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

[worstblogever]

I'm so sorry, WBE.

https://www.pressherald.com/2021/07/...t-janet-mills/

The worst thing about the current GOP is their ability to keep sitting up like Michael Myers when by all political logic, they should be politically dead, and stay down. But their dedication to enacting laws that get people killed get them to sit up for more.

[Tendrin]

The worst thing about the current GOP is their ability to keep sitting up like Michael Myers when by all political logic, they should be politically dead, and stay down. But their dedication to enacting laws that get people killed get them to sit up for more.

I mean, you get to unretire LePage, profile Amon Bundy, *and* one of the heads of MUFON, and that's just from the last few weeks.

I bet you can't wait for 2024. <3

[Wildling]

Talking about horror movies.

I watched and enjoyed the just released Forever Purge movie. It's just a movie and all (that like some horror movies asks you to not think about the helpless children you don't see but should be getting slaughtered everywhere) but I wish it had shown scenes of the Forever Purgers brutally murdering members of the far-right party in power that fed them their hate morsels for years, since it was outright stated the White House was regained by them again after the last movie but the hate escalation result overwhelmed them enough that at least in the border Texas area they had to retreat all troops (I assume because a billionaire there called and asked them not to carpet bomb the whole state).

[numberthirty]

Take another bow, Illinois...

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loca...arges/2545687/

Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin, Chief of Staff Indicted on Federal Bribery Charges

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Dale Mensing, a Bob Jones University graduate and grocery clerk who, in his mid-fifties, dove into politics for a challenge to Rep. Jared Huffman for his seat to represent California’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. His campaign ads were primarily YouTube videos of Mensing in the picturesque California redwoods, claiming the Affordable Care Act was created to start attacks on the freedom of religion, or was a violation of the Bill of Rights. In others he warned of Common Core education as “One World Order education concepts”. Not surprisingly, Mensing lost the election by 50 points, and will likely never perform better in any election, should he make another go of it.

In 2016, 2017, and 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward, who in 2016 was the latest in a long line of nut-jobs we’ve profiled who decided to challenge Senator John McCain for his seat to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate, and she lost in 2018 as well running for the seat formerly held by Sen. Jeff Flake. For starters, Ward was running a osteopathic clinic in Lake Havasu City back in 2009, and not particularly well from a financial standpoint. She then sold her practice to a company named NorthCountry. That included the clinic, employees and all, and her buyout was paid for with… half a million dollars in Obama Stimulus Funds that came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. But she tells all her prospective voters she HATES Obamacare, go figure, while she laughs all the way to the bank. In 2012, she even gave an interview to an osteopathic magazine to discuss the matter with no regrets. As a state legislator in Arizona, Kelli Ward hosted a town hall meeting with her constituents to discuss the threat of… CHEMTRAILS. That’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, though, as Ward has the nasty habit of supporting OTHER conspiracies, and appearing on the radio talk shows of every right-wing paranoid conspiracy theorist lunatic who will host her. Back in 2013, she co-sponsored Arizona’s attempts to reject the United Nations’ Agenda 21 Treaty, and spoke on the floor of the Arizona legislature about how she believes it’s not about better environmental standards, but tricking rural Americans into moving back into metropolitan centers and cities. Mother Jones Magazine also has reportied about how Ward has appeared on the radio show of a local Arizona conspiracy nut named Luca Zanna, where Ward chatted about mysterious helicopters that had been spotted in Arizona, finding agreement how Common Core standards were turning children into “slaves”, as well as the prospect of martial law, or the possibility of a foreign power sending troops to subdue American citizens. Mother Jones was also good enough to note how Kelli Ward made a trip up to the Cliven Bundy Ranch to hang out with him and the Oathkeepers in 2014, and she described the armed standoff where domestic terrorists had assault rifles pointed at federal agents from the Bureau of Land Management as a “family friendly” event. Just… yikes. After Cliven Bundy made his comments “about the negro”, Ward tried downplaying her visit to see the would-be hero turned racist domestic terrorist, but noting Bundy had a “1st Amendment right” to his remarks. She also actually did an interview in 2014 with self-described conspiracy theorist and fellow Bundy supporter Pete Santilli, who called John McCain “a domestic enemy”, and brought up both Chemtrails and 9/11 Trutherism during their talk. Funny side story thought? Remember when Donald Sterling still owned the Los Angeles Clippers, and after decades of racist remarks and lawsuits over racial discrimination against Sterling, he was caught on tape making racist remarks by his girlfriend about the company she was keeping with African Americans being something he didn’t approve of. The NBA voted to force Sterling to sell the Clippers, and most people felt it was because the league didn’t need anyone that racist as part of their day-to-day operations. Well, Kelli Ward, for whatever reason, came running to Donald Sterling’s defense, saying that forcing him to lose his team in such a manner created a “slippery slope”, and promised the public that she would “fight for free speech”. Kelli Ward also received a 2016 endorsement from Nohl Rosenthe leader of a group of racist protesters who are pro-police, taunting Black Lives Matter protesters with Confederate flags, or the time Rosen participated an armed protest with assault rifles of a Phoenix mosque (where they talked about the possibility of having a “Draw Muhammed” contest). While most assumed Ward would distance herself from a bigoted crank like Rosen… she re-Tweeted his endorsement. Then you do a little bit of checking and find out… Ward has spoken at some of Rosen’s “Back the Badge” rallies that defend police violence (especially the times against minorities). And that sort of mentality jibes with Mother Jones’ other reporting, that when asked about her position on birthright citizenship at a local GOP gathering in September 2014, she responded by making a thumbs-down gesture and blowing a raspberry, stating that it had been "misinterpreted for years" and that immigrants shouldn't be able to stay just because they "create a child." (Which isn’t how birthright citizenship works.) In radio interviews, Ward has fear-mongered in the worst possible ways, warning that "polio-like illnesses" are spreading "throughout the country as the federal government shipped all of these illegal immigrants all across the country without properly treating them for health and wellness, and they're exposing our kids, our families, to things that we should never have to be exposed to." (Remember, now, we’re talking about a woman with medical training…) Establishing that Ward is off her rocker seems like an open and shut at this point, but we’ll note she also was a co-sponsor of extremist Arizona Republicans attempts to make gold and silver legal tender as one of her first priorities as a legislator, as well as voted for both an attempt to nullify federal firearm laws, and voted for Arizona’s attempt at passing a “religious freedom” law to prevent same sex marriage back in 2013. So to sum up, she frequents the company of bigots, is supported by leaders of hate rallies, says unfounded things about immigrants, tries making conspiracy theories into actual policy, and only seems to mention the importance of the First Amendment when someone says something really racist. Perhaps then, it should come as little surprise that she has spoken at Trump events and praised Cheeto Jesus himself, Donald Trump. Ward was left desperate enough to tout “endorsements” from fake news sites that her own campaign manages, and YET… she rose to become the new Chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, pushing hard to get them to do push for the “Fraudit”, where they hired a Trump-backing firm with no experience in election monitoring to come and investigate the 2020 election ballots for non-existent fraud and in the process, cost the state a small fortune in corrupting the existing voting machines’ databases, and for whatever reason, sending the ballots to a cabin in Montana. She is still bats***, and we won’t be surprised if she runs for office again at some point.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Carl Nett, who lost in an attempt to get elected to the Kentucky state legislature in 2014, and in 2019, was a candidate to be the Secretary of State of Kentucky. Nett, however, decidedly crossed a line during the build-up to the 2018 elections, harming his own reputation by making a threat towards longtime Democratic Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth. Rep. Yarmuth posted a picture of himself wearing an “F” pin, which he revealed was his pride in knowing that “F” is the lifetime rating the NRA gave him. Nett, a former law enforcement officer and Secret Service agent, posted on Twitter that Yarmuth should, “move it over a bit, I was trained center mass”, indicating he wanted to shoot him square in the chest. Nett deleted the post, but not before it was seen, screen-captured, and sent to the FBI to investigate. He ended up apologizing, but his reputation was already damaged. Not that he seems to have a good idea of what a good reputation looks like, as Nett not only insisted that he has the nickname “Trump”, but he threatened to sue the state of Kentucky if they didn’t include that nickname for him on the ballot in 2019, only to have a judge laugh his frivolous lawsuit out of court. Nett finished fourth among four candidates for the GOP Primary, getting only 13% of the vote. As he seems unlikely to ever reach elected office now that he threatened to shoot a sitting politician (we hope, at least).

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Fern Shubert, who was a GOP Primary candidate in the special election for U.S. House Representative for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional district in 2019, an unsuccessful campaign for North Carolina State Senate in 2010, and way back in 2004, she had an unsuccessful run for Governor of North Carolina. upon her announcing her intention to try and get into Congress, the media did some looking back at her 2004 campaign site, and discovered that Fern Shubert believes that support for same sex marriage leads to “rising crime rates”, which has precisely zero statistical correlation outside of Fern Shubert’s warped brain. Further inspection into that website showed that Shubert compared homosexuality to pedophilia, stated her opposition to gun control because she believes in the urban legend that “Hitler supported it”, and compared Democrats to the Taliban. Fern Shubert finished sixth out of ten candidates, having all of 433 people vote for her, for 1.5% of the vote. We’re gussing she will never win office, and we will retire her profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 998-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Katherine Tate

Welcome to what is the 998th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Katherine Tate, a 2018 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District, who absolutely should not be confused with Catherine Tate, the brilliant English actress who portrayed one of Dr. Who’s all-time best companions and was Nellie on the original UK version of The Office. No, the Mississippi Republican Katherine Tate we’re profiling is spelled with a K, although we wouldn’t be shocked to find out she spells it with three of them.

Yes, this should be an easy explanation…. Katherine Tate actually posted several times about Facebook to defend her family’s history of owning a plantation and how they owned slaves, saying “They were well treated members of the family” and how they were “worse off” after emancipation. Now, as bad as that bit of revisionist history is, her social media also had a pattern of maligning billionaire philanthropist George Soros, calling him “Satan” and sharing a number of conspiracy theories about him, while also claiming that Muslims on London were running secret slave markets, presumably not as wholesome as her idea of the Christian ones her ancestors did. She defended Confederate monuments, of course, in other posts.

Just in case anyone was unsure that Tate was a reality-challenged individual, she turned some heads during the GOP Primary debate for the seat by proposing the solution to mass shootings as “Get the federal government out of this godless, Marxist, statist, anti-god, anti-Christian control of schools." And when you mention some variant of Judeo-Christian God oppression three times in one sentence, we’re not sure if you’re trying to summon the Anti-Christ like Beetlejuice or if you’re just raving mad.

While being incredibly racist hasn’t been a dealbreaker for Republican voters in Mississippi at any point since 1965 or so, we are relieved to say that Katherine Tate only got 416 total votes, for 0.6% of the total tally and has since remained out of American politics. We’ll drink to the thought of her staying out.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Brazil's Bolsonaro says he won't hand over presidency if there is vote fraud

Bolsonaro now parroting pre-election Trump. The election will be fair only if he says it's fair.

That's what Israel's PM attempted to do but it didn't stick. But bolsaro, like trump, does have fanatical supporters.

[worstblogever]

That's what Israel's PM attempted to do but it didn't stick. But bolsaro, like trump, does have fanatical supporters.

And the difference is, Bolsonaro hasn't alienated himself from the military structure... it's a lot easier to stage a coup if you have the military backing you.

[Tami]

Massachusetts police responding to group of 'heavily armed men' claiming to 'not recognize our laws'

A bizarre incident unfolded Saturday morning in Wakefield, Massachusetts. According to local police: "during a motor vehicle stop, several heavily armed men claiming to be from a group that does not recognize our laws exited their vehicles and fled into the woodline" near Interstate Highway 95.

The incident unfolded around 1:30 a.m. when a state trooper came across a group of 8 to 10 people refueling on the side of the I-95 highway in Wakefield, a suburb of Boston. The group was dressed in military-style uniforms, carried tactical gear like body cameras and helmets and had long guns slung over their shoulders.

They told officials they were on their way to Maine from Rhode Island for "training," Col. Christopher Mason said.

Officials said they made two initial arrests and the rest of the group, which calls itself "Moorish American Arms," fled into a wooded area that is now surrounded by police. As a result, a stretch of I-95 was closed and shelter-in-place orders were set for people who live nearby.

Police negotiators talked to those hiding in the woods throughout the early morning.

"We're trying to successfully and peacefully resolve this," Mason said.

As of 10:30 a.m. Saturday the "remaining suspects on highway" were taken into custody by MSP Special Tactical Operations Team, Massachusetts State Police said in an update.

"7 additional suspects being transported for booking ... Total of 9 in custody counting the initial 2 arrests," MSP said.

---

What Do We Know About the Armed Group Involved in I-95 Police Standoff?

The group of nine men were reportedly in two cars stopped in the breakdown lane on I-95 in Wakefield with their hazard lights on around 1:30 a.m. when police stopped to assist them. Police said the responding trooper saw that they were wearing “tactical or military style” uniforms, including tactical vests and body cameras. Some had long rifles, others pistols or some combination of both.

State Police Col. Christopher Mason said the men identified themselves as being part of a group known as Rise of the Moors. The group's website describes them as "Moorish Americans dedicated to educating new Moors and influencing our Elders."

“Their self-professed leader wanted very much known their ideology is not anti-government,” Mason said. “Our investigation will provide us more insight into what their motivation, what their ideology is.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's website, the Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments.

It is not clear if Rise of the Moors is specifically affiliated with that movement.

Mason said he did not have any knowledge of this group prior to Saturday, but said it is not unusual for state police to encounter people with "sovereign ideologies."

"I'm not saying that this group does, but we have had those encounters before in the past, we trained to those encounters," he said. "We very much understand, you know the, I guess the philosophy that underlies that mindset, and we train our officers actually at the academy on on these interactions and how to de-escalate those situations and how to engage with people that have that that philosophy and mindset and resolve those situations, you know, in a peaceful manner, which is what we're committed to doing today."

[Tami]

Climate change has gotten deadly. It will get worse.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The emergency department at Oregon Health Systems University had rarely been this busy, even during the worst stages of the covid-19 pandemic.

Physicians raced to provide fluids to patients who arrived breathless, dizzy and drenched in sweat. Others were brought in on stretchers, their body temperatures so high their central nervous systems had shut down. Those who could still speak told of stifling apartments and sun that made their skin sizzle. Some had tried to walk to county cooling shelters, only to collapse in the blistering heat.

“The system was overwhelmed,” said Mary Tanski, chair of OHSU’s department of emergency medicine, of the towering heat dome that toppled temperature records across the Northwest this week.

Some patients didn’t survive. In Oregon, Washington and western Canada, authorities are investigating more than 580 deaths potentially linked to the punishing heat.

[Tami]

N.H. Supreme Court Strikes Down Voting Law As Unconstitutional

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has struck down a Republican-backed voting law that required newly-registering voters to provide proof of residency in the state before they could cast a ballot.

The 2017 law, known as Senate Bill 3 (SB 3), was challenged in court by the League of Women Voters and the state Democratic Party, who said it was an attempt at voter suppression. Republicans championed the law, saying it would prevent people from voting in places where they didn’t live.

Get NHPR's reporting about politics, the pandemic, and other top stories in your inbox — sign up for our newsletter (it's free!) today.

A state superior court judge last year ruled the law unconstitutional and found it placed unreasonable burdens on the right to vote. In a 4-0 ruling Friday, the state Supreme Court agreed, affirming the lower court’s ruling and writing that the law was confusing, placed undue burdens on the right to vote and “must be stricken in its entirety.”

“We conclude that SB 3 is unconstitutional, as the State has failed to demonstrate that SB 3 is substantially related to the precise governmental interests it set forth as justifications necessitating the burdens the law imposes on the right to vote,” the justices wrote.

[BeastieRunner]

Massachusetts police responding to group of 'heavily armed men' claiming to 'not recognize our laws'





---

What Do We Know About the Armed Group Involved in I-95 Police Standoff?

Where they incels or a far right terrorist group?

EDIT:

Nevermind. The second article says the group name.

N.H. Supreme Court Strikes Down Voting Law As Unconstitutional

Go New Hampshire!

[Tami]

FBI launches flurry of arrests over attacks on journalists during Capitol riot

Nearly six months after the U.S. Capitol riot, the Justice Department has begun arresting a new category of alleged criminals — those who attacked reporters or damaged their equipment as journalists documented the violence perpetrated by supporters of President Donald Trump.

The first such charge came last week, when 43-year-old Shane Jason Woods of Illinois was charged with engaging in violence on the Capitol grounds Jan. 6, as well as assaulting a law enforcement officer. Authorities say Woods was caught on video knocking down a cameraman.

The arrests come at a contentious moment for the Justice Department and First Amendment advocates, who have sharply criticized federal law enforcement for secretly issuing subpoenas of reporters’ phone records during the Trump administration.

On Thursday, FBI agents arrested a Covington, Va., man for allegedly destroying journalists’ equipment. Joshua Dillon Haynes was charged with smashing their gear outside the Capitol and bragging about it in a text to a friend. Haynes was the fifth person arrested in connection with attacks on the media in a little more than a week.

“We attacked the CNN reporters and the fake news and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars of their video and television equipment here’s a picture behind me of the pile we made out of it,” he allegedly messaged the person, according to court papers.

Court papers filed in the “attacks on media” cases suggest that charging someone with assaulting a journalist or vandalizing their equipment is a bit more complex than other rioting charges.

There is no federal law specifically against attacking a journalist, so the Justice Department has charged those who went after reporters or their gear on Jan. 6 with committing violence in the restricted grounds of the Capitol, or destroying property on the Capitol grounds. More such arrests are expected, according to officials.

[Malvolio]

Many people have not gotten the joke when it comes to Stan Kelly. Part of it is that he is satirizing heavy-handed political cartoons.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/sa...ons-stan-kelly

I've seen several of his cartoons in the Onion. I get what he's trying to do, but he's a bit ham-fisted with it. The person who did that sort of thing the best was Stephen Colbert, when he had the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. It's a fine line between staying in character and having people think you've actually become what you're satirizing.

[Malvolio]

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Fern Shubert, who was a GOP Primary candidate in the special election for U.S. House Representative for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional district in 2019, an unsuccessful campaign for North Carolina State Senate in 2010, and way back in 2004, she had an unsuccessful run for Governor of North Carolina. upon her announcing her intention to try and get into Congress, the media did some looking back at her 2004 campaign site, and discovered that Fern Shubert believes that support for same sex marriage leads to “rising crime rates”, which has precisely zero statistical correlation outside of Fern Shubert’s warped brain. Further inspection into that website showed that Shubert compared homosexuality to pedophilia, stated her opposition to gun control because she believes in the urban legend that “Hitler supported it”, and compared Democrats to the Taliban. Fern Shubert finished sixth out of ten candidates, having all of 433 people vote for her, for 1.5% of the vote. We’re gussing she will never win office, and we will retire her profile at this time to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 998-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Katherine Tate

Welcome to what is the 998th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Katherine Tate, a 2018 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District, who absolutely should not be confused with Catherine Tate, the brilliant English actress who portrayed one of Dr. Who’s all-time best companions and was Nellie on the original UK version of The Office. No, the Mississippi Republican Katherine Tate we’re profiling is spelled with a K, although we wouldn’t be shocked to find out she spells it with three of them.

Yes, this should be an easy explanation…. Katherine Tate actually posted several times about Facebook to defend her family’s history of owning a plantation and how they owned slaves, saying “They were well treated members of the family” and how they were “worse off” after emancipation. Now, as bad as that bit of revisionist history is, her social media also had a pattern of maligning billionaire philanthropist George Soros, calling him “Satan” and sharing a number of conspiracy theories about him, while also claiming that Muslims on London were running secret slave markets, presumably not as wholesome as her idea of the Christian ones her ancestors did. She defended Confederate monuments, of course, in other posts.

Just in case anyone was unsure that Tate was a reality-challenged individual, she turned some heads during the GOP Primary debate for the seat by proposing the solution to mass shootings as “Get the federal government out of this godless, Marxist, statist, anti-god, anti-Christian control of schools." And when you mention some variant of Judeo-Christian God oppression three times in one sentence, we’re not sure if you’re trying to summon the Anti-Christ like Beetlejuice or if you’re just raving mad.

While being incredibly racist hasn’t been a dealbreaker for Republican voters in Mississippi at any point since 1965 or so, we are relieved to say that Katherine Tate only got 416 total votes, for 0.6% of the total tally and has since remained out of American politics. We’ll drink to the thought of her staying out.

So Katherine Tate got 17 votes fewer than Fern Shubert. Since Tate kind of looks like a local news anchor, maybe she and Shubert should get a show on Newsmax. Call it the Kathy and Fern Show. It would be the conservative version of Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb.