Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Well good for him then. But that doesn't erase what he did during the fucking Bush administration, so why exactly are we supposed to just forgive and forget?
Someone did tell me life was going to be this way.
Did he do anything in particular?
Here's Wa Po's article about it.
Richard Painter, probably best described as an ethics-guru-turned-anti-Trump crusader, will be challenging interim Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) as a Democrat, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. He's expected to announce his candidacy Monday.
Painter's most high-profile job was in a Republican administration. He served as the chief ethics lawyer in George W. Bush's White House. Now he's vice chairman of a nonprofit government watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is nonpartisan but whose leaders also describe it as progressive. (They've sued Trump once already.)
Despite his Republican background, it's not a coincidence that Painter has decided to run for office as a Democrat. The Trump era has opened the door for Painter to run for Senate. His candidacy is getting a big boost, if not being launched, thanks to Painter's high profile as a Trump critic on Twitter, cable TV and other news media.
And from retiring Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to dropping poll numbers among Republican voters for Trump critic Sen. John Mc Cain (R-Ariz.), there's plenty of evidence that being a Republican and a Trump critic will cost you politically.
Therein lies the irony of politics in the Trump era: For all his criticism of the president, Painter has become prominent enough to run for a U.S. Senate seat because of help from Trump's presidency....
....The next obvious question is whether candidates known mostly for being Trump critics can win. That's to be determined.
Painter must first win a primary against a sitting U.S. senator. Smith was appointed to the Senate by the state's governor in December after Al Franken stepped down amid numerous sexual harassment allegations spanning a decade. The first election for Franken's old seat will take place in November.
Smith was fairly prominent in the state before Franken's resignation. She had been the state's lieutenant governor since 2015 before going to Washington and was high-profile enough that she was widely speculated to run for governor in the open 2018 election. She's got the backing of nearly the entire Minnesota Democratic establishment and had already scared off at least one prominent potential primary challenger, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).
Painter, by contrast, has never run for office and is arguably better known in Washington political and journalism circles than among Minnesota Democrats.
The only Republican in the race is a state senator, Karin Housley. Minnesota has voted for a Democrat for president for the past 11 presidential elections. Nonpartisan political analyst the Cook Political Report puts this race as lean Democratic, saying that “it's up to Republicans to make it more competitive.”
If Painter's prolific Twitter feed since he decided to run is any indication, he plans to make his candidacy not just an indictment of Trump but also of the Republican Party that has stayed by Trump.
He has gone after the party's identity and its leaders, like House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) over his decision to abruptly and somewhat mysteriously fire the House chaplain. Meanwhile, Painter is quickly elevating his support for women's reproductive rights — a Democratic wedge issue that candidates like to use as a signal of their anti-Trump creds. He has also pledged not to take money from super PA Cs, like Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Tex.), to notable success, in his uphill Senate race in Texas.
In other words, Painter sounds like a Democrat who's attempting to catch a ride on any blue wave created by anti-Trump sentiment. It's TBD if his plan works, but it's notable for happening at all, given that Painter's candidacy is arguably created by anti-Trump sentiment.
edited 1st May '18 11:13:29 AM by megaeliz
Can't really find on the caucusing with the GOP part, must have been some miscommunication there. Here's him doing bullshit Franken apologism, starting around 2:20 in the video
![]()
I personally don't have any experience on the subject, but Rational Wiki has a section on it
on their Gish Gallop page. Hope it helps.
edited 1st May '18 11:14:14 AM by TrashJack
"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionaryhttps://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2018/05/01/day-467/
Day 467: So disgraceful.
1/ Robert Mueller has at least 49 questions he wants to ask Trump regarding his ties to Russia and alleged obstruction. The questions deal primarily with Trump's firing of James Comey and Michael Flynn, as well as his treatment of Jeff Sessions and the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Other topics of inquiry include Trump's conversations with Michael Cohen about a real estate deal in Moscow, Jared Kushner's attempts to set up a backchannel to Russia, contacts Trump had with Roger Stone, and Trump's 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/us/politics/robert-mueller-questions-trump.html
The questions Mueller wants to ask Trump about obstruction of justice and what they mean. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/us/politics/questions-mueller-wants-to-ask-trump-russia.html
2/ Trump tweets: "So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were 'leaked' to the media." The leak didn't come from Mueller's office, but were provided to the New York Times by a person outside of Trump's legal team. "No questions on Collusion," Trump added. "Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!" The list includes 13 questions related to possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump followed up with another tweet 45-minutes later: "It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!"(Washington Post / Politico)
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/01/trump-new-york-times-mueller-561692
3/ Grammatical errors point to Trump as the source who leaked the list of Mueller's questions. "Lawyers wouldn't write questions this way, in my estimation," Michael Zeldin said, a CNN analyst and former assistant to Robert Mueller. "Some of the grammar is not even proper," he continued. "I think these are more notes that the White House has taken and then they have expanded upon the conversation to write out these as questions." (The Hill)
Nixon's White House counsel said that if the Trump administration leaked Mueller's questions it could qualify as obstruction of justice. John Dean said leaking the questions could be an attempt to "try to disrupt the flow of information" or tip off a witness. (The Hill)
4/ Trump allies in the House have drafted articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein. One author of the draft articles referred to them as a "last resort" and are not expected to garner much support. The last federal official to be impeached by the House was federal Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr., who was convicted on bribery allegations by the Senate in 2010. (Washington Post)
5/ Trump's bodyguard and a Trump Organization lawyer took the original and only copy of Trump's medical chart from his doctor in February 2017 after Dr. Harold Bornstein told the New York Times that Trump takes Propecia. Keith Schiller, who was serving as director of Oval Office operations, also took lab reports under Trump's name as well as under the pseudonyms the office used for Trump. Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records, which is a violation of patient privacy law. (NBC News)
The White House pushed back that Dr. Ronny Jackson is no longer Trump's personal physician, despite reports that Jackson will not return to his previous role as physician to the president after withdrawing his nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. (The Hill)
6/ Mike Pence's physician privately warned the White House in September that Ronny Jackson may have violated the federal privacy protections of Karen Pence and intimidated the Vice President's doctor. The previously unreported incident is the first sign that the White House knew about Jackson's misconduct months before Trump and his staff defended Jackson's professionalism and insisted that he had been thoroughly vetted. The incident is also the first allegation of medical misconduct by Jackson, adding to a long line of allegations against the former White House physician. (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/politics/karen-pence-doctor-privacy-ronny-jackson/index.html
Notables.
California and 17 other states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to protect national vehicle emission standards from being rolled back by the federal government. The states argue that the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously, failed to follow its own regulations and violated the Clean Air Act. (Los Angeles Times)
A whistleblower from the EPA says that Scott Pruitt was "bold-faced" lying when testified to Congress that no EPA employees were retaliated against for raising concerns about his spending decisions. (ABC News)
Michael Cohen was hit with more than $185,000 in new state warrants for unpaid taxes on his taxicab companies, bringing the total he owes New York state to $282,000. (Bloomberg)
Former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo met with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators as part of the panel's probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. (ABC News)
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-campaign-aide-meets-senate-panel-russia-probe/story?id=54852929
A last resort for what, I wonder?
RE: Fighting the Gish Gallop - the page for Chewbacca Defense has one of the better ones, courtesy of Michael Shermer. Shermer requested to go first in their debate - "and not only explained why all Gish's questions were wrong and how his quotes were all out of context, he even stole all his jokes. Gish then gave the same speech he always gave and declared himself the winner."
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Shermer's Why Darwin Matters was actually one of the first books I read that directly attacked creationism, and since he wrote from the perspective of a former creationist I found his perspective on the issue interesting.
It's too bad Shermer turned out to be a big Broken Pedestal for me once I learned about his libertarian views (granted, I shouldn't have been surprised as I was) and (even more) his horrible behavior at conventions.
edited 1st May '18 1:17:57 PM by Raptorslash
Two things I hate are Creationalists making it seem like Darwin is necessarily anti-religion. Biblical literalism is a thing that people should have gotten over before Jesus but jerkasses try to advance as the only true way.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Well of course! The Bible is the literal word of God, the Bible says so!
Incidentally, there's someone on another forum who holds that literal attitude towards the US Constitution - that it's the best one out there because US History books say as much.
edited 1st May '18 1:30:16 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Well, it's at least (by some standards) the first and/or first written constitution. And it definitely has some strengths in terms of being concise. However, lot of problems with the 2nd Amendment as well as anything dealing with slavery. Not to mention the fact that the government structure imagined in the document didn't really work had required two amendments (i.e. 12 and 17), in addition to requiring various amendments enshrining rights for people who were not white men.
I'd also say in connection with some of the above, that Hamilton had a good point in arguing that enumerating rights in the Bill of Rights would make people conclude that those were the only rights Americans possessed. For a long time, this view was scorned and treated as Hamilton being against rights, but probably helped by him being the star of a best-selling musical, it's righffull gained some credence. Because if you look at how Originalists interpret the 14th Amendment, they do pretty much argue that rights not explicitly spelled out don't exist.
And conversely, with the 2nd Amendment, you can see the issues with being very specific about a right but not quite specific enough. Ditto I think the 8th Amendment, given the argument by Scalia that the only thing it clearly bans is executing people by breaking them on the wheel and maybe the whipping post.
Anti-intellectualism is a huge problem - people oppose evolution and climate change because those things "feel" wrong to them.
Acknowleging that climate change exists and needs to be stopped would mean acknowledging that the way we live is unsustainable and massive changes need to be made. Also, the concept is frightening and it's always easier to pretend nothing's wrong so we don't need to change. Evolution is threatening to them because it brings humans down to the level of other animals and takes away our "specialness". They blame evolution for everything from school shootings to abortion because they're convinced that evolution takes away the need for morals.
Then there are people who are convinced God gave the Earth and other living things to us to pretty much do whatever we want to them, and/or won't let anything too bad happen.
Honestly, a good share of why the anti-intellectualism is taking hold is how there is a good amount of investment in creating reasonable doubt and appealing to common sense.
Surely this fits wonderfully with the oil companies and oil lobbyists who found in the Republicans and conservative media (Fox News and other bullshit) a platform to plant doubt on the minds of their public, using every single of logical fallacy and taking vantage of the overall ignorance around the subject.
Together with the idea that some things like Climate Change and Evolution are just hoaxes to change the good old ways and attack the life style of plenty of conservative Americans is troublesome in itself. Also, the education in the US varying a lot from state to state doesn't help either.
edited 1st May '18 3:13:43 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesIt's like how, when scientists began to publicize data on how smoking caused serious health problems, including cancer, the tobacco companies fought tooth and nail to stop that information from getting out and muddy the issue with consumers, even though they were aware of the health effects. It stopped them from making money.
"Common sense" is one of those terrible buzzwords in politics because on a fundamental level, it's describing a good thing, but a common understanding of complicated concepts typically lacks nuance. Like, "It's common sense! You never spend more than you have! If I had a checkbook in the red, I'd be in deep trouble. If a household can't be in debt, the nation can't be in debt!"
"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."

edited 1st May '18 10:59:11 AM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV