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

[Tendrin]

More of this, please.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —
After weeks of nationwide protests calling for police reform, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced the city is creating an alternative department to respond to non-violent calls, like those dealing with mental health and homelessness.
Keller said this first-of-its-kind program is a unique solution to a number of challenges the Albuquerque Police Department is facing.

https://www.koat.com/article/mayor-k...fety/32869947#

Obviously, it's not a solution to all systemic issues, but it's plainly better than sending guys with guns to murder homeless people sleeping at a bus stop or a drunk man sleeping it off in his car.

[JCAll]

There was plenty of evidence in 2016 to what a POS he was. People chose to ignore it.

People chose to embrace it, and then spend half a decade wallowing in what miserable bastards they've been granted license to be.

[shooshoomanjoe]

I think that the person who commits the act of violence gets kicked out of the police-free zone

Terrible system.

[numberthirty]

More of this, please.



https://www.koat.com/article/mayor-k...fety/32869947#

Obviously, it's not a solution to all systemic issues, but it's plainly better than sending guys with guns to murder homeless people sleeping at a bus stop or a drunk man sleeping it off in his car.

Mentioned this yesterday in post #4105.

That said, yeah...

Why this hasn't taken place in quite a few more places is a bit of a disappointment, even if it's not much of a surprise.

[Tendrin]

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Democratic Party called on its U.S. Senate nominee to drop out of the race Tuesday after he made sexually repugnant comments about a campaign staffer in a group text with her and other staffers.
The party said its state executive committee voted unanimously on Monday evening to withdraw all of its resources from Chris Janicek's campaign

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-...171613543.html

The text messages, which were obtained by The Associated Press, were from a group chat involving Janicek and five other people, including the female staffer. At one point, he wrote that he had argued with her and then asked whether the campaign should spend money on “getting her laid."
“It will probably take three guys," he wrote, before describing in graphic detail an imagined group sex scene involving the female staffer.
He then tried walk back those comments as “a joke," and texted an apology to the group.

[Malvolio]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-...171613543.html

This guy should be in WBE's April 1st post next year.

[JackDaw]

I think that the person who commits the act of violence gets kicked out of the police-free zone

Who by?

Patently you need a different sort of police force...but was society really wondrously peaceful before organised police forces existed?

[Steel Inquisitor]

More of this, please.



https://www.koat.com/article/mayor-k...fety/32869947#

Obviously, it's not a solution to all systemic issues, but it's plainly better than sending guys with guns to murder homeless people sleeping at a bus stop or a drunk man sleeping it off in his car.

Love this. Programs like this needs to go nation wide.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

‘Woefully Inadequate’: Trump Order Falls Short Of Broader Push To Curb Cop Abuse

His move doesn’t erase an administration record of working to end federal efforts to prod change in troubled police departments. Meanwhile....

**********

Congress Headed Toward Standoff On Police Reform

Senate Republicans are moving forward with their own police reform legislation, setting up a clash with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

**********

Republican Group Questions Trump’s Health: ‘It’s Time We Talk About This’

“He’s shaky. Weak. Trouble speaking. Trouble walking. So why aren’t we talking about this?” The Lincoln Project asks. Why indeed!

**********

Donald Trump Gets Hit With Blunt Fact-Check Over AIDS Vaccine Falsehood

“Too bad there isn’t a vaccine for serial liars,” one person responded to the president’s latest false claim.

**********

Book By Trump’s Niece To Reveal He ‘Derided’ Father’s Alzheimer’s Struggles

A new tell-all by Mary Trump promises to expose the president’s “appalling” treatment of his father.

[worstblogever]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nebraska-...171613543.html

This guy should be in WBE's April 1st post next year.

Absolutely, yes. Unacceptable.

[worstblogever]

In both 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Pat McDonough, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates who is also a conservative talk radio host (yes, this is going the way you think it will) whose entire political lifeblood seems to be to subsist on a constant stream of race-baiting to motivate conservatives. Since 2010, there have been multiple instances of McDonough complaining about Mexican immigrants not speaking English (in Maryland) and people celebrating pro-immigration victories by "popping their tequila corks", whining about "black youth mobs" running amok, and campaigning for all immigrants to have driver's licenses rejected by falsely claiming 9/11 hijackers got their licenses in Maryland. He responded to the Baltimore riots in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray by suggesting protesters' parents should "have their food stamps taken away" for those people using their First Amendment rights to protest, and wanted the death penalty to be reestablished in Maryland and instituted in any case where a police officer is attacked. McDonough's legislative playbook is much the same, as he tends to submit the most extreme anti-immigrant legislation his warped mind can come up with. In 2016, though, he began a new focus on transphobia, as he supported legislation on transgender bathroom access. As we predicted in our original profile of McDonough, he took a shot at higher office in 2016, trying to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives Maryland's 2nd Congressional District, but was crushed by incumbent Democrat Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, only getting 33% of the vote in the general election. McDonough will hopefully begin fading from relevance, as he’s currently trying to weasel his way back into some political office by running for Baltimore County Executive, while using his radio talk show for propaganda purposes, such as lying about how the FBI raided the office of a Maryland GOP consulting firm. McDonough’s elected career seems to be over.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” gave our original, long-overdue profile of the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 22nd District, Devin Nunes, who has rocketed up into our “must profile” list over the past two years after actions he took his role in the Trump transition team, as well as in the Republican House Intelligence Committee’s joke of an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Trump transition team with Russia. Because it’s not so much that Rep. Nunes has made Trump look like a traitor, or that he’s made his campaign look like traitors, or that he’s made himself look like he was covering up his own potentially treasonous actions… no, Devin Nunes has drawn our scrutiny because he’s so goddamned transparent and incompetent of how to cover up a scandal, he may as well have been trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it.

Devin Nunes spent his high school days back in the 1990s rocking a mullet and passing the time like you would think a guy with a mullet would, then first fan for Congress at the age of 29 back in 2002, winning and spending six years quietly going about his business as most Bush-era Republicans, using patriotism after 9-11 as a shield against any criticism. Nothing too interesting about him, through that stretch.

Of course, Rep. Nunes’ tone changed around 2009, in the face of Democrats having control over the White House, Senate, and House, when during the debate over the soon-to-be-passed Affordable Care Act, he spitefully claimed it was bringing back “ghosts of communism”, which we’re sure in no way was any kind of hyperbole about democratic socialism.

Fast forward a few years to February of 2014, and the Congressman was also going “all-in” on climate change denial, during one of the worst droughts in the history of California, no less, when he declared “global warming is nonsense”. Other than that, Nunes spent the second half of the Obama administration wasting taxpayer dollars so that conspiracy theory nuts could bay at the moon over theories about the attack on an American-controlled compound in Benghazi, but after years of promising some clear links to wrongdoing by President Obama or Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nunes and his GOP-controlled House Intelligence Committee investigation ended up having to debunk most of their own theories.

Still, all of that partisanship brought Devin Nunes to the attention of the Trump campaign, and he was quickly brought on as a member of the Trump transition team. Only days after the inauguration, Nunes was entrenched enough with the secrets of Team Trump and on their side that he was backing his Muslim ban, in spite of the fact that, y’know, it was unconstitutional as f*** and most national security experts thought it actually would make foreign relations far, far worse.

Less than a month into the Trump administration, though, the whispers of links between the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team trying to set up secret meetings with Russians were growing to a claxon alarm… and Devin Nunes, the man who only a few years earlier was whining about healthcare reform bringing back “the ghosts of Communism” was suddenly referring to the reports from the FBI, CIA, and others in the intelligence community as a “Witchhunt” or a new “McCarthyism”. It’s only apparently Nunes who’s allowed to fear-monger about the commies, you see, and when his own party literally has their candidate linked to the leftovers of the KGB to swing the American elections that it’s dirty pool to talk about it.

And let’s be honest, it’s around March of 2017 where Nunes done f***ed up when it came to being a covert operative trying to help out the Trump administration and himself. As the great John Oliver summed it up, "Stupid Watergate", where if Watergate were happening again, but everyone involved was very, very stupid. Nunes was caught leaking classified information found during the intelligence community’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Trump transition team directly back to the White House and then blurting it out to the public outside the White House to frame public opinion in Trump’s favor. Similarly to how Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the Department of Justice’s inquiries into Trump/Russia because of his own involvement, Nunes was forced to step aside after leaking classified information to the White House, then the public.

Except, Devin Nunes is completely full of s*** that he’s no longer tainting the House Intelligence committee’s investigation, especially when he’s caught by the media sending his own investigators on taxpayer’s dime to the United Kingdom to try and find Christopher Steele, author of the Steele Dossier. (Note: They failed, using House Intelligence Committee position to taint investigation and attack the FBI investigators.) As time goes by, though, Nunes has become less and less subtle about putting his thumb on the scale, moving on to actually outright talk of “corruption” he’s imagining is happening at the Bureau, trying to throw up smokescreens to distract from the Trump/Russia investigation like say, demanding an investigation Hillary Clinton over the conspiracy theory Uranium One in December of 2017, because no Republican would enjoy giving a Christmas gift to their party like continuing to waste taxpayer dollars harassing Hillary Clinton for daring to be both a Democrat and a woman seeking the presidency. and of course, choosing the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page, the most suspicious Russian operative in the entire Trump/Russia operation to be the hill to die on, by write a memo about it, saying it was full of “shocking revelations” but once it was released, would do little but make him look like even more of an incompetent boob.

By February of 2018, Congressman Nunes was caught funding his own alternative news site to try and manipulate what “news” was being spread about the Trump/Russia investigation, and that in no way mirrored how the intelligence community reported on how the 2016 election was tainted by Russian bots spreading those kinds of stories, right? It's dragged on now to where Nunes has started threatening senior members of the FBI and Department of Justice with impeachment for not revealing all of the information they’ve gathered during their investigation of the links between Trump and Russia (when by now, Nunes is supposed to have recused himself anyway, and has already shown he’d leak classified information for partisan reasons) and he’s been left with no other option but to go on Fox & Friends to claim that the Trump campaign was “set up” by the FBI.

It's almost as if Devin Nunes has some personal stake invested in the matter, you know? Like, more than the average Republican who will just look the other way, Nunes seems to want to outright taint the investigation and declare it over… like how he might in some way be implicated in illegal activity because of things he did as a member of the Trump transition…

[worstblogever]

California’s 22nd District has a +8 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and in 2018, he only managed 53% at the polls. Nunes has not ceased has flagrant attempts to prop up the Trump administration:

• August 28th, 2018: Nunes travels to the United Kingdom, looking to convince British intelligence to help him prove the Steele dossier is inaccurate and only succeeding in embarrassing himself. British intelligence tell him to kindly f*** right off.
• October 1st, 2018: An investigation by journalist Ryan Lizza reveals that Devin Nunes not only doesn’t have a dairy farm in his district, but it’s in Iowa… and he employs undocumented immigrant workers on that farm.
• January 22nd, 2019: Nunes cannot be arsed to bother to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Nunes voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Devin Nunes votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Nunes votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• March 19th, 2019: Nunes files a pathetically frivolous lawsuit against Twitter, outraged that two parody accounts named “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” mocked him, and he goes on conservative media to insist he also has been “shadow-banned from Twitter”, when he hasn’t.
• March 27th, 2019: Rep. Nunes abruptly calls for the resignation of Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, because he apparently can’t stand to be in the minority in Congress and see anyone actually holding the Trump administration accountable for its rampant corruption.
• April 3rd, 2019: Nunes panics as the Mueller Report is released to Attorney General William Barr, and goes on Fox News to refer to it as "a dossier".
• April 4th, 2019: Devin Nunes is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote 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).
• April 8th, 2019: Rep. Nunes continues filing frivolous lawsuits, this time against McClatchy News, because he doesn’t like that they have the nerve to report facts about him.
• June 4th, 2019: Nunes votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Devin Nunes votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 31st, 2019: Devin Nunes gets in the spirit of Halloween by speaking before the House and claiming that Democrats holding classified impeachment hearings inside the SCIFE was “like a cult” and that the media were “cult followers” for reporting on the president’s wrongdoing.
• November 24th, 2019: Nunes is linked for the first time in media reports to Lev Parnas, already arrested in the Ukraine scandal, and he responds quite predictably for him… threatening to sue the media for linking him to the scandal (which would later be proven to be true in Congressional testimony).
• December 9th, 2019: On Twitter, a rather paranoid Devin Nunes claims he has a “stalker”, and posts a picture of the person following him. It turns out to be reporter Lee Fang of The Intercept, who was, of course, trying to do his job and ask Nunes questions.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Nunes ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• January 18th, 2020: Devin Nunes is mentioned in a Congressional hearing to be linked to criminal Trump stooge Lev Parnas, currently under arrest for campaign finance violations, and that he may have been aware, or even in on the Trump 2020 campaign’s attempts to get Ukraine to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden in exchange for their military aid being released.
• February 20th, 2020: Nunes goes on Fox News, and expresses outrage over the fact that there are “nude pictures of Donald Trump in the possession of the Russians”, because Democrats, according to him, are hunting for them… no one seems to be able to make sense of it, but Nunes’ claims about nude Trump photos is getting a bit… frequent.
• March 15th, 2020: As the Covid-19 pandemic begins, and several states take more direct action to enforce social distancing guidelines in the interest of public safety, Devin Nunes goes on Fox News and downplays the threat, telling people to “go to their local pub”.
• April 5th, 2020: Nunes refers to homeless people as the “zombie apocalypse” in a Fox News interview.
• May 8th, 2020: Nunes celebrates the news that Attorney General William Barr recommended the miscarriage of justice that Michael Flynn’s charges (that he plead guilty to already) be dismissed, but isn’t just content to be happy for Flynn… he makes the claim that Flynn was “set up” by the FBI.

Devin Nunes is not your “average” Republican, he’s the sea-worthy douche-canoe using what power he has to prop up in incompetent racist s***heel in the White House. He currently is moving towards election season hoping and praying he can survive all the controversy and criminal activity he seems to be linked to over the past few years, while also getting his ass handed to him in court rulings about all the frivolous lawsuits he’s been filing.

His opponent this fall is small business owner Phil Arballo, one of three Democrats that was in the open primary and advanced out to try and unseat Devin Nunes for the good of the country. Arballo isn’t about to let him off the hook for his ties to the Ukraine scandal, as well as Nunes’ ignorant statements telling people to go out to pubs during a pandemic. There’s a good chance that California’s 22nd Congressional District could be flipped blue in 2020, and we can only hope that Arballo gets one of the most toxic, partisan conspiracy theorists in Congress bounced from office when the final tallies are in.

[Mister Mets]

What do you guys think of the police-free zones. Do y’all think it can be applied on wider scale?

It's a terrible idea, and shouldn't be applied on a wider scale.

Society is not going to function without the enforcement of laws. It's bad when the process goes wrong, but it doesn't make the alternative of people taking the law into their own hands better.

Haha, Google banned The Federalist and Zerohedge from making money using google ads, because they spread racist conspiracy theories.

I remain curious as to what specifically was said that is unacceptable.

However, in the case of the Federalist, it was never demonitized.

https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/sta...97425821540352

There seemed to be an objection to something in the comments section, which sets an interesting precedent for online commentary. Should Facebook or Twitter be demonitized if someone says something stupid. Should the religious right insist that comments by obnoxious atheists be held to the same standards?

I mean, when the cops are the ones turning peaceful protests violent, what is there to do?

Firing someone for pointing out a correlation between violent protests and 1968 presidential election results is probably not the answer to that question.

[aja_christopher]

"Just asking questions"

"Just asking questions (also known as JAQing off) is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements. It shifts the burden of proof to one's opponent; rather than laboriously having to prove that all politicians are reptoid scum, one can pull out one single odd piece of evidence and force the opponent to explain why the evidence is wrong.

The tactic is closely related to loaded questions or leading questions (which are usually employed when using it), Gish Gallops (when asking a huge number of rapid-fire questions without regard for the answers) and Argumentum ad nauseam (when asking the same question over and over in an attempt to overwhelm refutations)."



https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions