All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[PaulBullion]

They aren't. Bloomberg's like a garden variety neoconservative. He's a racist, transphobe and all around horrible human being but between him and Trump he wouldn't be the same kind of train wreck like Trump's doing. Trump is on another level of awful. I wouldn't vote for Bloomberg unless I absolutely have to but between him and Trump there's no contest.

I really wish Bloomberg had just run all of is (admittedly pretty good) ads as a primary challenger to Trump this year, instead of as a Democratic spoiler tearing down Biden.

[PaulBullion]

So what we're saying basically is that Bloomberg and Trump are both New York billionaires who care little for Black people, poor people, women or homosexuals, and the only difference between them is that Bloomberg won't tweet nine stupid things before breakfast. Just so we're clear.

Bloomberg also would not use the presidency to enrich himself, because he actually is rich. And that leads to not selling the country out to Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc

Other than that, he'd be a horrible president, I'm sure.

[PaulBullion]

They aren't meaningless. Very useful actually. Maybe you should study elections a bit more and understand why they are used.

Pretty sure national polls predicted Hillary winning the 2008 primaries for a long time, and the 2016 GE polls very precisely predicted her Electoral College lead. Both meaningless. Utterly, desperately. completely meaningless in the system we have.

[PaulBullion]

Oh great, the Yang Gang will throw away their vote on a write-in vote. #stillvotingyang is the top trend on twitter right now. Probably amplified by the usual operatives.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Stephen Wise, a former member of the Florida House of Representatives and Florida State Senate who was a dedicated Creationist, who insisted on repeatedly bringing forth legislation to try to see that his religious beliefs about the origin of life were taught alongside the theory of evolution. Wise was also dedicated to the “War on Christmas”, trying to use his position on the Florida K-12 Education Committee to make sure that “Winter Break” be returned to being called “Christmas Break”. He also was big on drug testing welfare recipients (always a failed policy), and wanted rape victims to have to provide proper documentation to prove they had actually been sexually assaulted to get an abortion. After a career that spanned decades, Wise came up against term limits and mercifully vanished from public service.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of William Flynn, a North Carolina talk radio host who challenged incumbent Congressman Howard Coble in the GOP Primary for his seat in Congress representing North Carolina’s 6th District, portraying himself as a “firebrand” in a debate, and quickly lived up to that reputation when he made the tasteful decision to compare the national debt to, of all things, slavery. He also was briefly a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2014 before dropping out of the race and not just because he was tied to a Neo-Confederate group called the Institute on the Constitution, whose website endorsed Flynn and touted his time teaching courses on the Constitution. Flynn’s luck continued to get worse, as the radio station he was working for, AM 980 the Eagle, announced it was no longer broadcasting talk radio, booting Flynn just after Christmas in 2015. Unless he aims much lower, it seems highly unlikely that he will be elected to any office.

On this date in 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its first profile of Michigan State Senator Patrick Colbeck, who has served as a member of the Michigan State Senate since riding the Tea Party Wave into office back in 2010, with a big assist from the DeVos family And they apparently got what they paid for in Colbeck, as he has been caught on tape admitting that the DeVos family bankrolled the Michigan GOP's move to pass "right to work" legislation back in 2013. Or, alternatively, you can believe Colbeck's opinion that passing the Right to Work law in Michigan was actually the work of "divine providence", because nothing screams a miracle quite as much as when a rich dude greases Republican palms to curb workers' rights. Colbeck is not known for pulling punches in rhetoric, either. He spent a fair number of days back in 2013 comparing Barack Obama to King George III of England, and his favorite political quote, which he drops far too often, is Thomas Jefferson's remarks about the Shays Rebellion, that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It's also that sort of fetishization of the Founding Fathers you might see from someone like self-proclaimed conservative historian David Barton, who not coincidentally, is another of Colbeck's big allies. And Colbeck is so fanatically dedicated to the historic fabrication that the Founding Fathers intended on making the United States a Christian nation that he actually submitted legislation in January of 2013 that would have prevented the censorship of any history teacher who decided to push this false narrative. What made Patrick Colbeck particularly noteworthy to us here at CSGOPOTD, however, was how he joined the ranks of a few anti-gay members of the GOP back in December of 2015 to introduce resolutions in the Michigan state legislature to urge all state officials to just ignore the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling made by the Supreme Court that legalized same sex marriage. Colbeck was a speaker at a “religious liberty” rally outside the state capitol, where he made the comparison between the position of Christians in America having to live in a country with gays getting married to that of people persecuted by ISIS. (Seriously, there's video of him saying this.) Because if there's one thing that ISIS pushes on the public, it's LGBTQ rights, am I right? Taking a cursory glance at the rest of Colbeck's voting record reveals the sort of extremely conservative positions you might expect, including support for charter schools like the DeVos family would want, stricter Voter ID laws to suppress the vote, support for TRAP laws to close all the abortion clinics in the state, support for drug-testing welfare recipients, and votes to block the minimum wage. Now, normally a fanatical twit like Patrick Colbeck would be content to just float around a state legislature and be content to play political games when they know they're set up pretty well to win a conservative district (although he only did garner 53% of the vote in 2014). Colbeck made plans to run for Governor of Michigan in 2018, but did not advance out of the primary as his fellow legislators grew tired enough of his hyper-partisan antics that they started removing from committee leadership positions that he held. Colbeck was also term-limited in the Michigan State Senate, so he’s now out of office. Thus, we will set aside his profile at this time and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 835-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Michael Waltz

Welcome to what is the 835th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling the sitting U.S. House Representative from Florida’s 6th Congressional District, Michael Waltz, who is serving in his first term in office after being elected in the 2018 elections to replace former Congressman, consistent racist, and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Now Rep. Waltz, who is the first Green Beret ever elected to Congress, cut his teeth in politics working as a senior adviser for Dick Cheney regarding South Asia during the Bush administration, and also advised Dubya on counterterrorism. We’re relieved to see him, however, throwing cold water on other conservatives who want war at times, and he was a vocal critic of Donald Trump’s decision to let Turkish forces attack our Kurdish allies in Syria as well as when he was pushing back against talk of war with Iran over the past few weeks…

But on the other hand, his opposition against Donald Trump’s deranged and terrifying foreign policy might just be empty words, because during the House Impeachment Inquiry, Michael Waltz marched like a stupid little lemming into Congressman Matt Gaetz’s “protest” against the impeachment process, supports Trump’s stupid goddamned idea for a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border, and is still willing to run back onto his old stomping grounds at Fox News to advocate for Trump’s Space Force. Hell, we can’t give him credit for trying to be one of the people who wanted Trump to put the brakes on going to war with Iran, because Waltz is the same dumbass who as a candidate went onto Fox News to cheerlead for Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement in the first place.

Nothing like bringing one of the people who helped oversee the Iraq War want to do another one, y’know? And we shouldn’t be surprised that this is what his voting record looks like:

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Waltz voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Waltz votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Waltz 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.
• May 17th, 2019: Waltz votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Waltz votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Michael Waltz votes 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”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Waltz ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.

We’re going to start profiling Michael Waltz annually now, because we’re expecting him to continue to enable some of the worst behaviors of Donald Trump, and to insist upon the next great foreign policy blunder that could lead to thousands of American deaths in foreign lands to help the military industrial complex get richer. Nobody works that closely with Dick Cheney without having that kind of plan for this country and the world at large. It’s just not possible.

[PaulBullion]

Oh great, the Yang Gang will throw away their vote on a write-in vote. #stillvotingyang is the top trend on twitter right now. Probably amplified by the usual operatives.

Speaking of the usual operatives, both Trump and his bot army (like this push poll site) are trying to stoke the flames of Berner's anger:



Or fascist actor James Woods, an honorary bot:

[jetengine]

Why is Woods a fascist again ?

[PaulBullion]

Why is Woods a fascist again ?

His political viewpoints were actually rightwing enough to get him banned from twitter for a long time. That's telling.

He's called black people parasites. Do you need more?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Federal Judge Lashes White House ‘Banana Republic’ Influence In Andrew McCabe Case

Judge Reggie Walton said that as federal prosecutors unduly kept McCabe on the hook, “people at the top” undermined the “integrity of the process.” Look for Trump who wanted McCabe head on a stick to go ballistic on that judge.

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‘What Have We Become?’ — New Republican Video Rips Trump Revenge On Lt. Col. Vindman

Vindman “kept his oath,” Trump “has not,” says latest ad from The Lincoln Project. Caramel Caligula won't like this either, to which I say....GOOD!

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Michael Bloomberg Appeared To Blame Obama For Racial Division In 2016

The Democratic candidate has been touting his relationship with the former president in his ubiquitous campaign ads. Billionaire Bloomy continues being two-faced.

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Don Winslow Nails Lindsey Graham’s Hypocrisy With ‘The Truth Is Coming’ Supercut

The bestselling author highlighted the GOP senator’s radical shift in attitude towards Donald Trump with the montage shared online. Yeah, the abrupt turnaround of Lapdog Lindsey makes just about EVERYONE wonder what Trump and/or Putin has on him.

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Trump’s 29th Trip To Mar-a-Lago Brings Golf Tab To 334 Years Of Presidential Salary

The president often brags about not taking a paycheck, but his golf hobby has now cost taxpayers $133.8 million. Remember, boys and girls, Trump said he'd be too busy for golf if elected.

[numberthirty]

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Michael Bloomberg Appeared To Blame Obama For Racial Division In 2016

The Democratic candidate has been touting his relationship with the former president in his ubiquitous campaign ads. Billionaire Bloomy continues being two-faced.

**********

It's not really much of a shock, though.

He was still putting money into Republican campaigns that year.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Here's what I'll say about Bloomberg, by the end of his Presidency, Democrats will have lost any moral superiority they had over Trump and they likely will lose progressives for a long time

Bloomberg's a piece of **** on multiple levels, but thinking he's identical to Trump is mind-blowing. Trump's incompetence is something that makes him worse, not blunting his damage to the country and the world. Electing Bloomberg would be a sign of how desperate the Democrats are to stop Trump, and when someone is desperate they'll do whatever it takes to get victories. Giving Trump 4 more years is not an option. Bloomberg succeeding would mean Sanders' wing failed to convince the Democrats they could do it, which should be motivation to get their own wing in order so the next presidential primary they'll be the ones who win. That's their responsibility to fulfill.

Democrats won't lose progressives, only Sanders' wing - who probably would lose a large chunk once Sanders leaves politics. It's be nice to be able to rely on them long term, but that's up to them to decide whether they want to keep the GOP from power again.

Edit: If your only priority is self righteousness over actual progress you're losing.

[SquirrelMan]

Speaking of the usual operatives, both Trump and his bot army (like this push poll site) are trying to stoke the flames of Berner's anger:



Or fascist actor James Woods, an honorary bot:

[numberthirty]

Bloomberg's a piece of **** on multiple levels, but thinking he's identical to Trump is mind-blowing. Trump's incompetence is something that make shim worse, not blunting his damage to the country and the world. Electing Bloomberg would be a sign of how desperate the Democrats are to stop Trump, and when someone is desperate they'll do whatever it takes to get victories. Giving Trump 4 more years is not an option. Bloomberg succeeding would mean Sanders' wing failed to convince the Democrats they could do it, which should be motivation to get their own wing in order so the next presidential primary they'll be the ones who win. That's their responsibility to fulfill.

Democrats won't lose progressives, only Sanders' wing - who probably would lose a large chunk once Sanders leaves politics. It's be nice to be able to rely on them long term, but that's up to them to decide whether they want to keep the GOP from power again.

Edit: If your only priority is self righteousness over actual progress you're losing.

One guy's take...

If he is(or is not) identical to Trump is largely a non-issue. The main problem is that giving voters a choice between "Provable Garbage..." and "Provable Hot Garbage..." doesn't really leave you with much in the way of leeway when it comes to being able to win an election.

[aja_christopher]

One guy's take...

If he is(or is not) identical to Trump is largely a non-issue. The main problem is that giving voters a choice between "Provable Garbage..." and "Provable Hot Garbage..." doesn't really leave you with much in the way of leeway when it comes to being able to win an election.

I'm assuming Sanders was the "Provable Hot Garbage" in 2016 given how badly Hillary beat him.

Interesting how you never apply your own logic to the candidates you support, especially when discussing winning an election.