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

[hyped78]

Sounds like you love to hate them!

Yes, I love to hate authoritarianism and intolerance (see what I did there?)

Like we say in my country, "Nu komt de aap uit de mouw"

[DrNewGod]

My uninformed guess: Trump read the room to perfection when he launched his campaign in 2015, tapping into all the fear, rage and frustration whites felt at being marginalized and knocked from the top of the societal food chain, and turned it into a platform of rampant grievance and bottomless hatred of minorities, gays, Muslims, liberals, so-called elites and immigrants. Trump gave those “downtrodden” multitudes a voice, telling them he hated the same people they hated, and it was love at first sight, the cult was born, and it shows zero sign of going away so long as Trump continues breathing.

I doubt Trump plans as much as he reacts. The 2015 campaign was a branding stunt, and his whole camp was flabbergasted when he won. However, I agree that his whole life perfectly prepared him to draw those bigoted souls to him (both the blatant and the gentile), and further agree that there's no ending it while he's alive. Maybe not even then if somebody manages to pull a Saul/St. Paul in the wake of his death.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled former Georgia Congressman Paul Broun, who became infamous for giving a speech in front of a backdrop of dozens of deer trophies where he claimed that evolution and the Big Bang Theory were "lies from the pit of Hell", which was really sad considering he was on the House Science Committee. He was also a big climate change denier, telling the John Birch Society that "global warming is a hoax" in 2010, advocating for racial profiling by the TSA to harass people that appeared to be Middle Eastern, and repeatedly calling the Obama administration socialist or comparing its policies to Nazi Germany. Broun’s affection for appearing around dead animals also didn’t serve him so well after the death of Zimbabwe's cherished Cecil the Lion in July of 2015, when Broun responded to the controversy by bragging about killing and eating a lion himself in Zimbabwe, displaying the taxidermied remains in his office. Broun tried running for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat in 2014, and lost in the primary to David Perdue. Because of Georgia election law, that left him unable to also run for his U.S. House seat, which he had to give up in January 2015, and he decided to try and weasel his way back into Congress in 2016 by challenging incumbent Republican Doug Collins for his seat to represent Georgia’s 9th District, instead of his old one back in Georgia’s 10th District, that is now occupied by Jody Hice. Broun got crushed in that race, only receiving 22% of the vote. In 2020, Broun again attempted to return to office in his old seat in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District and this time finished in third, not even qualifying for a runoff. He’s now in his seventies and we’re unsure if he’ll ever weasel his way back to Washington, D.C., but we’re watching, just in case.

In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented our original profile of the one-term U.S. House Representative for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, Jason Lewis, who did manage to win office in 2016 over Democrat Angie Craig by about 6,000 votes, to replaces former House Rep. John Kline in Congress. This is unfortunate, as we have discussed, Lewis was most famous for being a radically conservative radio talk show host in Minnesota, who famously quit live on air right after promoting his own Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian website that has interesting topics like “exposing the global warming hoax,” promoting a “Free Market Education,” and championing states’ rights. Lewis just up and walked off the job in about the most unprofessional manner possible. No matter how good the results have been for Governor Mark Dayton in Minnesota as the state has come to boom under Democrats’ policies, Lewis has refused to give an iota of credit to them for it, clinging to ideology before any reason. And that’s putting it mildly… Let’s just recap some of the highlights from Jason Lewis’ time on air… in 2011, he brushed off sexual assault accusations against Republican presidential candidate, the late Herman Cain, because he hadn’t raped anyone, saying, ”I don't want to be callous here, but how traumatizing was it? [...] How many women at some point in their life have a man come on to them, place their hand on their shoulder or maybe even their thigh, kiss them, and they would rather not have it happen, but is that really something that's going to be seared in your memory that you'll need therapy for? You'll never get over? It was the most traumatizing experience? Come on! She wasn't raped!” On November 9th, 2012, he reacted to the election loss of Mitt Romney by looking at the racial demographics of it… and lamenting, how white people were committing “cultural suicide” and “political suicide” with their failure to procreate at the same level as Hispanics. “I don’t want to make a racial thing out of this. I’m just stating a fact.” he said, beside himself about President Obama having won a second term. Two days later on November 11th, 2012, Lewis was still looking at demographics that the Republicans lost, this time female voters, and he called women “ignorant” for voting for Obama. Yeah, Lewis is that terrible, and then some. How much of an ***hole does someone have to be to pitch-hit for Rush Limbaugh? Because Lewis got to do that back in in 2008, where he compared taxing the rich to “slavery”, and in 2009 he decided to start demonizing victims of Hurricane Katrina were “a bunch of whiners”. He’s used the Supreme Court’s previous rulings on slavery as well when discussing their rulings on same sex marriage, and even since leaving talk radio, has spoken about the income disparity between whites and African Americans in less than endearing ways, saying, “the median income for blacks in America would make them rich in most African nations.” Of course, there are two phrases we’ve seen in discussing Jason Lewis’ opinions that seem to have a common thread. What do you think of when you think of when you see “states’ rights”, and “slavery”? It might be that you just thought of the Civil War, and guess what? Lewis has some opinions on that. He once suggested a Constitutional amendment to allow states the right to secede from the union, and also questions why the Civil War needed to be fought, arguing that it was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery, at all (which is false). And we all know how important defending the Confederacy is to voters way north of the Mason-Dixon line in Minnesota, right? Lewis flat out refused to hold a town hall and explain his vote for Trumpcare or say even his vote to prevent federal funding to go to his own state to fund a light rail project in Minnesota and his constituents have responded by protesting outside his actual home. Prior to Jason Lewis’ rematch in 2018 against Angie Craig, … even more audio recordings have emerged of him from his days in talk radio, including even more thoughts on race, which were all just bigoted false assumptions about the African-American community. Audio also was uncovered where Jason Lewis gave his thoughts about Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke, and big surprise, he’s an ***hole who had Rush’s back, and longed out loud for the “good old days” when a man could call a woman a slut without being called a sexist for it. That had a lot to do with why Jason Lewis was bounced from office, only getting 47% of the vote against Angie Craig and why he failed to unseat Senator Tina Smith in 2020.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Billy Earley, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 44th Congressional District, and a guy we’re perplexed as to the reasons why he was running for Congress as a Republican, given his posing for photos in front of a mural of George Floyd and his commitment to combating alleged discrimination by the California medical board targeted against African-American doctors. That makes him an unlikely GOP candidate given how the Republican Party has taken quite the turn towards white nationalist ideology the past few years. Still, we have to include Earley in our far-too-long list of Republican Congressional candidates from 2020 who were touting the Qanon conspiracy theory, which Earley promoted on both his Twitter and Facebook pages. We’ll note he also was promoting conspiracies about Hunter Biden and Burisma on his Instagram page, so he seemed to be diversifying in the amount of right-wing conspiracies he was peddling. Billy Earley finished in third place in the primary for California’s 44th Congressional District in the House of Representatives, getting 13% of the vote as the top Republican to run for the seat. We’re not sure if this was a one-off campaign, or if he’s going to continue resurfacing in California elections going forward, but we’ll set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1130-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Jim Lamon
Welcome to what is the 1130th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Jim Lamon, a 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona who made his fortune in solar energy, but in spite of that background in green energy, he was trying to be the hardest of right-wing candidates for the seat, a tough feat to even attempt given that he was running against Blake Masters, who was popping off with white-nationalist rhetoric all the time. Still, Jim Lamon wasn’t above trying… his first campaign ad was just him declaring, “LET’S GO BRANDON!” Like, that’s it. Just a f*** you to the sitting president was his campaign pitch. But it made him a viable choice to most Arizona Republicans.

Needing to further build his bonafides, he started rolling out cosplaying as an Old West sheriff and in the most put-on podunk accent, declare how he would wipe out the ”DC Gang”, lising President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and his potential opponent, Sen. Mark Kelly with childish nicknames. Critics did point out that it was probably in bad taste to attack Sen. Kelly with a “gunslinger” motif, given that his wife is a victim of gun violence… but if there’s nothing Republican voters love these days, it’s showing a complete lack of empathy and subtle projections of violence against political foes.

Lamon’s online rants against Critical Race Theory and/or demonizing immigrants garnered him further instance with GOP voters in Arizona… but he still wasn’t going in as hard as Blake Masters. So he decided to attack Masters being financially propped up by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, but that backfired after the Masters campaign pointed out that Lamon’s solar company was doing business with China. Yes, the entire Arizona GOP Senate primary boiled down to who could make the more effective xenophobic attack against the other candidate, which tracks for the Arizona Republican Party.


Jim Lamon lost in the GOP primary, finishing second behind Blake Masters and getting just 28% of the vote. We would like to believe this will be his only run for political office. He’ll probably be too busy explaining to federal authorities why he participated in the Trump administration’s “false electors” scheme as part of his coup attempt.

[Jack Dracula]

My uninformed guess: Trump read the room to perfection when he launched his campaign in 2015, tapping into all the fear, rage and frustration whites felt at being marginalized and knocked from the top of the societal food chain, and turned it into a platform of rampant grievance and bottomless hatred of minorities, gays, Muslims, liberals, so-called elites and immigrants. Trump gave those “downtrodden” multitudes a voice, telling them he hated the same people they hated, and it was love at first sight, the cult was born, and it shows zero sign of going away so long as Trump continues breathing.

He recognized the dissatisfaction people felt with almost two decades of congressional gridlock (mostly due to Republican stonewalling) and channeled it by presenting himself as the non-career politician who would go to Washington and "drain the swamp".
He also virtue signaled to the borderline and unabashed racists who'd been fretting over illegal immigration and Muslims for years. His popularity really demonstrates the power of grievance-based politicking.
Here's a clip of what I like to think of as Ted Cruz's "Come to Jesus" moment when he began to realize the changes Trump was having on the electorate and which way the wind was beginning to blow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZCMcoC8X8

I think the Trump supporters in the video would normally be embittered and disengaged from politics, but in Trump they thought they'd found someone they could relate to.

[hyped78]

He recognized the dissatisfaction people felt with almost two decades of congressional gridlock (mostly due to Republican stonewalling) and channeled it by presenting himself as the non-career politician who would go to Washington and "drain the swamp".
He also virtue signaled to the borderline and unabashed racists who'd been fretting over illegal immigration and Muslims for years. His popularity really demonstrates the power of grievance-based politicking.
Here's a clip of what I like to think of as Ted Cruz's "Come to Jesus" moment when he began to realize the changes Trump was having on the electorate and which way the wind was beginning to blow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZCMcoC8X8

I think the Trump supporters in the video would normally be embittered and disengaged from politics, but in Trump they thought they'd found someone they could relate to.

I guess the question is - he had 74 million votes in 2020. Why are so many million embittered and disengaged from politics and what can be done to bring them to a more moderate stance?

[worstblogever]

I guess the question is - he had 74 million votes in 2020. Why are so many million embittered and disengaged from politics and what can be done to bring them to a more moderate stance?

Remind them that cruelty is not strength, and empathy is not weakness.

And that whatever version of Christianity the conservative movement has instilled in them are missing that point.

[Vakanai]

I guess the question is - he had 74 million votes in 2020. Why are so many million embittered and disengaged from politics and what can be done to bring them to a more moderate stance?

Hmm...if you make bigotry a moderate stance, that'd work. But otherwise, probably not much.

[hyped78]

Remind them that cruelty is not strength, and empathy is not weakness.

And that whatever version of Christianity the conservative movement has instilled in them are missing that point.

I like that

Hmm...if you make bigotry a moderate stance, that'd work. But otherwise, probably not much.

But I mean, you need to moderate people and ease divisions, or else the possibility of a civil war - as some folks have been pointing out in this thread - will always be present.
And you don't need to moderate 74 million people, because some people are forever lost, but you need to recover a good chunk of those people

[WestPhillyPunisher]

He recognized the dissatisfaction people felt with almost two decades of congressional gridlock (mostly due to Republican stonewalling) and channeled it by presenting himself as the non-career politician who would go to Washington and "drain the swamp".
He also virtue signaled to the borderline and unabashed racists who'd been fretting over illegal immigration and Muslims for years. His popularity really demonstrates the power of grievance-based politicking.
Here's a clip of what I like to think of as Ted Cruz's "Come to Jesus" moment when he began to realize the changes Trump was having on the electorate and which way the wind was beginning to blow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErZCMcoC8X8

I think the Trump supporters in the video would normally be embittered and disengaged from politics, but in Trump they thought they'd found someone they could relate to.

How in hell could those lunkheads possibly relate to a trust fund baby who grew up on third base with a silver spoon in his mouth and lived in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper penthouse? How could they relate to Trump who wouldn’t so much as piss on the lot of them if they were on fire? I gotta say Trump sure bamboozled those idiots.

[babyblob]

How in hell could those lunkheads possibly relate to a trust fund baby who grew up on third base with a silver spoon in his mouth and lived in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper penthouse? How could they relate to Trump who wouldn’t so much as piss on the lot of them if they were on fire? I gotta say Trump sure bamboozled those idiots.

Ive lost track of how many times I have heard

"Trump has the touch of the common man. He is one of us. He knows what it is like."

Really does he?

[Vakanai]

But I mean, you need to moderate people and ease divisions, or else the possibility of a civil war - as some folks have been pointing out in this thread - will always be present.
And you don't need to moderate 74 million people, because some people are forever lost, but you need to recover a good chunk of those people

I don't think many of those people can be recovered. They're homophobic, islamaphobic, xenophobic, transphobic, anti-semitic, racist and downright nasty. And you asked what could drive them to be more moderate, not prevent civil war - heck, for some of them civil war is probably much more moderate than some of what they'd like to do.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Ive lost track of how many times I have heard

"Trump has the touch of the common man. He is one of us. He knows what it is like."

Really does he?

Look , the man knows what its like to struggle like Dusty Rhodes would say. Every morning he wakes up and takes a crap on a golden toilet ! Man is WORKING CLASS !

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I don't think many of those people can be recovered. They're homophobic, islamaphobic, xenophobic, transphobic, anti-semitic, racist and downright nasty. And you asked what could drive them to be more moderate, not prevent civil war - heck, for some of them civil war is probably much more moderate than some of what they'd like to do.

Even worse, many of those people don’t WANT to be recovered. They were forced to hide their hatred for most, if not all their lives, then along came Trump who gave them free rein to publicly fly their hate flag and they loved that freedom. Bottom line: they’re not about to go back under their rocks.

[Zauriel]

Why doesn't the US just move election days to weekends, Saturday or Sunday? I know it's set by the Federal Government, but can't it be changed to boost voting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electi...United_States)

By 1792, federal law permitted each state legislature to choose Presidential electors any time within a 34-day period before the first Wednesday in December. A November election was convenient because the harvest would have been completed but the most severe winter weather, impeding transportation, would not yet have arrived, while the new election results also would roughly conform to a new year. Tuesday was chosen as Election Day so that voters could attend church on Sunday, travel to the polling location (usually in the county seat) on Monday, and vote before Wednesday, which was usually when farmers would sell their produce at the market. Originally, states varied considerably in the method of choosing electors. Gradually, states converged on selection by some form of popular vote

That is how 1st Tuesday of November became a tradition. It all began when America was still an agricultural country. Besides Sunday is the day when many voters attend church. Many people, including me, don't attend church mass on Sundays. But there is still a lot of people, including many Democrats, who attend church on Sundays, so why move the election day to Sunday that would conflict with their churchgoing schedule unless you want to prevent the evangelical Republicans from voting.