All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

They don't have the credibility to make that joke when previously they supported China purging their landlord class with gusto. Gun violence is a problem in America, definitely.

No the problem is that you and the other person that didn’t “get it” always come in this thread with same gimmick complaining about the same topic like it’s clockwork so you weren’t able to separate that from the joke so it went over both your heads.

It was patently obvious to anyone else who was able to take a step back and look at it for what it was. Just take the L and move on, it’s better long term than digging in on something this trivial

[worstblogever]

]It was on this day in both 2015, as well as 2016, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Paul “Skip” Stam, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the North Carolina House of Representatives who has voted to nullify the Affordable Care Act, voted for North Carolina's "Motorcycle Safety/Anti-Abortion" Law, and compulsively votes for every stricter measure to disenfranchise voters that comes up, be it Voter ID bills, or votes to reduce early voting and close polling locations in Democratic-leaning districts. He has also called for poor people from being banned from playing the state lottery, misogynistically told the North Carolina chief of schools to "stick to her own knitting", and once forcibly closed debate on the legalization of marijuana because as he admitted, he didn't want his constituents to write and call and ask him about it. Stam responded to the news that the Confederate flag was being removed from the state capitol in South Carolina by voting for a law to make it harder for Confederate monuments to be renamed or taken down in North Carolina, apparently because celebrating a failed rebellion from a century and a half ago fought over slavery should be a priority. Perhaps Stam's worst issue is LGBTQ rights, as he has on more than one occasion compared same sex marriage to bestiality, polygamy and incest, and has been caught circulating fliers with homophobic content around the North Carolina legislature to colleagues from the Christian Action League, which is classified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He responded to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by voting to vote for SB 2, an attempt to allow officials to refuse to perform marriage duties based on "sincerely held" religious objections, and was the sponsor of North Carolina’s HB 2, the combination “religious freedom to discriminate against LGBT citizens” law, that also doubled as transphobic bathroom legislation. Stam chose to not run for re-election in 2016, and has yet to re-emerge onto the political scene.

On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Kevin Calvey, who on two occasions (2006 and 2010) has ran for, and failed to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, and instead has become yet another member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives whose fanaticism seems to know no bounds. How much so? Look, when someone who claims to be “Pro-Life” is threatening to set themselves on fire to protest abortion, well, we think it might be missing the point just a tad. Perhaps this would be a good time to point out that Kevin Calvey was elected to serve in the Oklahoma House of Representatives back in 2014, but back over a decade ago, in his first run through office in Oklahoma, Calvey did manage to show he’s so “Pro-Life” that he voted for the death penalty to be used on second offense sex offenders (which, we’re not fond of sex offenders, but WOW is that pretty extreme), as well as the fact that Calvey was the sponsor of Oklahoma’s version of the “Stand Your Ground” firearms law. So clearly, he’s all about things that promote life, which you can further see his commitment to by noting how he is vehemently opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and being able to afford health insurance that keeps them alive, or allows their pre-existing conditions to be covered by insurance. Calvey never did self-immolate, and was term-limited in the Oklahoma state legislature in 2018.


Eric Porterfield

On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Eric Porterfield, a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates who was just elected in 2018 in a conservative district by advancing out of the GOP Primary as the third place finisher, making the cut ahead of the next-best vote-getter by… 8 votes. That’s right, it was a difference of EIGHT votes in his district that elected a man who’s fortunate to be blind, so he can’t have watched Legion on FX and seen how much he resembles the Shadow King’s corpulent astral form. But all kidding aside, Eric Porterfield has rocketed to the top of the CSGOPOTD queue in his freshman term in office, after only a few short weeks into his freshman term in office, he was calling a bill to prevent LGBT discrimination as “bigoted and discriminatory” (presumably towards straight people), and uttered the gay slur “f*****” on the floor of the West Virginia state legislature. When a reporter interviewed him about it, he provided one of the dumbest homophobic quotes imaginable:

”The LGBTQ is a modern day version of the Ku Klux Klan, without wearing hoods with their antics of hate.”

And by no means did Porterfield start backing down, in another West Virginia House session adding:

The LGBT is the most socialist group in this country. They do not protect gays. There are many gays they persecute if they do not line up with their social ideology.”

Porterfield faced calls to resign, claimed he had begun receiving death threats from people he said self-identified as gay, calling them “brutal monsters”, and a “terrorist group”, admitting “I am terrified of these people. They represent a socialist activist agenda. They are opponents of freedom.” When asked what he would do if he discovered his own children were gay, Porterfield seemed to indicate he might be trying to drown them, saying he would “take them fishing and see if they can swim”.

At this time, this deranged putz has not resigned, and looks to embarrass most of the GOP for the next two years in West Virginia. Which is no small feat. But even the circumstances of his blindness are ridiculous. Wouldn’t you know it, he was blinded in a bar fight back in 2006, when he threw the first punch after his best friend said something inappropriate about another tavern-goer’s girlfriend, and got the beatdown of a lifetime for defending a misogynist. Porterfield, not surprisingly, lost his lawsuit. He continues to bumble about West Virginia like a clown.

[Starter Set]

Sweet poseidon, now that's a disturbing picture.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Has he really come over as Presidential in his handling of the virus crisis?

In the bits I’ve seen of his actions on BBC site, my gut reaction is that he is very clearly putting New York’s interests over the rest of the USA.

I can understand that..of course his responsibility is to New Yorkers...but it’s not really Presidential, is it?

From completely anecdotal experience, people I know who are far more moderate than me are absolutely in love with him right now for coming off like a cal reassuring leader.

Also as of yesterday New York has 50000 cases of Covid-19. The next highest state is New Jersey with 8800 cases followed by Michigan with 4000. So he is dealing with a much larger immediate crisis. Also it’s NY. So they are going to have more people out if state visiting, people going out of state, and international travelers. It’s a huge risk and they are already making tough decisions.

To go step further, for people who have less proactive governors on this, Cuomo is kind of sounding the warning bells because all the rest of us are about to experience that in the next few weeks/months and people are kind of wishing their leaders won’t wait until then

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Can we just acknowledge that states individuality creates needless bureaucracy and hazards ? Cause if America was a single whole you'd have more streamlining

We can, but if we are a single unit all the well run states that actually are in black that have good schools, infrastructure and regulations would get pulled by the mean so I’m not in favor of that either. Because the standard a lot of us prefer would go down to service standardizing nationally

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Trump is making Biden's choice for VP an easy one: Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan.

Whitmer is going from largely unknown to the major democratic face behind Cuomo during this pandemic. She is obviously a woman and she comes from a swing state that Biden needs to take back from Trump. And though it should matter it does in fact matter that she is attractive.

Ohhhh that’s actually a good choice. Also that’s a state you wouldn’t mind locking down either

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Just heard about the baby. My question now is, what about babies who are born in hospitals now or mothers that have it while pregnant. How is this going to affect them or the fetus?

We don’t know enough about the virus. Obviously it’s so new and we as a global community are being hit so hard at volume that the anomaly cases were bound to eventually pop up. Some late 20 something who is a friend of one of my friends (who I was at a party with in late Feb before this blew up) got it and is now in a hospital on a ventilator in critical condition. Which is supposedly not remotely supposed to be the standard case for otherwise healthy people in that age group.

The baby is tragic and terrifying all at once.

We are going to be inundated by new data and cases with this virus and we don’t have comprehensive understanding of it yet. Our scientists our working at hyper speed trying to quantify everything and build a portfolio on it.

[Steel Inquisitor]

No the problem is that you and the other person that didn’t “get it” always come in this thread with same gimmick complaining about the same topic like it’s clockwork so you weren’t able to separate that from the joke so it went over both your heads.

It was patently obvious to anyone else who was able to take a step back and look at it for what it was. Just take the L and move on, it’s better long term than digging in on something this trivial

I'm willing to take the L on this, however, you've missed why that person's credibility nose dived in the last few weeks. What "gimmick" are you referring to?

[PwrdOn]

I can understand feeling safer in regard to the assholes who are doing hate crimes thanks to Trump. But, why does he believe them? Xi had himself voted in for life, how do you trust someone who has basically created his own dynasty, and broken part of the idea of democratic communism the idea of office chosen by the people.

This is the only part of the Chinese population that I dont get. They were under dynastic power for years, wasn't Mao's big thing to get away from that? Shouldn't they at least be a bit curious about the situation? Or are any comments crushed?

The thing is, term limits and ideals of good governance tend to be higher level concerns that are only relevant after more basic needs are met. After the death of Deng Xiaoping, China had a succession of weak leaders who gave free rein to corrupt local officials to run roughshod and enrich themselves and their cronies in the private sector, and Xi is largely seen as having put an end to that by centralizing control and prosecuting many of those plutocrats. While of course this was presented in the West as some sort of Stalinist purge, the guilt of those who were targeted was never really in doubt, the only question is how many of Xi's own cronies escaped punishment for similar crimes, though he doesn't really have as extensive of a patronage machine as his predecessors did. And this is an issue that far supersedes any concerns over term limits because, and tell me if this story sounds familiar, many of the gains from China's economic development over the last few decades didn't translate to meaningful gains for regular folks and were rather siphoned off to feed a decadent elite class which monopolized economic and political power.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

From completely anecdotal experience, people I know who are far more moderate than me are absolutely in love with him right now for coming off like a cal reassuring leader.

Also as of yesterday New York has 50000 cases of Covid-19. The next highest state is New Jersey with 8800 cases followed by Michigan with 4000. So he is dealing with a much larger immediate crisis. Also it’s NY. So they are going to have more people out if state visiting, people going out of state, and international travelers. It’s a huge risk and they are already making tough decisions.

To go step further, for people who have less proactive governors on this, Cuomo is kind of sounding the warning bells because all the rest of us are about to experience that in the next few weeks/months and people are kind of wishing their leaders won’t wait until then

Phil Murphy in New Jersey and Tom Wolf here in Pennsylvania where I live have been working hard to stay ahead of the madness. I could be wrong here since I have seen much in the way of stats, but I don’t think it at all a coincidence that Democratic governors have taken the crisis far more seriously and done more to put the word out insisting, if not demanding citizens shelter in place and practice social isolation than their counterparts in red states who’ve been in business as usual mode, especially that moron Ron DeSantis down in Florida who kept the goddamn beaches open at the start of the crisis. If I’m wrong about that, I’ll take the hit.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Phil Murphy in New Jersey and Tom Wolf here in Pennsylvania where I live have been working hard to stay ahead of the madness. I could be wrong here since I have seen much in the way of stats, but I don’t think it at all a coincidence that Democratic governors have taken the crisis far more seriously and done more to put the word out insisting, if not demanding citizens shelter in place and practice social isolation than their counterparts in red states who’ve been in business as usual mode, especially that moron Ron DeSantis down in Florida who kept the goddamn beaches open at the start of the crisis. If I’m wrong about that, I’ll take the hit.

Oh trust me, Desantis was at the top of my mind on that. People are going to die specifically because of his idiocy

[Panfoot]

especially that moron Ron DeSantis down in Florida who kept the goddamn beaches open at the start of the crisis. If I’m wrong about that, I’ll take the hit.

I still believe he hasn't officially closed them, though some counties are finally getting off their asses and doing it themselves. You know it's bad when even Rick Scott is giving better leadership...I'm just glad I live in the (relatively) saner central part of the state which while still a little to slow for my liking, is taking things more seriously.

[worstblogever]

Sweet poseidon, now that's a disturbing picture.

It's a disturbing political party, frankly. A hypocritical death cult.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh trust me, Desantis was at the top of my mind on that. People are going to die specifically because of his idiocy

I still believe he hasn't officially closed them, though some counties are finally getting off their asses and doing it themselves. You know it's bad when even Rick Scott is giving better leadership...I'm just glad I live in the (relatively) saner central part of the state which while still a little to slow for my liking, is taking things more seriously.

I suspect part, if not most of the problem is that DeSantis wants to kiss up to Trump who relocated there and is hot to signal the all clear because the economy is the only thing keeping his poll numbers afloat. If it sinks, Trump sinks with it.

[SquirrelMan]

It's a disturbing political party, frankly. A hypocritical death cult.

Still, one has te be proud of all those moderate Republicans who do not break with their party, because they want to work from the inside to turn it from a general death cult back to a party that mostly kills women and minorities.