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

[PaulBullion]

Bret Stephens has a Pulitzer, and Thomas Friedman got one for pushing for war after 9/11.

Haberman getting one isn't even the lowest they've sunk.

Yeah, stanning for Haberman won't age well.

[PaulBullion]

The same way they did in Germany. The same way they did in Japan. The same way they did to minorities and 'criminals' in America. The list goes on and on. Ethics only apply to those you consider to be people.

Yes, while the crimes in China are inexcusable, let's not pretend the Tuskegee syphilis experiment didn't run from the 30s to the 70s (!!!) in the US. (Basically the supposed good old time the GOP wants to bring back)

[worstblogever]

Perhaps missed in all the stories about the impeachment inquiry on Saturday morning...

Trump, on Twitter, named two Jewish Congressmen, and then four Congresswomen of color in a tirade, and then referred to them as "do-nothing savages".

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Bishop E.W. Jackson, a particularly insane clergyman who ended up on the ballot in the 2013 elections for Governor of Virginia because the Virginia GOP decided to nominate candidates for office at their convention rather in a primary vote to ensure that their gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, would not be damaged in a primary election. The drawback was, the party hard-liners picked Jackson, a complete kook, to run as his lieutenant governor. Thus both were stuck discussing not just Cuccinelli’s radical party stances, but the fact that E.W. Jackson had given thoughts on the LGBT community as nuanced as “IKKY!” and “YUK!”, promised there would be divine retribution if same sex marriage was legalized (still waiting),gone on social media to say that President Obama is a secret Muslim manchurian candidate, a closet homosexual, or the Anti-Christ himself in different posts, and written books that had passages about how Planned Parenthood is as bad as the KKK, that Democrats are the new “slave masters” in America, and that people who take yoga were on a “path to Satan” (really).After Dylann Roof assassinated nine African-Americans in a hate crime in the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Jackson broke a particular one of the Ten Commandments by claiming the shooter was actually motivated because he was a “left-wing socialist”. E.W. had only been dragged out onto the occasional segment on conservative news channels since 2013, and we were shocked to learn that he actually entered the three-candidate race for the nomination to be a U.S. Senator in Virginia in 2018. During the course of the campaign, he continued to make outlandish and magnificently insane statements, including but not limited to his claim that “America was never a racist country because Arab Muslims began African slavery”, that not being able to carry a firearm anywhere due to modest gun control laws makes him feel “naked and vulnerable”, and that “Democrats want to persecute the followers of Jesus Christ into silence and submission.” Jackson finished a distant third, well behind the winner… white nationalist ***hole Corey Stewart. We hope this time… this time is the last time he runs for public office.

[worstblogever]

In both 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, an octogenarian who has served in Congress since 1975, and been a U.S. Senator since 1981. We shared the hilarity of Grassley's Twitter feed, with brilliant examples of wordsmithing like, ”N”, ”Work on farm Fri. Burning piles of brush WindyFire got out of control. Thank God for good naber He help get undr control PantsBurnLegWound”, ”Fred and I hit a deer on hiway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire we continued to farm. Assume deer dead”, and "Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is good place for u kno what”. Oh, and the time on Twitter he compared President Obama's foreign policy to Poland's foreign policy that led to Hitler invading in 1939. Our main beef with Sen. Grassley was that as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and therefore gets to decide on confirmation of judges and Supreme Court nominees, and goddamn has been partisan and obstructive in that role. Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama but Grassley, more than anyone in the Republican Senate (with perhaps the exception of Mitch McConnell), is responsible for shirking their Constitutional duty to appoint a successor to the late Antonin Scalia and admitted the logic was purely political.

The rest of his voting record includes opposition to the Brady Handgun Bill to create background checks for firearm purchases, against universal background checks after Sandy Hook, support for the Defense of Marriage Act, voting for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, and voting for the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, which repealed key parts of the Glass-Steagall Financial Regulation Act, and opened the door for big banks to create the 2007 Sub-Prime Mortgage Housing Crisis. Grassley also voted for the Iraq War Resolution, voted against the Equal Pay Bill and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Zadroga Bill, disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and against raising the debt ceiling in 2011. Oh, and Sen. Grassley is on record as a denier that climate change exists, claiming he does not have enough evidence to make a conclusion or to vote on the matter. Grassley was also a big supporter of the Graham/Cassidy Healthcare Act, a last-ditch effort to repeal the ACA which Sen. Grassley admits to being extremely flawed and will harm Americans... but hey, he promised he would get rid of Obamacare, so no matter what the actual details or how bad they're going to hurt real people, damn it, he's gonna do it. HE ADMITTED THAT. Sen. Grassley also voted for the BRCA, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and left 23 million people without health insurance, and coldly voted against disaster relief funding, this time for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

Oh, and Grassley not only voted for the GOP’s tax plan/tax scam in December of 2017, he shrugged off complaints that it would only offer tax breaks to people who owned stock by saying that working class people might have the money to buy some if they didn’t “booze or women or movies”.

We also took issue with Sen. Grassley’s behavior regarding the Trump/Russia investigation, as on multiple occasions over the past year and a half, Grassley has gone out of his way to either cast doubt on the mounting evidence, such as when he tried insinuating that the Steele Dossier was the REAL fake news planted by the Russians, or even when he released a statement to blame the FBI for not telling the Trump campaign that Paul Manafort was leaking information from the Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs (which ignores how they probably should have been aware when one of them sent agents to Trump Tower to meet with Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.). His allegiance to Trump has become so cancerous that Sen. Grassley flat out refuses to conduct Senate hearings on political appointees if he thinks that they in some way participated in, or are loyal to people conducting the Mueller investigation. At this point, Grassley is doing more to aid the Trump administration in a coverup than preventing future Russian interference, but hey, what do you expect from a senile, partisan old hack?

We can't say we don't also take issue with Grassley's voting record during the past three years, as he voted to confirm every member of Donald Trump's Cabinet of Horrors, and saw his obstruction against Merrick Garland being named to the Supreme Court rewarded with him getting to vote for Merrick Garland…

But right here, right now, if there were any doubt anyone still had about how utterly partisan Chuck Grassley is at the ripe old age of 84… and looking to name a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, an uber-conservative son-of-a-bitch who won’t think twice about overturning Roe v. Wade. And so it was that Brett Kavanaugh, who made his career investigating the Clintons during Whitewater and trying to foment conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton murdering Vince Foster… a guy who perjured himself in his confirmation to be a federal judge multiple times…. THAT was the pick. And Sen. Grassley knows… KNOWS all the dirt that’s out there on Kavanaugh. It’s why he and the Trump White House refused to make documents about Kavanaugh’s work unavailable to the Senators who would vote on them, and why he literally opened the hearings shouting over the reasonable requests by Democrats to release those documents and allow Kavanaugh’s record to be legitimately reviewed. So it looked like the final vote on Kavanaugh would go through strictly along partisan lines, 51-49… until a woman emerged to accuse Kavanaugh of attempting to drunkenly rape her when she was 15 and he was 17. Now, you’re really seeing how single-minded and gutless Chuck Grassley is, as he wanted to “investigate” the matter by not letting the FBI look into it, and conducting a sham hearing where only two witnesses will be called, Kavanaugh, and his accuser, and Senate Republicans can harass a woman already traumatized decades ago by her sexual assault. And that upon learning of a second accuser, Grassley and his colleagues actually tried to force the vote FASTER, and blocked the second accuser, Deborah Ramirez from testifying or having the FBI investigate her claims. After trying to open the hearing with 15 minutes of grandstanding, Sen. Grassley forgot to introduce and thank the witness, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, for coming forward, and after his time to speak was up and he ceded to Sen. Diane Feinstein… he interrupted her after SHE introduced Ford to insist he didn’t forget.

But through all that, do you know who Chuck Grassley thinks the victim in all this is? CHUCK GRASSLEY. Yes, in an interview during all of this, Grassley whined about how he didn’t like when it’s mentioned that he’s so old, and feels, we s*** you not… that he is being DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. You’re 86, Chuck. You’d think you’d have developed a good calloused hide by now.

Grassley won re-election rather easily in 2016 over Iowa’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, and unless one of those deer Chuck Grassley posted about killing on Twitter has one of their family members come to avenge them, he might be around in office until at least 2022, when he’ll be 89 years old. Maybe he’ll get around to appointing some sane judges at some point that aren’t former rapists if he can stop squinting, open his methusaleh eyes, but it seems unlikely that he’s going to listen to what his constituency actually wants anytime soon, and should just go back to trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act if possible.

[PaulBullion]

Maya Rudolph was perfect as Kamala Harris on SNL.

[Robotman]

Maya Rudolph was perfect as Kamala Harris on SNL.

That whole sketch was brilliant. Conservatives hate SNL when they get “political”, which means they hate when they poke fun at republicans. They nailed the Democratic candidates and as a liberal I thought it was hilarious.

[worstblogever]

Maya Rudolph was perfect as Kamala Harris on SNL.

Maya Rudolph is a treasure.

That whole sketch was brilliant. Conservatives hate SNL when they get “political”, which means they hate when they poke fun at republicans. They nailed the Democratic candidates and as a liberal I thought it was hilarious.

Seconded.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Perhaps missed in all the stories about the impeachment inquiry on Saturday morning...

Trump, on Twitter, named two Jewish Congressmen, and then four Congresswomen of color in a tirade, and then referred to them as "do-nothing savages".

Caramel Caligula's racism was clearly on full display. of course, spineless Republicans are silent as mimes about that, like everything else.

That whole sketch was brilliant. Conservatives hate SNL when they get “political”, which means they hate when they poke fun at republicans. They nailed the Democratic candidates and as a liberal I thought it was hilarious.

It's hardly a secret that conservatives are thin skinned and have ZERO sense of humor, leaving them totally incapable of laughing at themselves.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

What is really behind the crisis in Haiti?

Decades of neoliberalism, neocolonialism and now climate injustice have pushed Haiti to the brink.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/op...092336787.html

For months now, Haiti has been shaken by intensifying protests. A deepening economic crisis and growing fuel and food shortages have sent people to the streets demanding the resignation of US-backed President Jovenel Moise, who has so far resisted stepping down.

The crisis started last year and was compounded by natural disasters that have repeatedly devastated the island nation. Hurricanes destroyed housing, food production, livelihoods and infrastructure and a severe drought dried up the island's water resources.

While international media has focused on a familiar story of corruption and mismanagement, what lies beneath this debilitating crisis is much more serious - a deadly combination of neocolonialism, neoliberalism and climate injustice. Indeed, what is happening now in Haiti is extreme and should scare us all, as it foreshadows what could happen to the rest of the planet if we do not take immediate action.

[Tendrin]

And for those curious about a big old root of the country's impoverishment, there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti

Haiti’s legacy of debt began shortly after gaining independence from France in 1804. In 1825, France, with warships at the ready, demanded Haiti compensate France for its loss of slaves and its slave colony. In exchange for French recognition of Haiti as a sovereign republic, France demanded payment of 150 million francs. In addition to the payment, France required that Haiti discount its exported goods to them by 50%.[2] In 1838, France agreed to reduce the debt to 90 million francs to be paid over a period of 30 years to compensate former plantation owners who had lost their property.[3] The modern equivalent of $21 billion was paid from Haiti to France.

[Tami]

Why did Park Police officers kill Bijan Ghaisar?

A man is rear-ended in a fender bender on the George Washington Parkway in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington. He drives off. Two U.S. Park Police officers chase him and, minutes later, repeatedly shoot him in the head. The man, Bijan Ghaisar, a 25-year-old accountant, dies after 10 days in a coma.

Nearly two years later, the FBI has released virtually no information about its investigation into the police shooting. But police videos of the shooting raise questions that must be answered: What threat was so grave that the officers seemingly ignored protocol, and common sense, to shoot an unarmed man multiple times at point-blank range? And why are the FBI and federal prosecutors taking so long?

[Tami]

The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?

The images are horrific. Children, some just 3 or 4 years old, being sexually abused and in some cases tortured.

Pictures of child sexual abuse have long been produced and shared to satisfy twisted adult obsessions. But it has never been like this: Technology companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of the abuse last year.

More than a decade ago, when the reported number was less than a million, the proliferation of the explicit imagery had already reached a crisis point. Tech companies, law enforcement agencies and legislators in Washington responded, committing to new measures meant to rein in the scourge. Landmark legislation passed in 2008.

Yet the explosion in detected content kept growing — exponentially.

An investigation by The New York Times found an insatiable criminal underworld that had exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it. As with hate speech and terrorist propaganda, many tech companies failed to adequately police sexual abuse imagery on their platforms, or failed to cooperate sufficiently with the authorities when they found it.

Law enforcement agencies devoted to the problem were left understaffed and underfunded, even as they were asked to handle far larger caseloads.

The Justice Department, given a major role by Congress, neglected even to write mandatory monitoring reports, nor did it appoint a senior executive-level official to lead a crackdown. And the group tasked with serving as a federal clearinghouse for the imagery — the go-between for the tech companies and the authorities — was ill equipped for the expanding demands.

A paper recently published in conjunction with that group, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, described a system at “a breaking point,” with reports of abusive images “exceeding the capabilities of independent clearinghouses and law enforcement to take action.” It suggested that future advancements in machine learning might be the only way to catch up with the criminals.

[worstblogever]

Who would have thought nominating a guy for attorney general (William Barr) who was involved in the Iran Contra affair would lead to the same guy being involved in the cover-up of another potentially impeachable offense?

*shrugs*

[Tami]

Hillary Clinton left office over 6 1/2 years ago. The statute of limitations on any potential offense is 5 years. This is 100% pure political stunt perpetrated to try and deflect attention from the corruption of the @realDonaldTrump administration.

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