[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.

ruhk wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:
ruhk wrote:

No one else going to make a joke about how the libertarian just equated a group whose worst excesses are mostly limited to superficial property crimes to another group that has murdered people and openly advocates genocide and ethnonationalism? No? Going to have to be me?

I must be getting old. I have no idea which groups you're referring to, or how it maps back to the story. Or who the libertarian we're referring to is. Or which story this should map back to.

I'm just very confused.

Aetius dropped a boomer-level hot take equating antifa with the Proud Boys, an extremist white supremacist organization that advocates violent ethnonationalism and who is closely associated with another group in Washington State that frequently comes to my city to provoke and physically attack people. People have been severely injured or killed. Meanwhile, antifa blocks traffic and occasionally breaks windows.

Gotcha. Thanks. I was stuck on farley’s #frigginwhitepeople story and couldn’t make your comment parse.

No problem.
"Antifa is too violent" arguments get on my nerves because they're disingenuous and only show that the person making them haven't bothered to do even the simplest research. The protests are seriously like 10% of most antifa activity, the majority of their time and effort is spent identifying white supremacists, mapping out and exposing hate groups, and community organizing.

I dunno. It’s only a matter of time before Soros unleashes the Antifa Super Soldier Horde. And We all know the only way that Horde is sated is when the streets run red with White Dude Libertarian blood from all the beheadings.

Hide your women folk!!!

TheGameguru wrote:

I dunno. It’s only a matter of time before Soros unleashes the Antifa Super Soldier Horde. And We all know the only way that Horde is sated is when the streets run red with White Dude Libertarian blood from all the beheadings.

Hide your women folk!!!

Hard to believe we still have a country left after the Antifa Supersoldier attacks of 11/4

What The f*ck

NYT: Teenager Accused of Rape Deserves Leniency Because He’s From a ‘Good Family,’ Judge Says
The family court judge also said the victim should have been told that pressing charges would destroy the accused’s life.

Spoiler:

he 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party in New Jersey, prosecutors said.

The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind, her torso exposed, her head hanging down, prosecutors said.

He later shared the cellphone video among friends, investigators said, and sent a text that said, “When your first time having sex was rape.”

But a family court judge said it wasn’t rape. Instead, he wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers.

He also said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life.

So he denied prosecutors’ motion to try the 16-year-old as an adult. “He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” Judge James Troiano of Superior Court said last year in a two-hour decision while sitting in Monmouth County.

Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers.

The article doesn't say but I am going to use my psychic skills to say he is white....

There are even more horrors in that article with another judge, this one a woman...

Spoiler:

The second family court judge, Marcia Silva, sitting in Middlesex County, denied a motion to try the teenager as an adult and said that “beyond losing her virginity, the State did not claim that the victim suffered any further injuries, either physical, mental or emotional.

And what the actual F?

A spokeswoman for the administrative office of the courts said the judges had no comment on the case. She said Mr. Troiano, a veteran judge who retired several years ago, was asked to occasionally fill vacancies on the bench.
farley3k wrote:

*this is the f*cked up results of the fetus as a person laws.
** today it is because she started the dispute but tomorrow it will be that she didn't eat right so the baby died, or she worked to hard causing stress which caused the baby to die.

Alabama Woman Indicted After Someone Else Shoots Her in the Stomach, Killing Her Unborn Child

An Alabama woman who was shot in the stomach, resulting in the death of her unborn child, was indicted on a manslaughter charge by a grand jury. The reason? She started the dispute that led to her getting shot.

Jefferson County Cutoff District Attorney Lynneice Washington has the dropped case against Marshae Jones: "No further legal action will be taken against Miss Jones in this matter."

In another article Washington expressed her...consternation...at people who called her office to scream insults and obscenities at her and her staff when the news first broke. Washington noted that her office had nothing to do with the grand jury which, based on police testimony, decided that the shooter shot Jones in self defense. Washington herself was out of the country when the grand jury happened.

Great. So it didn't happen this time. But, you can see where this is going. It's only a matter of time until something like this happens in a smaller county with a DA who is now inspired by this approach. Gotta' protect them unborns. I predict this will be a disaster for some poor woman (poor literally and figuratively, I imagine...).

EDIT: Okay, before I submitted this, I found the following at the bottom of one of those articles:

the code also states that the prosecution of "any woman with respect to her unborn child" should not be permitted under criminal homicide charges like manslaughter.

That's encouraging. And yet, the lieutenant who wrote up the charges stated specifically that Jones was at fault for the termination of her pregnancy:

AL.com wrote:

“The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby,’’ Pleasant Grove police Lt. Danny Reid said at the time of the shooting.
...
"Let’s not lose sight that the unborn baby is the victim here,’’ Reid said. “She had no choice in being brought unnecessarily into a fight where she was relying on her mother for protection."

As an aside: Let the DA get bent out of shape for the complaints. As she points out, she does have the authority to make a call on these cases. She is an elected official. People should express how ridiculous this is.

Okay, most political gamesmanship and "dunks" on Twitter are totally useless tribalism....

....HOWEVER....

....Rep. Steve King getting fooled into praising Col. Jessup is the best goddamn thing I'll see on Twitter this week, and that includes the Mets minor league affiliate trying to do a July 4 fireworks show and accidentally starting a huge fire.

.........

..............King would totally be pro-Jessup, wouldn't he. Like, in the movie's universe, he'd be defending Jessup from "liberal elitists," wouldn't he?

ruhk wrote:

Aetius dropped a boomer-level hot take equating antifa with the Proud Boys, an extremist white supremacist organization that advocates violent ethnonationalism and who is closely associated with another group in Washington State that frequently comes to my city to provoke and physically attack people. People have been severely injured or killed. Meanwhile, antifa blocks traffic and occasionally breaks windows.

I didn't equate them - I just pointed out that neither group's violence was directed at anything other than stirring things up. And it's laughable to argue that antifa "blocks traffic and occasionally breaks windows" when the discussion was prompted by talking about how antifa believes in fighting back very literally.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

At least neither of them is the government.

Which, to point out the obvious again, is actually committing major atrocities on a large scale. Things that would, you know, actually might be worth fighting back about.

And it's laughable to argue that antifa "blocks traffic and occasionally breaks windows" when the discussion was prompted by talking about how antifa believes in fighting back very literally.

Yeah, against literal Nazis. Like against the Proud Boys who are actual Nazis in all but name.

Things that would, you know, actually might be worth fighting back about.

Ummm... Noted? You don't think fighting against actual Nazis and violent ethnonationalism is worthwhile. Got it?

Aetius wrote:

I didn't equate them - I just pointed out that neither group's violence was directed at anything other than stirring things up. And it's laughable to argue that antifa "blocks traffic and occasionally breaks windows" when the discussion was prompted by talking about how antifa believes in fighting back very literally.

If you actually think that antifa are only interested in “stirring things up” than I honestly have no idea what to say to you other than you’re probably part of the reason why antifa as a movement is necessary.

Occasionally breaking windows sound a lot worse than fighting literal nazis. They should not break windows :/ Unless a nazi is hiding behind it I guess.

Prederick wrote:

Okay, most political gamesmanship and "dunks" on Twitter are totally useless tribalism....

....HOWEVER....

....Rep. Steve King getting fooled into praising Col. Jessup is the best goddamn thing I'll see on Twitter this week, and that includes the Mets minor league affiliate trying to do a July 4 fireworks show and accidentally starting a huge fire.

.........

..............King would totally be pro-Jessup, wouldn't he. Like, in the movie's universe, he'd be defending Jessup from "liberal elitists," wouldn't he?

Republican policies are atrocious enough that we don't also need to mock them for being easily-trolled, clueless buffoons, too.

It was pretty funny, though.

Aetius wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

At least neither of them is the government.

Which, to point out the obvious again, is actually committing major atrocities on a large scale. Things that would, you know, actually might be worth fighting back about.

As tempting as it is to concede your point, I know that your list of ongoing government atrocities includes environmental regulation and child labor laws. It's a challenge to keep a straight face when you say anything at all.

Or, one of them has over 50% of the income of the bottom 50%...

Also note that the numbers for the bottom 50% are rom 2016 so they are likely even worse off.

The interesting thing about that graph is that Buffett, with the least wealth, is on the bottom. Gates and Bezos combined have $257 billion, which is almost exactly where the bar on the left is. So take Buffett out and the two bars are almost equal, meaning it's pretty accurate to say "Two billionaires have about as much wealth as half of America".

Speaking of wealthy men, it looks like Jeff Epstein may finally be experiencing consequences.

Turning over this log may uncover other crawling things underneath it, all over the place.

One can hope, but if this federal and not state, that just means Trump can swoop in with a pardon at some point.

Edit: Now I find myself wondering if this was the reason Pence abruptly canceled an appearance in Virginia to stay in Washington.

Rat Boy wrote:

One can hope, but if this federal and not state, that just means Trump can swoop in with a pardon at some point.

They're federal charges. Then US attorney/now Trump's Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta gave him a sweetheart deal for Florida charges of prostitution (and helped him avoid federal charges) back in 2007.

If Trump does then we'll get to see if his followers are so deplorable that they'll be OK with him pardoning a serial child rapist. My gut is that they'd be perfectly fine with it, especially the Evangelical crowd.

He has repented so we forgive him. It wouldn't have happened if the girls spent all their time at home and didn't wear skirts above their knees.

On judgement day, their god will be like, well, you did support child rapist, some of which were my priests, and as a bonus you also caused a lot of librul tears. Welcome.

Jesus does love him some sweet sweet librul tears!

Shadout wrote:

On judgement day, their god will be like, well, you did support child rapist, some of which were my priests, and as a bonus you also caused a lot of librul tears. Welcome.

The Atlantic just had an article about Evangelicals and "librul tears."

The Atlantic wrote:

Reed is partially right; for many evangelical Christians, there is no political figure whom they have loved more than Donald Trump.

I recently exchanged emails with a pro-Trump figure who attended the president’s reelection rally in Orlando, Florida, on June 18. (He spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, so as to avoid personal or professional repercussions.) He had interviewed scores of people, many of them evangelical Christians. “I have never witnessed the kind of excitement and enthusiasm for a political figure in my life,” he told me. “I honestly couldn’t believe the unwavering support they have. And to a person, it was all about ‘the fight.’ There is a very strong sense (I believe justified, you disagree) that he has been wronged. Wronged by Mueller, wronged by the media, wronged by the anti-Trump forces. A passionate belief that he never gets credit for anything.”

The rallygoers, he said, told him that Trump’s era “is spiritually driven.” When I asked whether he meant by this that Trump’s supporters believe God’s hand is on Trump, this moment and at the election—that Donald Trump is God’s man, in effect—he told me, “Yes—a number of people said they believe there is no other way to explain his victories. Starting with the election and continuing with the conclusion of the Mueller report. Many said God has chosen him and is protecting him.”

The data seem to bear this out. Approval for President Trump among white evangelical Protestants is 25 points higher than the national average. And according to a Pew Research Center survey, “White evangelical Protestants who regularly attend church (that is, once a week or more) approve of Trump at rates matching or exceeding those of white evangelicals who attend church less often.” Indeed, during the period from July 2018 to January 2019, 70 percent of white evangelicals who attend church at least once a week approved of Trump, versus 65 percent of those who attend religious services less often.

The enthusiastic, uncritical embrace of President Trump by white evangelicals is among the most mind-blowing developments of the Trump era. How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him? Why are those who have been on the vanguard of “family values” so eager to give a man with a sordid personal and sexual history a mulligan?

Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left. If you listen to Trump supporters who are evangelical (and non-evangelicals, like the radio talk-show host Mark Levin), you will hear adjectives applied to those on the left that could easily be used to describe a Stalinist regime. (Ask yourself how many evangelicals have publicly criticized Trump for his lavish praise of Kim Jong Un, the leader of perhaps the most savage regime in the world and the worst persecutor of Christians in the world.)

Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity. If a Democrat is elected president, they believe, it might all come crashing down around us.

The Atlantic wrote:

Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity. If a Democrat is elected president, they believe, it might all come crashing down around us.

I left Evangelicalism when I realized that "American Christianity" didn't have much to do with Christ but had a lot to do with believing that wealth is a sign of divine favor; that the civic religion of patriotism and guns is more holy than helping the weak; that white purity is divinely ordained; and that the middle-class of the mid-20th century is the ultimate form of family and church.

and that the middle-class of the mid-20th century is the ultimate form of family and church.

Except that none of them live that way even remotely closely. And there is barely any middle class anymore to people to live like or aspire to be.

Maybe that is how someone should frame it: rallying for Trump's Wall Street boon and tax cuts for the wealth are beyond just a threat to the middle class, its directly killing it beyond the point of resurrection.