Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

The Trump regime can't stop lying, and tens of millions will believe its every lie because they want to believe.  It's a cargo cult for America, and history tells us at the end of this road there's nothing but mass bloodshed.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders falsely claimed that President Donald Trump has created three times as many jobs for black workers as his predecessor Barack Obama did during his entire time in office.

Sanders asserted at a White House press briefing Tuesday that Trump had tripled Obama’s eight-year job creation record in just 18 months, quoting numbers that are not even close to accurate.

“This president since he took office, in the year and a half that he’s been here has created 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans,” Sanders told reporters Tuesday. “That’s 700,000 African-Americans that are working now that weren’t working when this president took place. When President Obama left, after eight years in office, he had only created 195,000 jobs for African-Americans.”

The claim isn’t true, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Sanders backtracked hours later in a tweet. While the U.S. economy has added about 700,000 jobs held by black workers since Trump took office, it added about 3 million while Obama was in office, according to BLS data.

But it'll make your local news and you FOX-watching uncle will believe it until his dying day.  The regime lies with impunity and will continue to do so until it is deposed.

A Supreme Scandal In West Virginia, Con't

Last week I covered the growing state Supreme Court scandal in West Virginia, where the state House of Delegates, overwhelmingly under GOP control, was moving to impeach the entire state Supreme Court over lavish spending.  This week, the WV House of Delegates made good on their threat and voted to impeach all four remaining justices.

West Virginia lawmakers completed the extraordinary move of impeaching all four state Supreme Court justices Monday night for spending issues, including a suspended justice facing a 23-count federal indictment.

The state House of Delegates voted to impeach Justice Allen Loughry on eight articles, setting the stage for a trial in the state Senate.

Beth Walker became the final justice to be impeached when an article was approved stating all four justices abused their authority. It said they failed to control office expenses, including more than $1 million in renovations to their individual offices, and not maintaining policies over matters such as working lunches and the use of state vehicles and office computers at home.

Walker had dodged impeachment earlier Monday night when lawmakers decided to overlook her $131,000 in spending on office renovations. A short time later, another article was withdrawn against Chief Justice Margaret Workman, who spent $111,000 in renovations.

Justice Robin Davis was impeached for $500,000 in office renovations. And lawmakers approved articles against Loughry for spending $363,000 in renovations to his office; having a $42,000 antique desk and computers, all owned by the state, at his home; lying to the House Finance Committee about taking home the desk and a $32,000 suede leather couch; and for his personal use of state vehicles.

Loughry, Workman and Davis also were impeached for their roles in allowing senior status judges to be paid higher than allowed wages. Lawmakers say the overpayments violated state law and stopped when they were challenged by the Internal Revenue Service.

Another impeachment article was withdrawn dealing with an accusation Loughry used state money to frame personal items at his office.

Minority Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that approved the articles last week had tried to speed up the impeachment process in the hopes of beating an Aug. 14 deadline for arranging a special election in November if any justice is removed from office or leaves office. Instead, the committee took its time, even conducting a tour of the state Supreme Court offices earlier this month.

Republican Gov. Jim Justice will be allowed to appoint new justices to replace any who are impeached — with no requirement that they be from the same party as the incumbent.

 It's that last part that makes this a coup against the judicial in the state.  Still, despite the impeachment vote, at least one justice is retiring now in order to force a special election.

A West Virginia Supreme Court justice has announced her retirement just hours after her impeachment.Justice Robin Davis announced her departure Tuesday at the state Capitol, saying the citizens of West Virginia now “will be afforded their Constitutional right to elect my successor in November.”

That means two of the five justices will be up for special election in November, but it also means Justice can appoint the other three should the Senate trials result in removal from office.

Needless to say, there's a lot going on here, and this is an absolute mess.

The Social(ist) Network

There's a lot of screaming, laughing, and pointing from the right about this latest Gallup poll on Democrats and "socialism".

For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year -- lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

These results are from Gallup interviewing conducted July 30-Aug. 5. Views of socialism among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are particularly important in the current political environment because many observers have claimed the Democratic Party is turning in more of a socialist direction.

Socialist Bernie Sanders competitively challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, and more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a candidate with similar policy views and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District. Several candidates with socialist leanings lost their primary bids in Aug. 7 voting, however, raising doubts about the depth of Democrats' embrace of socialism.

As several people have pointed out, "Socialism" to anyone older than myself means "The failed Soviet states, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and crippling poverty brought on by corrupt Communism" while "Socialism" to anyone younger than myself means "Scandinavia, the European Union, Australia, the UK, Canada, and a government that provides many basic services, the US being the one developed country on Earth that hasn't taken this route."

Right-wing bad faith critics all believe that Democrats want the former and not the latter, conveniently ignoring the fact that Europe and Oceania and our northern neighbor that we share thousands of miles of border with, you know, exist.

But that's how the right rolls, guffawing at the "stupid socialists" (You ever notice how Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is always called "stupid" or "ignorant" by these clowns?)

StupidiNews!