U.S. Politics: The Biggest Trade in WNBA History

[bobjr]

Well the lawsuit itself will get thrown out right away, it's even suspected that it's meant to be like that so they can run the grift even more and complain about how the system is against rich white religious people.

Basically the lawsuit itself is "These kids were too stupid to know what they were doing"

 

[Pikachu52]

Well the lawsuit itself will get thrown out right away, it's even suspected that it's meant to be like that so they can run the grift even more and complain about how the system is against rich white religious people.

Basically the lawsuit itself is "These kids were too stupid to know what they were doing"

I suspect so.

Judges tend to hate these type of Politically motivated lawsuits. The complaint itself is impressive in how many rightwing tropes it can pack into a legal document. Almost reads your average pro-trump comment section.

Beyond that, a lot of the statements the complaint alleges to be defamatory are the Post quoting witnesses, namely Nathan Phillips himself.

They’re also claiming the Post published the articles as part of a campagin against the students, seemingly raising their own evidentiary bar. They would have an easier time just establishing negligence.

 

[Trainer Yusuf]

Meanwhile in the rest of Americas, member of Troika of Tyranny™, Cuba has approved a new constitution that will end the ban on gay marriage, restore private property as well as tons of pro-democracy reforms, except re-establishment of political parties of course:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Cuban_constitutional_referendum
Mind you, Cuba still needs to change its civil code to legalize gay marriage, which has a lot of support from the government, but not from the general public(Cuba is Catholic, after all).

Note: Troika of Tyranny is a registered trademark of the Republican Party and John Bolton 2018-2019.

 

[Pikachu52]

It's going to be a busy couple of days for former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. He gave testimony to the Senate intelligence committee today, will give testimony in a public hearing to the House intelligence committee tomorrow and then a closed session also in front of the House committee.

Ahead of his public testimony he has produced a written statement you can read here courtesy of the times - Nothing new or truly shocking but parts of it are very interesting, particularly the documents referenced in the statement is is providing to the committee.

He's admitted that Trump indirectly told him to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project:

I lied to Congress about when Mr. Trump stopped negotiating the Moscow Tower project in Russia. I stated that we stopped negotiating in January 2016. That was false – our negotiations continued for months later during the campaign.

Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates.

In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie

That at least partly corroborates the central claim of Buzzfeeds article last month that Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to congress - Which Robert Mueller's office issued a statement claiming parts of the article were misrepresentations.

He's also admitted that Trump knew of the DNC email dump by wikileaks in advance on account of Roger Stone's contact with Julian Assange

In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

He tells that Trump told him to arrange a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event, whom was subsequently reimbursed with funds from Trump's charitable foundation the Trump Foundation.

As I noted, I’m giving the Committee today an article he wrote on, and sent me, that reported on an auction of a portrait of Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 3A to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself. Please see Exhibit 3B to my testimony.

Wishful thinking that conservatives be as viscerally angry at this revelation as they were about the Clinton Foundation?

He directly inculpates Trump is the scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal - the arrangements for which Cohen was indicted for campaign finance violations.

He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the First Lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly – and she did not deserve that.

I am giving the Committee today a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer from me to Ms. Clifford’s attorney during the closing days of the presidential campaign that was demanded by Ms. Clifford to maintain her silence about her affair with Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 4 to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that, too – without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.

I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later.

As Exhibit 5 to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank
account on August 1, 2017 – when he was President of the United States – pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me – the word used by Mr. Trump’s TV lawyer -- for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf. This $35,000 check was one of 11 check instalments that was paid throughout the year – while he was President.

Vindication for Michael Avenatti at the very least.

And now the most interesting part of the Statement - Russia.

Cohen claims not to have any direct evidence of whether the campaigncolluded with Russia:

Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.

But he did say this:

Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, “Dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk – which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: “The meeting is all set.” I remember Mr. Trump saying, “Ok good...let me know.”

This last quote could be meaningless - without further direct evidence its impossible to know what meeting Idiot Jr is referring to (though of course we don't the full extent of the information the special counsel knows).

The statement is also full of Cohen whining about how sorry he is for all his crimes and a few lines about Trump being a racist and a con-man - like we didn't know that already.

 

[RileyXY1]

Dennis Richardson, the Oregon Secretary of State, has passed away from brain cancer.

 

[Pikachu52]

Well there you have it - The Hanoi summit has ended in failure.

The meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump has failed to produce a deal and the planned signing ceremony and lunch between the leaders were cancelled on the second day of talks.

The reason seems to be that North Korea couldn't get the US to agree to lift sanctions.

This isn't really a surprise. No country with a nuclear program as developed as North Korea's has ever agreed to give up its nuclear capabilities, and previous summits between the North, the US and South Korea have failed to produce any tangible result. The 2018 Singapore summit only reached an anaemic 4 point agreement that the North Koreans quickly failed to comply with, though saw Trump unilaterally decide to make a massive concession to the North.

 

[Pikachu52]

CPAC 2019 was last week.

The annual get together of (most of) America's conservatives is worth a quick mention, mostly for the address of Donald Trump, whom I assume was its keynote speaker given his position - But god only knows why CPAC chose to make this years theme "crazy guy screaming on the subway"...

Fresh from his abruptly cancelled summit with Kim Jon Un, Trump started out by hugging the American flag and it only got weirder from there. Apparently he didn't have a speech prepared - something he actually bragged about - so in typical Trump fashion he went off a multitude of tangents that managed to last for two-hours.

He called the Russia investigation "Bull****." Said John Podesta "hasn’t gotten over getting his ass kicked." He attacked Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and even made fun of Jeff Sessions accent - The Republican base in the South! He proclaimed that Democrats in Congress quote unquote "hate our country." A fair bit of racist dog-whistling about the "migrant invasion" at the southern border. The Green new deal apparently is going to end air travel. Not having white hair is apparently an accomplishment now. And Crowd size at the inauguration is apparently still bothering him.

And that's just a sample:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...ump-repeatedly-veered-off-script-cpac/584014/
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/2/18247712/trump-cpac-bizarre-rant
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/02/politics/fact-checking-cpac/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/politics/trump-cpac-fact-check.html

The other speakers didn't quite reach this level of crazy, but that wasn't for lack of trying.

Congressman Mark Medows claimed that the Green New Deal is the Democrats "trying to get rid of all the cows." But don't worry because "Chick-fil-A stock will go way up because we are gonna be eating more chicken!"

Former White House aid Sebastian Gorka, yes everything in that statement was true, double down on this "dems coming' for your cows theme" and falsely accused Democrats of wanting “to take away your hamburgers.” Apparently that's what "Stalin dreamt about but never achieved."

And then trying to outdo everyone on this dumb cow meme, Jerry Falwell and Donny Jr got into a back and forth.
“I’ve got 100 cows — you just let Alexandria Cortez show up at my cows and try to take my cows away,” Falwell said, prompting Trump Jr. to reply: “I love cows, Jerry — they’re delicious.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/2/18246812/cpac-2019-themes-cows-infanticide-don-jr-pence-meadows

This is the level of displacement conservatives have to do to bring Democratic policies and politicians down to a level they think they can beat. I guess when your president has trouble spelling the words Country and Hamburger, you're only really capable of winning elections when your opponents are made of straw.

It gets worse. VP Mike Pence accused the Democrats of “standing for late-term abortion and infanticide.”

There's also this, bizarre interchange between Kimberly Guilfoyle, Idiot Jr and Charlie Kirk, in which Kirk uses Jr's suggestion Guilfoyle name her granddaughter "Trump" (the name they settled on was Reagan) to make a Transphobic joke. Why do conservatives keep repeating this same, bigoted, ignorant and dumb joke.

 

[RileyXY1]

CPAC 2019 was last week.

The annual get together of (most of) America's conservatives is worth a quick mention, mostly for the address of Donald Trump, whom I assume was its keynote speaker given his position - But god only knows why CPAC chose to make this years theme "crazy guy screaming on the subway"...

Fresh from his abruptly cancelled summit with Kim Jon Un, Trump started out by hugging the American flag and it only got weirder from there. Apparently he didn't have a speech prepared - something he actually bragged about - so in typical Trump fashion he went off a multitude of tangents that managed to last for two-hours.

He called the Russia investigation "Bull****." Said John Podesta "hasn’t gotten over getting his ass kicked." He attacked Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and even made fun of Jeff Sessions accent - The Republican base in the South! He proclaimed that Democrats in Congress quote unquote "hate our country." A fair bit of racist dog-whistling about the "migrant invasion" at the southern border. The Green new deal apparently is going to end air travel. Not having white hair is apparently an accomplishment now. And Crowd size at the inauguration is apparently still bothering him.

And that's just a sample:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...ump-repeatedly-veered-off-script-cpac/584014/
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/2/18247712/trump-cpac-bizarre-rant
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/02/politics/fact-checking-cpac/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/politics/trump-cpac-fact-check.html

The other speakers didn't quite reach this level of crazy, but that wasn't for lack of trying.

Congressman Mark Medows claimed that the Green New Deal is the Democrats "trying to get rid of all the cows." But don't worry because "Chick-fil-A stock will go way up because we are gonna be eating more chicken!"

Former White House aid Sebastian Gorka, yes everything in that statement was true, double down on this "dems coming' for your cows theme" and falsely accused Democrats of wanting “to take away your hamburgers.” Apparently that's what "Stalin dreamt about but never achieved."

And then trying to outdo everyone on this dumb cow meme, Jerry Falwell and Donny Jr got into a back and forth.
“I’ve got 100 cows — you just let Alexandria Cortez show up at my cows and try to take my cows away,” Falwell said, prompting Trump Jr. to reply: “I love cows, Jerry — they’re delicious.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/2/18246812/cpac-2019-themes-cows-infanticide-don-jr-pence-meadows

This is the level of displacement conservatives have to do to bring Democratic policies and politicians down to a level they think they can beat. I guess when your president has trouble spelling the words Country and Hamburger, you're only really capable of winning elections when your opponents are made of straw.

It gets worse. VP Mike Pence accused the Democrats of “standing for late-term abortion and infanticide.”

There's also this, bizarre interchange between Kimberly Guilfoyle, Idiot Jr and Charlie Kirk, in which Kirk uses Jr's suggestion Guilfoyle name her granddaughter "Trump" (the name they settled on was Reagan) to make a Transphobic joke. Why do conservatives keep repeating this same, bigoted, ignorant and dumb joke.

Not only that, freshman senator Josh Hawley of Missouri was slapped with a subpoena right after he left CPAC.

 

[Pikachu52]

An interesting news day.

Paul Manafort has finally been sentenced - to a grant total of 47 months - about four years. He'll be sentenced again next week.

A federal judge has dismissed Stormy Daniels lawsuit against Trump and Cohen seeking to declare null and void the Non-disclosure agreement she signed with him prior to the 2016 election, and for which Cohen was indicted for campaign finance violations. The case has been remanded back to the Superior Court of California where it was first filed, and said she may be enticed to legal fees.

 

[Auraninja]

So I just found out about one of the runners in the Democratic race of 2020 (so far).

Jay Inslee has brought to the forefront one of the most important issues for me, and that is combating climate change.

I know all too well that there will be consequences if we don't act on this issue, and I like a candidate who addresses that.

However, I haven't really noticed any of his other stances. Hopefully, he brings those up as well.

In this primary, I want a candidate who is willing to take on a number of issues, and who can ultimately beat Trump.

I don't know if Inslee hits all of those checkboxes yet.

 

[Scammel]

What happened to Chelsea Clinton, and the reaction to it, was weird and disgusting.

 

[bobjr]

Any candidate who doesn’t take Climate Change as the threat it is should be ignored.

Also there have been a number of fairly obvious attempts to jumpstart Chelsea Clinton's prospective media/politics career since her mom ate ****. She also decided to condemn Ilhan Omar's "antisemitism" in a fairly tone-deaf way. Then she showed up at a vigil as part of yet another attempt to throw herself into the limelight, and the people there told her to **** right off and leave.
So centrist dem twitter unleashed the winemom hordes to defend their precious warhawk aristocrat. At best she did a stupid ignorant thing and took no steps to apologize or attone for it.

 

[Scammel]

Nah, it was weird, disgusting and enormously self-centred. It's an increasingly apparent trend that the American commentariat and those who consume it can't see international events through a prism of anything other than their own domestic politics. You have to be insensible with grief (charitably) or hyper-partisan to the point of irrationality to think that the New Zealand killer A: would not loathe the Clinton family and anything it stood for and B: would give the slightest toss about a mild tweet from a foreign political D-lister.

She also decided to condemn Ilhan Omar's antisemitism in a fairly tone-deaf way.

Via a mild and entirely civil tweet.

Also, fixed it for you.

At best she did a stupid ignorant thing

What in the actual bollocks are you on about? Chelsea Clinton can attend whatever vigil she damn well wants.

What it ultimately boils down to: Chelsea Clinton rightly called out a fellow Democrat poster girl for racism, and the revolution is devouring itself as it always does.

EDIT: Oh, transpires the woman from the clip is a homophobe and antisemite, slinging around slurs like f****t and calling for the destruction of Israel.

 

[bobjr]

Okay lets clear things up. First, did the Chelsea Clinton thing need to blow up like it did? No, not when we have more serious matters like another racism inspired shooting and no one taking any serious actions against the people who directly inspired the shooter. I even have sympathy for Chelsea, since what she had to deal with in the 90's wasn't easy. But what she did with Congresswoman Omar was incredibly dumb.

AIPAC is one of the strongest political lobbies in America. Only pharmaceuticals are probably stronger now. Did you know it's actually illegal to be critical of Israel now in several places in America? Several people who usually pound the free speech drum all tripped over each other's dicks to vote for a law that would punish people for speaking out against another country. So to say the Israel lobbying group has a ton of money and power to throw around Washington is true. Even dictatorships usually limit that stuff to their own country.

Representative Omar would be attacked for some thing no matter what. She's a young, Muslim, woman of color immigrant so everyone who is offended by any of that was just waiting for an opportunity. So when she makes a song lyric about how said lobbying group works and is successful at it, everyone jumps. Don't get me wrong, it's not just Chelsea since Dem leadership did a more stupid thing before they walked it all back after internal polling was probably a disaster, but to come in as a wealthy white person of privilege and act like she did showed off how she didn't understand the situation at all and only just confused things. Chelsea Clinton does not just go to a vigil because she cares. She is not just another person at the vigil. She doesn't want to be and to an extent she can't be. And her presence at the vigil is especially notable because it comes on the heels of some Islamophobic behavior that she hasn't addressed and that showing up at a vigil for the Christchurch victims doesn't absolve. This isn't personally meaning to be an eternal damnation of her, but an explanation of why she can't just brush off her previous behavior and act like nothing happened. For all she went in on how Representative Omar should reflect and apologize, she did neither.

When you have the Right Wing of America defending a Clinton, don't assume it's for a moral or good reason.

 

[Auraninja]

Any candidate who doesn’t take Climate Change as the threat it is should be ignored.

I just worry about how high up the priority ladder it will be with other Democratic candidates.

Because of its urgency, its not something you can just get around to fixing. We need a stronger stand.

And don't get me wrong, I think social policies are important. However, the US's environmental policies will effect everybody around the world.

Edit: Fixed a sentence that read wrong.

 

[Pikachu52]

Any candidate who doesn’t take Climate Change as the threat it is should be ignored.

Unfortunately I fear that that ship may have already left port, given that the current president, not just a candidate, has repeated questioned whether Climate Change is real because "it's cold outside" or words to that affect, and climate denial seems to be relatively common among the GOP base.

Only this morning, this is what President Moron had to say on the subject.

How is the Paris Environmental Accord working out for France? After 18 weeks of rioting by the Yellow Vest Protesters, I guess not so well! In the meantime, the United States has gone to the top of all lists on the Environment.

 

[bobjr]

Oh climate change is already going to happen. It's now more about managing it and making it less worse, because it's not an overnight thing.

We literally had Captain Planet come back just to tell kids "Here's how you deal with living in hellscape world kids, good luck"

 

[Gamzee Makara]

The hate speech resolution wasn't binding or criminalizing such. It's just a bureaucratic slap to the new blood's heads for speaking their minds and not out of their coffers(or lack thereof).

This is why term limits should be universal in all political positions. 4 years, no matter who it is and you're done.

To fix the issues of the US and States' governments, overturning and completely reversing Citizens United to make taking lobby money(bribery) criminalized again and made tantamount to treason, and a universal 4-year binding limit in political power across all branches of government should be priorities #1 and #2 with the poor regarding checking and balancing the politicians by the common people..

And the Clintons can stay away from politics like the relic of the 90s that they are.

The 90s were NOT perfect. The second everyone gets over that, the better.

 

[Auraninja]

Oh climate change is already going to happen. It's now more about managing it and making it less worse, because it's not an overnight thing.

To be more exact, climate change has been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

But you're right, it won't just disappear even when we police it better.

Of course, we still need to bring the matter at hand.

 

[Pikachu52]

To be more exact, climate change has been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

But you're right, it won't just disappear even when we police it better.

Of course, we still need to bring the matter at hand.

I fear that the fight against Climate Change may already be lost, given the timeframe involved and the current state of politics.

As I understand it, the 2018 IPCC report said there were 12 years left in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Trump could easily stay president for 6 of those years.

In the last two years of his presidency Trump’s administration has approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, has rolled back fuel economy standards and is seeking to increase both offshore oil drilling and drilling in federally controlled land.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration

The US’s emissions are rising again: https://www.vox.com/2019/1/8/18174082/us-carbon-emissions-2018

Beyond the United States, no signatory to the 2015 Paris Accord is on track to meet it’s emissions reduction pledge and the Paris accord itself has no effective enforcement mechanism - typical of these large international agreements.

https://www.nature.com/news/prove-paris-was-more-than-paper-promises-1.22378

Even if democrats do manage to claw back the White House in 2020 climate policies could still face an uphill battle. For one, Democrats are very unlikely to take back the Senate making legislative action extremely difficult to pass. Climate denial seems to have become a point of ideology within the GOP and the wider conservative movement and that’s unlikely to change in two years so expect obstructionism. A president force to resort to executive action and relying on existing legislation to bring down emissions could have their actions blocked by a Supreme Court and federal judiciary that Trump’s appointments are slowly pushing to the right.

Thus far the GOP has tried to turn the “Green New Deal” into a weapon wiht all sorts of incendiary claims about taking cows and hamburgers and cars ect. Even a serious problem like the high levels of methane produced by cattle has been turned into a joke

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm

The hate speech resolution wasn't binding or criminalizing such. It's just a bureaucratic slap to the new blood's heads for speaking their minds and not out of their coffers(or lack thereof).

This is why term limits should be universal in all political positions. 4 years, no matter who it is and you're done.

To fix the issues of the US and States' governments, overturning and completely reversing Citizens United to make taking lobby money(bribery) criminalized again and made tantamount to treason, and a universal 4-year binding limit in political power across all branches of government should be priorities #1 and #2 with the poor regarding checking and balancing the politicians by the common people.

I agree with you about reversing Citizens United, but I don’t think Congressional Term Limits are a good idea.

For one it would usher in a lot of inexperienced representatives and senators who would be be heavily reliant on both professional staff and lobbyists to navigate complicated policy issues and legislation, taking a lot of power out of the hands of elected officials. Congress could become less effective at oversight of federal agencies, whose agency heads will almost certainly be around for longer than the representatives.

It would also diminish citizens ability to choose their representative. If a particular representative is well like within their district then that district should be able to keep relecting them.

This does seem to be consistent with the experiences of the 15 states that have term limits.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reasons-to-oppose-congressional-term-limits/
https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/10/18/13323842/trump-term-limits

Most other common law countries don’t have term limits in their legislative branch - Australia, the UK and Canada don’t term limit their Parliaments. In Australia we have and have had members who’ve served in Parliament for 10, 20, 30 or more years