President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I think (hope?) that society will change its ways. When I was in college, you played grab-ass, word would get out that you were a dick. Internalizing it as potentially criminal behavior will just change the way people behave. That's a lot more powerful. It's like the n-word. A generation ago, it was used casually in the Deep South. We've shamed it out of polite lexicon.

 

I don't know that this will be an echo chamber. I think there is a real sea change.

I notice a difference in just the past five or so years. I remember my wife and her sister talking about Bill Cosby's accusers, and to make it short, they didn't believe the accusers.

That wouldn't happen in 2017.

I love it that women are speaking up.

 

That is a worthy hope, and an optimistic one. But sometimes social change happens pretty quickly. Look at gay marriage.

 

Had not heard Hewitt say this. Disappointed. Disagree with him on most politics, but he’s sane. Not a Trumpy Nut.

But, stealing seats is popular with republicans lately. See Gorsuch, Neil.

 

Man, I feel really badly for folks who'll wind up working in combined newsrooms.

U.S. regulator votes to loosen media ownership rules

 

You might want to google Bob Torricelli.

 

We don’t believe the Trump accusers?

 

Sea change for what? Fewer sexual assaults? Sure. I think that's possible.

 

Come on, dude.

 

You want to know the real untold story about this entire Alabama Senate special election? Governor Robert Bentley was pretty much put in place by the big dogs on the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. He originally got elected as a state legislator largely on the strength of having been Bear Bryant's doctor (no, I'm not kidding). When he ran for governor in 2010, it was a seven candidate Republican primary. Paul Bryant, Jr. was a big behind the scenes supporter, including providing Bentley with his private plane for campaign use as well as funding him. Clay Ryan, now a vice-chancellor and special counselor at UA, was a high campaign official in the 2010 campaign, and Kato Kaelin-like, was sleeping in the governor's pool house at the time his affair scandal broke. Cooper Shattuck, long Bentley's personal attorney, was legal counsel for UA when he set up ACEGov, the private PAC which paid the salary of the governor's political advisor/lover Rebekah Caldwell Mason. He negotiated the plea deal when Bentley resigned from office. Bentley also hired Mason's husband to a $110k state job and while he was doing that, UA ran the contracts for game day billboards through a company run by the Masons.

Bentley was their handpicked guy, and when he was under investigation Luther Strange blocked an investigation by the state legislature into what was going on by telling them that their investigation would muddy the waters for an investigation by the AG's office. Several months later when he was pressed regarding the progress of that investigation, he basically said "I never said there was an active investigation. I said that if the lege held hearings that might complicate an investigation by the AG". When Strange was tapped to take over Session's seat by Bentley it was widely regarded as a Quid Pro Quo. That appearance was exacerbated when Bentley decided that a special election for the seat, which the state Constitution calls for promptly, would be an unnecessary expense and that Strange should simply be the Senator until the 2020 election. Luther was also involved in the plea bargain which let Bentley resign with minimal criminal charges.

When Kay Ivey was sworn in as governor one of her first actions was to schedule the current special election.

This was a significant part of why Strange lost to Moore in the primary runoff. This deal reeked of corruption - by the State Attorney General, no less. That combined with Moore's loyalists got Moore the Republican nomination over Strange.

When I talk about how crazy powerful and influential the UA Board of Trustees are in Alabama with connection to what happened to UAB, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about. I know of no other such entity with this sort of power, unelected and answering to no one but themselves, anywhere in government.

 

Fewer sexual assaults
More awareness by (a percentage of) males about what constitutes uncomfortable behavior by men, towards women
More speaking up by women

 

Thankfully the Dems frontrunner for 2020 has no issues in this area: