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TyeDyeWildebeest Unreasonably Quirky from Big Rock Candy Mountain Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: How does it feel to treat me like you do?
Unreasonably Quirky
#241451: May 7th 2018 at 11:11:42 AM

Right-wing/social conservative views definitely seem more predisposed to bigotry, but I don't think they inherently have to go together, and the opposite (more left-wing automatically equals less bigoted) certainly isn't true.

Oh, yeah. Just look at the lefties who are so virulently anti-Zionist that they border on anti-semitic.

edited 7th May '18 1:06:08 PM by TyeDyeWildebeest

No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#241452: May 7th 2018 at 11:16:55 AM

The Right Wing isn't inherently bigoted as a former Right winger.

Right Wing politics are inherently more likely to afflict the poor, immigrated, or vulnerable.

Bill Clinton, for example, has caused mammoth damage with both NAFTA as well as the revised drug policies (mandatory sentencing) as well as three strikes laws.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
rikalous World's Cutest Direwolf from Upscale Mordor (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
World's Cutest Direwolf
#241453: May 7th 2018 at 11:25:28 AM

"Essentially" that's questionable - to me and to Wikipedia "Young Turks" is principally the group that succeeded the Ottomans and gave Turkey much of its present structure, the Armenian genocide is perhaps the second not the first thing they are known for.
And I still associate the term most with the obscure meaning nobody knows about. Always gonna be outliers, I guess.

@magaeliz: I gotta admit, a 12 Angry Men reference is more culture than I expected from Trump.

@Sci Fi Slasher: Nothing like threatening to shoot up a restaurant to prove how safe a lack of gun control is.

edited 7th May '18 11:25:43 AM by rikalous

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#241454: May 7th 2018 at 11:26:43 AM

Going to disagree with those claiming the right isn't inherently bigoted. There are individual right-wingers who do not have bigoted views, but right-wing parties are more or less universally bigoted (it's simply a question of by how much).

That the left is not immune to bigotry (far from it), does not change the fact that right-wing politics are pretty intrinsically bigoted. Unless you already live in a utopia, you cannot be conservative without holding out for a status quo that disadvantages some minority, some where. And of course you cannot ever be reactionary without wanting to go back to a time that disadvantaged some minority, some where.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#241455: May 7th 2018 at 11:32:06 AM

I think you missed a point that if it is or is not inherently bigoted, the result is a a Distinction Without a Difference.

Does it matter if law and order laws are directly aimed at blacks if it affects them disproportionately?

edited 7th May '18 11:32:29 AM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#241456: May 7th 2018 at 11:34:18 AM

To put what Ambar says in another way, you cannot completely divorce the intent of the ideology from its outcomes. The invariant outcomes of right-wing policies are to disadvantage women and minorities. This is true in all times, all places, throughout all of history wherein "right-wing" has had any meaning.

Ergo, the policies are racist (and sexist), and the question of whether any individual supporter of those policies has that as a specific intent is rather specious.

Slightly ninjaed. [up][nja]

edited 7th May '18 11:34:50 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#241457: May 7th 2018 at 12:36:17 PM

So in really bright news, a Rochester, NY pilot program in which those carrying guns to commit non-violent offenses (e.g. robberies/muggings where no one is shot, violating parole terms, etc.) has shown an 82-percent success rate, compared to the 77% failure rate with conventional means. Part of it is that the offender is effectively put on parole rather than thrown in jail, and connected to resources which they can use to get away from that life of crime.

It was implemented after the summer of 2015, in which there were 84 shooting victims in the span of 93 days, and even a current District Supreme Court Justice who supports the program only anticipated a 10-15 percent success rate.

As a former police officer and long-time prosecutor, my expectations were hopeful, but measured. I knew we were dealing with a very difficult crowd. I knew that three-quarters of the defendants were, statistically, likely to re-offend. I knew that, despite our best efforts, it would be naive at best to imagine that we could cure 18 or 20 years of dysfunction in a 12-month probation program. I was hopeful that we could maybe divert 10 or even 15 percent of Gun Court participants from state prison. I was praying that 10 to 15 percent of Gun Court participants would step away from the gangs and the violence. But, honestly, I wasn’t expecting much.

After two full years, the Monroe County Gun Court is succeeding beyond anything I imagined. While the conventional system has a failure rate of about 77 percent, we have a success rate of 82 percent.

I believe Gun Court’s success is a result of our collaboration-not-confrontation approach. All the Gun Court partners work together to encourage positive change in the probationers’ lives. This is a huge step for prosecutors and defense attorneys. Rather than battling it out in the courtroom, they are working together on tailoring the terms and conditions of probation to ensure a positive outcome. Probation officers are no longer the enemy to probationers, but a resource for success. And I must say the dedication and professionalism of the Monroe County Probation Department is extraordinary.

It is my hope that other communities will follow Monroe County’s lead and create their own gun courts.

What are the odds of a system like this getting implemented nationally? Probably slim to none with Sessions' "tough on crime" posturing.

edited 7th May '18 12:38:54 PM by ironballs16

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
smokeycut Since: Mar, 2013
#241458: May 7th 2018 at 12:39:26 PM

Huh. Neat. Glad my home is doing something right.

KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#241459: May 7th 2018 at 12:45:11 PM

[up][up][up] So basically, the existence of the Right Wing proves that Humans Are Bastards.

Eh, I suspected that. I didn't wanted confirm it

[up][up] That's pretty neat. I go for the thing that work

edited 7th May '18 12:49:35 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#241460: May 7th 2018 at 12:47:30 PM

[up][up][up]That's awesome, if it continues to go so well I hope other states begin to adopt similar programs. Rehabilitation is the way to go and it's fundamentally irrational and inefficient to do anything else.

edited 7th May '18 12:47:43 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#241461: May 7th 2018 at 12:47:50 PM

[up][up]Not quite. The humans who are bastards congregate in the right wing. Some hang out on the fringe left as well, but for different reasons.

edited 7th May '18 12:48:00 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#241462: May 7th 2018 at 12:49:51 PM

Ohio, a state very heavily gerrymandered in favor or Republicans, (the map of districts in in the article, and it's fairly ridiculous) is putting forth a bipartisan compromise to address gerrymandering

Activists and politicians alike acknowledge that the attempt isn't perfect, but it seems like a legit first step, although apparently it's largely an attempt to circumvent voters passing a bigger reform via ballot initiative.

    Ohio's gerrymandering 
A strange thing will happen during Tuesday’s Ohio primary election: One of the most pro-Republican-gerrymandered states in the country will put an actual bipartisan deal to reform gerrymandering in front of its voters.

Issue 1, or the Congressional Redistricting Procedures Amendment, will be up for a statewide vote, and its prospects look good. Three months ago, it got overwhelming support in the state House and passed the state Senate unanimously. Both party establishments are on board with the reform, as are business and labor groups in the state. And activist groups are generally either supportive or neutral.

“There’s no organized opposition that we know of,” says Keary Mc Carthy, who’s working on the bipartisan campaign in favor of the measure.

So why would the Ohio Republican Party — which has controlled the governorship, dominates the state legislature, and drew the maps of its dreams in 2010 — sign on to a deal that could limit its power to gerrymander in the future?

The answer lies in the plan itself. Under it, the legislature would have to try to come up with a new map supported by a big bipartisan majority. If they fail, however, a one-party map could still pass — but it would now expire after four years, rather than the current 10.

Reformers see this as a clear improvement on the status quo, which gave the minority party little recourse. The Ohio GOP, though, sees it mostly as a way to preserve that status quo — fearing that if they didn’t cut a deal for here, a more radical measure could have gained support and passed through a separate ballot initiative.

“I think it largely enshrines the process that we have,” says Republican state Sen. Matt Huffman. “It still leaves it in the hands of the majority party in the legislature, because people elected the majority party to make these decisions. But it also enshrines the concept of minority rights.”

The current rules for how congressional redistricting happens in Ohio are simple: The state legislature can pass a plan, and the governor can sign or veto it, just like any ordinary bill. That means that if one party has majorities in both the state House and state Senate, as well as the governorship, they can gerrymander to their heart’s content.

That’s exactly what Republicans did after their 2010 landslide victories in the state. As David Daley describes in his book Ratf**ked, the GOP rented a room in the Columbus Doubletree for months to draft a plan in secret. In the next election, 2012, President Barack Obama won in Ohio — yet Republicans won 12 of the state’s 16 congressional districts under the new map. They did so with only 52 percent of the statewide US House vote.

Since then, the partisan breakdown of the state’s congressional delegation has remained unchanged. The 2014 GOP landslide and Donald Trump’s surprisingly large 2016 win in the state led to the same partisan outcome in the same districts. And the Brennan Center has found that Ohio has one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country.

Yet unlike in many other GOP-controlled gerrymandered states, reform has come on the agenda in Ohio in recent years. Part of this, of course, is due to efforts of groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, which have spent years pushing for reform.

But some leading Republicans also displayed a surprising openness to dealmaking. After the 2014 elections, Huffman — then a Republican state House member who had played a key role in passing the recent gerrymandered maps — introduced redistricting reform plans for both congressional and state legislature maps. “One of the things that I came away with personally was there’s gotta be a better way of doing this,” he says.

...

Ohio Republicans had defeated such ballot initiatives before — most recently in 2012, when a sweeping redistricting reform went down to defeat by a 26 percentage point margin. Huffman helped engineer that defeat. “One of my jobs in 2012 was to go around the state and raise money to beat back that ballot initiative,” he says. “A lot of people gave us money, and we did beat it back. But a lot of those people said, ‘Can you fix this? Because we don’t want to keep having this same fight.’”

But this time around, the midterm environment began to look increasingly challenging for Republicans, just as the new ballot initiative was gaining steam. “We had the specter that it could go on the ballot,” Huffman said. “We knew then we’d have to raise $10 or $12 million. Maybe we’d beat it back, maybe not. But that’s money we wouldn’t have been able to spend on Republican House races and other things.”

Issue 1, if approved, would create a new congressional redistricting process that would proceed in a series of stages designed to incentivize bipartisan agreement.

  • To start off, the Ohio legislature would be tasked with drawing a new map. But they could no longer pass it with a simple majority vote. They’d need three-fifths support and the support of at least half the members of both major parties, in each chamber, as well as the governor’s signature.

  • If there’s no deal, the congressional map-drawing would be punted over to the seven-member Ohio commission that exists to handle the state legislature’s redistricting. Here, again, bipartisanship would be necessary — at least two minority-party members would have to agree to approve a new map.

  • If the commission fails, the job would be tossed back to the Ohio legislature. In that case, the threshold for success would fall, but bipartisanship would still be necessary to pass a map — at least one-third of each party’s members would have to vote for it, to pass it and send it for the governor’s signature.

  • Finally, if all these efforts fail, the legislature would be permitted to pass a map with simple majority support. But the catch is that this new map would only last four years, rather than the usual 10. And again, the governor’s signature would be required.

Issue 1 has other reforms too. It restricts how often counties and other local governmental units in the state can be split up in the new map, and declares that any plan must not “unduly” favor or disfavor a political party or its incumbents.

A brief overview of the primary elections to watch that are taking place tomorrow in Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and North Carolina

Audio only story from NPR about how Republicans are using the Congressional Review Act to try to roll back any rules put out by any government agency that they don't like

The latest victim is a rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that aims to protect minority borrowers from being ripped off in auto loans after investigators from the CFPB found that minority borrowers, even those with a better credit rating than similar white borrowers, were given worse deals by lenders. Prior to 2017, the CRA had only been used once to overturn a rule, it was used more than a dozen times in 2017, and is part of an aggressive campaign against the administrative state. In particular, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation wants to use it against every rule passed by an agency that wasn't submitted to Congress first since 1996. See here for more details from Vox

Connecticut will join a group of 10 states that will pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of who wins in their individual states

All the states to do so thus far are blue states, totaling 172 electoral votes. 270 electoral votes are currently the amount needed to win a Presidential election. The agreement among these states won't kick in unless the compact gets enough states to make up more than half of the electoral votes to join in, so there won't be any immediate changes.

A bill introduced by Senators Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) would limit the ability of the president to conduct warfare without Congressional approval

An entirely symbolic move, since it will never get through Congress, nevermind survive a Trump veto, but it is an overdue conversation. That said, legal analysis by the writer, (who is a Constitutional law professor) says that while the bill would entirely repeal the 2002 authorization of military force and clear up some fuzzy areas in the 2001 version that have been stretched and abused, this bill might make certain things worse and in some areas surrender some of Congress' oversight powers on the president's ability to wage war.

New York City to become the first city in the US with safe injection sites for addicts, as it moves to open 4 such sites

One thing that made a personal impression on me is that the plans for where to open them is not paying any heed to the NIMBY attitude of "Don't do it where us decent upper class folk may be effected." One of the proposed sites is in the very upscale Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, (which is routinely ranked as one of if not the most desirable neighborhood in the city and one of the top 10 in the country) which also happens to be where the mayor himself lives. I find it both surprising and encouraging that it's a real effort and not just a dog and pony show.

In Follow The Money news:

Trump used to call himself the "King of Debt" and aggressively used debt, borrowing, and bankruptcy to keep his empire afloat. But in the decade before he ran for president, Trump suddenly went on a $400 million spending spree using only cash and refusing to borrow any money. Where did all that cash come from?

Warning, the article doesn't have answers for that, but it does give a very deep look into Trump's sudden turnaround and complete about face on business philosophy.

    Why did Trump suddenly use so much cash? 
In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties — including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks — during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described “King of Debt.”

Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.

It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.

Why did the “King of Debt,” as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects?

And how did Trump — who had money tied up in golf courses and buildings — raise enough liquid assets to go on this cash buying spree?

...

Real estate investors typically don’t buy big properties with their money alone. They find partners to invest and banks to lend alongside them. That allows the investors to amplify their buying power, and it increases the odds of earning higher returns.

“For privately held real estate firms, basically they like to use as much debt as they can. The only brakes are put on by the lending institutions, who don’t want to lend too much,” said David Geltner, a professor of real estate finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Industry experts said avoiding loans can alleviate risk for real estate companies and allow them to maneuver more quickly.

But they said that approach is typically undertaken by cash-rich investors that aren’t focused on maximizing the money they make off a property or by companies that aren’t trying to minimize their tax bills, because interest payments on mortgages are often tax-deductible. Companies that have trouble obtaining loans would also turn to cash, they noted.

Particularly when pursuing major projects, private real estate firms usually borrow. “I still think at the end of the day, you want some debt,” said Ed Walter, a Georgetown University real estate professor and former chief executive of Host Hotels, which owns more than 100 hotels under various brands.

Trump himself embraced that philosophy — extolling the virtues of borrowing big, even more enthusiastically than other real estate executives. Until, suddenly, he didn’t.

...

“He always used other people’s money. That’s for sure. Not cash,” said Barbara Res, who was a top executive for Trump throughout the 1980s and continued to work for him for most of the 1990s. “He always got somebody to put up funds for him. To put up the money. And he’d put up the brilliance.”

Debt helped make Trump in the first place, allowing the prince of an outer-borough apartment empire to play a king in Manhattan.

In 1988, when Trump bought New York’s famed Plaza Hotel, he paid $407.5 million. He got a $425 million loan.

“If the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I won’t lose a dollar,” Trump bragged to a reporter in 1988. He said he had offloaded the risk by investing and borrowing against other people’s money.

But then it was debt that nearly sank Trump, when a late-’80s recession undercut his risky investments in hotels, casinos and airplanes. Among the things he lost was the Plaza: The bank took it back and sold it for $325 million in 1995. He never personally went bankrupt, but his real estate holdings dwindled.

...

George Ross, a senior counsel who advised Trump for 25 years, summed up the developer’s attitude toward debt in one sentence.

“Borrow as much as you can for as long as you can,” Ross wrote in his book “Trump Strategies for Real Estate.”

In the book, Ross explained that borrowing allowed Trump to seed his money into multiple projects at once, then fill out the rest with loans and partners’ investments, protecting his bank account and getting significant tax write-offs on the interest he had to pay.

“When Trump invests in a real estate project, he typically puts up less of his own money than you might think,” Ross wrote, explaining how Trump followed this rule. “Typically, his investors in the project will put up 85 percent while Trump puts up 15 percent.”

Then in 2006, the same year Ross’s book was published, Trump changed his approach.

He began buying up land near Aberdeen, on Scotland’s North Sea coast. Trump ultimately paid $12.6 million for the property. He’s spent at least $50 million more to build a golf course there, which was wrapped up in land-use fights and didn’t open until 2012.

“Even his closest senior advisers in NYC were surprised” that Trump paid cash, recounted Neil Hobday, a British developer who worked on the Aberdeen project with Trump.

Why did he do it?

Hobday said it was a personal connection: Trump’s mother was born in Scotland.

“He was, I believe, ‘mystically’ connected and hooked to this project. All my conversations with him were almost on an emotional rather than hard business level,” Hobday wrote in an email to The Post.

But Trump soon began to buy other properties in cash, in places far from his mother’s homeland.

In 2008 and 2009, he paid $17.4 million in cash for two neighboring Beverly Hills homes.

In 2009, Trump spent at least $6.7 million on two golf clubs, one outside New York City and another outside Philadelphia.

In Charlottesville, he paid $16.2 million for a winery, buying up the first plots in 2011. “I own it 100 percent, no mortgage, no debt. You can all check,” Trump said of that winery during the 2016 campaign.

In the same period, some of Trump’s companies also experienced financial problems. His publicly traded casino and hotel company declared bankruptcy in 2009. And in 2008, Trump sued Deutsche Bank to challenge the size of his payments on a loan related to his tower in Chicago. Trump’s logic in that case: The 2008 financial crisis had crushed the real estate business so completely that it should be considered like an act of God.

Eric Trump said that, in this time, the company had accumulated enough cash to have ready spending money, so it could bid on short notice.

When the Trumps felt an emotional connection to a property, Eric Trump said, they didn’t want to wait for banks and outside partners to sign off. So they paid cash.

“We want to be nimble. If we see an unbelievable opportunity or something that interests us, we want to jump on it,” he said.

“With lenders, every time you sneeze, you have to write a four-page report,” he added.

Despite that distaste for bankers’ paperwork, the Trump Organization still obtained loans in this period from Deutsche Bank. Starting in 2012, Trump borrowed $125 million from Deutsche to purchase the Doral golf club in Florida and $170 million from the same bank to renovate the Old Post Office into a hotel in Washington. The Trump Organization declined to comment about why it turned to borrowing in these cases.

Trump spent $65 million of his own on those two deals to cover the costs that Deutsche Bank did not.

Then the spending got bigger.

The year before he launched his campaign for president, Trump made the two most expensive all-cash purchases that The Post found in its review. In 2014, he shelled out $79.7 million for the huge golf resorts in Doonbeg, Ireland, and Turnberry, Scotland — both of which were losing money at the time.

The golf courses were his most recent cash deals and last acquisitions before becoming president.

The Trump Organization pursued pricey renovations of both courses, during which time the properties have continued to suffer losses. Under Trump, the two courses are at least $240 million in the hole so far, according to British and Irish corporate records.

Had Trump financed the property, the risks to the investment would be shared among lenders and other partners.

Geltner said it was unusual to see a company not bring in financial partners in either the purchase or construction of such large development projects.

...

During the 2016 campaign, Trump continued to brag about how he’d mastered the art of spending other people’s cash.

“I do that all the time in business: It’s called other people’s money. There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money because it takes the risk,” Trump told a campaign-trail audience in North Carolina in September 2016. “You get a good chunk of it, and it takes the risk.”

edited 7th May '18 12:59:34 PM by TheWanderer

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#241463: May 7th 2018 at 12:50:52 PM

[up][up] The Right seem to be exclusively about being a bastard towards someone (Poor people, minorities" etc).

Leftists can be bad, Right Wing ideas are almost always bad

edited 7th May '18 12:51:15 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#241464: May 7th 2018 at 12:51:33 PM

@Charles Phipps Yes, yes it does. A good example: Bigots support policies because they disproportionately effect minorities. However, there's a stopped clock principle here. For example, there's a huge difference between disliking Bill Cosby because he's a rapist and disliking Bill Cosby because he's black.

And leftism and rightism have little to do with bigotry per se. If black people are all public property of the white man, that's still a pretty far-left system. If all men are economically equal to all men, and all women are economically equal to all women, that is also egalitarianism by its anthropological definition. By contrast, if rich white people are equal to rich black people, that's still capitalism.

edited 7th May '18 12:51:50 PM by Protagonist506

Leviticus 19:34
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#241466: May 7th 2018 at 1:00:09 PM

f black people are all public property of the white man, that's still a pretty far-left system.

...No. It's not even close to a far-left system. You've just described a variant of fascism.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#241467: May 7th 2018 at 1:03:04 PM

Yeah the existence of public property does not make it automatically far-left, just because Libertarians and some Republicans are crazily fond of privatization does not mean that all right-wingers must be.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#241468: May 7th 2018 at 1:24:48 PM

[up]

Would communal AI be a better example? It's still a socialistic approach in regards to a particular resource.

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#241469: May 7th 2018 at 1:34:59 PM

Melania Trump is starting a campaign against cyberbullying. Considering her husband is the world's most well known cyberbully (targeting not just individuals, but companies and nations), any credibility she might have had is already gone.

In worse news, Trump is going announce a decision on the Iran deal tomorrow. I think we all know what's coming.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/white-house-press-briefing-05-07-2018/index.html

Also includes him congratulating Putin for "winning" the latest "election" in Russia.

edited 7th May '18 1:35:08 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#241470: May 7th 2018 at 1:35:49 PM

I am willing to give Melania the benefit of doubt on this one, dunno.

[down] Yeah, but anyway.

edited 7th May '18 1:41:10 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#241471: May 7th 2018 at 1:37:36 PM

I don't see why we should, she'll never be able to meaningfully make a dent against cyberbullying when it's most prolific virtuoso is her husband. The entire idea is a gigantic farce that is as amusing as it is hypocritical.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#241472: May 7th 2018 at 1:47:00 PM

Adam Schiff, head Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, describes how his Republican colleagues are working to put the DOJ in a Xanatos Gambit: either turn over unredacted documents that would severely hinder or outright neuter the investigation, or refuse and give Congress an excuse to declare that the investigation is not cooperating with Congress and then oust Mueller

On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told Fox News that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should be held in contempt of Congress.

Nunes promised to press for that outcome this week after the Justice Department, citing national security concerns, declined to comply with a classified subpoena.

“Disclosure of responsive information to such requests can risk severe consequences, including potential loss of human lives, damage to relationships with valued international partners, compromise of ongoing criminal investigations, and interference with intelligence activities,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote in a letter responding to Nunes’ request earlier in the week.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with Slate on Friday and described what he believes is behind Nunes’ confrontation with the Justice Department.

Schiff said there is a concerted effort by some of his colleagues to force the DOJ into an impossible bind by issuing subpoenas on classified topics. Those requests force the DOJ to either interfere with the Russia probe, by publicizing currently secret evidence, or reject the subpoenas, giving the administration a pretext to remove officials like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Indeed, President Donald Trump on Wednesday commented on the subpoena situation and issued a veiled promise to “get involved” if it wasn’t resolved satisfactorily.

The money quote from this interview:

Interviewer: You’re basically saying that your colleagues are hoping to force Rosenstein’s hand to either give away evidence that will interfere with the investigation and make public that evidence, or refuse them in a way that would lead them to claim that Rosenstein should be impeached.

Schiff: Without a question. Most recently they asked for the Comey memos, and they were quite indignant in not getting the Comey memos. What they didn’t reveal, of course, is that we had already had access to the Comey memos. I had already read the Comey memos, and the chairman already had the opportunity to read the memos. Now, whether he took the opportunity or not—the chairman seems to ask for a lot of things and demand them and then not read them—but we already had access, so we knew that the Comey memos were completely consistent with the director and what he was saying in his testimony.

They were hoping for a fight, and they didn’t get it. The Justice Department decided, “OK, we’ll give you the memos.” So then they moved onto the next fight, “OK, we want to see the document in unredacted form that initiated the investigation.” And they were hoping for a fight on that, because that’s even more sensitive. And ultimately, the Justice Department relented again, and they didn’t get their fight. Now they’ve moved onto other things and the goal is to keep asking until they can force the Justice Department to say no. You already saw the president in lockstep say, “Why won’t the Justice Department give the Congress what it’s asking for, what are they hiding? I said I wasn’t going to be involved, but I might have to get involved.” It’s a clearly choreographed effort to give the president and his team a pretext to fire Rod Rosenstein. When this chapter of history is written about our country, it will be damning of the president but it will reserve a special damnation for people in Congress that are complicit in the tearing apart of our institutions and undermining of our systems of checks and balances.

Meanwhile, lets us never forget that Nunes, who is trying to provide this cover for Trump and is the ranking Republican of the House Intelligence committee, was repeatedly accused of undermining the House investigation, first rose to prominence as one of the Republicans obsessed with Clinton's emails, advised Trump on the campaign trail where Nunes was said to be close allies with Michael Flynn, was part of the Trump transition team, and was involved in multiple controversies during the House investigation, including his episode of running to inform Trump of what Nunes claimed was damning must read intelligence he just got from a source, (the source turned out to be Nunes himself in an act of political theater) and open a fake news site called the California Republican paid for by Nunes' reelection committee which was a big broadcaster of the whole "Release the memo!" debacle.

edited 7th May '18 3:24:06 PM by TheWanderer

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Larkmarn Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#241473: May 7th 2018 at 1:49:29 PM

[up][up][up] Cyberbullying has been her topic of choice for a very long time. Her husband being the number 1 enabler and justifier of cyberbullying really does shoot any idea of her making a difference in the foot. It's like if Michelle Obama's fitness campaign... well, if her husband were Trump.

... goddamn, Trump is the ugly American.

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Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#241474: May 7th 2018 at 2:03:54 PM

[up][up]This is why taking control of the House is key, it takes away control of key investigative bodies from Trump's hatchetmen.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#241475: May 7th 2018 at 2:18:20 PM

Eh, maybe she wants to go against cyberbullying because she knows Trump is one.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

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