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

[Gray Lensman]

They could always go for the Jason Voorhees mask, holed enough to risk infection while stabbing you to death with a machete. Or terrible politics.

Are Republicans big hockey fans?

A sport that is most popular in Canada and the Northeast? Too liberal for that crowd.

[JackDaw]

Exactly. Jack acts as if we did not have almost 6 years to witness that Trump does, indeed, inspire fascist hordes.

I suppose tastes vary. But on the surface the Donald is a desperately unfit git who seems to spout platitudes which he patently doesn’t believe himself. And he’s not very competent.

I’m not sure how that “inspires” anyone, let alone multitudes. Yes...it turns out a lot of people quite like some of the stuff he did, and his insular right wing attitude. But don’t think he inspired anybody, I don’t think he converted anybody...I think he took advantage of existing conditions.

Here’s what I’m predicting. I’m actually more optimistic on the “Donald phenomenon” than most on these boards...it will become steadily more apparent over the next couple of years that he’s finished as a credible politician.

But actually...that by itself won’t alter much. Because all those right wing voters are waiting for the next bullshit merchant. And they are not in short supply!

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Here’s what I’m predicting. I’m actually more optimistic on the “Donald phenomenon” than most on these boards...it will become steadily more apparent over the next couple of years that he’s finished as a credible politician.

That's not much comfort to the people who have died or who suffered or were affected by the "Donald phenomenon", you know.

I think you are going a little too far in underrating the importance of personality and individual agency, which is a common leftist mistake.

Regardless of your feelings about Trump, the January 06 Putsch happened. It wasn't some grand social conditions or abstract social theoretical constructs that led to it. It happened because of Trump. No other individual political figure in the American right-wing would have done it. Not Romney, not McConnell, not Dubya Bush, not Liz Cheney. Even Richard Nixon would never have done it. Trump is America's most successful and dangerous demagogue -- he has gone further than McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Huey Long, Lindbergh and the America First-ers, among several others.

If Trump will be finished as a credible politician it will come from activism and vigilance and not because of natural social conditions and so on.

[Tami]

I suppose tastes vary. But on the surface the Donald is a desperately unfit git who seems to spout platitudes which he patently doesn’t believe himself. And he’s not very competent.

I’m not sure how that “inspires” anyone, let alone multitudes. Yes...it turns out a lot of people quite like some of the stuff he did, and his insular right wing attitude. But don’t think he inspired anybody, I don’t think he converted anybody...I think he took advantage of existing conditions.

Here’s what I’m predicting. I’m actually more optimistic on the “Donald phenomenon” than most on these boards...it will become steadily more apparent over the next couple of years that he’s finished as a credible politician.

But actually...that by itself won’t alter much. Because all those right wing voters are waiting for the next bullshit merchant. And they are not in short supply!

If you actually listen to Trump talk, you would realize that he is a rambler. He talks about whatever is on his mind. But as he does, he pays attention to the clues from his 'Audience'. Like a stand-up comic at a comedy club, Trump fine-tunes his words to get the best reaction from his rally-goers. That is why he is dangerous.

He spouts nonsense, yet in such a way that his 'fans' fill in the blanks however they want. That is why he is dangerous.

He speaks repetitively about the same things over and over again, drilling it into the minds of his followers so that they won't forget. That is why he is dangerous.

Trump is a living, breathing, Q. A fantasy game that the desperate, the violent, the gullible, the less intelligent among us have convinced themselves that it is real.

Trump is a stage performer who, himself, can't tell fantasy from reality. Who has been spoiled on the idea of his own making that he is the center of the universe, that 'everyone' loves him, and that he can get whatever he wants, that he can do 'no wrong'. And his supporters are more than happy to indulge him since they see this as a way to power for themselves, even if it flies in the face of reality or common sense.

That is why he is dangerous.

[worstblogever]

They could always go for the Jason Voorhees mask, holed enough to risk infection while stabbing you to death with a machete. Or terrible politics.

Are Republicans big hockey fans?

They don't consider it "Murican" enough to embrace it. For whatever reason, the GQP is trying to turn their followers against every major sport for standing on the right side of history on social justice issues. So it's not a hockey thing.

And prior to the GQP being "anti-mask" for Covid-19, there were anti-mask laws being drafted to prevent "Antifa" from wearing masks at protests to potentially conceal their identity. They were s***ing their pants at the thought of the ending of V for Vendetta, with a populace overthrowing a fascist controlled government in Guy Fawkes masks.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, we profiled Jerry Bergevin, a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who advised against teaching evolution in public schools because he believed it led to the rise of Nazi Germany, and was the motivation for the shooters in the Columbine Massacre. Alternately, he has tried making Bible Studies a mandatory course in schools. Bergevin also released one of the country's first "religious freedom" bills back in 2012. Upon the state legislature in New Hampshire voting to legalize medical marijuana, he completely lost his damned mind, and sent out an email decrying that, calling his colleagues "Potheads who legalized the rectum as a sexual organ." Bergevin has been voted out of office for three years now, and we’re fine with that.


In both 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and in 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the U.S. House Representative for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, Mike Kelly, who was first elected in the Tea Party Wave back in 2010, defeating Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper by double digits with the benefit of GOP turnout that year, and after gerrymandering has turned the Cook Partisan Voter Index for his district from +2 Republican lean, all the way to +8 Republican, he’s now in his fourth term in office. Of course, in 2016, that was likely because nobody even bothered to run against him. Mike Kelly has raised some eyebrows since heading to our nation's capitol, with his first foray into the spotlight coming in August of 2012, when at a press conference, he compared the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act to "Pearl Harbor or 9-11." Certainly there was no hyperbole there, comparing the deaths of thousands in a surprise attack to employers having to cover contraceptives women might need to help regulate irregular menstrual cycles. No sir. A year after that blunder, in August of 2013, Rep. Kelly decided to comment on President Obama, explaining that actually, it was that Barack Obama "divides our country on race". Kelly went on to rant about how his "liberty and freedom were under attack" by the Obama administration, offering little explanation of how that was, exactly. But that's far from the worst thing he said about President Obama. He also discussed impeaching him for "dragging America into a Civil War" shortly after winning re-election back in November of 2014, and in a December 2015 interview with Houston conservative talk-show host Sam Malone, Kelly began questioning where Obama was born and who raised him, before ranting about how his remarks "embolden our enemies", and that terrorists could "shoot up a ballet while Obama dithers." His fearmongering about terrorism isn't a one off, as during the massive Ebola Virus outbreak in 2014, Mike Kelly was on Newsmax, calling for a travel ban (that doctors said would only make the outbreak worse) and making the ridiculous assertion that American Jihadis were going to go into Africa to deliberately infect themselves with the lethally terminal disease, and then bring it back to the states and spread it to massive numbers of people. Which is stupid, because people infected with Ebola are pretty easy to spot, and usually unable to move because they're so crippled by their organs liquifying. And to infect other people, they would have to smear blood or feces on people en masse, which is sort of a telltale sign of ill intent. And so in our update in the vein of “Mike Kelly is a deranged Obama-hating conspiracy theorist”, we must note that since President Obama left office, Rep. Kelly has not moved on, and in March of 2017, he told a crowd in his home district that President Obama was staying in the capitol not to just let his daughter Sasha finish high school, but was actually “running a shadow government that is totally gonna upset the new agenda.” Kelly never apologized for this blatant and paranoid lie, and his staffers tried walking it back, to being “frustration that some Obama holdovers within the federal bureaucracy are attempting to upset the Trump agenda”… which for a walk-back, is still pretty inflammatory. Meanwhile, President Obama took the time outside the White House to go kite-surfing with Richard Branson, because that’s exactly how shadow governments operate.

It was only a few weeks ago that Mike Kelly got humiliated on the floor of the House by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, after he tried claiming that he knew more about discrimination than she did as an African American woman before dropping “MAGA” into his remarks, and trying to skulk out. Waters was having none of that bulls***, and straight up torched him.

A few days later, Kelly doubled down on his behavior, going on Fox News and uncorking the most outlandish take imaginable. This time he claimed it was Un-American to acknowledge and talk about the existence of racism in the United States, and that he was often prejudiced against because… before he was a Congressman, he was a car salesman. Then, he praised Donald Trump for improving racial unity. No, we’re not making that up, here’s the quote:

“We have seen the economy take off. I just think that if you come to the floor and there are 60 minutes to debate. 30 minutes on each side. But as I was sitting there, I had 30 minutes of Democrats coming down and talking about how bad automobile people are because they discriminate against nonwhite buyers. I said that’s not America. We don’t talk about those things.

We are a people of diversity, but we come together to make America great again. When I’ve seen what President Trump has done and you come in this area you can see it. It is so uplifting. Look at this, you say ‘if your only platform is hate and resistance and not about bringing the country together again’ — I mean, listen, we are still the United States of America, not Divided States of America, and if we can’t talk better than what happened on the floor the other day. I was disappointed and the Democrats that came down, every single person demagoguing and talking about how bad automobile people are. It’s just not true.”

Mike Kelly is living on Bizarro World, it seems.

Anyway, other than all that insanity, there's the matter of Mike Kelly's partisan, conservative voting record, that includes votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown, votes against raising the debt ceiling (!), two votes to shut down Planned Parenthood and one to shut down National Public radio, votes against disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voting against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, votes for banning abortion at 20 weeks, and a vote for the SAFE Act, to keep Syrian refugees from fleeing the civil war in that country.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I suppose tastes vary. But on the surface the Donald is a desperately unfit git who seems to spout platitudes which he patently doesn’t believe himself. And he’s not very competent.

I’m not sure how that “inspires” anyone, let alone multitudes. Yes...it turns out a lot of people quite like some of the stuff he did, and his insular right wing attitude. But don’t think he inspired anybody, I don’t think he converted anybody...I think he took advantage of existing conditions.

Here’s what I’m predicting. I’m actually more optimistic on the “Donald phenomenon” than most on these boards...it will become steadily more apparent over the next couple of years that he’s finished as a credible politician.

But actually...that by itself won’t alter much. Because all those right wing voters are waiting for the next bullshit merchant. And they are not in short supply!

Regarding how Trump inspired people on the right, he made it fashionable, almost permissible to hate, to be racist, to be homophobic, to be xenophobic, to be misogynist, to be as revolting and disgusting as humanly possible, and those multitudes LOVED Trump because he gave them the "freedom" they yearned for to be deplorable. Now that Trump is gone, those same knuckledraggers, unwilling to return to the rocks they had been living under before the Donald's rise to power are lashing out in his name like angry toddlers because they don't want to go back to being rightfully marginalized like they had been before. And yeah, Trump is absolutely manipulating those hordes to his benefit.

[worstblogever]

And guess what? Mike Kelly is still a bastard of a legislator:

• October 23rd, 2019: Kelly is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Kelly 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: Kelly votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• October 2nd, 2020: Mike Kelly is one of 17 Republicans who vote against a resolution to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
• December 10th, 2020: Kelly signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that she won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: Mike Kelly 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. Kelly 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.
• February 4th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online.
• February 25th, 2021: Kelly votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Kelly 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: Mike Kelly votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Kelly votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Kelly votes 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).
• May 19th, 2021: Mike Kelly votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Kelly is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Mike Kelly’s seat was one of the top Democratic targets in 2020 to be flipped and further their majority advantage in the House. And he’s still in the middle of controversy. Because Mike Kelly still owns car dealerships… and has benefited from a law that allows him to sell models of cars that have been recalled by their manufacturers. And, over all, the practice has resulted in 24 deaths around the country, including vehicles with defective airbags that kill passengers. Mike Kelly’s own dealerships have sold 17 recalled vehicles, and thus far, and luckily, he hasn’t managed to sell anyone a death trap yet.

Yet.

Mike Kelly still won re-election with 59% of the vote, regardless of that being brought to light.

What has caused far more deaths in the past year and a half than his car dealerships is of course, Covid-19. And Mike Kelly tested positive in March 2020, and during a couple weeks of debilitating infection, he managed to lose 30 pounds, but was lucky enough to never see symptoms any worse than congestion other than the weight loss. One would hope that this would motivate Kelly to make statements that would benefit the public interest and advise people to go along with “stay at home” orders. But not so much. Mike Kelly was pimping out the Trump-touted snake-oil “cure”, hydroxychloriquine as a treatment, and while he admitted he couldn’t prove it helped him recover, he still seems to promote the dangerous drug that kills more people than it saves. Because this man is a moron who will put coal in the train engine that is Donald Trump’s stupidity whenever he can.

Speaking of, when the final assessment of who contributed to The Big Lie that fomented a violent coup attempt against Congress, one of the most irresponsible douchebags involved in the Republican Party was Mike Kelly, who actually personally filed lawsuits against the state of Pennsylvania on November 20th, 2020, to try and overturn the results of the election. He continued to bang on about it not just until 1/6/21, when his paranoia helped lay the seeds for a violent coup attempt to be carried out in the Capitol by Trump supporters, but Kelly kept pushing his lawsuits until they were laughed out of court a month later in February of 2021. All in all, Mike Kelly ended up wasting millions in taxpayer dollars on the fruitless effort to make Trump a president-for-life.

Whoever his Democratic opponent is in 2022 needs to call him into account on this.

[Tami]

Trump's July Fourth fireworks show caused more than $42,000 in damage, records show

WASHINGTON — The July Fourth fireworks show hosted by the Republican National Committee in Washington last summer caused $42,150 worth of damage, according to records obtained by the Democratic organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

CREW published four pages of documents Wednesday, including a letter the Department of Interior sent the RNC in February detailing the damage caused to the National Mall.

The letter said damage was done to turf near the sidewalks by a forklift operator “who drove at a high rate of speed" and to turf from the setup of fireworks and “scorch marks from the fireworks.” It said that a dumpster also “struck” a water fountain, and that "extensive compaction damage" was caused by "improper setup and security/setup/takedown vehicles driving throughout the turf."

Photos included in the documents showed the damage done to the grass and water fountain.

The RNC has since reimbursed the federal government, according to documents filed with the Interior Department and published by CREW.

The records were obtained by CREW as part of a lawsuit “to reveal the full cost to taxpayers of Trump’s rampant use of Interior resources for self-aggrandizement,” the organization said on its website.

[Tami]

'I thought I was going to lose my life': Capitol Police officers share their harrowing January 6 stories for the first time

Washington (CNN)US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell was beaten with a flagpole. His hand was sliced open. He was hit with so much chemical spray that the liquid soaked through to his skin. During intense hand-to-hand combat with rioters on the west front of the US Capitol on January 6, there were moments where Gonell thought he might die.

"They called us traitors. They beat us. They dragged us," Gonell told CNN, in his first interview about the violence he experienced and witnessed on January 6. "And I could hear them, 'We're going to shoot you. We're going to kill you. You're choosing your paycheck over the country. You're a disgrace. You're a traitor.'"

Several hundred feet away that same day, US Capitol Police Officer Byron Evans was inside the locked Senate chamber with 100 senators and Vice President Mike Pence, hand on his weapon and mentally preparing for a life-or-death situation to come through the doors.

"I remember thinking, all that stuff like, Byron, this is the day. All those times you've given thought on what you would do, you're doing it. This is the day," Evans said.

"This could be the day that I may have to use deadly force," he said. "I had already heard of shots fired over the radio."

[4saken1]

But actually...that by itself won’t alter much. Because all those right wing voters are waiting for the next bullshit merchant. And they are not in short supply!

I agree. I don't think January 6th would have happened without Trump egging his base on. If it wasn't January 6th, though, it would have been some other cult of personality on some other date in the near future.

[4saken1]

And prior to the GQP being "anti-mask" for Covid-19, there were anti-mask laws being drafted to prevent "Antifa" from wearing masks at protests to potentially conceal their identity. They were s***ing their pants at the thought of the ending of V for Vendetta, with a populace overthrowing a fascist controlled government in Guy Fawkes masks.

I wonder if now they are torn on the subject, thinking it would actually be a good thing if Quidiots in masks would overturn the Democratic controlled government.

[worstblogever]

I wonder if now they are torn on the subject, thinking it would actually be a good thing if Quidiots in masks would overturn the Democratic controlled government.

They're committed to the anti-mask bit for the most part. That's why so many dumbasses have already been ID'ed from 1/6/21. And if Qanon loons tried something that stupid again, they have not proven the type to learn from any mistakes made. Or just... learn, frankly.

[Robotman]

Regarding how Trump inspired people on the right, he made it fashionable, almost permissible to hate, to be racist, to be homophobic, to be xenophobic, to be misogynist, to be as revolting and disgusting as humanly possible, and those multitudes LOVED Trump because he gave them the "freedom" they yearned for to be deplorable. Now that Trump is gone, those same knuckledraggers, unwilling to return to the rocks they had been living under before the Donald's rise to power are lashing out in his name like angry toddlers because they don't want to go back to being rightfully marginalized like they had been before. And yeah, Trump is absolutely manipulating those hordes to his benefit.

The world is changing around these people and they are terrified. Minorities and woman are demanding equal rights and to not have racial and sexual slurs thrown at them and the “traditional” Americans can’t stand it. Trump makes them feel safe with his anti-wokeness.

The vast majority of them will not be returning to their rocks. But people have to keep calling them out and showing that there are negative consequences for their racist/sexist/homophobic actions.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

If it wasn't January 6th, though, it would have been some other cult of personality on some other date in the near future.

The fact is that a lot of right-wing militia and other goons on the right ecosystem in the current age haven't been able to, or achieved any success in their attempts to, develop anything on that level.

The "Unite the Right" rally at Charlottesville was a huge failure and embarrassment which actually made Virginia even more blue, and started the confederate statue removal wave. The militia attempt to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer was a laughing stock. Steve Bannon who too many people wasted time thinking about was a hack who lost Alabama to the Dems, got kicked out early by Trump, got caught by the Post Office, and it's pretty clear now that it was Trump and never him that carried and drove that movement to power.

Trump by himself and through himself alone mobilized something on the scale of the January 6 Putsch. He did it because he had Presidential power and immunity to use and abuse at his pleasure, a corrupt collaborationist GOP who he sees as canon fodder. There have always been and always will be right-wing figures on the fringe. And it's not a given or inevitable that the fringe can be actioneered by just anyone.

Trump has proven himself capable of actioning this stuff and it's not clear that he can be replaced or overturned that easily. The Liz Cheney ousting proves that.