US Politics Mega-thread - Page 577

On August 03 2018 08:37 screamingpalm wrote:
I don't think there is a single good place to use or rely on. I think it is more important to mix up mainstream and independent media, rather than "left" or "right". Otherwise, it just leaves you with the corporate neoliberal narrative usually. I find the Intercept to be of good quality most of the time- more old school investigative and in-depth style. It really depends on the subject though. If it is something I have a good understanding of, it makes it easier to sift much of the bs.

On August 03 2018 11:05 GreenHorizons wrote:Considering the rounds of people that accused The Intercept of being Russian stooges I'd say most people consume almost exclusively corporate approved news.

On August 03 2018 12:43 Womwomwom wrote:


People accuse The Intercept of that because of Glenn Greenwald's initial tightrope walking with regards to Russia and election interference. For a while, he supported a full investigation but he didn't think it would lead anywhere and everyone talking about it was scaremongering, despite there being so much smoke that you could kill an elephant. He's not a stupid man and people were confused at his position.

From his articles, I gather that he assumed that US Intel services were omniscient and powerful and would never let this become such a big problem. Which is an entirely fair one to make especially when someone like Greenwald's done so much investigation in the area of US intelligence overreach.

Its got little to do with "corporate approved news" peddling propaganda or people getting badly sourced information, Its to do with an honestly very intelligent person holding a position that makes little sense given the amount of information we have.

On August 02 2018 22:56 iamthedave wrote:


I think that might have played a small role, too. But then America did have Vietnam, which killed a shit ton of America's youth.

On August 03 2018 05:43 xDaunt wrote:

"Reporting the truth?" Oh, please. What the press decides to report just as important as how they report it. The disparity in reporting is obvious. Trump rarely gets good press.



And Trump's precise motivation for attacking the press is besides the point. I agree with his attack not because of Trump, but because I have recognized the press as being biased against my political and cultural interests for as long as I have been politically aware (and even before then). What most of you still seem to miss is that Trump got to where he is today because of political conditions and temperaments in the electorate that pre-date him. Trump's political genius is in being the first conservative politician to seize upon those currents and ride them.

On August 03 2018 03:05 xDaunt wrote:

I dunno. Episode 8 kinda proved their point. And it's not exactly the only shining example.

A former worker at a shelter for immigrant youths in Arizona has been accused of molesting eight teenage boys over a nearly yearlong period at the facility, according to federal records cited by nonprofit news site ProPublica.

In a separate case, a federal contractor has also been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl at a facility in Phoenix operated by the same organization, Southwest Key Programs, according to court records in Maricopa, Ariz., The Washington Post reports.

The two cases highlight allegations of abuse and poor conditions at shelters housing migrant children that have come into focus since the Trump administration's now-rescinded policy of separating families at the Southern border. A federal judge ordered more than 2,500 children who were separated from their parents to be reunited.

According to federal court documents cited by ProPublica, Levian D. Pacheco, 25, worked at Southwest Key's Casa Kokopelli facility over the period from May 2016 to July 2017. Between August 2016 and July 2017, he is alleged to have performed oral sex on two teenage boys and tried to force another to engage in anal intercourse.

Six others say Pacheco groped them through their clothing, according to ProPublica. All the boys were between 15 and 17. Charges against Pacheco --who has since been fired by Southwest Key — were brought in August 2017.

The alleged victims in the case involving Pacheco were all unaccompanied minors, but it is not clear if they were separated from their parents or traveled to the U.S. alone.

The Associated Press says Pacheco has pleaded not guilty. His attorney said that the charges against him involve an "extraordinary broad range of dates and lack of specificity."

ProPublica reports that Casa Kokopelli, the facility where Pacheco worked, "was cited by the Arizona Department of Health Services in 2017 for failing to complete background checks, including fingerprinting, to ensure that employees hadn't previously committed sex offenses and other crimes, records show. Pacheco worked for nearly four months without a complete background check, according to documents and an agency official. Those records did not show any previous arrests or convictions for sex offenses, they said."

In July, ProPublica published an extensive report documenting at least 125 calls to police to report sex offenses at shelters primarily serving immigrant children since 2014.

In another case, Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, was charged Tuesday with child molestation, sexual abuse and aggravated assault which allegedly occurred at a different Southwest Key facility in Phoenix.

The Post writes, "According to a probable cause statement, a teenage girl sharing the room with the 14-year-old girl witnessed the alleged June 27 incident and sparked the investigation when she reported it to authorities July 25. In interviews with investigators, the 14-year-old girl said Magaz Negrete entered her room and began kissing her on the lips. She then 'pushed him away,' got away from him and 'went to her bed angry,' police said in the probable cause statement."

It is not clear from the documents whether the girl had been separated from her parents at the border.

The facility where the incident involving Magaz Negrete allegedly took place is not named in the court documents, but Phoenix's ABC15 reports it is Southwest Key Campbell, the same shelter visited by first lady Melania Trump in June.

Austin, Texas-based Southwest Key Programs is a nonprofit that operates dozens of shelters for migrant children across the country and its funding includes contracts with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Responding to the accusations of abuse, the organization said its "number one priority" is "keep the children in our care safe."

"During our hiring process, we fully comply with all background and fingerprint checks of the staff we employ, and we go above and beyond to train every employee on issues such as their legal obligation as mandated reporters of abuse or neglect, appropriate boundaries, situational awareness, bystander training and many others," Southwest Key Programs said in a statement attributed to spokesman Jeff Eller.

"When a child tells us of inappropriate behavior, we immediately call law enforcement and start an internal investigation as appropriate," Eller said in a statement to the Post.

As NPR's Camila Domonoske reported in June, Southwest Key is the largest nonprofit running migrant shelters for the government, but it is not the only one.

"Shelters run by other organizations have been accused of serious physical abuse, sexual abuse and the use of psychotropic drugs without consent. By most accounts, Southwest Key shelters are generally safe, except for some health and safety violations," Camila writes.

As ProPublica notes, "Trump administration officials have repeatedly asserted that the shelters are safe, even fun, places for kids. But there has been increasingly intense scrutiny of the federally funded, privately run shelters" after the administrations separation policy went into effect.

On August 03 2018 18:22 iamthedave wrote:


I have to ask... do you genuinely not care that Donald Trump lies again and again? Does it not matter to you that the President - your President - simply does not tell the truth?

And if the President is a liar... how do you expect people to report on those lies?

The tone was set the moment he lied about the size of his inauguration crowd.

As for his 'political genius', we all know that he won because he was up against the most hated political figure in modern US politics. And he still lost the popular vote by the largest margin ever.



I admit to being genuinely disappointed to see you of all people engaging in this sort of trash argumentation. You've struck me as a fairly intelligent poster in the past, but this is garbage-tier thinking not just posting.

Like there weren't terrible sci-fi movies before SJW's turned up? There weren't terrible movies of all stripes without their involvement?

Bad writing makes movies bad. And SJW-friendly movies are no better or worse for that than non-SJW movies. Though what those are, is kind of hard to tell. Seemingly, it's a retroactive label put onto anything the speaker doesn't like; which is why almost everyone who seriously uses those three initials is a fucking moron who should be ignored, and almost without exception those people fall to pieces if put in an environment where their shitty beliefs are challenged. Sargon of Akkad in particular is guilty of this. I really hope you consider him beneath you. If not, there's a very revealing debate he had with a feminist in which she tore him completely to pieces and he failed to successfully counter anything she said. And she wasn't even a prominent feminist thinker who really knows their stuff, just a youtube poster with a degree.

As for episode 8, the things that make it a controversial movie are stupid writing decisions, not 'SJW' politics, unless you're an idiot. The fact that an entire third of the movie could be cut without affecting the plot one iota, for example. The fact that it outright junks almost all the plot threads from the original without paying any of them off in a satisfying manner (writing 101 right there), and the absurd mixed messages the movie sends about self-sacrifice and survival when you compare Rose's speech to Finn to how multiple other characters in the series, franchise, and the same movie have behaved. These are the problems with episode 8. not that Rian Johnson wanted to put women in charge everywhere.

Some bad writers can be described as SJWs. Some great ones proudly wear the term. And that's what makes the argument trash. It's all about focusing on the negatives, and ignoring the evidence that proves it to be what it is; nonsense peddled by people who don't know the first thing about what they're talking about.

Half of the examples they use - and yes I've listened to these arguments and looked into them to check - don't even prove the point they think they do, as a lot of things that happen that are blamed on 'SJWs' are often the result of executive meddling that has nothing at all to do with the desires of the person they're blaming, focus group testing (which is almost never involving 'SJW's), or complete random chance.

On August 03 2018 15:39 KwarK wrote:

The decade in Vietnam was proportionately equivalent to the first day of the Somme, for reference.

On August 03 2018 20:52 iamthedave wrote:


Huh. I thought Vietnam was a lot bloodier than that.

On August 03 2018 20:44 Jockmcplop wrote:


I saw an argument yesterday that SJWs are writing Europeans out of history by putting black people in docudramas about the Roman army (there were black people in the Roman army all over the world), casting a black person in an episode of Dr. Who set in Victorian times (its Dr. Who ffs) etc.
Of course they meant 'white' not European, and the argument is absolute bullshit.
Even if its historically accurate, there's an argument to be made that in a purely capitalistic sense its more sensible to allow fiction to cater to people of all genders and races.
The biggest problem I have with history books is that the SJWs let Boudicca be the queen of a tribe in England. That would never have happened in real history.

On August 03 2018 05:15 xDaunt wrote:
I have no problem with labeling the press as the enemy. Do you really think that any rational conservative would consider the NYT or CNN as being friendly to a conservative agenda? Of course not. The press as a whole is predominantly liberal if not left wing. As a result, the press as a whole has been hostile to conservative interests for generations. Trump is merely the first conservative president to point it out and act accordingly.

On August 03 2018 21:23 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

Wow this is creepy as fuck. This is how democracies die.

On August 03 2018 21:23 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

Wow this is creepy as fuck. This is how democracies die.