The GOP’s Civil War Over LGBT Rights Just Killed a Spending Bill

BIGOTED ASSHOLES!

All Paul Ryan wanted was to appropriate some funds for energy and water spending: a quick and easy vote, bang the gavel, go home, and CrossFit hard enough to forget the Donald’s name. But lately, routine spending bills in the House have had a funny habit of turning into acrimonious debates over LGBT rights. 

Last week, Democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney proposed an amendment to a Veterans Affairs appropriations bill barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees — thus enshrining President Obama’s 2014 executive order on that matter into law. 

The amendment appeared to pass — then a bunch of Republicans switched their votes. And then Democrats chanted “Shame, shame, shame,” and the Human Rights Campaign blasted the GOP flip-floppers over Twitter, and Speaker Ryan had another fire to put out. 

Late Wednesday night, Maloney reintroduced the amendment, this time to an energy and water spending bill. Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts tried to split the baby, adding a line stipulating that the ban wouldn't apply in circumstances where its enforcement would violate the Constitution. Since conservatives think the Constitution guarantees Christians the right to discriminate against gay people, while liberals think it demands the exact opposite, this was supposed to let both sides win. 

And for a while there, they seemed to: The amendment passed with 43 Republican votes. And then, just before the full bill came up for a vote, Georgia congressman Rick Allen treated his colleagues to a prayer about "the gays." Per Politico: The breakdown of the appropriations process started earlier in the day when Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) opened the weekly GOP conference meeting with a prayer about the LGBT issue, prior to the vote. He read a passage from the Bible and questioned whether members would violate their religious principles if they supported the bill. 

Moderate Republicans were stunned by Allen's remarks, and some walked out of the meeting in protest, according to GOP lawmakers. The appropriations bill fell 305–112, as a majority of Republicans voted it down in protest of the LGBT-rights provision. The vast majority of Democrats also turned on the bill after the GOP caucus filled it with poison pills. 

Among these was a provision barring the federal government from spending money to calculate the climate impact of regulations, one cutting off all funding to “sanctuary cities," and an amendment prohibiting the federal government from withholding funds from North Carolina if it continues to violate the president’s federal order about transgender bathroom rights.

GOP Psychopath Tom Cotton

Senator: 'We have an under-incarceration problem'

(CNN)Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton spoke out against bipartisan efforts to reform America's criminal justice system at a conservative think tank in Washington on Thursday, saying, "If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem." 

"For the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted and jailed," Cotton said at the Hudson Institute. The Arkansas senator has been a staunch opponent of bipartisan legislation which would push to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent criminal offenders. The bill would also give judges greater discretion on sentencing for low level drug related crimes.   

Cotton called efforts to restore voting rights to felons, and making it easier for ex-felons to seek employment "dangerous." "Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19% of property crimes and 47% of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem," Cotton said. "The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime," Cotton said. "It's simply impossible." 

Criminal justice reform advocates claim the severity of the sentencing does not have much of an effect on repeat offenders and crime rates. "When he says we have all of these unsolved crimes, so that's why we should be filling the prisons even more, where is he going to get the resources to prosecute those if we're spending so much money putting a nonviolent drug offender in prison for 30 years," said Kevin Ring, Vice President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a non-profit organization. "This is a misallocation of resources. No one is trying to make a trade off between safety and security. We're saying we can get more safety if we use our resources efficiently."

Cotton is a traitorous monster... totally lacking in humanity. Fuck him.

The Continuing Saga of Trump and GOP Assholery

 JUST IN: Ryan: We can work with Trump http://hill.cm/QnqTSsQ 

So the GOP leadership is willing to work with a man they call a "fraud" and "con artist," just not with the twice-elected POTUS Obama.

GOP Senate Will Not Even Consider Obama Supreme Court Nominee or Hold Hearings

Motherfuckers:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell says flatly that his party won't permit a vote on any Supreme Court nominee submitted by President Barack Obama but will "revisit the matter" after the presidential election in November. The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that Obama is within his rights to nominate a replacement to Antonin Scalia but said Republicans controlling the Senate would exercise their rights to "withhold" consent.

GOP Traitors and GOP Insanity

GOP Traitors: Iran Reveals Republicans Tried To Delay Release Of US Prisoners Until After Election


GOP Insanity: Republicans threaten to keep Supreme Court Vacancy open for one whole year to prevent Obama from Appointing Justice.

In Wake of Lead Poisoning of Flint, Michigan Water Supply by GOP Assholes Governor, Psychopathic Republicans in US Senate Try Desperately to Weaken EPA Regulations on Water

In a stunning display of clueless arrogance Mitch McConnell’s Senate Republicans moved forward with a vote to override President Obama’s veto of a bill that would have killed the EPA’s new clean water rule. Republicans failed to get enough votes to override the veto. The final vote was fifteen votes short (52-40) of the 67 needed to override President Obama’s veto. Three red state Democrats, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Donnelly (IN) and Joe Manchin (WV) voted with Republicans to override Obama’s veto. 

Susan Collins (ME) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to sustain the president’s veto. In his veto message the President said, “We must protect the waters that are vital for the health of our communities and the success of our businesses, agriculture, and energy development. As I have noted before, too many of our waters have been left vulnerable. Pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters near which most Americans live and on which they depend for their drinking water, recreation, and economic development.” 

The message sent by McConnell and his Republicans was obvious to all. The Senate Republican majority doesn’t care about making sure that the American people have access to clean drinking water. The crisis in Flint has taught Republicans nothing. 

Republicans originally tried to cut the new clean water rules before the Flint crisis became a national story, but after Flint, a responsible Senate majority might have reconsidered gutting clean water rules after hundreds of children were sickened with lead poisoning in an American city due to contaminated water. 

The Republican majority in the Senate is owned by corporations and big business. It doesn’t matter to them if the American people are denied access to clean drinking water. 

The Senate Republican maneuver to kill new clean water rules was all about enabling polluters. Republicans are determined to make sure that people are not guaranteed access to clean water. Without Senate Democrats having Obama’s back, the crisis in Flint could be repeated all across the country as Senate Republicans have placed the polluters ahead of the needs of the American people.

Ben Carson and Hugh Hewitt Are Psychopathic Monsters

My mind can barely even process how incredibly obscene and demented this is-- from the 5th GOP primary debate.

Hugh Hewitt Questions Ben Carson If He Was Ruthless Enough to Kill Thousands of Innocent Kids in War  

"Ben Carson: I am OK with Killing "Thousands of Innocent Children and Civilians""
During Tuesday’s debate, radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Dr. Ben Carson if he was ruthless enough to wage war. "You are OK with the deaths of thousands of innocent children and civilians?" Hewitt asked. Carson, a neurosurgeon, responded, "You got it. You got it."  

HUGH HEWITT: And—neurosurgeon. And people admire and respect and are inspired by your life story, your kindness, your evangelical core support. We’re talking about ruthless things tonight—carpet bombing, toughness, war. And people wonder, could you do that? Could you order airstrikes that would kill innocent children by not the scores, but the hundreds and the thousands? Could you wage war as a commander-in-chief? 

DR. BEN CARSON: Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them, "We’re going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor." They’re not happy about it, believe me. And they don’t like me very much at that point. But later on, they love me. Sometimes you—I sound like him. Later—you know, later on, you know, they really realize what’s going on. And by the same token, you have to be able to look at the big picture and understand that it’s actually merciful if you go ahead and finish the job, rather than death by a thousand pricks.  

HUGH HEWITT: So you are OK with the deaths of thousands of innocent children and civilian. It’s like—  

DR. BEN CARSON: You got it. You got it.  

HUGH HEWITT: That is what war—can you be as ruthless as Churchill was in prosecuting the war against the Nazis?  

DR. BEN CARSON: "Ruthless" is not necessarily the word I would use, but tough, resolute, understanding what the problems are and understanding that the job of the president of the United States is to protect the people of this country and to do what is necessary in order to get it done. 

All the fucking demagogue war porn addicts on that stage were just as bad, just calling for war, war, war, all they fucking care about is ISIS. Just beyond evil.

 FUCK THE GOP PSYCHOPATHS...FUCK CNN