***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

Yeah let's trust the guy who voted for Trump twice to decide what good "messaging" looks like. Lol.

 

[dinyc3st]

 

[letsgetit22]

This whole process takes too damn long to be honest. I don't understand why he couldn't be indicted the day of or day after. He clearly broke the law, why is a grand jury needed? Maybe one of nt lawyers can school me on this.

 

[gry60]

Menace Enters the Republican Mainstream (Published 2021)

Threats of violence have become commonplace among a significant part of the party, as historians and those who study democracy warn of a dark shift in American politics.

www.nytimes.com

At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats.

“When do we get to use the guns?” he said as the audience applauded. “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a “fair” question.

In Ohio, the leading candidate in the Republican primary for Senate blasted out a video urging Republicans to resist the “tyranny” of a federal government that pushed them to wear masks and take F.D.A.-authorized vaccines.

“When the Gestapo show up at your front door,” the candidate, Josh Mandel, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, said in the video in September, “you know what to do.”

And in Congress, violent threats against lawmakers are on track to double this year. Republicans who break party ranks and defy former President Donald J. Trump have come to expect insults, invective and death threats — often stoked by their own colleagues and conservative activists, who have denounced them as traitors.

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

In Washington, where decorum and civility are still given lip service, violent or threatening language still remains uncommon, if not unheard-of, among lawmakers who spend a great deal of time in the same building. But among the most fervent conservatives, who play an outsize role in primary contests and provide the party with its activist energy, the belief that the country is at a crossroads that could require armed confrontation is no longer limited to the fringe.

 

[dwalk31]

 

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Jesus

 

[gry60]

‘But He’s Jewish’: The Ohio GOP Senate Race Just Went There

“Are we seriously supposed to believe the most Christian-values Senate candidate is Jewish?” asks Ohio GOP Senate candidate Mark Pukita's radio ad.

www.vice.com

Spoiler: Full article

Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate for the Ohio Senate race, speaks to a crowd on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, at the Renaissance Hotel in Columbus, Ohio. (Joel Prince for the Washington Post via Getty Images)
It seems that (((dog-whistles))) are just too subtle for modern politics.

Ohio GOP Senate candidate Mark Pukita defended his blatantly antisemitic ad attacking Republican primary front-runner Josh Mandel’s Jewish faith during a Thursday candidate forum.

“Are we seriously supposed to believe the most Christian-values Senate candidate is Jewish?” asks an actor in a radio ad Pukita has recently been airing. “I am so sick of these phony caricatures.”

Pukita doubled down when asked by a moderator to respond to claims the ad is “antisemitic and intentionally divisive and inflammatory.”

"In terms of antisemitism, all I did in an ad was pointed out that Josh is going around saying he's got the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other. But he's Jewish,” Pukita said, according to Politico. “Everybody should know that though, right?”

Mandel fired back at the attack in a Friday tweet. “Opponents attack me because I’m a proud American and a proud Jew,” he said.

Pukita, an IT consultant, is barely registering in the polls. Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer who’s repeatedly run for statewide office, has had the early lead, with author and entrepreneur J.D. Vance, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timkin, and businessmen Bernie Moreno and Mike Gibbons as the other more serious candidates in the race.

Moreno, who spoke next at the forum, slammed Pukita’s comments.

“Josh, nobody should question your faith. That's not right,” Moreno said. “The Jewish religion, the Bible is the Bible. That was hard to hear. I'm sorry about that. That's not right. We're better than that, guys.”


Mandel hasn’t exactly been high on respecting the values of other faiths (or of secular people) during his current Senate run either. He’s campaigned hard on “Judeo-Christian” values and attacked Islam in an effort to ingratiate himself with the states large Evangelical conservative community.

“There’s no such thing as separation of church and state,” he declared at a recent Senate debate, arguing that the “Judeo-Christian ethic separates itself from Islam and atheism and all these other belief sets on so many levels, but one of the main levels is our acknowledgment of good vs. evil.”

“They’re trying to take god out of all aspects of society and they’re trying to water down on the Judeo-Christian bedrock of America,” he continued. “And my personal feeling is we shouldn’t be watering down, we should be doubling down. We should be instilling faith in the classroom, in the workplace, and everywhere in society.”

Mandel has also compared Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban to reptiles, saying “You can keep feeding the alligators, but eventually you will be eaten as well,” and repeatedly claimed the refugees are bringing in “child brides” and COVID-19.

In October, he called for the government to shut down public schools and instead fund Christian and Jewish religious schools:

After running as an establishment-minded conservative in past elections, Mandel has pivoted hard to the right in his current race. The candidate has repeatedly used inflammatory rhetoric, claimed former President Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him, and endorsed Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made a string of anti-Semitic comments herself.

Mandel has faced criticism from more liberal Jews for this pivot. But he’s fired back against claims he’s seeking to distance himself from his faith:

Ohio’s GOP Senate primary has been a race to the far right. But even by those standards, Pukita’s ad is pushing the limits.

 

[gry60]

The rise of the traditionalists: how a mystical doctrine is reshaping the right

Steve Bannon, Russia’s Alexander Dugin and Brazil’s Olavo de Carvalho are united by their affinity with a spiritual movement that fundamentally rejects modernity.

www.newstatesman.com

 

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[frink85]

Birx was a moron and Redfield was on his knees for the entire administration, both were/are cowards and should lose their licenses.

 

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[dinyc3st]

 

[gry60]

Natural gas customers in Texas get stuck with $3.4 billion cold-snap surcharge

State oil and gas regulator will allow exemptions from winterization mandates.

arstechnica.com

Texans will be paying for the effects of last February’s cold snap for decades to come, as the state’s oil and gas regulator approved a plan for natural gas utilities to recover $3.4 billion in debt they incurred during the storm.

The regulator, the Railroad Commission, is allowing utilities to issue bonds to cover the debt. As a result, ratepayers could see an increase in their bills for the next 30 years.

In the wake of the storm, many officials have called on utilities and oil and gas companies to winterize their operations. In a law passed in May, the Railroad Commission was given the authority to write regulations for critical gas infrastructure, including winterization. But facilities have to voluntarily submit forms declaring that they're critical infrastructure, and the regulator says that the law includes a loophole that allows gas producers, for $150, to file for an exemption from winterizing wellheads.

Texans aren’t the only ones whose bills are higher as a result of producers’ and utilities’ unwillingness to winterize their equipment. Utilities around the country were forced to buy natural gas at significantly higher prices when Texas’ markets went haywire as a result of low supply and high demand. Ratepayers as far away as Minnesota will be paying surcharges for years to come after their utilities had to pay $800 million more than expected for natural gas.

 

[Nike Jordan]

RustyShackleford

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

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[AEA18]

They really want him to behave like their god the orange clown.

Editing videos to make Biden say stuff trump would actually say, asking if some dumb chant is getting him in his feels.

 

[aepps20]

YUCK