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

[Jack Dracula]

The Facebook messages are truly scary. Someone was giving them detailed directions.

Attachment 105175

Federal authorities presented new details on Tuesday about three self-described members of a paramilitary group who are the first to be charged with plotting the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The FBI said a Virginia man, Thomas Edward Caldwell, appeared to be a leader of the effort. Caldwell and a man and woman from Ohio were all charged with conspiracy and other federal counts, the first of more than 125 people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 assault to be charged with conspiracy.

That's insane.

[4saken1]

A Senate Impeachment Trial isn't a regular trial. Trump doesn't have to appear in person, his lawyers do but not him in person.

A congressional subpoena and being held in contempt is only a thing if the House invites you and you don't attend.

Thanks. I did not know this.

[CaptainEurope]

Saw this twitter exchange in response to this insane meme:





How can there be unity with people who refuse to accept the truth and just get aggressive when they have things calmly explained?

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Gary Kiehne, a candidate for Congress hoping to represent Arizona’s 1st Congressional District in 2014 and 2016. Kiehne is a local rancher and Tea Party wild card who lost in 2014 to State Senator Andy Tobin by a mere 407 votes. It is remarkable that the race was that close, considering Kiehne supported the cause of Cliven Bundy to the extent that he wanted the Bureau of Land Management to lose their control over protected government lands, referred to Arizona law enforcement as "Nazi and SS Officers" during a 2011 wildfire evacuation, and during a primary debate when the conversation turned towards gun control, made the outlandish claim that 99% of all mass shootings are perpetrated by Democrats. Well, Gary Kiehne took another crack at politics in 2016, and again Kiehne managed to lose again, this time finishing second in the GOP Primary by a much wider margin of about five thousand votes. To whom, you might ask? Paul Babeu. Yes THAT Paul Babeu, the anti-immigrant sheriff who got outed as gay when he was threatening to deport his illegal immigrant boyfriend, and who once was the headmaster of a private school where the staff were systematically abusing children there. Kiehne has, at least for now, given up on his dreams of becoming a Congressman.

It was on this date in 2018 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Dan Kirby, a former four-term member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives for a decade first elected back in 2008. During his eight years in office, he was frequently absent during votes, but when he was present, supported Republican Voter Suppression tactics via stricter Voter ID laws and opposed minimum wage increases during the greatest period of income inequality in perhaps our nation’s history. Kirby made headlines right at the end of 2016, prior to the new session of the Oklahoma State Legislature though, after news surfaced that the 58 year old Kirby not only sexually harassed a legislative aide three decades his junior, not only responded to her reporting him by firing her (which would be a violation of whistleblower protections), but that he settled her lawsuit against him by using $16,000 of legislative funds meant to be used on cleaning supplies to keep the Oklahoma House of Representatives all spotless and lemon-scented. While that scandal would easily be enough to force a lawmaker’s resignation, Kirby actually tried reversing his resignation a few days after making it, but he finally relented and went off into the sunset in shame.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Steven McLaughlin, a former member of the New York Assembly representing District 107 who rose to office as part of, what else, the 2010 Tea Party Wave. His voting record saw him trying to prevent some of the rather reasonable progressive ideas New York has had over the past few years, like his votes against minimum wage increases, pay equality for women, protecting “marriage equality”, or a vote against a ban on gay conversion therapy on minors. And, during his seven years in office, McLaughlin was certainly not a shrinking violet, as in 2013, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was pushing for gun control legislation, McLaughlin decided to compare Cuomo to just… y’know, Hitler. And Vladmir Putin. McLaughlin, over the years, also began to embrace what the Republican Party has been coming under Donald Trump, such as when he was running to be the Rensselaer County Executive, and he referred to the Times Union Leader as “fake news” and a “worthless rag” because he didn’t like their reporting about him, like say wehen they covered his sexist harassment of one of his aides, in which the audio had him telling her, “You’re still fat. You are. Not attractive — and you’re a (expletive) awful human being.” cLaughlin resigned from the New York State Assembly after that aide successfully filed sexual harassment charges against him He is finishing a four-year term as Resselaer County Executive and seems unlikely to win any other political office when his term is up in 2021. As such, we will set aside his profile at this time and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 826-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Florida State Senator Dennis Baxley, a man who is referred to as “The Steve King of Florida”, because holy s***, is he vomiting out some white nationalist talking points. Baxley was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives from 2001-2006, before returning in the 2010 Tea Party Wave (of course he came with the Tea Party), and after winning two more elections unopposed and serving for six non-consecutive terms in the lower chamber, he moved up to the Florida State Senate in 2016, narrowly winning the GOP Primary for District 12 by a few hundred votes.

So for a time, nobody was paying Baxley too much mind in Tallahassee, but maybe they should have. In 2007, he raised a stink when the state of Florida voted to change the state’s song so that it no longer used the term “Darkeys” in its lyrics. As years went by, Baxley continued to make public comments supporting the legacy of Confederates, and thumbed his nose at acknowledging any other non-white group in Florida’s state history. In 2014, he fought against adding a memorial to fallen Union soldiers to the same patch of land inside the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park that held three monuments honoring Confederate soldiers, saying, "My biggest concern is that this is revisionist history and that these decisions are being made by park officials and not an elected body." A year later, in 2015, Baxley hailed a decision by Marion County commissioners to fly the Confederate flag at their government complex and would also oppose a bill in the House that would ban the display of Confederate flags on state and local government property.

By 2017, Dennis Baxley wasn’t even being subtle about how racist he was. Or

“I don’t want to celebrate defeat. I would rather celebrate overcoming the heartbreak of slavery. I wouldn’t want to build a memorial to child abuse; I wouldn’t want to build a memorial to sexual abuse. I have a discomfort about memorializing slavery. ... I would like to take it in a more positive direction than a memorial to slavery.”

And… we’re just going to point out that if this motherf***er didn’t want to “celebrate defeat” then maybe he shouldn’t be championing the Confederacy so much, since they were, y’know, defeated.

Only a few weeks later, people already keeping a close eye on Baxley noted that he went to a pro-Confederate event only two weeks after the events at Charlottesville, Virginia, which was a fundraiser being held by “Save Southern Heritage Florida”, a group that claimed “leftists and Antifa” were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville (online conversations show the white nationalists were planning violence for weeks ahead of time, incidentally). Baxley lied and claimed he was attending to “condemn racism, bigotry, and violence” at the closed door event.

We’ll pause from discussing Baxley’s racism to point out that in 2005, he sponsored Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law that resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman. He scoffs at the idea that he might have any blood on his hands, because of course he does. But that isn’t his only foray into idiotic extremism when it comes to guns. In 2018, when asked about gun control in the wake of the shooting at Parkland, he said that we shouldn’t ban guns to stop gun violence, because “Spoons are used to eat stuff to kill yourself with obesity, but we're not picking up spoons to get rid of obesity."

We’re not even touching the surface of how low this guy will stoop. In the wake of Hurricane Irma in October of 2017, Dennis Baxley tried claiming that 14 deaths in one Florida nursing home where staff failed to avoid deaths from exposure after the air conditioning system failed that there was no negligence, saying, "Look at the population. You're dealing with the 90-somethings. Some of these deaths would naturally occur, storm or no storm."

In 2019, it hasn’t just been frustrating to see Baxley trying to allow for “alternative science” to be taught in schools, and giving “opposing views” to things like climate change or evolution… Go figure that most of his sources during debate on such a measure in the Florida State Senate was supplied by a hate group that says LGBTQ people are guilty of “deviant behavior” and has a decidedly Islamophobic agenda for public schools.

No, we’re more freaked out about how Baxley started making calls recently for stricter anti-choice legislation, but it was the reasons he gave that turned some heads, as he began adopting white nationalist talking points again, and lamented that Western Europeans were “disappearing” because supposedly enough abortions were happening that the Western Europeans were “being replaced by folks that come behind them and immigrant, don’t wish to assimilate into that society, and they do believe in having children. So you see that there are long range impacts to your society when the answer is to exterminate.”

Baxley spent 2020 addressing the threat of Covid-19… HAHAHAH of course he didn’t, this ***hole tried getting legislation passed to ban gender reassignment treatments for transgender youth, and sponsored two separate bills to try to find an end-around to get prayer in schools by claiming he wanted a “moment of silence” in classrooms.


Just… holy f***. All we know for sure is that when 2022 rolls around, Florida Democrats and yes, Florida Republicans had better have candidates lined up to boot this bigoted old bag of garbage from office.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Kevin McCarthy: ‘Everybody Across This Country’ Is To Blame For Capitol Attack

Donald Trump is responsible for the Jan. 6 riot, but so are you, according to the House Republican leader. I'm not a Republican, so I'm not to blame. That idiot needs to SHUT. THE. ****. UP.

**********

Republicans Are Mad Joe Biden Isn’t Uniting The Nation Around The GOP Agenda

Just two weeks after the Capitol riot inspired by their own voter fraud lies, Republicans say the new president’s policies are dividing the nation. The hypocrisy is strong in those Republican assholes.

**********

Joe Biden Orders Review Of Domestic Violent Extremism Threat In U.S.

It’s a stark acknowledgment of the national security threat that officials see as posed by American extremists motivated to violence by radical ideology. Well past time for white supremacists and right wing thugs to be targeted!

**********

The Supreme Court Was Complicit In Donald Trump’s Execution Spree

Instead of acting as a safeguard, SCOTUS rubber-stamped the administration’s killings, sidestepping issues fundamental to the legality of the death penalty.

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Trump Campaign Paid $2.7 Million To People, Firms That Planned Rally Sparking Capitol Riot

Eight Trump campaign officials were listed on the permit for the rally that ended with the deadly storming of the Capitol, reports the Center for Responsive Politics. That is repugnant!

**********

Meet Your Local Republican Insurrectionist

A new HuffPost tally finds over 20 GOP state and local lawmakers or officials were at the D.C. rally that turned into a violent insurrection. Here are their names.

[Mister Mets]

You're wasting everyone's time by questioning facts that are readily available if you just look, as if they aren't the facts.

On brand, really.

Again, you said that I "defend conspiracy theorists/seditionists from your party." This was in response to a post in which I referred to them as "extremist Republicans" which should make it clear that I do not like them.

Are false personal attacks your brand?

[Tami]

For 1st Black Pentagon chief, racism challenge is personal

WASHINGTON (AP) —

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will have to contend not only with a world of security threats and a massive military bureaucracy, but also with a challenge that hits closer to home: rooting out racism and extremism in the ranks.

Austin took office Friday as the first Black defense chief, in the wake of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, where retired and current military members were among the rioters touting far-right conspiracies.

The retired four-star Army general told senators this week that the Pentagon’s job is to “keep America safe from our enemies. But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Ridding the military of racists isn’t his only priority. Austin, who was confirmed in a 93-2 vote, has made clear that accelerating delivery of coronavirus vaccines will get his early attention.

But the racism issue is personal. At Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, he explained why.

In 1995, when then-Lt. Col. Austin was serving with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, three white soldiers, described as self-styled skinheads, were arrested in the murder of a Black couple who was walking down the street. Investigators concluded the two were targeted because of their race.

[Tami]

Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

“You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud,” a man replied, according to audio recordings of communications between Watkins and others during the incursion.

“We are in the main dome right now. We are rocking it. They are throwing grenades, they are fricking shooting people with paint balls. But we are in here,” a woman believed to be Watkins said, according to court documents.

In charging papers, the FBI said that during the Capitol riot, Caldwell received Facebook messages from unspecified senders updating him of the location of lawmakers. When he posted a one-word message, “Inside,” he received exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and hallways, the FBI said.

Some messages, according to the FBI, included, “Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3floors down,” and “Go through back house chamber doors facing N left down hallway down steps.” Another message read: “All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas,” the FBI added.

[Tami]

The Opinions Essay: Former president, private citizen and, perhaps, criminal defendant: Donald Trump’s new reality

The question came out of the blue and has haunted me ever since. It was Jan. 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trump’s swearing-in, and my wife and I sat with him in the near-empty main cabin aboard the Trump Organization’s Boeing 757 en route to Washington for a pre-inaugural gala.

So, asked the president-elect: Should he retain or fire Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York? I gave what I thought was an obvious, anodyne answer: All other things being equal, it’s better to have your own people in place. Within two months, Bharara was gone.

To the charge of naivete that night, I plead guilty: I didn’t consider then that Trump might have had his personal legal interests in mind. But it is impossible to escape the self-interested intent behind his question. From the earliest days of his administration, it became painfully apparent that in all matters — including affairs of state — Trump’s personal well-being took top priority. Four years and two impeachments later, he has managed to avoid the full consequences of his conduct.

But now that run of legal good fortune may end. Trump departed the White House a possible — many would say probable, provable — criminal, one who has left a sordid trail of potential and actual misconduct that remains to be fully investigated.

As Trump himself well understands. Long-standing Justice Department opinions hold that presidents can’t be prosecuted while they are in office. Given that any such protection was temporary, some of Trump’s advisers believed that one reason he decided to seek reelection was to avoid criminal exposure. Indeed, in the weeks leading up to November’s election, Trump reportedly confessed to advisers that he was worried about being prosecuted.

But Trump’s problem is ours as well: How the Biden administration addresses these issues will have long-lasting implications for the rule of law in America — along with potentially enormous political consequences.

President Biden himself should stay out of it, and rightly seems intent on doing so. His Justice Department, however, can’t and shouldn’t. Previous presidents and previous prosecutors gave former presidents a break for their misdeeds: President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon; independent counsel Robert W. Ray (Kenneth W. Starr’s successor) reached a plea deal with President Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office.

Trump deserves no such grace. His wrongs are far too many to ignore. His demonstrated contempt for the constitutional and legal order is simply too great. That was clear enough before Trump’s repellent and possibly criminal efforts to overturn the election results, for which he was duly impeached. Now, an effort to hold Trump to account in the criminal justice system is essential and unavoidable.

[worstblogever]

Again, you said that I "defend conspiracy theorists/seditionists from your party." This was in response to a post in which I referred to them as "extremist Republicans" which should make it clear that I do not like them.

Are false personal attacks your brand?

Here's a tip... when extremists from your party are mentioned?

Spending half the post "criticizing them" and spending the other half a post trying to pretend it's not true or that it's somehow not who your party is right now. Because that's still a defense, and you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

If you feel that's personal, you could always not run to comment on those stories, because people are obliged to push back on your "hot & cold" approach to the extremists in your party. I understand, that's hard to do, because it is the whole story of the GOP at the moment. You can't go a day without someone dropping white nationalist talking points or defending sedition right now.

It's a real predicament. Maybe if folks had taken a hard stand 5 years ago when people called for such a brave stand, you wouldn't be stuck in it.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The Opinions Essay: Former president, private citizen and, perhaps, criminal defendant: Donald Trump’s new reality

Trump absolutely needs to be brought to trial and prosecuted for his numerous crimes, if but for no other reason than to prevent future REPUBLICANS who win the presidency from getting the idea that they can run rampant over the rule of law.

[Amadeus Arkham]

[shooshoomanjoe]

Saw this twitter exchange in response to this insane meme:





How can there be unity with people who refuse to accept the truth and just get aggressive when they have things calmly explained?

Yea trump supporters are having a field day with this but it has nothing to do with dems. DC metro that booted them out and it's the responsibility of US leadership to set up accommodations for the troops.

[MajorHoy]

This is disingenuous. If you watched the Democrats during the last trial they didn't back at nailing Trump to the wall. The only reason he wasn't evicted then was because the GOP covered for him, because they're spineless. Now they have the added incentive of Trump trying to kill them all, and even signs that the GOP want him gone. The only reason this would fail is because the GOP didn't want Trump gone.

Well, the other problem is that even if a Republican feels Trump is guilty, there's always the problem of how much of their constituency feels the same way and whether they would hold a vote against Trump against the politician himself/herself when they come up, for re-election.

Impeachment votes should be anonymous for that exact reason.

But then you'll have politicians who publicly say they voted one way when they actually did the opposite.

(Not the politicians would ever lie to try and win votes or anything . . . )