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

[worstblogever]

It's our latest reminder of what a crock the statement "Nuh uh. Both parties are just as bad," actually is...

It’s Your Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day!

(And please, for those who those who really felt the "Both Parties are Just as Bad" statement is defensible, remember, I'm still challenging you to write your own essays each day, to keep pace with me, if it's actually "just as bad". Keep in mind, you have to pick someone from politics who has either ran for, held office within the past 5 years, and have multiple verifiable news sources to any quotes/beliefs they might have to build a solid, established track record of stupid that clearly isn't a fluke. Hell, we'll even accept people who help write party platforms within that time frame. Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 42-0, since this was established on 7-18-14)


Paul LePage

The Republican Governor of Maine promised during his 2010 campaign that if he became governor, he’d “tell Obama to go to Hell”. Well, since he took office in 2011, he’s spent three years taking most of the state there, personally… I’m just going to go right into a list of how. If you’re outside of Maine, you might have missed his spectacular display of derangement, that I’m surprised doesn’t make the national news more often.

• LePage is opposed to the Maine Clean Elections Act, which provides for publicly financed campaigns in Maine. He proposed eliminating all funding for the Act in his 2014–2015 biennial budget, deeming it, “welfare for politicians”.
• Gov. LePage dismayed critics with a jaw-dropping level of nepotism since taking office. As one of his first actions, LePage appointed his 22-year-old daughter Lauren as assistant to his chief of staff on the state’s dime to the tune of $41,000 in tax payer dollars, and employee benefits estimated to be worth an additional $15,000. While residing in the governor's mansion, she also receives a housing benefit with an estimated value of $10,000 per year. Many noted that Lauren LePage has a limited work history, but at 22, that shouldn’t be too shocking. Lauren performed her duties until it was revealed on October 15, 2013 that she would be leaving her position to work on her father's reelection campaign. Meanwhile, Gov. LePage later hired his brother-in-law, Jody Ledoux, as director of administrative services for the State Planning Office with an annual salary of $68,577. Ledoux, who is married to a sister of LePage's wife Ann, began his work on February 13, 2012.
• At the beginning of his term as governor, he was criticized for refusing either to attend Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events in Portland or Orono or to meet with Maine representatives of the NAACP. When questioned, LePage said he would not be "held hostage" by special interest groups including the NAACP, and laughingly told a local news reporter, "Tell them they can kiss my butt.” Outrage over this flippant response followed, and LePage thought the media were blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
• In February 2011, LePage again gained national attention when he spoke on a local TV news program saying he hoped to repeal the Maine ban of Bishpenol A, voted for unanimously by the Maine Board of Environmental Protection, because "There hasn't been any science that identifies that there is a problem" and added: "The only thing that I've heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards....and we don't want to do that.”
  Now, this is ignorant on a lot of levels. For one, laughing off chemicals that develop when you microwave substances, to like, eat off of or out of them… that’s pretty… well… bad. But then Gov. LePage is dumb enough to get his hormones mixed up and claim that estrogen makes you grow a beard? No, governor. You’re thinking of testosterone. Estrogen is the lady one that causes the development of breasts. (I almost wish he would have made himself a test patient to prove it was harmless, and grown his own moobies.)
  
  On March 28, it was reported that the LePage administration had dropped its opposition to the new BPA regulations. After a unanimous vote in the Senate and only three opposing votes in the House of Representatives, on April 22, the Maine legislature passed a bill to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups and other reusable food and beverage containers, effective January 1, 2012. Governor LePage, though, stubbornly refused to sign the bill but it became law without his signature.
• In his weekly radio address on July 8, 2012, LePage said, while discussing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , that the IRS was "the new Gestapo" due to their role in enforcing the law. Many in the Jewish community, and other critics were obviously less than thrilled.
  On July 9, LePage saved some face, when he issued a written statement stating that his intent was not to "insult anyone, especially the Jewish community, or to minimize the fact that millions of people were murdered", and that his message had been "clouded" by his use of the word Gestapo.
  
  But on July 12, he ended up digging the whole a little deeper while at a fundraiser for Randy Brock, candidate for Vermont governor. LePage was questioned about his comment from July 9th, and when asked by a reporter if he knew what the Gestapo did, LePage said that he knew they "killed a lot of people" and that he thought the IRS, while not there yet, was headed towards killing many people as well. LePage clarified that he did not think the IRS would intentionally kill anyone, but that he meant the IRS would eventually ration the medical care of Americans, which would result in deaths.

[worstblogever]

• On June 20, 2013, after speaking at a rally opposed to the bipartisan biennial budget proposal voted out of the Legislature, LePage responded to criticism from Democratic Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Troy Dale Jackson that LePage was "delusional" to claim Democratic leaders were unwilling to negotiate with him. LePage stated that Sen. Jackson "claims to be for the people but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline". He further stated people like Jackson, a logger by trade, "ought to go back into the woods and cut trees and let someone with a brain come down here and do some good work", along with other negative personal remarks.
• LePage found himself in controversy again when on August 19, 2013 two Republican state legislators alleged, to a Portland Press Herald reporter, that at a fundraiser in Belgrade, Maine, LePage made the comment that President Obama "hates white people".
• Nine days after the federal government shutdown on October 1, 2013, LePage declared a civil emergency in Maine. That allowed him to ignore state laws or rules if they delayed effective management of the emergency. LePage said that the declaration was necessary in order to cope with the loss of federally funded positions during the shutdown, such as by transferring state-funded personnel to functions originally carried out by the federally funded personnel to minimize layoffs. The head of the Maine State Employees Union Ginette Rivard criticized the move as an unnecessary "overreach of power". Democrats in the Legislature were concerned about the lack of transparency about what Governor LePage was going to do as a result of the emergency and sought more information. A week later, after the shutdown ended, the “civil emergency” was lifted.
• Speaking before a conservative women's group in Falmouth, Maine on October 14, 2013, LePage claimed that "About 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don’t work ... It's really bad." Where LePage obtained these figures remains unclear since Maine's unemployment rate is actually below the national average. According to an analysis posted on Politifact, only about ten percent of "able-bodied people" age 18 to 64 in Maine were not working and if unemployed Maine residents who were looking for work were excluded from the count, the number not working drops to 3.6 percent. Most thought this remark was another instance of a Republican thinking Mitt Romney’s claims about the “47%” were in some way true, or justified. Either way, it didn’t go over well publicly, obviously.
• In December 2013, LePage stated his desire to change child labor laws in Maine, so that children as young as 12 could be put to work.
• But most frightening, perhaps, is his feud with the media. And I don’t mean the national media, even. Paul LePage has an ongoing war with the local newspapers in Maine that borders on infringing on the freedom of the press. After a three-part report published by the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal, and Morning Sentinel which alleged his Department of Environmental Protection commissioner was favoring former clients, he ordered his administration to not grant interviews to reporters of those newspapers or cooperate with their information requests. Thankfully, it seems most of the state agencies have ignored this paranoid, deranged request.
• On August 9, 2013, while using an F-35 Lightning II simulator at the Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine plant in North Berwick. LePage was asked what he wanted to do in the simulator; he stated "I want to find the Portland Press Herald building and blow it up." He later sent a tweet stating that it was a joke. The Portland Press Herald printed a statement by Publisher Lisa DiSisto that LePage had "a misguided sense of humor" and called the remark "irresponsible" when it comes from the leader of the State.
• From January to September 2013, Gov. LePage met eight times with the Constitutional Coalition, an extremist group of 9/11 Truthers who believe the government is about to wage a war on Christians. During his meeting with them, he apparently joked about hanging a Democratic member of the state legislature. While LePage denies discussing hanging the Democrat, he does not deny meeting with the paranoid conspiracy group.
• LePage has repeatedly opposed funding for state EMS workers to have access to naxolone, a drug that can be used to save people dying from heroin overdoses. At first, he claimed that he was opposed to it because he didn’t want to give “addicts a feeling of invincibility” when someone comes to save them from death at the last moment. But in the end, it was just something he said was “too expensive”.

I mean, go ahead from that list. Pick your favorite insane quote. And remember, this is just in his first term, and excludes his extreme positions against marriage equality, unionized labor, or wanting to completely eliminate income tax in Maine. I can only imagine what is yet to come if he somehow wins a second term.

[Spike-X]

Idiots. I've been around guns my whole life, and even I'm weary of automatic weapons. Those things are wild. Parents should know better, the people working there should REALLY know better. But apparently some people don't live in the age of good parenting or responsibility.

Just think - the people who allowed their 9-year-old to shoot an Uzi are still allowed to have guns, and kids.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Paul LePage, another Republican driven batshit insane by a black man in the Oval Office. At least we don't worry about that sort of insanity here in Pennsylvania with Tom Corbett who's soon to be "One Term Tom" as governor.

[Spike-X]

This is equally upsetting.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/2...parent-reason/

This is the aftermath of all kinds of bad things erupting into a giant mess created by several groups of people.

We still don't know details as to why this Mike Brown shooting happened, but this group of police is pretty ridiculous.

I've only been speaking specifically about the officer who shot Mike Brown. He is one of "them", but is he? Benefit of the doubt until there's a reason not to.

Why is it you're willing to bend over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved in the shooting of unarmed black people by police, except for the unarmed black people?

[Kasper Cole]

Why is it you're willing to bend over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved in the shooting of unarmed black people by police, except for the unarmed black people?

Not to mention the multiple witnesses saying the same thing. It's amazing to me how some people are working awfully hard to downplay that aspect of it. The shooting happened in broad daylight in a populated area.

Yet we're supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to the cop skipped town soon after the shooting happened and scrubbed his social media footprint.

[Vibranium]

Riot police may make situations worse

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...ampaign=buffer

[Tendrin]

Paul LePage, another Republican driven batshit insane by a black man in the Oval Office. At least we don't worry about that sort of insanity here in Pennsylvania with Tom Corbett who's soon to be "One Term Tom" as governor.

That's giving him too much credit. LePage and people like him were always batshit crazy. It's just that the election of a black man to the highest office in the country made it okay for them to be more publically noxious and more people to justify the votes they were already casting.

[JediMindTrick]

Not to mention the multiple witnesses saying the same thing. It's amazing to me how some people are working awfully hard to downplay that aspect of it. The shooting happened in broad daylight in a populated area.

Yet we're supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to the cop skipped town soon after the shooting happened and scrubbed his social media footprint.

Its posts like this that show just how crazed and lunatic the Brown side has become in irrational thought.

Do you honestly think Darren Wilson would still be alive if he'd stayed in town? There were crazies threatening his life. They had to put security on his house. The black Darren Wilson cop at the St Louis PD even had death threats against his life for sharing a name. And don't try to pretend like it wouldn't have happened. Look at all the looting and rioting done in the name of "justice" by many. Don't even try and pretend otherwise. As to scrubbing his social media footprint - that was his dad not him and it was done after the media and others started harassing him on it. Lastly even if he did leave town he's stayed in contact with investigators - you say skip town like he's trying to evade something other than the threats against him.

And once again your multiple witnesses are not saying the same things. Some have been proven to either be outright lying or very incorrect by the autopsy (no shots in the back). Dorian Johnson, a guy with a documented history of lying to the police, has given multiple accounts some of which are impossible and are in huge contradiction to the other witnesses. Some other witnesses contradict one another on other things as well as far as whether his hands were up and what exactly Brown was doing. Its also funny the hypocrisy of the whole witness argument - I've seen the argument now that the witnesses in the Walmart shooting case were mistaken about what they saw which led to them calling 911 and the police shooting the guy with the air soft rifle. So which is it, are witnesses always correct or only correct when it suits your purposes - I made my statement earlier in this thread - witness testimony is the most unreliable evidence there is which is, especially in high stress moments, why when there are any doubts or confusion about it a full investigation should be done before a rush to judgement which is whats going on in Ferguson.

[Vibranium]

Looting and violence does not offset murder

no matter how hard people want it to

[Double 0]

Its posts like this that show just how crazed and lunatic the Brown side has become in irrational thought.

Says the person defending a cop who shot down an unarmed black kid, protected by a police force that used weaponry banned from conventional warfare and more advanced than the ones used by the average soldier against their own citizens and have done all they can to obstruct the legal process involved in the shooting, as well as dehumanizing a town caught up in a history of abuse from the political, housing, and law enforcement sectors by calling them a bunch of crazies.

Pardon me if I find that particularly interesting, to say the least.

[Vibranium]

furthermore what kickstarted the really serious coverage was the night the PD decided that its citizens were enemies and started arresting reporters, there was no violence happening that night, you can go find the archived web stream and its a line of peaceful protesters having stun grenades and tear gas launched at them

[7thangel]

Do you honestly think Darren Wilson would still be alive if he'd stayed in town? There were crazies threatening his life. They had to put security on his house. The black Darren Wilson cop at the St Louis PD even had death threats against his life for sharing a name. And don't try to pretend like it wouldn't have happened. Look at all the looting and rioting done in the name of "justice" by many. Don't even try and pretend otherwise. As to scrubbing his social media footprint - that was his dad not him and it was done after the media and others started harassing him on it. Lastly even if he did leave town he's stayed in contact with investigators - you say skip town like he's trying to evade something other than the threats against him.

this is so ridiculous. it's beyond hyperbole.

somehow all the other cops that have done the same thing around the country and were named either immediately or in the following days, all remained unscathed and untouched, but somehow rioters and looters in Ferguson were definitely going to find and kill wilson. smdh

[Vibranium]

http://newjersey.news12.com/news/mar...-car-1.9166611

4 part time jobs, and kept gas in her car because she used to run out going from job to job

This is unacceptable

[worstblogever]

Its posts like this that show just how crazed and lunatic the Brown side has become in irrational thought.

Do you honestly think Darren Wilson would still be alive if he'd stayed in town? There were crazies threatening his life.

Here's a bit of revised history (which, for the record, is stupid to attempt when the history you're trying to re-write is from 3 weeks ago).

Darren Wilson's identity was withheld for a week after the shooting. No one was calling for his death early on, because hey, nobody knew who he was.

Since it was found out, the only point anyone threatened him was when the Black Panthers showed up for 5 minutes, then got told to bugger off by Brown's family.

Finally, since the shooting, I'm willing to bet there have been more peaceful protesters threatened with death by the Ferguson PD, than the other way around. Hell, there's video that proves that.