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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

BOTH SIDES!

One party is receiving contributions from hate groups and our Russian geopolitical foes. One is receives them from civil rights groups and Planned Parenthood.

Case in point:

Doug Mastriano under fire for relationship with antisemitic website and its founder

Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, is facing bipartisan criticism for his ties to Gab, a far-right social media platform, and its founder Andrew Torba, over the rife antisemitic commentary that exists on the site.

The criticism is the latest in what has become a complicated campaign for Republicans after Mastriano, one of the most vocal purveyors of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump, won the commonwealth's primary in May. At the time, many Republicans worried that Mastriano was too extreme a candidate to win over the suburban swing voters needed to win statewide, and his ties to Gab and Torba have attracted new intraparty criticism. Mastriano will face Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, in November.

"Jewish voters expect candidates to condemn antisemitism whether it comes from the far left or the far right -- and to shun those who espouse it," said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "We strongly urge Doug Mastriano to end his association with Gab, a social network rightly seen by Jewish Americans as a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism."

Mastriano has had a formal relationship with Torba and Gab since at least April, when Mastriano's campaign paid Gab $5,000 for "consulting" services, according to state records first published by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning watchdog organization that has documented the relationship between Mastriano and Torba.

Gab, founded in 2016, brands itself as the "free speech social network" and has grown in popularity with conservatives, alt-right figures and some extremists as a counter to more traditional social media spaces such as Twitter and Facebook. The site's lax approach to content management has made it a haven for QAnon conspiracy theories, misinformation and antisemitic commentary.

The site has a particularly grisly history in Pennsylvania. Shortly before suspected gunman Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, he posted on Gab, "I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in." The shooting left 11 people dead, and while the site took down the suspect's profile, his digital footprint was littered with antisemitism.

[worstblogever]

Case in point:

Doug Mastriano under fire for relationship with antisemitic website and its founder

I mean, I was talking about most of the GOP House and Senate in DC getting all that cash from the Family Research Council on hate group donations.

But an OUTSTANDING example, yes.

[hyped78]

Explain to me why the damage done from the lockdowns falls exclusively on Democrats, when it was largely Republicans who fought against every measure meant to mitigate the pandemic, thus drawing it out?

It doesn't fall on Democrats, or only on Democrats (I don't know if your comment was for me or for Mister Mets, though)

You seem to think that the United States has a safety net in which grandparents can be given the care they need, without the constant involvement of their extended family.

Why is that?

Good point. I think that because I live in Europe - I see what you mean.

Pressure groups donating to representatives with the understanding that they will vote in the pressure group's interest, is corruption. When the donations come from the people, it's government working the way it's supposed to. While both things happen on both sides, the first happens a lot more often with Republicans and the second happens a lot more often with Democrats.

You just described the entire US political funding system as corrupt, then. Hard money, soft money, PACs - you think that money shows up just because of goodwill, without any interests attached to it? (whatever the interests may be, and some are more benign than others)

Exactly. The lockdowns did have some negative effects, but that was never the intent. The intent of the lockdowns was always to save lives.

That is true. But it doesn't mean that they actually succeeded in solving a problem vs. creating another another. In fact, there is increasing spotlight on whether lockdowns were "worth it", especially the latter ones (and each country is a different case). For example:
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/vie...-fierce-debate
The economic impact is staggering.

I am not saying this is undeniable truth - but it's certainly open to debate.

So vans of "isolation agents" would roll through the streets, dragging old people out of their homes (especially if there were children living there too) and hauling them away to senior citizen internment facilities? "Isolation" is not an especially practical policy, except possibly for patients in nursing homes (and we saw that those patients too were infected, by asymptomatic staff working in those facilities).

European counties generally had lower death rates than the USA, because the national governments could (and did) impose national mask mandates and shut-down orders. In the USA each State implemented its own policies, which of course kept the virus spreading from one State to another. It was the GOP-controlled States that kept the restaurants and bars open, which largely negated the advantages of closing the schools.

"Isolation" means keeping your distance, wearing a mask, sanitizing your hands - following everything we've been told to do.

Not all European countries did the same thing by the way, each country had its own approach. The most controversial example was Sweden, which didn't do lockdowns.

BOTH SIDES!

One party is receiving contributions from hate groups and our Russian geopolitical foes. One is receives them from civil rights groups and Planned Parenthood.

They are not the same thing, and you have to have a lack of a moral compass to even pretend it is.

I mentioned back there that whether you agree with some interest groups or not is a different matter, post #51825 (you're late to the party) - but that both parties vote, to an extent, according to interest groups, whatever and whoever they are.

By the way, the main Democratic Party funders:
https://www.opensecrets.org/election...-organizations

You'll even find a Cryptocurrency company based in the Bahamas offshore as one of the main donors.

I am not implying that Republican donors are "better", far from that. They are not, in my opinion. Most Democratic donors align with the policies I believe in, mostly.

[worstblogever]

I am not implying that Republican donors are "better", far from that. They are not, in my opinion. Most Democratic donors align with the policies I believe in, mostly.

Unless you have a Democratic member of the House or Senate taking money from Russians or hate groups, your argument remains ridiculous and without an understanding.

Also, perhaps this would be a good time to remind everyone that unlimited political donations as "free speech" were a policy that solely the Republican-appointed conservatives on the Supreme Court green lit with the Citizens United decision.

Conservatives are trying to make a false comparison that if it exists in ANY form, it's because of a stupid policy they created in the first place, but blame the other side for.

[hyped78]

Well played Mr. Biden haha:
https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1566...4ZdywwP1gmf6vQ

[hyped78]

Unless you have a Democratic member of the House or Senate taking money from Russians or hate groups, your argument remains ridiculous and without an understanding.

Also, perhaps this would be a good time to remind everyone that unlimited political donations as "free speech" were a policy that solely the Republican-appointed conservatives on the Supreme Court green lit.

Conservatives are trying to make a false comparison that if it exists in ANY form, it's because of a stupid policy they created in the first place, but blame the other side for.

That's your opinion, it's fine, I've already realized that the Democratic party tells you to jump and you ask how high, without any critical thinking. Even making up figures if needed to fit the narrative.

[hyped78]

On US school closures, NY Times:: "The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading. The results of a national test showed just how devastating the last two years have been for 9-year-old schoolchildren, especially the most vulnerable."

And it's the same all around the world were schools were closed because of Covid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/u...-pandemic.html

[Mister Mets]

You're comparing instigating a coup/domestic terror attack on the Capitol to "limits on in person learning" (which, kept kids from spreading a highly contagious and deadly virus around for years during the pandemic).

Starting to truly illustrate why you're not the best person to assess "both sides" analysis, Mets. There's comparing apples and oranges, but at least that's fruit. This is like levels of comparing an apple to a vat of molten steel.

I agree that these are difficult to compare.

Prominent Republicans weren't calling for anyone to storm the capitol. And while the capitol riots were damaging, it pales in comparison to the long-term harm of compromising on the quality of education for tens of millions of children.

Not the Europe I live in. Even notoriously laissez-fair Sweden sent grades 10 to 13 home. Where do you get such faulty information?

By the way, schools were "open" - just online. They were open in the US, too. Some schools met that challenge better than others.

In the United States, many school districts did not have in-person learning from March 2020-June 2021. That seems to be significantly worse than what was going on in Europe.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/04/healt...ntl/index.html

I can understand school closures in the first few months of the virus at the tail end of the 2019-2020 school year. But there should have been a solution in place for in-person learning when the 2020-2021 school year started.

[CaptainEurope]

And I think schools opened too early and caused the deaths of vulnerable people that could have been prevented. I care about those deaths. Does that make me as bad as fascist Republicans?

[The Cool Thatguy]

I agree that these are difficult to compare.

Prominent Republicans weren't calling for anyone to storm the capitol. And while the capitol riots were damaging, it pales in comparison to the long-term harm of compromising on the quality of education for tens of millions of children.

They weren't calling for it, they just looked the other way after it happened. And still follow the man who made it happen.

And again, why do the Democrats bear all responsibility for school closures, when it was the Republicans who fought against every measure to mitigate the pandemic? From closures to masks and eventually, vaccines, Republicans have fought them all, as a party.

The Democrats always seem to get punished for being the adults in the room.

[worstblogever]

I agree that these are difficult to compare.

Prominent Republicans weren't calling for anyone to storm the capitol.

Other than the sitting president and several members of the House and a Senator or two. Enough that Kevin McCarthy was fretting about it before the attack.

And who even with the gift of hindsight, are saying it was "legitimate political discourse." If not pretending the attackers are political prisoners.

You can't rewrite history, Mets. Your party, that you continue to support, staged a failed coup, and seem to make it clear they have no regrets other than that it didn't work.

[hyped78]

And I think schools opened too early and caused the deaths of vulnerable people that could have been prevented. I care about those deaths. Does that make me as bad as fascist Republicans?

Do you have data to back up the assertion of "schools opened too early and caused the deaths of vulnerable people that could have been prevented"? I don't think you do (I might be wrong) - if so, then that's a moot point, an opinion without data points.

I agree that these are difficult to compare.

Prominent Republicans weren't calling for anyone to storm the capitol. And while the capitol riots were damaging, it pales in comparison to the long-term harm of compromising on the quality of education for tens of millions of children.

There I disagree. At the very least, those are two completely separate and non comparable things, the capitol invasion and school closures. They're completely different things - and while I don't agree with school closures, the objective/ purpose behind it was a good one. There was nothing good about the capitol invasion.

They weren't calling for it, they just looked the other way after it happened. And still follow the man who made it happen.

And again, why do the Democrats bear all responsibility for school closures, when it was the Republicans who fought against every measure to mitigate the pandemic? From closures to masks and eventually, vaccines, Republicans have fought them all, as a party.

The Democrats always seem to get punished for being the adults in the room.

Agree. Both parties are to "blame" for school closures, directly or indirectly.

[hyped78]

That school closures were terrible for students, with lingering effects, seems a given:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2022376118
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...21.746289/full
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2788069
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/tripl...nal-inequality
https://blogs.worldbank.org/developm...-disadvantaged
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/futur...l-disruptions/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/u...-pandemic.html

This will have lasting effects on an entire generation of school kids - especially those from disadvantaged families - for years to come.

[kidfresh512]

‘They’re getting killed among women’: Skeptical female voters stand in way of GOP Senate

Republicans this election cycle thought they had finally achieved a breakthrough with suburban women after years of losing support.

Now, as the primary season has all but ended, the GOP is back where it once was: Appealing directly to skeptical female voters, the women whose support will make or break the party’s drive to retake the Senate majority.

A sure sign: One after the other, Republican nominees in top Senate battlegrounds have softened, backpedaled and sought to clarify their abortion positions after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Another is that male candidates have begun putting their wives in front of the camera to speak directly to voters in new television ads.


Those ads, along with public and internal polling data, suggest that the GOP’s struggle to attract women voters may turn out to be the biggest obstacle standing between the party and a potential Senate majority in 2023. A Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday showed that abortion was the single issue most likely to drive respondents to vote this fall, above inflation. And 52 percent of white suburban women say they would support a Democratic candidate in the election, the poll found, while only 40 percent said they would vote for the Republican.

Coughlin’s consulting firm, HighGround Inc., found in polling that women and unaffiliated voters in Arizona are overwhelmingly siding with Democrats on abortion. That trend has prompted Masters to remove language on his campaign website that previously stated he was “100 percent pro-life.” He has also adjusted his stance from favoring a far-reaching national abortion ban to one that only applies to third-trimester pregnancies.

“Clearly,” Coughlin said of Masters’ pre-primary rhetoric on abortion, “he needs to do something about it.”

Now they have to keep scrubbing their campaign sites, lying about or trying to make it seem like they don't hold more moderate anti abortion views than they have previously run on. The struggle will be that women will have seen Supreme Court Justices do the same thing in hearings moderating anti abortion views, answering questions about settled law as the GOP got them in.

Then came Dobbs where they showed their true colors, we knew was the case all along. The wave of harsh, disgusting red state legislation.

GOP will see if they can do it again. Turn from old positions, 'aw shucks and look I have a wife' tap dance away from how they clearly feel about women's rights. I mean in some cases it may work. Stick a camera in front of the wife and have her tell these voters her husband isn't a Handsmaid Tale commander in training.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Utah’s 3rd District, Jason Chaffetz, who in our first profile, we noted about how in 2012 he fanatically campaigned on behalf of Mitt Romney (including contradicting Mitt and saying he would run again and WIN in 2016). Jason Chaffetz also is a prolific back-stabbing weasel of the highest order, even to veterans of his own party who give him a hand up the power structure. Chaffetz also has carried out a personal vendetta with the TSA, convinced that he's searched because they're union employees and badmouthing them at every opportunity. As a member of the House Oversight Committee, Chaffetz had already participated in various witch hunts led by Darrell Issa, including interviews about Benghazi, insisting it is a scandal of unimaginable magnitude in spite of the fact that he has never produced, or seen any evidence to indicate there's anything to it. He’s also a pretty prolific warmonger, because he not only criticized the Obama administration for trying to negotiate a nuclear treaty with Iran, but he called for pre-emptive strikes on all “nuclear sites” they might have. Betrayal at the hands of the Utah Congressman is frequent enough that the term “getting Chaffetzed” was becoming frequent on Capitol Hill during his tenure. Chaffetz continued Darrell Issa’s pattern of having the House Oversight Committee waste millions of dollars on phantom “scandals”, including when he continuously interrupt Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards to try and rattle her during her five hour testimony before the panel. Chaffetz also took time to insult Richards and claim she was overpaid, for her $200,000 salary and embarrassed himself during his closing comments as he demanded a response from Richards to a chart he held up that showed inaccurate (i.e. false) statistics about abortion. Richards humiliated him by responding, “My lawyer’s informing me the source is Americans United for Life, which is an anti-abortion group,” said Richards. “So you might want to check your source.”

By July of 2016, after the investigation by FBI Director James Comey into Hillary Clinton's e-mails found no evidence of wrongdoing, and no indictments, Jason Chaffetz was one of several Republicans who demanded an investigation of James Comey's investigation. This is after Chaffetz had previously been hailing Director Comey as “a man of integrity and honesty”, but after his investigation did not produce sufficient evidence to press charges, suddenly he was suspect. Oh, and your tax dollars would pay for both investigations. Well, once Donald Trump won the electoral college in the 2016 elections thanks to GOP voter suppression tactics and Russian interference, a lot of smart folks around the United States realized that having the House Oversight Committee keep an eye on a corrupt businessman with authoritarian leanings so that he didn’t become an equally corrupt president. Whether it was the alarming news breaking about General Michael Flynn meeting with Russians, or any of Donald Trump’s own business dealings with Russia, Chaffetz suddenly wanted to sit on his thumbs. While some thought this was simply a matter of Chaffetz being a partisan dildo, others like reporter Louise Mensch indicated that there could be a strong possibility that an outside group had compromising material on the Utah Congressman. Within a few days of Mensch reporting that on Twitter, all of a sudden Jason Chaffetz abruptly announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2018, and then amended his announcement to say he wouldn’t finish out his term, resigning from office completely. This weasel has moved on to work as a Fox News contributor, even though his punch-worthy face is much more worthy of radio. It seems we won’t have the misfortune to have to discuss him for some time, but we’ll note that Chaffetz’s name keeps getting thrown around as a potential future Governor of Utah…

On this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Michael Snyder, a 2018 candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for Idaho’s 1st Congressional District, and stunt-mustache from To Catch a Predator. The day before announcing his candidacy, that Snyder had ranted against “men not dressing like men and women dressing like women” in an op-ed. As the 2016 election approached Snyder called Hillary Clinton a modern-day Jezebel and began flailing about claiming that the “elite” might launch an attack on Donald Trump and his family and blame it on a “lone wolf”, or create a “false flag” event so they could cancel or suspend the election. Perhaps that, and spreading his own conspiracy theory about the Las Vegas shooter being a secret anti-Trump activist with ties to Antifa, is why Snyder won the endorsement of the even-more-bats*** crazy Alex Jones.If that’s still not insane enough for you, Snyder would also claim to be the “most Pro-Trump candidate” while assuring confidence in everyday Americans by plugging his book about the Rapture, and making paranoid statements on social media where he’d mention the End Times, Like you do. Snyder’s platform, outside of conspiracy theories and warnings out of the Book of Revelations featured abolishing the income tax and the IRS, building President Trump’s stupid border wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, allowing communities to “say no to refugees” and his vow “to completely destroy Planned Parenthood as an organization.” As one would hope, Michael Snyder proved too wacky and apocalyptic for voters at the polls, and he finished a distant fifth with only 10% of the vote in the primary, slightly worse than FRED alumni Christy Perry. He may now go back to his full time job, trying to scare people that the book “Left Behind” is non-fiction.



On this date in 2019, 2020, as well as in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profile the U.S. House Representative from Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, Tim Burchett, who is now serving who was first elected to that position in the 2018 elections with 66% of the vote, allowing him to replace the disgraced John Duncan, Jr. in a highly conservative district that the GOP have held since, oh… 1857. Mind you, Burchett underperformed what Duncan used to do at the polls, because Burchett, the former mayor of Knox County, is a rabid Bigfoot enthusiast, whose greatest achievement in terms of policy was to make it legal for his constituents at home to eat roadkill when he was still a member of the Tennessee state legislature in the 1990s. (Knox County apparently prefers their mayors eccentric, as Burchett’s replacement was Glenn Jacobs, aka WWE’s Kane.)

Burchett has a long, sordid history of campaign finance violations dating back to his time in the Tennessee State Senate, including an investigation in 2018 that had the FBI considering whether or not they should pursue tax evasion charges. He also has been quite prolific on Twitter, being dumb enough to besmirch the University of Tennessee football team (not a smart political move for someone from Tennessee), and to make non-sequitur attacks on “Serbian dirtbags”. The latter slight, he of course refuses to apologize for, and the former he blew off as “something I deleted after five minutes”.