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

[aja_christopher]

"Portraits of former Confederate leaders removed from Capitol"

"Portraits honoring four former House speakers who served in the Confederacy were removed Thursday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the men "embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.″

Pelosi directed the House clerk to oversee the immediate removal of portraits depicting former speakers from three Southern states: Robert Hunter of Virginia, James Orr of South Carolina and Howell Cobb and Charles Crisp, both of Georgia.

Calling the halls of Congress “the very heart of our democracy,″ Pelosi said, “There is no room in the hallowed halls of Congress or in any place of honor″ to commemorate the Confederacy.

Hours later, the portraits were gone, taken away by workers and placed in storage. The ornately framed portraits had hung outside the House chamber for decades, barely noticed by lawmakers, staffers and journalists who crowded into the carpeted Speaker's Lobby adjacent to the chamber.
Three of the portraits hung near a staircase used by lawmakers to enter the House chamber; Crisp's portrait was in the Speaker's Lobby, where portraits of House leaders dating to the earliest days of the republic are displayed in honor.

Pelosi noted that Friday is Juneteenth, honoring the day in 1865 when many African Americans learned of the end of slavery after the Civil War. She called Juneteenth “a beautiful and proud celebration of freedom for African Americans” and noted that this year’s celebration comes "during a moment of extraordinary national anguish, as we grieve for the hundreds of Black Americans killed by racial injustice and police brutality, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others.”

Orr, who served as speaker from 1857-59, swore on the House floor to “preserve and perpetuate” slavery in order to “enjoy our property in peace, quiet and security,” Pelosi said in her letter to the House clerk. Hunter, who served at nearly every level of the Confederacy, including as Confederate secretary of state, was speaker from 1839-41. Cobb served as speaker from 1849-51, while Crisp served after the Civil War, from 1891-95.

Earlier this month, Pelosi urged the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol and the renaming of U.S. military bases that honor Confederate Army officers. The abrupt removal of the Confederate portraits brought back memories of 2015, when then-Speaker Paul Ryan ordered the removal of a portrait of former Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., after he pleaded guilty in federal court to breaking banking laws in a hush money scheme. The payments were meant to silence a male student that Hastert had sexually abused while he was teaching high school decades before.

In the Senate Thursday, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, one of three black senators, unsuccessfully pressed for immediate passage of a bill to remove statues of Confederate notables such as Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, president of the Confederate States of America, from display in the Capitol.

“The continued presence of these statues in the halls is an affront to African Americans and the ideals of our nation,” Booker said.

The chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he is open to holding a hearing on the bill, but he opposed immediate action because it would upend a process set in law governing the display of state-sponsored statues in the Capitol.

Blunt, a member of the GOP leadership team, said he is heartened by states such as Arkansas that are replacing Confederate statues on their own."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pelosi-or...161001060.html

[Mister Mets]

Swing voters are less informed? What? Swing voters are the voters who actually judge by candidate rather than blindly voting for ideology or party regardless of who the candidate is.

Anyway, I never heard of Juneteenth til Trump and if it had been a thing the last 21 years I would have noticed as June 19th also happens to be my daughter's birthday so its a day I tend to pay more attention to than others.

Not voting for Trump over it as why would this make me want to vote for Trump? Pretty sure I'm not voting for Biden either at this point. A pox on them all though it would require more typing than I want to do right now to explain why I've turned so hard on Biden in last two weeks. I'm either voting 3rd party or not at all. Its just a choice of lube at this point as they **** America up the ***.

The people who are undecided closest to the election do tend to be less informed. They tend to follow politics less than the typical voter. This is a well-known phenomenon.

Here's a write-up about it in the Cook political report.

https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/n...-voters-anyway

Thirty percent of the respondents, a total of 603, can be called swing voters, who were either undecided or only “probably” going to vote for either Trump or the Democrat. Of the 9 percent who said they would probably vote for Trump, just over half (5 percent of all voters) said there was a chance they would vote for the Democrat, while 4 percent said no chance. Of the 13 percent who would probably vote for the Democrat, just a quarter (3 percent of all voters) said that there was a chance they would vote for Trump, while the others said there was no chance. Those who only probably would vote for one candidate but definitely would not vote for the other have a good chance of either not voting or throwing a vote to a third-party candidate.

But who are these swing voters? What makes them different from those who have decided, and from the overall electorate? Swing voters tend to be younger, more moderate, and less engaged in politics compared to those who have decided and to the overall electorate. While 72 percent of voters who are 65 years of age or older have decided for sure, just 47 percent of 18-29-year-olds have decided.

Ideologically speaking, 56 percent of all swing voters identify themselves as moderates, compared to 38 percent of all voters. Just 16 percent of swing voters called themselves liberal, while 26 percent self-identified as conservative. Eleven percent of all voters are “pure independents”—that is, they don’t identify with or even lean toward either major party—but 18 percent of swing voters are pure independents.

When asked, “How much attention do you normally pay to what is going on in national government and politics?” 57 percent of voters and 68 percent of decided voters said they pay a lot of attention, but only 39 percent of swing voters said so. Twice as many swing voters said they pay only a little attention or none at all—17 percent, compared with just 8 percent of those who are decided.

Does this mean that every swing voter is less informed than every partisan? Of course not.

Does this mean that these people are wrong to spend their time and energy on something other than daily politics? Of course not. It can be a good idea to focus on personal and professional responsibilities, rather than daily political posturing.

[aja_christopher]

I knew about Juneteenth at a pretty young age -- I just never thought (white) Americans would see fit to celebrate the end of slavery in America.

------
"From Juneteenth to the Tulsa massacre: What isn't taught in classrooms has a profound impact"

On the eve of Juneteenth, educators said the history of systemic racism in this country and the contributions of Black people have been erased.

"A Connecticut fourth grade social studies textbook falsely claimed that slaves were treated just like “family.” A Texas geography textbook referred to enslaved Africans as “workers.” In Alabama, up until the 1970s, fourth graders learned in a textbook called "Know Alabama" that slave life on a plantation was "one of the happiest ways of life."

In contrast, historians and educators point out, many children in the U.S. education system are not taught about major Black historical events, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre or Juneteenth, the June 19 commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. As the country grapples with a racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd in police custody, educators said that what has and what has not been taught in school have been part of erasing the history of systemic racism in America and the contributions of Black people and other minority groups."

There’s a long legacy of institutional racism that is barely covered in the mainstream corporate curriculum,” said Jesse Hagopian, an ethnic studies teacher in Seattle and co-editor of the book “Teaching for Black Lives.” “It’s really astounding how little the contributions of Black people are included in much of the mainstream curriculum and how much of that institutional racism is disguised,” he said.

Historians said curriculums are about identity and learning about ourselves and others.

“The curriculum was never designed to be anything other than white supremacist," Julian Hayter, a historian and an associate professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said, "and it has been very difficult to convince people that other versions of history are not only worth telling. They’re absolutely essential for us as a country to move closer to something that might reflect reconciliation but even more importantly, the truth."

LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Missouri, said the history curriculums in schools are meant to tell a story and, in the U.S., that has been one of a “progressive history of the country.”

“Really the overarching theme is, ‘Yes, we made mistakes, but we overcame because we are the United States of America,'” said King, who is also the founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the university. “What that has done is it has erased tons of history that would combat that progressive narrative,” he said.

King said the experiences and oppression of Black people, Latino people, indigenous people, Asian people and other minority groups in the U.S. are largely ignored or sidelined to fit those narratives.

"So, of course you’re not going to have crucial information such as what happened in Tulsa, you’re not going to have information such as the bombing of a Philadelphia black neighborhood,” he said.

In 1921 in Oklahoma, whites looted and destroyed Tulsa's Greenwood District, known for its affluent Black community. Historians believe that as many as 300 Black people were killed.

In May 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb onto the compound of MOVE, a black liberation group, killing six members, five of their children and destroying 65 homes in the neighborhood.

Another often-omitted period of U.S. Black history is the Red Summer, a period of time through 1919 when white mobs incited a wave of anti-Black violence in dozens of cities. As for the protests against racial inequality and police brutality after the killing of Floyd and other Black people at the hands of police, King emphasized that these movements were not new.

“Black people have been saying this for the past 400 years, this is not a new movement,” he said. “Each generation has had their point in time where they’re trying to say through protest, through rebellion, ‘listen to us, listen to us,’” he said.

Part of the problem is that society has never listened to that history, he said.

“In many ways we wouldn’t have a Black Lives Matter movement if Black lives mattered in the classroom,” he said..."

Hayter said those histories have been seen as “a footnote to a larger narrative and not an important and integral portion of the history more largely.”

“As long as we continue to treat these as addendums to a larger American narrative, we’re failing these kids in large part because we’ve reduced these histories to second-class status,” he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...found-n1231442

[Mister Mets]

Nice job of supporting the police refusing to show up for duty unless they're allowed to get away with murder. You're a true kind soul in a dark world there sir.

It would matter if you believe it was murder. If it's anything short of murder, prosecutors are overcharging someone who works for the state.

In this case, the prosecutor is making an argument that the police office had nothing to fear from a man who stole a taser and was trying to use it against them, when the same prosecutor had previously noted that a taser is a deadly weapon under Georgia law.

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/sta...78926744739842

There are some complicating factors. A taser that the police had used is likely to be ineffective (although this doesn't mean that anyone would be expected to fully comprehend this when making a split-second decision against someone who panics.)

A lot of the focus has been on what occurred prior to the shooting. The prosecutor focused heavily on the demeanor of the officers afterwards.
https://www.abc57.com/news/decision-...ill-come-today

[Tami]

What Is Juneteenth?

[sammy_hansen]

It would matter if you believe it was murder. If it's anything short of murder, prosecutors are overcharging someone who works for the state.

In this case, the prosecutor is making an argument that the police office had nothing to fear from a man who stole a taser and was trying to use it against them, when the same prosecutor had previously noted that a taser is a deadly weapon under Georgia law.

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/sta...78926744739842

There are some complicating factors. A taser that the police had used is likely to be ineffective (although this doesn't mean that anyone would be expected to fully comprehend this when making a split-second decision against someone who panics.)

A lot of the focus has been on what occurred prior to the shooting. The prosecutor focused heavily on the demeanor of the officers afterwards.
https://www.abc57.com/news/decision-...ill-come-today

Like how Rayshard Brooks was 18 feet away and running away?

Or how George Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground?

Or how Breonna Taylor was asleep?

Seeing the pattern here?

[JCAll]

I got mocked by a few, the joke is on you guys, when I brought up the Purge in Atlanta and cops walking out. Not long after I posted and was mocked all the national media picked up on it so I obviously wasn't wrong.

Well it continued today and tonight. 1 officer, ONE, showed up in one of the districts this morning when there are normally 24-30 officers. The Blue Flue or mass exodus, whatever you want to call it, continued tonight despite the $500 bribe offered to all Atlanta cops today as a bonus - if you didn't see all Atlanta officers were given a bonus of $500 today. Hate the cops if you want. Fire them if you want for blu fluing / striking. You still have next to no cops in Atlanta and this is about to happen everywhere the way things are going. The cop haters and critics certainly aren't going to step up to the plate, despite their keyboard expertise, all while preaching about how they think the job should be done. Atlanta survived through the lies the Mayor told about having enough cops to cover calls but the reality is that over 500 911 calls went unanswered. The lie is exposed now and the criminals know there are no cops. How bad will it get tonight? I'll be happy if come tomorrow it things turn out okay come morning, I just wouldn't bet on it.

The police seem to be banking on outside violence coming in and making people nostalgic for the good old violence that they're used to. That's just not a winning plan, that's not going to get people back on the side of the police. The only thing it might accomplish is letting violence spill over into areas that police violence generally didn't, turning them against more marginalized people. Which would just create an ever bigger cluster in this already worldwide clusterfuck.

[aja_christopher]

It's an ongoing -- but often one-sided -- conversation with many who seem to think that "black history" isn't American history.



Glover isn't ready to talk about "This Is America" just yet, but he does give you full permission to use it as your July 4th anthem.

"Donald Glover’s “This Is America” music video has inspired countless think pieces across the internet over the last several days (read Vulture’s “What It Means When Childish Gambino Says ‘This Is America,’” or NPR’s “Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America’ Holds Ugly Truths To Be Self-Evident”), but what does the song and video actually mean in Glover’s eyes? It turns out he’s not going to give fans that answer so easily.

E! caught up with Glover on the red carpet of the 2018 Met Gala and asked the artist behind Childish Gambino what his intentions were when writing “This Is America” and filming its instant-classic music video. Glover responded with self-aware and politically-charged misdirection: “I just wanted to make, you know, a good song. Something people could play on Fourth of July.”

Glover sported a grin and refused to comment further on the song, but his answer was a potent one nonetheless. As “Dear White People” creator Justin Simien observed in his own analysis, Glover’s music video tells a history of black oppression in America (from Jim Crow to police brutality) and depicts America’s false promise of freedom. The idea of “This Is America” being an anthem for Fourth of July, a holiday celebrating America and its values, only makes the lyrics and video’s imagery more urgent.

Glover’s “This Is America” video has become a phenomenon with nearly 50 million views in its first four days."

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/do...ew-1201962197/

[Tendrin]

Just saw someone on twitter refer to Trump as 'Tang the Conqueror' and I am dying. WPP, that one is for you.

[worstblogever]

Like how Rayshard Brooks was 18 feet away and running away?

Or how George Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground?

Or how Breonna Taylor was asleep?

Seeing the pattern here?

sammy gets it. Thank you, sammy.

[shooshoomanjoe]

I got mocked by a few, the joke is on you guys, when I brought up the Purge in Atlanta and cops walking out. Not long after I posted and was mocked all the national media picked up on it so I obviously wasn't wrong.

Well it continued today and tonight. 1 officer, ONE, showed up in one of the districts this morning when there are normally 24-30 officers. The Blue Flue or mass exodus, whatever you want to call it, continued tonight despite the $500 bribe offered to all Atlanta cops today as a bonus - if you didn't see all Atlanta officers were given a bonus of $500 today. Hate the cops if you want. Fire them if you want for blu fluing / striking. You still have next to no cops in Atlanta and this is about to happen everywhere the way things are going. The cop haters and critics certainly aren't going to step up to the plate, despite their keyboard expertise, all while preaching about how they think the job should be done. Atlanta survived through the lies the Mayor told about having enough cops to cover calls but the reality is that over 500 911 calls went unanswered. The lie is exposed now and the criminals know there are no cops. How bad will it get tonight? I'll be happy if come tomorrow it things turn out okay come morning, I just wouldn't bet on it.

That's because you claimed Atlanta would become the purge.

[Kirby101]

As for this Atlanta "purge" nonsense. What do we call a group of people who threaten that bad things will happen to you if you don't give them everything they want?

"Nice city ya got there? Shame if anything happened to it."

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled a two-time loser in attempts to get into the U.S. Senate, World Wrestling Entertainment CEO and now former Cabinet Secretary of the Small Business Association, Linda McMahon, whose background as a recurring character within the WWE Universe (including storyline angles where she was cheated on, in a catatonic state, and “turning heel” by kicking announcers with medical ailments in the groin). Some of the shady business practices her company has made within the industry of professional wrestling over the past few decades include not just a widespread misuse of steroids distributed by company doctors in the 1980s, not just hiring wrestlers who had allegedly murdered their girlfriends, not just pressuring wrestlers to perform with concussions and likely exacerbating their progressive brain tissue’s destruction via CTE, not just permeated a culture of sexual harassment of female employees, but even allegedly covering up a sexual assault of a female wrestler on an overseas tour of Kuwait in 2007. Linda was a hopeless cause in multiple elections as she burned through millions of dollars of her own family’s fortune to try and win a Senate seat. After losses in both 2012 and 2014, both Linda and her outspoken husband, Vince McMahon seemed content to give up politics, but when WWE Hall of Fame member Donald Trump managed to win the White House, they called their old pal, and Linda was set up to run the Small Business Association, because he’s that insane and terrible at picking people for federal appointments. In any event, Linda McMahon was openly describing how chaotic and terrible it is working in the Trump administration and announced she would resign in May of 2019 from that position to run a Trump political PAC.


In 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the current U.S. House Representative from North Carolina’s 7thCongressional District, David Rouzer, whose resemblance to Saturday Night Live cast member Jon Lovitz still haunts us to this day. Rouzer had already established himself as a staunch conservative while he served in the North Carolina State Senate, aligning himself as a climate change denier who tried blocking studies of sea level change, showing he was downright archaic when it came to education, what with his support of corporal punishment without parental exemption in schools, and his homophobic streak was proven by both his opposition to anti-bullying measures that would protect LGBTQ students and his support for a state constitutional ban on same sex marriage. He hasn't mellowed out much since heading to Washington, D.C., like how he was willing to state his desire to have another government shutdown over the fact that the GOP was unable to defund Planned Parenthood, due to his viewing of the fraudulent video produced by the Center for Medical Progress (whose leaders were since been indicted for their deception). This was only two years after the last time Republicans shut the government down, and got nothing but costing millions upon million dollars for our country, and threatening government workers with being furloughed, Rouzer was ready to repeat that over a shoddy hoax.

Rouzer was trying to earn big points points as a freshman lawmaker for introducing his own written legislation, but then again, when you consider his bill was to drug test welfare recipients nationally, it becomes a lot less impressive. After all, when states have passed such laws and adopted them, they have lost a fortune on the cost of drug testing, and found statistically less drug use by those on government assistance, without any "savings" of throwing people off welfare. Even worse, the states have lost money on court cases when the same Republicans supporting these bills see their legislation challenged by ACLU lawsuits, and they get overturned as being violations of the 4th Amendment. But that's David Rouzer for you... take a failed, s*** idea at the state level and try to do it across the country.

In June of 2015: Rep. Rouzer released a statement after the Supreme Court rules in the Obergefell v. Hodges case in favor of marriage equality, saying it would be against the will of our Founding Fathers, and that it created a "slippery slope of shifting sand". Perhaps this would be a good time to point out to Rouzer that George Washington was cool with awarding a house to Continental Army General Baron von Steuben after the war, mmhm? When a guy with wooden teeth is more tolerant of gays than you are… you have problems.

North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District has a +9 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which was enough to help him limp to get 55% of the vote in the 2018 elections.

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Rouzer voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: David Rouzer 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. Rouzer 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.
• April 4th, 2019: David Rouzer is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote 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).
• June 4th, 2019: Rouzer votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: David Rouzer 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”.
• October 23rd, 2019: Rouzer is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Rouzer 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.

David Rouzer’s been a vocal defender of Donald Trump, regardless of the blatant corruption of the administration, and whined about “the abuses of the FBI” and claiming “the truth has been trampled” as Republicans’ efforts to end the impeachment inquiry into the Ukraine scandal closed in around Trump in Congressional hearings. All we know for sure is, if he wins in 2020, he’s likely to make a decision based on what the redrawn districts for North Carolina look like in the 2022 election. If he doesn’t have that +9 advantage, we expect him to make a challenge to Thom Tillis or jump to a neighboring district to try to save himself. We’re hoping he doesn’t even last that long, and that his Democratic challenger, Christopher Ward, puts the boots to him in November.

[worstblogever]

How do we go back in time and drown you as a baby?

We all know that the only acceptable use of a time machine is to go back in time and kill HITLER as a baby, not spambots, Kirby. Stay focused.

[Kirby101]

We all know that the only acceptable use of a time machine is to go back in time and kill HITLER as a baby, not spambots, Kirby. Stay focused.

Deleted and replaced with more appropriate post.