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

[Tendrin]

Oregon House GOP finally commits to telling Nearman he should resign.

Every one of his Republican colleagues in the House signed a letter Monday “strongly” recommending that state Rep. Mike Nearman resign from the Legislature after video surfaced last week showing him appearing to coach residents on how to get inside a closed Capitol during a special session last year.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oregon House GOP finally commits to telling Nearman he should resign.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

Nice of those bozos to finally get around to calling for Nearman's resignation.

[worstblogever]

Oregon House GOP finally commits to telling Nearman he should resign.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

There's a detail I've learned about the Mike Nearman story that is even more damning. The video of him coaching domestic terrorists of how to notify him to be let into the capitol during a Covid-19 lockdown?

That's recorded at a meeting of the "Freedom Foundation", of which Mike Nearman is an employee. The Freedom Foundation is Koch Brothers funded.

For those who need the dots fully connected, Koch Enterprises is now financially backing domestic terrorism.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the current U.S. House Representative from Washington’s 8th Congressional District, Dave Reichert, a former police officer who fell all over himself to take credit for catching the Green River Serial Killer (in spite of botching the case for years until the murderer’s body count was approaching triple digits), and for using over-aggressive tactics on protesters at the 1999 World Trade Organization conference that led to the situation escalating into “The Battle for Seattle” (where he abandoned his post when cameras showed up to chase after looters). Reichert ran sexist campaign ads against Darcy Burner in both 2006 and 2008, has been caught on tape joking about Hillary Clinton falling to her death out of a plane, and told fellow Republicans they should “be worried about Barack Obama stealing money out of your wallets”. His voting record is widely conservative, including votes against Dodd-Frank, against regulating offshore oil rigs after the Deepwater Horizon incident, voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and consistently voting against the Affordable Care Act (lying about its success whenever he gets the chance). Oh, and Reichert, always quick to defend police violence and extend unconditional support for law enforcement, as an ex-cop himself, celebrated National Police Week in March 2016 by taking to the floor of the House to give a speech called “Blue Lives Matter”, a deliberate slap in the face at the “Black Lives Matter” movement, because of course he did. Dave Reichert decided to retire from office in 2018, rather than face down the Blue Wave.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Nick Miccarelli, a former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives who served District 162 in that body from 2009-2018. It wasn’t Miccarelli’s voting record that stood out to us so much, with your basic Republican support for anti-choice regulations, voter suppression efforts with unnecessary Voter ID laws, and opposition to firearm regulations. Now, where Nick Miccarelli really drew our attention was the series of allegations brought against him during his career as a legislator. A fellow Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Tarah Toohill, got an order of protection against Miccarelli, citing two separate incidents where he threatened her life. In one, in 2012, he pulled a gun on her. In another, in 2014, he threatened to crash a car both were in where he was speeding at 100 MPH. A legislative aide also reported being sexually assaulted by Miccarelli. and while retaliating against the woman who reported him having raped her, Miccarelli allegedly decided to attempt to silence her in the most classy of methods… revenge porn, naming his accuser and providing nude photos of her to media outlets. He refused to resign even though politicians from both sides of the aisle called on him to do so, because he’s enough of a motherf***er that he still wanted to finish out the last few months of his term and qualify for his benefits as a legislator. That proved difficult, though, considering Toohill had a restraining order against him, he was yanked from all his committee assignments, and he was about as much of a pariah as someone could be. Nick Miccarelli’s career is over, and we’re going to be ready to hand anyone the largest hammer we can find should he attempt to pop up in a game of MeToo Whack-A-Mole in a couple years.



On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the appointed U.S. Senator from Georgia Kelly Loeffler, who we predicted was unlikely to be that for more than the six months to come thereafter. She became Senator Loeffler back in January of 2020, with her previous experience in politics being “nothing” and her husband being the head of the NYSE while she was the owner of the WNBA team the Atlanta Dream. This appointment was not without controversy in Republican circles, as Donald Trump wanted his sycophantic lackey Doug Collins to be named the next Senator from Georgia, but the vote-stealin’ wonder, Gov. Brian Kemp picked Loeffler based on thinking from stalwarts within the Republican Party, who thought having a good female Senator would help them win back votes from women in the Georgia suburbs in 2020 to hang onto this Senate seat, and not see it flipped blue.

Loeffler started trying to garner some favor with the Trump administration by coming out in favor of his stupid f***ing vanity project, the border wall, and it seemed like maybe she could coast into a permanent seat on the Senate. There was just one problem with Kemp and the mainstream GOP’s thinking… Kelly Loeffler doesn’t really seem to have any ethical compass, whatsoever, and within six weeks after being sworn in, she went to a Senate Intelligence hearing on Covid-19, learned that the country was f***ed, and then she and her husband just coincidentally started to immediately make million-dollar stock portfolio adjustments that seem almost certainly to be motivated by the upcoming pandemic. In other words, she violated the STOCK Act, and was insider trading, because pulling money out of tourism and putting it into tele-working is an AMAZING coincidence. She and other Republicans who got caught using a public health crisis as a money-making venture and was facing calls to resign, which she ignored.

Kelly Loeffler had a unique strategy to try and hold onto her seat, to just be as racist as possible. Whether it was feuding with the players on her own WNBA team over social justice issues, or to blame the spread of Covid-19 on China, she continued to show herself to be a worse human being the longer she was in the spotlight as the election approached.

She ended up losing in the runoff election against the Reverend Rafael Warnock, getting only 49% of the vote, and spent the days that followed attacking the integrity of Georgia’s election results, going along with Donald Trump’s Big Lie, and helping lay the seeds for the violent coup attempt carried out by Trump supporters on January 6th. She finally flipped after seeing the rioters storm the Capitol, and word is, the whole experience has made her realize maybe she doesn’t want to be in politics, after all.

At this time, we’d like to wish this corrupt twit our heartiest “GOOD RIDDANCE” salutes.

[Tendrin]

There's a detail I've learned about the Mike Nearman story that is even more damning. The video of him coaching domestic terrorists of how to notify him to be let into the capitol during a Covid-19 lockdown?

That's recorded at a meeting of the "Freedom Foundation", of which Mike Nearman is an employee. The Freedom Foundation is Koch Brothers funded.

For those who need the dots fully connected, Koch Enterprises is now financially backing domestic terrorism.

Yeah, that's what pushed them to do this finally. I don't know whether he'll resign or not but I presume it's just a matter of time. One less update you'll have to write.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

There's a detail I've learned about the Mike Nearman story that is even more damning. The video of him coaching domestic terrorists of how to notify him to be let into the capitol during a Covid-19 lockdown?

That's recorded at a meeting of the "Freedom Foundation", of which Mike Nearman is an employee. The Freedom Foundation is Koch Brothers funded.

For those who need the dots fully connected, Koch Enterprises is now financially backing domestic terrorism.

Well now, isn't THAT interesting! Of course, mouthpieces from Koch will waste little time issuing denials about their association with Freedom Foundation.

[Tami]

Massive internet outage: Websites and apps around the world go dark

New York (CNN Business)Countless websites and apps around the world went down Tuesday after Fastly, a major content delivery network, reported a widespread failure.

Fastly supports news sites and apps like CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and many others. It also provides content delivery for Twitch, Pinterest, HBO Max, Hulu, Reddit, Spotify and other services.
Other major internet platforms and sites including Amazon, Target, and the UK government website — Gov.uk — are not working.

The problem is appears to be related to an outage at Fastly (FSLY), a cloud service provider.

[worstblogever]

Yeah, that's what pushed them to do this finally. I don't know whether he'll resign or not but I presume it's just a matter of time. One less update you'll have to write.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Massive internet outage: Websites and apps around the world go dark

Just heard about that. To be honest, I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often as NOTHING is 100 percent secure or infallible these days.

[Tami]

Just heard about that. To be honest, I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often as NOTHING is 100 percent secure or infallible these days.

I'm not a big fan of cloud computing, except in certain instances with a single user.

[Tendrin]

We really shouldn't be relying on one spikey haired anime protagonist to do all our math for us anyway.

[Tami]

This is kind of wild, almost like desperation chess.

Democrats’ Improbable New F.E.C. Strategy: More Deadlock Than Ever

WASHINGTON — A funny thing keeps happening in federal court. An arm of the government has not been showing up to defend itself against lawsuits. Some judges appear confused, and less than amused, by the unusual absences.

“It is necessary for the agency to pay attention to this case,” one exasperated district court judge wrote in March. Yet when the judge set another court date, in May, the agency in question, the Federal Election Commission, didn’t show up again.

It was not an accident.

For more than a decade, Democrats seeking more robust enforcement of election laws and transparency measures have been routinely routed at the F.E.C., the nation’s top campaign watchdog agency. They have complained bitterly that Republicans have weaponized the commission’s bipartisan structure — there are three commissioners allied with both parties — to turn it into a toothless, do-nothing bureau.

Now, the Democratic commissioners have stealthily begun to strike back by leveraging some of the same arcane rules that have stymied enforcement efforts for years — namely, that a bipartisan vote is necessary to do almost anything — to make the agency do even less. The goal appears to be to take a commission widely seen as dysfunctional and create further deadlock, compelling federal courts to fill the breach when it comes to policing federal election law.

“I think of it as a desperate cry for help,” said Adav Noti, a former lawyer at the F.E.C. who is now a senior director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group that is among those that have sued the F.E.C.

If successful, the gambit could have far-reaching implications for future campaigns and for pending F.E.C. complaints from the 2020 election, like one that accused former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through limited liability companies to conceal whom his campaign was ultimately paying.

The chief architect behind the strategy is Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democratic F.E.C. commissioner since 2002, who described it as something of a last-ditch effort after years of watching enforcement actions become sidelined in 3-3 split decisions. “I’m using the small amount of leverage that I have,” she said. “It’s not a lot.”

Here is what has been happening behind closed doors, according to people familiar with the commission’s private executive sessions: First, the Democrats are declining to formally close some cases after the Republicans vote against enforcement. That leaves investigations officially sealed in secrecy and legal limbo. Then the Democrats are blocking the F.E.C. from defending itself in court when advocates sue the commission for failing to do its job.

Lee E. Goodman, a Republican former F.E.C. chairman who stepped down in 2018, said the tactic amounted to “sandbagging federal judges” by making them believe deadlocked cases are unresolved. “While we can admire it in its creativity, it fundamentally rests on a dishonesty,” he said.

The combination of moves takes advantage of existing provisions in campaign law to essentially open the door for outside advocacy groups to directly sue campaigns in federal court. In fact, it is already happening, including in one case involving a group that spent money supporting Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and that is accused of improperly existing as a nonprofit to shield its donors from public disclosure.

“If I don’t believe the case ought to be dismissed, why would I vote to dismiss?” Ms. Weintraub said of leaving cases pending. “I’m just trying to get the law enforced.”

[Tami]

Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims

Donald Trump called Joe Biden a “mental retard” during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.

Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal, will be published in August. Trump was among interviewees for the book. Vanity Fair published an excerpt on Monday.

Previous revelations include that the Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was rebuked for campaigning with Trump, wrote an ad for the Trump campaign – a report Hannity denied.

Bender writes that Trump interrupted a White House meeting to ask: “How am I losing in the polls to a mental retard?”

The idea Democrats would replace Biden reportedly came from Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who has migrated rightwards and who was informally advising Trump.

“Dick Morris told Trump that Biden was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee,” Bender writes.

Biden was 78 when he became the oldest president ever sworn in. Trump turns 75 next week.

Bender adds that Trump believed his attacks on the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren early in the Democratic primary were too successful. Trump gave Warren a racist nickname, Pocahontas, based on her claim to Native American ancestry.

Thinking Warren would have been an easier opponent, Bender writes, Trump fretted to aides that Democrats would “realise [Biden is] old, and they’re going to give it to somebody else. They’re going to give it to Hillary, or they’re going to give it to Michelle Obama.”

Trump reportedly feared Democrats would move to replace Biden at their convention.

[Tami]

Trump’s Deranged Theory That Democrats Would Replace Biden Might Have Helped Him Lose 2020

In early 2020, a frustrated and furious Donald Trump described Joe Biden as “a mental retard” while struggling to cope with his own placement in early polls, according to a passage from “Frankly, We Did Win This Election”: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, a forthcoming book by senior Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. The author notes that Trump vented his anger at the time by interrupting “a policy meeting in the Oval Office to ask, ‘How am I losing in the polls to a mental retard?’”

In another moment Bender writes that Trump held back on focusing his firepower on Biden during the primary stage of the election because he was convinced that the Democratic Party was scheming to switch out now president Biden for a different candidate—such as Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama—over the summer. The source of this conspiracy theory, per Bender, was Dick Morris, a former Clinton White House adviser who was “quietly advising Trump” last year. “Dick Morris told Trump that Biden was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee,” Bender writes, while others in Trumpworld felt Biden would exit the race and be replaced by someone else if Trump began bashing him too hard. “Others said Fox News anchor Sean Hannity expressed concern that Biden would collapse under a sustained attack from Trump.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims

Trump’s Deranged Theory That Democrats Would Replace Biden Might Have Helped Him Lose 2020

But Biden was said to have been senile while Trump was floating those looney tune conspiracy theories. Right, gotcha!