All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Steel Inquisitor]

You lose credibility when you equate Democratic Socialism with Communism. Do you think all of Europe is Communist?

It isn't, but Sanders has problems signalling Communists, like Castro. Democratic Socialists don't have the credibility in America to get within a hundreds yards of agreeing with Communists on anything. It's political suicide.

[Kirby101]

Hey, you get my joke?

I missed it.

[Tendrin]

God damn ouch.

Biden camp senior adviser Anita Dunn on post-debate call w/ reporters: "I think it's fair to say that Vice President Biden showed up to a debate tonight and -- for two hours graciously dealt with the kind of protester who often shows up at campaign events."

For the record, Anita Dunn seems like a terrible person who I don't like, and I dislike her dismissal here, even if that was an 'oooh ouch' dig.

[Mister Mets]

Regarding the debates, it really wasn't great that Biden was referring to Coronavirus in the past tense and then corrected himself to say N1H1.

And Sanders could've taken advantage of that if he didn't think we were currently dealing with Ebola.

I'm still voting Biden since Trump is worse, but what the hell?

[Tazirai]

Lyin Biden lol.

During Democratic debate Joe Biden denies advocating for social security cuts—here's video showing he did

[godisawesome]

It isn't, but Sanders has problems signalling Communists, like Castro. Democratic Socialists don't have the credibility in America to get within a hundreds yards of agreeing with Communists on anything. It's political suicide.

I sometimes wonder if half of America’s hangups with Socialism is tied into the weird nature of the country’s birth - The American Revolution started and ended well before the French Revolution produced the traditional right- and left-wing perspective of politics, and was a mishmash of aristocratic Southerner plantation owners, old school Whig revolutionary ideals, hardcore Protestantism, and a quite frankly freakish alliance between the classes on both sides. Then, after that stewed for most of a century, the next huge war with a major political bent was over slavery between those aristocrats and the federal government, leading to such weird things as the formerly populist and anti-elitist Democratic Party being a Southern aristocrats Party while the Republican Party began as another weird alliance of radicals and conservatives. America was a country that was simultaneously far more liberal than many of its contemporaries in the 1800s and early 1900s but always more conservative than what the first really liberal parties were...

...And then of course the other half of the equation is answered by America becoming the richest capitalist country right around the time the Russian Civil War wound up seeing the birth of Bolshevik Communism from the various socialist schools, which meant that America was simultaneously just going to associate leftward policies with authoritarianism and suddenly had the world’s richest and most ruthless robber barons and captains of industry as well, so it wasn’t really hard for them to tar and feather socialism with communism’s greatest problems.

Probably part of the reason younger generations are less apt to make that mistake is because the only really big “communist” country left is China, which has morphed into its own weird thing in its economic policies, which makes it easier to see European socialist groups in a more even handed light, sincere there’s no great boogeyman espousing socialist views in truth - just a bunch of ex*********.

[TheDarman]

Lyin Biden lol.

During Democratic debate Joe Biden denies advocating for social security cuts—here's video showing he did

Yeah, that was a flat out lie.

Unfortunately, it also isn't out-of-step with how Biden has always been in the center of the Democratic Party. There was a long period of time where Democrats were trying to take a "realistic" approach to entitlement programs. However, Biden's current position is what matters. And, again, he finds himself firmly within the center of the party in advocating for renewed benefits and revenue being directed to it.

I mean, we can focus on Sanders’ opposition to the Brady Bill and his support of dumping nuclear waste outside of its originating state (his), but I think that is kinda nasty politics.

[worstblogever]

I just saying if you want party unity, maybe you should stop with the ''Bernie supporters are Bernie Bros, irredeemable, sexist, racist, monsters'' arguments unless your pride is more important than party unity.

Or maybe Bernie Bros that are racist and sexist need to realize that if they insist on racist and sexist attacks on women and POC for daring to support someone who isn't Bernie, that they have no place in this party. And the rest will be united without the toxic element that they bring, for the better.

Dont. Be. S***ty. Humans.

At the end of the day, that's the unity I want, and the party needs.

[worstblogever]

Now here is someone perfect for WBE's Republican list, because we got someone who is braindead stupid here.

Well, that will got a fella hot-shotted up the queue.

[Tendrin]

Well, that will got a fella hot-shotted up the queue.

*picardfacepalmgif*

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Brian Nieves, who upon winning his 2010 primary, threatened one of his opponent's staffers for the egregious offense of congratulating him. He then spent his time belittling his constituents whenever possible, calling some thugs, and haranguing an Anglican priest for not being conservative ENOUGH for his tastes. As a legilsator, Nieves tried to nullify both firearms laws and the Affordable Care Act, and took time on the floor of the Missouri State Senate to downplay waterboarding as "just a little water in the face" and to rail against the fact that the legislature's website offered a Spanish translation. Brian Nieves also has never met a paranoid conspiracy he didn't like, spreading fears about President Obama's birth certificate, the United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, and a supposed threat from "creeping Sharia Law". The GOP chose to find a more level-headed politician to beat Nieves in the 2014 primaries before he embarrassed them any more, and he has gone on to be a simple county controller, at least for the time being.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Annette Bosworth, a candidate for U.S. Senate from South Dakota in the 2014 elections, who was another one of the mold of "Republican doctors who hate the Affordable Care Act" that they have scoured the country to try to use as candidates for office and justify their irrational hatred of healthcare reform with an "expert" on the subject. Bosworth was still a long shot as a candidate, coming in as a total outsider, and was polling third behind two mainstream candidates. Her stance on the issues involved an opposition to same sex marriage, wanting to outlaw abortion, repealing the ACA, and revamping the tax code to enact a flat tax. She got attention, and not in a good way, in late April of 2014 after sharing a viral post about food stamps creating dependency, warning against the practice by saying, "Don't feed the animals". A month later, also once held a press conference in a room covered in sexual slurs to decry misogyny she claimed she was enduring as a female politician. Where her story truly got fascinating was one day after the primary election, when she turned herself into police on charges of perjury and falsifying documents. It seems that Bosworth was told by her key adviser, Joel Arends, that South Dakota's laws about gathering signatures to get on the ballot were more of guidelines, really, and that candidates didn't actually need to be present when the signatures were garnered. Bosworth was found guilty on all counts, but in spite of committing multiple felonies, avoided jail time, getting 500 hours of community service and two years of probation. While Bosworth now has the time to return to practicing medicine, her medical license was revoked for committing a handful of felonies.

On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its first profile of Tila Hubrecht , a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives, who quickly became infamous around the country in May of 2016 when she opined during debate in the Missouri state legislature over a Personhood Bill by musing that there is a "silver lining" to pregnancies resulting from rape. And despite massive criticism because of those comments, Hubrecht dug in and refused to apologize for them This was hardly a one-off for Hubrecht as a pro-life fanatic, though. In her time as a Missouri state legislator, she co-sponsored legislation to attempt to ban the donation of fetal tissue, and voted against a measure to allow a pharmacist to prescribe oral contraceptives. Hubrecht, in the interests of being “pro-life” is also extremely “pro-gun”, and has voted to allow school employees to carry firearms on school campuses, as well as voting to allow concealed carry without a permit statewide. She also once supported a doubly unconstitutional bill that would have forced public school children to not only be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance every day, but require that it be performed in ENGLISH. Hubrecht surprisingly resigned in 2018, deciding to return to her previous career in the nursing field. We can only say “good riddance”, and feel like she’ll do far more good emptying bedpans than voting for legislation that deserves to be carried off in one.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled John Whitmer, a former member of the Kansas House of Representatives who served two terms from 2014-2018. During his time in office, Whitmer would mostly try and support legislation based on paranoid conspiracy theories like when he supported a bill to “urge the President not to send terrorist detainees to Kansas or anyone else in the U.S.” or to support such relevant legislation as trying to give adoption agencies the “religious freedom” to prevent same sex couples from adopting children to give them happy homes. Through and through, Whitmer was a toady to former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, and a backer of noted anti-immigrant lunatic Kris Kobach, wanting to prevent the Medicaid expansion in the state, to see that the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling would be overturned, and to attack a woman’s right to choose in any way possible. However, the detail we found most concerning was how in June of 2017, prior to a vote on schools being gun-free zones, John Whitmer decided to remind a Democrat, Stephanie Clayton, who supported the measure that he and his GOP colleagues were strapped on the floor of the Kansas House at that moment in an online message. Kansas Democrats treated the message as a threat. (This was only weeks after a Republican legislator left a gun in a committee room, and a few months after Clayton was threatened with being lynched for her support of gun control.) John Whitmer was sent packing in the 2018 GOP Primary for his seat, losing by all of 60 votes. He still tried to aid Kris Kobach’s doomed campaign to become the next Governor of Kansas, posting online that Democrats’ date to vote was two days after the actual date. He then tried claiming that his post of false information to suppress the vote was “just a joke”. We can only hope this is the last we ever hear from this cross-eyed twit, and we will set aside his profile at this time and profile a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 845-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Douglas McLeod

Welcome to what is the 845th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Douglas McLeod, a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives since winning office in District 107 back in 2011.

A quick rundown of his voting record shows him to be, quite frankly, a hyper-conservative lunatic:

• February 17th, 2012: McLeod co-sponsors HB 638, legislation aimed at legalizing prayer in public schools (which is, y’know, patently unconstitutional).
• March 14th, 2012: Douglas McLeod votes for HB 1196, a mandatory ultrasound bill for women seeking an abortion.
• April 26th, 2012: McLeod votes for HB 921, a stricter Voter ID bill that’s a transparent attempt by Mississippi Republicans to suppress the vote.
• February 13th, 2014: Douglas McLeod votes against Mississippi’s House Amendment 1, which would have created an exemption to a ban on abortion at 20 weeks in the state if the woman was a victim of rape or incest.
• February 17th, 2016: McLeod votes for HB 786, to legalize the concealed carry of firearms in church.
• February 25th, 2016: Douglas McLeod votes for HB 519, which would outlaw “dismemberment abortions”, which aren’t actually a thing.
• March 2nd, 2016: McLeod shows a bit of the GOP’s anti-vaccination tendency, when he votes for HB 938, to expand exemptions for vaccinations for public school students.
• March 26th, 2017: Douglas McLeod votes for HB 638, to restore the use of the electric chair, gas chamber, and even firing squad as methods of execution in Mississippi.
• February 7th, 2018: McLeod votes for HB 1083, to permit the concealed carry of firearms in public without a license.
• March 8th, 2018: Douglas McLeod votes for HB 1510, an attempt to ban abortion at Mississippi at just 15 weeks.
• January 17th, 2019: McLeod votes for HB 732, a fetal heartbeat abortion ban that would effectively ban abortion at just 6 weeks, before many women even realize they are pregnant.

But really, it’s how he made the news in 2019 that give us far greater concern. And that shows the continued pattern of Republican men with issues towards women and how they’re stereotypically opposed to women having control over their own bodies.

With only six months to Election Day in May of 2019, police ended up being called to Doug McLeod’s home due to a report of domestic violence. When they got there, the 58-year-old representative for Lucedale was anything but lucid. McLeod appeared heavily intoxicated, was slurring his speech and stumbling around the house like if Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow had a trashy Southern accent instead of a British one. As they continued to investigate who made the call, police found McLeod’s wife and another unidentified woman who had locked themselves in a room on the second floor of the house, and were shaking with fear.
McLeod’s wife told the police that McLeod “just snapped” and punched her dead in the face after she didn’t get her clothes off quickly enough to have sex, per the police report. The punch turned her nose into a faucet of blood, leaving plenty of it through the bedroom on the couple’s bed and floor. Party of family values, y’all. McLeod’s wife then ran to the other woman’s room for safety and the two locked themselves inside, police say. The other woman said McLeod began banging on the locked door and threatened to kill her dog if she didn’t let him in.

There’s some old expression about the easiest way to get attacked in public is to hit a woman, a child, or a dog, and Douglas MacLeod already has his willingness to harm two of the three as public knowledge. However, McLeod was only saved from jail when his wife contradicted her friend, and the statements she gave to police by claiming it was all just a misunderstanding and she “tripped and fell” into his hand, and that created enough doubt to have him found not guilty in court.

McLeod won re-election in 2019 in spite of being regarded as a known domestic abuser because… no one bothered to run against him. Thus, this piece of garbage will remain in office until 2024.

[Billy Batson]

Lyin Biden lol.

During Democratic debate Joe Biden denies advocating for social security cuts—here's video showing he did

[Steel Inquisitor]

I sometimes wonder if half of America’s hangups with Socialism is tied into the weird nature of the country’s birth - The American Revolution started and ended well before the French Revolution produced the traditional right- and left-wing perspective of politics, and was a mishmash of aristocratic Southerner plantation owners, old school Whig revolutionary ideals, hardcore Protestantism, and a quite frankly freakish alliance between the classes on both sides. Then, after that stewed for most of a century, the next huge war with a major political bent was over slavery between those aristocrats and the federal government, leading to such weird things as the formerly populist and anti-elitist Democratic Party being a Southern aristocrats Party while the Republican Party began as another weird alliance of radicals and conservatives. America was a country that was simultaneously far more liberal than many of its contemporaries in the 1800s and early 1900s but always more conservative than what the first really liberal parties were...

...And then of course the other half of the equation is answered by America becoming the richest capitalist country right around the time the Russian Civil War wound up seeing the birth of Bolshevik Communism from the various socialist schools, which meant that America was simultaneously just going to associate leftward policies with authoritarianism and suddenly had the world’s richest and most ruthless robber barons and captains of industry as well, so it wasn’t really hard for them to tar and feather socialism with communism’s greatest problems.

That's probably got something to do with it but is there any country in the West where being a Communist or saying things which boosts Communist regimes is a positive? All Sanders had to do was not mention Communism in any context and he failed.

Probably part of the reason younger generations are less apt to make that mistake is because the only really big “communist” country left is China, which has morphed into its own weird thing in its economic policies, which makes it easier to see European socialist groups in a more even handed light, sincere there’s no great boogeyman espousing socialist views in truth - just a bunch of ex*********.

Most of that, in America at least, is that Communism has been diluted as an attack by the GOP who try to call any Democrat a dirty Communist not because the left itself has managed any significant campaign to change peoples minds. This has made them complacent about Communism and many don't see the danger of that rising again, and I'm talking about the Communism from the 70's. Other problems are Communists in leftist circles blending in so it makes it harder to identify an actual Democratic Socialist than a Communist pretending to be one, which hurts the entire movement's credibility with anyone who doesn't hate socialism.

Tensions between Russia and America exacerbate this, they may be capitalist now but they remain connected to the Soviets by remaining a continuing enemy of America and the West in general and Putin wants to go back to his glory days of the Soviet Union by clawing back the satellite states who went independent, like Ukraine.

[Darkspellmaster]

Lyin Biden lol.

During Democratic debate Joe Biden denies advocating for social security cuts—here's video showing he did

Yeah, that was a flat out lie.

Unfortunately, it also isn't out-of-step with how Biden has always been in the center of the Democratic Party. There was a long period of time where Democrats were trying to take a "realistic" approach to entitlement programs. However, Biden's current position is what matters. And, again, he finds himself firmly within the center of the party in advocating for renewed benefits and revenue being directed to it.

I mean, we can focus on Sanders’ opposition to the Brady Bill and his support of dumping nuclear waste outside of its originating state (his), but I think that is kinda nasty politics.

While one could say its not true theres more to the story.

https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...-attack-biden/

For the record my choice was Warren, and she got kicked off.

And how is no one here at all talking about the fact that these two are actually very friendly with each other and kept accidentally calling each other by their first names.

As a friend told me, as some one who works in a pub, this debate felt more like two friends meeting for a drink and debating policy than a pay per view boxing event. Both came out looking good in their own way.