US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6995

On March 01 2017 06:49 Plansix wrote:
I will laugh forever if the Republicans shut down the government when they control all three branches.

On March 01 2017 07:26 LegalLord wrote:
Meh, much as I wish it were true, John Rambo McCain is far from irrelevant. He represents the all-important "all wars, all the time, under the illusion that it projects strength" faction in DC.

Lindsey Graham is correctly perceived as a tag-along nobody though.

On March 01 2017 07:48 Velr wrote:


what makes you think it would be any diffrent to their retarded voterbase than last time? Controlling even more of the goverment? Lol?

On March 01 2017 08:04 Gahlo wrote:

Gotta find a way to stuff people into those privatized prisons and take advantage of prison labor.

On March 01 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:


Worth noting that the drug war was started as a way to criminalize political opposition. Not irrelevant in the current political climate.

On March 01 2017 08:23 Slaughter wrote:
Speaking of Ryan...why do people consistently talk him up as the intellectual and moral leader of the GOP? He is such a failure in both categories you wouldn't have to look far to find a better person for those titles.

On March 01 2017 08:23 Slaughter wrote:
Speaking of Ryan...why do people consistently talk him up as the intellectual and moral leader of the GOP? He is such a failure in both categories you wouldn't have to look far to find a better person for those titles.

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump said recent threats to Jewish institutions could be intended to make “others look bad,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) told reporters Tuesday following the president’s meeting with a group of state attorneys general.

Shapiro declined to speculate on what Trump meant. The White House and other attorneys general contacted by The Huffington Post did not respond to requests for comment. But Trump has previously suggested that political opponents who wanted to make him look bad, rather than actual anti-Semites, were behind a recent rise in anti-Semitism.

It’s the kind of language that echoes what white nationalists and far-right conspiracy theorists have been saying about the waves of bomb threats directed against Jewish facilities this year.

“Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the people that love or like Donald Trump,” the president said at a press conference earlier this month, when a reporter asked him about “a rise in anti-Semitism around the country, some of it by supporters in your name.”

“Some of those signs and some of that anger is caused by the other side,” Trump said at the Feb. 16 news conference. “They’ll do signs, and they’ll do drawings that are inappropriate. It won’t be my people. It will be the people on the other side to anger people like you.”

At least 13 Jewish community centers and eight day schools received threatening phone calls on Monday, bringing the total number of bomb threats against Jewish institutions since the start of the year to over 90. Some locations have now been targeted as many as three times. HuffPost is tracking the threats here.

Like Trump, white nationalists and neo-Nazis also claim that people other than anti-Semites may be behind the anti-Semitic incidents. They just think it’s Jewish people themselves.

“When I see these bomb threats, I just assume it is Jews doing it,” Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website — who has also argued that the Holocaust is a hoax — wrote on his blog last week. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke sent a tweet that implied the same. Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist, told HuffPost on Monday that he “seriously” doubts that the person or people behind the threats supports white nationalism, because making those threats only hurts their cause.

Conservative conspiracy theorists appear to share Trump’s theory about political opponents being involved. Mike Cernovich, a Twitter personality who has spread conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health, blamed the left for funding the “false flag threats” in a tweet on Monday. Anthony Scaramucci, a financier whom Trump once planned to appoint as an adviser, also suggested that Democrats may be behind the threats. He later said that he wasn’t blaming Democrats, just noting that “no one knows yet” who’s behind the phone calls.

Real “hoax” and “false flag” hate crimes are rare. “Hoaxes have become symbols for some who want to promote the idea that most hate crimes are hoaxes,” Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told Talking Points Memo in December.

But hoaxes constitute only a “tiny fraction” of reported hate crimes, Levin said. “As criminologists, we see hoax fires, hoax domestic violence accusations, hoax car thefts,” he added. “And the overwhelming majority of those offenses really are being committed, too.”

Questioning the veracity of threats against Jewish people is particularly damaging, given that some anti-Semites deny the fact that approximately 6 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazi regime and collaborators during the Holocaust. Jewish people are by far the most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States.

Trump has a long history of boosting conspiracy theories, including casting doubt on the legitimacy of then-President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and more recently blaming Obama for organizing protests against him — without offering any evidence that’s true. Trump has also come under fire for his repeated dog-whistles to white nationalists: Among other actions during his presidential campaign, he failed to initially denounce Duke’s support for his candidacy, shared a false racist meme, and retweeted the message of a Twitter user called “WhiteGenocideTM” who was listed as living in “Jewmerica.”

So far, Trump’s administration has remained relatively quiet on the rise in anti-Semitic threats since his election, with some exceptions. “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” the president finally said during a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture earlier this month.

On March 01 2017 10:23 farvacola wrote:
He reportedly brought the families of people killed by illegal immigrants, so I wouldn't count on it.