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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

White House Abruptly Orders EPA To Loosen Clean Air Rules In Polluter Giveaway

The executive order puts poor communities and people of color particularly at risk. Big surprise, right?

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Trump’s Lawyer May Have Stored ‘Gold Mine’ Of Recorded Conversations: Report

The FBI raided Michael Cohen’s offices earlier this week, seizing his computers and phones. Well now, THAT sure sounds interesting!

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Balanced Budget Amendment Fails Amid GOP Fiscal Hypocrisy

Look who suddenly cares about budget deficits! Usually Republicans only care about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the Oval Office.

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Comey Memoir Claims Trump Was Obsessed With Disproving ‘Pee Tape’ Allegation

“There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way,” Trump allegedly told Comey. Meanwhile....

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Donald Trump’s Hometown Newspaper Just Burned Him With A Savage Nickname

New York Daily News comes out swinging over Comey’s claim that the president was “obsessed” with the alleged “pee tape.”

[Tendrin]

Might be of interest for WBE when he does his next profile on the governor of Tennesee:

Let’s start with our billionaire governor and his hissy fit on losing a privatization plan for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Bill Haslam, long-time investor in privatization beneficiary Jones Lang LaSalle, got revenge two ways. First, he imposed a new level of post-tenure review, one open to political machination, on UT faculty already covered by a broad range of productivity and quality evaluation methods — a slap at academic freedom. The Board of Trustees, meeting almost as far away from Knoxville as possible while still being in Tennessee, went along.
Then Haslam and the legislature took aim at the board itself, shrinking it and removing those pesky faculty and student members, making the board more open to gubernatorial sway. Haslam, seen by some as a white knight on at least some educational measures, insists these revenge policy changes are merely coincidence. However, as Navy veteran and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance warns us, “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/opini...ole/483935002/

Incidentally, one of the Reps mentioned probably belongs on the list.

Perhaps this is why, when I talked to Daniel on Monday, he seemed so flabbergasted that anyone could not be as upset as he was over this issue.
"I don't have any objections to students learning about civil rights or whatever," he said. "But if we're going to learn about real facts, then move it to a history class."
So inequality in school systems shouldn't be addressed? I asked.
"That's a vague theory, in my view," Daniel responded.
You're saying that inequality in Knox County schools is not a fact? I asked.
"It's not something that should be discussed in reading classes. There is no statement of fact, that, say, this happened in Chicago in 1966. It needs to be in a history class."
I pressed him again, then again.
"Why does a fourth grader need to learn about race?!" Daniel snapped.

State Representative Martin Daniel must report to jail by August 10, 2016 at 7:30 a.m. to be booked after an incident on a Knoxville radio show. According to Knox County court records, Daniel received a criminal summons for a misdemeanor assault charge.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Brenda Barton, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives since 2010 who during the 2013 Government Shutdown, compared President Obama to Hitler, and then when she was widely criticized for it, defended the move because she had seen pictures of President Bush compared to Hitler online (mind you, elected officials weren't the ones doing it, so there's that). Barton also made a road trip up to the Bundy Ranch to get to know Cliven Bundy and the Oath Keepers to support those militia goons during their standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. Her voting record is full of legislative votes that were even too extreme for former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to have signed, including a "religious freedom" law to allow for discrimination of LGBT citizens, and a bill to make gold and silver legal tender in Arizona. Barton also is terrible on votes regarding women's issues, supporting legislation to allow warrantless surprise inspections of abortion clinics at any time, to nullify the Affordable Care Act, and to allow business owners the right to opt out of contraceptive coverage in female employees' health insurance plans. But the bigger kerfluffle Barton was involved in was regarding a bill she sponsored, HB 2150 that was supposedly written as a measure to prevent animal hoarding, or from people running illegal puppy mills out of their home, but because she decided to throw a little hidden provision into the bill to change the definition of "livestock" so they are no longer considered "animals", it would have allowed Arizona ranchers to ignore previous legislation to prevent the abuse of livestock from 2006, through the loophole of just renaming and reclassifying whole species of creatures, easy-peasy. After dumbfounded animal rights groups caught on to Barton's attempt at turning Arizona into a butcher shop horror show, by the time the bill hit the desk of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey he chickened out and vetoed it. After a high-speed chase near the Oregon Malheur Refuge back in May of 2016, Barton wanted the federal agents who shot an armed Lee Roy Finicum while he went for his gun charged with manslaughter, because she feels a kinship towards paranoid militias. Factor that in to the reason why she might sponsor legislation to try and create statewide militias out of all able-bodied citizens in 2017.

Brenda Barton still has some twisted priorities in 2018, as she introduced legislation to honor one of her ancestors, John D. Lee, with a memorial plaque at the state capitol in March of 2018. This would be the same John D. Lee who was a bigamist mass murderer back who back in 1857, carried out the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where he led 50 Mormon militiamen and a group of Native Americans to slaughter 120 settlers from Arkansas travelling in a caravan through Utah to reach California. Lee wasn’t tried for this crime for twenty years, had some children (thus how Barton is his living descendant) before being executed by firing squad. Because, hey, there’s nobody who needs a monument to their memory like someone executed for mass murder, right?

We are relieved to report, though, that in 2018, Brenda Barton is term-limited in the Arizona state legislature and looks to be headed off into retirement. Hopefully whomever replaces her isn’t as insane, but really, that’s not setting the bar too high.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Gun nut stupidity at it's best, or worst, depending on your point of view:

No guns? No anthem, singer tells Reno minor-league baseball team

It's not the high notes of the The Star-Spangled Banner that has Alishia Wolcott turning down a spot to sing at a Reno Aces baseball game this summer.

The 2016 University of Nevada, Reno graduate said no to her chance to sing the national anthem at Greater Nevada Field, the downtown Reno stadium where the Aces minor league baseball team plays, because she can't bring her gun.

Wolcott declined to sing or ever attend another baseball game in a letter to the team after learning of the stadium’s new policy in which everyone will be checked with hand-held metal detectors before entering the stadium.

Wolcott, in her letter to the Aces, said in part:

“I will not sing our national anthem at a place that seeks to strip me of my Second Amendment rights, nor will I be attending any future events at Ace’s ballpark while these things take place.”

To which I say....WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Cry me a freaking river!

[InformationGeek]

Oh boy, NRA has a new ad...

"We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president, and the people who voted for him...in American history. From the highest levels of government, to their #MSM...their fate will be failure and they will perish in the political flames of their own fires." –@DLoesch

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh boy, NRA has a new ad...

I guess Loesch wasn't paying much, if any attention to how Barack Obama was vilified during his eight years in office, including no end of pictures on social media where he was hung and/or burned in effigy while called every vulgar, racist term in the book. But hey, let's whine like five years olds denied cookies before dinner when a corrupt, temperamental carnival barker who has ZERO business being president gets called on the carpet for his crooked deeds. That harridan really needs to STFU.

[JCAll]

Oh boy, NRA has a new ad...

The worst attack on a president in American histroy!!!
...
Except the ones why were shot.

[Trey Strain]

There is no "believe" when it comes to man made climate change. It is established scientific fact. Just as there is no believe in evolution or relitivity or the Big Bang.

It's not a matter for opinion.

We just had a freakishly cold winter. I don't hear anyone talking about us roasting any more. Not even Al Gore.

[Trey Strain]

Huh, fascinating. Now me, I'm thinking of becoming single issue on climate change. Whether you believe in man-made climate change or not (which I do, btw), keeping the Earth habitable should be a top priority. Cause 10,000 years ago there weren't 8 Billion people on the planet and we can't keep them underwater or feed them iceburg.

I didn't say I didn't believe gases have made the Earth a bit warmer. I'm saying it doesn't keep me awake at night. Especially not after the winter we just went through.

You might not know that Earth in actually still in an Ice Age. The temperatures are lower than the historic averages. A period like this is called an interglacial. In several thousand years, the glaciers will start advancing again.

If you want to worry about something, then worry about nuclear war or someone cooking up a lethal virus and letting it out.

[Trey Strain]

Here's how the game is played. You underfund part of the government, then claim that it doesn't work and sell it off to your big contributors.

https://apnews.com/83b8e84a28b244108...-Postal-System

[WestPhillyPunisher]

We just had a freakishly cold winter. I don't hear anyone talking about us roasting any more. Not even Al Gore.

Ahem....

Why Global Warming Can Mean Harsher Winter Weather

Cold winters have been caused by global warming: new research

Extreme cold winters fuelled by jet stream and climate change

Why Cold Weather Doesn't Mean Global Warming Isn't Real

[mojotastic]

Gun nut stupidity at it's best, or worst, depending on your point of view:

No guns? No anthem, singer tells Reno minor-league baseball team





To which I say....WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Cry me a freaking river!

What isnt she making a stand on what she believes WPP?

[Tami]

We just had a freakishly cold winter. I don't hear anyone talking about us roasting any more. Not even Al Gore.

That is the most common, completely ignorant rebuttal of Global Warming.

You through a pebble into a stream, there is some change in the flow of water, but its' not yet visible. You keep throwing rocks and pebbles in a stream and eventually, in time, the water level appears to get higher and the water appears to move faster. Throw in enough pebbles, eventually the steam is either dammed up or the flow of water is diverted to another path.

Global Warming is far more complex then that.

[Kirby101]

We just had a freakishly cold winter. I don't hear anyone talking about us roasting any more. Not even Al Gore.

It's called GLOBAL Climate Change and GLOBAL Warming. Not Local warming.


From NASA

February 2018 was sixth warmest February on record

Maybe you should talk to a Climate scientist to hear about the Earth getting warming.

[ed2962]

Oh boy, NRA has a new ad...

I'm telling you Loesch should be the next Bond villain.

Remember when on GI Joe Cobra Commander would interrupt TV broadcasts so he could rant? That's what this feels like.