[worry]

Always worth recalling that Whitaker is, like his boss, an experienced grifter who made a living helping to trick hopeful people out of their money, to enrich himself and others: Link


Also it's fun to see which pols feel, out of the goodness of their hearts, the urge to defend Roger Stone.

[QuickTidal]

Who the heck is this Doug Collins asshole who keeps throwing little hissy fits about the yes/or no questions?

What a reprehensible lickspittle.

[worry]

[Tsundoku]

I'm sure most of you have already seen this, but here it is anyway for reference:

https://www.news.com...d0a7d549a22769a

AOC talking about US finance laws and politics.

I think I knew most of this stuff anyway, all disconnected though. But when it's put together like that ... how depressing. This is why campign finance laws (for starters) desperately need to be heavily redrafted.

[Tapper]

 Tsundoku, on 08 February 2019 - 10:43 PM, said:

I'm sure most of you have already seen this, but here it is anyway for reference:

https://www.news.com...d0a7d549a22769a

AOC talking about US finance laws and politics.

I think I knew most of this stuff anyway, all disconnected though. But when it's put together like that ... how depressing. This is why campign finance laws (for starters) desperately need to be heavily redrafted.

And with soundbites and clear communication like that, she should be given a wide birth for whatever office she wants to run for while she is still this fresh and there's no-one in the Republican party who would know how to fight her.

[Tsundoku]

... and more on far-overdue financial reform: Kleptocracy and the USA. Holy shit.

Long-ish article but worth it.

https://www.theatlan...america/580471/

Really makes me feel angry and depressed. Money isn't necessarily the root of all evil, just a very high precentage.

Solve these problems, or at least shut down a goodly proportion of it, and so much more could be done to benefit people everywhere.

[worry]

 Tsundoku, on 09 February 2019 - 11:50 PM, said:

Really makes me feel angry and depressed.

That's the spirit!

On another note:


Notice what gets capitalized, and also DJTJr's own caption on the screencap. And if you wonder -- about DJT's ability to understand the reference, if not his penchant for cruelty -- just remember who his favorite president is.

[Gorefest]

Wow. That is just.....wow. Every time when you think the man cannot get any viler.

[worry]

And yet...he's just one man. 62 million people cast their vote for him, knowing who and what he is (~25% of our adult population). He's got plenty of collaborators (the entire Republican Party, and then some).




But we're all soaked in white supremacy as a given, constantly, and the denial runs deep. Many of us (meaning white Americans) can't even say the words, let alone acknowledge the horror that is our past and present.



But because white people are, by default (I mean c'mon, it's a given), going to be the ones who'll decide how we're gonna get past it as a country, from what to do to when to do it to how to feel about it, it's up to everybody else to lend them all the support and understanding they can muster.

[worry]

Not to be a downer. I don't mean any of that in a pessimistic way, per se. I just mean that any progress has to be honest, so it must involve getting beyond denial, acknowledging reality, expunging the entire "the past is the past" line of exculpatory thinking from the conversation, and maybe -- just for a while -- not centering white people('s hurt feelings). And that it's gonna take collective effort, like actual work, not just mind-changing.

This post has been edited by worry: 10 February 2019 - 10:05 PM

[worry]

This one's just for fun:

[Cause]

How is this man still president!

There has to a be a limit on lying! When he and his intelligence chiefs are so far apart on the nature of reality surely everyone in the senate needs to worry.

[worry]

It's because the party in majority power in the executive branch, judicial branch, and the Senate agrees wholeheartedly with all of his policies, including the kleptocratic plundering, the rigid enforcement of racial and economic castes, and dismantling any body or process meant to be a check on those projects. The limit is only that which will endanger those things.

[worry]

And in what should be a surprise to nobody, particularly our friends in the UK, a progressive is being kneecapped by "moderates" (and of course right wingers) for speaking out about right-wing lobbying money (via AIPAC) influencing politicians. A fact that is plainly true and not any more controversial than speaking of any big lobby, yet becomes controversial anyway in part because it is true. You can get a pretty good sense of who's being honest or dishonest here by who's actually saying 'AIPAC' and who is avoiding that at all costs.






And of course, she was forced to apologize, and did so for leaving room for misinterpretation, but at least she put the center on AIPAC.





But you know what the headlines are gonna say about it (cuz they already are). I dunno man. What a hopeless species we turned out to be.

[Illuyankas]

The worst thing is all this does is provide cover for genuine antisemitism. The problem with AIPAC was never that they're Jewish or Israeli; it's the right wing legislation they're pushing for.

[worry]

[Malankazooie]

Any you news junkies/policy wonks been following what's been happening with the Friday deadline for border security agreement? I've been too busy to follow it closely but I believe the last I read/heard was that there is a smaller $ amount for the wall then what was initially offered (back in Dec.) before Trump was 'persuaded' by his Fox News friends to reject it and set in motion the govt. shutdown. I did see a clip of Trump stating that if there is another shutdown it will be the Dems fault. What a pos.

[Slow Ben]

Includes 1.375 billion for a "Border barrier". Not a wall.

Hes said he'll sign it. But we'll see.

[worry]

I don't like it. To be clear, there's a supposed deal but not a written bill yet. But yeah it give $1+ bil for barriers as SB says, and also does absolutely nothing about ICE (though it'll be spun to suggest they didn't give them all the beds they wanted). Being slightly less bad than Trump isn't the goal here though, or shouldn't be. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what good are Dems if their position is "We'll support a more moderate percentage of Republican evil instead of all of it"?

A couple links/excerpts that go into better detail: Link

Quote

The Democrats didn't give him [the requested ~52,000] but they agreed to fund 40,520 beds — or 5,520 over their original offer and pretty much what the Republican-controlled Congress handed Trump last year. Worse, this is not a hard statuary cap so Trump can keep trying to exceed it by ginning up funds from elsewhere as he's been doing. (It's unclear right now if Democrats are insisting on any limits on housing interior detentions.)

Democrats are trying to sell this as a reasonable compromise by claiming that this funding level represents a 17-percent cut in detention over current levels. But Trump was maintaining those levels using unauthorized funds. In other words, far from calling out Trump for illegally exceeding Congressional limits, Democrats are using Trump's detention levels as their official baseline.

So, all in all, Trump got more money for a border barrier, enhanced border security, and increased detention capacity. What did Democrats get? Absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada.

Link

Quote

The central problem with the deal, leaders of the immigrant rights community say, is that Democrats, from a position of strength given their control of the House of Representatives, merely entrenched Trump’s immigration policy. The deal, they say, puts a bipartisan stamp of approval on the dark chapter of American history that Trump’s policies have brought upon us.

It's definitely not a unilateral "victory" for Trump either, but it doesn't harness any momentum from family separation, the election, or the shutdown to get any progress done. If the actual bill, when it's written, proves these concerns wrong I'll be happy to say so, but as of now it kinda feels like typical kicking the can down the road.

[worry]

Also: