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

[Gray Lensman]

The con job angle doesn't match her background.

She was a social worker who ran for state legislature twenty years ago as a green party affiliated candidate.

I think there's some other explanation.
The right to a speedy trial is for his defense to request if they want it. They chose to spend more time prepping.

Because his defense could do that, it helps out anyone in a more ambiguous situation. It's all for the good.

It seems he doesn't think it would work. Granted, Powell's case is unusual enough that it doesn't have serious policy implications (a small segment of the population having a form of cancer which minimizes the effectiveness of vaccines is hardly proof vaccination is ineffective for most people) even if he views it differently. Plus, it is his responsibility to articulate his views.

Powell's cancer likely did more than just reduce the effect of the vaccine. Since it affected his blood it probably reduced the red cells ability to bring oxygen to the rest of the body as well. Not a good thing to have when you catch a respiratory illness that reduces your oxygen intake on the front end.

[Tami]

Republican lawmakers from western Maryland ask for their counties to be added to West Virginia

Republican legislators from three western Maryland counties have asked for their jurisdictions to be broken off from Maryland and added to West Virginia, a reflection of what they say is growing frustration with the Democratic-controlled legislature in Annapolis.

“We believe this arrangement may be mutually beneficial for both states and for our local constituencies,” the lawmakers said in letters that were sent earlier this month and addressed to West Virginia Senate President Craig Blair (R) and House Speaker Roger Hanshaw (R). They were signed by five Republican legislators who represent rural counties along Maryland’s border with West Virginia: Garrett, Allegany and Washington.

Maryland House Minority Leader Jason Buckel (R-Allegany), who signed one of the two letters, said in an interview Thursday that he is not under any illusion that Maryland will be losing the western region to its neighbor any time soon, if ever. As a practical matter, he added, people appear to be getting “a little too excited” about the prospect of leaving.

Hanshaw, the West Virginia speaker, said the letter did not come as a total surprise. For more than 20 years, officials from Western Maryland have been meeting with those in bordering counties to discuss issues related to shared government and commercial interests. Over time, he said, Western Maryland legislators have come to “feel that their interests were more closely aligned with ours.”

West Virginia’s House of Delegates has 100 members — 78 Republicans and 22 Democrats. Property taxes in West Virginia are lower, Hanshaw noted, and there’s greater representation for rural communities in the state government. The biggest city in West Virginia is Charleston, which has about 50,000 residents.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

If Democrats could exchange Sinema for a Republican - Sinema switches to Republican and the Republican becomes a Democrat, who should they pick? As in, is there a moderate Republican nin the Sennate that might switch parties if the incentive was good enough?

I'm thinking of possibly Lisa Murkowski.

I'm sure there are moderate Republicans who have little love for the crazies and obstructionists in the party, but I can't see any of them getting fed up enough to become Democrats. For one, I doubt they could ever bring themselves to make the switch because of opposing ideologies, for another, I suspect they fear being targeted by mouth foaming Trumpanzees if they betrayed the GQP, especially after 1/6.

[seismic-2]

As a historical footnote, those westernmost counties of Maryland are in fact nearly geographically separate from the rest of the State. The northern border of western Maryland is the latitude parallel at about 39.72 degrees and its southern boundary is the Potomac River. In Colonial times it wasn't altogether certain whether the Potomac's northernmost point might not in fact be slightly north of that parallel, thereby dividing Maryland into two non-contiguous pieces! In the 1760s the British surveying team of Mason and Dixon established their famous "line" to follow that parallel all the way to the western border of Pennsylvania, and they determined that the Potomac does actually stay south of that parallel, by about 1.8 miles at its closest approach. So those westernmost counties are physically, if not politically, connected to the rest of Maryland - but just barely!

[Kirby101]

This shows what is going on with Maryland. It is a strange shape.

[seismic-2]

Most of Maryland is in the coastal plains, but those western counties are in the Appalachian Mountains. When the TV stations in Baltimore are panicking about whether they might get a 2-inch snowfall overnight, they casually mention that Garrett county will get two feet of snow, and then say nothing further about it. It's no wonder that the people in the 3 western counties feel a stronger kinship to the counties they border in West Virginia than they do to the other 20 counties in Maryland.

[JCAll]

The con job angle doesn't match her background.

She was a social worker who ran for state legislature twenty years ago as a green party affiliated candidate.

I think there's some other explanation.

If I had to guess, getting sick of it all and cynically deciding to cash in would seem the obvious answer.
I suppose she could just enjoy acting as an agent of chaos, but that's my bias against the Green Party poking through.

[Tami]

This shows what is going on with Maryland. It is a strange shape.

This reminds me how some states have boarders that don't make sense geographically, though I guess there was a reason for them politically.

[Tendrin]

Thinking about the Chapelle special. I don't think he was anti-trans the way many Christian Fundamentalist/Republicans are. I think he is very "live and let live" about it. I think he was manly offended that after a few jokes about trans in a previous special, he felt he was unfairly attacked by the trans community, who were not accurate about what he said. (I have not looked back at this to see what was said). I think he decided to use this in his knew show to "get the record straight". And while doing so, told some more jokes at Trans' expense.
My take is, he just should have just let it go. Whatever his feelings about what he said, and what the reaction was, just take a knee dude and move on. Say "Sorry if you took offense, I'll try to do better". Which is passive aggressive anyway and doesn't imply guilt.
I am sure somewhere he is thinking, "No one should tel me what should be in my act". True, but I am sure you decide to leave things out all the time. Hell, you walked away from your show because your jokes were being taken as aligning with some racists ideas, instead of exposing them as you wanted.
So in the end, he just shouldn't have gone there.

Chapelle may not consider himself 'anti-trans', but he is, the same way a lot of liberals might consider themselves not racist, but are. Again: dude declared himself on the side of the folks who don't think trans women are women and want them erased from public life. He made reductive arguments that are biologically essentialist when it comes to sex and gender. He said 'I'm team TERF'. It's hard to get more anti-trans than that, no matter how much you might consider yourself 'live and let live', you're not really 'letting live', if you align yourself with people who are a threat to trans lives.

[Kirby101]

Chapelle may not consider himself 'anti-trans', but he is, the same way a lot of liberals might consider themselves not racist, but are. Again: dude declared himself on the side of the folks who don't think trans women are women and want them erased from public life. He made reductive arguments that biologically essentialist when it comes to sex and gender. He said 'I'm team TERF'. It's hard to get more anti-trans than that, no matter how much you might consider yourself 'live and let live', you're not really 'letting live', if you align yourself with people who are a threat to trans lives.

You make a good point.

[worstblogever]

Today in Tennessee, State Senator Frank Niceley decided to share an anecdote he had with his grandson where he told him the "war between the states isn't over" and "the South is winning".

State of the GOP... they're the party of insurrection/sedition, top to bottom.

[Tami]

Liz Cheney’s Consultants Are Given an Ultimatum: Drop Her, or Be Dropped

WASHINGTON — A prominent Washington lobbyist close to Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, is warning Republican political consultants that they must choose between working for Representative Liz Cheney or Mr. McCarthy, an ultimatum that marks the full rupture between the two House Republicans.

Jeff Miller, the lobbyist and a confidant of Mr. McCarthy’s dating to their youthful days in California politics, has conveyed this us-or-her message to Republican strategists in recent weeks, prompting one fund-raising firm to disassociate itself from Ms. Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming.

In response, The Morning Group, a fund-raising firm she hired to help prepare for a primary next year against a challenger endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, informed her last month they could no longer work on her campaign, according to Republicans familiar with the matter.

Mr. Miller’s warnings illustrate the disintegration of the relationship between the two lawmakers, who began this year serving together in the House Republican leadership. They also underline Mr. McCarthy’s willingness to wield his leadership position to undercut Ms. Cheney’s re-election and head off an impediment to his claiming the speakership, should Republicans win a House majority next year. Were Ms. Cheney to return to Congress, she would loom as a potential instigator of any effort to block Mr. McCarthy from leading their party in the House.

After initially defending Ms. Cheney to House Republicans angry at her for voting to impeach Mr. Trump earlier this year, Mr. McCarthy abandoned her after she continued to speak out against the former president. In May, with Mr. McCarthy’s blessing, party lawmakers ousted Ms. Cheney from her role as the third-ranking House Republican.

She has, however, emerged as perhaps Mr. Trump’s top priority to defeat. After meeting with a series of would-be challengers, Mr. Trump in September endorsed Harriet Hageman, a Cheyenne attorney who had taken part in a failed, last-ditch effort to strip him of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination two months after he had clinched it.

Ms. Hageman, who was once a Cheney family friend and served as an adviser to Ms. Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign, raised just over $300,000 for the quarter, but she only filed her candidacy on Sept. 9.

Mr. Trump has endorsed a handful of other Republicans challenging the lawmakers who voted to impeach him and was exultant last month when Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who cast one of the 10 Republican votes to impeach, said he would retire from Congress rather than run against a former Trump White House official.

“1 Down, 9 To Go!” the former president said in a statement at the time.

[numberthirty]

Here's the obvious problem with the garbage that Chapelle is on about when it comes to this...

Just recently he saw the issue when the cops murdered a someone in the street.

No runaround/No qualifier

One man being murdered in the street.

(Not to minimize his death. Just pointing out the actual reality when it came to Chapelle...)

Meanwhile, this is also the current reality...

https://www.out.com/crime/2021/2/03/...violently-2021

29 Trans Americans Have Been Killed in 2021 — Most on Record

2020 was historically deadly for the transgender community. A record 45 trans people were violently killed last year, eclipsing the previous high of 31 in 2017. As usual, transgender women of color were disproportionately impacted by the violence. The true number of victims will never be known, as many go unreported or are misgendered in death.

Sadly, 2021 is proving even more deadly with the recent announced killings of Thomas Hardin and Haven A Bailey. Hardin, 35, a Black transgender woman, was shot and killed in South Carolina on May 2 by a man suspected of multiple other killings. Haven A Bailey, 25, a transgender man, was shot and killed by police in Illinois in the early morning hours of May 24 when he allegedly pointed a pellet gun at officers despite repeated requests to disarm. It was also reported earlier that Oliver “Ollie” Taylor, 17, a transgender boy, was shot on May 12 in Oregon by his alleged kidnapper who also shot and seriously wounded his friend who tried to save him; Taylor died a week later on May 19.

Listed below are the 29 known violent killings of transgender people so far this year, making 2021 on pace to be the deadliest ever for the transgender community.

[numberthirty]

That is a reality that any human being with a seriously basic set of computer skills can dig up.

It's is impossible to see why one of those things was as serious as a second heart attack while the other is apparently perfectly acceptable comedic fodder.

[Malvolio]

I don't think Chapelle would dispute that many transgender individuals are being brutally murdered. I think he would dispute that his words directly lead to those murders.