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

[PwrdOn]

That tells you all you need to know about the repugnant state of today's Republican party, and why Joe Biden's patently foolish claim that the GOP will return to some semblance of bipartisan decency after Trump is voted out is utter and complete foolishness. The GOP had been a three-ring shitshow LONG before Trump came along, he simply gave the party free rein to publicly act on their vulgar, greed driven, power hungry and thoroughly disgusting impulses, if anything they'll only get worse should Trump lose.

Trump's erratic waffling on the Iran issue may have just prevented a war. Any of those mainstream, "reasonable" Republicans would have signed off on those airstrikes without a second thought.

[SquirrelMan]

Spokesman for Moore was on CNN earlier, Ted Crockett. It went as well as you think it did.



By the way, Teddy boy here ran last year for Alabama House of Representatives District 45, but got defeated in the Republican Primary. Hint hint WBE.

Much, much earlier. That clip is from the last time Moore ran, being dug up again now.

In other words: The clip is so old, Moore is no longer attracted to it.

[Tendrin]

Uh uh uhm HOLY $#@ WBE.

Tensions were already smoldering in the Oregon Senate Wednesday, when Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, poured gasoline on the situation, suggesting he would shoot and potentially kill any state trooper sent to haul him unwillingly back to the Capitol.
After Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. said Tuesday that his caucus was “prepared to take actions” to prevent passage of a major climate change bill, Gov. Brown announced on Wednesday that she was ready to answer Republican stonewalling by calling lawmakers back for a special session.

Brown hinted that she would be willing to send state troopers to round up Republicans if they walk out in the final days of the regular legislative session, saying in a statement that she is “in close communication with Oregon State Police.” That’s an option Democratic senators and the governor did not use earlier this year, when Senate Republicans first brought the Senate to a standstill by walking out and preventing the necessary quorum.

The Oath Keepers are offering to be 'security' for state senators in hiding to avoid the passage of said bill. Yes, that's right.

[InformationGeek]

I want to repost this again, just to say this is still f**king crazy.

Ummmmmm... WBE!!!! A US Senator is threatening to shoot and kill state troopers!

Anywhoooo, hello from Oregon, where it appears Republican state senators have fled the capitol and are teaming up with local paramilitary groups for a potential armed standoff with state police.

What the EVERLASTING F**K!!!

And in other insane news...

BREAKING: Wisconsin Supreme Court sides with Republican lawmakers in suit over laws passed in December shifting powers away from @GovEvers and @WisDOJ.

And my state is about to go back down the crapper again.

[Tendrin]

LOL. Dang it, Geek.

[PaulBullion]

Maybe the Iran crisis is to district from more crimes by Trump?

The relationship between the Falwells and Granda forms the backdrop of an improbable Miami story that is causing political ripples beyond South Florida. It involves a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, the “pool boy” as he is described in the lawsuit, the comedian Tom Arnold, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s now imprisoned political fixer, naked photographs — and a Miami father and son who say they were defrauded in a real estate deal then forced to change their names due to “threats.”
...

“This report is not accurate,” Falwell told the Todd Starnes radio show. “There are no compromising or embarrassing photos of me.”

Three photographs have been seen by the Herald, however. They are images not of Falwell, but of his wife in various stages of undress. It is not known who took the photographs or when they were taken, and the Herald was not given the photographs and therefore has not been able to authenticate them independently. Two of the photographs appear to have been taken at the Falwells’ farm in Virginia, and a third at the Cheeca Lodge.

The timing of Cohen’s alleged photo-recovery mission roughly preceded Falwell’s pivotal evangelical endorsement of Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, which Cohen says he helped engineer. Ted Cruz, who became the last candidate standing in the fight to deprive Trump of the Republican nomination, wanted to land that endorsement for himself. That he didn’t get it remains a sore point with some of his backers and a source of curiosity, including speculation that the “pool boy” saga and the presidential endorsement could be somehow related.

Tyler said that Falwell assured him that he had no intention of endorsing anyone in the primary in part because his board at Liberty University wouldn’t permit it. So Tyler and others on the Cruz campaign were caught off guard when Falwell suddenly endorsed Trump in January 2016 — a week before the crucial Iowa caucuses and at a time when Cruz and Trump were mounting a fight for key endorsements from powerful leaders on the religious right.

“Clearly, something changed that led him to endorse Trump, and I would like to know what that was,’’ said Tyler, who is now an MSNBC commentator.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/pol...#storylink=cpy

Sure sounds like Trump blackmailed Falwell to endorse him.

[GindyPosts]

Right in my back yard. You all might wanna sit down for this one.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis no longer recognizes Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School as a Catholic institution for refusing to fire a gay teacher

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis is cutting ties with Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School after the school refused to fire a gay teacher, the latest chapter in a growing debate over LGBTQ staff in local Catholic education.

The decision comes with limited financial implications for Brebeuf, but it could isolate the northwest side school from the larger Catholic community.

Brebeuf, which is sponsored by the USA Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus, received notice Thursday that the archdiocese will issue a canonical decree Friday stating that the archbishop will no longer formally recognize Brebeuf Jesuit as a Catholic school in the archdiocese.

Brebeuf receives no financial support from the archdiocese, but has partnered with it since its founding in 1962.

Greg VanSlambrook, principal at the high school, said Brebeuf had worked hard to avoid this outcome but the split will not change anything for students or families. The partnership had enabled VanSlambrook to participate in meetings of Catholic school principals and allowed archdiocesan priests to minister at Brebeuf, though the school does not have anyone from the archdiocese at the school currently.

"All of our programming will remained unchanged," he said. "There are some things we're going to miss, but it's not things that students and families will notice."
Brian G. Paulson, provincial for the Midwest Jesuits, called the decision "disappointing" in a statement posted to the group's website. He said the Midwest Jesuits and Brebeuf have been fighting the archdiocese over the gay teacher for the last two years.

"Brebeuf’s administration and Board of Trustees have determined that following the Archdiocese’s directive would not only violate their informed conscience on this particular matter, but also would set a concerning precedent for future interference in the school’s operations and other matters that have historically been the right and privilege of Brebeuf Jesuit officials," Paulson said in his statement.

Because Brebeuf is an independent Catholic school, not governed by the archdiocese as many other Catholic schools in the city are, administrative decisions are usually left to the school.

Paulson said the teacher is a "longtime valued employee of the school" and does not teach religion.

He said that a representative of the archdiocese has verbally assured Brebeuf that it will continue to allow Jesuit priests to serve in leadership at the school and they can still hold Mass on campus. He said the Midwest Jesuits will appeal the archdiocese's decision.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, the archdiocese said all archdiocesan Catholic schools and private Catholic schools have been instructed to clearly state in their contracts that all teachers "must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church."

"To effectively bear witness to Christ, whether they teach religion or not, all ministers in their professional and private lives must convey and be supportive of Catholic Church teaching," the archdiocese said in the statement. "The Archdiocese of Indianapolis recognizes all teachers, guidance counselors and administrators as ministers."

Brebeuf is one of 68 schools Catholic recognized by the archdiocese. The highly regarded private school currently serves about 800 students in grades 9-12.

In a statement posted to the school's website Thursday, Brebeuf President William Verbryke said that the archdiocese's decision would not change the mission or operations of the school.
"As an institution with a mission to develop men and women for others, our intent has been to do the right thing by the people we employ while preserving our authority as an independent, Catholic Jesuit school," Verbryke's letter read.

The school has a robust nondiscrimination policy posted to its website that protects school employees and other members of the school community from discrimination based on a whole host of factors, including race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and marital status.

Only the president, principal, religious studies teacher and campus minister are required to be staffed by practicing Catholics.

Brebeuf and Roncalli: How two schools handled gay marriage differently

VanSlambrook said decisions about teachers are made based on how well they carry out the mission of the school and their skills in the classroom. The school values diversity in its teachers and students, he said.

"We feel that people from many walks of life, whether Catholic or non-Catholic... can come carry out our mission with effectiveness and with care."

Brebeuf is not the first Catholic school in Indianapolis to grapple with how to handle gay employees.

Roncalli High School has been under fire since it suspended a gay school counselor last year.

Shelly Fitzgerald was placed on administrative leave over her marriage to a woman. While many in the Roncalli community stood with the school, a vocal group of students, parents and alumni have urged the school to take a different course. A group of students formed an advocacy group, called Shelly's Voice, to support LGBTQ individuals who have faced discrimination by the Catholic Church.

Fitzgerald has since filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the school and the archdiocese.

That complaint alleges intentional discrimination and retaliation on the basis of "gender, failure to conform to gender stereotypes, association with another woman and sexual orientation."

Another gay counselor at the school, Lynn Starkey, has filed a similar complaint with the EEOC. Both women intend to sue.

The archdiocese has denied the charges.

Looking the other way at decades of child molestations is fine (and Indianapolis's Archdiocese is guilty of this, too), but gay people in a school that we don't actually support with financial input? Aw, hell nah!

Some of the comments online from Indianapolis social media alone are hilarious, as expected. I say this due to the fact that they come from Christians more than Catholics who just wanna complain about the evil gay guy, which is ironic given that Anti-Catholicism was one of the cornerstones to the rise of Protestantism (arguably the most common version of Christianity) and that it has remained to this day.

[worstblogever]

Uh uh uhm HOLY $#@ WBE.




The Oath Keepers are offering to be 'security' for state senators in hiding to avoid the passage of said bill. Yes, that's right.

I'm all over this story. Boquist hopped into the queue, and I'm hoping the 2020 election is not kind to him after threatening to attack state troopers like that.

So much for the party of "Blue Lives Matter" rhetoric though, huh?

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its profile of Steve Vaillancourt, a former Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who in 2012, protested being told his time at the podium is up by saluting, “SIEG HEIL!” at New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien. He also shot his mouth off in 2014, when he said Republican Congressional candidate Marilinda Garcia would win because her Democratic opponent, Anne Kuster, was “ugly as sin” and “looked like a drag queen”. Vaillancourt thus managed to not only tick off female voters with his misogynistic assessment, but insulted the drag queen community, as well. But that’s hardly the biggest beef the LGBT community has with Vaillancourt, who in spite of him being openly gay, has towed the party line and voted multiple times against same-sex marriage, and voted for a “religious freedom” bill that would allow individuals to refuse to provide services for marriage based on their own “religious conscience”. Vaillancourt lost his 2014 re-election bid by 89 votes, and apparently decided to sit out the 2016 elections. He probably should stay seated.


In 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from New York’s 1st Congressional District, Lee Zeldin, who barely won his first term in office in 2014 with 53% of the vote. Way back in 2008, Zeldin made a first disastrous attempt at getting elected to Congress, and instead, with the winds of the Tea Party Hot-Air machine blowing at his back, he did manage to get elected as a New York State Senator in 2010. And what makes Zeldin stand out in particular is his vomit-inducing levels of partisanship, as relates to his military record (we’re grateful for his service, but not his attitude). Zeldin’s taken up the sort of banner once waved by former Congressman Allen West, where he’s the first person in Congress to puff out his chest and accuse Democrats of not supporting the troops enough, to attack them for not caring enough about national security in fighting the war on terror, or to take care of veterans when they get home. He’s also great about running off onto Fox News to do so, and talk a big talk about how the Obama administration’s strategies were counterproductive to defeating ISIS, in particular, his belief that we should ban Syrian refugees from entering the United States, already fear-mongering scenarios where those refugees strap on suicide vests to attack us on the floor of the House. There’s just one problem…. The New York Post noticed that Rep. Zeldin has a nasty habit of missing half the meetings of the House Foreign Affairs committee that would have been keeping him abreast on the subject, and two thirds of the meetings that he could have attended in relation to ISIS and Syria. So perhaps folks should be taking his “expert” opinion on these matters with a grain of salt. Well, that and that he’s better than his counterparts across the aisle on national security, because if he was, he wouldn’t have a vote against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a petty vote to thumb his nose at the Obama administration’s immigration policy (see below for more details). He also was part of a GOP effort to even block debate back in December of 2015 regarding Democratic efforts to deny gun sales to people on the “no fly list” for suspicion of terrorism, so there’s that to factor in.

Rep. Zeldin was one of the first people in Congress to offer an endorsement to Donald Trump for president, and while most Congressman have gone out of their way to avoid talking to the press about the big bad bigoted cheeto puff,Zeldin didn’t have the good sense to say, “No comment” and get the heck out of dodge. Instead, after Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in the Trump University case, as being biased because he was of Mexican heritage, Zeldin was on CNN to try and defend the Donald from what many Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, begrudgingly admitted to be the textbook definition of racism. Plus, Zeldin done goofed his riposte. Not only did Zeldin voice his disappointment with PAUL RYAN and not Trump, he refused to withdraw his support for Trump, and instead tried countering that he thought you could “easily argue that President Obama is racist with his policies and rhetoric”.

On November 2nd, 2016 when all the polls showed his hero the Gropenfuhrer was going to be losing to Hillary Clinton on election Day, Lee Zeldin even released a statement that the Clinton Foundation was “the largest white collar crime in America”. Which, given the charges against Trump’s own charitable organization, was pretty ballsy of Zeldin to say.

His entire brief voting record reeks with that sort of one-sided fanaticism, with votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act or defund Planned Parenthood, and that was just as a Congressional freshman. Rep. Zeldin currently is in the unenviable position of being one of Donald Trump’s “favorites” in Washington, and gets invited to private dinners with him. He obviously understands that between his voting record and that, he’s going to be really unpopular back in his home district. And he understands enough that he’s decided to cancel all in-person town halls, and instead, host “telephone town halls” in their place. You know, so his aides can screen calls for people who will actually complain, and mitigate what audio gets released.

[worstblogever]

Zeldin barely survived re-election in 2018, winning office again with only 51% of the vote. Back in Washington, he has returned to toadying for Donald Trump.

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Zeldin voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Lee Zeldin votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Zeldin votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Lee Zeldin is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• June 4th, 2019: Zeldin votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.

Perhaps our least favorite new thing to report about Lee Zeldin is that he finds one of his top priorities in Congress to just be an outright Islamophobic bigot to fellow Congresswoman Ilean Omar, who he named as his reason for voting against Congress’ condemnation of anti-Semitism because it didn’t single her out by name, and whom a few weeks later in April of 2019, he accused of “targeting Jewish people” after she voiced criticism of Trump administration offical and all-around hatemonger Stephen Miller. Rep. Omar has brilliantly responded to that line of attack by ignoring him and joining a new Black-Jewish Caucus with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Brenda Lawrence. Still, Zeldin has not relented, and has claimed her intent is to “poison” the new group.

We don’t know if being a hateful bag of d***s is a winning campaign strategy in the 2020 elections, but we definitely know our country will be better without men like Lee Zeldin affecting its politics.

[Tendrin]

I'm all over this story. Boquist hopped into the queue, and I'm hoping the 2020 election is not kind to him after threatening to attack state troopers like that.

So much for the party of "Blue Lives Matter" rhetoric though, huh?

As an Oregon native, fingers crossed. I just want to say: man, I don't think we've seen such a header into the queue since Higgins.

[worstblogever]

As an Oregon native, fingers crossed. I just want to say: man, I don't think we've seen such a header into the queue since Higgins.

It's like... an amazing combination of things.

• Refuses to show up and do the job he was elected to do.
• Threatens to shoot law enforcement and tells them to "send bachelors" so he won't make widows.
• Immediately allies himself with Oregon militia movement, if he hadn't already.
• The whole refusal to show up is because he refuses to do anything about the global crisis of climate change.

Like... it's 4 in 1, at least.

[BeastieRunner]

Are any of my board peeps for a war with Iran? Or at least open to the idea?

And those of you who are against it, what are you willing to do to stop it? I haven’t seen any marches, no one recommending you call Congress, nothing of that sort ...

The thing is: a war with Iran would be more disastrous than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This all feels like a bad joke, but it’s not.

[Malvolio]

Bible thumpers are such incredible morons, but, that goes without saying.



Yeah, I think he did. Pathetic.

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

Trump Reportedly Orders Military To Attack Iran Before Strikes Suddenly Called Off

The president issued a warning earlier this week that Tehran had made a “very big mistake” when it shot down a U.S. spy drone. Keep an eye on this growing clusterfuck. Trump could use a war with Iran to boost his re-election chances. Meanwhile....

The Trump Administration’s Pressure On Iran Is Creeping Toward Conflict

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Trump Claims Latino Voters Want Him To Deport Millions Of Undocumented Immigrants

The president says his hard-line approach to immigration has improved his standing among Hispanic voters. What are the chances Caramel Caligula lied out his orange ass about that claim? I'd say pretty damn good.

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Justice Department Argues Against Providing Soap, Toothbrushes, Beds To Detained Kids

“I find it inconceivable that the government would say” current conditions are “safe and sanitary,” as required, said a stunned Judge William Fletcher. I'm surprised that judge was stunned by what he heard from DoJ. The inhumanity of the Trump White House regarding brown skinned immigrants has been well documented.

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GOP Refuses To Support Disgraced Roy Moore’s Senate Run In Alabama

Republicans are speaking out against the former judge’s decision to run for office again after he was accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls. I'm surprised the GOP showed a streak of morally responsible behavior. Once in a blue moon sort of thing I guess.

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Infowars Host Calls Obama Treasonous, Adds: ‘Find The Tallest Tree And A Rope’

J. Owen Shroyer attacks former president in shocking YouTube War Room video. Funny, I thought Obama was gone from the political scene. But, Republicans will tell you that racism is no longer an issue in America these days.

Shouldn't Shroyer be getting a call from the Secret Service? I mean, he is threatening the life of a former President.

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoon's of the Week:

The first one is for my fellow comic book nerds!