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

[Tami]

Warning of serious brain disorders in people with mild coronavirus symptoms

Doctors may be missing signs of serious and potentially fatal brain disorders triggered by coronavirus, as they emerge in mildly affected or recovering patients, scientists have warned.

Neurologists are on Wednesday publishing details of more than 40 UK Covid-19 patients whose complications ranged from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage and stroke. In some cases, the neurological problem was the patient’s first and main symptom.

The cases, published in the journal Brain, revealed a rise in a life-threatening condition called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (Adem), as the first wave of infections swept through Britain. At UCL’s Institute of Neurology, Adem cases rose from one a month before the pandemic to two or three per week in April and May. One woman, who was 59, died of the complication.

A dozen patients had inflammation of the central nervous system, 10 had brain disease with delirium or psychosis, eight had strokes and a further eight had peripheral nerve problems, mostly diagnosed as Guillain-Barré syndrome, an immune reaction that attacks the nerves and causes paralysis. It is fatal in 5% of cases.

“We’re seeing things in the way Covid-19 affects the brain that we haven’t seen before with other viruses,” said Michael Zandi, a senior author on the study and a consultant at the institute and University College London Hospitals NHS foundation trust.

“What we’ve seen with some of these Adem patients, and in other patients, is you can have severe neurology, you can be quite sick, but actually have trivial lung disease,” he added.

[Tendrin]

https://twitter.com/scottbix/status/1280927924489555968

Scott Bixby says:

Eartha Kitt had to flee the hemisphere for ten years because she criticized the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon. She was blacklisted from Hollywood with the help of the CIA, which wrote a dossier calling her “a sadistic nymphomaniac.”

That’s cancel culture.

[Tami]

Private Facebook groups are using 'Justice for George Floyd' as a cloak for racist behavior

At first glance, a private "Justice for George Floyd" Facebook group looks like many of the dozens of other groups created to collectively mourn the killing of an unarmed Black man by a white police officer. "We demand justice for the murder of George Floyd," the group says in its description with the hashtag #BLM, for Black Lives Matter. The group has more than 10,000 members and its profile picture is an illustration of George Floyd. Nine people, several of whom appear to be Black, control the group.

But dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes apparent the group isn't interested in racial justice. Instead, it cynically uses Floyd's name to fan racial hatred.

The admins, none of whom appear to be who they say they are, post "announcements" with hateful memes and misinformation, while commenters share support for neo-Nazis. Many mock Floyd's appearance and background. The posts are sprinkled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, sometimes involving billionaire investor George Soros. The image of Pepe the Frog, a comic book character co-opted by white supremacists, makes a few appearances.

[Mister Mets]

There is an increase in shootings.

Exhausted cities face another challenge: a surge in violence

NEW YORK (AP) — Still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and street protests over the police killing of George Floyd, exhausted cities around the nation are facing yet another challenge: a surge in shootings that has left dozens dead, including young children.

The spike defies easy explanation, experts say, pointing to the toxic mix of issues facing America in 2020: an unemployment rate not seen in a generation, a pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 people, stay-at-home orders, rising anger over police brutality, intense stress, even the weather.

“I think it’s just a perfect storm of distress in America,” said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms after a weekend of bloodshed in her city.

Jerry Ratcliffe, a Temple University criminal justice professor and host of the “Reducing Crime” podcast, put it more bluntly: “Anybody who thinks they can disentangle all of this probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

President Donald Trump has seized on the violence for political gain, accusing Democrats of being weak and suggesting the crime wave is being driven by recent protests calling for racial justice, police reform and drastic cuts in law enforcement funding.

“Law and order are the building blocks of the American dream, but if anarchy prevails, this dream comes crumbling down,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said last week.

Police officials in New York City and elsewhere say the recent bloodshed has shown there are consequences to some reforms they see as misguided, particularly on bail reform, enacted before the protests happened but exacerbated by the moment.

Emboldened criminals feel “that the cops can’t do anything anymore, that no one likes the police, that they can get away with things, that it’s safe to carry a gun out on the street,” New York Police Department Chief Terence Monahan said this week.

Monahan’s remarks came after a holiday weekend that saw a wave of shootings leaving 10 dead. Through Sunday, shootings were up more than 53% — to 585 — so far this year.

The recent spasm of violence was captured in a New York Post headline about a crime-ravaged city crying out for help. It was nearly identical to one that ran 30 years ago — when there were more than 2,000 murders a year. But crime has been declining for more than a decade — there were about 300 last year.

Crime has spiked in other major cities, too. In Dallas, violent crime increased more than 14% from April to June. In Philadelphia, homicides were up 20% for the week ending July 5 over last year at this time. In Atlanta, 31 people were shot over the weekend, five fatally, compared with seven shootings and one killing over the same week in 2019.

Some police unions say officers just aren’t doing their jobs over fear of being charged with crime.

Bottoms, a Democrat, lashed out after an 8-year-old girl was shot and killed near the Atlanta Wendy’s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks died three weeks earlier in a confrontation with police who were later charged criminally.

“That’s an important movement that’s happening,” she said at a news conference. “But this random, wild, wild West shoot ’em up because you can has got to stop.”

[AnakinFlair]

Breaking news: Supreme Court rules New York prosecutor can get Trump's tax returns



EDIT: HOWEVER, The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress cannot get the tax returns, and since the New York case the returns would be covered under Grand Jury secrecy rules, the public won't be seeing the returns before the election.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Breaking news: Supreme Court rules New York prosecutor can get Trump's tax returns

Oh sweet God, yes.

[Kirby101]

They ruled against him in the Congress case too. But said the lower court must rule again.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Breaking news: Supreme Court rules New York prosecutor can get Trump's tax returns



EDIT: HOWEVER, The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress cannot get the tax returns, and since the New York case the returns would be covered under Grand Jury secrecy rules, the public won't be seeing the returns before the election.

Doesn't matter if neither the public, or Congress gets to see the returns. Regarding the former, I already figured that wasn't happening, the important thing was that three of the conservatives on SCOTUS ruled against Trump. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the Oval Office when the news went down, Dolt45 must've gone berserk.

[Joker]

What will happen when large segments refuse to take the vaccine when it’s available?

Who made the vaccine? How fast tracked was it, and what does that mean? Is the current administration endorsing it? Who else is endorsing it? How much does it cost? Is it covered by your health insurance? Do you even have health insurance? Will it be subsidized?

Then supply and demand enter the conversation. There simply won't be enough for everyone to just go get it right away. So who gets it? (You already know the answer to this one.)

There's going to be a lot of factors involved with a vaccine that aren't as simple as here it is, life is normal now. Unfortunately.

This is why we need to be doing everything else we can to mitigate the spread of it. But we aren't doing that.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Doesn't matter if neither the public, or Congress gets to see the returns. Regarding the former, I already figured that wasn't happening, the important thing was that three of the conservatives on SCOTUS ruled against Trump. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the Oval Office when the news went down, Dolt45 must've gone berserk.

I can provide a rough transcript

Trump: I'm the victim! I'm the best president in the worst situation of any president in history *childish crying*

Everyone else: Yes sir, this is the worst ever, to the best president.

[AnakinFlair]

I can provide a rough transcript

Trump: I'm the victim! I'm the best president in the worst situation of any president in history *childish crying*

Everyone else: Yes sir, this is the worst ever, to the best president.

Amazing! It's just like his Twitter feed!

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Randy Terrill, a former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives with ties to FAIR, an organization classified as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center who repeatedly submitted unconstitutional legislation to make English the official language of the state, and to end Spanish-language driver's tests in the state, describing it as "slowly rolling down the welcome mat for illegals" because as he told the Wall Street Journal "Latin Americans will not assimilate like previous waves of immigrants". The rest of his legislative record included not just anti-abortion support and stricter Voter ID votes, but also his submission of Oklahoma's legendary attempted (and unnecessary) ban on Sharia Law. Don't lose sleep over a crazy bigot like this being in office, because Terrill was caught trying to bribe a Democratic State Senator to not run for office so an ally could run against her unopposed, and went to prison for it. The prison sentence he got effectively also ended his career, and we’re fine with that.

In both 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the former U.S. House Representative from South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, Mick Mulvaney, who appeared in Washington in the 2010 Tea Party Wave after making a career as a state legislator who would sponsor bills to require medically unnecessary ultrasounds before abortions, define marriage as only existing between a man and a woman, and strict anti-immigration restrictions. Once he found himself in our nation’s capital, Mulvaney joined the House Freedom Caucus, the radical bomb-throwers who thought House Speaker John Boehner, who somehow, inflexible as he was, wasn’t conservative enough, and became one of the more combative members of the GOP House in attempting to oust him. Except of course, for all the times when Mulvaney would develop a split personality and turn around and lecture some of his colleagues for attempting to do the exact same thing. Rep. Mulvaney was not really a person worth noting until right around the time he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, when over the course of two weeks, he made headlines with two bizarre quotes that made people wonder if the stress of the job was getting to him. The first being a Newsmax interview where he claimed he eavesdropped on a phone call between Speaker Boehner and President Obama about discussions to negotiate the budget, and to raise the debt ceiling, where he said that Obama was “acting like a girlfriend I had in high school who called me to tell me she was giving me the silent treatment”. Well, Mulvaney followed that up by, after not voting to re-open the government, he made an outrageous claim that money was set aside in the new budget… for Ugandan Warlord Joseph Kony and his “Lord’s Resistance Army” rebel group that is infamous for kidnapping children and turning them either into soldiers or sex slaves. Why in the HELL any money would be given to them… in any event, Mulvaney’s communications director took the blame, saying that the statement was because of a “typo” on her part. What slip of the keys made her somehow type out twenty incorrect characters, or what Mulvaney had actually meant, of course, they neglected to say. Now, it would make sense for someone who had such an epic political blunder as the GOP did with the 2013 Government Shutdown to not repeat it. Mick Mulvaney, however, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he was so adamant about cutting funding to Planned Parenthood after the “sting” videos released by the Center for Medical that Mulvaney was the leader of the group of 28 Republicans who signed a letter to threaten ANOTHER government shutdown to force the point. It’s amazing that someone could be that much of an extremist that the fact that Mulvaney’s also a climate change denier is and afterthought. After all, he’s much more noteworthy for voting against disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy, every attempt the GOP has made to repeal the Affordable Care Act, against raising the debt ceiling, and issued a press release with some revisionist history where he commended Senate Republicans for refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland as a nominee to the Supreme Court, lying in it an saying “the right should fall as it has for 200 years… to the incoming president.” Well, we might not be profiling Mick Mulvaney after this year, as he’s no longer an elected politician… shortly after the 2016 Elections, he was named Donald Trump’s Budget Director. And frankly, that has led to a comedy of errors. Like how Mick came out and tried defending the Trump budget cutting all funding to Meals on Wheels because it was one of those programs “not showing any results” (The lack of people starving because of it would disagree with that, you utter mother***er). He’s also begun making the habit of not just ignoring facts when it comes to climate change, but with anyone presenting any kind of facts, like when he disputed the CBO gave their score to the House GOP’s healthcare bill, and reported it would leave 24 million people without health insurance who are currently covered. That’s earned him the criticism of the previous four directors of the CBO. Remember, this is the White House’s budget director being slammed by past four heads of the Congressional Budget Office. We’re not even warming up, here. Mulvaney is such an ideological twit that as the Trump agenda began failing in the middle of 2017, he already began talking about how Congressional Republicans should stage a government shutdown again. Except this time… THE GOP ARE IN CONTROL OF THE HOUSE, SENATE, AND WHITE HOUSE. Think about that. And then think about how someone this incompetent could be PROMOTED to be the new acting White House Chief of Staff. The Republican Party has forgotten how to govern so much that it’s threatening itself with closing down because it can’t make a decision about what direction to lead the country. We are only hoping that this is the last job in government that Mick Mulvaney ever holds in government, and when the Trump administration reaches its overdue ending, he gets swept out with the rest of the trash, never to be heard from again. we'll move on and start profiling a different wacky Republican on this date instead.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the former U.S. Senator from Alabama, Luther Strange, who served seven months as an interim Senator after serving six years as the Attorney General of Alabama. And, a myriad of CSGOPOTD f***-ups from Alabama are linked to both Strange’s rise and fall. Strange was never supposed to win in the GOP Primary to become Alabama AG, not in 2006 when he lost, but especially when he tried to upset Troy King during the 2010 elections. But the man he faced off against that year, Troy King, was rumored to have been caught by his wife banging a 24 year old college intern who was a homecoming… king… from Troy University, so… Troy King allegedly was cheating on his wife with the king of Troy. That made GOP voters balk at King, and support Strange. Six years go by, and Luther Strange is trucking along in the seedy world of Alabama politics when Governor Robert Bentley gets busted in his own sex scandal when he was shtupping a top aide, and she definitely was on the state payroll. So Luther Strange was going to serve as the man who would indict Bentley and determine what charges were appropriate for his corruption scandal. So when Senator Jeff Sessions was appointed Attorney General, all of a sudden, Gov. Bentley thought that Luther Strange would make the finest goddamned Senator ever, which in no way made anyone think it seemed like he was bribing the A.G. for some leniency. Even with all the commentary about how incredibly screwed up this arrangement was, Luther Strange became the tallest senator in American history at six-foot-nine, and was around to vote for Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court Justice and to rubber stamp any other Trump appointee. So… yes. Luther Strange’s ascendance was due to all sorts of folks trying to slip the salami to underlings they were also the bosses of. Could his downfall get any seedier? Well, his chief fundraiser was being investigated by the feds for a bribery scandal. Just a reminder about how Strange was upset in the special election to hold onto that U.S. Senate seat by Roy Moore, who was known at the time to be an anti-Semitic, terribly homophobic, terribly racist lunatic who was twice kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court and was pulling out revolvers at campaign rallies and riding a horse to the polls (badly). Yes, Luther Strange lost to that guy, and then all the women who Roy Moore hit on as teens and the members of the police department and local community who were aware Moore was a pedophile were like, “Hey, maybe this guy shouldn’t be a Senator, y’know?”. Luther Strange lost to that guy. As far as Strange just being a corrupt tool that fell ass-backwards onto the U.S. Senate, he also used the power he had as Alabama Attorney General to try and block the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on same sex marriage, and tried protecting ExxonMobil in a lawsuit when it was discovered the oil company did everything it could to conceal investigations into climate change. Strange is currently out of office, and at 65, tainted by scandals and humiliated by a loss in an election to an insane, bigoted pedophile, it’s unlikely that he gets a second chance for his political career.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former South Dakota State Senator Neal Tapio, who was first elected in 2016 while running unopposed while simultaneously running the Donald Trump campaign’s operations in South Dakota. He made a name for himself by criticizing higher-ranking Republicans like Sen. John Thune and Gov. Dennis Daugaard for “inadequately supporting Donald Trump” and doing his damnedest to connect violent extremism and Islam in the public eye. Tapio thought that he had all the momentum in the world to seek higher office in 2018, and wanted to move into the void created by Kevin Cramer abandoning his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for South Dakota’s “At Large” district to make a run for Senate. And thus, with his dedication to Donald Trump and hatred of Islam being the bedrock of his political profile, Tapio apparently thought, “How can I further act like a white nationalist?” That would be the only explanation we could come up with why in South Dakota of all places, that Tapio would call for the abolition of Native American reservations, and start blaming crime rates in South Dakota on Native Americans. It was the South Dakota equivalent of the Trump strategy, save for the lack of an escalator, and instead of “Mexicans are rapists”, it was, “Native Americans cause crime”. During the 2018 campaign, while serving in the South Dakota State Senate, Neal Tapio continued to further his anti-Muslim rhetoric, defending not just the Trump administration’s attempt to ban all Muslims from traveling to the United States, but to call for any refugees from the Middle East to be blocked from resettling within South Dakota. By January of 2018, Tapio went full bore bigot, screaming at a planned interfaith gathering in the state capitol as it went on, “I don’t like being called a racist. If you don’t have the freedom to leave a religion, is there a freedom of religion? …That’s the question we have to asks ourselves as a state. When 14 Islamic countries kill you for leaving Islam, don’t you think we would want to keep those people out?” Only ten days later, Tapio was straightaway arguing that the freedom of religion protected for Americans by the First Amendment of the Constitution did not apply to Muslims. And, all the while, Tapio was attacking the media for “unfairly” reporting his bigoted or Islamophobic remarks. Thankfully, Tapio was still trailing in the GOP Primary to become the next Congressman from South Dakota, but what made sure he wouldn’t mount a last minute surge was when audio emerged of him wistfully hoping for a terrorist attack to help his chances, saying, “There will be one more terrorist attack between now and then and I will be the, just by the Trump effect, I will be the candidate.” Further audio also revealed that Tapio thought of certain portions of the U.S. military stationed in the Middle East as “mercenaries for Saudi Arabia”. Neal Tapio ended up finishing third out of three candidates, netting just 22% of the vote in the 2018 GOP Primary for South Dakota’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and is now out of office entirely. We can only hope that this intolerant douche-canoe losing $300,000 that he self-funded his campaign on is a permanent setback for all his political ambitions. , we will set aside her profile at this time and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 888-45, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Greg Pence

Welcome to what is the 888th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the sitting U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 6th Congressional District, Greg Pence, who yes, is the older brother -of Vice President Mike Pence, whom Greg would call “Bubbles” in their youth. (Frankly, that’s the most humanizing thing I’ve ever heard about either Pence, who have all the charisma of jars of mayonnaise past their expiration.) Anyway, Mike Pence was the Congressman from Indiana’s 6th from 2003-2012, when he left Congress to become the abysmal Governor of Indiana, and Luke Messner took the baton for three terms… until 2018, when Messner made a failed run for U.S. Senate in Indiana, and Greg Pence stumbled out of his brother’s shadow to join the ranks of the obstructionist tools of the Republican Congressional Caucus.

Part of the reason Mike Pence became the more successful political story has to do with Greg’s record as a businessman, as he ran the family chain of Tobacco Road convenience stores in Indiana badly enough that they filed for bankruptcy, and ended up being fined $8.4 million because of environmental damage done by leaking underground storage tanks. Other than that, Greg Pence avoided reporters as if they were radioactive, did the bare minimum by being interviewed by a conservative radio talk show host where he could endorse Trump’s stupid idea for a border wall, and otherwise coast into Congress based on the family name.

Which somehow, was not the end of him having shady and outrageous business dealings… as the New York Times reported last year, since Greg Pence arrived in Washington, D.C., he frequently helps funnel money into the Trump Foundation, often by booking rooms at Trump’s DC hotel that he can pay for with campaign money. Whenever there’s been a Trump rally back in Indiana, he’s there to cheerlead (and his son is rumored to literally be doing that with chants at the rallies).

And whenever Donald Trump is in jeopardy in the House, like say, when the inquiry into Trump’s phone call with the President Ukraine was being investigated as a shakedown, he called it a “power grab”, or “bulls*** to the 4th degree”. (Watch the language, Greg, you might burn poor Bubbles’ virgin ears.)

Being boring, partisan, pathological liars is familial trait, it seems. Don’t believe us? Check out his voting record:

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Pence voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• January 27th, 2019: Greg Pence voted against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attacking our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
• February 28th, 2019: Greg Pence votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Pence votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Greg Pence is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• June 4th, 2019: Pence votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Greg Pence votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 17th, 2019: Rep. Pence is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• December 3rd, 2019: Greg Pence is one of 71 Republicans who votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Pence ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Pence votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indiana’s 6th Congressional District has a +18 Republican lean, and yes, that’s a tie for the most conservative lean of any district in the state. It's been set up so that nepotism can reign, and Greg Pence can get at least 60% of the vote while never talking to a reporter, or debating his Democratic opponent, Jeannine Lee Lake, for the second election in a row.

We don’t know how long this guy rides his little brother’s coattails into a career in politics, but the sooner this putz is shown the door, the better.

[BeastieRunner]

Amazing! It's just like his Twitter feed!

A Russian spy, a tax cheat, and adulterer walk into a bar.

Bar tender says, "What will you have today Mr. President?