US General Election 2016

There is no other way to atone for my sins. This is the end.

Well Petty mainly went off on a rant about American immorality, which was a bit off topic.

But Trump praising a congressman for body slamming a reporter for asking questions about health care is more on the topic.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-kind-guy-apos-president-030851213.html

From what Ive seen you cant get 2 further apart presidents than Trump & Obama. Would Obama have spoken like Trump ?

bungobaggins wrote:A little taste of what's going on here at home in addition to the Keith Ellison allegations.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/two-gop-candidates-assaulted-minnesota/

Let us see, Keith Ellison allegations were baseless partisan nonesense, pushed by party political interests, that only ended up hurting someone who wanted nothing to do with politics, his ex-wife:

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1052703201768730624

If it was an allegation against Trump however, you know, for instance, of the tax fraud behind his fortune, I am quite sure we would get skepticist reaction.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html

Get out of the filter bubble.

The only problem with Petty's argument is that the British government sells nearly as many bombs to the Saudis as America does. We cant pull the old moral highground bullshit, because it would be gross hypocracy, and yes Scotland is part of Great Britain whether you agree or not. We the British are as guilty as hell of murdering Yemeni children. We are no different to Trump.

{{I am as equally opposed to the UK investment in Saudi Figg and arms sales to them as I am to the US sales- we are just as guilty- but then I have never voted Tory or Labour and the SNP have never sold arms to anyone. So I make my opposition known through the ballot box and by my choice of vote- Bungo supports Trump- so he actively votes for and so supports the sale of arms to Saudi.

And for Republicans to be whining about Dems using aggressive rhetoric when the Republican President just the other night at his rally, after the brutal murder and dismembering by the Saudi of a reporter, backs, supports and encourages an assault on a reporter, is mind-boggling hypocrisy.

Maybe Republicans now need a safe place to get away from the feisty Dems!}}

The British government is also guilty if it does nothing about the murder of Khashoggi. There may be a few mild rebukes from that numpty Hunt, but it will end there, and what is doubly skin crawling in comparison to the massive reaction to Russia murdering someone on foreign soil. Unfortunately its all about oil and bombs, what a shit world.

And the world turns a blind eye to Yemen. I think part of the problem there is the sheer complexity of the origins of the situation, but it's clear as day where our $100 billion in arms sales will be employed.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
And for Republicans to be whining about Dems using aggressive rhetoric when the Republican President just the other night at his rally, after the brutal murder and dismembering by the Saudi of a reporter, backs, supports and encourages an assault on a reporter, is mind-boggling hypocrisy.

Seconded.

Trump Administration Eyes Defining Transgender Out of Existence - New York Times

NY Times wrote:WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

...

For the last year, health and human services has privately argued that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them.

You can practically set your watch to the Trump admin making sounds about rolling back advances in trans rights, but this will undoubtedly be challenged in multiple venues (including courts) if they try to move forward with it, as they ultimately did with the military ban. A fair number of states have laws protecting people on the basis of gender identity and expression, but still not that many, and the federal government taking an actively antagonistic stance has the potential to make things much more difficult regardless of the state you live in.

{{People who should not have civil rights protections- yeah, why are their any people who should not have civil rights protections?! Given even criminals have civil rights protection under the law are they saying a trans person should not even be accorded the protections offered to criminals?!  }}

There's more subtlety to it than that, Petty. Classes of criminals lose voting rights for life, etc. They have rights about being mistreated while incarcerated, but I don't know if they have the right to sue for discrimination after incarceration...I think it must have been tested at some point. But all this happens because criminals are a manifest group of people clearly recognized by the government.

This legal approach to transexuals etc is to declare they don't even exist, so there is nothing to protect. This makes fighting it even harder because first you have to establish legal identity.

I would be surprised (though I guess not that surprised) if any of the higher-ups at HHS used the same wording as the Times did in their summary, but the long and the short of it is that much of US civil rights law is based on the concept of protected classes (aka protected groups). Most such classes are specifically enumerated in various laws, but the dispute here is whether current (relatively old) legislation establishing "sex" as a protected class covers LGBT people. Policy during the Obama administration was that it does.

I think the reasoning for this is fairly straightforward. If you discriminate against (eg, fire, refuse to rent to, etc) a man who is married to and/or has sex with a man, but you wouldn't discriminate against a woman doing the same thing, then biological sex is pretty clearly a relevant factor in the discriminatory decision-making process. With trans issues it can be tricky because of the distinction between biological sex and gender, but again, if you discriminate against someone for living as a man because they were born with a biologically female body but you wouldn't discriminate against a cisgender man for living male, there's an argument to be made that current legislation is sufficient.

The conservative argument is that this isn't what the legislators who wrote the laws in question intended*, and that it's executive overreach to apply the protections to anything other than people being discriminated against for living as the gender typically associated with their biological sex. At least, that's the argument in theory. As is often the case, pro- or anti-"big government" arguments are mostly made on the basis of which side is seeing success at the federal level. The actual argument against LGBT rights is (as the NYT linked to) that increasing acceptance of LGBT (especially T) people in public spaces is a dangerous infringement on traditional social norms and must be opposed on moral grounds.

Likewise, while I think there's a fair legal argument to be made for the Obama administration's position, the primary motivating belief is that LGBT people are frequently victims of discrimination (and worse) and that it's better for them and for society as a whole to have legal protections in place. Ideally, Congress could pass, and the President could sign, a law expressly making LGBT people a protected class or classes, but, well ... y'know. Maybe in a few years.


*Though it's also questionable whether they would've seen a meaningful distinction between sex and gender, so interpreting the legislation as only applying to biological sex is arguably anachronistic in its own way, but that would make the case for protecting trans people easier so let's not talk about that.

For those who don't completely understand how our election system works, since we are in the so-called "mid-term" elections, I'll lay it out.

Senators ("upper chamber") are elected every 6 years, but on a rotating cycle of 1/3 of the senate every 2 years.  We have 2 senators for every state.

Representatives ("lower chamber") are elected every 2 years, with the number per state proportional to population.

Presidents are elected every 4 years, so the 2 years in between are called "mid-term" elections, which is what we are doing TODAY.

State and local official elections follow typically 2 and 4 year patterns, and will vary by state and locality.

We are not doing a presidential election now, but if we were, the states each put in a number of votes equal to the number of representatives plus senators (the "electoral college").  The states get to decide individually how to divide the votes, and unfortunately most have decided to do this half-assed system of winner-take-all, where if the majority of people vote for one party or the other, all the states votes go for that party.  So in states that reliably go one way or the other, voters develop apathy and many stay home.  For "swing states" that can go either way, voters are more energized.

New York is pretty reliably democratic, mainly due to being dominated by New York City.  Even though this national election can pull the House of Representatives away from Republican control, there's not much excitement in the city; we pretty much know how the state will vote.

But I can still get excited to stay up late and see how the national results turn out.  Presidents typically lose much of congress in mid-terms, and it's expected the House will go democratic.  If it doesn't, Trumpism will get a major boost.

{{Anyone else up for the mid-terms? Ill probably be about and on and off for a couple hours yet, doubt too much will be decided by then however, if anyone else is planning to be about for it. }}

{{{CNN calling a dem win in Virginia for Senate (think it was senate seat, just caught the end of it hopping channels) }}

{{Was Virginai 10th district they called- think thats House not Senate }}

95% chance democrats will take the house.  But Senate (which was never likely) looking worse.  Our own Staten Island in NYC went Democratic in an upset result.

Edit: part of what makes the Staten Island turnover significant is it went 57% Trump 40% Hillary. But NYC is not a town known for sentiment, and even the mainly white Staten Islanders appreciate the diversity of New York City and are likely punishing him for his rhetoric.

ABC just declared Republicans for Senate and Democrats for House, and statistical mensch Nate Silver did not object. That's all I need to hear, off to bed.

{{Yeah largely as predicted beforehand- Reps get the Senate (which given the numbers up on each side for election this year is hardly a huge upset) and Dems take the House, which is still not surprising, but more interesting as it now clears the way for looking at Trumps taxes, business connections to Saudi ect I expect those sort of things to come up way ahead of any thoughts of impeachment. Pretty much guarantees Mueller all the time he wants too.

Also opens up some possibilities, depending how the Republicans play it with the Dems, of some common ground on infrastructure, DACA and health care. Though wouldn't hold my breath for too much non-partisan politics for so long as Trump remains President. }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{ Though wouldn't hold my breath for too much non-partisan politics for so long as Trump remains President. }}

My point of view may not be the normal (I'm living in a pink corner of the country where we all still talk to each other) but I think that mostly depends on Trump's popularity. If he can demonstrate that he can still raise crowds, votes and money in the coming months then of course republicans in congress will stick with him, but if they see his star setting in their home states and districts, then I think you'll see more and more politicians reaching across the aisle to find small compromises that are popular at home, because ultimately that's where the votes are.

I decided that watching the results trickle in and following every swing back and forth of the needle of various predictions wasn't good for my mental health right now, but I've been catching up on news since then. Obviously not thrilled about the increased GOP majority in the Senate, but taking back the House is nothing to sneeze at for the Dems. Haven't paid close enough attention to the gubernatorial races to have a strong opinion on most of them. Larry Hogan easily won reelection in Maryland but he's pretty moderate, though some of my fellow poli sci majors who I still have on FB think he's going to shift right this term with an eye towards a Presidential run in the future. No idea how likely that is, but I'd think his track record thus far would probably be a disqualifying factor in the primaries. Also, I'm very glad Scott Walker is out in Wisconsin. Some of the successful ballot measures were heartening too, especially restored ex-con voting rights in Florida and protections for transgender rights in Massachusetts.

Speaking of catching up on news ... this just broke a few hours ago, apparently:

Sessions out at Justice Department - The Hill

The president’s Republican allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), have signaled it would be appropriate for Trump to remove Sessions following the midterms. But the decision could aggravate some Republicans in the Senate and trigger criticism among Democrats and others who view it as an effort to interfere with the Mueller investigation.

Despite Republicans maintaining control of the Senate, Trump’s nominee is likely to face a difficult confirmation battle. It is unclear, at this point, who the president may appoint to replace Sessions.

The move is likely to be viewed by some critics as an effort by Trump to impede the Mueller investigation, which is currently being overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Potentially related: Donald Trump Jr. Expecting to Be Indicted by Mueller Soon - Intelligencer (New York magazine)

Two days ago, Gabriel Sherman reported that White House officials are concerned about Donald Jr. “I’m very worried about Don Jr.,” a former West Wing official told Sherman, who fears Mueller will be able to prove perjury. Deep in a report about Trump’s 2020 campaign plans, Politico drops the news this morning that Trump Jr. “has told friends in recent weeks that he believes he could be indicted.”

Twitter chatter is that Rosenstein has already been removed from overseeing the Mueller investigation but I don't know if that's demonstrably verified.

https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1060267993815531527

16/ As I write this thread, many of you are indicating to me that Rosenstein has reportedly been removed from oversight of the Mueller investigation. That appears to be inconsistent with prior Justice Department practice, and could provide additional evidence of obstruction.

CBS now reporting the last bit as well

Matthew G. Whitaker, Sessions' chief of staff, will now become acting attorney general, and he will also oversee the Russia investigation that the president often refers to as a "witch hunt." Before Whitaker joined to the Justice Department, he wrote an opinion piece for CNN in August 2017 criticizing the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Whitaker argued that Mueller should not be able to investigate the Trump family's finances in the course of his probe. "It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump's finances or his family's finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else. That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel," Whitaker wrote.

I think Mueller has seen the writing on the wall by now and will wrap everything up in about 2 weeks. Whittaker has commented that it's not necessary to officially end an investigation; you just cut off the funding and starve it.