[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.

Sure, but a quick 20 minute fact check should be the bare minimum anyone working for Politico should do before publishing anything, let alone one of their associate editors. It's not like they're TMZ.

Okay, so, presume that they do the background check and determine that some of those Presidents committed injustices A, B, and C. So how do they report that? If they just say that the Presidents were hostile to the tribes, they're presenting their own opinion as a fact. The reporter would be taking a position on the behavior of those historic Presidents.

That's something I think reporters should probably do more of, but since it's not the main thrust of the article here, just submarining that argument into the article without being clear that it's a judgement call, not an undisputed fact, strikes me as poor journalism.

I'm sure some or all of those Presidents were indeed terrible to the natives, since most of them were, but we've left the realm of the strictly factual and have entered the realm of opinion. The reporter's beliefs about and interpretations of history become part of the story, but without clear labeling, background, and justification.

Now, I think what would be good journalism would be to include a sidebar with more links and information for people who want to learn more about the issue. The reporter can put in "they say", but then include extra links with the evidence they found, perhaps including a quick summary stating that the tribes' opinion is likely justified.

That, however, would take a long time and would tie up the reporter for probably a half-day or more. In the era of super low-margin, low-effort web journalism, getting that past the editors might not be easy.

After all, probably none of us are paying them any money to write good news. We're all probably just driveby clickthroughs that might pay a half-cent in revenue. We probably shouldn't expect more than quarter-cent journalism.

My brain just cannot fathom this level of stupid....

Texas Republicans to hold in-person convention amid spike in coronavirus

(CNN)The Republican Party of Texas will hold their state convention in-person with an expected attendance in the thousands, as the state is seeing record numbers of new daily coronavirus cases and increased hospitalizations.

The party's executive committee on Thursday night passed a resolution, 40-20, in support of moving forward with its in-person convention in Houston.
The convention will be held indoors at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston from July 16-18. Committee meetings will begin on July 13.

Stengah wrote:

Sure, but a quick 20 minute fact check should be the bare minimum anyone working for Politico should do before publishing anything, let alone one of their associate editors. It's not like they're TMZ.

It's an article about Trump and his event. Going into a tangent on the actions of other presidents isn't relevant to the story. A link in the article to the history of those presidents and Indigenous people (perhaps making "they say" a hyperlink) would be ideal, but I'm not going to fault them for not having a pre-made article ready to go.

How long is it gonna take for people to just call out what the administration is doing blatantly? They are trying to increase the spread of the virus in order to cause chaos and confusion around the election. Last night was an attack on the several Native American tribes in the region. It was as good as giving them blankets infected with measles.

You will not convince me that the white supremacist wing of the GOP, which is in control right now, is not purposely spiking cases. Their lack of response to the spikes is telling.

Because of systemic racism, minority communities are at significantly more risk, and the GOP is exploiting that. Yes, it will take down many whites, too. But if it goes on long enough, its going to make a difference in demographics. Look at the last governor's race in Georgia. This about turning the tide. We spent so long telling the GOP that their base was shrinking that the first opportunity they had to shrink a portion of the Dem base, they just committed genocide without a second though.

Yeah, last night was about culture war and division. But it was also about killing Native Americans.

Jayhawker wrote:

How long is it gonna take for people to just call out what the administration is doing blatantly? They are trying to increase the spread of the virus in order to cause chaos and confusion around the election.

Trump isn't doing anything about COVID anymore because people laughed at him when he said they should drink bleach and shove lights up their asses.

Once Trump realized--honestly, his campaign noticed first--that his nightly COVID press conferences were hurting his public image he simply stopped giving a sh*t about the pandemic. Instead of being something he could exploit by using it to make him look in charge, COVID became something that exposed his incompetence and ignorance and got in the way of the things he really cared about, like having rallies and golfing.

Trump also backed himself in a corner by how he initially handled the pandemic. I suppose it made some sort of psychopathic sense to downplay it and call it a hoax when it was hammering blue states, but now it's ravaging red states and his rural base. But because Trump is Trump, he can't admit that he made a mistake so we're at where we're at: Trump pretending that COVID doesn't exist.

The RNC and state Republican Parties will try to take advantage of COVID because it helps their voter suppression efforts, but Trump doesn't have a master plan that he's working from. He's going to continue to ignore the pandemic and the suck ass Republican governors will back him right up until the moment they're forced to acknowledge how f*cked their states really are.

Jayhawker wrote:

Yeah, last night was about culture war and division. But it was also about killing Native Americans.

No, it wasn't. I can't believe I have to type this, but the GOP is not intentionally infecting people to kill off minorities. That is conspiracy nonsense on the level of Pizzagate.

Djinn wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Yeah, last night was about culture war and division. But it was also about killing Native Americans.

No, it wasn't. I can't believe I have to type this, but the GOP is not intentionally infecting people to kill off minorities. That is conspiracy nonsense on the level of Pizzagate.

JC wrote:

Texas Republicans to hold in-person convention amid spike in coronavirus

(CNN)The party's executive committee on Thursday night passed a resolution, 40-20, in support of moving forward with its in-person convention in Houston.
The convention will be held indoors at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston from July 16-18. Committee meetings will begin on July 13.

Somehow I doubt most of the members of the Texas Republican party are going to have a lot of contact with minorities (intentionally or otherwise). I don't really think they're trying to kill anyone with the virus, whether minorities or their own people. I think they're just so effing stupid and have their heads so far down in the sand (or so far up somewhere else) they don't believe anything bad can possibly happen.

I mean, there's certainly a level of callousness around the risks to minorities--I've seen plenty of Trump supporters who insinuate as much--but it's not like someone is running around with smallpox blankets. They're just forcing workers to stay in the meat-packing plants, and incidentally those workers tend to be minorities and immigrants. They are teargassing Native Americans and arresting them, which heightens the risk. And apparently at least some of the police at Mount Rushmore weren't wearing masks (let alone the rest of the crowds attending) so they're at best indifferent.

I've encountered (online and second-hand) a number of young and middle-aged white people who believe that they're immune, so I'm sure that also factors into it. Having interacted with Texas GOP politicians before, I'm also pretty sure that at least a few of the convention-goers believe that the virus is a hoax meant to distract from the Jade Helm operation to round up white gunowners and hold them prisoner in abandoned Walmarts.

Apparently Kanye West just announced his presidential candidacy. He's already too late to get on the ballot in Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. He'll have anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to gather thousands of signatures to get on the ballot in the other states.

So he's either off his meds again or he's using election as a publicity stunt for his new album. If it's the former, I hope his family gets him the medical attention he so clearly needs and they take precautions like keeping him away from any electronic device. If it's the latter then I hope the album's a horrendous critical and commercial failure and someone sits him down and explains to him that this year is not the year for idiots like him to be f*cking around.

Launch the ultra wealthy into the sun.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/3l0Wkd1_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)

I'd say eat the rich, but my digestive system's already full of sh*t.

Rat Boy wrote:

I'd say eat the rich, but my digestive system's already full of sh*t.

yeet the rich?

Hobear wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

I'd say eat the rich, but my digestive system's already full of sh*t.

yeet the rich?

Compost the rich.

Keldar wrote:

I don't really think they're trying to kill anyone with the virus, whether minorities or their own people. I think they're just so effing stupid and have their heads so far down in the sand (or so far up somewhere else) they don't believe anything bad can possibly happen.

Absolutely. The actions of Trump and the GOP are killing people, but they're not intentionally trying to kill people. Trump is an incompetent, narcissistic man-child, but he's not a comic book super villain. Posting that Trump's rallies are a secret plot to spread the disease and murder minorities to turn the tides of the election is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory and I don't like seeing that stuff here.

Djinn wrote:
Keldar wrote:

I don't really think they're trying to kill anyone with the virus, whether minorities or their own people. I think they're just so effing stupid and have their heads so far down in the sand (or so far up somewhere else) they don't believe anything bad can possibly happen.

Absolutely. The actions of Trump and the GOP are killing people, but they're not intentionally trying to kill people. Trump is an incompetent, narcissistic man-child, but he's not a comic book super villain. Posting that Trump's rallies are a secret plot to spread the disease and murder minorities to turn the tides of the election is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory and I don't like seeing that stuff here.

No, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Stephen Miller or somebody like him in the administration said in a passing conversation that since the virus was disproportionately affecting large citites it would kill more democrats than republicans and ultimately be a good thing for the republican party. Actually, it would shock me to learn that nobody in the administration expressed that opinion.

Clumber wrote:
Djinn wrote:
Keldar wrote:

I don't really think they're trying to kill anyone with the virus, whether minorities or their own people. I think they're just so effing stupid and have their heads so far down in the sand (or so far up somewhere else) they don't believe anything bad can possibly happen.

Absolutely. The actions of Trump and the GOP are killing people, but they're not intentionally trying to kill people. Trump is an incompetent, narcissistic man-child, but he's not a comic book super villain. Posting that Trump's rallies are a secret plot to spread the disease and murder minorities to turn the tides of the election is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory and I don't like seeing that stuff here.

No, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Stephen Miller or somebody like him in the administration said in a passing conversation that since the virus was disproportionately affecting large citites it would kill more democrats than republicans and ultimately be a good thing for the republican party. Actually, it would shock me to learn that nobody in the administration expressed that opinion.

This.

And I think Brian Kemp made this exact calculation in Georgia. The moment reports started circulating about the effect on black communities Kemp began aggressively trying to open.

His re-election hangs on suppressing the black vote. The tipping point in Georgia is amazingly thin. And, yes, I think he has had this conversation with Trump. And I suspect much of the sun belt leadership considered the consequences.

The problem with the conspiracy theories is that one of the groups most affected disproportionately by this are older people, and any chance of Republican victories depends on older people making up a high enough percentage of the people who vote. You think someone at some point would bring up that this is sawing off the branch the Republican party is sitting on.

Of course, this is the same administration that is spreading conspiracy theories that might wreck decades-long electioneering success by the GOP in Florida, so...*

I mean, I heard a story for a reporter on TV the other day about how the only way they could get Trump to stop tweeting crazy stuff at the end of the '16 campaign is that they showed him a cartoon picture. A picture of a predator chasing its prey off a cliff. They had to use a picture to explain to him the concept that in attacking Hillary he might take himself over the edge, too.

So "they wouldn't be THAT stupid" is never out of the question with this administration. Heck, how many times has the conservative members of the Supreme Court basically told this administration "we'll rubber stamp whatever horrible thing you want, you just have to not make it so obvious!" only to have them screw it up again and again?

Any other campaign you could dismiss it just on the basis of how *stupid* and counterproductive it is. This one, though? It's possible this is a strategy. A terrible strategy, but there's been so much terrible strategy so far, "no one is that stupid" doesn't apply to this administration.

*the second episode of the new Rachel Bitecofer podcast from Old Bull has the Republican strategist Rick Wilson on, and he goes into detail about just how effective early voting and vote by mail have been for the Florida GOP. One thing that really blew my mind is that they use the *actual* election to A/B test their campaign message in real time! They send, say, 10% of their voters one message, 10% another, and because they have time in between the start of early voting/v-b-m and the last day of the election, they have the opportunity to follow up and see which message gets people to vote for real--the *ultimate* focus group.

From April 7, when the stats first started coming up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/u...

“This is a call-to-action moment for all of us,” said Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, who announced statistics of the outbreak in her city this week. African-Americans account for more than half of those who have tested positive and 72 percent of virus-related fatalities in Chicago, even though they make up a little less than a third of the population.

“Those numbers take your breath away, they really do,” said Ms. Lightfoot, who is the city’s first black woman elected as mayor. She added in an interview that the statistics were “among the most shocking things I think I’ve seen as mayor.”

Because of systemic racism, a significant portion of the black community live in area that are more conducive to spread. In a state like GA, where the vote for Governor was so close, the kind of numbers being reported will lead some to believe that they can let the liberal cities get ravaged, while to “good Americans” live reasonable lives outside the cities.

I mean, it’s shortsighted and wrong. Letting the cities go down has spread the virus to rural communities. Whether this actually affectS the election is irrelevant. It’s what governors like Kemp thought, and how that drove their actions.

The deaths in the Democratic base was the bonus they got for trying topen early. At best, the effect on the black community was racist because they didn’t care. But with how clear and obvious that effect was shown, I absolutely believe Kemp saw that as a feature, not a bug, of reopening.

Ok I am way late on this, but I cannot let this slide without some comment.

The idea that early American leaders and the government as a whole were hostile to native american communities (and continue to be) is a 'disputed fact' in exactly the same manner and to the same degree that 'the earth is roughly spherical and not a flat disk' is a disputed fact.

You might get some historical argument on whether the document of the sale of Lakota lands in South Dakota was a case of coerced Lakota leaders or simply a wholesale forgery, but i don;t think there is any reasonable dispute as to the hostile stance of the US Gov to all NA groups.

I mean, the FBI spent the '70s illegally targeting the American Indian Movement (among other groups) until they were caught so it's not like the hostility has stopped either. Oppressing Native Americans has frequently been explicit, official government policy.

Supreme Court says states can punish Electoral College voters

The Supreme Court said Monday that states can punish members of the Electoral College who fail to fulfill a pledge to vote for a state's popular vote winner in presidential elections.

The case comes as the election season is heating up and the Electoral College will once again be front and center in an increasingly polarized and volatile political atmosphere.
In 2016, 10 of the 538 presidential electors went rogue, attempting to vote for someone other than their pledged candidate. In all, 32 states and the District of Columbia have laws that are meant to discourage faithless electors. But until 2016, no state had ever actually punished or removed an elector because of his or her vote.
The vote count was 9-0.
"Today, we consider whether a State may also penalize an elector for breaking his pledge and voting for someone other than the presidential candidate who won his State's popular vote. We hold that a State may do so," Justice Elena Kagan said.
Three presidential electors in Washington state, for example, voted for Colin Powell in 2016 rather than Hillary Clinton and one voted for anti-Keystone XL pipeline protester Faith Spotted Eagle. A $1,000 fine was upheld by the state Supreme Court.
In Colorado, the legal outcome was different when Micheal Baca sought to vote for John Kasich instead of Clinton.
Baca's vote was rejected and he was removed and replaced with a substitute who voted for Clinton. Baca was referred for potential perjury prosecution, although no charges were filed. He filed suit, and ultimately won when the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that while the state does have the power to appoint electors, that does not extend to the power to remove them.
During oral arguments, Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, became a part of the court's historical record.
In a line of hypothetical questioning, Justice Clarence Thomas used Baggins as a case study.
"The elector who had promised to vote for the winning candidate could suddenly say, 'You know, I'm going to vote for Frodo Baggins. I really like Frodo Baggins.' And you're saying, under your system, you can't do anything about that," Thomas asked Baca's attorney, Jason Harrow.
"Your honor, I think there is something to be done, because that would be a vote for a non-person. No matter how big a fan many people are of Frodo Baggins," Harrow said.
There is an elector for every member of the House of Representatives, the Senate plus an additional three for people who live in the District of Columbia. It takes 270 votes to get a majority of the Electoral College. If there is a tie or nobody gets to the majority, then the election goes to the House of Representatives.
"This has become a big deal because there is a large risk that for the third time in this century, the popular vote winner and the electoral vote winner will be different people," said Reed W. Hundt, who runs a foundation called Making Every Vote Count.
To Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor behind the challenges, the answer is clear that while the state has the power to appoint a slate of presidential electors who are members of the same party as the ticket that wins the popular vote, those electors, once appointed, can cast their votes however they like.
He argued that if the court allowed states to step in to penalize the electors, it could have unexpected consequences. For instance, a state might feel free to take more drastic steps, including passing laws to bar an elector to vote for a candidate who has not released a copy of their tax returns.
Washington state Attorney General Robert Ferguson told the justices that since the creation of the Electoral College, there have only been 165 faithless electors representing less than 1% of the Electoral College votes cast for president. Of those, 71 changed their vote in 1872 and 1912 because the candidate they pledged their vote for died.
"The scattered examples that remain have been largely symbolic gestures with no chance of impacting results," Ferguson said, adding that "over the last century, no elector for a winning presidential candidate has switched votes to the losing candidate."

9-0 is something.

Suuuure you do...

It should also be noted that you refer to Trump's wife as "Melania Knauss" because that isn't trying to avoid anything either... is it...

New York (CNN)Fox News said on Monday that it "mistakenly" cropped President Trump out of a photograph that featured the accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
"On Sunday, July 5, a report on Ghislaine Maxwell during Fox News Channel's 'America's News HQ' mistakenly eliminated President Donald Trump from a photo alongside then Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell," a spokesperson for the network said.
The Fox News spokesperson added, "We regret the error."

So if electoral college voters don't have a choice about who they vote for... why are they voters? Why are they necessary at all?

Theater.

Also because it is now impossible to get enough states to agree on any amendments to the Constitution ever again.

I mean, I'm not sure the Electoral College is the greatest thing, especially with a first-past-the-post two-party system, but wasn't the point kind of to allow electors to help minimize the "tyranny of the majority"?

Oh well. If all the Supremes agreed on it, it must be right... right?

BadKen wrote:

I mean, I'm not sure the Electoral College is the greatest thing, especially with a first-past-the-post two-party system, but wasn't the point kind of to allow electors to help minimize the "tyranny of the majority"?

Oh well. If all the Supremes agreed on it, it must be right... right?

Sort of? But I always believed that need to minimize the tyranny of the majority was born out of contempt for uninformed voters, and the belief that only educated men could be trusted enough to make those decisions. And, in the 1780s, I'm not even sure I can fault them for that opinion. The problem is the constitution was meant to be an everchanging document and we've backed ourselves into a place where change is nigh impossible.

What I find the most peculiar is that of the 7 faithless electors, 5 left Hillary Clinton and 2 left Trump (3 others tried but were replaced). Yikes.

I hope this speeds up the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, as one more supposed reason (electoral college can overrule popular vote if the president-elect is deemed unfit for office) can be scratched from the list.

Of course, the actual reason the bipartisan popular support for abolishing the electoral college has become polarized like everything else in US politics is nothing that high-minded. It's simply the fact that the Republicans lost the popular vote all but once in the last 5 Presidential elections, but still got their guy in the White House 3 times.

The Framers were more worried about a Demogague taking power than Tyranny of the majority and put in a lot of protections against it. They studied history and saw how the freedoms of a democracy always lead to abuse by the charismatic charlatan. Unfortunately, most of those protections have been eroded over time. Usually in the name of being more Democratic. But, because of the unevenness of those erosions, you just have a system that can be taken advantage of more readily. Particularly by Republicans who are more than willing to encourage and entrench tyranny of their national minority or local majority when it suits them.

Becoming more Democratic should have coincided with growing a better educated electorate, but that wouldn't have benefited the people in charge, so we ended up with state lines that are effectively gerrymandered and a more easily brainwashed public. If we're lucky, Biden can undo some damage to institutions, punish some criminals, and make white crime illegal again, but it's just plugging holes in a breaking dam.