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

[CaptainEurope]

FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say



So, if Trump really did have classified documents on Nuclear weapons.....wouldn't one prominent conclusion be that he was planning on using them to gain favor with a foreign country, like, say, Russia?

In Trump's defense, he also may have needed to hand them over to Putin because of the K-ompromat (word is censored here?) not to enrich himself.

[Tendrin]

With Trump, the answer is usually just the dumbest one rather than anything else.

[CaptainEurope]

With Trump, the answer is usually just the dumbest one rather than anything else.

I dunno. We have seen some examples of actual evil planning, though I am sure other people helped him with those: vilify early voting and voting by mail during a pandemic, tell your followers the pandemic is not real, then declare victory when the in-person votes come in. That one took some thinking.

[Tendrin]

I dunno. We have seen some examples of actual evil planning, though I am sure other people helped him with those: vilify early voting and voting by mail during a pandemic, tell your followers the pandemic is not real, then declare victory when the in-person votes come in. That one took some thinking.

Not saying there's no cunning, but Trump's Razor is a thing. 'the stupidest possible scenario to fit the facts is usually the right one'.

[CaptainEurope]

The revelation of the nuclear weapons docs makes me wonder if at some point, more of the GOP will realize that it is too risky to come to Trump's defense.

[worstblogever]

Not saying there's no cunning, but Trump's Razor is a thing. 'the stupidest possible scenario to fit the facts is usually the right one'.

Which is similar to the theme that "the only thing that saved us from how evil this f***er is seems to be his sheer incompetence".

His name is Ricky Walter Shiffer. He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

A stochastic terrorist, in both instances.

The revelation of the nuclear weapons docs makes me wonder if at some point, more of the GOP will realize that it is too risky to come to Trump's defense.

They defended him after ALL the other stuff, up to and including a coup attempt.

They've sided with him instead of the FBI, who had a subpoena ignored and got a search warrant from a judge because Trump's lawyers showed them he had the classified intelligence.

The Republican Party are f***ing lemmings for this s***stain, and if they didn't have a jumping off point from 2015 through now, they ain't gonna. They're gonna go ride or die, because they were choosing "death" with his refusal to wear masks during a pandemic.

Book it.

[CaptainEurope]

New Politico/Morning Consult poll shows Trump with a HUGE lead for the GOP primaries. With 56% of Republicans wanting him, he is 38 points ahead of Desantis. Everybody else is in the single digits.

[worstblogever]

New Politico/Morning Consult poll shows Trump with a HUGE lead for the GOP primaries. With 56% of Republicans wanting him, he is 38 points ahead of Desantis. Everybody else is in the single digits.

If he gets convicted of a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which he signed off on a new version of it himself... it states...

Federal statute 18 U.S. Code 2071 had long banned the removal, concealment or destruction of presidential records. It says “willfully and unlawfully” removing such records can result in a penalty of up to three years in prison and that the defendant “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

Mind you, I'm not going to be in any way shocked if Trump SUES and claims that this part of the law isn't constitutional, because there's nothing in the Constitution that says a president can't be president if they're a criminal. And the 6 GOP extremists who are going full Originalist on interpreting the Constitution would back him on it, and overturn that part of the law, because it's not in the original discussion of limitations on who can run for president.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Which is similar to the theme that "the only thing that saved us from how evil this f***er is seems to be his sheer incompetence".



A stochastic terrorist, in both instances.



They defended him after ALL the other stuff, up to and including a coup attempt.

They've sided with him instead of the FBI, who had a subpoena ignored and got a search warrant from a judge because Trump's lawyers showed them he had the classified intelligence.

The Republican Party are f***ing lemmings for this s***stain, and if they didn't have a jumping off point from 2015 through now, they ain't gonna. They're gonna go ride or die, because they were choosing "death" with his refusal to wear masks during a pandemic.

Book it.

No doubt about it. The GQP have come way too far to give up on Trump now. It's as I've said for the longest time, without the unwavering support of Trump's legion of lemmings, Qpublicans can't win an election for local dog catcher, so they're sticking with him to the bitter end. Bottom line: Trump is Thelma and the party's Louise, and they're riding off that cliff to the promised land together.

[hyped78]

If anything else is missing, they should start by examining Ivanka's grave. After all, why did they bury a casket when she was cremated?

That's a bit too crazy

[WestPhillyPunisher]

If he gets convicted of a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which he signed off on a new version of it himself... it states...



Mind you, I'm not going to be in any way shocked if Trump SUES and claims that this part of the law isn't constitutional, because there's nothing in the Constitution that says a president can't be president if they're a criminal. And the 6 GOP extremists who are going full Originalist on interpreting the Constitution would back him on it, and overturn that part of the law, because it's not in the original discussion of limitations on who can run for president.

The wild card in this scenario is SCOTUS. Would they interpret the Constitution as they see fit and ride to Trump’s rescue, or sink him like a stone?

[hyped78]

New Politico/Morning Consult poll shows Trump with a HUGE lead for the GOP primaries. With 56% of Republicans wanting him, he is 38 points ahead of Desantis. Everybody else is in the single digits.

At this point, DeSantis (and other hopefuls) has all the interest in the world that Trump isn't allowed to run in 2024

[worstblogever]

The wild card in this scenario is SCOTUS. Would they interpret the Constitution as they see fit and ride to Trump’s rescue, or sink him like a stone?

I think they would muse upon a bunch of legal writings, want to lean with an Originalist bent...

But if in prospective polling matchups vs. Biden or a generic Democrat in 2024, if DeSantis has better odds than Trump, they'll suddenly uphold the Presidential Records Act of 1978 as written.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

That's a bit too crazy

Is it really? Remember, we’re talking about Trump for whom NO scheme is too underhanded, too unscrupulous, or too insane for him to pull. Trump buried his ex-wife on his golf course as part of a goddamn tax dodge, what do you think he WOULDN’T do?

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published our profile of former 2014 Illinois gubernatorial candidate Susan Atanus, the former candidate for U.S. Congress to represent Illinois’ 9th District who believes that God created things like tornadoes and autism to punish us for abortions and tolerance of gays. Oh, and if we don’t stop same-sex marriage, there’s going to be an AIDS epidemic that will weaken our military. She was insane enough that the Illinois GOP scrambled to get her off the ballot for a Congressional run even though she won the 2014 primary, and she fought tooth and nail to stay on and lose by over 30 points against Jan Schakowsky.

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Andy Holt, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who popped up in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, and back in July of 2015, bent over backwards to try to do a rewrite of history to defend the honor of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, aka the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (who even prior to leading the KKK, was accused of war crimes after the war for massacring African Americans as they attempted to surrender). Taking a look at Holt’s voting record, his affection for the Confederacy still carries over into at least his support of nullification measures, stricter Voter ID laws, and his support to keep Confederate landmarks intact with their original names. Holt also supported the Tennessee GOP’s attempt to pass the obviously unconstitutional law to declare the Bible the state book, and has voted for measures to try and get Bible studies taught in schools. Our discussion still went farther, though, in our research, we also noted that Holt also referred to the footage recorded by undercover police officers trying to bust a sex trafficking ring as “tape and rape”, which is decidedly large lack of tact. Holt, as we have noticed that he is becoming more and more of a fan of guns, if that were at all possible. While there’s nothing stopping any candidate for office from having one of those controversial giveaways of an AR-15 at one of their political rallies, as he now has done, but he’s also looking to offer free gun permits to attendees whenever possible. Man, next thing you know, Andy Holt’s going to have his own loyal army of supporters in Tennessee armed to the teeth. Is there any cause to be concerned as to why a guy who has praised the founder of the KKK and likes voting for the kinds of nullification bills that started the Civil War would do something like that? Well, not for nothing, but while Ammon Bundy and his militia cronies decided to occupy the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, Andy Holt’s name popped up in the media, as he posted on Twitter an offer to send them support on January 4th, 2016. So we’re seeing that he now might be building his own militia, after previously allying himself with a group of domestic terrorists with vacuous plans to have an insurrection against the federal government. This is exactly the sort of behavior you don’t want to see from an elected official… right? It’s not like he’s calling on people to ignore the government or anything… oh. Oh wait. He did that too. Yes, Andy Holt recorded a video of himself burning up traffic citations he had received, and encouraged others to do the same.” Holt also has accrued a number of speeding tickets in double digits, that he doesn’t want to pay the fines on. Ten of those traffic-cam tickets are in one town alone. And it wouldn’t be a conflict of interests if he got the law overturned so he didn’t have to pay the fines, right? And, Andy Holt took up the standard, level-headed crusade of trying to better censor Tennessee lottery commercials, apparently unhappy with the theme that people might get lucky if they play, and there’s no hope so quit giving that to the poor. And, when one of those lottos was Christmas-themed, Holt literally invoked the, “quit ruining Jesus’ birthday” argument. (We’re not joking.) So it should also come as no surprise that as much of the country responded to events in Charlottesville by making the decision to push ahead and remove Confederate monuments. And Holt, unable to just accept that the city of Memphis decided to remove statues to men he holds in such regard for having fought for their right to keep slaves, needed himself a scalp to even out the imaginary racist scoreboard. He settled for voting to pull $250,000 from the budget for Memphis’ bicentennial celebration, and was one of the most vocal proponents of the bill. You might think that Andy Holt is out on the fringe, but through most of 2018, he was considering a run for U.S. Senate to challenge Bob Corker. Once Corker retired, though, all the sharks in the GOP smelled the blood in the water, and a bigger fish named Marsha Blackburn came in and scared Holt off. He returned to the realm of controversy almost immediately, attacking fellow Republican Jay Bush for, quite effectively, “not liking Donald Trump enough”, and harassing his colleague on Twitter by posting bizarre photos of him surrounded by hot dogs and cats, with a set of horns made of hot dogs. Because that’s normal to do that to anyone, especially people in your own party. Which, of course, means he’s infinitely s***tier to his Democratic colleagues, as exhibited back in April of 2019 when during a debate about legalizing online gambling (he seriously hates gambling with the passion of a thousand suns), Holt began comparing gambling addiction to… what else… SLAVERY. And the person he was lecturing across the aisle was, of course, African American. But, we have outstanding news… on March 18th, 2020, Andy Holt announced he would not be running for re-election to the Tennessee state legislature to “spend time with his family”. Whatever scandal that was about to drop that forced him to resign instead and use that as his cover story… we don’t know what it is, but we’re just relieved that he will no longer be in office.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Mark Pitrone, a retired carpenter and 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio’s 14th Congressional Distric who was hoping to unseat four-term Republican Congressman Dave Joyce for his seat in the House. While Pitrone branded himself as a “Tea Party Republican”, that’s about six to eight years late in branding, and some noted his conservative bona fides were sketchy given he ran as a Democratic primary challenger to former Congressman Zack Space back in 2008. So how did Mark Pitrone try to appeal to Republican voters given his political back history? Easy. He started getting into sharing Qanon posts on Twitter. And not just your standard sharing of the hashtags… Pitrone began JAQing off and asking if JFK Jr. had faked his death and was secretly the man behind “Q”. Mark Pitrone lost in the GOP Primary for this seat, getting just 17% of the vote. As he seems unlikley to ever win office, we will set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1128-55, since this was established in July 2014.