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

[aja_christopher]

The right wing monsters are minds unworthy of any concern, but I think fair and rational responses to their boogeyman bullshit can weaken those arguments in the wider public discourse.

Just want to say I respect your idealism -- hopefully Americans will live up to it.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

By the time you've had a Beer Hall Putsch of any sort, you're already far too late. Fascism needs to be opposed and uprooted early and fast before it has a chance to spread. The reason we had a BEer Hall putsch in Germany at all was because of long-term enabling and coddling of right-wing extremists alongside violent repression of opposition voices to them.

We've already seen the GOP use the threat of violent anti-government extremists here in Oregon. If you think the coddling isn't going to continue, I don't know what to tell you. Pretending that 'Antifa' is 'just as bad' because it wants to punch swastika-wearing murderers, break some windows, and throw milkshakes is just... not... an accurate assessment of things. Want to get rid of 'antifa'? Get rid of the frigging Nazis.

Bingo! Couldn’t have said it better myself. I worry FAR more about being caught in the crossfire of some rabid, foam at the mouth lunatic who decides for reasons known only to himself to shoot up a mall, church, school or movie theater. This crazy **** has been happening way too much, we’re talking right wing terrorism which our racist president and his goon squad administration purposely refuses to acknowledge. Compared to those bloodthirsty fuckwads and their ever escalating body counts, antifa is amateur night in Dixie.

[Iron Maiden]

Just a reminder, Trump was on cable TV on 9/11 to brag about how with the Twin Towers down, he then had the tallest building in Manhattan.

Just shy of 3,000 people were killed in a terror attack, and the motherf***er was thrilled to have moved up the list for big buildings to overcompensate for smaller body parts.

And let's not forget how he claimed he saw on TV that hundreds of Muslim Americans were celebrating the fall of the towers in New Jersey or how he could see the people jumping to the deaths from the WTC .....from 4 miles away at Trump Tower.

[Tendrin]

Republicans, not satisfied with delivering the government into massive deficits, send a letter to Secretary Mnuchin asking him to use executive authority for further tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

https://www.atr.org/sites/default/fi...s_Indexing.pdf

[Theleviathan]

Just want to say I respect your idealism -- hopefully Americans will live up to it.

Ha! And I consider myself a cynic....perhaps the world has outpaced me!

[PwrdOn]

By the time you've had a Beer Hall Putsch of any sort, you're already far too late. Fascism needs to be opposed and uprooted early and fast before it has a chance to spread. The reason we had a BEer Hall putsch in Germany at all was because of long-term enabling and coddling of right-wing extremists alongside violent repression of opposition voices to them.

We've already seen the GOP use the threat of violent anti-government extremists here in Oregon. If you think the coddling isn't going to continue, I don't know what to tell you. Pretending that 'Antifa' is 'just as bad' because it wants to punch swastika-wearing murderers, break some windows, and throw milkshakes is just... not... an accurate assessment of things. Want to get rid of 'antifa'? Get rid of the frigging Nazis.

It's worth pointing out that the Beer Hall Putsch itself ended in a miserable failure and the Nazis only rose to power a decade later because of electoral shenanigans. The communists and social democrats preferred to attack each other rather than form a united front against the Nazis, the centrists saw the communists as being just as bad as the Nazis and preferred to let them exhaust themselves against one another, and the traditional conservatives believed that they could use and control the Nazis to gain support for their own policies. So in the end, what had always been a fringe movement with a tiny base of support mostly consisting of basement dwelling chuds ended up moving into the power vacuum and seizing absolute power.

[Tendrin]

It's worth pointing out that the Beer Hall Putsch itself ended in a miserable failure and the Nazis only rose to power a decade later because of electoral shenanigans. The communists and social democrats preferred to attack each other rather than form a united front against the Nazis, the centrists saw the communists as being just as bad as the Nazis and preferred to let them exhaust themselves against one another, and the traditional conservatives believed that they could use and control the Nazis to gain support for their own policies. So in the end, what had always been a fringe movement with a tiny base of support mostly consisting of basement dwelling chuds ended up moving into the power vacuum and seizing absolute power.

I mean, you're not wrong. My point is that you only reach a point where they feel confident in trying something like through a history of enablement -- which continued long after the putsch anyway. Today, we see right-wing extremsists coddled by our government, to the point where we mute and muzzle agencies that even talk about the issue.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Republicans, not satisfied with delivering the government into massive deficits, send a letter to Secretary Mnuchin asking him to use executive authority for further tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

https://www.atr.org/sites/default/fi...s_Indexing.pdf

Big surprise, right? I saw one of the cretins who signed that letter to make the rich even richer was Cindy Hyde-Smith who voted to block the 9/11 funding bill.

====================

House Republicans To Hold Retreat In Baltimore Despite Trump’s Tirade Against City

The House Republican Conference scheduled its annual policy retreat in the very city President Trump has been attacking since Saturday. Oh, this is rich! I wonder if the GOP will cancel or move the event, lest they arouse the wrath of Trump who's been bashing the city?

**********

Mitch McConnell Lashes Out At Critics Who Called Him A ‘Russian Asset’

The Kentucky Republican blocked two measures last week that would have beefed up election security. It seems Moscow Mitch doesn't like being called a tool of the Ivans. Too damn bad!

**********

Trump Intelligence Nominee The ‘Least Qualified Individual Ever’

GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe gets a big thumbs down from Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). But, the guy sucked up to Trump by slamming Robert Mueller during that hearing last week, and that was good enough for Caramel Caligula.

**********

Trump Again Boasts He ‘Spent A Lot Of Time’ At Ground Zero With First Responders

The president told first responders that while he doesn’t consider himself to be one of them, he was at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, too. Of course, that was yet another lie by Trump, resulting in this bit of hilarity....

**********

Trump’s 9/11 Boast Sparks Hilarious ‘Lost Trump History’ Meme

George Conway and others on Twitter have been taking swipes at the president’s questionable claim that he “spent a lot of time” at Ground Zero.

[worstblogever]

I wish Trump had spent time at Ground Zero to breathe in all the asbestos that through the years in real estate he has claimed isn't a carcinogen.

[worstblogever]

It was back on this date in 2014 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our profile of former 2014 Idaho gubernatorial candidate Walt Bayes, who along with Harley Brown, captured the imagination of the entire nation that year when he showed up to a spectacularly insane debate where who boasted of having 16 children, and 77 living descendants, as well as the fact that he previously had been given visits from Child Protective Services for home-schooling his children, spent most of his time at the debate quoting scripture, and stated his desire to “take Idaho back from the federal government” because “we’re wasting all kinds of wood out there.” Needless to say, he did not fare too well against Gov. Butch Otter in that election.

In both 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Peter DeGraaf, a member of the Kansas House of Representatives representing District 82 who during a debate on an anti-abortion bill back in 2011, compared being impregnated during a rape to being something women should actually have a contingency plan for, because it’s “just like getting a flat tire”. DeGraaf also supports drug testing welfare recipients, votes against minimum wage increases, supports voter ID bills strict enough to disenfranchise tens of thousands of people to prevent statistically nonexistent "in person voter fraud", trying to block the relocation of Syrian refugees, and has supported nullification legislation to try and avoid enacting the Affordable Care Act or enforcing federal firearms laws. Oh, and he's so fanatical about abortion, as he submitted a resolution to have the Bill of Rights applied to all human beings from the point of fertilization. We reported in our original profile that DeGraaf has discovered he suffers from Parkinson's, but chose not to receive stem cell treatments for his condition because of his pro-life beliefs. While we wished him the best in his fight against that degenerative disease, even by his own decision to tie one arm behind his back, he did end up resigning three months into his latest term in the legislature. As such, we wish him the best in his battle with it, and breathe a sigh of relief that his retirement has mercifully come.

[worstblogever]

It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published our original profile of the man who was the Secretary of State of Georgia, and who is now Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. Kemp was elected Secretary of State back in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, who you may have heard of as that troglodyte who actually ran a campaign ad where he cocked a loaded shotgun at a young man who supposedly wanted to date his daughter to prove what a manly man he is. Yes, woe to us all, it’s this sort of idiocy that stirs something in the hearts of GOP Primary voters, and that led Kemp to make the ad to make up the thirty points he was trailing in polls to his main opponent, Casey Cagle, and not ask themselves, “Wait, did he just point a loaded gun at a child?” and wonder if he’s perhaps a bit too unstable to be given the governor’s mansion. Maybe if the gun-totin’ loon was off message a little, he decided to point his gun in a different direction in his next ad, as he marched around with the same gun boasting about how he’d “round up criminal illegals myself” with his big ol’ pickup truck. Yes, it seems there is no better utility tool to rule over Georgia with than a shotgun. It solves all the problems, if you ask Kemp. Well, not all problems. He also went full “Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Macho Camacho” and released a third ad where he took a chainsaw to a “stack of regulations” before blowing them up in a giant fiery explosion. (We’re not sure if this will remain symbolic, or if he’s actually nuts enough to try it.)

Kemp’s gamble seemingly paid off, as he closed enough ground to keep Casey Cagle under the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff election, which going into the final stretch, polls showed Kemp and Cagle neck-and-neck. It didn’t help that Cagle was literally caught on tape admitting that the two Republican candidates were focused on “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest”, either. Kemp wore that accusation like a badge of honor, and released the audio hoping that blue-collar people in Georgia would rally behind him because of it.

Kemp, a die-hard anti-immigrant Trump supporter… hmm… maybe this would be a good time to point out that while serving as the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brian Kemp’s brilliant oversight managed to release the names and social security numbers of millions of registered voters, and he repeatedly fought with the Department of Justice regarding the security of Georgia’s voting systems (which were hacked by Russians), and resisted preventing any investigation into the intrusions even after the 2016 elections. His name appears in declassified reports alphabetically just prior to “Jared Kushner”, for some reason. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence…

Even more disturbing? He claimed in the buildup to the 2018 midterms that our own Department of Justice is “hacking” Georgia election systems, and he wanted Donald Trump to personally investigate the matter (this would more than likely be a guy setting up a future claim of “voter fraud” when he loses). Just days prior to the election, he then claimed that Democrats had hacked the voting rolls… which is ironic, because the e-mail he cited as “evidence” was between a voter and a Democrat who noted how easy it was to hack Georgia’s voter information under Kemp’s watch, and that Democrat forwarded their concerns to the FBI herself.

Brian Kemp narrowly “defeated” Stacey Abrams at the polls in the 2018 elections, and we put that word in quotations because Stacey Abrams never conceded, and neither do we, really, given of how suspect the final counts are… and Kemp’s actions after the election. One of his first hires as govenror was to bring on a lobbyist who not coincidentally, worked for the company the voting machines used in Georgia were purchased from… mysteriously at a price tag far higher than Georgia should have paid (and a price tag Kemp tried to conceal from the public).

All of this reeks of voter fraud carried out by the man who was supposed to secure Georgia’s elections, but all signs point to the fact that he rigged them in his own favor. And that is why the would-be Governor Kemp is getting called before Congress, specifically the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where Chairman Elijah Cummings will be waiting to ream him a new orifice for a systematic voter purge that likely kicked just enough Democratic votes off the voter rolls to ensure Kemp’s victory. And expect some discussion of the latest news, that Kemp and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office ignored a judge’s order to follow up on an FBI investigation into the 2018 election potentially being hacked, and never served a subpoena to the FBI for their copy of the records, per the judge’s request. It's almost like they have something to hide and don’t want to check and make sure that it was a fair election, you know?

And that has left Brian Kemp under suspicion of being an illegitimate executive. One who can do terrible things like sign off on a fetal heartbeat bill, HB 481 in the hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade, and respond like a complete maniac to a proposed boycott by film and television studios on filming in Georgia (which brings billions to the state) by calling those who voiced their displeasure “C-List celebrities squawking”.

At least he didn’t point a shotgun at them. This time. We’ll see if he can hang onto office, or what comes of the investigation of his conduct while overseeing the election he “won”. If he avoids criminal charges for obstruction of justice, he’ll be lucky.

[numberthirty]

Having finally got to read just a bit on Harris and the seemingly new approach to healthcare...

I don't even really begrudge her being where she now seems to be on the issue. While I would disagree with her approach, I guess that I can sort of see what she might be going for.

That said, the idea that she still seemed to be confused about what was happening in a debate that happened that long ago? Just kind odd. It's not like there was zero coverage, and she just happened to realize how it sounded the other day.

[Tendrin]

Welp, this is bad.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...box=1564386597

Boris Johnson’s government is considering imposing direct rule in Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a senior minister had admitted.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary and Mr Johnson’s de facto deputy, said senior ministers were looking “very carefully” at whether legislation would be needed for the government to take direct control of the region.

The admission follows reports officials have warned ministers that the region would struggle to cope without a functioning government if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

[InformationGeek]

Welp, this is bad.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...box=1564386597

Oh yeah, like that will go well.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Welp, this is bad.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...box=1564386597

Can anyone say, The Troubles: Part Two? I sincerely hope and pray it doesn't come to that.