Open Thread - Politics Plus

I get it.

Take Texas as an example. They vote in nuts like Abbott, Cruz, Patrick - freezing out more and more Democrats.

All I ever wanted to be was a good friend and a national hero.

Trump's base is a gathering together of a previously unidentified and untapped tribe.

Armchair privates.

There's no low too low.

Well, that was very funny. I'm quite high on good reefer and I was just writing a lyric with pen and paper and as I wrote one word, but anxious about the spelling, I waited for the spell checker to verify.

Jane Mayer's investigative piece in the New Yorker several years ago blew the lid open on the influence (and organizational sophistication) of the Koch brothers. It was her piece that really lifted the Kochs out of relative obscurity as very important political agents. Previously, that obscurity had served their purposes well.

Very quickly, the Koch crowd and others so aligned tried to smear Mayer (of course they did) in a standard ad hominem ploy. But it didn't work with anyone outside the rightwing lunatic world.

The Koch's latest gambit has been to forward a narrative that they are really just plain old folks who do a lot for charity and this last week finds them suggesting that, dangnabbit, their money isn't really getting them what they want. There's truth to that, at the federal level, but it's total bullshit at the state level.

In any case, this...
NYT

I think maybe there should have been a more stringent screening process about holiday hobbies before shipping people in.

Who'd have ever imagined this?

Taharrush, they call it.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/10/german-authorities-fear-repeat-of-cologne-as-taharrush-comes-to-europe/

Could be real. But might not be. The only wikipedia entry is from this month (in german but translatable) and it is proposed for deletion.

All I can find on google is either rightwing sourced (like Breitbart) or german. SPEISA, for example, looks like it has a serious credibility problem.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12086473/Suspects-in-Cologne-sex-attacks-claimed-to-be-Syrian-refugees.html

I don't use wiki as a reliable source. People talk of a cover up due to PC, so it's difficult to get verifiable information one way or the other.

Maybe Walter or Ulla can speak to it.

German protests over specialized attacks by refugees.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12085182/Cover-up-over-Cologne-sex-assaults-blamed-on-migration-sensitivities.html

Reliable for what? I used it to find instances of prior use of "Taharrush"

I use wiki all the time, because their information can be challenged by anyone, and what's posted has that credibility.

It's a great resource. It is manipulatable, but as you say, that also makes it correctable where dubious or false information is entered in.

there's something a tad out of whack where Breitbart is trusted as an information source but wikipedia is not.

Does being from Brietbart rule it out though? I remember the National Enquirer being the only source of a particular news item. Good thing people didn't automatically rule it out.

...sort of like wiki.

Which ones are those. That Israel is justified in killing palistianian in hospitals or where ever they can find them or the one about everyone should own a gun and carry it as John Wayne did in his movies? Yes I know he has cleaned up this retoric just like any other politician who wants to be president. Play to the lowest common denominator. And no one has yet pointed out how he is going to get any thing past a republican congress. I read one article that said that the "people" would force congress to accede to his demands but how much has that done for Obama. A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage may play well to the public but like Hoover in 1929 it dont mean shyt in politics.

It has become an explosive subject. All politicians are very careful to name the suspects "refugees". They're perpetrators, period. I've never heard of "Taharrush", yet I remember vividly what happened to a female CNN reporter in Egypt where she was stripped of her clothes by a mob of men and sexually violated.

European women, Germans included, aren't used to cover up. They have a very healthy attitude towards their body and they wear skimpy tops and mini skirts. In summer months they sunbathe naked and I don't think they let this incident change their habits.

Since New Years Eve, women are more cautious though, but I would hope that anyone violating women in this manner will be deported at once.

Lash, Germany is quite naive when it comes to immigrants. We are not an immigrant nation, on the contrary, Germany was a homogeneous nation for so many decades, any integration of refugees is difficult to begin with, but the influx of over 800,000 Muslims - predominately men - doesn't come without problems. The current (blue eyed) government doesn't have enough resources to handle all of them. Some small towns had to take in a larger number of refugees that outnumbered the towns people.

There are good refugees and there are bad ones. Fact is, if they want to live in Germany they have to integrate and leave their misogynist traits at home. Angela Merkel promised that anyone disobeying German laws will be deported immediately. Let's hope this doesn't escalate into something bigger. The right wingnuts are too powerful as it is already.

Thanks for your input. This is what my daughter came home talking about, and like me, she's much more concerned about the media blackout than the behavior.

It is WRONG to suppress news. THIS is an example of damaging PC.

Of course not. A white supremacist might say something true. Pravda would have said things that were factual or rational.

My comment you refer to spoke to Lash's statement that she didn't grant wikipedia credibility while at the same time offering up quotes from Brietbart. Which is comparable to dismissing the contents of Britannica while offering up quotes from Leviticus.

He's in for the money. What else?

It was no set up.

Sadly, the cliché among Muslim men in Mulsim nations is that, since they show so much skin and can sleep with men outside of marriage, western women are evidently whores, without any decency. I know how awful that sounds and am not saying it to bash Muslims or anything. I can assure you this perception is very widespread in predominently Muslim countries (been there, discussed that).

I believe what happened in Cologne stems from there: young Muslim men, whose knowledge of Europe is very superficial and based on tired clichés like that, got drunk and acted on them.

Muslims who have lived in Europe for a while know better than that.