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

[Iron Maiden]

First the MAGAbomber and now this. One of these days one of the madmen is going to succeed.

I fear the same thing. Even though he was not able to harm any of his targets, the MAGAbomber got pretty close in finding out how to find his targets. It was lucky that a postal worker or delivery person didn't get killed instead.

And Trump is still tweeting about the press being an Enemy of the People even after this latest case. It reminds me of some of the taunts I've seen coming from the crazies on the Right..."we have all the guns"

[Iron Maiden]

Of course the hypocrisy runs deep in the GOP.

Congressman Bob Collins (GOP-Ga.) went there

as Democrats push ahead with their own investigations, Collins is not pleased.
In an interview with McClatchy, Collins posed this question: "What are you going to do if you based your angst in life over the last two years on something that doesn't come out? It'll be an interesting day on the Hill."

So was he asleep or something for the endless Benghazi investigations?

[Michael Watkins]

That could be.

Just felt a lot like Morton Downey Jr. getting "Mad" back in the day.

but he didn't air it.

[Tendrin]

but he didn't air it.

Correct. But don't worry. He'll have someone else on to bash liberals tomorrow -- like, say, Glenn Greenwald again.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

So who is 'Kill Em All' and 'Justice'? That's all I care about in this thread at this point.

AOC and Khanna

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The Bernie side is all or nothing, unfortunately. They'd rather the country burn (Bern?) if they don't get exactly what they want.

It's useless to try and reason in that way. They'd rather a Trump than someone who might not have as good of economic policies as Bernie, but has better than Trump's at least.

I don't get it either.

Again, last time Bernie gave you more of his voters than Hillary gave to Obama. Bernie voters were still spit on over it. It’s more that the party unity schtick was a bs lie to get away with bad behavior to get others to serve an interest.

Also it’s not all or nothing. The vast majority of Bernie voters would go for Warren.

[ZombieHavoc]

AOC and Khanna

I can hang with that.

[BeastieRunner]

I couldn't wait till Friday but I have my cartoon of the week:

[PaulBullion]

The Mueller Report is coming in the next few days or early next week.

https://www.vox.com/2019/2/20/182334...tion-next-week
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1Q92G9

You know, I heard this on the radio and on this evening's news.

Is this a head fake, or is it likely?

Considering the amount of data they confiscated from Roger Stone's computers and the additional evidence they've been getting from the House since the Blue Wave happened, I seriously doubt he'll be ready before a few more months.

[PaulBullion]

News from the saner parts of the world:

Swedish student leader wins EU pledge to spend billions on climate

In a speech alongside 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for suggesting climate change was “invented” and “ideological”.

“In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change,” Juncker said of his proposal for the EU budget, which is typically 1 percent of the bloc’s economic output, or 1 trillion euros ($1.13 trillion) over seven years.

[SquirrelMan]

2019 in two tweets:

[Tazirai]

The Washington Post, Picking Up Where They Left Off in 2016, Runs Four Negative Bernie Sanders Stories in Two Days

The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, and while I don’t think he was calling down these headlines to his editors from the heights, the paper’s corporate agenda became impossible to disguise—Bernie Sanders was the enemy, and they weren’t even trying to hide their pro-Clinton antagonism.

Here we are in 2019, and it appears that absolutely nothing has changed. In fact, after Sanders helped shame Amazon into raising its minimum wage to $15, the specific antipathy toward him at the Post has surely only gotten worse. The proof is in the pudding—Sanders declared his candidacy for president on Tuesday, and in the space of 48 hours, the Post churned out four negative pieces—two of them by the same writer!

“Bernie Sanders is no big deal the second time around,” by Jennifer Rubin

In short, Sanders is offering little different from many younger, less cranky Democrats, including nonwhite candidates who haven’t struggled to win over African Americans and women and who haven’t had to explain complaints of sexual harassment in their campaigns.

“Why Sanders’s money haul doesn’t matter very much,” by Jennifer Rubin

Sanders is the only Democratic contender for 2020 who ran for president in 2016, during which he raised about $230 million. For someone with nearly universal name recognition, an extensive donor list and a long run-up to his announcement, Sanders’s haul shouldn’t impress knowledgeable political watchers. (Should Joe Biden announce, I would bet his 24-hour fundraising total will dwarf Sanders’s total. A former vice president shouldn’t have to lift a finger to trigger a flood of money.)

“Bernie, your moment has come—and gone,” by David Von Drehle

However the 2020 campaign might unfold for the Democrats, there is no wounded giant to define the party fray. Minus the vacuum, Sanders will find, like gruff Gene, that his moment is gone, his agenda absorbed by more plausible candidates, his future behind him. Only the residue of unslaked ambition remains.

“Bernie Sanders is probably just another one-hit wonder,” by Henry Olsen

The Democratic presidential jam session gained a new act Tuesday with Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) entry into the race. Despite running second in most early polls, Sanders is likely to find that he can’t recapture the magic once he goes back out on tour.

Bernie Sanders Campaign: Strong Start, Big Challenges Ahead

[Tazirai]

CNN anchors misleadingly portray popular Democratic proposals such as "Medicare-for-all" and taxing the wealthy as far to the left

SCIUTTO: You know, universal health care, universal health care. You’re talking about background checks. That’s one kind of issue. But I’m talking about issues further to the left of the political spectrum.

POPPY HARLOW (CO-ANCHOR): And also let’s remember Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president, also, you know, proposing that wealth tax on people with any assets over $50 million -- also very far left.

[Tazirai]

Fox & Friends guest complains college courses convey "anti-white bias" and are a way of "scapegoating" white males
Young America's Foundation's Spencer Brown: "White males are the most disfavored group on college campuses."

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST) Every year Young America's Foundation compiles a list of the most outrageous courses offered at colleges all across the country, calling out the bias and sometimes very bizarre culture at higher education in America.

...

EARHARDT: So y'all found 250 bizarre courses at 50 different schools. Which schools did you analyze?

SPENCER BROWN (YOUNG AMERICA'S FOUNDATION): So this report goes through basically the top universities and colleges in America. So the Big Ten, the SEC, the Ivy Leagues, the top ten U.S. News and World Report-ranked colleges, and looks at what these students are actually being taught, and what we find every single year is it just continues this leftward slant and just gets more crazy and more tragic as the title implies.

EARHARDT: Some of these are a little bizarre. At the University of Illinois, there -- you can take a class called "Gender in Gaming." It examines the history of gender and video games -- internet bullying, doxxing, trolling -- an effort to consolidate and maintain video games and geek culture as a domain of masculinity and whiteness?

[Tazirai]

Tulsi Gabbard Pushes Back Against Meghan McCain's 'Assad Apologist' Accusation: Reason Roundup

"When I hear the name Tulsi Gabbard, I think of Assad apologist, I think of someone who comes back to the United States and is spouting propaganda from Syria," said McCain. "You have said that the Syrian president Assad is not the enemy of the United States....It's hard for me to understand where you come from a humanitarian standpoint if you were to become president."

It's not surprising that McCain, daughter of a senator who seldom saw a country he didn't think could be improved by U.S. bombs, can't understand the impulse not to police the world. But Gabbard pushed back admirably at the contention that trying to disentangle the U.S. from Syria was somehow tantamount to supporting Bashar al-Assad.

"An enemy of the United States is someone who threatens our safety and our security," said Gabbard:

There is no disputing the fact that Bashar al-Assad in Syria is a brutal dictator. There's no disputing the fact that he has used chemical weapons and other weapons against his people. There are other terrorist groups in Syria who have used similar chemical weapons and other weapons of terror against the people of Syria. This is an unfortunate thing that wrenches at every one of our hearts. This is not something that I'm disputing, nor am I apologizing or defending these actions.

My point is that the reality we are facing here is that since the United States started waging a covert regime-change war in Syria starting in 2011, the lives of the Syrian people have not been improved.