Assault On Reporter By Republican Candidate Gianforte A Campaign Boost

Republican Greg Gianfonte, in a special Montana Congressional
election today, is accused of assaulting a reporter Wednesday
evening. Will that help or hurt him?

Everybody is talking about Republican Greg Gianforte today this morning.

He's up for a special Congressional election today against Democrat Rob Quist in a closely watched race.

Of course the reason all the talking today is going on is because Gianforte assaulted a reporter who fairly aggressively questioned him about the Republican repeal and replace of Obamacare, which would kick 23 million people off health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Yep, Gianforte is charged with misdemeanor assault for body slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs the night before the election.

Many people rightly condemned the assault. Montana newspapers withdrew their endorsements of Gianforte. Many people are now hoping he loses the election, which had been tightening anyway due to revulsion over some Republican proposals.

If Gianforte loses, that would be something, as his Congressional district is normally reliably Republican.

Don't count on him losing, though.

There's a large subset of the worst of the Republican base who are thrilled that Gianforte punched a so-called obnoxious reporter, especially one from the left-leaning Guardian.

Gianforte's macho moves might lead hard-core Republicans to come out and vote for him in droves today.

After all, the Trump campaign and his administration has made literally bashing journalists - not just criticiziing them - a popular move among the Republican wacko caucus.

As CNN notes:

"Senior Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone pointed to the arrest earlier this month of a West Virginia reporter who shouted questios about health care reform at Health Secretary Tom Price and the manhandling by security gaurds of a Washington reporter at the Federal Communications Commisson headquarters."

All this led Modern Family Executive Produer Danny Zuker to tweet, "It's a sad fact that in this climate I have no idea if assaulting a reporter hurts Gianforte or helps him."

That is sad.

But people really are applauding the assault. Brent Bozell, the president of the conservative Media Research Center, tweeted, "Jacobs is an obnoxious, dishonest first classs jerk. I'm not surprised he got smacked."

If Jacobs is an obnoxious, dishonest first class jerk, does that justify assaulting him? To Bozell, the answer is yes.

Of course, Bozell might still have sour grapes because Jacobs broke a story about suspicious financial dealings by the Media Research Center.

Reports from Montana polling places this morning are not encouraging.  CNN National Correspondent Kyung Lah offered the following tweets from Montana this morning:

"MT GOP voter to me just now, knowing I work for @CNN. 'That audio made me cheer.' She smiled as she walked in to vote for Gianforte."

And:

"MT  GOP voter, upon learning we're from @CNN: 'You're lucky soeone doesn't pop one of you.'"

Sigh.

 By the way, Jacobs also got Gianforte pissed off in another respect

The assaulted reporter - Ben Jacobs - had previously broken a story about Gianforte's investments in Russian companies and we all know how controversial that type of thing is under the Trump administration.

It was telling that Gianforte's statement after the assault blamed Jacobs, saying he was a liberal reporter being aggressive. I guess that's grounds for body slamming, I guess.

Also, how can anyone run for office if they can't stand reporters asking tough questions and shoving tape recorders in their faces? That's what life is like for all politicians, liberal and conservative.

Today's election in Montana has turned into a referendum on which is better: Civility, or the natios continued decline into an acceptance of mob "justice" or the rule of law.

Arizona Republicans Want To Make The First Amendment Cost You, Big Time

Some Republican state lawmakers are trying to find ways to
stop mostly peaceful demonstrations like this one

UPDATE: 

Public outcry over a bad idea by lawmakers is always a good thing.

That bill that I describe below that could have led to racketeering charges and asset seizures for even the most innocent protest organizers is gone. 

Stick a fork in it.

Arizona House Speaker J.D. Menard said his office got manhy calls about the proposal and the conversation around it had become "toxic"

He will not be moving the bill forward, so it's dead.

Remember, folks, if something doesn't sound or look right, speak up! It worked here in Arizona.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

There's been lots of protests around the nation lately, mostly by liberal groups and people opposed to Donald Trump, and by extension, Republicans who are propping him up.

That's cool. It's always refreshing to see people express their First Amendment rights to speak out.

Be assured, I'd say exactly the same thing had it been a bunch of conservative Republicans marching out in the streets.

One thing I don't like, and few people do, is when demonstrations turn violent and ugly. Usually, it's a peaceful protest, and then a few yahoos in the crowd smash windows or set fires or do something stupid.

Sometimes, it's an anarchist who generally agrees with what the protesters are saying, but want to take it further and cause trouble.

Other times, it's provocateurs who oppose what the protesters stand for and want to undermine their message.

Either way, that behavior is criminal, and I'm all for arresting people who do that type of thing.

However, Republican lawmakers in Arizona want to take this beyond criminally charging idiots who cause injury or damage.

They've introduced a bill that would allow the state to charge protest organizers with racketeering and seize their property if somebody turns violent during the demonstration. 

Never mind if the protest organizers intended a peaceful demonstration. Never mind if the organizers had no way to know that somebody would end up causing trouble. If one moron causes trouble, the protest organizer is in big trouble under this legislation.

You can see pretty plainly what the Arizona Republicans are trying to do here. Many Republicans are increasingly hostile to First Amendment rights and are really sick and tired of people going out into the streets to publicly criticize their policies.

So their trying to shut everybody up so they can do what they want, voters and constituent sbe damned.

This legislation would mean that everybody would be afraid to organize a demonstration. Or, if someone does organize a march, somebody who doesn't like the demonstrators' point of view would break a window or start a fire.

That way, the organizers woud be in hot financial water (or worse) and not organize future protests. And everybody who knows that the organizer who has his or her assets seized because of the actions of someone they had nothing to do with would never set up any new protests.

As Arizona Democratic State Senator Martin Quezada said, "This bill only serves to chill people's rights to free speech by allowing one bad actor to turn peaceful demonstration organizers into racketeering felons."

Why do so many Republicans hate democracy lately?

As Quezada points out, it's already illegal to start riots, break windows and set arson fires.

Sponsors of the bill say they want to stop riots before they start, and dragged out that Donald Trump trope that people are paid to demonstrate and cause trouble, so they want to stop those allegedly paid thugs.

Democrats point out that, besides the legislation probably being unconstitutional, it could backfire on the Republicans. 

Say a Tea Party group wants to hold a demonstration to cheer on something Trump or Republicans in Congress are doing. Great! Then some idiot, maybe a liberal activist, smashes some car windows during the Tea Party party.

Would these Republicans be willing to charge a fellow Republican with racketeering if that happened? I wonder.

Either Arizona Republicans can't think ahead to such circumstances, or they would only apply their proposed law to liberal demonstrations.

Which is it?

In any event, this crackdown of First Amendment rights is spreading among Republican controlled legislatures nationwide.

According to Alternet:

"In recent weeks and months, politicians in at least 11 states - Minnesota, Washington, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, Indiana, Virginia,  Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina and Arizona - have either introduced or threatened to introduce bills that make it more dangerous or costly to attend protests, or be anywhere near them."

The Arizona legislation, like some of the others, could hold people who merely peaceably participate in demonstrations to those racketeering charges and asset seizures.

Say you object to Trump's immigration policy and your city is holding a demonstration against that and you want to participate. Would you go if you knew if some moron caused even a tiny bit of trouble that you could have your life ruined?

This legislation is the stuff of dictatorships.

Let's hope everybody protests against this type of legislation, before they essentially become illegal.

Republicans Seem To Hate Wishes Of Voters

Another case of GOP anti-democratic instincts: South Dakota
Gov.Dennis Daugaard and his fellow state Republicans
are mad at his state's voters for approving an ethics las
for state lawmakers. 

In yet another example of how many Republicans seem to have abandoned the idea of doing the bidding of voters, South Dakota lawmakers are going to cancel a voter initiative that insisted on government ethics.

Republicans there just declared a "legislative emergency" since voters there had the gall to want ethics in their government.  Because it's definitely an emergency when voters want their lawmakers to be ethical.

According to Huffington Post, the goal of the "legislative emergency" is to wipe out the new ethics and campaign finance law South Dakota voters approved in November.

The regulations would create an independent commission to oversee proves into ethical misconduct by elected officials, impose tougher limits on campaign contributions and lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers, place restrictions on lawmakers who become lobbyists, increase disclosure requirements from independent political groups and set up a system to publicly finance elections, says the Huffington Post. 

Sounds pretty comprehensive, right?

Much too comprehensive for the Republicans running South Dakota. The state's governor, Dennis Daugaard said South Dakota voters were "hoodwinked" into voting for the law.

I don't think the voters of South Dakota are that dumb. They knew what they were doing, since there was a lot of back and forth about the merits of the proposed law before South Dakotans approved it in November.

But, the voters had the gall to want to hinder political hijinks. A big no-no, especially among Republicans, it seems.

The people have no right, apparently to influence the decisions of their so-called leaders.

Exhibit Number 1 is Donald Trump, of course, who obvious thinks what he wants in his Big Ego alternative universe, where he has a "mandate" despite losing the popular vote by around 3 million people.

Trump's life is life guided by "alternative facts" such as the YUUGE crowds that supposedly turned out for his inauguration, and the billions of lies he's told. (I don't have the space to list them, obviously.)

State Republican-led legislatures are big into this game, too, and it's not just South Dakota.

We saw the spectacle a month or two back, after North Carolina voters narrowly got a Democratic governor into the State House.

The Republicans there pounced, calling an out-of-the-blue special session in December stripping the new Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of many of his powers before he took office on the first of January. (Cooper is of course suing these Republicans.)

Republicans have been deft at gerrymandering Congressional districts, .adopting voter suppression laws, and pleasing their dwindling ultra-conservative base.

CNN noted the Republican M.O. in relation to the atrocity in North Carolina, but they could have been talking about Trump and many other Republicans across the nation.

"Extremist Republicans wo cut taxes for the wealthy, denied health care to poor people, attacked public education, suppressed votes and targeted immigrants and minorities with mean-spirited legislation are making their last stand against the ballot box and the courts."

Despite the huge damage that Trump, Congressional Republicans and many rank-and-file Republicans in red states are doing and will do, I'm still optimistic that demographics and decency will win out.

We're just going to have to spend a few painful years first. I can see already that Trump is proving every bit as terrible a president as his many critics predicted.

The arch-conservatives are overstepping, and people are going to rebel. The first real sign of that was the Womens Marches last weekend. Almost all of them drew far more participants than even some of the most optimist organizers predicted.

It was basically old white people that got Trump into power, and have enabled Republican state legislators to do their damage to everyone else.

I still think these mostly old white people will realize they've been conned. Also, as crass as this sounds, a lot of them are dying off, leaving us with a far more diverse, tolerant, moderate populace.

Moderate does not mean "not pissed off." People are pissed off, and the pendulum will swing. We'll have to be patient.

Push Americans far enough, though, and they tend to get revolutionary. Yep, we are living in interesting times. Let's hope the short term pain of the next few years leads us to long term gain.

That prospect is what keeps us going.

The Bonkers Political Ad Season Starts Early

Crazy North Carolina congressional candidate Kay Daly
goes "RINO hunting" in her classic campaign ad

Every political season, we get to enjoy really super bonkers campaign ads.

It's started already.

Introducing Kay Daly, a Tea Party backed Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina, is taking on incumbent Renee Elmers, a Republican who isn't exactly liberal, let me tell you.  

Still Elmers is not nearly conservative enough for Daly, oh no, not at all.

She voted for Obamacare! (sort of) She allows "homosexuals to pretend they are married!"

Daly also complains that Ellmers voted to let illegal immigrant child molesters stay in America, but I bet that's a bit of a distortion, don't you?

The ad also features Ellmer in extremely unflattering photos, as if she's constantly making bizarre faces while serving in Congress. Come to think of it, I believe they all do that.

In an email touting the ad, Daly also complains that Ellmers "hispanders" to illegal immigrants. You're such a punster, Kim Daly!

Daly also doesn't like an Equal Rights Amendment Ellmer supposedly supported that is "the one lesbians used to burn their bras over."

The solution, according to Daly: Go RINO hunting. That's Republican In Name Only, which is what Republicans who are not extreme right wing wackos are called these days.

So we have a RINO hunt in Daly's campaign ad

You HAVE to watch it:

Now We Know Playbook: How Alabama Republicans Ensuring Minorities Don't Vote

Alabama is making it harder for residents to get
driver's licenses. Is it budget cuts or is it
an effort to prevent the poor and minorities from voting?  

So a bunch of states in recent years  have passed voter ID laws, in which voters have to have official photo IDs, usually a driver's license to vote.

This is to combat the imaginary epidemic of voter fraud going on across the country.

Since most of these voter ID laws were passed by Republican legislators or championed by Republican governors, the fraud might be efforts to make it more difficult for poorer people and minorites to vote.

The proof of this idea came from Alabama this week. Citing "budget cuts" Alabama plans to close 45 of its 49 Department of Motor Vehicles offices, says the Daily Kos.

Of course, nobody is blatantly saying that this is really an effort to prevent people from voting, but it has to be.

People can get voter photo IDs from county registrar offices in Alabama, too, but that also sometimes involves traveling pretty far distances. Which is hard if you don't have a car and driver's license, and there's not much in the way of public transportation.

Sure, Alabama has budget problems. A lot of states do.

But closing so many DMV offices in Alabama would force people to take an entire day, possibly two days off from work to travel long distances, wait in long lines, and then hopefully obtain a driver's license.

As Daily Kos points out, this will also encourage people to drive without a license. Which means people who really don't know how to drive will drive unsafe cars around Alabama. What could go wrong?

Sure, some people can renew drivers' licenses on line. But if there's a problem that has to be resolved, then it's an arduous day at the Alabama DMV.

Are Republican lawmakers in Alabama more concerned with balancing the budget? Or are they more concerned too many Democratic or Independent voters could force them out of office?

Hmmmm.

Republicans Make More Sense In "Bad Lip Reading" Version Of Debate Footage

The best twist on a Republican debate this summer is
by far from Bad Lip Reading.  

There's a YouTube channel that takes public events, like political news and pop culture touchstones, and turns what everybody is saying into bad lip reading.

The words you hear on the Bad Lip Reading channel are incredibly absurd, but if you watch the lips of the speakers and listen to the nonsense Bad Lip Reading comes up with, it seems amazingly accurate.

A couple weeks ago, the Bad Lip Reading channel took a crack at the first Republican candidates debate held earlier this summer.

In the Bad Lip Reading version of the debate, Huckabee asks one of the Fox News moderators, "All your friends are bozos, but who's this Minion?"

The Fox guy says it's an old friend and a great gal, but Huckabee disagrees saying she "pooped on the treadmill."

Bad Lip Reading has Ted Cruz telling us, "We can just go out and collect a dead swan and then I will drink a sorority's goldfish."

Fox's Megyn Kelly asks Jeb Bush this all-important policy question: "How would you get a dead mouse in a crescent roll with some steak?"

Bush answers, "If a pit bull is loose in your house, you'll find me stiff on the bed because I'll always throw up."

Yes, it's certainly Theater of the Absurd, but frankly, the nonsense I'm highlighting from this video isn't much more bizarre than what some of the candidates are saying.

The second half of the video is precious, when each candidate gets to sing a closing song. Ben Carson's, at the end, is by far the best.

But you have to watch the entire video. I really hope Bad Lip Reading does a LOT more political videos between now and the 2016 election.   They already have a lot more hilarious videos you should watch, too. 

Here's the Republican Debate:

No, I Don't Follow This Political Ad About Wedding Dresses, Either

This gleeful young woman models
the Republican wedding dress. Because apparently,
you can only explain politics to women
in terms of fashion.  

It's easy to find really, really, REALLY bad political campaign advertisements, but I think I found one that is a contender for one of the worst ever.

Introducing the Tom Corbett and Rick Scott wedding dresses!

The freaky ad, you can see it at the bottom of this post, was dreamed up by the College Republican National Committee, and s being used by at least three campaigns.

One of them is Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, running against Democrat Tom Wolf.  Another is for  Florida Republican Rick Scott, who is seeking re-election victory over challenger Charlie Crist.

Republicans are trying to attract women to vote, and this is supposed to make women fall in love with Republicans.  Apparently they think this is the way to do it. Just compare your favorite Republican to wedding dresses. Or maybe imagine your favorite Republican in a wedding dress? Ugh.

Maybe the Republicans have this weird wedding dress ad because, after all, women are too fragile to think about things like the economy, foreign policy and climate change. They should only concern their pretty little heads with things like frilly wedding dresses and wearing perfect makeup on their face.

We'll let the menfolk worry about politics. They've done such a good job with it in recent years. (Cough, cough.)

Here's how Slate tries to describe this truly weird ad, which apparently is inspired by the television reality show "Say Yes To the Dress."

"'The Rick Scott is perfect,' says our blond and youthful heroine, Brittany, admiring herself in the mirror while wearing a wedding dress, which is thing Republicans heard women like to wear. 

Her friends ooh and aah. But mom, who is of course a harridan because she dared age past 35, has other ideas. 'I like the Charlie Crist,' she says as we see Brittany - an undecided voter, by the way - in a frumpier dress. 'It's expensive and a little outdated, but I know best.' "

Then the ominous music starts playing because you're supposed to be afraid of Charlie Crist. Or at least the Charlie Crist dress.

The Pennsylvania add featuring the Corbett dress is pretty much identical to the Florida one.

Bloomberg View has a great headline for this story, "Does This Dress Make Me Look Republican?" and also raises a very good point.

Cookie cutter ads, the same ones used by candidates across the country, might make voters think that the candidates are beholden to outside interests who made the ads and don't understand local values.

Or, they'll make them laugh really, really hard because it makes them imagine Tom Corbett and Rick Scott in hideously designed wedding dresses.

Maybe the two candidates can put them on, and have the contestants on Project Runway improve on them to make them presentable.

Here's the video:

The Squirrel Is Back: Are The Republicans Being Squirrelly?

Back in 2008, a guy dressed up as a squirrel dogged (ha!) the Obama presidential campaign, just sort of harassing him and his assistants from a Republican perspective.

The strange Republican squirrel is back! I wonder
what the Democrats will come up with. 

Normal for a campaign. Both major parties bring out the gimmicks and the weirdos to call attention to their cause, and tell us why the opposition is really, really bad.

Now, (drum roll) the Republican squirrel is back! Already!

Yeah, it's a couple years before we select a new president, but Hillary Clinton is already making noises about running on the Democratic side.

Never one to waste time, the squirrel is fully recharged and fighting the good (or bad, depending on your perspective) fight against Hillary.

Here's the truly bizarre video from the Republicans re-introducing us to the Infamous Squirrel: