This Criminal Should Be in Jail

Via Wonkette commenter IMPOed:

Rape Our Daughters

Make every repug candidate everywhere answer to this.

Down With Tyranny:

Paid for Abortion

Down with Tyranny:

Just Do the Right Thing

There's a ridiculous and counter-productive "debate" going on right now about how Democrats should handle the nomination of a face-eating leopard to the Supreme Court.

Should Democrats fight like rabid ferrets in a losing cause in order to inspire Democratic voters for the November elections?

Or should they surrender in order to protect red-state Democratic Senators up for re-election?

Or maybe put up a token resistance that won't anger repug voters and drive them to the polls?

When the likely electoral consequences of such what-if game-playing are not clear and obvious, stop playing games.  Just. Do. The. Right. Thing.

The Right Thing is to loudly condemn any nominee who is not Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Gov. Steve Beshear.

The Right Thing is to vote against the Orange Loser's nominee and discourage any Democratic Senator from doing otherwise.

The Right Thing is to speak clearly, loudly and often about the catastrophe the Orange Loser's nominee will bring down on this country.

Do the right thing, and let the chips fall where they may.

Do Or Die Time: Mitch Schedules Health Care Execution for Thursday

The Rude Pundit says it best:

Look, it's time to stick a pin in the left's Russia hard-on right now in order to get all hands, voices and boots on deck to stop the American Health Care Act from passage. It's a terrible bill filled with terrible ideas, concocted by terrible human beings.  So it's time for Maddow/Hayes/O'Donnell/Reid and whoever else to knock off the financial conflict and espionage stories for a while and go whole hog on this.

Right now, Democrats are doing something by denying unanimous consent to proceed on any votes in the Senate, and they are holding the floor in a "talkathon" speeches about the unfair process. But these delay tactics need to be followed by even more. The "filibuster by amendment" is one approach, where Democrats keep proposing amendments that have to be voted on until Republicans agree to hold hearings on the bill. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on the seemingly wavering Republican senators, who need to be reminded who will be blamed when the AHCA doesn't do any of the shit voters were promised.

One last thing needs to happen, and I'm frankly stunned that it hasn't happened yet. The Affordable Care Act is the signature achievement of the Obama presidency.  Where the fuck is he? Why the fuck isn't Barack Obama barnstorming the country, riling people up? He gets to protect his legacy.  Enough of being above the fray.

Fuck that.  Lives are on the line, man,and a bunch of vicious assholes are shitting all over him.

Obama, Biden, get 'em all out there, giving interviews, tearing into the cruelty of those who want to turn back the clock. 

This is life and death, motherfuckers. Let's all act like it is.

Call your Senators.  Do it right now.

The Resistance: Turn the Senate Now

No waiting for 2018!

Rude Pundit:

So while we're still tilting at the burning windmills of Russian interference and possible Obama spine-stiffening on things like Merrick Garland, let's not overlook one real Hail Mary pass on confronting Donald Trump and halting his history-demolishing agenda. What about trying to turn three Republican senators into Democrats (or, at least, turn independent and then caucusing with the Democrats)? It's crazy, sure, and unlikely, in that it relies on the possibility of there existing rational Republicans, but surely there are ones who have a gut-level fear of what Trump might do. Check this out:

SNIP

That's the prize: the ability to get some facts on the table about Trump that could lead to impeachment. And that ain't gonna happen unless one of the houses of Congress has legal authority to demand those facts.

Obviously, this plan relies on a number of factors: that Republicans could behave honorably; that the Democratic Party could have the guts to go through with this strategy; that some Democrat, like Manchin, doesn't turn, too; and that all are ready for a republic-defining confrontation.

It's a slim hope. But you gotta believe that there are elected Republicans who are freaked out right now. Majority power is the only thing that can bring Trump down. Hell, tell any senators that switch to independent or Democrat that once Trump is out of the picture, they can switch right back. Or try to win the majority in the midterms.
You wanna defeat an irrational opponent? You gotta figure out how to build a wall around his irrationality.

Yay We Have Another Chance To Fuck Up Mitch McConnell

For real.  The election is not over.  There is one more Senate race, and you can help the Democrat win.

 

Evan Hurst at Wonkette:

Hey, you there! You are a sad Hillary voter, or you are a person saying arguments to the internet about how Bernie would have won (NO MORE DISCUSSING THAT), or you are protesting in the streets, or maybe you are just curled up in a ball day-drinking and waiting for the end of America on January 21. That’s all fine, and we need to have time to process and mourn and eat our feelings, but it’s also time to get FIRED UP, READY TO GO! for what needs to be the greatest period of libtard/progressive civic engagement in American history, at least since the first time “Arrested Development” was canceled.

And you need a thing to do! And his name is Democratic Louisiana Senate candidate Foster Campbell! No, you perverts, we don’t literally mean you are going to DO him, but you are going to DO whatever you can to get him elected.

The dealio here is that one million and five people were running for the Louisiana Senate seat formerly diaper-stained by gross diaper man David Vitter. Since nobody won a majority of the vote on election day, it’s going to a run-off, which will be held December 10. The Republican challenger John Kennedy got 25% of the vote in the first election, whereas Foster Campbell got only 17.5%, and Kennedy reportedly has a lot of structural advantages and more money dollars. But what did we learn last Tuesday? We learned you either TURN OUT or you gonna get TURNT OUT, you know what we are saying?

So go give Foster Campbell money.

 

You will do this because, if Campbell wins, the Republicans will only have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, which gives Dems just a little bit more power to push back on Donald Trump’s worst plans. It means it won’t be as much of a stretch to try to form majority coalitions with Republican senators who are occasionally decent on specific issues, like John McCain with Russia or Rand Paul opposing Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton for secretary of State. If 49 Democrats can pull a McCain and a Susan Collins across the aisle to oppose Trump erecting a statue of Vladimir Putin on top of the White House, we might be able to at least mitigate Trump’s damage, is what we mean.

So go give Foster Campbell money.

Another reason for why to do this is the 2018 midterms, which we have to start organizing for NOW, so call your mama and call your liberal congressman, and if you don’t have one of those, call your local party to see how you can get involved. The Democratic Senate map in 2018 is tough, TO SAY THE LEAST, so having one more seat filled with a Democrat up there in Washington could make a big difference.

So go give Foster Campbell money.

 

He is a good guy! He’s a cattle rancher good ol’ boy Louisiana dude who just happens to want to raise the minimum wage and go after Wall Street and do something to save Louisiana’s coastline, which, in case you have not heard, is disappearing due to global warming and the oil industry. He wants to fix it with SCIENCE! Doesn’t he sound like a nice new work boyfriend for Elizabeth Warren?

We think so! So give him money. If you have time for a quick weekender, head to Louisiana — WHERE NEW ORLEANS IS — and do some volunteering for him! While you are there, eat at Mandina’s and Cafe Degas and also a million other places, we don’t care, it’s not our responsibility to plan your meals.

If you can’t make it down South, you could always make phone calls for Campbell! And then give him more money. And like him on Facebook! And share this post on Facebook and Twitter and wherever else you share the things!

On the Senate Repugs Who Are Sucking Trump's Tiny Dick

Via LGM, the only politician on the planet whose big bag of fucks is emptier than Barack Obama's: Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid:

Senate Republicans have put party so far ahead of country, they’ve endorsed a racist, incompetent failure who managed to lose a billion dollars in a boom year. Now they are helping Trump hide his tax returns and preventing the American people from knowing what individuals, businesses or foreign interests could have leverage over Trump.

AynRandy to Coal Miners: Fuck You and Your Union, Too

It's such a perfect lying cop-out for the Tribble-Toupeed One:  No one can have insurance and pension relief from their criminal former employers until everyone gets the exact same thing.

Thus preventing anyone from getting anything.  Except of course for corrupt Big Coal, which skates as always. So conservative and libertarian at the same time!

Meanwhile Democratic Senate candidate Jim Gray is standing up for Kentucky coal miners.

Adam Beam of the AP:

The bill, currently before the U.S. Senate, would use some of the $490 million each year that flows through the federal Abandoned Mine Land program to rescue the health benefits for union coal miners whose companies have gone out of business. It would also shore up a United Mine Workers of America pension fund that is on the brink of collapse following the 2008 recession.

The bill would preserve the health benefits of about 3,500 Kentucky coal miners, most who worked for Patriot Coal, which filed for bankruptcy in 2012. It would also protect the retirement benefits of about 9,800 retired Kentucky coal miners who were members of the United Mine Workers of America labor union.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, who like many fellow Republicans has criticized Obama's energy policies as a "war on coal", does not support the bill in its current form. He says he supports the concept of the bill, but only if it provides relief for all coal miners, not just those who joined a labor union.

"If they will give the coal companies relief, and the nonunion workers relief as well as the union workers, I could be persuaded to be for it," Paul told The Associated Press in an interview. "For something to get passed, it has to please more people."

Paul is seeking re-election in November after ending his presidential campaign earlier this year. He faces Democrat Jim Gray, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky's second-largest city.

Gray said he if he were a senator he would vote for the bill because "you don't let the perfect get in the way of the good."

"I think it represents a positive, bipartisan step. I think it shows that at least some members of the Senate can cross party lines and work together. And that's what I promised I'd do," Gray said. "It's (Paul's) usual endless rhetoric that prevents anything good from being done."

The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday by a vote of 18-8, with six republicans joining all 12 Democrats to vote "yes."

The Only Way to Commemorate 9/11

Reading the whole painful, devastating thing is the most patriotic thing you will ever do in your life, just after voting and just before military service.

Charlie Pierce:

Getting someone to talk on the record is the eternal jackpot of investigative reporting, and, in today's Guardian, Ackerman hits the Comstock Lode with Daniel Jones, who was the chief investigator for the Senate intelligence committee when that committee was looking into the practice of rendition and torture and the other extraconstitutional horrors perpetrated in our name by the late Avignon Presidency, and who also looked on in anger as the CIA worked overtime to ratfck the investigation and to bury its result. This is the first of a three-part series. I'd say that the extended weekend forecast calls for fury and outrage.

It begins with a holy-shit moment straight out of a paranoid political thriller, except that it was real, and it happened here. From The Guardian:

There was one document in particular that proved it. Jones and his team had found it years before, placed mysteriously onto a shared computer network drive the Senate intelligence committee investigators were using in northern Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters. But they hadn't appreciated its full significance until the agency, in an attempt at refuting a report that was still far from publication, told Barack Obama's staff that the committee was pushing a hysterical interpretation of the agency's fateful post-9/11 embrace of torture. The document, prepared for Leon Panetta when he was CIA director, had reached the same conclusions about the torture program that Jones had. As long as Jones had it, he would be able to show that the agency knew full well how brutal the torture was; how ineffective its torturers considered it to be; and how thoroughly the CIA had covered all of that up. As long as Jones had the document, that is. Lurking in the back of his mind was the event that had led him to devote five years of ceaseless work, through nights and weekends: the CIA had already destroyed evidence of torture. It did that before the Senate had launched an investigation, and long before that investigation had turned acrimonious. Inside the small room in Virginia the CIA had set up for the Senate investigators, Jones reached for his canvas messenger bag. He slipped crucial printed-out passages of what he called the Panetta Review into the bag and secured its lock. Sometime after 1am, Jones walked out, carrying his bag as he always did, and neglecting to tell the agency security personnel what it contained. After years of working together, no one asked him to open the bag.

And thus was saved a document that gave the lie to everything the CIA ever said in public about how it squandered the moral authority of the United States in the world. It is important to note, as Ackerman does, that Jones didn't remove this document to leak it—no Ellsberg, he—but to make sure that the cover-up artists from Langley didn't burn the thing.

Dem Challenger Starts Attacking AynRandy

Yes, by Clinton/Obama vs. the Orange Menace standards this isn't much of an "attack," but it's the first of Jim Gray's Senate campaign and we are chanting "hit 'im again, hit 'im again, harder, harder!"

John Cheves at the Herald:

Waving a newspaper story about last weekend’s shooting rampage in Orlando that killed 49 people, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray on Wednesday criticized Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for opposing a bill that would ban gun purchases by people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

“How many headlines like this do we need to see before Congress does something?” asked Gray, the Democratic Senate nominee, standing outside Paul’s Lexington field office. “Senator Paul voted to let potential terrorists buy guns. He chose to protect the rights of radical Islam over the safety of innocent Americans. What was Rand Paul thinking? Where is his common sense? Where’s the backbone?”

In December, the day after an extremist couple shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., Paul voted against a Democrat-backed bill that would have blocked the sale of guns through licensed firearms dealers to roughly 10,000 Americans whose names are reported to be on the secret watch list, indicating that federal law-enforcement officials suspect them of possible terrorist activity.

Yes, the terrorist watch list is dangerously error-ridden and suspect constitutionally, but the point is that Paul follows the repug line that there is no problem - including mass murder - that cannot be solved by MOAR GUNZ.

And that Jim Gray, occasionally suspect Democratic-ly, disagrees.

Gray, by the way, was a guest at the Fairness Alliance of Kentucky's 25th Anniversary celebration last Friday night, barely 24 hours before the Orlando massacre.

The Tribble-Toupeed One is now on notice: This Race is Personal.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article83948022.html#storylink=cpy

AynRandy Pissed $500K Down the Toilet

Looks like the KY GOP had already read the writing on the wall when they insisted the Tribble-Toupeed One pay half a mil in advance for his personal, private repug primary caucus so he could run for the Senate and White House at the same time.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

Of the remaining ten, it is looking more and more like the next one to go could very well be Sen. Rand Paul.

There have been a couple of stories lately that might signal a move sometime soon. First of all, one of Paul’s SuperPacs has quit raising money for him.

SNIP

Jonathan Easly reported that this week Paul will take a break from the presidential race to do some fundraising for his Senate campaign.

Of course Paul’s supporters were quick to point out that this doesn’t mean he is giving up on his presidential bid. But you have to wonder how long he can keep this up - and why he’d want to when he’s at under 3% in the polls.

When AynRandy drops out of the presidential race and asks the KY party for his money back, I sincerely hope they laugh him right out of the Senate.

"Her qualifications are superb"

Go ahead and say it, Mr. President: she's not get confirmed because she's a ni**er without even a penis. You know that deep in the repug cloakroom they're calling her what they called Barbara Jordan in the Texas lege: "that ni**er mammy washerwoman."




Full transcript here.

AynRandy is a Coward

Yes, the Tribble-Toupeed One is so sure he is going to be the repug nominee for Sacrificial Lamb to President Hillary Clinton that he is clinging like the infantile coward he is to the job he already has.

Wassamatta, boy? Pretending to be a real doctor not a lucrative enough job for you?

From the Courier:

The Kentucky Republican Party's Executive Committee gave preliminary approval Saturday to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's request to hold a presidential caucus in 2016 rather than a primary election.

The move would rescue Paul from the consequences of a state law that could have prevented him from seeking both the presidential nomination and renomination for his Senate seat simultaneously.
"I just want to be treated like many other candidates around the country who have not been restricted (from running for two offices at the same time)," Paul said in an interview.

The party's central committee will be asked to formally adopt a more specific plan in August after a committee of 13 people create a detailed proposal that will likely address issues like ballot security, absentee voting and cost of a caucus, which must be borne by the party.

Ayn Randy Is Aiding And Abetting Terrorists

Oh, yes he is.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Monday said that most vaccinations ought to be voluntary, a stance that goes beyond his old rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) view on parental choice in immunizations.

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham asked Paul whether vaccines should be mandatory after Christie's office tried to walk back the governor's remarks on allowing parents to have "some measure of choice" in vaccinating their children. Paul went a step further than his potential 2016 presidential opponent in his response.

"I'm not anti-vaccine at all, but particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary," Paul said. "What happens if you have somebody not want to take the smallpox vaccine and it ruins it for everybody else? I think there are times in which there can be some rules, but for the most part it ought to be voluntary."

The Kentucky senator then brought up the failed 2011 push by another potential 2016 rival, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), to require sixth-grade girls be vaccinated with Gardasil, which protects against HPV, as an example of an unnecessary mandate.

"While I think it's a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that's a personal decision for individuals to take and when they take it," he said.

No, motherfucker, it is NOT a personal decision.  If you'd been smart enough to pass the board exams for opthamalogy, you might have learned in medical school about something called herd immunity.  Herd immunity means that it's not enough to get vaccinated yourself.  To be safe, you have to be surrounded by millions of other people who are also vaccinated.

Vaccination is not choosing organic veggies.  Vaccination is a duty, even more important than voting.  Not even serving in the military is as patriotic, as nation-serving, as society-protecting as getting vaccinated and making sure everyone you love, like, work with and run into on the street is also vaccinated.

People who do not vaccinate their children are terrorists. Period.

And Rand Paul is aiding and abetting them from the platform of the U.S. Senate. Throw him in Guantanamo.  Do it now.

Thank You, Ted Cruz

President Obama's nominees are not, of course, the far-left liberals needed to just begin to offset the far-right wingnut extremist crazies appointed by Reagan and both Bushes who now dominate the federal courts.

But they are a slight improvement over vacancies.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

Thanks to Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) blunder, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was able to move 12 more judicial nominees towards confirmation this week, which may ultimately bring the overall total for the year to 88 -- more than double last year's tally, and the most since Bill Clinton's second year in office.

As of this minute, 291 of Obama's judicial nominees have been confirmed to the federal bench -- one more than Reagan at this point in his sixth year, 37 more than W. Bush, and just seven fewer than Clinton. If, however, the 12 pending nominees are approved this week, Obama will be outpacing them all.

Brookings' Russell Wheeler told the AP that Obama and the Democratic-led Senate have "changed the face of the judiciary."

The rest of the AP article makes clear just how true that is:

Of Obama’s judges confirmed so far, 42 percent have been women, 19 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic, the White House said. That exceeded the percentages of his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Clinton, the White House said.

Another measure of Obama’s impact is on federal appeals courts, which have enormous influence on their regions of the country and can be conduits for cases to reach the Supreme Court. When he took office, 10 of the 13 appeals courts had more judges appointed by Republican than Democratic presidents. Now the balance has switched, with Democratic-appointed majorities on nine of the courts.

Most significantly, that includes the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, considered the nation’s second-most powerful court because its jurisdiction includes actions by the White House and federal agencies.

Of course, for the White House, Senate Democrats, or anyone else who wants to see the courts move in a more progressive direction, the good news is poised to come to a screeching halt. Dems have controlled the Senate for each of the last eight years – and for all of the Obama presidency – which generally made it possible to advance many of the White House’s preferred jurists. A Republican-led Senate begins next month, at which point, the confirmation process will slow to crawl, if not a complete stop.

In the meantime, though, this is the part of a president’s legacy that will matter long after he or she has left office.

Rand Paul Votes to Let the NSA Take Naked Pictures of You

We have a variation on the old Stupid or Evil question: Does the Tribble-Toupeed One not even realize he is contradicting himself? Or does he think repug primary voters are too stupid to notice all of his weather-vaning and flip-flopping?

Scott Lemiuex at LGM:

Now, yes, yes, unlike most of his Republican colleagues, Paul ostensibly opposed the bill because it wasn’t robust enough. But this makes about as much sense as most heighten-the-contradictions arguments (i.e. none.) This was, to be clear, far from a great bill. But it’s also quite clearly better than anything that’s going to be passed by the next Congress.

SNIP

McConnell strongly opposed this legislation as doing too much to rein in the NSA, and especially with Udall losing the chances of a better bill emerging next year can be safely estimated at 0%. So Paul’s motives for opposing the legislation are irrelevant; he’s a cat’s paw for the Mukasey/Hayden team when the rubber hits the road, and all the showoff filibusters in the world won’t change the fact that he voted for this one too.

Yeah, I Know. Vote for Grimes, Anyway. Polls Open at 6 a.m.

Just keep repeating: "I'm voting against Mitch. I'm voting against Mitch. I'm voting against Mitch."

And you want to be able to bitch about the repug Congress for the next two years, don't you?  If you don't vote, you can't.

Where Debates Go to Die

Once upon a time, the League of Women Voters operated all political debates, and if you were running for office you showed up and followed the rules whether you like them or not.

Now it's just a waste of time.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

Kentucky's U.S. Senate candidates each have accepted an invitation to debate each other — just not the same one.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell accepted an offer last month from Louisville's WDRB-TV, a Fox affiliate, to attend a June 21 debate, but Democratic nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes did not mention WDRB in a letter she sent McConnell on Thursday outlining her criteria for debating.

In the letter, Grimes said she had accepted an invitation for an Oct. 13 debate from KET, and she hoped McConnell would join her. 

 Grimes said Kentuckians should "have a full opportunity to hear our viewpoints and understand the real differences in our visions for the future of the state." But, she said, "there are a few criteria for these debates where we disagree."

KET is the Kentucky public television station, and in reality world its political credibility stands light years ahead of the Fox affiliate. Not so many years ago, no commercial television station would even have attempted to organize a debate in competition with KET.

But in reality world, the Democratic nominee would be an actual Democratic candidate.

The Rude One's Gotcher Religious Freedom Ratcheer

Of course we all know that when conservatards like Nebraska's Ben Sasse talk about "religious freedom" they really mean "freedom for evangelical rotestant freakazoids only," but that's all the more reason to call them out every time.

 But then...well...just read it: "Ben Sasse believes that our right to the free exercise of religion is co-equal to our right to life. This is not a negotiable issue. Government cannot force citizens to violate their religious beliefs under any circumstances. He will fight for the right of all Americans to act in accordance with their conscience." That's some fucked-up shit right there. Government can't make citizens "violate their religious beliefs"? "Under any circumstances"? Huh.

Dude, the Rude Pundit is starting the Holy Church of Wanton Cock and Pussy where our sacraments include ingesting liquor and Molly and smoking shit-tons of pot while fucking freely on the altar. Don't violate our First Amendment rights, assholes.

To go another way, if Democratic nominee (and there is one) David Domina wanted to really fuck with Sasse, he should put out an ad saying that Sasse supports Shariah law because, well, Sasse kind of said he does. Muslims get to have their religious beliefs held sacrosanct against the government, too.
 

Don't forget the Church of Free, On-Demand Abortions and the Church of Full Employment With a $20 Minimum Wage, and the Church of Confiscatory Taxes on the Rich and the Church of Reparations for Slavery and the Church of Everybody Votes and the Church of Corporations Are Unconstitutional and ....