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

[Mister Mets]

I'm not sure if the Judges can. He can be prevented from grabbing money elswhere, or building the wall in many places. But I don't think Judges can overturn a declaration of National Emergency. So Pandora's Box is open.

It's happened before.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/343us579

A court battle is much guaranteed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/u...emergency.html

One theory I've heard from conservatives skeptical of Trump is that he'd do this to get political cover with his base, and then blame others when the courts rule against him. "I tried my best but this is why we need more Republicans in Congress."

[Kirby101]

I guess if part of the Wall is confiscation of property that precident holds.

I also wonder if an Executive Order is looked at the same as a Emergency Declaration.

Your second point might be right, but either way, he will be stopped from doing anything with this stupid wall.

[4saken1]

The police suggest that he faked the attack to get publicity after his character was written out of the show.

https://abc7chicago.com/sources-smol...mpire/5138497/

Would it be more accurate to say that police are suggesting this or that they are investigating whether or not this is the case? Seems to me they're just having problems finding any additional evidence to corroborate his story, which is entirely different than suggesting he faked it.

[numberthirty]

Would it be more accurate to say that police are suggesting this or that they are investigating whether or not this is the case? Seems to me they're just having problems finding any additional evidence to corroborate his story, which is entirely different than suggesting he faked it.

From Illinois...

https://abc7chicago.com/sources-poli...thers/5138497/

Sources: Police investigating whether Jussie Smollett staged attack with help of others, allegedly being written off 'Empire'

Chicago police told ABC News, "Police are investigating whether the two individuals committed the attack - or whether the attack happened at all."

While it still seems kind of murky to me, that last part sort of sticks out.

Edit:

So...

The local news(9pm central) opened with the following:

- The two folks that the police are questioning are Nigerian.
- Unless I completely took what they said wrong, police believe they are the men Smollett said attacked him.
- Smollett might be questioned again this evening.

Don't even know what to make of all that.

[Dalak]

Would it be more accurate to say that police are suggesting this or that they are investigating whether or not this is the case? Seems to me they're just having problems finding any additional evidence to corroborate his story, which is entirely different than suggesting he faked it.

Media reports anout the Empire incident being a hoax are unconfirmed by case detectives. Supt Eddie Johnson has contacted @ABC7Chicago to state on the record that we have no evidence to support their reporting and their supposed CPD sources are uninformed and inaccurate.

[numberthirty]

Well, the lawyer for the two men being questioned says she has no clue why they have been detained/questioned.

Odd, to say the least.

[Mister Mets]

Would it be more accurate to say that police are suggesting this or that they are investigating whether or not this is the case? Seems to me they're just having problems finding any additional evidence to corroborate his story, which is entirely different than suggesting he faked it.

I'll note the article has been updated. There are police sources who are suggesting that he faked the attack, although there is now more pushback.

https://abc7chicago.com/sources-smol...mpire/5138497/
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02..._aCQWeha_UCYS8

If the initial reporting was flawed, and a black gay star of a show of a rival network is wrongly accused of fabricating a hate-crime, that is going to be a shitshow.

[JCAll]

So Democrat National Emergencies....

Infrastructure
White Nationalism
Healthcare
Gun Control

Megacorps
Anti-Vax
Gitmo

[BeastieRunner]

Trump is gonna jumpstart a Constitutional amendment with this dumb idea.

[Tazirai]

Eric Porterfield: Republican lawmaker who compared LGBT+ people to KKK urged to resign
He also used an anti-gay slur during a committee meeting

Eric Porterfield, a Republican member of the state’s House of Delegates, has claimed the LGBT+ community is a “terrorist group” that has “no care for diversity of thought”.

“The LGBTQ is a modern-day version of the Ku Klux Klan, without wearing hoods with their antics of hate,” Mr Porterfield, who is blind and a “born-again Baptist missionary”, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

In addition to the KKK comparison, Mr Porterfield used an anti-gay slur during a committee meeting over a proposed amendment to limit anti-discrimination protections for individuals who identify as LGBT+. The amendment did not pass.

[worstblogever]

The police suggest that he faked the attack to get publicity after his character was written out of the show.

https://abc7chicago.com/sources-smol...mpire/5138497/

And because if there's one police department that should be trusted in terms of race relations, it's the Chicago PD.

This is from within the past five years:

[Gray Lensman]

44 Democrats voted against Barr who was previously confirmed by the entire senate including the Democrats in 1991.

So much for the Congress being bipartisan.

Considering the rest of the guys Trump has picked for posts most benefit of the doubt he may have had is gone. And Congress stopped being bipartisan sometime under the last President.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Stephen Wise, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives and Florida State Senate who was a dedicated Creationist, who insisted on repeatedly bringing forth legislation to try to see that his religious beliefs about the origin of life were taught alongside the theory of evolution. Wise was also dedicated to the “War on Christmas”, trying to use his position on the Florida K-12 Education Committee to make sure that “Winter Break” be returned to being called “Christmas Break”. He also was big on drug testing welfare recipients (always a failed policy), and wanted rape victims to have to provide proper documentation to prove they had actually been sexually assaulted to get an abortion. After a career that spanned decades, Wise came up against term limits and mercifully vanished from public service.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of William Flynn, a North Carolina talk radio host who challenged incumbent Congressman Howard Coble in the GOP Primary for his seat in Congress representing North Carolina’s 6th District, portraying himself as a “firebrand” in a debate, and quickly lived up to that reputation when he made the tasteful decision to compare the national debt to, of all things, slavery. He also was briefly a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2014 before dropping out of the race and not just because he was tied to a Neo-Confederate group called the Institute on the Constitution, whose website endorsed Flynn and touted his time teaching courses on the Constitution. Flynn’s luck continued to get worse, as the radio station he was working for, AM 980 the Eagle, announced it was no longer broadcasting talk radio, booting Flynn just after Christmas in 2015. Unless he aims much lower, it seems highly unlikely that he will be elected to any office.



On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its first profile of Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck, who has served as a member of the Michigan State Senate since riding the Tea Party Wave into office back in 2010, with a big assist from the DeVos family And they apparently got what they paid for in Colbeck, as he has been caught on tape admitting that the DeVos family bankrolled the Michigan GOP's move to pass "right to work" legislation back in 2013. Or, alternatively, you can believe Colbeck's opinion that passing the Right to Work law in Michigan was actually the work of "divine providence", because nothing screams a miracle quite as much as when a rich dude greases Republican palms to curb workers' rights. Colbeck is not known for pulling punches in rhetoric, either. He spent a fair number of days back in 2013 comparing Barack Obama to King George III of England, and his favorite political quote, which he drops far too often, is Thomas Jefferson's remarks about the Shays Rebellion, that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It's also that sort of fetishization of the Founding Fathers you might see from someone like self-proclaimed conservative historian David Barton, who not coincidentally, is another of Colbeck's big allies. And Colbeck is so fanatically dedicated to the historic fabrication that the Founding Fathers intended on making the United States a Christian nation that he actually submitted legislation in January of 2013 that would have prevented the censorship of any history teacher who decided to push this false narrative.

What made Patrick Colbeck particularly noteworthy to us here at CSGOPOTD, however, was how he joined the ranks of a few anti-gay members of the GOP back in December of 2015 to introduce resolutions in the Michigan state legislature to urge all state officials to just ignore the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling made by the Supreme Court that legalized same sex marriage. Colbeck was a speaker at a “religious liberty” rally outside the state capitol, where he made the comparison between the position of Christians in America having to live in a country with gays getting married to that of people persecuted by ISIS. (Seriously, there's video of him saying this.) Because if there's one thing that ISIS pushes on the public, it's LGBT rights, right?

Taking a cursory glance at the rest of Colbeck's voting record reveals the sort of extremely conservative positions you might expect, including support for charter schools like the DeVos family would want, stricter Voter ID laws to suppress the vote, support for TRAP laws to close all the abortion clinics in the state, support for drug-testing welfare recipients, and votes to block the minimum wage. Now, normally a fanatical twit like Patrick Colbeck would be content to just float around a state legislature and be content to play political games when they know they're set up pretty well to win a conservative district (although he only did garner 53% of the vote in 2014). But Colbeck made plans to run for Governor of Michigan in 2018, because the Michigan GOP had to prove they could do worse than Rick Snyder for governor, apparently. Anyway, Colbeck did not advance out of the primary, considering his fellow legislators have grown tired enough of his hyper-partisan antics that they started removing him from committee leadership positions that he held. Colbeck was also term-limited in the Michigan State Senate, so he’s now out of office, and with the amount of bridges he burned during his final term in office, that might be the end of his career. And, we’d like to take the time to say, “GOOD RIDDANCE.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Nancy Pelosi To GOP: A Democratic President Could Declare National Emergency On Guns

The House speaker warned Republicans about the precedent Trump could set by declaring a national emergency to secure border wall funding. Speaker Pelosi officially put into words what schlubs like me have been saying since IQ45 made his foolish declaration. Meanwhile....

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Ex-RNC Chair Michael Steele Warns GOP On Trump’s Emergency: You Will Rue This

He said Republicans will have “no credence, no authority” to block future national emergencies by a Democratic president. Thing is, Trump doesn't care. Once he's out of office, that'll be the GOP's problem, not his.

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People Call Out Trump’s Hypocrisy On National Emergency With His Own Anti-Obama Tweet

Trump once slammed the previous president for taking executive action because he was “unable to negotiate w/ Congress.” Nice to know people haven't forgotten. That's good.

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Payday Lenders Sure Have A Cozy Relationship With The Trump Administration

The Trump administration is helping payday lenders through weak law enforcement and deregulation. No surprise there. If anything, I wonder what took this administration so long to team up with scumbag lenders.

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Trump Vowed To Wipe Out National Debt; Deficit Soars 41.8 Percent

The nation’s total debt has topped $22 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. But hey, the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility, remember?

[KOSLOX]

44 Democrats voted against Barr who was previously confirmed by the entire senate including the Democrats in 1991.

So much for the Congress being bipartisan.

Bipartisanship doesn't mean capitulation.