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

[hyped78]

If anything, I suspect at the moment there's momentum towards Republicans, and that polls generally underestimate Republicans (primarily because Democrats are more likely to answer pollsters.) I'll know in three weeks.

I think that:
1 - Polls in recent years have underestimated GOP voting
2 - There seems to be slight momentum in favor of the GOP, according to the latest polls
3 - Five Thirty Eight's model, for example, accounts for the fact that in Midterms, as we get closer to election day, there is a slight shift in favor of the party that's out of power, so in this case the GOP
4 - But all polls in Nevada are showing a statistical tie and this is a state that Biden carried by +2.4%, Hillary also carried by 2.4% and Jacky Rosen won the Senate race in 2018 by +5.0%. So it's been a consistently Democratic leaning state in recent years

Obviously I don't have a crystal ball but Nevada seems as close as it can get, could go either way by a small margin. In a way, the GOP needs the Nevada Senate win more than the Democrats do, as the GOP need to flip seats - the Dems don't.

[AnakinFlair]

Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison and a $6500 fine. Of course, he won't have to serve any of it pending appeal.

[Dalak]

Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison and a $6500 fine. Of course, he won't have to serve any of it pending appeal.

This is a slap on the wrist and will do nothing to dissuade anyone else from flouting the Jan 6th Committee's authority at all. I'm very disappointed.

[Panfoot]

This is a slap on the wrist and will do nothing to dissuade anyone else from flouting the Jan 6th Committee's authority at all. I'm very disappointed.

Yeah, it's essentially getting off scot free.

[numberthirty]

Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison and a $6500 fine. Of course, he won't have to serve any of it pending appeal.

This is a slap on the wrist and will do nothing to dissuade anyone else from flouting the Jan 6th Committee's authority at all. I'm very disappointed.

Yeah, it's essentially getting off scot free.

"Basics 101..." The "Default..." for a politician when it comes to this is not to hold another politician to any actual degree of accountability.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” ran a profile of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who grew widely unpopular and earned the moniker “Governor Ultrasound” after he signed some of the harshest anti-abortion legislation in the country back in 2012. McDonnell was considered to be a possible pick on the GOP ticket as a vice-presidential candidate, but quickly fell from grace in a bribery scandal where he and his wife accepted lavish gifts from a tobacco lobbyist in exchange for using the governor’s profile to promote the lobbyist’s snake oil alternative-tobacco products. As he had to fight tooth and nail to end up serving hard time in federal prison on a variety of appeals in courts, his career is almost definitely over.

On this date in 2015, we published our original “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profile of former Minnesota Congressman John Kline, who didn’t just oppose the Student Loan Forgiveness Act in 2014, he proposed a plan to balance the federal budget by raising Stafford Loan rates to cover the difference. Kline, not coincidentally, has deep pockets flush with cash from "for profit" universities, and has then turned around and hosted "job fairs" in his district that make it look like he cares about employment, but really give disproportionate amounts of space to those diploma paper mills to pick up more business from desperate young people looking for jobs. John Kline also wasted time pushing forward legislation to take Ulysses S. Grant off of the $50 bill and replace him with Ronald Reagan, voted for the Terry Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Bill, and has co-sponsored "War on Christmas" legislation to recognize the importance of Christmas and Christianity. He has twice voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted to defund ACORN based on partisan hack James O'Keefe's fraud, and even voted against disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy. Kline's response to the CIA's report on torture being an ineffective and immoral tactic was to claim the report was "completely partisan" and grumbling that not enough Republicans put ink into it. Kline, after seven aggravating terms in Congress, retired in 2016.


In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the U.S. House Representative from Ohio’s 4th District, Jim Jordan, a brain dead lunk who is now serving in his seventh term in office. Prior to that, he spent twelve years as a member of the Ohio state legislature. Jordan's background prior to entering politics was as a national champion as an NCAA wrestler who eventually became the men's wrestling coach at Ohio State University (which OSU has a fanatical following, frankly, in the state, more on this later). Jordan's career in the Ohio state legislature was spent trying to strip welfare and the social safety net out from those in need of government assistance, and after winning the primary for his Congressional seat in 2006 to replace the retiring Mike Oxley, has been all but guaranteed re-election every year in Ohio's 4th, a district that has voted Republican in all but 16 years since the Civil War ended. Jordan was one of the original founders of the House Freedom Caucus in 2015 that orchestrated the downfall of former House Speaker John Boehner, stemming from an disagreement that the two had over the debt ceiling limit way, way back in 2011. If you're wondering, yes, Rep. Jordan was thus one of the main hindrances into getting an agreement on the debt ceiling passed, refusing to work with his own party to do so, and the inability of the GOP to produce one with control of the House is why Standard and Poore's lowered the United States credit rating for the first time in our nation's history.

We’re going to put this in perspective… John Boehner, of all people, refers to Jim Jordan as a terrorist.

And when it comes to committees... well, Jim Jordan first came onto our radar on the day the then-GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee badgered Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards after the release of the Center for Medical Progress' fabricated "sting" video, interrupting her 19 times in a 5 minute span. He turned up to utterly embarrass himself while trying to harangue Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings, eventually being called to the carpet for his egregiously incorrect take on the investigation by the collective Beltway media, and after FBI Director James Comey decided there was no precedent or charges that could be pressed against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail server, Jordan turned on him and accused Comey of helping "cover up the cover-up" which sounds as paranoid and ludicrous as you're thinking.

But perhaps that's not as paranoid and ludicrous as the interview Jim Jordan gave to Tony Perkins, the leader of the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council on April 30th, 2013, where he started insisting there was merit to the government conspiracy that the Obama administration was trying to "buy up all the ammunition" as part of a plan to negate the 2nd Amendment and limit the freedom of gun owners. It's little surprise that Jordan would say something like that around Tony Perkins, after all, in April of 2012 Jordan was telling Perkins the importance of registering Evangelical voters to get them to vote against President Obama was akin to the Union Army winning the war to stop slavery, or Americans in World War II going to Europe to beat the Nazis. Ah... Godwin's Law. Never gets old.

And that's not all... after the faux "IRS Scandal" that the GOP worked itself into a frenzy was investigated, and no wrongdoing was found, he continued to demand investigations at taxpayer expense, saying:

"We need this special counsel to help us get to the truth because the so-called investigation by the Justice Department has been a joke. The current investigation has no credibility because it is being headed by a maxed-out donor who is financially invested in the president's success."

I guess what we're getting at is Jim Jordan is an extremist fiscal conservative, provided the money being spent isn't being wasted on partisan witch hunts that only exist to throw red meat to lunatic conservatives.

Jordan aligns himself legislatively with the House Freedom Caucus on their most extreme positions, and has gone from whining about presidents using executive orders, to defending Donald Trump for using them. That might be because Rep. Jordan likes that it screws over people who would dare to sign up for medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act, which Jordan STILL insists isn’t constitutional (in spite of the Supreme Court twice ruling that it was).

At least Jim Jordan hasn’t been bailing on town halls in his district. Naw, that would be wrong, and deny him the satisfaction of telling his constituents to go f*** themselves for expecting the government to provide them with any sort of security on healthcare, or doing anything to stop industrial giants from polluting the environment. But, y’know, doing it while cowering behind a police officer while he blew off everyone who asked a question, because apparently his wrestling skills aren’t what they used to be.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

More proof Qpublicans are drop deadINSANE:

GOP Governor Nominee: Having Baby Could Be 'Healing' For Teen Rape Victims

[hyped78]

More proof Qpublicans are drop dead, motherfucking INSANE:

GOP Governor Nominee: Having Baby Could Be 'Healing' For Teen Rape Victims

Part of the insanity is that the Michigan Governor race actually seems somewhat competitive:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...tmer-7545.html

Maybe those comments from Dixon will boost Whitmer's numbers.

[worstblogever]

A lot of interesting coincidences also popped up with Jim Jordan in 2018. The first off is that one of his former aides, Wesley Goodman, was an Ohio state legislator up until the time he was caught having sex with another man in his office, and then dozens of individuals came forward, some underage, to report being sexually harassed by Goodman. And then a report came out that Goodman had sexually assaulted an underage boy while working for Jordan in Washington at a Family Research Council retreat, and the whole thing got hushed up.

But what’s that you say? That’s just a former staffer of Jim Jordan’s. It’s not like that he would ever be caught up in such a scandal and cover up a sexual assault. To that, we say… OH RLY?

Over the summer of 2018, reports surfaced that while Jim Jordan was working as an assistant coach in the wrestling program at Ohio State University, a team physician, Richard Strauss, was sexually assaulting dozens of students over several years. And when asked about it, Jordan denied having any knowledge of any such sexual abuse taking place. You’ll never guess what happened next… multiple wrestlers came forward who said that they were aware of the abuse, brought it to the attention of Jim Jordan, and he just laughed it off as normal everyday locker room shenanigans. Further, as more wrestlers came forward, some reported being contacted by former Ohio State coaches on behalf of Jim Jordan asking them to make public statements to defend him from the controversy. And of course being involved in a coverup of sexual assault means that Jim Jordan received special attention and praise from Donald Trump. Because of course.

Now, in some eras of American history, a scandal like the one Jim Jordan is involved in one be enough to force his resignation, and the president wouldn’t be coming to talk about how great he is. However, we’re in the darkest timeline, and thus a man suspected of being involved in not one, but TWO DIFFERENT coverups of sexual assault could be re-elected time and again. And so it is that Jim Jordan has become one of the most predominant gas-lighters in the modern Republican Party, turning every minute of the time he gets to speak in House Oversight Committee hearings into a farce, and when that’s not enough, to run onto cable news to further the misinformation being spread on behalf of Donald Trump. Here are but some of his worst moments in the past year and a half or so:

• May 2nd, 2018: Jim Jordan is one of 18 Republicans who sign on to a letter asking to nominate Donald Trump for a Nobel Prize for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
• March 4th, 2019: Rep. Jordan makes an arguably anti-Semitic Twitter post where he attacks Tom Steyer (who has Jewish heritage) by replacing the S in his name with a “$”, to complain about him donating money to Democrats.
• March 27th, 2019: Jim Jordan sends a letter to Donald Trump’s accountants, Mazars, and instructs them to ignore any subpoenas they might receive, including Congressional subpoenas.
• June 11th, 2019: Jim Jordan harasses former White House Counsel John Dean during his testimony about how impeachment should be handled, and for whatever reason, tries to insinuate that Dean is attacking Donald Trump because of how he has handled foreign policy with Israel (???).
• September 29th, 2019: Jordan goes on CNN to try and confuse the public regarding the Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal, and Jake Tapper humiliates him, catching him in several lies and contradictions, and refusing to allow Jordan to try and deflect by spreading conspiracy theories about Joe Biden.
• October 14th, 2019: After 10 hours of damning testimony from State Department employee Dr. Fiona Hill during the impeachment inquiry, Rep. Jordan makes the ludicrous claim to the press that impeachment testimony doesn’t count unless it’s presented in front of all 435 members of Congress, and not just a committee. He also tried claiming that Congressman Matt Gaetz was unfairly kicked out of the meeting, but Gaetz wasn’t on any relevant committee to the discussion. (Jordan is, as per usual, full of s***.)
• October 23rd, 2019: Jordan is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• November 14th, 2019: Jim Jordan, in the midst of the Trump impeachment hearings, tries to spin that Trump is somehow the hero of the story, and that he was actually holding up aid to Ukraine and trying to solicit an illegal investigation as a “test”, to see if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was corrupt or not.
• December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Jordan votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Jordan 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.
• February 13th, 2020: Rep. Jordan is mentioned in a court hearing back in Columbus, Ohio, where a witness recalls Jim Jordan, then an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, pressuring a wrestler to dispute his own brother’s reports of sexual abuse by a team trainer. This is yet another mention of Jordan covering up sexual abuse in that scandal, and yet… he still remains a member of Congress.
• April 23rd, 2020: Jim Jordan refuses to wear a mask in a House Oversight Committee hearing, and claims that an oversight committee for the Coronavirus response is “a Democratic plot to attack Trump”.
• May 15th, 2020: Jordan votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• July 28th, 2020: Jim Jordan opens a hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr by, without permission, airing a video of out-of-context news footage (without the consent of the reporters giving those reports either), claiming that those protesting police violence are violent mobs.
• July 29th, 2020: Rep. Jordan is scolded by his Democratic colleagues for refusing to obey House rules and wear a mask during a meeting of the Technology Committee.
• July 31st, 2020: Jim Jordan is combative during a hearing on Covid-19, and while harassing Dr. Anthony Fauci, tries to target his questioning specifically to find out if he can shut down protests of police brutality and police murder around the country by using the pandemic as an excuse to deny protesters their right of assembly.
• August 20th, 2020: Rep. Jordan, the lemming that he is, follows Donald Trump off a cliff to back Trump’s calls to boycott the Goodyear Tire Company, who have a factory in Akron, Ohio, because the company called on its employees to not wear political clothing to work, such as any MAGA gear.

[worstblogever]

• December 10th, 2020: Jordan 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: There’s quite a few known anecdotes about what Jim Jordan was doing when Trump supporters attempted the violent overthrow of our legislative branch of government on this date… first, he has ended up blurting out in interviews that he was repeatedly on the phone with Donald Trump while the attack was taking place (leading for calls for his phone records to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation into the attack)…
  and the second being that when the domestic terrorists invading the building were trying to get into the House chamber, Jordan suddenly came up with his own dumb plan to “sequester the women”, leading Wyoming Congresswoman Lynne Cheney to tell him “GET AWAY FROM ME. YOU F***ING DID THIS.”
• January 7th, 2021: Jim Jordan 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. Jordan 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: Jim Jordan 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: Jordan votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Jordan 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: Jim Jordan votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Jordan 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. Jordan 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 31st, 2021: Rep. Jordan comes out in defense of accused child sex trafficker and fellow Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, because there’s apparently not any sex crime he’s aware of that he won’t try to sweep under the rug.
• April 15th, 2021: Jim Jordan decides to use his five minutes of time in a Covid-19 hearing to just be a useless, bullying prick, repeatedly asking questions of infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, then interrupting him before he can even complete a sentence. At the end of that five minutes, Jordan continued berating Fauci and grandstanding until Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters had to tell him, “Your time expired, sir. You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth.”
• April 19th, 2021: Jordan sarcastically posts, “How many masks are we supposed to wear this week?” on Twitter, mocking advice of medical experts that two masks offer more protection than a single one.
• April 21st, 2021: Jim Jordan gets into a shouting match with Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings, interrupting her while she had the Floor as she pointed out that Republicans’ efforts to insert an amendment into the Covid-19 Hate Crimes bill that would prevent “defunding the police” were irrelevant because the bill did not do anything in regards to police funding. (She’d know if a bill would do so, given her experience with 27 years on the force.)
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. Jordan votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Jordan is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.

[worstblogever]

• September 6th, 2021: Jim Jordan, on Twitter, says that “Vaccine mandates are un-American”, so users remind him that General George Washington mandated vaccinations for the Continental Army way back in 1777, and they’ve been a thing for literally centuries in this country.
• October 13th, 2021: Jordan, again on Twitter, calls for banning ALL vaccine mandates. Not just Covid-19 mandates, but all vaccines. He gets predictably ratio’ed.
• November 5th, 2021: Jim Jordan votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• February 5th, 2022: Jordan is confirmed to have spoken to Donald Trump on the phone for at least 10 minutes on the morning of January 6th, 2021.
• February 14th, 2022: Rep. Jordan is on Fox News, and is asked about how Donald Trump called for the deaths of aides who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and responds that Trump is “right on target”.
• March 31st, 2022: Jordan votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, whihttp://https://www.govtrack.us/congr.../117-2022/h102ch 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. Jim Jordan would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• April 22nd, 2022: Text messages between Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows are revealed in a court filing that Jim Jordan was offering the strategy to the Trump White House that Mike Pence should just not count any electoral votes and say they were “unconstitutional” as his justicifcation.
• May 18th, 2022: Jim Jordan is one of 192 Republicans who votes against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Jordan 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: Jordan votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
• July 15th, 2022: Jim Jordan votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
• July 13th, 2022: Jordan votes against the Honoring Our PACT Act, to provide healthcare to veterans affected by toxic burn pits while serving in the War on Terror that leave them more susceptible to forms of cancer.
• July 21st, 2022: Jordan is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.
• July 25th, 2022: After the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, one of the more horrible stories that emerges from the legal chaos that followed was of a 10 year old rape victim from Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. Jim Jordan’s strategy to spin that? Lie and claim she didn’t even exist. But that’s probably how he had to think to avoid acknowledging sexual assault while coaching at Ohio State.
• August 8th, 2022: Jim Jordan, already with a history of looking the other way when crimes are committed, posts a defense of Donald Trump stealing classified documents on the House Judiciary GOP account that reads, "If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you.”

Now, while Ohio’s 4th Congressional District has a +20 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, meaning that even though Jim Jordan is a traitor and utter , the deck is stacked pretty hard with that gerrymander against his Democratic challenger, Tamie Wilson. We’re crossing our fingers, and hoping that after fourteen years if madness, his reign of douchebaggery comes to an end, but the even worse scenario could be if Republicans take back the House, and Jim Jordan becomes the next Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and makes it an even more extreme and warped version of what it was under the guidance of Darrell Issa, and starts issuing subpoenas to Democrats based on whatever imaginary crimes this gaslighting can imagine.

What we’re saying it, regardless of where you are, get out the vote.

[Ragged Maw]

More proof Qpublicans are drop dead, motherfucking INSANE:

GOP Governor Nominee: Having Baby Could Be 'Healing' For Teen Rape Victims

To put it in more detail, she brought up some cases where that supposed result came about:

Dixon replied that her stance came from talking to rape survivors who have given birth, as well as people who are the children of rape survivors. “I’ve talked to those people who were the child of a rape victim, and the bond that those two people made, and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby — it’s something that we don’t think about,” she said.

[Mister Mets]

Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison and a $6500 fine. Of course, he won't have to serve any of it pending appeal.

If he has to actually serve four months in jail for ignoring subpoenas, that would be an understandable penalty. That is a big if though.

[AnakinFlair]

If he has to actually serve four months in jail for ignoring subpoenas, that would be an understandable penalty. That is a big if though.

He's also still facing charges in New York over that whole 'Build the Wall' scam. Hopefully we see some movement on that soon.

I saw him ranting to the press outside the courthouse (my TV was muted), and all I could think of was the drunk in the police station in RoboCop: "I'm a repeat offender! I repeat, I will offend again!"

Meanwhile, the Jan 6 Committee issued the subpoena for Trump (to take place AFTER the midterms), and the Justice Department needs more money for the Jan 6 investigation. Guess what the first two things are going to be canceled if the Republicans take control?

[worstblogever]

He's also still facing charges in New York over that whole 'Build the Wall' scam. Hopefully we see some movement on that soon.

I saw him ranting to the press outside the courthouse (my TV was muted), and all I could think of was the drunk in the police station in RoboCop: "I'm a repeat offender! I repeat, I will offend again!"

Meanwhile, the Jan 6 Committee issued the subpoena for Trump (to take place AFTER the midterms), and the Justice Department needs more money for the Jan 6 investigation. Guess what the first two things are going to be canceled if the Republicans take control?

So are we going to be surprised when the GOP defund the police? Y'know, to protect their own?