All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[skyvolt2000]

Crazy trials last couple days.

Little White girl helps her boyfriend die, WHILE in another state, and not physically with him. She gets ten years.
Bill Cosby, has documented cases of years of abuse. But gets a Mistrial.
Yanez, MURDERS Philando Castile on Facebook Live, and gets Acquitted.

Something is seriously wrong with the American Legal system. Why we are not on the same page federally Is insane.

Part of the issue is we don't do our job in who we elect.

There is a reason you don't vote straight ticket especially see who got into the White House thanks to that.

Look at who votes in elections.

I'll give you real example here in Dallas.

We had elections back in May. For school boards, city council, mayors and so on.

You go into SOME black communities-the elections are already over because whoever is black has won by a land slide that if Trump had that lead Hilary would have conceded after 30 minutes after the polls closed.

One election had 10K voters vote-a school board slot that went to a runoff. So you had Judge slot, mayor slots and city council spots up for grabs and the number of folks who voted in those elections-under 1K.

We as POC have to pay attention over who gets put in office and look beyond skin color.

Also we have to accept a reality when it comes to these jurors. They will RESEARCH the holy heck out of whatever court case they get assigned to. They are going to look up everyone in that case and use it against them.

[Rogue Star]

Tim Farron, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats party, resigned recently because his religious beliefs were becoming too much of a distraction. Michael Brendan Dougherty of the National Review thinks this is a problem.

Ummm hmmmm.

[Tami]

[Tami]

“All the President’s Men Revisited” airs Saturday, 6/17 on MSNBC

On Saturday, June 17th, MSNBC will feature a special presentation of All the President’s Men Revisited. The special airs on the 45th anniversary of the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, an event that set the stage for one of the biggest political scandals in history and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

The documentary, narrated by Robert Redford, offers a deep-dive into the explosive Watergate scandal, weaving first-hand accounts from members of the Nixon administration at the center of the story with scenes from Robert Redford’s movie All the President’s Men.

Candid retrospective interviews with the journalists who unraveled the story, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, bring added color and insight into this infamous scandal. These interviews are featured alongside reflections from members of Congress who ultimately voted on the Articles of Impeachment. Current journalists further contextualize this historic event and underscore its continuing relevance for political journalism today.

Watch All the President’s Men Revisited Saturday, June 17th, 2017 at 9PM Eastern on MSNBC.

I'm going to watch this.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

"This song says everything that the left is about and wants! Very sad" - right wing lady discussing this song on a FB post. Yes...THIS SONG.



Yes , because peace and harmony are fucking terrible in society. What makes it more silly is a statement that someone posts that a HS student told them to stop playing that anti-religious song. John Lennon practiced a message of peace and wanting people to live in harmony . Yes he had big dreams and sure he wasn't a great guy to his 1st son and wife. But ...I can say it , least Lennon didn't want any war.

[Gray Lensman]

"This song says everything that the left is about and wants! Very sad" - right wing lady discussing this song on a FB post. Yes...THIS SONG.



Yes , because peace and harmony are fucking terrible in society. What makes it more silly is a statement that someone posts that a HS student told them to stop playing that anti-religious song. John Lennon practiced a message of peace and wanting people to live in harmony . Yes he had big dreams and sure he wasn't a great guy to his 1st son and wife. But ...I can say it , least Lennon didn't want any war.

I never thought of that song as being dark - now the cover by A Perfect Circle on the other hand....the tone of that one carries a vibe that is more 'imagine no choice' rather than 'imagine the possibilities'. I always envision Bester from B5 listening to it with that smug look on his face whenever it comes across on my car radio.

[wjowski]

A chilling thought; meteorologists are predicting a particularly active hurricane season this year. Imagine the Trump administration dealing with a Katrina-level disaster.

[worstblogever]

Well Considering in the latest poll Bernie has 80% black support, soooo....

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm done defending Bernie from Establishment types.

And yet, can you defend the Berners themselves for being as gullible as they were? Because that was my whole point.

[jeanvaljean]

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke rescinds acceptance of Homeland Security post

1. Yay.

2. We already knew about so much dirty laundry with this guy. What could have been dug in addition to that to have him running scared?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke rescinds acceptance of Homeland Security post

1. Yay.

2. We already knew about so much dirty laundry with this guy. What could have been dug in addition to that to have him running scared?

Aww! No Sheriff Sinister (my nickname for Clarke) in the Trump White House? Bummer! To take a guess in response to jeanvaljean's question, I'd say something particularly damaging to Clarke is coming down the pike, damaging enough that he couldn't take the position.

**********

Bodies Of Missing USS Fitzgerald Sailors Found In Flooded Compartments

Seven sailors were reported missing after USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship. As a retired sailor, this is truly sorrowful to me.

**********

Unedited Putin Interview Reveals A Missed Opportunity For Megyn Kelly and America

The footage obtained by HuffPost shows a nervous Kelly who failed to press Putin on obvious issues. Can we expect more softballs from Kelly with Alex Jones tonight?

**********

At Least 58 Presumed Dead In London Tower Fire, PM May Admits Failings

May admitted that the response from the authorities had not been good enough. No kidding.

**********

Bill Cosby Isn’t The Exception, He’s The Rule

A mistrial is a win for team Cosby. What did we expect? What indeed. Meanwhile....

Celebrities React To Bill Cosby Mistrial With Total Indignation

“What kind of bulls**t??????”

**********

Cerebral Palsy Didn’t Stop This College Junior. Obamacare Repeal Might.

Here’s what cutting Medicaid could mean for people with disabilities. Deplorable.

[worstblogever]

It was one year ago we shared our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of the former candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, who became a right wing cult hero by, y’know, being accused of war crimes and arrested and put on trial for murdering two detained Iraqi citizens and displaying their corpses with a banner that said, “No better friend, no worse enemy” while serving in Operation: Iraqi Freedom. After a military trial where even several soldiers in his unit testified against him, media pundits like Michael Savage and U.S. House Rep. Walter Jones fought to have him cleared of all charges, and he was. But the GOP were not content to have a potential war criminal cleared of all charges, and thought someone accused of murder overseas also made a great candidate for U.S. Congress, and ran Pantano as a Tea Party candidate in 2010, and he appeared along the campaign trail promising to fight against a “victory mosque” at 9-11’s Ground Zero, and making appearances with Pamela Geller, and other members of anti-Islamic hate groups. He currently had been appointed as the Assistant Secretary to the North Carolina Veteran’s Affairs Commission by Gov. Pat McCrory, but stepped down in May of 2016. It seems his time in the limelight is over.



It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District, Bill Shuster, who is a political legacy. Bill was first elected to serve Pennsylvania’s 9th way back in the 2000 elections, after his father, fourteen term Congressman Bud Shuster, retired. Bud, a Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, was forced into retirement by multiple ethics investigations that he was accepting gifts from lobbyists, and using a former aide turned lobbyist, Ann Eddard, to speak on his behalf, actually trying to hide in the backseat of Eddard’s car while 60 minutes tried to get him to comment on the arrangement.

Like father, like son, apparently. Because Bill Shuster has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior as the current head of the House Transportation Committee, admitting in April of 2015 that he has been dating a lobbyist for Airlines for America. But before they announced it publicly, you see, they finalized Bill’s divorce from his wife of twenty years, and then signed documents to assure that his new squeeze wouldn’t lobby Bill directly (how romantic). Now, his gal pal would only lobby the entire rest of the committee that he runs, and leave him be. See? Totally no influence there, right? I mean, other than the fact that Shuster keeps hiring people from Airlines for America to positions in his office and to be staff directors for the Transportation Committee in a way that sounds more like arranged marriages on Game of Thrones than part of a democracy.

Yes, we are now in an era where our Congressmen can LITERALLY be in bed with lobbyists.

Bill Shuster is also a climate change denier, insisting that there’s still “debate” on the subject, in spite of 98% of scientists saying the data is conclusive. And in 2009, he posted his own evidence that it didn’t exist at all… the weather forecast for Copenhagen… in December. And there was snow. So obviously it can’t be getting hotter if a balmy place like Denmark was seeing snow! In 2013, he introduced legislation to make any new rules enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency first require Congressional approval because he felt the organization was “running rampant”. (It’s not hard to imagine what an EPA being hamstrung by GOP obstructionism and a resentment of science would be faced with.)

But perhaps the worst kind of denialism you’ll see from Bill Shuster is his efforts to petition his fellow members of Congress to not recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, where over a million Armenians were killed, saying, “the events of 1915…did not constitute genocide because over two million Ottoman Kurds, Arabs, and Muslims…also suffered in this conflict.” Shuster told his colleagues that adopting the resolution to recognize something that clearly happened would be “cataclysmic”, and fearing what our Mid-East ally Turkey might think if they were forced to acknowledge a dark chapter of their own history, a century later.

As far as the rest of Shuster’s voting record goes, he was around to vote for the Iraq War Resolution, and in 2006, was a co-sponsor of a bill that attempted to create a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage as well as to support the "Abortion Pain Bill", which would create an unconstitutional ban on abortion at 20 weeks. Bill Shuster voted in 2007 against ENDA, allowing the continued discrimination of LGBT citizens based on their sexual identity in the workplace. Through the early part of the Obama administration, he was quite the obstructionist, voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, against the Hate Crimes Expansion, against Dodd-Bill Wall Street Reform, against stricter regulations on offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon spill, against the DREAM Act, against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and against the Zadroga Bill, to provide healthcare to the First Responders from 9/11, after many inhaled toxic dust and chemicals looking through the rubble for survivors after the tragedy. Since Republicans took control of the house, he voted for both attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, the great majority of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, voted against raising the Debt Ceiling limit (which would have collapsed the global economy, and led to the United States having its credit rating reduced for the first time in its history), and also voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown. Shuster voted against funding the Department of Homeland Security in 2015, and was a co-sponsor of the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, an attempt to ban Syrian refugees from being resettled in the United States.

Now, Pennsylvania’s 9th district has a +14 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index (the most conservative of any district in the state), But hey, we’re also talking about a Congressman who’s been caught in a sex scandal that is also simultaneously an ethics scandal, right? Surely he had a tough time being re-elected in 2016?

[worstblogever]

Not so much. The “Democrat” who ran against Shuster was Al Halvorson, a somewhat unhinged Tea Party candidate who has repeatedly lost to Shuster in GOP primary races (missing the mark in their 2016 battle by 1200 votes) and figured trying to sneak on the ballot as a Democrat would ensure his victory (it didn’t, he got crushed and only pulled down 37% of the vote).

As such, Rep. Shuster has returned to Washington for his ninth term in office, and has been all over every Republican initiative in the new session, including flat-out lying about what a repeal of the Affordable Care Act would do to people with pre-existing conditions:

"If you have a pre-existing condition today and you're on health insurance, (they) can't get rid of them. People aren't going to get thrown off. The states have criteria they have to meet. Some state can't willy-nilly say: 'We're going to throw everybody off.' (Also) they have voters, (and) the state legislatures and governors have constituencies in those states to respond to. This is giving them the flexibility to drive down costs and make the plans work better for the people who live in their states."

See? They’re not throwing anyone off of their health insurance, they’re only making it POSSIBLE for state legislatures to do that. BIG DIFFERENCE. Blame those guys if and when they choose to do it. He also added, at a later time, the brazenly false statement that Obamacare covered “24 million people fewer than it was supposed to, and the projected price tag doubled to $2 million”. Fact-checkers are all over him on this, and thankfully, his constituents are highly suspicious of his claims.

The rest of Shuster’s voting record is hardly inspiring, either:

• February 16th, 2017: Shuster votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
• March 16th, 2017: Bill Shuster votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• March 28th, 2017: Rep. Shuster votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses. Well, so much for privacy.
• May 4th, 2017: Shuster votes for the GOP's healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, post-partem depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions". Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Shuster would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: Bill Shuster votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Bill financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.

Look, we know that his district leans hard to the right, and his family name is almost a lock to get a vote from the general public in his district from Republicans… but seriously, can Democrats at least find someone to challenge Shuster in this district in 2018? It’s well past time for him to go, and he no longer gives even a pretense that he’s looking out for anyone but himself. He hasn’t held a town hall meeting, and has no plans to. Get a candidate with a “D” next to their name who isn’t a desperate Tea Party nutter and make an upset happen.

[Tami]

A look at Trump's new Lawyer

[Tami]

Donald Trump Reports He’s Getting Rich as President

It has always been clear, Trump is doing this for the money.

[ed2962]

"This song says everything that the left is about and wants! Very sad" - right wing lady discussing this song on a FB post. Yes...THIS SONG.

Yes , because peace and harmony are fucking terrible in society. What makes it more silly is a statement that someone posts that a HS student told them to stop playing that anti-religious song. John Lennon practiced a message of peace and wanting people to live in harmony . Yes he had big dreams and sure he wasn't a great guy to his 1st son and wife. But ...I can say it , least Lennon didn't want any war.

I heard that Yoko is finally going to be credited as co-writer of this song.