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

[Dalak]

I mean, your state DID elect Ted Cruz.

We're hoping some lucky guy gets to Beto him this fall!

*hands out whiffleball bats so you can Beto him for that pun*

[Tendrin]

We're all betoing on it.

[Tendrin]

Like I said.

It won't take her long to fold. XD

[numberthirty]

I honestly don't disagree with this. It's similar to my own feelings, but don't be surprised if people with their ears closer to the ground than either of us feel differently.

You know?

TBH, I do think Jones will wind up voting against him due to the amount of support he received from pro-choice forces that helped elect him.

I just don't see a guy who barely scraped together a win against the guy he just managed to beat having too many bonehead moves before he puts himself into a position where winning reelection is going to be unlikely.

[aja_christopher]

You guys can be good aggregators for left-wing talking points.

When the talking points involve separating kids from parents in violation of due process, repeatedly attacking "minority" American citizens, and openly selling America out to the Russians, they are points worth talking about.

I don't give a damn about Warren's heritage -- Trump with the aid of the Republican party is helping to destroy our country as we know it.

That's what I care about.

Standing up to racism, injustice and corruption is not a "talking point" and if you think it is then maybe you need to rethink what it means to be an American citizen -- you spend more time attacking your fellow Americans on the "left" than you do addressing our common interest of preserving our democracy and keeping it free of foreign influence.

You focus on Warren's "heritage" all you want to -- I've got more important issues to address.

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"Allies Wonder if the West Can Withstand the Trump Presidency"

"For the last 17 months, Trump has torn at the West's cohesion and questioned its values in a startling manner since, typically, the US has always seen European institutions as multiples of its own power and enhancing its own security.

He's portrayed US allies as freeloaders exploiting American generosity rather than partners in a US effort to rebuild shattered Europe after World War II and an alliance that beat communism in the Cold War in a triumph for liberal democratic capitalism.

It's an assault that has opened wide divides in the transatlantic alliance and plays directly into what US intelligence agencies and foreign powers assess as Putin's goal -- to cement his own autocratic rule by weakening the institutions of the West.

As it is, transatlantic relations are in their worst state in 70 years, as an increasingly unfettered US President acts on his populist nationalist intuition, inciting a trade war with the European Union and parroting the foreign policy talking points of the Russian strongman he admires.

"The question everybody has here is what is the world going to look like after this couple of days here? Is an already undermined system getting a further blow?" said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a former German presidential adviser, speaking from Brussels.

Before leaving the White House, Trump showed why there is such concern in Europe, a month after he blew up the G7 summit in Canada. Then Trump told reporters his meeting with Putin would be easier than those with US allies, further stoking worries that his hostility to NATO could embolden Russia.

The comment was yet another example of Trump siding with a leader seen by US allies as a threat to democracy, who US spy agencies say meddled in the 2016 US election to help Trump win and who presides over a security state likely responsible for the death of a British woman after a nerve gas attack on a Russian former spy on UK soil.

Trump has often seemed more in tune with Russia's foreign-policy objectives than those of NATO -- calling for Russia's readmission into the G7 and refusing to rule out the recognition of Putin's annexation of Crimea."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/polit...tin/index.html

[WestPhillyPunisher]

5 Men Could Overturn Legal Abortion In America

Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court would present an immediate threat to Roe v. Wade. Which is just what the Grand Old Pervert party wants most. However, making abortion illegal won't, I say again, WON'T eliminate the practice, it'll simply return to the back alley, presenting life threatening dangers to poor, desperate and minority women.

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Trump Hits Obamacare Again, Nearly Wiping Out Funds For Outreach

It will probably mean less help for the very people who need Affordable Care Act coverage the most. Which is just what Caramel Caligula wants most, to completely destroy Barack Obama's signature legislation to satisfy a petty vendetta against the first black president. And if people die as a result? Oh, well, them's the breaks.

**********

GOP Anti-Antifa Act Could Send Masked Demonstrators To Prison For 15 Years

Convicted murderers can do less time. I would ask where the logic is here, but there is none when it comes to the GOP.

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Trump Could Separate Families Again If Parents Don’t Agree To Long-Term Detention

The Trump administration may start pressuring BROWN SKINNED asylum-seeking parents to agree to let their kids be locked up indefinitely or face separation. Fixed that for HuffPost.

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Fox News Politics Editor: Trump Will ‘Defecate All Over Everything’ In Europe

Chris Stirewalt said Trump will realign the United States with Russia instead of Europe. Ain't that some crazy ass ****? But, hey, her emails....!

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Pregnant Women Say They Miscarried In Immigration Detention And Didn't Get The Care They Needed

Pregnant women in immigration detention under the Trump administration say they have been denied medical care, shackled around the stomach, and abused.

[Iron Maiden]

Sometimes I have to convince myself that I am still living in America. But then I read the news about this administration's actions and I doubt it has been for a while now. Bill Maher has been calling it a slow moving coup and I think that's what been happening. In many respects, Turtle Boy McConnell is the more of the architect instead of Trump. They've gotten scores of judges in the courts and probably get the majority in the Supreme Court for decades considering all the young picks they have lined up ready to go. All because they started slow walking Obama's choices in the circuit courts during the last year or so of his presidency. And more importantly denying any hearings for Merrick Garland.

[Tendrin]

o. All because they started slow walking Obama's choices in the circuit courts during the last year or so of his presidency. And more importantly denying any hearings for Merrick Garland.

That started immediately, honestly.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Sometimes I have to convince myself that I am still living in America. But then I read the news about this administration's actions and I doubt it has been for a while now. Bill Maher has been calling it a slow moving coup and I think that's what been happening. In many respects, Turtle Boy McConnell is the more of the architect instead of Trump. They've gotten scores of judges in the courts and probably get the majority in the Supreme Court for decades considering all the young picks they have lined up ready to go. All because they started slow walking Obama's choices in the circuit courts during the last year or so of his presidency. And more importantly denying any hearings for Merrick Garland.

And if Hillary became president, Turtle Boy threatened not to fill the vacancy on SCOTUS at all during her term. Could you imagine going four years with only eight Justices? Or perhaps McConnell knew ahead of time that Kennedy was going to retire and decided to wait that out so the number dropped to seven, possibly giving the edge to the right leaners on the bench. More of McConnell playing the long game to help the GOP, not the country, regardless of if Clinton or Trump won the election, and he came out on top in the end.

[ed2962]

This is why you can't have honest conversations with Conservatives, they are Snowflakes, and they can't handle a real honest debate where they can't just LIE!

Then Carol Costello plays the "Oh! Let's not be mean to them game."

I've said it before...anti-snowflakes are the biggest snowflakes

[worstblogever]

Trump went to a NATO meeting and has immediately started s***, grousing up a storm about how Germany is really beholden to Russia, because of a single oil pipeline between the two.

The Senate responded by passing a resolution by a vote of 97-2 to reaffirm their support of NATO. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, both isolationist right-wing loons, were the no votes. Remember that about the former should he ever run for president again.

[worstblogever]

Four years ago on this date, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on Carl Paladino, the former candidate for Governor of New York, who campaigned by mailing garbage-scented fliers out to voters, took to the podium with a baseball bat to try to look like a capable leader, like say Al Capone in the Untouchables, who got caught e-mailing beastiality jokes to colleagues while previously working in state government, who said the Affordable Care Act would be worse than 9-11, and who threatened members of the media with being “taken out”. Ah, how we miss the days when that sort of behavior would actually stop someone from being elected.

It was three years ago that we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of former perennial Presidential candidate Jack Fellure, a man who has run for president in eight consecutive elections, and when asked for his party platform in 2012 when he ran as the Prohibition Party candidate (who still want to outlaw liquor), he submitted the King James Bible, because he believes America is a Christian nation. Fellure not only wants to outlaw booze, but blames all of society's evils upon “atheists, Marxists, liberals, queers, liars, draft dodgers, flag burners, dope addicts, sex perverts and anti-Christians”. While running for president in 1996, where he received one write-in vote in Ohio, he raged at the man who defeated him in 1992, saying President George H.W. Bush was “responsible for inestimable damage toward the destruction of this sovereign democratic constitutional republic who continued to water the seeds of international, Satanic Marxism to the exclusion of our national sovereignty" before assessing that President Bill Clinton, “merely shifted into overdrive the socialistic, Marxist New World Order agenda.” Fellure has been on the GOP ballot every year except 2012 in every presidential election since 1988, and after losing yet again in 2016 with zero total delegates at the age of 84, he has not a chance in hell of ever being any more than a joke candidate before he shuffles off the mortal coil.


In both 2016, and 2017, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, who much to our surprise, in spite of having no government experience, managed to get himself elected in the 2016 elections, based almost solely on the impact of his campaign ads where he had a narrator claim Obama wouldn’t “steal another Missouri election” (nice paranoid lunacy there, Eric) as he fired off a .50 caliber machine gun. Greitens’ entire justification for office was that he had a former career as a Navy SEAL where he may or may not have been on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden (per other SEALs who have responded to his claims, Greitens was not even involved in direct combat operations on any missions they can recall). Greitens also raised campaign cash by selling "ISIS Hunting permits" to constituents in Missouri, without a care for the possibility that could be the sort of rhetoric that obviously could easily lead to the harassment or an attack on someone who’s Muslim but totally isn't ISIS, and in fact gleefully commenting on the choice by saying, "Liberals will go crazy when they see these, but remember, this isn’t an official government issued hunting tag.”

Once Greitens has inexplicably become governor, he’s making the exact same kinds of mistakes that drove Kansas, but one state over, into a ditch six years ago under the hairbrained leadership of Gov. Sam Brownback. Just for starters, there was the new state budget that cut $251 million dollars out of it, with such humble needs to trim the fat like taking away the medical care of over 8,000 elderly and disabled people, prescription drug co-pays from 60,000 people, and taking $15 million away from school transportation (have fun walking to school, kids). Or maybe he could take a special page out of the book of several Texas Governors like Rick Perry or Greg Abbott, and call a special session of the state legislature to try and pass highly unconstitutional anti-abortion legislation. Like Donald Trump’s tendency to make all his staff members sign non-disclosure agreements, Greitens did the same with his own transition team in Missouri, a direct rejection on the issue of transparency that he ran on, and more extreme than his predecessors, by far.

But really, when people are going to remember Eric Greitens, who you may have noted we mentioned was already a FORMER governor, is that he was accused of sexually assaulting, and blackmailing a mistress to remain silent about his affair with her. Saying the details were lurid would be an understatement, as Greitens duct taped the woman to gym equipment in his basement, blindfolded her, stripped her nude, and then took a photo of her without her consent, saying he would release it to the public if she ever spoke about their relationship. He would then assault her throughout the affair, sometimes shoving her to the floor or hitting her during intercourse. The affair happened in 2015, just as he was running for office, and he was charged in February of 2018 with a crime.

For those Republicans who might hand wave away one of their own being a sexual predator, as is the current tradition, Greitens was also being investigated and charged for fraud by his personal charity in April of 2018 for giving the charity’s donor list to his campaign… so that was a whole other criminal investigation occurring simultaneously to the sexual assault investigation.

Greitens finally resigned on June 1st, 2018 after a legion of Missouri Republicans were calling for the move to save their own skins in the 2018 elections because they didn’t want to impeach him, and yet didn’t want to defend him. The fact that they couldn’t do the former should tell you everything you need to know about GOP courage. At this point, it looks like Greitens was lucky enough to avoid jail time for all the crimes he’s accused of, but let’s hope that he doesn’t try pretending he’s the victim in all this and making a political comeback in a few years. We certainly hope not.

[Tami]

A good point is made that the new Supreme Court Nominee has made states not only saying he, Brett Kavenauh, is against a sitting President being investigated and indicted, but that he also believes that it can happen. That there is nothing short of the enactment of a Congressional Law that could stop it from happening.

In other words, Muller might just have a case against Trump.

[InformationGeek]

What the f**k is this?

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is preparing for the possibility of another surge in family separations. Internal documents obtained by Slate show that ORR has modeled a scenario in which the Trump administration’s border policies could require the detention of thousands more immigrant children.

ORR—an agency within the Administration for Children and Families, which is itself a division of the Department of Health and Human Services—was caught off guard by the family separation policy, the documents reveal. In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice would henceforth have “zero tolerance” for immigrants who cross the border without authorization. He expanded the policy in May by partnering with the Department of Homeland Security to prosecute immigrants for unlawful border crossing, a misdemeanor. Under zero tolerance, parents are imprisoned, and children are placed in ORR shelters, sometimes far from the border.

There are currently about 11,800 children in ORR’s care. Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has stated that somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 of those children were separated from their parents at the border. The remaining children in ORR custody are unaccompanied minors—children who crossed the border without a parent or guardian.

In the documents obtained by Slate, ORR officials describe the budget implications of a potential surge in immigrant minors over the next three months. The ORR’s budgeting exercise is premised on the possibility that the agency could need as many as 25,400 beds for immigrant minors by the end of the calendar year. The documents do not indicate that ORR officials have specific knowledge that family separations will increase but do show that the agency is preparing for the possibility.

The internal documents estimate that if 25,400 beds are needed, ORR would face a budget shortfall of $585 million for ORR in fiscal year 2018, which ends on Sept. 30. Under this scenario, that shortfall would increase to $1.3 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019, adding up to a total shortfall of $1.9 billion for the period between Oct. 1, 2017, and Dec. 31, 2018. The documents stress that these budget estimates represent maximum possible expenditures and that actual expenses may be lower. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment about these figures or anything else relating to the documents.

To help cover these potential costs, the documents say, HHS will seek supplemental appropriations from Congress. The documents also indicate that HHS plans to pay for child separation by reallocating money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which, according to its website, “provides a comprehensive system of care that includes primary medical care and essential support services for people living with HIV who are uninsured or underinsured.” Per the documents, the process of transferring those HIV/AIDS funds has already begun.

In addition, HHS plans to reallocate $79 million from programs for refugee resettlement, a move that could imperil social services, medical assistance, and English language instructions for refugees in the U.S., as well as programs for torture survivors.