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

[worstblogever]

I'm realizing you not only get to profile the person who claimed that but ALSO the person caught on tape discussing it.

I pity your liver, man, I truly do.

Exactly. Even before this, Luna was a bit of a loose cannon, and you'd have to be to get the Trump/Gaetz endorsement.

What Braddock did is obviously criminal. Her reaction, though, accusing EVERYONE for political gain and making it public like this could make prosecuting the case more difficult.

The important thing on this is that people don't victim-blame her for having this threat made against her, but hope that she resists the urge to campaign on it to aid prosecutors to hold Braddock accountable.

[Robotman]

What shocker. McConnell has vowed to block any voting rights legislation.

[Tendrin]

What shocker. McConnell has vowed to block any voting rights legislation.

Stunned! Stunned, I say!

[worstblogever]

What shocker. McConnell has vowed to block any voting rights legislation.

Said Manchin's new version of the bill, that has concessions from HR 1, has a "rotten core".

Word is, Manchin having dirt kicked on him by Mitch publicly is making him reconsider filibuster reform, and going it with just 50 votes.

[Tami]

DOJ warns officials in Missouri that the state can’t ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.

Justice Dept.: Missouri governor can't void federal gun laws

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is warning Missouri officials that the state can’t ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill last week that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.

In a letter sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice officials said the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause outweighs the measure that Gov. Mike Parson signed into law Saturday. The new rules penalize local police departments if their officers enforce federal gun laws.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said the law threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities, they said in the letter, noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.

“The public safety of the people of the United States and citizens of Missouri is paramount,” Boynton wrote in the letter.

President Joe Biden has made gun control laws a priority of his administration, and the House has passed two bills requiring background checks on firearms sales and an expanded review for gun purchases, though they face a tough road in the Senate. But states, including Missouri, have increasingly worked to loosen gun laws, including abandoning requirements that people get training and pass background checks to carry concealed handguns.

Missouri’s law would subject law enforcement agencies with officers who knowingly enforce any federal laws to a fine of about $50,000 per violating officer.

[Robotman]

Florida Republican Threatened to Call in Hit Squad to Make Rival ‘Disappear’

The outlet said William Braddock made repeated threats against the life of Anna Paulina Luna in a 30-minute conversation with a fellow conservative activist who recorded the call. “I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock allegedly said. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a fucking speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Said Manchin's new version of the bill, that has concessions from HR 1, has a "rotten core".

Word is, Manchin having dirt kicked on him by Mitch publicly is making him reconsider filibuster reform, and going it with just 50 votes.

I'll believe that when it actually happens and not before. I trust Manchin about as far as I can throw the Washington Monument.

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The Hypocrisy Of Honoring Juneteenth While Condemning Critical Race Theory
Banning critical race theory from classrooms whitewashes racism’s role in U.S. history and, ironically, America’s newest federal holiday.

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At Long Last, Donald Trump Finally Admits: ‘We Didn’t Win’

But he did add ominously: “Let’s see what happens on that.” Newsflash, Donnie: Nothing's gonna change.

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Texas Governor Signs Bill To Allow Permit-Free Gun Carrying

People age 21 and up will no longer have to obtain a license, complete training or undergo a background check to carry a handgun in public. Cars kill more people than guns, but you still need a license to drive. I'm glad I don't live in Texas, that state is dangerous af.

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GOP Voters Believe Trump’s Lie That Arizona’s Sham Audit Could Overturn His Election Loss

A new poll finds that half of Republican voters think Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud could put him back in the White House this year. The rampant stupidity of Qpublican voters is staggering!

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Texas Rep. — Trump’s Former Doctor — Demands Biden Take Cognitive Test

Republican Ronny Jackson thinks the president should follow in Trump’s footsteps to “document and demonstrate sound mental abilities.” This is laughable on more levels than I can describe.

[Gray Lensman]

I'll believe that when it actually happens and not before. I trust Manchin about as far as I can throw the Washington Monument.

Actually, Manchin is pretty trustworthy, in that you know how he'll react, and that his words and actions seem to match up. You and I might not like what those are, but he seems pretty consistent and straightforward. Unlike Mitch, who will make a show of something, then change his stance the moment it becomes inconvenient to his overall goals.

I'd call Manchin naive, probably out of touch (but not with W. Virginia) , but I wouldn't call him untrustworthy. As frustrating as he can be, he doesn't meet the criteria.

[CaptainEurope]

It was odd that she claimed all 3 opponents she faces were in on it.

Well.

The GOP is a terrorist organization.

[Gray Lensman]

Well.

The GOP is a terrorist organization.

And one which only tolerates a single point of view.

[Tendrin]

Actually, Manchin is pretty trustworthy, in that you know how he'll react, and that his words and actions seem to match up. You and I might not like what those are, but he seems pretty consistent and straightforward. Unlike Mitch, who will make a show of something, then change his stance the moment it becomes inconvenient to his overall goals.

I'd call Manchin naive, probably out of touch (but not with W. Virginia) , but I wouldn't call him untrustworthy. As frustrating as he can be, he doesn't meet the criteria.

I don't think you get to where he is by being naive. Manchin's cynicism cuts both ways, however, unfortunately.

[Gray Lensman]

I don't think you get to where he is by being naive. Manchin's cynicism cuts both ways, however, unfortunately.

I can understand that, but I think one can be cynical in one area and naive in another. Manchin seems to honestly believe that bipartisanship is possible, or at least he did. McQuisling's latest, especially with the directed vitriol, seems to have shaken Manchin out of his fantasies. The question is will his campaign donors be able to push him back in?

[worstblogever]

Actually, Manchin is pretty trustworthy, in that you know how he'll react, and that his words and actions seem to match up. You and I might not like what those are, but he seems pretty consistent and straightforward. Unlike Mitch, who will make a show of something, then change his stance the moment it becomes inconvenient to his overall goals.

I'd call Manchin naive, probably out of touch (but not with W. Virginia) , but I wouldn't call him untrustworthy. As frustrating as he can be, he doesn't meet the criteria.

I don't think you get to where he is by being naive. Manchin's cynicism cuts both ways, however, unfortunately.

I can understand that, but I think one can be cynical in one area and naive in another. Manchin seems to honestly believe that bipartisanship is possible, or at least he did. McQuisling's latest, especially with the directed vitriol, seems to have shaken Manchin out of his fantasies. The question is will his campaign donors be able to push him back in?

Having Mitch McConnell publicly and repeatedly clown him and making a show of it over the course of months isn't going to help. It's painting him into the corner of supporting the reform, to where he can say, "I personally did everything I could to make concessions, and every time he threw it in my face while I was trying to pass a law that 3/4 of the country wants passed. Truly, working within the Senate with Mitch McConnell is untenable."

Which, already should be obvious, but maybe not to people in West Virginia, who still haven't grokked onto the fact that Trump is and always was a con man.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled of of the former candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, who became a right wing cult hero by, y’know, being accused of war crimes and arrested and put on trial for murdering two detained Iraqi citizens and displaying their corpses with a banner that said, “No better friend, no worse enemy” while serving in Operation: Iraqi Freedom. After a military trial where even several soldiers in his unit testified against him, media pundits like Michael Savage and U.S. House Rep. Walter Jones fought to have him cleared of all charges, and he was. But the GOP were not content to have a potential war criminal cleared of all charges and thought wanted him as a member for U.S. Congress, and ran Pantano as a Tea Party candidate in 2010, and he appeared along the campaign trail promising to fight against a “victory mosque” at 9-11’s Ground Zero, and making appearances with Pamela Geller, and other members of anti-Islamic hate groups. He currently has been appointed as the Assistant Secretary to the North Carolina Veteran’s Affairs Commission by Gov. Pat McCrory, but stepped down in May of 2016.

In 2016, 2017, and 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the current U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District, Bill Shuster, who is a political legacy. Bill was first elected to serve Pennsylvania’s 9th way back in the 2000 elections after his father, fourteen term Congressman Bud Shuster, retired. Bud, a Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, was forced into retirement by multiple ethics investigations that he was accepting gifts from lobbyists, and using a former aide turned lobbyist, Ann Eddard, to speak on his behalf, actually trying to hide in the backseat of Eddard’s car while 60 Minutes tried to get him to comment on the arrangement. Like father, like son, apparently. Because Bill Shuster has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior as the head of the House Transportation Committee, admitting in April of 2015 that he has been dating a lobbyist for Airlines for America. But before they announced it publicly, you see, they finalized Bill’s divorce from his wife of twenty years, and then signed documents to assure that his new squeeze wouldn’t lobby Bill directly (how romantic). Now, his gal pal would only lobby the entire rest of the committee that he runs and leave him be. See? Totally no influence there, right? Other than the fact that Shuster keeps hiring people from Airlines for America to positions in his office and to be staff directors for the Transportation Committee in a way that sounds more like arranged marriages on Game of Thrones than part of a democracy. Because we are now in an era where our Congressmen can LITERALLY be in bed with lobbyists. Bill Shuster is also a climate change denier, insisting that there’s still “debate” on the subject, in spite of 98% of scientists saying the data is conclusive. And in 2009, he posted his own evidence that it didn’t exist at all… the weather forecast for Copenhagen… in December. And there was snow. So obviously it can’t be getting hotter if a balmy place like Denmark was seeing snow! In 2013, he introduced legislation to make any new rules enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency first require Congressional approval because he felt the organization was “running rampant”. But perhaps the worst kind of denialism you’ll see from Bill Shuster is his efforts to petition his fellow members of Congress to not recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, where over a million Armenians were killed, saying, “the events of 1915…did not constitute genocide because over two million Ottoman Kurds, Arabs, and Muslims…also suffered in this conflict.” Shuster told his colleagues that adopting the resolution to recognize something that clearly happened would be “cataclysmic”, and fearing what our Mid-East ally Turkey might think if they were forced to acknowledge a dark chapter of their own history, a century later. As far as the rest of Shuster’s voting record goes, he was around to vote for the Iraq War Resolution, and in 2006, was a co-sponsor of a bill that attempted to create a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage as well as to support the "Abortion Pain Bill", which would create an unconstitutional ban on abortion at 20 weeks. Through the early part of the Obama administration, he was quite the obstructionist, voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, against the Hate Crimes Expansion, against Dodd-Bill Wall Street Reform, against stricter regulations on offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon spill, against the DREAM Act, against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and against the Zadroga Bill, to provide healthcare to the First Responders from 9/11, after many inhaled toxic dust and chemicals looking through the rubble for survivors after the tragedy. Since Republicans took control of the house, he voted for both attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, the great majority of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, voted against raising the Debt Ceiling limit (which would have collapsed the global economy, and led to the United States having its credit rating reduced for the first time in its history), and also voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown. Shuster voted against funding the Department of Homeland Security in 2015, and was a co-sponsor of the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, an attempt to ban Syrian refugees from being resettled in the United States. Rep. Shuster returned to Washington in 2017 to start his ninth term in office, and supported every Republican initiative in the new session, including flat-out lying about what a repeal of the Affordable Care Act would do to people with pre-existing conditions. He also added, at a later time, the brazenly false statement that Obamacare covered “24 million people fewer than it was supposed to, and the projected price tag doubled to $2 million”. Fact-checkers were all over him on this, and thankfully, and his constituents were highly suspicious of his claims. Not that those voters would get a chance to confront him about it, because Shuster dodged all of his town halls for two whole years. Bill Shuster saw the writing on the wall with the Blue Wave coming and decided to hit the “EJECT” button and abandon Congress, failing in his promise to pass a new nationwide infrastructure bill before he left office.

One this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Jeff Hoover, the former Republican Speaker of the House in the Kentucky House of Representatives, who served as a state legislator for District 83 from 1997-2018. Hoover’s two decades were marked by feverish support of a hyper-conservative agenda of anti-choice, pro-gun legislation he supported and that he’d even vote against minimum wage increases during our country’s greatest period of income inequality in a century. While we could analyze all that, it’s much more relevant to say that Jeff Hoover submitted his resignation in January of 2018 after it was revealed he didn’t just sexually harass women at the state capitol, but he would settle lawsuits from those incidents with taxpayer dollars. On a nearly daily basis, the 21 year-old staffer was sexually assaulted nearly daily by the 58-year-old Hoover, sometimes under the table in meetings at the capitol. And his obsession with her was terrifying, as reports were that he allegedly would scream at her for just talking to other men. Hoover had the nerve to finish out his final term so he could collect a government pension that he would have lost if he resigned from office entirely. He was an incredible scumbag, and now is out of office.

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing C. Wesley Morgan, who owns four liquor stores, and who was one-term member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 2017-2018. In 2020, he aimed much higher, as he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, hoping people hated Mitch McConnell enough that he might upset him in the GOP Primary for the seat. Morgan managed to get caught up in controversy in 2017, in his first term in office, when it was discovered he bought a house boat thirteen years earlier in 2004 and paid not a dime of property taxes on it. Other than that, he supported a ban on abortion at only 11 weeks, and a bill that would have classified any attack on a first responder as a “hate crime”, because he was apparently into “Blue Lives Matter”. Now, while in theory, anyone trying to beat Mitch McConnell, we want to root for instinctively, even if they are a lesser tax cheat and have a voting record like Morgan’s. But then again, repeatedly on social media, C. Wesley Morgan came out in defense of Qanon conspiracy theorists, both on Twitter, and Facebook, including posting the hashtag, “WWG1WGA”, and repeatedly shared links to Qanon videos. As he is now completely out of office and has the ire of Mitch McConnell, his career seems over, so we will set aside his profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 994-50, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Julie Dupre

Welcome to what is the 994th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Julie Dupre, a 2020 candidate for District 49 of the Minnesota State Senate, and yet another Republican who ran for office that year while touting the Qanon conspiracy theory. Specifically, when asked by the local press about her support for QAnon, Dupre referred to it as “a really great information source” and “one of many that I use.” When you’re referring to “Q” like it’s a search engine, that’s distinctly a problem.

For some perspective, Julie Dupre was such a conspiratorial nutjob that Pat Garofalo, who we’ve long profiled here at CSGOPOTD, actually called on the Minnesota GOP to rescind their endorsement of her. When that guy thinks you’re too extreme for office, that is definitely saying something.

Julie Dupre lost in the general election, getting just 37% of the vote, about 15,000 votes off the pace of what she needed. We hope she gets the psychological help she clearly needs.