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

[CSTowle]

And it's not like google won't help you check your facts:



The one promise broken was not to allow new fracking on public lands. That is regrettable, but I get that Putin invading Ukraine and us Germans begging for American gas so we don't need Russian fuel anymore changed the game a little.

On energy related broken promises, he's now back to puckering up and smooching Saudi ass again even after promising to distance themselves after the journalist Khashoggi's murder and dismemberment. He'll break more, it's a political reality.

This is nothing new in the US. It's an old cliche' that politicians used to promise a 'chicken in every pot' while campaigning for office.
Only an idiot would assume they intended to give every household a chicken if elected.

It's a given that when a politician makes a campaign promise they intend to try to fulfill that promise barring the possibility their opposition is too great.
Feigning ignorance of that to imply the politician is dishonest is itself dishonest. It is a bad faith argument.

Agreed, just also agreeing with 30 that Biden/Hillary supporters can't have their cake and eat it too by doing exactly that and acting like Sanders not being able to accomplish everything he promised was a political "gotcha" and a reason not to vote for him. You vote for the person most likely to fight for and accomplish what you want, because there's too much unknown (and strong knowns, like Republican's refusal to do anything good with the power of the Federal government) to predict the future.

We should not have Capitol Punishment at all. It takes so long because there is a long appeals process. U5 even with that, innocent people are still executed. It's barbaric and the rest of the civilized world has stopped.
Just last month the corrupt, right wing Supreme Court denied the appeal of a man who is clearly innocent.

https://www.vox.com/2022/5/23/231381...-shinn-ramirez

I am torn in the Death penalty. I think it is a huge waste of money and resources and it is in no way a deterrent. But I see some cases and think man that guy deserves it. So I go back and forth. But if it is going to be there and it is going to be an active sentence then it needs to work and not take 20 or 30 years to off a guy.

In theory I'm fine with the idea of the death penalty. Given certainty of guilt (key) and heinousness of a crime, and while I'm for more rehabilitation and integration back into society we have to accept that there are points where people are too far gone and irredeemable, then I'm OK with killing them off.

In practice, it's a system run by human beings with prejudices and ignorance with incentives to impose harsher punishments to appear "tough on crime", and it overwhelmingly falls on the head of the poor and minorities who rarely have adequate defense. Even when serious doubt and legal malpractice is understood by all parties involved we still kill people we know are likely innocent or at least doubtfully guilty.

Maybe when Skynet goes online and can track everyone on Earth in real time with digitally recording nanobots/satellites, and guilt or innocence is known fully I'd be OK with trusting it to carry out executions (though I wouldn't be surprised if they just save time and launch the nukes). Until then, I can't trust people to make that decision.

[worstblogever]

There's a lot of folks in Arizona pointing out how weird the GOP Primary for the next Republican candidate looking to replace Doug Ducey should go...

Trump endorsed Kari Lake, a former newscaster on local Fox10 news. Her opponent, is a literal Karen, Karrin Taylor-Robson, who has pointed out for all of Lake's bluster about being a "lifetime NRA" member, or "true Republican", that Lake voted for Obama in '08 (and not John McCain, the longtime GOP Senator FROM THE STATE)... but Kari Lake just keeps putting out more and more insane statements about Trump's Big Lie, or vague white nationalist rhetoric to match Robson blow-for-blow.

And now... this. Kari Lake put out a statement on Twitter during Pride Month about how "they kicked God out of schools and welcomed the drag queens. They took down our flag and replaced it with a rainbow". Pretty awful, right?

Cue local entertainer Richard Stevens, who guest-hosted the news at one point on Fox10 alongside his, at the time, friend Kari, with AAAALLLL THE RECEIPTS, including bunch of photos of Lake attending Stevens' performances locally as drag queen Barbra Seville.

Lends itself to Robson's narrative of "Fake Kari Lake" even more.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled of of the former candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, who became a right wing cult hero by, y’know, being accused of war crimes and arrested and put on trial for murdering two detained Iraqi citizens and displaying their corpses with a banner that said, “No better friend, no worse enemy” while serving in Operation: Iraqi Freedom. After a military trial where even several soldiers in his unit testified against him, media pundits like Michael Savage and U.S. House Rep. Walter Jones fought to have him cleared of all charges, and he was. But the GOP were not content to have a potential war criminal cleared of all charges and thought someone accused of murder overseas also made a great candidate for U.S. Congress, and ran Pantano as a Tea Party candidate in 2010 and 2012, and he appeared along the campaign trail promising to fight against a “victory mosque” at 9-11’s Ground Zero, and making appearances with Pamela Geller, and other members of anti-Islamic hate groups. He was appointed as the Assistant Secretary to the North Carolina Veteran’s Affairs Commission by Gov. Pat McCrory, but stepped down in May of 2016. It seems his time in the limelight is over.

In 2016, 2017, and 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” presented profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District, Bill Shuster, who is a political legacy. Bill was first elected to serve Pennsylvania’s 9th way back in the 2000 elections after his father, fourteen term Congressman Bud Shuster, retired. Bud, a Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, was forced into retirement by multiple ethics investigations that he was accepting gifts from lobbyists, and using a former aide turned lobbyist, Ann Eddard, to speak on his behalf, actually trying to hide in the backseat of Eddard’s car while 60 minutes tried to get him to comment on the arrangement. Like father, like son, apparently. Because Bill Shuster has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior as the head of the House Transportation Committee, admitting in April of 2015 that he has been dating a lobbyist for Airlines for America. But before they announced it publicly, you see, they finalized Bill’s divorce from his wife of twenty years, and then signed documents to assure that his new squeeze wouldn’t lobby Bill directly (how romantic). Now, his gal pal would only lobby the entire rest of the committee that he runs and leave him be. See? Totally no influence there, right? I mean, other than the fact that Shuster kept hiring people from Airlines for America to positions in his office and to be staff directors for the Transportation Committee in a way that sounds more like arranged marriages on Game of Thrones than part of a democracy. Because we are now in an era where our Congressmen can LITERALLY be in bed with lobbyists. Bill Shuster is also a climate change denier, insisting that there’s still “debate” on the subject, and in 2009, he posted his own evidence that it didn’t exist at all… the weather forecast for Copenhagen… in December. Perhaps the worst kind of denialism you’ll see from Bill Shuster is his efforts to petition his fellow members of Congress to not recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, where over a million Armenians were killed, saying, “the events of 1915…did not constitute genocide because over two million Ottoman Kurds, Arabs, and Muslims…also suffered in this conflict.” Shuster was around long enough vote for the Iraq War Resolution, in 2006, was a co-sponsor of a bill that attempted to create a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and voted in 2007 against ENDA, allowing the continued discrimination of LGBTQ citizens based on their sexual identity in the workplace. Through the early part of the Obama administration, he was quite the obstructionist, voting against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, against the Hate Crimes Expansion, against Dodd-Bill Wall Street Reform, against stricter regulations on offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon spill, against the DREAM Act, against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and against the Zadroga Bill, to provide healthcare to the First Responders from 9/11, after many inhaled toxic dust and chemicals looking through the rubble for survivors after the tragedy. When the GOP attempted repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017, he made the brazenly false statement that Obamacare covered “24 million people fewer than it was supposed to, and the projected price tag doubled to $2 million”. Fact-checkers were all over him on this, and thankfully, and his constituents were highly suspicious of his claims. Not that those voters would get a chance to confront him about it, because Shuster dodged all of his town halls for two whole years. Just prior to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling where judges threw out the gerrymander engineered by the Pennsylvania GOP in 2018, Bill Shuster saw the writing on the wall and decided to hit the “EJECT” button and abandon Congress, failing in his promise to pass a new nationwide infrastructure bill before he left office.

One this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Jeff Hoover, the former Republican Speaker of the House in the Kentucky House of Representatives, who served as a state legislator for District 83 from 1997-2018. Hoover’s two decades were marked by feverish support of a hyper-conservative agenda of anti-choice, pro-gun legislation he supported and that he’d even vote against minimum wage increases during our country’s greatest period of income inequality in a century. While we could analyze all that, it’s much more relevant to say that Jeff Hoover submitted his resignation in January of 2018 after it was revealed he didn’t just sexually harass women at the state capitol, but he would settle lawsuits from those incidents with taxpayer dollars. On a nearly daily basis, the 21 year-old staffer was sexually assaulted nearly daily by the 58-year-old Hoover, sometimes under the table in meetings at the capitol. And his obsession with her was terrifying, as reports were that he allegedly would scream at her for just talking to other men. Hoover had the nerve to finish out his final term so he could collect a government pension that he would have lost if he resigned from office entirely. We’ll just add him to the list of scumbags exposed by the MeToo Movement, and leave him with his own tainted legacy.

On this date in 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing C. Wesley Morgan, who owns four liquor stores, and who was one-term member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 2017-2018. In 2020, he aimed much higher, as he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, hoping people hated Mitch McConnell enough that he might upset him in the GOP Primary for the seat. Morgan managed to get caught up in controversy in 2017, in his first term in office, when it was discovered he bought a house boat thirteen years earlier in 2004 and paid not a dime of property taxes on it. Other than that, he supported a ban on abortion at only 11 weeks, and a bill that would have classified any attack on a first responder as a “hate crime”, because he was apparently into “Blue Lives Matter”. Now, while in theory, anyone trying to beat Mitch McConnell, we want to root for instinctively, even if they are a lesser tax cheat and have a voting record like Morgan’s. But then again, repeatedly on social media, C. Wesley Morgan came out in defense of Qanon conspiracy theorists, both on Twitter, and Facebook, including posting the hashtag, “WWG1WGA”, and repeatedly shared links to Qanon videos. As he is now completely out of office and has the ire of Mitch McConnell, his career seems over.

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Julie Dupre, a 2020 candidate for District 49 of the Minnesota State Senate, and yet another Republican who ran for office that year while touting the Qanon conspiracy theory. Specifically, when asked by the local press about her support for QAnon, Dupre referred to it as “a really great information source” and “one of many that I use.” When you’re referring to “Q” like it’s a search engine, that’s distinctly a problem. For some perspective, Julie Dupre was such a conspiratorial nutjob that Pat Garofalo, who we’ve long profiled here on this blog, actually called on the Minnesota GOP to rescind their endorsement of her. When that guy thinks you’re too extreme for office, that is definitely saying something. Julie Dupre lost in the general election, getting just 37% of the vote, about 15,000 votes off the pace of what she needed. As she seems unlikely to ever reach office, we will set aside her profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1111-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

John Rose

Welcome to what is the 1111th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing John Rose, the sitting U.S. House Representative for Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District, who was first elected in the 2018 elections to replace former Congresswoman Diane Black, who left office for a failed gubernatorial bid. But as much of a kook as Black was, John Rose is a far creepier case for us to cover.

You see, for a few years now, right-wingers have thrown out baseless accusations that people on the left are somehow “grooming” children to abuse, without any evidence. Meanwhile, a bunch of them have been arrested for sex trafficking minors, rape, possession of child pornography, and… well, doing that which they accuse their foes of.

But meanwhile, nobody seemed to bat an eye that Congressman John Rose got his future wife a paid scholarship when she was 15, and then started dating her before she was even 20, and married her at the age of 21. Ms. Rose is right about a quarter century younger than the hubby who potentially groomed her.

You may now pause from reading this article to take a shower if it helps you feel less dirty having even just read that.

Our other reason for looking into John Rose was regarding his actions regarding the January 6th attacks. Sure, he voted to not certify the election results after Donald Trump’s failed coup attempt… but we’ll note he was also one of the extreme minority of GOP caucus members so dedicated to the insurrectionists that he voted twice against honoring members of the Capitol Police with Congressional gold medals to honor their bravery.

Because make no mistake, he has chosen a side in the conflict, and it’s Team Sedition.

[worstblogever]

John Rose’s voting record looks a lot like you’d expect:

• January 27th, 2019: John Rose voted against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attacking our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
• January 22nd, 2019: Rose votes against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Rose voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: John Rose votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Rose votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• June 4th, 2019: Rose votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 12th, 2019: Rose is one of 12 Republicans who vote against the re-authorization of the Zadroga Act to provide healthcare to 9/11 First Responders.
• July 16th, 2019: John Rose votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 17th, 2019: Rep. Rose is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Rose ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Rose votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Rose signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 6th, 2021: John Rose votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Rose votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: John Rose votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Rose votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Rose votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: John Rose votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Rose votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Rose votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• March 17th, 2021: Rose is one of twelve Republicans who pick a side to have rooted for in the failed coup attempt on 1/6/21 and votes against awarding Congressional gold medals to members of the Capitol Police who bravely defended members of Congress during the attack.
• May 19th, 2021: John Rose votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Rose is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
• June 15th, 2021: Rep. Rose is one of twenty-one Republicans who pick a side to have rooted for in the failed coup attempt on 1/6/21 and votes against awarding Congressional gold medals to members of the Capitol Police who bravely defended members of Congress during the attack.
• June 29th, 2021: Rose is one of 8 Republicans who travel to the U.S./Mexico border to do photo-ops to stir up anti-immigrant furor, but also appear on camera with Capitol insurrectionist Anthony Aguero, as if he wasn’t a part of an attack on Congress less than six months prior.
• November 5th, 2021: John Rose votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Rose votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. John Rose would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: John Rose is one of 192 Republicans who vote against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Rose votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Rose votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.

Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District has a +26 Republican lean according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which explains a lot of how he could win re-election to a second term in 2020 with about 74% of the vote. Whether or not the revelations regarding his skeevy family-planning scenarios put a dent in that number… we would like to think that kind of controversy would compel Tennessee voters to go another direction, but then again, we’re talking about the state that keeps re-electing people like Scott DesJarlais, so they’ll likely overlook the grooming accusations and all the sedition.

Because goddamn it.

[Gray Lensman]

On energy related broken promises, he's now back to puckering up and smooching Saudi ass again even after promising to distance themselves after the journalist Khashoggi's murder and dismemberment. He'll break more, it's a political reality.



Agreed, just also agreeing with 30 that Biden/Hillary supporters can't have their cake and eat it too by doing exactly that and acting like Sanders not being able to accomplish everything he promised was a political "gotcha" and a reason not to vote for him. You vote for the person most likely to fight for and accomplish what you want, because there's too much unknown (and strong knowns, like Republican's refusal to do anything good with the power of the Federal government) to predict the future.





In theory I'm fine with the idea of the death penalty. Given certainty of guilt (key) and heinousness of a crime, and while I'm for more rehabilitation and integration back into society we have to accept that there are points where people are too far gone and irredeemable, then I'm OK with killing them off.

In practice, it's a system run by human beings with prejudices and ignorance with incentives to impose harsher punishments to appear "tough on crime", and it overwhelmingly falls on the head of the poor and minorities who rarely have adequate defense. Even when serious doubt and legal malpractice is understood by all parties involved we still kill people we know are likely innocent or at least doubtfully guilty.

Maybe when Skynet goes online and can track everyone on Earth in real time with digitally recording nanobots/satellites, and guilt or innocence is known fully I'd be OK with trusting it to carry out executions (though I wouldn't be surprised if they just save time and launch the nukes). Until then, I can't trust people to make that decision.

One of my issues with the death penalty is it stands is exactly that, as our current SCotUS will protect system and procedure at all cost. Innocence should be reason enough to set someone free, to say nothing of staying the execution. And to launch an investigation as to exactly how someone innocent ended up on Death Row.

[Mister Mets]

I was thinking that too. How is Russia not in red on that map?

It likely counts official executions. When Russian officials order journalists killed, they don't exactly divulge records of the decision.

One of my issues with the death penalty is it stands is exactly that, as our current SCotUS will protect system and procedure at all cost. Innocence should be reason enough to set someone free, to say nothing of staying the execution. And to launch an investigation as to exactly how someone innocent ended up on Death Row.

Legally, there would be some messy questions about who gets to determine that someone is innocent.

There's a special urgency in death penalty cases, but it's also pretty bad if an innocent person is serving a life sentence.

I certainly agree about the need for investigations in cases where innocence is proven.

[Malvolio]

First, become a country that will not use it disproportionately against black people. Then we will talk about whether you should have the privilege to end people's lives.

This. Also when you have a state like Texas where they are so eager to show off how "tough on crime" they are that they don't even bother to make sure they got the right guy before they execute him, it becomes difficult to support the death penalty in practice, even if you support it in principle.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Show of hands if anyone’s surprised:

Log Cabin Republicans Shut Out at Texas GQP Convention

Once again, members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party we’re shocked and surprised when leopards ate their faces.

[Tami]

Show of hands if anyone’s surprised:

Log Cabin Republicans Shut Out at Texas GQP Convention

Once again, members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party we’re shocked and surprised when leopards ate their faces.

They don't know who they are, they are totally screwy.

[kidfresh512]

Show of hands if anyone’s surprised:

Log Cabin Republicans Shut Out at Texas GQP Convention

Once again, members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party we’re shocked and surprised when leopards ate their faces.

They show who they are time and time again. If the party platforms didn't tell them. If the hundreds of anti LGBT legislation being pursued by GOP states. If being denied a booth at this s*** show isn't humiliating enough. Nothing will help them. Vote for people who officially think you shouldn't exist. Makes a lot of sense.

[babyblob]

Show of hands if anyone’s surprised:

Log Cabin Republicans Shut Out at Texas GQP Convention

Once again, members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party we’re shocked and surprised when leopards ate their faces.

This still wont be a wake up call for many of them. They will find some excuse to justify why the GOP did this to them.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

They don't know who they are, they are totally screwy.

I beg to differ, they know who they are, and what they’re all about, and it’s tax breaks. That’s why they support the GQP.

They show who they are time and time again. If the party platforms didn't tell them. If the hundreds of anti LGBT legislation being pursued by GOP states. If being denied a booth at this s*** show isn't humiliating enough. Nothing will help them. Vote for people who officially think you shouldn't exist. Makes a lot of sense.

Problem is, it does make sense to them if voting Qpublican keeps money in their pockets. Nothing else, including LGBTQ rights matters to them.

[Kirby101]

We no the price of giving up their Rights for the Log Cabin Rep. 3% tax cut. That is mighty cheap to betray the people you love.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

We no the price of giving up their Rights for the Log Cabin Rep. 3% tax cut. That is mighty cheap to betray the people you love.

Pfft! There’s no amount too cheap for Log Cabins to roll the LGTBQ community under the nearest Greyhound.