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

[worstblogever]

]It was on this day in both 2015, as well as 2016, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Paul “Skip” Stam, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the North Carolina House of Representatives who has voted to nullify the Affordable Care Act, voted for North Carolina's "Motorcycle Safety/Anti-Abortion" Law, and compulsively votes for every stricter measure to disenfranchise voters that comes up, be it Voter ID bills, or votes to reduce early voting and close polling locations in Democratic-leaning districts. He has also called for poor people from being banned from playing the state lottery, showed he's a misogynist when he told the North Carolina chief of schools to "stick to her own knitting", and once forcibly closed debate on the legalization of marijuana because as he admitted, he didn't want his constituents to write and call and ask him about it. Stam responded to the news that the Confederate flag was being removed from the state capitol in South Carolina by voting for a law to make it harder for Confederate monuments to be renamed or taken down in North Carolina, apparently because celebrating a failed rebellion from a century and a half ago fought over slavery should be a priority. Perhaps Stam's worst issue is LGBTQ rights, as he has on more than one occasion compared same sex marriage to beastiality, polygamy and incest, and has been caught circulating fliers with homophobic content around the North Carolina legislature to colleagues from the Christian Action League, which is classified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He responded to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by voting to vote for SB 2, an attempt to allow officials to refuse to perform marriage duties based on "sincerely held" religious objections, and was the sponsor of North Carolina’s HB 2, the combination “religious freedom to discriminate against LGBT citizens” law, that also doubled as transphobic bathroom legislation. Stam chose to not run for re-election in 2016, and has yet to re-emerge onto the political scene.


One year ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Kevin Calvey, who on two occasions (2006 and 2010) has run for, and failed to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, and instead has become yet another member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives whose fanaticism seems to know no bounds. How much so? Look, when someone who claims to be “Pro-Life” is threatening to set themselves on fire to protest abortion, well, we think it might be missing the point just a tad. Perhaps this would be a good time to point out that Kevin Calvey was elected to serve in the Oklahoma House of Representatives back in 2014, but back over a decade ago, in his first run through office in Oklahoma, Calvey did manage to show he’s so “Pro-Life” that he voted for the death penalty to be used on second offense sex offenders (which, we’re not fond of sex offenders, but WOW is that pretty extreme), as well as the fact that Calvey was the sponsor of Oklahoma’s version of the “Stand Your Ground” firearms law. So clearly, he’s all about things that promote life, which you can further see his commitment to by noting how he’s vehemently opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and being able to afford health insurance that keeps them alive, or allows their pre-existing conditions to be covered by insurance. Well, since Calvey has Jesus in his life and thus didn’t make the decision to self-immolate, he ran for re-election in 2016 and overcame both a primary challenger and Democratic opponent to win a second term in office.

We’re still hoping everyone keeps flammable materials away from him, just to be on the safe side, until he’s term-limited in the Oklahoma state legislature in 2018. He isn’t running for any higher office, and it looks like we can just end this update by saying one of our favorite expressions to those we profile… “good riddance”.

[Carabas]

While it had certainly occurred to me that this one would play out the way it did, it was still a downer to see it actually happen.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ch...tonio-legrier/

[Darkspellmaster]

While it had certainly occurred to me that this one would play out the way it did, it was still a downer to see it actually happen.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ch...tonio-legrier/

Not at all surprised by the rejection. Johnson has been very direct on wanting to protect his men. ON the plus side the oversight board is getting an update and eventually will have the ability to pick out the COPA cheif, Fire and Police superintendents and police policy. So we have that at least to look forward too. It's not much, but at least head way is being made. Johnson has had some bad calls though.

In regard to the Pope Francis thing. For every one progressive thing he does, he has to keep the damm cardinals happy, and for them, the whole situation with the Native American's and Canadians has always been that they didn't do wrong, so much as they made mistakes but teaching the people western religion wasn't one of them. So if he wants to do something progressive he has to back less then progressive ideals so that they don't act like douchebags. Keep in mind that these Cardinals make a lot of money and seem to want to keep him at arms lenght at times.

[Mister Mets]

Hey, look! An "independent" just blamed Obama for Trump administration corruption!

There have been some relatively sympathetic takes on Shulkin by left-leaning journalists prior to his ouster.

Matthew Ygelisias of Vox suggested the main issue was over policy (Shulkin prefers incremental changes and opposes privatization of services) with the ethics allegations being pretext.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin hasn’t made many headlines. He was confirmed by a 100-0 vote in the United States Senate early in President Trump’s term after a few years of service as a sub-Cabinet official under President Obama; it’s probably fair to call him the least controversial member of the Trump administration. Even a minor scandal involving Wimbledon tickets and improperly billing the public for his wife’s airfare didn’t generate many Democratic calls for firing or investigation.

And yet over the past few months, Shulkin’s position has quietly become untenable.

His relationship with his own staff at Veterans Affairs has become toxic to the point where he’s posted an armed guard outside his office door. As part of the breakdown, the VA communications team has been openly trashing their boss to the press. In response, Shulkin has freelanced in his own communications with the media, going outside normal administration channels. And Axios reported over the weekend that Trump, in an effort to get a handle on the situation, organized an impromptu conference call with Shulkin and Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and Trump confidant on whom the president relies for expertise in veterans’ matters.

The situation appeared to be at a boiling point Tuesday evening when the White House leaked simultaneously to multiple outlets that Trump was leaning toward asking Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take over the VA.

Somewhat oddly, Shulkin isn’t in the hot seat because anything is particularly wrong with the VA’s work or because of anything he’s done. Rather, the issue is precisely that Shulkin isn’t doing enough for conservatives’ tastes. Instead, he’s in line with the preferences of most veterans groups, taking a deliberate pace toward reform rather than pushing to blow up the agency with a big push for privatization.

There’s no particularly good reason for Trump to ensnare himself in a contentious fight with veterans groups in order to pursue a conservative ideological hobbyhorse — and, in fact, he initially appointed Shulkin precisely to avoid doing that. But the very lack of policy knowledge and inattention to detail that often gives Trump’s governing style a sheen of moderation serves, in practice, to consistently empower the most radical and right-wing elements inside the GOP coalition.

Phillip Carter of Slate argued a few weeks ago that ousting Shulkin would be a bad idea.

All of this distills down into a policy question that is at the heart of Shulkin’s first battle: What, exactly, does the nation owe to those who have served in uniform? And how should the VA deliver on that promise? On one side is the VA establishment, and major veterans organizations, who have taken a “mend it, don’t end it” stance toward VA health care. On the other side are political conservatives including the Koch brothers–funded Concerned Veterans for America and many of Trump’s allies in Congress, who would like to focus the VA on service-related care like mental health and contract for everything else from the private sector. Shulkin has tried, with some success, to forge a middle path with congressional leaders in the House and Senate.

Shulkin’s second battle—political infighting with more partisan members of the administration—inflames and complicates these policy disagreements. He is the sole survivor of the Obama administration among Cabinet officials serving Trump. A practicing physician and successful health executive, Shulkin came to the Obama administration to run the VA health care system after the 2014 Phoenix scandal. His selection came after a turbulent Trump transition, during which the president interviewed several potential candidates before settling on Shulkin. Trump reportedly gave Shulkin the job because the New Jersey physician persuaded him he could continue the slow, deliberate privatization of the VA and deliver other wins to Trump on issues like employee accountability (read: easier firing of civil servants).

Since being confirmed in February 2017, Shulkin has largely delivered on those pledges. The VA has continued to purchase private-sector care for veterans—so much so that it has needed to ask Congress for more money to fund the popular program. Shulkin made a difficult decision on electronic health records that the Trump administration has touted as an example of public-private partnership (although that contract now appears stalled). And, Shulkin has presided over the termination of hundreds of VA employees, something the president praised in his State of the Union address this year. But Shulkin has made a few missteps, too, including presiding over continuing problems at the VA’s Washington hospital and proposing to kill the VA’s support for homeless veterans, before walking back that idea in the face of public outcry.

Unfortunately, none of this success has helped Shulkin battle with more partisan appointees brought in by the Trump administration. Some of these appointees, including former beer executive Jake Leinenkugel and Trump campaign operative Cam Sandoval, began working late last year to engineer Shulkin’s exit. According to the Washington Post, these nominees have actively sought to sabotage Shulkin’s tenure, going so far as to call congressional leaders and lobby them to push for Shulkin’s ouster. In response, Shulkin has isolated himself from these senior appointees, reportedly barring their access to his 10th floor executive suite and asking White House chief of staff John Kelly for permission to fire them. (Permission has thus far been denied.) This political battle has consumed more and more of Shulkin’s time in recent months, threatening his reform agenda and ability to deliver more political wins for the president.

It is against this backdrop that Shulkin must wage his third and most personal battle: a fight over two internal ethics investigations by the VA’s inspector general. The first investigation was triggered by Washington Post reporting about Shulkin’s trip to meet with veterans officials in Europe—a trip that included a detour to Wimbledon, and a few days of vacation too. The VA’s inspector general scorched Shulkin in its report on this trip, finding that permission to bring his wife had been predicated on a falsified email from Shulkin’s chief of staff and that Shulkin had impermissibly ordered his staff into travel concierge duty. Shulkin pushed back, retaining counsel to dissect the IG report, and he even suggested that his chief of staff’s email had been hacked. (It was not.) A day later, however, Shulkin’s chief of staff announced her retirement, and Shulkin said he would repay the government for the cost of his wife’s airfare.

A second investigation, regarding Shulkin’s use of his protective security detail, is reportedly percolating in the VA inspector general’s office now. That assessment will reportedly criticize Shulkin for inappropriate use of his security detail for personal errands. On its face, the allegations aren’t that damning; they show Shulkin to be an inexperienced government executive who’s used to different rules in the private sector and also indicate his naïveté about how certain things will play on the proverbial front page of the Washington Post. But these errors come at a time when the Trump administration can ill afford another ethics scandal after similar abuses at HUD, Interior, and HHS, with the latter resulting in Secretary Tom Price’s resignation. A Cabinet secretary aligned more closely with the White House than Shulkin, or with more political allies across the administration, could probably survive these investigations with barely a flesh wound. For Shulkin’s tenure at VA, they may end up being fatal, to the extent they provide a pretext for the White House to replace Shulkin with a more trusted partisan.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

‘Heartbroken’ Trump Critic Ann Coulter: He’s a ‘Shallow, Lazy Ignoramus’

Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter, whose 2016 campaign book, In Trump We Trust touted the many virtues of the Republican nominee, is having second, third, and possibly even fourth thoughts about Donald J. Trump.

“I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn’t care,” Coulter admitted to an audience largely composed of College Republicans and a few hecklers at Columbia University on Tuesday night.

It was the sort of anti-Trump invective that Coulter would share privately with pals, including this reporter, over a wine-soaked dinner during the first year of the new administration, but in recent weeks she has increasingly voiced her displeasure in public forums.

Hmm! I wonder if the perpetually thin-skinned Trump, who never lets ANY slight against him go unchallenged will attack Coulter who's still popular among right wingers?

[Tami]

Republicans consider ‘balanced-budget amendment’ after adding more than $1 trillion to the deficit

House Republicans are considering a vote on a “balanced-budget amendment,” a move that would proclaim their desire to eliminate the federal deficit even as they control a Congress that has added more than $1 trillion to it.

The plan is expected to have virtually no chance of passing, as it would require votes from Democrats in the Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Republican lawmakers have pushed for the vote as a way to signal to constituents ahead of the midterm elections that they have tried to reduce the nation's deficit.

[ed2962]

‘Heartbroken’ Trump Critic Ann Coulter: He’s a ‘Shallow, Lazy Ignoramus’



Hmm! I wonder if the perpetually thin-skinned Trump, who never lets ANY slight against him go unchallenged will attack Coulter who's still popular among right wingers?

I still think Coulter is simply bitter. I believe she thought that she was going to ride Trump's coattails to even higher levels of fame and when that didn't happen she turned against him.

[Tami]

How Slovakia stood up to a journalist’s murder and kicked out its prime minister

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — During his decade as Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico flashed all the moves of the strongman autocrats now so in vogue the world over.

He snarled at journalists, answering tough questions with epithets like “hyena” and “prostitute.” He scapegoated Muslim refugees and a Jewish financier for his country’s troubles. His party cozied up to Slovak oligarchs, Russian apparatchiks and Italian mafia kingpins, while he lived large in a luxurious hilltop apartment with sweeping views of the Danube.

Then something extraordinary happened: An investigative reporter hot on the trail of Fico’s finances was murdered, and tens of thousands of people in the once apathetic nation cared enough to take to the streets. Rather than be intimidated by the killing, journalists dug deeper. Grassroots opposition movements sprang from nowhere. Constitutional checks kicked in.

Under pressure from all sides, Fico resigned.

“I couldn’t have imagined this a month ago. It would have been so naive,” said Juraj Seliga, a 27-year-old law student who was among the protest organizers. “He was so strong. Now he’s weak.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Republicans consider ‘balanced-budget amendment’ after adding more than $1 trillion to the deficit

Funny thing. Usually, the only time Republicans give a damn about a balanced budget is when a Democrat is in the Oval Office. Now with a threat looming of the GOP being drowned by a "blue wave" in the upcoming midterms, suddenly, they've had their come to Jesus moment about the budget. I find that both transparent and hypocritical on their part.

How Slovakia stood up to a journalist’s murder and kicked out its prime minister

I wonder if what happened with Fico could be seen as a cautionary tale for Donald Trump. However, he still has the Republican controlled Congress running interference and protecting him at every turn, so who knows if it'll matter in the long run.

[Malvolio]

I still think Coulter is simply bitter. I believe she thought that she was going to ride Trump's coattails to even higher levels of fame and when that didn't happen she turned against him.

She probably thought she'd have Kelly-Anne Conway's job by now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

She probably thought she'd have Kelly-Anne Conway's job by now.

I'm not so sure. I don't think those two would be able to co-exist for very long, Coulter is too alpha doggish for Trump who likes his flunkies quiet and compliant. Say what you will about Sewer Rat Barbie, but she doesn't rock the boat, Coulter probably would, and in ways Dolt45 wouldn't like I suspect.

[PaulBullion]

You're used to criticizing what people say from the left of them. That's why you still haven't figured out that I'm criticizing what you're saying from the left of YOU.

The fact that I'm that far on the left but hate political correctness is confusing you further. I get that.

Is that one of those "my left or your left" kind of deals?

I'm left... left befuddled.

Pull my left finger!

[InformationGeek]

Looks like old Steve King is getting into trouble. His attack on Emma Gonzalez has opened up some complaints regarding him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

[kidfresh512]

Looks like old Steve King is getting into trouble. His attack on Emma Gonzalez has opened up some complaints regarding him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

So is Laura Ingrahm for her b.s. yesterday attacking David Hogg's college prospects. These bitches are gross attacking kids I am sorry. You can disagree with them but why are they going to the most vile bullying arena possible first. They are supposed to be the "adults" that know better.

Lost some sponsers on her shitty Faux News show already and had to fake apologize

[Mecegirl]

I'm finally listening to this podcast about Watergate. It's extremely informative.
http://www.slate.com/articles/slate_plus/watergate.html