Matters of politics, mostly USian.
Oct. 8th, 2017 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptGreetings.
Those who fall afoul of the fact-checkers the most are, unsurprisingly, not a fan of them.
If you're looking for the most recent and most wide-ranging scandal of the Current Administration, then, well, it exploded into view when the Current Administrator fired the FBI Director on the recommendation of the recused Attorney General over, ostensibly, the "BUT HER EMAILS!" issue. We mention the recused AG, however, because it became immediately apparent that the firing was more to do with the continual discovery of ties between the Russian government and just about every member of the Current Administrator's campaign for President. As the investigation continues, the Current Administrator continues to get more strident and unhinged, and hunkers down into even more defensive postures as the investigations continue. Even when he supposedly is willing to testify under oath about certain matters.
It's no laughing matter. Then again, the Current Administrator doesn't genuinely laugh all that much. Instead he demands that his cabinet members shower him with praise/a>, despite having done nothing to earn or deserve it. Here's a timeline of the Administrator and Russian ties.
President Obama tried to punish Rusia for their actions in interfering with tha election in the United States, but ran into opposition everywhere, including fear of retaliation. But because very little happened, the Current Administrator tried to say that President Obama was the real collaborator with Russia.
The Current Administrator's continual pro-Russia stance generates a lot of divisions, even in his own staff and allies. Congress has to get their act in gear, not that they will. Russia is arresting their opposition leaders on whatever charges can be slung.
The Current Administrator cares not for the truth. Or lies. Just that there's enough stories in play for everyone to choose whichever one the Administrator wants them to. Baseless accusations are the easiest and least-effort way of doing it.
The Current Administrator continues to be in Constitutional violation regarding his own coffers being enriched by foreign governments and the United States government. Maryland and the District of Columbia have both sued the President over this continued profits.
The Current Administration is making sure the civil rights divisions of the government are being rolled back and unstaffed, when not explicitly changing their mandate to the opposite of civil rights. several govenment agencies are not uploading their hate crime data to the FBI. That's in addition to the systematized voter suppression tool in use by several Republican states that now has a federal commission underway with the intent of suppressing more votes that has been demanding sensitive voter information. In addition to that, several items actually intended to help ensure accurate votes were defunded or placed under the control of someone who believes in the voter fraud myth. Several states have pushed back against the request, some more colorfully than others, drawing a rebuke from the person in charge of the commission as well as allegations that the commission violated federal law in its request. Even though Kansas had to tell the comission chair that the data he wanted was unavailable.
(They're really just doing what the ACRU has been doing, just written larger.)
Considering that the attack on voting integrity in the United States was more widespread than previously thought, which was thought to be pretty bad by itself, the attacks on voting integrity and voting by the Administrator appear to be helping the next attackers more than hindering them. And those attackers are increasing in their frequency.
The Muslim travel ban is back on, at least in a limited form, even though appeals courts told the ban to get stuffed.
The continuing attempts from the Republican Party to repeal and dismantle the Affordable Care Act are bringing out protests in force, including dragging wheelchair-using protesters out of their chairs while arresting them. Because allowing peaceful protest only applies to the other guy, I guess.
The current Attorney General believes in reviving programs that were proven not to work on getting young children to not use drugs. Because he fails to understand the nature of the market that's created for drugs. Children get hurt in all of the machinations. Courts are prescribing specific items to help curb addictions...making some companies very profitable by being able to use the would-not-be-jailed population as their test subjects.
Some parole board hearings in Missouri were more about saying the secret word rather than determining parole.
Briefings for this Administration seem designed to provide as little information as possible, including things that should be obvious or deducible.
The best way to try and sell unpopular tax cuts is to lie about them, mislead about them, and then patronize the people who oppose them, according to the Current Administrator. And, well, considering all he has to do is convince legislators to do it, and plenty of legislators and conservatives are willing to believe just about anything... we can expect bad and worse to come from the Republican legislative houses with wide-ranging effects.
The Current Administrator may have been the last one to be able to roust enough white Christians to create victory. Considering that the biggest base of supporters of the Administration are hiding in the suburbs as much, if not more, than the places the media expects them to be, maybe it's possible to roust a big swath of them as needed for a while yet. They're certainly carrying the torch for many of his ideas all on their own.
Attempts by the Administration to roll back environmental protections are being stymied - often by other Republicans as climate scientists attempt to adjust their understanding so as to account for discrepancies between the historical record and projections of the future and meterologists have to expand their pallettes. The Administration's EPA is doing its best, however, to roll back as much regulation as it can. Because it apparaently is okay if the United States contributes significantly to an attitude that things can be just thrown away.
The Current Administration's emphasis on deporting anyone who looks undocumented is putting a serious cramp in farmers' abilities to harvest their crops and is making it harder for immigrant women to report domestic abuse for fear of deportation.
Then there's the shuttering of programs that actually helped undocumented families correctly navigate immigration coupled with specifically targeting those who were given reprieve from deportation because they had made a life for themselves in the United States.
White supremacist violence is not new and sudden - it's just getting further out into the mainstream.
Robotics teams looking to compete are being denied entry into the United States, including the all-women team from Afghanistan. Presumably because someone believes that women with scientific knowledge are terrorists.
Elsewhere, you'll hear plenty about the left supposedly causing problems on campus, but not when those same leftists are being threatened.
The more the Current Administrator blames the media and paints them as lying adversaries, the more he resembles dictators and other autocrats. This is after a time where the Administration said that briefings could not be held on camera, without giving a why.
There are a lot of profiteers making money on the practice of scaring people about an Other. In Florida, it's easier to claim defense when you shoot an Other.
For an Ohio council member, death is preferable to taxes when it comes to trying to help overdosing addicts. The councilmember has proposed keeping a list of people whom emergency medical services have helped on overdoses and cutting off emergency services for anyone on their third call. One of the sheriffs in Ohio prevents his deputies from carrying an overdose antidote. Palm Beach is having struggles with corrupt houses committing insurance fraud on addicts rather than helping them get unaddicted.
The obssession with deregulation is an obsession with people dying from things that are unsafe. Fire, when it strikes, is often an agitator for social change...or a pretext for a government to crack down on who they don't like.
Women serving life sentences without parole were given an opportunity to have their sentences changed...yet the process for their potential freedom is not the process they should have received.
Any time a conservative tells you about the land where private giving replaces the social safety net, call them out on their bullshit and explain that government has always had a hand in the social safety net. The Administration and its supporters want you to believe anyone on public assistance is morally deficient, when it's much more likely they're a byproduct of the decisions people at Trump's income make.
More minority deaths at the hands of police, and yet things don't seem to be changing. Also, civilians should not have to de-escalate police officers to save their own lives. What police officers do with dogs is also indicative of what they will do with people. Despite there having been plenty of opportunities for police to learn how to handle people better. One of which might be actually using respectful language around minority drivers.
The National Security Agency has said they're not actually going to tell us how many people have been spied upon in warrantless wiretaps and backdoor programs. Even with a Supreme Court ruling saying they couldn't have been given life sentences as juveniles, many inmates find themselves still with life sentences they earned as juveniles. The public is generally denied information about what happens in prisons, including their generally-awful treatment of people with mental illnesses in prison.
Trans detainees in ICE custody are often at risk for sexual assault.
Republicans appear to be increasingly opposed to all institutions, unions, or other things created or supported by the government that have the potential to make people's lives better.
(As always, there's a lot of "not all" involved in this - you will always find a Republican telling others to shove off because he doesn't want children to kill themselves over bathroom bills. But they're not the majority anymore, it seems.)
An opinion for the Democrats that says if they want to win, they will have to avoid being an ideological anything and just run candidates that are in-step with the opinions of the districts. Which, as I recall, the Democrats have tried, and were ousted because people tend to prefer the Republican that proudly proclaims how much they're going to screw everyone who votes for them than the Democrat that claims to have their interessts at heart and then screws them. Hypocrisy used to be a thing that got you pummeled.
Some activist groups are trying to prevent deaths of migrants out in the deserts between the United States and Mexico, and they have a complicated relationship with the Border Patrol.
Turkish opposition came out in mass protests against Erdogan and his restrictive policies and practices.
Dealing with North Korea is essentially trying to pick from a list of bad options - although one of them might lead to the actually desired result of disarmament.
The United States and Russia are essentially fighting separate wars in Syria. But Iraq seems to be going well, with much of the occupying forces pushed out of places like Mosul. Although there's always the issues that happen when the security forces start acting outside the law.
The current policy regarding fighting wars seems to be to leave it up to the generals and then blame them if things go wrong.
A "put up or shut up" proposal for both the red and blue states to separate in all but name and then reconvene around the next Presidential election to see who's doing better. Because the suburbs are also teeming with poverty and even less equipped to handle it than the cities are. If the red states are smart, they won't take the deal, because Colorado Springs already tried it, and it didn't go well at all.
The SCOTUS says that churches should be free to apply for state-funded grants...at least on the issue of playground resurfacing.
This Administration is alienating just about everyone, except dictators and strongmen. Oh, and white supremacists looking to get into respectability.
Not-science has significant latitude in state education to be taught with science.
Attempts to kill and wound Congresscritters for their political beliefs is almost certain to backfire, as it causes unity instead of further divisions.
If you want to keep tabs on everything, Amy Siskind has been keeping lists. It is for the purpose of making sure of noticing how radically your world has changed around you.
Rather than try to make things work for mass transit commuters, Mr. Cuomo suggests that they drive into New York City...
Housing landlords told their poor residents that the police would be coming by to train the police dogs in searching places. And, of course, if they found something, that would be prosecutable. The practice stopped because one of the residents objected to being used for warrantless searches.
Media outlets that play to partisan impulses are doing so with the intent of getting a population hooked on them. What's disturbing is that it seems to be working. At this point in the previous administration, the opposition network was talking about a choice of mustard with the same fervor that people now are talking about the current scandals.
And yet, with all this barrage, ways to stay motivated and on balance while everything around you seems to be going to pot. Understanding that you can take a break from the feeds is probably helpful, too.
Recommendations for Canada to truly implement reconciliation with their First Nations. Which probably could be adopted by the States, too...
Wales and Scotland are offering free abortion to women from Northern Ireland who are traveling to have the proceudre done.
The Six-Day War has had lasting effects in the fifty-year occupation that followed.
Stories of the children of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of churches that claim ithey're the most biblical and holy are the ones that exclude and marginalize their women. However, plenty of women are taking their fight to the people who want to enslave them and others are carving space for themselves and advocating that the patriarchal history be revised. Many are vowing to break a cycle of violence against themselves and their daughters.
If you would like a distraction, or some training on how to spot the actual fake news amongst the proclamations of the Current Administrator, have a go at Factiliious. Or, if you just want something potentially soothing, a cat purr simulator.
Those who fall afoul of the fact-checkers the most are, unsurprisingly, not a fan of them.
If you're looking for the most recent and most wide-ranging scandal of the Current Administration, then, well, it exploded into view when the Current Administrator fired the FBI Director on the recommendation of the recused Attorney General over, ostensibly, the "BUT HER EMAILS!" issue. We mention the recused AG, however, because it became immediately apparent that the firing was more to do with the continual discovery of ties between the Russian government and just about every member of the Current Administrator's campaign for President. As the investigation continues, the Current Administrator continues to get more strident and unhinged, and hunkers down into even more defensive postures as the investigations continue. Even when he supposedly is willing to testify under oath about certain matters.
It's no laughing matter. Then again, the Current Administrator doesn't genuinely laugh all that much. Instead he demands that his cabinet members shower him with praise/a>, despite having done nothing to earn or deserve it. Here's a timeline of the Administrator and Russian ties.
President Obama tried to punish Rusia for their actions in interfering with tha election in the United States, but ran into opposition everywhere, including fear of retaliation. But because very little happened, the Current Administrator tried to say that President Obama was the real collaborator with Russia.
The Current Administrator's continual pro-Russia stance generates a lot of divisions, even in his own staff and allies. Congress has to get their act in gear, not that they will. Russia is arresting their opposition leaders on whatever charges can be slung.
The Current Administrator cares not for the truth. Or lies. Just that there's enough stories in play for everyone to choose whichever one the Administrator wants them to. Baseless accusations are the easiest and least-effort way of doing it.
The Current Administrator continues to be in Constitutional violation regarding his own coffers being enriched by foreign governments and the United States government. Maryland and the District of Columbia have both sued the President over this continued profits.
The Current Administration is making sure the civil rights divisions of the government are being rolled back and unstaffed, when not explicitly changing their mandate to the opposite of civil rights. several govenment agencies are not uploading their hate crime data to the FBI. That's in addition to the systematized voter suppression tool in use by several Republican states that now has a federal commission underway with the intent of suppressing more votes that has been demanding sensitive voter information. In addition to that, several items actually intended to help ensure accurate votes were defunded or placed under the control of someone who believes in the voter fraud myth. Several states have pushed back against the request, some more colorfully than others, drawing a rebuke from the person in charge of the commission as well as allegations that the commission violated federal law in its request. Even though Kansas had to tell the comission chair that the data he wanted was unavailable.
(They're really just doing what the ACRU has been doing, just written larger.)
Considering that the attack on voting integrity in the United States was more widespread than previously thought, which was thought to be pretty bad by itself, the attacks on voting integrity and voting by the Administrator appear to be helping the next attackers more than hindering them. And those attackers are increasing in their frequency.
The Muslim travel ban is back on, at least in a limited form, even though appeals courts told the ban to get stuffed.
The continuing attempts from the Republican Party to repeal and dismantle the Affordable Care Act are bringing out protests in force, including dragging wheelchair-using protesters out of their chairs while arresting them. Because allowing peaceful protest only applies to the other guy, I guess.
The current Attorney General believes in reviving programs that were proven not to work on getting young children to not use drugs. Because he fails to understand the nature of the market that's created for drugs. Children get hurt in all of the machinations. Courts are prescribing specific items to help curb addictions...making some companies very profitable by being able to use the would-not-be-jailed population as their test subjects.
Some parole board hearings in Missouri were more about saying the secret word rather than determining parole.
Briefings for this Administration seem designed to provide as little information as possible, including things that should be obvious or deducible.
The best way to try and sell unpopular tax cuts is to lie about them, mislead about them, and then patronize the people who oppose them, according to the Current Administrator. And, well, considering all he has to do is convince legislators to do it, and plenty of legislators and conservatives are willing to believe just about anything... we can expect bad and worse to come from the Republican legislative houses with wide-ranging effects.
The Current Administrator may have been the last one to be able to roust enough white Christians to create victory. Considering that the biggest base of supporters of the Administration are hiding in the suburbs as much, if not more, than the places the media expects them to be, maybe it's possible to roust a big swath of them as needed for a while yet. They're certainly carrying the torch for many of his ideas all on their own.
Attempts by the Administration to roll back environmental protections are being stymied - often by other Republicans as climate scientists attempt to adjust their understanding so as to account for discrepancies between the historical record and projections of the future and meterologists have to expand their pallettes. The Administration's EPA is doing its best, however, to roll back as much regulation as it can. Because it apparaently is okay if the United States contributes significantly to an attitude that things can be just thrown away.
The Current Administration's emphasis on deporting anyone who looks undocumented is putting a serious cramp in farmers' abilities to harvest their crops and is making it harder for immigrant women to report domestic abuse for fear of deportation.
Then there's the shuttering of programs that actually helped undocumented families correctly navigate immigration coupled with specifically targeting those who were given reprieve from deportation because they had made a life for themselves in the United States.
White supremacist violence is not new and sudden - it's just getting further out into the mainstream.
Robotics teams looking to compete are being denied entry into the United States, including the all-women team from Afghanistan. Presumably because someone believes that women with scientific knowledge are terrorists.
Elsewhere, you'll hear plenty about the left supposedly causing problems on campus, but not when those same leftists are being threatened.
The more the Current Administrator blames the media and paints them as lying adversaries, the more he resembles dictators and other autocrats. This is after a time where the Administration said that briefings could not be held on camera, without giving a why.
There are a lot of profiteers making money on the practice of scaring people about an Other. In Florida, it's easier to claim defense when you shoot an Other.
For an Ohio council member, death is preferable to taxes when it comes to trying to help overdosing addicts. The councilmember has proposed keeping a list of people whom emergency medical services have helped on overdoses and cutting off emergency services for anyone on their third call. One of the sheriffs in Ohio prevents his deputies from carrying an overdose antidote. Palm Beach is having struggles with corrupt houses committing insurance fraud on addicts rather than helping them get unaddicted.
The obssession with deregulation is an obsession with people dying from things that are unsafe. Fire, when it strikes, is often an agitator for social change...or a pretext for a government to crack down on who they don't like.
Women serving life sentences without parole were given an opportunity to have their sentences changed...yet the process for their potential freedom is not the process they should have received.
Any time a conservative tells you about the land where private giving replaces the social safety net, call them out on their bullshit and explain that government has always had a hand in the social safety net. The Administration and its supporters want you to believe anyone on public assistance is morally deficient, when it's much more likely they're a byproduct of the decisions people at Trump's income make.
More minority deaths at the hands of police, and yet things don't seem to be changing. Also, civilians should not have to de-escalate police officers to save their own lives. What police officers do with dogs is also indicative of what they will do with people. Despite there having been plenty of opportunities for police to learn how to handle people better. One of which might be actually using respectful language around minority drivers.
The National Security Agency has said they're not actually going to tell us how many people have been spied upon in warrantless wiretaps and backdoor programs. Even with a Supreme Court ruling saying they couldn't have been given life sentences as juveniles, many inmates find themselves still with life sentences they earned as juveniles. The public is generally denied information about what happens in prisons, including their generally-awful treatment of people with mental illnesses in prison.
Trans detainees in ICE custody are often at risk for sexual assault.
Republicans appear to be increasingly opposed to all institutions, unions, or other things created or supported by the government that have the potential to make people's lives better.
(As always, there's a lot of "not all" involved in this - you will always find a Republican telling others to shove off because he doesn't want children to kill themselves over bathroom bills. But they're not the majority anymore, it seems.)
An opinion for the Democrats that says if they want to win, they will have to avoid being an ideological anything and just run candidates that are in-step with the opinions of the districts. Which, as I recall, the Democrats have tried, and were ousted because people tend to prefer the Republican that proudly proclaims how much they're going to screw everyone who votes for them than the Democrat that claims to have their interessts at heart and then screws them. Hypocrisy used to be a thing that got you pummeled.
Some activist groups are trying to prevent deaths of migrants out in the deserts between the United States and Mexico, and they have a complicated relationship with the Border Patrol.
Turkish opposition came out in mass protests against Erdogan and his restrictive policies and practices.
Dealing with North Korea is essentially trying to pick from a list of bad options - although one of them might lead to the actually desired result of disarmament.
The United States and Russia are essentially fighting separate wars in Syria. But Iraq seems to be going well, with much of the occupying forces pushed out of places like Mosul. Although there's always the issues that happen when the security forces start acting outside the law.
The current policy regarding fighting wars seems to be to leave it up to the generals and then blame them if things go wrong.
A "put up or shut up" proposal for both the red and blue states to separate in all but name and then reconvene around the next Presidential election to see who's doing better. Because the suburbs are also teeming with poverty and even less equipped to handle it than the cities are. If the red states are smart, they won't take the deal, because Colorado Springs already tried it, and it didn't go well at all.
The SCOTUS says that churches should be free to apply for state-funded grants...at least on the issue of playground resurfacing.
This Administration is alienating just about everyone, except dictators and strongmen. Oh, and white supremacists looking to get into respectability.
Not-science has significant latitude in state education to be taught with science.
Attempts to kill and wound Congresscritters for their political beliefs is almost certain to backfire, as it causes unity instead of further divisions.
If you want to keep tabs on everything, Amy Siskind has been keeping lists. It is for the purpose of making sure of noticing how radically your world has changed around you.
Rather than try to make things work for mass transit commuters, Mr. Cuomo suggests that they drive into New York City...
Housing landlords told their poor residents that the police would be coming by to train the police dogs in searching places. And, of course, if they found something, that would be prosecutable. The practice stopped because one of the residents objected to being used for warrantless searches.
Media outlets that play to partisan impulses are doing so with the intent of getting a population hooked on them. What's disturbing is that it seems to be working. At this point in the previous administration, the opposition network was talking about a choice of mustard with the same fervor that people now are talking about the current scandals.
And yet, with all this barrage, ways to stay motivated and on balance while everything around you seems to be going to pot. Understanding that you can take a break from the feeds is probably helpful, too.
Recommendations for Canada to truly implement reconciliation with their First Nations. Which probably could be adopted by the States, too...
Wales and Scotland are offering free abortion to women from Northern Ireland who are traveling to have the proceudre done.
The Six-Day War has had lasting effects in the fifty-year occupation that followed.
Stories of the children of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of churches that claim ithey're the most biblical and holy are the ones that exclude and marginalize their women. However, plenty of women are taking their fight to the people who want to enslave them and others are carving space for themselves and advocating that the patriarchal history be revised. Many are vowing to break a cycle of violence against themselves and their daughters.
If you would like a distraction, or some training on how to spot the actual fake news amongst the proclamations of the Current Administrator, have a go at Factiliious. Or, if you just want something potentially soothing, a cat purr simulator.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-10 07:21 pm (UTC)