All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Robotman]

Such a wordsmith

Trump: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much... Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes & everything.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/s...0%2Fframe.html

[Tami]

There's a huge loophole in the GOP's claim that Trump's sale of Javelin missiles to Ukraine shows his support for the country

Republicans involved in the impeachment inquiry have repeatedly touted the Trump administration's sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine as evidence the president is supportive of the country against Russian aggression, but they've left out key details in the process.

Under the rules of the sale, the Javelin missiles have to be stored in western Ukraine, which is far from the frontlines of the ongoing conflict in the eastern part of the country (the Donbas region) against pro-Russia separatists.

In short, the Javelins were essentially provided to Ukraine under the condition that they not be used in the conflict zone.

Accordingly, the Javelins have yet to be used in the fighting, though US personnel are training some Ukrainian forces how to use them against tanks.

Trump, however, was reluctant to sell the missiles to Ukraine and did so only after he was persuaded it would be good for US business, current and former officials familiar with the decision told Foreign Policy.

My take on this: Trump 'You can have your Javelins, as long as you don't actually use them against Russians. That would ,make my friend Putin very unhappy.'

[worstblogever]

Are you really trying to make the argument that Obama is as dishonest about the economy, the deficit, climate change (etc) as the Republicans?

As usual, you deflect from the truth about the Republican party instead of addressing the issues raised directly.

This isn't a "both sides" argument -- you know the Republican party routinely lies in order to achieve it's goals, especially with regards to things like tax cuts, the deficit and voter suppression.

Obama did none of those things, so this is a false comparison -- a person who lies once or twice is not the same as someone who lies almost all the time.

Lies about the economy, record deficits, climate change, requesting aid from foreign nations to subvert our democracy, and children being taken from their families as a "deterrent" are far more detrimental to our republic than the above statement regarding some people not being able to keep the same health care plan -- to pretend otherwise is equally dishonest.

The lies they tell to stay in power might be the least morally repugnant thing the GOP does.

2010: "Death Panels"
2011: "Obama was born in Kenya!"
2012-2013: "There was a stand down order at Benghazi!"
2014: "Democrats are going to let Ebola happen here."
2015: "They're aborting live babies to harvest parts!"
2016: "We're not coordinating with Russians to get Trump elected."
2017: "The tax cuts will help the economy!"
2018: "No one dies from not having healthcare!"
2019: "There was no quid pro quo!"


The GOP is full of sh**********t.

[Malvolio]

Such a wordsmith

Trump: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much... Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes & everything.”

https://mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/s...0%2Fframe.html

You know this all goes back to the wind farm that fought against Trump building a golf course in Scotland. The man holds a grudge like a dog with a bone.

[JCAll]

You know this all goes back to the wind farm that fought against Trump building a golf course in Scotland. The man holds a grudge like a dog with a bone.

The grudges are the only parts of his brain that haven't melted with dementia yet.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You know this all goes back to the wind farm that fought against Trump building a golf course in Scotland. The man holds a grudge like a dog with a bone.

Can't argue that. Two years ago, Trump railed against the NFL during the sideline kneeling episode because of his three decade long grudge against the league after he was embarrassed in that 1987 antitrust trial he lost. Trump never forgives, and he never forgets.

====================

House Judiciary Committee Raises Prospect Of More Impeachment Articles

The committee wants a federal appeals court to order former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify as it examines potential obstruction of justice by the president. The more, the merrier I say!

**********

Susan Collins Is Suddenly Opposing Trump’s Court Picks Amid Tough Reelection Bid

The Republican senator didn’t vote against a single one of the president’s judicial nominees in 2017 and 2018. That changed in 2019. Is Madam Pearl Clutcher developing a spine? Who saw THAT coming!

**********

When Native Americans Are Told To ‘Go Back’ To Where They Came From

The absurdity of a white supremacist slur laid bare. Not to mention the four alarm stupidity of white supremacists laid bare. But hey, they're Trump's kind of people.

**********

How Democrats, Republicans And Jared Kushner United To Protect Saudi Arabia

“I wasn’t f**king caving,” said Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, as lawmakers and human rights advocates traded barbs.

**********

Former Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie Urges Tulsi Gabbard To Resign From Congress

Abercrombie, a Democrat who also served nine terms in the House, said Gabbard has proved incapable of juggling her congressional duties and her bid for president. And a mother of a long shot bid at best.

[Tami]

THIS IS A LIE
Why would @GOPLeader
go on tv and choose to tell this lie?

Twitter Link with video of McCarthy on Fox News lying worse than Trump

[Mister Mets]

Are you really trying to make the argument that Obama is as dishonest about the economy, the deficit, climate change (etc) as the Republicans?

As usual, you deflect from the truth about the Republican party instead of addressing the issues raised directly.

This isn't a "both sides" argument -- you know the Republican party routinely lies in order to achieve it's goals, especially with regards to things like tax cuts, the deficit and voter suppression.

Obama did none of those things, so this is a false comparison -- a person who lies once or twice is not the same as someone who lies almost all the time.

Lies about the economy, record deficits, climate change, requesting aid from foreign nations to subvert our democracy, and children being taken from their families as a "deterrent" are far more detrimental to our republic than the above statement regarding some people not being able to keep the same health care plan -- to pretend otherwise is equally dishonest.

I make no argument comparing levels of dishonesty. Both sides lie enough that decisions on who to vote for should typically be based on something other than trustworthiness. I know that Republicans routinely lie, as do Democrats. As did Obama.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...s/?arc404=true

Even in the context of elected officials, Trump is extraordinarily untrustworthy which is part of why I'm ready to vote against him in primaries and ready to vote for some of his likeliest general election opponents in the November 2020 election.

I'm not really deflecting anything. This chain of posts was about a procedural question, regarding changes to SSI and SSDI. My comment was about that, and you deflected in a comment about wider points.

There's a lot of policy disagreement, but often when we go granular, we get to the specific rationale for policies.

[worstblogever]

One decade of lies from the GOP equals that one time Obama misspoke, but it's not a false equivalency.

Enjoy your Kool-Aid, sir.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 7th Congressional District, John Culberson, a particularly xenophobic Republican (and that’s saying something these days) who as far back as 2005 was claiming members of Al Qaeda were caught trying to sneak across the U.S./Mexico border, and in 2008 made the wild accusation that students at American universities from China were actually there to steal state secrets. Culberson has also proposed a plan to divide Texas up into smaller states to stack the U.S. Senate with more right-wing senators, told the public to “calm down” about the BP Gulf Oil Spill because it was a “statistical anomaly”, and proposed legislation to defund ACORN three years after it ceased to exist. Perhaps his tackiest moment, though, came during the 2013 Government Shutdown, when he said, “LET’S ROLL!” when it came time to vote, echoing the last known words from the passengers of Flight 93 when they tried to storm the cockpit of the hijackers. He more recently has panicked over Syrian refugees being resettled into the country, as well as attempting to defund Planned Parenthood over the hoax “sting” videos provided by the Center for Medical Progress. The latest session of Congress has not go well for Culberson back home, and as early as February of 2018, his attempt to meet with wealthy donors at a local country club was met with a massive protest, and his town hall did not go much better for him. After several constituents asked him questions that he seemed unable to answer, only being able to respond with a vague “freedom” answer on issues, and was booed when he affirmed his support for repealing the Affordable Care Act. One constituent asked him about net neutrality, which he showed even less understanding of. Culberson attempted to end the town hall early and exit out a side door to avoid further confrontation, but wandered right into a legion of protesters outside, causing him to flee even faster. Culberson was trailing in fundraising to all if his Democratic opponents in the 2018 elections, and he had reason to be nervous, as Texas’ 7th District only has a +7 partisan lean, and going into the election, generic Democrats had a +8 advantage. And then, as his final showdown in November approached, Culberson was being investigated for election campaign fraud, after it was found that he was using campaign funds to buy himself $50,000 of books and collectibles. So it was that Democrat Lizzie Fletcher managed to unseat John Culberson, and send him packing in the 2018 Blue Wave election. As such, we’ll set aside his profile at this time, and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 814-40, since this was established in July 2014.)


Briscoe Cain

Welcome to what is the 814th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Briscoe Cain, who may be a puppet character who escaped from Lazy Town first elected to District 128 of the Texas House of Representatives in 2016, when he upset the GOP incumbent, Wayne Smith, by all of 23 votes in a runoff election and then coasted to victory against a Libertarian in the general election. He made it into office in spite of referring to violence against trans-women as “dudes waking around in dresses getting beat up”, which is somehow still far from the most offensive thing we’ll reveal in this profile.

In 2018, Cain was allowed to run for re-election unopposed. He currently has the most conservative voting record in the Texas House, which is saying something, because we’re talking about Texas. Cain is also the Texas legal counsel for the Fundamentalist fanatics, Operation Rescue, and is a member of the Texas House Freedom Caucus… but again, we can’t understate how much Cain takes extremism to a whole different level. Seriously, look at his voting record, and try to make sense how someone can crusade against a women’s right to choose and Planned Parenthood because they supposedly respect keeping babies alive, and try and figure out how that same person can literally vote against child car safety seats for children under 2 based on “smaller government” principles.

In his first year in office, Briscoe Cain caused several confrontations within the state legislature, including his puzzling attack on state funding towards pallative care, which he referred to as “death panels”, and wanted it removed. When questioned by his colleagues, it became abundantly clear that Cain had no idea what pallative care actually was, and had to have it explained to him on the floor of the legislature. But hey, f*** those terminally ill people dying in pain from getting any kind of pain relievers until they pass, right?

In October of 2017, Briscoe Cain was scheduled to speak at Texas Southern University, and after the event was cancelled at the last minute because protesters would not allow Cain to speak (similar to how Richard Spencer has been booed out of several college bookings), Cain whined about his First Amendment right to speak being infringed upon, which the protesters pointed out they had a First Amendment right to drown his punk ass out.

In a superbly classless move, upon the death of legendary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, a self-identifying atheist in May of 2018, Briscoe Cain took a Creationist pot-shot at the deceased, posting on Twitter that, “Stephen Hawking now knows the truth of how the universe was made”.

But one of our main concerns about Briscoe Cain is the fact that he has, on more than one occasion, threatened people with a gun. In June of 2018, Cain crashed the Texas Democratic Party’s state convention, and started to pass out signs that read, “This home is a gun-free safe space” to dare those who want gun control to declare it publicly and then, y’know, get robbed because people wouldn’t be scared they weren’t armed (in theory). When an attendee asked Brisco when he went gun-free, he responded by lifting his shirt to show he was packing (this isn’t heresay, there’s video of it). Cain was summarily thrown out.


The second incident, was far more publicized… during the second Democratic Presidential Primary debate in September of 2019, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke talked about gun control, proposed buy-backs of AR-15s, which enraged Brisco Cain enough to throw out a thinly-veiled death threat at O’Rourke:

"My AR is ready for you Robert Francis”

It was enough of a threat that Twitter deleted his post, which is remarkable in and of itself because that platform censors almost nothing.

Anyway, Briscoe Cain remains in office, but we would be quite amused if Beto O’Rourke’s current actions to turn the Texas legislature blue in 2020 pay off, and Briscoe Cain ends up with a challenger to allow him to focus on his hobby of unsuccessfully trying to deny gay people their rights with Operation Rescue.

[Tami]

Christian prophet: If Trump doesn’t make a high profile arrest soon, ‘the gun community will take things into their own hands’

Mark Taylor calls himself the “Firefighter Prophet” and has a real fondness for making bizarre claims, including a recent one in which he connected Jimmy Carter to the Illuminati. He’s also claimed the late Sen. John McCain was executed by a military tribunal. Now he’s saying President Donald Trump had better hurry up and arrest a “high-profile” Democrat or member of the “deep state” or else right-wing militias will launch violent civil unrest, writes Kyle Mantyla for Right Wing Watch.

This is just typical behavior for Taylor, who is a proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Allegedly the roster of those to face judgment include Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Now he’s claiming right-wing activists are growing increasingly angrier and will spring into action if these arrests don’t begin soon. And, he claims God has a plan for all this, but that Trump needs to get cracking and alert gun activists and militia members that things are proceeding apace.

“If they wait too long, this is what is going to end up happening if we’re not careful is that you will see some civil unrest, because patriots are tired of it,” he said. “They’re not going to put up with it anymore.”

“I’m around the gun community,” Taylor added. “I hear the talk. This is beginning to escalate, like the militia-type stuff. They’re getting ready to take up arms and to take things into their own hands if they don’t see something happen. So this is why I’ve been saying they have got to make at least one high-profile arrest. Perp walk the son of a gun, whoever it is. I don’t care who it is, perp walk ’em in handcuffs on national television to set the stage and to let people know, ‘Yes we are very serious about judgment.'”

[Mister Mets]

One decade of lies from the GOP equals that one time Obama misspoke, but it's not a false equivalency.

Enjoy your Kool-Aid, sir.

I posted a top ten (or bottom ten) list from the Washington Post. I am curious about your take on the acceptable level of lies and what it means for him to misspeak rather than to lie.

[Tami]

I posted a top ten (or bottom ten) list from the Washington Post. I am curious about your take on the acceptable level of lies and what it means for him to misspeak rather than to lie.

When someone does it often enough, the line blurs so badly it really doesn't make a difference. Either the speaker is ignorant, careless, or intentionally deceitful but the end result is passing on incorrect information that results in the same effect.

Someone asks you when the next bus will arrive and you say 2:30 PM when, in truth, the bus arrives sat 2:00 PM, it doesn't matter what the reason was that you said what you said, the end result is that the person, if they believe you, will end up missing the bus.

This could lead to all sorts of problems for that person, like being late for work or missing a doctor's appointment, or even the risk of getting mugged at the bus stop.

Bottom line is, if it happens once or twice, a person speaking these untruths can be excused for it. If it happens all the time, then the speaker becomes very dangerous to him/herself and others.

[Tami]

Tulsi Gabbard and the Return of the Anti-Anti-Trump Left

Tulsi Gabbard has been slowly edging toward leaving the Democratic Party and, it now seems more likely than not, launching a spoiler candidacy to peel disaffected left-wing votes away from the Democrats. Her “present” vote on impeachment, followed by a disavowal of what she called the “zero-sum mind-set the two political parties have trapped America in,” sets the stage for Gabbard to play the role of 2020’s Jill Stein.

Left-wing anti-anti-Trumpism played an important role in the bizarre 2016 outcome. Die-hard Bernie activists, fired up with anger at the release of DNC emails stolen by Russians that purportedly showed the party had rigged the primary, demonstrated against the party outside its convention hall and tried to drown out the speakers inside with boos. Stein attacked Hillary Clinton from the left, then audaciously staged a grift-y fundraising scheme supposedly to hold recounts in the states she had labored to flip to Trump. Trump’s election appeared to deliver the same shock of reality that had vaporized Ralph Nader’s 2000 support.

But Gabbard’s emergence is another indication that the disaffection that drove these events has not disappeared. Anti-anti-Trumpism has maintained a small but durable intellectual infrastructure. The sentiments that first registered as dissent from the Russia investigation transferred to impeachment, and a chorus of left-wing voices is attacking the effort to remove Trump from office as at best a misguided diversion and at worst a deep-state coup.

[Tami]

Republicans feel obligated to ‘assault the English language’ with terrible grammar to show that they’re true conservatives: report

The conservative movement in the United States used to pride itself on having intellectuals like George Will and the late National Review founder William F. Buckley, who spoke with a posh Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded quasi-British. But these days, many right-wing politicians and media figures champion a certain anti-intellectualism —and journalist Christian Schneider, in an article for the conservative website The Bulwark, notes that some Republicans go out of their way to butcher the English language even if they have Ivy League educations.

One example, Schneider notes, is referring to the Democratic Party as “the Democrat Party.” And Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is among the offenders: the Missouri senator, Schneider writes, “fancies himself a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner who doesn’t truck with fancy elites” — even though he attended Yale Law School.

“Saying ‘Democrat’ instead of ‘Democratic’ has become a shibboleth — a verbal handshake to signal that you’re on Team Red Hat,” Schneider explains. “It’s about as annoying as people rolling their r’s when ordering a burrito to prove they once vacationed in Cozumel. But whatever. Triggering Democrats has become so important to Republicans that they’re willing to assault the English language if the people who like good grammar are the bad guys.”

“An Ivy Leaguer like Hawley must now play the role of lexical low-roader, winking to the MAGA-nistas,” Schneider explains. “Don’t be surprised if his plan to cinch the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will be declaring that gerund phrases are tools of the Deep State.”