The September 2019 US Politics Thread is great Great GREAT GR8

I mean let's get real, if we didn't want to be smarmy knowitalls none of us would be here

tombot that's what i said but without the effing and jeffing, please try not to swear.

honest/ignorant question: if you don't have facebook, what does the tracking hash do

I just cut and paste from the address bar. I tend to ignore that guy anyway cos I can't stand the level of utter self righteousness.

Sounds like sic’s theory is that it results in the publisher paying Facebook for the traffic (regardless of whether you’re logged in?).

I’m only tangentially in the industry but my understanding is that is wrong.

It does allow Facebook to report higher traffic numbers but they lie about those anyway so who gives a shit.

I mean let's get real, if we didn't want to be smarmy knowitalls none of us would be here

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Wednesday, September 4, 2019 2:04 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

new board desc for the love of god

I still can't figure out how to change the text of a link and still make it active, though (like, for example, Sanpaku did above). right clicking on it doesn't bring up any "edit link" function for me

my theory is that Facebook sell the data to their own advertisers & other third parties, thus also undermining the entire industry of journalism which they have also already gutted

what the fuck you guys on about?

Dan S - bbcode [ url= ] text [ /url ]

without spaces

Plop

sic doesn't need to cut out the shtick, it's hilarious

some of y'all fuckers post AMP links too and that's just as unconscionable

honest/ignorant question: if you don't have facebook, what does the tracking hash do

If you click a link with it and don't have a Facebook account, it creates a version of you that only exists in a secret government/Facebook database that accrues government benefits to which you don't have access. In order to avoid legal responsibility for your digital clone's activities, you must fill out all government forms going forward with "*NFB*" (including the asterisks) as your middle name or as a prefix to your surname, which indicates that you are a sovereign human person and Not of FaceBook.

sounds like a plan

The September 2019 US politics thread truly is great.

xxp thanks, sic!

By "edit link," I think people just mean paste the link into the address bar (or Notepad or whatever), delete all the FB cruft, and copy what's left before posting onto ILX.

If you just paste all the FB cruft into a "hidden" link, I think you will still make sic mad.

I mean if you post like this:

This link is bad

This link is good

amusingly the way their CMS works you can chop the URL all the way down to https://www.irishtimes.com/1.4006979 but that's neither here nor there

any url containing how-mike-pence-shat-on-the-new-carpet is fine, really

Sensenbrenner (R-WI) out at the end of this term.

A 5th TX rep is also out. Something is really brewing here.

xp also thank you DJI for that!

Can’t find the tweet now but I saw a local Texas journalist say they knew of two more republicans planning to retire and he was surprised to see this latest retirement wasn’t one of them. That would make 7?!

The parallel with the quitting Tories is kind of epic, if you can spare the time to keep up between the two games afoot

Almost all the TX quitters are in safe GOP districts

Counterpoint: a lot less of TX is safe for the GOP than you think

Yeah but those guys’ districts in particular are mostly ruby red

Perhaps they have polling data that you don't. They can't all have just gotten unpleasant news from their urologists.

If all the people quitting are quitting safe districts that seems ... weird. Simpler explanation is they’re not all safe districts. Maybe not like they’re going to flip. But like “oh shot I actually have to raise money and campaign, this is not a sinecure any more”.

They may just hate being in congress and want to make some $$$ rather than be sidelined by Pelosi for two more years

Those are definitely not all safe GOP districts. They are districts that have been gerrymandered to shit and can absolutely be turned.

Look their districts up on the Cook Report for the last election

shakey did you check? 3/5 of these races are competitive.

ok a democrat is not taking mike conaway's seat in midland or flores's in waco, but.

will hurd's district tx-23 is i think literally the most vulnerable republican seat in congress. he won by a few hundred votes in 2018. they're absolutely going to lose it to gine ortiz-jones who was already raised over $1m for 2020 (more than any other democratic congressional challenger iirc).

ken marchant won his district by 33% in 2014, but 17% in 2016 and 3% (!) in 2018.

pete olson won by 35% in 2014, then ran unopposed in 2016, then won by 5% in 2018.

blue wave papi

wendy davis of the really long filibuster fame is running for my district (tx-21) currently held by cruz pustule chip roy and previously by actual historical villain lamar smith.

lots of interesting stuff in this, still reading. but

During a meeting with Bush in May 2008, the vice president sparred with Robert Gates, the defense secretary, over the wisdom of a strike against Iran. Gates argued that a military move against Iran by the United States or Israel would strengthen radical factions in the Iranian government and rally the country behind the Iranian regime. Gates said that Olmert should be told in the most direct terms that Israel should not launch a unilateral attack. Cheney disagreed on every point, saying that a strike on Iran was necessary and that at minimum the White House should enable Israel to act. Gates recalled Cheney’s thinking in his memoir: Twenty years on, “if there was a nuclear-armed Iran, people would say the Bush administration could have stopped it.”

That same month, Bush arrived in Jerusalem for his last visit to Israel as president. Olmert hoped to get American and Israeli spies to share more intelligence about Iran, and he used a private meeting at his residence to make his case. When the aides had cleared the room, according to an official who was familiar with the conversation, Olmert moved in to seal the deal. “Come, let’s open the books and be transparent with each other,” he said. Bush agreed, a decision that led to far greater intelligence cooperation between American and Israeli spy services — a “total mutual striptease” in the words of one of Olmert’s former aides. This cooperation would culminate in the Olympic Games operation, which deployed sophisticated computer malware, including the Stuxnet virus, to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities. This was one path forward to containing Iran.

But Bush was also made keenly aware of the other path. One night during his visit, Olmert invited him for a dinner at his residence with the members of his national security cabinet, including Barak, the defense minister, who like Cheney had taken an increasingly hawkish position on Iran during internal discussions. As Olmert tells the story, he and Bush walked alone into a side lounge after the dinner. As the two men relaxed in leather armchairs, Olmert smoking a cigar, the prime minister told Bush that Barak was waiting and wanted an audience.

Bush was reluctant, according to Olmert. “I understand that it is politically important for you to let him in,” Olmert recalls Bush explaining, “but you know my position on the Iran issue. I am unequivocally against an attack.”

thank you bush? jfc

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/magazine/iran-strike-israel-america.html

shit, the best part was right after that

Olmert persisted. Bush eventually relented, and soon Barak was in the room, smoking a cigar and sipping a whiskey. He delivered a comprehensive lecture about the Iran threat. Finally, Bush cut him off. “He banged on the table like this,” Olmert recalls, “and he said: ‘General Barak, do you know what no means? No is no.”’

Barak, for his part, remembers much about the affair differently, including Bush’s reaction. In Barak’s version, when he finished making his case to the American president, Bush turned to Olmert but pointed a finger directly at Barak. “This guy scares the living shit out of me,” Barak recalls him saying. (A spokesman for Bush says the former president does not recall either of these conversations.)

jfc

Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast). The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2019

pres still mad that he doesn't get to go to Alabama to throw paper towels at people

Stop trying to make Alabama happen

https://twitter.com/mark_novata/status/1169347613214302208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1169347613214302208&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fheavy.com%2Fnews%2F2019%2F09%2Fsharpie-sharpiegate-trending-trump-memes%2F

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDpbdLHWkAAFppi?format=jpg&name=900x900

All it would take is one CNN reporter saying something like, 'Mr. President, your Democratic opponents strongly assert that you can't possibly be smart or tough or rich enough to chug an entire bottle of drain cleaner in one sitting. How would you respond to that?'. We got Steve King to drink out of a toilet so, y'know, dare to dream?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDpbdLHWkAAFppi?format=jpg&name=900x900

Crap, sorry.

http://www.hrwiki.org/w/images/5/57/Ab-Abber_2000.png

Conaway by 61 pts, Flores by 15, Olson won by almost 5, and Marchant by 3. imo Hurd is really the only gimme for Dems in that group of Texans, given that he won last time by less than half a point, in a District with demographics that are tilting towards Dems.

many xps

oh I see caek already got there, sorry