Not nasty enough..

[Admin]

How about this for nasty..

Tuesday night, Andrea Jenkins became the first trans woman of color elected to a city’s governing body, winning a seat on the Minneapolis City Council. State Rep. Mary Franson responded Wednesday morning by tweeting, “A guy who thinks he’s a girl is still a guy with a mental health condition.” The tweet has since been deleted. 

Thursday night, Franson issued an “apology,” wherein she reiterated her belief that no one can change their gender and refused “to go along with fantasy and participate in it”

In a 2012 debate, she defended her opposition to marriage equality by explaining that she doesn’t believe homosexuality is “normal behavior” and she wanted to protect children from being taught to normalize it. Two years later, she opposed legislation to protect LGBTQ students from bullying because she deemed LGBT organizations to be “special interest groups” that were trying to impose “fascism” on schools.

A Minnesota lawmaker attacked a new transgender city council member. Her ‘apology’ was just as bad. – ThinkProgress

Yea, sticking up for minority rights is fascism...

Actually, attacking minorities that do no harm, like Jenkins is doing, that is much more akin to fascism..

[Admin]

Fighting to keep people getting healthcare with lies. How's that for nasty?

Imagine that expanding Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands of people somehow meant that hunting and fishing licenses would be more expensive. Fearing a price hike, hunters and fishermen would surely surge to the polls in off-year election to vote no on a Medicaid expansion ballot question. Which is why one of the ads unleashed by opponents of Maine’s Medicaid expansion voter initiative made that very—and very ridiculous—claim.

Maine’s Republican Governor, Paul LePage, pugnacious as usual, was the face of the anti-expansion campaign. He took to Maine’s influential talk radio programs to dial up his base, backed by a PAC called Welfare to Work launched by one of his former advisors in August to fight the Medicaid measure. The message? “Able-bodied people” looking “medical welfare” should get off their collective butts and get to work. Those scare tactics backfired. Mainers voted 59 percent to 41 percent to expand Medicaid, making Maine the first state to approve Medicaid expansion at the ballot box. Both the turnout and the margin of victory were higher than expected in a year with no candidate elections and just four voter initiatives on ballots statewide. How do you successfully counter misinformation on an issue as critical as health care? Mainers for Health Care, the statewide coalition that helped lead the successful yes campaign, countered the hunting and fishing license price hikes and other tall tales by relentlessly repeating a few salient data points. Medicaid expansion would create 6,000 new jobs and give the state a $500 million infusion of federal funding each year. Most importantly, the measure would provide health care to 70,000 Mainers.

How Maine’s Medicaid Expansion Campaign Got to Yes

70K people with healthcare translates in tens, perhaps hundreds less avoidable deaths, rising medical debts and bankruptcies. 

But that has to be fought at all cost, even with lies.

Nasty.

And the governor still doesn't want to implement it even after the election loss:

Surprising exactly no one, LePage has now pledged to not to implement the Medicaid expansion until the Legislature funds the state’s Medicaid match using the administration’s estimates of those costs (which are almost twice as high as the figures put forward by the nonpartisan budget office that provides analyses for state lawmakers).

How Maine’s Medicaid Expansion Campaign Got to Yes

Really nasty. A bad loser as well.

[Admin]

Meanwhile, while passing tax cuts for big corporations and billionaires..

Nearly two months since its funding technically expired, the Children's Health Insurance Program is still in limbo while congressional Republicans try to pass their tax bill. There was a lot of good reporting over the past week about how states are preparing for the possible end of funding for CHIP, which covers more than 9 million Americans. Then on Monday, Colorado announced it would start sending letters to families enrolled in CHIP, letting them know what their options would be if the program actually ran out of money. The state projects its reserves for CHIP, which helps cover 167,000 people there, will be dry at the end of January. States warned us this would happen if Congress left the matter unresolved. Some families might be able to buy coverage on their state's Obamacare marketplaces, as Colorado is notifying its residents, but the fear is that some number of children would become uninsured. "A fair amount of our children we think will become uninsured," Alabama CHIP director Cathy Caldwell told reporters earlier this fall. The program helps cover 150,000 kids in her state.

Congress is already doing real damage to CHIP - Vox

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Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney suggested Wednesday that he will tip restaurant servers less if the minimum wage goes up.  "If I walk into a restaurant, and I know that the waiter or waitress is making $15 an hour, way more than they used to make the previous year, I'm going to think, 'wait a minute, am I going to give you 20 percent, 15 percent, 10 percent or whatever?' " the millionaire TV host asked.  Varney made the comment while speaking with Apple-Metro CEO Zane Tankel in a segment Wednesday on increases to the national minimum wage.

Fox Business's Varney says he'll tip restaurant servers less if minimum wage goes up | TheHill

What follows is the usual evidence free railing against increases in the minimum wage..

[Admin]

Teachers take care of our kids, this should be a very important job (like it is in Finland, where it produces much better results). But not according to the Nasty Party:

A veteran public school teacher has announced plans to run against a GOP state lawmaker who vowed to vote against all education funding during the Oklahoma teachers strike. Cyndi Ralston, who has worked in education for 30 years, announced on Tuesday that she will be running as a Democrat to represent Oklahoma’s 12th District, the Tulsa World reported. She wrote in a Facebook post that she was spurred to make her announcement after Rep. Kevin McDugle said he would not vote “for another stinking [education] measure when they're acting the way they're acting." Oklahoma teachers are on their third day of a statewide strike in protest for more resource funding and better pay. McDugle said he didn’t care if the teachers were “pissed” at him.

Oklahoma teacher to run against state lawmaker who vowed to vote against all education funding | TheHill

[Admin]

The Republican proposal to impose stricter work requirements and anti-fraud measures on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as food stamps — is estimated to slash $20 billion from the program over the next 10 years. More than 2 million people could be pushed off the program, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Farm bill 2018: House Republicans’ push to slash food stamps, explained - Vox

[stpioc]

Sooo, what do you do when you have just cut taxes on corporations and the rich (mainly) and blew up the deficit in the process? You cut.... Child Health Insurance!

President Donald Trump will introduce a rescission package to cut $15 billion in already approved spending from the federal budget. The cuts would come from the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation program, and the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program. The rescission package is subject to approval by a simple majority in Congress, but passage is not guaranteed.

Trump rescission bill details, cuts to CHIP, healthcare - Business Insider

And violate campaign promise not to touch Medicare and Medicaid in the process..

[Admin]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- who identifies himself as a Christian -- addressed an Arizona law enforcement conference about an imaginary "massive influx of illegal aliens across our Southwest Border" (something that not even Trump believes in), and told border guards that they should disincentivize such crossings by separating undocumented children from their parents in border detention. More than 700 children have been separated from their families by US border guards since October 2017.

Jeff Sessions tells border guards to separate children from their parents / Boing Boing

President Donald Trump is falsely claiming that "bad legislation passed by the Democrats" has forced his administration to separate children from their families at the border, even though no such law exists..

Fact check: Trump blames Democrats for his policy of separating kids from parents at border

Helplessness. It’s what I feel when children are faced with forced separation from their parent or caregiver at the US border. Anger, sadness, uncertainty, and dismay all follow closely behind. I work as an attorney with an organization called Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, devoted to working with unaccompanied children. I hear firsthand stories that illustrate the severe impact of family separation on children; to say they are terrorized and completely devastated is an understatement. This new terror is compounded by the trauma already experienced by these children — the violence, persecution, and other harm they faced in their home country that caused them to seek protection in the US in the first place.

Immigration: I work with children separated from caregivers at the border. What happens is unforgivable. - Vox

The Nasty Party strikes again..

[Admin]

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) slammed the Trump administration over its decision to stop granting asylum to victims of gang violence and domestic abuse on Monday, calling it "inhumane."  "The inhumanity of the Trump Administration’s asylum policy is staggering," Casey said in a tweet.

Dem senator slams Sessions on asylum: The 'inhumanity' of the policy 'is staggering' | TheHill

[Admin]

We already knew Cruz is extremely mean spirited (see here for an extraordinary example), so this comes as no surprise:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is defending the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrants from their children when they are apprehended at the border, saying it can't be avoided when people illegally cross the border.

Cruz defends Trump policy of family separation | TheHill

And this guy is supposedly a Christian..