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

[BeastieRunner]

Gaetz associate expected to plead guilty in federal case

Man, I really wouldn’t want to be Matt Gaetz right now....

Is it a plea deal? If so, then yes I would be worried if I were Gaetz.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Alright, cool but I’m a little paranoid so I’ll just continue to wear a mask outside until herd immunity finally is reached. One of the only times I’ll disobey health guidelines.

Edit: “The new CDC guidance will still call for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters. It will also no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors in crowds.”

Okay good, but I think this gives an opportunity for the anti-vaxxers to pretend they’re vaccinated regardless.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The Qpublican Party's mad dog is at it again:

Marjorie Taylor Greene confronts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside House chamber

[BeastieRunner]

The Qpublican Party's mad dog is at it again:

Marjorie Taylor Greene confronts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside House chamber

What a nut.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Qpublican Party's mad dog is at it again:

Marjorie Taylor Greene confronts Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside House chamber

You know the right's fixation with AOC borders on some demented stalker-crush. I guess they can't stand the reality-check. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a blonde white woman who is a daughter of a millionaire, inheriting from her Dad's construction company while AOC is a working-class Latina who had to work by the bootstraps to get as far as she has, earning the respect and support of her generation in two years, all on her own. The reality that somebody embodies the American ideal better than them, who's also smarter, more pleasant, more charismatic, and yes more beautiful than them, is too much for them to handle.

I do hope AOC isn't careful, pretty soon Greene will do something to merit being spoken off with all three of her names, and if you think that's unlikely look up the word "twinkie defense" and the incident that led up to that.

[worstblogever]

It was on this day in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Nan Hayworth, the former U.S. House Representative who served New York’s 19th District for one term from 2011-2013. During her Tea Party campaign, she was noted for stammering and getting nervous and stammering whenever asked complicated policy questions about Social Security, and once in her 2012 campaign, fled from a constituent who asked if she supported minimum wage increases, only answering that she would make sure we “grow the economy”. While in office, she voted against all women’s issues, including supporting the Hyde Amendment, voting to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, but during her 2012 campaign, she tried claiming she “voted with Obama”, which was patently false. Hayworth was also frequently plagued by her tendency to hire idiots in key campaign staff positions, including their eventual admission that they broke election laws to gain enough signatures to put her on the 2010 ballot in the first place. She also had her 2012 re-election campaign spokesman talk about committing acid attacks against female Democratic Senators (right out of the Taliban playbook), and for whatever reason, Hayworth and her campaign tried defending his remarks for a time. She also had the revelation that her campaign manager, Karl Brabenec make the news for being revealed to have hosted a Young Republicans event in 2003 where he promised attendees “liquor and sex to go around all evening”, and that female attendees should “wear as little clothing as possible”. At least Hayworth didn’t defend that. After losing in both 2012 and 2014 to Patrick Maloney, Hayworth has apparently given up on running for office, and only cameos on Fox News every now and again these days.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Drew Turiano, a Tea Party Republican from Montana who was a 2014 candidate for Congress to represent the state’s “At Large” District, and in 2012, thought about running for governor, but instead, chose to be a candidate for Montana Secretary of State. He didn’t fare well in that race, finishing fourth with 6.7% of the vote. Now, in that first election, what slipped by most of the media was the fact that Turiano had sent out mailers regarding immigration where he claimed that not just undocumented immigrants were “rapists, murders, and thieves”, but he didn’t seem to make the distinction and thought that legal immigrants were part of the problem, too, and called for an end to ALL immigration. As Turiano was prepping for his Congressional run in 2013, he gave a delightful interview with a local TV station, and gave some interesting opinions regarding immigration policy. Like say, to bring back “Operation Wetback”. It would be four months until anyone in the Montana Republican Party or Montana Tea Party batted an eye, and they actually let him file as a candidate again, as he went around the state campaigning on what they eventually even deemed as “racist views”. In February 2014, even prior to registering as a candidate, Turiano posted on his campaign website that he supported states’ rights to nullify or reject any federal law or judicial mandate, citing Roe v. Wade and Obamacare as prime examples, and his belief that President Barack Obama should be impeached. Which, even without the support of the Montana GOP, he went ahead and spent money to rent six billboards to call for Obama’s impeachment. Drew Turiano ended up finishing a distant fifth in the GOP Primary, getting but 1.7% of the voter. The Montana GOP have abandoned him as a candidate for his overt racism, which by today’s Republican standards, is ironic, considering Donald Trump has almost the same ideas on immigration as Turiano. We cannot say with certainty where his eyebrows are, but we hope he finds them

[Tami]

Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government

WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

The campaign shows the obsession that some of Mr. Trump’s allies had about a shadowy “deep state” trying to blunt his agenda — and the lengths that some were willing to go to try to purge the government of those believed to be disloyal to the president.

This account is drawn from more than a dozen interviews with former Project Veritas employees and others familiar with the campaign, along with current and former government officials and internal Project Veritas documents.

The scheme against Mr. McMaster, revealed in interviews and documents, was one of the most brazen operations of the campaign. It involved a plan to hire a woman armed with a hidden camera to capture Mr. McMaster making inappropriate remarks that his opponents could use as leverage to get him ousted as national security adviser.

Although several Project Veritas operatives were involved in the plot, it is unclear whether the group directed it. The group, which is a nonprofit, has a history of conducting sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and advocacy groups.

The operation was ultimately abandoned in March 2018 when the conspirators ended up getting what they wanted, albeit by different means. The embattled Mr. McMaster resigned on March 22, a move that avoided a firing by the president who had soured on the three-star general.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had its original profile to discuss Tommy Benton, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives who has held office since 2004, and has not faced a Democratic challenger for his seat since 2006. There was some doubt if he was going to be re-elected to a seventh term in 2016, though, after the uproar he caused (more on that in a second), but he lucked out the same way most state legislators do when nobody failed to register to run against him before the deadline to enter the race, and he was allowed to run unopposed. Which is a real shame, considering that only a few weeks before the deadline for other candidates to register to challenge him, he decided, during an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution to discuss his support of Confederate landmarks, whose removal he considered “cultural terrorism” that the topic turned to the Confederate monument at Stone Mountain, Georgia, where the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in 1915. At that point, Benton decided to pontificate on the positive things that the Ku Klux Klan did for this country:

”The Klan was not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order. It made a lot of people straighten up. I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s just the way things were.”

Benton was just warming up, as he continued on, comparing a Democratic colleague, Vincent Fort, who sponsored a bill to remove Confederate monuments to ISIS:

“That’s no better than what ISIS is doing, destroying museums and monuments,” he said. “I feel very strongly about this. I think it has gone far enough. There is some idea out there that certain parts of history out there don’t matter anymore and that’s a bunch of bunk.”

This came, of course, on the heels of Benton having sponsored his own opposing bill to preserve Confederate monuments, as well as one to celebrate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday, as well as Confederate Memorial Day. Oh, and he sponsored a third bill that would revert street names that honored Confederate war heroes back to their original names, which would turn Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Blvd. back into Gordon Road, named after former Confederate officer John B. Gordon, an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. (Benton certainly is “all in” on a failed rebellion over slavery from a century and a half ago, that’s for sure.)

Over Benton’s career, there are more than a few conservative votes, and a few that would seem to fit into the mindset of a guy who likes to look on the bright side of the KKK, what with his support for stricter Voter ID laws that disproportionately suppress the votes of minorities, the time he sponsored multiple unconstitutional bills to make English the official language of the state of Georgia, as well as his support of Georgia’s disastrous anti-immigrant bill, HB 87, which ended up decimating the population of immigrant farmers in the state enough that crops were left to rot in the fields, unpicked, to the cost of $140 million in lost revenue for the industry. He also voted for a monument of the Ten Commandments to be built at the state capitol building (which have been overturned as violations of the First Amendment in previous rulings like in the Roy Moore case in Alabama), and the failed conservative policy to drug test welfare recipients.

Since we last profiled Tommy Benton, his deep affection for the Confederacy again reared its ugly head, this time when he sent out a campaign mailer that denied that the Civil War started over slavery. If Benton would pull his head out of his ***, he would know that five Confederate states, GEORGIA AMONG THEM, literally wrote letters to the Union stating, plainly, that they were fighting a war against the federal government because they refused to keep slaves.

Did we forget to mention that Tommy Benton once called for people arrested on marijuana charges to be sentenced to caning, or perhaps executed? Because in an e-mail with a constituent back in 2009, that happened. (He also threatened to have the person arrested for disagreeing with him, not for nothing.)

So… yeah, Benton is full of s***, and we’re glad that the Georgia GOP stripped him of all of his placements on Committees in the legislature for being a deranged bigot.

Because of course supporting the Klan should only be a temporary setback in your political career, or so modern Republicans seem content to believe.

In August of 2020, Benton furthered his descent into white nationalism, giving a radio interview where he praised Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and disparaged the late Georgia Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis, only weeks after his death:

"Now, the other person that they're talking about replacing his statue with, I have never read of a significant piece of legislation that was passed with his name on it. His only claim to fame was he got conked on the head at the [Edmund] Pettus Bridge ... and he has milked that for 50 years."

Tommy Benton re-election in 2020, with 80% of the vote, only weeks after his revolting comments.

Not shockingly, Benton was one of many Georgia Republicans who voted for their restrictive voter suppression bill after the 2020 election where Georgia flipped blue, looking to further denigrate John Lewis’ legacy. He remains a vile excuse for a legislator, and he has no business holding any office outside of a Klan chapter.

[babyblob]

Has anyone seen what Dewine is doing here in Ohio. Using 5 million bucks in Corona Virus Relief funds to have a lotto and give away for people who have had the vaccine a chance to win 1 million bucks each? 5 winners a a mil a pop.

[BeastieRunner]

Has anyone seen what Dewine is doing here in Ohio. Using 5 million bucks in Corona Virus Relief funds to have a lotto and give away for people who have had the vaccine a chance to win 1 million bucks each? 5 winners a a mil a pop.

Is this for real??

[numberthirty]

Is this for real??

Heard it on local AM news radio in Illinois...

If it's a scam?

It's a pretty solid scam.

[BeastieRunner]

Heard it on local AM news radio in Illinois...

If it's a scam?

It's a pretty solid scam.

When is the deadline to be registered as a resident?

Asking for a friend ...

[babyblob]

Is this for real??

this is for real. Everyone who has had the vaccine get five entries. Each entry is for a chance to win 1 million bucks. 5 winners. he and the state lotto board are going to give more details next week.

What people are mad about is that it is coming from the Corona Virus Relief funds. Money that could go for rental, housing, food assistance. but this is better I guess.

[Mister Mets]

this is for real. Everyone who has had the vaccine get five entries. Each entry is for a chance to win 1 million bucks. 5 winners. he and the state lotto board are going to give more details next week.

What people are mad about is that it is coming from the Corona Virus Relief funds. Money that could go for rental, housing, food assistance. but this is better I guess.

We could consider the overall financial benefits for everyone who gets vaccinated.

It might be more worthwhile than assistance.

Let me make something clear here. I didn't mean to say that every Republican thinking about running for President in 2024 is afraid of Trump. They just want to know what kind of primary they're getting into. Is it a primary with Trump, or a primary without Trump?

Fair. Everyone in the party is really interested in that question.

Well, duh, everyone knows that it's possible. When you have one party not playing the game and cheating openly with voter suppression, intimidation, lies and spurring on violence, and the other side is trying to govern, it's entirely possible to lose.

Ygleisias believes that, taking into account, it is important for Democrats to do and say popular stuff, and avoid doing and saying unpopular stuff.

[Zauriel]

Robert L. Caslen resigns as the president of University of South Carolina due to plagiarizing someone else's speech. He is a former US Army general and superintendent of West Point.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bob-cas...na-plagiarism/