United States Congress of Fail - Part 4

[JMarie]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/politics/arizona-lawmaker-white-kids-immigration/index.html

Quote

David Stringer, a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, can be seen criticizing immigration in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday that has since gone viral.

The video shows him saying, "There aren't enough white kids to go around ... immigration is politically destabilizing ... immigration today represents an existential threat to the United States. If we don't do something about immigration very, very soon the demographics of our country will be irrevocably changed and we will be a very different country."

On Thursday, the Arizona Republican Party put out a statement from their chairman calling for Stringer to resign.

"In light of today's reports detailing Representative David Stringer's comments, I am calling on him to resign immediately," Arizona GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines said. "These words have no place in our party, or in our state."

In response to a request for comment, Stringer emailed a statement to CNN accusing his political opponents of attempting to "distort" what he had to say.

"My political opponents have taken 51 seconds out of a 16-minute speech to try to distort my message and mislead voters. We recognize the tactic. I'm not interested in taking the fake news bait," he said in the statement.

The statement said his remarks touched on a number of issues, "including immigration -- both legal and illegal -- and the challenge of successfully assimilating large numbers of immigrants over a short period of time."

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Labrador is all sad because he didn't get to screw the American people more. This is a lengthy article, so I will just quote selected passages: "‘This Is a Place That Just Sucks Your Soul’"

Spoiler

It was the opening week of the 112th Congress, in January 2011, when Raúl Labrador, then a rookie congressman representing Idaho’s 1st District, joined 86 other Republican freshmen for a series of talks with Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team.

Disruption was in the air. It was this group—the rollicking, swaggering, overflowing class of 2010—that allowed Republicans to reclaim the majority in the House of Representatives. They had done so not merely by vowing to check President Barack Obama after two years of unified Democratic rule, but by declaring war on a flaccid GOP establishment that, in their estimation, had fallen out of touch with the American people. Few incoming members were more bellicose than Labrador, a Puerto Rico-born immigration attorney who had distinguished himself as a conservative firebrand during two terms in the Idaho statehouse. Armed with what they felt were clear mandates from their voters, Labrador and his fellow Tea Party freshmen came to transform Congress itself—to stop Washington’s spending binge and to return the Republican Party to its small-government foundations.

Boehner, however, quickly set a few things straight. Campaigning, he told them, was different from governing. With Obama in the White House and a Senate still controlled by the Democrats, incrementalism would be necessary if they were to accomplish anything of substance. The speaker expected his new colleagues to fall in line. Labrador remembers being appalled, first at Boehner’s dismissal of their messianic fervor—and, by extension, the enthusiasm of their voters—and then at his fellow classmates, many of whom reflexively pledged allegiance to the speaker.

“I thought it was a revolution. I thought we were going to completely change the way that Washington worked,” Labrador says. “Within one week—I’m not exaggerating—I saw a large majority of my class saying, essentially, ‘Whatever you need us to do, we will do.’ And I was sick inside.”

...

It’s an understatement to say Labrador has failed to fit in. He is, in the words of one friend, “the angriest man in Congress,” an abrasive critic of Washington whose time here only darkened his outlook. He is a loner, even by House Freedom Caucus standards, a Mormon who doesn’t drink and has no interest in socializing. Hardly any member of Congress has been tougher on his own party’s leadership, and less popular on Capitol Hill as a result. There were surely no tears shed in Speaker Paul Ryan’s office when Labrador announced last year that he would leave and run for governor of Idaho, and no small celebration at Boise’s chamber of commerce when, in May, Labrador lost the Republican primary to Brad Little, the lieutenant governor and party favorite.

It seemed only appropriate that Labrador was thwarted by the establishment one final time. Looking back over his nearly eight years in Congress—a period of internecine turmoil within the GOP—he relishes having so forcefully and frequently played the role of antagonist, even though his efforts, at least on the surface, have mostly been for naught. Power is more concentrated in the hands of party leadership than ever. America’s immigration crisis, a problem he was determined to solve, grows more vexing for Republicans by the day. And, to Labrador’s greatest chagrin, government spending has increased since a total GOP takeover in 2016. “It feels like Dick Cheney’s in the White House again,” he sighs, “saying, ‘Deficits don’t matter.’”

Labrador, though, isn’t going home empty-handed. To the fundamental question asked in 2010—could these renegade Tea Partiers actually change how Congress works?—the answer is increasingly, emphatically yes. In establishing the House Freedom Caucus, a group of some three dozen conservatives who sometimes vote as a bloc, Labrador and his co-founders scrambled Washington’s symmetrical partisan warfare by threatening an effective veto over their own party’s leadership. One speaker of the House retired because of these tactics; another is on the way out and eager to be rid of them. It is a strange achievement: to gain enough power to hamstring the party from the inside, but not enough to realize its policy goals. If the GOP keeps the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections, one thing is clear: Labrador’s remaining comrades in the Freedom Caucus will have the numbers, and the leverage, to choose the next speaker.

If that day comes, Labrador won’t be in Washington to celebrate it. He’s heading home at year’s end, unsure of what he will do next. In an exit interview with Politico Magazine, the congressman says he is glad to be escaping a “broken” Congress and the “hypocrites” in his own party. “I won’t miss a lot of things about this place,” Labrador says. “I think some people lose their soul here. This is a place that just sucks your soul. It takes everything from you.”

This is the story not just of Labrador, but of the dozens of conservatives who came to Washington after the 2010 elections, in the wake of George W. Bush’s presidency, on a mission to seize back control of both the federal government and of their own party. Nearly eight years later, they are left to weigh the triumph of trashing the status quo against the failure to effect the substantial policy changes they promised—all while wrestling with the realization that Donald Trump’s presidency refutes some of the core assumptions they once had about conservatism, their constituents and the future of the Republican Party.

...

Labrador vowed never to become one of those politicians. He and his new colleagues had made bold promises to their constituents; delivering on them was not optional. Problem was, some of those promises were a tad unrealistic. Democrats controlled both the Senate and the White House. This conflict manifested itself quickly: Part of the GOP’s “Pledge to America” in 2010 was to cut $100 billion in spending in year one. Except they couldn’t. The fiscal year was already half-over by the time numbers could be crunched; moreover, Democrats were never going to rubber-stamp such a steep reduction.

Labrador remembers that struggle, in the spring of 2011, as a watershed. While the freshman class pressured leadership to make good on the promise, they began to realize that the promise was not meant to be made good on. It was that episode, he says, that drove Republicans into two distinct camps: one that observed Boehner’s message about the realities of governing and resigned themselves to a lemonade-making pragmatism; the other that dismissed Boehner’s call for teamwork and rebelled, convinced that brawling in pursuit of even the unattainable was a better alternative.

It was the beginning of factionalism in the House GOP—and the end of any hope for party unity. “You could tell how unhelpful a member would be, and not just from the 2010 class, by how much they would use the word ‘fight,’” says Doug Heye, former deputy chief of staff to then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “Rarely would the call to fight be accompanied by any kind of strategy to land the punches, win the round or knock down the opponent. It was as if all of the problems of dealing with a Democratic president and Democratic Senate could be magically won simply by throwing as many punches as possible.”

It’s a fair critique—that many Tea Partiers were more committed to headline-grabbing obstruction than the diligent pursuit of policy changes. Still, the Obama-era reality was that Republicans, from the top down, bit off more red meat on the campaign trail than they could hope to chew. The result was a cascading narrative of expectations not met—from conservative media, voters and politicians—and a self-perpetuating fatalism about the party’s viability. Six years of such dysfunction laid an ideal foundation for a future president to run against both parties and win. “It’s the only reason we got Trump,” Labrador tells me. “Trump was a reflection of how the country felt about the Republican Party.”

...

And so was born, in January 2015, the House Freedom Caucus, with Ohio’s Jordan as chairman. There were growing pains, especially on the question of removing Boehner. Cantor’s loss had extended the speaker’s tenure by default, and there was no ready alternative. Still, some restive conservatives—notably Mark Meadows, the ambitious co-founder of the group who later succeeded Jordan as chairman—wanted to move against the speaker. Labrador and Jordan objected. “We didn’t think it was the right timing. And we were trying to give Boehner an opportunity to change,” Labrador says.

Undeterred, Meadows executed a parliamentary procedure to invite a midsession vote for speaker of the House, triggering Boehner’s eventual resignation. The implication was stunning: Whoever the next speaker was going to be, the Freedom Caucus now had implicit veto power. McCarthy failed to lock up its support; try as they might, Labrador’s crew couldn’t extract any sort of deal in which he would promote one of their own to majority leader in exchange for making him the speaker. This opened the door for Ryan, the only universally acceptable man for the job—and one who didn’t want it to begin with. After reluctantly agreeing to run, he met with Freedom Caucus members on several occasions. He told them he wouldn’t be held hostage to their demands. They understood but made something clear in return: What they wanted most was for him to open the legislative process and let the House “work its will,” a phrase Ryan deployed repeatedly upon taking the speaker’s gavel.

He did not deliver. The House under Ryan has been procedurally stifled—amendments disallowed, committee chairmen disempowered, leadership predetermining outcomes left and right. “It’s worse than ever,” Labrador says. “Boehner never said he wanted a process that was more open. There were no pretenses. … That’s what’s so disappointing about Paul—he said he was going to change it. And he hasn’t.”

Complicating the dynamic is the president himself. A vote against GOP leadership is no longer a base-pleasing poke at Boehner or Ryan—it’s a dangerous defiance of Trump. The president is wildly popular in Freedom Caucus districts. This has been confounding to some conservative lawmakers: They watched the same voters who sent them to D.C. with a mandate for ideological purity and fiscal discipline—or so they believed—flood the polls to vote for a former Democrat from New York who barely paid lip service to the debt or the deficit.

...

For a once-proud revolutionary, Labrador sounds resigned to the fact that Republicans cannot change. And he worries that if Trump makes the mistakes of George W. Bush—whose big-government, big-spending tenure might have birthed the Tea Party as much as Obama’s—conservatives will break free and start “a third party completely divorced from the establishment, like a Freedom Caucus on the national level.” It’s a strange conversation to have at a time when his party dominates the federal government and Democrats are in the wilderness. But Labrador fears history could rapidly repeat itself—and the GOP could be vulnerable to another wipeout.

“The Republican Party is on a pretty thin thread right now,” he says. “The establishment invited this insurgency by not listening to the American people. It started during the Bush years. It got worse with Boehner. Now Paul. And Trump actually spoke to those people. That’s why it’s so incumbent on him to listen to them. Because if he doesn’t, they will turn on him, too.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Critics question influence of airline travel perks on Congress"

Spoiler

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) canceled most of the Senate’s August recess, lawmakers and staffers didn’t have to worry about one thing: airline ticket change fees.

That’s because airlines allow members of Congress and their staff to book fully refundable fares at about the same rate their constituents pay for a highly restrictive nonrefundable ticket — a potential savings of hundreds of dollars or more per ticket.

Does this generous airline benefit sway Congress into making more favorable policy decisions when it comes to the airline industry? A group of consumer advocates thinks that the answer is yes, and they’re hoping to draw public attention to what they call an unconscionable legislative perk. Others say that the flight benefits are not special because they have significant restrictions and no monetary value. What’s less clear is how these waivers directly affect your travel experience.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Paul Hudson, president of the advocacy group FlyersRights.org, outlined their grievances about congressional air travel perks in an open letter to Congress last month. The advocates claim that airfare benefits are excessive, effectively giving lawmakers the personal benefit of free air travel “of at least 1 to 2 percent of the cost of their air travel expense paid for by U.S. taxpayers.”

The House Committee on Ethics, which enforces standards of ethical conduct in Congress, did not comment officially for this story.

In any other context, allowing government employees to receive $200,000 worth of tax-free personal air travel would be considered illegal, the advocates say. But a 2008 memo from the House Committee On Standards of Official Conduct created a loophole for accepting these magnanimous terms, noting there was “little or no identifiable monetary value” to the tickets.

Nader and Hudson allege that airlines corrupt Congress in other ways, including by offering special benefits such as exclusive dedicated phone lines, complimentary status upgrades, ticket discounts, fee waivers and priority boarding.

“These are considered special privileges unavailable to the mere citizenry,” Nader says.

The advocates sent a survey to all 535 members of Congress in early May regarding services and freebies they receive from the airlines. Nader says he hasn’t received a response yet.

“It is unlikely that many will respond, given the prevailing level of arrogance on Capitol Hill,” he says.

While congressional air travel perks may seem generous, they come with significant restrictions, according to current and former travel industry employees. To qualify for the fully refundable ticket, a member of Congress or staffer must travel on government business. That person is also restricted to certain airlines and must follow other travel policies set by Congress.

Airlines for America, a trade group that represents domestic airlines, would not comment on the air travel benefits. But a representative said access to air travel is vital to Congress.

“Lawmakers travel back and forth from their districts weekly, seeing firsthand just how critical aviation is to connecting people and goods in a global economy,” said A4A spokesman Vaughn Jennings.

Andrea Newman, a recently retired senior vice president of government affairs at Delta Air Lines, says the congressional tickets are negotiated government fares, not freebies offered to Congress. Outside of the fares, she adds, airlines play it by the book.

“A member of Congress cannot ask for an airline to waive fees and an airline cannot waive the rules for a member of Congress,” she says.

The latest House Ethics Manual is mostly silent on the subject of airline tickets. It notes, for instance, that a staffer may accept “free” tickets if that person’s spouse works as a flight attendant for an airline that offers free travel to all employees and their immediate families. It also allows House members to accept frequent flier miles when they travel. The rules allow members to make multiple reservations for official travel if offered by an airline, per the special negotiated rate.

I contacted the congressional travel office and confirmed that the fare is strictly for members of Congress and staffers traveling on government business. So, for example, a senator’s family would not qualify for the government rate and fee waiver and would have to pay change fees on their tickets because of the canceled summer recess.

Nonetheless, the perks rile some observers.

“Congress is getting a sweet deal from the airlines,” says John Breyault, a vice president for the National Consumers League, an advocacy organization. “Maybe the rest of America should get the same sweet deal.” No one I spoke with for this story was aware of a private company that had negotiated comparable flight benefits.

Breyault and other advocates wonder if they explain why Congress hasn’t acted to curb outrageous airline fees and other practices unfriendly to consumers, such as the slow removal of legroom in economy class.

“Is it because they aren’t experiencing these fees themselves?” he asks.

Newman, the retired Delta vice president, says the benefits don’t affect Congress the way you might expect. Members’ families are subject to regular airline policy, she explains, and the lawmakers are frequent fliers who almost always fly in the back of the plane. She recalls at least one time when a senator complained about the size of an economy class airline seat. Shortly thereafter, she says, legislation turned up mandating a minimum amount of legroom on airlines.

Hudson is unconvinced. “If members of Congress want to show they are on the side of the public instead of the airlines, they can pledge to reject special treatment and benefits,” he says.

Political contributions made by airlines hit a record high during the 2016 election cycle, according to the website Opensecrets.org, with $7.4 million spent trying to influence policy. Some industry-watchers say that the airlines can influence Congress through their ability to award service to new cities within members’ districts or punish them by removing flights.

These benefits mean something to you and your next flight, too, beyond airline ticket envy. If Congress fails to act on the sky-high fees you’re experiencing when you try to change a ticket or reschedule a flight, this could be one reason. Until Congress flies like the rest of us, we may never get regulations that put the passengers — and not the airlines — first.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Susan Collins is in on it 

 

[fraurosena]

40 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Susan Collins is in on it 

 

Anyone with an R behind their name not only condones, but is complicit in the atrocities propagated by this administration. 

That R signifies that this person is morally and quite probably personally corrupt, has no empathy, ethics, or compassion, and is, in my opinion, a contemptible human being.

[AnywhereButHere]

Here’s a winner from my state. Ugh. Yet another rethuglican running for Congress. 

Spoiler

 

Michael Grimm threatens to throw a reporter off a balcony because he doesn’t like a question about his finances. He was a state congressman forced to resign after being convicted of tax fraud, which of course qualifies him to run on the national level. Add in a willingness to hurt people, and we have a perfect, modern, Republican candidate.

[Cartmann99]

17 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Michael Grimm threatens to throw a reporter off a balcony because he doesn’t like a question about his finances. He was a state congressman forced to resign after being convicted of tax fraud, which of course qualifies him to run on the national level. Add in a willingness to hurt people, and we have a perfect, modern, Republican candidate

I thought you had to have a sex scandal to get to that level? 

[AnywhereButHere]

40 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I thought you had to have a sex scandal to get to that level? 

Oh, just wait. I'm sure there's one in there somewhere. Sadly, he seems too much of an asshole not to have something.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Yes, family separation is bad. But what about Hillary Clinton’s emails?"

Spoiler

Babies are seized from their mothers’ arms. Photographs show their anguish. News reports describe their cages. A recording captures their wailing and a U.S. border official’s cold mockery. A defiant President Trump falsely blames others for the misery he created.

And Republican lawmakers respond as they often have: They hold another hearing about Hillary Clinton’s emails.

But they have run this play too many times before.

Just 29 seconds into Tuesday’s hearing on the defeated Democratic 2016 presidential nominee and her emails, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, interrupted to point out that something more important needs attention.

“We have seen the pictures of immigrants ripped apart from their parents at the border. These children are not animals,” he said. “They are children who have been forcibly removed from their parents in our name.”

Republicans on the committee tried to silence Nadler with calls of “order!”

Nadler spoke over them: “The United States should be better than this. We should not put children in cages.”

“Regular order!” called out Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Nadler “has been given more time than would have been afforded the other side, had we pulled something like that.”

Ah, so it’s “regular order” to have the umpteenth hearing about a now-private citizen’s emails, but you’re “pulling” a stunt if you talk about the Trump policy under which border guards are reportedly telling parents they are taking children “for a bath” and the children never return.

No, Republicans, your “regular order” is out of order.

As soon as Gowdy had silenced Nadler, two women in the back of the room, with infants in their laps, began to heckle the lawmakers about the inhumanity of Trump’s family separation policy.

Gowdy slammed the gavel to the dais and demanded that the mothers and babies be removed. (At least the Capitol Police had the good sense not to take the babies from the mothers.) “We will be in recess until the Capitol Police restore order!” Gowdy proclaimed.

But “order” remained elusive.

Shortly after the moms and babies were evicted from the room, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, spoke. “Are we really going to sit here, 70 members of the Congress of the United States of America, in 2018, and have a hearing . . . on Hillary Clinton’s emails?”

His voice rising, and at times breaking, Cummings continued: “We should be able to agree that we will not keep kids in child internment camps indefinitely and hidden away from public view. What country is that? This is the United States of America! We now have reports of parents being deported, but the Trump administration is keeping their children here.”

But Republicans would not be distracted from their urgent and singular focus on Clinton’s emails. Unhappy that Clinton wasn’t charged in 2016 for mishandling her emails, they had demanded an investigation into the original investigation of Clinton. That investigation, conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, last week reported misconduct by some officials but “no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations.”

Now Republicans, still unsatisfied, are threatening to investigate the investigation of the investigation of Clinton. Senate Republicans hauled Horowitz in Monday, and House Republicans hauled him in Tuesday, to field questions for seven hours from 70 lawmakers on the Judiciary and Oversight committees.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked: “How is it you can say you found no evidence of bias?”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), suggesting the FBI had acted in a “nefarious” manner and had hidden information from Horowitz , said the misconduct was “more than just casting a cloud on the overall investigation,” as Horowitz had concluded.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) alleged that the FBI had given “false information” to Horowitz, and he attempted to unmask people whose identity the FBI protects because they work in counterterrorism.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) demanded the names of special agents and prosecutors involved in the original probe, and he accused Inspector General Horowitz of going soft in his conclusions and offering “a little throwaway” to Democrats. Alleged Gohmert: “Bias is all the way through this, and I’m sorry that you were not able to see that.”

Does it never end? “Why is it that, here and now, in June of 2018, we are still talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails at all?” asked Nadler.

Perhaps because they care more about a scrubbed server than a clean conscience.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Also they're still going for your healthcare 

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[47of74]

Then this happened in Dubuque today

Quote

Police didn't arrest anyone on Friday, June 22 after a sit-in at Representative Rod Blum's office in Dubuque.

Three women and one man left the office at 5 pm when it closed, and one woman named Hannah Grove was escorted by police out of the back door.

This all happened after a rally which was held in Washington Park at noon. It was hosted by Indivisible Dubuque, Americans for Democratic Action and Nextgen Iowa. More than 100 people attended and gave speeches, played music or listened in solidarity.

Grove was one of many who marched from the park to Blum's office around 1 pm. She and five other women were able to get inside of the office before staff locked the doors.

I'll bet Blum is gonna be all pissy now that the protestors didn't genuflect in front of his staff or the picture of Fornicate Face that has to be gracing his office.

[Howl]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

George Will.  GEORGE WILL!  I don't think he'll be the last person to oppose his own party. 

[GreyhoundFan]

An op-ed from Mark Sanford: "I lost because I wasn’t Trump enough. All Republicans should worry."

Spoiler

They say elections have consequences, and if this is so, we should all be concerned over the recent primary along the coast of South Carolina. I know it well. I lost.

I’ve been involved in politics for a long time in my state and have run and won in tough races. This one was like no other. The operative question was not about conservative policies that are normally the lifeblood of a Republican primary, but rather who on the ballot would more loyally support the president.

I wasn’t Trump enough in the age of Trump — and so indeed I lost. As one of 435 members of the House, this shouldn’t matter to someone living in Fairfax or Cleveland, but, based on what I saw on election night, I think it will.

We should all be alarmed when dissenting voices are quashed. President Trump is not the first executive to want compliance from a legislative body, but he has taken it to a new level. This is more than a problem; it’s a challenge to one of the most basic of American tenets — that we can agree to disagree.

Our Founding Fathers baked dissent into the cake of our political system. It’s one of their most vital gifts. The constitutionally designed tug-of-war between branches of government was not for efficiency; it was to prevent too much power ending up in one place.

This represents my biggest disagreement with the president, and it is certainly part of what was at play during my district’s primary election.

I’m a conservative, and I have overwhelmingly supported the president on the issues he attempted to advance. But because I haven’t been 100 percent supportive, and have spoken out on areas where we disagreed, he injected himself into the race to oppose me as he did. This suggests his concern was over personal loyalty, rather than issue loyalty. That’s a problem in a system built on compliance to laws and the Constitution — not a single man.

The Republican Party is going through an identity crisis. We need to decide who we are. I believe we are meant to be the party of individual freedom, and I believe in the building blocks of what will get you there — ranging from limited government, taxes and spending to open markets and free trade.

I have all the merit badges and hard-fought votes to demonstrate my allegiance to those ideals. But voters in this election did not value this as much as they did fidelity to our president. In fact, on election night, my opponent proclaimed in her victory speech that “we are the party of Donald J. Trump.”

I could not disagree more strongly. I believe that both parties belong to the regular working people who have labored to advance their ideals. Given the state of our politics, we need to question who we are and what we stand for as never before.

Finally, I am struck by how little we now care for truth. The president’s attacks on me were certainly not true, and my opponent took license with the truth in ways I have never seen in an opponent, but does this pattern deserve alarm? I believe so. Trust is foundational to a reason-based republic. It’s why I feel the need to speak up for my values, as I did before the election — though there proved to be an electoral consequence.

I respect the fact I could be seen as an odd person to offer a sermon on the notion of truth — given the fact that I was living a lie in 2009. But this is precisely the point. It was discovered, and there were tremendous personal and professional consequences for me in the wake of that discovery. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

We have become so desensitized to the president’s tortured relationship with the truth that we don’t challenge the inaccurate things he and others say. There should be a consequence to making things up. But inexplicably, as a society, we have somehow fallen into a collective amnesia in thinking that it doesn’t matter when the highest officeholder in the land doesn’t tell the truth.

These themes played a part in my first electoral loss, but I believe their implications are far more significant. This is something I’ll be contemplating over the weeks and months ahead, and I hope other Americans will, too.

 

[CTRLZero]

14 minutes ago, Howl said:

George Will.  GEORGE WILL!  I don't think he'll be the last person to oppose his own party. 

Wowser.  I read his article out loud to my husband, who was also astounded.  Coincidentally, I was thinking of Thomas More today.  I wonder what brought that on? 

[Toothfairy]

Why do we even need a Congress? Checks and balances went out the window. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Toothfairy said:

Why do we even need a Congress? Checks and balances went out the window. 

That is a scary sentiment. Understandable, but scary. It plays right into the hands of a wannabe dictator, who would like nothing more than to get rid of Congress and rule supreme.

You really do need a Congress. Especially now.

That said, you need a Congress that does it’s job, not look the other way. There’s only one way to get that. VOTE.

[Drala]

Branch Trumpvidians back pimp for congress. You can't make this stuff up. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-religion-brothels/in-age-of-trump-evangelicals-back-self-styled-top-u-s-pimp-idUSKBN1JI1A9

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@47of74 -- I have a question for you, since you have the misfortune of King residing in your state: does he wear his white hood every day or only on special days? "Steve King singles out Somali Muslims over pork"

Spoiler

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Friday that he doesn’t want Somali Muslims working at meat-packing plants in his district because they want consumers of pork to be sent to hell.

In a Breitbart News radio interview, the eight-term congressman, known for his inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric, said his views were shaped by a conversation with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), whom he called “the lead Muslim in Congress.”

King said Ellison told him that Muslims would require “a special dispensation” from an imam in order to be able to handle pork in one of his district’s meat-packing plants. “The rationale is that if infidels are eating this pork, [the Muslims] are not eating it,” King said. “So as long as they’re preparing this pork for infidels, it helps send them to hell and it must make Allah happy.”

“I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for eating pork chops,” he concluded.

Ellison’s office declined to comment on King’s interpretation of the Minnesota congressman’s remarks.

King said he approached Ellison about the issue because meat-packing plants in his district had informed him they hoped to hire Somalis to work in their facilities. “And I say, ‘Well, Somali Muslims, will they cut pork?’” King recalled of his conversation with the plant leaders. “They looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t know.’”

King has drawn attention for frequently flirting with fringe, racist political elements. Earlier this week, he retweeted a known British white supremacist’s warning about immigration.

King’s commentary on pork consumption and Islam doesn’t stop at his district’s edge. Last week, he slammed Sweden, which he said “capitulated to Halal” when the organizers of an international soccer tournament there decided against serving pork to accommodate a large number of Muslim players.

“I draw the line here and, if need be, will fight for freedom of choice — in our diets,” he tweeted. “Iowa’s 4th Congressional District is the #1 Pork district in America. No takin’ bacon off our tables.”

 

[47of74]

58 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@47of74 -- I have a question for you, since you have the misfortune of King residing in your state: does he wear his white hood every day or only on special days? "Steve King singles out Somali Muslims over pork"

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Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Friday that he doesn’t want Somali Muslims working at meat-packing plants in his district because they want consumers of pork to be sent to hell.

In a Breitbart News radio interview, the eight-term congressman, known for his inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric, said his views were shaped by a conversation with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), whom he called “the lead Muslim in Congress.”

King said Ellison told him that Muslims would require “a special dispensation” from an imam in order to be able to handle pork in one of his district’s meat-packing plants. “The rationale is that if infidels are eating this pork, [the Muslims] are not eating it,” King said. “So as long as they’re preparing this pork for infidels, it helps send them to hell and it must make Allah happy.”

“I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it, let alone hope I go to hell for eating pork chops,” he concluded.

Ellison’s office declined to comment on King’s interpretation of the Minnesota congressman’s remarks.

King said he approached Ellison about the issue because meat-packing plants in his district had informed him they hoped to hire Somalis to work in their facilities. “And I say, ‘Well, Somali Muslims, will they cut pork?’” King recalled of his conversation with the plant leaders. “They looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t know.’”

King has drawn attention for frequently flirting with fringe, racist political elements. Earlier this week, he retweeted a known British white supremacist’s warning about immigration.

King’s commentary on pork consumption and Islam doesn’t stop at his district’s edge. Last week, he slammed Sweden, which he said “capitulated to Halal” when the organizers of an international soccer tournament there decided against serving pork to accommodate a large number of Muslim players.

“I draw the line here and, if need be, will fight for freedom of choice — in our diets,” he tweeted. “Iowa’s 4th Congressional District is the #1 Pork district in America. No takin’ bacon off our tables.”

 

God, calling King an embarrassing fuckstick is too nice.   In response to your question, yeah most days he wears a white hood when he goes out.  On special days he wears the complete set of robes.

 

Oh and fuck you Steve.

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Jeff Flake on Tuesday 

Jeff Flake on Thursday  

 

Is that what they call all hat and no cattle?

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I have such a crush on Adam Schiff.