All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tami]

So Trump really admitted that Russia helped him win the election.

[mogwen]

So Trump really admitted that Russia helped him win the election.

Yes, then backtracked as usual.

[Tami]

Yes, then backtracked as usual.

He let the Bear out of the bag, doubt any amount of backtracking is going to stop that from running wild.

[Kusanagi]

So another mass shooting occurred, at this point I feel like they struggle to make front page news. Are we becoming desensitized to how fucked up this is?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/31/us/vi...ing/index.html

[worstblogever]

What kills me is why these miserable fuckwads waste time with plausible deniability in the first place. Anyone with two working brain cells to rub together has known for years that the GOP wants to return the country to those grand old days before the Civil Rights Act when whites were at the top of the societal food chain and minorities were so far down to the point of being underground. I mean, seriously, who in the hell would right wingers and conservatives from Trump on down alienate if they came right out and publicly admitted they were racists and white supremacists? Minorities whose votes they weren't going to get anyway? Women? Hell, more than some are onboard with the bigotry themselves. Christians? ****, they're driving this goddamn train. Republicans hiding their racism when it's already out there for all to see makes no damn sense to me.

I think the actual Christians who can't stand a party led by Trump are leaving the GOP, and leaving the charlatan Fundamentalists and those too dumb to see the ruse behind.

A veritable rapture, if you were.

[mogwen]

So another mass shooting occurred, at this point I feel like they struggle to make front page news. Are we becoming desensitized to how fucked up this is?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/31/us/vi...ing/index.html

That's the purpose, my dear. A desensitized society is easier to subdue into tyranny.

[Tendrin]

ohiostate2.JPG
ohiostate.JPG

The speaker of the Ohio house, ladies and gentlemen.

[Tendrin]

Read this twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status...16070789226496

[Malvolio]

So another mass shooting occurred, at this point I feel like they struggle to make front page news. Are we becoming desensitized to how fucked up this is?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/31/us/vi...ing/index.html

The school where I work is having their senior trip this weekend in Virginia Beach. So the faculty chaperones had to send out an alert to let us all know that the kids are okay and safe.

[PaulBullion]

Read this twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status...16070789226496

I wonder who will be judged harsher by history: Those that stood by and did nothing when fascism came to the US, those who appeased and normalized fascism, or those who demanded we treat the first two groups with respect and kindness on social media and message boards.

[Tendrin]

I wonder who will be judged harsher by history: Those that stood by and did nothing when fascism came to the US, those who appeased and normalized fascism, or those who demanded we treat the first two groups with respect and kindness on social media and message boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XfyyKYxnU

[SquirrelMan]

The school where I work is having their senior trip this weekend in Virginia Beach. So the faculty chaperones had to send out an alert to let us all know that the kids are okay and safe.

Glad to hear they were unaffected by this latest tragedy.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Chip Rogers, who at one point was the Majority Leader for the Georgia State Senate, but his career started to fall apart after he began to host conferences for Georgia Republicans to warn about the threat of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory, and that President Obama was using “the Delphi Technique”, a supposed form of mind control to that could be utilized to coerce large segments of the populations into city centers where they could be more easily be controlled. Rogers also had a prolifically extreme conservative record, supporting legislation like 20 week abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest, as well as drug testing. Rogers went on to retire and become a lobbyist, because of course he did.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of John Diehl, a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives who went and put himself at the center of a sex scandal, where he was sexting with a 19 year old college intern who just so happened to be three decades his junior, who he wanted to (hold your lunches) leave “quivering”. When news first broke that Missouri Southern university was scrapping their entire program to send interns to the capital, rumors began to swirl, and when they led back to Diehl, he actually spend some time hiding in his office, trying to deny any wrongdoing until the texts themselves were dug up by the Kansas City Star, and at that point he released a public apology, decided to spend time at home resolving some… well, marital issues that were now presenting themselves, and resigned. Diehl was supposedly a “family values” Republican, who counted himself a member of the local branch of that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council (who have a knack for having members cheat on their wives), fiercely defended biblical marriage (except apparently his own), and even led a move by the Missouri GOP to try and ban any extracurricular activity in public schools that might ever “discuss sexual orientation other than its purpose for human reproduction”. As a member of the legislature prior to his affair being exposed, Diehl had no inkling of how to work across the aisle and would talk of impeaching Governor Jay Nixon for… reasons, we guess. Diehl never seemed to specify. His voting record hardly paints a picture of a stable individual, as he voted for the most insane legislation Missouri Republicans came up with over his career. That includes their attempts to ban Sharia Law, prevent the Agenda 21 controversy, to nullify federal firearms laws, to attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act, to assure presidential candidates submit their birth certificates (yes, he’s a Birther, too), responding to the Sandy Hook Massacre by trying to put more guns in schools, creating stricter Voter ID Laws, adding additional requirements for a woman having an abortion, cutting the amount of time a person could collect unemployment, to drug test welfare recipients, and to force children in public schools to not just participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, but to make them do so in English. Diehl has been publicly humiliated and run out of office.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, as well as 2018, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Mike Moon, a member of the Missouri House of Representatives since 2013, and the only person we’ve profiled whose name can be spelled by Tom Cullen. Moon first took office in 2013 after a special election and was re-elected in 2018 on the benefit of facing no opposition at all in the GOP primary, and coasting to victory in the general election with 79% of the vote.

Which, for Moon, is pretty lucky. After all, he’s made some of the most embarrassing remarks from a Republican anywhere in the country regarding abortion over the past few years, and that truly is saying something. In January of 2016, he sponsored legislation called the “All Lives Matter” act (uh oh). But don’t worry, it didn’t have anything to do with police violence, it was just a slap in the face to folks in Ferguson, Missouri added on to a Personhood bill he filed. It was even more of a bit of an eyebrow-raiser back in March of 2016 when during debate on a bill that would ban abortion at any stage of development, Moon was laughed out of the room when he compared abortion to the enslavement of African Americans for a moment before he claimed to be a “reproductive expert” based on his qualifications of being a “former embryo”. Alas, Mike Moon did not learn his lesson about looking like a boob for trying to get high and mighty about fetal development without knowing what the hell he was talking about. In February of 2017, Missouri Republicans were again looking to pass some form of Personhood legislation, even though it would obviously be overturned. And this time, Mike Moon didn’t just compare abortion to slavery. We mean, he did that, mentioning the Dred Scott ruling during debate, but this time, he also compared legalized abortion to “Jews being slaughtered by Nazis”, because why not add Godwin’s Law while we’re at it? But he STILL wasn’t done. He then began to argue that life begins farther than people think, comparing sperm to tadpoles, rhetorically asking, “Is a sperm alive?” during a hearing on a bill that would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the statement that life begins at conception, going on to get even dumber and ask, “Have you ever seen a tadpole? Is a tadpole alive?”

So, since Mike Moon cares so much about life at all stages, you would think he would care a lot about saving the lives of refugee children fleeing war, right? HA HA! Trick question! Are those kids Muslims? Because if so, Mike Moon wrote a nice letter in November of 2015 where he explained he would like those kids placed in camps, and sent back home at the first opportunity, especially because you can’t trust ‘em because they lie so danged much.

”I do realize that the refugees we should be scrutinizing most is one who professes the muslim faith. Unless I'm mistaken, a practicing muslim can do whatever is necessary for the ‘good’ of the faith - telling ‘fibs’ is a smallpart of what they might do. Our preference, as a nation, should be to place the refugees in camps so that they can be properly cared for and returned safely home when the time is right.”

Mike Moon doesn’t like the idea of special protections in schools for transgender youth, and in his arguments against them, he cites the work of Dr. Paul McHugh, who classifies being transgender as a “mental disorder”, even though the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying “gender dysphoria” as a mental disorder years ago. He also introduced a resolution that he and his fellow legislators should appeal to Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act with “manly firmness”, as if they would be able to pull it off if they just took an extra large dose of Viagra, or something? As you’d expect, Mike Moon’s whole voting record is pretty “out there”, including a vote to try and block the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty, votes to attempt to nullify federal firearms laws, and a vote for the unconstitutional HB 499, which would have forced schoolchildren to recite the pledge of allegiance… specifically in English.

Since we first introduced you to Mike Moon a year ago, he has continued to be a goddamned lunatic. Take for example in June of 2017, how he decided to put up a video on his Facebook page to announce he was introducing new anti-choice legislation in Missouri, and he did so by discussing it as he decapitated a chicken. That is not a typo, Mike Moon cut off a chicken’s head and started to pull its innards out while discussing abortion.

Now, if that isn’t crazy enough, there’s also the matter of current Governor of Missouri Eric Greitens, who’s been all over the news cycle for being accused of taking nude photos of his mistress without her consent, assaulting her during rough sex, and threatening to release the nude photos of her if she ever exposed him as an adulterer. After Mike Moon spent four years trying to impeach Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon without any real cause, when a governor comes along who isn’t just a sexual predator, but is caught breaking the law in multiple campaign finance violations and abusing charitable organizations to further his own political career, can you guess what Moon wants to do? NOTHING. Mike Moon thinks it would be unfair to impeach Gov. Greitens for ANY of his moral, or legal failings.

We’ll close this update out by reporting on Mike Moon’s voteing record since we last checked in with him. Because maybe he’s mellowed out… NOPE. He’s voted for legislation to have public schools teach Bible courses, and voted for a bill that prohibits all abortion in Missouri “if Roe v. Wade is overturned”. What’s sad is that this makes it the most stable we’ve seen Moon in any year since we first started tracking him… and that’s not saying a lot.

[InformationGeek]

Oooooooooh WBE!!

In audio released by the Pensacola State Journal on Friday, Florida Republican State Rep. Mike Hill can be heard casually discussing the possibility of introducing legislation to kill gay people.

The recording, taken during a May 24 forum held by the Pensacola-based Women for Responsible Legislation, features a man whom the Journal identified as Hill responding to a constituent who noted that “In 1 Corinthians, it says that a man who has an affair with another man will be put to death.”

“It says that in the Old Testament too,” Hill answered, before another person chimed in, asking if he could “introduce legislation.”

Hill, a self-described “Pro Life! Pro Guns! Pro Jesus!!” representative, could be heard chuckling along with several members of the audience before replying “I wonder how that would go over?”

Hill reportedly prefaced his comments by telling audience members that homosexuality is “a behavior, and it’s a choice,” and that “You can say, ‘But I was born that way.’ [...] but nobody’s forcing you to engage in that relationship, even if you were born that way.”

Last week, the Journal reported that during the same event, Hill told audience members that he’d received divine inspiration from God to sponsor an anti-Women’s Choice bill without exceptions for rape or incest, similar to one which recently passed in Alabama.

Shortly after the comments became public, Florida Democrats began demanding that he either apologize or resign from office over the comments.