***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[d nice]

 

[cedric ceballos]

Good. The concept of mandatory prison labor has always been stupid to me.

It doesn’t consider the wrongfully convicted. It’s taking potential jobs away from the homeless and struggling veterans because these companies are too cheap to pay legit wages so they rely on prison labor.

If an inmate willfully chooses to work for 40 cents an hour or whatever the wage is to learn skills and land a job with that company when they get out, that’s one thing, but these companies aren’t hiring them at a normal wage when they get out. Or if they get time taken off their sentence for every day they work, that’s something as well (slippery slope because the victim might feel some type of way about them getting time taken off).

But if you want to just do your bid and keep it moving without doing any type of labor, you shouldn’t be penalized. You’re there to serve your time, not to be free labor.

 

[Belgium]

https://www.apnews.com/143be3c52d47...l-Enquirer's-safe-held-damaging-Trump-stories
AP: National Enquirer hid damaging Trump stories in a safe
The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.

The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump.

Five people familiar with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company’s CEO.

The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities’ catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people’s stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.

But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal’s catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.

It was unclear whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people.

Jerry George, a longtime Enquirer reporter who left the publication in 2013, said the practice of catch and kill took root at the Enquirer under Pecker. Though George had no personal knowledge of Trump-specific catch and kills, he said that AMI generally paid hush money only if it believed it had something to gain.

“It’s ‘I did this for you,’ now what can you do for me,” George said. “They always got something in return.”

Catch and kills were loathed by the National Enquirer’s reporters, he said, because they robbed the publication of juicy stories.

American Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pecker’s immunity deal was first reported Thursday by Vanity Fair and The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources. Vanity Fair reported that Howard also was granted immunity.

Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump’s) relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $130,000, and McDougal was paid $150,000.

While Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments “later on.”

In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Trump discussed plans to buy McDougal’s story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

“You never know where that company — you never know what he’s gonna be —” Cohen says.

“David gets hit by a truck,” Trump says.

“Correct,” Cohen replies. “So, I’m all over that.”

While Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, American Media previously declined to participate in congressional inquiries.

Last March, in response to a letter from a group of House Democrats about the Daniels and McDougal payments, American Media general counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was “exempt” from U.S. campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and it was “confident” it had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that America Media Inc., or AMI, had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices.

“AMI states unequivocally that any suggestion that it would seek to ‘extort’ the President of the United States through the exercise of its editorial discretion is outrageous, offensive, and wholly without merit,” Stracher wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

In 2010, at Cohen’s urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen’s involvement, the publication began questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.

The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump’s coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him “with sycophantic fervor.”

Positive headlines for Trump, a Republican, were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton, a Democrat: An Enquirer front page from 2015 said “Hillary: 6 Months to Live” and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes.

 

[rexanglorum]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...reclaim-the-center-by-moving-hard-left-219354

Democrats Must Reclaim the Center … by Moving Hard Left

I urge everyone to read the whole thing but here's the money paragraphs:

"After the corporate elite slices off its giant share of the income pie, the median American family—those standing near the 18-inch halfway mark of our majoritarian yardstick—is left with about $59,000 a year. Had inequality held constant since 1980, that figure would be $86,000. Had middle-class incomes grown with productivity (as they had in the previous three decades), the median American family would be earning over $100,000 a year.

Let me underscore this point: America owes the median family a raise of somewhere between $25,000 and $40,000. Per year. This—not the fictional entitlement crisis—is the inconvenient economic truth that elites in both parties lack the political courage to confront. And only by enacting policies that right this wrong can Democrats lay claim to being a truly centrist party."

Broadly speaking, one major party moves incrementally towards an overarching goal and the opposition part unwittingly follows. American political history has four epochs and they involve a consistent control over the federal Government (due to demographic forces) an activist bloc and within that bloc an
especially zealous cadre that emerges late in the epoch.

From 1776 to 1865, we have the expansion and strengthening of slavery (and yes, part of that era saw the Democratic Party as the institutional political arm of slavery power). The pro slavery forces held majorities because the 3/5ths compromise gave pro slavery States outsized power within the federal government. Obviously slave owners were the activists who pushed this. The most zealous subgroup were the new moneyed Kings of cotton who became immensely wealthy between about 1820 and 1860.

After the civil war, slave power ends but certainly not white supremacy. Vast waves of immigration from Northern Europe to Northern US States gives Republicans durable majorities. The activists were the industrialists. The extremely wealthy monopolists were the most zealous subgroup. This era ends with the onset of the Great Depression.

From the 1930’s to the 1970’s, we have an era of Democratic Majorities which were the result of the Great Depression and the acculumation of immigrants from eastern and Southern Europe and internal migration of southern blacks into the north and West. Workers pushed the Democratic Party towards greater and greater benefits for workers (although far too often only white and male workers). The leading edge of all of this were the militant labor leaders. Complacency among unions, cultural appeals to the white working class and neoliberalism among the new professional class led to our current era.

From circa 1980 to present day, we’ve seen a recon quest of capital. Republicans have gained governing majorities and they get pushed to the right by a resurgent capitalist class. The reconquista of capital began in the financial services sector and as of late the tech monopolists have been leading the charge.

So we have to either let these trends continue or we can chart a new path. We need both enduring Democratic majorities and we need activism. The elements are there for both but we got to fight. If we win, we can have multi racial socialism, if we lose, we will sink yet further into barbarism.

Politicos. Support the activists and activists, support your allies and potential allies in elected office.

 

[HIM]

Okay so a man killing 50 people with an automatic rifle = "guns don't kill people, people do."

One person kills a woman over jealousy/pride. He's an illegal immigrant = "Immigration kills people"

 

[elpablo21]

 

[Belgium]

Well how about that, another lie by Sarah Sanders exposed. This time by none other than Rudy Giuliani.
How shocking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f93b21aec5a2
Trump recently sought his lawyers’ advice on possibility of pardoning Manafort, Giuliani says
President Trump recently asked his lawyers for their advice on the possibility of pardoning Paul Manafort and other aides accused of crimes, his lawyer said Thursday.

The subject of pardoning Manafort came as Trump’s former campaign chairman faced multiple charges of bank fraud and tax evasion in an Alexandria criminal case, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani said in an interview.

Trump’s lawyers counseled the president against the idea of pardoning anyone linked to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to Giuliani, saying Trump should at least wait until special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has concluded his probe. Giuliani said the president agreed and did not push the issue further.

“He said yes,” Giuliani said. “He agreed with us.”

Giuliani said Trump was seeking advice in the wake of a spate of pardons he granted earlier this summer, including for a woman whom Kim Kardashian had lobbied the White House to release. Giuliani said he and fellow personal attorney Jay Sekulow had advised waiting to see whether Mueller delivers a damning report that accuses the president of trying to block a federal probe of his campaign’s contacts with Russians.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday that she “wasn’t aware” of any discussions of Trump pardoning Manafort and that the topic was “not something that’s been up for discussion.”

On Thursday, in the wake of Giuliani’s comment, Sanders said the pardon topic is not under active consideration “in the White House.”

“This pardon is not something being discussed in the White House and the president has not made a decision on pardoning Paul Manafort or anyone else,” she said in a statement.

The exact timing and nature of the pardon discussion is unclear.

A senior administration official said the president discussed the pros and cons of granting pardons to Manafort and others linked to a probe of his campaign “a few weeks ago.”

Giuliani initially said he and Trump had the conversation “three to five weeks ago” but later corrected his statement to say he believed they discussed it several weeks earlier, in June. Giuliani clarified in a follow-up call to The Post that his conversation with Trump was a general discussion about potential pardons for a range of people under investigation, including but not limited to Manafort.

Some experts have argued Trump could expose himself to more legal danger if he were to pardon aides who are witnesses in the Mueller probe, because Mueller is examining the president’s own conduct and whether he sought to obstruct justice.

Giuliani acknowledged that risk.

“We sat him down and said you’re not considering these other pardons with anybody involved in the investigation. He said yes, absolutely, I understand,” Giuliani said. “The real concern is whether Mueller would turn any pardon into an obstruction charge.”

Other Trump associates who have pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s investigation include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Trump campaign aide Rick Gates.

Mueller’s findings are supposed to be provided in a report to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who would then decide whether any evidence of wrongdoing was serious enough that it should be presented to Congress to consider for impeachment proceedings.

Trump has repeatedly decried the government’s treatment of Manafort — who a jury found guiltyTuesday on eight counts of tax- and bank-fraud charges. Manafort refused to cooperate with Mueller investigators seeking his information about the Trump campaign and instead took his chances at trial.

On Tuesday, the president told reporters that Manafort was a “good man” and that he felt sorry for him.

Trump tweeted his support of Manafort on Wednesday while criticizing Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a bank and two campaign finance violations: willfully causing an illegal corporate contribution and making an excessive campaign contribution.

“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump tweeted. “ ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!”

Inside the West Wing, the prospect of a Manafort pardon is met with near universal opposition. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, White House counsel Donald F. McGahn and attorney Emmet T. Flood are all opposed. Aides are trying to keep Trump from even discussing the matter. After Ainsley Earhardt, the Fox News anchor, said Wednesday night that Trump discussed a pardon while appearing on Fox News, Sanders asked her to clarify her comments that she did not hear Trump say that, according to a person familiar with the matter. Officials are increasingly frustrated with Giuliani inside the West Wing.

Trump has admiringly talked about how Manafort did not “flip” on him and was ebullient when Judge T.S. Ellis said that the prosecution only wanted to go after Manafort to get him. Asked about a pardon, one senior White House official said: “What does it accomplish? You pardon him, it doesn’t get rid of the Mueller probe, it causes you more headaches, he still has another trial, you have more Republicans coming after you.”

“Legally he’s entitled to pardon Manafort,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard professor that Trump likes to watch on TV. “My advice to the president is don’t tweet, don’t pardon, don’t testify, don’t fire.”

That was a major shift for Trump, who in April called it a “national disgrace” when federal investigators raided Cohen’s home and office as part of an investigation into his efforts during the campaign to squelch embarrassing stories about Trump.

Cohen implicated Trump directly in some of his acts when he pleaded guilty Tuesday, saying he arranged to pay off two women to keep their stories of alleged affairs with Trump from becoming public before Election Day — in coordination with the then-candidate.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his anger at how federal prosecutors had “beat up” and mistreated Manafort. The president’s critics argue that Trump’s public tweets are a thinly-veiled message to Manafort, that he supports his refusal to cooperate with Mueller and is willing to pardon him in the future.

Giuliani said Trump’s concern for Manafort is what motivates him to consider a pardon.

“He feels Manafort has been mistreated. Nobody in a case like this gets raided in the middle of the night, put in solitary confinement,” Giuliani said. “They tried to crack him and it didn’t work. Over the last two to three weeks, he’s expressed anger and frustration about how he’s been treated.”

 

[nomnom]

 

[nomnom]

 

[iDon’tRead]

wonder how that amazon delivery is going to go

 

[dwalk31]

People need to throw bricks at tomi lahren.

Wow

 

[gwap]

I wonder what the ambassador to South Africa thinks about the land reappropriation...

Oh wait.... Trump didn't appoint one .

 

[whywesteppin]

filthy. sounds like cult members or a bot.

but that 2 day shipping keeps me coming back.

 

[whywesteppin]

Don has had it. This came after the blonde girl on the panel brought up Benghazi for no reason at all.

 

[IATT]

How many school shootings again?

 

[whywesteppin]

finally the NT Echo Chamber has been exposed!!!

The Echo Chamber
The communications infrastructure that the Obama admin used to sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public (“Echo Chamber”) has been shifted from the White House into the private sector, and is now being used to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy. Some of the members of this network refer to themselves as “the resistance.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...ides-that-circulated-in-the-trump-white-house

 

[InTheHallway]

Rashid Khalidi ...

 

[frink85]

How many school shootings again?

He sounds like a creep with that quote, and given his history I’m sure it was in his head.

RIP to her, but this whole time my skeptical and jaded mind was thinking she’s lucky she’s a cute white girl...

 

[IATT]

 

[jape]

 

[the qbz]

So fun fact
The store pic is a grocery store i worked at. It was during a hurricane scare. Even though austin was in immediate danger

 

[dwalk31]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/24/us/randolph-county-polling-closures-vote/index.html

I imagine they determined it had a discriminatory intent. Good news!

 

[dacomeup]

 

[flacobey]

Allen Weisselberg and David Pecker granted immunity.

 

[dacomeup]