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

[numberthirty]

While there's obviously stuff that's soaking up most of the national coverage...

- https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/fb...ook-and-summit

FBI agents raid village hall offices in Lyons, McCook and Summit

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from New York's 2nd Congressional District, Peter King, a repeated fear-monger of practitioners of Islam in America, who has insisted that amongst American Muslims there is a “looming threat”, in a manner that makes the late Sen. Joe McCarthy give a thumbs up from beyond the grave. In 2016, Rep. King called for 24/7 surveillance of all mosques in the United States, which would be a simultaneous violation of both the 1st and 4th Amendments. King is also one of the biggest defenders of the CIA torturing detainees at Guantanamo Bay Prison, and has tried defending it by lying and saying the intel that led to the United States locating and killing Osama bin Laden was acquired by waterboarding prisoners (it wasn’t). Rep. King contradicted the CIA’s torture report by saying, “no one was severely hurt” by the practices because no one was cut or stabbed. But the fact that Peter King is willing to fabricate stories to push his agenda should come as little surprise, when you consider he literally dismissed CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien for correcting him in an interview by yelling at her, “I DON’T CARE WHAT FACT-CHECK SAYS.” This also came into play in our second look at Congressman King, who blamed the death of Eric Garner not on police, but on Garner for being obese. He also once gave an interview where he referred to the Japanese as the racial slur "Japs", and refused to apologize for doing so.

King was re-elected to a fourteenth term in Congress in 2018, squeaking by with only 52% of the vote. Since the Trump administration began, he's tackling the issues that really matter to Americans like... ah, we're just kidding... he's been dedicating most of his energy towards attacking members of the intelligence community and the press for investigating, and reporting on Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluding with Russia to win the presidency in the 2016 election. Back in December of 2016, he actually was suggesting that it was just "rogue" CIA officers claiming the Russians hacked the election. Which in hindsight, makes him look really stupid since every single agency in our intelligence community agree the Russians were influencing our election. They have them on tape talking about it in intercepts while they did it, there's been numerous confirmed meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russians, and of course now after the fact, there are people in the Russian government literally bragging about what they did on Russian television.

So, hey, maybe we should get on preventing the Russians from interfering in future elections, like immediately, right? Maybe Peter King would like to do something about that? Well, apparently as long as he and members of his party win, he could give a s***, as he's been using hearings to discuss the matter to instead complain that information is reaching the media via "leaks". He has continued carrying water for Trump and his cronies at every opportunity to cast doubt on the investigators, including when he was justifying Donald Trump releasing all the information about the FBI’s investigation of Carter Page using a FISA warrant.

This is a man who is supposedly the GOP's top guy on national security, incidentally. We’ll note that this is also the same man who tried hand-waving away outrage over the Trump administration’s family separation policy on immigration in June 2018, unfazed about children being locked in cages by ICE or the potential fallout from it, being quoted as saying, “Americans care more about Americans.” Again, if you aren’t American enough to Peter King, you’re not even really a human being.

Now, Peter King has spent the past two decades portraying himself as the ultimate patriot and that anyone who disagrees with his extreme views on terrorism are just not committed to loving America as much as he does. That pattern held all the way into May 2018, where as the owner of the New York Jets announced he would not punish players who took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence in our country, Peter King lost his goddamned mind, and compared players kneeling during the anthem to “giving Nazi salutes” in a response on Twitter that also declared it was “time to say goodbye to the Jets”. When Rep. King was criticized from many angles for his comments, he, of course, doubled down on them.

[worstblogever]

In the current term in office, Peter King has been occasionally voting toward the middle, but by and large, is still plainly and fanatically conservative:

• January 22nd, 2019: King cannot be arsed to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians. Just a reminder, King is a high-ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee who seems indifferent about the United States’ biggest adversary.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. King voted against HR 648, because he was gleeully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Peter King votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 7th, 2019: King votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/116-2019/h108
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. King votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Peter King is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 17th, 2019: King votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/116-2019/h217
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. King votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Peter King can’t be bothered to vote against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.

Peter King is continuing to wilt as resistance towards his re-election in 2020 grows, as he just caved to a lawsuit after he was banning his own constituents from contacting him on Facebook. We’re wondering if there’s a point where he decides to just call it a career, as his district starts shifting bluer, and he’s going to have to sit as part of the minority party even if he wins… We’re not going to be shocked if he announces his retirement and puts an end to the fearmongering that has become synonymous with him for the past quarter century. Now, Peter King outperforms the Cook Partisan Voting Index lean for his district, which supposedly has a +3 Republican lean, aNo amount of demonizing Muslim Americans (which, incidentally is something harder to do during the era of Trump's Muslim ban, which King supports, but runs away from any responsibility for) might be able to keep him afloat IN 2020.

[Kirby101]

Glad you got around to this ******* WBE. He is in a nearby district and I have to see his bullshit on TV to much. Something else about his big anti-terrorist crap. It's just anti-Islam. He actively supported Irish terrorism.

Peter King's pro-terrorist past
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...9/congress-ira

[worstblogever]

Glad you got around to this ******* WBE. He is in a nearby district and I have to see his bullshit on TV to much. Something else about his big anti-terrorist crap. It's just anti-Islam. He actively supported Irish terrorism.

Peter King's pro-terrorist past
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...9/congress-ira

He's been called out on his hypocrisy for that multiple times. And he deserves all of the flak he gets for it.

[SquirrelMan]

The one Republican (so far) in favor of impeachment inquiry is Mark Amodei R-NV.

[PaulBullion]

I can already see how a purely partisan vote against Impeachment in the Senate (with one or two possible Republican defections) after months of Trump's crimes being exposed on life TV and him going from twitter meltdown to tarmac meltdown daily, and Giuliani getting arrested ...

Swing voters and independents are going to see this as a win for Trump?

[Mecegirl]

I can already see how a purely partisan vote against Impeachment in the Senate (with one or two possible Republican defections) after months of Trump's crimes being exposed on life TV and him going from twitter meltdown to tarmac meltdown daily, and Giuliani getting arrested ...

Swing voters and independents are going to see this as a win for Trump?

Some independents, really the ones that used to be Republicans. might?? It is always hard to saw with that demographic.

[Tami]

To put Trump's July shakedown of Ukraine in context, it wasn't his first rodeo. The first time he agreed to send Ukraine Javelin anti-tank missiles, the country stopped cooperating with Mueller. Back in 2018, the folks running Congress didn't didn't mind that sort of corruption.

But that was when Poroshenko was President. Zelensky ran on an anticorruption platform. Zelenksy must've not watched enough mafia movies or maybe Trump was short on horse heads this summer. Either way he was forced to get explicit—even to the point of using the word "reciprocal."

Twitter Thread

[Kirby101]

I can already see how a purely partisan vote against Impeachment in the Senate (with one or two possible Republican defections) after months of Trump's crimes being exposed on life TV and him going from twitter meltdown to tarmac meltdown daily, and Giuliani getting arrested ...

Swing voters and independents are going to see this as a win for Trump?

I doubt that. Swing and independents turned against him in 2018, and he lost most of them that voted for him in 2016 already. And what if 5 or 10 Republicans vote against him in the Senate, when it comes out that he made the same type of deals with Putin? If he isn't convicted, but still has a majority of senators vote to remover, how is that an exoneration?
60% of voters don't want him again, and now we are seeing an even split on impeachment.

[Theleviathan]

Maybe we just have different standards for what is "Good."
For you, "Horrible" is good enough, and I have higher standards.

Me...the people that vote for all sorts of journalism awards....the New York Times (The leading source for a lot of the breaking Trump news)....and most people who don't get their news from left-wing social media fever dreams. Or Trump for that matter - you and Trump strongly agree on this issue!

Your standards are the problem, but not the way you think.

[SquirrelMan]

Me...the people that vote for all sorts of journalism awards....the New York Times (The leading source for a lot of the breaking Trump news)....and most people who don't get their news from left-wing social media fever dreams. Or Trump for that matter - you and Trump strongly agree on this issue!

Your standards are the problem, but not the way you think.

I see you edited out the picture to make your point about Trump hating her.

[jetengine]

Me...the people that vote for all sorts of journalism awards....the New York Times (The leading source for a lot of the breaking Trump news)....and most people who don't get their news from left-wing social media fever dreams. Or Trump for that matter - you and Trump strongly agree on this issue!

Your standards are the problem, but not the way you think.

I've no horse in this race but "She won awards" is kind of hollow in this day and age.

[Tendrin]

There are legitimate reasons to dislike Haberman and the kind of journalism she frequently engages in. The NYT has a looooot of problems these days. These issues can't be dismissed as 'left wing fever swamp imaginings' just 'coz she gets awards or Trump says mean things about her some times.

[Tendrin]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...-to-talk-about

It was just a little pop, hardly noticeable amid the din of the shouting and the fighting on Inauguration night—January 20, 2017—in the University of Washington’s Red Square, a massive red-brick plaza on which a crowd of Milo Yiannopoulos fans, and an even larger crowd of people out to protest his appearance, had gathered that evening. But it nearly killed a man.
The handgun that produced the popping sound was a 9 mm Glock semi-automatic, and the person wielding it was a 29-year-old Milo fan named Elizabeth Hokoana. The single bullet that it discharged entered the stomach of a 34-year-old antifascist named Joshua Dukes, passing up through his lungs and narrowly missing his heart before lodging next to his spine.
Elizabeth—her friends call her Lily—fired the gun because Dukes had a grip on her husband’s arm. Marc Hokoana, also 29, had been circulating in the crowd and instigating fights all night; at the moment the handgun was fired, he had been attempting to douse antifascists with a pepper spray gun, and Dukes was attempting to take it away.
I had been standing only feet away from Dukes less than a minute before the shot was fired, recording the whole scene. My footage eventually played a critical role in the decision to file charges against the Hokoanas. But I didn’t record the shooting because my camera had been knocked away only moments beforehand by a black-clad antifascist.