All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[InformationGeek]

Tulsi explains herself.



Do you not understand why its partisan?

[mogwen]

While you're talking about Biden, Warren, Gabbard or impeachment the real danger is looming upon you. Something dirty is happening right now.
Fifth Pentagon official announces resignation in seven days, replaced by a Trump supporter, the Pentagon leaders are quietly replaced by sycophants of Trump. Where will it lead your country my friends?
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4...-in-seven-days

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The anti-Semitism smear against Corbyn is now being already repeated against Bernie, however. Conservatives in the UK and the USA read from the same playbook now.

Going to be hard to stick with the whole being Jewish thing

[Theleviathan]

The right-wing has proven many times of late that smears don't have to make sense or be true to stick with voters. Sad as it is.

[Tendrin]

Going to be hard to stick with the whole being Jewish thing

They'll just trot out 'self hating Jew', like they always do -- but the fact that he's Jewish is irrelevant to the people the smear is intended to influence.

[Gray Lensman]

Going to be hard to stick with the whole being Jewish thing

These people can question the Christianity of the Pope and the followers lap it up.

...

I didn't realize how many of us were saying the same thing in different words. I wasn't intending to pile on.

[Tendrin]

Just saw the best tweet in regards to Tusli's 'present' vote.

"We really should make her the past."

[jetengine]

Do you know who Boss Tweed was?

Yes, yes I do. But you see in multiple other nations it actually works, so bringing out a Victorian relic doesnt really do much for me.

[numberthirty]

From the "Illinois..." corner, one very slight step in the right direction -

https://news.wttw.com/2019/12/17/20-...laws-know-2020

20 New Illinois Laws to Know in 2020

Saving for Higher Education

Every baby born in Illinois will soon receive $50 in a 529-style investment account to help pay for their future community college, university or trade school expenses. It’s not a lot of money for any one individual, but the intent of HB 2237 is to spur parents and guardians to contribute more money to their child’s future education.

While the law takes effect in the new year, the treasurer’s office will spend 2020 setting up the program. The first babies eligible for the $50 seed money will be those born starting in January 2021. Want to know more? Amanda Vinicky explains the new law in detail.

[numberthirty]

And another significantly larger one...

No More ‘Pay to Stay’

HB 900 eliminates the Illinois Department of Corrections’ ability to sue an inmate to recoup the costs of their imprisonment.

[jetengine]

As for "Oh noez the Uk"

1. Corbyn is unpopular due to corporate media smears. Most of our Press is either owned by Murdoch or Right Wingers OR relies heavily on government funding. His anti semetism consists of being critical of Israels national policies and the Tories trotting out the Chief Rabbi whom seems to be friends with Boris to say "Your a shitty anti semite Cirbyn" whilst conveniently ignoring the Conservatives literally suspended two members over anti semetism the week before. His ckaims of "terrorist sympathiser" boils down to "Hey maybe we shoyld stop fucking with Ireland" and the following awkward rigamarole that was early post troubles uk. Oh and lets not forget saying stuff like "I'd rather not use the Nukes if I can" and prefering to talk peace over sabre rattling. The rest of the smears are the usual bullshit over not singing the anthem etc.

2. Corbyns unpopularity is due to the above, not being agressive enough in countermanding it and his mixed stance on Brexit. Brexit fucking ruined this whole thing, he tried to be a moderare but things became far to partisan regarding it. Oh and his policies were good, but a little long winded and contained oddities (free broadband?). Aldo the Conservatives playing the dirtiest election within living memory, so many lies (independent factcheckers found 88% of Tory ads were lies compared to 0% on labours), former Lib dem coalition member Nick Clegg allowing Facebook's political ads to legally be factually incorrect and shit like making fake labour manifesto pages, fake factchecking websites.

3. Corbyns got higher inner party votes then any other Labour leader in the last 30 odd years, so he isnt THAT unpopular. Just that people get suckered in by tabloids and have brexit fever. Oh and the North has a short memory because they got angry over Thatcher but now vote for Thatcher 2 : The dumbening.

[Billy Batson]

Ignoring that moderates like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won election and re-election (while progressives like Jerry Brown and Dennis Kucinich did not) is being blatantly dishonest, 30.

I'd really like to say that I expect better of you, but unfortunately I no longer do.

I've been of voting age for 21 years.

Al Gore lost in 2000 as a centrist.

John Kerry lost in 2004 as a centrist.

Obama won in 2008 posturing as a progressive.

Hillary lost in 2016 as a centrist.

The Dems never spoke of chucking centrism after these devastating losses.

[worstblogever]

Even on the things where I wonder if Warren is too far left, I feel she has a good grasp on the underlying problems behind the issues leading to her stances. It's a solid foundation at the very least - and the CFPB is exactly what I want out of regulations, they should be protecting the public, the consumer, or the free market - also the workers, but that is a little beyond the scope of the CFPB and more the duty of OSHA.

Warren has a plan for everything, and Wall Street s***ts their pants at the thought of her actually taxing them at a fair rate for the good of rebuilding the country.

Warren, man. She's the best of this bunch. And if the only complaint people have is, "I don't think she can win the primary, so why bother?"

Vote for her anyway. Because she ain't gonna win without you believing in her.

I think Tulsi Gabbard is throwing away any future presidential runs, at least as a democrat. If Trump is beaten in 2020 I don't think history is going to look kindly on Democrats who didn't vote for impeachment.

Voting happening. Reporting that Tulsi Gabbard wasn't there for most of the day, but showed up late to vote "Present"

Forget Tulsi having presidential plans... she wouldn't win the primary in her own district if she ran for re-election now.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who has expressed a desire to pass anti-immigrant laws in his state similar to Arizona’s controversial SB1070, tried to prevent a single Syrian refugee from being resettled into his state, and has signed a myriad of insane bills that have hit his desk from Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature, including ones to legalize firearms being carried in state and local parks (because we need headlines about playgrounds being turned into battlegrounds), prevent sex education teachers from discussing “gateway sexual activities” like touching of the thigh or buttocks, ordering welfare recipients to be drug tested (which proved again to be a failed policy where they only found 1 person out of 812 until a judge overturned the law), and legalizing the use of the electric chair for executions in his state again. Gov. Haslam also spent some time arguing with a federal judge that same-sex marriage should be allowed in his state, filing an appeal because the decision was “frustrating the will of the people of Tennessee”. It has been a mostly quiet year for Gov. Haslam, as he has gone into full lame duck mode now that he’s term-limited as governor… and the federal fraud scandal surrounding his family’s trucking company made him think twice about running for U.S. Senate to replace the retiring Sen. Bob Corker in 2018. So this very well will be our last entry about Bill Haslam, who we hope will spend his future trying to hide from federal investigators, and watching his brother’s NFL team, the Cleveland Browns, continue to be the laughing stock of football.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Everett Corley, a four time loser in trying to gain political office, failing to win the GOP nomination for Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016, losing in the primary for District 43 of the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2012 and 2014, and losing in the general election for that same seat in the 2018 elections after coming up far short with only 21% of the vote. We have must also note in our article that Everett Corley was born Corley Everett, but changed his name a couple years ago for unexplained “family reasons”. Those reasons may or may have not had something to do with the fact that Corley Everett was endorsed by the white supremacist American Freedom Party along side Neo-Nazi candidate Robert Ransdell back in 2014. Among the things known about Corley or Everett or… this guy… he had a Facebook page that frequently defended the Confederacy (including calling a Louisville professor a “damn dirty black bastard” for supporting the removal of Confederate monuments), supported Donald Trump’s stupid idea for a border wall on the U.S./Mexico border, or shared the sort white nationalist rhetoric (i.e. lies) about white farmers in Rhodesia being run off by black ones. The “campaign themes” that were on Corley’s 2016 campaign website included his desire wants to interpret the 2nd Amendment as having zero restrictions (which is still insane), what’s probably far more heinous to see Corley referring to immigration as “cultural suicide” and that allowing birthright citizenship affects the “cultural integrity” of the United States. Corley also called for eliminating the Department of Education and creating “personal accounts” for Social Security, which sounds like he doesn’t understand how it even works. But changing his name and pretending like his views weren’t explicitly racist was a harder strategy for Everett Corley to continue while just hoping that no one noticed. Because man, did his past catch up to him in a big way. In 2014, around the time the American Freedom Party was endorsing him, Corley Everett (who is still the same guy) appeared on the Youtube show “The EthnoState” back in 2014 with avowed white nationalist William Johnson, and aired several racial grievances during the hour long broadcast, including (but not limited to):

• His belief that white voters in western Louisville's Portland neighborhood are "completely surrounded" because of a Democratic plot where "It's a bunch of white liberals and minorities who've conspired together to cut the white working class out of power."
• His quote about the white nationalist group endorsing him that, “One thing that struck me about the American Freedom Party, if you’re a minority you can belong to all these groups that champion your ethno background but you certainly have very little to do as a European or a Caucasian America."
• His anecdotal story about black on white bullying in schools (that likely wasn’t happening because conveniently had no names or details to corroborate it).
• An extended rant about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s marriage to Secretary Elaine Chao:
  

  "I certainly feel that we should maintain our people and our culture as much as anyone else, and that's a post, and I’m not saying this in a bad way, but that’s a post, shall we say marriage that has not borne any children or anything. That’s simply a marriage of companionship, you understand what I’m saying? I don’t think he’s trying to make a statement about children on that marriage, I just simply think that that’s someone he relates to on an interpersonal relationship. But be that as it may, that primarily is not what I’m, his marriage is not my problem, you know what I’m saying?"

Once the 2014 interview resurfaced, Everett Corley had the balls to try to claim he didn’t understand what kind of show the “EthnoState” was, or what Johnson’s aims were (which, it’s pretty easy to call bulls***, considering the interview’s content), saying, "If I made any mistake it wasn't doing my homework. I engaged in some hyperbole, but that was all due to my anger over redistricting. If he said he was a racist, a neo-Nazi or a member of the Klan, I would have hung up." If there was only one part of the interview that really damned Everett Corley in the eyes of the Kentucky GOP, and that was that he and Johnson discussed the marriage between Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao. Up until that point, mind you, they had nothing to say about all the white nationalist things he was up to. Speaking ill of McConnell or his wife is as close to political suicide as a Republican can make in Kentucky, in any event, so even though he’s only 51, we’re thinking that he might give up on trying to win political office and just spend his weekends out at cross burnings to pass the time instead. As such, we’ll retire his profile at this time, and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 811-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Joseph Silk

Welcome to what is the 811th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Oklahoma State Senator Joseph Silk, who was first elected to the Oklahoma State Senate back in 2014, specifically to represent District 5 in that body. Silk, pictured above sporting a fine coat of polish on his dome, is of particular concern to us because of his aspirations for higher office, seeking to be the next U.S. House Representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressoinal District, but the fact that he’s challenging CSGOPOTD Markwayne Mullin makes us wonder which option is worse. Because they’re both awful.

Joseph Silk first came to our attention a few years ago in January of 2017 when he submitted legislation to make it possible for Oklahoma to secede from the union. No, really, this numbnuts was ready to go full Antebellum South Carolina and have Oklahoma secede from the union, because it’s not like we know how that would go after having had a Civil War at one point, you know? Maybe folks shouldn’t be so surprised, considering he campaigned for office on nullifying federal law.

when he submitted legislation in the Oklahoma state legislature that specifically would classify any attempt at terminating a pregnancy as criminal murder, and he was very clear that he didn’t care if the procedure was being performed to save a mother’s life. The doctor performing the procedure would be charged with murder, and there was no indication in the writing of the bill if the mother or other medical staff would also be charged as an accessory or not. And in case you were wondering… this would, under Oklahoma law, mean the doctor performing the procedure would be charged with a capitol offense, and face the death penalty. Facing criticism, a jaded Silk responded:

“We either protect life as a state, or we don’. A 4-week-old fetus in the womb is no different than a 1-year-old child.”

So zygotes and toddlers. Same difference. Let’s execute any doctor who disagrees with that in the interest of saving a woman’s life.

As you might expect from a Fundamentalist lunatic who argues that not only is there no separation of church and state, but that the two are inherently intertwined, and was a co-sponsor of Oklahoma’s attempts to legalize putting monuments of the Ten Commandments on state property, Silk has also submitted bills to make it legal to discriminate against LGBTQ citizens (called the Right of Conscience Act), for adoption agencies to refuse to allow LGBTQ couples from adopting children (Heaven forbid they end up finding a child a loving home!), and supported legislation to discriminate against transgender citizens using public bathrooms. And wouldn’t you know it? He has ties to the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council.

But Silk’s weirdness isn’t limited to just God-fearing ideas. Back in 2016, he submitted a bill to study the effects of “EMP Pulse Attacks” upon the electrical grid, even though such a weapon is not believed to exist.

We’re going to wrap up by pointing out that Joseph Silk is running for Congress because he feels the GOP leadership in the Oklahoma state legislature is “too liberal”, which blows our minds considering some of the profiles we’ve run on Oklahoma state legislators over the past five years. But yes, that’s his reason. At this point, even his attendance record is pathetic, as he’s missed almost a third, literally almost a third of the votes in the Oklahoma State Senate this sesson. And… he wants to go to Congress, based on his performance record, by running to the right of Markwayne Mullin.

Just… please don’t do it, Oklahoma. Please.