[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.

Running the campaign from jail and still winning.

Prederick wrote:

Trump meeting with Kanye is mostly hilarious (Kayne is probably the only person Trump has ever met who is vastly more narcissistic and egocentric than him), that Trump may have met with white nationalist vlogger Nick Fuentes is more dismaying (and again, a statement about where the movement is/has been going).

The best part of this is that Ye asked Trump to be *his* VP. Apparently Trump didn't respond favorably.

OG_slinger wrote:

I can't help thinking we're, what, a week into Trump's 24-month-long reelection campaign and we're already at the point where he's casually dining in public with avowed anti-Semites and white nationalists.

I hate to imagine where we're going to be in like June 2024.

This is all to be expected though. In absolute numbers the American conservative base has already shrunk to the point where they can’t win national elections without trickery like the electoral college, extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and political violence, but those tricks can only get them them so far. You still need to replenish the actual voters, so you pad those numbers with the moral majority, the tea party, the alt right, and so forth. Every time you need to re energize the base, you dredge up increasingly unsavory voters, allowing yourself to be beholden to their increasingly unsavory opinions.

Eventually, if you keep increasing the amount of heads and tails you keep with your moonshine, you’re gonna die of wood alcohol poisoning.

Prederick wrote:

Trump meeting with Kanye is mostly hilarious (Kayne is probably the only person Trump has ever met who is vastly more narcissistic and egocentric than him), that Trump may have met with white nationalist vlogger Nick Fuentes is more dismaying (and again, a statement about where the movement is/has been going).

Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point

(NYT Link)

Take it Chris:

Now now, "antisemites" is a pretty strong word, and those allies of Trump should remember that as he said in 2017, there are some very fine people on both sides of the issue.

But seriously, where was their concern about nazis when T-bag was openly supporting them for years before now? Sounds more like they're just making an excuse for changing their mind.

Meanwhile, the election in Arizona is still going:

Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the results of the 2022 midterm election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count from earlier this month.

Some officials who have embraced voter fraud theories held out, defying a state deadline and setting the stage for a legal battle.

The move came amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races, and the county was holding out in the afternoon of a nail-biting day that was the deadline for several counties to confirm results.

In a lawsuit on Monday, the secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who narrowly won the race for governor, asked a judge to order county officials to canvass the election, which she said was an obligation under Arizona law. Lawyers representing a Cochise county voter and a group of retirees filed a similar lawsuit on Monday, the deadline for counties to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass.

The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.

.......

Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave county postponed a certification vote until later on Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa county.

Officials in Maricopa county, the state’s largest, where the state capital Phoenix is located, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

Something, something, Air Traffic Controller strike. In the near term, I am sure this will work out well for the working class. Right?

Or maybe, and perhaps this is just crazy talk, the Democrats could actually help the US citizenry by finally pushing for some real labor law reforms to protect workers' rights rather than just continuing to pay lip service to us.

Farscry wrote:

Or maybe, and perhaps this is just crazy talk, the Democrats could actually help the US citizenry by finally pushing for some real labor law reforms to protect workers' rights rather than just continuing to pay lip service to us.

Hahahahahahaha! Good one. *single tear slowly slides down face as eyes return to lifelessness*

So, 4 of the 12 railroad unions want to add day one paid sick leave to the package that the other railroad unions already agreed to. (The other 8 unions did not get the paid sick leave but have had many of their other demands fulfilled, based on a plan proposed by the Biden team.) The accepted agreements were the most generous pay and benefits increases in *50* years of RR/Union negotiations. That's more than lip service. That's succeeding beyond what's been done before.

Railroad unions in previous negotiations, as well as the current one, accepted a deliberate tradeoff of higher daily pay in exchange for no paid sick leave for the first 3 days of an illness. After 4 days (depending on craft, longer for some), the workers get up to 52 weeks of paid sick leave. I mean, *I* don't have anything like that benefit. I'd love it.

Congress can add the paid sick leave from day 1 to the railroad workers contracts. It has the power to do that. But in effect, you're asking Congress to set a health care precedent for all union negotiations, and it's one that Republicans would rather die than see put in place. It's also going against what both sides agreed to in earlier negotiations, and 8 of the 12 in this one.

So Congress and "Democrats" are not the right venue to actually solve this impasse. The unions and the railroads need to sort this out (just as Biden said). Congress WILL NOT pass new pro-worker or pro-union laws in the current climate. And knocking the achievements that Biden has already got - and make no mistake, it's his team that put together the framework that the other 8 unions bought into - is just playing into the hands of Republicans. At some point, we have to be pragmatic. "Everything all at once" is not a reasonable negotiating strategy. It's frustration talking, and faulting the Democrats and Biden for doing better than any leader in the last 50 years... At what point do we say "Oh, okay, that was a good job?", if this is not enough? 24% pay raise backdated to 2020; lower health care premiums; more health care benefits; and an additional personal day. Also they got the requested scheduling changes (to greatly reduce "surprise" shifts and the like, as well travel restrictions and new reimbursement policies, and more). That's what they already have on the table.

Given that, it's now a question of "how much damage should be inflicted on the US economy for a dispute that the American people can't solve?". That's why the other unions are backing Biden's request to Congress. (This would, in effect, force the unions to accept the deal the other ones took, for now, without a strike. A stopgap, not a solution.)

The problem here is not Democrats being weak on labor law, it's 4 unions over-reaching. And no, I'm not anti-union in any way. But there comes a time to take a good deal on the table and work for more in the future. Given that 8 of the unions found the current deal to be satisfactory, I think the focus has to shift to solving the dispute without breaking the economy, again.

That does change my view a bit Robear; I've followed the story somewhat casually so I was not aware of the full range of concessions on the table, so I'll certainly take the hit for failing to sufficiently research the issue.

Thank you for the detailed response, I always appreciate your thoughts!

Thanks for that, Farscry. There's so much knee-jerking going on in the media these days it can be hard to find a path through to reality. Everything is spun like crazy. But we gotta take the wins where we find them because this is political trench warfare.

Mitt Romney Brutally Assesses How Low Donald Trump Will Go

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) measured the depths of Donald Trump’s audacity after the former president met with antisemitic rapper Ye and Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.

“I think it has been clear that there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney told reporters on Monday after calling Trump’s meeting with the two figures “disgusting.”

Romney needs to talk to his niece who keeps backstopping Trump.

The party upset about witch hunts plans never ending witch hunts.

GOP's New Committee Leaders Prepare Blitz Of Investigations

House Republicans are promising aggressive oversight of the Biden administration once they assume the majority next year, with a particular focus on the business dealings of presidential son Hunter Biden, illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and the originations of COVID-19.

Republicans won’t have enough votes to advance key legislative priorities if there is no Democratic buy-in, but their oversight of government agencies could put Democrats on the defensive and dampen support for the Biden administration going into the 2024 presidential elections.

Some of the lawmakers expected to lead those investigations once House Republicans select their new committee chairs:

farley3k wrote:

Mitt Romney Brutally Assesses How Low Donald Trump Will Go

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) measured the depths of Donald Trump’s audacity after the former president met with antisemitic rapper Ye and Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.

“I think it has been clear that there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney told reporters on Monday after calling Trump’s meeting with the two figures “disgusting.”

Romney next year...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/KwpV1Yl.png)

farley3k wrote:

The party upset about witch hunts plans never ending witch hunts.

GOP's New Committee Leaders Prepare Blitz Of Investigations

House Republicans are promising aggressive oversight of the Biden administration once they assume the majority next year, with a particular focus on the business dealings of presidential son Hunter Biden, illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and the originations of COVID-19.

Republicans won’t have enough votes to advance key legislative priorities if there is no Democratic buy-in, but their oversight of government agencies could put Democrats on the defensive and dampen support for the Biden administration going into the 2024 presidential elections.

Some of the lawmakers expected to lead those investigations once House Republicans select their new committee chairs:

Republicans declare they will waste no time when it comes to wasting everyone's time.

Robear wrote:

Congress can add the paid sick leave from day 1 to the railroad workers contracts. It has the power to do that. But in effect, you're asking Congress to set a health care precedent for all union negotiations, and it's one that Republicans would rather die than see put in place.

In that case I have a compromise solution that will give the Republicans some of what they want.

The mystery of rising prices. Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation?

Corporate confessions?
Rakeen Mabud is chief economist for the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative. "Companies are taking a spoonful of sugar off the ... backs of families who are all really struggling to get by," she said.

Mabud has sat in on dozens of corporate earnings calls and says she often hears CEOs bragging about how much they were able to raise prices.

Grocery giant Kroger has earned billions in profits over the last couple of years. On a recent call with investors, Mabud heard CEO Rodney McMullen say, "We view a little bit of inflation as always good in our business and we would expect to be able to pass that through."

AutoZone, which sells car parts and accessories, saw earnings jump 13%. CFO Jamere Jackson called inflation "a little bit of our friend in terms of what we see in terms of retail pricing."

Hostess has seen profits jump more than 15% this year. CEO Andrew Callahan had this to say: "We're also seeing the consumers experience a lot of disruption, and they haven't fully recognized or absorbed pricing."

Et tu Twinkies?

University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers says corporate greed is a red herring and companies are not the source of inflation.

"My friend and economist Jason Furman says, 'Blaming inflation on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity,'" says Wolfers. "It is technically correct, but it entirely misses the point."

Wolfers says companies are always trying to charge as much as they possibly can. In fact, the only reason we're not all paying $800 for a pair of socks or a cheeseburger is simply due to greed in another form: competition.

"That greed forces them to offer low prices because they're trying to muscle out their competitor," says Wolfers.

I was with it until this

As it turns out, consumers might be the guilty party in the inflation mystery. We've at least been aiding and abetting. "Inflation is coming from demand," says Wolfers.

In spite of inflation, demand hasn't really blinked. Companies have been raising prices and we have been paying them. In fact, in many parts of the economy, spending has been rising right along with prices.
We're not necessarily buying more because we have more money, though. Our collective savings has been shrinking and household debt has been on the rise. It's possible we're spending money we don't have to keep up with rising prices.

That is likely not sustainable. And when our buying slows down, Wolfers says, companies will start lowering prices to entice us to buy: Prices will fall and inflation will ease. But, until demand drops, companies will push prices up as much as they can. It's elementary.

Demand for gas, house and food can't blink. If I don't come to work I lose my job, if I don't pay rent I lose my apartment, and I can't exactly blink of food.

So it was an interesting story but I just don't buy the end. That somehow people wanting to stay alive, eat, live and work is to blame for part of this.

I don't even know what can be done about this. I mean I was thinking "I hope the courts slam the door on this quickly" but I realized fascists republicans have been stacking the courts for years in preparation. I also realize that even when courts do point out the BS of the claims (like the idea that trump didn't lose) they don't care. They are insane so sane solutions don't matter....

Arizona secretary of state sues after Republican officials refuse to certify county election results

Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the results of the 2022 midterm election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count from earlier this month.

Paywall is the strongest wall

Ego Man wrote:

Paywall is the strongest wall


CNN repeats

farley3k wrote:

The mystery of rising prices. Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation?

Corporate confessions?
Rakeen Mabud is chief economist for the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative. "Companies are taking a spoonful of sugar off the ... backs of families who are all really struggling to get by," she said.

Mabud has sat in on dozens of corporate earnings calls and says she often hears CEOs bragging about how much they were able to raise prices.

Grocery giant Kroger has earned billions in profits over the last couple of years. On a recent call with investors, Mabud heard CEO Rodney McMullen say, "We view a little bit of inflation as always good in our business and we would expect to be able to pass that through."

AutoZone, which sells car parts and accessories, saw earnings jump 13%. CFO Jamere Jackson called inflation "a little bit of our friend in terms of what we see in terms of retail pricing."

Hostess has seen profits jump more than 15% this year. CEO Andrew Callahan had this to say: "We're also seeing the consumers experience a lot of disruption, and they haven't fully recognized or absorbed pricing."

Et tu Twinkies?

University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers says corporate greed is a red herring and companies are not the source of inflation.

"My friend and economist Jason Furman says, 'Blaming inflation on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity,'" says Wolfers. "It is technically correct, but it entirely misses the point."

Wolfers says companies are always trying to charge as much as they possibly can. In fact, the only reason we're not all paying $800 for a pair of socks or a cheeseburger is simply due to greed in another form: competition.

"That greed forces them to offer low prices because they're trying to muscle out their competitor," says Wolfers.

I was with it until this

As it turns out, consumers might be the guilty party in the inflation mystery. We've at least been aiding and abetting. "Inflation is coming from demand," says Wolfers.

In spite of inflation, demand hasn't really blinked. Companies have been raising prices and we have been paying them. In fact, in many parts of the economy, spending has been rising right along with prices.
We're not necessarily buying more because we have more money, though. Our collective savings has been shrinking and household debt has been on the rise. It's possible we're spending money we don't have to keep up with rising prices.

That is likely not sustainable. And when our buying slows down, Wolfers says, companies will start lowering prices to entice us to buy: Prices will fall and inflation will ease. But, until demand drops, companies will push prices up as much as they can. It's elementary.

Demand for gas, house and food can't blink. If I don't come to work I lose my job, if I don't pay rent I lose my apartment, and I can't exactly blink of food.

So it was an interesting story but I just don't buy the end. That somehow people wanting to stay alive, eat, live and work is to blame for part of this.

If you squint really hard, they could have a point if wages had also increased right alongside prices, but they haven't, so they don't.

Thinking about the seditious conspiracy convictions and the Jan 6 coup d-etat. More to the point, I am thinking about how you can draw a straight line between America's mollycoddling of white domestic terrorists and this eventual outcome. Whether it was our refusal to deal with the KKK, our winking and nodding at neo nazis, our soft chuckling at the Bundy Fundies, and/or our hand-waving away federal reports of white nationalists in our law enforcement, this sh*t was inevitable. And worse is coming unless we admit to ourselves that white nationalist is terrorism. In the purest sense, its entire purpose is to terrorize and cow others not white into submission and compliance.

Burn it down.

The Senate has officially passed the Respect for Marriage Act. I intentionally chose a right wing source because I am a petty person who would swim in the tears of conservatives if I could.

“Members of Congress who voted for this bill and claim to support religious liberty are either naïve or don’t understand the laws they are passing,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, in a statement. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

“Despite polling showing that their constituents oppose this legislation, they refused to adopt Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment that would have protected the religious freedom of millions of Americans without taking away a single benefit or legal entitlement from same-sex couples,” Severino said.

“As a result, the tax-exempt status of religious schools and nonprofits is now up for debate. Additionally, the Left will try to use the bill to sue faith-based adoption agencies and contractors to drive them out of business as they have done in multiple states and localities already.”

I realize this law is just a backstop against the hyperconservative Supreme Court, but I'm also hoping that all the worst fears the conservatives have come true.

White domestic terrorism existed during slavery and is ingrained in our culture and society. The Civil War should have established a foundation to eradicate it but instead built a carefully establish institution to support it and let it grow.

TheGameguru wrote:

White domestic terrorism existed during slavery and is ingrained in our culture and society. The Civil War should have established a foundation to eradicate it but instead built a carefully establish institution to support it and let it grow.

One of America's greatest mistakes was not giving the rope to every Confederate over the rank of corporal.