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

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Joshua Black, a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives in the 2014 elections whose aspirations for office at first were the sort of thing that the GOP loved… an African-American taxi-driver turned street preacher who hated President Obama enough to call for his impeachment over Benghazi. Of course, their new favored son fell out of favor fast when he started calling for Barack Obama to be hanged as a traitor like Benedict Arnold… on MLK Day, of all times. While this got him a visit from the Secret Service, the only apology Black ever gave was that he was incorrect that Benedict Arnold was ever hanged, as he died back in England of old age. It seems like Joshua Black won’t be a viable candidate for anything but a Secret Service watch list going forward.

It was on this date in 2015 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day profiled former House Speaker John Boehner, the weepy wanker who wielded a speaker's gavel that was the most cartoonish example of overcompensation anyone could have ever imagined. Boehner's reign as speaker saw our Congress become a complete circus where he lost control of insurrectionists who were IN HIS OWN PARTY, eventually leading to several votes for Speaker where members of the House Freedom Caucus went out of their way to embarrass him with protest votes for other candidates for the role, and threats for votes for non-confidence that led to him opting to just resign. Boehner should not be pitied, however, because he led the charge to repeatedly, again and again attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act knowing the effort would either be stopped by a filibustered Senate, or be vetoed by President Obama, but insisting on repeating the lie that it was a "job-killing" healthcare plan. Boehner once denied climate change and disregarded that carbon dioxide played a role in it, mentioning how it's as harmless as cow flatulence. When confronted with the fact that the Congressional sessions he led were the least productive in modern history, he scoffed, saying he should be judged by the bills they didn't pass, rather than the ones they had. Boehner allowed Ted Cruz to practically usurp him and lead the GOP off a cliff and into the 2013 Government Shutdown without any plan as how to proceed in governing our country. He tried blaming cries from his Republican colleagues to impeach the president were actually "a scam perpetuated by the White House", who had somehow tricked them into suggesting such a thing. He frequently would insinuate that President Obama was loyal to forces outside the country, in particular Iran, during nuclear negotiations with them. Boehner, always a notorious chain smoker who once handed out checks from the tobacco lobby right before Congress was about to vote on legislation that directly affected the tobacco industry, has after retiring from Congress gone on to... big surprise... work for the tobacco lobby. We only credit him for having the redeeming quality of having a sense of humor and being brutally honest about hating Ted Cruz since he left office.

In both 2016, as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who in our first discussion was just U.S. Senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions. Now, we covered ALLLLLL the racist crap that Sessions had done including but not limited to his full-throated in his opposition to immigration, his die-hard support of the presidential aspirations of President Trump and helping write his vague and insane national security and anti-immigration policies, appeared on stage with him wearing a "Make America Great" hat as far back as August of 2015, and was the first Republican to defend Trump's idea of banning the entry of all Muslims entering the United States, saying it was "an appropriate time to begin discussion" of something that bigoted and obviously unconstitutional. We talked about how he opposes LGBT rights so fiercely that he was the person who introduced a bill for a Constitutional Amendment to ban same sex marriage in 2006. Long before he was in the Senate, back in 1986, Jeff Sessions was a U.S. Attorney for Southern Alabama nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be a U.S. District Court judge. During the hearing to confirm him, however, four lawyers from the U.S. Department Justice came and testified to report on Sessions' history of making racist statements. He was quoted as having said that the NAACP and ACLU were "un-American" and "Communist" because they "forced Civil Rights down the throats of people" and had told an assistant U.S. Attorney once that he "thought the Klan was okay until I found out they smoked pot", which is a revolting place to draw a line, frankly. The Reagan administration withdrew his nomination, making him only the second person denied the office after being nominated in 48 years. That forced Sessions to go skulking back to Alabama, where he would remain a U.S. Attorney until 1993, before running for Alabama Attorney General and serving for all of two years before making the jump to replace the late Sen. Howard Heflin, coincidentally one of the senators in that Judiciary Committee hearing who refused to confirm him to the U.S. District Court. Back in 2005: Sen. Sessions insulted protesters of the Iraq War, saying "They did not represent the American ideals of freedom, liberty and spreading that around the world. I frankly don't know what they represent, other than to blame America first.", In 2010, Sessions gave his humble opinion that President Obama "sees the Constitution as an inconvenience." and in June of 2016 spoke before the Faith and Freedom Coalition, claims that his anti-immigration position is "The Biblical One", citing the Book of Nehemiah from the Hebrew Bible. (Of course, in the actual Christian Bible, that Sessions is supposed to follow the tenets of, Jesus Christ kind of talks about welcoming strangrs from other lands with open arms as the mark of a True Christian (Romans 12:13), so...) Jeff Sessions helped fuel the anti-immigrant fever of the Trump presidential campaign, allowing his own creepy-ass white nationalist communications director, Stephen Miller, to join the Trump campaign, and Miller helped write the dystopian nightmare speech that Donald Trump delivered at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Sessions was rewarded for his loyalty with Trump to be nominated to be Attorney General, which filled every civil rights organization with dread, as this racist little Keebler Elf is openly opposed to every policy that would promote racial equality, criminal justice reform, and reducing the prison population that tends to lean disproportionately in favor of locking up minorities for longer periods of time for minor criminal offenses. He's proven them pretty right, too, as he's been focusing on things like trying to coordinate mass deportations of immigrants, reverse affirmative action at college universities, and re-direct funding away from investigations into white supremacist organizations as terrorist threats, even though they’re the most likely to carry out such attacks, statistically speaking.

But, the thing we're happy to report, is that this bigoted hobbit is still thankfully quite incompetent. Before he ever took the job as Attorney General, he had set the stage for ending up being thrown out of office, if not going to prison. You see, it seems people involved in the Trump 2016 campaign, which still did include Jeff Sessions were colluding with foreign entities from Russia to steal the presidential election (the United States Intelligence community are in unanimous agreement that this is the case). And did Jeff Sessions get caught up in the conspiracy to commit treason? Why, it certainly would seem so, what with there being secret meetings between himself and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on at least THREE CONFIRMED occasions? But hey, a Senator meeting with foreign dignitaries might be something that you could explain, right? It's not like Jeff Sessions would lie under oath when asked about meeting Russians during his confirmation hearing to be Attorney General and risk being charged with perjury at some point... OH WAIT, HE F***ING DID THAT TOO. As a result of Attorney General Sessions being a complete moron aiding Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, his hand was forced and he had to recuse himself in the matter of the investigations into Russian tampering in the 2016 election. Big surprise... Donald Trump is not happy about that! It seems as so many dots are turning up for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to connect that it's almost going to be a slam dunk to prove not only did Trump campaign people were aiding a foreign power, but Donald Trump knew about it. And Trump is kicking himself that he's powerless to have his A.G. do anything to save his ass. Trump demanded Jeff Sessions resign, and wanted to toss him out of the White House in his pointy-heeled shoes, but was pressured by sane members of his administration that doing so would only accelerate his downfall. Instead, Trump has comforted himself by publicly ridiculing his own Attorney General in interviews and on social media in July of 2017, something he continued to do for over a year, and has even admitted he would have never nominated him if he knew Sessions wasn't going to play defense for him in the Trump/Russia investigation. Sessions eventually resigned in November of 2018.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2018 that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day profiled Jan Morgan, a 2018 candidate for Governor of Arkansas who tried challenging Gov. Asa Hutchinson in the GOP Primary by running to his right primarily on the basis that she loves guns and hates Muslims more than he does. Really, that’s the long and the short of it. Morgan, an NRA activist now 54 years old, entered the race with the support of Donald Trump and based on her own viral fame in 2014 when she declared her own gun range to be a “Muslim free zone”, presumably because she felt she was getting too long in the tooth to continue her advertising for the range by running ads where she posed as its “gun babe”.After facing criticism for that incident, she claimed, “Agents with the Counter-Terrorism unit of the FBI met with me last year to alert me that ISIS is in Arkansas… The agency feared I was going to be a target of opportunity, and I was directed to take EVERY SECURITY PRE-CAUTION necessary to protect my life and the lives of all people in my presence at all times.” She also wrote on her own website in 2014 in a now deleted post, “Why would I want to rent or sell a gun and hand ammunition to someone who aligns himself with a religion that commands him to kill me or other innocent people simply because we refuse to submit to Islamic authority.” By January 2015, this revolutionary business practice of open bigotry expanded to skin color, when Morgan denied service to two men who were Hindu, who argue with her they “weren’t Muslim, just brown”.She stated her belief that the 2nd Amendment should be unbridled, as well as her concerns that “Sharia Law” is taking over the United States (Hint: IT ISN’T), and tried gaining points politically against Asa Hutchinson for not signing a patently unconstitutional anti-Sharia Law that passed in the Arkansas state legislature. Mind you, she has also reflexively attacked Sen. Marco Rubio for defending the rights of Muslims to be at gun ranges by accusing him of “like a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood front organization CAIR.” We’re going to point out that that’s not just hyperbolic, it’s conspiracy-theory insane, because there is no link between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council for American-Islamic Relations. CAIR, however, is often the target of anti-Islamic hatemongers for trying to improve relations between the United States and Muslims around the globe… so yeah, seems to make sense that Jan Morgan would weigh in that way. It's not just the bigotry, it’s the level of “gun crazy” that is intertwined with it with Morgan, though, as she not only believes there should be no limits to the 2nd Amendment, but she actually had the backwards-ass idea that the solution to an increase in school shootings was to declare laws that school zones are “gun-free zones” to be unconstitutional. She was also proud enough to meet Trump Administration advisor and European Neo-Nazi member Sebastian Gorka that she took a photograph of the two of them together to post to her Twitter profile in September of 2018. Anyway, in the end, Jan Morgan still got a surprisingly good 30% of the vote in the GOP Primary against Asa Hutchinson in 2018, and is planning a 2022 run for U.S. Senate, challenging for John Boozman’s seat.

On this date in 2019, the “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Tom Braund, who was very briefly nominated to be placed on the Alaska State Senate by Republican Gov. Bill Walker in February of 2018, but that nomination proved disastrous after the media reported some of Braund’s thoughts in Facebook posts, where he advocated for theocracy, compared women to dogs, and apparently urged the murder of abortion providers by cutting their hearts out with scissors. He also shared “A Theory Of Why Some Men Have Dogs And Not Wives,” which concluded, “To test this theory: Lock your wife &your dog in the garage for an hour. Then open it and see who’s happy to see you!” Because OF COURSE the anti-abortion fanatic thinks misogyny is hilarious. Braund has never made a run for office officially, and blew his chance at being appointed for one, so we will set aside his profile at this time, and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 922-45, since this was established in July 2014.


On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the U.S. Senator from Georgia, David Perdue, who was first elected to office back in the 2014 elections, based on his resume of being the CEO of a variety of companies through the years including Sara Lee, Haggar Clothing, Reebok, and Dollar General, as well as being the cousin of former Georgia Governor (and Trump administration Secretary of Agriculture) Sonny Perdue. Ah, nothing more Republican than corporate elitism combined with nepotism… well, that if you add the fact that his business record includes investors suing companies he worked for because they were misreporting profits, times he took a golden parachute while a company filed for bankruptcy (both with Dollar General), and laying off workers and/or outsourcing jobs (pretty much everywhere else). It was not until May of 2020, when the media scrutinized his stock portfolio and how it was handled as the Senate was informed of the Covid-19 pandemic looming that he announced his financial advisors would no longer be buying and selling individual stocks… because of course no one with a career as a shady CEO would look to enrich themselves during a viral outbreak. The only reason he wasn’t scrutinized more is because Georgia’s other senator is Kelly Loeffler, who was even more brazen in trying to profit off of coronavirus.

But while his track record of letting greed motivate him is troubling enough, David Perdue has given us more then enough reason through the years to be concerned that he isn’t a bigoted fascist. We first really focused on him as a potential candidate for a CSGOPOTD profile back in June of 2016 when at that year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, he quoted scripture to make a “joke” about President Obama, quoting Psalms 109:8 and saying, “let his days be few”.

Ah, the Christian value of praying for the death of your political foes. Classy.

As a legislator, David Perdue has voted almost exclusively along party lines in the Senate, rubber-stamping every member of Donald Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors” through, giving a free pass to every judicial nominee, including accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act among the rare moments where Mitch McConnell has actually allowed a vote to the floor. He sponsored anti-immigration legislation that would not prevent illegal immigration as much as reduce the amount of people legally allowed to emigrate into the United States, because as we’re about to cover… Perdue’s got a bit of a track record for doing racist things in terms of policy, and looking the other way when they happen in reality. Sen. Perdue developed amnesia about Donald Trump calling Haiti and African nations “s***hole countries” even though he was present in the room when it happened, and then only remembered it a few weeks later when his feet were held to the fire about it.

Maybe it’s better that he wasn’t facing the media to comment, after all, we’re talking about the same David Perdue who in 2018 was being filmed while campaigning for current Georgia Governor (by way of voter suppression and kicking Democratic voters off the ballot) Brian Kemp by a student with their cell phone. And Perdue lost his cool and snatched the student’s phone out of his hand and away from them. Which is, y’know, not normal behavior for a member of the U.S. Senate.

Recent headlines from the 2020 election, now that Perdue is up for re-election, have not done a lot to shake the image that maybe he’s got some serious problems with people of other races or religions, as his campaign opened up against his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff, by going “all-in” on anti-Semitic tropes. The first ad released enlarged Ossoff’s nose in both length and width (interesting choice of photoshop there, Dave), and then the campaign followed by releasing an add of Ossoff standing with Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Minority Leader who just so happens to be Jewish with the caption that Democrats are trying to “buy Georgia”. Perdue ordered his people to pull the ads after facing criticism and claimed it was an “inadvertent error” and not that he was employing people cribbing notes from Joseph Goebbels.

David Perdue was defeated by Jon Ossoff in the special Georgia runoff election in January of 2021. We would like to wish him our heartiest “GOOD RIDDANCE” salutes at this time.

[Tendrin]

Taipei, Taiwan (CNN)Taiwan has reported a record number of incursions by Chinese warplanes into its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) for the second day in a row, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said on Saturday night.

The self-governing island said a total of 39 Chinese military aircraft entered the ADIZ on Saturday, one more than the 38 planes it spotted on Friday.
The 38 and 39 planes respectively are the highest number of incursions Taiwan has reported in a day since it began publicly reporting such activities last year.
The incursions on Saturday came in two batches -- 20 planes during daytime hours and 19 planes at night, the ministry said in two statements. They were made by 26 J-16 fighter jets, 10 Su-30 fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warning aircraft and one KJ-500 airborne early warning and control plane, the Defense Ministry said.

But remember, America is definitely the one behaving provocatively and anything bad that happens is definitely their fault and the Chinese government is just a prisoner of the nationalism of its people and definitely has no agency whatsoever.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/02/asia/...hnk/index.html

[InformationGeek]

Man, I remember this guy. It feels like forever ago.

Former Rep. Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin Dies At 74 - https://t.co/bka1CkYZsE https://t.co/H5ctEVz5sb

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Man, I remember this guy. It feels like forever ago.

Predictably, there were snarky responses to the news, like this comment which was my favorite:

"If it was a legitimate death, the body has ways of shutting that down"

[Tendrin]

predictably, there were snarky responses to the news, like this comment which was my favorite:

"if it was a legitimate death, the body has ways of shutting that down"

ahahahahah.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had a profile of Ben Quayle, the son of former Vice-President Dan Quayle who managed to be elected to a single term in Congress in Arizona's 6th District who in campaign ads but a year into the Obama presidency, declared him the worst president in our history and that he'd go to Washington D.C. and "knock the hell out of the place". Quayle was elected in spite of working as a writer at the website "The Dirty" where he'd make sexist remarks to caption photos of women at Scottsdale nightclubs, and while in office, accomplished little except embarrassing our country as part of a delegation that went to Israel, got wasted in a bar on the taxpayers' dime, and then went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee. Quayle's Congressional career came to a crashing halt after redistricting left him facing off against fellow Republican David Schweikert in one of the ugliest primaries in politics, and has since chosen the life of a lobbyist.

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled of the U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, Ted Poe, who when he served as a Texas judge, and made the controversial decision (which was thankfully appealed by prosecutors and overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals) to permit the PBS documentary show Frontline to record a jury deliberating a capital murder case thinking that it wouldn't somehow skew the outcome. Ted Poe is also a Birther conspiracy theorist, who on the floor of the House, once quoted Nathan Bedford Forrest by saying, “Get there firstest with the mostest”, then acting surprised when people were offended that he cited the wisdom of the founder of the KKK. Poe also once tried forcing all VA funerals to be Christian by default, and when the maneuver was shut down, tried accusing the Obama administration of having changed the funerals away from Christians (as if he were a secret Muslim, or something). Perhaps his greatest hypocrisy was to vote against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and then to whine and complain when additional disaster relief funding was not send to West, Texas, when a fertilizer factory caught fire and exploded (when some had already been sent, and that's sort of not an act of nature, but malfeasance). Ted Poe also made a statement about Syrian refugees, saying that the Obama Administration “won’t take care of our veterans,” but will “open the doors to people we don’t even know” adding that President Obama was only allowing Syrian refugees to be brought into the United States because "It’s a political maneuver on the part of the president just to get more people in the U.S. so they’ll support the Democratic Party, I think it’s a long-term goal." He also had some ideas about African American outreach efforts being made by Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying that her plan to win over African American voters was “to keep people more on government dependence because then she assumes she’ll get their vote.” Ah, the myth that all African Americans are dying to live free off of welfare. Classic racist dog whistle. In January of 2017, Poe announced that the leukemia he was battling through the 2016 campaign was in remission, leaving him able to try and strip the medical insurance of millions of Americans so they couldn't do the same. Ted Poe did fight hard for more resources to be pulled into hurricane relief for his own district, but this is only four years after he voted against disaster relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy. He quit the House Freedom Caucus back in May of 2017, and then announced he was retiring from Congress only five months later in November of 2017.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Beverly Goldstein, a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District in both 2016 and 2018. Her campaign strategy in 2018 was to campaign hard against LGBTQ rights, and get on Twitter to claim the only reason her district supported them was because “If CCC (Cuyahoga County Council) had LITERATE inner-city church-attending Black voters following this issue=entirely opposite outcome.” No better way to alienate youself to African American voters in the district by saying they’re too stupid to read and support your agenda. That’s an incredible cocktail of bigotry Ms. Goldstein. She was unavailable to the press to explain this post, and instead, her husband/campaign manager responded by doubling down and going on a transphobic rant about the non-existent threat of transgender people attacking ladies in public restrooms. A few days later, Beverly Goldstein posted a photo of herself with four African American security guards as “proof” she wasn’t racist… which is somehow even worse than the “I have a black friend” card some Republicans play in these moments. Goldstein had barely advanced out of the Republican primary, but once she got into the general election against Democratic Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, she got utterly obliterated, and only pulled down 18% of the vote.

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Rich Helms, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ 33rd Congressional District who was, of course, another Republican we’ve been profiling who buys into the Qanon conspiracy theory, that Democrats are running secret dungeons where children are being sacrificed in Satanic rituals to harvest fear hormones from them which can be used to grant others eternal youth… and Donald Trump is the guy who’s going to expose the cult… ANY… DAY… NOW… He repeatedly posted on social media with Qanon’s slogan, and made references to “the Great Awakening”, Rich Helms was enough of a racist, paranoid conspiracy theorist that he’s been banned from Twitter. We aren’t sure why, there seems to have been some indication that he started spreading conspiracy theories about the “true parentage” of Malia and Sasha Obama, but honestly, this guy’s such a nut we’re not even sure if that’s the nuttiest thing he might have come up with. Helms dropped out of the race for Texas’ 33rd District in March of 2020. We’re expecting him to be a perennial failed candidate for office until he inevitably loses it and trespasses at a random address looking for mole children where there’s not even a basement to be found. As such, we will set aside his profile at this time, however, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1032-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Russ Ramsland

Welcome to what is the 1032nd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Russ Ramsland, who was a 2016 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District who was looking to knock off incumbent Congressman Pete Sessions by running campaign ads where he’d shoot empty cardboard boxes labeled “Obamacare” and “open borders” (Spoiler alert, he lost to Pete Sessions by 38 points, but Democrat Colin Allred would put the boots to Sessions in 2018). Anyway… about Ramsland…

Russ Ramsland repeatedly has spread voter fraud conspiracy theories, claiming that all American voting machines “have the same DNA” and are all created using Smartmatic software, which he claims has its origins from Venezuela and is thus a plot to overthrow American democracy by that country’s late dicator Hugo Chavez. Among the people whose ear he whispered these impossible claims to include Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and legendary CSGOPOTD Louie Gohmert, and at least two of those three people passed them on to someone you may have heard of called Donald Trump, who was willing to believe anything or spread any lie to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

Really, this should be enough for us to justify this profile, but there’s just a bit more. Here’s a video of Ramsland from late 2012 speaking to a conservative group, and describing the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, as “a Deep State operation”, before rambling on to foment a whole conspiracy theory about the origins of “The Deep State” to a World War II-era collaboration involving Prescott Bush, the father of former president George H.W. Bush; the Muslim Brotherhood; and liberal financier George Soros — who was born in 1930 and barely in his teens when World War II was happening (and he was rather busy not getting killed by Nazis during their occupation of Hungary, of course).

Anyway, between the “Deep State” paranoia that pitches a Jewish man in league with the Muslim Brotherhood and scion of the Bush family… and all the voter fraud claims, Russ Ramsland is crazier than a s***house rat, and hopefully will not be making any future runs for office.

[Gray Lensman]

Predictably, there were snarky responses to the news, like this comment which was my favorite:

"If it was a legitimate death, the body has ways of shutting that down"

I saw "If it was legitimate cancer, it has ways of shutting Todd Akin down."

Remember when he was the dumbest person in the GoP? Now he would be close to the most reasonable...

[Xheight]

But remember, America is definitely the one behaving provocatively and anything bad that happens is definitely their fault and the Chinese government is just a prisoner of the nationalism of its people and definitely has no agency whatsoever.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/02/asia/...hnk/index.html

Like so much else in the PRC way of advancing its interests it borrows from the same two-faced Orwellian lexicon that western powers have used - freedom, democracy, unity all mean different and oppressive things

Why, then, is the term “democracy” so powerful that the Party wants to own it? The answer may be a nod both to the past and the future. Back in the days of China’s war against Japan, Mao Zedong pioneered the “three-thirds” system which actually preserved the majority (two thirds) of the local assemblies for non-Party members. President Xi Jinping’s party is unlikely to permit that much loss of control, but it certainly wants to use an association with the Mao era to burnish its brand.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/socie...mpaign=2102330

In ideal that the party and democracy would be the same China has in fact become a role model of oligarch power for the rest of Asia.

[Xheight]

If these amateurish "audits" result in finding only one ballot, anywhere, that was possibly miscast (whether through actual fraud or through honest mistake), that will be sufficient for the Trumpists to claim that the entire election process was deeply flawed and cannot be trusted. ("Who knows how many votes were really phony? This shows that it happened, and it's probably only the tip of the iceberg!") Citing this "finding" as proof, in the future they will demand that the results of all elections that they lost be summarily thrown out and the elections be reverted to the State legislatures, which they control in most States.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...4d&nlid=630318

In 2020, there was a massive shift to absentee balloting; Donald Trump did denigrate absentee balloting despite using it himself and despite having his own ballot harvested for the primary; he lost the election but claimed he actually won; he made hundreds of false statements calling the election results into question; he’s convinced millions of people that the election has been stolen from him, and he is continuing to not only push the lie that the election was stolen, but also to cause changes in both elected officials and election officials that will make it easier for him to potentially manipulate an election outcome unfairly next time. This is the danger of election subversion.

What technocrats like Rick Hasen fail to recognize is that insisting on systems are trustworthy and secure is counter productive -who believes that?- Subversion only exists in a climate of possibility and it is more than possible for our systems of government and technology to fail and in turn be subverted for criminal ends. Look at the Millions of dollars stolen in relief money for government failure as the system tries to claim oh no we are catching them.

https://www.irs.gov/compliance/crimi...f-fraud-scheme https://www.irs.gov/compliance/crimi...-fraud-charges

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...cates-n1257766

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I saw "If it was legitimate cancer, it has ways of shutting Todd Akin down."

Remember when he was the dumbest person in the GoP? Now he would be close to the most reasonable...

"Reasonable" when compared to the QAnon loons or the unrepentant Trump slurpers in the GQP.

[Xheight]

Pro-Trump Lawyer Lin Wood Loses Lawsuit Over Mental Health Evaluation - Jun 10, 2021

More use by the Law of a field of medicine as "science" and proof of something. This is why red flag laws are regarded with such suspicion as just authorities getting together to crush individuals which unique POVs. It is Okay to tolerate writers and artists with such but not law makers, lawyers and constituencies that buck some larger agenda. (until they too are "dangerous" to the state) **sigh**

[Xheight]

Opinion: Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess

I don't think Trump supporting Republicans want a Democracy, they don't want people to vote. All they want is a way to hold onto power.

Gosh and you think the Trump people don't think the same about those that stole the election as serving some greater good in their minds and justifying their hold on power with legalist constructs?

It isn't hard to see the GOPer as just extending their skepticism on welfare cheats and immigration scoff laws to votes cast where you don't actually have to show up and put the work in to vote. Proving that somebody is really entitled to a WIC benefit has little baring that the isn't a sham.

[thwhtGuardian]

Gosh and you think the Trump people don't think the same about those that stole the election as serving some greater good in their minds and justifying their hold on power with legalist constructs?

...except that they're objectively wrong.

This isn't a "whatabout" kind of thing, it's objective reality on one side and delusions on the other.

[babyblob]

More use by the Law of a field of medicine as "science" and proof of something. This is why red flag laws are regarded with such suspicion as just authorities getting together to crush individuals which unique POVs. It is Okay to tolerate writers and artists with such but not law makers, lawyers and constituencies that buck some larger agenda. (until they too are "dangerous" to the state) **sigh**

Yea. The link I posted a couple pages back where he claims 9/11 was CGI and Photoshop. A unique POV and not a batshit crazy loon spouting batshit crazy lies!