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

[numberthirty]

You saw the same thing when that kid took a gun across his state's border to a neighboring one to shoot people. They like to say he was "protecting property" (that wasn't his to protect, as he wasn't a resident of the state again let alone owner of property in the city), but really he was living out the masturbation fantasy of all these white supremacists. Getting to use their fetishized weapons that, as Obama famously made the mistake of telling the truth about (though behind closed doors), they cling to in order to feel the power they obviously know they lack without them on another human being. Preferably ones darker than themselves.

These guys cosplaying cowboys or (in the fantasies of the white supremacists who will be proudly posting these images and out loud wishing they had been on horseback with them to "round 'em up") slave overseers will be sending thrills up the legs of the increasingly vocal white nationalist faction on the right for years to come. The only good thing about this movement is that it's now coming out into the open, where before people kept such feelings to themselves generally and allowed those of us on the left who would prefer to believe in the general decency of humanity to believe we were living in a more tolerant and less racist world. You can't solve a problem until you first acknowledge there is one, and now it's impossible to deny. So give Trump that at least. He saw these people, and he pandered but good. Now's the time to figure out what to do about it.

While it's a minor issue that is removed from the central issue that you are bringing up, I heard on news radio here in Illinois that the reason that never really came up is that it never actually happened.

Apparently(never really double checked it closely after hearing about it...), there was a gun waiting for him in the state where it happened.

[numberthirty]

Well... Looks like that was indeed the case, and he never actually took a weapon across state lines.

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-up...es-in-illinois

Kyle Rittenhouse, Accused Kenosha Killer, Won't Face Gun Charges In Illinois

Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, faces six criminal counts in Wisconsin, including first-degree intentional homicide. He allegedly used an AR-15-style rifle during protests in Kenosha, Wisc., that erupted after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Lake County, Ill. State's Attorney Michael Nerheim's office said in a statement that an investigation conducted by local police "revealed the gun used in the Kenosha shooting was purchased, stored and used in Wisconsin."

"Additionally, there is no evidence the gun was ever physically possessed by Kyle Rittenhouse in Illinois," the state's attorney's office added.

Police in Antioch, Ill., led the investigation. Antioch is Rittenhouse's hometown, which is located about 15 miles southwest of Kenosha.

The Lake County statement did not provide any details about who may have possessed the gun or where it currently is.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Voting Machine Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows

Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.

But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.

By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.

The court papers, which were initially filed late last week as a motion in a defamation lawsuit brought against the campaign and others by a former Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, contain evidence that officials in the Trump campaign were aware early on that many of the claims against the companies were baseless.

How now, brown cow! The truth is out at last. The only question is if Trump was made aware about said memo, and if he was, did he accept it?

[worstblogever]

Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Voting Machine Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows



How now, brown cow! The truth is out at last. The only question is if Trump was made aware about said memo, and if he was, did he accept it?

Dominion Voting Systems is gonna get PAAAAAAID in that lawsuit.

[worstblogever]

Well... Looks like that was indeed the case, and he never actually took a weapon across state lines.

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-up...es-in-illinois

Then the question is...

How does a 17 year old purchase an assault rifle in another state that isn't the one in which he lives during a background check?

He can't purchase cigarettes or vote, but he can get a murder toy to kill two people. How the f*** does that make sense? Like, it was almost a better take on our gun laws if his mom bought it for him and he took it with him.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a man who cites the Bible as the evidence he needs to refute climate change (even contradicting Pope Francis' stance on the issue based on his Bible stance, which the Pope is kind of also an expert on), which he does with a passion beyond possibly any other Republican in Congress, most famously in the still frame above from C-SPAN, where he presented a snowball in Washington, D.C. in February as indisputable proof. He also criticized President Obama for attending the Paris climate change accords because climate change science "ignores God's power". He’s also pridefully bragged about his dedication to discrimination over his refusal to have ever employed a single gay staffer in his entire Congressional career, and boasted how there are no gay people amongst any of his 11 children or 47 grandchildren on the floor of the Senate, and in 2016, took to the floor of the Senate to condemn he idea of transgendered citizens being allowed to use the public bathroom of their choice, saying it was a "liberal agenda being crammed down the neck of Oklahoma" . Inhofe once declared 9-11 was “God’s Judgment on the American people for not doing enough to help Israel”. He also expressed his outrage in 2004 when the photos of American soldiers abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison leaked to the public, because he thought everyone was making a fuss over people who deserved what they were getting. Inhofe not only once participated in a Republican filibuster of a bill from New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand that was aimed at preventing military sexual assault, but on the anniversary of that filibuster, he single-handedly moved to block her from bringing the bill to the floor for another vote. He has claimed there are no instances of fracking ever contaminating groundwater, anywhere. Inhofe claimed that “the culture of sanctuary cities” were the real cause of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, rather than lax gun control laws. Oh, and rounding things out, James Inhofe voted against relief funding for Hurricane Sandy, which is rather hypocritical considering how much he falls all over himself to get disaster relief funding whenever any part of Oklahoma gets hit by a tornado (which is pretty frequent).

During the Trump administration, Sen. Inhofe voted to confirm every member of Donald Trump's Cabinet of horrors, attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and leave 23 million Americans without health insurance, and voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, something he'd been keen on doing since immediately commenting on delaying the vote before Antonin Scalia's body was even cold. He put Brett Kavanaugh on there as well, ignoring that Kavanaugh perjured himself multiple times during his confirmation hearings, as well as his first confirmation hearing to become a federal judge... and then helped push Amy Coney Barrett onto the SCOTUS in the fastest confirmation in modern history.

We’ll add that not long after the death of Sen. John McCain, when the White House bizarrely took its flag down from half-mast ahead of every other institution in Washington, Sen. Inhofe blamed the breach of protocol not on a grudge Donald Trump had with McCain… but on the deceased Arizona Senator. That may have been because the entire time McCain was battling cancer, Inhofe was chomping at the bit to take his place as the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that he also just bought stock in the military contractor Raytheon in the past few years, which is a HUGE conflict of interest for someone who, you know, uses his position in the Senate to decide what companies get tax dollars for their military equipment. That’s why it should come as little surprise that he would claim a general at the Pentagon told him we should not withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan… how is Sen. Inhofe supposed to profit on war without one actively going on?

James Inhofe is now 87 years old, and won re-election in 2020 that will theoretically keep him in office until he is 92.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Dominion Voting Systems is gonna get PAAAAAAID in that lawsuit.

I know, right? Whatever the initial amount was that Dominion asked for in their lawsuit, it clearly WASN'T enough, given these new revelations.

[CaptainEurope]

And for all of the atrocities committed by Australia, the US, and other "democratic" nations we have dead bodies, lots and lots of them. If you want to say that both are just as bad, then you need to apply the same standard of evidence on both sides. If you're going to assert that one side is worse despite the fact that far LESS evidence exists for its misdeeds than for the other, then I really don't know what to tell you.

Just be honest with me here, before this current spat with China started circa 2017 or so, did you even know that there was a Muslim ethnic group living in the northwest of the country with a distinct culture? It's okay if you didn't, I had no idea who the Rohingya were before they started showing up in the news either.

When a country has no free press or free university research, you will never have as much evidence. That is the beauty of committing crimes in non-democracies.

[Robotman]

Dominion Voting Systems is gonna get PAAAAAAID in that lawsuit.

I really hope so. There needs to be some accountability in this world of rampant conspiracy theories that are destroying lives and our freaking democracy.

[Gray Lensman]

When a country has no free press or free university research, you will never have as much evidence. That is the beauty of committing crimes in non-democracies.

By The China Apologist's logic, the North was in the wrong during the American Civil War, as there are far more records of what they did wrong than anything the Confederacy did during the war. In objective reality, it's understood that the Confederacy destroyed as many records as they could, whereas the Union still has records detailing even minor infractions.

[numberthirty]

Then the question is...

How does a 17 year old purchase an assault rifle in another state that isn't the one in which he lives during a background check?

He can't purchase cigarettes or vote, but he can get a murder toy to kill two people. How the f*** does that make sense? Like, it was almost a better take on our gun laws if his mom bought it for him and he took it with him.

From the article...

An attorney for Rittenhouse has previously said his client never had possession of the gun outside of Wisconsin.

"Kyle did not carry a gun across state lines," Lin Wood said in a tweet. "The gun belonged to his friend, a Wisconsin resident. The gun never left the State of Wisconsin. Truth always prevails."

[PwrdOn]

By The China Apologist's logic, the North was in the wrong during the American Civil War, as there are far more records of what they did wrong than anything the Confederacy did during the war. In objective reality, it's understood that the Confederacy destroyed as many records as they could, whereas the Union still has records detailing even minor infractions.

What you're saying is not even true, since we have plenty of evidence for Confederate war crimes such as the Fort Pillow massacre, while it generally understood that most of the Union's supposed atrocities were severely exaggerated by post-war Southern propagandists. Similarly we have a lot more evidence for Axis war crimes during WW2 than for Allied ones.

Look, if you're going to accuse the Chinese of committing genocide without evidence, assert that you don't have evidence because China covers everything up and so you can safely just assume the worst, and then accuse anyone who points this out of being an apologist, then you're a perfect example of why the American notion of "free expression" isn't as universal a value as you might think. If everyone is "free" to just spread lies and nonsense without backing it up with actual information, then you're not speaking truth to power, you're just a conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones or the QAnon people. Because let me tell you, the right wing media sphere has PLENTY of stories to tell about China that THEY don't want you to know about.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

From the article...

Okay, I'm confused. So what did that little shitstain use to murder those two people?

[babyblob]

Okay, I'm confused. So what did that little shitstain use to murder those two people?

He used the gun in the article from what I understand when I read. The point of the article was that Kyle did not bring the gun across state lines, That the gun was already in the state and he got it from a friend or something.

[Tami]

Then the question is...

How does a 17 year old purchase an assault rifle in another state that isn't the one in which he lives during a background check?

He can't purchase cigarettes or vote, but he can get a murder toy to kill two people. How the f*** does that make sense? Like, it was almost a better take on our gun laws if his mom bought it for him and he took it with him.

I was thinking he may have been given it by someone else. If so, there is another person out there that the FBI should be tracking down.