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  1. #7951
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    House GOP to Run in 2020 on Reducing the Debt They Helped Grow

    House Republicans plan to run on tried-and-true issues in 2020: repealing Obamacare and reducing the national debt, even though the GOP fell short of both goals the last time the party had full control of Washington.

    “The first thing we would do is make sure our debt is taken care of,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters during a meeting of party members in Baltimore to work on their election-year agenda.
    This week, the annual budget deficit reached $1 trillion under President Donald Trump’s watch. When Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House last year, they enacted tax cuts estimated to add $1.5 trillion in deficits over 10 years.

    Republicans plan to reduce the debt by repealing Obamacare, McCarthy said, a day after Democratic presidential candidates vowed to greatly expand government’s role in health care during their third debate.

    Democrats view health care and the defense of Obamacare as the key issue that sealed their takeover of the House in the 2018 election.
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  2. #7952
    Ultimate Member Tendrin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    I've had Briscoe Cain in my queue since he pulled a gun on Democrats about a year or so ago outside the Texas state legislature. His spotlight is due on... *checks* Christmas Eve of this year.
    That does seem pretty queue worthy and I recall reading about it way back then. Just... frigging yikes.

  3. #7953
    Ultimate Member Tendrin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    What could Obama have done that would have achieved different policy results?
    I don't know, Mets. Can you tell me what would make your party a less racist dumpster fire? Obviously, trying to meet Republicans by offering up to implement their wn policies to try to accomplish something with bipartisan support didn't work.

  4. #7954
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    I will point out that most people advocating impeachment aren't suggesting that it will pass the McConnel Senate. They are suggesting a moral argument. If you can't impeach Trump then congress is truly supine and fangless in the face of a lawless and corrupt executive. There are understandable reasons to slow roll it, but while they are, trump is packing the courts with lifetime appointments of some truly absurd ideologues and doing his level best to raze the future that future generations could have had.

    The dude is eminently impeachable on a whole lot of grounds and if we had a Senate majority that cared about the rule of law more than they do packing the judiciary with conservative ideologues and authoritarian apologists it would be a done deal.

    And don't give me 'oh, but then we'd get Pence'. We already have Pence. He's already writing the transphobic policies coming out of this administration that some people on this board liked to assure us was never going to happen because Trump was from New York.
    One guy's take...

    It isn't even just that.

    If Democrats drag their feet on whatever it is they are doing and come up with anything except "Impeach..." by the General, they are handing Trump "Democrats Have Nothing, And Have Always Known They Had Nothing." to run on during the General.

    They need to figure out where they are going, and hit the gas on getting there.

  5. #7955
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Except congress IS fangless and supine.

    The system DOESNT WORK. Your expecting people to vote against their better interests. Not happening.

  6. #7956

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    I heard Samantha Bee comment on Sen. Joni Ernst on her Wednesday show by reminding everyone she campaigned on castrating pigs, and then saying, "She makes your laws now."

    And I immediately thought, "She doesn't. The Senate doesn't make any laws anymore, they confirm a budget and that's about it. Otherwise, they're just around to rubber-stamp in Trump appointees and judges, no matter how racist, sexist, and/or blatantly unqualified they might be. The Senate had to be shamed into passing healthcare for 9/11 First Responders. McConnell doesn't allow Joni Ernst to do anything."

    And that's the problem right now. Democrats want to actually govern, and Republicans want to upend the entire functionality of our government because they can't do ALL of the things they would like to do.
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  7. #7957
    Extraordinary Member PaulBullion's Avatar
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    So, step 1: Write a memo saying that a sitting president cannot be indicted because the mechanism for that is impeachment.
    Step 2: Make sure impeachment can't work by denying evidence to Congress.
    "How does the Green Goblin have anything to do with Herpes?" - The Dying Detective

    Hillary was right!

  8. #7958
    Astonishing Member SquirrelMan's Avatar
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    Fake news alert:

    Conservative Party Facebook advert altered BBC headline to make critical article look like praise.

    An advert featured the BBC logo with a headline saying "£14 billion pound cash boost for schools".

    But a BBC story linked in the advert said the figure was £7.1bn.

    Fact-checking charity Full Fact said political parties should not "misrepresent the work of independent journalists in this way".

    A Conservative Party spokesman said: "It was not our intention to misrepresent by using this headline copy with the news link, where the BBC's £7bn figure is clearly displayed, but we are reviewing how our advert headlines match accompanying links."

    Clicking on the advert took readers to the original story on the BBC News website by Sean Coughlan, where it had the headline "Multi-billion pound cash boost for schools".

    BBC analysis in the story from 30 August queried the government's claims about its additional funding for schools.
    Do Brexiters have anything left but lies and distortions?

  9. #7959
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SquirrelMan View Post
    Fake news alert:

    Conservative Party Facebook advert altered BBC headline to make critical article look like praise.



    Do Brexiters have anything left but lies and distortions?
    Of course not. Brexit is nothing but lies and distortions. People will die over it but these fools are gullible idiots.

  10. #7960
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Trump’s Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable

    Questioning “mutual assured destruction,” Charles Kupperman called nuclear conflict “in large part a physics problem.” Jesus Christ. So, Trump ditched Johnny Warhawk while THIS ******* is in his cabinet? And no, nuclear war is NOT winnable, not for the U.S., not for the Russiaans, not for ANYBODY.

    **********

    Ex-Ethics Chief Breaks Down Why The Donald Trump-Turnberry Story Is Such A ‘Big Deal’

    Walter Shaub asked in a lengthy Twitter thread if Trump has “created a culture where officials believe he wants people to stay at his properties.” Unfortunately, the GOP will ignore this like every other instance of Trump grifting like a boss to line his pockets.

    **********

    New York Accuses Purdue Pharma Family Of Secretly Siphoning Off Fortune

    The Sacklers, the family behind OxyContin, allegedly wired around a billion dollars to their own bank accounts while defending their role in the opioid crisis. This is smarmy as hell.

    **********

    Muslim New Jersey Mayor Says He Was Interrogated About Terrorists At JFK Airport

    Mohamed Khairullah says Customs and Border Protection agents held him for three hours and confiscated his phone for nearly two weeks. Talk about dreadful.

    **********

    Actually, Pete Buttigieg, Sept. 12, 2001, Was Bad

    Democratic candidates met for a debate one day after the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. During his opening statement, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in the 21st-century “West Wing” style he’s both loved and derided for, offered that he’d been “thinking about Sept. 12. The way it felt. When for a moment, we came together as a country. Imagine if we had been able to sustain that unity. Imagine what would be possible right now with ideas that are bold enough to meet the challenges of our time.”

    It’s not an uncommon sentiment. Former President Barack Obama tweeted Wednesday that “we also remember the spirit of unity and togetherness that defined the weeks and months after.” But that evocation — anchored on real memories of people lining up to give blood and volunteer to clean up ground zero — also buries the ugly legacy of those attacks. The day after Sept. 11, first responders were still digging bodies out of the rubble of the World Trade Center towers. Some would contract devastating illnesses from exposure to toxins and spend years begging lawmakers to help pay for their health care.

    Meanwhile, officials in the highest levels of government made plans to launch new wars and tear away civil liberties protections. Hate and fear drove anti-Muslim hysteria. If you want to know why so many architects of this poisonous legacy currently enjoy comfortable think tank and cable news sinecures, it’s because both parties have chosen to forget just as much as they fondly remember.
    Avatar: Here's to the late, great Steve Dillon. Best. Punisher. Artist. EVER!

  11. #7961

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    In 2014, 2015, as well as 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of David Vitter, the former U.S. Senator from Louisiana, a man implicated in the D.C. Madam Scandal several years back who according to some of the prostitutes he frequented, enjoys being diapered like a baby. Now, as if that weren’t enough to open and close his profile, you have to also consider he’s enough of a partisan hack to have been only one of two senators who voted against Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State in 2009 (the other was Jim DeMint), he opposed the Franken Amendment (which was written to punish military contractors who try to cover up sexual assaults overseas to Americans), and has been trying to destroy Planned Parenthood long before the manufactured “scandal” over doctored videos that we saw here in 2015. In spite of his main “job creating” in Washington having been to find a niche for certain sex workers, Sen. Vitter won re-election in 2010 during the Tea Party Wave by running some of the most jaw-dropping racist anti-immigrant ads of that campaign in a very crowded field. Somehow, don’t ask us how, he survived a prostitution scandal for almost eight years, and actually had the gall to hope everyone just forgot about it and ran for Governor of Louisiana in 2015, attempting to replace Bobby Jindal in that role. He lost that election narrowly to John Bel Edwards, and after completely exhausting his campaign war chest in the quixotic effort, he opted to finally retire to go home and presumably wear adult-size pampers around the house.


    On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled, the U.S. House Representative from Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Karen Handel, who narrowly won the special election for her seat over John Ossoff last year. She had previously finished third in the GOP Primary in the 2014 elections behind David Perdue while trying to win office to the U.S. Senate from there, in 2010, lost a squeaker against Nathan Deal to be elected Governor of Georgia. In the 2017 special election race to replace former Congressman Tom Price (the one-time Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services prior to his resignation), Handel identified supporting anti-abortion efforts, repealing the Affordable Care Act, constructing Donald Trump's border wall, simplifying the tax code, and increasing national defense spending as policy priorities if she would reach office.

    Handel's most recent work included taking an executive job at the Susan B. Komen Foundation (the charity that gets less than stellar ratings for actually putting its incoming money towards efforts to cure breast cancer) where she deliberately tried to cut donations being made to Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screenings by the organization, because she drinks the GOP Kool-Aid and doesn't like that a minute portion of their budget goes towards paying for abortions. She actually resigned after Susan G. Komen reversed her decision, but admits what she did in a book she wrote, "Planned Bullyhood", where she paints herself as quite the martyr in the story.

    Handel's name also came up a lot at the Justice Department's Voting Rights division from 2007 to 2010 while she served as Georgia's Secretary of State, because of her efforts to purge voter rolls repeatedly to try and insure that Democrats couldn't flip Georgia blue in any presidential election. In lower level races, Handel worked to literally block Democratic candidates from getting their names on the ballot. Hell, at one point in the build-up to her race against John Ossoff, she responded to the news that a judge would allow 8,000 voters who registered late to vote in the election by criticizing him and sending out a fundraising e-mail about how unfair all those actions promoting participation in our democracy were.

    And Karen Handel is hardly sympathetic on LGBTQ issues, as evidenced in 2010 when she openly discussed banning gay adoption because she felt not only would two gay parents be not a good situation, but even "a situation where the parents are not married, as in one man and one woman, is not the best household for a child." She wouldn't even support straight parents with a kid out of wedlock. But did she evolve on the issue by 2017? HELL NAW as can be seen in this video where a constituent who admits to being conservative herself talks about how she has a gay daughter who might want to adopt one day, and asks if Handel supports the concept of someone being able to adopt a child regardless of their sexual orientation. Handel tells her with a smile and shrug, “my faith calls me to a different place on that issue,” because her faith apparently teachers her the virtues of bigotry and ignorance. Handel then scurries away like there might be some gay she could catch off this woman via her daughter. Both of these incidents enraged Georgia's Log Cabin Republicans, who supposedly had Karen Handel as a member of their group in 2002, and have only watched her consistently argue against them having, y'know, rights.

    In the final debate between Democratic candidate John Ossoff, Karen Handel shocked everyone present during what should have been a softball question on the minimum wage, when she not only opposed an increase to it, but phrased her argument as being that she "did not support a livable wage". Karen Handel, ladies and gents... she doesn't even care whether a working family can survive or not, the hand of the free market should get to decide that. Hell, even 55% of REPUBLICANS support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 at the time of her remarks.

    After finishing second in the initial election against John Ossoff, with all of the other Republicans out of the way, Handel won with 51% of the vote on election day, in the most expensive House race in American history, where the national GOP spent millions to keep her afloat against all the individual donations Ossoff received. This was with the help of last minute ads that bizarrely tried tying John Ossoff to the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise. Her performance, while a win... was not a good bellwether for Republicans, who yes, held a seat, but a seat that has averaged twenty point wins for Republicans since the 1970s, and has a +8 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

    And all the money Republicans spent to hold onto this seat proved to be only a temporary patch, as in the 2018 elections, Democrat Lucy McBath upset Karen Handel, and flipped Georgia’s 6th blue, with Handel only getting 49% of the vote. She’ll be looking to avenge that loss in another pricey match-up in 2020, but will still have to survive a crowded GOP Primary to get the chance.
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  12. #7962
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jetengine View Post
    Except congress IS fangless and supine.

    The system DOESNT WORK. Your expecting people to vote against their better interests. Not happening.
    Speaking for myself, not really.

    Nine times out of ten even "The Good Guys" are going to look out for their political career before they go messing with their slice of the pie to look out for the citizen's best interest.

    All that said, Hickenlooper did just make a move that was probably not in his best interest. It's worth giving that sort of thing a bit of credit where it's due.

  13. #7963
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by numberthirty View Post
    Speaking for myself, not really.

    Nine times out of ten even "The Good Guys" are going to look out for their political career before they go messing with their slice of the pie to look out for the citizen's best interest.

    All that said, Hickenlooper did just make a move that was probably not in his best interest. It's worth giving that sort of thing a bit of credit where it's due.
    Best interests in this case isnt "My political career" but "Help defund, deregulate and destroy the nation for my own greed"

    Because most of the **** getting put through isnt even about conservative ideology, its about hurting people and getting rich.

  14. #7964
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    I don't know, Mets. Can you tell me what would make your party a less racist dumpster fire? Obviously, trying to meet Republicans by offering up to implement their wn policies to try to accomplish something with bipartisan support didn't work.
    That doesn't seem to answer my question.

    But one thing that would help is the left being more judicious about allegations of racism. When they get it wrong, it gets harder to take it seriously.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/o...ionalism-.html

    But if you want evidence that unjust delegimitization is happening as well, consider that in the very same period that the email exposé appeared, a succession of mainstream media outlets served up bogus accusations of racism against prominent and not-so-prominent conservatives.

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    First Rachel Maddow’s show ran a segment accusing a judicial nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Steven Menashi (an old friend, full disclosure), of highbrow white supremacy for a 2010 law review essay arguing that Israel’s status as a Jewish homeland is normal rather than dangerously illiberal, because liberal democracies the world over often have similar ethnic identities and foundations. (The Maddow segment neither mentioned that Menashi is Jewish nor that Israel was his primary subject.)

    Then The Washington Post published an op-ed attacking J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” (also my friend, full disclosure), as a racist for a speech in which he worried about America’s plunging birthrate. In that case The Post had to run a correction, not least because one of the Vance speeches cited in the essay specifically attacked Republicans for being insufficiently sympathetic to … African-American single mothers.

    Then a couple of days later The Post published a peculiar essay by Eve Fairbanks, a usually judicious liberal writer, accusing a group of mostly anti-Trump conservatives and centrists (including, full disclosure, my colleague Bari Weiss) of somehow adopting the rhetoric of Confederates and slaveholders when they argue that left-wing orthodoxies in the intelligentsia are oppressively stifling debate.

    And then, just Tuesday morning, Bloomberg Law published a hit piece on an obscure Labor Department appointee, Leif Olson (fullest disclosure: I had never heard of him before), which alleged that he had posted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook. Olson was forced to resign before it became apparent that the post in question was mocking white supremacists and anti-Semites, the reporter having apparently failed to recognize crushingly obvious sarcasm in his haste to shame a bigot.

    I’m not interested in using this sequence of smears to invite pity for the plight of conservatives in the age of Trump. Olson deserves an apology and reinstatement because of the brazen absurdity of the Bloomberg Law piece, but generally prominent authors and journalists and judicial nominees have to live with a certain rough-and-tumble, and avoid claiming persecution unless there’s a literal fatwa on their heads.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  15. #7965
    Ultimate Member Tendrin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    That doesn't seem to answer my question.

    But one thing that would help is the left being more judicious about allegations of racism. When they get it wrong, it gets harder to take it seriously.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/o...ionalism-.html
    Oh, get ooff it with this nonsense. No one who supports the current Republican party gets to talk to anybody about being judicious about accusations of racism. And to indulge your question would have been a waste of my time, since 'different policy outcomes' had little to do with the point I raised in the first place. I rerierate: Your party is a racist dumpster fire that makes it very difficult for anyone to take your complaints about being 'unfairly tarnished' seriously.
    Last edited by Tendrin; 09-14-2019 at 10:01 AM.

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