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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

As for "It's about ratings!!!!!!!!!!!!!"...

Yeah, I know. There's just a point where it had better be worth the money because you are doing the public a disservice.

Do you think the suits care about the public? They're all about satisfying their stockholders, and that's what this circus does.

Edit: Something they could move on to...

Take that Vice news piece about if O'Rourke's campaign dropped the ball on Latino outreach. There is exactly no reason that you couldn't do a perfectly polite hard news interview about what happened there. It seems like that sort of reporting gets the people way more than that Acosta bit or having Avenatti on one more time.

News outlets: "Should we cover a serious story about how Beto O'Rourke failed to do outreach with Latinos, or report on the latest Trump presser meltdown?"

"SEND THE CAMERAS TO THE WHITE HOUSE! STAT!"

You know that, I know that. Don't beat yourself up thinking that mindset will change.

[Mister Mets]

I just have one request for House Democrats; do not, I repeat, DO NOT, elect Nancy Pelosi as House Majority Leader!

For the love for all that is decent, do NOT pick that trilobite!!! The Democratic Party needs to focus on the future!

It's interesting that you're so passionate about this but unaware of the position she is seeking (Speaker of the House.)

Counterintuitively enough, the House Majority Leader is the #2.)

Admittedly sour grapes, but there really should be some law that any time an election result is within 1% or something, then everybody who sat out or voted third party could have a second chance to change their vote, accompanied by a stern reminder that hey, their vote DOES in fact count this time. I know everybody these days seems to favor these ranked choice ballots, but instant runoff systems fail to capture how seeing results coming in real time can create a sense of urgency and spur people into action, especially to avoid the regret from having to live with the results of your mistake for six years. I don't have many good things to say about Mississippi, but I like the way they set up their Senate race and while I doubt the Democrats have a prayer in the runoff at least it won't be because they lost a statistically tied race or got screwed over by the Greens again.

The secret ballot would prevent authorities from knowing who voted third party.

My issue with ranked choice voting is that it assumes that everyone goes in with a clearly defined ranking of candidates already in mind and that they will never want to change their list as votes are counted and candidates eliminated, which might be true if all voters were perfectly logical but is a bit of a stretch in practice. If there are a lot of candidates, trying to rank them all can be quite confusing, so many people will just put their less favored candidates in an essentially arbitrary order, which could be pivotal later on, or just leave them off the ballot, which risks throwing away your vote. An actual runoff election helps clear away a lot of noise and gives voters a chance to make a definitive choice, rather than having to consider all possible scenarios where their vote might be decisive, with the added advantage that people can get in their protest votes in the first round and still make a meaningful choice in the second.

Another thing I'd be in favor of is outlawing partisan primary elections entirely, and forcing all candidates to enter a jungle primary followed by a runoff if nobody gets a majority in the first round, just like in the Mississippi special election. Though I suppose that kind of system will just end up with some kind of informal primary that anoints the leading contenders, with cash flowing to those campaigns and funds cut off from marginal contenders and potential spoilers. Blah.



You can't have a functional democracy if you can't at least depend on voters to act like mature adults rather than petulant children who can't be entrusted to take voting seriously.

With ranked choice voting, no one has to have a second choice. It would just be an option.

Jungle primaries have their own problems. In a crowded field, you could have two extreme candidates, or unfortunate vote-splitting (if two Republicans run in a jungle primary with five Democrats, they could be in the final two with less total votes.)

You could blame the press for giving Trump wall to wall coverage during 2016, esp after he became the nominee. I remember that summer that his rallies were covered not just by Fox but frequently by CNN and MSNBC too. Now he has the most important pulpit in the world. It's a no win situation. If he gave a press conference and no one showed up, they'd call them biased for not allowing the President to get his message out to the people, etc.

The press's original sin was the amount of coverage they gave him before he was the nominee, which put him in the position of being someone who has to be covered. He got two-thirds of the media attention during the primaries,which was less than his share of the vote (45 percent)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The press's original sin was the amount of coverage they gave him before he was the nominee, which put him in the position of being someone who has to be covered. He got two-thirds of the media attention during the primaries,which was less than his share of the vote (45 percent)

Trump was going to get loads of coverage for no other reason than BECAUSE he was Trump, a shameless huckster, self-promoter and carnival barker who's been in the public eye for over thirty years. That sort of relentless celebrity was mother's milk for news outlets, knowing that no matter what he said or did, good, bad or in-between, people would watch. And, at the end of the day, that's all the outlets cared about.

[numberthirty]

News outlets: "Should we cover a serious story about how Beto O'Rourke failed to do outreach with Latinos, or report on the latest Trump presser meltdown?"

"SEND THE CAMERAS TO THE WHITE HOUSE! STAT!"

You know that, I know that. Don't beat yourself up thinking that mindset will change.

Sure.

It's just hard to ignore that the the Parkland survivors are probably yesterday's news now that the midterms are over. Meanwhile, wall to wall coverage of the professional clown show is guaranteed.

[JCAll]

I'm just so glad to see that it took less than a day after the win on election day for Democrats to set their sights on the enemy that truly matters.
Other Democrats.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

13 dead in mass shooting at Thousand Oaks, Calif., bar packed with college students

At least a dozen people are dead after a gunman opened fire inside a crowded Thousand Oaks bar lat Wednesday night, throwing smoke bombs and raining bullets on an event popular with college students.

The shooting inside the Borderline Bar & Grill has killed at least 11 people, including the gunman, and seriously injured several more, according to Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean. A sheriff’s department sergeant was shot several times and died at a hospital.

The gunman, who is believed to be among the dead, burst into the bar around 11:20 p.m., cloaked in all black as he threw smoke bombs and began shooting at targets as young as 18 , authorities and witnesses said. Several witnesses described the weapon used as a pistol.

Deputies arrived and got into a firefight with the suspect, which left one deputy seriously injured, according to Capt. Garo Kuredjian, a Ventura County Sheriff’s department spokesman.

Witnesses reported a horrifying scene as gunfire echoed through the club and those inside ran for cover, in some cases using chairs to break windows to escape the building. Others hid in bathrooms and an attic as they frantically called loved ones who were hearing reports of the shooting.

Sadly, the first thing that came to mind when I heard about the shooting this morning was this----what was the shooter's race?

[Mister Mets]

Trump was going to get loads of coverage for no other reason than BECAUSE he was Trump, a shameless huckster, self-promoter and carnival barker who's been in the public eye for over thirty years. That sort of relentless celebrity was mother's milk for news outlets, knowing that no matter what he said or did, good, bad or in-between, people would watch. And, at the end of the day, that's all the outlets cared about.

The media definitely had incentives to promote the hell out of Trump when he ran for the Republican nomination, since it was good copy and good ratings. They didn't realize the harm in it since for the most part they didn't take him seriously as a presidential candidate, and they didn't really care if he won the Republican nomination.

I'm going to come at this from a slightly different angle since I think it's worse that Trump became the Republican nominee than that he became President. From the perspective of Democrats, instead of a typical Republican who they would still dislike and oppose, we've got a worse President who is less competent than usual and fosters greater pushback. From the perspective of many Republicans, it's going to be a few election cycles before there's a shot at a decent Republican President.

Another issue in the primaries was that the media were in a bubble and didn't realize how some criticisms would play. Sometimes they would go after Trump for suggesting policies that were bad but that had majority support in the country (IE- the Muslim ban.) They also didn't realize how desperate people were in parts of the country that have diminishing economies and declining life expectancies.

Once Trump was the nominee, he received a fair amount of coverage since he was the candidate of one of the two major parties for top office. The media's main mistake wasn't in the amount of publicity they gave Trump at that point, but in making calculations on the idea that Hillary Clinton was an inevitable President, which led to overhyping of her problems, and a glossing over of some of Trump's failings (IE- His friendliness with wackos like Alex Jones, his refusal to release his tax returns.)

[kidfresh512]

13 dead in mass shooting at Thousand Oaks, Calif., bar packed with college students



Sadly, the first thing that came to mind when I heard about the shooting this morning was this----what was the shooter's race?

Because we are programmed for it now. I just woke up saw the headline and read the story in la Times and thought the same thing.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Loy Mauch, who was elected during the 2010 Tea Party Wave, and shortly thereafter, people in Arkansas discovered the revelation that they had elected a member of the Neo-Confederate group known as the League of the South who considered the Ol' Stars & Bars to be "a symbol of Jesus Christ and biblical government", and compares the founder of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, to Marxists and Nazis. He also believes the 14th Amendment of the Constitution is unconstitutional, that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, and even if it was, he thinks "slavery isn't that bad because Jesus never spoke out against it." Needless to say, being that overpoweringly racist was enough to get him the boot from voters when they discovered what ugly opinions he had, even by red state standards.

It was on this date in 2015 we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of Cindy Gamrat, a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives who served less than one term in office before being expelled from office by a vote of 91-12 by her colleagues. How? Well, Gamrat was a passionate Christian "defender of the sanctity of marriage", who also just so happened to be carrying on an affair with fellow anti-gay legislator Todd Courser. After rumors of the affair began to be noticed, the two plotted a scheme to bury the lead about them burying the bone by planting a story in the media that Courser had been accused of having gay sex behind a nightclub in Lansing. One of Courser's top aides realized how insane both Gamrat and Courser were, and blew the whistle that both were planning on using government e-mail to perpetuate their cover story, a grievous enough misuse of resources to get both tossed from office. Gamrat had the unmitigated, fanatical gall to make an attempt at trying to win back her seat in the special election for it, but lost in the GOP Primary. She was lucky enough to have the criminal charges against her tossed out, and unsuccessfully sued her former colleagues for "ruining their careers" (she did a fine enough job of that herself). In the meantime she has also filed for divorce, and now hosts an insane conservative radio show with Courser.

It was on this date in 2016 “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about Jon Girodes, who wanted to serve the district where Harlem is, which would be hard already given his party's demonizing of "inner cities", or their policies that impact African Americans negatively from education standardization to voting rights, to civil rights, to... you get the idea. But how could Jon Girodes find a way to be even MORE abhorrent to African American voters in Harlem, by not just being a Republican? Well, Girodes gave himself the October surprise of sending out an e-mail promising “Kool-Aid, KFC and watermelons” to people who attended a Harlem campaign rally. And when people immediately went, "HOLY F***, THAT IS RACIST AS ALL F***ING GET-OUT!", Girodes, inexplicably DOUBLED DOWN, saying, “What I think is anyone who gives free food to people is doing them a favor. Get a bunch of people who say it’s offensive and let me go into their neighborhood and give it out for free and see if they take it.” Residents of Harlem admirably responded to Girodes' offer by offering "to donate various foots to his ass". Now, if it weren't enough that Girodes was a Republican who apparently took his candidacy as an excuse to be a racist troll towards African Americans... he wasn't done with scandals in October. Within eight days of the news breaking about Girodes' racist food giveaway, he was back in the news again for being arrested on grand larceny charges in a rental scheme where he would collect deposit money from potential tenants and then still leave them without a place to live. He collected deposits from twelve people on one apartment, and left them unable to reside there, and responded with various lies to most of them, threats for others. Perhaps the most outrageous is that he threatened to rape a disabled prospective tenant in a phone call who he had swindled not just out of the deposit, but several months of advanced rent. And it’s that scheme that got Girodes a three-to-six year prison sentence back in September of 2017.

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about former Florida State Senator Greg Evers, who served in that body from 2010-2016 after previously having served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000-2010. Evers was considered a favorite to potentially win office in Florida’s 1st Congressional District to replace the retiring GOP Congressman from there, Jeff Miller in 2016, and had a long record of being radically anti-choice, pro-gun, and supporting conservative policies like instituting prayer in schools or drug testing welfare recipients that the Constitution sort of frowns upon. But when we say he was pro-gun, that included not just votes for things like “Stand Your Ground” laws in Florida that would lead to deaths like those of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman… but he actually would go on quixotic missions to stifle criticism of firearms, including submitting legislation to forbid a doctor from asking his patients if they own a gun (which might be something you would want to determine if your patient is being treated for suicidal thoughts), as well as his “Pop Tart bill”, which was inspired by a news story about a student in Maryland who chewed a pop tart into the shape of a gun which he used to threaten another student, and that got the kid suspended from school. Well, Greg Evers would rather teachers not be able to make their own decisions about what sorts of things kids did in the classroom, and pushed for a bill to limit teachers’ ability to punish students for making threats of firearms. Only one week after Omar Matteen murdered 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Miami, Evers thought it would be a great time to further demonstrate his commitment to the 2nd Amendment by announcing the “Homeland Defender Giveaway”, where you could win an AR-15. Needless to say, even in his conservative district, people were rather annoyed by the tacky and tactless attempt to garner support, and Facebook actually pulled his post, claiming it violated their user terms for “promoting violence”. Evers’ aspirations in 2016 to head to Washington, D.C. and making it inexplicably even easier to get a gun in this country were cut short mostly because of the outrage over his AR-15 auction at the worst possible time, and cost him in a wide-open GOP primary. We would like to tell you that Greg Evers is currently enjoying his retirement as a legislator and back just enjoying strawberry farming, but he was tragically killed in a car accident in August of 2017, when he crashed into a creek and was partially ejected through the windshield, getting stuck and drowned. As we can rule out a political comeback, we'll set aside his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 703-30, since this was established in July 2014.)


Jim Knoblach

Welcome to the 703rd original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be talking about former Minnesota House of Representatives member Jim Knoblach, who served as a legislator from 1995-2007, and then after a six year break from politics, returned to office with a win in the 2014 elections to serve two more terms. While Minnesota’s state legislature has trended left just slightly over the past few years, Knoblach still was staunchly anti-choice, and voting for stricter Voter ID requirement to suppress the vote. Perhaps his most heinous act of obstruction, though, was his unilateral move to prevent a hate crimes law from going on the books in Minnesota back in 2016, without explanation.

But we digress. The real reason that we are profiling Jim Knoblach is because he made headlines when four months after he announced his campaign to run for a ninth non-consecutive term representing Minnesota’s District 14B, in September of 2018, Knoblach’s 23-year old daughter reported to the media that she had been molested and sexually abused by her father from the ages of 9 until she was 21. Knoblach denies any of the behavior described, and described his daughter as “estranged” from the family (gee, wonder why, Jim). Local police did not pursue charges, with investigators assessing that what behavior was done by Knoblach was “inappropriate but not criminal”, which might be a polite way of saying doing things like sliding into bed with your underage daughter and licking her neck or biting her ear in the middle of the night is “creepy as f***”. In any event, Jim Knoblach withdrew from the ballot, and looks to be on his way out of office, hopefully this time permanently.

[JCAll]

13 dead in mass shooting at Thousand Oaks, Calif., bar packed with college students

Sadly, the first thing that came to mind when I heard about the shooting this morning was this----what was the shooter's race?

This will never not be relevant.

[Username taken]

This will never not be relevant.

I'm saving this picture.

It's damn too accurate.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This will never not be relevant.

A sad but accurate commentary on America today.

[Mecegirl]

On the other hand I'm kinda leery about nationalizing voting standards because...well...we might get another Trump one day.

They aren't now and we still got a Trump. But I may have used the wrong word with nationalize. I mean that right now not every state has early voting and that every state should, the same way that every state has voting day on a Tuesday. Though honestly sometimes I think early voting backfires. Some people who may switch parties vote before the debates even happen and then regret that vote as new info comes out.

So basically instead of this past Tuesday being the day to vote, this whole week would be a voting week.

[jetengine]

What people want to put it bluntly is...

Easy access
No gerry mandering
Paper ballots
Enough time to make a choice and/or get there.

[JCAll]

A sad but accurate commentary on America today.

Since that comic was make in 2006, to me it's a commentary on America as it's been for my entire adult life.
Some days I feel like I've been a bitter old man since I was 15.