USA Politics (redux)

[T. D.]

https://apnews.com/article/michigan-gretchen-whitmer-grand-rapids-c502551bd6fa4af0a8706d0b9653e653

How much time would a Black plotter have gotten?

[greg]

Don't be so literal.  You've got it mostly right, though.  Tucker Carlson is a despicable propagandist, inciting, and approving of, hatred against immigrants and racial minorities (do we need it to be "extreme" to find it despicable?).  He's constantly race-baiting on his show.

He has also promoted the anti-Semitic "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory on his show. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/media/adl-letter-fox-news-tucker-carlson/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tucker-carlson/2021/07/13/398fa720-dd9f-11eb-a501-0e69b5d012e5_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/12/how-tucker-carlsons-racist-rhetoric-gives-new-life-trumpism/
https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2021/04/15/tucker-carlson-is-a-white-supremacist-and-hes-giving-fox-viewers-exactly-what-they-want

Do you have direct links to the specific source or just links from the opposition?

[Karl Henning]

Lordy, There May Be Consequences

Judge hammers Trump election lawyers

[Karl Henning]

The dark future of far-right Trumpist politics is coming into view

Greg Sargent Today at 11:18 a.m. EDT

The anti-immigrant politics of a certain swath of Republican politicians and Donald Trump loyalists have taken a particularly virulent and ugly turn of late — and if you look closely, you can catch a glimpse of the future direction that U.S. far-right Trumpist political aspirations might take.

This unsettling hint of what's to come emerges, surprisingly, from the confluence of two big developments in our politics that aren't linked in any obvious sense: the surge in covid-19 cases, and the battle over the coming resettlement of Afghan refugees in the United States.

Right now, the Republican Party is deeply split over the refugees created by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as a new report from the New York Times details. While some Republicans recognize an obligation to admit them here, as many worked alongside the United States, many are aligning with Trump and demagoguing them in the most despicable terms imaginable.

Meanwhile, with covid cases on the rise, GOP governors in states seeing the worst outbreaks are escalating efforts to blame this on migrants who, fleeing their own horrors, are attempting to cross our southern border. The right-wing media disinformation apparatus has pushed this message with lockstep unity and unfathomably disgusting vitriol.

These two developments together bode ill for what's to come. They suggest that U.S. reactionary right-wing movements may be characterized by a very particular form of rising nativist and ethnonationalist cruelty at exactly the time when increasingly pressing global challenges will require a diametrically different approach.

[Karl Henning]

Capitol Cops Sue Trump, Associates in Sweeping Jan. 6 Civil Suit

Cheyenne R. Ubiera
Published Aug. 26, 2021 1:47PM ET

A group of Capitol Police officers have sued former President Donald Trump and some of his associates in a sweeping civil suit that alleges he worked together with far-right activists and extremists to promote the election lies that underpinned the Jan. 6 insurrection. Associates like Roger Stone Jr. and groups like the Proud Boys are among the defendants. "This is probably the most comprehensive account of Jan. 6 in terms of civil cases," said Edward Casper, the lawyer leading the suit, which alleges that Trump and the other defendants violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by interfering with Congress' constitutional duties.

[arpeggio]

A few months ago I made the observation that the Trump Administration has messed up the United States Postal Service.  I made the comment that the time it took to deliver a letter got longer.

I recall how a few Trumpsters chastised me.

Well I have just had another example of how the postal service has deteriorated under Trump minions.  I normally pay most of my bills through the mail (I will not respond to why am I doing it the old fashion way.  If a person want to pay his bills through the mail he should be being subjected to a bogus lecture.  I have my reasons.)  Since January two of my checks to the charge vendor (Visa) have been lost and I was stuck with steep late charges.  This is the first time this has happened to me in decades.  And now twice within a few months.  So far Visa has reversed the charges.  They told me after the last incident they would no longer acknowledge any lost payments.  I am now forced to pay off my charge bills online and I SHOULD NOT BE FORCED TO DO SO.

[greg]

Had the current, colossal, tragic Afghanistan debacle occurred during Trump's presidency, you guys would have flayed him alive verbally --- and rightly so.

Now that it happened under Biden's presidency, you are silent about it and instead flay alive verbally his critics.

Liberal fair-mindedness in action... 

Lol yep, tribalism in action.
I don't know any groups of Trump supporters, but I would bet money they would do the exact same thing.
You might as well call partisan politics "tribal politics."
You notice how Fox News complained about Obama's golf trips while CNN complains about Trump's golf trips? And the ardent followers of each network parrots that criticism, but don't complain when THEIR president is doing it.

Seems like if so much of humanity has such a tribalistic orientation, that energy could be used in different places, like team sports or something, anything that is more good natured fun and doesn't result in such conflict.

[DavidW]

A few months ago I made the observation that the Trump Administration has messed up the United States Postal Service.  I made the comment that the time it took to deliver a letter got longer.

You're needlessly politicizing a crisis that has been brewing for the past twenty years.  The USPS have been making critical changes to how they operate since the Obama administration.  They've been operating at a loss for many years.  It is a necessary service so that people can get prescriptions through the mail, but anything else will be slowed or cut.  And I expect this to continue through the Biden administration.

The world has moved on.  People don't write letters, or pay bills, or collect and sign paperwork through the mail.  They don't request and order through catalogs.  People don't even use netflix dvds anymore.

[Herman]

Lame duck time has started now.

[JBS]

Lame duck time has started now.

Only if you take media focus as a valid measurement of public opinion.  What the public feels now, and what it will feel in the long term, can't be accurately co-related to the number of hawks appearing on the pundit shows.

Remember 2 things: a lot of the media and political class have invested heavily into the GWOT narrative for 20 years, and if the media has no real controversy to report on, it must either invent one or lose the public's attention.

I saw several Twitter accounts today complaining that Biden was not making the forceful response he had promised 5 days ago if the evacuation operation was attacked. Checking the time stamps, I noticed these people were making their complaints within an hour or two of the initial reports of the attack.

[The new erato]

Prescriptions through the mail? Holy moly. If I have a prescription from any doctor , any pharmacist in Norway pulls up its online status and updates the status after delivering the required medication.

If I'm due for a NHS compensation after payment that is also handled automatically.

Renewal of current prescriptions is handled online. I request a renewal from my doctor (online of course usong a secure national ID system), and after reviewing my case I get an online feedback and the database is updated with a renewal.

Very smooth, and incredibly practical when e.g. travelling if you've forgotten some medication.

Of course my vaccinations and Corona test status is also available online and can be checked by a QR code I can download to my Phone or print out.

[arpeggio]

You're needlessly politicizing a crisis that has been brewing for the past twenty years.  The USPS have been making critical changes to how they operate since the Obama administration.  They've been operating at a loss for many years.  It is a necessary service so that people can get prescriptions through the mail, but anything else will be slowed or cut.  And I expect this to continue through the Biden administration.

The world has moved on.  People don't write letters, or pay bills, or collect and sign paperwork through the mail.  They don't request and order through catalogs.  People don't even use netflix dvds anymore.

I am not going to debate you on this.  I am not going to waste my time trying to defend my reasons since you will shoot down whatever I have to say.  I said my peace and you can have the last word.

[The new erato]

I am not going to debate you on this.  I am not going to waste my time trying to defend my reasons since you will shoot down whatever I have to say.  I said my peace and you can have the last word.

Not going to question your choices.

99% of my bills comes up in my Netbank, where I can read them as pdfs, change the payment date or the account they should be paid by, and approve them for payment using secure ID (usually by a digital certificate on my phone or PC). The same as used for the health service.

I get an email and SMS notification on their arirval.

The postal service seems more and more irrelevant. Small packages that fit in the mailbox are the prime business, larger packages are notified, mainly by online service, and collected.

[JBS]

I am not going to debate you on this.  I am not going to waste my time trying to defend my reasons since you will shoot down whatever I have to say.  I said my peace and you can have the last word.

That the USPS has become increasingly obsolete over the last 20 years and that Trump's nominee made things worse are not mutually exclusive.

I pay some bills online but not many. The less I do online the less I need to worry about online security at both my end and the payee's.

[Herman]

Only if you take media focus as a valid measurement of public opinion.  What the public feels now, and what it will feel in the long term, can't be accurately co-related to the number of hawks appearing on the pundit shows.

Remember 2 things: a lot of the media and political class have invested heavily into the GWOT narrative for 20 years, and if the media has no real controversy to report on, it must either invent one or lose the public's attention.

Apart from media bloviating there are just the very bad images of the scenes at the airport and now the hard numbers of dead, too.

Those are not going to go away and there will be no second term.

[milk]

Had the current, colossal, tragic Afghanistan debacle occurred during Trump's presidency, you guys would have flayed him alive verbally --- and rightly so.

Now that it happened under Biden's presidency, you are silent about it and instead flay alive verbally his critics.

Liberal fair-mindedness in action... 

I think that's right. But I don't think Trump would have deserved it because I think getting out was always going to be a mess. I'm firmly anti-Trump but I understand why people like Glenn Greenwald say Bush and Obama were worse in terms of foreign policy. To me, this sticking to this plan was courageous on the part of Biden.

[milk]

Apart from media bloviating there are just the very bad images of the scenes at the airport and now the hard numbers of dead, too.

Those are not going to go away and there will be no second term.

Neocons are just despicable hypocrites. THEY made this war and now they'll turn around with the lie that someone also has bungled it. The whole thing was a bungle.

[The new erato]

The laughing stock thing starte years ago. And getting out of Afghanistan would always become a mess. I'm with Milk here.

[milk]

Which plan? The whole thing looks rather like a retreat in disarray than a carefully planned withdrawal.

No, really, the USA is now the laughing stock of the world, but then again what could you expect when the commander-in-chief and allegedly the most powerful man on earth is this guy?

I don't think so. It's called losing. Did you want a plan as good as the one we've had for the last twenty years? If that one didn't work, what makes you think anything else would? This is what I expect when The American military withdraws. Chaos. What did you want to fill the vacuum?

[milk]

Most probably there will not even be a complete first term.

This is a mirror of what we said about trump. He made it for four years though and only barely lost. I'll say this, if the nominees is Kamala then I agree. She's a loser.