Ah?
Republican Congressman Steve King is STILL around?
What Northam did was stupidly WRONG….
But Democrats seem to go out of their way to eat their own?
Again?
Steve King is STILL in Congress?
And his comments where recent not 20 years ago????
Fast moving story stay tuned…
Update…
NY Times….
Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, facing pressure from his own party to resign, said Saturday he would not quit and denied that he appeared as a member of the Ku Klux Klan or in blackface in images from his medical school yearbook that have upended his governorship.
“I am not either of the people in that photo,” Mr. Northam, a Democrat, told reporters at a news conference in the governor’s mansion, adding: “I cannot in good conscience choose the path that would be easier for me to duck the responsibility to reconcile.”
The governor called the images, which first surfaced Friday afternoon, “offensive, racist and despicable.”
But he may have made his effort to remain in office more difficult by revealing that he had darkened his face with shoe polish in the 1980s at a dance party in Texas when he was a young Army officer.
He asked Virginians for forgiveness and said he understood not all of the state’s citizens would believe him.
The governor’s refusal to resign plunged Virginia into political turmoil and created a crisis for national Democrats, who have assailed President Trump for his demagogy on racial issues and will not abide a prominent party member who is associated with emblems of bigotry.
Democrats in the Trump era have adopted a sort of zero-tolerance approach in their own ranks toward misconduct involving race and gender. With Republicans eager to level accusations of hypocrisy, Democratic leaders in Washington have sought to aggressively police the sort of misdeeds they have linked to Mr. Trump. They have pushed out lawmakers such as former Minnesota Senator Al Franken and former Representative Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, both of whom were accused of sexual harassment….
image…abcnews.go.com
Steve King will not remain in Congress for long. He is a legislator not an executive and these are different circumstances.
The Republican Party rightly moved to basically excommunicate King and stripped him of committee assignments. If he runs again, just about everyone will support his primary opponent. Nonetheless, King does keep getting reelected with his constituent having ample opportunity to be aware of his horrific views. It’s a freedom of speech issue and a “voters pick who they want” issue above all else. King’s views are completely extreme but he did not dress as a Klansman or in blackface.
It is beyond obvious that the people of Virginia have lost confidence in Northam at this point. Someone without that cannot effective govern as an executive. His back and forth over whether it was him or not in the photo is pathetic and Trumpian. Either it was or it wasn’t and he knows for sure. Besides the question of how did his political opponents never find this (he would have lost), there is no way that Northam did not know this existed since 1984. He ran for office all the while knowing this could be made public, (whether it some mistake with it not being him) or the fact that he posed that way in 1984, as a 25 year old medical student. Completely unacceptable, especially with all the attention paid to Brett Kavanaugh’s *High School* yearbook from roughly the same time.
1. If Northam were a Repeublican, the calls for him to go from Democrats would be universal and Republicans would want him gone too. I admit that many Democrats have been consistent on this and recognized that there is no choice but for Northam to go and be replaced by an African-American Lt. Governor.
2. Trump is about the only politician in America that people would defend on this if it were him. That would be unacceptable.
3. This is apparently happening now because earlier in this week, Northam made news by speaking on a radio station and all but endorsing infanticide. He deserves whatever he had coming.
Ok
Thanks for the reminder about the abortion
In the last trimester..
I had forgotten that..
My basic beef here is that King and Trump enjoy has said insensitive things and been accused of far worst is still in office..
Al Franken was never tried criminally but bailed….
Sure Northam Did something stupid
Then compounded it , making thing worst but changing position REPEATILY
He should go before the media and explain mistakes and all and then hold on for a while to see how things play
We ALLmake mistake..
But Democrats have to stop throwing their own over the side for things done in the past that have little bearing on the present…
He’s useless to Democrats now (and Fairfax can be very useful), so merit aside, politics is a tough business, and dumping Northam (just as was the case with Franken) is a no-brainer for a party trying to oppose Trump.
What he did as a 25 year old medical student was bad enough, but the way he has handled this yesterday and today make it even clearer that he is unfit.
My wife agrees that his handling of this was terrible….
In regards to third trimester abortions, that is not even what Northam was suggesting.
He said, the baby would be delivered, be kept comfortable, while a “discussion” was held as to if the post-born child would live or die. Unconscionable. That’s not even an abortion. That’s first degree murder.
What a complete and total gift to Trump due to the millions of people who do not necessarily want to vote for Donald Trump but will do so because the Democrat Party has become so extreme on this issue (I won’t vote for Trump regardless). It makes perfect sense why many Democrats would have wanted to toss him aside or “abort” his political career over the way he made that remark earlier this week.
Trump will reportedly add abortion to his SOTU speech….
It will set the media off on a different tangent for sure….
In response to Corey, of course Republicans would have defended Northam.
there is no comparison to King and Northam. Northam was a racist in 1984, (35 yrs ago) but King is a rascist today. There were some in the GOP who called for King to resign; most did not. And Although Northam should resign, he never tried to rape anyone. And yes, Kavenaugh bragging about his attempted rape(s) in his yearbook is far more offensive than what Northam did – at least by the standards in 1984. But just like Republicans were silent and morally indifferent about King in allowing him to keep his seat, and Trump – when they elected him President or chose not to vote, they were morally indiffernt about what Kavenough did too.
And that is just one example of why most intelligent people I know genuinely think most Republicans are either evil or stupid. They may not say it publicly, but they almost all say it privately.
My wife agrees with ur conclusion Z…
And so do I….
As much as the Northam story is the media headliner now?
It will fade come Tuesday with Trump’s SOTU speech and Abrams follow-up….
Every single Republican Member of Congress voted on the floor of the House to condemn King. He was stripped of all committee assignments which is basically unheard of. I wish Republicans would face reality as much as it comes to Trump and I wish Democrats would clear out the racists and anti-Semites in their midst too.
But King remains….
I am grateful that Zreebs finds me neither evil nor stupid.
Me neither CG….
A better comparison would be the recently appointed by a Republican Governor Secretary of State of Florida, who posed in blackface, years ago when he was young. The photo became public. The Governor called on his to resign and he quickly did, as he should have.
I do not think that poising in black face is something we should tolerate from elected officials either.
But the way u handle something brought up IS and indication of who u are…
Come primary time?
How far are they gonna go back?
To kindergarten?
Not kindergarten, but 1984, when you are 25, and in medical school, is pretty bad. Northam’s college yearbook uses a racial slur as a nickname for him.
(this is different than Mel Carnahan admitting he dressed in backface way back in 1960)
We saw how much the the Left focused on alleged off-color or drinking jokes from Kavanaugh’s High School yearbook.
The fact that Northam would admit to it yesterday, thinking this might blow over, and now claim some sort of conspiracy today is beyond ridiculous. He is going to speak in about an hour and unless he resigns and apologizes, it’s not going to go well.
The second sickest person over this (in addition to Northam’s other past opponents) has to be Ed Gillespie.
(It looks like there will be a special election for VA Lt. Governor this year. )
How do you not do Oppo-Research and find these things against a person you are running against (hello by the way to Keith if you are out there),
As for Northam, he has had to know for decades that this yearbook page was out there (even if a case of “the photos got mixed up”) and he reacts this ineptly?
While I am not running for anything, I do have to confess that in 1984, when I was in Kindergarten, I did pose as Michael Jackson.
Not in blackface, but with one glove and sunglasses.
Michael Jackson?
You had a LOT of company….
He stole the Michael Jackson mea culpa from me!
But I was 6, and there was no blackface.. his entire explanation for all of this defies reality. He is just in sheer desperation mode. Eventually, he will resign, and just going through this entire charade will make it all look worse. His poor wife having to stand there… unless she is the one insisting he do this.
This is surreal.
He was seriously considering doing the Moonwalk to try to defend himself and his wife made him stop considering it.
Will he take a lie detector test?
Will he ask for an FBI investigation?
Those were supposed to be important things a few months ago…
The media totally has him nailed and he knows it. This is a very pathetic thing to watch.
” I had to take some time to make sure it was not me.?
Now, “I am convinced it was not me.”
But he admits to dressing up in blackface in 1984 as Michael Jackson,.
This press conference will be shown in college classes, etc for decades about how not to handle damage control.
An innocent person reacts how Brett Kavanaugh did, whether it’s pretty or not, not how this joker is acting today.
The “Beat It” references in newspapers will write themselves….
Everybody is talking about Michael Jackson now in 1984, and he admitted it hours after I did on here!
Al Sharpton on MSNBC just said it was ok I did that at age 6 without blackface.
We’ll see on the resigning….
It DOES seem like Democrats ARE expected to while Republicans can hunker down and ride things thru NO MATTER WHAT….
Again?
Bad political handling of a bad situation….
True THAT….
Republicans resign all the time.
Any Republican (beyond Trump) would have been already gone.
At this point, after he continues to make this worse for himself by the hour, he’s going to simply get impeached if he doesn’t resign.
The KNOWS he’s in a bad place….
He’s just trying to get out of a hole…
Update...
At a press conference Saturday, embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that he is not either of the people in the racist yearbook photo that surfaced on Friday, but admitted that he darkened his skin for a dance contest in San Antonio that same year to imitate Michael Jackson..
More….
or King?
With his past as a Michael Jackson minstrel performer behind him, Ralph Northam needs to look at the Man in the Mirror and make that change.
The Kavanaugh thing is correct….
It DOES get a bit stupid from BOTH sides….
Northam is doing a presser right now….
The Florida Secretary of State wore blackface in 2005, 21 years after Northam did, and while you defend him as “young”, he was 35 at the time.
There TRUELY IS A double standard DEMOCRATS. Hold themselves to….
I’ve certainly advocated Steve King being defeated or resigning. I don’t think there is a logical standard to expel someone from Congress altogether, who has been duly elected, simply because of ideology. They should be voted out. The circumstances between 1 of 435 and a Chief Executive is very different.
All evidence pointed to Brett Kavanaugh being completely innocent. The left just cannot get over the fact he is on the Supreme Court. They will likely act even more disgracefully next time.
I think Democrats get away with this stuff far more often. See Clinton, Bill and the Kennedy Family.
I thought the FL SOS was in college at the time. Even worse then. Good thing he resigned.
CG, I’ve been waiting to ask you for an update about Alderman Burke, who must be a classic example of how someone can be a powerful and well-known figure locally, yet close to unknown anywhere else.
(A profiteer is not without dishonour, save outside his own country. Cf, Mark 6:4 & Matthew 13:57).
Alderman Burke has been indicted. He is also seeking reelection this month.
It turns out he was ensnared in part because another Alderman Danny Solis (the brother of Patti Solis-Doyle, Hillary’s former campaign manager) wore a wire. Solis also had been ensnared by the Feds over some pretty embarrassing things. When this came out, the City Council colleagues went all mafioso and talked about how outrageous it was for Solis to wear a wire and act as a rat. It was pretty telling. Solis had already announced he would not seek another term. He might have to go into some sort of witness protection program.
Several of the Chicago Mayoral front-runners have major ties to Burke over the years, politically, professionally, or both, so they are all trying to use that against one another. The person considered the frontrunner seems to have been hurt by this. It looks like it could very well be a wide open race for two runoff spots.
Now I have to ask what I should have asked for at the beginnin:, the background for those of us who only watch (or are told about) Chicago politics episodically. What exactly is Ald. Burke accused of or charged with ? And how does his position fit into city government ?
He’s a prominent property tax attorney and currently in Chicago, Aldermen have the power to approve or disapprove of any project in their district.
He is charged with shaking down a Burger King franchisee who wanted to remodel their restaurant. Burke is accused of applying pressure to make sure that various Burger Kings retain his law firm’s services. He has stepped down for now as Chairman of the City Council Finance Committee which he had basically held forever.
Burke’s wife is a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Awaiting the beginning of the Ralph Northam “media statement.”
This should be a doozy. I doubt very much that he will Budd Dwyer himself, but he is clearly a desperate man at this point.
This surpassed Gary Hart and Anthony Weiner for the worst “damage control” press conference ever. Only Budd Dwyer’s ended worse for the official.
Al Sharpton is obsessed with the Michael Jackson angle! He’s sticking up for the white kids who pretended to be Michael Jackson and did not put on blackface.
Thank you Rev. Al (We won’t talk about what you were up to in the 1980s.)
Also, somebody better let Sharpton know that Bill Cosby references are probably no longer a good idea.
Lets get real on the Michael Jackson angle….
The man and kid was a Rock Star and Icon….
Kids around the planet imitated him…
And HE bleached his skin lighter…
Again?
This gets stupider as it plays out….
Michael Jackson was still black in 1984. Anybody at that time who was white would have had to be a colossal idiot to have put “shoe polish” on his face. And I really doubt he was able to do the Moonwalk.
I am tempted to write a whole Billie Jean parody song about this but I don’t know I have the creativity.
Agreed there CG…
I thought the Northam situation would bring a flood of comments, and I see that I was correct. I certainly miss Jack for a discussion like this, and hope he is doing well. Also, hopefully Jack is pleased with his new Congressman (more about that later).
I, like most every other Democrat I know, think that Ralph Northam should resign. But, I also think that this is a distraction from much more important issues. I have known Northam since he entered politics and contributed to his campaigns. Nothing in his career as a legislator or Lt. Governor is in the slightest way racist. Nothing in his record or rhetoric in the last campaign, where he clearly said that those Confederate symbols should go, could be construed as racist. That’s why the photos are so surprising. But, they are also disqualifying.
So, while this incident might provide Republicans with some type of moral high ground on the issue of race, it really doesn’t.
Republicans who continue to support a party dominated by Trump cannot be taken seriously on this issue. After all, Trump got his start in politics with his birtherism attacks on our first black President, and a majority of the country’s self-described Republican still believe that Obama was born in Africa (and even more of them believe Obama is a Muslim). Trump has attacked Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, called majority black nations “shithole countries,” and called “Tiki Torch” carrying Young Republicans who march for white supremacy in Virginia “very fine people.”
And what has the Republican Party done in response to Trump’s record on race while they have been condemning the Governor of Virginia? The Republican National Committee passed a resolution expressing “undivided support” for Trump, and, of course, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Congressional leaders went off the “shutdown cliff” with him. Not hard to understand since Trump still enjoys an almost 80% approval rating with the party faithful. This approval rating goes hand and hand with the rank and file’s opinions on race (and education for that matter). Trump wasn’t kidding when he said he “loved the poorly educated.” So, it is impossible to separate Trump from the Republican Party (although we all know people will try).
Of course it’s also a wet dream to think Congressman King is going anywhere during this session of Congress. After sixteen years in office, years of overt racism and countless racial slurs, the Republicans have finally censured King. Big deal. They waited until they were in the minority to take action, not when he was actually able to take meaningful legislative action, nope they didn’t go after him then. An empty gesture given the damage he has done all these years. Of course, it’s easy to put him up as a sacrificial lamb in the time of Trump. He is a rather poor fig leaf after all this time.
So, we have found ourselves in one of those rare moments when the Democrats have a race debacle on their hands. One easily solved when Justin Fairfax becomes the State’s second black Governor. So, there is good reason to remove Northam from his job, but the newfound racial piety of the GOP who sold its soul to Trump isn’t one of them.
This brings me to the last election and what I have planned for the future. President Obama said that we should all stop arguing on the internet and go out and do something for change. That’s what I have been attempting to do, with some success for the last six months. I got deeply involved in the Congressional races in Orange County last year and out of that effort came two new job offers. One back in DC and one with a political consulting firm. I am now working for one of the more successful firms here in California and we have some interesting new clients.
It’s amazing to me what happened here last November. I never expected we could take seven seats (I expected five), and we have targeted two more for the 2020 cycle. The Republican electorate in California has fallen to third place behind the “decline to state,” and the Democrats have all the State Offices and super majorities in the State Assembly. Orange County went from one Democratic Congressman to five. It was incredible transformation and I was proud to be a small part of it. The Republican brand is truly toxic here.
During the November election there were five new candidates that I both gave money to and raised money for, and they all won. Even Kendra Horn in Oklahoma and I thought that was a lost cause. I was also very heartened to help Sean Casten win his seat in DuPage County. Amazing to see Illinois go the way of California. And, finally, I raised money for Joe Cunningham, one because he was a great candidate, and two, because I felt he was ripe of an upset.
So, I am busy, and in the future I will really not have time to argue on the internet. The Harris and Brown people are after me, and the husband is helping Tom Steyer (we are both happy he took a pass on running), and we have books to read and travel planned. The West Coast is going to play a much larger role in next year’s nomination process, and I want to do my part. So, as Jack aptly put it, I have other things I need to do and only so much time to do it.
So, take care everyone. Thanks James for all your work.
Good to hear from ya Keith….
And props to you for the hard work you continue to put for the party and ideas and vision you believe in….
On Northam….
I can believe what you relate about him since you personally knew know the Governor…
My pique with this is what you have mentioned …Rep. King and Trump and we could add Justice Kavanaugh….
All with blemishes on their resume’s yet still in office….
Frankly, I’m torn ….
While the WAY Northam has handled his problem on this would seem to indicate that he’s NOT a very good politician?
The fact that these things are continuing to be based on incidents decades in the pass worries me…
We ALL have done dumn things as kids, teenagers and young adults….
The thing of dragging them up decades later as readings of a person in the present is troubling in my view…
Called to remember things few days ago puts me at a disadvantage as some have pointed out here…
To hold these people accountable for actions in a different time and place is rough…
We’ll see what happens..
But Northam WILL get breathing space if he doesn’t step down by Tuesday…
Trump will be holding his STOU speech and THAT will grab all the spotlight from the Virginia Governor….
I have said it here before…
Democrats want to be high minded…
But they gotta stop eating their own…
The return of comments here is heartening….
I hope people can drop in from time to time….
As advertised….
I WILL continue to keep cracking out the daily posts here at the PDog….
I’m in it for the long haul…..
Post coming later….
But one could almost guess this was coming…..
….
From Vox….
Justin Fairfax, second in line for governor of Virginia, faces sexual assault allegation
Here’s what we know….
Voxdotcom