Republicans

[Brian Peacock]

Republicunts.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/h ... ry-socials

69 Republicans vote against aid for Puerto Rico, other disaster sites

Legislation to provide $36.5 billion in aid for communities affected by recent wildfires and hurricanes, including Puerto Rico, secured widespread support in the House on Thursday save for 69 Republicans.

The votes in opposition included many members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who believe government spending should not add to the deficit. [...]

Rep. Mark Walker (N.C.), who leads the Republican Study Committee, also voted against the legislation due to the lack of offsets.

“Hurricane aid shouldn’t be added to the debt. That’s akin to going to the Emergency Room after an injury, putting the charges on a credit card, and then pretending that the Visa bill is never going to arrive,” Walker wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

That's a drop in the ocean, what the Pentagon spends on biscuits each day.

[Tero]

America needs the 1% to be even wealthier!
(Pence)
After the requisite joke about the length of the tax code — as though something as complicated as tax laws for a nation of roughly 323 million people could be fully elucidated in a few pages — Pence insisted that “our broken tax code weakens America itself.”
The laws “[sap] our spirit of entrepreneurship, culture of innovation, and even our belief in a brighter, more prosperous future for our kids and our grandkids,” Pence lamented.
He thanked the crowd for their support of the tax scheme that would do nothing whatsoever to ensure that “more prosperous future” for any kids not born to the 1 percent. But he plaintively begged them to go further.
We need you to reach out, use your voice. Use the stature that you enjoy in your communities and your state and all across this country to share the opportunity that we have with this tax relief legislation. You talk to your employees, talk to your suppliers, your fellow business leaders to get them on board. And of course, we need you to talk to your elected officials about just how important this moment is in the life of this nation. Tell everyone you can that America needs this tax cut, and America needs it now.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Moving on, you called Sanders an 'organizer' for the American People's History Society, which you assert is 'a Marxist propaganda group.' Again, bullshit; the American People's History Society was a non-profit company started by Sanders and his neighbor Nancy Barnett. They made educational film strips and at least one short documentary film. The subject of the film was Eugene Debs, but that in itself doesn't make the American People's History Society 'a Marxist propaganda group.'

It doesn't make it "not" a Marxist propaganda group.

You made the accusation--the burden of proof is yours. You haven't provided any evidence to support the accusation.

I explained why. There is no official list of approved "Marxist propaganda groups." It's a group, that's for sure, because companies are groups. Bernie and those working with him in that nonprofit entity constituted the group. It produced propaganda, including the Debs documentary, which is biased, politically motivated material designed to push Bernie's ideology. Propaganda. sounds like a marxist propaganda group to me. If it doesn't sound like one to you, that's fine. It doesn't change the fact that Bernie created glowing, one-sided pro-Debs pro-Marxist material and tried to get it into schools and such.

What it 'sounds like' to you is irrelevant if you cannot cite any evidence in support for your accusation. Where in the documentary does Sanders express a 'pro-Marxist' point of view? Can you cite even one 'pro-Marxist' statement made by Sanders in the documentary?

I think I've discovered where you're getting some of your material on the Debs documentary; a National Review opinion piece. 'Bernie Sanders’s Documentary on Eugene Debs

That article includes a link to a video of the documentary as well as a transcript, which was helpful. It also makes the point that Sanders' speech on his views of democratic socialism will clarify his current view. More on that later.

You've repeatedly asserted that the American People's Historical Society was a Marxist propaganda group, echoing an assertion made by the New York Post in its 'Sanders is a diehard communist!!!' screed. (Tellingly, nowhere does the National Review describe it as such.) That assertion in turn appears to be based entirely on the Post's interpretation of the Debs documentary--it doesn't cite any of the other materials produced by the APHS. Nor have you.

I've now read through the transcript of the documentary, and as with the other debunked parts of the Post story, the accusation appears to be nothing but lame sensationalism. The documentary accurately describes Debs's opposition to the capitalist system. As for 'balance,' it makes clear that Eugene Debs illegally defied a court injunction and was imprisoned for it. It also describes his (unpatriotic) stance in opposition to WWI, which resulted in his final stay in prison.

While Debs expressed sympathy and support for the revolution in Russia, he never promoted such a revolution in the US. Instead he chose political activism, just as Sanders has done. Beyond giving a description of Debs's life and views there is little editorializing in the documentary. As the sole piece of evidence put forward to justify the accusation that the APHS was a Marxist propaganda group, one would expect it to at least include a few unequivocal pro-Marxist statements from an editorial point of view. Such statements are entirely lacking; it's ludicrously weak evidence.

The National Review piece says that Sanders' speech on democratic socialism will give an insight into his current views. In that speech, Sanders focusses on Roosevelt's New Deal as a model to emulate in tackling issues confronting the United States in the present-day; Debs isn't mentioned even once. Unless you can cite some actual evidence to back your accusation, I'm done with this particular derail.

[Tero]

Senators printing dollars in three 8 hour shifts in Capitol basement to pay for trump tax cuts.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/1 ... its-243759

[L'Emmerdeur]

In the October 12 Quinnipiac poll, 46% of Republicans support a preemptive strike against North Korea (41% oppose). They either have no fucking clue, or they don't care that millions of people in Seoul would immediately be hit with a devastating artillery barrage.

[Sean Hayden]

--everyone's full of shit. How does Joe plumber form an opinion on the merits of a preemptive strike on NK? --read a Clancy novel? How does Joe chemist do it? --read The New Yorker?

[Tero]

Foxnews of course.

[Tero]

There is no bill yet, and if there were, there are no spending cuts planned. So future presidents will do...something to fix all that:
”But like with health care, the tax reform process is moving more slowly than many Republicans would like. There’s no bill yet, for starters. And White House officials have deliberately left some policy details vague because they're unsure what it will take for various senators to get on board and want to leave their options open, one of these people said.”
Politico

[L'Emmerdeur]

Perhaps Roy Moore deserves his own thread, but then again he's a prime example of the direction the Republican party appears to be taking. First up, an example of his legislative activism.

'Roy Moore Led Charge Against Removing Segregation From Alabama Constitution'

In 2004, a bipartisan coalition of Alabama leaders moved to eliminate sections of the state constitution mandating school segregation and poll taxes. They assumed it’d be an easy feat — until Roy Moore got involved.

Democrats and Republicans led by then-Gov. Bob Riley (R) worked together on an amendment to remove language in the state constitution mandating “separate schools for white and colored children” and allowing poll taxes, Jim Crow-era requirements that people to pay to vote that disenfranchised most black people.

The changes were purely symbolic — all of the state constitutional language had already been struck down by state and federal courts — but civil rights and business leaders saw it as a way to heal old wounds and make the state more attractive to big business.

The opposite happened instead, and Moore’s fierce opposition likely made the difference.

“He had a huge impact. It was a measure that was set to pass without much opposition and then because he got involved it changed the dynamic completely,” said Susan Kennedy of the Alabama Education Association, the state public teachers’ lobby that supported the amendment.

At the time, Moore, who is currently the GOP nominee and the front-runner to become Alabama’s next U.S. senator, had recently been booted from the state supreme court for defying higher court orders to remove a Ten Commandments statue from in front of his courthouse. That fight had made him a superstar in the religious right both in the state and nationally.

When conservative evangelical activists including the Alabama Christian Coalition began warning about adverse effects of the segregation amendment he stepped up to be the amendment’s most prominent foe — a move that kept his name in the headlines as he geared up for a 2006 primary challenge against Riley and sent the amendment down to a narrow defeat.

“This amendment is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and the people of Alabama should be aware of it,” Moore told the Birmingham News in 2004, warning it would “open the door to an enormous tax increase” — one of many broadsides he issued.

His argument worked. The statewide measure failed by about 2,000 votes, out of 1.4 million cast. Every subsequent attempt to remove the language since that initial failure has failed, most recently in 2012.

Moore’s stance against the amendment was one of many of his efforts over two decades that has built him a fiercely loyal following on the religious right. That base wasn’t enough when he ran against Riley in 2006, but it powered his primary victory over Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) last month and has him favored to win the Dec. 12 general election. It’s also one in a long line of racially charged episodes in Moore’s career.

Next, Moore's dishonesty about personally profiting from a 'Christian legal organization' that he set up.

'Roy Moore took a salary from his charity after saying he didn’t'

Judge Roy Moore, the Republican nominee in the Alabama Senate race, is under fire for understating the income he received from a charity he founded.

Although Moore had previously claimed that he did not draw a "regular salary" from the Christian charity, Foundation for Moral Law, he actually earned $180,000 each year for his part-time work there, according to a Washington Post investigation. Overall, Moore took home more than $1 million during his tenure as president of the charity, from 2007 to 2012.

The charity guaranteed Moore's salary by allowing him to be paid through speaking fees and charitable donations through his pastor and preacher ministry program, Project Jeremiah. If Project Jeremiah failed to earn enough revenue for Moore's salary, the difference would come directly from the charity itself.

In 2012, when the Foundation for Moral Law couldn't afford Moore's full salary, they gave him a promissory note for either back pay, that would eventually be worth $540,000, or a stake in a historic building in the Alabama city of Montgomery. One charity official said that Moore still owns the promissory note.

The Foundation for Moral Law has faced scrutiny prior to this recent revelation. The Campaign Legal Center, a Washington watchdog group, accused the charity of illegally promoting Moore's Senate campaign. Moore's wife, Kayla, sent a statement to the Post claiming that the Facebook page promoting her husband's campaign was "not an official page of the Foundation for Moral Law." Andrew Kaczynski of CNN has accused Kayla Moore of lying to the Post, pointing out that "the page is linked from the website and Kayla Moore runs the Facebook page."

[Brian Peacock]

I thought judges like that died out with the Atari 2600.

[Animavore]

Burn!

[Forty Two]

In the October 12 Quinnipiac poll, 46% of Republicans support a preemptive strike against North Korea (41% oppose). They either have no fucking clue, or they don't care that millions of people in Seoul would immediately be hit with a devastating artillery barrage.

Of course they have no clue. Nobody has a clue. However, it's very likely that anyone supporting a preemptive strike is probably assuming that the circumstances warrant a preemptive strike - which is when an attack from the target country is impending and imminent - they're going to shoot, so you shoot to stop them. It's not a "preemptive" strike to just bomb the country if it's not to address an imminent and impending attack. So, if someone asks me to answer whether I support a "preemptive" strike, to answer that I'd need to know what the justification was for the strike -- answering the question without detailed justification means the people responding will just generally answer by rooting for their team. Of course Republicans will support the Republican President. If Obama was President, and the question was to Democrats whether they would support Obama's decision to use preemptive strikes, if he thought it necessary and in the best interests of the country, I would be willing to bet a good bunch of Democrats would answer yes.

Most people just root for the team they think they're on.

[L'Emmerdeur]

In the October 12 Quinnipiac poll, 46% of Republicans support a preemptive strike against North Korea (41% oppose). They either have no fucking clue, or they don't care that millions of people in Seoul would immediately be hit with a devastating artillery barrage.

Of course they have no clue. Nobody has a clue. However, it's very likely that anyone supporting a preemptive strike is probably assuming that the circumstances warrant a preemptive strike - which is when an attack from the target country is impending and imminent - they're going to shoot, so you shoot to stop them. It's not a "preemptive" strike to just bomb the country if it's not to address an imminent and impending attack. So, if someone asks me to answer whether I support a "preemptive" strike, to answer that I'd need to know what the justification was for the strike -- answering the question without detailed justification means the people responding will just generally answer by rooting for their team. Of course Republicans will support the Republican President. If Obama was President, and the question was to Democrats whether they would support Obama's decision to use preemptive strikes, if he thought it necessary and in the best interests of the country, I would be willing to bet a good bunch of Democrats would answer yes.

Most people just root for the team they think they're on.

You're right, the question asked by the Quinnipiac poll was very simple and straight-forward. There were no qualifications about justification, and none about the president thinking it 'necessary and in the best interests of the country,' which would have put a better light on the Republican response. There was the option to answer 'don't know' or to simply not answer the question, which even if you're 'rooting for the team' is a more considered response than an unqualified 'yes.'

48. Would you support or oppose a preemptive strike on North Korea?

The total response of those polled was 26% 'yes,' 62% 'no,' 11% 'don't know/no answer.'

[Tero]

Franken holding Sessions' trouser like the pit bull that he is:

Franken’s initial line of questioning referred to a report that was published around the time of Sessions’ testimony this summer, to which Sessions said Wednesday he responded on the spot. The report alleged that U.S. intelligence agencies had intercepted Russian communications that shed light on “substantive discussions on policy matters important to Moscow.” Sessions, at the time, said he “did not have any private meetings” and he did not “recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel.”
But Franken pressed on—even sparring, briefly, with committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, over the amount of time Sessions had to respond in relation to the time he was given for questioning.

Sessions slammed Franken for having “10 minutes” of “improperly framing” the situation and his responses.

“I have committed myself to a high level of public service to reach the highest level of ethics and decency in my service,” Sessions said. “You have now gone through this long talk that I believe is totally unfair to me.”

Sessions also had testy exchanges with other Democratic senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., over Chicago violence and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., over whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller has requested an interview with him.

Fox

[Brian Peacock]

In the October 12 Quinnipiac poll, 46% of Republicans support a preemptive strike against North Korea (41% oppose). They either have no fucking clue, or they don't care that millions of people in Seoul would immediately be hit with a devastating artillery barrage.

Of course they have no clue. Nobody has a clue. However, it's very likely that anyone supporting a preemptive strike is probably assuming that the circumstances warrant a preemptive strike - which is when an attack from the target country is impending and imminent - they're going to shoot, so you shoot to stop them. It's not a "preemptive" strike to just bomb the country if it's not to address an imminent and impending attack. So, if someone asks me to answer whether I support a "preemptive" strike, to answer that I'd need to know what the justification was for the strike -- answering the question without detailed justification means the people responding will just generally answer by rooting for their team. Of course Republicans will support the Republican President. If Obama was President, and the question was to Democrats whether they would support Obama's decision to use preemptive strikes, if he thought it necessary and in the best interests of the country, I would be willing to bet a good bunch of Democrats would answer yes.

Most people just root for the team they think they're on.

Why do you presume that? I mean, nobody has a clue, however, it's very likely that anyone supporting a preemptive strike probably thinks that NK need to be taught a lesson and to be shown who's boss.