What Republicans do

[pbrower2a]

You can see what the solution isn't:






About the only political asset that Congressional Democrats have until at least January 2009 is the ability to stop a purge by the President within his own Party. The Republicans have few elected officials that could make the R-to-D or even R-to-I switch.

President Trump cannot purge any Democrats.

[pbrower2a]

No, this is not representative of the Republican Party.

Quote:A Missouri man is being sought in connection with the murder of an attorney in Kansas City, MO who had successfully argued a previous shooting case against him.

Jungerman is believed to have shot and killed Tom Pickert, a 39-year old personal injury attorney who won a civil suit against him on behalf of homeless men shot by Jungerman.

Pickert was found dead outside of his home in Kansas City’s Brookside neighborhood by his wife, who was also home at the time. Pickert was sitting on his porch after walking his children home from school when he was murdered. Witnesses said a white 1997 Chevrolet van registered to Jungerman had fled the scene. It was found abandoned on Wednesday afternoon.
Police have yet to provide an official motive for the crime.
Both of the homeless men  survives , but one of the men lost part of his leg as a result. The court awarded Pickert’s client who had been shot in the leg by Jungerman $5.75 million in damages. Officials had begun seizing Jungerman’s property last week, including his home and business, the Babee Tenda Corporation.


Both of the homeless men  survives , but one of the men lost part of his leg as a result. The court awarded Pickert’s client who had been shot in the leg by Jungerman $5.75 million in damages. Officials had begun seizing Jungerman’s property last week, including his home and business, the Babee Tenda Corporation.

Jungerman was featured on the Twitter account Every Trump Donor, which revealed that he, a farmer from Raytown, MO, gave the maximum personal donation allowed to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Not only that, Jungerman took in $1 million in farm subsidies from the government since 1995, despite posting a sign on a semi-truck trailer that said, “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats — Party of the Parasites.”

http://reverepress.com/news/trump-donor-shoots-two-homeless-men-kills-attorney-losing-lawsuit/

No, he was not an elected official,  but murder of someone in the process (attorney or judge) for an unflattering judgment is disrespect for law at its worst. It is the legal system that forms the figurative wall between civilization and barbarism.

This is, I admit, extreme.

[Eric the Green]

Ah, Alabama senate candidate Moore has now been accused of having been messing around sexually with a young girl. I wonder if this will cost Moore than it cost Trump to be accused of messing around with women sexually in inappropriate ways? Maybe messing around with little girls might be considered more serious than messing around with women and grabbing their pussies down in dixieland. We'll see!

""If there’s even a shred of evidence to these accusations, Gov. Ivey and the Alabama Republican Party need to do everything in their power to remove Judge Moore from the ballot," Law said in a statement. "There is no place in our party for sexual predators.""

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...ar-BBEMpgA

Wait, uh; shouldn't a certain guy in the White House be removed, then?

[pbrower2a]

If you are a man in your thirties and you are messing around with 14-year-old boys, you are a filthy perv. If you are a man in your thirties and you are messing around with 14-year-old girls, you are still a filthy perv.

What's that commandment:

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Yes, that includes grabbing women by their crotches, too.

[pbrower2a]

Quote:A number of Alabama Republican officials dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct against their Senate GOP nominee, former judge Roy Moore, as suspect and overblown on Thursday.

Leigh Corfman told The Washington Post that Moore, then a 32-year-old assistant district attorney, took off her shirt and pants and removed his own clothes in one 1979 incident. He touched her through her bra and led her hands to touch him through his underwear, she said. She was 14 at the time.

Three other women who spoke to the Post ― for a deeply reported article that was published Thursday ― said Moore had “asked them on dates when they were between 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.”

While most Senate Republicans immediately distanced themselves from Moore, maintaining that he ought to withdraw from the race if the allegations are true, GOP officials in Alabama stood by the prominent Ten Commandments advocate.

“He’s clean as a hound’s tooth,” Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler said in an interview with The Washington Examiner, before invoking the Bible to defend Moore.

“Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist,” Ziegler said. “Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roy...mg00000009
Counter-argument:
Exodus 20:14King James Version (KJV)

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
King James Version (KJV)
Public Domain
Exodus 20:14 in all English translations

[pbrower2a]

...and last night that old hypocrite and unrepentant perv (yes, one still is very much a sinner, culpable of whatever transgressions that one committed until one gets redemption from egregious sins -- and then only upon repentance with a firm resolve to never commit such sins again) who made an appearance in a revival meeting in which he expressed his concern that America was going to ruin until it went back to God and Jesus. Filthy hypocrite!

And this is a former DA and judge, responsible for the administration of justice, one of the most important functions that anyone can ever do. Such requires that one must refrain from abusing power. I can imagine what potential this man had for abusing people. Sure, his messing around with teenagers happened in the 1970s when America was much more tolerant of such than it is now. Except for acceptance of homosexual rights (and those are limited to sex and marriage among consenting adults and the right to adopt and raise children), America is much more repressive on sex than it was forty years ago. Gays and lesbians got their rights by throwing the pervs under the bus, so to speak. What Roy Moore did is inexcusable; it is now good for a long prison term and registry as a sex offender.

Does anyone want to bet that Judge Moore has sentenced many adult men who messed around with underage girls to long prison terms? So would I were I a judge. But I know well that the adolescent world has not been mine since I left adolescence. At most I can guide adolescents toward the finer attractions of the adult world, as in "This is Schubert", "This is Vermeer", or "This is Dostoevsky". But they are not ready for sex even with fellow adolescents, let alone with adults.

Plenty of people have renounced drugs and alcoholism, reckless adventures, promiscuity, extremist causes, and juvenile delinquency. Such people can be fair warnings to the rest of us.

[Eric the Green]

Well, maybe if he wins Moore can be the first senator required to wear one of those ankle bracelets.

[Eric the Green]

Can anyone really believe that trickle-down economics doesn't cause a huge increase in the national debt? Given the record of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, and their trickle-down economics policies? And can anyone really believe that adding more trillions of dollars in debt, as Trump and his Republicans want to do now, is good for the USA?

[David Horn]

(11-24-2017, 06:50 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Can anyone really believe that trickle-down economics doesn't cause a huge increase in the national debt? Given the record of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, and their trickle-down economics policies? And can anyone really believe that adding more trillions of dollars in debt, as Trump and his Republicans want to do now, is good for the USA?

Actually, trickle down economics biggest failing is its manifest inefficiency.  Every other negative derives from that.  Even in times where investing in the supply side may have some value, (not that this has happened in a long time, mind you), the fact that all gains must be achieved by the trickle that makes it into the hands of those who will spend it makes it useless as policy.

[Eric the Green]

ALABAMA HAS THE WORST POVERTY IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD, U.N. OFFICIAL SAYS
BY CARLOS BALLESTEROS ON 12/10/17 AT 10:21 AM
http://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-pover...ism-743601

A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.

"I think it's very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I'd have to say that I haven't seen this," Philip Alston, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where "raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits."

The tour through Alabama's rural communities is part of a two-week investigation by the U.N. on poverty and human rights abuses in the United States. So far, U.N. investigators have visited cities and towns in California and Alabama, and will soon travel to Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

Of particular concern to Alston are specific poverty-related issues that have surfaced across the country in recent years, such as an outbreak of hookworm in Alabama in 2017—a disease typically found in nations with substandard sanitary conditions in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, as reported by The Guardian.


A pedestrian walks through a neighborhood with rundown homes on March 6, 2015, in Selma, Alabama.
(JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES)

The U.N. investigation aims to study the effects of systemic poverty in a prosperous nation like the United States.

According to the Census Bureau, nearly 41 million people in the U.S. live in poverty. That's second-highest rate of poverty among rich countries, as measured by the percentage of people earning less than half the national median income, according to Quartz.

These income and wealth disparities affect minorities the most. Black, Hispanic, and Native American children, for example, are two to three times more likely to live in poverty than white kids, according to a study using Census data by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Minorities in the United States have also historically had higher rates of unemployment, worked longer hours, and gotten paid less than their white counterparts on average, as reported in a 2013 article in The Atlantic that analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics stretching back to 1975.

Economic inequality and racial discrimination have also been linked with civil rights abuses, particularly in Alabama and other states across the South. Police shootings of unarmed black men and women are also of deep concern to the U.N.

Alston, who's also a law professor at New York University, said in a statement announcing the start of the U.N. investigation that poverty in the U.S. has been overlooked for too long.

“Some might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States," Alston said. "But despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and inequality.”

Alston also pointed out that the U.S. "has been very keen" on other countries being investigated by the U.N. for civil and human rights issues.

"Now, it's the turn to look at what's going on in the U.S.," Alston said. "There are pretty extreme levels of poverty in the United States given the wealth of the country. And that does have significant human rights implications.”

Despite these concerns, the Republican Party, which controls all three branches of the federal government, is on course to pass a tax bill before the end of the year that will increase the federal deficit by $1 trillion in 10 years—costs that GOP leaders have said will be offset by reducing an already-weakened social safety net.

For Alston, these political decisions are at the root of systemic poverty in the U.S.

“The idea of human rights is that people have basic dignity and that it’s the role of the government—yes, the government!—to ensure that no one falls below the decent level,” he said. “Civilized society doesn’t say for people to go and make it on your own and if you can’t, bad luck.”

“Politicians who say, ‘There’s nothing I can do about that’ are simply wrong,” Alston told WKMS 91.3 FM, a public radio station in Ohio near one of the other sites under investigation by the U.N.

[Eric the Green]

I had to do a search and rescue in "nebraska" to retrieve this thread. I had to do it when I saw this article. Twitter burns! That sounds like a new meme!

Rubio suffers serious Twitter burns from a high school student and a veteran turned congressman
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/...=emaildkre

By Laura Clawson
Friday Feb 23, 2018 · 6:40 AM PST

Ouch! An already-defensive Sen. Marco Rubio has to be feeling the burn from this one, from a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivor:

Sarah Chadwick// #NEVERAGAIN
✔
@sarahchad_
We should change the names of AR-15s to “Marco Rubio” because they are so easy to buy.
10:34 PM - Feb 22, 2018

That’s not the only damage inflicted on Rubio on Twitter in the last day or so. After Rubio tweeted this (as previously mentioned, he’s feeling a little defensive) …


Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
Will msm ever clarify to public that so called “Assault Rifles” are NOT machine guns? They fire at rate no faster than most hunting rifles
12:19 PM - Feb 22, 2018

… Rep. Ruben Gallego, (D-AZ) an Iraq veteran, went in on him, from correcting him on the facts:

Ruben Gallego
✔
@RubenGallego
So wrong. Cyclical rate of fire on an AR15 is much faster than a typical bolt action hunting rifle. https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/96...6174379008 …
12:59 PM - Feb 22, 2018


To summing up what Rubio is doing here:

22 Feb

Ruben Gallego

The combination of all those elements make the AR15 a killing machine for humans. Your typical hunting rifle is not.

Ruben Gallego

If @marcorubio wants to kiss ass to the @NRA he should just be honest and say he doesn't want to ban the AR15 because he is afraid of the NRA. Not use lame excuses.
12:59 PM - Feb 22, 2018


Not a good 12 hours or so for Rubio, there.

[pbrower2a]

We are in need of a new New Deal -- and it may be ironic that the South, then by far the part of America most left behind in mass poverty, was its most enthusiastic supporter by region. The New Deal kept its wild promise of making life better for those to whom it paid attention.

Poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South (Alabama straddles both regions) need to recognize themselves as victims of economic oppression as severe as in urban ghettos. It may be surprising, but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was planning a tour of Appalachia that -- well, James Earl Ray made that impossible. Its focus was not Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but poverty just as bad as was normal among Southern blacks. Race wasn't the problem in America; poverty is.

If we don't deal with mass poverty, under-education, and malnutrition, then other countries will surpass us. Ask yourself -- would you now rather be reincarnated in South Korea or West Virginia? Statistically, would you rather be reincarnated as a black kid in the UK -- or in Alabama?

[Eric the Green]

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.
This is not news, you say.
Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.
The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.
"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."
On the other hand:
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.
They conclude:
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.
"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

[Eric the Green]

Republicans are now taking democracy away from us. We need to realize what Republicans do, afresh. We need to counter what Republicans are doing now!

[pbrower2a]

(03-29-2018, 12:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.
This is not news, you say.
Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.
The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.
"A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18% of the time," they write, "while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45% of the time."
On the other hand:
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.
They conclude:
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.
"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

Much of the fault lies with media who know who butters their bread. The economic elites in America as reactionary here as elsewhere. They could accede to popular sentiment on LGBT rights which had nothing to do with profit, the only sacred entity to them.  Abortion may be a different matter, as a high birth-rate means higher rents, lower wages, and the 'right' to harsher terms of work -- and most ominously, more cannon fodder for wars for profit. (The elites are pacifists if war isn't costly; otherwise the only fear that those elites have of war is that they might be overthrown in defeat or find that their assets are destroyed in war. Should war be profitable, then there will be war of some kind). Legalization of marijuana became acceptable when it. Many of the media know the need for advertising revenue, so media owners know well enough to not say anything derogatory about the merchandise offered or the economic agenda of the elites. Global warming is to be denied so that the powerful fossil-fuel companies can churn out carbon-rich fuels.   

This was true with tobacco and leaded gasoline, too -- until it became well known that tobacco was killing off workers and that leaded motor fuels were causing street crime.   

The surprises are that unions are not yet outlawed and that peonage contracts are still illegal. Or maybe unions are less troublesome than terrorists.

[Eric the Green]

Former Republican Max Boot says the Republicans are an existential threat to democracy. We must now vote Democratic, he says.

[David Horn]

(02-24-2018, 02:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We are in need of a new  New Deal -- and it may be ironic that the South, then by far the part of America most left behind in mass poverty, was its most enthusiastic supporter by region. The New Deal kept its wild promise of making life better for those to whom it paid attention.

Poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South (Alabama straddles both regions) need to recognize themselves as victims of economic oppression as severe as in urban ghettos. It may be surprising, but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was planning a tour of Appalachia that -- well, James Earl Ray made that impossible. Its focus was not Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but poverty just as bad as was normal among Southern blacks. Race wasn't the problem in America; poverty is.

If we don't deal with mass poverty, under-education, and malnutrition, then other countries will surpass us. Ask yourself -- would you now rather be reincarnated in South Korea or West Virginia? Statistically, would you rather be reincarnated as a black kid in the UK -- or in Alabama?

That's the point.  The economic elite have spent decades perfecting the split: getting low information whites to vote their social rather than economic ends, and take sides against 'others' in similar straits.  When guns are considered more important than food and shelter, what counterleverage can alter that? Bigger question: what happens when the guns come out?

[Eric the Green]

President Obama zeroes in and describes what Republicans are doing.

https://youtu.be/7hZgg_KjvDQ?t=1667

[pbrower2a]

A report has leaked that the US Supreme Court will be reversing Roe v. Wade. Reasoning is not offered for the reversal.

[Eric the Green]

Can you believe that we have one man ruling our country, and it is the man in the middle of a split Supreme Court, as Jason Greene says, and he is a man whom Blasey-Ford accused under oath of raping him, and who acted like a crazed crybaby at his confirmation hearing, and also stated that Roe v Rade was settled consensus. His name is Brett Kavanaugh, and he is ruling over us, as the man in the middle who decides, and the "middle" right now is the far right as approved by the Federalist Society and appointed by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.

https://youtu.be/WnNhULrpW70?t=767

https://www.gq.com/story/kavanaugh-alway...ican-first