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

[Jack Dracula]

So, the orange idiot was in my city for a rally today. He got the name wrong.
How this dumbass could be the Republican front-runner defies explanation.

[numberthirty]

To put it plainly...

If you are setting up a situation where the guy is in a far worse position to be be able to hit the needed number?

You played a role in him failing.

Not a pivotal role, mind you. That said, you did play a role.

[aja_christopher]

I haven't said that Mike Johnson is a moderate.

I haven't even said that he's not far-right.

Yet this "far-right" election denier is the individual Republicans have chosen to represent them as their speaker.

Rather than arguing hypotheticals said reality should be addressed -- "left" and "right" are subjective issues but Republican bigotry and fascism is a known problem.

Regardless, the graph makes it quite clear that Republicans are the party who have "moved" -- to the point where Trump, Abbott and DeSantis are their leaders.

And they back overturning legal elections to take power from the voters to give it to those leaders.

I know people like to blame Dems for everything.

But how in the Hell can people really put any blame on them for Emmer not being elected Speaker when he didnt even have the support in his own party to bring to a vote.

How is that in anyway the fault of the Dems?

Somewhat of a moot point in that McCarthy was not deserving of the position and deserved to be removed for his openly deceptive behavior and dishonesty.

They are trying to make Democrats "complicit" in Republican failure but the reality is that Republicans wouldn't be in this position if they were honest.

Better to have Johnson there as the true representative of the Republican party (homophobia, election denial, etc) and to let people vote accordingly.

As has been shown on this forum many take little issue with bigotry within their party -- as this point it is up to voters to show them the errors of their ways.

Notable that both Obama and Biden are Christian yet neither sees the need to legislate that women have to carry a rapist's baby or that LGBT citizens can't marry.

Many Republicans use their religion for personal and political gain and as an excuse for persecution and bigotry rather than doing as Jesus taught.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So, the orange idiot was in my city for a rally today. He got the name wrong.
How this dumbass could be the Republican front-runner defies explanation.

Because Trump hates the same people (minorities, immigrants, gays) his followers hate. I’ve said that time after time after time, and it remains true, his legions of deplorables live for hate, that’s why they support him, and why the GQP has to bow the knee and kiss his orange ass.

[JCAll]

So, the orange idiot was in my city for a rally today. He got the name wrong.
How this dumbass could be the Republican front-runner defies explanation.

He's the evilest bastard running. That's the only qualification the GOP needs.

[aja_christopher]

He's the evilest bastard running. That's the only qualification the GOP needs.

[Mister Mets]

I know people like to blame Dems for everything.

But how in the Hell can people really put any blame on them for Emmer not being elected Speaker when he didnt even have the support in his own party to bring to a vote.

How is that in anyway the fault of the Dems?

I don't blame Democrats for anything. I credit them for playing their hand well.

They helped Matt Gaetz get rid of McCarthy, and politically speaking, it is better for Democrats to have the branch of government controlled by Republicans led by a bible thumper who isn't as good a fundraiser as McCarthy.

Emmer had support within the party, but he couldn't reach a high threshold. There seem to be two irreconcilable views with the perspective that a chunk of congressional Republicans are unreliable lunatics and the perspective that a particular individual should be expected to have the support of over 97% (216 of 222) House Republicans.

In any way?

Simple.

They had enough possible "Yes..." votes that if you added them to possible Republican "Yes..." votes, the guy would be Speaker.

While it ain't an "All The Blame..." situation?

It's also not like anyone looking at the can reasonably say "They Don't Deserve ANY Blame For That..."

A subtext I'm picking up in some of the arguments on this is that a part of the Democratic party seems to want to go back to politics as usual, which contradicts implicit promises. They want to be able to do things like ratfuck (spend money promoting nutcases on the other side in primaries) without being called out on it (because it raises the questions of how seriously they take the problem if they're not making any concessions to gain support.)

[Tendrin]

A subtext I'm picking up in some of the arguments on this is that a part of the Democratic party seems to want to go back to politics as usual, which contradicts implicit promises. They want to be able to do things like ratfuck (spend money promoting nutcases on the other side in primaries) without being called out on it (because it raises the questions of how seriously they take the problem if they're not making any concessions to gain support.)

Your party votes for them, Mets, and sends them to congress. This isn't the fault of the dems for 'ratfucking'. It's the fault of people like you.

[godisawesome]

Your party votes for them, Mets, and sends them to congress. This isn't the fault of the dems for 'ratfucking'. It's the fault of people like you.

As long as “moderate” Republicans are willing to sacrifice patriotism, faith, and sanity for the sake of whatever economic goals they hold to by voting for monsters listing tax cuts somewhere below depositism, persecution of minorities, obvious corruption, and wannabe fascism rather than taking a “risk” and voting for Dems who, in most cases, are still going to be maddeningly slow in implementing any kind of risky social change - and who recent history has shown seem to consistently be better caretakers and stewards of the economy than their GOP counterparts in the way the GOP claims they should be (a harsh truth fiscal conservatives are in denial about, and that maddens actual progressives.)

Dems will continue to “ratfuck” as long as they know that the GOP continues to lack men and women of principles, in the hope that doing so will shock a few principled voters away from tacitly supporting cowards and monsters for the sake of some comforting dream for Reaganomics that died in the 90s..

[worstblogever]

Got a few days worth of profiles to get caught up on...



On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted its profiles of Virginia Foxx, the sitting U.S. House Representative for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, who has inspired the nickname from Capitol Hill staffers of “HIDE YER BISCUITS!” from her bizarre tendency to, even on a six figure salary, to wear large coats to buffets around Washington D.C. hosted by lobbyists, and stuff her pockets full of as much food as she can carry in them as if her salary does not provide her with enough cash to afford groceries, while maintaining the contradictory optics of trying to cut funding to the National School Lunch Program.

When Foxx was still a North Carolina State Senator, she proudly compared herself to legendary unapologetic segregationalist Jesse Helms, and upon arriving in Congress, became one of only 11 members of Congress to vote against Disaster Relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina, which is even more frustrating when you consider how often her home state gets hit with hurricanes. She referred to the AIG bank bailout by calling it a “tar baby” and then defended her remarks by saying she was unaware the term was a racial slur (but didn’t apologize).

Foxx is also a specialist at revising history to fit her own party’s policy stances, like how she tried claiming the death of Matthew Shepherd was not a hate crime, but just a robbery (and anyone who says otherwise is perpetuating a hoax)… or the time that she claimed Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act without much help from Democrats (when Democratic president LBJ passed it by getting bipartisan support from Northern Democrats and a contingent of Republicans)… or the time she claimed Jared Loughner, the shooter in the Tucson, AZ mass shootings was a “communist” and the “liberal of liberals”. Oh, and in 2016, Foxx gave a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, where she exhibit’s an unhealthy desire to ignore the separation of church and state, saying, “If people of faith are not involved in political life, then you’re leaving it to the Philistines. And I’m not willing to leave it to the Philistines.”

Virginia Foxx’s gerrymandered district allowed her to get re-elected to a seventh term in 2016 with 58% of the vote. Thus, she’s back in Congress, where she’s become infamous during the Trump administration not for any sort of achievement as a legislator, but because the old cross-eyed twit showed up to Trump’s executive order signings that f*** over the middle and lower class citizens of the country, practically giddy at the thought of their suffering.

When she has submitted legislation, it’s been utterly revolting towards anyone who isn’t loaded, like when she tried to pass a bill to allow corporations to collect genetic material from employees to look for medical conditions in their family history that would allow them to raise their insurance premiums based on the results. Seriously, what kind of f***ed up Gattaca plot point is that? And why is it that she’s still taken seriously when she’s trying to eliminate all federal education standards?

[worstblogever]

She spent most of the past term in Congress being, of course, an obstructionist, including attacking the “Build Back Better” bill by complaining that none of the infrastructure plans in it will go toward building useless barriers on the U.S./Mexico border.

Virginia Foxx was re-elected in 2022 with 63% of the vote, and has resumed having one of the most conservative voting records in Congress:

• December 18th, 2019: Foxx ignores her Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• December 10th, 2020: Foxx signs her name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 7th, 2021: Virginia Foxx votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Foxx votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 25th, 2021: Foxx votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Foxx votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Virginia Foxx votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Foxx votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because she feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Foxx votes 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).
• May 12th, 2021: Virginia Foxx files the resolution to remove Liz Cheney from Republican leadership for daring to hold Donald Trump accountable in any way for the Capitol attack, and admit that he lost the 2020 election.
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. Foxx votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Foxx is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• May 20th, 2021: Foxx is fined for refusing to go through metal detectors set up at the Capitol after the Jan. 6th attacks.
• November 5th, 2021: Virginia Foxx votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Foxx votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. Virginia Foxx would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: Virginia Foxx is one of 192 Republicans who votes against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Foxx votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Foxx votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
• July 15th, 2022: Virginia Foxx votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
• July 13th, 2022: Foxx votes against the Honoring Our PACT Act, to provide healthcare to veterans affected by toxic burn pits while serving in the War on Terror that leave them more susceptible to forms of cancer.
• July 19th, 2022: Rep. Foxx is one of 157 Republicans who vote against the “Respect for Marriage Act”, which would codify same sex marriage into law nationally.
• July 21st, 2022: Foxx is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.
• September 29th, 2022: Virginia Foxx is one of 49 Republicans who vote against HR 8888, the Food Security for All Veterans Act.
• December 6th, 2022: Foxx, embracing the GOP’s white nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiment votes against HR 7946, which was meant to honor the promise to grant citizenship to immigrants who served in the United States Armed Forces.
• December 21st, 2022: Virginia Foxx is one of 28 Republicans who votes against the Respect for Child Survivors Act, a bill created to aid the survivors of child abuse, which shows you how much the GOP truly care about stopping “groomers”.
• March 8th, 2023: Rep. Foxx is one of 26 Republicans who vote against a resolution condemning white supremacy and the “Great Replacement Theory” white nationalists promote.

At this point, we have to ask the people of North Carolina’s 5th District… WHY? Why do you vote for this woman? She has never shown a care for anyone other than the wealthiest people in the country. She doesn’t look out for your well being as much as her one lazy eye kind of falls on top of it every now and then. We understand that the Cook Partisan Voting Index gives North Carolina’s 5th District a +10 Republican lean, but we’re hoping maybe after redistricting, that number might come down a bit.

So would it be so much to hope that the folks in NC-5 might think of a bitter choice than a twisted old biddy cackling at reporters to “shut up” for pointing out the GOP just chose one of the architects of Donald Trump’s coup attempt Speaker of the House? Nobody in the working class can think that we’re talking about someone who has their best interests at heart when her name is uttered.

[Tendrin]

As long as “moderate” Republicans are willing to sacrifice patriotism, faith, and sanity for the sake of whatever economic goals they hold to by voting for monsters listing tax cuts somewhere below depositism, persecution of minorities, obvious corruption, and wannabe fascism rather than taking a “risk” and voting for Dems who, in most cases, are still going to be maddeningly slow in implementing any kind of risky social change - and who recent history has shown seem to consistently be better caretakers and stewards of the economy than their GOP counterparts in the way the GOP claims they should be (a harsh truth fiscal conservatives are in denial about, and that maddens actual progressives.)

Dems will continue to “ratfuck” as long as they know that the GOP continues to lack men and women of principles, in the hope that doing so will shock a few principled voters away from tacitly supporting cowards and monsters for the sake of some comforting dream for Reaganomics that died in the 90s..

I should also point out that Mets' post is another good example of Murc's law, where Republicans seemingly bear no responsibility for the candidates they're electing/running. What makes this funny is that the 'ratfucking' Mets is complaining about largely amounts to them saying 'hey, check this guy out! He's super conservative, even more conservative than this other guy -- way too extreme!" and then conservatives rushing to vote for the more extreme candidate that no one is forcing them to vote for.

It's almost like the *actual* problem is that this is what a lot of republican voters like.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who may or may not be a skeleton dipped in wax and given life. While still the CEO of a health insurance company that was caught illegally gouging the public on billing, Scott had to plead the Fifth Amendment a staggering 75 times to help himself avoid prosecution, as the company, HCA, was smacked with the largest fine in a fraud settlement case in United States history. His leadership in running Florida has been as equally questionable, with Scott cutting government funding to state run hospitals, education, and welfare whenever possible. He lost the state a mint’s worth of taxpayer money on a quest to drug test people on welfare that found statistically minimal drug use compared to the national average (go figure, poor people can’t afford drugs), and was eventually thrown out as an unconstitutional violation of the 4th Amendment by the courts. Gov. Scott has had ethics investigators breathing down his neck almost his entire tenure, as his friends and donors get lucrative government contracts, and that he failed to disclose his personal assets during campaign finance reports (he’s worth somewhere between $200 and $340 million). By December 2014, media investigations started to reveal that Scott’s decision to outsource prison medical care to Corizon Health for $1.2 billion had additional fees… the cost of over 660 malpractice lawsuits from shoddy care it provided Florida inmates that left as many as 30 people dying a month.

Two months later, in February 2015, Scott is handed three more lawsuits that accuse his administration of widespread corruption, including his previous failure to disclose his finances while running for office, and a refusal to obey transparency laws, particularly over the firing of the former executive director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Gerald Bailey, who Scott wanted to replace with party loyalists (when the FDLE is supposed to be non-partisan). From there, a series a lies and cover-ups started shaking out, including a time where Gov. Scott was claiming Bailey resigned (as if he wasn’t going to correct him). Scott and the state of Florida settle these lawsuits in August at a cost of $700,000 to taxpayers. He also managed to revamp the state’s unemployment system, and wouldn’t you know it, he botched the $77 million overhaul of that completely as well. And it was a deliberate sabotage, at that.

The only reason this Voldemort-with-rhinoplasty didn’t get impeached is because Florida election law makes it nigh-impossible to impeach or recall a governor, and the people are opting to just wait him out.

Rick Scott also is prone to tantrums, like when he refused to take the stage during the 2014 debates for Florida governor because his opponent, Charlie Crist, had a fan under his podium to blow cool air at his crotch (seriously) or the time Gov. Scott tried heading into a local Starbucks for some coffee, a woman spotted him, told him how choices he'd made had cut her Medicaid funding, and she shamed him for it, not taking his comeback of "creating jobs" before calling him an "***hole". Now, normally, FRED doesn't make much of hecklers politicians might get... but it's how you react to them that counts. And Rick Scott, no lie... released an attack ad against the woman, calling her “a terribly rude woman,” a “latte liberal” and someone who “clearly has a problem.” And perhaps most Mr. Burns-like of any of his actions was how Scott adopted a rescue dog that he named “Reagan” during his 2010 election to look like a real softie, and then reporters realized it wasn’t ever around and started to ask about it… only to finally have his staff admit that Scott had “gotten rid” of the dog because it “acted too crazy”, and that they, to this day, have no idea what fate befell the poor canine.

In 2018, Rick Scott was term-limited as Governor of Florida, and Donald Trump started pressuring Scott to run for U.S. Senate the middle of relief efforts after Hurricane Irma (that’s tacky, but that’s Trump). While most sane people should realize the last person you should take advice from is Donald Trump, Rick Scott figured he and the Florida GOP gerrymandered elections there enough to win statewide office twice already, so he made it official in April of that year.

Going into the final weeks of the campaign, though, the headlines in Florida are a constant reminder of how corrupt and incompetent Rick Scott has been over the past 8 years, whether its gun control advocates who survived the Parkland shooting campaigning against his election to the Senate, Scott being rebuffed for trying to pack the Florida Supreme Court before leaving office, red tides and green slime algae manifesting as a testament to his negligence on the environment, (and yes, his decisions did pave the way for this ecological disaster) or watching him try to distance himself from Donald Trump especially after a lackluster response from FEMA and the Scott administration after Hurricane Michael.

And yet, this soulless corporate husk was elected to the U.S. Senate, and continued proving himself to be a coward time and time again. Whether it was his inability to grow enough of a backbone to stand against Donald Trump after his racist attacks on four Congresswomen, or even seeing Scott try and defend Trump after he admitted to a quid pro quo in the Ukraine whistleblower scandal.

And of course, Rick Scott voted against witnesses in the impeachment trial (thus making it a “trial”), and then voted to acquit Donald Trump so he could go back to not paying any attention to the looming threat of Covid-19. He’s far enough up Trump’s ass that he echoed concerns that counting all ballots cast by mail by Election Day would be unnecessary, and he actually drafted legislature to try and leave potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions uncounted.

But y’know, of course he wouldn’t understand the threat of Covid-19, as every Republican from Florida seems unable to. Rick Scott, who was the CEO of a health insurance company stupid to realize that when you test POSITIVE for it, that would be a bad thing. What he thinks would truly be terrible, though, is if people got any more Covid-19 stimulus money, because the uber-rich Sen. Scott thinks that economic relief might make Americans “lazy”. (How about, “f*** you”, Rick?)

[worstblogever]

For those unaware, this is a small list of Sen. Scott's handiwork from the past few years:

• January 31st, 2020: Rick Scott votes against witnesses being allowed in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
• February 5th, 2020: Sen. Scott votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance in the 2020 elections.
• February 25th, 2020: Scott votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.
• February 13th, 2021: Rick Scott votes to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, feeling that he deserves no punishment for inciting an attack on the Capitol and jeopardizing the lives of the legislative branch of our government.
• March 6th, 2021: Sen. Scott votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he can’t be bothered to care if people need financial assistance during a pandemic.
• September 30th, 2021: Scott votes for an amendment to a government funding bill that would target and eliminate government aid for Afghani refugees that just fled their country after the return of the Taliban.
• December 14th, 2021: Scott votes against raising the debt ceiling, jeopardizing the United States’ credit rating.
• January 25th, 2022: Rick Scott touts the Infrastructure Bill, which he voted against.
• February 28th, 2022: Sen. Scott votes against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have established a right to physicians to perform abortions to save their patients’ lives.
• March 30th, 2022: Scott votes against putting the extremely qualified nominee, Judge Kentanji Brown-Jackson, onto the Supreme Court.
• March 31st, 2022: Sen. Scott speaks before CPAC, and goes on a white nationalist rant where he says “The ‘Woke’ Left is the greatest threat to America today,” which kind of ignores the sorts of domestic terrorists who would storm the Capitol to overturn an election.
• July 27th, 2022: Rick Scott votes against the PACT Act, blocking additional funding towards veterans exposed to “burn pits” while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a vote conducted out of spite that Democrats passed the Act the prior day. Several Republicans are seening shaking hands and fist bumping to celebrate screwing over the vets, while releasing a series of photos of the Senate GOP Caucus filling USO boxes and claiming they “support the military”.
• August 16th, 2022: Sen. Scott makes a threat against the IRS, telling people not to apply to any of the new openings at the organization, because the GOP will hobble the power of the agency when they take back Congress.

Now, one of our more entertaining feuds that’s broken out among Republicans, and there are more divisions of late than there have been in some time… Mitch McConnell is apparently annoyed with Rick Scott for blowing through the entire budget of the National Republican Senatorial Committee this year under Scott’s leadership, blowing though hundreds of millions of dollars on some of the doofiest candidates to emerge from primaries. Who would have thought that a man who oversaw the biggest Medicare fraud in American history would be the same guy who would blow through hundred millions of dollars if someone was dumb enough to give him a blank check?

Since arriving in the Senate, Rick Scott had one major goal… to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, which sure isn’t a way to endear yourself to voters in Florida. He had a plan to do it so cruel that even Mitch McConnell rejected it, further escalating a rivalry between the two that is transparently clear that Scott wants to be the next Senate GOP leader. But with Rick Scott facing re-election in 2024, and a solid Democratic challenger in former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell running against him, what can he do to win over the voters he’s blatantly trying to f*** over? Make empty “Stay outta my state!” threats towards “Communists and Socialists”. While the man physically is as menacing as a scarecrow, he’s still looking to chase off something that isn’t there.

Florida, as a state, keeps electing this reptilian jagoff, and we can’t begin to understand why. We’ll see if they’ve become wise to his con-man ways when he’s up for re-election in 2024.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Bobby Jindal, the former Governor of Louisiana, and absolute bottom-feeder in the polling for the 2016 GOP Presidential Primary candidates. Bobby Jindal was born Piyush Jindal, but got a man-crush on Bobby Brady on the Brady Bunch and renamed himself. While Gov. Jindal’s call to his colleagues in the GOP to “stop being the stupid party” sounds like a brave call for better discourse, he might want to practice what he preaches, considering he’s fighting to have creationism taught in schools instead of evolution, and in 2014, refused to answer if he believed in evolution with the defense that he’s “not an evolutionary biologist”. That defense might have worked better if Jindal’s degree wasn’t in biology. But Jindal’s religious bent should come as less of a surprise when you learn that in 1994, Jindal wrote an article in the New Oxford Review about noticing a classmate who had a smell of sulfur about her, so he and some classmates performed an amateur exorcism on her that had the side effect of curing her skin cancer. If that isn’t quite KOO-KOO for Cocoa Puffs enough for you, Jindal also has come out repeatedly in defense of Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, no matter what homophobic things he’s saying at the time. Then there’s just Jindal’s record as governor of Louisiana, where he inherited a post-Hurricane Katrina state and brought it from the bottom in most statistical categories like job creation, crime rates, high school graduation rates to numbers elevated so far that they have stayed in the bottom five in the nation. During Jindal's brief time in the 2016 Presidential Primary, he admitted that if president, he would use the IRS as a tool to attack Planned Parenthood, said President George W. Bush "made absolutely the right decision on Iraq", and said he would force the resignations of House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and all 535 members of Congress. Just before his campaign ended, he came up with the solution to defeat ISIS, a "no fly zone", which he had immediately pointed out to him would not work so well, since ISIS doesn't have an air force. Jindal will be remembered as one of the worst governors of the past decade in terms of job creation, education, and poverty of his citizens, which is amazing because he inherited a state recovering from Hurricane Katrina and never raised its fortunes any higher, really.

In both 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the day profiled former sex term Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany,… Whoops. Freudian slip. I mean six terms. But if you believe current headlines, perhaps it is the sex terms of Rep. Boustany that need to be addressed, as his name was alleged to be tied to a prostitution scandal back in Louisiana. As the story goes, in a book called "Murder on the Bayou" about several prostitutes who have turned up dead in Boustany's district, is alleged that Boustany was a frequent customer of those sex workers, and several of them worked out of a hotel owned by Martin Guillory, a field representative for Boustany prior to their deaths. The veracity of the accusation has not been verified, but Boustany insists it was all a "dirty tricks" attack from fellow U.S. House Rep. John Fleming, as both were candidates in the GOP Primary for the U.S. Senate seat for Louisiana that was up for grabs with the retirement of David Vitter, a guy who truly knows how to be implicated in a prostitution scandal. Boustany is also noteworthy for, prior to running for office, being a rather terrible doctor. He was sued for malpractice eight times, twice being found at fault, and what makes that even more relevant is Congressman Boustany also is the co-sponsor of the provision of the Affordable Care Act that had Medicare money being approved for end-of-life counseling... also known as the thing Republicans themselves wet their pants over, and fearmongered to the public as being "death panels". Charles Boustany remained utterly inflexible about gun control, which isn't uncommon for a Republican, but when you consider the fact that he personally has recently had a relative shot in a mass shooting, it just seems callous. When John Houser went on a killing spree at a movie theatre in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2015, Boustany's cousin was among those wounded... and yet, he still is unmoved to enact any gun control legislation, including the kinds of improved background checks that would have prevented Houser from carrying out his mass shooting in the first place. But his story gets even weirder... at one point back in the mid 1990s, Rep. Boustany was a victim of a fraud scheme... because he was trying to buy a title of British nobility (really). Two con artists ran a scam where they hoodwinked dumb wealthy Americans like Congressman Boustany into believing they could buy an English title for a hefty sum. That would earn him not just the right to refer to himself as "Lord Boustany", but would grant him a seat to ride in the Queen Mum's 100th Birthday celebration. Most millionaires would just write the money off as a loss on a flight of fancy. But not Congressman Lord Boustany. Nuh uh. He filed a lawsuit that never went anywhere in Lafayette Parish, but the record is available to the public. Here is a link to all three pages of the complaint, but the most relevant one is page 2, which shows how much he paid for the Title - $18,500 - and lists both his name and that of his wife in the pleading, and why they are filing suit. Ironically, as Boustany tried to pay to alter the record to make it show he was a British noble, he was also one of many Republicans who questioned the circumstances of the birth and citizenship of President Obama publicly back in a 2009 interview, before quickly backpedaling when he was called out on it. Anyway, all of that weirdness, as well as a hyper-partisan voting record may have been what led to Charles Boustany finishing only third in the 2016 race for the U.S. Senate seat to represent Louisiana.

On this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the now-former Governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, who was elected to a single term in office back in 2014, and has been so staggeringly incompetent at his job that he was very nearly pushed out of office in the GOP Primary while running for re-election here in 2018, winning over Jeanne Ives with only 51% of the vote to Ives’ 49%. And Jeanne Ives is a completely bats*** homophobe, to put it mildly. Rauner tripped over his own feet and any other part of his anatomy for four years… everything that Rauner attacked former Democratic Govenror Pat Quinn on in 2014 to get elected… he’s managed to be worse. Job creation? Worse. Budget shortfalls? Worse. Violent crime, in virtually every statistical category? Worse. AND he’s not just worse on crime, he impotently tries blaming mayors for that violence rather than accept any criticism, like a true leader would. Meanwhile, as the Illinois state legislature moved to pass popular legislation like automatic voter registration, Rauner vetoed it. As teachers began to strike around the country for increased wages, the Illinois state legislature passed a salary increase to end the problem…and Bruce Rauner vetoed it. That’s par for the course because for the past four years, Rauner refused to raise taxes, and instead, wanted to run Illinois by the same kind of model with which Sam Brownback ran Kansas into the ground… by cutting “entitlements” like funding for Medicaid, public education, funding for programs addressing domestic violence, homeless youth, autism, and immigrant integration that most critics found flat-out morally wrong. He emulated Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s stupid quest to wipe out labor unions in his state, trying to pass “right to work” legislation. You would think that as far away from Mexico as Illinois is, that maybe the good Illini wouldn’t have to get pissed about Bruce Rauner on the issue of immigration, compared to say, most border states… and then they found out he was personally profiting from ICE detention centers that were holding children separated from their families in cages. Gov. Rauner’s main survival tactic through this past year seemed to try to blame all the problems in his state on Mike Madigan, the Democratic Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. This included trying to blame Madigan for what happened with Nick Sauer. For those don’t know that story… Nick Sauer was appointed to a state position by Bruce Rauner to be the State Tollway Authority Board director, eventually ran for the state legislature. And, during Sauer’s first term in office, he went and carried out a revenge porn scheme by releasing nude photos of his ex-girlfriend online. When the media reported on this, and noted Rauner was behind Sauer’s rise in politics… Rauner tried blaming Sauer’s actions on a “culture of abuse” Madigan had created in the capitol. No one bought it. Everybody hates Bruce Rauner. Republicans hate him for being too moderate on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Democrats hate him for being a near billionaire who attacks any and all parts of the social safety net… Rauner was defeated in 2018 by J.B. Pritzker, and now is a forgotten man in Illinois politics.