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

[kidfresh512]

Video of the “assault” on Rudy at ShopRite, where Rudy had the person arrested, and said if he wasn’t in better shape he would’ve fallen, cracked his skull, and died.

Yeah, right. Definitely an eyeroll moment. See for yourself.

I saw the headline all day and ignored it. I thought it was an actual slap though.

[Tami]

I saw the headline all day and ignored it. I thought it was an actual slap though.

As the video shows, it was a light slap on the back, something done to get his attention but not to cause harm.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

To me the perfect out come is Trumps runs for the GOP Nod. he gets beat by Desantis or some other QOP. Well we know how weel Trumpo handles loss. So he starts ranting and raving to his base about fraud and fake votes but this time against Desantis like he kind of Did Vs Cruz when he lost the Iowa primary.

Then he tells his base the GOP have turned on him and cheated him and they are not worth the votes. And enough of Trumps cult listen that they stay home and dont vote for Destantis or who ever and that the Dems Keep the White House is 2024. Trump starts a GOP civil war in 2024.

Pretty much that. Trump doesn’t handle losing at all well, given how he’s still ranting and raving about 2020, there’s no doubt in my mind he’d sabotage DeathSantis and the party should he lose the primary. Loyalty is a one way street when it comes to Trump, you either kiss his ass or you’re his enemy, no shades of gray.

[AnakinFlair]

Meanwhile Don Jr. keeps proving he is batshit crazy with a post on his Insta that Roe V Wade was over turned because Obama made fun of his dad.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CfMVK3mO...8-fcbba5fa9b8e

As much as I hate giving Don Jr. credit for anything other than his (probable) massive coke habit... He's kinda right. Trump never got over Obama making a joke at his expense at the White House Correspondence Dinner. His entire Presidency then consisted of two things- undoing every single thing Obama did, and packing the courts as much as he could with the least qualified judges he could find. Which led us to our current problem.

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

He's kinda right. Trump never got over Obama making a joke at his expense at the White House Correspondence Dinner. His entire Presidency then consisted of two things- undoing every single thing Obama did.

Probably, but Bruce Bartlett said something i thought was interesting. He said Democrats let their guard down thinking the republicans gave up the fight/crusade against the new deal, the great society. He said they haven't and they won't. When Dem's let their guard down you get GWB trying to privatize medicare. Then top of that you have dems frankly still coddling corporation. We can blame Repubs, but Dems definitely deserve SOME of the blame. Frankly speaking I feel like they're out of their depths dealing with the Republicans, whom some Dems still see as their "friends". And their obsession with Bipartisanship.

[Mister Mets]

As much as I hate giving Don Jr. credit for anything other than his (probable) massive coke habit... He's kinda right. Trump never got over Obama making a joke at his expense at the White House Correspondence Dinner. His entire Presidency then consisted of two things- undoing every single thing Obama did, and packing the courts as much as he could with the least qualified judges he could find. Which led us to our current problem.

Do you think Trump won an election a generic Republican would have lost?

And did he fight harder for Supreme Court nominees than another Republican would have?

To me the perfect out come is Trumps runs for the GOP Nod. he gets beat by Desantis or some other QOP. Well we know how weel Trumpo handles loss. So he starts ranting and raving to his base about fraud and fake votes but this time against Desantis like he kind of Did Vs Cruz when he lost the Iowa primary.

Then he tells his base the GOP have turned on him and cheated him and they are not worth the votes. And enough of Trumps cult listen that they stay home and dont vote for Destantis or who ever and that the Dems Keep the White House is 2024. Trump starts a GOP civil war in 2024.

There is a nontrivial chance Trump will sabotage the 2024 presidential nominee.

He basically cost the Republicans the Senate.

Legal clashes await U.S. companies covering workers' abortion costs





Interesting article talking about the legal ramifications corporations will likely face that are supporting their employees with healthcare related costs in areas where there will now be abortion bans. GOP always claim to be pro business. And how often were private, or employer healthcare plans brought up to oppose Obamacare? But, they will clearly fight these plans now just like they did with mask mandates companies tried to enact for the health of their employees.

There are going to be different views on this on the right.

It'll be resolved quickly enough, likely with the understanding that there's nothing states can do to control their residents once they go elsewhere.

Not if each justice is tied to a Circuit Court of Appeals. That would cap the number of Justices at 13. It would probably be wise to limit the expansion of the Courts of Appeals before going ahead with this course of action, however.

This likely won't work. Any mechanism to expand the court is not going to limit the next Republican president.

You can say each justice is tied to a circuit court of appeals, but it would be pretty easy to come up with some pretext to expand further. They could say we need more justices, so that the DC Circuit, 9th district and Federal Circuit get two justices due to their higher profile, while the Chief Justice isn't tied to a circuit, or one Supreme Court justice for every ten circuit court judges. Eventually, the court could be so full of federalist society approved conservative jurists that we'll need a new building for them.

[worstblogever]

You're asking them to care about other people. Remember, the root of conservatism in America is: They can tell you what to do. You can't tell them what to do. And the entire reason this works for them is so that they don't even have to entertain the notion that other people matter.

Other people don't matter to them after they have identified cruelty as a measure of strength in conservatism, the one quality that matters. Also, that empathy is a sign of weakness, and they pathologically eliminated it from their personal character over decades.

H.W. Bush did get hammered for being a "wimp" for the "kindler, gentler" approach. Bush 43 got hit for daring to show sympathy for immigrants on immigration reform. That dynasty was systematically declared void by modern conservatives... but for ALL the wrong reasons. They became less palatable to conservatives for compromising on issues and trying to relate to people affected by them.

The brand is now, "F*** you, I got mine, and I'm going to f*** with you just because I think you're thinking about taking it from me." by the white collar conservatives, and the duped blue collar ones get, "I'm going to make THE OTHER hurt more than us."

[CSTowle]

Twitter seems to think this is big news

Supermarket Worker Slaps Giuliani, Says ‘Hey, What’s Up, Scumbag?’: Report



Bound to happen someday. It shouldn't have, but Rudy wasn't hurt except maybe his ego.

We can only hope someone meets Donald Trump and goes with a "Whats up f-ck face ?" deal. Or Clarence Thomas as a judge.

We shouldn't laugh off or normalize violence against people we disagree with, whether it's scumbags like Giuliani or Rand Paul or the whole "punch a nazi" twitter fad of a few years back. Not just because it's morally wrong and eliminates any kind of high ground or moral standing (which it does), but because you then set that as the precedent/norm and I guarantee you there are more people open to the idea of violence against their political "enemies" on the right than on the left.

[CaptainEurope]

We shouldn't laugh off or normalize violence against people we disagree with, whether it's scumbags like Giuliani or Rand Paul or the whole "punch a nazi" twitter fad of a few years back. Not just because it's morally wrong and eliminates any kind of high ground or moral standing (which it does), but because you then set that as the precedent/norm and I guarantee you there are more people open to the idea of violence against their political "enemies" on the right than on the left.

It was literally a pat on Rudy's back. Maxine Waters hit Michael Tracy harder.

[Tendrin]

It was literally a pat on Rudy's back. Maxine Waters hit Michael Tracy harder.

I was literally joking about this earlier. "He should count himself lucky it wasn't Maxine Waters"

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled John Lloyd Ellis, the former Chairman of the Alabama Cherokee County Republican Party whose career ended when he was discovered to have a massive marijuana farm being operated out of his home by police. Last we heard, he was looking at a prison sentence of one to ten years.

On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Alex Beinstein, who as a 28-year old libertarian who filed as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, as a primary challenger to incumbent Congressman Scott Tipton, focusing almost entirely on a single issue… destroying all foreign relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Now, among the many Saudi-related conspiracies that Beinstein believes is that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 attacks, helped protect Osama bin Laden while he was hiding in Pakistan, and are responsible for helping create ISIS. But how do they get away with it, you ask? Bribes. Bribes all over the place. Saudi princes have spent money to corrupt everyone from President Barack Obama and CNN’s Anderson Cooper to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Fox News leadership. Beinstein also told The Huffington Post that Bill Gates, Apple Inc., The Plaza Hotel in New York and the Four Seasons hotel chain are among other alleged lackeys of the kingdom. (Let’s not even get started on Hillary Clinton.) Beinstein compares cutting ties to Saudi Arabia as to when the United States chose to stop doing business with Nazi Germany, so we’ll add a little dash of Godwin’s Law to his wacky mix. And of course, Beinstein said his primary opponent, Tipton, is in on the conspiracy, and his evidence is… Tipton has failed to publicly condemn Saudi Arabia and has ties to local oil, gas and coal companies. Beinstein, being a libertarian, also has thoughts on gun control… he’s against all of it, specifically even arguing against the idea that those deemed mentally ill or incompetent should still be allowed to have their 2nd Amendment rights. (We suspect this might be because a psychologist might one day recommend Beinstein not have firearms, since he’s already showing some signs of needing to shop for real estate with padded walls.) Beinstein managed a meager 21% of the vote against Tipton in the 2016 GOP primary for that Congressional seat, and it bears watching if he makes another run for office on the platform of, “I REALLY DON’T LIKE SAUDI ARABIA, YOU GUYS.”

On this date in 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Paul Blair, a radical anti-gay pastor from Oklahoma who has twice run for the Oklahoma State Senate, and a big ally of State Rep. Sally Kern, who proudly spoke of her political credentials (i.e. her dedication to oppressing the LGBTQ community) at the “Rally for Sally” back in 2008. You see, he was all lathered up after she said that gays represent a bigger threat to America than terrorism (since gay rights made people like Blair and Kern victims). Blair is a former player for the Chicago Bears (and could easily be operating under the effects of long term head injuries), the pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, the founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, head of the Reclaiming America For Christ organization. He's also appeared at an anti-hate crimes “Rally for Religious Freedom” where he and anti-gay activists vowed never to stop fighting homosexuality and challenged the Justice Department to prosecute them. Blair was the driving force behind a video called “The Criminalization of Christianity” in which he warns that hate crimes legislation is actually a “Pedophile Protection Act”, would “make it possible for a pastor to be prosecuted for doing nothing more than preaching a Biblical sermon on Sunday”. Which would be breaking a commandment about bearing false witness, because hate crime legislation does nothing to criminalize free speech (because that would be an unconstitutional violation of the 1st Amendment now, wouldn't it?) But it would seem that lying is a frequent habit of Pastor Blair, who claims he receives death threats from the gay community over his stance (that are repeatedly unfounded). And that's when Blair tried saying the unsubstantiated death threats were his motivation for making himself a 2012 candidate for the Oklahoma State Senate (endorsed by that anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council), where he lost in the Republican Primary, earning a shockingly impressive 43% of the vote. Some of the more disturbing and/or homophobic quotes from Paul Blair's most bats*** speeches include that "The Devil is behind gay rights and gay culture", before whining how America has gone from "Ozzie and Harriet to Desperate Housewives" and "from True Grit to Brokeback Mountain", claiming that the “communists” are trying to “inculcate homosexual values, or lack of values, into the American culture” in order “to destroy the family” and create “a global utopia", adding that "Satan is the source and ultimate conspirator” behind “the force of communism, the force of the radical homosexual agenda, the secularist movement in America.", and of course, comparing his battle against gay marriage to be similar to “the fight against slavery and Nazi Germany”. Paul Blair has also promoted conspiracy theories about how our government deliberately launches EMP attacks against conservative Christians, and that Jade Helm 15 and began promoting the alternative history that the ancient Israelites had a Constitutional Republic. It takes an extremist to be too far to the right in Oklahoma, but Paul Blair manages to pull it off.

On this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan’s 11th District, Dave Trott, who was first elected back in 2014, when the GOP were desperate for a sane candidate to replace the far more bizarre FRED legend Kerry Bentivolio. Trott just straight up outspent Benvolio in the 2014 Primary for this seat by a ratio of 25-1 and took his infamous reprutation as being “Michigan’s foreclosure king who got rich during the Great Recession of ’07 and ’08 by preying on homeowners who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgage and were being evicted from their homes, including signing off on the paperwork to evict a 101 year old Detroit woman from her home, leaving her belongings in the street.. In many ways, that’s actually a perfect representation of modern Republican values. While in Congress, Trott’s voting record exemplifies that “rich white men first” mentality, trying to repeal the ACA and defund Planned Parenthood among many other stereotypically conservative measures. Only about seven weeks into Dave Trott’s second term in office that he was caught on a hot mic with aides after a tense town hall talking to advisers about how the protesters who showed up to complain about their Congressman ignoring the working class were “un-American”. One of his aides claimed it was his voice on the recording (maybe, maybe not)… but needless to say, Trott didn’t have the courage to ever host another town hall after kicking the hornet’s nest and announced his retirement after only two terms in office in September of 2017.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Ron Beaty, a human thumb with hair and Republican candidate for the Massachusetts state legislature, who lost in an attempt to get elected to the Massachusetts State Senate the 2014 general election. That bid seemed like a long shot even with the GOP having political momentum that year, because Beaty served a 16 month prison sentence back in 1991 for making death threats against Republican President George H.W. Bush, the late Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, and Massachusetts State Senator Lois Pines. Beaty was trying his luck again to pull an upset in 2018 even in the face of the forecasted Blue Wave to represent the Cape and Islands district of the state,. With the momentum Donald Trump showed in 2016, Beaty hoped as a fellow member of the “bloated old white guy” demographic, that he could ride the white nationalist coattails of Trump into a second chance at political success beyond just being a County Commissioner, branding himself as “Deplorable and Proud of It”. Go figure, Beaty lives up to that promise. Because in the weeks after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Beaty took to Twitter to call shooting survivor David Hogg “a communist pig” for his anti-gun advocacy. He refused to apologize, and ignored calls to resign as County Commissioner. The only good news to come out of that is… Beaty became as politically radioactive as Chernobyl as a result, and lost the GOP Primary in 2018 for the state legislature with only 21% of the vote. Still, after the election, and prior to us having printed this article, he made the news again in April of 2019, when he again took to social media to suggest that LGBTQ Americans cannot serve in political office, because they are ‘too self-absorbed and self-centered”. Yet again, Ron Beaty refused to apologize or resign from his position as County Commissioner. Instead, he defended his Twitter post, comparing it to the sorts of things Donald Trump posted about (when he had an account that wasn't banned).

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Lynne DiSanto, the former model turned owner of a modeling agency in Rapid City, South Dakota, who was a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives from District 35 elected three times in 2014, 2016, and 2018. In that time, she racked up a voting record that was unabashedly pro-gun, anti-choice, and anti-union. She once sponsored legislation to ban educating school children about what gender dysphoria was for kids up to 7th grade (because heaven forbid the existence of transgender children be allowed) and supported a transphobic bathroom ban. She was also repeatedly a source of controversy, for reasons that show a general lack of empathy normally only seen in sociopaths. Let’s start with how on her own Facebook page back on September 7th, 2017, where she posted an “All Lives Splatter” meme, upset about protesters at Standing Rock blocking the highways in South Dakota, and, y’know, generally just mocking the Black Lives Matter movement and peaceful protesters who apparently deserved to be run over for doing so. Now, in many instances of conservatives who shared this sort of meme or supported legislation to make it legal for drivers to run over protesters was “B.C.”, or “Before Charlottesville”, Lynne DiSanto shared the meme only a few days AFTER Heather Heyer was murdered in such a scenario. She faced calls to resign and refused, and within a few months, she needed a new cause. And this… is where things start getting strange. In January of 2019, a nine-year old girl in foster care named Serenity Dennard ran away from the facility where she was staying, and is still, as of the writing of this article, missing. Police searches could not find her, and the theory in the community is that she may have wandered into the woods and froze to death. However, Lynne DiSanto saw a cause that she could invest herself into, and by that we mean “exploit for political gain”. DiSanto soon started a Facebook page titled, “Lyn seeks Truth” in May of 2019, and soon registered the domain name for a website lynneseekstruth.com, where she would conduct interviews and organize searches for Serenity. The local police, however, seemed to have the opinion that these civilian gatherings were potentially trampling on potential evidence and were in no way helpful other than, y’know, perhaps setting Lynne up to take Nancy Grace’s job one day. Thus, a constituent posted on DiSanto’s Facebook group page that it was pretty evil to exploit a kid’s death like she was doing… and Lynne had the level-headed response to tell her, “I see you live close to me!!! Awesome! I’ll be stopping by to say Hi so we can talk face to face soon.” And so it was that her constituent filed a police report to get a “no trespass” order to keep DiSanto off her property. But DiSanto was not to be stopped in her quest to become infamous while hunting for Serenity Dennard and online views and likes. She tracked down her biological mother, who was in a state correctional facility, and met with her to get some more background about Serenity from the woman who gave birth to her… and illegally videotaped their conversation against the policies of the State Department of Corrections. DiSanto claimed she was given permission to do so, but was temporarily banned from visiting inmates. She, of course, played the victim the whole time. Our story ends with, oddly, Lynne DiSanto separating from her husband on September 5, 2019, legally changing her name to Lyndi DiSanto, separating from her husband Mark DiSanto, and resigning from the South Dakota legislature to move to Montana and beginning a career in real estate there In February of 2021, a story broke that DiSanto was harassing a woman in Wyoming whose husband went missing and DiSanto stalked her until the woman could get a restraining order to keep DiSanto the f*** away. As of late 2019, stories were out that Lynne and her husband Mark were getting a divorce and she was going to move to Montana. Well, it seems on January 7th, 2020 she was back in South Dakota and called the cops on her husband, claiming she was assaulted and choked on Jan. 6th. The officer on scene was about to arrest her husband when he provided an airtight alibi that he was playing racquetball with a friend, who confirmed it. At that point the cop noted that she had waited a day after the assault, and hand not a scratch or bruise on her, so he got suspicious. Eventually, cell phone records confirmed neither Lynne, nor her husband were at the house when the assault happened. Lynne got charged with filing a false police report and pleaded no contest to the charges in court in March 2021. She was given a 90 day suspended sentence and $250 dollar fine. She, last we checked, hand changed her name to Lyndi Meyer, but has also been known by the names Lyn DiSanto, Lynne Hix-DiSanto, and Lynne Hix. Whenever she is on social media, she continues to posit weird theories about random missing persons and paranoid conspiracies. We will not, however, link to any of those, because she doesn’t deserve to have it promoted.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling the former U.S. House Representative from Kansas’ 2nd Congressional District, Steve Watkins, who after leaving the military and starting a career as a defense contractor, Watkins focused on a simple hobby of, y’know, running sled dogs in Alaska, including in the Iditarod (he finished in 58th place out of 66 competitors in 2015). But reporters fascinated with the guy began to notice a lot of the other details Watkins was providing about his professional career, though, that had… let’s just say some inconsistencies that looked like he may have padded his resume as a candidate a bit, and Watkins played the “FAKE NEWS” card that Donald Trump made infamous. Watkins continuously was trying to win Trump’s endorsement to push himself to the head of the pack, in the primary, and prior to getting fired, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale noted Watkins was sending out mailers with Trump on them without the endorsement of the White House occupant. And his primary opponents were asking the question, “Wait, how can he have two homes in Alaska and be dog-sledding up there and also be living in Kansas, where he’s never voted? His guy’s carpet-bagging, man!” The Associated Press took note that there was no sign Watkins had lived in Kansas since leaving for the military in high school, but still, with a crowded seven-candidate primary field, Watkins emerged victorious with 26.5% of the vote in it. Watkins still had to beat Democrat Paul Davis in the general election, and eventually officially won favor with the nation’s hot-garbage-chief-executive by supporting Trump’s stupid f***ing idea for a physical wall on the U.S./Mexico border, saying things in favor of it like "That doesn't make us mean-spirited or the racist bigots that some leftists would have you believe. It's just common sense," or the quite White Nationalist-ish statement of “I want to keep our culture,” about it. So OF COURSE Donald Trump ended up appearing with him at a rally in October 2018. Like many Trump-endorsed candidates, Steve Watkins was then accused of sexually harassing a woman who he worked with on an Alaskan military base, only days after getting Trump’s seal-of-approval (not that Trump would retract it, after his endorsing of Roy Moore showing how little he cared about if men he endorsed were creeps). And yet, and YET… Steve Watkins still won that race by less than a percentage point, say by around 2200 votes in the Blue Wave year, which should just be regarded as having the benefit of Kansas’ 2nd District having a +11 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. After one term in office, though, he helped prove the Republican Party’s incessant complaints about voter fraud by committing such an act personally and filing his voter information with the Federal Elections Commission that listed his residence in Topeka as what was actually the location for a UPS Store. Yes, all the questions regarding his residence seemed to hold some merit. Three separate felony charges were filed related to the voter fraud he personally committed, and he was slapped with a fourth charge for lying to a detective who was investigating the matter. Watkins chalked it up to being just an error, and only narrowly avoided jail time by signing a controversial agreement with the Shawnee County District Attorney’s office where he admitted all four of the things he was charged with were true. (White privilege has its perks, it seems). Steve Watkins ended up losing in the GOP primary in 2020 for his seat, what with all the fraud surrounding him, losing in the GOP Primary with about 34% of the vote. As he is now out of office, we will set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1113-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Chris West

Welcome to what is the 1113th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Chris West, the elected Republican sheriff of Canadian County in Oklahoma, and the first sheriff we’ve profiled probably since our last update on disgraced former Arizona Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Usually, we don’t go out of our way to discuss the office of county sheriffs, but some folks are just too corrupt, racist, or violent to have us overlook them.

Chris West, though… it can’t be assuring for the folks in his district to have a guy spouting conspiracy theories about the Mueller Investigation out during the Trump administration as your elected law enforcement official. And to see someone entrusted with public safety respond to actions being taken to restrict the Covid-19 pandemic by fearmongering against prospective vaccine mandates for his sheriff’s department. It's not even that he’s predictably a part of a network of anti-immigrant law enforcement officers from around the country...

But no, what really got our attention about Sheriff West is that he was one of 57 Republican elected officials from around the country who went to Washington, D.C. on January 6th and took part in Donald Trump’s coup attempt against the legislative branch of our government. While he tried to pretend he wasn’t a part of the extremism that day because he "never entered the Capitol building”, his social media posts at the time were a bit more volatile than he’s letting on:

“If they’re okay rigging an election and foreign help to steal the white house and control of WeThePeople, then I’m okay with using whatever means necessary to preserve America and save FREEDOM & LIBERTY,” West allegedly wrote in one post.

When another Oklahoman on Facebook wrote “I want several in Congress… in prison” West wrote back: “or worse.”

So… yeah, it’s not normal to have the guy policing the law in your county making veiled threats towards the people who make the laws for the country you’re supposed to enforce. At all.

Chris West has not, shockingly, been removed from office, and his term will not be up until the 2024 elections. We’re hoping there’s a less extreme candidate who runs to his left, whether in the primary or the general election, and that seems like a perfectly low bar for anyone sane to clear.

[babyblob]

Now we know what an insurrection looks like to the GOP.

https://www.newsweek.com/abortion-ri...licans-1719257

[worstblogever]

Now we know what an insurrection looks like to the GOP.

https://www.newsweek.com/abortion-ri...licans-1719257

Last week, they were claiming Triumph the Insult Comic Dog being in the halls of Congress was an insurrection.

They're spiteful children employing the "rubber/glue defense" for Trump.

These are some of the minds GOP voters think are clever enough to govern. Think about that.