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

[worstblogever]

First, I identified the substack guy as a data visualization writer. That is his specialty. His work doesn't take into account the delta variant, because it is an overview of the research, much of which predates the Delta variant. It's also worth noting that if someone was wrong about specific factual claims before the Delta variant, it doesn't make them right later. If they're on the right side of an issue, it's going to be by accident.

Y'know, it's an amazing "coincidence" you keep linking to cranks and dubious media sources and when you get called out on it, you justify it my noting you don't disagree they're dubious.

BUT YOU'RE STILL FLOATING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

That's called a "trial balloon", to see if you can float them as legitimate without anyone noticing. Maybe feigning surprise that anyone would find that questionable while continuing to repeat whatever bogus information the source is spewing in your defense of it being there as long as you add what amounts to " * this source is dubious" is just wasting everyone's time? Just don't post them in the first place or stop repeating the bogus claims in each additional post.

Please stop, please and thank you.

[Tendrin]

Red states governors blocking mask mandates continue to preside over the worst of the outbreak at this point but, yeah, sure, we're supposed to buy into the argument that opposing mask mandates in schools is 'reasonable' while red states are running out of pediatric ICU beds. Once again, Mets asks us to believe people who are seeking to justify awful policies because they don't like the idea of their kids wearing masks (or anyone else for that matter, judging by red state results) rather than what is actually happening in front of us.

But then, defending the indefensible is all that members of the GOP can try to do these days.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Maine Governor Paul LePage, who in our original write-up, we noted was a was elected in 2010 after he made the campaign promise to “make Obama’s life a living hell”, but instead seems to have only enacted that promise upon the people of Maine. When he’s not threatening to blow up local newspapers or call in airstrikes against them, he’s meeting with a society of 9/11 Truthers and joked about hanging Democratic members of the state legislature. This is a man so heartless that he’s advocated for child labor laws to be changed so children as young as twelve can be put into the workforce, and so insane he once warned that microwaving plastics could result in hormonal changes in children increasing their estrogen levels and making them grow little beards (really). LePage has also told the heads of the local NAACP they could “kiss his butt”, referred to the IRS as “the new Gestapo”, and accused the Majority Leader of the Maine State Senate of “giving it to the people without providing Vaseline”. And, in bour second profile on Paul LePage again proved interesting, as he provided us with new things to talk about like trying to illegally quarantine a nurse who returned from Africa after helping stop the Ebola Virus outbreak there, and then turned around to blame illegal immigrants for spreading HIV, Hepatitis C, and tuberculosis without any foundation in reality, at all. LePage then made a promise to “veto everything that crosses his desk” and wasn’t joking, vetoing 100 bills consecutively, if they did not have veto-proof majorities without any consideration for their content. At the end of that streak, LePage hosted the media at a press conference with a squeaky toy of a pig, and standing in front of a Christmas tree, promising to veto hundreds of things in the state budget passed by the Maine state legislature. The legislature, in turn, passed the budget with a veto-proof majority, so he couldn’t do a thing about it, except continue embarrassing himself. Which, his bold "veto everything" stance became even more hilarious when LePage forgot how vetoing bills works, and left for vacation without properly vetoing 65 that were hitting his desk that he had said he would block the Democratic legislature from passing. The catch was, he only had a certain number of days to veto them, and after the deadline passed, all 65 laws went into effect. Governor LePage also visited a local school, saying he’d like to shoot a newspaper’s editorial cartoonist. He told the joke… to the cartoonist’s father. Oh, and there was all the talk of Paul LePage getting impeached, after he threatened to cut funding to a school in the state because they had offered a high-paying job to a political rival of LePage’s, House Speaker Mark Eves. When a reporter, Paul Merrill asked LePage about it, he was actually stupid enough to brag about it. Even many Maine Republicans were participating in impeachment talk, after that. LePage even took the time to write a petty letter back to a constituent who asked him to resign in July, and told her “all of Southern Maine is corrupt”(yes, half the state) and “not going to happen”. Three weeks later, he just offered to leave office if enough people wrote to ask him to, and claimed that only four people had asked him to. Paul LePage continued to be one of the craziest, if not THE craziest governor in the United States and in our third update, we had to bring up moments like how he tried to illegally block the relocation of Syrian refugees into his state by the federal government, laying on plenty of Islamophobic fear-mongering, even invoking 9/11 as his reasons against it, and warning that immigrants from there could bring “hepatitis C, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV” and “the ‘ziki fly” (which isn’t actually a real insect). LePage also got really racist while trying to play up fears of drug dealers, warning of “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” who wouldn’t just come to sell heroin, but “half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave." (After a few days, he admitted that he was referring to African Americans, but that it wasn’t harmful because Maine is “95 per cent white”.) LePage’s rhetoric about drug dealers at least stopped being racist, but no less insane, as he called for public executions for drug dealers. By guillotine! Well, that and he advised the citizens of Maine to help combat the drug trade by becoming gun-toting vigilantes and to “Load up and get rid of the drug dealers.” Paul LePage also endorsed Donald Trump for president, and started questioning whether or not Sen. Ted Cruz was eligible to be president (making him a Birther, two-fold). LePage even botched an attempt to humanize himself, effectively “cutting in line” at an adoption center ahead of the general public to adopt a dog a day rather than leave it for its intended adopter, a sexual assault victim who had been waiting for the day the dog could be adopted to take in as an emotional support dog. The shelter admitted it broke its own rules for LePage (and considering his history of holding petty grudges when he doesn't get his way, it's sort of easy to understand why). LePage also refused to support keeping the drug naloxone readily available in hospitals and emergency services to treat overdoses, by citing an example of a high school student who had overdosed on three separate occasions with naloxone only to keep on using drugs to prove it doesn't help do anything but allow addicts to continue using drugs, undeterred. Over the course of the next few weeks, after the school said he made up the story of the student, and yet he continued to insist it had happened. State officials soon also came forward to contradict LePage, and prove he made it up, and LePage never could name the mystery student addicted to heroin who came back from the dead three times. After the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Gold Star parent Khzir Khan was outspoken in criticizing Donald Trump for his bigotry, and Trump embarrassed himself by slandering the Khan family, with some of his surrogates even attacking their deceased son, Humayyan. Almost a month later… Paul LePage decided to be one of the elected Republicans to get on the bandwagon, calling Khzir Khan a “con-artist”. A day after attacking a Gold Star parent, Gov. LePage leaves a voice mail for a Democratic lawmaker, calling him a “c***sucker” in an unhinged voice mail to respond to claims that he is a racist. And then, at the end of the phone call, LePage gives him permission to make the insane rant public. By October 2016, Gov. LePage was calling on Donald Trump to use “authoritarian power”, because it’s a good idea to say that to a proto-fascist. He responded to Civil Rights Hero and Congressman John Lewis’ criticisms of Donald Trump by telling him to thank “Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Ulysses S. Grant” for furthering racial equality. (Lewis, through a spokesman, politely asked LePage to check his history.) In August 2017, LePage becomes the latest Republican to run to the defense of Confederate monuments, in spite of his state being the farthest in the continental U.S. from the Mason-Dixon line, comparing their removal to… what else? Removing a 9/11 Victims Memorial. And in June 2018, LePage says he “probably” would not certify the primary results in Maine’s 2018 elections, because he didn’t feel the new primary rules that were voted upon on a ballot measure by his own citizens were “constitutional”. The courts, of course, had already ruled that they were. Paul LePage survived as governor only because the process of impeachment in Maine is designed to be nigh-impossible to pull off outside of flagrant criminal activity. Term limits ended his embarrassing tenure after 2018, but he occasionally threatens to run for U.S. Senate in Maine, something we hope we never actually see happen.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Max Linn, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine in 2018, who we only need to talk about briefly in this profile, since it’s a short story. Linn was proud to be a “Trump Strong” Republican, even in the face of the Blue Wave coming. Of course, considering he was registered as a Democrat when he was thinking about running for Governor of Florida back in 2006, and when he ran for Congress in 2010, maybe he’s just an opportunist. It’s still pretty sad to see someone who a decade ago was on the (D) side of the ballot saying that he not only wanted to build Trump’s stupid border wall, but that he would use his “own two hands” to do so. But no, we’re doing a quick profile on Max Linn because he got caught faking signatures to get his name on the ballot to run for U.S. Senate in Maine, and then kept trying to campaign anyway after the fact. He is unlikely to get a second chance as a candidate after that little bit of fraud.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former U.S. Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, who after serving in the Colorado House of Representatives from 2004-2010, used the momentum of the Tea Party Wave in 2010 to get elected to Congress to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, got a second term in the House after his constituency had Fort Collins cut out of it to make it more conservative for him to win in 2012, and then in 2014, made the jump to U.S. Senate. Gardner was a supporter of Personhood, frequently lied and claimed he was it even though his voting record showed he clearly did, and claimed he was “moderate” on LGBTQ rights in spite of his voting record not reflecting that, either. In 2016, he claimed he wouldn’t support or vote for Donald Trump anymore, paid the minimum lip service to criticize him after his “both sides” comments after Charlottesville… but voted for all his Cabinet and judicial appointees, and now has endorsed him in 2020, after ALL the corruption, treason, and disappointment. While giving Trump the credit for all the positives in Colorado that are actually the Governor and state legislature’s doing. That was his whole game. Lie about being a moderate, while having a voting record that still supports Republican policies nine out of ten times. Cory Gardner was thought to be the most vulnerable Senator going into the 2020 elections, and he was booted from office with relative ease. As he is no longer in office, we will set aside her profile at this time, however, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1017-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Billy Prempeh

Welcome to what is the 1017th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Billy Prempeh, who was a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District, hoping to unseat veteran Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell in his deeply blue district. He is yet the latest in our far-too-long list of 2020 Republican Congressional candidates who were openly promoting/supporting the Qanon Conpiracy theory while running for office, posing with Qanon followers at campaign events, and posting the Qanon slogan on his Twitter account. When confronted this fact, Prempeh declared it was “fake news”, but then turned around and started talking about Jeffrey Epstein and said “there’s definitely something very shady going on in the higher echelons of society”. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Billy.

Billy Prempeh lost to the 83-year-old Pascrell, earning just 32% of the vote. He now can get back to his main business, being a troll on Twitter questioning whether we can trust vaccines, and then complaining that it would be “racist” to require vaccine passports when African Americans aren’t vaccinated as much as whites. Oh, and Fox News has been having him on to rail against Critical Race Theory being taught in the military, which isn’t actually a thing the Pentagon has planned, at all.
 

[Malvolio]

I keep hearing this said by folks.

I honest HATE to be the one to say it-most of those kids (and parents) DO NOT CARE about learning.

You know how many kids with their parents I saw at various places during school hours?

If there is so much learning lost-why are online schools prospering? This was before the pandemic. It's the same thing.

And I will point out one of the struggles with distance learning was teachers pulling DOUBLE duty.

You had teachers teaching in person and online. As SILLY as that sounds-schools were not having one set of teacher do online and the other do in-person. Teachers were doing BOTH and now that teacher shortage has gotten WORST.

I work as support staff at a school and the teachers I talk to agree with this 100%. In fact, one of them is an art teacher who retired at the end of the last school year, but the school has not hired anyone to succeed her. Instead, the other two art teachers will now have to do the work of three, for the same pay, by the way. So yeah, that teacher shortage has gotten worse.

[Tami]

Ummm.....wt......????


Revealed: how California police chased a nonexistent ‘antifa bus’

Authorities in rural northern counties spread misinformation and launched aircraft surveillance in response to false rumors about antifa ‘infiltrators’, according to records obtained by the Guardian

On 1 June 2020, a law enforcement official in the small northern California city of Redding sent screenshots of two social media posts to her staff, asking them to investigate.

One was an Instagram story. “BE AWARE … I have heard, from a reliable source, that ANTIFA buses with close to 200 people (domestic terrorists) are planning to infiltrate Redding and possibly cause distraction and destruction,” it read.

The second, a Facebook post, warned that buses of protesters planning to “riot” had stopped in Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, “but there was no rioting or burning as they decided to move on”. The post included a grainy image of a small van with “Black Lives Matter” written on the back.

Elizabeth Barkley, then chief of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) northern division, which covers rural parts of the state just south of Oregon, asked her colleagues to look into the claims and “notify our allied agencies in town”. Ninety minutes later, another CHP official forwarded the message to officers saying, “The thought is these buses are roaming – looking for events to attend (and possibly cause problems).”

Fifteen minutes after that, a CHP sergeant told a listserv of commanders that “possible ANTIFA buses [are] heading to Redding”, adding that the agency’s tactical alert center had been notified. The official said that CHP aircraft operations were now actively trying to locate a vehicle on the freeway. The sheriff of nearby Humboldt county, William Honsal, shared the information with his entire staff, saying, “BOL [be on the lookout] for ANTIFA buses from Oregon.”

They show how officers in these rural counties, known for weed farms and hiking and overwhelmingly white, were swiftly duped by unfounded allegations about “Antifa buses” threatening to “infiltrate” the community as the United States wrestled with the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that sprung up in the aftermath.

The records also show how the agencies’ response to those unsubstantiated allegations helped spread misinformation rooted in online conspiracy theories. The files were particularly troubling, experts said, because antifa conspiracy theories have inspired armed rightwing vigilantes to organize in response, sometimes with violent demonstrations.

Okay, so imaginary threats by 'Antifa' send the police into full scale panic mode, while actual threats by right wing groups like the ones that attacked the Capitol on January 6, were just 'exercising their rights to demonstrate'.

[thwhtGuardian]

David Zweig appears to be a journalist in good standing.

What made his questions misinformed, or indications of a nutjob pushing an agenda?

It seems to be a legitimate question to ask about the evidence regarding a controversial policy. One can believe that masks help stop the spread, but that it's not effective in a particular case.

Over the pandemic, I had to simultaneously work with a small group in-person and the rest of the class online.

There are going to be logistics issues with any new set-up. Schools aren't designed to have redundant teachers, so there will be shortages if there are any serious changes.

As for what you said about people who don't care about learning, if parents don't prioritize education, it is then better for the kids to be in schools.

There are going to be other reasons for learning loss. Some families will have tech issues, especially if there are several children using zoom at the same time. Mandated services (speech therapy, guidance counselors) are also built around in-person schools, and many of the professionals involved just aren't that tech-savvy. It can also be easier to get a hold of a student who is in a classroom that one who has signed up to Zoom. Being in a physical classroom focuses children more than being in the same environment in which they might play video games/ browse TV. Some kids just need to be supervised, and lack the maturity to focus on their education when no one's holding them immediately accountable.

It's only controversial for people who are primarily informed by youtube videos and posts on facebook...and everything about the articles you linked to fed into that. If you couldn't see that the writers already had a conclusion in mind right from the start and that their questions were purposefully trying to sew doubt then I have some mountain top property in Kansas I'd love to sell to you, heck even better, I'll pay you to take said property! All you need to do is post your routing number, account number, address and social security number and I'll transfer you $10,000 dollars and then mail you the deed!

[JackDaw]

It already starts to look like the new look cuddly Taliban may turn out to even more Draconian than the old model.

Rumours of punishment beatings for crime of wearing jeans are already circulating, and I wouldn’t give much chance of women’s sport flourishing in Afghanistan in next few years.

And certainly Taliban has promised reprisals if evacuation efforts go beyond the 31 st of August.

Hope I’m wrong…of course…but there’s really no grounds to believe they will be graceful winners.

[Tami]

‘It’s just unbelievable’: Tennessee surveys wreckage after floods

Tennesseans were surveying the mangled wreckage of towns and communities across the middle of the state on Monday, after a record-breaking deluge caused flash flooding that swept away houses, shattered lives and left at least 22 people dead and many more missing.

In Waverly, one of the hardest hit towns, about 60 miles west of Nashville, the local department of public safety posted a list of 25 people still missing. Among those killed were twin infants aged just seven months, who according to local police were torn from their father’s arms as water rushed through their apartment complex.

Local residents expressed astonishment at the speed of the catastrophe, which came and went with equal velocity.

“It was amazing how quick it came and how quick it left,” Kansas Klein, a business owner in Waverly, told the Associated Press.

A succession of thunderstorms passed repeatedly over the heart of Tennessee, depositing an astonishing 17in of rain in some parts. The downfall smashed records and prompted discussion among meteorologists that the disaster could be attributed at least in part to the climate crisis that is exacerbating extreme weather events across the US and around the world.

[Tami]

NYC-to-Scranton Amtrak service would spur big economic boost to region, study says

Amtrak’s Vision: New York – Scranton

I wish there was more detailed information, this could be a very significant project.

[PwrdOn]

It already starts to look like the new look cuddly Taliban may turn out to even more Draconian than the old model.

Rumours of punishment beatings for crime of wearing jeans are already circulating, and I wouldn’t give much chance of women’s sport flourishing in Afghanistan in next few years.

And certainly Taliban has promised reprisals if evacuation efforts go beyond the 31 st of August.

Hope I’m wrong…of course…but there’s really no grounds to believe they will be graceful winners.

Well this just goes to show you the danger of concern trolling about human rights issues to rationalize military intervention. Let's be clear about something here, us going into Afghanistan had absolutely NOTHING to do with protecting women's rights, we were just hungry for revenge after 9/11 and wanted to tear some shit up. We only used the Taliban's treatment of women to retroactively justify why we were there, and while certainly some progress has been made on that front in the last 20 years, in the eyes of many Afghans the increasing role of women of society became strongly identified with the American occupation, so rather than being seen as a mark of progress and modernity they were just another reminder of yet another foreign army going around imposing its will, without caring much what Afghans think on the matter.

And this is hardly an isolated case either. The US, and the West more broadly, loves to use human rights issues to put a humanitarian glaze on our foreign policy interventions, because naturally who could be against advancing human rights? Never mind that the US has plenty of the same issues at home that we don't bother to address. But at the end of the day, these people always end up suffering MORE as a result of our actions, because they are immediately branded by their neighbors as American pawns and collaborators. And given our sterling track record of abandoning our allies whenever we have no more use for them, they inevitably suffer a far worse backlash after we have left them to their fate.

[Kirby101]

Mets, can you come and GOP-splain to us again how DeSanitis is doing the bestest job in the whole country at managing COVID in his State.

[GindyPosts]

All it takes is looking at the maps. The mask resistant states, which are all red states, have the worst rates of infection. In the state of Indiana where I live it plays out again by counties. The northern section of Indiana is generally goes Democratic voting. Those counties are in the yellow. The rest of the state is mostly GOP and they have a higher rate of infection.

And down in the donut district that is Central Indiana, it's a hot bed thanks to a high population density & a combination of various walks of life having different philosophies on why they don't take COVID as a threat.

But when you leave and go to the rural counties, it becomes more cut and dry.

[Mister Mets]

Y'know, it's an amazing "coincidence" you keep linking to cranks and dubious media sources and when you get called out on it, you justify it my noting you don't disagree they're dubious.

BUT YOU'RE STILL FLOATING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

That's called a "trial balloon", to see if you can float them as legitimate without anyone noticing. Maybe feigning surprise that anyone would find that questionable while continuing to repeat whatever bogus information the source is spewing in your defense of it being there as long as you add what amounts to " * this source is dubious" is just wasting everyone's time? Just don't post them in the first place or stop repeating the bogus claims in each additional post.

Please stop, please and thank you.

You're mischaracterizing what I've said. Nowhere in the post you quote do I say that the guy is dubious.

This is not the first, second, third or tenth time you have mischaracterized what I've said. I'm not sure if it's carelessness, intentional, or maybe you're primed to go with the least generous interpretation of people you disagree with on some issues.

Red states governors blocking mask mandates continue to preside over the worst of the outbreak at this point but, yeah, sure, we're supposed to buy into the argument that opposing mask mandates in schools is 'reasonable' while red states are running out of pediatric ICU beds. Once again, Mets asks us to believe people who are seeking to justify awful policies because they don't like the idea of their kids wearing masks (or anyone else for that matter, judging by red state results) rather than what is actually happening in front of us.

But then, defending the indefensible is all that members of the GOP can try to do these days.

That has nothing to do with the question of whether the science indicates that mask mandates in schools make a difference.

It's only controversial for people who are primarily informed by youtube videos and posts on facebook...and everything about the articles you linked to fed into that. If you couldn't see that the writers already had a conclusion in mind right from the start and that their questions were purposefully trying to sew doubt then I have some mountain top property in Kansas I'd love to sell to you, heck even better, I'll pay you to take said property! All you need to do is post your routing number, account number, address and social security number and I'll transfer you $10,000 dollars and then mail you the deed!

If it's not controversial, this means there is clear and unambiguous evidence that mask mandates for students in schools make an appreciable difference in Covid spread.

I'd love to see the evidence on that.

The question about whether the writers had a conclusion in mind from the start is an interesting one. If this is your priority, you should dismiss all journalism by anyone who has a conclusion in mind from the start. By this argument, if there's criticism of Trump, we should first evaluate whether the journalist dislikes Trump rather than the merits of what was said.

I would disagree with this approach. A complicating factor is that people who are informed about something may come to recognize when groupthink is mistaken, which increases their skepticism.

Mets, can you come and GOP-splain to us again how DeSanitis is doing the bestest job in the whole country at managing COVID in his State.

I believe you're attributing an argument to me that I haven't made.

[Kirby101]

Sure you didn't Mets, sure you didn't.

One of the main arguments for DeSantis is that he dealt with Covid while not minimizing the impact of the quality of life for Floridians.