The Random Politics Thread

[skinsmarydu]

[Springfield]

Random political thought. I haven't been paying very close attention to politics since about a week or two ago. I feel like I can breathe, not be concerned about the state of the country for a little bit since we have an adult and don't have to be concerned about some half-brain turd tweeting hate every 2 hours 7 days a week.

[Burgold]

I'm slowly moving away to. I still have some SCOTUS nerves. I still really want the Dems to somehow win the Georgia runoff and Trump is still doing things that will harm this country, but I feel like there's a chance the ship won't sink.

[Cooked Crack]

 

https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/143423/hungarian-mep-resigns-after-attending-sex-party-in-brussels-jozsef-szajer-rue-des-pierres-prime-minister-orban-fidesz-equal-rights-lgbtq-community/

[skinsmarydu]

^^^That's how you TRY to go about fixing stuff.  (even if it's kinda out of reach, at least try)

[China]

Articles of Impeachment officially filed against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, claiming abuse of power during pandemic

 

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - A total of 12 Articles of Impeachment have officially been filed against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Those articles were filed by State Rep. John Becker (R-Union Township) and were joined by Representatives Keller, Vitale and Zeltwanger.

 

The representatives argue that the governor has abused his power during the coronavirus pandemic and cites his veto of Senate Bill 55, along with threatened vetoes against other General Assembly legislation, including Senate Bill 311, which aims to severely limit the powers of the governor during a pandemic.

 

In a release sent to the media, Rep. Becker’s office said, “Governor DeWine’s mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, abuse of power, and other crimes include, but are not limited to, meddling in the conduct of a presidential primary election, arbitrarily closing and placing curfews on certain businesses, while allowing other businesses to remain open. He weaponized the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to bully and harass businesses and the people; to enforce a statewide mask mandate and other controversial measures of dubious “value,” making Ohio a hostile work environment.”

 

The statement goes on to mention the governor’s inclusion of places of worship during shutdown orders and the mask mandate which has been in effect in one state or another since the summer.

 

“Rather than hearing the cries of Ohioans, Governor DeWine continues to stifle those cries by finding more inventive ways to use masks to muffle the voices of the people,” said Representative Becker in the statement. “He continues to have callous disregard for the fact that his isolation policies have led to a shockingly high number of suicides, alarming rates of drug abuse, persistently high unemployment, and the forced abandonment of the elderly by their loved ones.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TradeTheBeal!]

Reminder that Bernie Sanders chose Tulsi Gabbard to introduce him at the 2016 Dem convention.

 

 

[China]

Judge Declares We Don't Need to Dig Up Warren G. Harding's Dusty Old Boner to Prove He Had a Secret Family

 

Warren G. Harding, who until 2016 was considered America’s worst president, was also pretty much America’s grossest horndog president, despite some fierce competition from pretty much all the rest of them. Rumors of his affairs abound, and the very first presidential sex scandal tell-all memoir was written about Harding by Nan Britton, who claimed Harding was the father of her daughter as the result of a sexual relationship that began when Britton was 20 and Harding was nearly 50. After growing up in the long shadow of his grandmother being labeled a money-hungry, Harding-obsessed liar, Britton and Harding’s grandson, James Blaesing, has been denied a request to exhume Harding’s body in an effort to prove once and for all that they are related.

 

An Ohio judge has ruled that Blaesing already has sufficient evidence to prove Harding was an old creep who impregnated a young woman out of wedlock and then left her to fend for herself, as the DNA link between Blaesing and Harding has been proven using data from Ancestry.com and matching with samples taken from Harding’s living relatives. However, the nearly hundred-year-old fight to prove Nan Britton wasn’t lying is about much more than one man wanting evidence he is related to a terrible president that most historians agree was extremely corrupt and just all-around kind of a dick who thought about his own dick above nearly anything else.

 

According to Politico, Harding’s fascination with his own junk and the vaginas of his myriad affair partners is incredibly well documented. He was known to call his penis “Jerry” and named one mistress’s vagina “Mrs. Pouterson.” In a letter to one of these women, Harding spoke on behalf of old Jerry: “Jerry came and will not go,” the letter reads. “[S]ays he loves you, that you are the only, only love worthwhile in all this world, and I must tell you so and a score or more of other fond things he suggests, but I spare you. You must not be annoyed. He is so utterly devoted that he only exists to give you all.”

 

Click on the link for more

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

Thousands of U.S. judges who broke laws or oaths remained on the bench

 

In the past dozen years, state and local judges have repeatedly escaped public accountability for misdeeds that have victimized thousands. Nine of 10 kept their jobs, a Reuters investigation found – including an Alabama judge who unlawfully jailed hundreds of poor people, many of them Black, over traffic fines.

 

Judge Les Hayes once sentenced a single mother to 496 days behind bars for failing to pay traffic tickets. The sentence was so stiff it exceeded the jail time Alabama allows for negligent homicide.

 

Marquita Johnson, who was locked up in April 2012, says the impact of her time in jail endures today. Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.

 

“Judge Hayes took away my life and didn’t care how my children suffered,” said Johnson, now 36. “My girls will never be the same.”

 

Fellow inmates found her sentence hard to believe. “They had a nickname for me: The Woman with All the Days,” Johnson said. “That’s what they called me: The Woman with All the Days. There were people who had committed real crimes who got out before me.”

 

In 2016, the state agency that oversees judges charged Hayes with violating Alabama’s code of judicial conduct. According to the Judicial Inquiry Commission, Hayes broke state and federal laws by jailing Johnson and hundreds of other Montgomery residents too poor to pay fines. Among those jailed: a plumber struggling to make rent, a mother who skipped meals to cover the medical bills of her disabled son, and a hotel housekeeper working her way through college.

 

Hayes, a judge since 2000, admitted in court documents to violating 10 different parts of the state’s judicial conduct code. One of the counts was a breach of a judge’s most essential duty: failing to “respect and comply with the law.”

 

Despite the severity of the ruling, Hayes wasn’t barred from serving as a judge. Instead, the judicial commission and Hayes reached a deal. The former Eagle Scout would serve an 11-month unpaid suspension. Then he could return to the bench.

 

Until he was disciplined, Hayes said in an interview with Reuters, “I never thought I was doing something wrong.”

 

Hayes is among thousands of state and local judges across America who were allowed to keep positions of extraordinary power and prestige after violating judicial ethics rules or breaking laws they pledged to uphold, a Reuters investigation found.

Judges have made racist statements, lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer – and then returned to the bench, sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct.

 

Recent media reports have documented failures in judicial oversight in South Carolina, Louisiana and Illinois. Reuters went further.

 

In the first comprehensive accounting of judicial misconduct nationally, Reuters identified and reviewed 1,509 cases from the last dozen years – 2008 through 2019 – in which judges resigned, retired or were publicly disciplined following accusations of misconduct. In addition, reporters identified another 3,613 cases from 2008 through 2018 in which states disciplined wayward judges but kept hidden from the public key details of their offenses – including the identities of the judges themselves.

 

All told, 9 of every 10 judges were allowed to return to the bench after they were sanctioned for misconduct, Reuters determined.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[China]

Lara Trump leading Republicans in 2022 North Carolina Senate poll

 

President Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is currently the favorite among North Carolina voters to succeed in the 2022 Republican primary for the seat of retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), according to a BUSR/UNLV Lee Business School poll released Monday. 

 

The poll found that Lara Trump, who is reportedly considering a Senate run, leads former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) 24 percent to 23 percent, though this is within the poll's 7-point margin of error. 

 

The leads by Lara Trump and McCrory far surpass support for Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), the only major candidate so far to launch a campaign for the Senate seat. The congressman polled at 7 percent among North Carolina Republicans surveyed. 

 

Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.) and North Carolina State House Speaker Tim Moore (R) were also included in the poll, receiving 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively. 

About 39 percent of those surveyed were undecided on their favorite for the Republican Senate primary. 

 

The same poll also found that in the 2024 North Carolina Republican Presidential Primary, President Trump leads among voters with 76 percent support, ahead of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) at 6 percent. 

 

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) were also included in the presidential primary poll question, each receiving 3 percent or less. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

There definitely needs to be some sort of election reform.  Things are way out of control, including spending:

 

US election spending exceeds GDP of numerous countries

 

Americans spend more on politics and political campaigns than any other nation on Earth, and the 2020 election once again rewrote the fundraising record books.

U.S. spending is such that it’s barely comparable to the amounts in other countries.

 

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party spent 16 million pounds on the 2019 campaign that handed them a majority in Parliament, about $21.3 million based on today’s exchange rate. That’s less than the amount Democrats and Republicans spent on the 21st Congressional District in Texas, where Rep. Chip Roy (R) held off a challenge from former state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) last month.

 

The most expensive races attract more dollars than some small nations generate as their annual gross domestic product (GDP). Here are some of the most expensive contests of the year, paired with the nations whose GDP they rival.

 

Sens. David Perdue (R) and Kelly Loeffler (R) and Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock are clashing over the highest-profile runoffs in Georgia history. With control of the Senate on the line, the two parties and their outside supporters have reserved $315 million on television in just the few weeks after the November elections, according to AdImpact, a nonpartisan firm that monitors the television markets.

 

That figure does not include all the party-building and get-out-the-vote activities that cost millions more.

 

The amount spent in Georgia will rival the GDP of the Federated States of Micronesia, which the World Bank pegged at $402 million in 2018. Micronesia’s four states have a population of about 104,000.

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

A suspected Chinese spy slept with at least 2 mayors and got close to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell in a yearslong intelligence campaign, report says

 

A suspected Chinese spy slept with at least two US mayors and got close to numerous Bay Area politicians in a yearslong intelligence campaign directed at influencing American officials early in their careers, according to a new report from Axios.

 

Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was heavily involved in Bay Area and national US politics from 2011 to 2015, the outlet reported.

 

Two of the candidates Fang reportedly fundraised for - Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard - both ran for president in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Axios said.

 

 

According to Axios, Swalwell has not been accused of wrongdoing, and said he cut ties with Fang as soon as he learned about her alleged connections to China. Gabbard told Axios via a spokesperson that she has "no recollection of ever meeting or talking with" Fang.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Lithuanian Anti-LGBTQ Lawmaker Caught with 'Naked' Man During Online Parliamentary Session

 

In an embarrassing faux pas, a vocally anti-LGBTQIA lawmaker in Lithuania was caught on tape with a naked man in yet another Zoom call mishap.

 

MP and eminent politician Petras Grazulis was caught on tape at home with a man while attending an online parliamentary meeting. Apparently, the MP had accidentally turned on the camera while attending the meeting, giving others a brief glimpse into his home.

 

Brief though it was, the footage was long enough to cause embarrassment for Grazulis, who is a member of the right-wing Order and Justice Party of Lithuania.

 

The incident occurred during an online Seimas assembly committee session. In the video which has gone viral online, the man who can be seen wearing no shirt appears behind the MP's shoulder. The incident is especially embarrassing for Grazulis, who has often shown explicit disapproval of non-traditional forms of union and LGBTQ rights.

 

Grazulis had in 2012 said that all gay people should leave Lithuania.

 

As the incident caused outrage and not laughter online, Grazulis initially tried to claim that the man seen in the video was his son, Russia Today reported. He, however, soon changed his statement and claimed that the man in the video was a journalist named Andrius Tapinas.

 

The MP alleged that Tapinas had been persecuting him for some time and that it was actually him in the video. To explain the bizarre claim, Grazulis hazarded that the journalist was "haunting" him and somehow edited himself into the live stream to embarrass the politician.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Senate approves three FEC nominees, restoring commission's ability to function

 

The Senate on Wednesday voted to approve the nominations of two Republicans and one Democrat to serve on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), restoring a quorum to an agency that has been kneecapped for the past year. 

 

The Senate approved the nominations of Republicans Allen Dickerson and Sean Cooksey and Democrat Shana Broussard by votes of 49-47, 50-47 and 92-4, respectively. 

 

Dickerson, Cooksey and Broussard provide the FEC with a full slate of six commissioners after months of it being unable to fully function with only three. Four commissioners are needed for a quorum.

 

“The Federal Election Commission plays a critical role in ensuring the integrity of our campaign finance system,” Blunt said in a statement. “I’m glad the Senate has taken action to restore a full slate of commissioners to the FEC, which has been without a complete panel since February 2017. With all six commissioners in place, the FEC will be stable, politically balanced, and able to fulfill its most important functions.”

 

The FEC lost its quorum in August 2019 when former Commissioner Matthew Petersen, a Republican, stepped down. The quorum was briefly restored in May with the Senate confirmation of current FEC Chairman Trey Trainor, a Republican, but was lost weeks later when former FEC Republican Commissioner Caroline Hunter stepped down.

 

Trainor told The Hill in October that he hoped the Senate would quickly confirm the three nominees due to the backlog of cases that the FEC had been unable to address. 

 

“There is plenty of work for us to do,” Trainor said. “There have been plenty of complaints that have been generated by the 2020 cycle; looking forward to getting to address those.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Tulsi digging in on the issues that matter in these trying times.

 

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Ice-T for President.

 

 

[Malapropismic Depository]

Paul Newby has won his seat on the Supreme Court.

So if you're a criminal, you best beware.

Cuz Paul Newby brings justice, tough but fair.

 

Banjo-pickers rejoice

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

 

https://www.wect.com/2020/12/12/newby-wins-race-nc-supreme-court-chief-justice/

 

"Newby wins race for N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice

Paul Newby has been serving on the North Carolina Supreme Court since 2004.He served 19 years as an Assistant United States Attorney in Raleigh.Newby is currently an adjunct professor at Campbell University School of Law."

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

Outgoing Rep. Cunningham opens beer on House floor in goodbye toast to bipartisanship

 

Outgoing South Carolina Rep. Joe Cunningham (D) cracked open a beer in the name of bipartisanship during his farewell speech to Congress on Thursday.

 

"For the betterment of this country, we have to come together, we have to sit down and listen to one another, and maybe even have a beer," Cunningham said before grabbing a brew out of an inside pocket of his jacket and snapping it open.

 

"I raise this glass to my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans," he said as he held up what The Post and Courier identified as a can of DC Brau pale ale called Joint Resolution.

 

The South Carolina Democrat noted his ranking as the fourth most bipartisan congressman and that President Trump signed two of his bills into law.

 

"Our democracy has been battered and bruised, but it is not yet broken," he said on the floor. "To save it we must agree on one basic truth: The other side is not the enemy."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

Likely story.🤔

[China]

The Whoppers of 2020

 

For the sixth year in a row President Donald Trump has proved he is in a class of his own when it comes to political mendacity. His claims again make up the majority of our top 10 list of the most egregious falsehoods.

 

And in 2020, two of Trump’s whoppers may well be the most outrageous and damaging of his political career: his false attacks on the integrity of the election and his downplaying of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Democratic President-elect Joe Biden also earned spots in our lineup for false claims about Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak and for wrongly, and repeatedly, saying he was “arrested” while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

 

Bogus information on COVID-19 dominated the viral misinformation landscape for much of the year. Among the worst of the worst: the “Plandemic” video, which gathered many such falsehoods into a grand conspiracy theory.

 

Read on for the full whoppers rundown, and for more information on the claims, see links to our prior stories on these falsehoods at the end.

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

He either misspoke when he said Biden instead of Trump or he's projecting, something that Trump frequently does:

 

Meet the Congressman With a Decades-Long History of Questionable Acts Who Just Called for Joe Biden to Be Prosecuted

 

Meet U.S. Congressman Ken Buck, a Republican of Colorado. Buck on Thursday called for President-elect Joe Biden to be prosecuted for supposed crimes after he leaves office.

 

Biden is not under investigation nor is there any proof he has committed any crimes, but that didn’t stop Buck from making the accusation on live national television.

 

“The American people are fed up with corruption in Washington, D.C.,” Buck told Fox News. “I think they’re fed up with people selling their office for personal gain, and thats exactly what it appears President-elect Biden did.”

 

Again, there is zero proof to support that charge.

 

“If he didn’t do it, we need to have a special counsel to clear the air,” he added, echoing reports that President Donald Trump wants to install one before he leaves office.

 

Buck, who has a long and disturbing history of ethical and legal missteps, went on to claim, falsely, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller “cleared” President Trump.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Warren re-ups bill to ban stock trading by lawmakers

 

While Georgia’s two Republican senators fend off campaign attacks on their stock trading, their Democratic colleague Elizabeth Warren is re-launching her bill to prevent lawmakers from making individual stock trades.

 

Georgia Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler both came under recent fire for buying and selling stocks at moments when they were privy to sensitive information about the companies they invested in. Each is now a candidate in Georgia’s high-stakes January 5 runoff election, the outcome of which could change control of the Senate next year.

 

Warren’s proposed ban is part of a broader anti-corruption plan she promoted on the presidential campaign trail and is reintroducing with hopes that it can gain traction now that she has returned to the Senate. Warren, who said she would make such reform her first priority as president, proposes many changes to federal ethics law, including creating lifetime bans on lobbying for former members of Congress, expanding federal conflict-of-interest rules and barring lobbyists from fundraising for political candidates. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced a companion bill in the House.

 

“After nearly four years of the most corrupt president in American history and with U.S. senators brazenly trading stocks to profit off a raging pandemic, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is more urgent than ever,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

 

Click on the link for the full article