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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Michael Cohen Told Congress A Trump Lawyer Urged Him To Lie About Moscow Project

Trump’s longtime fixer said Jay Sekulow told him to lie about the timeline for talks about a Moscow Trump Tower. Honor among scumbags, yo!

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GOP Senator Says Trump’s Trade War Has Farmers On ‘Verge Of Financial Collapse’

Jerry Moran of Kansas urged Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to find a better response than unreliable government aid. Even though farmers are hurting, it's hard to feel sorry for them since they did vote for Trump.

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Judge Rules Against Trump In Financial Records Dispute With Congress

A federal judge said Monday that the president cannot block a House subpoena to Mazars USA, an accounting firm for Trump and his businesses. Your move, Donnie.

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Guatemalan Teen Becomes 5th Migrant Child To Die After Being Detained By Border Patrol

The 16-year-old was found “unresponsive” during a welfare check. Of course, Republicans will say, "Well, if these kids never crossed the border illegally, they wouldn't have died".

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Justin Amash Fires Back At GOP Critics Of Trump Impeachment

The Republican congressman once again made his case after previously tweeting that the president had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Amazing isn't it, how gutless and cowardly Republicans refused to see the same facts in the Mueller report that Amash had.

[worstblogever]

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Jim Buchy, a rather controversial member of the Ohio House of Representatives who served 9 terms from 1983-2000, and then after a decade out of office, was the hand-picked appointment of Gov. John Kasich to replace Jim Zehringer in his position in 2010. Buchy has continued running for office every two years since, putting his total number of terms in office to 12 over the past 34 years. Since beginning his second run in the Ohio state legislature, he has been criticized for making Birther jokes, trying to outlaw abortion in Ohio unless a mother's life is at risk, as well as a repeatedly pushing for a fetal heartbeat abortion ban that would place the ban on the procedure at 6 weeks (in other words, unconstitutional via Roe v. Wade). Buchy has also pushed for curtailing voting rights, voted to allow school employees to carry firearms on campus in that time, supported legislation to try and stop Syrian refugees from being resettled in his state, and supported "religious freedom" legislation. He thankfully has chosen to not run for re-election in 2016, and being that he is in his late seventies now, it looks like he's done in politics.

One year ago today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Rick Womick, a former Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 2010 to 2016. The Volunteer State has no shortage of GOP extremists, but Womick in particular, took it to a new level on various occasions, perhaps no more noteworthy than the time he reacted to the news that Gov. Bill Haslam would follow the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by suddenly calling for his party's own governor to be impeached. Womick's not at all hyperbolic statement went as follows, “And where is Tennessee’s leadership…oh that’s right…our Governor bowed down to the five self appointed gods in black robes just minutes after they issued their ‘opinion! He changed Tennessee state law and our State Constitution without ever consulting with the General Assembly.” Besides that huge civics class fail from Womick, only a year prior he declared Haslam a "traitor to our party" over what he called efforts by a political-action committee run by supporters to defeat opponents of Common Core education standards. Now, the end of Rick Womick's political career may have come from him lashing out repeatedly at his own governor, but maybe the Tennessee GOP should have realized he was unstable prior to that. Back on Veteran's Day in 2011, he figured it was a good time to call for all Muslims to be kicked out of the U.S. Military, because as he opined in a paranoid rant, “if they truly are a devout Muslims, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.” He then went on to further stoke Islamophobic hatred by declaring Allah is a "false God", and claiming that he had now ensured there was a "fatwa on my head". It further devolved from there into conspiracy theory territory where he said Iran had planned a "population Jihad" where they would take over the United States by pushing for Muslim immigrants to head here from all over the Middle East, and that had been their plan since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Only four month later, in March of 2012, Rick Womick was ranting about a whole other conspiracy theory, this time the threat of the United Nations' Agenda 21, which were no longer a bunch of environmental recommendations to be adopted, but instead, a sinister plot for global domination and to, as Womick explained, "a step by step methodical process that denies United States citizens their property rights". Somehow, even after all that, Womick got re-elected to a second term in office. And in it, he started things off by once claiming in a hearing that the city of Shelbyville, Tennessee, was the victim of a "electromagnetic pulse bomb" detonated by unnamed terrorists for uncertain reasons. Now, the idea that the "terrorists" targeted the Tennessee state legislators is weird (you'd think using it in a major metropolitan area, if it existed, would cause more chaos), but nobody else seemed to know what the hell Womick was talking about but he insisted it was "in the paper". We don't really feel the need to get too much farther into this head case, but will note his voting record features support for all of the kookiest ideas to come out of the Tennessee state legislature from its past three sessions. Whether it's trying to restrict abortion or voting rights, nullify the Affordable Care Act, teach Creationism in schools, making the Bible the state book, allow guns in schools, or preserve the names of Confederate monuments... it makes us glad that Womick’s career has come to an end.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Only in political threads. He does post elsewhere on the boards.

He's something of a regular on the anime thread in the TV/Movie section.

[worstblogever]

It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 6th District, Bill Johnson, who was first elected in… wait for it… the 2010 Tea Party Wave. He’s managed to win four more elections, which has a lot to do with the fact that Ohio’s 6th has a +16 lean in Congress. He’s usually not known for awkward quotes, and he has the benefit of providing absolutely no name recognition. Honestly, is there anything more generic of a name for a Congressman than BILL JOHNSON? That stands out as much as it would if he was one of the townspeople named Johnson in Blazing Saddles.

We give some points on the dumb scale to Johnson for denying climate change science. But it’s not just that he waves away the facts, it’s that he claims he’s an expert because he says he is a “scientist” himself. For the record, Bill Johnson’s “science background” is a degree in computer science… that was awarded to him back in 1979, quite the golden age for high level technology. And it was that resume that Johnson used to stifle an actual scientist from the EPA in a Congressional hearing.

What concerns us more, though, is the level of Islamophobia that seems to have taken root in Rep. Johnson over the past few years. You might wonder why the guy would support Donald Trump’s bigoted idea of a Muslim travel ban, but then you realize, Trump is hardly the only bigot who he’s palling around with these days. Johnson has been identified as one of two GOP members of Congress allying himself with Daniel Pipes, an anti-Muslim activist who has for decades been maligning practitioners of Islam, and after the Oklahoma City Bombing, insisted it was carried out by Muslims, and not anti-government militia goons Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Bill Johnson and Ron DeSantis both co-founded the “Congressional Israel Victory Caucus”, which advises extreme action to help Israel wipe out Palestine, including withholding water from Palestinian settlers. Delightful. Don’t see how that could be a reason that peace won’t be brought to the MidEast, y’know, trying to get people on one side to die of thirst.

During Johnson’s first eight years in office, he wasted years of taxpayer time trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, twice voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, voted to shut down the government in 2013, and in 2018, when his party controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, and voted for the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.

Bill Johnson coasted to re-election with 69% of the vote in 2018, and has resumed being a partisan bag of d***s:

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Johnson voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Bill Johnson votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Johnson votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Bill Johnson is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-autorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).

Bill Johnson is currently chaining himself to the legacy of Donald Trump, responding to the Mueller report back on April 18th, 2019, by saying it revealed, “no collusion, no obstruction, no anything”, in spite of all the times that Robert Mueller’s report mentioned things Trump did that qualify as obstruction of justice, all of the hundreds of links between the Trump campaign and Russian oligarchs, and the nameless criminal activities that he forwarded to other prosecutors.
https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/po...6-c2d5b9004ddd
We can only hope that in 2020, the people of Ohio’s 6th remember that Johnson and his party put a criminal and traitor above the security of the American people, and undo the mistake they’ve made for a decade.
 

[Tendrin]

The Republican congressman once again made his case after previously tweeting that the president had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Amazing isn't it, how gutless and cowardly Republicans refused to see the same facts in the Mueller report that Amash had.

You know, what really frustrates me in all this is when I see ostensible leftists praising Amash for his 'principled' stand. This is a guy who votes against clean water for Flint and all the other things WBE has catalogued over the years. Don't lend him credibility he doesn't deserve for doing the bare minimum. Let him sink or swim on his own. Credibility, once lent, can not easily be revoked and we don't need to build this guy up. He's horrible and awful to the highest degree and a truly terrible example of a human being. I will welcome any and all opposition to the criminal in chief but I'm not going to help Amash or Kristol or any NeverTrumper conservative rehabilitate their image in an attempt to wash,say, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis off their hands.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

She is very smart, shrewd, manipulative, ruthless, dishonest, conniving and overambitious. If she had her way, she can get the Twenty-second Amendment repealed. (It is possible to repeal an amendment like when they repealed the 18th Amendment with the Twenty-first Amendment.)

You basically nearly described Donald Trump . So again whay makes this any different ? Only Hillary isn't a big moron and reminds us of that daily.

Why does anyone listen to Zet ? Dudes nothing more then a Troll.

Unfortunately, his views are representative of a lot of people who think they're 'liberal'.

Sadly its true and the worst part is the outlandish lies they utterly eat with a spoon as we see. Like they are fed this constantly and yet believe it. If you counter and show facts they get mad and proclaim .."I'll believe what I want..." The end result is shrug your shoulders and move on.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You know, what really frustrates me in all this is when I see ostensible leftists praising Amash for his 'principled' stand. This is a guy who votes against clean water for Flint and all the other things WBE has catalogued over the years. Don't lend him credibility he doesn't deserve for doing the bare minimum. Let him sink or swim on his own. Credibility, once lent, can not easily be revoked and we don't need to build this guy up. He's horrible and awful to the highest degree and a truly terrible example of a human being. I will welcome any and all opposition to the criminal in chief but I'm not going to help Amash or Kristol or any NeverTrumper conservative rehabilitate their image in an attempt to wash,say, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis off their hands.

Oh, I understand Amash is no saint, far from it, but, compared to all those spineless Republicans who continue looking the ignoring the obvious conclusions from the Mueller report, he almost qualifies. Note, I said "almost". Meanwhile....

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Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment

House Democratic leaders sparred internally on Monday over whether to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies rejecting the call to move forward for now, according to multiple sources.

Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) — all members of the Democratic leadership — pushed to begin impeachment proceedings during a leadership meeting in Pelosi's office, said the sources. Pelosi and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) — one of her key allies and a member of leadership herself — rejected their calls, saying Democrats' message is being drowned out by the fight over possibly impeaching Trump.

And in a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee meeting, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) stood up and demanded Trump's impeachment. Pelosi then countered, "This is not about politics, it's about what's best for the American people," said a member who attended the meeting.

While Pelosi and her top Democrats argue that a majority of Democrats don't want to impeach, she is under heavy pressure from some of her most hardline members to move more forcefully against Trump.

Pelosi pushed back on Cohen during the meeting and his assertion that she was simply afraid impeachment would cost her the House majority.

Several members and aides said an impeachment inquiry resolution could be introduced in the House Judiciary Committee in the next several days, spurring more Democratic debate over how to respond to Trump.

During the Steering and Policy Committee meeting, Cohen said President Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings “over sex” while Trump is “raping the country,” according to two sources in the room. Cohen later confirmed his remarks.

I haven't always agreed with Pelosi on everything, but I'm in lockstep with her here. Using the impeachment hammer on Trump serves no purpose, and could actually derail gains the Democrats made since November. An impeachment vote in the House would only be overturned by the cowardly and complicit Republicans in the Senate, and would certainly add grist to Trump's claim of being the target of a witch hunt, thus gaining him more support for 2020 from sympathetic followers, and perhaps even from independents who may think Democrats went too far by constantly harassing him. As of right now, the only way to get rid of Trump is to vote his ass out of office, THEN go after him in the courts once he no longer has the presidency and the GOP to shield him.

[Tami]

Oh, I understand Amash is no saint, far from it, but, compared to all those spineless Republicans who continue looking the ignoring the obvious conclusions from the Mueller report, he almost qualifies. Note, I said "almost". Meanwhile....

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Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment



I haven't always agreed with Pelosi on everything, but I'm in lockstep with her here. Using the impeachment hammer on Trump serves no purpose, and could actually derail gains the Democrats made since November. An impeachment vote in the House would only be overturned by the cowardly and complicit Republicans in the Senate, and would certainly add grist to Trump's claim of being the target of a witch hunt, thus gaining him more support for 2020 from sympathetic followers, and perhaps even from independents who may think Democrats went too far by constantly harassing him. As of right now, the only way to get rid of Trump is to vote his ass out of office, THEN go after him in the courts once he no longer has the presidency and the GOP to shield him.

It's not the impeachment, it's the Impeachment HEARINGS that are important. It was the hearings that lead to Nixon's downfall as the public watched, learned, and understood what was going on. Keeping the public in the dark isn't helping anyone, especially not teh Democrats.

[Kirby101]

It's not the impeachment, it's the Impeachment HEARINGS that are important. It was the hearings that lead to Nixon's downfall as the public watched, learned, and understood what was going on. Keeping the public in the dark isn't helping anyone, especially not teh Democrats.

That is exactly it Tami.

[Tendrin]

Oh, I understand Amash is no saint, far from it, but, compared to all those spineless Republicans who continue looking the ignoring the obvious conclusions from the Mueller report, he almost qualifies. Note, I said "almost". Meanwhile....
.

Yeah, to be clear I didn't mean you.

[Mecegirl]

Oh, I understand Amash is no saint, far from it, but, compared to all those spineless Republicans who continue looking the ignoring the obvious conclusions from the Mueller report, he almost qualifies. Note, I said "almost". Meanwhile....

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Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment



I haven't always agreed with Pelosi on everything, but I'm in lockstep with her here. Using the impeachment hammer on Trump serves no purpose, and could actually derail gains the Democrats made since November. An impeachment vote in the House would only be overturned by the cowardly and complicit Republicans in the Senate, and would certainly add grist to Trump's claim of being the target of a witch hunt, thus gaining him more support for 2020 from sympathetic followers, and perhaps even from independents who may think Democrats went too far by constantly harassing him. As of right now, the only way to get rid of Trump is to vote his ass out of office, THEN go after him in the courts once he no longer has the presidency and the GOP to shield him.

For all the bluster and all the stalling from Trump and co our democracy has not fallen yet. All that has happend is that we have been shown how weak our democracy actually is. We've been living in an old house with a good paint job and new appliances. Now there are cracks forming on the walls and leaks from the ceiling. So now we know the guy who sold us the house did a quick flip job and never fixed any structural problems.

I think impeachment is inevitable, but its inevitability does not mean that we need to rush. And that is why I do agree in part with Pelosi. I also think she's talking out of the side of her mouth for show and that's part of the plot...but I digress. There is nothing wrong with due diligence . There is nothing wrong with following the rules and standard procedure. Just because the situation is outstanding in scope doesn't mean we have to scramble and do something out of turn. Biggest example of that lesson?? James Comey.

We have a lot of work to do to not just repair the damage done by Trump but to shore up our foundations so that a Trump can never happen again. We might actually have to tear some things down and rebuild from scratch. That is gonna take time and more importantly the trust of the American people. Trust that can lost if the Democrats are seen as rushing this situation. And for what? Because some pundits say that democrats are to scared to act? Like this is some game or whatever. I understand the frustrations of some Democrats but all that energy and enthusiasm will be needed in the coming clashes so they are better off waiting til the right moment to release it. Let him back the Democrats into a corner, let him push until there is 100% no other choice. Then no matter what no one can say that Democrats didn't try to work things out. Because if they do there will be a CVS length receipt of proof to the contrary.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

It's not the impeachment, it's the Impeachment HEARINGS that are important. It was the hearings that lead to Nixon's downfall as the public watched, learned, and understood what was going on. Keeping the public in the dark isn't helping anyone, especially not teh Democrats.

It should be noted that the clusterfuck with Nixon was over forty years ago, back when the country wasn't a fraction as polarized politically as it is today. I seriously doubt that even hearings would get off the ground, not with Republicans hellbent on keeping Trump in office so he can help realize the party's ultimate goal of stacking the courts all the way up to SCOTUS with right wing ideologues. Then there's the rank and file voters, most of whom have already made up their minds and will ride or die with Trump because A) he's their man, and B) they wanna stick it to the libs. Should the Dems continue putting pressure on Caramel Caligula for his misdeeds until he finally cracks or something pops up that neither he, Turtle Boy McConnell or the GOP can defend? Absolutely, but I'm skeptical that playing the impeachment card, even if it's just hearings will get the job done.

[4saken1]

It's not the impeachment, it's the Impeachment HEARINGS that are important. It was the hearings that lead to Nixon's downfall as the public watched, learned, and understood what was going on. Keeping the public in the dark isn't helping anyone, especially not teh Democrats.

Yep! It's not “The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors, but only if it is politically expedient.”

[JCAll]

She is very smart, shrewd, manipulative, ruthless, dishonest, conniving and overambitious. If she had her way, she can get the Twenty-second Amendment repealed. (It is possible to repeal an amendment like when they repealed the 18th Amendment with the Twenty-first Amendment.)

I don't think any of that is true, but what do you mean by "overambitious" in this context?

[Sharpandpointies]

.... who became the new Grand High Witch? Pendaran from the Rumbles Boards.

You went there. The meme has now crossed boards.