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

[Zauriel]

Trump knew enough to run as a Republican, so he already had Sherpas to carry him up the mountain. If he had run as an Independent or as a Green Party candidate, he never would have come close to winning.

That's true. Trump ran as an independent candidate before and lost

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald...ntial_campaign

Trump's desire to occupy the nation's highest office was inspired by Ross Perot's attempt to run in the Presidential election..

[CaptainEurope]

That's true. Trump ran as an independent candidate before and lost

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald...ntial_campaign

Trump's desire to occupy the nation's highest office was inspired by Ross Perot's attempt to run in the Presidential election..

Yes, people don't talk enough about how Trump lost 2 out of 3 presidential campaigns.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”posted profiles of the current U.S. House Representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd District, Markwayne Mullin, who we noted was a Birther conspiracy theorist, having entertained the ramblings of a constituent about President Obama’s birth certificate at a town hall, saying he agreed with them that it was fraudulent, but didn’t feel anything could be done about it. Mullin is also noteworthy for voting against disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy while having the double standard of wanting federal aid whenever a tornado hits Oklahoma. Mullin also claims America’s food stamp program has widespread fraud because he has personally witnessed “physically fit people using food stamps”. Mullin has not only voted against every opportunity to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but has also directly lied to constituents by telling them the healthcare exchanges had not opened, when they were. Lastly, Mullin has also been one of the GOP’s members on the Benghazi Select Committee, having called for numerous investigations into the attacks, never being satisfied with previous ones that have all concluded there was no malfeasance of culpability by the Obama administration. Over the past year, Rep. Mullin has voted to defund Planned Parenthood, tried to pass legislation to prevent the acceptance of Muslim refugees, and when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was allowed to speak before Congress, Mullin went on Twitter to post a misspelled message of support, “God Bless Isreal”.

In 2017, Mullin has had some tense standoffs with constituents, including a town hall where he declared the anger he faced was “bullcrap” and whining that his appearance was a “service” because “no one paid him to be there”. Only three months before the 2018 election, he was found guilty of campaign finance violations after an ethics investigation and forced to pay back $40,000, and was investigated for investing in the same businesses that Rep. Chris Collins did and led to him being indicted for insider trading. Did we also mention that a week before the election, Mullin, who himself is of Native American heritage, mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her own, and then insinuated that the Trail of Tears was actually a “volunteer walk”?

These many, many flaws in his character that would hinder his chances of re-election are negated by Oklahoma’s 2nd is sitting at a +24 Republican lean, it still helped him get re-elected with 75% of the vote. Thus, he could rack up a voting record this extreme:

• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Mullin ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Mullin votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Mullin signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 7th, 2021: After a group of Trump-supporting, fascist domestic terrorists spend a day terrorizing the Capitol Building, upset over the results that Trump lost the election, Markwayne Mullin votes against certifying the electoral college results.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Mullin votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because accountability is anathema to his party, even after a failed coup attempt that results in the deaths of police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Markwayne Mullin votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Mullin votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Mullin votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Markwayne Mullin votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Mullin votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Mullin votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
  *]May 19th, 2021: Rep. Mullin votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• November 5th, 2021: Markwayne Mullin votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

We can’t end this profile without commenting further on what Markwayne Mullin had to say on January 6th, during the attack on the Capitol Building by Trump supporters staging a violent crew and hunting for specific Democratic members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to murder them. You see, Mullin had already spent weeks contributing to “The Big Lie”, as we documented, so he was potentially culpable, and someone might just say he’s a seditious prick who has no place in America’s politics. That makes it little surprise that this absolute motherf***er had the gall to blame “both sides” for the attack:

”We all (have responsibility),” he said. “The media has responsibility, the Republicans have responsibility, the Democrats have responsibility. Those who post the most ridiculous things on social media … have responsibility. No one is to blame here. We are all to blame.”

We should also note that against the wishes of the State Department, Pentagon, and intelligence community, and all reason, in September of 2021, Markwayne Mullin attempted to sneak into Afghanistan for reasons that remain unclear, although he insisted he had someone he wanted to sneak out of the country before the return of the Taliban to power (courtesy of Donald Trump abandoning our allies there and signing an agreement to pull out the U.S. Military). Mullin never apologized for hurling insults at several diplomats, and when word went public about his behavior he responded, “I’m not Rambo…”

Which, isn’t the best reference, since in his third movie, Rambo fought alongside the Mujahdeen.

Bottom line, Markwayne Mullin is still a seditious idiot.

[Tendrin]

Learning that just giving homeless people the help they need works is a lesson we need to learn over and over and over and over and over and over again.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...?ocid=msedgntp

Nine of 14 participants were homeless at the beginning of a San Francisco basic income program.
They were given $500 per month for six months.
By the end, six of them had found permanent housing.
A basic-income pilot in San Francisco, California was meant to help fourteen residents attain food security and improve their overall financial well-being.

[Tami]

White father and son charged with shooting at Black FedEx driver in case echoing Arbery’s killing

A White father and son in Mississippi were charged this week after they were accused of chasing and shooting at a Black FedEx driver in an incident that the driver’s attorney says was a “copycat crime” of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

FedEx driver D’Monterrio Gibson said he was delivering packages on his route in Brookhaven, Miss., on Jan. 24 when two White men with whom he had not interacted chased him in a pickup truck for about seven minutes and fired at least five shots at the van he was driving.

Gibson, who said he was driving a Hertz van at the time but was in his full FedEx uniform, told reporters Thursday that he believes that Brandon Case and his father, Gregory Case, chased and shot at him because he is Black and thought he didn’t belong in the neighborhood.v

At about 7 p.m. on Jan. 24, Gibson was delivering packages when he saw a white pickup truck approaching him and honking its horn. Court records show that Gregory Chase was driving the truck. When the vehicle cut him off as he was trying to leave, Gibson told the Mississippi Free Press that he attempted to swerve around the pickup truck to get out of the neighborhood. But as he drove past a couple of houses, Gibson said there was another man in the road — and he had a gun pointed at him. That man was Brandon Case, according to court records.

“There’s another guy standing in the middle of the street pointing a gun at my windows and signaling to me to stop with his hands, as well as mouthing the word, ‘Stop.’ I shake my head no, I hide behind the steering wheel, and I swerve around him as well,” he told the Free Press, the first to report the news. “As I swerve around him, he starts firing shots into my vehicle.”

After he eventually got away from the men, Gibson told reporters that he called police to report what happened to him. As he was explaining the incident, a dispatcher interrupted him and asked whether he had been on Junior Trail, the street where the driver was delivering packages.

“I said, ‘Yes,’ ” Gibson said at the news conference. “He was like, ‘Well, I just got a call of a suspicious person at this address.’ ” Gibson recalled to the Free Press how he responded, “Sir, I’m not a suspicious person, I work for FedEx. I was just doing my job.”

Gibson told FedEx what had happened and filed an incident report the next day, on Jan. 25, to the Brookhaven Police Department detailing that he heard “at least five shots and heard the bullets hitting the van.” The police report includes an interview with a woman identified as Gibson’s boss who confirmed that the van had at least two bullet holes and three packages inside the vehicle had bullet holes.

[JB]

Rubio, Manchin offer bill to prevent feds from buying 'crack pipes'
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ng-crack-pipes

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Friday introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at blocking federal funds from going towards "crack pipes" and other drug paraphernalia.

The Preventing Illicit Paraphernalia for Exchange Systems (PIPES) Act would prevent the government from purchasing syringes and needles to be used for illegal drug injection. The bill also dictates that federal funds can not be used to “procure, supply, or distribute pipes, cylindrical objects, or other paraphernalia that can be used to smoke, inhale or ingest narcotics,” according to a press release.

The bill also states that unless there is a considerable risk of an HIV outbreak or hepatitis infection due to drug use, government funding should not be used towards such purchases.

“Every American and West Virginian has been impacted by the drug epidemic that has killed over 101,000 Americans from April 2020 to April 2021,” Manchin said in the press release. “While this is a heartbreaking issue that must be fully addressed by the federal government, using taxpayer funds to buy paraphernalia for those struggling with substance use disorder is not the solution.

[Kirby101]

Rubio, Manchin offer bill to prevent feds from buying 'crack pipes'
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ng-crack-pipes

Because, why trust Science when it gets in the way of grandstanding.

Politics Are Tricky but Science Is Clear: Needle Exchanges Work

[JB]

Because, why trust Science when it gets in the way of grandstanding.

Politics Are Tricky but Science Is Clear: Needle Exchanges Work

Considering the overdose rate continues to get worse every year, I'm all for trying any and everything to get a handle on it and to help minimize the spread of infection.

[Tendrin]

The 'crack pipe' story is, of course, all a lie, rooted in the conservative misinformation media complex as they so often are.

Earlier this week, a lie rocketed around conservative media that the Biden administration planned to hand out “crack pipes” as part of a $30 million public health grant package. The truth was just getting its pants on.

The myth appears to have started with a miscommunication and a large leap of thinking from the right-leaning Washington Free Beacon.

The Daily Beast confirmed that the claim—that a Health and Human Services spokesperson confirmed that smoking kits funded by the program “will provide pipes”—is false. The agency said the spokesperson never made or confirmed that claim, and it provided documentation to corroborate that version of events.

The report, published Monday and titled “Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity,’” cited an HHS spokesperson as confirming that a sweeping harm reduction package “will provide pipes” to smoke, quote, “any illicit substance.”

“Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for ‘smoking kits/supplies,’” the article said. “A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/free-c...-beacon-report

[The Cool Thatguy]

I saw the 'crackpipe' article on a DEA inter-department email. Gotta love Trump undermining law enforcement's ability to stay non political.

[Tendrin]

I saw the 'crackpipe' article on a DEA inter-department email. Gotta love Trump undermining law enforcement's ability to stay non political.

Law enforcement being filled with right-wing extremists has been an enormous problem since before Obama was president. Trump just made it worse.

[Tami]

A New Version Of The Mueller Report Reveals That Mueller Declined To Charge Donald Trump Jr. And Roger Stone With Computer Crimes

The Department of Justice released a new version of the Mueller report Friday afternoon that reveals for the first time that former special counsel Robert Mueller considered charging Donald Trump Jr. with a misdemeanor “computer intrusion” crime for accessing an anti-Trump website using a password he obtained from WikiLeaks.

The new version of the report on Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election also said that Mueller declined, citing insufficient evidence, to charge the political operative Roger Stone with crimes related to the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers and email accounts. And the report “did not establish” that the Trump campaign’s then-director of national security, JD Gordon, was acting as an agent of Russia when he arranged for changes to the Republican platform during the 2016 convention.

The new version of the Mueller report contains nearly a dozen new unredacted passages and was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News in 2019. The lawsuit sought portions of the report that would reveal the identities of people Mueller considered charging and whose names were originally redacted. A lower court ruled against BuzzFeed News, which appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last year. Today's release marks the third time BuzzFeed News has forced the Justice Department to unredact portions of the 448-page report.

[JB]

The 'crack pipe' story is, of course, all a lie, rooted in the conservative misinformation media complex as they so often are.



https://www.thedailybeast.com/free-c...-beacon-report

The media has to make up its mind because the Wall Street Journal said the kits include "crack pipes" but are "only a very small part of the program." Now we have senators wasting time on bills based off of lies or half truths or who knows what.

[Tendrin]

The media has to make up its mind because the Wall Street Journal said the kits include "crack pipes" but are "only a very small part of the program." Now we have senators wasting time on bills based off of lies or half truths or who knows what.

The Wall Street Journal is, of course, a Murdoch rag and not a respectable newspaper.

[Jack Dracula]

Republicans are a serious threat to the democratic process.

Realistically, the only viable opposition to Republicans is currently Democrats. No other party has the popularity, organizational structure, or resources.

The idea that Democrats must be spotlessly perfect in every way or they're not worth voting for is unrealistic and misleading and is therefore ultimately self-defeating.

The plain fact is that a political party without bad actors, flawed strategies, and mistakes made has never, does not, and will never exist.

Democrats aren't perfect. No one here has ever claimed they are.

The uncomfortable reality is if we don't vote for Democrats we're very likely condemning ourselves to semi-permanent Republican domination for an unknown period of time.

It isn't the situation we want and Democrats didn't create it, but it's where we are so moaning about it won't help and may actually do harm.

Anyone, please point out how any of these statements are wrong.