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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@ Trump being less popular than other autocrats: Eh, is it really that surprising that people like competent authoritarians more than they like incompetent authoritarians?
Lost in Space
Normally I'd post this in the Space thread, and may cross-post there, but since we've been on the subject of China mucking around in U.S. affairs, this Space News article might be of interest.
In a virtual fireside chat, United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno revealed that Chinese actors attempted to infiltrate his company's supply chain by acquiring businesses involved in manufacturing rocket parts. The scheme revolved around existing, screened suppliers, who would be acquired (or their own subcontractors would be acquired) by businesses ultimately owned by China. China would thus gain access to any intellectual property shared with those suppliers.
This has become an increasing problem in the U.S. space industry, since International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) prohibits any exchange of technology with sanctioned nations that could be used to build intercontinental missiles. ULA builds rockets, and rockets that can go to space can also be aimed at the ground. (Also, China's space program, while prolific, lags in technology and has many more failures as a percentage of launches than the U.S., Europe, and Russia.)
Thanks to proactive security screenings, no secure technology leaked, but Bruno expressed his concern that the U.S. government, which is supposed to be enforcing ITAR, has "stressed" resources and has been unable to take any action. ULA itself does not have any law enforcement power and only detected the risks by hiring a third-party investigator. He requested that the DOD direct additional resources to maintaining the security of restricted technology.
For all that Trump rails against China, his evisceration of the national security agencies has damaged their ability to protect vital U.S. industries like rocket manufacturing from intellectual property theft.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 15th 2020 at 11:09:27 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lauren Witzke wins the Delaware Republican primary, making her the second QAnon supporting Senate candidate (the other is Jo Rae Perkins in Oregon) this year. Witzke is also a fountain of other far-right views. Thankfully both her and Perkins are running in deep blue races and have no chance of winning.
Edit: Is it just me or does Chris Coons have the luck of going up against the nuttiest opponents? I'm pretty sure he ran against Christine O'Donnell when he was first elected to the Senate.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 15th 2020 at 8:31:16 AM
The 35-year-old woman has been held in the facility, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for about a year and told lawyers about a “pattern and practice” of abuse there, including that guards systematically assaulted her and other detainees in areas that were not visible to security cameras.
Several guards “forcibly” kissed her, and at least one touched her intimate parts, often as she was walking back from the medical unit to her barrack, according to her complaint filed with law enforcement agencies.
“If she behaved,” she said one guard told her, “he would help her be released.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General launched an investigation into the accusations after Pro Publica and The Texas Tribune first reported them last month. At least two more women have since come forward with similar allegations of assault.
The inspector general requested that ICE not deport the woman and the FBI interviewed the woman extensively, according to her lawyers. Her attorneys also sent a complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office, warning of a potential criminal investigation.
Those government agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jeanette Harper, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s El Paso office, said the agency’s policy prevents it from commenting on an ongoing investigation. She said the lead agency into the woman’s allegations is now the Justice Department’s Inspector General, which oversees accusations of civil rights abuses. That office did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Last Friday, lawyers filed a habeas petition in federal court asking that the woman be freed on supervised release and held in an immigrant shelter in El Paso.
They said in an interview that guards and inmates had been making intimidating comments to her following her accusations and that she felt unsafe.
She gave investigators a tour of the facility, showing where the assaults occurred in security camera blind spots, her lawyers said. Shortly after she quoted one guard telling her: “You need to watch out for yourself.”
“Everybody knows, and it just made things very difficult for her,” said her lawyer, Linda Corchado.
Three days after her habeas was filed, DHS’ inspector general reversed its earlier position and told ICE that the agency could deport the woman and investigators would further interview her by telephone from Mexico if necessary, her lawyers said.
Within hours, she had been sent back even though she says she fears persecution from drug cartels there. A high-ranking cartel member sexually assaulted her and threatened her after she reported the attack to police, according to statements she gave the U.S. government.
The government “allowed their most powerful witness to be deported,” Corchado said. “How can we possibly take this investigation seriously now or ever pretend that it ever was from the outset?”
Ranjana Natarajan, who directs the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law and who filed the woman’s habeas petition, wrote in an email that the government’s decision was “extremely disappointing.”
The woman had waived her right to appeal her deportation in July, long before the allegations became public. She told Pro Publica in a telephone interview last month that she worried about being targeted in the detention center for speaking up about the abuse.
In August, her lawyers filed an application with ICE requesting the agency not remove her and that it release her until the investigation is complete. She could also qualify for a legal status known as a U visa, which is intended for immigrant victims of crime.
Instead, the government deported her.
“We hope that the government does not abandon its investigation of disturbing and egregious allegations of sexual misconduct at the El Paso detention center,” Natarajan said.
Pro Publica and the Tribune are not identifying the deported woman because she said she is a victim of sexual assault. She repeatedly told reporters, lawyers and investigators the same account, identifying the officers who abused her and other detainees.
When she complained to a captain, she said he dismissed her. One officer who had assaulted her briefly disappeared from her area of the detention center only to later return, becoming “increasingly aggressive and intimidating.” She told lawyers that the same officer was still working in her area of the facility last week.
“She has lived in constant panic that he may do something against her again,” according to her complaint.
The allegations detailed by her and two other detainees in that filing also involved a lieutenant who detainees said was promoted even after women complained. At least one other woman was deported after a guard assaulted her, detainees told lawyers.
A spokesperson for ICE has said that those allegations would be investigated, including by its Office of Professional Responsibility. The agency has “zero tolerance” for abuse, she wrote in an email last month. “When substantiated, appropriate action is taken.”
A spokesperson for Global Precision Systems, a subsidiary of Bering Straits Native Corporation, which contracts with ICE to run the El Paso facility, has said that she could not comment on pending legal matters.
The El Paso allegations are the latest instance of sexual abuse complaints related to detention centers run by ICE, which imprisoned an average of 50,000 immigrants daily across the country in 2019. Most are operated by contractors at taxpayer expense.
Another woman also said she was repeatedly harassed while in the El Paso detention center and that guards continued to reach out to her even after she was released.
She told Pro Publica and the Tribune in a telephone interview that officers encouraged detainees to sign up for anti-anxiety pills because they oversee the dispensing of medication at night and have access to an enclosed off-camera area.
“Most women who are still there are scared of saying anything,” she said. “You don’t know what they can do.”
Guess we can add obstruction of justice to the list of crimes ICE committed.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Working under the assumption Biden wins, my big worry is that prosecutions against ICE for all the fucked up things will only get thise at the bottom and not all the higher ups who enabled or ignored all this shit happening.
Without irony, I have no doubt Biden would win in a massive landslide in any fair election.
The problematic word being fair.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Redmess
That's a bit of a pipe dream. Massive landslide victories either way are unlikely with a binary party system, and the current political division means many are unlikely to cross the aisle one way or the other, making landslide victories very unlikely.
Expect something more along the lines of the 2018 election, where Democrats had a modest victory.
Optimism is a duty.
Candidates no longer have their party registrations listed on the ballot. Instead, they're only listed as the nominee of a particular party or as having entered a race through the petition process.
Ouch, that can't be good for Gross or Galvin. They'll now both be listed as the Democratic Party Nominee and not as independents.
Edit: Actually, a 9-point Dem margin like would be excellent. That would probably net them the Senate, the House and the Presidency, with even a little bit of wiggle room in the Senate. By popular vote, that's equivalent to Reagan's 1980 win, but of course state-by-state polarization is much worse, so Biden can't win the Electoral college by the same amount (which I think was your last point)
Edited by nova92 on Sep 16th 2020 at 6:20:13 AM
Redmess
It was excellent, but it was hardly the landslide blue wave people were hoping for either. I think that will be about the extent we can expect with Biden, unless a lot of Trump supporters decide to vote Biden after all.
Optimism is a duty.
Would that it were so simple.
"Expect something more along the lines of the 2018 election, where Democrats had a modest victory."
Democrats picked up 40 seats in a district map that's basically hard-coded to keep them below 200 seats. That's not a landslide, but it's also not modest, either.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Redmess
Modest was not the right word, but I wanted to indicate that it was not a landslide.
Optimism is a duty.
I think we're getting into differing semantics and expectations territory here (my post included). We're agreed on 2018 being good, if we can replicate it in 2020 that's also good.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 16th 2020 at 6:55:52 AM
Redmess
Its good to have realistic expectations. Of course a land slide would be nice, but it is not very realistic, and will likely lead to disappointment.
Biden looks set to win the popular vote, at least. Whether or not he can win the electoral college is much more uncertain.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
In the current environment, a "landslide" means winning the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate. People just don't seem to grasp that Republicans dominate enough state legislatures to make a supermajority of states and of Congress all but impossible even in the most optimistic scenario.
This isn't "if only we could get the right leaders we'd have progressive policy". That sort of thinking is very nearly as ignorant as Trump telling everyone that COVID-19 will "just go away".
We are literally in an existential fight to retain control of our democracy. It feels like some people (*cough* Bernie) are planning the victory march through Berlin while the bombs are still dropping on London and telling anyone who isn't joining them that they are "tools of oppression".
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 16th 2020 at 10:04:27 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Unless the Senate is changed, nothing will change but via Executive Orders.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Professional Forum Ninja
Lost in Space
A few weeks ago I was getting Trump ads on MSNBC's mobile app of all places. Thank goodness that's stopped.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Is it cash strapped or is Trump embezzling from his campaign?
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
A nice butterfly
Damn he IS running it like one of his casinos
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes
Like just a month or two ago he had more cash-on-hand than Biden. What happened to all that money?
Any bets he's started embezzling to line his pockets when he can't funnel taxpayer money to his kids anymore?
It's been fun.
Redmess
It's probably a bit of both. Apparently they raised over a billion dollars, but already blew through 800 million of that, and are at risk of running out of money before the election.
I guess they want to outdo Bloomberg in the wasteful campaign spending race.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Point of advice: never bet against a certainty.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 16th 2020 at 10:31:38 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Transgender activist Sarah McBride wins Delaware state Senate primary
McBride, who currently serves as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, defeated Joseph McCole to win the nomination for the state Senate seat in the 1st District. She will be the heavy favorite to win the seat, which has been held by Democrat Harris McDowell since 1977 and is open this cycle.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Gov. John Carney (D-DE) also won their primaries.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 15th 2020 at 7:16:11 AM