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

[BeastieRunner]

Happy Tax Fraud Friday everyone!

Trump Org and Trump Payroll sound like everything FOX & the GOP wanted the Clinton Foundation to be ... yikes!

After two-year investigation, CFO of Trump company surrenders.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Facts. There is no widespread voter fraud. That isn't debatable. It is a proven fact. And it is the basis for all of these lies about "election security" and you know it. You can bloviate to some tin foil hat morons all you like but it doesn't change facts.

There has been clear and wide open chances to present ANY evidence that would bolster arguments that there is this vast need for ramping up "election security" even to the point of creating a "disparity" with non white voters as Alito flat out admitted in his argument. All those court cases were clearly tossed out as complete garbage. Kagan's 42 page descent fully points out that they conservative majority is gutting the Voting Rights Act and its own precedents.

Hell if they had even one court case with clear evidence that ok yeah here are the receipts that there was some widespread fraud in (insert state here) and we have got to plug that hole even if a side effect is voters being disenfranchised. An argument can be made. THEY ALL WERE TOSSED OUT. "A lot we don't know" Please. What we do know is GOP don't want black and brown voters. And are willing to do anything to stop them.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that after Mitt Romney lost in 2012, it was suggested, perhaps strongly suggested that the GQP do some serious outreach to black and brown voters, to practice inclusion instead of exclusivity. Nine years later and it's glaringly evident Qpublicans want nothing to do with people of color, since the party has absolutely nothing to offer us, they're going to shut us out of the election process if they can.

[Mister Mets]

Facts. There is no widespread voter fraud. That isn't debatable. It is a proven fact. And it is the basis for all of these lies about "election security" and you know it. You can bloviate to some tin foil hat morons all you like but it doesn't change facts.

There has been clear and wide open chances to present ANY evidence that would bolster arguments that there is this vast need for ramping up "election security" even to the point of creating a "disparity" with non white voters as Alito flat out admitted in his argument. All those court cases were clearly tossed out as complete garbage. Kagan's 42 page descent fully points out that they conservative majority is gutting the Voting Rights Act and its own precedents.

Hell if they had even one court case with clear evidence that ok yeah here are the receipts that there was some widespread fraud in (insert state here) and we have got to plug that hole even if a side effect is voters being disenfranchised. An argument can be made. THEY ALL WERE TOSSED OUT. "A lot we don't know" Please. What we do know is GOP don't want black and brown voters. And are willing to do anything to stop them.

You seem to be responding to an argument I haven't made. I have not claimed that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020, or in recent elections.

Someone else making a bad argument has nothing to do with me. Otherwise progressives would be obligated to support George W Bush when it turned out that documents that made him look bad were likely doctored, and they would have been obligated to support Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court once Swetnick's allegations against him fell apart. The best political arguments are about addressing the strongest arguments for the other side, rather than dunking on the weakest.

Election security isn't primarily about 2020. It's something the Republican party was concerned about before. One situation that showed that it was a good thing to have these concerns was in 2016 when many of the left were afraid that Russians, or conservative-affiliated hackers may have changed the vote totals. We had enough of a paper trail to show that the 2016 election machinery wasn't hacked, and it also highlighted the need for security in the future, to prevent anyone from being able to hack election machinery. I agree that there does not appear to be any widespread voter fraud, but we don't want to make it easy in the future.

Some of the discussions after 2020 are complicated by the fact that there were a lot of temporary changes to election policy based on a unique situation (a contagious pandemic which meant we wanted to limit indoor gatherings with large amounts of people) and there's a bit of a bad-faith claim that those policies were meant to be permanent.

Since people do not live or work randomly, we should expect disparate impact from a lot of policies. That's not evidence that the disparate impact was the point, or that the policy is mistaken.

My point on pretext was that if you're looking at motives to dismiss an argument, Clarence Thomas and the rest of the conservative supermajority on the court get to dismiss progressive arguments for the same reason (IE- if a Democrat lied, we get to ignore every left-wing argument on an issue.)

[Kirby101]

Mets can stay willfully blind to what his Party is doing, but it is pretty much out in the open.

In Supreme Court, GOP attorney defends voting restrictions by saying they help Republicans win

Republicans Admit Voter ID Laws Are Aimed at Democratic Voters

Florida GOP Leaders Admit Voter Suppression Was Motive Behind Voter Laws

And I could post a dozen more.

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

[Mister Mets]

Mets can stay willfully blind to what his Party is doing, but it is pretty much out in the open.

In Supreme Court, GOP attorney defends voting restrictions by saying they help Republicans win

Republicans Admit Voter ID Laws Are Aimed at Democratic Voters

Florida GOP Leaders Admit Voter Suppression Was Motive Behind Voter Laws

And I could post a dozen more.

If you disagree with something I say, you can quote the post and let me know what specifically you disagree with. Otherwise, we may be arguing past one another.

In your first link, the lawyer says that every vote Democrats get through an unlawful interpretation hurts the Republicans, which is true. The counterpoint would be to show that is a lawful interpretation, rather than to twist what he's said. The ability to twist “Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.” into "In Supreme Court, GOP attorney defends voting restrictions by saying they help Republicans win" can be used by Clarence Thomas when he's summarizing Democratic arguments in a 6-3 decision.

Parties and their members are not a hivemind. Just because a ninety year old activist had a particular understanding of a policy doesn't mean it's the only possible understanding. Otherwise, that can be another tool for Clarence Thomas when writing 6-3 decisions "This Huffington Post columnist shows what the Democrats really want to do."

[Kirby101]

And now Mets is conflating election cyber security, a real concern and something the GOP opposed to protect elections from. With their voter suppression laws aimed at non existent voter fraud.
Your agreements that these are not purely voter suppression laws in the guise of "election security" hold as much weight as your GOP's arguments against the reality of Climate Change.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Frank Artiles, a member of the Florida House of Representatives who first turned up in the Tea Party Wave of 2010, has a voting record featuring support for drug testing welfare recipients, unnecessary bans on Sharia Law, trying to prevent gays and lesbian couples from adopting children and find ways to deny them their legal right to be married, as well as sponsor pro-life legislation that included a measure to try and change the definition of fetal viability. At the time we gave Artiles the spotlight, he was one of the first Republicans around the country to also support transphobic bathroom legislation, wanting to fine transgendered citizens $1000 for using the “incorrect” bathroom. In our profiles of Artiles, we’ve taken great pains to be as accurate as we can in our discussion of him because he tends to threaten people who report on anything he does with libel and/or slander lawsuits, considering unflattering discussion of him or his interests “bullying”. When we factored in that, along with Artiles being investigated for assault for attacking a man in a night club a few years back, we thought we had more than enough to begin keeping tabs on him.

After six years of being a toxic influence in the Florida House of Representatives Artiles did successfully win election to the Florida State Senate in 2016 after fundraising at a rate roughly four times that of his opponent, Dwight Bullard. However, his time in the upper chamber was much shorter than perhaps anyone anticipated. One would think that after Frank Artiles had that run-in at a night club a few years back, that he might rethink where he spends time after hours in the state legislature, or to not be so combative. Well, Frank Artiles is a special brand of hostile, as in April of 2017, only four months into his first term in the Florida State Senate, went out to the Governor’s Club, a members-only bar and restaurant in Tallahassee, and called several members of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus the n-word, as well as calling one female lawmaker a “bitch”, and a male lawmaker a “p***y”. Artiles actually tried defending his use of the racial slur, claiming it was the version of the word that ends in an –a, and not –er, so he felt like he was just using slang and not insulting any of them. After days of trying to justify why casual bigotry was not a big deal, Artiles made a few half-hearted apologies before resigning in disgrace.



It was on this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Florida Congressman and current Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who was narrowly elected in 2018. Back in 2012, in his first Congressional run, DeSantis ran as a Tea Party candidate trying to get whatever momentum was left out of that toxic movement, and earned a second term by raving about Benghazi as much as possible in 2014. By 2016, DeSantis was feeling cocky enough that he thought he would be able to fill the void left by Marco Rubio who was leaving his U.S. Senate seat open, and promised he wouldn’t run, so DeSantis made a run for U.S. Senate. It wasn’t going so well, with polls showing not just that DeSantis would be crushed in the general election by any Democratic candidate, but that he would finish not just behind David Jolly, but even behind Carlos Beruff, a complete lunatic and political outsider. When Rubio reneged on his promise to run for a second term for office, it made DeSantis’ decision to instead run for re-election for his House seat look far less craven.

In 2018, DeSantis sought the office being vacated by Voldemort-cosplayer Rick Scott due to term limits. This is troubling to us here at CSGOPOTD because of various alliances that DeSantis has with… well, hatemongers. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted in April of 2017 that Ron DeSantis was teaming up with fellow Congressman Bill Johnson to form the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, and in that endeavor, acting as its chairman, enlisted the help of Daniel Pipes, an anti-Islamic “activist” who has spent three decades demonizing Muslims in the political sphere, including proposing Muslim detention camps in the United States, and claiming that Muslims orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing and not the anti-government militia lunatics who actually did it.

That relationship with a xenophobic bigot is not an outlier, by any stretch. Only a few weeks after the 2017 election, Ron DeSantis appeared at David Horowitz’s “Restoration Weekend”, a rather polite name for an event that is perhaps better classified as an Islamophobic hate rally, which that particular weekend, featured White Nationalist speakers like Steve Bannon, actual Neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, and Milo Yiannopoulos, who had already been revealed to have spoken several times in favor of pedophilia, as if his racist agenda wasn’t enough of a reason to be disgusted by him. And yet, there was DeSantis on stage, speaking alongside both Milo and Bannon, without any shame whatsoever. (We haven’t forgotten, Ron.)

So, we’ve established already that Ron DeSantis is allying himself with the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/White Nationalist wing of the GOP, and perhaps no greater evidence of that is the pathetic way he’s been trying to defend Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation. In August of 2017, he was actually trying to campaign within Congress to place a six-month timetable on the probe into any collusion between Trump and Russia. That has continued going forward, when he was a frequent guest pundit on Fox News to try and taint the findings of the investigators further, claiming that the investigation was “infected with bias” from the start. Now, why would anyone trying to win office in 2018, during a Blue Wave year, do something so stupid?

Maybe you’d get the idea that DeSantis being proud of being arm-to-arm with those intolerant jackasses means he has some courageous streak… HA! No. Because the day after yet another tragic mass shooting in Florida, this time in Parkland, Florida, a local television reporter that wasn’t satisfied with DeSantis posting “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter put a microphone in front of Rep. DeSantis to ask him if there would be any gun control measures he might support to prevent such a tragedy from happening in the future… and he cravenly ran away claiming he “had to go down” as if there was a vote about to happen.

His voting record as a Congressman showed him vote for Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy (but you know he would want disaster relief if a hurricane hit Florida, and he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and then the time came to vote to re-open the federal government, DeSantis voted to keep it closed. as well as a variety of anti-choice, pro-gun legislation through the years. DeSantis also voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act scores of times, and even voted to strip the protections granted by the Americans with Disabilities Act prior to leaving office in 2018.

[worstblogever]

Since becoming Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has still been awful, releasing a statement to honor the victims of the Pulse shooting but neglecting to make any mention of it being a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, and then, blaming that omission on his own staff (you still signed it, Ron), Around the same time, DeSantis had a major purge where seven members of his staff quit on the same day (and no one is still sure if there’s a connection). Still, DeSantis is doing what he can to take credit for disaster relief funding coming to his state for Hurricane Irma, when as a Congressman, he voted against doing so for other states. The initial approval ratings after his election mostly held steady for a few months, but the honeymoon ended fast... and nothing made it clear what an incompetent, fascist boob he is like the past eighteen months:

• April 15th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis declares WWE pro-wrestling an “essential” service to keep it open and airing during the pandemic without any pause or oversight.
• May 1st, 2020: As all public health experts are recommending social distancing guidelines and public venues remain closed to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Ron DeSantis orders all beaches to be reopened. Multiple critics compare his flippant rejection of their guidance and putting lives at risk to the Mayor of Amityville in Jaws, who refused to close the beaches for fears of angering local businesses even though a lethal threat would be present…
• June 16th, 2020: As DeSantis’s idiocy causes Florida to become one of the biggest Covid-19 hotspots in the nation and numbers skyrocket, he refuses to even consider to shut down his state again in any way.
• June 26th, 2020: Rebekah Jones, a whistleblower who worked within Florida’s Department of Health first reports that even the enormously high numbers being reported in Florida are manipulated by the DeSantis administration to hide the death toll his ignorance has wrought.
• July 20th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis is sued by the Florida Education Association, after he tries forcing Florida’s public school teachers to go back to in-person learning during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic. (The infection rate, which was finally coming down over the summer, immediately begins spiking again in the fall as children return to classes and become vectors.)
• October 13th, 2020: There are levels of stupid, and then there’s Ron DeSantis. He hosts Donald Trump’s first political rally since he nearly died of coronavirus, and at the event, DeSantis is filmed maskless, high-fiving Trump supporters, and then immediately wiping his nose. He is somehow being added to his own abysmal Covid-19 statistics in spite of his dumbassery.
• November 11th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis personally drafts legislation to allow Florida citizens to shoot “looters and rioters” that would apply the Stand Your Ground Defense to anyone encountering civil protesters. The bill is written specifically to also allow drivers to run over protesters who “block traffic”, encouraging right-wing terrorists to run over protesters, a crime which is escalating around the country even before his bill is proposed.
• November 26th, 2020: Epidemiologists are dumbfounded by Ron DeSantis’ decision to extend an executive order barring municipalities throughout from Florida from enacting mask mandates, even as the number of infections being reported reaches their highest levels since the pandemic has started. Some go as far as to comment that the Governor of Florida is “on a killing spree”.
• December 7th, 2020: Gov. DeSantis orders law enforcement to sent a SWAT team to do a raid on the home of former Dept. of Public Health official Rebekah Jones as retribution for her telling the public the truth about his incompetent response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and during it, the officers point weapons at her children while moving through the home.
• April 16th, 2021: As Congressman Matt Gaetz is implicated in a sex-trafficking ring that includes a minor, and thus, also a child sex trafficking ring, the media notes Gaetz’s friendship with DeSantis, where he referred to himself as the “Robin” to DeSantis’ Batman, as well as that a top campaign donor of Ron DeSantis, Jason Pirozzolo is implicated in criminal activity, as is one of his top administration staffers, Halsey Beshears.
• April 18th, 2021: A report drops that the DeSantis administration’s “Seniors First” policy on distributing the Covid-19 vaccine specifically worked to get the life-saving vaccine to his rich political donors first, in a brazen show of corruption.
• May 6th, 2021: Ron DeSantis signs SB 90, a bill aimed at targeting voting rights in Florida, and a way to help him suppress the vote to aid his own re-election chances in 2022. In a shockingly partisan move, he has the bill-signing ceremony live on Fox and Friends, beaming with pride over his anti-democratic action.
• May 30th, 2021: Almost a year after she went public with the DeSantis administration’s malfeasance on Covid-19 safety and manipulation of data to minimize the death poll to try and cover up the number of deaths, Rebekah Jones is granted Whistleblower Protections.
• June 1st, 2021: Ron DeSantis signs the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act”, a bill targeting transgender athletes in public schools and universities to ban them from playing in any sport as any gender other than the one of their birth.

Rumors are already beginning that should DeSantis somehow survive re-election via all his voter suppression activities in Florida in 2022, that he would be a dark horse presidential candidate should Donald Trump be unavailable due to health concerns or an acute case of incarceration by the time 2024 rolls around. Based on the above timeline, that’s a terrifying alternative.

[worstblogever]

Here's 7 members of the Republican House posing for selfies at the U.S. Mexico border with one of the men charged in the 1/6 Capitol Attack...

This past Tuesday.


Your seven:

• Lauren Boebert (CO)
• John Rose (TN)
• Mary Miller (IL)
• Madison Cawthorn (NC)
• Chris Jacobs (NY)
• Ronny Jackson (TX)
• Michael Cloud (TX)

Half this list voted against giving medals to capitol police. Mary Miller gave a speech on the day of the attack where she said "Hitler was right", and her husband was running around the rotunda with rioters.


There's a reason they don't want the 1/6 commission. They're sympathetic to the domestic terrorists who carried it out. They're not even hiding the fact.

[Robotman]

Brazil's Bolsonaro says he won't hand over presidency if there is vote fraud

Bolsonaro now parroting pre-election Trump. The election will be fair only if he says it's fair.

[Malvolio]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

"Genteel Confederacy Buffs?" You lost! Stop celebrating a LOST CAUSE! And BTW, if you think the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery, take a look at the State constitutions of the eleven Confederate States. You will find at the top of the list of their precious States' Rights, that's right, the right to own slaves. And not only that, but those Confederate State Constitutions make it plain that the White man has an absolute right to enslave the Black man. That's the heritage that the Southern Civil War reenactors want to preserve.

[Tami]

"Genteel Confederacy Buffs?" You lost! Stop celebrating a LOST CAUSE! And BTW, if you think the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery, take a look at the State constitutions of the eleven Confederate States. You will find at the top of the list of their precious States' Rights, that's right, the right to own slaves. And not only that, but those Confederate State Constitutions make it plain that the White man has an absolute right to enslave the Black man. That's the heritage that the Southern Civil War reenactors want to preserve.

Yeah, I don't like that one either. The only thing is does is show how the world is seen through the eyes of the far right, and obviously what they see is a world that is light-years away from reality, twisted by misinformation and ignorance, and colored by an obvious sense of White victim-hood.

[Tami]

A Judge Banned This Cop Rioter From Owning Guns. He Secretly Bought 34, FBI Says.

A former cop accused of taking part in the Capitol riot was granted a pre-trial release in the weeks after his arrest, on the condition that he not own any guns.

But in the months since, he has secretly bought at least 34 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition—including armor-penetrating rounds—and tried to disguise some of the payments as being for “wedding photos,” according to an FBI search warrant affidavit filed Friday.

Now prosecutors are asking a judge to revoke Thomas Robertson’s bail, and arrest him for violating his pretrial release conditions for the second time in six months.

Robertson, who was a sergeant with the Rocky Mount, Virginia Police Department until he was fired in late January for his alleged role in the sacking of the Capitol, has pleaded not guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, and disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. His attorney, Mark Rollins, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

[BeastieRunner]

"Genteel Confederacy Buffs?" You lost! Stop celebrating a LOST CAUSE! And BTW, if you think the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery, take a look at the State constitutions of the eleven Confederate States. You will find at the top of the list of their precious States' Rights, that's right, the right to own slaves. And not only that, but those Confederate State Constitutions make it plain that the White man has an absolute right to enslave the Black man. That's the heritage that the Southern Civil War reenactors want to preserve.

I think you miss the point of the cartoon. That's the lens of the joke, that the far-right has created their own reality. If it helps, this was from the Onion. That might help with the context. The Onion's cartoonist often portrays the far-right as literal snowflakes. President Snowflake shows up with a Trump wig and orange tan often.

Yeah, I don't like that one either. The only thing is does is show how the world is seen through the eyes of the far right, and obviously what they see is a world that is light-years away from reality, twisted by misinformation and ignorance, and colored by an obvious sense of White victim-hood.

Well, that WAS the point of the cartoon. The warped reality of white fragility the American far-right have. They're mocking them with flair.

It is okay to not like it. I thought it was funny.