Plan B Forum

Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama

Roy Moore, the ousted chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and a bombastic voice of right-wing conservatism, secured victory in Tuesday's contentious battle against incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the Republican runoff to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions' vacated Senate seat.

Moore defeated Strange by a little over 9 percentage points, or 44,320 votes, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Moore, a conservative Christian known as the "Ten Commandments Judge" for his defiance of a federal order to remove a monument to the Bible's Ten Commandments from a state building, has long been a celebrated leader of Alabama's right wing.

Moore is deeply controversial both among those who take issue with his positions on race, religion, and sexuality. And he has detractors among establishment Republicans, supported by President Donald Trump, who say he would be a weak candidate in the December general election and have mobilized almost $11 million to support his opponent.

Along with Trump, Moore has consistently cast doubt on former President Barack Obama's US citizenship and promoted the "birther" conspiracy as recently as December 2016.

In 2005, the former judge said that "homosexual conduct" should be illegal, calling it "immoral." Moore voiced the same position 10 years later.

Moore has also acted on his virulently anti-gay beliefs. After he was reelected as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Moore was again removed from the position in 2016 after he directed probate judges to enforce the state's ban on same-sex marriages despite the Supreme Court's decision to overturn it.

Last February, Moore suggested that the 9/11 terror attacks were a punishment from God for Americans' declining religiosity.

"Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon ... therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance,'" Moore said, quoting the Bible. He added, "Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn't it?"

He later claimed that God may be angry with the US because "we legitimize sodomy" and "legitimize abortion."

"You know, we've suffered a lot in this country, maybe, just maybe, because we've distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land," he said.

Moore called Islam a "false religion" in July in response to an Alabama resident's question about how he would deal with alleged Muslim influence on US law.

Moore has fanned the flames of unsubstantiated concerns that Sharia law is influencing the rule of law in some American communities. Right-wing leaders and politicians have long claimed that Sharia law poses an "existential threat" to the United States, a position critics argue stokes Islamophobic sentiment.

"There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country," Moore told a Vox reporter in August. Up in Illinois. Christian communities; I don't know if they may be Muslim communities."

Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, won't seek re-election next year

(CNN)Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker said Tuesday he will retire at the end of 2018.

"After much thought, consideration and family discussion over the past year, Elizabeth and I have decided that I will leave the United States Senate when my term expires at the end of 2018," Corker said in a released statement.

Corker is the Senate's foreign relations committee chairman and had told CNN earlier this month that he was considering whether to run again.

Corker, who was at one time among those considered a candidate to be President Donald Trump's secretary of state, had been increasingly critical of the President in recent months.

"The President has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful," Corker said last month, according to a video posted by local news website Nooga.com, in reference to Trump's handling of violence related to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump and his press secretary responded with their own criticism.

Lord Jim wrote:Apparently Corker wanted to see how things turned out in Alabama...

He didn't want to have to deal with a Roy Moore clone primary opponent (which was sure to happen with Moore winning)

I have been hearing that he may be planning to primary Trump for 2020

RayThom wrote:...Can you imagine all the sports metaphor that will over take the news media if he runs? I think I'll pass.

• Any report about Roy Moore that doesn’t specifically refer to him as a right-wing extremist is not worth your time. No more “firebrand.” No more impotent yap about his “controversial views.” Roy Moore is an extremist or the word no longer has meaning. If, as appears likely, he gets elected to the Senate from Alabama, then a majority of Alabama voters are extremists, too. If he gets elected, then the Republican Party ever more should be referred to as an extremist party. That, of course, is if we’re being honest about what’s really going on in this country in 2017.

  
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  I’m out of empathy for this stuff. I’m out of pity. I’m out of patience. And, not for nothing, but Moore’s opponent is a guy named Douglas Jones. In 2001, Jones convicted two men for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, one of the iconic white supremacist terrorist acts of that period. One of those bastards already died in prison and the other keeps getting denied parole. If you’d rather be represented in the Senate by a lawless theocratic lunatic, rather than a guy that finally got justice for four murdered little girls, well, you deserve anything that goddamn happens to you.

Econoline wrote:Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester the cat, Tweety Bird, Marvin the Martian, Taz the Tasmanian devil, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam are all DEEPLY OFFENDED by the title of this thread. (We'll have to wail 'til Wile E. catches up with the Roadrunner to find out what the Roadrunner thinks, but he'll probably agree with the rest of them.)

Trump Lashes Out at GOP Sen. Corker — Who Then Calls White House ‘an Adult Day Care Center’

President Donald Trump and Sen. Bob Corker traded jabs in a series of tweets on Sunday, with the president first saying the Tennessee Republican "didn’t have the guts to run" for re-election and Corker then calling the White House "an adult day care center."

Trump tweeted Sunday morning that Corker "begged" him to endorse him to re-election and the president said “NO.” Trump then said that Corker dropped out because he did not think he could win without his endorsement.

“He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said "NO THANKS," Trump wrote in another tweet.

In a third tweet, Trump said that hence he would expect Corker to "be a negative voice" and stand in the way of his political agenda, adding that the Tennessee senator "Didn't have the guts to run!"

Corker fired back, tweeting that “the White House has become an adult day care center” and that “Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

The Twitter feud came after Corker said earlier this week that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly “are those people that help separate our country from chaos.”