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

[Tendrin]

What is the significance of that as a criticism of Shelby County V. Holder?

The first argument is that these locations (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, handful of counties elsewhere including the Bronx) remain fundamentally racist generations later, and should be held to a higher level of scrutiny. In this case, the argument should be made openly. Anyone against the court's decision should say that Georgia, Arizona and Virginia are obviously racist shitholes, and should be recognized as such by John Roberts.

This is relevant. You don't get to act like we're declaring places 'racist shitholes generations later', as if it was so very long ago that black people in the south were mauled by police dogs marching for their civil rights. There are people alive with direct connections to people who were born slaves. To act as if it was so long ago and people have moved past is to fail to understand just how recent this history is, and just how recent Jim Crow being struck down is. History matters, and the point of pre-clearance was to take into the account of the history of voter suppression in these states, whom promptly *returned* to the antics of voter suppression immediately afterwards, thus proving the point that pre-clearance was still needed. The thousands of closed polling places and drop off of minority representation in those states says so.

John Roberts, of course, knew this, but also knew that removing pre-clearance could be hidden behind 'lol we elected a black guy so obviously racism is over and this is SO unfair to target these states when these problems were just so OLD and no longer RELEVANT'. .

Of course, reality bore out the opposite: naked voter suppression has been engaged in, now, in an effort to further entrench hard-right minority rule.

Research shows that preclearance led to increases in minority congressional representation and minority turnout.[6][7] Five years after the ruling, nearly 1,000 U.S. polling places had closed, many of them in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows that changing and reducing voting locations can reduce voter turnout.[5] There were also cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws.[8][9] A 2020 study found that jurisdictions that had previously been covered by preclearance substantially increased their voter registration purges after the Shelby decision.[10] Virtually all restrictions on voting subsequent to the ruling were by Republicans.[11]

Mets is sure that some of the criticisms are overblown, so that the goal post of every passed law touching on elections being voter suppression is a very high bar.

Of course Mets would like to think so. Remind me again how many polling places have been closed and where they are predominantly located and how long black people have to stand in line to vote. Mets needs to a better job investigating the disparate impacts of voter suppression laws rather than turning a blind eye to it and pretending the threat is 'exaggerated', especially in the face of his party's overt authoritarian turn. It's weird how Republicans can pass laws that they have nakedly admitted think will benefit them but Mets reserves his tut-tuts for democrats wanting to make DC a state or people getting angry about it being made more difficult for people to vote.

And that you still trot out 'but the primary!' as a reason for federal eletions to not be a holiday remains effing hilarious, Mets. If it was easier to vote on election day, maybe some of these elections wouldn't be so easily decided within the party instead of outside of it. Why, parties might actually have to do a better job actually competing for votes instead of just making it harder to do so in a representative democracy.

Also, Republicans could always compete for the votes of the people living in DC and Puerto Rico. They might even have a shot there if they wanted to bother trying.

[batnbreakfast]

Denmark and NSA were spying on Germany's Angela Merkel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806

Why are governments still doing this to close allies? Probably because they can.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Chip Rogers, who at one point was the Majority Leader for the Georgia State Senate, but his career started to fall apart after he began to host conferences for Georgia Republicans to warn about the threat of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory, and that President Obama was using “the Delphi Technique”, a supposed form of mind control to that could be utilized to coerce large segments of the populations into city centers where they could be more easily be controlled. Rogers also had a prolifically extreme conservative record, supporting legislation like 20 week abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest, as well as drug testing. Rogers went on to retire and become a lobbyist, because of course he did.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of John Diehl, a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives who went and put himself at the center of a sex scandal, where he was sexting with a 19 year old college intern who just so happened to be three decades his junior, who he wanted to (hold your lunches) leave “quivering”. When news first broke that Missouri Southern university was scrapping their entire program to send interns to the capital, rumors began to swirl, and when they led back to Diehl, he actually spend some time hiding in his office, trying to deny any wrongdoing until the texts themselves were dug up by the Kansas City Star, and at that point he released a public apology, decided to spend time at home resolving some… well, marital issues that were now presenting themselves, and resigned. Diehl was supposedly a “family values” Republican, who counted himself a member of the local branch of that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council (who have a knack for having members cheat on their wives), fiercely defended biblical marriage (except apparently his own), and even led a move by the Missouri GOP to try and ban any extracurricular activity in public schools that might ever “discuss sexual orientation other than its purpose for human reproduction”. As a member of the legislature prior to his affair being exposed, Diehl had no inkling of how to work across the aisle and would talk of impeaching Governor Jay Nixon for… reasons, we guess. Diehl never seemed to specify. His voting record hardly paints a picture of a stable individual, as he voted for the most insane legislation Missouri Republicans came up with over his career. That includes their attempts to ban Sharia Law, prevent the Agenda 21 controversy, to nullify federal firearms laws, to attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act, to assure presidential candidates submit their birth certificates (yes, he’s a Birther, too), responding to the Sandy Hook Massacre by trying to put more guns in schools, creating stricter Voter ID Laws, adding additional requirements for a woman having an abortion, cutting the amount of time a person could collect unemployment, to drug test welfare recipients, and to force children in public schools to not just participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, but to make them do so in English. Diehl has been publicly humiliated and run out of office.

[Ragged Maw]

In response the the back-and-forth on the last page, would it have killed the news cycle to maybe look exclusively at sources independent of the GOP to make sure the "lab leak" wasn't all hot air? Or was there the tribalistic assumption that ANY source - reputable or no - who found some kind of credible lead on it was "in bed with the GOP/Trump"?

[CSTowle]

The media has a long history of admitting when they are wrong and how they are wrong. No political party has that history (nor most of the folks who post on any of these forums, for that matter).

Let's face it though. The media has a duty to the fundamentals of the United States to be "against" Trump and the current flavor of what being Republican means. That criticism is critical to our survival as a concept, a country, and to freedom. If the media is viewed as impartial to that, they become part of the problem.

The media should report facts as facts, and be careful not to report opinions as facts.

If the facts go against Trump, as is often the case, so be it. If it seems that the media is lying about Trump, obscuring information that it is helpful to him, or making up attacks, that can end up giving him more power.

It's easier to criticize Republicans for acting like victims when they're not provided with legitimate grounds for doing so.

This isn't about Trump's credibility. The media mishandled a news story, suggesting that a legitimate theory had no merit and failing to address it vigorously enough.

It is a massive indictment of the media that two posters here, who are well-informed and intelligent people, believed that the lab-leak hypothesis was debunked, when that's not the case any more.

Again, bleeding-heart Warren supporter lefty nutjob but I agree wholeheartedly with Mets here. The media isn't and should never be a soldier in the fight for Democratic values vs Republican values. That this is even debatable gives legitimacy to every right-wing complaint about media bias over the decades and crystallized in Trump's dumbed-down "Fake News" slogan. If they can't at least try to tamp down their biases and report the facts then they are just left-wing propaganda, as the Limbaughs and the Trumps of the world have said all along. You can't eliminate all bias, and while I'm obviously biased I believe facts and reality tend to be biased against Trump and his kind anyway, but it should be the goal you're aiming for.

If you want to take a Trump down you do it by reporting on the horrible things he's done and repeating it until it gets through, not talking about the new crazy tweet he put out. That might get ratings and eyeballs but not serve the purpose of getting information useful to the voter out there. I get hatred for Trump and his kind, I think most of us here do, but undermining our values and sinking to the lowest levels we can to try to combat him is likely what they want. They're better at those fights. And if you undermine journalism (more than it already has been) it encourages the conspiracy nuts and Q-Anoners to look to alternative sources. Usually crazier and more dangerous ones, that they'll trust because they like what they hear. Easier to make that choice when you can point at mainstream media and legitimately say, "Well it's all propaganda anyway" and objectivity and facts take a backseat to an agenda (even if it's an agenda I agree with).

If we want to editorialize and add context that's fine when it's pointing out the differences between countries that had coordinated federal responses to Covid and what their death rates were compared to ours, and how much of that is Trump's fault. Or the fact that he openly mocked POWs because one insulted him (still boggles my mind he suffered no consequences for that, usually so much of a no-no that it doesn't need to be said because nobody sane would consider doing it), or how often he cheated small businesses and then sued them into oblivion when they tried to collect on what they were owed. There are hundreds (thousands?) of ways to legitimately report on (and if desired, "attack") Trump or his kind. You don't have to make things up, or suppress things, or dismiss things out of hand because they might be beneficial or even just suggested by "the enemy".

Denmark and NSA were spying on Germany's Angela Merkel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806

Why are governments still doing this to close allies? Probably because they can.

We all do it. We do it to allies, enemies, corporations, institutions, etc. They do it to us. Probably always have/always will.

On voter suppression: This is like smoking being bad for you, when the tobacco companies always had research that said it wasn't and that cancer claims were unproven. The Republicans have already admitted, on camera, multiple times, that these laws are about suppressing the vote on the Democratic side to gain advantage. They make noises about integrity and rule of law, but they know and we know what it's really about. Is it meant to be racist, or is that a side effect because minorities tend to vote Democratic so these policies end up disproportionately impacting them, or is it a "win-win" for them because suppressing minority votes makes a good portion of their base happy on top of the fact that it helps them win elections? Don't know. But I think it's beyond disputing that the main goal isn't election integrity but rather the opposite.

If they truly cared about every vote being counted they'd work to pay for photo IDs for every citizen, sending folk out like the census to get confirmation, pre-register all voters in their district and making it easier to confirm change of residency to allow them to vote when it changes close to an election, and designing a way for citizens to check that their vote was counted and correctly in a short enough time to avoid mistakes, adding rather than subtracting polling places, making Election Day a National Holiday, and doing everything they can to make sure every vote is counted and counted accurately so nobody is disenfranchised and no fraud occurs. They could do this if they made these changes federally and had oversight over each state's handling of it, down to the local precinct. They're not interested in that though. That doesn't help them. In fact, it's pretty established that the more people who vote the worse it is for Republicans.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Mike Moon, a member of the Missouri House of Representatives since 2013, and the only person we’ve profiled whose name can be spelled by Tom Cullen. Moon first took office in 2013 after a special election and spent eight years in the lower chamber making himself a polarizing figure in Missouri politics. That was probably because of his tendency to have made some of the most embarrassing remarks from a Republican anywhere in the country regarding abortion over the past few years, and that truly is saying something. In January of 2016, he sponsored legislation called the “All Lives Matter” act (uh oh). But don’t worry, it didn’t have anything to do with police violence, it was just a slap in the face to folks in Ferguson, Missouri added on to a Personhood bill he filed. It was even more of a bit of an eyebrow-raiser back in March of 2016 when during debate on a bill that would ban abortion at any stage of development, Moon was laughed out of the room when he compared abortion to the enslavement of African Americans for a moment before he claimed to be a “reproductive expert” based on his qualifications of being a “former embryo”. Alas, Mike Moon did not learn his lesson about looking like a boob for trying to get high and mighty about fetal development without knowing what the hell he was talking about. In February of 2017, Missouri Republicans were again looking to pass some form of Personhood legislation, even though it would obviously be overturned. And this time, Mike Moon didn’t just compare abortion to slavery. We mean, he did that, mentioning the Dred Scott ruling during debate, but this time, he also compared legalized abortion to “Jews being slaughtered by Nazis”, because why not add Godwin’s Law while we’re at it? But he STILL wasn’t done. He then began to argue that life begins farther than people think, comparing sperm to tadpoles, rhetorically asking, “Is a sperm alive?” Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, asked during a hearing Tuesday night on a bill that would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the statement that life begins at conception. “Have you ever seen a tadpole? Is a tadpole alive?”

So, since Mike Moon cares so much about life at all stages, you would think he would care a lot about saving the lives of refugee children fleeing war, right? HA HA! Trick question! Are those kids Muslims? Because if so, Mike Moon wrote a nice letter in November of 2015 where he explained he would like those kids placed in camps, and sent back home at the first opportunity, especially because you can’t trust ‘em because they lie so danged much.

”I do realize that the refugees we should be scrutinizing most is one who professes the muslim faith. Unless I'm mistaken, a practicing muslim can do whatever is necessary for the ‘good’ of the faith - telling ‘fibs’ is a smallpart of what they might do. Our preference, as a nation, should be to place the refugees in camps so that they can be properly cared for and returned safely home when the time is right.”

Mike Moon doesn’t like the idea of special protections in schools for transgender youth, and in his arguments against them, he cites the work of Dr. Paul McHugh, who classifies being transgendered as a “mental disorder”, even though the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying “gender dysphoria” as a mental disorder years ago. He also introduced a resolution that he and his fellow legislators should appeal to Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act with “manly firmness”, as if they would be able to pull it off if they just took an extra large dose of Viagra, or something? As you’d expect, Mike Moon’s whole voting record is pretty “out there”, including a vote to try and block the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty, votes to attempt to nullify federal firearms laws, and a vote for the unconstitutional HB 499, which would have forced schoolchildren to recite the pledge of allegiance… specifically in English.

In June of 2017, how he decided to put up a video on his Facebook page to announce he was introducing new anti-choice legislation in Missouri, and he did so by discussing it as he decapitated a chicken. That is not a typo, Mike Moon cut off a chicken’s head and started to pull its innards out while discussing abortion.

Now, if that isn’t crazy enough, there’s also the matter of former Governor of Missouri Eric Greitens, who resigned in disgrace after he was accused of taking nude photos of his mistress without her consent, assaulting her during rough sex, and threatening to release the nude photos of her if she ever exposed him as an adulterer. After Mike Moon spent four years trying to impeach Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon without any real cause, when a governor comes along who isn’t just a sexual predator, but is caught breaking the law in multiple campaign finance violations and abusing charitable organizations to further his own political career, can you guess what Moon wants to do? NOTHING. Mike Moon thought it would be unfair to impeach Gov. Greitens for ANY of his moral, or legal failings.

In 2019, Moon’s focus turned to a direct theocratic bent, as he voted for legislation to have public schools teach Bible courses, and voted for a bill that prohibits all abortion in Missouri “if Roe v. Wade is overturned”.

In 2020, Mike Moon was term-limited in the Missouri House of Representatives and took on the former Chairman of the Missouri GOP, David Cole in a primary that he narrowly won with 52% of the vote. It seems that Cole struck a nerve in that primary, as Moon has currently been throwing a strop in the Missouri State Senate and is feuding with Gov. Mike Parson after he named Cole to a position as a circuit judge in Southwest Missouri.

We don’t know at what point Mike Moon’s sheer lunacy and personal crusade end up with people within his party trying to force him out, but he’s targeting some pretty big fish within his own party, so it might not be long.

[Tami]

Quote from Dan Rather:

The reality is we have a sharp partisan divide in this country. And that divide is largely over reality.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Denmark and NSA were spying on Germany's Angela Merkel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806

Why are governments still doing this to close allies? Probably because they can.

Pretty much. They spy on us, we spy on them, etc.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Denmark and NSA were spying on Germany's Angela Merkel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806

Why are governments still doing this to close allies? Probably because they can.

I remember reading something by a historian who was reviewing exposes about USSR espionage on the US during the Cold War. He pointed out the asymmetry that the public knows far more about USSR espionage than they do about US espionage in other countries. In America, being a spy for the Soviets was this horrible thing to kvetch over but there was never an acknowledgement that USA more than likely had spies doing the same kind of work in other countries.

But yeah, USA has spies all over the world, spying on its allies and more than likely interfering in local elections. Look what they did to Allende in Chile. And then you had campaigns to sabotage Italian elections after World War II over fears that the Italian Communist Party could legitimately win an election fair and square. There was that movie The Ghost Writer which came a decade back. It's directed by Polanski, aka he-who-must-not-be-named, but it's an interesting thriller that features Pierce Brosnan playing a UK PM who is a spoof of Tony Blair and it's big twist is that his wife is a CIA agent and been manipulating and subverting UK's democracy towards neocon interests. Obviously it's a satire and thriller but it has a plausibility to it. It's not unlikely that sections of UK's Civil Service and other parts of its sector might be acting for their American handlers over their service to UK.

I'm not sure what would be the reason to investigate Merkel. I suppose it might be because she came from East Germany and they might have fears that Putin and others could have inside dope on her from that time and place.

[Tami]

Woman arrested for painting ‘Police Lives Matter’ on Manhattan sidewalk

Police arrested a fan of the NYPD Tuesday after she was caught painting “Police Lives Matter” on a lower Manhattan sidewalk, officials said.

Cops were called to the corner of Chambers and Centre Sts. outside City Hall Park about 12:50 p.m. after the the 66-year-old woman Asian woman was seen using a paintbrush to write out her pro-cop slogan.

The woman was also carrying a sign with the same message in English and Chinese, officials said.

Cops took her into custody without incident, officials said.

She’s expected to be charged with making graffiti and criminal mischief — the same crimes anti-cop protesters have been hit with when some have been caught scrawling messages like “F--- the police” and “All Cops Are Bastards” on buildings, vehicles and city property during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

[Tami]

Joe Manchin: Deeply Disappointed in GOP and Prepared to Do Absolutely Nothing

When the Jan. 6 commission became the latest casualty of Republican obstructionism on Friday, most Democrats weren’t surprised. Joe Manchin was.

Manchin, West Virginia’s senior senator and the only Democrat in Congress from a state Donald Trump won by 40 points, has not been convinced that the GOP’s current strategy is scorched-earth partisan politics.

Ahead of Friday’s vote, as Republican opposition to the insurrection commission solidified, Manchin issued a call “imploring” his colleagues to consider passing the legislation. He said he couldn’t imagine why Sen. Mitch McConnell’s conference would block a bipartisan effort to get to the bottom of the attack on the Capitol.

“There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission,” he said, “since Democrats have agreed to everything they asked for.”

That argument was a pitch-perfect distillation of how Manchin views the Senate. How it was received—with just six Republicans voting for the commission—would perhaps indicate to a more mutable senator that his view may be out of step with reality and necessitate eliminating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold for passing bills.

But not for Manchin.

“I don’t think I’ll ever change,” Manchin told reporters on Thursday. “I’m not separating our country, OK?”

[worstblogever]

While the headlines from a Texas Qanon hullaballoo are that former Gen. Michael Flynn was calling for a military coup... let us not overlook the fact that...

Sitting Texas Congressman and long-sufferer of neurosyphilis Louie Gohmert was present at the same traitorous Qanon event. He denied initial reports he was there, and well... there's photos and video. And the cowboy hat on the conference's logo literally has the Qanon slogan right on the band of the goddamned hat, so... pretty obvious he should have been aware. Oh, and he also was photographed with people who were a part of the insurrection on 1/6.

Make no mistake, they are the GQP.

[AnakinFlair]

While the headlines from a Texas Qanon hullaballoo are that former Gen. Michael Flynn was calling for a military coup... let us not overlook the fact that...

Sitting Texas Congressman and long-sufferer of neurosyphilis Louie Gohmert was present at the same traitorous Qanon event. He denied initial reports he was there, and well... there's photos and video. And the cowboy hat on the conference's logo literally has the Qanon slogan right on the band of the goddamned hat, so... pretty obvious he should have been aware. Oh, and he also was photographed with people who were a part of the insurrection on 1/6.

Make no mistake, they are the GQP.

One of the retired Generals on a news show had a good idea a few months ago. Flynn should be recalled to active duty, just so they can court martial him.

[Tami]

Tulsa isn’t the only race massacre you were never taught in school. Here are others.

With President Biden commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre Tuesday, many Americans are learning for the first time about the nation’s long history of racist massacres, particularly during (but not limited to) the period from the 1870s to the 1920s — considered by many a nadir in the fight for Black civil rights.

This new awareness has prompted calls from many, including musician and activist Common, to learn more about these incidents. On Monday he posted to social media a map of part of the United States with locations and dates of other massacres against Black people. “Pick a massacre and research it!” it read.

[worstblogever]

One of the retired Generals on a news show had a good idea a few months ago. Flynn should be recalled to active duty, just so they can court martial him.

Seeing a lot of folks saying this. Including Walter Shaub, several generals, former Secretaries of Defense....

Flynn getting activated just to be open-and-shut court-martialed and bankrupted when he's stripped of his benefits and jailed via military tribunal would be some poetic justice.