All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tendrin]

Shapiro objects to neonazis So strenuously that they regularly cite him as inspirational to them. That checks out.

[aja_christopher]

There are several issues with the comparison of Shaprio on white supremacism to Democrats on immigration.

Ben Shapiro's has written and spoken often against white supremacism.

The Democratic party has written and spoken often on wanting stronger borders as well and have presided over decreasing illegal immigration -- you just pick and choose by party instead of actually practicing what you preach when you claim it's "more important to look at what they actually do."



None of which justifies wholescale family separation and that "wall" your Republican president wants, which is the real issue at hand.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that ‘Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Jay Townsend, a former candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010 who tried challenging Sen. Chuck Schumer… by claiming he didn’t actually support Israel enough(Chuck Schumer of all people!). Part of his campaign to do so involved him appearing with known anti-Islamic hate-monger Pamela Geller near the 9/11 site, as she raved about Muslims trying to build a “Ground Zero Mosque”. During protests in Wisconsin against Gov. Scott Walker by union workers, Townsend referred to the unions as “pigs needing to be slaughtered”. When he became a campaign advisor for former Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, he went way, way over the line when he suggested that conservatives should “hurl some acid” at female Democratic Senators who voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a move that typically is used by psychos in the Taliban to silence women they don’t agree with. Townsend’s political career has gone from being a terrible candidate, to a liability as an adviser, to not even rating headlines.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Spencer Bachus, a former eleven term U.S. House Representative from Alabama's 6th Congressional District from 1993 through 2015, Bachus easily won office in that district, mostly because of redistricting prior to his 1992 run, most of the African American parts of Birmingham, Alabama, were shunted off into Alabama's 7th, and brought most of the white wealthy districts from the 7th to the 6th, making it a much friendlier district to him, as a member of the GOP. While Bachus was often associated with his role from 2006 to 2012 as the head of the House Financial Services Committee, he was certainly a figure not without other controversy. Back in May of 2005, when it was rather easy for conservatives to chastise critics or anyone that had the nerve to not just nod their head and agree, comedian Bill Maher was using his First Amendment right of satire on his show to joke about how the U.S. military began falling short of recruiting goals by saying, "More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club. We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies." Spencer Bachus didn’t take that sort of talk in stride, and had the levelheaded response of accusing Maher of straight-up treason. He eventually was kind enough to backpedal and say that he at least wasn’t going to call for Maher to be prosecuted for this capital crime, instead settling to have him off the air (alas, he would not get that wish). But that’s not the only time Bachus went over the top to demonize dissenting opinions. On April 9th, 2009, he started going the Joe McCarthy route in rhetoric and complaining to local Alabama officials that there were a supposed 17 socialists in the U.S. House. We’ll at least give him credit for Bernie Sanders, at least. Bachus just called it a career perhaps not coincidentally around the time it was revealed he was the most prolific member of Congress to perform legal insider trading (at the time), benefit from knowledge about the collapsing financial industry of the time to manipulate his own personal stock portfolio to profit from the crisis, as many citizens were losing their own homes and retirement funds. He helped get himself richer by betting against the U.S. economy. As Elizabeth Warren began moving to step in and regulate the big banks after that crisis, and close the kinds of loopholes that allowed Bachus' behavior to continue, he responded by saying that she and President Obama were "violating the Constitution". His overall voting record including voting to try and impeach Bill Clinton back in 1998, voted to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act that led to the 2007 financial crash, voted against Dodd-Frank financial reform that would prevent the next one, voted to allow government buildings to erect monuments of the Ten Commandments, the Iraq War, and was a staunch anti-abortion and pro-gun vote. Since Bachus has moved on to predictably start working as a lobbyist for K Street.

In both 2017, as well 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted profiles of the eleven-term U.S. House Representative from New Jersey’s 11th District, Rodney Frelinghuysen, who arrived in Congress all the way back in the 1994 Red Wave Election. Quite literally, he is a part of one of the oldest political families in the history of the United States, that goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War, that has had seven generations serve as politicians from New Jersey at the state and federal level. The family name has intimidated enough within New Jersey that many pundits note that for two decades, Rodney hasn’t had to face much in the way of a challenger at the polls. Frelinghuysen made a variety of controversial ethical decisions through the years like accepting donations from military contractors while sitting on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, often getting those donations on the same days he voted to get the same companies lucrative government contracts. Eventually, he decided it would be more prudent to stop pretending he represents his constituents at all, dodging town halls altogether. This of course would have a lot to do over the outrage surrounding his endorsement (albeit reluctant) of Donald Trump during the 2016 elections, and in his final term of Congress, his flip-flopping over support for repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017. He insisted he wouldn’t vote to repeal… and then he did. So almost immediately, disgruntled constituents began calling his Washington, D.C. office, and staking him out if possible. One of the main grassroots activists working against him was Saily Avelenda, a banking executive from his district. And that was unacceptable to Congressman Frelinghuysen, who responded by writing a poison pen letter in the form of an e-mail to Avelenda’s boss, outing Avelenda’s out of work activities to him as a “ringleader”, which yet again made him the target of an ethics investigation, because WOW that is beyond the pale. Through his career, Frelinghuysen was a co-sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, voted for the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about the Monica Lewinsky affair, voted against Equal Pay for women, against Wall Street reform after the global economy tanked in 2007, against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and voted for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood. He is retired, and we hope that it’s not to groom his son to take his place in a few years. We’re going to go ahead and retire his profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 756-40, since this was established in July 2014.)


Cliff Hite

Welcome to the 756th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be taking a look at former Ohio State Senator Cliff Hite, who was first appointed to office back in 2011 by Governor John Kasich after serving four years on the Ohio House of Representatives. (This would be the same John Kasich we noted has an extensive history of misogyny.) After a decade schlepping around the Ohio state legislature, Hite suddenly resigned in October of 2017, citing “health reasons”.

Turns out, Hite has that medical condition a lot of Republicans around the country have had forcing their resignation, of “being a skeevy scumbag”. Because there’s sexual harassment, and then there’s just practically stalking. The 63-year-old Hite was revealed to have actually spent two months pleading with a female legislative employee to have sex with him despite her repeated refusals. Details included he admitted to previous extramarital affairs, , he had a condo and no one would ever know, and on one specific day, he pestered her to have sex with him for more than an hour. Hite would shared intimate details of his sex life with his wife, and would plead, "I'm a grown man with needs," including (but not limited to) oral sex, according to the allegations. The woman refused eight or nine times.

Cliff Hite’s voting record also was terrible for women (amazing coincidence, that), including support for anti-choice measures as extreme as fetal heartbeat bills. We’ll also note that he voted for legislation to allow guns in bars, tried to nullify the Affordable Care Act, and supported every Voter ID measure he could to try and rig our democracy so that Republicans would win in Ohio going forward.

Cliff Hite can eat a proverbial bag of Richards, and we’ll leave him in the past.

[Mister Mets]

Shapiro objects to neonazis So strenuously that they regularly cite him as inspirational to them. That checks out.

Perhaps neonazis might have ulterior motives in blaming a prominent Jew for their actions.

If you think he has said or written something that only neonazis could agree with, point it out.

The Democratic party has written and spoken often on wanting stronger borders as well and have presided over decreasing illegal immigration -- you just pick and choose by party instead of actually practicing what you preach when you claim it's "more important to look at what they actually do."



None of which justifies wholesale family separation and that "wall" your Republican president wants, which is the real issue at hand.

This is two and a half minutes in which Obama doesn't say what kind of limits he wants on legal immigration, or under what circumstances he'll kick out those who came into the country illegally, which were the things I noted Democrats are vague on.

He specifies that the bill is a compromise, and not what Democrats actually want.

And the party has gotten more radical since 2013.

[aja_christopher]

This is two and a half minutes in which Obama doesn't say what kind of limits he wants on legal immigration, or under what circumstances he'll kick out those who came into the country illegally, which were the things I noted Democrats are vague on.

So it's not about "what they actually do" but what you assume they will do -- which is where the hypocrisy (and blatant party bias) comes in.

Meanwhile, what your party "actually does" is protect Republican candidates that obstruct justice and separate families at the border as a "deterrent".

[ed2962]

It's the algorithms. It's on Facebook and Google, et al.

I watched a Joe Rogan interview with Adam Connover (Adam Ruins Everything), and the suggestions were bonkers. A lot of "_____ destroys feminist/SJW" type videos.

I recall this coming up previously with Facebook's algorithm sorting people out. It's built that way.

That's part of it. Part of it is also there's an audience for things that appear to anti-PC and some folks will absorb as much of it they can. They might reading say racist jokes ironically, then eventually the irony disappears.

[ed2962]

The most obnoxious kick my Cult of Shapiro ex-friend got on was just hardcore railing about how white priveledge doesn't exist. He would say it's not white priviledge, it's American priviledge--every one has the same oppurtunity as everyone else because it's America. All while posting condecending shit about people who are in debt. He is not in any debt, because his parents paid for his college, after which he received a well paying job.

It always seems those who go hardest against the idea of white priviledge are the ones who are the most priviledged.

Ugh, that dude sucks. I get so annoyed when I think of the 20+ years I wasted in friendship with him.

I think it's many cases ( most?) it's the white people who are struggling. They think, "Hey they cut my hours at work and I got all these bills to pay...I'm sure not 'priviledged!'"

[ed2962]

A vote about Supreme Court justices usually favors Republicans. Polls consistently show their voters caring more about it, and that if it made a difference in 2016, it was to encourage more voters to back Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/29/175110...kennedy-retire

I'd also argue there's a better argument for the conservative view of jurisprudence (an understanding of laws should be based on the original intent of the lawmakers and/ or the ordinary understanding of the law) versus the liberal view (all conservative legal arguments are pretext to get what they want; this is not actually an argument for a particular vision of legal understanding although the subtext is the left should act in the same way.)



If someone makes a strong claim based on their understanding of the political views of people they disagree with, it's important to determine whether their understanding is accurate and they know what they're talking about. In this case, there is the claim that Ben Shapiro intentionally bridges the gap between Fox News and white nationalists, which would be a vicious slander if untrue, even if Shapiro wasn't Orthodox Jewish.

There may be a different discussion about Shapiro's shortcomings, but someone has to actually make it. People shouldn't be expected to come up with a better articulated version of someone else's argument.

Arguments have to be followed where they lead. If the claim is that people who are fans of Shapiro are disproportionately likely to become terrible, and that this means Shapiro is bad, that logic has to be applied in all cases. When there are left-wing lunatics, we've got to look into whether they liked Maddow or Thinkprogress at any point, and be willing to make the same argument.

Good and bad people can find something in particular ideologies and communicators; it doesn't make the ideology automatically good or bad. You might agree that the people who go to Shapiro because they're conservative and find Hannity/ O'Reilly intellectually dishonest or too focused on tradition have a point.

To determine whether Shapiro's a problem, it's more important to look at what he actually does. What does he actually say to incite violence? What does he say that no one reasonable can agree with?

Ben is constantly intellectually dishonest, mis-represents other points of view, and uses meanspirited language...yet is able to dress it up as "logic." Many times in the service of the worse sides of conservatism or the republican party. I'm not saying that Ben is making calls to violence, but not hard to see person going from watching Ben "own the libs" to watching Stephen Molynuex and "race realism" to something even darker.

[InformationGeek]

I'm not surprised, but I'm still surprised. It's just so pathetic.

This is outrageous.

The Trump administration asked the Navy to move the USS John McCain ship out of the port in Japan so Trump wouldn’t see it.

It was being repaired so they draped a tarp over the name, made people w/ name on clothing take the day off.

[ed2962]

"Charging the president with a crime is something we could not consider."

So now Congress should be given access to all relevant information -- including the unredacted report -- so that they can do their job and impeach if necessary.

That said, we know most Republicans will fight against that to the end because they put loyalty to party above loyalty to country.

Ha! Muller's basically, "I did my job...Peace Out!"

[Tendrin]

Ben is constantly intellectually dishonest, mis-represents other points of view, and uses meanspirited language...yet is able to dress it up as "logic." Many times in the service of the worse sides of conservatism or the republican party. I'm not saying that Ben is making calls to violence, but not hard to see person going from watching Ben "own the libs" to watching Stephen Molynuex and "race realism" to something even darker.

Ben isn't making /direct/ calls to violence but violence is the inevitable end of, say, dehumanizing arabs as, what did he say again...?
shapiroracism.JPG

But again: we have nazis openly telling us that Ben Shapiro was part of their journey to becoming Nazis. No matter how much Mets might tut at me about this being a 'vicious slander', it's exactly what it appears to be.

Shapiro, who edits the conservative publication the Daily Wire, has made Islamophobic claims similar to other far right figures, such as saying that most Muslims are radicalized. Prosecutors in the case of a man who killed 6 and injured 19 in a Quebec City mosque in 2017 noted that the attacker visited Shapiro’s Twitter page 93 times in the month before the attack. Shapiro shrugged off the connection then, too.

But I'm sure such rhetoric has no consequences, right? It's not like he wore a t-shirt or something.

[PwrdOn]

Perhaps neonazis might have ulterior motives in blaming a prominent Jew for their actions.

If you think he has said or written something that only neonazis could agree with, point it out.

This is two and a half minutes in which Obama doesn't say what kind of limits he wants on legal immigration, or under what circumstances he'll kick out those who came into the country illegally, which were the things I noted Democrats are vague on.

He specifies that the bill is a compromise, and not what Democrats actually want.

And the party has gotten more radical since 2013.

What's with your hard on for trying to limit legal immigration? You do realize that workers are coming here because the country needs them, not the other way around, and that we'd never be able to compete globally if we had to recruit from an ever shrinking base of "real Americans." If you want a white ethnostate so bad, go move to Russia or something, they'd be glad to take you.

[Tendrin]

Meanwhile, we now have freedom gas.

Serioiusly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clima...=.8714808e5fd9

The Energy Department announced the approval of a liquefied natural gas project in Texas, saying it would allow “molecules of U.S. freedom to be exported to the world.”
The department said the permit for the expansion of the Freeport, Texas facility “is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world.”
The language drew wry responses on social media.
“Personally, I don’t think this goes far enough,” Jason Bordoff, founding director of Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, wrote on Twitter. He urged the Energy Information Administration to “change its monthly data metric from mcf (million cubic feet) to musf (molecules of US freedom).”
Another tweeter asked whether the administration would treat another hydrocarbon gas, propylene, the same as methane. “Or will some molecules be more free than others?”

[JCAll]

It was pretty much a partisan power grab, although part of it is that Obama and Democrats played a bad hand poorly.

Republicans had a majority in the Senate. They were not going to vote to give liberals a 5-4 majority. In the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton remained vague on whether she would put Merrick Garland on the court, which took away the moral power of the argument.

So they had to block Merrick Garland...so Hillary wouldn't block Merrick Garland? GOP logic just baffles me. There's no moral argument. Merrick Garland was never going on the Court, maybe because a black man nominated him, maybe just to own the libs.

[Tendrin]

So they had to block Merrick Garland...so Hillary wouldn't block Merrick Garland? GOP logic just baffles me. There's no moral argument. Merrick Garland was never going on the Court, maybe because a black man nominated him, maybe just to own the libs.

It was always about keeping the seat vacant so that a hardline conservative could eventually be appointed to it. Any other justification misunderstands the essential nature of the GOP.