All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Malvolio]

Pelosi also said no. That kind of courtesy is for lesser, non-rogue states.

When, in his three years in office, has Trump ever informed Congress first before any of his crazy, stupid moves? As far as he is concerned, he is the only person in the world who matters. Everyone else are merely pawns to be used to accomplish whatever his aims are on any given day.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing

Donald Trump drastically escalated the United States' ongoing conflict with Iran on Thursday night by ordering the assassination of Iran's General Qassem Soleimani with an airstrike on the Baghdad International Airport. It takes what was arguably already a war (with an economic blockade and regular skirmishes with Iranian proxy forces) to a straight-up shooting war.

Events like this bring out the absolute worst in the American foreign policy community. Many conservative writers and thinkers, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the Hudson Institute's Michael Doran, and Commentary's Noah Rothman, openly cheered this Putin-style cold-blooded murder of a foreign statesman. Other more supposedly nonpartisan commentators uncritically parroted Trump administration assertions that Iran was planning something bad. Every top Democratic presidential candidate except Bernie Sanders was careful to foreground that Soleimani was a bad guy before condemning the assassination in their initial comments.

The truth is that Soleimani was not all that different from any of about five dozen current and former American politicians and bureaucrats — if anything, he was considerably more restrained about the use of force. Yes, he was involved in a lot of bloody wars — but so was every American president since 2000, and besides half the wars he fought in were started or fueled by the United States. It's just another instance of America's gigantic hypocrisy when it comes to war.

As writer Derek Davison explains, Soleimani was no ordinary general. He was more like a cross between the American vice president and the secretary of state — one of the two or three most famous and powerful people in Iran behind Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Soleimani commanded the Quds Force, a Special Forces-type operation supporting Iranian allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and many other countries. American hardliners hate him mainly for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, and for arming insurgents who fought the American occupation of Iraq. Incidentally, as recently as September 2015, Trump plainly had no idea whatsoever who Soleimani was. Indeed, as Mehdi Hasan writes at The Intercept, when Hugh Hewitt asked him about the Quds Force, he thought Hewitt had said "Kurds."

So yes, Soleimani has fueled a lot of nasty conflicts and killed a lot of people, directly or indirectly, many of them American soldiers — though it's worth noting also that much of his recent effort has been dedicated to fighting ISIS (with great effectiveness, by all accounts) in a tacit uneasy alliance with U.S. forces.

Yet even the worst of Soleimani's record pales in comparison with the most blood-drenched American warmongers.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Not since McCain, he was about as close to that as any Republican could be in this day and age.

McCain had no decency.

He was always salivating for war with Iran. If he were alive today, he'd be fully in support of the US invading Iran.

[Kusanagi]

It's shocking and horrifying to me how many would support a war in Iran. We're still in Afghanistan and Iraq, STILL! Even if we flattened Iran's army in a week we'd be facing ramifications decades later, and spoiler warning Iran's army is a good deal tougher than Iraq or Afghanistan.

How this plays in the 2020 elections I don't have a clue. War time presidents typically do well, but war time presidents typically haven't run on "I'll get us out of middle east conflicts" while starting brand new ones.

In a just and sane world this would be the end of Trump, but we surely don't live in that world.

[GindyPosts]

It's shocking and horrifying to me how many would support a war in Iran. We're still in Afghanistan and Iraq, STILL! Even if we flattened Iran's army in a week we'd be facing ramifications decades later, and spoiler warning Iran's army is a good deal tougher than Iraq or Afghanistan.

How this plays in the 2020 elections I don't have a clue. War time presidents typically do well, but war time presidents typically haven't run on "I'll get us out of middle east conflicts" while starting brand new ones.

In a just and sane world this would be the end of Trump, but we surely don't live in that world.

Nothing like good ol' fashioned "storming the gates" and spilling blood that brings out the nationalism in most of us. Things have gotten boring lately, so why not find another opponent to face off again, huh?

Seriously, I am getting flashbacks to 2002 and 2003 now. 9/11 was fresh off our minds, and virtually everyone was arguing for the conflict in some capacity, and if you weren't with us, you were with the terrorists. That came out of the mouth of the president himself. Just think about all the insane stuff that happened and we let happen due to paranoia and blind patriotism.

Are we going to do that all over again? The rationalist in me wants to say "no", but the realist in me says "yes" because there's profit to be had by the private sector. And now that we're in the social media age, I'm already seeing people make jokes and memes about something in which people are going to die and have their lives be changed forever because of this, which I know existed back in the aforementioned period, but that was limited to the land of Newgrounds and underground chatrooms (YTMND had just started, as well). It didn't have the widespread momentum it does today.

Might as well brace for the worst.

[Robotman]

With any Trump decision we have to ask “how will this benefit Putin?”. War with Iran would take them off the table as a massive oil supplier to the world. Oil is one of Russia’s chief exports. Russian weapons exports to Iran would suffer, but any losses would be dwarfed by gains from higher oil exports. Plus not having a nuclear Iran across the Caspian Sea would definitely be beneficial. Better to have a puppet in charge than a shaky ally.

[Electricmastro]

America is guilty of everything we accuse Iran of doing

After all, it's easy to shift the blame onto someone else and even scapegoat them as the dangerous enemy.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of John Fleming, the former U.S. House Representative for Louisiana’s 1st District who we noted has not faced a Democratic Challenger in the general election since winning office by a mere 342 votes in 2008, in a district that prior to Fleming taking office, Democrats had held since Reconstruction. Fleming famously criticized President Obama’s tax plan in 2011, saying that it was unfair because he, a man worth over $6 million dollars, would annually “only have $400,000 left over” to work with under it. Fleming has also used “evidence” to support his pro-life arguments from article he found on The Onion, unaware that they were parody, to justify shutting down Planned Parenthood. He made the hyperbolic argument that “Obamacare was the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed by Congress”, that you can kind of scrutinize by knowing your history well enough to realize the Fugitive Slave Act was a thing. John Fleming was a huge proponent of the 2013 Government Shutdown, literally saying “This isn’t over…” as part of the “NAY” votes to reopen the government. He also has defended footage of oil companies using the advanced technology of trash bags and duct tape to seal leaky pipes transporting oil, so he’s not exactly a friend of the environment, either. Rep. Fleming is also a frequent guest of the leader of the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council’s leader, Tony Perkins, appearing on his “Washington Watch” show, to stir fears that President Obama is secretly a Muslim, or that he supposedly doesn’t care about violence towards Christians in other countries around the globe. in the 2016 elections. Fleming failed in an effort to get elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, finishing fifth in the primary race with only 10.6% of the vote.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published our profile of Taylor Rose, a candidate for District 3 of the Montana House of Representatives in the 2016 elections. His primary qualification for running for office as a legislator was that he was a writer for WorldNetDaily, the one-stop shop for all paranoid right-wing conspiracy theories online that features regular columns by Ann Coulter and Andy Schlafly (the deranged son of CSGOPOTD Phyllis Schlafly). Suffice to say, it’s not just being a wingnut that makes Taylor Rose a terrifying proposition in our government. He also has drawn the interest of the Southern Poverty Law Center for his various trips to Europe to meet with right wing extremists, his ties to the American Sovereign Citizen Movement. He denies that he is a White Nationalist, claiming his values are just “supportive of Western Civilization”, and claiming that if he had espoused the views he had while at Liberty University, he would have been expelled (because Falwell’s Liberty is known for being a bastion of tolerance). Make no mistake, the group he founded, “Youth for Western Civilization” is precisely a White Nationalist group with its more racist language replaced with buzzwords to sound only slightly less sinister.The SPLC also did a quick check of Rose’s Facebook page, and noted that Rose ”expressed revulsion at the prospect of a white couple giving birth to two black babies via artificial insemination. He also bitterly complained when it was announced that Harriet Tubman, the black woman who helped lead the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. He compared the action to the removal of Confederate monuments around the nation in the wake of the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., by a white-supremacist Confederacy admirer. It should come as little surprise then, that Rose has ranted against immigrants, as well as Muslims as well, has written articles in the newspaper of the Neo-Confederate organization, the Council for Conservative Citizens, and praises Nigel Farage and UKIP, the far-right, white nationalist party he runs in the United Kingdom. Luckily, the people of Montana’s District 3 did not elect Taylor Rose, and his disturbing background with ties to various White Nationalist groups and militias assured he lost to Democrat Zac Perry… by all of 271 votes.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published our profile of John Ritzheimer, who took his paranoid militia act back home and ran for Congress to represent Arizona’s 8th Congressional District in 2018, hoping that maybe he could get lucky and win the special election to replace CSGOPOTD alumni Trent Franks. Ritzheimer was one of the militia lunatics who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge with Ammon Bundy back in January and February of 2016. Prior to that, Ritzheimer was making extra cash as a professional hatemonger in Arizona, printing and selling T-shirts bearing a profanity-laced denunciation of Islam. In May of 2016, he organized a “protest” that drew about 250 mostly armed anti-Muslim demonstrators to a Phoenix mosque, where Ritzheimer, carrying a 9mm Glock 26, and with others wielding automatic weapons, called it a patriotic sign of resistance against what he deemed the tyranny of Islam in the United States. He also has hosted “Draw Muhammed” contests and posted videos online where he shoots up copies of the Koran with a gun, just to remind everyone he’s a certain combination of unstable and bigoted. Also, Ritzheimer is so insane that even the militia group known as the OathKeepers have disowned him after he called for the arrest of Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. Now, for those who remember the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, you may remember that the militia bros who holed up there came woefully unprepared for a cold winter, didn’t bring, y’know, FOOD, and almost immediately started begging fellow “patriots” online to send them money and supplies. The internet responded by sending… something less helpful. And thus, your memory of the Malheur Occupation might include or even consist solely of Jon Ritzheimer opening a care package mailed to him and his lunatic pals that was filled with dildos, and going berserk with rage. Clearly, Congressional material, right there. So why didn’t Jon Ritzheimer end up shocking the political world? Well, he was forced to drop out of the race because he was scheduled to go to prison on January 12th, 2018. What with getting arrested for occupying federal property. However, Ritzheimer assured the lunatic fringe that, ”This won’t be the last the people of Arizona see of me.” We’re going to advise people to support his political endeavors while he’s in, our out of prison by mailing him more dildos. Since he won’t be elected any time soon, we’re going to set aside his profile at this time, and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 819-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Gail Griffin

Welcome to what is the 819th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Gail Griffin, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives from District 14 who has bounced around the Arizona state legislature in either chamber on and off since 1997 (she has two terms of eligibility left in the lower chamber, and is already term-limited from ever serving again in the Arizona State Senate.) And, it takes a special kind of stupid to stand out among Arizona Republicans to get a CSGOPOTD profile, but Griffin, whose brain may be under undue pressure from the helmet of hair she’s sporting, managed to get our notice in early January of 2019 when she filed a bill to try and pay for Donald Trump’s stupid f***ing idea for a wall on the U.S./Mexico border by establishing a new tax on… INTERNET PORN.

Now, this is dumb for a lot of reasons. First off, she’s xenophobic and dumb enough to support the border wall at all. But second, she wants to pay for it be taxing porn? Even if this wasn’t patently unconstitutional… does she not realize how impossible it is to regulate internet porn in the first place? It’s not like finding nudes online is a difficult task these days, even with a Safesearch on, people can get an eyeful.

Griffin also has caused controversy by trying to redraw county lines to get tax breaks for people living on the borders who were unhappy with how much they were being charged. Anyway, Gail Griffin is also trying to get legislation passed to forbid cities and municipalities from placing regulations upon apartment landlords to protect the public from unfair housing practices, and has sponsored legislation to make it easier for landlords to evict guests of tenants.

During Griffin’s career, she also has sponsored legislation to allow the sale of firearms without a background check, tried to challenge the protected status of the endangered species of Mexican wolves, and she has also co-sponsored legislation to name an official state gun, to try to force physicians to attempt to revive a “viable fetus” after an abortion (regulations being what they are, no fetus that is being aborted by a doctor is “viable”), and a racist and patently unconstitutional bill to try to make English the official language of the state. She has also voted for bills as insane as trying to establish that gold and silver to be accepted as legal tender, and continues to resurrect anti-immigrant bills originally submitted by recalled Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce. (Yes, that would be the white nationalist Russell Pearce who had a Neo-Nazi protegee.)

We know this conservative crone only has a few years of potential office left before term limits end her career, but we’ll continue to monitor her and see if she tries to honor the Grifter-in-Chief by helping him build a border wall out of discarded wank-rags.

[InformationGeek]

There's a mysterious Russian Jet that has arrived in Florida where Trump currently is. I wonder what that is about?

[Tami]

There's a mysterious Russian Jet that has arrived in Florida where Trump currently is. I wonder what that is about?

I didn't see anything in the news about this.

I did find this Twitter Thread

1. I’ve had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what I’ve learned. According to them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is “razor thin”.

[Tami]

There's a mysterious Russian Jet that has arrived in Florida where Trump currently is. I wonder what that is about?

Found something

Interesting plane watching: Jet Air Group’s private G650 into Fort Lauderdale tonight, likely out of Moscow. (The plane was last logged on a round trip from Moscow to Grenoble and back on December 28.)

Twitter Link

Usual disclaimers apply

[jetengine]

I didn't see anything in the news about this.

I did find this Twitter Thread

Of course it was Razor thin. Just an excuse to start a war

[Malvolio]

Gail Griffin

Welcome to what is the 819th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Gail Griffin, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives from District 14 who has bounced around the Arizona state legislature in either chamber on and off since 1997 (she has two terms of eligibility left in the lower chamber, and is already term-limited from ever serving again in the Arizona State Senate.) And, it takes a special kind of stupid to stand out among Arizona Republicans to get a CSGOPOTD profile, but Griffin, whose brain may be under undue pressure from the helmet of hair she’s sporting, managed to get our notice in early January of 2019 when she filed a bill to try and pay for Donald Trump’s stupid f***ing idea for a wall on the U.S./Mexico border by establishing a new tax on… INTERNET PORN.

Now, this is dumb for a lot of reasons. First off, she’s xenophobic and dumb enough to support the border wall at all. But second, she wants to pay for it be taxing porn? Even if this wasn’t patently unconstitutional… does she not realize how impossible it is to regulate internet porn in the first place? It’s not like finding nudes online is a difficult task these days, even with a Safesearch on, people can get an eyeful.

Griffin also has caused controversy by trying to redraw county lines to get tax breaks for people living on the borders who were unhappy with how much they were being charged. Anyway, Gail Griffin is also trying to get legislation passed to forbid cities and municipalities from placing regulations upon apartment landlords to protect the public from unfair housing practices, and has sponsored legislation to make it easier for landlords to evict guests of tenants.

During Griffin’s career, she also has sponsored legislation to allow the sale of firearms without a background check, tried to challenge the protected status of the endangered species of Mexican wolves, and she has also co-sponsored legislation to name an official state gun, to try to force physicians to attempt to revive a “viable fetus” after an abortion (regulations being what they are, no fetus that is being aborted by a doctor is “viable”), and a racist and patently unconstitutional bill to try to make English the official language of the state. She has also voted for bills as insane as trying to establish that gold and silver to be accepted as legal tender, and continues to resurrect anti-immigrant bills originally submitted by recalled Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce. (Yes, that would be the white nationalist Russell Pearce who had a Neo-Nazi protegee.)

We know this conservative crone only has a few years of potential office left before term limits end her career, but we’ll continue to monitor her and see if she tries to honor the Grifter-in-Chief by helping him build a border wall out of discarded wank-rags.

Even with term limits in the Arizona state legislature, she could still run for a US Congressional seat. I mean, I hope she doesn't, but she could if she thinks she has a chance of winning.

[Mister Mets]

It was a pretty big mistake, and I don’t think he knew what he was getting into with her. Of course, once he realized she was batshit insane, it was too late...for us all.

Since we on this board like relitigating past elections, lemme just say that I firmly believe the conspiracy that Sarah Palin was never a SERIOUS contender. She was just testing the water on how gullible and easily manipulated the Republican base was. And since she succeeded and became a person people ‘took seriously’, she had influence well beyond anyone’s wildest dreams - for a while - and helped prepare and support the dumbing down of the party base. She was a Trump ‘dry run’, essentially.

And, as much as I despise conspiracy theories as intellectually lazy and flimsy against actual reality, something about this one just feels absurdly plausible, given how callous and power-lusty establishment Repugs are...

Where have you seen this conspiracy theory?

It seems to assume a level of insight missing during the 2008 campaign.

The basic explanation was that Republicans went with Palin because she checked a lot of boxes (she was a woman after the Democrats had a contentious primary a woman lost, she was an exciting new face when they were going against Obama, there was the sense she had policy expertise on energy issues, she could appeal to conservative voters who didn't trust McCain.) The main problems were that she was ignorant about national issues (which wasn't picked up during vetting because everyone involved thought the other people were checking that stuff), and would react poorly to national scrutiny.

This theory that it was a Trump "dry run" assumes that the party establishment, including Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, who are no longer with the Republican party, knew the shortcomings of a geographically isolated Governor.

Had Palin been more versed on national issues, and responded better to national scrutiny, she would have been hard to beat as a presidential contender.

His biggest mistake. If he had chosen someone else, he might have stood a better chance at becoming President. Though, all things considered, I preferred the outcome as it worked out.

I doubt anyone else would have been able to overcome the national mood, especially with an unpopular Republican President and an economic crash.

To win the electoral college, he needed states he lost by more than nine points.