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

[The Cool Thatguy]

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but this sounds like folks having gone into cover your ass mode, to be soon followed by someone thrown under the nearest Greyhound. This story is only going to get messier and uglier.

Most likely.

The DOJ inquiry won't matter.

There's no federal law that requires cops to do their job, sadly.

[Gray Lensman]

Most likely.

The DOJ inquiry won't matter.

There's no federal law that requires cops to do their job, sadly.

And a Supreme Court case that establishes that protecting the public is not part of the job description.

[CaptainEurope]

Except Clinton's policies (if Gore had become President) would have continued to lower the debt. G W Bush gave the rich massive tax breaks and then got us into expensive wars he did not pay for. Culminating in the biggest market crash since the Great Depression. After the initial spending to save the Economy, the deficit shrank under Obama, until Trump gave even more money to the Rich.

Any metric will show that the Democrats are better on the budget and the Economy. But the media continues to spout the GOP narrative that they are more fiscally responsible. But what they really mean is that they will give away massive amounts to the Rich, to Corporations and to Military Contractors. But they will not let money be used for the poor or needy, especially since so many of them are not white.

Oh, no doubt, I just wanted to clear up the difference between the deficit and the national debt.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Most likely.

The DOJ inquiry won't matter.

There's no federal law that requires cops to do their job, sadly.

And a Supreme Court case that establishes that protecting the public is not part of the job description.

Then perhaps police departments should remove this slogan from their vehicles and such. No wonder people want the cops defunded.

[CaptainEurope]

Trump invited Proud Boys to his recent rally, but when they came, they were told they had to turn their shirts inside out or buy a different shirt as they did not allow Proud Boy symbols.

The amount of disarray in the GOP is staggering.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Trump invited Proud Boys to his recent rally, but when they came, they were told they had to turn their shirts inside out or buy a different shirt as they did not allow Proud Boy symbols.

The amount of disarray in the GOP is staggering.

I'm a little surprised that the Proud Boys would have to be told not to wear their crap. GOP SOP is basically "Don't say that part out loud."

[Mister Mets]

Trump invited Proud Boys to his recent rally, but when they came, they were told they had to turn their shirts inside out or buy a different shirt as they did not allow Proud Boy symbols.

The amount of disarray in the GOP is staggering.

He seems upset.

Most likely.

The DOJ inquiry won't matter.

There's no federal law that requires cops to do their job, sadly.

There are potential drawbacks to that kind of law.

Among other things it would give different police officers justification for excessive force.

[CaptainEurope]

I'm a little surprised that the Proud Boys would have to be told not to wear their crap. GOP SOP is basically "Don't say that part out loud."

That has not been true since about the tea party. Now it's "say the quiet parts out loud, add <**** your feelings> and then whine when you have to face consequences for what you said.

[Tami]

The law holds medical professionals, doctors, to high standard. They risk losing their licenses if convicted of malpractice. They have to abide by their oath.

Lawyers can lose their license to practice law if they act against the interest of their clients under certain conditions. They are expected to act professionally.

Police officers wield a power over people's lives that is just as significant. Anyone who holds the power of life or death over others, through action or inaction, should be held to a high standard of professionalism.

[CSTowle]

They should at least suspend them without pay, before acquitting them. And if they're caught on camera shooting an unarmed person they have no reasonable cause to think is a danger to themselves or others running away from them (and especially if they plant a gun or drugs or the like on them after the fact) they should be charged with murder and the state should seek the death penalty where applicable. Charge those who help cover up their crimes as accessories to murder.

[kidfresh512]

Most likely.

The DOJ inquiry won't matter.

There's no federal law that requires cops to do their job, sadly.

It will matter to at least get clarity and accountability to the people there. With such a huge amount of the budgets going to these officers and the public expecting that the training and arms they are buying will get them a certain result in this situations.

Breaking that illusion with an accurate account of why these officers did not or could not act sooner to possibly save more lives will be invaluable.

Then it is up to people to vote accordingly. If they have been mislead on what the local and state governments have been using their money for.


____________________

‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections

Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO.


Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Chip Rogers, who at one point was the Majority Leader for the Georgia State Senate, but his career started to fall apart after he began to host conferences for Georgia Republicans to warn about the threat of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory, and that President Obama was using “the Delphi Technique”, a supposed form of mind control to that could be utilized to coerce large segments of the populations into city centers where they could be more easily be controlled. Rogers also had a prolifically extreme conservative record, supporting legislation like 20 week abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest, as well as drug testing. Rogers went on to retire and become a lobbyist, because of course he did.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of John Diehl, a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives who went and put himself at the center of a sex scandal, where he was sexting with a 19 year old college intern who just so happened to be three decades his junior, who he wanted to (hold your lunches) leave “quivering”. When news first broke that Missouri Southern university was scrapping their entire program to send interns to the capital, rumors began to swirl, and when they led back to Diehl, he actually spend some time hiding in his office, trying to deny any wrongdoing until the texts themselves were dug up by the Kansas City Star, and at that point he released a public apology, decided to spend time at home resolving some… well, marital issues that were now presenting themselves, and resigned. Diehl was supposedly a “family values” Republican, who counted himself a member of the local branch of that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council (who have a knack for having members cheat on their wives), fiercely defended biblical marriage (except apparently his own), and even led a move by the Missouri GOP to try and ban any extracurricular activity in public schools that might ever “discuss sexual orientation other than its purpose for human reproduction”. As a member of the legislature prior to his affair being exposed, Diehl had no inkling of how to work across the aisle and would talk of impeaching Governor Jay Nixon for… reasons, we guess. Diehl never seemed to specify. His voting record hardly paints a picture of a stable individual, as he voted for the most insane legislation Missouri Republicans came up with over his career. That includes their attempts to ban Sharia Law, prevent the Agenda 21 controversy, to nullify federal firearms laws, to attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act, to assure presidential candidates submit their birth certificates (yes, he’s a Birther, too), responding to the Sandy Hook Massacre by trying to put more guns in schools, creating stricter Voter ID Laws, adding additional requirements for a woman having an abortion, cutting the amount of time a person could collect unemployment, to drug test welfare recipients, and to force children in public schools to not just participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, but to make them do so in English. Diehl has been publicly humiliated and run out of office.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Missouri State Senator Mike Moon, who we’ve been covering since 2013, when he was a member of the Missouri House of Representatives. He remains the only person we’ve profiled whose name can be spelled by Tom Cullen. Moon first took office in 2013 after a special election and spent eight years in the lower chamber making himself a polarizing figure in Missouri politics.

That was probably because of his tendency to have made some of the most embarrassing remarks from a Republican anywhere in the country regarding abortion over the past few years, and that truly is saying something. In January of 2016, he sponsored legislation called the “All Lives Matter” act (uh oh). But don’t worry, it didn’t have anything to do with police violence, it was just a slap in the face to folks in Ferguson, Missouri added on to a Personhood bill he filed. It was even more of a bit of an eyebrow-raiser back in March of 2016 when during debate on a bill that would ban abortion at any stage of development, Moon was laughed out of the room when he compared abortion to the enslavement of African Americans for a moment before he claimed to be a “reproductive expert” based on his qualifications of being a “former embryo”. Alas, Mike Moon did not learn his lesson about looking like a boob for trying to get high and mighty about fetal development without knowing what the hell he was talking about. In February of 2017, Missouri Republicans were again looking to pass some form of Personhood legislation, even though it would obviously be overturned. And this time, Mike Moon didn’t just compare abortion to slavery. We mean, he did that, mentioning the Dred Scott ruling during debate, but this time, he also compared legalized abortion to “Jews being slaughtered by Nazis”, because why not add Godwin’s Law while we’re at it? But he STILL wasn’t done. He then began to argue that life begins farther than people think, comparing sperm to tadpoles, rhetorically asking, “Is a sperm alive?” Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, asked during a hearing Tuesday night on a bill that would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the statement that life begins at conception. “Have you ever seen a tadpole? Is a tadpole alive?”

So, since Mike Moon cares so much about life at all stages, you would think he would care a lot about saving the lives of refugee children fleeing war, right? HA HA! Trick question! Are those kids Muslims? Because if so, Mike Moon wrote a nice letter in November of 2015 where he explained he would like those kids placed in camps, and sent back home at the first opportunity, especially because you can’t trust ‘em because they lie so danged much.

”I do realize that the refugees we should be scrutinizing most is one who professes the muslim faith. Unless I'm mistaken, a practicing muslim can do whatever is necessary for the ‘good’ of the faith - telling ‘fibs’ is a smallpart of what they might do. Our preference, as a nation, should be to place the refugees in camps so that they can be properly cared for and returned safely home when the time is right.”

Mike Moon doesn’t like the idea of special protections in schools for transgender youth, and in his arguments against them, he cites the work of Dr. Paul McHugh, who classifies being transgendered as a “mental disorder”, even though the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying “gender dysphoria” as a mental disorder years ago. He also introduced a resolution that he and his fellow legislators should appeal to Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act with “manly firmness”, as if they would be able to pull it off if they just took an extra large dose of Viagra, or something? As you’d expect, Mike Moon’s whole voting record is pretty “out there”, including a vote to try and block the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty, votes to attempt to nullify federal firearms laws, and a vote for the unconstitutional HB 499, which would have forced schoolchildren to recite the pledge of allegiance… specifically in English.

In June of 2017, how he decided to put up a video on his Facebook page to announce he was introducing new anti-choice legislation in Missouri, and he did so by discussing it as he decapitated a chicken. That is not a typo, Mike Moon cut off a chicken’s head and started to pull its innards out while discussing abortion.

Now, if that isn’t crazy enough, there’s also the matter of former Governor of Missouri Eric Greitens, who resigned in disgrace after he was accused of taking nude photos of his mistress without her consent, assaulting her during rough sex, and threatening to release the nude photos of her if she ever exposed him as an adulterer. After Mike Moon spent four years trying to impeach Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon without any real cause, when a governor comes along who isn’t just a sexual predator, but is caught breaking the law in multiple campaign finance violations and abusing charitable organizations to further his own political career, can you guess what Moon wants to do? NOTHING. Mike Moon thought it would be unfair to impeach Gov. Greitens for ANY of his moral, or legal failings.

In 2019, Moon’s focus turned to a direct theocratic bent, as he voted for legislation to have public schools teach Bible courses, and voted for a bill that prohibits all abortion in Missouri “if Roe v. Wade is overturned”.

In 2020, Mike Moon was term-limited in the Missouri House of Representatives and took on the former Chairman of the Missouri GOP, David Cole in a primary that he narrowly won with 52% of the vote. It seems that Cole struck a nerve in that primary, as Moon has currently been throwing a strop in the Missouri State Senate and is feuding with Gov. Mike Parson after he named Cole to a position as a circuit judge in Southwest Missouri.

And while you would think becoming a regular headache to those ostensibly leading your party in your own state would not be something that would be rewarded with any kind of advancement to higher office, Mike Moon is running for U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, and is currently a part of an 8 candidate GOP Primary to try to replace the retiring Missouri Congressman, Billy Long.

Just… please do not send this idiot to Washington, D.C., PLEASE. There’s already as any GOP dunces as the nation can probably tolerate at once in the building.

[achilles]

Thank God our long national nightmare is over, and Johnny Depp won. Well, someone had to win. And those were the two choices. Eh, $15 million to Depp, IIRC.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Captain Jack Sparrow has made it through another wild adventure....