We need to talk about Donald – the Nightmare continues

[Brian Peacock]

Here's an interesting nugget. By 2013 Mitch McConnell had led filibusters of 79 of Obama's court nominees, compared to 68 filibusters against nominees to the federal courts in the entire history of the United States. And his reason? Because he considered nominations to the courts from Obama as "partisan appointments". Yeah. Just that that one sink in for a moment...

[Tero]

Forward to 2020:
"Trump campaigns on replacing Obamacare and making America great this 2nd time."

[Brian Peacock]

I thought this was interesting...

Town halls a lose-lose situation for many Republicans right now (analysis)

For some members of Congress, the unusually strict requirements they've put in place for who can attend their town halls sound more like a trip to the DMV than an invitation to practice democracy. And those are the few lawmakers who have agreed to hold town halls at all while on break from Congress this past week.

The seem to be a direct response to the intense activism springing up across the nation right now, driven mostly - but not completely - by the left of the political spectrum. It's creating some tense moments for Republicans who decide to hold town halls and no-win situations for Republicans who don't.

Caught up in the middle are Americans who feel left out of having their say in this remarkable moment in U.S. politics.s but can't.

Here's a sampling of the rules town hall attendees are being asked to follow:

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa: "Please note that entry will be reserved to constituents of Iowa's 1st District. To verify residency, please RSVP here and bring a photo ID to the town hall. RSVP and photo ID will be required for entry. Information provided during registration must match address on photo ID. . . . No backpacks, signs, banners, or artificial noisemakers will be allowed into the event."

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y.: "The one-hour event will not be a traditional town hall meeting open to any member of the public who wants to stop by. Instead, the television stations will distribute about 100 tickets through an online lottery." (His office says the requirements were put in place by the TV station hosting the event.)

Rep. Thomas Garrett, R-Va.: "You must present a valid state issued I.D. that matches your registration information in order to gain entry to the event. No cheering, clapping, jeering, or signs are allowed at the event. Civil dialogue only, please."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.: She held a town hall in February that was only open to prescreened residents of the town she was in, Fairview, who had reserved seats in advance. At one point, the town's mayor took the event off the city's website because, the mayor told CNN, officials wanted it to be a "low key" "community meeting."

The lawmakers' rationale behind all the new rules: Town halls are being exploited by liberal advocacy groups with national motives.

Garrett's recent 200-ish-person town hall at a church outside Roanoke, for example, was lined with police officers who are investigating "credible" threats to his family.

• I asked Rep Garrett about heavy security presence here. He said he had received specific threats against his life, his wife and even his dog
  -- MaryAlice Parks (@maryaliceparks) May 10, 2017

Other lawmakers have taken note.

"I will not risk public safety to entertain individuals that have no desire to respectfully discuss important issues," Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, told a Dallas Morning News watchdog columnist this week about why he's not holding a town hall nor advertising his office location. "The only complaints received are from members of the obstructionist group - Indivisible."

There's no rule that lawmakers have to hold town halls when they're back in their districts. But for those who do, putting limits on who can attend kind of flies in the face of having one in the first place, said Norm Ornstein, a congressional ethics expert: "Even when you had the conservative outrage over Obamacare, I don't recall anyone trying to preselect attendance. The unwillingness to take criticism or any heat from a legislative decision is really unusual."

A staffer for a Republican representing a solid GOP district, who agreed to speak candidly on condition of anonymity, said anything that's labeled a "town hall" should generally be pretty open to whomever wants to come.

The liberal advocacy group on the receiving end of most of the finger pointing from Republicans, Indivisible, denies orchestrating any protests.

The group, set up by former congressional staffers after President Donald Trump's win, says it provides tools to help people get the attention of their lawmakers - how to ask for a town hall, what questions to ask, how to how to stage "die ins" and other attention-grabbing protests.

"Aside from that, they are out there talking about the things that matter to them and we're not directing to anyone." said Angel Padilla with Indivisible.


Paul Ryan in Wisconsin
Sonette Tippens from the Town of Linn holds a sign in protest of House Speaker Paul Ryan's visit to address high school students Friday, May 12, 2017, at Badger High School in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Ryan said Friday that he chose not to hold town halls while visiting his southeastern Wisconsin congressional district because he doesn't want constituents to be harassed. (Angela Major/The Janesville Gazette via AP) (Angela Major)
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The Washington Post By The Washington Post
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on May 13, 2017 at 1:15 PM, updated May 13, 2017 at 1:16 PM

Proof of residency. Photo ID. Preregister.

For some members of Congress, the unusually strict requirements they've put in place for who can attend their town halls sound more like a trip to the DMV than an invitation to practice democracy. And those are the few lawmakers who have agreed to hold town halls at all while on break from Congress this past week.

The seem to be a direct response to the intense activism springing up across the nation right now, driven mostly - but not completely - by the left of the political spectrum. It's creating some tense moments for Republicans who decide to hold town halls and no-win situations for Republicans who don't.

Caught up in the middle are Americans who feel left out of having their say in this remarkable moment in U.S. politics.s but can't.

Here's a sampling of the rules town hall attendees are being asked to follow:

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa: "Please note that entry will be reserved to constituents of Iowa's 1st District. To verify residency, please RSVP here and bring a photo ID to the town hall. RSVP and photo ID will be required for entry. Information provided during registration must match address on photo ID. . . . No backpacks, signs, banners, or artificial noisemakers will be allowed into the event."

Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y.: "The one-hour event will not be a traditional town hall meeting open to any member of the public who wants to stop by. Instead, the television stations will distribute about 100 tickets through an online lottery." (His office says the requirements were put in place by the TV station hosting the event.)

Rep. Thomas Garrett, R-Va.: "You must present a valid state issued I.D. that matches your registration information in order to gain entry to the event. No cheering, clapping, jeering, or signs are allowed at the event. Civil dialogue only, please."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.: She held a town hall in February that was only open to prescreened residents of the town she was in, Fairview, who had reserved seats in advance. At one point, the town's mayor took the event off the city's website because, the mayor told CNN, officials wanted it to be a "low key" "community meeting."

The lawmakers' rationale behind all the new rules: Town halls are being exploited by liberal advocacy groups with national motives.

Garrett's recent 200-ish-person town hall at a church outside Roanoke, for example, was lined with police officers who are investigating "credible" threats to his family.

I asked Rep Garrett about heavy security presence here. He said he had received specific threats against his life, his wife and even his dog
-- MaryAlice Parks (@maryaliceparks) May 10, 2017

Other lawmakers have taken note.

"I will not risk public safety to entertain individuals that have no desire to respectfully discuss important issues," Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, told a Dallas Morning News watchdog columnist this week about why he's not holding a town hall nor advertising his office location. "The only complaints received are from members of the obstructionist group - Indivisible."

There's no rule that lawmakers have to hold town halls when they're back in their districts. But for those who do, putting limits on who can attend kind of flies in the face of having one in the first place, said Norm Ornstein, a congressional ethics expert: "Even when you had the conservative outrage over Obamacare, I don't recall anyone trying to preselect attendance. The unwillingness to take criticism or any heat from a legislative decision is really unusual."

A staffer for a Republican representing a solid GOP district, who agreed to speak candidly on condition of anonymity, said anything that's labeled a "town hall" should generally be pretty open to whomever wants to come.

The liberal advocacy group on the receiving end of most of the finger pointing from Republicans, Indivisible, denies orchestrating any protests.

The group, set up by former congressional staffers after President Donald Trump's win, says it provides tools to help people get the attention of their lawmakers - how to ask for a town hall, what questions to ask, how to how to stage "die ins" and other attention-grabbing protests.

"Aside from that, they are out there talking about the things that matter to them and we're not directing to anyone." said Angel Padilla with Indivisible.

Stacy Nelson, who lives in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, is one of those self-organizing people frustrated by the lack of access to her member of Congress. She and a group of seven others met on Facebook because they had a mutual interest in asking Rep. George Holding, R-N.C., what he can do to force Trump to release his tax returns. She said her group is a mix of Democrats and Republicans who live in the district who just want to talk with their congressman: "We have a high school social studies teacher, a retired pastor, a small-business owner ..."

After three months of negotiating, they finally got a meeting with Holding on Wednesday. "We have full-time jobs," Nelson said a day before the meeting. "None of us are paid protesters, we're just concerned. We are not going to be confrontational, we just want him to listen. There's never been an opportunity."...

http://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/20 ... tuati.html

[BarnettNewman]

Hey but freedom of speech, amiright leftys?

[L'Emmerdeur]

I thought this was interesting...

Here's a sampling of the rules town hall attendees are being asked to follow:

[. . .]

I don't recall hearing about this sort of tactic during the hey-day of the Tea Party, when they used similar tactics. I blame the lamestream media for this!

[Brian Peacock]

[Animavore]

[pErvinalia]

The bit at the end of this is the same for me as it is Noah.

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status ... 65921?s=09

[Tero]

Fry

“The skills they lacked were the same skills required to recognize their incompetence,” Fry said. “The incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ste ... 308cf4323c

[Tero]

Librul heads go splodey!
Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters don’t have to defend his specific actions as long as they make liberal heads explode, or as Sarah Palin put it so memorably, “It’s really funny to me to see the splodey heads keep sploding.” If liberals hate something, the argument goes, then it must be wonderful and worthy of aggressive defense. Each controversy reinforces the divisions and the distrust, and Mr. Trump counts on that.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/o ... ogle.com/P

[Animavore]

Trump's AmeriKKKa.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/0 ... /22085869/

[Brian Peacock]

Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Ku Klux Klan riot in the 1920s, news reports from the time suggest.

An article from a June 1927 edition of the New York Times records seven men being arrested after a brawl in New York, including “Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road, Jamaica” – the same name and address as the current US President’s father.

The fight was said to have been between members of the white supremacist Klan and supporters of the Italian fascist movement.

Under the headline ‘Klan assails policemen”, the article, first uncovered by the BoingBoing blog, details how Mr Trump was one of those detained after a “battle” in which “1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all”.

It quotes the then New York Police Commissioner, Joseph Warren, saying the Klansmen wore gowns and had hoods covering their faces.

Having been represented by the same lawyer as the six other men, Fred Trump was “discharged” – the only one of the seven not to be charged with a criminal offence.

It is unclear what role, if any, Mr Trump played in the brawl. Some reports at the time suggested he was arrested for “refusing to disperse”.

Another news story on the fight claimed that all seven men arrested were wearing KKK gowns and hoods.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 07556.html

[JimC]

I would have thought that fascists and KKK members had little to quarrel about...

[Scot Dutchy]

In Hitler's time it was the black and brown shirts. Fascist always want dominance.

[Svartalf]

problem is that the white sheets also want dominance