All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/...-incompetence/

Hadn't heard of this guy, or had forgotten. He got epically dunked on by AOC on twitter earlier while trying to declare she 'grew up rich'.

So I guess that bartending gig AOC had that helped get her through college was just something she did for shits and giggles. Makes perfect sense to me.

[Maine Starfish]

It’s interesting how that shows how much larger the polling bump a “conventional” office holder would receive compared to what Trump received, and how unique his sudden drop afterwards is. He received less of a bump and lost it quicker than he should have.

It’s pretty much the text book case where he’s have been better off just having the experts make decisions, and stay out of the spotlight.

yeah, it would have been better to stay out of the spotlight and leave it to the experts, but he’s a narcissist and everything is about him.

I’m not super surprised he’s mishandled this crisis, but it’s still kind of amazing just how bad he’s handled it.

[shooshoomanjoe]

When will his supporters realize what a danger to Americans trump is.

More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study

[Robotman]

I saw someone online refer to the quarantine protests as the “Flu Klux Klan” lol.

[Tendrin]

I saw someone online refer to the quarantine protests as the “Flu Klux Klan” lol.

Was just coming to post this myself. Flu klux klan. WPP is gonna love it.

[Steel Inquisitor]

What the hell are you talking about? Here's the post I was initially responding to:

I'm not sure what that reads like to you, but to me it just sounds like he's bragging that China won't be able to get away with what they did because there are plenty of racists all over the Western world that will gladly hold them to account, which is a curious thing to be talking about.

That sort of read only applies by using the absolute worst interpretation of what was said to attack the messenger, rather than listening to what the message is. It was a benign passage about how Obama should been more aggressive as a president against the GOP's obstruction, and how he had less political power in his second term with less seats in congress. Seats which were vital in passing legislation through congress, the more presidents have the more leverage they get. The second passage was acknowledging how racism has a large role in both America and Australian societies and how the Chinese government having bad polices don't alter that. The bragging, however, comes from your end when you think you caught sammy in a "gotcha." You don't know what you're talking about. The political theatre is getting boring, vary it a little.

[Malvolio]

I saw someone online refer to the quarantine protests as the “Flu Klux Klan” lol.

I like to think of them as children refusing to eat their vegetables.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date back in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had a profile of Stephen “Stephanie” Meade, who ran on the ballot for Congress to represent California’s 51st District in the U.S. House of Representatives as “the first transgendered candidate to run for Congress”. We don’t think doing so would make anybody crazy or stupid, except for the fact that Meade was not actually transgendered, and was only a transvestite who started wearing women’s clothes when he was in his eighties. His actual policy stances included eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood, a hawkish stance on foreign policy, and reducing the corporate tax rate. Oh, but rather than raising the minimum wage, Meade wanted it reduced to a mere $5 an hour. He also wanted to break up television and cable service providers, and finally get the United States to institute the metric system. Since he seems very unlikely to ever win office now that he’s ninety and the California GOP actively tries to throw him out of their meetings.



In 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Jackie Walorski, who during her time in the Indiana House of Representatives from 2004-2012, gained some notoriety for being a co-sponsor of a widely contested Voter ID bill to curtail the statistically non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud that led to a slew of lawsuits, was barely upheld in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge, and was then duplicated by various other Republican-controlled state legislatures to ensure voter suppression as a national tactic. What really made Jackie Walorski stand out, however, was her complete dedication to attacks on a woman’ right to choose, often sabotaging common sense legislation in the Indiana state legislature by adding on riders or amendments regarding abortion that would be the “poison pill” to make Democrats in Indiana forced to no longer support it. She used this tactic most famously (and disgustingly) to sabotage legislation to prevent hate crimes against the LGBTQ community by putting in an amendment to consider fetuses a protected group. Walorski decided to make the jump to national politics and hoped to ride the Tea Party Wave to Washington, D.C., to represent Indiana’s 2nd District in the 2010 elections, challenging Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly for his U.S. House seat. During that campaign, she spoke about privatizing Social Security, and with her radical record in the Indiana state legislature, voters still balked at the idea of putting her into office.

But alas, she still wasn’t giving up hope, especially after Indiana’s 2nd District was gerrymandered after the 2010 elections by House Republicans so that Walorski could get another chance at weaseling her way into Congress again, once it had a +6 Republican lean, rather than the previous rating, only a +2 lean, that it had when she lost to Joe Donnelly in 2010. Donnelly didn’t want a rematch, and instead, ran a successful campaign in 2012 to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Jackie Walorski would lose any advantage she might have gained from fundraising, though, after she was involved in a scandal regarding her attempts to fundraise off of a Planned Parenthood “sting” video. No, not the ones that popped up over the summer of 2015. Walorski was using footage from a pro-life activist pretending to be a 13 year old girl and go to a Planned Parenthood to raise money for her campaign coffers even prior to that slander. She sent the fundraising letter out during a period when it wasn’t allowed, then tried saying the ethics committee who were investigating her for doing so were “overlooking the rape and sexual abuse of a 13-year old minor”. (Which, again, wasn’t true, she wasn’t 13, wasn’t raped or abused, and wasn’t pregnant.) Anyway, Walorski’s Democratic opponent was an Iraq War Veteran Brendan Mullen, and as the polling showed the race tightening in August of 2012, she made the classy decision to doxx him, and release his home addresses in Washington, D.C., to the public in a campaign ad. Sadly, this tactic may have worked, as Walorski won office by only about 3,800 votes, 49 to 48%.(And we remind you, this was after the district was gerrymandered to help her as a Republican.)

Since she arrived in the capitol, Walorski's voting record includes votes against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voting to defund the Department of Homeland Security to protest President Obama's executive orders on delayed deportations, voting for the 2013 Government Shutdown and all anti-choice legislation that comes to the floor. Oh, and she did react to the more recent faux-controversy over Planned Parenthood because of the Center for Medical Progress bogus "sting videos, accusing the organization of "selling baby body parts." Which if you recall, is the exact kind of rhetoric that motivated Robert Dear, the shooter who attacked and killed several people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, so thanks for that, Jackie.

Ironically, in 2016, Rep. Walorski survived both a primary challenge because of how she pulled her own anti-choice bill, HR 7, because she realized too late that it would not provide exceptions for rape, unless it was reported to authorities. Both Walorski and Rep. Renee Ellmers panicked, and called for their own legislation to be dropped before they risked reigniting the War on Women claims the GOP had been battling in a big way (considering they schedule the vote on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, yeah, it would have been pretty bad). Walorski was immediately branded a traitor to the Pro-Life movement, and did her best to earn back their good graces by getting her name down as a co-sponsor on HR 36 in May of 2015, but to no avail. That’s all it took, was pulling back on one anti-abortion measure for how it phrased its exceptions for rape, and she was No True Scotsman. So Jeff Petermann came onto the scene to try to swipe her seat in Congress out from under her. But alas, Petermann failed to unseat her, and Walorski returned to office with 59% of the vote in the general election against Democrat Lynn Coleman.

Walorski was re-elected in 2018 with 55% of the vote, her poorest showing in any election since she came to Washington, D.C. And, she has continued to underwhelm her constituents with a voting record like this:

• January 22nd, 2019: Walorski cannot be arsed to bother 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.
• February 28th, 2019: Jackie Walorski 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. Walorski 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: Walorski votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• July 16th, 2019: Jackie Walorski 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”.

Indiana as a whole is trending further and further right all the time, and we’re curious to see if there’s a point where the people of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District realize that after eight years in office, she’s not achieved anything legislatively noteworthy, and that they might not want to wait until the Congressonal map gets redrawn in 2020 to be rid of her.

[jetengine]

People keep bringing up the wet markets but so far there's no evidence of food being a transmission route for the virus.

Its not the food thats the issue, its the live/dead animals on sale, but being near food certainly doesnt help the disease issue

[Tendrin]

Its not the food thats the issue, its the live/dead animals on sale, but being near food certainly doesnt help the disease issue

The USA has thousands of wet markets too. We're lucky it didn't strart here.

[jetengine]

For one thing, the doctor you are talking about didn't get sent to a gulag, the police brought him in for questioning and then let him go, and he subsequently contracted the virus and died from it. The fact that everyone over here just assumes that he was murdered for daring to speak up just shows you how easily people can be swayed by silly conspiracy theories if it fits their predefined world view. As for lying about the numbers, I'm sure there are plenty of deaths that haven't been recorded just like there are in every country, but even a CIA investigation into the matter couldn't find any evidence of some massive cover up, and at this point, why the hell does that even matter? Are we keeping score now?

Yup, I fucked up on the Gulag part. However he was theeatened by the government for daring to speak out so its kind of irrelevant one way or another.

"Are we keeping score now"

So if I set a fire in your home due my dumbfuckery, lie to you, do a reasonable job of dousing it, claim to you that its totes dealt with because I stopped actually looking for it and then said fire burns down the entire suburb thats cool with you ? Awesome.

[jetengine]

For example, the story that the coronavirus was engineered in some bio-weapons lab never had any evidence to support it, yet continues to be plastered across the front page with stories that are "just asking questions," keeping the conspiracy alive in the minds of the public.

Thats some BAD journalism right there. Any nation that develops and uses Bio-weapons in the 21st century at best gets its economy destroyed or at worst gets glassed.

[jetengine]

The USA has thousands of wet markets too. We're lucky it didn't strart here.

Do you sell live wild (and or rare) animals at them ? Cause again, they suspect it was Bat--Animal (possibly Pangolin)---Human.

[Tendrin]

Do you sell live wild (and or rare) animals at them ? Cause again, they suspect it was Bat--Animal (possibly Pangolin)---Human.

On April 3, Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, joined the chorus of voices calling for the immediate closure of China's "wet markets," where the coronavirus is widely believed to have originated. Butchers, trappers and consumers mingle openly, slaughtering and trading live animals; it is the perfect environment for zoonotic diseases to leap from an infected creature to a human.
But China is hardly the only country where live animal markets and other squalid operations are common. Some 80 of them operate within the five boroughs of New York City alone, according to Slaughter Free NYC, a nonprofit group that opposes them. They are near residences, schools and public parks.

https://www.theeagle.com/opinion/col...df0e88166.html

So, yeah. It's done here too and all over the world. The focus on China's is understandable given the present context, but a lot of us simply aren't in the position to know what goes on in our back yard, let alone around the world. This honestly could have just as easily started in New York as it did in China and we're lucky that it didn't given how bad the situation in NYC already is just from what's happening now.

[jetengine]

https://www.theeagle.com/opinion/col...df0e88166.html

Fair, shut that shit down too. So then that raises the question. Why has this happened multiple times in China and not the USA ?