All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[PaulBullion]

I'm not super confident about FL going blue.

Trafalgar Group has Trump +3 with registered voters in FL.

It's just going to be close there.

Pennsylvania on the other hand ...

Ignore the Trafalgar group. They are not honest brokers.

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

[BeastieRunner]

Ignore the Trafalgar group. They are not honest brokers.

PPP leans heavy left.

Dismissing out of hand is part of why we are in the mess in the first place.

The reality is Florida is going to be close.

And probably in court again.

[Tami]

Trump rolled back more than 125 environmental safeguards. Here’s how.

President Trump has spent the run-up to next week’s election touting himself as the finest steward of the nation’s air and water in generations. “Who would have thought,” he boasted during one stop in Florida, “Trump is the great environmentalist?”

But over the course of nearly four years, his administration has steadily loosened oversight of polluting industries, eroded protections for endangered wildlife and stymied Obama-era efforts to address the globe’s most daunting environmental threat: climate change.

A Washington Post analysis has found that as Trump’s first term winds to a close, he has weakened or wiped out more than 125 rules and policies aimed at protecting the nation’s air, water and land, with nearly 40 more rollbacks underway.

The administration has accelerated its push to deregulate in the weeks before the election, to ease requirements on power plants that leak waste into waterways, weaken efficiency standards for dishwashers, scale back oversight of mine safety and approve seismic drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

On Thursday, the Trump administration opened up more than 9.3 million acres to logging in Alaska’s vast Tongass National Forest, one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests. It boasts the highest density of brown bears in North America, and its trees — some of which are 1,000 years old — absorb more carbon than any other forest in the United States.

Trump officials say they are focused not solely on diluting existing policies but on advancing a more practical environmental agenda. They say they have prioritized issues most relevant to Americans — a list that includes cleaning up Superfund sites, upgrading municipal water systems and addressing the maintenance backlog at national parks.

But Trump, who once vowed to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency to “little tidbits,” promised regulatory rollbacks when he arrived in Washington. And they will probably define his environmental legacy, touching every corner of the nation, from what comes out of car tailpipes to how companies extract oil on land and at sea.

More than half of the policies instituted by the Trump administration are being challenged in court by environmental groups, states and public health organizations. While the looming election and ongoing legal fights ultimately will determine whether many of them remain in place, their impact has already begun to reverberate.

[Robotman]

LOL

It’s hilarious how the left always rambles on about “Faux News” being a propaganda network for Trump while at the same time pretending that networks like CNN and MSNBC aren’t biased.

There's a pretty huge difference as Fox isn't just a conservative news outlet but also shapes Trump's opinions and decisions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/o...iss-google1tap

One of the first things senior staff members learned about Mr. Trump was that he was all but un-briefable. He couldn’t seem to take in complex information about policy choices and consequences in the ways presidents usually do in Oval Office meetings.

What they saw instead was the guy from the first debate. He’d switch subjects, go on crazy tangents, abuse and humiliate people, cut them off midsentence. Officials I interviewed described this scenario again and again.

In the middle of a briefing, Mr. Trump would turn away and grab the phone. Sometimes the call would go to Fox television hosts like Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs; sometimes the officials wouldn’t even know who was on the other end. But whoever it was would instantly become the key voice in the debate.

So you can see why Rupert Murdoch and co. will do anything to keep Trump in power. They are his top advisers.

Fox is basically state run television.

[BeastieRunner]

Trump rolled back more than 125 environmental safeguards. Here’s how.

He really enjoys undoing everything good Obama's done.

You have to go back to Johnson to find a POTUS that works that hard to undo legacies.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

He really enjoys undoing everything good Obama's done.

You have to go back to Johnson to find a POTUS that works that hard to undo legacies.

And makes it worse. I mean when people look at Trump's legacy its gonna be quite horrible and if Biden wins he should basically reverse every change Trump did and mock him each time he does it. "Well we had to change this back since the previous administration was pretty dumb for changing it."

[worstblogever]

To be honest, democrat voters not turning out for midterms are more to blame for the current situation than politicians. I mean, you can turn around and blame the party for not getting voters excited to vote or whatever but that’s a rabbit hole that goes nowhere. The fact remains that dem voters couldn’t be bothered despite the ruin W Bush Left the country in when he left office.

This was most true in 2010 (to a lesser extent in 2014 during Senate races). But that Tea Party year... it let the GOP swipe state legislatures, then re-write the Congressional maps in those states so they could hang onto the House via a false majority for almost a decade. States like PA and NC, where Democrats would win 55% of the vote but get only 33% of the Congressional seats in the caucus. The GOP's bulls*** was out of control enough to motivate Democrats in 2018, and get the House back. They'll hang onto it in 2020, and if as many state legislatures flip blue...

Well, the unf***ing of that gerrymander will begin.

To which, the credit goes to people like Eric Holder, Beto, Stacey Abrams and the like. It was a goal they worked to undo the gerrymander for like the past 5 years.

[BeastieRunner]

This was most true in 2010 (to a lesser extent in 2014 during Senate races). But that Tea Party year... it let the GOP swipe state legislatures, then re-write the Congressional maps in those states so they could hang onto the House via a false majority for almost a decade. States like PA and NC, where Democrats would win 55% of the vote but get only 33% of the Congressional seats in the caucus. The GOP's bulls*** was out of control enough to motivate Democrats in 2018, and get the House back. They'll hang onto it in 2020, and if as many state legislatures flip blue...

Well, the unf***ing of that gerrymander will begin.

To which, the credit goes to people like Eric Holder, Beto, Stacey Abrams and the like. It was a goal they worked to undo the gerrymander for like the past 5 years.

Sadly, we have to wait for another census to fully fix it. The GOP, win or lose under Trump part 2, only has 1-2 elections left that will let them run this way.

It will take a major EC change and nationwide redistricting to keep them in power much longer.

Or, they could get with the program and just start being a moderate conservative party.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

He really enjoys undoing everything good Obama's done.

You have to go back to Johnson to find a POTUS that works that hard to undo legacies.

As I’ve said numerous times in the past, in my opinion, it all goes back to Obama making fun of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, something the Donald never forgave or forgot, and he’s been out to destroy Barack’s legacy ever since.

[Robotman]

As I’ve said numerous times in the past, in my opinion, it all goes back to Obama making fun of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, something the Donald never forgave or forgot, and he’s been out to destroy Barack’s legacy ever since.

In Barack's defense, Trump had already started spreading the "birther" conspiracy so Obama was justified in making fun of him.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" featured a profile of former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a voraciously anti-immigrant Republican who not only signed SB1070 into law, but had done FOX interviews where she said illegal immigration was a form of "terrorist attack", insisted repeatedly that illegal immigrants were decapitating Arizonans and headless bodies were being found in the desert (even while her law enforcement agencies were debunking her), but perhaps it became clear she might have a racist streak a mile wide when she wanted courses on Native American and Hispanic culture banned because they "breed treason" When accused by some critics of having policies not unlike the Nazis (-1 points for them breaking Godwin's Law), Brewer defended herself by saying her dad died fighting against the Nazis in World War II. Fact checkers, though, found out her father died of lung cancer in 1955, which left her scrambling even more. Details on the case are sketchy, because days before she took office, a judge did a solid and sealed them. Brewer left office in January, and left the Grand Canyon State far worse than she inherited it from Janet Napolitano, and her career in politics may have come to a close, save for sticking around as a consultant (although I don't see what insight she could give anyone about public speaking or avoiding controversy, at this point). Brewer has served as a campaign proxy for Donald Trump here in the 2016 elections, where she managed to stir up a hornets' nest by laughing off the idea that Trump might lose Arizona by saying, "Latinos don't vote."

In 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Joe Carr, a former member of the Tennessee state legislature who challenged Senator Lamar Alexander for his U.S. Senate seat in 2014. Back n 2012, though, Carr weighed in on the controversy over Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" remarks telling a reporter that not only did he feel Akin shouldn't drop out of the race, he felt that Akin's assessment of women having a way to shut down pregnancies conceived in rape was true. Carr actually tried claiming Lamar Alexander was "supporting amnesty" on illegal immigration, and his campaign webpage feaured bizarre ideas to do things like restore the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and his thoughts on foreign policy included a Thomas Jefferson quote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Which is rather dumb interpretation when you consider it was written to discuss the Shays rebellion that took place prior to the Constitutional Convention, and really shouldn't be used as a justification to go send our armed forces off to die like a blood sacrfice. Anyway, Carr ended up losing to Alexander, but it was closer than you'd think, with him getting 41% of the vote. Its real success, though, was how he exploited his campaign to funnel money to his daughters, who were paid $6500 a month working on his campaign. He ended up out of the Tennessee state legislature in January of 2015, and followed that with a losing bid to run for chairman of the Tennessee GOP.

In 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" featured a profile of Jim Spurlino, a candidate for U.S. House from Ohio's 8th Congressional District, who claimed, without any evidence, that he received an anonymous letter threatening to blackmail him should he run for office, and then stalking his children on social media. While that in and of itself is a little bit chaotic for a candidate to tell the media in an interview, Spurlino actually chose to make it the center point of his whole campaign for Congress, and ran ads where he talked about shady back-door deals like this. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Spurlino was discovered to be a deadbeat dad who was nearly $24,000 behind on child support payments, as the local media discovered. And while Spurlino was also a political outsider, he had some pretty radical views on issues, especially abortion where he falsely accused Planned Parenthood of ”selling baby parts” and was “pro-life from conception”. Suffice to say, he did not fare well in the GOP Primary to replace Speaker Boehner, finishing fourth with 6.9% of the vote in a field of no less than fifteen Republicans.

It was in both 2017, and in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Wendy Rogers, who not only failed to get herself elected to the Arizona State Senate during the 2010 Tea Party Wave then failed in the past four elections to get herself elected to Congress, first losing in 2012 in the GOP Primary for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District, then in 2014 in the general election to Kyrsten Sinema for that district, before carpet-bagging her way down to try to get elected further north in Arizona’s 1st District and lose in the primary to the child-abusing anti-gay, anti-immigrant sheriff who dates gay illegal immigrants, Paul Babeu in 2016, before losing to Democratic Congressman Tom O’Halleran in 2018 after petitioning voters to “send Trump some back up”, while calling Democrats “radical, crazy, and unhinged” in campaign ads. Now, why is it that Wendy Rogers has repeatedly failed to win office? Well, she touts her experience as an Air Force veteran, which is always good. On the other hand, she runs fear-mongering ads that should come with trigger warnings like when she included a few seconds of footage of ISIS beheading James Foley in her 2014 campaign video. Even the traditionally conservative Arizona Republic condemned that choice, especially because Foley lived in Phoenix, where his loved ones could get triggered whenever their local television programming went to commercials during election season. After Rogers’ campaign manager actually argued why this bit of Islamophobic propaganda wasn’t so bad…they changed the ad so instead it showed head lice, because once Kyrsten Sinema pointed out there were polls out that said Congress was less popular than head lice (and was correct). Her insane campaign tactics have continued, but this time may have proved fruitful, as she won the GOP Primary in 2018 for this seat by running attack ads against fellow Republican, and State Senator Steve Smith, claiming the modeling agency he works for “specializes in under age girls” and is “linked to sex trafficking” (law enforcement actually spoke in Smith’s defense on this). Anyway, this was hardly the only flag we saw on Wendy Rogers, because looking at her issue stances, on immigration, she supported building a physical wall along the U.S. Mexico border (which explains why she campaigned with Trump in Arizona), opposed migrant resettlement including from Syria (of course she does, she’s scared of those Muslims doing all the terrorisms!), and even pushing for English to be made the official language of the United States, which has kind of repeatedly been established as unconstitutional (and the first historic time was in her home state, to boot). Her national security policy is her belief that the American government was doing nothing to help Christians being attacked by ISIS, but America was committing “suicide” by allowed Muslim refugees in “without screening”, in spite of the quite rigorous screening process in place. In May of 2018, she compared the fact that abortion is legal in the United States to… oh… you know… the Holocaust. It’s these sorts of details that have made Rogers a five-time loser.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Randy Baumgardner, a stunt double for villains in old-timey Western flicks, and a former Colorado state legislator from 2009 through 2019, who spent his first four years in office in the state House, before moving on to the Colorado State Senate in 2013. Baumgardner was a hard-right hardliner, to be sure, who touted States’ rights to rage against the Obama administration whenever possible, once sponsored legislation to try and reclassify “person” in murder cases to include fetuses as an end-around against Roe v. Wade, and also traveled to Arizona in the hopes of bringing an anti-immigrant racial profiling bill like SB 1070 to Colorado. But, the main reason we were meaning to profile Randy Baumgardner was the multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment levied against him (What? An anti-choice fanatic with issues towards women? THE HELL YOU SAY.) that forced his resignation. Taking a look at his photo, and then hearing that he slapped a woman on the ass without her consent seems to track, and we can visualize him going, “YEE-HAW!” before threatening anyone who has a problem with it like Yosemite Sam in a Looney Tunes picture. His career is thankfully over. We will set aside his profile at this time, and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 932-45, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Ben Cline
Welcome to what is the 932nd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the sitting U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 6th District, Ben Cline, who is currently serving in his freshman term in Congress, after having been in the Virginia House of Delegates for five terms over almost a decade. Only days after being sworn in as a Congressman, it became clear that Cline was a bit extreme when he went on a conservative talk radio show to promote the false anti-immigrant narrative that “Democrats want open borders” and insisting they only care about immigration to “replenish their voting base” before pitching the positively ludicrous idea that Donald Trump should have held the 2019 State of the Union Address from the U.S./Mexico border before conceding maybe that was logistically impossible and they should do it at a stadium in Arizona or Texas.


How much of a partisan lemming is this stooge? Well, he’s willing to charge into a classified hearing behind accidental Butt-Head cosplayer Matt Gaetz. And when you follow that dumbass… you maybe should have your head checked. Especially because… BEN CLINE WAS ON THE COMMITTEE AND COULD HAVE BEEN IN THE ROOM WHENEVER HE WANTED. But no, he’d rather pretend he’s shut out, and that impeaching Trump for withholding Congressional-approved aid to Ukraine in exchange for political favors in the form of announcing an investigation into Joe Biden was a “sham”.

His entire legislative career, he’s been an extremist. From his Personhood stance on a woman’s right to choose, his refusal to consider any gun control measure, and his support for Trump’s stupid idea for a useless wall along the U.S./Mexico border, he’s in love with every failed conservative policy there is. Heck, as a state legislator in Virginia, he supported Voter ID, expanding the potential methods of execution by capitol punishment (because the state couldn’t get lethal injection drugs), and co-sponsored legislation to make it the state’s position that life begins at conception.

So in his first term in office, this is what Ben Cline has done (not much, and what he has, it ain’t good):

• January 22nd, 2019: Cline votes against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Cline voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Cline votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 7th, 2019: Cline votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
• April 4th, 2019: Ben Cline is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 17th, 2019: Cline votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Cline votes against the Dreamers Act, because she’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Ben Cline votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 23rd, 2019: Cline is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 18th, 2019: Cline ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Cline votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Virginia’s 6th Congressional District has a +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, making it a the second-most conservative out of the state’s 11 Congressional Districts. That makes it a tough fight for the Democratic nominee for this seat, Nicholas Betts, a law clerk with no prior political experience that hasn’t flipped blue in three decades. Which is a shame, because Betts says all the right things and has detailed policy ideas, whereas Cline spends more time badmouthing Joe Biden and mindlessly mimicking Trump 2016 talking points like how he’s in Washington to “drain the swamp” when he’s been an elected legislator since the Obama administration started. Ben Cline is a worthless empty suit who will do little but vote against every good idea the other party has while battling strawmen he creates and claims are Democratic positions until people stop making him relevant by seeing through the obvious and ceasing to elect him.

[Jack Dracula]

Don't get me wrong, I am not absolving voters of their share of the blame. I constantly stress to people the importance of voting locally. Also contributing to campaigns out of state that could be flipped, if you live in a state that's pretty hemmed up, like I do.

Say what you will about the GOP, they do not fail to get their base exited to vote. And I think the DNC could sure learn a thing or two about that.

I've said more-or-less the same thing here before. The GOP have become masters at keeping their electorate engaged. All they had to do is trade in their ethics.

This was most true in 2010 (to a lesser extent in 2014 during Senate races). But that Tea Party year... it let the GOP swipe state legislatures, then re-write the Congressional maps in those states so they could hang onto the House via a false majority for almost a decade. States like PA and NC, where Democrats would win 55% of the vote but get only 33% of the Congressional seats in the caucus. The GOP's bulls*** was out of control enough to motivate Democrats in 2018, and get the House back. They'll hang onto it in 2020, and if as many state legislatures flip blue...

Well, the unf***ing of that gerrymander will begin.

To which, the credit goes to people like Eric Holder, Beto, Stacey Abrams and the like. It was a goal they worked to undo the gerrymander for like the past 5 years.

That was exactly what I was thinking of while typing my post.

Sadly, we have to wait for another census to fully fix it. The GOP, win or lose under Trump part 2, only has 1-2 elections left that will let them run this way.

It will take a major EC change and nationwide redistricting to keep them in power much longer.

Or, they could get with the program and just start being a moderate conservative party.

Wilbur Ross saw to it any information gathered from the 2020 census will be incomplete.
Another instance of the Trump administration blatantly cheating to maintain Republican power.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Say what you will about the GOP, they do not fail to get their base exited to vote. And I think the DNC could sure learn a thing or two about that.

They try, but it's impossible to catch up to an opponent with numerous structural advantages in society, and they don't have billionaires investing in multiple decades old propaganda news networks or able to get their own judges to outnumber Republicans in the court system. And that's just what I can think if at the moment, there's more. Another problem is that as soon as the Dems get any momentum politically with congress and presidency, they're not able to make signifiant changes due to how sabotages the system is by Republicans, their voters get demotivated since they're not understanding how difficult it is to govern and the Republicans are voting it again during the mid-terms and the process repeats. This is why Obama still gets attached for not closing Gitmo on the left, despite the fact Congress wouldn't let him.