All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Tendrin]

Dennis Hof, the controversial brothel owner who in June won the Republican primary for a seat in the Nevada state legislature, has died at the age of 72. Hof’s campaign manager tweeted the news Tuesday afternoon. “I just confirmed with Nye County sheriff’s deputy that Dennis Hof passed away this morning,” wrote Chuck Muth. “No other details at this point. I’m heading out to Love Ranch Vegas now. Official statement will come once I learn more.”
Though Hof’s cause of death has yet to be determined, the Nye County Sheriff’s Office announced on Facebook that Hof was found dead at his Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada. According to the Nevada Independent, Nye County spokesman Arnold Knightly said Hof “had gone to sleep and did not wake up.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...h-dead-738698/

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Caught this one on the local news. Got to say, I'm interested in what comes of it.

https://wgntv.com/2018/10/16/after-2...ms-get-closer/

EVERY goddamn state in the Union should take similar measures.

[Tami]

My first article of the day - Today's reading list

McConnell Blames Entitlements, Not GOP, for Rising Deficits

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed rising federal deficits and debt on a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and said he sees little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”

McConnell’s remarks came a day after the Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the result of the GOP’s tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases and rising interest payments on the national debt. That’s a 77 percent increase from the $439 billion deficit in fiscal 2015, when McConnell became majority leader.

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

Yeah, get rid of all those pesky Social/Public Assistance programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and so on and that would free up the Republicans to keep giving even more Tax Cuts to the wealthy...not that they need them...

Jared Kushner Paid No Federal Income Tax for Years, Documents Suggest

It's not like they are paying taxes anyway.

Over the past decade, Jared Kushner’s family company has spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His personal stock investments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million.

And yet, for several years running, Mr. Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser — appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes, according to confidential financial documents reviewed by The New York Times.

His low tax bills are the result of a common tax-minimizing maneuver that, year after year, generated millions of dollars in losses for Mr. Kushner, according to the documents. But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to actually lose any money. The losses were driven by depreciation, a tax benefit that lets real estate investors deduct a portion of the cost of their buildings from their taxable income every year.

In 2015, for example, Mr. Kushner took home $1.7 million in salary and investment gains. But those earnings were swamped by $8.3 million of losses, largely because of “significant depreciation” that Mr. Kushner and his company took on their real estate, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from California’s 1st Congressional District, Doug LaMalfa, one of the dumbest deniers of climate change on Capitol Hill, who actually cites a promise that God made to Noah in the Book of Genesis as proof against the phenomenon, and wants to eliminate carbon dioxide restrictions from the EPA, viewing it as “taking away plant food from the atmosphere”. He also compared IRS commissioner Lois Lerner to “the Republic of Korea”, which is actually SOUTH Korea while grilling her in hearings about the IRS scandal. LaMalfa speaks before Congress, lying and claiming that "We know now that one of the terrorists who participated in the attack on Paris last Friday entered Europe by posing as a refugee." (Fact-checking the Congressman: The terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.) Oh, and he also went conspiracy theorist regarding the money repaid to Iran that was frozen in banks in the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but returned interest-free in 2016, saying it was a secret delivery done "in the dark of the night on a pallet" (the Obama administration announced it was done six months prior to LaMalfa’s freak out on the House floor.).

Inexplicably, Doug LaMalfa won a third tem in office in 2016 with 59% of the vote over Democrat Jim Reed. Since, he’s been a tireless defender of Donald Trump, no matter how grievously stupid the President or his family might be. In August OF 2017 alone, LaMalfa dug in deep on the most indefensible of reports… the first being his attempts to make the talk of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia go away by just declaring it “a load of crap”. Now, never mind that Donald Trump Jr. already released e-mails that show he wanted the Russians’ help in gathered intelligence detrimental to Hillary Clinton… apparently LaMalfa wouldn’t know a turd if it hit him in the face (which might be an improvement). But no, that wasn’t all. After Donald Trump’s utterly revolting remarks following white supremacists marching in Charlottesville that led to the death of Heather Howeyer, and Trump’s claims that there were “many fine people there” or that “both sides” were responsible for the violence… Doug LaMalfa actually tried saying Trump’s response was fine because he had a long track record of speaking out against white supremacists. (HINT: Trump doesn’t, and even when he does, it’s after reporters have to PLEAD with him and say something bad about people as evil as David Duke after days or weeks of sidestepping it.)

And speaking of Doug LaMalfa always getting Donald Trump’s back… he defended the Trump regime’s family separation policy when they began locking migrant children seeking asylum, some toddlers, in cages. We knew he hated immigrants, but he’s “all-in” on the subject for someone who supposedly represents a district in a blue state.

Now, while we’re at it, let’s look and see what sorts of legislative embarrassments LaMalfa has gone in on:

• February 16th, 2017: LaMalfa votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Doug LaMalfa votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• March 28th, 2017: Rep. LaMalfa votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses. Well, so much for privacy.
• May 4th, 2017: LaMalfa votes for the House GOP's healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), post-partum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that LaMalfa would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Doug LaMalfa votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• October 3rd, 2017: LaMalfa votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: Rep. LaMalfa votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
• February 18th, 2018: LaMalfa and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.

Now, with Doug LaMalfa putzing about, working against the interests of the voters of his district, and defending a president with record low approval ratings because, well, he’s a sociopathic ***hole… you would probably guess that his town halls in California’s 1st have not gone well. Even if that district has a +10 Republican lean, and is atypical for what you’d expect for California… maybe people there aren’t livid, right? OH NO. They are downright PISSED. And LaMalfa can’t handle it. He walked out in the middle of a town hall in front of hundreds of constituents that were booing him back in April of 2017, and decided to regroup and host another town hall months later in a more controlled environment… at an Elks Lodge where he figured he would only see more conservative members of his constituency and fewer people ,overall. Well, that didn’t work either, as an elderly man who lives off of Medicaid grilled Rep. LaMalfa about his vote for Trumpcare and all the people who would have died if it had made it through the Senate. LaMalfa still felt his decision was justified, and the questioner walked away from his Congressman after cursing him, “May you die in pain.”

Doug LaMalfa, even with that +10 lean, is looking like he’s in trouble in 2018, and his opponent, Audrey Denney, embodies this part of California to a tee. She is a grape farmer, cattle rancher, and an ovarian cancer survivor, and seems to have every quality you would want in a candidate to pull the upset. She performed well in a debate between the two candidates, and we’re hoping she pulls a big upset here in a few weeks’ time, to send a fake cowboy like LaMalfa packing.

[Tami]

On somewhat better news

Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings in His Trump Probe, Sources Say

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

[adkal]

I know I can be pretty slow on things but:

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

I would have thought having a unified government would make pushing changes easier as you're not likely to get blocked.

Bah. Politics. I know nothing.

[Tami]

Alaska's lieutenant governor resigns over 'inappropriate comments'

JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott resigned Tuesday over what Gov. Bill Walker called "inappropriate comments."

The resignation complicates what was already a difficult re-election fight for Walker, a man with whom Mallott shared a brother-like bond.

Walker, in a release, said he learned late Monday that Mallott had made "inappropriate comments" not suitable for his office.

"As leaders, we must hold ourselves to the highest standards of conduct," he said.

The resignation was announced shortly after Walker participated in a debate in Anchorage. His statement did not specify what comments Mallott had made. A spokesman for Walker said there would be a later news conference addressing the matter.

State health commissioner Valerie Davidson was sworn in as lieutenant governor.

Davidson said she was "deeply saddened" by Mallott's resignation but also "profoundly disappointed by his conduct."

[Tami]

I know I can be pretty slow on things but:



I would have thought having a unified government would make pushing changes easier as you're not likely to get blocked.

Bah. Politics. I know nothing.

Maybe he means he'll have no one else to blame for it.

[Tami]

Turkey Details Alleged Killing of Saudi Journalist

President Trump warns against finding Riyadh ‘guilty until proven innocent’ in the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi

[InformationGeek]

Oh that Ted Cruz. Always a charmer.

"Don't interrupt me, Jason," says Ted Cruz as the moderator tried to ask a follow-up question on the importance of remaining civil in debate.

#TexasDebate

[aja_christopher]

"If Not for Republican Policies, the Federal Government Would Be Running a Surplus"

"Following an announcement Monday from the Treasury that the federal government ran a deficit of $779 billion in Fiscal Year 2018, the Democratic staff on the Senate Budget Committee released a report showing that the federal government would be running a surplus today if not for four Republican policies.

Without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the enormous post-9/11 defense buildup and two rounds of costly, regressive tax cuts, the federal government would be running a $156 billion surplus instead of a $779 billion deficit.

The Trump Tax Cuts – which coupled permanent corporate tax cuts with temporary individual tax cuts – added $164 billion to the 2018 deficit.

The Bush tax cuts contributed $488 billion to the deficit in FY 2018, the Trump tax cuts added $164 billion, the direct costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ran up $127 billion and base defense increases led to $156 billion in spending.

Instead of spending nearly $1 trillion on the military and tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations, the federal government could have paid for any of the following proposals – multiple times over for some – in FY 2018 and still balanced the budget.

Very nearly eliminate poverty for all Americans of any age. Estimated cost: $174 billion.

Pay the one-year average of the 10-year infrastructure funding gap. Estimated cost: $144 billion.

Provide high-quality early care and education (ECE) for children from birth to kindergarten. Estimated cost: $140 billion.

Eliminate child poverty by simply boosting the income of all families with children (and children who do not live with their families) over the poverty line. Estimated cost: $69 billion.

Double the budget of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Geologic Survey. Estimated cost: $61 billion.

Make public colleges and universities tuition-free for working families, cut student loan interest rates in half, and allow every American with student debt to refinance at the lowest interest rate possible. Estimated cost: $60 billion.

Double the $1.40 per-meal allowance in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Estimated cost: $70 billion.

End homelessness in America. Estimated cost: $22.5 billion.

Read the full report here:

https://www.budget.senate.gov/rankin...ning-a-surplus

[Tendrin]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...h-dead-738698/

I just want to add that the party was with Ron Jeremy and Grover Norquist.

Really.

[GOLGO 13]

...So why doesn't she bust on him first? I don't think these arm candy wives want to lose their situation (she probably signed a prenup and NDA before the ring was on her finger) but if it were me we'd be heading for divorce court.

So I'm thinking, she might not mind that if he's chasing other women, then she's doesn't have to deal with Fat Don knocking on her bedroom door at night. Could be a good thing.

Plus I'm sure he's got her sealed up tight with a ND so she knows her role.

[Kirby101]

I guess she has to defend her own dignity but hubby has been cheating on her with an actress who appears in adult films and Playboy models. And those are just the ones we know about since they've been married. As revealed on the Access Hollywood tapes, he was also trying to make moves on Mary Hart. So why doesn't she bust on him first? I don't think these arm candy wives want to lose their situation (she probably signed a prenup and NDA before the ring was on her finger) but if it were me we'd be heading for divorce court.

He probably has threatened to take her son, Baron away.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So I'm thinking, she might not mind that if he's chasing other women, then she's doesn't have to deal with Fat Don knocking on her bedroom door at night. Could be a good thing.

Yeah, it wouldn't shock or surprise me if Donny Doughboy and Melania sleep in separate bedrooms at the White House, not to mention anywhere else they travel to together. That looks to me of a marriage in name only, with Barack Obama, Stevie Wonder could see the tremendous love he has for Michelle, with Trump, it's barely contained tolerance for Melania as the only person he TRULY loves is himself. In fact, I'm already on record in this thread saying that if Trump never became president, he would've dumped her long ago in favor of a younger European model. And I'll take that opinion to my grave.

Plus I'm sure he's got her sealed up tight with a ND so she knows her role.

Exactly. On top of that, she doesn't want to risk losing out on those fat alimony checks after she's been kicked to the curb, just like Ivana and Marla Maples.