American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

No mention on ILX yet of Democracy Spring. Also not much coverage in the media about it. Is it a big deal?

It's paying our boy Hoosteen so kind of a big deal

Flint, Michigan. Wasn't that something we all cared about at some point? Good to know someone's been held accountable... for all that!

Clinton will fix it!

Michigan already voted

No mention on ILX yet of Democracy Spring. Also not much coverage in the media about it. Is it a big deal?

― ejemplo (crüt), Sunday, April 10, 2016 4:03 PM (2 days ago

I had never heard of it till yesterday when I was doing a US Capitol building tour, and after we left the building we saw the Democracy Spring protestors outside. There was only 75 or so folks there and it did not look like much of a big deal. Some of 'em went up some steps that regular folks are not allowed on and staged a sit-in so they would get arrested.

Ooh, did not know Hoos was involved

it was #1 trending on twitter

Well today trending #1 on twitter is #NationalGrilledCheeseDay so Hoos has to work a little harder

i hope it becomes a thing + <3 h00s but i am skeptical that it will become a thing. not sure why breaking the 'arrest record' is so exciting but wherever i've seen it reported (cnn) it was about that as tho it was a Guinness world record feat.

What trends on your Twitter - this is for the both of y'all - isn't exactly what everyone else sees.

To go off-topic for a moment, Twitter would like for me to pick one of these places in my region so it can post "what's trending."

http://i.imgur.com/6JV2x3T.png

I don't really identify with any of those places, so I always see this instead.

http://i.imgur.com/AWDo6Qs.png

Hey, look! #NationalGrilledCheeseDay is trending! And Yuri Gagarin!

tbh i'm not even sure where the trending section is on twitter! but i saw hoos post a screenshot that showed around 200,000 tweets about #DemocracySpring yesterday

Well, wait. I guess I do kinda identify with "United States", sorta in the same way I identify myself as a Roman Catholic.

xp

aka the tweettrender

the tweet trender, the death threat sender

i think that media outlets rarely run stories about 'deliberate' protests now unless they draw more interest from the uninvolved (spontaneous joining in, hitherto unidentified interest, etc.). BLM still protest round my parts a lot and it seems it's really only the effect of significant shutdowns (highways, ballparks, big events) that gets them headlines.

During daytime and afternoon news segments, CNN did not devote any coverage to the actions. MSNBC mentioned the protests for approximately 12 seconds, while Fox News mentioned the arrests and discussed the protests for about 17 seconds.

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/12/democracy-spring-media-coverage/

:(

i did hear the NPR story this morning

looks like some bankster apologists may have a bone to pick with Senator Warren.

‏@ggreenwald
To whom is Warren referring when she says "Revisionist history is dangerous" on (Too Big to Fail)? Interesting

"Eight years ago, Too Big to Fail banks sparked a financial meltdown, then sucked up hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. Today, after an extensive, multi-year review process, federal regulators concluded that five of the country's biggest banks are still - literally - Too Big to Fail. They officially determined that five US banks are large enough that any one of them could crash the economy again if they started to fail and were not bailed out.

"This announcement is a very big deal. It's scary. And it means that, unless these banks promptly address the concerns identified by the regulators, the government must push these banks to get smaller and less complex.

"The announcement also dramatically demonstrates the danger of taking our focus off the big banks as we think about how to prevent the next major crisis.

"There's been a lot of revisionist history floating around lately that the Too Big to Fail banks weren't really responsible for the financial crisis. That talk isn't new. Wall Street lobbyists have tried to deflect blame for years. But the claim is absolutely untrue...."

https://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1112

spoiler: she's talkin to Krugman, Frank and Shakey

it's funny all the flack Krugman got past week for those TBTF comments. he was probably the most OTM person in the world on the crisis while it was happening, mostly due to having the right analogy in mind with Japan (the book he wrote in 1999 is crazy prophetic). i'm sure he's against TBTF but the thrust of his argument was that it's deregulated/shadow banking of investment banks that lead to these types of crises, rather than moral hazard in regulated banks. so ending TBTF may be desirable but it's not necessary or sufficient to prevent the next crisis. and like, Bernie Sanders agrees with that, TBTF isn't the only part of his financial reform plan, says he wants to "make Banking boring again" and all that good stuff. and i mean, obviously if you're running a populist campaign it's the stuff like jail bankers or end TBTF that gets people motivated, and not like, higher equity requirements. so no one really disagrees, more like the left are realizing how lazy and smug the guy with a Nobel prize they relied for a gloss of legitimacy to anti-Austerity is.

lol Morbz do you know how much air there is between Frank and Warren on this cuz its not a lot

(I don't care about/don't read Krugman)

but keep on misrepresentin, I know that's yr thing

i suspect part of Krugman's skepticism re:Sanders (other than shilling in hopes of getting a CEA chair under Clinton???) is that he doesn't trust Sanders to follow through with the unsexy, technical but necessary parts of financial reform. but it's a good big name easy-to-understand wedge to get people riled up with. also ending TBTF has pretty bi-partisan appeal

I mean who do you think wrote the goddamned law that led "federal regulators [to] conclude that five of the country's biggest banks are still - literally - Too Big to Fail"

er xp

Krugman's a shill among shills

fuck the banks

uhh

he's definitely not a shill for Wall Street or The Banks, but maybe for the Clintons

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-fact-check-clinton-sanders-wall-street-38413952

"Fact-checking" the debate last night

CLINTON: "I stood up against the behaviors of the banks when I was a senator. I called them out on their mortgage behavior."

SANDERS: "Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this."

THE FACTS: Sanders had reason to be sarcastic about Clinton's claim. She has repeatedly cited a speech she gave to the financial industry in December 2007 as proof that she gave Wall Street a dressing down for its behavior as the sector slipped into crisis. In reality, she delivered a much more mixed message.

In a video of the speech obtained by ProPublica, she thanked her "wonderful donors" in the audience, said banks were not the main villains in the emerging crisis, "not by a long shot," and praised Wall Street for its contribution to the economy. At the same time, she said Wall Street had a hand in worsening the crisis and called for voluntary steps on foreclosures and subprime mortgages.

lets voluntarily stop making money hand over first by fucking people over when nobody is trying to stop us ok

inside the Capitol

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democracy-spring-protest_us_571106eee4b0060ccda3074c?bggoomuvgx2f39pb9

http://www.democracyspring.org/demands

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/721009508810510336

i'm so pessimistic about dems chance of taking back the senate let alone the house atm. it's early still but november looks like a disaster.

https://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/pennsylvania/release-detail?ReleaseID=2342

Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania tops either of the two Democrats challenging him for reelection, but falls short of the 50 percent threshold, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

In a rematch of their 2010 Senate race, Sen. Toomey leads former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak 47 - 39 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. Toomey bests Katie McGinty by a similar 47 - 38 percent margin.

In the Toomey-Sestak matchup, independent voters are divided with 40 percent for the Republican and 39 percent for the Democrat. Toomey leads McGinty 41 - 34 percent among independent voters.

Pennsylvania voters approve 50 - 29 percent of the job Toomey is doing and give him a 45 - 24 percent favorability rating.

I don't see how Dems take the Senate without beating Toomey.

It’s no secret where Democrats are competing the hardest: Against incumbents in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and New Hampshire and in open seats in Florida and Nevada, the only one of the seven now held by a Democrat. Republicans must decide at some point how much money to spend to protect Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mark Kirk of Illinois, while full air cover is more assured for Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, candidates who are running in tighter races.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/senate-campaign-democrats-221112#ixzz45vGAZUuC

they need to flip 5 seats iirc so they have to run the table on all of these candidates

seems a bit odd that Sestak has lost that much support since he barely lost to Toomey in a Republican wave election in 2010. I know the Democratic party is going out of its way to defeat Sestak in the primary so that may account for some lack of current support.

https://newrepublic.com/article/132942/paul-ryan-making-john-boehner-look-like-legislative-genius

On May 1, the government of Puerto Rico is likely to go into default, without Congressional action helping the U.S. territory deal with its unpayable $73 billion debt burden. Puerto Rico is also one of several regions struggling with the effects of the Zika virus, which is ravaging much of Latin America with debilitating effects on children born to carriers—and is headed into this country. Then there’s the water crisis in Flint, which requires ongoing emergency assistance and raises awareness of lead poisoning in U.S. infrastructure more generally. Meanwhile, heroin and opioid painkiller abuse is causing thousands of deaths per year and affecting virtually every part of the country, particularly rural areas in red states.

No legislation addressing any of this has passed in the House.

These bills are crashing because Ryan won’t do what made Boehner so unpopular among the Republican House caucus: cut deals with Democrats to pass legislation that Republican factions oppose.

Nearly all of these are not Republican priorities so it is not surprising there have been no bills passed, and that Ryan has not pushed for compromise.

Does the word "progressive" actually mean anything today? It seems like every democrat now wants to be called a "progressive" and in a lot of cases it's the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" type only they won't cop to that description anymore.

holy shit Hastert got jail time

15 months, and a stern talking-to for boytouching

I expected he would get jail time, but not the fifteen months

This review of two books on liberals past & present seems relevant:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/books/review/listen-liberal-and-the-limousine-liberal.html

It's weird to me when people act like any amount of jail time is a walk in the park. 15 months is a long time to sit in a jail cell, especially for a 74-year-old.

apparently he's going to a prison hospital

You think a regular hospital is bad....

There's really nothing like rank-and-file Dems cooing over Obama's comedy skills at the Marie Antoinette Dinner every year to make me wish i was the type who'll pick up and go live in a fucking ashram.

eh I would never give the Dems the satisfaction of thinking I'd give up using deodorant.