2017 Democratic Thread

[Balta1701]

I wonder how many stayed home because of voter suppression laws.

[Balta1701]

The argument is that Trump's "on the fence"/independent supporters were energized the final 10-11 days by the Comey letter and the tide shifted (Clinton had been ahead for most of that time by 3-5% in national polling). Conversely, that it was the final nail in the coffin for young (especially Sanders supporters) and African-American voters who had been previously considering voting for Hillary, depressing votes on the other side.

When pollsters asked people which day they made up their vote and who they voted for, during the Comey week there is a big enough dropoff in Hillary Clinton's numbers that it is the equivalent of several million votes compared to a steady race.

It’s true that there are other possible explanations for a late shift in vote intentions, but thus far there is no alternative explanation of merit. (The cyberhacks were surely important, but their effects would have been felt more steadily throughout the campaign.)

 

Instead, the evidence is clear, and consistent, regarding the Comey effect. The timing of the shift both at the state and national levels lines up very neatly with the publication of the letter, as does the predominance of the story in the media coverage from the final week of the campaign. With an unusually large number of undecided voters late in the campaign, the letter hugely increased the salience of what was the defining critique of Clinton during the campaign at its most critical moment.

[illinilaw08]

I wonder how many people stayed home because of the media narrative over the last few weeks that Trump had no chance of winning?

 

Vox had a post that people who were unfavorable to both Trump and Clinton voted Trump 47/30. You would expect that to be closer to 50/50. It's a very interesting metric that probably shifted the election to Trump.

[caulfield12]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/german-vice-chan...-085837447.html

 

Europe/EU/NATO/BMW vs. Trump, who blinks first?

 

 

 

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/01...anks-devos.html

Liz Warren questioning Devos for Secretary of Education should be high theater.

Edited January 17, 2017 by caulfield12

[Balta1701]

President Obama will commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning and she will be released later this year.

[bmags]

Good. That year plus where she was in solitary was absurd and abusive.

[BigSqwert]

President Obama will commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning and she will be released later this year.

 

Why not release her today? I expect Trump's administration to foil this somehow.

Edited January 17, 2017 by BigSqwert

[StrangeSox]

On Trump's pick for Education Secretary:

 

BETSY DEVOS WANTS TO USE AMERICA'S SCHOOLS TO BUILD "GOD'S KINGDOM"

 

Which brings us back to Michigan, "school choice," charter schools, and vouchers. Betsy DeVos has spent at least two decades pushing vouchers—i.e., public funding to pay for private and religious schools—to the center of the Republican Party's education agenda, thanks in large part to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based think tank.

 

In the mid-'90s, Mackinac leadership suggested a long-term strategy on how to make the unpopular voucher policies more palatable for the mainstream America. Its then-senior vice president, Joseph Overton, developed what became known as the Overton Window, a theory of how a policy initially considered extreme might over time be normalized through gradual shifts in public opinion. Education policies were placed on a liberal-conservative continuum, with the far left representing "Compulsory indoctrination in government schools" and the far right, "No government schools."

 

Charter schools became the main tool of voucher advocates to introduce school choice to public school supporters, with the aim to nudge public opinion closer to supporting tax credits to pay for private schools. Since about 80 percent of American students outside the public system attend religious schools, "universal choice"—or allowing taxpayer money to follow individual students to any private or public school—could eventually mean financing thousands of Christian schools.

 

In Michigan, Detroit has been at the heart of the charter push, which began in the early '90s. In 1996, former Metro Times reporter Curt Guyette showed how the Prince Foundation, as well as the foundation run by Dick DeVos' parents, funded a carefully orchestrated campaign to label Detroit's public schools as failing—and pushed for charters and "universal educational choice" as a better alternative. While Betsy DeVos has not called for an end to traditional public schools, she has written about the need to "retire" and "replace" Detroit's public school system and pressed for aggressively expanding charter schools and vouchers. (In 2000, Dick and Betsy DeVos helped underwrite a ballot initiative to expand the use of vouchers in Michigan and lost badly.)

 

Detroit's schools—where 84 percent of students are black and 80 percent are poor—have been in steady decline since charter schools started proliferating: Public school test scores in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have remained the worst among large cities since 2009. In June, the New York Times published a scathing investigation of the city's school district, which has the second-biggest share of students in charters in America. (New Orleans is No. 1.) Reporter Kate Zernike concluded that lax oversight by state and insufficiently regulated growth—including too many agencies that are allowed to open new charter schools—contributed to a system with "lots of choice, with no good choice."

 

Boote's truck takes a sharp turn into the predominantly Latino section of town, with large, free-standing Victorian cottages, fenceless yards, and ancient trees. Most kids in this neighborhood go to public schools. In the two decades since school choice was implemented, white student enrollment in Holland's public schools has plummeted 60 percent, according to Bridge Magazine. Latino students are now the face of the system, and 70 percent of all students are poor, more than double the district's poverty rate when choice began. The Holland Christian Schools are predominantly white.

 

We leave downtown and drive along Lake Macatawa for about three miles before parking in front of a huge, castlelike mansion. This is Betsy and Dick DeVos' summer home—a three-story, 22,000-square-foot estate that the Holland Sentinel once boasted was the the biggest in the city, if not the county.

 

As we look out at the stone-and-shingle house, Boote reflects on how most people around here—her family, Betsy DeVos' family—grew up among proud Dutch immigrants who overcame deep poverty. DeVos went on to attend a small, elite, mostly white private religious school, and a similar college. She married into a rich dynasty.

 

"'Look at us. God has given to us. I can fix this. All you have to do is be like me.' You can understand how you might think that way, if you grew up here," Boote says later, as we take one final glance at the mansion over its tall, iron gate. "If you come from the small, sheltered, privileged environment of Holland, you are most likely going to have a very limited worldview—including how to fix education."

[StrangeSox]

Why not release him today? I expect Trump's administration to foil this somehow.

 

Sentence is commuted and I don't think a future President can revoke the commutation.

[BigSqwert]

Sentence is commuted and I don't think a future President can revoke the commutation.

 

I wouldn't put it past them to make up some bogus stuff. "She tried attacking a prison guard. That's 20 more years!"

[bmags]

I wouldn't put it past them to make up some bogus stuff. "She tried attacking a prison guard. That's 20 more years!"

 

What rationale is there that Trump Admin would want to reverse this.

[Balta1701]

Why not release her today? I expect Trump's administration to foil this somehow.

Honestly I do not know at all why this President has chosen commutations over pardons but that has been a choice they have made literally thousands of times over the past year, and since I'm in this thread I can say that I'll defer to their judgment as they've earned some deference.

[BigSqwert]

What rationale is there that Drumpf Admin would want to reverse this.

 

Who knows. This is a very petty and unpredictable buffoon.

[Balta1701]

@wikileaks WikiLeaks Retweeted WikiLeaks

If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case

5 days ago.

[bmags]

Honestly I do not know at all why this President has chosen commutations over pardons but that has been a choice they have made literally thousands of times over the past year, and since I'm in this thread I can say that I'll defer to their judgment as they've earned some deference.

 

My best guess is pardon implies innocence whereas commuting is a disagreement on sentencing. I think May puts Manning on a more reasonable sentence for her crimes.

 

The non-violent drug offenders were commuted, again, not implying innocence but instead sentencing issues.

[StrangeSox]

Jennifer Epstein ✔ @jeneps

"I have never heard Betsy speak against our public school system," Lieberman says of DeVos

4:53 PM - 17 Jan 2017

 

Lieberman is just so awful.

[Soxbadger]

My best guess is pardon implies innocence whereas commuting is a disagreement on sentencing. I think May puts Manning on a more reasonable sentence for her crimes.

 

The non-violent drug offenders were commuted, again, not implying innocence but instead sentencing issues.

 

Yeah this is a pretty good explanation. A pardon is as if it never happened. So if youre pardoned you get certain privileges restored (ie if a law says you cant hold office if convicted of an infamous crime). If your sentence is just commuted, you are still guilty, but you are now free.

 

I have a feeling that based on this "technicality" Assange wont be turning himself in.

[Quin]

5 days ago.

 

Bluff called.

[LittleHurt05]

Bluff called.

 

On Saturday he will announce that he has waived extradition. Then on Monday the new President will pardon him as thanks for helping him win the elction.

[caulfield12]

No surprise here...

 

 

In a Washington Post story on Tuesday, freelance stylist Tricia Kelly of Randolph Cree Salon in Washington, D.C., claimed Marla Maples, ex-wife of President-elect Donald Trump, tried to avoid paying for hairstyling services for her daughter, Tiffany Trump, and herself on Inauguration Day.

 

After expressing interest in styling their locks for the big day, Kelly said she was connected to Maples’s assistant through a client. She outlined her rate — $150 for traveling expenses in addition to the cost for her styling services — to Maples’s assistant, which led to bargaining over the price between the parties.

 

“I was told they had a $300 budget for both of them for hair and makeup,” Kelly told the Washington Post.

 

The two parties eventually agreed on a flat fee of $200 for Kelly’s services and $150 for a makeup artist’s services for Maples and Trump, according to Kelly. However, Maples’s assistant then suggested the stylist waive her fee in exchange for promotion on Maples’s social media account, according to Kelly.

 

“I was stunned. I told them . . . I work for a fee, not for free,” she said, offended by the offer. Considering Maples has about 43,700 followers on Instagram, many stylists would love the opportunity to be promoted. However, Kelly prefers to keep her work with political types under the radar so that she doesn’t seem biased when working with clients of different political parties.

[caulfield12]

Putin says the Obama administration is "worse than prostitutes" and maintains Russia did not collect compromising information on Trump when he visited Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant.

 

Of course they didn't!!!!

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/video/putin-accu...-021151552.html

 

Oh, and I forgot Obama's admin being termed "geopolitical bullies," and yet we're still defending Vladimir Putin while our other primary foe is quoting Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dickens at DAVOS?

 

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

 

 

 

2012

 

“Although President Vladimir Putin recently thanked Romney for his openness regarding the ‘No.1 foe’ comment, he also indicated that it would be hard for the Kremlin to work with Romney as president, especially on sensitive security issues such as the missile defense system.

 

During Putin’s interview with RT state television, he also called Obama an ‘honest man who really wants to change much for the better.’ This comment was widely viewed as Putin’s most direct endorsement of Obama in the presidential race.”

 

http://russia-insider.com/en/time-vladimir...k-obama/ri11964

Edited January 18, 2017 by caulfield12

[StrangeSox]

5 days ago.

 

Assange lawyer: Manning commutation doesn't meet extradition offer's conditions

[Soxbadger]

Assange lawyer: Manning commutation doesn't meet extradition offer's conditions

 

This was the easiest news of the week to predict.

[caulfield12]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-...m=.d61773b17042

 

DeVos: Six astonishing things Betsy DeVos said and refused to say at her confirmation hearing

[StrangeSox]

Recap of the 2016 election and how it was covered both pre- and post- election from Nate Silver, and a launching off point of a series of articles expanding on this topic.

 

The Real Story Of 2016.

What reporters — and lots of data geeks, too — missed about the election, and what they’re still getting wrong.