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

[catbellysqueezer]

But how does that not result in the party moving to the right on economic issues?

And what about people whose lives are already affected by not having health care or a living wage right now?

[PaulBullion]

I am saying that you guys and the people I know are getting your talking points from the same source.

[catbellysqueezer]

You think it's just a coincidence that the people who get millions of dollars from the health care industry and from some of the largest U.S. employers are calling universal health care and higher wages (which the majority of citizens support) "purity tests"

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Report: White House Counsel Is Cooperating Extensively In Russia Probe

Don McGahn reportedly feared Trump was setting him up. Well now, THAT is sure intriguing, which leads to this....

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Watergate Figure John Dean Says McGahn Was Smart To Cooperate With Mueller

“Self preservation is a real motive,” noted Dean. “Trump throws almost everyone under the bus.” That much is true. Loyalty is a one way street when it comes to Trump.

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Eric Trump Loses It Over What He Apparently Thinks Is ‘Nazi Salute’ Dig At Dad

Photo of the president, waving, exposes mainstream media’s “hatefulness” and “propaganda,” he fumes. Yo, Beavis, chill out, dude! You're as paranoid as your old man!

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ICE Detains Man Driving Pregnant Wife To Deliver Their Baby

Joel Arrona-Lara was stopped at a San Bernardino gas station en route to a local hospital. Christ on a crutch! That was awful!

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Lastly, some Sunday morning humor:

Steve Bannon Gets Mercilessly Mocked With Tweaked Movie Titles

“Hate Actually” or “The Fascist and the Furious,” anyone?

[PaulBullion]

You think it's just a coincidence that the people who get millions of dollars from the health care industry and from some of the largest U.S. employers are calling universal health care and higher wages (which the majority of citizens support) "purity tests"

Your manicurist gets millions of dollars from the health care industry?

She must be damn good.

[catbellysqueezer]

Your manicurist gets millions of dollars from the health care industry?

She must be damn good.

[worstblogever]

It was back in 2014 on this date that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our original profile of Joe Wurlzebacher, aka "Joe the Plumber", who after getting fifteen minutes of fame from his sudden appearance late in the 2008 presidential race where he pretended to be an unaffiliated voter whose business would supposedly be greatly harmed by Barack Obama's tax plan, was actually revealed to have been working without a license, and to have grossly exaggerated what his earnings were (so he would not have been in the tax bracket that would have been inconvenienced anyway). While the McCain campaign lost all use for Wurzelbacher, Fox News and the Tea Party movement kept dragging Joe the Plumber in front of microphones for several years that followed, where he would say offensive or idiotic things like talking about lynching Senator Chris Dodd, or how "Our Founding Fathers knew communism and socialism didn't work", which would have been quite the revelation for them, as it would be over a century before those systems of government would even be conceived. Wurzelbacher was finally prodded into attempting a run for office in 2012 against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and kept embarrassing himself by being quoted linking gun control to the Holocaust andto stop illegal immigration by "put a damned fence on the the border, going to Mexico, and start shooting". The minute of Wurzelbacher's 15 minutes came in 2014, when after the Isla Vista killings, he got on social media to write an open letter to the grieving families only four days after the shooting that said, in part, "Your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights. We still have a right to bear arms." He has now become a forgotten footnote in American politics, at best.




It was on this date in 2015, 2016, and 2017, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" shared our profiles of Ohio Governor John Kasich, who we said at the time was the moderate* candidate in the GOP Presidential primary field, with the asterisk denoting how whenever Kasich supposedly had a moderate position, you could find either a quote to contradict that supposed moderate stance, or the fact that it only meant he wasn't as extreme as the other 16 nuts in the field, but was still pretty far to the right. I mean, during the Clinton administration, John Kasich twice voted for government shutdowns. He still defends the lie that he told to justify that action to this day, and never delivered on his promise to “change parties an become a Democrat if the Clinton economic plan didn’t steer the economy into a ditch” that he had said at the time. Instead, he respected the Clinton economy by voting to impeach President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. McCain spent six long years Ffrom 2001 to 2007 as a forgettable FOX News anchor, hosting the show Heartland, spending a lot of that time working a second job for the Lehman Brothers, earning somewhere between $140-500K a year (depending on bonuses) until the banking giant declared bankruptcy. Perhaps John Kasich’s views on censorship are not the best to look to, as he once tried having his local Blockbuster video ban the movie Fargo because he was so offended by the “wood chipper scene”, as he admitted in a 2006 book.

Since becoming the Governor of Ohio, Kasich signed a sweeping anti-union law to limit the collective bargaining rights of public workers. It ended up being repealed when Ohio citizens signed a petition to put it on the public ballot, to sidestep what Kasich and his allies in the legislature had done. In his February 2012, Kasich gives his “state of the state” speech in Ohio, and discusses going to a research facility where Parkinson’s patients are receiving experimental treatments. In a less-than-sensitive moment, he begins physically shaking to demonstrate what those afflicted with the disease look like and in the same speech, he also offered this energy policy, that included the thought, "We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal. Clean it and burn it. Clean it, Gordon, and burn it. Clean it, Battelle, and burn it. Use it.” So... yeah, Kasich leadership is not so good for the environment. Gov. Kasich’s record on voting rights has been abysmal, spurring a slew of lawsuits from advocacy groups, including his attempts at voter suppression in Ohio in May 2012 that would have limited absentee ballots. Kasich’s efforts to curtail statistically non-existent “voter fraud” through stricter ID laws, and cutting back the number of early voting days would seem to only rig the system to prevent participation in our democracy. John Kasich signed one of the most aggressive anti-choice laws in our country’s modern history on July 3rd, 2013, which featured a myriad of measures restrictive to women including medically unnecessary, mandatory ultrasounds for any woman seeking an abortion, the doctor providing the service to read a pre-written anti-choice speech to the patient, preventing rape crisis centers from mentioning abortion, stripping Planned Parenthood of most of its funding, redefining pregnancy, and forcing doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital or be shut down, which closed seven of the sixteen clinics in the state (and yes, that last part was by design). (It was actually overturned by the courts in October of 2015.)

Under Gov. Kasich’s leadership, police departments in Ohio have been at the forefront of several news stories about brutality against citizens, including various incidents resulting in the death of citizens. Amongst those killed include Samuel Debose, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Kasich has done little in response, only laying out an executive order that said that lethal force should not be an option to be used against a fleeing suspect*. (*WOW. What a concession. That’s sort of already the law, John.) Kasich has otherwise dragged his feet on efforts by Ohio Democrats to require Ohio law enforcement to all have body cameras, in spite of the spate of high profile police killings that have occurred under his watch. (The kind that Officer Tensing, the killer of Samuel Debose was wearing. The same body camera that showed his claims of fearing for his life were false, and that he straight up murdered a man sitting behind the wheel.)

In June 2015, Kasich expressed his “disappointment” at the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. When LGBT advocates still began asking if Ohio would do something to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation, since you can be fired for being gay in Ohio, Kasich was quoted as saying, “Let’s not create problems where there frankly is none- or very little.”

Once he was in the presidential race, Kasich did not want to be left behind by some of the more xenophobic rhetoric coming from people like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump about immigrants, so he decided to publicly state his opposition to birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants born in the United States, and the repeal of the 14th Amendment. His stance on immigration, frankly, has been all over the road, varying from that extreme to saying he supports solutions that could include amnesty.

Through the 2016 GOP Primary, John Kasich ate his way across the country while running for president, apparently biding his time by pretending to be the star of a Food Network show about our nation's small-town eateries and expecting that at some point, the GOP primary voting electorate would look at options worthy of a drop kick like Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump and go, "UGH, Okay, fine. I guess Kasich." They weren’t that into him, as he may not have been offensive as the front-runner, Donald Trump, but he still managed to piss off any variety of women or other supporters with careless gaffes. Like how he missed out on any potential endorsement from teachers’ groups when he was recorded confessing that if it were up to him, he would abolish teacher's lounges, altogether. Or how about when Kasich tried some voter outreach towards Hispanics, by talking about how nice the Hispanic maid that cleaned his hotel the previous night was. So nice... he actually tipped her.

[worstblogever]

And the misogyny. Oh, so much incidental misogyny. John Kasich was speaking at the University of Richmond, and a girl in the audience asked him about what his immigration policy will be like. He seemed to try and blow the young woman off, making a joke at her expense and belittling her inquiry by telling her, "I'm sorry, I don't have any tickets to Taylor Swift." Or while campaigning in Dubuque, Iowa, a prospective female voter asked Gov. Kasich about how he had managed to do reasonably well in balancing Ohio's state budget, and he responded by asking her, "Have you ever been on a diet?" At a town hall in Fairfax, Virginia, Kasich harkens back to the good old days, boasting about how women used to "leave their kitchens" to campaign for him. And at a CNN town hall, Kasich inexplicably started flirting with a questioner in response to her question of who he might pick as a vice-presidential running mate, asking her, “Are you available? You look great tonight." At yet another town hall in Waterton, Pennsylvania, Kasich was asked by a female audience member what policies he might enact to curtail the growing number of sexual assaults on college campuses to make her feel safer on campus, and he advised her to "not drink at parties" (This revealed that in Kasich's mind, the onus of preventing assault is entirely on the victim).

When the mathematical chance that Kasich might win the nomination was long gone, he was still campaigning, and on April Fool’s Day 2016, Kasich celebrated the holiday properly at another town hall and while bragging about his record as governor, touted several positive statistics. Oddly, he brings up the infant mortality rate not being as high as he would like, and laid the blame squarely on... minorities:

“The issue of infant mortality is a tough one. We have taken that on and one of the toughest areas to take on is in the minority community, And the community itself is going to have to have a better partnership with all of us to begin to solve that problem with infant mortality in the minority community, because we’re making gains in the majority community.”

Critics responded by pointing out that Kasich had cut funding to Planned Parenthood and several other health programs that helped young mothers and their children.

It wasn’t until May 4th, 2016 that John Kasich finally... FINALLY announced he was dropping out of the 2016 presidential race and was the last Trump opponent to concede defeat. He then reneged on his pledge to support the Republican Party's nominee from months earlier, and stubbornly refused to attend the Republican National Convention to endorse Donald Trump, or speak in any way… which is the only admirable thing we can say about him of late.

John Kasich, when we last left him, was busy sucking lemons to further embitter him, and had not made much of a peep since the 2016 Republican National Convention, when aides revealed that Mike Pence was not Donald Trump’s first choice for Vice-President, and Donald Trump, Jr. had called one of his aides to offer to make him “the most powerful vice-president in history”. We were wondering if Kasich would finish out his last two years as Ohio Governor quietly or not… and well… he’s still salty about losing to Trump, but still as spineless and full of s*** about taking a full-on stand against Trump’s bigotry.

Here’s how it works… when Donald Trump is at his weakest, his absolute lowest, like say when the Comey memos drop? That’s when John Kasich pops up on cable news to give an “I told you so.” When the day-to-day things like extremists and lunatics being placed in the Cabinet or on the Supreme Court? Silence. The most he’s stuck his neck out is to criticize the lengths of violating normal procedure Sen. Mitch McConnell went through to try to get a repeal of the Affordable Care Act passed. Even this week, as Donald Trump went out of his way to not criticize Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists and even in some places defend them, sure, John Kasich went on cable news to call his Trump Tower press conference “terrible”, but he balked at the thought of going to Republican leaders and ask them to denounce Trump saying, “Look, he’s our president, okay?”

Kasich’s going to create dissent within the GOP without looking like he’s doing it. Because, surprise, he sees a “moral imperative” to challenge Trump in 2020. And he’s not being subtle about going after Trump, after all, when Trump tried taking credit for Troy Balderson’s “way too narrow” victory in the special election, while blaming John Kasich for how bad turnout was in a conservative district on Twitter, Kasich responded by posting a video of Vladimir Putin laughing.

So now, thanks to term limits Kasich will be a “former Governor” when he goes on another road trip where he crams whatever he can into his face only to pause long enough to be a d*** to the nearest woman standing nearby. Great.

[Tendrin]

If you're going to repeatedly pose the same image, can you at least shrink it?

[Mecegirl]

If you're going to repeatedly pose the same image, can you at least shrink it?

Yeaaaah, this is why I blocked. Kinda hard to take someone seriously with all that.

[PaulBullion]

[JCAll]

Truth isn't truth. The President of the United States says..."He who smelt it, dealt it".
Truth isn't truth. The President of the United States says..."I'm Henry the Eighth I am".
Truth isn't truth. The President of the United States says..."Behold, the power of cheese".
Truth isn't truth. The President of the United States says..."I'm Batman".
Truth isn't truth. The President of the United States says..."If I did it, here's how it happened".

[Jack Dracula]

If you're going to repeatedly pose the same image, can you at least shrink it?

At least the doubled post problem has cleared up.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Anything to protect Caramel Caligula. Clearly Rudy’s gone senile as his endless defense of Trump has fried what few brain cells he has left. Sad.

[Jack Dracula]

That's how it works. You vote for people who you know will listen to you. So when they get into office, you send them letters, you make phone calls, you lobby and then those politicians know which bills to bring up to a vote. Sometimes, the activists have to write the bills themselves, but we still need the Congressional Representatives and Senators to bring the bills to a vote.

This is the point I've been trying to make. This is why overall strategy outweighs individual concerns during this particular election cycle. Voters need to think in terms of delayed, rather than immediate gratification.
You get your cookie after you finish your vegetables.