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

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in both 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 6th District, Bill Johnson, who was first elected in… wait for it… the 2010 Tea Party Wave. He’s managed to win four more elections, which has a lot to do with the fact that Ohio’s 6th has a +16 lean in Congress. He’s usually not known for awkward quotes, and he has the benefit of providing absolutely no name recognition. Honestly, is there anything more generic of a name for a Congressman than BILL JOHNSON? That stands out as much as it would if he was one of the townspeople named Johnson in Blazing Saddles.

We give some points on the dumb scale to Johnson for denying climate change science. But it’s not just that he waves away the facts, it’s that he claims he’s an expert because he says he is a “scientist” himself. For the record, Bill Johnson’s “science background” is a degree in computer science… that was awarded to him back in 1979, quite the golden age for high level technology. And it was that resume that Johnson used to stifle an actual scientist from the EPA in a Congressional hearing.

What concerns us more, though, is the level of Islamophobia that seems to have taken root in Rep. Johnson over the past few years. You might wonder why the guy would support Donald Trump’s bigoted idea of a Muslim travel ban, but then you realize, Trump is hardly the only bigot who he’s palling around with these days. Johnson has been identified as one of two GOP members of Congress allying himself with Daniel Pipes, an anti-Muslim activist who has for decades been maligning practitioners of Islam, and after the Oklahoma City Bombing, insisted it was carried out by Muslims, and not anti-government militia goons Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Bill Johnson and Ron DeSantis both co-founded the “Congressional Israel Victory Caucus”, which advises extreme action to help Israel wipe out Palestine, including withholding water from Palestinian settlers.
 
Delightful. Don’t see how that could be a reason that peace won’t be brought to the MidEast, y’know, trying to get people on one side to die of thirst.

During Johnson’s first eight years in office, he wasted years of taxpayer time trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, twice voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, voted to shut down the government in 2013, and in 2018, when his party controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, and voted for the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.

[worstblogever]

Bill Johnson coasted to re-election with 74% of the vote in 2020, and has resumed being a partisan bag of d***s after spending the Trump administration voting with his party 98% of the time:

• May 15th, 2020: Johnson votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Johnson signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that she won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Johnson votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Johnson votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Johnson votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Bill Johnson votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Johnson votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Johnson is one of 172 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 19th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• November 5th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Johnson votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. Bill Johnson would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: Bill Johnson is one of 192 Republicans who vote against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Johnson votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly now domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Johnson votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.

Bill Johnson is currently chaining himself to the legacy of Donald Trump, responding to the Mueller report back on April 18th, 2019, by saying it revealed, “no collusion, no obstruction, no anything”, in spite of all the times that Robert Mueller’s report mentioned things Trump did that qualify as obstruction of justice, all of the hundreds of links between the Trump campaign and Russian oligarchs, and the nameless criminal activities that he forwarded to other prosecutors.

The day of the impeachment vote, Bill Johnson mocked the proceedings by calling for a “moment of silence” for the 63 million voters who voted for Trump and were having their voices ignored by the impeachment. In case you’re wondering, no, he hasn’t called for any moments of silence as hundreds of thousands of victims of Covid-19 die because of the incompetence of the same president Johnson bent over backwards to try and keep in power.

Bill Johnson is, make no mistake, a seditious, anti-democratic mother****er, as five days after the violent coup attempt carried out by Trump supporters because Republicans were supporting “The Big Lie” that the election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump, he was still challenging election results publicly, including in Pennsylvania, a state Joe Biden only won by over 80,000 votes that Johnson isn’t from. Johnson faced zero consequences for it, and won the GOP primary in Ohio’s 6th district, running away with 77% of the vote.

He seems a lock for re-election in 2022 to a seventh term in office.

*resumes drinking*

[Panfoot]

It does appear that this person does not have the mental fortitude to go to a comedy show, and should not be taken seriously.

"By the time he was done, I thought I was going to throw up. My sister actually left and had a breakdown."

"Please reblog if you can, for evidence of his continued transphobia. I'd really hate for my Chapelle nightmare to be for nothing."

John Mulaney would be too edgy for people this sensitive. Comedy clubs are a poor fit for this kind of audience.

**** off with that "grow a pair" bullshit.

[Totoro Man]

They hate democracy. They hate that people of color, women, gays and non-Christians are on an equal footing with them, something that isn’t the case in autocracies. Frankly speaking, I can’t think of any other plausible reason.

this makes no sense to me.

autocrat is gender neutral and racially neutral in general usage. that means it can include people of color, women, gays, and non-Christians.

Frederick the Great
(generally considered gay, married for over 50 years and didn't have a single child in spite of being the King of Prussia? seems like a pretty big rainbow colored flag. yeah, he did some cold-blooded stuff... but on the sliding scale of 'enlightened despots', he's not that awful)

Emperor Hadrian (probably one of the most famous homosexuals in history)

Nicolai Ceaucescu was an atheist
Stalin was an atheist

Olga of Kyiv
(she springs to mind because I just watched "the Northman" a week or so back... and the movie strongly suggests that the main characters were supposed to be her parents)

Catherine the Great
Elizabeth I
Haile Selassie
Robert Mugabe
Idi Amin

I can't really think of a single Grand Caliphate, ancient Chinese emperor, or Pharaoh in history that was 'Christian'

autocrats tend to be representative of the dominant ethnic and social group... but that doesn't always make them white, heterosexual, and Christian.

[Totoro Man]

**** off with that "grow a pair" bullshit.

LOL, how gracious and polite of you.

at least he thought the author was sincere.

"grow a pair" sounds somewhat better than "is this person a delusional idiot or a feckless liar?" (which, I have to admit, was my first reaction to reading that stuff)

if people don't like Chapelle then they shouldn't be giving him free publicity complaining about him on social media! they should focus on other stuff that they like. life is too short. it's not like all of those people who complained about "Married with Children" or "South Park" ever got them taken off the air.

[Wildling]

Madison Cawthorn coming up with Dark MAGA sounds like he just came up with a mid-boss name for the kind of fighting or urban chaos videogames his party would blame on Fox the next time a white extremist mass murdered with pretty transparent and traceable intentions.

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

I'm just glad Summer Lee won after AIPAC among others spent MILLIONS trying to derail her.

[Tendrin]

LOL, how gracious and polite of you.

at least he thought the author was sincere.

"grow a pair" sounds somewhat better than "is this person a delusional idiot or a feckless liar?" (which, I have to admit, was my first reaction to reading that stuff)

if people don't like Chapelle then they shouldn't be giving him free publicity complaining about him on social media! they should focus on other stuff that they like. life is too short. it's not like all of those people who complained about "Married with Children" or "South Park" ever got them taken off the air.

Do you ever stop and think that maybe focusing on the reaction of the person in the audience is, maybe, a way of deflecting attention from the homophobic/transphobic contents of a popular comedian's routine who has continued to platform transphobia (including trans-women-will-rape-women-in-prison jokes) in the face of an ongoing backlash to their very existence as people in the deadliest year on record for violence against trans people?

You probably should.

Life would be great if we could alll just agree to let transphobic comedians wither away in silence, but that's now how, historically, change has been delivered.

Once again, James Acaster said it best.

“If people on the internet get upset about it, the comedian’s always like, ‘Bad luck! That’s my job. I’m a stand-up comedian, I’m meant to challenge people. If you don’t like being challenged, don’t watch my shows. What’s the matter guys, too challenging for you?'”

Repeating the last part twice, to light laughter from the audience, Acaster then delivers the punchline.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Because you know who’s long been overdue a challenge? The trans community!”

“Oh, they’ve had their guard down for too long, if you ask me,” Acaster continues. “They’ll be checking their privilege on the way home now thanks to you, ya brave little cis boy!”

[jetengine]

Chapelle does give "Old comedian desperately trying to cling onto modern topics" vibe. No one gives a **** about his twitter hot takes which is why the complaints roll in. Then again, find me a bloke his age who doesn't have shitty views about the Trans community? Exceedingly rare.

In other news...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politi...drink-27030008

The Tory party are now like Rats in a bag, not content with savaging others, they turn on their own. Date Rape Drugging their friends and colleagues so they can sexually assault them.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

The LA Times last year put up this story last year. It details a history of comedy where some got threats over material they did to arrests. It shows that subjects deemed controversial to joke then , wasn't years later.

In fact I never knew about Mae West getting arrested. Or Dice Clay cancelling a show worried in Texas he'd get arrested.

I have always had this stance comedy is about being free up there. Not everyone is gonna laugh or like jokes from every comedian. There are acts I never did like myself ( never understood Carlos Mencia's lure really). Or Pete Davidson now. Saw his stand up...not a fan.

But there folks like Robin Williams , Richard Pryor etc that just pushed boundaries.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lat...le%3f_amp=true

[worstblogever]

The LA Times last year put up this story last year. It details a history of comedy where some got threats over material they did to arrests. It shows that subjects deemed controversial to joke then , wasn't years later.

In fact I never knew about Mae West getting arrested. Or Dice Clay cancelling a show worried in Texas he'd get arrested.

I have always had this stance comedy is about being free up there. Not everyone is gonna laugh or like jokes from every comedian. There are acts I never did like myself ( never understood Carlos Mencia's lure really). Or Pete Davidson now. Saw his stand up...not a fan.

But there folks like Robin Williams , Richard Pryor etc that just pushed boundaries.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lat...le%3f_amp=true

Since you're talking comedians that pushed boundaries the right way...

There's a 4 hour George Carlin documentary that just dropped on HBOgo.

Highly, highly recommended.

[Tendrin]

Nobody is pushing boundaries by punching down at the trans community.

And thanks, WBE. I need to watch that.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Since you're talking comedians that pushed boundaries the right way...

There's a 4 hour George Carlin documentary that just dropped on HBOgo.

Highly, highly recommended.

I'll check it out ! I have HBO Max so hopefully it goes there.

Speaking of Carlin , NBC back in the 1970s didn't want him to host SNL. Due to his controversial act. Lorne himself stood by the move as NBC relented.

[jetengine]

Nobody is pushing boundaries by punching down at the trans community.

And thanks, WBE. I need to watch that.

I think that's the problem really. They're a hideously small minority so it feels needlessly mean to punch down.. Meanwhile if a comedian started making cracks about Chapelle being Black or a Muslim I have a strong suspicion he'd be pretty offended.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of John Ludlow, the Clackamas County Chairman of the GOP who has literally asked the question, "Do you want a piece of me?" while bullying colleagues on county board, and without a vote, trying to throw people off it without a second thought. He also has a tendency to comment on the record when tragedies happen to blame them on a minority group, like when he declared the Boston Marathon bombing was the "work of an A-rab", or asking a police officer about a recent shooting and telling him it was his "bet they were Mexicans". Ludlow also makes inappropriate sexual comments, like when he volunteered his opinion about a female legislator receiving an appointment because "she shoves her perky titties in people's faces". Not surprisingly, Ludlow’s ascent into GOP politics was halted, the more his name made the papers.

On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Dennis Hedke, a former member of the Kansas House of Representatives who prior to taking office, was geophysicist who worked for oil and gas companies, and his main focus in Kansas politics was centered around climate change denial. Hedke doesn't just possess your regular brand of climate change denial, oh no, he takes it to a whole other level. Dennis Hedke wasn't content to be the only one questioning the science of climate change, but he wanted all public school teachers to do so as part of their curriculum, and filed legislation to try and make that happen. If we're not being plain enough... Hedke wanted to disseminate lies to young, impressionable minds, to agree with his own worldview. In February of 2013, Dennis Hedke led the charge in Kansas to produce a bill to prohibit the implementation of the United Nations' Agenda 21 environmental treaty. When it failed, he instead targeted environmental sustainability itself, submitting legislation to prohibit the use of public funds to promote sustainable development. When critics pointed out that his long-established ties to the oil and gas industry might be causing a conflict of interest for him, Hedke played dumb, and said "the possibility never crossed his mind". But we can't say that Dennis Hedke is just a kook based on his voting record and his will to ignore scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change. No, he's also delightfully Islamophobic as well, as was evidenced when he raised a stink about the Minneha Core Knowledge Magnet School having an educational display which included the Five Pillars of Islam. Nevermind the fact that the school also has displays to give the basic tenets of Christianity (including a painting of the Last Supper), Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism, because their history department liked to teach a history of those five religions and their impact on the world. Just the one for the Islamic faith seemed "appalling" in Dennis Hedke's mind. Hedke chose not to run for re-eleciton in 2016, and has faded from view.

It was on this date in 2017, as well as 2018, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”published profiles of Corey Stewart, a former Trump 2016 campaign staffer who ran for office to be the Governor of Virginia as a Republican here in 2017. That was honestly a pretty surprising development, though, considering Corey Stewart went off the reservation in his role with the Trump campaign, and posted some staggering race-baiting online to "support" his candidate that was beyond the pale. And yet, Stewart still wasn't held accountable for any of that, and got fired in October of 2016 from the Trump campaign after he took part in a protest by Trump voters outside the Republican National Party headquarters, angry at the perception that the GOP wasn't doing enough to prop up Donald Trump after the "Access Hollywood" tape surfaced. To give you an idea of how much acrimony Corey Stewart had/has for his own party, this was his explanation for joining that protest was “I called them establishment pukes because that’s how they make everybody feel." Thus, when long time Bush administration and former RNC head Ed Gillespie entered the campaign to be the next Governor of Virginia when the election would be held in 2017... Corey Stewart threw his hat into the ring to challenge the stalwart in the Republican primary. So how does one paint themselves as a true conservative when they're running agaist a former RNC Chairman? Well, in an AMA thread on Reddit that he was hosting, Corey Stewart decided to outright call Gillespie a "cuckservative" to win the Alt-Right, Pepe-Lovin' demographic, and "RINO" is apparently too nice of a thing to say. Stewart of course, panders to racists and xenophobes as much as possible, including not just on his staunch anti-immigration views, but in the key issue in his campaign to differentiate himself from Gillespie... he LOVES the Confederate flag. Bizarrely, Stewart, who grew up in Minnesota, has made Confederate heritage the cornerstone of his campaign. The strategy helped Stewart get the backing of White Nationalists and Neo-Confederates, as if that's supposed to be a good thing. And, that nearly was enough, as Stewart came within 5,000 votes of winning the GOP nomination for Governor of Virginia. We hthought that Corey Stewart getting narrowly beaten would be the end of our profiles of him, and he’d quickly fade from view… however, he inexplicably turned around and filed for office again in 2018, this time hoping to knock of Senator Tim Kaine to be elected to U.S. Senate. What was Stewart’s strategy in that race? Well, for starters, he’s decided to revive the Birther Conspiracy about Barack Obama not actually having been a citizen of the United States and defending noted racist pedophile Roy Moore, claiming that the girls Moore was trying to prey on when he signed their high school yearbook while in his thirties and trying to date them was a forgery. In February 2018, Stewart rallied outside the Virginia State House of Delegates, outraged that the Virginia GOP worked with Democrats to pass the expansion of Medicaid in the state. Of course, Stewart could not voice his grievances tastefully, instead waving around a roll of toilet paper and attacking the virility of his fellow Republicans, calling them “garbage”, “flaccid”, and saying he “felt sorry for their wives”. Corey Stewart narrowly won the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 2018 by 5,000 votes, only to get trounced by Tim Kaine by half a million in November.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Bob Nonini, a candidate to be the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho in 2018 after he had served fourteen years in both the House and Senate of the Idaho state legislature. His voting record was hard to the right on anti-choice and pro-gun mentality, he also supported unconstitutional bills to try and nullify the Affordable Care Act, and to try and make English the official language of the state. That… is the tame part of his story. You see, what’s interesting was that Nonini pulled off a fourteen year career in spite of being arrested in 1983 for cocaine possession with intent to deliver. While Nonini tried claiming the arrest was because he was in a car with a friend with some marijuana under his seat, and not cocaine, further media research showed that Nonini had the charges dropped because he became an informant on, John Wayne Clark, the other man in the vehicle. However, the idea that Nonini was just caught up in someone else’s activities goes out of the window when an airplane he owned crashed due to pilot error… and that pilot was also known to be running cocaine into the country from Mexico. That… is a lot to unpack. (Not unlike a kilo, we would wager.) Bob Nonini somehow was the Tim Allen of Idaho politics. But it’s still not the only wild story we have about Bob Nonini in 2018. Because after the public learned of Nonini’s sordid past, he thought maybe he could survive being labled a coke dealer and still win office if he could win over the GOP electorate by declaring that women who have abortions should be punished, and when asked what that punishment should be, he offered up the mild sentence of ”the death penalty”. Bob Nonini’s anti-choice extremism proved to be a foolish gambit, as he finished a distant fourth in the GOP Primary with only 15% of the vote.