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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Finally. We should have done this a long time ago.
The 56-to-41 vote was a rare move by the Senate to limit presidential war powers and sent a potent message of disapproval for a nearly four-year conflict that has killed thousands of civilians and brought famine to Yemen. Moments later, senators unanimously approved a separate resolution to hold Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia personally responsible for the death of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
Together, the votes were an extraordinary break with Mr. Trump, who has refused to condemn the prince and dismissed United States intelligence agencies’ conclusions that the heir to the Saudi throne directed the grisly killing.
While the House will not take up the measure by the end of the year, the day’s votes signal that Congress will take on Mr. Trump’s support of Saudi Arabia when Democrats take control of the House next month.
The action indicated a growing sense of urgency among lawmakers in both parties to punish Saudi Arabia for Mr. Khashoggi’s death, and to question a tradition of Washington averting its gaze from the kingdom’s human rights abuses in the interest of preserving a strategically important relationship.
“What the Khashoggi event did, I think, was to focus on the fact that we have been led into this civil war in Yemen, half a world away, into a conflict in which few Americans that I know can articulate what American national security interest is at stake,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “And we’ve done so, following the lead of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
The resolution was written by Mr. Lee and Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. It was an unusual invocation of the War Powers Act, a 1973 law by which Congress sought at the end of the Vietnam War to reassert its constitutional role in deciding when the United States would go to war.
Mr. Sanders called it the first time Congress had used the law to make clear “that the constitutional responsibility for making war rests with the United States Congress, not the White House.”
“Today, we tell the despotic regime in Saudi Arabia that we will not be part of their military adventurism,” he said.
Seven Republican senators joined Democrats to pass the resolution: Mr. Lee, Susan Collins of Maine, Steve Daines of Montana, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Todd Young of Indiana.
....Senators in both parties described the twin measures as a direct response to the refusal by Mr. Trump and his administration to hold Saudi Arabia to account for Mr. Khashoggi’s death — and a way to counter the president’s assertion that the money to be made from arms sales to the kingdom was enough to justify turning a blind eye to such a deed.
And once again we come to that all-to-brief moment when the stopped clock is right.
In a rather abrupt change of topics, It turns out that Donald Trump was in the Room where it happened!
As part of a nonprosecution agreement disclosed Wednesday by federal prosecutors, American Media Inc., the Enquirer's parent company, admitted that "Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate's relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided."
The "statement of admitted facts" says that AMI admitted making a $150,000 payment "in concert with the campaign," and says that Pecker, Cohen and "at least one other member of the campaign" were in the meeting. According to a person familiar with the matter, the "other member" was Trump.
Edited by megaeliz on Dec 13th 2018 at 10:28:54 AM
Raineh: Nothing's been confirmed yet, but the Republicans are already preparing for a new primary to force out Harris from running again.
In other good news, Betsy DeVos is being forced to stop being a terrible person for once.
DeVos cancels $150M in student loan debt after losing court battle
The move comes as De Vos is being forced to implement a package of regulations that created more protections for student loan borrowers who were affected by a school closure or defrauded by their college.
A federal judge in September ruled that De Vos' efforts to stop the 2016 “borrower defense” regulations from taking effect was illegal. And in October, the same judge rejected a bid by for-profit colleges to immediately stop the regulations, clearing the way for them to take effect.
Education Department officials said Thursday that they will cancel the loans of about 15,000 borrowers who qualified for “closed school” loan discharges but who haven’t yet applied for that benefit. Those student loans total approximately $150 million.
Department officials said they would begin notifying borrowers Friday by email that they will receive the loan discharges. Borrowers will not have to take any action, but the process could take as long as 90 days to complete.
Figure of Hourai
I think I read that Congress could just seat the losing candidate or something. Which seems strange, but seems like less of a waste of money than the cost of another election, half a year of campaigning, and possibly getting the same result as the cheating.
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Man it must absolutely kill her to have to do that. Probably sets back her plans on getting another yacht by, like, a day or something.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.
Oh, bother.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
No, Devos never stops being a terrible person. The difference in this situation is that she has been stopped from hurting other people. It's not like she doesn't still want to screw these people over.
Edited by M84 on Dec 14th 2018 at 12:41:05 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Untrustworthy
The two possible outcomes are this:
- The NC election board forces a new election, with the same candidates as before. It all probably wraps up before the New Year in this case. Interesting, they don't actually need proof that there was fraud to this; things that look suspicious are enough to give them the authority
- The election board okays the result, but then Congress refuses to seat him. Then, in a few months, there would a special election to fill the empty seat, with new primaries and everything, which could take months.
The second option is probably better for the Republicans, because it gives them a chance to get a cheater off the ballot. Meanwhile, it's obviously in the Democrat's best interests to have that scandal damaging the Republican's support as much as possible.
Edited by Gilphon on Dec 13th 2018 at 12:07:36 PM
"Canada Day is over, and now begins the endless dark of the Canada Night."
Professional Forum Ninja
She/her
Siiiiiigh. I don’t know much about this guy but I feel like I heard something bad back in 2016? I refuse to research any candidates yet. I refuse. Not until February or March 2019, dammit.
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
Reading over his Wikipedia page, he seems like a pretty straight-forward Democrat, he passed a $30,000,000 sales tax for pre-kindergarten education and he's an LGBT+ ally.
The only controversy I could find, and this is probably what you're thinking of, is that he apparently violated the Hatch Act in 2016 by praising Clinton while giving an interview in an official capacity as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Right before he started talking about Clinton, he said this:
"Now taking off my HUD hat for a second and just speaking individually,"
He later said that he thought that was a sufficient disclaimer, but he admitted that he made a mistake and was going to take steps to improve training on the Hatch Act for himself and his department's executive team to ensure it wouldn't happen again.
Seems like a minor gaffe, kind of a nothingburger, but you know the 2016 election was full of the Republicans turning molehills into mountains, I wouldn't be surprised if this got way more attention and press coverage than it deserved.
See, personally I was thinking that while "everyone is racist" is often sorta accurate it also is a convenient way to make false equivalencies.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
She/her
No; it wasn’t that; I can’t remember what it was but it wasn’t a scandal; I think it was something about him being on the corporate wing of the Dems maybe? As I said, I refuse to research any candidates yet. I just. Need a couple months to breathe dammit.
Besides "that" is comparable to the crime that Individual-1 is accused of doing, so it's not quite a "nothingburger".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
Only as much as accidentally walking out of a store with a pack of gum you forgot to pay for is comparable to holding up the store with a gun and stealing all their money.
I don't agree. Illegal hush money is not much worse than campaigning using your public office.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I feel like making the mistake of answering too candidly during an interview - or rather, of not passing on the question as he should have, given the platform - is in no way comparable to knowingly paying out money from a hair-above-fraudulent charity organization to hush up stories about infidelity and rape.
It's been fun.
Yeah they're not equivalent. One person was completely open about things and when it was clear they did the wrong thing immediately owned up about it and vowed to do better, the other did everything possible to keep it secret, denied it for months after it was revealed and then started making excuses as to why it was okay.
RE: racism not being natural from last page:
It's my opinion that even so, people are taught to hold racial biases so early in life, that it really doesn't make a difference. That's no excuse, and there's no reason sentient beings cannot turn from what society has taught them since early childhood, but I don't think "racism isn't natural" is a particularly useful argument to make.
See here I was also thinking that racism starts early.
Also, Paul Krugman has written an op-ed titled Manhood, Moola, McConnell and Trumpism about the border wall charade and what it says about his policies. And about what other things say about his policies.
Edited by SeptimusHeap on Dec 14th 2018 at 11:32:20 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
There is strong evidence that the in-group bias, and by extension racism, has neurological roots. It's plausible that there is a nature x nurture interaction going on. Regardless, its deeply seated.
So it seems like New Jersey Democrats are trying to rig the election maps in their state. Yes, this time it's Democrats who are engaging in anti democratic games.
I saw that. The national Democrats, among others, were like "Dude, no..."
Anything can and has been used as an excuse to justify the very thing being argued against. Truth is truth. You cant let the potential underhanded tactics of people engaging the argument in bad faith stop you from making the best argument. That's effectively letting the other side frame the debate. Which is why they engage in those underhanded tactics in the first place.