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

[PaulBullion]

COVID-19 stimulus talks hit an unexpected setback when a GOP senator insisted on extra rules to throttle lending by the Federal Reserve

And now Ron Johnson blocks it because he feels giving people money never works, it's all about cutting taxes and regulations.

(he says that the same week after the largest ever study on the ineffectiveness of trickle down economics comes out).

[Jack Dracula]

We need to, as a country, take a long look at how our government is run. The fact that they cannot or will not pass a fucking relief package as people are dying and going broke, unable to buy food, during the holidays no less, because the politicians can't get what they want out of the package shows how deeply broken and flawed the entire system is.

And now they're looking at a partial, temporary shut down because of it.


We won't take that look. Nothing will change. But this is where we are. As a country. As a "society". And people are fine with it. The richest country in the world, and we can't just help our people eat and pay rent. It's an embarrassment.

We’re experiencing the results of a multiple-party government. Without the R next to his name for protection, Toomy wouldn’t dare to pull that stunt. He knows the Republicans in his state will support him no matter what.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Tamara Scott, a member of the Republican National Committee from Iowa, who hosts a conservative talk show there, and once served as the Campaign Co-Chair for Michelle Bachmann’s disastrous 2012 presidential run. When we last looked in on Ms. Scott, she had been opposed to gay marriage and was floating a false report from the Family Research Council that claimed keeping a ban on it saves the United States $280 billion a year and she’s also argued against same-sex marriage because she believes people could start marrying objects like the Eiffel Tower (they can’t). Scott also believes in the sinister Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, thinks that migrant children fleeing violence in Central America are “highly trained warriors who might rise up against Americans”, and has been convinced for over a year now that refugees fleeing Syrian are doing so to start a “stealth jihad” in the United States. Scott also praised Michelle Bachmann for trying to root the Muslim Brotherhood out of American government, and claimed that that group also was behind the attacks in Benghazi. Scott believes there is a correlation between prayer being taken out of schools, and a rise in rape and murder (in reality the rates of those violent crimes have dropped in the past two decades) and also doesn’t believe a separation of church and state is not guaranteed in the Constitution. She’s so paranoid about other faiths that after a Wiccan prayer, and then a prayer by a Muslim imam were performed in the Iowa Statehouse, Tamara Scott responded by admitting that she “prayed for a storm” to hit during the Wiccan prayer, because that’s very Christian of her. Oh, and during the debate to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol in Charleston, South Carolina, after the shooting at the Emanuel AME Church by a white supremacist, Tamara Scott, on her radio show, claimed the shooting was “not a racial issue” but was actually an attack on Christianity and that the Confederate flag is actually a symbol of fun and affection because of how it was portrayed on “The Dukes of Hazard”. She has not just outed herself as anti-vaccination advocate and started claiming that disease outbreaks in public schools were not a result of children’s parents avoiding vaccinating them, but actually because we were using a “socialistic model in schools” where children are forced to share pencils and used her radio show to give a platform to Eileen Dannenmann, head of the Vaccine Liberation Army which touts a false link between autism. She has stated her Godwin’s-Law-be-damned belief that pro-choice advocates are “even more devious than Hitler.” And, in spite of Donald Trump being possibly the worst example of a Christian that the GOP could ever have pushed forth upon their Evangelical wing, Tamara Scott not only endorsed him a few weeks before the Republican National Convention, but berated callers into her show who had reservations about voting for Trump because of his racist comments and making fun of a disabled reporter by claiming THEY were not a good Christian for not forgiving for his “past mistakes” (that Trump feels he doesn’t have to ask forgiveness for). Tamara Scott, of course, also helped write the 2016 GOP Party Platform, which was the most extreme in the history of the party, particularly in how fervently anti-gay it was. That should not shock anyone, with a fanatic like her helping draft it. In February of 2017, Scott made the outlandish claim that removing Christianity from schools has led to an increase in “assault, rape, and murder.” During the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, where she showed up to embrace Sen. Chuck Grassley during the farce of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing he held, and she referred to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford as a case where Democrats might have "overplayed" their hand with the "scattered and scared fragile female". (Yes, she remains the worst.) We’re expecting continued insanity from Scott and her cohorts on her radio show going forward, and look forward to the day where the Republican Party sever ties with her for being nuttier than a squirrel’s diet (she’s not far off from the median attitude of the GOP, we fear).

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Jimmy Matlock, a tire salesman by trade, and now a former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 2006 to 2018. We’re not going to delve into every aspect of his voting record from start to finish, but suffice to say that even just looking from 2014 on, Matlock supported some of the most extreme legislation Tennessee Republicans submitted in the legislature, from repeated attempts to make the Bible the official state book, his support of legislation to nullify federal firearms laws, his vote for a bill to allow the electric chair to be used as capital punishment in Tennessee again, his vote for a resolution to express displeasure with the Supreme Court in the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, as well as his vote to see that state funds be used to construct a “monument to the unborn” to protest abortion…and well… it’s pretty clear he always leaned hard right. So far to the right, that he kept sponsoring bills to try to find a way to reinstitute prayer in schools, and how he insisted abstinence-only sex education worked. Now, whenever some schmuck from the Tennessee state legislature gets a CSGOPOTD profile, we usually end up stuck reporting on them being elected every two years and fight the urge to drink heavily because they still keep remaining in office until they die, commit multiple grievous instances of sexual harassment, or get convicted of a felony of some sort. Well, there is another way they can get out of office, and that’s if they dream too big and run for higher office and fail. Which may be how Jimmy Matlock’s story ends… in 2018, he tried to run for the seat of former Tennessee Congressman John Duncan, Jr., but ended up losing in the primary to the former mayor of Knox County, Tim Burchett, only coming away with 36% of the vote in the primary. That was in spite of having Duncan’s endorsement, as well. Jimmy Matlock has yet to resurface in Tennessee politics, and as such, we will set his profile and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 945-45, since this was established in July 2014.


Rick Roeber
Welcome to what is the 945th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Rick Roeber, who is currently a Missouri House of Representatives-Elect for District 34 of that body who just won office in the 2020 elections by 301 votes. While Roeber may have been known for his hobby of running marathons barefoot as a means to proselytize Jesus prior to September of 2020, now he’s going to be known as “the guy who got elected even though more than one of his daughters came forward to accuse him of molesting them”. His daughters, now adults, all reported similar stories of physical abuse, and three of his four daughters reported being sexually abused after he divorced his ex-wife during visitations in the 1990s. The fourth sibling reports having been aware of the abuse. Roeber’s ex-wife gave a sworn deposition to that effect back in 2003, and even though a court found probably cause that “sexual maltreatment” of that child occurred in 2001, Missouri’s Child Abuse and Neglect Review Board overturned the case, for reasons not disclosed to the public.

The Republican leaders of the Missouri House of Representatives have decided this warrants an investigation, and the results of that will decide whether or not Rick Roeber is seated in the Missouri state legislature. That’s right, Roeber isn’t just stepping aside in shame, he’s gonna force the Missouri GOP for, the second time in two years, conduct an investigation into the sexual wrongdoings of one of its members. If you’re unaware, the other one was former Gov. Eric Greitens. Roeber will be seated and allowed to vote until they get answers, but they're at least conceding that maybe they don't want to put him on any committee assignments.

It’s unclear whether or not this hypocritical monster does get seated in the state legislature. We’ll see how far the Republican Party has fallen if they choose to rally around Rick Roeber, and try and make him a martyr, or if they just roll the dice and concede it’s not worth fighting over to defend a man credibly accused of molesting his own children.

[worstblogever]

We’re experiencing the results of a multiple-party government. Without the R next to his name for protection, Toomy wouldn’t dare to pull that stunt. He knows the Republicans in his state will support him no matter what.

Toomey is reportedly not running for re-election in 2022, so it's somewhat moot if he gets their support or not.

[Jack Dracula]

Toomey is reportedly not running for re-election in 2022, so it's somewhat moot if he gets their support or not.

Good point. I should’ve checked before posting. Probably why he was picked.
I still like to daydream about a government that actually functions without factional maneuvering and outside influence.

[Joker]

They don't care about us. We need to stop caring about them. Burn them all down.

[DrNewGod]

Brazil's president Bolsonaro, I am not making this up, warned today that the Pfizer vaccine could turn people into alligators.

Man. We thought POTUS was nuts.

[Tami]

More Than 1.1 Million People Have Been Vaccinated: Covid-19 Tracker

The first Covid-19 shots have been given to more than 1.1 million people in four countries, according to data collected by Bloomberg. It’s the start of the biggest vaccination campaign in history and one of the largest logistical challenges ever undertaken.

Vaccinations in the U.S. began this week with health-care workers, and 24 states reported the first 49,567 doses administered. Those numbers are expected to surge in coming days as more states work through their early allocations of shots and begin to report their numbers.

[Tami]

He Wanted to Count Every Vote in Philadelphia. His Party Had Other Ideas.

In the Friday predawn, Al Schmidt stepped from his room in the Aloft Hotel, which adjoins the convention center. His watch read 5 a.m. That meant little: Hours, and for that matter days, had lost significance for Schmidt, one of three city commissioners on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections. He had been working seven days a week since the June primary. He hadn’t slept in — he couldn’t say for sure. Three days? Maybe four. Time and the democratic process had become indistinguishable.

At City Hall, where he usually worked, Schmidt would have been meticulously turned out in a tailored suit, but now he wore jeans and a wrinkled button-down. He was subsisting on coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts sandwiches. Election Day was Tuesday, Schmidt had to remind himself as he walked through the convention center’s empty corridors, taking in a rare bit of quiet, on his way to Exhibit Hall F. But then, in 2020, every day felt like Election Day.

When Schmidt arrived at the exhibit hall, the quiet ended. Here, he and his colleagues on the Board of Elections had assembled, on the fly, an operation to canvass, or count, the mail-in ballots. The hall now resembled a factory floor: Banks of ballot-processing machines were staffed by city employees and temporary workers pulling round-the-clock shifts. The work force numbered in the hundreds, and almost every agency in the city would eventually pitch in. They called the hall — which measured 125,000 square feet and in a normal year would host the Philadelphia Auto Show — the “canvassing room” or “the counting room” or, simply, “the room.”

For the sake of transparency and to reassure an anxious public, Schmidt and the commissioners were announcing tranches of newly canvassed ballots as they worked. By Friday morning, they had made 10 announcements. More than 300,000 mail-ins had been canvassed. Seventy-four thousand remained. Schmidt was counseling patience to his contacts in the media. There would be a conclusive total by the weekend, he told them.

Al Schmidt, who is 49, is the sole Republican on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections and one of very few Republican elected officials in the city. Lisa Deeley, the board’s chairwoman, and the third commissioner, Omar Sabir, are both Democrats. Before being elected to the board, Schmidt was the executive director of the Philadelphia G.O.P.

The board was not required to announce the count until all the ballots were done, but they had been putting out regular releases. At 8:23 on election night, they announced the first batch of 75,755; the next morning, at 5:11, they announced another 65,768; at 10 a.m., another 44,963; and at 3:57 p.m., 47,097 more. Thursday brought another five releases. With each new release, Biden’s percentage of the mail-ins increased, and the margin narrowed.

As it did, Trump’s rhetoric grew shriller, and the crowds outside the convention center grew larger. The Sheriff’s Office assigned to the board’s staff members deputies who accompanied them when they went outside. At one point, as Schmidt was walking to City Hall, a man rushed at him on the street. He yelled “Commissioner Schmidt, why are you harassing our poll watchers?” The deputy stepped in front of the man and said: “How about I lock you up for harassment?”

Schmidt saw it was the same man who harassed him at the last board meeting. He realized the man was probably staking out the main entrance to the convention center, possibly from a Panera Bread across the street. It was also in front of this entrance that the protesters were gathering. So Schmidt took to sneaking in and out of the center via a back loading dock. It afforded him a clear path to the Dunkin’ Donuts, of whose all-day breakfast sandwich menu he had become a “connoisseur,” as Schmidt put it. The employees there recognized him and always tried to give him free food, which he declined; Philadelphia law prohibits city commissioners from receiving gifts.

[Kirby101]

Kushner helped create shell Trump campaign company that secretly paid family members, report says

How do people support these thieves? I also have no doubt that Jarvanka will get a pardon before Jan. 20.

[Tami]

Kushner helped create shell Trump campaign company that secretly paid family members, report says

How do people support these thieves? I also have no doubt that Jarvanka will get a pardon before Jan. 20.

I heard that Trump is planning to hand out Pardons like Christmas Presents before the 25th. :shrug:

Honestly, I hope he gets distracted, changes his mind, or forgets and doesn't actually go through with it.

[InformationGeek]

Oh f**k you to hell and back.

The best stimulus? A job.

[Joker]

Oh f**k you to hell and back.

Burn the witch.

[DrNewGod]

Vanity Fair uses the phrase that Trump's grip on the party is slipping. I think they're kidding themselves. As long as he can enflame his base, a goodly chunk of the GOP will fear crossing him, and will parrot him.

[Tami]

On Cable News it was mentioned that Trump is talking up the possibility of bringing the Apprentice back. Half-joking someone suggested that it would be to select Trump's next Vice-President.