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

[Tendrin]

Just a complete coincidence as well that they saw a big uptick in the latter after the election of the first African American president, too, I'm sure.

Total coincidence, WBE. Everyone knows racism is dead, and if there are racists, it's the party that elected the affirmative action food stamp president. Totes.

[gantz_alien_killer]

Pretty much. Reframe a hate crime against African Americans into the kind of story they like to push about "Victimized Christians" instead.

Those ***holes have officially gone full Conservapedia.

The victims were in a church during Bible study time so why can't it be a attack on Christians? Can blacks not be Christians like they can't be geniuine republicans? Do you think their blackness superceds their Christianity or vice versa? So far the only people claiming hate crime are progressives which see race in everything.

Funny how progressive step over cold bodies to start pushing the gun agenda once again. Like any law would have stopped this murder.

[Tendrin]

Funny how progressive step over cold bodies to start pushing the gun agenda once again. Like any law would have stopped this murder.

Oh, I don't know. Because he said 'you're raping our women and taking over the world and I have to stop you', or something akin to that? Pretty sure it's about race there, guy. In this case, in the killers eyes, their blackness certainly did supercede anything else about them, didn't it?

Oh, and by the way: One Conneticut gun control law cut their homicide rate by 40%.

/40%/.

So the idea that laws can not stop a shooting like this from happening is, of course, absurd.

Of course, there’s no way to measure the true impact of Connecticut’s “permit-to-purchase” law. We can’t access the alternate universe where Connecticut’s law never existed. But we can compare Connecticut against the 39 states that didn’t have similar legislation at the time.

That’s what the researchers did, using records on gun killings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the control states, homicide rates tumbled in the mid ’90s — but in Connecticut, the gun homicide rate fell faster and farther, even after controlling for demographic changes, incomes and policing levels. This is a sign that Connecticut’s gun policy washaving an effect.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ssed-this-law/

But of course, what do I know? I'm just another progressive stepping over the cold dead bodies of the recently deceased to try to stop something like from ever happening again. I guess ignoring the drum beat of mass shootings would be preferable. Life is just /so/ much easier when we can throw up our hands and pretend we couldn't have done anything differently or chosen different policies.

[worstblogever]

It’s Your Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day!
(Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 343-12, since this was established in July 2014.)


Linda McMahon

Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO and two-time U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut, Linda McMahon tried to downplay her product to reinvent herself as a “strong family values Republican” while seeking office, when under her leadership from 1980-2009, the WWF/WWE has provided some of the lowest common denominators with televised pro-wrestling that have not just pushed the bounds of what can be aired on television in terms of graphic violence, but storylines that frame those pro-wrestling matches that are not just misogynist, but exploited women, and contained insensitive racial or ethnic caricatures for the wrestlers’ alter egos. And Linda McMahon didn't just sit behind the scenes, a CEO lording over the company, her entire family appear within the show as a dysfunctional, trashy collective willing to degrade, or flat out assault one another for a national audience.

A sampling of "sports entertainment":

• There was the time that Linda’s husband, Vince, on air, used the N-word. In front of two African-American wrestler/characters.
• A WWE wrestler portraying a character as a former porn star sleeps with the sister of a Japanese wrestler, who defects back to a heel stable of Japanese wrestlers, who kidnap the former, and take him backstage where they attempt to castrate him with a katana, while declaring, “CHOPPEE CHOPPEE YOUR PEE PEE!”.
• There were over a dozen “skits” that aired featuring a character introduced as a former WWE referee on hard times after losing his job in a weekly skit named “Lunchtime suicide”.
• WWE had an Irish wrestler who wielded a shillelagh as a foreign object and would eventually gain a dwarf sidekick… who was a leprechaun.
• One WWE Diva
  started getting inside the head of another Diva by sleeping with her elderly father. The former promised not to marry the old gent if her rival would sleep with her, and successfully extorted sex from her rival, and then revealed their lesbian encounter to her father, to really turn the screws. Then she broke her word and married her father anyway (in their underwear), and when they consummated their union, she sexed him until he died of a heart attack.
• WWE had a star tag team whose in-ring gimmick was that they were unintentionally homoerotic, and possibly closeted gay men, even being given a manager who was their “stylist”. After being paired for months, one eventually proposed to the other, and on an episode of WWE Smackdown, a “gay wedding” was supposed to take place. The angle was noticed by GLAAD, who were, at first, praising WWE for their depiction of a gay couple. They probably should have noted how much WWE loves “swerve” weddings, and before the ceremony was official, both men affirmed they were straight, and their whole lifestyle was an act their “stylist” had them putting over. The stylist and the preacher, actually a General Manager in disguise, then summoned a heavyweight tag team to assault the fraudulently gay couple. GLAAD was less than pleased.
• An elderly former WWE women’s wrestler was a featured character for a time who would try to kiss or grope male wrestlers several decades her junior. She successfully bedded one, a former Olympic weightlifter, and would inexplicably become pregnant at her advanced age. The storyline ended abruptly when she “gave birth” to a hand. (Or the doctor just found a severed one up there.)
• A WWE Champion taunted his masked challenger during a feud for having once been in a car accident with his girlfriend, who died in the wreck, and claimed that he had attempted to consummate their relationship after his death in a necrophilic act. He then showed a recreation of the events firsthand by putting on a copy of his foe’s mask, and attempting to get it on with a mannequin in a coffin in a pre-taped segment.
• A WWE “General Manager” once introduced a segment titled, quite simply, “HLA” which he explicitly explained stood for “Hot Lesbian Action”. He then brought out two women to the ring to kiss and fondle each other before a live audience before ending the segment by summoning two heavyweight wrestlers to come out and brutalize them.
• Three Mexican wrestlers debut, and their ring entrance is they ride to the ring on… lawn mowers.
• A wrestler portraying an Arab-American performs a Muslim prayer underneath the Titantron, which is the signal for five allies wearing ski masks to appear, and begin to aid him in ambushing another wrestler with clubs and piano wire. That might be in bad taste, but worse taste because it aired the day of the Terror Attacks in London.
• A wrestler in the WWE began to stalk the wife of another wrestler, where he confessed that he wanted to have “beastiality sex” with her.
• An entire faction of wrestlers who were white taunted an entire a stable of wrestlers who were African American by dressing up as them, complete with some of them in blackface makeup. The guys in blackface were the "good guys" in that storyline.
• Linda's husband Vince once ordered one of the WWE Divas to strip down in the ring, then crawl around like a dog and bark for his amusement.
• A male wrestler was repeatedly assaulted by another one, the latter portrayed as being an infernally-motivated burn victim. The demonic heel then kidnaps the first wrestler’s girlfriend, one of the WWE Divas, and off-screen supposedly rapes her and gets her pregnant. Somehow, at 2 months along, a paternity test confirms the heel is the father. The feud culminates in a PPV match where the “prize” for winning the bout is to marry the WWE Diva who’s a victim of rape. The heel wins, and the Diva is forced to marry her rapist. A second Diva, the WWE Women’s Champion, at this time, constantly humiliated the first over her victimization and plight, to get “heel heat”.
  
  The pregnancy then ends when a third male wrestler comes along months into the storyline, and strikes the second (the husband/rapist/father of the baby) with a chair that topples him onto the pregnant diva, who miscarries. The next time the new wrestler appears, he brings a baby doll with him. After mocking the duo, he punts the baby doll into the crowd. The rapist/father is then somehow “turned face” in this scenario.
  (Yes, these stories all tied in to one another.)
• A wrestler steals the girlfriend of another (still the gal from the pregnant by rape angle), then intends to have a “live sex celebration” in the ring (where one of her breasts ends up exposed on live cable television accidentally).

[worstblogever]

And no, those examples aren't even the old school WWF from the 1980s or 1990s where things were even wilder, and racial caricatures like Mr. Fuji, Yokozuna, Tatanka, Saba Simba, Kamala the Ugandan Headhunter, Slick, (the Jive Soul Bro video alone...) and Akeem the African Dream (wherein the white biker gang-themed wrestler One Man Gang was mystically turned into an African by a mystical ritual performed in a parking lot over a trash fire) were all running about. The above list was things from within the past 20 years. The older stuff... well, the less said, the better.

For Linda's own part, her on-screen character's two most famous storylines were the time she "turned heel" by firing legendary announcer Jim Ross and then kicking him in the mommy-daddy button (and her opponents often use that in ads), and an extended storyline where she was in a catatonic stupor while her husband Vince flitted around right under her unresponsive nose with whatever WWE Diva tickled his fancy. It was a memorable angle because, frankly, it played to her strengths... not talking.

And that last story highlights a big problem with a Linda McMahon candidacy. Not only was she trying to run away from WWE's product (which is ironically also what she could tout for making her a 'successful businesswoman'), but in the minds of wrestling fans, she has always been a robotic void of charisma when she has appeared on television, in sharp contrast to Vince, or either of her children, Shane and Stephanie, who can sway a crowd rather easily.

But touting her credentials as an executive at WWE means she also shares what many critics of her husband's bravado say about the family... OUTSIDE of the wrestling business, they have been abject failures. The World Bodybuilding Federation. The WWE Restaurant in New York City. The XFL.

And that's not to say that WWF/WWE has always been run under her leadership above board. You have the early 1990s steroid scandal that ended up with Vince McMahon nearly going to jail. Which thirteen years later, at least Vince wasn't potentially distributing the steroids, but their use was still rampant by their talents, and the promises made to test their talents for abusing them had long since fallen by the wayside.

And even if someone were to look past that, there's not just WWE's portrayal of women... there's how they actually treat women in real life. Like the time they released a wrestler while she was taking time off because she was pregnant, for example. To say nothing of the harassment that several participants in their first "WWE Diva Search" faced from wrestlers backstage. Or even the harassment reported against young male employees of WWE, for that matter. The great majority of the time, wrestlers are kept around... the accusers are sent packing.

In spite of the grueling physical rigors of being a pro wrestler, WWE under the McMahons provides no basic health protections, and has their own doctors trying to convince wrestlers they're not actually injured to keep them in the ring generating revenue for the company. Which, of course, includes several years where talents were pushed to return to the ring as soon as possible after receiving concussions. Which more blows to the head in such a condition can lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which is believed to have been the cause of the mental breakdown of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, who after one weeks' tapings, returned to his home in Atlanta and murdered his wife and child before killing himself.

On stage, and off, Linda McMahon had her hands in some of the seediest industries in entertainment. On the actual issues, she was running as a moderate, supporting immigration reform, same sex marriage, and maintaining that she was pro-choice. Of course, fiscally she was as conservative as it gets, and also denied climate change science indicates that the phenomenon is man-made.

Linda's quest to become a senator by running against Richard Blumenthal in 2010 cost her about $50 million of her own finances and when she tried to run again in 2012 against Chris Murphy and lost 55% to 43%, she equaled that amount, putting the grand total of her quest for power to $100 million. No senate seat was up in Connecticut in 2014, but she could, in theory, try to challenge Blumenthal in 2016. Most polling indicates that she would just be adding to insane total of money she's thrown away. And that would make Vince McMahon a sad, sad man.

[worstblogever]

The victims were in a church during Bible study time so why can't it be a attack on Christians? Can blacks not be Christians like they can't be geniuine republicans? Do you think their blackness superceds their Christianity or vice versa? So far the only people claiming hate crime are progressives which see race in everything.

Funny how progressive step over cold bodies to start pushing the gun agenda once again. Like any law would have stopped this murder.

I can't decide if I find this argument more ridiculous, or disgusting.

Oh, I don't know. Because he said 'you're raping our women and taking over the world and I have to stop you', or something akin to that? Pretty sure it's about race there, guy. In this case, in the killers eyes, their blackness certainly did supercede anything else about them, didn't it?

Exactly. When the killer outright told people, including the one survivor his attack was racially motivated, I think it's case-closed.

Unless you're willfully trying to deny reality.

[lancerman]

Did you really just put up a bunch of wrestling storylines as a criticism of Linda McMahon?

[Michael P]

If he just wanted to kill Christians, he could have shot up a church in his own neighborhood. Instead, he went well out of his way to specifically shoot up a black church (and a historically important one at that). That he specifically wanted to kill black people is a reasonable inference, even without the fact that everyone who knew him says he was a racist, he surrounded himself with white supremacist iconography, he spouted white supremacist rhetoric while he was killing black people, etc.

[CSTowle]

The victims were in a church during Bible study time so why can't it be a attack on Christians? Can blacks not be Christians like they can't be geniuine republicans? Do you think their blackness superceds their Christianity or vice versa? So far the only people claiming hate crime are progressives which see race in everything.

Funny how progressive step over cold bodies to start pushing the gun agenda once again. Like any law would have stopped this murder.

If'n you're truly interested in figuring out why, and not just pushing out an agenda yourself, head on over to Hulu.com and check out the first 5 minutes of last night's episode of "the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore". Breaks it down and Fox News' "attack on faith" angle. Hell, watch the whole show. It's pretty good.

[InformationGeek]

If he just wanted to kill Christians, he could have shot up a church in his own neighborhood. Instead, he went well out of his way to specifically shoot up a black church (and a historically important one at that). That he specifically wanted to kill black people is a reasonable inference, even without the fact that everyone who knew him says he was a racist, he surrounded himself with white supremacist iconography, he spouted white supremacist rhetoric while he was killing black people, etc.

BINGO! Even Larry Willmore pointed out that obvious thing in last night's show.

If'n you're truly interested in figuring out why, and not just pushing out an agenda yourself, head on over to Hulu.com and check out the first 5 minutes of last night's episode of "the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore". Breaks it down and Fox News' "attack on faith" angle. Hell, watch the whole show. It's pretty good.

Oh good, someone else saw that last night. Very good show.

Also Bill O'Reilly weighed in on this shooting. It can be summed up in this tweet Fox News put out.

[worstblogever]

Did you really just put up a bunch of wrestling storylines as a criticism of Linda McMahon?

Well, not JUST those. When we've been talking about a bunch of Republicans who say or do racist or sexist things... that's her business model as the head of an entertainment company.

The fact that she wanted to downplay the content she put on air that to win conservative votes is hilarious, frankly.

And as a wrestling fan, Jesus, those are some horrifically bad storylines.

[JCAll]

WWF/WWE has provided some of the lowest common denominators with televised pro-wrestling that have not just pushed the bounds of what can be aired on television in terms of graphic violence, but storylines that frame those pro-wrestling matches that are not just misogynist, but exploited women, and contained insensitive racial or ethnic caricatures for the wrestlers’ alter egos. And Linda McMahon didn't just sit behind the scenes, a CEO lording over the company, her entire family appear within the show as a dysfunctional, trashy collective willing to degrade, or flat out assault one another for a national audience.

And it was awesome!
<_<
>_>
Um...

[JCAll]

And as a wrestling fan, Jesus, those are some horrifically bad storylines.

Plus, you barely scratched the surface of bad wrestling.

[worstblogever]

Plus, you barely scratched the surface of bad wrestling.

There's lousy writing and booking, and then there's just the racist and sexist booking. I can give a pass on the former, not the latter.

[JCAll]

There's lousy writing and booking, and then there's just the racist and sexist booking. I can give a pass on the former, not the latter.

In that case I'm surprised you didn't mention The Godfather and the Ho-Train. Love that guy.
Or Val Venis starting a feud with Ken Shamrock by making a porno with Ken's "sister".
I imagine the list goes on forever.