All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Tulsi might pull more votes away from conservatives who hate Hillary, but won't support Trump's corruption and misogyny than Democratic voters away from the nominee with this "BOO HILLARY" strategy, arguably.

Someone stop me if I’m mistaken, but, last time I checked, Hillary WASN’T running for president. Gabbard’s obsession with her isn’t at all healthy, unless of course she’s playing the role of useful idiot for Putin.

[Tami]

Only 7 Republican senators completely ruled out impeaching Donald Trump

The seven hard nos came from Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rob Portman (R-OH), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Mike Rounds (R-SD).

[worstblogever]

Someone stop me if I’m mistaken, but, last time I checked, Hillary WASN’T running for president. Gabbard’s obsession with her isn’t at all healthy, unless of course she’s playing the role of useful idiot for Putin.

Gabbard seems like she's just decided to commit political suicide as a Democrat. Not just in the 2020 Presidential Primary, but in any hopes she had of winning her Congressional seat. She's gonna get beat in the primary now... there's no way you pull the s*** she has and move along without political consequences.

[worstblogever]

Only 7 Republican senators completely ruled out impeaching Donald Trump

Senators Tillis, Hyde-Smith, Inhofe, and Rounds are all up for re-election in 2020. They're either thinking they won't win in a GOP Primary without backing Trump, or are too much of partisan f***wads to have the temerity to take a stand for justice and the Constitution.

[Tendrin]

Seems like we missed this but I'm not sure:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas' embattled GOP House speaker announced Tuesday that he won't seek re-election after a growing number of Republicans called for his resignation following the release of a secretly recorded conversation in which he sought help to oust members of his own caucus in 2020 and used foul language to disparage Democrats.
The decision by Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen comes less than a week after the release of the hourlong tape that sparked among the biggest political scandal in the state in years. Bonnen's retreat puts Republicans' fragile dominance of the state Legislature further at stake.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/tex...r-14552642.php

Texas is a /mess/ for the GOP and while they may yet cling to power it definitely seems like they've peaked and its downhill from here for the GOP dominance that had been at every lever of power.

[wjowski]

Senators Tillis, Hyde-Smith, Inhofe, and Rounds are all up for re-election in 2020. They're either thinking they won't win in a GOP Primary without backing Trump, or are too much of partisan f***wads to have the temerity to take a stand for justice and the Constitution.

Hyde-Smith I can comfortably say is both.

[wjowski]

Seems like we missed this but I'm not sure:



https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/tex...r-14552642.php

Texas is a /mess/ for the GOP and while they may yet cling to power it definitely seems like they've peaked and its downhill from here for the GOP dominance that had been at every lever of power.

That would be amazing. Texas going blue would be a nightmare for the GOP.

[Tendrin]

That would be amazing. Texas going blue would be a nightmare for the GOP.

Texas turning blue would be a nightmare scenario for the GOP, yeah. I think they've taking their dominance in the state for granted on a local level.

[Gray Lensman]

Senators Tillis, Hyde-Smith, Inhofe, and Rounds are all up for re-election in 2020. They're either thinking they won't win in a GOP Primary without backing Trump, or are too much of partisan f***wads to have the temerity to take a stand for justice and the Constitution.

I heard that the ONLY GoP senator more popular in his of her own state than Benedict Donald is Mitt Romney. Having Twittler turn on you might be a death sentence for a political career in a red district. Which tells you what they care about....

[Tendrin]

JUST IN: Hong Kong legislature formally withdraws extradition bill that sparked mass protests

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1186899789037887488

[jetengine]

JUST IN: Hong Kong legislature formally withdraws extradition bill that sparked mass protests

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1186899789037887488

Awesome, and no ones died afaik ?

[Tendrin]

Awesome, and no ones died afaik ?

Far as I know, no, though some protestors have been injured.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Top Diplomat Confirms There Was Quid Pro Quo Demand In Trump’s Ukraine Call: Reports

Acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor testified to the House that the president held up military aid to Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Joe Biden.

**********

Mitch McConnell Contradicts Trump’s Claim They Spoke About His Ukraine Call

The president said the Senate majority leader spoke with him and called it “the most innocent phone call he’s read.” Did Moscow Mitch roll Trump under the bus? Sure looks like it.

**********

White House Spokesman Attempts To Defend Trump’s ‘Lynching’ Remarks

Hogan Gidley told reporters on Tuesday that Trump wasn’t “comparing what’s happened to him with one of our darkest moments in American history.” Sure, right. Whatever you say, chum. Speaking of defending the indefensible....

**********

Sean Hannity Breaks Out His Most Orwellian Defense Of Trump Yet

The Fox News host has a bonkers new claim about the president’s request for a “favor” from Ukraine. Boy, Hamhocks sure twisted himself into a pretzel with that nonsense.

**********

Susan Rice Calls Sen. Lindsey Graham ‘A Piece Of S**t’

“I said it, dammit. Finally,” the former national security adviser said on “Pod Save the World.” Tell us how you REALLY feel, Susie!

[worstblogever]

On this date, in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of former Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp, a man who claims President Obama is using the military as guinea pigs to promote a gay agenda, has accused the Supreme Court of demeaning Jesus by overturning bans on gay marriage, and while questioning the Secretary of the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs, took the time to ask why Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t like veterans, refusing to apologize for the query after the fact. Huelskamp isn’t just anti-gay, though, he’s also got a terrible record on women’s issues, and all too often in his attacks on their right to choose, he compares abortion to slavery. And just to give you an idea of how utterly toxic this guy is, even is own party can’t stand him. Huelskamp was stripped of his committee posts in 2012 along with Justin Amash and David Schweikert because, as one anonymous GOP aide put it, “They were the most egregious assholes in the House Republican Conference.” Our update from 2015 featured the disgraceful rhetoric of Huelskamp actually finding a way to somehow get worse, as he called the failed effort by the House Freedom Caucus to not fund the Department of Homeland Security as an example of Speaker John Boehner “surrendering the Constitution to the left”, called the Iran nuclear deal “not a deal, but a gift to radical Islam”, gave a speech on the floor of the House where he claimed Planned Parenthood is racist “and targets minority communities for destruction and elimination”, and ten minutes before Pope Francis spoke before Congress, Huelskamp decided to mark the occasion to get on Twitter and attack Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic of “voting for years to kill babies”. We are thrilled to report that in the 2016 elections, Huelskamp was defeated in the GOP Primary, and no longer is serving as a testament to how little oxygen a brain can survive with in our nation’s capitol.

On this date in 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the now-former U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 5th Congressional District Tom Garrett, who was photographed smiling with Jason Kessler, the piece of human garbage that organized the Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that led to the death of Heather Heyer. And Garrett is such a f***ing scumbag himself that after Heyer’s death, he still had the unmitigated gall to go on Fox Business Channel to try and “both sides” the situation and claim “we’ve worked since 1776 to erase horrible flaws like slavery and second-class citizenship and to think that my child might be born into a world where we’re regressing is genuinely frightening.” Which, the United States did not “work since 1776 to erase slavery”, as the country trucked along for four score and seven years before something was done about it, and we had to have a whole civil war about the issue before it was settled. Meanwhile, Garrett had, as a legislator, represented the passions of the Neo-Nazis who were there to talk about their precious Confederate monuments, like when he co-sponsored as a state legislator to preserve said monuments. Now, Rep. Garrett rode the Alt-Right hatred stoked by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign into office in 2016, coming out of a five year tenure from the Virginia State Senate where he co-sponsored legislation to criminalize oral and anal sex between teenagers (oddly specific to worry about those kinds, and not the kinds that could result in teen pregnancies), attempts to drug test welfare recipients, voting against efforts to offer LGBT citizens protections against discrimination, votes against equal rights for women, as well as votes for mandatory ultrasounds prior to an abortion that would make Ken Cuccinelli proud, co-sponsoring a Personhood bill, and attempts at voter suppression through unnecessary stricter Voter ID requirements. All of that was his resume to replace Virginia Congressman and CSGOPOTD Robert Hurt as the Republican representative for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District after being picked at the GOP’s party convention for this seat (which usually results in more conservative candidates in Virginia), and then defeating Jane Dittmar with 58% of the vote in a traditionally conservative seat. At the debate with Dittmar a few weeks prior to the 2016 election, Garrett mentioned that our election was “rigged”, echoing a certain oranged-hued cretin on the presidential ticket, argued vehemently in favor of the 2nd Amendment being unimpeded, claiming that Democrats trying to pass a law to prevent terrorists on the “no fly list” from being able to buy firearms was “racist”, and when presented with a question about curtailing gun violence, scoffed, saying ,“the question is fallacious on its face, because homicides and suicides aren’t caused by gun use, they’re caused by people, that’s like saying that home construction is caused by hammer use.” Garrett’s campaign rhetoric, of course, also was stuffed full of as much anti-immigrant bigotry as possible, fanning the flames of xenophobia about immigrants from Central America, as well as Muslim immigrants from Somalia, and going as far as to claim that “Sharia Law” was a threat rising around the globe. While serving in his one term in office, in an MSNBC interview where Garrett admitted most of the House GOP hadn’t read the healthcare repeal bill they were about to vote on in Congress, and were just asking their staff to do it for them. At a town hall in May of 2017, when asked about Trump’s potential collusion with the Russians, Garrett set the bar for the President of the United States about as low as it can get by downplaying complaints about his policies by saying they’re “small potatoes compared to Nazi Germany”. Going into 2018, Garrett’s pals from hate groups were going to be brought up REPEATEDLY so that voters heading to the polls know that if they don’t want a guy who’s palling around with Nazis… at least that’s what we thought until Garrett abruptly announced that he wouldn’t be running for a second term in office in March of 2018, instead choosing to seek out treatment for alcoholism. That might just be the cover story, though, as about two months later, it was revealed that Garrett and his wife had managed to spend their first year and half working in the capitol treating their Congressional staff like their personal servants,forcing them to do their grocery shopping, laundry pick-up, and cleaning up dog poop, among other menial tasks on the taxpayer’s dime. We wish him the finest of luck with treating his alcoholism, and even more luck in f***ing right off and never re-entering politics. As such, we’ll set aside his profile at this time, to go ahead and take a look at a different kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 793-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Scott Taylor

Welcome to what is the 793rd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be taking a look at Scott Taylor, the former U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District who served one term in office from 2017-2019, after winning in office in 2016 with 61% of the vote. This was after a failed 2010 run for the same seat where he lost in the GOP Primary to Scott Rigell. As a member of the Virginia State Senate from 2013-2016 prior to that, Taylor had a 0% rating from NARAL for his votes on abortion, including attempts to defunding Planned Parenthood.

During his one term in office in Congress, Scott Taylor supported Donald Trump’s bigoted Muslim Ban, and voted for some of the GOP’s s***tiest piece of legislation:

• February 16th, 2017: Taylor votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Scott Taylor votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• March 28th, 2017: Rep. Taylor votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses.
• May 4th, 2017: Taylor votes for the GOP's healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, post-partum depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions". Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Taylor would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Scott Taylor votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• October 3rd, 2017: Taylor votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: Scott Taylor votes for HR 1, 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.
• February 18th, 2018: Rep. Taylor and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.

Alas, Scott Taylor ended up being undone by a scandal that is becoming all-too-common for modern Republicans, and that is their inability to find people willing to sign a petition to put them on a ballot, and hiring staffers to do it who are too lazy to collect them, and prefer to just forge them. Dozens of people in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District came forward to say, “I SIGNED WHAT?” Other folks didn’t say anything about having signed Taylor’s petition, as it’s hard for the press to get a quote out of anyone who is, y’know DEAD. Thus, Taylor was forced to have to sue to keep his name on the ballot, at all, and ended up losing with only 48% of the vote against Democrat Elaine Luria. The staffer who forged signatures has, of course, been indicted.

Rather than Scott Taylor trying to avenge that loss of his House seat after a scandal of that magnitude… he’s decided to instead run for U.S. Senate to challenge Democratic Senator Mark Warner. There was a time when Republicans were at least held into account by their party for a scandal like forgining ballot signatures, and we’d see an end to their political aspirations outright (folks like Thadeus McCotter or Annette Bosworth). Given Warner’s excellent reputation and his active role in the Senate Intelligence Committee in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election… we don’t see Taylor finding his way back to Washington a year from now. And we’re fine with that.