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

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Yeah, no it isn't. The "small talent pool" argument is also BS because we'll never know how many "unknown", extremely talented people of color were not considered in favor of well known willing white people hired to work in black face. The decisions were driven by potential profits from ticket sales. The reality is that talented minority performers were passed over for what could've been their career-making performances because $$$$.

Edit: A mainstream Hollywood example is Emma Stone being cast as an Asian/Hawaiian in the film Aloha.

Rant Over...again

Yeah.........

[jetengine]

Shakespeare isn't special.

Except it kind of is. Now modern Shakespeare ? Yeah no need for blackface beyond the weird set of circumstsances that the Met has set itself which we've already discussed are racist, but sitting there going "400 years of culture isnt special" is a pretty dumb move.

All the poliricians who are having issues though dont have the excuse of "Its 1735" though. They live in a post Civil Rights world in a nation which pioneered minstrelism. This should be obvious.

[Mecegirl]

Except it kind of is. Now modern Shakespeare ? Yeah no need for blackface beyond the weird set of circumstsances that the Met has set itself which we've already discussed are racist, but sitting there going "400 years of culture isnt special" is a pretty dumb move.

All the poliricians who are having issues though dont have the excuse of "Its 1735" though. They live in a post Civil Rights world in a nation which pioneered minstrelism. This should be obvious.

Sorry....Can't help it. lol

[JCAll]

Except it kind of is. Now modern Shakespeare ? Yeah no need for blackface beyond the weird set of circumstsances that the Met has set itself which we've already discussed are racist, but sitting there going "400 years of culture isnt special" is a pretty dumb move.

All the poliricians who are having issues though dont have the excuse of "Its 1735" though. They live in a post Civil Rights world in a nation which pioneered minstrelism. This should be obvious.

I meant it more in the sense that Shakespeare's age and cultural impact doesn't earn it any special exemption.

[jetengine]

I meant it more in the sense that Shakespeare's age and cultural impact doesn't earn it any special exemption.

That I can agree with.

[InformationGeek]

Good. Hail to the Chief.

EDIT: Oh god, I just realized people are going to be acting super racist about the "Chief" part of that song title if she wins. Damn Trump getting that crap started.

Tooooooooo late. Rob Lowe has you covered.

Elizabeth Warren would bring a whole new meaning to Commander in “Chief”.

[InformationGeek]

Don't worry though. Trump can still out racist them all.

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!

[JCAll]

Tooooooooo late. Rob Lowe has you covered.

Don't worry though. Trump can still out racist them all.

*sigh* I hate it when the world lives down to my expectations.

[Tazirai]

[Gray Lensman]

A recent Washington Post poll has black respondents against Northam resigning by 58% to 37%.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Average Tax Refunds Down 8.4 Percent As Angry Taxpayers Vent On Twitter

Many workers who had always gotten a refund find out they now owe the IRS. if anything sinks Trump next year, it'll be this after the dumpster fire that was his tax scam that's now screwing people, including Republican voters out of their money.

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New Evidence Emerges Of Possible Wrongdoing By Trump Inaugural Committee

Tax law prohibits nonprofits from paying inflated prices to entities that are owned by people who also control the nonprofit’s activities. Wrongdoing? By the Trump Committee? NO! Say it ain't so!

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Border Towns ‘Safer Than Any City Trump Has Lived In,’ Says Texas Congressman

People “need to look at FBI stats and reality,” and the “fallacy” about border crime needs to end, Rep. Vincent Gonzalez said. Republican reps know that too, but won't say anything for fear of angering Trump. Pathetic!

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Parents Protest For Kids’ Right To Suffer From Preventable Illness

Hundreds of anti-vaxxers descended on Washington’s capital amid the state’s worst measles outbreak in decades. Talk about insanity! These idiots have ZERO business being parents if they intentionally choose to put the lives of their kids at risk.

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Texas City Councilman Calls Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez A ‘Bimbo’ After She Criticizes Trump

Republican Scott Dunn has apologized and deleted his social media accounts after major blowback. Stay classy, homeslice!

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Jacob Dorsey, who was a 19 year old candidate for a seat in the Wisconsin House of Representatives in 2014, who was obliterated in the election for his seat not because of his age, and surely not because the Wisconsin GOP didn’t support him (he was given $1,000 by the party for his campaign from them directly, and even got a photo-op with Gov. Scott Walker)… but it was more of his Twitter account that destroyed his chances. He probably should have went back and deleted all the posts where he casually used gay and/or racial slurs, declared his hatred of President Obama and other “urban bastards”, wished for another Civil War, and declared “f*** Abe Lincoln”, which indicated he hadn’t checked who founded the party he was a member of. Anyway, all signs point towards Dorsey having slinked back into college at BYU-Idaho, and has yet to make another attempt at joining the world of politics.

In both 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright, a two-term South Carolina State Senator from District 12 in in the Palmetto State who got into office by running unopposed for his seat after serving many years as a school board member trying to get Creationism taught in South Carolina schools. He galvanized his support base of Tea Partiers over the next several years with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, winning re-election in 2012, and finishing second in the GOP primary race to try and unseat sitting U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham in the 2014 elections. Bright’s voting record, that featured support for defunding Planned Parenthood as well as Personhood legislation, stricter Voter ID laws to combat the mythical threat of “in person voter fraud” at the cost of disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters, a love of guns that saw him co-sponsor a bill to legalize carrying firearms in bars (because alcohol does wonders for impulse control of people packing heat), the time he submitted a completely unconstitutional bill to that would see South Carolina begin printing its own currency, and a bill he created to try to give a five year jail sentence to anyone who worked on implementing the Affordable Care Act in South Carolina… it was Lee Bright's rhetoric that truly got our attention. In January 2010, Lee Bright was quoted by a local journalist in South Carolina as saying, “If at first you don’t secede, try again,” in a discussion about states’ rights. In August 2013 Bright gave a speech where he warned against “IRS Brownshirts enforcing Obamacare”, as well as claiming that “FEMA is training a militia” while warning against “terrorist nations” sending people to execute a “Southern border invasion”, specifically mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood of perpetrating such an action. In December 2013, Bright argued that able-bodied food stamp recipients “shouldn’t eat”, claiming that many of them “have the nicest nails, and the nicest pocketbook and the nicest car”, and that the United States should completely eliminate its social safety net because it’s “the role of the church”. He finished that discussion by comparing the IRS to Nazi Germany and stated his belief that South Carolina troops will turn against President Obama, advising his allies that "If the Tenth Amendment won’t protect the Second, we might have to use the Second to protect the Tenth.” Shortly after the Newtown Massacre, Bright made the classy decision to campaign for U.S. Senate by auctioning off an AR-15 assault rifle, the weapon that Adam Lanza used to murder 26 people in the Newtown Massacre. In April 2014 Bright was interviewed by Josh Duggar saying that Republicans need to have the courage of Bashir al-Assad and Vladimir Putin in dealing with gays, and not allow an “indoctrination” of the “homosexual agenda”. In June 2015, days after the tragic shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina that was perpetrated by Dylann Roof, a white nationalist motivated by Confederate iconography… the one positive that came out of the tragedy was that a majority in the South Carolina state legislature were willing to discuss removing the Confederate flag from state property, such as the state capitol. Almost immediately upon hearing that news, however, Lee Bright lost his damned mind, and comparing removing the flag to a “Stalinist purge” and gave a rambling defense of the Stars & Bars on the floor of the South Carolina legislature where he added “the Confederate flag is a proud symbol of freedom”, before soon raving wildly about “the devil taking control of his land”, abortion clinics in black neighborhoods “committing genocide”, how “gay marriage is a national sin” and how President Obama and the White House displayed the “abomination colors” when it was legalized. Lee Bright impotently worked towards getting Ted Cruz elected president in the 2016 presidential campaign, and as it turned out, he probably should have spent his time watching his own back. We are relieved to report. In a runoff election against Scott Talley, Lee Bright was defeated by a total of 299 votes, and will now presumably spend some time alternating between sulking about his own political fortunes and furiously wanking to the fact that there are White Nationalists in the highest echelons of our government currently. We’ll set aside his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 645-25, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

It was on this date one year ago that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, who was first elected to office back in 2012 by a little less than seven thousand votes. Forest is a political legacy, as the son of former Congresswoman and rubber room candidate Sue Myrick (the gal who palled around with Islamic hate groups in the wake of 9/11, tried to get rock music banned in her hometown, and claimed God spoke to her through her toaster to tell her to run for office), who spent four years serving under former Gov. Pat McCrory during his administration, during some of the more dismal policy failures the Tar Heel State has seen in several years (that are a lot of the reason why McCrory was only a one-term governor). Perhaps the biggest political disaster of the McCrory regime was North Carolina’s HB 2, a transphobic bathroom ban that allowed for the discrimination of LGBT citizens whose passage ended up costing the people of North Carolina over $3.7 billion in lost revenue due to several groups boycotting the state as a result and even some corporations choosing to move their operations elsewhere. And as the economic fallout from passing such a socially conservative law began to take its toll, a few more moderate members of the GOP around North Carolina started to admit that maybe… maybe they went too far. Dan Forest is most certainly not one of those reasonable souls.

You see, Dan Forest is a true Fundamentalist believer to his core. And he sat down with Tony Perkins, yes THAT Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council (which is still an anti-gay hate group) to tout the importance of HB 2, insisting that “if it protects one child or one woman "from being molested or assaulted, then it was worth it." Note the wording… IF.

Because, and I know this might be shocking, there were no transgender attacks upon women or children in restrooms. There never were. But that didn’t stop Forest from lying his *** off about what the bill was meant to do:

"Well, our bill does not discriminate against anybody. In fact, the Charlotte ordinance was amazingly discriminatory against especially women and girls who no longer had the freedom to walk into a restroom and know that they would be safe and secure in that restroom without a man walking in or a pedophile or a predator walking into that bathroom."

Now that we’ve established that Dan Forest has some issues with the LGBTQ community, in particular the “T”, what with hanging out with anti-gay hate groups and defending an anti-gay discrimination law…. Let’s talk about why this is going to matter going forward… one of the worst kept secrets right now in North Carolina politics is that when Forest is term-limited in 2020, he’s going to take a shot at preventing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper from getting a second term in office. GOP Congressman Mark Meadows already let the cat out of the bag, and Forest is already attacking his sitting Governor for wanting to repeal the widely unpopular HB 2, and claiming that Roy Cooper, intends to enact, and we quote, “a 'Look But Don't Touch' policy in our bathrooms.” That doesn’t sound like someone who is backing off of his bad move, does it?

But the levels of fanaticism already look to be well ingrained farther than even that. For years now, Forest has begun organizing a “Christian retreat” for political donors and allies known as “Black Mountain Weekend” where political players from North Carolina who cut their teeth working for monsters like Jesse Helms get together, hopefully without wearing hoods while they discuss a “Christian worldview”. And while Forest seems more than thrilled to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, he doesn’t discriminate nearly as much with the kind of company he keeps with fellow people at his retreat. Like Robin Webster, a Faith preacher who believes that you can help turn a gay person straight by beating it out of them. Every legal method of exploiting 501 (c3) law is being pushed, and apparently the bounds of the law aren’t enough for Forest’s backers, who already this year have gone far enough to donate an entire TV studio’s worth of equipment to Forest… illegally. He's more than willing to collect all the donor money from the heads of charter schools at the cost of selling out North Carolina’s education system to them later on.

So, CSGOPOTD has had Dan Forest on our radar since early 2018, because he seems devoted enough to his bigoted cause that we want everyone to know his name by the time the ballots go out for Governor of North Carolina in 2020. And it seems like that day is coming soon, as we’re seeing…

[SuperiorIronman]

Autism does not come from vaccines.

Autism can occur via genetic mutations, toxic chemicals being present around the mother during pregnancy or complications before delivery. Giving your child a fucking flu-vaccine isn't going to give them autism.

All a vaccine basically is is a watered down version of a disease that can be attacked and destroyed by the immune system. That's all that's in those syringes. That's why you can still get sick even after a vaccination, it's a variant of the disease that your body is getting trained for. Doctors can botch disease control, but nobody is getting autism off this stuff.

[Tendrin]

I think we can call those anti-vaccine protests what they are: a bunch of white noise. :P