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

[Kirby101]

Looks like conservatives won't be able to say "how can you call it an insurrection when no one's been charged with insurrection" anymore.

It won't stop them, they will still say they are loyal Americans trying to "protect the election" ...1,2,3....

[worstblogever]

Oath Keepers leader and 10 others charged with 'seditious conspiracy' related to US Capitol attack

Yes, what happened January 6th was nothing short of open rebellion against the lawful and legitimate Government. All involved, right up to the Orange Ringleader, need to be brought to justice.

Looks like conservatives won't be able to say "how can you call it an insurrection when no one's been charged with insurrection" anymore.

There's a lot of folks involved who are starting to sweat right about now.

The "fake electors" from 7 states that have been talking to the press, indignant, are gonna get their asses caught up in this if they don't start lawyering up and telling the press "no comment".

[Xheight]

Oath Keepers leader and 10 others charged with 'seditious conspiracy' related to US Capitol attack

Yes, what happened January 6th was nothing short of open rebellion against the lawful and legitimate Government. All involved, right up to the Orange Ringleader, need to be brought to justice.

Let the real sedition begin, in other words. Neither lawful nor legit only "legal" but that is just what you are saying 'we've got the power'

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” ran a profile of Anthony Culler, who was the Republican candidate for South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District in 2014, who believes that we are all granted a right to bear arms from CONCEPTION, so that American zygotes can pack heat inside their mothers’ wombs if they choose. He not surprisingly also warned voters of a nameless “they” who were “coming for our guns”, and said Barack Obama and Joe Biden were “using dead schoolchildren” to push for legislation to do so. While his stance on gun rights was pretty extreme, it was nothing compared to Culler’s stance on LGBTQ rights, where he described same sex marriage as “a pestilence upon society” and compared gay people to “for those of you old enough to remember the movie, Gremlins”. I am still unaware of the large gay community in San Francisco being due to a gay person getting wet and being fed after midnight, but anyway, when people told Culler he was a bigot after saying that, he instead went with the classic “I’m rubber and you’re glue” defense and claimed anyone who thought HE was the bigot, was the actual bigot. Jim Clyburn crushed Anthony Culler by almost fifty points in the election, and it seems unlikely the Republican Party will want to put him on a ticket to embarrass them again

In both 2016, and 2017, on this date, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who has a longer history of being a kook, by far, than her overall political career. After switching party affiliation in the late nineties to Republican because she was outraged over Bill Clinton having an affair, she’s become most famous for heckling presidential candidates campaigning in New Hampshire once every four years, going all the way back to 1999, when there are tales of her haranguing Al Gore about Bill Clinton’s infidelities (as if Al Gore was watching from behind a curtain like a voyeur the whole time). Anyway, no reports emerged of her during the 2004 election cycle, however in 2007, she popped up three times to bust the chops of Mitt Romney about supposed double standards on taxation and college residency and harassed Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side of the ticket, for his past infidelities, and to ask him why his children didn’t support his candidacy, leading Giuliani to tell her to “leave his family alone”. By the time Prudhomme-O’Brien went after a Democrat, though, she managed to end up being threatened with arrest for showing up at Hillary Clinton appearances in both 2008 and 2016 and demanding to know everything she knew about her husband Bill’s encounter with Juanita Broaddrick from three decades earlier. (The one Hillary wasn’t at, can’t speak to, and shouldn’t really have to.) The New Hampshire Union-Leader actually gave her the moniker of “New Hampshire’s Most Annoying Voter”, after all of these revolting and obnoxious exploits. And apparently, people weren’t paying attention when the name Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien appeared on the ballot in the 2014 elections as a candidate for office as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives on the Republican side of the ticket. She finished tenth in the Republican Primary, barely qualifying for the general election where she finished sixth. Somehow, that still meant she won a seat in the state legislature. In the year she’s been in office, she’s turned up as part of the New Hampshire GOP’s voting block, attempting to pass some extreme legislation, like an attempt to repeal Common Core Standards (which Gov. Maggie Hassan repealed), an attempt to repeal the need for licensing for people who wanted to practice concealed carry of firearms (also vetoed by Gov. Hassan), and most heinously, an attempt to repeal the “buffer zone” for protesters around abortion clinics. (Which never even made it to Maggie Hassan’s desk, but after what happened in Colorado Springs not long after, it’s probably something that needs to be there.) Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien’s time in office mercifully came to an end in the 2016 GOP Primary, where she failed to qualify in a field where she only needed to finish tenth or better, coming in seventeenth of seventeen candidates.

It was on this date in 2018 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Richard Snow, a former candidate for the Maine House of Representatives back in 2012 was talking about running for Congress, but failed to fire his paperwork on time, and ran for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives to represent District 47 in 2014, losing with 43% of the vote. His qualifications? Snow runs an indoor kart racing track. He’s so good at business that he managed to get himself hacked and had his business’ bank accounts cleaned out, however. Snow was asked for his thoughts on raising the minimum wage (which should be a no-brainer since America is in it’s greatest period of income inequality in perhaps its entire history), he explained that a minimum wage increase would likely lead to workers just spending the money on opiates. Keep in mind, though, that Snow also openly griped about having to pay his workers overtime, so maybe it’s a safe bet that he isn’t a champion of workers’ rights. Or that he likes spreading supposed “news stories” about supposed widespread voter fraud on his Facebook page. Big surprise, Snow’s insult towards the working class led to him losing again to Democrat Janice Cooper in 2016 with only 38% of the vote. Snow won the GOP Primary for the same seat in 2018, and for unknown reasons to us, withdrew from the race prior to the general election.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Katie Arrington, a failed candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the 2018 elections[/URL], after serving a single term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Arrington was decidedly a candidate to watch, since from the point she announced she was running for Congress, she made it clear she was doing so to “support Donald Trump’s bold, conservative agenda”, which was evident in her lack of understanding about border security and desire to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border. The incumbent Republican that Arrington was challenging was FRED Alumni Mark Sanford, who may have several bizarre incidents that we’ve documented against him, but still was willing to criticize Donald Trump for some of his s***tier moments in the spotlight. Trump endorsed Arrington over Sanford, and why he thought it would help her cause by calling out Sanford for “hiking the Tallahassee Trail”,which isn’t an actual thing, nor is it the correct reference to the extramarital affair that Sanford had back in 2009. And with a traditionally conservative district filled with Republicans who had grown tired of Sanford after years and were starting to buy into Arrington and Trump’s white nationalist rhetoric… Arrington managed to win the GOP Primary, and Trump was crowing about f***ing over Mark Sanford on Twitter. Arrington practically declared herself a member of Congress, promising that “There’s no Blue Wave crashing on the shores of South Carolina”. Only a few days after that, it wasn’t a Blue Wave that crashed into Katie Arrington (yet), it was an apparent drunk driver who veered into her own lane, and crashed into her head on. At her debate in October against Joe Cunningham, Arrington tried attacking him for not denouncing “memes” about her that said she “faked her breast cancer” or others that were overtly racist and depicted African Americans who supported her “being lynched”. These “memes” were either created online by conservatives who supported Mark Sanford in the primary and had barely been viewed on the internet, at all, let alone been viewed by Cunningham. But sixteen minutes into the debate, it was Arrington’s own campaign that used her Twitter account to complain about them for the first time. Cunningham denounced the images immediately after learning they existed when Arrington mentioned it for the first time, much like the rest of the public. So… Arrington made a botched attempt at creating a non-scandal. In the final weeks of the campaign in October, there were signs that Katie Arrington maybe didn’t have as comfortable of a lead as she was projecting in June, after she made veiled threats towards the mayor of the Isle of Palms, Jimmy Carroll, telling him he “lost his seat at the table” for endorsing Cunningham, and a real sign of trouble was that the NRCC had to dump almost a quarter of a million dollars into the race to aid her at the last minute in what was supposed to be a “safe” Republican district. Mark Sanford refused to endorse her, at all, and outright talked about her willingness to brazenly lie just a week before the election. And so it was that as Donald Trump’s fortunes turned worse and worse, and Katie Arrington’s campaign techniques got more and more stupid, that Joe Cunningham upset her by seeming rather sane and moderate. Arrington took the loss well in her concession sp- HA! Gotcha. Arrington flipped out during her concession speech and went on a tirade against Mark Sanford, while promising she’d be back to run for the seat again in 2020 a promise that she has broken.

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Looks like conservatives won't be able to say "how can you call it an insurrection when no one's been charged with insurrection" anymore.

Strange how that happens, "quick get me DOJ, those Fox guys are saying we have no insurrection" LOL as if Washington lives in a vacuum of objectivity.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who ascended to that position after former Gov. Nikki Haley accepted the nomination to be the Trump administration’s original Ambassador to the United Nations in 2017. At the time, he became the oldest person to ever serve as South Carolina Governor. He then won re-election with only 52% of the vote in the GOP Primary, and only 54% in the general election in the 2018 elections.

But it’s the long-term political history of Henry McMaster that concerns us. When he was fresh out of law school, McMaster was hired as a Legislative Assistant to none other than legendary segregationalist U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond in the capitol. An interesting influence. Other than that, McMaster was appointed U.S. Attorney to South Carolina by Ronald Reagan in 1981, and then kicked around South Carolina politics for almost thirty years. Losing elections for everything from U.S. Senate in ’86, Lieutenant Governor in ’90, and then chairing the South Carolina GOP for a decade from ’93 to ’02. He finally won an election in 2002 as Attorney General in 2002, and 2006, and unsuccessfully ran for Governor in 2010, losing to Nikki Haley. Haley kept McMaster relevant by putting him in charge of the Ports Authority of the state until the 2014 elections, when he made a second successful bid to become Lieutenant Governor. Then, he just waited for Haley to step aside, and he could finally be governor.

And it’s when you achieve an office that prestigious that people start asking, “So who is this guy who’s running the state, anyway?”

And… it should come as little shock that the guy who got his first job out of college from Strom Thurmond is, in the 21st century, still a a member of an All Whites Country Club. How such an establishment can still exist is one thing, but that a politician would be a member… and refuse to give up membership when people noticed… yeah. Yeah, that’s a bit disturbing.

In his first year in office in 2017, McMaster—along with the University of South Carolina, BlueCross BlueShield, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, and a number of prominent SC legislators—was connected to Richard Quinn and Associates, a firm he employed for political consulting purposes. Richard Quinn himself, is a known Neo-Confederate, and Associates was named as part of a larger corruption probe within the South Carolina General Assembly conducted by Special Prosecutor David Pascoe, which had already ended the careers of then-House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, who resigned and pleaded guilty to public corruption charges in 2014 Four South Carolina state legislators were indicted as part of Pascoe's corruption probe as of May 2017. In spite of all that… McMaster again refused to step away from Quinn... who any normal politician would distance themselves from for being a Neo-Confederate, let alone corrupt for two whole months. Under pressure and losing momentum in the GOP Primary for Governor in 2018, McMaster finally relented and cut ties with Quinn.

As a Governor, McMaster has stated he would sign legislation, if passed by the General Assembly, that "would allow anyone who is legally allowed to buy a gun to do so without a state permit and carry it openly or concealed.”, which isn’t strange for a Republican governor nowadays. What is strange is when students did a walkout to protest gun violence and to call for stricter gun control only a month after the Parkland shooting, McMaster described the student walkout as "shameful" and said that it was a "tricky move" orchestrated by "left wing groups" which were using the students as "tools" to further their left wing agenda. David Hogg, one of the most politically active survivors of the Parkland shooting, criticized McMaster, saying in a tweet that "future voters will not reelect you and outlive you too. "

Adding to this racist old mummy’s disturbing extremism is his support of fetal heartbeat anti-choice bills. He spent 2020 mismanaging South Carolina’s Covid-19 restrictions, which maybe if he had reduced the number of infections, he wouldn’t have set up an environment to get himself infected. When he’s not fighting back against federal vaccine mandates, accusing public health experts of “hyperbole” and “exaggerating” the threat, and downplaying the threat of the Omicron variant, McMaster is declaring that any discussion of the existence of LGBTQ people in school libraries is “obscene material” and trying to ban it, since he’s so in line with the First Amendment.

McMaster up for re-election until 2022, at the tender young age of 75. Should he win, South Carolina will have a governor with a membership in a “Whites Only” club until 2026.

[JCAll]

RNC threatens to bar candidates from participating in official presidential debates

Makes sense. I mean, if you are taking all that time and energy to suppress the vote so that only a chosen few can, why bother to have debates?

I don't think it'll work., at least if Trump runs again. There's no way he'd ever promise to give up a chance to stand up and lie on camera.

[numberthirty]

The narrative for the Trump years was utter dysfunction. The media has become used to McConnell's will being done and that "nothing gets passed".

A lot got cut out of this bill, but people needed to calm the f*** down in the press the whole time, because at the end of the day, Joe Biden knows how to get something through the Senate.

That, at the end of the day, is the story. To a lesser extent, the story is, "F*** Manchin and Synema for aiming so low and selling out to corporate interests so more wasn't in there". She, at least, will be toast when she's up for re-election in 3 years.

On the off chance that this is indeed still the case?

Right about "Now..." would be a really, really good time to figure out what cabinet he left that magic wand in.

[worstblogever]

On the off chance that this is indeed still the case?

Right about "Now..." would be a really, really good time to figure out what cabinet he left that magic wand in.

People who are much younger can misplace the TV remote, so maybe the 79 year old dropped the magic Senate wand.

You can crow about every Sinema/Manchin setback along the way, but I wouldn't crow about it until November comes.

Also, considering we're talking about American democracy being on the line, it's odd that someone with "no party affiliation" takes such glee in "I told you so" moments that they'd take every opportunity to do this along the way. Like their priorities about politics were misplaced and everything boiled down to petty grudges meaning more than not slipping into an autocratic state.

What a shame that would be.

[worstblogever]

More on Sinema falling to the dark side:

"In 2010, @SenatorSinema blasted the “false pressure to get to 60” votes. She advocated for using reconciliation to pass big legislation to help working families. Now, she’s standing in the way of passing Joe Biden’s agenda with 50 votes."- More Perfect Union

"Sinema delivers the Senate’s stupidest speech by a Democrat in an edge of tears voice to give childish words a melodramatic effect."- Lawrence O'Donnell

"“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.“ - MLK

59 years later, we are facing the same tragedy.
."-Charles Booker

[numberthirty]

People who are much younger can misplace the TV remote, so maybe the 79 year old dropped the magic Senate wand.

You can crow about every Sinema/Manchin setback along the way, but I wouldn't crow about it until November comes.

Also, considering we're talking about American democracy being on the line, it's odd that someone with "no party affiliation" takes such glee in "I told you so" moments that they'd take every opportunity to do this along the way. Like their priorities about politics were misplaced and everything boiled down to petty grudges meaning more than not slipping into an autocratic state.

What a shame that would be.

That is more something that someone has decided that they see than something that is actually taking place.

Meanwhile, out in the reality that is actually coming to pass?

- It is bad enough that a lot of Dems in Congress are heading for the exits.

- It is bad enough that the Covid response looks sort of haphazard even if you are in this outfit's corner when it comes to dealing with this pandemic.

Even if BBB gets done soon, the fall might not be a cakewalk.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed, but this really feels like it is taking a turn for the worse.

[numberthirty]

Past that...

The actual shame would be Dems fumbling folks giving them the opportunity that they did.

[Xheight]

"in and around Venice, a 3.5-square-mile neighborhood that in 2020 had 1,900 unsheltered homeless individuals, more than any other area in L.A. except skid row. "

The Los Angeles City Council spent $5 million in outreach services to clear the Ocean Front Walk encampment in the summer of 2021, moving homeless individuals into temporary hotel rooms and forcing those who did not accept housing to move on. Shortly thereafter, more than 70 tents sprang up in Westchester Park, near Los Angeles International Airport. As with the boardwalk encampment, the surrounding residents grew frustrated with the sudden spike in crime, open air drug use and trash — and the city eventually spent $1.1 million in outreach to move individuals into temporary hotels.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/op...d=winp1taskbar

Working with someone in LA county on data collection one of the often unspoken major traits of the on the west coast is their military backgrounds and the unacknowledged link between that and mental illness. Poverty is not the driver people but a failed mental heath care system. California often touts itself as a nation and national leader yet the political leadership sadly sees this as just a plight of the "disadvantaged" and the rampant underdogism ideas as solutions that are more about virtue signaling than delivering results. 2022 is a big election year there and local politicians need to answer some of these question with real answers.

[Tami]

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes charged with seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 Capitol riot

Stewart Rhodes — founder and leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers, whose members are accused of being key players in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress — has been indicted and arrested in connection with the riot, officials said Thursday.

The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He is charged with seditious conspiracy, along with 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates, officials said.

Most of those individuals were previously arrested, but one, 63-year-old Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, is also facing charges as part of the case against the Oath Keepers for the first time. Officials said Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Tex., and Vallejo was taken into custody in Phoenix.

The indictments unsealed Thursday mark the first time anyone has faced charges of seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attacks, though prosecutors have long signaled they were considering using that rarely applied section of federal law.

In interviews with The Post, Rhodes disputed previous government allegations regarding his encrypted posts to a group that included regional Oath Keepers leaders from several states at the scene.

The messages, on the Signal message app, were an attempt to keep the group members “out of trouble,” he said.

Rhodes also said he has grown disillusioned with Trump, accusing the former president of not supporting members of the Oath Keepers charged in the Jan. 6 investigation.

“All of the people that are being unlawfully detained or denied bail, they’re being abandoned by Trump. He’s done nothing for them. You know, he could donate money, he hasn’t even done that. He didn’t pardon anybody while he was still in office, and then when he left, he hasn’t raised money,” Rhodes said. “... I think he has abandoned his base, because he has abandoned the people who were there to protect his other supporters. So, yes, I do feel abandoned by him.”

Watching MSNBC. The messages he sent including references to Serbia, to the revolt against Milošević.

My thoughts, he got things A-backwards. Trump = Milošević. He was on the wrong side.

[numberthirty]

One other thing...

It would be really great to see Republicans come up short on "Fourth And One..." in the fall.

Just starting to look like that "And One..." is heading towards "And Inches..."

Which has the potential to make everything from there on out a seriously heavy lift.