Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Shazbot]

Yes, please investigate it. If Ms. Swetnik was hanging around at all these gang rape parties, witnessing horrific sex crimes, she should probably be investigated for criminal conduct in not reporting it to the police.

[smjjames]

Avenatti might not have been the best person to go to, optics wise, but it certainly should have been checked to see if it really is credible.

Yes, please investigate it. If Ms. Swetnik was hanging around at all these gang rape parties, witnessing horrific sex crimes, she should probably be investigated for criminal conduct in not reporting it to the police.

It does seem weird that she would keep hanging around those gang rape parties, unless maybe peer pressure or something. Still, the point the democrats are making is that Avenatti was also playing politics (by angling to run in 2020), which really didn't help things. This WaPo article explains it.

[Trekkin]

Trump's coalition was sick of losing. Trump's coalition was told to vote for him and start winning.

He just won bigly. Huge. Huuuuuuge.

The question is now if they are sick of winning yet.

Or if they've yet realized that when Trump wins, they still lose.

Let's assume for a moment that the nightmare world conjured by Bannon and Miller is somehow representative of the reality in which Trump's base lives; for good measure let's say Navarro is right and every other real economist is wrong. It's still the case that Trump's wins have, with the exception of conservative justices any Republican would nominate (and that were largely McConnell's doing) been mostly in areas where his interests dovetail with the Republican party line: to wit, lining the pockets of the wealthy at his base's literal expense.

There's still no wall to stop the brown menace from carting off the base's womenfolk in exchange for drugs and crime. (Again, we're taking the Trumpist propaganda verbatim here.) The coal plants are still dying and robots are still taking their manufacturing jobs away.

Most grating of all, of course, the coastal liberal elites are still calling them a bunch of stupid ugly backwards inbred racist pedophile troglodytes and waiting for them to finally overdose on opioids so the country can move forward in a big LGBT steamroller trundling over the ruins of their churches and guns or whatever Alex Jones is screaming about this week. (Again, not saying this is actually a thing.)

So yes, Trump is winning -- but even in the ludicrous world he peddles to his followers, they're still losing. Kavanaugh was a win for pro-corruption interests in the government and conservative partisans, but he's not going to make flyover country less of a shithole in the eyes of the coasts or make them less of a laughingstock. Nor would Trump want to do anything that would materially help his followers. He needs their animus toward everyone else to keep them behind him.

[Folly]

Yes, please investigate it. If Ms. Swetnik was hanging around at all these gang rape parties, witnessing horrific sex crimes, she should probably be investigated for criminal conduct in not reporting it to the police.

Swetnik assumed that the sex was consensual. She did not realize that the girls were being drugged until it actually happened to her, at which point she stopped going to those parties.

As for going to the police, remember that this is a high school/college setting. That would have been worse than just social suicide, it likely would have resulted in bullying and further physical violence against her. It's entirely understandable that she chose to keep quiet until now.

[Trekkin]

it likely would have resulted in bullying and further physical violence against her.

It's resulting in bullying and threats of violence now, lest we forget. How much worse would it have been when the elites had the threat of criminal proceedings to further motivate them to silence the victims?

[McTraveller]

So when folks in this forum say "The Republicans this..." or "The Democrats that..." - what is meant? Does it mean "The <party> leadership?"  Does it actually mean "every member of party X that is actually holding an office?" I mean, we don't really mean "every single person who associates with a party", do we?

I feel like I'm missing some unspoken convention or something.... because it should be easy to tell, but I really can't.  And I don't think it's just because of all this Bailey's I put in my coffee.

[Lord Shonus]

Usually, the established power bases of both parties, not the rank-and-file members.

[smjjames]

It also depends on the context a bit, can also mean just the party in general.

[JoshuaFH]

So when folks in this forum say "The Republicans this..." or "The Democrats that..." - what is meant? Does it mean "The <party> leadership?"  Does it actually mean "every member of party X that is actually holding an office?" I mean, we don't really mean "every single person who associates with a party", do we?

I feel like I'm missing some unspoken convention or something.... because it should be easy to tell, but I really can't.  And I don't think it's just because of all this Bailey's I put in my coffee.

I had the same problem when reading a Bell Hooks book ("Teaching Community" I think? I'm desperately trying to remember) where she refers to sexists or anti-feminists like they were a coordinated and homogeneous group that was acting with deliberate motivation and intention, which seemed so absurd to me that I stopped reading right there. It just felt like utter bullshit to think that anyone could agree on anything to such an extent, and I get that same feeling when people self-identify as democrat or republican or whatever party they choose. I'm thinking that when people are blaming the 'party' what they're actually doing is blaming a small handful of people, or sometimes even blaming the actions of a single person, but they're just being deliberately vague about it. It honestly pisses me off and has largely convinced me to just stop talking about such subjects in their entirety.

[sluissa]

Depends on the context, but I'm generally speaking of either the politicians themselves, or their base other than the simple likely voters in their party. The sort of people who would be willing to go to rallies and volunteer their time. Occasionally I do mean "anyone that typically votes X party" but I don't really mentally consider a person attached to a party just because they've registered that way. That hurdle is typically when someone is willing to do more than just "go vote".

[Max™]

What a shitshow... I guess the GOP will be rebranding itself as the GOP now: the Greatly Obnoxious Patriarchy?

"Boy that women's lib bullshit sure was annoying, but good news other white guys, we're back in the saddle again, and it's time to push those babyfactories back into the kitchen where they belong!"

"...and don't forget, she can't say no if she blacked out already!"

[martinuzz]

My sincere condoleances for the appointment of Kavanaugh.
A setback for independent justice.

[MrRoboto75]

My sincere condoleances for the appointment of Kavanaugh.
A setback for independent justice.

It was inevitable.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm so confused, my own intuition told me that his appointment was good and dead, and we were just going through the formalities before he got picked up and thrown out of the building. Guess it just means I just don't know anything about anything...

[Trekkin]

I'm so confused, my own intuition told me that his appointment was good and dead, and we were just going through the formalities before he got picked up and thrown out of the building. Guess it just means I just don't know anything about anything...

To be fair to your intuition, a normal political party would have nominated someone else. The GOP leadership is presently operating under the assumption that these are their last days in power -- and certainly in across-the-board majority power -- for the foreseeable future, and that changes their calculus significantly.