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

[JCAll]

All signs indicate that the lack of harm to people was intentional.

What scares me is how sophisticated the attack clearly is. They built a bomb, safely drove it to a location, successfully wired it to a programmed warning system and detonated it.

This is certainly a lot more sophisticated than the Midterm Bomber.

[Tami]

I cleaned up the image of the RV, but couldn't get any more info out of it.

Nashville-Bomb-RV-Clean.jpg

[DrNewGod]

True, but from what I've read, that's not what happened.

The devise announced itself as a bomb, did a 15 minute countdown, and then blew up. Seems like an updated IRA playbook...

Glad to be wrong. What is the goal, other than sewing fear, division and chaos?

[The Cool Thatguy]

Glad to be wrong. What is the goal, other than sewing fear, division and chaos?

Could be the same as the Vegas Shooter, just some ******* looking to be famous going out in a blaze of glory

[Kirby101]

Glad to be wrong. What is the goal, other than sewing fear, division and chaos?

No, I don't think it was Trump.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Could be the same as the Vegas Shooter, just some ******* looking to be famous going out in a blaze of glory

That was my guess, some lone wolf lunatic. I only hope this was an isolated incident and doesn’t inspire copycats.

[JCAll]

Glad to be wrong. What is the goal, other than sewing fear, division and chaos?

The only reason I can think of why you would publicly announce you're doing terrorism is so that people will be afraid expecting the next one.

[The Cool Thatguy]

The only reason I can think of why you would publicly announce you're doing terrorism is so that people will be afraid expecting the next one.

Or to garner attention without costing human life. Whomever did this was a scumbag, but humans have contradictions. This hardly seems like your average terror campaign

[JCAll]

Or to garner attention without costing human life. Whomever did this was a scumbag, but humans have contradictions. This hardly seems like your average terror campaign

I just can't imagine what this kind of thing could be trying to say other than "I can do it again".

[JackDaw]

The only reason I can think of why you would publicly announce you're doing terrorism is so that people will be afraid expecting the next one.

It is always..I would guess..one of the reasons. If fear is not one of the aims, then why employ terrorism?

But it is often not the only reason. The aim of the IRA terrorist campaign in the 60s, for example, was to create a United Ireland.

And some terrorist acts were employed in South Africa in fight against apartheid. (Fewer than might have been expected given degree of evil of apartheid.)

[Steel Inquisitor]

Could be the same as the Vegas Shooter, just some ******* looking to be famous going out in a blaze of glory

Stephen Paddock did have an anti-government agenda, he was against what the government did in Ruby Ridge and the Waco siege and believed in the FEMA death camps. Supposedly he was into the NRA narrative that Democrats wanted to ban all guns, too. He was really into the Online Conspiracy Nut websites, according to a witness who knew him. Too many roads to right wing terrorism.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Don Balfour, who was at the time, the longest sitting Georgia State Senator, riding high after making a fortune as an executive for the Waffle House chain of restaurants. That run came to an end in 2014, when he was defeated in the GOP primary for his state senate seat, partially because he was under indictment for 18 counts of falsifying expense reports. It wasn’t his first indictment, and Balfour claimed the crime was accidental, and was allowed to simply repay money to the state and resume his position in state government, rather than get any jail time. He’s not exactly going to be missed, considering before he left office, he supported a 20 week ban on abortion, drug-testing welfare recipients (which always is a failed conservative policy), and actually drafted legislation to make it illegal to picket against a corporation, which is about an obvious violation of a right to assembly as you’ll ever see.

On this date in 2015, Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day profiled Monica Wehby, a physician from Oregon who ran for U.S. Senate against Democrat Jeff Merkley in 2014, and seemed promising for the GOP until she was interviewed by the Willamette Week, who assessed that she "fumbled her way through" their interview, and "waffled endlessly" on several topics. They noted she was "all over the map" on the Affordable Care Act and gave "befuddling answers that were at times disingenuous”, and that concern only grew worse when she skipped her televised GOP Primary debate in May 2014, claiming that her schedule was “packed solid” and later skipped a debate against Merkley in the general election in October 2016. When she finally did get in a debate, she gave a meek answer in her opposition to increasing the minimum wage during the greatest period of income inequality in the United States in a century… in one of the bluest states in the union. She also got hit with reports of a mother being charged for abusing her children by forcing them to undergo a series of medically unnecessary medical procedures, and in at least 10 instances, the unsound procedures were performed by Dr. Wehby. Her campaign’s statement about it was to say little or nothing because HIPAA laws prevented them from doing so (which is pretty convenient).Right on the heels of that bombshell were police reports that were unsurfaced that showed Wehby had been accused of repeatedly stalking both her ex-husband, and an ex-boyfriend, entering his home without permission and harassing his employees in 2007, 2009, and 2013. Then, Buzzfeed ran a report after noticing that Monica Wehby’s website featured an entire policy on an issue that was plagiarized straight from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS website, word for word, and When asked for comment by reporters, Wehby claimed to be “too busy performing brain surgery on sick children to respond, sorry.” What followed only made it worse… she later replaced that policy with a new one… which was also plagiarized, verbatim from the website of her own primary opponent, Jason Conger. The worst part? The policy in question was Monica Wehby’s policies on healthcare. She was still a doctor, and her entire credibility of her campaign was based on that one issue, that she lifted all her ideas from whoever she could, rather than have an original thought on the subject. Further analysis of her website showed her economic policies were a combination of information lifted from the websites of Ohio Senator Rob Portman, and California Congressional Nominee Gary DeLong. Her website also featured a quote in a section on the 2nd Amendment attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “When the government fears the people there is liberty, when the people fear their government there is tyranny” that historians note Thomas Jefferson is never known to have said or written, anywhere. She has started a SUPERPac, and claims she will not longer seek office.

On this date in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Tim Kelly, a former member of the Minneosta House of Representatives who was a big “defender of the sanctity of marriage”, who also once tried sneaking a transphobic bathroom policy into the state budget in May 2015. That’s why it was incredibly hypocritical for Tim Kelly to have been caught half naked in a car at a park by a Minnesota park ranger having an affair with a fellow Republican legislator, Tara Mack, in September of 2015. His defense was a desperate and sad claim they were not caught in flagrante, but were actually just “exchanging documents” in the car. While half naked. For trying to stuff a few papers into Mack’s “inbox”. im Kelly was forced to resign from his spot on the… wait for it… Minnesota House of Representatives ETHICS COMMITTEE. He opted to retire at the end of 2016 after the scandal.

On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Georgia State Senator Josh McKoon, the man pictured above who you might suspect was voted, “Most Likely to be Unable to Find a Comb” in his high school yearbook. McKoon has been in the Georgia State Senate since… you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave, was allowed to run for a second term in 2012 unopposed, and has only faced two primary challenges since taking office, although one of those back in 2014 was from a guy accused of stealing money from a state park by exploiting his position as the head of a charitable non-profit (suffice to say, he wasn’t a good candidate). Anyway, we’re going to discuss Josh McKoon because of his fanatical obsession with trying to use his “religious freedom” to target every law passed at the federal level, or even state level that he doesn’t like with “religious freedom” bills. Back in February of 2014, it seemed like a long shot idea for McKoon to start seguing from bills meant to “protect Christmas” to start using the same principles to try eliminating the Affordable Care Act by attacking any coverage of contraceptives that the health insurance mandates might cause. Big surprise, throughout 2015 and 2016, he also was using “religious freedom” laws to attempt to make transphobic bathroom bills state law, alienating him from GOP allies who didn’t want to repeat the same sorts of disastrous outcomes that Indiana and North Carolina had seen while attempting to pass such legislation, like tourism boycotts that would cripple the state economy. Heck, the number of film studios who film on location in Atlanta that would walk away? The numbers could be astronomical. Which is far from the only obviously unconstitutional legislation that McKoon has sponsored through the past few years. Remember how Roy Moore got his ass handed to him in court over his obsession with putting up monuments of the Ten Commandments? Well, McKoon sponsored a bill to do the same thing in Georgia’s state capitol. Remember how every time we discuss the GOP’s obsession with drug testing welfare recipients, we point out it’s a failed policy that doesn’t actually catch anyone on welfare using drugs, and it only exists to shame poor people until courts step in and overturn them as violations of the Fourth Amendment? Well, guess who doesn’t? Josh Mckoon, that’s who. Remember how Arizona got the Supreme Court to slap them down in 1999 for trying to make English the state’s official language? McKoon apparently doesn’t, because he sponsored a bill to do that in Georgia, arguing that it was “discriminatory” to English speakers to ever consider communicating people in other languages (Hint: That’s another example where he doesn’t understand how discrimination works). These bills don’t always serve a purpose, either, it just seems like McKoon wants the “religious freedom” to be a d*** to minorities. He wanted to be able to suspend the driver’s licenses of women protected by DACA, even if they were immigrant women battered by their husbands protected by the law. He up and decided one day that Muslim women in Georgia who wear burqas should be forced to take them off for their driver’s license photos (and THAT isn’t a violation of THEIR religious freedom in his mind). At least he’s consistent enough in his hatred of immigrants that he’d vote for HB 87, Georgia’s self-inflicted wound of an immigration bill back in 2011, that led to millions of dollars of crops left in fields to rot. Maybe it’s not that his “religious freedom” is in jeopardy, maybe it’s just that this guy is a total ***hole. And the rest of the Republican caucus in the Georgia state legislature caught on, and started removing him from leadership positions, the whole while McKoon insisting that his actions weren’t just a gimmick to rile up the conservative base to run in a statewide election, but based on his own views on faith. McKoon opted to not run for re-election to the Georgia State Senate as his opposition in the state legislature grew and instead, chose to make a run to be the Georgia Secretary of State. He finished third in the GOP Primary in that race, and is now mercifully out of office.

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Kyle Koehler, a member of the Ohio House of Representatives who was first elected to office in 2014. We started to see Koehler’s name pop up back in 2015 as Ohio Republicans began a mad quest to close down every Planned Parenthood in the state, and taking a fraudulent video created by the Center for Medical Progress (a fanatical anti-choice group) as factual, and wanted to close down any facility that performed an abortion and donated fetal tissue for research. The state launched an expensive witch hunt that found not a single witch, and when the investigation came back finding no proof of wrongdoing, let alone anything as shocking as what the video purported, Koehler didn’t flinch, sponsored a bill to require women who have an abortion to bury or cremate the remains, and didn’t dial back the rhetoric when explaining his decision:

“Whether they are selling body parts or simply tossing them into landfills doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

We’re also a bit puzzled about Koehler’s feud with pro-gun advocate and provocateur Chris Dorr… which is supposed to be centered on Koehler not being “tough enough” on guns… and when given a survey to indicate his absolute or not-quite-absolute-how-dare-you support for the 2nd Amendment, Koehler had the level-headed response to film himself shooting up the survey on a gun range.

We’ll finish up by noting that in Koehler’s voting record, he has repeatedly sponsored legislation to allow for prayer in public schools supported extreme anti-choice legislation as ludicrous as fetal heartbeat bills, but remains hypocritically “pro-life” because he also voted against a bill that would protect people with certain mental illnesses from being executed for capitol offenses, and he cares so much about “life” that he wanted to block the state from taking in Syrian refugees.

We’re not certain if under the current gerrymandered map that was set in Ohio in 2012 that Kyle Koehler can be booted from office… but we definitely can tell he isn’t someone that we would be comfortable learning was seeking higher office.

[Tami]

DeSantis spokesman Piccolo deletes his Twitter account after tweet about COVID-19 victims

Fred Piccolo, spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis, deactivated his Twitter account Wednesday after he tweeted in the middle of night that photos of each dead COVID-19 victim should be balanced with 99 photos of people who survive the disease.

In response to a Reuters photo gallery on COVID-19, Piccolo wrote, “I’m wondering since 99% [of] Covid patients survive shouldn’t you have 99 photos of survivors for every one fatality? Otherwise you’re just trying to create a narrative that is not reality.”

According to screenshots captured by Miami Herald reporter Ben Conarck and WLRN reporter Danny Rivero, Piccolo was responding at about 4 a.m. to a tweet by Corinne Perkins, the North America editor for Reuters Pictures.

Piccolo’s tweet drew an almost immediate angry response.

“Survive? I have friends who ‘survived’ who have hair falling out and can’t walk across a room without getting winded,” read one reply.

“Do some math for me, Fred. How many people is 1% of 330 million?” read another.

“‘Creating a narrative that is not reality’ is a good way to talk about Florida’s COVID numbers,” replied another, with a link to the South Florida Sun Sentinel article about the difficulty of determining how many Floridians died of COVID following Thanksgiving gatherings.

Piccolo’s account was deactivated shortly after the controversial tweet. Piccolo told the Sun Sentinel Wednesday he had already planned to leave the social media site.

[Kirby101]

There was a time, before Trump, when someone doing something that stupid and inhumane would have to resign. But there is nothing a Republican can do that will effect them negatively. Even criminal prosecutions are just pardoned.

Remember when Shirley Sherrod had to leave for a doctored video? But IOKIYAR.