Political Randomness

[LordMortis]

gatos metoo I would rather paygo than build debt. I would rather have infrastructure and healthcare than a presumptive 2% or 4% raise. At the same time, if there is going to be $1.5 trillion giveaway and there was nothing I could do to stop it, I'd rather have some scraps than nothing.

[gbasden]

Yay! I get to go out to dinner a few extra times a month and all I have to do for that is mortgage my child's future so that billionaires can save millions in taxes.

Fuck, people are stupid.

[Chaz]

First paycheck of the year for me, and my take home went down a bit.

[Holman]

[Holman]

[LawBeefaroni]

He has no chance of winning in that district. But still.

[Isgrimnur]

HuffPo

Top Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania suffered another defeat on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court denied their request to delay drawing a new congressional map ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
...
Their request went before Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees the 3rd Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania. Alito denied the request on Monday without referring it to the whole court.
...
The ruling from the high court ended Republicans’ last pending legal appeal on redrawing the state’s map, but Republicans in the state may not be done fighting. Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati (R) has indicated he won’t comply with a court order to hand over information to assist the court in drawing the map because he believes it’s unlawful.

[El Guapo]

HuffPo

Top Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania suffered another defeat on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court denied their request to delay drawing a new congressional map ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
...
Their request went before Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees the 3rd Circuit, which includes Pennsylvania. Alito denied the request on Monday without referring it to the whole court.
...
The ruling from the high court ended Republicans’ last pending legal appeal on redrawing the state’s map, but Republicans in the state may not be done fighting. Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati (R) has indicated he won’t comply with a court order to hand over information to assist the court in drawing the map because he believes it’s unlawful.

That's good.

With the appeal denied, I wonder if Scarnati will comply with the ruling now. At least while an appeal was pending he could rely upon "that's illegal as the Supreme Court will soon say", but with the stay denied it starts to get a little more dicey. The Supreme Court could I suppose hold him in contempt, although if there are other sources for the information they may prefer to get it the info another way.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, announced that he would sign a highly controversial bill Tuesday that will ban most Holocaust accusations against Poles as well as descriptions of Nazi death camps as Polish — likely raising tensions with the United States and Israel, which have criticized the measure.

An ally of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party who occasionally has been willing to buck the party’s will, Duda also announced that he would ask the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to review the bill to check whether it complies with Poland’s fundamental rights, such as the freedom of speech.

But the law is expected to take effect before the tribunal would be able to issue any clarifications, and the independence of the tribunal itself has recently been questioned after the Law and Justice Party passed reform plans that critics condemned as an “assault” on the judiciary.
...
Once the legislation is signed into law, anyone convicted under the law will face fines or up to three years in jail.

The State Department said in a statement last week that the phrase “Polish death camps” was “inaccurate, misleading, and hurtful.” But it also said the proposed legislation “could undermine free speech and academic discourse.” The department’s statement warned that if the legislation is implemented, it could have “repercussions” for “Poland’s strategic interests and relationships.”
...
In a speech on Tuesday, Polish President Duda adopted less provocative rhetoric. “[We] do not deny that there were cases of huge wickedness” in which Poles denounced Jews, he said, according to the Associated Press. But the president also stressed that “there was no systemic way in which Poles took part in” Nazi crimes.

[PLW]

It makes me sad every time I hear about a country banning people saying stuff.

[El Guapo]

It makes me sad every time I hear about a country banning people saying stuff.

Poland is in very rough shape these days, politically.

[Vivien]

gatos metoo I would rather paygo than build debt. I would rather have infrastructure and healthcare than a presumptive 2% or 4% raise. At the same time, if there is going to be $1.5 trillion giveaway and there was nothing I could do to stop it, I'd rather have some scraps than nothing.

Hi,
Frankly speaking I totally am a spammer

[Isgrimnur]

How did we get on the baccarat spam list?

[LordMortis]

My guess is you even <BAM> to report baccarat spam. Heh.

[Isgrimnur]

Yeah, I was able to jump on that one pretty quickly.

[Defiant]

Hawaii’s Governor Waited 17 Minutes to Tweet the Missile Alert Was a False Alarm Because He Forgot His Twitter Password

How hard is it to remember 123456?

The person responsible for the false alarm was fired.

It's worth reading the short article to see how crazy things got.

Apparently, they have a new job.

[Daehawk]

I think there should be some law that IQ is tied to government employment. Lower IQ is fine for lower gov jobs. But when you get to Congress level then IQ needs to be high. President should accept nothing but genius .

[Moliere]

IQ tests are not objective and the scale changes over time.

[Holman]

Nancy Pelosi spoke in the House in defense of immigrants for eight solid hours, then yielded the floor to Maxine Waters.

That's pretty badass.

[GreenGoo]

Nancy Pelosi spoke in the House in defense of immigrants for eight solid hours, then yielded the floor to Maxine Waters.

That's pretty badass.

I have it on good authority that Pelosi is part of the problem in Washington.

[Daehawk]

2 quick political news stories...

1994 Trump interview says When I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof

Pruitt continues to fly 1st class on taxpayer dime

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has used taxpayer funds to purchase first-class airfare and spend nights at luxury hotels more often than his predecessors, according to records first analyzed by The Washington Post.
According to the Post, Pruitt's travel choices distinguish him from his predecessors in that he brings a larger group of aides with him on trips, he usually flies first or business class on international and domestic trips, and he often flies Delta Airlines even though the government has contracts with certain airlines on specific routes.

As the Post notes, federal regulations say agencies can authorize first-class travel under "exceptional security circumstances." Regulations permit first-class travel when using coach would endanger a traveler's life or government property, when the traveler is part of a security detail accompanying someone traveling in first-class, or the traveler is a courier.

One trip to Rome for Pruitt and his entourage of aides, which included a ride from a White House event in Cincinnati to New York in a military jet, cost at least $90,000, excluding the cost of his security detail's 24/7 support.

[ImLawBoy]

With family like this, who needs enemies?

Just months after Republican Kevin Nicholson announced his bid to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2018, his own parents donated the legal maximum to her primary campaign.

[Isgrimnur]

Pennsylvania

Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map on Tuesday as unfairly skewed toward protecting Republican candidates, likely putting the state's top court in charge of creating new boundaries.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court invalidated the existing map last month as an unconstitutional gerrymander, ruling that Republican lawmakers had marginalized Democratic voters in an effort to win more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A new map is expected to boost Democrats' chances of winning more Pennsylvania seats in November's midterm elections, when they need 24 nationwide to take control of the House from Republicans. Republicans hold 13 of the state's 18 congressional seats despite Pennsylvania's status as a closely contested swing state.
...
The court's Democratic majority had given Wolf until Thursday to decide whether to accept or reject the new map submitted by Republican leaders late on Friday. With no deal in place, the court has said it will undertake the process of drawing new lines itself, with help from an independent redistricting expert.
...
Leaders in the Republican-controlled state legislature have said they may file a federal lawsuit challenging the state Supreme Court's authority to draw the map. The U.S. Supreme Court last week rebuffed an emergency appeal filed by Republicans.
...
The state Supreme Court's order called for a map that prioritized compactness and avoided splitting counties and municipalities. Numerous redistricting experts have said in recent days that the proposed map remains heavily gerrymandered, despite creating more compact districts.

Wolf's office retained Moon Duchin, a mathematician from Tufts University, to analyze the Republican proposal. In a statement, Duchin said she calculated there was no more than a 1-in-1,000 chance that a map drafted to comply with the court's order would result in such a large advantage for Republicans.

"The proposed Joint Submission Plan is extremely, and unnecessarily, partisan," she said.

[Fitzy]

That was a crazy attempt. I mean the new map almost looked right, but the numbers were almost exactly the same.

[Holman]

As a Pennsylvanian since 2002, I can tell you it's a crazy situation. For years the state legislature has been dominated by Republicans who wouldn't be out of place in a solid-red state. The rural and depressed conservative middle is basically at war with the two economic engines on which they entirely depend. Pennsylvania is accurately described as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in-between."

Fortunately our governor is a sane Democrat, our Supreme Court is (newly) liberal, and the trend is towards a blue wave in 2018.

[Fitzy]

I've been in Maryland a few years. Specifically district 6, which is nuts. We moved recently, about 10 miles and into a new district. I feel Pennsylvania's pain.

[Isgrimnur]

That's not how you hotlink Wikipedia.

Independent

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to plough ahead with a campaign promise to reintroduce compulsory military service to France nearly two decades after it was scrapped.

During his election campaign Mr Macron pledged to give all young people “a direct experience of military life with its know-how and demands” and said restoring national service would inspire patriotism and social cohesion.

Between 600,000 and 800,000 young people are year would face military training and spend at least a month with the armed forces – at great cost to the French state.
...
Mr Macron is the first modern French President not to have done military service, because he came of age after the practice was scrapped. The Government wants to trial the return of the scheme from 2019.
...
During the French Revolution France pioneered military conscription as a condition of citizenship. By the second half of the 20th century the amount of military service required was scaled back from the 1960s onwards, with the practice finally being phased out between 1996 and 2001.

In Britain, National Service was ended from 1957 onwards, with the last conscript leaving the army in 1963. Many countries have abandoned conscription in recent years, preferring professionalised armies. The policy can be expensive, with countries that continue with the practice racking up huge defence budgets for little perceived military advantage.

[AWS260]

Jacob Zuma's gone in South Africa.

Zuma’s resignation leaves the path clear for deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over the leadership of the ANC in December, to be elected by parliament to the highest office.

Zuma, a former anti-apartheid activist who has led the ANC since 2007 and been South Africa’s president since 2009, was due to leave power next year.

His tenure has been marred by economic decline and multiple charges of graft that have undermined the image and legitimacy of the party that led South Africans to freedom in 1994.

[Isgrimnur]

Sam Brownback

January 24, 2018

The Senate narrowly confirmed Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) to a diplomatic post Wednesday, with Senate GOP leaders needing the help of Vice President Pence to break a deadlock over his controversial nomination.

Brownback was confirmed to be ambassador at large for international religious freedom on a 50-to-49 vote, with all Democrats opposed and two Republicans absent. Pence cast the tiebreaking vote in his role as president of the Senate.
...
Brownback had faced opposition from LGBT groups over a decision he made as Kansas governor to scuttle an executive order that barred discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
...
Advocates for international religious freedom, particularly conservative Christian groups, have been asking the Trump administration to fill the vacant ambassadorship for months. When Pence spoke in May, for instance, to a conference organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association about the persecution of Christians, one of the most frequent requests from the speakers in attendance was a new ambassador.

The most recent ambassador was Rabbi David Saperstein, the only non-Christian who has held the position. President Barack Obama appointed him in 2014.

Priorities

February 8th, 2018

Former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, now ambassador at-large for international religious freedom, said Wednesday that he plans to begin his new role by focusing on the plight of Christians in Northern Iraq and Syria as well as the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
...
In the interview, Perkins touted Brownback’s track record on human rights and international religious freedom. Brownback sponsored the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act and condemned persecution of religious minorities such as the Baha’i while in the U.S. Senate.

[Kraken]

How is that even a real job?

[Isgrimnur]

Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled 105th Congress - International Religious Freedom Act of 1998

The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 was passed to promote religious freedom as a foreign policy of the United States, and to advocate on the behalf of the individuals viewed as persecuted in foreign countries on the account of religion. The Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 27, 1998. Three cooperative entities have been maintained by this act to monitor religious persecution.

1. An Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom within the Department of State,
2. A bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and
3. A Special Adviser on International Religious Freedom within the National Security Council.

While the original bill imposed mandatory sanctions on the countries supporting religious persecution, the amended act offers the president a waiver provision if he feels that it would further the goal of the bill or promote the interests of U.S. national security not to impose measures on a designated country.

[Defiant]

Based on the "I cut, you choose" method of splitting some cake:

There’s another way to solve gerrymandering. It’s as simple as cake.

The first party divides the state into eight districts (in a way that satisfies all legal requirements) and hands the map to the second party. The second party freezes one of the eight districts drawn by the first party and then divides the unfrozen part of the state into seven new districts. The second party then returns the map to the first party, which then freezes one of the seven new districts, draws six more and hands it back to the second party. This process continues until, after seven rounds, all eight districts have been frozen.

Why is the “I cut, you freeze” protocol fair to both parties? Intuitively, neither party is able to unilaterally shape districts, as each party can only freeze districts drawn by the other party. In fact, we establish mathematically that this protocol can prevent one party from packing a targeted group of voters into a district. This property holds when both parties employ their best possible strategies, which might make use of sophisticated algorithms and detailed information about voters.

The article does point out that it has problems with states with two (or very few) districts (and probably also for the last two districts of any state. But it does look like a reasonable solution (at least, to solve the problem of preventing one party or another from biasing the map to a large degree, anyway)

[Max Peck]

Mitt Romney launches Utah Senate campaign with dig at Trump

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has announced he is running for a US Senate seat in Utah, while taking a dig at President Donald Trump.

In a Facebook campaign video, he lamented that Washington was sending "a message of exclusion" to immigrants.

A vocal critic of Mr Trump, Mr Romney is seen as a shoo-in for outgoing Republican Senator Orrin Hatch's seat.

The ex-private equity manager has kept a low profile since losing his 2012 race to oust President Barack Obama.

[pr0ner]

Romney will make a fine senator.

[El Guapo]

I just wonder whether Romney will actually do substantive things to undermine Trump, or whether he'll join the (outgoing) Flake-McCain-Corker caucus of "complain about Trump, vote with him 80% - 90% of the time, and not do anything to further oversight of his administration".

[ImLawBoy]

I just wonder whether Romney will actually do substantive things to undermine Trump, or whether he'll join the (outgoing) Flake-McCain-Corker caucus of "complain about Trump, vote with him 80% - 90% of the time, and not do anything to further oversight of his administration".

It's unrealistic to expect a Republican - even one who's anti-Trump - to vote against him all (or even much) the time. Most of the things that are supported by Trump are bread and butter Republican issues - tax cuts, screwing people on health care, etc. It's oversight and support of investigations where we have to hope he'll be a principled senator.

[El Guapo]

I just wonder whether Romney will actually do substantive things to undermine Trump, or whether he'll join the (outgoing) Flake-McCain-Corker caucus of "complain about Trump, vote with him 80% - 90% of the time, and not do anything to further oversight of his administration".

It's unrealistic to expect a Republican - even one who's anti-Trump - to vote against him all (or even much) the time. Most of the things that are supported by Trump are bread and butter Republican issues - tax cuts, screwing people on health care, etc. It's oversight and support of investigations where we have to hope he'll be a principled senator.

Oh, I agree. And that's the crux of it for me - that (at least from what I can tell) the quasi anti-Trump Republican senators are not doing anything on oversight. I hope that Romney will be different, though honestly I'm pessimistic on the chances that he will be.

[ImLawBoy]

I think he has a better chance of it than your typical Republican, since he'll be representing a deep red state that really despises Trump.

[Kraken]

I think he has a better chance of it than your typical Republican, since he'll be representing a deep red state that really despises Trump.

It's all well and good that some Democrats are styling themselves as The Resistance, but that has very little practical effect so far. What we really need is committed resistance within the R Party. It's a long shot -- Romney always bends with the wind -- but maybe he can be a nucleus for such a thing. If he detects a wind blowing in that direction.

[Skinypupy]

I think he has a better chance of it than your typical Republican, since he'll be representing a deep red state that really despises Trump.

I think "really despises" is probably a bit strong, tbh. Trump clashes strongly with LDS values, but he still has a ton of support simply because there's an R next to his name.

I never thought I'd see the day where I'm relieved that I'd be represented by Mitt Romney in any capacity. Yet, given the alternative (Hatch, or worse), the fact that Romney seems mostly sane (even if I disagree with him on nearly everything), and his lean towards an anti-Trump stance (or at least lip service to it), I find myself in that camp. It's really just...weird.