What do you think about with current News and Opinions?

toomuchbaloney · Aug 23, 2022

39 minutes ago, nursej22 said:

https://apnews.com/article/economy-government-and-politics-c721634482519d591cb1a0522a464bf7

Somewhat good news.

All we can do is take small steps away from the the last presidency. We can try to establish a more fair economy, a better performing health system and a quality public education infrastructure but it's a slow process and there seem to be people who would rather see democrats lose than see we the people win.

toomuchbaloney · Aug 24, 2022

Trump, Without the Presidency’s Protections, Struggles for a Strategy https://nyti.ms/3PHdn4Z

Maggie Haberman offers some pretty good reporting.

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Mr. Trump’s court filing on Monday requesting the special master to review the seized documents was styled as a legal motion, but it sounded more like a news release drafted by Mr. Trump himself.

It was filled with bombastic complaints that the government had long treated Mr. Trump unfairly. The document cited purported examples like “two years of noisy ‘Russian collusion’ investigations.” It also contained Trumpian boasts about the former president being “the clear front-runner” for the 2024 election.

Justice Department officials, who have maintained an open channel with Mr. Trump’s representatives, have said they operate under the assumption that none of his attorneys can speak with authority for the former president, knowing he is liable to change his mind in a moment, or withhold information from his own representatives.

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In one respect, Mr. Trump and his current roster of lawyers are fundamentally in lock step. They maintain, without any apparent evidence, that the Justice Department and F.B.I. used the document search at Mar-a-Lago to uncover new information for the widening investigation into his actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol during certification of the 2020 election.

And they maintain, without proof, that Mr. Biden himself has been ordering up all of the investigations to destroy his political opponent, according to three people close to Mr. Trump.

Is anyone surprised that Trump's strategy for defense include bluster, bad faith claims and bold faced lies?

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Two of Mr. Trump’s most ferocious defenders on the matter are not even on his legal team. Kash Patel, a former Trump White House and Pentagon aide, and John Solomon, who runs a conservative news site and is close to the Trump team, are both representatives for Mr. Trump with the National Archives. Both argued that Mr. Trump had a standing order to declassify documents that went to the president’s residence. Mr. Trump’s aides have provided no evidence that this was the case.

The result, according to people who have worked for him over the years, is that the only real continuity in the defense is Mr. Trump himself, and his demands that his lawyers do what he wants, which is why so many of his legal filings sound as if they were dictated by him.

It is possible that Mr. Trump is the only one who knows what material he took with him from the White House. His concentric circles of political advisers, several layers deep when he held power, are also shrinking. Mr. Trump is thinly staffed as he sits at his private club at Bedminster, N.J., or at Trump Tower in New York City for the Summer, and sometimes makes decisions without keeping his close advisers in the know.

To that point, few of Mr. Trump’s advisers appeared to have been aware that Mr. Solomon was publicizing the letter that the archives had sent to Evan Corcoran, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. Many of them acknowledged that they had learned of it when reporters began reaching out after Mr. Solomon made it public.

“He’s so impulsive that he does this on his own,” said Alan Marcus, a New Jersey-based consultant who worked for Mr. Trump’s company in the 1990s. Mr. Marcus described Mr. Trump’s approach to much of his life as “ready, fire, aim,” as opposed to something more strategic.

“So much of the ‘ready, fire, aim’ comes when he’s sitting alone,” he said.

He's so impulsive...

Beerman, BSN · Aug 24, 2022

Wah!

I'd probably be bitter too, though...30 years in Congress comes to an end by being beaten that bad, by that guy.

"The longtime lawmaker also thanked great female New York leaders of the past like Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro, who Maloney said “fought sexist systems and misogyny that continues today, as we know from my own campaign” — an obvious dig at Nadler."

https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/rep-jerry-nadler-knocks-off-carolyn-maloney-in-ny-12-battle-of-house-dems/

toomuchbaloney · Aug 24, 2022

24 minutes ago, Beerman said:

Wah!

I'd probably be bitter too, though...30 years in Congress comes to an end by being beaten that bad, by that guy.

"The longtime lawmaker also thanked great female New York leaders of the past like Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro, who Maloney said “fought sexist systems and misogyny that continues today, as we know from my own campaign” — an obvious dig at Nadler."

https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/rep-jerry-nadler-knocks-off-carolyn-maloney-in-ny-12-battle-of-house-dems/

At least the "bitterness" didn't prevent a concession of loss or inspire claims of election fraud. Oh...and the democratic primaries didn't seem to elevate the craziest left wingers in the party the same way that the republican primaries elevated right wing crazies, that's probably just my personal bias talking.

toomuchbaloney · Aug 24, 2022

When It Comes to Eating Away at Democracy, Trump Is a Winner https://nyti.ms/3AIwDL6

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Donald Trump’s drive to undermine American democracy has proved strikingly successful.

Take the most recent analysis by Varieties of Democracy, better known as V-Dem, an international organization founded in 2014 to track trends in democratization:

While the United States remains a liberal democracy, V-Dem data shows that it is only a fraction away from losing this status after substantial autocratization. The U.S. Liberal Democratic Index score dropped from 0.85 in 2015 to 0.72 in 2020, driven by weakening constraints on the executive under the Trump administration.

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Of 179 countries surveyed, V-Dem found that the United States was one of 33 to have moved substantially toward “autocratization.” From 2016, when Trump won the presidency, to 2021, when he involuntarily left office, the United States fell from 17th to 29th in the global V-Dem democracy rankings:

Liberal democracy remains significantly lower than before Trump came to power. Government misinformation declined last year but did not return to previous levels. Toxic levels of polarization continue to increase. Democracy survives in the United States, but it remains under threat. Of all the forces undermining democratic traditions in elections and policymaking — Donald Trump’s big lie, the politicization of ballot counting by Republican state legislatures, the attempt to disenfranchise segments of the population — one that has devastating potential is operating under the radar: the growing cynicism of younger voters.

And this;

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Two types of events in upcoming elections, Valentino writes, “indicate that the U.S. has broken from mainstream democratic systems”:

First, widespread refusal among losing candidates and members of their party to accept their losses in these elections; and second, state officials in certain states refusing to certify elections where candidates of their own party lose. Note these types of threats are significantly more serious to democracy even than the myriad changes to election laws that make it harder for citizens to vote, even when those laws disproportionately affect some groups more than others. This would be voter nullification after the fact.

Buckle up. If republican election liars are are put in control of our republic in 2022 and 2024 they will try to break it to retain power for themselves. This time they will likely be successful because they've convinced so many republican voters with lies about Trump's losses.

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In their 2021 paper, “The Majoritarian Threat to Liberal Democracy,” Guy Grossman, Dorothy Kronick, Matthew Levendusky and Marc Meredith, political scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, argue that “many voters are majoritarian, in that they view popularly elected leaders’ actions as inherently democratic — even when those actions undermine liberal democracy.”

The willingness of majoritarians “to give wide latitude to elected officials is an important but understudied threat to liberal democracy in the United States,” Grossman and his co-authors write.

What liberal democrats see as backsliding, the four authors continue, “majoritarians see as consistent with democracy, which mutes the public backlash against power grabs.”

"Inherently democratic" ... is that what we saw when Trump's first impeachment defense was essentially that "if it was a benefit to Trump it was a benefit to the country" after he was caught strong arming the new Ukrainian president looking for a personal political favor? (By the way, since my conservative neighbors are very agitated about weaponizing federal institutions for political benefit I wonder why they weren't upset about that weaponizing of the state department).

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Along similar lines, but with a different emphasis, Elizabeth Suhay, a political scientist at American University, wrote by email that “the rise in authoritarian parties is primarily driven by discontent among the masses.” Scholars have demonstrated this, she continued, “at the individual level (e.g., whether a person is unemployed) and the national level (e.g., the national unemployment rate).”

Suhay added a crucial caveat:

I would also say that European and U.S. elites are an indirect cause of the rise of authoritarian parties. The neoliberal policies they have championed have led to increased inequality, stagnating wages, and a weaker safety net for most citizens. Economic distress, pessimism, and precarity increase citizens’ interest in radical political candidates and policies, on both sides of the political aisle.

Trump, Suhay argues,

deserves substantial blame for the recent challenges to democracy in the United States. It is difficult to overstate how unique he is on the American political scene with respect to his genuinely authoritarian tendencies. This said, it is important to recognize that a substantial portion of the electorate was strongly attracted to these very tendencies. In my view, it is due to a combination of factors that have generated deep anxiety about their own lives as well as the state of the nation: economic precarity and pessimism, rapidly increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and declining social capital. In response to these anxieties, a powerful person who promises to turn America’s clock back several decades is very attractive.

Make America Great Again...a return to preRoe reproductive healthcare for women and pre WW2 tax rates for the wealthiest. What's next?

toomuchbaloney · Aug 24, 2022

"We're doomed to endure what you're willing to put up with"

"Voting with the ballot before we have to vote with bullets"

It seems that he feels that we may need violence because conservative voters believe lies about elections and other government institutions. The believe lies that republican politicians and activists and media personalities told and continue to tell them. So they may need to get out their guns...

Editorial Team / Admin · Aug 24, 2022

Thread closed for staff review.

Editorial Team / Admin · Aug 26, 2022

Thread reopened. Please stick to the topic of current news and opinions and keep the Terms of Service in mind when posting.

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Home Health Columnist / Guide · Aug 26, 2022

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Investigation 8/26/22

Inventing Anna: the story of a fake heiress, Mar-A-Lago and an FBI Investigation

https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/anna-de-rothschild-trump-mar-a-lago-security-fbi-investigation/

Young lady from Ukraine, daughter of an Illinois truck driver with Russian,Ukraine, fake Canadian and US passports mingles with Trump and his guests at his resort ---and depository of US government security records.

Months ago it was a Chinese National lady with spy equipment who'd infiltrated Mar-a Lago. "Anna" er Inna now under investigation by Canadian authorities.

toomuchbaloney · Aug 26, 2022

7 minutes ago, NRSKarenRN said:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Investigation 8/26/22

Inventing Anna: the story of a fake heiress, Mar-A-Lago and an FBI Investigation

https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/anna-de-rothschild-trump-mar-a-lago-security-fbi-investigation/

Young lady from Ukraine, daughter of an Illinois truck driver with Russian,Ukraine, fake Canadian and US passports mingles with Trump and his guests at his resort ---and depository of US government security records.

Months ago it was a Chinese lady with spy equipment who'd infiltrated Mar-a Lago.

Another big clue that Trump and his sycophants (I'm looking at you Lindsay) aren't the most discerning individuals in politics. I'm reminded that DJTJ and Giuliani both reassured us that Mara Lago was nearly as secure as the white house.

Home Health Columnist / Guide · Aug 26, 2022

Redacted Memorandium re FBI Affidavit to search Trumps Mar-a-Lago for missing government records, permitting release:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.617854/gov.uscourts.flsd.617854.98.0_1.pdf

Redacted search warrant:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.617854/gov.uscourts.flsd.617854.102.1.pdf

Off to fully read documents after listening to Fox, CNN and MSNBC reports. Fox noontime hosts and guests reported Affidavit was damming...

Affidavit clearly documents that MULTIPLE requests sent to President Trump from US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) from May 2021 through December 2021. Not until February 9th, did NARA receive 15 boxes--in viewing contents that contained 184 classified documents that alarm bells rang and agency made referral to DOJ.

toomuchbaloney · Aug 27, 2022

It's an interesting read. The letter from Corcoran was especially fun.