Choosing a presidential candidate

I hate that our presidential election cycle is two years long, but there’s nothing we can do about that. So, I though I’d start running down the list for the fun of it, because at this point, it means next to nothing. If anything. I want to dispel some myths I hold that may or may not be true and discover somethings I don’t know, which are many. So here we go!

33 thoughts on “Choosing a presidential candidate”

  1. @Cat Chew: It’s the first I’ve seen of this particular tactic of inequality of Facebook but can’t say I’m surprised.

    I think a big part of their “Move fast and break things” philosophy is know that the faster they move and break more things, the harder it is to catch them. Of course when they do get caught it’s just a matter of using their size to request new rules and exceptions and to make sure it’s known how hard it will be for them to fix the problem.

    I’m creating a reminder to come back a revisit this in 6 months.


  4. Remember the Big Story in the Russia Scandal: Donald Trump Betrayed America
    In the flurry of new developments—and disinformation—it’s easy to lose sight of this essential and proven fact.
    Altname

    Michael Cohen heading to jail. Michael Flynn narrowly avoiding a prison sentence—for now. Paul Manafort stuck in the hoosegow and still tangling with special counsel Robert Mueller. The news of the Trump-Russia scandal these days has focused on the dramatic developments for several top lieutenants in Donald Trump’s crew. (And don’t forget about Roger Stone!) But whenever there is a rush of new details about one slice or another of this controversy—or the other pending or possible cases involving the Trump Foundation, the Trump Organization, the Trump inauguration, the Trump family’s alleged tax fraud, and more—it’s important for all of us (and the media) to keep the spotlight on a central element that has already been established beyond any doubt: Trump betrayed his fellow Americans.

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  5. ‘New bizarre low’: Trump faces backlash after reviving McCain attacks
    Republicans such as Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney defended the late senator after the president said he ‘never liked’ him

    Donald Trump renewed attacks on the late senator John McCain, stating he “never liked” the Arizona Republican and “probably never will”.

    The president faced widespread backlash for reviving his criticism of McCain, who died of brain cancer last year.

    George Conway: why Kellyanne Conway’s husband is Trump’s biggest critic
    Read more

    While Trump shared a notoriously contentious relationship with McCain, Republicans balked at Trump’s willingness to engage in posthumous attacks on the decorated war veteran. Some audience members in Ohio were members of the military.

    “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Trump said of McCain while touring a tank manufacturing plant in Lima, Ohio. “I don’t care about this. I didn’t get a thank you, that’s OK.”

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  6. US judge halts hundreds of drilling projects in groundbreaking climate change ruling
    In a rebuke of the Trump administration’s ‘energy-first’ agenda, a judge rules greenhouse gas emissions must be considered
    Altname

    In the first significant check on the Trump administration’s “energy-first” agenda, a US judge has temporarily halted hundreds of drilling projects for failing to take climate change into account.

    Drilling had been stalled on more than 300,000 acres of public land in Wyoming after it was ruled the Trump administration violated environmental laws by failing to consider greenhouse gas emissions. The federal judge has ordered the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages US public lands and issues leases to the energy industry, to redo its analysis.

    The decision stems from an environmental lawsuit. WildEarth Guardians, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Western Environmental Law Center sued the BLM in 2016 for failing to calculate and limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from future oil and gas projects.

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  8. ALL OF TRUMP’S HUMILIATING FINANCIAL LIES ARE ABOUT TO BE EXPOSED

    Starting with the whoppers he told to get $2 billion from Deutsche Bank.
    Altname

    One of the great mysteries of the business world is why Deutsche Bank lent financial pariah Donald Trump $2 billion over two decades, when other firms treated him like an infectious disease capable of wiping out entire populations. Thanks to Democrats’ newly obtained subpoena power, the answer may be revealed through the “extensive internal documents and communications about Mr. Trump” the bank is expected to start handing over to congressional committees next month. In the meantime, however, a report from The New York Times about the president’s relationship with the German lender has shed some light on the matter. For one, Deutsche had a “ravenous appetite for risk,” including the risk of doing business with a guy whose name was synonymous in some quarters with bankruptcy. As a result, reporter David Enrich writes, bank executives were happy not only to ignore repeated, glaring red flags, but to go along with Trump’s cornucopia of financial lies.

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  9. How Democrats can defeat Trump and his ugly ideas, according to Pete Buttigieg

    In this strange and unsettled political moment, one of the most unlikely Democratic presidential candidates of all is Pete Buttigieg. He’s the mayor of a midsize city — South Bend, Ind. — checks in at a ripe 37 years of age, and is also openly gay.

    Yet in recent days, Buttigieg has had surprising success breaking through the din as the presidential field’s voice of the millennial generation. Buttigieg has struck an earnest and authentic tone on big policy and moral questions, defending the Green New Deal as correct in the scale of its ambitions, and claiming that the way to win moderate voters isn’t to project squishy centrism but rather to offer progressive solutions to real-world problems.

    Buttigieg recently had a big viral moment in the wake of the New Zealand mosque massacre, when he released a brief but powerful letter to his city’s Muslim residents, informing them that the city supports and loves them, and that they have an “equal claim on the blessings of life in this community.”

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  11. Devin Nunes sued a parody account with about 1,000 followers. Here’s how many it has now

    WASHINGTON
    In suing two Twitter parody accounts for defamation, Rep. Devin Nunes amplified their audiences.

    One of the accounts, known as Devin Nunes’ Cow, saw its followers on Twitter swell from just over a thousand to more than 135,000 in less than a day after the Republican congressman from Tulare announced his lawsuit on Fox News.

    The anonymous writer behind the account continued to taunt the congressman. In one post, the author wrote, “Do process servers visit dairies, or will it come in the mail?”

    Read more here:

  12. Opinion
    THE CONVERSATION
    The Kids Aren’t All Right
    And why should they be?

    Altname

    I love to read the conversations between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. This time they talk about the terrorist attack in New Zealand, higher education in America and the overdue need for sensible gun control. So many good points are made between a liberal and conservative in a civil tone and healthy doses of humor.

    Read more (pdf)

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  13. Altname
    Opinion By David N. Cicilline
    The Case for Investigating Facebook

    Why I am calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook for violating antitrust laws.
    Mr. Cicilline, a member of the House of Representatives from Rhode Island, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.

    A year ago, the world learned that Facebook allowed a political consulting company called Cambridge Analytica to exploit the personal information of up to 87 million users, to obtain data that would help the company’s clients “fight a culture war” in America.

    Since then, a torrent of reports has revealed that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was part of a much broader pattern of misconduct by Facebook.

    It has paid teenagers to spy on their behavior, even asking users “to screenshot their Amazon order history page,” according to the website TechCrunch. The company has secretly collected highly sensitive data through the back doors of other apps, such as ovulation trackers, to target ads at users “even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

    And in its pursuit of dominance, Facebook gave at least 60 device makers direct access to its users’ data. Those actions are under criminal investigation, The Times reported last week. Facebook has also engaged in campaigns to obstruct congressional oversight and to smear and discredit critics — tactics reminiscent of the big tobacco playbook.

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