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

[inisideguy]

Look I think Taiwan is a country for whatever that is worth. But people ripping on John Cena don't really get that the freaking US Government no matter who is in charge won't say Taiwain is a country. So everyone who keeps ripping on this dude might want to check the pressure here. And its not just corporate pressure. There are 14 countries in the world who say Taiwan in is a country. Here they are.
Rank
Country
2021 Population
1 Guatemala 18,249,860
2 Haiti 11,541,685
3 Honduras 10,062,991
4 Paraguay 7,219,638
5 Nicaragua 6,702,385
6 Belize 404,914
7 Saint Lucia 184,400
8 Saint Vincent And The Grenadines 111,263
9 Marshall Islands 59,610
10 Saint Kitts And Nevis 53,544
11 Palau 18,169
12 Tuvalu 11,931
13 Nauru 10,876
14 Vatican City


Now. Everyone is going to rip on Cena. When no one in NATO is will say Taiwan is a country. Maybe we might want to think about this.

[worstblogever]

This... is not new. John Cena served as an ambassador to China for WWE when they signed their "first" Chinese-born wrestler (which wasn't true, since there was another wrestler they signed a few years prior that officially holds that distinction), Tian Bing. I should note, Tian Bing would do nothing in WWE besides wrestle at a Chinese house show that got aired on the WWE Network, appear in one Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, and get released after an appearance on NXT after his last appearance on that show was two years prior. But, that's not the point.

The point was that John Cena has a habit of placating the Chinese cause he is corporate. He learned Mandarin for a reason besides appealing to a large population. He was essentially beloved by WWE for his willingness to follow the line most of the time and speak what was needed as opposed to guys like Daniel Bryan and CM Punk (and especially someone stuck in the midcard like Sami Zayn) who had to be reigned in from time to time for having a more outspoken (i.e. not conservative) worldview, and Hollywood companies want that, cause contrary to what right-wing chuckleheads claim, much of Hollywood is filled with conservatives that want that money and will do whatever it takes, which means having their cake and eating it. They want us to hate China because they're different or they're Commies or they commit blatant human atrocities but they also want all the money China has to offer, and we've seen endless times that when given a choice, executives will choose the money over taking a stand.

Cena took a stand against going to Saudi Arabia after the Kashoggi killing ordered by MBS, if I recall.

So between that and his work with Make a Wish and how vocal he was about supporting the troops during both Iraq & Afghanistan, he's normally on the right side of things... it would be sad to see him not take the high ground against China given their human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and their stance on Hong Kong.

Can't get it right all the time, I suppose. It's just disappointing.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Rachel Maddow made an interesting point tonight. Trump's White House Council Don McGahn is set to testify before Congress next week. While he was President, Trump sued to make sure that wouldn't happen (and it didn't). Now, as a former President, he could again sue to prevent it from happening- but he hasn't. The reason? Now, as a private citizen, he has to pay the lawyers himself- which he of course doesn't want to do. Makes you wonder how rigorous a defense he can afford to have in court, now that he's footing the bill.

This might be the one instance where Trump actually opens his wallet to put up a spirited defense. I've said this here a time or two: the ONE thing Trump fears more than anything is the threat of losing his freedom (which, in itself is ironic as I don't think he's stepped outside Mar-a-Lago since leaving Washington back in January). I believe Trump would spend his last dollar to stay out of prison, even if it's a cushy country club lockup where rich guys are sent. The notion of Trump ending up in Leavenworth is patently laughable, and that's if he even goes on trial, should that happen and he's convicted, he'll file appeals for years. However, if that keeps him from running for president in 2024, I'll be content.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Look I think Taiwan is a country for whatever that is worth. But people ripping on John Cena don't really get that the freaking US Government no matter who is in charge won't say Taiwain is a country. So everyone who keeps ripping on this dude might want to check the pressure here. And its not just corporate pressure. There are 14 countries in the world who say Taiwan in is a country. Here they are.
Rank
Country
2021 Population
1 Guatemala 18,249,860
2 Haiti 11,541,685
3 Honduras 10,062,991
4 Paraguay 7,219,638
5 Nicaragua 6,702,385
6 Belize 404,914
7 Saint Lucia 184,400
8 Saint Vincent And The Grenadines 111,263
9 Marshall Islands 59,610
10 Saint Kitts And Nevis 53,544
11 Palau 18,169
12 Tuvalu 11,931
13 Nauru 10,876
14 Vatican City


Now. Everyone is going to rip on Cena. When no one in NATO is will say Taiwan is a country. Maybe we might want to think about this.

So the freaking Catholic Church has more b-lls than USA, EU and John Cena? We are supposed to take that lying down?

[worstblogever]

This might be the one instance where Trump actually opens his wallet to put up a spirited defense. I've said this here a time or two: the ONE thing Trump fears more than anything is the threat of losing his freedom (which, in itself is ironic as I don't think he's stepped outside Mar-a-Lago since leaving Washington back in January). I believe Trump would spend his last dollar to stay out of prison, even if it's a cushy country club lockup where rich guys are sent. The notion of Trump ending up in Leavenworth is patently laughable, and that's if he even goes on trial, should that happen and he's convicted, he'll file appeals for years. However, if that keeps him from running for president in 2024, I'll be content.

You're right about one thing for sure he's scared for his freedom.

But he was welcomed with open arms at 2021 CPAC to give a followup whine and claim the election was stolen for him to keep the Big Lie going and potentially incite future coup attempts. There's been talk he's antsy about how little web traffic his new blog is getting and needs to get a lathered up crowd so he feels that love he never got from his father again... by resuming rallies at some point soon.

The problem? He won't be able to go outside of red-controlled states for fear if the SDNY moves to arrest him, he could be extradited to NY to face charges. If he does them, at all, yes, they will resume being Covid-19 superspreader events even at the late stage of the pandemic because his flock are refusing to get vaccinated, and they are unlikely to be in places outside of Texas, Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, or Oklahoma. He's paranoid, I don't even think he trusts Doug Ducey in Arizona or Brian Kemp in Georgia after they didn't help overturn the election results enough. There's already two opinions of thought on whether or not certain red-state governors could legally try to keep him from the SDNY, and honestly, trying would only make them stronger with the Republican base if they did.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Tom Goolsby, a former North Carolina State Senator and comb over enthusiast who in his time in office, supported massive cuts to education, a state constitutional ban on same sex marriage, voter ID laws that disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, voted for a law to prevent climatologists from North Carolina from being able to discuss climate change, was the sponsor of the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, and was the man who snuck an amendment onto a motorcycle safety bill to turn it into one of the most radical pieces of anti-abortion legislation in the country. When his legislative agenda began to create weekly protests at the state capitol, known as Moral Mondays, for being led by the Reverend William Barber, Goolsby took the very adult approach to take out an opinion editorial in the local paper to call them “Moron Mondays”, in which he lied about there being no members of the legislature among the group’s numbers. Goolsby lasted less than two terms in office, resigning in August 2014 shortly after being sued by the rest of the law firm where he worked for financial fraud, which makes him even harder to elect.

On this date in 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative for Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Mike Coffman, who prior to going to Washington, D.C., had a career in Colorado state politics that went all the way back to 1989. Back in 2012, Mike Coffman was at a campaign fundraiser when he volunteered his opinion about the Birther conspiracy, saying, “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” Well, word of this disgusting moment leaked to the public, and Coffman was forced to apologize. Mind you, robotically repeating that apology to local news reporters in Colorado who chased him down for comment might not have been the best way to make it seem genuine. He apparently doesn't like the negative publicity about it, since he was caught having his Congressional staff trying to edit the fact that it ever happened from his Wikipedia page, earning him top honors in a Buzzfeed article about members of Congress wasting taxpayer dollars to have paid staff scrub their Wiki pages. But in terms of policy, Mike Coffman isn't any less of an extremist. Say, for example, his repeated support for Congress trying to make fetal Personhood a thing, and make life start at conception. Coffman voted to do so as a state legislator in 2008, and again after hitting Washington, D.C. in 2010 in the Tea Party Wave. In 2011, he also sponsored legislation that tried to redefine the legal definition of rape, specifying whether it was “forcible rape” or not. As you might expect, Coffman's also is a climate change denier, believing scientists' research cannot be trusted, and there's financial pressure on the scientists to cut their funding unless they produce studies that say it DOES exist. And THAT is a decidedly different paranoid conspiracy theory, right there. But it's far from his only one. In October of 2012, Coffman told reporters he believed President Obama would engage in a last minute military engagement to cement his bid on winning the presidency over Mitt Romney (and spoiler alert, nothing of the sort happened). Believe it or not, in spite of Mike Coffman having a history of voting for conservative interests, Colorado's 6th Congressional District held it for four terms after the Tea Party Wave, even though it has a +1 Democratic lean the Cook Partisan Index. After two years filled with disastrous town hall appearances for Coffman where constituents lambasted him for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or how in the wake of the Parkland shooting, they demanded gun control… Mike Coffman got bounced from office in the 2018 Blue Wave by Jason Crow, who bested him by 11 points.



On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled the sitting U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, Trey Hollingsworth, who was first elected to office in 2016. He is the 12th wealthiest member of Congress as of this article’s posting, with a net worth of over $50 million. He self-funded his first campaign for Congress, having carpet-bagged his way up from his home in Tennessee to end up getting a seat in Congress.

And what immediately brought Trey Hollingsworth near the front of the queue of people we had planned on profiling was his remarks on Covid-19 in April of 2020, where he came out hard in favor of reopening the country, considering thousands of people dying “the lesser of two evils” when compared with the GDP being lower:

”The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on," he said. "Our GDP is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter. It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say more deaths is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."

To which, we have a fine rebuttal to say, “Go f*** yourself and your ‘big boy pants’, Trey. People’s lives matter more than your stock portfolio.”

[worstblogever]

Indiana’s 9th Congressional District has a pretty advantageous +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and that helped Trey Hollingsworth coast to a third term in office in the 2020 elections, winning with 61% of the vote after not facing a challenger in the GOP Primary. He has returned to DC to serve on the Financial Services Committee and find ways to tweak the law to increase his family’s own profit margins. In the end, that’s his only interest in serving in office.

• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Hollingsworth votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Hollingsworth 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: Trey Hollingsworth 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. Hollingsworth 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: Trey Hollingsworth 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: Hollingsworth votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Hollingsworth 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: Trey Hollingsworth votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Hollingsworth 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. Hollingsworth 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: Trey Hollingsworth votes against HR 3233, a bill aimed at creating of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.

We look forward to when Trey Hollingsworth is bounced from office and hope he lands hard on the ass of whatever "big boy pants" he's wearing at the time when he does.

[Kirby101]

Stephen Colbert Shows How Jeff Bezos Could Be About To Expose Trump’s Racist Past

Maybe Amazon doesn't just want some old Clarke Gable films.

[Tendrin]

Update for WBE:

Pennsylvania GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a candidate for governor in 2022, has tried to downplay his role in the Capitol riot after it was revealed he was in the area while it was taking place. "When it was apparent that this was no longer a peaceful protest, my wife and I left the area and made our way out of the area," said Mastriano. "At no point did we enter the Capitol building, walk on the Capitol steps, or go beyond police lines."

https://www.rawstory.com/doug-mastriano/

[worstblogever]

Update for WBE:

https://www.rawstory.com/doug-mastriano/

I think I'll be moving him into the queue at some point by the end of 2022 (I really, really wish some of these ass-clowns would stop getting re-elected so I can wrap the project up).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You're right about one thing for sure he's scared for his freedom.

But he was welcomed with open arms at 2021 CPAC to give a followup whine and claim the election was stolen for him to keep the Big Lie going and potentially incite future coup attempts. There's been talk he's antsy about how little web traffic his new blog is getting and needs to get a lathered up crowd so he feels that love he never got from his father again... by resuming rallies at some point soon.

Oops! Forgot about CPAC! My bad. And wasn't that an absolute party.

The problem? He won't be able to go outside of red-controlled states for fear if the SDNY moves to arrest him, he could be extradited to NY to face charges. If he does them, at all, yes, they will resume being Covid-19 superspreader events even at the late stage of the pandemic because his flock are refusing to get vaccinated, and they are unlikely to be in places outside of Texas, Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, or Oklahoma. He's paranoid, I don't even think he trusts Doug Ducey in Arizona or Brian Kemp in Georgia after they didn't help overturn the election results enough. There's already two opinions of thought on whether or not certain red-state governors could legally try to keep him from the SDNY, and honestly, trying would only make them stronger with the Republican base if they did.

I'm sure Ron DeathSantis or Greg Abbott down in Texas would give it the old college try, whether or not they'd have a legal leg to stand on is anybody's guess. The only certainty is that they'd try to get such a case heard by the Supremes, then all bets would be off.

[Tami]

Members of the PA legislature today voted to fine women who miscarry and force them to fill out this form. This is traumatizing for women experiencing incredible loss. Unbelievable.

[worstblogever]

Members of the PA legislature today voted to fine women who miscarry and force them to fill out this form. This is traumatizing for women experiencing incredible loss. Unbelievable.

Almost positive the governor will veto that garbage. The fact that this is what they are prioritizing coming out of a pandemic tells you a lot, though.

[GindyPosts]

Members of the PA legislature today voted to fine women who miscarry and force them to fill out this form. This is traumatizing for women experiencing incredible loss. Unbelievable.

It's one thing to penalize people who elect to terminate a pregnancy, but to punish someone who biologically couldn't maintain a fetus?

You know how hard hearted and malicious that sounds?

My mother (God rest her soul) had two miscarriages before giving before to me and two older siblings.

[BeastieRunner]

It's one thing to penalize people who elect to terminate a pregnancy, but to punish someone who biologically couldn't maintain a fetus?

You know how hard hearted and malicious that sounds?

My mother (God rest her soul) had two miscarriages before giving before to me and two older siblings.

Did your mom ever recover from it mentally?

I ask because my mother had 3 between my sister and I (we're seven years apart) and she's still not over it in her 70s.

The legislation is just sick, sick, sick.