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

[worstblogever]

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Jim Buchy, a rather controversial member of the Ohio House of Representatives who served 9 terms from 1983-2000, and then after a decade out of office, was the hand-picked appointment of Gov. John Kasich to replace Jim Zehringer in his position in 2010. Buchy has continued running for office every two years since, putting his total number of terms in office to 12 over the past 34 years. Since beginning his second run in the Ohio state legislature, he has been criticized for making Birther jokes abortion in Ohio unless a mother's life is at risk, as well as a repeatedly pushing for a fetal heartbeat abortion ban that would place the ban on the procedure at 6 weeks (in other words, unconstitutional via Roe v. Wade). Buchy has also pushed for curtailing voting rights, voted to allow school employees to carry firearms on campus in that time, supported legislation to try and stop Syrian refugees from being resettled in his state, and supported "religious freedom" legislation. He thankfully has chosen to not run for re-election in 2016, and being that he is in his late seventies now, it looks like he's done in politics.

On this date in 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Rick Womick, a former Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 2010 to 2016. The Volunteer State has no shortage of GOP extremists, but Womick in particular, took it to a new level on various occasions, perhaps no more noteworthy than the time he reacted to the news that Gov. Bill Haslam would follow the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by suddenly calling for his party's own governor to be impeached. Womick's not at all hyperbolic statement went as follows, “And where is Tennessee’s leadership…oh that’s right…our Governor bowed down to the five self appointed gods in black robes just minutes after they issued their ‘opinion! He changed Tennessee state law and our State Constitution without ever consulting with the General Assembly.” Besides that huge civics class fail from Womick, only a year prior he declared Haslam a "traitor to our party" over what he called efforts by a political-action committee run by supporters to defeat opponents of Common Core education standards. Now, the end of Rick Womick's political career may have come from him lashing out repeatedly at his own governor, but maybe the Tennessee GOP should have realized he was unstable prior to that. Back on Veteran's Day in 2011, he figured it was a good time to call for all Muslims to be kicked out of the U.S. Military, because as he opined in a paranoid rant, “if they truly are a devout Muslims, and follow the Quran and the Sunnah, then I feel threatened because they’re commanded to kill me.” He then went on to further stoke Islamophobic hatred by declaring Allah is a "false God", and claiming that he had now ensured there was a "fatwa on my head". It further devolved from there into conspiracy theory territory where he said Iran had planned a "population Jihad" where they would take over the United States by pushing for Muslim immigrants to head here from all over the Middle East, and that had been their plan since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Only four month later, in March of 2012, Rick Womick was ranting about a whole other conspiracy theory, this time the threat of the United Nations' Agenda 21, which were no longer a bunch of environmental recommendations to be adopted, but instead, a sinister plot for global domination and to, as Womick explained, "a step by step methodical process that denies United States citizens their property rights".

Somehow, even after all that, Womick got re-elected to a second term in office. And in it, he started things off by once claiming in a hearing that the city of Shelbyville, Tennessee, was the victim of a "electromagnetic pulse bomb" detonated by unnamed terrorists for uncertain reasons. Now, the idea that the "terrorists" targeted the Tennessee state legislators is weird (you'd think using it in a major metropolitan area, if it existed, would cause more chaos), but nobody else seemed to know what the hell Womick was talking about but he insisted it was "in the paper". We don't really feel the need to get too much farther into this head case, but will note his voting record features support for all of the kookiest ideas to come out of the Tennessee state legislature from its past three sessions. Whether it's trying to restrict abortion or voting rights, nullify the Affordable Care Act, teach Creationism in schools, making the Bible the state book, allow guns in schools, or preserve the names of Confederate monuments... it makes us glad that Womick’s career has come to an end.


It was on this date in both 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 6th District, Bill Johnson, who was first elected in… wait for it… the 2010 Tea Party Wave. He’s managed to win four more elections, which has a lot to do with the fact that Ohio’s 6th has a +16 lean in Congress. He’s usually not known for awkward quotes, and he has the benefit of providing absolutely no name recognition. Honestly, is there anything more generic of a name for a Congressman than BILL JOHNSON? That stands out as much as it would if he was one of the townspeople named Johnson in Blazing Saddles.

We give some points on the dumb scale to Johnson for denying climate change science. But it’s not just that he waves away the facts, it’s that he claims he’s an expert because he says he is a “scientist” himself. For the record, Bill Johnson’s “science background” is a degree in computer science… that was awarded to him back in 1979, quite the golden age for high level technology. And it was that resume that Johnson used to stifle an actual scientist from the EPA in a Congressional hearing.

What concerns us more, though, is the level of Islamophobia that seems to have taken root in Rep. Johnson over the past few years. You might wonder why the guy would support Donald Trump’s bigoted idea of a Muslim travel ban, but then you realize, Trump is hardly the only bigot who he’s palling around with these days. Johnson has been identified as one of two GOP members of Congress allying himself with Daniel Pipes, an anti-Muslim activist who has for decades been maligning practitioners of Islam, and after the Oklahoma City Bombing, insisted it was carried out by Muslims, and not anti-government militia goons Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Bill Johnson and Ron DeSantis both co-founded the “Congressional Israel Victory Caucus”, which advises extreme action to help Israel wipe out Palestine, including withholding water from Palestinian settlers. Delightful. Don’t see how that could be a reason that peace won’t be brought to the MidEast, y’know, trying to get people on one side to die of thirst.

During Johnson’s first eight years in office, he wasted years of taxpayer time trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, twice voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, voted to shut down the government in 2013, and in 2018, when his party controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, and voted for the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.

[GOLGO 13]

More questions. "What happened to the child Bouchard fathered in statutory rape? If he didn't try to get custody, why not? Is the kid raised by the mother's parents, or in foster care? Does Bouchard even know? Does he even care, because he's in the 'pro-life, party of responsibility' party?"

Also, the timing of this all being revealed now as he was getting ready to face off with Cheney in a primary shows that if you have anything in your past in Wyoming politics and are gonna come at the Cheneys, they probably have friends that are going to air your dirty laundry. Because he's been trucking along fine as a Wyoming State Senator and there was nothing heard about this. He goes after Liz Cheney, and bang, this ends up falling into a reporter's hands.

It's either just that they looked into his past because he's going for a higher-profile job, or the Cheneys have all the dirt on everyone and are just waiting until its in their best interests to drop a dime to the press.

So deliciously Republican trashy. More to come...

[Robotman]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

All three are winners. But damn are they depressing.

[Mister Mets]

More questions. "What happened to the child Bouchard fathered in statutory rape? If he didn't try to get custody, why not? Is the kid raised by the mother's parents, or in foster care? Does Bouchard even know? Does he even care, because he's in the 'pro-life, party of responsibility' party?"

Also, the timing of this all being revealed now as he was getting ready to face off with Cheney in a primary shows that if you have anything in your past in Wyoming politics and are gonna come at the Cheneys, they probably have friends that are going to air your dirty laundry. Because he's been trucking along fine as a Wyoming State Senator and there was nothing heard about this. He goes after Liz Cheney, and bang, this ends up falling into a reporter's hands.

It's either just that they looked into his past because he's going for a higher-profile job, or the Cheneys have all the dirt on everyone and are just waiting until its in their best interests to drop a dime to the press.

A state senator in Wyoming represents a thirtieth of a congressional district, so a congressional race is a new level of scrutiny, even before you consider that this would be a higher profile than average congressional primary.

This guy does have a pretty crappy track record. He's won reelection as a state senator, but before that he lost two state legislative primaries.

Oh, she committed suicide when she was 20 as well. Just wanna add on the horror factor.

There's another sketchy detail.

https://trib.com/news/state-and-regi...d0f832eda.html

He implies that his ex-wife's suicide was due to other problems, as her father had also committed suicide.

“She had problems in another relationship. Her dad had committed suicide,” Bouchard said in the video.

There are three ways this could have gone, none flattering.

At 18, he knocked up a 14 year old traumatized by her father's suicide.
Or his former father in law killed himself after the death of a daughter.
Or his former father in law killed himself after his fourteen year old daughter became pregnant as the result of statutory rape.

[CaptainEurope]

I Garth Ennis had written that into a plot in "Preacher" I might have written an angry letter to the editor demanding less depressing, and more realistic villains.

[Tami]

First is was Asian Americans, now it's Jewish Americans. Any excuse to promote hate.

Dozens Arrested After Conflict in Gaza Leads to Clashes in Times Square

Several New York City elected officials on Friday denounced clashes that took place between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters in Midtown Manhattan, leading to more than two dozen arrests and at least two people being hospitalized.

The clashes on Thursday afternoon and evening began in Times Square and spread to the Diamond District, a small neighborhood south of Rockefeller Center that is home to many Jewish-owned businesses, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire after days of fighting that killed more than 230 people in Gaza and 12 in Israel.

By midday Friday, 27 people in the city had been arrested on charges including disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, the police said.

One video showed groups of young men, many of whom waved Palestinian flags or wore traditional Palestinian scarves, moving through Midtown pushing and shouting obscenities at older men they accused of being Zionists. At one point, a firework was thrown at close range at a group of pedestrians, including protesters, the police said, adding that it was unclear who threw it.

Another video showed a man being beaten by several others while he lay in the street. A Brooklyn man, Waseem Awawdeh, 23, was charged with several counts on Friday afternoon in connection with the beating, including assault as a hate crime, aggravated harassment as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Awawdeh had retained a lawyer.

The police said they were still searching for five to six other people in connection with the assault. The victim, Joseph Borgen, 29, was punched, kicked, pepper sprayed and hit with crutches. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, the police said.

“I was really just cowering and made sure I braced for it and survived,” Mr. Borgen, who said he was Jewish, told FOX 5 New York on Friday. “My message would just be everyone get along. We all want peace.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the attack on Friday morning. “Anti-Semitism has NO place in our city,” he said on Twitter. “There’s no excuse for violence against someone because of who they are. None. We will bring the perpetrators of this vicious act of hate to justice.”

While I am sympathetic to the Palestinians conditions, what is going on in the US is just wrong.

[worstblogever]

Bill Johnson coasted to re-election with 74% of the vote in 2020, and has resumed being a partisan bag of d***s after spending the Trump administration voting with his party 98% of the time:

• May 15th, 2020: Johnson votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Johnson signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that she won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Johnson votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Johnson votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Johnson votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Bill Johnson votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Johnson votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because she feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Johnson is one of 172 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 19th, 2021: Bill Johnson votes against HR 3233 the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.

Bill Johnson is currently chaining himself to the legacy of Donald Trump, responding to the Mueller report back on April 18th, 2019, by saying it revealed, “no collusion, no obstruction, no anything”, in spite of all the times that Robert Mueller’s report mentioned things Trump did that qualify as obstruction of justice, all of the hundreds of links between the Trump campaign and Russian oligarchs, and the nameless criminal activities that he forwarded to other prosecutors.

The day of the first impeachment vote, Bill Johnson mocked the proceedings by calling for a “moment of silence” for the 63 million voters who voted for Trump and were having their voices ignored by the impeachment. In case you’re wondering, no, he hasn’t called for any moments of silence as hundreds of thousands of victims of Covid-19 die because of the incompetence of the same president Johnson bent over backwards to try and keep in power.

Bill Johnson is, make no mistake, a seditious, anti-democratic mother****er, as five days after the violent coup attempt carried out by Trump supporters because Republicans were supporting “The Big Lie” that the election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump, Johnson was still challenging election results publicly, including in Pennsylvania, a state Joe Biden only won by over 80,000 votes that Johnson isn’t from.

[AnakinFlair]

Screen Shot 2021-05-21 at 3.53.33 PM.jpg

So apparently Ted Cruz is retweeting Russian propaganda against the US military. How lovely.

[BeastieRunner]

Q the Excuses: QShaman Lawyer "Defends" Client, Offends Everyone.

Attorney Albert Watkins first made comments to Talking Points Memo, which were published Tuesday, that Chansley has Asperger’s syndrome and added that this, as well as former President Trump’s “propaganda,” should be considered in his client’s case.

“A lot of these defendants — and I’m going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully — but they’re all f------ short-bus people. ... These are people with brain damage, they’re f------ retarded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum,” Watkins told Talking Points Memo.

In a Wednesday interview on CNN’s “New Day,” co-host John Berman asked Watkins if wanted to apologize for his previous remarks, which also included the argument that the rioters weren’t “bad people” but were “subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f------ Hitler.”

So that is the big guy's defense.

You have to check out the lawyers bio on his website.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend to cooperate with federal authorities in sex trafficking investigation

[worstblogever]

Matt Gaetz currently:

[worstblogever]

Daniel Hernandez is the intern credited with acting to help save Gabby Giffords' life back in January of 2011.

In 2022, Hernandez will be running for her old Congressional seat in Tucson, AZ.

Kinda hard to root against the guy, I'd think.

[Tami]

Daniel Hernandez is the intern credited with acting to help save Gabby Giffords' life back in January of 2011.

In 2022, Hernandez will be running for her old Congressional seat in Tucson, AZ.

Kinda hard to root against the guy, I'd think.

Looks like there are a few Democrats who share impressive creditials running for that seat. Still, win or lose, I wish him good fortune in his political career.

[Mister Mets]

First is was Asian Americans, now it's Jewish Americans. Any excuse to promote hate.

Dozens Arrested After Conflict in Gaza Leads to Clashes in Times Square







While I am sympathetic to the Palestinians conditions, what is going on in the US is just wrong.

While there has likely been an increase in anti-Semitic attacks recently, the norm is pretty high. Jewish-Americans are consistently the top victims of antireligious hate crimes.

https://www.adl.org/news/press-relea...ion-based-hate

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Marjorie Taylor Greene Condemned For ‘Grotesque’ Face Masks-Holocaust Comparison

The conspiracy-endorsing Republican’s comments were slammed as “full-blown bats**t anti-Semitism” and “an insult to the memory of six million dead.” I wonder if any Jewish Qpublicans are onboard with Trashy Greene's comments? ****! Who am I kidding? Of course they are!

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Trump Has Charged Secret Service $40,000 For Mar-a-Lago Room Since Leaving White House

“It’s tacky,” said one observer, especially since the billionaire is also collecting a $219,000 annual pension and has a taxpayer-funded staff. In other headlines of the day, water is wet, and the sun sets in the west.

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Chinese American Group Sues Trump For Slurs It Says Triggered ‘Racial Violence’

Trump’s “outrageous conduct” resulted in an “unmistakable” trend of attacks on Asian Americans, the suit states. Good luck going anywhere with that suit.

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‘You Shouldn’t Be Able To Breathe,’ Police Officer Told Tennessee Man Before He Died

Local media obtained surveillance footage that shows officers berating and beating William Jennette.

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Ted Cruz’s Tweet About Russia Army Makes ‘EmasculaTED’ Trend

The Texas senator angered people on Twitter by suggesting the Russian army was better prepared than America’s “woke, emasculated military.” Fled just needs to stop making a fool of himself on a daily basis as was the case here.