China arrested Meng Hongwei, President of Interpol, on charges of corruption when he went back home for a visit (he is a Chinese citizen), leading to his subsequent resignation. Let me reiterate that: they arrested the President of Interpol. That's a very aggressive move on their part. There is no indication that this was a topic of conversation between Pompeo (who is in China after having recently been in Pyongyang) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
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Johns Hopkins University will name a new research facility after Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who was a former patient there when they took some of her cells without her consent or knowledge back in 1951 (she was being treated for cancer). Those cells were used to create a strain of self-replicating cells which are still in use today and which have been used to develop a variety of medical advances, including the polio vaccine. To date, Ms. Lacks' descendants have not received any compensation from the Univserity's patents for developments which arose through the use of her cells.
On the one hand they were collected without her knowledge or consent *but* they were still "her property" and thus her family should receive said compensation. At least they are naming the building after her as a way to honor her for her contribution.
Unfortunately, the DPRK is only allowing inspections of a site that is no longer active--a meaningless gesture. Their active facilities remain closed to free scrutiny by international inspectors.
Ah so--did not see that detail. That is the single most aggravating thing about Democracy Now!--all they give are blurbs of news stories without getting into too much detail. DN! digs into details only on stories it really cares about--climate change, civil disobedience, etc.
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edit/add: holy crap--Nikki Haley just resigned as Ambassador the United Nations. I didn't see that coming.
I can't blame her, though--the time has come to put distance between herself and the Trump Administration if she wants to have any chance of running for anything in 2020.
Apparently Haley's original intent was to stay for 2 years; she never planned on going further. A lot of Trump appointees have left office due to scandal or disillusionment or relationship problems with Trump or the public (if my memory is correct, turnover has been at record highs in this administration), but it seems that Haley is not one of those people.
She's said she doesn't intend to run for the presidency in 2020, but I suppose there's still a chance of it. I'm curious how a Republican challenger would play out in the primary. Trump doesn't have great odds for beating almost any Democratic candidate in 2020 (we don't have anyone as disliked or mistrusted as Clinton was), but it wouldn't surprise me if sheer inertia and fear of angering Trump's base would keep any challengers from taking the nomination from Trump.
@Mathsorcerer "Every successful person who is not white *proves* my assertion. If this nation were as was suggested--racist to its core and anathema to non-white people--then there wouldn't be any successful people who were not white. On the other hand, if people wish to continue thinking that this is 1918 instead of 2018....well, that isn't my problem. "
You, uh, do know that there are degrees to racism? Just because we are no longer lynching people in the streets, doesn't mean racism is dead. I've had personal interaction with many non-white people who only ever get callbacks on reume's or applicaiotn if they give a "white" name. Black people people getting harsher penalties than a white person who commited the same crime is also very common and documented. The very harsh pushback of "Black Lives Matter" as if its ridiculous for these people to be upset at police brutality is another strong indicator. Heck in my own Facebook newsfeed, whenver someone is killed by police; if they are white, its always tragic; if they are black, well then, they were a thug. To make a claim that black people aren't (on average) treated differently is either INCREDIBLY naive, or intentionally looking the other way.
It may not be written into law anymore, but racism is alive and well. Our black community regularly is treated as second class citizens by our governemnt and some businesses.
Well, that is a problem, but this doesn't means that is ok to call a guy who marries a woman of mixed race and have an mestizo as his vice candidate is racist or threat then as "second class citizens", mainly in a country of mostly mixed race people.
I don't know what you are getting at.
For the sake of clarity, @SorcererV1ct0r is talking about Brazil, while @ThacoBell is talking about the United States.
You, uh, do know that there are degrees to racism? Just because we are no longer lynching people in the streets, doesn't mean racism is dead.
Of course I know that. However, many people try to present things as if nothing has changed in the last 75 years, which is clearly not true.
I do agree that the criminal justice system still has a lot of holdover from times past, but then there is a lot about the criminal justice system which is serious need of reform--no more for-profit prisons, no more of those predatory third-party agencies who take regular monthly payments for court costs (if you miss one payment they will have you picked up and thrown in jail), no more throwing people jail for non-violent offenses (I don't care if someone has 30 unpaid parking tickets they are not a violent criminal, only irresponsible), and no more overly-harsh sentencing guidelines (we have Bill Clinton to thank for that right now, the end result of that whole "take a bite out of crime" nonsense).
@semiticgod I suspect Trump is not going to run in 2020. Remember--this is a man who likes to *win*, so the risk of losing is too great. At the very least, that would be my advice both to him and to the RNC.
Apparently Haley's original intent was to stay for 2 years; she never planned on going further. A lot of Trump appointees have left office due to scandal or disillusionment or relationship problems with Trump or the public (if my memory is correct, turnover has been at record highs in this administration), but it seems that Haley is not one of those people.
A lot of them 'resign' instead of 'being fired'.
If Haley had planned on quitting after two years, why not mention it before today? It smacks of more lies tbh.
Apparently they had a "I love you" "no I love you more!" type press conference but you never know with Trump. The truth is 95% of the time the complete opposite of what he's saying.
For the sake of clarity, @SorcererV1ct0r is talking about Brazil, while @ThacoBell is talking about the United States.
He seems to be excited for the far right wing guy, Brazil's Trump, who has called for genocide and dictatorship and is generally an awful guy. He says the outrageous things like their old Military dictatorship didn't kill enough people they should have gone further. He argued with a female politician and said was too ugly to rape. He hates the gays thinks they should be killed. A swell guy. Might bring in death camps wish that was a joke but it seems it's not. John Oliver did a segment on him last week.
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Anybody else notice the apology to Kavanaugh from Trump? The only apology he's ever made ever and it's to his buddy who has credible allegations of rape. And then Trump said he'd been proven innocent. He hasn't apologized for any of the horrible things he's said or done ever. Instead he thought it was a good idea to apologize to Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh has not been proven to be guilty, either, and in this country we still have a system of "innocent until proven guilty"; the nature and scope of unproven allegations are irrelevant.
Apparently Haley's original intent was to stay for 2 years; she never planned on going further. A lot of Trump appointees have left office due to scandal or disillusionment or relationship problems with Trump or the public (if my memory is correct, turnover has been at record highs in this administration), but it seems that Haley is not one of those people.
She's said she doesn't intend to run for the presidency in 2020, but I suppose there's still a chance of it. I'm curious how a Republican challenger would play out in the primary. Trump doesn't have great odds for beating almost any Democratic candidate in 2020 (we don't have anyone as disliked or mistrusted as Clinton was), but it wouldn't surprise me if sheer inertia and fear of angering Trump's base would keep any challengers from taking the nomination from Trump.
Calling it now:
After the Midterms, Sessions is fired. Lindsay Graham is selected to be his replacement, Nikki Haley is tapped by the Governor of South Carolina to serve out the remainder of his term as a Senator in SC.
With experience as a Diplomat, Governor and Senator - and while being close to enough to Trump to court Trumpism but still far enough away to avoid his legacy, she'll be a front runner in 2024.
Apparently Haley's original intent was to stay for 2 years; she never planned on going further. A lot of Trump appointees have left office due to scandal or disillusionment or relationship problems with Trump or the public (if my memory is correct, turnover has been at record highs in this administration), but it seems that Haley is not one of those people.
She's said she doesn't intend to run for the presidency in 2020, but I suppose there's still a chance of it. I'm curious how a Republican challenger would play out in the primary. Trump doesn't have great odds for beating almost any Democratic candidate in 2020 (we don't have anyone as disliked or mistrusted as Clinton was), but it wouldn't surprise me if sheer inertia and fear of angering Trump's base would keep any challengers from taking the nomination from Trump.
Calling it now:
After the Midterms, Sessions is fired. Lindsay Graham is selected to be his replacement, Nikki Haley is tapped by the Governor of South Carolina to serve out the remainder of his term as a Senator in SC.
With experience as a Diplomat, Governor and Senator - and while being close to enough to Trump to court Trumpism but still far enough away to avoid his legacy, she'll be a front runner in 2024.
That's much more believable than the story Trump and Haley put out. Hopefully they fail in this Mueller obstruction effort. But Trump has seen how handicapping investigations can work in his favor like he just did with Kavanaugh.
Trump had Rosenstein on AF1 yesterday I think. He had to know Haley's plan, surely it had been schemed for a couple of days at least. I wonder what Trump asked Rosenstein on the flight? He probably wanted to feel him out for 'loyalty'.
Trump would know that if he gets it (loyalty) - great then Mueller is done. If not then he'd have this scheme to fire Sessions after the midterms and obstruct the probe that way.
Since Hailey made her announcement today I suppose Trump didn't get what he wanted from Rosenstein (the loyalty pledge ). I mean he probably didn't directly ask him like he did with Comey but he felt him out and determined he wasn't the typical weak Republican who kowtows to his every whim and would be willing to do anything even break the law to make sure their team wins at all costs.
I do agree that the criminal justice system still has a lot of holdover from times past, but then there is a lot about the criminal justice system which is serious need of reform--no more for-profit prisons, no more of those predatory third-party agencies who take regular monthly payments for court costs (if you miss one payment they will have you picked up and thrown in jail), no more throwing people jail for non-violent offenses (I don't care if someone has 30 unpaid parking tickets they are not a violent criminal, only irresponsible), and no more overly-harsh sentencing guidelines (we have Bill Clinton to thank for that right now, the end result of that whole "take a bite out of crime" nonsense).
Does theft fall into the non-violent offenses category?
I do agree that the criminal justice system still has a lot of holdover from times past, but then there is a lot about the criminal justice system which is serious need of reform--no more for-profit prisons, no more of those predatory third-party agencies who take regular monthly payments for court costs (if you miss one payment they will have you picked up and thrown in jail), no more throwing people jail for non-violent offenses (I don't care if someone has 30 unpaid parking tickets they are not a violent criminal, only irresponsible), and no more overly-harsh sentencing guidelines (we have Bill Clinton to thank for that right now, the end result of that whole "take a bite out of crime" nonsense).
Does theft fall into the non-violent offenses category?
Depends on what the theft is. Are they robbing a bank or attempting to hide some extra food they can't afford in their coat pockets??
The assault on voting rights in this country simply does not end. Here in North Dakota, the Supreme Court (of the United States) just upheld a law in regards to voter registration. It is one thing to require a photo ID. But the North Dakota law that was just upheld not only requires you to have a photo ID, but requires you to have a physical residential address, and a PO Box will not suffice. Guess who disproportionately not only use PO Boxes at a higher rate than the rest of the state, but, in many cases, don't even HAVE street addresses in their communities?? That's right, Native Americans. In some cases, the Post Office doesn't even deliver to residential areas on Indian Reservations, so OF COURSE these people only have PO Boxes. Kagan and Ginsburg were in the minority opinion against the law. The law was of course passed by the Republican legislature in North Dakota.
Again, there is ONE party that not only flat-out doesn't want minorities of ALL stripes to vote, but goes out of their way to take their vote away. And that is the Republican Party. I have challenged everyone in this thread to find a SINGLE example of this kind of voter disenfranchisement taking place on the other side of the aisle, and no one has been able to do so. Even if in an alternate universe I agreed with every else about the Republican Party, they would still be the people who actively work and pass laws to take voting rights away from minorities. This is absolutely destructive to democracy, or whatever the hell we have left of it at this point. If Heidi Heitkamp loses in November, you can chalk this up as a MAJOR reason why.
So at the Trump rally tonight the crowd and Dear Leader decided that it was time to change the target of the "lock her up" chant from Hillary Clinton to Dianne Feinstein, presumably because she has committed the crime of being both female AND a Democrat. Let that sink in. The President of the United States is leading a rally where the crowd is raucously cheering for a Senator from the opposition party to be thrown in jail. Mind you, THESE are the same people who think Brett Kavanaugh was denied "due process". Can anyone really not see where this is heading?? Honestly?? Are we supposed to shrug this kind of shit off and find it mildly amusing?? How anyone can watch a Trump rally and not smell the nascent fascism from halfway across the country is beyond me.
@jjstraka34 I don't find it amusing at all. We should lock Trump up.
Since he basically inoculated himself from any legal repercussions by getting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, the idea that he will ever be held accountable for anything is now a pipe dream. I am 99% convinced Kavanaugh has given Trump a STRICT promise that he will vote to protect him in any cases regarding Executive Power. Trump will refuse to answer a Mueller subpoena, the case will go before the Supreme Court, and unlike what happened with Nixon, this Supreme Court will vote 5-4 that he doesn't have to do so. At which point we might want to think of starting this country over from scratch, if it is even worth saving at that point.
Democracy was nice while it lasted. The dirty tricks party has corrupted it all the way up to the Supreme Court. They will find a way to justify this crap.
I do agree that the criminal justice system still has a lot of holdover from times past, but then there is a lot about the criminal justice system which is serious need of reform--no more for-profit prisons, no more of those predatory third-party agencies who take regular monthly payments for court costs (if you miss one payment they will have you picked up and thrown in jail), no more throwing people jail for non-violent offenses (I don't care if someone has 30 unpaid parking tickets they are not a violent criminal, only irresponsible), and no more overly-harsh sentencing guidelines (we have Bill Clinton to thank for that right now, the end result of that whole "take a bite out of crime" nonsense).
Does theft fall into the non-violent offenses category?
Depends on what the theft is. Are they robbing a bank or attempting to hide some extra food they can't afford in their coat pockets??
Even if they are hiding extra food, there are social services like Food Banks that can assist them and doesn't make their actions right. I am also not saying lock up everyone who shoplifts, but there are people who make careers out of stealing other people's property and the only thing that stops them is locking them up. It is also not a violent crime which makes me wonder if it would have been excluded from @Mathsorcerer list of penitentiary reform.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court order requiring voters in North Dakota to present certain forms of identification and proof of their residential address in order to cast a ballot in next month’s elections. A case challenging this requirement on behalf of the state’s sizable Native American populations alleged that the requirement would disenfranchise tribal residents, many of whom lack the proper identification and do not have residential addresses on their identification cards.
The Supreme Court’s order will likely make it harder for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, considered the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, to retain her seat in November. Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012 with strong backing from Native Americans, and she is the only statewide elected Democrat.
North Dakota Republicans began changing voting rules to make it harder to cast a ballot months after Heitkamp’s victory six years ago. Republicans have claimed the changes to voter ID requirements are intended to stop voter fraud, even though in-person fraud is virtually non-existent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in on Monday, did not partake in the decision, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.
In her dissent, Ginsburg argued that the Supreme Court’s order was at odds with one of the top court’s most frequently invoked doctrines on election law: not to change the rules right before an election. By allowing a different set of ID rules in the general election from in the primary, Ginsburg warned, the court was risking widespread confusion and disenfranchisement.
“The risk of voter confusion appears severe here because the injunction against requiring residential-address identification was in force during the primary election and because the Secretary of State’s website announced for months the ID requirements as they existed under that injunction,” Ginsburg wrote. “Reasonable voters may well assume that the IDs allowing them to vote in the primary election would remain valid in the general election. If the Eighth Circuit’s stay is not vacated, the risk of disfranchisement is large.”
So the rules will be changed right before a general election. The rules will be different than they were in the primaries causing confusion. According to facts presented in the case, as Ginsberg also noted...
**20% of voters likely to try to vote in the general will lack proper id.**
This is another atrocity against the rule of law and democracy
He seems to be excited for the far right wing guy, Brazil's Trump, who has called for genocide and dictatorship and is generally an awful guy. He says the outrageous things like their old Military dictatorship didn't kill enough people they should have gone further. He argued with a female politician and said was too ugly to rape. He hates the gays thinks they should be killed. A swell guy. Might bring in death camps wish that was a joke but it seems it's not. John Oliver did a segment on him last week.
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Anybody else notice the apology to Kavanaugh from Trump? The only apology he's ever made ever and it's to his buddy who has credible allegations of rape. And then Trump said he'd been proven innocent. He hasn't apologized for any of the horrible things he's said or done ever. Instead he thought it was a good idea to apologize to Kavanaugh.
No, Bolsonaro is not that bad. The woman accused him of being a rapist and he said in response to that. About military dictatorship, he said about killing terrorists and guerrilla warriors who wanna violently transform the country into Cuba/Venezuela. He din't talked about kill an moderate and democratic left.
About gays, he never said that gays should have been killed, he just said that gays doesn't need to get privileges. For the left he is misogynistic and racist, doesn't matter if he is married to a woman of mixed race with another man child. If he is racist, how he can win in a country of white minority where mostly declared whites are in fact light brown mestizos with non whites parents so the white population?
Look to her nose if you don't believe on me. She clearly have afro blood on her. No way that he is racist only because he is against affirmative actions.
As from Kavanaugh, isn't he innocent until PROVE guilty? Why he needs to prove to be innocent?
If you remove innocent until prove guilty, you have a new witch hunt. An woman accuse another woman of being a witch, then his familiars accuse the woman by revenge and you end up with an completely chaos. I don't understand why some people believe in the "right of not being offended" but not the right of a fair trial and innocence until prove guilty...
Does theft fall into the non-violent offenses category?
Depends on what the theft is. Are they robbing a bank or attempting to hide some extra food they can't afford in their coat pockets??
Even if they are hiding extra food, there are social services like Food Banks that can assist them and doesn't make their actions right. I am also not saying lock up everyone who shoplifts, but there are people who make careers out of stealing other people's property and the only thing that stops them is locking them up. It is also not a violent crime which makes me wonder if it would have been excluded from @Mathsorcerer list of penitentiary reform.
Although technically theft is often a victimless crime, it varies in nature according to the details of what was stolen. Someone shoplifts a pack of pork chops from Wal-Mart? That isn't a problem--assign them some community service and let the store ban them from returning. Someone makes off with tens of thousands of dollars of rings and watches from a jewelry store? Even though they were probably just going to pawn it all and no one got hurt that is a significant crime. We would have to sit down and figure out the details as to which instances necessitate community service and which ones necessitate jail time.
Sound-byte or talking point style solutions which I can give here aren't really solutions. *Real* solutions would take working out the details, as I noted. Consider someone carrying a kilogram of marijuana. They could have bought it and are taking it back home so they and their friends can smoke it; in this case they probably aren't going to wind up harming anyone except themselves when one of them tries a ridiculous "hold my beer" stunt; this doesn't require jail but might require rehab. A different person carrying that same kilogram might be planning to sell it to kids as they get out of school. Clearly, the second person is attempting harm but when you arrest a person carrying a kilogram you cannot determine whether they are planning a party or if they intend to distribute.
On the other hand, if that person has smoked some of it and then gets behind the wheel of a car, *now* they risk harm to someone else--jail time for them.
Kavanaugh has not been proven to be guilty, either, and in this country we still have a system of "innocent until proven guilty"; the nature and scope of unproven allegations are irrelevant.
That just means the government can't put him in jail. It doesn't mean ordinary people have to purge their memories of everything he's said and done or the credible accusations made against him. Nor does it mean we have to be silent about him or pretend we think he's going to be a fair and impartial judge. I predict that any decision he's involved in is going to end up with a (virtual) asterisk next to it, especially if it's a case involving rape or women's rights. I can see future courts saying "Kavanaugh voted on that, so it's not like it's real precedent.
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Add another thing to the list white people try to get black people killed over: Babysitting white kids.
My wife used to get the reverse of this. Many times when she was out with our daughter, whose skin color is closer to mine, white women would come up and ask what she charged for babysitting. Sometimes this would even happen when I was with them.
That just means the government can't put him in jail. It doesn't mean ordinary people have to purge their memories of everything he's said and done or the credible accusations made against him. Nor does it mean we have to be silent about him or pretend we think he's going to be a fair and impartial judge. I predict that any decision he's involved in is going to end up with a (virtual) asterisk next to it, especially if it's a case involving rape or women's rights. I can see future courts saying "Kavanaugh voted on that, so it's not like it's real precedent.
I never suggested that anyone forget what he said, how he acted, or what the allegations against him were; neither did I suggest that anyone remain silent about the case.
Add another thing to the list white people try to get black people killed over: Babysitting white kids.
A lot of people are nosy busybodies who don't know how to mind their own business. Some of those people are also white. Mr. Lewis was right to start livestreaming the incident--that protected both the kids in his care and himself.
About gays, he never said that gays should have been killed, he just said that gays doesn't need to get privileges.
My thoughts are, that if it's privileges that EVERYONE ELSE GETS, then they're not privileges, they're the standard. Cases in point, marriage and civil equality for gays, voting rights for minorities and women.
As from Kavanaugh, isn't he innocent until PROVE guilty? Why he needs to prove to be innocent?
If you remove innocent until prove guilty, you have a new witch hunt. An woman accuse another woman of being a witch, then his familiars accuse the woman by revenge and you end up with an completely chaos. I don't understand why some people believe in the "right of not being offended" but not the right of a fair trial and innocence until prove guilty...
Again, this is ONLY true in CRIMINAL COURTS. At best in CIVIL COURTS, no one's innocence or guilt is ASSUMED at the start.
For example, for professional accountants, per the Securities Act of 1933, Section 11, the auditor who certified the securities being sued under the act must prove their innocence by proving they did their due diligence, among other acceptable defenses. The auditor is presumed to have NOT done their due diligence, they have to PROVE their innocence by showing that they did reasonably enough work that a reasonable person in their position would assume that the financial statements were valid.
Does theft fall into the non-violent offenses category?
Depends on what the theft is. Are they robbing a bank or attempting to hide some extra food they can't afford in their coat pockets??
Even if they are hiding extra food, there are social services like Food Banks that can assist them and doesn't make their actions right. I am also not saying lock up everyone who shoplifts, but there are people who make careers out of stealing other people's property and the only thing that stops them is locking them up. It is also not a violent crime which makes me wonder if it would have been excluded from @Mathsorcerer list of penitentiary reform.
Although technically theft is often a victimless crime, it varies in nature according to the details of what was stolen. Someone shoplifts a pack of pork chops from Wal-Mart? That isn't a problem--assign them some community service and let the store ban them from returning. Someone makes off with tens of thousands of dollars of rings and watches from a jewelry store? Even though they were probably just going to pawn it all and no one got hurt that is a significant crime. We would have to sit down and figure out the details as to which instances necessitate community service and which ones necessitate jail time.
Sound-byte or talking point style solutions which I can give here aren't really solutions. *Real* solutions would take working out the details, as I noted. Consider someone carrying a kilogram of marijuana. They could have bought it and are taking it back home so they and their friends can smoke it; in this case they probably aren't going to wind up harming anyone except themselves when one of them tries a ridiculous "hold my beer" stunt; this doesn't require jail but might require rehab. A different person carrying that same kilogram might be planning to sell it to kids as they get out of school. Clearly, the second person is attempting harm but when you arrest a person carrying a kilogram you cannot determine whether they are planning a party or if they intend to distribute.
On the other hand, if that person has smoked some of it and then gets behind the wheel of a car, *now* they risk harm to someone else--jail time for them.
Theft is a crime malum in se (translated as wrong in itself). You're TAKING something that rightfully belongs to another, thus harming them, no matter the intent. The dollar amount doesn't matter. Theft is NEVER a victimless crime.
You marijuana example is correct for a crime that's a crime just because we're prohibited from carrying around a kilogram of marijuana. It's not evil to be carrying the thing around.
Being married to a woman does not mean a person isn't misogynistic or racist.
Do you think that the segregation supports(racists) will marry with an woman of clearly african ancestry???
There's more than just one kind of racism. Not all racists are necessarily supporters of segregation, just like not all anti-Semites are Holocaust supporters. There are degrees of racism, and types of racism. As we've discussed earlier in the thread, Thomas Jefferson explicitly claimed that blacks were the intellectual inferiors of whites and even opposed miscegenation, but that never stopped him from taking a black mistress after his white wife died.
I don't know if it matters, but I would not have guessed that that woman had African ancestry. Looking at her features and skin color, I'd have guessed she was primarily European in ancestry, with a small amount of Hispanic blood.
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Johns Hopkins University will name a new research facility after Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who was a former patient there when they took some of her cells without her consent or knowledge back in 1951 (she was being treated for cancer). Those cells were used to create a strain of self-replicating cells which are still in use today and which have been used to develop a variety of medical advances, including the polio vaccine. To date, Ms. Lacks' descendants have not received any compensation from the Univserity's patents for developments which arose through the use of her cells.
On the one hand they were collected without her knowledge or consent *but* they were still "her property" and thus her family should receive said compensation. At least they are naming the building after her as a way to honor her for her contribution.
************* Ah so--did not see that detail. That is the single most aggravating thing about Democracy Now!--all they give are blurbs of news stories without getting into too much detail. DN! digs into details only on stories it really cares about--climate change, civil disobedience, etc.
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edit/add: holy crap--Nikki Haley just resigned as Ambassador the United Nations. I didn't see that coming.
I can't blame her, though--the time has come to put distance between herself and the Trump Administration if she wants to have any chance of running for anything in 2020.
She's said she doesn't intend to run for the presidency in 2020, but I suppose there's still a chance of it. I'm curious how a Republican challenger would play out in the primary. Trump doesn't have great odds for beating almost any Democratic candidate in 2020 (we don't have anyone as disliked or mistrusted as Clinton was), but it wouldn't surprise me if sheer inertia and fear of angering Trump's base would keep any challengers from taking the nomination from Trump.
You, uh, do know that there are degrees to racism? Just because we are no longer lynching people in the streets, doesn't mean racism is dead. I've had personal interaction with many non-white people who only ever get callbacks on reume's or applicaiotn if they give a "white" name. Black people people getting harsher penalties than a white person who commited the same crime is also very common and documented. The very harsh pushback of "Black Lives Matter" as if its ridiculous for these people to be upset at police brutality is another strong indicator. Heck in my own Facebook newsfeed, whenver someone is killed by police; if they are white, its always tragic; if they are black, well then, they were a thug. To make a claim that black people aren't (on average) treated differently is either INCREDIBLY naive, or intentionally looking the other way.
I do agree that the criminal justice system still has a lot of holdover from times past, but then there is a lot about the criminal justice system which is serious need of reform--no more for-profit prisons, no more of those predatory third-party agencies who take regular monthly payments for court costs (if you miss one payment they will have you picked up and thrown in jail), no more throwing people jail for non-violent offenses (I don't care if someone has 30 unpaid parking tickets they are not a violent criminal, only irresponsible), and no more overly-harsh sentencing guidelines (we have Bill Clinton to thank for that right now, the end result of that whole "take a bite out of crime" nonsense).
@semiticgod I suspect Trump is not going to run in 2020. Remember--this is a man who likes to *win*, so the risk of losing is too great. At the very least, that would be my advice both to him and to the RNC.
If Haley had planned on quitting after two years, why not mention it before today? It smacks of more lies tbh.
Apparently they had a "I love you" "no I love you more!" type press conference but you never know with Trump. The truth is 95% of the time the complete opposite of what he's saying.
------------ He seems to be excited for the far right wing guy, Brazil's Trump, who has called for genocide and dictatorship and is generally an awful guy. He says the outrageous things like their old Military dictatorship didn't kill enough people they should have gone further. He argued with a female politician and said was too ugly to rape. He hates the gays thinks they should be killed. A swell guy. Might bring in death camps wish that was a joke but it seems it's not. John Oliver did a segment on him last week.
------------
Anybody else notice the apology to Kavanaugh from Trump? The only apology he's ever made ever and it's to his buddy who has credible allegations of rape. And then Trump said he'd been proven innocent. He hasn't apologized for any of the horrible things he's said or done ever. Instead he thought it was a good idea to apologize to Kavanaugh.
Calling it now:
After the Midterms, Sessions is fired. Lindsay Graham is selected to be his replacement, Nikki Haley is tapped by the Governor of South Carolina to serve out the remainder of his term as a Senator in SC.
With experience as a Diplomat, Governor and Senator - and while being close to enough to Trump to court Trumpism but still far enough away to avoid his legacy, she'll be a front runner in 2024.
Trump had Rosenstein on AF1 yesterday I think. He had to know Haley's plan, surely it had been schemed for a couple of days at least. I wonder what Trump asked Rosenstein on the flight? He probably wanted to feel him out for 'loyalty'.
Trump would know that if he gets it (loyalty) - great then Mueller is done. If not then he'd have this scheme to fire Sessions after the midterms and obstruct the probe that way.
Since Hailey made her announcement today I suppose Trump didn't get what he wanted from Rosenstein (the loyalty pledge ). I mean he probably didn't directly ask him like he did with Comey but he felt him out and determined he wasn't the typical weak Republican who kowtows to his every whim and would be willing to do anything even break the law to make sure their team wins at all costs.
Again, there is ONE party that not only flat-out doesn't want minorities of ALL stripes to vote, but goes out of their way to take their vote away. And that is the Republican Party. I have challenged everyone in this thread to find a SINGLE example of this kind of voter disenfranchisement taking place on the other side of the aisle, and no one has been able to do so. Even if in an alternate universe I agreed with every else about the Republican Party, they would still be the people who actively work and pass laws to take voting rights away from minorities. This is absolutely destructive to democracy, or whatever the hell we have left of it at this point. If Heidi Heitkamp loses in November, you can chalk this up as a MAJOR reason why.
Democracy was nice while it lasted. The dirty tricks party has corrupted it all the way up to the Supreme Court. They will find a way to justify this crap.
I am also not saying lock up everyone who shoplifts, but there are people who make careers out of stealing other people's property and the only thing that stops them is locking them up.
It is also not a violent crime which makes me wonder if it would have been excluded from @Mathsorcerer list of penitentiary reform.
The Supreme Court’s order will likely make it harder for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, considered the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, to retain her seat in November. Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012 with strong backing from Native Americans, and she is the only statewide elected Democrat.
North Dakota Republicans began changing voting rules to make it harder to cast a ballot months after Heitkamp’s victory six years ago. Republicans have claimed the changes to voter ID requirements are intended to stop voter fraud, even though in-person fraud is virtually non-existent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in on Monday, did not partake in the decision, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.
In her dissent, Ginsburg argued that the Supreme Court’s order was at odds with one of the top court’s most frequently invoked doctrines on election law: not to change the rules right before an election. By allowing a different set of ID rules in the general election from in the primary, Ginsburg warned, the court was risking widespread confusion and disenfranchisement.
“The risk of voter confusion appears severe here because the injunction against requiring residential-address identification was in force during the primary election and because the Secretary of State’s website announced for months the ID requirements as they existed under that injunction,” Ginsburg wrote. “Reasonable voters may well assume that the IDs allowing them to vote in the primary election would remain valid in the general election. If the Eighth Circuit’s stay is not vacated, the risk of disfranchisement is large.”
So the rules will be changed right before a general election. The rules will be different than they were in the primaries causing confusion. According to facts presented in the case, as Ginsberg also noted...
**20% of voters likely to try to vote in the general will lack proper id.**
This is another atrocity against the rule of law and democracy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/migrant-children-tent-city-texas.html
And I'm sure these voter registration errors in Florida near the deadline are just a coincidence:
http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article219732785.html?__twitter_impression=true
About gays, he never said that gays should have been killed, he just said that gays doesn't need to get privileges. For the left he is misogynistic and racist, doesn't matter if he is married to a woman of mixed race with another man child. If he is racist, how he can win in a country of white minority where mostly declared whites are in fact light brown mestizos with non whites parents so the white population?
Look to her nose if you don't believe on me. She clearly have afro blood on her. No way that he is racist only because he is against affirmative actions.
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As from Kavanaugh, isn't he innocent until PROVE guilty? Why he needs to prove to be innocent?
If you remove innocent until prove guilty, you have a new witch hunt. An woman accuse another woman of being a witch, then his familiars accuse the woman by revenge and you end up with an completely chaos. I don't understand why some people believe in the "right of not being offended" but not the right of a fair trial and innocence until prove guilty...
Sound-byte or talking point style solutions which I can give here aren't really solutions. *Real* solutions would take working out the details, as I noted. Consider someone carrying a kilogram of marijuana. They could have bought it and are taking it back home so they and their friends can smoke it; in this case they probably aren't going to wind up harming anyone except themselves when one of them tries a ridiculous "hold my beer" stunt; this doesn't require jail but might require rehab. A different person carrying that same kilogram might be planning to sell it to kids as they get out of school. Clearly, the second person is attempting harm but when you arrest a person carrying a kilogram you cannot determine whether they are planning a party or if they intend to distribute.
On the other hand, if that person has smoked some of it and then gets behind the wheel of a car, *now* they risk harm to someone else--jail time for them.
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Add another thing to the list white people try to get black people killed over: Babysitting white kids.
My wife used to get the reverse of this. Many times when she was out with our daughter, whose skin color is closer to mine, white women would come up and ask what she charged for babysitting. Sometimes this would even happen when I was with them.
For example, for professional accountants, per the Securities Act of 1933, Section 11, the auditor who certified the securities being sued under the act must prove their innocence by proving they did their due diligence, among other acceptable defenses. The auditor is presumed to have NOT done their due diligence, they have to PROVE their innocence by showing that they did reasonably enough work that a reasonable person in their position would assume that the financial statements were valid. Theft is a crime malum in se (translated as wrong in itself). You're TAKING something that rightfully belongs to another, thus harming them, no matter the intent. The dollar amount doesn't matter. Theft is NEVER a victimless crime.
You marijuana example is correct for a crime that's a crime just because we're prohibited from carrying around a kilogram of marijuana. It's not evil to be carrying the thing around.
I don't know if it matters, but I would not have guessed that that woman had African ancestry. Looking at her features and skin color, I'd have guessed she was primarily European in ancestry, with a small amount of Hispanic blood.