[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

OG_slinger wrote:
BadKen wrote:

BTW, that Falwell story is a welcome bit of trashy trash and a great distraction from all the horribleness that is going on currently.

Michael Cohen's involvement in that story is very likely why Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump in early 2016 and sealed the unholy alliance that currently exists between white Evangelicals and Trump. It's not a distraction. It's a root cause.

I think you're giving evangelicals too much credit. They aren't prime movers, they just provide a gullible audience. The current worst horrors are more militant racists, nationalists, and extremist righties. There is some overlap, but those groups are not driven by the likes of Falwell Jr.

I can laugh at the foibles of a hypocrite zealot because he is ultimately ineffectual, incompetent, and a mere servant of the true evildoers.

BadKen wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
BadKen wrote:

BTW, that Falwell story is a welcome bit of trashy trash and a great distraction from all the horribleness that is going on currently.

Michael Cohen's involvement in that story is very likely why Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump in early 2016 and sealed the unholy alliance that currently exists between white Evangelicals and Trump. It's not a distraction. It's a root cause.

I think you're giving evangelicals too much credit. They aren't prime movers, they just provide a gullible audience. The current worst horrors are more militant racists, nationalists, and extremist righties. There is some overlap, but those groups are not driven by the likes of Falwell Jr.

I can laugh at the foibles of a hypocrite zealot because he is ultimately ineffectual, incompetent, and a mere servant of the true evildoers.

Their followers voted for Trump...

White Christians, especially evangelicals, support Trump because of his racism. Religious identity and moral wedge issues are covering fire for the White supremacy. I would put forward that Falwell's endorsement or no, Trump still would have won that constituency.

Liberty University still fines its students if they attend dances or get caught “visiting alone with the opposite sex at an off-campus residence” so the news that the president of the university has spent years in a hypocritical sexual relationship is presumably not going to go over well. (Though dollars to doughnuts a lot of people are going to either say the thing was exaggerated or say he's repented and should be forgiven.) Given that he spent the weekend trying to throw his wife under the bus in a vain effort to get out in front of the story, he's worse scum than I thought he was.

BadKen wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
BadKen wrote:

BTW, that Falwell story is a welcome bit of trashy trash and a great distraction from all the horribleness that is going on currently.

Michael Cohen's involvement in that story is very likely why Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump in early 2016 and sealed the unholy alliance that currently exists between white Evangelicals and Trump. It's not a distraction. It's a root cause.

I think you're giving evangelicals too much credit. They aren't prime movers, they just provide a gullible audience. The current worst horrors are more militant racists, nationalists, and extremist righties. There is some overlap, but those groups are not driven by the likes of Falwell Jr.

I can laugh at the foibles of a hypocrite zealot because he is ultimately ineffectual, incompetent, and a mere servant of the true evildoers.

The Modern Evangelical movement in the U.S was created in large part due to opposition to school desegregation. This Venn Diagram is practically a circle.

Falwell resigned.

Thoughts and prayers.

I guess he felt the need to take a step back and let someone else do the hard work for him.

You have to give him this, unlike most Republicans in congress he was really into the idea of Oversight.

RawkGWJ wrote:

The goal of the Republican Party for the past 100 years or more has been the dehumanization and outright oppression of the working class and anyone else who isn’t rich.

Fixed that for you.

Glycerine wrote:
RawkGWJ wrote:

The goal of the Republican Party for the past 100 years or more has been the dehumanization and outright oppression of the working class, and basically anyone else who isn’t rich.

Fixed that for you.

Double post.

Is working class an issue? Does it have to be the rich?

Reaper81 wrote:

Falwell resigned.

Thoughts and prayers.

Hold on! Apparently that isn’t the case. The reality show BS that has been our lives continues...

Falwell denied that he was resigning, telling Virginia Business that the report was "completely false."

I guess they did it without him participating.

JC wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Falwell resigned.

Thoughts and prayers.

Hold on! Apparently that isn’t the case. The reality show BS that has been our lives continues...

Falwell denied that he was resigning, telling Virginia Business that the report was "completely false."

But I don't have any jokes about Falwell backing out at the last second, though.

More on this from CNN:

Embattled evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. agreed to resign as Liberty University's president Monday but withdrew his resignation when media reports about the decision emerged, the university said in a statement Monday night.

Apparently he was fine with resigning as long as nobody knew about it? Blame the media again, I guess.

This isn't really new news but the gun-waving couple from the RNC are really amazingly awful people. They sue everyone and everything including their family, (probably) tried to enforce HOA rules to block a gay couple from living nearby, sued to seize HOA common land under adverse possession, and destroyed beehives belonging to a neighboring synagogue because they were six inches over the property line.

The St. Louis couple charged with waving guns at protesters have a long history of not backing down.

The rabbi who is neighbor to Mark and Patricia McCloskey speaks out: ‘They are bullies’

In 2013, the synagogue placed beehives along the wall to produce honey for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. One morning they found the hives destroyed and all the bees dead. Mark McCloskey had taken an ax or sledgehammer to them.

His issue? The fence between them sat six inches inside the McCloskey’s property line. The hives were his to wreck.

He then left a note threatening a lawsuit if the wreckage wasn't immediately cleaned up.

My wife, Teresa, has actually argued in court against them before. And, yes, they are that awful. They hate Teresa because she got roped into a case in which they were doing something so dumb, a partner at her firm requested she appear at the hearing with him, because he was afraid there was something he was missing.

Teresa is an appellate attorney, so often she is used as tech support for cases. She kept trying to assure him that he can't do what he is asking, and the judge will just over rule him. She thought it was dumb that he even needed her there. And she was right, the judge actually didn't even let Mark McCloskey speak, and denied his claim.

Teresa thought she was done, and everything was as dumb as she had assumed. Then McCloskey made another legal action, in anger, not thinking it through. This time, apparently, only Teresa noticed the impact that it had, and casually mentioned that she assumed that everyone would respond by doing X. The other attorney didn't know what she meant.

My favorite part of her telling me this story is. After the attorney mansplained the rules to her she had to walk him through the sequence of events to show how the situation changed, and that the rules changed. He then had her, by speakerphone, explain this to the entire group of lawyers (McCloskey was suing a range of people in an injury case), in which she began to hear giggling. The mistake was worth millions of dollars.

Teresa has been absolutely adamant that the mistake she caught was so simple that it would have been caught well before it was too late by everyone. She may have been the one to spot it, and it made for a funny moment, but she didn't actually do anything that a third year law student would not have caught, in her view. The only reason McCloskey made the mistake was that he was so mad over the ruling that he thought he was sticking it to the lawyer she was there with. McCloskey's action is something Teresa would have had multiple people go over just to catch stuff like that.

But because of all that, there is actually a court record of McCloskey accusing Teresa of bewitching the other lawyers.

She also told me that his wife, who is a lawyer, doesn't really practice. She is like an attack dog that accompanies her husband to court and mostly makes a lot of noise as she complains about rulings and actions.

They were not popular people in town. But in some ways, that was good for them. Teresa's firm is an insurance defense firm. Being known as an enemy of them is not bad for business, even if it is acting so outlandish. Think Saul Goodman, but on the legal side of things.

But waving guns at BLM protesters? That's f*cking stupid for their business. Those are their clients. They work in the city and not the county for a reason. It's where you get the biggest settlements because the juries tend to be more anti big business. Now they are the face of the wrong side.

Before this, they would have been viewed as BLM supporters, for purely PR and marketing reasons. I have no idea what their politics really are. They probably don't have any. They take advantage of the landscape by doing things others would never dare to do, out of pride.

Does it go to 11?

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EgTjYxOWoAATqX-?format=jpg&name=900x900)

100% reasonable demands:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/wYNpTP4.jpg)

That human is a piece of traaaaaash.

Mags was not having it this morning.

She's a lot better at this than Chuck Todd.

I remember weekends NOT feeling like this. Those were nice.

She has no f*cks left to give.

He condones violence in all of its forms?

Prederick wrote:

I remember weekends NOT feeling like this. Those were nice.

Watching the Sunday news shows was something Teresa and I always kind of looked forward to. Most Sundays we just skip now. Margaret Brennan is our go to for now.

She has really gotten more aggressive about laying out what answers imply, and forcing officials to clarify, lie, or awkwardly repeat the spin she just called out. And unlike all the dudes, she seems less concerned about getting in a zinger than actually holding her guests accountable for their answers.

John Dickerson, who had it before her was good about this, too. Like, the opposite of Chuck Todd.

Probably worth getting back into CBS Sunday Morning, which is much less political, while still getting a decent weekly news magazine show.

Stephanopoulos seems ok but that show keeps Chris Christie on there every week. He just lies and spins even more than the interviewees.

I can think of few better descriptions of 2020 than Herman Cain, who died of COVID-19, posting posthumously from his Twitter account various coronavirus skeptic sh*t. Just perfect. Never, ever stop posting.

Prederick wrote:

I can think of few better descriptions of 2020 than Herman Cain, who died of COVID-19, posting posthumously from his Twitter account various coronavirus skeptic sh*t. Just perfect. Never, ever stop posting.

My idol.

So, um...

@DannyZuker wrote:

"I've had it with these motherf%*king antifas on this motherf%*king plane!"

https://t.co/MvGna5xF49 {@Acyn tweet below}

— Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) September 1, 2020

@Acyn wrote:

The President claims people in the dark shadows who control the streets are really controlling Biden. He goes on to talk about a plane full of people wearing black uniforms but then says he can’t reveal anymore because it’s under investigation

pic.twitter.com/AAk5GX0eWu {<- oh, this is must see TV}

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 1, 2020

Today's Trump theme song: