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

[Agent Z]

Arnold Schwarzenegger Compares the Capitol Riot To Kristallnacht in Stirring Video

As America continues to grapple with last week’s violent insurrection attempt on the Capitol, we cannot help but draw frightening comparisons to the nazi uprising in 1930s Germany. It’s a memory that is still fresh for those who lived through World War II, which carried deep psychological damage and trauma to the generations that followed. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in 1947 in Austria, was part of that generation. And in an emotional new video, the former governor of California describes firsthand the lasting impact of nazism and totalitarianism.

In the 8 minute video, Schwarzenegger compares Wednesday’s domestic terrorist attack to Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a violent pogrom that saw the murder of Jews and rampant destruction in Germany in 1938 carried out by SA paramilitary brownshirts, which Schwarzenegger aptly compares to the proud boys.

The action star describes his childhood in Austria and his abusive father, who was one of countless “broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.” Schwarzenegger goes on to describe his parents’ generation, which was made up not just of nazis, but of “people next door” who were just going along with the nazi regime, duped by a toxic blend of lies, propaganda, and intolerance.

Shwarzenegger then lays into Trump for fomenting lies and unrest, calling him “the worst president ever” and noting that “he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” He also calls out Trump’s enablers, calling them “spineless” and “complicit”, reminding them of the Teddy Roosevelt quote, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

https://www.themarysue.com/arnold-sc...ce=mostpopular

[Agent Z]

edited post.

[Mister Mets]

Swing district Congressman Conor Lamb (D-PA) makes his argument for impeachment.

I support impeaching President Trump.

I'm sure people have reasonable, practical questions about why we should do this when it's difficult to remove him from office any faster than January 20th.

I get that. But here's why I decided it must be done immediately.

First & foremost, he committed an impeachable offense, & a horrible one.

He created The Big Lie & helped incite an invasion of the Capitol of the COUNTRY THAT HE SUPPOSEDLY LEADS, resulting in several deaths, including the murder of a police officer.

Second, even if he isn't removed, impeachment can result in Trump being banned from holding any public office ever again.

We owe it to the nation to do absolutely everything we can to make sure that this man can never again be the Commander in Chief.

Third — & I think most importantly — we're in the middle of an ongoing criminal investigation. We could learn at any second that Trump is actively obstructing it. We could learn that he's using federal agents to protect fugitives. Or any number of things…

Right now, Senate GOP probably wouldn't vote to remove him or bar him from holding future office. But the tide is turning, & that could change very quickly if we learn new information.

The House must impeach immediately so that the Senate can act at a moment's notice.

Since Wednesday, many people have observed that there should have been busloads of police & military personnel ready to go in case something like this happened.

Impeachment is the political equivalent of that. We need to be ready to go, which means we need to do it immediately.

Finally, I just want to say that I personally will never forget seeing those foreign flags — Confederate & Trump — flying over our Capitol.

Never, ever again.

It's a persuasive case for people who aren't already on board (in many cases, it's because most people don't follow the news as much as we do.)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Conor Lamb has been more impressive in the aftermath of January 6 than at any time before, gotta say.

His speech at the House opposing the objection to the PA electoral votes was quite good (the one that apparently had Andy Harris trying to start a fight with someone right on the floor leading people to say "Are you serious? Haven't we had enough violence for today?").

And his case for impeachment is succinct.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Swing district Congressman Conor Lamb (D-PA) makes his argument for impeachment.



It's a persuasive case for people who aren't already on board (in many cases, it's because most people don't follow the news as much as we do.)

Mr. Lamb absolutely killed it with everything he said. His rationale for impeaching Trump immediately makes perfect sense, especially since Trump can, and probably will interfere with any investigation into last Wednesday.

[Ragged Maw]

Arnold Schwarzenegger Compares the Capitol Riot To Kristallnacht in Stirring Video


https://www.themarysue.com/arnold-sc...ce=mostpopular

Fortunately, not really the same (in scale of destruction or loss of life), but I'd still waste no time in catching and throwing the book at these assholes as a way of "firmly discouraging" those who would want it to reach that point.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

An Op-Ed on NYT about Hawley's religion-tinged worldview that's basically a kind of theocracy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/o...gtype=Homepage

Capitol Police Chief Sund gave an exit interview so to speak about basically being fired after the Capitol debacle. He puts the blame on the Sergeant at Arms. He does offer this tidbit:

"Just before noon Wednesday, Sund was monitoring Trump’s speech to the crowd on the Ellipse when he was called away. There were reports of two pipe bombs near the Capitol grounds. So Sund didn’t hear the president call on protesters to “fight” against lawmakers preparing to confirm Biden’s victory. Nor did he hear Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, urging the crowd to engage in “trial by combat,” an eerie reference to battles to the death in the series, “Game of Thrones.” Sund said he now suspects that the pipe bombs were an intentional effort to draw officers away from the Capitol perimeter."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...6d6_story.html

[Tendrin]

An Op-Ed on NYT about Hawley's religion-tinged worldview that's basically a kind of theocracy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/o...gtype=Homepage

Capitol Police Chief Sund gave an exit interview so to speak about basically being fired after the Capitol debacle. He puts the blame on the Sergeant at Arms. He does offer this tidbit:

"Just before noon Wednesday, Sund was monitoring Trump’s speech to the crowd on the Ellipse when he was called away. There were reports of two pipe bombs near the Capitol grounds. So Sund didn’t hear the president call on protesters to “fight” against lawmakers preparing to confirm Biden’s victory. Nor did he hear Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, urging the crowd to engage in “trial by combat,” an eerie reference to battles to the death in the series, “Game of Thrones.” Sund said he now suspects that the pipe bombs were an intentional effort to draw officers away from the Capitol perimeter."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...6d6_story.html

If Police Chief isn't kept in the loop on developments like that, either the people underneath him supported the rhetoric and he should be replaced with someone who will correct this, or he didn't run his organization well enough to be aware of how volatile that situation was to be monitoring it proerly. either way, he should be fired, and was.

[AnakinFlair]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but Parler has been taken down.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but Parler has been taken down.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, and in 2017 on this date, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled former Oklahoma State Senator Don Barrington, whose biggest claims to fame are introducing a law in 2015 to ban hoodies, presumably as a response to people protesting the death of Trayvon Marin, as well as opposing a bill to potentially legalize marijuana because his church told him to. His voting record also features him trying to stop Common Core standards in education, trying to restrict abortion including supporting state Personhood bills, voting for a law to prevent minors from buying emergency contraceptives, preventing the passing of a minimum wage, allowing for open carry everywhere in the state, voting for “Stand Your Ground” in Oklahoma, trying to restrict collective bargaining rights, voting for harsher Voter ID restrictions, and trying to pass a unnecessary ban on Sharia Law. Barrington was forced out of office by term limits in 2016, and seeing as how he’s now into his seventies, he seems unlikely to re-emerge as a candidate for higher office.

It was on this date in 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Gerald Gay, a former engineer who worked for oil companies who became a three-term member of the Wyoming House of Representatives first arriving during the 2010 Tea Party Wave. Gay was adamant that he hated same sex marriage to an extent where he repeated it like a mantra in his 2014 re-election campaign, including a campaign video where he was dressed up like Yosemite Sam’s homophobic brother or something. We’re honestly surprised he never changed his surname. We also can’t say he’s too level-headed about people on government assistance, as Gay also sponsored legislation to drug-test welfare recipients during his time in office. Well, it seems Gay was also obsessed with people who aren’t white men abusing the system wherever possible, because when he was asked by Better Wyoming what his thoughts were on the pay equality gap between men and women, he went on a bizarre, ill-informed rant about how it was necessary because women call in sick too much, complaining about maternity leave in particular. When asked to clarify his views by the press, Gay made it worse by claiming not only do women call in sick more than men, but that they were faking it just to take their kids to activities. Rather than accept any responsibility for his comments, Gay blamed the media for taking him out of context. The ironic part was that Gay himself had repeatedly taken days off in the legislature for medical reasons of his own, and missed plenty of votes. All that sexism may have been the deciding factor for voters in Wyoming’s District 36, who voted for his opponent, Democrat Debbie Bovee by 212 votes, and doesn’t call in sick too much.

On this date in 2019 “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Patrick Little, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in California in 2018, who was out to unseat Sen. Diane Feinstein. Perhaps he was motivated to challenge her because he’s an openly anti-Semitic white supremacist. He is in no way subtle about that, claiming that even the GOP have been overthrown by “Zionist stooges” and dragging around and spitting an Israeli flag around him on the ground after he was kicked out of the California Republican Party’s state convention. Then again, he feels the Neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, is “too Jewish”. Little also refers to Adolf Hitler as “the second coming of Christ”, and would like for the United States to be “free of Jews”.He had plenty of modest and not at all hateful ideas like having the government to grant federal benefits based on merit and to nationalize internet giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter, and making it illegal for people of Jewish faith to take office in government, outlawing foreign aid to Israel and changing the U.S. Constitution to make the U.S. an explicitly an “ethnically European nation.” He also wants to make it illegal for any foundation to raise money for Holocaust education. He, of course, refers to the Holocaust as “a lie”, and bizarrely violated copyright law by sending out a robocall where he discusses his grievances with Jews set to the theme music from the classic sitcom “Friends”. At the point the GOP took measures to not run a Neo-Nazi for U.S. Senate, Patrick Little was polling second behind Feinstein with 18% of the vote. Without his party’s support, and in spite of being a hate-fueled moron, he still managed to get nearly 90,000 votes. He seems determined to not go away, protesting outside the White House for all Jews to be expelled from the United States, and continued touring the nation to outlandishly accuse Jews of raping children or orchestrating murders while occasionally hanging out with the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally from Charlottesville.

[Tami]

Nancy Pelosi on the riot at the Capitol, Congress' mandate under Joe Biden and the youth in the Democratic party

[Tami]

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who squints hard enough to try and convince himself he’s good at the job he’s held now since he won office in the 2014 elections. Hutchinson is also a former Congressman, who served three terms representing Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District back from 1997-2001, giving him enough time to have served as one of the impeachment managers during the Clinton impeachment hearings, and ending when he resigned only months into his third term to take the job as the Administrator of the DEA during the Bush administration. After two years in that roll, the Bush administration allowed him to fail up into the role of leading the Border and Transportation Security Directorate. He resigned in 2005, because he was determined to become Governor of Arkansas in 2006.

Spoiler alert: He lost that year to Mike Beebe, and ended up kicking around GOP circles for four more years. It gave him time to do things like become a toady for the NRA, and come up with a “solution” after the Sandy Hook shooting that was “why don’t we put guns in schools, then?”

But yes, Hutchison won office in 2014, and somehow, with five years of leadership under his belt, his only noteworthy achievement was his desire to execute seven inmates in 11 days. What was the hurry in killing so many inmates on death row? Well, the expiration date on the lethal injection drugs was coming up, and you just can’t let that stuff go to waste, right? This would have been the first executions since 2005, and yet, Hutchison was foiled by the courts, who created stays of execution to prevent him from sending eight men to their graves.

Hutchison truly is a cold-hearted bastard, signing legislation in 2018 to force work requirements on recipients of Medicaid to collect their benefits… even though many of those recipients are disabled, and cannot work. Back in 2015, he released a statement that he would use whatever powers of his office he could to stop the settlement of Syrian refugees in Arkansas.

But of course, Hutchison claims to be “pro-life”. He’s already tried passing extreme anti-choice legislation like fetal heartbeat bills, and already jumped the gun and signed a bill that would criminalize abortion in Arkansas “when Roe v. Wade is overturned”.

At this point, Hutchison is a lame duck who is holding the seat once held by loon Mike Huckabee warm until Huckabee could properly groom his daughter as the Trump administration’s biggest propagandist to run for it in 2022, when Hutchison faces term limits. His legacy as governor is that he not only has been unable to take his state out of the Bottom Five in most categories like education, or economic growth, or poverty… he can’t even stop his own son, Asa Hutchison III from being a serial drunk driver (who was only required to serve one of 365 days in jail for his third offense, because hey, it’s the governor’s son.) His nephew Jeremy, of course, wasn’t as lucky, and is likely awaiting a prison sentence for bribery and tax fraud.

Asa Hutchinson is currently finishing out his term making the bold decision to keep essential services like water parks open and shrug in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, getting countless people killed in his inaction.

A fitting legacy to his disastrous time in office.

[Agent Z]

Some off-duty cops were among the people who stormed the Capitol Building.

https://www.theroot.com/surprise-sur...cou-1846029959