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

[JBatmanFan05]

I mean, it says a lot, doesn't it?

OMG it does. Look how high he's holding that umbrella. C'mon Trump!

[TheInvisibleMan]

nothing that really hasn't been said

[Malvolio]

This picture is making the rounds recently.



I mean, it says a lot, doesn't it?

Well, Donald's hair is more vulnerable to the rain than Baran's, right?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This picture is making the rounds recently.



I mean, it says a lot, doesn't it?

Coming from the orange skinned action hero who boasted of rushing into that Florida high school unarmed to throw down with the shooter (who’s name I will not mention), it says that Trump is a colossal wuss.

[numberthirty]

Really? It seems to me like she was the one who always to the left of him.

While I've got about a million problems with Hillary, it's not like she was out there still trying to justify the policy that created mass incarceration in front of a minority crowd in 2016.

[numberthirty]

I mean, it says a lot, doesn't it?

Ignoring whatever the political takeaway is supposed to be from that, I don't have much trouble seeing a boy that age being like "Shove your coat and your umbrella, old man!"

[Mecegirl]

I'm trying not to cry...So I was dicking around on Youtube and this popped up.



It's from 2016 but it still fucking applys.

[JBatmanFan05]

Pretty good summary of Jared's news and situation as of today:

Washington (CNN)Officials from at least four countries have discussed ways they could use Jared Kushner's intricate business arrangements, lack of experience and financial woes to manipulate President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The paper reported that it is unclear, based on current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter, that the countries -- - Mexico, Israel, China and the United Arab Emirates -- acted on the conversations.

The revelation is the latest in a series that call into question Kushner's ability to work in the White House given his complex business ties.

CNN reported earlier on Tuesday that Kushner has been stripped of his access to the nation's top secrets after chief of staff John Kelly mandated changes to the security clearance system. Kushner had been working on a temporary clearance, but, under the new system, aides who previously had "top secret" interim clearances saw their access downgrade to the less sensitive "secret" designation.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Kushner's attorney Abbe Lowell, declined to comment on the story.

"We will not respond substantively to unnamed sources peddling secondhand hearsay with rank speculation who continue to leak inaccurate information," Mirijanian said.

According to the Post, national security adviser H.R. McMaster told his deputies in spring of 2017 that he wanted all the intelligence reports on conversations where foreign leaders discussed interactions with senior Trump officials, including Kushner. The order came after McMaster learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials without coordinating with the National Security Council.

Kushner -- while on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a meeting on prison reform -- declined to respond to repeated CNN questions about his security clearance and The Washington Post report. Kushner's meeting had been scheduled long before news about his security clearances broke, and according to a source in the room, the story did not come up during the meeting.

Top White House officials were worried Kushner was "naive and being tricked" by foreign officials, one former White House official told the Post.

Before stepping into the White House, Kushner worked at the CEO of his family's real estate and development company, Kushner Companies. The extensive network and debt from the company, according to the Post, was also seen as leverage foreign officials talked about in efforts to manipulate Kushner.

Officials from the White House and National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.

The news of foreign interest in Kushner's business ties and financial woes comes after CNN reported special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded his probe beyond Kushner's contacts with Russia into his efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition.

CNN also reported that one reason Kushner has been unable to obtain full security clearance is because of Mueller's ongoing investigation.

One source familiar with the matter told CNN that Kushner would be unlikely to obtain full clearance as long as the special counsel's probe is ongoing.

In response to questions about the delay in background checks, the FBI has added more agents to deal with the backlog of applications.

A source familiar with the matter says the FBI is expected to wrap up the Kushner background check within a month, but the source said the FBI would hand the findings to the White House for it to make the ultimate decision on his clearance.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/polit...uae/index.html

[Tazirai]

This picture is making the rounds recently.



I mean, it says a lot, doesn't it?

Don't forget that his wife was behind their son also. He didn't try to protect either of them.
It wouldn't have been so bad if they each had one. But look at the size of his...

[worstblogever]

Two more state legislature seats flipped red to blue tonight in special elections.

New Hampshire
Connecticut

[Tendrin]

Two more state legislature seats flipped red to blue tonight in special elections.

New Hampshire
Connecticut

Is it any wonder that republicans are starting to panic and even refuse to hold elections? :P

[worstblogever]

Is it any wonder that republicans are starting to panic and even refuse to hold elections? :P

Or refuse to adhere to court rulings to unf*** the gerrymanders they've set up.
Or bother to do anything to stop the Russians from meddling in those elections, because apparently they're fine with the Russians having their fingers on the scales provided it's in their favor.

[Tendrin]

Or refuse to adhere to court rulings to unf*** the gerrymanders they've set up.
Or bother to do anything to stop the Russians from meddling in those elections, because apparently they're fine with the Russians having their fingers on the scales provided it's in their favor.

It's all about that power, baby.

Meanwhile, we've got a doozy of a quote for your next Don Young update.

Speaking at a conference in Juneau last week, Alaska Congressman Don Young argued against gun control by suggesting Jews might not have died in the Holocaust if they had been armed.

“How many millions of people were shot and killed because they were unarmed? Fifty million in Russia,” Young said. “How many Jews were put in the ovens because they were unarmed?”
The recording was provided by Dimitri Shein, an Anchorage Democrat who is running for Young’s seat. Shein was in the audience for Young’s speech to the Alaska Municipal League and he asked Young about school safety, which prompted Young to bring up the Holocaust.

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2018/02...ing-holocaust/

[Iron Maiden]

U.S. intel: Russia ‘compromised’ seven states prior to 2016 election

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ele...m_npd_nn_tw_ma

That the actually got into the tables that store data on registered voters is certainly cause for alarm. Sometimes I guess it's good to have the old paper system. At out local voting locations, they still keep the big books that show you are registered to vote. and I imagine that goes for many states.

[worstblogever]

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Gene Alday, a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives who is a pro-life and pro-death penalty, Voter ID supporting, climate-change denying, God fearin’ American who also happened to be quoted in 2015 saying, “I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks.' They don't work.I had to go to the emergency room for pain. I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots." But don’t worry, in his apology for those remarks, Alday insisted he was being taken out of context, just like the majority of Republicans do when they frequently say racist things. Alday lost his seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives in the 2015 elections, and hopefully will not be heard from again.

One year ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Angela Kaaihue, who has taken two shots at running for the U.S. House of Representatives for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District in 2016. She describes herself as a "real estate developer", and has previously failed to be elected Mayor of Honolulu. Kaaihue's first attempt at getting elected to Congress in 2016 was actually in the special election for Hawaii's 1st Congressional District, where she bizarrely ran as a Democrat trying to replace the Congressman Mark Takai, who was dying from pancreatic cancer. She was utterly wrecked by Colleen Hanabusa, only receiving 3% of the overall vote. Perhaps her poor performance had something to do with her choice to run campaign advertising where she proudly declared herself "healthy and cancer-free" as a positive trait, and later gave a radio interview where she defended her ads, saying, "Would you want to vote for someone who has cancer?" She then continued to dig the hole even deeper when she later added the assessment that, “If you have cancer, it's almost like having AIDS, you don't want people to know." Now, given how disastrous her performance was in the special election, one would hope the Republican Party wouldn't welcome someone with a questionable educational background and poor campaigning skills into their ranks with open arms. Alas, the Hawaii GOP did just that, and had Angela Kaaihue as a candidate in the primary to run against their chosen son, Eric Hafner... and she won with 56% of the vote. And that decision blew up right in their faces, almost immediately. It was just a tad disconcerting, perhaps, to GOP insiders that Kaaihue actually was arrested in 2013, sentenced to probation, and ordered to undergo a mental health exam. Or maybe they should have balked because she chose to have a website that looked, at best, like a Myspace page with auto-playing music when you went to it. And they chose not to get upset about the fact that Kaaihue was a fanatical Christian who believes that a Christian religious identity supersedes any other qualifications for office, and put out bigoted campaign ads to tout herself as a Christian, and try and attack Tulsi Gabbard, her opponent, for being Hindu. She then took it a step further by claiming both Rep. Gabbard, and her previous opponent, Rep. Hanabusa, were both devil-worshippers, or that a vote for Gabbard was "a vote for Satan". And then, for whatever reason, Kaaihue decided to get on Facebook, and start hysterically ranting about Japanese people in a now-deleted post where she said they were "murderous", "lieing" (yes, she can't spell it), "stealing" and "conspirators." She told them to go back to Japan and "eat your fucking radiation at Fukushima you f***ing low life scum" among other things. When the local media asked her to explain herself, she walked her comments back, although continued to underline that she was a theocratic Christian twit when she said, "I truly regret posting that about Japanese people. I don’t think all Japanese people are bad, I just think that the non-Christian Japanese people.” (NOTE: That didn't help.) Kaaihue was disavowed by the GOP, and of course responded rationally to being denounced by the Hawaii GOP. HA! Of course she didn't. She started raving on social media further about it, getting even more fanatical than normal, and insisting that everyone was silencing her, a true "Messenger of God". Kaaihue got crushed by Tulsi Gabbard, getting a little less than 19% of the vote against her in the general election. She is likely too toxic politically for any party, even the GOP, from giving her a chance to run for any office going forward. We’ll set aside her 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 653-25, since this was established in July 2014.)


Jeffrey Guice
Welcome to the 653rd original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Jeffrey Guice, who was first elected back in 2007 by running unopposed, and other than a challenger who he crushed by over 40 points in the GOP Primary in 2015, has been allowed to have a career as a legislator without any competition whatsoever. Guice’s odds of seeing a challenger in 2019 went up, though, in 2019 because after a mother wrote to him to express her difficulties in getting her Medicaid benefits to cover the cost of her daughter’s medications for her Type 1 diabetes to keep her alive, Guice responded to her e-mail thusly:

"I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought about buying the supplies with money that you earn?"

The parents, between the two of them, were working three jobs to cover medical expenses. And they posted Guice’s response (one of only 3 they received from state legislators) onto Facebook, prompting him to apologize to try and save his own ass politically, going forward. But really, Guice was probably too busy trying to preserve the public glorification of the Confederacy to bother trying to save a poor diabetic girl’s life.

That’s actually understating how awful his legislative career is:

• March 14th, 2012: Guice votes for HB 921, a GOP “Voter ID” bill aimed at suppressing the vote in the state.
• April 1st, 2014: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 1400, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks that flies in the face of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
• February 17th, 2016: Guice votes for HB 786, a nice little bill to allow people to be authorized to carry firearms in church.
• February 25th, 2016: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 519, an anti-choice bill to prohibit “dismemberment abortions”, which might mean a D&E, but who can even tell with these anti-abortion morons anymore.
• March 2nd, 2016: Guice votes for HB 983, to make it easier for parents to get exemptions for having to get their children vaccinated.
• March 26th, 2016: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 683, to authorize the use of the gas chamber, the firing squad, and the electric chair as possible means of execution in Mississippi.
• February 5th, 2018: Guice votes for HB 1510, a ban on abortion on 15 weeks even more likely to be overturned by a judge than the 20 week ban Guice voted for four years earlier.

When you put all that together with his exchange with his constituent simply trying to keep her daughter alive… suffice to say Jeffrey Guice is kind of a ****hole. Hopefully the voters in his district in Mississippi get someone to vote for who seems like they prioritize keeping children alive. At least, we’d hope that’s the case.