All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[worstblogever]

A Quinnipiac poll has Trump's approval rating down 3% to a 38% overall, and support for impeachment up 4 points to 55%.

When Nixon resigned, he sat at 35% and 58%, respectively. We could see that threshhold passed in the next 7-14 days if this trend continues. Especially given there's more impeachment testimony coming, and we haven't even heard from the actual whistleblowers or John Bolton yet.

[Astral Disaster]

A Quinnipiac poll has Trump's approval rating down 3% to a 38% overall, and support for impeachment up 4 points to 55%.

When Nixon resigned, he sat at 35% and 58%, respectively. We could see that threshhold passed in the next 7-14 days if this trend continues. Especially given there's more impeachment testimony coming, and we haven't even heard from the actual whistleblowers or John Bolton yet.

I'm as shocked as anyone to realize I could possibly have anything good to say about John Bolton.

[Tendrin]

So this is kind of the buried lede of all buried ledes. Apparently when they were arrested, Parnas and Fruman were headed to Vienna (with Rudy to meet them) to help with logistics for a blockbuster interview of Viktor Shokin on Hannity!

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...paign=trending

[worstblogever]

(This would be the same Hannity who was also one of Michael Cohen's only 3 clients.)

[Tendrin]

Good lord, New York Times!

The original piece quoted Clinton saying Russians have “got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.”
In fact, the actual thing Clinton said was that Republicans were grooming Gabbard to be a third-party spoiler candidate in 2020.
“Hillary Clinton waded into the Democratic primary on Friday by suggesting that Russia was backing Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii for president and that Republicans were ‘grooming’ her as a third-party candidate,” The Times said in a corrected report (emphasis from RawStory).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

A Quinnipiac poll has Trump's approval rating down 3% to a 38% overall, and support for impeachment up 4 points to 55%.

When Nixon resigned, he sat at 35% and 58%, respectively. We could see that threshhold passed in the next 7-14 days if this trend continues. Especially given there's more impeachment testimony coming, and we haven't even heard from the actual whistleblowers or John Bolton yet.

Which makes the Gaetz goon squad stunt today all the more relevant as Republicans know the Trump presidency is nearing FUBAR territory and desperation has set in. They know that if he goes down, they go down with him and are frantic to protect him, to defend the indefensible.

[Kirby101]

I don't want to use the lynching analogy, but they acted like some kind of lawless mob.

[Theleviathan]

Good lord, New York Times!

The hell? Those two quotes are substantially different.

One of my biggest issues with the quote from Hilary was the Russian grooming, that implies a direct connection. The corrected quote does not imply that. That's one hell of a botched quote there.

[Tendrin]

The hell? Those two quotes are substantially different.

One of my biggest issues with the quote from Hilary was the Russian grooming, that implies a direct connection. The corrected quote does not imply that. That's one hell of a botched quote there.

I didn't even take it to imply a direct connection, myself, and this is a HUGE botch by the NYT that I have to assume was done on purpose.

[Theleviathan]

I didn't even take it to imply a direct connection, myself, and this is a HUGE botch by the NYT that I have to assume was done on purpose.

Yeah, I know a lot of posters here have thrown themselves pretty heavily behind the original quote from Hillary, but there were some really troubling aspects to it IMO.

The correct quote, if this is it, doesn't have any of those troubling issues. So...yeah...I'm curious as to how it could be this badly misconstrued.

[Tendrin]

Yeah, I know a lot of posters here have thrown themselves pretty heavily behind the original quote from Hillary, but there were some really troubling aspects to it IMO.

The correct quote, if this is it, doesn't have any of those troubling issues. So...yeah...I'm curious as to how it could be this badly misconstrued.

I don't even think the 'original' quote was all that problematic. We know a /lot/ of Gabbard's social media presence isn't authentic and she's been more than happy to praise Putin in the past. When asked, she couldn't even denounce their social media activity on her behalf and just stated she 'couldn't control what they did'. I never thought that she was in communication with the Russians like our current president was but it wasn't at all out of character for what we know about Russian interference. And I think there can be little doubt about Jill Stein's role in it all at this point.

That said, WTF? At this point, who the heck knows?

[worstblogever]

I don't want to use the lynching analogy, but they acted like some kind of lawless mob.

Arguably, that's been the Republican Party strategy since the Government Shutdown of 2013.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Turns Against Him

Nameless, faceless and voiceless, the C.I.A. officer who first triggered the greatest threat to President Trump’s tenure in office seemed to be practically the embodiment of the “deep state” that the president has long accused of trying to take him down.

But over the last three weeks, the deep state has emerged from the shadows in the form of real live government officials, past and present, who have defied a White House attempt to block cooperation with House impeachment investigators and provided evidence that largely backs up the still-anonymous whistle-blower.

The parade of witnesses marching to Capitol Hill culminated this week with the dramatic testimony of William B. Taylor Jr., a military officer and diplomat who has served his country for 50 years. Undaunted by White House pressure, he came forward to accuse the same president who sent him to Ukraine a few months ago of abusing his power to advance his own political interests.

The House impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine to investigate Democrats is the climax of a 33-month scorched-earth struggle between a president with no record of public service and the government he inherited but never trusted. If Mr. Trump is impeached by the House, it will be in part because of some of the same career professionals he has derided as “absolute scum” or compared to Nazis.

“With all the denigration and disparagement and diminishment, I think you are seeing some payback here, not by design but by opportunity,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat from Washington’s Virginia suburbs who represents many federal employees. “It’s almost karmic justice. All of a sudden, there’s an opportunity for people who know things to speak out, speak up, testify about and against — and they’re doing so.”

Current and former officials like Marie L. Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill and George P. Kent told House investigators how the government was circumvented by a rogue foreign policy operation on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Michael McKinley, a four-time ambassador and senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, described resigning after four decades at the State Department over the treatment of the career foreign service.

Even the original Anonymous is back, the unidentified author of a much-discussed essay in The New York Times last year claiming that officials within Mr. Trump’s administration were working “to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The writer, still unnamed, plans to publish a book next month called “A Warning.”

The witnesses heading to Capitol Hill do not consider themselves part of any nefarious deep state, but simply public servants who have loyally worked for administrations of both parties only to be denigrated, sidelined or forced out of jobs by a president who marinates in suspicion and conspiracy theories.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in 2014, 2015, and in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of former six-term Georgia Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, , who is perhaps most famous for passionately campaigning for bills he wrote to recognize the Ten Commandments in all public schools and courtrooms (which isn’t constitutional). He was later interviewed by Stephen Colbert during his “Better Know a District” series, and was asked to name the Ten Commandments he loved so much, and could not. Rep. Westmoreland’s press secretary later claimed that the segment was edited to make him look bad, and said that he actually successfully named SEVEN of the ten. He’s also been known to be controversial on matters of race, having campaigned against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act as far back as 2006, and having referred to the first African-American president and first lady as “uppity”, only to be shocked when the media informed him that the term was racially charged. He has since had the decency to only refer to Barack Obama as “our enemy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”, which is somehow an improvement in discourse. He’s also lambasted the media for having the nerve to report stories about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi (which he also thinks Obama should be impeached over) that indicate she committed no wrongdoing, and demanded investigations to prove that her top aide, Human Abedin, was not a secret operative for the Muslim Brotherhood. Westmoreland retired in 2016,

It was on this date in 2017 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled A.J. Kern, a failed candidate for Congress from Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in the 2016 elections whose career would best be described as “Monetizing Islamophobia”, as she is one of many known bigots in the state who spread as many lies as thy can about Muslims, which have led to an increase in attacks upon Somali immigrants in the state. Perhaps her most insane rant is against “female gential mutilation” being performed by Muslims, in spite of there being no edict in the Quran about such a thing. When she doesn’t do that, she claims Somali immigrants are driving up state and federal budget deficits because they somehow (she’s not clear on her math) exploit government assistance programs. Kern also agreed with Ben Carson during his 2016 presidential campaign, he stated his belief that the United States should never have a Muslim president. Apparently, she felt like Congressman Tom Emmer hadn’t hated Muslims enough, or that he was too busy being a homophobe to be a good enough Islamophobe, so A.J. Kern decided to challenge him for what was once the seat in Congress held by CSGOPOTD Hall of Famer, the bats*** Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. A.J. Kern managed to snag 26% of the vote in the GOP Primary in 2016 and 18% in 2018, which should tell you a lot about the modern Republican Party, that a person whose resume amounts to “dedicated bigot” could get over a quarter of their votes. She has returned to just giving hate speeches around Minnesota and isn’t running for elected office currently.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be discussing Jim Newberger, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Minnesota to challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar here in 2018, who cut his teeth in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2012. Perhaps Newberger’s most infamous moment in his six years as a state legislator was back in 2015, when Minnesota Democrats were discussing expanding their own light rail out past the St. Cloud prison (no stops in that neighborhood, we would guess), and Newberger chimed in, saying, "Right on the edge of St. Cloud, maybe a half a mile, a quarter-mile, from the rail tracks is the St. Cloud State Prison.... Boy, wouldn't that be convenient, to have that rail line going from that prison to North Minneapolis…" For those not in the know, Northern Minneapolis is also the most diverse community in the entire state, and is where most of the Somali immigrant population of the United States has settled. So… immediately after Newberger blurted that out, he was raucously booed by his colleagues, and immediately tried backtracking before putting out an insincere apology. And no, that xenophobia wasn’t a one-off, as during his campaign, Newberger has been calling for a block on all refugees being resettled in Minnesota, warning of the “rise of Sharia Law” and Muslim “no-go zones” in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (neither of which are happening). But if supporting the kind of bigotry that Newberger does wasn’t off-putting enough, he is also a defender of climate change, instead offering the incorrect scientific theory that the Earth is somehow moving closer to the sun. This stupid theory is debunked on NASA’s home page, suffice to say it shows a great deal of ignorance on Newberger’s part. Newberger’s voting record shows him consistently voting against minimum wage increases and workplace protections, supporting transphobic bathroom legislation, and voting against the legalization of same sex marriage. Newberger failed miserably in his attempt to unseat Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the 2018 elections and has yet to re-emerge in politics. Thus, we’ll set aside his profile at this time, to go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 794-40, since this was established in July 2014.)


Courtland Sykes

Welcome to what is the 794th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be taking a look at Courtland Sykes, a 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate in Missorui whose campaign strategy was to try to win over Republican voters by being the most sexist candidate in the race. Seriously, when you’re asked in a forum by potential votes about your stance on women’s rights, and you go with an answer like this:

“I want to come home to a home cooked dinner every night at six. One that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives. Feminists push an agenda that they made up to suit their own nasty snake-filled heads. I hope my daughters don’t go on to be career obsessed banshees who forgo home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the top of a thousand tall buildings they are think they could have leaped in a single bound — had men not been ‘suppressing them.’ It’s just nuts.”

Needless to say that the press took attention to this misogynistic lunatic, and were wondering, “WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY?” after he opened with that rant… and they were left with more questions than answers. Sykes apparently just moved to Missouri from Arkansas, where he worked as a defense contractor, and prior to that, he was a Congressional aide to Arkansas Congressman Bruce Westerman. Big surprise, he was anti-abortion. Also not shocking… he supported Donald Trump’s stupid idea for a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border. The only other political stance that could be found from Sykes was that he attacked the media for being too “liberal”, and claiming it was “fake news” like Trump, and that he was a fervent defender of Roy Moore. Yes, THAT Roy Moore.

Courtland Sykes ended up finishing 9th out of 12 possible candidates in the GOP Primary for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat, getting only 2.1% of the vote. We hope this will be the only time we ever mention this sexist troll.

[Tami]

The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It.

AUSTIN, Texas — At Austin Community College, civics is an unwritten part of the curriculum — so much so that for years the school has tapped its own funds to set up temporary early-voting sites on nine of its 11 campuses.

No more, however. This spring, the Texas Legislature outlawed polling places that did not stay open for the entire 12-day early-voting period. When the state’s elections take place in three weeks, those nine sites — which logged many of the nearly 14,000 ballots that full-time students cast last year — will be shuttered. So will six campus polling places at colleges in Fort Worth, two in Brownsville, on the Mexico border, and other polling places at schools statewide.