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

[numberthirty]

HHS official shared post saying 'forefathers' would have 'hung' Obama, Clinton for treason

Let's be honest...

The founding fathers would run out of rope while they were hanging current political figures for treason.

They would be like Oprah handing out free cars. "You get a noose! You get a noose! You get a noose!"

[kmeyers]

Let's be honest...

The founding fathers would run out of rope while they were hanging current political figures for treason.

They would be like Oprah handing out free cars. "You get a noose! You get a noose! You get a noose!"

It's amazing how revered the founding fathers are. They were a bunch of racist rich dudes with a 1st grade education who were sick of paying taxes so they convinced people to revolt.

[SuperiorIronman]

America today is a different animal compared to the age of the founding fathers, lets not act like they would have much sway over modern politics to actually hang someone. I'm sorry but that is also a form of punishment that is both cruel and unusual primarily due to the way it's performed. Unless it is built to exact standards it is cruel and unusual (decapitation, strangulation, eye popping, the victim not exactly dying, parallelization, etc) and thus not currently used (or if is is used in a capacity that lawmakers would frown upon).

Seriously, they can **** off with that about nooses.

[Tendrin]

God, I hope so. It would be so delicious.
I absolutely hate that guy.

Depending on the timeline, though, I suspect it might have had more to do with potentially illegal coordination with the Trump campaign.

[Malvolio]

No.

Trump’s America First media allies think he has betrayed them with the Syria strike.
Non-Interventionism Finds A Home On Fox News.
Trump supporters upset over decision to attack Syria.

Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and the like are not fans of the strike. I think a lot of conservatives thought "America First" meant isolationist policies.

You know, there were a few things that liberals didn't like about Barack Obama. Drone strikes, for one. But I don't remember Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow or anyone else bursting into tears and losing their **** over it. I mean, Alex Jones is showing what a crybaby he really is.

[numberthirty]

You know, there were a few things that liberals didn't like about Barack Obama. Drone strikes, for one. But I don't remember Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow or anyone else bursting into tears and losing their **** over it. I mean, Alex Jones is showing what a crybaby he really is.

Doesn't this make the likely unsafe assumption what Jones does is on the level and not something like Andy Kaufman's feud with Jerry Lawler?

[JCAll]

America today is a different animal compared to the age of the founding fathers, lets not act like they would have much sway over modern politics to actually hang someone. I'm sorry but that is also a form of punishment that is both cruel and unusual primarily due to the way it's performed. Unless it is built to exact standards it is cruel and unusual (decapitation, strangulation, eye popping, the victim not exactly dying, parallelization, etc) and thus not currently used (or if is is used in a capacity that lawmakers would frown upon).

Seriously, they can **** off with that about nooses.

The anti-Obama crowd got strangely into nooses because they knew it invoked the image of lynching black men. I remember lynching Obama in effigy was a real thing that got going for a while. I guess they just can't let it go. Honestly, if Hillary had become president instead of Obama, those same people would probably have gravitated more toward burning at the stake, because it invokes the image of witches.

[Mecegirl]

http://breaking-cnn.com/former-first...-bush-dies-92/
Rest in peace Mrs Bush.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Sean Hannity Defends Withholding Link To Trump’s Attorney: ‘I Have A Right To Privacy’

“It was such a minor relationship,” Hannity said. Suuuuuure it was, bubblebutt. Whatever you say. Meanwhile....

**********

Sean Hannity Accused Of Stealing His Legal Strategy From ‘Breaking Bad’

Better Call Saul! Holy Ambulance Chaser, Batman! You can't make up stupid **** like this!

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Trump Campaign Pays Lawyer Who’s Trying To Make Stormy Daniels Shut Up

Trump’s advisers have been claiming that the $130,000 payment to the adult film actress on the eve of the election really had nothing to do with the election. Uh-huh, right. Gotcha. Tell me another story.

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A New Poll Shows The GOP Is More Trump’s Party Than Paul Ryan’s

The House speaker is well liked within his party, but most Republicans aren’t especially sad to see him go. Same for Democrats.

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Billionaire GOP Donor: I’m Using My Tax-Cut Money To Help Elect Democrats

“For the good of the country, the Democrats must take back one or both houses of Congress.” Well now, that's sure to make Dolt45 unhappy.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, Walter Jones, whose biggest claim to fame is that during the build up to the Iraq War, when France refused to join the United States in invading, he responded by submitting a resolution to have French Fries in the Capitol cafeteria renamed "Freedom Fries". He was also a big supporter of Ilario Pantano, a U.S. Soldier from Iraq who was placed on military trial for killing two Iraqi citizens and displaying their corpses with a sign saying, "No better friend, no worse enemy." Of course, Jones seems rather fine with anti-Muslim measures himself, considering he's publicly complained about community colleges in his district spending money on copies of textbooks on Islam or Muslim culture, called for defunding the Obama administration to stop the resettlement of Muslim refugees, and has tried to get classified information about 9/11 declassified, claiming that Saudi Arabia would be secretly revealed to have funded the attacks. He has also discussed impeaching President Obama for his executive orders on immigration, and going on the conservative news network Newsmax to be interviewed by former Congressman J.D. Hayworth to say he felt Republicans have a “Constitutional duty to impeach President Obama”. As late as June of 2015, Rep. Jones was repeating lies about how the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels”, over a half-decade after it was named Politifact’s “Lie of the Year”. Walter Jones also is a repeated guest of Alex Jones' InfoWars, agreeing with the host on one episode that "abortion is a curse upon America", and that if it was stopped, the curse would be lifted.

Walter Jones has been sabotaging the Republican Party’s biggest establishment names for the past few years. We discussed in our original profile of Jones that he recanted his belief that the War on Iraq was justified (that’s right, even the Freedom Fries guy has hindsight). By the end of the Bush administration, Jones was more than willing to throw Dubya under the bus, and lay blame with him for the deaths of thousands of American troops in a conflict we stared because of selectively presented evidence against the Hussein regime. And that guilt and resentment over his Iraq War vote carried over to the rest of the Bush family, it seems, because while Jeb Bush was trying his damnedest to make some headway in the 2016 Presidential Primary, Walter Jones was right there to chuck Jeb under the bus over it, as well, going on Alex Jones’ InfoWars (again) in August 2015 to do so, saying, “If my brother had sent 4,000 Americans to die in an unnecessary war, I don’t believe I’d be making those statements. We never had to go into Iraq. It was manufactured intelligence. We had no business going into Iraq, taking out Saddam is part of the problem that we’ve got with the Middle East right now.”

And he still wasn’t done. Through most of the summer and early fall of 2015, Walter Jones was working with the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the most obstinate, pigheaded, and deranged Republicans in all of Congress, to push for the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, who they no longer trusted because they felt he compromised with Democrats too much. (Think about that for a second… John Boehner compromised too much in his mind.) Rep. Kevin McCarthy was fast-tracked to be John Boehner’s replacement as House Speaker, and while McCarthy certainly did botch his step into the media spotlight for the job, it certainly didn’t help that Walter Jones sent out a letter to Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers than implied Rep. McCarthy was having an affair with another woman, who many speculated was fellow Congresswoman Renee Ellmers.

His voting record over the past year or so, with plenty of defections from his party this time out:

• March 16th, 2017: Walter Jones 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.
• October 3rd, 2017: Jones votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).

Since winning re-election in 2016, Jones has continued to be all over the road when it comes to allegiances. You wouldn’t expect that a Republican southern pastor whose party loyalties can wear thin would stand behind a kook like Donald Trump no matter what, and you’d be right. Walter Jones was rather blunt about the fact that he was voting for Mike Pence on the GOP ticket, indicating his distaste for the egomaniacal billionaire at the top of the ticket. In fact, in February of 2017, Walter Jones became the first Republican to call for a special commission to investigate ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, sponsoring a bill called the “Protecting Our Democracy Act” to show he wasn’t messing around, either. In later March of 2017, as California Congressman Devin Nunes started leaking information about that investigation directly to the White House, and then sharing classified information with the media without sharing it with the other members of the Intelligence Community first, Rep. Jones was the first Republican to call for him to step aside. Perhaps the final straw for the GOP establishment was the fact that last spring, Rep. Jones voted against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and in December of 2017, Walter Jones was the lone member of the GOP to vote against the Republican tax plan/scam, sticking to his principles and refusing to cast a vote for it because if would balloon the federal deficit (The rest of the GOP don’t care about deficits when their party holds the White House, of course).

The Republican Party, of course, has responded with a primary challenger to try to rid themselves of Walter Jones for the third time in the past three elections. This time, it’s Scott Dacey, a local Craven County Commissioner, and federal lobbyist who’s already promising to be a toady for Donald Trump in Washington. Walter Jones has not taken this news lightly, nor the news that GOP donors have been funneling money to Dacey and even as the incumbent, he’s trailing in fundraising. Jones has tried to beat Dacey to the punch by claiming that as a lobbyist, he’s the real member of “the swamp” that needs to be drained in Washington, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a part of it, too. This… is gonna be an ugly primary. And while North Carolina’s 3rd District has but +11 Republican lean, no Democrats filed to run in this district by the February 28th deadline. (In theory a write-in candidate might be possible in the Democratic primary?). At this point, it looks like it’s going to be Jones winning a twelfth term, or Dacey taking his place in Washington come this time next year. Between the two Republicans, Jones still somehow seems more palatable, in spite of years of paranoia and Islamophobia, but we definitely would prefer a blue option on the ballot.

[Kirby101]

http://breaking-cnn.com/former-first...-bush-dies-92/
Rest in peace Mrs Bush.

No one else is reporting this, and I don't think that is actually CNN.

[InformationGeek]

In other news, more dick-ish behavior via executuve orders.

Without much fanfare (totally apropos, given what’s been happening in the world of the White House in the last 72 hours), President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that will force recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, Medicaid and low-income housing subsidies to find work or lose their assistance.

Trump quietly signed the long-anticipated order, oddly named “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility.” Given that many government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, have already begun issuing waivers to Republican governors who want to impose stricter work requirements on Medicaid recipients to cut costs, it will not make much of an impact, according to the New York Times.

The fact remains that most able-bodied adults who receive federal aid in the form of subsidized health care or housing already work—but are still unable to make ends meet; others receive exemptions for legitimate reasons.

[Tendrin]

Yep. It's only screwing people who either can't get a job or have don't have one for some other reason, so you know, the actually /most/ vulnerable parts of the population, like the mentally ill and the disabled but not quite disabled enough.

[Mecegirl]

No one else is reporting this, and I don't think that is actually CNN.

Good to know!! I saw the link late last night and was like wow...already???

[WestPhillyPunisher]

In other news, more dick-ish behavior via executuve orders.

But the GOP will tell you, with a straight face, that there's no war on the poor when anyone with one working brain cell knows that there is. Always has been. The Republican Party's longstanding and pathological hatred of the poor and disabled (on top of their hatred of minorities, gays, women and religions other than Christianity) has only grown larger and stronger since Sunkist Satan took office and shows zero signs of letting up.