TYT Hour 2 August 10, 2018

In The Young Turks Hour 2 - On Demand by Waldo Peterson20 Comments

Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Francesca Fiorentini & Nomi Prins. Laura Ingraham slams all forms of immigration. Judge halts deportation during trial. Trump to double tariffs on Turkey.

0 seconds of 40 minutes, 39 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
40:39
40:39
 

Comments

  1. I know it’s not a popular position to question the intentions of people who adopt kids from less developed countries. And before I say anything else, I do believe that, in general, it’s a great thing to do and takes a great level of commitment. That said, I do question the intention of some of the Evangelical Christians who parade their non-white babies around to show how wonderful they are. I think it is often symptomatic of the “great white savior” complex. Essentially they are saving that little brown heathen from all the other, unfixable brown heathens in their birth countries. When I was a teen I remember hearing a family from church talk about how they went to the airport in Haiti to pick up their two little Haitian rescues and how hard it was (for them) to watch the biological father say good bye to his kids for ever. That story always bothered me. That man gave up his kids in the hope that they could have a better life. Those people got painted as heroes, but to me, a really hero would have looked at that and wanted to do everything to keep that family together, like maybe support legislation to bring in refuges, to provide aid, whatever. Maybe I’m just super cynical now.

    1. Your cynicism is completely warranted here– the adoption industry isn’t in the business of creating families, but of ripping them apart. I know I’ve said this before but The Child Catchers by K Joyce is essential reading about the evangelical adoption movement.
      Dollars to donuts the Guatemalan child that Laura Ingram adopted has a birth mother who did not give informed consent for her child to be adopted and who grieves for her lost baby every day.

  2. A big detail that no one has been pointing out about the Laura Ingraham rant was that she had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a woman born in NY who is Puerto Rican (a US citizen) on the screen behind her at the beginning of her rant and this was part of a segment about AOC.

  3. Demographics also refer to SES, and the term has been used, accurate or not, to refer to cultural groupings. And, of course, these things: race, ethnicity, SES, and other cultural groupings are often interconnected.

    Examples: rural people are a different demographic than urban people. Christians (at least the loudest of them) make a huge majority block of social conservatives of all kinds of people from those other groups.

  4. I’m always watching late, never live, so I can’t get my questions about tariffs addressed.

    What role do tariffs play in trade policies should we ever move away from “free” trade to trade based on workers’ rights, human rights, environmental quality principles? (Dennis Kucinich)

    I mostly hear support for free trade from TYT. Where is the left when it comes to fair trade based on those things Kucinich ran on? (admitted bias: I was a DK supporter in ’04)

    If we don’t support oligarchy, if we don’t want corporate control of the world, shouldn’t those things be on the table?

  5. Thanks for your comment. It caused me to scrutinize the ACLU position. It was worth my while. I am also mulling over the counterfactual. Ultimately, I think the ACLU has legitimate concern, but the wrong position. I do take issue with calling them evil, though. Below are quotes from their site along with some thoughts I thought I would share.

    I have added the brackets for context in the following quote. It hardly seems like the ACLU is evil. However, you are absolutely correct (in what I interpret your comment to be stating) that the ACLU opposes a constitutional amendment to ban political campaign donantions.

    “In our view, the answer to that problem [expensive political campaigns] is to expand, not limit, the resources available for political advocacy. Thus, the ACLU supports a comprehensive and meaningful system of public financing that would help create a level playing field for every qualified candidate. We support carefully drawn disclosure rules. We support reasonable limits on campaign contributions and we support stricter enforcement of existing bans on coordination between candidates and super PACs.”

    -ACLU website

    It seems to me that the ACLU sees the wisdom in restrictions. But, they admittedly don’t disclose what they mean by “reasonable.” It turns out that “reasonable” is not a quantity. They also do not disclose what they mean by “public” funding. But, I take that to mean their argument is that government funded elections are a violation of the first amendment because the ACLU believes that creates incentives for government officials to manipulate campaign funding to benefit their own party. That is a legitimate concern.

    “Any rule that requires the government to determine what political speech is legitimate and how much political speech is appropriate is difficult to reconcile with the First Amendment. Our system of free expression is built on the premise that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear; it is not the role of the government to make that decision for them.”

    -ACLU website

    That quote is what I perceive to be the central argument against government funded elections. It doesn’t add up to being evil in my book. But, it does set off some red flags. Firstly, it seems to be somewhat comfortable with nearly conflating, if not outright conflating, expenditures as being logically equivalent to free speech. It also doesn’t seem to offer a distinction between media coverage or citizens sharing information at will and that of politically affiliated groups contributing to a campaign. That’s my personal interpretation, though.

    My personal conclusion remains that getting money out of politics is crucial. The ACLU will combat an effort to create any amendment that is in violation of the first. Therefore, it would need to be structured in such a way that bribery induced corruption is the specific target. I don’t know how the language of that amendment should be structured. We have time to sort that out before it ultimately becomes a reality. We may also be able to look to other countries with laws that seem to effectively combat corruption and adopt some of those principles into the language.

    Again, thanks for pointing to their position. It is important to consider the weight of the implications of our decisions. That is especially true when discussing amending our constitution.

    Link to source:
    https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-and-citizens-united

  7. Laura’s bullshit “I’m not a racist” comment means nothing.
    It’s not about sounding racist or being too stridently anti-immigrant.
    It’s about her GIVING COVER to her viewers.
    People who saw the first tirade AGREED with her. They LIKED it. They did not object.
    But, some might have felt slightly uncomfortable later. We know advertisers did, cuz otherwise there wouldn’t be this weird pseudo walk-back.

    Now Fox viewers can continue to be racists, but tell everyone that there are NOT because they really just want the Rule of Law to be followed. They just happen to believe that only brown, black or purple plaid immigrants actually break the law.

    Wonder if they’ve ever heard of the Russian Mafia.
    Maybe ask Trump about them.

  8. TYT shows its shortcomings once again on international relations. The US did negotiate for the release of the pastor (someone who is being accused of working with Kurdish groups and somehow a Gulenist at the same time?). The US was going to slap fines on two Turkish banks that violated sanctions on Iran in the Obama era. In order to release the pastor, the US agreed to let the banks go away with a warning, and in return the pastor would go free. Some people thought it was a bad idea and an example of hostage taking. Nevertheless, the US followed through, and when it was Turkey’s turn they instead changed the pastor’s detention to home arrest – and did not let him go free.

    One could say that maybe thats just how their justice system works, but Turkey just committed one of the biggest purges in modern history after the coup attempt. Hundreds of thousands of journalists, judges, police officers, army personnel, judges, university professors…etc. have been jailed. There is no one left in any branch of the government that does not tow the line. Trump imposed sanctions (not mentioned at all in this segment despite being unprecedented for a NATO member) and then imposed tariffs when the sanctions did not produce the results.

    As for the weak lira, this has been going on for a long time and has to do with Erdogan taking control the central bank and not allowing them to raise interest rates despite inflation reaching 15%. Losses gathered speed when he won the election and put his son in law in charge of the economy and finances, and includes the central bank.

    I obviously did not expect TYT to mention all of this in the time allocated for the story, but the facts and nuance missing is atrocious. That the lead host is Cenk makes it doubly terrible. When will the producers of this show get serious about stories, or when will Cenk admit that they don’t do real journalism?

    1. The positive result from the US turning on turkey is that it could push a key western capo into a friend of russia. providing friends on the black sea and perhaps further economic unity in Eurasia. link by link the American empire rots and hope for the future rises like the sun.

  9. Laura Ingraham hates Melania! Why does she hate Melania??!! And why am I not surprised that as a Trump supporter, she has connections (her adopted kids) to RUSSIA?! Yes, our country is aspirational – I am aspirating the vomit in my mouth still, as I have been for the entire Trump administration! Anyone here know the Heimlich maneuver? I can’t breathe!

    Also, with these tariffs, how does Bill Clinton finish that “bridge to the 21st century”? How does Chris Christie trap thousands of people in traffic with his bridge closed? How do we burn the bridge of success behind us if the bridge isn’t finished for us to get across? Inquiring minds want to know!

  10. Laura I, Tucker C, Fox & Friends etc, are the true enemies of the American people. The propaganda this (FOX) network vomits on a daily basis, is dangerous. We must reverse the hatred they dish out, and make these host feel the political fear deep in their rotten souls. If we do not stand up to ugly people like them, then they will continue to cause pain and suffering to a lot of minorities. Latinos, start to boycott any of their sponsors. Email their sponsors and tell them you will no longer buy their products if they continue to allow these racist host act in such a dangerous manner. We must use the thing they fear most, loss of revenue. Remember, the strongest tool the Nazi party had was Joseph G. Minister of Propaganda. #boycottFoxNewsSponsors If we started doing that, I bet they would tone down. #TYTARMY

  11. Hey Ana, it’s “the Other”, singular, when referring to the philosophical idea of people different from the self. Not “The Others” like the ghost movie with Nicole Kidman.

  13. I am *appalled* at the positive treatment “the good work” of ACLU (29:44). Have you forgotten their position on Citizens United? Are you ignoring the opposition that they bring, on a daily basis, to WolfPac? The ACLU is NOT our friend, even though they oppose the policies of Donald Trump. Please do not glorify this EVIL organization.

Leave a Comment