U.S. Politics

[chrisp65]

'They're saying they don't like your politics, but they respect your right to the chicken soup that they absolutely have not spat in.'

[bickster]

9 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

'They're saying they don't like your politics, but they respect your right to the chicken soup that they absolutely have not spat in.'

Being as Godwins has been invoked... too f**king right I'd refuse to serve Goebbels (if I was in a country where such an action didn't put me in fear of my life)

[Keyblade]

The whole clamour by the mainstream media for "civility" is just nauseating. They are tone police and nothing more. 

[Keyblade]

Like they are more outraged by the kicking out of SHS than they are by the action by her administration that led to it.

Even their general opposition to Trump is because he's crude/rude/racist etc and is entirely devoid of any policy analysis.

This one clip from CNN sums it up. You have to be civil to Stephen Miller, whose whole claim to fame is being the racist Goebbels-lite who is the brains behind most of Trump's white supremacist policy. Don't call him names, I mean I just did a whole segment on civility for gosh sake! FFS.

 

[choffer]

I won't quote the tweet (cos swears) but my favourite response so far on the Miller hounding was something like:

Quote

If I can't go to Planned Parenthood for a routine pap smear without being screamed at and harassed by Christian protestors then Stephen Miller shouldn't be able to eat his flipping salad without being called an A-hole.

 

[sne]

Harley Davidson moving abroad to avoid the Trump tolls.

They have to be one of the most U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! companies out there so that must sting a bit for the "they took our jeerbs" folk

[choffer]

And he's straight on the front foot, calling them out for it....

 

 

[Xann]

15 minutes ago, choffer said:

'... ultimately they will not pay tariffs selling into the E.U.'

He's banking on a spineless Tory trade deal.

Judging by Fat Prick Boris echoing the plainly wrong US stance on Palestine (an attempt offset his calamitous Brexit) ,  it's all too real a possibility (for the UK anyway).

Edited June 26, 2018 by Xann

[Straggler]

Why is Donald "child snatcher" Trump kidnapping South American children and holding them ransom so that he will get USA tax payer money to build his wall?  I thought Mexico was going to pay?  Shouldn't he be kidnapping Mexican kids who don't want to be in America and ransom them back until he has the money he needs?  All this assuming that kidnapping children is the new go to negotiation technique. 

[villakram]

Supreme court backs the President in travel ban case.

Not even remotely surprising for the supreme court to do this... congratulations on choosing to fight this fight and giving the president judicial precedent, morons!

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, villakram said:

Supreme court backs the President in travel ban case.

Not even remotely surprising for the supreme court to do this... congratulations on choosing to fight this fight and giving the president judicial precedent, morons!

The alternative to 'fighting this fight' being . . .?

[villakram]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

The alternative to 'fighting this fight' being . . .?

There was an implementation period during which procedure could have been fought, all sorts of procedures and specific court cases based on them. Going to the supreme court on this particular issue was a poor strategic decision.

Too much invested in this issue and nothing invested in the tax fight. One could generously see this as unfortunate or one could open their eyes. 

[snowychap]

That separation of powers thing's working wonders.

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, villakram said:

There was an implementation period during which procedure could have been fought, all sorts of procedures and specific court cases based on them. Going to the supreme court on this particular issue was a poor strategic decision.

Too much invested in this issue and nothing invested in the tax fight. One could generously see this as unfortunate or one could open their eyes. 

I don't see why they're mutually exclusive, to be honest.

[snowychap]

20 hours ago, villakram said:

There was an implementation period during which procedure could have been fought, all sorts of procedures and specific court cases based on them. Going to the supreme court on this particular issue was a poor strategic decision.

What would success in any of those arenas meant?

I somewhat get your point here (honestly ) but aren't you just largely arguing the negative effect of the inevitable defeat? It could be youge. Doesn't this allow the President (or his thirty something year old puppetmaster - on this subject) leeway to ban immigration from any single nation that it wants?

Edited June 27, 2018 by snowychap
spelling

[snowychap]

The Supreme Court and the Travel Ban

Quote

Ten years ago this week the five conservatives on the Supreme Court ignored the facts about the drafting of the Second Amendment and found in its addled language an individual right to bear arms. Five years ago this week the five conservatives on the Supreme Court ignored the facts about voter suppression in the South and gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. This week, the five conservatives on the Supreme Court ignored the racist underpinnings of the Trump administration’s travel ban, and compelling, documented evidence it already is being misapplied, and nonetheless endorsed it.

The Court’s 5-4 decision in Trump v. Hawaii is as disappointing as it is unsurprising. It is unsurprising because both the Constitution and Congress have granted the president, any president, even a president like Donald Trump, vast authority over immigration and travel and so the White House enjoyed a clear precedential advantage from the start. An executive order in this area has to be really awful to be struck down by the judiciary and it became clear months ago, as each iteration of the ban became less awful, and especially after oral argument this spring, that there was enough in it for a compliant justice to embrace.

“Neutral on its face,” is how Chief Justice John Roberts described the executive order but any living, breathing human being who has been following this saga knows that’s not the whole story or even the most significant part of the story. Travel Ban 3.0 may be less awful than its predecessors but it still is awful. It may be “neutral on its face” but it wasn’t neutrally conceived and it isn’t being neutrally applied. The fact that five justices were willing to ignore the discrimination that pervades the ban, to pretend that the administration’s bigotry dissolved with the drafting of the third executive order, is what makes this decision so disappointing.

There is nothing conservative about a judge who ignores the realities of a dispute to achieve the ideological result he seeks. There is nothing noble about a ruling that pretends that a matter of religious and racial discrimination is simpler than it really is. And there is nothing admirable about what Justice Anthony Kennedy did in his brief concurrence in which he urged administration officials to “adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise” when this administration from its inception has demonstrated over and over again its disdain for constitutional principles. If this is Justice Kennedy’s final run at the Court it’s a lame end.                                               

One could argue, and some already have, that the “rule of law” nonetheless prevailed here because the current iteration of the travel ban was less bigoted and indefensible than its predecessors. I suppose in a sense that’s true. Each version of the ban, papered over by federal lawyers, refined by the lower appeals courts, became more palatable than its predecessor. Each drew the text closer to the model the Court’s conservatives needed to see to justify what they did. But that’s small beer given the results of the case and innocent people caught up in this travel ban don’t have much use for ersatz victories.

What the Court should have done in Trump v. Hawaii, given what we now about the way the travel ban is being implemented, was to call out administration officials for the way they are enforcing the “neutral” ban and then remand the case to the lower courts for evidentiary hearings on how the ban is being applied. If nothing else, such a hearing would prove, or disprove, the persistent allegations that not only was the travel ban conceived with discriminatory purpose and intent it also now is being enforced with discriminatory effect. That would have been the judicious thing for this Court to do instead of what its majority did today.

Which is to dismiss this waiver argument, made by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent, in a footnote (Footnote 7, to be precise). That footnote tells me the Court’s conservatives were not interested in getting to the bottom of the discrimination at the heart of this case. It tells me they were more comfortable pretending that the text of the third travel ban was a salve. That’s no way to protect constitutional rights, no way to serve as a check on discrimination as policy, no way to send a message to federal officials everywhere that there are limits, after all, to the way a president can treat immigrants.

Always eager to put a little powder on the body once he’s committed the murder the chief justice made a point of concluding that the Court’s notorious decision in Korematsu v. United States, in which the justices endorsed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, was “gravely wrong the day it was decided.” It is possible, indeed it is likely, that future historians will say the same thing about Trump v. Hawaii, a case in which five justices stoically pretended that a racist policy of discrimination wasn’t really discriminatory after all because the agents of discrimination said so.

[Straggler]

Some good news from America.  Last night Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won in a Democratic primary and will now more than likely become a member of Congress.  She displaced a 20 year veteran Democrat, the fourth most powerful member of the Democratic party in Washington, part of the old guard who outspent her 10 to 1 in the district.  She won't take corporate money, she wants medicare for all, she will abolish ICE and is a genuine breath of fresh air in politics.  She sounds like the real deal, I hope that this is the start of something that can stem the tide of corruption and has bled out the heart of America.

 

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

She seemed like an excellent candidate and is basically a certainty to win in a district that Cook rates as 29 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. 

Great result. 

[villakram]

16 hours ago, snowychap said:

What would sucess in any of those arenas meant?

I somewhat get your point here (honestly ) but aren't you just largely arguing the negative effect of the inevitable defeat? It could be youge. Doesn't this allow the President (or his thirty something year old puppetmaster - on this subject) leeway to ban immigration from any single nation that it wants?

So much of the fight that has been fought, could have been done so without giving Trump and the presidency this victory. These social battles are being won and the hard work of transferring them to policy will take time. All of this could have been brought to bare on congress and whatever committees got stuck trying to work the details of the ban out, without the risk of this fait accompli.

The president has always had these crazy powers. It was only a few short years ago that Obama codified in law the imperial power of the president to kill US citizens without trial **and** to detain a US citizen indefinitely at the leisure of the president, i.e., national security concerns or some such. 

The true danger to American society has been the tax reform package and the associated budget bill. The continued transfer of wealth in these bills will take so so long to fix, if that is even possible any longer. That no fight was fought on this issue is a great tragedy.

Edited June 27, 2018 by villakram

[maqroll]

Ocasio-Cortez is a socialist, as well. Big broadside to the complacent Dem machine in NYC.