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

[Tendrin]

Bernie Sanders addressed the 'essay issue' with Chuck Todd.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2s...old-essay_news

[Spike-X]

And, as George Carlin was famous for saying in a rant, once that child is born, it's on it's own in a Republican world.

[kane]

Alberta 'creationist' finds 60m-year-old fish fossils: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32928979

[Spike-X]

Alberta 'creationist' finds 60m-year-old fish fossils: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32928979

...still refuses to change his mind. Because who needs facts and evidence when you have religion?

[Michael P]

Lindsey Graham does declare that he is running for President: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/lind...r-white-house/

[Malvolio]

Lindsey Graham does declare that he is running for President: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/lind...r-white-house/

"I waited until June 1st to officially declare so that Jon Stewart could properly ridicule me."

[Jeff Brady]

Lindsey Graham does declare that he is running for President: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/lind...r-white-house/

"Lindsey Graham's voice sounds like a 'whites only' water fountain."

- Elon James White.

[Michael P]

"Lindsey Graham's voice sounds like a 'whites only' water fountain."

- Elon James White.

[worstblogever]

Lindsey Graham does declare that he is running for President: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/lind...r-white-house/

Get a fainting couch for the Oval Office, STAT!

[worstblogever]

It’s Your Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day!
(Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 325-12, since 7-18-14)


Chip Rogers

We have profiled many folks who believe in a variety of conspiracy theories, but former Georgia State Senator Chip Rogers took his love for them to the next level, actually managing to organize a seminar to warn his colleagues about phantom threats to America, and managed to have every state legislator from the Georgia GOP getting paid taxpayer dollars to be there, too. It’s the cherry on top of Rogers’ hyper-conservative political career, frankly, which began back in 2002 when he joined the Georgia State House of Representatives, and then after one term, he moved to the upper chamber, where he served for a decade, including his run as State Senate Majority Leader, winning the position unanimously in both 2008 and 2010.

Before we get to his more eccentric kookiness, let’s peek at his voting record:

• On Women’s Issues: Rogers was a staunch anti-choice Republican, voting for HB 954, Georgia’s ban on abortion at 20 weeks, without exceptions for rape or incest (and it was nicknamed by some critics as the “Women as Livestock” Bill). He also voted for HB 147, to require women getting an abortion to get a medically unnecessary ultrasound prior to the procedure. Rounding things out, he voted for SB 460, which would have allowed employers in Georgia to deny female employees the ability to have contraception covered by their employee insurance plans based on their “religious conscience”.
• On Welfare: Chip Rogers has never seen an unemployment benefit he liked, apparently. He moved to cut Georgia’s social safety net out from underneath the state’s poorest residents during some of the toughest economic years America has seen since the Great Depression, sponsoring SB 447, voting for HB 347, both meant to cut unemployment benefits. That didn’t satisfy him enough, though, and he also cast a vote for Georgia’s HB 861, their attempt at drug testing welfare recipients. And yes, that story ended the same way it always does… it was a failed policy that never found statistically significant drug use by those on government assistance, and the cost of drug testing lost the state a small fortune without any projected “savings” of kicking people off of welfare, before it eventually cost Georgia even more when it was ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the 4th Amendment.
• On the First Amendment… You may have heard of SB 469, a law designed to ban workers from picketing against the corporations and businesses that they might ever want to protest against. As obviously unconstitutional an overreach as this was, and a clear show of its supporters being in big business’ pocket… yes, Chip Rogers voted for it.
• On Voting Rights: Rogers isn’t a big fan of these, either, trying to pass stricter Voter ID laws like SB 84 and SB 86 to combat “voter fraud” that happens less often than people being struck by lightning.
• On guns: Much to the chagrin of Georgia law enforcement, and against their wishes, Rogers sponsored HB 89,
  which allowed the concealed carry of firearms inside of motor vehicles, as well as in restaurants and bars serving alcohol (because you want people with impaired impulse control from booze packing heat).
• On Illegal Immigration: Possibly Chip Rogers’ favorite issue. He co-sponsored SB 67, an attempt to make Georgia drivers’ license testing to be taken mandatorily in English, SB 458, an attempt to keep undocumented students from getting any benefits of state colleges and universities, and a vote for HB 87, Georgia’s draconian “Immigration Enforcement Act” that actually ended up costing millions of dollars in waste within the state’s agriculture industry because it made it nearly impossible for farms in the state to find guest workers to harvest the crops, which ended up spoiling in the fields.

Hell of a rundown, huh?

But Chip Rogers will probably not be remembered for all the conservative legislation he sponsored or voted for in the Georgia State Senate, as much as he will his final months in office. You see, in November of 2012, Rogers convened a closed-door meeting of all the Republicans in Georgia’s legslature, that warned of the sinister Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory, and President Obama using “the Delphi technique”, a mind control scheme to get the population to move into urban centers where they would be more easily controlled.

Those present were treated to a PowerPoint presentation followed by a 90-minute screening of an anti-Agenda 21 documentary, Agenda: Grinding America Down. The whole conference was emceed by a guy by the name of Field Searcy, a local conservative activist who was booted from the Tea Party for rambling out kooky conspiracy theories non-stop. I’ll say that again… The host was too much of an insane, paranoid conspiracy theorist for EVEN THE TEA PARTY. Around this time, Rogers stepped down as Georgia Senate Majority Leader, after saying that the meeting was simply to “allow constituents to voice their concerns”. It’s kind of hard to take Rogers at his word, though, because only two years earlier, in 2010, he sponsored SB 235, a bill that would ban “required human microchip implantation’, which was based on the paranoid fear that with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, that Americans would be forced to undergo a surgical procedure to have a microchip inserted into their bodies. (Because that was totally part of the ACA.)


A month later, Rogers resigned from the Georgia State altogether to take a $150,000 a year job that he and his GOP allies helped create at the Georgia Public Broadcasting Service, likely with the intent to move to take it all along. Critics assailed the hire, realizing it was the latest in a long line of Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s cronyism, giving a cushy job with a big salary to a key ally/potential challenger in the 2014 primary. However, those critics would not have to complain long. Rogers managed to get himself fired a little over a year into the job in April 2014, and when inquiries were made into the nature of his dismissal, it turned out he was violating a number of ethical rules of the state-run broadcasting company, in relation to dual employment (Rogers was working as a lobbyist for a hotel company at the time), as well as pushing the boundaries of what was allowed for partisan political activity (that’s hardly a shocker), and improprieties involving his time and attendance (go figure, he thought he was being paid to show up whenever he felt like for $150K, unlike all those “deadbeat leeches on the system” he cracked down on with his cuts to unemployment assistance).

Don’t worry, though. The lobbying group that Chip Rogers was working for, the Asian American Hotel Owners’ Association, gave him a cushy executive job in January 2015. I’m sure it had nothing to do with serving their interests in the legislature, and in his role at Georgia Public Broadcasting. (Yeah, right.) Hopefully he doesn’t end up staying at one of those hotels in a population center where Obama is mind-controlling the populace, and force Chip Rogers to become one of us. ONE OF US. ONE. OF. US…

[7thangel]

A Florida Police Killing Like Many, Disputed and Little Noticed

The witnesses who saw a Broward County deputy sheriff kill a man who had strolled through his apartment complex with an unloaded air rifle propped on his shoulders agreed: Just before he was gunned down, Jermaine McBean had ignored the officers who stood behind him shouting for him to drop his weapon.

Nothing, the officer swore under oath, prevented Mr. McBean from hearing the screaming officers.

Newly obtained photographic evidence in the July 2013 shooting of Mr. McBean, a 33-year-old computer-networking engineer, shows that contrary to repeated assertions by the Broward Sheriff’s Office, he was wearing earbuds when he was shot, suggesting that he was listening to music and did not hear the officers. The earphones somehow wound up in the dead man’s pocket, records show.

“I want justice for something that went totally wrong.” Mr. McBean’s mother, Jennifer Young, said in an interview. She added that she believed officers had profiled her son because he was black.

A federal wrongful death lawsuit filed May 11 accused the Broward Sheriff’s Office of tampering with evidence and obstructing justice. The suit alleges that the deputy who shot Mr. McBean perjured himself and that the department covered it up by giving him a bravery award shortly after the killing, while the shooting was still under investigation.

From Ferguson, Mo., to Baltimore to Cleveland, the nation seems awash in disputed, high-profile cases of police violence. But a look at disputed cases in Florida is a reminder of how frequently they arise far from the limelight and how many questions surround the way they are investigated. The issue is particularly acute in Florida, where State Department of Law Enforcement statistics show the number of fatal police shootings has tripled in the past 15 years, even as crime has plummeted.

In South Florida’s Broward County, no officer has been charged in a fatal on-duty police shooting since 1980, a period that covers 168 shooting deaths.

“The court never goes against the police,” said Rajendra Ramsahai, whose brother-in-law, Deosaran Maharaj, was killed by a Broward County deputy last year. “They are always ruling in the officer’s favor.”

In civil wrongful death cases throughout South Florida, lawyers discovered that files were missing, that dashboard camera videos had been erased and that police department accounts sometimes did not match the evidence. Cases like Mr. McBean’s underscore how law enforcement agencies that handle their own shooting investigations can be exposed to criticism years after the crime-scene tape has been taken down and the television cameras are gone.

Nearly two years after his death, and months after The New York Times began inquiring about the case, the state attorney for Broward County has subpoenaed a key witness to testify before a grand jury and assigned the case to a public corruption prosecutor.

There are signs that some cases are getting more attention. The death of a black man struck multiple times by Coconut Creek police officers firing Taser stun guns was ruled a homicide this month by the Broward County medical examiner’s office. The death led to the resignation of the police chief, Michael Mann, in March after it was revealed that three of the four officers involved were not certified in Taser use. The family of the victim has asked the United States attorney general for an independent investigation.

[...]

[Tendrin]

Conservative hero (and total deadbeat) rancher Cliven Bundy is back!

“Receiving welfare and housing – is that a sense of slavery when you get caught up in that and can’t get out of it for generations?" Bundy said, as quoted by The Guardian. "They don’t have freedom.”

Awesome.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...ampaign=buffer

[Mister Mets]

Okay, can we please stop referring to anti-choice fascists as "pro-life"?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker plans to sign a bill banning abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest. This means, for instance, that a 12-year-old girl raped by her father, who becomes pregnant as a result, would be forced to carry that pregnancy to term.

Anti-abortion groups are criticizing the bill because it contains an exception for when the mother's life is at risk. Let me just repeat that - people calling themselves "pro-life" are objecting to legislation that would permit a woman to terminate a pregnancy to save her own life.



They should start calling themselves "pro some life", because they've made it perfectly clear, time and time again, they don't give a flying fuck about the life of any female human being of child-bearing age.

George Carlin argued that pro-abortion and anti-abortion are more accurate, but I think pro-life and pro-choice work since it describes the motives of most of the people on the two sides of the abortion debate. Those who are opposed to abortion generally do it because they think it's either equivalent to killing an infant or close enough to be problematic. Those who support abortion generally do it because they want women with unplanned pregnancies to not have to derail their lives. That's mainly what the debate comes down to.

Well, it WAS better back then than now...just by a smidgen. Racism had somewhat been mocked into hiding for a lot of people, so it may have LOOKED like it was much better, but they just kept their mouths shut more. Then as we went through the '80s and '90s and '00s more and more people found it acceptable to openly be racist, and that's how we got HERE.

In the 1970s, less than 40 percent of the population supported interracial marriage.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/ap...ks-whites.aspx

I think it's safe to say that it was a more racist time.

In context, Sanders' essay isn't offensive at all. He describes the fucked-up sexuality of many Americans, then talks about what might be causing it and what might lead to people and society having a more healthy attitude towards sex. But a Libertarian website did a very good job of stirring up shit about it by cherry-picking quotes and outright lying.

If a guy is mistaken in his assessment of the populace, that's still a major issue.

That's a rather poorly-written article, isn't it?

And if the only thing people have to use against Sanders is a poorly-written article from forty three years ago, well, I think that says it all, doesn't it?

I'll start preparing for the Bernie Sanders presidency then, I guess.

[Mister Mets]

So sick of hearing, "OH, they just see the world differently." "Oh, they just have a different opinion."

No dice. I'm black, and I give a shit about women and non-heterosexuals. What Reagan legacy (and Republicans post Civil Rights Movement) did/are doing to black communities, to women's rights, to LGBT rights, is not "just an opinion", its ruined lives and livelihoods.

So spare me on that "be kind to one another" garbage. How about stop sitting around watching us die and lose our rights as human beings in the US.

Look at the systemic and structural problems, how it's affecting your communities and communities beyond yours, and have enough empathy to TRY to help solve them. Do some freakin' research and LEARN about them, instead of dismissing them.

Frankly, I don't think anyone who sees and cares about the amount of systemic problems plaguing minorities would vote Republican. Straight up.

Republicans believe that their policies will solve these problems. Plenty have done their research.

The idea that the people complaining about Racism, Police Brutality, et. al., are indifferent to the deaths of Black People at the hands of Black People is an very widespread one.

However it is wholly dependent on missing the amount of time the supposed "Race Baiters" from Farrakhan to Obama spend on hammering the "Go to School", "Take care of your kids", "Get an Honest Job", etc. Drums. In my more cynical moods I wonder if ignoring such is intentional rather than cluelessness.

An increase in murders seems to be a news story worth examining, in order to figure out how to reduce the number and save more lives. If the media doesn't do that for reasons of political convenience, it's appropriate for Lowry to be upset about that.

No, Mets. It's still Lowry sinking toa new low, and it's still hogwash. It's not 'different in context'. It's just yet another white pundit whining 'but black on black crime!!'.

Lowry is still disgusting, and he's still trying to find a way to point the finger at African Americans and, of course, liberals.

It's the same thing as when a republican shouts 'the most dangerous place to be black is in the womb!! What about THAT huh?!' It's about marginalizing the real concerns that African Americans have about, say, police behavior and ignoring the fact that, shockingly, police are held to a different standard of conduct than the criminals they're supposed to be arresting.

Given finite resources, numbers do have to be assessed when determining policy priorities. Other people may have made some dumb comments on race relations, but it doesn't mean Lowry's point about Baltimore is wrong.

[JCAll]

George Carlin argued that pro-abortion and anti-abortion are more accurate, but I think pro-life and pro-choice work since it describes the motives of most of the people on the two sides of the abortion debate. Those who are opposed to abortion generally do it because they think it's either equivalent to killing an infant or close enough to be problematic. Those who support abortion generally do it because they want women with unplanned pregnancies to not have to derail their lives. That's mainly what the debate comes down to.

Pro-choice and pro-life don't work for me since every "pro" implies an "anti". Pro-abortion and anti-abortion works, pro-choice and anti-choice works too, but pro-life and anti-life doesn't work because the only person on team anti-life is Darkseid. In fact, I've seen people use the "pro-life" label deliberately so that they can call the pro-abortion side out on being "anti-life", which not only isn't really true and doesn't help their argument, but kind of makes them look like jerks.