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

[GindyPosts]

Because it takes money away from already struggling schools? Because it's a system that's easy to cheat.

Competition is not a cure for everything, ya know.

Explain to me why all schools in a state shouldn't be equally funded.

Charter schools blatantly cheat the system. It's surprisingly common and well-known, but considering the narrative is that traditional public schools (especially inner-city schools) are all failures and we should abandon them en masse in favor of the newer, "better" idea, you're not going to find many politicians who will take the stance that charter schools are a plague on our educational system and we must protect our traditional system.

I do not know why treating childhood education like fast food franchises has become part of society. If you royally screw up a child's education, it's going to severely impact them later in life. As a result, it's another reason why the "free market" strategy is a bad idea.

[GindyPosts]

Regulations are critical to the health and well being of humanity. Without them we would have a lot of issues, including issues in the drinking water (see what happened with Flint), the air (smog and other things can kill people), medicine (or you know we can go back to ancient remedies that can give us the plague like eating bladders of animals or ingesting snake venom into our systems), the cars we drive (You really want that steering wheel to be defective man, or that seat belt to snap when you get hit by someone), hell even our livelihood in regulating the amount of money that's printed and the like and what that paper is worth.

Regulations have been enacted for a long ass time and no it doesn't limit your freedoms. I mean, if you wanna try some untested creek water to drink, be my guest sir. I'll stick with my regulated tap water and plan on living a long life.

The point of equal opportunity is to allow for equal success.

As others have asked already, what exactly do you believe in? What is your point in not wanting regulations?

But, regulations killed mah jobs!

We need no regulations so we can be the best damn 'Murica it can ever be!

...

What is wrong with not wanting standards in the food we eat, and the buildings we live in? I get some people may be stressed out over feeling nagged all the time, but let's be real; let's say you're an average person who doesn't know what he's going to eat for dinner tonight, but everything available for him to eat is of various stages of quality; be it freshness, preparation, treatment, and where it was sourced from. If there wasn't a set of standards in place enforcing what should be edible for Americans to consume, would you be capable of knowing what's safe to consume or not? Sure, our senses may allow us to bypass the blatantly rank and vile, but what about from sources that prepared food adequately, but didn't follow safety procedures, or used meat from unhealthy livestock or expired produce during meal prep? Not like we have the time or patience to just go into the kitchen and see how the sausage was made, if you catch my drift.

I am looking forward to the counter response telling me how my setting is dumb and how regulations are stupid 'cuz we need freedom, baby.

[JackDaw]

[I]

I am looking forward to the counter response telling me how my setting is dumb and how regulations are stupid 'cuz we need freedom, baby.

But you’re effectively arguing against a straw man: the position that ALL regulations are bad. I guess few (if any?) people actually take that position.

I think it’s certainly possible..actually easy..to sensibly argue that some regulations are bad, and some societies are over regulated.

[Tendrin]

https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/...829528578?s=21

WBE-eeeeeee...

I know you already have them in the queue but wheeeeeeew.

[worstblogever]

https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/...829528578?s=21

WBE-eeeeeee...

I know you already have them in the queue but wheeeeeeew.

Well, I just wrote her profile the other day... looks like I might have to update that prior to posting.

Which takes some talent, y'know? To be s***ty enough of a person that it requires weekly check-ins. As opposed to the s***bird in the White House, who it's twice a day.

[Tendrin]

Well, I just wrote her profile the other day... looks like I might have to update that prior to posting.

Which takes some talent, y'know? To be s***ty enough of a person that it requires weekly check-ins. As opposed to the s***bird in the White House, who it's twice a day.

Looks like I got that one to you just in time. :P

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Honestly yeah. I care more about substance. Don’t need the team sports cheering

Agreed. I found the speeches to have been stirring, and I didn't miss the Saturday afternoon college football rah-rah atmosphere one bit.

[Tendrin]

But you’re effectively arguing against a straw man:

Sure, but that's because the Republican scarecrow has been without a brain for so long.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2014 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our profile of Tye “Glenn” Champ, a GOP candidate for governor of California in 2014 who just so happened to have a record as a felon for soliciting underage prostitutes and committing manslaughter, who after faring surprisingly well in the primary (finishing better than ten other candidates), managed to later get into an argument with a neighbor where Champ fired off several rounds at the neighbor and his son, instead missing wildly and killing a horse. He is now back in prison, and as such, seems unlikely to be politically relevant for some time (but nice job inviting him to your state party convention as a candidate, California Republicans!)

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who in 2010, had colorful campaign discussions that included pushing back against calls to increase the statute of limitations on sexual abuse in Wisconsin, leaving victims of abuses years ago unable to seek justice, labeling Social Security "a Ponzi scheme", saying that the 97% of climate change scientists who say the phenomenon is man-made were "crazy", the real cause of climate change was sunspots, and that Greenland is covered in snow and ice because we're actually witnessing "global cooling". In 2013 that Ron Johnson answered criticism from the League of Conservation Voters that he denied climate change by accusing them of waging “environmental jihad” and has compared politicians and activists trying to prevent climate change to Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro.

Johnson also was against marriage equality, and was pro-life to the extent where he considers that life begins at conception (which means he's also against most forms of birth control). Johnson also showed quite a bit of hypocrisy, railing against the economic stimulus packages passed by Congress to help the American economy, that as it turned out, his business had accepted funding from. Or perhaps he showed a great deal of personal bias for attacking the Obama administration for trying to take BP Oil to task after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the environmental damage he caused, by categorizing it as "launching an assault on BP" and after some digging, the media found out that Ron Johnson had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in BP Oil, and he made the excuse of not selling it because he was waiting for the stock market to be better so he could get more money out of it. And that was just what we discussed from BEFORE him reaching office in the 2010 Tea Party Wave in an upset victory over three-term Senator Russ Feingold. Since reaching office, Johnson has stayed to party lines in almost every obstructing vote in the Senate, voting against increasing the debt ceiling, the new version of the Violence Against Women Act (which he said was “unconstitutional”), and disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, just to name a few choice “blocks”. Heck, he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and then voted to keep the government closed when the time came to end it. Inexplicably, he also tried fear-mongering to the fringe elements of the GOP prior to the 2014 elections during the outbreak of Ebola Virus in Africa, warning that ISIS might deliberately infect its own followers with the disease and send them to the United States to deliberately spread it (which is not a viable form of suicide attack, considering people afflicted with Ebola are far from mobile as their body starts getting wracked by the disease, and they have to get blood or feces on anyone they’re attacking without being noticed). Sen. Johnson was one of the “47 Traitors” in the GOP who tried to meddle in the State Department’s negotiations with Iran, presented a photo of President Obama and President Rouhani shaking hands as proof they were “chummy” that was actually photo-shopped, and wasted time in a Senate hearing asking Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz questions about an “EMP Bomb” that doesn’t actually exist outside of movies. And speaking of movies, Johnson even went on record to rail against, of all things, The Lego Movie, because he felt the villain, Lord Business, was a demonization of rich corporations. He has blamed a rise in mass shootings on the media for reporting them, paid tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after his death by stupidly posting a picture of actor Edward Gero, who starred in a play about Scalia and his court decisions called “The Originalist”, and whose solution to help combat the prescription opioid drug abuse epidemic… bring back those “War on Drugs” ads where your brain was compared to an egg in a frying pan that did nothing to curtail even ordinary drug abuse in the 1980s.

Johnson compared his own hard battle for re-election in 2016 to the choice of passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to storm the cockpit, and as outrageous and disgusting as that comparison might be (not just to the victims but to his opponent Russ Feingold), with a lot of help from the voter suppression tactics employed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his cronies in the Wisconsin state legislature, managed to actually win a second term in 2016. And that was even after how on the week of the election, unprompted, he decided to discuss impeaching Hillary Clinton. I mean, counting your impeachment chickens before they’re hatched much, Ron?

Now, since Sen. Johnson’s shocking re-election, he has done little to stand up to the Trump administration, voting for every unqualified member of his “Cabinet of Horrors”, as well as voting for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. As frustrating as that is to see, there has only been one big vote on legislation since January in the U.S. Senate, and that would have been on healthcare repeal… Ron Johnson, in late July, was saying he would vote against any attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because Sen. Mitch McConnell and leadership in the Senate were being too secretive about what was actually in the bill, and that he would vote to block it from coming to the floor. Two days later, Johnson voted to repeal. Two days. That’s all it took to contradict himself.

And how upset was Sen. Johnson that he couldn’t burn down the American healthcare system and whiz on the ashes? Enough so that he responded to the dramatic “no” vote by Senator John McCain by saying Sen. McCain’s “brain tumor may have factored in” to his vote.

Well, isn’t that sweet of you, Ron.

[worstblogever]

We’ve covered before that Ron Johnson is a moronic conspiracy theorist, so current events in our country mean he’s really reveling in the moment, what with a conspiracy theorist at the White House. And what with Donald Trump and a lot of conservative “media” sources rambling on with paranoid delusions about a “Deep State” within the government sabotaging the Trump administration, that Sen. Johnson would join in the chorus on Fox News:

"And that secret society — we have an informant talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site. There's so much smoke here, there's so much suspicion. I've heard from an individual that ... there was a group of managers within the FBI that were holding meetings off site. Wzhen Strzok and Page had described a secret society, that didn't surprise me because I had corroborating information."

And… that was stupid enough that fellow GOP Congressman Charlie Dent all but accused Johnson of having brain damage.

We’re honestly thinking that’s not hyperbole. In April of 2018, Johnson started whining about supposed “unprecedented obstruction” about Democrats, and then literally, a minute later, started praising Mitch McConnell for leading the Senate GOP to block the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

Just… f***. F***.

On July 4th weekend, you may have seen a report about several Republican Senators and one member of the GOP House spending the celebration of American independence by going to Russia to meet with their foreign counterparts. Commentators and pundits thought that maybe the optics of going on a diplomatic visit to the country that meddled in the 2016 election on arguably its most patriotic holiday weren’t good. But, it was worse than that Three days later, Johnson suddenly was arguing against sanctions on Russia because “they aren’t working that well”. Three days. That’s all it took for Ron Johnson to flip on his on country.

This… this ***hole really does telegraph how easily he’s bought, doesn’t he?

Speaking of, Sen. Johnson gave lukewarm criticism when Donald Trump told four Democratic Congresswomen of color to “go back to where they came from”, but defended him against accusations that the attack was racist, saying that telling people to “love America or leave it” wasn’t racist in the 1960s. (Which isn’t what Trump said, mind you, and it has had racist connotations… but what do you expect from the dumbest man in the Senate?)

Ron Johnson is spending the 2020 election season apparently volunteering his services to be a proxy for Russian intelligence, issuing Senate subpoenas to the FBI to have them come down to discuss their investigation of Donald Trump colluding with the Russians in 2016, and also that he’s still beating the dead horse of Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and knowingly admits he’s doing it to swing the outcome of the 2020 election.

Barring any sudden resignation or karmically developing brain tumor on his own end, Ron Johnson is now cemented in the Senate like the dumb bag of rocks he is until 2022. Just… goddamn. He has pledged to not run for a third term, and has intimated that he might run for Governor of Wisconsin that year, instead. We’ll have to see if after twelve years, the Badger State gets wise to his bulls*** and rejects him if he runs for either.

[4saken1]

I never said they should have your tax dollars. I'm talking about their tax dollars. Why don't you think they should be allowed to spend their school tax dollars to send their child to a school of their choice?

They can, in most cases, by simply moving to a neighborhood in which that school serves. By conservative logic, if they can't afford to do so then they simply need to go out and educate themselves better so they can get a better job which enables them to.

[Surf]

Pretty Hilarious.

[Tami]

It's actually multiple and overlapping cults that have elevated Trump to be their 'Savior'. The QAnon cult which believes that Trump is waging a war to save all those poor 'white' children who have been kidnapped in order to be sold into slavery or eaten in the basements of Pizzerias; The Evangelical cults who believe that Trump heralds the 2nd coming/end of the world which will take them all into a heavenly paradise (or something like that); The White Supremacists Survivalist Cults which see Trump as the Racest Leader who will bring about a new Civil War that will reverse the outcome fo the last Civil War and either eradicate, eliminate, or subjugate anyone who isn't one of them; The Ayn Rand Cult of the most elite wealthy conservatives who see Trump as the pathway to their Golden City where poor people are left to die in poverty while they can live in luxury; The Federalist Society which is cult-like in its fervent belief in filling judicial positions with like-minded lawyers who will regard the Constitution like Evangelicals regard the Bible; Then there is another group, whose name I can't remember, who are made up of wealthy and very religious people who want the US to become a Theocracy instead of a Democracy.

Everyone assumes that there is just one 'Trump Cult', I mean perhaps there are those who are part of the 'Cult of personality' orfTrump and nothing more, but for many others, Trump is a focus of a pre-existing or proto-cults that sees him as whatever they want to see him as. Whatever they need him to be. Mainly because that is what Trump does best, he wants the attention, he wants the adoration, so in public, he morphs himself into whatever gets him the most 'love' which isn't 'love', it is more of a co-dependency.

Screenshot_2020-08-18 southpaw on Twitter What Trump is saying here is that he modified an impor.jpg

What Trump is saying here is that he modified an important US foreign policy stance toward Israel in service of an end-of-days biblical prophecy credited by Evangelical Christians that features the great battle at Armageddon and ends with the Jewish people in hell.

Twitter Link

[Tami]

JUST OUT: Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia report, focused on counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities. It's 966 pages long.

Twitter Link