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

[Tazirai]

‘Appalling’ Video Shows the Police Yanking 1-Year-Old From His Mother’s Arms

Yeah **** these people, and I'm gonna say Cops do NOT deserve our trust until they earn it. That Pedestal they are on needs to fall.

[Tazirai]

Chuck Todd is the ABSOLUTE worst!

He would NEVER ask this of a Republican EVER!!!
He just has to do that Both sides bullshit, with no evidence whatsoever, because Decorum must be MAINTAIIIIINNNNEEEDDD, I do declare!

I can see Chuck saying dumb **** like... "The HONORABLE GOP of Wisconsin have taken your power because you've won a VERY narrow election, how do you reach out to the people who stole your power?"

[JackDaw]

"On Friday, federal prosecutors in New York accused Trump of a felony: violating campaign-finance laws with hush-money payments intended to skew the 2016 election. Specifically, they detailed how Trump’s lawyer and self-described fixer Michael Cohen bought the silence of two women who said they had sexual liaisons with Trump – and did so in order to help Trump win the presidency – with the president’s full knowledge. "

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I know a fair amount of people seem to think nothing will happen yet, the evidence and convictions have piled up.

I assume that case could have enormous consequences, not just for Trump but for future presidential candidates?

Surely practically anybody entering a non disclosure agreement is primarily doing it to prevent embarrassing stuff coming out...stuff that will potentially lose votes.

So if Trump loses case, wouldn’t make it “impossible” for any future candidates to use non disclosure agreements? ( Or at least profoundly risky to do so.)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Accused Russian Agent Maria Butina Reaches Plea Deal With Federal Prosecutors: Reports

The gun-rights activist has been accused of working for the Kremlin, including an attempt to arrange a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin. The dominoes are falling!

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Trump’s Businesses Have Charged $1.1 Million To His Own Re-election Campaign: Forbes

The president’s companies raked in funds for rent, food, “legal consulting” fees and more, according to election filings. The Grifter-in-Chief is hard at work.

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NY Daily News Mocks Trump’s Hunt For ‘Spineless, Clueless’ Chief Of Staff

The tabloid said John Kelly’s replacement should be “fluent in Russian.” Sick BUUUUUUUUUURN!



Speaking of which, we have a candidate....

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Jon Voight Appears Game To Be Trump’s Chief Of Staff, And Hilarity Ensues

When CNN asked the Oscar-winning actor if he was going to succeed John Kelly, he said his credentials are ready. Pardon me while I laugh. BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Trump Administration Paid Firm Nearly $14 Million To Recruit Just 2 Border Agents

And the private company used government resources to do even that, concludes Homeland Security’s inspector general. Damn! Those must be two serious badasses to be worth THAT much dough!

[Iron Maiden]

I assume that case could have enormous consequences, not just for Trump but for future presidential candidates?

Surely practically anybody entering a non disclosure agreement is primarily doing it to prevent embarrassing stuff coming out...stuff that will potentially lose votes.

So if Trump loses case, wouldn’t make it “impossible” for any future candidates to use non disclosure agreements? ( Or at least profoundly risky to do so.)

NDA's are under the microscope because of the MeToo# can protect the wealthy. Rose McGowan settled for one with Harvey Weinstein years ago when she was just getting roles and I wouldn't doubt she was the only one. Earlier this year when his company filed for bankruptcy, the company announced it was nullifying all the NDAs that silenced their employees over the years.

[numberthirty]

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Jon Voight Appears Game To Be Trump’s Chief Of Staff, And Hilarity Ensues

When CNN asked the Oscar-winning actor if he was going to succeed John Kelly, he said his credentials are ready. Pardon me while I laugh. BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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That could be one of the great deadpans of the year.

[worstblogever]

Three years ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, a man who responded to the Columbine shooting by saying he felt that bazookas should be legal, who fretted over the gay community "infiltrating" centers of power in America to push for more abortions in 2004 (since gay people cause so many pregnancies in the first place), and advocated for the death penalty for abortion doctors (even though abortion is legal). Coburn also was involved in the attempted cover-up in former Sen. John Ensign's affair in 2008, denied climate change by claiming Earth was entering a "mini ice age", and moved unilaterally to try and block the Zadroga Bill to provide healthcare assistance for 9/11 First Responders. He also helped add fuel to the conspiracy theory that the government was trying to "buy up all the ammunition", terrifying gun lovers in 2013, voted against disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy (even though he constantly asks for relief aid for tornadoes in Oklahoma), and complained about NBC airing "Schindler's List" on television because it had too much violence and sex in it. Sen. Coburn retired this past year, to battle prostate cancer, and we continue to wish him well in his recovery, even in spite of all of the valid criticisms we have with his politics.

It was two years ago that Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Chris Buttars, a former Utah State Senator who found his calling working for fifteen years as executive director and fundraising consultant for Utah Boy Ranch, a place where parents who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints send their "troubled youth" who are thinking of leaving the church to teach them a lesson, that's known in many circles as "The Mormon Gulag". And according to many accounts, the Utah Boy Ranch was an environment where children were forced into backbreaking labor, and sexual abuse was not unheard of among the charges, and Buttars even admitted to a reporter once that the ranch should not be funded, for fear of government oversight actually getting eyes upon the camp's practices.Outside of that, as a legislator, Buttars co-sponsored a bill to ban all student organizations that support alternative lifestyles taking to the floor of the Utah State Senate to say that organizations were "recruitment tools for gays" and would "tear down the moral pillars of society", tried to vote to allow corporate water systems to refuse to fluoridate their water supplies (John Birch Society territory), argued against evolution being taught in schools unless intelligent design was also allowed to be discussed, and he supported legislation which would allow for gold and silver coins to be accepted as legal tender in Utah. But Buttars drew our attention because he was an equal opportunity bigot, on different occasions making a variety of vile comments about gays, minorities, and Muslims, including arguing that gays cannot actually be discriminated against, stating his belief that the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling was “wrong”, claiming that Islam had completely been taken over by “the radical side”, and referring to homosexuality as “sexual perversion”, or “pig sex”. Buttars retired for health reasons in 2011, hinting he’d written a memoir that will not be published after his death, because he’s self-aware enough to know all his ugly opinions in it will face criticism he’d rather not deal with.

One year ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Anthony Cappola, a candidate for New Jersey State Assembly in 2015 whose resume was that he ran a company that provides DJs, videographers, and other entertainers at weddings. Well, he also was an amateur author, and someone got their hands on his 2003 book, “Outrageous”, in which he provided his thoughts on gays, Asians, senior citizens, blacks, public breastfeeding, andeven singled out Pope Jone Paul II and John Tesch for other criticism. It is, quite simply, a string of 223 pages of slurs and graphic sexual discussion chock full of spelling and grammatical errors. Now, here’s the kicker… Cappola did apologize, and withdrew from the public eye when he was “found out”… but he declined to leave the race for the Assembly seat. The New Jersey GOP only let him remain on the ballot because it would have cost $200,000 to have his name removed from the ballot as they wished. Cappola stayed in until the bitter end, insisting his book was supposed to come off like a cross between “Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern”, but insisted his book was just satire and that he wasn’t a sexist bigot because he “cherishes the relationships I have with my friends who are gay, bisexual, black and Hispanic and the Korean community that I’m a part of.” Ah yes. The classic, “I can’t be racist because I have minority friends” defense. That clears it all up, right? Yeah… not so much. Cappola ended up losing the race for his seat, and even dragged down Mark DiPisa, the Republican he was bracketed with on the ballot. Cappola’s political career is apparently over.


Randy Voepel
It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Randy Voepel, a former mayor of Santee, California, who had the good fortune of running for a seat in the California State Assembly in 2016 without being challenged by a Democrat. Specifically, our issue with Randy Voepel begins with his views on climate change, which somehow also becomes how to weaponize it against faiths other than his own. Voepel thinks the planet actually is getting warmer… but he feels like that is a good thing because as he explained in an interview back in 2007, “our enemies are on the equator” and a hotter climate would harm them. He still feels this way today, giving an interview to the Los Angeles Times where he explained, “Most of the Muslim nations are in the hot areas of the world”.

It’s hardly just Muslims in the Middle East that Voepel has issues with, however, as he also have some unfortunate opinions about both the Asian people. He responded to a Chinese citizen who wanted his autograph for a collection he keeps by writing them in e-mail in which he stated:

”I respectfully decline to cooperate in any way with what I consider to be an enemy of the United States. The People's Republic of China is a repressive and evil communist regime that runs a Police State. I fought in Vietnam to stop communism and will fight communism until the day I die. Please accept me as a very determined enemy, as I assume you to be to me.”

He also once gave a paranoid rant about the Vietnamese supposedly stripping a local mine, saying, “I served two tours in Vietnam. And I’m getting attacked here by the Viet Cong, stealing my copper, and I don’t like it.” There’s a lot to unpack there… does Voepel think there’s no difference between Vietnamese Americans and the Viet Cong he fought over forty years ago?

Needless to say, Voepel is probably not the kind of person you’d want to serve as an ambassador. Or as a legislator. Or as any kind of government employee. And yet… and yet he won re-election even in the 2018 Blue Wave with 62% of the vote. He thus will remain ignorant, and in office, until at least 2020.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

That could be one of the great deadpans of the year.

I believe Voight can become a Chief of Staff of America's most complicated bureaucracy.

Well, as someone pointed out in the article, Voight did play the Secretary of Defense in the first Transformers movie, so maybe he thought the skills he learned for that role could translate to real life. Heh!

[Michael Watkins]

that makes him as qualified as Heather Nauert.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump once mocked his predecessor Obama for chief of staff turnover.

"3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why @BarackObama can't manage to pass his agenda," Trump wrote in a 2012 tweet.

Can Trump still say that comment when he is looking for a third chief of staff less than two years after his administration began in January 2017?

I suspect he probably can because what happened to Obama doesn't apply to him. Trump will shrug off all the departures as nothing more than just a "healthy turnover of personnel".

[Kirby101]

Trump once mocked his predecessor Obama for chief of staff turnover.

"3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why @BarackObama can't manage to pass his agenda," Trump wrote in a 2012 tweet.

Can Trump still say that comment when he is looking for a third chief of staff less than two years after his administration began in January 2017?

There is a very long list of things he criticized Obama for which he has a worse record. From executive orders to golf outings and on and on.

[Tami]

Time's 2018 'Person of the Year': Killed and imprisoned journalists

The Guardians."

That's what Time magazine is calling the journalists behind 2018's "Person of the Year," which was revealed exclusively Tuesday morning on "Today."

With a record number of reporters behind bars around the planet — the Committee to Protect Journalists documented 262 cases in 2017 — an avalanche of misinformation on social media and government officials from the United States to the Philippines dismissing critical, real reporting as "fake news," Time is spotlighting a handful of journalists who have one thing in common: They were targeted for their work.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Time's 2018 'Person of the Year': Killed and imprisoned journalists

Seeing one of those people honored was the late Jamal Khashoggi, that's bound to drive Trump, MBS, all those media hating Republicans in Congress and Faux News talking heads batshit insane. To which I say....GOOD!

[Tami]

Seeing one of those people honored was the late Jamal Khashoggi, that's bound to drive Trump, MBS, all those media hating Republicans in Congress and Faux News talking heads batshit insane. To which I say....GOOD!

I liked that Robert Mueller was #3 choice, but I hated that Trump was #2. But still, having Trump beat out by the reporters whose lives he has put at risk through all his irresponsible 'enemy of the people' and 'fake news' comments was definitely a good way to start 2019.

[Iron Maiden]

I liked that Robert Mueller was #3 choice, but I hated that Trump was #2. But still, having Trump beat out by the reporters whose lives he has put at risk through all his irresponsible 'enemy of the people' and 'fake news' comments was definitely a good way to start 2019.

So Trump was #2? Eh, IMO he would get it for all the wrong reasons. I know they've had some unsavory winners in the past but this is a much more worthy choice. It's a bit of a dig at Trump since he is a big factor in the anti-free press movement in the U.S. Except of course Fox News or Trump Pravda