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

[numberthirty]

They are easy targets. Mouthy women who dare not to be perfect. Somehow their flaws are worse that everyone else's.

I'd say it's not really about "Easy". They are Dems with an actual profile.

If they focused on Ed Markey or Jack Reed, who cares?

[SuperiorIronman]

So I looked up that profile, and everything about it is immediately suspect. Especially considering it's based in New York.

But that's not what's troubling. What is troubling is that they are trying (that is Trump supporters anyways) to take over Twitter. And that makes sense.

Trump's 2016 campaign benefited heavily off of Trump in the news. He didn't really have to pay much for ad space all things considered because he was in the news simply because of the awful **** he's been spewing. Furthermore you have a lack of money where Trump's campaign is concerned, people have pulled out and Trump can't pull much from the NRA lest it desire to put itself in an economic coma. There is no white knight when it comes to campaign donations. So you get awful **** like Trump trying to get money from a dead man.

The point is that if you can't buy your way in, they want to control the narrative. Did you recall the push of all those immigrants nearing the border? No. Well it's not a sexy news topic so that's why you don't. Did you know Kavanuagh is still being investigated and impeded by his own people? No? Sounds about right. Controlling the narrative makes it easy to control the masses. It's that simple.

[Tendrin]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a...support-to-dem

Wild stuff going on in Alaska.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Gov. Bill Walker dropped his re-election bid shortly after the sudden resignation of his lieutenant governor over what Walker described as an inappropriate overture toward a woman.


Walker’s announcement, made Friday at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage right before he was to participate in a debate, was met with gasps and cries of “No!” from the audience.

“‘Alaska First’ is and cannot be just a campaign slogan,” he said. With less than three weeks until the election, Walker, an independent, said it became clear he could not win a three-way race against Republican former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy and Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich.

Alaskans deserve a competitive race, “and Alaskans deserve a choice other than Mike Dunleavy,” he said.

WTF. xD

[Malvolio]

They are easy targets. Mouthy women who dare not to be perfect. Somehow their flaws are worse that everyone else's.

Yeah. I have lots to criticize for both Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. But that doesn't mean they deserve all of this abuse aimed their way.

[Tendrin]

Sen. MIke Dunleavy told a Fairbanks group earlier this year that one way to save money in Alaska and improve education is to replace small village high schools with regional boarding schools in hub communities.

“Do you think that some of the villages will have to go to more regional high schools and things like that as the costs increase for having all these small schools around the state?” he was asked at a campaign event in Fairbanks in May at the Bible Baptist Church.

“Yeah, I think that’s probably gonna be the end result in your hubs like Barrow, Kotzebue, Nome, Bethel,” Dunleavy said.

“I think that’s probably gonna be the end result. I think it is a cost saver, but also more importantly it provides an opportunity for high school kids that they may not get in a high school with one teacher.”

Let's see. A state with a high population of natives and the Republican candidate wants to take their children from their villages and put them in 'boarding schools'.

Where have I heard this before?

[Gray Lensman]

Let's see. A state with a high population of natives and the Republican candidate wants to take their children from their villages and put them in 'boarding schools'.

Where have I heard this before?

Rudyard Kipling.

[zinderel]

Let's see. A state with a high population of natives and the Republican candidate wants to take their children from their villages and put them in 'boarding schools'.

Where have I heard this before?

Having studied American Education while pursuing a teaching degreee, 'Native American Schools' are a monstrous blight on our history...one Republicans seem to think is worth revisiting.

Is there no terrible idea from the past that they won't dredge up or support?

[Tendrin]

Having studied American Education while pursuing a teaching degreee, 'Native American Schools' are a monstrous blight on our history...one Republicans seem to think is worth revisiting.

Is there no terrible idea from the past that they won't dredge up or support?

Exaaaactly.

[PaulBullion]

So I looked up that profile, and everything about it is immediately suspect. Especially considering it's based in New York.

But that's not what's troubling. What is troubling is that they are trying (that is Trump supporters anyways) to take over Twitter. And that makes sense.

Trump's 2016 campaign benefited heavily off of Trump in the news. He didn't really have to pay much for ad space all things considered because he was in the news simply because of the awful **** he's been spewing. Furthermore you have a lack of money where Trump's campaign is concerned, people have pulled out and Trump can't pull much from the NRA lest it desire to put itself in an economic coma. There is no white knight when it comes to campaign donations. So you get awful **** like Trump trying to get money from a dead man.

The point is that if you can't buy your way in, they want to control the narrative. Did you recall the push of all those immigrants nearing the border? No. Well it's not a sexy news topic so that's why you don't. Did you know Kavanuagh is still being investigated and impeded by his own people? No? Sounds about right. Controlling the narrative makes it easy to control the masses. It's that simple.

Today they're back to posting the long debunked "Soros is/was a Nazi" memes. And if you link them to sites debuning that, they go "lol Snopes. lol Factcheck.org. All liberal propaganda sites."

Please keep reporting the worst of their posts. They are in constant violation of Twitter's TOS. And they do reach a lot of people, a lot of voters with their bile.

https://twitter.com/MbmpPB7/with_replies

[PaulBullion]

Good for her.

(Reuters) - U.S. comedian and actress Amy Schumer has said she will not appear in any commercials during the 2019 Super Bowl in support of National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protests against racial injustice.

And RiRi, too:

U.S. media reported on Friday that singer Rihanna had declined an offer to perform during the halftime show in support of Kaepernick, who in 2016 began kneeling to protest multiple police shootings of unarmed black men.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-p...source=twitter

[PaulBullion]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a...support-to-dem

Wild stuff going on in Alaska.



WTF. xD

I remember when many of us on the left were angry at Begich for running to the left of Bill Walker and basically giving the governorship to the Republican candidate. Now Begich actually has a shot. I'm wondering if he knew about some skeletons in the closet, his run seemed so weird.

[PaulBullion]

Reminder that this is only possible because of activist Supreme Court justices doing away with the Voting Rights Act.

North Carolina's stated reason for shutting down Sunday voting was that counties with heavy Sunday voting were disproportionately African-American, and that African-Americans tended to be Democrats.

https://twitter.com/haroldpollack/st...57219899617280

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump Buys The Saudi Line On Jamal Khashoggi. Congress Doesn’t Have To.

Lawmakers can take key steps immediately, and vital votes are on the horizon. But, will the Republican controlled Congress have the balls to cross Mango Mussolini? Count me down as doubtful. Meanwhile....

**********

Skeptics Worldwide Bash Latest Saudi Story About Jamal Khashoggi

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy ripped the kingdom’s version of the journalist’s death as “preposterous.”

**********

Man Refuses To Sit Next Elderly Black Woman On Ryanair Flight To London

The man called the woman an “ugly black bastard,” yet Ryanair staff members let him keep his seat. Trump would just LOVE that shitstain.

**********

White People, Stop Using 911 To Oppress Black People

If there’s one thing white people seem to love, it’s calling the police on black people who are just going about their daily lives.

On Oct. 8, Corey Lewis was stopped by police in Cobb County, Georgia, as he was babysitting two of his friend’s children after a white woman called 911 accusing him of committing a crime. A few days later, D’Arreon Coles was blocked from entering his St. Louis apartment building by a white resident who demanded to see his identification and key despite having no authority to do so. Although the woman followed Coles to his apartment and watched him open his door with a key, police were still dispatched to the building to question him.

And just last week, Teresa Klein frantically called the police on Jeremiah Harvey, a 9-year-old black boy. Klein told police that Harvey had sexually assaulted her. Video footage later revealed that Harvey’s backpack had lightly grazed Klein, now known on the internet as “Corner Store Caroline,” as he walked by her.

While the media and the public may be fascinated with such stories (and their corresponding hashtags), white people calling the police on black people isn’t a new phenomenon at all. What’s new is the consistent use of cellphone cameras to record and publicly distribute these incidents within their proper context.

**********

Trump Says Anybody Voting Democrat ‘Is Crazy’ At Arizona Rally

“Democrats produce mobs, Republicans produce jobs,” the president said. What a steaming load of horseshit.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who grew widely unpopular and earned the moniker “Governor Ultrasound” after he signed some of the harshest anti-abortion legislation in the country back in 2012. McDonnell was considered to be a possible pick on the GOP ticket as a vice-presidential candidate, but quickly fell from grace in a bribery scandal where he and his wife accepted lavish gifts from a tobacco lobbyist in exchange for using the governor’s profile to promote the lobbyist’s snake oil alternative-tobacco products. As he had to fight tooth and nail to end up serving hard time in federal prison on a variety of appeals in courts, his career is almost definitely over.

It was on this date in 2015 that we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of former Minnesota Congressman John Kline, who didn’t just oppose the Student Loan Forgiveness Act in 2014, he proposed a plan to balance the federal budget by raising Stafford Loan rates to cover the difference. Kline, not coincidentally, has deep pockets flush with cash from "for profit" universities, and has then turned around and hosted "job fairs" in his district that make it look like he cares about employment, but really give disproportionate amounts of space to those diploma paper mills to pick up more business from desperate young people looking for jobs. John Kline also wasted time pushing forward legislation to take Ulysses S. Grant off of the $50 bill and replace him with Ronald Reagan, voted for the Terry Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Bill, and has co-sponsored "War on Christmas" legislation to recognize the importance of Christmas and Christianity. He has twice voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted to defund ACORN based on partisan hack James O'Keefe's fraud, and even voted against disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy. Kline's response to the CIA's report on torture being an ineffective and immoral tactic was to claim the report was "completely partisan" and grumbling that not enough Republicans put ink into it. Kline, after seven aggravating terms in Congress, retired in 2016, and is not terribly missed.


In both 2016, as well as in 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled the U.S. House Representative from Ohio’s 4th District, Jim Jordan, a brain dead lunk who is now serving in his sixth term in office. Prior to that, he spent twelve years as a member of the Ohio state legislature. Jordan's background prior to entering politics was as a national champion as an NCAA wrestler who eventually became the men's wrestling coach at Ohio State University (which OSU has a fanatical following, frankly, in the state, more on this later). Jordan's career in the Ohio state legislature was spent trying to strip welfare and the social safety net out from those in need of government assistance, and after winning the primary for his Congressional seat in 2006 to replace the retiring Mike Oxley, has been all but guaranteed re-election every year in Ohio's 4th, a district that has voted Republican in all but 16 years since the Civil War ended. Jordan was one of the original founders of the House Freedom Caucus in 2015 that orchestrated the downfall of former House Speaker John Boehner, stemming from an disagreement that the two had over the debt ceiling limit way, way back in 2011. If you're wondering, yes, Rep. Jordan was thus one of the main hindrances into getting an agreement on the debt ceiling passed, refusing to work with his own party to do so, and the inability of the GOP to produce one with control of the House is why Standard and Poore's lowered the United States credit rating for the first time in our nation's history.

And when it comes to committees... well, Jim Jordan has taken time as a member of the House Oversight Committee to badger Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards after the release of the Center for Medical Progress' fabricated "sting" video, interrupting her 19 times in a 5 minute span, embarrassed himself while trying to trip up Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings, eventually being called to the carpet for his egregiously incorrect take on the investigation by the collective Beltway media, and after FBI Director James Comey decided there was no precedent or charges that could be pressed against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail server, turned on him and accused Comey of helping "cover up the cover-up" which sounds as paranoid and ludicrous as you're thinking.

But perhaps that's not as paranoid and ludicrous as the interview Jim Jordan gave to Tony Perkins, the leader of the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council on April 30th, 2013, where he started insisting there was merit to the government conspiracy that the Obama administration was trying to "buy up all the ammunition" as part of a plan to negate the 2nd Amendment and limit the freedom of gun owners. Yeah, that realy happened. But it's little surprise that Jordan would say something like that around Tony Perkins, after all, in April of 2012 Jordan was telling Perkins the importance of registering Evangelical voters to get them to vote against President Obama was akin to the Union Army winning the war to stop slavery, or Americans in World War II going to Europe to beat the Nazis. Ah... Godwin's Law. Never gets old.

And that's not all... after the faux "IRS Scandal" that the GOP worked itself into a frenzy was investigated, and no wrongdoing was found, he continued to demand investigations at taxpayer expense, saying:

"We need this special counsel to help us get to the truth because the so-called investigation by the Justice Department has been a joke. The current investigation has no credibility because it is being headed by a maxed-out donor who is financially invested in the president's success."

I guess what we're getting at is Jim Jordan is an extremist fiscal conservative, provided the money being spent isn't being wasted on partisan witch hunts that only exist to throw red meat to lunatic conservatives.

He’s still dug in with the House Freedom Caucus on their most extreme positions, and has gone from whining about presidents using executive orders, to defending Donald Trump for using them. That might be because Rep. Jordan likes that it screws over people who would dare to sign up for medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act, which Jordan STILL insists isn’t constitutional (in spite of the Supreme Court twice ruling that it was).

[worstblogever]

Jim Jordan remains one of the most conservative, partisan trolls in all of Congress:

• February 16th, 2017: Jordan votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Jim Jordan votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• March 28th, 2017: Rep. Jordan votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses.
• May 4th, 2017: Jordan votes for the House GOP's healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), post-partum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Jordan would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Jim Jordan votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• September 8th, 2017: Rep. Jordan chooses to be one of 90 Republicans in Congress who votes against disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey.
• October 3rd, 2017: Jordan votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: Jim Jordan votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
• February 14th, 2018: Jordan celebrates Valentine’s Day by blurting out as many conspiracy theories as he can in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo to try to cast doubt on the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with them.
• February 18th, 2018: Rep. Jordan and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
• August 13th, 2018: Jordan gives an interview to Fox News where he celebrates the firing of FBI Agent Peter Strzok as retribution from Donald Trump for Strzok having sent unkind texts about him prior to his work on the Mueller investigation.

At least Jim Jordan hasn’t been bailing on town halls in his district. Naw, that would be wrong, and deny him the satisfaction of telling his constituents to go f*** themselves for expecting the government to provide them with any sort of security on healthcare, or doing anything to stop industrial giants from polluting the environment. But, y’know, doing it while cowering behind a police officer while he blew off everyone who asked a question, because apparently his wrestling skills aren’t what they used to be. Now, as the 2018 elections are only DAYS away, we want to point out that Jim Jordan thought that maybe, just maybe if the Republican Party could hang onto control of the House after the mid-terms, an unlikely prospect… well, Jim Jordan had designs on replacing Paul Ryan as the next Speaker of the House, and thought he was going to be able to coast to victory in the general election to do so. HOWEVER…

A lot of interesting coincidences have come up with Jim Jordan in the past year. The first off is that one of his former aides, Wesley Goodman, was an Ohio state legislator up until the time he was caught having sex with another man in his office, and then dozens of individuals came forward, some underage, to report being sexually harassed by Goodman. And then a report came out that Goodman had sexually assaulted an underage boy while working for Jordan in Washington at a Family Research Council retreat, and the whole thing got hushed up.


But what’s that you say? That’s just a former staffer of Jim Jordan’s. It’s not like that he would ever be caught up in such a scandal and cover up a sexual assault. To that, we say… OH RLY?

Over this past summer, reports surfaced that while Jim Jordan was working as an assistant coach in the wrestling program at Ohio State University, a team physician, Richard Strauss, was sexually assaulting dozens of students over several years. And when asked about it, Jordan denied having any knowledge of any such sexual abuse taking place. You’ll never guess what happened next… multiple wrestlers came forward who said that they were aware of the abuse, brought it to the attention of Jim Jordan, and he just laughed it off as normal everyday locker room shenanigans. Further, as more wrestlers came forward, some reported being contacted by former Ohio State coaches on behalf of Jim Jordan asking them to make public statements to defend him from the controversy. And of course being involved in a cover-up of sexual assault means that Jim Jordan received special attention and praise from Donald Trump. Because of course.

Now, in some eras of American history, a scandal like the one Jim Jordan is involved in one be enough to force his resignation, and the president wouldn’t be coming to talk about how great he is. However, we’re in the darkest timeline, Jordan is still running for re-election, and still wants to be the Speaker of the House, which would be the second time within four Republican Speakers that one was involved in wrestling and covering up sexual abuse (Google Dennis Hastert if you aren’t aware of what we’re talking about).

Jim Jordan’s Democratic opponent is Janet Garrett, a retired teacher and union leader hoping that the third time running for office against Jordan will be the charm, what with him being entwined in one of the seedier sex scandals in Congress at the moment (and that’s saying something). We wish her luck, and hope that she can pull this off and flip a seat blue in a highly conservative district like Ohio’s 4th.