Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

[metroid composite]

13 Russians and one American got arrested by Muller today.  So that's a thing that just happened.

[dunie]

The Russians have to be stateside or in an extraditing country for arrests to be made. Unless they're somehow in custody and that's slipped in reporting?

[Sierra]

I'm not reading that any of them are actually in any position to be arrested, so seems unlikely.

I think it's more a P.R. move intended to put pressure on stateside people already under scrutiny in the investigation than anything else, but Mueller is proving adept with surprises like this.

[Shale]

It's also a way to put his findings about how the IRA operation worked on the record, rather than having to limit it to his final report rather than court filings that can later be cited as proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Cotigo]

Additionally, it seems pretty clear to me that this is designed to inoculate the investigation from claims that it is illegitimate, hasn't turned up any evidence of crimes, and is merely a witch hunt of Donny T. Rump.  Now, whether that will actually stop the shills in the GOP from making these claims remains to be seen, but it does strike me as something solid to point to when they start squawking about how the special counsel is a waste of time and money.

[NotMiki]

"The first count is conspiracy against the United States. The second count is for making a false statement. Remarkably the alleged false statement was made by Gates to the Special Counsel’s Office and the FBI on Feb. 1, months after the original indictment was issued, according to the information. That suggests Gates lied in the course of plea negotiations. His lawyers moved to withdraw from the case the same day."

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/gates-mueller-plea-deal-entered

Gates lied in his plea agreement and that's why his lawyer dropped him!  THAT DAY!  He'd been charged, decided he'd pretend to play ball but actually still lie to the FBI, and they caught him!

:emojiwhereimlaughingsohardimcrying:
:emojiwhereimlaughingsohardimcrying:
:emojiwhereimlaughingsohardimcrying:

[Luther Lansfeld]

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/07/ive-been-called-a-dyke-a-rug-muncher-a-whore-snps-mhairi-black-opens-up-about-vile-online-abuse/

People are, of course, pearlclutching about her saying vile language in the Parliament, as if that weren't literally the fucking point. I love the guy in the article who says "Won't someone think of the meeeeen?" He's like a strawman personified as a human being.

[NotMiki]

#allmrasmatter

[SnowFire]

Ways to not let Canadians lord their superiority over us and get 'em to can the attitude:
1. Vote Trump & his cronies out of office, say "whoops guess we hit the wrong button lolz musta been sleepy that day!", pretend that 2017-2020 never happened.
2. Canadians do something just as stupid as we did and elect Doug Ford, brother to Mayor Cocaine of Toronto, to lead Ontario, their biggest and greatest province?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/opinion/doug-ford-populism-canada-trump.html

Tide, this is your fault.

[Pyro]

Bolton as National Security Advisor.

There will be blood.

[OblivionKnight]

Michael Bolton can truly go the distance as national security advisor

[Luther Lansfeld]

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23040693/houston-texans-owner-bob-mcnair-regrets-apology-inmates-comment

Still a cuntbag.

[metroid composite]

Half of the things I thought I knew about the pulse nightclub shooting were lies:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/noor-salman-pulse-massacre-wrong_us_5ac29ebae4b04646b6454dc2

As far as investigators could tell, Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex. They presented evidence demonstrating that Mateen chose Pulse randomly less than an hour before the attack. It is not clear he even knew it was a gay bar. A security guard recalled Mateen asking where all the women were, apparently in earnest, in the minutes before he began his slaughter.

Based on data from their cell phones, neither Mateen or Salman had ever been in the vicinity of Pulse before. On the night of the attack, Mateen first went to Disney Springs and EVE Orlando ― both of which had heavy, visible security ― before ending up at Pulse after a Google search for “downtown Orlando nightclubs.” Notably, his search did not include the words “gay” or “LGBT.”

Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. There was no evidence he was a closeted gay man, no evidence that he was ever on Grindr. He looked at porn involving older women, but investigators who scoured Mateen’s electronic devices couldn’t find any internet history related to homosexuality. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways.

“She was not his partner, she was not his peer, and she certainly was not his confidant,” one of Salman’s lawyers, Linda Moreno, said. Mateen was a domestic abuser who treated Salman with disrespect and violence. “Her only sin was that she married a monster,” she said.

Salman told her family that her husband had beat her. He raped her. He controlled her life. Her story was echoed by Mateen’s first wife, who said he physically assaulted and terrorized her during their short marriage.

“[T]he agents had coerced Noor into agreeing that Omar Mateen had cased the Pulse and selected the nightclub as his target,” said Swift in an email, “and it was not in the government’s interest to contradict that narrative.”

[...]

Salman had originally been granted bail by a magistrate judge in California, but prosecutors appealed, asking a federal judge to keep her behind bars. They pointed to her confession that she had scouted Pulse with her husband ― even though by this point they had strong evidence to the contrary

[...]

During the trial, when an FBI agent testified that he had determined “within days” of the massacre that Salman had never been in the vicinity of Pulse, based on her cell phone data, Byron stopped him.

You knew within days? he asked.

Yes, the agent responded.

Did you tell anyone?

Yes, the agent said.

Whom did you tell?

My superiors, the agent replied. Byron asked for their first and last names. Later, after excusing the jury, he asked prosecutors to explain themselves. Why had they misled him when they asked him to deny Salman bail?

[metroid composite]

Well, with Kennedy stepping down, it's time to talk about what happens if Roe V Wade is overturned.

This has a lot of implications, some of them negative obviously, but some potentially positive.

On a political level, it will be put up or shut up time for the Republicans.  This happened in Canada in 1988, when an older anti-abortion law was struck down by Canada's supreme court.  The conservative party was in power at the time, and vowed to come up with a new law and...then kind-of didn't.  I mean, fundamentally, a lot of the options for bans or restrictions just aren't great, and any actual concrete policy will always be a lot less popular than the vague idea of a partial restriction or ban.  Kind of like how everyone likes the idea of "better healthcare" but Obamacare ended up not satisfying the right or the left.

Let's say the Republicans actually get what they want, Roe V Wade overturned--now they would actually need some real policy proposals.  Way too many times in 2008 with Palin, and 2016 with Trump, I would talk to Republicans who were like "I hate this candidate, but I have to vote for them cause abortion."  Take away that carrot, and now suddenly candidates will need to have actual policy positions, instead of just promising the same thing for 40 years.

Now what about in the interim?  Some people fear a return to 60s America and rusty coat hangers.  Not to mention Abortion being available to rich women but merely being about 10x more expensive.  I'm...skeptical, just because technology has changed.

#1, the internet Fundamentally, most abortions are done by taking a pill, taking a pill you can take at home, and even if the pill is banned, you honestly probably could make it in a home chemistry lab, or order the relevant chemical compounds from those mail order Chemistry labs in China.  There are websites for all these things https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/website-aims-to-help-women-self-induce-abortions-using-drugs/2017/04/26/119a1ba8-29c4-11e7-be51-b3fc6ff7faee_story.html?utm_term=.c6f7048c77af .  There isn't really a way to block this information without pretty obviously violating the 1st amendment either.

#2 If the pill does get banned, Smuggling has gotten more economical too Know what people in Europe did when Poland had restrictive abortion laws?  Smuggled abortion pills into Poland via drone: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/abortion-drone-border-poland-germany-women-on-waves

#3 Travel I look at the cost of an abortion in the US (always paid out of pocket, I believe, due to restrictive laws).  We're talking generally $300-$800.  Round trip flight to Canada is like $300.  So even with this extreme option, we're not talking 10x more expensive as in the 60s.  More expensive, but more like a 50% increase instead of a 1000% increase.

[Sierra]

I suspect the most immediate course is that it falls to the states to legislate abortion availability individually. Guess what the Republicans have been extremely effective at legislating away on the state level for years? (Other than voting rights.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

#3 Travel I look at the cost of an abortion in the US (always paid out of pocket, I believe, due to restrictive laws).  We're talking generally $300-$800.  Round trip flight to Canada is like $300.  So even with this extreme option, we're not talking 10x more expensive as in the 60s.  More expensive, but more like a 50% increase instead of a 1000% increase.

Well the problem is it's not just the round trip and cost of the procedure. It's the time off work. It's childcare if applicable. It's the cost of a passport if you need to leave the country (though I'd think that flying to a state with legal abortion would be easier,). And that assumes you find a place that will perform the procedure without a waiting period.

I mean 10x is probably still an exaggeration but it's a very significant barrier to those with lower incomes (and really, that's who we're worried about here; the wealthy always have and always will be able to get abortions if needed).

FWIW I think we're still at least one more SC replacement away from this being a real danger but y'know Breyer and RBG aren't young and I have steadily less faith in the Democrats to win the 2020 election.

[Sierra]

What NEB said. A couple hundred dollars is a lot of money to a woman in trouble anyplace rural, and quite sufficient barrier (plus the difficulty getting time off of work, as noted--again something that often presents an obstacle for voting, why is election day not a fucking holiday?) to be an insurmountable hurdle in states that have pushed through bullshit laws to restrict abortion access to a couple clinics. This is already a problem.

[dunie]

Quite heavy-handed, but...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opinion/race-politics-whiteness.html?imp_id=84086400&action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[Sierra]

It's occurred to me more than once over the past several years that being heavy-handed is sometimes the only effective way to make certain points.

[Cmdr_King]

Although it feels weird to me not to mention how deeply those things are intertwined with American christianity as well.  There's a non-negligible portion of them that actively design policy goals to speed up the literal Apocalypse via Holy Land (ie Israel) shenanigans.

[Cmdr_King]

https://twitter.com/salstrange/status/1037780384363233281

A rare case where many of the comments are also worth reading!

[dunie]

The burden of being a heterosexual woman who can reproduce is so goddamned oppressive and suffocating in the US. Add all the other intersections and my god. Most of my close friends are lesbians, and the stories they have shared on their journey for kids??

I will only ever see a cis female feminist midwife and only ever have a black cis female doula for any of my women's health. Ever. And though I don't find that much of a privilege by comparison, it's definitely something out of reach for thousands of women. 

[OblivionKnight]

This hearing is a shitshow.

[Lady Door]

What the fuck was the conclusion of the hearing today? Seriously. What the fuck happened, none of the people in the room seem clear on it.

[dunie]

3x the voters of 2014's results showed up on day one of early voting in Georgia. As both sides of the ideological poles brace for these midterms, I'm just sharing the data for Georgia: http://georgiavotes.com. We like numbers here.