Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

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Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 06, 2016 9:51 am

if Trump is elected he will be impeached then we will be left with President Mike Pence who will then appoint 4 Supreme Court Judges

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Heaven's Gain Ministries

Early Second Trimester

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The flannel baby blanket interior gives a warm look and feel to this casket's interior. Casket, burial bottle, glue, and a baby blanket bottle covering are included. This casket seals when the glue is applied. Note: The diameter of the opening to this bottle is 2.1 inches and the length is 5.75 inches.

Exterior Size 10.25"(L) x4.5"(w) x 3.75"(H)
Interior Size 8.4"(L) x 3.5"(w) x 3.1"(H)

We can personalize your baby's casket with a golden metal name plate. Just type the baby's name in the text box below before adding to your cart. There is no additional charge for the name plate.



Heaven's Gain Ministries

Why The Bottle?


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View our clients baby in our bottle (Click here) One of our clients has posted on Baby Center how she used our bottle to preserve and bury her baby. Scroll about three fourth down the page for the picture and read that page and the next page for more info.

Through our experiences in our own miscarriages, we realized that the handling and burial of a miscarried baby often brings with it some special challenges. Specifically, the miscarried baby’s skeletal system is not fully developed, and so the baby does not retain his/her natural form after birth. The miscarried baby’s body is very fragile and the skin may be sticky to the touch.
If still in the womb, the baby would be peacefully floating in his/her own amniotic fluid. Our bottles allow the baby to be suspended in the natural state of water. Babies at this stage are meant to be suspended in amniotic fluid. The use of the bottle filled with water gives the body of the baby a womb-like environment. We recommend a saline solution (contact Solution works well) to preserve the baby for a couple days until burial. Often times a miscarried baby does not look exactly as might be expected from the baby development pictures. When place in a jar with a combination of distilled and saline water, babies usually return to his/her natural beautiful state for that stage in pregnancy. This change in appearance allowed our other children and family members to view the baby. Also, the clear bottle allows the baby to be photographed.
Placing our baby in the womb-like environment of the bottle, and partially wrapping the bottle with a blanket allowed us to cuddle and rock our baby without worrying about skin breakdown. After being suspended in water, our baby's appearance was improved. If you are uncomfortable burying the baby in the bottle, the bottle can be used just temporarily to help preserve the baby with the side effect of improving his/her appearance in and out of the water.
We carefully selected bottles for our various caskets according to the baby's age and size. This is why we ask the baby's age/trimester. Although recommended, use of the bottle is totally optional. We will include the bottle and you can make your own decision.
At this point, we only have bottles fitting babies up to 28 weeks. Bottles are included with caskets up to 20 weeks. If you wish to use a bottle after 20 weeks please specify that in your order.
http://www.heavensgain.com/id3.html



Pence Signed a Law Requiring Burial or Cremation for Aborted Fetuses
The measure was part of a controversial abortion bill that Trump's vice presidential pick signed this past March.

HANNAH LEVINTOVAJUL. 15, 2016 1:54 PM


Mike Pence speaks at a 2011 anti-abortion rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Alex Brandon/AP
The sweeping abortion bill that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed into law in March gained national attention for prohibiting women from electing to have an abortion due to the race, gender, or disability of the fetus. But the bill contained another unusual provision: It required that aborted fetuses receive what amounts to a funeral.

Pence, whom Donald Trump announced as his vice presidential running mate on Friday, signed the law that made Indiana the second state ever, after North Dakota, to pass a ban on abortions carried out for certain reasons. The law also imposed liability for wrongful death on doctors that perform an abortion motivated by one of the prohibited reasons. And, as Mother Jones reported in March, the law also required that health care facilities inter or cremate the remains of an aborted fetus, and prohibited fetal tissue donation.

Following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down several Texas abortion restrictions in June, a federal judge blocked the Indiana law from going into effect.

"By enacting this legislation, we take an important step in protecting the unborn, while still providing an exception for the life of the mother," Pence said in a statement when he signed the bill. "I sign this legislation with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers, and families."

This sort of fetus funeral provision has recently gained traction in legislatures around the country: Arkansas and Georgia have similar laws on the books, while Ohio, South Carolina, and Mississippi have all considered similar measures in the last year.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... ed-fetuses



Decoding Mike Pence's Misogyny

Having lost the women’s vote, the Trump campaign doubles down on gendered language.

By Adele M. Stan / The American Prospect October 5, 2016


f there’s any one thing the Trump campaign wants you to remember about Hillary Clinton, it’s that she’s a woman—a play for the votes of people who believe that’s not a good thing.

In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Mike Pence, the right-wing extremist Indiana governor who is the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, attempted to paint the foreign policy of Trump’s Democratic opponent as weak, saying of the war in Syria, “Look, we have got to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership that begins by rebuilding our military.”

Ah, that broad-shouldered leadership. You know who doesn’t have broad shoulders? The woman!

It’s not the first time Pence has trotted out the term. Just before the September 26 debate between Trump and Clinton—the first time a woman has stood on the debate stage as a major-party presidential nominee—Pence said of his boss, “Look, Donald Trump's got broad shoulders. He's able to make his case and make a point."

Pence is smooth, carefully choosing his turns of phrase. Nothing crass here, just very polite sexism of the kind that could serve him well when he vies for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020.

Other Trump surrogates are less adroit. On Sunday, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani went straight to the point. Addressing a New York Times report indicating that Trump may not have paid personal income tax for some 18 years, Giuliani described his man as a “genius” for having worked the system so brilliantly.

“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman?” Giuliani asked during an appearance on ABC’s This Week.



The Trump campaign has long played to the fears of a large constituency of white men unnerved by the changing role of women in the world. More than any one thing, the place of white men in society is what this election is all about. For them, knowing that no matter how hard the times on which they’ve fallen, they’ve still got a leg up on people who are not like them—be they women, black people, or brown-skinned immigrants—is no longer a given.

In addition to Trump’s crasser statements of misogyny, he’s suggested that Clinton “doesn’t have a presidential look.” (Her shoulders are not broad enough?) And, of course, Trump’s repeated questioning of his opponent’s “stamina” is all about gendered stereotypes—as if we still lived in the days when corseted upper-class white women regularly took to fainting couches from forcing themselves into lung-crushing garments constructed of grommets, laces, and animal bones, all to have a figure like that of a Miss Universe pageant winner.

Questioned about his “presidential look” comment by moderator Lester Holt,Trump doubled down. Clinton neatly dispensed with his reply, saying, “As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a ceasefire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina." (During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton’s travels covered 956,733 miles; she spent 401 days on the road.)

The upshot of Trump’s debate performance in September was to reopen Clinton’s lead among women. Going into the first debate, Clinton’s advantage among women, according to national polls as parsed by the International Business Times, was as low as 5 percent. But in the days following the debate, her advantage soared by as much as 20 points, according to two Fox News polls. Meanwhile, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll, Trump is winning men by 5 points.

Trump is not likely to win back many of those women voters, so his campaign has little choice but to make a fierce bid for every vote of every white man in the country who fears the usurpation of the Barcalounger throne in his cul-de-sac castle. Hence, whatever such a man’s misgivings about Trump, he’s got to be, as Giuliani so baldly put it, “better than a woman.”

Yet the very things that set off alarm bells in such men are the very things that appeal to women. Hillary is confident, capable, and remains unruffled by the very sorts of insults that every woman who has sat in a male-dominated workplace meeting, or simply walked down the street alone, has had to endure. She’s the embodiment of the Urban Dictionary’s definition of a “broad.” Once a pejorative term, “broad” came to denote something admirable, according to Urban Dictionary contributor Alexei Kotsov. “Broads … know how to compete and win in a man's world,” he writes. To summarize, Kotsov quotes Bette Midler, who said, “People always love a broad—someone with a sense of humor, someone with a fairly wicked tongue, someone who can belt out a song, someone who takes no guff."

No one yet knows the true dimensions of the 2016 electorate (the people who actually cast a ballot on Election Day). But we do know that women historically vote in greater numbers than men.

In the vice presidential debate, Pence offered little defense of his running mate—except for Trump’s broad shoulders. But women voters are likely to pick the broad minus the shoulders, as are a number of guys who find broads more appealing than bluster. That leaves Trump scurrying to muster a militia of angry white men large enough to put him over the top. More misogyny is surely on tap.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/d ... e-misogyny



All of Mike Pence's Awful Positions on Women's Rights

A reminder that the Indiana governor has some of the most extreme anti-abortion stances in the country.


By Prachi Gupta
Oct 04, 2016
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s views on abortion rights are heavily influenced by his religion as a born-again evangelical Catholic. During the first (and only) televised vice presidential debate of the 2016 election Tuesday night, he said, "For me, my faith informs my life."

Though it may have been the first time watching Pence speak for some, many voters — particularly, many women — may already be familiar with Pence, who is one of the most extreme anti-abortion legislators in the country. "It all, for me, begins with cherishing the dignity, the worth, the value, of every human life," he said.

Earlier this year, Pence signed a controversial anti-abortion law that would have banned abortions of fetuses sought over gender, race, ancestry, or diagnosis of a genetic disorder. The law also criminalized fetal tissue collection or transferring, a practice that is vital to life-saving fetal tissue donation and research (including for understanding the Zika virus), and required women to view the fetal ultrasound hours before receiving an abortion. The law was so far-reaching that women in Indiana began calling Pence’s office to tell him about their periods — you know, since he seems to care about women’s reproductive health so much. A federal judge blocked the law in June.


As a member of Congress and later as governor, Pence also gutted Planned Parenthood funding in his state, which resulted in the closure of multiple clinics. In 2015, this "inadvertently created" an HIV outbreak in one Indiana town, Media Matters reported, "by shutting down access to the only HIV testing centers available to many residents."

Though there is little doubt how extreme Pence’s anti-abortion stance is, he made it explicitly clear on the campaign trail. “I’m pro-life and I don’t apologize for it,” he said during a town hall in July. Of a Trump/Pence administration, he said, “We’ll see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs."


Pence also has a history of making homophobic comments. In 2006, he said that same-sex couples were a sign of “societal collapse," and he voted against repealing the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Last year, Pence signed a religious freedom bill that critics said enables anti-gay and other types of discrimination. According to the Huffington Post, the bill "would allow any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party" — meaning that businesses that "don’t want to serve same-sex couples, for example, could now have legal protections to discriminate." After the backlash from business leaders, Politico reports that Pence "backpedaled on language" in the bill that worried critics.

Oh, and for an extra kick in the pants: While in Congress, Pence voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — which calls for equal pay for women — three times.


This post was updated on 10/4/2016 at 11:24 pm to include Pence’s comments on abortion during the vice presidential debate.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a4 ... ion-views/



Think Trump Is Scary? Check Out Mike Pence On The Issues.

Trump might blow up the world, but Pence would set the clock back to 1954.

10/03/2016 01:48 pm ET | Updated 21 hours ago

Jerry Bowles
Writer, Editor, Old Guy

MIKE SEGAR / REUTERS
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump (L) greets vice presidential nominee Mike Pence after Pence spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 20, 2016.
Mike Pence looks like a guy who watched too many episodes of “Mary Tyler Moore” as a kid and came away imprinted by the character of Ted Baxter, the pompous and self-deluded silver-haired newsman, whose perpetual cluelessness amused millions of TV watchers across the country. Little Mike appears to have seen Ted’s uninformed close-mindedness as a virtue and grew up to become an unapologetic evangelical social conservative who sees the last 40 years of progress on abortion, gay rights, civil rights, criminal justice reform and race relations as a disaster for the country.

Why does it matter? Because there is a possibility that Pence could become president of the United States. I know, I know. He’s running for vice president but consider that if he wins, Trump would be the oldest person ever elected to the job. He hides it well behind the constant rage and Agent Orange hair dye, but the Talking Yam is 70. At 6’3” and 236 pounds, he is overweight. He lives on Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken. And, we know from John Kasich, who turned Trump down, he envisions making his VP the most powerful in history—kind of a chief operating officer while Trump handles the really important things like 3 a.m. tweets.

Donald Trump might blow up the world, but Mike Pence would set the clock back to 1954. It’s hard to say which would be worse. Here are some of Pence’s positions that should give even the most lukewarm progressive voters pause.

Abortion

As governor of Indiana, Pence signed the most abortion-restrictive regulations in the nation, banning abortion even in cases where the fetus has a “genetic abnormality” such as Down syndrome and holding doctors legally liable if they had knowingly performed such procedures. The law also required that aborted fetal tissue be buried or cremated. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in a landmark abortion case in June, a federal judge blocked the law from going into effect.

He led the national fight to defund Planned Parenthood and forced so many of its clinics to close in Indiana that he triggered an H.I.V. epidemic in one county.

LGBT Rights

in 2015, Pence helped pass one of the nation’s harshest “religious freedom” laws that would have protected businesses who wanted to refuse service to LGBT people if they cited religious objections. After businesses pulled out of expansion plans into the state, Pence signed an amended version of the law that was nominally intended to provide protection for sexual orientation and gender identity.

As a congressman, he opposed federal funding that would support treatment for people suffering from H.I.V. and AIDS, unless the government simultaneously invested in programs to discourage people from engaging in same-sex relationships.

He has resisted changes to hate-crime laws that would have included acts against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. And he was against the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a Clinton administration policy that allowed gays to serve in the military.

He has said publicly, “I long for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history.”

Immigration

In 2006, Pence proposed an immigration compromise that envisioned a guest worker program that required undocumented immigrants to “self-deport” before returning to America legally. His plan did not offer a path to citizenship, nor did it propose a “deportation force.” He’s down with the big beautiful wall. He fought against having Syrian refugees settled in Indiana.

Education

Under Governor Pence, Indiana has diverted $53 million in the past two years from public school to funding vouchers for private schools, including religious schools, and to charter school programs. He was the first governor to try to repeal Common Core. Pence earned an F on the official NEA legislative report card in eight of his 12 years as a member of Congress.

He was one of only 25 Republican congressmen to vote against George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative.

The Environment

He is skeptical of climate change and wrote a letter to President Obama threatening to disobey the new regulations on coal mandated by the Clean Power Plan.

Trade

In 2014 Pence tweeted, “Trade means jobs, but trade also means security. The time has come for all of us to urge the swift adoption of the Trans Pacific Partnership.” Presumably, he has, or will, walk that one back.

Guns

Take a wild guess. He has an “A” rating from the NRA and is opposed to any restrictions on assault rifles.

Bonus: Troubling Personal Fact

Campaign finance records from a 1990 run for Congress show that Pence, then 31, had used political donations to pay the mortgage on his house, his personal credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees and car payments for his wife.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/thi ... bd896a11db



Purvi Patel: What you need to know about the woman arrested under Gov. Mike Pence’s abortion law

One state's quest to arrest a woman because of her fetus
SALON STAFF

Purvi Patel: What you need to know about the woman arrested under Gov. Mike Pence's abortion law

As a result of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s crusade against reproductive rights, a woman named Purvi Patel was convicted of feticide and neglect of a dependent in what was called an illegal abortion. The charges were dropped, and Patel was spared a 20-year prison sentence. But the case remains a mark of the dangers that women face under Gov. Pence’s rule.

Salon has covered the case, as well as the war against abortion and reproductive rights, many times.

–Woman sentenced to 20 years in prison after claiming she had a miscarriage, March 30, 2015
– Religious right’s next crusade: What they want to throw women in jail for now, April 3, 2015
– Secrets of the hate-pizza revolution: Indiana’s dreadful culture-war week, April 4, 2015
– Pregnant women are now targets: The tragedy of Purvi Patel, April 26, 2015
– Purvi Patel to appeal conviction: “Feticide is an extreme, extreme proposition, April 29, 2015
– America’s criminalization of women continues: Woman charged after allegedly self-inducing abortion, June 9, 2015
– The dark road to criminalizing pregnancy: Why everyone should care about the “feticide” conviction of Purvi Patel, May 2, 2015
– Abortion rights at stake: Purvi Patel and the fate of pregnant women in Indiana, May 25, 2016
– The case of Purvi Patel: How Mike Pence won his crusade against abortion in Indiana
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/05/purvi-p ... rtion-law/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 06, 2016 10:36 am


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoP86oboAdI


'Trump and Pence Are a Dangerous Ticket:' Talking Women's Health With Planned Parenthood Votes

Stassa Edwards

CLEVELAND— This year’s Republican platform is the first to mention Planned Parenthood by name. The Fifth Amendment of the platform, dedicated to “Protecting Human Life,” opposes the “use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare.” It also supports a “human life amendment to the Constitution,” as well as advocates legislation that would extend the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections to apply to children before birth.

Though talk of abortion has been scarce at the convention—Ted Cruz mentioned protecting human life in between boos from Trump delegates and Mitch McConnell promised that Donald Trump would sign legislation defunding Planned Parenthood—the 2016 Republican platform is one of the party’s most extreme attacks on women’s healthcare. In addition to human life amendments and defunding Planned Parenthood, the platform cites the 2015 videos by David Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress. Though the videos, which claimed to show Planned Parenthood selling fetal remains for profit, were widely discredited, they resonated with Republican leadership, resulting in a House investigation and multiples states passing fetal remain laws.

Even though the issues of abortion and women’s healthcare have been subsumed by talk about ISIS and immigration and political correctness, Planned Parenthood Votes’ communications director Erica Sackin says, that despite the talk (or lack thereof), “Trump and Pence are a dangerous ticket” for women’s reproductive health. The organization has been in Cleveland since Friday, handing out condoms packaged in pink and blue with anti-Trump slogans. Planned Parenthood says they’ve been well-received by the Cleveland crowd, “we’ve been hearing from Republicans who say ‘thank you’ and ‘we don’t agree what our party is doing.’” Sackin notes that that kind of response isn’t unusual, the Republican platform is extreme and only represents a sliver of the party.



But that fringe has a powerful spokesperson in vice presidential candidate Mike Pence. Ending abortion access has been one of Pence’s defining issues for his nearly decade-long political career. As a member of Congress, Pence introduced numerous six bills to defund Planned Parenthood. He pioneered the “defund Planned Parenthood bill,” which is now a staple of every Congressional session. “Pence was willing to shut down the government in order to block access to care and he pushed it again and again and again while he was in Congress,” Sackin, director of political communications for Planned Parenthood, said. In 2011, with a government shutdown over the budget looming, Pence made his own demand: to defund Planned Parenthood.

As governor of Indiana, Pence continued to “sign legislation that attacked Planned Parenthood and reproductive care in Indiana.” Sackin was referring to HB 1337, a notoriously broad bill that covers everything from sex-selective and disability-based abortions to requiring women to bury fetal remains.

Though Pence’s Wednesday night speech was standard convention fare (a rather vast departure from nearly every other speech this week), focusing on family and affinity with the presidential candidate, he made only a passing mention of abortion. But Pence, Sackin warns, has been “leading an anti-woman crusade for nearly a decade.”

Planned Parenthood argues that Pence’s selection as the vice presidential candidate is evidence of Trump’s position on abortion. That position has been, at times, incoherent. In one day he changed his position on abortion three times, arguing that women who have abortions should be “punished.” And anti-abortion groups aren’t entirely convinced that Trump is one of them. In a June op-ed for the Washington Post, the president of Students for Life of America, expressed doubts over Trump’s commitment to the cause after the Republican nominee remained silent on the Supreme Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt.

But Planned Parenthood insists that the rift is less about ideology and more about presentation. “Pro-life people are mad that he’s not using their rhetoric,” Sackin says, but, she adds, “when he said he believes a woman should be punished, he just put into words the policies that anti-abortion groups have been put into policy.” The pure spectacle of Trump is a smokescreen that detracts from the fact that he’s sympathetic to the anti-choice movement and, as McConnell said during his Tuesday speech, a President Trump would have signed legislation defunding Planned Parenthood. “This is one of the most extreme tickets for President that we’ve seen in generations,” Sackin said.
http://theslot.jezebel.com/trump-and-pe ... 1784000820


8 Outrageous Facts About Mike Pence's Record on Reproductive Rights

By Miriam Berg | July 20, 2016 | 8:20 PM

What was Donald Trump's first major decision as the GOP presumptive nominee? To pick Mike Pence — THE anti-women's health crusader — as his vice president. If you haven’t heard of Pence, you’ve got to know that he is just as dangerous as Trump himself. The difference: Pence has already passed extreme anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood, anti-LGBTQ laws.

Here are the top seven things you need to know about Pence’s record on reproductive health and rights.

#1: Pence is a one-man anti-Planned Parenthood crusade.

For years, Mike Pence has been on what Politico dubbed a “one-man crusade” to end patients’ access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers. In Congress, he started the whole “defund” Planned Parenthood thing: He introduced the first federal measure to block patients from care at Planned Parenthood… and then introduced five more… and said he’d shut down the government over it. He’s still trying.


#2: Pence has done just about the worst of any governor to restrict access to safe, legal abortion.

Pence signed a whopping eight anti-abortion bills into law in his less than four years as governor of Indiana. That’s every anti-abortion bill that crossed his desk. That's equivalent to two per year... and he’s not even done!

Mike-Pence-VP-Sign-All-The-Bills.png

The litany of anti-abortion laws Pence passed include what some have called the country’s “most extreme abortion bill yet.” It’s so extreme that even anti-abortion, Republican women in his state legislature opposed it. Just one of this sweeping law’s many restrictions spurred women to protest en masse in what was dubbed “Periods for Pence.”


#3: Pence tried to redefine “rape” in a bill in order to limit access to abortion

It is just as awful as it sounds. Pence cosponsored a bill that would have allowed hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women who would die without the care — and the only exception would have been cases of “forcible” rape.

Newsflash to Pence: All rape is forced.


#4: Pence said working mothers stunt their children’s growth

Yup. In a letter to the editor of Indianapolis Star, Pence argued that households with two working parents are under a spell of "the big lie that 'Mom doesn't matter.'" This expert asserted that having both parents work would lead to “stunted emotional growth” in their children.

We think Pence’s logic is stunted.


#5: Pence signed a $3.5 million contract to lie to women seeking abortion

As governor, Pence signed a contract to take $3.5 million from the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides aid to low-income families, and gave it to the Pennsylvania-based anti-abortion group “Real Alternatives,” that lies to women to “actively promote childbirth instead of abortion.”

The contract is clear: It says reps from the anti-abortion group should spread its message to pregnancy centers, as well as adoption and social services agencies, "so more women can be served and fewer abortions chosen."


#6: Pence cosponsored “personhood” legislation

In Congress, Pence cosponsored dangerous, so-called “personhood” legislation that, if enacted, could interfere with medical decisions relating to birth control, access to fertility treatment, management of a miscarriage, and access to safe and legal abortion.

#7: Pence said women shouldn’t be in the military because sex. And Disney.

Yep. He actually cited Disney’s Mulan as proof that women shouldn’t be allowed in the military. But what would you expect from this guy. He’s the same politician who denied that smoking kills.


#8: Pence Doesn’t Know How Condoms Work And Thinks They’re Too “Modern”

Get this: In 2002 Pence said that “...condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases,” and using condoms as a solution to STDs was “too modern.” Guess this anti-Planned Parenthood crusader’s views really are Medieval! But here’s another thing: For a guy who obviously had no idea how condoms work to protect against STDs, Pence sure has been fighting hard to block patients from accessing contraception — as well as STD testing, treatment, and education — at Planned Parenthood health centers… Dontcha think?

BONUS BLUNDER: Pence built his career not only attacking women’s health — but also attacking LGBTQ rights

As governor, Pence signed a law to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people: The “religious freedom” law gave businesses the green light to discriminate against LGBTQ people on religious grounds. The law was criticized around the country: High-profile groups withdrew events from the state in protest, and businesses like Apple and Marriott condemned the law. Pence “revised” the law, but the controversy still cost the state at least $60 million.

And the revision still invites discrimination against LGBTQ people, and against women in accessing health care. Remember: Religious restrictions put a woman’s health at risk — often offering her less health care, less information, and fewer options when she may need them most.

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org ... QHuGY.dpuf
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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seemslikeadream
 
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:23 pm

“Little Trump” Pence: Bomb Syria, confront Russia, smear refugees; & smoking doesn’t cause Cancer
By Juan Cole | Oct. 5, 2016 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Trump running mate Mike Pence continued the unreality of this election season in Tuesday’s debate by denying many things that are true and asserting many things that are not true. For example there was this exchange:
“KAINE: [Trump said that] More nations should get nuclear weapons. Try to defend that.
PENCE: Don’t put words in my mouth. Well, he never said that, Senator.
KAINE: He absolutely said it. Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan.
PENCE: Most of the stuff you’ve said, he’s never said.
Of course, Trump did say it. Even Fox News was appalled:

The biggest Middle East news to come out of the VP debate was that Mike Pence advocated that the US strike “military targets of the Assad regime as a way of punishing Russia for its participation in the campaign to take East Aleppo from the mostly fundamentalist rebel groups now holding it.
That’s huge! Pence wants to go head to head with Russia in Syria and wants vastly to expand the US military involvement by bombing Syrian military targets that are protected by Russian anti-aircraft batteries.
PENCE:. . . And the small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America — the greatest nation on Earth — . . . But about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.
And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.
No one asked him how he would get around Russia anti-aircraft batteries or how he would stop Russia, which has a naval base and air bases in Syria, from supplying more and better ones to Syria. Or maybe he wants to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia?
Also no one asked him what would happen if he bombed and weakened the Syrian army and then Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) or the al-Qaeda-linked fundamentalist militias took over Damascus?
He further urged a no-fly zone to protect a humanitarian zone. But how would he protect it from troops on the ground?
Pence also said in the debate on Tuesday night that the United States has the lowest number of troops since the end of WW II. Since we are not in a world war, it is not clear why we need a world-war sized army. It is still huge compared to what it was before WW II. But despite not being in the middle of a world war, we are spending $800 billion a year on our war budget. Why? That is $8 trillion a decade. In today’s dollars, WW II cost $4.1 trillion for the four years. That is, we’re spending almost as much money on our war department now as we did when Hitler controlled the entirety of continental Europe with a heavy tank military and Japan had most of Southeast Asia! Big wars are supposed to be rare and then you’re supposed to demobilize. Such a huge standing army has contributed to the downward spiral of American democracy. But Pence wants to spend more and put more men under arms. And lets face it, he wants to do that as a form of corporate welfare, throwing even more money to the big war contractors.
Tim Kaine’s only real response was to agree with Pence that the US should establish a humanitarian zone in Syria. But he did not offer specifics about Syria.
Pence repeated his opposition to the US settling Syrian refugees in this country, and he tried to exclude them from Indiana. He also smeared Syrian refugees as behind the Paris attacks (they weren’t).
How shameless Pence is in his racial bigotry is clear from the recent Federal appeals court ruling against him on the Syria refugee issue. The Chicago Tribune writes,
“The ruling by a three-judge panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed a preliminary injunction that a federal judge in Indianapolis issued in February. That judge found last year’s order by the Republican governor, now Donald Trump’s running mate, “clearly discriminates” against refugees from the war-torn nation.”
The court actually called Pence a racist:
“He argues that his policy of excluding Syrian refugees is based not on nationality and thus is not discriminatory, but is based solely on the threat he thinks they pose to the safety of residents of Indiana. But that’s the equivalent of his saying (not that he does say) that he wants to forbid black people to settle in Indiana not because they’re black but because he’s afraid of them, and since race is therefore not his motive he isn’t discriminating.”
But there are other reasons no one should pay any attention to anything Pence says.
Mike Pence has taken over $100,000 from tobacco company lobbyists to deny that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. He voted against the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Tobacco smoke has 8 of the proven cancer-causing agents. The Centers for Disease Control estimates the following: “Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year,” that is more “than 480,000 deaths annually.” The scientists add, “Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers. Included in this massacre is that “Exposure to secondhand smoke causes an estimated 41,000 deaths each year among adults in the United States.” Note that many of those involuntarily exposed to second hand smoke are children.
This Pence position is not a quirk. It is not a forgivable lapse. Pence is a professional hit man, paid to rub out tens of thousands of Americans. He is an axe murderer for hire.
Then, Pence opposed a needle exchange program in Indiana. As a result rural whites sharing needles to shoot up prescription drugs were stricken with an AIDS epidemic. Pence’s opposition to the program hand nothing to do with protecting public health or with taking a scientific approach to public health issues. He thinks a needle exchange might encourage drug use and so was willing to sentence people to death.
I could go down the list– denying human-made climate change; legislating that the religious can discriminate against gay people (in 1964 many white evangelicals argued that they should be able to discriminate against African-Americans because of their “faith”); or trying to ban abortion and the control of women over their own bodies.
But between the Himalayan lies and the execrable policy positions, you get the picture. People keep contrasting Pence with Trump, but Pence is a Trump in politicians’ clothing. He is just as dishonest and erratic, just much smoother about it.
http://www.juancole.com/2016/10/confron ... oking.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 07, 2016 8:21 am

FRIDAY, OCT 7, 2016 05:00 AM CDT
Trump in training: Mike Pence doesn’t like black people

The vice presidential debate "winner" would "set aside talk of institutional racism" and enable police brutality
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA


In an earlier Salon piece, I suggested that if the 2016 Republican presidential race were a horror movie in which Donald Trump is the maniac armed with a chainsaw, Mike Pence is the gentleman serial killer. The vice presidential debate on Tuesday reaffirmed my conclusion.

During his 90-minute contest with Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, Pence lied with effortless grace and efficiency all the while maintaining a straight face and acting offended at being confronted with facts.

Pence lied about Trump’s support for the second Iraq war, admiration of dictators such as Vladimir Putin, lack of transparency about his taxes and belief that more countries — not fewer — should have nuclear weapons. And in a moment of gross delusion and fantasist fable telling and mendacity, Pence even went so far as to suggest that it was Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump (a man who calls women “pigs”, believes that Mexicans and Hispanics are rapists, says that black people’s lives are a living hell, and wants to ban all Muslims from the United States because they are “terrorists”) who was waging an “insult-driven” campaign.

As Jamelle Bouie at Slate has so sharply pointed out, Tuesday night’s debate was Mike Pence’s attempt to gaslight an entire nation when he lost the debate on matters of political fact and substance but delivered a masterfully stylish performance. Pence “won” only because he was able to lie so effortlessly and consistently.

During Pence’s 90-minute assault on reality and the truth, the moderator, Elaine Quijano, asked several questions about police brutality and “race relations.”

The responses by Pence and Kaine embodied the empty rhetoric, vagueness, dishonesty and emphasis on white folks’ hurt feelings, instead of life and death matters for people of color, which typifies so much of America’s tedious and seemingly unending “national conversation” on race in the age of Obama.

For example, the concept known as “implicit bias” was referenced by Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine. Implicit bias is not a mere opinion but rather a well-documented psychological phenomenon whereby individuals internalize, and to varying degrees, reproduce the prejudiced values, attitudes and beliefs of their society. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton, Kaine and other Democratic and progressive politicians have made “implicit bias” a new talking point and buzzword instead of thoroughly explaining the science and evidence behind it.

Pence predictably deflected to the reverse racism script and summoned up hurt feelings about how white people and police are not all “bigots.” His comments are part of a larger social dynamic whereby white folks’ hurt feelings about being called racist are somehow worse than the actual harm done to people of color by racism. This is ethically and morally perverse. It is also the new normal in the United States.

Both Kaine and Pence participated in the cultlike worship of America’s police. Afraid to be perceived as “soft on crime,” Kaine recited obligatory statements such as “we put a lot on police shoulders” and “criminal justice is about respecting the law.”

Pence was less restrained and cited the endorsement of the extremely right-wing organization the Fraternal Order of Police as proof of his and Trump’s “law and order” bona fides.

Both candidates ignored how America’s police are not victims and constitute a class of public employees with the power to kill and who often do so against innocent people of color with near impunity. Moreover, neither Pence nor Kaine dared to tell the truth that America’s police do not have an especially dangerous job and are not necessarily “heroes” because they chose a job that requires them to wear a uniform and carry a gun.

And contrary to Pence’s assertion, social scientists and other researchers have repeatedly shown that America’s police do, in fact, exhibit implicit bias in their unfair and racist treatment of black and brown people.

But in their answers to Quijano’s question, there was a moment that should give even more pause to those Americans who believe in equality and fundamental fairness under the law and who are concerned about how a Trump administration would violate those values.

When asked about his fellow Republican Tim Scott and how the latter has been repeatedly harassed by police because he is African-American, Pence’s response was:

“Well, I have the deepest respect for Senator Scott and he’s a close friend. What I would say is we need to adopt criminal justice reform nationally. I signed criminal justice reform in the state of Indiana, Senator, and we’re very proud of it. I worked when I was in Congress on a second-chance act.

We have got to do a better job recognizing and correcting the errors in the system that do reflect an institutional bias in criminal justice, but what Donald Trump and I are saying is let’s not have the reflex of assuming the worst of men and women in law enforcement.”

Pence continued:

“Law enforcement in this country is a force for good. They are the — they truly are people that put their lives on the line every single day. But I would, I would suggest to you, what we need to do is assert a stronger leadership at the national level to support law enforcement. You just heard Senator Kaine reject stop and frisk. Well, I would suggest to you that the families that live in our inner cities that are besieged by crime.”

This type of response is in keeping with Pence’s earlier statements at an event in Colorado that police are “the best of us” and “We ought to set aside this talk, this talk about institutional racism and institutional bias.” Pence also believes that discussing racial bias by police is the “rhetoric of division.”

Again, the facts are not kind. Stop and frisk policies are an ineffective policing strategy. Stop and frisk is racist and classist in practice, theory and application. Stop and frisk undermines the relationship between communities of color and police.

Pence and Trump are racial authoritarians: they want to create a gestapo force to deport “illegal aliens,” violate the constitutional rights of Muslims and fashion a Terrordome for black and brown people who live in America’s inner cities.

Ultimately, Pence and Trump will not stop police brutality against black Americans and other people of color because they — and their white voters — do not believe that equal protection under the law should exist on both sides of the color line.

Pence’s insensitivity to justice and fairness to black Americans extends beyond his comments in Tuesday night’s debate. In his role as governor of Indiana, Pence is refusing to pardon Keith Cooper, who was convicted of murder almost 20 years ago but was wrongfully put away and has since been proven innocent — and who is, conspicuosly enough, black.

As Esquire’s Charles H. Pierce has suggested, “This is not conservative. This is not Christian. But making Cooper go through another trial when you know he’s innocent and because it will fob an easy decision off on your successor is sure as hell Republican. Mike Pence is demonstrably both cruel and cowardly. He’s perfect.”

Comedians have joked that Pence looks the character Cotton Hill from Mike Judge’s animated cartoon series “King of the Hill.” Judge’s goal with the show was to depict the day-to-day life and misadventures of Cotton’s son, a Texan named Hank Hill. And Hank Hill happened to be a Republican. Hank Hill was a good man, reasonable, sensible and someone who maintained his core beliefs while negotiating an increasingly diverse and multicultural world. In an era of extreme political polarization “King of the Hill” looks like one of the last bastions of bipartisanship.

Decent people like Hank Hill would not support Trump or his vice presidential candidate Pence. Trump’s Republican Party is centered on catering to the wishes and wants of sexists, racists, nativists and bigots. This is the “basket of deplorables” that Hillary Clinton so accurately described several weeks ago.

Trump’s domination of the Republican Party is the proof of concept for how white identity politics and overt white supremacy can now be publicly embraced by conservatives. Pence will be the production model of this brand of reactionary far-right-wing politics going forward to the 2020 presidential election.
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/07/trump-i ... ck-people/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 22, 2016 5:41 pm

Jeremy Scahill: Mike Pence Has "Militant Agenda"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e19QQlwqdtg

Jeremy Scahill: Mike Pence Has "Militant Agenda" Against Women, the Poor, Immigrants, LGBTQ People
STORYNOVEMBER 21, 2016Watch iconWATCH FULL SHOW


Jeremy Scahill
co-founder of The Intercept. His latest book is The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.

"Mike Pence Will Be the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History" Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept)
We spend the hour looking at the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, a candidate who ran on a platform of open bigotry, threats against immigrants and Muslims, and blatant misogyny. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is often portrayed as a counterbalance to Trump and called a "bridge to the establishment." But our guest Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, says Pence’s ascendance to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a "tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence—and his fellow Christian supremacist militants—would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Today, we spend the hour looking at the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, a candidate who ran on a platform of open bigotry, threats against immigrants and Muslims and blatant misogyny. Over the weekend, Trump held meetings with finalists for high-level Cabinet positions at his golf resort clubhouse in New Jersey. Reporters questioned Trump as retired Marine General James Mattis, who is considered a strong contender for defense secretary, left the facility.

DONALD TRUMP: Really efficiently, very good, tremendous talent. We’re seeing tremendous talent, people that—as I say, we will make America great again. These are really great people. These are really, really talented people.

REPORTER 1: Do you see the Cabinet being shaped by [inaudible]?
DONALD TRUMP: Yes, partially.
REPORTER 1: Will you be announcing any—
DONALD TRUMP: We’re doing this again tomorrow.
REPORTER 2: Is General Mattis going to be secretary of defense?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, we think he’s a great guy. I mean, he’s some—he is some great man.
REPORTERS: [inaudible]
DONALD TRUMP: You will hear some things tomorrow, I think.
REPORTER 3: Governor Pence, what are your thoughts, Governor Pence?
VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT MIKE PENCE: Great day.
REPORTER 4: Does Bridgegate disqualify Governor Christie from being in your Cabinet, sir?
DONALD TRUMP: We like Chris a lot.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Retired Marine General James Mattis is a former commander of United States Central Command and one of several names being floated for secretary of defense. Other possible nominees include Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry officer, and national security adviser under George W. Bush, Stephen Hadley.

Later in the broadcast, we’ll examine other potential members of Trump’s Cabinet, but first we turn to his incoming vice president, Mike Pence, who is often portrayed as a counterbalance to Trump and called a, quote, "bridge to the establishment." But our guest today says there’s every reason to consider him even more terrifying than President-elect Trump. The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill writes that Pence's ascendance to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a, quote, "tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence—and his fellow Christian supremacist militants—would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend."

On Friday, Pence attended a performance of the Broadway hit Hamilton in New York City. At the end of the show, actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr in the rap musical about America’s Founding Fathers, had a message for Pence.

BRANDON VICTOR DIXON: You know, we had a guest in the audience this evening. And, Vice President-elect Pence, I see you walking out, but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen. There’s nothing to boo here. We’re all here sharing a story of love. We have a—we have a message for you, sir, and we hope that you will hear us out. And I encourage everybody to pull out your phones and tweet and post, because this message needs to be spread far and wide, OK?
Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do. We, sir, we, are of the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us. Again, we truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Donald Trump later took to Twitter to demand an apology from the cast of Hamilton, saying, quote, "Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!"

In Pence’s first round of Sunday show interviews since the election, he said he wasn’t offended by the remarks and that Trump would be a president, quote, "for all Americans." Later, in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, Pence was asked whether Trump would reinstate waterboarding as an interrogation technique during his administration. This was his response.

VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT MIKE PENCE: We’re going to have a president again who will never say what we’ll never do. I think, in President-elect Donald Trump, you have someone who believes that we shouldn’t be telling the enemy what our tactics or our strategies are. And I know that in conversations with some leading Americans about—about playing roles in our administration, we’re very excited about Congressman Pompeo’s role at the CIA, we’re very excited to see General Mike Flynn stepping into his leadership position. The team that we assemble, the president-elect assembles at the Department of Defense will all advise him, but the American people should know that this is a—this is a president who, on day one, January 20th, is going to focus on defeating and destroying ISIS at its source and confronting radical Islamic terrorism so it can no longer threaten our people or inspire violence here in the homeland.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaking Sunday on Face the Nation.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, where his most recent article is headlined "Mike Pence Will Be the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History." His latest book is The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Good to be with you, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: All right, let’s start with Mike Pence now, extensive articles you’ve been doing on him, particularly your main concern about him as the new vice president.

JEREMY SCAHILL: I’ve been covering Mike Pence for almost a decade, and my initial gateway into covering Pence is because he was one of the candidates that received the most funding from Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, who during the Bush-Cheney years operated what amounted to a Christian supremacist neo-Crusader militia. And Pence was actually the member of Congress that invited and welcomed and threw a party for Erik Prince in the aftermath of the Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007, when Blackwater operatives killed a dozen and a half Iraqi civilians, including small children. So, Pence sort of was on my radar because of looking at who Erik Prince and his family were funding.

You look at Pence’s evolution as a political figure, and in many ways it is the story of how the radical religious right gained such prominence and now is in an unprecedented position to wield power. Some may say, "Oh, well, wasn’t George W. Bush the same mentality?" These guys are more extreme than George Bush on issues of religion, on issues of women’s right to choose, on immigrant rights, on gay marriage—a slew of issues. I mean, they really make Dick Cheney look like a reasonable guy on some of these policies. And, in fact, Mike Pence says that Cheney is one of his mentors and examples and whose footsteps he wants to follow in as vice president, combined, though, with a really radical Christian agenda. Mike Pence—

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well—

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you say Christian supremacist, as opposed Christian fundamentalist, what’s the—

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, part of what I write—well, so, part of what I was doing with this article was playing with the way that so many people have used these terms to describe people that are perverting the religion of Islam in the name of ISIS or al-Qaeda, etc., and I sort of did it as a social experiment, and I got inundated with people demanding that I retract these labels. And some of those people, in their emails to me, actually use these same terms to describe the religion of Islam.

So, but what I’m getting at is that Mike Pence is not just against gay people being together in a relationship; he wants to legislate a ban on those issues. He wants to repeal Roe v. Wade. As he said, he wants to put it in the ash heap of history. Their primary agenda, on a social level, is basically taking us back to medieval times when it comes to the rights of women, the rights of immigrants, the rights of the poor, the humanhood of all of these sort of vulnerable, targeted groups.

And, you know, Mike Pence, his personal history is interesting. He was raised in an Irish Catholic, Kennedy Democrat household, and then he was converted, on the spot, at a Christian music festival in Kentucky while he was in college. And he sort of now describes himself as an evangelical Catholic. But his sort of intellectual role models within this, what I call a Christian supremacist world, are people like the famed radical right-wing Catholic priest Richard Neuhaus, who was an evangelical and converted to being a Catholic, Gary Bauer and James Dobson, you know, ferocious right-wing, anti-woman activists. These are the people that sort of populate the world that Mike Pence comes out of. And Pence has always been viewed as one of the prized warriors of the radical religious right.

In Indiana, his state was one of the most—had one of the most restrictive, draconian rules on abortion, in the criminalizing of abortion. He actually tried to ram through a law that would have required fetal tissue or fetuses that were aborted to receive a proper burial. And, you know, a judge intervened, a federal judge intervened, the day before this was to take hold, and said this is quite likely unconstitutional. He denied—he held up HIV medication and treatment funding, trying to put on it a requirement that it come with a therapy that would preach against the evils of gay sex. He has said that he believes that the only safe sex is no sex, and he chided former Secretary of State Colin Powell for suggesting that people should use condoms when having sex.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to turn to—Indiana Governor Mike Pence cut funding to Planned Parenthood, resulting in the closing of clinics. Pence has also called for ending all federal funding to the organization. This is him speaking in 2011.

REP. MIKE PENCE: The time has come to deny all federal funding to Planned Parenthood of America. I’ve authored the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would deny Title X funds to Planned Parenthood or any other abortion provider. And Congress must act, and act now, to move this important legislation. Pro-life Americans and all Americans should not be forced to subsidize America’s largest abortion provider or to continue to provide federal taxpayer dollars to Title X clinics that engage in this abhorrent behavior.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Mike Pence in 2011. Plan Parenthood has called Vice President-elect Mike Pence, quote, "the anti-women’s health crusader," noting that Pence has already passed extreme anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood, anti-LGBTQ laws. Since the election, the group says it has received 20,000 donations made from its supporters in the name of Mike Pence. This is Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards speaking to MSNBC after the election.

CECILE RICHARDS: Our doors stay open, and they will. And it has been kind of extraordinary, as you said. We have supporters—thousands of supporters from around the country took to social media last night immediately. Folks have been dropping off baked goods at our health centers. But also, one of the most interesting things has been the number of women who have called and made appointments for birth control, IUDs, things that are covered now by the Affordable Care Act at no cost, because they are, of course, concerned that Donald Trump will follow through on his pledge to overturn the Affordable Care Act. So we are seeing lots of new patients coming in to our—in to our health centers.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood, responding to some of the positions of Pence. But, Jeremy, very little of this made its way into the public discussion during the campaign season of Pence’s stance on a lot of these issues. He was portrayed sort of as the more reasonable, more establishment figure compared to Trump. Your—

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oh, yeah, even like liberal pundits and major newspapers have sort of referred to him as like the adult in the room, and this is going to be the reasonable guy who will be able to have a conversation with the Democrats. I mean, Mike Pence is anything but reasonable. I mean, this is a guy who has a militant agenda against women, against the poor, against immigrants. But also, remember, he is going to be running both domestic and foreign policy, according to Donald Trump Jr. Now, the Trump campaign walks that back and says, "Oh, we didn’t say that." I think it’s very likely they did say that. And that becomes extremely important when you look at the composition of the Supreme Court right now. You know, the Republicans have effectively stopped Obama from putting Merrick Garland in as a Supreme Court justice. We have the potential for these guys to be putting in two, maybe more, Supreme Court justices. The court will tilt as sharp to the right as it’s been certainly in our lifetime and could actually raise the prospect of a full attempt to criminalize abortion.

Just quickly, also, on foreign policy, you know, Mike Pence is an extremely hawkish neocon when it comes to redrawing maps in the Middle East. He is now coming to terms with the fact that he loves torture. He was one of those Republicans who was sort of saying John McCain is right on this; now he’s walking that back. The strategy that they’ve said they’ll employ against ISIS is just like bomb the blank out of them, as Donald Trump put it.

Mike Pence, though, is an interesting guy. The few areas where I actually think he has decent policy ideas, he’s now slowly backing away from them. One is, Mike Pence was one of the only members of Congress to support a shield law for journalists to protect confidential sources. And Mike Pence actually had a very strong position on that. The language of the bill that they ended up putting forward, that of course did not pass, was weak in its exceptions for national security, which is what they use against, well, The Intercept and other places to conduct surveillance on journalists. But it was there. He also has walked back his opposition to warrantless wiretapping. In the state of Indiana, he tried to require probable cause in order for local law enforcement to use Stingray surveillance devices against people. But he wants a permanent PATRIOT Act, and he doesn’t want federal law enforcement to have a warrant. So, on these issues where he may have had some logical, sane policy ideas, Trump has all but destroyed that. And Pence is now a foot soldier in this lunatic agenda, that joins his own lunatic agenda. So, it’s kind of like the worst of both worlds from the right.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And quickly, on Israel-Palestine? Because Trump, at least in the debates, seemed to be offering a more balanced approach to Israel-Palestine. Your sense?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, no, I mean, Mike Pence has suggested that the United States should pass a law, or pass a resolution, rather, supporting an Israeli attack on Iran, should they decide to do that.

You know, Pence, also, on climate change, I call him sort of climate change curious. He once said it was a fraud and wrote that, and that was part of his political campaign, was to say climate change is a total myth, and it’s a fraud. Now he’s sort of saying, "Well, yeah, I guess that human actions and pollution contribute to this, but I don’t want us to do anything about it, because jobs." You know, there’s this whole thing about Trump restarting coal. First of all, they’re lying to those workers, you know, that they’re going to be reopening this booming coal industry. You know, for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment, they’re going to lose that. But to have a—to have two people running this country who have either dog-whistled or blatantly said that climate change is a hoax bodes very, very dim for the prospects of our environment and the world that we’re going to leave our children and our grandchildren.

It’s a frightening administration on a number of levels, because it combines the buffoonery of Trump’s public persona with nuclear weapons and being the most powerful economic force in the world right now, second maybe to China, with this radical right-wing Christian supremacist agenda. They want to wipe out Muslims. That’s the clearest definition of a religious supremacy: You want to wipe out another people because of their religion. ANd Pence is in good company in the emerging Cabinet in terms of viewing Islam as an ideology that needs to be exterminated, along with its followers.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we’re talking with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, where his most recent article is headlined "Mike Pence Will Be the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History." We’re going to be going into the rest of that Cabinet after we come back from this break.

[break]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: "Retreat!" by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Sharon Jones died this Friday after an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. She had returned to performing in 2015 after treatment, put the cancer into remission, but late last year she revealed she had been told it had returned.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Posts: 32090
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 22, 2016 6:02 pm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3WN05hJXi4



Erik Prince in the Hot Seat: Blackwater Founder Under Investigation for Illegal Mercenary Biz
STORYMARCH 25, 2016

"Erik Prince in the Hot Seat: Blackwater’s Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Broke
In a major new exposé, The Intercept has revealed that the Justice Department is investigating Blackwater founder Erik Prince for possible money laundering, ties to Chinese intelligence, and attempts to broker military services to foreign governments. Prince is currently the chairman of Frontier Services Group, an aviation and logistics firm specializing in shipping in Africa. But documents obtained by The Intercept show that Prince has also set up shell companies to offer paramilitary services to at least a half-dozen African nations, including Libya. Both the United States and the United Nations have imposed a series of restrictions on military dealings in Libya. Prince is also suspected of attempting to open Chinese bank accounts to move money for his Libyan associates. As part of its investigation, The Intercept obtained an internal slide presentation showing Prince’s private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe. Prince has also long been interested in raising a private military force to battle Islamic militant groups in a variety of countries. We spend the hour with The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole, the reporters behind "Erik Prince in the Hot Seat." "In a lot of ways, Erik Prince is like a Mafia don," Scahill says. "He has been able to avoid any criminal charges against him personally for activities that his companies have engaged in. … Whether or not the U.S. government will actually seriously go after him is still to be seen." Scahill is the co-founder of The Intercept and author of the best-seller, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army." His most recent book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield," is out in paperback, and his film "Dirty Wars" was nominated for an Academy Award.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a major new exposé, The Intercept has revealed that the Justice Department is investigating Blackwater founder Erik Prince for possible money laundering, ties to Chinese intelligence and attempts to broker military services to foreign governments. Prince is currently the chairman of Frontier Services Group, an aviation and logistics firm that specializes in shipping in Africa. But documents obtained by The Intercept show that Prince has also set up shell companies to offer paramilitary services to at least a half-dozen African nations, including Libya. Both the U.S. and the United Nations have imposed a series of restrictions on military dealings in Libya. Prince is also suspected of attempting to open Chinese bank accounts to move money for his Libyan associates. A former intelligence official told The Intercept, quote, "Money laundering for Libyan officials using a Chinese bank—that is the issue that pushed it over the edge."

AMY GOODMAN: As part of its investigation, The Intercept obtained an internal slide presentation showing Erik Prince’s private force would operate in Libya for the stated purpose of stopping the flow of refugees to Europe. Libya is one of the main routes for migrants trying to enter Europe from eastern Africa and parts of the central Sahel region. Prince has also long been interested in raising a private military force to battle Islamic militant groups in a variety of countries. The Intercept also reports on internal proposals drafted by Prince and his team for a project code-named Project November aimed at confronting the theft of Nigerian oil, providing VIP protection for Nigerian officials and engaging in counterinsurgency activities.

For more, we’re joined by the reporters who broke the story: Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole. They’re co-authors of the new piece for The Intercept headlined "Erik Prince in the Hot Seat: Blackwater’s Founder is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services." Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of the The Intercept. His forthcoming book is called The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program. His most recent book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is out in paperback, and Dirty Wars was nominated for an Academy Award. He’s also author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. And we’re also joined by Matthew Cole, the national security reporter for The Intercept.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Matthew, let’s begin with you. Talk about how you learned and what you found reasons for Erik Prince right now in the hot seat.

MATTHEW COLE: Well, we began with—you know, as I think all good investigative journalism does, with sourcing and tips about what Erik Prince was up to on the continent of Africa. And so, over the last year or so, we’ve been hearing about Erik Prince’s trips and efforts in various countries to try to sell Blackwater-like services to countries that had insurgencies or instability, anywhere that they could get foreigners on the ground to fight Islamic rebels, essentially. And eventually we were able to review a series of documents that show what Prince and a small group of cohorts were trying to do.

And what we found was pretty alarming in terms of a U.S. citizen, a private U.S. citizen and no longer really associated with the U.S. government, going around to countries and trying to exploit either their problems or their fears to present a—what they call turnkey solutions, which is a full spectrum of military services, intelligence, so that the countries that would potentially buy these proposals basically have to do nothing other than write a check, and he would be able to bring in everything from spy airplanes to paramilitary operatives on the ground and his own, you know, personal spying force and hunter killers, if you will. You know, so far, what we’ve found is that no one has purchased his services, but it didn’t stop him from trying and continuing to try to provide those things to as many countries as he—anywhere he could and could see a business opportunity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about this company that he has been involved with recently, because obviously he supposedly sold out all of his interests in Blackwater years ago? What is this company, and what is its connection to the Chinese?

MATTHEW COLE: Well, he is the chairman of a company called FSG, Frontier Services Group, and that is a publicly traded company in Hong Kong with—that does aviation and logistics, primarily in Africa. And what we understand is that—and what the documents show is that what Erik Prince did was he used his position as the chairman of this publicly held company to gain legitimate access to meetings with African government officials. So he would—it would allow him to enter the country, come into the room and offer, say, infrastructure or logistics contracts. And then what he would do is he would present his own ideas of what the country needed, and those were services that the company that he was a chairman for, FSG, was not able to provide—and without the knowledge of the company itself. They had no idea that he was walking around bringing these proposals in for armed foreigners, for weaponized vehicles, for surveillance aircraft—things that the company that he was chairman for literally didn’t have licenses for and didn’t have equipment. They didn’t—they didn’t have it. And that’s where you start to see the discrepancy between what he was trying to do versus what—what he appeared to be doing when he arrived in the country versus what he was actually providing. And that was cause of a major concern for the company, and they then went about a series of things to try to separate themselves from their own chairman. And that’s where we stand today.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Jeremy, you’ve spent years investigating Erik Prince. You wrote your first book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Explain who he is, his background, and why all of this matters today.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, you know, Erik Prince comes from a very wealthy family in the state of Michigan. His father, Edgar, ran a very successful business making auto parts. In fact, his dad invented the lighting system on the drop-down visors in a car, where the—you know, you pull the visor down, and a light goes on. And that company was really the lifeblood of the community of Holland, Michigan, which is a pretty conservative, Dutch Reformed section of the state of Michigan. And his dad was, in many ways, sort of the king of Holland, Michigan. And his mother is a—I mean, I don’t know how to say this other than just a fanatical, right-wing extremist, who now is one of the major funders of basically trying to stop gay people from marrying around the country. But his father was a very beloved figure, Erik Prince’s, in Michigan, built up this very successful company, and then he died at a pretty young age of a heart attack. He dropped dead in the elevator of his building. And eventually, his wife, or his widow, and the kids decided that they were going to sell the company. So they actually sold it to Johnson Controls in Wisconsin for $1.3 billion, and a part of that money, Erik inherited.

And Erik, you know, very much had daddy issues. He wanted to impress his father and actually—and live up to his father’s reputation. And he did something that, you know, many—not many children of the ultra-wealthy do: He joined the military. And he did a brief stint in the Navy SEALs and then, ultimately, in the late ’90s, started what was envisioned originally as a law enforcement training center and shooting range, the Blackwater Training Center. And among the things that they did was they built a mock high school to try to, you know, train law enforcement officials on how to deal with Columbine-like shooting scenarios. They also—because of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000, one of the early contracts Blackwater got was to train sailors and other military personnel on how to defend against a small boat attack against their larger vessels.

And then 9/11 happens. And, in fact, Erik Prince was interviewed on Fox News, on The O’Reilly Factor, about the 9/11 attacks, and he said that, you know, before 9/11, his business was relatively small and focused on training, and he commented that his phone was ringing off the hook. And among the people that he communicated with in the early stages of post-9/11 reality was a guy who was the executive director at the Central Intelligence Agency named Buzzy Krongard, who was an old friend of Erik’s father. And it’s sort of a chicken-and-egg question of who came up with the ideas—and Matthew and I both reported on this over the years—but what ended up happening, to make a long story short, is that Erik Prince began providing retired special operations personnel to the U.S. government as a sort of private force that would serve a dual function for the CIA and other agencies. They could deploy these guys without claiming—if they got killed, without claiming—having to claim the fact that U.S. personnel were dying in war zones, but also it gave an incredible flexibility to the Bush-Cheney administration for deniability.

And so, essentially, Erik Prince wanted to—he wanted to join the CIA and was unable to clear the process of it. I mean, there’s different stories as to why Erik Prince did not actually become a CIA operative, but he basically then set out to create his own sort of small, privatized version of like a special access program for the CIA. And a number of veterans of the CIA’s paramilitary operations, people like Enrique "Rick" Prado, who was a paramilitary operative in Latin America, and others, ended up coming over and working with Blackwater on this program. And they operated in a variety of countries around the world, not only bodyguarding the CIA and U.S. officials in Iraq and elsewhere—they were sort of the Praetorian Guard for the occupation of Iraq, guarding Paul Bremer—but they also were involved with the Hunter-Killer program.

And so, Erik Prince largely existed in the shadows until the killing of the four Blackwater operatives in the city of Fallujah in March of 2004, where they were hacked to death and then strung up from a bridge. And Erik Prince really took that opportunity of his company being in the news to really make his presence known on Capitol Hill with Republicans. And he worked with very high-powered Republican lobbyists. He has a very close personal relationship with the Cheney family. And Prince basically became a hero within national security circles in the Republican administration at the time and on Capitol Hill. And that led to very, very large contracts and also contracts with the CIA around the world.

And, you know, Matthew and I talked to several former CIA officers who were saying very critical things about what Erik Prince is doing right now, but all of them said, "You know, look, at the end of the day, he—they kept us safe in these operations." I mean, two Blackwater guys were killed when Forward Operating Base Chapman was attacked by this triple agent from Jordan and blew up a number of CIA—pretty senior CIA people on Afghanistan. And two Blackwater guys got killed in that operation.

So, you know, Erik Prince then basically viewed himself as having been thrown under the bus by Leon Panetta when he became CIA director. And, you know, some of what Panetta did, I think, was disingenuous. You know, Panetta runs over to Congress very early on in his tenure at the agency and briefs the Intelligence Committee on what he said was basically an inactive assassination program that Blackwater was at the center of, and then tells the members of the Intelligence Committee that they had shut it down. And, you know, what it—I talked to people on the Intelligence Committee at the time, and what it seemed like is that Panetta basically was trying to deal with the fact that there was all the torture and sort of extrajudicial activity by the agency—they would say it was judicial activity, because they had all these memos allowing them to torture and stuff. But basically, Panetta tried to put all the garbage on Erik Prince and Blackwater and flush it down the toilet. And so, at that point—

AMY GOODMAN: Of course, there was Nisoor Square.

JEREMY SCAHILL: And then the Nisoor Square massacre happened in September of 2007. And, you know, I would say that the Fallujah incident brought Blackwater to sort of fame and prominence in the world, and then Nisoor Square brought it to infamy, when they killed 16 civilians in a crowded Baghdad traffic stop. And there—some of the Blackwater guys that did that ultimately were prosecuted and were sentenced to decades in prison, one of them to life in prison.

And so, anyway, but to bring it to the present, Erik Prince continued, actually, to get contracts under the Obama administration, while the Justice Department was investigating Blackwater and the other affiliated companies that Erik Prince owned for a wide range of defense control violations, where they were offering services to the government in South Sudan or other nations without having obtained the proper licensing from the State Department. And in some cases—and, you know, Blackwater admitted to doing this—the State Department would say, "Well, explicitly, we don’t want you to do that, and we don’t give you permission to do this," and then they would go and do it anyway. But no one—Erik Prince was never—no charges were ever brought against him personally.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, how did that happen? Was that just a question of one agency in the government not knowing what the other was doing, or was that—was that greenlighted higher up in the administration?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I don’t think that there was—I don’t think there was political pressure put on the prosecutors in that case. I think it was a different sort of—it was a beast of a different nature. You know, Matthew and I talked to one of the very senior people involved with that prosecution, and he said, "Look, we’ve got an overwhelming abundance of evidence indicating that this company has committed systematic criminal violations of our defense restrictions, that are in place for our own national security, so that we’re not exporting these things to people that potentially could do harm to the U.S. or its interests. And while we’re trying to bring this criminal case, the Obama administration and Secretary Hillary Clinton are giving them more contracts. So how do we go in front of a jury and say this is a criminal enterprise, but the new Democratic president and his secretary of state are continuing to award them contracts?" So, basically, they said, "Well, all we really could do was to figure out a way to get Prince to leave those companies as the head and the chief controller of them, and then just levy massive fines against them."

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Erik—

JEREMY SCAHILL: So they paid around $50 million in fines, and then they were able to reconstitute themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: When Blackwater was being investigated and you were putting a lot of pressure through your investigations, Erik Prince left the country.

JEREMY SCAHILL: He—yeah, well, he’s always maintained a residence in Virginia. He did relocate to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and started up a number of other companies. And that became very controversial when his plan for a private security force for the—for several Emirati governments came to public light. And, you know, one of the reasons why—you know, remember, this is—the uprisings start in 2011 in the Arab world, and those governments were very nervous. You know, these corrupt monarchies were very nervous that their own status would be—would be confronted, you know, in control of these countries. And Erik Prince was viewed as a guy who could potentially provide them with non-Muslim private soldiers that could, you know, tamp down any rebellion in those countries. And, you know, we understand that Erik Prince fell out of favor in Abu Dhabi and then started looking elsewhere and found himself in negotiations with people with deep connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to turn to comments that Erik Prince made in 2014 about the self-proclaimed Islamic State. This is Prince on Fox News responding to host Bill O’Reilly’s proposal to fight the Islamic State with mercenaries.

ERIK PRINCE: The U.S. military has mastered the most expensive way to wage war. They’ve proven that in Iraq and Afghanistan. They haven’t been that effective there. So finding a cheap, sustainable way that you can keep presence into these areas, to keep pressure on Islamists, to keep—to support friends and be that long-term dwell is about the only way you’re going to do it. It’s as part of American history as apple pie.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about that, Jeremy? A more efficient—a more efficient way to do things?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, Erik Prince always said that, you know, if you want a package to arrive somewhere, you don’t send it through the U.S. Post Office, you use FedEx. And he sort of views his—himself as basically offering the CIA, the Defense Department, the State Department FedEx services that are actually lethal, and not delivering packages, but the package in question would be, you know, either deniable assets or the provision of what are essentially mercenaries that you don’t have to count as your fallen in a war zone or you don’t have to own if they commit misconduct that you wanted them to commit.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And there’s also the issue, though, of the accountability then, because it’s no longer a government operation, but it’s these private outfits, as well.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, soldiers are subjected to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And until very recently, these kinds of private military contractors existed in a total gray zone, where it was unclear—should they be prosecuted under the UCMJ, or do they go into civilian courts? And that’s why you saw so few of these guys actually prosecuted for anything.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, Erik Prince subsequently spoke at an event for donors to the Maverick PAC, a conservative group with ties to the Bush dynasty, and claimed Blackwater, now Academi, could stop the Islamic State. He said, quote, "It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don’t have the argument of U.S. active duty going back in there." Matthew Cole, respond to that and then this broader relationship right now—it’s not Academi, it’s not Blackwater; you can talk about the latest incarnation—and why China matters to the U.S. in this investigation.

MATTHEW COLE: I think, first, the issue about what mercenaries bring or what an American company brings to the table is—from the standpoint of democracy, is accountability and transparency. War is one of the most, if not the most, important thing that a nation-state, and especially a democracy, engages in abroad, certainly. And so, it’s of the utmost seriousness that the—you know, the government, the people who elected that government have some kind of understanding of who in their country—who represents them abroad and what they’re doing.

And what Blackwater, what Erik Prince provides—on one hand, he’s not wrong. Right? He has—they are very effective. They are very efficient, I should say, in providing the services that they offer. But the question is, is without accountability or transparency, what do they get away with? When things go wrong, what is the recourse? And what Blackwater has shown historically is that there is very little recourse for when things go wrong. And so, it’s a very, very dangerous weapon or tool, if you will, to have Erik Prince or have a mercenary organization operating.

And what he’s done now is, by leaving the U.S. government and going and doing it on his own, he has separated—there’s even less connection between accountability and transparency, because the—he’s offering his services directly to foreign countries. When things go wrong or when they want to hide, it didn’t happen. It’s a plausible deniability, is a lot of what happens for governments that would hire his services.

And so, when you bring in the notion of his business ties to China, the issue is—you know, obviously the United States has a very complicated relationship with China, but one of the things that’s certainly going on is that, at least on the defense side, whether it’s cyberwarfare, whether it’s, you know, out—Pacific growth and reach by the Chinese government in the Pacific region, what you have is kind of a stalemate and a bit of a cold war going on. And the concern would be for Erik Prince to be getting in bed with—and certainly, he is an appealing figure for the Chinese government, right? He has a lot of expertise. He has an idea of how to—and the ability to go into—in small groups, to go into countries where China may have, for instance, natural resource interests in Africa. Certainly, you know, their investment in the infrastructure in Africa has been massive, as a way to sustain their economy and their growth. And what he is providing them is the ability to protect their investments in places.

And certainly, that would be a concern, and we know it’s a concern, for the Department of Justice. We know it’s a concern for U.S. intelligence agencies. And again, at the heart of it is accountability and transparency. He’s a U.S. citizen. He is still subject to U.S. law. And so, you know, we don’t—I think there’s—at this point, the question is whether any of what he has done thus far has violated U.S. law or U.S. regulations.

AMY GOODMAN: You asked his lawyer if he’s being investigated?

MATTHEW COLE: Yeah, we asked his lawyer—

AMY GOODMAN: Victoria Toensing?

MATTHEW COLE: Yes, we asked his lawyer if he’s been notified of an investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: Remember, you can’t curse on the air. What did she respond?

MATTHEW COLE: And she—well, her response was—

AMY GOODMAN: Be careful.

MATTHEW COLE: —that neither she nor her client had been notified of an investigation by the Department of Justice. So that was her—

AMY GOODMAN: But she did say it was "total [BS]."

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, what—well, her—

MATTHEW COLE: She said that the—her exact response on that was—

AMY GOODMAN: Don’t give it exactly.

MATTHEW COLE: No, no, no, but it was in response to a question about money laundering. In fact, over three days of communication, many of the things that we initially submitted to Mr. Prince, her story changed, and her response for her client changed.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.

MATTHEW COLE: And so, it’s actually a little unclear. We can’t give one concise answer as to whether she denied certain things. In fact, she denied certain things and then moved back. So, certainly, I think they recognize that a lot of what we presented in the story is quite accurate.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, and she—Victoria Toensing is a very well-known Republican commentator and lawyer. And, you know, she and her husband both are attorneys that have represented a lot of interests for the pretty far-right elements of the GOP. But she’s also one of the main people that you see going after Hillary Clinton for Benghazi. And when we first spoke to her, she was like indignant at what we were saying that we had evidence on for Prince. But over the course of several days, it went from "He has no idea what you’re talking about" to "Oh, yes, he did actually open up a bank account at Bank of China, but it was for a company." And, "Oh, was it for Frontier Services Group?" "I’m not going to tell you what company it was for." We asked Frontier Services Group. "It’s not our bank account." "OK, well, what’s the bank account for?" You know, and she said, "Well, I don’t know. I can’t—now I can’t reach my client." "What about his meetings with Chinese intelligence?" "He has no idea what you’re talking about." Then, the next time, when we give her more detail on it, she says, "Oh, well, he did meet with them, but it was actually about medevac services." So, you know, it’s this evolving thing, and it felt a little bit, I think, to us like a dry run for an alibi for all of these things that we’re reporting on.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, I want to ask about Joseph Schmitz, the man who Donald Trump says will be his new foreign policy adviser, his links to Blackwater, and much more. Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole are our guests for the hour, reporters for The Intercept. Their latest exposé, "Erik Prince in the Hot Seat: Blackwater’s Founder is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services." Stay with us.



MIKE PENCE WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST IN U.S. HISTORY
Jeremy Scahill
November 15 2016, 12:27 p.m.
THE ELECTION OF Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through the souls of compassionate, humane people across the country and the world. Horror that a candidate who ran on a platform of open bigotry, threats against immigrants and Muslims, and blatant misogyny will soon be president is now sinking in. Trump appointed a white nationalist, Steve Bannon, as chief White House strategist — which was promptly celebrated by the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. Bannon and other possible extremist Trump appointees, such as John Bolton, a neocon who believes the U.S. should “bomb Iran,” and the authoritarian Rudy Giuliani, are now receiving much deserved public scrutiny.

The incoming vice president, Mike Pence, has not elicited the same reaction, instead often painted as the reasonable adult on the ticket, a “counterbalance” to Trump and a “bridge to the establishment.” However, there is every reason to regard him as, if anything, even more terrifying than the president-elect.

Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence — and his fellow Christian supremacist militants — would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. “This may not be our preferred candidate, but that doesn’t mean it may not be God’s candidate to do something that we don’t see,” said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the U.S. government enforce “biblical values.” In June, Barton prophesied: “We may look back in a few years and say, ‘Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none of us expected.’”

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

“The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That’s the only legitimate government,” contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” “So when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.”

One of Trump’s sons, Don Jr., reportedly said that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy, while Trump would focus on the vague mission of “Making America Great Again.” Trump’s campaign subsequently claimed the story was “made up,” though Trump has consistently denied saying things he is on record as saying, so who knows? In any case, the implications of a Pence vice presidency are vast. Pence combines the most horrid aspects of Dick Cheney’s worldview with a belief that Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” novels are not fiction, but an omniscient crystal ball.

While Trump has flip-flopped on a variety of issues, Pence has been a reliable stalwart throughout his public life in the cause of Christian jihad.
How the GOP foisted Pence on Trump is undoubtedly a fascinating story that hopefully will some day be revealed. Obviously, Pence gave Trump badly needed credibility with evangelical voters and the GOP establishment, but Pence’s selection portends a governing apocalypse. While Trump has flip-flopped on a variety of issues, from abortion to immigration to war and health care, Pence has been a reliable stalwart throughout his public life in the cause of Christian jihad — never wavering in his commitment to America-First militarism, the criminalizing of abortion, and utter hatred for gay people (unless they go into conversion therapy “to change their sexual behavior,” which Pence has suggested the government pay for).

He supported making the Patriot Act permanent and wants to ban the burning of the U.S. flag. Pence does not believe federal law enforcement agencies should have to get a FISA warrant to conduct domestic surveillance and voted against requiring any warrant for domestic wiretapping. As governor of Indiana, he did quietly sign a bill to limit the use of Stingray devices by local law enforcement, though it was during the early stages of the Snowden revelations and the public concern about government surveillance was intense.

Pence supported giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies implicated in warrantless surveillance. He does not want congressional oversight of CIA interrogations — which Trump believes should include waterboarding and other torture “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Pence has paid lip service to the illegality of torture but said that “enhanced interrogation” has saved lives. He has characterized relationship-building, non-coercive interrogation strategies as “Oprah Winfrey methods.” Pence is against whistleblower protections that would prohibit retaliation for reporting crimes or misdeeds. In 2002, the ACLU gave him a 7 percent rating on civil rights.

He wants the U.S. to resume the practice of holding new prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or, as Trump put it, they plan “to fill it up.” Pence also supports expanded use of the military tribunal system.

Pence has claimed that he wants to “economically isolate” Iran rather than engage in a military attack. But should Israel decide to conduct pre-emptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, he said in 2010, “if the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: that America will stand with Israel.” He supported a failed legislative effort to make it U.S. policy “to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force.” Both in rhetoric and policy, Pence has compared “radical Islam” to the “evil empire of the Soviet Union” and said that he and Trump will “name the enemy” and “marshal the resources of our nation and our allies to hunt them down and destroy them before they threaten us.”

“We’ll see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” Pence promised.
As has been widely reported, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed a law requiring fetal tissue from abortions to be buried or cremated, making his state one of the most medieval in its approach to reproductive rights. The fetus burial law, which Pence claimed would “ensure the dignified final treatment of the unborn,” was suspended at the 11th hour by a federal judge, who said it was likely unconstitutional. Pence has been at the forefront of the movement to defund Planned Parenthood. “We’ll see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs,” Pence promised. He has long sought to have 14th Amendment protections applied to fetuses, arguing that they should be declared persons. In Congress, Pence voted to criminally punish doctors who performed late-term abortions, except in cases where the woman’s life was in danger. A doctor who “kills a human fetus” faces up to two years in prison, according to that law.

Pence opposed efforts to widen hate crimes laws to include attacks on LGBT people. He tried to block federal funding of HIV treatments unless they came with a requirement to advocate against gay relationships. Pence opposes non-straight people serving in the military. “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service because the presence of homosexuals in the ranks weakens unit cohesion,” he said.

Pence believes “the only truly safe sex … is no sex” and once (falsely) claimed on CNN that “condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases.”

Pence supports the “wall” Trump has said he will build, believes in self-deportation, and has staked out one of the most virulent positions against the U.S. taking in refugees from Syria. In defending a proposed ban on Syrian refugees entering Indiana, Pence said it was necessary to “ensure the safety and security of all Hoosiers.” He has advocated for greater militarization of the so-called war on drugs, including escalated military patrols. Pence denounced activists and others protesting recent police killings of unarmed African-Americans, charging they “seize upon tragedy in the wake of police action shootings.” He said he found it offensive to “use a broad brush to accuse law enforcement of implicit bias or institutional racism and that really has got to stop.” He has said that “police officers are the best of us.”

Pence is a strong supporter of stop-and-frisk programs, which in New York were used overwhelmingly against people of color. “It’s on a sound constitutional footing,” said Pence, who added that he wanted the practice expanded nationwide. “Stop-and-frisk literally saved lives in New York City when it was implemented, and it’s been implemented in cities around the country.”

One interesting difference between Pence and Trump centers on the First Amendment. Trump has made clear he believes in waging war against a free press and has encouraged hostility toward journalists covering his campaign. While in Congress, Pence was a major force behind trying to get a federal shield law to protect journalists’ rights to maintain confidential sources. A former radio talk show host, Pence said he was inspired to act by the case of then-New York Times reporter Judy Miller, who was imprisoned for refusing to answer questions about her sources during the scandal over the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. No such law was ever passed and the bill provided wide latitude to nullify the protections of journalists in national security situations.

When he joined the ticket with Trump last summer, Pence claimed they were internally reviewing the campaign policy on the treatment of journalists covering Trump events. If anything, the situation worsened as the campaign moved forward.

On health care, Pence is now on board with repealing the Affordable Care Act, though as governor he did embrace the law in a pretty bold act of hypocrisy. He also supported denying non-emergency care for people who cannot afford a Medicare co-payment and opposed expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Pence is what might be termed “climate change curious,” though earlier in his political career, he wrote an essay in which he asserted, “Global warming is a myth. The global warming treaty is a disaster. There, I said it.” More recently, Pence has kind of acknowledged the fact-based nature of human action contributing to climate change but opposes ending any of the industrial, governmental, or corporate practices responsible. He has consistently advocated withdrawing from climate change agreements and treaties. Pence has an impressively atrocious record on environmental issues and a slavish devotion to big energy and big oil companies.

He opposed government assistance to U.S. workers who lost their jobs because of free trade agreements and has supported every neoliberal trade program since his time in public office. Pence was a loud proponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership until he joined Trump on the ticket, and now he claims to be pondering the “wisdom” of the agreement.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence pause during an event at the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci) Donald Trump and Mike Pence sit together during an event at the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center on Sept. 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
MIKE PENCE WAS raised Catholic, in a Kennedy Democrat household, but he has been a devout evangelical since being converted at a Christian music festival in Kentucky while in college. Pence now describes himself as “a Christian, a Conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” Even his political action committee’s name gives off a crusader vibe: Principles Exalt a Nation.
Pence opposed imposing restrictions on no-bid contracting, which may help explain his close relationship to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater. In December 2007, three months after Blackwater operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, Pence and his Republican Study Committee, which served “the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives,” organized a gathering to welcome Prince to Washington. But their relationship is not just forged in wars. Prince and his mother, Elsa, have been among the top funders of scores of anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives across the country and have played a key role in financing efforts to criminalize abortion.

Prince has long given money to Pence’s political campaigns, and toward the end of the presidential election, he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Trump/Pence Super PAC Make America Number 1. Prince’s mother kicked in another $50,000. Ironically, Erik Prince — who portrays himself as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and Pope Benedict — is now working with the Chinese government through his latest “private security” firm.

WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 02: Erik Prince, chairman of the Prince Group, LLC and Blackwater USA, participates in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill October 2, 2007 in Washington, DC. The committee is hearing testimony from officials regarding private security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, participates in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 2, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
THE PRINCE FAMILY’S support for Pence, and the Christian supremacist movement he represents, has deep roots.
Erik Prince’s father, Edgar, built up a very successful manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, and became one of the premier bankrollers of what came to be known as the radical religious right. They gave Gary Bauer the seed money to start the Family Research Council and poured money into James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. “Ed Prince was not an empire builder. He was a Kingdom builder,” Bauer recalled soon after the elder Prince’s death. “For him, personal success took a back seat to spreading the Gospel and fighting for the moral restoration of our society.” Erik Prince’s sister Betsy married Dick DeVos, whose father, Richard, founded the multilevel marketing firm Amway and went on to own the Orlando Magic basketball team. The two families merged together like the monarchies of old Europe and swiftly emerged as platinum-level contributors to far-right Christian causes and political figures.

The Prince and DeVos families gave the seed money for what came to be known as the Republican Revolution when Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1994 on a far-right platform known as the Contract with America. The Prince and DeVos clans also invested heavily in a scheme developed by Dobson to engage in back-door lobbying activities by forming “prayer warrior” networks of people who would call politicians to advocate for Dobson’s religious and political agenda. Instead of lobbying, which the organization would have been prohibited from doing because of its tax and legal status, they would claim they were “praying” for particular policies.

The Princes consistently poured money into criminalizing abortion, privatizing education, blocking gay rights, and other right-wing causes centered around their interpretation of Christianity. The family, especially Erik, was very close to Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man,” Watergate conspirator Charles “Chuck” Colson. The author of Nixon’s enemies list, Colson was the first person sentenced in the Watergate scandal, after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the investigation of the dirty tricks campaign against Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Colson became a born-again Christian before going to prison, and after his release, he started the Prison Fellowship, which sought to convert prisoners to Christianity to counter what Colson saw as the Islamic menace in U.S. prisons. Erik Prince funded this as well and went on prison visits with Colson.

“There’s a coalescing idea that somehow, obviously, God is doing something with Trump.”
All of these figures, bankrolled by the Prince family, are the ideological and theological ascendants of Mike Pence, who called Colson “a dear friend and mentor.” Colson and his allies viewed the administration of Bill Clinton as a secular “regime” and openly contemplated a faith-based revolution. In the early ’90s, Colson teamed up with conservative evangelical minister-turned-Catholic priest Richard Neuhaus and others to build a unified movement. That work ultimately led in 1994 to the controversial document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.” (Note: I wrote extensively about this in my book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” and drew heavily on that for this story.) Pence has described himself as “a born-again, evangelical Catholic.”

The ECT manifesto declared:

The century now drawing to a close has been the greatest century of missionary expansion in Christian history. We pray and we believe that this expansion has prepared the way for yet greater missionary endeavor in the first century of the Third Millennium. The two communities in world Christianity that are most evangelistically assertive and most rapidly growing are Evangelicals and Catholics.

The signatories called for a unification of these religions in a common missionary cause, that “all people will come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” They asserted that religion is “privileged and foundational in our legal order” and spelled out the need to defend “the moral truths of our constitutional order.” The document was most passionate in its opposition to abortion, calling abortion on demand “a massive attack on the dignity, rights, and needs of women. Abortion is the leading edge of an encroaching culture of death.” It also called for “moral education” in schools, advocating for educational institutions “that transmit to coming generations our cultural heritage, which is inseparable from the formative influence of religion, especially Judaism and Christianity.”

The ECT signers, according to author Damon Linker — who worked for Neuhaus for years — “had not only forged a historic theological and political alliance. They had also provided a vision of America’s religious and political future. It would be a religious future in which upholding theological orthodoxy and moral traditionalism overrode doctrinal disagreements. And it would be a political future in which the most orthodox and traditionalist Christians set the public tone and policy agenda for the nation.”

In November 1996 — the month Clinton crushed Bob Dole and won re-election — an organ of what Linker termed the theoconservative movement, Richard Neuhaus’s journal First Things, published a “symposium” titled “The End of Democracy?” Acknowledging that it might be viewed as “irresponsibly provocative and even alarmist,” the symposium bluntly questioned “whether we have reached or are reaching the point where conscientious citizens can no longer give moral assent to the existing regime.” A series of essays raised the prospect of a major confrontation between the church and the “regime,” at times seeming to predict a civil-war scenario or Christian insurrection against the government, exploring possibilities “ranging from noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution.”

Chuck Colson authored one of the five major essays in the issue, as did the extremist judge Robert Bork, whom Reagan had tried unsuccessfully to appoint to the Supreme Court in 1987. Colson’s essay was titled “Kingdoms in Conflict.” “Events in America may have reached the point where the only political action believers can take is some kind of direct, extra-political confrontation of the judicially controlled regime,” Colson wrote, adding that a “showdown between church and state may be inevitable. This is not something for which Christians should hope. But it is something for which they need to prepare.”

Dobson said the essays “laid an indisputable case for the illegitimacy of the regime now passing itself off as a democracy,” adding, “I stand in a long tradition of Christians who believe that rulers may forfeit their divine mandate when they systematically contravene the divine moral law. … We may rapidly be approaching the sort of Rubicon that our spiritual forebears faced: Choose Caesar or God. I take no pleasure in this prospect; I pray against it. But it is worth noting that such times have historically been rejuvenating for the faith.”

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence looks out over the crowd as US President Barack Obama answers a question at the Republican GOP House Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, January 29, 2010. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) Mike Pence looks out over the crowd as President Barack Obama answers a question at the Republican GOP House Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on Jan. 29, 2010. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
TODAY, PENCE AND his allies have warded off the return of another secular Clinton regime that their ideological and theological prophets once contemplated overthrowing. They will now have the opportunity to build the temple they have long desired. “Secular viewers forget that King David wasn’t always such a nice guy in the Bible, but he was God’s chosen man,” said Jeff Sharlet. “So there’s a coalescing idea that somehow, obviously, God is doing something with Trump.”
Donald Trump’s grasp of the bible is certainly not up to the standards of Pence and the religious zealots behind him. “Two Corinthians 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame,” Trump declared — in the same way he spits out “Make America Great Again” — in front of an audience at an evangelical college on the campaign trail. People laughed. At him. It is Second Corinthians.

Perhaps that episode is telling. The radical religious right doesn’t need to save Trump’s soul. As they saw in the campaign, Trump has staked out a hateful agenda — one that tracks quite well with the crusades of Pence and his fellow apostles. Even if elements of Trump’s vile rhetoric and his various threats were a psychotic form of performance art, or mere opportunistic political strategy, as some suggest, they have set the stage for the pursuit of a civilizational war that poses a dire threat to vulnerable populations throughout the world. President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a slew of prominent Democrats have publicly said that Americans should give Trump a chance. With Mike Pence seated at the right hand of the father, running foreign and domestic policy, they will do so at their peril.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/mik ... s-history/
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby kelley » Tue Nov 22, 2016 7:05 pm

solid state gaydar is completely off the dial with this deranged fundy xtian bigot

it's just obvious
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 24, 2016 8:49 am

Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment (PENCE).... :P

New York Legislator Names Law to Ban Conversion Therapy After Mike Pence

by Melissa Chan NOVEMBER 22, 2016, 7:20 PM EST

“You have a man who is going to have enormous power over all of us, who advocates for it”
A New York elected official has introduced local legislation that would ban conversion therapy, naming the law after Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who has appeared to show support for the practice.

Patrick Burke, a legislator in Erie County, has named the proposed law the Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment (PENCE), according to WBFO.

“Mike Pence is probably going to have the most power of any vice president in the history of our country and he has openly advocated for conversion therapy,” Burke told the new outlet. “I want that to sink into people. I want them to realize it’s a serious issue of abuse of children, Flatly, whether they are gay or not, it’s abuse. Then you have a man who is going to have enormous power over all of us, who advocates for it.”

Conversion therapy attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual through psychological treatments or counseling.

In 2000, when Pence was running for Congress, his website said money was aside to help HIV/AIDS patients be “directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior,” according to the Washington Post.
http://fortune.com/2016/11/22/conversio ... pence-law/
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 01, 2016 6:45 pm

Mike Pence's New Neighbors Are Welcoming Him With Gay Pride Flags
The anti-LGBT vice president-elect should get the message loud and proud.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet December 1, 2016


Vice-president elect Mike Pence, who previously advocated for redirecting federal HIV/AIDS funds to useless and dumb pray-the-gay-away therapy, has taken up temporary digs in NW Washington until he moves into the Vice Presidential mansion. Pence’s neighbors have greeted his arrival with the perfect signifier for how they feel about the his anti-LGBT legacy—in the form of lots of gay pride flags.

The DCist reports that at least six rainbow flags are now displayed on the Chevy Chase Street where Pence will be residing until inauguration day. One of those belongs to llse Heintzen, a soon-to-be neighbor of Pence’s who hopes her flag will convey her opposition to his anti-LGBT agenda.

“A respectful message showing, in my case, my disagreement with some of his thinking,” Heintzen told local ABC affiliate WJLA.

Pence has been on the wrong side of LGBT legislation for his entire political career, voting for laws that would allow homophobic bigots to violate the rights of queer, trans and other LGBTQ people.

“I have no idea what [the Vice-President Elect] will think about, but I hope he will change his mind,” Heintzen told WJLA.

The DCist reports that a similar silent protest is taking place around the Indiana governer’s mansion, Pence’s former residence. According to the outlet, “more than two dozen homeowners...have also displayed pride flags and other anti-Pence signs.”
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/m ... ride-flags



Suzanne Kennedy ✔@ABC7Suzanne
Residents on NW Washington Street where VP Elect Pence is renting a house are sending him a symbolic message. More residents may hang flags
3:59 PM - 30 Nov 2016

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#Pride flags sending message to @mike_pence outside temporary #DC home. Neighbors say more are coming.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby General Patton » Thu Dec 01, 2016 8:02 pm

Just popping in to say: The rent there is more than most American households will pull down in a year.

Not to invalidate this symbolic protest (we all love symbolic protests), but to add context to who is protesting.
штрафбат вперед
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 19, 2017 1:01 pm

SEE IT: Gay rights activists hold ‘Queer Dance Party’ in front of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s D.C. home

BY
MEG WAGNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, January 19, 2017, 10:45 AM
Gay rights activists welcomed one of their fiercest foes, the staunchly conservative Vice President-elect Mike Pence, to his new home with a block party — one complete with blaring Beyoncé songs and a sea of rainbow flags.

About 200 people attended the “Queer Dance Party” Wednesday night outside of the Washington D.C. home Pence had been renting ahead of his inauguration. The protestors danced their way to the house, tossing glitter and twirling glow sticks along the way, as speakers blasted dup-beat disco and pop music.

“The idea is to leave a mark that Mike Pence will never forget,” protestor organizer Firas Nasr told the Washington Post. “We want to send a strong message to Pence that we’re a united queer community.”
Image

Supporters of LGBT rights hold a dance party in the middle of the street where Vice President-elect Mike Pence is temporarily renting a home. (JIM LO SCALZO/EPA)
Pence is known for his anti-gay policies and opinions. During his tenue as Indiana’s governor, he signed a law that allows businesses to deny service to gay, lesbian and transgender customers. The discriminatory legislation prompted so much backlash, lawmakers were forced to amend it to protect the LGBT community.

Mike Pence’s ‘on my knees’ comment sparks LGBT outrage
He also has voiced opposition to the repeal of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell," tried to ban same-sex marriages in Indiana and once equated homosexuality with 'societal collapse."

Pence is known for his anti-gay policies and opinions.
Pence is known for his anti-gay policies and opinions. (JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
At least one protester brought his 8-month-old daughter to the colorful protest.

“I want her to grow up in a world where she can be whoever she wants and be respected for who she is,” the unidentified dad told Reuters. “And I’m concerned that some of the statements that President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence have made on the campaign trails suggesting that they would not support that world.”
Image

About 200 people attended the “Queer Dance Party” Wednesday night outside of the Washington D.C. home Pence had been renting ahead of his inauguration. (JIM LO SCALZO/EPA)
The protestors were not allowed to boogie directly up to Pence’s rental home, as the street was closed off for several blocks. It’s unclear if the Vice President-elect was at home during the roaring party.

Indiana gov defends law that legalizes discrimination
In the weeks leading up to the inauguration, many of Pence’s new neighbors have flown rainbow flags in solidarity with those who oppose with anti-gay views. The dance party was meant to send the same message.

“We want to send a strong message to Pence that we’re a united queer community,” Nasr said. “We’ve always stood united. There’s always space to dance.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.2950229
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jan 19, 2017 5:12 pm

Looks like Bromance of the Veeps is happening:

The former vice president is also in close contact with senior Trump aides. Cheney speaks frequently with the vice president-elect, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who himself serves as a liaison between the president-elect and Capitol Hill, and who has said he hopes to model his vice presidency on Cheney’s.

“Mike relishes the advice,” said a senior transition aide, who added that Cheney is “willing to do what he’s asked” and “wants to be helpful” to the incoming administration.” The aide denied, however, that Cheney's conversations were part of a coordinated effort between Trump Tower and Capitol Hill to push for Tillerson’s confirmation.


:shock2:
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby Elvis » Fri Jan 20, 2017 4:50 am

said he hopes to model his vice presidency on Cheney’s


I'd be more worried if Pence knew his ass from a hole in the ground.
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 21, 2017 11:11 pm

Mike Pence Disappointed In The 200,000 Husbands And Fathers Who Permitted Women To Attend March

NEWS IN BRIEF
January 21, 2017
VOL 53 ISSUE 02
Politics · Politicians · Activism · Mike Pence

WASHINGTON—Admonishing those responsible for failing to uphold their moral duties, Vice President Mike Pence expressed disappointment Saturday in the 200,000 husbands and fathers who had allowed the women and girls in their charge to attend the Women’s March on Washington. “I can’t tell you how let down I feel by the heads of these households who did not simply give their wives and daughters a firm, decisive ‘no’ when they asked to participate in today’s demonstration,” said Pence, noting with frustration that many of the protesters had been granted permission to travel across the country alone and stay for several days in a faraway city with no male chaperone whatsoever to guide and look after them. “There are a few men marching as well, so they must be the ones supervising this whole thing, and thank God for that. But I can’t help but feel that these ladies’ custodians—the ones who were supposed to be providing a masculine voice of reason on these sorts of matters—have really come up short today.” Pence stressed that he, for example, had told his 23-year-old eldest daughter that it was simply out of the question when she mentioned she was thinking of attending the march.
http://www.theonion.com/article/mike-pe ... ther-55116



:P
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Re: Mike Pence is seriously dangerous

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Jan 27, 2017 9:18 pm

Ex-Christian from Duggar cult explains why we should be more afraid of Mike Pence than Trump
Travis Gettys
27 Jan 2017 at 11:09 ET

Image
Mike Pence and Josh Duggar (Instagram)

Right-wing Christians have been plotting their takeover of the U.S. government for nearly 50 years — and the rise of Donald Trump and his evangelical sidekick, Mike Pence, have finally set up “the tragedy playing out right now.”

Kieryn Darkwater is a transgender former evangelical “Christofascist” who grew up in the Quiverfull movement and uses “they” as a personal pronoun, wrote about their experience as a homeschooled right-wing political activist for the website Autostraddle.

“I watched the Tea Party takeover and was surprised no one saw it coming,” Darkwater wrote. “After all, this was part of the plan. Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence.”

Evangelical conservatives started taking over local Republican groups in the 1970s and setting up right-wing advocacy groups to push their agenda into the mainstream — which, of course, is the standard form political activism — while all along training their children in home schools and church groups to fight in the “culture wars.”

“It’s a loose and ambiguous term that basically means anything or anyone that doesn’t align with this very specific view of Christianity must not be allowed to continue,” Darkwater wrote.

The Christian right hopes to overturn court decisions protecting reproductive rights and non-discrimination on race, and Darkwater warned that these religious extremists intend to amend the U.S. Constitution to legalize discrimination against women, people of color and LGBT people .

“The only way to do this is to infiltrate the government,” Darkwater wrote, recalling the training and activism they took part in as a teenager.

“We were sneaky and polite Trojan horses,” Darkwater wrote. “We had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds.”

Right-wing Christians have wanted someone like Pence in the White House for years, but a hardline religious conservative hasn’t even been able to win the GOP primary — until Trump emerged as a blank slate with no real principles beyond his own self-aggrandizement.

“They know Trump is easily manipulated and will change his mind with the wind if it makes him feel more powerful and famous,” Darkwater wrote. “Trump couldn’t care less about policy, a fact he’s made quite obvious. The Right has given a tyrant power and fame; he will do whatever they want him to do in order to keep it.”

With Trump apparently willing to sign anything Pence and congressional Republicans hand him, Darkwater wrote, right-wing Christians see an opportunity to finally take over the U.S. government with an army of homeschooled religious extremists.

“Those of us who didn’t leave the far Right are being elected to federal positions or are taking over states and cities,” Darkwater wrote. “With Pence in office, even the reasonable-seeming incumbents – who have been and are still at the mercy of the Tea Party – are growing more bold in their attempts to further the Christofascist agenda: To Take Back The Country For Christ.”
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