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

[MacrossPlus]

[Gray Lensman]

Exactly how much of an issue is this?

Not a great deal, but Juneteenth protesters in San Francisco did topple the statue of Ulysses S. Grant along with the ones of Francis Scott Key and Junipero Serra. I haven't heard of it happening in other places, but the news cycle has had so much crazy stuff over the last couple of months it could have been buried.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

This talk of U.S.S Grant and all reminds me of the comical approach the Republican party (or a group supporting them) took in 2012 election. Where they were losing the black voters by such a huge demographic they ran this ad.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The difference is there are corrupt Democrats, but few stupid, crazy ones, not compared to the GOP. And the corruption doesn't reach the systemic Party level the GOP has.

Sure, the Dems have had a few scammers, cheats, dirtbags, perhaps even the occasional kiddie diddler, but to compare them to the Republican Party which took abominable behavior and kicked it up to levels unknown is like comparing a pickpocket to a mass shooter.

[JCAll]

Oh good, the Senate GOP finally unveiled their stimulus plan. Looks like it's a disaster, so this ought to be a "fun" week in the news cycle.

[worstblogever]

Here's another fun thing...

Around the same time that Dr. Anthony Fauci was invited to throw out the first pitch for the Washington Nationals on opening day of baseball, Trump claimed he would throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game on August 15th. Today, he claimed he would cancel that first appearance, and people wondered if it was because two Yankees players were cheered for kneeling during the national anthem in their own opener.

Plot twist: Trump didn't cancel. The Yankees never invited him.

He still is stuck in his original media whore role, and telling obvious lies to get publicity.

[Steel Inquisitor]

I mean, if you're a pharma company that is developing a vaccine that you intend to sell at an exorbitant price because there's a pandemic going on and people will be willing to pay almost anything, then I feel pretty comfortable saying that you deserve whatever is coming to you. The DoJ was pretty clear about this too, the companies were never claiming that the issue was that using stolen vaccine data might be dangerous or that other sensitive systems had been breached, their complaint was simply "CHINA STOLE OUR MONEY!"

I agree what they did was wrong, and should be reformed and lower prices so its affordable to the populace. That's a justification, not a good reason. Companies are motivated by money, they shouldn't be as motivated by this as they are right but what they're saying isn't false. They did create and own it, their profits that are lowered from that action. The answer isn't "let's steal it," it's to reform the system so every is able to get it fairly.

[worstblogever]

On this date back in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on Herman Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO who ran for president in 2012, taking his “AWWW… SHUCKY-DUCKY” attitude and tax plan of “NINE, NINE, NINE” onto the campaign trail to try to upset the big favorite for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney. Cain inexplicably DID become the front runner ahead of Romney for a few weeks, in spite of an old video circulating of him singing a parody of John Lennon’s “Imagine” about pizza, his frequency to give an inspirational quote that was actually the lyrics to the theme song of the Pokemon 2000 movie, his belief that there may be a country called “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”, and his promise to put up a 20 foot border wall… with an electrified fence… and a moat… with alligators in it. Cain also said African-Americans had been “brainwashed” for not having a conservative point of view, froze up when asked about intervention in Libya, asked how to say “Delicious” in “Cuban” (which isn’t a language), talked about how the country needed a “leader and not a reader”, promised not to sign any bill more than three pages in length, and created some of the most bizarre campaign ads, including one that closed with him smiling in super-slow motion, and another that ended with his own campaign manager taking a dramatic drag off of a cigarette. And, in spite of all that, he still had wide support as a presidential candidate… until women started to come forth in droves to report that Herman Cain had sexually harassed them while working for him. The day Cain announced he was leaving the presidential race, he pulled up in a bus, and then, passionately and from his heart… he read… the lyrics to “The Power of One” from Pokemon 2000. For two minutes straight. He was last seen being hospitalized for being a f***ing moron who tweeks prior, attended Donald Trump’s underpopulated MAGA rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma without a mask to prevent being infected with Covid-19.

It was on this date in 2015 that we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of Todd Courser, a fanatical zealot from the Michigan House of Representatives who entered politics because “Jesus wanted him to run to save the party”. He nearly won the role of being the Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party but settled instead for a set in the Michigan House of Representatives. He was 100% pro-life, which did include no exceptions for rape, incest, or risk to the mother’s life, he also believed in no exceptions to the 2nd Amendment and supported “state’s rights”. But Courser’s favorite conservative battle was over “the sanctity of marriage”, where he not only opposed gay marriage, but even gay adoption. His credibility on trying to protect marriage took an amazing hit, though, when he was about to be caught having an affair with fellow anti-gay legislator Cindy Gamrat. Courser’s solution to covering up the affair when it hit the news cycle? He tried talking one of his aides into helping him stage a false separate scandal that would “bury the lead”, that he was paying for sex with male prostitutes. Fortunately, that aide recorded their conversation, and realizing how insane Courser really was, he went to the media with the WHOLE story. Courser and Gamrat were both kicked out of the Michigan state legislature, and have gone on instead, into what else? A career as conservative AM talk radio hosts. Last we heard, Courser was trying to win election as a county prosecutor, but even that seems unlikely. We still say he looks like Marvel Comics villain, the Hulk nemesis known as The Leader, if he were green.

It was on this date in 2016 that we published our original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about David Jolly, a one term Congressman who was once a lobbyist for The Church of Scientology. That… is not a traditional Republican affiliation, by any stretch. But wouldn’t you know it, his district has a higher-than-normal amount of big Scientology donors who contributed to his campaign, and he had the benefit of running for office in a special election, then was completely unopposed in the primary, and still only faced a Libertarian challenger, Alex Sink, in the general election. While Jolly was flying in under the radar in spite of his peculiar background, it became harder to hide as he decided, for whatever reason, to further elevate his profile and threw his hat into the ring to try and replace Sen. Marco Rubio for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat in the 2016 election. While up until this point, Rep. Jolly had no problem with folks knowing about his ties to Scientology, suddenly, he was caught trying to scrub that fact from his Wikipedia page by the press (as well as his previous support for same sex marriage that would hurt his chances in the GOP Primary). During his brief time in Congress, Jolly co-sponsored and voted for HR 36, a 20-week abortion ban, voted with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, voted for the Islamophobic American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act meant to try and stop aiding Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war there, and generally whatever terrible legislation the GOP vomited forth along partisan lines. Jolly’s ambition at running for U.S. Senate blew up in his face when Marco Rubio broke a promise to not run for re-election to the Senate and coasted past him easily in the GOP Primary, so Jolly has been relegated to cable news these days, where he has been a moderate Republican voice who admits he is embarrassed at what his party has become with Donald Trump as their flag-bearer, and would likely have zero chance to get elected as a member of the GOP anywhere as he’s started coming out in support of the Affordable Care Act (after having voted to repeal it while in Congress).

It was on this date in 2017 that we published our original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about Jon Keyser, a former member of the Colorado House of Representatives, and a guy who was enough of a rising star in the Colorado GOP that he was the favorite to win their nomination in the 2016 Primary to challenge sitting Democratic U.S. Senator Michael Bennet. There was just one wee little problem with this huge upward leap that Keyser was trying to make… he got caught forging the signatures of people on petitions to have his name added to the ballot, in a completely stupid move. That’s not just a way to get disqualified from qualifying for office, but a crime, and it got Keyser 14 days in jail. It’s also the reason why Darryl Glenn became the nominee for U.S. Senate and let Michael Bennet coast to victory into what would have otherwise been a very tight race. Anyway, like we were saying, Jon Keyser only served a little more than a year in office in the Colorado State legislature, and in that time, there are a few other legislative priorities he had that gave us concern. Like his support of HB 1288, to try and allow racial profiling by police departments, his vote against HB 1265, which would have allowed transgendered individuals to change their listed gender from their birth certificate, but most troubling on his record on LGBT rights was his vote against HB 1175, which would have created a ban on the barbaric practice of gay conversion therapy being performed on minors. After his disastrous forgery scandal, Jon Keyser moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work as a corporate lawyer for Harley-Davidson Motorcycles.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published our original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, Scott Perry, who was first elected to office back in 2014 after serving six years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. While there wasn’t really anything that Congressman Perry did to turn up on CSGOPOTD’s radar in his freshman term in Washington, D.C., in his second term in office, he has been decidedly more idiotic in the public eye.

Let’s start with his town hall from March of 2017, where when he tried arguing against EPA standards trying to stop pollution because “God pollutes, too”. No, we’re serious:

”When I was in the state house, we had a thing called the Chesapeake Bay strategy, which everybody in this room if you live in this district has to abide by. There was no law. There was no statute. This came out of the EPA, forced on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and left some violators out. And by the way, some violators, if you believe in, if you are spiritual and you believe in God, one of the violators was God because the forests were providing a certain amount of nitrates and phosphates to the Chesapeake Bay.”

Pollution is part of God’s design, you see, so we shouldn’t do anything about it. By this logic, we also shouldn’t treat preventable diseases, but hey, let’s not give ol’ Scott anything else to use to argue against the Affordable Care Act.

Heh. No, actually, Perry’s arguments on healthcare are even dumber, and more selfish than that. In May of 2017, while the debate over the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a far inferior healthcare plan, the AHCA were underway, Scott Perry argued why maternity care should not be included in health insurance coverage. His reason? He was too old to have kids, and therefore, he sure as hell wasn’t paying for it:

“I don’t want maternity care. I have two children, and we’re not having anymore. I don’t want to pay for maternity care.”

An Indivisible activist pointed out that people who don’t have children or whose children are older still have to pay property taxes, which fund schools, adding that there’s a “social contract” in American society for public goods.

“Without a doubt,” Perry replied. “But there’s also personal responsibility. Some people never want to start a family. ... Some people don’t want to own a Cadillac. But should we want to make everybody pay for a Cadillac?”

Babies aren’t Cadillacs, you simpleton, and comparing the two is nonsense.

Anyway, over the past year, Scott Perry has begun spiraling into flat-out conspiracy theory nonsense, instead of just your typical conservative ideologue like most members of the House Freedom Caucus. In October 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Maria devastating Puerto Rico, he went on CNN to yell at anchor Chris Cuomo and call the reports of a massive death toll and citizens struggling to recover “fake news”. (It’s not fake, almost 5,000 people died as a result of the storm, and almost a year later, the power grid had not been fully repaired.)

By January of 2018, Rep. Perry was making guest appearances with Tucker Carlson on Fox News to try to re-write history… the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock wasn’t a mentally ill white guy with a gun fetish gone out of control… the entire Las Vegas shooting, per Perry, was a terror attack orchestrated by ISIS. There is zero evidence outside of Scott Perry’s mouth-hole to indicate that such a statement is true, and he should be removed from his position on the Homeland Security Committee for spreading such a paranoid conspiracy theory, in our humble opinion.

[worstblogever]

With a new district map for Pennsylvania without a gerrymander set up to grant him automatic victory, Perry barely hung onto office, winning with only 51% of the vote. If you weren’t getting the feeling that he’s terrible yet, let’s take a look at his voting record:

• January 22nd, 2019: Perry 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. Perry voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history. And he definitely was enjoying it, as he trivialized government workers not getting paid as not a problem because “their pay gets caught up” when they’re over. The concept of anyone living paycheck to paycheck is a mystery to him.
• February 28th, 2019: Scott Perry votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Perry votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Scott Perry 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).
• June 4th, 2019: Perry votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Scott Perry votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 23rd, 2019: Perry is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Perry is one of 71 Republicans who votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Perry ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Perry votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We’ll see if Scott Perry can hold onto his seat in Congress in 2020, but with voter turnout expected to be even higher and favor Democrats perhaps even more than 2018… he has a November matchup against Eugene DePasquale that might not go so well for him. After all, when Perry first was elected in 2012 to Pennsylvania’s 10th District, it was gerrymandered to be far more conservative than the mere +6 Republican lean it holds now. He barely held on in 2018, when he only won 51% of the vote… and the country seems to have only trended away from Republican philosophy in polls. The fact that at his last town hall, he admitted there is no line Donald Trump would cross that would lead him to condemn him… in the same meeting where he said he doesn’t like seeing presidents embrace dictators and complaining about former President Obama but neglecting to mention Donald Trump’s relationships with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

In other words, it's looking like a pretty good chance that Team Blue can snag PA-10 here in a little over three months’ time.

[shooshoomanjoe]

The difference is there are corrupt Democrats, but few stupid, crazy ones, not compared to the GOP. And the corruption doesn't reach the systemic Party level the GOP has.

Probably because the 'party of family values' don't care how corrupt GOP politicians are.

[Gray Lensman]

Probably because the 'party of family values' don't care how corrupt GOP politicians are.

Sadly it's because that phrase can now be interpreted to mean "only the Republican family has any value."

[Kirby101]

Think about this, the leading GOP for 2024 is Tom Cotton, a man who thinks the military should be used against American citizens and that slavery was a necessary evil.

Think Trump is bad? President Tom Cotton would be even more terrifying

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Think about this, the leading GOP for 2024 is Tom Cotton, a man who thinks the military should be used against American citizens and that slavery was a necessary evil.

Think Trump is bad? President Tom Cotton would be even more terrifying

Well, ****! I thought Fucker Carlson was the leader in the GOP clubhouse for 2024. Can't say I'm surprised though, I've said the Republicans would want another right wing madman in the Oval Office to follow in Trump's footsteps because the insanity for the last four years with tax cuts, judge stacking, racism, fascism, unchecked criminality, xenophobia, subservience to foreign strongmen and all around chaos was just that good for them, and Cotton looks to be the frontrunner they're looking for.

[Gray Lensman]

Well, ****! I thought Fucker Carlson was the leader in the GOP clubhouse for 2024. Can't say I'm surprised though, I've said the Republicans would want another right wing madman in the Oval Office to follow in Trump's footsteps because the insanity for the last four years with tax cuts, judge stacking, racism, fascism, unchecked criminality, xenophobia, subservience to foreign strongmen and all around chaos was just that good for them, and Cotton looks to be the frontrunner they're looking for.

Carlson isn't as strong for da billionairze as Cotton, so there will be a difference in who the donors might back.