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

[PaulBullion]

Something that I missed if someone mentioned it earlier...

Lyndon LaRouche apparently passed away earlier in the month.

He's going to have to stay that way for ten years for me to actually buy it.

Interesting - was it the House of Windsor or Greenpeace who murdered him?

[PaulBullion]

I wonder if the crowd trying to get Justin Fairfax to resign are gonna react the same way to this one.

Heck, I'm wondering if a The Intercept blogger will demand "Mitch" McConnell should resign?

[Gray Lensman]

Heck, I'm wondering if a The Intercept blogger will demand "Mitch" McConnell should resign?

Of course not. Its only bad when the left does it. When the right does it things are different.

[Robotman]

I can envision Marvel Comics' version of Mephisto with a big, shit eating grin on his face and rubbing his hands from glee while patiently waiting for Trump to drop in his lap. Trump lives for grudges which he NEVER lets go or forgets, he's driven by hatred of anyone who did him wrong and his lust for revenge. Years from now, long after he's gone from the White House, Trump will STILL be bitching .

I would like to see The Spectre spend some time with him before handing him over to Mephisto

[Mister Mets]

I’m sorry. I should’ve made it clearer. If you put people, especially children, in cages, with unsanitary conditions, without viable access to health care, you don’t get to act surprised that bad health outcomes result from it. The Trump Administration made them both more unhealthy and more lengthy stays than any prior administration.

And the fact that Republicans are more comfortable with even ONE kid dying in custody than allowing refugees a short reprieve from captivity until they can be processed and, potentially, returned back to their country, says a lot and largely disproves their abortion stance is not pro-life so much as it is anti-abortion.



Ten million dollars a year, in income, is more than enough money to buy multiple condominiums in New York City and still have plenty left over. Especially if the argument is that we should have policies that make sure people don’t starve or get stuck in abject poverty forever in a country where people can do that, the frustration is understandable.

Again, David Duke endorses Republican candidates, and continues to support Trump in particular, because these are racist policies that the party is laying out. The fact that there is a proposal to build a wall on the Southern border and the Northern one just continues to elevate the point that this isn’t about drug flows or people flows. It’s about the fact that one group of people are brown and poor and the other group isn’t.



He says the effect of these policies is “blacks get hurt worse than whites.” That is literally what he is saying in the video. The attempt to give this statement the benefit of the doubt is truly stunning and unbecoming of someone who claims to be moderate in their positions. If you can attempt to justify something like this instead of unequivocally saying that is awful (especially since he did say the thing you just said he didn’t), there is no shortage of racist policy you won’t either a) defend or b) actually be cognizant of. I’m not sure which is worse.

Yikes—what has the party come to if even moderates won’t condemn remarks such as these?



That’s ridiculous because, more often than not, I’ve heard claims that are no more or no less valid than claims of the Mayflower migrants for these refugees. And the point is to deter people who are FLEEING VIOLENCE from coming here so they don’t “darken” our body politic. They aren’t “BS claims” if they are fleeing from violence, either because of its government, its government’s inability to aid them against cartels, or other social ills that are caused by an unresponsive government. We need to be expanding the efficacy of these claims, not shrinking them. These people need our help and we are turning our back on them—just as we did in World War II with Hewish individuals.



No. They weren’t. And they weren’t even relative to Trump either especially given how many terrible things Trump has done and would continue to do.



I think Trump actively attacking people for using their First Amendment rights out in the public and private sphere, given its illegality, should’ve compromised him right there from serving in public office. But, yet, here we are, with candidates on both sides not taking the freedom to speech seriously. And, yet, one is president and one isn’t. Can you guess which one you continually make excuses for or give the benefit of the doubt to and which one you continue to attack despite her reluctance to re-enter public life in any meaningful way?

The kids came from places with unsanitary conditions and poor access to health care, so blaming the US is premature. There also isn't a comparison with Obama since we don't know the health results of all the kids who left US custody.

There is a legitimate concern that more kids will die if there's the reprieve from captivity, as that will encourage more parents to take their children on this journey. At this point, we don't know how many die on the way here or once they're in their homes (as unfortunate as it is, with thousands of children, the law of averages suggests some tragedies will occur, especially when you take into account the malnutrition and potential for diseases in the countries they fled.)

Duke has backed a Democratic nominee for President.

As for the differences between the Canadian and American borders, is there any indication the percentage of illegal border-crossers from the North is close to the percentage from the South (which isn't just Mexico, but everyone travelling through Mexico from other countries)? Do you think Canadians who generally speak English would have a similarly difficult time acculturating to the US?

As for the view, the specific goalpost was whether the purpose of policies was to hurt brown people. Someone saying that the effect in 1981 was that way doesn't demonstrate that it's the point, and further, that the majority want it for that reason.

As for a lack of condemnation, Lee Atwater has been dead since 1991. There isn't much point in condemnation. I legitimately didn't think there was any question about whether his expressed views are bad, or that I would have to spend time convincing anyone here of that.

I made the point about Hillary because it came up in conversation. I don't care for Trump, and look forward to voting against him, but there is less need to attack him because you guys typically have those points covered. You're less likely to articulate the arguments against Hillary, so there's more purpose in bringing that up on my end. That said, I'm eager to hear from anyone who thinks that prosecuting people for making an anti-Islam film is a worthwhile policy goal.

[Tazirai]

NEWS ANALYSIS WAR & PEACE
US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships

For decades, the American people have been repeatedly told by their government and corporate-run media that acts of war ordered by their president have been largely motivated by the need to counter acts of aggression or oppression by “evil dictators.” We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. We had to bomb Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was an evil dictator, bent on unleashing a “bloodbath” on his own people. Today, of course, we are told that we should support insurgents in Syria because Bashar al-Assad is an evil dictator, and we must repeatedly rattle our sabers at North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin because they, too, are evil dictators.

This is part of the larger, usually unquestioned mainstream corporate media narrative that the US leads the “Western democracies” in a global struggle to combat terrorism and totalitarianism and promote democracy.

I set out to answer a simple question: Is it true? Does the US government actually oppose dictatorships and champion democracy around the world, as we are repeatedly told?

[Mister Mets]

I wonder if the crowd trying to get Justin Fairfax to resign are gonna react the same way to this one.

What Fairfax was accused of is worse.

Sen John Cornyn tweeted yesterday: “We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.” Benito Mussolini

The party of tolerance and freedom guys, who aren't at all tied to or respect Nazis in any way.

Do you think Cornyn agrees with the tweet? I would figure he's posting it in order to voice his disagreements on plans to restrict the individual.

This is very on brand for Trump, kicking a man down when he's dying of cancer and the following it up by insulting another man for crying about losing family during the Holocaust.

Schumer cried in a discussion about contemporary immigration policy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufbw6wGSbew

[Tazirai]

Say Goodbye to Mitch McConnell’s America

Which brings us to a most valuable teacher: a privileged, compromised, cowardly, racist, sexist, hate-swaddled, power-mad, greed-gorged, double-dealing, fathomless void where all integrity goes to die. I speak, of course, of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If Donald Trump is the Devil waiting at that moonlit crossroads to tune our guitar at the cost of our souls, Mitch McConnell drove him there and paid for the gas.

Mitch McConnell is valuable because he teaches us in graphic fashion how not to be. In his own words, McConnell shines a light down that road to ruin — his road, his way — and compels us for our own sake to choose the other route. He serves to make the decision binary: zero vs. one, nothing vs. something, altogether elegant in its simplicity.

[numberthirty]

I wonder if the crowd trying to get Justin Fairfax to resign are gonna react the same way to this one.

Nope. They won't.

Put simply...

Unless Trump became on of "The Good Guys" overnight, the reaction won't be the same because the situation is different.

What you have when it comes to Faifax is one of "The Good Guys" not just still in office when there are what appear to be credible rape accusations against him. He is trying to compare attempts to get him to step down to lynchings.

Never mind that folks have talked about how The Democratic Party runs such people out of the party or primaries them without fail.

If someone wants to look at that and see "Apples"/"Apples", that doesn't mean that it is.

[Tazirai]

Heather McGee on Meet The Press - "This morning I got choked up on air when discussing the political reluctance to be bold on climate change. It’s never happened to me before, but there’s no precedent for the threat we are facing."

[Tazirai]

Former Fox News Medical Contributor Keith Ablow Accused of Sexually Exploiting 3 Patients

[Tendrin]

Gee. Another fox news guy is a rapist?

I'm shocked.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Peter Kinder, a former Lieutenant Governor of Missouri who has the uncomfortable reputation of having held numerous campaign fundraisers at Missouri area Hooters restaurants, and once frequented a strip club enough to get to know a dancer there who would go on to become a Penthouse Pet. Kinder also lied to the public about the Affordable Care Act, telling citizens not to sign up, and during the 2012 elections, he got on social media to claim that United Nations poll watchers were helping President Obama “steal the election”. In the past few years, Kinder has not done much to repair his reputation, either. During the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri back in 2014, Kinder made the level-headed decision to start demonizing the protesters, calling for the arrests of Michael Brown’s father and the Reverend Al Sharpton, and demeaned the citizenry return to “Anglo-American values” (because that doesn’t sound racist at all). Kinder was quoted in an interview with Steve Malzberg on Newsmax that “the protests in Ferguson were based on a lie” and “the Justice Department is more racist than Ferguson”, shortly after the Department of Justice released their own report on the killing of Michael Brown, and blamed all of the fuss on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, who he said were “obsessed with race”. He defended his remarks later, saying the DoJ was staffed with “Marxists and Black Radicals” and that they were “fanning the flames of racial division”. His bigoted tone had not changed by November 2015, either, when he responded to the terror attacks in Paris that were carried out by jihadists from France and Belgium by asking Governor Jay Nixon to stop accepting Syrian refugees into Missouri, adding that they must be sure “terrorists are not coming to Missouri masquerading as refugees.” Kinder lost in the 2016 GOP Primary to become the next Governor of Missouri and has now faded from relevance.


It was one year ago that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled the U.S. House Representative from Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, Ann Wagner, who after a long career that included working on the 1992 Bush campaign and several years during the second Bush administration as a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, was first elected to the U.S. House back in 2012, when she ran for the seat being vacated by former Congressman Todd Akin, who decided to not for his House seat and instead make his epically disastrous run for the U.S. Senate. Thus far in Wagner’s tenure, she has missed over double the amount of votes of the average member of Congress.

Back in 2015, Wagner became a hyperbolic opponent of Planned Parenthood, when she went to the floor of the House to call for the organization to be defunded based on the fraudulent “sting” videos provided by the anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress. Rep. Wagner bought the lie hook, line, and sinker, ranting that it showed “barbaric murder” and insisting that Planned Parenthood was “selling body parts of unborn babies”. That however, as far as extremist lunacy goes, pales in comparison to what might beher lowest moment as a member of Congress in October 2017, when she got on Twitter to try to link Planned Parenthood to, and we’re not kidding… the Church of Satan. Where would she get such an idea? Well, apparently Ann Wagner gets her best information from Breitbart News, who linked two separate stories about the groups individually suing the government over anti-abortion laws as “proof” of their plot. We’ll let Snopes.com cover just how stupid that is, and then have you wonder how much of a moron Ann Wagner would have to be to believe it.

But that isn’t to say Rep. Wagner is ready to attack all who might wrong the public… when it comes to banks and payday loan lenders, she’d like to allow them to victimize the public as much as possible, as evidenced by her efforts in March of 2017 to gut the protections provided by Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform as well as the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Wagner is also a climate change denier, and she may have also eaten her own booger in a live Fox News interview, so there’s that.

Ann Wagner was a bit endangered in 2018, what with her unsteady allegiance to Donald Trump in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape where he boasted of committing sexual assault was released. While at first Rep. Wagner condemned Trump for his remarks, she ended up waffling again and admitting she would vote for Trump anyway prior to the election. She didn’t get a serious primary challenger, but still, in the general election, Ann Wagner was definitely sweating about whether or not Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District’s +8 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index would be enough to protect her from the Blue Wave, what with Democrats having a +8 advantage in polls with generic Democrats versus generic Republicans. She was nervous enough that she actually tried claiming that a campaign mailer Missouri Democrats sent out that criticized her immigration record was “illegal”, which isn’t only untrue, it’s also a bizarre attempt at stifling the First Amendment rights of her opponents to speak ill of her. Still, even with the fact that she has never hosted a town hall in the six years she had held office… the partisan lean for Missouri’s 2nd ended up being just about enough to allow Wagner to hold on, as she won re-election in November with 51% of the vote.

She remains one of the few Republican women left in Washington, and still one of the worst.

[worstblogever]

So after Roger Stone posted that image of his judge with a sniper's crosshairs next to her last week, he tried blaming it on his "social media managers", but she called bulls*** on the excuse and laid the smack down on him. One of the things she ordered, at that point, was for Stone to name his "social media managers" to the court.

As it turns out, all four of Roger Stone's "social media managers" are Proud Boys. One of whom managed to get close enough to Trump to appear behind him while he gave a speech last week.

It's almost as if they have no problem with the fact that they're white nationalists, you know?

[numberthirty]

Pretty interesting read on how a corner of things actually worked under Rahm...

https://chicago.suntimes.com/busines...on-complaints/

Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, city has sharply scaled back environmental enforcement