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

[GindyPosts]

Sure.

That said...

Firefighters were hurt, and someone died. With someone being hurt as an incredibly likely possibility, you'd think he could have just not mentioned his building and how well it was built.

Not artificially inflating the size is one way. I know some buildings technically don't have a 13th floor, but adding 10+ floors is ridiculous.

[InformationGeek]

Talk about defending stupidity.

Comedian and progressive talk show host Bill Maher defended Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham on Friday, arguing with guests on his HBO show that a boycott led by Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg was un-American.

Maher sparred with "Real Time" panel guests including author Max Boot over whether Hogg's boycott of Ingraham, who Maher admitted is a "deliberately terrible person," should be celebrated.

Hogg called for his Twitter followers to contact Ingraham's top advertisers following her criticism of him last month. Ingraham's Fox News show has since been dropped by multiple companies.

"I want to defend Laura Ingraham," Maher told the audience. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but it has to do with the Parkland kids and guns and free speech."

"Again, he is in the arena, and then he calls for a boycott of her sponsors," Maher continued, referring to Hogg, a student survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February.

"Really? Is that American?" Maher asked the crowd, several of whom audibly shouted "yes!" in response.

"He complains about bullying? That's bullying!" the host continued. "I have been the victim of a boycott ... I've lost a job as a result. It is wrong. You shouldn't do this by team, you should do it by principle."

"Boycotting is part of free speech," shot back former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer (D). "Saying, 'I don't want to work with that person.' Saying, 'I will not buy a product from that person.' That's speech."

"Really? All of the things Laura Ingraham has said over the years, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back?" Maher shot back.

It creates a "very chilling atmosphere," Maher added.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Sure.

That said...

Firefighters were hurt, and someone died. With someone being hurt as an incredibly likely possibility, you'd think he could have just not mentioned his building and how well it was built.

That’s not how Trump rolls. Braggarts and blowhards NEVER keep their light under a bushel basket. As for that one line about how well his building was constructed, one wonders if that was a dig at the old WTC.

[JCAll]

Oh, man...

While taking a look at the news about this, I just caught Trump's tweet on the situation.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...e%2Findex.html

The guy is a knucklehead.

My first thought was that I hope his building is up to code. That his first word on the subject is to remind us that it's a great building and totally not his fault doesn't surprise me at all. Of course, since Donald Trump said it it's probably a lie, so I also wouldn't be surprised if some building violation is discovered over this. I should probably stop trying to predict the news, I clearly have no idea how the world works anymore.

EDIT: Oh, damn, someone died. I'm sorry for using this as a chance to ****-talk Trump.

[Tami]

1 killed in fire at Trump Tower in New York

A 67-year-old man who was in the apartment was taken to a hospital and died a short time later, the New York Police Department said. His name was not immediately released. Officials said four firefighters also suffered minor injuries.

Shortly after news of the fire broke, Trump, who was in Washington, tweeted: “Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”

Asked if that assessment was accurate, Nigro said, “It’s a well-built building. The upper floors, the residence floors, are not sprinklered.”

Fire sprinklers were not required in New York City high-rises when Trump Tower was completed in 1983. Subsequent updates to the building code required commercial skyscrapers to install the sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install sprinklers unless the building undergoes major renovations.

Some fire-safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when New York City passed a law requiring them in new residential highrises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani said that would be too expensive.

[Tami]

‘When you lose that power’: How John Kelly faded as White House disciplinarian

After White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly pressured President Trump last fall to install his top deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, atop the Department of Homeland Security, the president lost his temper when conservative allies argued that she wasn’t sufficiently hard line on immigration. “You didn’t tell me she was a [expletive] George W. Bush person,” Trump growled.

After Kelly told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier in a January interview that Trump’s immigration views had not been “fully informed” during the campaign and had since “evolved,” the president berated Kelly in the Oval Office — his shouts so loud they could be heard through the doors.

And less than two weeks ago, Kelly grew so frustrated on the day that Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin that Nielsen and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis both tried to calm him and offered pep talks, according to three people with knowledge of the incident.

“I’m out of here, guys,” Kelly said — comments some interpreted as a resignation threat, but according to a senior administration official, he was venting his anger and leaving work an hour or two early to head home.

[Malvolio]

Talk about defending stupidity.

I have a take similar to Stephanie Miller on this. She doesn't like advertiser boycotts because she knows that she has many of the same advertisers as people like Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity, so a boycott hurts her, too. I also don't want people like Ingraham or Hannity taken off the air. I want them to answer for their stupidity. Make them accountable.

[numberthirty]

I have a take similar to Stephanie Miller on this. She doesn't like advertiser boycotts because she knows that she has many of the same advertisers as people like Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity, so a boycott hurts her, too. I also don't want people like Ingraham or Hannity taken off the air. I want them to answer for their stupidity. Make them accountable.

Huh...

While I guess that the idea is worthwhile, how would you go about actually doing it?

Some of the folks we are talking about have made entire careers out of lies and stupidity. If anything, Ingraham has moved up the food chain while doing this sort of thing.

[numberthirty]

Also, he can seriously shove trying to use that "Free Speech" angle.

If you want to say "Freedom Of Expression"? Have the nerve to actually do it. Stop trying to use "Free Speech" as a scare tactic. No one's freedom of speech was violated in this instance.

[JCAll]

If two people get into an argument on the street, and one of them goes to the other's job and causes a fuss to get them fired, I'd feel like they took the fight too far. But if one of those people is being paid millions of dollars by advertisers to be in that argument in the first place, I feel like it's a bit more warranted.

[PaulBullion]

It's only tone deaf when you take it out of context and portray it as a slight against Obama, which it isn't.

You don't get to decide how the black people in the audience heard it, though. The reactions shows it upset them, which makes it tone deaf.

They also heard it in context of knowing Sanders once thought a primary challenge to Obama would be a good idea for Democrats.

[Iron Maiden]

Talk about defending stupidity.

I saw that discussion and I think the panel pushed back very strongly on that. Boycotting is how the little guy can bring a company, or network in this case, to their knees. That was Bill O'Reilly's death knell. Fox had covered up some of his larger settlements and kept in quiet for a while.

[numberthirty]

I saw that discussion and I think the panel pushed back very strongly on that. Boycotting is how the little guy can bring a company, or network in this case, to their knees. That was Bill O'Reilly's death knell. Fox had covered up some of his larger settlements and kept in quiet for a while.

It would also be a little bit different discussion if what she said had been anywhere near the actual discussion of the danger guns present and if gun control might be a way to mitigate that danger.

What she did was just take a swipe that had nothing to do with any of it. I just can't see trying to make a case for why we should defend her "Right" to do so.

[worstblogever]

It was on this day in both 2015, as well as 2016, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Scott Brown, who after being defeated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts in 2012, carpet-bagged his way up to New Hampshire to attempt a challenge of Sen. Jean Shaheen in the 2014 midterm elections, also failing there. In that 2012 campaign, he falsely sent out fundraising e-mails claiming that MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was running against him, and then made a series of misogynistic attacks against Elizabeth Warren once she entered the race, including having his staffers go to her rallies and try mocking her for putting Native American heritage on her college forms by war-whooping and doing a tomahawk chop (which obviously made them look far more like the ***holes). During his campaign against Jean Shaheen, he reversed position and denied climate change existed, accused illegal immigrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border of bringing the Ebola Virus with them (which makes zero sense), and gave out free alcohol to college students at a tailgate fundraiser, leading to viral videos of Dudebros for Brown chanting, “F*** Jean Shaheen” and “F*** her right in the p****”. Because that’s effective campaigning. And yes, Brown once modeled nude for in Cosmopolitan magazine back in 1982 as a male centerfold. Brown spent 2016 campaigning for Donald Trump, but did not returned into the fold as a candidate in 2018.



It was one year ago on this day that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had its original profile to discuss Ken Weyler, a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who originally served nine terms in that body from 1990-2008, before taking a loss in 2008 and laying low for two years. He returned to office in a 2010 special election, garnered some attention when he argued against insurance covering mental health problems because, as he claims, “mental illness is an elaborate racket” where “by cutting the amount of help we're willing to offer, we'd like them to discover that some of these people can be cured.” That probably should have alarmed people, as should his voting record, since Weyler has taken the hardest of hard lines on most issues across the board, be it sponsoring the effort by New Hampshire Republicans to sue the federal government over the Affordable Care Act, voting for obviously unconstitutional legislation to force public school students to stand for the pledge of allegiance, opposition to New Hampshire’s SB 390, which would have prevented housing discrimination against victims of domestic violence, and a vote against a bill which was written to establish a buffer zone outside of abortion clinics to keep protesters from getting close enough to bar the door, or attack those going in.

Now, it’s not Ken Weyler’s legislative record that really made him stand out to us. It was when he made the news in February of 2016 as he submitted testimony to a state House committee hearing for a bill he co-sponsored that would prohibit "any member of a foreign terrorist organization from receiving public assistance, medical assistance, or food stamps." That already sounded xenophobic and bigoted, but it got worse during the hearing, as Weyler argued that giving public assistance to Muslims amounts to “treason”. And that quote is most definitely not just the heat of the moment, because the prepared remarks that Weyler had included his opinions that In his written testimony, Weyler said that all "terrorist attacks of the last twenty years have been by Muslim fanatics" (which is false when you have people like Dylann Roof and James Dear running around, to name a few). Weyler then went on to rant about the Tsarnaev brothers, who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing and claimed both where not just “raised on public benefits” (reports are their mother did in their youth), but wasn’t satisfied and lied to claim Tamerlan still was because, " one of them married and put his wife on public benefits. If he had to support his family, he might have had more devotion to his job and not to bomb building and radicalizing his brother." Weyler continued in his testimony, admitting that there are "Muslims in our community who are working hard to be economically successful", but calling for an end to any welfare for Muslims because, “if one does not have to be responsible for what all the rest of us do to support ourselves, then ‘The Devil has work for idle hands." Weyler then meandered back into an argument that all Muslims are responsible for terrorism (which would be news to the IRA up in Ireland), charging that Islam is not a real religion.

"You may hear from some opposition to this bill, but I must remind you that in the Muslim religion the word ‘taqiyya’ describes how its adherents are expected to lie to non-believers to advance their cause. I say cause rather than religion because this is an ideology posing as a religion. Islam is intolerant and deceitful, and its adherents are ordered to overthrow our way of life and to replace it with ‘sharia’ law. Anyone who attends a mosque is expected to contribute. Ten percent of the contributions are labeled ‘zakat’ and are used to fund ‘jihad’ or religious war against us.”

We wish we could report that being that much of an intolerant piece of garbage was enough to deny Weyler his eighteenth non-consecutive term in the 2016 elections, but alas, he still survived by getting 15% of the vote and finishing fourth in his district, which is enough to find oneself back in the New Hampshire state capitol. Which serves as the latest bit of evidence that the bar for what it takes to legislate in the Granite State is set perhaps a little too low. We’re hoping that in 2018, Weyler does not make the final cut, because intolerant and ignorant s***s like him have no place in American politics.

[Carabas]

I also don't want people like Ingraham or Hannity taken off the air. I want them to answer for their stupidity. Make them accountable.

I wonder how you see this realistically happening.

So far boycotts are pretty much the only way anybody on Fox has ever been held accountable for anything.