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

[James Cameron]

It's weird how some people who called it an "Open Air Prison" a few weeks ago are now posting videos of a beautiful and beloved Gaza strip that Israel just destroyed.
I myself took the "open air prison" line as fact, and now I am feeling manipulated.

https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1727972950207299947

https://twitter.com/michaeldickson/s...73907920806230

Both can be true

[CaptainEurope]

Both can be true

A gilded cage can still be a cage, true. But it's clearly not the image that was conveyed of a horrible, unbearable situation that basically forced Hamas to murder people in front of their children and kidnap those kids.

[CaptainEurope]

Some good news from Mali: German pastor Hans Joachim Lohre, affectionately known as Father HaJo, has been released by his Al Qaida affiliated kidnappers. He has been in Mali for over 30 years and has been working for religious tolerance between Christians and Muslims. He was a prisoner of Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin for one year.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Here's some Republican idiocy on steroids:

Tom Cotton Suggests Using U.S. Special Forces, Air Craft Carriers to Free Hostages from Hamas

[Mister Mets]

So, not many I'm guessing.



Quite clear to whom? You just took a completely self evident and obvious phrase and morphed to fit with your own bias. The line itself means nothing about Israel not existing, it's about liberation.

It's in the Hamas charter. "Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea."

It's frequently used to call out the Palestinian Authority for giving up too much. Personally, I don't think a major problem in the Middle East is that Palestinian authority is too willing to make deals with Israel.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This is heinous:

3 Palestinians Shot In Vermont In Possible Hate Crime

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is calling on the police and the FBI to investigate it as a hate crime.

[CaptainEurope]

Why are they all crooks?

Gom van Strien (peak Dutch name!) is a member of Geert Wilders' far-right, islamophobic party and was handpicked by old Geert to scout possible coalition partners. He stepped down from that post after 3 days when it was revealed that he is being sued for fraud by a fomer employer.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from California’s 50th Congressional District, Duncan Hunter, the current U.S. House Representative for California's 50th District, who has a prolific record of voting against women's interests, like against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, defunding Planned Parenthood back in 2011, and voting for measures like the Blunt Amendment and Personhood bills that would criminalize even some forms of birth control, let alone abortion. On gay rights, he has been opposed, even voting against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and claiming "the homosexual lobby" was trying to take over our military. Hunter has also been a hard-liner against immigration, calling for an end to birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, praising Arizona's SB 1070 law that allows racial profiling by law enforcement to catch illegal immigrants, and making outrageous charges that people were bringing the Ebola Virus across the U.S./Mexico border, or that 10 member of ISIS were caught attempting to cross it into the United States (which our nation's intelligence community completely rebuffed). Duncan Hunter is also a huge war hawk, having once listed nuclear war as an alternative to the treaty being forged with Iran, and playing the demagogue to President Obama on Syria, alternating stances from wanting intervention, to voting against it, to saying Obama should be impeached for ordering air strikes against ISIS there. His thoughts on the military are, as well, backwards and exist, as in a Armed Services hearing in January of 2016, he told Navy Secretary Ray Mabus he was “a greater threat to the Marine Corps than ISIS” for putting women in combat roles. In 2017, Hunter supported a Declaration of War on North Korea that didn’t exist, and expressed his support for Donald Trump by giving him the ringing endorsement of, “He’s an ***hole, but he’s our ***hole.” Rep. Hunter, also voiced his support for a GOP tax plan, in spite of both Republicans, Democrats, and in particular, Californians being opposed to it. He was actually quoted in an interview in late October of 2017, saying he would support such an unpopular piece of legislation, saying, “Why punish the rest of the nation because California is stupid?” The younger Duncan Hunter also has been a dedicated ally of the tobacco lobby, frequently doing everything he can to improve access to cheaper tobacco products on U.S. military bases, because our combat efficiency will be greatly improved with our troops being chain smokers. In 2016, Rep. Hunter showed how far his allegiance to the tobacco lobby (who have funneled tens of thousands of dollars towards him) went while in a Congressional hearing, he was arguing against laws that would ban vaping on airplanes, and decided to show his solidary for users of e-cigarettes by honest-to-goodness vaping in the middle of a Congressional hearing, dramatically puffing vapor out to prove his point. Hunter has interesting ethical problems arising from other hobbies he’s interested in, including video games which he illegally paid for using campaign money in 2015. He responded to that by starting off the new session of Congress at the beginning of 2017 by being one of a handful of Republicans attempting to gut funding to the Office of Congressional Ethics. If you’re wondering why it is that Hunter would be so terrified of facing the music over his children sneaking a credit card to pay for video games… oh, the rabbit hole kept going deeper. And literally, it involves a rabbit. It seems Rep. Hunter also used campaign money to have his family’s pet rabbit flown on a plane from California to Virginia… but that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. The extent of him violating campaign finance laws was egregious enough to garner the attention of the FBI, and sparked a criminal investigation, because the Hunter family was using campaign money to pay for several personal purchases and utilities. Keep in mind, the honorable Congressman has already tried blaming this on his wife, and has recently forced the resignation of his campaign chief of staff, whom he has employed since 2014, and seems to want to take the fall for him. There’s one problem with that attempt at accepting responsibility for the crime… these abuses of Hunter’s campaign money that mysteriously benefit his household and his children have apparently been occurring since 2010, four years before that chief of staff was hired. Among the other things the Hunters charged to taxpayers? Trips to Costco, Riverdance tickets, shots at bachelor parties, and hotel rooms which he was using to screw mistresses behind his wife’s back (that would be the same wife he tried blaming all the illegal spending on). All told, he and his wife were indicted on 60 corruption charges. Now, we’d like to think the people of California’s 50th Congressional District are, at this point, just voting “Hunter” on their ballot for a man under indictment and who literally called Californians stupid within the current term of Congress because they haven’t noticed he isn’t his father who retired yet. So, in order to make sure he could hold onto power, he opted to go with full on bigotry in his campaign ads, claiming his opponent, Anmar Campa-Najjar, a former Obama White House staffer, was actually a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who changed his name to avoid being linked to terrorism. While the pending trial for his alleged crimes isn’t enough to prevent his re-election campaign for 2020… Hunter is still stubbornly trying to hang on to his Congressional seat but was unseated in the GOP Primary by fellow Republican Darrell Issa, who decided to carpet-bag his way over to California’s 50th to unseat his embattled colleague rather than try to take back his old district.

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Reba Sherill, a 2020 candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida’s 21st Congressional District, who is the latest in a long line of Republicans we’ve had to profile who snagged that red pill and embraced the deranged Qanon conspiracy theory. Sherill was interviewed by a supporter and openly admitted attending a “Great Awakening” rally, taking a hipster’s approach to the nuttery by claiming she had “been following Q since the beginning”. When that interview was posted, she deliberately misspelled her “ThanQ you” back at her interviewer. Sherill rambled about a “new world order”, “globalism”, and fearmongered about the “sex trafficking” being done in underground cults (per the conspiracy theory), and burned through $350,000 of her own money during her campaign. That sum of cash translated to Sherill effectively spending $350 per vote she got, and amounted to all of 3% of the primary vote. It’s even more sad when you realize she finished with 1/14 of the votes by the winner… fellow conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. As Sherill has about no chance to ever reach office, we’re going to set aside our profile of Steve Scheffler for the moment to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1047-50, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled David Armstrong, who was first elected to District 75 of the Wisconsin State Assembly in 2020, after getting to run for office in the GOP Primary unopposed, and there are some decidedly disturbing things about that.

You see, prior to his being elected, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that in the wake of the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Armstrong was vocal in his support of the Confederate flag, because Wisconsin is clearly on the side of the Mason-Dixon line where that would even make sense. But Armstrong went all the way to his hilt in his online rants about the removal of the Confederate flag, posting videos featuring outright racist lies being spread by David Duke. Even when Armstrong wasn’t linking to quotes from one of the most notorious white supremacists and Klansmen in modern history, his own ugly, bigoted opinions were on display when he was adding comments around things he linked to like, “Slavery: Blacks dirtiest secrets exposed… Apologies are due to who from whom?”

David Armstrong also spent the build-up to the 2020 election liking and forwarding videos propagating the Qanon conspiracy theory, because of course someone who likes alternate history where slavery was the fault of the people being kept as slaves would also believe that insane pile of dreck.

And while he deleted all of his comments from 2015 regarding slavery and the Confederate flag, on Qanon, he dug in, saying:

”I don’t know if we’ll ever know the answer to that, nor can we prove it. That’s the biggest thing with QAnon is you can’t prove any of it.”

Yes, he touted that conspiracy theories like Q are good because it’s hard to prove a negative.

Regrettably, this virulently racist old coot was elected anyway, and he has, perhaps not coincidentally gone on to sponsor legislation to try to prevent schoolteachers from teaching “anti-racism and anti-sexism instructions and training”, and instead, sponsor legislation that focuses on teaching children completely useless and obsolete things, like cursive.

This white nationalist piece of garbage won re-election in 2022 primarily because he was allowed to run for re-election completely opposed in the primary or general election. And now... he's sponsoring transphobic bigotry.

[Catlady in training]

This question is a bit sick and twisted, and not relevant, there is no commonly used phrase referring to the liberation of Native Americans, at least not one used today. We went and straight up eradicated those people instead of packing those people in like sardines and bombing them. We made slaves of them and raped them. Oh, but if only they listened to the proclemation. Too bad the proclemation was read to them in Spanish which they had no hope of understanding.

Anyway, all I'm saying is the phrase itself does not mean "Israel shouldn't exist"

This is an interesting choice of word "we" here. Do you personally feel responsible for it?
How is it that it's not acceptable to suggest that people living today are in some way responsible for the actions of their own governments if those governments have not been democratically elected by our standards (even if it seems that most people in those countries don't have much problem with it). Yet for some reason, the same people who are quick to condemn the above as collective blame seem fine to blame themselves for the atrocities committed by their ancestors hundreds of years ago.

[Kirby101]

This question is a bit sick and twisted, and not relevant, there is no commonly used phrase referring to the liberation of Native Americans, at least not one used today. We went and straight up eradicated those people instead of packing those people in like sardines and bombing them. We made slaves of them and raped them. Oh, but if only they listened to the proclemation. Too bad the proclemation was read to them in Spanish which they had no hope of understanding.

Anyway, all I'm saying is the phrase itself does not mean "Israel shouldn't exist"

Yes, that is exavtly what it means. It means Israel should be Palestine. That is what everyone who uses it means. It doesn't mean they will kill all the jews who remain and live under Palestinian rule. But it means Palestine will replace Israel.

As for our country's genocidal past. Yes the phrase "Manifest Destiny" was used to mean we had a divine right to the land "From Sea to Shining Sea" and could treat the inhabitants in whatever way that would give us that land. Manifest Destiny was an excuse for genocide. There was no point where we peacefully co-existed with the Native Americans.
As for slavery, it is our country's original sin and one we still have not atoned for.

[JackDaw]

This is heinous:

3 Palestinians Shot In Vermont In Possible Hate Crime

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is calling on the police and the FBI to investigate it as a hate crime.

When three men are shot is involved I really struggle to see why investigating it as “hate crime” should make any difference.

I just take it for granted that when three people are grievously harmed, it gets a detailed, exhaustive investigation, and at some point the facts will establish the motive. I actually feel assuming a specific motive at the start is likely to be anti-productive.

[AnakinFlair]

When three men are shot is involved I really struggle to see why investigating it as “hate crime” should make any difference.

I just take it for granted that when three people are grievously harmed, it gets a detailed, exhaustive investigation, and at some point the facts will establish the motive. I actually feel assuming a specific motive at the start is likely to be anti-productive.

I think hate crimes involve even stiffer penalties.

[Malvolio]

Here's some Republican idiocy on steroids:

Tom Cotton Suggests Using U.S. Special Forces, Air Craft Carriers to Free Hostages from Hamas

Yeah, that might make for an exciting action movie, but in real life, things don't work that way.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Got an alert that the truce between Israel and Hamas has been extended two days to free more hostages and prisoners.