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

[worstblogever]

Donald Trump’s Worst Nightmare May Come In The Form Of Rep. Elijah Cummings

Think about the number of reports we hear about the Trump administration engaging in criminal and unethical behavior. Now, picture that if the Blue Wave gives Democrats control of the House in November (LIKELY) and Elijah Cummings is now the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

He's gonna be haranguing them in hearings and investigations DAILY, and the GOP won't be able to block any of his inquiries.

Rep. Cummings has already shown he's extremely competent while playing defense when the GOP were shaking the trees on every faux scandal of the Obama administration, from the IRS "targeting", to Benghazi, etc. And in interviews, he takes his duty on that committee very seriously, to not just use it as a partisan tool, but to ensure that government officials are serving the best interests of Americans and obeying the law.

Hot damn, more of Big E doing the oversight, please.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, who made a run at the presidency as well in 2016. In our original profile, we talked about his background as a career military reservist and lawyer who is always spoiling for a war that he never seems to give much thought as to the why or how it will be fought, just that we should ABSOLUTELY fight it. Sen. Graham also is prolifically paranoid, worrying about terror threats both foreign and domestic, from roaming gangs after a hurricane that would require the citizenry to be armed with automatic weapons, or that every nation in the Middle East from Iran, to Iraq, to Syria has developed a nuclear weapon. He also justifies the permanent detainment of people at Guantanamo Bay based off the precedent set by internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, which is a pretty dark chapter of American history to use as a guideline, while claiming that Hilary Clinton “got away with murder” during the Benghazi attacks, acting like she was in on the attack on her own friend, Ambassador Chris Stevens. Oh, and speaking of his criticism of Hillary Clinton, he tried criticizing her about her usage of an e-mail server by boasting that he had never written an e-mail (because that's exactly the sort of tech-savvy guy that should be president). Oh, and he later compared that to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, because e-mails are like getting a blowie from an intern, apparently.

Anyway, during Graham's run for the presidency in 2016, we covered how he admirably tried defending his amigo, Sen. John McCain's service record to insults from Donald Trump, and for his trouble, he had his cell phone number given out by Trump, publicly. Sen. Graham's response was then to release a campaign video of himself destroying his cell phone with several implements (rather than just get his number changed). Graham has frequently been caught lying about facts surrounding 9/11 to shape immigration policy, and through the presidential debates (at least, the "kid's table" debate he was in because his poll numbers were that awful) continued fear-mongering, using every question about any topic to segue into a discussion of ISIS and declaring, "The world is a battlefield and radical Islam is everywhere." His response to the terror attacks in Paris, was to insist the United States send 10,000 ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, warning that "there's a 9/11 coming". A short time later, though, after Democrats produced some common sense gun legislation, that anyone who is found to be on a terror watch list during a background check should not be allowed to purchase a firearm or explosives (which they could use to carry out a terror attack)… well, Lindsey Graham loves the Second Amendment way more than he hates terrorism, as he voted against it. On two occasions.

Now, here's the thing about CSGOPOTD and Lindsey Graham... he’s a lot like John McCain. Both are war hawks, to be sure. And it’s not hard to start to like him, povided he's not getting a case of the vapors, panicking about terrorists, and having to retreat to his fainting couch. After he dropped out of the presidential race back on December 21st, 2015, we've seen something we like to think of as "No F***s Left" Lindsey Graham.

It's just refreshing, frankly, to see this new side of the South Carolina Senator, and refreshing honesty about how utterly insane and stupid his own party has become. Like when he said the Republican National Commitee "couldn't run a one-car funeral" after the clusterf*** of a debate plan they had for 2016. Or the time he was speaking before the Republican Jewish Coalition and flat-out admitted that the conservative obsession with being ultra-pro-life was out of hand, because "If you are going to tell a woman who has been raped she has to carry the child of a rapist, you’re losing most Americans." Yeah, that happened. And how surreal was it to see Lindsey Graham of all people defend peaceful Muslims from the sort of ideas Donald Trump was putting forth, and saying, "Leave the faith alone, go after the radicals that kill us all."

Who is this man? Where has he been for the past twelve years? He seems kinda cool for a Republican Senator (that’s not exactly a high bar to clear, in relative terms). He compared the options of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz as potential presidential nominees as good of an option as being poisoned or being shot. By February 2016, he admitted the GOP had gone "bats*** crazy" for voting for Donald Trump, and adding "If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you."

After Donald Trump started making racist statements towards a federal judge of Mexican descent, Sen. Graham advised his fellow members of the GOP to unendorse him, saying, "if anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it". Sadly, they didn't heed his advice, and he can now say things about Trump like, "No one knows where the bottom is at."

[Tami]

WOW! As someone who doesn't see myself as a political animal, to have finished fourth in posts was quite a surprise.

I currently rank 6th on the site in overall posts, 5th if you exclude CBR News. You should have seen my post count prior to 2014, it was well over 100,000. But you're almost right behind me, ranking 8th.

[worstblogever]

This pattern has continued for the past year:

• September 9th, 2016: Lindsay Graham, after Donald Trump continually praises Vladimir Putin, remarks, “This election makes me want to move to Canada.”
• November 15th, 2016: Graham calls for a Senate investigation into Russia’s hack of the DNC.
• November 29th, 2016: Sen. Graham responds to Donald Trump’s deranged claims about “widespread voter fraud”, telling the public, “I don’t know what he is talking about. If he has evidence, bring it forward. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t say things like that. He’s gotta realize he’s just not a normal person anymore. He’s not a billionaire TV star — he’s the president of the United States. His words really resonate.”
• January 8th, 2017: Lindsay Graham chides any of his Republican colleagues who might be defending Russia’s hacking of the DNC or their efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections, saying “you are not a patriot” if you celebrate such a thing.
• March 22nd, 2017: Graham criticizes Donald Trump for making a ridiculous claim that President Obama had done “wire-tapps” to his phones, calling on him to apologize or “his credibility will suffer”.
• May 9th, 2017: During Senate testimony by former Director of Intelligence James Clapper, Lindsay Graham begins questioning if there might be something about Donald Trump’s business ties or in his tax returns that would tie him to Russia.
• May 23rd, 2017: Sen. Graham casts doubt on the amount of money that the Trump budget would cut from U.S. embassies, saying, “We could have a lot of Benghazi situations” if it was put into place.
• July 9th, 2017: After Donald Trump announces on Twitter that he’s contemplating a joing cyber-security agency WITH Vladimir Putin and Russia, Graham comments, “It’ s not the dumbest idea, but it’s pretty close.”
• July 27th, 2017: Lindsay Graham warns Donald Trump that firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller would be “the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency”, and also vowed “holy hell” if Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
• August 13th, 2017: Sen. Graham gives a less than subtle hint to Donald Trump about how to respond to white supremacists carrying out a terror attack in Charlottesville, to “do more” and to make sure to “dissuade these groups that he’s their friend”.
• January 8th, 2018: Graham responds to Donald Trump’s remarks about being a “stable genius” by giving the backhanded compliment that, “if he doesn’t call himself a genius, no one else will.”
• January 21st, 2018: Lindsay Graham comments on failed attempts at compromise on immigration, saying, “As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we’re going nowhere.”
• March 18th, 2018: Graham warns Donald Trump that firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller would “be the beginning of the end of his presidency”.
• May 13th, 2018: Lindsey Graham calls for the White House to have its staffer, Kelly Sadler, apologize for her comments about John McCain’s opinion not mattering because “he’s dying anyway”.
• June 7th, 2018: Graham responds to remarks from Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that he wouldn’t have had an affair with Stormy Daniels because “she wasn’t attractive enough”, defending Daniels, and saying Giuliani’s remarks were “inappropriate”.
• June 10th, 2018: Sen. Graham responds to Trump’s remarks prior to the G7 conference, saying that Russia should be allowed back in by telling him it would be “” to do so.
• August 1st, 2018: Graham criticizes Donald Trump for not doing enough (or really anything) to increase the online security to protect American election systems from Russians.

We’ll point out, though, that Lindsay Graham still has voted for every single member of Donald Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors” so far in this term in the Senate, he voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch (and not everyone back in South Carolina is thrilled about that), and he was one of the 49 Republicans who voted for the BRCA, and attempted to leave 23 million Americans without health insurance. And he’ll still justify partisan dickery, like when Sen. Mitch McConnell decided to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren from speaking back in February of 2017.

He is now finally ingratiated himself to Caramel Caligula fully, and they golf together. Isn’t that nice?

So that's our current dilemma... we don't know a streak of candor we saw from Lindsey Graham is the crazy part of his profile or not... because it probably means he won't survive his next GOP Primary. As we get closer to 2020, it seems like he's going back on the fence to try and position himself however he needs to ride whatever political winds are blowing. We're just hoping we seem more of “Cynical Bastard Senator Lindsey Graham” than the war-hungry, histrionic drama queen we did for most of the past decade. Sadly, it seems the latter one is still who’s casting the votes.

[Mister Mets]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1KK134

Article from July 30th.

The listed policy recommendation it seems all Democrats agree on is background checks. According to the article, a chunk of the officeholders support an assault weapons ban, and one supports a ban on high capacity ammunition magazines.

Is this going to make a difference? The latest shooting was a guy in his twenties with a handgun.

[PaulBullion]

The listed policy recommendation it seems all Democrats agree on is background checks. According to the article, a chunk of the officeholders support an assault weapons ban, and one supports a ban on high capacity ammunition magazines.

Is this going to make a difference? The latest shooting was a guy in his twenties with a handgun.

Was the last shooting the only one you remember?
If it was, please see your personal physician or a neurologist.

[Kevinroc]

The listed policy recommendation it seems all Democrats agree on is background checks. According to the article, a chunk of the officeholders support an assault weapons ban, and one supports a ban on high capacity ammunition magazines.

Is this going to make a difference? The latest shooting was a guy in his twenties with a handgun.

[PaulBullion]

In 1954 Eisenhower made the flag system regular. The American Flag on the White House should remain at half-mast until burial for any member of congress.

They just put the flag back at full staff, not waiting until McCain's body is even fully cold.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

In 1954 Eisenhower made the flag system regular. The American Flag on the White House should remain at half-mast until burial for any member of congress.

They just put the flag back at full staff, not waiting until McCain's body is even fully cold.

Again, not surprised. I’ll bet a month’s pay Mango Mussolini had to be cajoled into lowering the flag from jump street. Trump never lets silly stuff like compassion, decency and morality get in the way of a good feud. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump decides to hold one of his inane rallies on the day of McCain’s burial in order to steal the attention away from his enemy. He’s just petty and vindictive enough to do something like that.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Whispers “who was that poster that got heat for saying Democrats lose on this issue because they are uninformed about guns and use half measures that Republicans can easily argue against to dismiss it”?

[PaulBullion]

Whispers “who was that poster that got heat for saying Democrats lose on this issue because they are uninformed about guns and use half measures that Republicans can easily argue against to dismiss it”?

No idea, but sounds like a total garbage person.

[Mister Mets]

In 1954 Eisenhower made the flag system regular. The American Flag on the White House should remain at half-mast until burial for any member of congress.

They just put the flag back at full staff, not waiting until McCain's body is even fully cold.

For members of Congress, it's two days (the day they died and the next day.)

http://halfstaff.org/about/

I'm not defending the Trump administration here. I think they should do it longer, since McCain was awesome and because he's going to lie in state in the capitol at the end of the week.

Was the last shooting the only one you remember?
If it was, please see your personal physician or a neurologist.

The comment I was responding to was about that particular shooting.

Dear Conservative gamers and comic fans, Republicans don't care about you.

[Mister Mets]

Josh Barro raises an important question after McCain's death: How important are good intentions?

But there was also an important sense across much of the spectrum that McCain meant well. McCain lived a life of service, and he sought to make his country better. When he was wrong, he was sincerely wrong.

Is that important? Well, that's a central question in American politics today.

'Meaning well' as a distraction from doing good
Why might it be bad to care whether politicians and officials "mean well"?

One objection comes mostly from the left, and you can see it in the furious reaction to anyone who says something nice about the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's personal character — that he is a good mentor to diverse classes of law clerks, or that he's well liked in the soccer carpool.

The idea here is that focusing on personal character amounts to taking the eye off the ball: When you give someone credit for being a nice guy, you give him room to make policy decisions you oppose.

And this was one of the left's biggest complaints about McCain over the years: that his positive personal reputation got him undue political popularity and an unearned reputation as a "maverick" despite his fairly ordinary conservative record on policymaking.

(In his last year in office, McCain's dramatic vote to block the Republican healthcare-repeal effort did move his substantive legislative track record significantly closer to the "maverick" reputation.)

I think this critique of meaning well is partially correct and partially misguided.

Definitely, you shouldn't put someone on the Supreme Court just because his neighbors say he is nice. Nor should McCain have been elected president over Barack Obama just because of his war service or just because he was fun to hang out with on a campaign bus.

But suppose everyone in the soccer carpool thought Kavanaugh was a jerk. Wouldn't that be useful information to know? Being personally good isn't a sufficient condition for confirmation to the Supreme Court, but it is a necessary one. Therefore, we need to discuss whether nominees meet the condition.

The same is true for elected officials.

Does 'meaning well' mean not being selfish enough?
The other critique of "meaning well" comes from the right, and it's an impulse that got us President Donald Trump.

Well-meaning leaders have made a lot of significant mistakes over the past 20 years. McCain was a cheerleader of some of those mistakes, including the Iraq War. This has led to a significant degree of sometimes warranted cynicism about politicians who appear to mean well.

And for some conservatives, there is a sense that meaning well means being altruistic on the public's behalf. While McCain's politics were driven in large part by global concerns — a desire to promote democracy and political freedom around the world, a desire to admit immigrants who can benefit from entry to the US — Trump explicitly rejects those concerns and promises to be "greedy" on behalf of his supporters.

Under this view, Trump's personality defects aren't defects at all. His voters wanted a jerk, and they got one. They think meaning well just makes you a cuck.

This is the likely source of the president's barely concealed contempt for McCain. All this praise of McCain's good character feels like an implicit rebuke of the president for being immoral and vulgar. Trump likes criminals and thieves and lowlifes. He wants to be praised for his flaws, not be compared to someone who was tortured for his country.

It is important to have leaders who mean well — and who do good
What the left and right critiques of good intentions have in common is that both warn against coming to admire politicians with whom you disagree. Liberals warn you those politicians may act against your interests; conservatives warn they may give away your stuff.

But there is a problem with a scorched-earth politics that says not to like your opponents: We all have to share one government and one society. And if we convince ourselves never to find the good in the people we disagree with, lest that distract us from our continuous efforts to defeat and bury them, we are likely to become miserable.

That's because we won't always succeed at defeating and burying our political opponents. They will win, and we will have to be able to stand living under them.

The key is striking a balance: Acknowledging the good in our opponents in a way that makes it easier for us to live together under governments that change from one party to the other, without giving up the drive to win those elections.

But we can only have that kind of politics when we have politicians who are deserving of a kind of cross-aisle admiration, in the way that Barack Obama is and John McCain was. It obviously is never going to work with the current president.

Benjy Sarlin of MSNBC has an interesting question.

One thought about McCain that’s haunted me the last several years: 2008 may be remembered as the last modern election with two nominees who were both broadly and deeply admired at the time, even by many of the people voting against them. I’m not sure that’s possible now.

I'm not a hundred percent sure McCain and Obama were broadly and deeply admired (the right saw Obama as likely being the most liberal President in generations, the left disliked McCain when he wasn't arguing with Republicans) but a related question is when we had two good (rightly admired) candidates in an earlier race.

George W Bush is seen as an intellectual lightweight, so that knocks out 2000 and 2004.
Bill Clinton is a terrible human being, so that knocks out 1992 and 1996.
Was Dukakis admired? That knocks out 1988.
The left hated Reagan and saw him as a dunce, so that knocks out 1980 and 1984.
Nixon was the Republican nominee in 1960, 1968 and 1972, and he certainly wasn't widely admired. Goldwater was seen as a nut.

This kind of leaves 1976, although that was a race between two people who would lose reelection.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I'm not a hundred percent sure McCain and Obama were broadly and deeply admired (the right saw Obama as likely being the most liberal President in generations, the left disliked McCain when he wasn't arguing with Republicans) but a related question is when we had two good (rightly admired) candidates in an earlier race.

George W Bush is seen as an intellectual lightweight, so that knocks out 2000 and 2004.
Bill Clinton is a terrible human being, so that knocks out 1992 and 1996.
Was Dukakis admired? That knocks out 1988.
The left hated Reagan and saw him as a dunce, so that knocks out 1980 and 1984.
Nixon was the Republican nominee in 1960, 1968 and 1972, and he certainly wasn't widely admired. Goldwater was seen as a nut.

This kind of leaves 1976, although that was a race between two people who would lose reelection.

Don’t forget Bush Senior (1988) who wasn’t exactly beloved since he was Reagan’s Vice President and therefore knew about the Iran-Contra shenanigans.

As for 1976, I can’t imagine Ford was at all liked since he pardoned Nixon while Carter was seen as a country bumpkin with a loose cannon idiot brother.

[PaulBullion]

For members of Congress, it's two days (the day they died and the next day.)

http://halfstaff.org/about/

I'm not defending the Trump administration here. I think they should do it longer, since McCain was awesome and because he's going to lie in state in the capitol at the end of the week.
´

True, I misread that:

“The flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels of the Federal Government in the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia on the day of death and on the following day upon the death of a United States Senator, Representative, Territorial Delegate, or the Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and it shall also be flown at half-staff on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels of the Federal Government in the State, Congressional District, Territory, or Commonwealth of such Senator, Representative, Delegate, or Commissioner, respectively, from the day of death until interment.”

So it is 2 days in DC, and until interment in Arizona. Legalese is hard to parse sometimes.