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

[Tendrin]

When we imagine potential prison life in the US, it is rare that the loss of freedom seems the biggest concern, isn't it? I mean, people unfortunately love to predict that a person going to prison means they may likely be raped. I think it is a perverse aspect of our society, that some seem to think that violence from other prisoners might somehow be justice; that prisoners have foregone any right to safety, by the simple fact of being prisoners.

You're absolutely correct, of course.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Is the knife ok?

More seriously, I'm really surprised something like that was allowed to happen and that he wasn't in protective custody.

Or he wasn't put in solitary. I'm sure just about every black prisoner in the place was dying to get their hands on Chauvin.

[Username taken]

When we imagine potential prison life in the US, it is rare that the loss of freedom seems the biggest concern, isn't it? I mean, people unfortunately love to predict that a person going to prison means they may likely be raped. I think it is a perverse aspect of our society, that some seem to think that violence from other prisoners might somehow be justice; that prisoners have foregone any right to safety, by the simple fact of being prisoners.

I could be wrong, but I imagine Chauvin probably thought something like that, before he became a prisoner, himself. I will nonetheless say violence against even him shouldn't be celebrated, and the irony of our broken criminal justice failing him just as it fails so many others does not lessen the tragedy of Floyd's murder in the slightest.

Not like I get to spend a ton of time being proud of things about America, but our prison industrial system is embarassing on a political level, just as it is inhumane on a human level.

You're correct.

The problem is how society has largely turned a blind eye to this. The US prison system is completely broken but no one wants to take a firm hand on this because they don't want to appear "soft on crime".

[Iron Maiden]

The prison system in the U.S. has been broken for a long time. The staffing shortage doesn't help either.

[Mister Mets]

Hamas has delayed the second hostage release.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/25/12151...soners-release

I am not at all surprised that they're operating at bad faith, and still believe that anyone calling for a ceasefire should have been calling for an unconditional surrender from Hamas.

[Tami]

Hamas has delayed the second hostage release.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/25/12151...soners-release

I am not at all surprised that they're operating at bad faith, and still believe that anyone calling for a ceasefire should have been calling for an unconditional surrender from Hamas.

This is why it is a complicated situation and one that has to be handled carefully by expert diplomats. Everyone would love a unilateral cease-fire, but it it were that easy Hamas never would have attacked in the first place and would instead have found a more civil (diplomatic) avenue for their grievances.
a

[The Cool Thatguy]

This is why it is a complicated situation and one that has to be handled carefully by expert diplomats. Everyone would love a unilateral cease-fire, but it it were that easy Hamas never would have attacked in the first place and would instead have found a more civil (diplomatic) avenue for their grievances.
a

Minor disagreement.

Hamas would rather fight a war they know they cannot win then make a sincere effort at peace.

They could have armed the @$$-holes from October 7 with paint ball guns and spraypaint, and achieved a far greater diplomatic victory than what they did.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" ran a profile of Andre Bauer, who for years was a thorn in the side of former Governor Mark Sanford, and looked to supplant him after his "hike in the Appalachians". After spending years intimidating local police in the Palmetto State into not giving him tickets for extreme speeding violations, and crashing his own personal plane, he garnered further attention for pushing for state-issued license plates with a crucifix on them that said "I Believe", and condemned anyone opposed to this violation of the separation of church and state to hell. His campaign for governor was marred with ugly gaffes, like having former FRED Jake Knotts say that his opponent, Nikki Haley, "wasn't really a Christian", and a "raghead", dragging as many men out of the woodwork as he could to claim they had participated in adulterous affairs with Haley, and then Bauer himself comparing people on welfare to stray dogs. Needless to say, there's a reason that people now refer to her as "Governor Nikki Haley", and Andre Bauer went on to fail to be elected in South Carolina's 7th District two years later in 2012.

On this date in 2015, we published our original "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" profile of Stephen LaRoque, a former member of the North Carolina General Assembly who was an opponent of voting rights, gay marriage, and climate change research who mocked protesters who appeared at the state capitol to protest the Republican-controlled legislature stripping unemployment benefits by offering them a job doing yard work for a pittance at his home. LaRoque tried to act like these workers were getting a sweet deal by being paid more than a dollar an hour than he gets paid as a legislator... but then word broke that LaRoque had been caught embezzling $2 million in ill-gotten interest on state agriculture loans since 1998. Since he was found guilty and sentenced to 24 months in prison.

On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published a profile about Don Dwyer, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates whose career when spiraling out of control, much like the vehicles Dwyer would often operate while inebriated. Dwyer’s first incident back in 2012 saw him crashing his boat, “The Legislator” while intoxicated, injuring himself, another adult, and four children with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Not even a year later, Dwyer was charged with DUI during a traffic stop where he failed three different sobriety tests and was cited for over 14 violations including driving without a license. Supposedly, that second incident went on record while Dwyer claimed to be in a treatment program, and while he was about to be sentenced for his drunken boat crash. Dwyer, though, had a reasonable explanation for losing himself to raging and irresponsible alcoholism… His wife left him and he was really sad because his colleagues had allowed gay marriages to start happening. In the small world of Maryland politics, maybe it should come as little surprise that Dwyer is also closely linked to the White Nationalist Michael Peroutka, as he once served as the executive director for Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution. When you’re pals with a Neo-Confederate lunatic, it can’t come as a surprise that Dwyer ended up frequently submitting nullification legislation to any law he didn’t like. Or, y’know, the fact that Dwyer misinterprets the Constitution to think that people should have to pass religious tests to hold public office (The Supreme Court’s Tarasco v. Watkins ruling says otherwise). And, it’s real hard to feel bad for him for getting voted out of office considering that Dwyer responded to the Sandy Hook Massacre in early 2013 by holding a fundraiser where he auctioned off two assault rifles. Anyway, Don Dwyer failed to get re-elected in 2014, finishing a distant sixth in an eight candidate Republican primary for his seat. He did not run for any office in 2016.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in both 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled Glenn Gruenhagen, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives who first came onto the scene back in, you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave with but 51% of the vote. He since has somehow gathered a following among GOP voters, winning with at least 60% of the vote in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Perhaps his charm with his party lies in his radical social conservative views, like that he is “pro life from conception to natural death” and thinks that abortion somehow has “economic consequences” or that he claims the Affordable Care Act will lead to “healthcare rationing”, a frequently debunked myth the right likes to spread about the ACA that has been widely known to be a bogus talking point for around… oh, eight or nine years now.

Gruenhagen’s signature issue, however, is LGBTQ rights, or why we should not have them. Going back to his earliest days serving on a school council, Gruenhagen has been fervently anti-gay, often interrupting school board meetings to, non sequitur, rant about the evils of sodomy. In 2005, his own colleagues noted:

. . .With regularity Mr. Gruenhagen inserts his own biases into school board meetings with not the least provocation. Abortion, homosexuality, safe sex, evolution and countless other topics that do not appear on the school board’s agenda are brought to the fore, repeatedly, and forced onto unsuspecting school board members, administrators and individuals in the viewing audience. To do so is rude, a violation of school board decorum, a waste of attendees’ time and a disruption in the flow of otherwise quality public meetings. He ignores the expert advice of the superintendent of schools, two architectural firms, a construction management firm ... Incredible!

Back in 2007, Gruenhagen also wrote an op-ed in his local paper, where he wanted to discuss Christmas… The topic he veered off for a moment to show how aghast he was at Congressman Keith Ellison being sworn in on a copy of the Koran and how it was a plot to have it someday take the place of the Bible, and somehow, he went even further off course from talking about celebrating the birth of Jesus and instead onto the dread topic of sodomy:

”When newly elected U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison insisted on using the Koran (Qur’an) at his oath of office, many citizens raised concerns about the symbolism of that event. . . . . I believe we see the disturbing and subtle influence of using the Koran to replace the Bible as our source of “civil and religious liberties.”
. . .Many have great concern for our country as we have drifted from the Judeo-Christian principles which gave us our liberties and freedoms, into the religion of atheism, such as the belief in abortion, pornography, sodomy as an orientation, evolution, etc. The corruption of atheistic values in our schools and government institutions leaves open the door for a foreign religious value system to influence our country’s culture. [emphasis added] Many patriotic Americans are concerned that our freedoms and liberties will be lost with the censorship and removal of our Creator who authored our liberty and freedoms. Is it important for publicly elected officials to place their hand on the Bible during their oath of office in spite of the American Civil Liberties Union? I’ll let you decide.”

At another point in 2013, Gruenhagen wrote a column online that linked any constituent who clicked on it to read it to an anti-gay hate group from Massachusetts that conveniently still reports sodomy is a crime (which, no, not after the Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003). The gist of all this rants is, by being allowed to exist, and marry people, and have any gay sex, the gay community are “coming after Christians with their gay agenda” and that homosexuality is just a form of “sexual addiction” based on an “unscientific lie”. And he will, at any point, reflexively start telling lies about homosexuals.

The “secret gay agenda” is hardly the only bizarre conspiracy theory Gruenhagen believes in, as he is also a climate change denier wielding a particularly abhorrent lack of logic, insisting that talk of it is “a United Nations fraud”, while making the idiotic accusation that those who do acknowledge evidence of climate change “believe that exhaling is causing global warning”, citing “facts he learned at CPAC”. And honestly, when the most sane idea you’ve pitched in government is to castrate sex offenders because “it worked on the farm”, maybe you shouldn’t be a legislator.

That’s just us at FRED thinking, though.

Glenn Gruenhagen was elected to a sixth term in office in 2020, where we’re sure he’ll continue to try and block any Democratic bills that cross his path, even something as simple as a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to include an equal rights amendment or to sponsor bills that would defund any public library that dares to host a Drag Queen Story Hour.

On January 6th, 2021, while the U.S. Capitol was being overrun by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and domestic terrorists trying to prevent the counting the electoral college votes that would lead to Joe Biden being sworn in as president after being incited by Donald Trump, Glenn Gruenhagen was one of six Minnesota state legislators who were having their own little sedition-fest back in St. Paul, where several speakers called for violence, including one who flat-out wanted to start up a civil war. Gruenhagen, of course, painted himself the victim when criticism emerged, saying, ““It seems like it is political theater to try and intimidate and silence a constitutionally protected peaceful rally at the St. Paul Capitol in support of Trump.”

Glenn Gruenhagen opted to run for the Minnesota State Senate in 2022, seeking the very red seat in District 17 held by the retiring Scott Newman,
https://www.willmarradio.com/news/gr...02b60d76b.html
getting 70% of the vote. What else would he have done with that elevated power but continue to be incredibly transphobic. Whether or not he’s getting investigated for an ethics complaint for sharing a horrifying video around the Minnesota state legislature of supposed “gender reassignment surgery videos”, or going into a bigoted panic because the Daughters of the American Revolution started admitting trans-women into their ranks...

This man exists almost solely to propagate intolerance. The world will be better when Glenn Gruenhagen leaves it.

[JCAll]

Minor disagreement.

Hamas would rather fight a war they know they cannot win then make a sincere effort at peace.

They could have armed the @$$-holes from October 7 with paint ball guns and spraypaint, and achieved a far greater diplomatic victory than what they did.

I doubt it. Terrorists don't really care about their public image, just about accomplishing their goals and solidifying their power. Just think of all the chaos and dysfunction they've spread even in the US and Europe. Anti-Muslim and anti-jewish bigotry feels everywhere, Israel got provoked into botching their response triggering waves of backlash, which got it's own backlash to the backlash, and another backlash against the backlash to the backlash. It sucks.

This might be the biggest victory for terrorism since 9/11, and all it took was not caring how many innocent people they killed or got killed in the crossfire.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I doubt it. Terrorists don't really care about their public image, just about accomplishing their goals and solidifying their power. Just think of all the chaos and dysfunction they've spread even in the US and Europe. Anti-Muslim and anti-jewish bigotry feels everywhere, Israel got provoked into botching their response triggering waves of backlash, which got it's own backlash to the backlash, and another backlash against the backlash to the backlash. It sucks.

This might be the biggest victory for terrorism since 9/11, and all it took was not caring how many innocent people they killed or got killed in the crossfire.

Not to sound heartless, but the number of Israelis killed doesn't equal anywhere near enough to win a war. Same with 9/11.

October 7 wasn't Pearl Harbor. It was just pointless slaughter that served little tactical advantage. It may have been a big win, but it would never be enough to overcome Israel's superior tactical power.

Religious zealots care less about winning meaningful victories and more about the fight than anything else

[ed2962]

Hamas has delayed the second hostage release.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/25/12151...soners-release

I am not at all surprised that they're operating at bad faith, and still believe that anyone calling for a ceasefire should have been calling for an unconditional surrender from Hamas.

I just heard the deal is back on.

[Tami]

I just heard the deal is back on.

I think the second group has just recently been released.

[Arachne]

Yeah. 17 more hostages have been released. 13 Israelis and 4 Thai.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel...ay-2-1.7040142

[Malvolio]

While I would definitely believe Hamas going back on their word, this particular delay does now seem to be a logistical one.