[ggwhiz]

ldrews, on 2018-October-29, 12:32, said:

So it appears that Gillum depends on racists for his information regarding racists. Does he also use them for other policy input?

What part of David Duke and the Daily Stormer being Trump and GOP super fans did you sleep through?

[ldrews]

ggwhiz, on 2018-October-29, 14:30, said:

What part of David Duke and the Daily Stormer being Trump and GOP super fans did you sleep through?

What does David Duke and Daily Stormer have to do with the subject under discussion?

[ggwhiz]

ggwhiz, on 2018-October-29, 12:07, said:

Gillum was right not only about DeSantis but the entire GOP when he said "I'm not accusing you of being racist but racists believe you are".

Ummm Duh?

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2018-October-29, 20:09, said:

What does David Duke and Daily Stormer have to do with the subject under discussion?

Sorry, just need to check, are you claiming that Duke and the Daily Stormer are not racist?

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2018-October-29, 23:36, said:

Sorry, just need to check, are you claiming that Duke and the Daily Stormer are not racist?

David Duke is racist, I am not familiar with Daily Stormer. But, again, what do they have to do with the subject of Gillum and Desantis?

[ggwhiz]

ggwhiz, on 2018-October-29, 12:07, said:

Gillum was right not only about DeSantis but the entire GOP when he said "I'm not accusing you of being racist but racists believe you are".

Name a racist and they have enthusiastically endorsed Trump and the GOP. The Proud Boys showing up at GOP events and the lot of them gaining influence in primaries etc. and bragging about it.

And getting away with it because of additional support from a) closet racists and b) ignorant as an eggplant enablers. You appear to be a b)

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2018-October-29, 11:35, said:

Is there no shame left with these people? How can you use such tragedy to spin hate to try to make yourself sound righteous to the religious voters?

And of course, it's not really true that the comedians are anti-religious. Bill Maher is, but I don't think any of the rest are (Stephen Colbert occasionally talks about when he was an altar boy). Of course, they all make jokes about pedophile priests -- it's a statement about those horrible people, not about religion. Of course, K-A C can't see the difference.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2018-October-30, 10:25, said:

And of course, it's not really true that the comedians are anti-religious. Bill Maher is, but I don't think any of the rest are (Stephen Colbert occasionally talks about when he was an altar boy). Of course, they all make jokes about pedophile priests -- it's a statement about those horrible people, not about religion. Of course, K-A C can't see the difference.

Don't kid yourself. She is plenty smart enough to see and know the difference but she doesn't care. Her job is to baffle, confuse, and propagate hate and she does it well.

[y66]

ggwhiz, on 2018-October-30, 09:32, said:

Name a racist and they have enthusiastically endorsed Trump and the GOP. The Proud Boys showing up at GOP events and the lot of them gaining influence in primaries etc. and bragging about it.

And getting away with it because of additional support from a) closet racists and b) ignorant as an eggplant enablers. You appear to be a b)

He appears to make me puke. BRB.

[Winstonm]

And the beat goes on:

Quote

An alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been referred to the FBI for further investigation, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office told The Atlantic. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” the spokesman, Peter Carr, told me in an email on Tuesday.

https://www.theatlan...-to-fbi/574411/

[y66]

In the good news department:

Quote

Trump’s deregulatory efforts keep losing in court. In a running tally of court challenges to Trump-era deregulatory rules, the administration has prevailed in just one case and either lost or abandoned its position in 18 cases. Connor Raso looks at how that could affect future administrations’ ability to deregulate down the road.

[johnu]

johnu, on 2018-October-29, 02:30, said:

Explaining why he didn't cancel rally, Dennison falsely says NYSE opened day after 9/11

Another example that nothing is too big, or too small for Dennison to outright lie about. Only in Dennison world is there no record of what happened way back in 2001. Most of his supporters either wouldn't care that he lied again, or would take his word against in person and historical records.

Another day, another dozen lies by the pathological liar. Here's another one of them:

Dennison says no other country has birthright citizenship. He’s wrong.

Quote

He will issue an executive order, he said, to override the 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

I'm waiting for all those Republican politicians who profess to believe in the sanctity of the constitution as originally written to speak out against this. Just joking, I don't think any of them have the guts to say anything.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2018-October-30, 12:28, said:

In the good news department:

Trump’s deregulatory efforts keep losing in court. In a running tally of court challenges to Trump-era deregulatory rules, the administration has prevailed in just one case and either lost or abandoned its position in 18 cases. Connor Raso looks at how that could affect future administrations’ ability to deregulate down the road.

More Trump "accomplishments".

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2018-October-30, 13:06, said:

Another day, another dozen lies by the pathological liar. Here's another one of them:

Dennison says no other country has birthright citizenship. He’s wrong.



I'm waiting for all those Republican politicians who profess to believe in the sanctity of the constitution as originally written to speak out against this. Just joking, I don't think any of them have the guts to say anything.

1) After the attacks on 9-11, the NYSE did not reopen until 9-17.
2) There is some kind of (not-very-good-it-seems-to-me) debate about the 14th amendment, but those arguing against automatic citizenship are making the argument that "under the jurisdiction of" means the same thing as "giving allegiance to". One I saw even argued that the noun form of "subject" (a subject of the king) is what is meant by the adjective form "subjected to", as only the former complies with the "allegiance to" theory of the amendment meaning.

Not only does the argument seem (to me) weak, but it bucks precedent:

Quote

U.S. v. Anthony and examine the operative paragraph from Justice Hunt in its entirety and context:

“The fourteenth amendment creates and defines citizenship of the United States. It has long been contended, and had been held by many learned authorities, and had never been judicially decided to the contrary, that there was no such thing as a citizen of the United States, except as that condition arose from citizenship of some state. No mode existed, it was said, of obtaining a citizenship of the United States, except by first becoming a citizen of some state. This question is now at rest. The fourteenth amendment defines and declares who shall be a citizen of the Unite States, to wit, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The latter qualification was intended to exclude the children of foreign representatives and the like. With this qualification, every person born in the United States or naturalized is declared to be a citizen of the United States and of the state wherein he resides.”

[johnu]

Winstonm, on 2018-October-29, 09:19, said:

For anyone who is still denying the relationship of support for this president and racial bias, there is this, offered by Daryl Johnson, former Department of Homeland Security analyst: (emphasis added)

Probably has roots in a legal ploy, but hey:

Kansas militia men blame Dennison's rhetoric for planned attack

[y66]

From What good are elections, anyway? by Jennifer Victor at Vox:

Quote

Elections are a necessary but flawed system in democracy. There are good reasons to vote and good reasons to hold elections, but “because that’s how we hold representatives accountable” is not one of them. There are at least three big reasons why elections are imperfect mechanisms of accountability: limited agency, limited cognition, and oversensitivity.

...

It’s okay that elections probably do not provide accountability. There are other ways of holding elected people accountable (if they are operational). So don’t vote because it makes democracy work; vote because you want to live in a democracy, and if you don’t vote, it won’t be one anymore.

[y66]

From Congress Has No Clue What Americans Want by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger and Leah C. Stokes at NYT:

Quote

Congress doesn’t know what policies Americans support. We know that because we asked the most senior staff members in Congress — the people who help their bosses decide what bills to pursue and support — what they believed public opinion was in their district or state on a range of issues.

In a research paper, we compared their responses with our best guesses of what the public in their districts or states actually wanted using large-scale public opinion surveys and standard models. Across the board, we found that congressional aides are wildly inaccurate in their perceptions of their constituents’ opinions and preferences.

For instance, if we took a group of people who reflected the makeup of America and asked them whether they supported background checks for gun sales, nine out of 10 would say yes. But congressional aides guessed as few as one in 10 citizens in their district or state favored the policy. Shockingly, 92 percent of the staff members we surveyed underestimated support in their district or state for background checks, including all Republican aides and over 85 percent of Democratic aides.

The same is true for the four other issues we looked at: regulating carbon emissions to address the climate crisis, repealing the Affordable Care Act, raising the federal minimum wage and investing in infrastructure. On climate change, the average aide thought only a minority of his or her district wanted action, when in truth a majority supported regulating carbon.

Across the five issues, Democratic staff members tended to be more accurate than Republicans. Democrats guessed about 13 points closer to the truth on average than Republicans.

Our research isn’t unique: As a similar study showed, state politicians also do a poor job guessing public opinion of their constituents. We found two key factors that explain why members of Congress are so ignorant of public preferences: their staffs’ own beliefs and congressional offices’ relationships with interest groups.

Aides usually assumed that the public agreed with their own policy views. If an aide did not personally support acting on climate change, he or she was less likely to think that constituents wanted action. This self-centered bias is common in other areas of life — we all tend to think that other people share our preferences. But we aren’t all charged with understanding what the public wants to ensure democratic representation.

Interest groups also played an important role in explaining congressional staffs’ errors. Aides who reported meeting with groups representing big business — like the United States Chamber of Commerce or the American Petroleum Institute — were more likely to get their constituents’ opinions wrong compared with staffers who reported meeting with mass membership groups that represented ordinary Americans, like the Sierra Club or labor unions. The same pattern holds for campaign contributions: The more that offices get support from fossil fuel companies over environmental groups, the more they underestimate state- or district-level support for climate action.

Since most congressional offices cannot regularly field public opinion surveys of their constituents, staff members depend heavily on meetings and relationships with interest groups to piece together a picture of what their constituents want. And if offices hear from only deep-pocketed interest groups, they are likely to miss out on the opinions of ordinary Americans.

We should not place all the blame on Congress. The public contributes to the problem by not taking the time to express its opinions to politicians or vote. For example, recent polling shows that supporters of tighter gun regulations are much less likely to contact Congress than those who oppose gun control. Without citizen participation, it’s hard to imagine how political staffs can accurately gauge public attitudes in their districts and states.

The forthcoming midterm elections are an important opportunity for the public to make its policy choices clear to Congress. But political action can’t end on Election Day. Citizens need to keep writing, calling and meeting with elected officials and their staffs long after the midterms. Otherwise, Congress will continue to misunderstand the public’s preferences. And if Congress doesn’t know what the public wants, it’s hard to imagine it will do a good job representing all Americans.

[barmar]

y66, on 2018-October-31, 08:35, said:

From Congress Has No Clue What Americans Want by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger and Leah C. Stokes at NYT:

Seems like this would only matter if Congress actually cared what Americans want. While they may claim to represent their constituents, in reality they mostly represent the special interest groups that support them.

[Winstonm]

Quote

....we compared their responses with our best guesses of what the public in their districts or states actually wanted using large-scale public opinion surveys and standard models. Across the board, we found that congressional aides are wildly inaccurate in their perceptions of their constituents’ opinions and preferences.

If this information is available to researchers it is certainly available to Congressional aides and elected officials.

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2018-October-31, 10:13, said:

If this information is available to researchers it is certainly available to Congressional aides and elected officials.

Indubitably. See barmar's post.