All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Mister Mets]

So that's a yes on Trump's racist comments being okay. Got it.

It's more about you being wrong about Warren being accurate in her claims. Does 1/64th ancestry (at best) mean someone should identify themselves as American Indian on official documents like bar exam applications?

I haven't voted for Trump so I don't see any need to grapple with his comments. Can you explain the racism of the tweets?
“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"

[Tami]

Klobuchar Pushes For Bill To Lift Protections For Wolves

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Senators from three states have introduced legislation to lift federal protections for gray wolves in Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and return responsibility for managing those populations to the states.

The bill introduced Tuesday comes from senators Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, John Barrasso and Enzi of Wyoming, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

The Interior Department has tried several times to take wolves in the four states off the endangered list but has been blocked by the courts. Both the Senate bill and one introduced in the House last week would prevent the courts from overruling the decision.

Similar proposals stalled out last year, partly due to White House opposition. But farm and rancher groups and other wolf hunting supporters hope that changes under the Trump administration.

Not sure if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

It's more about you being wrong about Warren being accurate in her claims. Does 1/64th ancestry (at best) mean someone should identify themselves as American Indian on official documents like bar exam applications?

I haven't voted for Trump so I don't see any need to grapple with his comments. Can you explain the racism of the tweets?
“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"

Him mocking someone who really (no one really for awhile did look into Warren's history of Native American claims as 1/64th now) identified as Native American then and using a slur of calling her Pocahontas is just terrible to do. He is slurring Native Americans doing this horse shit repeatedly so he doesn't care. I mean he invited the kids who taunted a Native American to see him so we see where they rank to him.

It would be like if I mocked someone and called them Chief Jay Stronbow or Geronimo to mock them. Its terrible as fuck and we should never excuse this. But hey gotta defend this terrible racist behavior I guess.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Klobuchar Pushes For Bill To Lift Protections For Wolves





Not sure if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

Its not a bad idea for animal control and setting limits on it as pure as hunting goes. Because a big reason deer & bear hunting is now controlled is due to keeping the populations controlled. Because the populations of both can get really out of control and from what has been detailed for a few years the wolves have caused problems for farmers etc due to how many there is.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Fox & Friends host says he hasn’t washed hands in 10 years: ‘Germs are not a real thing — I can’t see them’

Wouldn't surprise me if this idiot is an anti-vaxxer too.

President Trump supporters form human chain at border near Sunland Park

Awww, how cute. Talk about morons.

====================

Mick Mulvaney: ‘Absolutely Cannot’ Rule Out Another Government Shutdown

GOP Sen. Richard Shelby says talks on Capitol Hill to avert another shutdown are “stalled right now.“ Oh, yes, holding hundreds of thousands of government workers hostage worked so damn well for Republicans the last time, why not do it again?

**********

Defiant Leaker Amid White House Probe Reveals Trump Still Ticking Off ‘Executive Time’

The president is refusing to change his schedule despite criticism over what sources characterize as easy time. Well, why should he? After all, Trump sets policy by watching the talking heads on Faux News.

**********

Democrats Come For Susan Collins After Brett Kavanaugh Backs Anti-Abortion Law

Demand Justice is running ads reminding Maine voters that their senator, who claims to support abortion rights, voted to confirm Kavanaugh. Pfft! The only thing Collins supports is Trump.

**********

Cory Booker On Talking About Race: ‘We Need A Better Conversation’

The 2020 presidential said people need to “extend grace” to those we talk to about racism, even if they’re asking about their own bigotry. No grace period. If, after all these years, people don't understand the evils of bigotry, they need to be shunned, not coddled.

**********

Arizona’s ‘In God We Trust’ License Plates Found To Fund Anti-LGBTQ Group

Two new bills hope to increase regulations and remove the plate that a lawmaker says has fed over $1 million “to an extremist hate group.” Well, that's just plain hideous. Yo, WBE, did you know about this?

[JCAll]

President Trump supporters form human chain at border near Sunland Park

If the entire border policy of the United States nothing but a gigantic game of Red Rover, it would still be less stupid than the way Trump is handling it.

[Kirby101]

It's more about you being wrong about Warren being accurate in her claims. Does 1/64th ancestry (at best) mean someone should identify themselves as American Indian on official documents like bar exam applications?

I haven't voted for Trump so I don't see any need to grapple with his comments. Can you explain the racism of the tweets?
“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"

That you ask me to explain is the sad part. She has explained her reasons for claiming that over and over. It was her family's history, told to her by her parents. You bend over backwards to give every Republican the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to Dems, GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
And to not know making light of Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears is offensive is illuminating.

[Kirby101]

And another thing. Warren's claim of Native American ancestry is a "Major Scandal". Even though she never really benefited from it.
But this doesn't seem to bother folks.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry

[4saken1]

It's more about you being wrong about Warren being accurate in her claims. Does 1/64th ancestry (at best) mean someone should identify themselves as American Indian on official documents like bar exam applications?

Were there DNA tests available to the public 40+ years ago?

[Kirby101]

Were there DNA tests available to the public 40+ years ago?

And the Boston Herald and Globe looked into this and found she did not get into the Texas Bar or Harvard because of this claim. (these were the two places she is criticized for using NA heritage)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Right-wing blowhards are having a tough time with this whole women-in-power thing in Congress

Just over a year ago, a writer named Kristen Roupenian published a short story in the New Yorker called “Cat Person.” It chronicled a brief, mediocre romance. At first, it was hard to say what made the story newsworthy.

Still, just as #MeToo was taking off, “Cat Person” became history’s first viral short story. Something in Roupenian’s tale of Robert and Margot’s relationship — testy, opportunistic — felt familiar. And then there was the word mild Robert uses at their breakup, when he finally believes he has nothing left to lose: “Whore.”

“Cat Person” laid out the ways men can pretend to tolerance of and even affection for women while also seething with sexist resentment of their power.

The “Cat Person” parable is germane this week. As the new Congress convenes, with a record 102 women taking office, a crew of men in right-wing media and politics seems to believe they’ve tolerated this whole women-in-power exercise for too long.

They’ve been patient. They’ve been gallant. They praised Ivanka Trump’s grace. They hat-tipped Sen. Susan Collins for helping put brother Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. They sat for the #MeToo tedium.

But now, like Robert, they’ve had enough.

On Thursday night, shortly after being sworn in, freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) boasted that the new Democratic House majority would “go in there and impeach” Trump, whom she called by a commonplace vulgarism beloved of Norman Mailer and Samuel L. Jackson. She landed the line to perfection, and her supporters loved it.

Understandably anxious about impeachment, Republicans decried Tlaib. They pretended not to mind her political zeal, though; it was her coarseness they took umbrage at. For a woman of color, and one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, using a bad word is evidently criminal unseemliness. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, from Bakersfield, huffed and puffed about how indecorous Tlaib had been and was essentially laughed off the dais by people reminding him of Trump’s long record of barnyarding it up.

As of this writing, Tlaib has not apologized for her impeachment plan — or her vocabulary.

[Tendrin]

And another thing. Warren's claim of Native American ancestry is a "Major Scandal". Even though she never really benefited from it.
But this doesn't seem to bother folks.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry

IOKIYAR, you know?

[worstblogever]

And another thing. Warren's claim of Native American ancestry is a "Major Scandal". Even though she never really benefited from it.

And she has scientific data to show her that what she was taught as a child about her ancestry isn't made up from whole cloth.

But this fits into the GOP's followers being brainwashed into ignoring evidence.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Dave Daubenmire, a former candidate for U.S. Congress in 2010 for Ohio’s 18th Congressional District who’s also a rabidly homophobic former high school football coach who was fired after repeatedly coercing players to participate in prayers and lost a lawsuit filed by the ACLU by several students and their families back in 2004. Daubenmire falsely claims he won that lawsuit as one of many instances where he bears false witness, despite of the fact that his self-righteousness motivated him to found “Pass the Salt” Ministries. Among the many, many patently deranged things Daubenmire has said through the years are that he wasn’t content to run for office, but wanted to “lead a revolution against those who oppose his ideals”, claiming that the hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing was the government “doing a dry run to see how martial law would work”, that Chemtrails are a thing and are chemical weapons sprayed on the populace to cause cancer and autism, and that President Obama is “either mentally ill or demonically possessed” and that all Democrats are “Children of Lucifer”. While you probably find all those statements enough to merit him certifiably insane, again, this guy’s a grade A bigot towards the LGBTQ community, having said that LGBTQ adults are “better off dead” and “homosexuals are gobbling up our kids”, declared “the most dangerous lifestyle in America today is homosexual behavior”, that Hillary Clinton “screams lesbian”, longs for the good old days “when being gay was a mental illness”, and has whined about how he’s tired of being “sodomized by the left”, and that gays have “stolen his manhood”.The less said about the bottomless pit of intolerance that is Dave Daubenmire, the better.

In both 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Rick Morris, a three-term member of the Virginia House of Delegates who was a big supporter of the anti-abortion fanaticism of former Gov. Bob McDonnell and former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, such as Virginia’s mandatory ultrasound bill, but also a Personhood bill that would have claimed life starts at conception. He cares so much about the human right to life that he also voted for legislation return the electric chair to a list of acceptable means to execute prisoners. He's also voted against not just gay marriage, but even adoptions by LGBT couples. In 2017 because Morris took to the floor of the Virgina State Legislature to compare abortion to slavery... and it seems that Rick Morris was arrested in September of 2016 on 11 separate charges of domestic abuse and child abuse, after he decided to go medieval on his 11 year old stepson with a belt, and trying to force him to stand in a corner for... oh, three days at a clip. Morris refused to resign, but at least had the sense to not run for re-election in the 2017 Virginia elections.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the former U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, Patrick Meehan, who you might not have realized was a Congressman since he was elected in the Tea Party Wave of 2010, and you might not have heard about how his district as gerrymandered by Republicans to guarantee his re-election several times. People may not have paid much mind to his voting record, which was an His voting record was an embarrassment of conservative ideology, but again, other than votes against women’s issues and an obsession with repealing the Affordable Care Act, there was nothing in there to make Meehan stand out from his Tea Party brethren. That held, at least, until reports surfaced that Meehan harassed a woman about four decades his junior because he thought she was his “soul mate”, and then after she won her case against him, he used taxpayer money to settle the case and tried to keep the whole thing hushed up. Meehan actually tried blaming his predatory behavior on the stress he was enduring because the Affordable Care Act continued to exist (really, he said that). Alas, he is now out of office in disgrace, and thus we will set aside his profile at this time, and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 730-30, since this was established in July 2014.)

Keith Wheeler
Welcome to the 730th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Keith Wheeler, a member of the Illinois House of Representatives first elected in 2014 and is now serving in his third term in office. Wheeler first got on our radar back in 2016, when he co-sponsored legislation in Illinois that was designed to throw single mothers and their children off of government assistance if the child’s birth certificate did not have a father listed, which opponents pounced on for its misogyny at targeting single mothers, but also noting that there are a lot of reasons a mother might personally not want a biological father listed on a birth certificate, like if they were the victim of rape, incest, or sexual assault. When confronted over his sexist bill, Wheeler responded to the media by running and hiding, refusing any comment on why he felt his “small government” solution was necessary.

When we take a wider look at Wheeler’s voting record, we’re far from reassured that he has the people’s best interests at heart:

• May 19th, 2015: Wheeler votes against HB 217, a ban on gay conversion therapy on minors, in spite of it being considered a human rights violation by many international humanitarian groups.
• April 21st, 2016: Keith Wheeler votes against HB 5576, a bill which would have guaranteed that insurance companies would have to cover birth control on their insurance plans.
• May 30th, 2017: Wheeler votes against SB 81, an attempt by Illinois Democrats to raise the state’s minimum wage.
• October 26th, 2017: In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, Keith Wheeler still votes against HB 4117, an attempt to ban the possession of bump stocks in the state.
• February 28th, 2018: Wheeler votes against HB 1465, an attempt on raising the age limit on people who can purchase assault weapons to 21, in the wake of several mass shootings carried out in schools around the country.
• May 30th, 2018: Wheeler votes against SJRCA 4, refusing to support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Illinois.

Keith Wheeler has rapidly risen to be the Assistant GOP House Floor Leader in Illinois, and we’re going to continue to keep an eye on him as a legislator, to see if he gets bold enough to push for any deliberately malicious legislation aimed at attacking women again any time soon.

[mogwen]

And she has scientific data to show her that what she was taught as a child about her ancestry isn't made up from whole cloth.

But this fits into the GOP's followers being brainwashed into ignoring evidence.

Exactly, I'm french and I don't know much Elisabeth Warren except that she's a democrat and that Trump mocks her as Pocahontas. But her story is really moving: a woman confronting the family story she's been told to tell the truth from fiction.
Is it a parabole about Fake News and the need to check sources?