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

[Malvolio]

NYPD Arrests First Proud Boys Member For Rioting

They're only arresting one guy? For rioting? You can't have a one-man-riot. If there's a riot, there have to be several people rioting.

[Dalak]

They're only arresting one guy? For rioting? You can't have a one-man-riot. If there's a riot, there have to be several people rioting.

They did say in the article they were seeking 12 others, 9 of them Proud.

[PaulBullion]

but not Gavin McInnes, the **hat who encouraged the violence? too bad.

Boy Gavin has influential Daddies in high places.

[Robotman]

https://news.yahoo.com/julian-castro...193648726.html



[Castro and The others are all considering to be in the race for 2020 presidential elections]

Well, the list doesn't look good or promising.

If a strong and promising democratic candidate doesn't come out to run in the 2020 elections, then Trump will get re-elected.

It basically boils down to who can win Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. I personally like a few of the potential democratic candidates but I don’t think any of them will appeal to white blue collar voters. Even if they do appeal to the midwestern voters I don’t think they could overcome Trump’s fear mongering and hate speech. We’ve seen how insanely racist and sexists they are. Sadly I think Biden, as a white male midwesterner himself, is the only candidate who could appeal to the voters in these areas.

In 2016, Bernie was an unknown commodity who came out of no where. I feel as if the Republican hit squads are prepared for him now.

[Darkspellmaster]

It basically boils down to who can win Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. I personally like a few of the potential democratic candidates but I don’t think any of them will appeal to white blue collar voters. Even if they do appeal to the midwestern voters I don’t think they could overcome Trump’s fear mongering and hate speech. We’ve seen how insanely racist and sexists they are. Sadly I think Biden, as a white male midwesterner himself, is the only candidate who could appeal to the voters in these areas.

In 2016, Bernie was an unknown commodity who came out of no where. I feel as if the Republican hit squads are prepared for him now.

Please do not group all midwesterners in this way. We are not drones that are connected to a hive mind. Harris and Gilbrand probably will appeal to different groups, so would Booker, etc.

Why does everyone think we're the Borg? Do you hear anyone here from the midwest saying that the easteners are a bunch of yuppies or that westerners are a bunch of cowboys, or that way westeners are a bunch of elitists. So please stop thinking were all a bunch of racist sexist scum.

[worstblogever]

but not Gavin McInnes, the **hat who encouraged the violence? too bad.

And violated N.Y. law by waving around a sword in public.

[Gray Lensman]

So WBE... got anymore room to squeeze this guy in because.... holy s**t man.

French Hill has condemned that ad. I'm sure there are plenty of other things to dislike about the man, but this ad doesn't seem to be one of them.

[Robotman]

Please do not group all midwesterners in this way. We are not drones that are connected to a hive mind. Harris and Gilbrand probably will appeal to different groups, so would Booker, etc.

Why does everyone think we're the Borg? Do you hear anyone here from the midwest saying that the easteners are a bunch of yuppies or that westerners are a bunch of cowboys, or that way westeners are a bunch of elitists. So please stop thinking were all a bunch of racist sexist scum.

Sorry I didn’t mean that all people from the Midwest are racist and sexist. I was referring to Trump supporters in general. I worded that paragraph horribly.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of former Colorado House of Representatives member Gordon Klingenschmitt, a.k.a. “Dr. Chaps” who in 2014, actually managed to get enough support to be elected in spite of the fact that he is, for lack of a better term, a complete goddamned lunatic. How much of a loon is he? Well, in our first profile, we went in depth on Klingenschmitt, a former military chaplain reprimanded and discharged by the Navy in 2006 for disobeying orders and attending a political protest in uniform. He also apparently while once counseling a rape victim on his vessel, discovered she was a lesbian and immediately stopped helping her through her trauma to restrain her and try to exorcise the demons out of her that were making her gay (I’m serious, he’s bragged about this). Klingenschmitt then took to the airwaves on a cable access show, where he has tried performing long-distance exorcisms on all sorts of famous people to remove demons from them, from liberal celebrities like Madonna, to politicians like President Obama and Texas State Senator Wendy Davis. The latter makes sense when you consider he claims the Bible teaches us to defend ourselves against “left-wing crazies” (I don’t remember Jesus saying that, myself). He also thinks the FCC have loosened guidelines to help demons travel through televisions to “molest and visually rape your children”, that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us to discriminate against gays, and repeatedly has claimed “Obamacare causes cancer”. Klingenschmitt, despite being pants-s***ingly insane (speaking of which, he has claimed the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” has made gay soldiers have to start wearing diapers from all the gay sex they’ve been having making them lose bowel control, because he’s that charming)… despite being that barking mad, decided to make a run for the Colorado House of Representatives. And just prior to the election, he claimed openly gay Democratic Congressman Jared Polis was “going to join ISIS and start beheading Christians” because seriously, at this point, could he really do anything to come off as more deranged? Within three months of being sworn into office, Colorado House Republicans refused to allow Klingenschmitt to participate in any committees in state government, for fear of what he might say on them, and halfway through his term, he praised the Bundy family for seizing a federal building and called on the judges who tried the case to be executed. He’s called for the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, arguing that we should “push gay people back in the closet”, which doesn’t make any goddamned sense because the people who have come out of it can’t put that genie back in the bottle at this point, and also claimed that a female Muslim cadet at The Citadel would lead to an increase in female service members being raped because… well, he’s insane, so don’t try to make sense of that. Klingenschmitt’s still going on his cable access show daily, where he continues to insist President Obama is a secret Muslim, argues that God preached against gun-free zones in the Bible, compares same sex marriage to “the yoke of slavery”, said that executives from Planned Parenthood have “blood dripping from their fangs” and blames polling that shows Americans are starting to accept same sex marriage on what else? Massive demonic possession. Mercifully, Klingenschmitt was defeated in his efforts to be elected to the Colorado State Senate in 2016, and hopefully will never, ever even sniff anything close to elected office again so while we’ll peek in from time to time to see what Dr. Chaps is up to over at RightWingWatch.org,

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Bill Nojay, a former member of the New York State Assembly who was first elected to office in 2012, and seemed to be well on his way to re-election until just a few weeks prior to the 2016 elections, he took his own life rather to go to jail on federal fraud and other white collar criminal charges he was facing (he actually won his primary days after he died). Months after his suicide, the FBI were still trying to sort out his criminal activities, which involved business dealings though out multiple countries across the globe, reached well into the seven-figure range, and were committed even years prior to his first run for office. In fact, it is believed that much of the money donated to a SuperPAC for Nojay’s first run for office was $91,000 looted from an escrow account on a construction project that was never completed for the King of Jordan. Perhaps not coincidentally given all the money the Trump Corporation and Paul Manafort are being investigated for grifting their way through in foreign real estate deals… Bill Nojay endorsed Donald Trump pretty early on in the 2016 elections, gave him advice on where his “lane” would have to be given he had no prior office or military service, urging him to run for Governor of New York instead, and eventually served as the Trump campaign’s New York Co-Chairman. Democrats were respectful following Nojay’s death, unlike their GOP counterparts who when placed in similar situations like with Seth Rich or Vince Foster, would start whipping up conspiracy theories about how the head of the ticket were responsible for his death. Since Nojay is… y’know, deceased… we'll set aside his profile to go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 699-30, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Pete Olson
Welcome to the 699th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we'll be taking a look at the current U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 22nd District, Pete Olson, who has been in office now since 2008, and prior to that he spent a decade serving as aide to Texas Senator Phil Gramm for four years, and then as Texas Senator John Cornyn’s chief of staff from 2002-2007. Olson most recently won in the 2016 elections with just shy of 60% of the vote, And yes, he’s a Republican Texas Congressman, so obviously Rep. Olson’s going to have a long voting record that shows he’s anti-immigrant, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ (Olson was actually the sponsor of the anti-transgender “Civil Rights Uniformity Act” that would have defined citizens by the gender of their birth), pro-gun, and the whole myriad of extremist ideas that come with it. What sets him apart from the rest, though?

Well, our hands-down greatest WTF from Pete Olson is easily that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Olson was chatting on the radio with conservative talk show host Sam Malone, and straight up started theorizing that when Bill Clinton met Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the airport tarmac, the former president “must have threatened to kill her like the Clintons did to Vince Foster” to gain her loyalty and get FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Hillary’s e-mails. If you think that we’re making out of context accusations, listen to the audio yourself:

“I guarantee you, they had a conversation and he basically said, ‘Mrs. Lynch, call your attack dog off. We have killed people. We killed Vince Foster, we destroyed Webb Hubbell, we will destroy you’.”

Alright, so… first up, the Clintons didn’t kill Vince Foster, that was a suicide, and Foster’s family REPEATEDLY keep telling Republicans to stop spreading conspiracy theories about his death, because that’s just f***ed up. Second… that would be some brazen and stupid obstruction of justice attempts, and if there’s something Bill Clinton knows about, it’s having to endure bulls*** investigations without doing anything that gets you charged with obstruction of justice. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sat down with investigators during the Lewinsky debacle, or stopped the Starr investigation from looking into his taxes… etc.

Anyway, Pete Olson is a conspiracy spreading moron. This wouldn’t be a one-off, as Olson also “misspoke” during a speech in August of 2018 in front of the India House in Houston, when he claimed that the 9/11 hijackers were Pakistani in origin. Because, y’know, there’s not enough tensions between India and Pakistan, so let’s just start telling Indians that the Pakistanis did 9/11. Nice one, Pete.

Back in November of 2013, though, Pete Olson was also one of 19 Republicans in Congress who were calling for the impeachment of Eric Holder for not enforcing laws related to the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, it is the Attorney General’s duty to enforce the laws in our country, however, we’ve got to side with holder on this, because the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned by the Supreme Court about four or five months prior to Olson and company’s little tantrums. (Spoiler Alert: Holder didn’t get impeached.)

Rounding things out, yes, Pete Olson is a climate change denier, citing that it’s obviously not man made because “our climate has been changing since God created Earth”. You see? That’s scientific, when you mention an invisible man in a sky to back up the science.

[PaulBullion]

Justice Dept. charges Russian woman with interference in midterm elections

The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her alleged role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for interfering in the upcoming midterms.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and the National Football League national-anthem protests.

[worstblogever]

But by all means, take a look at his decade-long voting record during his career in Congress to get an idea of how bad he is:

• January 9th, 2009: Olson votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
• April 29th, 2009: Pete Olson votes against the Hate Crimes Expansion that would provide protections to LGBT citizens.
• July 31st, 2009: Olson votes against the widely successful "Cash for Clunkers" program that helped save the American auto industry.
• June 30th, 2010: After Wall Street bankers taking unnecessary risks nearly imploded the global economy in 2007, legislation finally comes forward to prevent the same behaviors from being permitted in the future. The signature piece of legislation to prevent another financial meltdown was Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, which Pete Olson voted against.
• December 8th, 2010: Rep. Olson votes against the DREAM Act.
• December 15th, 2010: Olson votes against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".
• December 22nd, 2010: Pete Olson is one of 60 people who voted against the Zadroga Act to provide healthcare for First Responders of 9/11.
• January 5th, 2011: Rep. Olson votes the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for almost every attempt to do so since.
• February 18th, 2011: Pete Olson votes to defund Planned Parenthood. This on the very same day his "smaller government principles" compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
• March 17th, 2011: Rep. Olson votes to cut funding to National Public Radio.
• September 15th, 2012: Rep. Olson votes for the "No More Solyndras Act".
• September 21st, 2012: Olson votes for the "Stop the War on Coal Act".
• January 15th, 2013: Pete Olson votes against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
• June 19th, 2013: Pete Olson votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
• September 30th, 2013: Rep. Olson votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown.
• Feb 26th, 2014: Pete Olson goes "all in" on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by co-sponsoring and voting for the "Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act".
• July 10th, 2014: Olson votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
• January 22nd, 2015: Pete Olson votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
• February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Olson votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
• September 11th, 2015: Olson votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• September 18th, 2015: Rep. Olson votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that were repeatedly debunked by investigators.
• November 19th, 2015: Olson votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
• February 2nd, 2016: Pete Olson votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
• March 16th, 2017: Pete Olson 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.
• March 28th, 2017: Rep. Olson votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses.
• May 4th, 2017: Olson votes for the GOP's healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, postpartum depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions". Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Olson would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 7th, 2017: Olson sponsors anti-transgender bill, the “Civil Rights Uniformity Act” that would have defined citizens by the gender of their birth, and attempted to undo many of the protects set forth for transgender Americans during the Obama administration.
• June 8th, 2017: Pete Olson 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.
• October 3rd, 2017: Olson 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: Pete Olson 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 18th, 2018: Rep. Olson 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.

Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, representing the Houston suburbs, has had a shift in its partisan makeup over the past decade, from a +15 Republican advantage when Olson was first elected in 2008, to now, a slightly more manageable +10 that could put it in play in 2018. And the candidate challenging Pete Olson is Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni, a former State Department diplomat first brought into the Foreign Service by Secretary of State Colin Powell during the Bush administration, and who resigned along with so many other diplomats once the Trump regime came to power. His family history is… he’s the son of an Indian immigrant, and his mother’s family line traces back to a guy you may have heard of in Texas history named Sam Houston. Kulkarni has Olson scared, and there may be an upset in the works here in 2018, when a seat that hasn’t been blue since Tom DeLay resigned from it in disgrace and it flipped for one term in ’06 flips yet again.

[Iron Maiden]

Trust me, I live in North Carolina. The problem with thinking like this is that things will always be the same, because we have to vote for shitty weaksauce Democrats who don't back us. Talk down ot us, and then to appease Republicans, start spouting Republican ideals.

In North carolina we went from Tarheel Blue to Purple with LOTS of Red, even going full Red a few years ago.

Know what happened? We got sick of a Republican House, Senate, and Governorship. We stopped supporting Weak Democrats and went after Stronger Progressive ones.
Roy Cooper was the Attorney General and went SUPER Aggressive against the last Governor who I, unfortunately, voted for in 2008, because he came across as sensible.
Then the GOP took over NC and we went downhill QUICK.

SO we fought back, and today after only ONE DAY of Early voting Democrats have a SUBSTANTIAL lead. Roy Cooper is backing Progressives, and not shitting on people tearing down Confederate Monuments or Black Lives Matter, and wants NC to go 15 an hour after meeting with Bernie.

It can be done. We gotta stop being scared to try to run Progressives. I'm sorry you guys feel stuck with him, but TRY a Progressive, or run yourselves.

I hear what your saying but there are more red counties then blue in Indiana and we were lucky to get a Democratic senator that doesn't always vote with the GOP. He voted against Kavanaugh,. Don't forget our Governor was Mike Pence and before that Mitch Daniels. We had a history of Democratic governors until recently and Birch Bayh and then Evan Bayh were our senators. Both the Bayhs were moderates. But today the majority has switched to being GOP. It may change back one day but it will take the next generation or maybe two to for that to happen.

[PaulBullion]

TrumpRussia is blowing up quite a bit tonight. Other than the Projekt Lakhta bombshell, the WSJ is reporting:

Mueller is scrutinizing WikiLeaks' contacts with a network of conservative activists, incl. Roger Stone & Peter Smith (died under suspicious circumstances). Mueller has obtained phone records on Stone & is questioning witnesses about his comm's with WikiLeaks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller...sts-1539978208

[PaulBullion]

The Houston Chronicle, the Texas newspaper that endorsed Romney over Obama and both George Bush Sr and Jr when they ran for President, has endorsed Beto O'Rourke over Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opi...p?t=1a429858ad

Yikes:

Voters don't send representatives to Washington to win popularity contests, and yet the bipartisan disdain the Republican incumbent elicits from his colleagues, remarkable in its intensity, deserves noting. His repellent personality hamstrings his ability to do the job.

"Lucifer in the flesh," is how Republican former House Speaker John Boehner described Cruz, adding: "I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, famously said: "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."

Graham, of course, was being facetious — we think — and yet Cruz's off-putting approach works to the detriment of his constituents. His colleagues know that Cruz works for Cruz, first and foremost.