All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Uh huh! Let's see if Republicans still feel that way when a Democrat reclaims the White House and pulls the same shit Trump has done.

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House Committee Report: Trump Misused Power, Obstructed Congress

The 300-page report from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee details “significant misconduct” by the president. My, my! Donnie sure has been a bad boy!

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Romney Breaks With GOP Colleagues: ‘No Evidence’ Of Ukrainian Meddling

The Utah senator dismissed conspiracy theories that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, calling out Russia as the culprit. Shame on Mittens for not toeing the party line. SHAME! Oh, yeah, guess who else has strayed from the GOP camp....

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Lindsey Graham Breaks Ranks With Trump, Declares Ukraine Conspiracy Theory False

The senator and staunch Trump defender says he’s “1,000% confident” Russia, not Ukraine, meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. Oh, dear! Spongedon Whinepants won't like hearing that!

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Watergate’s John Dean: Case Against Donald Trump ‘More Compelling’ Than One Against Nixon

CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin also predicted a separate article of impeachment being added against Trump. if anyone would know about this sort of stuff, it's Dean.

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Trump Trolls Kamala Harris’ Exit And Gets Hilariously Burned

The president tried to mock the senator for ending her campaign but ended up in the shade himself. Well done, Ms. Harris! Well done!

[worstblogever]

On this date, in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Greg Brannon, a former OBGYN who moved to the Tar Heel State because he idolized its famous senator and proud segregationalist, Sen. Jesse Helms. Brannon, in spite of being a doctor, argues against vaccinations, and claims there is a link that shows women getting abortions end up at higher risk for breast cancer (that link doesn’t exist). Brannon has compared food stamps to slavery, property taxes to the Holocaust, claims that the Affordable Care Act created death panels (it didn’t) and that the ACA is somehow a part of the New World Order that will be established in the United Nations Agenda 21 conspiracy theory. That should come as little surprise considering he was once president of an organization called “Founder’s Truth” that believed the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado and the Boston Marathon bombing were “false flag” attacks and that water fluoridation is a plot to control the populace. Brannon also has gone on record to say that the Founding Fathers believed in Fetal Personhood, stated his support for nullification of fedreal laws at the state level, and refuses to acknowledge the authority of the Supreme Court, saying, “Just because nine people in black robes and seven of them say that abortion is in the Constitution doesn’t make it law.” For the third consecutive election, Brannon failed to reach office in 2016, finishing third in the GOP primary while trying to challenge Renee Ellmers for his seat in Congress.

On this date in both 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Ed Henry, a former member of the Alabama House of Representatives originally elected in the 2010 Tea Party Wave. Henry’s name came to the fore in 2016 in a big way, because he was one of the first Alabama Republicans to file articles of impeachment against Gov. Robert Bentley after the former Govenror went and done goofed by sleeping with one of his top aides, who was drawing a six-figure state salary. Ed Henry’s is a bit of a hypocrite, though on being staunchly against creepy old dudes, considering some of his awful reactions to CSGOPOTD legend, U.S. Senate candidate and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore being a pedophile with multiple victims coming forward to accuse him, and a mall, YMCA, and local police departments coming forward to say that they banned Moore from places where teenage girls were when he was in his 30s and trolling for jailbait. It might be one thing if he was only one of the Alabama Republicans who denied that the accusers who came forward were telling the truth, but instead, Ed Henry suggested that the women coming forward “should be prosecuted” because they failed to report on Roy Moore’s pedophilia decades earlier, and keep him off the streets forty years. Henry went on record that he didn’t feel like Roy Moore being accused of being a sexual predator/pedophile combination should end his campaign, that those withdrawing support for Moore were “cowards”, and that Roy Moore was the actual “victim” in all of it. Then again, maybe there’s a bright side to Ed Henry’s hypocrisy. Back in 2015, Ed Henry was campaigning hard for a bill he submitted to restrict abortion clinics from operating within 2,000 feet of a school (presumably, Alabama Republicans could shut down clinics by just putting money towards building a new school across the street). He argued at the time that his idea was not unlike how sex offenders aren’t allowed within that distance of school, and that it wasn’t unreasonable to treat abortion providers like sex offenders. Which, after his defense of Roy Moore means that should be trying to get more abortion providers elected to the U.S. Senate. Legislative extremism is par for the course for Henry, as one of his first sponsored pieces of legislation was an attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act. He also supported an obviously unconstitutional bill that shows why he liked Roy Moore, proposing a monument of the Ten Commandments built on state property, and supported legislation to protect confederate monuments. He voted for a bill to outlaw abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before most women even realize they are pregnant., an attempt at drug testing welfare recipients, a bill to re-establish the electric chair as a means of execution in the state of Alabama, a bill to make it legal for officials to refuse to perform marriage ceremonies, a last ditch effort to try and stop same sex marriage that wouldn’t work, and even a bill to allow child placement agencies to deny services based on their religious beliefs, which translates to Henry would like orphanages to be able to tell gay people they’re not allowed to provide a loving home to a child on account of their sexual orientation. On June 7th, 2018, he was arrested and indicted on 14 corruption charges for accepting kickbacks from a medical clinic that was being investigated for being a “pill mill” that overprescribed opiates. Henry’s legal woes seem to have ended his career, and he currently is trying to avoid going to prison. We’ll note that we shouldn’t really be surprised, given that he was a co-chair for the 2016 Donald Trump campaign for president in Alabama, which is a title we’re not unaccustomed to seeing people being brought up on charges for (See Ralph Shortey and Bill Nojay). As he is now out of office, we will retire his profile at this time, and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 803-40, since this was established in July 2014.)


Michael Clark

Welcome to what is the 803rd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Michael Clark, who was first elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives in the 2016 elections. He had blind support for conservative policy, supporting a ban on abortion at 19 weeks, and moving the concealed carry of firearms without a permit among other hard right legislation during his one term in office.

What brought a hasty end to Michael Clark’s career was that only about five months ahead of his first re-election, he got on Facebook and gave his deep thoughts about how much freedom business owners should have, and he felt that such freedoms should include the ability to return us to the days of segregation, and allow them to turn away people of color:

"A businessman should have the opportunity to run his business the way he wants. If he wants to turn away people of color, that’s his choice."

Now, if you’re thinking that his apology could undo the damage on such a horrid opinion, he took the time to explain that he knew his statement was very racist and wrong, but that it was just a poor attempt at justifying why businesses should be allowed to refuse to do business with gay people:

"I made some comments here on Facebook, defending a Colorado Baker decision not create a cake for a homosexual wedding. The comments I made were very racist. I would like to apologize for those comments. Businesses should not be able to discriminate solely based on race, sex, national origin, age, or handicap."

So even in that apology, he acknowledged he still wanted to discriminate against someone.

Michael Clark fell short of holding onto his seat in the South Dakota legislature by 67 votes. We’re hoping that he disappears into obscurity, and he never gets a second chance in politics after he said what most Republicans only think these days out loud.
 

[aja_christopher]

"The Democrats’ choice: The midterm elections and the road to 2020"

"...the 2018 midterm election was different, and its results shed important light on the choice that Democrats face.

Turnout in 2018 reached 49 percent, the highest for a midterm since 1966 and within two points of its all-time high in 1914. The 2018 vote was closer to a typical presidential election than to a standard midterm.

A strong midterm result usually reflects strong voter mobilization for the winning party and low enthusiasm for the loser. Here again, 2018 was different. Republican turnout rose from 40 million in 2014 to 51 million in 2018, a healthy 27 percent increase. But this growth was dwarfed by a 70 percent increase for Democrats, from 36 million to 61 million. In this way too, the strong turnout on both sides made 2018 look more like a presidential election than a midterm...

Looking forward to 2024 and 2028, a southern-tier strategy may well prove feasible, as what has been called a “coalition of transformation” (millennials, minorities, and college-educated whites) becomes strong enough to challenge the Republican grip on these traditionally red states. And this may prove to be a smart long-term strategy in the Electoral College as the population of states throughout the Sunbelt is expected to grow more rapidly than in the northern-tier states.

But with the 2020 presidential election less than two years away, the party’s future does not seem to be arriving fast enough. Even in the strong Democratic tide last year, with exciting, well-organized, and well-funded candidates, Democrats lost all but one of the key statewide races in the southern-tier states we analyzed, and the statewide House vote remained unfavorable in nearly every state.

If the Democratic candidate were to win a popular vote margin as large as Barack Obama’s in 2008, he or she might prevail in some of these states, and the party would be spared the need for a strategic choice. But it would be more prudent for Democrats to plan on a tighter contest and to choose the course most likely to yield victory in less advantageous circumstances.

Our analysis suggests that reclaiming Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin offers Democrats the path of least resistance. The 2018 election results show that Donald Trump’s victory in these states did not mark their permanent realignment into the Republican column and that Democrats attuned to the electorates of these states can prevail. There is good reason to believe that a suitable Democratic nominee could replicate this result in 2020.

The Democratic path to victory is straightforward: take enough states out of Trump’s 2016 column to reach 270 electoral votes in 2020. If our analysis is sound, the Democratic Party should look to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin for the electoral votes it needs to prevail, focusing on bringing voters in these states back into the Democratic fold."

https://www.brookings.edu/research/t...-road-to-2020/

[Tendrin]

Amanda Marcotte: "This "Kamala is a cop" meme wasn't about opening up a nuanced discourse about progressive views on law enforcement. It was about giving douchey white dudes an excuse to claim self-righteousness while dunking on black female candidate."

I'd say that's about white for a lot of them.

[Malvolio]

"The Democrats’ choice: The midterm elections and the road to 2020"

"...the 2018 midterm election was different, and its results shed important light on the choice that Democrats face.

Turnout in 2018 reached 49 percent, the highest for a midterm since 1966 and within two points of its all-time high in 1914. The 2018 vote was closer to a typical presidential election than to a standard midterm.

A strong midterm result usually reflects strong voter mobilization for the winning party and low enthusiasm for the loser. Here again, 2018 was different. Republican turnout rose from 40 million in 2014 to 51 million in 2018, a healthy 27 percent increase. But this growth was dwarfed by a 70 percent increase for Democrats, from 36 million to 61 million. In this way too, the strong turnout on both sides made 2018 look more like a presidential election than a midterm...

Looking forward to 2024 and 2028, a southern-tier strategy may well prove feasible, as what has been called a “coalition of transformation” (millennials, minorities, and college-educated whites) becomes strong enough to challenge the Republican grip on these traditionally red states. And this may prove to be a smart long-term strategy in the Electoral College as the population of states throughout the Sunbelt is expected to grow more rapidly than in the northern-tier states.

But with the 2020 presidential election less than two years away, the party’s future does not seem to be arriving fast enough. Even in the strong Democratic tide last year, with exciting, well-organized, and well-funded candidates, Democrats lost all but one of the key statewide races in the southern-tier states we analyzed, and the statewide House vote remained unfavorable in nearly every state.

If the Democratic candidate were to win a popular vote margin as large as Barack Obama’s in 2008, he or she might prevail in some of these states, and the party would be spared the need for a strategic choice. But it would be more prudent for Democrats to plan on a tighter contest and to choose the course most likely to yield victory in less advantageous circumstances.

Our analysis suggests that reclaiming Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin offers Democrats the path of least resistance. The 2018 election results show that Donald Trump’s victory in these states did not mark their permanent realignment into the Republican column and that Democrats attuned to the electorates of these states can prevail. There is good reason to believe that a suitable Democratic nominee could replicate this result in 2020.

The Democratic path to victory is straightforward: take enough states out of Trump’s 2016 column to reach 270 electoral votes in 2020. If our analysis is sound, the Democratic Party should look to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin for the electoral votes it needs to prevail, focusing on bringing voters in these states back into the Democratic fold."

https://www.brookings.edu/research/t...-road-to-2020/

We also have to do something to stop any Republican vote suppressing shenanigans in those three states.

[BeastieRunner]

The GOP attorney's questions to the Constitutional scholars is all about Hunter Biden, nothing about Trump.

I was not aware Hunter Biden is getting impeached.

[Jack Dracula]

The GOP attorney's questions to the Constitutional scholars is all about Hunter Biden, nothing about Trump.

I was not aware Hunter Biden is getting impeached.

I imagine they'll combine this with a stepped up schedule of around-the-clock character assassination on Fox, Hannity, and Limbaugh.
Trump will of course also be tweeting his thumbs off about it. Because that's what the President of the United States does now.

[worstblogever]

I imagine they'll combine this with a stepped up schedule of around-the-clock character assassination on Fox, Hannity, and Limbaugh.
Trump will of course also be tweeting his thumbs off about it. Because that's what the President of the United States does now.

Other than get openly mocked by our allies at NATO meetings for being a lazy moron.

[worstblogever]

The GOP attorney's questions to the Constitutional scholars is all about Hunter Biden, nothing about Trump.

I was not aware Hunter Biden is getting impeached.

I was a stan for Fiona Hill about two weeks ago.

I am now also a stan for Pamela Karlan. Holy s***, did she read GOP Rep. Doug Collins for filth.

There are three witnesses present today. All law scholars. Three were called by Democrats, one, Jonathon Turley, by the GOP. She then pointed out that Trump's comments to the President Ukraine are obviously a bribe. Because if a hurricane hit Texas, and Congress approved aid, only for Trump to withhold it, and when called by the Governor of Texas, "I want you to do me a favor, though. Smear Joe Biden with the power of your office first..." That's a bribe, and it's revolting.

Jonathon Turley is being made fun of by any cable news show that isn't Fox (and possibly by Fox, but I ain't watchin' that garbage). The Democrats have called on their witnesses to dismiss Turley's arguments as bulls***, and they have obliged, admirably.


Different committee, same GOP s***show.

[worstblogever]

It has come to my attention that Pamela Karlan was Obama's first thought for a Supreme Court Justice nominee to replace Antonin Scalia.

Merrick Garland was Obama picking a true moderate to make sure the vote got through the Senate. But Mitch McConnell is just that much of an unprecedented ***hole.

So in a way, Karlan coming into Congress to tear s*** up today is an unsettled debt, and the latest few chickens coming home to roost by pecking out the Republicans' eyes.

(I do not feel bad for them. They're also trying to only ask Turley questions, or not ask ANY questions at all with their time. This... is again, going poorly for them.)

[worstblogever]

Cover yourself in a plastic tarp to not get any syphilitic spittle on you... it's GOHMERT TIME.

(As you'd expect, he's rambling about conspiracy theories and not asking any questions.)

[worstblogever]

Next Republican up: Jim Jordan, who bumbled over from the Intelligence committee hearings. Jordan just throws up on himself, and whines about Nancy Pelosi.

Next up for the GOP: Colorado Republican Ken Buck, whose defense of Trump is, no s***, "THESE ARE CORRUPT THINGS OTHER PRESIDENTS DID WITHOUT GETTING IMPEACHED!" Among Buck's list? Claiming "OBAMA LIED ABOUT BENGHAZI!!!"

These... these are some dumb motherf***ers. The conspiracy theories they're floating about Biden aren't sticking, so they're just blurting out other conspiracy theories from the conservative media from the past, like it's going to form a brain-damaged Voltron to defend Trump from trouble. An absolute clown car of f***wits.

[worstblogever]

From earlier in the day:

I cannot help but conclude that this president has attacked each of the Constitution’s safeguards against establishing a monarchy in this country.
— Professor Michael Gebhardt, Impeachment witness, 12/4/2019

[worstblogever]

John Ratliffe for the GOP: Tries to ask Turley to just say there are no crimes here, move along, nothing to see... Turley plays along...

Democratic witnesses: "BULLS***! And let's explain why in sound bites that are great for cable news..."

Martha Roby's up, and seems like she's only here to show us that her brain's already retired for her a year early. Conspiracy theory nonsense. Seems confused as to what we're actually here to talk about today.

[worstblogever]

I should mention that while the GOP has effectively only wanked off at the mic for the conspiracy theory crowd today, and filibustered...

All the Democrats that have followed have rebutted their obfuscating attempts effectively in under 90 seconds, and used the other three and a half minutes of their time to question witnesses while remaining completely calm, and presenting the evidence in their case for impeachment coolly.

This all boils down to the analogy I keep using... that the Republicans were given a s*** hand to play by Trump, and the Democrats have four aces.