1. #31231

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    Yesterday, Jim Jordan blurted out that he spoke to Donald Trump on 1/6, then was evasive and "couldn't remember" if that call was before or after the riot. (Methinks cell phone records will reveal what it is.)

    But the GQP panic and moments like this are showing why their tune changed from holding people accountable in the days after the Capitol Attack to where they are now... it's a deliberate cover-up to protect their own.
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  2. #31232
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    Yesterday, Jim Jordan blurted out that he spoke to Donald Trump on 1/6, then was evasive and "couldn't remember" if that call was before or after the riot. (Methinks cell phone records will reveal what it is.)

    But the GQP panic and moments like this are showing why their tune changed from holding people accountable in the days after the Capitol Attack to where they are now... it's a deliberate cover-up to protect their own.
    You can bet the mortgage and the kid's college fund Jordan wasn't the only member of the GQP to talk with or message Trump on 1/6, either before, during or after the riot. At this point in the proceedings, it's no longer a question of who was on the horn with The Former Guy that day, but how many Qpublicans were.
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  3. #31233

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    It was back on this date in 2014 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our profile of former 2014 Idaho gubernatorial candidate Walt Bayes, who along with Harley Brown, captured the imagination of the entire nation four years ago when he showed up to a spectacularly insane debate where who boasted of having 16 children, and 77 living descendants, as well as the fact that he previously had been given visits from Child Protective Services for home-schooling his children, spent most of his time at the debate quoting scripture, and stated his desire to “take Idaho back from the federal government” because “we’re wasting all kinds of wood out there.” Needless to say, he did not fare too well against Gov. Butch Otter in that election.

    In both 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Peter DeGraaf, a member of the Kansas House of Representatives representing District 82 who during a debate on an anti-abortion bill back in 2011, compared being impregnated during a rape to being something women should actually have a contingency plan for, because it’s “just like getting a flat tire”. DeGraaf also supports drug testing welfare recipients, votes against minimum wage increases, supports voter ID bills strict enough to disenfranchise tens of thousands of people to prevent statistically nonexistent "in person voter fraud", trying to block the relocation of Syrian refugees, and has supported nullification legislation to try and avoid enacting the Affordable Care Act or enforcing federal firearms laws. Oh, and he's so fanatical about abortion, as he submitted a resolution to have the Bill of Rights applied to all human beings from the point of fertilization. We reported in our original profile that DeGraaf has discovered he suffers from Parkinson's, but chose not to receive stem cell treatments for his condition because of his pro-life beliefs. While we wished him the best in his fight against that degenerative disease, even by his own decision to tie one arm behind his back, he did end up resigning three months into his final term in the legislature.




    On this date in both 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published our original profile of the man who was the Secretary of State of Georgia, and who is now Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. Kemp was elected Secretary of State back in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, who you may have heard of as that troglodyte who actually ran a campaign ad where he cocked a loaded shotgun at a young man who supposedly wanted to date his daughter to prove what a manly man he is.

    Yes, woe to us all, it’s this sort of idiocy that stirs something in the hearts of GOP Primary voters, and that led Kemp to make the ad to make up the thirty points he was trailing in polls to his main opponent, Casey Cagle, and not ask themselves, “Wait, did he just point a loaded gun at a child?” and wonder if he’s perhaps a bit too unstable to be given the governor’s mansion. Maybe if the gun-totin’ loon was off message a little, he decided to point his gun in a different direction in his next ad, as he marched around with the same gun boasting about how he’d “round up criminal illegals myself” with his big ol’ pickup truck. Yes, it seems there is no better utility tool to rule over Georgia with than a shotgun. It solves all the problems, if you ask Kemp. Well, not all problems. He also went full “Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Macho Camacho” and released a third ad where he took a chainsaw to a “stack of regulations” before blowing them up in a giant fiery explosion. (We’re not sure if this will remain symbolic, or if he’s actually nuts enough to try it.)

    Kemp’s gamble seemingly paid off, as he closed enough ground to keep Casey Cagle under the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff election, which going into the final stretch, polls showed Kemp and Cagle neck-and-neck. It didn’t help that Cagle was literally caught on tape admitting that the two Republican candidates were focused on “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest”, either. Kemp wore that accusation like a badge of honor, and released the audio hoping that blue-collar people in Georgia would rally behind him because of it.

    Kemp, a die-hard anti-immigrant Trump supporter… hmm… maybe this would be a good time to point out that while serving as the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brian Kemp’s brilliant oversight managed to release the names and social security numbers of millions of registered voters, and he repeatedly fought with the Department of Justice regarding the security of Georgia’s voting systems (which were hacked by Russians), and resisted preventing any investigation into the intrusions even after the 2016 elections. His name appears in declassified reports alphabetically just prior to “Jared Kushner”, for some reason. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence…

    Even more disturbing? He claimed in the buildup to the 2018 midterms that our own Department of Justice was “hacking” Georgia election systems, and he wanted Donald Trump to personally investigate the matter (this would more than likely be a guy setting up a future claim of “voter fraud” when he loses). Just days prior to the election, he then claimed that Democrats had hacked the voting rolls… which is ironic, because the e-mail he cited as “evidence” was between a voter and a Democrat who noted how easy it was to hack Georgia’s voter information under Kemp’s watch, and that Democrat forwarded their concerns to the FBI herself.

    Brian Kemp narrowly “defeated” Stacey Abrams at the polls in the 2018 elections, and we put that word in quotations because Stacey Abrams never conceded, and neither do we, really, given of how suspect the final counts are… and Kemp’s actions after the election. One of his first hires as governor was to bring on a lobbyist who not coincidentally, worked for the company the voting machines used in Georgia were purchased from… mysteriously at a price tag far higher than Georgia should have paid (and a price tag Kemp tried to conceal from the public). All of this reeks of voter fraud carried out by the man who was supposed to secure Georgia’s elections, but all signs point to the fact that he rigged them in his own favor. And that is why the would-be Governor Kemp got called before Congress, specifically the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where they were be waiting to ream him a new orifice for a systematic voter purge that likely kicked just enough Democratic votes off the voter rolls to ensure Kemp’s victory. And expect some discussion of the news that Kemp and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office ignored a judge’s order to follow up on an FBI investigation into the 2018 election potentially being hacked, and never served a subpoena to the FBI for their copy of the records, per the judge’s request. It's almost like they have something to hide and don’t want to check and make sure that it was a fair election, you know?

    And that has left Brian Kemp under suspicion of being an illegitimate executive. One who can do terrible things like sign off on a fetal heartbeat bill, HB 481 in the hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade, and respond like a complete maniac to a proposed boycott by film and television studios on filming in Georgia (which brings billions to the state) by calling those who voiced their displeasure “C-List celebrities squawking”. At least he didn’t point a shotgun at them. This time.
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  4. #31234

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    As Covid-19 spread across the country in 2020 and several red-state governors have embarrassed the hell out of themselves in the things they’ve said, and the ways they’ve responded or in many instances, not responded to the pandemic. And Kemp has been no different. Almost a month into the crisis, and well after CDC experts warned that Covid-19 can be spread by people who are infected by asymptomatic, Kemp revealed that fact as if it had just been discovered, and that it was a “game-changer. He didn’t even keep a “stay home” order through April, being one of the first to reopen his state on April 28th, and wouldn’t you know it, Georgia rose to one of the top states in the country in new Covid-19 cases. By the end of June, he signed an executive order to do away with most of the remaining restrictions on businesses, including opening up restaurants, and in mid-July, he signed another order to rescind any mask-wearing mandates from local municipalities that actually had the nerve to give a damn about public health and safety. In a final, desperate attempt to get people to die of Covid-19, he actually filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Atlanta for issuing mask mandates within her own city. Kemp eventually dropped the lawsuit, because it didn’t have a prayer of holding up in court.

    To say Brian Kemp is facing a tough fight for re-election after he stole the prior gubernatorial race in Georgia three years ago is an understatement. His experience in voter suppression wasn’t enough, however, to prevent Democrats from flipping Georgia blue in the 2020 elections, much to Republicans’ chagrin, and setting an ominous stage for him personally in 2022. But as Donald Trump started ringing up election officials and Kemp in Georgia to get them to just declare him the winner (Trump is still the target of a criminal probe as a result), and his legal team filed the flat-out dumbest lawsuits in a quixotic effort to try to cling to power, Kemp refused to budge, and refused to take steps to bail out Trump’s longshot effort. That’s made him a loathed figure now on both the right, and the left, as Republicans booed him heartily at their own state party convention. He might only survive his primary challenge from Vernon Jones on the grounds that frankly, Jones is completely bats***.

    But Brian Kemp, if nothing else, knows his political survival to win a state-wide election depends on him doubling down on voter suppression and creating the 21st Century’s finest revival of Jim Crow, and thus he signed a sweeping voter suppression bill that not only was designed to prevent African Americans in Georgia from exercising their right to vote, not only set itself up to force in-person voting that would create the longest lines to vote in decades… but it was written to criminalize bringing food or water to people stuck in line to vote. When criticism rained down on that suggestion, Kemp sneered and said that voters in line “could just order Uber Eats.

    Kemp signed the bill and had a Democratic legislator arrested for daring to knock on his door while he did. Several businesses had threatened to boycott doing business with Georgia if the bill was signed, and made good on that promise, including Major League Baseball, who pulled the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and leading conservatives around the country to call on their ilk to, in turn, boycott MLB.

    At this point, conservatives are running out of sports to support.

    Perhaps all the pressure on Gov. Kemp from those on the right enraged on him for not helping Donald Trump steal a second term in the White House, the criticism from the left regarding… well everything and not even just his attempts at voter suppression… but just the fact that he’s done a terrible job of running Georgia throughout the pandemic. Maybe that’s why in a Fox News interview back in June, he couldn’t even nail the layup that is wearing American patriotism through aged colloquialisms when he finished up by saying:

    Good Lord, Georgia. Just f***ing elect Stacey Abrams already and stop it with all these dumb, corrupt, racist douchebags you’ve been going on with for over a decade now.
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  5. #31235
    Ultimate Member Malvolio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    I'd bet a month's pay on that. Qpublicans have clearly shown they have no morals or decency and will do ANYTHING to further their twisted goals.
    This is nothing new from a party whose Vice President once doxed a CIA agent. Of course, now we're supposed to pretend that his daughter is on our side.
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  6. #31236
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Malvolio View Post
    This is nothing new from a party whose Vice President once doxed a CIA agent. Of course, now we're supposed to pretend that his daughter is on our side.
    What are you referring to?
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  7. #31237
    Latverian ambassador Iron Maiden's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    You don't think someone in the GOP who Fanone called asking for answers the past 6 months would give his number out to some psycho follower of theirs?

    (They would.)
    That's what I was questioning. It's not like the days when you could look up people's number in a telephone book. There is no way to get someone's cell phone number without someone giving it to him.

    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    I'd bet a month's pay on that. Qpublicans have clearly shown they have no morals or decency and will do ANYTHING to further their twisted goals.
    I hate to say it but even among the Metropolitan police and the Capitol Police there were sympathizers with the mob. Remember some even moved the barriers away for them. But you are right and I think it more likely someone in Congress either staff member or a congressman could have given away that number.

  8. #31238
    I am invenitable Jack Dracula's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    What are you referring to?
    Valerie Plame
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  9. #31239
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ChadH View Post
    Valerie Plame
    It wasn't Cheney or anyone who worked under him.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  10. #31240

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    It wasn't Cheney or anyone who worked under him.
    Well, you're lying again, as a cursory search shows the leak was done by Scooter Libby, who was VP Cheney's Chief of Staff.

    That's pretty "under him", he-who-gaslights.
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  11. #31241
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    Well, you're lying again, as a cursory search shows the leak was done by Scooter Libby, who was VP Cheney's Chief of Staff.

    That's pretty "under him", he-who-gaslights.
    The Washington Post gave Plame three Pinocchios for blaming Libby.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...-her-identity/

    Plame’s name and CIA role was first disclosed in Robert Novak’s column. Novak’s original source was Armitage, and his confirming sources were Rove and a CIA spokesman. Novak’s column led to the firestorm that launched a federal investigation. But no evidence shows that Libby disclosed Plame’s role to Novak.
    As noted in your wikipedia article, a civil suit against Cheney was dismissed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. It was upheld by the US Court of Appeals. When the Wilsons appealed to the Supreme Court, then-US Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote the brief about why the Supreme Court should reject the appeal (which it did.)

    Petitioners allege that Novak's July 14, 2003 column publicly disclosed Ms. Wilson's covert CIA employment and that that disclosure 'destroyed her cover as a classified CIA employee'. Petitioners, however, allege that Novak's source was Armitage, and do not allege that any of the three defendants against whom Mr. Wilson presses his First Amendment claim-Cheney, Rove, and Libby-caused that column to be published. In the absence of factual allegations that Mr. Wilson's alleged injury from the public disclosure of his wife's CIA employment is 'fairly traceable' to alleged conduct by Cheney, Rove, or Libby, petitioners have failed to establish Article III jurisdiction over Mr. Wilson's First Amendment claim.
    Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to a grand jury and to investigators. One of the jurors said she hoped he would be pardoned, but that she felt that he lied and then it snowballed.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna17506701

    Redington said “it was very difficult — it was hard” to vote to convict Libby, who was found guilty of four of five felony counts accusing him of lying to a federal grand jury and the FBI. Prosecutors said he hoped to derail a special prosecutor’s investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative.

    “He seemed like a ton of fun. ... I didn’t want to see him and his wife and say he was guilty of a crime,” Redington told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. But she she said she had no choice given the evidence.

    “I think he got caught in a difficult situation where he got caught in the initial lie, and it just snowballed,” she said.
    Last edited by Mister Mets; 07-30-2021 at 11:54 AM.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  12. #31242

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    Because in my link:

    According to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby first learned of Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA in early June 2003 from Vice President Dick Cheney and proceeded to discuss her with six other government officials in the following days and months before disclosing her name to reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in early July 2003.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 07-30-2021 at 12:16 PM.
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  13. #31243
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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  14. #31244
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  15. #31245
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post


    Because in my link:
    Cooper noted that Libby confirmed something he had heard from Karl Rove.

    https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/0...-trump-pardon/

    Plame's role in the CIA was made public thanks to a leak from Richard Armitage, who was wary of the Iraq war. It was a mistake by a state department official, rather than an effort by war enthusiasts to punish Wilson.

    Cooper's Time article was published on July 17, several days after Novak's article was published. Cooper has asked if Libby was aware that Valerie Plame recommended her husband for a fact-finding trip to Africa. At the time, Libby disputed reporting that Dick Cheney sent Joe Wilson on the trip.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/p...from-rove.html

    Mr. Cooper also wrote about a conversation he initiated with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Although it has been known that reporters spoke to Mr. Libby, what he said was not known. His conversation with Mr. Cooper is the first indication that Mr. Libby was aware of Ms. Wilson's role in her husband's trip to Africa. When Mr. Cooper asked if Mr. Libby knew of that, Mr. Libby said he had heard that as well, the article said.

    Both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove sought to dispel speculation that Mr. Cheney had played a role in dispatching Mr. Wilson on his mission.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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