2017 Democratic Thread

[StrangeSox]

To be fair, it's his job to do that and there really aren't any checks on the President's authority to launch a nuclear strike. People who are in the "launch nuclear weapons" chain of command down to the guys that turn the keys go through evaluations to ensure that they won't question those orders and won't back down when ordered to take the steps to end hundreds of thousands or millions of lives in an instant.

 

Which is why it's totally cool we have an unhinged toddler running things.

[Balta1701]

This is not alarming...

 

U.S. Pacific Fleet commander: I'd launch nuclear strike against China if Trump ordered it

Um...I hate to say it...but wouldn't U.S. military personnel saying they'd defy the direct order of the guy given power over them by the constitution be equally alarming?

 

We literally built a system with nuclear weapons where there's not supposed to be a veto. It's supposed to be "Mr. President there are missiles inbound do we fire back" - no time there for consultation with Congress.

 

If we're going to elect leaders we don't trust, then well first of all shame on us and if we wind up vaporized we don't get to complain because we elected the racist twit, and second you should build a Congress willing to update that system under the guise of the occasional racist lunatic being elected.

[BigSqwert]

I know that's his job and that's the way things are but it's still scary to hear him say that on record, knowing what a dimwit we have in charge of such decisions.

Edited July 27, 2017 by BigSqwert

[Balta1701]

I know that's his job and that's the way things are but it's still scary to hear him say that on record, knowing what a dimwit we have in charge of such decisions.

Like I said, if we get vaporized, well at least the scary immigrants are getting vaporized too.

[StrangeSox]

Foxconn, Taiwanese manufacturing firm known for making iPhones and having to install suicide nets to stop their employees from killing themselves, announced yesterday that they're building a factory in Wisconsin. This new factory will bring 3,000 jobs to the state, but Foxxconn is receiving $3,000,000,000 in tax incentives in the form of up to $200M/year for up to 15 years in direct payments from Wisconsin taxpayers to Foxconn. This doesn't include any local tax breaks they'll be receiving. An overwhelming majority of these 3k jobs will be low wage, low/no benefit work.

 

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politic...ears/519687001/

[bmags]

I especially love the gloating article in the trib from some douchebag wisconsin person thanking illinois for not installing "real reforms" so that they could get FoxConn.

 

Foxconn is a welfare queen. We need to cut off their welfare and get them a job. I work too hard to have a company like foxconn freeloading.

[caulfield12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

 

It took them WAY too long to figure out putting up nets was one simple way to prevent those deaths.

 

The sad part is the workers always waited until they'd first sent their latest paycheck back to their families...usually, many provinces away from Shenzhen.

[StrangeSox]

I especially love the gloating article in the trib from some douchebag wisconsin person thanking illinois for not installing "real reforms" so that they could get FoxConn.

 

Foxconn is a welfare queen. We need to cut off their welfare and get them a job. I work too hard to have a company like foxconn freeloading.

 

It's going to be built in southern Wisconsin so a lot of the jobs will be filled by Illinois people anyways lol great job Walker!

 

[StrangeSox]

Private prison threatens to close unless the state fills up 300 more beds

 

https://twitter.com/KeeganNYC/status/890541...src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

 

Abolish all private prisons

 

 

[Quin]

Private prison threatens to close unless the state fills up 300 more beds

 

https://twitter.com/KeeganNYC/status/890541...src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

 

Abolish all private prisons

 

What the f***

[caulfield12]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/07/politics/201...rump/index.html

 

Daunting challenge for Dems to take back House in 2018

[StrangeSox]

[GoSox05]

If We Care About Inequality, We Must Confront Capital

 

 

Here is a piece to go with that. From the new People's Policy Project, a new left wing think tank from Matt Bruenig.

 

 

Keith Ellison even tweeting about it.

 

@keithellison 21h21 hours ago

We need more progressive think tanks. Excited to see the People’s Policy Project up & running.

[StrangeSox]

Shockingly, Republicans in Indiana are suppressing the vote in Democratic areas and expanding it in Republican areas

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/08...olls/435450001/

 

Most telling, Hamilton County saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting from 2008 to 2016, while Marion County saw a 26 percent decline. Absentee ballots are used at early voting stations.

 

Population growth and other factors may have played a role, but Hamilton County Clerk Kathy Richardson, a Republican, told IndyStar the rise in absentee voting in Hamilton County was largely a result of the addition of two early voting stations, which brought the total to three.

 

"It was a great concept to open those (voting stations)," Richardson said, adding that the turnout might have increased with the addition of even more voting machines.

 

Other Central Indiana Republican strongholds, including Boone, Johnson and Hendricks counties, also have added early voting sites — and enjoyed corresponding increases in absentee voter turnout.

 

But not Marion County, which tends to vote Democratic, and has a large African-American population.

 

During that same 2008-16 period, the number of early voting stations declined from three to one in Marion County, as Republican officials blocked expansion.

Edited August 10, 2017 by StrangeSox

[Jake]

Shockingly, Republicans in Indiana are suppressing the vote in Democratic areas and expanding it in Republican areas

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/08...olls/435450001/

 

Came here to post this. What a clever way to do it, too. It seems nice and bipartisan to have one member of each party on the boards...and the Dems will always vote to expand voting access. Republicans will vote to expand voting access when it's likely to earn them votes, but then can shut down voting access in all the places where they are likely to be hurt by it. So instead of, say, a system in which early voting is just stalled in general due to Republicans, this system expands early voting in Republican areas while halting/reducing it in Democratic areas.

[caulfield12]

Even if the Democrats are able to rebrand their agenda—the party's new motto is "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages," which has been compared to pizza company Papa John's slogan—and win back some seats in areas where Trump barely clinched a victory, it likely won't be enough to give them a majority in either house of Congress.

 

"Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points—a pretty good midterm by historical standards—they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats," David Wasserman, of poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight, wrote Monday.

 

"Today, Republicans don’t even need to win any 'swing states' to win a Senate majority: 52 seats are in states where the 2016 presidential margin was at least 5 percentage points more Republican than the national outcome," Wasserman added.

 

But Democratic operatives tell Newsweek the party could see major wins against the GOP in the upcoming elections if they further embrace the progressive, Bernie Sanders-style politics that grew increasingly popular throughout the 2016 primaries.

 

"Sanders supporters are forceful, they're vocal, but they haven't learned how to win yet," says Scott Bolden, a Democratic strategist and former chairman of the D.C. Democratic State Committee. "I think the Democrats are still trying to win support from Sanders supporters, and whether they have been successful to date is still an open question."

 

Progressives continue to lean on the Republican Party's stalled agenda in their efforts to unseat the GOP with liberal newcomers, believing a shift further to the left could be the most effective way of garnering anti-Trump voters, instead of embracing the centrist governing style employed by Clinton and Obama Democrats.

 

"Is it convenient someone as horrific as Trump, with his destructive agenda, is in the White House? In a way, yes," says Lucy Flores, a former Nevada assemblywoman and founding board member of the progressive group Our Revolution. "It helps engage people who otherwise may not be involved in politics take a stand for the issues they believe in. It's why we've been able to field and train so many new people to run in local elections."

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-may-win-20...-153122679.html

 

Edited August 11, 2017 by caulfield12

[GoSox05]

Things are bad, and David Frum makes them worse

 

 

Great take down of the awful David Frum. Who liberals are way too cozy with.

[StrangeSox]

Came here to post this. What a clever way to do it, too. It seems nice and bipartisan to have one member of each party on the boards...and the Dems will always vote to expand voting access. Republicans will vote to expand voting access when it's likely to earn them votes, but then can shut down voting access in all the places where they are likely to be hurt by it. So instead of, say, a system in which early voting is just stalled in general due to Republicans, this system expands early voting in Republican areas while halting/reducing it in Democratic areas.

 

IIRC Ohio has done basically the same thing.

[StrangeSox]

[caulfield12]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/11/politics/dem...feud/index.html

 

The argument that could derail the Democratic Party

[StrangeSox]

There was a failed unionization vote last week at a Nissan plant in the South. Turns out Nissan promoted a bunch of temp workers right before the vote to bring it down.

 

https://twitter.com/MikeElk/status/89610764...src=twsrc%5Etfw

[caulfield12]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/opinions/int...ston/index.html

Has Trump United the Democratic Party ?

[ron883]

Who's the young guy some people think will be ready to run by 2024? Saw him mentioned here before.

[Balta1701]

Who's the young guy some people think will be ready to run by 2024? Saw him mentioned here before.

That's not exactly very specific. Eloy Jiminez?

[StrangeSox]

I know bmags has posted about housing issues before, but this seems....bad

 

 

Here's why that buyer may not plan to live in your home

One out of every four homes sold in the Chicago area in 2016 went to buyers who don't plan to live in the property, a phenomenon that sneaked up on almost everybody.

 

Just over 26 percent of the homes sold in 2016 in the metropolitan area went to small investors, according to figures Attom Data Solutions compiled exclusively for Crain's. The figure is up from 10 percent a decade earlier. The buyers include those who plan to rent the properties to tenants, rehab them for resale or use them as second homes.

 

Small investors are a different crowd from the big institutional investors that were hoovering up distressed properties by the thousands a few years ago. In Attom's definition, small investors own up to 100 properties, but in the Chicago area, about three-quarters of the buyers own just one or two, according to Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at Attom.

 

"This is something we haven't seen in about 50 years, this level of small-investor ownership of the housing stock," Blomquist said. Nationwide, 33.7 percent of last year's home sales were to small investors, Attom's data show. That's up from 21.6 percent a decade ago.

 

Institutional buyers picked up 3 percent of the Chicago-area homes sold in 2016. Combined with small investors' buys, that makes 29.1 percent of sales going to non-resident buyers.

 

 

It's not mentioned in the article, but I've read that in at least some markets, investors are buying up apartment buildings to turn them into de facto hotels via AirBnB, which reduces housing stock and lets them get around all sorts of legal requirements they'd have if they were legitimate hotels.