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

[AnakinFlair]

GOP have just decided they are going to continue to lean into the worst insticts of the party. Instead of trying to win new voters, just take away the power of their vote by removing who they elect. We saw it in Tennesee with Justin Pearson and Justin Jones being expelled and having to win their seats back.

We have seen it right here in Houston, with the school district being taken over by the state and the voters elected officials just being superseded.

DeSantis campaign stagnant and looking weak as ever after everyone big upped him and made him out to be a "rising GOP star". Fighting with Disney, war on "woke", and now straight up dismissing elected officials, and one of the few elected black women at that in the state.

One of those gentlemen (I think it's Pearson) still hasn't gotten his committee assignment back. Guess who's stalling on that one?

[Jack Dracula]

GOP have just decided they are going to continue to lean into the worst insticts of the party. Instead of trying to win new voters, just take away the power of their vote by removing who they elect. We saw it in Tennesee with Justin Pearson and Justin Jones being expelled and having to win their seats back.

We have seen it right here in Houston, with the school district being taken over by the state and the voters elected officials just being superseded.

DeSantis campaign stagnant and looking weak as ever after everyone big upped him and made him out to be a "rising GOP star". Fighting with Disney, war on "woke", and now straight up dismissing elected officials, and one of the few elected black women at that in the state.

I predict this bug will become a feature in many more Red states going forward. They’ll turn the country into a Christian authoritarian dictatorship from the ground up one state at a time.

[kidfresh512]

Millions struggle to pay AC bills in heat waves. Federal aid reaches only a fraction

DENVER (AP) — Bobbie Boyd is in a losing battle against near triple-digit temperatures in northwest Arkansas.

Her window air conditioner runs nonstop and the ballooning electric bill carves about $240 out of her $882-a-month fixed income. So the 57-year-old cuts other necessities.

Boyd eats one meal a day so her 15-year-old grandson, who she's raising alone, can have two. She stopped paying car insurance and skips medical appointments.

As climate change ratchets up temperatures across the U.S., millions of the poorest Americans grapple with the same agonizing decisions as Boyd — between perilous indoor heat or paying costly bills. While President Joe Biden has invested billions into federal programs that subsidize the poorest Americans' energy costs, the money reaches only a fraction of the most vulnerable during the sweltering summer months.

Nationwide, nearly 30 million American households struggle to pay their energy bills and qualify for the subsidy, but less than 3% receive it for their summer bills, according to the latest, preliminary federal data.

Compared to food stamps, which reach over 80% of the eligible population nationwide, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, falls far short even as climate change helped make July Earth’s hottest month on record and air conditioning becomes a means of survival.

That's because most states run out of their federal funding every year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program.

I would like to see what states are using the funding they receive on that they run out of the intended money by the summer months. I would hazard a guess that it somehow doesnt reach these poor communities to just be repurposed somewhere else.

Last week I had to come out of pocket and immediately pay thousands of dollars to replace my AC that failed in the middle of this weeks long 100degree plus weather we have had. Luckily I have emergency portable AC in the garage. And I have the savings etc to cover these things. Because it was uninhabitable and likely dangerous heat in here. I cannot imagine the people that live check to check in situations like this.

[CaptainEurope]

X marks the spot:

Special counsel obtained search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account

Twitter’s initial resistance to complying with the warrant resulted in a federal judge holding the company in contempt and levying a $350,000 fine.


“Although Twitter ultimately complied with the warrant, the company did not fully produce the requested information until three days after a court-ordered deadline,” according to the 34-page opinion by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The district court thus held Twitter in contempt and imposed a $350,000 sanction for its delay.”

It’s unclear what Smith was seeking from Trump’s account. Trump used the account actively in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, promoting false claims of election fraud, calling his supporters to Washington to “stop the steal” and mounting attacks on his rivals. Obtaining data from Twitter might have revealed patterns about Trump’s use of the account, whether others had access to it and whether there were any draft statements that were unsent.

Twitter’s fight with Smith’s team was rooted in prosecutors’ decision to serve the warrant along with a “nondisclosure order” that prohibited Twitter from notifying Trump — or anyone else — about the warrant’s existence.

“Based on ex parte affidavits, the district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses. Moreover, the district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,’” the appeals court noted.

Twitter complained that the order violated the First Amendment and that the federal judge overseeing the matter at the time — U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell — should have blocked enforcement of the search warrant until the objection was resolved.

Free speech absolutism means tipping off criminals about investigations against them, apparently.

[Tami]

FBI fatally shoots man in Utah who allegedly threatened Biden, Alvin Bragg and others

The suspect was identified in charging documents as Craig Deleeuw Robertson.

On Monday, Robertson allegedly made a threat saying, “I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old Ghille suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 Sniper rifle."

Robertson’s threat to Bragg included calling him a political hack linked to George Soros and plotting to ambush him in a parking garage, the charging documents said.

“I’ll be waiting in the courthouse parking garage with my suppressed Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm to smoke a radical fool prosecutor that should never have been elected,” the charging documents said. “I want to stand over Bragg and put a nice hole in his forehead with my 9mm and watch him twitch as a drop of blood oozes from the hole as his life ebbs away to hell!”

[Vakanai]

FBI fatally shoots man in Utah who allegedly threatened Biden, Alvin Bragg and others

I hate that I'm somewhat happier that a man has died, but these radical terrorists deserve no human empathy. Just one less real burden to society.

[worstblogever]

FBI fatally shoots man in Utah who allegedly threatened Biden, Alvin Bragg and others

This guy... this guy was bragging about prepping an M24 sniper rifle and Ghillie suit for Biden's visit.

A suit to blend in with the foliage.

In the tropical jungle of... Salt Lake City.

...

Maybe the FBI spotted the patch of brush running around amongst the desert landscape, I dunno.

[AnakinFlair]

This guy... this guy was bragging about prepping an M24 sniper rifle and Ghillie suit for Biden's visit.

A suit to blend in with the foliage.

In the tropical jungle of... Salt Lake City.

...

Maybe the FBI spotted the patch of brush running around amongst the desert landscape, I dunno.

There are desert ghillie suits, I think.

That said, I imagine this man dressed like a cactus, slowly making his way across the landscape.

[babyblob]

There are desert ghillie suits, I think.

That said, I imagine this man dressed like a cactus, slowly making his way across the landscape.

I picture those old cartoons where they hide in the bush and pick the bush up and walk with it. THen drop down into the bush when someone is looking.

[Deathstroke]

I dunno, guys. Seems bad.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fo...ei=14#comments

Interfering with a democratically elected official...why is this even legal for him to do?

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published a profile on John Koster, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for Washington’s 1st District who took publicity photos of himself on the lawn of the home of his female opponent Suzan DelBene to taunt her, who really torpedoed his chances by claiming that rape exceptions for abortion shouldn’t be a thing because it was “just more violence on a woman’s body”. This was, of course, but days after Todd Akin, so Koster ended up losing in his third bid to get elected to Congress.

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” featured profiles of Jeb Bush, the former Florida Governor and 2016 presidential candidate who went from the consensus favorite to win the GOP nomination, to a goofy, pitiable mess before all was said and done. In that original article, we dug deep, and covered every last bit of detail that we could find on Jeb, because to be honest... he was widely thought by pundits to be the eventual 2016 GOP nominee for president, especially with a campaign war chest that exceeded $100 million. As such, we took hard aim at Jeb, going all the way back to the 1980s, where he frequently had shady business dealings with a Miami businessman who defrauded Medicare, all the way up to the interim after he left office as Governor and before his presidential run when he worked for Lehman Brothers bank. During his first failed campaign for Florida governor in 1994, he compared gay people to pedophiles, and when asked what he would do to help black people he answered, "Probably nothing." In 1995, Jeb wrote a book where he had a great idea for preventing single motherhood... SHAME THE WOMEN. Jeb, in case you forgot, ordered the voter rolls purged in the 2000 election, and threw tens of thousands people off them... primarily minorities, who would find out on election day that they were ineligible to vote in the election that Jeb's idiot brother would win by 537 votes in the state. Jeb has a bizarre and obsessive pro-life record, including the time in 2004 when he tried to give a state guardian to the fetus of a rape victim who had cerebral palsy in an attempt to try and stop the victim from getting an abortion, when he tried to stop a 13 year old ward of the state from getting an abortion even though her life was at risk, and his desperate attempts to force Terry Schiavo to not be allowed to die with dignity.

In 2015, Jeb was supposed to be making the case of why he was the best Republican for the job, because he was the moderate one... but quickly made people wonder how he was ever thought of as "the smart Bush Brother". In his first foreign policy speech, he incorrectly stated the number of ISIS troops as ten times the actual amount, could not successfully name the leader of ISIS, referred to Nigerian terror group Boko Haram as “Beau-Coup Haram”, and provided no details on what he would do differently than the status quo to better combat such foes. It didn't get much better from there, as Jeb said that his brother President George W. Bush would be his “chief adviser” on the Middle East, as well as Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz, and when asked by Fox News Megyn Kelly, “Knowing what we know today, that Iraq did not have WMDs, would you still have invaded?” Jeb said he still would have authorized the invasion, and it was not a mistake. After being lambasted for this, he gave excuses that indicated that he did not understand how hypothetical questions work.

Jeb also took time to praise Indiana's hugely unpopular "religious freedom" law, that allowed for discrimination and gave his support for the rights of Christian businesses to use their “religious freedom” to discriminate against LGBT citizens, and said that it would be “intellectual arrogance” to agree with scientists about humans driving climate change before criticizing Pope Francis’ stance on the environment. (Hint for you Jeb… good Catholics like you aren't supposed to question the Pope’s infallibility.) In response to the mass shooting in Charleston, S.C. at the AME church, Jeb Bush says he doesn’t “know what was on the mind of shooter” that made him kill those present. (The shooter, Dylann Roof, had already repeatedly stated it was racially motivated. For whatever reason, he chose to talk about “phasing out” Medicare, and did an about face on immigration by clamoring for “sanctuary cities” to be shut down. And lastly, right before we published that original profile, Jeb suggested we eliminate not just Planned Parenthood funding, but funding to all women’s health because “we don’t need it”.

And that was only in our first profile, in our second, we talked about the embarrassing Jeb! 2016 campaign, that seemed to be just one sad shot kicking a man while he was down. In June of 2016, Jeb was campaigning in Miami with his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, and said that he got her to admit that he's her favorite. Barbara Bush has always been noted as a brutally honest woman, and replied, "No I didn't." Jeb continued reversing his position on issues to try and keep up with the lunatic front-runner, Donald Trump, endorsing the use of torture, and going as far in his reversal on immigration to actually use the term "anchor babies" for the children of immigrants... when in 2013 Jeb wrote a GOP strategy about how to address immigration without looking insensitive to minorities, and advised them to not use the term "anchor babies" himself. To try and save face, then Jeb insisted he wasn’t actually badmouthing Latinos, he was referring to Asians when he said “anchor babies”, thus alienating a second minority group. But he wasn’t done. Jeb also managed to piss off Native Americans by coming out in defense of the nickname of the NFL’s franchise in Washington, D.C., argued against replacing the Voting Rights Act because “it isn’t necessary” and tried commenting on the police shooting of Tamir Rice but incorrectly named Chicago as the city it happened in, offering a meager “My bad…” when the mistake was pointed out to him.

By November 2015, Jeb's struggling campaign tried a new campaign slogan... "JEB CAN FIX IT". Unfortunately, it is quickly deflected into reminders of how he helped fix the 2000 election for his brother. A month later, at a Republican Primary debate, Jeb told Donald Trump that he will never be president, and Trump responded by saying he's "trying to be a tough guy" before pointing out the poll numbers that show he was "At 42. You're at 3." As things spiraled further out of control, Jeb started giving out plastic toy turtles to people on the campaign trail, reminding them of the old adage that "slow and steady wins the race". The end truly was near in February 2016, as Jeb gave a speech on the campaign trail, and after what seemed like a rousing promise to be an effective commander in chief, he is met with silence. He then filled it by quietly pleading, "Please clap." Jeb was utterly humiliated in his quest for the White House in 2016 and seems unlikely to ever hold office again.

It was in both 2017, 2018, and in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the U.S. House Representative from Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, Peter Roskam, who after serving in the Illinois state legislature from 1993 through 2006, served six terms in Congress since winning office in the 2006 elections. That’s no small feat, considering 2006 was a Blue Wave year, his opponent in that race was (now Senator) Tammy Duckworth, and he attacked her stance on the Iraq War as “cut and run” which is a hell of a thing to say to an Iraq War veteran who lost both her legs in that conflict in a helicopter crash. In spite of his rhetoric against Duckworth as well as accusations that he had plagiarized several issue stances on his campaign website from the National Republican Congressional Committee… he won the seat over Duckworth in 2006 with 51% of the vote to her 49% thanks in part to the party support he’d built up through the years. He wasthe target of an ethics investigation in 2013 after taking a $25,000 trip to Taiwan on the dime of Chinese Culture University. And that likely was his motivation for trying to defund the Office of Congressional Ethics at the start of the current session of Congress in January of 2017. Because what’s the point of being in Congress if you have to be ethical, right? Roskam here at FRED is also climate change denier. Back in his 2006 campaign, during a debate against Tammy Duckworth, he drew groans from the crowd after he called studies into global warming “junk science”.One of the pieces of legislation he once sponsored, that called for oil drilling in the Alaska Arctic Wildlife refuge.Roskam supported many of Trump’s craziest initiatives including his vote for Trumpcare and some support for Trump’s xenophobic Muslim ban, even as it was repeatedly overturned by the courts as unconstitutional. He cancelled all his scheduled town halls so far over the past year and a half, including bailing on attending a packed March for Our Lives town because of last minute “scheduling conflicts”, like sitting at home and cowering for his political future.In the 2018 elections, Roskam only got 46% of the vote, and that Democrat Sean Casten sent him packing.

[skyvolt2000]

GOP have just decided they are going to continue to lean into the worst insticts of the party. Instead of trying to win new voters, just take away the power of their vote by removing who they elect. We saw it in Tennesee with Justin Pearson and Justin Jones being expelled and having to win their seats back.

We have seen it right here in Houston, with the school district being taken over by the state and the voters elected officials just being superseded.

DeSantis campaign stagnant and looking weak as ever after everyone big upped him and made him out to be a "rising GOP star". Fighting with Disney, war on "woke", and now straight up dismissing elected officials, and one of the few elected black women at that in the state.

We have had that happen before. This just happens to be the LARGEST school district taken over in Texas.

El Paso & Beaumont ISD had it done to them.

Wilmer Hutchins ISD had it done to them and they got absorbed into Dallas ISD. The schools were all closed for a good number of years. Now they are all back with 2 new ones but still under Dallas ISD.

It should be noted in FAIRNESS a DEMOCRAT came up with the bill that started all of this.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03...uston-schools/

Houston Democratic state Rep. Harold Dutton, who co-authored the law and is a Wheatley alum, has defended the law, arguing that there should be consequences when a school district fails students multiple times.

The commissioner can also appoint a board of managers in a school district that has been under a conservator for two years. Houston ISD has had a conservator since 2016 to oversee district-level support for Kashmere High School, another longtime underperforming school.

The TEA pointed to these statutes and the consistent academic underperformance at two of Houston’s high schools as grounds to appoint a board of managers.

The KEY thing to note is Houston can get out of that.

The TEA commissioner can decide to remove a board of managers if the failing campus receives a passing grade for two consecutive years, according to state law.

If the campus is still failing, the commissioner can extend the placement or consult with the community to decide whether to place a new board of managers, state law says. Once it is determined that the campus or district has met standards, the commissioner can announce a transition timeline. During that transition, the trustees are expected to be phased back into power, according to a timeline in a TEA slideshow to lawmakers about the Houston ISD takeover.

State law says the majority of the board of managers must be residents of the school district.

The TEA’s jobs description said appointed managers would have to be eligible voters within district boundaries. It also outlined that the board should include some members from across the district, district parents, people with leadership experience, and people with backgrounds in fields such as social work, psychology, business, finance or law.

Pretty much the laws in it can keep outsiders OUT.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the former U.S. House Representative from Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, Doug Collins, who served in Congress for four terms from 2012 through 2020, and prior to that, he served two terms in the Georgia House of Representatives. During the latter half of his career in Congress, Collins was falling all over himself to defend the indefensible Donald Trump whenever he can. Take for example, on January 8th, 2020, where after Trump ordered an airstrike to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and Democrats and most of the free world were outraged that he could be dragging the country to the brink of war, Collins came skulking onto Fox News to claim"Democrats are in love with terrorists, we see that they mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our gold star families." Throughout the second half of 2019, Collins made statements prior to the testimony of Robert Mueller before Congress in July of 2019 about how the FBI should not be allowed to investigate private citizens due to “political leanings” (all indications are the FBI were investigating Carter Page and others within the Trump campaign based on legitimate reasons) and calling the entire impeachment over Trump’s attempt to solicit foreign aid from Ukraine to win the 2020 election as a “sham”, in spite of the mountain of evidence, and witnesses that testified in Congress. This man was always ready to give Trump a thorough tongue bath. If we’re still not making it clear enough, Doug Collins is the sponsor of the “Covid-19 Accountability Act”, which if passed, would allow Trump to sanction China if they do not cooperate with an investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming China conducted some sort of “cover-up”, and frankly, we’re getting into deranged conspiracy theory territory now. But every time an issue comes up, Collins is on the wrong side of the argument, for what keeps Americans safe and prosperous. He can demand people “reopen the economy” during the Covid-19 pandemic, but then tell them after they’re risking their lives in catching the disease, that the recovery will “take time”, which makes one wonder what they’re even putting their necks on the line for. On police violence, of course Doug Collins would interject to demand that charges be pressed after the police killing of Rayshard Brooks… but he wanted an investigation launched against the Atlanta DA who prosecuted the cops for killing Brooks. In 2020, Doug Collins decided he was worthy of being a U.S. Senator, but finished third in the race between Kelly Loeffler and Ralph Warnock, thus being cut out of the final two, and being left out of office for the betterment of the country. He has yet to resurface in politics, and his seat in the House is now held by Andrew Clyde.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Nicholas Vessio, a 2020 Republican Primary challenger to Congressman Brian Mast in Florida’s 18th Congressional District, running on his background as a former New York DA’s office police sergeant. We profiled him, though, because he was yet another Republican who fits in the middle of the diagram of “GOP Congressional Candidates” and “Qanon Conspiracy Theory supporters”. How far gone was Vessio? Well, he did posit a question to Q himself into the ether on Twitter that was a bit beyond, “Lock Her Up”, asking,”Q , when is HRC and company going to GISMO to be Hung!” Yes, he misspelled “GITMO” so we’d hate to see how he his attempts at spelling Guantanamo Bay would go. But Vessio seemed way to eager for hangings of Democrats to come to pass, what with believing in the conspiracy theory that they’d be rounded up for all the Satanic basement pedophile abuse dungeons that don’t exist. Not for nothing ,he somehow didn’t get banned from Twitter, what with declaring the tech giant “Un-American” and insinuating they’re in league with China while claiming he was the victim for being “censored” by the platform, or just spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros. Nicholas Vessio only managed 14% of the vote in the primary, and hopefully that’s the high water mark for any of his political aspirations.

On this date in 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Sean Parnell, a 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, who was the original candidate in that race who won the endorsement of failed coup-plotter and all around incompetent moron, Donald Trump. As is so frequently the case… Trump’s favored the guy just happened to allegedly abuse his wife and children. In 2021, Parnell was arguing before a judge trying to get the records of his child custody hearing with his wife sealed, arguing it was for his children’s privacy. The problem was within the same two years, he was in court arguing that he should be allowed to post photos of himself with his kids for promotional purposes… so it’s a bit odd that he wanted to selectively toggle the “privacy” switch depending on how much it benefited him in the specific moment. When the records came out we learned:how in tearful testimony, Laurie Snell told a family court judge that her husband once called her a "whore" and a "piece of s—" while pinning her down.“He tried to choke me out on a couch and I literally had to bite him,” Snell said in a Butler, Pa. courtroom. “He was strangling me.” On another occasion, she said, Parnell slapped one child hard enough to leave fingerprint-shaped welts through the back of the child's T-shirt. And she said he once got so angry he punched a closet door with such force it swung into a child's face and left a bruise. She said Parnell told his child: "That was your fault." She also testified that after a Thanksgiving trip in 2008, he briefly forced her out of their vehicle alongside a highway after raging at her, telling her to "go get an abortion." While we find all of that abhorrently disturbing, we think that a lot of Republican primary voters would give him a pass on everything except maybe openly discussing him pressuring a woman to get an abortion. Surprise, Parnell claims he was “pro-life”, and referred to abortion as “infanticide”, so he’s just a hypocrite. When the story hit, Politico also noted Parnell’s literary career seems to feature some graphic scenes of violence towards women that almost play out like a power fantasy. Hmm… how odd. Parnell announced he was running in May of 2021, and by November of 2021, he acknowledged there was no path to victory with his wife’s court testimony about him roughing her and the kids up in the public consciousness, and dropped out of the race, leaving Donald Trump to give his endorsement instead to Mehmet Oz. As Parnell is highly unlikely to ever win public office, we will set aside his profile at this time, to profile another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1227-60, since this was established in July 2014.


Kimberly Lowe
Welcome to what is the 1227th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Kimberly Lowe, who was a Republican candidate for office over the past few years, failing to qualify in 2021 in the race for Virginia House of Delegates, and then failing to qualify again a year later while trying to win a seat in the U.S. House for Virginia’s 9th Congressional District. In 2024, she’s decided to make another state-wide run, seeking to qualify to get on the ballot to provide a challenge to Democratic Senator Tim Kaine.

If there were one particular problem we thought qualified Lowe getting our attention for a profile, it would be when she was caught on tape menacing the National Butterfly Center on the U.S./Texas border, a common destination for white nationalist conspiracy theorists who are into Qanon convinced that it’s the secret haven of human smuggling and child-sex trafficking. Most of the lies about the National Butterfly Center originated right around the time they informed the Trump administration that they wouldn’t let construction begin on his useless border wall on their enclosure, and she tried shoving her way onto the property because she thought she would find “illegals crossing on rafts”.

But yes, Lowe is on tape yelling about “kids getting raped” within the sanctuary, which seems like it might be why the Virginia GOP don’t want her on ballots. Her social media feeds are a constant filtration from right-wing conspiracy sites, which isn’t shocking given she was menacing a center where entomologists work. Taking Qanon beliefs to that degree is enough that we’re hoping this white nationalist twit never comes close to sniffing any elected office.

[Ragged Maw]

So........maybe once I get a better job in some odd years, I'll vacay in Kauai. I kind of want to hurry up and enjoy the "Yosemite of the Pacific" before climate change has its way with it, like it did Maui just recently.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

FBI fatally shoots man in Utah who allegedly threatened Biden, Alvin Bragg and others

Oh, well. One less brain damaged lunatic breathing air he doesn’t deserve.