US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 31

On October 03 2018 08:59 xDaunt wrote:

The republican temerity that I bitched about is very different than what Nebu is complaining about. Before Trump, Republicans simply took it on the chin whenever Democrats peddled in slander as they are with Kavanaugh. W would say that it was beneath the dignity of the office to respond. It was the same with Romney and even McCain. And beyond that, Republicans are still terrible at actually using their power. The lack of major legislation over the past couple years is really sad.

On October 03 2018 09:25 xDaunt wrote:

The voters gave Trump a pass, but the establishment GOP politicians certainly didn’t. Why do you think #nevertrump gained as much traction as it did during the campaign?

On October 03 2018 09:27 Nebuchad wrote:


Could you expand a little bit on what the difference is, please?

On October 03 2018 09:47 GreenHorizons wrote:


#NeverTrump had nothing to do with the slanderous rumors Trump spread, it's merely the people who previously took money from Trump flipping out about him being in charge. NeverTrump was just the Republican "wait your turn" crowd mad that power wasn't heading to the person they had groomed (Bush), and businesses concerned Trump's blind selfishness would leave them in the cold.

Both groups have gotten over that pretty quickly and none of them ever tried to hold Trump accountable for the type of stuff you're saying you so strongly disapprove of Democrats doing.

The closest you'll come is when Trump viciously went after other Republicans and Republicans thinking that is too far, but you won't find any statement as remotely condemning of Trump's slanderous rumor spreading about Obama from Republicans (as you do in the Ford/Kavanaugh situation, you included) because it's not the slanderous rumors that they have the big problem with. It's who the target of them is that matters more imo.

On October 03 2018 10:34 xDaunt wrote:

My complaints about the GOP stem from the GOP failing to respond to Democrat provocation and enacting conservative policy when in power. Your complaints about the Democrats stem from them not being aggressive enough in obstructing the GOP agenda even when there's very little that the Democrats can actually do within the confines of the law and regular decorum.

On October 03 2018 10:43 Nebuchad wrote:


I find it extremely doubtful that you would be fine with the GOP bending over if they have a minority, I'm sorry to say. But I keep some hope that we may find out pretty soon.

On October 03 2018 10:37 xDaunt wrote:


#Nevertrump was certainly funded by anti-Trump interests who stood to lose a lot from Trump's policies, but one of the major planks of #Nevertrumpism, if not the major plank, is that Trump is simply unfit for office due to his lack of decorum. That's a charge that included taking Trump to task for the birther thing. When I talk with my #Nevertrumper friends, their single biggest hangup with climbing on the Trump train is still the lack of decorum. They actually like most of his policies.

On October 03 2018 11:24 xDaunt wrote:
Well, you can start here with Bill Kristol (or here for something more contemporaneous to the campaign.) Beyond that, how could you have forgotten about the GOP presidential debates? The other candidates routinely teed off on Trump’s rhetoric.

On October 04 2018 02:33 xDaunt wrote:
Trump's rally last night is a good example of what the GOP should be doing versus what it has done historically. During the rally, he pointed out all of the inconsistencies in Ford's testimony at the hearing. Now he's being criticized by moderates and Democrats for "mocking" Ford. That criticism is utterly insane. Since when is it out of bounds to point out the inconsistencies and other holes in an accusation? Everyone who is against Trump to this extent on the Kavanaugh issue has clearly lost their marbles. They better get their shit straight fast, because, if the recent "tightening" of the polls is any indication, voters are getting ready to punish them.

Sanders to launch new plan to break up Wall Street giants, including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would place a hard cap on the size of financial institutions, a proposal that would splinter Wall Street’s biggest firms in an effort to ward off future taxpayer bailouts.

Sanders’s bill would bar financial institutions from holding assets, derivatives and other forms of borrowing worth more than 3 percent of the entire U.S. economy. That would cap their size at $584 billion in today’s dollars.

The legislation would force federal regulators to break up six different Wall Street firms — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — as well as insurance giants such as Prudential Financial and MetLife. Collectively, the targeted firms hold more than $13 trillion in assets, according to Sanders aides.

Sanders touts the plan as a way to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of a decade ago, when banks on the edge of collapse were large enough that their failures would rock the fundamentals of the global financial system. In response, the federal government extended the banks massive loans, a move largely credited with blunting the crisis but that also gave government funding to wealthy individuals at a time when unemployment was soaring and thousands were losing their homes.

“We spent huge amounts of money bailing them out, and they are significantly larger now than they were back then,” Sanders said in an interview. “It’s time we return to that discussion, especially now for the 10th anniversary" of the crash.

“This legislation cuts to the heart of the matter, by putting a size cap on the largest highly leveraged firms. The size cap is simple, straightforward, and transparent,” said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and supports the bill. “This measure will bring us closer to full and fair competition in the financial system, where a few megabanks currently predominate.”

Four of the six biggest banks are on average 80 percent bigger than they were when they started receiving bailout funding about a decade ago, according to Sanders aides, as many of the largest financial firms acquired distressed banks during the crisis. JPMorgan, which acquired Bear Stearns in 2008 at the urging of the federal government, has grown by about 60 percent, to $2.53 trillion, according to the company’s public disclosure forms.

On October 04 2018 07:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


I think pretty much everyone thinks Ford experienced a sexual assault (lots of women have), so it is messed up, even if she somehow her being 100% sure it was Kavanaugh is wrong, for Trump to target her like that. Punching down to a citizen is pathetic for a president.

It's gross really.

I understand the "what about our boys" argument, but the fact of the matter is a LOT more women are attacked/abused and their attackers go without being held accountable, whereas false accusations are far more rare.

These types of arguments "what about the boys" are completely devoid of recognition of the context. The justice system was set up by slave owning rapists, so that colors the "justice" it deals out.

Ironically the thing that stuck out to me about the whole Kavadrama was that he's going to be a SC justice when other kids had their lives ruined just for doing the same things he proudly admits as a kid.

On October 04 2018 07:47 GreenHorizons wrote:
Bold proposals that give people someone to vote FOR is the only chance Democrats have but they'd rather have Manchin in their party than this guy.

Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm.

That’s the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The dossier, though mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign.

The revelation was confirmed both in contemporaneous evidence and testimony secured by a joint investigation by Republicans on the House Judiciary and Government Oversight committees, my source tells me.

It means the FBI had good reason to suspect the dossier was connected to the DNC’s main law firm and was the product of a Democratic opposition-research effort to defeat Trump — yet failed to disclose that information to the FISA court in October 2016, when the bureau applied for a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“This is a bombshell that unequivocally shows the real collusion was between the FBI and Donald Trump’s opposition — the DNC, Hillary and a Trump-hating British intel officer — to hijack the election, rather than some conspiracy between Putin and Trump,” a knowledgeable source told me.

On October 04 2018 11:45 xDaunt wrote:

Horseshit. Since when is telling the truth a bad thing? Since when should the truth be ignored for political expediency or “feelings?” The truth is that Ford’s story has huge internal credibility problems. The truth is that is there is no reason to even believe that Ford was sexually assaulted by anyone — much less by Kavanaugh — other than her own mentally ill presentation. The truth is that there is good reason to believe that Ford perjured herself on multiple points during the hearing on Friday (polygraphs, the second door, and fear of flying). All of that should be accounted for and openly discussed.

On October 04 2018 12:12 Howie_Dewitt wrote:

I really wish Sanders was younger. He's the only person I know that pushes for the kinds of things that I want to see happen, and he's ancient.

On October 04 2018 14:38 LegalLord wrote:

On the one hand, I can definitely understand why you see this as a problem - she's probably genuinely been sexually assaulted before, and it isn't proper to make light of that. On the other... this is clearly a pretty flimsy allegation directed towards Kavanaugh, played deliberately off of the court of public opinion rather than through any of the more impartial channels of justice, and clearly abusing the existence of an automatic sympathy for the alleged victim to gain political points without ever needing to provide proof. That abuse of sympathetic sentiment is a pretty disgusting thing when it is used, and in that light I can see merit in Dauntless' "all she earned was hundreds of image macros of her face on a green cartoon frog" approach to this.

As something of a parallel case that I'm certain you have some personal thoughts on, I'd like to know what you thought of the "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" quip from Obama early in that Zimmerman investigation. Is that something you think was appropriate for the president to say, or was that "punching down" in the same sense of attacking a citizen for whom there was a perception, but not proof, of wrongdoing?