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

[Adam Allen]

Attachment 102723

Twitter Link

It appears that even some Republicans are getting tired of Trump's antics.

I didn't know his name before today, but based just on this, apparently Paul Mitchell is the type of Republican we need more of!

[Tendrin]

Let him keep talking, force all Republicans to pick a side. If they stick with him, they're deranged lunatics and if they abandon him, they're disloyal opportunists, don't give them any way out or let them save face.

This is the correct take. There is zero need to comfort Republicans who are suddenly speaking up now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Attachment 102723

Twitter Link

It appears that even some Republicans are getting tired of Trump's antics.

Pfft. Not impressed. Republicans should've been tired of Trump's antics way back in January when they had the chance to get rid of him, but punted.

I didn't know his name before today, but based just on this, apparently Paul Mitchell is the type of Republican we need more of!

Which means the GOP will come down on him like a ton of anvils for straying off the reservation. Don't be surprised if a day or two from now, Mitchell recants what he said and goes along with the party line about Trump having been "cheated".

[worstblogever]

On this date, in 2014, in 2015, and in 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Charles Van Zant, from the Florida House of Representatives. This fervent social conservative has repeatedly tried passing laws to completely outlaw abortion, which he has compared to the Holocaust, and says kills 1 in 4 African American children in the United States, making it even deadlier for them than the Ku Klux Klan. Seriously, he went there. Van Zant was also highly concerned that Common Core education is “turning all the children gay”, and has repeatedly pushed for legislation that would instead allow prayer in public schools (in spite of that sort of thing being unconstitutional via our separation of church and state). While those painfully stupid misconceptions might be enough to get someone booted for office, inexplicably no one has run against Van Zant in a primary or general election since he first won office in 2008. For four consecutive election cycles, this boob has been allowed to help make Florida… well… Florida. As we also mentioned in our 2015 profile, Charles Van Zant couldn’t stand the thought of missing out on trying to outlaw abortion or stopping homosexuality from being, y’know, tolerated in our society. So he decided he would govern by proxy, and his wife Katherine was going to run for the seat he has to give up in January. And just when it seemed like that would come to pass, both Mr. and Mrs. Van Zant were revealed by the media to have illegitimately claimed a homestead exemption on their taxes since 2008 on a property that no one actually lives in. Defrauding your local government out of thousands of dollars in bogus tax breaks was enough to cause Katherine Van Zant to lose the GOP primary to her opponent, so both Charles and his wife are now out of Florida politics.

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Mark Assini, who very nearly unseated Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter in New York’s 25th District in the 2014 elections, coming within about 1,000 votes of doing so and refusing to concede the election to her until eight days later. In 2016, he figured he’d give it another shot, but things did not quite go according to plan, mostly because old blog posts written by Assini back from 2005-2009 were discovered where he had some delightful opinions about the LGBTQ community. Oh, sorry, did we say delightful? We meant hateful and bigoted. Links to those articles show Assini agreeing with a reader who called members of the LGBTQ community "sexual deviants" and quoting a pastor who called transgender individuals "mentally disturbed." But the best quote was probably that he wanted the only openly gay Congressman at the time, Barney Frank, jailed for imagined crimes, and threw in a prison rape joke while he was at it, writing, “Barney Frank should go to prison. Old Barney would have plenty of dates along with three squares and cable TV.” There were also plenty of press releases from Assini that made misleading and xenophobic claims about illegal immigrants committing crimes in the United States. Assini has not resurfaced yet in politics.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be talking about Joshua Youssef, a candidate for New Hampshire State Senate back in 2012 who lost in the general election with 41% of the vote, and that may have had something to do with the fact his ex-wife’s attorney had a blog that noted that Youssef was behind on paying both child support, as well as numerous tax debts, and that story started to get covered by the local media. Youssef then tried to “bury the lede” by creating his own version of the lawyer’s blog that would praise himself, and discredit the lawyer, but the state attorney general had to bring Youssef up on charges of election fraud. And, being terrible to his former spouse, a tax cheat, and convicted felon wasn’t enough to stop Donald Trump from hiring Youssef to head his 2016 presidential campaign headquarters in Belknap County. He was also a delegate sent to the 2016 Republican National Convention to cast his vote there for Trump, but alas, with “very good people” like Joshua Youssef working for Donald Trump in New Hampshire, that wasn’t enough to help him win the state in the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton. So instead, when Donald Trump claimed that Clinton won the state due to “voter fraud” and that illegal voters were brought in by bus to help her win the campaign (with no evidence whatsoever of this happening), Joshua Youssef furthered the theory. And by that, we mean he went on CNN to be interviewed by Alisyn Camerota and lie his arse off. Youssef was called out for believing such a paranoid conspiracy theory, and forced to slowly back away from the story. To sum up so far… Donald Trump hired a man convicted of election fraud to run his campaign, who then tried accusing Democrats of election fraud without evidence, and had to backpedal after being caught in such an easy lie. Now, these reasons would probably be enough to earn a CSGOPOTD profile and for us to call it a day. But Joshua Youssef is much, much more dangerous and odious of a human being. It wasn’t long ago that we also had a profile of Robert Fisher, a former New Hampshire state legislator who was outed for creating a Reddit group called “The Red Pill” that defended raping women, and offered advice to “men’s rights activists” about how to get away with the crime. And when Robert Fisher had a day job at a business called Same Day Computer, you’ll never guess who his boss was… Joshua Youssef. Who also ended up being outed as a “Men’s Rights activist” whose bitter divorce had him posting hateful things about women and feminists online as well. We’re glad Youssef has never won an election, and now it seems a done deal that he never will.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Mike Kennedy, a former member of the Utah House of Representatives from 2013-2019 in District 27.Kennedy’s former district, as it is… is about as conservative as you’ll find of any one in the state, and all Kennedy had to do was survive the GOP Primary and could cake walk into re-election in the state legislature, winning with 92% in 2012, 88% in 2014, and 100% in 2016 because he was completely unopposed. Kennedy is both a doctor, with a MD from Michigan State, as well as a lawyer with a JD from Brigham Young University. And that’s why it was kind of mind-blowing to see such an educated guy speak before the Utah House of Representatives in 2014, and claim that more poor people would die if they had proper access to healthcare, saying,”Sometimes access to healthcare can be damaging and dangerous… I’ve heard from National Institutes of Health and otherwise that we’re killing up to a million, a million and a half people every year in our hospitals. And it’s access to hospitals that’s killing those people.” Fearmongering about dangerous hospitals… when you’re a doctor? WHAT? But maybe Mike Kennedy doesn’t know what’s dangerous and what’s not. After all, he’ll hang out with pro-gun groups extreme enough that they appear in towns where the Parkland survivors are to auction off assault rifles and insult those gun violence survivors. Other than that, Mike Kennedy is a big defender of Trump administration immigration policies, and as a legislator, voted against a bill to end discrimination based on sexual orientation, voted to return to using the firing squad as a means of execution for capital crimes, voted against the Medicaid Expansion, and even voted against a bill to outlaw bigamy in Utah. So here’s the thing… if Kennedy’s district was so conservative, how did he end up losing office? Well, delusions of grandeur being what they are, with the retiring of Sen. Orrin Hatch, Kennedy thought it was time to move up into the big leagues, and run for U.S. Senate. There’s just one catch to that plan… another Republican had designs on that Senate seat… and his name is Mitt Romney. Kennedy got 52% of the votes… at the Utah Republican Party convention. When voting was opened up to the public, he was crushed at the polls, and only got 28% of the vote. He did not run for his old seat in 2020, or if he decides to go back to being a full-time doctor. As such, we will set aside his profile at this time and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 939-45, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Eric Redman
Welcome to what is the 939th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Eric Redman, who was a member of the Idaho House of Representatives in District 2B from 2014 through 2018. Our reason for profiling him, in particular is simple enough… Redman was actively pushing policy based on the advice of an anti-Muslim hate group, and got called out for those efforts by the Southern Poverty Law Center. This wasn’t actively the toughest case to crack, as two days before Eric Redman sponsored HB 419, a bill that targeted the threat of Sharia Law in the United States, ACT for America was already hyping the legislation on their website. Now, never mind that the threat of Sharia Law on the rise that doesn’t actually exist, there might as well be a law about preventing unicorn attacks… but even if someone was intent on establishing Sharia Law anywhere in the country, such laws would be immediately invalidated as unconstitutional via the establishment clause of the First Amendment that prevents a separation of church and state. Hatemongers and bigots tend to not deal in facts, or have a keen understanding of basic civics classes.

But we won’t bury the lede… Eric Redman was in cahoots with a hate group to let them know his plans. Upon further research via a FOIA request, the SPLC determined there had been no less than 47 e-mails exchanged between Redman and ACT for America over just 15 months. He submitted multiple bills aimed at “foreign laws”, one of which included illustrations of a hand about to be chopped off, and another image of a man about to be beheaded that made it pretty clear what sorts of folks Redman was talking about in bigoted terms. While in his final attempt to get a bill passed in Idaho, Redman was pretending the bill wasn’t aimed at Muslims, it’s interesting to note that he shared videos on social media that fear-mongered about Islam.

Eric Redman made a 2017 announcement that he would not run for a third term in the Idaho State Legislature, around the time the SPLC were hot on his heels, and Redman began a campaign to try and oust fellow Republicans who didn’t go along with the plan set forth by his favorite hate group.

It may come as little surprise that when you peek at his overall voting record, he voted to have the Bible put into public school classrooms as a teaching aid, voted for “Stand Your Ground” laws in Idaho, for ridiculously strict abortion restrictions, supported a bill to remove members of the judiciary that support same sex marriage, and even against a minimum wage increase in the greatest period of income inequality in our nation’s history.

So we’ll note he’s retired from office, and say good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Tami]

Kushner to Lead U.S. Delegation to Middle East as Tensions Simmer

Jared Kushner will be in Noem, Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week; it's a continued bid to ease tensions in region, per admin officials. He's traveling with @aviberkow45
, @AdamUSDFC and Brian Hook, an ex State official who's now an unpaid adviser on Mideast.

Twitter Link

[Tami]

The Trump You’ve Yet to Meet

How well do we know Donald Trump? Pretty well, it would seem. Nobody has ever accused the outgoing president of possessing a complex personality. His behavior in office confirmed the common view, barely disputed even by his allies, that he is a shallow narcissist, blind or indifferent to common decencies, with poor impulse control and a vindictive streak. His futile attempt to litigate away electoral defeat may appall you, but it probably doesn’t surprise you.

Still, just because we know bad things about the 45th president, don’t assume that there’s nothing bad left to find out. Journalists like to pretend that we know everything about a president in real time, but our information is never close to complete. There’s always more to learn, and it’s seldom reassuring.

Americans had no idea until after he left office how completely Woodrow Wilson depended on his wife, Edith, after he suffered a stroke in September 1919; she waited two decades to admit in her memoirs that, on instructions from Wilson’s doctors, she’d winnowed his written communications with Cabinet members and senators, digesting and reframing “in tabloid form those things that … had to go the president.”

Trump’s presumed understanding of the way the game is now played doesn’t mean we won’t have some capacity to eavesdrop on his administration. In recent years, voice-recognition software has made it easier to create near-verbatim transcripts of “memcons,” or memorandums of presidential telephone conversations made by duty officers in the Situation Room. It was a memcon of Trump’s July 2019 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about investigating Hunter Biden (“I would like you to do us a favor though”) that led to his impeachment.

Eventually we’ll get to see other Trump memcons, though their release will likely be slowed by national-security claims. With some luck we’ll also get to see raw transcripts produced by the voice-recognition software. But those won’t be equivalent to the transcripts of the Nixon tapes, because the voice recognition captures not the president’s voice but that of the duty officer repeating what he’s just heard. Besides, a former staffer on the National Security Council told The Washington Post in September 2019 that Trump’s political appointees on the NSC, departing from previous practice, routinely edited out glaringly erroneous or offensive things that the president blurted out in conversations with foreign leaders.

[Tami]

Behind Trump’s final push to limit immigration

Donald Trump is not done with immigration yet.

Since Election Day, the president’s staffers have pushed through changes that make it easier to deny visas to immigrants, lengthened the citizenship test and appointed new members to an immigration policy board.

Some aides even urged Trump to sign an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, said two people familiar with the discussions — a legally dubious tactic given that birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution. A third person said the idea had recently been dismissed.

The moves amount to an 11th-hour attempt to solidify the Trump administration’s legacy on immigration, which started with a sweeping ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries, swerved into scandal over family separation at the border and solidified with severe reductions on refugees and temporary foreign workers. Now, the focus is on putting a bind on President-elect Joe Biden, making it harder for him to reverse these politically fraught issues, according to half a dozen people familiar with the changes.

“What they're doing through the transition is working their way down their list of items to minimize immigration to the U.S.,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group. “The Trump administration has been widely effective in terms of grinding our immigration system to a halt.”

Presidents of both parties have pushed through last-minute policies in the weeks before leaving office, but Trump’s actions are taking on a more urgent feel in part because he thought he would have a second term to implement plans.

The flurry of recent immigration changes — primarily made thorough rules, regulations and administration policy — cap nearly four years of reductions in legal and illegal immigration to the United States.

Trump denied visas to citizens of several majority-Muslim nations. He erected more than 400 miles of a 30-feet steel wall along the southern border, much of it a sturdier replacement of what was already there. He sharply limited the granting of asylum claims. And, this year, he used the coronavirus outbreak to slash the number of foreign workers in the U.S. and essentially close the southern border to migrants.

But Trump has failed to fulfil some immigration promises. Perhaps most notably, he has yet to end an Obama-era program that offers work permits to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. Trump tried to wind down the program in his first year, but the Supreme Court rejected his action.

“Despite having lost in the courts before and DACA having overwhelming support, we are seeing a full-scale effort by the Trump administration to try to kill DACA on the way out the door, subjecting 700,000 people to deportation and dropping this program on the Senate’s lap,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a group working to protect Dreamers.

[Tami]

Marco Rubio is already suiting up for the politics of destruction - opinion

Let’s say you’re a Republican senator who claims to support democracy and U.S. leadership in the world.

Let’s imagine, too, that you’ve spent four years excusing and supporting a president who fawned over North Korea’s odious dictator, encouraged China’s ruling tyrant to build his concentration camps, took the word of Russia’s strongman over U.S. intelligence agencies and celebrated the Saudi despot who orchestrated the dismemberment of a dissident journalist.

And let’s posit that, on top of all that, you’ve been a profile in cowardice as your president tried to nullify a democratic election here at home.

Now the president-elect appoints a team of seasoned, moderate foreign policy experts who support democracy and American leadership in the world.

How do you respond?

Like this, maybe? “I’m sure I will have my differences with President-elect Joe Biden and his team over the coming years. But we share many fundamental principles. His nominees are beyond well-qualified.

“For the good of our country, I wish them every success.”

In our dreams.

Here is the way Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) actually greeted the new team: “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.”

I suppose this sour, graceless tweet shouldn’t surprise us. It shouldn’t surprise us to see Rubio, along with Tom Cotton (Ark.), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and other Republican senators, disparaging the incoming Biden team. They are now in the opposition, after all. In an ideal world, constructive criticism from the opposition might help keep an administration sharp and focused. In a USA Today op-ed following the tweet, Rubio said his main concern is the new team will be too soft on China.

[Tami]

1918 Germany Has a Warning for America

HAMBURG, Germany — It may well be that Germans have a special inclination to panic at specters from the past, and I admit that this alarmism annoys me at times. Yet watching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history.

One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.

Its core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I. Defeat, its proponents said, was declared but not warranted. It was a conspiracy, a con, a capitulation — a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation. That the claim was palpably false didn’t matter. Among a sizable number of Germans, it stirred resentment, humiliation and anger. And the one figure who knew best how to exploit their frustration was Adolf Hitler.

Don’t get me wrong: This is not about comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, which would be absurd. But the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. It’s tempting to dismiss Mr. Trump’s irrational claim that the election was “rigged” as a laughable last convulsion of his reign or a cynical bid to heighten the market value for the TV personality he might once again intend to become, especially as he appears to be giving up on his effort to overturn the election result.

But that would be a grave error. Instead, the campaign should be seen as what it is: an attempt to elevate “They stole it” to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen.

[DrNewGod]

Marco Rubio is already suiting up for the politics of destruction - opinion

How anyone can take either Rubio or Cruz seriously, after they went from being The Trumpsters' ruthlessly-denigrated "swamp-dwelling" adversaries to his palm-licking lackeys is beyond me. Cotton, I can get Trumpsters loving b/c he's always been a faithful part of the camp. But R&C? I don't see how anyone can view them other than as opportunistic toads, without dignity or principle.

[PaulBullion]

How anyone can take either Rubio or Cruz seriously, after they went from being The Trumpsters' ruthlessly-denigrated "swamp-dwelling" adversaries to his palm-licking lackeys is beyond me. Cotton, I can get Trumpsters loving b/c he's always been a faithful part of the camp. But R&C? I don't see how anyone can view them other than as opportunistic toads, without dignity or principle.

That is called a "winning formula" in Red States.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

1918 Germany Has a Warning for America

I seriously doubt Trump gives even half a damn about social polarization or division. For him, it’s about pulling every trick out of his hat to stay in power and avoid SDNY and that trial looming over him like the sword of Damocles.

[Tami]

I seriously doubt Trump gives even half a damn about social polarization or division. For him, it’s about pulling every trick out of his hat to stay in power and avoid SDNY and that trial looming over him like the sword of Damocles.

For him, of course. He isn't smart enough to think beyond his own base needs and wants. The problem is, those who have bound themselves to him, those who drink up every word, every tweet, are they going to quietly forget? Or are they going to be simmering pots of Trump Soup just waiting to boiling over or explode? Grudges like this don't go away easily.

Difference is, in 1918 Germany was the 'loser' and the Germans refused to accept it. In 2020, it's Trump who is the loser, not the U.S.

So it depends on if people who supported Trump, who voted for him, believe that they were wronged or do they just believe that Trump was wronged? If it's just Trump, then this might die down eventually. But if they self identify with Trump, if they conflate Trump with the county, if patriotism becomes synonymous with supporting Trump in their minds, then yes, we could be in for a whole lot of trouble down the road.

[PaulBullion]

Not gonna link to the article, because ewww, but the National Review has turned on Trump.