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

[The Cool Thatguy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/u...ings-guns.html

I thought the Americans were supposed to be easy-going, friendly people… well compared to us, the French. Has this country changed that much?

We just have better PR than most

[Tami]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/u...ings-guns.html

I thought the Americans were supposed to be easy-going, friendly people… well compared to us, the French. Has this country changed that much?

The US is more like 50 different countries, all trying to get along with each other because they have to. Each State is different, and now those differences are becoming more obvious, once again. We've been in a state of 'Civil Cold War' for nearly 200 years. When the war is quiet, we can seem friendly, but that varies state by state.

[numberthirty]

The maintenance man in North Carolina had just arrived to fix damage from a leak. The teenager in Georgia was only looking for his girlfriend’s apartment. The cheerleader in Texas simply wanted to find her car in a dark parking lot after practice.

Each of them accidentally went to the wrong address or opened the wrong door — and each was shot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/u...ings-guns.html

I thought the Americans were supposed to be easy-going, friendly people… well compared to us, the French. Has this country changed that much?

When it comes to this...

I would not be all that shocked if at least a couple of these instances wind up being folks where there are mental health issues in play(as opposed tho them just being garden variety "Regular" Americans...)

[Mister Mets]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/u...ings-guns.html

I thought the Americans were supposed to be easy-going, friendly people… well compared to us, the French. Has this country changed that much?

It's a country of 300,000,000+ people. Some of them are trigger-happy morons.

[thwhtGuardian]

It's a country of 300,000,000+ people. Some of them are trigger-happy morons.

The point of the article was that these things wouldn't happen if we weren't a nation bristling with guns.

[worstblogever]

It's a country of 300,000,000+ people. Some of them are trigger-happy morons.

China and India have over four times our population, yet no mass shootings.

It's all the guns, and no regulation upon them, genius.

[InformationGeek]

Speaking of which, here's one from Florida.

A couple in Broward County said someone shot at them after they ended up at the wrong address while delivering groceries for Instacart.

Waldes Thomas told NBC affiliate WTVJ that he was delivering for Instacart Saturday, and his girlfriend Diamond D’arville was with him. The couple said they were on the phone with the customer trying to find her house but ended up at a home on Southwest 178th Avenue.

The couple said they saw a flashlight as they were about to drive off the property.

“He’s like, ‘Who are you?’ and we’re saying we’re with Instacart,” D’arville told the news station.

Things quickly took a terrible turn after the man got into his truck and pulled up behind the couple.

“I had seen him pull out a gun and that’s when I said, ‘We got to go, we got to go,'” D’arville told WTVJ. “I was scared, I’m not going to lie.”


D’arville said her car was hit several times. The couple said they decided to pull over about a block away from the home and called Davie police.

[The Cool Thatguy]

China and India have over four times our population, yet no mass shootings.

It's all the guns, and no regulation upon them, genius.

Also, the fantasies of fighting the government when/if it becomes oppressive.

Because a well regulated militia is gonna beat a trillion dollar expense budget.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date back in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” had a profile of Stephen “Stephanie” Meade, who ran on the ballot for Congress to represent California’s 51st District in the U.S. House of Representatives as “the first transgender candidate to run for Congress”. We don’t think doing so would make anybody crazy or stupid, except for the fact that Meade was not actually transgender, but a transvestite who started wearing women’s clothes when he was in his eighties (and running as a part of a party that demonize the transgender community). His actual policy stances included eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood, a hawkish stance on foreign policy, and reducing the corporate tax rate. Oh, but rather than raising the minimum wage, Meade wanted it reduced to a mere $5 an hour. He also wanted to break up television and cable service providers, and finally get the United States to institute the metric system. Since he seems very unlikely to ever win office now that he’s ninety and the California GOP actively tries to throw him out of their meetings.

In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented its original profile of the U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Jackie Walorski, who during her time in the Indiana House of Representatives from 2004-2012, gained some notoriety for being a co-sponsor of a widely contested Voter ID bill to curtail the statistically non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud that led to a slew of lawsuits, was barely upheld in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge, and was then duplicated by various other Republican-controlled state legislatures to ensure voter suppression as a national tactic. What really made Jackie Walorski stand out, however, was her complete dedication to attacks on a woman’ right to choose, often sabotaging common sense legislation in the Indiana state legislature by adding on riders or amendments regarding abortion that would be the “poison pill” to make Democrats in Indiana forced to no longer support it. She used this tactic most famously (and disgustingly) to sabotage legislation to prevent hate crimes against the LGBTQ community by putting in an amendment to consider fetuses a protected group. Walorski decided to make the jump to national politics and hoped to ride the Tea Party Wave to Washington, D.C., to represent Indiana’s 2nd District in the 2010 elections, challenging Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly for his U.S. House seat. During that campaign, she spoke about privatizing Social Security, and with her radical record in the Indiana state legislature, voters still balked at the idea of putting her into office. Indiana’s 2nd District was gerrymandered after the 2010 elections by House Republicans so that Walorski could get another chance at weaseling her way into Congress again, once it had a +6 Republican lean, rather than the previous rating, only a +2 lean, that it had when she lost to Joe Donnelly in 2010. Donnelly didn’t want a rematch, and instead, ran a successful campaign in 2012 to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Walorski would lose any advantage she might have gained from fundraising, though, after she was involved in a scandal regarding her attempts to fundraise off of a Planned Parenthood “sting” video. No, not the ones that popped up over the summer of 2015. Walorski was using footage from a pro-life activist pretending to be a 13 year old girl and go to a Planned Parenthood to raise money for her campaign coffers even prior to that slander. She sent the fundraising letter out during a period when it wasn’t allowed, then tried saying the ethics committee who were investigating her for doing so were “overlooking the rape and sexual abuse of a 13-year old minor”. (Which, again, wasn’t true, she wasn’t 13, wasn’t raped or abused, and wasn’t pregnant.) Anyway, Walorski’s Democratic opponent was an Iraq War Veteran Brendan Mullen, and as the polling showed the race tightening in August of 2012, she made the classy decision to doxx him, and release his home addresses in Washington, D.C., to the public in a campaign ad. Sadly, this tactic may have worked, as Walorski won office by only about 3,800 votes, 49 to 48%.(And we remind you, this was after the district was gerrymandered to help her as a Republican.) Since she arrived in the Capitol, Walorski's voting record included votes against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voting to defund the Department of Homeland Security to protest President Obama's executive orders on delayed deportations, voting for the 2013 Government Shutdown and all anti-choice legislation that comes to the floor. Oh, and she did react to the more recent faux-controversy over Planned Parenthood because of the Center for Medical Progress bogus "sting videos, accusing the organization of "selling baby body parts." Which if you recall, is the exact kind of rhetoric that motivated Robert Dear, the shooter who attacked and killed several people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, so thanks for that, She twice voted against impeaching Donald Trump, signed her name to the amicus brief to the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election, and voted against certifying the electoral college votes. Walorski spent the Covid-19 pandemic everything she apparently can to assure it continued as long as possible, calling the concept of vaccine passports that would be required to be carried for admission to venues as “Un-American”, because there’s nothing more representative of the USA than having the medical capability to fight a disease but allowing plague carriers to still spread it. Walorski was killed in an automobile accident on August 3rd, 2022. As such, we will set aside her profile at this time, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1197-60, since this was established in July 2014.


Eric Berthel
Welcome to what is the 1197th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Connecticut State Senator Eric Berthel, who was first elected to office back in 2016, after serving one term in the Connecticut House of Representatives. He has somehow been re-elected twice after it was discovered he was a supporter of the Qanon conspiracy theory, enough so that he had a “WWG1WGA” bumper sticker on his car. Once caught repping a conspiracy theory cult, Berthel released a statement that he didn’t support the wilder parts of Qanon, but just the parts about rooting out “government corruption”, which, y’know, are the accusations about the left having secret sex dungeons for pedophiles to harvest adenochrome he says he doesn’t support.

Berthel has predictably been on the wrong side of all reasonable legislation pitched by Connecticut Democrats, including voting against support for abortion rights, bans on bump stocks, minimum wage increases, and limiting the use of solitary confinement in state prisons.

He is currently using an “investigation” by Project Veritas about Connecticut schools having discriminatory hiring practices against conservatives to try and manufacture a scandal that doesn’t exist to garner outrage, to no avail. This technically would be the second time he was caught flogging a conspiracy theory, and we’re not thinking it’s the last.

[numberthirty]

China and India have over four times our population, yet no mass shootings.

It's all the guns, and no regulation upon them, genius.

He was not talking about mass shootings...

Someone specifically brought up this particular "Type..." of instance of someone getting shot.

Which probably undercuts "It's All About The Guns..." since only three of the gun owners in America decided to just shoot someone who seemingly crossed a personal boundary.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Also, the fantasies of fighting the government when/if it becomes oppressive.

Because a well regulated militia is gonna beat a trillion dollar expense budget.

Yeah, a well regulated militia of overweight weekend warriors against a military that can shove the barrel of an M1 Abrams tank through a living room window or drop a smart bomb down a chimney from five miles up. Not much of a contest.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Yeah, a well regulated militia of overweight weekend warriors against a military that can shove the barrel of an M1 Abrams tank through a living room window or drop a smart bomb down a chimney from five miles up. Not much of a contest.

Tanks, planes...

Any modern army has too much of a tactical advantage for a militia to overcome. Idiots think that they'll be like Ukraine vs. Russia, when in reality they'll be Syrian rebels vs. Russia.

Anyone remember that? Assad's doing fine now, thanks to Russia's army, of all things.

[Tami]

Yeah, a well regulated militia of overweight weekend warriors against a military that can shove the barrel of an M1 Abrams tank through a living room window or drop a smart bomb down a chimney from five miles up. Not much of a contest.

The only things that saves them is the rule (I forget if it is in the constitution or someplace else) that says that the US Military can't be deployed in the US against US citizens. However, if they are crazy enough to renounce their citizenship, :shrug:, who knows?

[Spike-X]

Also, the fantasies of fighting the government when/if it becomes oppressive.

The people saying that have been proven time and time again to be cowardly, lying hypocrites, who are never anywhere to be seen when there's actual government oppression going on, unless it's to cheer on the oppressors ('Back The Blue!'*). The only "oppression" they're remotely concerned about is the thought of somebody coming to take their toys away.

* Only applies when the Blue are beating and killing black people, not when they're giving white folks speeding tickets.

[Gray Lensman]

Also, the fantasies of fighting the government when/if it becomes oppressive.

Because a well regulated militia is gonna beat a trillion dollar expense budget.

I blame the fear mongering from certain media outlets telling viewers that half the country is the enemy who wants nothing more than to destroy them and all they hold dear.