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

[Tendrin]

I'm in a different time zone, but can someone explain to me why the Senate is up at almost 3 AM on the Eastcoast, voting?

It's called the 'vote-a-rama' and it's tied to the reconcilation process.


https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ast-all-night/

[CaptainEurope]

It's called the 'vote-a-rama' and it's tied to the reconcilation process.


https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ast-all-night/

Ah. So essentially, Republicans putting lots of poison pills out to keep people up.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The American right is beyond terrifying.

The Surreal Spectacle of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Capitol Riot Rage Cage

The whole thing was comical until you remember that everyone watching that spectacle will be voting in November, then it was no longer funny.

[useridgoeshere]

The news media are largely to blame for amplifying crazy do-nothing big mouths because they love extremes and they love a train wreck. If you ask people the names of the hardest working reps who actually accomplished something, they wouldn’t know them at all. Instead, they only hear about the people who’ve achieved nothing (or less than nothing) because it’s more interesting to talk show hosts and sensationalist talking heads.

[JB]

Would you really want an overall system that allows late abortions for non medical reasons??

It's an important question. During the protests in front of the Supreme Court while waiting for the Roe v Wade decision, there was a group of pro-life LGBTQ democrats (along with DFLA) counter-protesting. One of the women speaking to reporters talked about three clinics within walking distance from where they were standing that offered late-term abortions. She specifically mentioned the Dupont Clinic. "If you are 26 weeks or later into your pregnancy, we can still see you, regardless of your medical history, background, or fetal indications. We do not require any particular “reason” to be seen here – if you would like to terminate your pregnancy, we support you in that decision."
There's a good chance you'd never see this in Europe.

The entire subject is not as black and white as it's often portrayed and it doesn't split party lines. AOC thinks pro-life Dems shouldn't be in office.

AOC questions if Dems who oppose abortion rights should still serve
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/26/aoc...life-democrats

"Because the thing that a lot of people don't like to talk about is the fact that not every Democrat is pro-choice," she added.
"So, the ones that aren't, we really need to reassess if it's appropriate for them to continue to serve in 2022, because people should have the right to control their own body. This is pretty basic."
"That goes for the municipal level, it goes for the state level, it goes for the federal level."

[CaptainEurope]

It's called the 'vote-a-rama' and it's tied to the reconcilation process.


https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...ast-all-night/

My god, they are still at it.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/f...ivity_pail.htm

[Tendrin]

Leading gunmakers made more than $1 billion from selling AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons in the last decade, a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform says.

These companies use "aggressive marketing tactics" to target young men by emphasizing masculinity, making veiled references to white supremacist groups, and touting military-grade weaponry, the committee report said.

"The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless," Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, committee chairwoman, said in a statement.

Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive who is now a senior policy adviser to gun-safety advocacy group Giffords Law Center, told Insider that it is crucial to examine the ways that gun companies market their weapons.

Busse noted the change in how guns had been pitched over the years – from an emphasis on hunting and self-defense to selling military-grade weapons and tactical culture.

"The [gun] industry is both creating these customers and marketing to them. And therefore, it's propagating more of this radicalization," Ryan Busse said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...c21101713d7f3e

[worstblogever]

The American right is beyond terrifying.

The Surreal Spectacle of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Capitol Riot Rage Cage

The GOP brand in the late Trump years is going for "Christian" Nationalism. Where they ignore the teachings of Jesus completely, and rally behind the cruelest men around as the "victims" when they face consequences and justice for that cruelty.

[worstblogever]

In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. Senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Our quick take on Mike Lee is that every policy he doesn’t like (The Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Violence Against Women Act (!), child labor laws (!), FEMA, disaster relief (!), the Food and Drug Administration, the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment… etc.) he has the nasty habit declaring unconstitutional (which is the job of the Supreme Court, not a senator). Sen. Lee is also one of Sen. Ted Cruz’s few allies in the Senate and was one of the most recognizable faces seen during the 2013 Shutdown, including at the rally the weekend before it ended at the World War II memorial where a pastor demanded that President Obama “put down his Quran and come out with his hands up”, before Tea Party “patriots” started grabbing barricades to throw in front of the gates of the White House while some waved Confederate flags. Y’know… nice, healthy rhetoric worthy of the movement.

Our 2015 update on Mike Lee featured his joining the ranks of the #47 Traitors and signing his name onto a letter to the leaders of Iran meant to sabotage negotiations the Obama administration was having with Iran, his belief that the Supreme Court actually does not have the power to overturn same-sex marriage, and the fact that he submitted federal “religious freedom” law legislation to attempt to allow the legal discrimination of LGBTQ citizens based on someone’s “deeply held religious faith” (the bill went absolutely nowhere).

In 2016, Mike Lee defended his U.S. Senate seat against Misty Snow, the first transgendered candidate for Senate in U.S. history, and in a state as red as Utah, he not surprisingly easily won re-election to a second term in office. He was confident enough that he would be victorious that he spent far more time helping his pal Ted Cruz campaign for president, and not just remaining on the fence about Donald Trump as a prospective nominee the whole time, but calling on him to step down as their nominee in October of 2016 (presumably so Ted Cruz could take his place as the nominee).

Fast forward a couple months, though, and as an investigation was just beginning by the United States’ intelligence community into the Trump campaign and Russia potentially colluding to change the outcome of the American election, and Mike Lee was quick to declare that “I don’t see any evidence of anything happening here, so as a result, I think it’s time to move forward. It’s time to wrap this thing up and it’s time to move on.”

With the amount of revelations spinning out about Trump/Russia, Mike Lee could not keep his finger in the dyke forever. As of mid-July 2018, he was talking about how Donald Trump needed to “step down” to salvage any kind of legacy. And that was BEFORE Trump’s humiliation by Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, but slightly after Trump passed over Mike Lee and his brother Thomas, a Utah Supreme Court Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and instead chose Brett Kavanaugh (likely because Kavanaugh thinks presidents should be above the law). He has continued to carry water for Trump regarding the Mueller investigation, complaining not only about Democrats reading it and wanting to protect future elections, but literally booking himself on The View to whine about it and claim he didn’t see evidence of a crime. Which is amazing because Mueller literally spells out ten different ways Trump committed obstruction of justice during the FBI’s investigation. It’s like he didn’t read the report, y’know?

Mike Lee has been further proof that the GOP can be their own worst enemies. Senate Republicans have been unable to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act during the Trump administration, even though they had a 52 seat majority. They’re stuck, though, because they have about three or four Senators with too much of a conscience, and a small cabal of complete ideological lunatics who aren’t satisfied with a partial repeal, they want socialized medicine completely burned to the ground, and salt poured on its ashes so nothing can ever grow there again. And Sen. Lee is one of that latter group.

Don’t think for a moment, though, that Mike Lee is ever coming to the center, because in 2018, he was openly discussing eliminating all public protected government lands as a policy of the United States, because apparently rejecting the Bears’ Ears Monument in Utah wasn’t enough for him.

[Tami]

The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy

As a therapist for children who are being processed through the American immigration system, Cynthia Quintana has a routine that she repeats each time she meets a new patient in her office in Grand Rapids, Michigan: She calls the parents or closest relatives to let them know the child is safe and well cared for, and provides 24-hour contact information.

This process usually plays out within hours of when the children arrive. Most are teens who have memorized or written down their relatives’ phone numbers in notebooks they carried with them across the border. By the time of that initial call, their families are typically worried, waiting anxiously for news after having—in an act of desperation—sent their children into another country alone in pursuit of safety and the hope of a future.

But in the summer of 2017, Quintana encountered a curious case. A 3-year-old Guatemalan boy with a toothy smile and bowl-cut black hair sat down at her desk. He was far too little to have made the journey on his own. He had no phone numbers with him, and when she asked where he was headed or whom he’d been with, the boy stared back blankly. Quintana scoured his file for more information but found nothing. She asked for help from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, who came back several days later with something unusual: information indicating that the boy’s father was in federal custody.

At their next session, the boy squirmed in his chair as Quintana dialed the detention center, getting his father on the line. At first the dad was quiet, she told me. “Finally we said, ‘Your child is here. He can hear you. You can speak now.’ And you could just tell that his voice was breaking—he couldn’t.”

The boy cried out for his father. Suddenly, both of them were screaming and sobbing so loudly that several of Quintana’s colleagues ran to her office.

Eventually, the man calmed down enough to address Quintana directly. “I’m so sorry, who are you? Where is my child? They came in the middle of the night and took him,” he said. “What do I tell his mother?”

[Tami]

CPAC Texas 2022 Live Blog


So, CPAC/GOP is admitting out loud that they are an organization of Domestic Terrorists.....

[worstblogever]

Hell, he’s so patriotic that he would also be one of the two Senators to vote against

• July 23rd, 2019: Sen. Lee votes against the Zadroga Act, to provide medical care for the 9-11 First Responders.
• January 31st, 2020: Mike Lee votes against witnesses being allowed in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
• February 5th, 2020: Lee votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance in the 2020 elections by trying to extort a favor from Ukraine to produce false evidence on Joe Biden in exchange for Congressionally-approved military aid to be released to them.
• February 25th, 2020: Lee co-sponsors and votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.
• July 2nd, 2020: Mike Lee begins a hyperbolic name-calling tantrum shortly after failing to push through a resolution condemning protests against police violence as “mob violence”, going on to say that Democrats were challenging him based on “bat guano-inspired insanity”, adding:
  

  “This is a statement that says mob violence is bad. Democrats can’t say mob violence is bad without simultaneously taking a jab at the president of the United States? You can’t really oppose this, it seems to me, without being on the side of the mobs, of mob violence, of mob mentality, of cruelty and intolerance and terror. I don’t think one can oppose this without being comfortable with those things. These violent protesters aren’t enlightened, edgy or hip. They’re frauds. They’re dimwitted, phony drama addicts.”

• January 6th, 2021: In the middle of the Capitol attack, as insurrectionists are storming the building, Donald Trump tries to call Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, but instead, dials Mike Lee and leaves a bizarre voice-mail, which in the days that follow, the press get their hands on audio.
• February 13th, 2021: Lee votes to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, after at one point during the trial, trying to sabotage Democrats’ case against him by claiming their portrayal of his statements on the phone call, and denying it took place when he’d already previously confirmed it.
• March 6th, 2021: Sen. Lee votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he can’t be bothered to care if people need financial assistance during a pandemic.
• May 28th, 2021: Lee votes against the creation of a non-partisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6th attack.
• August 10th, 2021: Mike Lee votes against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• December 14th, 2021: Lee votes against raising the debt ceiling, jeopardizing the United States’ credit rating.
• February 28th, 2022: Mike Lee votes against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have established a right to physicians to perform abortions to save their patients’ lives. He then boycotts Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address that night, refusing to even be tested for Covid-19 as required before the proceedings.
• March 30th, 2022: Lee votes against putting the extremely qualified nominee, Judge Kentanji Brown-Jackson, onto the Supreme Court.
• May 25th, 2022: Mike Lee responds to the mass shooting at Uvalde, Texas, by claiming that the real cause of mass shootings in our country was “fatherlessness”. The shooter at Uvalde lived in a home with a mother and father. So do a majority of mass shooters. Mike Lee, as we’ve more than demonstrated, is completely full of s***.
• May 26th, 2022: Sen. Lee votes against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, because at this point, domestic terror is a policy plank of authoritarian Republicans.
• July 27th, 2022: Mike Lee votes against the PACT Act, blocking additional funding towards veterans exposed to “burn pits” while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a vote conducted out of spite that Democrats passed the Act the prior day. Several Republicans are seening shaking hands and fist bumping to celebrate screwing over the vets, while releasing a series of photos of the Senate GOP Caucus filling USO boxes and claiming they “support the military”.
• August 2nd, 2022: After a week of outage after Republicans used the filibuster to block the PACT Act, another vote is held on the bill… Sen. Lee is one of 11 Republicans who vote against it again out of spite.

Mike Lee’s allegiances to Donald Trump have led a faction of Utah Republicans seeking to restore their party to its former self in 2022 to run two primary challengers against Sen. Lee in the GOP Primary. When we mentioned that fact in our post one year ago, we said, “If there’s any hope for the Republican Party, it will be that an incompetent, boot-licking putz like Mike Lee does not get a third term in the Senate.” There’s clearly not hope for the Republican Party, because he easily won the GOP Primary with 62% of the vote.

The only way Senator Mike Lee is going to be taken out of office, it seems, is if he’s convicted of seditious conspiracy, and considering in the build-up to January 6th, he was exchanging texts with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows including one on December 8th, 2020 about creating a slate of “fake electors”… that is going to be something Merrick Garland and the Dept. of Justice might take a look at. Also something that should be added into the evidence log? Only a few weeks prior to that, he straight up declared “America is not a democracy” on social media.

We’re going to question the judgment of the state of Utah if they send someone who straight up endorses authoritarianism, interprets the Constitution as he sees fit to set up his party as the only one in control, and took part in a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power post-election to a third term in the Senate. Think about that, after twelve years, they think Mike Lee, who’s demonstratably a useless kook, might deserve another six on the job. At some point, you have to believe there’s a better option, and Lee sets the bar so, so low.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

CPAC Texas 2022 Live Blog


So, CPAC/GOP is admitting out loud that they are an organization of Domestic Terrorists.....

Well, isn’t THAT the damndest thing!

[worstblogever]

CPAC Texas 2022 Live Blog


So, CPAC/GOP is admitting out loud that they are an organization of Domestic Terrorists.....

Well, for once, they're being honest.

[Tendrin]

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show" early Sunday morning, the Florida district attorney who was suspended from his job by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for pledging to not prosecute doctors or women over abortions described the horrific way he was forcibly removed from his office, saying it was akin to what you would see in Russia, China or North Korea.

Speaking with the host, Hillsborough County DA Andrew Warren said the whole affair reeked of living in an Orwellian Police state.

"Let's be clear, this isn't about anything I have done," he began. "This is about what I've said. The statements that I signed onto were value statements expressing my opposition to legislation that was being considered and passed that was violating people's constitutional rights"

"So I'd be punished not only for cases that have not come before me but for cases that don't even exist or not even on the ballot in the state of Florida," he continued. "This is Orwellian thought police, I'm being punished for not enforcing laws that are not even on the books yet."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...0533c9cb18abfa

Meanwhile, DeSantis' all out assault on trans people continues, giving conversion therapy 'leaders' and catholic groups comitted to never approving any guidance that allows for transition leading positions on transition care guidance rule making. Here's Zinnia Jones on it:

https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1556158364060712960

Transphobia is a sectarian religious belief not fit for secular policy. The Catholic Medical Association, whose members include Patrick Hunter of the Florida Board of Medicine and Florida Medicaid "expert report" writers Patrick Lappert and G. Kevin Donovan, explains their views:

Seems like Florida is well on its way to banning gender affirming care for minors and banning transition for poor people. So, not only will you not be allowed to transition as a youth, if you're not already well off, you won't be allowed to do it as an adult either. Moreover, it is likely he will take his cue from Texas and try to criminalize doctors who would give gender affirming care to youths, given the radicals shaping this 'guidance'.