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

[Tami]

Grassley makes up rule as GOP eyes new Supreme Court blockade

It was nearly six years ago when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. President Barack Obama soon after nominated Judge Merrick Garland, a center-left, compromise jurist — who'd received praise from Senate Republicans — to fill the vacancy.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell instead decided to impose an unprecedented high-court blockade for nearly a year, hoping that Americans might elect a Republican president and Republican Congress despite the GOP's abusive tactics.

For now, the political dynamic is different — Democrats control both the White House and the Senate, which wasn't the case in 2016 — but Republicans believe there's a strong likelihood that the GOP will soon reclaim the Senate majority, at which point they'll be ready to impose another Supreme Court blockade.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley — the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and currently its ranking member — went so far as to manufacture a rule that does not exist.

"You know what the rule is on that," the Iowan told CNN. "You go back to 1886 and ever since then, when the Senate's been of one party and the president's been of another party, you didn't confirm."

As Grassley really ought to know, this is spectacularly untrue.

[worstblogever]

Grassley makes up rule as GOP eyes new Supreme Court blockade

Grassley ought to save his energy for answering the Jan. 6th committee about why he posted Mike Pence wasn't going to be there that day on Jan. 5th, and if it's because he was playing along with the plan in Mark Meadows' powerpoint.

[babyblob]

Grassley ought to save his energy for answering the Jan. 6th committee about why he posted Mike Pence wasn't going to be there that day on Jan. 5th, and if it's because he was playing along with the plan in Mark Meadows' powerpoint.

He dont have to save his energy for that because he wont bother showing up.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Candace Owens claims trump endorsed COVID vaccines because he's too old to research obscure websites.

Everything that [Trump's generation] read in a newspaper that was pitched to them that they believe that that was a reality. And one of those things was, you know, this push for vaccines and believing that people were going to die without vaccines. And so, I believe that his support of the vaccine is genuine and it's not based on any corruption at all. Believe it or not, I do not believe that Trump reads or partakes in any other news sources. I don't believe that Trump is on the internet or that he necessarily uses the web to try to find obscure websites. I think that he just relies on typical mainstream sources. So, I don't think that there's anything evil going on there.

[Username taken]

Thoughts and prayers to alpha male Alex Jones, who apparently got beaten up by his wife on Christmas.

I guess he forgot to take his "power pills" that day.

[Tami]

Candace Owens claims trump endorsed COVID vaccines because he's too old to research obscure websites.

It irks me that Owens is pushing conspiracy websites and dangerous misinformation as "research". A true researcher knows how to tell the difference between facts and fiction.

[Kirby101]

It irks me that Owens is pushing conspiracy websites and dangerous misinformation as "research". A true researcher knows how to tell the difference between facts and fiction.

Anybody claiming to do "research" on COVID through websites isn't doing research, they are just reading shit. Research on COVID is being done by scientists at the CDC and universities throughout the world.

[Malvolio]

On this date in both 2019, as well as 2020, "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Kyle Koehler, a member of the Ohio House of Representatives who was first elected to office in 2014. We started to see Koehler’s name pop up back in 2015 as Ohio Republicans began a mad quest to close down every Planned Parenthood in the state, and taking a fraudulent video created by the Center for Medical Progress (a fanatical anti-choice group) as factual, and wanted to close down any facility that performed an abortion and donated fetal tissue for research. The state launched an expensive witch hunt that found not a single witch, and when the investigation came back finding no proof of wrongdoing, let alone anything as shocking as what the video purported, Koehler didn’t flinch, and sponsored a bill to require women who have an abortion to bury or cremate the remains, and didn’t dial back the rhetoric when explaining his decision:



We’re also a bit puzzled about Koehler’s feud with pro-gun advocate and provocateur Chris Dorr… which is supposed to be centered on Koehler not being “tough enough” on guns… and when given a survey to indicate his absolute or not-quite-absolute-how-dare-you support for the 2nd Amendment, Koehler had the level-headed response to film himself shooting up the survey on a gun range.

In 2020, Koehler was forced to apologize to a colleague after calling them a “son of a bitch” during debate on a bill regarding Confederate monuments, and of course it was a woman of color, who he was trying to get to shelve her amendment because if he voted no on it “it would make him look like a racist”.

We’ll finish up by noting that in Koehler’s voting record, he has repeatedly sponsored legislation to allow for prayer in public schools, supported extreme anti-choice legislation as ludicrous as fetal heartbeat bills, but remains hypocritically “pro-life” because he also voted against a bill that would protect people with certain mental illnesses from being executed for capitol offenses, and he cares so much about “life” that he wanted to block the state from taking in Syrian refugees.

He is currently working hard to try and make sure that would prevent Ohio businesses from mandating that their employees get the Covid-19 vaccine, because he’d apparently like his state to remain a petri dish of plague from now until the end of time. We don’t know when he’s bounced from office, but we hope the answer is, “2022”.

So for some Republicans, they're against regulating private businesses, until they aren't.

[The Cool Thatguy]

So for some Republicans, they're against regulating private businesses, until they aren't.

They're for regulations that can be weaponized against those who won't vote for them.

[Xheight]

SIGN OF THE TIMES — In a strange sequence of events, an Oregon father named Jared on the annual White House Santa tracking call with military families said “Let’s go Brandon” to JOE BIDEN. The president, either unaware or playing along, responded, “Let’s go Brandon, I agree.” The caller then apparently hung up. Sitting next to the president, JILL BIDEN seemed to roll her eyes.

ERICK ERICKSON wrote in response: “Confession: I find it in poor taste to tell the President of the United States ‘Let’s go Brandon’ when the man just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas. Good manners should still matter. … And yes, I did laugh, because I do think it is funny, but I also think it is bad manners. If the president of the United States calls to wish you a merry Christmas, be flattered you get to speak to the president of the United States.”

Today the guy said he didn't mean to be disrespectful but really this is just a lie to avoid the cancel pressure that I am sure he is getting when Resident Biden don't deserve the respect that the scolders are calling for.

skousen-fondue-dumpster-fire.gif
"Four months later, that "blip" has become the new normal. Biden's job approval in Gallup's December poll was 43%, the fourth straight month it has been at either 42% or 43% in the survey.
Those numbers suggest that job approval ratings in the low 40s are not an exception for Biden at this point but rather the rule." CNN 12/22

[4saken1]

"Four months later, that "blip" has become the new normal. Biden's job approval in Gallup's December poll was 43%, the fourth straight month it has been at either 42% or 43% in the survey.
Those numbers suggest that job approval ratings in the low 40s are not an exception for Biden at this point but rather the rule." CNN 12/22

There goes that liberal media again.......

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Got an alert that Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who successfully argued the landmark Roe v. Wade case that granted women the right to abortion passed away today at 76.

[worstblogever]

Got an alert that Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who successfully argued the landmark Roe v. Wade case that granted women the right to abortion passed away today at 76.

I'd like to think that this would mean anti-choice zealots will stop sending death threats her way, but they were never very bright and are noteworthy for being unable to discern when life actually begins and ends.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District, Jim Sensenbrenner, who has been a member of Congress since 1979. Through the years, he has been involved in some of the more distasteful legislative acts in our country, such as the attempted impeachment of President Clinton, where he read the opening statement, the drafting of the original version of the Patriot Act (which he denies leaving loopholes in to allow for government surveillance of the civilian populace), and his vote against $50 billion in relief aid for Hurricane Katrina. Sensenbrenner has also been prone to tantrums, like when in 2005, he walked out of a meeting about human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay prison after demanding C-SPAN turn off all cameras in an attempt at a media blackout. This guy even fought against funding for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis prevention, and against stiffer penalties for people convicted of dogfighting, he’s so heartless. Sensenbrenner also has a long history of ridiculous quotes on climate change denial, including his insistence that there’s data to prove “global cooling” out there. That should come as little surprise, as Sensenbrenner owns stock in British Petroleum,and during the Congressional hearings after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, he actually refused to recuse himself from the proceedings, instead writing an angry letter to the White House to lay blame on them for the disaster. His disgust for the Obama White House goes a bit farther than that, as he actually tried criticizing Michelle Obama’s efforts to combat childhood obesity, because “she has a big butt” (because he himself is doing so much better in battling obesity). Sensenbrenner actually voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women act, and not only voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, but voted against re-opening it when the time came. In 2015, Sensenbrenner was taking testimony in the hearings on Planned Parenthood, and asked witness Priscilla Smith why she prioritized Planned Parenthood over feeding hungry children, then cut her off to pretend to be baffled by her answer about how it helped mothers with cancer screenings so they could feed their healthy children, because they would still be alive to if it's caught early. So, it’s little surprise that when he hosted a town hall back in April of 2017, he didn’t seem too concerned with his constituents’ wealth of complaints. When asked about his vote for SJ Res 34, where internet providers would now be allowed to sell the data information of their users to businesses, and how that would violate all sense of privacy, his response was, “Well you know, nobody has got to use the internet.”
The frequently yet impotently-enraged Sensenbrenner showed up at the Congressional hearings aimed at discrediting the Mueller investigation, and he spent a few minutes harassing Peter Strzok, failing to score any points in his partisan attack on the career FBI agent who investigated the massive corruption within the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. During the Trump impeachment inquiry, telling Democratic counsel that “you have made Joe McCarthy look like a piker”, and seemingly because he can’t remember he doesn’t wield a gavel anymore, he used his time to accuse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of losing control whenever Trump is simply accused of committing crimes, saying, “The committee is not in order and the chairman is not in order. We have to have some decorum in here.” Sensebrenner was in Congress for four decades, and in 2006 he finished second place in a Rolling Stone piece about “America’s Worst Congressmen”, only behind GOP colleague and child molester, Dennis Hastert. In that article, the assessment of the man representing Wisconsin’s 5th District was,”Sensenbrenner is an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast who wields his gavel in a way that makes you think he might have used one before in some other arena, perhaps to beat prostitutes to death.” Sensebrenner retired in 2020.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Nikka Piterman, a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in the 2020 elections in California’s 13th Congressional District who was looking to knock off Congresswoman Barbara Lee for her seat in the House. Because, y’know, taking a crack at someone who pulls down more than 80% of the vote in her district wasn’t a long shot campaign. Piterman’s policy platform centered around tax cuts, establishing a U.S. Space Force that would create colonies on the Moon and Mars (well, that’s up Trump’s ***), and included plans to attempt to split California into two states, implying on his website that splitting the state would help gain more representation on the federal level. (Yikes on that last thing). Nikka Piterman was yet another Republican who supported the completely mental Qanon conspiracy theory and ran for Congress in the 2020 elections. Piterman put out posts with the Qanon slogan. We don’t have much else to add, but to point out that no other candidates ran against Barbara Lee, so Piterman ended up on the final ballot in November. It probably would have been better if he hadn’t, as he only got 9.6% of the vote. As he seems unlikely to ever reach office, we will set aside her profile to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1059-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Buzz Patterson

Welcome to what is the 1059th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Buzz Patterson, who was a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 7th Congressional District hoping to unseat incumbent Democratic Representative Ami Bera. At one point during the build-up to the election, Patterson was asked on Twitter if he supported the Qanon conspiracy theory, and he gleefully responded, “Yep!” While he was at it, Patterson was also trying to spread the conspiracy theory that the Covid-19 virus was deliberately created in a lab in Wuhan, China, and frequently referred to the virus by the racist sobriquet, “kung flu”.

As you might expect, his Twitter account is a hodge-podge of s***posts, JAQ-ing off, and right-wing lunacy, including but not limited to denying the science behind vaccines, and of course, a dash of anti-Semitism to spread other conspiracy theories about George Soros.

Buzz Patterson only managed 43% of the vote against Ami Bera in 2020, and is registered to again face him in 2020. Let’s hope he doesn’t get out of the primary this time.