All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[the4thpip]

For the First Time Ever, a Prosecutor Will Go to Jail for Wrongfully Convicting an Innocent Man

Texas, not a big surprise. The innocent man spent a quarter of a century in prison because Ken Anderson withheld evidence. Anderson (now a judge) will get... 10 days in jail.

Ah, Justice.

[Tendrin]

For the First Time Ever, a Prosecutor Will Go to Jail for Wrongfully Convicting an Innocent Man

Texas, not a big surprise. The innocent man spent a quarter of a century in prison because Ken Anderson withheld evidence. Anderson (now a judge) will get... 10 days in jail.

Ah, Justice.

Authority can never fail. It can only be failed.

I just want to add: 10 days.

/10 days/.

So ridiculous.

[Kid A]

(Edited per moderator request)

During the 2012 elections, Mitt Romney was caught in lies by fact-checkers over 500 times. (about 20 a week) Steve Benen from the Washington Post documented it. Obama had... two that I can name off the top of my head. They were "You Didn't Build That" (which was more about the context and how the GOP tried to spin it), and, "You'll be able to keep your healthcare." (this one's more tangible). Other than that, I didn't see him getting caught in very many blatant ones.

https://www.google.com/search?q=comp...ed=0CAYQ_AUoAQ

[the4thpip]

The much-maligned government program that funded the failed solar tech company Solyndra is expected to make taxpayers a $5 to $6 billion return, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Wednesday.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...rogram-profit/

[worstblogever]

I really feel like that gif is the perfect response to "THANKS, OBAMA!" people.

[Malvolio]

It's our latest reminder of what a crock the statement "Nuh uh. Both parties are just as bad," actually is...
It’s Your Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day!





Victoria Jackson

Yes, that is the same Victoria Jackson who spent most of the late 1980s and early 1990s as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, making a career out of only being able to act like a vacant, ditzy blonde, and playing the love interest opposite Weird Al Yankovic in the cult hit/box office disaster “UHF”. Now, there are probably two sorts of thoughts people are having about this entry right now.

The first thing some of you are still saying is, “No, seriously, WHO? Never heard of her.”

The second is, “WAIT A SECOND… you said you were keeping these entries limited to politicians who have run for office or helped write the party platform! She’s a celebrity!”

Well, to that, I will report she actually did run for office in Tennessee this year, for county commissioner… even with her having the advantage of name recognition/fame, she still LOST in the primary, getting only half the votes that her two counterparts did, in spite of getting the money to actually run TV ads for the spot. Mind you, they were completely paranoid rants about creeping Sharia Law and communism, so… yeah, maybe not the best investment.

I know, it’s only a county commissioner seat, it’s hardly like she tried to run for U.S. Senate or anything, but come on, how the hell could anyone who ever goofed around on SNL ever be a Senator?



Oh, right. Anyway, the important difference between Senator Al Franken and Victoria Jackson would probably be that one is a liberal who is grounded in reality, and the other is a Tea Party Republican who is out of her friggin’ gourd crazy. Here’s some of her finer moments in “political commentary”.

• October 2008: Desperate to prevent Al Franken from becoming a U.S. Senator in Minnesota in a tightly contested election, the Republican Party turn to one of his old pals to put a knife in his back… calling in Victoria Jackson to do so. He wins in a recount in a closely contested race.
• October 28th, 2008: As Election Day 2008 approaches, as the polls start to show a big break towards the Obama/Biden ticket, and away from McCain/Palin, Victoria Jackson decides to give the important political analysis that she’s pretty sure Obama is the anti-Christ.
• April 2009: Jackson declares Barack Obama is a communist, and that Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh should be the ones running the country. (Man, would we be ****ed.)
• August 2009: Victoria Jackson compares President Obama to who else? Hitler.
• June 2010: Jackson writes an article where she admits that she was ignorant to much of our democracy until she finally started voting in 2000, claiming she voted for Bush, helping make sure Clinton would lose and be knocked out of office. She forgets of course, that Clinton wasn't on the ballot because of term limits, and Gore was the other guy on that ballot. And he still won the popular vote. Considering he was from Tennessee, where she is these days, you’d think she might have heard of the guy.
• September 2010: Victoria Jackson becomes a colleague of Glenn Beck, giving her deepest thoughts about his D.C. rally, wondering why everyone there is white, scrapping for a debate with anyone who disagrees with her, about how impactful Beck’s Washington D.C. rally is, while wondering if she’s thinking too loud, and the Thought Police can hear her.
  
  It gets weirder.
• March 2011: Victoria Jackson goes on WorldNetDaily and writes about an episode of Glee where two gay characters kissed, and declares it “disgusting”
  while claiming it was done specifically to “shove the gay thing down the throats of Chrsitians.”
• December 2011: Jackson claims she had a meeting across the street from the capitol where she had all the evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our government laid out before her. Of course, the men who presented the never seen “evidence” to her were drummed out of government intelligence jobs for being incompetent Islamophobes years earlier, so there’s definitely some credibility issues to consider.
• February 12th, 2012: For whatever reason, Victoria Jackson was booked to speak at CPAC, where she claimed President Obama is a communist and has enslaved African Americans again (WTF!)
  
  While that might not seem off compared to the rest of her rants… she also added that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are actually socialists, and the only candidate worth trusting is Rick Santorum.
  …
  
  Of all the “get rich, it’s the American way” people to accuse of not liking capitalism… Romney and Gingrich? Holy ***, she’s nuts.
  
  Of course, the wankers at CPAC treated her like a rock star. Of course.
• August 31st, 2012: Victoria Jackson comes out in defense of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks, giving made-up-out-of-whole-cloth statistics, and some extra terrible science, to boot.
  See, it was great of her to also show a complete lack of understanding of genetics by adding that the baby doesn’t have the mother or father’s DNA, and it’s a whole new person… making her even more scientifically ignorant, somehow, than Todd Akin. And that takes some skill.
• October 2012: Appearing on the Howard Stern Show, Jackson insists gay marriage should never come to pass because it would “make God mad”.
• November 10th, 2012: Jackson decides to ease the sting from seeing Barack Obama elected to a second term by going online to say terrible things about the 51% of the country that voted for him. Apparently she thinks that no Christians voted for Obama, has Voter ID conspiracies (that aren’t based in reality, compares the president to a dictator, talks about secession, is scared of gay people, and even squeezes in the conspiracy theory about “Obama-phones” before insinuating Obama voters are all a bunch of reefer-smoking deadbeats and sluts.
  
  Classy.
• November 12th, 2012: Jackson started talking about secession as a great tactic because it was “better than civil war”. Which would mean she doesn’t know that the Amercian Civil War sort of started after states started seceding over slavery.
• A few days after the Sandy Hook Massacre, Jackson went online to compare the shooting to abortions, and claim that the real problem was that parents weren’t stressing the Ten Commandments to their children enough. She also mocked President Obama’s tearful speech about the tragedy, and claimed he was responsible for one million abortions. In all capital letters, of course.
• January 2013: Victoria Jackson writes a whole article complaining about the lack of a “White History Month”, since there’s a Black History Month. She deletes the article after getting called out for being racist, because, well, it was pretty racist.

I don’t know how else to wrap this profile up, other than say that I think even less of her as a performer now than I did when she was on SNL. Because for all the people playing a variety of hilarious characters during her days on the show, like Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and others… she just played the ditzy blonde non-stop. And as it turns out, she wasn’t even acting. She’s actually that much of a moron, if not more.

I remember one bit on SNL where Jackson dropped the baby-voice, got all serious and said that "...this is the real Victoria Jackson." Makes me wonder if this kind of level of crazy is all just one big Andy Kaufman-style piece of performance art.

[worstblogever]

I remember one bit on SNL where Jackson dropped the baby-voice, got all serious and said that "...this is the real Victoria Jackson." Makes me wonder if this kind of level of crazy is all just one big Andy Kaufman-style piece of performance art.

Believe it or not, you're not the only one who suggested that, in researching her, a lot of people were thinking she couldn't be serious, and that was the case.

However, some of her old colleagues, like Julia Sweeney are pretty sure that she's not playing games, and it's for real.

[Double 0]

There's a state of emergency in Ferguson, the second time since Mike Brown was murdered.

[Shawn Hopkins]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...rogram-profit/

They'll still find a way to spin it against him.

[Pinsir]

There weren't any riots from Trayvon Martin...

Just announce Wilson will not be charged already Jesus. I'm sure we can take it.

[7thangel]

There's a state of emergency in Ferguson, the second time since Mike Brown was murdered.

There weren't any riots from Trayvon Martin...

Just announce Wilson will not be charged already Jesus. I'm sure we can take it.

not surprised in the least bit. especially when the prosecutor chose to not gve the grand jury and instructions or gave any arguments and instead just dropped all the the info and evidence on them and let them do his job and their duty. nixon, once again shows he's an a-hole

[Lightsabretooth]

There weren't any riots from Trayvon Martin...

Just announce Wilson will not be charged already Jesus. I'm sure we can take it.

I'm more curious why there aren't any protests at all over the killing of John Crawford who had a bb gun in Walmart in an open carry state, and literally did absolutely nothing wrong. The guy who called the police was proven to be lying and nothing even happened to him at all either. There's substantial evidence to prove John Crawford did nothing at all wrong as opposed to the Mike Brown case where there are definite questions about what happened there, but Mike Brown is the higher profile case for some reason.

[Double 0]

I'm more curious why there aren't any protests at all over the killing of John Crawford who had a bb gun in Walmart in an open carry state, and literally did absolutely nothing wrong. The guy who called the police was proven to be lying and nothing even happened to him at all either. There's substantial evidence to prove John Crawford did nothing at all wrong as opposed to the Mike Brown case where there are definite questions about what happened there, but Mike Brown is the higher profile case for some reason.

There are protests for Crawford. And Garner, and others. Trust me, I was at some of the Garner protests.

Thing is, those protests haven't led to nearly the same amount of police escalation.

[Surtur]

I'm more curious why recently the parents of Michael Brown were allowed to speak at an anti-torture committee. Why was this still allowed after the mother beat down and assaulted and robbed someone?

[Lightsabretooth]

There are protests for Crawford. And Garner, and others. Trust me, I was at some of the Garner protests.

Thing is, those protests haven't led to nearly the same amount of police escalation.

Because there was no looting? I have to assume that's got to be the main difference in media coverage and police involvement of these different protests.