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Poor Johnny Depp. Despite earning more than $650 million over 13 or so years, hes gone near broke. While a rational person might try and cull his $2-million-a-month lifestyle, Depp apparently thought the best way to rehabilitate his image was to tell a half-edgy joke about killing the president.

It looks like death threats are the new sex tapes. Just ask Kathy Griffin.

But its not like you or I could get away with making insinuations or direct threats against the presidents life. For starters, the Secret Service wouldnt give us the benefit of the doubt because of our celebrity status. Regular people arent allowed to make such jokes and use our eccentricity as cover.

Besides, even if the government decided not to investigate, the left wouldnt let us live us down. After all, look at what theyve done to people guilty of far less.

In our first stop on our trip down Memory Lane, we find ourselves in Jefferson City at the annual Missouri State Fair where a rodeo clown received a lifetime ban after he wore a President Barack Obama mask. After receiving blowback from Democratic state lawmakers, the fair put out a written statement lamenting the unconscionable stunt.

Unconscionable.

The Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, the genocide in Darfur, the 2013 Missouri State Fair. All great tragedies of modernity.

If only that poor rodeo clown had appeared in a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, he might still have a job.

Lesser-known examples include a Houston news anchor who was fired back in November for expressing her belief that the United States had become more violent and racist under the Obama administration and blaming the former president for making the entire country hate one another.

A little kooky? Perhaps. Worthy of permanent unemployment in her line of work? Absolutely not.

How about the GOP staffer who had to resign from her position as a communications director for Congressman Steve Fincher because she made a few rude comments about the way Malia and Sasha Obama dress? Begging for the countrys forgiveness wasnt humiliating enough, she had to lose her job, too.

There are countless other low-level government bureaucrats, businessmen and celebrities (remember Hank Williams Jr.?Hes only just now returning to Monday Night Football after he made a stupid comment comparing Obama to Hitler) who all had to pay dearly literally for offhand comments about the last president. None of them wished violence against him, but they all triggered a switch in liberals brains that made them bully the offender into submission.

To be clear: I dont think Griffin or Depp deserve any sort of punishment for their inane stunts. The principle of free speech doesnt just mean the government should steer clear, it means that Americans shouldnt try to inflict as much misery on one another just because someone lost control of their verbal filter for a minute.

At the same time, if some liberal celebrity tries to act like theyre the victim next time a bunch of Trump supporters try organizing a boycott for a tasteless joke, spare the pity. Remember that the real victims of this kind of culture are mostly people youve never heard of.

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The rest is here:
Johnny Depp Is Lucky He's a Democrat - Heat Street

Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Nancy Pelosi's time as a leader of the Democrats is over, as Democrats have been stuck in the minority since 2011, and have had no luck picking off Republican seats in special elections so far this year.

"Nancy Pelosi was a great speaker," Rice said on MSNBC. "She is a great leader. But her time has come and gone."

Rice backed Rep. Tim Ryan's bid to replace Pelosi as leader last year, and thus has long ago decided Pelosi needs to go. But she said the Democrats' failure to win the open seat in Georgia on Tuesday made it more clear that Democrats need new leadership.

"I sat in a meeting the other day, and I listened to a rationale as to how we should be happy as a caucus because we didn't lose as badly... two days ago as we did a year ago," she said. "But we're still losing."

Rice dismissed Pelosi's ability to raise money for Democrats, and said that money isn't helping Democrats win.

"If money that we are raising through her leadership is not helping us win elections, then we have to have this difficult conversation now," she said.

She also rejected the idea that by saying this out loud, she is accepting Republican criticism that Pelosi is an "out-of-touch, San Francisco liberal."

"I do not believe she's an out-of-touch, San Francisco liberal," she said. "I believe she is not the leader for the future of the Democratic Party."

Rice was one of a handful of Democrats who were raising questions about Pelosi's leadership after Tuesday's special election. Ryan, who tried to unseat her last year, said the Democrat brand is "toxic" in some areas of the country.

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House Democrat: Nancy Pelosi's time has 'come and gone' - Washington Examiner

Democratic candidate Ralph Northam in the Virginia governor race carries a significant lead over Republican Ed Gillespie according to a poll released late Wednesday.

The Democratearned 47 percent of the vote in the poll compared to Gillespies 39 percent support. Forty percent of Independent voters supported the Republican, compared to only 38 percent who supported the Democrat.

The former Republican party chair led with male voters, white voters, and Republicans with substantial leads, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. Northam led with women voters and non-white Voters in the poll.

Although Northams lead is just 47 39 percent, other data indicates the difficulty of the job facing Gillespie, Assistant Poll Director Peter Brown wrote in a statement. Voters have a mixed view of Gillespie. By a three-two margin, they see Northam favorably. And, voters say they would prefer that the Democrats control the State Legislature.

Republicanscurrently control both chambers of the state legislative assembly, and 48 percent of respondents in the poll report they wanted Democrats to take control. Only 41 percent said they liked Republican control of the statehouse.

Gillespie does have the economy going for him. The most important issue to voters in the poll was the states economy, and 42 percent of voters think that the Republican would handle the economy better than Northam whose support on the issue was 38 percent. Voters also asserted they felt that the Democrat would be better on education policy and health care.

This is the first poll of the general election. Northam blew progressive candidate Tom Perriello out of the water, and Gillespie edged out pro-Trump firebrand Corey Stewart in their respective primaries two weeks ago.

The poll included 1,145 registered voters from June 15 through June 20. It carried a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points in either direction.

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Democrat Takes Solid Lead In Key Virginia Race - The Daily Caller

President Donald Trump again blamed Senate Democrats for blocking the passage of a health care bill that no one outside of a handful of GOP lawmakers has actually seen yet.

Speaking Wednesday at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump lamented criticism that his administration hasnt accomplished much yet and pointed a finger at Democratic lawmakers for slowing the passage of a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

If we went and got the single greatest health care plan in the history of the world, we would not get one Democrat vote, because theyre obstructionists, Trump claimed. If we came to you and said, Heres your plan, youre going to have the greatest plan in history, and youre going to pay nothing, theyd vote against it, folks.

Trump tweeted similar complaintsearlier Wednesday.

If we had even a little Democrat support, just a little, like a couple of votes, youd have everything. And you could give us a lot of votes and wed even be willing to change it and move it around and try and make it even better, he continued at the Iowa rally. But again,They just want to stop, they just want to obstruct. A few votes from the Democrats, seriously, a few votes from the Democrats, it could be so easy, so beautiful, and youd have cooperation.

What Trump failed to mention is that Senate Democrats havent actually had the opportunity to even read the bill, which Republican senators have written almost entirely behind closed doors. The unprecedented lack of transparencyhas drawn outrage from Democrats, the media and the public, while Republicans have falsely claimed that Democrats engaged in similar secrecy while writing the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010.(Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he plans to release the text of the bill Thursday.)

Trump, who described the House version of the bill as mean, said Wednesday that he hopes Republicans will surprise the public with a plan with heart.

Reports, however, indicate that the Senate bill will be substantially similar to the one passed in the House last month. An estimated 23 million fewer people would have health care coverage under that bill, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of it.

And as HuffPosts Jeffrey Young points out, the bills intent, regardless of what the Senate version looks like, is already clear. The purpose of this bill is to dramatically scale back the safety netso wealthy people and health care companies can get a massive tax cut, Young wrote this week.

The president also mocked Democrats for failing to pick up seats in special elections in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday, singling out Jon Ossoff, the Democrat who narrowly lost in Georgias 6th Congressional District.

They thought they were going to win last night in Atlanta, he said. And theyve been unbelievably nasty, really nasty. They spent close to $30 million on this kid, who forgot to live in the community he was in.

Trump then acknowledged that his criticism may not be doing Senate Republicans any favors in winning over their Democratic colleagues.

I am making it a little bit hard to get their support, but who cares? he said.

Originally posted here:
Trump Blames Democrats For Obstructing Health Care Bill They Haven't Seen Yet - HuffPost

WASHINGTON National Democrats woke up Wednesday morning with bleary eyes and low morale.

On one hand, they were wondering "what went wrong" in a special election in Georgia, where their party spent millions of dollars to boost their candidate only to see him lose Tuesday night.

But when it came to the special election race in South Carolina, where Democrats spent just a fraction to help Archie Parnell, the question was mostly, "What if?"

What if Democrats had invested more heavily in the state's 5th Congressional District? What if they had established a stronger ground game earlier in the cycle?

Would Parnell have lost by an even slimmer margin than 3.2 percent? Would he have actually defeated Republican Ralph Norman in the seat left vacant by now-White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney?

Ultimately, there's no way to know.

"Hindsight is always 20/20," said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Winthrop University in Rock Hill.

Nobody could have rationally expected Parnell to perform so well, Huffmon said. The district is as red as can be, and its Democratic operation has been in disarray since the 2010 defeat of Democrat John Spratt, who coasted to reelection for years on name recognition and constituent service before Mulvaney won.

National Republican Congressional Committee Executive Director John Rogers was pleased at the outcome, saying the final result is what matters for the GOP's numbers on Capitol Hill, not how ugly or pretty it was.

"Were in the business of winning races, not ... landslides," he said. "We did exactly what we had to do to get things done."

But it didn't stop Democrats from pondering what might have been after Norman enjoyed a 44,906-42,072 vote win (a 51-48 margin), with three lesser candidates getting a few hundred votes each, according to unofficial results.

"There wasn't enough juice on the ground for (get out the vote efforts), there wasn't enough push at the end," said U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who campaigned with Parnell the weekend before Election Day. "I don't think we should have made it a big deal, because then we would have had a money war, but there were a lot of people in the Congressional Black Caucus saying 'We need to get money in, stealth money, for a turnout operation.' "

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn the S.C. delegation's lone Democrat, third most senior member of his party's leadership and highest-ranking black lawmaker in Congress agreed more resources were needed.

"I dont think we had the campaign that was designed to win," said Clyburn. "If we had gotten the resources, I think we would have won."

Smart Politics, a political news site tied to the University of Minnesota, noted Wednesday the 3.2-point victory margin in the 5th District special election was the third most closely decided out of the last 393 contests in the state since the turn of the 20th century.

Clyburn was among those who made a direct plea to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to invest in the district by targeting black constituents, who count for almost 26 percent of the voting age population.

The DCCC put $275,000 into the 5th District for the Parnell campaign to hire additional staffers and boost voter turnout, placing volunteers in black communities like churches and doing ad buys in black media markets.

DCCC regional press secretary Cole Leiter in a statement gave Clyburn and former S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison direct credit for their "strategic guidance" in getting the party within "striking distance" of victory.

Not everyone agrees that was enough, or that it came through in enough time to make a difference.

"If we had had a scintilla of those resources, the outcome of this election ... would have been different," said current S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Trav Robertson. "When you compare what Archie Parnell and his team ... were able to do in such a short time span compared with the $40 million that was spent in Georgia, it is absolutely remarkable."

Harrison, who now has a leadership role at the Democratic National Committee, told The Post and Courier that he, Clyburn and Robertson all "had a conversation" with Parnell after the special election primary to talk strategy.

"You can't put all the money into broadcast TV," Harrison said they told him.

This was one mistake Democrat Fran Person made in his bid to unseat Mulvaney in 2016, which he lost by 20 points. The brain trust told Parnell that grassroots investments were the way to go, and Parnell agreed.

Many of the other things that went well for Parnell might have been specific to the circumstances. He was running in an open special election rather than against a popular incumbent like Mulvaney. His background as a tax attorney and his economic messaging resonated with moderates.

Harrison said he hoped Parnell challenges Norman to a rematch in 2018: "Hes now on the radar screen for a lot of Democrats. National Democrats. And maybe then we can get the national investments."

If Republicans were having any anxiety behind closed doors on Wednesday, they downplayed it publicly.

S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick attributed the close race to low voter turnout, acknowledging that "Republicans have got accustomed to winning."

But he added it also proved that Democrats opting to focus on "the vitriolic hatred of Donald Trump, won't win elections."

Maya T. Prabhu and Andrew Brown contributed to this report.

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After close South Carolina special election race, Democrats wonder 'what if?' - Charleston Post Courier