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

[PaulBullion]

Ooooooh boy, this a bad take from Bernie's former National Press Secretary.

She also seems to have confused John Mulaney with somebody else.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Paul Blair, a radical anti-gay pastor from Oklahoma, and a big ally of State Rep. Sally Kern, who proudly spoke of her political credentials (i.e. her dedication to oppressing the LGBTQ community) at the “Rally for Sally” back in 2008. You see, he was all lathered up after she said that gays represent a bigger threat to America than terrorism (since gay rights made people like Blair and Kern victims). Blair is a former player for the Chicago Bears (and could easily be operating under the effects of long term head injuries), the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, the founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, head of the Reclaiming America For Christ organization. He's also appeared at an anti-hate crimes “Rally for Religious Freedom” where he and anti-gay activists vowed never to stop fighting homosexuality and challenged the Justice Department to prosecute them. Blair was the driving force behind a video called “The Criminalization of Christianity” in which he warns that hate crimes legislation is actually a “Pedophile Protection Act”, would “make it possible for a pastor to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than preaching a Biblical sermon on Sunday”. Which would be breaking a commandment about bearing false witness, because hate crime legislation does nothing to criminalize free speech (because that would be an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment now, wouldn't it?) But it would seem that lying is a frequent habit of Pastor Blair, who claims he receives death threats from the gay community over his stance (that are repeatedly unfounded). And that's when Blair tried saying the unsubstantiated death threats were his motivation for making himself a 2012 candidate for the Oklahoma State Senate (endorsed by that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council), where he lost in the Republican Primary, earning a shockingly impressive 43% of the vote. Some of the more disturbing and/or homophobic quotes from Paul Blair's most bats*** speeches include that "The Devil is behind gay rights and gay culture", before whining how America has gone from "Ozzie and Harriet to Desperate Housewives" and "from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain", claiming that the “communists” are trying to “inculcate homosexual values, or lack of values, into the American culture” in order “to destroy the family” and create “a global utopia", adding that "Satan is the source and ultimate conspirator” behind “the force of communism, the force of the radical homosexual agenda, the secularist movement in America", and of course, comparing his battle against gay marriage to be similar to “the fight against slavery and Nazi Germany”.

[worstblogever]

It was originally in July of 2014, and then on this date in both 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Wyoming’s At-Large Congressional District, Liz Cheney, the carpet-bagging daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney who after spending several years during President Obama’s first term as a Fox News Correspondent fomenting fear and anger towards Muslims to try and justify bigotry towards Muslim Americans, the use of torture in the War on Terror, and to keep our troops in combat in the Middle East, even if it means going to war into completely new quagmires there. She has defended the paranoid ramblings of Birther conspiracy theorists, rallied against the “Ground Zero Mosque” (that was actually an Islamic cultural center located blocks away), and had said that Republican obstructionism of any Democratic effort to do anything was “patriotism”.

But the real comedy started once Liz Cheney challenged Senator Mike Enzi, where her campaign took one disastrous turn after another, from being caught falsifying information on her Wyoming hunting license application (to try and make it look like she was a resident for longer than she was), having her husband caught on voter rolls in both Virginia and Wyoming, when she attacked the print media for investigating her carpet-bagging by saying, “newspapers are dying, and that’s not a bad thing”, to ending up feuding with her own sister-in-law on Facebook after she reversed her stance on gay marriage. It was a comedy of errors. When we first created our Liz Cheney entry, back around July of 2014, we wondered if she would ever re-emerge to try for another run in politics. A year passed, and in 2016, she is ran for Congress in Wyoming again, to replace the retiring Cynthia Lummis. Liz learned so much from her first run for office that she managed to send out a Facebook post to announce her run for office, it was listed from… Alexandria, Virginia, in the home she supposedly left to go back and live in Wyoming and totally not be a carpet-bagger. Name recognition helped Liz Cheney get a victory over EIGHT other Republicans in the GOP Primary for her House seat, and in a state that leans as far right as Wyoming, she coasted to victory in November of 2016.

Afterwards, she hasn’t hesitated in making some headlines for being an awful human being. Whether it’s her eagerness in killing endangered wolves, her completely partisan insults directed at Barack Obama while he was leaving office, or her desire to get the Trump administration the ability to start torturing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cheney still has still demonstrated that she’s a hollow puppet being used by her father to continue his twisted policies in the world. However, Liz also shows that she’s not smart enough to pick the right horse, as she excitedly posted to Twitter her support for Donald Trump when he fired the FBI Director James Comey, writing, “Best. Termination. Letter. Ever.”

She still isn’t above friendly fire with members of her party, as she is willing to accuse even fellow Republicans like Rand Paul of “sympathizing with terrorists” for opposing Haspel, which comes as little of a surprise from someone who would throw her own sister under the bus, y'know?


We know that Wyoming has a +25 Republican lean, meaning that all Liz Cheney has to do to win, practically, is advance out of the GOP Primary for her seat, so she can keep returning to Washington, D.C. and do things like this:

• December 4th, 2018: Fresh off the GOP getting shellacked in the 2018 elections, word begins to come out over leadership posts of both parties in Congress. The GOP look to having a caucus sworn into office in a month that will see its already anemic numbers of women dwindle from 23 members to 13. And one of them is Liz Cheney, who they elevate in the party’s leadership to conference chair. In a Fox News interview, when asked about what the GOP can do in terms of policy to win back female voters, Cheney scoffs and says she finds the idea of producing legislation to appeal to female voters “offensive to women”. (Future’s bright for you, Republican Party!)
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Cheney voted against HR 648, because she was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Liz Cheney votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 7th, 2019: Cheney votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Cheney 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: Liz Cheney 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: Cheney votes against the Dreamers Act, because she’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Liz Cheney 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. Cheney ignores her 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.

Now, we didn’t include this in the above timeline, because it’s a sign of how much the GOP have made Donald Trump the anchor around their neck as they fall overboard into a stormy sea these days… on May 26th of 2019, Liz Cheney was a guest on ABC’s This Week, and told host Martha Raddatz that text conversations between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page amounted to “treason” and that it was proof that there was “a coup” against Donald Trump staged before he ever took office. She then also began to insinuate further against other supposed members of what conservative kooks label “the Deep State” by complaining about James Comey and Andrew McCabe.

Ladies and gents, the spawn of Dick Cheney has been mainlining conservative ideology so long that she might actually fanatically believe her own bulls*** and choke on it with the rest of her party before all is said and done. The only good news we have is that she backed off of running for U.S. Senate to try yet again to replace Mike Enzi, who’s finally retiring.

But… hey, Wyoming? We know you’re a red state and all that, but there’s a family history of national malfeasance, that you can put a stop to at any time. Any time now…

[PaulBullion]

Here is a blast from the past:

Lobbyist Abramoff to plead guilty in cryptocurrency fraud case

Abramoff and Rowland Marcus Andrade, the chief executive of NAC Foundation, were accused of conspiring to make false and misleading statements to potential purchasers of the cryptocurrency. Andrade was also criminally charged in connection with the offering.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday announced parallel charges against NAC, Andrade and Abramoff. Abramoff, who once served four years in prison for bribing U.S. officials in a case that became synonymous with government corruption, also agreed to settle with the SEC.


Abramoff was released from federal prison in 2010 and was then subject to three years on probation.

He returned to lobbying in late 2016 (here) when he tried unsuccessfully to set up a meeting and phone call between Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso and then-President-elect Donald Trump via Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, according to a public disclosure filed with the U.S. Department of Justice the next year.

[CaptainEurope]

Big story here in Europe:

Kosovan President Hashim Thaci has been indicted for war crimes allegedly committed during the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s, leading him to cancel a planned trip to the White House this weekend for talks with Serbian leaders.
The charges against Thaci were announced Wednesday by a special court at The Hague, in the Netherlands.
According to a press statement, the Specialist Prosecutor's Office filed a 10-count indictment on April 24 that accuses Thaci, Kadri Veseli, the former Chairman of the Assembly of Kosovo, and others of "a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/e...6T00%3A10%3A37

Buyer (or voter) beware. I have some Kosovarian friends, and they always told me Thaci was "mafia" to them.

[CaptainEurope]

I know I should not laugh but

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Jesus H. Christ. And his campaign is calling Joe Biden senile in TV spots? Seriously? Pot, let me introduce you to kettle!

====================

Governors Pause Some Reopenings As Coronavirus Cases Near Record High

Arizona joins Texas in holding off on reopening efforts amid the surge of COVID-19 cases.

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Trump Administration Files Supreme Court Brief To End Obamacare Amid COVID-19 Crisis

The late-night move, taken as coronavirus cases reach record levels, threatens the health insurance of millions of Americans. Anyone who thought Trump gave a **** about people during this crisis, now you have undeniable proof he doesn't!

**********

Andrew Yang Offers Scathing Explanation For Donald Trump’s Racist ‘Kung Flu’ Slurs

The former Democratic candidate said Trump is “desperate” and “grasping at straws that aren’t actually keeping him afloat.”

====================

In non-coronavirus news:

Running For Reelection, Trump Talks Like He’s Running For President Of The Confederacy

Why pander to the “heritage” of a rebellion started solely to defend the right to own Black people as slaves? Critics say it’s simple: He’s a racist.

**********

House Passes Police Reform Bill

But without action in the Senate, it’s unlikely to become law anytime soon.

**********

Media Brutally Calls Out John Bolton For Putting Money Over Patriotism

The former national security adviser was humiliated on CNN, Fox News and “The View” for not testifying during Trump’s impeachment trial.

[PaulBullion]

Current EC map looks good for the "flawed" Biden campaign:

States where the margin is <5% are shown as toss-up. Leaning is <10%, likely <15%. Safe is 15% or higher.

Winning all toss-ups would not save trump. He would have to pick up 23 Electors from states that are currently leaning towards Biden. So massive voter suppression in Florida will happen. But if they lose Arizona (which will move to the "likely blue" column with the next one or two polls, even that would not be enough.

[Kuro no Shinigami]

Current EC map looks good for the "flawed" Biden campaign:





Winning all toss-ups would not save trump. He would have to pick up 23 Electors from states that are currently leaning towards Biden. So massive voter suppression in Florida will happen. But if they lose Arizona (which will move to the "likely blue" column with the next one or two polls, even that would not be enough.

Arizona hasn't voted for a democrat in the prez election since 1996. Arizona, which shares the border with Mexico and has problems with illegal immigration, will move to the blue?

If Biden doesn't get back Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and also win either Ohio or Florida, then Trump gets another 4 years in office.

[PaulBullion]

Arizona hasn't voted for a democrat in the prez election since 1996. Arizona, which shares the border with Mexico and has problems with illegal immigration, will move to the blue?

If Biden doesn't get back Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and also win either Ohio or Florida, then Trump gets another 4 years in office.

Of the last dozen polls in Arizona, Trump only had a narrow lead in one.

az.jpg

[Tendrin]

Arizona hasn't voted for a democrat in the prez election since 1996. Arizona, which shares the border with Mexico and has problems with illegal immigration, will move to the blue?

If Biden doesn't get back Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and also win either Ohio or Florida, then Trump gets another 4 years in office.

Turns out old white people don't like it when you try to kill them through inaction. They like it even less than having brown neighbors, for the most part, it seems.

[numberthirty]

Arizona hasn't voted for a democrat in the prez election since 1996. Arizona, which shares the border with Mexico and has problems with illegal immigration, will move to the blue?

If Biden doesn't get back Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and also win either Ohio or Florida, then Trump gets another 4 years in office.

Don't look at it it like "Move To The Blue..."

Last time out, it's not so much that the Republican nominee had some brilliant platform. It's that support for the Democratic nominee wasn't exactly over the moon.

Now, consider this time out.

Your Republican nominee who had Congress...

- Did he deliver on any real Republican leaning immigration policy?
- Did he deliver on a Republican alternative to the ACA that saved Republican voters on health care?

That's just two of a long list one could make.

If Republican voters sit it out because they didn't really get anything out of the last four years, things won't "Move To The Blue..." Blue support could just falter.

[PaulBullion]

things won't "Move To The Blue..." Blue support could just falter.

Huh?

Make it make sense.

[Tendrin]

If Republican voters sit it out because they didn't really get anything out of the last four years, things won't "Move To The Blue..." Blue support could just falter.

Or people could just be motivated to vote out Trump.

Unlike you.

[numberthirty]

Or people could just be motivated to vote out Trump.

Unlike you.

Anything's possible...

Their call.