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

[worstblogever]

So what's the over under on Roy Moore winning? It's Alabama so maybe the Dems should downplay the whole "prosecuting the KKK" thing to keep the child molester from using it to his benefit.

Probably 70/30 at this point.

And the whole "prosecuting the KKK" thing has meant very little since the white evangelicals here don't really give a damn about their racism being shown to the world.

I've seen many a pundit say Moore winning would be a disaster for the Republican Party. They're 11 months from a mid-term election where it's already looking like they're getting an ass-whooping, they serve a deranged racist president who's also a sex offender (while working on legislation the public downright HATE), and they'll have a lunatic pedophile as their new senator who will immediately be facing very public expulsion hearings if he wins the election. Even if they hold this seat, Moore is such a hypocritical fanatic and sexual predator... he becomes the GOP brand for however long he's in DC, and months later, the impact of that "win" will only magnify the impact of the Blue Wave... which will push back in the states not named Alabama. Every vulnerable GOP Congressman in NY, NJ, CA, IL, CO, AZ, VA, etc... they're toast, and the GOP loses the House. Maybe the Senate, too.

[Tami]

The Trump allegations

A growing list of powerful men have faced serious consequences for sexual misconduct allegations but the most powerful one of all has faced none. Instead Donald Trump's official position, as his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders recently clarified in a White House press briefing, is that the 20 women accusing him of assault and harassment are lying. Trump has also suggested some were not attractive enough for him to want to sexually assault. As the conversation around sexual conduct continues to evolve, and new abusers are revealed, here are the cases against the president.

[Tami]

Mexican man found not guilty of murder in San Francisco case Trump condemned

A jury on Thursday found a Mexican man not guilty of murder in the killing of a woman on a San Francisco pier that touched off a national immigration debate two years ago.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Kate Steinle was fatally shot in the back while walking with her father on the pier.

Garcia Zarate did not deny shooting Steinle and said it was an accident.

The shooting came in the middle of the presidential campaign in July 2015 and touched off a fierce debate over the country’s immigration policies. It spotlighted San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” policy, which limits local officials from cooperating with US immigration authorities.

Politics, however, did not come up in the month-long trial, which featured extensive testimony from ballistics experts. Defense attorneys argued that Garcia Zarate was a hapless homeless man who killed Steinle in a freak accident. Prosecutors said he meant to shoot and kill her.

A defense attorney, Matt Gonzalez, said in his closing argument that he knew it was difficult to believe Garcia Zarate found an object that turned out to be a weapon, which fired when he picked it up.
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But he told jurors that Garcia Zarate had no motivation to kill Steinle and that as awful as her death was, “nothing you do is going to fix that”.

The bullet ricocheted on the pier’s concrete walkway and fatally struck Steinle in the back.

The gun was stolen from the SUV of a US Bureau of Land Management ranger that was parked in San Francisco. The city has been plagued by an epidemic of car burglaries in recent years.

[Tami]

Special relationship? Theresa May discovers she has no friend in Donald Trump

It was some poor official’s job this morning to tell Theresa May that while she slept, the relationship with the US became special for all the wrong reasons.

It is at least historic. No US president in modern times has addressed a UK prime minister with the open peevishness and contempt of Donald Trump’s tweet telling May to mind her own business.

May had to tell the president off in September for speculating about a terrorist attack in London. On Wednesday she had little choice but to rebuke him for retweeting Islamophobic videos put out by the UK far right, and that earned her the acid riposte from the thin-skinned president on Wednesday night.

So what can May do to limit the damage? She can be stern or she can try to laugh it off. But whichever mode she adopts, she will have to distance herself from Trump in the short term while sending reassuring noises that all will be fine in the long term.

All the signs suggest however, that it will not be fine.

May is in open disagreement with Trump over a major foreign policy issue, the nuclear deal with Iran, which the president would like to destroy and which the UK is anxious to salvage. To that end, May’s strongest card is European solidarity. Top diplomats from the UK, Germany and France are in Washington this week to do a triple act in defence of the agreement.

[Diamond]

Mexican man found not guilty of murder in San Francisco case Trump condemned

I read in the Washington Post that the Sheriff Office had set him free even after receiving a federal order to report him again. Unbelievable. Like, he's not a dreamer, but someone who has committed multiple felonies.

[worstblogever]

Three years ago, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of of Charles Fuqua, a candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012, who after winning the Republican primary for his seat, the press started to notice had some interesting opinions that he wrote about in his book, “God’s Law”. Like say, that all Muslims should be expelled from the United States. Or that parents should have the right to execute their children, if they’re too “rebellious” by stoning them to death. As you might expect, he did not win office, and seems to know he never will, as he hasn’t resurfaced since in an election.

Two years ago we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of Debbie Dunnegan Waters, the County Recorder for Jefferson County, Missouri. But in October 2014, she drew a hell of a lot of attention after she got on Facebook to post some of her deep thoughts, wondering to everyone why the military just doesn’t take out President Barack Obama in a coup, writing, "I have a question for all my friends who have served or are currently serving in our military … having not put on a uniform nor taken any type military oath, there has to be something that I am just not aware of. But I cannot and do not understand why no action is being taken against our domestic enemy. I know he is supposedly the commander in chief, but the constitution gives you the authority. What am I missing? Thank you for your bravery and may God keep you safe.” Now, obviously, what Ms. Dunnegan Waters was missing was how our nation’s military swear an oath to uphold the constitution, and serving the orders of the rightfully elected president, our chief executive, have a lot to do with that. But when media outlets reported on her comments, she claimed that she meant “no ill intent” by suggesting a military coup take place and that the media was taking something “simple and innocent and twisting it”.

It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about Mitch Holmes, a former Kansas state senator with a brutally conservative voting record that includes sponsoring a bill to prevent “dismemberment abortions” (to terrify anyone who thinks that’s a thing), support for the failed policy of trying to drug test welfare recipients, and trying to make it easier to impeach Kansas Supreme Court judges (which he resents for overturning a lot of the unconstitutional ideas Holmes and the Kansas GOP have sent to the desk of Gov. Sam Brownback to get rubber-stamped). What truly made Mitch Holmes infamous, though, even among in one of the most conservative state legislatures in the country, was in January of 2016, where for whatever reason, he decided that the State Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections should have an 11 point dress code, all of which was directed at what women wear, and not men. A bipartisan effort by the women of the Kansas State legislature all united to tell Holmes to effectively get bent, and the weight of both Democrats and Republicans giving him the business wilted Holmes enough to warrant an apology for his dress code suggestions. As Holmes retired as an embarrassment in 2016, we’ll also retire his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 625-25, since this was established in July 2014.)


Jason Spencer

Welcome to the 625th “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be talking about Jason Spencer, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives since the Tea Party Wave in 2010, pictured above with a memorial to another fellow loser from below the Mason-Dixon Line. That’s not a coincidental photo, by any chance, as Spencer’s love of monuments to a failed rebellion fought because 19th century plantation owners were not about to let the federal government tell them they couldn’t keep slaves. And when a Democratic colleague, LaDawn Jones, saw him post the above photo she commented that he should “that he should get it in … before it is torn down.” Spencer did not take her observation well, and began to retort in a way that sounded like he was threatening to lynch her:

“You got that right, they go missing in the Okefenokee .Too many necks they are red around here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I cant guarantee you won’t be met with torches but something a lot more definitive.”

And after this ugly exchange on social media, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reached him for comment, and he wasn’t backing down:

”She is from Atlanta — and the rest of Georgia sees this issue very differently. Just trying to keep her safe if she decided to come down and raise hell about the memorial in the back yards of folks who will see this as an unwelcome aggression from the left.”

Now, if you still have any doubts about whether or not Jason Spencer is a bigoted ***hole, rest assured, there’s more. In November of 2016, he sponsored a ban on burqas in his state, the sort of legislation you usually only see backed in legislatures in Europe by right-wing fascist bigots like Geert Wilders or Marine LaPen. Apparently the original legislation that was written to prevent the Ku Klux Klan in regalia, and if guys like that who Spencer looks up to were going to lose their ability to wear their hoods in their driver’s license photo, so Spencer thought a good “compromise” would be to also force Muslim women to take off their head coverings. Because that’s like the same thing, right? Comparing membership in a hate group to Islam? Same diff, right?

Would you expect that Jason Spencer is also hell bent on anti-immigration law while he’s at it? Because, yeah, he’s got that kind of hatred in spades, too. Back in 2011, while still a freshman lawmaker, he voted for HB 87, Georgia’s draconian anti-immigration law that was so brilliant, it left the state’s agriculture industry with crops rotting in the sun and no workers available to harvest them. Spencer also voted for the state to establish “English only” driver’s tests, which, guess what, the Supreme Court has already ruled that sort of thing unconstitutional.

But not all of Jason Spencer’s terrible votes are based on bigotry, some are just motivated by being steeped in conservative ideology that’s either going to be overturned by courts, like his vote for a 20 week abortion ban, his vote to require a Ten Commandments monument be built at the Georgia capitol (again, one state over in Alabama this sort of idiocy was deemed unconstitutional, see Moore, Roy), or his desire to see welfare recipients forced to undergo drug testing (a violation of their fourth amendment rights). The most reasonable thing we’ve seen Spencer vote on is to allow the concealed carry of firearms on college campuses, which, holy s***, Spencer, do you not know the Virginia Tech Massacre was a thing?

What we’re getting at is, in 2016, Jason Spencer did not face a challenger in the GOP Primary, or in the general election. We’re hoping that in 2018, that changes, because this guy is a flaming racist with no regards for anyone’s constitutional rights.

[Tami]

Roy Moore feuds with Jimmy Kimmel and claims to be victim of conspiracy

Moore engaged in a back-and-forth with ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who had planted a comedian at an event in a south Alabama church to supportively heckle the Republican candidate. Tony Barbieri, who has long worked with Kimmel, praised Moore as “a man’s man” and insisted of the Alabama Republican: “Does that look like the face of someone who hits on teenage girls?”

Moore has faced multiple allegations that he sexually assaulted teenage girls in late 1970s. A number of other women have come forward to say that he had pursued them when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.

Moore has emphatically denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a joint effort by Democrats and “the establishment” to defeat him.

In response to the prank, Moore, in a tweet, accused Kimmel of “mocking Christian values”.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Senate Republicans Don’t Care If Their Tax Bill Is Unpopular

The polls are wrong, the opposition is distorting the truth, and tax cuts are “generally unpopular.” Jesus himself could come down from heaven and hold a presser saying the tax bill stinks like day old diapers and Republicans would dismiss him as a liberal muckraker. Nothing NOBODY says will stop them from getting their horrible bill passed. Meanwhile....

**********

Republicans Insist Tax Cuts Will Benefit Workers, But CEOs Have Other Plans

GOP lawmakers are placing faith in corporations to do “the right thing.” My response to that: "BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

**********

State Dept. Warned That Trump’s Anti-Muslim Tweets Could Endanger Embassies: Report

The president was trying to “elevate the conversation” about terrorism, according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Suuuuuuure, Sarah. Anything you say.

**********

Donald Trump Urged Top Republicans To End Senate Russia Probe: Report

Sen. Richard Burr, head of the Senate’s Russia investigation, told The New York Times he and other lawmakers have fielded requests from Trump. Yo, Donnie, I don't think it works that way.

**********

Minister At Roy Moore Event Has History Of Covering For Accused Pedophile

The minister’s eldest son was accused of abusing children at an orphanage run by the family. Disgusting!

**********

[Darkspellmaster]

Added Geraldo Rivera, to the list.

I don't know if I should shake my head at the tax bill or pull my hair at the stupidity of this all. And what happens when these rich jerks die off? Do we get that money back?

[InformationGeek]

CBS confirms Rex Tillerson will be forced out. Here we go, another one is going.

[Kevinroc]

Roy Moore feuds with Jimmy Kimmel and claims to be victim of conspiracy

This explains this Kimmel tweet in response to Moore.

https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/stat...49997112557568

Judge Roy Moore
Verified account

@MooreSenate
Despite D.C. and Hollywood Elites' bigotry towards southerners, Jimmy, we'll save you a seat on the front pew. https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/stat...23360694222848 …
1:43 PM - 30 Nov 2017

Jimmy Kimmel‏
Verified account

@jimmykimmel

OK Roy, but I'm leaving my daughters at home! P.S. - wear that cute little leather vest

[Tami]

Trump tells confidants that a government shutdown might be good for him

President Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically and is focusing on his hard-line immigration stance as a way to win back supporters unhappy with his outreach to Democrats this fall, according to people who have spoken with him recently.

Over the past 10 days, the president has also told advisers that it is important that he is seen as tough on immigration and getting money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two people who have spoken with him. He has asked friends about how a shutdown would affect him politically and has told several people he would put the blame on Democrats.

Trump’s mixed messages on a partial government shutdown could hamper the ability of congressional Republicans to negotiate with Democrats, whose support they need to pass spending legislation in coming weeks. Many Republicans said this week that a shutdown is a possibility they hope to avoid. Even inside the White House, aides fret about the possibility, saying it would not poll well.

[Kirby101]

CBS confirms Rex Tillerson will be forced out. Here we go, another one is going.

But why do they continue the Kabuki dance about "policy differences". Tillerson called Trump a moron. Trump can't abide any personal insult. It ends there. The press still acts like he is a normal person.
And Pompeo and Cotton to replace Tillerson makes things go from bad to worse.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump tells confidants that a government shutdown might be good for him

As a government worker, words can't describe how pissed I am that I'm being used yet again as a bargaining chip in another round of Washington's political games. And I'm doubly furious that Dolt45 wants to do that for no reason other than to kiss up to his deplorables who he angered after his outreach to Democrats. That CANNOT be allowed to happen! PERIOD!

[Jack Dracula]

But why do they continue the Kabuki dance about "policy differences". Tillerson called Trump a moron. Trump can't abide any personal insult. It ends there. The press still acts like he is a normal person.
And Pompeo and Cotton to replace Tillerson makes things go from bad to worse.

"Bad to Worse" seems to be this administrations motto.
It's like just when we think the elevator has hit the bottm of the shaft Trump breaks through the floor and there's a whole other shaft beneath.