Jump to content

bolverk

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    11,895
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    2

Posts posted by bolverk

  1. Will Democrats Win the House? Ask Texas

    SAN ANTONIO — The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s wish list of House seats to flip from red to blue includes slightly over 100 districts — remember, it’s a wish list — and is chockablock with the usual swing states.

    Ohio makes six appearances; Pennsylvania, seven. Wisconsin is present and more promising than ever, with Paul Ryan’s soon-to-be-open spot squarely in Democrats’ sights.

    But wait, what’s this? Texas once, Texas twice, Texas five times in all. It reads like a typo. It looks like a delusion. Predominantly Republican and perversely gerrymandered, the Lone Star State is where Democrats send their dreams to die. Only 11 of its 36 House seats are in the party’s hands.

    But 2018 is shaping up as a year in which old rules are out the window and everything is up for grabs. Ryan’s planned retirement and the increasing disarray of the Republican Party illustrate that. So does Texas’ emergence as a credible wellspring of Democratic hope.

    Leave aside the Senate contest and Beto O’Rourke’s surprisingly muscular (if nonetheless improbable) bid to topple Ted Cruz. Several of the most truly competitive House races in the country are in Texas, which could wind up providing Democrats three or more of the 24 flipped seats that they need for control of the chamber. The state tells the tale of the November midterms as well as anywhere else.

    The appeal of youth, of first-timers, of women, of veterans and of candidates of color will be tested here. And a bevy of compelling characters have emerged from the primaries on March 6 and are poised to prevail in runoffs on May 22.

    There’s Gina Ortiz Jones, for example. Jones, 37, is almost certain to be the Democrat challenging Representative Will Hurd in the 23rd District, which sprawls from San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso. Despite its large numbers of rural voters, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the 23rd by more than three points. (Clinton lost the state by nine.)

    Jones was an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq. Like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, she drew the support of the Serve America PAC, which promotes veterans as candidates on the theory that they can help Democrats forge a cultural connection with working-class voters in swing districts.

    She’s Filipina-American. She’s also openly lesbian, and while Texas political analysts told me that they weren’t sure whether that would affect her bid, Jones has figured out precisely how to handle it: with brief acknowledgment and no special focus.

    At a recent house party in San Antonio where she introduced herself to a few dozen of the district’s voters, she mentioned that she “served under ‘don’t ask don’t tell’” but didn’t spell out the significance of that.

    She talked more about it during an interview with me the next day, comparing her time in the military with the anxiety and vulnerability of many minorities, particularly immigrants waiting to see what happens with the DACA program.

    “I don’t know what it’s like to be a Dreamer,” she told me. “But I do know what it’s like to have worked hard for something and to live in fear that it can be ripped away from you. When I was in R.O.T.C. at Boston University, I lived in fear every single day that if they found out I was gay, I would lose my scholarship. My opportunity to get an education — my opportunity to serve my country — would be taken away.”

    Democrats also have an excellent shot at victory in the 32nd District, a collection of Dallas neighborhoods and suburbs. Its Republican incumbent, Pete Sessions, has been in Congress for two decades, but the district has become more diverse and less white over those years, and his likely opponent, a black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred, should benefit from that.

    Allred is 34. Like Jones, he’s making his first run for office. Also like her, he has an unconventional professional biography. Before getting his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he played professional football for the Tennessee Titans, and before that he was a football star at Baylor University in Waco and at a high school in his Dallas district. Many of its voters remember watching him play.

    And more of them voted for Clinton than for Trump in the presidential election, a sign of the district’s evolution and an outcome for which Democrats were so unprepared that not a single Democrat challenged Sessions in 2016. This time around, seven Democrats entered the race. Allred got 38.5 percent of the votes in the primary, more than twice that of the second-place finisher.

    “We’ve seen a level of activism here that is off the charts,” he told me after a town hall in Dallas where he spoke with voters about the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and the need for gun-safety legislation. Sessions is a major recipient of donations from the National Rifle Association, and Allred, echoing the campaigns of Democrats across the country, is making an issue of that.

    The mere existence of the runoffs that he, Jones and other Texas Democrats will compete in next month reflects Democrats’ hopes in Texas in 2018, because it means that there were three or more Democratic candidates in districts that had two, one or none in election cycles past.

    “Democrats smell blood in the water,” Harold Cook, a former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, told me, “and for the first time in maybe forever, there is a Democrat running in every single congressional district in Texas, including ones where it’s a ludicrous thought that a Democrat could conceivably win.” They’re that angry about Trump and that convinced that his turbulent presidency and failure to nudge his approval rating much above 40 percent could mean an enormous blue wave.

    Democrats may even take a few districts that Trump won, like the 21st and 31st. The 21st attracted the party’s attention largely because its Republican incumbent, Lamar Smith, isn’t seeking re-election. He decided to retire after more than three decades in the House.

    And the 31st? Well, it’s hard not to indulge in some optimism when your party’s leading candidate is a female war hero whose story is possibly becoming a movie, “Shoot Like a Girl,” starring Angelina Jolie. That candidate, M. J. Hegar, 42, did several tours of duty in Afghanistan as a search-and-rescue pilot and won a Purple Heart after she was wounded while saving fellow passengers when the Taliban shot down her helicopter.

    Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, told me to keep an eye as well on the 22nd District, a largely suburban swath of the Houston area that he described as a microcosm of demographic changes that are making the state ever more hospitable Democratic turf.

    “The suburban counties that led Republicans to dominance here 25 years ago are getting significantly less Republican fast,” he said, adding that Fort Bend County, in the 22nd, is roughly 20 percent Asian-American now. The first-place finisher in the district’s Democratic primary, Sri Preston Kulkarni, is Indian-American. Murray said that if Kulkarni wins his runoff, that could be a significant boost to Democrats’ chances to nab this House seat.

    Trump took the 22nd by almost 8 points. But Mitt Romney won it four years earlier by more than 25. And bear in mind that Lamb notched his Pennsylvania victory last month in a district that had gone for Trump by a margin of 19 points.

    “When you look at what happened in Pennsylvania,” Allred told me, “you can’t take anything off the board.” Lamb’s triumph, and the Virginia returns last November, suggest a suburban revolt against Trump.

    But who best understands how the winds are blowing — the national Democratic Party or local primary voters? And are those voters making smart general-election choices or romantic ones? I suspect they made the right calls with Allred and Jones, neither of whom was anointed by the party and both of whom faced primary opponents with more money and with powerful connections.

    In Jones’s case that was Jay Hulings, a former federal prosecutor who went to law school at Harvard with the Texas political stars Joaquin and Julián Castro. He finished fourth in the five-candidate primary, with 15 percent of the vote. Jones’s 41 percent tally was more than twice that of her nearest competitor.

    Allred’s better-financed and more conventionally pedigreed rival was Ed Meier, who has a master’s degree in Middle East studies from Oxford University and worked as a management consultant with McKinsey. He finished fourth among the seven primary candidates.

    Following their hugely impressive primary performances, Jones and Allred landed on another, more refined list — “Red to Blue” — that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee puts together. It directs donors to House candidates in especially strong positions. It’s now 33 names long.

    Meredith Kelly, the communications director for the D.C.C.C., told me that Jones’s and Allred’s newness to politics could prove hugely appealing. When the party did focus groups in Pennsylvania’s 18th District after Lamb’s victory, she said, “One of the biggest takeaways was that he was seen as a young, fresh face in contrast to Rick Saccone.” Saccone was 60 and had long served in the State Legislature. Lamb was 33 and had never held elected office.

    Allred put it to me this way: “My youth is not a bug. It’s a feature.”

    He and Jones are and potentially formidable for additional reasons. There’s not a whiff of entitlement or the establishment about either of them. Both had single mothers of humble means. Both talk expansively and eloquently about government or community help that was crucial in their lives.

    Both have deep roots in their districts, where they spent their childhoods. Both are great-looking, as it happens. (That rarely hurts.) And both acknowledge the shock of Nov. 8, 2016 — and the peril of what they’ve witnessed since — as factors that motivated them to run and could be central to whether they win or lose. Trump is large in their minds and in their races.

    Before and immediately after the presidential election, Jones worked in the federal government as an economic and national security adviser. She hadn’t thought about a career as a lawmaker, she told me.

    But Election Day changed everything. “I remember a sinking feeling in my stomach,” she said, “in no small part because a lot of us thought, ‘That will never happen.’ That was not an option, because then what does that mean?”

    “About America?” I asked.

    “That’s right,” she said.

    She quit her bureaucratic job and became one of a record number of 309 women to file to run for House seats. There’s an unusual bounty of Democratic candidates of all kinds, and as Jones and Allred demonstrate, that’s not merely a numerical phenomenon. It has brought engaging new figures and impassioned new voices into the arena. On Nov. 6, in Texas and elsewhere, we’ll see how much that matters.

  2. 15 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

    I grew up Sourhern Baptist as well. And I turned out gay. So even if I still believed in the Southern Baptist way I’d be damned. I don’t, so I don’t worry about it. I try to remember that it is none of my business what other people think of me. I’ll live my life the best way I can, and my family, who is still Southern Baptist, can think what they want. If they feel bad about it, ain’t shit I’m willing to do about it, because I can’t make myself believe, and I’m past the point of pretending for their sake. 

    Love your family. Do your best. Don’t worry about the shit you either can’t or won’t do anything to fix. 

    I'm all out of emojis.

  3. 10 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Otherwise, my perspective is that we all go to the same place when we die. If heaven and hell must be conceived as "places", they are the same place. And we all will end up there. It is our experience of that place, assimilation into the divinity, that differentiates.

     

    Expand on this, please.

  4. The scare tactic is real, and to be quite honest it's the only thing that kept me trained and comforted for as long as it did, but it obviously held no permanent sway. Quite the opposite: it's a message of fear and punishment. I don't know, but that doesn't seem like a way of keeping the sheep in line - especially if they stop fearing the non-existent wolf.

  5. As background, my father was raised Southern Baptist, and my mother was raised Church of Christ. When they got married my mom adopted the Southern Baptist tradition.

    My mom's mom (grandma) believed that her daughter (my mom) was going to hell for switching from Church of Christ to Southern Baptist, simply for accepting the use of musical instruments as part of a worship service. She even went so far as to condemn my older sister and me to hell for also being raised Southern Baptist and letting the Devil's instruments be a part of our church experience. This isn't a joke: she directly told me as much.

    The point is that, early on, I've been told by close family members that I was bound to an eternity of suffering and hell-fire.

    Growing up in the Southern Baptist church had its challenges. For one, I recall the fire and brimstone speeches. For another, I remember the rank hypocrisy associated with "just ask for forgiveness and you'll be saved" which led to the attitude of "do what you want and ask for forgiveness later." One of the most striking moments was when the Youth Minister demonstrated souls going to hell by turning a lit candle upside down to show that each wax drop was a soul going to hell.

    What shook me out of it was an evening when I went to a county fair with a few "weird" friends and being confronted by the most sanctimonious asshole you could ever imagine. He was a couple years older and was a Youth Minister wannabe. He put his arm around my shoulder and tried to lead me away from my friends when he asked me "I see the people you associate with. If you were to die tonight, would you know where you were headed?" Obviously, my friends didn't meet his specs and, therefore, my everlasting soul was at risk. I told him "no and neither do you." It should go without saying that I wanted to hit him (plus, his name was "Taft"), but the line of questioning was so unexpected and bizarre that I just walked away.

    So, yeah, that was the moment I decided that organized religion wasn't for me. Over time, the entire notion of God and religion became an anathema, which held, at most, a slight superstition over my actions. Today, I'm happy to report as "God free."

    Unfortunately, now, I have my two aging parents who both believe that I'm going directly to hell. While I obviously don't agree, it hurts to know that they believe themselves to be failures and to also think that I somehow deserve eternal condemnation. The craziest part of it is my stated beliefs and not my actions. I could go rob a bank tomorrow, kill a couple customers, and then have a deathbed conversion. Then, they'd think I was worthy of God's love. Instead, I'll go to work tomorrow, doing something that I believe helps our society, and will be promptly condemned to eternal damnation and suffering.

    So, how many people think you're going to hell?

    • Like 1
  6. 4 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

    Southern Baptist denomination is merely a whitewashed and normalized KKK.

    The Church of Christ is similar but God forbid the use of musical instruments, which is a completely bizarre and random way of distinguishing one's denomination from another - at least to my mind. Nothing really matters much. My entire family thinks I'm hellbound, in spite of any good deeds I've ever done.

  7. 6 minutes ago, ndawg said:

    Don't worry, evangelicals will make sure to point out that this means that you are going to hell, instead of realizing that they shit the bed.

    No worries. I've already been explicitly instructed by my mother that she thinks I will go to hell for no longer believing in God.

    Edit: But, of course, I was also told at an early age by her Church of Christ mother that I was bound for hell due to having been raised in the Southern Baptist church, which allows the Devil's musical instruments.

  8. 10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    I am ashamed that he professes to be a Christian and an actual man of the cloth in a mainstream denomination.  While there are lots of jerkholes and dickwads that profess to be Christians (possibly including me), most of them are fringey.  That guy, as pastor of a very large and at least superficially mainstream church in a mainstream denomination, frightens me.

    He, and hypocrites like him, is the reason that I began to question my Southern Baptist upbringing. That, of course, led me to question the entire message of Christ, as well as my belief in God.

  9. Look, I really don't want to act as a partisan hack, but can anyone tabulate all the various scandals (and convictions) over the last few decades between Republican administrations/campaigns with Democratic ones? The uproar over supposed "scandals" during the Obama administration was deafening. And, yet, I can't think of a single Obama official/campaigner (a couple from the Clinton admin were but none from Carter that I remember) that was actually convicted of a single crime versus dozens from Reagan to Trump.

  10. I can't find it now, but I heard earlier today (NPR/BBC?) that all communications between Cohen and two AMI (National Enquirer) execs were being sought, regarding a pattern where Trump Co. would use the two as a pass-thru to pay for Trump-related stories with the intent of ensuring the National Enquirer would not publish them.

  11. 8 hours ago, kevwun said:

    Somebody figure out who the likely candidates are for who did that interview.

    1. The florid language indicates he's from below the Mason Dixon line.
    2. His acquaintance with the "circling green fly" (which I'd never heard of and research on wiki) indicates he's familiar with sheep farming.
    3. There's no indication that he serves on the judiciary committee, but his "insider knowledge" of its voting proclivities leads me to believe he's on it.
    4. He mentions that he's not in a totally safe district.
    5. He's often been on Fox News to support the president.

    Conclusion: Lamar Smith, who represents SW Austin and its suburbs as well as wealthy northern portions of San Antonio, along with large swaths of the Texas Hill country where sheep/goat farming is a thing. Given the demographics, his seat is no longer safe, and he's chosen to not run again. Maybe now he feels freer to speak. He's also a member of the judiciary and would know which ways the wind blows within the committee. I don't have cable, but I think I've seen references to him on there frequently defending the bloated orange blight.

  12. 15 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    But after Trump sued him for libel shortly after his biography came out, O’Brien’s lawyers deposed Trump in December 2007 — during which Trump admitted he had not, in fact, clandestinely taped O’Brien. 

    “I’m not equipped to tape-record,” Trump said in the deposition. “I may have said it once or twice to him just to — on the telephone, because everything I said to him he’d write incorrectly; so just to try and keep it honest.”

    But I repeat myself, what a fucking weirdo.

  13. 1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

    About the only things he's avoided so far are sexual deviancy and animal abuse.  But....Oklahoma....so, don't bet against those quite yet.

    1

     

    1 hour ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

    Scott Pruitt reportedly seen late at night in D.C. area notorious for draq queens:
    https://bit.ly/IqT6zt

    2

    Gawdammit, ToT!

  14. 5 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:
    Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and executive editor of Bloomberg View, wrote a column in the wake of Trump’s taping claim saying that Comey likely had little reason to worry. In the piece, O’Brien recounted that Trump frequently made a similar boast to him.

    “Back in the early 2000s, Trump used to tell me all the time that he was recording me when I covered him as reporter for the New York Times,” O’Brien wrote. “He also said the same thing when I was writing a biography of him, ‘Trump Nation.’ I never thought he was, but who could be sure?”

    1

    What a fucking weirdo.

  15. 20 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

    There is no comparison. 

     

     

    I represented Perot years ago in connection with the Reform Party. Without revealing any privileged communications I can state that having spent considerable time with him in person there is no comparison. 

     

    Whether or not you agree with his policies, Perot genuinely injected himself into the political sphere because of a sense of patriotism.

    To be clear, I wasn't intending to compare Trump to Perot as individuals or as candidates. I was speaking to one tranch, amongst many of the coalitions, that supported them.

  16. Fuck you, David.

    Trump Nominates Austin Attorney Who Stymied Investigation Into Trump University

    https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-nominates-austin-attorney-who-stymied-investigation-into-trump-university/

    Quote

     

    President Donald Trump this week nominated to fill a federal judge vacancy the man who claimed responsibility for the state of Texas’ failure to pursue a $5.4 million settlement against the president and his now-defunct Trump University.

    Trump’s nominee, David S. Morales, said in 2016 that he was responsible for pulling the plug on an investigation into Trump University when he served as deputy attorney general for then-Attorney General Greg Abbott. The investigation fizzled in 2010, but when a whistleblower in 2016 accused Abbott of going easy on Trump for political reasons, Morales said it was his call, not Abbott’s.

    In 2009, the attorney general’s consumer protection division began investigating Trump University. Ultimately brought down by numerous fraud lawsuits across the country, Trump U existed for less than a decade and sold wealth-creation “education” services for thousands of dollars. Despite not providing academic credit or even grading its thousands of students, Trump and the company promised the services would make clients rich.

    In May 2010, according to attorney general records obtained by the Dallas Morning News, the chief of the consumer protection division sought formal approval from Morales to “enter into settlement negotiations” with Trump U for its “false, misleading and deceptive practices.” Trump is individually named for his “direct involvement in this business.”

    The attorney general was preparing to seek $5.4 million in legal fees and restitution for the nearly 500 Texans who spent millions on the “university.” (At least 39 Texans purchased Trump’s $35,000 “Gold Elite” package.) But for reasons that weren’t made public at the time, the state never filed suit or sought monetary damages for the allegedly swindled Texans.

     

     

  17. On 4/10/2018 at 8:05 AM, PittsburghTiger said:

    In one year, 65 per cent of asylum seekers assessed after claiming to be juveniles were judged to be over 18.

    Home Office figures reveal that there have been 12,942 disputes over the ages of child asylum seekers since 2006, with 5,965 – around 46 per cent – found to be over 18 in this period.

    Ministers have ruled out using medical tests, including dental checks, to assess the age of migrants. Citing guidance by the Dental Medical Association, they say tests of teeth are ‘inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical’.

    But Britain is one of only three EU countries not to use medical checks to verify the age of child asylum seekers. The others are Ireland and Cyprus.

    Every other nation calls in doctors, dentists or psychologists to root out adults who are abusing the asylum system by pretending to be children.

    A Home Office spokesman said: ‘After consultation with stakeholders we published revised guidance on age assessments and we have committed to produce more child-friendly information in a range of languages to help children better understand the asylum system.’

     

    Despite concerns that adults pose as minors to get into the UK, officials do not carry out medical tests, subjecting them instead to a series of rigorous interviews.

    Once a person claims asylum, initial interviews are conducted to gather information such as identity, medical conditions and age.

    If a refugee does not have a birth certificate or travel documents, a Home Office screening officer must decide whether the person is a child based on ‘physical appearance and demeanour’.

    Unless the refugee appears ‘significantly’ over 18, they should be ‘afforded the benefit of the doubt and treated as children’. Officials will continue to attempt to collect more information to check their age. If there are still doubts about a refugee’s claim to be a child the individual will then be age-assessed by two local council social workers.

    They consider family composition, schooling, experience of life, ability to interact with others, and psychological development, alongside appearance and demeanour.

    The Home Office has ruled out using medical tests, including dental checks, to assess the age of migrants.

    Citing guidance by the Dental Medical Association, ministers have said tests of teeth are ‘inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical’. Experts said age assessments using dental X-rays were unreliable, with it being possible to wrongly estimate someone’s age by two or three years.





    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5592357/Two-thirds-child-refugees-lied-age-18.html#ixzz5CH3oaDhz 
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

    I don't get the point that's being made.

    According to the article, 1/3 of all asylum seekers are younger than 18.  Okay...

    Some are trying to portray themselves as being that age. Okay...

    How many of the less than 18 are parents? No indication...

    What's normal for refugees???

    What, exactly, is the author trying to express in that piece? Massive fraud? Compared to what?

    Declaring that 1/3 of refugees are minors doesn't tell me anything other than a substantial portion of asylum-seekers are young. Is there something else I'm missing?

    What am I supposed to be upset about?

  18. 8 hours ago, BurntEyes said:

    I've no issue with SM at all, but IMO it doesn't really fit the nature of this thread.

    Yeah, San Marcos doesn't count anymore. On the other hand, I have heard people argue that "San Marvelous" is the new "Old Austin" in terms of the college atmosphere with it's subsequent "weirdness" (poor artist & musician Austin refugees are apparently moving there) and relative affordability. I'm agnostic on that take as I really don't know otherwise, but I can see it in a certain sense. Obviously, it's not a perfect comparison.

    Speaking of which: What are our sloots up to these days?

    • Like 1
  19. 13 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    @bolverk i would rep if I could. But if you think Trump could pull off a presentation like that one linked with perot, well, I know you dont think that. 

    Trump's not worried about Perot's numbers - just his anti-globalism feels. That's simply my trite summation of the similarities. Don't get me wrong, Trump obviously doesn't give a fuck about debt or income inequality.

  20. Just now, GSU&UT said:

    Yeah there's no doubt that a huge voting bloc of '92 and '96 have become anti-brown people and anti-PC speech. As long as you say you care about us white working class too then we're sold.

    In that video I posted, Perot hits on several points of wages decreasing, CEO pay going up, the U.S. not investing in public investment programs in comparison to the industrialized nation counterparts, etc. These are all huge issues that us millennials care deeply about, it's very eerie to see him in 1992 hit on these same points that today's GOP believes aren't of any concern.

    Oh, without a doubt, it's not a perfect comparison. As Tahoe likes to say, these guys are supported by "coalitions." At that time, blue-collar workers were still wedded to their unions - which meant being anti-management. The appeal of the message was essentially a class-based one. Today, unions are largely irrelevant to most blue-collar workers. Without that sort of internal leadership, they've become radicalized by outside forces: 9/11!, Mooslems!, immigration! & brown people taking our jobs!

    They were always an inherently domestically-focused group. Today, the debt doesn't disturb them anymore (unless it can be used as a useful political football) - it's the way of life they remember that's fucked them in the head.

    The comparison I make between one portion of Trump's coalition and Perot's isn't a well thought out one that I've ever given any previous thought to. So, bear with me, I'm just thinking as I type, and I could easily be persuaded otherwise. There's no forethought to any of this.

×
×
  • Create New...