demagogue on 25/1/2020 at 03:12
Another way the criminal trial analogy is interesting (and the fact that this isn't one) is that it seems the facts of the case aren't really credibly in dispute.
If it were a real trial, there wouldn't even be jurors involved because they only decide on matters of fact. (They might come up with some alternative bizarro narrative, but the evidence is pretty one sided, unambiguous, and all a matter of public record, but even aside from that, the defendant himself admits the facts and says there's nothing wrong with them.)
If the facts aren't in dispute, then it's just a summary decision by the judge as a matter of law, asking do the indusputable facts violate the legal standard or not. So we see this really weird "prosecution" speech working around that, doing what you don't need to do in a real trial, which is to say "you know this. Everybody knows this." If this were a trail we'd skip this part because it'd go in the record automatically. But here we have to pretend facts are true.
It makes it look like one of those deep south 1930s trials where the white guy confesses and the jurors say to themselves, welp the dedendant is black. That's all I need to know to convict. That's the "we're lost part".
Law and their beloved constitution are only as good as people actually bothering to follow them and know a clear fact when they see it.
Starker on 25/1/2020 at 12:05
Yeah, I thought the "we're lost" speech encapsulates and puts into words how a lot of people feel about it just like "no decency" crystalised everything that was wrong about McCarthyism. Right matters. Or at least it should. And of course there's all the backdrop of the man who first said it having been slimed by Lord Dampnut's toadies. Just like with McCarthy, the public has seen relentless bullying, evasion of duty, lying, and attacks on anybody who dares to disagree and speak out.
As they say, history rhymes, and McCarthy was in many ways similar to Lord Dampnut. Both men are the products of vicious Republican politics and McCarthy was just as ready to spin constant falsehoods, use underhanded tactics, and bait the media. The "no decency" moment is a remarkable piece of history and I encourage anyone to (
https://youtu.be/wJHsur3HqcI?t=1h10m20s) go check it out in the documentary Point of Order. Just the juxtaposition of these two characters alone... Welch, playing the gentle country lawyer and mocking the histrionics of McCarthyism by needling Cohn and McCarthy not understanding he has long stepped over the line and obliviously continuing to press the issue, finally culminating in the famous line by Welch. Reportedly, he was so clueless, he asked, "What did I do? What did I do?" after the backlash.
Of course, this was far from the coup de grâce it's sometimes depicted as. The red scare didn't start or end with McCarthy and indeed it wasn't the first red scare in US history. And there were several other moments like these, like the Declaration of Conscience and the famous "not descended from fearful men" address. But it was one of the outstanding moments to signal that people had finally had enough. Stalin was dead, the Korean War was over, and the Cold War no longer seemed quite as scary, so GOP support of McCarthyism gradually started to wither and it lost its bite.
Oh, and btw, by this point in time I don't have to explain why exactly Tony is full of it, right? We can just take it as given?
demagogue on 25/1/2020 at 14:31
The history was interesting. As I understood it, the "no decency", or the subtext of it, was because McCarthy was dog-whistling that the guy was gay as well as a communist sympathizer. One could interpret that as assuming it's a terrible slander to accuse or just dog-whistle suggest a decorated soldier of being gay (which isn't really how we want to remember it today), but I prefer the interpretation that it's none of the Senate's business to even be making the suggestion or harassing the guy with no rational connection to anything the public should be concerned about to begin with.
But that isn't what I wanted to post about now. What I want to post about now is actual disgust at my "religious" friends going on about Trump's remarks at the pro-life rally, how "life is sacred and God's creation even from conception" and all that. And I try to understand their thinking on a lot of things, but this is one is pretty beyond the pale however you slice it. The guy has been linked to paying for 8 abortions that we know about, and I have an idea the number is higher, even much higher than that. It's almost literally stupefying how much of a mockery that makes of what he's saying, coming from him, and how putrid it is for people that legitimately care about the sanctity of life from conception to lap it up. I haven't used ole pukey emoji here in I don't know how many years, but imma pull him out for this. :eww:
Starker on 25/1/2020 at 15:24
There was indeed a lot of dog-whistling of that kind at the time. On both sides. McCarthy of course constantly ranted about the queers and communists, but even Welch made references to pixies during the hearings as a not so subtle jab at Cohn. There was a lavender scare going on, as it's sometimes called, and Eisenhower fired and outed thousands of people suspected or found to be homosexual.
The "no decency" part itself I don't think had much to do with that, though. Rather, it was McCarthy going to a place where Welch didn't think he would go and trying to destroy yet another person's career over spurious allegations on a matter Welch had considered to be an innocent mistake. Of course, everybody knew about Fisher being taken off the case at that point and the reason for it being his once membership in the National Lawyers Guild. But, more crucially, everybody saw that McCarthy didn't care one bit about the truth or the damage he was doing. I think the Point of Order documentary I linked above does a pretty decent job of highlighting why exactly people had grown so disgusted with McCarthy at that point.
Starker on 25/1/2020 at 20:30
Another one of Lord Dampnut's fine people in the news:
Quote:
(
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/crying-nazi-involved-unite-right-rally-arrested-fbi-n1121266)
A New Hampshire man who was involved in the violent 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Virginia was charged Thursday with threatening a person using the online messaging app Telegram, authorities said.
The man, Christopher Cantwell, 39, was taken into custody and indicted on two counts, extortion over interstate communications and threatening interstate communications, according to the FBI's Boston field office.
The indictment alleges that Cantwell threatened a man to get the personal identifying information of a second man with whom he was feuding. He is alleged to have told the victim over Telegram that if he didn't hand over the information he would attack his wife.
[...]
Cantwell became one of the most familiar faces of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville after he was featured in a Vice News documentary on the far right that showed him chanting "Jews will not replace us."
[...]
Cantwell earned the nickname "the crying Nazi" after he posted an emotional video when a warrant was issued for his arrest following the rally.
[...]
Starker on 25/1/2020 at 21:38
"The best people":
Quote:
(
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/27/trump-lawyer-jay-sekulow-donations)
Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal Jay Sekulow approved plans to push people to give to his Christian nonprofit, which then paid big sums to his family
More than 15,000 Americans were losing their jobs each day in June 2009, as the US struggled to climb out of a painful recession following its worst financial crisis in decades.
But Jay Sekulow, who is now an attorney to Donald Trump, had a private jet to finance. His law firm was expecting a $3m payday. And six-figure contracts for members of his family needed to be taken care of.
Documents obtained by the Guardian show Sekulow that month approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses.
Telemarketers for the nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (Case), were instructed in contracts signed by Sekulow to urge people who pleaded poverty or said they were out of work to dig deep for a “sacrificial gift”.
“I can certainly understand how that would make it difficult for you to share a gift like that right now,” they told retirees who said they were on fixed incomes and had “no extra money” - before asking if they could spare “even $20 within the next three weeks”.
[...]
Case raises tens of millions of dollars a year, much of it in small amounts from Christians who receive direct appeals for money over the telephone or in the mail. The telemarketing contracts obtained by the Guardian show how fundraisers were instructed by Sekulow to deliver bleak warnings about topics including abortion, Sharia law and Barack Obama.
[...]
So, business as usual, then.
Renzatic on 25/1/2020 at 21:44
The usual responses: what about Hillary giving away our uranium to the Russians? What about her emails? What about Obama and Iran? What about? What about? What about? Fake news! Antifa!
Renzatic on 26/1/2020 at 05:25
This is less about Bernie, more about how Hillary Clinton really is pretty dense.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/QxfpwKr.jpeg...and some people think she actually has the brains to murder 150 odd people without getting caught.
Still would've made a better president than Trump, though.
howeird on 26/1/2020 at 15:30
Trump is a role model for Republican's children and grandchildren. I include people that back him for religious reasons. I was listening to a Anglican priest talk about Trump. He said Trump is a evil person but does do good things like the anti-abortion legislation that he is implementing. He also said he can't tell anyone how to vote but backing someone that is pro-abortion is wrong. But because many of his congregation don't like the candidates of the Republicans or Democrats they don't vote at all. The one thing the priest failed to say is that excessive sanctions kill a lot of babies for they starve to death because the mothers can't produce enough milk to feed them. They estimate that 25,000 children will die in North Korea, and another 25,000 in Iran because of the excessive sanctions. There are other countries as well including Venezuela. The reason the i call them 'The Right to Death Party' is because they have failed to stop abortion over the years, they start wars for no legit reason, and stave people to death with sanctions. Not to mention a true 'Right to Life' person opposes the death penalty - not many Republican's here.
