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

[Tendrin]

A Tennessee man charged by New York prosecutors with pretending to be a Manhattan lawyer and taking thousands from would-be clients was the co-founder of Students for Trump, a national group that mobilized college campuses in the run-up
to the 2016 election and plans to do so again in 2020.

John Lambert, 23, was arrested last week and charged by Southern District of New York prosecutors with wire fraud for having invented a lawyer persona named “Eric Pope” that he used to solicit legal work online. ALM reported last week that the fake firm website he created appeared to have attorney biographies cribbed from senior partners at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

https://www.law.com/newyorklawjourna...20190324210714

this is the grift that never ends it just goes on and on my friends...

[Kevinroc]

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/sta...54337961652225

I'll let this speak for itself.

[Tami]

Mueller Report Reveals Trump’s Fixation on Using Law Enforcement to Target a Rival

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a tenuous hold on his job when President Trump called him at home in the middle of 2017. The president had already blamed him for recusing himself from investigations related to the 2016 election, sought his resignation and belittled him in private and on Twitter.

Now, Mr. Trump had another demand: He wanted Mr. Sessions to reverse his recusal and order the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

“The ‘gist’ of the conversation,” according to the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, quoting Mr. Sessions, “was that the president wanted Sessions to unrecuse from ‘all of it.’”

Mr. Mueller’s report released last week brimmed with examples of Mr. Trump seeking to protect himself from the investigation. But his request of Mr. Sessions — and two similar ones detailed in the report — stands apart because it shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken.

Mr. Trump wanted Mrs. Clinton investigated for her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state, the report said, even though investigators had examined her conduct and declined to bring charges in a case closed in 2016.

No evidence has emerged that Mr. Sessions ever ordered the case reopened. Like many of Mr. Trump’s aides, as laid out in the report and other accounts, Mr. Sessions instead declined to act, preventing Mr. Trump from crossing a line that might have imperiled his presidency.

[Tami]

Hillary Clinton: Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Here’s how to respond.

Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people.

The debate about how to respond to Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” attack — and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there’s a better way to think about the choices ahead.

Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say I’m not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladi*mir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.

[Tami]

Sri Lanka told of extremist network months before blasts – sources

Sri Lankan authorities were told by foreign security agencies more than four months ago that a network of violent Islamic extremists was active in the country and likely to commit terrorist attacks, regional and western officials have said.

The revelation that officials may have known last year about the threat posed by those responsible for the Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 350 people will fuel outrage at what now appears to be multiple and systematic intelligence failings.

On Wednesday, President Maithripala Sirisena demanded the resignation of senior officials who failed to pass on three separate formal warnings sent by Indian agencies in the three weeks before the attack.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Yes, just like Bill Clinton who refused to resign, despite some calls from Congress for his resignation. That is not the only thing they have in common.

Both Trump and Clinton were dark horses and went against more known presidential nominees when they ran for presidency. Both of them were draft dodgers who never served in Vietnam. They were granted an educational exemption as a way to avoid conscription. They both cheated on their wives.

Clinton was not a draff dodger. He didn't serve and was against the war but he left himself open to be drafted. trump is the only cowardly draft dodger.

[worstblogever]

https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/sta...54337961652225

I'll let this speak for itself.

Seems like the only answer he prepped was to segue back into discussions of income inequality, aka the broken record.

[Tendrin]

Yikes. We got another for WBE.

Just when you thought State Senator Amanda “My Gun Is My ERA” Chase (R-11th) had reached peak crazy when she started packing heat during this year’s General Assembly because she hallucinated that visiting activists were trying to kill her, now it is reported that she threw a tantrum in front of the Pocahontas Building because the Capitol Police Officer on duty would not break established protocol to give her the special treatment to which she felt entitled. The official Capitol Police report quotes Senator Chase, a self-described conservative Christian whose Lexus was blocking several buses and holding up downtown traffic during the altercation, as saying, “I am not going to move unless you let the fucking barricades down to let me in.”
In another decidedly un-Christian moment, Chase also ranted about Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar getting to park there, stating that, “Madame Clerk, Miss Piggy, gets to park her fat ass up front.”
Suddenly Senator Law and Order is OK with breaking rules when it would benefit her, as she whines in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article that the Capital Police were being too “legalistic” by not breaking the rules to give in to her tantrum. Not surprisingly, Chase resorts to the classic cry of the privileged, “Do you know who I am?” The most surreal moment, though, was when Chase, a vocal opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who prefers her pistol to a constitutional amendment, blurts, “You don’t know equality of women’s rights!” at the female officer.

So there's probably more. a lot more.

[Malvolio]

Yes, just like Bill Clinton who refused to resign, despite some calls from Congress for his resignation. That is not the only thing they have in common.

Both Trump and Clinton were dark horses and went against more known presidential nominees when they ran for presidency. Both of them were draft dodgers who never served in Vietnam. They were granted an educational exemption as a way to avoid conscription. They both cheated on their wives.

Bill Clinton was granted an educational exemption. Donald Trump had a phony baloney doctor's note that said he had bone spurs. And he still can't even remember in which foot he was supposed to have the bone spurs.

[worstblogever]

Yikes. We got another for WBE.

So there's probably more. a lot more.

I found a great deal of stories referenced in this paragraph over the past few months. However...

Can you link to the original article about this meltdown with the Capitol Police?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it. Had to refine my search for certain words.

She's claiming the Capitol Police are "partisan liars" in their report about the incident.

Uh huh.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

That Deep State Trump Complains About Looks Like It Had An Active West Wing Cell

Don McGahn and others in the White House did what’s become common among Republicans in Washington: Dealing with Trump by ignoring him. And that "cell" saved Trump's ass, not that he'll admit to that of course, after all, no one in his administration disobeys his orders. This shit gets crazier by the day.

**********

Trump’s Republican Opponent Says The President Would Resign If He Was A Patriot

In an op-ed, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld said the Mueller report proves that Trump is “a pathological liar.” And there's the rub: Trump ISN'T a patriot, never WAS a patriot, he's just a traitorous shitstain who's in it only for the power.

**********

Franklin Graham Gets Holy Hell After Telling Pete Buttigieg To Repent For Being Gay

Evangelical leader called out for setting aside his biblical principles when it comes to Donald Trump. Then Graham should demand that Trump repent for breaking most of the Ten Commandments. Talk about a royal hypocrite!

**********

Nearly 8,000 Alleged Child Abusers Identified In Boy Scouts’ Files, Review Finds

The BSA also reported 12,254 alleged victims within its organization dating back to 1944. While everyone screams bloody murder about predator priests, this offense has almost flown under the radar.

**********

Gun Safety Group Sues Over Alleged NRA Campaign Spending Violations

The Giffords Law Center says the NRA illegally coordinated campaign spending with Republicans and the FEC failed to act on it. Nice to see the NRA caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" posted profiles about Christine Jones, a former member of the Arizona State Legislature, a candidate for Arizona Governor in 2014, and a failed Congressional candidate for Arizona’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She ran in spite of the fact that she was previously arrested for DUI, and that she was a former GoDaddy.com executive who tried dodge criticism for the company’s exploitive ads by saying “she didn’t like them”, even though was actually IN one of them alongside Danica Patrick. She also was caught lying badly about super racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, trying to claim he was just misunderstood, and a nice guy who puts barrels of water out near the border for illegal immigrants to survive on while he’s catching them (completely untrue), and talked about how immigrants were crossing the Rio Grande and into Arizona, which is amazing because that river does not geographically exist anywhere within the state. Her immigration plan was completely moronic, trying to use the National Guard as extra border patrol agents, but not realizing that doing so wouldn’t be free, and would cost her state $110 million annually. Finally, Jones tried winning over gun enthusiasts by giving an interview where she bragged about her skill with firearms, claiming she enjoyed squeezing off rounds with one arm, or even her eyes closed, which would make her a better shooter in low visibility, or so she said. Jones not only failed to win office in the past two elections, but said enough dumb things to spook even normally deep red Arizona Republicans away from her.

On this date in both 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" posted profiles about Frank Guinta, who served two non-consecutive terms in Congress, winning office in 2010 and 2014. Not long after he returned to the capitol, however, a report broke that Guinta, way back in his first run for Congress back in 2010, received illegal campaign funding donations… from his parents. That’s right, it seems Guinta lied for years about where $355,000 in contributions came from, and after trying to fib about it for forever and a day, finally got pinned to the wall, admitted it, and was fined by the Federal Election Commission. The scandal tarnished Guinta enough that Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire called on him to resign, and harmed his overall future in politics. Supposedly, Frank Guinta is considered by some to be a Republican moderate, but I find that hard to believe, considering he’s a climate change denier, his stance on abortion is hard to the right, with “Life begins at conception”, indicating that he’s opposed to birth control (with votes that back that up), and is a major hard-liner on immigration, back in 2010, calling for immigration enforcement that was beyond harsh… it was his suggestion that we just ignore the 14th Amendment and deport the children of undocumented immigrants with their parents (which is, y’know, unconstitutional and all). The rest of his voting record is hardly a sign that Guinta’s anywhere near the middle of the spectrum on the issues, including two separate votes to defund Planned Parenthood, votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, and a vote for an amendment to be added to the Constitution to ban same sex marriage. Frank Guinta was sent packing from Washington, D.C. yet again by U.S. House Rep. Carol Shea-Porter in 2016, who topped him by just about 5,000 votes for the highly-contested seat in New Hampshire’s 2nd. With a multitude of scandals and his latest loss going into a Blue Wave year in 2018, Frank Guinta chose to not run for any office. Thus, we’ll set aside his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 670-30, since this was established in July 2014.)


Anthony Kern

It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published its original profile of Anthony Kern, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives from District 20 who was first elected to office in 2014, usually by running second behind fellow GOP legislator Paul Boyer in that district. It wasn’t until Kern was into his second term in office that he managed to earn our notice here at CSGOPOTD, and that’s because only a few weeks after he was sworn in, he decided to go to a Trump rally in Phoenix to speak, and where he brought out the “LOCK HER UP!” rhetoric against Hillary Clinton four months after the election not just as a colorful chant, but something he actually suggested needed to be revisited as an actual policy. More interesting was that this rally featured several members of the anti-government militia group, the Oathkeepers, and people baying out other great opinions, like beginning “liberal genocide” and the deportation of either all Muslims or all Jews from America. Y’know, nothing that would seem at all like the sort of thing Neo-Nazis would be yelling out loud, unprompted.

That wasn’t the first time Kern faced some sort of controversy, though. Back in his first few weeks in office in 2015, co-sponsored Arizona’s HR 1445, a law meant to conceal the name of whatever police officer should kill a suspect in the line of duty from the public for at least 90 days. Now, that law in and of itself seems pretty fascist and extreme, given the wide swath of police killings in the past few years. But it’s not the bill that stirred up controversy. It was the fact that Kern lied during debate on the bill and claimed to be a “certified peace officer”. Shocker, the media did some checking, and could not find a record of Kern being a police officer, let alone having any sort of certification to be one.

So… yeah, we think speaking at what amounted to a hate rally and helping to work the crowd into frothing madness is enough alone to get Anthony Kern a profile here. There’s also the fact that he chose to give Donald Trump a tongue bath a few months after getting on our radar, celebrating Trump’s executive order to reverse every executive order Barack Obama made to combat climate change, and whining about how the coal industry had “suffered”, which is an odd choice of energy to support in a state that’s famous for getting SUN all the time, y’know?

And over the past three years, Anthony Kern’s voting record has shown us he’s definitely the sort of Arizona Republican worthy of a CSGOPOTD profile, with his co-sponsorship of HB 1445, the bill to conceal the names of police officers who murder suspects for at least 90 days, his votefor HB 2173, a lunatic bill written to legalize gold and silver as legal tender in Arizona, his vote for SB 1122, which would allow the sale of firearms without any background check (ignoring federal law), and his vote for SB 1367, an insane anti-choice bill aimed at forcing abortion providers to have to attempt to revive a “viable fetus” after an abortion, which ignores the fact that the way the law is already written, no fetus viable outside the womb can be aborted.

Now, we have kind of a big update on Anthony Kern, as in 2019, he sponsored legislation that would allow law enforcement to have their name removed from “The Brady List”, which is a database of law enforcement officials kept who are suspected of repeated dishonesty. Now, while we’ve already established that Kern, a former peace officer, seems to like the idea of Arizona being a fascist state where the police can do whatever they want, and that he’s a liar… lo and behold it turned out he had a selfish reason for wanting to have names taken off the Brady list… HE’S ON IT. Not only did Kern sexually harass a co-worker back in 2010, he once lied to law enforcement officials that he had already worked to pay them back for a department laptop he “lost”. Now, he was trying to revise history so that none of that would ever be reported on…

Whether or not this controversy comes back to haunt Anthony Kern in 2020, we don’t know. But he seems to have friends in high places, as he’s been photographed pretty frequently with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Vice-President Mike Pence. Odds are, he was being groomed for something, but this controversy will hopefully put an end to all that.

[Tendrin]

I found a great deal of stories referenced in this paragraph over the past few months. However...

Can you link to the original article about this meltdown with the Capitol Police?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it. Had to refine my search for certain words.

She's claiming the Capitol Police are "partisan liars" in their report about the incident.

Uh huh.

D'oh~! I didn't realize I'df left out the link! I'm sure she'll be the gift that keeps on giving :P

[worstblogever]

D'oh~! I didn't realize I'df left out the link! I'm sure she'll be the gift that keeps on giving :P

She's up for re-election in 7 months. If she keeps melting down, an upset might be in the works. But of course, the GOP isn't bothered by having raving lunatics in their ranks, and didn't even bother to find her a primary challenger.

[Tendrin]

She's up for re-election in 7 months. If she keeps melting down, an upset might be in the works. But of course, the GOP isn't bothered by having raving lunatics in their ranks, and didn't even bother to find her a primary challenger.

I saw she had an opponent. Let's cross our fingers because she is definitely a lunatic.