All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[PaulBullion]

I am so angry right now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Turkish jets already started attacking our Kurdish allies.

Lindsey Graham threatened to write Trump a stern letter.

I’m sure that has Trump all kinds of scared.

This **** is abominable. Nobody will trust the U.S. again after this unholy debacle.

[Enigma]

I was pretty sure that the tweet was from a parody account. I was double-checking and I'm still not 100% convinced that it isn't an elaborate joke. I mean, it would be comical if the consequences of it were not so real.

[Tami]

Exclusive: Official Who Heard Call Says Trump Got 'Rolled' By Turkey and 'Has No Spine'

Donald Trump got "rolled" by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a National Security Council source with direct knowledge of the discussions told Newsweek.

In a scheduled phone call on Sunday afternoon between President Trump and President Erdogan, Trump said he would withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria. The phone call was scheduled after Turkey announced it was planning to invade Syria, and hours after Erdogan reinforced his army units at the Syrian-Turkish border and issued his strongest threat to launch a military incursion, according to the National Security Council official to whom Newsweek spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. withdrawal plays into the hands of the Islamic State group, Damascus and Moscow, and the announcement left Trump's own Defense Department "completely stunned," said Pentagon officials. Turkey, like the United States, wants regime change in Syria. Russia and Iran support the Assad regime.

"President Trump was definitely out-negotiated and only endorsed the troop withdraw to make it look like we are getting something—but we are not getting something," the National Security Council source told Newsweek. "The U.S. national security has entered a state of increased danger for decades to come because the president has no spine and that's the bottom line."

Newsweek granted the National Security Council official anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The source said it would not be surprising to see a Turkish incursion in the next 24 to 96 hours.

[SquirrelMan]

Exclusive: Official Who Heard Call Says Trump Got 'Rolled' By Turkey and 'Has No Spine'

So is that official a "leaker" or a "whistleblower"?

[Tami]

So is that official a "leaker" or a "whistleblower"?

A News Source

[Mecegirl]

I’m sure that has Trump all kinds of scared.

This **** is abominable. Nobody will trust the U.S. again after this unholy debacle.

Yep. This and other things. So much damage in over 3 years. And whoever is president after him will have their hands full getting us back to zero that they won't have as much time to help us progress.

[Astral Disaster]

I’m sure that has Trump all kinds of scared.

This **** is abominable. Nobody will trust the U.S. again after this unholy debacle.

I'm surprised the Kurds trusted the U.S. again after the last time we screwed them over in '91, but I guess being a people without a country in a region where multiple parties want nothing more than your total annihilation you take what you can get. There's already speculation the Kurds will ally with Assad and Russia out of desperation for self-preservation.

http://socket.newrepublic.com/articl...wing-kurds-yet

[BeastieRunner]

Lindsey Graham threatened to write Trump a stern letter.

That will show him! A STERN letter is what we've needed all this time ...

-----

White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney predicts post-impeachment landslide of 45 state win.
Peach Pol Pot's orbit sure attracts the nutters.

McConnell Urges Trump to Keep U.S. Troops in Northern Syria: As bipartisan criticism greets Trump move, Senate majority leader cautions against ‘retreat.’
The Kurds have been our longest and best ally in the Middle East. They are now staring at genocide with this betrayal. The most interesting comment about this?

[B]oth Pelosi and Schumer’s offices say they weren’t briefed. McCarthy also said this morning he hadn’t talked to Trump about it and McConnell’s office won’t read out conversations, but both stated they were concerned when Trump met with Sean Hannity without staff.

Can't make this **** up folks.

[BeastieRunner]

Sasse, Collins, and Romney went to an all Dem senate panel today, FWIW.

Johnson, Blunt, and Graham have started to come out against Trump's antics overseas as they come to light.

Blunt called him a fool for damning Hillary for the same thing he's doing.

The cracks have started forming ...

[shooshoomanjoe]

Has anyone from the trump administration, outside the Muller investigation, been busted for the rampant corruption?

Trump’s Education Chief in Hot Seat Over Student-Debt Collection

"U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages."

[BeastieRunner]

Has anyone from the trump administration, outside the Muller investigation, been busted for the rampant corruption?

Trump’s Education Chief in Hot Seat Over Student-Debt Collection

"U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages."

Nader was arrested for child porn, trial is soon.

Wilbur Ross has something currently on-going related to insider trading, in addition to his Mueller stuff.

Stone is facing non-Mueller charges along with his witness tampering.

Peter Smith committed suicide when he was staring at racketeering charges.

Erik Prince has something going on ... again.

I guess it depends on what you call corruption?

[worstblogever]

On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of former Texas Congressman Steve Stockman, a raving lunatic conspiracy theorist who was booted from Congress after one terrifyingly insane term back from 1995-1997 who inexplicably found his way back into the Capitol building eighteen years later, getting back in from 2013-2015. Over the years Stockman has come up with ideas like forcing all members of Congress to live in dorms, posed wild accusations about “the truth about what happened in the Koresh compound”, and apparently was keeping corrospondence with some militia groups who tried warn him about the Oklahoma City bombing before it happened, and for whatever reason, he forwarded their fax to the NRA before the FBI. He has also defended the Liberty Lobby, a right-wing radio show that claims the Holocaust is a hoax against charges that they might be anti-Semitic, and called for all sex education to be removed from public schools. And that was in his FIRST term. In his second term these past few years, Rep. Stockman called for the impeachment of President Obama for using executive orders on gun control, compared Obama to Saddam Hussein, said Obama’s birth certificate is faked, and because he was born in Kenya he can’t be president, but while Ted Cruz’s birth certificate says he was born in Canada, he’s legit. Stockman showed an astounding level of ignorance about transgendered citizens by even being able to define even what the term “transgender” is, and distributed bumper stickers that said (and this is 100% true), “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted”.

On this date in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" featured a profile of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who through the years, has run for both Governor of Louisiana, and, in 2016, the Alt-Right movement and Donald Trump’s presidential run inspired him to run for U.S. Senate. Now, we’re not going to get into the details of every ugly thing David Duke has said over the past four decades, because we would be here all day... but suffice to say, there is no individual that has been so dedicated to hate that we can think of in American politics. Whether it’s for African Americans, Jews, immigrants, or the gay community, David Duke has been disparaging them since the 1970s in the name of white supremacy. We hope and pray David Duke is never a serious candidate, ever again until the day he dies.

On this date in 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" featured a profile of Bryce Marlatt, a former Oklahoma State Senator who served for almost a decade , chalking up a voting record to suppress to combat statistically non-existent cases of in-person voter fraud via stricter Voter ID laws meant to suppress the vote, voting to try and nullify federal firearms laws and the Affordable Care Act, a ban on Sharia Law, voting for a law to strip doctors that perform abortions of their medical license, and a vote for a Personhood bill. Where Marlatt was truly noteworthy was how after he was lucky enough to survive a DUI scandal back in 2014, when the police found him passed out behind the wheel of his parked vehicle, and when they asked him how many beers he had, he told them, “No more than anybody else. I had what you would call a bourbon and coke.” Based on how bloodshot his eyes were in the mugshot, it must have been in a very large glass, if not a bucket. Anyway, we’re guessing that Marlatt learned his lesson after this incident, and made it a point to always take a cab, or call an Uber to come pick him up after a night of hard drinking. But perhaps the Uber route wasn’t the way to go, because Bryce has such poor self-control that when he was picked up by a female Uber driver in July 2017, he went and sexually assaulted the poor woman, grabbing her forcefully and starting to kiss her on the neck while she was trying to drive. Why, would you believe that a “family values” Republican who’s a husband and father of four would act in such a way? On September 6th, 2017, Bryce Marlatt was officially charged in the case, and he resigned six days later. As it stands, Bryce Marlatt is going to be real busy trying to keep himself out of jail, if not off of any sex offenders’ lists. And that’s not exactly the sort of thing that would be good on a resume of someone seeking higher office, which he would have to do because he’d be term-limited in the Oklahoma state legislature. Odds are, this guy’s career is good and over, so we'll set aside his profile to go ahead and take a look at a different kooky Republican today instead.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date one year ago that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled former Pennsylvania State Senator Scott Wagner, who mounted a run to try to become the next Governor of Pennsylvania in the 2018 mid-term elections, running against Democratic incumbent Tom Wolf. As a legislator, Wagner has served since 2014, and is considers himself 100% Pro-Life, which is hard to argue as he supports even fetal heartbeat bills that effectively ban abortion at 6 weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant, and sponsored a bill to outlaw D&E abortions prior to 20 weeks. His fanaticism about a woman’s right to choose, however, is far from the only reason we’re highlighting him today.

Let’s start with how his campaign kicked off in a less-than-inspiring manner, as while addressing a country club crowd, Wagner realized that he was being filmed by a progressive activist… so he threatened to confiscate their camera (which, he has no legal right to do), and then backed that threat up, snatching it away. The activist then wisely pulled out their cell phone and began recording with that, demanding that Wagner return their actual camera, at which point, Wagner physically assaulted them in an effort to get the phone away.

So… that’s nuts, right? Like, you would think he would have an aide or staffer handle this sort of thing and be subtle about it, but nope. And we’re just warming up.

As the GOP Primary went on, at one point Scott Wagner argued that “teachers are overpaid”, which runs contrary to most of the grassroots movements for raises for teachers that have spawned in the past 18 months or so, and is incredibly hard to justify based on the actual math involved. Not that the math matters to Wagner, though, because he overstated the average teacher’s salary by roughly $18,000 a year.

Anyway, even with some serious red flags popping up along the way, Scott Wagner won the GOP nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania with 44% of the vote in a three way primary. He then resigned from the Pennsylvania State Senate to focus full time on his gubernatorial campaign, and honestly, based on what we’re about to talk about, it might be better if he’d focused on being a State Senator, and campaigned saying how important that job is.

There’s people who deny the existence of climate change, and then there’s crackpots with cockamamie junk scientific explanations for why it’s not a thing. Scott Wagner is decidedly in the latter category, as he has not only addressed increasing temperatures by falsely claiming that the Earth is getting closer to the sun, but that some of the warming we’re seeing is from “body heat” from rising populations. In March of 2018, at a town hall, a potential voter asked him how he could be so clueless about the environment, as she had grave concerns as to what the Earth might be like if something wasn’t done to halt climate change, and Wagner just decided to go with condescension in his reply, telling her, “You’re real young and naïve.”

Wondering how Wagner is on LGBTQ issues? Well, for a time, there were claims out there that Scott Wagner might actually be a bit moderate when it came to folks from alternative lifestyles, but then he came out in support of a ban on same sex marriage that would, of course, be unconstitutional via the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling,and in August 2018, he was recorded voicing his support for transphobic bathroom bans, citing people’s “plumbing” to justify his bigotry:

"It’s real simple. If you’re born with male plumbing, you use the men’s room. If you’re born with female plumbing, you use the ladies’ room. Period.”

Now, if you think that was a gaffe, there is also the fact that Wagner was the only candidate in the race to refuse to release his tax returns, and his reason was that union employees at his private business might use that information to squeeze a higher salary out of him:

"If I make money or don't make money that's my business. And you know what? If I disclose those tax returns, union representatives get a hold of my tax returns, go around to my employees' homes at night and say, 'Hey Mrs. Jones, how much does your husband make?' She goes, 'Well he makes this.' 'Well this guy makes a lot more.'"

Instead, he just comes off as a Trump Republican, following the lead of Mango Mussolini on tax returns. And, not just on his taxes. Because in September 2018, Wagner decided to share with potential voters his thoughts on immigrants and Muslims, and… well… he lifted his talking points from InfoWars, and compared immigrants and Muslims to raccoons in a racist diatribe.

You’re probably thinking that doing something that racist almost certainly would be the dumbest thing a candidate can say as the elections… but Wagner still wasn’t done. Now trailing far behind Gov. Tom Wolf in polls, he thought he would joke about the deficit by saying “Russia will help me with Tom Wolf,” and “I’ll call Paul Manafort if I have to.” (Manafort, of course, had already been found guilty on several counts of fraud, and was in the process of flipping and pleading guilty to a myriad of other crimes in the Muller investigation.)

And Wagner’s last ditch campaign ad was to embody Judge Smails from Caddyshack, and threaten to stop on Tom Wolf’s face wearing golf spikes. Seriously.

Suffice to say, Scott Wagner lost in his match-up against Tom Wolf, getting 40.7% of the vote. He is now out of office, and it seems like we have seen the last of him.

[Mister Mets]

Twitter Thread Link

Seth Abramson doesn't seem like the ideal person to convey what Republicans really believe. He has had issues with inaccuracies in the past, often pandering to "The Resistance" with out there theories that just don't end up happening.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...-not-ever.html

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/tr...-le-1793957969

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...y-true-or-not/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-media/585721/

But there is also the problem that a guy who is quite busy on left-wing twitter, in addition to being a journalism professor and writing two books on Trump's international ties probably doesn't have the time to understand the views of a group he doesn't belong to.

Republicans don't have to believe in a permanent fissure if they fight Trump in order to believe it's a bad outcome for Democrats to get a wave election. A temporary split could still be pretty bad for our policy objectives.

It's worth noting that the top search results for Republicans and "schism theory" are Seth Abramson's own comments on the matter.

He seems to exaggerate the significance of 30 Republican Senators being willing to vote against Trump if it were anonymous. Much of that comment (which is from Mike Murphy relaying what he claims a Senator said rather than "several behind the scenes" reports) is due to a preference for partisan advantage. Abramson recognizes that many Republican officeholders would be happier working with Pence; they wouldn't care about whether Trump truly deserves to be removed from office.

Likewise, there would have been legitimate difficulties with getting rid of Trump after he won the primary. It goes against voters' sense of fair play. Trump's willingness to wreck things does get to why Republicans don't want to piss off. He will not be an Al Franken who can be persuaded to resign for the good of the party, but that's not the only downside to dumping a man who won 14,015,993 primary votes.

The arguments about the failings of the party are a bit exaggerated. We do live in a country with an electoral college so the wins of Bush and Trump are legitimate. Both also came after major last-minute scandals involving flawed candidates. If McCain were the nominee in 2000, it probably would've been a landslide. Likewise, the weakest presidential candidate in generations barely winning a presidential election suggests that his party is in a position of strength.

Republicans have also won the popular vote in US House elections in 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2014 and 2016, which isn't a mark of a party dying for 30 years.

Abramson suggests that what America stands for is "the rule of law, free and fair elections, easy ballot access, transparent government, an unbiased media" and I'm curious when we had settled that discussion. These are good ideals, although there are plenty of times Democrats have been on the other side. There are a lot of claims about media bias, while Democrats are often opaque when they're in charge. Different people are going to have different views on what America stands for. What Sarah Palin believes America stands for is different from what Bernie Sanders believes America stands for, to say nothing of what Stacey Abrams thinks America stands for, or what Paul Ryan thinks America stands for, or what Joe Manchin thinks America stands for, or what Joe Rogan thinks America stands for, or what your apolitical neighbor who can't name a Supreme Court justice thinks America stands for. There are plenty of other concepts that are seen as emblematic of America, sometimes incorrectly, like politics as a temporary profession, freedom from government interference/ regulation, an emphasis on self-reliance rather than the safety net as a hammock, adherence to the written constitution, and Judeochristian values. Abramson seems to look at a complex unsettled question in the lens of hating Republicans circa 2019. One of the main things that makes the country unique is the diversity of viewpoints on tough questions (IE- pro-life VS pro-choice, the degree to which immigrants should assimilate.)