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

[Tami]

I just kind of turn a skeptical eye to those 'Candidates votes matched Z political party X% of the time.' studies. I mean, yes but what exactly did they vote on?

Once the list of Democrats actually running in 2020 is set, we (or I, or someone) can/should work on a guide-sheet of their backgrounds and voting records if they previously or are currently holding office. By this summer we shoudl have a better idea who is running and who isn't.

[Tami]

Ari's show is on fire lately. Seriously he needs a better timeslot I think they should retire Hardball and five it to Ari.

Hes had a couple segments especially since the shutdown that almost had me cheering.

I try to watch him at 6:00, though it might get harder in the future. I rarely watch MSNBC at 7:00 unless someone else is filling in or I'm bored. I agree, Chris Matthews isn't all that interesting.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of the former U.S. Senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, whose quarter century career in Congress finished rather distastefully, as during the GOP’s 2011 efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, he took to the floor to smear the organization, saying “abortions are 90% of what Planned Parenthood does”. When fact-checkers informed the Senator he was off by about, oh… 30 times what their annual budget is spent on (and none of the money they spend on abortion is government funded), Kyl offered no apologies and said that portion of his speech was “not intended to be a factual statement”. Kyl also justified the passage of SB 1070 by Arizona Republicans by saying illegal immigration had led to Phoenix becoming “the kidnapping capitol of the United States”, which was also false. He also tried claiming eliminating the Bush era tax cuts would not help close the annual budget deficit of the U.S., so it really was a bit of a habit. He was always terribly partisan, including his vote to impeach Bill Clinton during that administration as a member of the House, and in the Senate during the Obama administration, he compared the president’s remarks about the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi to “a judge telling a woman she deserved to be raped for how she was dressed”. Which is shocking, but also doesn’t make a lick of sense. Jon Kyl retired, only to come out of retirement to be appointed to the Senate again for a few months for the privilege of voting for Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, only to skulk back to Arizona and into retirement again. Thus, his blatant lies are no longer a part of the Senate (the rest of the Republicans in it are more than making up for what dishonesty void he left).



In both 2016, 2017, as well as in 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its profiles of Tom Morrison, an incredibly homophobic member of the Illinois House of Representatives, who first entered the fray in politics back in the Tea Party Wave of 2010. Back in March of 2013, where he began responding to e-mails from several constituents inquiring about forthcoming legislation that would legalize same sex marriage, and he felt the need to make a “slippery slope” argument beyond the pale. In one, Morrison suggested that legal gay marriage would open the door to also legalize bisexual polygamy. But that apparently wasn’t enough homophobic fear-mongering for Morrison, as a month later, he sent another response to a constituent that not only included the polygamy comparison, but also mentioned that legalizing same sex marriage could lead to marriages between a man and “a consenting 9-year-old girl”. After taking a beating when the public found out about it, Morrison apologized and claimed his e-mail was written “in haste” and he doesn’t actually equate gay marriage to statutory rape, even though it was pretty plain that’s exactly what he was doing. If supporting bans on same sex marriage weren't enough, Tom Morrison has also voted against bans on the practice of gay conversion therapy, so there's that, as well. Morrison didn’t back off of his anti-LGBT stances going into 2016, as he added transphobia to his resume, submitting HB 4474 back in January of 2016 to try and institute bathroom regulations on the transgendered to use the bathroom of the gender they were born as. It mercifully failed to pass without incident.

Morrison’s voting record continues to show his disdain for those in the LGBT community in 2017 as well as he voted against HB 1785, a bill that allowed transgendered citizens in Illinois the right to change their gender on their birth certificate records.Of course, that wasn’t the only ridiculous vote he participated in, as he also voted against an increase in the minimum wage in Illinois (during the greatest period of income inequality in our nation’s history), and when a bill turned up to ban “bump” stocks that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic one after the greatest mass shooting in American history occurred in Las Vegas, he voted against that as well.

This intolerant twit got to run for re-election in 2016 unopposed in either the GOP Primary or the general election to allow for another two years of him continuing his narrow-minded crusade against the LGBT community. In 2018, we regret to inform you that he held onto his seat in the Illinois state legislature by a whopping 43 votes, out of almost 43,000 cast. This was in spite of Morrison being identified as a supporter of a pastor in Arizona convicted in court for physically abusing children. That’s right, the holier-than-thou Republican who’s convinced letting gay people get married would lead to them having sex with children is actually perfectly fine with the abuse of children, so long as you do it while preaching the gospel.

And so, we’ll have to wait until 2020 to see if an anti-gay fanatic who’s fine with supposed men of the cloth actually assaulting children can be forced out of power.

[PaulBullion]

Guys, the next Monsters, Inc. movie is gonna be lit!

[Jack Dracula]

While it's not progress on the legal or fixing the infrastructure front, this could wind up being an interesting development...

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/201...on-system.html

It's nice to see someone actually doing something to help Flint.

[Iron Maiden]

Ari's show is on fire lately. Seriously he needs a better timeslot I think they should retire Hardball and five it to Ari.

Hes had a couple segments especially since the shutdown that almost had me cheering.

Have to agree. I like it when he has subbed on various shows this past year.

[Jack Dracula]

Conservatives Are Starting To Turn On White Supremacist Congressman Steve King

The Iowa lawmaker’s praise of white nationalism may finally have gone too far. Now THAT'S positively shocking!

King has already drawn two primary challengers for 2020 with local rumors of a third soon to announce.
I'll point out that he was denied any GOP funding in his campaign against Democrat JD Scholten last year when he narrowly won by only 3% here in our deeply red 4th district.

The writing's on the wall Steve. Start planning your retirement.

[Tazirai]

"Huffpo" and Salon did plenty of "smearing" of Hillary when she was running -- often to the benefit of Sanders.

As a result of said divisiveness, we all lost.

Meanwhile, while you sit here and complain about Beto and the like, you ignore issues with your own candidate(s) of choice.

https://forward.com/opinion/417179/i...-no-one-cared/

Huffpo smeared Sanders and still is smearing Sanders. Let's not play the one sided thing. Huffpo often sided with Hillary, since she shared many of the values of Arianna Huffington.

[Tazirai]

The twitter thread I posted is full of links to actual evidence.

Why exactly do you like her? Is she Young Turks approved or something?

I'm not a Tulsi fan actually. I like some of her Progressive values, but she has issues.
Your outright dismissal of the Young Turks says a lot. But no it's not that she's Turks approved, it's that the media immediately smears her, like they smeared Warren, and AOC, and Sanders.
That help?

Wait... You seriously linking to Sputnik now?

You guys can post random ass links, but I can't? Seriously?

Who cares about over 100 sources, including congressional voting records and interviews from 2015 where she stays by her homophobia? A propaganda outlet for the Russian government says it's all a smear, so she can be considered a properly vetted, 100% progressive candidate for the Democratic Party. Man, I lost this debate badly. Can I live?

The same way people immediately jumped on Sirota for pulling out Beto's record. Pulling hundreds of articles means nothing if they are slanted yes? Slanted either way. Washingtonost once did 16 hit pieces on Bernie in 24 hours. So your hundreds of sources need vetting.

Geeze, Tazirai. This is not a good look for you. Tulsi Gabbard is not the standard bearer of progressiveness. It seems like you feel the need to defend anyone who's 'progressive', but you're veering into bad territory here in defending Gabbard. She ain't it.

What do you mean not a good look?
She is not the standard bearer of Progressives, like I said she has issues that need addresing, REAL issues. Being an apologist for Assad isn't one of them.
I'm not defending her for being a "Pogressive" I'm defending peoples actual records, not the feelings of people who see her as a bad person, or some homophobe, when many of those things have been proven false. So i should sit back and let people here post negative things on a person, when many of those things have been proven wrong? Post actual issues, not your feelings (Not saying you personally).
I'll defend a Progressive even if I disagree with some of there issues. But you guys are unitarily like, she's a **** human being, without providing details on her shittiness.

If this person I defend Has human rights issues, then I stop defending them. But you guys attack and attack 'Progressives' a lot. But I'm supposed to say nothing, because "It's not a good look"?

/smh

All I ask is for you to give evidence and factual links to prove yout points. Tulsi is NOT the standard bearer for Progressives. But if you can't see how the media IMMEDIATELY started smearing her, It's not a good look for you. I thought you guys were all about Labels and People with a D next to their name?

[Tazirai]

I also really underestimated her appeal to non-Democrats in the general elections:

Why didn't you post her IMMEDIATE reply? Th8is is what I'm talking about, Even you are smearing without context.
Tribalism is unreal.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard rejects white supremacist David Duke support

[Tazirai]

It's along ways away from me making a decision about who I would support in the 2020 elections, but I already have a short list of *Never in a Million Years*, one that could grow larger over time:

Tulsi Gabbard
Kirsten Gillibrand
Bernie Sanders

So if those people are the nominee, they get a no vote from you?

[PaulBullion]

You guys can post random ass links, but I can't? Seriously?

Dude.

You posted a Sputnik link.

Sputnik makes Russia Today look like a real news channel. If Russia Today is Breitbart, Sputnik is Stormfront. You should be ashamed of yourself for buying into their Russian state sponsored propaganda. Unless you actually work for a Russian troll farm and your whole "African American Bernie supporter" identity is just a cover. In that case: Well done.

[PaulBullion]

Why didn't you post her IMMEDIATE reply? Th8is is what I'm talking about, Even you are smearing without context.
Tribalism is unreal.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard rejects white supremacist David Duke support

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4132463

[Malvolio]

FBI Probed Whether Trump Was Working For Russia After Comey Firing: Report

Law enforcement officials launched an investigation into whether the president was secretly working on Russia’s behalf, according to The New York Times. Just call Trump The Siberian Candidate.

**********

Trump Sets Record With Longest Government Shutdown Ever

The president’s demand for a border wall has kept much of the government closed for more than three weeks, leaving some 800,000 workers without pay. Congrats, Donnie! I'm sure you must be proud. Ditto to the GOP who continues enabling his hostage taking madness. Meanwhile....

**********

Who’s Going To Pay For The Wall? Mexico, Many Republicans Still Falsely Claim

The government shutdown is over a dispute about how much money Congress ― and therefore taxpayers, not Mexico ― will dole out for new barrier. Keep on spreading those lies, boys. That's what Republicans do best.

**********

Conservative Men Are Obsessed With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Science Tells Us Why.







It's as I've been saying from day one when AOC arrived in Washington: Republicans hate what they fear, and this woman terrifies them.

**********

Conservatives Are Starting To Turn On White Supremacist Congressman Steve King

The Iowa lawmaker’s praise of white nationalism may finally have gone too far. Now THAT'S positively shocking!

The only way AOC could be scarier to old white Republican men is if she announced that she was a lesbian or an atheist.

[Tazirai]

Here's an article from Jacobin on Gabbard.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/t...mocratic-party

Her ties to Modi are especially worrisome given what's going on in India right now. Seriously, if you're not paying attention to the Hindutva, start.

Here's a Hit piece from the Intercept also.
A rag I normally like, but even so-called Progressive sites can do smear jobs. Hopefully, they correct the record.

TULSI GABBARD IS A RISING PROGRESSIVE STAR, DESPITE HER SUPPORT FOR HINDU NATIONALISTS

The writer completely leaves out the nuance. She also leaves out this little relevant gem, about Hindu Support from America.
BREAKING NEWS: Hindu Americans Financially Support Hindu American Politician – The Height of Hinduphobic Political Reporting

Bernie Sanders is against BDS. I'm for BDS, I'm against the Apartheid Nation of Israel, and what they are doing to the Palestinians. I wish Bernie was stronger on this issue, and he isn't. But I gotta toss him under the bus? You guys always say their is no perfect candidate, and their isn't. But hit pieces and smears are disengenous if not ouright lies. Do better.
I asked @SenSanders about Palestine, the BDS movement targeting Israel, and whether he supports a one state solution