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

[Gray Lensman]

Let's see...

Lt Gov Dan Patrick wants to let elderly people die so that we can re-open businesses.

TX AG sues other states because he doesn't like how they run their elections.

Colorado City, TX mayor Tim Boyd slams residents during snowstorm that knocks out power, heat and bursts pipes. Says "city and county owes you nothing!"

TX Rep Kyle Bierdermann wants to file a motion allowing Texas to secede from the Union. TX GOP Chair Alan West also wants TX to leave.

TX Gov Greg Abbott blames Green New Deal and windmills for power failure during winter storm. Texas gets the majority of it's energy from fossil fuels and the Green New Deal program doesn't exist in Texas.

Sen Ted Cruz of Texas blames daughter for fleeing to Cancun while his state suffers catastrophic failures during winter storm.

Texas, you have a problem.

Natural gas is responsible for 6 times the energy shortfall as windmills, but no one is saying much about that. The issue is the same one they have in California - anyone with a lick of sense KNOWS what the problem is, but fixing it would lower profits, so it never will be fixed.

In Texas little, if any, of the grid is winterized, so when a freak storm hits stuff shuts down. In California, they need to rerun many powerless underground where they won't start fires when they break. Neither power company or state government seems to want to foot the bill to fix the problems.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Trump to speak at CPAC in first public appearance since leaving White House

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Trump to speak at CPAC in first public appearance since leaving White House

It's Feb 20, one month since the Marine Helicopter took to Joint Base Andrews and he gave his last press conference as POTUS, before sulking off to Mordor-a-Lago.

You guys, one month without Trump tweeting, domineering the news cycle, insulting and attacking opponents and so on.

This is the part of the movie where the narrative VO mutters wistfully, "we never had it so good".

[Marvell2100]

Trump to speak at CPAC in first public appearance since leaving White House

I'd be interested to see who's going, who's not and who else will speak.

[Marvell2100]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

Lauren Boebart wanted Pres. Biden to lower flags to honor Rush Limbaugh. Someone rightly pointed out that she didn't ask Trump to lower the flag for Ofc. Sicknick.

Some people just don't know when to stfu.

[DrNewGod]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

Lauren Boebart wanted Pres. Biden to lower flags to honor Rush Limbaugh. Someone rightly pointed out that she didn't ask Trump to lower the flag for Ofc. Sicknick.

Some people just don't know when to stfu.

She won't stfu. She's screaming on behalf of an angry, ignorant mob. She won't analyze and think. She'll believe she's right and lash out. No matter how wrong she actually is.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump to speak at CPAC in first public appearance since leaving White House

I can imagine Trump dredging up his favorite whine about how the election was stolen from him, attacking Moscow Mitch, slamming Biden, bitching about how Faux News didn't support him, yadda yadda yadda. Same ****, different day.

[AnakinFlair]

Trump to speak at CPAC in first public appearance since leaving White House

For some inexplicable reason, I read that as 'AOC to speak at CPAC', which had me going WTF?! until I re-read it.

[Kevinroc]

It's Feb 20, one month since the Marine Helicopter took to Joint Base Andrews and he gave his last press conference as POTUS, before sulking off to Mordor-a-Lago.

You guys, one month without Trump tweeting, domineering the news cycle, insulting and attacking opponents and so on.

This is the part of the movie where the narrative VO mutters wistfully, "we never had it so good".

His supporters have never stopped whining on social media.

[RisingForce]

It is kind of old news but I thought that it was funny

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44009621
Karl Marx statue from China adds to German angst

How will capitalism end?
https://www.thenation.com/article/so...nd-capitalism/
The long history of forecasting capitalism’s demise.

[RisingForce]

His supporters have never stopped whining on social media.

It's pretty reaching across the entire socio-political spectrum if you really want to label anyone as whiny I guess.

[CaptainEurope]

It is kind of old news but I thought that it was funny

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44009621
Karl Marx statue from China adds to German angst

´

We had a similar discussion about a (rather ugly) Friedrich Engels statue in my town, also donated by China.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” ran our profile of Scott Beason, who was also a failed candidate for U.S. Senate in 2012, and a failed candidate for Congress to represent Alabama’s 6th Congressional District as well. Among Beason’s many controversial moments are the fact that he praised the Communist witch hunts of Senator Joe McCarthy, claiming that “they worked”, saying that the solution to the immigration crisis was for his party to “empty the clip and do what needs to be done”, and that he was recorded (while being aware he was recording) referring to African Americans as “Aborigines”. All those moments are bad enough to make you forget he’s also got a terrible voting record, including introducing legislation to try to ban the children of undocumented immigrants from taking part in after school activities, not just extracurricular sports or clubs… but even going to their prom. He also supported drug testing welfare recipients, TRAP laws to close all the abortion clinics in Alabama, a nullification measure to allow Alabama to ignore federal firearms laws, strict Voter ID laws, and voted against a measure that would have seen Alabama apologize to African Americans for slavery.

It was in both 2016, and in 2017, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted profiles about Isaac Latterell, who came to our attention as a reactionary, outspoken pro-life extremist after back in February of 2014 when he submitted a bill in the South Dakota state legislature that would have banned abortion at 7 weeks (in other words, a flagrantly unconstitutional bill that flew in the face of the Roe v. Wade ruling). At that time, he posted a blog to comment on the impending vote, tastefully titled, “Stop the Dismemberment of Living Children” in which, he compared abortion to “a veterinarian ripping the heads off puppies and crushing their skulls”, and gave his humble opinion that abortion doctors are more savage than “the barbarians of old”. After the talk of puppy decapitation and barbarians didn’t sway the public to his cause, and just shy of a year after his first rant about Planned Parenthood, Latterell penned a second screed, this time titled, “Planned Parenthood is worse than ISIS and Lying About It”. After being criticized for his rant, Latterell decided to back off just a tad, changing his article’s title to “Planned Parenthood is Beheading Children and Lying About It”, which is still devoid of facts. Laterrell then pitched a bill in the South Dakota House, HB 1230, that would “prohibit the beheading of certain living unborn children”, that predictably went nowhere. Now, this would be the most offensive issue that Isaac Latterell has ranted about, but just so everyone’s aware, he’s not a one-issue politician. Apparently, Latterell has some deep-seated fears about transsexuals, as he has voted for H1195, a bill that would limit a citizen’s gender identity to what is listed on their birth certificate, and in January 2016 voted for HB 1008, a transphobic bathroom cop bill to make sure that people use the bathroom designated for the gender types people are born. This is also reflected in his support through 2017 for a transphobic bathroom ban to be implemented in public schools, as well as a failed attempt at passing a “religious freedom” law to allow Christians the freedom to discriminate against same sex couples whose marriages threaten their “freedom”.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” ran our profile of Rayne Brown, who served in the Tar Heel state’s legislature from 2011-2016. She did so as a member of ALEC, the conservative group that brainstorms all manner of insanely extreme hard-right legislation around the country backing her (and later getting her help in trying to block renewable energy laws in North Carolina), as well as by way of having her campaign and the North Carolina GOP send out fliers during her 2010 campaign for office that made the Willie Horton ads from 1988 look like a walk in the park. Because it wasn’t just that the legislator in question that she was accusing of being soft on crime, Hugh Holliman, actually was alright enough with capital punishment that he had watched his daughter’s murderer be executed for the crime, but that Henry McCollum, one of the two supposed murderers that Holliman’s “weak on crime” stance would not be executed would be released from prison was, in reality, innocent of the crime that he was convicted. And that Holliman’s support for the Racial Justice Act would have easily aided in the wrongful execution of McCollum. Well, after Rayne Brown took office and established several years’ worth of votes on some of the worst state-wide legislation in the nation (more on that in a minute), Brown also decided that it was wrong that the city of Ashville, North Carolina, could have women protesting Republicans’ policies by showing up topless, as it was legal. So she thought to remedy that with the small-government solution of making it not just a criminal offense for a woman in North Carolina to have her nipple exposed, but a FELONY OFFENSE. The bill she submitted to do so died in committee, mercifully, but not before Brown became notoriously nutty, taking out opinion editorials to scold liberals for being… y’know, liberal, and calling them “willful and petulant children deprived of a treat”. As a legislator, Brown voted f to drug test welfare recipients, for the Repeal of the Racial Justice Act, for SB 353, an extremely restrictive anti-abortion bill that was amended by the North Carolina GOP from a motorcycle safety bill into an anti-choice measure, as well as HB 465, a TRAP law aimed at creating abortion regulations so restrictive that they would effectively force the closure of all abortion clinics in the state for failing to be able to meet them. Brown also voted several “stricter Voter ID laws” North Carolina Republicans push during her tenure aimed at suppressing the vote, for SB 2, a bill to allow state officials to refuse to perform “certain marriage duties” if they have a “sincerely held” religious objection as well as for HB 2, North Carolina’s disastrous anti-LGBTQ law, and she voted for several bills to make it harder to remove Confederate monuments in North Carolina. Brown opted to leave the North Carolina state legislature after three terms in office, and we won’t be missing her.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Omar Navarro, a three-time loser in attempts to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 43rd Congressional District. Navarro, a currently unemployed former used car salesman, began being pushed out of California GOP politics in 2014 by mainstream members of the party after he started to act bizarrely and showed a poor temperament, which only made him rebrand himself as a Trump Republican that supports the border wall. This is odd because Navarro is the son of Mexican immigrants. Navarro was sentenced to probation in a prior court case due to his decision to illegally place a tracking device on his now ex-wife’s car to track her movements. He was found guilty only weeks before the 2016 election and sentenced to 18 months probation and to take an anger management course. Predictably, he lost badly to Maxine Waters in 2016. Navarro wasn’t messing around in his second go-round in 2018, when he supported white nationalists like Chuck Johnson aiding his campaign by stalking Congresswoman Waters while she slept on a plane, and being dumb enough to solicit an endorsement from Michael Flynn (who was already charged with lying to the FBI) and going with a “Lock Her Up” mentality by demanding that Waters be arrested on social media. (Again, he himself was still on probation.) Then Navarro got a visit from the FBI after releasing a fake letter that he claimed was from Maxine Waters’ Congressional office, that supposedly wanted to resettle tens of thousands of Somali immigrant refugees in her district (it’s a crime to forge a document from a Congressional office). So, of course, Navarro had a level-headed response to the FBI’s inquiries, to go online and compare his plight to Donald Trump’s, and claim he was also the victim of “a witch hunt”. It’s hard to pick a “lowest moment” for someone like this as a candidate, but if we had to, it might be that video emerged of Omar Navarro handing out with self-proclaimed “Hollywood Nazis” and white nationalists in September of 2018. Three known “Alt-Right” figures were featured, including Milo Yiannopolous’ former manager Tim Gionet, and at points, they were standing beside Navarro while he spoke, giggling as they were performing Nazi salutes. It wasn’t a one-off experience for Navarro, as only days before the election, another video emerged of him complimenting a man for an Anti-Semitic sign that read, “DA GOYIM KNOW”. Omar Navarro was completely crushed by Maxine Waters on Election Day 2018, earning only 22% of the vote. Navarro immedatiely changed his Twitter title to indicate he was running against Waters again in 2020 and started palling around with other MAGA Trolls like Laura Loomer and cheering her on for trying to get herself arrested by storming the California Governor’s Mansion in sombreros to prove Gov. Gavin Newsom a hypocrite for thinking “walls don’t work” and the mansion has walls. (Please note, this doesn’t make sense, since Newsom isn’t living in the residence.) An investigation of Navarro was simultaneously underway to see if he was violating his probation because he was stalking his ex-girlfriend in San Francisco. He ended up pleading guilty and serving six months in prison. Predictably, he performed even worse in 2020, finishing third in the primary with only 11% of the vote. Upon being released from prison, he immediately announced he would run against Maxine Waters in 2022, because he is living off of campaign donations at this point.

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Michele Presnell, a former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives in District 118 from 2012-2020. She became a cause for concern in her first few months in office when she sponsored House Resolution 494, which would declare Christianity the official state religion of North Carolina. You may now pause to remember that the United States’ First Amendment guarantees a separation of church and state, and that her resolution was patently unconstitutional before we resume with this story. Anyway, one of Presnell’s constituents, Britt Kauffman, sent her an e-mail to ask her if she would be comfortable with an Islamic prayer being said before a day’s work in the state legislature. She responded,”No, I do not condone terrorism. We just need to start taking a stand on our religious freedom or it will be whisked away from us.” It seems “religious freedom being whisked away” is not having it be the official religion of the state. And yes, she did equate Islamic prayer to terrorism. Her voting record was equally as troubling, including her support of welfare drug testing, her vote for the Repeal of the Racial Justice Act,her votes for SB 353, an extremely restrictive anti-abortion bill that was amended by the North Carolina GOP from a motorcycle safety bill into an anti-choice measure, her support of stricter Voter ID laws aimed at suppressing the vote, her support for keeping Confederate monuments, and that she was a co-sponsor of HB 2, North Carolina’s disastrous anti-LGBTQ law, that caused boycotts over the law cost the state well over a trillion dollars of revenue from business boycotts and the tourism industry. In her final term in office, she sponsored legislation to ban abortion at 13 weeks, and a bill that would force doctors performing abortions to try and resuscitate the zygotes they are aborting after performing the procedure (by legal definition, such unborn children cannot survive outside the womb). Oh, and of course she was a part of a “smaller government” effort by North Carolina Republicans to sell raw milk, because pasteurization is the devil’s handiwork. As she is now out of office, we will set aside her profile at this time and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 968-45, since this was established in July 2014.


Mike Hubbard

Welcome to what is the 968th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Mike Hubbard, a former Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives and Alabama Republican Party chair who was in office from 1998-2016, serving in District 79 in the state House. Hubbard’s rise in Alabama politics is odd because it is rooted in SEC football. His journey began at the University of Georgia studying journalism, he hyped the Heisman Trophy campaign for Herschel Walker. After graduating, he into a business that won exclusive rights to covering Auburn Tigers football games (which eventually made him a millionaire, and he hyped the Heisman campaign for Bo Jackson only a few years after Walker’s. He parlayed his experience into running political campaigns to hype people like former Alabama Governor Bob Riley, who rewarded Hubbard in 2002 with the Alabama Republican Party Chair, and whom Hubbard was so enthralled with that he named his own son Riley.

Hubbard then began his own political career as a state legislator, where of course, as an Alabama Republican, he had an extreme voting record, where he’d support broken policies like welfare drug testing, turn back to the good old days when you could execute a predominantly minority population of death row inmates by the electric chair, stop free minorities from voting through Voter ID bills that were plainly attempts at voter suppression, push for radical anti-choice legislation to disallow women rights over their own bodily autonomy, completely wanting to undo any and all gun control, and of course, supporting bills to ignore the separation of church and state to put monuments of the Ten Commandments in government buildings (Roy Moore-influenced, for sure!).

But this profile isn’t meant to cover his origin story or what sorts of conservative f***ery he supported while in office. He was more concerned about the fact that Mike Hubbard was as crooked as an abstract painting of a dog’s hind leg. Hubbard was forced to leave office in 2016 when he was found guilty of twelve felony counts of ethics violations that amounted to him soliciting lobbyists and using his own office for profit, earning him a four year prison sentence and eight years of probation after that. He fought on appeal for literally YEARS and got six counts overturned, and a judge reduced his sentence down to a mere 28 months. So after over four years from when he was originally found guilty, Hubbard was finally taken into custody in November of 2020.

While we’re not thrilled that it took as long as it did for him to face justice, or that his time behind bars got shaved down, it at least seems like his political career is mercifully over, and it least he can no longer make a profit while pushing legislation to make the people of Alabama (at least the ones who aren’t rich and white) miserable.

[RisingForce]

We had a similar discussion about a (rather ugly) Friedrich Engels statue in my town, also donated by China.

That is quite funny, I guess.

The spectre of communism still persists to haunt Europe.