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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

No one gives a flying **** anywhere. But Benghazi backfired, so this attack is being pressed. When it peters out a new one will be chosen.

And if that new attack fails, there will be a new one in the queue, and so forth and so on. Just like with Obamacare, Republicans simply will now stop until they get what they want, in this instance, the goal being Hillary's destruction in the campaign.

[tombo]

I keep wondering about US gun use, since I began chatting to non-brits on the internet I've met lots of Americans who are strongly into their right to own guns. We hear a lot about the shocking US rates of gun death here, and I was wondering how often do possibly righteous killings happen, IE a good person shooting a criminal/attacker who threatened them? I mean do they ever happen., are there any stats for them? Or is it all crazy people stocking up their fortress for the day Obama gives the phone call for his secret army of Muslims and Communists to land on the beaches and begin the takeover.

[Tendrin]

I keep wondering about US gun use, since I began chatting to non-brits on the internet I've met lots of Americans who are strongly into their right to own guns. We hear a lot about the shocking US rates of gun death here, and I was wondering how often do possibly righteous killings happen, IE a good person shooting a criminal/attacker who threatened them? I mean do they ever happen., are there any stats for them? Or is it all crazy people stocking up their fortress for the day Obama gives the phone call for his secret army of Muslims and Communists to land on the beaches and begin the takeover.

A lot of it is crazy people. More guns are owned by fewer people. Gun ownership is declining, but thoe who buy guns are buying more and more of them.

Yes, 'good shootings' happen, but not as frequently as NRA propagandists like to pretend, and there are a /ton more/ careless, reckless and stupid gun uses than there are 'self protection' stories, no matter how much they try to massage the statistics.

[Shawn Hopkins]

I keep wondering about US gun use, since I began chatting to non-brits on the internet I've met lots of Americans who are strongly into their right to own guns. We hear a lot about the shocking US rates of gun death here, and I was wondering how often do possibly righteous killings happen, IE a good person shooting a criminal/attacker who threatened them? I mean do they ever happen., are there any stats for them? Or is it all crazy people stocking up their fortress for the day Obama gives the phone call for his secret army of Muslims and Communists to land on the beaches and begin the takeover.

Data is real spotty on those, because there's no official requirement to track them, but they do happen. We call them justifiable homicides. A report I saw found about 250 in 2012, compared to more than 8300 criminal gun homicides, so they are very rare.

http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

One question this raises, how many of those people were protecting themselves from someone else with a gun?

[Tendrin]

Not to mention the CDC is barred from actually studying gun violence because they might recommend things that the gun lobby doesn't like.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Another thing I realized about the Bernie Bros. not being Democrats is, they're not fucking Democrats. Unless they live in states with open primaries or realize they actually need to change their affiliation, they won't do **** for Bernie in the primaries. Their only contribution is finding inventive ways to call Hillary supporters cunts.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The more...rabid gun enthusiasts, mockingly called "ammosexuals" tend to be rather paranoid, obsessed with thinking President Obama is out to take their guns, thus the hoarding Tendrin previously mentioned.

[CSTowle]

As has already been pointed out, by that reasoning no Democrat can ever win. The lies are inevitable, it's how you handle them that counts. Denying them like Kerry did isn't enough, you've got to have a management strategy to counter them and minimize them. Obama handled the lies better than Kerry, for example. Hillary has more experience and better results in this area than anyone, period. She's proven time and again that she's a master of managing mud. She looked BETTER after the Benghazi attack. She's Teflon.

Bernie gets mad and looks flustered, which to be fair will resonate with people on his side but is going to look like weakness to the undecided.

She looked like Teflon compared to the morons in Congress almost literally foaming at the mouth to take her down. And she did it for an audience of reporters and a very small percentage of the population who pays attention to these things and gives a f##k (which probably includes anyone posting here about politics rather than funnybooks). That's great for that niche audience, but means almost nothing when it comes to the vast majority of folks who are going to be half paying attention on their way to the polling booths.

If the one skill she has (other than riding her name to jobs around the government) is defending against attacks it's because she's been attacked for 25 years. Not all of it legitimate, and most of it not worth the amount of vitriol that came their way, but that you can spin that into a strength shows why you're supporting her. In fairness, there's not much else there to admire.

I think the concern about the Hillary e-mail thing is entirely regional, because here in the northeast, no one gives a FLYING f*****

Nobody anywhere gave a f##k, again outside of the media and niche audiences who treat this stuff like their version of soap operas (I'd count myself in that category). If she gets the nomination and it gets brought up in the general, with a thousand other things, most folks who tuned out will be seeing it pretty much for the first time. Will this be the straw that breaks the back? Probably not, but it'll be more fuel for the fire of questioning her trustworthiness. Balanced against what positives, other than "she's great at handling being attacked for stuff she may or may not have done"?

Interesting article about the Sanders campaign's problem reeling in the "Berniebro," which is like a What If issue where Gamergaters are liberal. These guys are passionate Bernie supporters, but they express that through a seething, often sexist, hatred of Hillary Clinton, calling her things like "twat" and "clitrash" and harassing anyone who supports her. I've seen a few of these guys around the web and while they're definitely a minority, they're bad for the ole optics.

http://theslot.jezebel.com/bernie-sa...ebr-1755911898

What, there are a##holes supporting Bernie Sanders? Gosh you guys, I guess we better vote for Hillary instead then. She'd never have a##holes supporting her, or calling for boycotting the general election if she didn't get the nomination, or putting out pictures of the first viable black candidate in traditional religious garb to make him look foreign, or anything like that.

Attachment 31936

[Shawn Hopkins]

She looked like Teflon compared to the morons in Congress almost literally foaming at the mouth to take her down. And she did it for an audience of reporters and a very small percentage of the population who pays attention to these things and gives a f##k (which probably includes anyone posting here about politics rather than funnybooks). That's great for that niche audience, but means almost nothing when it comes to the vast majority of folks who are going to be half paying attention on their way to the polling booths.

If the one skill she has (other than riding her name to jobs around the government) is defending against attacks it's because she's been attacked for 25 years. Not all of it legitimate, and most of it not worth the amount of vitriol that came their way, but that you can spin that into a strength shows why you're supporting her. In fairness, there's not much else there to admire.



Nobody anywhere gave a f##k, again outside of the media and niche audiences who treat this stuff like their version of soap operas (I'd count myself in that category). If she gets the nomination and it gets brought up in the general, with a thousand other things, most folks who tuned out will be seeing it pretty much for the first time. Will this be the straw that breaks the back? Probably not, but it'll be more fuel for the fire of questioning her trustworthiness. Balanced against what positives, other than "she's great at handling being attacked for stuff she may or may not have done"?



What, there are a##holes supporting Bernie Sanders? Gosh you guys, I guess we better vote for Hillary instead then. She'd never have a##holes supporting her, or calling for boycotting the general election if she didn't get the nomination, or putting out pictures of the first viable black candidate in traditional religious garb to make him look foreign, or anything like that.

Attachment 31936

Look at your reaction to that negativity and the grudge you clearly still hold. It helped fuel your hatred of Hillary, even though it had nothing to do with her directly, to the point you won't even vote for her in the general. If an on the fence person is called a **** by a Bernie Bro., it'll harden their heart the same way.

So nobody has cared or noticed during the last two decades when Hillary beats her manufactured scandals? But they'll definitely notice the attacks, and just the attacks and not her deft deflections, at some point in the future? So how will Bernie be immune from this effect? For these Republican-manufactured attacks to have any real impact on her trustworthiness, they should have merit. Are you saying they have merit?

[jeanvaljean]

I guess due to the unbeatable power of manufactured scandals, we might as well get used to Trump becoming the last US president, ever.

[numberthirty]

Will the real Hillary Clinton please stand up...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-...r-ever-happen/

Circa '94...

"If, for whatever reason, the Congress doesn't pass health care reform, I believe, and I may be to totally off base on this, but I believe that by the year 2000 we will have a single payer system," she said. " I don't even think it's a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single payer system will sweep the country... It will be such a huge popular issue... that even if it's not successful the first time, it will eventually be. "

Circa now...

She added, "People who have health emergencies can't wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass."

[worstblogever]

What, there are a##holes supporting Bernie Sanders? Gosh you guys, I guess we better vote for Hillary instead then. She'd never have a##holes supporting her, or calling for boycotting the general election if she didn't get the nomination, or putting out pictures of the first viable black candidate in traditional religious garb to make him look foreign, or anything like that.

I'm pretty sure this is another one of those stories that the internet has buried the truth, but...

Those pictures hit the internet after Hillary's '08 campaign was over. They were circulated, if by anyone, by bitter Clinton supporters, but by no one from her campaign.

[worstblogever]

One year ago today we ran our profile of former Congressional candidate David Hedrick, who appeared as a Tea Party protester on the scene in the earliest incarnations of the group in 2009, showing up at a town hall hosted by Congressman Brian Baird to yell not just about healthcare, but demand that Baird "STAY AWAY FROM MY KIDS!" After being hyped up for that tirade even further by both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, Hedrick decided to make a bid to run for Baird's seat in Washington's 3rd Congressional District. In interviews with the media after becoming a cult figure, Hedrick compared Democrats to Nazis, claiming that they were "indoctrinating our youth". He then proceeded to fundraise by writing a Christmas-themed children's book that was loaded with conservative ideology called, "The Liberal Clause", because he was that much of a hypocrite. During the GOP Primary in 2010, Hedrick got "swift-boated" by fellow Republican Jamie Herrera-Beutler over injuries he claimed he got while on a "classified mission" while a war hero the U.S military, that after some digging by the press, were revealed to have occured while he was still a non-commissioned officer going through basic training. As his campaign started to crumble, things got worse when Hedrick was arrested for domestic violence, after which he filed a lawsuit against local law enforcement that was laughed out of court. Since Hedrick hasn't turned up on a ballot for over five years now, and it seems unlikely he will ever make an attempt to again, we’ll retire his profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 434-12, since this was established in July 2014.)


Mike Pitts

For the 434th original profile here at "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day", we're going to talk about Mike Pitts, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives serving District 14. Pitts, a former police officer, was first elected in 2002, and was re-elected in 2014, after he was allowed to run unopposed. Call it a hunch, though, but with what he's been up to since that election... he might find his road to office in 2016 a bit more difficult.

I mean, let's be honest, here... maybe years ago, someone in Pitts' part of South Carolina should have raised concerns about re-electing him around the time he suggested the Palmetto State should start its own currency made of gold and silver coins and ban federal currency back in 2010.

That's not a typo, and he actually tried justifying it with the following paranoid quote:

"The Germans felt their system wouldn't collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s. "The Soviet Union didn't think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also. If the federal government continues to spend money at the rate it’s spending money, and if it continues to print money at the rate it’s printing money, our economic system is going to collapse.”

That's just the most insane of his legislative suggestions. Here's some other fun ones:

• December 13th, 2006: Pitts co-sponsors H 3063 South Carolina Republicans' attempt to define marriage as a union between one man and one women.
• January 26th, 2011: Pitts co-sponsors H 3003, a stricter Voter ID law to combat the statistically non-existent problem of "voter fraud" that conservatives hyperventilate about.
• December 11th, 2012: Pitts sponsors H 3101, South Carolina Republicans' attempt at nullifying the Affordable Care Act (and you'd hope that a concept like nullification wouldn't be something someone from the state that started the Civil War would throw around so casually).
• May 23rd, 2013: Pitts sponsors H 4223, an unconstitutional ban on abortion at 20 weeks that fails to pass.
• January 13th, 2015: Pitts sponsors H 3114, another unconstitutional ban on abortion at 20 weeks that fails to pass.

But where things take a definite uncomfortable turn regarding Mike Pitts comes after the tragic mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina at the AME Emanuel Church in June 2015, by a shooter who revered Confederate iconography, and embraced white nationalist ideology. In the wake of that tragedy, the silver lining was perhaps that a debate began to finally take the Confederate flag down from places where it was presented on government property, such as the state capitol. But damn it, ain't nobody takin' down the good ol' Stars & Bars when Mike PItts is around! He became the face of the effort to continue to embrace one of the battle flags of a failed rebellion from a century and a half ago that was fought because rich white people in the South refused to to accept the idea of running their plantations without slave labor. (And if you had to pick a face for it, you would think they would have chosen one that didn't look like a walrus that got stuck in a tanning bed.) His quote at the time:

“I associate that with scrubbing history I associate that as the first move of a much larger movement to eliminate all things Southern. They said, 'We’ve got to raise an army. The Yankees have invaded us.' The good ol’ boys, my ancestors, said, ‘Hell, yeah,’. They grabbed their squirrel rifles and off they went to fight a war. All they knew was that the Northern states were trying to dictate to the Southern states what to do.”

Alas, with those moving words, Mike Pitts was unable to prevent a great majority of the legislature from voting to take down the Confederate flag from the state capitol. And while you might think that's where this story closes... oh no. Not yet. You see, on January 19th, 2016, Mike Pitts made one of the kookiest suggestions you can imagine, when he proposed legislation that would create criminal background checks not for firearms sales... oh no... but for journalists. They would have to be a part of a mandatory registry, and if caught violating rules set, would be hit with fines or even jail time.
The obviously unconstitutional bill he submitted was a heinous attack on the press, and when news outlets reported on what a boob he was for even suggesting such a thing... he tried to turn around and claim the joke was on them, and he "punked" them by suggesting such a thing, and that he intended to show they were hypocrtical for only defending "their" first amendment rights, but were not willing to go to bat for his, over the Confederate flag (even though he can still have one, it's just that taxpayers don't have to pay for one on government property).
His whiny quote where he tried to paint himself as the real victim was as follows:

“They constantly attack people who follow their Christian [sic] beliefs and attempt to portray them as bigots, and they certainly do not like the fact that normal everyday Americans gather to petition the government and air grievances. Look no further than how they have demonized the Tea Party. Furthermore, they love to trample on our 2nd Amendment rights to 'Keep and Bear Arms'. If they had their way, there would be no 2nd Amendment.”

South Carolina... maybe there is one more thing you can do to help heal your state... like get a festering pustule like Mike Pitts out of your lawmaking body, considering he's clearly insane, and only wants to use his office to grandstand with nonsensical ideas that do no one any good. Just... you clearly can do better.

[Brigonos Chomhgaill]

there are a##holes supporting Bernie Sanders? Gosh you guys, I guess we better vote for Hillary instead then.

A common tactic against the global rise in left-wing candidates of the last few years has been to attack their support by highlighting the actions of extremists. It's an attempt to tarnish the candidate by association, and to attack the notion that those on the left might occupy a higher moral ground than those on the right.
It also doesn't work, as evidenced in Spain and the UK.

[CSTowle]

Look at your reaction to that negativity and the grudge you clearly still hold. It helped fuel your hatred of Hillary, even though it had nothing to do with her directly, to the point you won't even vote for her in the general. If an on the fence person is called a **** by a Bernie Bro., it'll harden their heart the same way.

So nobody has cared or noticed during the last two decades when Hillary beats her manufactured scandals? But they'll definitely notice the attacks, and just the attacks and not her deft deflections, at some point in the future? So how will Bernie be immune from this effect? For these Republican-manufactured attacks to have any real impact on her trustworthiness, they should have merit. Are you saying they have merit?

Nobody noticed because during her last run she never made it past the primaries. Folks who vote in the primaries tend to ignore scandals below the level of something like the Edwards cheating scandal when it comes to their own candidates. It's when you get to the general that the real attacks come out and Independents/leaners tend to take stock. Had she made it that far she'd have really been tested. Same with buying a house and running in a reliably Democratic state.

Should she gain the nomination and be at the center of a Presidential run, rather than an also-ran, she will have the full force of the Republican attack machine focused on her. And what's the difference between her and Bernie there? Well for one, there's a lot more baggage and scandal to attack. Two, even her supporters don't see her as authentic. It'll be harder to get people to believe bulls##t with someone viewed as authentic (if more radical) than it will a Clinton. And some of it will not be bulls##t. Good luck sorting through which is which, or relying on the public to be able to.

As to "Bernie Bros", who's sounding bitter and biased? But I guess painting Bernie Sanders supporters as bitter, misogynist, closet right-wingers is the best strategy to go with as a Hillary supporter since you can't win on authenticity, leadership, the issues, or just about any other argument outside of "hey guys, she knows how to play the game and probably won't be as bad as Trump".

I'm pretty sure this is another one of those stories that the internet has buried the truth, but...

Those pictures hit the internet after Hillary's '08 campaign was over. They were circulated, if by anyone, by bitter Clinton supporters, but by no one from her campaign.

Sort of like these "Bernie Bros" Mr. Hopkins is talking about then? Guess my point stands.