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

[PaulBullion]

I suspect he believes he is making things better, even for women and minorities.

It's rude to say McConnel is stupid, Mets! He's one of your guys, too.

[PaulBullion]

Attachment 96963

10 Char

Mets is going by the old trope that nobody is the villain in their own story. McConnel, though, has shown time and time again that he embraces evil.

[Tendrin]

If that's what it looks like, Irene Ryan never did anything to deserve that.

It's not even photshopped.

For once we're in agreement. The resemblance is unfortunate for her.


...still hilarious, though.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh my god.

https://twitter.com/ImmoralishMe/sta...25985861808129

What has been seen cannot be unseen. And yeah, that IS an insult....to Irene Ryan!

This is what Trump is up to now

AP FACT CHECK: Scarborough staffer death not a “mystery”





Trump is accusing Joe Scarborough of her 'murder'. Another conspiracy theory he probably found online or on Fox News.

Just another distraction from Trump's horrifically inept handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

====================

Trump Plays Golf As Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 100,000 In U.S.

This is the first time President Trump has played golf since he declared the coronavirus a national emergency. But hey, Trump said he wouldn't have time to play golf if elected.

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Fox News’ Judge Napolitano Says Trump Has No Power To Override Governors On Churches

The president “on his own ... is without authority to do that,” said the legal analyst.

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Alabama’s Coronavirus Outlook Is Worsening As State Reopens

The situation in Alabama has deteriorated over the past 14 days, The Associated Press found.

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Tearful Republican Governor Attacks Political Fight Over COVID-19 Face Masks

“I would ask people to dial up their empathy and their understanding,” said GOP Gov. Doug Burgum. “We’re all in this together.”

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Washington Bishops Continue To Suspend Masses Out Of ‘Respect For Human Life’

The statement doesn’t put the best light on Donald Trump’s demand that all houses of worship be re-opened “right now” amid the COVID-19 crisis.

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Street Artists Take On Coronavirus Pandemic With Powerful, Poignant And Witty Pieces

Here is our ongoing collection of murals, posters and street art stencils supporting health care workers and calling out world leaders, including Donald Trump.

[worstblogever]

Tweet is gone.

His tweet might be, but it was already screencapped and referenced by some websites.

https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/23/north...ointment-only/

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had a profile of Norman McAllister, whose legislative record was not the focus of our profile, as much as his arrest for sexually assaulting two women in a sex-for-rent scheme. One of the victims was believed to be an underage girl who worked as an intern for in the state capitol, and another was encouraged to have sex with some of the workers on his farm, with the incentive being that her rent would get even cheaper. For lack of a better term, Norman is scum, and the Vermont State Senate suspended him from the chamber in a 20-10 vote and will not be permitted to return unless the charges against him are dismissed (you’re reading this right, the GOP have not disowned him, and he did not resign). McAllister was eventually found guilty, though, is currently looking at a seven year prison sentence, and will have to register as a sex offender, which makes it pretty unlikely that he’ll be mounting a political comeback.

In both 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of former Illinois State Senator Kyle McCarter, who was originally appointed to office in 2009, and served three terms in office, winning re-election in 2014 by having the benefit of running unopposed. We’ve had him floating around our queue for quite some time now, starting around the time that we read about McCarter claiming he was punched in the chest by a Democratic State Senator back in 2011. The accused senator, Mike Jacobs, responded to the accusation by saying of McCarter, “I would say the senator is full of s***.” And considering no charges were ever filed, no video proof of this event in the Senate chamber seems to have come out of it, we would tend to agree. Then again, we know how the rest of this profile reads, and how Jacobs may have been understating McCarter’s… shall we say philosophical constipation. In his time in office, McCarter has appeared in the news cycle several times, most frequently because of his irrationally extreme opposition to LGBT rights. In October of 2011, not four months removed from his heated debate with Jacobs, McCarter submitted a bill to try to allow Catholic adoption agencies to refuse to place children in households with same sex parents, because he apparently thinks a child continuing to be an orphan is better than having two parents of the same gender. He’s also blocked anti-bullying legislation because it would protect LGBT students in public schools from being harassed and voted against a ban on gay conversion therapy on minors (even though the practice is considered a human rights violation by some) in the Illinois legislature. But on Valentine’s Day in 2013, Kyle McCarter truly became worthy of our attention. In the wake of the Illinois State Senate voting 34-21 to legalize same sex marriage, despite of McCarter’s ridiculous protests that doing so would force local flower shops and “marriage-related” businesses to close down (when in fact, if they were tolerant and accommodated gay couples, their business would soar),McCarter took to Facebook to seethe about the great majority of the chamber deciding it was time for marriage equality, writing, “To redefine marriage is discriminatory towards those who hold the sincerely held religious belief that it is a sacred institution between a man & a woman.” That’s right… LGBTQ couples being allowed to marry is discriminatory towards McCarter and all his straight pals. Or at least, he says it is, because he’s got things as backwards as they could ever possibly be. He spent the next year attempting to repeal the law, before finally giving up. Mind you, giving up still means he’s been trying to defend his “religious freedom” from “discrimination” by sponsoring the same sorts of “religious freedom” laws seen in Indiana and North Carolina (that have worked out so well for those states’ local economies). On other issues, McCarter says he is “pro-life without apologies”, and supports the potentially disastrous idea of establishing a flat tax. McCarter also has voted against raising the minimum wage in Illinois during the greatest period of income inequality in the United States in almost a century. Kyle McCarter grew ambitious enough in this past election cycle to challenge U.S. House Rep. John Shimkus and see if he couldn’t inject some fresh, even somehow-even-more-conservative blood into the Republican-controlled House. McCarter relentlessly attacked Shimkus on his broken promise, long ago to only serve three terms in Congress, and now he’s on his eleventh term, citing his own dedication to that issue by saying he would not be running for office again in the 2018 midterms for a fourth term for his Illinois State Senate seat. He lost to the veteran climate-change denier, Shimkus, by over twenty points in the 2016 GOP Primary. McCarter did not file for re-election by the deadline or the 2018 elections, but as we feared, in spite of his rampant homophobia, the Trump administration has nominated him to be Ambassador to Kenya, because of course they found employment for this bigoted ****stain.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Peter Boykin, a 2018 candidate for District 58 in the North Carolina House of Representatives. Our first and most definitive evidence that Boykin might be a wee bit unbalanced is that he is a former webcam model paid to masturbate for money, is the founder of “Gays for Trump”, and wasn’t afraid to show his support for white nationalism in t photos. There’s also the fact that Boykin is so “LGBTQ-friendly” that he defends Mike Pence’s record on LGBTQ rights, calls transgender troops in the U.S. military “mentally challenged”, called for the “T” to be removed from LGBTQ, and warned that transgender military service members would use their service weapons to slaughter their fellow soldiers, saying, “People already have enough problems with PTSD, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give someone going through that type of change a weapon. They might snap and turn it on their fellow soldiers.” We’ll also add that Boykin has been an emcee for an Anti-Muslim hate group, Act for America, at events in North Carolina to fear-monger about Islam, where he gave big shout-outs to the white supremacist groups Identity Evropa and the militia group, the OathKeepers, and the Soldiers of Odin (another organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group). Peter Boykin was crushed by over 50 points by Amos Quick, the Democratic incumbent in the 2018 elections. His candidacy will hopefully be the end of his fifteen minutes of fame, but we’re not going to be shocked if he’s dragged on Fox News when Donald Trump says something homophobic during the 2020 election campaign. As he is extremely unlikely to ever reach office, we will set aside his profile at this time and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 871-45, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Mike Hill

Welcome to what is the 871st original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Mike Hill, who is currently serving in his third nonconsecutive term in the Florida House of Representatives, spending his first two terms from 2013-2016 representing District 2, and after an ill-fated attempt at becoming a Florida State Senator in 2016, returned to win office in District 1 of the Florida House in 2018. During his current term in office, Hill has cosponsored HB 527, to prevent Florida’s cities from establishing “sanctuary cities” for immigrants, voted for SB 7030, to authorize firearms on schools campuses.

But that’s not even close to what concerns us about Mike Hill as a legislator. When someone in the Republican Party writes a fetal heartbeat bill, we consider them and extremist. If that person then goes and tries amending a bill so that it outlaws abortion without exceptions for rape and incest, we’re already raising our eyebrows at the level of extremism they exhibit. That also includes Mike Hill.

”At what age should a child be killed for the acts of the father? I have met a young lady whose mother was a rape victim. This lady is glad that her mother did not choose to abort her, but instead had her adopted. Life does not exist without God. As horrific the crimes of rape and incest are, who are we to tell God that He made a mistake by allowing a precious life to come from a terrible situation? "I place before you life and death.... choose life." Deut 30:19”

But when they claim they’re doing so because “God spoke to them” and told them to, as Hill claims, we’re thinking that hearing voices telling them what to do should probably have them sat down for some counseling.

"As plain as day, God spoke to me. He said 'that wasn't my bill,' talking about the heartbeat detection bill that I filed. He said 'that wasn't my bill.'"

So of course he’s a “pro-life” Republican who supports people being able to call for religious exemptions to vaccination requirements, as well as being a supporter of the death penalty. Heck, he’s far more comfortable with execution than even that, as Mike Hill has “joked” with other Republican legislators about putting gay people to death based on his interpretations of a passage in Corinthians 1. When he was called on to apologize or resign over the matter, Hill indignantly claimed that he never made the statement (there’s audio recording that he did) and that he was victim of “social media lynching” over his “joke”.

We don’t know if he’ll face a primary opponent due to this controversy or not, but we’d like to think whether it’s a Republican or Democrat running against him, that someone who’s calling for gay people to be put to death and women to be forced to carry their rapist’s child to term because “God said so” in his mind wouldn’t be kept around further. We’d like to think.

[jetengine]

Some fantastic journalism from The Mirror here in the uk. Strung this Government and the odious "advisor" Dominic Cummings up. Now the only option the Government has is to let him go or suffer the never ending shitstorm of trying to enforce "Do as I say, Not as I do"

[Kieran_Frost]

Some fantastic journalism from The Mirror here in the uk. Strung this Government and the odious "advisor" Dominic Cummings up. Now the only option the Government has is to let him go or suffer the never ending shitstorm of trying to enforce "Do as I say, Not as I do"

He'll be gone soon. Tory MPs are now calling on him to quit; which carries far more weight to condemnation (Labour's played the "call to quit" card WAYYYYYY too many times in the last few years, and it's lost all importance). It's now just seen as point scoring, because it's their standard response to everything. But with Tory MPs saying it, I think his days are numbered.

[CaptainEurope]

Some fantastic journalism from The Mirror here in the uk. Strung this Government and the odious "advisor" Dominic Cummings up. Now the only option the Government has is to let him go or suffer the never ending shitstorm of trying to enforce "Do as I say, Not as I do"

He'll be gone soon. Tory MPs are now calling on him to quit; which carries far more weight to condemnation (Labour's played the "call to quit" card WAYYYYYY too many times in the last few years, and it's lost all importance). It's now just seen as point scoring, because it's their standard response to everything. But with Tory MPs saying it, I think his days are numbered.

That's a little bit like when Trump lost that obese advisor who dresses like a hobo, right? Can't think of his name right now. But he and Cummings were both considered "men behind the curtain", yes? While Trump and Johnson are just the bloated floating heads moving their lips.

[Mister Mets]

McConnell said this before Obama became president, that's how much in a rush he was to destroy the Democrats.

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/...-pledge-044311

That would be true if you believed that a Republican congressional leader will conclude that the policies of someone he disagrees with politically will be helpful in the long term.

Likewise, Democratic congressional leaders will believe that the policies of George W Bush, Donald Trump and whoever the next Republican president ends up being will be destructive, and it's better to have one of their people in the White House.

Voting against and blocking every legislation that would help them. It's GOP logic.

The general argument is that policies meant to favor protected classes can end up backfiring due to unintended consequences and/ or fail to address the main causes of inequality.

For example, diversity training programs often increase the awareness of stereotypes, helping to normalize bad behavior, while also giving people excuses to be biased, which makes them less likely to change. Affirmative action policies can lead to the impression that newly hired/ accepted individuals are less qualified, stigmatizing them and putting an asterisk on their resume. Any additional paperwork requires time and energy that is added on to that already reserved for other activities.

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2019-71045-001.html

Mets is going by the old trope that nobody is the villain in their own story. McConnel, though, has shown time and time again that he embraces evil.

The old trope is the obvious answer because it is often true. Why should we expect Mitch McConell to be immune to motivated reasoning and self-justification?

[Kirby101]

That's a little bit like when Trump lost that obese advisor who dresses like a hobo, right? Can't think of his name right now. But he and Cummings were both considered "men behind the curtain", yes? While Trump and Johnson are just the bloated floating heads moving their lips.

Steve Bannon

[CaptainEurope]

Steve Bannon

Yes, it.

.....

[aja_christopher]

The general argument is that policies meant to favor protected classes can end up backfiring due to unintended consequences and/ or fail to address the main causes of inequality.

The general argument is a cover for blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, and xeonphobia, whether you are willing to admit it or otherwise.

It's patronizing and somewhat insulting to try and argue with members of said "protected classes" that your party does what it does "for our own good" as if we don't know better ourselves what is best for us -- I understand you might see it differently but that's because you're not their target.

Your party does it's best to make sure said "groups" voting and civil rights are restricted -- let's not pretend it's for our benefit.

With with regards to McConnell's obstructionism -- your statement reveals a key problem with your logic. Most Democratic congressmen and presidents don't go in with the attitude of doing nothing more than obstructing Republican policies. Like Obama, many go in with the objective of compromise and are instead obstructed and villified at every turn for doing so.

This is why I repeatedly point out that most of these dialogues are meaningless in that respect but at least this time you've revealed the real problem with the Republican party -- seeing the other political spectrum as an enemy to be defeated rather than a political faction to be worked with as an equal, even when the people have voted them into power in record numbers.

This is also why I say it's best to learn from how Republicans treated Obama more so than from what you claim about them on this forum.



"Trump Outstripping Obama on Pace of Executive Orders"

"Trump is on pace to sign more executive orders than any president in the last 50 years"

[Kieran_Frost]

That's a little bit like when Trump lost that obese advisor who dresses like a hobo, right? Can't think of his name right now. But he and Cummings were both considered "men behind the curtain", yes? While Trump and Johnson are just the bloated floating heads moving their lips.

I don't think anyone believes that Cummings is the puppet master; Johnson has been a strong political force for well over a decade (became Mayor of London in 2008); he's only been Johnson's aide since 2019. Before then he was with Michael Gove and Vote Leave campaign.