RecPit

Former New York congressman Michael Grimm is a felon who has admitted to hiring undocumented workers, hiding $900,000 from tax authorities and making false statements under oath. To hear him tell it, that’s a reason Staten Island Republicans should vote him back into office.

“It’s almost identical to what the president has been going through,” Grimm says of the federal investigation that led to his imprisonment. “It’s not an accident that under the Obama administration, the Justice Department was used politically. And that is all starting to come out.”

Grimm has uncovered a new reality in the constantly changing world of Republican politics: Criminal convictions, once seen as career-enders, are no longer disqualifying. In the era of President Trump, even time spent in prison can be turned into a positive talking point, demonstrating a candidate’s battle scars in a broader fight against what he perceives as liberal corruption.
[....]
Grimm says only some convicted criminals have a justification to run in a Republican primary.

“You can’t say a guy that was an ax murderer can use this,” he said. “It has to be that you only were criminalized because of the politicization of the Justice Department.”

nobby wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 6:49 pm The big questions:

1) Will the country and the planet survive 2 more years of this shit, and...

2) When Dems take over the WH and Senate in 2020, will this mess be something that can be fixed? The usual deal is Яape-ubliKKKriminal$ do everything they can to rape the country and the world and Democrats get into power and fix things somewhat but we won't know until 2020 whether or not they are permanently broken. Unfortunately you can't put the world out on the curb and order a new one.

The bad news is that Rape-ubliKKKans$$ have been legalizing white collar crime*, corruption and voter suppression just as fast as they can for the past 2 years with Trump as their mindless rubber stamp. The KKKon$$eЯvative Supreme Court didn't wait for Trump to be elected to start legalizing voter suppression but now they have 2 more KKKon$$eЯvative KKKЯi$$tian Justices to criminalize abortion, etc.
Also they will be appointing judges as fast as they can but judges don't always go along with their agenda. I'm also pretty sure judges can't be convicted criminals unlike Republican nominees. And Trump can still wreak havoc with Executive Orders.

The good news is that the House can block any new legislation that originates in the Senate. Of course, the Senate can block any bill that originates in the House, but gridlock in this case is a blessed relief.

Sound about right so far?

Bob Olhsson wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 9:32 pm Nixon, Reagan and now cryBaby drrumpfh commited treason in order to get elected. You need to consider why would somebody risk that?

The ONLY reasonable answer is corruption!

nobby wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 6:55 pm In case my ranting makes me look like some hyperventilating, hyperbolic, paranoid nut, this is the current reality in the USA:

Former New York congressman Michael Grimm is a felon who has admitted to hiring undocumented workers, hiding $900,000 from tax authorities and making false statements under oath. To hear him tell it, that’s a reason Staten Island Republicans should vote him back into office.

“It’s almost identical to what the president has been going through,” Grimm says of the federal investigation that led to his imprisonment. “It’s not an accident that under the Obama administration, the Justice Department was used politically. And that is all starting to come out.”

Grimm has uncovered a new reality in the constantly changing world of Republican politics: Criminal convictions, once seen as career-enders, are no longer disqualifying. In the era of President Trump, even time spent in prison can be turned into a positive talking point, demonstrating a candidate’s battle scars in a broader fight against what he perceives as liberal corruption.
[....]
Grimm says only some convicted criminals have a justification to run in a Republican primary.

“You can’t say a guy that was an ax murderer can use this,” he said. “It has to be that you only were criminalized because of the politicization of the Justice Department.”

So if you're a convicted axe murderer, apparently that's disqualifying for a ЯepubliKKKan congressman. Anything less than that and you're golden as long as your constituents are too fucking stupid to know not to vote for you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpos ... 81fd2480a3

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 2nd, 2018, 10:36 pm

nobby wrote: ↑November 30th, 2018, 6:49 pm The big questions:

1) Will the country and the planet survive 2 more years of this shit, and...

2) When Dems take over the WH and Senate in 2020, will this mess be something that can be fixed? The usual deal is Яape-ubliKKKriminal$ do everything they can to rape the country and the world and Democrats get into power and fix things somewhat but we won't know until 2020 whether or not they are permanently broken. Unfortunately you can't put the world out on the curb and order a new one.

The bad news is that Rape-ubliKKKans$$ have been legalizing white collar crime*, corruption and voter suppression just as fast as they can for the past 2 years with Trump as their mindless rubber stamp. The KKKon$$eЯvative Supreme Court didn't wait for Trump to be elected to start legalizing voter suppression but now they have 2 more KKKon$$eЯvative KKKЯi$$tian Justices to criminalize abortion, etc.
Also they will be appointing judges as fast as they can but judges don't always go along with their agenda. I'm also pretty sure judges can't be convicted criminals unlike Republican nominees. And Trump can still wreak havoc with Executive Orders.

The good news is that the House can block any new legislation that originates in the Senate. Of course, the Senate can block any bill that originates in the House, but gridlock in this case is a blessed relief.

Sound about right so far?

Not really. Gridlock is a bad thing any way you slice it (the only thing worse is full control by the opposition)

Full control by the opposition is more than a little bit worse.

- what we need is control of the Senate and over the top, inflammatory ravings will not get us there - in fact you're playing right into their hands.

BTW, all the superfluous "K"s and "$"s and backwards "R"s (how do you do that?) make your writing very difficult to read

nobby wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 3:39 am

P.S. There are only about 3 people reading this thread so your fears that my post will ruin our country are overblown.

weedywet wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 4:20 pm I keep reading some version of : “don’t call the Nazis ‘nazis’ or ‘racists’ or ‘antisemites’ or ‘criminals’ because then you’ll never “win over” their supporters.

It should go without saying that that’s idiotic.

But it somehow doesn’t.

Bob Olhsson wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 7:26 pm Winning over "their" supporters will require a great deal of education over a period of years if not decades. They need to be taught why there is nothing to fear but being sold fear by a despot, aka "fear itself."

Most of these people's grandparents supported Roosevelt except for the uber-rich who were pro-Hitler prior to Pearl Harbor. When I was a kid in Michigan, people in my mother's family were just as anti-hillbilly as anti-colored. If you didn't own a home, you were considered to be "trash."

I posted this before but I'll repeat: the folks who inherited great wealth see two ways to prevent a labor revolution that could cost them their privilege. One is buying off labor with socialism and the other is oppressing labor with fascism. Republicans have been trying to replace socialism with fascism since Franklin Roosevelt was elected.

Racism is the most common excuse given to Christians for oppression.

weedywet wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 4:23 pm For years we’ve been saying that Republiklans in Congress aren’t “doing their jobs” of oversight and consent.
And that’s true.

But that’s why it’s at LEAST equally important to expect Democrats to do that JOB, when they have the House now, whether people think it’s politically expedient or not.

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 8:19 pm I never said anything remotely like that. There's a difference between calling something by its rightful name and behaving like a 3rd grader to anyone who just might have a more responsible viewpoint that your own. One which might actually work

nobby wrote: ↑December 4th, 2018, 12:21 am

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2018, 8:19 pm I never said anything remotely like that. There's a difference between calling something by its rightful name and behaving like a 3rd grader to anyone who just might have a more responsible viewpoint that your own. One which might actually work

When did that happen on this thread?

Put up, or shut up.

The usual deal is Яape-ubliKKKriminal$ do everything

bad news is that Rape-ubliKKKans$$ have been

The KKKon$$eЯvative Supreme Court

they have 2 more KKKon$$eЯvative KKKЯi$$tian Justices

KKKon$$eЯvative KKKЯi$$tian Justices

your utterly clueless patronizing attitude, you fucking overweening asshole.

Fuck you, you goddamned asshole and be thankful for the 2000 miles between my fist and your face.

weedywet wrote: ↑December 4th, 2018, 3:01 am Speaking of juvenile, what's juvenile is thinking you’re going to have some sort of sensible ‘self defense’ shoot out at the ok corral with those armed nazis etc.

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 4th, 2018, 9:08 pm
You're just venting, and not very coherently at times.

THAT'S not a winning strategy.

It's also a major problem with the current Democratic party, unfortunately.

You don't change people's minds by ranting at them.

weedywet wrote: ↑December 5th, 2018, 12:24 am Democrats just won 40 House seats.

And one might add that Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump (and that’s even WITH all the voter disenfranchisement and intimidation they could muster).

They have a “winning strategy” in terms of policy.
(Including reasonable fun control and universal healthcare).

What they need is better policy to address voter suppression in key electoral States and to meaningfully address Russian meddling.

The idea that they need to move right (or to the imaginary “center”) is simply nonsense.

It’s not 1990.

nobby wrote: ↑December 5th, 2018, 6:37 pm

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 4th, 2018, 9:08 pm
You're just venting, and not very coherently at times.

THAT'S not a winning strategy.

It's also a major problem with the current Democratic party, unfortunately.

You don't change people's minds by ranting at them.

I'm not running for office and there are maybe a half dozen people following this thread, things you apparently aren't taking into consideration.
That has everything to do with your utterly offensive patronizing tone which you seem oblivious to, and nothing to do with Democratic politics. And I'm not trying to win you over -- we're on the same side.

You are 3 years older than I am.
Didn't know that, did you? Get with the times, gramps.

While I was a welder for 11 years, at one of the places I worked at, the owners and most of the people in the shop had arranged for a special deer hunting holiday (you have to travel away from Long Island to hunt anything with a gun except for duck). I wasn't into hunting and these guys were drinking while hunting which is an accident waiting to happen, anyway, so I'd use the time to work on my music instead. But these guys saved money by having a freezer full of venison for their families -- I get that.

Actually, they probably didn't break save any money due to travel and lodging costs, but in most places in the country they would have.
But I must not know anything about the common working man or his affinity for guns and hunting because I never lived in Oklahoma, right? And you magically know everything about me.

I actually have a couple of guns but if the gov't wants to kill you, small arms aren't very effective against tanks, artillery and air power.

And most of the guns of military pedigree are in the hands of people on the right and far right. If the gov't turns fascist, they'd be on the gov't's side.

You don't have to take my word for it; do a search on "prepper". Not "preppy", that's something else entirely.

The idea that I'm going to be part of some liberal liberation army would be kind of ludicrous. I do get that taking out a couple of the bastards before they kill you would be preferable to just being rounded up for the gas chamber. But that's about the best you can hope for which is why most people tend to flee conflict if they can.

And it's 2018 and the gov't has unmanned armed drones and bulletproof police robots that can come into your hiding place, guided by heat seeking imagery software and drop a grenade at your feet.

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 5th, 2018, 8:36 pm I'm sorry that you find my tone offensive and patronizing. It's what I get from growing up as an only kid in a house with my father, who was a man who if you asked him the definition of a word was liable to delivery a half-hour lecture on the etymology and history of the word going back to the ancient Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit before getting around to telling you what it meant. He was an extremely intelligent man of very wide interests but anything he explained to you (and he was always explaining things) was going to be in depth. And he didn't suffer fools gladly - he was always getting into intellectual arguments. Of course argument is the favorite sport of rabbis...

Semi-apology semi-accepted.
Your father sounds a lot like mine. He didn't argue for a living as would be the case with a rabbi or lawyer but if you got into an argument with him, you'd never know it.
Fortunately, we had a dictionary so I wasn't usually asking my father the meaning of words and I'd usually look up the etymologies also, being a weird kid.

Ranting? Please. You started this thread knowing that as an older shut-in whose relatives and friends are mostly dead, arguing, maybe even arguing senselessly, beats a lack of human interaction. Or am I the one making baseless assumptions now?

Profanity? Spare me the lecture. I can turn it on or off, as with a switch. I think most people can. Parents avoid cursing in front of the children. Children avoid cursing in front of their parents

One of my facebook friends is a lawyer who curses rather frequently. Why? She's a liberal and she lives in Florida. You would curse too, if it happened to you.

No chance that she curses in court, though.

Ah, I didn't know that.

You shouldn't make assumptions based on what you don't know. I guess you could fault me for being kind of introverted and holding my cards close to the vest, but that's usually the way I roll.

But you should then be sympathetic to my argument that the Democrats MUST stop yapping about gun control in what other people view as wildly radical ways if we are to take back control of the government

That's a generalization. CMIIW but most Democrats want the type of minimal gun control that over 90% of Americans support -- background checks at gun shows, limits on magazine capacity -- that's about it. They also want to make bump stocks illegal but those things are far too easy to jury-rig. And pretty useless with a 10 round capacity mag.

I think there are only a few Democratic lawmakers/ nominees advocating the confiscation of all guns. Agreed that those people should stuff a sock in it. I also don't think far left positions such as housing as a basic human right or confiscating all guns even work as populism.

- which means a majority in the Senate at a bare minimum and a 2/3 majority to be able to pass certain crucial matters - like overriding a presidential veto.

At what point does selling your soul become counterproductive?

Joe Manchin is a "Democrat" but he's so Republican that he voted to confirm Kavanaugh. The Senate was rigged from the start and now a handful of hillbillies in West Virginia (among other red states) have the same voting power as millions of people in California or NY. How far should we sell out in a faustian bargain for the Senate? How is a Democratic Senator who votes Republican on the most important issue of all, a Supreme Court Justice who will be in power for generations to work for the greedy and religious against the vast majority of the American people, leaving aside his lack of judicial qualifications (the only cases he ever tried were cases of beer) and probable guilt of sexual assault and obvious guilt of perjury, any different from a Republican?

A pyrrhic victory is not much of a victory.

How are you going to reach people who don't have access to real news and don't particularly want to hear it? Gomer's pickup truck has only AM radio and the only stations it can pull in are the local religious and/or right wing hate radio stations. Then he goes home and tunes in to Fox News.
How you sculpt the message is irrelevant if you can't deliver the message.

BTW, Maine's a lot closer to Long Island. There aren't many deer in most of Oklahoma. Wild pigs though...

Maine isn't flat and crowded like much of Long Island is. The only places you can legally fire a rifle on Long Island are designated firing ranges. Same for handguns and they make it hard to get a handgun license here.

I don't have any. I keep thinking that if things get more dangerous maybe I should, but I keep spending my free cash on microphones. (Just got a nice pair of C414EBs for a grand - the EBs are generally regarded as the best of the 414s - transformer output, simplest circuit.)

If things become more dangerous, guns and ammo might become unobtanium.

In any case, there are reasons why the military has limits on whom they accept into the service. Can you run? I would probably be telling the enemy to hold their fire while I put on my other pair of glasses.

It's not the formal government forces I'm really worried about right now. If you know anything about the history of the early 20th century you should know that most of the actions against Jews, Leftists, Gypsies, Gays, etc were carried out by civilian gangs (known as "brownshirts") until the Nazi party had subverted the government to the point where the SS could take over. And Trump appears to be following Hitler's playbook as closely as possible.

In a case in which armed groups of thugs are allowed to take over instead of being arrested for their crimes, how are government forces not complicit?

Later, if they start herding people into formal ghettos and then camps I'll worry about official action.

If that starts happening it's likely too late.

Ah, the only hope must be Heroic Hackers! Heroic Hackers to the rescue!

Sooner or later the world will end as a bad science fiction movie.

I'm hoping it will be much, much later. The bad guys have hackers also, BTW.

nobby wrote: ↑December 6th, 2018, 7:13 pm

But you should then be sympathetic to my argument that the Democrats MUST stop yapping about gun control in what other people view as wildly radical ways if we are to take back control of the government

That's a generalization. CMIIW but most Democrats want the type of minimal gun control that over 90% of Americans support -- background checks at gun shows, limits on magazine capacity -- that's about it. They also want to make bump stocks illegal but those things are far too easy to jury-rig. And pretty useless with a 10 round capacity mag.

I think there are only a few Democratic lawmakers/ nominees advocating the confiscation of all guns. Agreed that those people should stuff a sock in it. I also don't think far left positions such as housing as a basic human right or confiscating all guns even work as populism.

- which means a majority in the Senate at a bare minimum and a 2/3 majority to be able to pass certain crucial matters - like overriding a presidential veto.

At what point does selling your soul become counterproductive?

Joe Manchin is a "Democrat" but he's so Republican that he voted to confirm Kavanaugh. The Senate was rigged from the start and now a handful of hillbillies in West Virginia (among other red states) have the same voting power as millions of people in California or NY. How far should we sell out in a faustian bargain for the Senate? How is a Democratic Senator who votes Republican on the most important issue of all, a Supreme Court Justice who will be in power for generations to work for the greedy and religious against the vast majority of the American people, leaving aside his lack of judicial qualifications (the only cases he ever tried were cases of beer) and probable guilt of sexual assault and obvious guilt of perjury, any different from a Republican?

A pyrrhic victory is not much of a victory.

How are you going to reach people who don't have access to real news and don't particularly want to hear it? Gomer's pickup truck has only AM radio and the only stations it can pull in are the local religious and/or right wing hate radio stations. Then he goes home and tunes in to Fox News.
How you sculpt the message is irrelevant if you can't deliver the message.

Most of those "gomers" have pickup trucks with better sound systems and radios that my Prius. I don't think they even make vehicles with only AM and haven't for at least a decade and a half or two.

And you don't have to hand the right wing propagandists ammunition on a silver platter. Which Democrats do every time they make general pronouncements about "gun control", which sounds a lot like "gun suppression". And we don't need ignorant morons yapping about "banning semiautomatic rifles" who are too stupid, blind, and willfully uniformed to understand that the majority of hunting rifles are, in fact, semiautomatic. Not all semiautomatic rifles look like AR-15s and Kalashnikovs. A lot of them don't even have removable clips.

BTW, if the Left has any sense they'd have their media allies start buying up contracts for broadcasting major sports networks. Faux has a lock on that now and it's where a huge percentage of their propaganda power comes from. If you've got them watching your networks for Sports, you've very probably got them watching your news as well. The NFL would be a good start, then MLB.

BTW, Maine's a lot closer to Long Island. There aren't many deer in most of Oklahoma. Wild pigs though...

Maine isn't flat and crowded like much of Long Island is. The only places you can legally fire a rifle on Long Island are designated firing ranges. Same for handguns and they make it hard to get a handgun license here.

I don't have any. I keep thinking that if things get more dangerous maybe I should, but I keep spending my free cash on microphones. (Just got a nice pair of C414EBs for a grand - the EBs are generally regarded as the best of the 414s - transformer output, simplest circuit.)

If things become more dangerous, guns and ammo might become unobtanium.

In any case, there are reasons why the military has limits on whom they accept into the service. Can you run? I would probably be telling the enemy to hold their fire while I put on my other pair of glasses.

It's not the formal government forces I'm really worried about right now. If you know anything about the history of the early 20th century you should know that most of the actions against Jews, Leftists, Gypsies, Gays, etc were carried out by civilian gangs (known as "brownshirts") until the Nazi party had subverted the government to the point where the SS could take over. And Trump appears to be following Hitler's playbook as closely as possible.

In a case in which armed groups of thugs are allowed to take over instead of being arrested for their crimes, how are government forces not complicit?

Later, if they start herding people into formal ghettos and then camps I'll worry about official action.

If that starts happening it's likely too late.

Ah, the only hope must be Heroic Hackers! Heroic Hackers to the rescue!

Sooner or later the world will end as a bad science fiction movie.

I'm hoping it will be much, much later. The bad guys have hackers also, BTW.

John Eppstein wrote: ↑December 6th, 2018, 9:12 pm Ah, but in politics it's often the perception (by the other guy), not your actual position (of the majority on your side) that's important in swaying votes. And having a few high profile people incessantly yapping and making something a major plank in your party position can be very damaging. It can be a deciding factor in major elections.

First, it's the way our government is set up. To change it would take a major constitutional amendment and we'd have a hell of a time getting it ratified.

I'm not advocating that our candidates should be turncoats like Manchin

Taking the Senate would not be a Pyrrhic victory. Taking the Senate is key to winning the war.

The ability to override a Rumpian veto would be neither a "Faustian bargain" not a "Pyrrhic victory". Indeed, it would go a long way toward winning the war.

Impeachment conviction requires a supermajority in the Senate and is the only to to not only get rid of a president, but to get rid of a SCOTUS Justice as well. You want to get rid of The Rapist? We need a Senate Supermajority.

You want to get rid of gerrymandering once and for all? Control of the Senate is key.

Most of those "gomers" have pickup trucks with better sound systems and radios that my Prius. I don't think they even make vehicles with only AM and haven't for at least a decade and a half or two.

And you don't have to hand the right wing propagandists ammunition on a silver platter.

Which Democrats do every time they make general pronouncements about "gun control", which sounds a lot like "gun suppression". And we don't need ignorant morons yapping about "banning semiautomatic rifles" who are too stupid, blind, and willfully uniformed to understand that the majority of hunting rifles are, in fact, semiautomatic.

Not all semiautomatic rifles look like AR-15s and Kalashnikovs. A lot of them don't even have removable clips.

BTW, if the Left has any sense they'd have their media allies start buying up contracts for broadcasting major sports networks.

Complicit? Sure. But there's a big difference between being complicit and actually doing the action.

The reason why that doesn't seem to matter that much to me is that if nobody on the left says anything to inflame the right, the right will just make up lies to that effect and feed them into their well-oiled, high-dollar propaganda machine, which is what they've been doing.
The reason why that doesn't seem to matter that much to me is that if nobody on the left says anything to inflame the right, the right will just make up lies to that effect and feed them into their well-oiled, high-dollar propaganda machine, which is what they've been doing.

.The "birther" thing is just the tip of the iceberg and bending over backwards to try to appease them by making the Democratic platform more racist and ignorant would most likely only result in a racist, ignorant Democratic party.

Should a Democratic candidate for Senate in Mississippi strongly imply that lynching people of color is great because that's what the Republican who won did?

Evangelicals main and often only concern is overturning Roe v. Wade and criminalizing abortion. A Republican candidate with a criminal record as long as your arm can get nominated and elected just by claiming to be anti-abortion.

Are you still a Democrat if you want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

I'm not advocating that our candidates should be turncoats like Manchin

And you don't have to, since that has proven to be a winning strategy in West Virginia.

The ability to override a Rumpian veto would be neither a "Faustian bargain" not a "Pyrrhic victory". Indeed, it would go a long way toward winning the war.

I don't think Trump is going to win re-election, do you? And we don't get a new Senate until 2020, so the ability to override a veto from this "president" (his quotes, not mine ) would be an impossibility.

A Senate Supermajority is about as likely to happen as I am to win the lottery, and since I never buy lottery tickets -- they only occasionally show up on my birthday and Christmas...

You want to get rid of gerrymandering once and for all? Control of the Senate is key.

With the Supreme Court ruling in favor of gerrymandering?

Now the SCOTUS should be even more involved in creating/ sustaining massive voter fraud with the addition of Kavanaugh.

And you don't have to hand the right wing propagandists ammunition on a silver platter.

Right. In fact you don't have to give it to them at all because they will simply fabricate it themselves and their constituents will believe them.