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

[numberthirty]

And, seriously...

Every other Democrat, except for maybe Tammy Duckworth, needs to start watching Katie Porter and taking notes.

[Tendrin]

While I’m still cynical and pessimistic that 10 GOP Senators will approve the Jan. 6 commission, that’s partially because I think the 35 GOP Reps who broke ranks to vote for it is likely more a reflection of Kevin McCarthy bungling his job as Minority Leader in the House.

McCarthy is swiftly becoming an inconstant leader who lacks even the cunning to keep his inconstancy hidden; probably more than one rep who would have quietly supported his move against the commission if he kept it quiet or ordered Katko to torpedo it in committee felt compelled to vote for the commission because the way McCarthy let it unfold is a liability to them in some way.

If the Dems retain the House in 2022 I don't expect McCarthy to keep his job. They'll replace him with an even bigger arch-Trumpist.

[numberthirty]

Even for them, this is pretty far out...

https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-ha...rets-city-hall

CPD launched secret drone program with off-the-books cash

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Israel Ignores U.S. Pressure To Wind Down Offensive, Launches New Strikes On Gaza

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “determined to continue this operation until its aim is met.” And what might that aim be, wiping Gaza off the map?

**********

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Signs Extreme 6-Week Abortion Ban

The legislation effectively bans abortion at six weeks and lets anyone file a lawsuit to enforce the law. Well, how about women suing rapists who get them pregnant for child support? That would be interesting. Meanwhile....

**********

The Lawmakers Behind ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Bans Are Lying To You

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is the latest to sign one of these laws, which doctors say are arbitrary and medically misleading. No surprise there. Lying is what Qpublicans do best.

**********

Mike Pence’s Own Brother Opposes The Capitol Riot Commission

Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.) is against an independent panel to investigate the incident, where a mob was advocating hanging his brother. "Et tu, Greg?"

**********

Michael Cohen Reveals When And How Trump Will Flip On His Own Family To Avoid Jail

Trump’s former attorney said they could all be getting “some orange jumpsuits” soon. I'm doubtful. No way Trump rolls his precious Ivanka under a Greyhound. Everyone else? What do you think?

**********

New York Daily News Taunts Mitch McConnell’s Devotion To Donald Trump With Lapdog Cover

The Kentucky Republican is “TRUMP’S LI’L MITCH” on the newspaper’s front page.

[Gray Lensman]

Israel Ignores U.S. Pressure To Wind Down Offensive, Launches New Strikes On Gaza

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “determined to continue this operation until its aim is met.” And what might that aim be, wiping Gaza off the map?

**********

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Signs Extreme 6-Week Abortion Ban

The legislation effectively bans abortion at six weeks and lets anyone file a lawsuit to enforce the law. Well, how about women suing rapists who get them pregnant for child support? That would be interesting. Meanwhile....

**********

The Lawmakers Behind ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Bans Are Lying To You

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is the latest to sign one of these laws, which doctors say are arbitrary and medically misleading. No surprise there. Lying is what Qpublicans do best.

**********

Mike Pence’s Own Brother Opposes The Capitol Riot Commission

Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.) is against an independent panel to investigate the incident, where a mob was advocating hanging his brother. "Et tu, Greg?"

**********

Michael Cohen Reveals When And How Trump Will Flip On His Own Family To Avoid Jail

Trump’s former attorney said they could all be getting “some orange jumpsuits” soon. I'm doubtful. No way Trump rolls his precious Ivanka under a Greyhound. Everyone else? What do you think?

**********

New York Daily News Taunts Mitch McConnell’s Devotion To Donald Trump With Lapdog Cover

The Kentucky Republican is “TRUMP’S LI’L MITCH” on the newspaper’s front page.

Israel's Gaza operations are a 100% success for Netanyahu - before the operation started he was on the verge of being finished politically, with the far left AND far right agreeing that he needed to go, and prosecution his likely future. Now, that coalition has collapsed, he is still Prime Minister, and any charges are on hold until he no longer holds office. Everything he needed to happen has happened, and all it cost him were other people's lives.

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I think Trump throws Ivanka under the bus last, but if it ever reaches the point where it's Ivanka or Donnie, well, we all know who he is in it for.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Israel's Gaza operations are a 100% success for Netanyahu - before the operation started he was on the verge of being finished politically, with the far left AND far right agreeing that he needed to go, and prosecution his likely future. Now, that coalition has collapsed, he is still Prime Minister, and any charges are on hold until he no longer holds office. Everything he needed to happen has happened, and all it cost him were other people's lives.

What I know about Israeli politics wouldn't fill a thimble, but I couldn't help wondering if Netanyahu touched off that conflict as a Hail Mary to save his ass from being thrown out of office as the vultures were definitely circling. Thanks for confirming what I had suspected.

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I think Trump throws Ivanka under the bus last, but if it ever reaches the point where it's Ivanka or Donnie, well, we all know who he is in it for.

You have a point there. Self-preservation is first and foremost to Trump.

[Mister Mets]

And, seriously...

Every other Democrat, except for maybe Tammy Duckworth, needs to start watching Katie Porter and taking notes.

Porter underperformed Biden.

She won her congressional race by 7 points.

Biden won the district by 11 points.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...-2016-and-2012

On a national level, her approach would lose Democrats the popular vote.

If the Dems retain the House in 2022 I don't expect McCarthy to keep his job. They'll replace him with an even bigger arch-Trumpist.

He's definitely out if Republicans can't take back the House.

[Hellion]

That New York Daily News cover is majestic as ****. Tabloids telling it true for once.

[Malvolio]

That New York Daily News cover is majestic as ****. Tabloids telling it true for once.

The NY Daily News has been doing stuff like that ever since their front page from the 1990s depicting Newt Gingrich as a whiny baby.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

He's definitely out if Republicans can't take back the House.

Who would want the job? Despite boasts to the contrary, the GQP isn't quite as united as they would have us believe, especially after several of their ilk crossed the aisle to join Democrats in passing the bill on the January 6th commission in the House. Between the Trump zealots and the QAnon crazies, being Qpublican Leader would be like herding cats.

[Tami]

Who would want the job? Despite boasts to the contrary, the GQP isn't quite as united as they would have us believe, especially after several of their ilk crossed the aisle to join Democrats in passing the bill on the January 6th commission in the House. Between the Trump zealots and the QAnon crazies, being Qpublican Leader would be like herding cats.

They are united in a shared fear of being voted out of office. Most countries fear a single authoritarian despot. Here in the US, we have around 300 mini-authoritarian despots.

[AnakinFlair]

If the Dems retain the House in 2022 I don't expect McCarthy to keep his job. They'll replace him with an even bigger arch-Trumpist.

Porter underperformed Biden.

She won her congressional race by 7 points.

Biden won the district by 11 points.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...-2016-and-2012

On a national level, her approach would lose Democrats the popular vote.

He's definitely out if Republicans can't take back the House.

I think Thirty was talking about how Porter schooled Big Pharma in the last hearing held about out of control drug costs.

[AnakinFlair]

Who would want the job? Despite boasts to the contrary, the GQP isn't quite as united as they would have us believe, especially after several of their ilk crossed the aisle to join Democrats in passing the bill on the January 6th commission in the House. Between the Trump zealots and the QAnon crazies, being Qpublican Leader would be like herding cats.

Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't doing anything else....

[worstblogever]

In 2015, as well as 2016, and 2017, that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Mark Reed, who on three occasions has failed to get elected to U.S. Congress to represent California’s 30th Congressional District, having gone down in defeat to Rep. Mark Sherman all three times. And we don’t mean he lost, as much as got crushed. Reed, for whatever reason in his debate against Sherman, tried attacking him and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of not being supportive enough of Israel, which is amazing in that both not only have records that show they are supportive of Israel, but they’re also both coincidentally Jewish, to boot. Reed has a website loaded with misleading information about the Affordable Care Act, his opposition to same-sex marriage, as well as climate change denial. Perhaps the best reason to not elect him to office is his long police record featuring two arrests for narcotics possession. His 2016 campaign website featured an inspirational quote from Founding Father John Adams regarding debt, that is not, in fact, something that Adams has ever actually been recorded saying. failed in his fifth attempt at getting elected to Congress in 2020. We don’t know when he’s finally going to take a hint.



On this date in both 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who prior to winning that office in the 2014 elections, was a member of the Texas state legislature for over a decade. And while there’s no shortage of Texas Republicans for CSGOPOTD to have profiled through the past few years, Ken Paxton earned our notice not just for the usual Fundamentalism you see from members of the Lone Star State GOP, but for the fact that while he was tasked with enforcing the law in Texas, he was simultaneously fighting an extended legal battle while being accused of committing securities fraud.

But that’s really not all, as Paxton’s alleged illegal activity and all his chicanery to avoid ever going to go to trial for it until after the 2018 elections, if at all, (the indictments for white collar crime are almost three years old now) have cost a small fortune in legal fees. Legal fees which were paid for by campaign donors of Paxton, so he’s had to report “gifts” he’s received totaling over $84,000 to keep himself out of court.

Again, this is the guy responsible with the law being enforced in Texas. Although, his interest in what the law actually is seems hyper-focused on partisan politics, as Paxton has encouraged state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, chastised school districts for respecting the gender identity of students trying to use the bathroom, and just two months ago, Paxton sent a “cease and desist” letter to Texas public schools for busing students eligible to vote to the polls, which has been encouraged previously in Texas since the Civil Rights movement passed over half a century ago. It seems Paxton is terrified of the thought of young people having access to our democracy. But Paxton is threatened by a great many things, and will flat out make things up to feign outrage over, like the time he accused a Texas school district of creating a “Muslim-only prayer room”, which was in no way a part of reality. Or it could be just that Ken doesn’t see that well out of his droopy eye, or something.

Maybe none of this should come as much of a surprise, because when you look at Paxton’s career in the Texas state legislature, there were signs he was a fanatic, like when he co-sponsored HB 3678, a bill aimed at allowing students greater expression of their religious beliefs in public schools, like say, when a teacher dared to mention that evolution is a thing. He also co-sponsored SB 14, a bill to suppress the vote in Texas via stricter Voter ID laws, voted for bills that attempted to nullify federal firearm regulations, co-sponsored legislation that would enact the failure of a conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients, voted against HB 950, which would have guaranteed equal pay for women in Texas, and was a co-sponsor ofTexas’ HB 2 law, which was aimed at closing down all the abortion clinics in the state by creating stricter requirements for them.

In spite of all the indictments that have held against him for years now, as well as his long track record of extremist lunacy, Ken Paxton decided not to bow out of the 2018 elections, and only narrowly won re-election, barely cracking the 50% threshold. His trial for securities fraud has yet to begin, and his wife, Angela Paxton, is now a Texas State Senator trying to draft legislation that would exempt her husband from facing jail time for the crimes he’s committed (really).

He has taken his second term in office to do such effective things such as launch an investigation into the city of San Antonio for refusing to open a Chik-Fil-A in their airport because of the company’s history of anti-LGBTQ activities, because Paxton feels they may have rejected the chicken franchise due to “religious discrimination”. (Remember Texas, he’s spending taxpayer dollars on that investigation.)

And, ever so slowly, the trial date approaches for Ken Paxton, but yet he’s still not resigned, using his office during one of the more pressing times in American history in some of the most corrupt and bizarre ways. Like how Paxton intervened on behalf of one of his political donors out of state in Colorado to try and get them an exception against a “stay out” order for non-residents of a resort community during the Covid-19 outbreak. Or how he’s been trying to fight against calls to vote by mail during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus and getting more people infected. He aligned so much with the Texas GOP’s insistence on “reopening the economy” that he paid the fines of a Dallas salon owner who ignored orders to keep her business shuttered during the outbreak. (Again, this is the guy in charge of making sure people obey the law.)

None of that was keeping the state of Texas calling for Ken Paxton to be bounced out of office, and put in jail… so he decided to go for a Hail Mary in December of 2020… after Donald Trump lost the election, he needed a state attorney general who could be leveraged into appealing the results of the 2020 presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court… and Ken Paxton, desperate to get a pardon for securities fraud, obliged. Spoiler Alert: Like practically every legal challenge Trump had filed on his behalf, it failed. And Trump never rewards people for failure, so… no pardon for Ken Paxton. However, because he’s a corrupt, selfish prick, now Trump’s most fanatical followers had the fuel needed to inspire an attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and are still holding onto “Trump won” as a conspiracy theory. To which, Paxton claims that the attackers were not Trump supporters, but “busloads of Antifa”.

So, f*** you very much, Ken. Do not pass Go. Go directly to jail.

Currently, Paxton is floundering on Fox News whenever they’ll have him with some fake conservative outrage about immigrants, or onto Newsmax to whine about Critical Race Theory, because why not poison the water in our country on his way to jail? Plus, he’s turning his back on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for all the wrong reasons, and, but of course… he keeps getting charged with new cases of securities fraud.

It’s remains a question of if, but when Ken Paxton goes to jail.

[worstblogever]

Who would want the job? Despite boasts to the contrary, the GQP isn't quite as united as they would have us believe, especially after several of their ilk crossed the aisle to join Democrats in passing the bill on the January 6th commission in the House. Between the Trump zealots and the QAnon crazies, being Qpublican Leader would be like herding cats.

I've seen Q folks that are hoping the GQP reclaim the House and install not Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker... but Donald Trump. And then they imagine some scenario where Biden and Harris both die/get impeached and Trump can be elevated back into the presidency BEFORE the 2024 election.

It's... beyond insane, and out of touch with the realm of possibility, which means these dips***s really are thinking it's possible.