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

[Tendrin]

The group whose members then-lawmaker Mike Nearman coached to breach the closed state Capitol sprang a decade ago from billionaire Koch brothers-funded efforts to encourage grassroots support for libertarian ideals of personal freedom, small government and big tax cuts.

In the years since that group, Oregon Citizens Lobby, was launched by the state chapter of Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity, it has generated a steady stream of lobbying-related training events and alerts. The group rallies its volunteers to press legislators to support or oppose bills. Before the pandemic caused lawmakers to shut off public access to the Capitol, the group rented a room in the building during sessions to hold weekly “war room” meetings.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

I'm sure we're all shocked.

[Gray Lensman]

After reading that, methinks Bundy might have a particular skeleton in his closet.

Bundy has gone on record denouncing Trump's anti-immigrant stance. It might be his one redeeming quality, which is one too many for the GQP.

Of course he might ALSO have skeletons in his closet, but those might not be necessary to cause the rift.

[JackDaw]

The very low rate of convictions for rape has been a running sore on UK justice for decades now. Presently Labour is calling for the Conservative Justice Secretary to resign unless conviction rates go up. (Only 3 percent of reported rapes result in a successful conviction in UK)

Over recent years a number of changes have been considered to improve this situation.

Some of the proposed changes would be supported by any sane person (I think). In this category I would include far more considerate treatment of the complainant, better resourcing of the investigation, and an automatic assumption that every complaint will be investigated thoroughly and competently.

Others leave me concerned...some proposals would be automatically rejected if any other crime was considered. These include things like limiting the rights of cross examination, videoing testimony, etc.

The whole subject leaves me uneasy...it is clear that a fair number of rapes go unpunished. But sadly...I think that is is down to the principles that guilt has to be established beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused has a wide range of rights to put their case forward.

Ultimately...I think it would be a grievous mistake to jettison those principles.

Is situation similar in US?

[worstblogever]

The very low rate of convictions for rape has been a running sore on UK justice for decades now. Presently Labour is calling for the Conservative Justice Secretary to resign unless conviction rates go up. (Only 3 percent of reported rapes result in a successful conviction in UK)

Over recent years a number of changes have been considered to improve this situation.

Some of the proposed changes would be supported by any sane person (I think). In this category I would include far more considerate treatment of the complainant, better resourcing of the investigation, and an automatic assumption that every complaint will be investigated thoroughly and competently.

Others leave me concerned...some proposals would be automatically rejected if any other crime was considered. These include things like limiting the rights of cross examination, videoing testimony, etc.

The whole subject leaves me uneasy...it is clear that a fair number of rapes go unpunished. But sadly...I think that is is down to the principles that guilt has to be established beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused has a wide range of rights to put their case forward.

Ultimately...I think it would be a grievous mistake to jettison those principles.

Is situation similar in US?

Statistically, it's five times worse, per RAINN, out of 1000 rapes, only 6 result in incarceration for the crime.

Note that 7 out of 1000 are convicted, but somehow 1 in that 7 avoid jail time for rape.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Sheila Butt, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who we gave special attention to for responding to the existence of the Council of American-Islamic Relations on Facebook by suggesting that she should start a Council of Christian Relations and a NAAWP (which would presumably be the National Association for the Advancement of White People). What Butt might have wanted to check before she shot her mouth off that there already WAS a NAAWP back in 1953, founded by a White Supremacist in response to the NAACP. It fell apart within two years, but made a comeback in 1979, being run by none other than former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. Sheila Butt refused to apologize, claimed she was being unfairly targeted by a liberal conspiracy for her remarks, and was offended that anyone would even suggest she was racist because of them. Butt, who is a pastor’s wife, also wrote a book in 2008 that gave advice like to not date outside one’s race to avoid having biracial children, along with other tips like “find a young man who believes he is a breadwinner so his wife could be a stay home mom someday”, that “we did not come from ‘goo’ as the theory of evolution suggests”, and that “being gay is a choice” that is typically made because of “Satan, a bad sexual experience with members of the opposite sex, or a mom who didn’t encourage her son’s masculinity”. As a legislator, Butt has racked up the kind of voting record you might expect from a Tennessee Republican, including trying to nullify federal firearms laws, declare abortion as against the law because there’s nothing in the Constitution regarding it, and to try and name the Bible as the state book. And yes, she’s quite the theocrat, having produced legislation that would ban public schools from mentioning other religions during world history lessons, because she felt Islam was being given too much attention in it., being concerned that acknowledging it exists and played a role in world history could amount to “indoctrination”. Go figure, she also started haranguing Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to block the admission of Syrian Refugees that might be resettled into the state in November of 2015. She’s also currently on board with Tennessee Republicans’ attempts to prevent the removal of Confederate monuments (but she still insists she’s not racist). But perhaps her lowest moment was when she argued against putting rape and incest exceptions into an abortion bill because they are “not verifiable”, which would be news to a lot of crime labs with rape kits and genetic testing, but it’s still sad to see a woman who believes anyone who seeks an abortion due to rape should be immediately be under suspicion of deception. Oh, and we weren’t the only ones who noticed the phenomenon that is Sheila Butt, as Samantha Bee gave her a special spotlight on Season One of her TBS show, Full Frontal, back in April of 2016, where she mocked Butt not only for her new stance on transgender citizens using public bathrooms (Hint: Butt’s ideas are on the intolerant side of the issue) for all of what we covered, and referred to Butt’s book for advice for girls, “Instead, do all the stuff Sheila Butt suggests, or as she may call it, ‘Butt Stuff.’ This Tennessee state representative wants you to do lots and lots of Butt stuff. Do Butt stuff until it hurts!” All the criticism and mockery finally withered away enough on Sheila Butt that she has decided to retire after four terms in office, and did not be running for re-election in 2018.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, profiled John Fitzgerald, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 11th Congressional District who was going to challenge Democrat Mark DeSaulnier by campaigning on the issues that really matter to GOP voters these days… like denying the existence of the Holocaust. Yes, that’s right… the Republican Party had yet another anti-Semitiic lunatic on the ballot in 2018, and Fitzgerald “campaigned” by going on Neo-Nazi podcasts to talk about his dedication to “exposing the Holocaust as a fabricated lie”. He insisted he wasn’t anti-Semitic and was “just stating facts”, but that’s hard to believe considering he actually ordered robocalls that warned about “Jews taking over the world”, while blaming them for 9/11. Fitzgerald is also such a moron that he paid for the calls to be made outside of the district he was running for office in. And, one would think that Republican voters aren’t just brain dead enough to vote for anything with an “R” next to their name… and yet, Fitzgerald still got 26% of the vote. It seems highly unlikely that this bigot will ever be elected to office in California, though, so we will set aside his profile at this time and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead.

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Corey Lewandowski, who most people will remember was one of the multiple Trump 2016 campaign managers unafraid to go on cable news and incessantly lie on Trump’s behalf, but in 2020, Lewandowski also became a candidate for U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, hoping to unseat Senator Jean Shaheen. Back in 1994, he also had a failed campaign for the Massachusetts House of Representatives, so he’s been a loser for about a quarter century now. In 1999, Lewandowski managed to further be an embarrassment while working as an aide on Capitol Hill, and security caught him “accidentally” bringing a gun into the Longworth building in a laundry bag. (He wasn’t even disciplined for this by Congressman Bob Ney’s office, and it was chalked up to being an “accident” and not a crime because white privilege is that bad.) Corey Lewandowski’s rise into national Republican politics came through his being hired by Americans for Prosperity, the 501(c) political group started and run by the Koch brothers, that pushed back against Demcoratic gains in 2006 and 2008 by beginning the Tea Party movement, that, y’know, gave the GOP a case of rabies in 2009 that it has yet to recover from, if it ever will. That was enough to pad his resume to get to work on a presidential campaign… For Donald Trump. And his time on the campaign involved him trying to set up back-door channel meetings with UK political analyst company (and data thieves) Cambridge Analytica to get their help in finding people dumb enough to vote for Trump. To this day, Lewandowski denies he did this while working for the Trump campaign, but then again, he denied assaulting a reporter, Michelle Fields, after a Trump press conference even though other reporters filmed it, and has denied sexually assaulting a woman at a party, smacking her on the ass, getting warned, laughing, and then smacking her again. Among the worst moments of Lewandowski playing defense for Trump, him claiming Trump “had nothing to apologize for” after attacking the Mexican heritage of the judge in the Trump University case is right up there. After he was let go after the Fields incident, and replaced by Russian colluder Paul Manafort, Lewandowski was bizarrely hired to be a commentator by CNN (while he was still being paid and kept on conference calls with the Trump campaign), the One America News Network, and then Fox News. Around this time, he was cheating on his wife with Hope Hicks, and leak damaging information about White House staffers who were competition for her romantically about their own domestic abuse cases. Lewandowski’s career as a racist conservative Trump-fellating pundit came to a screeching halt, however, during the stretch where the Trump administration began the family separation policy, and he responded to the story of an immigrant girl with Down’s Syndrome being ripped from her family by mockingly making a sad trombone noise and saying, “WOMP, WOMP.” He refused to apologize for that, because yes, he’s an unrepentant monster. Anyhow, Corey Lewandowski was being pressed by Donald Trump to run for U.S. Senate in 2020, because of course he thought a ghoul like Lewandowski would make a great Senator. Hell, Lewandowski just about reveled in the fact that he was going into the race in the middle of his testimony in September of 2019 before the House Judiciary Committee. Alas, he backed off prior to the filing deadline, and announced he would not run on New Year’s Eve 2019, but making the ridiculous boast that if he had ran, “I would have won”. Sure you would have, douchebag. Sure you would have. Anyway, at this point, we’re just hoping Lewandowski f***s out of American politics forever, because his legacy seems to be whatever he touches turns into failure, or success with the caveat of an FBI investigation for criminal activity. Thus, we will set aside his profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 995-50, since this was established in July 2014.

And today, we have a profile by request...

[worstblogever]

Tom Tiffany

Welcome to what is the 995th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling the sitting U.S. House Representative from Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, Tom Tiffany, who after losing in races for Wisconsin State Senate in 2004 and 2008 and served one term in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 2010-2012. He then greased himself up with his prior jobs in the petroleum industry to grab a spot in Congress in a special election in May of 2020 to replace the utter dumbass who we kept track of for years, former Congressman Sean Duffy. Barely 13 months into the gig, we’re not sure of who’s worse, but in a short amount of time, Tiffany has made it more of a debate then we thought there possibly could be.

We’re not even kidding that it didn’t take long, as only two days after Tiffany had won his special election, he made headlines for using the racist term “Wuhan Virus” to refer to Covid-19 in a letter where he called for the Wisconsin Secretary of Health to resign, furious that she recommended business closures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, attacking her and Governor Tony Evers:

“The recent Supreme Court ruling confirmed that Ms. Palm’s power grab exceeded her authority. Her shotgun approach to lock down Wisconsin has produced disastrous consequences. New data shows us how we can make a targeted response to the Wuhan virus, but Ms. Palm will hear none of it. A native New Yorker, ally of Hillary Clinton’s, and Washington, D.C. insider, Ms. Palm understands very little of our Midwestern values or how her decisions have devastated our way of life.

Wisconsin’s economy and health care system are collapsing. Small businesses are closing their doors for good. Tens of thousands of people are struggling to apply for unemployment in an attempt to survive the storm she caused. Ms. Palm came here as Governor Evers’ hired gun, and she will leave with Wisconsin’s corpse if she continues.”

Facing a November rematch with the Democrat he defeated in the special election, Andrea Junker, Tiffany released a “Back the Blue” ad in October of 2020 that accused Junker of wanting to “defund the police”. Which, of course, isn’t something that Junker actually wanted to do. Meanwhile, Junker pointed out something we’ll note below, that Tom Tiffany was one of only 17 Republicans who voted against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after one Congressman started getting death threats, and Tiffany claimed he voted against it because it was “political posturing” by Nancy Pelosi.

Which, holding a posture that isn’t sympathetic to conspiracy theorists motivated to threaten to kill a member of Congress might be y’know, just having a backbone at all. Like supporting democracy and not being an active participant in “The Big Lie” post-election and the build-up to January 6th. If he had any principles, he wouldn’t show up to a maskless rally only DAYS after an attempted coup in our nation’s capitol to speak at a forum hosted by a right-wing radio host who openly called for “war” over the results of the election.

Y’know, not that such rhetoric isn’t exactly the sort of incitement that caused 1/6 in the first place.

But what Tom Tiffany will take a stand on? Anti-vaccination paranoia, like in March of 2021, when he made it a point to tell everyone that he was advising his daughters not to get the Covid-19 vaccine, while also lying and claiming that no one their age had died of the virus (Two had.) He did this unmasked, at a town hall, filled with people who were also unmasked.

Way to have a potential super-spreader event a year into the pandemic when we should know better and set a good example for the public, s***bird.

Rather than focus on the pandemic, Tom Tiffany worried about the voters in his district… by traveling the opposite border, over a thousand miles away, to throw tantrums about the less fascist approach the Biden administration was taking on undocumented migrants, and act like all fifty states were under attack by Mexico. Yes, within the same fortnight.

Just… seriously, look at this lunatic’s voting record, and try and not be shocked at how unbelievably partisan he is:

• October 2nd, 2020: Tom Tiffany is one of 17 Republicans who vote against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
• December 10th, 2020: Tiffany 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 6th, 2021: Tom Tiffany 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. Tiffany 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 both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Tom Tiffany votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Tiffany votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Tiffany 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: Tom Tiffany votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Tiffany doesn’t even bother to show up to vote on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Tiffany 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: Tom Tiffany votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Tiffany is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• June 16th, 2021: Tom Tiffany is one of 14 Republicans who vote against celebrating Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

We’re not sure how long an uncaring, science-denying, insurrection-supporting s***stain like Tom Tiffany holds Congressional office, but we hope that someone wakes up to his destructive tendencies upon our democracy and people’s literal health before he does too much damage.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Others leave me concerned...some proposals would be automatically rejected if any other crime was considered. These include things like limiting the rights of cross examination, videoing testimony, etc.

The whole subject leaves me uneasy...it is clear that a fair number of rapes go unpunished. But sadly...I think that is is down to the principles that guilt has to be established beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused has a wide range of rights to put their case forward.

Ultimately...I think it would be a grievous mistake to jettison those principles.

Is situation similar in US?

The issue is that there's (still) this huge stigma about rape and sexual assault, as well as talking about it. The #MeToo movement has done a lot to restore dignity to that. Likewise everyone thinks rapists are stereotypically cartoonishly evil types, when many are ordinary and familiar figures, which again the #MeToo has spotlighted.

The stigma that exists makes it hard to deal with it as a normal crime. Hard but not impossible. And I think laws should be framed very carefully if only so it gets to last.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Yo, WBE! Do you have anyone special in mind for your 1,000th profile? Inquiring minds wanna know!

[InformationGeek]

Tom Tiffany

Welcome to what is the 995th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling the sitting U.S. House Representative from Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, Tom Tiffany, who after losing in races for Wisconsin State Senate in 2004 and 2008 and served one term in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 2010-2012. He then greased himself up with his prior jobs in the petroleum industry to grab a spot in Congress in a special election in May of 2020 to replace the utter dumbass who we kept track of for years, former Congressman Sean Duffy. Barely 13 months into the gig, we’re not sure of who’s worse, but in a short amount of time, Tiffany has made it more of a debate then we thought there possibly could be.

We’re not even kidding that it didn’t take long, as only two days after Tiffany had won his special election, he made headlines for using the racist term “Wuhan Virus” to refer to Covid-19 in a letter where he called for the Wisconsin Secretary of Health to resign, furious that she recommended business closures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, attacking her and Governor Tony Evers:



Facing a November rematch with the Democrat he defeated in the special election, Andrea Junker, Tiffany released a “Back the Blue” ad in October of 2020 that accused Junker of wanting to “defund the police”. Which, of course, isn’t something that Junker actually wanted to do. Meanwhile, Junker pointed out something we’ll note below, that Tom Tiffany was one of only 17 Republicans who voted against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after one Congressman started getting death threats, and Tiffany claimed he voted against it because it was “political posturing” by Nancy Pelosi.

Which, holding a posture that isn’t sympathetic to conspiracy theorists motivated to threaten to kill a member of Congress might be y’know, just having a backbone at all. Like supporting democracy and not being an active participant in “The Big Lie” post-election and the build-up to January 6th. If he had any principles, he wouldn’t show up to a maskless rally only DAYS after an attempted coup in our nation’s capitol to speak at a forum hosted by a right-wing radio host who openly called for “war” over the results of the election.

Y’know, not that such rhetoric isn’t exactly the sort of incitement that caused 1/6 in the first place.

But what Tom Tiffany will take a stand on? Anti-vaccination paranoia, like in March of 2021, when he made it a point to tell everyone that he was advising his daughters not to get the Covid-19 vaccine, while also lying and claiming that no one their age had died of the virus (Two had.) He did this unmasked, at a town hall, filled with people who were also unmasked.

Way to have a potential super-spreader event a year into the pandemic when we should know better and set a good example for the public, s***bird.

Rather than focus on the pandemic, Tom Tiffany worried about the voters in his district… by traveling the opposite border, over a thousand miles away, to throw tantrums about the less fascist approach the Biden administration was taking on undocumented migrants, and act like all fifty states were under attack by Mexico. Yes, within the same fortnight.

Just… seriously, look at this lunatic’s voting record, and try and not be shocked at how unbelievably partisan he is:

• October 2nd, 2020: Tom Tiffany is one of 17 Republicans who vote against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
• December 10th, 2020: Tiffany 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 6th, 2021: Tom Tiffany 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. Tiffany 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 both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Tom Tiffany votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Tiffany votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Tiffany 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: Tom Tiffany votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Tiffany doesn’t even bother to show up to vote on the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Tiffany 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: Tom Tiffany votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Tiffany is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• June 16th, 2021: Tom Tiffany is one of 14 Republicans who vote against celebrating Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

We’re not sure how long an uncaring, science-denying, insurrection-supporting s***stain like Tom Tiffany holds Congressional office, but we hope that someone wakes up to his destructive tendencies upon our democracy and people’s literal health before he does too much damage.

Ladies and gentlemen, my new representative!

Man, from Duffy to this prick. My district stinks.

[Mister Mets]

The very low rate of convictions for rape has been a running sore on UK justice for decades now. Presently Labour is calling for the Conservative Justice Secretary to resign unless conviction rates go up. (Only 3 percent of reported rapes result in a successful conviction in UK)

Over recent years a number of changes have been considered to improve this situation.

Some of the proposed changes would be supported by any sane person (I think). In this category I would include far more considerate treatment of the complainant, better resourcing of the investigation, and an automatic assumption that every complaint will be investigated thoroughly and competently.

Others leave me concerned...some proposals would be automatically rejected if any other crime was considered. These include things like limiting the rights of cross examination, videoing testimony, etc.

The whole subject leaves me uneasy...it is clear that a fair number of rapes go unpunished. But sadly...I think that is is down to the principles that guilt has to be established beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused has a wide range of rights to put their case forward.

Ultimately...I think it would be a grievous mistake to jettison those principles.

Is situation similar in US?

As a relevant news item, the Shadow secretary for justice said the Justice Secretary should resign if convictions do not increase by next year, and the justice secretary who commissioned the report said that he can't control independent police and prosecutors.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48095118

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-57511425

One of the major culprits is budget cuts. The percentage of convictions was as high as 13% five years ago.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-57542194

The most prominent arguments about the rights of the accused and justice tend to be in the context of sexual assault on college campuses. One frequent problem is academics and bureaucrats taking over a responsibility that is outside their purview.

There was an argument about that on the forum last year.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post5249023

There is also a potential clash with the #blacklivesmattter movement, with the understanding that more prosecutions will result in more black men in jail, largely due to the understanding that black men will be easier to convict.

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion...s/201810220022

Training materials for the charity Oxfam did suggest that victims going forward to authorities was an example of privileging white safety, so there is a similar argument in the UK.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...n-root-causes/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...hite-supremacy

Statistically, it's five times worse, per RAINN, out of 1000 rapes, only 6 result in incarceration for the crime.

Note that 7 out of 1000 are convicted, but somehow 1 in that 7 avoid jail time for rape.

The UK government review was about the percentage of rapes reported, so it started from the equivalent of 34.8% of sexual assaults reported to police.

According to the UK review, only 20% of rapes and attempted rapes are even reported to the police.

[worstblogever]

Yo, WBE! Do you have anyone special in mind for your 1,000th profile? Inquiring minds wanna know!

I do! I have a certain 2022 gubernatorial candidate and nepotism/political legacy in mind... (that actually could be at least 2 different people, off the top of my head.)

[Tami]

Republicans, spurred by an unlikely figure, see political promise in targeting critical race theory

President Donald Trump was watching Fox News one evening last summer when a young conservative from Seattle appeared with an alarming warning, and a call to action.

Christopher Rufo said critical race theory, a decades-old academic framework that most people had never heard of, had “pervaded every institution in the federal government.”

“Critical race theory,” Rufo said, “has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.”

Critical race theory holds that racism is systemic in the United States, not just a collection of individual prejudices — an idea that feels obvious to some and offensive to others. Rufo alleged that efforts to inject awareness of systemic racism and White privilege, which grew more popular following the murder of George Floyd by police, posed a grave threat to the nation. It amounts, Rufo said, to a “cult indoctrination.”

Rufo is something of an unexpected activist as he urges states on. A California native, he worked for years as a documentary filmmaker, with films broadcast on PBS. In recent years, his work has grown more political, and more conservative. Today, he lives in the Seattle area, where he has campaigned for a more enforcement-oriented policy toward homeless people living on the city streets. He mounted a short-lived campaign for Seattle City Council before dropping out, saying he and his family were being harassed. He has worked with conservative think tanks including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute and the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

Rufo said he began reporting on this issue a year ago, when he got a tip that the city of Seattle had invited White employees to a program about “internalized racial superiority” and their “complicity in the system of white supremacy.”

That led to a flood of tips and documents about similar programs across the country, he said. “I had naively thought this is probably a crazy Seattle thing.”

Then Tucker Carlson invited Rufo to deliver his show’s opening monologue with him. Rufo saw it as a unique opportunity to lay out his reporting on the federal government and to ask Trump directly to issue an executive order.

Some of the allegations Rufo laid out that evening are not supported by the evidence he produces, and others are stretched beyond the facts.

He pointed to three examples of what he said were woke politics gone amok inside the federal government — at the Treasury Department, Sandia National Laboratories and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Treasury Department, he said, had hired a diversity consultant named Howard Ross who “told Treasury employees essentially that America was a fundamentally white supremacist country and, I quote, 'Virtually all White people uphold the system of racism and white superiority.’”

Rufo said that Ross was “essentially denouncing the country” and asking White Treasury employees “to accept their White privilege, accept their white racial superiority.” A post about this training on Rufo’s website is headlined, “Treasury Department tells employees all white people are racist.”

A Treasury Department spokesperson did not dispute the authenticity of the document but said Rufo’s characterization of it was “completely false.” The online, town hall-style event was for Treasury staff to gather after the Floyd murder, the spokesperson said, and was meant as an opportunity “to have meaningful discussions with one another and build trust and understanding.”

She said that participation in this event was voluntary but thousands of employees chose to attend. The agency continues to host diversity and inclusion events for employees across the department, she said.

[Mister Mets]

Republicans, spurred by an unlikely figure, see political promise in targeting critical race theory

The New Yorker has a thorough article on Rufo as well, which does get into his opposition with the entire field of Critical Race Theory.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annal...al-race-theory

Through foia requests, Rufo turned up slideshows and curricula for the Seattle anti-racism seminars. Under the auspices of the city’s Office for Civil Rights, employees across many departments were being divided up by race for implicit-bias training. (“Welcome: Internalized Racial Superiority for White People,” read one introductory slide, over an image of the Seattle skyline.) “What do we do in white people space?” read a second slide. One bullet point suggested that the attendees would be “working through emotions that often come up for white people like sadness, shame, paralysis, confusion, denial.” Another bullet point emphasized “retraining,” learning new “ways of seeing that are hidden from us in white supremacy.” A different slide listed supposed expressions of internalized white supremacy, including perfectionism, objectivity, and individualism. Rufo summarized his findings in an article for the Web site of City Journal, the magazine of the center-right Manhattan Institute: “Under the banner of ‘antiracism,’ Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism—ugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago.”

The story was a phenomenon and helped to generate more leaks from across the country. Marooned at home, civil servants recorded and photographed their own anti-racism training sessions and sent the evidence to Rufo. Reading through these documents, and others, Rufo noticed that they tended to cite a small set of popular anti-racism books, by authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Rufo read the footnotes in those books, and found that they pointed to academic scholarship from the nineteen-nineties, by a group of legal scholars who referred to their work as critical race theory, in particular Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell. These scholars argued that the white supremacy of the past lived on in the laws and societal rules of the present. As Crenshaw recently explained, critical race theory found that “the so-called American dilemma was not simply a matter of prejudice but a matter of structured disadvantages that stretched across American society.”

This inquiry, into the footnotes and citations in the documents he’d been sent, formed the basis for an idea that has organized cultural politics this spring: that the anti-racism seminars did not just represent a progressive view on race but that they were expressions of a distinct ideology—critical race theory—with radical roots. If people were upset about the seminars, Rufo wanted them also to notice “critical race theory” operating behind the curtain. Following the trail back through the citations in the legal scholars’ texts, Rufo thought that he could detect the seed of their ideas in radical, often explicitly Marxist, critical-theory texts from the generation of 1968. (Crenshaw said that this was a selective, “red-baiting” account of critical race theory’s origins, which overlooked less divisive influences such as Martin Luther King, Jr.) But Rufo believed that he could detect a single lineage, and that the same concepts and terms that organized discussions among white employees of the city of Seattle, or the anti-racism seminars at Sandia National Laboratories, were present a half century ago. “Look at Angela Davis—you see all of the key terms,” Rufo said. Davis had been Herbert Marcuse’s doctoral student, and Rufo had been reading her writing from the late sixties to the mid-seventies. He felt as if he had begun with a branch and discovered the root. If financial regulators in Washington were attending seminars in which they read Kendi’s writing that anti-racism was not possible without anti-capitalism, then maybe that was more than casual talk.

[Malvolio]

I do! I have a certain 2022 gubernatorial candidate and nepotism/political legacy in mind... (that actually could be at least 2 different people, off the top of my head.)

So either:

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Andrew Giuliani.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So either:

SPOILER ALERT!
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Andrew Giuliani.

My money's on Sanders.