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

[CaptainEurope]

Kiev was Russia (Kievan Rus'), there wasn't any other Russia back then, much less Ukraine. The original "Ukraine" was Galicia (split between Poland and Ukraine today), Kievan Rus' was much bigger and reached the frontier with modern day Finland. It disintegrated in the 12th century and "Russia" survived to the Northeast with capital in Novgorod first and Moscow later. The rest (Galicia–Volhynia) was absorbed by Poland and Lithuania. Cossacks in the south remained independent until the 18th century. Crimea saw different conquests, until it fell to the the Ottoman Empire; it gained independence only to lose it again to Catherine the Great (13 years later), but Tartars continued fighting until Stalin deported them after WWII. There was never any Ukraine as it existed after the collapse of the URSS, the short-lived after WWI had part of "Ukraine" in the re-instated Poland.

Rus =/= Russia.

I am German. Trust me, you do not want modern countries to base their borders on what used to have common cultural roots, similar languages or similar names.

Or are you looking forward to be taxed by the House of Habsburg when they take Spain back?

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Glenn McConnell, a former South Carolina State Senator and Lieutenant Governor who left office in 2014 to become the President of Charleston University after almost two decades of people noticing he was a big Neo-Confederate supporter. Whether it was running a store with his brother that sold Team Gray paraphernalia, going on Nightline in 1999 to make comments in support of keeping the Stars & Bars at the state capitol, and keeping an active membership it the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Perhaps the most shocking display of McConnell's defense of a rebellion fought in support of slavery were photos that surfaced of him at a party where he was wearing a general's uniform, and posing for photos with African American actors were paid to portray slaves working at the plantation home where the party was taking place. McConnell retired as president of the University of Charleston in 2018, during a tenure that featured protests against his hire in the first place.

It was on this date in 2016 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Karen Davis, a 2014 candidate to represent California's 9th Congressional District, and former clerk for Stanislaus County. As a Stanislaus County Clerk back in the 1990s, she became a symbol of bravery for public officials, during a time when several anti-government anti-tax extremists, the Juris Christian Assembly, began harassing state employees. An Oregon man, Roger Steiner, was actually arrested and sent to prison for 18 years for sending her death threats, including bullets in her mailbox and a simulated bomb under her car, before she was actually physically assaulted back in 1994. But Karen Davis did not retreat from politics, even writing a novel about her experiences, "The Terrorist in My Garage". Steiner, meanwhile, maintained his innocence for two decades. Mind you, producing that book led to Davis' career as a clerk ending, as she had created a job to net her son a paycheck, and having her secretary, on the clock, helping write it for her, and using government FedEx accounts to ship copies to Hollywood producers, hoping it would be made into a movie. As Davis was making some noise about running for Congress, when suddenly, she received more death threats in the mail, against both herself and her husband. She harkened back to her experience in such matters, talking tough about how she wouldn't be intimidated, and that if she backed down she'd be "letting the terrorists win". Well, even with Davis on the ballot, it wouldn't matter, as she finished fourth among four candidates in the blanket primary. Except for one detail... investigators thought it strange that the threats she received were labelled "white bitch", which she said was what Steiner called her during her 1994 attack. She indicated to investigators that she felt it was Steiner, again... until finally, investigators realized her story didn't add up, and they submitted Davis to a polygraph, which she failed. She finally admitted to sending the death threats to herself, likely to stir up sympathy for her campaign for office. Now, not only is her first report of a crime to authorities bogus, but her 1994 assault accusations against Roger Steiner, who served 18 years of a 22 year sentence, are highly in doubt. Steiner, now 77 and unable to leave Fresno because he's still on probation, is seeking to have his conviction overturned, and if it is, he could likely sue the state of California for being wrongly imprisoned on the word on Karen Davis, who now seems pretty unelectable, what with lying to send an innocent man to prison for almost two decades.

One this date in 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Mike Fair, who served two decades on the South Carolina State Senate, from 1996-2016, and back in 1998, he made an unsuccessful bid at running for Congress in South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District. Mike Fair went bonkers starting in 2014, and was fighting the culture wars against everyone and anyone without any level of patience to actually prepare an appropriate response. In January of 2014, as an investigative report was released that South Carolina’s prison system was neglectful enough of mentally ill prisoners that it was being faced with legal action over the abuses. Mike Fair is the head of the Corrections and Penology Committee in the South Carolina State Senate, and responded to this revelation by saying he "didn't know that we had a problem with any particular aspect of mistreating or not treating inmates who have a diagnosis of mental illness". And that is remarkable, because about a decade earlier, Mike Fair was the chair of a Task Force whose findings were that the mentally ill in South Carolina’s prisons were facing terrible conditions. After a ruling from Judge Michael Baxley found that inmates had died because of a lack of basic care in South Carolina’s prisons, there obviously was going to be a discussion on how to fix the problem held by the Committee on Corrections and Penology… except that Mike Fair literally opened that meeting by trying to silence everyone and forbid them from discussing Judge Baxley’s findings. A month later, in February 2014, Fair started making headlines because he was opposing teaching standards for teaching evolution in school, holding up the process at almost the last minute. This was not uncommon, however, as Fair had argued as a Creationist against teaching natural selection in schools as far back as 2005. But it really was two months later in April 2014 that Mike Fair went off the deep end in his opposition to evolution… an 8 year old girl by the name of Olivia McConnell had petitioned to the South Carolina State legislature that she thought it would be a nice nod to the history of South Carolina if they would name the Colombian Wooly Mammoth as the official state fossil of South Carolina. And a bill got submitted on behalf of her teacher and class by one of the state legislators, to teach the kids how government works. The lesson they got, however, was less than inspiring. That would be because Mike Fair decided to try and litigate his fight over evolution again, and felt this “Colombian Wooly Mammoth” bill should be fought tooth and nail, because it was attacking his belief in Creationism by being older than he thought the Earth was. The rest of the Republicans in the South Carolina State Senate realized it’s bad optics to be a d*** to an 8 year old bill and dropped the Creationist language that Fair had added. Only two weeks after that in April, Fair was teaming up with FRED alumni Lee Bright and freaking out about a play being performed at the University of South Carolina Upstate titled “How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less”, calling it a “recruitment tool” and comparing those performing the play to “skinheads and radical Islam” looking to bring others into the fold. Almost a full year went by before Mike Fair made the papers again, this time in April of 2016, when he actually tried following the disastrous lead of North Carolina to pass transphobic bathroom legislation, co-sponsoring a bill on a bathroom ban submitted by his buddy Lee Bright. It fortunately went nowhere, but true to form, Fair would take out his frustration on the dreaded left in America soon thereafter. An LGBTQ advocate named Caleb Laieski, who was actually invited to the White House in 2011, frequently writes letters to state legislators asking them to consider having their states submit and pass legislation to ban the practice of “gay conversion therapy”, because of that nagging little detail where international groups are beginning to consider it a human rights abuse. Well, rather than respond politely with a “this would not pass muster in our legislature at this time”, or just choosing to not respond at all, Mike Fair sent a letter back to Laieski where he called him “warped”, “sick”, and “shameful”. Fair was torpedoed in the GOP Primary for his seat in the South Carolina State Senate in 2016.

It was on this date in 2018, as well as 2019, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Phil Covarrubias, a former member of the Colorado House of Representatives elected to represent District 56 who was in his freshman term in office when during a debate on the floor of the Colorado House regarding Donald Trump’s attempts at proposing a Muslim ban, Phil Covarrubias started defending one of the most shameful moments in American history, that being when the United States government placed Japanese-American citizens in internment camps during World War II. In October of 2017, he posted a rant on Facebook that featured his thoughts on how “liberals are racist against Americans”, or that “Russian collusion is Hitlery Clinton and the selling of uranium”, on top of defending Donald Trump’s admitted sexual assaults of women. A month later, e was caught on Facebook caught hitting “Like” at conspiracy theories that the mass shooting in Southerland Springs, Texas, was carried out by Antifa. In January of 2018, he again demonstrated a definitive case of rectal-cranial inversion (his head up his ass) on the floor of the Colorado House, this time during an abortion debate. For whatever reason, Covarrubias began comparing abortion to prostitution. We are thrilled to report that Phil Covarrubias was defeated in the GOP Primary in the 2018 elections, and is now longer in office.

[worstblogever]

On this date in both 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Randy Fine, a member of the Florida House of Representatives from District 53 who was first elected back in 2016, and a second term with 55% in 2018. He did so with the campaign strategy of attacking his Democratic opponent, Phil Moore, by accusing him of thinking he was “above the law” and giving the shocking examples of… traffic citations. In his time in office, Fine has decided to call for a city to be dissolved due to them not being able to afford to build a highway on their city budget, and called for the University of Central Florida to be shut down in 2019 because of “excessive spending” he didn’t like (Heaven forbid money be spent on education).

But Randy Fine really got onto our radar back in November of 2017 after an insane social media outburst. You see, Fine is the only Jewish member of the Florida GOP. And when his own constituents began asking him why he was sponsoring bills that would forbid businesses and municipalities to do business with ”anti-Semitic” companies. What that definition includes is any business that Fine gets annoyed with for not blindly supporting Israel. But his constituents weren’t even AGAINST the idea… they were just wanting to know how it would work, and were asking their representative online… Fine doesn’t deal well with being questioned, though, and anyone who wanted details he would quickly declare was also “Anti-Semitic” or straight up a “NAZI”. One such “Nazi” was a disabled veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces.

That wasn’t a one-off, and Fine didn’t learn anything, as evidenced how in April of 2019, he got into another online argument and was attacking a constituent in a similar manner. Once he learned the person he was calling an “anti-Semite” was Jewish, though, Fine instead referred to his 68 year old opposition as a “Judenrat”, a term for a Nazi-installed council made of Jewish members during World War II. When confronted with the fact that doing so is just, y’know, f***ed up, Fine doubled down, and insisted he was using the term properly.

In spite of Randy Fine’s obvious mental instability, he won re-election in November with 55% of the vote. That has allowed him to continue to sponsor and vote for some of the most brazenly bigoted bills in the Florida, including HB 1, the biggest direct attack on First Amendment rights Florida has put forth in decades, that changed the legal definition of “riot” to reflect protesters, and then removed civil liability for anyone who might run over a “rioter”. If that scenario sounds familiar, Randy Fine submitted legislation that would protect the sort of Neo-Nazi motherf***er that ran over a crowd of people in Charlottesville and killed Heather Heyer.

If you’re not revolted by Randy Fine yet (and you should be), he was also a sponsor of Florida’s HB 1475, the transphobic bill aimed at targeting transgender youth who participate in public school athletics and have created a conservative “smaller government” philosophy of children being forced to submit to mandatory genital inspections to prove they’re the sex of their birth, as well as trying to make it illegal for them to receive hormone therapy to change genders.

In the past year, Fine dug in on anti-mask sentiment enough to send anti-maskers to the home of Jennifer Jenkins, a political rival to cough in her face, and then call her “Jezebel Jenkins” or flat out a “whore” for taking a stand against him. Fine is currently frothing at the mouth to try to eliminate funding for the Special Olympics, as well as gleefully looking to further exacerbate Gov. Ron DeSantis’ feud with Disney for daring to take a stand for LGBTQ rights.

This is Randy Fine, and his surname is ironic, because none of this s*** is okay.

[Wildling]

Some big chins white bigot in a suit called Randy Fine being a real life political candidate nowadays is why I laughed a while ago at someone in the Film board mocking The Batman movie for having a young, black and female mayor candidate called Bella Real running for office, when she had factually nothing to do with the movie's corruption plot, yet she was supposed to be a movie flaw just because of what her name was.

[worstblogever]

Some big chins white bigot in a suit called Randy Fine being a real life political candidate nowadays is why I laughed a while ago at someone in the Film board mocking The Batman movie for having a young, black and female mayor candidate called Bella Real running for office, when she had factually nothing to do with the movie's corruption plot, yet she was supposed to be a movie flaw just because of what her name was.

And we all know how "real" a lot of the names of Batman characters are, right?

*stares at Chase Meridian, Harleen Quinzel, and Harold Allnut*

[Ozymandias]

And Putin has just validated the existence of NATO…

NATO is viewed as a defence organization by the West and as an US Trojan horse by Russia? It’s certainly a problem… Maybe if the US should play a lesser role in this organization and the Europeans take in hands their defence… The Germans has increased their weapon budget following the invasion of Ukraine: until now, they tended to rely on NATO for their security…

NATO was defensive during the cold war, after that they went rather hot in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. For Iraq they didn't even use NATO and chose instead to turn the UN security council into a clown circus. That way more countries could join in and share the blame (as it matters).

[Ozymandias]

Rus =/= Russia.

I am German. Trust me, you do not want modern countries to base their borders on what used to have common cultural roots, similar languages or similar names.

Or are you looking forward to be taxed by the House of Habsburg when they take Spain back?

Spain is another can of worms, as the October 1 referendum made evidently clear. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, it would be relatively easy for a foreign power to destabilize the country, if they so decided. So if you guys want cheap houses on the sunny beaches of Spain, start thinking about it.

[CSTowle]

Kiev was Russia (Kievan Rus'), there wasn't any other Russia back then, much less Ukraine. The original "Ukraine" was Galicia (split between Poland and Ukraine today), Kievan Rus' was much bigger and reached the frontier with modern day Finland. It disintegrated in the 12th century and "Russia" survived to the Northeast with capital in Novgorod first and Moscow later. The rest (Galicia–Volhynia) was absorbed by Poland and Lithuania. Cossacks in the south remained independent until the 18th century. Crimea saw different conquests, until it fell to the the Ottoman Empire; it gained independence only to lose it again to Catherine the Great (13 years later), but Tartars continued fighting until Stalin deported them after WWII. There was never any Ukraine as it existed after the collapse of the URSS, the short-lived after WWI had part of "Ukraine" in the re-instated Poland.

Yes, history is complicated but this also points out that Ukrainians are right to view Russia with fear and skepticism. Especially given very recent history (not including, obviously, the ongoing war).

Who do you think I was responding too?

My complaint about reflexive attacks on any pushback against the narrative (even if it agrees with the overarching one) was a general one, but your point on it being a poor excuse was something that I wanted to repeat as I pointed it out once again and feel like it's the main point (even if I think it's worth pointing out that Russia's fears/insecurity do come from a real place, even if they severely overreacted and have put themselves in a bad position because of it).

[Zelena]

NATO was defensive during the cold war, after that they went rather hot in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. For Iraq they didn't even use NATO and chose instead to turn the UN security council into a clown circus. That way more countries could join in and share the blame (as it matters).

The US didn’t have the UN agreement. They went into war without it.

[CaptainEurope]

Spain is another can of worms, as the October 1 referendum made evidently clear. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, it would be relatively easy for a foreign power to destabilize the country, if they so decided. So if you guys want cheap houses on the sunny beaches of Spain, start thinking about it.

You just want to watch the world burn, don't you?

[Ozymandias]

You just want to watch the world burn, don't you?

What I want matters little, do you believe your opinion to be important?

[Kirby101]

My complaint about reflexive attacks on any pushback against the narrative (even if it agrees with the overarching one) was a general one, but your point on it being a poor excuse was something that I wanted to repeat as I pointed it out once again and feel like it's the main point (even if I think it's worth pointing out that Russia's fears/insecurity do come from a real place, even if they severely overreacted and have put themselves in a bad position because of it).

Thanks for clarifying.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Those are obviously your words.

Yes.

But also, obviously, your implication.

Otherwise why bring up past history, when Ukraine clearly chose to separate themselves from a power that abused them for decades?

[Ozymandias]

Yes.

But also, obviously, your implication.

Otherwise why bring up past history, when Ukraine clearly chose to separate themselves from a power that abused them for decades?

I didn't bring up history, I was replying to this "historical argument":

Kiev goes back to like the 7th century, and the Ukraine first shows up back in the 12th century. Try to keep up. Moscow wasn't founded until mid 12th century too. Ukraine, conceptually and culturally has existed for a long time, regardless of a state of independence.

[Ozymandias]

Woman From Azovstal: Ukraine As A State Is Dead For Me

This is where the video was posted, and later deleted:

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/mariu...8-fcb6eab1be17