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

[Tami]

What I am hearing, so far, seems to imply that Trump never actually planned on withdrawing the last 2,500 troops; that the Afgan Govt was expecting that the remaining US forces were leverage to negotiate with the Taliban; and that withdrawing all troops was not fully planned for.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it still feels to me like Biden fell into Trump's Trap.

Biden administration moved slowly to help Afghan refugees as it prepared to exit

Asked Wednesday by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos whether some troops might stay beyond the end of the month if necessary to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies, President Biden said: “It depends on where they are, and whether we can ramp these numbers up to five [thousand] to 7,000 a day coming out. If that’s the case, they’ll all be out.”

Biden also said, “If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”

But the administration showed little public urgency to expedite visas for Afghans in the months before and immediately after Biden’s announcement in April that the United States would pull U.S. forces out. White House officials said bureaucratic backlogs and delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic slowed the process but that it ramped up dramatically as summer approached.

The State Department approved 137 visas between Jan. 1 and March 31, resulting in more than 650 people approved for relocation to the United States. Successful applicants for what is known as special immigrant visas, or SIVs, can bring immediate family members. The pace picked up after that, and the State Department says it reached a rate of 800 per week at the start of August, just before the Taliban takeover of the country and the shuttering of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

“At every stage the administration expressed nominal support for the SIV program” while saying that bureaucratic hurdles prevented faster work, said Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), who is part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that pushed the White House to move more quickly.

“At every point that had an excuse thrown up, we went and fixed that excuse,” Meijer said. “So at the end of the day I can’t help but come to the conclusion that they just didn’t want to deal with this issue and put up every roadblock possible.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Bellowing anti-vaxxers terrify Walmart workers with execution threats -- and it's all caught on video

Revolting! If doctors, nurses, pharmacists or volunteers, anyone associated with administering the vaccine are physically attacked by nutbags like Key and his crew, not only should those bastards be sued out the ass along with being jailed, Faux News and the Qpublican Party should also face lawsuits since their misinformation campaigns have worked up anti-vaxxers to the point of violence. And let's not kid ourselves, there's bound to be violence, it's only a matter of time.

[Tami]

I give Biden high marks for his handling of the COVID Pandemic, low Marks for his handling of Afghanistan, so far.

Biden's presidency is under scrutiny as never before over Afghan chaos

In one part of the interview, Biden said that he didn't trust the Taliban but argued that the militia was cooperating with the US evacuation.
"I'm not sure I would have predicted nor would you or anyone else, that when we decided to leave that they'd provide safe passage for Americans to get out," the President.

In the chaos at Kabul airport, however, it is far from clear that the Taliban is cooperating. While hundreds have people have been getting through, CNN's Clarissa Ward in Kabul reported Thursday that there was no process, only mayhem of Afghans who worked for the US and are seeking exit visas because they fear for their -- and their families' -- lives. Some lucky people got through Taliban checkpoints but many others were turned back or beaten, Ward said.

Biden is failing to adequately explain why he so badly failed to predict the swift collapse of the Afghan state. And his credibility has been sullied because his confident downplaying of the risks of the withdrawal has been repeatedly confounded by events. Seven months into his term, Biden no longer gets credit simply for not being Donald Trump.

At the Pentagon news conference, Milley and Austin inadvertently revealed the deficiencies of the US evacuation.

They said there were insufficient forces at the airport to keep its perimeter secure and to venture behind enemy lines to collect Americans or allied Afghans as they shelter from the Taliban in Kabul and elsewhere.

"We don't have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people," Austin said.

Austin also said US forces would try to "deconflict" the situation with the Taliban to "create passageways for them to get to the airfield." But he also admitted he didn't have enough forces to do much more.

"I don't have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul," he said.

Milley revealed that a lack of resources was also behind the decision to shutter the vast former US base at Bagram airfield further out of Kabul, in comments that implicitly confirmed that the forces were never in place to assure Biden's vow for an orderly withdrawal.

[Tami]

‘My jaw dropped.’ Video raises questions about another Miami Beach arrest and a new law

Mariyah Maple, a visitor from New York, was arrested last month under a new Miami Beach ordinance intended to protect police officers from belligerent crowds interfering with their “lawful” duties.

The arrest report described her as part of a group that “refused officers commands” to back away from cops making an arrest on South Beach on July 25. When a police sergeant used his bicycle to “create a physical barrier,” the report claimed, the crowd “stood their ground and refused to move” — forcing him to use pepper spray.

The clip shows Maple, using her phone to video record a traffic stop in the middle of a street, standing peacefully on a sidewalk. “Back up. Back up,” a sergeant says. But before giving her a moment to do so, he whips his bike around like a shield, striking her hand and immediately deploys pepper spray. Maple, eyes stinging, then runs away with several friends.

“She was standing at a distance. She wasn’t doing anything to interrupt the investigation. She was standing on a public sidewalk,” said her defense lawyer, Chad Piotrowski. “When I watched the video, my jaw dropped. It’s completely different depiction than the arrest report.”

[Mister Mets]

Revolting! If doctors, nurses, pharmacists or volunteers, anyone associated with administering the vaccine are physically attacked by nutbags like Key and his crew, not only should those bastards be sued out the ass along with being jailed, Faux News and the Qpublican Party should also face lawsuits since their misinformation campaigns have worked up anti-vaxxers to the point of violence. And let's not kid ourselves, there's bound to be violence, it's only a matter of time.

For a lawsuit, they would have to demonstrate that Fox News and the Republican party circulated the extreme and bullshit claims that 45,000 recipients had died within three days of being vaccinated, or that the Nuremberg code allows for the execution of pharmacists.

Well what happened in Eastern Europe is a great example of how the West wasn't so much interested in liberating people from communism, it just wanted to eliminate the Soviet bloc as its rival and couldn't have cared less what happened to all of those people afterwards. Western Europe had just enjoyed nearly a half century of peaceful economic development and had more than enough resources to integrate the East if it so chose, but that would have required some sacrifices to be made and of course the nature of capitalism demands that nothing cuts into the profits of entrenched interests first and foremost.

There is a lot of variety within Eastern Europe.

For example, Estonia is a former part of the Soviet Union and it's doing okay. So is Poland.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...0-year-revival

[Tami]

Police Probing Report of Explosive in Truck Near Capitol: AP Sources

I hope this isn't a sign that things are going to get even more heated.

Police were investigating a report Thursday of a possible explosive device in a pickup truck outside the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill and have evacuated the area around the building, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. Capitol Police said it was responding to a "suspicious vehicle" near the Library of Congress.

Capitol Police said to stay away from the area.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Police Probing Report of Explosive in Truck Near Capitol: AP Sources

I hope this isn't a sign that things are going to get even more heated.

I just heard about this. Most disturbing. As for that being a potential harbinger, yeah, it's a possibility.

[PwrdOn]

There is a lot of variety within Eastern Europe.

For example, Estonia is a former part of the Soviet Union and it's doing okay. So is Poland.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...0-year-revival

That fact that the Baltic states managed to do well in the aftermath of the USSR's collapse is hardly the ringing endorsement of capitalism that some think it is. For one thing, those areas were already relatively well developed during the Soviet era, given their key strategic location and the need for Moscow to secure the loyalty of a restive population. For another, the fact that three small countries with a combined population of 6 million people managed to achieve something close to Western standards doesn't quite stack up when you consider that rest of the nearly 300 million people living in the former Soviet countries suffered through an unprecedented cataclysm of economic collapse, civil war, and depopulation culminating in the re-establishment of authoritarian rule in most areas.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2014 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published a profile of Joe Wurlzebacher, aka "Joe the Plumber", who after getting fifteen minutes of fame from his sudden appearance late in the 2008 presidential race where he pretended to be an unaffiliated voter whose business would supposedly be greatly harmed by Barack Obama's tax plan, was actually revealed to have been working without a license, and to have grossly exaggerated what his earnings were (so he would not have been in the tax bracket that would have been inconvenienced anyway). While the McCain campaign lost all use for Wurzelbacher, Fox News and the Tea Party movement kept dragging Joe the Plumber in front of microphones for several years that followed, where he would say offensive or idiotic things like talking about lynching Senator Chris Dodd, or how "Our Founding Fathers knew communism and socialism didn't work", which would have been quite the revelation for them, as it would be over a century before those systems of government would even be conceived. Wurzelbacher was finally prodded into attempting a run for office in 2012 against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and kept embarrassing himself by being quoted linking gun control to the Holocaust andto stop illegal immigration by "put a damned fence on the the border, going to Mexico, and start shooting". The minute of Wurzelbacher's 15 minutes came in 2014, when after the Isla Vista killings, he got on social media to write an open letter to the grieving families only four days after the shooting that said, in part, "Your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights. We still have a right to bear arms." He has now become a forgotten footnote in American politics, at best.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" shared our profiles of Ohio Governor John Kasich, who we said at the time was the moderate* candidate in the GOP Presidential primary field, with the asterisk denoting how whenever Kasich supposedly had a moderate position, you could find either a quote to contradict that supposed moderate stance, or the fact that it only meant he wasn't as extreme as the other 16 nuts in the field, but was still pretty far to the right. I mean, during the Clinton administration, John Kasich twice voted for government shutdowns. He still defends the lie that he told to justify that action to this day, and never delivered on his promise to “change parties an become a Democrat if the Clinton economic plan didn’t steer the economy into a ditch” that he had said at the time. Instead, he respected the Clinton ecoomy by voting to impeach President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Kasich spent six long years Ffrom 2001 to 2007 as a forgettable FOX News anchor, hosting the show Heartland, spending a lot of that time working a second job for the Lehman Brothers, earning somewhere between $140-500K a year (depending on bonuses) until the banking giant declared bankruptcy. Perhaps John Kasich’s views on censorship are not the best to look to, as he once tried having his local Blockbuster video ban the movie Fargo because he was so offended by the “wood chipper scene”, as he admitted in a 2006 book. After becoming the Governor of Ohio, Kasich signed a sweeping anti-union law to limit the collective bargaining rights of public workers. It ended up being repealed when Ohio citizens signed a petition to put it on the public ballot, to sidestep what Kasich and his allies in the legislature had done. In his February 2012, Kasich gives his “state of the state” speech in Ohio, and discusses going to a research facility where Parkinson’s patients are receiving experimental treatments. In a less-than-sensitive moment, he begins physically shaking to demonstrate what those afflicted with the disease look like and in the same speech, he also offered this energy policy, that included the thought, "We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal. Clean it and burn it. Clean it, Gordon, and burn it. Clean it, Battelle, and burn it. Use it.” So... yeah, Kasich leadership is not so good for the environment. Gov. Kasich’s record on voting rights has been abysmal, spurring a slew of lawsuits from advocacy groups, including his attempts at voter suppression in Ohio in May 2012 that would have limited absentee ballots. Kasich’s efforts to curtail statistically non-existent “voter fraud” through stricter ID laws, and cutting back the number of early voting days would seem to only rig the system to prevent participation in our democracy. John Kasich signed one of the most aggressive anti-choice laws in our country’s modern history on July 3rd, 2013, which featured a myriad of measures restrictive to women including medically unnecessary, mandatory ultrasounds for any woman seeking an abortion, the doctor providing the service to read a pre-written anti-choice speech to the patient, preventing rape crisis centers from mentioning abortion, stripping Planned Parenthood of most of its funding, redefining pregnancy, and forcing doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital or be shut down, which closed seven of the sixteen clinics in the state.Under Gov. Kasich’s leadership, police departments in Ohio have been at the forefront of several news stories about brutality against citizens, including various incidents resulting in the death of citizens. Amongst those killed include Samuel Debose, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Kasich has done little in response, only laying out an executive order that said that lethal force should not be an option to be used against a fleeing suspect. Kasich has otherwise dragged his feet on efforts by Ohio Democrats to require Ohio law enforcement to all have body cameras, in spite of the spate of high-profile police killings that have occurred under his watch. (The kind that Officer Tensing, the killer of Samuel Debose was wearing. The same body camera that showed his claims of fearing for his life were false, and that he straight up murdered a man sitting behind the wheel.) In June 2015, Kasich expressed his “disappointment” at the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. When LGBTQ advocates still began asking if Ohio would do something to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation, since you can be fired for being gay in Ohio, Kasich was quoted as saying, “Let’s not create problems where there frankly is none- or very little.” Once he was in the presidential race, Kasich did not want to be left behind by some of the more xenophobic rhetoric coming from people like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump about immigrants, so he decided to publicly state his opposition to birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants born in the United States, and the repeal of the 14th Amendment. His stance on immigration, frankly, was all over the road, varying from that extreme to saying he supported solutions that could include amnesty. Through the 2016 GOP Primary, John Kasich ate his way across the country while running for president, apparently biding his time by pretending to be the star of a Food Network show about our nation's small-town eateries and expecting that at some point, the GOP primary voting electorate would look at options worthy of a drop kick like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump and go, "UGH, Okay, fine. I guess Kasich." They weren’t that into him, as he may not have been offensive as the front-runner, Donald Trump, but he still managed to piss off any variety of women or other supporters with careles gaffes. Like how he missed out on any potential endorsement from teachers’ groups when he was recorded confessing that if it were up to him, he would abolish teacher's lounges, altogether. Or how about when Kasich tried some voter outreach towards Hispanics, by talking about how nice the Hispanic maid that cleaned his hotel the previous night was. So nice... he actually tipped her.

And the misogyny. Oh, so much incidental misogyny. John Kasich was speaking at the University of Richmond, and a girl in the audience asked him about what his immigration policy will be like. He seemed to try and blow the young woman off, making a joke at her expense and belittling her inquiry by telling her, "I'm sorry, I don't have any tickets to Taylor Swift." Or while campaigning in Dubuque, Iowa, a prospective female voter asked Gov. Kasich about how he had managed to do reasonably well in balancing Ohio's state budget, and he responded by asking her, "Have you ever been on a diet?" At a town hall in Fairfax, Virginia, Kasich harkens back to the good old days, boasting about how women used to "leave their kitchens" to campaign for him. And at a CNN town hall, Kasich inexplicably started flirting with a questioner in response to her question of who he might pick as a vice-presidential running mate, asking her, “Are you available? You look great tonight." At yet another town hall in Waterton, Pennsylvania, Kasich was asked by a female audience member what policies he might enact to curtail the growing number of sexual assaults on college campuses to make her feel safer on campus, and he advisied her to "not drink at parties" (This revealed that in Kasich's mind, the onus of preventing assault is entirely on the victim).

When the mathematical chance that Kasich might win the nomination was long gone, he was still campaigning, and on April Fool’s Day 2016, Kasich celebrated the holiday properly at another town hall and while bragging about his record as governor, touted several positive statistics. Oddly, he brings up the infant mortality rate not being as high as he would like, and laid the blame squarely on... minorities! Critics responded by pointing out that Kasich had cut funding to Planned Parenthood and several other health programs that helped young mothers and their children.

It wasn’t until May 4th, 2016 that John Kasich finally... FINALLY announced he was dropping out of the 2016 presidential race and was the last Trump opponent to concede defeat. He then reneged on his pledge to support the Republican Party's nominee from months earlier, and stubbornly refused to attend the Republican National Convention to endorse Donald Trump, or speak in any way and by 2020, he was appearing at the Democratic National Convention to endorse Joe Biden… which was the only admirable thing we can say about him.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Virginia State Senator Amanda Chase, who represents District 11, and is pictured above using open carry firearms laws to ensure her protection as she submits bills on the floor of the Virginia State Senate, on which she has served since 2015. Chase began brandishing her firearm as a “deterrent” to anti-immigration protesters who she imagined were out to kill her in January of 2019. It’s not that she’s fanatical about guns that we’re concerned about, either. She’s also decidedly against LGBTQ rights, having voted for marriage officiants to deny people same sex marriages, against bills that would prevent racial discrimination in housing, and also voted against bans on gay conversion therapy on minors.

As far back as 2017, people were concerned she was drifting farther and farther to the right, buddying up to former Congressman Dave Brat prior to him getting the boot from Virginia voters in 2018, and how she was openly talking about banning books from the state’s libraries that she took personal objection to. And ejecting anyone from a town hall who had the nerve to disagree with her or Brat.

As far as bad behavior goes, Amanda Chase also has shown herself capable of screaming at capitol police for not getting to park wherever she pleases whenever she wants, and screaming about the Equal Righs Amendment not being applied to her (even though she’s opposed to it?) because of being denied drive-up access to the capitol. Oh, and calling a colleague who she felt was given access “Miss Piggy”. When the incident made the news with the official police report back in April of 2019, she referred to the police as “partisan liars”.

If being a gun fetishist and getting into fights with the capitol police there to protect her aren’t enough of a red flag folks, we would also like to point out that she decided to get on Facebook to boast about her pistol-packing, and used it to point out that she hadn’t been raped, in a way that blamed rape victims for their own assaults:

“It’s those who are naive and unprepared that end up raped. Sorry but I’m not going to be a statistic.”

Ah, guess it’s time to reset the calendar for “days since a Republican made ignorant comments about rape” back to zero. But maybe you would expect someone to has referred to her gun as “my own ERA”, and the actual Equal Rights Amendment as “a ploy by the left to eliminate gender altogether”. Then in September of 2019, two months prior to the Virginia off-year elections, she put her foot in her mouth again when she ran ads on Facebook about how she is “not afraid to shoot down” gun control groups. After immediate outrage, she admitted that her ad was poorly worded, and released a second version where she unironically declared “gun rights are women’s rights” while leaving in the more offensive statement.

In June of 2020, Chase made headlines yet again when during protests over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, she claimed calls to remove Confederate monuments were an “overt effort to erase white history”.

”I think it's racially insensitive and racist in itself not to respect the history of all Americans. It's all about shoving this down people's throats and erasing the history of the white people. And I think it's wrong. I would never do that to another person, another culture. Removing the Robert E. Lee statue is a cowardly capitulation to the looters and domestic terrorists.”

Guess it’s official, that she’s a white nationalist now, especially with how her Facebook page has become a frequent source of paranoid ramblings about Antifa.

To add to her myriad of absolute wingnuttery, that during the Covid-19 pandemic, she went to a local restaurant, and when she was asked to wear a mask, she allegedly threatened to sue them because she had “a medical exemption” to wearing a mask per Virginia’s state mandate to so.. Y’know, the mask that you need to avoid the medical situation that is Covid-19. She dug in on this unscientific nonsense enough that when she refused to wear a mask on the floor of the Virginia State Senate, she forced the solution to create a plexiglass partition around her desk at taxpayer expense so that she wouldn’t spread respiratory droplets upon the rest of the people present. Rather than, y’know, wear a piece of cloth on her face.

Now, in a development that honestly should surprise no one, Amanda Chase was present during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. She has since lied and claimed that it was a “peaceful” rally and any violence was the result of operatives who infiltrated the protest to frame Trump supporters, referring to the domestic terrorists who stormed the building as “patriots”, saying that Ashli Babbit was “murdered” by police, and that “The insurrection is actually the deep state with the politicians working against the people to overthrow our government. She was censured for her presence at the Capitol and her comments supporting domestic terrorists in the wake of the attack by the Virginia State Senate, with three Republicans joining Democrats to vote for it. Chase tried suing to overturn her censure (she is becoming more impotently litigious), but was unsuccessful in her attempt. Instead, she’s continued to promote “The Big Lie” about election fraud stealing Trump’s not-a-victory from him, and wants to do a repeat of the election “fraudit” conducted in Arizona’s Maricopa County in her own state, because it wasn’t embarrassing enough when it happened in Phoenix over the summer.

Amanda Chase had a run for Governor of Virginia in 2021, finishing third in the nominating votes at her state party convention, which may have had something to do with her embarrassing her party further having an aide pull a gun on a constituent during a live online debate she was having on gun control. She responded to the announcement that the Virginia GOP would hold their primary in this method back in February by suing her own party, and having a judge quickly dismiss her groundless case. So it seems like she might have some issues with them.

Her seat in the Virginia State Senate will be up for re-election in 2023, and we’d like to think she won’t narrowly win another term, given all the, y’know, sedition and insanity.

[Tami]

I just heard about this. Most disturbing. As for that being a potential harbinger, yeah, it's a possibility.

Just in: Domestic violent extremist who was threatening to detonate a bomb at the US Capitol appears to have surrendered himself to law enforcement and FBI — crawling out of his pickup truck on all fours.

New: Man issuing US Capitol bomb threat, seemingly an ardent Trump supporter, said on Facebook Live he was prepared to die for the revolution — adding there are “five of us spreading all across your little DC”

The guy who parked his pick up truck at the Library of Congress threatening he had a bomb, is allegedly Floyd Ray Roseberry, a 49-year-old Republican with 22 prior arrests.

[Tami]

South Carolina county Republican Party chair dies of COVID-19 after railing against mask requirements

Greenville County Republican Party leader Pressley Stutts died Thursday morning after succumbing to COVID-19, The Greenville News reported.

[BeastieRunner]

Just in: Domestic violent extremist who was threatening to detonate a bomb at the US Capitol appears to have surrendered himself to law enforcement and FBI — crawling out of his pickup truck on all fours.

New: Man issuing US Capitol bomb threat, seemingly an ardent Trump supporter, said on Facebook Live he was prepared to die for the revolution — adding there are “five of us spreading all across your little DC”

The guy who parked his pick up truck at the Library of Congress threatening he had a bomb, is allegedly Floyd Ray Roseberry, a 49-year-old Republican with 22 prior arrests.

"Rand Paul is already making braclets to honor him."

Savage.

[worstblogever]

Just in: Domestic violent extremist who was threatening to detonate a bomb at the US Capitol appears to have surrendered himself to law enforcement and FBI — crawling out of his pickup truck on all fours.

New: Man issuing US Capitol bomb threat, seemingly an ardent Trump supporter, said on Facebook Live he was prepared to die for the revolution — adding there are “five of us spreading all across your little DC”

The guy who parked his pick up truck at the Library of Congress threatening he had a bomb, is allegedly Floyd Ray Roseberry, a 49-year-old Republican with 22 prior arrests.

It's not a political party any more. The GQP are an insurgency.