The General 'Murican Politics Thread

[CleverSonicUsername]

Trump staffers not being able to figure out light switches would sound dubious if it didn't also sound just so right.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

And Trump just seems unable to stop throwing tantrums on Twitter for at least a day...

Isn't it just juicy how everyone ripped the last president apart and yet he simply tried to do his fucking job?

[Tani Coyote]

5 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

And Trump just seems unable to stop throwing tantrums on Twitter for at least a day...

Isn't it just juicy how everyone ripped the last president apart and yet he simply tried to do his fucking job?

Don't forget how Obama was a tyrant for using Executive Orders to try and keep things running, whereas Trump's doing it and it's a-okay.

If the Congressional GOP are so hung up on a President having to cooperate with them, they should pass an Amendment turning us into a parliamentary system. The President doesn't have to work with Congress if he doesn't want to, he'll just have his options limited if he doesn't.

[Nepenthe]

GOP just eliminated the Election Assistance Commission, which was created in 2000 to oversee the implementation of better voting standards and information and to upgrade voting technology. DeVos was also confirmed to Secretary of Education via a tie-breaking vote cast by Mike Pence.

Things just keep getting wooorrrrse.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Couldn't removing the Election Assistance Commission backfire on the GOP come 2018?

[PSI Wind]

Honestly I hope karma hits my sister HARD with DeVos as she currently has a teaching degree from college and is working in education. If it does, she reaped what she fucking sowed.

[Nepenthe]

32 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Couldn't removing the Election Assistance Commission backfire on the GOP come 2018?

On the contrary; it gives them more leeway to institute measures that would fall under the banner of disenfranchisement. So expect more bullshit and a big red wall come midterms.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Was thinking more along the line of people catching wind of this and voting them out despite any nonsense they would pull if the Democrats could use this against them in their mobilization.

How is that coming along by the way? I've had difficulty finding decent sources to believe (been getting extremely cynical in politics lately) on any successes or failures these days.

[Nepenthe]

Mark my words: they're going to frame this as them dismantling the red tape and bureaucracy that allowed millions of illegals to vote in California, thus they're actually protecting the sanctity of our voting process. Once they say that, it's a done deal.

And how's what coming along? Democratic opposition?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

And how's what coming along? Democratic opposition?

Yeah.

Are how are they preparing for 2018, if at all? Because it's gonna take a pretty big push to overcome all of this despite everything that is being done to suppress their voters.

[Nepenthe]

Last I really heard was that the Dems who remained were going to go all in on full opposition, similar to what Republicans did during Obama's years, and just deny everything. There's also discussion on how to restructure the DNC to be more inclusive, but I've not been keeping up on that.

[Patticus]

New York state Democrats have just passed a bill that will turn the state into a 'Sanctuary State', in response to the Trump administration's recent anti-immigrant crap:

Quote

“It is our job to respond to his call to build border walls with a wall of our own, one that protects diversity and acceptance that have always been at the core of our state,” Assemblyman Francisco Moya, a Democrat from Queens, said a press conference announcing the measure. “Not only is it a moral imperative to shelter every race or religion from bigotry, it is our obligation to protect the function of our local law enforcement and agencies."

Moya’s bill, dubbed the “New York State Liberty Act,” would prohibit state and local law enforcement from making arrests based on suspected immigration status and would prohibit state and local police officers from enforcing federal immigration laws.

The legislation would also limit when police agencies can collect data on immigration status from people reporting accidents or seeking help and would bar police from complying with federal immigration detention orders (or detainers) if they aren’t issued by a judge unless the individual in question has been convicted of a violent felony, has previously been deported, is on a terrorism watch list or has an outstanding warrant.

The bill would also guarantee a right to lawyers for people facing deportation. Neither Moya nor Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie estimated how much that provision would cost the state.

Assemblyman Dean Murray, a Republican from Long Island, said the bill would tie the hands of law enforcement.

“We pass laws for a reason — we pass laws to protect the public. Now we’re asking our local law enforcement to just completely ignore some of those laws,” he said. “That’s a problem. This is a matter of law. We need to allow law enforcement to work together to enforce all laws.”

http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2017/02/assembly-passes-sanctuary-state-bill-as-trump-response-109389

This is going to go down so well with the Trump administration. I can just see the fight now; a small group of blue states going sanctuary and rubbing Trump's nose in it, until he threatens to cut their federal funding. In response, they threaten to stop sending their money to Washington, knowing it would cause a big budget crisis or some such thing. Naturally, the GOP chooses to use the opportunity to threaten to hack Medicare and other welfare programs to pieces with the condescending "it's your own fault" excuse, rather than swallow their pride, as the big court battles over sanctuary status loom large on the horizon.

I don't know what'll happen, but it's going to get scary.as.fuck in the coming years.

Go to 21:21. The infamous Yemen raid that killed 30 mostly innocent civilians, one Navy SEAL and let the target escape... has now morphed into an "intelligence gathering raid" or some such bullshit, where apparently the target wasn't the target at all. My, how convenient! Now, I'm not super knowledgeable about military operations, but I believe that this is called "post-operational mission creep", and it beggars belief that anyone could classify that fuck-up as anything other than a terrible blunder.

 

Lastly for now, the best new Twitter account in years, a Medieval Trump parody:

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I wonder if all the fuck-ups that are gonna happen between the states and the federal government will finally get people to realize how much they've fallen and how they need to stop this nonsense and work together?

Because twisted psycho in me wants to really look forward to this trainwreck just so this could happen. I can dream tho...

[Tani Coyote]

The New York sanctuary state bill will likely fail the state Senate, but it's a nice gesture.

I can only presume a few other hard blue states will join in.

2 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Couldn't removing the Election Assistance Commission backfire on the GOP come 2018?

Only if Democrats make a point to turn out and make sure they can get around whatever legal hoops the GOP constructs.

Fortunately, the GOP uses the same playbook as Jim Crow Southerners.

Rather than ban voting, they just make it inconvenient. Never mind how the right suppresses talk of voter suppression by saying such bullshit things as "if you claim voter ID laws disenfranchise minorities, you're a racist because you're saying they're stupid!"

But yeah. The advent of REAL ID and the fact about half of Americans fly once a year raises the possibility of voter ID laws losing effectiveness. The best thing we could hope for is Homeland Security expanding REAL ID to cover things like the USPS; this would make it extremely inconvenient to not have an up to date ID, which would in turn incentivize the disenfranchised to get one.

Though voter ID suppression can be overblown at times. While it does happen, it only decreases turnout by a percentage point or two usually. This isn't deciding in most races, but it can be in elections like 2016's, given how many states were decided by narrow margins. So it's worth fighting as part of a larger package of suffrage protection.

The real bogeyman is felon voting laws, which disenfranchise far more people and have no real way around them barring government action.

1 hour ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Yeah.

Are how are they preparing for 2018, if at all? Because it's gonna take a pretty big push to overcome all of this despite everything that is being done to suppress their voters.

They've released a list of several dozen House seats they're gunning for, to start. The Republicans so far have dismissed the list, though, smugly declaring that the Democrats targeted many of the same distrits expecting Trump would lose in 2016, so targeting the same districts isn't going to make any difference.

The Republicans are forgetting Trump had things going for him that weren't him running as a Republican, namely hostility towards Clinton and his status as an outsider. They'd do good to not be like Hillary and become too confident in victory. The GOP won't have Trump's coattails to help them, and there will likely be a lot of animosity towards his administration. Seats lost in midterms are generally ones that were tossups in the Presidential race, but were won by the coattails (ergo, without a President running in the midterms, most of the tossups flip to the opposition).

We'll likely have a more coherent Democratic strategy after a new DNC chair is elected, after which point I presume we'll see their 2018 platform being put together. They need to really work hard to take back economic populism from Trump. Trump was able to court just enough Democratic-leaning voters with his promises of economic revival to swing the race, so the Democrats need to point out how he's failed at this and how they can do better. Negative campaigning alone likely won't be enough.

They also, quite frankly, need to run some compromise candidates who can appeal to voters outside the urban areas. Democrats historically were able to court rural voters quite well, but that has suffered in recent decades. While the move towards the left on both social and economic issues is good, it doesn't help if the Democrats can't win enough seats to pass major economic reform.

[Nepenthe]

....

Apparently Trump had to make a call early this morning to the National Security adviser to figure out whether or not a strong dollar or weak dollar was good for the fucking economy.

This is the "savvy businessman" we elected. Either he's had a bunch of yes men all his life pulling the strings on his businesses or he's losing it. Cuz ain't no way in Hell.

[Patticus]

You beat me to the punch in posting that article.  Oh well, here's the worrisome rest of it:

Quote

Leaks Suggest Trump’s Own Team Is Alarmed By His Conduct
White House leaks are common, but leakers suggesting the president might be unfit for office are not.

President Donald Trump was confused about the dollar: Was it a strong one that’s good for the economy? Or a weak one?

So he made a call ― except not to any of the business leaders Trump brought into his administration or even to an old friend from his days in real estate. Instead, he called his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, according to two sources familiar with Flynn’s accounts of the incident.

Flynn has a long record in counterintelligence but not in macroeconomics. And he told Trump he didn’t know, that it wasn’t his area of expertise, that, perhaps, Trump should ask an economist instead.

Trump was not thrilled with that response ― but that may have been a function of the time of day. Trump had placed the call at 3 a.m., according to one of Flynn’s retellings ― although neither the White House nor Flynn’s office responded to requests for confirmation about that detail.

For Americans who based their impression of Trump on the competent and decisive tycoon he portrayed on his “Apprentice” TV reality shows, the portrait from these and many other tidbits emerging from his administration may seem a shock: an impulsive, sometimes petty chief executive more concerned with the adulation of the nation than the details of his own policies ― and quick to assign blame when things do not go his way.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s volatile behavior has created an environment ripe for leaks from his executive agencies and even within his White House. And while leaks typically involve staffers sabotaging each other to improve their own standing or trying to scuttle policy ideas they find genuinely problematic, Trump’s 2-week-old administration has a third category: leaks from White House and agency officials alarmed by the president’s conduct.

“I’ve been in this town for 26 years. I have never seen anything like this,” said Eliot Cohen, a senior State Department official under President George W. Bush and a member of his National Security Council. “I genuinely do not think this is a mentally healthy president.”

There is the matter of Trump’s briefing materials, for example. The commander in chief doesn’t like to read long memos, a White House aide who asked to remain unnamed told The Huffington Post. So preferably they must be no more than a single page. They must have bullet points but not more than nine per page.

Small things can provide him great joy or generate intense irritation. Trump told The New York Times that he’s fascinated with the phone system inside the White House. At the same time, he’s registered a complaint about the hand towels aboard Air Force One, the White House aide said, because they are not soft enough.

He’s been particularly obsessed with the performance of his aides on cable television. Past presidents typically didn’t make time to watch their press secretary’s daily briefings with reporters, but Trump appears to have made it part of his routine. “Saturday Night Live’s” weekly skewering of his administration is similarly on his must-watch list ― with his reaction ranging from unamused to seething.

Information about Trump’s personal interactions and the inner workings of his administration has come to HuffPost from individuals in executive agencies and in the White House itself. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

While some of the leaks are based on opposition to his policies – the travel ban on all refugees and on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim nations, for instance – many appear motivated by a belief that Trump’s words, deeds and tweets pose a genuine threat.

When Trump tweeted about North Korea’s missile technology three weeks before he took office, for example, it scrambled then-President Barack Obama’s national security apparatus, which saw a risk in provoking an unstable young dictator who possessed nuclear weapons.

Richard Nephew, a State Department expert on Iran sanctions under Obama, said some of the leaks from the agencies are likely efforts to let the public know that their advice has not been followed, in the event something bad happens down the road. “This, I think, is about making it clear that these folks have tried to do the right thing and there is only so much they can do with a hostile administration,” Nephew said.

Perhaps along those lines, The Associated Press reported the details of a phone call Jan. 27 between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, noting that Trump said Mexico had “bad hombres” and that he might need to send U.S. troops to take care of things. (The White House later said Trump had been joking around.) The Washington Post detailed a Jan. 28 conversation between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in which Trump angrily denounced an agreement to resettle refugees held by Australia in the United States.

The New York Times, meanwhile, painted a portrait of a brooding commander in chief, wandering the White House alone in a bathrobe at night, watching too much cable television and venting his frustrations through angry tweets.

“I think it’s a cry for help,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a counterterrorism expert at the Treasury Department under Obama. She said many staffers still working in the national security agencies under Trump see what’s happening and are driven by a simple motive: “Incredulity, and the need to share it.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-administration-leaks_us_589a45f1e4b04061313a1fbb

When the president's own White House staff is alarmed at his behavior, and his mentality, and are trying to get the word out anonymously, you know something deeply wrong is going on. But of course, these people can't relieve him of his post, no matter how far his mental state decays - only congress can do that, or Pence, and I'm sure they'll only do that when they feel like their election chances are suffering too much at his hands. When it's time for their trusty lapdog, Pence, to take over.

Incidentally, the image of a darkly brooding President Trump wandering the White House halls at night, that is some political thriller gold right there.

[Blacklightning]

1 hour ago, Patticus said:

Incidentally, the image of a darkly brooding President Trump wandering the White House halls at night, that is some political thriller gold right there.

i'm batman

Spoiler

Wow you're right, that is funny.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

How the fuck are those people some how alarmed by someone they supported and got them their fucking positions?

There's stupid, and then there's brain-dead...makes you wonder what the difference is.

[Candescence]

Elizabeth Warren was silenced in the senate by the GOP for reading Coretta King's 1986 letter admonishing Sessions.

Fuck the GOP. Racist fucking scumbags, the lot of them, they pretty much confirmed as much with this vote, and a ridiculous use of senate rules.

Also, they should man the fuck up, I've heard worse 'insults' in Question Time over here in Australia's parliament. Thin skin like their president, apparently.

Edit: Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, posts wise advice.

[Nepenthe]

Amazing how Sessions was too racist back in the 70s and 80s for any kind of promoted political positions, and now he's about to be the Attorney General. GOP really getting off on the fact that they're getting to tell black people we ain't shit after Obama.

EDIT: Sean Spicer, you motherfucker!

[PSI Wind]

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/318608-senate-confirms-sessions-as-attorney-general

And surprise surprise, Sessions confirmed for AG.

1986: Too racist to be federal judge

2017: Totally okay to be AG

[SenEDDtor Missile]

There's a question that I only realized I never asked and kind of want an answer to:

Why does it seem like extreme (white) conservatism is on the rise in such a large number of first world countries lately?

Maybe I've just been ignorant due to lack of knowledge and attention span and it's always been there, but it only seems like recently that radical extremes like the GOP and various other conservative groups have come climbing out of the woodwork to try to stamp down the rise of progress. Did they just only start showing because they realized that they were no longer on the top of the shit pile and wanted to "remind the minorities their place" or something?

[KHCast]

Possibly could be because they don't fear repercussions that much when senators, people of national importance and the president are all now right leaning and don't seem to think that much for other groups since there isn't in their mind much in it for them. "If the president an be phobic and discriminating on multiple accounts and get people on both sides defending it as constitutional, why should I?" If the raise in hate crimes and I'm assuming in certain locations discrimination among police doesn't send that message across, I don't know what will.

[Speederino]

Still breaking (at the time of this posting, the page is literally just a paragraph saying "refresh the page soon") BUT:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38927175

Trump's appeal to reinstate the travel ban has been DENIED in court.

[Patticus]

13 minutes ago, Speederino: Hero of Hyrule said:

Still breaking (at the time of this posting, the page is literally just a paragraph saying "refresh the page soon") BUT:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38927175

Trump's appeal to reinstate the travel ban has been DENIED in court.

The verdict was unanimous, as well! But it's not over, not by a long shot:

Quote

The White House could take the issue to the Supreme Court, but the prospects for such an appeal are uncertain due in part to the high court being short a justice and split evenly between Democratic and Republican appointed justices.

The appeals court ruling is not a final one on the legality of Trump’s order. Litigation on that subject will go forward before the Seattle judge and in about 20 other legal challenges pending across the country.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-court-decision-travel-ban-ruling-234870

Trump will more than likely be Tweet raging well into the night. I expect that he'll call for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to be broken up to reduce its influence (as Republicans have been trying to do for years), as well as pass the blame for his lawyer's failure to have his ban upheld onto the justices of the court, rather than take responsibility for the that shoddily written garbage. I guess that the buck stops with whomever Trump decides to blame at any given moment, apparently: "Don't look at me, I'm just the president!"

Edit:

There we go.