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

[PaulBullion]

I just want to remind people who 'like Gabbard's Foreign Policy', that she's big on India's Modi and BJP. The BJP, which is a Hindu nationalist organization, has put up for election for parliament a dude who is literally accused of terrorism. The BJP, which forments violence against Muslims, is pretty fascist.

Stop thinking Gabbard is good on foreign policy. She's not. And her ties to the BJP and Modi aren't going to magically appear any better anytime soon. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about Fox News' favorite 'Democrat' getting out of the Democratic primary for president.

https://qz.com/india/1601064/narendr...for-elections/

I find that people who like her "foreign policy" are usually very simplistic thinkers who act like Non-interventionism is a brand new, brilliant policy that will only save lives and make the world a better place.

[worstblogever]

I cannot repeat this enough... BOTH PARTIES ARE NOT "JUST AS BAD". See below.

In 2015, as well as 2016, and 2017, that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the former U.S. House Representative for Florida’s 19th District, Curt Clawson, who won the special election to replace Trey Radel in April of 2014 on his portrayal of his business record as a “successful executive”, while failing to mention that under his leadership, Hayes-Lemmerz, the company he ran, skipped safety inspections as a cost-cutting measure, leading to the death of an employee, a huge OSHA fine, and then laid off a quarter of their work force before going bankrupt while he drew a seven-figure income. Which is an interesting definition of “successful”, isn’t it? Clawson’s capable understanding of finance has also led him to be a proponent of a “flat tax”, in spite of the fact that actually enacting his tax plan would be economically disastrous for the country. Clawson also met a group of senior officials of the U.S. government shortly after taking office who were Indian-American, and because all people of color apparently look alike to him, mistook them for visiting dignitaries from India, embarrassing the bejeezus out of himself (and the GOP, considering they put him on the House Foreign Affairs Committee). For whatever reason, the Tea Party decided to let Curt Clawson give their rebuttal to President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address, and all he did with his time, for the most part, was talk about his college basketball career at Purdue. He is, for lack of a better term, an incompetent boob. Now, here’s the kicker… to the surprise of everyone on Capitol Hill, the particularly young (but not too bright) Curt Clawson decided that after one term and change in office, he would not run for re-election in Florida’s 19th Congressional District, giving the always-suspicious reason that he was instead going to “spend time with his family”, leading everyone to speculate what scandal actually was covered up behind the scenes to make him flee Washington, DC so fast.

On this date in 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Sheri Few, a candidate for Congress in the 2017 special election for the seat to represent the 5th Congressional District of South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives. That seat, of course, was vacated by Mick Mulvaney when he took the job to be part of the Trump Cabinet of Horrors. And maybe she was never really a threat to win, as she failed to ride the Tea Party Wave into the South Carolina state legislature in 2010, and even with GOP tail winds strong in 2014, failed to even be elected as South Carolina’s Superintendent of Education. Still, she was terrifying committed to her big two issues… guns, and the Confederacy. She attacked the two leading candidates in the GOP Primary for the seat in Congress, South Carolina state legislators Ralph Norman and Tommy Pope, over the fact that the both of them voted to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol in Charleston after the mass murder carried out by White Nationalist Dylann Roof at the Emanuel AME Church. Few doubled down on this stance, and in an interview with The Guardian, argued that if the rest of the Confederate Memorial at the state capitol were removed, she would see the memorial that’s there acknowledging the atrocities of slavery would also be removed. Which, was an inflammatory reaction to something no one was suggesting at the time. Still, Few didn’t get much of a bump in the polls from her racist, Stars & Bars-humpin’ idea. So she made sure that everyone was positive she meant business by running one last political ad featuring her brandishing an assault rifle while she continued complaining about Norman and Pope, saying, "Weak politicians are too quick to blame a horrible tragedy on a flag or a gun, or even free speech, and that's how bad laws are made." Nevermind that she was complaining about the removal of a Confederate flag while standing in front of what their soldiers regarded as “the Union flag” in her video. Few finished fifth in the GOP Primary for the seat to represent South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, pulling down only 4.9% of the vote. We’ll set aside her CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 747-40, since this was established in July 2014.)


Augustus Invictus
Welcome to the 747th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be taking a look at Augustus Invictus, at utter scumbag and 2018 Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Florida, who you might remember as being a keynote speaker at the “Unite the Right” white supremacy rally in Charlottesville in August of 2017. He's also tight with Richard Spencer, and runs the “military division” of the Proud Boys. Invictus would like to start a second American Civil War, and is a Holocaust denier known for ending his speeches with “Hail Death.” In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, he admitted that he is, in fact, a practitioner of Thelema, the same pagan religion practiced by Aleister Crowley, and once sacrificed a goat to drink its blood in an occult ritual.

Now, let’s not be content to just say August Invictus is a hatemonger. He’s also a serial sexual predator, who has been accused of domestic violence, sexual assault, and kidnapping, and terroristic threats by multiple women. While Invictus knew he would never stand a chance against the fundraising of Rick Scott for that Senate seat, he re-registered as a Libertarian and still failed to win even that nomination. However, we feel quite content saying Augustus Invictus can f*** off until the end of time, and would like to point out that this is the sort of “new normal” for Republican primary candidates.

The less said about this motherf***er the better.
 

[Tendrin]

WBE, did you see the bit about why twitter isn't banning the Nazis because they might accidentally catch Republican politicians? :P

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I find that people who like her "foreign policy" are usually very simplistic thinkers who act like Non-interventionism is a brand new, brilliant policy that will only save lives and make the world a better place.

Or they just simply like non interventionalism better than being a hypocrite picking and choosing which foreign dictator that kills people you like better and advancing wars that kill innocent people. At least one way you actually get a high ground.

[PaulBullion]

Or they just simply like non interventionalism better than being a hypocrite picking and choosing which foreign dictator that kills people you like better and advancing wars that kill innocent people. At least one way you actually get a high ground.

The world is not simplistic enough for "high grounds" in many situations. Maybe higher than others, but never "high." That is exactly what I meant earlier. Letting Assad gas his own people will never, ever be "high ground".

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The world is not simplistic enough for "high grounds" in many situations. Maybe higher than others, but never "high." That is exactly what I meant earlier. Letting Assad gas his own people will never, ever be "high ground".

Unless Assad is fighting the fights we want him to, then we are totally cool with it. That's the point. There are no good guys here. And the innocent people who die because you felt "so bad" about Assad, well those dead people don't make you on high ground either.

In some cases there are things that suck in the world that has nothing to do with us. And if we are getting involved, it's because it directly effects our interests.

[Tendrin]

Or they just simply like non interventionalism better than being a hypocrite picking and choosing which foreign dictator that kills people you like better and advancing wars that kill innocent people. At least one way you actually get a high ground.

None of this changes the fact that she's friendly to Modi and his murderous Hindu nationalists. We can't oppose fascism at home while propping it up or validating it in other countries. We've already seen the kind of consequences that has. You can prefer non-intervention but Gabbard is a poor, poor representative of it.

[jetengine]

All I'm seeing is the same arguments for isolationism that failed prior to both world wars, said wars also raising the USA to an industrial juggernaut and world power.

[Tami]

Sunnyvale crash: Driver targeted victims because he thought they were Muslim, police say

An Army veteran who faces eight counts of attempted murder after plowing his car into a crowd of people in Sunnyvale, critically injuring a 13-year-old girl, targeted the victims because he thought some of them were Muslim, police officials said Friday.

Isaiah Joel Peoples, 34, was ordered held without bail Friday at his first appearance in court since being arrested and charged with steering his black 2010 Toyota Corolla into eight pedestrians Tuesday evening. The defendant said nothing during the brief appearance in Judge Richard Loftus’ courtroom at the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice in San Jose.

“Based on our investigation, new evidence shows that the defendant intentionally targeted the victims based on their race and his belief that they were of the Muslim faith,” Sunnyvale Police Chief Phan Ngo said outside court. The chief didn’t explain what evidence led police to believe this and did not say whether any of the victims are Muslim.

[Tami]

Guantánamo Bay as Nursing Home: Military Envisions Hospice Care as Terrorism Suspects Age

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Nobody has a dementia diagnosis yet, but the first hip and knee replacements are on the horizon. So are wheelchair ramps, sleep apnea breathing masks, grab bars on cell walls and, perhaps, dialysis. Hospice care is on the agenda.

More than 17 years after choosing the American military base in Cuba as “the least worst place” to incarcerate prisoners from the battlefield in Afghanistan, after years of impassioned debates over the rights of the detainees and whether the prison could close, the Pentagon is now planning for terrorism suspects still held in the facility to grow old and die at Guantánamo Bay.

With the Obama administration’s effort to close the prison having been blocked by Congress and the Trump administration committed to keeping it open, and with military trials inching ahead at a glacial pace, commanders were told last year to draw up plans to keep the detention center going for another 25 years, through 2043.

At that point, the oldest prisoner, if he lives that long, would be 96. Another of the 40 people still held here — the Palestinian known as Abu Zubaydah, who was confined to a box the size of a coffin while held at a secret C.I.A. site and waterboarded 83 times to break him — would be 72. Like him, a number of the detainees are already living with what their lawyers say are the physical and psychological aftereffects of torture, making their health especially precarious as they head toward old age.

[Tami]

Our Rapidly Blossoming Authoritarian State Is Headed to Another Level

Camp Runamuck is showing its teeth these days. The president* wants to put the ghastly Stephen Miller in charge of all immigration matters, and now he's tossing the head of the Secret Service out as well, and in such a manner that Senior Administration Officials are calling it a "purge" which, historically, do not end well for spies and intelligence operatives. He also seems to be gathering a large portion of federal law enforcement under his control, which, again, historically does not end well for a country. If the president* is trying to draw fire away from the Mueller Report, he's going about it quite enthusiastically.

Once again, an entirely new cast of characters will discover what it's like to work for a petulant would-be authoritarian whose empathy for other human beings stops at what he sees in the mirror, and whose idea of whimsy is to mock the disabled and to accuse the victims of natural disasters of ingratitude while they're trying to avoid starvation and cholera. He will be done with them soon enough. After all, apparently part of what set off the current tantrum was a reluctance of DHS officials to break the law on his command. Again, from CNN:

[Tami]

Trump Again Threatens Violence If Democrats Don’t Support Him

One of Donald Trump’s favorite riffs is a wish, cast as a warning, that his supporters inside and outside the state security services will unleash violence on his political opponents if they continue to oppose the administration. The specifics of the riff don’t vary much. Trump laments that his opponents are treating him unfairly, praises the toughness and strength of his supporters — a category that combines the police, military, and Bikers for Trump, which he apparently views as a Brownshirt-like militia — and a prediction that his supporters will at some point end their restraint.

He does it again in a new interview with Breitbart:

I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Early warnings that Trump could undermine the Constitution have not been borne out, which has produced a certain complacency about the issue. It is true that Trump is only an aspirational authoritarian, and to date has failed to bring his most illiberal dreams to life. He has used the government to punish independent media, prevailing upon the Post Office to raise rates on Amazon in retaliation for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, and repeatedly told his staff to order the Justice Department to block a merger in order to punish CNN. So far, this has had little effect.

[InformationGeek]

NRA is continuing to implode with Oliver North now leaving.

BREAKING: Oliver North says he will not serve a second term as president of the National Rifle Association.

[Mister Mets]

So, anyone interested in what's going on in the city of Baltimore with the mayor?

It doesn't fit the narrative.

[Tendrin]

It doesn't fit the narrative.

What, corruption in Baltimore? I mean, I'm pretty sure we've all watched the Wire and this is our surprised faces. :|