All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Malvolio]

Some on the left had to call for an end to capitalism. It's a position some people do hold, and they tend not to be free-markets type.

There was a lot of upside to her administration. Average earnings increased significantly, while inflation (a major problem in the 70s when the conservative party took over) was greatly reduced.

There was a massive increase in productivity following union reforms (national agreements had previously been undermined by local leaders) and the privatisation of industry was largely seen as a good thing.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-...st-thatcherism

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...n-8566596.html

There's a distinction between what some health insurance companies cover and what they're mandated to cover.

It's one thing if Blue Cross adds questionable therapies to its plans to get more customers; they shouldn't be mandated to do so by the state, which is the situation in France.

This gets messy. I agree on the need to know what we're talking about in political discourse, but there are downsides to keeping out large chunks of the population from the conversation (This is not a partisan issue as there's ignorance on both sides; see how few Americans can name a single Supreme Court justice.)

This has been a major problem for a few years. It had been going on in particular communities before, but it got so bad it's affected the national average in 2015 (the statistics became public in late 2016.)

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...s-report-finds

1. You say "some on the left call for an end to capitalism." Care to name any of those people?

2. Large chunks of the population should be kept out of the conversation if they're completely ignorant on the given topic. I, for one, don't want to hear one more person on television say, "I'm no scientist, but..." and then proceed to make some completely unscientific argument about climate change or abortion or whatever matter of science is being discussed.

[Malvolio]

Writing for the New York Times, Steve Rattner, counseler to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, notes economic tailwinds benefit Trump in 2020.


Other models come to the same conclusion.



This isn't to say he's guaranteed to win reelection, or even favored to win. Rattner noted that Trump consistently underperformed models predicting how a typical Republican candidate would do.

But at the very least Trump winning again remains a significant possibility. Democrats can't take his defeat as a foregone conclusion. We may be stuck with him for a while.

A positive economy always favors the incumbent. However, how good is the economy really doing when so many people have to work two jobs just to pay their bills?

[Kirby101]

Writing for the New York Times, Steve Rattner, counseler to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, notes economic tailwinds benefit Trump in 2020.


Other models come to the same conclusion.



This isn't to say he's guaranteed to win reelection, or even favored to win. Rattner noted that Trump consistently underperformed models predicting how a typical Republican candidate would do.

But at the very least Trump winning again remains a significant possibility. Democrats can't take his defeat as a foregone conclusion. We may be stuck with him for a while.

I don't think it is a slam dunk by any means. And neither do any of the Dems I converse with. (Including on a very large Democratic website). Given the Electoral College map, he could win with a minority of votes again.

Also that the GOP has stymied every attempt to safeguard voting, the election is very much up in the air.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ity/884438002/

[worstblogever]

May 25th, 2019
It was on this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Matt Richardson, who was a candidate for the Washington State Senate back in 2010 trying to unseat the legendary CSGOPOTD, Pam Roach. The main problem with his candidacy was that at the age of 16 he was charged with molesting two family relatives, aged 8 and 5 at the time. Richardson’s far lesser flaw that’s still pretty wild, was that his campaign website compared abortion to slavery, even using the phrase “Modern Emancipation” in his calls to prevent it. He’s not exactly suited for office, just given those two facts.

It was on this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Molly White, whose background prior to being elected to office was as a radical anti-abortion advocate. She still proudly traveled with displays of plastic fetuses in her SUV ready to go, and blames the fact that she herself got two abortions and blames it on rampant substance abuse at that stage of her life. There’s also her fervent passion for the 2nd Amendment that saw her pander to fellow gun enthusiasts by posing with guns almost as big as she is. But then, the Texas GOP learned how off her rocker Molly White really is as she proceeded to then make headlines for all the worst reasons but weeks into being sworn into office. On January 29th, 2015, a group of Muslim constituents had planned to visit Austin for Texas Muslim Capitol Day, where they would seek out lawmakers to discuss policy, as part of an event hosted by the Council of American Islamic Relations. Molly White, however, had heard somewhere that CAIR was considered to be the 82nd top terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, and that was good enough reason for her to make sure that no Muslim coming to the event had nefarious intent. So, she went on Facebook, where she made a post instructing her staff to confirm that these Muslims they were good, loyal Americans, by taking them to her office where an Israeil flag would be present on her desk, and where they would “ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.” All right, there’s a lot to unpack here. First off, that’s bigoted as all get out. Second… why did she have an Israeli flag in her office? And why did she think that Muslims would turn away for it like a vampire seeing a cross? Not even two months went by, and Molly White was at it again, shaking her fist at the sky, and showing she probably flunked social studies, because she was under the impression that she could undermine a Supreme Court ruling, drafting Texas’ HB 2555, which was meant to overturn rulings to overturn bans on same sex marriage. She also filed HB 2553 around the same time, a bill meant to allow Texas businesses the right to refuse goods or services to anyone based on their own religious grounds. (Because that wasn’t something that Southern states didn’t argue to try and keep discriminating against African Americans after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, either.) Her love of denying LGBT rights really does mean something to her, as she was photographed with several Texas Republicans celebrating the state amending the Texas constitution to ban same sex marriage with delicious cake. It seemed like White might get through the rest of 2015 without making an arse of herself, but on December 9th, 2015, she decided to give her opinion about President Barack Obama (uh oh). She apparently thinks he’s in league with the Muslim Brotherhood and should be arrested and tried for treason against the United States. Mercifully, Molly White was defeated by Hugh Shine by 104 votes in the 2016 GOP Primary for her Texas House seat. As such, we'll move on and start profiling a different wacky Republican on this date instead.

It was on this date in 2017, as well as 2018, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Bob Gannon, a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly who should not be confused with the pig-faced nemesis of Link in The Legend of Zelda series, but we could understand how people could get him mixed up with an evil warlord with a pig face. In his short one term and change in office, Gannon has already made an ass of himself on numerous occasions. It was in December of 2015 when Gannon reacted to a shooting in a Wisconsin mall by advising more citizens to practice concealed carry and “help clean society of these scumbags” in vigilante killings. On January 6th, 2016, Gannon put out a press release with false statistics blaming a higher murder rate on “n”, who he seemed to claim were also deliberately choosing crime over employment. Well, that story gets worse. When Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca began to criticize Gannon for his comments on the floor of the Wisconsin State Assembly, he didn’t exactly take it too well, with his rebuttal coming in the form of a middle finger flashed at Barca. And you know it’s bad when even fellow Republicans find your behavior distasteful. Bob Gannon tends to get called out for his rhetoric, or dishonesty, or d***ishness within the Wisconsin State Assembly, and likes to throw around the phrases “leftists” and “liberals” in response to Democrats, using the terms as epithets. The victimization complex in him is strong, nearly as strong as his desire to shoot black people in the street before they have a chance to commit a crime, apparently. Looking to Bob Gannon’s brief legislative record, and he’s already managed to support legislation as heinous as SB 533, which was designed to disenfranchise voters by prohibiting municipalities from carrying out the issue of identification cards (you can’t vote without the Voter ID the GOP require in Wisconsin, and guess what? They’re closing everywhere you can get one!) But he also co-sponsored AB 950, which would have blocked local police departments from preventing immigration status inquiries, had it passed. Add in his sponsorship of AB 192, to drug test welfare recipients (which never ceases to be overturned as unconstitutional, or a failed conservative policy prior to judges tossing it out as a violation of the Fourth Amendment), and his vote for a ban on abortion at 20 weeks. In October of 2017, Bob Gannon was found dead in his pickup truck, apparently of natural causes, at the age of 58. As such, we’re going to go ahead and retire his profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 755-40, since this was established in July 2014.)

[4saken1]

Writing for the New York Times, Steve Rattner, counseler to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, notes economic tailwinds benefit Trump in 2020.


Other models come to the same conclusion.



This isn't to say he's guaranteed to win reelection, or even favored to win. Rattner noted that Trump consistently underperformed models predicting how a typical Republican candidate would do.

But at the very least Trump winning again remains a significant possibility. Democrats can't take his defeat as a foregone conclusion. We may be stuck with him for a while.

I've seen that his approval ratings among African Americans has hit double digits as well. I think this is connected to the unemployment rates being so low, even if he can only take the credit for the last hundred meters of that marathon. And even a crappy job is better than no job! Still, this is bad news for Dems in 2020 if they can't get these voters back.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I've seen that his approval ratings among African Americans has hit double digits as well. I think this is connected to the unemployment rates being so low, even if he can only take the credit for the last hundred meters of that marathon. And even a crappy job is better than no job! Still, this is bad news for Dems in 2020 if they can't get these voters back.

But, on the other end of the spectrum, you have midwesterners and especially farmers who’ve been kneecapped by Trump’s tariff war against China, and those people are said to be plenty pissed, so those more than likely represent voters he’ll lose next year.

[JCAll]

1. You say "some on the left call for an end to capitalism." Care to name any of those people?

2. Large chunks of the population should be kept out of the conversation if they're completely ignorant on the given topic. I, for one, don't want to hear one more person on television say, "I'm no scientist, but..." and then proceed to make some completely unscientific argument about climate change or abortion or whatever matter of science is being discussed.

I definitely hear people pointing out that a lot of the problems in out society are directly tied to problems with the very system capitalism, but I don't really hear them calling for capitalism to be abolished since there isn't really a good system to replace it with.

[Kirby101]

Writing for the New York Times, Steve Rattner, counseler to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, notes economic tailwinds benefit Trump in 2020.


Other models come to the same conclusion.



This isn't to say he's guaranteed to win reelection, or even favored to win. Rattner noted that Trump consistently underperformed models predicting how a typical Republican candidate would do.

But at the very least Trump winning again remains a significant possibility. Democrats can't take his defeat as a foregone conclusion. We may be stuck with him for a while.

Nate Silver says this is seriously flawed and these models are terrible at elections.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ial-elections/

[Mister Mets]

UFOs do not = Aliens. There is ZERO evidence for alien visitation. It's a giant leap with nothing to back it up.

It is interesting that there's an uptick in stories in the press. It could all just be that they determined that if they have the right tone (respected pilot saw something unusual; there may be a mundane explanation) they'll get clicks/ views without hurting their straight news brand, but it's a noteworthy trend.

1. You say "some on the left call for an end to capitalism." Care to name any of those people?

2. Large chunks of the population should be kept out of the conversation if they're completely ignorant on the given topic. I, for one, don't want to hear one more person on television say, "I'm no scientist, but..." and then proceed to make some completely unscientific argument about climate change or abortion or whatever matter of science is being discussed.

1. https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what...tic-socialism/

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...end-capitalism

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ist-manifesto/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2007/04...-five-minutes/

I'll note that goal posts have shifted and part of it was my fault. Robotman was talking about politicians, and the last comments are a bit easier when I'm just asked about references to anyone on the left.

Granted, I can talk about specific officeholders. There are many more who sought office but didn't win.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4...s-irredeemable

https://www.thenation.com/article/kshama-sawant-drinks/

In the international context, there would be plenty more politicians who are left-wing but not capitalist. There was a network of political parties called the European Anti-Capitalist Left.

2. I agree in principle, although it's a problem in practice when determining who the gatekeepers should be. There are plenty of Republicans who would be eager to shut out anyone in gun control discussions unfamiliar with particular nuances (IE- what constitutes an assault rifle.)

[worstblogever]

May 25th, 2019


Pete Kelly

Welcome to the 755th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be taking a look at former Alaska State Senator Pete Kelly, who originally served for six years in the Alaska state legislature from 1994-2000 before taking twelve years off and returning to office in 2012. In that first tenure, Kelly’s most noteworthy legislative victory was to pass legislation to allow for wolves to be hunted by helicopter. Because nothing is more charming than trying to side-step federal wildlife protections for douchebag hunters with their own personal choppers looking to trophy hunt.

During Pete Kelly’s second term in office, though, he started to turn more heads, and not just because he advanced to be the President of the Alaska State Senate. Back in 2014, Alaska’s state legislators were debating an increase in cases of fetal alcohol syndrome being documented in newborns around the state, when Kelly threw his two cents in during the discussion on providing better access to birth control around the state, and instead submitted legislation that would use state funding to place pregnancy tests in vending machines in bars around the state. His colleagues were baffled, and became even more so when Kelly began to try and explain how that made sense:

”If you have people who are binge drinking or chronic drinkers, we’re hesitant to say ‘use birth control as your protection against fetal alcohol syndrome,’ because again, as I say, binge drinking is a problem…If you think you can take birth control and then binge drink and hope not to produce a [baby with fetal alcohol syndrome] you may be very wrong. Sometimes these things don’t work. Sometimes people forget, sometimes they administer birth control improperly and you might produce a fetal alcohol syndrome baby. That would be irresponsible of us until we get better information on that to say that well, maybe that is a good idea.”

… It would be irresponsible to place birth control because sometimes it doesn’t work…

Anyway, Kelly had other embarrassing things that weren’t his own mouth to also help make him face a tougher road to re-election… like the fact that his 30-year-old son was arrested for sexually assaulting a 13-year old, as well as exposing his genitals and masturbating in public to another child under 16. That earned the younger Kelly a six year prison sentence. Meanwhile, Pete Kelly and the ministry he founded, Humble Raven Ministries, would rather protect families from the dread threat of same sex couples getting married…

But then during his debate against his opponent, Democrat Scott Kawasaki, Kelly also denied the science proving the threat of Climate Change, which in Alaska, where they literally are watching the glaciers melt, was enough to topple Pete Kelly fom office, as he lost by 179 votes.

We hope that he does not get a third chance at reaching office.

 

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Child Dies, Several Schoolgirls Injured In Knife Attack At Japan Bus Stop

A man brandishing a knife stabbed at least 18 people in Kawasaki City on Tuesday morning. One child and one adult were killed, officials said. A sad and horrible story. I'm sure some unhinged gun nut probably commented that if Japan allowed people to have guns, he would've been stopped.

**********

Trump HUD Official: ‘I Honestly Don’t Care’ If I’m Breaking Federal Law

Lynne Patton said she may have violated the Hatch Act, then called anyone mad about it a “liberal snowflake.” Can you imagine the howls of outrages from right wingers if someone in Barack Obama's administration had said something THAT damn stupid? And this bitch will get away with it because of cowardly Republicans in Congress looking the other way.

**********

Congressman Likens His Own Behavior In Marines To That Of War Crimes Suspect

Rep. Duncan Hunter attempted to downplay charges filed against Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, saying he did “one bad thing that I’m guilty of too.” There is NO downplaying what scum like Hunter and Gallagher had done.

**********

Fox News Host Pete Hegseth Gushes About Trump: ‘This Guy’s Got The Thickest Skin’

The “Fox & Friends” host said Trump’s political rivals, about whom he constantly tweets, aren’t getting to him at all, actually. My response to that nonsense: BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

**********

Service Members Pictured Wearing Donald Trump-Themed Patches During USS Wasp Speech

The morale patches bore a likeness of the president alongside the slogan “Make Aircrew Great Again.” Silence from the GOP. Now if those patches had Barack Obama's likeness on them, those same Republicans would be screaming bloody murder.

[worstblogever]

May 26th, 2019
On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Tom Goolsby, a former North Carolina State Senator and comb over enthusiast who in his time in office, supported massive cuts to education, a state constitutional ban on same sex marriage, voter ID laws that disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, voted for a law to prevent climatologists from North Carolina from being able to discuss climate change, was the sponsor of the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, and was the man who snuck an amendment onto a motorcycle safety bill to turn it into one of the most radical pieces of anti-abortion legislation in the country. When his legislative agenda began to create weekly protests at the state capitol, known as Moral Mondays, for being led by the Reverend William Barber, Goolsby took the very adult approach to take out an opinion editorial in the local paper to call them “Moron Mondays”, in which he lied about there being no members of the legislature among the group’s numbers. Goolsby lasted less than two terms in office, resigning in August 2014 shortly after being sued by the rest of the law firm where he worked for financial fraud, which makes him even harder to elect.


On this date in 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Mike Coffman, who is now serving in his fifth term in office in Washington after a lengthy tenure in Colorado state politics that strings all the way back to 1989. The main thing Coffman has had going for himself to not seem that crazy, is the fact that Colorado’s 6th District was previously held by Tom Tancredo, who was rabidly xenophobic and nuttier than a Payday bar.

Back in 2012, Mike Coffman was at a campaign fundraiser when he volunteered his opinion about the Birther conspiracy, saying, “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” Well, word of this disgusting moment leaked to the public, and Coffman was forced to apologize. Mind you, robotically repeating that apology to local news reporters in Colorado who chased him down for comment might not have been the best way to make it seem genuine.

He apparently doesn't like the negative publicity about it, since he was caught having his Congressional staff trying to edit the fact that it ever happened from his Wikipedia page, earning him top honors in a Buzzfeed article about members of Congress wasting taxpayer dollars to have paid staff scrub their Wiki pages. But in terms of policy, Mike Coffman isn't any less of an extremist. Say, for example, his repeated support for Congress trying to make fetal Personhood a thing, and make life start at conception. Coffman voted to do so as a state legislator in 2008, and again after hitting Washington, D.C. in 2010. In 2011, he also sponsored legislation that tried to redefine the legal definition of rape, specifying whether it was “forcible rape” or not.

As you might expect, Coffman's also is a climate change denier, believing scientists' research cannot be trusted, and there's financial pressure on the scientists to cut their funding unless they produce studies that say it DOES exist. And THAT is a decidedly different paranoid conspiracy theory, right there. But it's far from his only one. In October of 2012, Coffman told reporters he believed President Obama would engage in a last minute military engagement to cement his bid on winning the presidency over Mitt Romney (and spoiler alert, nothing of the sort happened). Believe it or not, in spite of Mike Coffman having a history of voting for conservative interests, Colorado's 6th Congressional District held it for four terms after the Tea Party Wave, even though it has a +1 Democratic lean the Cook Partisan Index. After two years filled with disastrous town hall appearances for Coffman where constituents lambasted him for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or how in the wake of the Parkland shooting, they demanded gun control… Mike Coffman got bounced from office in the 2018 Blue Wave by Jason Crow, who bested him by 11 points.

We now would like to wish him our most sincere “GOOD RIDDANCE” salute.

[worstblogever]

May 27th, 2019

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the current U.S. House Representative for Michigan’s’ 3rd District, Justin Amash, who believe it or not, both Democrats and Republicans agree, is one of the most unflinching ***holes in Washington, D.C. Amash is a disciple of the Ron Paul Libertarian school of Republican thought, and occasionally votes against GOP supported measures because in his mind, they are not conservative ENOUGH. He was actually branded a "Whacko Bird" along with Sen. Ted Cruz by Sen. John McCain, and has continued his rivalry with the former standard bearer of the GOP. He has had pundits on Sunday morning shows laugh in his face for saying things like the GOP would be doing the Obama administration a favor by delaying implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and has outright lied about even the basics of what that legislation does (he said pre-existing conditions were covered prior to its passage). He's into the libertarian ideal of smaller government so much that he is against all forms of hate crime legislation, voted against disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and even voted against the 2014 version of the Farm Bill, considered to be one of the biggest legislative "no brainers" Congress ever votes on. But his "hands off" approach to government sure doesn't apply to abortion, because Amash has stated he believes that abortion should be outlawed 3, yes THREE days after conception (when most women don't even know they're pregnant, and longer than some states' waiting periods for abortion).

Justin Amash remains an unpredictable, petulant bastard, but he does remain bluntly honest about that fact. Case in point, he's not pulling punches about the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached when asked about it by the media. The social media director for the Trump White House, Dan Scavino, responded by calling Amash "a great liability". Make no mistake, though, Rep. Amash is not someone who should be trusted. When he's not brown-nosing to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, he's also advocating that the entire Department of Education should be dismantled. Which would do wonders for America, by making them stupid enough to keep voting for a lunatic like Justin Amash.

And, looking to Amash’s voting record this term… he hasn’t gained much of a conscience:

• January 27th, 2019: Justin Amash voted against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attacking our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
• January 22nd, 2019: Amash cannot be arsed to bother to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Amash voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Justin Amash votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• April 4th, 2019: Justin Amash is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).

Justin Amash remains a sadist whose governs by his personal philosophy of “I got mine.” He’s also considering taking that ball and going home with it, as the GOP have no interests of pushing someone so determined to embrace libertarianism to the fore, and instead, might run for president in 2020 on the Libertarian ticket, a move that most experts think would eliminate Donald Trump’s chances of winning Michigan again. We’d be fine with that choice, as it would rid us of this boob in Congress, and put a dagger into the re-election hopes of the criminal-in-chief.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Niger Innis, a former Congressional candidate for Nevada's 3rd District who is a frequent quest on FOX News and the national spokesman of the one-time civil rights group CORE, that Niger's dad Roy Innis turned into a black nationalist group that bizarrely would support the re-election of Richard Nixon, and has aligned itself with Republican conservatives and big business for the past 40 years to speak on their behalf and explain why they're totally not racist, against all evidence to the contrary (selling out big for paychecks). Say for example, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Niger Innis claimed that CNN and MSNBC were racist for reporting Herman Cain's long track record of sexual harassment and portraying him as a "oversexed Mandingo". On behalf of energy comapnies at speaking engagments, Innis has claimed the "War on the Poor" is actually being led by environmentalists, and not industry, and has simultaneously attacked food stamps being issued to the needy because it's akin to "the scraps from Massa's table". Innis also defended the racist remarks of Cliven Bundy in 2014, and has declared all gun control measures racist in their motivation. After the deaths of several young African American men in recent years by police officers in highly publicized incidents often caught on video, downplayed a system rife with police brutality and instead said the real problem was "black on black crime". After only receiving 33% of the vote in the 2014 GOP Primary for the U.S. House seat he was running for, he immediately began crying foul due to election fraud, and demanded a complete audit of the election. We're going to go ahead and guess Niger Innis won't be winning office any time soon, even if he runs again.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Mike Pape, a candidate for the U.S. House seat for Kentucky's 1st Congressional District being vacated by the retiring Rep. Ed Whitfield in 2016. Pape's first campaign ad which showed three supposed Mexican illegal immigrants bumbling across the border, but stopping to talk, in English, about how they needed to do whatever they could to stop Mike Pape from winning office, because he'd help build a wall between Mexico and the United States, and make life too tough for them. Pape didnt' limit his xenophobia to Mexicans, though, as he not only embraced Trump's ideas for the border wall, but called for a halt to accepting Syrian refugees. Scratch that, he called to a halt completely from immigrants from "countries who sponsor terror", which we're pretty sure would only apply to Muslim countries and forget about Ireland's past. Pape's issue stances also include support for mandatory minimum sentencing for crimes and the death penalty while being staunchly "pro-life", his opposition to same-sex marriage, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and other conservative staples. The only thing that could ever be considered in any way moderate about him is that he acknowledges climate change is man-made, but he still didn't want any regulation to prevent it from getting worse). Pape ended up losing spectacularly in the primary for Kentucky's 1st District on May 17th, pulling down but 23% of the vote. He has not re-emerged since.

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Robert Bentley, who was forced to resign from office in disgrace when Bentley fired the top cop in Alabama, who dropped a dime to the media about Bentley cheating on his wife of 50 years on his way out the door, saying he was near Bentley once when he dropped his phone, and it had a sexually explicit text on it directed towards a Governor’s aide on it. Audio quickly surfaced of Gov. Bentley making sexual comments on the phone towards his mistress... and that recording was made by Mrs. Bentley, who confronted the governor about the affair in front of their adult children before filing for divorce. It's only a surprise that it took SO LONG for news of the affair to come out, after all, Bentley would answer the door to his hotel rooms while travelling in his boxers, expecting the aide to be on the other side, only to give random unfortunate souls and eyeful. It would not simply remain a family matter, because in an added twist, Bentley used government resources to carry out the affair and cover it up, which is grounds for impeachment, which opportunistic Republicans in Alabama were more than willing to do. The Alabama state Attorney General, Luther Strange, was in charge of the investigation into any wrongdoing during that time, but in a brazen bit of corruption, Bentley appointed him to be the next Senator from Alabama once Sen. Jeff Sessions was narrowly appointed to be the next U.S. Attorney General. Anyway, on April 9th, 2017, Bentley resigned in disgrace after taking a plea deal to accept punishment of only misdemeanors and refunding money to the state to avoid jail time. Bentley's actual time as governor was filled with several embarrassing moments, such as the time he gave a speech on MLK Day in 2011, always a great opportunity for Alabama Governors to distance themselves from the shameful past it had during the era of George Wallace. Well, for whatever reason, Bentley used the speech to downplay racial division, but chose to try to start religious divisions by saying, "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother." On immigration? Well, in September of 2011, Bentley signed HB 56 one of the more draconian anti-immigration bills in the country into law, sparking a Justice Department review... and only after a Mercedes-Benz executive got arrested under that piece of legislation did Bentley and Alabama Republicans scramble back to the drawing board to amend it to prevent it from infringing upon immigrants who weren't... y'know... not white. Bentley was staunchly anti-abortion signing harsh anti-choice legislation that aimed at closing the majority of, if not all of the abortion clinics in Alabama. Gov. Bentley was also part of the GOP's efforts to disenfranchise voters with stricter Voter ID requirements, and even moved to close DMV offices where new IDs could be acquired... predominantly in parts of Alabama where the population leans... y'know, the not-white parts of the state. Bentley’s legacy is tainted, and his career is over.

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Georgia State Senator Michael E. Williams, who was elected to his first term in office back in 2014. After being the first Republican politician in Georgia to endorse uber-racist presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 elections, in the 2018 elections, Williams has opted to not run for a second term in the Georgia State Senate, instead opting to aim much higher early in his career, thinking he has a crack at becoming the next Governor of Georgia. There are already several signs as to why that was a mortifying thought for the people of Georgia prior to the GOP Primary for that race. Williams’ voting record is hardly encouraging, what with votes for “religious freedom” bills to allow discrimination towards LGBTQ citizens, a bill to allow adoption agencies to reject potential adoptees for “religious reasons” like their sexual orientation, his vote for a bill to legalize the concealed carry of firearms on university campuses, and of course, his vote for a bill to make English the official language of the state of Georgia, an idea that the Supreme Court has acknowledged as unconstitutional as far back as 1999.

No, our bigger concern is the four times Michael Williams has turned up on our radar during his campaign for governor. The first time he distinguished himself as being a concern was in June of 2017, when he appeared at an anti-Sharia Law rally being held in the name of paranoid Islamophobia by the anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, where he was more than willing to pose with the Georgia Security Force 3% Militia, who just so happen to be a hate group with dual interests, intersecting as not just rabid anti-Islamic nuts who infamously protested a mosque being built in Newton County, and also were not long prior holding a in defense of Confederate monuments. They’re a nice intersection of hate, and Williams was more than happy to pose with them for a photo where they were flashing white supremacist signs. It was only after the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media took note of their friendly little meeting that Williams’ spokesman gave the meager defense that he thought the militant racists were just “pro-gun supporters”.

So Williams went to an Anti-Islam rally and hung out with Neo-Confederates… but it’s not like he’s staunchly defending Confederate monuments himself or anyth- oh, whoops, he has, on live television, such as in August of 2017 when he was outraged at the thought of monuments being defaced, blaming it on Antifa, and falling all over himself in outrage that anyone would want to blast the face off of Stone Mountain Georgia. As you might expect, a guy who was comfortable chilling out with a militia group packing assault rifles might be, Williams also has quite the hard-on for guns, himself. Enough so that only a few weeks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, that was carried out by way of using bump stocks to make the guns used fully automatic, that Michael Williams announced that he would be raffling off bump stocks at one of his campaign rallies. And it was only three months ago that Williams went on CNN to defend his criticisms of Delta Airlines, after it decided to end a discount partnership with the NRA following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Williams began outright lying around this time to say that Delta was still clearly acting on partisan lines because it offered discounts to employees of Planned Parenthood. On air, anchor Brianna Keilar called him out for making an untrue statement, and he doubled down, defending his lie because he and other GOP State Senators in Georgia “looked it up on Google” and then spent a couple days arguing with Keilar on Twitter, claiming that he’d defended his statement. Williams was trying to drum up support by touting his idea to solve our immigration crisis with a “deportation bus” that would catch, per the painted on sign on its windows, “murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors, and other criminals”. Yes, because this bigot also can’t spell. And doesn’t understand that buses are quite large, slow, and would be easy for any suspected illegal immigrants to evade, but “YEEHAW, he’s gonna catch ‘em all like they’re the Pokey-mon.” The end result of the ad was… Williams got banned from Youtube for violating their terms of service because he was sharing super racist views.

Michael Williams ended up finishing fourth on the GOP Primary in his quest to become the next Governor of Georgia. But it was what happened AFTER the election that we found far more satisfying… it seems that Williams fell victim to a break-in at his own campaign offices, and then filed a fraudulent insurance claim that estimated the value of the computers stolen at almost thirty times their actual worth. For the moment, he’s pleading not guilty… but we feel like even being indicted is probably enough to put a halt to his political career going forward.