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

[Gryphon]

If he were still running against Trump, he wouldn't have the balls to say that. But now that he's running against Alan Grayson, he has to say something sympathetic.

Actually he said made similar comments back in February
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016...-great-nation/

[Crazy Diamond]

I'm not one bit surprised the NRA hadn't spoken up after Castile's murder, mainly because they ARE racist hypocrites. If he was white, Wayne LaPierre and his cronies would be screaming bloody murder about how his Second Amendment rights had been violated. Clearly, gun owners of color don't count with the NRA, if they ever did.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-w..._b_992043.html

[DDD]

Maybe they are waiting until the investigations are over and knowing the full stories instead of jumping to conclusions.

[Inhuman X]

So, the TSA gets all keyed up and decides a young woman with visual and hearing impairments returning home from brain surgery deserves to be beaten and head bashed into the floor until bloody even when the family screams her disabled status to them...

[Tami]

I read about that, that's seriously messed up.

[Carabas]

Maybe they are waiting until the investigations are over and knowing the full stories instead of jumping to conclusions.

I suppose there is a first time for everything.

Seems very unlikely though, given their history.

[worstblogever]

It was one year ago that we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of former Massachusetts Governor and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose endless wave of “clueless rich guy” gaffes in the 2012 campaign just kept coming at a rapid fire pace only equaled perhaps by his staggering ability to act like fact checkers weren’t paying attention, and take being mendacious while running for national office to a whole new level (at least, until he got upped by the 2016 GOP standard bearer). Whether it was his comments about “the 47 percent”, that “Corporations are people, my friend”, admitting he was “not concerned about the very poor”, that Michigan’s “trees being just the right height”, feuding with British politicians about their preparations for the London Olympics, or arguing with the CEO of Jeep-Chrysler about whether or not he was closing one of his company’s own Ohio factories… Mitt was especially full of it. Trying to lie about President Obama’s remarks following the attacks in Benghazi as “an act of terror” in a debate, of course, led to the legendary, “Please proceed…” from the sitting Commander-in-Chief, to let Mitt lose the last gasp of momentum he was trying to snag going into the election. And of course, there was the legendary election night where Mitt and his family stood dumbfounded as the election results came in and they lost, because they actually had staffers “unskewing” the polls, internally, and was forced to throw together a concession speech, because he hadn’t prepared one. Supposedly, Mitt Romney has retired from politics, but we assume that means running for office, because he’s resurfaced a lot this year to talk trash about Donald Trump (and not surprisingly, does not fare well in name-calling back and forth with a schoolyard bully). So since it’s been four years, and he’s ignoring his family’s suggestions to jump into the 2016 race with four months to go…we're going to retire his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wackyRepublican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 507-20, since this was established in July 2014.)


Robert Hurt

Welcome to the 507th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where the subject of our discussion will be the current U.S. House Representative for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, Robert Hurt a man first elected in… you guessed it… the 2010 Tea Party Wave. He was re-elected to a third term back in 2014 with 61% of the vote, which is a reasonably impressive showing considering that Virginia’s 5th only has a +5 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. Hurt fit the mold of a lot of Republicans, believing that life begins at exception, while still being "pro-life" enough to want to put criminals to death. On immigration, he was far enough to the right to back Arizona's SB1070 law that allowed for racial profiling of "suspected illegal immigrants", and wanted marriage defined as being between one man and one woman.

Perhaps his most disturbing policy stance, though, was on climate change, where Hurt expressed his belief that there was a "Climategate", and that climatologists are purposely selling the populace a false bill of goods on their studies:

"Climategate is 'scientists who have given us something that is not true. It is faulty information and it has real consequences in the 5th District, in the loss of jobs and in power bills from Appalachian Power Co."

Of course, lying about the other side of a debate's true intent in the worst ways truly became Robert Hurt's calling card after President Obama spoke following the mass shooting in San Bernadino, California, calling for Americans to treat Muslims with respect, because two members of their faith should not be representative of our opinions of an entire religion (similar to remarks President Bush made in the wake of 9/11). Rep. Hurt, however, got on conservative talk radio to gripe about it, misrepresenting those remarks to claim that President Obama "is more concerned with the premise that America is 'racist' than fighting terrorism":

"I think that this administration begins with the premise that America is racist and America needs to get a grip and get a hold of itself and not be racist and not be concerned about all these threats and not be concerned about the fact that 14 people, innocent people, were murdered at a Christmas party by Islamic terrorists. That is their concern, and that is so far away from the real concerns of the American people, who are not racist in general and don’t need to be lectured about how to treat other human beings.

Obviously we should have respect for all human beings regardless of their religious faith. Obviously. It’s the premise of our country. And we don’t need to have finger-wagging by this administration at a time when they should be sitting in the Oval Office developing strategy, delivering resources to law enforcement, to intelligence agencies to make sure that this never happens again.
A lot of it has to do with this apologist embarrassment about America and about what this country stands for."

[worstblogever]

Stay classy, Rep. Hurt. Although, it's hard to in any way think of him as a picture of class with a voting record like this:

• January 5th, 2011: Rep. Hurt votes for the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for every attempt to do so since.
• February 18th, 2011: Robert Hurt votes to defund Planned Parenthood, on the very same day his "smaller government principles" compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
• March 17th, 2011: Hurt votes to defund National Public Radio.
• May 31st, 2011: Robert Hurt votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, which if not lifted, economists warn could lead to the collapse of not just the American economy, but the global economy. Worse yet, even the Republicans' threatening to hold it hostage during this time led to the United States' having its credit rating decreased by Standard and Poor's for the first time in its history a few months later.
• September 14th, 2012: Rep. Hurt tries to score partisan points by voting for the “No More Solyndras” Act.
• September 21st, 2012: Robert Hurt voted for the "Stop the War on Coal" Act.
• January 15th, 2013: Rep. Hurt votes against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
• February 28th, 2013: Robert Hurt votes against the new version of the Violence Against Women Act that would offer protections to lesbians and Native American women.
• June 18th, 2013: Hurt votes for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks.
• June 19th, 2013: Robert Hurt votes against restoring $20.5 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
• September 30th, 2013: Rep. Hurt voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown. When the time came to reopen the government, he then voted to keep it closed.
• February 26th, 2014: Robert Hurt tries making hay of of the faux "IRS Scandal" by co-sponsoring and voting for the Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act (note, the IRS was not found to have actually been doing this).
• July 10th, 2014: Hurt 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.
• 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. Robert Hurt, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
• February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Hurt co-sponsors and votes for the 60th 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.
• March 3rd, 2015: Robert Hurt votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
• May 13th, 2015: Rep. Hurt co-sponsors and votes for HR 36, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks.
• September 11th, 2015: Hurt votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• September 18th, 2015: Rep. Hurt co-sponsors and votes for a bill 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.
• October 22nd, 2015: Robert Hurt takes time to put out a press release to praise Congressman Trey Gowdy for his work on the Benghazi Select Committee.
• November 19th, 2015: Hurt votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
• February 2nd, 2016: Robert Hurt votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
• May 19th, 2016: Rep. Hurt votes against House Amendment 1079, which would have prohibited the use of federal funds for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So if you were wondering, yes, he's pro-discrimination, apparently.

And now, for the good news… Robert Hurt has decided to call it a career after three terms in Congress. That may have been a prudent move, though, considering that the highly gerrymandered electoral map Republicans drew up for Virginia was rejected by the courts, and it isn’t thought to be as favorable in terms of its GOP lean this year, as compared to the past two.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Hmm! Sounds like Roger Ailes has been a busy beaver:

Six More Women Allege That Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Them

**********

Micah Johnson sounds like he was a bad apple:

Dallas sniper was loner; Army sent him home from Afghanistan

Micah Johnson, Gunman in Dallas, Honed Military Skills to a Deadly Conclusion

Dallas Gunman Learned Tactics at Texas Self-Defense School

**********

APNewsBreak: Cop's lawyer blames driver's gun, not his race

Yeah, sure! Tell me another story, daddy!

**********

Spanish Bullfighter Gored To Death In The Ring

Karma, baby! KARMA!

[Tami]

Don't love Hillary? Fine, but vote for her anyway | Moran

Clinton is likely to win this race, even if Whitman flakes out, the Keans embrace Trump, and my friend spends Election Day grilling fresh squirrel meat. (Yes, he has done that.)

But a narrow win is not enough. I want Trump to be crushed mercilessly so that the Republican Party is forced into a healthy period of soul searching, so that opportunists like Gov. Chris Christie learn that bigotry and bombast does not sell in America any more, and so the world can see that we are better than this.

So here's hoping that all those who can't stand Trump cast ballots for Clinton. That coalition is big enough to build the needed landslide

Another plea to the Right.

[skyvolt2000]

I'm not one bit surprised the NRA hadn't spoken up after Castile's murder, mainly because they ARE racist hypocrites. If he was white, Wayne LaPierre and his cronies would be screaming bloody murder about how his Second Amendment rights had been violated. Clearly, gun owners of color don't count with the NRA, if they ever did.

They do count because who makes the white gun owners look bad? How many white legal gun owners have shot up schools, churches & movie theaters. How many videos have we seen white gun owners act a fool like cops and TROLL them and even black businesses. Did we not have one sell a gun because he called it a piece of history to fight Hilary Clinton & BLM (yes he's mixed but still).

We are not seeing this with legal gun owners of color as often.

If you are the NRA and despite Sandy Hook, Columbine and other shootings where white kids got killed- NOTHING got changed.

You just had a black military legal gun owner shoot and kill 4 white cops (1 female) and 1 of color. You better believe there will be CHANGES.

So NRA how are you going to spin this to make sure you look good and at least look like you are supporting change.

Now you got to look at mental illness.

Now you got to look at side effects of being in wars and overseas.

Now you got to look at what type of weapons can and need to be sold.

In other words everything those Sandy Hook parents and others have screamed for.

[skyvolt2000]

APNewsBreak: Cop's lawyer blames driver's gun, not his race

Yeah, sure! Tell me another story, daddy!

Was the gun being displayed for the cops to see it? If it was there MIGHT be a point but wouldn't the officer had seen it when they FIRST got to the car? Sorry that excuse doesn't work.

[Pohzee]

Don't love Hillary? Fine, but vote for her anyway | Moran


Another plea to the Right.

I would think that the logical protest vote against Trump for a discontent conservative would be Gary Johnson. It doesn't help Trump; it doesn't help Clinton. Makes a statement that they are displeased with their options.

[Tami]

Is it me or does Politco's news headlines lately sound very pessimistic? Not in a normal sense (things are bad right now), but in a 'we are all doomed' kind of way.

[skyvolt2000]

Is it me or does Politco's news headlines lately sound very pessimistic? Not in a normal sense (things are bad right now), but in a 'we are all doomed' kind of way.

I think we are getting to the point of we know what the issues are but WHEN do we do something and yes that means stepping on plenty of toes.

Yes that means telling BLM stop with the narrative cops are the main ones killing you when we got data that says OTHERWISE.

Yes NRA-we need better gun control to make sure guys like Johnson don't get a gun.

Yes cops-you need to better screening of who you hire and put in communities and go back to a time when everybody knew who their cops were.

Yes black community you need to get your HOUSE in order.

Yes white America-you can not judge an ENTIRE race based on the actions of few.

Yes everybody racism is REAL and we have to understand how it affects everybody.