US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9492

On December 12 2017 13:56 mozoku wrote:

The point was less about the guy, and more about the current media environment and its economic model. That said, I'm a little bemused if you can't see how a someone who studies voter suppression (or any other topic, for that matter) for a living is incentivized to post click-baity and/or sensationalist statements about the topic, especially on Twitter.

If you take off your partisan warfare glasses for a second, you'll see that it's equally true for right and left.

Roy Moore, who is running for U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s special election, is facing multiple allegations of child sex abuse. He has largely avoided the campaign trail since these allegations first surfaced.

But on Monday night, the last day before the election, Moore held a rally. It got off to an interesting start.

One of the introductory speakers was Bill Sailing, who said he served with Moore in Vietnam. Sailing told the story of a night he spent with Moore and a third man, who he did not name. According to Sailing it was the third man’s last night in Vietnam and the man invited them to a “private club” in the city to celebrate with “a couple of beers.”

Moore and Sailing agreed. According to Sailing, they didn’t expect there was anything untoward going on at the “private club” because “there were legitimate private clubs” in Vietnam. The third man drove them to the club in his Jeep.

Sailing said that, when he and Moore arrived, they soon realized the man had taken them to a brothel. The third man, Sailing suggested, essentially tricked them. “I could tell you what I saw but I don’t want to,” Sailing said mischievously.

“There were certainly pretty girls. And they were girls. They were young. Some were very young,” Sailing acknowledged. But according to Sailing, Moore was shocked by what he saw. “We shouldn’t be here, I’m leaving,” Moore said, according to Sailing.

They asked the third man to leave with them but he didn’t want to. So Sailing and Moore took his Jeep and left him there all night with sex workers, who they agreed were underage. The man returned to base the next morning on the back of a motorcycle, Sailing said with a grin.

Sailing viewed this story as a triumphant example of Moore’s sterling moral character. Although Sailing hasn’t seen Moore in 45 years, he said, “He’s the same guy… He’s honorable. He’s disciplined. Morally straight. Highly principled.”

In other words, he’s the kind of guy who might end up at a brothel with underage sex trafficking victims, but only by accident.

On December 12 2017 09:00 zlefin wrote:

I was already aware of those things;
most of what you're citing proves my point; the actual effect of americans was fairly weak on the ground. they didn' t accomplish much with what they did do (which was often fairyl weak anyways). and they really didn' tdo that much.
especially compared to the other actors involved.
you're also citin some things without citing ANYTHING which would address the actual point: the RELATIVE importance of US actions in the context of the conflict.
especially since it's well proven by now that the US sometimes throws money ineffectually at problems.

On December 12 2017 14:33 mierin wrote:
I'm not sure whether it's where I am from but this whole "black culture" vs. "white culture" thing in the USA is confusing me. For me "black culture" is being cool, not giving a fuck, living life etc while "white culture" is being nerdy, walking cats in your backyard with harnesses and feeding squirrels and having an electric bird bath warmer. Honestly black culture is seen to be /superior/ to white culture. I certainly don't take pride in being white. Is there really this huge social stigma against being black?

On December 12 2017 14:05 Nevuk wrote:

thinkprogress.org


I will note the guy doesn't actually say it's an underage brothel... just strongly implies it (there's video of these remarks). OH, and this is from a guy DEFENDING him.

On December 12 2017 11:44 IgnE wrote:


its pretty horrid.

On December 12 2017 14:01 Plansix wrote:

When applied your logic assumes that any level of knowledge or expertise must be distrusted as self serving. So every time you talk about statistics, I'm can simply assume you are overstating the value of your own profession and its utility.

But I won't do that and I'll continue to view you as deeply cynical. I'm pretty sure your math is on point.

On December 12 2017 14:51 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

Not half as horrid as your inability to look past it given the circumstances.

If we further consider who actually needs to hear his message, I think the way he speaks is situationally perfect.

On December 12 2017 16:27 IgnE wrote:


i think you meant situationally prefect

On December 12 2017 18:23 Kickboxer wrote:
While Moore is certainly unfit for senate (though not due to the sex allegations, imho, but because he is not only religiously insane but also clearly a racist), it's pretty safe to say the democrats are again making the retarded mistake that got Trump elected.

Instead of focusing on politics or the pragmatic qualities of their own candidate (if there even is such a thing), all they appear to be doing is blowing the pompous horn of moral outrage and apriori "disqualifying" the guy because "we can't elect a pedo". Well, I'm pretty sure Alabama is about to elect this guy because most of its voter base doesn't give a flying fuck whether he was allegedly sleeping with 18-year-olds or not.

It's like the democratic party is entirely unable to understand there are other locales in America apart from New York and California.

On December 12 2017 14:35 a_flayer wrote:



Tell me again how you feel about Russian interference in the US elections.

On December 12 2017 14:33 mierin wrote:
I'm not sure whether it's where I am from but this whole "black culture" vs. "white culture" thing in the USA is confusing me. For me "black culture" is being cool, not giving a fuck, living life etc while "white culture" is being nerdy, walking cats in your backyard with harnesses and feeding squirrels and having an electric bird bath warmer. Honestly black culture is seen to be /superior/ to white culture. I certainly don't take pride in being white. Is there really this huge social stigma against being black?

On December 12 2017 21:28 farvacola wrote:
It's pretty clear why a story like that would make for attack fodder; dude with a litany of accusers has an old friend tell a story about a time he didn't give in to temptation and fuck some ladyboys in Vietnam. Yeah...., a fine story, right?

In the year since Donald Trump was elected president on a promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington’s corruption, Americans have become more, not less, convinced that Washington is corrupt, and that the White House is the most corrupt institution in U.S. government.

A new public opinion poll conducted over the last two months found that Americans don’t believe that Trump is cleaning up the government. In fact, the opposite is true: 58 percent of people surveyed say the level of corruption has risen in the past 12 months, up from 34 percent who said the same in January 2016.

And more Americans put the blame at the top: 44 percent now believe that most or all of the officials in the Office of the President are corrupt — up from 36 percent last year, and worse than perceptions of Congress (38 percent of Americans believe Congress is the most corrupt institution).

Trump’s administration also has not made Americans more confident that the government can stop double-dealing, fraud or dishonesty. Seven out of 10 Americans believe the government is failing to fight corruption—up from half last year.

The poll was commissioned by Transparency International, a Berlin-based corruption oversight nonprofit that gauges conflicts of interests and other corruption in governments worldwide, and publishes an annual ranking of the most corrupt nations. Last year, before the Trump administration took office, the U.S. ranked 18th in terms of perceived corruption, with Denmark at number one, perceived as the most corruption-free nation. Somalia, at 176th, was perceived as the most corrupt.

Since before he took office, Trump and his family’s personal conflicts of interest, and his agencies’ revolving doors, have been widely reported on in the media and heavily criticized by ethics lawyers and government watchdogs.

While the president handed off day-to-day oversight of his company to his sons Eric and Donald, Jr., his hotels and golf courses have become vehicles for lobbyists and foreign dignitaries to curry favor with the administration, and, in the case of the golf courses, actually meet and play with the golf-loving president.

Shortly before his election last year, the Trump campaign trotted out a new slogan and a five-point plan for ethics reform that featured new lobbying restrictions. The plan was called “drain the swamp.”

But a year later, he had stocked his agencies with lobbyists for industries that were regulated by the agencies, and his administration has been rocked by almost daily legal and investigatory bombshells related to corruption. Trump is being sued in Maryland and Washington, D.C., for violating the “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution by running his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Paul J. Manafort, the second Trump campaign manager, has been indicted on money laundering charges; Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in an investigation that also uncovered secret lobbying work for the Turkish government; and his son-in-law Jared Kushner failed to disclose $1 billion in loans tied to his real-estate company, and has repeatedly had to revise his financial disclosure forms to add items he “forgot.”

At least six Trump Cabinet secretaries are being investigated for or asked about exorbitant travel expenses, including using government planes for private business, security details or business dealings.

Cabinet members, including Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, have used travel to combine business with pleasure and fundraising. Shulkin took in a Wimbledon tennis game on business, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reportedly spent at least $800,000 on non-work travel, including a viewing of the August 21 solar eclipse. He also requested a jet for his honeymoon, and to take his wife to the Fort Knox gold reserve.

The president’s hiring of his daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law, are at odds with the federal anti-nepotism law, which states that “a public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.” His Justice Department gave him an exemption, however.

Nepotism and Trump’s refusal of transparency with respect to his businesses prompted the resignation of Walter Shaub, who quit in July as head of the federal government’s ethics office. Shaub had been a ferocious critic of the Trump administration’s blasé attitude about government ethics norms.

"I can’t know what their intention is,” Shaub said in an interview after he resigned. “I know that the effect is that there’s an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency. And appearance matters as much as reality, so even aside from whether or not that’s actually happening, we need to send a message to the world that the United States is going to have the gold standard for an ethics program in government, which is what we’ve always had," he continued.

"America should have the right to know what the motivations of its leaders are, and they need to know that financial interests—personal financial interests—aren’t among them," Shaub said.

The US Barometer 2017 poll was conducted by Efficience3, which directed a computer-assisted telephone poll of 1,005 respondents in the U.S. in October and November. Respondents were selected using random digital dialing, and data was weighted to be demographically representative of all adults in the United States by age, gender, social grade, region, rural/urban area and ethnicity.

On December 12 2017 23:14 Stratos_speAr wrote:


First off, he allegedly assaulted a 14 year-old while he was in his 30's. Don't mitigate the allegations. It makes you look horrible.

Second, you are completely clueless about the situation going on in Alabama. How the hell are Democrats supposed to win on the qualities of their own candidate? He's a Democrat. Alabama hasn't voted for a Democrat at the national level since you or I were very young (or not alive at all). The state is incredibly conservative, to the point where no Democrat can win on party affiliation alone. The only reason they have any chance is because Moore is such a terrible person.