US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8948

On October 07 2017 11:58 RealityIsKing wrote:


Well the left were the first one to weaponize social media.

And keep in mind that we live in a country with freedom of expression and free market principles.

With one side playing identity politics for particular groups of people, it is only natural that other groups start their own thing and there is nothing that one do to stop that without some human rights violation.

On October 07 2017 12:00 micronesia wrote:

What does this mean? Assuming it means what I think it does, how do you know it's true? Why is it important?

On October 07 2017 12:11 RealityIsKing wrote:


Well the rise of popularity of Breitbart have been a recent thing.

Prior to that, you got Gawker, XOJane, BuzzFeed hitting on white males pretty consistently.

And things like #WhiteTears and #KillAllMen did trend on Twitter when you don't see #BlackTears and #KillAllLadies trending.

Its at the right time, at the right opportunity, everything fell into pieces and worked for Breitbart to become a cultural icon.

Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore’s top supporter is a hardline Confederate sympathizer with longtime ties to a secessionist group.

Michael Anthony Peroutka (pictured on the right above, with Moore in 2011) has given Moore, his foundation and his campaigns well over a half-million dollars over the past decade-plus. He’s also expressed beliefs that make even Moore’s arguably theocratic anti-gay and anti-Muslim views look mainstream by comparison. Chief among them: He’s argued that the more Christian South needs to secede and form a new Biblical nation.

The close connections raise further questions about the racial and religious views of Moore, the former Alabama supreme court chief justice and the front-runner to become Alabama’s next U.S. senator.

There’s a long history of southern conservative politicians playing footsie with fringe groups that hold controversial views on race. But that’s become more fraught in recent years as the advent of YouTube, camera phones and campaign trackers has made it harder to keep those meetings quiet. It’s also become more controversial to speak to Confederate groups in recent years as parts of the South have changed and in the wake of murderous racist violence in Charleston and Charlottesville. But even by the old standards, Moore’s deep ties to Peroutka — and Peroutka’s views — stand out, as most of those groups weren’t actively calling for the South to secede again.

Peroutka, a 2004 Constitution Party presidential nominee who in 2014 won a seat as a Republican on the county commission in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, spent years on the board of the Alabama-based League of the South, a southern secessionist group which for years has called for a southern nation run by an “Anglo-Celtic” elite. The Southern Poverty Law Center designates the League of the South as a hate group (a designation Peroutka regularly jokes about). That organization, after Peroutka left, was one of the organizers of the Charlottesville protests last summer that ended in bloodshed.

During his 2004 presidential run, Peroutka made it clear to the League of the South which side of the Mason-Dixon Line he stood on.

“I come from Maryland, which by the way is below the Mason-Dixon Line. … We’d have seceded if they hadn’t of locked up 51 members of the legislature. And by the way, I’m still angry about that,” he told the group to applause.

In that speech, Peroutka praised his daughter for refusing to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic in her school band, called a visit to Confederate leader Jefferson Davis’ grave “beautiful,” praised his son for calling the Confederate rebel flag the “American flag” and said he’d wished that those in the room had been there during the Civil War fighting for the South.

“We could have used you, there should have been more of us in 1861,” he said.

And he made it clear that his anti-union views weren’t just in the past.

“Of course the South is this remnant of a Christian understanding of law and government where there is a God and government is God-ordained. That stands right in the way of this pagan understanding that the state, the new world order, is God,'” he continued, warning that secularists were out to destroy the South.

The League of the South broke its tradition against involvement in a federal political system they normally reject and endorsed Peroutka’s campaign.

On October 07 2017 12:23 micronesia wrote:

I'm pretty sure both sides had weaponized social media in one form or another well before Breitbart became a noteworthy thing. I'm not totally clear what you mean by weaponized social media. Like "#KillAllMen" is not an effort by the unified left to attack the right. your examples are questionable.

On October 07 2017 12:39 RealityIsKing wrote:


Its not a unified effort, you are right. Although I've never said that it was.

When John Kelly was named White House chief of staff in July, one of his predecessors in the job, Rahm Emanuel, called his office to wish him luck and offer himself as a resource.

Bill Daley, another former chief to President Barack Obama, sent him a note with the same message: My line is open if you need anything.

Neither message was ever returned.

In his first two frenetic months on the job, the retired four-star Marine general and former homeland security secretary has had minimal contact with the small club of people who have served as gatekeepers to a president before him.

That’s somewhat unusual. Most chiefs of staff — a position that has been described by people who have survived it as daily exercise in mimicking Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” — have generally looked to others who have been through the fire as a resource.

Emanuel, when he served as Obama’s first chief of staff, spoke frequently to Josh Bolten, who filled the role for President George W. Bush. When John Podesta served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, he spoke frequently with the three chiefs who preceded him in the administration, as well as to Ken Duberstein, a former chief to President Ronald Reagan.

Daley said he would sometimes call Jim Baker, a chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush, for advice. Even President Donald Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, turned to Samuel Skinner, a former chief of staff to the elder President Bush, for guidance.

Kelly, according to White House officials, has seen less value in the lessons of his predecessors as he tests the limits of what military order can do for Twitter-happy Trump.

Even former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, who worked with Kelly when he served as Defense Secretary and Kelly was his senior military assistant, acknowledged in an interview: “I don’t really talk to him that much. It’s a little tough when you’re not there, getting a kind of first-hand sense of exactly how things are operating.”

During the presidential transition last winter, Priebus dined at the White House with a group of former Democratic and Republican chiefs of staff, a luncheon organized by Obama’s outgoing chief, Denis McDonough, and attended by Emanuel, Podesta and about ten other members of the former chiefs club. But for Kelly, who came in mid-stream, there was no time for a bipartisan gathering.

Kelly’s relative isolation from chiefs who came before him is, on some level, a fact of his seniority and the timing of his appointment. He came into the job from the inside, after serving as a Cabinet secretary involved in major planks of Trump’s agenda, like the travel ban — a post that already gave him regular interactions with the West Wing and the president.

He is also a different mold from the civilians who have come before him. Kelly is only the second modern-day general to hold the post of chief of staff, after Alexander Haig, the army general who served as chief of staff to President Richard Nixon. But that has left him more isolated in what is considered the second most difficult job in Washington, D.C.

“I don’t think he came in cold,” Skinner said of Kelly. “Kelly knew the White House, he knew some of the players, and he knew the process generally. I’m sure he’s pretty confident he knows what needs to be done.” That’s a contrast with Priebus, he said, “who had never been in the White House, he’d never been in the process. I did talk to him several times, because they were scrambling from Day One.”

Of the half-a-dozen former chiefs POLITICO interviewed for this story, Panetta was the only one who’s had even limited contact with Kelly since he assumed the post.

A White House official said that Kelly has reached out to former chiefs, but would not provide any names from his call list. But the official also pointed to Kelly’s 40-year career managing men and women in the military, noting that he does not feel he needs much management advice from his predecessors. The official added that Kelly doesn’t necessarily see the experiences of former chiefs of staff as applicable to the unique challenges presented by the Trump presidency.

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said in an interview: “What civilians don’t realize is after you’ve been a company commander at every level, you have been a staff officer for a commander. As much as he is known for his battlefield exploits, he is prepared to be a staffer to a principal.”

But despite Kelly’s deep well of experience, there are still pieces of the new job that are outside of his experience, like moving a domestic policy agenda through Capitol Hill.

“In a normally functioning White House, the chief of staff is relied upon by leadership in both parties to be able to speak for the president, to negotiate, and to be able to give commitments with the expectation that you would keep your word,” said Podesta. “That means operating in a political world. As a senior military officer, that probably wasn’t where he thought his basic strength lay when he took the job.”

But more than two months in, Podesta — who served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair — said he isn’t surprised that he hasn’t heard from Kelly. “I probably would be at the bottom of his list,” he said.

Kelly has tried to frame himself as an apolitical aide — a facilitator for the cabinet secretaries, who he wants to run point as the main political strategists on the issues coming out of their departments, White House sources said.

Colleagues describe him as someone who reluctantly agreed to take the chief of staff job out of a sense of patriotic duty – and someone who sees his role as instilling organization and process around the president.

But former administration officials said the chief of staff post is by nature a deeply political role, whether Kelly admits it or not. And while he has some strong relationships on the Hill — it was Cotton who first recommended Kelly to former chief strategist Steve Bannon as a potential Cabinet appointee during the transition — overseeing the progress of the president’s agenda is different from overseeing U.S. Southern Command.

“He’s in an incredibly political role,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, who served as a senior adviser to Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. “The way the generals in the administration are talked about is that they are presumed neutral, when they’re political appointees.”

Kelly, according to White House officials, does not view his role as changing the president’s behavior or positions. Rather, he wants to simply present him with the right information. But Schulman said: “That is a very military mind-set. We expect people in that role to be playing a politically influential role.”

Two months in, Kelly has proved successful at creating a process and controlling the paper flow into the Oval Office. But Trump still has no domestic policy achievements to point to, the “palace intrigue” has escalated with stories of Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson undermining each other and Kelly’s influence has not extended to Trump’s Twitter feed, or his off-script remarks. It remains to be seen what kind of impact Kelly will have on the success of the Trump presidency.

“He’s been more involved in the immigration conversations and negotiations, in which I’ve played a key role, than Reince Priebus ever was,” Cotton said, pointing to a piece of the president’s agenda that ran through his old department of DHS. “He’s setting up conferences calls and Oval Office meetings, thinking through legislative dynamics.”

Added Panetta: “When you’re a good chief of staff, you’ve got to be aware and involved in the legislative strategy, in order to be sure the staff is properly serving the president. [Kelly’s] hope is that ultimately the president will recognize that if he’s going to be able to get anything done...he has got to do a much better job at how he presents his decisions to the American people.”

The US Federal Communications Commission has approved Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc’s application to provide emergency cellular service to Puerto Rico through balloons.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico has struggled to regain communications services. The FCC said on Friday that 83% of cell sites remain out of service, while wireless communications company are deploying temporary sites.

Alphabet, which announced its Project Loon in 2013 to use solar-powered, high-altitude balloons to provide internet service in remote regions, said in an FCC filing it was working to “support licensed mobile carriers’ restoration of limited communications capability” in Puerto Rico.

Earlier on Friday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced he was forming a Hurricane Recovery Task Force with an emphasis on addressing challenges facing Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

“It is critical that we adopt a coordinated and comprehensive approach to support the rebuilding of communications infrastructure and restoration of communications services,” Pai said in statement.

Separately, Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rossello said in a Twitter posting late on Friday that he had a “great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities. Next steps soon to follow.“

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc, said on Friday the company would send more battery installers to Puerto Rico to help restore power after Hurricane Maria knocked out all power on the island over two weeks ago.

Musk said he was diverting resources from a semi-truck project to fix Model 3 bottlenecks and “increase battery production for Puerto Rico & other affected areas.“

In late September, Tesla said it was sending hundreds of batteries that can store power generated by solar panels to Puerto Rico to provide emergency help in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

The US government has declared “black identity extremists” a violent threat, according to a leaked report from the FBI’s counter-terrorism division.

The assessment, obtained by Foreign Policy, has raised fears about federal authorities racially profiling activists and aggressively prosecuting civil rights protesters.

The report, dated August 2017 and compiled by the Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, said: “The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.” Incidents of “alleged police abuse” have “continued to feed the resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity within the BIE movement”.

The FBI’s dedicated surveillance of black activists follows a long history of the US government aggressively monitoring protest movements and working to disrupt civil rights groups, but the scrutiny of African Americans by a domestic terrorism unit was particularly alarming to some free speech campaigners.

“When we talk about enemies of the state and terrorists, with that comes an automatic stripping of those people’s rights to speak and protest,” said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It marginalizes what are legitimate voices within the political debate that are calling for racial and economic justice.”

On October 07 2017 10:44 RealityIsKing wrote:


Because when Leftiests pushes for "patriarchy" that causes the wage gap myth, fear mongers about campus rape, refuse to call out/support BLM/antifa's violent behaviors; these guys are served as the antidote to the awful Leftiests.

On October 07 2017 12:00 micronesia wrote:

What does this mean? Assuming it means what I think it does, how do you know it's true? Why is it important?

Students affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement crashed an event at the College of William & Mary, rushed the stage, and prevented the invited guest—the American Civil Liberties Union's Claire Gastañaga, a W & M alum—from speaking.

Ironically, Gastañaga had intended to speak on the subject, "Students and the First Amendment."

The disruption was livestreamed on BLM at W&M's Facebook page. Students took to the stage just a few moments after Gastañaga began her remarks. At first, she attempted to spin the demonstration as a welcome example of the kind of thing she had come to campus to discuss, commenting "Good, I like this," as they lined up and raised their signs. "I'm going to talk to you about knowing your rights, and protests and demonstrations, which this illustrates very well. Then I'm going to respond to questions from the moderators, and then questions from the audience."

It was the last remark she was able to make before protesters drowned her out with cries of, "ACLU, you protect Hitler, too." They also chanted, "the oppressed are not impressed," "shame, shame, shame, shame," (an ode to the Faith Militant's treatment of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, though why anyone would want to be associated with the religious fanatics in that particular conflict is beyond me), "blood on your hands," "the revolution will not uphold the Constitution," and, uh, "liberalism is white supremacy."

This went on for nearly 20 minutes. Eventually, according to the campus's Flat Hat News, one of the college's co-organizers of the event handed a microphone to the protest's leader, who delivered a prepared statement. The disruption was apparently payback for the ACLU's principled First Amendment defense of the Charlottesville alt-right's civil liberties.

Organizers then canceled the event; some members of the audience approached the podium in an attempt to speak with Gastañaga, but the protesters would not permit it. They surrounded Gastañaga, raised their voices even louder, and drove everybody else away.

The college released what can only be described as an incredibly tepid statement:

William & Mary has a powerful commitment to the free play of ideas. We have a campus where respectful dialogue, especially in disagreement, is encouraged so that we can listen and learn from views that differ from our own, so that we can freely express our own views, and so that debate can occur. Unfortunately, that type of exchange was unable to take place Wednesday night when an event to discuss a very important matter – the meaning of the First Amendment — could not be held as planned. …

Silencing certain voices in order to advance the cause of others is not acceptable in our community. This stifles debate and prevents those who've come to hear a speaker, our students in particular, from asking questions, often hard questions, and from engaging in debate where the strength of ideas, not the power of shouting, is the currency. William & Mary must be a campus that welcomes difficult conversations, honest debate and civil dialogue.

Absent a promise to identify the perpetrators and make sure this never happens again, the college's statement is meaningless. If officials are just going to stand by while students make it impossible to even have a conversation about free speech on campus, the matter is already settled: there is no free speech at William & Mary.

These students have clearly made up their minds about free speech: they don't want to share it with anyone else—especially Nazis, but also civil liberties lawyers who happen to be experts on the thing they are willfully misunderstanding: the First Amendment. Their ideological position is obviously incoherent—Liberalism is white supremacy? What?—and would not stand up to scrutiny, which is probably why they have decided to make open debate an impossibility on campus. They really shouldn't get away with this.

On October 07 2017 12:11 RealityIsKing wrote:
And things like #WhiteTears and #KillAllMen did trend on Twitter when you don't see #BlackTears and #KillAllLadies trending