At the risk of stating the obvious, the July 2019 US Politics Thread is horse-sh*t

i don't know why i typed that, sorry. but i wish i had

...made that seal, not typed that.

sorry.

Barr has just announced that the federal government is going to resume executing people. The first 5 lucky winners have been chosen, but not yet named - the first killing will be on December 9, and almost certainly televised live on Fox News.

Upon the Attorney General’s direction, Acting Director Hurwitz adopted the Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and, in accordance with 28 C.F.R. Part 26, scheduled executions for the following individuals:

• Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl. After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois bayou. On May 4, 1999, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas found Lee guilty of numerous offenses, including three counts of murder in aid of racketeering, and he was sentenced to death. Lee’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 9, 2019.
• Lezmond Mitchell stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat twice, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands. On May 8, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona found Mitchell guilty of numerous offenses, including first degree murder, felony murder, and carjacking resulting in murder, and he was sentenced to death. Mitchell’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 11, 2019.
• Wesley Ira Purkey violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane. On Nov. 5, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, and he was sentenced to death. Purkey’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 13, 2019.
• Alfred Bourgeois physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested, and then beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. On March 16, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois guilty of multiple offenses, including murder, and he was sentenced to death. Bourgeois’ execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 13, 2020.
• Dustin Lee Honken shot and killed five people—two men who planned to testify against him and a single, working mother and her ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters. On Oct. 14, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa found Honken guilty of numerous offenses, including five counts of murder during the course of a continuing criminal enterprise, and he was sentenced to death. Honken’s execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 15, 2020.

Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions, which will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.

Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.

Already gave season 2 the green light, it appears.

they're executing a white supremacist, therefore trump is not a racist fyi

Also executing the Bourgeois, so it's fair.

surprised the guy who attacked Epstein wasn't on that list

nah he'll just turn up dead in his cell in a week or two having beaten himself to death

also, lol eric

No self-respecting white supremacist would be so gauche as to openly self-identify as such, so it's incumbent upon the 'whooo, meeee?' variety to do everything they can to underscore the distinction

Trump can't even get A$AP out of Sweden

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pajj9n/trump-couldnt-stop-sweden-from-charging-adollarap-rocky-with-assault

adollarap

what's the point in being president if you can't successfully pressure the president of sweden to drop charges against someone you've only just heard about because kim kardashian wants you to, smdh

this is from yesterday's wapo, but i think it's worth immortalising itt because democracy dies in darkness

What Robert Mueller and Pickle Rick have in common

By Stephen Stromberg
Opinion writer
July 24 at 4:26 PM

Throughout Wednesday’s congressional hearings with former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, I was reminded of the opening scene of the iconic “Pickle Rick” episode of the irreverent Adult Swim show, “Rick and Morty.”

“I turned myself into a pickle, Morty,” says Rick, formerly a genius mad scientist, now little more than a sentient gherkin, to his grandson.

“And?” Morty replies.

“And? What more do you want tacked on to this?”

On Wednesday, Mueller’s answers could be summed up: “I made a report. What more do you want tacked on to this?”

Trumps face when he finds out it's not Sylvester Stallone

boss: did you look at the data?
me, a data scientist: yes
boss: your report doesn't say whether there was or wasn't an effect
me: no. it does not
boss: was there no effect?
me: if there was no effect, i would say so.
boss: so there was an effect?
me: *sips water* not saying that

— Kareem 🔥10x statistician🔥 Carr (@kareem_carr) July 24, 2019

they're executing a white supremacist, therefore trump is not a racist fyi

The family he killed was white, is the point -- dad was a gun dealer who sold to the white supremacist anti-government militias. Those guys are important, can't have them getting murdered in deals gone wrong.

What Robert Mueller and Pickle Rick have in common

complexion?

if we can a comment from someone tangential to the music industry that will be an excellent pitchfork news item

Mac DeMarco "doesn't get" Robert 'Pickle Rick' Mueller and that's okay... and here's why along with his five favorite IPAs

I enjoy watching Rick and Morty most of the time but it is an undeniable truth that pop culture in general would have been better off had that show never made it to air.

oh i love Rick and Morty but it is undeniably sub-xkcd fandom at its worst

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Thursday poured cold water on the idea of impeaching President Donald Trump in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s hearings.

Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Schiff said he still isn’t convinced that it’s the right time to start impeachment proceedings.

“Can we make the case to the country and does the country benefit going through an impeachment if it’s going to be unsuccessful? And we know in the Senate, at least, it would be unsuccessful,” Schiff told CNN reporter John Berman.

“So I’m not there yet but I’m keeping an open mind and I may get there,” he continued.

The Intelligence Committee chair said that the upcoming 2020 election is “unquestionably the only way [Trump] gets removed from office” and that Democrats “need to be realistic.”

“The only way he’s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out,” Schiff said.

seriously, draft up a new constitution. ours is one of the oldest in the world. the balance of powers no longer works, demonstrably.

(i know, we can't)

we may very well vote him out of office (by making sure he's defeated by the minimum 4-5% popular vote margin to secure the electoral college, of course, which is no guarantee that democrats would win enough in enough gerrymandered districts across the country to make gains in the house)

then he can crash the economy on the way out, setting up battles over the suddenly important federal deficit and cuts to spending over the course of a democratic term, of course

some patriotic American you are, Karl.

also, has it been mentioned that the democrats did a SHITTY job conducting the hearings yesterday (schiff excepted)

i heard more than one democrat run out of questions long before their very short 5 minutes had expired. how the fuck do you not come up with enough questions when you have months/years to prepare?

just make the fucking intern do it, if you can't be bothered

GOOD. MOURNING!

They (and the ranking members) knew for weeks that Rob was gonna be a Zombie yet they didn't strategize?

oh Alfred

Allow me my fifth-rat jokes. It's 2 p.m. and half my students haven't shown for evals.

i feel like the "strategize" part should have been replaced with another Rob Zombie reference to really make the joke sing

wasn't giving Genius the clicks

https://www.thelittlechimpsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/fiveratschimp.jpg

FIFTH RAT JOKES

see the fifth rat? He's sniffing for bad jokes

1. Thank you for going there.
2. Thank you for going there to a high level of cuteness and quality.

making sure he's defeated by the minimum 4-5% popular vote margin to secure the electoral college, of course, which is no guarantee that democrats would win enough in enough gerrymandered districts across the country to make gains in the house

Dems won the popular House vote by 8 points in 2018, so a 4-5% win for Trump's challenger would probably mean the House keeps their majority but it shrinks a little. Of course incumbency helps, people split tickets, etc., but Dems just had a really good election, picking up a lot of the seats it's feasible for Dems to hold, and it's hard to see them making their majority much bigger absent a really big blowout win at the top of the ticket (which is certainly not impossible.)

can i pre-emptively whine about how much i especially hate mcconnell in the future version of the world where democrats win the white house + house but not the senate, and politico is reporting that mcconnell convened a GOP leadership meeting the night of election night 2020 to declare that their number one priority was defeating Pres. __, etc etc. that's like the best case scenario world right now too

i feel like a guy who is addicted to smoking compost, envyingly eyeing the guy addicted to chewing found cigar butts

buttz*

Had I known as a child that things like opposite day and the absurd fictional terrorist organization called Cobra were, in fact, brown acid visions of a future America, I would've been a whole lot more agnostic about the wisdom of drinking stuff with a Mr. Yuk label on it.

Then watch the following clip as if Destro were McConnell and Cobra Commander were Trump:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8eZ7yuGJFo

"You psychotic sibilant of a dolt!"

ftr, adam schiff sucks and should be primaried from the left

My admiration for Schiff has, until now, been based on his ability to form complex, grammatically correct sentences which embody actual thoughts and ideas. This is such a refreshing contrast from the average House member that he appears as a paragon of rationality when placed in their company.

Schiff and to a lesser extent Nadler was terrific yesterday.