Dumb & Dumber Democrat Cartoons

Trump administration to close Palestinian leadership's office in a bid to mount pressure over peace deal

The Trump administration cuts its $300 million yearly contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, citing a disproportionate share of the burden and an endlessly expanding recipient pool; Trey Yingst reports from the West Bank.
The Trump administration is reportedly set to announce the closing of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, D.C., in a bid to pressure the Palestinian leadership to participate in Middle East peace efforts.
According to the Wall Street Journal, national security adviser John Bolton is expected to make the announcement on Monday.
“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” Bolton is expected to say, according to the prepared remarks. “The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.”

"The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel."
- National security adviser John Bolton

The national security adviser is also planning to threaten the International Criminal Court in the same prepared remarks, saying the U.S. will impose sanctions against the organization if it investigates the U.S. and Israel, the Journal reported.
“If the court comes after us, Israel or other allies, we will not sit quietly,” Bolton plans to say, noting that ICC judges and prosecutors could be banned from entering the U.S. as a retaliatory measure.
“We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system,” he will add. “We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”
The White House reportedly mulled the shutting down of the PLO mission in Washington since last November, unless the Palestinian leadership enters serious peace talks with Israel.
Then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson deemed the PLO responsible for violating a provision in U.S. law that prohibits the group from trying to get the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israelis for crimes against Palestinians. The penalty of such violation is closing down of the office in Washington.
The accusation of breaking the U.S. law came after Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in a September United Nations General Assembly speech that the Palestinians had “called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people.”

Louisiana mayor prohibits Nike purchases for recreational programs: reports

Nike is a business, and their decision to make Colin Kaepernick the star of their new ad campaign wasn't just a political move, it was a business move. But is it paying off? Sales surged in the days immediately after the campaign's announcement, but Nike stock is still down from where it was at the beginning of the week. #Tucker
A Louisiana mayor reportedly banned his city’s recreation programs from purchasing Nike product in the wake of an ad campaign featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Mayor Ben Zahn, of Kenner, signed a memo last week that states that “[u]nder no circumstances” can any Nike apparel or equipment be “purchased for use or delivery” at any recreation facilities in the city.
“Effective immediately all purchases made by any booster club operating at any Kenner Recreation Facility for wearing apparel, shoes, athletic equipment and/or any athletic product must be approved by the Director of Parks and Recreation, or his designee,” the memo added.
WBRZ 2 first reported the existence of the memo on Saturday. The mayor’s offices sent the document to Parks and Recreation Department Director Chad Pitfield last Wednesday.
The mayor's office did not immediately respond to an email early Monday from Fox News.
The report came after Nike was criticized for putting Kaepernick as the face of the “Just Do It” campaign. “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” reads the campaign’s slogan.
COLLEGE OF THE OZARKS, PRIVATE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL, DROPS NIKE OVER KAEPERNICK AD
Sales of Nike products are up since the launch of the campaign the Kaepernick controversy has led to some people burning their sneakers.
Meanwhile a private Christian college in Missouri, the College of the Ozarks, announced last week that its athletic teams would no longer wear apparel manufactured by Nike as a reaction to its ad campaign.

Ahead of Kavanaugh confirmation vote, Sen. Collins receives 3,000 hangers from pro-choice activists

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks with Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh at her office, before a private meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018.  (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Following a week of contentious hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the focus has shifted to swing voters in the Senate and the crucial role they will play in the confirmation process.
One of the lawmakers on the hot seat ahead of the vote is Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who recently received a particularly unusual gift in an effort to sway her opinion.
A package of 3,000 coat hangers arrived at Collins’ office in Washington, D.C. -- symbolizing back-alley abortions that took place before they became legal with the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling -- in the hopes of convincing the pro-choice senator to vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation.
Collins, a centrist Republican who fought the GOP effort to junk the Affordable Care Act, is one of a few Republicans being targeted by activists hoping to block Kavanaugh from joining the bench as abortion has become a front-and-center issue in the debate over the judge.
Democrats argue that President Trump picked Kavanaugh because he will vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. Liberal groups are running TV ads encouraging the senator to reject the nomination.
Activists have also pledged to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund an opponent to Collins if she votes in favor of the president's nomination. She is up for re-election in 2020.
If Collins votes yes, then he is likely confirmed. She and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – another pro-choice Republican -- probably would have to both vote "no" for Kavanaugh to be blocked.
For her part, Collins has kept mum about how she'll vote.
Still, she's sent signals that Kavanaugh cleared a hurdle by telling her that Roe v. Wade establishing abortion rights is settled law. A spokeswoman for Collins said Saturday that a recently released email from Kavanaugh — in which he disputed that all legal scholars see Roe as settled — didn't contradict what he told the senator because he wasn't expressing his personal views.
"I always wait until after the hearings are complete before making a decision, and I'll do so in this case as well," Collins said.
Collins, for her part, is following the same process she used with GOP nominees John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, and Democratic nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
"I have voted for Justice Sotomayor, and I've also voted for Justice Alito," she said, referring to justices at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. "I respect the fact that one of my jobs is to determine whether or not the candidate is qualified for the court, has the requisite experience, and has the judicial temperament, as well as respect for precedence," she added.
While she's never voted against a Supreme Court nominee, Collins has vowed to reject a candidate who's hostile to the Roe v. Wade ruling. She said Kavanaugh told her during their face-to-face meeting that he views the 1973 decision as established legal precedent.
But Kavanaugh said in a 2003 email while working for the administration of President George W. Bush some legal scholars may view the idea of precedent differently and that the Supreme Court "can always overrule its precedent." Kavanaugh said that the comment did not reflect his personal views, but "what legal scholars might say."
Collins voted last month to preserve funding for Planned Parenthood a day after the same organization rallied in Washington to encourage her to vote against Kavanaugh. On Thursday, the group delivered letters to her office in Bangor.
"I've learned not to expect a 'thank you,'" Collins said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous headline stated that Sen. Collins received hangers from anti-abortion activists. The hangers were from pro-choice activists.

Jim Carrey says 'stop apologizing' and 'say yes to socialism'

'Dumb and Dumber' actor Jim Carrey on Friday urged Democrats to “say yes to socialism” and embrace the attacks from Republicans.
“We have to say yes to socialism — to the word and everything,” Carrey said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” show. “We have to stop apologizing.”
The actor, who’s among the richest in Hollywood, made the remarks after Maher pointed out that Republicans criticize socialist and progressive Democrats by invoking the example of Venezuela, a failing socialist regime where thousands of Venezuelans flee every week amid dire living conditions.
“But that word—the Democrats need to get a plan to fight this slander of, ‘Socialism, you’re going to be living in Venezuela,’” said Maher. “And I don’t see it yet.”
Republicans have repeatedly slammed the Democratic Party upon the election of troves of socialist candidates in the primaries across the U.S., including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who became the face of the changing party following her shock win against one of the top Democratic lawmakers, Joe Crowley, in New York.
More recently, progressive and socialist candidates made advances in Florida and Massachusetts, with Boston city councilor Ayanna Pressley unseating 10-term U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in a Democratic primary last week.
The host of the HBO show said the party’s leftward shift is a reaction to President Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.
“Medicare for all, ending student debt, a different approach to the war on terror, ending mass incarceration—it seems like if there is maybe a shining spot in this Trump tragedy, it’s that it’s made the Democrats sort of rediscover who they are,” Maher said.

The 'forgotten' Supreme Court decision and its impact on our politics

The Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C. 

Amid the current national debate over immigration policies, racial discrimination, LGBTQ rights, and executive power, the anniversary of an important legal and political dispute that has directly shaped that debate will pass quietly, its legacy all but forgotten.
In September 1958, sixty years ago next week, the United States Supreme Court finally earned its hard-fought reputation as a co-equal branch of the federal government, in a courtroom drama filled with urgency and uncertainty.
For perhaps the first time, the high court put muscle behind its mandate, asserting in unequivocal terms that its interpretation of the Constitution was the "supreme law of the land," and ordering immediate state compliance.
Thurgood Marshall, the prominent lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, had sized up his audience: nine older white men who were none too thrilled about revisiting their landmark precedent that was proving nearly impossible to fully enforce.
The crafty civil rights veteran turned the tables on the justices in a civil rights case debated and decided within hours, which spoke as much about public confidence in government as it did about a hot-button social issue.
Marshall was essentially arguing that officials in Little Rock, Ark. had to follow a federal court order to desegregate its schools. The 50-year-old's focus was not black students seeking equality, but about society's larger civic responsibilities.
"Education is not the teaching of three R's. Education is teaching of the overall citizenship, to learn, to live together with fellow citizens and above all, to learn to obey the law," he says in rarely heard audio of the two-day argument.

Thurgood Marshall was nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court in 1967.  (AP1967)

"I'm not worried about the Negro children at this stage. I don't believe they're in this case as such," Marsall went on. "I worry about the white children in Little Rock who are told as young people that the way to get your rights is to violate the law and defy the lawful authorities. I'm worried about their future. I don't worry about the Negro kids' future. They've been struggling with democracy long enough. They know about it."
The audio was secretly recorded by the court, and only made available to the public decades later. (Marshall's words can be heard here, at the 27:50 mark of Part 2.)
Just a day after the argument, the high court unanimously ordered Arkansas' governor to continue admitting African-American students.
"No state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it," wrote a unanimous bench in Cooper v. Aaron. Compliance with the principles of civil rights, as articulated by the federal courts, is "indispensable for the protection of the freedoms guaranteed by our fundamental charter for all of us. Our constitutional ideal of equal justice under law is thus made a living truth."
LITTLE ROCK'S LEGACY
The Court's ruling in Cooper v. Aaron came four years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which found "separate but equal" public facilities unconstitutional. It was groundbreaking, but many civil rights activists believed little progress was made in its initial aftermath, a sentiment echoed today.
"What happened in 1954?" asked current Justice Stephen Breyer in a speech this past January. "Nothing happened. What happened in 1955? Nothing. What happened in 1956? Double nothing."
The Brown ruling simply declared school segregation policies violated the 14th Amendment, implicitly leaving it to the states and lower courts to sort out the consequences. A follow-up decision a year later mandated school integration "with all deliberate speed," with federal court oversight to ensure compliance, but no timetable.
Some states needed no federal encouragement, but others, particularly in the South, were deliberately slow to change, and many courts were reluctant at first to force compliance.
Little Rock's school board initially created a court-backed integration plan, but the state legislature and Gov. Orval Faubus passed new laws banning such efforts. Local sovereignty was at stake, they insisted.
The situation in Arkansas' capital gained national attention in September 1957, when the state's national guard prevented a group of black students from attending the largest high school in the city (the "Little Rock Nine").

Elizabeth Eckford, one of the 'Little Rock Nine' is pursued by white students.  (Getty Images)

The crisis escalated after federal courts again ordered Little Rock Central High School's doors to be open to all, and President Dwight Eisenhower sent in Army troops. Despite threats of violence, the black students entered and began taking classes. They were subjected to continuing taunts, threats, and physical violence.
Months later, the school board asked for a delay in implementing the ongoing integration plan, citing "chaos, bedlam, and turmoil." A federal district judge agreed to do so, but a federal appeals court reversed that decision.
It was then that the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in a pair of special argument sessions, ordering immediate integration, and reaffirming existing precedent that the rights of minority students could not be sacrificed in lieu of state concerns about "order and peace." But the united justices went further, asserting clear authority to bind states to their decisions, which could not be circumvented with competing legislation.
Faubus was furious, closing the capital city's public schools, and ordering a special election within days to boost his actions.
"The Supreme Court shut its eyes to all the facts, and in essence said— integration at any price," he declared, "even if it means the destruction of our school system, our educational processes, and the risk of disorder and violence that could result in the loss of life—perhaps yours."
The open defiance continued, token desegregation continued slowly in many parts of the South and Southwest, and the impact is still being felt in many communities.
The citizens of Little Rock called 1958 the "lost year" in Little Rock, but the Supreme Court's newfound recognition of its own inherent power in its decisions would carry on. Some scholars have since called that bench the "living voice of the Constitution."
From the 1960s onward, a host of state laws on abortion, criminal procedure, and civil rights were debated and overturned by the Supreme Court in a series of cases known as single words: Gideon, Miranda, Loving, Roe, and Obergefell.
POLITICAL BACKLASH
But the Cooper vs. Aaron decision also created a legal and political backlash, especially among some conservatives.
Edwin Meese, a former Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, has been among those who have repeatedly criticized the Supreme Court for what they consider a self-affirming power grab.
"Constitutional interpretation is not the business of the court only, but also, and properly, the business of all branches of government," Meese has written.
The former AG has pinpointed the Cooper decision as the start of an era of an "imperial judiciary."
''Obviously the decision was binding on the parties in the case; but the implication that everyone would have to accept its judgments uncritically, that it was a decision from which there could be no appeal, was astonishing.''
Meese also believes that by saying its interpretation of the Constitution was "the supreme law of the land," that view ''was, and is, at war with the Constitution, at war with the basic principles of democratic government, and at war with the very meaning of the rule of law.''
Supporters of a more limited role for the nine unelected justices have cited Abraham Lincoln's remarks in his 1861 inaugural address.
"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court," he said, "the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
Lincoln had his own problems with the Supreme Court, ignoring its ruling the President had no authority to suspend habeas corpus, even in wartime. The justices did not bother to hold Lincoln accountable for his public defiance.
And yet, a Supreme Court confident of its mandate is a concept the public seems now to accept to a large extent. The justices themselves lack any formal enforcement tool except their own legitimacy contained in the power of words and ideas.
Breyer cites the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision that essentially handed the presidency to the Republican.
"What was remarkable about it is that even though vast numbers of Americans thought it was wrong," and even though Breyer himself thought it wrongly decided, "people followed it. In other places, there would have been guns and bullets. The fact that no blood was shed after Bush v. Gore, is what makes America great."

Big Mouth Obama Cartoons

Obama less combative in California speech

The tradition of all the past presidents, which dictates: Don't interfere with the peaceful transition of power, treat the new president with dignity and respect, and keep quiet.

Looking to rally support for several Democratic congressional candidates across California, former President Barack Obama took a more measured tone Saturday -- after a strongly worded speech the day before where he leveled blistering criticism of his successor and the GOP.
Obama said the November midterm elections would give Americans “a chance to restore sanity in our politics” during his 20-minute speech to a crowd of around 900 Democratic faithful at the Anaheim Convention Center, while warning voters of the risks of keeping Republicans in power.
“If we don’t step up, things can get worse,” Obama said. “We have a chance to flip the House of Representatives; to say ‘Enough is enough.’”
But California Republicans said Obama’s appearance would have little impact and may even help their party.
“I wish he would come more often because he reminds Republicans of eight years of misery,” said Republican National Committee member Shawn Steel, who lives in Orange County. “It reminds the Republicans why these midterms are important.”

“I wish [Obama] would come [to California] more often because he reminds Republicans of eight years of misery. It reminds the Republicans why these midterms are important.”

Some Democratic supporters would disagree.
Macy Bartlett, 17, a Democratic volunteer who registers other young voters in Los Angeles County, told the Orange County Register that Obama’s message will help her effort.
“We just say Obama’s name and it gets people interested,” Bartlett told the newspaper. “He’s such an icon for so many people, and he understands that flipping the House affects everyone.”
Obama led off his appearance with an anecdote about how he was once kicked out of Disneyland for smoking cigarettes on a ride during his days at Occidental College.
"After [a Kool & the Gang] concert, because we were teenagers, you could still kind of hang out in the park, and so we went into the gondolas, and I'm ashamed to say this — so close your ears, young people — but a few of us were smoking on the gondolas," Obama said of his time at Occidental, before he transferred to Columbia University for his junior year.
Saturday’s rally was Obama’s second campaign stop in a string of several planned appearances that Democrats hope will energize voters in an effort to flip 23 seats to take control of the House of Representatives.
He campaigned for seven California Democrats in competitive House district races. Four of those districts are in Orange County, the location of Saturday’s rally and a former GOP stronghold that Hillary Clinton carried by 9 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election.
Statewide, Clinton beat Trump in California by more than 4 million votes.
Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Trump loyalist, is running for a 16^th term against a real estate investor Harley Rouda in his district, which encompasses parts of Orange County. Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran and Democratic philanthropist, is vying to replace retiring Republican Rep. Ed Royce.
Obama also praised venture capitalist Josh Harder in his bid to unseat four-term Republican Jeff Denham, and T.J. Cox, who is challenging David Valadao in a district where Democrats hold a 17-point advantage in voter registration. Both districts are in the state’s Central Valley.
On Friday, the former president castigated President Trump and the Republican Party over its brand of politics at a public appearance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But on Saturday, he said Democrats have a chance to woo independents and Republicans unhappy with the direction of the party.
Trump offered no direct rebuttal to Obama’s speech, but tweeted that Republicans were doing well leading up to the midterms.
“Republicans are doing really well with the Senate Midterms. Races that we were not even thinking about winning are now very close, or even leading. Election night will be very interesting indeed!”
Obama is no stranger appearances in California.
In June, he headlined an expensive fundraiser in Beverly Hills where he participated in a discussion with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and attended and attended another Silicon Valley to raise money for candidates in hotly contested House races.
Obama is expected to deliver the same message in Cleveland on Thursday where he will campaign for Richard Cordray, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, and other Democrats.