US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5091

On September 22 2016 13:37 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Where exactly does Pence stating in an interview that he wants to be the Dick Cheney fit into this? Or are you saying being a "very active" vice president, a la Cheney, is not in any way language coded to reassure people he'll be the brains behind the operation?

On September 22 2016 14:14 oBlade wrote:

I did find that quote after you posted it earlier. It's interesting. Cheney was definitely active, but I don't think it approaches the figurehead business that critics are talking about with Trump/Kasich. Right? I don't remember how much people say Cheney was really in charge. If people do say that, to the extent it was false, well then maybe this is a common thing nowadays. To the extent it's true, I couldn't really say, I don't know that much.

The timing is pretty close to this business about Cruz possibly endorsing Trump over ICANN being in the news. There's probably some business about reassuring the party there, but then again nobody remembers (Republican) vice presidents anyway. Who else can he say, Dan Quayle? GHWB? I want to be like GHWB, and vote for Clinton, oops. The point about being active is what we wanted in Trump's VP selection earlier, though. That's why Flynn was considered a wildcard, the ticket needed government, particularly legislative, experience. So when he says "take the vision of the president and champion that on Capitol Hill," that is what we wanted before. If you were up for the VP job it's not like you can say you want to be lazy, either. Peculiar spot.

Like ticklishmusic is sort of getting at, the level of detail you expect from the president himself varies per person, for Trump maybe it will be lower than Obama (Although anytime there's war afoot, the Commander-in-Chief gets a lot of responsibility there automatically). But at the level of president you maybe don't expect a huge amount of detail from anyone, and detail itself may or may not be a reliable proxy for "great president."

I think a Trump administration would be very productive in general, or rather active as people on different sides of the aisle will probably contest the results. VP included. But you wouldn't expect Trump to be anything other than the top dog, right? To my mind that's the reason he never entered politics earlier, like being a lowly governor would be below him.

On September 22 2016 13:18 oBlade wrote:
Here's what we need to overturn:
-Months of Trump flatly saying people publicly rejecting the VP spot were never under consideration
-Guy talking about running for president for 30 years, considered running for mayor, governor, was even considered as GHWB VP candidate, giving multiple speeches in multiple states per day for a year just to get elected and do nothing?
-Trump camp saying it was nonsense
-No similar leaks from otherEdit: actual prospective VPs, like, for example, Pence, the guy that this entire train of thought is about him secretly being in charge

Here's the evidence we have to do it:
-An anonymous aide's hearsay...

On September 22 2016 14:19 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Ever since 2003 people argued Cheney was the one running the show in the White House. This is Trump campaign language 101, non-words to some and coded language to others: low information people rationalize it away, higher information people rationalize it to their own liking, and opposition just looks on flabbergasted at how anyone buys the bullshit.

I wouldn't expect Trump to think he's anything other than top dog. Whether he'd actually be top dog is another matter-his own campaign only got under control once they took away the man's twitter, after all (I'm sure that ended up getting spun as his own idea), and his spontaneous moments (calling for unconstitutional stop and frisk amidst riots in Charlotte) continue to be nonsense he later ends up sarcastically recanting, which seems to be the opposite of being top dog in your campaign to me.

On September 22 2016 13:18 oBlade wrote:

You barged in with a 3 word eureka like you had exposed a great revelation, and I'm now pretending to be an idiot - this has been lovely. I did not omit Kasich from the story to win an argument, that's just a failed attempt at mindreading. Everybody knows Kasich's role in the story, it's common knowledge. The original story/leak was from the NYT. The Kasich soundbyte came later.

Your observation of "change in reticence" is an irrelevant attack on straw Trump supporters. I have explicitly told you I don't care who the source is, but it's hitting a brick wall. Think about what you're saying, it's essentially that you observed some people are more willing to shit on the NYT than Kasich.

Here's what we need to overturn:
-Months of Trump flatly saying people publicly rejecting the VP spot were never under consideration
-Guy talking about running for president for 30 years, considered running for mayor, governor, was even considered as GHWB VP candidate, giving multiple speeches in multiple states per day for a year just to get elected and do nothing?
-Trump camp saying it was nonsense
-No similar leaks from otherEdit: actual prospective VPs, like, for example, Pence, the guy that this entire train of thought is about him secretly being in charge

Here's the evidence we have to do it:
-An anonymous aide's hearsay, first through the NYT and then syndicated, then later (this is important) the same hearsay not denied ("That's what they tell me") by Kasich, who we already know to be anti-Trump. The content of which is that someone sent a Kasich aide a what, a letter, or was it a phone call that luckily would never have been recorded, floating the idea of a Kasich VP for the first time (remember, this would have allegedly been the campaign's first outreach) opening by begging him to be VP with the enticing offer that he would be in charge of running everything while Trump would be in charge of making the country great again? That sounds more plausible than made-up? Can you not smell the bullshit? This is a rhetorical question too. It's naive not to think there's a process in the media where journalists and sources fabricate weird shit together.

There are a number of people very close to Trump, like Christie, Gingrich, Pence, Flynn, and it's interesting to think about their roles in a Trump WH and see things develop as we get closer. But that's interesting without having to resort to an anonymous campaign aide, from a different guy entirely, as if to prove one of them is going to be a puppeteer.

These would all still be my thoughts if I were to abstain or vote elsewhere.

On September 22 2016 14:29 Yoav wrote:


Yeah, but the issue is that Trump has so utterly demolished his credibility that nothing he says can be taken seriously and are often just assumed (quite safely) to be false.

On September 22 2016 14:41 oBlade wrote:
I do get the line of attack on Pence generally, for people who think he's too backwards/old Republican and don't want that kind of influential VP. And to draw a parallel to Cheney, previous strong VP, and go look how that worked out. But this special thing people have with Trump that he doesn't want to be president.

On September 22 2016 14:47 oBlade wrote:

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On September 22 2016 14:45 Dan HH wrote:
Does replacing "a lot of faith in an anonymous NYT source" with "beliveing Kasich over believing Trump" work as well in reducing Nevuk's point to a caricature? No, it doesn't.

On September 22 2016 14:48 TheYango wrote:

I mean, part of the appeal of Trump is that he's supposed to be enough parts of the Republican party that people like, mixed in with enough anti-establishment sentiment against the parts they don't. But when he picks a straight-shooter old Republican for his VP, where's the assurance that he's not just all talk and no substance with the anti-establishment stuff? If he's perfectly fine with getting in bed with the Republican elite when it comes down to actually picking people that will be a part of his administration (and not just throwing cheap shots at them in speeches and over social media, because that's not really worth anything), how is it believable that he won't do the same when it comes to real policy?

On September 22 2016 15:18 oBlade wrote:
I will use an analogy to illustrate the point and also let you tell me what a bad analogy it is. You're in the schoolyard and Tina tells you that Don has a crush on John. So the school newspaper prints it. Don says I've never heard of that. Then someone gets an exclusive interview with John and asks if it's true. John says yes, Tina told me that. That wouldn't magically increase Tina's credibility.

On September 22 2016 10:54 Dan HH wrote:
Does it really not matter? Because before he confirmed it was just the librul media making shit up. Now we've gone to Kasich saying it and maybe he's lying, maybe not. I assume you're not suggesting his aide is some deep undercover Hillary plant misleading Kasich, if this was a lie chances are Kasich is in on it.

On September 22 2016 14:41 oBlade wrote:

But this is Pence talking, the actual politician already. He probably wished he could say GHWB since the campaign is running with the Reagan image. But all the other 20th century VPs are forgotten or disliked. Whether he had foreknowledge of the question or not I don't see an easy answer to it.

I do get the line of attack on Pence generally, for people who think he's too backwards/old Republican and don't want that kind of influential VP. And to draw a parallel to Cheney, previous strong VP, and go look how that worked out. But this special thing people have with Trump that he doesn't want to be president.

The U.S. Treasury Department has granted permission to Boeing and Airbus to export commercial planes to Iran, a Treasury spokesperson told NPR. The government has approved a deal — not yet finalized — for Boeing to sell IranAir 80 commercial passenger aircraft.

Thumbs-up from the Treasury is a major step forward on a key portion of last year's deal between Iran and six world powers including the U.S., in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from decades-long sanctions. That relief officially started in January, as we reported.

"These licenses contain strict conditions to ensure that the planes will be used exclusively for commercial passenger use and cannot be resold or transferred to a designated entity," the Treasury spokesperson said.

Boeing and Iran reached a $20 billion provisional agreement in late June for 80 aircraft, as NPR's Jackie Northam reported.

Since then, the Treasury has "spent months scrutinizing the deal to see what technology will be used on the planes, and whether anyone remaining on a U.S. sanctions list is involved in the deal," Jackie said.

She added that this marks the first time that Boeing has sold planes to Iran since its 1979 revolution. Jackie reports, "There is ferocious competition between Boeing and Airbus, and a good chance Boeing would be locked out of the Iranian market for decades if it didn't get this approval."

The new aircraft are a major step toward modernizing and expanding "the country's elderly fleet, held together by smuggled or improvised parts after years of sanctions," as Reuters reported.

The Treasury also granted Boeing's competitor Airbus a license to sell 17 aircraft to IranAir, as Jackie reported. "Even though Airbus is based in Europe, it needs U.S. approval because its planes contain sophisticated technological equipment made in America. That includes the computers and navigational equipment."

Both companies received the green light to sell a mix of wide-body and single aisle jets, Jackie said.

On September 21 2016 20:14 Plansix wrote:
Pretty sure the lack of growth in the GDP has to do with the crash that took place during the Bush years. The Bush administration handed Obama a pending depression with a hearty "Good Luck."

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has paid his family's businesses more than $8.2 million, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance filings, which reveals an integrated business and political operation without precedent in national politics.

The GOP presidential nominee’s campaign has paid his various businesses for services including rent for his campaign offices ($1.3 million), food and facilities for events and meetings ($544,000) and payroll for Trump corporate staffers ($333,000) who helped with everything from his traveling security to his wife’s convention speech.

In all, the Trump campaign’s payments to Trump-owned businesses account for about 7 percent of its $119 million spending total, the analysis found.

That’s an unprecedented amount of self-dealing in federal politics. Even the wealthiest of candidates have refrained from tapping their businesses’ resources to such an extensive degree, either because their businesses are structured in a manner that doesn’t legally allow them to do it with flexibility, or because they’re leery of the allegations of pocket-padding that inevitably arise when politicians use their campaigns or committees to pay their businesses or families.

Trump, on the other hand, appears to have structured his businesses in a way that lets the campaign use them without legal restriction. And he certainly doesn’t appear to feel any embarrassment about flouting political norms that typically compel candidates to distance themselves from their businesses during campaigns.

Quite to the contrary, Trump has used the campaign itself as a marketing platform to promote everything from the difficult-to-find Trump Steaks to his golf courses and a new Washington hotel.

Trump’s tangle of businesses has raised concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest should he win the presidency, while the Trump-branded campaign has drawn mockery and allegations of pocket-padding from Trump’s critics. His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in July accused Trump of “spending his meager campaign resources on … himself.”

Trump, who in 2000 predicted “I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it,” declined to comment through a spokesman. But he has compounded the criticism lately, boasting this week that “there’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money,” in response to a report that his charity used donations to cover business-related legal costs.

But the degree to which Trump or his corporations may be benefiting from his campaign is unclear, partly because the financial and legal structures of his businesses — and their relationships with his campaign — remain opaque. Trump has stubbornly refused to release his taxes, which could shed light on the issue.

A nationwide prison strike over conditions and wages behind bars, which organizers tipped to be the biggest of its kind in US history, was under way in at least several correctional facilities across the country on Friday, according to prison rights advocates.

Inmates from several states, who had bound together with the help of activists and organizing groups, aimed the national strikes – which had been in the making for several months – against what they said amounted to slave labor conditions amid mass incarceration in the country.

The coordinated events, which organizers targeted in as many as 24 states, occurred on the 45th anniversary of the riots at Attica prison in New York – the largest prison uprising in American history – over grievances today’s protesters say are similar, including poor sanitary conditions and prison jobs that amount to forced labor.
New Attica documents reveal inmate accounts of torture after 1971 prison riot
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In April, one of the main national groups organizing the campaign, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, announced its call to action.

“This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage to end prison slavery,” it said. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”

“Work is good for anyone,” Melvin Ray, who is incarcerated at the WE Donaldson correctional facility in Bessemer, Alabama, told Mother Jones on Friday. “The problem is that our work is producing services that we’re being charged for, that we don’t get any compensation from.”

Ray is a member of the group called the Free Alabama Movement, which has been instrumental in leading the strike efforts, along with other groups formed with the help of incarcerated individuals such as the Free Ohio Movement, the Free Mississippi Movement and the End Prison Slavery in Texas movement.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, prisoners at federal facilities can make between 12 and 40 cents an hour for their work, while state prison rates can be higher or lower. In several states, including Texas and Arkansas, inmates are paid no wage for their labor.

But the issue is not merely about earning meager amounts of money on the side. Inmates and outside organizers say that many US prisons simply would not run without the labor of inmates, including the work of building maintenance, cooking and cleaning.

“These strikes are our method for challenging mass incarceration,” Kinetik Justice, a founder of the Free Alabama Movement, who serves at the Holman correctional facility in Alabama, told Democracy Now in May, during a prior 10-day strike which mirrors what he and others planned for Friday.

Justice said that effort to push for a coordinated strikes came after “we understood that our incarceration was pretty much about our labor and the money that was being generated through the prison system”. He added that the prisoners, as a result, “began organizing around our labor and used it as a means and a method in order to bring about reform in the Alabama prison system”.

A press release from the Free Alabama Movement said that a widespread strike at Holman correctional facility had been launched a minute after midnight on Friday. The Alabama department of corrections subsequently said that at least 45 inmates had gone on strike.

The Free Alabama Movement also said also that strikes were under way at other prisons in Florida, South Carolina and Texas.

An IWOC statement on Friday said the South Carolina prisoners who were striking had released a set of demands before they would return to work, including the end of “free labor”. The IWOC also said on Friday that inmates at the Fluvanna correctional center for women in Virginia had gone on strike.

A report from the Miami Herald said that two prisons in the state had put their facilities on lockdown, a day after it reported that prison guards across the state were gearing up for possible strikes in conjunction with the national protests.

The full scope of Friday’s planned protests, however, has not yet emerged.

Strikes have happened at many prisons across the country over wages and conditions in the past several years.

In 2013, one of the largest coordinated inmate resistance actions to date occurred when some 30,000 inmates across California went on hunger strike to protest at penal conditions, including a heavy reliance upon solitary confinement.