All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Nine Crocodile]

Republicans have this weird notion that Trans people have explicitly gone through the expensive, time consuming and painful process just to perv on women. This is very much a mixture of "Old people don't get the modern world" and transphobia.

The transphobia because duh, the old peoppe thing because they think that you'd go through all that trouble and not just watch porn/buy a hooker.

I've also heard the excuse that predators will disguise themselves as Trans in order to prey on women. I don't believe they've been able to produce cases of this occurring.

[InformationGeek]

Another mass shooting and another Republican jumping to defend the NRA.

Just now on the Senate floor: Chris Murphy (D-CT) called for bringing up the universal gun background checks bill passed by the House; Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) objected on behalf of Republicans, blocking consideration.

[Mister Mets]

It’s not like he had a chance anyway but this should officially finish Deval Patrick.

https://mobile.twitter.com/mldauber/...92096022683648

How the hell was this not a bigger deal earlier?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...XhO/story.html

But not for Patrick. On Monday, Patrick, still seething over the story eight years later, explained his recent decision to remove the top two officials at the state Sex Offender Registry Board, saying they improperly tried to force his brother-in-law to register as a sex offender.

In his first public comments on the shakeup at the agency, Patrick blamed the officials, his own appointees, for a number of other problems, including failing to update regulations and fostering an unproductive work environment. But he made it clear, as he prepares to leave office, that he is still nursing wounds from his first political campaign.

Blaming the Herald and the Republican Party for the revelation, Patrick said the disclosure that his brother-in-law had been convicted of raping his wife, Patrick’s sister, more than a decade earlier in California “nearly destroyed their lives.”

“So it was time for them to go,” Patrick said Monday, referring to the removal of board chairwoman Saundra Edwards and executive director Jeanne Holmes.

It was an unusually blunt acknowledgment: Politicians are usually loath to admit a personal stake in public policy decisions.

[BeastieRunner]

Team Trump has asserted their EA to the SCOTUS for immunity from his tax returns being made public.

They demanded an expedited ruling.

Shits about to go down one way or the other now. Are we a free nation state or has the Great American Experiment ended?

[Tami]

Career White House budget official expected to break ranks, testify in impeachment inquiry

Still hope

A longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify Saturday in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the hold-up of military aid to Ukraine.

Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear. The White House has called the impeachment inquiry unconstitutional and ordered administration officials not to participate.

Unlike these other OMB officials, Sandy is a career employee, not one appointed by the president. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks to his current role as deputy associate director for national security programs.

“If he is subpoenaed, he will appear,” Sandy’s lawyer, Barbara “Biz” Van Gelder, said Thursday evening.

Sandy is expected to testify during a closed-door deposition, which is not open to the public. Typically, witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have been served with subpoenas immediately before their depositions are scheduled to begin, an approach Democrats say is designed to give them cover against an administration that has ordered officials not to comply with the inquiry.

Van Gelder declined further comment.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Hillary Clinton Says Trans Issues Pose ‘Legitimate Concern’ for Women

She ran for President in 2016, there's no excuse for making such TERF friendly comments

Clinton’s comments have been a boon to conservatives who have used them to exploit a wedge between trans-affirming progressives and gender-critical segments of the left. The right-wing news site Washington Times called the backlash to her Sunday Times interview “unhinged” and a “completely understandable perspective, particularly for a woman of her generation.”

Meanwhile, U.K. newspaper The Spectator cited the remarks as proof there are “indeed legitimate questions” about whether trans people should be recognized as the gender they say they are.

Are there cis women who don't want to be transphobic but feel weird having to share bathrooms with trans women? Sure, but this isn't a complex issue.

They grew up in a transphobic culture, so when they feel that way they are being unwittingly transphobic. The way to treat it is to accept how they feel but tell them that they have to deal with their prejudice and accept that society is going to treat trans people as valid. Not, treat their transphobia as a sensitive thing.

They are not the ones hurt by transphobia, trans people are.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Team Trump has asserted their EA to the SCOTUS for immunity from his tax returns being made public.

They demanded an expedited ruling.

Shits about to go down one way or the other now. Are we a free nation state or has the Great American Experiment ended?

According to this the prior 2 Presidents who tried to not go along with an investigation and tried using Trump's excuse ...FAILED in Supreme Court. Nixon and Bill Clinton both lost there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/u...eme-court.html


If the court sides with Trump it creates a dangerous situation future Presidents can exploit big time. So those Justices Trump appointed best way the future here. He won't be in power forever and if a Democrat gets in office and abuses the system ala Trump he can point to their decision they make here.

[Gray Lensman]

According to this the prior 2 Presidents who tried to not go along with an investigation and tried using Trump's excuse ...FAILED in Supreme Court. Nixon and Bill Clinton both lost there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/u...eme-court.html


If the court sides with Trump it creates a dangerous situation future Presidents can exploit big time. So those Justices Trump appointed best way the future here. He won't be in power forever and if a Democrat gets in office and abuses the system ala Trump he can point to their decision they make here.

Oh, I'm certain that at least a few of the judges Trump has appointed will decide differently for a Democrat than they would a Republican.

[Tendrin]

Everything in China is perfectly rational and normal and not at all increasing atrocity.

https://globalvoices.org/2019/11/13/...yF_5J3Aaz1Bbpc

She said it often when she would tell me about what was happening in her home town. They barred women from the masjid. They scanned the faces of anyone who entered the masjid. They scanned faces at markets and airports. They banned the hijab. They banned fasting. Neighbors are disappearing. Cameras are everywhere. We buried our books. They told us to remove the locks from our doors. They took my passport. “I don’t know why.”

But it's okay, they're just Muslims and pointing this out just makes you a western apologist.

[Robotman]

****, someone call the burn unit because AOC torched David Rubin

https://mobile.twitter.com/carIisIe/...325440000?s=19

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Julián Castro doubles down on criticism of Iowa's early state role

Julián Castro on Thursday doubled down on the notion that the first nominating states on the primary calendar should reflect the nation’s diversity, firing back at the state party chairs who defended Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.

Castro reignited a debate this week over Iowa and New Hampshire’s coveted place on the primary calendar in a Sunday interview on MSNBC, when he suggested reordering the Democratic primary voting schedule by allowing more diverse states to vote first.

“It doesn't make any sense,” he said. “I believe, as many Iowans themselves do, that it’s time that our presidential nominating process reflects our nation’s and our party’s diversity. That's just the truth.”

He's right.

[Tendrin]

Julián Castro doubles down on criticism of Iowa's early state role



He's right.

He is. Did you see his statements on SSI?

Also, cleared my inbox.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of U.S. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who clearly has been taking hairstyle tips from Donald Trump on how to rock a comb over. Rounds, a former governor of South Dakota, once tried to outlaw all abortion in his state, and was turned back by the courts for it being a violation of Roe vs. Wade. He also insisted the Keystone Pipeline would create 40,000 new jobs in South Dakota alone, which was a gross exaggeration over four times the amount the company who would have owned the pipeline claimed there would be (It was more like 50, in reality). That’s not his only big lie, though, he actually has argued in favor of repealing Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform on the fallacy that the economy got WORSE after it was passed (the opposite is true). Sen. Rounds also was investigated for an immigration scandal, where he supposedly abused the EB5-Visa program to offer green cards to foreign investors if they would pony up $500,000 into beef packing plants in South Dakota. The visas were then not given, and the beef packing plant in question went bankrupt… and the money vanished with several of Rounds’ closest aides. Rather than face criminal penalties, Mike Rounds' cabinet secretary committed suicide. After almost a year and a half, someone was finally charged with a crime in the EB5 Scandal. Regrettably, it was not Mike Rounds, but his associate Joop Bollen, who was charged with five felonies.

On March 1st, 2016, Rounds commented on GOP Presidential Nominee Donald Trump, specifically, Trump’s reluctance to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which Rounds took time to defend him for. Yeah, you got that right. On top of all the other horrible things about Mike Rounds, he also doesn't object to his party being linked with the Klan that much.

If the EB-5 scandal didn’t already make it plainly clear how comfortable Rounds is corruption, we have to point out that he also went out of his way in April of 2018 to defend former EPA Director Scott Pruitt, who was the subject of over a dozen investigations into corruption, saying that people calling for his resignation were “nitpicking”. From where we’re sitting, those nits were the size of house cats, at least.

And not surprisingly, Sen. Rounds has been on board with every other terrible idea Donald Trump has managed to float through the Senate, including approving every member of Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors”, voting for the attempt the Senate GOP made at the “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, and he also voted for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, frequently complaining about protesters in the Capitol who had more sense than Rounds, at least enough to know that you shouldn’t put a rapist on the bench, let alone on the highest court in the land, and claiming that the “FBI Investigation” the GOP made into accusations against Kavanaugh was adequate (in spite of the fact that they weren’t even asked to interview Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who was in the room when the assault happened.

Rounds’ seat in the Senate is up in 2020, and he already has a primary challenger in the form of Scyller Borglum (not a character in Harry Potter), and already has a huge financial advantage, with almost $2 million in fundraising saved up. It will be interesting to see if the impeachment trial, however, affects Rounds’ re-election chances.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

5 Things To Know Before Marie Yovanovitch’s Testimony In Impeachment Hearing

Yovanovitch, who was removed as ambassador to Ukraine, will be the third witness to publicly testify in the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump. This testimony should prove to be particularly interesting.

**********

Nancy Pelosi Says Trump’s Actions Amount To Bribery

These are the House speaker’s strongest comments yet in favor of impeachment. Just a gangster doing gangster ****.

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Trump Defenders Portray Him As A Corruption Fighter, Only … He’s Not

If anything, Trump has increased corruption because his self-dealing makes it impossible for the U.S. to demand clean government overseas, critics say. That's like saying Tony Soprano was an honest bar owner.

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Bill Clinton Has Some Painfully Honest Impeachment Advice For Donald Trump

“You don’t get the days back you blow off,” Clinton said during a discussion with CNN’s Jake Tapper about gun control. I wonder if Trump will take Bill's advice. Bet the farm on "NO"!

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Rudy Giuliani Jokes That He Has ‘Insurance’ If Trump Throws Him Under The Bus

Giuliani’s attorney interjected on his call with The Guardian to clarify: “He’s joking.” Rantin' Rudy better be careful, Trump isn't known for having a sense of humor and might take what his buddy said seriously.

[Tendrin]

The last guy who probably had 'insurance' on Donald Trump wound up 'hanging himself' in a jail cell.

Just sayin'.

(In before someone rages at me for 'conspiracy theory': He probably did kill himself, but when you look at the list of 'mistakes' that had to be made for him to be allowed to do so, it's hard to walk away thinking that it's all that clear.)