All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Tami]

I mean I saw it as an issue because its becoming an incredibly frequent sight, these idiots are so terrified that their rights are being taken away that their blind to reason or sense.

But yes, 2 million dead hurts the economy bad and you cant force scared people to go out.

From what I saw on the news, a look at Europe showed that, while some countries are slowly opening, the people are still too scared (reluctant) to go back out. The U.S. is probably the only country where there are people too dumb to stay in.

[Kevinroc]

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status...71455901020160

Minutes after a Fox News segment on a protest against social distancing measures outside the Minnesota governor's office, by conservative "Liberate Minnesota" group, Trump tweets "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!"

Left, Fox's America's Newsroom, 11:19 a.m.
Right, Trump, 11:21 a.m.

People are going to die because of this bastard.

[Joker]

People are going to die because of this bastard.

Going to?! My dude, they already have.

But people still support this party.

But, as has been stated in this thread, their policies benefit the most people!

[ed2962]

Harris has some negatives, but she seems ready for the job. She's a Senator, she has won three statewide elections in a large state, she ran the second-largest justice department in the country, and she has the name recognition that comes with running for President.

Abrams is in a different category than most, as her highest office was as Democratic party leader in the Georgia state house.

Trump is very sui generis. He is probably the least qualified person every elected President, but enough voters thought he was qualified because he's a famous businessman. They've seen him as a talking head on history channel programs alongside Bill Clinton and Colin Powell.

Klobuchar's strength in Minnesota can count against her, because it means her replacement in the Senate could underperform in the midterms. Eric Levitz of New York magazine discussed the downsides.

He also noted that having Elizabeth Warren on the ticket might require her leaving the Senate in July, in order to avoid Governor Baker being allowed to replace her for five months, and run for the seat in a special election.

Yes. Real experience matters less and less to regular people.

[ed2962]

True enough. It's just that I keep seeing theses takes about what people want in the VP, but than others are like no that's not good enough. So how do you get people to vote when they are Anti Biden?

I'm seeing more and more people online trying to shame folks into voting and that's simply not to work.

I think Biden really has to take advantage of social media and the press and really get his policies out there. I'm not sure the average person even knows what he's supposedly running on other than not being Trump.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

From what I saw on the news, a look at Europe showed that, while some countries are slowly opening, the people are still too scared (reluctant) to go back out. The U.S. is probably the only country where there are people too dumb to stay in.

The problem is that the idiot Republicans think that those rabid idiots will make the rest of us act like everything is normal. The economy is still going to tank regardless, only now more people will get sick

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I mean I saw it as an issue because its becoming an incredibly frequent sight, these idiots are so terrified that their rights are being taken away that their blind to reason or sense.

But yes, 2 million dead hurts the economy bad and you cant force scared people to go out.

And people are going to be scared for months to come, perhaps the rest of the year, mainly because nobody knows who's a carrier or not, who's asymptomatic or not. The paranoia alone will keep people on edge and indoors. Yeah, that's going to result in a hurting economy, no doubt about that, but, to quote something Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer recently said, "Better to be six feet apart than six feet under". Can't put it any plainer than that.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, Walter Jones, whose biggest claim to fame is that during the build up to the Iraq War, when France refused to join the United States in invading, he responded by submitting a resolution to have French Fries in the Capitol cafeteria renamed "Freedom Fries". He was also a big supporter of Ilario Pantano, a U.S. Soldier from Iraq who was placed on military trial for killing two Iraqi citizens and displaying their corpses with a sign saying, "No better friend, no worse enemy." Of course, Jones seems rather fine with anti-Muslim measures himself, considering he's publicly complained about community colleges in his district spending money on copies of textbooks on Islam or Muslim culture, called for defunding the Obama administration to stop the resettlement of Muslim refugees, and has tried to get classified information about 9/11 declassified, claiming that Saudi Arabia would be secretly revealed to have funded the attacks. He has also discussed impeaching President Obama for his executive orders on immigration, and going on the conservative news network Newsmax to be interviewed by former Congressman J.D. Hayworth to say he felt Republicans have a “Constitutional duty to impeach President Obama”. As late as June of 2015, Rep. Jones was repeating lies about how the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels”, over a half-decade after it was named Politifact’s “Lie of the Year”. Walter Jones also is a repeated guest of Alex Jones' InfoWars, agreeing with the host on one episode that "abortion is a curse upon America", and that if it was stopped, the curse would be lifted. Walter Jones has been sabotaging the Republican Party’s biggest establishment names for the past few years. We discussed in our original profile of Jones that he recanted his belief that the War on Iraq was justified (that’s right, even the Freedom Fries guy has hindsight). By the end of the Bush administration, Jones was more than willing to throw Dubya under the bus, and lay blame with him for the deaths of thousands of American troops in a conflict we stared because of selectively presented evidence against the Hussein regime. And that guilt and resentment over his Iraq War vote carried over to the rest of the Bush family, it seems, because while Jeb Bush was trying his damnedest to make some headway in the 2016 Presidential Primary, Walter Jones was right there to chuck Jeb under the bus over it, as well, going on Alex Jones’ InfoWars (again) in August 2015 to do so, saying, “If my brother had sent 4,000 Americans to die in an unnecessary war, I don’t believe I’d be making those statements. We never had to go into Iraq. It was manufactured intelligence. We had no business going into Iraq, taking out Saddam is part of the problem that we’ve got with the Middle East right now.” And he still wasn’t done. Through most of the summer and early fall of 2015, Walter Jones was working with the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the most obstinate, pigheaded, and deranged Republicans in all of Congress, to push for the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, who they no longer trusted because they felt he compromised with Democrats too much. (Think about that for a second… John Boehner compromised too much in his mind.) Rep. Kevin McCarthy was fast-tracked to be John Boehner’s replacement as House Speaker, and while McCarthy certainly did botch his step into the media spotlight for the job, it certainly didn’t help that Walter Jones sent out a letter to Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers than implied Rep. McCarthy was having an affair with another woman, who many speculated was fellow Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. Walter Jones survived three consecutive attempts by the national Republican Party to bounce him from office in a primary election, winning another term in 2018. He would not, however, survive his own health, though, as only a month after he announced he would retire from office in 2020, Jones suddenly passed away at the age of 76, leaving behind one of the most bizarre political legacies of any modern Republican. As he has shuffled off the mortal coil, we will set aside his profile and focus on another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 853-45, since this was established in July 2014.)


Werner Horn

Welcome to what is the 853rd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Werner Horn, who has held office in the New Hampshire House of Representatives since 2014, when he unseated incumbent Democrat Scott Burns by all of 12 votes. In the 2018 mid-terms, Horn again held off Burns by a staggering 20 votes. We’re profiling Horn not so much for his voting record, where he’s voted against minimum wage increases, voted against an official procedure to investigate sexual harassment within the state legislature, against an attempt to repeal the death penalty, voted against a ban on gay conversion therapy, and voted against a measure to prevent discrimination in public schools.

No we’re going to write a profile on Werner Horn because in July of 2019, he had a conversation with a former GOP state legislator on Facebook where he posited his opinion that, “owning slaves doesn’t make you racist.” It wasn’t a misunderstanding, as he was contacted by the Huffington Post and gave an interview where, at length, he defended his goddamned ignorant stance:

”It’s never OK to own another person. But to label the institution as racist is a false narrative. Slave masters didn’t consider race at the auction block but instead were making an economic decision and purchasing who was available. When you look back at auction inventory lists, Horn said, there aren’t white names or Native American or Hispanic names.

I should’ve said European instead of white, but I’m a little less PC than normal people.

Women and children cost less than male slaves, so does that mean they were being discriminated against? Unless you’re going to try to tell me those plantation owners were so in the dark ages that they delighted in being also sexist and ageist — practicing age discrimination and sex discrimination when they bought slaves — I don’t see how you can say they’re being racist because they bought black slaves

My comment specifically was aimed at a period of time when that was how you survived, that’s how you fed your family. It wasn’t ‘I want to own a black person today.’ It was, ’I need to feed my family; I need five guys who can work stupidly long hours in the sun without killing themselves.’”

If you were playing white nationalist bingo, you may have just won based on that interview alone. And now would be a good time to help whoever his opponent is put a boot in Werner Horn’s ass come November.
 

[Malvolio]

We’re Going Backwards With Coronavirus Response, Obama ‘Ebola Czar’ Warns

“We’re not on a path to solve this problem, we’re on a path to make this problem worse,” said Ronald Klain.

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Dr. Phil Claims Shutdowns Deadlier Than Coronavirus In Wild Fox News Appearance

The TV psychologist says loneliness will “destroy more lives” than the infection. Like I'd trust anything that comes out of the mouth of that self-promoting gadfly. Then there's this lunatic....

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Dr. Oz Suggests Schools Should Reopen Because ‘Only’ 2% To 3% More People Could Die

The TV star cited a study on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that said schools opening back up would cost us “2-3%, in terms of total mortality.” Absolutely monstrous! That quack should be shunned, if not disbarred by the medical community for what he said. However, speaking of a REAL doctor....

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Dr. Anthony Fauci Shuts Down Laura Ingraham’s ‘Misleading’ Coronavirus Claim

“They’re really different,” Fauci said when the Fox News host tried to compare the coronavirus to HIV or SARS.

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Lou Dobbs Floats War With China As ‘Consequences’ For Coronavirus

The Fox Business host considers China’s response to the outbreak a “conscious act of warfare.”

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Mitt Romney Is Only GOP Senator Trump Didn’t Include On Coronavirus Committee

The Utah senator was also the only Senate Republican who voted to convict President Trump during the impeachment trial earlier this year. Hmm! Coincidence?

Remember in 2016 when a lot of people wished Oprah Winfrey would run for President? I wonder how that would have turned out when she relies on quacks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz for psychological and medical advice.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Remember in 2016 when a lot of people wished Oprah Winfrey would run for President? I wonder how that would have turned out when she relies on quacks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz for psychological and medical advice.

Yeah, I could imagine an Oprah administration with Dr. Phil as Education Secretary and Dr. Oz as Surgeon General. They'd actually be worse than the hacks Trump has in those positions right now.

[TheDarman]

And people are going to be scared for months to come, perhaps the rest of the year, mainly because nobody knows who's a carrier or not, who's asymptomatic or not. The paranoia alone will keep people on edge and indoors. Yeah, that's going to result in a hurting economy, no doubt about that, but, to quote something Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer recently said, "Better to be six feet apart than six feet under". Can't put it any plainer than that.

See, and if we were focused on trying to get the economy working at around 80% in the interim, you should be working to get to a place where people feel comfortable going back out again. Your lists of people’s fears are accurate and people will likely be scared even with mitigation efforts. But Trump is making things so much worse by not dedicating federal government resources to increasing testing capacity, access, and funding.

If people feel they can easily get tested for it if they have gone out, that will alleviate some fear about the uncertainty. And, at least after weeks of practice, they can feel comfortable that, for the most part, those who have it are staying in isolation.

Next, having it made clear that you have clear mechanisms in place for contact-tracing would go a long way to alleviating concerns even further. It would mean that folks would feel even that much more comfortable that people aren’t out and about if they have the potential of having it.

Finally, working to ease the severity of the symptoms would be a good final step. People are scared now because they fear that, should they get it, they end up either in isolation or dying. While isolation is probably a forgone conclusion anyway, having some effective treatments might get us to where we need to go to further make people comfortable with going out. This trifecta serves to make it clear that, for the most part, people aren’t walking around with this because we have effective testing structures in place, that tracing is aggressive and thus reinforces the previous point, and that, even on the small chance they do get it, they’ll have the ability to fight it off.

Unfortunately, Trump has been preoccupied with opening the economy without actually addressing the health concerns. And the truth is that this economic contraction will only heal a bit until a vaccine is created. There may be good news on that front and we might have one later this year instead of early next year. Still, his options were to maintain social distancing, have social distancing be the method for outbreak reoccurrence, or to create the infrastructure necessary to stop outbreaks with adequate testing, contact tracing, and treatment. He seems to be opting for the second choice without even realizing that. This is a total disaster.

[Jack Dracula]

From what I saw on the news, a look at Europe showed that, while some countries are slowly opening, the people are still too scared (reluctant) to go back out. The U.S. is probably the only country where there are people too dumb to stay in.

The current narrative among the far-right is that COVID-19 is a hoax overblown by the mainstream media to make Trump look bad.

White obese middle aged men and rail thin twenty somethings all pretending to be barriers against a runaway goverment with their ridiculous tactical gear that America could easily crush under its heel if it actually cared to.

If those armed protesters were black they'd be surrounded by police.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

If those armed protesters were black they'd be surrounded by police.

Surrounded, then gunned down. Of that, I have little doubt.

[PaulBullion]

Remember in 2016 when a lot of people wished Oprah Winfrey would run for President? I wonder how that would have turned out when she relies on quacks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz for psychological and medical advice.

She has good business sense, and she saw that they would be good for ratings. I am not sure that means she would choose them to be on her cabinet.

[Kevinroc]

Going to?! My dude, they already have.

Let me amend my earlier comment.

Even more people are going to die because of this bastard.