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

[worstblogever]

If they repeat the lie often enough it may eventually become true.
Repeatedly pretending there's a need for the recounts reinforces the idea in the minds of their base there's some sort of fraud happening.

Republicans take note. This is what your party is resorting to in order to win the next elections. They're basically running a con on you to instill a sense of urgency and outrage to keep you engaged. That's how dumb they think you are.

Their voters have been going on the same strategy since 2009, where it's obvious the rich are pulling the strings and manufacturing outrage to push an agenda that gets them richer at the expense of everyone else... and they haven't gotten wise to it in a dozen years. Like, at least during the faux patriotism phase's big run from 2001-2008 on W's watch, at least it was at least possible to say those people just had a misguided passion and love for America.

The Trump GOP s***ts all over any historical idea of the American dream. F*** the poor, hate the immigrants, abandon our allies, surrender our independent elections to foreign powers...

His corruptive influence eliminated whatever tiny molehill of moral high ground they might have had left.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

GA Lt Gov Is ‘Still Furious’ That Local Pro-Trump Officials Sought to ‘Invalidate Their Own Constituents’

I guess Rep. Duncan didn't get the memo that Trump sycophants will do anything and screw over anyone---including the party's own voters to suck up to The Former Guy.

[Jack Dracula]

Their voters have been going on the same strategy since 2009, where it's obvious the rich are pulling the strings and manufacturing outrage to push an agenda that gets them richer at the expense of everyone else... and they haven't gotten wise to it in a dozen years. Like, at least during the faux patriotism phase's big run from 2001-2008 on W's watch, at least it was at least possible to say those people just had a misguided passion and love for America.

The Trump GOP s***ts all over any historical idea of the American dream. F*** the poor, hate the immigrants, abandon our allies, surrender our independent elections to foreign powers...

His corruptive influence eliminated whatever tiny molehill of moral high ground they might have had left.

They're following the usual playbook of co-opting the message of whatever fringe element shouts the loudest in an effort to absorb them and guarantee their support. Previous examples would be the Religious Right and the Tea Party. Now it's the Trumpers and the Alt-right America First, Neo-fascists and those in between. It's a con because they give these groups just enough to keep them engaged and voting while their underlying mission of selling influence to any dark money donor who's willing to pay the most never changes.
They'll burn our democratic election process, our educational system, our environment, even our entire society if it ensures the money keeps coming. They absolutely do not care.

I'm ranting. Apologies everyone. I've had a pint or two.

[PwrdOn]

Do you have the definitive number of millions that Mao killed? I use those numbers because there is a discrepancy among historians. Though I am sure you know the exact number.

By and large liberals are not racists.

If you are flippantly citing death tolls to try and prove that the U.S. has not been a massively disruptive force in Asia, then yes, you are a racist. You clearly just don’t know anything about the history and politics of the region yet you keep insisting on stating your opinion as if it is authoritative even though you have no credibility to speak on these matters.

[Robotman]

They're following the usual playbook of co-opting the message of whatever fringe element shouts the loudest in an effort to absorb them and guarantee their support. Previous examples would be the Religious Right and the Tea Party. Now it's the Trumpers and the Alt-right America First, Neo-fascists and those in between. It's a con because they give these groups just enough to keep them engaged and voting while their underlying mission of selling influence to any dark money donor who's willing to pay the most never changes.
They'll burn our democratic election process, our educational system, our environment, even our entire society if it ensures the money keeps coming. They absolutely do not care.

I'm ranting. Apologies everyone. I've had a pint or two.

Pint or no, you're speaking the truth.

It's quite tragic the way people who are legitimately poor spew propaganda of the rich. I always hear a neighbor of mine, who is a struggling part-time house painter and has numerous medical conditions, ranting about how we don't need to raise the minimum wage and Obama Care is horrible for the country.

[Kirby101]

If you are flippantly citing death tolls to try and prove that the U.S. has not been a massively disruptive force in Asia, then yes, you are a racist. You clearly just don’t know anything about the history and politics of the region yet you keep insisting on stating your opinion as if it is authoritative even though you have no credibility to speak on these matters.

You said
"when the people who are responsible for more death and destruction in Asia then ANYONE"

I pointed out the tens of millions who died under Mao. You ignore this and continue to see all the wrong from one side with China blameless.

This is clear.

[CaptainEurope]

In German news, we're headed for the polls today! Angela Merkel will get to retire... as soon as what looks to be very long and complex coalition talks will settle on a new government.

The final polls make this look wide open. It's a long shot for the Greens to name their first chancellor, but it's still the closest they've come. The man who would succeed Merkel as another conservative German leader, Armin Laschet, went from gaffe to gaffe and scandal to scandal until the CDU fell behind the Social Democrats in the polls for the first time in a long time.

I'm way up early on a Sunday because I am kind of nervous about how this will turn out. Both the CDU and the business friendly FDP will drag their feet on climate change, so I am hoping we can get a coalition without either of them.

[worstblogever]

They're following the usual playbook of co-opting the message of whatever fringe element shouts the loudest in an effort to absorb them and guarantee their support. Previous examples would be the Religious Right and the Tea Party. Now it's the Trumpers and the Alt-right America First, Neo-fascists and those in between. It's a con because they give these groups just enough to keep them engaged and voting while their underlying mission of selling influence to any dark money donor who's willing to pay the most never changes.
They'll burn our democratic election process, our educational system, our environment, even our entire society if it ensures the money keeps coming. They absolutely do not care.

I'm ranting. Apologies everyone. I've had a pint or two.

I don't see anything to apologize over. Just hard truths.

Anyway, it would be nice if an element of the GOP started screaming about how this country has a serious problem with right-wing domestic terrorists, a lack of empathy, and has lost its way in terms of truly helping the American worker.

But hey, they've been sucking up to domestic terrorists since Oklahoma City, empathy's been out the door for about fifteen years, and... well... they've not been into workers' rights like... since the party was founded.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, Steve King, the sitting U.S. House Representative from Iowa's 4th Congressional District, a guy who is perhaps the most unapologetically racist member of the GOP (and that's saying something). Steve King is a man who seems hell bent on being the most venomous xenophobe in the entire Republican Party, showing his contempt for illegal immigrants by often comparing them to animals (considering he’s also proudly defended dog-fighting, it’s not surprising to see him hold as much concern for these human beings as he does animals), and making ludicrous, paranoid claims about how much of a threat they are to the general safety of the average American citizen. He literally has described the process of immigration in the United States as “a slow motion terrorist attack”. Years before Donald Trump ever wanted to build a border wall, Steve King was pitching a giant electrified fence that would keep out illegal immigrants because "it works on cattle". King’s also a huge war hawk, and has defended any action by the United States in the Middle East for the past 15 years, not even taking issue with the atrocities committed in the Abu Ghraib prison by American troops. He’s equally insane on the home front, having once argued that girls are frequently kidnapped out of playgrounds, raped, then taken over state lines to get an abortion, and returned back to the park before anybody knows they’re missing. (Really. I mean, those would be some really oblivious parents, to have the kid missing long enough for a predator to pull all that off before they notice.) In 2015, Steve King chastised President Obama for "apologizing for slavery" because he feels "there's nothing to apologize about". He has complained about undocumented immigrants "bringing in Ebola and beheadings", and defended Donald Trump's comments about Mexican rapists, saying that "Central Americans were doing the raping", in addition. Steve King gave everyone a waft of bigotry strong enough that is was like a blast of smelling salts on the first day of the 2016 Republican National Convention when in the midst of participating in a panel on MSNBC moderated by Chris Hayes, Rep. King gave his thoughts that no "non-white sub-groups" had ever contributed to civilization. The panel erupted in protest at King's ignorant, near-white-supremacist statement, and Hayes had to dump to commercial to avoid it devolving even further than that. Also in 2016, Rep. King compared Syrian refugees to “poisoned grapes”, ranted about the Obama administration’s LGBT protections showed they wouldn’t "be satisfied until all students are “transgendered [sic] vegans”, that the country was going "downhill" because women had contraceptive rights, argued it was racist and sexist for people to put Harriet Tubman instead of President Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, responded to Colin Kaepernick's protests against racial inequality at NFL games by kneeling during the national anthem by accusing him of being in league with ISIS, and while the featured guest of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, talked about how "no one would have been shot" if everyone in the Orlando Pulse nightclub had a gun (they had an armed off-duty police officer on the premises) and that the GOP shouldn't try and win over Hispanic voters because "we are all God's children". Steve King's own office at the Capitol now proudly has the Confederate flag on display on his desk, even though the last time anybody checked, Iowa wasn't in the Confederacy in the Civil War. Rep. King already has a pretty well-established rapport with European white nationalists like Marine LePen of France and Geert Wilders of Belgium, and one weekend in March of 2017, on his Twitter account, he posted an Islamophobic cartoon, then quoted Wilders and said he was right about refugees because “We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies”. After wide criticism in the following days, Steve King not only refused to apologize, but doubled down, saying, “I meant exactly what I said” and that he wanted the United States to be “so homogenous”. By that September, King was practically gleeful upon hearing the news that Donald Trump had announced he was going to allow the delayed deportation of Dreamers, or DACA, to expire, and went on Breitbart News to mockingly say that the action would effectively “create a Peace Corps-like force” that would allow deported Dreamers to teach their home countries “how a civilized people interact with each other.” In December of 2017, after a jury found the killer of Katie Steinle not guilty of murder, Rep. King reacts by accusing several of his black and Latino House colleagues of having “deified criminal illegal aliens” and fostered “an anti-white, anti-Western civilization culture.” In September of 2018, Steve King quoted White Supremacist Lana Lokteff in a Twitter post where he accused “Leftists” of being the “real Nazis”. Later that month, only hours before reports emerge of MORE accusers coming forward to report sexual assaults they had committed against them by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Steve King decides to join the chorus of Republicans defending him by saying, the charges amounted to “character assassination” and normalized sexual assault by saying “If that’s the new standard, no man will ever qualify for the Supreme Court again”. On January 11th, 2019, Rep. King wonders out loud, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” and two months later in March of 2019, King disparaged survivors of Hurricane Katrina, saying, “I saw that from the air and from the ground and went back and did what we could to help those folks down there. But here’s what FEMA tells me: ‘We go to a place like New Orleans and everybody’s looking around saying, who’s gonna help me, who’s gonna help me?’ They’re just always gratified when they come and see Iowans take care of each other, so that’s a point of pride that spreads across the country.” In August of 2019, Steve King, unprompted, started discussing what he feels are the merits of rape and incest, musing, "What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages taken place and whatever happened to culture after society? I know I can't certify that I'm not a part of a product of that.” Later the same month, King laughs when talking about how he heard the Chinese government forces detained Muslims to break the tenets of their religion and feed them only pork. Now, here’s the best news we’ve had to report in some time… Steve King was finally bounced from office by a primary challenger in 2020 and go back to gathering wood for cross burnings. As he is unlikely to ever be elected to any political office again, we will set aside his profile at this time, however, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1027-50, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Shannon Lundgren

Welcome to what is the 1027th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Shannon Lundgren, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from District 57 who was first elected to office back in 2016. Prior to reaching office during that 2016 campaign, Lundgren claimed she was the victim of vandalism after several lawn signs supposedly vanished, and/or were covered in spray paint (plus one family vehicle). Her opponent in that race, Tom Stecher, denounced the vandals, and no link ever seemed to emerge during the police investigation. Most of her legislative priorities are conservative dreck, like trying to force schoolchildren to take the Pledge of Allegiance every day, or voting to try and block cities and municipalities from choosing to raise their own minimum wage.

But where Shannon Lundgren keeps popping up on our radar is when it comes to her fanatical stance on abortion. In 2017, we were dumbfounded when we saw a news story featuring her because she wrote legislation that would insist women who had already suffered a miscarriage must still carry their dead fetuses to term. Her exact quote during debate on the bill:

"This bill wasn't written for the intent to protect or govern on the side of the woman. It was written to save babies' lives, giving the choice and being the voice of those babies...that don't have one. I understand what you're saying—this fetus, this baby, is not alive. I would concur that in that instance, if your daughter's life is not in danger, that yes, she would have to carry that baby."

Now, we’ll correct her that at 20 weeks, the “dead baby” is still not a baby, it’s a fetus… but it’s more importantly a DEAD FETUS whose rights Lundgren holds more dear than the living woman with those remains inside of her. While no Republicans in the chamber corrected Lundgren at the time, it wasn’t until outcry began after a video of it circulated online that the Iowa GOP claimed she “misspoke”.

Bulls*** she did. She meant that.

Lundgren’s name appeared again in 2018, when she was the manager of amendments to a bill regulating the transfer of fetal tissue that suddenly began to change into a ban on abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected, or at 6 weeks. At the time, it was the most restrictive bill to woman’s health in the nation, but we’ve seen some people cribbing her notes since. The goal was nothing short of putting something in place that would eventually lead to Roe v Wade being overturned.

We will conclude by pointing out that Lundgren is so “pro-life” that she voted against mask mandates for public school students during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a prohibition on vaccine passports, which weren’t even being suggested at the time.

So she can choke on her hypocrisy, to boot.

[JackDaw]

In German news, we're headed for the polls today! Angela Merkel will get to retire... as soon as what looks to be very long and complex coalition talks will settle on a new government.

The final polls make this look wide open. It's a long shot for the Greens to name their first chancellor, but it's still the closest they've come. The man who would succeed Merkel as another conservative German leader, Armin Laschet, went from gaffe to gaffe and scandal to scandal until the CDU fell behind the Social Democrats in the polls for the first time in a long time.

I'm way up early on a Sunday because I am kind of nervous about how this will turn out. Both the CDU and the business friendly FDP will drag their feet on climate change, so I am hoping we can get a coalition without either of them.

There’s been some long articles in UK press about her (Angela Merkel) as her time in office comes to an end.

Not surprisingly the articles considered her decision in 2015 to take in over 1 million Syrian refugees as maybe the biggest single decision of her time in office. It was an incredibly brave call…I can’t think of any close equivalent in recent years.

[Gray Lensman]

I don't see anything to apologize over. Just hard truths.

Anyway, it would be nice if an element of the GOP started screaming about how this country has a serious problem with right-wing domestic terrorists, a lack of empathy, and has lost its way in terms of truly helping the American worker.

But hey, they've been sucking up to domestic terrorists since Oklahoma City, empathy's been out the door for about fifteen years, and... well... they've not been into workers' rights like... since the party was founded.

I wouldn't go that far, but it has been a very, very long time - 100 to 120ish years or so.

[worstblogever]

I wouldn't go that far, but it has been a very, very long time - 100 to 120ish years or so.

I mean, they did support the slaves being freed in the 1860s so their workers' rights were important at that time that they shouldn't be forced to work for free.

Kinda downhill after that.

[PwrdOn]

You said
"when the people who are responsible for more death and destruction in Asia then ANYONE"

I pointed out the tens of millions who died under Mao. You ignore this and continue to see all the wrong from one side with China blameless.

This is clear.

Tens of millions of people starved to death under Mao, which while certainly a tragic failure of policy, is hardly a one to one comparison with the number of people that have been directly killed by American forces in Asia. If you want to start counting up all of the people whose lives were shortened as an indirect consequence of US foreign policy, whether military, economic, or otherwise, THAT toll would certainly be up in the billions by now, and would be even worse if you include the actions of US allies and proxies.

At the end of the day, this much is clear - the United States and its Western cohorts largely view Asian countries not as respected equals, but rather as naughty children that need to be brought in line, hence the all stick no carrot foreign policy that has been massively destabilizing to the entire region ever since the day Commodore Perry showed up in Edo Bay. And this attitude extends to Asian Americans as well, we're expected to keep quiet and not upset anyone, so that we can be used up for our skillset and then disposed of when we are no longer useful, we'll never be seen as true citizens who have an equal stake in deciding the future of this country. Sure, you might think that this doesn't apply to you and that you respect all people equally, but if you can't even stand someone expressing some quite mild criticism of America and think that even the most lukewarm statements in support of China are evidence that I'm a paid propaganda mouthpiece, I wonder how you'd react if you heard any actual radical opinions, which are far more common amongst Asian Americans than you might expect and are certainly widespread across Asia itself.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I have a nice friend who I disagree with a lot. But a lot of the debates are ...he will link videos of some political news or outrage happening and try to use it as a "win" deal. When I counter with a news article its , "I don't wanna read that..." Its like ...yet you wanna use Youtube links to some comedian (I believe its Jimmy Dore) and some news being posted by others without context on why something is happening ? Or has happened ?

Case in point ...was France being pissed at America for the nuclear submarine deal ARKUS with Britain and Australia. There was an India news video discussing how we had betrayed a trusted ally. Which he went on Biden for HARD. So I decided to look more into this ...

In a news article I found ...the deal was destined to be cancelled due to France being late repeatedly on the nuclear subs and pushing it back. So Australia was gonna cancel the deal eventually and went with UK/US deal ARKUS instead.

As I countered the deal seemed destined to be cancelled by Australia due to the issues involved. That the country couldn't keep waiting on these subs that was signed back in 2016 as a deal. He still dug in how we "betrayed an ally !" Like ...it seems like a business deal that one side couldn't deliver on.