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

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the current U.S. House Representative for Missouri’s 4th District, Vicky Hartzler, who returned to politics in 2010 after taking about a decade off to become one of the most rabidly anti-gay activists in the United States, if not the globe. Hartzler campaigned for Missouri to pass a law to outlaw same sex marriage, once upon a time, has compared same sex marriage to incest, and railed against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, suggesting that the United States military should house gay soldiers in separate quarters from the straight ones. After the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, Hartzler released a statement that she would “continue to champion marriage as the union between one man and one woman so every child has the opportunity to have both a mom and a dad”, indicating she doesn’t understand that parenting is something gay people can do, as well. Hartzler has also gone on social media to call climate change a hoax, has repeatedly perpetrated the myth that the Affordable Care Act would lead to “healthcare rationing”, went on record to say she has doubts about President Obama’s birth certificate, furthered the Center for Medical Progress’ crusade against Planned Parenthood by insisting the organization was “selling baby parts”, creating the false history that our Founding Fathers were pro-life, and has warned Americans that China is spying on us by hiding secret microchips in our toasters. Because that doesn’t make her sound like a paranoid whack-job, right?

Now, on a day-to-day basis, the United States is currently at the mercy of whatever brain-addled decision Donald Trump makes, and his own Cabinet and advisers often seem surprised when he’s pushed in a direction politically by whatever he sees on Fox and Friends, social media, or the last person in the room who talks. That’s a part of why military advisers were baffled when Donald Trump announced a ban on transgender troops back in July of 2017. But what motivated him to suddenly come up with such a policy? Most guessed it might have been Vice President Pence in his ear, but after some digging, it was determined that Trump was getting a lot of pressure from Congresswoman Hartzler to ban transgendered troops, as she lied (and continues to lie to the public) about “excessive medical costs” of sex-change surgery, because she just loathes anyone who isn’t straight.

“I think we raised the awareness for people all across this country of this failed Obama policy that had been inflicted on our military last year and the dangers to both our readiness as well as our ability to spend our precious defense dollars to meet the threat.”

This came on the heels of Rep. Hartzler having released a statement in June of 2016 where she compared transgendered soldiers to ISIS, North Korea, and Vladimir Putin, calling our own LGBTQ service members a “domestic threat”:

“At a time when we should be focusing on the threats from North Korea, and Putin, and ISIS, we’re having to deal with a threat here at home — a domestic threat — of allowing transgenders in our service, which is a real problem because it impacts their readiness, and it’s a huge cost for our military.”

Vicki Hartzler is slowly gearing herself up to follow in the footsteps of Phyllis Schlafly, arguing against current efforts to revive the Equal Rights Amendment by making bizarre claims to tie it towards abortion or gender identity.

[worstblogever]

In 2020, Hartzler won re-election with 68% of the vote to her House seat for Missouri’s 4th District thanks to its +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. She was so brave that she decided to skip out on having actual town halls with her constituents, and instead, has taken to having aides screen phone calls from chosen supporters who were allowed less than three minutes to ask a question, and absolutely no follow-up questions.

Other than her determination to be a homophobic and transphobic bigot, her voting record is still despicable:

• January 22nd, 2019: Hartzler cannot be arsed to bother to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Hartzler also passes on voting for HR 648, completely uninterested in ending the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Vicky Hartzler votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Hartzler votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Hartzler can’t be arsed to vote for the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Vicki Hartzler votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Hartzler ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Hartzler votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ldqpgc#4ldqpgc
• December 10th, 2020: Hartzler signs her name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: Vicki Hartzler votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Hartzler votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• January 28th, 2021: Hartzler introduces the most important legislation this country needs during the pandemic… no, just kidding, she introduced a bill in the House that had not a prayer of passing, to defund Planned Parenthood.
• February 4th, 2021: Vicki Hartzler votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because she wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Hartzler votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Hartzler votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Vicki Hartzler votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Hartzler votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because she feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Hartzler is one of 172 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).

We don’t know at what point Missouri’s 4th decides that maybe they would be better off voting for someone who does little to nothing for them, and only seems to get excited when it’s time to do whatever harm she can to the LGBTQ community… but we hope it’s sometime around 2022. Although, it’s just as likely this vapid, homophobic, anti-choice harpy tries running for Roy Blunt’s U.S. Senate seat.

[Gray Lensman]

The issue of reparations in America isn't just about the Civil War. Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed that out in "The Case for Reparations".

The fact is that over a century after the Civil War, white America has periodically doled out benefits that have always excluded African-Americans from properly making use of them. After Civil War, you had Reconstruction and then 1876 which led to Jim Crow, as a result of that segregation African-Americans in the South were excluded from the polls, from voting and so on (which as witness recent events in Georgia, is by no means ancient history). What that means is that post-war policies in the south catered to helping homes, neighborhoods, careers and businesses in the South excluded African-Americans from having a voice in that and often, demonstrably so, at their expense. African-American kids didn't get access to the same education whites did, their libraries and infrastructure (yeah African-Americans didn't get to use the same libraries that white people did either) were worse, their drinking water wasn't up to snuff and so on, healthcare wasn't the same. Then later policies in American history, like the New Deal was deliberately implemented in the South in a manner to benefit whites over African-Americans. The GI Bill, second verse same as the first.

So essentially in your own individual case, your family may not have come out of the Civil War as one of the Confederates who kept pre-war privileges or consolidated the same, but at the same time, more or less your family was able to recover and advance and benefit the way African-American families weren't able to. Your Jim Crow era ancestors had better utilities than the first generation descendants of freedmen, they could vote with safety and stability and have their voices counted in a way African-Americans can't, they got a bigger share of the New Deal than others did, better access to schools, libraries, healthcare.

Even if that's not the case, even if you can demonstrate historical consistent poverty in your family, which can happen and is definitely true, I don't see why you are getting huffed about reparations, because it's not your money or wealth that's being siphoned away or doled away in any case. The US Government or State governments pay reparations using state funds and taxes...if your family has historically been very poor or below the tax line, then your money isn't going towards this. In fact considering that African-Americans pay more propety taxes than white families (https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-property-tax/) this is a case of them getting their money returned rather than anyone else' being taken from them.

Not to mention race riots often resulted in well off black neighborhoods being burned to the ground, like in Tulsa (the destruction there is almost entirely on white people, who then arrested black community leaders for it), and when the highway system was built, the roads were often deliberately built through middle class black neighborhoods in order to destroy them. Plus public amenities like beaches and parks often had deliberately low bridges between them and black neighborhoods so that buses couldn't reach them.

[Tami]

Ballot drop boxes and curbside voting now allowed for all Illinois elections

A bill that would allow secure ballot drop boxes and curbside voting to become permanent fixtures in Illinois elections was signed into law Friday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The measure, which takes effect immediately, passed both chambers of the General Assembly last month.

In addition to drop boxes, the new law also makes permanent the requirement that election authorities accept mail-in ballots regardless of whether they are returned with sufficient postage.

Proponents of drop boxes say they are a convenient option for voters who have concerns about trusting their ballots to the Postal Service. Curbside voting, meanwhile, makes it easier for people with disabilities or health issues to cast ballots, supporters say.

It would remain up to each of the state’s 108 election jurisdictions to decide whether to permit those forms of voting.

[Tami]

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

Under the new rules of Crazytown, I may have been Speaker, but I didn’t hold all the power. By 2013 the chaos caucus in the House had built up their own power base thanks to fawning right-wing media and outrage-driven fundraising cash. And now they had a new head lunatic leading the way, who wasn’t even a House member. There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless ******* who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Senator Ted Cruz. He enlisted the crazy caucus of the GOP in what was a truly dumbass idea. Not that anybody asked me.

[Tendrin]

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

I may think Boehner is detestable but I love how much he hates Ted Cruz XD

[worstblogever]

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

In other words, John Boehner just wrote a book where he says what I've been saying since 2013... In 2010, the GOP completely lost its goddamned mind. And it's only gotten worse since.

[Jack Dracula]

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

One of many who chose to retire and watch the country burn rather than hang in there and try to stop what was happening.

[The Cool Thatguy]

One of many who chose to retire and watch the country burn rather than hang in there and try to stop what was happening.

Is it not nobler to write a book, saying 'I told you so', than to fight for one's ideals?

This is 'Merica, damn it!

[Revolutionary_Jack]

In other words, John Boehner just wrote a book where he says what I've been saying since 2013... In 2010, the GOP completely lost its goddamned mind. And it's only gotten worse since.

As J-P Sartre said, "hell is other people" and Boehner has been living in hell.

[Wildling]

One of many who chose to retire and watch the country burn rather than hang in there and try to stop what was happening.

A Cletus is less likely to drive a car on you or roam the Capitol looking for you if you are just in the position to write a book. Books are for dopes and babies.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A Cletus is less likely to drive a car on you or roam the Capitol looking for you if you are just in the position to write a book. Books are for dopes and babies.

People have called head-shaking Republicans like Boehner and others as "aronists being recruited as firefighters" where John Bolton and other wingnuts get to reframe themselves as heroes in the Trump years after being nutso in the W. years.

[Robotman]

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

The story could also be called “How Fox News Destroyed the World”

[Malvolio]

People have called head-shaking Republicans like Boehner and others as "aronists being recruited as firefighters" where John Bolton and other wingnuts get to reframe themselves as heroes in the Trump years after being nutso in the W. years.

This. You don't get to complain about the monster you helped create.

[CaptainEurope]

You think Trump would have done anything other than asked to see the pics?