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

[Godzilla2099]

I just wish there was a party in the middle. Most Republicans can't lead but on the other side Democratic Led Cities aren't places I'd want to live in either. They're sh#tholes where criminals have more rights than their victims.

Its Bizarro World in California

San Francisco Drops Case against Homeless Man Who Beat Former City Official with a Crowbar

[AnakinFlair]

The E. Jean Carroll trial is happening right now.

And Trump has already been reprimanded by the Judge for posts he made on Truth Social. From Twitter:

Trump went off against Carroll just moments before she was ready to testify in her rape case against him.

In a brilliant move, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney Robbie Kaplan, interrupted the case to read Trump’s words to the court.

“The E. Jean Carroll case, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, is a made up SCAM," Trump wrote.

The judge responded, “entirely inappropriate."

He then noted that Trump "may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability. ... And I think you know what I mean."

This comment appears to reference the crime of witness intimidation, warnings Trump has faced before.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I did love one of the Governors flunkies deciding to tell the press... "Were gonna have to raise taxes because of this !"

Maybe you shouldn't wage culture wars for press. Maybe that should be a f'n lesson.

[Darkspellmaster]

Disney sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleges political effort to hurt its business





I mean it's clearly obvious DeSantis is being vindictive and wielding state power as a political tool because Disney criticised his hate laws.

Non stop bashing them, threatening to open prisons next door to their properties to get his way. Trust Disney lawyers and DeSantis loud mouth to get him in trouble

What's going yo be interesting with this is if it opens a way for other companies to directly sue DeSantis and weirdly, i can see him going the way Cruz did. Or Rubio.

Maybe, just maybe, Florida Dems can use this yo make a push?

[Darkspellmaster]

I just wish there was a party in the middle. Most Republicans can't lead but on the other side Democratic Led Cities are places I'd want to live in either. They're sh#tholes where criminals have more rights than their victims.

Its Bizarro World in California

San Francisco Drops Case against Homeless Man Who Beat Former City Official with a Crowbar

San Francisco is in a weird place, but most, if not all Dem cities are safe. Thiessen is the proliferation of guns in a lot of places. For Chicago were stuck between somred states that let everyone have a weapon.

San Francisco is not a bad city.

[kidfresh512]

What's going yo be interesting with this is if it opens a way for other companies to directly sue DeSantis and weirdly, i can see him going the way Cruz did. Or Rubio.

Maybe, just maybe, Florida Dems can use this yo make a push?

They need to get the receipts. How much is all of DeSantis culture war and presidential run campaigning costing the regular Florida voter? From flights of migrants from Texas to DC that had nothing to do with Floridians. To fighting Disney. Campaigning and trips across the country and Japan now apparently.

They still need to do grass roots outreach though. Florida has swung more red now not really a swing state. They need unimpeachable quality candidates there.

[Panfoot]

They need to get the receipts. How much is all of DeSantis culture war and presidential run campaigning costing the regular Florida voter? From flights of migrants from Texas to DC that had nothing to do with Floridians. To fighting Disney. Campaigning and trips across the country and Japan now apparently.

They still need to do grass roots outreach though. Florida has swung more red now not really a swing state. They need unimpeachable quality candidates there.

We have a real issue down here of just being completely dry on candidates for the Dems and it's a hard problem to solve when it seems hopeless to even try and fund a campaign.

[Darkspellmaster]

We have a real issue down here of just being completely dry on candidates for the Dems and it's a hard problem to solve when it seems hopeless to even try and fund a campaign.

I take it part of the issue is just getting dems to stay given the Republicans down there?

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Timothy Jones, a former Missouri state legislator and the head of ALEC in Missouri. He might have seemed like a bit of a conspiracy theorist, because he passed legislation to prevent the implementation of environmental measures from the United Nations’ Agenda 21 conspiracy theory. But any doubt he was a kook goes out the window when you see the lengths he went to in support of the Birther conspiracy theory, signing off on the original lawsuit filed by “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz, claiming Joe Arpaio’s investigation into the birth certificate had “uncovered the truth”, and supporting the Birther Bill pushed by fellow state legislator Lyle Rowland. Once Jones left office, he apparently decided he never wanted to have to run for election again, going out of his way to say as many racist things as he could about unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, like “black elites are more of a threat to the black community than the Ku Klux Klan”, or get on social media to defend racist remarks about black-on-black crime made by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of JoAnn Windholz, a former one term member of the Colorado House of Representatives who won office in 2014 by a mere 104 votes. Days after the shooting rampage by James Roland Dear at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, Windholz blamed THE VICTIMS of that massacre for bringing the attack upon themselves. 60,000 people signed a petition calling on her to resign, and began discussing a recall election, but they figured it would be cheaper instead to just endure her for the rest of her term and be rid of her in 2016. For their patience, they were rewarded with a few rather anti-LGBTQ votes from Windholz, including her vote against a ban on gay conversion therapy in Colorado.

On this date in 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Kurt Schaefer, a former Missouri State Senator who who served on that body from 2009-2016, and while staring down the prospect of term limits in the 2016 election, figured he’d run for Missouri Attorney General. That campaign wasn’t going Schaefer’s way, and it looked like he’d be facing a loss to Josh Hawley, based on early polling. And that was unacceptable for Schaefer, who decided if he couldn’t hook his way into the AG spot, he’d crook it. Thus, he contacted Hawley’s boss at the University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe, and tried pressuring him to deny Hawley unpaid leave from his teaching job and force him to be unable to enter the race. That obviously is a breach of ethics. An official complaint against Kurt Schaefer for his actions was filed shortly after the primary, which Hawley won with 65% of the vote (likely boosted by the story already being in the media). During his eight years in the Missouri State Senate, he also led investigations into Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri (finding no evidence of wrongdoing like he expected to after seeing the Center for Medical Progress’ “sting” video, at taxpayer expense, of course), or how he wasn’t just opposed to raising the Minimum Wage in Missouri, he actually floated the idea of punishing Kansas City for trying to raise it themselves by eliminating their earnings tax. Schaefer, was turfed out of office by term limits in 2016.

It was on this date in 2018 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Bill Lant, a former member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 2010-2018. Back in 2014, where he wrote an opinion editorial that featured a 68 year old Lant discussing his high school reunion, and one of his favorite parts was how all the pretty cheerleaders he had the hots for but couldn’t woo back in the day didn’t show up because they “didn’t want us to see how old they looked.” That might seem a little misogynist, but then when you read the whole story, where Lant discusses a woman who DID show up who he remembered for filling out a tight sweater five decades ago, but as he remarked, “Time has not been kind to that girl! What was stretching the cardigan 50 years ago is now bumping the belt.” We know, a Republican who only seems to regard women as sexual things. Shocking. Fast forward a few months, and Lant was sponsoring right-to-work legislation in Missouri, not that he wrote it, of course. He was handed the bill by the conservative organization ALEC, which finds schmucks like Lant to push forward whatever idiot ideas they come up with in state legislatures around the country. While some Republicans might argue somehow gives “freedom” to workers… but Bill Lant’s too much of a dumbass to lie to the people of Missouri. He actually boasted about how right-to-work laws had lowered average hourly wages in states where it had passed, and laughed about how the reward workers got was… “less wages, more work”. (Again, why no one seriously ever challenged this ***hat for his seat…) In 2017, in a hearing in the Missouri House of Representatives regarding discrimination law, he silenced a witness, Ron Chapel, called from the NAACP called to give his expertise, choosing to instead berate and whitesplain how discrimination works to him. He then refused to allow Democrats to continue questioning Chapel during their own time with the witness. Missouri’s Democratic House Minority Leader summed it up quite nicely, saying, “A white man abused his power to stop a black man from expressing a contrary view, and on legislation that seeks to turn back the clock on Missouri’s anti-discrimination laws, no less. This situation is simply dripping in irony.” Lant faced term limits for his seat in the Missouri House of Representatives in 2018, and at the age of 72, does not seem to be up t the task of running for statewide office, or a spot in the Missouri State Senate.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled former Iowa State Senator Bill Dix, who was in the Iowa state legislature since 1996, and actually made a run for Congress to represent Iowa’s 1st Congressional District in 2006. However, while serving as the Majority Leader of the Iowa State Senate, Dix abruptly resigned under the cloud of what appeared to be a combination of sex scandal and ethics scandal. Yes, the double-whammy of political ruin came in March of 2018 when Dix was filmed on video out at a bar in Des Moines kissing a woman who was not his wife (yes, he is married), but was in fact, a lobbyist who was apparently hunting for some… policy shifts. Go figure, only about five years earlier, Dix was the same person who fired a caucus communications director for reporting a hostile work environment at the state capitol with sexual harassment being a part of the normal culture. Also, he liked to brand himself an anti-LGBTQ “defender of marriage”, who co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Bill Dix resigned in disgrace.

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”profiled George Papadopoulos, the dumbass former Trump 2016 campaign staffer who helped draw enough attention to himself by boasting about Russians helping them try to get access to Hillary Clinton’s e-mails while drunk that it drew the attention of the FBI, and then when Special Counsel Robert Mueller followed up by questioning him ,he lied to investigators and ended up being found guilty and doing jail time. As a result, he was mocked by President Trump and those loyal to him for being “just a coffee boy”, which is false, but a hell of a burn. Now, most people after living through that kind of saga would just write a tell-all book, or go on a talk show tour to cash in on their fame… (he and his wife are trying to cash in on his ill-gotten fame to get a reality show) but call it a career. But George Papadopoulos is a special kind of stupid, and thought being a felon who got caught lying about a foreign power interfering in American elections would be a great launching pad towards having a career in Congress, specifically in California’s 25th Congressional District, to replace Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill. He insisted there was a “deep state” conspiring against the Trump administration, but said virtually nothing about what his stances on issues were, but specifically did endorse Donald Trump’s stupid idea for a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border. George Papadopoulos ended up finishing eighth out of fourteen people who were running for the seat, earning a whopping 2% of the vote. His wife, Simona Mangiante, promptly filed to divorce him after the election while posting on social media that he was abusive, and that she regretted ever defending him in public.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Rayla Campbell, a 2020 Republican candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Massachussetts’ 7th Congressional District, aspiring to get stomped on Election Day by the incredibly popular Democratic Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. Campbell unsuccessfully sued to try and get on the ballot (she only got 1,200 votes in the primary and needed 2,000 signatures to get on ballot in the general election), and ended up being a write-in candidate who only got 695 votes, or 0.2% of those cast in the district. However, we’re giving a quick profile to Rayla Campbell for her support of Qanon, as her campaign page was chock full of photos of her wearing a Qanon t-shirt, with the “WWG1WGA” slogan, making her yet another Republican running for Congress who bought into the deranged conspiracy theory. Including with some proud anti-vaxxers protesting the flu shot. That might be a good thing to remember because Rayla Campbell has designs on elected office again in 2022, already working towards being elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. Hopefully, that will not come to pass, and she does not become a perennial candidate trying her luck at winning office.

On this date in 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”profiled Kelly Ernby, a 2020 candidate for District 74 of the California State Assembly who narrowly lost in the GOP Primary for that seat.Ernby was the deputy DA of Orange County, California, and had been challenging laws to require vaccine mandates in the very blue state of California. She herself, was also unvaccinated a year after the vaccine became available. So it was that she was dedicated enough to her own conservative principles that she remained unprotected from a preventable death, caught Covid-19, was unaware she was even sick, and died of a blood clot at her home suddenly in January of 2022. We would hope that there would be a lesson here that other conservatives pushing back against vaccines might learn from this, but given the dedication to cognitive dissonance the Republican Party had after Herman Cain’s death after attending a Trump rally without mask mandates in 2020, we wouldn’t expect them to learn anything from a tragic death like Kelly Ernby’s, either. As she has passed on, we will profile another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1199-60, since this was established in July 2014.


Mehmet Oz
Welcome to what is the 1199th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing incredibly corrupt doctor turned snake oil salesman Mehmet Oz, who was a 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. Like any person with no scruples who finds themselves on television regularly to express terrible opinions that can get people killed by ignoring science, Dr. Oz was the choice of Donald Trump, who continually rallied support behind Oz to make him the nominee for the Senate seat being vacated by Pat Toomey. Keep in mind, though, that Trump only begrudgingly chose Oz SECOND because his first choice, Sean Parnell, was accused of spousal abuse by his wife.

While Dr. Oz might not be a domestic abuser, he was a clueless, soulless, complete dope as a candidate. Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, is a giant of a man who comes from a blue collar background, and has always been extremely crass and candid to win over working class voters. So Dr. Oz’s campaign had to make sure he appealed to blue collar Pennsylvania voters to convince them he was the guy who understood the plight of the working man. And that’s why he released a video complaining about the price of crudites in a local grocery store (that he shopped at himself so much he called it the wrong name)… and… yeah, he clearly didn’t understand the assignment. Perhaps his campaign trying to fight back against Fetterman by mocking his health after he had a stroke wasn’t a great look, either.

Do you know what else might have helped Dr. Oz win over voters in Pennsylvania? IF HE WASN’T LIVING IN A MANSION IN NEW JERSEY. Which he touted in a very public interview with People magazine less than two years before announcing his attempt to win office in Pennsylvania. And had been voting in New Jersey. Hell, he didn’t vote in the United States in 2018, but did vote in Turkey, where he and his family still hold dual citizenship.

And hey, Dr. Oz had enough Republican values, what with being a shill without a conscience, being a hypocrite whose family emigrated to our country but was running on anti-immigrant statements, having terrible opinions about the issue of abortion (“abortion should be a decision between a woman, her doctor, and local elected officials”), lending his platform to people who would promote gay conversion therapy, and having blind fealty to Donald Trump, whether it was letting him use his show to promote the results of his supposed health exam, or losing whatever credibility he had left as a physician by backing Trump’s assertation that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, worked as a treatment against the Covid-19 virus (it actually put those who took it more at risk).

Hell, he parroted Trump’s calls to re-open schools during the Covid-19 pandemic far too soon, boasting that only 2-3% of kids would be killed if they did. And if there's a Republican trait these days, it's indifference to the deaths of children (life doesn't matter once it's out of the womb).

But his qualifications as being a widely known medical huckster made him hard to trust, given his history of promising miracle cures, whether it be “fat-burning raspberry ketones”, “strawberries for teeth whitening”, “green coffee bean extract for weight loss” or “lavender soap for leg cramps”, there was a mountain of evidence to question this man’s ethics. But it’s not as if he was some quack mad scientist who conducted horrible experiments or anyth-

HOLD UP, HE KILLED HUNDREDS OF DOGS DURING A STUDY WITH NO TANGIBLE POSITIVE RESULTS?

Let’s be real, here… the 2022 election, based on historical precedent should have been a “Red Wave” for Republicans, but with Donald Trump at the wheel, picking some of the worst candidates, they shot themselves collectively in the foot. Mehmet Oz may not have been an abuser, or a criminal of any kind, but he somehow could be argued as one of his worst choices. The real surprise is that Oz even pulled 47% of the vote, and the race against Fetterman was as close as it was.

[worstblogever]

Gonna say I wrote the above profile and picturing WestPhillyPunisher with a smile on his face.

That, and continuing to remember, "Oh yeah, Dr. Oz did THAT too." while researching it. There was a bottomless hole of stories about him being a schmuck.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Disney sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, alleges political effort to hurt its business





I mean it's clearly obvious DeSantis is being vindictive and wielding state power as a political tool because Disney criticised his hate laws.

Non stop bashing them, threatening to open prisons next door to their properties to get his way. Trust Disney lawyers and DeSantis loud mouth to get him in trouble

I’m surprised Disney waited THIS long before unleashing the monster that’s their legal team, given all the **** DeSantis heaped on them. Maybe I’m wrong, but we might be looking at the start of the endgame of DeSantis versus Disney, how long can Wretched Ron use taxpayer money to fund a court fight he can’t possibly win against The Mouse with its near inexhaustible bank book before citizens yell “ENOUGH”? Stay tuned….!

[Kuwagaton]

I wonder if it works like a general lawsuit for harassment?

[Deathstroke]

The battle is just starting and this could have far ranging consequences for Florida itself..just because DeSantis can't be a man and take his L.

That tends to happen when you are an imitation of a man with little dick syndrome.

[Anthony Shaw]

San Francisco is in a weird place, but most, if not all Dem cities are safe. Thiessen is the proliferation of guns in a lot of places. For Chicago were stuck between somred states that let everyone have a weapon.

San Francisco is not a bad city.

Bakersfield is the place you want to avoid, unless you have a healing factor.

Kevin McCarthy is no help.