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

[worstblogever]

It was two years ago we shared our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of Dale Mensing, a Bob Jones University graduate and grocery clerk in his mid-fifties who tried challenging Rep. Jared Huffman for his seat to represent California’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. His campaign ads were primarily YouTube videos of Mensing in the picturesque California redwoods, claiming the Affordable Care Act was created to start attacks on the freedom of religion, or was a violation of the Bill of Rights. In others he warned of Common Core education as “One World Order education concepts”. Not surprisingly, Mensing lost the election by 50 points, and will likely never perform better in any election, should he make another go of it.


In both 2016, and 2017, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its first profile of former Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward , who in 2016 was the latest in a long line of nut-jobs we’ve profiled who decided to challenge Senator John McCain for his seat to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate. For starters, Ward was running a osteopathic clinic in Lake Havasu City back in 2009, and not particularly well from a financial standpoint. She then sold her practice to a company named NorthCountry, clinic, employees and all, and her buyout was paid for with… half a million dollars in Obama Stimulus Funds that came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. But she tells all her prospective voters she HATES Obamacare, go figure, while she laughs all the way to the bank. In 2012, she even gave an interview to an osteopathic magazine to discuss the matter.

As a state legislator in Arizona, Kelli Ward hosted a town hall meeting with her constituents to discuss the threat of… CHEMTRAILS. You know, the idea that all those streams coming out from planes are actually just a sinister plot from someone, for some reason, looking to poison the masses, as if there was no difference between a 747 passenger jet and a crop duster. (If you’re not familiar with that paranoid conspiracy theory, we’ll reference Rationwiki for a moment so you can start laughing at her, properly.)That’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, though, as Ward has the nasty habit of supporting OTHER conspiracies, and appearing on the radio talk shows of every right-wing paranoid conspiracy theorist lunatic who will host her. Back in 2013, she co-sponsored Arizona’s attempts to reject the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Treaty, and spoke on the floor of the Arizona legislature about how she believes it’s not about better environmental standards, but tricking rural Americans into moving back into metropolitan centers and cities. Mother Jones Magazine also has reported about how Ward has appeared on the radio show of a local Arizona conspiracy nut named Luca Zanna, where Ward chatted about mysterious helicopters that had been spotted in Arizona, finding agreement how Common Core standards were turning children into “slaves”, as well as the prospect of martial law, or the possibility of a foreign power sending troops to subdue American citizens.

Mother Jones was also good enough to note how Kelli Ward made a trip up to the Cliven Bundy Ranch to hang out with him and the Oathkeepers in 2014, and she described the armed standoff where domestic terrorists had assault rifles pointed at federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management as a “family friendly” event. Just… yikes. After Cliven Bundy made his comments “about the negro”, Ward tried downplaying her visit to see the would-be hero turned racist domestic terrorist, but noting Bundy had a “1st Amendment right” to his remarks. She also actually dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd dddddd and fellow Bundy supporter Pete Santilli, who called John McCain “a domestic enemy”, and brought up both Chemtrails and 9/11 Trutherism during their talk.

Funny side story thought? Remember when Donald Sterling still owned the Los Angeles Clippers, and after decades of racist remarks and lawsuits over racial discrimination against Sterling, he was caught on tape making racist remarks by his girlfriend about the company she was keeping with African Americans being something he didn’t approve of. The NBA voted to force Sterling to sell the Clippers, and most people felt it was because the league didn’t need anyone that racist as part of their day-to-day operations. Well, Kelli Ward, for whatever reason, came running to Donald Sterling’s defense, saying that forcing him to lose his team in such a manner created a “slippery slope”, and promised the public that she would “fight for free speech”.
You hear that Arizona racists? KELLI WARD HAS YOUR BACK.

And that’s clearly the case, considering Kelli Ward received a 2016 endorsement from Nohl Rosen. If that name doesn’t ring a bell with you, you may have heard over the course of the past year about a group of racist protesters who are pro-police, taunting Black Lives Matter protesters with Confederate flags or the time he participated an armed protest with assault rifles of a Phoenix mosque (where they talked about the possibility of having a “Draw Muhammed” contest). While most assumed Ward would distance herself from a bigoted crank like Rosen… she re-Tweeted his post. Then you do a little bit of checking and find out… Ward has spoken at some of Rosen’s “Back the Badge” rallies that defend police violence (especially the times that it's used against minorities).

And that sort of mentality jibes with Mother Jones’ other reporting, that when asked about her position on birthright citizenship at a local GOP gathering in September 2014, she responded by making a thumbs-down gesture and blowing a raspberry, stating that it had been "misinterpreted for years" and that immigrants shouldn't be able to stay just because they "create a child." (Which isn’t how birthright citizenship works.) In radio interviews, Ward has fear-mongered in the worst possible ways, warning that "polio-like illnesses" are spreading "throughout the country as the federal government shipped all of these illegal immigrants all across the country without properly treating them for health and wellness, and they're exposing our kids, our families, to things that we should never have to be exposed to." (Remember, now, we’re talking about a woman with medical training…)

Establishing that Ward is off her rocker seems like an open and shut at this point, but we’ll note she also was a co-sponsor of extremist Arizona Republicans attempts to make gold and silver legal tender as one of her first priorities as a legislator, as well as voted for both an attempt to nullify federal firearm laws, and voted for Arizona’s attempt at passing a “religious freedom” law to prevent same sex marriage back in 2013.

[worstblogever]

Now, quite predictably, Kelli Ward lost to John McCain in that 2016 GOP Primary, but surprisingly, she still pulled down 40% of the vote for Republicans in that primary, despite being quite deranged. We weren’t even through the 2016 elections completely when Ward announced that she would be a 2018 challenger to Arizona’s other U.S. Senator, Jeff Flake. Flake opted to not run for re-election, being fully aware that the GOP has completely been left in ruins of the toxicity of Donald Trump pandering to bigots, which left the mainstream GOP scrambling to find a “mainstream” candidate to enter the primary to avoid being embarrassed by Ward in November and losing a Senate seat in a red state to the Democrats. They, settled on Congresswoman Martha McSally, and were even lucky enough that another Trump loyalist, octogenarian convicted felon and former Sheriff Joe Arpaio entered the fray. Arpaio’s presence meant the “hard right kook” vote is now split between Ward and Arpaio, and McSally looks like she might comfortably win the GOP Primary for this fight, and be able to hold serve for the Republican Party in the fall against popular Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema. Then again, Sinema looks like that regardless of her opponent, she’s favored to ride a Blue Wave into the upper chamber.

At this point, the GOP fighting to keep Ward out of the general election isn’t a secret, and she’s been left desperate enough to tout “endorsements” from fake news sites that her own campaign manages. Fox News, of course, has decided to put their thumb on the scale for her where they can, since she’s a Trump loyalist, and allowed her to lie about asylum seekers at the border, and claim that criminals were “using children” to help get across the border, trying to defend the highly controversial “family separation” policy instituted by the Trump administration like you’d expect a woman palling around with paranoid white nationalists would.

We’re going to monitor that Senate race in Arizona closely, and not just hope that Ward loses it, either in the primary of general election… but also hope she gets crushed hard enough that she thinks twice about vying for Senator John McCain’s seat, should he lose his battle with cancer. Seriously, there are only so many times Arizonans can dodge a bullet with a loon like Kelli Ward.

[zinderel]

Damn straight. This reminds me of parents who tell their kids to "be kind" to the bully and he'll learn that kindness is the way. Well, it's kind of hard to be kind to someone who's punching you in the face, or putting your head in the toilet, or as in my own case, grabbing your book-bag and throwing it down the street. So maybe we'll start being civil when the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world start giving out real apologies for some of their ****.

For me, it was getting punched in the back of the head after getting off the school bus. They loved knocking off 'the little faggot's' glasses and laughing as they shattered. Cheap, plastic, tortoiseshell glasses weren't terribly sturdy in the early 80's. Bonus points if I landed in a mud puddle and ruined my clothes. I went through so many pairs of glasses and new shirts, growing up, and we were NOT wealthy, by any means. I grew up in a damn trailer park, but we managed to afford replacements now and then, and tape when we couldn't do anything else. And then I hit my growth spurt, hit 6 feet in 8th grade, learned how to glower and hold myself and look the goodamned predators in the eyes and not blink. And whattaya know...the bullies and shitheels stopped punching me in the back of the head when I stopped being a punching bag and started making them uncomfortable. I never had to throw one punch, but I scared those bullies...because they, like all bullies, were cowards at heart.

Anyone who has been a victim knows that civility only works when there is a chance of compromise. Republicans - the hardcore base of ignorant, hateful, scared bullies and the elite, entrenched establishment that uses the ignorant base to accomplish their goals of getting richer at any cost - have made clear there will be no quarter given (even though they ASK for every quarter we can spare, and then some...), so...I say let them have it as good as they've given for the last few decades. Don't throw the first punch, but don't give a single square inch of ground to those fuckers. Stare them down. Call them out. Make them sweat and shiver and worry for their precious stuff, their precious 'status', since that's all they care about. It's time they started to feel some goddamn heat, again.

[zinderel]

"Proud Boys" should be the name of Ultimate X-Men villains. Like they could be a spin off an anti-mutant hate group.

From what I know of them, they'd hate mutants as much as they hate immigrants and LGBT+ folks, so...

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Scumbag Scotty just CAN'T keep out of trouble. Here's the latest mess Pruitt's mixed up in:

Whistleblower: EPA's Pruitt kept secret calendar to hide meetings

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides have kept "secret" calendars and schedules to overtly hide controversial meetings or calls with industry representatives and others, according to a former EPA official who is expected to soon testify before Congress. A review of EPA documents by CNN found discrepancies between Pruitt's official calendar and other records.

EPA staffers met routinely in Pruitt's office to "scrub," alter or remove from Pruitt's official calendar numerous records because they might "look bad," according to Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt's former deputy chief of staff for operations, who attended the meetings.

A CNN review which compared Pruitt's public calendar with internal EPA schedules and emails shows more than two dozen meetings, events or calls were omitted from his public calendar.

Chmielewski said that some interactions were intentionally removed from Pruitt's calendar after they occurred, such as meetings in June 2017 between Pruitt and Cardinal George Pell, who was charged weeks later with multiple historical charges of sexual offenses. Pell has pleaded not guilty.

"We would have meetings what we were going to take off on the official schedule. We had at one point three different schedules. One of them was one that no one else saw except three or four of us," Chmielewski told CNN. "It was a secret ... and they would decide what to nix from the public calendar."

Chmielewski says he was forced to leave the EPA in February after raising questions about Pruitt's spending and management.

If the allegations are true, the practice of keeping secret calendars and altering or deleting records of meetings could violate federal law as either "falsifying records" or hiding public records, according to legal experts interviewed by CNN.

"If somebody changed, deleted, scrubbed a federal record with the intent of deceiving the public or intent of deceiving anybody, it could very well be a violation of federal law," said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

[aja_christopher]

"Why did you finally decide to leave the Republican Party?

I think it’s fair to say I’ve been estranged from the party on a number of issues going back to my advocacy and support for marriage equality in 2009 and then my opposition to the populism and the nationalism that we’ve seen. The reality that I’ve come to is that the party stands at an hour at which it is irredeemable, where it has died and bled out because of the cowardice and fecklessness of its leaders.

When Trump was elected, there were three parties in Washington: the Trump party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The Republican Party had every chance to put a check on his vile personal conduct, his administration’s outlandish corruption, his fetishizing and affinity for autocrats around the world and his undermining of the western alliance.

How did it get to this point?

I think it’s important to understand the history of the Republican Party. It was founded in 1854 because of the moral collapse of the Whig Party, specifically around the question of race and the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

The Republican Party remained the party of the North and the West culturally in this country until the Civil Rights Act. On the day that LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act, he says, “I feel like I’ve lost the South.” Over time, beginning with Richard Nixon in ’68, with the Southern Strategy and the appeal to white working-class Southerners, the Republican Party is uprooted from the North and the West. That is the party I was born into.

This present strain of know-nothingism has long been in the party’s DNA. This cancer has always been there. This dormant cancer. But it has become fully embraced in this moment.

We’re seeing at this moment a president of the United States do five things. He is using mass rallies that are fueled by constant lying to incite fervor and devotion in his political base.

The second thing we see him do is to affix blame for every problem in the world. Many of them are complex, not so different from the issues faced at the end of Agrarian age and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We see him attack minority populations with words like “invade” and “infest.”

The third thing he does is a create a shared sense of victimization caused by the scapegoated populations. This is the high act of Trumpism: From Trump to Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham, everyone is a victim.

The fourth thing he does is he alleges conspiracy by nefarious and unseen hidden forces – the “deep state.”

And the fifth thing is the assertion that “I am the law, that I am above it.” He just said immigrants don’t get a hearing; they don’t get a court representation.

So the party’s evolution is as much cultural as it is political or ideological.

The two parties for a long time were not homogeneous ideologically. There were plenty of conservatives in the Democratic Party, and there were no small number of liberals in the Republican Party. Now, culturally, we’re in thrall to theocratic crackpots like Mike Huckabee and Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, where you’re able to justify the candidacy of a Roy Moore because you want to keep the Senate seat.

The theocracy and crackpot sewer conservatism has taken over.

What you’ve seen is this rapid devolution over the last 18 months of the Republican Party becoming a white ethno-nationalist party, a blood-and-soil party that is protectionist, isolationist, that is rooted in resentment and grievance."

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...troyed-667008/

[ed2962]

Alan Dershowitz shunned!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...MLH?li=BBnbfcL

[WestPhillyPunisher]

What you’ve seen is this rapid devolution over the last 18 months of the Republican Party becoming a white ethno-nationalist party, a blood-and-soil party that is protectionist, isolationist, that is rooted in resentment and grievance."

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...troyed-667008/

In brief, the Republican Party has been killed, replaced in full by the Trump Party. And the craven, cowardly politicians protecting him in Congress along with the legions of bad actors doing all sorts of evil **** in his name (I now call them "MAGA Maggots") couldn't be happier.

Alan Dershowitz shunned!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...MLH?li=BBnbfcL

Awww! What a damn shame! let me break out my tiny violin and play him a sad tune.

[Mister Mets]

Sanders did well with Northern Black Youth and west Mid Western Blacks. There's this persistent Myth that Blacks somehow despised Sanders, when he somehow has an 83% rating among us.
it was mostly Establishment and OLDER Blacks who saw the Clintons as more beneficial than Sanders.
To no fault of their own, until Democrats started attacking Sanders for having the Audacity to run.
But now that the Primary and Elections are over, older blacks and non establishment types accept the man, and also accept Progressive ideals.

In the 2016 primary, African-Americans voters supported HRC over Sanders with a roughly three to one margin. as of June 2016.

http://pos.org/democratic-primary-vo...te-coalitions/

There would be an ickiness in excluding the votes of conservative Southern States in which African Americans are a big part of the primary electorate (Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, etc.) because of the argument that those states should matter less because it's unlikely to be in play in the general election.

This doesn't mean Sanders would be unpopular with African-Americans in a General Election environment. My comments were limited to the primary.

Er, I should note POS means Public Opinion Services. That's an unfortunate initial.

[MyriVerse]

Damn straight. This reminds me of parents who tell their kids to "be kind" to the bully and he'll learn that kindness is the way. Well, it's kind of hard to be kind to someone who's punching you in the face, or putting your head in the toilet, or as in my own case, grabbing your book-bag and throwing it down the street. So maybe we'll start being civil when the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world start giving out real apologies for some of their ****.

Feh. I'm the guy that befriended the school bully, and got him to stop being a bully.

[Tendrin]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...sexual-n888386

Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, is being accused by former wrestlers he coached more than two decades ago at Ohio State University of failing to stop the team doctor from molesting them and other students.

Insert Dark Hastert Rule joke here.

[Tami]

Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan accused of turning blind eye to sexual abuse as Ohio State wrestling coach

"At the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on," a former Ohio State wrestler said.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, is being accused by former wrestlers he coached more than two decades ago at Ohio State University of failing to stop the team doctor from molesting them and other students.

The university announced in April that it was investigating accusations that Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, abused team members when he was the team doctor from the mid-1970s to late 1990s.

Jordan, who was assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994, has repeatedly said he knew nothing of the abuse until former students began speaking out this spring. His denials, however, have been met with skepticism and anger from some former members of the wrestling team.

Three former wrestlers told NBC News that it was common knowledge that Strauss showered regularly with the students and inappropriately touched them during appointments, and said it would have been impossible for Jordan to be unaware; one wrestler said he told Jordan directly about the abuse.

Former head coach Russ Hellickson, Jordan's mentor, said in a recent video — made by Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler — that Hellickson had told Strauss that he was being too "hands on” with students.

DiSabato, whose allegations against Strauss prompted Ohio State to open its investigation, called Jordan a “liar.”

“I considered Jim Jordan a friend,” DiSabato said. “But at the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on.”

[Jackmando7]

I heard it could take months for those Thailand kids to be safely rescued. That has got to be really tough for them to hear..

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan accused of turning blind eye to sexual abuse as Ohio State wrestling coach

Let's see if Cheeto Jesus will ride to his rescue. He probably will.

[aja_christopher]

In brief, the Republican Party has been killed, replaced in full by the Trump Party. And the craven, cowardly politicians protecting him in Congress along with the legions of bad actors doing all sorts of evil **** in his name (I now call them "MAGA Maggots") couldn't be happier.

I wouldn't say it's been so much replaced as many of the party members are just a lot more open -- and a lot less apologetic -- about their racism and bigotry.

The recent Paul, King, and Huckabee tweets show that the problem was always there -- they just needed a "leader" like Trump who they could rally around.

------
"President Obama said he draws a straight line from McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate to Trump’s election. You helped McCain pick Palin in 2008. Did she usher in the Trump era?

I think people miss the point on Sarah Palin. She’s not the cause. She’s a symptom. The sickness is how people reacted to her after you knew what she was.

There’s never been an era absent of demagogues. What there hasn’t been is an ability of those demagogues to gain actual power – certainly not at a national level. We threw the ball down the field [by picking Palin] and it didn’t work. I had no idea what she was and didn’t know until a couple days after we picked her. But by the time the race ends, everybody knows.

Yet what happens? Palin gets a million-dollar TV contract on Fox.

Can the Republican Party be saved?

If the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan is to be redeemed and resurrected, then the party of Trump must be obliterated. Annihilated. Destroyed. And all of the collaborators, the complicit enablers, the school of cowards, need to go down.

Maybe something can regenerate from that."