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

[numberthirty]

You gotta wonder if its a form of self-realization that this whole thing wont work. They are literally fighting a losing battle because the whole thing never succeeds. Ethno-states never work and so should Trump branded Nazism flourish, it's gonna crumble around them. That isn't hyperbole that's being surrounded on all sides by countries the administration pissed off, especially Mexico seeing as how its citizens are getting rights violated while in detainment.

I wouldn't get ahead of myself on that one.

If Mexico actually had a legitimate commitment to it's citizen's rights, no one would crossing the border to try to seek asylum in the States.

[Malvolio]

I'm just so disappointed that "Womp Womp" has become a rallying cry. How did we go this wrong as a society?

It's the sound of a bully celebrating the effect his bullying has on his victim. Pathetic.

[Gray Lensman]

It's the sound of a bully celebrating the effect his bullying has on his victim.

That's what bullies do.

Pathetic.

That's what bullies are.

[Gray Lensman]

Just going to leave this here....

Attachment 67746

[Username taken]

You gotta wonder if its a form of self-realization that this whole thing wont work. They are literally fighting a losing battle because the whole thing never succeeds. Ethno-states never work and so should Trump branded Nazism flourish, it's gonna crumble around them. That isn't hyperbole that's being surrounded on all sides by countries the administration pissed off, especially Mexico seeing as how its citizens are getting rights violated while in detainment.

Exactly.

The whole "ethno-state" thing shouldn't even be discussed in the US considering how diverse it is and just how much it's racial distribution is evolving.

[worstblogever]

The GOP and Mainstream Media can keep their #civility pleas.

I saw an outstanding analysis of it that went like this:

"The GOP are asking what happened to civility. Let me help you remember where it went. You killed it slowly over decades, when you had people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter start rebranding civility as 'political correctness', and you actually then had your Tea Party candidates turn killing it into a policy platform."

[4saken1]

I think you're arguing against a point I haven't made.

Riiiight, because you're just looking for the NASTIEST (in your opinion). I don't imagine you really GAF about the other 9 in the top 10, as long as you can convince yourself that the worst one was a Liberal!

[Ragged Maw]

The RNC's "Unhinged" ad



Michelle Wolf's response

https://www.thewrap.com/michelle-wol...clusive-video/

"Now is not the time to be hinged!"

Interesting think piece on the calls for civility in the face of barbarism, and why it's all bullshit:

https://splinternews.com/this-is-jus...ing-1827099100

Equating civility (or at least not being an opposing brand of vicious assbag) to complacency/ineffectiveness is fallacious, to say the least.

[numberthirty]

Equating civility (or at least not being an opposing brand of vicious assbag) to complacency/ineffectiveness is fallacious, to say the least.

Jeez, yeah.

Bill Maher has been doing this nonsense, to somewhat "Left" degree, since back when cassettes were still a viable sales medium.

To the best of my knowledge, it has got almost nothing done.

If I really need "Democrat" Tucker Carlson/Ann Coulter", I'll let you know.

Until then, there is zero doubt in my mind that the energy that would be put into that endeavor wouldn't be better spent elsewhere.

[numberthirty]

Seriously, it's always the time to be "Hinged".

[Ragged Maw]

The RNC's "Unhinged" ad



Michelle Wolf's response

https://www.thewrap.com/michelle-wol...clusive-video/

"Now is not the time to be hinged!"

Seriously, it's always the time to be "Hinged".

To be fair though, it takes varying degrees of effort and self-awareness from one moment to the next.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Frank Artiles, a member of the Florida House of Representatives who first turned up in the Tea Party Wave of 2010, has a voting record featuring support for drug testing welfare recipients, unnecessary bans on Sharia Law, trying to prevent gays and lesbian couples from adopting children and find ways to deny them their legal right to be married, as well as sponsor pro-life legislation that included a measure to try and change the definition of fetal viability. At the time we gave Artiles the spotlight, he was one of the first Republicans around the country to also support transphobic bathroom legislation, wanting to fine transgendered citizens $1000 for using the “incorrect” bathroom. In our profiles of Artiles, we’ve taken great pains to be as accurate as we can in our discussion of him because he tends to threaten people who report on anything he does with libel and/or slander lawsuits, considering unflattering discussion of him or his interests “bullying”. When we factored in that, along with Artiles being investigated for assault for attacking a man in a night club a few years back, we thought we had more than enough to begin keeping tabs on him.

After six years of being a toxic influence in the Florida House of Representatives Artiles did successfully win election to the Florida State Senate in 2016 after fundraising at a rate roughly four times that of his opponent, Dwight Bullard. However, his time in the upper chamber was much shorter than perhaps anyone anticipated. One would think that after Frank Artiles had that run-in at a night club a few years back, that he might rethink where he spends time after hours in the state legislature, or to not be so combative. Well, Frank Artiles is a special brand of hostile, as in April of 2017, only four months into his first term in the Florida State Senate, went out to the Governor’s Club, a members-only bar and restaurant in Tallahassee, and called several members of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus the n-word, as well as calling one female lawmaker a “bitch”, and a male lawmaker a “p***y”. Artiles actually tried defending his use of the racial slur, claiming it was the version of the word that ends in an –a, and not –er, so he felt like he was just using slang and not insulting any of them. After days of trying to justify why casual bigotry was not a big deal, Artiles made a few half-hearted apologies before resigning in disgrace and now we’re going to move on and start profiling a different wacky Republican on this date instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 681-30, since this was established in July 2014.)


Ron DeSantis
Welcome to the 681st original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we’ll be profiling the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 6th District, Ron DeSantis, who was first elected to office back in 2012. DeSantis ran as a Tea Party candidate trying to get whatever momentum was left out of that toxic movement, and earned a second term by raving about Benghazi as much as possible in 2014. By 2016, DeSantis was feeling cocky enough that he thought he would be able to fill the void left by Marco Rubio who was leaving his U.S. Senate seat open, and promised he wouldn’t run, so DeSantis made a run for U.S. Senate. It wasn’t going so well, with polls showing not just that DeSantis would be crushed in the general election by any Democratic candidate, but that he would finish not just behind David Jolly, but even behind Carlos Beruff, a complete lunatic and political outsider. When Rubio reneged on his promise to run for a second term for office, it really made DeSantis’ decision to instead run for re-election for his House seat look far less craven.

But now, here we are in 2018, and this time the higher office that the 40-year-old DeSantis seeks is the one being vacated by Voldemort-cosplayer Rick Scott due to term limits. This is troubling to us here at CSGOPOTD because of various alliances that DeSantis has with… well, hatemongers. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted in April of 2017 that Ron DeSantis was teaming up with fellow Congressman Bill Johnson to form the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, and in that endeavor, acting as its chairman, enlisted the help of Daniel Pipes, an anti-Islamic “activist” who has spent three decades demonizing Muslims in the political sphere, including proposing Muslim detention camps in the United States, and claiming that Muslims orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing and not the anti-government militia lunatics who actually did it.

That relationship with a xenophobic bigot is not an outlier, by any stretch. Only a few weeks after the 2017 election, Ron DeSantis appeared at David Horowitz’s “Restoration Weekend”, a rather polite name for an event that is perhaps better classified as an Islamophobic hate rally, which that particular weekend, featured White Nationalist speakers like Steve Bannon, actual Neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, and Milo Yiannopoulos, who had already been revealed to have spoken several times in favor of pedophilia, as if his racist agenda wasn’t enough of a reason to be disgusted by him. And yet, there was DeSantis on stage, speaking alongside both Yiannopoulos and Bannon, without any shame whatsoever. (We haven’t forgotten, Ron.)

Maybe you’d get the idea that DeSantis being proud of being arm-to-arm with those intolerant jackasses means he has some courageous streak… HA! No. Because the day after yet another tragic mass shooting in Florida, this time in Parkland, Florida, a local television reporter that wasn’t satisfied with DeSantis posting “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter put a microphone in front of Rep. DeSantis to ask him if there would be any gun control measures he might support to prevent such a tragedy from happening in the future… and he cravenly ran away claiming he “had to go down” as if there was a vote about to happen.

[worstblogever]

Yeah, that’s some kind of cowardice. Then again, when you look at his voting record, it’s not at all shocking:

• January 15th, 2013: Ron DeSantis fails to vote for Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
• June 19th, 2013: Ron DeSantis votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
• September 30th, 2013: Rep. DeSantis votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown. When the time came to vote to re-open the federal government, DeSantis voted to keep it closed.
• Feb 26th, 2014: Ron DeSantis goes "all in" on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by voting for the "Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act".
• July 10th, 2014: DeSantis votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
• January 22nd, 2015: Ron DeSantis votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
• February 3rd, 2015: Rep. DeSantis votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act.
• September 11th, 2015: DeSantis votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• September 18th, 2015: Rep. DeSantis votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
• November 19th, 2015: DeSantis votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
• February 2nd, 2016: Ron DeSantis votes for HR 3762, the GOP’s 61st attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act, which is still working better than anticipated at the time.
• February 16th, 2017: DeSantis votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Ron DeSantis votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• May 4th, 2017: DeSantis votes for the House GOP's healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), postpartum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that DeSantis would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Ron DeSantis votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• October 3rd, 2017: DeSantis votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: Ron DeSantis votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
• February 18th, 2018: DeSantis and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.

So, we’ve established already that Ron DeSantis is allying himself with the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/White Nationalist wing of the GOP, and perhaps no greater evidence of that is the pathetic way he’s been trying to defend Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation. In August of 2017, he was actually trying to campaign within Congress to place a six-month timetable on the probe into any collusion between Trump and Russia. That has continued until the present day, when he’s been a frequent guest pundit on Fox News to try and taint the findings of the investigators further, claiming that the investigation was “infected with bias” from the start. Now, why would anyone trying to win office in 2018, during a Blue Wave year, do something so stupid?

Because, for the second election cycle in a row, Ron DeSantis is getting his ass kicked in a primary by someone he should breeze past. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam was leading DeSantis by fifteen points in the GOP Primary for Florida governor, and lo and behold, after months of DeSantis ranting about the Mueller probe, he received the “full endorsement” of Donald Trump (on Twitter, because of course).

Whether or not Trump’s sudden involvement in this race saves DeSantis from an embarrassing defeat or not, we won’t know until the primary happens in August. While we’re pulling for someone on Team Blue in November, like Gwen Graham or Andrew Gillum, we know one thing for sure… we’d like to see someone with as disgusting of allies as Ron DeSantis left out of office when all is said and done.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I can tell you why but nobody here is gonna like it.

1. They didn't let segregation go and so you have racists who eventually make there way into power or into political positions where they can try and create an ethnic state. It's not about the people who came to America and founded the nation, no, it's about a bunch of people who can't stand people of color being on equal footing. Slavery was not that long ago overall and you have had people in this thread trying to claim we didn't fight a war over not owning people. They really can't let that **** go.

2.Why do you think so many cops wrongly target or use excessive force on non-whites? It's a local way of being racist that communities for a long time just accepted as being a facet of life. And then the war on terror began and that meant that racists who had a bone to pick suddenly went into the military and became worse when they got a body count.

3. Once it is accepted as common place you have people who elect people like Trump, they just don't know why. But at the end of the day they are for a rebranding of Nazism if it means appealing to their own racism cause guess what, being common place some are raised to be this way and have no idea how destructive they really are. Segregation and slavery was common place and not that long ago.

Everything you said rang true. Whites hate not being at the top of the societal food chain, they hate that minorities like me demanded equal footing, so they're lashing out in the worst possible ways.

====================

GOP Sen. Susan Collins Says Anti-Roe Supreme Court Nominee Is ‘Not Acceptable’

Collins is one of a handful of swing votes who will decide the fate of President Donald Trump’s pick. Good for her. Let's see if Lisa Murkowski feels likewise.

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Trump Rips Harley-Davidson For Overseas Operation — Just Like His Own

Do what he says, not what he does. BINGO! Hypocrisy at it's best.

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Trump Calls His Critics ‘Very Dangerous For The Country’

The president tells Fox News that people from “the other side” have “radical ideas” that are “bad” for America. This is laughable in more ways than I can describe.

**********

North Korea Mulls Ways To ‘Conceal’ Nuclear Weapons From U.S.: Reports

Pyongyang is “exploring ways to deceive Washington” about its number of nuclear warheads, The Washington Post reports. Show of hands if you're surprised. Anyone?

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White Evangelicals Will Never Make America Great Again

Donald Trump’s presidency continues to overflow with the creation and upholding of racist policies, sexual scandals, childish virtual chest-puffing over Twitter and a general disregard for the well-being of the rest of the world. This is not particularly shocking if you consider the things he promised on the campaign trail. However, the unwavering and increasing support from white evangelicals begs us to consider what it is that they see in Trump’s policies, personality and work that “Make America Great Again.”

Very little detail has been given about what the controversial campaign slogan actually means. Yet, Trump leaned on this rhetoric to win the presidency and capture the support of 81 percent of White evangelicals. We only have Trump’s subsequent actions, words and policies to define his version of greatness, as well as what it is that white evangelicals believe so-called Christian politics look like.

This “great” America ostracizes the marginalized, seeks profits over people on a global scale and uses inflammatory rhetoric to justify its violence. It is a version of America where Muslims are not allowed entry, where buying a wedding cake cannot be a free act for LGBTQ people, where children are separated from their parents and put in cages and all the while a real-estate investor-leader of the free world threatens his nuclear power with impunity.

It seems that the more immoral Trump’s behavior, the more evangelicals scramble to his defense, throwing the Bible at his scandals to defend their political savior. From defending the caging of children at the border by quoting Romans, to using the Scriptures to smooth over an affair with a porn star, white evangelical politicians are maintaining that into order to make America great again, we must in effect make America Christian, leaning on the myths that the United States was ever good, virtuous and committed to the teachings of Jesus.

In seeking to be the light of the world through moral control, Christians have succeeded only in giving power to the whites of the world while perpetuating darkness for people of color and other marginalized identities.

[Tendrin]

But guys, Dems are doing terribly!

MIAMI — Little Havana awoke recently to an unexpected new reality: The iconic neighborhood, the traditional heart of South Florida’s proud Cuban exile community, would no longer be represented on the county commission by a Cuban-American Republican.
Instead, voters elected a Democrat so clearly not Hispanic that the candidate herself playfully embraced the nickname of “La Gringa.”
Eileen Higgins’s surprise victory in a heavily Hispanic district has deeply unsettled Republicans in South Florida, where local elections have long been determined by ethnicity. Now, some Republicans worry that her win portends more losses for the party in November. Democrats have won three consecutive special elections in Miami-Dade County over the past nine months.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=spartandhp