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

[Malvolio]

C.S. Lewis once defined faith as, "the art of holding onto things your reason once accepted in spite of your changing moods."

I very much like that definition. I'm a Christian, but not a fundamentalist.

Most of the fundamentalists I know personally are really good people, the kind who will talk tough about politics but go out of their way to help others at a moment's notice without any thought of reward.

Or to quote Maureen O'Hara out of context from Miracle on 34th Street, "Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to." Oh, and let's remember how Natalie Wood responded, "But that doesn't make any sense, Mommy."

[TheInvisibleMan]

so Betsy "sack o money" DeVos' performance on 60 Minutes last night was not well received in the White House

[Kal-El Summers]

Why her awful interview would shock them after her disastrous Senate confirmation hearing kinda blows my mind.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

so Betsy "sack o money" DeVos' performance on 60 Minutes last night was not well received in the White House

She looked like she couldn’t live with herself and was on the verge of tears

[TheInvisibleMan]

She looked like she couldn’t live with herself and was on the verge of tears

too bad, so sad

[Iron Maiden]

I saw a few clips on Morning Joe. Lesley Stahl made her look like a fool, but that's an easy one anyway.

[ed2962]

She looked like she couldn’t live with herself and was on the verge of tears

I felt it was more like straining to not blurt out, "Ok, Fine! I took the job because I truly want to help kids, but I obviously don't know what I'm doing and I'm in way over my head with all this...happy?"

[TheInvisibleMan]

I felt it was more like straining to not blurt out, "Ok, Fine! I took the job because I truly want to help kids, but I obviously don't know what I'm doing and I'm in way over my head with all this...happy?"

she does NOT want to help kids

she wants to push her BS bible thumping dogma on kids

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I saw a few clips on Morning Joe. Lesley Stahl made her look like a fool, but that's an easy one anyway.

Kinda reminded me of that ages old joke about 60 Minutes that went something like: "You know you're in trouble when you show up at the office and Mike Wallace is in your waiting room." I watched some clips on my phone via Facebook during lunch, Daffy DeVos was the classic example of someone who brought a knife to a gun fight, and a plastic knife at that. Yeah, I can't imagine Dolt45 and company were at all pleased with her pathetic performance.

[TheDarman]

Illegal or undocumented immigrants I think you left out. Many Democrats remember when there was no Democrat messaging about being against or thwarting immigration enforcement.

That would be a fundamental misunderstanding of many Democrats' stances on the issues. Barack Obama was more than willing to give a little to Republicans on immigration enforcement for example--he just wanted to make sure that immigration enforcement was primarily targeting criminals rather than teenagers who were just going to school. That's why DACA exists. And that's why many people were receptive to the idea of immigration reform. We need to make it easier for the many fantastic individuals to get into the country, focus on the few people that do present issues (as we do with any other criminal act), and keep the contributive members of society here (with maybe smaller fines). Then, we implement a nationwide e-Verify system that punishes businesses for not properly identifying undocumented persons so as to ensure that people have more of an incentive to immigrate legally--and it isn't that difficult to do.

That's now how any of this works:

Trump lawyers seek to offer Mueller an interview in exchange for wrapping up probe

This should be concerning news for Trump supporters. If there wasn't anything to really hide, then Trump would just allow the investigation to run its course. Now, his lawyers want to end this probe as quickly as possible. This looks quite bad from the outside optics perspective.

How do we fight voter suppression?

Voter suppression efforts were renewed with the strength that we see today after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It would start with a renewal of that law, like it had been renewed year after year, in a bipartisan manner. Then, we need to also start getting people out to vote, running registration drives, and voting in politicians that will make it easier for same-day voting and the like.

[Trey Strain]

Chris Hedges is probably the most interesting political commentator of our time.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/em...merican-press/

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This should be concerning news for Trump supporters. If there wasn't anything to really hide, then Trump would just allow the investigation to run its course. Now, his lawyers want to end this probe as quickly as possible. This looks quite bad from the outside optics perspective.

Trumpanzees don't give a **** about outside optics and aren't smart enough to be concerned. They'll just shrug and call it all fake news, safe and secure in the knowledge that their orange skinned god emperor is untouchable while counting down the days until they can vote for him again as president. That's why the GOP continues protecting Trump at all costs, because they know they have to keep his voting bloc fat, dumb and happy for 2020.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who was elected with next to no qualifications other than being the former deputy counsel of Mike Huckabee. Her e-mail correspondence leaked from when she last worked for the state of Arkansas, where she would share racist jokes, make sexual comments alluding to an attraction to underage minors (“If there’s grass on the field, play ball!”), make fun of domestic abuse victims, and so on. Rutledge chalks all that up to just being good old "country talk", though. She also was caught committing voter fraud by simultaneously voting in multiple states, and one of her first actions while in office was to fire two dozen attorneys at the state's attorney general office including fifteen attorneys, some of whom she attended law school with. Since taking office, Rutledge has failed in attempts to petition the Supreme Court to try and allow a ban on abortion at 12 weeks, or to reconsider their ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, because she's still Mike Huckabee's pet project in many ways. Leslie Rutledge told numerous absurd lies and mistruths she told while trying to help Donald Trump get elected in 2016. It would have been one thing if her most grievous offense was how she attacked Hillary Clinton for not having an Arkansas accent during her four minute speech at the RNC (which isn't really that shocking when you consider Clinton spent almost her entire youth in New York), but Rutledge had no limits to her partisan attacks during the build up to the saddest election outcome in American history. The lowest moment, by far, would have been after the first presidential debate, when Hillary Clinton mentioned Donald Trump's fat-shaming of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, and over the following days where Trump went even further and began spreading lies that Machado had a "sex tape" that everyone should "check out". Leslie Rutledge not only defended Donald Trump for his actions, and thought that she should paint not just a false equivalency, and not just blame Hillary Clinton for mentioning Alicia Machado (you see, it's HER fault that Donald Trump had to insult Machado) but claim that what Hillary Clinton had done to women was "even worse". She could provide no evidence to back this up other than one quote from a friend of Clinton's from two decades earlier about Monica Lewinsky. She finished her interview by saying that Clinton "had never created a job" and was "insulting, sad, disgusting". (This from Leslie Rutledge, who comes with a checkered resume of briefly held, low-level legal jobs including one for the state of Arkansas that her supervisor said she wasn't qualified to be rehired.)

Over the past year, Leslie Rutledge has been working to simplify the process of executing prisoners on death row to help Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson satisfy his kill-boner. About two weeks ago, Rutledge spoke at CPAC, and invoked passages from the Bible to justify her anti-immigration stance. (Wow. It’s not like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph themselves was a refugee or anything, you brainless harpy.)

Just a reminder, Rutledge is terrible at her job, and up for re-election in about 8 months. While Democrat Mike Lee is an outstanding candidate for the position, it is well acknowledged that Rutledge has access to ridiculous amounts of dark money to fend off a good challenge, and ride her Fox News cameos and the partisan lean in Arkansas to another term in office. We’re not giving up hope completely, but Lee definitely has his work cut out for him.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Way to go Tim Kaine. Thanks for reminding everyone why there was enthusiasm around you being picked as a VP running mate and why you had so such lukewarm support for the ticket. With allies like these, who needs enemies?

[Iron Maiden]

Kinda reminded me of that ages old joke about 60 Minutes that went something like: "You know you're in trouble when you show up at the office and Mike Wallace is in your waiting room." I watched some clips on my phone via Facebook during lunch, Daffy DeVos was the classic example of someone who brought a knife to a gun fight, and a plastic knife at that. Yeah, I can't imagine Dolt45 and company were at all pleased with her pathetic performance.

She definitely had the deer in the headlights look and Lesley was the 18 wheeler coming at her.