All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Theleviathan]

I'm seriously worried that the Democratic primaries will give us a candidate that is a sure bet to lose. IMO Warren and Sanders will not attract voters such as yourself who recognizes the danger of a continuation of Trump's reign as autocrat. He will only get worse. But a lot of uncommitted voters will not like Sanders or Warren and will either sit it out or vote for Trump. I know Bill Maher is not very popular with some folks here but IMO he nailed it in his closing segment last week. And remember, both Bill Maher and Michael Moore feared that Trump would win and ended up being right.

Bless you for opening up about yourself and I wish you peace in these troubled times.

Bill Maher Friday "New Rules" closing segment

Maher is spot on. I know there are vocal, passionate people on the left who feel strongly about a great many issues....but somehow they are oblivious to the fact that their views do not (even closely) resemble the views of most Democrats. Much less Independents. The pandering to that side could end up being the nail in the coffin for four more years of Dingus Trump.

[Tendrin]

John Conyers has passed away.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/o...s-jr-dead.html

[Celgress]

Maher is spot on. I know there are vocal, passionate people on the left who feel strongly about a great many issues....but somehow they are oblivious to the fact that their views do not (even closely) resemble the views of most Democrats. Much less Independents. The pandering to that side could end up being the nail in the coffin for four more years of Dingus Trump.

Some people might hate it but you're right. Maher knows his stuff. Take my elderly aunt a dyed in the wool Democrat but even she was turned off by some of the stuff said at the debates. She said - "why are they focusing on this crazy **** when Trump is destroying the country?"

[numberthirty]

Voting for the inoffensive, milquetoast, 'electable' centrist is a surer bet to losing the White House than a vote for Sanders or Warren.

Most likely.

Folks need to accept that any Democrat in the field could lose to Trump, and focus on dealing with that reality.

[Tendrin]

LAFAYETTE, La. - Two state judges will begin hearing arguments this week about whether an African American Iberia Parish judge should be recused from more than 300 criminal cases after she criticized prosecutors for a high rate of incarceration of black Louisianans.
The comments by 16th Judicial District Court Judge Lori Landry about the treatment of black defendants have prompted claims of bias by the district attorney's office and support from community members who believe the judge is being treated unfairly.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/prosecuto...204544714.html

[numberthirty]

Maher is spot on. I know there are vocal, passionate people on the left who feel strongly about a great many issues....but somehow they are oblivious to the fact that their views do not (even closely) resemble the views of most Democrats. Much less Independents. The pandering to that side could end up being the nail in the coffin for four more years of Dingus Trump.

See this Joy Reid interview...

- https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/joy-...-with-you.html

Let’s talk about the election. You told The Hollywood Reporter just before November 8 that Hillary Clinton would win, and that, “I think she’ll get north of 300 electoral votes.” Now, you clearly were not alone in expecting that outcome, but I’m wondering what your emotional state was when it became clear that Clinton wasn’t going to win — and, more importantly, that Donald Trump was. Take me through your stages of reaction on Election Night.

I would say the first word that comes to my mind is shock. Going into the election, my only real questions were whether or not Hillary Clinton could pick up North Carolina … and whether she was wasting her time in Arizona. I didn’t think she could win that. But it never occurred to me, since it hadn’t happened since ’88, that a Democrat in a presidential year could lose Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. It’s been so long since that happened that I discounted the anecdotal evidence of how much the millennial voter generation hates Hillary Clinton, and has come to hate her, in part because of the long campaign to discredit her, because of the primary — for lots of reasons. And also because the Russian effort was successful. A lot of the information they put out that was anti–Hillary Clinton was designed to work on the sort of Berniecrat, the marginal Democratic leaner, and on the young voter. And it did work on a lot of people. So it just never occurred to me she could lose those three states.

While I don't know that millennial voters hate Joe Biden, Democrats might get bit by the same dog twice if the count on younger voters coming out for Biden without him having to put a serious effort into getting those votes.

So, forget the pandering you think might cost you something.

Get real with yourself about where you might be weak across your whole base.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Pelosi Announces House Will Vote On Impeachment Process After Weeks Of GOP Protests

Democrats are nullifying a key Republican talking point by taking the impeachment inquiry into a more public phase. Your move, Republicans.

**********

White House Official Who Listened To Trump Call Repeatedly Passed Concerns To Superior

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman will tell lawmakers he didn’t think it was “proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.” No kidding!

**********

State Court Strikes Down North Carolina Congressional Map

A three-judge panel said the districts were so gerrymandered toward Republicans that they violated the state’s constitution. Well, that was certainly good news. I have a friend in North Carolina who votes Democrat and was concerned about those shenanigans.

**********

$16.8 Million In Campaign Funds Went To Trump Businesses, Latest Records Reveal

When the president holds a fundraiser at one of his properties, he gets donations while his business collects money for rent and catering. And the Grifter-in-Chief continues his grifting.

**********

Trump Publicly Revels In Death And Spectacle: ‘Boom Boom Boom!’

The reality show president treats somber moments like cheap action movies. Well, what did people expect? The guy's a carnival barker with no filter and zero sense of decorum.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Bobby Jindal, the former Governor of Louisiana, and absolute bottom-feeder in the polling for the 2016 GOP Presidential Primary candidates. Bobby Jindal was born Piyush Jindal, but got a man-crush on Bobby Brady on the Brady Bunch and renamed himself. While Gov. Jindal’s call to his colleagues in the GOP to “stop being the stupid party” sounds like a brave call for better discourse, he might want to practice what he preaches, considering he’s fighting to have creationism taught in schools instead of evolution, and in 2014, refused to answer if he believed in evolution with the defense that he’s “not an evolutionary biologist”. That defense might have worked better if Jindal’s degree wasn’t in biology. But Jindal’s religious bent should come as less of a surprise when you learn that in 1994, Jindal wrote an article in the New Oxford Review about noticing a classmate who had a smell of sulfur about her, so he and some classmates performed an amateur exorcism on her that had the side effect of curing her skin cancer. If that isn’t quite KOO-KOO for Cocoa Puffs enough for you, Jindal also has come out repeatedly in defense of Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, no matter what homophobic things he’s saying at the time. Then there’s just Jindal’s record as governor of Louisiana, where he inherited a post-Hurricane Katrina state and brought it from the bottom in most statistical categories like job creation, crime rates, high school graduation rates to numbers elevated so far that they have stayed in the bottom five in the nation. During Jindal's brief time in the 2016 Presidential Primary, he admitted that if president, he would use the IRS as a tool to attack Planned Parenthood, said President George W. Bush "made absolutely the right decision on Iraq", and said he would force the resignations of House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and all 535 members of Congress. Just before his campaign ended, he came up with the solution to defeat ISIS, a "no fly zone", which he had immediately pointed out to him would not work so well, since ISIS doesn't have an air force. Jindal will be remembered as one of the worst governors of the past decade in terms of job creation, education, and poverty of his citizens, which is amazing because he inherited a state recovering from Hurricane Katrina and never raised its fortunes any higher, really.

In both 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the day profiled former sex term Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany,… Whoops. Freudian slip. I mean six terms. But if you believe current headlines, perhaps it is the sex terms of Rep. Boustany that need to be addressed, as his name was alleged to be tied to a prostitution scandal back in Louisiana. As the story goes, in a book called "Murder on the Bayou" about several prostitutes who have turned up dead in Boustany's district, is alleged that Boustany was a frequent customer of those sex workers, and several of them worked out of a hotel owned by Martin Guillory, a field representative for Boustany prior to their deaths. The veracity of the accusation has not been verified, but Boustany insists it was all a "dirty tricks" attack from fellow U.S. House Rep. John Fleming, as both were candidates in the GOP Primary for the U.S. Senate seat for Louisiana that was up for grabs with the retirement of David Vitter, a guy who truly knows how to be implicated in a prostitution scandal. Boustany is also noteworthy for, prior to running for office, being a rather terrible doctor. He was sued for malpractice eight times, twice being found at fault, and what makes that even more relevant is Congressman Boustany also is the co-sponsor of the provision of the Affordable Care Act that had Medicare money being approved for end-of-life counseling... also known as the thing Republicans themselves wet their pants over, and fear-mongered to the public as being "death panels". Charles Boustany remained utterly inflexible about gun control, which isn't uncommon for a Republican, but when you consider the fact that he personally has recently had a relative shot in a mass shooting, it just seems callous. When John Houser went on a killing spree at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2015, Boustany's cousin was among those wounded... and yet, he still is unmoved to enact any gun control legislation, including the kinds of improved background checks that would have prevented Houser from carrying out his mass shooting in the first place. But his story gets even weirder... at one point back in the mid 1990s, Rep. Boustany was a victim of a fraud scheme... because he was trying to buy a title of British nobility (really). Two con artists ran a scam where they hoodwinked dumb wealthy Americans like Congressman Boustany into believing they could buy an English title for a hefty sum. That would earn him not just the right to refer to himself as "Lord Boustany", but would grant him a seat to ride in the Queen Mum's 100th Birthday celebration. Most millionaires would just write the money off as a loss on a flight of fancy. But not Congressman Lord Boustany. Nuh uh. He filed a lawsuit that never went anywhere in Lafayette Parish, but the record is available to the public. Here is a link to all three pages of the complaint, but the most relevant one is page 2, which shows how much he paid for the Title - $18,500 - and lists both his name and that of his wife in the pleading, and why they are filing suit. Ironically, as Boustany tried to pay to alter the record to make it show he was a British noble, he was also one of many Republicans who questioned the circumstances of the birth and citizenship of President Obama publicly back in a 2009 interview, before quickly backpedaling when he was called out on it. Anyway, all of that weirdness, as well as a hyper-partisan voting record may have been what led to Charles Boustany finishing only third in the 2016 race for the U.S. Senate seat to represent Louisiana.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the now-former Governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, who was elected to a single term in office back in 2014, and everything that Rauner attacked former Democratic Govenror Pat Quinn on in 2014 to get elected… he’s managed to be worse. Job creation? Worse. Budget shortfalls? Worse. Violent crime, in virtually every statistical category? Worse. AND he’s not just worse on crime, he impotently tries blaming mayors for that violence rather than accept any criticism, like a true leader would. Meanwhile, as the Illinois state legislature moved to pass popular legislation like automatic voter registration, Rauner vetoed it. As teachers began to strike around the country for increased wages, the Illinois state legislature passed a salary increase to end the problem…and Bruce Rauner vetoed it. For four years, Rauner refused to raise taxes, and instead, wanted to run Illinois by the same kind of model with which Sam Brownback ran Kansas into the ground… by cutting “entitlements” like funding for Medicaid, public education, funding for programs addressing domestic violence, homeless youth, autism, and immigrant integration that most critics found flat-out morally wrong. He emulated Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s stupid quest to wipe out labor unions in his state, trying to pass “right to work” legislation. That’s something he didn’t campaign on, and if there’s one city where you don’t f*** with unions outside of New York, it’s Chicago. You would think that as far away from Mexico as Illinois is, that maybe the good Illini wouldn’t have to get pissed about Bruce Rauner on the issue of immigration, compared to say, most border states… and then they found out he was personally profiting from ICE detention centers that were holding children separated from their families in cages. Even the National Review considers Bruce Warner to the be the worst GOP Governor in the United States, which is amazing because that means he rated worse than people like Mary Fallin and Paul LePage. Gov. Rauner’s main survival tactic through this past year seemed to try to blame all the problems in his state on Mike Madigan, the Democratic Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. This included trying to blame Madigan for what happened with Nick Sauer. For those don’t know that story… Nick Sauer was appointed to a state position by Bruce Rauner to be the State Tollway Authority Board director, eventually ran for the state legislature. And, during Sauer’s first term in office, he went and carried out a revenge porn scheme by releasing nude photos of his ex-girlfriend online. When the media reported on this, and noted Rauner was behind Sauer’s rise in politics… Rauner tried blaming Sauer’s actions on a “culture of abuse” Madigan had created in the capitol. No one bought it. Everybody hates Bruce Rauner. Republicans hate him for being too moderate on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Democrats hate him for being a near billionaire who attacks any and all parts of the social safety net… Rauner was defeated in 2018 by J.B. Pritzker, and now is a forgotten man in Illinois politics. Thus, 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 795-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

 

[worstblogever]

Jason Reese

Welcome to what is the 795th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be taking a look at Jason Reese, a failed 2012 candidate for District 46, as well as failed 2018 candidate to be a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, specifically to represent District 83. Where Reese became notorious was his second campaign, when he filed a campaign expense report that had an online porn site specializing in BDSM listed on his campaign expense report filed with the FEC.

Reese used the excuse that it was just an “error” made by a staffer who accidentally cut and pasted the wrong address from the wrong web window, because THAT’S TOTALLY A THING THAT HAPPENS and that it didn’t raise questions about Reese’s campaign staff getting their rocks off to bondage porn on the clock.

Now, one would think someone who’s enough of a hypocrite to claim to represent family values in a red state and yet try to list online porn as a campaign expense… well… you would think that person would gracefully step aside for another Republican right? Well, welcome to the 21st Century Republican Party, where not only will that candidate not exit from an election to help a candidate without scandal win, but GOP voters are stupid enough to still advance them out of a primary. Yup, Jason Reese won by 400 votes, and advanced to the general election in November 2018… but he at least lost to Democrat Chelsea Branham with 48% of the vote.

At least Reese will have the free time to watch the continuing adventures of Hot Wife Chloe and whatever punishment she might get. In the meantime, it looks like he’s going to continue to float around the Oklahoma state legislature as a legislative aide until he can find a way to carpet-bag into a seat that comes available.

[Mister Mets]

Agreed, and that could be a major weakness depending upon the nominee. I hope I'm wrong but I fear I'm correct.

I can't help but wonder if Trump, or more exactly his handlers, allowed this Ukrainian scandal to occur so they could undermine Biden (via his son Hunter) with enough Democratic primary voters to ensure someone far less moderate will win. They know Trump is doing wrong but thought "hey we can use the event to wound Biden too". Perhaps I'm being paranoid. Time will tell I suppose.

Trump was hoping for the Hunter Biden stuff to get out without the scandal. The earlier goal was to have Ukraine announce an investigation.

Trump did seem genuinely unaware of how bad it would look, which may be one reason the White House released the call notes rather than trying to cover it up.

[kidfresh512]

Trump was hoping for the Hunter Biden stuff to get out without the scandal. The earlier goal was to have Ukraine announce an investigation.

Trump did seem genuinely unaware of how bad it would look, which may be one reason the White House released the call notes rather than trying to cover it up.

Exactly. They wanted this to be the "but her emails". Let the scandal marinate, keep suggesting something bad and illegal happened. It would be all over Fox News despite it being disproven already. They didn't expect it to backlash on them about how they were using the full weight , money and power of the American government to specifically target trumps personal campaign foe.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump was hoping for the Hunter Biden stuff to get out without the scandal. The earlier goal was to have Ukraine announce an investigation.

Trump did seem genuinely unaware of how bad it would look, which may be one reason the White House released the call notes rather than trying to cover it up.

Or maybe Trump WAS aware but, in his arrogance, thought he could get away with it like he has practically everything else.

[worstblogever]

Trump was hoping for the Hunter Biden stuff to get out without the scandal. The earlier goal was to have Ukraine announce an investigation.

Trump did seem genuinely unaware of how bad it would look, which may be one reason the White House released the call notes rather than trying to cover it up.

Trump's a useful idiot... Russia wants to get out of sanctions, has Republicans trying to pretend they were framed and never interfered in 2016... and while they're at it, they wanted Trump to hit up Ukraine like this to interfere so THEY would be slapped with sanctions for interfering with 2020.

Regardless of who wins in 2020, the Russians wanted Ukraine behind the 8 ball, and folks like Lev, Igor, and Firtash were suckering Rudy and Trump into making it happen. The only question I have is if Rudy and Trump are aware of what they're doing to help Russia, or if they're just such suckers for conspiracy theories that they honestly do believe the bulls*** bill of goods that is being sold about the Bidens. It's really 50/50.

[kidfresh512]

Man explains refusing to shake McConnell's hand at Cummings memorial: 'I couldn't do it'

A man seen in a viral video declining to shake Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) hand at the late Rep. Elijah Cummings's (D-Md.) funeral said the snub wasn’t based on his loyalty to Cummings as a friend.

The man, identified as Bobby Rankin, told The Washington Post on Monday he blamed McConnell for denying veterans’ benefits to his brother before he died last October from cancer after being exposed to contaminated water while serving in the Marines.

“When I saw Mitch McConnell, all I saw was my brother’s face,” Rankin told the Post.

In a 16-second clip, Rankin, one of Cummings's pallbearers, is seen passing over McConnell while shaking the hands of congressional leaders. He skips straight from shaking the hand of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), apparently snubbing McConnell, who stands between the top Democrats.

The clip was widely shared on Twitter, but Rankin told the Post he hadn’t seen the video until a reporter from the newspaper contacted him.

It was a powerful moment and hearing the backstory made it even more right. McConnell is the epitome of worthless trash.

[Tami]

General election: Labour says it will back pre-Christmas poll

Jeremy Corbyn has announced that Labour is ready to back a general election now that the EU has granted a three-month Brexit delay, making a pre-Christmas poll all but certain.

With the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party preparing to support a one-line bill tabled by Boris Johnson’s government later on Tuesday, triggering an early poll, Corbyn said his party would also vote for it.

The Labour leader told the shadow cabinet: “I have consistently said that we are ready for an election and our support is subject to a no-deal Brexit being off the table.

“We have now heard from the EU that the extension of article 50 to 31 January has been confirmed, so for the next three months, our condition of taking no deal off the table has now been met.