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

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of former Texas Governor and two-time failed presidential candidate Rick Perry, pictured above accidentally cosplaying Heath Ledger in a homophobic campaign ad from his 2012 Presidential campaign. All joking aside, Rick Perry does love him some guns, even going jogging and stopping from his cardio workout to add extra orifices via lead projectiles to coyotes that offend him. He’s equally callous about ending the lives of human beings, apparently, having executed over 250 people, more than any governor in U.S. History, including Todd Willingham, who after his death, was later proved innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. Perry, however, has no regrets. But don’t worry, he does love life. At least if the life in question has yet to be born. In his last term as governor, Rick Perry signed some of the harshest anti-abortion legislation into law (it’s still being decided by higher courts if it’s constitutional or not), causing mass protests at the state capitol. This is a man, while governor, who openly discussed having Texas secede from the union, and also backed anti-government tax scofflaw Cliven Bundy in his fight against the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. His 2012 campaign for president was supposed to be him riding to the Republicans’ rescue to deny Barack Obama a second term, but it was an unmitigated disaster, and included the revelation that his family’s vacation ranch was named with a racial slur, several campaign stops where he rambled on incoherently and made people speculate he was high on painkillers, and even how he forgot what the three government offices he wanted to shut down in a GOP primary debate, offering a meager, “OOPS” after his brain fart. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Perry claimed the unemployment number given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month is “doctored”, talked with Glenn Beck about the Jade Helm 15 Conspiracy Theory, claimed that the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina was not a race-motivated hate crime, but an “accident” motivated by drug use, recommended people start carrying firearms in dark movie theatres to shoot back blindly at any potential mass shooters who might attack them there, and compared himself to Jesus at a campaign rally in South Carolina. As a result, Perry’s second presidential campaign only lasted 92 days before he ran out of money. In the interests of staying relevant, and perhaps softening his image a bit, Rick Perry appeared on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, where he hoped to learn enough footwork to not embarrass himself at his daughter’s wedding later on in the year. He was eliminated very early on because… well, he was a terrible dancer, but you’re gonna fail miserably if you try to dance to “God Bless Texas” when you’re supposed to be performing a cha-cha. There was, for a time, speculation about Rick Perry being a primary challenger for Ted Cruz in the 2018 mid-term elections, but instead, Rick Perry inexplicably took a job of the Secretary of the Department of Energy in Donald Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors”. He had no qualifications for the job, and was going to be running a department of our government that he advocated should be eliminated completely (well, after Ron Paul reminded him). Now, we’ve established that Perry is quite the dumbass, but get this… Perry advocated for eliminating the Dept. of Energy. He then took the job running it. Perry then admitted his surprise in that he had no idea what his job was when he accepted it, and was surprised at what the Department of Energy does. So what has Perry been doing when he hasn’t used his position to help coal barons get rich? Well, he’s stupid enough to get crank-called by Russian pranksters. Which… is at last not the worst scandal the Trump administration has with the Russians. We'll set aside his profile to go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 697-30, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Doug Ducey
Welcome to the 698th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we'll actually be talking about Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who has been in office now since 2014, and the only reason we haven’t profiled him sooner is because the bar for insane and racist Arizona Governors was already set pretty high by his predecessor, Jan Brewer. Ducey’s career prior to running for office was that he was the CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream parlor chain, resigning from that spot in 2007 and then winning office in 2010 as Arizona State Treasurer. Our delay in profiling Ducey for the past year or two came to a quick end due to the above photo, where Gov. Ducey was posing with members of a supposed “Patriot Movement AZ” that’s a white nationalist group, and there’s not just members of the MAGA crowd, but they’re throwing up white supremacist hand gestures for the photo (let's be real, that's not an "OK" symbol, especially after that group shot of the Proud Boys from last weekend in NYC). What makes it even worse was the timing… While Gov. Ducey was meeting with these fringe hatemongers, he was simultaneously refusing to meet with education leaders during Arizona’s #RedforEd teacher’s strike. You kind of get the sense that his priorities are skewed, you know? That isn’t a one-off, either. As Ducey also spoke before Turning Point USA, another racist and anti-Semitic conservative group in August of 2018, and he answered to criticism over it by claiming that “he didn’t know” they were as bad as they are.

How racist is Doug Ducey? He came out strong to oppose removing Confederate monuments in Arizona, even though the Confederacy pre-dated his state’s existence by a few decades. He chose to put this statement out within a week of the murder of Heather Heyer and 20 others being injured in a terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, carried out by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis.

This guy is out of touch with the interests of actual people. While there were literally school students camping out right outside Ducey’s office to protest gun violence in schools after the Parkland Shooting back in March of 2018, he was too busy posting on Twitter about free agent players leaving the Arizona Cardinals. He’s also extreme enough on anti-choice legislation that he signed a law that would require physicians performing abortions in Arizona to attempt to resuscitate any fetus that survives the procedure… which would be amazing because fetuses are physically incapable of surviving outside the womb by definition. Their qualification of if the attempt needs to be made? If the fetus has a heartbeat. That would mean ANY abortion performed at six weeks or beyond… whether or not the fetus has developed other organs to survive. It’s… frankly mad science (and likely to be overturned by the courts).

At this point, you start to get the feeling that Ducey is some kind of spectacular ***hole. That’s probably why he and Donald Trump are fans of one another. Ducey actually praised Trump’s pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, (yes THAT Joe Arpaio) and earlier this year, when Trump demanded the governors of several states deploy the National Guard to the U.S./Mexico border for what amounted to an expensive photo-op to commemorate Trump’s bigotry, Doug Ducey was more than happy to humor the idea and join in the racism. Hell, even without any influence by Trump, Ducey has tried blocking the resettlement of refugees into Arizona this past year, and has been more than willing to sign whatever anti-immigrant legislation that crosses his desk.

Sadly, it’s on anti-immigrant stupidity that Doug Ducey has almost exclusively campaigned on in 2018, as he runs against Democratic challenger David Garcia. As you might expect from an Arizona Republican running against a Hispanic challenger, Ducey’s campaign ads are a hot bed of race-baiting, and primarily attack Garcia as supposedly wanting “open borders”, and doing everything he can to appeal to aggrieved white xenophobes as much as possible. Current polling seems to indicate that Ducey is going to win re-election, and we fear what we will do in a second term if Arizona Democrats cannot flip some seats in the state legislature to curtail the extreme policies he’s willing to support. It seems likely we’ll have four more years to report on that insanity, unless Ducey becomes the latest Governor of Arizona to get themselves impeached.

[Iron Maiden]

I just want to know why Some Red State Democrats run like this... and expect people to want to show up and vote for their dumb asses. **** Joe Donelly.

You don't know Indiana like JDogIndy and I do. I've lived here all my life and in some ways it's a lot like Illinois. Or any Midwest State that has larger urban areas and then most counties are rural farmland. The NW corner of the state is almost like a continuation of Chicago. I used to work in Whiting, Ind. and could go to a Mexican restaurant on the South side of Chicago for lunch in be back. The cities up north mostly have Democratic mayors. Pete Visclosky (Dem) has been our Congressman for decades and in his own low key way gets things done for our area and tries to think of the future, like expanding the commuter rail system,etc.

I'm not familiar with the guy JDogIndy mentions, Pete Bauer. But in Indiana the Republicans have a super majority in the State Legislature so it is somewhat miraculous that we've had a Democratic Senator in Joe Donnelly. One year the only thing the few Dems could do in the state house was not show up for a vote and hide out across the state line in Illinois. They had to come back when they were threatened with fines. His GOP opponent in 2012 Richard Mourdock famously torpedoed his own campaign when he said during the debate that a woman who gets pregnant by a rapist is carrying a gift from God. So yeah, I'll vote for Donnelly. At least he did vote no on Kavanaugh.

[InformationGeek]

And here's the latest dumb decision by Trump that is going to hurt many people.

White House Announces That the U.S. Intends to Withdraw From International Postal Agency.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Can't argue this in the slightest:

Bill and Hillary Remain the Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

The last thing Democrats wanted to do in October 2018 was talk about the Clintons.

Bill and Hillary Clinton aren’t just the past of the Democratic Party. The once-enormously-popular two-term president and the party’s 2016 standard-bearer are the living embodiments of two of the Democrats’ biggest problems: hypocrisy about the #MeToo movement, which they believe they can exploit politically, and contempt for the working-class voters who cost the party the last presidential election.

Any mention of the Clintons, whether with respect to Bill Clinton’s predatory personal behavior or Hillary’s insatiable need to relitigate her 2016 defeat and to justify her incompetent presidential campaign, distracts the voters from the topic Democrats want to discuss: President Donald Trump.

And yet, talking heads even on the network shows and cable-news outlets most hostile to Trump have spent a considerable amount of time reacting to the Clintons’ latest foray into the public square. Rationalizing Bill and Hillary is hard duty, yet some on the left are still up to the task, though they seem to be doing it more out of habit than conviction. But even those most inclined to sympathize with the Clintons seem to understand that justifying their latest statements — or even their puzzling decision to take to the road as a duo on a pricey lecture tour — is a counterproductive exercise for those who would rather be expending effort attacking Republicans.

The announcement that Bill and Hillary were launching a speaking tour titled “An Evening With the Clintons” was exactly what Democrats didn’t want to hear last week as they were gearing up to channel the rage of their base — and especially female voters — over Trump and the confirmation of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. Yet just as bad was the pre-tour publicity blitz in which Hillary Clinton made clear that she had neither gotten over her bitterness about her defeat nor come to understand why it happened.

Why are the Clintons sabotaging their party in this manner?

Only they can answer that question, but it’s clear that their sense of entitlement is at the heart of their refusal to simply go away, as so much of the country would prefer they do. They remain as clueless about the inappropriateness of the former president’s unrepentant attitude as they were about how Hillary’s deceitful attitude about the email scandal and other key issues cost her the election. Their belief that their self-proclaimed high-minded motives justify anything they do defines them as much today as it did in 1998 or 2016.

But no matter their personal motivation, their persistence in keeping their names in the news is a nightmare for Democrats who wish to put their failures in the rearview mirror — but who can’t seem to escape from their former idols. Until they do, it will hamstring efforts to demonize Republicans for problems that are nowhere near as serious as the ones the Clintons continue to remind us about.

[Iron Maiden]

And here's the latest dumb decision by Trump that is going to hurt many people.

I saw an interesting post further down on that Twitter thread that mentions how Mitch McConnell's wife has some kind of connection to a shipping business. Figures.

This is another reason why the GOP is going to prop Trump up as much as and as long as possible. They just need to put the idea into his tiny little mind and he just signs off on it.

[Iron Maiden]

smh about the Clintons going high profile again. Hillary talking about Monica the other day sure didn't help.

Open letter to Bill and Hillary: Please stick to walks in the woods until December 2020.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Rep. Steve King Endorses Neo-Nazi Sympathizer Faith Goldy. GOP Says Nothing

Once again, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) publicly declared his support for white-nationalist and neo-Nazi figures and, once again, Republican leadership remains silent.

King, who is currently running for re-election, tweeted an endorsement late Tuesday evening for Faith Goldy, a white supremacist, right-wing YouTube star running for the mayor of Toronto.

“Faith Goldy, an excellent candidate for Toronto mayor, pro Rule of Law, pro Make Canada Safe Again, pro balanced budget, &...BEST of all, Pro Western Civilization and a fighter for our values. @FaithGoldy will not be silenced,” the eight-term congressman tweeted last night, despite polls having the neo-Nazi-sympathizing Toronto native at just 1.5 percent.

“Who wants to tell @SteveKingIA that Toronto isn't in the U.S.?,” King’s opponent, Democrat and ex-pro baseball player J.D Scholten hit back on Twitter. “Once again, Steve King spends more time supporting far-right leaders in other countries than he does focusing on the needs of the people of our district.”

Goldy is a self-described “tough on crime and easy on taxpayers” far-right figure who rose to prominence by promoting white nationalism and anti-Semitism, cultivating ties with neo-Nazi groups, and regularly spreading their rhetoric through her massive social-media following.

Last August, Goldy covered the deadly Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville as a correspondent for Rebel Media, a conservative Canadian outlet (also the former home of Proud Boys leader Gavin McInnes), but was later fired after appearing on a show hosted by neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.

In the interview, Goldy told host and fellow far-right YouTuber Stefan Molyneux that neo-Nazis offer “robust” and “well thought-out ideas” about the “JQ,” a.k.a., the “Jewish question,” a common anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Jewish people controlling many aspects of society.

During the 2016 Republican National Convention, King diminished the contributions of minorities to modern civilization.

“I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?,” King declared, shocking his co-panelists during a discussion on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes.

“Than white people?," a befuddled Hayes asked.

“Than, than Western civilization itself,” King said. “It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”

And last September, King bashed San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his decision to protest police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem , calling it activism that’s sympathetic to ISIS.”

King’s open embrace of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric first came under the nation spotlight in 2013 when he claimed that young, undocumented immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes” because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

“I will retweet the devil if the devil tweets, “I Love Jesus,” he wrote on Monday defending his many retweets of white-nationalist figures. “It’s the message, not the messenger.”

Oh, WBEEEEEEEE....!

[PaulBullion]

Can't argue this in the slightest:

Bill and Hillary Remain the Democrats’ Worst Nightmare

Weird, my worst nightmares are children in cages and the US president covering up a murder.

But your mileage may vary.

[PaulBullion]

Meanwhile in Afghanistan:

Kandahar's police chief, governor, and intelligence chief have all been killed when a gunman opened fire on a meeting involving the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Gen. Miller who was not harmed.

[BeastieRunner]

Munchkin is pulling the US Treasury out of the Saudi investment conference.

Trump ain't happy.

Another Trumpster is breaking rank.

[BeastieRunner]

Meanwhile in Afghanistan:

Kandahar's police chief, governor, and intelligence chief have all been killed when a gunman opened fire on a meeting involving the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Gen. Miller who was not harmed.

Miller was getting ready to leave to be replaced by Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson (who's commanding the largest US force right now) ... I wonder if this is wheels up or beginnings of a maneuver?

[Iron Maiden]

Weird, my worst nightmares are children in cages and the US president covering up a murder.

But your mileage may vary.

Those two events, as damning as they are of the current administration, are beside the point because it certainly doesn't bother Trump's base. But the Clintons have to realize that they are not the future of the Democractic party and anything they say or do in the public eye at this point in time just may turn those fence sitters back to the GOP when they vote.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Pompeo says the U.S. will give Saudi Arabia 'a few more days' for Khashoggi investigation

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday after meeting with President Trump at the White House that the U.S. will give Saudi Arabia several more days to "conduct a complete, thorough investigation" into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi before deciding on a response.

"There are lots of stories out there about what has happened. We are going to allow the process to move forward," Pompeo said at the White House after a morning meeting with the president.

"I told President Trump this morning we ought to give them a few more days to complete that so that we too have a complete understanding surrounding the facts that so at which point, we can make a decision how or if the United States should respond to the incident surrounding Mr. Khashoggi," he said.

[Malvolio]

Those two events, as damning as they are of the current administration, are beside the point because it certainly doesn't bother Trump's base. But the Clintons have to realize that they are not the future of the Democractic party and anything they say or do in the public eye at this point in time just may turn those fence sitters back to the GOP went they vote.

I don't think the Clintons' speaking tour will turn any Democrats to vote Republican. However, it may make a few people so disgusted that they just stay home on Election Day. And that may be all the Republicans need to win in some districts.