“Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, claims that he has a “smoking gun” email that proves the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama directed funds from settlements away from conservative groups. From Fox News:
“It is not every day in congressional investigations that we find a smoking gun,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Tuesday. “Here, we have it.”
While Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general, the Justice Department allowed prosecutors to strike agreements compelling big companies to give money to outside groups not connected to their cases to meet settlement burdens. Republican lawmakers long have decried those payments as a “slush fund” that boosted liberal groups, and the Trump DOJ ended the practice earlier this year.
An email from July 2014 shows one senior DOJ official discussing a settlement from Citigroup. This person did not want the money to go to conservatives:
“Concerns include: a) not allowing Citi to pick a statewide intermediary like the Pacific Legal Foundation (does conservative property-rights legal services),” the official, whose name is redacted in the email, wrote under the title of “Acting Senior Counselor for Access to Justice.”
The official added that “we are more likely to get the right result from a state bar association affiliated entity.”
The Pacific Legal Foundation responded to the email release Tuesday by telling Fox News it believes “permanent reforms to prevent such abuse are needed.”
“We are flattered that the previous administration would be concerned enough about our success vindicating individual liberty and property rights to prevent settlement funds from making their way to Pacific Legal Foundation,” PLF CEO Steven D. Anderson said in a statement.
On the House floor yesterday, Goodlatte brought up then-Associate Attorney General Tony West because documents contain evidence that his “team went out of its way to exclude conservative groups.” Fox News continued:
“Aiding their political allies was only the half of it,” Goodlatte said. “The evidence of the Obama DOJ’s abuse of power shows that Tony West’s team went out of its way to exclude conservative groups.”
The documents indicate West played an active role in helping certain organizations obtain settlement information.”
And this article at First Things ties in nicely with our conversation yesterday about Bush and Reagan. My only quibble with the article is that he dates ‘Bushism’ back 16 years when it’s really more like 30. The whole thing is good, but here are a few selections:
We are trapped in a terrible loop. The arrogance, insularity, and solidarity of the elites empowers charlatans and fools. The elites then use the provocations of the populists as an excuse to avoid thinking about (or even admitting) their own errors. It is only getting worse.
An example can be seen in George W. Bush’s recent speech, which was widely read as critical of President Trump. Reihan Salam has already taken the speech apart, but one element sticks out. Bush talked about “the return of isolationist sentiments.”
Let’s start with a rule of thumb: As long as American special forces troops are being killed conducting operations in Niger, isolationism is low on the list of immediate threats. Donald Trump has many vices, but he doesn’t have Ron Paul’s vices…….
…..Look what Steve Bannon has to put up with in order to challenge incumbent senators. There are kooks like Roy Moore and other bizarre choices, such as Erik Prince of the Blackwater mercenary outfit. Someone on social media suggested running Pennywise the Clown to primary Susan Collins in Maine. If that were possible, it would probably happen.
In a sane and more socially integrated America, such odd insurgents would be taken as a sign that our political elites are missing something and should be trying to change responsibly. That’s not happening. The response of the Republican elites is to take these challenges as an excuse not to change. You see, they were going to do some rethinking—but then Donald Trump or Roy Moore or some idiot on Twitter said something mean about John McCain or George Bush or whomever, and now it is our moral responsibility to stop thinking and close ranks for the sake of basic decency.
The second response of the Republican elites is to look for the next pretty face that will distract the electorate from their discontent with the conventional GOP’s errors of the last sixteen years. It was Marco Rubio for a while, and then it was Ben Sasse. …….
…..But the problem isn’t with the personalities or resumes of the candidates, as such. Those are all fine. The problem is that what conventional Republicans are offering is unpopular. Our Republican elites offer Baskin-Robbins Bushism. You can have any skin tone, ethnicity, or gender you want, as long as it is all Bushism. The problem is that the voters don’t want Bushism in any vessel, and they really don’t want the post-Bush GOP’s obsession with cutting taxes almost exclusively on high earners.
On the day he announced he was not running for reelection, Senator Jeff Flake said that he hopes the Trumpist “fever will break.” Flake is misunderstanding the malady. The fever—the success of strange candidates like Trump and Moore—is only a symptom. The infection is a Republican elite, exemplified by Jeff Flake himself, that is obdurately committed to an economic agenda the public doesn’t want.
The public will not suddenly wake up and support tax cuts for high earners and Social Security cuts for themselves. The public will not suddenly wake up and support a massive increase in low-skill immigration. Either the Republican Party will embrace a reasonable and responsible populism, or the patient will die.
David Brooks puts forth a theory that Trumpism has now replaced Biblical values. The part of the story that caught my eye was an aside that the Republican Senators thought Trump’s speech was so incoherent the other day that they thought he had Alzheimer’s, then they gave him a standing ovation.
“On the day he announced he was not running for reelection, Senator Jeff Flake said that he hopes the Trumpist “fever will break.” Flake is misunderstanding the malady. The fever—the success of strange candidates like Trump and Moore—is only a symptom. The infection is a Republican elite, exemplified by Jeff Flake himself, that is obdurately committed to an economic agenda the public doesn’t want.”
——————————–
Exactly. They built this. And Trump is winning the argument against the elites of the party in the only area that matters. With voters.
“Traditional Republicans fancying the cracks in their party as an opening to primary President Trump in 2020 need to deal with one inconvenient fact: Republican voters aren’t interested.
The brawl for dominance in the Republican Party is certainly remarkable. Former President George W. Bush; Ohio Gov. John Kasich; the chairmen of two top Senate committees; and now Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; all have sharply rebuked Trump, questioning his fitness, integrity, and moral authority.
But their resistance, though hardly isolated, is missing one crucial element: a significant measure of enthusiasm from Republican voters. That’s a weak foundation from which to pursue a challenge to the renomination of a sitting president.
“You’ve got to understand the turf you’re fighting on,” said Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm.
“Some of the members [of Congress] who’ve been picking petty battles with the president have done it on issues that aren’t really things that our voters are with them on,” Stivers added. “That matters.”
In Arizona, Flake was essentially forced into retirement because his opposition to Trump was rejected. The senator didn’t endorse the president in 2016, raising the volume on his concerns about Trump’s leadership since the inauguration. It soured his relationship with Republican voters and didn’t to anything to help his general election prospects, either.
Nationally, Trump has maintained his standing with Republican voters through myriad controversies and legislative failures, receiving a job approval rating of anywhere from the mid-80s to low 90s. Contrast that with his dismal, average national approval rating of around 40 percent.
That is attributable partly to anger at Washington and disgust with Congress. But there also appears to be a disconnect between the traditional wing of the Republican Party and the GOP voting coalition, and how each views Trump.”
It gets much worse for my crowd. Only two percent of Core Conservatives are strongly opposed to Trump.
Here’s the key # in Pew poll of 5000 respondents. That top group – ‘Core Conservatives’ – represents 43% of all politically active GOPers pic.twitter.com/WnItrqLare
That means 2 out of every 1000 people in America think like me and my family. My goodness! I can name them all. Williamson, Will, Charen, Goldberg, Shapiro, Kristol, Stephens, Krauthammer, Matt Walsh, my pastor and the church staff, a few young people I have taught, a former pastor and my family. I almost forgot ..most of the Republicans in Congress. They are going to have to retire or keep giving standing ovations to a man they think has a brain disease.
I am going to watch a lot of basketball.
I realize I live in a “unique” area of Alabama, but I haven’t seen the first political sign for Roy Moore and I do not personally know anyone that admits to planning to vote for him.
I am voting for Doug Jones.
Here is the other thing. Moore signs and Trump signs are like pink flamingos. People don’t want to advertise such leanings, just as they don’t want to be called “Trumpkins”.
Debra @8:01 Good link and good comments! You can push it back more than 30 years. The Bushes are much like Nixon and Dewey. Reagan was that bright and shining exception of conservative government bringing an Indian Summer of American Greatness which quickly regressed into more Bushism, typical Democrat socialism and then Trump idiocy. Your new book will confirm the first part of that statement.
Kim, I’m curious as to whether you see many Doug Jones signs.
Ricky, even I didn’t put up a Trump sign. Nor do I have a Trump bumper sticker. Don’t want my house or car targeted for vandalism, not at this stage of the game anyway. And yes, it’s come to that.
I do not begrudge anyone their bubble. Life is short, and we must be satisfied with the blessings God grants, knowing that they are sufficient. :–)
“The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.
The Fusion GPS saga isn’t over. The Clinton-DNC funding is but a first glimpse into the shady election doings concealed within that oppo-research firm’s walls. We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele ? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
The answers are in Fusion’s bank records. Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?
Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records. The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning.
If the House wins, don’t be surprised if those records include money connected to Russians. In the past Fusion has worked with Russians, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who happened to show up last year in Donald Trump Jr.’s office.
FBI bombshells are also yet to come. The bureau has stonewalled congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dossier, but that became harder with the DNC-Clinton news. On Thursday Speaker Paul Ryan announced the FBI had finally pledged to turn over its dossier file next week.”
Kim, I talked to my sister yesterday, and she is very enthusiastic about a Moore candidacy, and she said something about being present at his “trial.” I admit I hardly follow news these days, but what is Moore disliked for? (I’m not defending him, just asking because I don’t know.) My sister’s take is that he defended Alabama’s right to say “no” to same-sex marriage and that putting him in the Senate will make Alabama’s position clear to the U.S. (I took it that she expected him to win, or at least had a strong hope and likelihood that he would, not that she was saying “Too bad he won’t win.”)
Oh please. Those who make the most pay the most. Do you really want to be taxing people who can hardly pay their electric bills as it is? If you’re among the top 20% in earnings you should be thankful that you have sufficient to pay your taxes, not bellyaching that you’re unappreciated. Most of the money is congregated in too few hands anyway. I believe it was Forbes that put out an article not too long ago saying that 82 people (most of them Americans) own over 50% of the world’s resources. Everyone should be good stewards of their resources, and those who have an abundance should be thankful for the political and economic stability that allows them to be on top. And stop carping about their taxes.
The BIGGEST thing is Moore will make Alabama even more of a laughing stock than we already are.
He called American Indians and Asians “red and yellow”. Yes, I know it is from Jesus Loves the Little Children…but really????? You just can’t do that these days
Like it or not, his opposition and opinion on gay people. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay Marriage and it wasn’t up to him to oppose it. It was the law of the land and he used it to grand stand.
Blaming 9/11 on God punishing American
Installing the Ten Comments and refusing to follow a court order to remove them.
BRANDISHING A GUN AT A CAMPAIGN EVENT!!!! What if the dang thing had been loaded and his dumb butt shot someone?
Luther Strange was bad enough. He had the stink of the Luv Guv on him, but I could have held my nose and voted for him. I cannot in good conscious vote for Roy Moore.
It is bad enough that people deduct 50-60 points from my IQ when they find out I am from Alabama already, I just can’t give them any more ammunition.
We have always had gay people in the South, we just preferred to call them “eccentric” and if you scan through the literature, they wrote some great stuff.
I can’t say how many Doug Jones signs I have seen but the key is that I see them. I don’t see any for Roy Moore.
After he was ousted from the bench the first time, Moore tried to get into politics. He ran for governor in 2006, but lost in the Republican primary to incumbent Gov. Bob Riley. He ran and lost again in 2010, this time coming in fourth place in the Republican primary.
He reportedly considered a presidential run 2011, but then opted to run for his old office as chief justice. Though he won his second run for chief justice, many top Republicans in the state chose to back his Democratic opponent.
“In Alabama, McConnell decided he needed to prop up Luther Strange. Strange is a corrupt former Alabama Attorney General whose appointment to the Senate came shortly after convincing the Alabama legislature to hold off impeaching the state’s corrupt governor. But Strange, despite a late in campaign life conversion to an anti-McConnell position, was a reliable McConnell vote and everyone knew it.
Mo Brooks was the most reasonable alternative to Strange and far less embarrassing than Moore. McConnell knew it and gambled that if his allies destroyed Brooks in the primary, they could finish off Moore in the runoff. So Strange, McConnell’s leadership PAC, and all the outside forces who back McConnell poured resources into Alabama to savage Mo Brooks. And once they were successful they declared that they would go so far as to find a challenger to Mo Brooks in the House.
The result?
Roy Moore curb stomped Luther Strange and is now the Republican nominee. This is typical of McConnell. Remember, the GOP came within two points of winning Colorado’s Senate senate in 2010, but the GOP nominee, Ken Buck, was backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund. So McConnell redirected money to California to help Carly Fiorina who lost by even more than Buck.
If Donald Trump is a symptom of a disease, Mitch McConnell is what the virus looks like under the microscope. Much of what ails the GOP right now is because of the repeated betrayals by McConnell and his apologists in conservative media blaming everyone else but him.
So now they get what they deserve — Roy Moore. They could have learned their lesson with Trump. But many of the very same people now horrified by the advance of Roy Moore were in bed with Trump to stop Ted Cruz.
If they won’t learn, they can and should have Moore. He is, if you will, the parental equivalent of catching your kid smoking then making your kid smoke a pack of cigarettes in one sitting to ensure they never do it again. If Senate Republicans will not finally do something about McConnell and if the conservative press in DC keeps rewriting history to protect him, I want even more Roy Moores.”
Kim, you say, “The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay Marriage and it wasn’t up to him to oppose it. It was the law of the land and he used it to grand stand.” Now, you see Alabama news and I don’t–Moore hasn’t been on my radar since the Ten Commandment cases, and I recall little of that. (My sister said he was displaying them in his own court room, and I don’t see how that can possibly be a problem, but it seemed to me there was also some kind of public monument he was fighting for, but that could have been someone else.) This is an honest question, but how is his argument different from “states’ rights”–yes, the federal government said this, but it’s none of their business? (That was what my sister was figuring he was saying, but I don’t follow Alabama news, and I have no idea if he had any legal ground or not.)
Ricky, people sitting in the top 20% of all wage earners in the country and still complaining about taxes is pretty much the definition of unappreciative. ;–)
He was ordered to remove the 10 Commandments but the State and he refused. He dragged us through the mud. States Rights disappeared sometime around 1864-1865. The solution to “gay marriage” is a civil service that is recognized by the government and a Rite of Christian Marriage recognized by the church. It is done in Europe.
Roy Moore is a buffoon.
You’re welcome again. For our military, medical care for Dems and Trumpkins, subsidized education for Dems and Trumpsters, food stamps, subsidized housing and drugs for Dems and Trumpers, your earned income credit (your tax refund in excess of what you paid in), your share of interest on the national debt, homeland security, the national parks. You’re welcome again from all of your “unappreciative” benefactors.
Debra, why does making a whole lot of money automatically mean that the government can take all it wants? What if you had your own plans for your money (business plans, charitable plans, even wasteful plans)?
It seems to me that if the government needs more than 10% of anyone’s income, then it is the government that is overspending, not the person whose money it is. Now, if the person got the gain unjustly, that’s a whole different issue. But “He makes too much money–let’s take it away in taxes” is not good, or moral, reasoning.
Wandering Views 
Everyone was colluding with Russia.
Except for Trump.
https://youtu.be/b3eJJvB6dNE
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Aiding their political allies was only part of the scam.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/10/goodlatte-smoking-gun-emails-prove-obamas-doj-moved-settlements-away-from-conservative-groups/
“Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, claims that he has a “smoking gun” email that proves the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama directed funds from settlements away from conservative groups. From Fox News:
“It is not every day in congressional investigations that we find a smoking gun,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Tuesday. “Here, we have it.”
While Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general, the Justice Department allowed prosecutors to strike agreements compelling big companies to give money to outside groups not connected to their cases to meet settlement burdens. Republican lawmakers long have decried those payments as a “slush fund” that boosted liberal groups, and the Trump DOJ ended the practice earlier this year.
An email from July 2014 shows one senior DOJ official discussing a settlement from Citigroup. This person did not want the money to go to conservatives:
“Concerns include: a) not allowing Citi to pick a statewide intermediary like the Pacific Legal Foundation (does conservative property-rights legal services),” the official, whose name is redacted in the email, wrote under the title of “Acting Senior Counselor for Access to Justice.”
The official added that “we are more likely to get the right result from a state bar association affiliated entity.”
The Pacific Legal Foundation responded to the email release Tuesday by telling Fox News it believes “permanent reforms to prevent such abuse are needed.”
“We are flattered that the previous administration would be concerned enough about our success vindicating individual liberty and property rights to prevent settlement funds from making their way to Pacific Legal Foundation,” PLF CEO Steven D. Anderson said in a statement.
On the House floor yesterday, Goodlatte brought up then-Associate Attorney General Tony West because documents contain evidence that his “team went out of its way to exclude conservative groups.” Fox News continued:
“Aiding their political allies was only the half of it,” Goodlatte said. “The evidence of the Obama DOJ’s abuse of power shows that Tony West’s team went out of its way to exclude conservative groups.”
The documents indicate West played an active role in helping certain organizations obtain settlement information.”
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Victor David Hanson on California’s future. It’s long, but worth the time.
https://youtu.be/7n-xhFLkgiE
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And this article at First Things ties in nicely with our conversation yesterday about Bush and Reagan. My only quibble with the article is that he dates ‘Bushism’ back 16 years when it’s really more like 30. The whole thing is good, but here are a few selections:
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David Brooks puts forth a theory that Trumpism has now replaced Biblical values. The part of the story that caught my eye was an aside that the Republican Senators thought Trump’s speech was so incoherent the other day that they thought he had Alzheimer’s, then they gave him a standing ovation.
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“On the day he announced he was not running for reelection, Senator Jeff Flake said that he hopes the Trumpist “fever will break.” Flake is misunderstanding the malady. The fever—the success of strange candidates like Trump and Moore—is only a symptom. The infection is a Republican elite, exemplified by Jeff Flake himself, that is obdurately committed to an economic agenda the public doesn’t want.”
——————————–
Exactly. They built this. And Trump is winning the argument against the elites of the party in the only area that matters. With voters.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-has-won-the-civil-war-where-it-counts-with-voters/article/2638654
“Traditional Republicans fancying the cracks in their party as an opening to primary President Trump in 2020 need to deal with one inconvenient fact: Republican voters aren’t interested.
The brawl for dominance in the Republican Party is certainly remarkable. Former President George W. Bush; Ohio Gov. John Kasich; the chairmen of two top Senate committees; and now Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; all have sharply rebuked Trump, questioning his fitness, integrity, and moral authority.
But their resistance, though hardly isolated, is missing one crucial element: a significant measure of enthusiasm from Republican voters. That’s a weak foundation from which to pursue a challenge to the renomination of a sitting president.
“You’ve got to understand the turf you’re fighting on,” said Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm.
“Some of the members [of Congress] who’ve been picking petty battles with the president have done it on issues that aren’t really things that our voters are with them on,” Stivers added. “That matters.”
In Arizona, Flake was essentially forced into retirement because his opposition to Trump was rejected. The senator didn’t endorse the president in 2016, raising the volume on his concerns about Trump’s leadership since the inauguration. It soured his relationship with Republican voters and didn’t to anything to help his general election prospects, either.
Nationally, Trump has maintained his standing with Republican voters through myriad controversies and legislative failures, receiving a job approval rating of anywhere from the mid-80s to low 90s. Contrast that with his dismal, average national approval rating of around 40 percent.
That is attributable partly to anger at Washington and disgust with Congress. But there also appears to be a disconnect between the traditional wing of the Republican Party and the GOP voting coalition, and how each views Trump.”
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This poll was astounding. Core conservatives (like my wife and me) are now 13% of the population. Debra, The Country First Conservatives are 6%.
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It gets much worse for my crowd. Only two percent of Core Conservatives are strongly opposed to Trump.
That means 2 out of every 1000 people in America think like me and my family. My goodness! I can name them all. Williamson, Will, Charen, Goldberg, Shapiro, Kristol, Stephens, Krauthammer, Matt Walsh, my pastor and the church staff, a few young people I have taught, a former pastor and my family. I almost forgot ..most of the Republicans in Congress. They are going to have to retire or keep giving standing ovations to a man they think has a brain disease.
I am going to watch a lot of basketball.
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I realize I live in a “unique” area of Alabama, but I haven’t seen the first political sign for Roy Moore and I do not personally know anyone that admits to planning to vote for him.
I am voting for Doug Jones.
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Kim, I live in a special part of Texas. It’s where the 2% of the 13% live. Debra and Charles Murray refer to our homes as “bubbles”.
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Here is the other thing. Moore signs and Trump signs are like pink flamingos. People don’t want to advertise such leanings, just as they don’t want to be called “Trumpkins”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra @8:01 Good link and good comments! You can push it back more than 30 years. The Bushes are much like Nixon and Dewey. Reagan was that bright and shining exception of conservative government bringing an Indian Summer of American Greatness which quickly regressed into more Bushism, typical Democrat socialism and then Trump idiocy. Your new book will confirm the first part of that statement.
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Kim, I’m curious as to whether you see many Doug Jones signs.
Ricky, even I didn’t put up a Trump sign. Nor do I have a Trump bumper sticker. Don’t want my house or car targeted for vandalism, not at this stage of the game anyway. And yes, it’s come to that.
I do not begrudge anyone their bubble. Life is short, and we must be satisfied with the blessings God grants, knowing that they are sufficient. :–)
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They took the 5th, so a subpoena of Fusion GPS’s banking records is appropriate. I hope they insist rather than take their piece offering. .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-russia-bombshells-1509059214#comments_sector
“The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.
The Fusion GPS saga isn’t over. The Clinton-DNC funding is but a first glimpse into the shady election doings concealed within that oppo-research firm’s walls. We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele ? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?
The answers are in Fusion’s bank records. Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?
Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records. The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning.
If the House wins, don’t be surprised if those records include money connected to Russians. In the past Fusion has worked with Russians, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who happened to show up last year in Donald Trump Jr.’s office.
FBI bombshells are also yet to come. The bureau has stonewalled congressional subpoenas for documents related to the dossier, but that became harder with the DNC-Clinton news. On Thursday Speaker Paul Ryan announced the FBI had finally pledged to turn over its dossier file next week.”
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Kim, I talked to my sister yesterday, and she is very enthusiastic about a Moore candidacy, and she said something about being present at his “trial.” I admit I hardly follow news these days, but what is Moore disliked for? (I’m not defending him, just asking because I don’t know.) My sister’s take is that he defended Alabama’s right to say “no” to same-sex marriage and that putting him in the Senate will make Alabama’s position clear to the U.S. (I took it that she expected him to win, or at least had a strong hope and likelihood that he would, not that she was saying “Too bad he won’t win.”)
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I guess they probably won’t get many “Thank You” notes.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/omb-top-20-pay-95-of-taxes-middle-class-single-digits/article/2638746
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Oh please. Those who make the most pay the most. Do you really want to be taxing people who can hardly pay their electric bills as it is? If you’re among the top 20% in earnings you should be thankful that you have sufficient to pay your taxes, not bellyaching that you’re unappreciated. Most of the money is congregated in too few hands anyway. I believe it was Forbes that put out an article not too long ago saying that 82 people (most of them Americans) own over 50% of the world’s resources. Everyone should be good stewards of their resources, and those who have an abundance should be thankful for the political and economic stability that allows them to be on top. And stop carping about their taxes.
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The BIGGEST thing is Moore will make Alabama even more of a laughing stock than we already are.
He called American Indians and Asians “red and yellow”. Yes, I know it is from Jesus Loves the Little Children…but really????? You just can’t do that these days
Like it or not, his opposition and opinion on gay people. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay Marriage and it wasn’t up to him to oppose it. It was the law of the land and he used it to grand stand.
Blaming 9/11 on God punishing American
Installing the Ten Comments and refusing to follow a court order to remove them.
BRANDISHING A GUN AT A CAMPAIGN EVENT!!!! What if the dang thing had been loaded and his dumb butt shot someone?
Luther Strange was bad enough. He had the stink of the Luv Guv on him, but I could have held my nose and voted for him. I cannot in good conscious vote for Roy Moore.
It is bad enough that people deduct 50-60 points from my IQ when they find out I am from Alabama already, I just can’t give them any more ammunition.
We have always had gay people in the South, we just preferred to call them “eccentric” and if you scan through the literature, they wrote some great stuff.
I can’t say how many Doug Jones signs I have seen but the key is that I see them. I don’t see any for Roy Moore.
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Oh, and his PEERS removed him from office not once, but TWICE
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5. He’s thought about politics before
After he was ousted from the bench the first time, Moore tried to get into politics. He ran for governor in 2006, but lost in the Republican primary to incumbent Gov. Bob Riley. He ran and lost again in 2010, this time coming in fourth place in the Republican primary.
He reportedly considered a presidential run 2011, but then opted to run for his old office as chief justice. Though he won his second run for chief justice, many top Republicans in the state chose to back his Democratic opponent.
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Debra @ 3:03 You’re welcome.
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My wife: Those Trumpkins are as unappreciative as the Democrats!
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Kim,
Blame the Republican leadership for Moore, just like Trump.
http://theresurgent.com/i-agree-with-jonah-goldberg-about-roy-moore-and-i-want-roy-moore-to-win/
“In Alabama, McConnell decided he needed to prop up Luther Strange. Strange is a corrupt former Alabama Attorney General whose appointment to the Senate came shortly after convincing the Alabama legislature to hold off impeaching the state’s corrupt governor. But Strange, despite a late in campaign life conversion to an anti-McConnell position, was a reliable McConnell vote and everyone knew it.
Mo Brooks was the most reasonable alternative to Strange and far less embarrassing than Moore. McConnell knew it and gambled that if his allies destroyed Brooks in the primary, they could finish off Moore in the runoff. So Strange, McConnell’s leadership PAC, and all the outside forces who back McConnell poured resources into Alabama to savage Mo Brooks. And once they were successful they declared that they would go so far as to find a challenger to Mo Brooks in the House.
The result?
Roy Moore curb stomped Luther Strange and is now the Republican nominee. This is typical of McConnell. Remember, the GOP came within two points of winning Colorado’s Senate senate in 2010, but the GOP nominee, Ken Buck, was backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund. So McConnell redirected money to California to help Carly Fiorina who lost by even more than Buck.
If Donald Trump is a symptom of a disease, Mitch McConnell is what the virus looks like under the microscope. Much of what ails the GOP right now is because of the repeated betrayals by McConnell and his apologists in conservative media blaming everyone else but him.
So now they get what they deserve — Roy Moore. They could have learned their lesson with Trump. But many of the very same people now horrified by the advance of Roy Moore were in bed with Trump to stop Ted Cruz.
If they won’t learn, they can and should have Moore. He is, if you will, the parental equivalent of catching your kid smoking then making your kid smoke a pack of cigarettes in one sitting to ensure they never do it again. If Senate Republicans will not finally do something about McConnell and if the conservative press in DC keeps rewriting history to protect him, I want even more Roy Moores.”
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Kim, you say, “The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay Marriage and it wasn’t up to him to oppose it. It was the law of the land and he used it to grand stand.” Now, you see Alabama news and I don’t–Moore hasn’t been on my radar since the Ten Commandment cases, and I recall little of that. (My sister said he was displaying them in his own court room, and I don’t see how that can possibly be a problem, but it seemed to me there was also some kind of public monument he was fighting for, but that could have been someone else.) This is an honest question, but how is his argument different from “states’ rights”–yes, the federal government said this, but it’s none of their business? (That was what my sister was figuring he was saying, but I don’t follow Alabama news, and I have no idea if he had any legal ground or not.)
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Weird But True: If You Put Your Ear Up To The New Joel Osteen Book, You Can Hear Dozens Of Tortured Bible Verses Screaming In Pain
http://babylonbee.com/news/weird-true-put-ear-new-joel-osteen-book-can-hear-dozens-tortured-bible-verses-screaming-pain/
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Our state’s new 12-cent per gallon gas tax kicks in on Nov. 1
We can hardly wait.
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Ricky, people sitting in the top 20% of all wage earners in the country and still complaining about taxes is pretty much the definition of unappreciative. ;–)
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DJ, well at least it’s not targeted at the nation’s overburdened top 20 %. :–)
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He was ordered to remove the 10 Commandments but the State and he refused. He dragged us through the mud. States Rights disappeared sometime around 1864-1865. The solution to “gay marriage” is a civil service that is recognized by the government and a Rite of Christian Marriage recognized by the church. It is done in Europe.
Roy Moore is a buffoon.
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You’re welcome again. For our military, medical care for Dems and Trumpkins, subsidized education for Dems and Trumpsters, food stamps, subsidized housing and drugs for Dems and Trumpers, your earned income credit (your tax refund in excess of what you paid in), your share of interest on the national debt, homeland security, the national parks. You’re welcome again from all of your “unappreciative” benefactors.
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CAMPAIGNS ON ANTI-VACUUM PLATFORM
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Debra, why does making a whole lot of money automatically mean that the government can take all it wants? What if you had your own plans for your money (business plans, charitable plans, even wasteful plans)?
It seems to me that if the government needs more than 10% of anyone’s income, then it is the government that is overspending, not the person whose money it is. Now, if the person got the gain unjustly, that’s a whole different issue. But “He makes too much money–let’s take it away in taxes” is not good, or moral, reasoning.
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