All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Gray Lensman]

Not to mention his having broken most of the Ten Commandments.

Actually, I think we could nail Trump with breaking all 10.

[Malvolio]

Trump's appointees are GOP appointees, not MAGAt appointees. So they are the latter. They are aligned with McConnell more than Trump.

Well, yeah. Just like the last two or three Republican Presidents before him, Trump appointed whoever the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society told him to nominate.

[MacrossPlus]

I've been wondering, if Trump gets pissed off enough, will he start airing out people's dirty laundry?

[CaptainEurope]

I've been wondering, if Trump gets pissed off enough, will he start airing out people's dirty laundry?

Will he remember enough of it, though?

[Zelena]

I've been wondering, if Trump gets pissed off enough, will he start airing out people's dirty laundry?

What credibility he has?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Biden Mourns 500,000 Dead From COVID-19, Calls Those We’ve Lost ‘Extraordinary’

“We’ll remember each person we lost, the lives they lived and the loved ones they’ve left behind,” the president said. “We will get through this.” But Trump couldn't be bothered to mourn the lives lost to the virus, and those deaths weren't all just godless liberals either.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Also Left The State During Deadly Winter Storm

Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, flew to Utah for a “previously planned” trip, his spokesperson said. Following in the dubious footsteps of Fled Cruz I see.

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Police Officer Who Battled Capitol Mob Slams Racist Abuse From Rioters: ‘Is This America?’

“They beat police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags,” said Officer Harry Dunn. “They fought us. They had Confederate flags in the U.S. Capitol.” And Qpublicans in Congress supported that dangerous rabble.

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CPAC Mocked For Canceling ‘Reprehensible’ Guest From Anti-Cancel Culture Event

The conservative organization has already canceled a guest from its “America Uncanceled” conference. What in god's name could've been too reprehensible for the GQP to handle, someone saying Donald Trump was to blame for the 1/6 riot?

**********

A Majority Of Americans Want To Make It Easier To Vote By Mail

The GOP is pushing new voter restrictions nationwide, but most Americans want more time and more options to cast their ballots, a new poll finds. Well, of course Qpublicans want to kill mail in voting, otherwise, they can't win jack ****.

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Former RNC Chair Has 3 Short Words For Republicans Wanting A Trump Party

“There’s the door,” said Michael Steele. You're too late, homeslice, your party ALREADY belongs to Trump, lock, stock and tacky toupee.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Michele Fiore, a former member of the Nevada House of Representatives and a particularly staunch fan of the 2nd Amendment who in her first year in office alone in 2013, came to the defense of Jim Wheeler for saying he would vote to legalize slavery if he could, bragged about breaking the law by carrying her personal guns through gun free zones, and abrasively swearing at colleagues on the floor of the Nevada State Assembly, saying in less flattering ways that her colleagues were suffering from rectal-cranial inversion, or that they needed to grow sets of brass ovaries or testicles. She also has blamed victims of sexual assault on college campuses because they weren't carrying a gun, themselves, and becoming one of the most vocal defenders of tax scofflaw and domestic terrorist Cliven Bundy during his standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. And that was just in our first profile of Fiore. Our second look at Fiore featured a whole new series of moronic adventures, including the time that in spite of being the CEO of a healthcare company, talked about working on a bill regarding "end of life care" for medical patients. She seemed like she had a lack of knowledge about medicine, though, when she talked about how to treat cancer, which she "believes is a fungus", by putting in a pic line to "wash it out" with baking soda (none of which is in any way medically or scientifically accurate). She chimed in during a debate in the Nevada State Assembly about Voter ID, where she said such a measure could no longer be discriminatory because Barack Obama was elected president and referred to one of her African American colleagues in the legislature as "colored". In April 2015, Fiore introduced a bill in support of rancher Cliven Bundy, AB 408, which would require the federal government to obtain permission from county commissioners to use public land in the state. When a colleague voiced his concerns that the bill was patently unconstitutional and a violation of the Supremacy Clause and that she was turning the proceedings into a circus, Fiore blew up, yelling at him,“Can you sit your ass down and be quiet?” In July of 2015, after the Charleston Massacre, Michele Fiore, born in New York, and now a citizen of Nevada decided to speak out in defense of the Confederate flag. In November 2015, she released a pin-up calendar featuring herself posing with assault rifles to try and further normalize them into the American consciousness and but a few weeks later in December 2015 the Fiore family Christmas Card made viral news on Facebook, by featuring ten family members, between them carrying seven guns, including one in the hands of a five year old boy. By the time 2015 was done, on her weekly radio show, Michele Fiore stated her desire to handle Syrian refugees by "flying to Paris and shoot them in the head myself". (Please remember, of course, that the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Paris were not, in fact, Syrian refugees, but Muslims from France and Belgium. And thus, Fiore was talking about going to murder innocent people.) In January 2016: Fiore raged on social media about actions taken by Oregon police and the FBI to end the militia (aka domestic terrorist) siege of Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Two of Cliven Bundy's sons, Ryan and Ammon, were present. But Fiore took the time to lie about the death of Lavoy Finicum, who she claimed was "murdered with his hands up". (The video of Finicum's death shows him nearly run over an officer while crashing through a police barricade, and not once, but twice reaching for a firearm that he was carrying in his belt before they opened fire.) Now, most smart conservatives would try to try and not come off as too extreme while running for office in a presidential year, but Michele Fiore is not most conservatives. In fact, in spite of all the above idiocy she's shown in the headlines, she even has an inflated enough opinion of herself to think that she could successfully run for U.S. Congress to represent Nevada's 3rd Congressional District. She finished third in that GOP Primary with only 18% of the vote, losing to Danny Tarkanian. Fiore has gone on to get herself elected to the Las Vegas City Council, so for the time being, we will set aside her CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Ohio State Senator Kris Jordan, a member of ALEC who was first elected to the Ohio House of Representatives back in 2008, before making the jump to the Ohio State Senate in the 2010 Tea Party Wave. What’s more amazing is that he was re-elected in 2014 when in 2011, dashcam video emerged of police at Jordan’s home investigating a domestic violence incident after he was suspected of attacking his wife, Melissa, and threatening her with a gun. While in the video, Jordan’s wife reports that the abuse had gone on for nearly two years, usually after he was drinking, she declined to press charges. Kris Jordan explained to the cops, however, that the whole thing was his wife’s fault, saying, ”She got a little upset. Girls do that.” For whatever reason, there was zero political fallout from this, until 2016, after the Jordans divorced, and for a time, a judge ordered the Jordans’ divorce records sealed, an order which another judge had to overturn in 2017. We’re not just going to point out Jordan’s issues with women as evidenced by his violence towards his wife, but will also note he was the sponsor of several bills in Ohio that seem to indicate a general resentment for them. Like the fact that he was a sponsor of a fetal heartbeat bill in Ohio that would have effectively outlawed abortion at 6 weeks, before many women are even aware they’re actually pregnant. Or the fact that Jordan, shocker of all shockers, was actually the one hold out on an anti-cyberbullying measure in the Ohio State Senate.

[worstblogever]

On February 21st, 2016, February 21st, 2017, February 23rd, 2019, and February 23rd, 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted profiles about Isaac Latterell, who came to our attention as a reactionary, outspoken pro-life extremist after back in February of 2014 when he submitted a bill in the South Dakota state legislature that would have banned abortion at 7 weeks (in other words, a flagrantly unconstitutional bill that flew in the face of the Roe v. Wade ruling). At that time, he posted a blog to comment on the impending vote, tastefully titled, “Stop the Dismemberment of Living Children” in which, he compared abortion to “a veterinarian ripping the heads off puppies and crushing their skulls”, and gave his humble opinion that abortion doctors are more savage than “the barbarians of old”. After the talk of puppy decapitation and barbarians didn’t sway the public to his cause, and just shy of a year after his first rant about Planned Parenthood, Latterell penned a second screed, this time titled, “Planned Parenthood is worse than ISIS and Lying About It”. After being criticized for his rant, Latterell decided to back off just a tad, changing his article’s title to “Planned Parenthood is Beheading Children and Lying About It”, which is still devoid of facts. Laterrell then pitched a bill in the South Dakota House, HB 1230, that would “prohibit the beheading of certain living unborn children”, that predictably went nowhere. Now, this would be the most offensive issue that Isaac Latterell has ranted about, but just so everyone’s aware, he’s not a one-issue politician. Apparently, Latterell has some deep-seated fears about transsexuals, as he has voted for H1195, a bill that would limit a citizen’s gender identity to what is listed on their birth certificate, and in January 2016 voted for HB 1008, a transphobic bathroom cop bill to make sure that people use the bathroom designated for the gender types people are born. This is also reflected in his support through 2017 for a transphobic bathroom ban to be implemented in public schools, as well as a failed attempt at passing a “religious freedom” law to allow Christians the freedom to discriminate against same sex couples whose marriages threaten their “freedom”.

Isaac Latterell at another point tried to subvert direct democracy, and instead tried to change the law so that South Dakota State Legislature, and not the people of the state, would vote to choose U.S. Senators that head to the capitol from South Dakota. Oh, and he admitted in an open hearing that he is “not necessarily comfortable with women serving on the front lines of the military”, because of course he’s that much of a misogynist. No words.

Latterell won re-election in 2018, and in his his fourth fanatical term in office, he decided to create legislation to target a specific category of women that makes his “pro-life” credentials seem even more ridiculous… he was trying to outlaw surrogate mothers. So, sorry to all those couples trying to overcome infertility issues by implanting a fertilized egg in a surrogate mother who would help them carry a child to term, f*** you for not being able to have kids without help!

The only good news we have is that this will be his last term in the South Dakota House of Representatives, as he was defeated in the GOP Primary in 2020. His loss has been attributed to two things… his history of being an anti-vaxxer in terms of policy, which is not a winning stance on that issue during a pandemic… but more so how he was caught on camera facepalming at the 2016 RNC to express his frustration about Donald Trump being named the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2016… and if there’s one thing currently being shown by the Republican Party, it’s that it’s captive to the whims of Trump, and anyone who isn’t completely up his *** isn’t getting any help from the rest of the party, who are currently his willing hostages.

In any event, we get to wish Isaac Latterell our finest “GOOD RIDDANCE” salutes at this time.

[Tami]

FBI Seized Congressional Cellphone Records Related to Capitol Attack

Within hours of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, the FBI began securing thousands of phone and electronic records connected to people at the scene of the rioting — including some related to members of Congress, raising potentially thorny legal questions.

Using special emergency powers and other measures, the FBI has collected reams of private cellphone data and communications that go beyond the videos that rioters shared widely on social media, according to two sources with knowledge of the collection effort.

In the hours and days after the Capitol riot, the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people who were identified at the crime scene. Investigators have also relied on data “dumps” from cellphone towers in the area to provide a map of who was there, allowing them to trace call records — but not content — from the phones.

The cellphone data includes many records from the members of Congress and staff members who were at the Capitol that day to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory. The FBI is “searching cell towers and phones pinging off cell sites in the area to determine visitors to the Capitol,” a recently retired senior FBI official told The Intercept. The data is also being used to map links between suspects, which include members of Congress, they also said. (Capitol Police are reportedly investigating whether lawmakers helped rioters gain access to the Capitol as several Democrats have alleged they did, though Republican officials deny this.)

The Justice Department has publicly said that its task force includes senior public corruption officials. That involvement “indicates a focus on public officials, i.e. Capitol Police and members of Congress,” the retired FBI official said.

[Tami]

Justice Clarence Thomas reveals some sympathy for Trump's baseless fraud claims

(CNN)Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday claimed election fraud is a threat to America, revealing in a forceful dissent some support for former President Donald Trump and Republicans who have refused to accept the result of the 2020 election.

A longtime conservative, Thomas' legal views naturally aligned with the Trump administration. But his dissent stands out for how much it subscribed to the Trump worldview of fraud, a notion debunked by election law experts and that has failed overwhelmingly in dozens of state and federal court challenges.

"We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud. But that observation provides only small comfort," Thomas said, dissenting as the court rejected a long-pending challenge to Pennsylvania mail-in voting procedures.

"An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence," Thomas wrote.

In his 11-page dissent on Monday, Thomas referred to "fraud" 10 times and emphasized alleged flaws in ballots that arrive by mail. He said review of them may be particularly subjective, for example on the validity of signatures, and require state officials to sift through millions of ballots. Each state determines its own election procedures, for balloting in person or by mail, within the safeguards of the federal Voting Rights Act and Constitution.

In his 11-page dissent on Monday, Thomas referred to "fraud" 10 times and emphasized alleged flaws in ballots that arrive by mail. He said review of them may be particularly subjective, for example on the validity of signatures, and require state officials to sift through millions of ballots. Each state determines its own election procedures, for balloting in person or by mail, within the safeguards of the federal Voting Rights Act and Constitution.

Perhaps Thomas is far more dangerous in the SCOTUS than any of Trump's hand-picked apointees.

[DrNewGod]

Trump's appointees are GOP appointees, not MAGAt appointees. So they are the latter. They are aligned with McConnell more than Trump.

Good point. Wasn't it the Federalist Society that prepared the roster?

[Tami]

U.S. Supreme Court denies recount for N.J. 2020 Senate primary race

This is dumb, I'm glad the Supreme Court threw it out.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied to hear a request for a recount of the New Jersey Republican nomination for the Senate seat up that was up for grabs in 2020, ending the months-long dispute over vote-by-mail.

The highest court rejected Hirsh Singh’s bid to hold a recount of the primary election held last July and his allegations that Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive order mandating vote-by-mail primary was unconstitutional.

Singh, who refused to concede after losing the Republican primary to Rik Mehta, filed the lawsuit three days after the general election. Mehta lost to Cory Booker, a Democrat in his second term.

He had his first suit thrown out by the state Supreme Court in October.

Okay, he was suing because he lost the Primary to another Republican who then lost the General to Cory Booker who was a shoe-in to win in NJ regardless.

[Marvell2100]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...?ocid=msedgntp

A friend of Oathkeeper Jessica Watkins says that she should be released from jail because she was an idiot and brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories which led her to join the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan 6th.

[Marvell2100]

Justice Clarence Thomas reveals some sympathy for Trump's baseless fraud claims

Perhaps Thomas is far more dangerous in the SCOTUS than any of Trump's hand-picked appointees.

Thomas has always had extreme conservative views.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Justice Clarence Thomas reveals some sympathy for Trump's baseless fraud claims







Perhaps Thomas is far more dangerous in the SCOTUS than any of Trump's hand-picked apointees.

Then there's his wife who's said to be a real right wing loopjob and allegedly bused in some of the rabble who participated in the 1/6 riot.