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

[MacrossPlus]

I'm in AZ, and the current word seems to be is she's already set herself up to lose, but head to K Street and cash in as a lobbyist. As in, unofficially, her abandoning her principles was based on the promise of a six-figure a year lobbying deal where some billionaire just hires her as what is a legal bribe.

And yes, there are progressives like Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren that have pointed out how insane it is that politicians can just do this and be bought so easily.

Sinema, if this is the plan... we're talking about someone who once protested the Iraq War while wearing a tutu as a member of the Green Party. She's always treated politics as theatre, save for in 2018 when she won the lottery of "Blue Wave + Martha-McSally-is-My-Opponent + She Took Herself Seriously for a Full Calendar Year Prior to Election Day". Any one of those three things not being true, she probably would have lost, and not be in the position she is right now to SELL OUT HARD.

It's goddamned disappointing... and that's an understatement.

The typical wolf in sheep's clothing, her being a member of the green party should've been a huge red flag

[worstblogever]

The typical wolf in sheep's clothing, her being a member of the green party should've been a huge red flag

It really is. I had someone recommend a state legislator to me, and they didn't mention they were Green Party.

I checked, she uh... didn't know much about anything and was campaigning on her background as a cosplayer.

Luckily, I don't profile Green Party candidates daily. There's uh... there's some folks who are really out there.

[Mister Mets]

I'm in AZ, and the current word seems to be is she's already set herself up to lose, but head to K Street and cash in as a lobbyist. As in, unofficially, her abandoning her principles was based on the promise of a six-figure a year lobbying deal where some billionaire just hires her as what is a legal bribe.

And yes, there are progressives like Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren that have pointed out how insane it is that politicians can just do this and be bought so easily.

Sinema, if this is the plan... we're talking about someone who once protested the Iraq War while wearing a tutu as a member of the Green Party. She's always treated politics as theatre, save for in 2018 when she won the lottery of "Blue Wave + Martha-McSally-is-My-Opponent + She Took Herself Seriously for a Full Calendar Year Prior to Election Day". Any one of those three things not being true, she probably would have lost, and not be in the position she is right now to SELL OUT HARD.

It's goddamned disappointing... and that's an understatement.

The idea that she's just bought seems a bit flawed.

If it's just about the money, there should be plenty of rich progressives able to make sure she can be just as wealthy as a standard Democrat, and help her avoid the backlash of pissing off the left-wing base.

If it's not true, it's also a bad strategy to make these claims because she'll have reason to think less of her critics recognizing that they're mistaken in how they see things.

My aunt always yelled about that. So do the GOP people I know. Going on about how it is odd most of the mail in votes went for Biden. I asked her and them what about the 6 months before the election where the GOP bitched about how mail in voting is not safe or valid and told people not to use it? So after being told for months not to use it while the Dems were telling people to use it why wouldnt it swing more for Biden?

It can get hard to tell the difference between trolling and a position that people actually hold. It's easier to understand where someone on your side is coming from, and to excuse errors made in ignorance.

If everyone on the other side is viewed as a troll, easily rebutted arguments like your aunt's suspicion about low Republican mail-in voting rates spread without being addressed.

The typical wolf in sheep's clothing, her being a member of the green party should've been a huge red flag

There has obviously been a lot of writing about Sinema. One argument that was interesting was how she may be influenced by uncompromising green party roots.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021...l-it-pass.html

It’s not clear Sinema is a rational actor. She appears deeply invested in a personal narrative in which she is the Democratic version of John McCain, bravely defying her party to stand up for bipartisanship. And, while this is armchair psychoanalysis, her history in the Green Party is a kind of through-line to a personal style that has remained consistent even as her ideological commitments have changed radically.

Sinema, like many Green Party types, sees politics as an avenue for personal expression. Attempting to persuade a Green Party candidate not to take action X because it will have consequence Y just makes them angry. In 2000, Ralph Nader was surrounded by advisers who saw exactly what outcome his campaign would have (electing George W. Bush) but simply could not get him to budge. Nader’s own account of this campaign reveals a mind unable to think in straightforward consequentialist terms — he was too fixated on his right to do what he wanted to measure his actions in any practical way.

Pressuring Sinema to go along with the rest of her party might work, and it would appeal to her self-preservation instinct. But it could also set her up to make the high-profile display of independence she appears to crave. If you think she is simply a shallow narcissist, cornering her would be the worst possible strategy.

[worstblogever]

Nevermind.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

My aunt always yelled about that. So do the GOP people I know. Going on about how it is odd most of the mail in votes went for Biden. I asked her and them what about the 6 months before the election where the GOP bitched about how mail in voting is not safe or valid and told people not to use it? So after being told for months not to use it while the Dems were telling people to use it why wouldnt it swing more for Biden?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my rationale for voting by mail was that I wasn’t at all comfortable with the notion of being in a crowded polling place during the height of the pandemic. In short, I was worried about my safety, and I’m guessing lots of other people were too, it just so happened they voted Democrat. By the by, Trump voted by mail as well. How did your aunt feel about that?

[Robotman]

Wow, so MAGA has infiltrated hip hop. A Trump worshipping rapper has the top spot on iTunes charts

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who may or may not be a skeleton dipped in wax and given life. While still the CEO of a health insurance company that was caught illegally gouging the public on billing, Scott had to plead the Fifth Amendment a staggering 75 times to help himself avoid prosecution, as the company, HCA, was smacked with the largest fine in a fraud settlement case in United States history. His leadership in running Florida has been as equally questionable, with Scott cutting government funding to state run hospitals, education, and welfare whenever possible. He lost the state a mint’s worth of taxpayer money on a quest to drug test people on welfare that found statistically minimal drug use compared to the national average (go figure, poor people can’t afford drugs), and was eventually thrown out as an unconstitutional violation of the 4th Amendment by the courts. Gov. Scott has had ethics investigators breathing down his neck almost his entire tenure, as his friends and donors get lucrative government contracts, and that he failed to disclose his personal assets during campaign finance reports (he’s worth somewhere between $200 and $340 million). By December 2014, media investigations started to reveal that Scott’s decision to outsource prison medical care to Corizon Health for $1.2 billion had additional fees… the cost of over 660 malpractice lawsuits from shoddy care it provided Florida inmates that left as many as 30 people dying a month.

Two months later, in February 2015, Scott is handed three more lawsuits that accuse his administration of widespread corruption, including his previous failure to disclose his finances while running for office, and a refusal to obey transparency laws, particularly over the firing of the former executive director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Gerald Bailey, who Scott wanted to replace with party loyalists (when the FDLE is supposed to be non-partisan). From there, a series a lies and cover-ups started shaking out, including a time where Gov. Scott was claiming Bailey resigned (as if he wasn’t going to correct him). Scott and the state of Florida settle these lawsuits in August at a cost of $700,000 to taxpayers. He also managed to revamp the state’s unemployment system, and wouldn’t you know it, he botched the $77 million overhaul of that completely as well. And it was a deliberate sabotage, at that. The only reason this Voldemort-with-rhinoplasty didn’t get impeached is because Florida election law makes it nigh-impossible to impeach or recall a governor, and the people are opting to just wait him out.

Rick Scott also is prone to tantrums, like when he refused to take the stage during the 2014 debates for Florida governor because his opponent, Charlie Crist, had a fan under his podium to blow cool air at his crotch (seriously) or the time Gov. Scott tried heading into a local Starbucks for some coffee, a woman spotted him, told him how choices he'd made had cut her Medicaid funding, and she shamed him for it, not taking his comeback of "creating jobs" before calling him an "***hole". Now, normally, CSGOPOTD doesn't make much of hecklers politicians might get... but it's how you react to them that counts. And Rick Scott, no lie... released an attack ad against the woman, calling her “a terribly rude woman,” a “latte liberal” and someone who “clearly has a problem.” And perhaps most Mr. Burns-like of any of his actions was how Scott adopted a rescue dog that he named “Reagan” during his 2010 election to look like a real softie, and then reporters realized it wasn’t ever around and started to ask about it… only to finally have his staff admit that Scott had “gotten rid” of the dog because it “acted too crazy”, and that they, to this day, have no idea what fate befell the poor canine.

In 2018, Rick Scott was term-limited as Governor of Florida, and Donald Trump started pressuring Scott to run for U.S. Senate the middle of relief efforts after Hurricane Irma (that’s tacky, but that’s Trump). While most sane people should realize the last person you should take advice from is Donald Trump, Rick Scott figured he and the Florida GOP gerrymandered elections there enough to win statewide office twice already, so he made it official in April of that year.

Going into the final weeks of the campaign, though, the headlines in Florida are a constant reminder of how corrupt and incompetent Rick Scott has been over the past 8 years, whether its his indifference to gun control advocates who survived the Parkland shooting campaigning against his election to the Senate, Scott being rebuffed for trying to pack the Florida Supreme Court before leaving office, red tides and green slime algae manifesting as a testament to his negligence on the environment, (and yes, his decisions did pave the way for this ecological disaster) or watching him try to distance himself from Donald Trump especially after a lackluster response from FEMA and the Scott administration after Hurricane Michael.

And yet, this soulless corporate husk was elected to the U.S. Senate, and continued proving himself to be a coward time and time again. Whether it was his inability to grow enough of a backbone to stand against Donald Trump after his racist attacks on four Congresswomen, or even seeing Scott try and defend Trump after he admitted to a quid pro quo in the Ukraine whistleblower scandal. And of course, Rick Scott voted against witnesses in the impeachment trial (thus making it a “trial”), and then voted to acquit Donald Trump so he could go back to not paying any attention to the looming threat of Covid-19. He’s far enough up Trump’s ass that he echoed concerns that counting all ballots cast by mail by Election Day would be unnecessary, and he actually drafted legislation to try and leave potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions if votes uncounted.

But y’know, of course he wouldn’t understand the treat of Covid-19, as every Republican from Florida seems unable to. Rick Scott, who was the CEO of a health insurance company too stupid to realize that when you test POSITIVE for it, that would be a bad thing. What he thinks would truly be terrible, though, is if people got any more Covid-19 stimulus money, because the uber-rich Sen. Scott thinks that economic relief might make Americans “lazy”. (How about, “f*** you”, Rick?)

Florida, as a state, keeps electing this reptilian jagoff, and we can’t begin to understand why. We’ll see if they’ve become wise to his con-man ways when he’s up for re-election in 2022.

[babyblob]

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my rationale for voting by mail was that I wasn’t at all comfortable with the notion of being in a crowded polling place during the height of the pandemic. In short, I was worried about my safety, and I’m guessing lots of other people were too, it just so happened they voted Democrat. By the by, Trump voted by mail as well. How did your aunt feel about that?

Fake News. I thought she was getting more I dont want to say better but less cult like maybe. And she is in someways. But there is a lot she wont let go. She is still all big on the Immigrants.

There is a guy in my state running for Senate. His big ad that just came out talks about the Immigrants

"They bring their drugs, their crime, their covid and their illegal votes for The Democrats." She is all in on this guy.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Fake News. I thought she was getting more I dont want to say better but less cult like maybe. And she is in someways. But there is a lot she wont let go. She is still all big on the Immigrants.

There is a guy in my state running for Senate. His big ad that just came out talks about the Immigrants

"They bring their drugs, their crime, their covid and their illegal votes for The Democrats." She is all in on this guy.

You mean to tell me she thought Trump voted in person? Mingling with the rabble he wouldn’t so much as piss on if they were on fire?

[Tami]

[Mister Mets]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who may or may not be a skeleton dipped in wax and given life. While still the CEO of a health insurance company that was caught illegally gouging the public on billing, Scott had to plead the Fifth Amendment a staggering 75 times to help himself avoid prosecution, as the company, HCA, was smacked with the largest fine in a fraud settlement case in United States history. His leadership in running Florida has been as equally questionable, with Scott cutting government funding to state run hospitals, education, and welfare whenever possible. He lost the state a mint’s worth of taxpayer money on a quest to drug test people on welfare that found statistically minimal drug use compared to the national average (go figure, poor people can’t afford drugs), and was eventually thrown out as an unconstitutional violation of the 4th Amendment by the courts. Gov. Scott has had ethics investigators breathing down his neck almost his entire tenure, as his friends and donors get lucrative government contracts, and that he failed to disclose his personal assets during campaign finance reports (he’s worth somewhere between $200 and $340 million). By December 2014, media investigations started to reveal that Scott’s decision to outsource prison medical care to Corizon Health for $1.2 billion had additional fees… the cost of over 660 malpractice lawsuits from shoddy care it provided Florida inmates that left as many as 30 people dying a month.

Two months later, in February 2015, Scott is handed three more lawsuits that accuse his administration of widespread corruption, including his previous failure to disclose his finances while running for office, and a refusal to obey transparency laws, particularly over the firing of the former executive director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Gerald Bailey, who Scott wanted to replace with party loyalists (when the FDLE is supposed to be non-partisan). From there, a series a lies and cover-ups started shaking out, including a time where Gov. Scott was claiming Bailey resigned (as if he wasn’t going to correct him). Scott and the state of Florida settle these lawsuits in August at a cost of $700,000 to taxpayers. He also managed to revamp the state’s unemployment system, and wouldn’t you know it, he botched the $77 million overhaul of that completely as well. And it was a deliberate sabotage, at that. The only reason this Voldemort-with-rhinoplasty didn’t get impeached is because Florida election law makes it nigh-impossible to impeach or recall a governor, and the people are opting to just wait him out.

Rick Scott also is prone to tantrums, like when he refused to take the stage during the 2014 debates for Florida governor because his opponent, Charlie Crist, had a fan under his podium to blow cool air at his crotch (seriously) or the time Gov. Scott tried heading into a local Starbucks for some coffee, a woman spotted him, told him how choices he'd made had cut her Medicaid funding, and she shamed him for it, not taking his comeback of "creating jobs" before calling him an "***hole". Now, normally, CSGOPOTD doesn't make much of hecklers politicians might get... but it's how you react to them that counts. And Rick Scott, no lie... released an attack ad against the woman, calling her “a terribly rude woman,” a “latte liberal” and someone who “clearly has a problem.” And perhaps most Mr. Burns-like of any of his actions was how Scott adopted a rescue dog that he named “Reagan” during his 2010 election to look like a real softie, and then reporters realized it wasn’t ever around and started to ask about it… only to finally have his staff admit that Scott had “gotten rid” of the dog because it “acted too crazy”, and that they, to this day, have no idea what fate befell the poor canine.

In 2018, Rick Scott was term-limited as Governor of Florida, and Donald Trump started pressuring Scott to run for U.S. Senate the middle of relief efforts after Hurricane Irma (that’s tacky, but that’s Trump). While most sane people should realize the last person you should take advice from is Donald Trump, Rick Scott figured he and the Florida GOP gerrymandered elections there enough to win statewide office twice already, so he made it official in April of that year.

Going into the final weeks of the campaign, though, the headlines in Florida are a constant reminder of how corrupt and incompetent Rick Scott has been over the past 8 years, whether its his indifference to gun control advocates who survived the Parkland shooting campaigning against his election to the Senate, Scott being rebuffed for trying to pack the Florida Supreme Court before leaving office, red tides and green slime algae manifesting as a testament to his negligence on the environment, (and yes, his decisions did pave the way for this ecological disaster) or watching him try to distance himself from Donald Trump especially after a lackluster response from FEMA and the Scott administration after Hurricane Michael.

And yet, this soulless corporate husk was elected to the U.S. Senate, and continued proving himself to be a coward time and time again. Whether it was his inability to grow enough of a backbone to stand against Donald Trump after his racist attacks on four Congresswomen, or even seeing Scott try and defend Trump after he admitted to a quid pro quo in the Ukraine whistleblower scandal. And of course, Rick Scott voted against witnesses in the impeachment trial (thus making it a “trial”), and then voted to acquit Donald Trump so he could go back to not paying any attention to the looming threat of Covid-19. He’s far enough up Trump’s ass that he echoed concerns that counting all ballots cast by mail by Election Day would be unnecessary, and he actually drafted legislation to try and leave potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions if votes uncounted.

But y’know, of course he wouldn’t understand the treat of Covid-19, as every Republican from Florida seems unable to. Rick Scott, who was the CEO of a health insurance company too stupid to realize that when you test POSITIVE for it, that would be a bad thing. What he thinks would truly be terrible, though, is if people got any more Covid-19 stimulus money, because the uber-rich Sen. Scott thinks that economic relief might make Americans “lazy”. (How about, “f*** you”, Rick?)

Florida, as a state, keeps electing this reptilian jagoff, and we can’t begin to understand why. We’ll see if they’ve become wise to his con-man ways when he’s up for re-election in 2022.

Rick Scott's up for reelection in 2024.

Can you explain the "Rick Scott figured he and the Florida GOP gerrymandered elections there enough to win statewide office twice already?" How does gerrymandering work with statewide races?

[worstblogever]

Rick Scott's up for reelection in 2024.

Can you explain the "Rick Scott figured he and the Florida GOP gerrymandered elections there enough to win statewide office twice already?" How does gerrymandering work with statewide races?

I'm sorry, I mean to say "The lizard-person (sarcasm) ***hole (not sarcasm) in question has taken steps to suppress the vote in Democratic controlled districts and gerrymandered the state legislature to do his bidding during his time in office."

Happy now?

I mean, that you bothered singling out one sentence and ignoring all the rampant incompetence and corruption and mysterious dog-disappearance?

[Mister Mets]

I'm sorry, I mean to say "The lizard-person (sarcasm) ***hole (not sarcasm) in question has taken steps to suppress the vote in Democratic controlled districts and gerrymandered the state legislature to do his bidding during his time in office."

Happy now?

I mean, that you bothered singling out one sentence and ignoring all the rampant incompetence and corruption and mysterious dog-disappearance?

I wasn't sure what you were communicating, and what the link was between gerrymandering and his wins. I was unaware of any story of the Florida state legislature making a controversial policy favoring Rick Scott in a statewide race, so it wouldn't be that.

I'm also unaware of Florida having a reputation for having an especially gerrymandered state legislature, or having high voter suppression relevant enough to change the outcomes in Rick Scott's midterm wins.

[worstblogever]

I wasn't sure what you were communicating, and what the link was between gerrymandering and his wins. I was unaware of any story of the Florida state legislature making a controversial policy favoring Rick Scott in a statewide race, so it wouldn't be that.

I'm also unaware of Florida having a reputation for having an especially gerrymandered state legislature, or having high voter suppression relevant enough to change the outcomes in Rick Scott's midterm wins.

It's easy to be unaware of things when you bury your head in the sand because it conveniently allows your party to win election even though they don't have a majority, I reckon.

Here's an explanation from 2012, after a few years' of Scott and the Florida leg suppressing democracy:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...xtreme-184830/

The Florida GOP hasonly gotten worse from there.

[Malvolio]

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my rationale for voting by mail was that I wasn’t at all comfortable with the notion of being in a crowded polling place during the height of the pandemic. In short, I was worried about my safety, and I’m guessing lots of other people were too, it just so happened they voted Democrat. By the by, Trump voted by mail as well. How did your aunt feel about that?

This. I usually vote in person, but last year, before there was a vaccine, I didn't want to take any more chances than I was already taking just by going into work every day.