From Law and Crime: Republican Federal Judge accuses Justice Department of “banana republic” tactics.
From The Washington Post: McCabe quietly exonerated by Federal Prosecutors.
From The New York Times: Border Patrol goons being deployed deep inside US borders to intimidate “sanctuary cities.”
From TechCrunch: A look at the AI startup stockpiling billions of private photos.
From The Tampa Bay Times: Climate change becomes an issue in city council races.
Two Links back at you if I may.
Why the smashed guardrails may not be repaired when Trump leaves:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/15/why-presidency-cant-go-back-normal-trump-115362
Lastly, with all the Pearl clutching of nominating a gay man or a socialist, I give you this; regardless of who the Dems nominate, Trump is still the MOST radical candidate running. Besides even if Bernie wins the nomination and the office do you really think Mitch would negotiate or compromise with any Dem? No, any policy changes would be DOA in the Senate.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/15/opinions/most-radical-2020-candidate-trump-zelizer/index.html
Defeat McConnell if we can but retake Senate. Both would be better.
I don’t understand why “any policy changes will die in the Senate” is thought to be an argument against Sanders.
Donald Trump’s in the WH, so Anything Can Happen in Politics, but I’ll plant my flag down on this one argument. Absent absolute economic cataclysm, Sanders is the absolute worst match-up to pit against someone like Trump and he cannot win.
Florida is a bygone thought if he’s the nominee (shame on him if he wastes so as a single dollar trying to win here) and the fecal tsunami of blistering ads that will play in every other conceivable swing state will be enough to make ’16 look positively mundane by comparison. It would be awful.
According to polling data, Sanders is one of the *best* candidates against Trump, ahead of Warren and significantly ahead of Buttigieg. Quinnipac predicts +8% nationally, which (if he pulls it off) is a bigger landslide victory than Obama in 2008 and almost as big as Clinton in 1996.
Detail here, as of 10 February:
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3655
There’ll be a lot of Right-wing propaganda about whichever candidate runs: if Ayn Rand herself stood on the democrat ticket she’d be accused of being a socialist, and if St Paul himself stood he’d be accused of not being Christian enough. Sanders at least has the advantage of both of those accusations being objectively true about him.
EJ, I’ve had this conversation with Bernie Bros so many times it makes me embarrassed that I wasted so much time on it.
Polling at this point *means nothing*. Clinton was taking a steel-toed boot to Trump in polling at exactly this point in ’16 and for several months afterwards, regularly up by high single-digits and even double-digits. But then the actual general election happened and her numbers started dropping… and dropping… and dropping some more.
And then November 2016 happened.
Sanders is a proverbial handbag of issues that Trump and merciless Republican ad makers are ready to unleash a political storm of hellfire on, and I’ve no faith that the man is ready to respond.
Here’s one example. Pennsylvania employs hundreds of thousands in the fracking business, and Sanders wants to ban any and all fracking. If that ain’t an issue to ram down voters’ throats in a critical swing state every damn day, I don’t know what is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/pennsylvania-democrats-fracking.html
At this point, you’d think the sensible political choice would be to recognize one’s mistake, retract said position and look for an alternative, right? Au contraire, not in the pure ‘progressive’ world of AOC and Bernie Sanders. They decided to revive the issue ONLY 3 DAYS ago.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/aoc-and-bernie-want-shut-down-fracking-nationwide-123426
As you say, Ryan, we’ve both had this conversation before and it’s getting pretty dull by now.
A comment on something from the previous post that I overlooked, since people move on to the latest thread:
“ All the supposed courage Democrats display in confronting Trump melts into a “reasonable compromise” when it comes time to do something hard, something that would place their personal ambitions at risk.”
I’ve always classified myself as an Indy, even though at this point I am functionally a Dem since the GOP has gone full batshit crazy off the rails and has nothing to offer me. But I reserve the right to say “Oh HELL NO!” when a party fields an unacceptable/ unqualified candidate. In our situation it’s the GOP that got the infection first. But I have done the thought experiment from the other side. What if Trump has run as a D, promising liberal judges and green new jobs, but still with all the corruption, lying, cruelty, and bigotry. Under what situations would I have taken the Hamilton option and voted R? For Jeb, Rubio, and Christie, I would have held my nose and voted for them over Trump as a Dem. But I admit that Cruz vs Trump would have made me vote for Johnson. That’s a red line for me.
CNN posted an opinion piece today that echoed much of what you said.
This is not ground breaking: The tyrant now controls the fascist party.
The upcoming almost 5 years (actually, as long as the tyrant lives) of devastation is no longer unimaginable. It is laying out the road map it plans to follow as the pearl clutchers moan.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/15/opinions/conservatives-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-in-trump-brown/index.html
My solution is the ONLY solution that has any logic attached to it anymore. Many totalitarian regimes are so entrenched now (read as Poland, Hungary, Russia, China as the frontrunners), that executing the de facto leader will have zero impact on the direction that country is going.
But others still operate more under the cult of personality (U.S., UK, Philippines, Italy, Brazil) where decapitating the serpent will still have a positive impact.
I will say it for the 15 millionth time: Targeted violence works, in many cases. One is presented to the planet every day.
”Targeted violence works, in many cases. One is presented to the planet every day.”
Who is stopping you?
If only you put half as much persistence into your local politics as you do with these posts, Dins.
How about because I am a lousy shot, and can’t make a bomb.
But you could volunteer with a campaign, couldn’t you? I’ll defend your 1A right to the DebbieDowner schtick, but I’ll also say that it is both tiresome and premature. We’ve had only one non-peaceful transition of power between parties since we adopted our current system. We may indeed have a second instance this year, but it is not inevitable, not yet.
Hello to any police watching this. Please be reassured that Dinsdale does not represent us and is not the spokesperson for any organisations that we’re part of.
“How about because I am a lousy shot, and can’t make a bomb.”
There are plenty of gun ranges or you could learn how in the military.
But since you have done none of those things I am going with “cowardice”.
Looking for joy in your list of articles, and the only glimmer I see is from Judge Walton. I guess there is also some positive in that Floridians are accepting the water is rising. But they are saying it does not matter why! How do you treat a disease if you do not identify the cause? Yes you can treat the symptoms, but not treating the source, only means no cure in sight. They are hoping evolution provides them with gills?
Happy Saturday.