[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day.

Jayhawker wrote:

This is a damn great speech, deserved to be seen by all. We were in New Orleans over Mother's Day weekend, and this story filled the news. It was really ugly hearing the protests, in a city so predominantly black, that these statues represented some sort of proud history of New Orleans, instead of a stain on its soul.

I repeatedly heard the Mayor referred to as a coward and gutless. I think he has shown to be the opposite in this fight.

Wow, that speech was powerful!

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Yonder wrote:

I grew up in a conservative household, I can emphatically report that that has been a thing for far longer than that.

Yeah I recall family trips to Florida and complaints about how all the waiters spoke Spanish. In the 1980s. Things were sooooo great under Reagan. :eyeroll:

JC, I think I misunderstood an early summary of the case results.

Very powerful. I like this mayor.

I don't even think the thing is fully operational yet!

2 more leaks found along Dakota Access pipeline

Variety: MSNBC Reaches Number One For First Time in Weekly Primetime Ratings, Fox News Drops to Third

For the first time in its history, MSNBC ranked number one in both total viewers and the key adults 25-54 demographic during primetime for a full week among the big three cable news networks.
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For the week of May 15, MSNBC averaged 2.44 million viewers with 611,000 in the key demo from 8 p.m.-11 p.m. Four MSNBC programs were number one for the week in total viewers in their respective time periods: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell”, “The 11th Hour” and the midnight re-air of “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow had the top ranked non-sports program in all of cable for the week. On CNN, “Anderson Cooper 360” ranked number one in in the demo for five straight days at 8 p.m. This ties for the longest winning streak on record for the show in that timeslot.
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In addition, Fox News ranked number three in primetime in the key demographic for five straight days with 497,000 viewers, the longest streak at number three the network has had in that measure in 17 years, since June 2000. CNN finished second in the demo with 588,000. Fox was second in total viewers, however, with 2.41 million, beating out CNN’s 1.65 million.

That worm, it's starting to turn.

farley3k wrote:

I don't even think the thing is fully operational yet!

2 more leaks found along Dakota Access pipeline

See, this is why we need to stop all the regulations and inspections. If we weren't checking for leaks, we'd stop finding them!

No Bill O'Reilly probably hurting FOX.

BBC: Manchester Arena blast: 19 dead and about 50 hurt

Nineteen people have been killed and about 50 injured in a suspected terror attack at Manchester Arena.

Police were called to reports of an explosion at the venue at about 22:35 BST following a pop concert by the US singer Ariana Grande.

The cause of the blast is unknown but the counter terrorism experts are treating it as a possible terrorist incident.

There's very little verified information at this point.

Now there is this:

Mississippi lawmaker: leaders taking down Confederate monuments “should be LYNCHED!”

Mississippi state Rep. Karl Oliver, a Republican, wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post:

The destruction of these monuments, erected in the loving memory of our family and fellow Southern Americans, is both heinous and horrific. If the, and I use this term extremely loosely, "leadership" of Louisiana wishes to, in a Nazi-ish fashion, burn books or destroy historical monuments of OUR HISTORY, they should be LYNCHED! Let it be known, I will do all in my power to prevent this from happening in our State.

He and his ilk are probably not asking, but yes, they are the f*cking baddies. Is it because of Trump that these nut jobs that ought that they were now the chosen ones and would always get their way? Is that why they are freaking out so bad? Like, if Hillary had won, and brought along a lot of democratic legislators, they would still be mad, but maybe not so on the nose evil?

The night the special prosecutor was named one of the friends of a friend of mine on Facebook had a meltdown. Some of it was just crazy posts about Trump being a hero. But several of his posts were like this rant, pissed about the city taking down confederate statues. It feels like this is all mixed up together.

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Gremlin wrote:

:(

BBC: Manchester Arena blast: 19 dead and about 50 hurt

Nineteen people have been killed and about 50 injured in a suspected terror attack at Manchester Arena.

Police were called to reports of an explosion at the venue at about 22:35 BST following a pop concert by the US singer Ariana Grande.

The cause of the blast is unknown but the counter terrorism experts are treating it as a possible terrorist incident.

There's very little verified information at this point.

Now confirmed it was a suicide bomb and arrests have being made. 22 Dead, many more injuried. An 8 year old girl has being named as one of the dead. Just lost for words.
Just 24 hours before my mate was at a Brian Cox event at the arena. I've been there myself for a few gigs, as I went to university in Salford so Manchester is my second city. IRA blow it up in the 90s but there were no deaths then. It's times like this I wish I belived in hell and heaven, because boy I want those cowards to burn forever.

Any news on why people do this and who benefits from it?

strangederby wrote:

Any news on why people do this and who benefits from it?

Definitively and verified? No. Not yet.

There have been attempts to claim responsibility and so on, but I'm waiting for more verification before I repeat any of it.

ISIS has claimed responsibility, of course.

“This type of target was absolutely foreseeable, as Islamic State has increasingly been highlighting in its propaganda that scores of children have been killed in coalition and Russian strikes targeting Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria,” said Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who specializes in the Islamic State’s influence efforts and who is writing a book on its external operations.

All of that content is “intended to stimulate thinking about executing retributive attacks among Islamic State supporters here in the West,” Mr. Smith said.

And they've also made an arrest apparently.

The police said they were following leads and poring over surveillance footage to determine if the assailant — who died in the attack — had acted with any accomplices. Shortly before noon on Tuesday, the police announced that they had arrested a 23-year-old man in the Chorlton-cum-Hardy neighborhood, southwest of the city center.

Max Boot : The Seth Rich ‘Scandal’ Shows That Fox News Is Morally Bankrupt

The network I once respected as a necessary antidote to liberal media now peddles craven lies and Russian disinformation.

Although Ailes had been pushed out of Fox News by the time of his death due to a raft of sexual harassment scandals and had no hand in the latest Seth Rich hoax, this is nevertheless the unfortunate culmination of his efforts to create an alternative news source. It was an ambition that I and many other conservatives sympathized with when Fox News went on the air in 1996. We had long chafed under what we viewed as the stifling liberal orthodoxy propagated by the major broadcast and print outlets. While not exactly “fair and balanced” — Ailes always meant the channel’s slogan to be taken with a wink and a nod — Fox was supposed to provide some ideological balance within the larger media universe.

That was a laudable ambition, but what Fox has become is far from laudable. Not only is it a toxic workplace where the harassment of women is rampant; it is also a no-fact zone. The Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact found that nearly 60 percent of the statements it checked on Fox News were either mostly or entirely false. Another 19 percent were only half true. Only Fox News viewers are likely to believe that climate change is a hoax, that there is a “war on Christmas,” that Obamacare would create “death panels,” that there is an epidemic of crime committed by immigrants (they actually have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans), that President Barack Obama forged his birth certificate and wiretapped Trump with the aid of Britain’s signals intelligence agency, and that the accusations bedeviling Trump are a product of “Russophobia.” FNC might as well stand for Fake News Channel, and its myths have had a pernicious, indeed debilitating, effect on U.S. politics.

Yeah. Lawsuits will do that.

Also this bullsh*t.

They've gone full brietbart.

They even lied in this press release. The Seth Rich article most definitely met their low standards.

I watched a WH Press briefing early last week, after Comey had been fired, and shortly after it was found that Trump told the Russians highly classified information. As you would imagine Spicer was fielding lots, and lots, and lots of questions on those topics, and mostly refusing to answer them.

The FOX News correspondent asked him about Seth Rich, and Spicer blinked, flummoxed. Told her he didn't have the information and it was an inappropriate question to ask. My response was "Damn, credit there, Spicer is floundering with the sharks circling, but he's still got the energy to bat away that sh*t life buoy Fox tried to toss him." It's not much, but it's worth remembering.

Edit: I should post the source, CSpan only has audio, the question is asked just after 11:30.

Yonder wrote:

I watched a WH Press briefing early last week, after Comey had been fired, and shortly after it was found that Trump told the Russians highly classified information. As you would imagine Spicer was fielding lots, and lots, and lots of questions on those topics, and mostly refusing to answer them.

The FOX News correspondent asked him about Seth Rich, and Spicer blinked, flummoxed. Told her he didn't have the information and it was an inappropriate question to ask. My response was "Damn, credit there, Spicer is floundering with the sharks circling, but he's still got the energy to bat away that sh*t life buoy Fox tried to toss him." It's not much, but it's worth remembering.

Edit: I should post the source, CSpan only has audio, the question is asked just after 11:30.

Except Spicey is probably getting replaced after that.

45 didn't take the leading softball questions when FOX hosted that one debate either.

Ironic.

This looked interesting to me (in a way that will no doubt be overshadowed by other news):

Top Education Department official resigns

The head of the Education Department’s student financial aid office has resigned after more than seven years on the job following an apparent dispute with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over his scheduled testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

James Runcie, chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid, “submitted his resignation to the department last night,” effective immediately, the agency said in a news release. Runcie had been slated to testify on Thursday before the House Oversight Committee regarding the department’s rising improper payment rate for federal student aid programs.

An Education Department official, who requested anonymity, said Runcie’s resignation came abruptly at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday after DeVos directed him to testify before the House oversight panel. The department official said Runcie also refused requests to testify made by the committee and Jim Manning, the department’s acting undersecretary.

...

The department official said Runcie said he wasn’t the correct person to testify about the issue, but department leadership indicated they didn't understand his reasoning and are baffled by his refusal to testify.

There's no indication (in my opinion) that his resignation was some sort of honor bound opposition to the Trump administration. Mostly it sounds like he just didn't want to testify before a committee on an embarrassing topic and a potentially failing program that's about to be big news because of upcoming Devos changes? No idea. But interesting.

I have at least one friend who has resigned from their government bureaucratic job as a direct result of Trump. Her words were (paraphrased) "I used to think I was making a difference for the better. I have no interest in doing the opposite."

Was she about to testify before the House Oversight Committee? It would be... interesting? fun? If one of these folks went rogue before the committee and abandoned the messaging they were told to use.

As far as this Financial Aid guy goes... it's confusing to me whether he was recently told to do or say something he disagrees with (from Devos) or whether Devos recently put him in charge of something he doesn't have the history to talk about or even if he's always been incompetent and decided to cut his losses before that played out on the national stage.

From what I've seen so far there's no indication which it might be. I'm betting 1 or 2 is likely, but 3 isn't all that outlandish.

Sounds like Runcie was worried he'd have to take the heat for years of problems. But they will just get a subpoena for the information, I'd think. Not sure how this makes him look good, or helps EdD.

Meanwhile, in the required comment period before Net Neutrality gets gutted:

FCC won't publish evidence of alleged DDoS attack, amid net neutrality battle

The agency has "gigabytes" of server logs that offer evidence for the alleged distributed denial-of-service attack, but it won't make them public.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not publish evidence of an alleged distributed denial-of-service attack, which critics say prevented a flood of people from leaving messages on the agency's support of net neutrality.

Call for the release of the agency's log files came after security experts and pro-net neutrality groups disputed the agency's claims that someone attempted to "bombard the FCC's comment system with a high amount of traffic" in the hours after the John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" show, which rallied viewers to leave feedback in favor of net neutrality rules, which the FCC currently wants to roll back.

Also, someone is using massive identity fraud to send fake comments:

Anti-net neutrality spammers are impersonating real people to flood FCC comments

The comments seem to be posted by different, real people, with addresses attached. But people contacted by The Verge said they did not write the comments and have no idea where the posts came from.

“That doesn’t even sound like verbiage I would use,” says Nancy Colombo of Connecticut, whose name and address appeared alongside the comment.

“I have no idea where that came from,” says Lynn Vesely, whose Indiana address also appeared, and who was surprised to hear about the comment.

Comcast is playing dirty:

Comcast Threatens Legal Action Against Net Neutrality Advocates Over Comcastroturf.com

Though Comcast loves to slap its various brand names over everything it can, the company is apparently none too happy that net neutrality advocates have invoked the Comcast name in their efforts to find out who is behind a trove of fake anti-neutrality comments filed with the FCC.

Although the official comment period just opened this week, the docket already has about 2.6 million filings in it, reaching back to when it was first announced in April. Many of those are from individuals using their own words. Many more are form letters sent by folks who visited various organizations’ and coalitions’ one-stop-shop websites to help them comment (both groups for and against preserving net neutrality use these).

But this time around, an estimated half million or so of those comments come from a botnet using stolen identities to spam identical anti-neutrality text.

Speaking of which, you might want to go to comcastroturf.com and see if your identity was stolen and used to leave fake comments:

Someone has submitted nearly half a million anti-net neutrality comments to the FCC, many of which appear to be completely fake — using stolen names and addresses. This needs to be investigated and stopped now.

(You can also search the comments directly on the FCC's site, if you prefer to do it that way.)

Especially if you are a current or former Comcast customer, because there's evidence that alleges that the addresses originally came from them.

And, if you need an overview about what this whole thing is about in the first place: Verge:
Breaking down the FCC’s proposal to destroy net neutrality

He'll get a bump for that probably.

The GOP is really leaning into fascism.

Over half of the votes are already in, which diminishes the possible impact, but in a sane world that should be the end of that campaign. In a sane world.