All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[JCAll]

Oh look, more hatred.

So he basically turned Native American Heritage Month into "My Ancestors Killed Your Ancestors Month".
Wonderful, perfect. Maybe next he'll turn Black History Month into "My Ancestors Owned Your Ancestors Month".

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh look, more hatred.

I'm guessing Kid Jackboot (Stephen Miller) crafted that bullshit. To be honest, I'm surprised Trump hasn't tried to abolish Black History Month, and you can't tell me that never crossed his mind.

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

Another Term For Trump’s Quid Pro Quo? Extortion.

Former federal prosecutors say the president’s interactions with Ukraine also amount to extortion, as defined by the Hobbs Act. Well, ****! Of course that's extortion!

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Trump Kicks Off Formal Process Of Pulling U.S. Out Of Paris Climate Accords

The decision could go into effect one day after the 2020 election. All the more reason to hope a Democrat defeats Trump so that move can be overruled.

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Here’s What Every Senate Republican Has Said About Trump’s Ukraine Scandal

They aren’t on the same page when it comes to the president’s phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Predictably, most Republicans are slurping Trump by saying what he did was okay.

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Former Ukraine Ambassador Lays Out White House Campaign To Oust Her

Testimony from Marie Yovanovitch offered a first word-for-word look at the closed-door House impeachment hearings. Smarmy stuff from the White House indeed.

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Milwaukee Mayor Blames Trump For Acid Attack On Peruvian-Born U.S. Citizen

“It’s because the president’s talking about it on a daily basis that people feel they have a license to go after Hispanic people,” said Tom Barrett. At this point, it's only a matter of time before Trump anti-Hispanic rhetoric results in someone getting killed.

[jetengine]

Out of all the Democratic candidates, Yang has the worse supporters, but coming up third are Buttigieg supporters.

I said second, then remembered Tulsi. She has the second worst.



As for the man himself.



Actually, Republicans are bad.

Screw them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/u...gieg-iowa.html

I'd say Buttigieg is trying to be forgiving tbh. IE : People are animals easily riled by political types, dont blame them too much for being suckered by propaganda.

Its a nice way of looking at things and probably the better way if you want both votes but there is the obvious issue of people who just hate for hates sake not because their ignorant

[numberthirty]

So odd, I'm not even sure what to think of it...

- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...-data-n1076356

Steyer staffer resigns after downloading Kamala Harris info in data breach

[worstblogever]

On this date in2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” we looked at former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, the first governor in the history of Pennsylvania to only be elected to one term before getting the boot from voters. When you look at his administration, it’s not hard to wonder why, what with pitiful job production numbers, and whose top aides were repeatedly under investigation for everything from having been paid to not do any work to trading pornography on state-owned computers. Corbett himself managed to once go on live television and compare same sex marriage to incest, and when he received complaints from state universities when he slashed their budgets in half, he advised they should drill for oil on campus to earn money to pay off the difference. He also rankled everyday citizens’ rights by signing one of the harshest Voter ID laws in the country into place, as well as a law to drug test welfare recipients, but both were thankfully overturned by judges. Corbett was widely unpopular, particularly among minority voters, and it really didn’t help his case that his campaign was caught by Buzzfeed photo-shopping stock images of minorities into photos with him on the campaign trail to make him seem like he actually was willing to surround himself with them. After being defeated by Tom Wolf in the 2014 elections and becoming the only incumbent Republican governor to lose that year, Corbett apparently decided to retire from politics and return to public life.


It was in 2015, 2016, 2017, and in 2018, that we published our first two "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiles of Michael Speciale, a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives who has not just supported some of the most extreme legislation the North Carolina GOP sent to the desk of Gov. Pat McCrory from 2012-2014, but as a freshman lawmaker back in 2013, sent out an e-mail accusing William Barber, the head of the North Carolina NAACP of being “racist” and a “race opportunist” because Barber had pointed out how Voter ID legislation in North Carolina was being used to suppress the vote of minorities (and some Republicans have been dumb enough to admit this.)

Only a few months later, Speciale made most of the North Carolina legislature question his humanity, outright, when during discussion of a bill to regulate puppy mills, he started mocking suggestions with comments like, “'Exercise on a daily basis’ – if I kick him across the floor, is that considered daily exercise? ‘Euthanasia performed humanely’ – so should I choose the ax or the baseball bat?” He didn't just say that, he went on Facebook and doubled-down on his remarks, saying they were appropriate because he didn't believe in over-regulation. And that wasn't the only time... after he posted inappropriate comments about President Obama being lectured by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the president an "Islamic son of a bitch", he again doubled down, saying liberals were "pretending" to be offended. (Nobody was pretending, dude.)

But weeks before the 2014 election, Michael Speciale Jr., his son, was arrested and plead guilty to sexually assaulting two teenaged girls, which is ironic only because Speciale was a co-sponsor of North Carolina's much-loathed HB 2 law, which wanted to force transgendered people to use the bathroom of their birth because they were supposedly attacking women in restrooms. Maybe if Speciale could have ignored a non-existent threat in public restrooms, he could have prevented his son from doing what the North Carolina GOP was so worked up about, you know? Or maybe he would also be less of a hypocrite if he hadn’t also backed the election of repeatedly accused pedophile Roy Moore for U.S. Senate in Alabama.

Speciale won re-election in 2016 with 63% of the vote, and by January 2017, he was back to being an ***hole on his Facebook page, this time commenting on the Women’s March on Washington, D.C. that had more people show up than for the inauguration, but calling those participating “leftists” and their efforts a “joke”, while sharing a video of a conservative commentator who “infiltrated” the march by dressing in drag and commenting that “no one questions, criticizes nor conducts security background checks on trannies.” Speciale was asked about his comments when he finally hosted a town hall six months later in July, and of course, he didn’t back down, even going farther and call the march “disgusting” because the hats the women wear are made to “look like their body parts” (the p****y hats are actually pink cat ears, not actual vaginas, so apparently he’s admitting he doesn’t know what the female anatomy look like). Still, over half the room WALKED OUT in outrage over this moron.

And can you blame them? We’re talking about Speciale, who’s such a speciale schmuck that in February 2017, he submitted HB 147, an attempt to reverse North Carolina’s state constitution so they could secede from the union (apparently the lessons learned in the Civil War are lost on this putz) and he actually sponsored HB 780 in April of 2017, a bill that argues North Carolina can still ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling and ban same sex marriage, citing what else, but the 10th Amendment as his justification.

While Michael Speciale did win re-election in 2018 after barely surviving a primary challenge, he took a shot at the big time in 2019, attempting to win the Congressional seat for the late Congressman Walter Jones in a August 2019 special election. Speciale finished fourth out of a possible seventeen GOP candidates, only getting 9.5% of the vote, and less than half of what the winner did. Speciale then announced that he would not be running for re-election in 2020, and would be calling it quits after two decades in office.

We would like to wish him the finest of “good riddance” salutes, and look forward to the day when he has to pack up his belongings into a cardboard box at the capitol in Raleigh.

[Tami]

Russia Says Trump Offered To Help Putin Fight Forest Fires In Siberia

President Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and offered U.S. help in fighting widespread forest fires raging in parts of Siberia, according to a Kremlin account of the call.

Putin, in response, expressed his "sincere gratitude" to Trump and said that if necessary, he will accept the offer, the Kremlin said on its website.

"The President of Russia regards the US President's offer as a sign that it is possible that full-scale bilateral relations will be restored in the future," the statement from the Kremlin read.

"The presidents of Russia and the United States agreed to continue contacts both in a telephone format and in person," it added.

However, the two countries differed somewhat in their interpretations of the call.

As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, "Russia announced the call first, saying President Trump offered Putin assistance fighting wildfires in Siberia. ... Putin assessed the offer as a sign that relations between the two countries would be fully restored. Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and is still under U.S. sanctions."

[SquirrelMan]

It's election day! Which means it's time for Republicans to do some crimes!

MARION, Ohio: Two people have been charged with distributing sample ballots.

Republican candidate for Marion City Auditor Robert Landon and Marion County Republican Party official, John Matthews have been charged with distributing phony sample ballots.

Investigators are looking into possible election fraud in Marion ahead of the 2019 election. Authorities are investigating whether the Marion County Republican Party broke the law with campaign handouts that are designed to look like sample ballots.

The campaign materials look just like a sample ballot a voter could get from the county board of elections but it has boxes highlighting where the Republican candidates are. Ohio law bans political parties or candidates from handing out sample ballots. Sample ballots are also supposed to be printed on colored paper to distinguish it from real ones. The one in question is on white paper, just like a real ballot. At the bottom of the document, it said, "paid by the Marion County Republican Party."

Mr Mets, are you proud of your party?

[Mister Mets]

It's election day! Which means it's time for Republicans to do some crimes!



Mr Mets, are you proud of your party?

Do you believe these two idiots represent the party (IE- that the majority of Republican county officials are on the same level)?

[SquirrelMan]

Do you believe these two idiots represent the party (IE- that the majority of Republican county officials are on the same level)?

With the way members of minorities are asked to distance themselves from whatever member of their group commits a crime, I don't give a flying ****, Mets. Will you own those criminals or won't you?

[Mister Mets]

With the way members of minorities are asked to distance themselves from whatever member of their group commits a crime, I don't give a flying ****, Mets. Will you own those criminals or won't you?

Do you believe that it is the right thing for members of minority groups to be asked to distance themselves from whatever member of their group commits a crime? If you don't think that's appropriate, how is it ideologically consistent for you to ask this of me?

[SquirrelMan]

Do you believe that it is the right thing for members of minority groups to be asked to distance themselves from whatever member of their group commits a crime? If you don't think that's appropriate, how is it ideologically consistent for you to ask this of me?

I don't get to live in the world I want to live in, so why should you?

Are you still comfy in the fascy party or are you not, Mets?

[numberthirty]

With the way members of minorities are asked to distance themselves from whatever member of their group commits a crime, I don't give a flying ****, Mets. Will you own those criminals or won't you?

If we are going to go down to the local level and apply this logic, Democrats are going to need to own this...

- https://abc7chicago.com/alderman-mun...e-say/5004762/

Alderman Ricardo Munoz arrested for domestic violence incident, police say

Which makes about as much sense as Mets has said.

[SquirrelMan]

If we are going to go down to the local level and apply this logic, Democrats are going to need to own this...

- https://abc7chicago.com/alderman-mun...e-say/5004762/



Which makes about as much sense as Mets has said.

Nobody asked you, Snakeboy.

[numberthirty]

Nobody asked you, Snakeboy.

Of course, the guy I mentioned was eventually acquitted, but it feels like Democrats should have just owned it just because he was arrested for it?

- https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...tyy-story.html

Ex-Ald. Ricardo Munoz acquitted of domestic battery of wife

[Robotman]

ABC News anchor caught on hot mic saying network quashed Epstein story 3 years ago.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesOKee...178034180?s=19