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

[Tendrin]

“It’s a pit, isn’t it?” Brownback said of the hospital. “Parsons (State Hospital) is worse than Osawatomie. And so you’ve got these state assets that we haven’t put any money into for years.”

Brownback’s candor about the poor condition of state facilities and their underfunding came minutes after the first of two votes by the U.S. Senate to approve his nomination for ambassador at-large for international religious freedom.

Basking in the dual triumphs of the prison project’s approval and his impending ambassadorship, Brownback pushed back on the suggestion that as the state’s governor since 2011 he had responsibility for the underfunding of state hospitals and prisons.

“For 155 years? No,” Brownback said.

Pressed again on the fact that he had been governor for seven years, Brownback replied, “And we got a new prison, didn’t we?”

The GOP in a nutshell in that last line

http://www.kansascity.com/news/polit...197379284.html

[Tazirai]

Pennsylvania GOP leader tells state supreme court he will ignore its anti-gerrymandering order
Contempt

https://thinkprogress.org/pennsylvan...-afc0b3cd8eb0/

Party of Law and Order?

[JCAll]

Party of Law and Order?

Party of Law and Order SVU.

[Jack Dracula]

Move along. Nothing to see here.

[InformationGeek]

Well that's something indeed.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) invited an activist affiliated with the white supremacist "alt-right" movement to President Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

[Tendrin]

Well that's something indeed.

Yeah, I was reading about that. I love the fact that Chuck C. Johnson is frequently called a 'Rage Furby'.

[JackDaw]

Exactly. There’s no winning over or converting Trump lemmings as they’re a lost cause. If anything, that would be a waste of time and resources. Dolt45 could gun down a bunch of Boy Scouts in Times Square at high noon on live TV and his followers would collectively shrug and say those little punks had it coming, that’s how brainwashed those people are. The Dems have to marshal candidates who can both rally the party faithful and attract all those disillusioned voters who sat out the last election because they wanted nothing to do with either Trump or Hillary.

Is the average wealth and material circumstances of Trump voters really substantially different from those that voted for Clinton? Is there really any evidence to prove there is a statistically significant difference in IQ levels? (At very least there will be a tremendous overlap in intelligence levels between the two groups.)

I think it’s an extra-ordinary proposition that a great many Trumo voters can’t be persuaded to vote differently. And one that would be costly if Democrats accept...they need to come up with policies to win a substantial number over.

[JCAll]

Is the average wealth and material circumstances of Trump voters really substantially different from those that voted for Clinton? Is there really any evidence to prove there is a statistically significant difference in IQ levels? (At very least there will be a tremendous overlap in intelligence levels between the two groups.)

I think it’s an extra-ordinary proposition that a great many Trumo voters can’t be persuaded to vote differently. And one that would be costly if Democrats accept...they need to come up with policies to win a substantial number over.

I mean...being able to speak SPANISH is a dealbreaker, what do you do to win over that?

[JackDaw]

I mean...being able to speak SPANISH is a dealbreaker, what do you do to win over that?

It isn’t a dealbreaker for a great many people that voted for Trump last time!

There’s a substantial number of people that can be won over if the Democratic Party looks at itself, and begins to wonder how so many working class people are willing to vote Republican...it won’t win them over by just (effectively) stereotyping them as thick bigots.

[worstblogever]

We'll see come Election Day.

Again, you're delusional. You're arguing that Democrats supporting DACA will ruin them in 2018? How can supporting Dreamers, which 79-80% of the public supports HURT them?

I'll add that we don't even have to wait to Election Day to prove you wrong, as chicken-s*** Republicans who know they're toast are resigning in droves. Case in point...

Meanwhile, in less depressing news, good-bye Trey Gowdy! May you finally find comb to fix that trash heap that you call your hair.

Trumps CDC director has resigned after it being reported she bought stock in a tobacco company

I'll summon the Oompa Loompas.

Train with Congressional Republicans going to a retreat crashed into a truck....no clear news yet. Wow, sesh.....I hope they are okay.

There's nothing that could represent the modern Republican Party more than a train wreck.

Ugh ... Clinton, Bernie, blah blah blah!

It's 2018 and the focus needs to be on mid-terms! Not yet another autopsy of 2016.

We have 33 Rs and 3 Ds not running for reelection. There's 21 seats that can be flipped and 20 are vulnerable!

Let's focus on that please.

What Beastie said.

[Tendrin]

Time to repeat this: The majority of Trump's voters were not working class. He did not win a majority of working class votes.

Among people who said they voted for Trump in the general election, 35 percent had household incomes under $50,000 per year (the figure was also 35 percent among non-Hispanic whites), almost exactly the percentage in NBC’s March 2016 survey. Trump’s voters weren’t overwhelmingly poor. In the general election, like the primary, about two thirds of Trump supporters came from the better-off half of the economy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.bfdab7c6c7cc

That doesn't mean that Democrats shouldn't try to peel off what voters they can but they can not do that by becoming Trumplite and they can not do that while sacrificing the interests of their actual base.

[JackDaw]

Time to repeat this: The majority of Trump's voters were not working class. He did not win a majority of working class votes.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.bfdab7c6c7cc

That doesn't mean that Democrats shouldn't try to peel off what voters they can but they can not do that by becoming Trumplite and they can not do that while sacrificing the interests of their actual base.

Yes agree effectively with that.

But I’d probaby add the thought that the “peeling off” strategy is more likely to be successful than hoping to get a lot of people that didn’t vote at all to come out for the Democrats. After all that 35 percent is a lot of working class voters.

Is there any real evidence that the “sit on my hands crowd/ non-voters” are predominantly “natural” democrats?

[worstblogever]

Three years ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Sandy Adams, a former one-term Congresswoman from Florida’s 24th District who denied the science of evolution while fighting for Creationism to be taught in public schools, advocated for the strictest possible abortion restrictions, and wanted American public schools to all have monuments of the Ten Commandments in them. She also wanted to repeal both the 16th and 17th Amendments of the Constitution, because apparently the good voters of the United States can no longer be trusted to pick their own Senators. Her career really imploded, though, because of her ridiculous theory that Sharia Law was already thriving in American Muslim communities throughout the United States and should be stopped, believing the heart of the threat was sitting in Dearborn, Michigan, of all places. Voters gave her the boot for being a few tacos short of a combination plate five years ago and she has yet to resurface in politics.

Two years ago today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Jack Kingston, a former eleven-term Congressman from Georgia who infamously appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher in 2011, where he denied not just the existence of climate change, but evolution as well, asking for proof that “human beings emerged from the sea”, which leaves out quite a few hundred million years of evolution from amphibians developing on up. In 2013, Rep. Kingston was arguing against the entire social safety net, saying that children who received help in affording school lunches should have to “sweep the floor in the cafeteria” so they’re taught there’s “no such thing as a free lunch”. He also began openly talking of attempting to impeach President Obama during his failed campaign to replace Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the U.S. Senate, and was proposing drug testing all welfare recipients (that old chestnut of failed conservative policy). While serving as a Trump surrogate in September of 2016, Kingston actually said that black voters prefer “a backdrop in front of a burning car” and had a disastrous interview the next day with NBC News’ Joy Reid, where he was cornered about the fact that he wouldn’t answer questions, to which he tried claiming the interview was unfair because the questions he was asking weren’t being answered (JESUS.) He is out of elected office and only serves as K Street lobbyist and a s***ty pundit these days.

One year ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Scott Schneider, a former two-term Indiana State Senator who authored the homophobic “Religious Freedom Act” that ended up getting the whole Hoosier state shamed for its passage, and was quickly amended to assure it wouldn’t be thrown out by the courts for being discriminatory because it was specifically written to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT citizens. At the time it was introduced, Schneider had already claimed it would shore up gaps in “religious liberty framework” in Indiana, and began trying to exploit the narrative that Christians in the United States. Said Schneider, "You don't have to look too far to find a growing hostility toward people of faith. This bill acts as a shield, not a sword.” When the backlash against SB 101 predictably came, Schneider continued to argue that it wasn’t authored to discriminate against gays, in spite of the fact that it was written with the intent to allow exactly that. Schneider’s legislative record also include several votes to attempt to ban same sex marriage, several votes to strip funding from Planned Parenthood and implement harsh anti-abortion regulations aimed to close down clinics, and attempts to drug test welfare recipients. But SB 101 was so disastrous that Schneider retired in disgrace, well aware he would never win office again, so we’ll set aside his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 641-25, since this was established in July 2014.)


Graham Hunt
Welcome to the 641st original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Graham Hunt, a former member of the Washington House of Representatives who first took office after the 2014 elections, winning on the strength of his reputation as a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who was injured in combat. And, immediately upon getting to the state legislature, Hunt took up the issues that truly mattered to the people in Washington… Eh, we’re not going to lie… Graham Hunt was one of those moronic members of the GOP banging the drums of transphobia, and pretending that there needed to be bathroom bans to stop transgender citizens from attacking innocent women and children in public bathrooms. Despite of there being ZERO reported incidents of this kind of predatory behavior, Hunt and bigoted twits like him submitted legislation like this around the country through 2015 and 2016. But Graham Hunt INSISTED he talked to constituents who wanted a bathroom ban, because they were victimized. Maybe the rest of this profile will make you disbelieve those nameless victims going to Hunt actually exist…

We can’t say that’s the only sort of paranoid fear that drove Graham Hunt’s daily routine, as he also sponsored a bill to prevent any sort of database of gun owners from being kept in the state, which exactly ZERO people were proposing should happen. But hey, why not score points with the pro-gun, ammosexual types by pretending, “They’re coming for our guns, and only I can stop them!”

The bathroom ban and gun paranoia are actually not why CSGOPOTD is discussing Graham Hunt. No, we’re talking about Hunt because as it turns out, he wasn’t exactly the war hero he purported himself to be. The Seattle Times was running a story on the young rising star in the Washington GOP, and began to notice some… shall we say inconsistencies in his war stories. While some noted there were campaign letters where Hunt claimed he was shot in Iraq and stabbed in Afghanistan, that seemed unlikely because Graham Hunt had never even SEEN COMBAT let alone get injured in it. Further checks began to note that photos on Hunt’s Facebook page of him supposedly being “wounded in a mortar attack” were heavily doctored.

The truth was, Graham Hunt was never a Marine, he was a member of the Air National Guard who simply performed security checks from… Saudi Arabia. All the stories of bloody war heroism were, simply put, lies. Hunt took the brave stance you’d expect a brave sentinel of liberty like him would, and tried blaming all the social media posts and campaign letters he lied in on an unnamed legislative aide, but the jig was up, and he resigned in complete disgrace. We’re glad his career is over before it ever really got a chance to start.

[Carabas]

If I was a betting person, I would wager that not a single Trump voter voted Democrat in 2020.
Some might stay home, but none will switch sides.

Them staying at home is good enough. It's almost the same as switching sides.

[JackDaw]

Them staying at home is good enough. It's almost the same as switching sides.

And I can see why our colleague is not a betting person..fairnumbers of people do change their votes.