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

[numberthirty]

For the "Illinois Adjacent..." folks who might find themselves driving in Chicago. Reads like the first time will come with a warning in the mail before actual tickets after that warning...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/polit...ffm-story.html

Speed camera tickets starting at 6 mph above the limit part of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2021 revenue packages

[worstblogever]

For the "Illinois Adjacent..." folks who might find themselves driving in Chicago. Reads like the first time will come with a warning in the mail before actual tickets after that warning...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/polit...ffm-story.html

One party attempted a failed violent coup.

The other party is going to fine you for speeding in one state.

Clearly, both sides are just as bad.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile the 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate from West Virginia, Don Blankenship, whose claim to fame is as a coal mining company executive who just so happened to get sentenced to a year in jail for conspiring to skirt federal laws that regulated his coal mine (specifically, the safety laws) that led to the deaths of 29 workers in a mine explosion, the deadliest accident in mining in four decades. Blankenship, a true exemplar of the GOP’s “party of responsibility” ethics blames everything on the Obama administration for putting him behind bars. Anyway, in 2018, Blankenship tried aping much of Donald Trump’s talking points, include ing the insane plan to build a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border, and calls to “Drain the Swamp”, but his flat, deadpan delivery of a rant against Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his initial 30-second ad spot really cemented why the coal baron was not ready for politics, where he called him “Cocaine Mitch”, accused him of creating “millions of jobs for China-people and claiming that “Mitch has gotten rich. In fact, his China-family has given him tens of millions of dollars”. Don Blankenship only managed 20% of the vote in the GOP Primary for Senate in West Virginia in 2018. He recently filed paperwork to run for President of the United States as the nominee for the Constitution Party so he has a snowball’s chance of hell in winning. We’ll set aside his profile at this time and profile someone else who just will not go away…



On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who is most famous for battling in the United States' culture wars since 2001, in particular his fetish for placing monuments of the Ten Commandments in government buildings. That battle led to a series of unsuccessful lawsuits, and eventually was tossed off the bench in 2003 for staunchly refusing to honor a superior federal judge's decision that the monument should be removed, as it violated the First Amendment rights of non-Christians. In 2012, for whatever reason, the people of Alabama returned him to the bench, where he's resumed his mad push for making America a theocracy. Incidentally, Moore has gone on record before and stated his opinion that non-Christians like Hindus or Buddhists aren't "real" religions, and don't deserve 1st Amendment protections, and even has stated his belief that an unborn zygote should have more rights than they do.

He founded a SuperPAC that funded a celebration of the anniversary of the day Alabama seceded from the union to join the Confederacy in 2010, claims Thomas Jefferson did not intend for the First Amendment to apply to non-Christians and that he was a fierce opponent of abortion, and has called for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Judge Moore is also stubbornly anti-gay, and is not only opposed to gay marriage, but believes that gay couples who have adopted should have their children taken away from them, arguing that "the laws of our state have always recognized the Biblical admonition" and comparing the acceptance to same sex marriage as being akin to "following Nazi orders". In fact, it was his refusal to acknowledge the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that got Moore removed from the Alabama Supreme Court a second time in 2016. He also floated his belief that Congressman Keith Ellison was illegitimate because he was sworn in with a Quran, and not a Bible (go figure, Ellison's a Muslim), and advised parents to pull their children out of public school if it dares to teach evolution.

Where things got truly interesting was when Moore decided to run for office to replace Sen. Jeff Sessions as a U.S. Senator for Alabama in 2017… we had no idea how staggeringly more insane the story of this little lunatic might get. With the help of white supremacist supporters like Steve Bannon, Breitbart News, and every intolerant ideological extremist in the GOP, Roy Moore threw down in the GOP Primary for U.S. Senate against establishment GOP candidate Luther Strange. Moore was eccentric as ever, pulling out a pistol in front of a crowd at a campaign rally, and riding a horse to the polls to vote. The unthinkable happened… Roy Moore won that primary. Some national Democrats began to wonder that in a matchup between Roy Moore, if his opponent, attorney Doug Jones, could win. Yes, it was Alabama, one of the reddest states in the union, but Jones was actually a pretty solid candidate, with his history of successfully prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan who carried out a church bombing that resulted in four girls’ deaths decades earlier. And, y’know, Moore had already shown himself bats*** extreme enough to have been not once, but twice removed from office for refusing to honor the rulings of the Supreme Court. It shouldn’t have even been a question if Jones should have had a chance, but… Alabama.

Well, then the question got easier to ask, because as it turns out, Roy Moore’s reputation of a dedicated Christian man neglected to include that while he was an assistant prosecutor in Gadsden, Alabama four decades ago, he was a serial pedophile. When one woman comes forward, maybe there’s some chance people might not believe them. But when seven of them come forward, and members of Gadsden law enforcement and people who run both the Gadsden Mall and Gadsden YMCA come forward and say they banned Roy Moore from the premises for creeping on teenage girls? Kinda hard for even the biggest misogynist to disregard that accusation as having been true… but then again, many Alabama Republicans actually started to argue that they believed his accusers, but that they still would vote for a pedophile before they voted for a Democrat.

Hell, Donald Trump even decided it would be a great time to endorse Moore, because sexual predators stick together in the face of accusers. Polls started coming out showing that Doug Jones was tied with Roy Moore after the accusations first hit the news, some even with Jones in the lead. An ideological, fanatical man who preyed on teenage girls like Moore knew he had to dig deep to pull out a victory in the end. And so, he had all the people closest to him talk up how great he was at a last minute rally… that included one friend of Moore’s from his tour of Vietnam talking about how they went to a sex club where you could get child prostitutes together back in the day, and Roy Moore’s wife insisting he wasn’t a bigot because “one of our attorneys is a JEW”. (Note: As it turned out later, their “Jew lawyer” is actually Christian.)

The day of the election came, and for the first time in a quarter century, a Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate in Alabama, with Roy Moore losing to Doug Jones by 22,000 votes. Roy Moore did not accept defeat gracefully, instead insisting that there was “massive voter fraud”, posting insane conspiracy theories about how that happened, and starting to attack Doug Jones’ gay son in social media posts. Nobody bought his voter fraud theories, though, because Alabama has a Republican Secretary of State whose entire reputation is about stomping out voter fraud with Voter ID laws and voter suppression tactics (the latter of which did pop up to HELP Roy Moore, and there are ACLU lawsuits filed to prevent them in future elections). A judge certified Doug Jones’ victory, and that was that. Roy Moore currently has bigger problems, though. Like being sued by his accusers for defamation for all the ways he called them liars after they came forward, and he and his wife should probably pay their “not actually Jewish” lawyer a bunch of money to protect them from the fact that the charity they run is being investigated for fraud by the IRS.

And YET… we have an update. Yes, we thought last year that we would have heard the last of Roy Moore, but we’ll be goddamned if this creeptastic, intolerant old sumb**** went and filed to run for U.S. Senate again in 2020. He was a long-shot what with only $34,000 in donations on hand as of October, and several more renowned Republicans without a track record of being alleged of trying to woo teenage girls running in the primary against him, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions trying to slide his way back into the Senate on a slime trail, Congressman Bradley Byrne taking a crack at things, and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville throwing his hat in the ring.

And alas, Roy Moore finished fourth among all GOP candidates with 7.2% of the vote. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that NOW we’re going to be able to say this will the last time we have to update a profile on him, and he’s going to f*** off and into retirement. Hopefully nowhere near a junior high school.
 

[Robotman]

And just like that, little Hitler Youth Madison Cawthorn is done.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn Totally Shredded On CNN, Admits He’s Got Nuthin’ On Vote ‘Fraud’

Pressed again to provide at least one specific example of election fraud, he responded, bizarrely: “Like I said, that’s not the reason I contested the election.”

Brown snapped: “So you wanted to throw out millions of votes without actually seeing any concrete evidence of fraud?”

Cawthorn then claimed he challenged the votes to “hold up the Constitution.”

...

At long last, Cawthorn admitted: “I think I would say the election was not fraudulent. The Constitution allowed for us to be able to push back as much as we could, and I did that to the ... constitutional limits that I had at my disposal. So now I would say that Joseph R. Biden is our president.”

[Tendrin]

God, Cawthorne is the worst.

[worstblogever]

God, Cawthorne is the worst.

I was a bit taken aback that other Paralympian athletes came forward to poke a hole in his claim that he was among their ranks. I think the quote I saw was, "it's like if a guy who played basketball in 4th grade said he made it to the NBA".

Just... damn.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Found this on Twitter: For fans of Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli or anime in general....

[Robotman]

So Cawthorn basically said that he believes the constitution gives him the right to overthrow the government if he doesn’t like the results of a fair and “not fraudulent” election. I really wish she would have asked him where in the actual **** does the constitution say that. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that he’s never read the document.

[worstblogever]

So Cawthorn basically said that he believes the constitution gives him the right to overthrow the government if he doesn’t like the results of a fair and “not fraudulent” election. I really wish she would have asked him where in the actual **** does the constitution say that. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that he’s never read the document.

He is a protegee of Mark Meadows, after all.

[SquirrelMan]

Obama got it too, as did JFK, as did Lincoln. Adulation of a political figure is common across all parties and all political ideologies, in any spectrum. You're making too much of a big deal.



These memes aren't really from his base. It's from the Internet.

The meme spread across the internet even to people not in Bernie's base (whatever that means) because people just like Bernie that much. It's a spontaneous direct thing, in no way astroturfed or directed by Sanders either (especially since the meme spread in real time to the coverage of the Inauguration).

So it's not comparable at all to Trump.



Jeanne d'Arc lost and got burnt in a stake but she became a legitimate Saint and feminist icon, and national treasure of France.

Defeat or loss doesn't mean a person can't be loved or admired.

Hey, I spread some of those memes just because they are funny.

I cannot stand Bernie and wish he'd go home and crochet little dolls of himself.

But that pic? That's gold.

[CaptainEurope]

For the "Illinois Adjacent..." folks who might find themselves driving in Chicago. Reads like the first time will come with a warning in the mail before actual tickets after that warning...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/polit...ffm-story.html

As someone whose dear friend lost her only son to a speeding driver, I say:

Good.

[CSTowle]

This Bernie meme idolatry is unsettling. He's been getting this ever since he ran for present in '16 turning him from a politician into a deity. You'd think the left would remember the last time someone did this on the right, we just booted that guy out of the White House. It's wrong to follow in their footsteps of making politicians into celebrities.

Of course Bernie likes it, that didn't make it good. The problem is that this continues the left's creepy infatuation with him like he's their Daddy Trump. He's not a person to many of them, he's an ideal. AOC gets this, too.



Not with these sorts of memes. It just exacerbates Bernie's cult of personality with his base rather than letting it die. Despite him losing both times he's still made out to be a deity among certain sections of the left.



They did that with Trump, as well. Did you think that was something we should emulate in politics? And this isn't a single meme, and the memes aren't without context themselves with Bernie. People being this "attached" to Bernie is dangerous.

There were wrong to do that. Cults of personality aren't something to strive toward. You saw how bad the Bernie supporters got in the primaries with this adulation, people got attacked in real life over this and it went on for years.



They're a part of his base. It's not like the internet is lacking of people who support him online, in fact they became a big face for his movement whenever he ran for president.



You know want the means, don't be coy. That's part of it, this omits the context for what emery like that represents to his base and we know how and they get when they idolise him. This isn't about astroturfing, that's moving the goal posts - it's about intentions, implications and political fallout. This didn't just start weeks ago. Bernie may not have directed hit but he and his campaign encouraged this amongst his followers.



They're doing the exact same thing, this is like whenever someone does a picture of Trump with big muscles. That's a manifestation of how the right see Trump as an idea, something which is very prominent among the left with Bernie. This is about Bernie the idea, not Bernie the man. It's really not a good thing for the left to make Bernie their god king right after Trump did the same thing with his base.



Now he's being compared to Jeanne d'Arc, proving my point. This isn't about admiring or respecting a politician, but "love" that's creepy infatuation with a political figure. He's a politician, not your cool uncle. There's a spectrum of respect, and the memes are solidifying his hold over his followers like Trump did. Memes aren't harmless.

1. I'd say this meme came about making fun of how Bernie looked at the Inauguration. Slumped down, in mittens, looking like he clearly didn't want to be there. If anything this is less about "deifying" Bernie and more about making fun of how he looked. Honestly it was probably spread slightly more by Biden and old Clinton supporters looking to take a mini victory lap over Bernie supporters than Bernie supporters trying to get his name back in the press. I'd still bet everything I own that both of those groups of people are very much outnumbered by people who are just amused at his look.

2. Presidential contests (and many political contests) are popularity contests. So some candidates are going to be more popular than others. Not saying this is the right way to go, I'd agree with you that it shouldn't be. But it is. And Bernie is actually kind of like your cool uncle. Not that this is a great qualification to be elected President, but it is going to make someone more likable than others. The reason he's a household name instead of the newest version of Dennis Kucinich is because in '16 every major politician got out of the way for Hillary Clinton because it was "her turn".

In a normal election cycle without an incumbent there would have been a healthy range of candidates to choose from and Bernie would likely have polled at under 5% as one of the crazy candidates that some on the far left would sigh and say, "If only someone like that could get elected in our country". Instead it was only Clinton and your crazy but loveable uncle Bernie. And since Hillary Clinton is one of the least popular politicians in my lifetime (again, not least qualified but least liked by the average voter) folks were desperate for an alternative. So Bernie went from what should have been under 5% to oddly competitive.

This excited many on the left because (like minority voters who are also pandered to, with talk of "hot sauce in my purse wherever I go" and the like) they usually have to eat s##t, get in line, and support the middle-of-the-road candidate the Party elite has pushed and accommodated. Now they had someone who held beliefs closer to theirs. And (a rare treat, and usually disqualifying) someone who actually seemed to believe in what he was saying, rather than saying what they needed to in order to be elected. This gave him a popularity he probably did not deserve, and allowed some to project qualities on him they wanted rather than who he necessarily was. Just as people did with Obama in '08.

The truth is most of the time politics is boring (sometimes by design, keeps average people from looking too deeply into things that are going on). People don't like boring. We just elected the political equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal that's probably slightly past its expiration date. But right now having spent the last four years with the meal equivalent of a still-living boar running around destroying things and defecating all over the carpet we're pretty OK with bland, stale oatmeal. How long will it take the American public to forget that boar though? One Presidential election cycle, two? We're (I say we as I'm a lifelong Democratic voter as apparently is a large section of this board) going to have to put a popular product out there at some point. Hopefully they can do something to make Harris seem more interesting than they did in '20 when she had to drop out from low polling. She'll have at least four years in the spotlight to build a resume. But it is important that she be at least somewhat likable. Whether that should matter or not, it does.

[CaptainEurope]

Trump's pardons may be poorly worded enough to leave some people on the hook

• President Trump's pardons leave some of their subjects open to additional prosecution, experts say.
• His former campaign chair Paul Manafort could still be prosecuted for specific crimes he wasn't pardoned for.
• Even Michael Flynn, who received a wider-ranging pardon, could still have it tested by courts.

[CaptainEurope]

Here is a longish twitter thread of the Hawaii GOP defending QAnon.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So Cawthorn basically said that he believes the constitution gives him the right to overthrow the government if he doesn’t like the results of a fair and “not fraudulent” election. I really wish she would have asked him where in the actual **** does the constitution say that. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that he’s never read the document.

If assclowns like Cawthorn want to die on that particular hill, then I say....GO FOR IT!