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

[Kirby101]

I will point out that this is for local elections and California is the gold standard for nonpartisan Statewide districting.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Tennessee's 4th Congressional District, Scott Desjarlais, an Episcopalian physician from Tennessee whose religious background would have made him the perfect Republican to push their social agenda against abortion, contraceptives, and gay rights, while also giving them a guy with the credibility to argue against the Affordable Care Act. The problem with that, though, is Desjarlais has proven to be an embarrassing hypocrite, because while he portrays himself a champion of the pro-life movement, his divorce records were unsealed, and the media discovered he protected the sanctity of marriage by cheating on his wife with four women, and pressured not only his wife (on tape, no less) into getting an abortion, but one of his mistresses. And that mistress was also apparently one of his patients (and she wasn’t the only patient he slept with)… so there went the credibility of the “doctor against the ACA” angle. Also, the “family values Republican” angle, considering he admitted sleeping with six women — including two patients, three co-workers and a drug company representative — during his three-year marriage. But don’t worry, he’s assured everyone that “God has forgiven him”.

Desjarlais is also a big hard-liner on immigration, what with the time he told an 11 year old girl that he was going to deport her dad, and all.

Desjarlais has been dodging facing his constituents like a coward these past few years and his voting record makes it clear that he has no intention of explaining anything to them:

• December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Desjarlais votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Desjarlais ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• December 10th, 2020: DesJarlais signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 7th, 2021: Scott DesJarlais votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. DesJarlais votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of police officers.
• February 25th, 2021: DesJarlais votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. DesJarlais votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Scott DesJarlais votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: DesJarlais votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. DesJarlais votes 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).
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. DesJarlais votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: DesJarlais is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• November 5th, 2021: Scott Desjarlais votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• May 18th, 2022: Scott Desjarlais is one of 192 Republicans who votes against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Desjarlais votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Desjarlais votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
• July 15th, 2022: Scott Desjarlais votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
• July 19th, 2022: Rep. Desjarlais is one of 157 Republicans who vote against the “Respect for Marriage Act”, which would codify same sex marriage into law nationally.
• July 21st, 2022: Desjarlais is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.
• December 1st, 2022: Rep. Desjarlais is one of 90 Republicans who vote against HR 6878, meaning he is perfectly fine with pregnant women in prison being placed in solitary confinement while claiming to be “pro-life”.
• December 6th, 2022: Desjarlais, embracing the GOP’s white nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiment votes against HR 7946, which was meant to honor the promise to grant citizenship to immigrants who served in the United States Armed Forces.

Inexplicably, even after the #MeToo movement continued, Scott Desjarlais remained in Congress, and every two years articles come out about his anti-choice hypocrisy, and we wonder, “Is this the year that the voters of Tennessee’s 4th wake up and boot this hypocrite to the curb?” And for over a decade now, and through six full election cycles… nothing. After Roe V. Wade was overturned by the Dobbs decision, could 2024 be the year?

With a +22 Republican district, sadly… it might not be.

[Gray Lensman]

I will point out that this is for local elections and California is the gold standard for nonpartisan Statewide districting.

I believe California also has a recent law that prevents elected officials at all levels from drawing districts to protect incumbents. While the veto is disappointing, this isn't as big a story as people are making it out to be.

[Tendrin]

"Thirty years ago," Damon Linker told The Guardian, "if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane."

Now, however, the senior lecturer at Penn State's Department of Political Science and author of the Notes From the Middleground Substack newsletter has reconsidered.

"But it's no longer insane," Linker writes. "It's now real. There are those people out there." And, Linker notes, "The question is: will they get their chance."

The simple reality is that they already have had their chance in multiple red states, and when we watch what they're doing with it we see that step by step, day by day, Republicans are inching towards full-blown fascism. Now they're calling to end democracy and replace our president with a "Red Caesar."

They no longer believe in elections, because the American people are rejecting their vision of more tax cuts for billionaires, hating on racial and gender minorities, and more fossil-fuel pollution to destroy our planet.

So instead of trying to get elected by presenting honest differences in policy from Democrats, Republicans have resorted to massive gerrymandering, purging voting rolls of millions of Americans who live in blue cities within red states and dark-money TV carpet-bombing campaigns often filled with lies and half-truths.

But that's just the beginning.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rights-re...160002411.html

[Wildling]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rights-re...160002411.html

Just going to say I wonder what Stephen King (vocal detractor of Trump, Musk, and Republicans in general) would think about the "Red Caesar" moniker, since he used "Crimson King" as the name for the villain of his epic fantasy series.

[CaptainEurope]

Just in case there was not enough bad news:
Far-right AfD says it is now ‘major all-German party’ after state elections
Alternative für Deutschland comes second in Hesse and third in Bavaria as support spreads from east of country

It's important to note that they still did not get more than the roughly 16% that analysts have considered their "roof" for a decade now. They mostly came in second because of a further fractioning of party politics in Germany and the weakness of the Social Democrats, who might never be one of the "big two" again.
In Bavaria, however, far right support is close to 30% if you consider that the government party Freie Wähler (independent voters) has a plainly antisemitic leader.

Also, just as with MAGA, it seems the AfD is pretty much immune from the effects of scandal. In recent weeks, both leaders were caught lying about supposed threats or attacks against their persons, candidates for the European Elections were caught inventing their CVs George Santos style and internal chats showed deep divisions in the party. Yet here they are, riding high.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rights-re...160002411.html

Like that old saying from David Frum: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

[Vakanai]

Like that old saying from David Frum: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

There's a problem with that quote - it doesn't acknowledge what "conservatism" is. If conservatives were convinced old school conservatism ideas about, say, fiscal spending can't win democratically, they still wouldn't abandon democracy. No, what is meant by conservatism that's important enough to them that they'll overthrow democracy, is bigotry. If conservatives are convinced bigotry cannot win democratically they will not abandon bigotry. They will reject democracy.

[CaptainEurope]

It will be interesting to see if the war in Israel will drive a wedge between the plain antisemitic part of the GOP and the Domionists.

Screenshot 2023-10-10 1126645.jpg

[CaptainEurope]

Special Counsel Interviewed Biden About Classified Documents

Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate how sensitive material ended up at the home and office of President Biden, met with the president over the past two days.

“The voluntary interview was conducted at the White House over two days, Sunday and Monday, and concluded Monday,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

The interview played out amid the dramatic events in the Middle East, as Hamas militants carried out a major attack on Israel and Mr. Biden met with his national security team and consulted with foreign leaders. The interview’s timing had been arranged several weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman for Mr. Hur, declined to comment.

The interview raises the possibility that Mr. Hur is nearing the end of his investigation, which the Justice Department began after Mr. Biden’s lawyers reported that they had found several classified documents mixed in with other papers in a storage closet while packing up an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
...

Mr. Hur’s investigation has proceeded relatively quietly. Unlike in Mr. Trump’s case, there have been no known fights before a grand jury over claims of executive privilege and other matters that led to numerous disclosures about recalcitrant witnesses receiving subpoenas — frictions that increased chatter that in turn helped give the public more glimpses of that investigation’s progress.

But over the past nine months, Mr. Hur appears to have been exhaustively interviewing everyone with insight into how the documents were packed and moved, as well as how Mr. Biden’s team handled their discovery.

Among the many current and former Biden aides who have spoken with Mr. Hur, according to people familiar with the matter, are Dana Remus, his first White House counsel, and Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff. They are also said to include Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state; both had been national security aides to Mr. Biden when he was vice president.

[achilles]

Did Newsome say why he vetoed it?

He's MY gov. So I know quite a bit about him. This is only one of a number of puzzling vetoes he's issued in the past week or two that have only one answer, he's running for President. Not this election, but next. Don't let him get in. Vote for any other human being, vote for dogs or cats instead. His other vetoes, all passed with wide bipartisan majorities, include a bill legalizing magic mushrooms, (he says he wants more study), one legalizing Amsterdam style weed cafes, (he said it "violates public anti-smoking laws), some bills helping small businesses, one outlawing self-driving semi trucks without drivers present in the cab.

He's trying to appear more center than very far left, which he is. Don't let him get away with it; he's the most corrupt pol in a state filled with them. Hell, a decade ago we had an entire city government wind up in the slam for various frauds. And this guy is connected to everyone in state politics and business, and uses the laws he proclaims for his own business benefit, waving aside concerns of corruption. He pretty much caused the homeless crisis here, before him, it was there, but manageable, as a result of his policies, the population of homeless has skyrocketed. He gamed COVID for his own personal business benefit, (by closing wineries and restaurants except for HIS businesses), The rolling blackouts we have during fall are courtesy his policies, so look for that nationally if you vote for him. This is a guy who governs by slogans and doesn't bother to give his proposed policies even a second thought, mush less a first one. He literally doesn't care if they work as intended. And he lies, constantly, to the public. When caught, he lies again.

Like I said, choose anyone else. Vote for a dead person, it'd be better than voting for him. The Pat Riley wannabe isn't very bright, but he is staggeringly corrupt, and has no fixed principle he won't violate for an advantage. Don't let him do to the nation what he's done to this state.

[Mister Mets]

He's MY gov. So I know quite a bit about him. This is only one of a number of puzzling vetoes he's issued in the past week or two that have only one answer, he's running for President. Not this election, but next. Don't let him get in. Vote for any other human being, vote for dogs or cats instead. His other vetoes, all passed with wide bipartisan majorities, include a bill legalizing magic mushrooms, (he says he wants more study), one legalizing Amsterdam style weed cafes, (he said it "violates public anti-smoking laws), some bills helping small businesses, one outlawing self-driving semi trucks without drivers present in the cab.

He's trying to appear more center than very far left, which he is. Don't let him get away with it; he's the most corrupt pol in a state filled with them. Hell, a decade ago we had an entire city government wind up in the slam for various frauds. And this guy is connected to everyone in state politics and business, and uses the laws he proclaims for his own business benefit, waving aside concerns of corruption. He pretty much caused the homeless crisis here, before him, it was there, but manageable, as a result of his policies, the population of homeless has skyrocketed. He gamed COVID for his own personal business benefit, (by closing wineries and restaurants except for HIS businesses), The rolling blackouts we have during fall are courtesy his policies, so look for that nationally if you vote for him. This is a guy who governs by slogans and doesn't bother to give his proposed policies even a second thought, mush less a first one. He literally doesn't care if they work as intended. And he lies, constantly, to the public. When caught, he lies again.

Like I said, choose anyone else. Vote for a dead person, it'd be better than voting for him. The Pat Riley wannabe isn't very bright, but he is staggeringly corrupt, and has no fixed principle he won't violate for an advantage. Don't let him do to the nation what he's done to this state.

I'm not sure there's a group of voters who would be more likely to vote for Newsom because of this veto. Independent redistricting commissions are pretty popular.

I will point out that this is for local elections and California is the gold standard for nonpartisan Statewide districting.

Local elections are still meaningful.

[achilles]

I'm not sure there's a group of voters who would be more likely to vote for Newsom because of this veto. Independent redistricting commissions are pretty popular.

Local elections are still meaningful.

I'm not saying he's judging correctly; after all, he's an idiot, but he's making a calculation that their moves will position him closer to the center nationally, ripe for a Presidential run. Hopefully, he's wrong and everyone hates him.

A more illustrative example perhaps is the "free" condoms bill that passed with wide bipartisan approval, (not that Republicans matter in CA, I hear there are a few, but they know their place in this state and have no power at all), (in the state). Make no mistake, it's the sort of thing that is wildly popular here. And yet...should he run for President, it won't be popular at all in most of the country. So he vetoed the bill. His excuse was cost, this from a guy who turned a $60 billion surplus into about a $40 billion deficit. And no, Californians haven't seen a dime in any conceivable benefit from all that spending, leaving one to wonder where the money actually went. But that's another issue.

[Tendrin]

"Monster Liberty": That's how the otherwise excellent closed-captioning service in the auditorium at Pennridge High School interpreted "Moms for Liberty," while one of several dozen citizens who had waited in line to lambast the group spoke at the podium. A chuckle rose up among the parents in the crowded school board meeting, held on a late August evening after the first day of classes for the Pennridge School District in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. "Fair enough," one mother whispered to another.

That wasn't the only moment of levity that evening, which saw a robust crowd of largely irate parents speak out against the adoption of a social studies curriculum linked to far-right organizations like Moms for Liberty and Hillsdale College. Before the meeting, people exchanged wisecracks about "talented clappers" — an inside-joke reference to an email circulated among local conservatives that appealed for sympathetic outsiders to turn out and applaud the right-wing agenda: "You do not need to be a resident to attend and clap," it advised, for "policies that bless and protect our children."

Most of the attendees saw that appeal as a minor victory, or at least as evidence that they were gaining ground in the battle for control over the school district — one of hundreds of similar battles unfolding all over the country. Yes, the Pennridge school board was dominated by far-right members, one of whom had been present in Washington for Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally-turned-riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Yes, at least five of the nine board members were linked to Moms for Liberty, a right-wing "astroturf" organization that has orchestrated a national campaign to remake public education along arch-conservative and anti-intellectual lines. But Pennridge board meetings for months had been dominated by outraged parents speaking out against the Moms for Liberty incursion and the board majority's apparent agenda. Conservative forces were sufficiently worried about the optics, it appeared, that they were eager to pull in "talented clappers" from outside the community.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/moms-libe...100001256.html

[Kirby101]

He's MY gov. So I know quite a bit about him. This is only one of a number of puzzling vetoes he's issued in the past week or two that have only one answer, he's running for President. Not this election, but next. Don't let him get in. Vote for any other human being, vote for dogs or cats instead. His other vetoes, all passed with wide bipartisan majorities, include a bill legalizing magic mushrooms, (he says he wants more study), one legalizing Amsterdam style weed cafes, (he said it "violates public anti-smoking laws), some bills helping small businesses, one outlawing self-driving semi trucks without drivers present in the cab.

If you are talking about in the Democratic Primary, I will listen to your advice. But if it is between Newsome and DeSantis or Abbot, I will campaign for him without a second thought.