The Random Politics Thread

[PleaseBlitz]

ATTA BOY. 

[Mr. Sinister]

Man, I don't care if she has a heart of gold, and stuff that's got rainbows shooting out of it, that's a death sentence. 

 

Poor lad must've been famished.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Mr. Sinister

[China]

Top GOP official says cyber attackers stole $2.3 million from Republican Party of Wisconsin

 

The top official of the Republican Party of Wisconsin said Thursday that hackers stole $2.3 million during a crucial phase of the presidential campaign. 

 

Party Chairman Andrew Hitt said the loss was attributed to a phishing attack that has been reported to the FBI. 

 

The Madison office of the FBI is investigating the matter, the Journal Sentinel has learned.

 

"It was a devastating moment," Hitt said of when the discovery was made.

 

The disclosure less than a week before the election comes at a difficult time for Wisconsin Republicans. The state Democratic Party has raised 2½ times as much as the state Republican Party over the last two years and President Donald Trump has trailed Democrat Joe Biden in polls in a state Trump narrowly won four years ago.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Apparently slavery was still legal in Nebraska until this election.  Who knew?  Some people still voted to keep it though.

 

Nebraska Amendment 1, Remove Slavery as Punishment for Crime from Constitution Amendment (2020)

 

Nebraska Amendment 1, the Remove Slavery as Punishment for Crime from Constitution Amendment, was on the ballot in Nebraska as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on November 3, 2020. It was approved.

A "yes" vote supports removing language from the Nebraska Constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.

A "no" vote opposes this ballot measure, thus keeping language in the state constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.

 

Election results

Nebraska Amendment 1
Result		Votes	Percentage
Yes		585,073	68.09%
No		274,138	31.91%

[China]

Mississippi Votes to End Jim Crow Electoral College-Like System; Popular Vote to Choose Governor

 

Mississippi has voted to end a Jim Crow-era constitutional provision intended to dilute the Black vote and ensure white voters would be able to choose governors and other statewide officials. It created an electoral college-like system requiring candidates for statewide office to win, not only the popular vote, but also a majority of Mississippi House districts.

 

With 67% of the vote in at 10:35 p.m., about 78% of Mississippi voters had approved the change.

 

Now, though, the popular vote alone will decide the victor in races for governor and the state’s other top offices.

 

After Mississippi’s Legislature amended the state constitution in 1890, white supremacist Missisippi House Rep. James K. Vardaman was not shy about declaring its purpose in the post-Reconstruction landscape.

 

“There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter. Mississippi’s constitutional convention was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the n*gger from politics—not the ignorant, but the n*gger,” said Vardaman, known as Mississippi’s “Great White Chief,” who served as speaker of the Mississippi House and, later, as a governor and U.S. senator.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

AP sources: Texas AG’s affair tied to criminal allegations

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had an extramarital affair with a woman whom he later recommended for a job with the wealthy donor now at the center of criminal allegations against him, according to two people who said Paxton told them about the relationship.

 

The two people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to fears about retaliation, said the high-profile Republican official acknowledged the affair in 2018 to senior members of his office and political staff. They said he told them that he had ended the affair with the woman, who then worked for a GOP state senator.

 

Austin developer Nate Paul said in a deposition this week that Paxton recommended the woman for her job with Paul’s real estate company, according to a transcript of his deposition obtained by the AP. The woman had stopped working as a Senate aide at the end of 2019, though her reason for departing wasn’t immediately clear.

 

Paul’s hiring of the woman at Paxton’s recommendation sheds new light on the relationship between the two men.

 

The attorney general’s top deputies reported their boss to the FBI in September for alleged bribery, abuse of office and other crimes. Those allegations stem in part from Paxton’s decision to investigate Paul’s claims that a federal judge and the FBI broke the law in searches of his home and offices last year.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Feds: Cincinnati City Council Member Jeff Pastor took $55K in exchange for votes on two developments

 

Cincinnati City Council Member Jeff Pastor took $55,000 in bribes over the course of about a year in exchange for votes related to development projects in the city, according to federal officials.

 

A federal grand jury charged Pastor, 36, with conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud, bribery, attempted extortion by a government official and money laundering, officials said on Tuesday.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[skinsmarydu]

I'm not ashamed to admit it, I've been trying to buy the "Tracking Kornacki" phone case for a couple years...they're always sold out on the MSNBC site.  Folks have figured out that his khakis come from the Gap, and the company is reporting a 90% increase in unit sales.  The network did a fabulous commercial dedicated to him set to Heart's "Magic Man". 

 

[spjunkies]

This is a pretty good watch. 

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[LadySkinsFan]

New Showtime documentary about the Reagans. Some description above the link.

 

While it sometimes undercuts itself by leaning too heavily on certain voices, it’s a valuable examination of a leader whose legacy is more complicated than it often appears, and whose political career established the foundations upon which the present Republican Party is built.

 

The Reagans censures Reagan for his pandering to racists through “Southern Strategy” coded language about “states’ rights,” demonizing Black women as “welfare queens,” for his refusal to confront the AIDS crisis in a timely and compassionate fashion, and for his and Nancy’s reliance on quack astrologer Joan Quigley for advice on virtually every important aspect of their lives. Seeking to examine the man rather than the legend, it condemns by crediting him with transforming the Republican Party into its current iteration: pro-business, pro-status quo, pro-intolerance, and pro-right-wing religiosity. 

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ronald-reagan-coded-racism-paved-095855325.html

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Forgot about posting NSFW language in an image. I deleted it.

Edited November 19, 2020 by LadySkinsFan

[Jumbo]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-counties-make-up-just-29-percent-of-us-economic-output-2020-election-study-shows/ar-BB1aXiBz?li=BBnb7Kz

 

Trump Counties Make Up Just 29 Percent of U.S. Economic Output, 2020 Election Study Shows

Quote

 

Counties won by Democratic President-elect Joe Biden make up 70 percent of all U.S. economic output—or gross domestic product (GDP)—a new post-election study finds. 

 

Biden has repeated the phrase "there are no blue states or red states, just the United States" in several appeals to President Donald Trump's voters since being named President-elect Saturday. But the more than 75.6 million votes Biden won in the 2020 election led him to victory in nearly all of the country's top 100 most powerful local economies.

 

Meanwhile, Trump voter counties make up less than one-third of the country's economic output, a Brookings Institution study said. The president's unsuccessful re-election bid hinged on his touting of the pre-pandemic economy. But his railing against urban areas as "crime infested" rather than centers of American wealth only allowed him to amass more rural county voters.

 

"Trump's losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy," the post-election analysis co-authors found.

 

Brookings Senior Fellow Mark Muro told Newsweek Thursday that Biden won 94 of the biggest GDP counties, while Trump won only six: New York's Nassau and Suffolk counties; Texas' Collin County; California's Kern County; and Oklahoma's Tulsa and Oklahoma counties.

 

Trump's urban-versus-rural 2020 campaign narrative further widened the definition of blue and red states, meaning the Republican won 7 percent fewer population-heavy economic powerhouses than he did in 2016. Biden's 70 percent GDP share this year came from the 477 U.S. counties he won compared to the 29 percent GDP share held in the 2,497 counties won by the president.

 

The study authors noted that Democrat control of heavily populated, economic city centers is hardly new. But the Republican Party's honing in on sparsely populated rural landmasses in order to hold onto votes has led lawmakers to reject things like coronavirus pandemic aid to cities, and to dismiss urban issues as partisan problems for their political rivals to handle.

 

Biden improved on Hillary Clinton's 2016 wins in 472 counties, which composed 64 percent of U.S. GDP four years ago. This year's Democratic nominee flipped places like Arizona's Maricopa County and Texas' Tarrant County to dig even deeper into Republicans' dwindling economic centers. Muro told Reuters Thursday that the GOP is clinging to "an economic [voter] base situated in the nation's struggling small towns and rural areas, which remains frustrated."

 

Biden flipped five of the 10 most economically powerful counties Trump won over Clinton four years ago: Phoenix's Maricopa County; Dallas-Fort Worth's Tarrant County; Jacksonville, Florida's Duval County; New Jersey's Morris County; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida's Pinellas County.

 

The 41-point gap between the economic output of Trump's "red counties" and Biden's "blue counties" this year has also impacted each party's views on topics like diversity. The Brookings study co-authors highlighted that Biden's counties tend to be "far more diverse, educated and white-collar professional." Aggregate non-white, college-educated portions of counties Biden won are between 35 and 36 percent—compared to Trump county economies, which are only between 16 and 25 percent non-white, college graduates.

 

 

[The Evil Genius]

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

Quote

As his gubernatorial campaign winds down, Culp said he expects to have a new vehicle to accept donations from supporters in the coming weeks, which he suggested could help pay for unspecified legal challenges. On Friday, he posted an appeal on Facebook, seeking to raise $50,000 by Nov. 25 to investigate fraud.

Always be grifting

[China]

 

 

[LadySkinsFan]

^^^^ Misogynist to the core.

[China]

In Facebook exchange, John Merrill tells man he should consider sex change

 

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill had a insult-filled exchange through Facebook with a Huntsville man on Saturday, a back-and-forth Merrill ended by telling the man to consider a sex change operation.

 

Michael Richard, 51, started the exchange Friday night with a message to Merrill: “You’re an embarrassment to the state.”

 

Richard said he was referring to Merrill’s retweet that referred to “Black Lives Matter’s war on whites” and a second retweet that said “when patriots decide it’s time to fight back it’s gonna be ugly.” The retweets have drawn criticism, including a letter from a coalition of social justice groups saying they were racially insensitive and could promote violence.

 

“It just reeks of more bigotry in this state that’s been going on for years. It’s just more of the same,” Richard told AL.com on Saturday when asked why he called Merrill “an embarrassment.”

Merrill fired back at Richard’s “embarrassment” message by telling Rich: “You are a racist liberal.” Merrill said he does not know Richard.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TradeTheBeal!]

Let’s check in on Tulsi.

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

Just noticed on my Dish program guide that Mark Halperin has a "focus group" show on Newsmax. 

Hell no, I did not check it out. 

[Jumbo]

i love the fox news programming now that it's not two hors of trump on their air live per day, and 10 hours of talking about that two, and then 12 hours of other trump news

 

tonight's big feature is "max gaetz talks about the left's hypocrisy"

 

 

this afternoon was "the left can't wait to raise the deficit again"