US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2655

On December 14 2015 00:06 TheTenthDoc wrote:


He said that? How can human beings think this man is competent?

Civil rights and religious groups have slammed the decision by a northeastern police union to endorse controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose comments on police brutality and calls to restrict U.S immigration for Muslims have sparked outrage across the political spectrum and among minority constituencies.

Rev. Jason Lydon was part of a group of clergy members who protested the event Thursday during which the New England Police Benevolent Association (NEPBA) announced their endorsement for Trump. Lydon, along with other clergy, kneeled down and prayed, blocking a hallway until police told them that they would be arrested if they continued.

Lydon said he protested to “highlight that Donald Trump is a symptom of a larger system of Islamophobia and white supremacy … and also giving credibility to so many people are responding to his Islamophobia and racism.” He added that there were around 200 protesters outside of the building where the endorsement event was being held.

Executive board members of the NEPBA, who attended a closed-door meeting to cast their votes Thursday, said that Trump’s comments about banning Muslims from entering the United States had come up briefly in their discussion, but that most of the conversation had centered on his support of police in what they perceive to be a national climate of hostility toward police officers. Trump has said that as president he would call for the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer.

The endorsement angered members of Black Lives Matter, the activist group that burst onto the U.S. political scene to denounce perceived brutality and racial biases in policing amid a spate of police killings of black men over the last year.

On December 14 2015 01:49 DickMcFanny wrote:
'Islamophobia' has to be stupidest buzzword in the English language.

Nobody calls it 'cancerphobia' if you're worried about cancer or 'bulletphobia' if you're afraid of getting shot.

On December 14 2015 00:37 MaCRo.gg wrote:


There is no way that he is actually this dumb irl. He went to a top tier business school in Wharton, even if it is more based off of his family money than merit there is no way he could've built what he has without way more intelligence than he is showing now.
Hardliners in the GOP know the truth, he is a Democrat agent campaigning to ruin the GOP. Everyone knows how close the Clintons are with Trump...

On December 14 2015 03:19 ticklishmusic wrote:


Maybe this is why he thinks he's worth 10 billion.

On December 14 2015 04:42 Plansix wrote:
Most people give zero fucks about the primaryelection until the month beforeafter.

On December 14 2015 04:42 Plansix wrote:
It is also a product of the Republican's pushing the primary process back a full year. It caters to this fridge section of the population an totally turns off main stream voters. Most people give zero fucks about the primary until the month before.

On December 14 2015 04:42 Plansix wrote:
It is also a product of the Republican's pushing the primary process back a full year. It caters to this fridge section of the population an totally turns off main stream voters. Most people give zero fucks about the primary until the month before.

I know that it was because the evidence in the trial was mostly/completely fabricated, yes, but it still means that the court can't defer to it as a precedent from my limited understanding of how the system works (I could be wrong however).

They also, again, do not have a religion based precedent to fall on it seems like. It would have to be a new decision, they could not just let an old one stand.

At minimum they would have to break new ground in First Amendment rulings if they took the case similar to the Korematsu one (Hirabayashi) about allowing the government to give curfews to citizens based upon race as precedent by extending this to religious rights. Both it and the Korematsu case would be brought in an entirely new direction if they just went with it unless we declared war on Muslims in general-though it would make good precedent if we were instead interning individuals from Iraq or Afghanistan after declaring war on them.

There's also the element that the United States government cannot clearly divine the religion of everyone that would probably play a result in the decision of the current court (probably anyway). You can't order an internment of all the Muslims when you can't tell who's a Muslim and who isn't-they're not just brown people. You can, on the other hand, verify the nationality and ancestry of any U.S. citizen fairly reliably given time.

On December 14 2015 05:22 UrsusRex wrote:


You are wrong there was no fabricated evidence, evidence was improperly withheld and receiving a statement from the U.S. solicitor general that they were wrong to prosecute Korematsu does not change the Supreme Court precedent that imprisoning people for their national origin or group affiliation is legal.

Also incorrect the U.S. government has banned and prosecuted groups because of their religious membership in particular the mormons who have been imprisoned for upholding and promoting their religious beliefs during certain periods of American history.

Also incorrect the first amendment gives people the right to practice their religion it does not prevent the government from discriminating against a religious group because of their open hostility as was the case with Mormons and branch dividians and various other religious groups that have been targeted by the federal government. The first amendment prevents the use of religion as an eliminating factor for policing where it says "no law shall be made respecting a religion". National Security interests trump religious freedom of the first amendment, heck school students have restricted first amendment rights.

Which is exactly what they would do, they would never declare all Muslims criminals they would do it based on affiliations with terrorist organizations and radicalized teachings, they would also exempt Yazidi and other muslim minorities so they could justify that the interment was not based on religion but national security. You vastly underestimate how simple this would be to accomplish.

Not really the president is the only one who has this authority under the constitution and only through executive order can classes of people be discriminated against. Its happened to immigrants from undesirable areas several times in U.S. history which is why Donald Trumps comments should be taken so seriously. If elected president he has full authority to inter Muslims ruled a threat to the U.S. during the war on terror (we already have imprisoned hundreds of American Muslims without trial or charging them with a crime due to suspected terror ties) federal judges have even ruled that its illegal but both Bush and Obama have ignored them citing the precedence of presidential authority in national security.

You can make a million and one arguments on why this is wrong but power is what matters and the president has the power to imprison and ban Muslims or any other category he deems a threat to U.S. security there is not argument that trumps that. I don't see the Roberts supreme court overturning that after all the times they have upheld presidential authority.

You’d think buying an election would be easy. This is, after all, the rough pitch that political consultants deliver when persuading donors to part with their money. (It’s also the primary theme of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.) The formula traditionally goes like this: Out-raise the competition, bludgeon them with attack ads, and watch the votes roll in. In the five years since the Supreme Court enshrined unlimited campaign contributions to organizations not directly affiliated with candidates, money has poured into the political system. And yet spending the cash haul effectively has never been more difficult.

Take the 2012 contest between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Celebrated political strategist Karl Rove assured a murderers’ row of Republican megadonors that, with enough funding, his super-pac could put Romney in the White House. “I had every expectation we would be the victors,” says Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone, who gave half a million dollars to Rove’s American Crossroads. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Crossroads circulated a top-secret presentation to a small group of billionaires that projected Romney could win a “mandate” if they contributed an additional total of $25 million to fund a “surge” of negative ads. A handful ponied up, and on Election Night, they assembled in Boston certain they would be watching their investment pay off.

Instead they watched Rove’s infamous Fox News meltdown as their $117 million grubstake went up in smoke. To many of the billionaires it felt like a mugging. A few days after the election, New York hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb, who’d helped finance Rove’s surge, tried to sue Crossroads and Fox News for misrepresenting the facts. “Loeb felt this was like an investment bank committing fraud on a road show,” a friend of his told me. After conferring with a securities lawyer, Loeb discovered that there are no investor protections in politics. He never filed a suit. (And Loeb declined to comment.)

Rove’s 2012 crash is having profound effects on the 2016 Republican primary. To begin with, George W. Bush’s Brain is no longer considered much of a brain. “I gave Rove $500,000. What did I get for it? Nothing!” Langone told me. Two of Rove’s most generous 2012 funders, Texas billionaires Bob Perry and Harold Simmons, have since passed away, and their heirs have turned off the cash spigot. “Everyone is still shocked Romney lost,” says Simmons’s widow, Annette. “I haven’t committed at all.” So far this year, Crossroads has raised just $784,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rove insists he’s still a player. “We’ll be involved in the Senate races,” he told me. “Depending on who the presidential nominee is, we may be involved in that, but that’s a long way off.” What Rove is not is anywhere near the center of the Republican Party. “But for his perch on Fox News, Karl would be in political Siberia,” says a top Republican strategist. “The going joke is that he must have a picture of Roger Ailes in his underwear to keep his contract.”

It’s not just that Rove is personally marginalized. Donors have awakened to the realization that topflight consultants can earn millions from campaigns regardless of whether they win. “It bothers a lot of people that politics has become a cottage industry. Everyone is taking a piece of this and a slice of that,” says California winemaker John Jordan, a former Rove donor. “Crossroads treated me like a child with these investor conference calls where they wouldn’t tell you what was really going on. They offered platitudes and a newsletter.”

Working under the assumption that they can support a campaign better themselves, donors are building their own organizations, staffed by operatives who report to them. “A lot of people who felt betrayed in 2012 set out to build political structures,” says Kellyanne Conway, president of the pro–Ted Cruz super-pac Keep the Promise I, which is backed by hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer. Mercer is a prime example of the new breed of activist donor. This presidential cycle, he has donated more than $30 million to a quartet of pro-Cruz super-pacs. A computer scientist by training, Mercer is also part owner of a political data firm called Cambridge Analytica, which boasts on its website that it employs “psychographic profiling” to recruit voters. As a result, Mercer’s pacs have shunned the traditional strategy of saturation TV coverage. Instead, Mercer is focused on targeted radio buys, digital outreach, and field organizing.