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

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Do people here think that's a bad thing?

Just accept your new socialist overlords

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Clark Kent would be one of those reporters getting attacked and yelled at at Trump rallies as "fake news" for writing accurate articles about trump.

I want this story so bad now

[ZombieHavoc]

Just accept your new socialist overlords

Ha if that is directed at me specifically, I feel like you misunderstood, or I didn't articulate, my particular leanings in all of our discussion.

[worstblogever]

Also last night, Republican Congressman Dan Donovan (R) fended off a challenge from former Congressman Michael Grimm (R), who's now more famous for threatening reporters and going to jail for tax fraud.

[ZombieHavoc]

Also, another thing about last night...it's going to be fun to post side-by-side screenshots of Mitt Romney calling out Trump for this or that with him bending the knee after he wins in November.

[worstblogever]

It was three years ago we had a profile of John Lloyd Ellis, the former Chairman of the Alabama Cherokee County Republican Party whose career ended when he was discovered to have a massive marijuana farm being operated out of his home by police. Last we heard, he was looking at a prison sentence of one to ten years.

Two years ago today, we posted a profile of Alex Beinstein, who as a 28-year old libertarian who filed as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for Colorado’s 3rdCongressional District, as a primary challenger to incumbent Congressman Scott Tipton, focusing almost entirely on a single issue… destroying all foreign relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Now, among the many Saudi-related conspiracies that Beinstein believes is that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks, helped protect Osama bin Laden while he was hiding in Pakistan, and are responsible for helping create ISIS. But how do they get away with it, you ask? Bribes. Bribes all over the place. Saudi princes have spent money to corrupt everyone from President Barack Obama and CNN’s Anderson Cooper to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Fox News leadership. Beinstein also told The Huffington Post that Bill Gates, Apple Inc., The Plaza Hotel in New York and the Four Seasons hotel chain are among other alleged lackeys of the kingdom. (Let’s not even get started on Hillary Clinton.) Beinstein compares cutting ties to Saudi Arabia as to when the United States chose to stop doing business with Nazi Germany, so we’ll add a little dash of Godwin’s Law to his wacky mix. And of course, Beinstein said his primary opponent, Tipton, is in on the conspiracy, and his evidence is… Tipton has failed to publicly condemn Saudi Arabia and has ties to local oil, gas and coal companies. Beinstein, being a libertarian, also has thoughts on gun control… he’s against all of it, specifically even arguing against the idea that those deemed mentally ill or incompetent should still be allowed to have their 2nd Amendment rights. (We suspect this might be because a psychologist might one day recommend Beinstein not have firearms, since he’s already showing some signs of needing to shop for real estate with padded walls.) Beinstein managed a meager 21% of the vote against Tipton in the 2016 GOP primary for that Congressional seat, and it bears watching if he makes another run for office on the platform of, “I REALLY DON’T LIKE SAUDI ARABIA, YOU GUYS.”

One year ago today, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Paul Blair, a radical anti-gay pastor from Oklahoma who has twice run for the Oklahoma State Senate, and a big ally of State Rep. Sally Kern, who proudly spoke of her political credentials (i.e. her dedication to oppressing the LGBT community) at the “Rally for Sally” back in 2008. You see, he was all lathered up after she said that gays represent a bigger threat to America than terrorism (since gay rights made people like Blair and Kern victims). Blair is a former player for the Chicago Bears (and could easily be operating under the effects of long term head injuries), the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, the founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, head of the Reclaiming America For Christ organization. He's also appeared at an anti-hate crimes “Rally for Religious Freedom” where he and anti-gay activists vowed never to stop fighting homosexuality and challenged the Justice Department to prosecute them. Blair was the driving force behind a video called “The Criminalization of Christianity” in which he warns that hate crimes legislation is actually a “Pedophile Protection Act”, would “make it possible for a pastor to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than preaching a Biblical sermon on Sunday”. Which would be breaking a commandment about bearing false witness, because hate crime legislation does nothing to criminalize free speech (because that would be an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment now, wouldn't it?) But it would seem that lying is a frequent habit of Pastor Blair, who claims he receives death threats from the gay community over his stance (that are repeatedly unfounded). And that's when Blair tried saying the unsubstantiated death threats were his motivation for making himself a 2012 candidate for the Oklahoma State Senate (endorsed by that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council), where he lost in the Republican Primary, earning a shockingly impressive 43% of the vote. Some of the more disturbing and/or homophobic quotes from Paul Blair's most bats*** speeches include that "The Devil is behind gay rights and gay culture", before whining how America has gone from "Ozzie and Harriet to Desperate Housewives" and "from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain", claiming that the “communists” are trying to “inculcate homosexual values, or lack of values, into the American culture” in order “to destroy the family” and create “a global utopia", adding that "Satan is the source and ultimate conspirator” behind “the force of communism, the force of the radical homosexual agenda, the secularist movement in America", and of course, comparing his battle against gay marriage to be similar to “the fight against slavery and Nazi Germany”. Paul Blair has also promoted conspiracy theories about how our government deliberately launches EMP attacks against conservative Christians, and that Jade Helm 15 and began promoting the alternative history that the ancient Israelites had a Constitutional Republic. Since it’s looking like November will be the end of Blair’s political career for good, we’re going to move on and start profiling a different wacky Republican on this date instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 680-30, since this was established in July 2014.)

[aja_christopher]

Clark Kent would be one of those reporters getting attacked and yelled at at Trump rallies as "fake news" for writing accurate articles about trump.

And that's without even getting to all of Trump's direct attacks on the first amendment, the media, and the free press.

[worstblogever]

Dave Trott
Welcome to the 680th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we’ll be profiling the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan’s 11th District, Dave Trott, who was first elected back in 2014, when the GOP were desperate for a sane candidate to replace CSGOPOTD legend Kerry Bentivolio. Trott needed to just seem a bit more mainstream than Bentivolio, a 9-11 Truther with an online profile featuring him blowing kisses to reindeer while shirtless and outspending Benvolio in the 2014 Primary for this seat by a ratio of 25-1. Yes, the bar was set pretty low for him as a candidate because Trott was most renowned for being “Michigan’s foreclosure king”, getting rich during the Great Recession of ’07 and ’08 by preying on homeowners who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgage and were being evicted from their homes, including signing off on the paperwork to evict a 101 year old Detroit woman from her home, leaving her belongings in the street.. In many ways, that’s actually a perfect representation of modern Republican values.

Over the last four years in Congress, Trott’s voting record exemplifies that “rich white men first” mentality:

• January 22nd, 2015: David Trott votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
• February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Trott 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.
• September 11th, 2015: Trott votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
• September 18th, 2015: Rep. Trott 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.
• November 19th, 2015: Trott 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: David Trott votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
• March 16th, 2017: David Trott votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
• May 4th, 2017: Trott votes for the House GOP's healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), postpartum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Trott would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
• June 8th, 2017: David Trott votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
• October 3rd, 2017: Trott votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
• December 19th, 2017: David Trott votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
• February 18th, 2018: Trott and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.

It was only about seven weeks into Dave Trott’s second term in office that he was caught on a hot mic with aides after a tense town hall talking to advisers about how the protesters who showed up to complain about their Congressman ignoring the working class were “un-American”.

"We're going to take that part where they're booing funding the military, and I'm gonna get somebody to write a story. We're going to promote the sh** out of that. It's un-American crap."

One of his aides claimed it was his voice on the recording (maybe, maybe not)… but needless to say, he hasn’t had the courage to host another town hall since, because obviously, he realizes that he went and kicked the hornet’s nest. In fact, not only did Trott not have the courage to face his constituents again, he was so craven facing up against the 2018 Blue Wave that he announced he would retire after only two terms in office in September of 2017. Again, we’d like to wish him the finest, heartiest “good riddance” we can muster.
 

[GindyPosts]

Superman and X-Men 'fans' seem overrepresented among them. I don't understand how that works. Are they rooting for the Mutant-hating bigots when they read X-Men stories?

Ever since "God Loves, Man Kills", they look at William Stryker as a paragon of virtue.

He was compassionate about his mutant son when he killed him.

[worstblogever]

Also, another thing about last night...it's going to be fun to post side-by-side screenshots of Mitt Romney calling out Trump for this or that with him bending the knee after he wins in November.

Mitt Romney is only second to Trump in terms of mendacity. He lied at a clip of about 20 times a week during the 2012 election. Almost 40 times a week during the last two months. Trump beats that, of course, because you can tell if he's lying by if he's breathing.

[aja_christopher]

[ed2962]

It's funny cuz a year ago, they were all going "Yeah, no more political correctness! People are too sensitive these days!" Now that they're on the receiving end it's, "Why can't we be civil towards one another?"

[ed2962]

Superman and X-Men 'fans' seem overrepresented among them. I don't understand how that works. Are they rooting for the Mutant-hating bigots when they read X-Men stories?

No, but they see themselves as the fringe group. It's like when people in the US say that it's Christians are a repressed minority...

[aja_christopher]

No, but they see themselves as the fringe group. It's like when people in the US say that it's Christians are a repressed minority...

Reminds me of the quote about how those complaining about a "witch hunt" -- Trump and Pence for example -- would have been the first to burn witches (without due process of law) in Puritan America.

[Trey Strain]

You watch. The Clintonites, the Pelosis and the other members of the aging Democratic establishment -- that is, the Republican Lite crowd -- will fight these upstarts tooth and nail. I've said for a long time that those old geezers have to be toppled before the Democrats can muster a serious challenge to the Republicans. It might be about to happen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/o...t-crowley.html