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Wanna See How Fast Democrats Flipped Over Kavanaugh Accuser Hearing?


When Christine Blasey Ford made an unfounded accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her sometime in the 1980’s, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee immediately tried to set up a hearing for her to tell her story. Initially Senate democrats also favored a hearing, but because the only point of Ford’s accusation is to delay and untimely terminate Kavanaugh’s nomination, they have flipped faster that a sizzling burger on a McDonald’s grill.

Here’s a perfect example of just how full of shit democrats are. On Monday Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said this about a hearing for Christine Blasey Ford:

“I think [a public hearing is] the only way to go at this point. She has agreed to do it and it’s going to be very difficult, otherwise, to satisfy all the different things that have been said, contradictory things, as you noted, between judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford,” said Durbin.

By Wednesday, this was Durbin’s take on a hearing:

On Monday New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand was all for a hearing:

“I’m hopeful the Senate will at least have some measure of review, maybe a hearing, some measure of analysis of this accusation, and have some measure of clarity on whether this is disqualifying. I believe it is disqualifying, given what we know,” said Gillibrand.

Sure, Gillibrand has already convicted Kavanaugh, but she was at least in favor of a hearing. But that was so Monday because by Wednesday she was attacking Republicans for scheduling a hearing.

On Tuesday Delaware Senator Chris Coons was in favor of a hearing for Ford to testify:

“It is my hope that the Senate Judiciary Committee will demonstrate that we are today capable of treating an alleged victim of sexual assault with the respect and thoroughness that her allegations deserve. It is important that this hearing be informed first by experts,” said Coons.

But by Wednesday he was all…

On Monday Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono was expecting a good hearing with Ford and Kavanaugh:

“I expect to have both witnesses come if they are willing to – and they both have expressed their willingness – and that everyone should be heard,” said Hirono.

On Wednesday Hirono was decidedly against any kind of hearing, calling Republican’s efforts to set it up “bullshit.”

Obviously whatever Republicans want, democrats will oppose and the GOP should use this to their advantage. They should call for a full FBI investigation into the allegations and put Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote on hold indefinitely. At that point democrats will call the FBI investigation an attempt to bully Christine Blasey Ford and immediately vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Democrats are insane but predictable.

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Colorado ‘pay-what-you-can’ cafe at risk of shutting down: ‘It kind of snuck up on us.’

FoCo Café in Fort Collins, Colorado, is a nonprofit that operates under a “pay-what-you-can” model, meaning customers make a donation of whatever they can afford under an honor system.

But the restaurant and food pantry has fallen on hard times and is making a plea to the community to help keep it afloat.

What’s the situation?

FoCo opened on Thanksgiving Day 2014 and was at first run entirely by volunteers. Now the eatery has four paid employees, which is affecting overhead — including a spike in health insurance costs and workers compensation premiums. According to KCNC-TV, the cafe is also required to pay sales tax whether or not a patron pays for their meal.

Executive Director Mallory Garneau told the Coloradoan that FoCo will shut down in the next month if they don’t receive additional funds.

“It kind of snuck up on us a little bit,” she said. “It has been a tough situation.”

Donations for meals have also declined, contributing further to FoCo’s woes. No menu prices are set for the all-you-can-eat meals, but the operation suggests a donation of $10 for those able to afford it.

The average customer contributed $6.50 for a meal in 2017, but this year’s average has dropped to $4.96, and only $3.83 for the month of August. The cafe is now operating at a loss of nearly $550 per day.

Garneau suggested, “I don’t think people are taking advantage of us. But maybe it is more of a misunderstanding of how it works.”

What’s next?

In their efforts to raise $50,000 by Halloween, FoCo has launched a sustaining membership campaign to raise funds, asking for supporters to pledge a monthly donation to help defer operating costs.

“We have seen a decline in awareness and excitement of the café from the general public,” Garneau said. “As we hope to enter year four, we need to reawaken the conversation around our mission and what it is we really do for the community.”

Since its opening, FoCo has served lunch six days a week, totaling roughly 80,000 meals. They also operate a food pantry, a summer kids breakfast program, a small garden, and a year-round “hydration station.”

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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CLASSY: Elizabeth Warren Fundraises Off Of Kavanaugh Allegations


This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent out a fundraising email in which she kept the subject topical, using the allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh to launch a pitch for her war chest. Warren wrote, “Christine Blasey Ford has done a brave thing in coming forward. She deserves to be heard and treated with respect. Now it’s the Senate’s job to make sure that happens.”

This month Warren tries to make money off of an allegation of sexual assault that hasn’t been proven. In July she tried to raise money by portraying herself as a defender of all women from President Trump:

As The Boston Herald noted, “But Warren apparently only feels strongly about cases she can exploit to her benefit. Hence her silence on Democratic colleague and choice for DNC Chair, Rep. Keith Ellison, whose former girlfriend Karen Monahan claims he physically and emotionally abused her. Far from being supported and believed, Monahan says she has been ‘smeared, threatened and isolated by her own party.’”

via Daily Wire

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Shutdown ahead? Trump blasts bipartisan “ridiculous spending bill” over border-wall snub


Shutdown, here we come! Start up the clocks and set up the sad-tourist photo ops. Despite what looked like an almost unnaturally smooth budget process in Congress over the past few weeks, we might end up with a new operational crisis thanks to sudden opposition in the White House to a bipartisan spending bill.

Apparently, no one told Donald Trump that funding for the border wall got pushed off again:

The bill doesn’t entirely zero out wall funding, but it’s not robust either. The two sides settled on about a third of Trump’s request for 2019, but it might well be the last shot to get anything:

Senate Democrats have agreed to $1.6 billion for Trump’s wall in 2019, far short of the $5 billion that Trump is seeking. Convinced they do not have the votes in the Senate to get Trump the money he wants, GOP leaders elected to put off a fight over Trump’s signature campaign issue until after the midterms.

But Trump’s tweet on Thursday raises the question many Republicans so far have been unwilling to answer: how can they assure him they will be able to secure wall funding after the midterm elections?

That’s a pretty good question, and one that might drive Trump to play hardball to get what he wants now. Roll Call’s John T. Bennett thinks this signals a budget shutdown, or may just be a way to rally his base ahead of the midterms:

President Donald Trump raised the odds of a government shutdown that lawmakers from both parties thought they had averted, calling a spending package headed his way to keep the federal lights on “ridiculous.” …

The president might simply be appealing to his conservative base with the shutdown-threatening tweet. He brought the government to the brink of a shutdown in March with a seemingly out-of-the-blue veto threat on a Friday morning with the funding clock ticking toward zero. By that afternoon, he signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending package after lawmakers had left town — then joined them by flying away from the White House to his New Jersey golf resort.

At that time, though, Trump said he wouldn’t sign another bill like it in the future after previously threatening to veto the omnibus bill for its lack of border-wall funding. He called a press conference to vent his disgust with the bill and made that threat explicit. Trump has been known to make threats over domestic policy and conveniently forget them later, but the media reports at the time painted him as a sucker — and he won’t have forgotten that.

Although, as Bennett also points out, Trump stopped threatening shutdowns after huddling with GOP leadership at the beginning of the month:

In fact, he has since threatened to shut down the federal government this fall unless Democrats give in to his border security demands, including giving him billions more for his proposed southern border wall. He has dropped the threat at campaign rallies and on Twitter, even as GOP leaders and rank-and-file members of the spending committees assured reporters the government would not again shut down in a few weeks.

Should Democrats continue denying Trump his border barrier and other demands and the president make good on his high-stakes threat, it would be the third funding lapse of his tenure. It also would shutter the government just weeks before voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate — and the Trump-GOP agenda — come January.

That’s really why Trump can’t, or at least shouldn’t, pull the trigger on a shutdown. Regardless of whom Trump blames for the bill in front of him, the midterm elections will take place five weeks after the budget deadline. If the federal government shuts down, especially in a dispute between Republican leaders, voters will punish the party in charge at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for a shutdown. Even as a means of rallying the base, it’s dangerous; it signals to the Trump voters that the GOP needs to energize that there’s no point in voting for Republicans. It’d be a buzzkill that a dozen Trump rallies couldn’t overcome.

That may be why Trump didn’t explicitly threaten a shutdown, although one can certainly take a hint from his tweet-blast. He can try to sell the “Dems are obstructing law enforcement” argument in the midterms by complaining about the bill now, and still signing it. But if that’s the strategy, then perhaps that should be in all-caps, and “REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!” can get demoted to regular case … even if it’s true.

By the way, the spending plan is awful — but the biggest problem isn’t that it doesn’t have enough spending. It’s that it has far too much spending, as usual, but no one seems to care:

Weeks before the midterm elections, conservatives in the House are gaining little traction on fiscal issues as Congress passed one spending bill after another in bipartisan votes.

It’s a significant shift from the last few years, when the House Freedom Caucus often threw a wrench into appropriations plans with demands to cut mandatory spending and advance other conservative priorities.

“It’s a little bit frustrating right now,” said Rep. Mark Walker, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in the House.

That battle was lost in the earlier bipartisan budget agreement, however. Six weeks before the midterms, few on Capitol Hill want to re-fight that battle in appropriations. Does Trump agree?

via Hot Air

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Atheist group complains about crosses in church building leased by school—and the crosses come down

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national atheist organization, recently got word that a Las Vegas church building had some crosses on its walls — and the group wasn’t too happy about that.

But this isn’t just any church building. The sticking point is that a public school is leasing it — and therefore the FFRF said the crosses on the walls aren’t constitutional.

So the Wisconsin-based activist group sent a letter to officials with Discovery Charter School this month, telling them to remove religious symbols in the building it’s leasing from Mount Olive Lutheran Church, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

“The appearance that the school endorses Christianity is overwhelming and undeniable,” FFRF legal fellow Christopher Line wrote, the paper said. “If [Discovery] wishes to continue leasing from a religious organization, it must ensure that the school environment is constitutionally compliant.”

What did the school say?

John Haynal — appointed to turn around struggling Discovery Charter — confirmed that two crosses inside the building it’s leasing from the church were removed when the school moved to the property in July, the Review-Journal said. The new Sandhill campus is for students in kindergarten through fourth grade.

He also told the paper that a banner with cross symbol welcoming visitors to Mount Olive will be moved away from the school entrance and to the front of the church by Oct. 1, and that Discovery’s blue banner will replace the church banner.

Discovery Charter also shares space in the church’s fellowship hall, which the school uses as a cafeteria and for art for its kindergarten, Haynal told the Review-Journal.

Who complained?

Haynal told the paper he attributes the complaint about the crosses to an individual unhappy with changes that came after he was appointed last year by state charter school officials to run Discovery, which was weathering struggling elementary grades.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation didn’t name the complainant, the Review-Journal said, but Line said it came from a local resident concerned about the school moving into a church.

Haynal added to the paper that Discovery got a similar complaint from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, urging the school to relocate to a space without religious connections.

But what about the cross in front of the church sanctuary?

While Line said he’s pleased the two crosses in the leased church building were taken down, the Review-Journal said a cross at the front of the church sanctuary could cause legal issues.

Line told the paper that if students aren’t entering near the cross and don’t see it every day, that might pass muster.

“It really is just about taking steps to make sure that it’s very clear that the public school is not affiliated with the church’s teaching,” Line added to the Review-Journal.

But Haynal argued to the paper that he has no say over religious symbols on church property the school isn’t leasing.

“I give my word to my public, to my parents, and to my students that this will be a public school environment second to none,” he added to the Review-Journal. “And only that.”

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PETA Mocks Donald Trump Jr. With Halloween Costume. Trump Jr. Neuters Them.


The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) decided to mock Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter, by creating a Halloween costume of him with blood dripping down his face as a leopard was posed behind him. But Trump Jr., as the hunter he is, had PETA in his crosshairs and promptly neutered them with a blast of his own.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk gleefully stated, “There’s nothing more frightful than an entitled ghoul who gets his kicks from gunning down wild animals. This Halloween, PETA will help people poke fun at someone who believes that the world and its wildlife are here for him to take.”

According to The Hill, “The $169 ‘Donald Trump Jr. Hunting Halloween’ costume, for which PETA is currently accepting pre-orders on its website, includes a blood-stained camouflage jacket with a name tag that reads ‘Half-Cocked.’ A red cap and a leopard stuffed animal are also part of the get-up, although a listing indicates ‘prop gun not included.’”

According to PETA , the costume was “inspired by and is a twist on the trophy-hunting photo that showed the Trump brothers grinning over the body of a dead leopard.”

Trump Jr., 40, a member of the Boone and Crocket Club, has been photographed holding elephant and leopard trophies. He didn’t have much trouble bagging PETA:

via Daily Wire

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