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

[Zauriel]

The White House liaison to the Justice Department was banned from the DOJ building


DOJ Bans Trump Aide Seeking ‘Insider Information’ on Voter Fraud

Trump Aide Banned From the Dept of Justice by Attorney General Barr After Trying to Get Case Info

Bill Barr bans Trump aide from entering DOJ building following post-election pressure campaign



I didn't think Barr really had the guts. If that move wasn't bold enough to make Trump angry, I don't know what will be.

[Joker]

They believe in eternal life. That is why those radicals endanger all of us, they just think they will pass over to a big garden full of bunnies where they get to be closer to sky daddy.

Oh, trust me, I know. It's dumb.

Yet they never consider judgement. The weight of spreading this to others and getting them sick, possibly resulting in their deaths, should weigh heavy on their 'eternal souls'. I'm not very religious, but the part of me that still is understands that, if there is an afterlife, there will be some form of judgement for how you have lived your life.

But... they legitimately don't think they're doing anything wrong. It's god's plan, mysterious ways etc. It makes absolutely zero sense.

But religious people rarely make any sense to me.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I wonder if Trump will sabotage the Georgia race just to show the Republicans his power. One can hope...

[numberthirty]

This is assuming that Mitch allows the bill to the floor for a vote. And assumes that Trump won't veto it out of spite. I do agree that Pelosi screwed up, but as someone else pointed out, she thought that the Democrats would be in a much better position after the election.

...

That was the whole point...

Pelosi making an intentional move to derail the thing instead of putting McConnell into a position where he had to either block throwing John/Jane Public a rope or actually get them a minimal amount of help right before an election was the stupidest thing she could have done.

There is no way you build up political goodwill by saying "We Will Help You, But On Our Terms..."

If anything? That is liable to make it more difficult for you to win the elections you will actually need to do it on your own terms.

Which is exactly what wound up happening.

Never mind that she helped McConnell out of a bind when she did it.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

But religious people rarely make any sense to me.

Marx was right about religion. He was right about a lot of other things but about religion, no one can gainsay him.

I wonder if Trump will sabotage the Georgia race just to show the Republicans his power. One can hope...

[Amadeus Arkham]

IMO, no matter what sort of stimulus bill Pelosi proposed, whether it was loaded to the gills or ridiculously watered down, McConnell would've slapped it down. It's not in his best interest, or that of the GOP to pass any sort of bill that helps the populace because that would help Democrats, and that just ain't happening as long as Moscow Mitch draws breath. And with Biden soon to take over, the obstruction and roadblocking from McConnell will continue, nothing will get done, the goal being to tell voters when midterms roll around that Biden and Democrats couldn't accomplish anything and to vote for Republicans. I'm probably wrong here, but that's my suspicion.

This is very much true until or if Dems win the Georgia run-offs in Jan. Fingers crossed the Dems can get control of the senate in January but I’m only cautiously optimistic at the prospects at this point. It can go either way.

[Jack Dracula]

But... they legitimately don't think they're doing anything wrong. It's god's plan, mysterious ways etc. It makes absolutely zero sense.

The reason for the separation of church and state.

[Malvolio]

The White House liaison to the Justice Department was banned from the DOJ building


DOJ Bans Trump Aide Seeking ‘Insider Information’ on Voter Fraud

Trump Aide Banned From the Dept of Justice by Attorney General Barr After Trying to Get Case Info

Bill Barr bans Trump aide from entering DOJ building following post-election pressure campaign



I didn't think Barr really had the guts. If that move wasn't bold enough to make Trump angry, I don't know what will be.

Looks like Barr knows that Biden won't keep him on, so he has to do something to make himself look like he has a backbone for potential employers or clients.

[Zauriel]

Looks like Barr knows that Biden won't keep him on, .

Perhaps that is why he appointed a special counsel to keep tabs on Mr. Biden. Perhaps he may have got the last laugh.


AG Barr does his job on two key calls: annoying both Democrats and President Trump

Barr revealed Tuesday that he’s made John Durham, the former US attorney he’d previously put in charge of examining the origins of the FBI “Russiagate” probe, a special counsel. That ensures a President Joe Biden can’t easily kill the investigation of serious Justice Department abuses.

The AG made the appointment Oct. 19 but kept it quiet so as not to be seen as interfering with the election. He said Tuesday he opted to use “the same regulation that covered Bob Mueller, to provide Durham and his team some assurance that they’d be able to complete their work regardless of the outcome of the election.”

Under that regulation, a special counsel can only be fired for specific reasons, such as dereliction of duty, misconduct or conflict of interest. Biden’s AG won’t be able to shut down the probe without some serious backlash.

[Steel Inquisitor]

That was the whole point...

Pelosi making an intentional move to derail the thing instead of putting McConnell into a position where he had to either block throwing John/Jane Public a rope or actually get them a minimal amount of help right before an election was the stupidest thing she could have done.

There is no way you build up political goodwill by saying "We Will Help You, But On Our Terms..."

If anything? That is liable to make it more difficult for you to win the elections you will actually need to do it on your own terms.

Which is exactly what wound up happening.

Never mind that she helped McConnell out of a bind when she did it.

Once again the woman is being blamed when a man does something bad, even when it's not in her own jurisdiction because congress is split in two and she's not the Minority leader in the senate, that'd be Chuck Schumer. And what is this thing she's supposed to be doing? What alleged leverage does she have to circumvent both McConnel, the man known for blocking voting for SCOTUS nominees who stole a seat from Obama and Donald Trump, who will veto anything on his desk which Democrats like?

Funny, works for the GOP. Not that Pelosi have that kind of leverage, Democrats have to compromise or get nothing and they'll blamed when the GOP win in congress.

Pelosi has nothing to do with Democratic elections, but the right love to make her the boogeyman when AOC and Hillary aren't around. Maybe when Pelosi's gone they'll be blaming a freshman representative for why Democrats losing seats in congress and when McConnell stops Democratic bills in the senate.

How did she help McConnell?

[numberthirty]

Once again the woman is being blamed when a man does something bad, even when it's not in her own jurisdiction because congress is split in two and she's not the Minority leader in the senate, that'd be Chuck Schumer. And what is this thing she's supposed to be doing? What alleged leverage does she have to circumvent both McConnel, the man known for blocking voting for SCOTUS nominees who stole a seat from Obama and Donald Trump, who will veto anything on his desk which Democrats like?

Funny, works for the GOP. Not that Pelosi have that kind of leverage, Democrats have to compromise or get nothing and they'll blamed when the GOP win in congress.

Pelosi has nothing to do with Democratic elections, but the right love to make her the boogeyman when AOC and Hillary aren't around. Maybe when Pelosi's gone they'll be blaming a freshman representative for why Democrats losing seats in congress and when McConnell stops Democratic bills in the senate.

How did she help McConnell?

What's in green is reasonably simple, and you are almost to where the actual reality is with what's in blue.

Here's the issue with your point of view in blue...

McConnell did not actually have to do anything once Pelosi decided to refuse that deal. Never mind actually having been put into a position where he would either have to do something bad or actually help John/Jane Public out a little bit.

That is how Pelosi helped McConnell. In an instance where she a actually had a chance to put him into a position where he might have to actually do the bad thing you are bringing up?

Pelosi passed, and made sure that McConnell didn't have to deal with anything.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Cynthia Davis, an ethically-challenged former member of the Missouri House of Representatives who not only wanted creation taught in school classrooms, but tried preventing children from learning about any other kind of sex education that wasn’t abstinence. Her quest to make the lives of Missouri’s children more terrible expanded beyond that, though, as she earned an appearance on the Colbert Report for her opposition to getting poor children free meals during the summer because it would “rob them of their ambition”, and suggested they should work as child labor at McDonald’s to earn themselves a free meal based on her assessment that “hunger can be a positive motivator”. Davis was also a key ally of self-titled Birther Queen Orly Taitz, accompanying her in person at court hearings over the lawsuit she filed about President Obama’s Birth Certificate, and accused the court of bias for ruling against Taitz, claiming they only did so because she had an accent. Wrapping things up, Davis wrote a newsletter in 2009 where she proclaimed that “racism is dead”. Cynthia Davis has been out of office since 2010, when she failed to move on to the Missouri State Senate after facing term limits in the Missouri House. She made a 2012 run to try to win office as Missouri Lieutenant Governor as a member of the somehow even more rabid right wing Constitution Party, but lost and has not turned up on a ballot in the four years since.

On this date in 2015, Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Chris Corley, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives who held up a white surrender flag to mock any Republicans who voted to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol after a fellow legislator was assassinated at the Charleston AME Emanuel Church by a White Nationalist, Dylann Roof. And, Corley still wasn't over his love for the Stars & Bars, as he sent Christmas cards out to all the legislators who voted for the flag's removal, forgiving them "for all their sins such as betrayal" a few months later. Corley was allowed to run for re-election unopposed, but ended up getting booted from office after being arrested on domestic violence charges over the 2016 holiday season.

On this date in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Steve Hickey, a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2011-2015, which many Democrats in South Dakota found alarming because of his background as a pastor with quite extreme views on abortion and LGBT rights. Those concerns were not unfounded. In January of 2014, Hickey turned heads by sponsoring one of the first "religious freedom" brand of bills in the country that were actually just legalizing the discrimination towards the gay community. Bizarrely, Hickey tried justifying it with the ludicrous statement that "gay rights are taking us down the road to Iran", because he's apparently unaware of how Iran punishes homosexuals with flogging or even the death penalty. Go figure. But then again, Hickey also believes that legalized gay marriage would have left him open to lawsuits as a pastor, so we're not talking about someone whose elevator goes all the way up, here. In May of 2014, for whatever reason, Steve Hickey was particularly upset about all the butt stuff happening in these United States, and decided to write an opinion editorial for the local paper, the Argus Leader about it. They found it... inappropriate for publication, and Hickey, outraged that they wouldn't go with his column, got on Facebook to post his vile and crude letter, titled, "A One Way Alley for the Garbage Truck", where he accused the entire medical community of creating a conspiracy to cover up the risks of anal sex. After a wave of criticism from LGBT groups, media outlets, and just sane people, Hickey refused to apologize or back down from his assertion. Steve Hickey was actually one of the first people in South Dakota to question the signatures being submitted by Annette Bosworth in her run for U.S. Senate were done so improperly, which makes it pretty hypocritical that he may have done the exact same thing in 2012 to get on the ballot as a state legislator. Before the walls closed in and he was arrested for forgery, Steve Hickey resigned from the South Dakota House of Representatives in July of 2015, deciding to travel to Aberdeen, Scotland, to try and get a PHD in Christian ethics.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Bill Drennan, a candidate for the Virginia State Assembly in the 2019 elections, attempting to flip District 87 for Republicans. Drennan is some old blood in the Virginia GOP, having once served as a military aide in the Reagan administration who claimed to have once been responsible for the nuclear football. His views on women, however, sound like the sort of insanity you would expect from that era. Because during a forum discussion on abortion, Drennan decided to come up with the policy suggestion to give women who get abortions ankle bracelets to track them like common criminals, saying “The number of abortions in Virginia in 2017 was 17,210. The number of gun deaths, the misuse of guns, was 1,041. That’s a ratio of 16.5:1. How about this, contrarian? I’m going to impose commonsense restrictions on the constitutional right to an abortion? How about ankle bracelets? I don’t think very many people would agree with that.” Drennan’s campaign website had plenty of lies to spread about abortion, to try and back up that kind of insanity, including the claim that Virginia Democrats had blocked “legislation that would have eliminated restrictions on third-trimester abortions and legalized infanticide.” (Fact check: Out of 200,000 abortions performed in Virginia since the year 2000, only TWO were third trimester, and those were non-viable pregnancies.) Drennan also opposed background checks on firearm purchases, and evaded giving a clear answer on if he supported the Equal Rights Amendment, calling it “dead legislation”. Bill Drennan los with only 38% of the vote against Democrat Suhas Subramanyam in Virginia’s 2019 election.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2017, as well as 2018, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Iowa State Senator Jason Schultz, who has served in the Iowa state legislature since 2009, spending six years in the lower chambers before moving up to the upper one in the 2014 elections. Back when he was just a member of the Iowa House, Schultz made a name for himself co-sponsoring legislation to try and nullify the Affordable Care Act. What really got our attention about Schultz was his appearance on Mickelson in the Morning back in September of 2015, when he went on a horribly racist rant against Muslim refugees being resettled in the United States from Syria, where he said, “We already have problems with concentrations of Middle Eastern refugees or migrants coming in and taking over communities. They don’t want to assimilate. They do not want to become Americans. They only want the free stuff from America. They practice a religion that orders them to dominate and they want to live under Sharia law which they will not subordinate under our law while they live here and enjoy our protections and our goodies. It’s an invasion” to spread their own theology by force.”[/QUOTE] While Schultz would like to spread paranoid lies about Syrians fleeing their nation for their lives, he supports Personhood and would do anything to save the lives of zygotes. Because they should have Constitutional rights to vote and have gun (while not having a heartbeat yet), and the refugees think they’re entitled to “free stuff”. His voting record also includes opposition to raising the minimum wage (during the worst period of income inequality in our nation in almost a century), opposition to a ban on gay conversion therapy on minors, and he voted against crimes against individuals based on their gender identity or expression as hate crimes, besides being a big supporter of stricter Voter ID regulations that suppress the vote in the name of preventing statistically non-existent in-person voter fraud. He also sponsored of a bill to try and implement the unconstitutional AND failed conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients to Iowa. The estimated price tag on implementing such a measure, that always fails to find drug use or any “savings” for the state? $100 million. Well, isn’t that “fiscally conservative” of you, Jason. Way to rack up a nine-figure bill just to shame poor people. Schultz was re-elected 2018 mid-terms, because he was allowed to run unopposed.

In 2019, Schultz insisted there should be work requirements for people on Medicaid, even though many people on Medicaid are literally physically incapable of doing work. With the threat of the coronavirus looming this year, Jason Schultz responded as you might expect… he sponsored legislation that would require public aid recipients to face constant scrutiny for “potential fraud” and have their benefits taken away. Schultz beamed with pride that his pitch had him compared to “Dr. Evil”, and wanted to spend $1.8 million to create an investigated bureau that would try to justify its existence by “proving” a supposed $12 million in imaginary abuse of government programs. It's the sort of soulless conservative extremism one might expect from someone in a leadership position with the policy group ALEC.

Hopefully someone emerges to run against Jason Schultz in 2022, because he’s still fantasizing about new ways to create bills that target the most vulnerable people. He needs a better hobby.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Looks like Barr knows that Biden won't keep him on, so he has to do something to make himself look like he has a backbone for potential employers or clients.

Agreed. Barr is superfund level toxic after all the shit he had done for Trump, all but publicly admitting he was Diaper Don's personal lawyer/attack dog instead of the nation's attorney. The sooner he gets the chop, the better.

[worstblogever]

Agreed. Barr is superfund level toxic after all the shit he had done for Trump, all but publicly admitting he was Diaper Don's personal lawyer/attack dog instead of the nation's attorney. The sooner he gets the chop, the better.

Inserting the DOJ into Trump's defamation case with E. Jean Carroll is appalling enough. Ordering tear-gassing of peaceful protesters at a church is enough. Shutting down the Mueller investigation without any cause but to shield Trump is...

Like, those are three moments. I could go on for a bit. Instead, I'll just say, "F*** Bill Bar with a rolled up poster of the the unitary executive theory he holds so dear.