StrictlyRockers
StrictlyRockers's JournalMitch McConnell's nauseating hypocrisy comes into full focus
We saw this coming.
Not just that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might die before the election. But that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most shameless man in Washington, would respond with one of the most nauseating acts of political hypocrisy in decades — vowing to rush a new Trump appointee onto the court in the two short months before the election.
That may not seem so nauseating and hypocritical on the face of it. After all, Donald Trump is the sitting president and Ginsburg died on his watch, so by law, Trump is entitled to nominate a successor and McConnell, in the ordinary course of events, would schedule confirmation hearings.
But McConnell doesn’t believe that! He argued just the opposite four years ago when Justice Antonin Scalia died and it was President Obama’s constitutional duty to fill the seat during his last year in office. Remember what McConnell did? He simply refused to hold confirmation hearings for Obama’s nominee in the Senate and ran out the clock until the following January. He argued — utterly unpersuasively — that a president in the final year of his term shouldn’t be appointing new justices.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-18/ginsburg-death-mcconnell-nominee-confirmation
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1307414789707104256
Mark Kelly, should he win the Arizona Senate seat, could be sworn in as early as Nov. 30.
https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1307115540352323584Trump ad says to support the troops, but it uses a picture of Russian jets.
A digital ad released by a fundraising arm of the Trump campaign on Sept. 11 calling on people to “support our troops” uses a stock photo of Russian-made fighter jets and Russian models dressed as soldiers.
The ad, which was made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, features silhouettes of three soldiers walking as a fighter jet flies over them. The ad first appeared on Sept. 8 and ran until Sept. 12.
“That’s definitely a MiG-29,” said Pierre Sprey, who helped design both the F-16 and A-10 planes for the U.S. Air Force. “I’m glad to see it’s supporting our troops.”
He noted the angle of the aircraft’s tail, the way the tail is swept far back, and the spacing of the engines, along with the tunnel between them.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, confirmed that the planes are Russian MiG-29s, and also said the soldier on the far right in the ad carries an AK-74 assault rifle.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/trump-ad-asks-people-to-support-the-troops-but-it-uses-a-picture-of-russian-jets-414883
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1306011525988126727?s=20
Santa Cruz becomes the first city with a city-sanctioned, permanent BLM mural installed
HAPPENING NOW: More than 500 volunteers are helping to paint a Black Lives Matter mural in front of Santa Cruz City Hall. Santa Cruz is the first city in the U.S. to create a city-sanctioned, permanent Black Lives Matter mural installation.
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1305024453496119296
Fire tornado near Vacaville, California.
Welcome to the gates of hell. 
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1304900128952573952
#TedCruzHasNoBalls is trending
#TedCruzHasNoBalls is trending, and I am here for this.
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1304559524099977216
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) on Friday responded to a tweet about a segment on gender reveal parties from Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show,” saying “many liberal males never grow balls.”
Cruz wrote his comment in a retweet of an article from conservative news website The Daily Wire, which critiqued Noah for railing against gender reveal parties.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/516066-ted-cruz-many-liberal-males-never-grow-balls
Kamala is 5' 2" and Joe is 6' 0". There, I saved you a Google.
https://twitter.com/sabrinasingh24/status/1303109510815510532Tens of thousands of people are suddenly eligible to vote in November in North Carolina
North Carolina Court Wipes Out Voting Restrictions Designed to “Secure White Supremacy”Tens of thousands of people are suddenly eligible to vote in November.
On Friday, a North Carolina court dramatically expanded the number of voters eligible to participate in the 2020 election. The state may not disenfranchise citizens who owe fines, fees, and other debts from a felony conviction, the Wake County Superior Court ruled on Friday. And while the court limited its order to those affected by wealth-based voter suppression, its reasoning portends a broader ruling in the near future that could restore voting rights to 70,000 more North Carolinians on probation or parole.
Many felon disenfranchisement rules, including North Carolina’s, are rooted in overt white supremacy. After Reconstruction, racist Democrats in the state sought to revoke Black citizens’ suffrage. They accomplished this task, in part, through vague criminal laws that stripped convicted felons of their civil rights—then enforced these laws disproportionately against Black people. North Carolina’s current statute is rooted in an 1877 law spearheaded by a representative who later presided over the lynching of three Black men. At the time, Democrats argued that felon disenfranchisement was necessary to stop “the honest vote of a white man” from being “off-set by the vote of some negro.” Its purpose, alongside other Jim Crow measures like the literacy test, was to “secure white supremacy.”
The law continues to work as intended, as documented in an expert report by University of North Carolina professor Frank R. Baumgartner. Today, Black North Carolinians represent 22 percent of adults and 42 percent of the disenfranchised. Black residents are denied the right to vote at three times the rate of white residents in 44 counties. The state’s disenfranchisement regime targets two groups of people: those on probation or parole, and those who’ve completed their full sentence but still owe court debt. Notably, judges may extend an individual’s probation or send them back to prison because they haven’t paid off these fines and fees.
Few do manage to pay off these debts. Like Florida, North Carolina practices cash register justice, funding its criminal system by extracting money from those who encounter it. Any person charged in district court is billed a minimum of $173. They must pay $25 for a criminal record check, $60 for a public defender, and $600 for lab analysis of evidence. Those sentenced to community service must pay $250; those placed under house arrest with electronic monitoring must pay $90 upfront, then $4.48 a day; those sentenced to a local jail must pay $40 a day—on top of the $10 a day they paid if detained before conviction. People on probation must pay $40 a month to fund their own supervision. Judges have authority to waive court debt. But they are also elected, and fearful of retribution at the polls if they’re deemed soft on criminals. In 2015, North Carolina Republicans passed legislation publicizing each judge’s annual waiver rate in an effort to shame them out of waiving fines and fees.
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https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1303480883924488192
No stimulus checks for Americans in slimmed-down GOP coronavirus relief package
Senate Republicans plan to vote later this week on another economic relief package for Americans dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, but the slimmed-down plan — which does not include new checks for individuals — is already a deal-breaker for Democrats, ensuring that the stalemate will continue.
The Republican proposal would restore enhanced unemployment benefits through Dec. 27 but halves the amount to $300 per week. It would also provide funding for schools and childcare centers, a new round of the popular Paycheck Protection Program and liability protections for businesses.
The $500-billion plan is far less than the minimum $2.2 trillion that Democrats want to spend on a new package, and even less generous than the $1-trillion plan Republicans unveiled just weeks ago.
In July, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a package that included $1,200 checks to many individuals and $500 for each qualifying child. But seemingly unable to get support from his own party’s members, McConnell abandoned the provision for checks in the latest proposal.
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https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-09-08/no-stimulus-checks-for-americans-under-revised-gop-coronavirus-relief-package
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1303469864766504960
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Name: ChristoGender: Male
Hometown: Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Home country: USA
Current location: Santa Cruz, CA
Member since: Thu Aug 31, 2006, 04:14 AM
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