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

[Amadeus Arkham]

SCOOP: Matt Gaetz snorted cocaine with an escort in an Orlando hotel room after he gave the keynote at a GOP fundraiser. His pal Joel Greenberg will name her as one of 15+ women Gaetz paid for sex.

Matt Gaetz right now:

[Tami]

SCOOP: Matt Gaetz snorted cocaine with an escort in an Orlando hotel room after he gave the keynote at a GOP fundraiser. His pal Joel Greenberg will name her as one of 15+ women Gaetz paid for sex.

Matt Gaetz right now:

Gaetz is delusional enough to still think he is protected by the Trump umbrella...



The Trump umbrella only protected Trump, though right now it's pretty much broken

[WestPhillyPunisher]

SCOOP: Matt Gaetz snorted cocaine with an escort in an Orlando hotel room after he gave the keynote at a GOP fundraiser. His pal Joel Greenberg will name her as one of 15+ women Gaetz paid for sex.

Matt Gaetz right now:

Just like Trump who learned at the feet of Roy Cohn about the love of denial, Matty Perv will call Greenberg a liar, even if rock solid evidence is produced. And, chances are the GQP will circle the wagons to protect Gaetz, so, I don't know if any of this will matter in the long run.

[Wildling]

Just like Trump who learned at the feet of Roy Cohn about the love of denial, Matty Perv will call Greenberg a liar, even if rock solid evidence is produced. And, chances are the GQP will circle the wagons to protect Gaetz, so, I don't know if any of this will matter in the long run.

Gaetz is not Trump and even Barr under Trump didn't want to be photographed around him when all this was brewing early so I think they'd rather go "Gaetz who?" when the perp walking starts but if they want to continue to tie all these rocks around their necks to remind every voter on a monthly basis until the midterms that's their business.

[BeastieRunner]

They will circle the wagons to protect Gaetz just like they circled up oust Cheney.

[Malvolio]

”Ignore the bully until she goes away” is kind of fallacious/impractical. Though “Don’t feed the troll” could cleanly apply here, as MTG keeps switching who she goes after. So it could be someone different, tomorrow, for all we know.

Yeah. Ignoring the bully only works if everyone ignores the bully. But we all know that FOX News will continue to give Q-Anon Betty attention, and even if they don't, Newsmax or OANN will.

[Wildling]

Yeah. Ignoring the bully only works if everyone ignores the bully. But we all know that FOX News will continue to give Q-Anon Betty attention, and even if they don't, Newsmax or OANN will.

Aren't at least those last pussying out about pushing conspiracies about Trump winning the election when the going got legal tough? Haven't heard about Lou Dobbs not being sued either.

AOC to me made the right call when refusing to brawl the bully on floor and later basically called her a bar drunkard.

[worstblogever]

SCOOP: Matt Gaetz snorted cocaine with an escort in an Orlando hotel room after he gave the keynote at a GOP fundraiser. His pal Joel Greenberg will name her as one of 15+ women Gaetz paid for sex.

[Zauriel]

Latest news:

Liz Cheney says she voted for Trump in the election and now she wishes she takes her vote back.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

They will circle the wagons to protect Gaetz just like they circled up oust Cheney.

And while the GQP removed Marjorie Trashy Greene from any Congressional committees she was on, they won't kick her out altogether. In their warped minds, that move would "give the Democrats a win", even though she's been a dumpster fire on two legs ever since she arrived in Washington.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day published profiles of South Dakota State Senator Phil Jensen, a man who drew national headlines back in March of 2013 for producing legislation that would allow businesses to discriminate against whoever they want, Civil Rights Act be damned. Jensen actually tried claiming that if a bakery owned by the KKK tried discriminating against an African American, that the matter would take care of itself, because customers would be too offended to patronize such a place. This logic, of course then fails to understand everything about the Jim Crow era South. Anyway, South Dakota Republicans threw Jensen under the bus for his remarks, but have never said anything about other extreme legislation he's produced or supported, including drug testing welfare recipients, an unnecessary ban on Sharia Law in the United States, an attempt to criminalize abortions as "attacks on a fetus", co-sponsoring “religious freedom” legislation to allow people to discriminate against LGBT citizens, and Jensen’s sponsorship of transphobic legislation including not just a ban on transgendered citizens using public bathrooms, but also to forbid transgendered athletes from participating in high school sports. (Because that just reeks of a “party of smaller government”, right?)

While the South Dakota GOP spent two years aghast and trying to do damage control over Phil Jensen’s remarks about the Klan, in 2016, he survived Jacqueline Sly, a primary challenger and he still won re-election comfortably in Rapid City with 61% of the vote. Has he dialed back the extremism since we last checked in? Hell no, he hasn’t! Phil Jensen has continued his attacks upon this LGBTQ community, but apparently isn’t content to only do so as a legislator. At a town hall in February of 2017, as David Hubbard, from the Human Rights campaign asked “Who will protect the people of South Dakota from discrimination??”, Jensen’s response drew groans from the audience for its sheer bigotry:

"Should a known pedophile… be allowed, be allowed to adopt. There are reasons this is not allowed."

Now, equating a transgendered person to a “known pedophile” did not go over, especially because there was a transgendered man in attendance who HAD adopted a child, and lambasted Jensen for believing a child should not find a loving family to care for them.

So far in 2018, Phil Jensen has swapped out his focus on homophobia to instead, move back to transphobia again, as he sponsored legislation to try and force businesses with public restrooms to place signs to warn users that “someone of the opposite gender may be inside”, because that’s a “smaller government” thing to do. Just like the other bill Jensen sponsored, where he tried to place a ban on public school teachers from being able to teach anything about gender identity in classrooms.

Phil Jensen survived both a GOP challenger, as well as a Democratic challenger in the 2018 elections. He decided to use that political capital to sponsor legislation to allow school children to challenge the lesson plans of any science teacher who dares to try and educate the youth of their state about climate change, claiming teachers “worship at the altar of climate change”, and calling any plans to teach kids about it “indoctrination”. Jensen has also spent his last term in office in the State Senate trying to imagine new ways to hunt down and stop any kids who might be undergoing feelings of gender dysphoria, submitting legislation that would require school counselors to notify parents if any children reported such feelings to them to make sure those children could not begin any transition to a gender outside of the one they were born as.

The only good news about that fact is… Jensen was term-limited and could not run for re-election to the South Dakota State Senate in 2020. Instead, the absolute bigot opted to run for a seat in the South Dakota House of Representatives instead, and he’s taken his new lease on legislative life to be a partisan motherf***er completely, submitting a bill to teach “Celebrate Black History Month” by distorting history and claiming that Democrats founded the modern Ku Klux Klan. Which, not for nothing, is an outright lie, if anyone thought it might not be.

Because he jumped to the lower chamber to avoid term limits, Phil Jensen can hold office until 2028, and his current term will last through the end of 2022. Just… f***, man.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Latest news:

Liz Cheney says she voted for Trump in the election and now she wishes she takes her vote back.

Is that the GOP version of going Bulworth?

[CSTowle]

You trotted out a conspiracy theory.



Show me your evidence for these grounds to speculate.



You did. You said "Defund the Police" was created by an agent provocateur or so on. That is a bold claim. One I have not come across. I demand you present your evidence for making this assertion, otherwise I insist you withdraw it.

And let's be clear..."defund the police" is the mild audience-friendly version. The real radical slogan is "Abolish the Police" which is an actual radical idea that the likes of Angela Davis among others have advocated. Police abolitionism is an actual idea in radical, anarchist, and anarcho-syndicalist circles. There's also the famous song by NWA which adds a four-letter verb to the Mad-Libs of "___ the Police" which isn't so far in attitude anyway.



You act as if the blame and responsibility is on the activists for being fickle when in fact The Dems have time and again betrayed the activist base as and when it's convenient, and then scapegoating them groundlessly just because low-propensity Republican voters also turned up in a Pandemic election with a huge section of the people furloughed and they had to justify why their centrist candidates didn't do as well as they expected. Again the Democratic party are not the protagonists of this story.



I do not believe that. I am not as radical as you assume I am. I am simply calling things as they are. This kvetching about "Defund the Police" and identity politics is centrist policing and chasing a right-wing boogeyman.



Biden hasn't been, historically or now, as centrist as Clinton. I don't think it's right to pair them.

On my speculation that the phrase "Defund the Police" was so harmful and distracting to popular support for police reform that it made me wonder if it were the work of a right-wing troll rather than a poorly conceived decision by police reform activists: I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you misread what I said, though it was fairly simple and hard to see how you misread but again benefit of the doubt, but I've now explained it again very simply and without room for wiggle. It's now clear that you're attempting to beat up on a strawman and act as if this is the point of contention rather than the harm done to the police reform movement itself (which again was a distraction from the discussion of whether Critical Race Theory and extremists in the Anti-Racism movement are alienating people similarly to the "Defund the Police" messaging). This is arguing in bad faith.

As to what I get to say, assuming you address what I actually say and not what you'd like to imagine I said because that seems to be easier to refute or argue against, you really don't get a say on that. You can say you disagree. You can ignore it. You can argue against it. You don't get to silence me or anyone else on this board, short of truly beyond the pale behavior or language and then you get to inform a mod and they get to make that call. I feel confident I haven't done anything like that so feel free to report me if you like but I don't think it'll go anywhere.

As for who is to blame for there not being as much progress as I think we both agree we'd like, there's more than enough blame to go around. Yes, activists do shoulder some of that responsibility. Whether justified or not property damage and violence will turn some people off. You can gamble it will frighten people enough to be forced to react, which some extremists do, but that's a risk you have to be willing to take. You also have to overlook the damage done to people who likely have nothing to do with changing the issue at hand. You have to own when you have bad and alienating messaging. You can be aggressive and lash out in anger at everyone around you who doesn't agree with you fully 100%, as some of the extremists do, but then you have to accept the lack of support you're building among people who might otherwise be sympathetic and supportive (even if only occasionally or part-time, and then with prodding). There's also a portion of the activist class who are more concerned with being seen doing something and crowing about their activism than they are actually getting things done. They'd rather feel morally superior than actually doing the work or supporting politicians who can make the changes they never will with decades of marching or holding signs. And if you want to bring up the real extremists who do want to abolish the police, that's not a feather in the cap of the activist movement either.

The Democratic Party gets the blame for the same reasons I listed. They like the status quo almost as much as the Republicans, and need that prodding. They also welcome extremists on the left who make leftist/progressive change unpalatable to the middle because it helps keep them in power and the status quo easier to maintain. As to Biden and Clinton, I feel they're similar enough on Neoliberal support for Wall Street (maybe more in Biden's case), war in the Middle East, historical support for "Tough on Crime" laws that target minorities, and other issues that I feel like it's a good comparison. They're more like each other (as was Obama) than either is to Bernie or AOC. Much as I might wish otherwise, they are the Democratic Party. I don't feel like I need to address the Republicans/right-wing blame on this issue.

There are no protagonists in this story, this impacts us all. There's blame to go around on all sides. Nobody's standing on the moral mountain top, especially people thinking they are and yelling down insults at people either lower down or not bothering to make a climb. Maybe if they tried helping them up rather than chucking rocks down at them we'd all climb up easier. I suck at metaphors, but you get my point. Nobody owns the narrative here, nobody is objectively right, and nobody gets to dictate terms and arguments. You can try, but again good luck with that. Might make you feel better in a bubble, but doesn't get anything done outside of one's ego.

Again, long story short...

A rock in one's shoe?

Actual issue.

This nonsense?

It is like the sort of garbage that somebody like Ben Shapiro is trying to tell me actually amounts to an issue.

No matter how much folks want to go on about it?

It is a non-issue.

In your example?

It is you trying to tell me that your shoelaces being the wrong color/style is actually an issue.

Which is just impossible to take seriously.

Fair enough, agree to disagree.

[Tendrin]

Is that the GOP version of going Bulworth?

No, I don't think so.

[Tami]

Israeli airstrike in Gaza destroys building with AP bureau

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike has destroyed a high-rise building that housed The Associated Press’ offices in the Gaza Strip.

The airstrike Saturday came roughly an hour after the Israeli military ordered people to evacuate the building. There was no immediate explanation for why the building was targeted.

The building houses The Associated Press, Al-Jazeera and a number of offices and apartments.