Rogue soldiers and errant drone strikes from Western forces have killed a lot more than 39 people!
Rogue soldiers and errant drone strikes from Western forces have killed a lot more than 39 people!
On this date in 2014, 2015, as well as 2016, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of North Carolina Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, who used a unique strategy for reaching Congress... she rode the 2010 Tea Party Wave on the strength of her campaigning hard against the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City, and while spewing out that sort of bigoted nonsense, accused Anderson Cooper of being anti-religion for questioning her pro-Christian/anti-Muslim worldview. After barely winning her first term, North Carolina’s 2nd District was gerrymandered after redistricting to be far more conservative, and keep her in office. During her second term, she voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, and drew headlines for saying she was keeping her Congressional salary, saying, “I need my paycheck.” She’s also argued for men getting to pay less for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act because “they won’t be using the maternity leave”, tried spinning the GOP’s “War on Women” by saying the real war was being pulled off with the ACA, and in July 2014, advised her fellow Republicans that the only way they, as a party, would win over female voters in elections was to “bring policy down to a woman’s level”. After Ellmers' bailed on the harsh anti-choice bill, HR 7, because was not thrilled with the language about the definition of rape in the bill and angered the anti-abortion movement, Ellmers fell from grace with the anti-choice movement so fast, they were demanding she be left off the GOP's special committee to investigate Planned Parenthood. Between that, and rumors of an affair began to swirl involving Ellmers, and California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, she was damaged enough to finish third in the GOP Primary in 2016. She is now mercifully out of office.
It was on this date in 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Mark Holbrook, who ran for Congress in 2016, attempting to win office in Maine's 1st Congressional District and pulling an upset in the GOP Primary by all of 58 votes. He thus advanced to attempt to unseat Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, but lost in that effort with only 42% of the vote. That is ironically an improvement upon his performance in the 2014 elections, when he only got 28% of the vote in an attempt to get into the Maine state legislature, and we're not sure how his bizarre football-themed ad could have helped elevate his profile. Especially when you consider Maine's 1st District is pretty far away from Foxboro, Massachusetts, where the nearest NFL team plays. Well, Holbrook's TV ads were also centered around portraying himself as an "anti-establishment" candidate, which got him as far as it did, adding in a little irrational criticism of Barack Obama, and winning over GOP voters by supporting Donald Trump's insane idea for a border wall. Which, if there's a state that shouldn't be worried about folks coming across the U.S./Mexico border on foot, you'd think it would be Maine, right? Well, Holbrook was actually claiming he was harder to the right on immigration than even Donald Trump, if you can believe that. Looking at Holbrook's issue stances, it's noteworthy that under his stance on abortion, he gripes about "selling baby parts" which tells you he still believes in the hoax perpetrated by the Center for Medical Progress. But on the majority of issues, Holbrook's stances are vague, or unspecified. He was contemplating running for U.S. Senate, but announced he was mounting a challenge to Rep. Pingree again in 2018, this time not even having an opponent to face off against in the GOP Primary for the seat. In July of 2017, Holbrook decided he would write an op-ed in the Portland Press Herald where he gave his humble thoughts that "fear-mongering by liberals on ACA repeal incites hostility and violence". How dare you tell people that the Republican plan to repeal the ACA would leave 23 million people without insurance and tens of thousands more people would die ANNUALLY as a result! Those facts provided by the Congressional Budget Office and medical organizations nationwide are just "fear-mongering"... This was only a slightly less inflammatory quote than seeing Mark Holbrook actually echo the disgusting comments by Donald Trump after white supremacists and Neo-Nazis carried out a terror attack and blamed "both sides" for the violence, saying they were "both sides of the same hate-filled coin". As a result, this time Mark Holbrook’s efforts in getting elected were far more pathetic, and he only got 32% of the vote in his rematch against Congresswoman Pingree.
On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Bryant “Corky” Messner, a 2020 candidate for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, looking to unseat Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Messner advanced out of the Republican primary with an endorsement from Donald Trump, which was earned by firmly and completely applying his lips to Trump’s arse to defend him, no matter how stupid Trump got. Literally, Messner even defended Donald Trump’s comments about potentially treating Covid-19 by injecting the infected with disinfectant, saying it was just “aspirational talk”. (There was a literal uptick in calls to poison control after people injected themselves with bleach.) However, the other big thing related to Covid-19 and Corky Messner is that he believes the conspiracy that the Chinese government deliberately spread it throughout the world, and as such, he would like to punish Chinese students at American universities and ban them from taking science or physics classes, and force them to only have the option to study economics or “the American Constitution”. At other points, Messner has called on Chinese students to be banned from the United States entirely, and called for nations from around the world to refuse to pay any debts back to China for failing to contain Covid-19. We’ll add that Messner also denies the science behind climate change, but that probably has something to do with him having hundreds of thousands of dollars personally invested in oil and gas companies. But while it already looked like he was going to lose in November to Jeanne Shaheen, last month Messner’s odds became incredibly long when it was announced he was under investigation because he runs a charitable organization that supposedly aids college students in need of financial assistance… but per the former Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, it has only awarded one scholarship in the decade that it has existed. And being accused of running a fraudulent charity is exactly on-brand for someone endorsed by Donald Trump, y’know? Corky Messner ended up losing to Jeanne Shaheen by over 15 points. As he seems to have decided to sit out the 2022 elections, we will set aside his profile at this time, however, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1025-50, since this was established in July 2014.
Julie Buria
Welcome to what is the 1025th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Julia Buria, who was a 2020 candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 6B. Buria, a member of the Mountain Iron City Council, made several references to the QAnon conspiracy theory on her Twitter account, and shared a report from a QAnon site purporting to show “Black Patriots” protecting a lone police officer from “Antifa Terrorists.” In April 2020, she shared a post from a woman who wrote “If only people knew how many Satanists are actually in the government” and “Pedophilia is going to bring the whole house of cards down.”
Y’know, just your boiler plate discussion of issues.
Buria then decided to make herself more notorious by comparing the response to the Covid-19 pandemic being led by Governor Tim Walz to the Holocaust. Because any government solution at any level is, in the minds of Republican kooks, the same as the systematic extermination of millions. . Minnesota Republican Party leaders insisted that Buria had apologized for her egregious remarks, but Buria undermined that by insisting that she was forced to apologize and did nothing wrong.
Julie Buria got far closer to winning office than she ever should have, losing with 45% of the vote. We hope this will be the last of her being seen in politics in Minnesota, or any level.
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There is a compelling logic that equally gets ignored and that is what happened in the past and what is occurring in the present. Nazi war crime and Japanese war crimes happened in the past as did the number of Imperialist atrocities by the west in Africa. Water under the bridge I afraid and the conditions of what is essentially history can not be remade to some sort of "original state" without and equal crime. The concern must always be with the now. Drone strikes or interventional invasions, human trafficking, ethnic cleaning are the crimes of today. China has played its victim card for a half century now and one doesn't pay for the other unless one wants to embrace the idea that history is just a collection of never-ending feuds and payback.
Or you could just do a simple search and easily find a result.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/92452...few-polling-pl
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On that note, China currently seems to be going out of its way to ignore those optics with one recent powerplay in Afghanistan involving rare earth minerals. And yes, it does involve, let’s say “brushing shoulders” with the Taliban to get at those nice rocks.
Long article on where Afghanistan may be headed, and one that isn’t sentimentally “loaded”, BTW, but some rather noteworthy details:
Mining. Afghanistan is estimated to have $1 trillion worth of minerals in its mountains and other parts of the country. China in particular has been eager to mine for these metals, which include ones that are critical to the modern supply chain, such as lithium, iron, copper and cobalt. This may not be possible in the short run, though.…….”Gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet” or something or other?Non-Western countries. Several governments have been reportedly helping the Taliban financially, including Russia, Qatar, Iran and Pakistan, and these countries may continue to do so. After the previous Afghan government collapsed in August, I was told by ex-central bank officials that a country in the region, likely Qatar, injected millions of dollars to support the Afghan economy. China in particular stands out for its potential ties to the new government, as the Taliban have recently declared the country their “principal partner.” On Sept. 8, 2021, China gave the government $31 million in emergency aid. Besides mining minerals, China is also interested in extending its Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure development project – into Afghanistan.
Last edited by Ragged Maw; 09-20-2021 at 12:14 PM.
This guy's an interesting politician. The Attorney General of Iowa has announced his plan to run for another term. He has been in office for ten terms, and these haven't even been consecutive. He ran for Governor in 1990, lost, went into private practice and then ran again in 1994. He was first elected in 1978, although he was the losing Democratic candidate in 1974. He didn't even have a Republican opponent in 2018.
https://www.kcrg.com/2021/09/18/tom-...lection-plans/
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Iirc he's the longest serving state attorney general in US history, just like our last governor was the longest serving Gov in US history in terms of total years of holding the spot...
maybe the Ili Rebellion sides wouldn't "map well" today with career politicians and right-wing pundits... but they'd probably get treated like heroes by a lot of academics, Hollywood, social media, and students... if people can become adoring fans of AOC and Bernie Sanders, they could learn to like these guys too.
I bet you could make a sure-fire Oscar nominated movie about it. just spin it as...
the ILI Rebellion in 1944. we could have the main character be Abdulkerim Abbas. that man's life practically reads like a Hollywood script already: doomed and forbidden love affairs, freedom fighters, espionage, war, tragic death scenes, etc.
it'd be like (Asian) Malcom X + Romeo and Juliet + Lawrence of Arabia.
sure, the fact that most of them were Asian Muslim socialists would turn off a lot of parochial right-wingers... in spite of some obvious cultural differences, it wouldn't be hard for Americans to read their own nation's historic struggle for independence onto (and alongside) the Ili Rebellion.
https://www.comicsands.com/rozar-har...0594-306341081
Oh, WBE! Is Donna Rozar in your queue yet?
Watching television is not an activity.
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On this date in 2014 “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had a profile of Jake Knotts, a former South Carolina State Senator who after having a long-standing feud with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, continued to take out his rage upon his heir-apparent, current Gov. Nikki Haley, during her campaign to follow in his footsteps. Perhaps if he really wanted to stop her from being elected, he shouldn’t have campaigned on behalf of her opponent, Andre Bauer, by going on conservative radio to say, “We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.” Knotts then continued to try to defend that racist statement by using the “Saturday Night Live” defense, that it was for a comedy show, before alternating back to claiming Nikki Haley was some sort of Sikh Manchurian Candidate and throwing men out of the woodwork who claimed they had bumped uglies with Haley. Knotts has been out of office, and politically off the radar now since 2012.
It was on this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Tim Murphy, a seven-term U.S. House Representative for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. Murphy, as you might recall, admitted to seeing the “terribly shocking” Planned Parenthood videos TWO WEEKS before they were made public. When asked why he would have kept silent after witnessing such alleged atrocities (that were proven to be false), he gave the mealy-mouthed response of, “Um, I don’t know why. All I know is I saw it and he said he was going to post it eventually, so that’s all I know” before Murphy seemingly then ended the interview by trying to perform a Jedi Mind Trick, telling the reporter, “This interview didn’t happen”. That isn’t even his first botched media confrontation, either. Back in 2006, a reporter from KDKA television, Andy Sheehan, interviewed Rep. Murphy and presented him with documents that showed he had his District Office employees were (illegally) also working on his re-election campaign. Murphy, on camera, snatched the documents away from Sheehan, and refused to give them back, not realizing apparently that a reporter would be smart enough to have COPIES of evidence. Murphy's bad reactions to this weren't over, though... he fired his scheduler, Jayne O'Shaughnessy, for blowing the whistle. Luckily for the Congressman, though, the Bush administration Dept. of Justice didn't bother to follow up with an investigation of any wrongdoing, because they weren't going to throw a fellow Republican ot the wolves. Murphy was also one of many Republicans fear-mongering over the Ebola Virus prior to the 2014 elections, by calling for a travel ban that medical experts said would only exacerbate the problem. His staunch conservative voting record includes stances against same sex marriage, equal pay for women, support for radical pro-life legislation that includes voting to keep Terry Schiavo alive against her wishes, and a need to investigate or decry every faux-scandal the GOP have cooked up. He has been re-elected five times in spite of being rated as one of the most corrupt members of Congress by CREW. Congressman Murphy made some headlines around this time in 2017 when the self-professed "defender of marriage" got caught running around on his wife, and admitted to having an extramarital affair, after the details were exposed in his mistress' divorce proceedings. And, shock of shocks, there was a point where Murphy and his mistress had a pregnancy scare, and he was immediately pleading with her to have an abortion, as was revealed in e-mails and text messages between the two. After having his arm twisted by what passes for Republican leadership, Tim Murphy quickly resigned, his career likely damned.
On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Pastor Mark Burns, who in 2018, was one of thirteen… yes THIRTEEN challengers trying to run for U.S. House of Representatives in South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, hoping to replace the chief exploiter of Benghazi, Trey Gowdy, who opted to resign after realizing he wouldn’t be able to turn House Oversight Committee hearings into a three-ring circus while in the minority party after the Blue Wave hit. Anyway, Mark Burns is renowned for being the sort of Evangelical charlatan who endorses the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” that ignores most of the actual teachings of Jesus when it comes to wealth and charity, and was drawn into the spotlight of the GOP when Donald Trump asked that he give the opening prayer at the four-day hate rally that the 2016 Republican National Convention. In that benediction, Burns referred to Democrats as “the enemy” and called upon God to defeat Hillary Clinton, so that’s a little much. That was far from the last he was heard from during the 2016 campaign, though, because he began serving as a Trump surrogate, by doing things like defending Trump from being openly racist towards Judge Gonzalo Curiel while sharing racist memes about Democrats, including a cartoon of Hillary Clinton in Blackface on social media, as one does in the name of the Lord. Not even a week after making headlines with that behavior, Pastor Burns sat down for an interview with Victor Blackwell of CNN, who came with receipts to read him for filth. Specifically, Blackwell wanted Burns to address several falsehoods on his church’s website that falsely claimed he had a Bachalor’s Degree (he only went to college for a semester), falsely claimed to have membership in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, and served six years in the Army Reserve (South Carolina National Guard, in reality). When the interview was obviously not going Burns’ way, he tried claiming that he’d only agreed to talk to Blackwell “off the record”, and got up and walked out. Within 24 hours, the church’s website deleted the lies from the pastor’s resume. Mark Burns then tried claiming he was the victim in everything for being “a black man supporting Donald Trump for President.” Pastor Burns continued to defend Donald Trump from warranted accusations that he was a racist for years, including in January of 2018 when Trump was facing public scrutiny for referring to Haiti and several African nations as “s***hole countries”. After another disastrous interview, this time with MSNBC’s Joy Reid where he embarrassed himself trying to shield Donald Trump from being called a racist when he obvious is, he made the very levelheaded decision to release a video on social media where he asked why Reid “doesn’t move to Haiti?” Joy Reid responded by quoting the Bible back at the pastor, which is fitting since he seems so confused about what’s actually in the book in the first place. The only real steps Mark Burns took to repair his image with voters prior to his attempt at getting elected to Congress in 2018 was to start wearing colored contacts and make people think he had blue eyes. It didn’t help much. Burns finished eighth out of the thirteen Republican candidates vying for Trey Gowdy’s old seat, only getting 2.5% of the vote. Back in 2017, he was making noise about challenging Lindsey Graham for his Senate seat in 2020, but he ended up sitting that election out.
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