[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Both can be true. We can become more polarized and still have minority oppression of the majority.

It seems to me to be a polarization of identity, tribal selection. I'm a Democrat/Progressive/Liberal vs. I'm a Republican/Conservative. Those identities are much, much more polarized than ever before, to the point that it seems inconceivable to a lot of people to switch allegiance anymore based on one parties changing policies/ideology (see views on Russia).

But I think if you were able to separate policy ideas from parties, in some theoretical vacuum, then the differences would lessen significantly. Of course that's impossible, but I think that this is what undergird's Wu's thesis.

Hiding in Plain Sight: PAC-Connected Activists Set Up ‘Local News’ Outlets

Snopes.com wrote:

On 6 February 2017, a website of uncertain origin named “The Tennessee Star” was born. At the time, it was unclear who funded or operated this “local newspaper,” which was largely filled with freely licensed content from organizations tied to conservative mega-donors. After some prodding by Politico in early 2018, the Tennessee Star revealed its primary architects to be three Tea Party-connected conservative activists: Michael Patrick Leahy, Steve Gill, and Christina Botteri.

Now, a Snopes investigation reveals in detail how these activists used the appearance of local newspapers to promote messages paid for or supported by outside or undisclosed interests. Gill, for example, is the political editor of the Tennessee Star, but he also owns a media consulting company that at least one candidate and one Political Action Committee (PAC) paid before receiving positive coverage in the Tennessee Star. Several Star writers have in the past or currently work for PACs or political campaigns that they write about, without disclosing that fact. Though its owners claim that the Tennessee Star is funded by advertising revenue, it appears to be supported by wealthy benefactors. Whatever the Tennessee Star is, it is not a local newspaper producing transparent journalism.

But this story is about more than just the Tennessee Star. Leahy, Botteri, and Gill have been expanding their version of journalism to other battleground states in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. They are, they say, co-founders of a new, Delaware-registered company, Star News Digital Media, Inc., whose explicit strategy is to target battleground states with conservative news. So far, Leahy, Gill, and Botteri have added The Ohio Star and The Minnesota Sun to their network of purportedly local newspapers. These papers are effective carbon copies of the Tennessee Star.

If you were to search for these three “newspapers” in Google, they would each show up described identically as the “most reliable” newspapers in their respective locales, providing “unbiased updates on Investigative Reports, Thoughtful Opinion, Sports, Lifestyle."

Across the political spectrum, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center study, local news is considered more trustworthy than other more national sources. It is perhaps for that reason that an estimated 30% of all links pushed by the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency during the 2016 presidential election were to stories on local news websites. In some cases, these Russian imposters created their own fake local news sites.

Leave it to Republicans and rich conservatives to look at the Russian interference in our elections and say "we should be doing that as well."

OG_slinger wrote:

Leave it to Republicans and rich conservatives to look at the Russian interference in our elections and say "we should be doing that as well."

"If it ain't broke...."

I find it admirable. They're taking overseas jobs and bringing them back home.

Second US judge calls citizenship question on census illegal

A second federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census is illegal.

Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco said Wednesday that the government's move was arbitrary and capricious and would violate a constitutional requirement that the census count everyone in the country.

Seeborg said evidence showed the question would result in a significant undercount of non-citizens and Latinos.

The effect of his decision is limited. A federal judge in New York had previously blocked the administration from adding the question to the annual population count, and the U.S. Supreme Court last month agreed to review that decision.

An email to the U.S. Department of Justice was not immediately returned.

My opinion of AOC has improved immeasurably since I muted her on Twitter. It stopped all the retweets from people amazed by her epic takedowns of trolls. Now, most of my news about her is about what she is doing. And so far, she is proving to be a damn good Representative.

Jayhawker wrote:

My opinion of everything has improved immeasurably since I muted her on Twitter.

For your mental health. Just saying.

Archangel wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

My opinion of everything has improved immeasurably since I muted her on Twitter.

For your mental health. Just saying.

Yup, that's what I did. I'm close to pulling the plug on Facebook, too.

Oh, I dropped Facebook for good, finally.

Twitter works for me, but I don't use it to communicate so much as follow very specific people for specific reasons. I unfollow lots of people I like if their posting isn't what I want.

I follow journalists that cover politics, sports, and pop culture. I follow a few celebrities, like Stephen King and JK Rowling that are interesting outside of their work. I follow a few friends, but I severely limit that to avoid the constant stream of outrage posts.

The first ten tweets in my feed:

@JPosnanski
Which 19th Century Pre-American League leagues would you consider "Major League Baseball?"
@STLonAir - Local NPR station
Missed today's noon show on @stlpublicradio? You can catch up on it all here (or at 10 p.m., of course!)..

First up, @rlippmann and @jrosenbaum joined us for a rundown of last night's #STL primary election results >>>

@NateSilver538
There are certain political debates where everyone is so annoying that I'm more persuaded by whichever person shuts the f*ck up first.
@GilbertBailon - Editor of St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Cardinals' brawny bopper O'Neill does a number on the Bronx Bombers https://www.stltoday.com/sports/base... … via @stltoday @dgoold
@StephenKing
Stephen King Retweeted Jeopardy!
Kick it's ass, Alex!

Should add that this is a retweet of Alex Trebek's announcement that he has pancreatic cancer. And then:

@kasie
Kasie Hunt Retweeted Jeopardy!
:cry:

I left out the next two retweets of Trebeck's announcement by Molly McKew and Joe Sheehan.

@chrislhayes
The argument for DNC having a debate on Fox to "reach voters where they are" seems to me, among other things, to truly misunderstand how audiences work for this kind of thing.
@minakimes
Mina Kimes Retweeted Pablo S. Torre
love this take, Kyler needs to get a Korean flag tattoo like yrs truly
Mina Kimes added,
@PabloTorre
If more people knew that Kyler Murray is Asian, he never would’ve been typecast as having bad “study habits”
@neilhimself
Neil Gaiman Retweeted michael sheen
Best tweet ever.
Neil Gaiman added,
@michaelsheen
michael sheen Retweeted Good Omens
Might have to watch this when it comes out. Looks quite good. The blonde one seems a bit of a drip but the one with the dark glasses? Hunk alert! #GoodOmens
Amanda Terkel
@aterkel
NEW — Kamala Harris statement on Ilhan Omar
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1Ahz1FX4AIas1x.png:large)

I really don't have much of an issue with my twitter feed. I find it to be an interesting newsfeed curated by really smart and interesting people.

Jayhawker wrote:

I really don't have much of an issue with my twitter feed.

Says the guy who got a retweet response from Jemele Hill.

Rat Boy wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

I really don't have much of an issue with my twitter feed.

Says the guy who got a retweet response from Jemele Hill.

Dude, that is my most "liked" anything on social media ever! I was explaining to my wife how I am now Twitter famous. It's at 634 likes!

I didn't realize she retweeted it. I guess that's why people get so worked up over quoted retweets?

oilypenguin wrote:

This is fine.

I assume sarcasm because "Trump revokes Obama order on reporting civilians killed in US airstrikes" is not fine. It is despicable.

See this is fine comic...

The "Tragedy of the Commons" was invented by a white supremacist based on a false history, and it's toxic bullsh*t

In a brilliant Twitter thread, UCSB political scientist Matto Mildenberger recounts the sordid history of Garrett Hardin's classic, widely cited 1968 article "The Tragedy of the Commons," whose ideas are taught to millions of undergrads, and whose precepts are used to justify the privatization of public goods as the only efficient way to manage them.

Hardin's paper starts with a history of the English Commons -- publicly held lands that were collectively owned and managed -- and the claim that commons routinely fell prey to the selfish human impulse to overgraze your livestock on public land (and that even non-selfish people would overgraze their animals because they knew that their more-selfish neighbors would do so even if they didn't).

But this isn't what actually happened to the Commons: they were stable and well-managed until other factors (e.g. rich people trying to acquire even more land) destabilized them.

Hardin wasn't just inventing false histories out of a vacuum. He was, personally, a nasty piece of work: a white supremacist and eugenicist, and the Tragedy of the Commons paper is shot through with this vile ideology, arguing that poor people should not be given charity lest they breed beyond their means (Hardin also campaigned against food aid). Hardin was a director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the white nationalist Social Contract Press, and co-founded anti-immigrant groups like Californians for Population Stabilization and The Environmental Fund.

Mildenberger argues that Hardin was a trumpist before Trump: He served on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose talking points often emerge from Trump's mouth.

(Hardin quotes that didn't make it into his seminal paper: "Diversity is the opposite of unity, and unity is a prime requirement for national survival" and "My position is that this idea of a multiethnic society is a disaster...we should restrict immigration for that reason.")

As Mildenberger points out, this isn't a case where a terrible person had some great ideas that outlived them: Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons was a piece of intellectual fraud committed in service to his racist, eugenicist ideology.

What's worse: the environmental movement elevates Hardin to sainthood, whitewashing his racism and celebrating "The Tragedy of the Commons" as a seminal work of environmental literature. But Hardin is no friend of the environment: his noxious cocktail of racism and false history are used to move public lands into private ownership or stewardship, (literally) paving the way for devastating exploitation of those lands.

By contrast, consider Nobelist Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons, whose groundbreaking insights on the management of common resources are a prescription for a better, more prosperous, more egalitarian future.

Hardin wasn't a social scientist or on an expert on social organization. Instead, he was a Human Ecology prof at UC Santa Barbara (my home institution) where he taught until his 1978 retirement. (Morbid side note: he and his wife killed themselves in a 2003 suicide pact.) 9/

Have you read Hardin's Science essay lately? It's a mind-numbingly racist piece. And not in a subtle way that demands 2019 woke analysis. Spend the 20 minutes and do it. It’s an ethical mess from beginning to end. 10/

There are headings like “Freedom to Breed is Intolerable”, under which Hardin imagines the benefits that might accrue if “children of improvident parents starve to death”, an outcome stymied (a bad thing to him), by the welfare state. 11/

For these reasons, he campaigned against such programs as Food for Peace. A few paragraphs later: “If we love the truth we must openly deny the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” I think you get the idea. 12/

Officers pull guns on black guy picking up trash on his property.
Cleaning while black

One officer was placed on leave or paid vacation while a investigation goes on. I'm guessing the police will try to dig up as much dirt on the black guy as possible to leak to the press. The times only had a 1 minute video up but I watched a video that was 15 minutes or so long a bit ago. Multiple cops show up that also pulls out guns because the scary black guy with a trash bucket and trash clamp. gross.

New York Times Columnist David Brooks Endorses Reparations

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who often stakes out conservative positions, has reversed course on a matter he had long opposed: modern-day reparations for slavery.

Brooks announced his newfound support for reparations in his Thursday op-ed, and credited journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates’ convincing 2014 essay in The Atlantic, “The Case For Reparations.” In a nod to Coates’ work, Brooks gave his column the same headline.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Officers pull guns on black guy picking up trash on his property.
Cleaning while black

One officer was placed on leave or paid vacation while a investigation goes on. I'm guessing the police will try to dig up as much dirt on the black guy as possible to leak to the press. The times only had a 1 minute video up but I watched a video that was 15 minutes or so long a bit ago. Multiple cops show up that also pulls out guns because the scary black guy with a trash bucket and trash clamp. gross.

...the episode late last week has caused anger and concern in the liberal and largely white city of Boulder, Colo.

Largely white is an understatement. I worked in Boulder for three years, and I didn't see more than one black person a day. I'm not surprised at all this happened there.

FFS...

North Carolina lawmakers are once again pushing to arm teachers with guns, and they're trying to make it worth teachers' while.
Filed on Wednesday, the School Security Act of 2019 would give a 5% salary boost to teachers who undergo basic police training.
These "teacher resource officers" could carry guns in an open or concealed manner, and they would have the same arrest powers as police officers, the bill says.

This is the best thing all day.

JC wrote:

FFS...

North Carolina lawmakers are once again pushing to arm teachers with guns, and they're trying to make it worth teachers' while.
Filed on Wednesday, the School Security Act of 2019 would give a 5% salary boost to teachers who undergo basic police training.
These "teacher resource officers" could carry guns in an open or concealed manner, and they would have the same arrest powers as police officers, the bill says.

That feels like somebody heard teachers say, “We aren’t cops!” and thought the appropriate response was, “Do you wanna be?”

JC wrote:

FFS...

North Carolina lawmakers are once again pushing to arm teachers with guns, and they're trying to make it worth teachers' while.
Filed on Wednesday, the School Security Act of 2019 would give a 5% salary boost to teachers who undergo basic police training.
These "teacher resource officers" could carry guns in an open or concealed manner, and they would have the same arrest powers as police officers, the bill says.

Outside of this being a terrible idea, and being ripe for abuse, 5% seems like a sh*t raise for doing at least 25% of another job.

NathanialG wrote:
JC wrote:

FFS...

North Carolina lawmakers are once again pushing to arm teachers with guns, and they're trying to make it worth teachers' while.
Filed on Wednesday, the School Security Act of 2019 would give a 5% salary boost to teachers who undergo basic police training.
These "teacher resource officers" could carry guns in an open or concealed manner, and they would have the same arrest powers as police officers, the bill says.

Outside of this being a terrible idea, and being ripe for abuse, 5% seems like a sh*t raise for doing at least 25% of another job.

What, you thought we'd actually pay reasonable amounts to the people who are doing vital work with the literal children of our country? Surely 5% is enough to compensate for the additional dangerous para-police role that requires a skillset that has little overlap with the training they have? After all, if we actually cared about keeping the children alive we'd be working to, say, actually enforce our gun laws.

Teachers could even be on call after school in the evenings and fill in for police officers who get sick. In their spare time between grading papers and SWAT training, they could even respond to fires when there is need for some extra personnel. We could even reduce the police and fire departments that way because we would have teachers doing it for less money (since they're covering all three positions for teacher's salary + 5%) and that will make taxpayers keep wanting to vote Republican because less taxes. It all works out great for everyone! (Well except now that the police and fire people need to get teaching certifications so they can be teachers too so they can keep doing the same jobs they were already doing, yeah!)

JC wrote:

FFS...

North Carolina lawmakers are once again pushing to arm teachers with guns, and they're trying to make it worth teachers' while.
Filed on Wednesday, the School Security Act of 2019 would give a 5% salary boost to teachers who undergo basic police training.
These "teacher resource officers" could carry guns in an open or concealed manner, and they would have the same arrest powers as police officers, the bill says.

Also, where is the money going to come from? It's not like they are gonna raise taxes. So out of the funding for kids, or pay for other teachers.

Mixolyde wrote:

Also, where is the money going to come from? It's not like they are gonna raise taxes. So out of the funding for kids, or pay for other teachers.

Sounds like we could have a little Battle Royale between teachers. A survival of the fittest to ensure only the best and strongest teachers can teach. Only way to weed out those teachers that make that old proverb of "Those that cannot do, teach" be false. Am I right?

*major sarcasm here*