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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://www.***************.com/buff...rlson-fox-news

I'm not sure who to believe, guys. Either we believe multiple videos of Tucker Carlson himself on the internet pushing great replacement stories about how dems want to replace white voters and has many other videos of him pushing white nationalism, just without the sieg heil at the end, and the many media analysis like the aforementioned NYT's article which found him to have done it over four hundred times, or ClassicalComics. It's a tough choice.

As usual, conservatives stoke the fire, and then, when people ineviably die as a result, attempt to hide behind a veil of plausible deniability that anyone not in bed with them already can see is horse ****.

https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supre...RoC-4YQAvD_BwE

I dunno, guys. Should I believe ClassicalComics, or the right-wing extremists thanking him for bringing Great Replacement Theory to a nightly, incrreasingly radicalized audience?

Golly gee whillickers! That's a tough choice, Tendrin!

[The Cool Thatguy]

What exactly is the endgame for these "Great Replacement Theory" idiots? Do they think the employers of the people they kill will offer them the jobs that are now open? Or do they have a pool of unemployed white guys ready to take their place? Have they applied for jobs that were given to minorities instead of them? I call shenanigans and bullshit on all of it.

They get to be martyrs to a (not at all) noble cause.

Conservatives would love to have the moral authority of MLK, after all. They just can't be bothered to suffer actual oppression

[Kevinroc]

Tucker Carlson says “violence and death” caused by white supremacists is the inevitable result of the “race politics” of the left

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-...vitable-result

Tucker Carlson not only promoted the white nationalist “great replacement” theory, but repeatedly called on his audience to take action

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-...acement-theory

We're all trying to find the guy who did this — Fox News struggled to shift coverage of Buffalo mass shooting away from the racist theory it frequently promoted

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-new...-mass-shooting

[worstblogever]

He doesn't. Nobody on the channel does.

Since you seem reality-challenged, here's something I hope is an uncomfortable check on that.

[babyblob]

Some of the GOP and their cult are in panic damage control. Because their and their "News" Network have been for a long time spouting racist theories and enabling racists, Proud Boys, Terrorists, and make a hero out of people like Kyle Rittenhouse.

Tucker has been for a very long time talking about the Great Replacement of the whites. To say other wise is either because they dont watch his show and are just defend the GOP talking points because the Damn Dems are never right. Or they hear him and others on the Network and are just ignoring because they agree with him and are too ashamed to admit it and dont want to admit to themselves they have blood on their hands.

My aunt watches Fox news 24 hours a day it seems. Either in her room or the Living room. I posted after the shooting they fell all over themsevles to talk about everything but the shooting. Going with the stand bys of Biden and inflation, Fake News and Biden being in Putin's pocket. They took a very "Oh this happened, we will find out why and get back to you." then pretty much forgot about. There were even a couple people who did the whole "We dont know what this is about. Law enforcement has to investigate and we cant say until they do." Even though a white man drove hours to gun down black people in cold blood after posting a racist paper full of Fox News talking points. Even after it was clear Fox ignored it.

It is sick that people just ignore the racist motive and yell about false flags and fake news.

The Mayor of Buffalo in an interview Sunday Morning said he thinks this is the tipping point and things are going to change. He has a Hell of a lot more faith then I do.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”published profiles about Mike Ritze, who we highlighted for his sponsorship of Oklahoma’s HB 1330 law, which allowed the presentation of religious monuments on state grounds. Now, while being enough of a theocrat to push for a law similar to ones that the Supreme Court has already overturned is often enough to earn a profile here, Ritze gets special consideration for purchasing a Ten Commandments monument to put up at the state capitol that had multiple spelling errors. The monument stood for a few months until a mentally ill man crashed into it, at the cost of several thousand dollars to Ritze, personally, to build yet another one. But the monument issue gets even more hilarious… Ritze’s wording in writing HB 1330 was vague enough that it left a loophole for ANY religion to put up a monument on state grounds, so a Satanic Temple decided to troll Oklahoma’s GOP Fundamentalists by preparing a statue of Baphomet tempting children to stand on government property, as well. In the end, the Oklahoma Supreme Court made him take down his third attempt at a Ten Commandments ruling after a legal challenge, at a cost of another five thousand dollars to Ritze. Rather than quit while he was ahead, I started lying and claiming all historical landmarks with any religious significance might be taken down (that’s false), and began trying to find ways to impeach members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court for recognizing that there should be a whole separation of church and state. Anyway, outside of this very specific comedy of errors that Ritze is responsible for, we also have one heck of a tacky voting record to single him out on, where he has been a proponent of Birther legislation, preventing the threat of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy theory, bans on Sharia Law, trying to nullify the Affordable Care Act, Trap Laws to attempt to shut down all the state’s abortion clinics, as well as stricter Voter ID laws to combat the statistically non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud at the cost of disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters. Mike Ritze’s newest obsession, as of March 2017, is the threat of “Blue Zones”. He warned citizens in an opinion editorial in the local papers that the group Blue Zones, LLC, was trying to restrict the lifestyle choices of Oklahomans, and to “stay vigilant”. Anyone who actually goes to the “Blue Zones” website, however, will only learn that the group tries to promote the benefits of spending quality time with family and friends, exercising, getting enough sleep, eating a more plant-based diet (fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes), or avoiding smoking. So whatever paranoid fears Ritze might have, the worst that might come of it is “Blue Zones, LLC” might convince a state legislature to invest money into healthier eating via school lunches or community orchards or marketplaces for selling organic vegetables, or maybe a ban on smoking in some public places. Clearly, global domination territory… STAY VIGILANT! In May of 2017 Mike Ritze came up with an interesting budget plan to save money... harass 82,000 kids who speak Spanish and hand them over to ICE for interrogation! First off, YES, we have to educate non-citizens when they're children, if you ever paid attention to federal law, you muskrat-toupeed twit. But apparently Ritze still thinks there's "savings" into profiling people and just deporting them for not speaking English, rather than, y'know, provide them with an education. One where they might actually be taught English, in theory. Since we last caught up with Ritze, he has left his mark on two of the bigger pieces of legislation in Oklahoma. You may have heard nationally about how Oklahoma teachers went on strike due to low salaries, and even worse funding towards the state’s education budget. Well, while most of the Republicans caved and voted to increase funding to that education budget, Mike Ritze doesn’t care if teachers are underpaid, and if kids are being taught with textbooks that are decades old and crumbling apart. He also co-sponsored a particularly insane piece of legislation to expand the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws so that people could more easily shoot and kill another person, this time if they suspect they’re somehow a threat to another member of their church. Mike Ritze, and his hairpiece were up for re-election in 2018. He was defeated in the GOP Primary that year, being bounced from office after only getting 42% of the vote.

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Melissa Ackison, 2020 candidate for District 26 of the Ohio State Senate and a 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate who finished third in the GOP Primary that year. Ackison was originally campaigning on trying to be the “true conservative” primary matchups by posing with the largest guns she could get her hands on, and threatening to sue any Republican who called her out on being a less than ideal candidate for office. She’s “out there” enough that in February of 2020, the Trump campaign actually contacted her to demand she stop promoting her own campaign for office by posting photos of a White House visit she took to meet Donald Trump as if he endorsed her. She responded publicly, on Twitter, by telling the Trump campaign, “Piss off, punk.” Now, let’s pause for a moment. How crazy does someone have to be to get asked to take down something that looks like a Trump endorsement? There’s white nationalists and Qanon conspiracy theorists running for office across the country doing the same thing, and there’s zero pushback from the Trump campaign. Is she that bad? Well, as the Covid-19 outbreak began, and several governors around the country issued “stay at home” orders to keep the populace from getting infected, well, there were obviously some loons on the far right who threw temper tantrums about the fact that they couldn’t get a haircut or dine in at their local Fuddrucker’s. Melissa Ackison surveyed the situation and thought it was the opportunity to exploit that she was waiting for, at first just calling for Gov. Mike DeWine’s impeachment, but within a month, Ackison became a bit of a viral sensation (and not in a good way), when she was photographed with a small group of lockdown protestors who turned up at DeWine’s office to bang on the doors impotently, ending up doing little more than looking like they were auditioning for another Walking Dead spinoff. She received only 35% of the vote in the GOP Primary in the face to get into the Ohio State Senate against Bill Reineke. She concluded her Election Night concession speech by making a gay joke at Reineke’s expense, insulting the Chairman of the Ohio GOP, and telling her “Republican haters”, and we quote, “kiss my ass”.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Joanne Wright, a 2020 GOP candidate for California’s 34th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, looking to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Jimmy Gomez. She would be the longest of long-shot candidates, given the mere +34 Democratic lean that the district has. It didn’t help that she had her Twitter background set to an image of Donald Trump in front of a curtain being drawn back to reveal a giant “Q” symbol, because she’s another Qanon twit who ran for Congress as a Republican in 2020. And that’s not the only conspiracy theory she loves, spreading lies about how Covid-19 was actually unleashed by a bioweapons lab in China that was funded by Bill Gates, or furthering the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Joanne Wright finished fourth out of five candidates, getting only 7.7% of the vote in spite of being the only Republican on the ballot. We will set aside her profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1101-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Michael “Mickey” Gates

Welcome to what is the 1101st original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Michael “Mickey” Gates, a former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives who served District 22 of that body from 2015 through 2019. We can sum up the reason we’re profiling Gates rather easily… he was a flagrant tax scofflaw who stopped paying taxes before ever running for the state legislature, racking up a $260,000 tax debt before the feds blew the whistle. He had paid no taxes for at least six years, and had filed a tax return since 2003.

Did he resign in disgrace when the news broke? HELL NO. Mickey Gates stayed in office, ran for re-election, and Arkansas Republicans RE-ELECTED A BRAZEN TAX CHEAT to serve until October of 2019 before the rest of the state legislature voted to expel him.

During his time in office, this committed lawless douchebag also voted for anti-choice bills to ban abortion upon Roe v. Wade being overturned, voter suppression bills, and voted for mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients (always a failed conservative policy that doesn’t find significant drug use until judges overturn it as a violation of the 4th Amendment).

Gates entered a “no contest” plea to avoid jail time and most of the charges, being forced to pay an $80,000 restitution to cover his debts.

His political career is hopefully over.

[Panfoot]

The Mayor of Buffalo in an interview Sunday Morning said he thinks this is the tipping point and things are going to change. He has a Hell of a lot more faith then I do.

Agreed, Carlson and Fox will lay low on GRT stuff for maybe like 2 or 3 weeks at most(in the mean time, with pride month coming up, maybe ramp up the LGBT bigotry early), and then it will be business as usual. They've been doing this for years now and there loyal soldiers in hatred come back every time(as proven here).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Agreed, Carlson and Fox will lay low on GRT stuff for maybe like 2 or 3 weeks at most(in the mean time, with pride month coming up, maybe ramp up the LGBT bigotry early), and then it will be business as usual. They've been doing this for years now and there loyal soldiers in hatred come back every time(as proven here).

Yeah, that’s the way I’m seeing it too. Go hard on attacking the LGBTQ community, 24/7 if necessary to steer attention away from the Buffalo massacre and how Fucker and Faux News stirred the pot with GRT.

[Tendrin]

Yeah, that’s the way I’m seeing it too. Go hard on attacking the LGBTQ community, 24/7 if necessary to steer attention away from the Buffalo massacre and how Fucker and Faux News stirred the pot with GRT.

Yep. Expect a massive run at gay rights, especially trans people, and a duplication of the UK 'trans cult' rhetoric.

[Tami]

Yeah, that’s the way I’m seeing it too. Go hard on attacking the LGBTQ community, 24/7 if necessary to steer attention away from the Buffalo massacre and how Fucker and Faux News stirred the pot with GRT.

One of these days someone in the legal profession will find a way to launch a lawsuit against FN, resulting in them either paying a huge penalty and/or forcing TC to humiliate himself with retractions and apologies and/or fire TC as a liability.

[CSTowle]

Beware to not link this kind of event and mental illness…

Terrorists do such things and they are not ill… they believe they do the right thing…

For my part, whatever the motive of the killer, there’s no reason to have a gun if it’s no for sport or hunting…

I disagree. I would say it's important to point out the difference between a person being mentally ill and the concept of being "not guilty by reason of insanity". We all have biases and flaws, and many more of us than we'd probably be comfortable with hold views that don't jibe comfortably with reality.

Perhaps absorbed by family, community, religion, political affiliation, etc. or comforting or empowering ideas that are held by others despite lack of evidence or logic.

Not all of those are signs of mental illness, but once a certain threshold has been reached (thinking it's OK to take the lives of others short of self defense or other extremely rare and justifiable conditions, for example) it's worth considering and in the extreme it's even likely to be the case.

Labeling something as evil (especially inherently, unchangeably evil) may feel good from our own moral standing and allow us to more easily pass judgment and render punishment, but it's not real handy for identifying the problem and looking to solve it or prevent it from happening in the first place.

He doesn't. Nobody on the channel does. I disagree with Carlson on a lot of policy, particularly most of what he says related to matters foreign and fiscal. But to say that he pushes Great Replacement Theory or any kind of white nationalism is a boldfaced lie. There are real white identitarian lunatics who push it, and they're evil. But pretending that people who clearly aren't doing it are in fact doing it only elevates said evil actors.

I take claims like this to be a good thing. It means you know the ideas and people you support (even if for more noble reasons than the worst actors in your particular group) are flawed and you want to deny a connection or even that such a thing could be happening, and to try and paint it in a better light.

Because if he is pushing replacement theory, that the world is run by a powerful cabal of international financial interests (*cough* jews *cough) looking to marginalize, demoralize, and depopulate the white population by replacement or interbreeding with others, that makes him at best a wannabe Nazi. And hey, maybe you like listening to Tucker and you're not a Nazi. So by extension it can't be possible he is, right? A good instinct. It means you know it's wrong.

You saw the same thing with January 6th. It wasn't a big deal, but if it was it wasn't really Republicans but Antifa in disguise or paid agents of George Soros (*cough* jews *cough). Because if it was a big deal, trying to stop the certification of an election that was the latest example dating back to the founding of the country of the peaceful transfer of power by an armed mob, then that's not something you'd want to be associated with. Better to deny reality and blame it on other people. Or claim that it was misunderstood.

Again, good instinct. Wrong, but good to see you're pulling back from associating with it. It's a good first step. The next is recognizing it for what it is, and purging it from your party before they further marginalize themselves or take it so far that we come to a point of danger and more widespread violent behavior.

[Tendrin]

A really good article on the worrying trends emerging from Idaho and its embrace of republican and conservative extremism and white nationalism.

IDAHO — White nationalist Vincent James Foxx had a new video for his nearly 70,000 subscribers on ********, one of the few tech platforms that hasn’t banned him. On Feb. 16, he appeared wearing a baseball hat emblazoned with the state’s outline tilted on its side so that it resembled a pistol.

“We are going to take over this state,” Foxx declared. “We have a great large group of people and that group is growing. A true, actual right-wing takeover is happening right now in the state of Idaho. And there’s nothing that these people can do about it. So if you’re a legislator here, either get in line, or get out of the way.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/far-r...4db7282bd6?29e

[Reviresco]

One of these days someone in the legal profession will find a way to launch a lawsuit against FN, resulting in them either paying a huge penalty and/or forcing TC to humiliate himself with retractions and apologies and/or fire TC as a liability.

There's the Dominion and Smartmatic voting machine companies defamation lawsuit against Fox News and others. It's taking forever, but it is going to trial ... for 1.6 billion.

I think that's the only way to stop Fox and people like Hannity and Carlson. Sue them into oblivion. Of course, that isn't cheap.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisond...h=31d51ce120e2

[Dalak]

A really good article on the worrying trends emerging from Idaho and its embrace of republican and conservative extremism and white nationalism.


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/far-r...4db7282bd6?29e

And yet we've seen the denialism involved in ignoring this sort of thing, regardless of how much proof is shown.

I take claims like this to be a good thing. It means you know the ideas and people you support (even if for more noble reasons than the worst actors in your particular group) are flawed and you want to deny a connection or even that such a thing could be happening, and to try and paint it in a better light.

Because if he is pushing replacement theory, that the world is run by a powerful cabal of international financial interests (*cough* jews *cough) looking to marginalize, demoralize, and depopulate the white population by replacement or interbreeding with others, that makes him at best a wannabe Nazi. And hey, maybe you like listening to Tucker and you're not a Nazi. So by extension it can't be possible he is, right? A good instinct. It means you know it's wrong.

You saw the same thing with January 6th. It wasn't a big deal, but if it was it wasn't really Republicans but Antifa in disguise or paid agents of George Soros (*cough* jews *cough). Because if it was a big deal, trying to stop the certification of an election that was the latest example dating back to the founding of the country of the peaceful transfer of power by an armed mob, then that's not something you'd want to be associated with. Better to deny reality and blame it on other people. Or claim that it was misunderstood.

Again, good instinct. Wrong, but good to see you're pulling back from associating with it. It's a good first step. The next is recognizing it for what it is, and purging it from your party before they further marginalize themselves or take it so far that we come to a point of danger and more widespread violent behavior.

I disagree, it's sheer denialism. Like a toddler who's got chocolate and crumbs all over them denying they ate the cookies, so many of these people haven't seen consequences to their actions for years if ever and reflexively respond "Nuh Uh" when confronted with proof of what their boogeymen (CRT, GRT, etc) are responsible for and how they've personally helped spread the filth that has led to murder. Others are just lying because they know how dangerous this is and they WANT these people dead. Only very few are willfully blinding themselves as you say here as far as I can tell, but they do exist. This individual strikes me as not one of those few.