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

[PaulBullion]

Oh and Cummings has refused to resign, so he flouted all the rules despite the police saying he broke them, lied frequently and now that track and trace as well as ecenomic talks are here has apparently gotten away with it.

A very naughty person uploaded the clip of Johnson standing by Cummings to one of those porn sites with the title "Submissive blonde can't quit cumming".

[Kuro no Shinigami]

Rioters are also attacking businesses owned by honest and hard-working black people.

Rioters just destroyed a bar that a black ex-firefighter bought with his life savings in Minneapolis. They also looted his safe inside the bar. In addition, the owner doesn't have any insurance for the bar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...-life-savings/

Rioters protesting the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, an African-American man who died after being arrested and pinned to the ground by officer Derek Chauvin, destroyed a bar owned by a black former firefighter Wednesday night.

Korboi Balla had invested his life savings in the bar and was planning to open it before the coronavirus pandemic caused mass business closures. Balla then moved the opening date to June 1, when Minnesota plans to lift restrictions on restaurants, but the bar has since been wracked and looted in the riots, CBS first reported.

CBS was filming a segment at the bar when looters entered through the back of the establishment to try to steal Balla’s safe.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Balla said in an interview. “It hurts, man. It’s not fair, it’s not right. We’ve been working so hard for this place. It’s not just for me, it’s for my family.”

Balla’s wife Tywanna said that the bar was not insured.

“Yes people are mad and upset, I get that and I understand the protest, I’m hearing people say F*** the business they have insurance WELL WE DON’T AND THIS IS ALL OUT OF POCKET!!!” Tywanna wrote in a Facebook post. “Let someone come run in your home and loot for the cause then and let’s see you be ok with it!”

[sammy_hansen]

Rioters are also attacking businesses owned by honest and hard-working black people.

Rioters just destroyed a bar that a black ex-firefighter bought with his life savings in Minneapolis. They also looted his safe inside the bar. In addition, the owner doesn't have any insurance for the bar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...-life-savings/

I guess it sucks when innocent black people are victims of crime hey?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Protests Continue Nationwide Over George Floyd Killing In Minneapolis

After days of unrest, the white officer who knelt on the Black man’s neck was charged with third-degree murder. Floyd’s family wants the other officers arrested, too.

**********

Restaurant Owner Shows Solidarity With Protesters: ‘Let My Building Burn’

Gandhi Mahal restaurant in Minneapolis was damaged during protests over George Floyd’s death.

**********

Trump Takes No Questions From Press Amid Nationwide Protests On Police Violence

Later in the day, the president expressed his “deepest condolences” to George Floyd’s family. Earlier, he tweeted that protesters in Minneapolis were “thugs.” Cowardly ************.

**********

11 Things To Do Besides Say ‘This Has To Stop’ In The Wake Of Police Brutality

Want to end police brutality against Black people? To paraphrase Angela Davis, it’s not enough to *not* be racist — you need to be antiracist.

**********

Maryland’s GOP Governor Rips Trump For ‘Inciting Violence With Twitter’ In Minneapolis

“Inflammatory rhetoric” isn’t “helpful,” chides Gov. Larry Hogan, who dealt with unrest after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore in 2015.

**********

The Shooting Of Black Americans Started Long Before The Looting

Donald Trump threatened George Floyd protesters on Twitter, but their lives have always been at risk.

[worstblogever]

Oooooooooh WBE! Get a load of this clown, Tony Lovasco.

Sadly, there are scores of loons like him in the Missouri state legislature, and that's probably the only reason I hadn't heard of this particular one sooner.

I'll add him to the queue, which only about in February had dwindled to like 80 people left I haven't mentioned yet. With Covid-19, Qanon, police violence, and the 2020 election approaching, that number has nearly doubled and jumped to over 150.

[Tendrin]

Sadly, there are scores of loons like him in the Missouri state legislature, and that's probably the only reason I hadn't heard of this particular one sooner.

I'll add him to the queue, which only about in February had dwindled to like 80 people left I haven't mentioned yet. With Covid-19, Qanon, police violence, and the 2020 election approaching, that number has nearly doubled and jumped to over 150.

Poor WBE.

Poor, poor WBE.

Also, PaulBullion, clear your dumb inbox!

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Michael Peroutka, a former member of the Constitution Party who ran for president on that ticket back in 2004, and in 2014, shifted his party to Republican to run for a seat on the Maryland Arundel County Council. While his current political rank might seem pretty low compared to being a one-time presidential candidate, Peroutka is a worthy enough person to profile for his influence, as he has long been a financial supporter of dim-witted Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, in his quest to violate the separation of church and state that our Constitution guarantees by putting Ten Commandments monuments up in courthouses. But that’s not where Peroutka’s extremism stops… he’s also a long time member of the NeoConfederate group, the League of the South, and when called out on that fact, once responded, “I’m not a Neo-Confederate, if anything I want to be just a True Confederate.” We covered an extensive list of racist and homophobic comments from Peroutka, as well as his calls to arrest all women who get abortions, and using his media profile to claim that Planned Parenthood stalks children and hopes they get pregnant so they can abort their own unborn children. He’s also disgustingly anti-science, to boot, having donated an allosaurus skeleton to a Creationalist museum that teaches children the Earth is only 4,300 years old, and that the Columbine shooting massacre happened because evolution was being taught in public schools. We cannot describe him as terrifyingly bigoted and insane… but at least he doesn’t hold a higher office than he does, currently.


It was in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the four term U.S. House Representative for Illinois’ 16th Congressional District, Adam Kinzinger, who not only bought into the Center for Medical Progress’ bogus “sting” video that illegally taped a Planned Parenthood executive, comparing the fraudulent footage to concentration camp experiments on conservative talk radio. And it’s part of that sort of reaction that the GOP had that served as a stochastic terror trigger to send a man named Robert Lewis Dear over the edge, and to shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. But Kinzinger wasn’t satisfied with the violence his party incited, not at all. During the five hour siege that left three people dead, and many others hospitalized or pinned inside the building, Adam Kinzinger was live on CNN, and said he expected an apology from Planned Parenthood if it turned out they were not the intended target of the shooter. We’ll repeat that… Kinzinger demanded an apology from the organization attacked while there was still gunfire being heard, and an active shooter was still attacking them. Kinzinger has never apologized for his remarks. His voting record also is highly conservative across the board, and not surprisingly, very much so on abortion rights.

And now, the brutally depressing part… in spite of all members of Congress having a pathetically low approval rating, Adam Kinzinger’s heartless comments about victims of a mass shooting while they were still laid up in a hospital, or that Kinzinger that he decided to send out a mailer of him taking a photo with some of his constituents which he used to make an ad mailer touting his pro-life record without their consent…

his district only has a +4 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index…. Kinzinger still won re-election in 2018 with 59% of the vote. Thus, his constituents have had to put up with representation like this during his current term:

• February 28th, 2019: Adam Kinzinger 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. Kinzinger 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.
• May 17th, 2019: Kinzinger votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Kinzinger votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Adam Kinzinger 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”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Kinzinger 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.

Adam Kinzinger has also ended up in a controversy because he criticized Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for removing National Guard troops from the U.S./Mexico border that were requested to be sent there by Donald Trump. Kinzinger is a reservist, and could face discipline for publicly criticizing his own orders to stand down. Of course, he probably only made the statement in the first place to win the approval of Trump, and hope it would allow him to be named Air Force Secretary. We can’t tell if his attacks on Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and to continue stay-at-home orders to keep the public safe are that he’s kissing Trump’s ass again, or if he’s trying to protect his stock options at the cost of human lives.

Either way, he remains quite the container of vinegar and water (*cough*douchebag*cough*).

[CaptainEurope]

Merkel rebuffs Trump invitation to G7 summit

Angela Merkel has rebuffed Donald Trump’s invitation to attend a G7 summit, which the U.S. president is keen to portray as a symbol of a return to normality from the upheaval of the coronavirus crisis.

"The federal chancellor thanks President Trump for his invitation to the G7 summit at the end of June in Washington. As of today, considering the overall pandemic situation, she cannot agree to her personal participation, to a journey to Washington," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told POLITICO Friday.

Nothing but respect for my Kanzlerin.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Merkel rebuffs Trump invitation to G7 summit




Nothing but respect for my Kanzlerin.

Who is Trump trying to fool? There is no such thing as normalcy during a pandemic that’s killed tens of thousands, affected millions more and crippled economies all over the world. Kudos to Madame Merkel for saying no to Drano Don whom I’m sure will have a hissy fit over being rebuffed, then insult her via Twitter.

[Kusanagi]

At what point do we just declare Germany leader of the free world? Or was that 2018? 2017 maybe?

[Kirby101]

I mean, it is funny that so much of our national identity is wrapped up in the American Revolution yet we are rarely ever taught what it was actually about. Forget all that nonsense about freedom from tyranny, in practice the government of the early United States was indistinguishable from the colonial administration, and indeed perhaps the greatest contribution of the revolution made to advancing the cause of liberty was to inspire the French to revolt with a far more radical stance which has had much farther ranging effects on politics the world over. The real reason the colonists revolted was because they were hungry for native land, after all most of them had only moved here in the first place because of the promise of vast tracts of open space just waiting to be settled, and with the British victory in the Seven Years' War and subsequent seizure of all French territory in North America, they believed that the gateway west was now wide open. However, the British insistence on maintaining the treaties the native tribes had signed with the French left the colonists bottled up near the coast, an intolerable situation as the vast majority of that land had already been claimed by a handful of wealthy plantation owners, and there were innumerable young men yearning to strike out into the frontier and stake their own claim, never mind all the people already living there. Admittedly, it is unlikely that the British could have maintained the borders as they were for long anyway, and there were certainly plenty of British investors who saw opportunities out west that they wanted to claim for themselves rather than allowing the colonists to get there first. But fundamentally, that's what the Revolutionary War was about, two groups of white men fighting over who had the right to take over native lands.

Nothing wrong with your analysis of the history. Historical analysis is always worth a good discussion. But to empirically state this as fact and not opinion is overreach at the least.

[babyblob]

Are you kidding me? The rioting IS for social activism. Looting is for survival, but don’t pretend that we’re all treated equally. In discussions of class, black ppl are still hit harder.

I can get that if there was looting for medicine, or food. But last night in Cincinnati the protesters broke into two stores. A sports clothing store and several people stole hats and jerseys. and they broke into a corner store and stole beer. What part of this was looting for survival?

The thing I did like was seeing several people on the news trying to calm the crowds down and deescalate the situation. I am glad the news showed coverage of people trying to help stop the violence.

One thing I have always said was work within the system. I still dont agree with riots and looting. But after seeing the reaction from several people in power I can understand more why people are rioting (Still dont agree with the looting).

And I am glad that on Friday several days after Floyds death that Trump gave his condolences to Floyds family. Way to be fast on your response. The racial problems in this country will be healed now that several days after the fact Trump said he was sorry for the murder of an innocent man.

[worstblogever]

I did see a photo of the folks in Target.

Gonna question how the white guy snagging a Star Wars Lego set is looting for survival, or social activism, and not just selfish opportunism.

Everyone else, fine. But not that dude.

[PaulBullion]

Anyone else embarrassed they ever spent money on a Dilbert book?

[babyblob]

Anyone else embarrassed they ever spent money on a Dilbert book?

I have several Dilbert books, the animated show and a doll. Proudly embarrassed.