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

[PaulBullion]

Speech writer for Trump is leaving for beating his wife now, too.

Firings/Resignations/Departures under Trump
—Yates
—Flynn
—Bharara
—Walsh
—Comey
—Dubke
—Shaub
—Corralo
—Spicer
—Short
—Harvey
—Priebus
—Mooch
—Cohen
-Watnick
—Higgins
—Bannon
—Gorka
—Sifakis
—Icahn
—Price
—Powell
—Manigault
—Dearborn
—Katz
—McCabe
—Porter
—Sorensen

[worstblogever]

Incidentally, did you see my post with the info on the alt-right 'knight' medieval reenactor running for congress? XD

Could you re-post a link? Or PM it? I missed that one.

[worstblogever]

Three years ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Jacob Dorsey, who was a 19 year old candidate for a seat in the Wisconsin House of Representatives in 2014, who was obliterated in the election for his seat not because of his age, and surely not because the Wisconsin GOP didn’t support him (he was given $1,000 by the party for his campaign from them directly, and even got a photo-op with Gov. Scott Walker)… but it was more of his Twitter account that destroyed his chances. He probably should have went back and deleted all the posts where he casually used gay and/or racial slurs, declared his hatred of President Obama and other “urban bastards”, wished for another Civil War, and declared “f*** Abe Lincoln”, which indicated he hadn’t checked who founded the party he was a member of. Anyway, all signs point towards Dorsey having slinked back into college at BYU-Idaho, and has yet to make another attempt at joining the world of politics.

In both 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright, a two-term South Carolina State Senator from District 12 in in the Palmetto State who got into office by running unopposed for his seat after serving many years as a school board member trying to get Creationism taught in South Carolina schools. He galvanized his support base of Tea Partiers over the next several years with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, winning re-election in 2012, and finishing second in the GOP primary race to try and unseat sitting U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham in the 2014 elections. Bright’s voting record, that featured support for defunding Planned Parenthood as well as Personhood legislation, stricter Voter ID laws to combat the mythical threat of “in person voter fraud” at the cost of disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters, a love of guns that saw him co-sponsor a bill to legalize carrying firearms in bars (because alcohol does wonders for impulse control of people packing heat), the time he submitted a completely unconstitutional bill to that would see South Carolina begin printing its own currency, and a bill he created to try to give a five year jail sentence to anyone who worked on implementing the Affordable Care Act in South Carolina… it was Lee Bright's rhetoric that truly got our attention.

In January 2010, Lee Bright was quoted by a local journalist in South Carolina as saying, “If at first you don’t secede, try again,” in a discussion about states’ rights. In August 2013 Bright gave a speech where he warned against “IRS Brownshirts enforcing Obamacare”, as well as claiming that “FEMA is training a militia” while warning against “terrorist nations” sending people to execute a “Southern border invasion”, specifically mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood of perpetrating such an action. In December 2013, Bright argued that able-bodied food stamp recipients “shouldn’t eat”, claiming that many of them “have the nicest nails, and the nicest pocketbook and the nicest car”, and that the United States should completely eliminate its social safety net because it’s “the role of the church”. He finished that discussion by comparing the IRS to Nazi Germany and stated his belief that South Carolina troops will turn against President Obama, advising his allies that "If the Tenth Amendment won’t protect the Second, we might have to use the Second to protect the Tenth.” Shortly after the Newtown Massacre, Bright made the classy decision to campaign for U.S. Senate by auctioning off an AR-15 assault rifle, the weapon that Adam Lanza used to murder 26 people in the Newtown Massacre. In April 2014 Bright was interviewed by Josh Duggar saying that Republicans need to have the courage of Bashir al-Assad and Vladimir Putin in dealing with gays, and not allow an “indoctrination” of the “homosexual agenda”.

In June 2015, days after the tragic shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina that was perpetrated by Dylann Roof, a white nationalist motivated by Confederate iconography… the one positive that came out of the tragedy was that a majority in the South Carolina state legislature were willing to discuss removing the Confederate flag from state property, such as the state capitol. Almost immediately upon hearing that news, however, Lee Bright lost his damned mind, and comparing removing the flag to a “Stalinist purge” and gave a rambling defense of the Stars & Bars on the floor of the South Carolina legislature where he added “the Confederate flag is a proud symbol of freedom”, before soon raving wildly about “the devil taking control of his land”, abortion clinics in black neighborhoods “committing genocide”, how “gay marriage is a national sin” and how President Obama and the White House displayed the “abomination colors” when it was legalized.

Lee Bright impotently worked towards getting Ted Cruz elected president in the 2016 presidential campaign, and as it turned out, he probably should have spent his time watching his own back. We are relieved to report. In a runoff election against Scott Talley, Lee Bright was defeated by a total of 299 votes, and will now presumably spend some time alternating between sulking about his own political fortunes and furiously wanking to the fact that there are White Nationalists in the highest echelons of our government currently. 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 645-25, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Dan Forest

Welcome to the 645th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we’re going to take a quick moment to have a discussion about North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, who was first elected to office back in 2012 by a few thousand votes. Forest spent four years serving under former Gov. Pat McCrory during his administration, during some of the more dismal policy failures the Tar Heel State has seen in several years (that are a lot of the reason why McCrory was only a one-term governor). Perhaps the biggest political disaster of the McCrory regime was North Carolina’s HB 2, a transphobic bathroom ban that allowed for the discrimination of LGBT citizens whose passage ended up costing the people of North Carolina over $3.7 billion in lost revenue due to several groups boycotting the state as a result and even some corporations choosing to move their operations elsewhere. And as the economic fallout from passing such a socially conservative law began to take its toll, a few more moderate members of the GOP around North Carolina started to admit that maybe… maybe they went too far. Dan Forest is most certainly not one of those reasonable souls.

You see, Dan Forest is a true Fundamentalist believer to his core. And he sat down with Tony Perkins, yes THAT Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council (which is still an anti-gay hate group) to tout the importance of HB 2, insisting that “if it protects one child or one woman "from being molested or assaulted, then it was worth it." Note the wording… IF. Because, and I know this might be shocking, there were no transgender attacks upon women or children in restrooms. There never were. But that didn’t stop Forest from lying his *** off about what the bill was meant to do:

"Well, our bill does not discriminate against anybody. In fact, the Charlotte ordinance was amazingly discriminatory against especially women and girls who no longer had the freedom to walk into a restroom and know that they would be safe and secure in that restroom without a man walking in or a pedophile or a predator walking into that bathroom."

Now that we’ve established that Dan Forest has some issues with the LGBT community, in particular the “T”, what with hanging out with anti-gay hate groups and defending an anti-gay discrimination law…. Let’s talk about why this is going to matter going forward… one of the worst kept secrets right now in North Carolina politics is that when Forest is term-limited in 2020, he’s going to take a shot at preventing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper from getting a term in office. GOP Congressman Mark Meadows already let the cat out of the bag, and Forest is already attacking his sitting Governor for wanting to repeal the widely unpopular HB 2, and claiming that Roy Cooper, intends to we quote, “a 'Look But Don't Touch' policy in our bathrooms.” That doesn’t sound like someone who is backing off of his bad move, does it?

But the levels of fanaticism already look to be well ingrained farther than even that. For years now, Forest has begun organizing a “Christian retreat” for political donors and allies known as “Black Mountain Weekend” where political players from North Carolina who cut their teeth working for monsters like Jesse Helms get together, hopefully without wearing hoods while they discuss a “Christian worldview”.

And while Forest seems more than thrilled to discriminate against the LGBT community, he doesn’t discriminate nearly as much with the kind of company he keeps with fellow people at his retreat. Like Robin Webster, a Faith preacher who believes that you can help turn a gay person straight by beating it out of them. Every legal method of exploiting 501 (c3) law is being pushed, and apparently the bounds of the law aren’t enough for Forest’s backers, who already this year have gone far enough to donate an entire TV studio’s worth of equipment to Forest… illegally. He's more than willing to collect all the donor money from the heads of charter schools at the cost of selling out North Carolina’s education system to them later on.

So, CSGOPOTD will open a profile on the Lt. Governor now, because he seems devoted enough to his bigoted cause that we want everyone to know his name by the time the ballots go out for Governor of North Carolina in 2020.

[Tendrin]

Could you re-post a link? Or PM it? I missed that one.

I'll PM it.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump won't release the Dem Memo. Because he is guilty as sh*+!

What possible defense will his supporters pull out of their asses for this?

The GOP voter is okay with this though. ANything Dear Leader does is okay in their book.

Democrats Erupt After Trump Blocks Rebuttal Memo

“Clearly, he has something to hide,” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says. No ****, Nan! That move by Dopey Donald screamed "I'M GUILTY!" Now, it's hardly a secret that he barely read the Republican memo if he read it all before giving it his blessing, you mean to tell me he actually saw the Democrat response, or did he slap it down on principle because it came from the Dems?

**********

All The White Supremacists Running For Office In 2018

Plus candidates who’ve said white supremacist things, hung out with white supremacists, or talked to anti-Semitic publications. More of what Trump has wrought with his support of neo-Nazis.

**********

The RNC Is Hawking Old Donald Trump Merch For The Olympics, And Folks Aren’t Happy

“This is undoubtedly the most insipid excuse at fund raising I have ever seen.” That much is obvious.

**********

Accused Sexual Harasser Blake Farenthold Wants You To Forget He Owes You $84,000

The GOP congressman spent lots of taxpayer money to settle a harassment lawsuit. He said he’d pay us back. He hasn’t. Yo, Fatty! Get off your wide load ass and pay back that money!

**********

Documentary Profiles Trump As The ‘P.T. Barnum’ Of Boasts And Bankruptcies

He’s still “lying and creating false scenarios,” the director of “Confidence Man” says. Looks interesting.

[Kirby101]

I think it had more to do with the amount of publicity and branding around it. When he lost he could just say he was an outsider and didn't get a fair shake. He didn't expect the Republican base to be so fed up with the **** the party served for years that they were ready to rebel and he didn't expect that Clinton would be the perfect foil for him

He also didn't expect that he could win after losing the popular vote by millions to her.

[Mister Mets]

Trump won't release the Dem Memo. Because he is guilty as sh*+!

What possible defense will his supporters pull out of their asses for this?

This one would actually to be easy to defend. It would be the national security claim. Democrats made a similar argument against releasing the Nunes memo, and there don't seem to be any major national security secrets there, although a more nuanced argument was that the Nunes memo was written in such a way that it would require revealing national security secrets in order to disprove it.

About that....

Jeff Flake's voting scorecard indicated he voted with Trump on things 88.5% of the time. Ted Cruz...93.8%. Ergo, Jeff Flake had practically the same stances/record as Ted Cruz.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...re/jeff-flake/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...core/ted-cruz/

The five percent could be a big difference given that the majority of the bills are standard Republican fare.

No, but you seem to be confusing it with a sociological textbook or a dictionary.

I'm looking at the usage of the word in media outlets. Sometimes it's used a bit differently than it was in "Unpacking the Knapsack"- the article in which the term first appeared.

It's also a distinction without a difference in a discussion that started off with the concerns of white working class workers. If the media often uses a technically incorrect definition of white privilege that seems to conflate all white people with a successful subsection (college-educated upper middle class) I can't expect the standard civilian to correct the editor of Buzzfeed on an academic term.

Which is exactly why it doesn't make sense to complain about something based on your -- or their -- own false conclusions: claiming that you are "alienated" by the concept of "white privilege" when you don't even really know what it is just demonstrates that ignorance is bliss for those who don't have to deal with the true consequences or racism and the tradition of white supremacy in this country: conveniently taking "race" out of the discussion of "white privilege" obviously makes it very easy to avoid the subject in question.

You're sitting here talking about whites being "alienated" by talk of white privilege while I'm pointing out that black (and brown) people like myself are discriminated against -- and sometimes even killed -- as a result of not having white privilege: there's really no comparison there.

Must be nice just to feel "alienated" by the concept of white privilege, rather than actually having to suffer the effects of it -- not to mention actually benefiting from it even as you continue to argue it's irrelevance. Instead of having to deal directly with the problem of racism and discrimination in our society, you can just ignore it and/or express your "sentiments" to those non-whites who are dealing with it, while you continue to vote for the party who promotes it almost every opportunity, especially under the new Republican president, Donald Trump.

Which, ironically enough, is yet another glaging example of white privilege.

Again -- if things like "having a tutor" is how you want to define "white privilege" then so be it -- there's really no point in discussing it further if that's your basis of argument.

My claim wasn't that I'm alienated from white privilege; I was writing about possible views of a group of people I barely interact with (working class white people), and going with a definition of white privilege celebrated by mainstream media outlets to make a point about the perception of the term in popular culture.

If the view is that working class white people have so many advantages in American society, they shouldn't complain, I would disagree as it's a group where the children seem to have less potential than their parents, which is the reverse of how it should be in the US.

[Mister Mets]

He also didn't expect that he could win after losing the popular vote by millions to her.

The campaign knew what it was doing when it came to the electoral college.

Hicks has quite a love life...I think she dated Lewandowski, Miller (I thought was rumor/gossip at one point for at least a fling (?)), and Porter.

My god, she's dated two to three guys in the space of two and a half years.

I don't think that will be the case. 2016 saw a perfect shitstorm that toppled Hillary, starting with the Russian hacking, it was no secret Vlad Putin hated Clinton because of her tough stance against him while she was Secretary of State and wanted no part of her as president, so he put his machine to work to help keep her from winning. But, at the same time, we can't discount Hillary's own missteps during the campaign that have been discussed here ad nauseam along with rampant misogyny (some of it, sadly, by women), a quarter century long Clinton smear campaign by the GOP, and the influence of Faux News and the media unashamedly slurping Trump at every opportunity because he was good for ratings which was all they cared about. Call me naïve, but I seriously doubt we'll see that magnitude of FUBAR happen again for 2020.

The worst Republican presidential candidate in generations got outsized media attention during the primaries, which helped contribute to his win.

Then a decade old tape of him talking about grabbing women by the pussy came out the month before the election.

It was kept quiet that a religious outreach guy was kicked out of the Clinton campaign for sexually harassing women (following similar accusations about the main in the 2008 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton ignored the advice that the guy should be fired.)

There was some big stuff that went Hillary's way.

Realistically speaking, there's no way of knowing whether Trump could have beaten Obama in a presidential election, especially while running on an overtly racist platform -- McCain defended Obama's honor as a "decent" fellow American while Trump would have played right into said racist and Islamophobic sentiment.



In that respect, an argument might be made that both McCain and Romney simply weren't (overtly) bigoted enough to get their "base" riled up like Trump did.

I think a lot of us would like to imagine that Obama would win an election against Trump, but there's no way of knowing for certain, especially given the nature of the electoral college.

I'm just trying to imagine the racist who votes for Obama over McCain and Romney, or who stays home in an election in which the Democrats nominated a black guy from Chicago who grew up in Indonesia.

For racism to be the thing that flipped in 2016, this would have to happen to quite a few swing voters.

[Kirby101]

Then a decade old tape of him talking about grabbing women by the pussy came out the month before the election.

It was kept quiet that a religious outreach guy was kicked out of the Clinton campaign for sexually harassing women (following similar accusations about the main in the 2008 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton ignored the advice that the guy should be fired.)

There was some big stuff that went Hillary's way.

That is some major false equivalency BS you threw there. Comparing a minor campaign adjunct who was dismissed to the candidate.

Things we know did not go Hillary's way. The email non-story that was relentlessly covered. The Benghazi non-story that was relentlessly covered. Russian hacking and interference. Comey's BS prress statement days before the election. Voter suppression in key States. Big stuff going her way indeed.

[Tendrin]

"FBI FINDS NO CLEAR LINK TO RUSSIA"

Meanwhile

"BUT HER EMAILS!"

Still makes me angry.

[Gray Lensman]

My god, she's dated two to three guys in the space of two and a half years.

It isn't so much the number, but that they are all effectively workplace relationships that disturbs me. Which I like to think I would find a little disturbing no matter who (or what gender) this was.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It isn't so much the number, but that they are all effectively workplace relationships that disturbs me. Which I like to think I would find a little disturbing no matter who (or what gender) this was.

It happens. Some people's social life is their work. Could easily see a White House job becoming life consuming and the people you end up closest too being coworkers.

[Malvolio]

The campaign knew what it was doing when it came to the electoral college.

My god, she's dated two to three guys in the space of two and a half years.

The worst Republican presidential candidate in generations got outsized media attention during the primaries, which helped contribute to his win.

Then a decade old tape of him talking about grabbing women by the pussy came out the month before the election.

It was kept quiet that a religious outreach guy was kicked out of the Clinton campaign for sexually harassing women (following similar accusations about the main in the 2008 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton ignored the advice that the guy should be fired.)

There was some big stuff that went Hillary's way.

I'm just trying to imagine the racist who votes for Obama over McCain and Romney, or who stays home in an election in which the Democrats nominated a black guy from Chicago who grew up in Indonesia.

For racism to be the thing that flipped in 2016, this would have to happen to quite a few swing voters.

I think a lot of Obama voters from 2008 and 2012 stayed home in 2016, and a lot of trump voters in 2016 were people who stayed home in 2008 and 2012.

[Kirby101]

Trump is now defending wife beaters.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...48831789797381

Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?

Come on Trumpers, double down with your guy. We know you have no shame.