All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[williamtheday]

As we all know, when people do things that fit with DeSantis's far-right views, it's justified, but you go just slightly to the left of that scale, and then it becomes a problem.

I mean, those Cubans were how Trump won Florida last year, so it's no surprise he's siding with them, as well.

Republicans owe a lot to Fidel Castro.

[Kirby101]

Can I point out that a big part of Cuba's problems is our immoral embargo against the country.
It is there solely for getting votes from FL Cubans.

[Tami]

Sen. Joe Manchin, key Democratic holdout on federal voting protections, coming to Texas for fundraiser hosted by several GOP donors

WASHINGTON - West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — a key Democratic holdout over efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation — is expected to head to Texas on Friday for a fundraiser with a host committee that includes several wealthy Republican donors.

The fundraiser comes just a day after Manchin met with Texas House Democrats on Capitol Hill who are desperate for his support of the congressional efforts which could preempt the statewide GOP’s push to pass bills that would restrict voting access for Texans.

Manchin is also one of two Democratic senators, along with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have proven to be obstacles to moving voting rights legislation through the U.S. Senate. At the center of the impasse is their opposition to eliminating or changing the filibuster, which requires 60 senators to put a bill on the floor.

“We invite you to join us for a special evening supporting our friend, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin,” according to the invitation’s cover letter, which went on to call Manchin “a longtime friend since his days as Governor of West Virginia.”

The host committee includes titans of the Texas oil and gas industry — many of whom donate almost exclusively to Republicans. But there is a prominent Democrat included among the hosts: former Houston Mayor Bill White. White was the 2010 Democratic nominee for governor, and declined to comment on this story. All of the other hosts could not immediately be reached for comment.

[Tami]

Judge Rules DACA Is Unlawful and Suspends Applications

A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled unlawful a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults from deportation, throwing into question yet again the fate of immigrants known as Dreamers.

The judge, Andrew S. Hanen of the United States District Court in Houston, said President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, by executive order in 2012.

But the judge wrote that current program recipients would not be immediately affected, and that the federal government should not “take any immigration, deportation or criminal action” against them that it “would not otherwise take.”

The Department of Homeland Security may continue to accept new applications and renewals for the program known as DACA, the judge ruled, but it is temporarily prohibited from approving any of them. Immigrants currently enrolled in the program, most of whom were brought to the United States as children, will for now retain the ability to stay and work in the country, though those protections could evaporate if the government is unable to rectify a series of legal shortcomings.

Judge Hanen, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the creation of the program violated the Administrative Procedure Act, in part because comment from the general public was never sought. “D.H.S. failed to engage in the statutorily mandated process,” he wrote, “so DACA never gained status as a legally binding policy that could impose duties or obligations.”

The Biden administration is expected to appeal the ruling, and unless Congress steps in with a legislative remedy, the ultimate legality of DACA is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Saw this on Twitter, rather appropriate these days:

[worstblogever]

Saw this on Twitter, rather appropriate these days:

Speaking of, Arizona's dumbass GOP Governor, Doug Ducey, is currently arguing that public schools should not be requiring unvaccinated children to be forced into quarantine if they have a known Covid-19 exposure, and is claiming it's "against state law".

Well, he's wrong, as the schools his office are mailing are following federal and state law. The common sense approach the school is following has been public health policy going back to the earliest history of vaccinations in the country. But Doug?Your ignorance is going to get children killed, you supposedly "pro-life" twat-waffle.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on Sharron Angle, who really, really hates immigrants, running some of the most blatantly racist ad spots about them back in the 2010 election, the last time she ran for the seat, against Sen. Harry Reid. When confronted about her racism by Hispanic constituents, she used the defense that “they don’t look Hispanic to me, they look Asian”, which kind of made things worse. Angle also once tried arguing against rape exceptions in anti-abortion legislation because rape victims “need to make lemons from lemonade”, argues against water fluoridation because she believes the government deliberately poisons the water supply with lead, mercury, and arsenic (Flint, Michigan aside, “deliberately” a government deliberately doing it is insane), wanted to privatize Social Security, and falsely claimed unemployment benefits pay more than entry level jobs. She is also a climate change denier, shared her belief that the 9/11 hijackers came into the country through Canada (again, wrong), wants to eliminate the Department of Energy, Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency,said there should be no separation of church and state in the Constitution, while claiming there are towns in America that have been taken over by Sharia Law. Angle was in the GOP Primary for Harry Reid’s seat again, six years later, but she had already established herself to be the kind of kook that cost the Republicans a shot at winning a Senate majority back in the first Tea Party wave and lost to U.S. House Rep Joe Heck. She seems to be the only one unaware that her career is over.

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, whose past we delved deep into, all the way back to 1973 when he worked for a Baptist newspaper called “The Rapture Express” where he would write about the dread menaces of things like women not wearing bras, or wearing short skirts, or gays, or teenagers dancing! OH MY! Back in 1992, while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat, Huckabee suggested the novel idea of quarantining AIDS patients. In both 2007 and in 2011, he used his newfound media profile on Fox News and conservative talk radio to lament the pregnancies of Jamie Lynn Spears, and Natalie Portman, for happening out of wedlock, which is a slightly different reaction than the defense he put up for the media paying any attention to Bristol Palin being pregnant in 2008. Huckabee has also defended the Confederate flag, and then compares abortion to slavery (he surprise, he supports fetal “Personhood”). Huckabee also praises “historian” and exposed fraud David Barton, and his lies that the United States is a Christian nation that was never intended to have a separation of church and state, saying “every American should be forced at gunpoint to learn from him”. (Because that in no way would be a military indoctrination into a theocracy.) Huckabee not only defended the “legitimate rape” comments by Congressman Todd Akin, but claimed people were only attacking him “because he was a Christian”. He can simultaneously complain about Beyonce being exploited by “Jay-Z acting like her pimp”, or Miley Cyrus being too scandalous, while he instead goes about performing on bass guitar for Ted Nugent in a rendition of “Cat Scratch Fever”, a song about getting an STD (Nugent, incidentally, also admits to having sex with underage girls numerous times in his heyday). After tensions rose in the wake of the shocking police killings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castle, Mike Huckabee took it upon himself to respond to the outcry from the Black Lives Matter movement by calling for... the "Male Lives Matter" movement, because he just feels so attacked by all the lady folk. Huckabee, inspired by his Christian faith, advised people to not take in Syrian refugees "just because they're not living a very fancy life", but lied his ass off about a German family who were being deported they were Christians who home-schooled their children… when they weren’t even being deported, at all. Huckabee defended the idea of monitoring mosques, and chastising liberals for suggesting such an act would be a violation of the freedom of religion Muslims, trying to prove liberals were hypocrites about the premise because "they are waging war on Christmas". Huckabee responded to the shooter at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs by condemning him… and then adding a BUT to the condemnation, and pointing out that in his eyes, the people he killed working at the clinc were murderers, too. Huckabee has also called for the impeachment of President Obama for “acting like God”, freaked out over Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend on ESPN during the NFL draft, and threatened to leave the Republican Party should they ever stop fighting to overturn the ruling on same sex marriage. Incidentally, Huckabee has rabidly attacked the Supreme Court since their ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, saying the United States was now “worse than Sodam and Gomorrah”, and that HIS first amendment freedom of religion is being violated because gay people can get married. He’s enough of a hypocrite that he once called a proposed boycott of Chik-Fil-A by people who were upset that they support anti-LGBTQ causes “economic terrorism”, and then only a few years later, called for a boycott of Doritos for producing a rainbow-dyed product to promote LGBTQ awareness. Huckabee also creeped everyone right out when he gave his opinion on transgendered bathroom use and said he would have done it as a teen to “get into the ladies’ locker room”. Huckabee is enough of a “victimized Christian” that he complains that “the left won’t rest until there are no more churches” and after news broke that his longtime favorite family, the Duggars were revealed to have turned a blind eye to the fact that their son, Josh Duggar was molesting some of his sisters and their friends, Huckabee defended them. Mike Huckabee continues to occasionally drag his chicken-fried dumb ass onto Fox News to vomit out all sorts of folksy metaphors for why Republicans aren’t that racist or sexist (even when they clearly are doing so), while his creepy daughter has started lying her ass off as the Deputy Press Secretary for the Trump Administration, and his posts on Twitter grow all the more bigoted with each passing year, like his attempts to link the MS-13 gang to Nancy Pelosi.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Renee Unterman, who has served in the Georgia state legislature in its House of Representatives back in 1998, and moved up into the Georgia State Senate in 2002. She’s been highly conservative for almost two decades, but it was back in 2016 that she started to draw attention to herself for a bizarre determination to use her position as the head of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to unilaterally prevent hearings on solving the problem of getting funding going towards the state testing thousands of untested rape kits sitting in a back log, the victims who allowed them to be collected wondering if they would ever get tested, and their attackers ever face justice. Unterman’s bizarre defense for this was to claim there just WASN’T a backlog of rape kits under her watch, because if there us, the problem would have already been solved, “Johnny on the spot”. There was, obviously, bipartisan support to do this from both Democrats, and several Georgia Republicans in the State Senate. The bizarre choice of Unterman to do this earned her a name-drop on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in March of 2016. Thankfully, there is a happy ending to the story, as the sponsor of the bill, Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb, was aided by the Republican Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston, The whole legislative miracle of two parties working together to side-step an obstructionist misanthrope made it into a follow-up segment on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in March 2017... and Renee Unterman decided it would be a great idea to try and paint herself as the victim in this story, calling Sam Bee “vile”, and getting really salty about the fact that Holcomb and Ralston were asking each other, “What the f*** is wrong with Renee?” because POTTYMOUTHS. Which, foul language is a real problem that something should be done about, unlike untested rape kits, RIGHT, YOU GUYS? As we discovered upon further research, this isn’t the sonly time that Unterman has used her position to unilaterally block common sense legislation, as she also did so to block a medical marijuana bill back in 2014, as well. With great power, comes a great responsibility to do nothing with it, like Bizarro Spider-Man would say. The rest of Unterman’s voting record looks like you’d probably expect from someone who justifies all the s***ty things she does on being from “Red meat” country, including her co-sponsorship SB 396, one of the most bonkers gun laws in the past 20 years in our country (and that’s saying something), which would have allowed Georgia residents to even use deadly force to defend their property, in public, as long as the weapon used was legal. She also has voted to create stricter Voter ID measures aimed at disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia, voted for some of her nuttier colleagues’ tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ban on human microchip implantations (which of course weren’t actually even happening), voted for unconstitutional attempts at making drivers’ tests to be given in English only, voted for Georgia Republicans’ attempt at banning picketing outside of corporations (because that’s not a clear violation of the 1st Amendment right to assemble, whatsoever), voted for a 4th Amendment violating bill to institute drug testing on welfare recipients, voted for a “religious freedom” bill to try to allow religious officials the right to refuse services to same sex couples, and several anti-abortion measures throughout the years. Unterman, again made some headlines in Georgia in 2018 after she weighed in on the candidates on the GOP Primary for Governor of Georgia. After a fellow legislator, David Clark, endorsed Brian Kemp, and not the candidate she preferred, Casey Cagle, she got on Twitter to accuse Clark of casting “votes for sexual predators preying on young children being bought & sold for sex”. Several Georgia state legislators from both sides of the aisle not only corrected the record on “the human trafficking bill” that Unterman sponsored not actually doing much of anything to stave off the problem, but blasted her for holding such a petty grudge and pulling some hyperbolic rhetoric to attack a colleague. Unterman never apologized or deleted the post. In spite of how quickly she’s becoming infamous, Renee Unterman made the unnerving decision to think she was Congressional material, and opted to not run for re-election to the Georgia State Senate, instead choosing to make a run for the U.S. House of Representatives for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in 2020. She lost that primary, only getting 17.5% of the vote and is now out of office completely and as such, we will we also retire her profile to take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1004-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Shane Hazel

Welcome to what is the 1004th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Shane Hazel, who traditionally, has run as a Republican in races in Georgia like when he lost in the GOP Primary to Rob Woodall for U.S. House Rep. for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in 2018, but we’ll also note that when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2020, he ran as a Libertarian candidate (which whenever someone’s too crazy for even the modern GOP, they seem to try that route and things get even wackier). His ideas were as level-headed as repealing Obamacare (without any replacement), to completely abolish income tax, and defunding Planned Parenthood.

But our real head-turning moment with this guy is from his Facebook page, where he showed a photo of a ship full of Muslim refugees and after a friend wrote,"[I]Maybe recon can accidentally sink it!!![/I}" Hazel was not content with just “accidentally” murdering a boat full of people fleeing for their lives, responding, "The navy should overtly sink it and send a message." That’s only one of his Islamophobic, anti-Immigrant opinions, because Hazel shared memes claiming that the Muslim faith ”offers" rape, pedophilia, beheadings, burning people alive and slavery. He wrote: "Disgusting doesn't even begin to paint the picture of Islam.” When someone on his post called him out for hate speech, Hazel upped the ante, replying "more like fact spreading. Jesus didn't teach pedophilia. Conversely the prophet Muhammad does. There are sick people of every religion. The difference is that Islam glorifies the sickness. In yet another bigoted post he offered his opinion that a new US military dress code allowing beards and turbans was "BS," and advocated for airplanes to be filled with pigs, so that "all suicide bombers body parts left over from the blast will be feed [sic] to pigs… And we won't do this because we're afraid to offend radical Muslims?" Which… is definitely meant to be intolerant, but isn’t a really well thought out plan on… multiple levels. In spite of all those quotes, Shane Hazel refused to acknowledge being Islamophobic or anti-immigrant when confronted with his own words.

He’s currently podcasting, and referring to any politician who isn’t a Libertarian as part of a “Murder Cult”, which is very chill of him. We’re sure it will help him upset the establishment candidates during his attempted 2022 run to become the next Governor of Georgia.

Shane Hazel seems doomed to tilt at windmills… hopefully he ends up banned on social media platforms long before he reaches that point.

[Tendrin]

Didn't see this posted but it might have been.

Two California men have been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly plotting to attack the Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, part of what prosecutors say was a plan to inspire a “movement” among “patriots” following the 2020 election.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/d...-2020-election

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Didn't see this posted but it might have been.



https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/d...-2020-election

Looks like California was asterisked in you URL by CBR.

[Tami]

Biden’s nominees to lead ICE and the Border Patrol are a sharp departure from the Trump era.

WASHINGTON — Ed Gonzalez, the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, made ending a partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement one of his first decisions on the job because, he said, the program encouraged “illegal racial profiling.”

Chris Magnus, the police chief in Tucson, Ariz., has taken pride in his city “being welcoming to immigrants.” It is also home to one of the busiest sectors of the Border Patrol, an agency that is rarely praised for its hospitality.

They have been tapped to run the federal government’s immigration enforcement agencies, an abrupt shift from hard-line immigration chiefs in the Trump administration. If they are confirmed by the Senate — Sheriff Gonzalez at ICE and Chief Magnus at Customs and Border Protection — they would be responsible for delivering on President Biden’s promise to return a measure of compassion to the immigration system after the roundups, zero tolerance, wall-building and family separations of the last administration.

[Tami]

Pence wasn't evacuated from the Capitol by the Secret Service on January 6th because he feared that they might be “involved in a coup attempt” and that they would abduct him to prevent him from certifying the result.

[Mister Mets]

Pence wasn't evacuated from the Capitol by the Secret Service on January 6th because he feared that they might be “involved in a coup attempt” and that they would abduct him to prevent him from certifying the result.

His main concerns were that the sight of his twenty car motorcade leaving would serve to vindicate the rioters, and that if he were to leave the Capitol, it would delay the certification of the election.

https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pence-...t-book-1610326

[PwrdOn]

Can I point out that a big part of Cuba's problems is our immoral embargo against the country.
It is there solely for getting votes from FL Cubans.

All in the grand old American tradition of spreading freedom and democracy by making people suffer unnecessarily, and the more they suffer the more free they become. But just remember, we're still the good guys because, as bad as it gets here, at least we have the freedom to criticize our government, never mind that no one ever bothers to actually listen or do anything to fix the problem. I for one am sure glad I have the privilege of living in a country where everyone can just spew empty talk all day without ever accomplishing anything.

[babyblob]

Another day another crazy theory from my aunt.

Biden is using the military to fly illegal immigrants all over the country to different states. The goal is to flood all 50 states with a large Latino population so in 2024 they can all vote for Dems in the election. He is also sending the navy to stop and sink all refuges coming out of Cuba so they can not vote for the GOP. To date there have been over 2 million Illegals that have secretly transported across the country since Biden took office with memos saying he wants to transport over ten million in his term.

Her source is super legit. A guy on Twitter who claims to have proof and copies of the memos but is currently in hiding because Biden's Secret Service is trying to kill him.