All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[PaulBullion]

Tara originally said in interviews last month that her mother went on Larry King to say that her daughter needed help because she had been sexually harassed and where to go. She never said that in that clip. Indeed, she said she could “only go to the press”. This would imply that it was a minor “problem” and not an illicit action.

She should have asked her horse psychic for help.

[Wildling]

Much like with other infections, the virus can "hide" in the body, apparently. We've seen this with HIV. A test that is done based on a nose swab may miss lingering infections and give false negatives. This is not good. We need to ramp up testing, and testing just got more complicated.

That'll teach Obama not to inherit bad tests for once a century pandemics that hadn't happened in his own term yet.

Where's Hunter Biden?

[PaulBullion]

That'll teach Obama not to inherit bad tests for once a century pandemics that hadn't happened in his own term yet.

Where's Hunter Biden?

The scary part is how much of red carnation twitter agrees with her and celebrates Stalin in the replies.

[Steel Inquisitor]

The scary part is how much of red carnation twitter agrees with her and celebrates Stalin in the replies.

These were the people pushing Sanders into office so they could use him to leapfrog themselves into power. They're incredibly incompetent but it's vital they never, ever be in authority.

Edit: If anything is compromising socialism in the west it's these people. Their own movement is holding them back from being credible on the public stage.

[jetengine]

Fucking Tankies. I'm down with the ideal of communism but realise its mostly a pipedream because human beings are human beings. These people though just want it with violence if needed.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump Holds Short Briefing After Disinfectant Claim, Takes No Questions

The president took no questions from the press a day after he suggested injecting people with disinfectant to fight off the coronavirus. Looks like President Snowflake didn't like having his orange ass roasted over the disinfectant debacle. And that leads to this....

**********

White House Could Alter Virus Briefings To Limit Trump Role

There have been discussions within the White House about changing the format of the briefings to curtail the president’s role, according to several sources. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Good luck with that pipe dream. Since Trump can't hold his inane rallies, the daily briefings are the only way he can get his media fix, so he won't go along with being curtailed.

**********

Trump Tells West Point He’s Speaking To Graduates; Now Cadets Must Return To Campus

1,000 cadets have been called back to New York, the state with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the nation. Oh, yes, let's expose cadets to COVID-19 so Trump can have a photo op and bleat about himself. The Joint Chiefs need to grow a pair, lay down the law and say NO to that madness!

**********

Maryland Emergency Hotline Flooded With Calls About Fake Disinfectant Cures

More than 100 people called the state’s Emergency Management Agency after President Donald Trump asked if disinfectant could treat COVID-19. That is flat out crazy, but not unexpected.

**********

Republicans Are Mad Unemployment Benefits Are Actually Benefiting The Unemployed

They worry business won’t survive if workers stay home, but staying home is the whole point. A point Republicans either don't get, or don't give a damn about.

**********

COVID-19 Protesters Leave Body Bags At Foot Of Trump’s D.C. Hotel

The demonstrators said they wanted to let the president know that “most of the country believes in science.”

[worstblogever]

Drug dealers are working from home, too:

Police catch a pigeon with 200 ecstasy pills hidden in a little backpack

Police do have a person of interest in their investigation.

[Robotman]

Police do have a person of interest in their investigation.

I did notice that Bert was unusually chipper during that segment.

He’s got a man on the street that handles the drop offs. Actually he’s in a trash can.

[PaulBullion]

Police do have a person of interest in their investigation.

They are also accusing the pigeon of flying high.

[Tendrin]

Tara originally said in interviews last month that her mother went on Larry King to say that her daughter needed help because she had been sexually harassed and where to go. She never said that in that clip. Indeed, she said she could “only go to the press”. This would imply that it was a minor “problem” and not an illicit action.

Yeah, meanwhile folks on twitter are screaming that 'CNN is sitting on this and they had it all along omg coverup!'

Which... I mean, you've got to be kidding me. How would they even know? The only reason we know now is Tara probably knew her mom called Larry King and *told them to look for it*.

I mean, come on guys.

[PaulBullion]

In a regular election year, we would be outraged at stuff like this:

TRUMP IS PERSONALLY INDEBTED TO CHINA’S STATE-OWNED BANK

As the president tries portraying Biden as weak on China, he owes tens of millions over a real estate deal—and the bill would come due during his second term.

As Politico reported Friday, the president is deeply in debt with the Bank of China—and his bill is soon coming due. As the publication reported, the president is scheduled to settle his tab with the state-owned bank in 2022, in the middle of what will be his second term in office should he be re-elected in November. The massive debt to a foreign government by an American president is obviously unusual, but the looming due date with Bank of China compounds concerns about his conflicts of interest. “He is highly conflicted with respect to China,” Gerry Connolly, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico.

[jetengine]

Soft on Russia - Owes Russia tons of money and possible *********
Soft on China - Owes the Chinese tons of money.

Iran better pay up soon.

Edit - why ko-mpro-mat censored? (Remove the hyphens)

[PaulBullion]

Edit - why ko-mpro-mat censored? (Remove the hyphens)

I, for one, welcome our new Russian moderators.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" posted profiles about Christine Jones, a former member of the Arizona State Legislature, a candidate for Arizona Governor in 2014, and a failed Congressional candidate for Arizona’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She ran in spite of the fact that she was previously arrested for DUI, and that she was a former GoDaddy.com executive who tried dodge criticism for the company’s exploitive ads by saying “she didn’t like them”, even though was actually IN one of them alongside Danica Patrick. She also was caught lying badly about super racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, trying to claim he was just misunderstood, and a nice guy who puts barrels of water out near the border for illegal immigrants to survive on while he’s catching them (completely untrue), and talked about how immigrants were crossing the Rio Grande and into Arizona, which is amazing because that river does not geographically exist anywhere within the state. Her immigration plan was completely moronic, trying to use the National Guard as extra border patrol agents, but not realizing that doing so wouldn’t be free, and would cost her state $110 million annually. Finally, Jones tried winning over gun enthusiasts by giving an interview where she bragged about her skill with firearms, claiming she enjoyed squeezing off rounds with one arm, or even her eyes closed, which would make her a better shooter in low visibility, or so she said. Jones not only failed to win office in the past two elections, but said enough dumb things to spook even normally deep red Arizona Republicans away from her.

On this date in both 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" posted profiles about Frank Guinta, who served two non-consecutive terms in Congress, winning office in 2010 and 2014. Not long after he returned to the capitol, however, a report broke that Guinta, way back in his first run for Congress back in 2010, received illegal campaign funding donations… from his parents. That’s right, it seems Guinta lied for years about where $355,000 in contributions came from, and after trying to fib about it for forever and a day, finally got pinned to the wall, admitted it, and was fined by the Federal Election Commission. The scandal tarnished Guinta enough that Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire called on him to resign, and harmed his overall future in politics. Supposedly, Frank Guinta is considered by some to be a Republican moderate, but I find that hard to believe, considering he’s a climate change denier, his stance on abortion is hard to the right, with “Life begins at conception”, indicating that he’s opposed to birth control (with votes that back that up), and is a major hard-liner on immigration, back in 2010, calling for immigration enforcement that was beyond harsh… it was his suggestion that we just ignore the 14th Amendment and deport the children of undocumented immigrants with their parents (which is, y’know, unconstitutional and all). The rest of his voting record is hardly a sign that Guinta’s anywhere near the middle of the spectrum on the issues, including two separate votes to defund Planned Parenthood, votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, and a vote for an amendment to be added to the Constitution to ban same sex marriage. Frank Guinta was sent packing from Washington, D.C. yet again by U.S. House Rep. Carol Shea-Porter in 2016, who topped him by just about 5,000 votes for the highly-contested seat in New Hampshire’s 2nd. With a multitude of scandals and his latest loss going into a Blue Wave year in 2018, Frank Guinta opted to not run for re-election in 2018

[worstblogever]

Anthony Kern

On this date in 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published its original profile of Anthony Kern, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives from District 20 who was first elected to office in 2014, usually by running second behind fellow GOP legislator Paul Boyer in that district. It wasn’t until Kern was into his second term in office that he managed to earn our notice here at CSGOPOTD, and that’s because only a few weeks after he was sworn in, he decided to go to a Trump rally in Phoenix to speak, and where he brought out the “LOCK HER UP!” rhetoric against Hillary Clinton four months after the election not just as a colorful chant, but something he actually suggested needed to be revisited as an actual policy. More interesting was that this rally featured several members of the anti-government militia group, the Oathkeepers, and people baying out other great opinions, like beginning “liberal genocide” and the deportation of either all Muslims or all Jews from America. Y’know, nothing that would seem at all like the sort of thing Neo-Nazis would be yelling out loud, unprompted.

That wasn’t the first time Kern faced some sort of controversy, though. Back in his first few weeks in office in 2015, co-sponsored Arizona’s HR 1445, a law meant to conceal the name of whatever police officer should kill a suspect in the line of duty from the public for at least 90 days. Now, that law in and of itself seems pretty fascist and extreme, given the wide swath of police killings in the past few years. But it’s not the bill that stirred up controversy. It was the fact that Kern lied during debate on the bill and claimed to be a “certified peace officer”. Shocker, the media did some checking, and could not find a record of Kern being a police officer, let alone having any sort of certification to be one.

So… yeah, we think speaking at what amounted to a hate rally and helping to work the crowd into frothing madness is enough alone to get Anthony Kern a profile here. There’s also the fact that he chose to give Donald Trump a tongue bath a few months after getting on our radar, celebrating Trump’s executive order to reverse every executive order Barack Obama made to combat climate change, and whining about how the coal industry had “suffered”, which is an odd choice of energy to support in a state that’s famous for getting SUN all the time, y’know?

And over the past three years, Anthony Kern’s voting record has shown us he’s definitely the sort of Arizona Republican worthy of a CSGOPOTD profile:

• February 3rd, 2015: Anthony Kern co-sponsors HB 1445, the bill to conceal the names of police officers who murder suspects for at least 90 days.
• February 18th, 2015: Kern votes for HB 2173, a lunatic bill written to legalize gold and silver as legal tender in Arizona.
• March 11th, 2015: Anthony Kern votes for HB 2643, an attempt by Arizona Republicans to nullify the Affordable Care Act.
• February 29th, 2016: Kern votes for HB 2338, a bill written to allow the legalization of concealed carry near public schools, which we are certain would make the parents of Arizona schoolchildren must feel much safer about their kids’ well-being.
• March 28th, 2017: Anthony Kern votes for SB 1122, which would allow the sale of firearms without any background check (ignoring federal law again).
• March 29th, 2017: Kern votes for SB 1367, an insane anti-choice bill aimed at forcing abortion providers to have to attempt to revive a “viable fetus” after an abortion, which ignores the fact that the way the law is already written, no fetus viable outside the womb can be aborted.
• February 25th, 2019: Kern votes for HCR 2009, to declare pornography is a public health crisis.
• April 10th, 2019: Anthony Kern is one of five Republicans who votes against SB 1346, which would authorize sex education teachers in Arizona schools to teach students about HIV prevention.
• February 6th, 2020: Kern votes for HB 2084, to allow private businesses to go ahead and build parts of a wall along the U.S./Mexico border.
• March 3rd, 2020: Anthony Kern votes for HB 2706, to ban transgender girls from participating in high school sports designated for females.

Now, we have kind of a big update on Anthony Kern, as in 2019, he sponsored legislation that would allow law enforcement to have their name removed from “The Brady List”, which is a database of law enforcement officials kept who are suspected of repeated dishonesty. Now, while we’ve already established that Kern, a former peace officer, seems to like the idea of Arizona being a fascist state where the police can do whatever they want, and that he’s a liar… lo and behold it turned out he had a selfish reason for wanting to have names taken off the Brady list… HE’S ON IT. Not only did Kern sexually harass a co-worker back in 2010, he once lied to law enforcement officials that he had already worked to pay them back for a department laptop he “lost”. Now, he was trying to revise history so that none of that would ever be reported on…

In December of 2019, he faced calls to be stripped of his leadership of committees in the legislature for making homophobic statements, and referring to sex education as “pornography”:

”Do you want LGBTQ Rights to take over? You want your kids being taught sex education — that you pull up a computer right now —I can pull up, you know, Pornhub.com ... I could pull it up and show you anything on that porn site is what is going to be taught to your kids, your little kindergartners.”

Whether or not this controversy comes back to haunt Anthony Kern in 2020, we don’t know. But he seems to have friends in high places, as he’s been photographed pretty frequently with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Vice-President Mike Pence.

Let’s hope that he never steps up like they seem to have designs on him doing.