All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[worstblogever]

It was on this day in both 2015, as well as 2016, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Rob Maness, a failed candidate for U.S. Senate from Louisiana in 2014 and for Governor of Louisiana in 2015 who drew a fair share of notoriety for airing a political ad where he showed his worthiness for being a senator by honest-to-goodness wrestling a live alligator. And during the 2014 primary, Maness challenged Senator Mary Landrieu by claiming that she would still support slavery if the issue was voted upon, while declaring in another speech that racism and prejudice in America were over and that the nation had become “color blind”. It was puzzling to hear Maness argue against the Affordable Care Act, as the crux of his argument was that “healthcare is not a right because it has to be taken from another human being and given to you”, which makes no sense whatsoever. Adding into his bizarre candidacy, Maness also decried the government for issuing farm subsidies, even though he himself had been collecting them for years. It seems unlikely Maness will ever win election if he doesn’t set his sights lower than the U.S. Senate.

It was on this date in 2017 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Florida State Senator Alan Hays, who served six years after reaching office in the 2010 Tea Party Wave. In his six years in office, Hays developed a reputation for submitting absolutely bonkers bills, including but not limited to one he spewed out in July of 2014 that insisted conservative filmmaker (and convicted felon) Dinesh D'Souza's "America" should be required viewing for all high school students, the time he tried to nullify the Affordable Care Act, or the fact that he once passed out fliers in the Florida State legislature decrying Islam as "a threat to the United States" and that during his efforts to try and get Florida to pass an unnecessary ban on Sharia Law, that he compared his measure to being like a "vaccination against a disease". Which shows that not only is he Islamophobic, but he doesn't quite understand how vaccines work. After court-ordered re-drawing of the Florida state legislature's electoral map, Alan Hays didn't think he could be re-elected to his seat in the State Senate, and instead ran to become the man who would oversee elections in Lake County, Florida. Because Florida Republicans have such a good track record of not stealing elections, right? And it's not like Hays has ever stated his own paranoid opinion that a lot of Hispanics in Florida vote illegally. Oh wait, he did in 2011.



On this date in 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published its first profile of Justin Humphrey, a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from District 19 who just reached office for the first time in 2016 with 52% of the vote, and almost immediately popped up on our radar as an anti-abortion fanatic. This is not only because he is one of 19 sponsors of a bill, HR 1004, proposed in the Oklahoma state legislature that would direct every public official in Oklahoma to exercise their authority to stop murder of unborn children by abortion, because wow does that fly in the face of the Roe v. Wade ruling and contain inflammatory language… but it’s not even the most extreme statement Justin Humphrey has made on the issue. It's still no small feat to stand out among anti-abortion loons in Oklahoma. Honestly, there were 18 other co-sponsors of the bill we just mentioned. What makes Justin Humphrey special enough to warrant our attention?

Well, it might be that he volunteered his opinion that “men should have a say” because pregnant women are “hosts” once they’ve been “irresponsible” enough to have sex and get pregnant:

“I believe one of the breakdowns in our society is that we have excluded the man out of all of these types of decisions. I understand that they feel like that is their body. I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant. So that’s where I’m at. I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”

Now, if you are a sane person, you just read that and are trying to process if it sounds more like something out of “The Handmaid’s Tale” or Ridley Scott’s “Alien” saga. But that’s the mental state of being of Humphrey, who’s saying out loud what you might suspect a lot of anti-abortion Republicans think like.

But days after making that statement, Humphrey unflinchingly sponsored legislation, HB 1441, that would require a woman to get the father’s permission before seeking an abortion, which neglects that a paternity test can’t confirm who a baby’s father is during a pregnancy without risking a miscarriage or developmental defects to the fetus. So really, any random guy could stake claim to being the “father” and stop an abortion. Also, the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in 1992 that passed in Pennsylvania’s state legislature, so the legal precedent was this would be overturned as unconstitutional almost immediately. Of course, Humphrey claimed, without proof, to be on the receiving end of threats after all this utter dickery during his first six weeks on the job.

While we were hoping that with only 52% was all he managed in 2016, and prior to that election, Democrats held the seat from District 19 for over a decade, that maybe Humphrey would be a “one and done” legislator, we regret to report that he managed to be re-elected with 68% of the vote in 2018. The only other news we have to report is that this rejected villain from A Handmaid’s Tale broke his hip shortly after his re-election, and while he was laid up in bed, had over $40,000 worth of cattle stolen from him.


We don’t know where Humphrey will be getting the raw materials to support all the bulls*** he seems to bring forth in the legislature without them helping.