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archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#277151: Apr 10th 2019 at 6:22:00 AM

[up] I’m sure I don’t need to point out why that’s a ridiculous comparison, but for the record Russia is a adversary state with a long history of interfering in our political process, invading its neighbors and destabilizing world politics. “The Jews” are not.

They should have sent a poet.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#277152: Apr 10th 2019 at 6:22:08 AM

Now you’re just deliberately splitting hairs. “The Russians” or “Russia” in a modern political context of international relations is a common and obvious shorthand for “the Russian government under Putin”.

But sure, let’s claim that using shorthand to refer to a bunch of nationalist anti-semites is the same as pushing conspiracy theories about evil Jewish overlords, that’s in no way insulting to victims of anti-semitism.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#277153: Apr 10th 2019 at 6:42:06 AM

Yeah, comparing Russia to Jewish people is extremely anti-semitic, and I'd suggest dropping that line of thought real quick if you want to continue as part of the conversion.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#277154: Apr 10th 2019 at 6:48:11 AM

...Wait a minute. Did someone equate wanting to take a harder line with the Kremlin with anti-semitism?

Disgusted, but not surprised
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#277155: Apr 10th 2019 at 6:54:30 AM

Last page's bottom post:

Russia is more than just its politicians though. And blaming stuff on "the Russians" isn't far removed from blaming "the Jews"

Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:54:55 AM

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#277156: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:10:53 AM

It's one of those stupid "we derail the discussing by acting like a snow flake" arguments. So, let's now allow to work it and go back to the point which was made before the distraction happened. Which was?

Edited by Swanpride on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:11:38 AM

ShinyCottonCandy Everyone's friend Malamar from Lumiose City (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Everyone's friend Malamar
#277157: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:13:51 AM

Populism and democratic presidential candidates, if I understand correctly.

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CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#277158: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:15:05 AM

Nielsen’s allies trying to rehab her image for life after Trump

     "She deserves accountability. She doesn’t deserve a big fat paycheck..." 
Kirstjen Nielsen’s image makeover has already begun—but it may be a hard sell.

Just days after she announced plans to resign as Homeland Security secretary, Nielsen and her allies are working to rehabilitate her reputation, arguing that she’s not the heartless villain depicted by liberal critics already pressuring big companies not to hire her.

Almost as soon as word of her resignation under pressure leaked, Nielsen’s allies began spinning a narrative of her tenure that casts her not as an enabler of President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, but as a guardrail against even more extreme action.

In particular, they stressed that the policy for which Nielsen is most fiercely reviled — separating detained migrant children from their parents — gave her no pleasure, and that she slow-walked or resisted other Trump demands on border security.

“I think Nielsen has been treated unfairly. A caricature was created by people who oppose the way the President talks about immigration or who even oppose current immigration law that’s been on the books for decades — and that caricature is nothing like the person she actually is,” said Thad Bingel, a former George W. Bush administration Homeland Security official who helped guide Nielsen through her Senate confirmation.

But it will likely prove difficult for Nielsen to shed her unsavory image. Ultimately, she implemented the child separation policy and other controversial Trump moves rather than resign in protest, as many critics argued she should. And Democrats and their liberal allies plan to continue making her the face of what they view as one of the most outrageous periods of the Trump presidency.

“She deserves accountability. She doesn’t deserve a big fat paycheck,” said Karl Frisch, spokesperson for the advocacy group Restore Public Trust. Cabinet secretaries, particularly ones at high-profile departments like DHS, typically go on to earn lucrative salaries with big corporations and Washington-based lobbying firms.

The group has organized an open letter to top American corporations urging them not to hire Nielsen and other Trump administration officials. “She represents a severe reputational risk to anyone, any institution, that would engage with her,” Frisch said.

Restore Public Trust is planning to launch a series of digital ads meant to hold Nielsen and other Trump administration officials involved in the family separation policy accountable. The ads will be targeted at K Street, Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Other Nielsen allies declined to go on the record, but privately made the case that she has unfairly shouldered much of the blame for a child separation policy fiasco that was mishandled by other administration officials, from senior White House aides to Health and Human Services Department officials who have struggled to reunite minors with their parents. (Trump halted the policy last year days before a judge declared it mostly illegal.)

Having defended the administration on Capitol Hill and stood alongside the president as he warned of a flood of dangerous immigrants coming into the country, Nielsen has become the face of the administration’s immigration policies. Her critics say images of minors being detained in fenced-in facilities along the border will dog her for life.

The vitriol she engendered was evident last June when a group of liberal activists hounded her out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, chanting, “Shame!”

Despite the ongoing effort to stigmatize Nielsen, two leading Washington-based corporate recruiters told POLITICO she will likely land a well-paid business job. But they both said her baggage could make image-conscious corporations, fearful of boycotts and Twitter backlashes, think twice about hiring her.

“My assumption is that she probably ends up in a consulting firm or something like that. I’m not sure that a company, for her first job out of this, is going to take a risk on that,” one of the recruiters said. "She’s going to have some challenges.”

The second recruiter noted that her experience with emergency management and cybersecurity issues could help her land lucrative consulting gigs.

People close to Nielsen said she is still plotting her post-government plans. Her allies expect her to lay low for several months after she leaves DHS, as she recovers from an exhausting 16 months leading the agency.

"I could see her getting into the cyber or risk resiliency sectors in corporate America because that’s her background before she came in, and obviously she did a lot of work on that in the department and the assumption is she will continue that work," a senior administration official said.

Nielsen’s last official public act will be speaking at a celebration of the brand-new DHS headquarters on Wednesday at the old St. Elizabeth's Hospital site in Washington. She will speak without formal written remarks and may take the opportunity to reflect on her tenure at the department.

Nielsen isn’t the first ousted administration official who has had to grapple with the reputational burdens of having served a controversial president. Indeed, several Trump White House officials have already laid out a possible path forward.

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, a close Nielsen ally, quickly sought to publicly distance himself from the president, arguing in a lengthy interview last year with The Los Angeles Times that he acted as a guardrail against Trump’s most extreme impulses. Kelly went even further in a speech earlier this year, rejecting the president’s assertion that migrants are dangerous and saying that building a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border would be a “waste of money.”

Shortly after White House counsel Don Mc Gahn left the White House in November, the New York Times reported that Mc Gahn rebuffed Trump’s push to prosecute Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. Some Trump officials interpreted the leaks as an act of image management by Mc Gahn to show that he, too, was more a restrainer than an enabler of Trump.

Some in Trump’s circle have privately stewed about what they perceive as Mc Gahn and Kelly’s efforts to rebuild their reputation among the Washington establishment. They see echoes of that strategy in a series of recent leaks about the administration’s internal immigration debate that have painted Nielsen in a positive light. A CNN report posted the day after Nielsen’s resignation depicted her as telling Trump that closing ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexican border would be a “bad and dangerous” idea, as the story put it.

Nielsen has few allies in the White House, where aides say she had an off-puttingly brusque style while serving as Kelly’s deputy in the chief of staff’s office.

“She’s not a monster,” said one former senior administration official who worked with her. But, the former official added of the family separation policy, “She not only didn’t resign on principle, but she gave the orders, and signed the documents and went before Congress and the public and the media and argued for these things.”

“She’s the face of it,” the former official added.

About this particular ex-official's exit plans. The No, Except Yes at the end makes me wonder what qualifies as 'monster' to the speaker...

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#277159: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:17:17 AM

[up] Eh... that kind of thing is pretty much Appeal to Worse Problems. Yes, Trump and Stephen Miller are worse human beings than Nielsen is, but the caged children/family separation still happened under her watch.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#277160: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:56:12 AM

Nielsen is worried that there won't be a future for her after defending Trump's barbaric policies.

I, for one, sincerely hope there isn't. F*ck her and the horse she rode in on. She doesn't get to play the "Just Following Orders" card.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 10th 2019 at 8:56:38 AM

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#277161: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:57:07 AM

[

Russia is more than just its politicians though. And blaming stuff on "the Russians" isn't far removed from blaming "the Jews"

Do you really think that people who use the term Russia as a proper noun are blaming all people of Russian ethnicity and not referring to the current government of the Russian Federation?

Oh really when?
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#277162: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:59:40 AM

[up][up]Yeah, I also have nothing but a tiny violin for her.

Disgusted, but not surprised
nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#277163: Apr 10th 2019 at 9:42:43 AM

The mods are spectacularly uninterested in entertaining apologia as presented handily by golgothasArisen.

KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#277164: Apr 10th 2019 at 9:53:52 AM

I find the idea of populism to be innately wrong to be a somewhat questionable belief. It's usually hot air but the idea behind it is appealing directly to the voter and I don't think that's innately bad.

...Trust me, I know that is hard to think on this in the Trump Era, but the "nice at first" is a very shitty type of populism, at least with Trump everyone knows what is the issue, with the "nice at first" guys, everyone is uber happy until you realize that the guy is ignoring the laws that they themselves wrote and finding bizarre legal loopholes to justify staying in power.

Watch me destroying my country
ShinyCottonCandy Everyone's friend Malamar from Lumiose City (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Everyone's friend Malamar
#277165: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:23:06 AM

It's unfortunate and inherent to democracy (though better than the alternative) that people have to win votes by appealing to the masses before they can do their job, because that job includes tasks that are confusing, boring, or making unpleasant-sounding decisions to a layperson's eye. The person who is best suited for many of the jobs, if they are honest in their presentation, won't be telling people what they want to hear, and will lose out on some votes from voters who really would have them in their best interests.

Hypothetically, if someone pretended to be populist but went ahead with an unpleasant-sounding plan after being elected, that could win in both counts, but then people like us might not trust them enough to give our vote and the people who bought in to the populist rhetoric may feel betrayed even if they end up given what's best for them.

My musician page
speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#277166: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:27:45 AM

[up] Yup. As Hillary once said (paraphrasing), "You have to be a nerd to do this job well."

AzurePaladin She/Her Pronouns from Forest of Magic Since: Apr, 2018 Relationship Status: Mu
She/Her Pronouns
#277167: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:29:53 AM

...You know, I'm trying to cut out the "what did I miss?" part of my posts whenever something happens, but sometimes its so bizarre that confusion needs to be expressed. What.

Anyway, populism is...a mixed bag. At its worst, its cynical powergrabbing without substance that tends to lead to bad things happening. At its best, it is a breath of fresh air that introduces new ideas into the mix, forcing the status quo to amend itself or be swept aside.

I find a lot of the arguments of "well, its bad that politicians have to appeal to the voters" to be...bad, in the sense that a Democracy is all about allowing the people of a country to have a say in what happens. If you're not listening to the people and keep doing harmful things, you deserve to lose, even if you're a total policy wonk. The entire point is that you're (supposed to be) accountable to the community.

The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#277168: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:32:04 AM

At its best, it is a breath of fresh air that introduces new ideas into the mix, forcing the status quo to amend itself or be swept aside.

And then the next gen are a generation of cynical powergrabbers. If the new good guy didn't decide to do it themself.

Watch me destroying my country
AzurePaladin She/Her Pronouns from Forest of Magic Since: Apr, 2018 Relationship Status: Mu
She/Her Pronouns
#277169: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:45:03 AM

[up] I, uh...I was thinking of Bernie Sanders when I wrote that part, and unless you count Tulsi Gabbard and not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as the new generation that doesn't seem to be happening. (^_^;;

Its a fair point though - there are numerous cases through history of the legacy of someone being tarnished by what happened immediately after. Even if they weren't that good to begin with - Lenin wasn't a good man, but his death resulted in the somehow-even-worse Stalin taking power.

I'd argue that its not inevitable that populism and listening to the people always ends in failure though.

The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#277170: Apr 10th 2019 at 10:54:15 AM

and unless you count Tulsi Gabbard and not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as the new generation that doesn't seem to be happening. (^_^;;

...uh...YMMV. She is too eerily similar as Evo or Chavez when they were democratic, I doubt she is malicious herself but she's striking many red buttons.

I'd argue that its not inevitable that populism and listening to the people always ends in failure though.

Populism usually leads to hilarious anti intellectualism, leading to goverments that become the definition of Too Dumb to Live.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 10th 2019 at 12:55:57 PM

Watch me destroying my country
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#277171: Apr 10th 2019 at 11:02:39 AM

My issue with most modern strands of populism (at least in the democratic world, elsewhere its a stepping stone to dictatorship a good chunk of the time, as [up] mentioned) is the tendency to dismiss expert opinion and science in exchange for (pretending) to follow a type of mob rule. Doesn't matter if a policy move is smart, well researched or even if its implemented legally; so long as "the people" (definitions flexible by design) support it.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#277172: Apr 10th 2019 at 11:09:00 AM

[up][up]Which of those women are you talking about, because that's a confusing statement as is.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#277173: Apr 10th 2019 at 11:09:13 AM

Anyway, populism is...a mixed bag. At its worst, its cynical powergrabbing without substance that tends to lead to bad things happening. At its best, it is a breath of fresh air that introduces new ideas into the mix, forcing the status quo to amend itself or be swept aside.
Given at least two out of three of the most recent, prominent examples of populism I can think of offhand (Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Brexit) are un- or barely mitigated fusterclucks, I'm disinclined to trust populists at this point in time.

Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 10th 2019 at 12:10:15 PM

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#277174: Apr 10th 2019 at 11:09:52 AM

@Kazuya-

Are you referring to Tulsi or AOC?

Because I actually would consider Tulsi malicious what with her denial of Syrian atrocities and past as an anti-gay crusader / ties to Hindu extremists.

Whereas AOC seems to be very competent and all around likable person. [nja]

Granted, I did originally have a somewhat positive view of Morales, but that's mostly because he looked like Ernie from Sesame Street.

More seriously though, I generally go with [up] in terms of populists. AOC is pretty great as is Elizabeth Warren, but I would not say that Bernie gives me a particularly positive view of populism, nor (of course) do Brexit and Trump - and in all three cases, it's a case study in how populism often but not always is tied to a certain view of who are/deserve to be "the people".

Edited by Hodor2 on Apr 10th 2019 at 1:12:19 PM

tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010

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