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

[Tami]

That's bad but not an indication of white nationalism.

Overturning an election is Fascism, and White nationalism is a key part of the Fascist philosophy/tactics.

Common characteristics of fascist movements

[hyped78]

Georgia smashes record for early voting

Good to see in terms of enthusiasm.

Good news for Democrats

Overturning an election is Fascism, and White nationalism is a key part of the Fascist philosophy/tactics.

Common characteristics of fascist movements

Plenty of examples of far-left/communist leaders also overturning or rigging elections

[worstblogever]

Plenty of examples of far-left/communist leaders also overturning or rigging elections

And yet, none in the United States. Which is the relevant examples right now.

But please, again, let's keep seeing folks try to hand wave away when people continue to point out in this thread that we're on the precipice of devolving into a fascist, authoritarian, white nationalist nation by trying to "both sides" it in a lazy argument without evidence.

[Wildling]

Imagine the Nuremberg trials both sided and the rate of knuckle sandwich deliveries afterward.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”posted profiles of former Texas Governor and two-time failed presidential candidate Rick Perry, who does love him some guns, even going jogging and stopping from his cardio workout to add extra orifices via lead projectiles to coyotes that offend him. He’s equally callous about ending the lives of human beings, apparently, having executed over 250 people, more than any governor in U.S. History, including Todd Willingham, who after his death, was later proved innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. Perry, however, has no regrets. But don’t worry, he does love life. At least if the life in question has yet to be born. In his last term as governor, Rick Perry signed some of the harshest anti-abortion legislation into law, causing mass protests at the state capitol. This is a man, while governor, who openly discussed having Texas secede from the union, and also backed anti-government tax scofflaw Cliven Bundy in his fight against the Bureau of Land Management in 2014.

His 2012 campaign for president was supposed to be him riding to the Republicans’ rescue to deny Barack Obama a second term, but it was an unmitigated disaster, and included the revelation that his family’s vacation ranch was named with a racial slur, several campaign stops where he rambled on incoherently and made people speculate he was high on painkillers, and even how he forgot what the three government offices he wanted to shut down in a GOP primary debate, offering a meager, “OOPS” after his brain fart. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Perry claimed the unemployment number given by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month is “doctored”, talked with Glenn Beck about the Jade Helm 15 Conspiracy Theory, claimed that the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina was not a race-motivated hate crime, but an “accident” motivated by drug use, recommended people start carrying firearms in dark movie theaters to shoot back blindly at any potential mass shooters who might attack them there, and compared himself to Jesus at a campaign rally in South Carolina. Perry’s second presidential campaign only lasted 92 days before he ran out of money.

In the interests of staying relevant, Perry appeared on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, where he hoped to learn enough footwork to not embarrass himself at his daughter’s wedding later on in the year. He was eliminated very early on because… well, he was a terrible dancer, but you’re gonna fail miserably if you try to dance to “God Bless Texas” when you’re supposed to be performing a cha-cha. There was, for a time, speculation about Rick Perry being a primary challenger for Ted Cruz in the 2018 mid-term elections, but instead, Rick Perry inexplicably took a job of the Secretary of the Department of Energy in Donald Trump’s “Cabinet of Horrors”. He had no qualifications for the job, and was going to be running a department of our government that he advocated should be eliminated completely (well, after Ron Paul reminded him). Perry advocated for eliminating the Dept. of Energy, then took the job running it. Perry then admitted his surprise in that he had no idea what his job was when he accepted it.

While in that role, he was stupid enough to get crank-called by Russian pranksters. Which… is at last not the worst scandal the Trump administration has with the Russians. Perry was also embroiled in the Trump administration’s Ukraine scandal, because of his meetings with Ukraine’s president where he may have been pressuring the country to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden to assist the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, as well as potential irregularities with the oil and gas companies in Ukraine.

On this date in 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who was been in office from 2014-2022, whose career prior to running for office was that he was the CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream parlor chain, resigning from that spot in 2007 and then winning office in 2010 as Arizona State Treasurer. Gov. Ducey posed with members of a supposed “Patriot Movement AZ” that’s a white nationalist group, and there’s not just members of the MAGA crowd, but they’re throwing up white supremacist hand gestures for the photo. While Gov. Ducey was meeting with fringe hatemongers, he was simultaneously refusing to meet with education leaders during Arizona’s #RedforEd teacher’s strike. That isn’t a one-off, either. As Ducey also spoke before Turning Point USA, another racist and anti-Semitic conservative group in August of 2018, and he answered to criticism over it by claiming that “he didn’t know” they were as bad as they are. How racist is Doug Ducey? He came out strong to oppose removing Confederate monuments in Arizona, even though the Confederacy pre-dated his state’s existence by a few decades. He chose to put this statement out within a week of the murder of Heather Heyer and 20 others being injured in a terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, carried out by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. While there were literally school students camping out right outside Ducey’s office to protest gun violence in schools after the Parkland Shooting back in March of 2018, he was too busy posting on Twitter about free agent players leaving the Arizona Cardinals. He’s also extreme enough on anti-choice legislation that he signed a law that would require physicians performing abortions in Arizona to attempt to resuscitate any fetus that survives the procedure… which would be amazing because fetuses are physically incapable of surviving outside the womb by definition. Their qualification of if the attempt needs to be made? If the fetus has a heartbeat. That would mean ANY abortion performed at six weeks or beyond… whether or not the fetus has developed other organs to survive. It’s… frankly mad science. Ducey actually praised Donald Trump’s pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and in 2018, when Trump demanded the governors of several states deploy the National Guard to the U.S./Mexico border for what amounted to an expensive photo-op to commemorate Trump’s bigotry, Doug Ducey was more than happy to humor the idea and join in the racism. Hell, even without any influence by Trump, Ducey tried blocking the resettlement of refugees into Arizona and has been more than willing to sign whatever anti-immigrant legislation that crosses his desk. In July of 2019, a lot of Republicans were bent out of shape about the relationship between Nike and Colin Kaepernick, who made the great offense of kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police violence, as the First Amendment allows him to do. Well, Nike had announced that it would pull shoes from the market that were Betsy Ross themed around the 4th of July, and the conservative media continued the feud, frothing at the mouth about Nike boycotts. One of the loudest critics was, Doug Ducey, who as part of a day long Twitter thread about it, was threatening to pull financial incentives towards Nike for creating jobs in Arizona. And then, two days later, the Arizona Republic photographed Doug Ducey at a charity event… WEARING NIKE SHOES. Doug Ducey sabotaged Covid-19 mitigation efforts, redirecting federal education funds away from public schools who enforce mask mandates for students, and giving the cash to schools that reject the safety and lives of those kids by allowing them to attend unmasked. The Biden administration let him know, “that’s not actually a thing you can do”, and Ducey’s threw tantrums that he can’t effectively offer bribes to administrators willing to get kids sick for extra cash, and then lying and claiming that wasn’t exactly what he was trying to do. Meanwhile, he was attending pool parties without a mask and getting called out on it by constituents on Twitter and acting like he was the victim of a “smear attack” when he was caught. Mercifully, his tenure comes to an end in 2022, thanks to term limits. Unless he makes a Senate bid in two years’ time, hoping to snag the seat currently held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (a scenario that is somehow worse than Sinema already), he seems like he might be done with politics, and we truly hope that’s the case. As such, we will set aside his profile at this time to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1147-55, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Kari Lake

Welcome to what is the 1147th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’re profiling Kari Lake, a 2022 candidate to be the next Governor of Arizona, a former local Fox News anchor whose name recognition made her an early favorite in the race, but who is hampered by being a raving loon who would not have a prayer of even sniffing a party nomination, let alone potentially winning the race.

Lake’s road to winning the GOP Primary hit a snag when her opponents realized that in 2006, she switched her party affiliation to “Democrat”, a fact which Lake attributes to having been frustrated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After voting for Barack Obama in 2008, in 2012, Lake again switched party affiliation back to Republican, and over the decade since, has fallen farther and farther away from reality, falling prey to most of the conspiracy theories anyone with basic critical thinking skills could decipher and reject. That fact began to cause concern for any journalists who actually worked with her, as she went down an ugly rabbit hole farther and farther. In 2018, during the “Red for Ed” teacher’s strike in Arizona, Lake began spreading a bizarre lie that the strike was a secret end-around by people trying to get pot legalized in Arizona.

That… that doesn’t make any sense, of course, and it earned her a one month suspension from appearing on air. In 2019, she was caught on a hot mic discussing her own Parler account with colleagues, which, again, that’s a big concern that someone trusted to deliver the news to the public is chilling out on a corner of the internet populated by white nationalists and Neo-Nazis. In April of 2020, she was at it again, sharing Covid-19 misinformation on her personal social media accounts, unaware or unable to care that her actions could get someone killed.

In June 2021, she announced her gubernatorial campaign, immediately appearing at CPAC, and campaigning at events with a Blue Lives Matter flag on display, and continuing to sow chaos, including leading an anti-mask rally at Arizona State University, boasting that she was taking hydroxychloroquine to avoid getting Covid-19 (which doesn’t work). promising to continue to “build the wall” along the U.S./Mexico border like Donald Trump failed to complete during his presidency, fear-monger about an “INVASION” on the southern border, and attack a local journalist for “refusing to recite the pledge of Allegiance” (said journalist is a Canadian who emigrated to the U.S.).

By the end of the year, she was speaking in front of white nationalists at a gathering in Phoenix, were she deried “John McCain Republicans” and told them to “get the hell out” of the GOP.

Clearly, run of the mill rhetoric.

[worstblogever]

While Kari Lake pushed herself to the fore of the primary by being the worst example of a human that she could be, there was one controversy that nearly cost her the nomination, and that would have been when she started railing against drag queens for “grooming” children. After a post she made on Twitter about “God having been taken out of our schools” and “letting the drag queens in”, part of Lake’s past in her personal life came back to haunt her in the form of Richard Stevens, aka local Phoenix drag queen Barbara Seville. Not only did Stevens/Seville provide several photos of Lake partying with him and other members of the Phoenix drag scene and point out Lake’s sheer hypocrisy for demonizing people whom she once craved the company of, she’d allegedly be kicked out by bouncers for being too drunk, and that at one point, Lake was so concerned about what drag queens might do around children that she hosted a baby shower where the entertainment for the women and children present was… drag queens.

Seems like either Lake was pretending to not be a terrible person then, or she’s pretending to be a terrible person now. Which, the latter kind of just makes you a terrible person.

At the GOP primary debate, Lake also furthered some of the “Big Lie” moments she’d pushed, officially stating that if she had a vote in the matter, she would not have certified the vote for the 2020 election. If supporting the conspiracy theory that the election was “stolen” from Donald Trump wasn’t enough, only days before the primary election, she went on a Qanon promoting broadcast to ask for donations. Oh, and she’s a fan of seditionists, claiming those arrested for attacking the Capitol on January 6th are “being held in prison without being charged”.

Every time she speaks, it’s terrifying how out of touch she is. She can casually just state “women aren’t equal to men”, and that’s a pretty big deal when she’s also talking about abortion and saying it is “the ultimate sin”.

Because we all know, the morality police should be someone so hypocritical about so many things, and who can say that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump exude “BDE”. But that’s the sort of good judgment she has for other Republicans, like Jarrin Jackson, the Oklahoma State Senate candidate and open anti-Semite she unnecessarily supported in August, as well.

While we would like to think everything we’ve written here would mean Kari Lake wouldn’t have a chance of getting elected, we’re talking about Arizona, the same state that elected Republicans as corrupt as Gov. Evan Mecham and Fife Symington, and extremists as virulent of late as Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey. Virtually nothing is disqualifying to Republicans in this state.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the choice seems not just safe, but extremely competent, and willing to fight for democracy, rather than cave to authoritarian lunacy, especially given the nominee is Katie Hobbs, who had to protect Arizona’s voters from all the bulls*** that Republicans pulled after Arizona got called for Joe Biden in 2020. This state hasn’t had a Democrat in office since Janet Napolitano left to run the Department of Homeland Security in 2009, and it has been a ROUGH 14 years for the Grand Canyon State. While Hobbs could be a healthy change, electing Kari Lake and her authoritarian, white nationalist ideals could be a damaging choice that would make John McCain turn over in his grave, assuming that Lake doesn’t order him dug up and dumped in the ocean.

We’re only mostly kidding, she might go mad with power and do that. Or, y’know, fight her own “Big Lie” fight within the state for years to come and fundraise off of refusing to accept she lost a fair election, which she’s already telegraphing by refusing to accept the result if she loses. Will Arizona Republicans continue to come out in droves to support authoritarian racist ***holes?

We’ll find out in a few weeks’ time. (PLEASE, Vote for Katie Hobbs, Arizonans. PLEASE.)

[Kevinroc]

Legendary television producer Norman Lear released these tweets today. I don't know where else to put them, and considering Lear's own history involving politics, I thought this thread would be a good place for them.

https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...94950649757696

I was 9 years old when my dad was found to have committed fraud & was sent to prison for a few years. Alone in bed one night, my father away, I was playing with a crystal set radio and came across the vicious antisemitic voice of Father Coughlin railing against American Jews. 1/3

https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...95298990981120

I’m confident that that horrifying moment resulted in my early enlistment in WWII and the 52 combat missions over Nazi Germany that followed. 2/3

https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...95335074566144

Today, having recently turned 100, I read Donald Trump’s appalling words about American Jews, and I am nine years old again. The phrase, a horse’s ass, was an everyday expression when I was nine and it occurs to me again now. 3/3

[CSTowle]

That honestly surprises me.

Capitalism, baby! Also, the whole infrastructure/public works explosion came from needing to put people back to work after the Great Depression and then when we briefly were top of the heap after WWII and were swimming in cash and actually wanted to invest it here at home. A lot of public buildings were made during that time, and most of them haven't even been repaired (let alone replaced) and getting the funds to do so is like pulling teeth.

One Party wants to bleed money out of the system as-is to save on tax money, let alone paying more to update or replace buildings. I don't know this, but I'd bet everything I own most of that third Google cited are located in poor and/or minority areas and rarely if ever in upper class areas. And government workers, pfft.

[Robotman]

And yet, none in the United States. Which is the relevant examples right now.

But please, again, let's keep seeing folks try to hand wave away when people continue to point out in this thread that we're on the precipice of devolving into a fascist, authoritarian, white nationalist nation by trying to "both sides" it in a lazy argument without evidence.

Really we would just be going back to our fascist, authoritarian, and white nationalist roots. Throughout the country’s history we’ve restricted the voting rights of minorities and women, kept certain populations of people down and ruled over by an authoritarian police state, and the idea of saying anything against Christianity and “Christian values” was akin to treason.

This is who we’ve been since our inception. It’s just horrifying to see us (and many other western nations) devolving over the past 6 years or so.

[AnakinFlair]

Capitalism, baby! Also, the whole infrastructure/public works explosion came from needing to put people back to work after the Great Depression and then when we briefly were top of the heap after WWII and were swimming in cash and actually wanted to invest it here at home. A lot of public buildings were made during that time, and most of them haven't even been repaired (let alone replaced) and getting the funds to do so is like pulling teeth.

One Party wants to bleed money out of the system as-is to save on tax money, let alone paying more to update or replace buildings. I don't know this, but I'd bet everything I own most of that third Google cited are located in poor and/or minority areas and rarely if ever in upper class areas. And government workers, pfft.

Ross School is located in a middle class area. Then again, McKelvey School- which is just a short distance away from Ross- was having issues recently. And apparently it was more cost-effective to remodel our High School's athletic center and move half of the students into that. So make of that what you will.

[Mister Mets]

Imagine the Nuremberg trials both sided and the rate of knuckle sandwich deliveries afterward.

This would require atrocities on the same level.

Capitalism, baby! Also, the whole infrastructure/public works explosion came from needing to put people back to work after the Great Depression and then when we briefly were top of the heap after WWII and were swimming in cash and actually wanted to invest it here at home. A lot of public buildings were made during that time, and most of them haven't even been repaired (let alone replaced) and getting the funds to do so is like pulling teeth.

One Party wants to bleed money out of the system as-is to save on tax money, let alone paying more to update or replace buildings. I don't know this, but I'd bet everything I own most of that third Google cited are located in poor and/or minority areas and rarely if ever in upper class areas. And government workers, pfft.

I don't think capitalism is a sufficient explanation for why buildings aren't updated as quickly as we'd like in the US. Socialist nations also had subpar buildings, and were subject to various constraints on construction. You can't build if you don't have enough raw material.

There is also a problem that if people are careless when getting rid of toxic substances such as asbestos, it'll do more harm than if they hadn't touched it in the first place. So that's another complication. The process of dismantling a building could lead to greater asbestos exposure/ spread. The things that require greater care tend to come with higher costs, as well as requiring things in finite supply (IE- at a certain point, there won't immediately be enough asbestos removal specialists to handle the workload.)

That said, there is a major problem in the US with the lack of construction. But the problem is not the lack of government funding, as much as it is the overall costs. These tend to be the results of excessive regulations. Even with unlimited funding, there are also all sorts of restrictions which make it difficult to be allowed to build something new thanks to environmental impact laws, and the like. We can see how hard it is to build something in California. And one party's in charge there.

[Mister Mets]

You're under the impression party leadership wouldn't listen to the demands of an organized, nationwide group of moderate Republicans threatening to withhold their votes and donations? I think you're wrong.

I don't think this hypothetical moderate group would work that way.

You would need a group that's plausibly in the hundreds of thousands, if not larger. That's difficult to manufacture, especially it's limited to a segment of the right (a combination of moderates and people who care about process issues.) The main way something like this might happen would be with a cult of personality, although that would be a different type of movement. For example, if there were an outsider Republican who had Trump's willingness to pick fights with any critics within the party, and would be just as willing to take down the party if they go after him, but who consistently picked the moral side on an issue.

One immediate problem is that a lot of issues don't divide so neatly. A moderate group or cult of personality could easily splinter, which becomes a problem for any spokesman.

Their demands may also end up alienating other segments of the party who don't share the sensibilities of a group that isn't necessarily representative of the public (it's more educated, for one thing.)

Overturning an election is Fascism, and White nationalism is a key part of the Fascist philosophy/tactics.

Common characteristics of fascist movements

Overturning elections are bad, but not exclusive to fascism. We're looking at three sometimes overlapping categories of bad things, fascism, and white nationalism (which I think would be a venn diagram of fascism and white nationalism inside the larger circle of bad things) and they are different.

[Wildling]

This would require atrocities on the same level.

I was just laughing out loud at bothsiderism in general, but I'm not really surprised you decided to easily reply to my post instead of worstblogever's one directly before mine and directly addressed to you.

It defines what you are now. Feeling free to take cover and post at length for whatever indignities the GOP inflicts on their opponents as long as things aren't "THAT BAD", yet.

[CaptainEurope]

Legendary television producer Norman Lear released these tweets today. I don't know where else to put them, and considering Lear's own history involving politics, I thought this thread would be a good place for them.

https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...94950649757696



https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...95298990981120



https://twitter.com/TheNormanLear/st...95335074566144

Goosebumps. Wow.