[Winstonm]

Jennifer Rubin nails it:

Quote

Trump is left with his cultlike followers, vague threats to “finish” the wall regardless of Congress, his mindless chants and his sycophantic right-wing media. As for the rest of the country, most Americans have little reason to pay attention to his rants. He’s not setting policy nor saying anything new. In fact, he has become a bit of a bore.

(my emphasis)

Ho-hum. What else is on?

Edit: And while at it, here is a new finding:

Quote

....according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.

Fifty-six percent to 33 percent, more say they trust Mueller’s version of the facts than Trump’s. And by nearly as wide a margin, more believe Mueller is mainly interested in “finding out the truth” than trying to “hurt Trump politically.”

I recommend henceforth that the president's base be termed the "33 percenters".

Edit: WaPo just released a poll that showed 1/3 of Americans think blackface on Halloween is OK. Gee, what a coincidence about that 33%. I guess I have to reconsider my thinking that support for this president is based on racism.

[Winstonm]

Seth Abramson explains the "no collusion found" statement from the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Richard Burr. (Scroll to the top and read each tweet for the full picture.)

There is also this from Marcy Wheeler:

[Chas_P]

 Winstonm, on 2019-February-12, 09:21, said:

I guess I have to reconsider my thinking that support for this president is based on racism.

Please give us your definition of "racism".

[Winstonm]

 Chas_P, on 2019-February-12, 19:50, said:

Please give us your definition of "racism".

You'll have to ask the 33% who think wearing blackface is proper. Btw, into which percentile do you fit?

[y66]

From the NYT Editorial Board:

Quote

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau betrayed financially vulnerable Americans last week by proposing to gut rules conceived during the Obama era that shield borrowers from predatory loans carrying interest rates of 400 percent or more. The bureau’s proposal is based on a legally dubious rationale that will surely be challenged in federal court. The agency’s abdication of its mandate to protect consumers underscores the need for state usury laws, which have passed in 16 states and offer the surest path to curtailing debt-trap lending.

Payday lenders promote “easy” loans for workers who run short of cash between paychecks and who typically promise to repay the debt within two weeks. But voluminous data collected by the consumer protection bureau showed that the industry’s business model — in which a $500 loan could cost a borrower $75 or more in interest just two weeks later — was built on the presumption that customers would be unable to pay at the appointed time and would be forced to run up the tab by borrowing again.

A 2014 bureau study of 12 million similar loans found that over 60 percent went to borrowers who took out seven or more loans in a row. In fact, a majority of loans went to people who renewed so many times that they ended up paying more in fees than the amount of money they originally borrowed. Among those trapped in this debilitating cycle were many people scrimping by on disability income.

After years of research, the bureau in 2017 issued sensible regulations governing loans that lasted 45 days or fewer. The cornerstone rule required payday lenders to determine whether the borrower could repay the debt while still meeting living expenses. The point was to create a supply of small-dollar loans that allowed lenders to earn a reasonable profit without driving borrowers into penury.

This strategy was clearly working. But the Trump administration established from the start that it was more interested in rewarding the lending industry than protecting borrowers. Mick Mulvaney, as the bureau’s acting director, sided with the lenders last year when they went to court to block the regulations. The bureau’s new director, Kathleen Kraninger, has now proposed hollowing out nearly all of the meaningful requirements in the rules — including the ability-to-pay requirement. The bureau argues that there was “insufficient evidence” for the provision, despite a wealth of data supporting it and the fact that the provision has long been a foundation of sound underwriting.

Consumer organizations are gearing up to flood the bureau with data showing that the existing rules are fully justified and that dismantling them would harm millions of borrowers. If the new rules weather the comment period and become final, a lawsuit will certainly follow. By that point, the 2020 political campaigns will be in full swing, and Republican candidates will have a difficult time ducking the issue.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2019-February-12, 20:26, said:

You'll have to ask the 33% who think wearing blackface is proper. Btw, into which percentile do you fit?

I'm getting a little tired of how broad the definition of "blackface" has become.

Blackface originally referred to an extremely exaggerated, clownish portrayal of black people, as done in traditional minstrel shows. It also included derogatory stereotypes of black behavior.

Governor Northam's alleged portrayal of a black man alongside the KKK member is certainly derogatory. But I'm not sure I'd include his admitted occasion of dressing as Michael Jackson for Halloween. Impersonating a specific black person is not making fun of the race, or even saying anything about the race at all. Michael Jackson was one of the most famous entertainers of his time, was it really insulting for white people to impersonate him?

In the current climate, it's clear that any portrayal of a black person by a white person is taboo. But 20-30 years ago this was not the case. Northam's portrayal of Jackson wasn't considered racist at the time, should he really be castigated for not imagining that it would be seen differently decades later?

We don't see women's libbers getting riled up over drag shows -- Ru Paul has made an industry out of it. There are complaints about Apu on The Simpsons now, but the complainers don't really blame the producers for not getting it right when the show was originally created.

[hrothgar]

 barmar, on 2019-February-13, 10:35, said:

Governor Northam's alleged portrayal of a black man alongside the KKK member is certainly derogatory. But I'm not sure I'd include his admitted occasion of dressing as Michael Jackson for Halloween. Impersonating a specific black person is not making fun of the race, or even saying anything about the race at all. Michael Jackson was one of the most famous entertainers of his time, was it really insulting for white people to impersonate him?

Northam is getting pilloried for multiple reasons. His decision to either wear blackface (or alternatively to dress as a Klansman) is obviously highly problematic. However, the bigger issue is how badly he handled the all of the issues around the disclosure.

I agree that standards around blackface have changed dramatically since I was in high school

• 30 years ago blackface was viewed as offensive and racist by the black community
  
• Today blackface is viewed as offensive and racist by both blacks and whites

Furthermore, I believe that politicians who did something offensive in the past but make a sincere effort at addressing this issue should be able to salvage something. However, an awkward admission followed by a transparent set of lies and then offer to "moonwalk" doesn't suggest much of an evolution.

Also, lets pretend that we believe Northam and don't think that he is wearing blackface OR dressed up as a klansman...
Assuming that he's not in the picture, why did he chose to include THAT picture on his yearbook page?

To me, that's a much more interesting question than whether or not its racist to wear blackface...

[hrothgar]

 barmar, on 2019-February-13, 10:35, said:

We don't see women's libbers getting riled up over drag shows --

You do understand that "women's libbers" is an insulting and derogatory term and that your decision to use it really undercuts anything else that you are trying to say.

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2019-February-13, 10:35, said:

I'm getting a little tired of how broad the definition of "blackface" has become.

Blackface originally referred to an extremely exaggerated, clownish portrayal of black people, as done in traditional minstrel shows. It also included derogatory stereotypes of black behavior.

Governor Northam's alleged portrayal of a black man alongside the KKK member is certainly derogatory. But I'm not sure I'd include his admitted occasion of dressing as Michael Jackson for Halloween. Impersonating a specific black person is not making fun of the race, or even saying anything about the race at all. Michael Jackson was one of the most famous entertainers of his time, was it really insulting for white people to impersonate him?

In the current climate, it's clear that any portrayal of a black person by a white person is taboo. But 20-30 years ago this was not the case. Northam's portrayal of Jackson wasn't considered racist at the time, should he really be castigated for not imagining that it would be seen differently decades later?

We don't see women's libbers getting riled up over drag shows -- Ru Paul has made an industry out of it. There are complaints about Apu on The Simpsons now, but the complainers don't really blame the producers for not getting it right when the show was originally created.

The definition of blackface has not changed; the response to it has changed, though, and for the better.

If a white man wanted to pay homage to someone of color, he would not need to paint his face. Painting the face is an emphasis on color. A white man dressed in a tight sequined suit, sequined glove on one hand, wearing a hat and doing the moon walk would certainly honor Michael Jackson's contributions to music and entertainment without emphasizing the difference in his skin color.

I cannot emphasize this enough - skin color is irrelevant. We are all equally human. Our differences are cultural, not race.

[y66]

The people who voted for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam knew where he was from when they voted for him. His southern boondocks background was once viewed as a plus by Dems who now view him as a political liability which he is.

You can debate shades of blackface, corresponding degrees of offensiveness and whether a person's values and attitudes can continue to evolve after age 24. Tellingly, Northam, who began his 'apology tour' this week, has yet to say in a credible way if his values and attitudes have evolved and why he is not only able but determined to do his best to represent all of the people who voted for him.

According to Virginia Mercury editor Robert Zullo, Northam has missed plenty of chances to lead on race.

Should he resign? Political liability aside, 58 percent of black people polled by WaPo don't think he should resign which tells us something.

[Chas_P]

 Winstonm, on 2019-February-12, 20:26, said:

You'll have to ask the 33% who think wearing blackface is proper.

I'm not interested in their definition. I'm interested in yours.

[y66]

Who ya gonna con?

From Bloomberg:

Quote

“This is the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

So declared President Donald Trump onstage last June at a press event at Foxconn’s new factory in Mount Pleasant, Wis. He was there to herald the potential of the Taiwanese manufacturing giant’s expansion into cheesehead country. He’d joined Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to celebrate a partnership he’d helped broker—“one of the great deals ever,” Trump said. In exchange for more than $4.5 billion in government incentives, Foxconn had agreed to build a high-tech manufacturing hub on 3,000 acres of farmland south of Milwaukee and create as many as 13,000 good-paying jobs for “amazing Wisconsin workers” as early as 2022.

In front of national media and an audience of several hundred, Trump talked up the larger meaning. For too long, he said, bad trade deals sent factory jobs to places like China, and that era was over. Yes, this Foxconn deal represented the largest public subsidy package to a foreign company in U.S. history, but it also marked a turning point for “restoring America’s industrial might.” Blue-collar jobs were coming home, starting with the Mount Pleasant facility and its LCD TV production. And what better bellwether for the success of his trade war than Foxconn Technology Group, a leading iPhone maker in China long synonymous with overseas manufacturing? “As Foxconn has discovered, there is no better place to build, hire, and grow than right here in the U.S.,” Trump said. “Made in the USA. It’s all happening.”

For some Foxconn workers watching who’d labored at the LCD TV factory for months, the president’s rhetoric didn’t match reality. The LCD components weren’t made in the USA, according to sources familiar with the operation. They were shipped from a Foxconn factory in Tijuana. The Wisconsin plant was only handling the last steps of assembly, and some TV displays were still labeled “Made in Mexico.” Pay at the factory started at about $14 an hour with no benefits, much less than the $23 average Foxconn promised. Many people weren’t hired full time—the company filled positions with temps and interns from a local technical college. And five workers present for Trump’s speech say some colleagues from Asia were conspicuously absent from the press event. (Foxconn says it encouraged all employees to attend, and the Mexican TV parts were for testing, not indicative of future production.)

Shortly after Trump’s visit, things got worse. A Foxconn manager at the factory, which then had only about 60 people working there, abruptly called about 15 of them—all interns —into a room to say they should seek other jobs because there wasn’t enough work to hire them full time, according to multiple people present. Two sources recall the manager telling the group, cryptically, that there were forces outside the company’s control affecting the Wisconsin project. A number of the interns, who’d received praise from Trump and shaken Gou’s hand just weeks earlier, were stunned. “It was upsetting for people,” says James Pitman, one of the former interns. “They had hyped a lot of ***** up. We were used as a publicity stunt.” Foxconn says that’s insulting and that the internships ended as scheduled.

Time seems to be bearing out the doubters. In a Jan. 30 interview with Reuters, Gou’s special assistant, Louis Woo, said the company was reconsidering its plans for an LCD factory in Mount Pleasant. It will use its campus in Wisconsin to house research and development teams, he suggested, with a much smaller emphasis on manufacturing.

Interviews with 49 people familiar with Foxconn’s Wisconsin project, including more than a dozen current and former employees close to its efforts there, show how hollow the boosters’ assurances have been all along. While Foxconn for months declined requests to interview executives, insiders describe a chaotic environment with ever-changing goals far different from what Trump and others promised. Walker and the White House declined to comment for this story, although a Trump administration official says the White House would be “disappointed” by any reduced investment. The only consistency, many of these people say, lay in how obvious it was that Wisconsin struck a weak deal. Under the terms Walker negotiated, each job at the Mount Pleasant factory is projected to cost the state at least $219,000 in tax breaks and other incentives. The good or extra-bad news, depending on your perspective, is that there probably won’t be 13,000 of them.

From the outset, Foxconn’s plans for U.S. expansion have been nakedly political. The first call to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state jobs agency that oversaw the deal, came in April 2017 from Jared Kushner’s Office of American Innovation at the White House. “It was from a blocked caller, and the lady on the other end mentioned a $10 billion investment,” says Coleman Peiffer, former WEDC director of business attraction. “It sounded like a wild goose chase.”

The chase continued

[y66]

From Trump Puts Best Face on Border Deal, as Aides Try to Assuage an Angry Right by Peter Baker at NYT:

Quote

WASHINGTON — In pursuit of a wall, President Trump ran into one. A single-minded drive to force Congress to finance his signature campaign promise has left Mr. Trump right back where he started, this time seeking a way to climb over the political barrier in his way after trying to charge through it did not work.

As he inched closer to reluctantly accepting a bipartisan spending compromise without the money he demanded for his border wall, Mr. Trump offered no acknowledgment on Wednesday that his pressure tactics had failed even as aides sought to minimize the damage by tamping down criticism on the right.

One call was made to Lou Dobbs, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s whose Fox Business Network show he often tries to catch live. Another was placed to Sean Hannity, the Fox host who regularly talks with the president. The message: Mr. Trump deserved support because he still forced concessions that he would never have gotten without a five-week partial government shutdown.

Even so, it was arguably the most punishing defeat Mr. Trump has experienced as president, and it left the White House scrounging for other ways to pay for a wall on the southwestern border and rethinking its approach to a Congress now partly controlled by Democrats. Mr. Trump’s inability to reach a satisfying deal despite the negotiating experience he regularly touted on the campaign trail suggested that any aspirations of collaboration across party lines may be even more elusive than he had imagined.

“We shut down the government for 35 days, we put America through this crisis, we jeopardized our economy — for what?” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the upper chamber and a member of the House-Senate committee that negotiated this week’s spending deal.

[Winstonm]

 Chas_P, on 2019-February-13, 19:35, said:

I'm not interested in their definition. I'm interested in yours.

Normally I don't answer questions which I think are facetious, but I will this time. A racist is anyone who fails to understand that skin color is meaningless.

For a bonus, I will also define dumbass: after learning that campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the heart of the election met, along with his vice-chairman, Rick Gates, with a GRU operative at the NYC branch of the Havana Cigar Club - a private club on the 39th floor of a Manhattan building at 666 5th Ave owned by the Kushners - and passed along sensitive internal campaign polling data that was so in depth it required specialized training to decipher it and use it, then, all three left separately out different doors in order not to draw attention to themselves, and then after agreeing to a deal with the Special Counsel's Office, lied to the SCO and the judge about this meeting and what type of polling data was passed along - anyone who still claims "no collusion" is a dumbass.

[barmar]

 hrothgar, on 2019-February-13, 11:06, said:

Also, lets pretend that we believe Northam and don't think that he is wearing blackface OR dressed up as a klansman...
Assuming that he's not in the picture, why did he chose to include THAT picture on his yearbook page?

To me, that's a much more interesting question than whether or not its racist to wear blackface...

Oh, I didn't realize until now that this was on a page that's specific to him. I didn't know that yearbooks did that, I thought it was just some random picture in the yearbook for his class, so I wasn't sure why everyone automatically assumed it was him.

But I just looked up the image, and see the fancy title with his name at the top of the page. I guess medical school yearbooks are different from the high school and college books I'm more familiar with.

Definitely suspicious. Even if it's not him, it seems like he was promoting the practice.

[Elianna]

Not saying that I believe this (or that I don't), but he's claiming that he didn't actually put the page together, and didn't know anything about the picture, and hadn't ever seen the yearbook.

So yes, it would seem like he was promoting the practice. Plus the fact that he didn't even seem to know it wasn't him the first time it became public, makes me think that he's either lying now, or really prone to disturbing lapses of memory.

I'm not really taking a stand on whether he should resign, but I will note that we have been talking for a while about this, and no one has mentioned the Lt Gov resigning? I find the lack of outrage about him (being accused of rape by two women) very disturbing.

 barmar, on 2019-February-14, 10:21, said:

Oh, I didn't realize until now that this was on a page that's specific to him. I didn't know that yearbooks did that, I thought it was just some random picture in the yearbook for his class, so I wasn't sure why everyone automatically assumed it was him.

But I just looked up the image, and see the fancy title with his name at the top of the page. I guess medical school yearbooks are different from the high school and college books I'm more familiar with.

Definitely suspicious. Even if it's not him, it seems like he was promoting the practice.

[Chas_P]

 Winstonm, on 2019-February-14, 09:42, said:

Normally I don't answer questions which I think are facetious, but I will this time. A racist is anyone who fails to understand that skin color is meaningless.

It was not intended as a facetious question. You had previously said,

Quote

my thinking that support for this president is based on racism.

Now you say,

Quote

A racist is anyone who fails to understand that skin color is meaningless.

So your contention is that support for President Trump's policies...lower taxes, border security, better trade deals, etc...is directly proportional to how much light is reflected from his supporters' skin? I'm trying really hard to get the correlation. But so far it has escaped me. Please elaborate.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Christopher Titus
‏
Verified account

@TitusNation
Follow Follow @TitusNation
More
A friend of mine sat next to John Brennan on a plane and asked him if the Russia thing was as bad as they say. John Brennan said, “Can’t tell you what, but it’s much worse than you think.”
Mueller hasn’t found too little, he found too much.
#DemocracyShaken

11:21 AM - 14 Feb 2019

True? Lie? Hyperbole? What?

[Winstonm]

 Chas_P, on 2019-February-14, 20:00, said:

It was not intended as a facetious question. You had previously said,

Now you say,

So your contention is that support for President Trump's policies...lower taxes, border security, better trade deals, etc...is directly proportional to how much light is reflected from his supporters' skin? I'm trying really hard to get the correlation. But so far it has escaped me. Please elaborate.

Dear Charles:

Look in a mirror. It's all there.

Something I read:

Quote

Quote

Members of an ideological group share specific knowledge as a given. Inside the group, this knowledge is not perceived as ideological, rather as a fair picture of social or physical reality, and it’s uncontroversial.

Inherently complex issues lend themselves especially to that information warfare (allowing for cherry-picked collections of facts). It seems to be increasingly a type of bunker warfare, in which the disinformation serves less as weapon than as barricade, defending from objective evaluation the group’s sense that their shared knowledge is a fair picture of reality

[johnu]

 Chas_MiniDennison, on 2019-February-14, 20:00, said:

...