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

[Tendrin]

A protestor attending a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was dragged out of the event Friday and kicked by a man described by the Trump campaign as a rally attendee, reported an NBC affiliate.

The campaign rally, held at the Trump National Miami Doral Resort, was interrupted by three groups who were "chanting pro-immigration messages," according to the TV station.


The protestor, identified by the NBC affiliate as Ariel Rojas, can be seen in a video being dragged by a man who also kicks him while he's on the ground before police removed Rojas from the room.

Disgusting. Just disgusting.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...rotestor-rally

[Gray Lensman]

Anytime I hear a politician talk about a border wall I roll my eyes and think of stuff like this.

drug tunnels

And that's not counting the sheer idiocy of putting one on the Canadian border. Anyone suggesting that is too stupid to be president.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Conservatives continue to be schizophrenic as hell:

Fuming over Ryan, some conservative voices turn on the Freedom Caucus

It's both laughable, and pathetic at the same time. No wonder the Republican Party is such a sideshow.

************

In other news about crazy ass Republicans, Ben Carson is at it again, this time, he compares abortion with slavery during an interview on Meet The Press. The more Carson speaks, the more insane he sounds, sadly, he continues appealing to the base of knuckledraggers who refuse to join the 21st century. However, Carson caught plenty of hell in the comments section, this one I found to be among the strongest and most appropriate:

I find the word "slavery" would apply to forcing women and girls who do not wish to be pregnant to carry the pregnancy to term. Forced pregnancies are just as repugnant as forced abortions since both force a female to do things to her body she does not wish to be done. That is slavery. Can we start forcing men to have vasectomies against their will? That would stop a lot of unwanted pregnancies. I am sure men like Carson would be yelling at the top of their lungs about "freedom" and how that would be slavery.

[worstblogever]

Conservatives continue to be schizophrenic as hell:

Fuming over Ryan, some conservative voices turn on the Freedom Caucus

It's both laughable, and pathetic at the same time. No wonder the Republican Party is such a sideshow.

They almost have certainly hit "No True Scotsman" territory, if they're screaming about Raul Labrador being a RINO.

[Arvandor]

I wouldn't suggest that the Lords hasn't on occasion knocked back odious laws, but on balance this has happened only as a consequence of the chamber's ingrained conservatism, as the Lords has not been a "check and balance" system since the early 19th century. It might have been modified over time by the barest minimum demanded of the sensibilities of any given era in order to avoid dissolution or replacement, but it remains a symbol of hereditary privilege and the idea that it is in any way necessary for democratic process is laughable - as evidenced by the current government appointing party donors with no political experience as "lords" to represent the government's own interests in the chamber.

Sorry to bring up a month old argument, but it's hilariously ironic that the House of Lords is being called upon by Corbyn's Labour and the Lib Dems to block the Tax Credits Bill, which Parliament has already passed.

So the elected MPs have voted for this austerity bill, while opponents are calling upon the unelected House to block it. Hilarious.

[worstblogever]

One year ago on this date, CSGOPOTD first profiled the U.S. House Representative from South Carolina’s 1st District, Mark Sanford, a man who once was considered a possible future president, but whose career came crashing to a halt after he went “hiking the Appalachian Trail”. And by that, we mean that he said he was hiking when he actually was taking personal trips to see his Argentinian mistress. This led to Sanford leaving office in disgrace, and of course, an ugly divorce from his wife with a settlement agreement that Sanford has repeatedly been accused of violating, including letting himself over to their place to watch the Super Bowl without her knowledge. In typical hypocritical GOP fashion, the adulterer Sanford also was a self-professed champion of “the sanctity of marriage” who wanted to protect the institution from all those gay folks who might threaten it. He returned to the Congressional seat he vacated while serving as Governor by winning a public debate he held between himself and a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi (really), and then made the classy move of breaking up with the mistress who he nearly ruined his career for over Facebook while she was in Paris.

Rep. Sanford won re-election in 2014 when he ran unopposed, but perhaps a sign that he doesn’t have a good hold on the seat is that 8,423 people in his District bothered to use the “Write-In” option rather than cast their vote for him. His recent history:

• July 10th, 2014: Rep. Sanford votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
• September 15th, 2014: Mark Sanford agrees to go to mediation with his wife in their divorce settlement, where she cites he must undergo a psychiatric exam, and attend both parenting classes and anger management classes.
• December 16th, 2014: Sanford is under hard scrutiny for controversial six-figure payouts from Tree.com, a company that regulators say deceived their customers, and Sanford was one of their directors who owned stock for while campaigning to get back into Congress.
• On January 22nd, 2015, an anti-abortion bill, HR 7, was moving through the House, and was halted because even some members of the GOP were put off by the language in the bill regarding its definition of rape. Mark Sanford, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
• On February 3rd, 2015, Rep. Sanford co-sponsors and votes for the latest Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
• On March 3rd, 2015, Sanford votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
• On May 13th, 2015, Mark Sanford voted for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks, which he also co-sponsored.
• On September 11th, 2015, Sanford votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• On September 18th, 2015, Rep. Sanford votes with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.

As of right now, no Democrat has registered to challenge Mark Sanford for his seat in 2016. Considering how close Elizabeth Colbert-Busch was in 2013, in the special election for the seat, if she were to jump back into the race this year, she might be able to clear the hurdle. If his divorce records from five years ago ever get unsealed, it could only add to the amount of embarrassing details of Sanford’s private life hindering his political career and make this a potential swing for Democrats. Jenny Sanford was decidedly a woman scorned, and what little information that has been made public shows that where there's smoke, there could be fire.

[Kirby101]

One year ago on this date, CSGOPOTD first profiled the U.S. House Representative from South Carolina’s 1st District, Mark Sanford,

Why do the voters of the "family values party, keep electing these immoral creeps? Vitter, of the being with prostitutes while wearing diapers fame, is on his way to the Governor mansion in LA.

[Mister Mets]

Why do the voters of the "family values party, keep electing these immoral creeps? Vitter, of the being with prostitutes while wearing diapers fame, is on his way to the Governor mansion in LA.

Vitter got 23 percent of the vote in the jungle primary. Two other Republicans got a combined 34 percent. Mark Sanford got just under 37 percent in the first phase of the special election to replace Tim Scott.

Both had the advantage of running in crowded fields with the name recognition that comes with being a statewide officeholder.

One year ago on this date, CSGOPOTD first profiled the U.S. House Representative from South Carolina’s 1st District, Mark Sanford, a man who once was considered a possible future president, but whose career came crashing to a halt after he went “hiking the Appalachian Trail”. And by that, we mean that he said he was hiking when he actually was taking personal trips to see his Argentinian mistress. This led to Sanford leaving office in disgrace, and of course, an ugly divorce from his wife with a settlement agreement that Sanford has repeatedly been accused of violating, including letting himself over to their place to watch the Super Bowl without her knowledge. In typical hypocritical GOP fashion, the adulterer Sanford also was a self-professed champion of “the sanctity of marriage” who wanted to protect the institution from all those gay folks who might threaten it. He returned to the Congressional seat he vacated while serving as Governor by winning a public debate he held between himself and a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi (really), and then made the classy move of breaking up with the mistress who he nearly ruined his career for over Facebook while she was in Paris.

Rep. Sanford won re-election in 2014 when he ran unopposed, but perhaps a sign that he doesn’t have a good hold on the seat is that 8,423 people in his District bothered to use the “Write-In” option rather than cast their vote for him. His recent history:

• July 10th, 2014: Rep. Sanford votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
• September 15th, 2014: Mark Sanford agrees to go to mediation with his wife in their divorce settlement, where she cites he must undergo a psychiatric exam, and attend both parenting classes and anger management classes.
• December 16th, 2014: Sanford is under hard scrutiny for controversial six-figure payouts from Tree.com, a company that regulators say deceived their customers, and Sanford was one of their directors who owned stock for while campaigning to get back into Congress.
• On January 22nd, 2015, an anti-abortion bill, HR 7, was moving through the House, and was halted because even some members of the GOP were put off by the language in the bill regarding its definition of rape. Mark Sanford, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
• On February 3rd, 2015, Rep. Sanford co-sponsors and votes for the latest Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
• On March 3rd, 2015, Sanford votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
• On May 13th, 2015, Mark Sanford voted for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks, which he also co-sponsored.
• On September 11th, 2015, Sanford votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• On September 18th, 2015, Rep. Sanford votes with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.

As of right now, no Democrat has registered to challenge Mark Sanford for his seat in 2016. Considering how close Elizabeth Colbert-Busch was in 2013, in the special election for the seat, if she were to jump back into the race this year, she might be able to clear the hurdle. If his divorce records from five years ago ever get unsealed, it could only add to the amount of embarrassing details of Sanford’s private life hindering his political career and make this a potential swing for Democrats. Jenny Sanford was decidedly a woman scorned, and what little information that has been made public shows that where there's smoke, there could be fire.

There's a distinction between policies you believe in, and policies that are so objectively right that no reasonable person can disagree with it. I don't think the Iran treaty falls in the latter category.

As for his Planned Parenthood vote, I'm guessing he didn't care for federal funding for a company that provides abortion services long before those videos came out. The questions about the videos are unlikely to change his position, in the same way liberals weren't morally obligated to vote for Bush when it turned out documents central to a harmful CBS story were likely faked.

My experience is that the bad Dems tend to lean towards the corrupt side, rather than the looney side. Such as a former prosecutor who made his name going after everyone involved in prostitution busts being a john himself, or someone else trying to sell the senate seat recently vacated by the new President.

I haven't seen much in the way of denials of reality or calls for outright persecution under the guise of 'freedom' like I am seeing from the current crop of Repubs (and I grew up a Northeast US Republican, or a RINO as they call them now).

There are a few factors that contribute to differences in party perception.

Due to the constituencies, the excesses of the parties will differ. Democrats are the party of minorities and also the party of big government, so Republicans will be more likely to tolerate the bigotry of the majority. Democrats are more likely to support sending people to jail for refusing to perform certain duties, while Republicans are more likely to believe there's a free market solution.

Republicans are the party of uneducated white people, a group that it's socially acceptable to mock. Democrats are the party preferred by uneducated Afircan-Americans and Hispanics, who it's less socially acceptable to mock.

If we split most politicians on a spectrum from far right to far left, with the right, the center-right, the center, the center-left and the left somewhere in between, someone on the center-left will be as close to the center-right as to the far-left, and will see the right-wing as completely out of bounds. The American media is generally center-left, if not more liberal, so they'll see Susan Collins or Charlie Baker as Bernie Sanders' ideological equivalents. They're more likely to understand where a liberal who says something outrageous (IE- Hillary Clinton wanting to put Terry Jones in jail for burning a Koran) is coming from, so it's less likely to get coverage.

Demographics do force some of the crazier liberals to broaden their appeal. An LGBT activist or militant atheist will have to appeal outside of their group in order to get votes. There are plenty of areas where white married Christians are the majority of the voters.

Democrats have the White House, and one clear frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination. So the conservative media is likelier to focus on Obama and Hillary, rather than the most left-wing members of the Austin City Council, or the Maryland House of Delegates, or whatever legislative body you can think of. Liberals have more of an incentive to focus on the craziest members of the opposition in elected office, although that's likely changed in the last few months with Trump and Carson.

[Gray Lensman]

The big problem I have with opposition to the Iran treaty is no one is offering an alternative. Regime change isn't happening. Maintaining the status quo is becoming less viable, since international sanctions require the cooperation of the international community, and support for that was slipping. It only takes a couple of self-interested countries (or openly adversarial ones, like Russia) to make a sanctions regime collapse. Find me something else that allows even a chance of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and I'll listen. So far, no one has done that.

[Spike-X]

As for his Planned Parenthood vote, I'm guessing he didn't care for federal funding for a company that provides abortion services long before those videos came out.

I wonder why he thinks it makes sense, then, to withdraw funding for an organization that does so much more to prevent abortion than any amount of sign-waving, abuse-hurling protesters, or so-called "pro-life" politicians whose only concern seems to be making sure women don't 'get away with' having sex that their God doesn't approve of, even if it means that the 97% of Planned Parenthood health services that aren't abortion-related get thrown under the bus so they can grandstand politically on the backs of poor women?

[JCAll]

There's a distinction between policies you believe in, and policies that are so objectively right that no reasonable person can disagree with it. I don't think the Iran treaty falls in the latter category.

Given a full set of possibilities I might agree, but when given only 1 choice the chance to do something is almost always preferable to doing nothing.

Right now the realistic outcomes are: 1) Everything stays the same, Iran gets the bomb, and we miss the opportunity to say anything about it because we rejected the treaty; 2) Accept the treaty, Iran doesn't get the Bomb, and we move on the the next international crisis; or 3) Accept the treaty, Iran breaks the treaty to get the Bomb, we get the backing of the international community for whatever we do next because we tried and they are the ones totally in the wrong.

The treaty is objectively the better option, between that and nothing.

[Malvolio]

I wonder why he thinks it makes sense, then, to withdraw funding for an organization that does so much more to prevent abortion than any amount of sign-waving, abuse-hurling protesters, or so-called "pro-life" politicians whose only concern seems to be making sure women don't 'get away with' having sex that their God doesn't approve of, even if it means that the 97% of Planned Parenthood health services that aren't abortion-related get thrown under the bus so they can grandstand politically on the backs of poor women?

None of that matters to Mets or to Sanford, because they both live in their little disingenuous world, where they can pretend that they don't know for sure what Planned Parenthood does or that they're forbidden by the Hyde Amendment to steer any federal funding toward abortion.

[Mister Mets]

Given a full set of possibilities I might agree, but when given only 1 choice the chance to do something is almost always preferable to doing nothing.

Right now the realistic outcomes are: 1) Everything stays the same, Iran gets the bomb, and we miss the opportunity to say anything about it because we rejected the treaty; 2) Accept the treaty, Iran doesn't get the Bomb, and we move on the the next international crisis; or 3) Accept the treaty, Iran breaks the treaty to get the Bomb, we get the backing of the international community for whatever we do next because we tried and they are the ones totally in the wrong.

The treaty is objectively the better option, between that and nothing.

It's a bit weird to me that Iran got the upper hand on negotiations given that they gain with the end of sanctions.

None of that matters to Mets or to Sanford, because they both live in their little disingenuous world, where they can pretend that they don't know for sure what Planned Parenthood does or that they're forbidden by the Hyde Amendment to steer any federal funding toward abortion.

I'm reasonably well informed on politics. It's part of why I said "I'm guessing he didn't care for federal funding for a company that provides abortion services" rather than "I'm guessing he didn't want federal funding for abortions." I understand the difference.

I wonder why he thinks it makes sense, then, to withdraw funding for an organization that does so much more to prevent abortion than any amount of sign-waving, abuse-hurling protesters, or so-called "pro-life" politicians whose only concern seems to be making sure women don't 'get away with' having sex that their God doesn't approve of, even if it means that the 97% of Planned Parenthood health services that aren't abortion-related get thrown under the bus so they can grandstand politically on the backs of poor women?

The 97% number is misleading. Planned Parenthood lists every service an individual customer gets as a separate interaction, so if a woman gets an STD test, a pregnancy test and contraceptives, that's three services.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor...hat_about.html

Another problem with the three percent argument is that it suggests there's an easy compromise; Planned parenthood could stop performing abortions since it's such a miniscule portion of what they do.

Plus, if an organization that received federal funding said that three percent of what they do is something that is repugnant to the left (conversion therapy) there would be a push to get them to stop that.

[WAKANDA FOREVER!]

As usual: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sou...id=mailsignout

[CSTowle]

The big problem I have with opposition to the Iran treaty is no one is offering an alternative. Regime change isn't happening. Maintaining the status quo is becoming less viable, since international sanctions require the cooperation of the international community, and support for that was slipping. It only takes a couple of self-interested countries (or openly adversarial ones, like Russia) to make a sanctions regime collapse. Find me something else that allows even a chance of preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and I'll listen. So far, no one has done that.

You could pretty much fill in the non-bolded area with any policy President Obama has proposed in his 8 years and it'd work.