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

[Iron Maiden]

While it is probably not a lock, it is good to see Rahm take a run at this on his way out the door...

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ra...-compensation/

It's probably not very popular to say this but I liked Rahm as mayor of Chicago and I'm curious to see where he ends up next.

[PaulBullion]

Meanwhile, the WaPo has another scoop:

After closed door meeting with Putin, Trump took his interpreter's notes, told linguist not to reveal what had transpired to other administration officials.

At least he wasn't using a personal email server. Just his unprotected phone.

First former head of state weighing in on this massive scandal:

[PaulBullion]

Seems like ole Chuck is finally starting to do his job:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Saturday he will force a vote soon on a resolution to disapprove the Trump administration’s decision to relax sanctions on three Russian companies connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...source=twitter

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Food Pantries Help Federal Workers, Coast Guard Amid Shutdown

Furloughed and unpaid government employees are struggling to buy necessities amid the weekslong government shutdown. This shouldn't be happening, but Trump doesn't give a fuck as he's happy to hold nearly a million workers hostage to get funding for his damn wall.

**********

Trump Concealed Details Of Putin Meetings From Administration Officials: Report

The Washington Post reports the president instructed his interpreter not to disclose any details of what transpired during the meeting to administration officials. So, what was Dolt45 trying to hide?

**********

Tulsi Gabbard’s Homophobic Remarks Surface After 2020 Presidential Announcement

The Hawaii Democrat’s previous stance on same-sex marriage has come back to haunt her after she announced her bid for the White House. Well now, isn't THAT interesting?

**********

Oregon Governor’s Husband Cleans Up National Forest Loos, Bills Trump

Dan Little tackled trashed bathrooms at Mt. Hood during the shutdown. Clearly Mr. Little didn't the memo about how Trump lives for stiffing people who try to pry money out of him.

**********

Trump Has Entered The Lying Stratosphere, Says Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist

“No one believes a word out of his mouth,” Thomas Friedman said of the president. Wrong, Trump's lemmings believe his lies, and that's all he cares about.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Anthony Culler, who was the Republican candidate for South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District in 2014, who believes that we are all granted a right to bear arms from CONCEPTION, so that American zygotes can pack heat inside their mothers’ wombs if they choose. He not surprisingly also warned voters of a nameless “they” who were “coming for our guns”, and said Barack Obama and Joe Biden were “using dead schoolchildren” to push for legislation to do so. While his stance on gun rights was pretty extreme, it was nothing compared to Culler’s stance on LGBT rights, where he described same sex marriage as “a pestilence upon society” and compared gay people to for those of you old enough to remember the movie, "Gremlins”. I am still unaware of the large gay community in San Francisco being due to a gay person getting wet and being fed after midnight, but anyway, when people told Culler he was a bigot after saying that, he instead went with the classic “I’m rubber and you’re glue” defense and claimed anyone who thought HE was the bigot, was the actual bigot. Jim Clyburn crushed Anthony Culler by almost fifty points in the election, and it seems unlikely the Republican Party will want to put him on a ticket to embarrass them again

In both 2016, and 2017, on this date, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who has a longer history of being a kook, by far, than her overall political career. After switching party affiliation in the late nineties to Republican because she was outraged over Bill Clinton having an affair, she’s become most famous for heckling presidential candidates campaigning in New Hampshire once every four years, going all the way back to 1999, when there are tales of her haranguing Al Gore about Bill Clinton’s infidelities (as if Al Gore was watching from behind a curtain like a voyeur the whole time). Anyway, no reports emerged of her during the 2004 election cycle, however in 2007, she popped up three times to bust the chops of Mitt Romney about supposed double standards on taxation and college residency and harassed Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side of the ticket, for his past infidelities, and to ask him why his children didn’t support his candidacy, leading Giuliani to tell her to “leave his family alone”. By the time Prudhomme-O’Brien went after a Democrat, though, she managed to end up being threatened with arrest for showing up at Hillary Clinton appearances in both 2008 and 2016 and demanding to know everything she knew about her husband Bill’s encounter with Juanita Broaddrick from three decades earlier. (The one Hillary wasn’t at, can’t speak to, and shouldn’t really have to.) The New Hampshire Union-Leader actually gave her the moniker of “New Hampshire’s Most Annoying Voter”, after all of these revolting and obnoxious exploits. And apparently, people weren’t paying attention when the name Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien appeared on the ballot in the 2014 elections as a candidate for office as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives on the Republican side of the ticket. She finished tenth in the Republican Primary, barely qualifying for the general election where she finished sixth. Somehow, that still meant she won a seat in the state legislature. In the year she’s been in office, she’s turned up as part of the New Hampshire GOP’s voting block, attempting to pass some extreme legislation, like an attempt to repeal Common Core Standards (which Gov. Maggie Hassan repealed), an attempt to repeal the need for licensing for people who wanted to practice concealed carry of firearms (also vetoed by Gov. Hassan), and most heinously, an attempt to repeal the “buffer zone” for protesters around abortion clinics. (Which never even made it to Maggie Hassan’s desk, but after what happened in Colorado Springs not long after, it’s probably something that needs to be there.) Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien’s time in office mercifully came to an end in the 2016 GOP Primary, where she failed to qualify in a field where she only needed to finish tenth or better, coming in seventeenth of seventeen candidates.

It was on this date in 2018 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Richard Snow, a former candidate for the Maine House of Representatives back in 2012 was talking about running for Congress, but failed to fire his paperwork on time, and ran for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives to represent District 47 in 2014, losing with 43% of the vote. His qualifications? Snow runs an indoor kart racing track. He’s so good at business that he managed to get himself hacked and had his business’ bank accounts cleaned out, however. Snow was asked for his thoughts on raising the minimum wage (which should be a no-brainer since America is in it’s greatest period of income inequality in perhaps its entire history), he explained that a minimum wage increase would likely lead to workers just spending the money on opiates. Keep in mind, though, that Snow also openly griped about having to pay his workers overtime, so maybe it’s a safe bet that he isn’t a champion of workers’ rights. Or that he likes spreading supposed “news stories” about supposed widespread voter fraud on his Facebook page. Big surprise, Snow’s insult towards the working class led to him losing again to Democrat Janice Cooper in 2016 with only 38% of the vote. Snow won the GOP Primary for the same seat in 2018, and for unknown reasons to us, withdrew from the race prior to the general election. We’ll go ahead and retire his profile at this time, and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 722-30, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Katie Arrington
Welcome to the 722nd original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Kate Arrington, a failed candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the 2018 elections, after serving a single term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Arrington was decidedly a candidate to watch, since from the point she announced she was running for Congress, she made it clear she was doing so to “support Donald Trump’s bold, conservative agenda”, which was evident in her lack of understanding about border security and desire to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border. The incumbent Republican that Arrington was challenging was CSGOPOTD Alumni Mark Sanford, who may have several bizarre incidents that we’ve documented against him, but still was willing to criticize Donald Trump for some of his s***tier moments in the spotlight.

That’s why it came as little surprise when Donald Trump endorsed Katie Arrington over Mark Sanford, and why he thought it would help her cause by calling out Sanford for “hiking the Tallahassee Trail”,which isn’t an actual thing, nor is it the correct reference to the extramarital affair that Sanford had back in 2009. And with a traditionally conservative district filled with Republicans who had grown tired of Sanford after years and were starting to buy into Arrington and Trump’s white nationalist rhetoric… Arrington managed to win the GOP Primary, and Trump was crowing about f***ing over Mark Sanford on Twitter. Arrington practically declared herself a member of Congress, promising that “There’s no Blue Wave crashing on the shores of South Carolina”.

Only a few days after that, it wasn’t a Blue Wave that crashed into Katie Arrington (yet), it was an apparent drunk driver who veered into her own lane, and crashed into her head on. While she spent a few weeks recovering in the hospital, her Democratic opponent, Joe Cunningham, ceased to campaign out of respect, and Mark Sanford offered her his prayers while she recovered, both classy decisions. Arrington, upon returning to the campaign trail, seemed to not acknowledge their kindness, and went right back to slandering Sanford, who she had beaten, and her Cunningham, who she hoped to beat.

At her debate in October against Joe Cunningham, Arrington tried attacking him for not denouncing “memes” about her that said she “faked her breast cancer” or others that were overtly racist and depicted African Americans who supported her “being lynched”. These “memes” were either created online by conservatives who supported Mark Sanford in the primary and had barely been viewed on the internet, at all, let alone been viewed by Cunningham. But sixteen minutes into the debate, it was Arrington’s own campaign that used her Twitter account to complain about them for the first time. Cunningham denounced the images immediately after learning they existed when Arrington mentioned it for the first time, much like the rest of the public. So… botched attempt at creating a non-scandal?

In the final weeks of the campaign in October, there were signs that Katie Arrington maybe didn’t have as comfortable of a lead as she was projecting in June, after she made veiled threats towards the mayor of the Isle of Palms, Jimmy Carroll, telling him he “lost his seat at the table” for endorsing Cunningham, and a real sign of trouble was that the NRCC had to dump almost a quarter of a million dollars into the race to aid her at the last minute in what was supposed to be a “safe” Republican district. Mark Sanford refused to endorse her, at all, and outright talked about her willingness to brazenly lie just a week before the election.

And so it was that as Donald Trump’s fortunes turned worse and worse, and Katie Arrington’s campaign techniques got more and more stupid, that Joe Cunningham upset her by seeming rather sane and moderate. Arrington took the loss well in her concession sp- HA! Gotcha. Arrington flipped out during her concession speech and went on a tirade against Mark Sanford, while promising she’d be back to run for the seat again in 2020, and stopping just short of writing that promise in the sky in smoke like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of the Wizard of Oz. Based on how Donald Trump’s fortunes are doing by the day, having Arrington handcuffed to someone who could be in handcuffs, legitimately, might not make her the best option Republicans could have in the primary in a year and a half.

[Ragged Maw]

Tulsi Gabbard’s Homophobic Remarks Surface After 2020 Presidential Announcement

The Hawaii Democrat’s previous stance on same-sex marriage has come back to haunt her after she announced her bid for the White House. Well now, isn't THAT interesting?

Yet she still has a track record of facilitating legislation supporting LBGT rights despite her own biases (assuming they haven't budged since the time of that statement). Granted, it'd be foolish to expect voters to "get past" anything that rubs them the wrong way about a particular candidate in the name of practicality, so the Presidency may be well out of her reach at this point.

[PwrdOn]

Yet she still has a track record of facilitating legislation supporting LBGT rights despite her own biases (assuming they haven't budged since the time of that statement). Granted, it'd be foolish to expect voters to "get past" anything that rubs them the wrong way about a particular candidate in the name of practicality, so the Presidency may be well out of her reach at this point.

Gabbard has no realistic chance of scoring the nomination, but she can still serve a useful function in moving the Overton window on economic issues. She just has to keep her mouth shut about Assad or Hindutva or whatever and keep repeating those progressive talking points, that's how she'll do the most good for the party and the country as a whole.

[aja_christopher]

Trump Concealed Details Of Putin Meetings From Administration Officials: Report

The Washington Post reports the president instructed his interpreter not to disclose any details of what transpired during the meeting to administration officials. So, what was Dolt45 trying to hide?

Looking forward to seeing the results of the Mueller report and all of the upcoming investigations into Trump and the Republican party -- hard jail time may be the only way that the Republicans can be made to understand that their illegal and blatantly undemocratic behavior won't be tolerated any longer.

Otherwise, there's absolutely nothing to stop this from happening again -- or maybe even worse the next time around.

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"Prosecute Donald Trump To The Full Extent Of The Law"

"There is a reason that “Equal Justice Under Law” is carved into the physical architecture of the Supreme Court above its primary west entrance. Far, far too often, America has not been a society where we are all actually subject to law equally. And yet the notion that politicians and billionaires are supposed to be the same under the law as the poor and the oppressed is a powerful principle. This aspiration is necessary for the development of a sense of community and has served as a powerful impetus for America becoming generally less unfair over time.

When the idea of equality under the law is breached serially and nearly irrevocably, that sense of commonality fractures. We won’t be able to address our many challenges ― for instance, a Green New Deal ― as an actually *united* United States unless we can create a sense that the rule of law applies to all equally.

In 2009, then president-elect Obama expressed “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” in previewing his administration’s free pass to George W. Bush alumni. That view was at odds with a commitment to justice, since, by its very nature, justice is always retrospective ― crimes are committed, criminals are charged, juries or judges weigh the evidence and proceed to punish (or not) accordingly.

The view was also a political calamity ― Obama’s governance strategy of burying the broadly accepted failures of the Bush presidency created a path for Bush’s enablers in Congress to secure historic victories in the 2010 midterms. And the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute bankers and other elites responsible for economic cataclysm added fuel to the fire of resentment that led so many Americans to the tea party, and ultimately, Trumpism.

But an argument for accountability is not principally about politics. If Pence or a Democratic successor follows in the footsteps of presidents Ford or Obama, they will be continuing a cycle of non-accountability for the powerful. They will be helping cynicism flower anew.

Democrats and their candidates should resolve now to end the cycle of injustice that allows the powerful to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. It should be a litmus test for any aspiring Trump opponent to commit to governing under the principle of “equal justice for all” and to empowering prosecutors to go where the evidence takes them.

The end of Trumpism will not be when Trump is defeated at the polls or even when he is impeached. It will be when America comes together as a nation and acts to ensure that elites like Trump who transgress against our shared laws suffer consequences proportionate to their actions."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b0c469d76db38c

[Tami]

Border Patrol union deleted 2012 webpage opposing border wall

A union that represents Border Patrol agents recently deleted a webpage that said building walls and fences along the border to stop illegal immigration would be “wasting taxpayer money.”

The deleted webpage, posted in 2012, argued that border barriers don’t tackle the root causes of migration — and could potentially encourage more migrants to enter the U.S. fraudulently or overstay visas.

he webpage was taken down after the union's president endorsed the wall at a White House news briefing earlier this month.

“Walls and fences are temporary solutions that focus on the symptom (illegal immigration) rather than the problem (employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens),” the union wrote in a media FAQ.

The federal government has been partially shuttered for 21 days over President Donald Trump’s demand of $5.7 billion for a border wall. The president has touted the support of the 14,000-member National Border Patrol Council during the shutdown, which will become the longest in history over the weekend.

[Tami]

The 'doomsday' scenario: Here's what happens if the shutdown drags on

The country would face an economic hellscape if the government shutdown lasts "months or even years," as the president has suggested it might, experts tell NBC News.

The doomsday scenario might be unlikely — the longest the federal government has ever shut down is 21 days, a record that will fall if the current closure lasts until Saturday — but it is chilling.

"We'll be in no man's land," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told NBC News.

If the worst were to happen, experts say the devastating impact would be widespread:

• 38 million low-income Americans lose food stamps
• 6 million face an uncertain timetable for collecting tax refunds
• 2 million without rental assistance and facing possible eviction
• 800,000 paycheck-less federal employees plunged into dire financial straits
• Shuttered parks and museums while overstressed airports cause tourism to tank
• Federal court system slows to a crawl
• Disaster relief money doesn't get to storm-ravaged areas
• Lapsed FDA and EPA inspections lead to dangerous outbreaks
• Private companies looking to go public are stuck in limbo
• Stock market plummets

The end isn't near — yet. But if the standoff persists — talks blew up at the White House on Wednesday — and Congress and President Donald Trump can't reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling in a few months, "it's game over — you'll have a pretty severe recession," Zandi said, adding that given the trade war with China, and Brexit looming, "you could start seeing some pretty dark scenarios" worldwide.

[Tami]

On Mike Pences Destructive Ambition

At Vanity Fair, David Drucker has written a piece about the possible existence of a "shadow campaign" being run by Mike Pence, as he takes the lead on rallying the Republicans through midterms, becase that, like many other responsibilities of being president, is something in which Donald Trump has no interest.

Naturally, there are Republicans quick to assert that "dispatching the vice president is only logical," but, noting that Pence has built a political operation that now outmatches the president's, a "Republican insider and former leadership aide in Congress" told Drucker that Pence's maneuvering is "unusual. Most V.P. offices haven't dreamed of having separate political operations from that of the president of the United States."

Yes, well, most vice presidents aren't Mike Pence. Most vice presidents weren't about to lose their gubernatorial reelection before they were plucked to serve as second to a president who explicitly wanted a vice-president to "be in charge of domestic and foreign policy," leaving his boss free to "Make America great again," whatever that means on any given day.

The subhead on the Vanity Fair piece is: "Could Pence's ambition make him the president's next mortal enemy?" But that isn't the right question. The right question is whether Pence's ambition makes him the nation's next mortal enemy.

[Tendrin]

Gabbard has no realistic chance of scoring the nomination, but she can still serve a useful function in moving the Overton window on economic issues. She just has to keep her mouth shut about Assad or Hindutva or whatever and keep repeating those progressive talking points, that's how she'll do the most good for the party and the country as a whole.

certainly, she knows she can't get away with oppossing such legislation. However, as jounralist David Neiwert points out, she is still problematic

e. When Gabbard talks about protecting "religious freedom," it's actually in basic right-wing mode -- about protecting the right of fundamentalist bigots to attack abortion and deny Muslims their civil rights.

Gabbard’s claim, made in an op-ed in the Hill newspaper, drew a rebuke Wednesday from another Hawaii Democrat, Sen. Mazie Hirono.
In the op-ed, Gabbard did not name any names. But she argued that some lawmakers had gone too far in their questioning of Brian Buescher, whom Trump nominated in October to serve as a district judge.
“While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus,” Gabbard said in the op-ed.

Gabbard was referring to questions asked about his previous positions, taken in campaign, and association with groups, in opposition to same sex marriage and abortion. Standard republican positions, and standard questions to be asked for a confirmation of a judgship. Gabbard taking issue with them is purely about shielding her own bigotry and attacking fellow democrats from the right, something she's no stranger to, given all her appearances on Fox News.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.6b5e0d9827f5

If she wins the nomination, I'd still see her as an improvement over Trump in many ways, but she won't be as much of an improvement for transgender friends of mine, or LGBT friends, as I'd like to see. At all.

And this isn't getting into her love for authoritarian regime, Modi's fascist aspirations for India, and her anti-Muslim bigotry.

No such thing as a perfect candidate, after all.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The 'doomsday' scenario: Here's what happens if the shutdown drags on

Doomsday scenario indeed. The problem is that Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of that, he’ll gladly let the country go down the sewer before he backs down on the wall. Compromise isn’t in Trump’s vocabulary, to him, it’s either win or lose, nothing else matters, including the 800,000 federal workers he furloughed. Meanwhile, those gutless Republican bastards in Congress continue enabling Trump because they don’t have the balls to confront him over reopening the government.

[Ragged Maw]

Doomsday scenario indeed. The problem is that Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of that, he’ll gladly let the country go down the sewer before he backs down on the wall. Compromise isn’t in Trump’s vocabulary, to him, it’s either win or lose, nothing else matters, including the 800,000 federal workers he furloughed. Meanwhile, those gutless Republican bastards in Congress continue enabling Trump because they don’t have the balls to confront him over reopening the government.

How much does Trump care about reelection? Cause that "longest government shutdown in U.S. history" thing can be used against him when campaign season hits. And the resentment will only grow the longer he keeps it going.