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

[Tami]

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace ‘struck’ by how quickly Trump spoiled the mood at George HW Bush’s funeral

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace couldn’t help but notice the chill that accompanied President Donald Trump as he took a seat among the surviving commanders in chief at George H.W. Bush’s funeral.

The president and first lady Melania Trump sat down next to Barack and Michelle Obama, who had just been chatting and smiling with Bill and Hillary Clinton, but conversation ceased when the Trumps arrived.

“I have to say I was struck when President Trump and Melania Trump came to the front row that it was as if a chill had descended on that front row,” Wallace said. “You had seen a lot of chatty talk between the Clintons and the Obamas, the Carters. But when Donald Trump sat down, the greeting that he was given by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama was about as cool as it could have been.”

“It seemed like they exchanged hello, good morning,” he added. “That was it, and at that point they all stopped talking to each other.”

Wallace said the interactions showed some hard feelings toward Trump by his predecessors, which he said was highly unusual.

“There are some ill feelings among some of the people in the front row,” he said, “and I have to say that where you usually have a president’s club, and even people that ran against and maybe one beat the other, that doesn’t seem to have been extended to President Trump when you see them sitting in that front row.”

[Kusanagi]

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace ‘struck’ by how quickly Trump spoiled the mood at George HW Bush’s funeral

And to show it's not just partisan politics here's W continuing a running trend/joke with Michelle and sneaking her candy.

https://imgur.com/gallery/VG5OUIQ

[Rob Allen]

Matthew 26:52 New International Version (NIV)
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

OK, so he's against swords. But he never said a word against guns!

Many believers think that God himself wrote the second amendment.

"... the Second Amendment doesn’t stem from what government wants or wishes. The Second Amendment, like the First, is God-given, not government granted." - https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...es-second-ame/

"It's not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright. So I call right now today on every citizen who loves this country and who treasures this freedom to stand and unflinchingly defend the Second Amendment, the one freedom that protects us all." - Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, quoted by https://www.christianpost.com/news/n...hright-219018/



Do you ever wonder if they're reading the same Bible you're reading?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace ‘struck’ by how quickly Trump spoiled the mood at George HW Bush’s funeral

No surprise there. Trump needlessly went out of his way to not only burn bridges with his predecessors, he then dumped the ashes in a vat of acid. You can’t tell me most of the assemblage, including the Bush family would’ve preferred he not attend the service at all, but Bush senior, bless his soul, sought to repair the divisions and heal wounds by inviting Trump. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll work in the end, those divisions and the partisanship runs too deep, and I suspect it won’t be long (perhaps tomorrow) before Trump is bitching on Twitter about how he was disrespected (in his warped mind) at the funeral and the usual bullshit in Washington will soon resume.

[Tazirai]

PAY YOUR STAFF!!! PAY YOUR INTERNS!!!

**** Chuck Schumer, rich bastard, pay your people.
Chuck Schumer’s listing for an unpaid intern gets ripped apart (updated)

Chuck Schumer: Ad for Unpaid Interns Was Posted in ‘Error’
The senate minority leader has promised to compensate his office’s interns come January 2019

[numberthirty]

PAY YOUR STAFF!!! PAY YOUR INTERNS!!!

**** Chuck Schumer, rich bastard, pay your people.
Chuck Schumer’s listing for an unpaid intern gets ripped apart (updated)

Chuck Schumer: Ad for Unpaid Interns Was Posted in ‘Error’
The senate minority leader has promised to compensate his office’s interns come January 2019

That cannot be.

Everyone knows that folks only take Pelosi to task, and are never critical of Schumer.

Edit: This is a "Mainstream" Democrat doing this. I am not exactly shocked.

[Malvolio]

PAY YOUR STAFF!!! PAY YOUR INTERNS!!!

**** Chuck Schumer, rich bastard, pay your people.
Chuck Schumer’s listing for an unpaid intern gets ripped apart (updated)

Chuck Schumer: Ad for Unpaid Interns Was Posted in ‘Error’
The senate minority leader has promised to compensate his office’s interns come January 2019

Aren't interns traditionally unpaid? They get college credit for it, right? I know I did when I was an intern in college.

[PwrdOn]

Aren't interns traditionally unpaid? They get college credit for it, right? I know I did when I was an intern in college.

The problem is that Congress, just like many companies, basically uses internships as an easy source of free labor. Any experience or connections the interns might gain out of the arrangement are purely incidental, and not particularly special compared to what they would get out of working a normal paid job instead, so it's hardly an excuse for not compensating them properly for their necessary and valuable labor.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Cynthia Davis, an ethically-challenged former member of the Missouri House of Representatives who not only wanted creation taught in school classrooms, but tried preventing children from learning about any other kind of sex education that wasn’t abstinence. Her quest to make the lives of Missouri’s children more terrible expanded beyond that, though, as she earned an appearance on the Colbert Report for her opposition to getting poor children free meals during the summer because it would “rob them of their ambition”, and suggested they should work as child labor at McDonald’s to earn themselves a free meal based on her assessment that “hunger can be a positive motivator”. Davis was also a key ally of self-titled Birther Queen Orly Taitz, accompanying her in person at court hearings over the lawsuit she filed about President Obama’s Birth Certificate, and accused the court of bias for ruling against Taitz, claiming they only did so because she had an accent. Wrapping things up, Davis wrote a newsletter in 2009 where she proclaimed that “racism is dead”. Cynthia Davis has been out of office since 2010, when she failed to move on to the Missouri State Senate after facing term limits in the Missouri House. She made a 2012 run to try to win office as Missouri Lieutenant Governor as a member of the somehow even more rabid right wing Constitution Party, but lost and has not turned up on a ballot in the four years since.

On this date in 2015, Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Chris Corley, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives who held up a white surrender flag to mock any Republicans who voted to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol after a fellow legislator was assassinated at the Charleston AME Emanuel Church by a White Nationalist, Dylann Roof. And, Corley still wasn't over his love for the Stars & Bars, as he sent Christmas cards out to all the legislators who voted for the flag's removal, forgiving them "for all their sins such as betrayal" a few months later. Corley was allowed to run for re-election unopposed, but ended up getting booted from office after being arrested on domestic violence charges over the 2016 holiday season.

On this date in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Steve Hickey, a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2011-2015, which many Democrats in South Dakota found alarming because of his background as a pastor with quite extreme views on abortion and LGBT rights. Those concerns were not unfounded. In January of 2014, Hickey turned heads by sponsoring one of the first "religious freedom" brand of bills in the country that were actually just legalizing the discrimination towards the gay community. Bizarrely, Hickey tried justifying it with the ludicrous statement that "gay rights are taking us down the road to Iran", because he's apparently unaware of how Iran punishes homosexuals with flogging or even the death penalty. Go figure. But then again, Hickey also believes that legalized gay marriage would have left him open to lawsuits as a pastor, so we're not talking about someone whose elevator goes all the way up, here. In May of 2014, for whatever reason, Steve Hickey was particularly upset about all the butt stuff happening in these United States, and decided to write an opinion editorial for the local paper, the Argus Leader about it. They found it... inappropriate for publication, and Hickey, outraged that they wouldn't go with his column, got on Facebook to post his vile and crude letter, titled, "A One Way Alley for the Garbage Truck", where he accused the entire medical community of creating a conspiracy to cover up the risks of anal sex. After a wave of criticism from LGBT groups, media outlets, and just sane people, Hickey refused to apologize or back down from his assertion. Steve Hickey was actually one of the first people in South Dakota to question the signatures being submitted by Annette Bosworth in her run for U.S. Senate were done so improperly, which makes it pretty hypocritical that he may have done the exact same thing in 2012 to get on the ballot as a state legislator. Before the walls closed in and he was arrested for forgery, Steve Hickey resigned from the South Dakota House of Representatives in July of 2015, deciding to travel to Aberdeen, Scotland, to try and get a PHD in Christian ethics.

[worstblogever]

It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Iowa State Senator Jason Schultz, who has served in the Iowa state legislature since 2009, spending six years in the lower chambers before moving up to the upper one in the 2014 elections. Back when he was just a member of the Iowa House, Schultz made a name for himself co-sponsoring legislation to try and nullify the Affordable Care Act. Of course, those sorts of extremist reactions aren’t enough to make any Republican stand out and earn a CSGOPOTD profile. It’s a start, though.

What really got our attention about Schultz was his appearance on Mickelson in the Morning back in September of 2015, when he went on a horribly racist rant against Muslim refugees being resettled in the United States from Syria. There are bigoted rants, and then there’s this:

“We already have problems with concentrations of Middle Eastern refugees or migrants coming in and taking over communities. They don’t want to assimilate. They do not want to become Americans. They only want the free stuff from America. They practice a religion that orders them to dominate and they want to live under Sharia law which they will not subordinate under our law while they live here and enjoy our protections and our goodies. It’s an invasion” to spread their own theology by force.”

Paints a picture of a hardline loon, doesn’t it? Well, while Schultz would like to spread paranoid lies about Syrians fleeing their nation for their lives, he would do anything to save the lives of zygotes. Because he thinks they should have Constitutional rights to vote and have a gun (while not having a heartbeat yet), and the refugees think they’re entitled to “free stuff”.

His voting record also includes opposition to raising the minimum wage (during the worst period of income inequality in our nation in almost a century), opposed a ban on gay conversion therapy on minors, voted against crimes against individuals based on their gender identity or expression as hate crimes, and is a big supporter of stricter Voter ID regulations that suppress the vote in the name of preventing statistically non-existent in-person voter fraud.

We’ll add that since our first look at Jason Schultz, he’s continued to be a nightmare of a legislator, including his sponsorship of a bill to try and implement the unconstitutional AND failed conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients to Iowa. The estimated price tag on implementing such a measure, that always fails to find drug use or any “savings” for the state? $100 million. Well, isn’t that “fiscally conservative” of you, Jason.

While the Blue Wave managed to take many folks we profile on this blog out of office in the 2018 mid-terms, Jason Schultz was not on that list, because he was re-elected mostly because he got to run unopposed. Thus, we can expect more extremist ideas to be brought to the floor in Iowa from him until at least 2022.

[numberthirty]

Aren't interns traditionally unpaid? They get college credit for it, right? I know I did when I was an intern in college.

The problem is that Congress, just like many companies, basically uses internships as an easy source of free labor. Any experience or connections the interns might gain out of the arrangement are purely incidental, and not particularly special compared to what they would get out of working a normal paid job instead, so it's hardly an excuse for not compensating them properly for their necessary and valuable labor.

Exactly.

If you want to talk about how you are looking out for the working people?

Come right out in the open, and make a case for how your party having a pool of unpaid labor needs to happen to create a scenario where you are in a better position to look out for those working people.

Don't just take advantage of the workers you can take advantage of when you believe that no one is watching.

Also...

The way everything was "Traditionally"?

Not really the way they should have stayed in every single instance. Plenty of times where how things had be "Traditionally" was complete garbage.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Wisconsin Republicans Approve 82 Scott Walker Appointees In 1 Day

The move hinders the incoming Democratic governor from choosing his own people. Talk about smarmy, underhanded ****! Meanwhile, in Michigan....

**********

How The Michigan GOP Gutted A Minimum Wage Hike And Paid Sick Leave

“We consider it just an undermining of democracy, the will of the people, and a slap in the face to all of the work that we did,” said one activist. Even smarmier and shittier.

**********

Every President Recited This Prayer Except Trump, And People Definitely Noticed

Trump didn’t recite the Apostles’ Creed during the funeral for former President George H.W. Bush. I guess this fortifies the suspicion that Trump can't read. Some stable genius HE is! But, I'm sure right wingers, Faux News talking heads and loyal Trumpanzees will cook up an excuse for what he did, or rather, didn't do.



**********

Joe Biden Blames Rise In Anti-Semitic Incidents Firmly On Donald Trump’s Administration

“Our leadership is giving license, giving license to this prejudice,” said the former vice president. It's been that way ever since Charlottesville, and things are only getting worse.

**********

Migrants Don’t Pose A Threat To Public Health. That’s Just Racism, Report Says

“In too many countries, the issue of migration is used to divide societies and advance a populist agenda,” the editor of the Lancet said. And in the U.S., Trump is pushing that populist crapola like a boss.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh, yeah! Then there's THIS moment during the service:

[Tami]

Aren't interns traditionally unpaid? They get college credit for it, right? I know I did when I was an intern in college.

In a previous job, I used to hire an Intern to work during the summer. HR dealt with issues of employment for them, so I'm trying to remember if the position was paid or not. If it was unpaid, it definitely would have been for credit, a requirement for graduation. I think it was paid, not a lot but enough so that every summer I always had at least a dozen resumes to choose from. Still, this was a case where the interns lived In-State, most within easy driving distance.

If you have an Intern who is coming from out-of-state, out of the area, like most Congressional Interns do, then there is no reason not to give them financial compensation. They will need the money just to survive.

I was surprised to hear that some weren't being paid.

[Tami]

Confusion clouds restoration of Florida felons’ voting rights

SARASOTA — Florida voters spoke clearly four weeks ago: They restored the right to vote to most convicted felons who complete their sentences.

When it becomes Florida law in five weeks, an estimated 1.2 million felons will be eligible to rejoin the voter rolls. But at a statewide elections conference Tuesday, it was obvious that confusion and uncertainty still hovers over implementation of Amendment 4.

The state announced that it has stopped transmitting documents counties use to remove convicted felons from the rolls. One official said the issue requires more research on how to carry out the will of the people.

"The state is putting a pause button on our felon identification files," Division of Elections director Maria Matthews told election supervisors from most of the state's 67 counties at a mid-winter meeting. "We need this time to research it, to be sure we are providing the appropriate guidance."

Matthews said the will of the people is clear: A person who completes their sentence should be able to register to vote, "and that's what we're going to do."

Speaking to reporters, Matthews' boss, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, who reports to Gov. Rick Scott, said lawmakers should be consulted.

"We need to get some direction from them as far as implementation and definitions — all the kind of things that the supervisors were asking," Detzner said. "It would be inappropriate for us to charge off without direction from them."

Counties were not happy.