Monday, September 23, 2024

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.

Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.

Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president...

Getting this out of the way before the election is good;  not letting Republicans attach a showboating proof of citizenship test to the CR is better;  Trump losing his bid to sabotage government funding is best.

The bad:

Former President Donald Trump suggested he could efficiently conduct mass deportations if reelected because immigrants have "serial numbers." 

In a Sunday interview on Full Measure, host Sharyl Attkisson challenged Trump on his promise of mass deportations.

"Don't you think the first time there is an image on television of a family tearfully being told to board a bus that that whole program would end?" Attkisson asked.

"That's right," Trump said. "You take a young woman with two beautiful children, and you put her on a bus, and it ends up on the front page of every newspaper. It makes it a lot harder."

"So yes to mass deportation, even of women and children," he continued. "You put one wrong person onto a bus or onto an airplane, and your radical left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that's ever happened."

Trump said that he would work with local authorities to round up immigrants by "serial numbers." 

"But we're getting the criminals out, and we're going to do that fast, and we know who they are, and the local police know their names, and they know their serial numbers," he insisted. "They know everything about them."

"We're not a dumping ground," he added. "We're going to get all of those people out, and we're going to get them out fast."  (our emphasis)

This is white nationalist fascism, pure and simple.  This is the kind of divisive hate and prejudice that our country fought against in WWII, and it's right here, right now in America.  By now, people know who he is, so anyone who votes for this dangerous fascist buffoon at this stage is a dangerous fascist buffoon, too.

The ugly

Several top operatives on Republican Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor have stepped down, just days after a CNN report uncovered inflammatory comments the candidate made on a porn website.

Robinson’s campaign announced Sunday evening that general consultant and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, finance director Heather Whillier and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk have stepped down from the campaign. Pogorzelski confirmed the news when reached by CNN.

“The reports are true that I, along with others from the campaign have left of our own accord,” he told CNN in a statement.

Pogorzelski also named additional officials who left the campaign: deputy finance director Caroline Winchester, political director John Kontoulas, political director Jackson Lohrer and director of operations Patrick Riley.

The departures come in the aftermath of a CNN report uncovering inflammatory comments the lieutenant governor and Republican nominee for governor made on a pornography website message board over a decade ago. The lewd comments included Robinson describing himself as a “black Nazi” and how he used to go “peeping” on women at a public gym when he was 14 years old.

Robinson has a long history of making inflammatory statements but the newly unearthed message board posts go a step beyond.

Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, a pornographic website that includes a message board, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades...

Ugly man.  Ugly ideas.  Ugly campaign.  Allow us a prediction:  not only is "black Nazi" Robinson toast, but his presence on the ballot will help Harris-Walz carry North Carolina in November.