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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Eric Trump: "The LGBT community, they are incredible. And you should see how they come out in full force for my father every single day. I'm part of that community, and we love the man."

Just waiting for the Twitter Hashtag #EricComeOut


‘We don’t want him!’ Eric Trump sparks confusion by declaring himself part of the LGBT community

I wonder if Eric had any clue just how bizarre and awkward that sounded? Snarkmasters on Twitter are going to have a field day with that blunder. I don't think this much furor would've been raised if Eric replaced LGBT community with Ku Klux Klan.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Bishop E.W. Jackson, a particularly insane clergyman who ended up on the ballot in the 2013 elections for Governor of Virginia because the Virginia GOP decided to nominate candidates for office at their convention rather in a primary vote to ensure that their gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, would not be damaged in a primary election. The drawback was, the party hard-liners picked Jackson, a complete kook, to run as his lieutenant governor. Thus both were stuck discussing not just Cuccinelli’s radical party stances, but the fact that E.W. Jackson had given thoughts on the LGBTQ community as nuanced as “IKKY!” and “YUK!”, promised there would be divine retribution if same sex marriage was legalized (still waiting),gone on social media to saythat President Obama is a secret Muslim manchurian candidate, a closet homosexual, or the Anti-Christ himself in different posts, and written books that had passages about how Planned Parenthood is as bad as the KKK, that Democrats are the new “slave masters” in America, and that people who take yoga were on a “path to Satan” (really).After Dylann Roof assassinated nine African-Americans in a hate crime in the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Jackson broke a particular one of the Ten Commandments by claiming the shooter was actually motivated because he was a “left-wing socialist”. E.W. had only been dragged out onto the occasional segment on conservative news channels since 2013, and we were shocked to learn that he actually entered the three-candidate race for the nomination to be a U.S. Senator in Virginia in 2018. During the course of the campaign, he continued to make outlandish and magnificently insane statements, including but not limited to his claim that “America was never a racist country because Arab Muslims began African slavery”, that not being able to carry a firearm anywhere due to modest gun control laws makes him feel “naked and vulnerable”, and that “Democrats want to persecute the followers of Jesus Christ into silence and submission.” Jackson finished a distant third, well behind the winner… white nationalist ***hole Corey Stewart. We hope this time… this time is the last time he runs for public office.

[worstblogever]

In both 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, an octogenarian who has served in Congress since 1975, and been a U.S. Senator since 1981. We shared the hilarity of Grassley's Twitter feed, with brilliant examples of wordsmithing like, ”N”, ”Work on farm Fri. Burning piles of brush WindyFire got out of control. Thank God for good naber He help get undr control PantsBurnLegWound”, ”Fred and I hit a deer on hiway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire we continued to farm. Assume deer dead”, and "Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is good place for u kno what”. Oh, and the time on Twitter he compared President Obama's foreign policy to Poland's foreign policy that led to Hitler invading in 1939. Our main beef with Sen. Grassley was that as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and therefore gets to decide on confirmation of judges and Supreme Court nominees, and goddamn has been partisan and obstructive in that role. Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama but Grassley, more than anyone in the Republican Senate, is responsible for shirking their Constitutional duty to appoint a successor to the late Antonin Scalia and admitted the logic was purely political.

The rest of his voting record includes opposition to the Brady Handgun Bill to create background checks for firearm purchases, against universal background checks after Sandy Hook, support for the Defense of Marriage Act, voting for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, and voting for the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, which repealed key parts of the Glass-Steagall Financial Regulation Act, and opened the door for big banks to create the 2007 Sub-Prime Mortgage Housing Crisis. Grassley also voted for the Iraq War Resolution, voted against the Equal Pay Bill and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Zadroga Bill, disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and against raising the debt ceiling in 2011. Oh, and Sen. Grassley is on record as a denier that climate change exists, claiming he does not have enough evidence to make a conclusion or to vote on the matter. Grassley was also a big supporter of the Graham/Cassidy Healthcare Act, a last-ditch effort to repeal the ACA which Sen. Grassley admits to being extremely flawed and will harm Americans... but hey, he promised he would get rid of Obamacare, so no matter what the actual details or how bad they're going to hurt real people, damn it, he's gonna do it. HE ADMITTED THAT. Sen. Grassley also voted for the BRCA, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and left 23 million people without health insurance, and coldly voted against disaster relief funding, this time for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

Oh, and Grassley not only voted for the GOP’s tax plan/tax scam in December of 2017, he shrugged off complaints that it would only offer tax breaks to people who owned stock by saying that working class people might have the money to buy some if they didn’t “booze or women or movies”.

We also took issue with Sen. Grassley’s behavior regarding the Trump/Russia investigation, as on multiple occasions over the past year and a half, Grassley has gone out of his way to either cast doubt on the mounting evidence, such as when he tried insinuating that the Steele Dossier was the REAL fake news planted by the Russians, or when he released a statement to blame the FBI for not telling the Trump campaign that Paul Manafort was leaking information from the Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs (which ignores how they probably should have been aware when one of them sent agents to Trump Tower to meet with Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.). His allegiance to Trump has become so cancerous that Sen. Grassley flat out refuses to conduct Senate hearings on political appointees if he thinks that they in some way participated in, or are loyal to people conducting the Mueller investigation.

We can't say we don't also take issue with Grassley's voting record during the current term of Congress, as he voted to confirm every member of Donald Trump's Cabinet of Horrors, and saw his obstruction against Merrick Garland being named to the Supreme Court rewarded with him getting to vote for Neil Gorsuch…

But then in 2018, Grassley was looking to name a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, an uber-conservative son-of-a-bitch who won’t think twice about overturning Roe v. Wade. And so it was that Brett Kavanaugh, who made his career investigating the Clintons during Whitewater and trying to foment conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton murdering Vince Foster… a guy who perjured himself in his confirmation to be a federal judge multiple times…. THAT was the pick. And Sen. Grassley knows… KNOWS all the dirt that’s out there on Kavanaugh. It’s why he and the Trump White House refused to make documents about Kavanaugh’s work unavailable to the Senators who would vote on them, and why he literally opened the hearings shouting over the reasonable requests by Democrats to release those documents and allow Kavanaugh’s record to be legitimately reviewed.

So it looked like the final vote on Kavanaugh would go through strictly along partisan lines, 51-49… until a woman emerged to accuse Kavanaugh of attempting to drunkenly rape her when she was 15 and he was 17. Now, you’re really seeing how single-minded and gutless Chuck Grassley is, as he wanted to “investigate” the matter by not letting the FBI look into it, and conducting a sham hearing where only two witnesses will be called, Kavanaugh, and his accuser, and Senate Republicans could harass a woman already traumatized decades ago by her sexual assault.

And that upon learning of a second accuser, Grassley and his colleagues actually tried to force the vote FASTER, and blocked the second accuser, Deborah Ramirez from testifying or having the FBI investigate her claims. After trying to open the hearing with 15 minutes of grandstanding, Sen. Grassley forgot to introduce and thank the witness, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, for coming forward, and after his time to speak was up and he ceded to Sen. Diane Feinstein… he interrupted her after SHE introduced Ford to insist he didn’t forget.

But through all that, do you know who Chuck Grassley thinks the victim in all this is? CHUCK GRASSLEY. Yes, in an interview during all of this, Grassley whined about how he didn’t like when it’s mentioned that he’s so old, and feels, we s*** you not… that he is being DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. You’re 87, Chuck. You’d think you’d have developed a good calloused hide by now.

……..

Grassley won re-election rather easily in 2016 over Iowa’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, and unless one of those deer Chuck Grassley posted about killing on Twitter has one of their family members come to avenge them, he might be around in office until at least 2022, when he’ll be 89 years old. Maybe he’ll get around to appointing some sane judges at some point that aren’t former rapists if he can stop squinting, open his methusaleh eyes… but we’re not sure he can, as this hypocrite already is rushing to vote to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg only weeks before an election against his own prior promises to never do such a thing, but it seems unlikely that he’s going to listen to what his constituency actually wants anytime soon, and should just go back to trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act if possible, or at least strip a woman of her right to choose.

[Tami]

Donald Trump is saying Biden will be on drugs and be wearing an earpiece, so you know what that means...

[Tami]

Coronavirus live updates: Researchers find rapid rise in pediatric COVID-19 cases across US

The amount of children infected by the novel coronavirus in the United States has increased dramatically in recent months, according to new research by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.

Researchers found that the number of pediatric COVID-19 cases rose between April and September from 2.2% to 10% of all cumulative reported cases nationwide. As of Sept. 10, there was a cumulative total of 549,432 pediatric COVID-19 cases in the United States, a rate of 729 cases per 100,000 children, according to the study, which was published online Tuesday and will appear in the December issue of Pediatrics, the official flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

[BeastieRunner]

Coronavirus live updates: Researchers find rapid rise in pediatric COVID-19 cases across US

We went from 9 in 6 months to 97 in 3 days of 25% hybrid ...

[Tami]

We went from 9 in 6 months to 97 in 3 days of 25% hybrid ...

It's clear that children can get infected, it's possible that it just takes longer for the exposure to turn into an infection for some reason. Given enough time, scientists might figure this out but right now we don't have time. Even less with Trump and his cult pushing for schools to reopen.

[BeastieRunner]

It's clear that children can get infected, it's possible that it just takes longer for the exposure to turn into an infection for some reason. Given enough time, scientists might figure this out but right now we don't have time. Even less with Trump and his cult pushing for schools to reopen.

Children should not be be the lab rats.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Children should not be be the lab rats.

What is the obsession with basic ethics? Sheesh

[JackDaw]

Donald Trump is saying Biden will be on drugs and be wearing an earpiece, so you know what that means...

Probably that neither are true?

Every time I think about the Donald an old joke drifts through my mind:-

Question: How do you know he’s lying?

Answer: His lips are moving.

[Malvolio]

Donald Trump is saying Biden will be on drugs and be wearing an earpiece, so you know what that means...

I don't know about the drugs, but if the debate is going to be socially distanced, wouldn't they both have to wear earpieces in order to hear the questions?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Donald Trump is saying Biden will be on drugs and be wearing an earpiece, so you know what that means...

That Trump is jealous because Biden is getting the drugs and he isn't? Just a guess.

[Kirby101]

Drinking contest, a shot every time Trump lies. Everyone is drunk 5 minutes in.

[babyblob]

Drinking contest, a shot every time Trump lies. Everyone is drunk 5 minutes in.

I was thinking of doing a drinking game where every time Biden calls Trump out on Something Trump blames the fake news media.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Drinking contest, a shot every time Trump lies. Everyone is drunk 5 minutes in.

Five minutes? ****, bro, that’s a generous estimate, more like three. Trump can’t spell truth, much less practice same.