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

[4theEarth]

Majoritarianism as a political idea isn’t racist by itself.
As our country’s and others history demonstrates, it typically follows racial and/or religious lines.
It’s the bigotry or racism that initiates or corrupts the Majoritarianism.
Shouldn’t really have to explain that to someone who portrays themself to be so smart btw.

not following your notion of corruption here - are you assuming some sort of egalitarian ideal? A majority state functions by practically serving its major population's interests and minority populations live on the margins. Given that state have been formed around homogeneous populations for as long as nation states have existed it is a standard to which they tend toward as a matter of functionality.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” ran a profile of Leo Berman, a former member of the Texas House of Representatives who in 2010 went on Glenn Beck to declare Barack Obama was "God's punishment on us" and needed to be a one-term president. He also was a Birther, once getting humiliated about the conspiracy on CNN by Anderson Cooper over it on air. Berman also was the driving force behind trying to pass anti-Sharia Law legislation in Texas, insisting that Dearborn, Michigan was being taken over by Muslims, and feuding with former Gov. Rick Perry at the time for the governor being perceived as "too lenient" about it.

On this date in 2017, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” had its original profile of conservative political pundit and failed Congressional candidate Katrina Pierson, who you probably know as "that one Donald Trump surrogate who gave Kellyanne Conway a run for her money in being full of s***". Well, here's what you might not know... Katrina Pierson was actually a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in the 2014 elections, challenging Congressman Pete Sessionsin the GOP Primary for his seat representing Texas' 32nd Congressional District. Now, rest assured, that since she emerged as a Tea Party operative, Katrina Pierson has said some truly demented things, placing her in a category of “totally bananas” usually reserved for places owned by the Chiquita corporation. We note she was caught shoplifting $168 in clothes from a J.C. Penney in Dallas, Texas back in 1997, and as late as 2008 stated that her political hero was Malcolm X, because Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was "too moderate". She became disenchanted with President Obama, however, because she saw pictures of him where "he wasn't wearing a flag pin", enamored of Donald Trump as a candidate because of his anti-Islamic views, which Pierson agrees "preys on the weak and uses political correctness as cover". (She might want to read a little more about Malcolm X's religious background, frankly, if he's still her "idol".) In ]July of 2011, Pierson taught classes to the Waco Tea Party about the threat of the United Nations Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty being a secret plan for global conquest. By January 2012, Pierson began illegally collecting $11,400 in unemployment earnings while working for the U.S. Senate campaign of Ted Cruz. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Pierson referred to President Obama as “the Head Negro in Charge”, and gave key analysis on Twitter, like, "Perfect Obama's dad born in Africa, Mitt Romney's dad born in Mexico. Any pure breeds left?" (She actually doubled down and said “half-breed” isn’t a slur because she considers herself a "half-breed", too) and as the final days of the election approached, broke down the Romney vs. Obama choice as “#2012 Choice: Mormon or Jihadi #clear enough?" Pierson also has told the gay community that they hill never have “acceptance, but you could win coexistence”, and that ”Gay is not normal, accept that." She then had her ill-conceived attempt at a Congressional seat thwarted in 2014, only to emerge in 2015 working as an in-studio spokeswoman for the Donald Trump campaign, and in one of her first appearances on CNN, she argued in favor of an unconstitutional ban on all Muslims because, and we quote, "So what? They're Muslim!" In December of 2015, Pierson went on Fox News to defend a lackluster answer by Donald Trump about the nuclear triad while asking, without irony, "Why have nuclear weapons if you're afraid to use them?" After an appearance on cable news where Katrina Pierson was mocked for wearing a necklace made out of shotgun shells, she lashed out at her fashion critics in the less-than-sane demeanor on Twitter that she had already begun making herself infamous for, when she responded, "Maybe I'll wear a fetus next time& bring awareness to 50 million aborted people that will never ger to be on Twitter". As the GOP Primary continued, she began questioning the true citizenship of Sen. Marco Rubio on CNN, and later tried spinning the blame for Humayun Khan’s death in Iraq in 2004, while Obama was still just a state legislator in Illinois. After being used in a less high profile role for the campaign after that last spectacular gaffe, Pierson turned up in 2017 as part of a Pro-Trump advocacy group called "America First Strategies" (cleverly named after the American Nazi movement from 75 years ago), where she will fight against "biased media coverage" against Donald Trump by going on Fox News and well… being bats*** crazy like how only about a week after the violence in Charlottesville propagated by Neo-Nazis, she went on Fox News to join a debate about Confederate monuments and declare that slavery is “good history”. She ended up a target of the January 6th investigation, which should make her even more unelectable.

On this date in 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” had its original profile of Jonathan Stickland, a high school dropout and exterminator turned into a “pro-life” politician and Tea Party hero as a member of the Texas House of Representatives who has held office in District 92 since 2012. Stickland’s upward trajectory seemed remarkable, as he had co-sponsored a lot of successfully passed (albeit radically conservative) legislation at but 32 years old. That is, until in December 2015, when comments Stickland made online in a fantasy football forum under the moniker of “Stick” surfaced, where he “joked around” with a friend whose wife wouldn’t have sex with him in a particular sexual position by advising him that “Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!” Stickland also was looking for some companionship from possible aficionados of marijuana on the forum, giving his e-mail if they wanted to be his “smoke-buddy” and also ranting about being called upon to undergo a random drug test at work (that he also tried to avoid getting a positive result on by drinking a detox drink). This was pretty hypocritical considering Stickland voted to drug test welfare recipients, because of course he did. After his comments were unearthed online, and the media began to circulate them, he got on Twitter to post a one word defense of his remarks… “LIBERTY!” Despite of being caught claiming that there is no such thing as spousal rape and admitting to illegal drug use, Stickland’s one word defense managed to be enough for Texans in his district to re-elect him in 2016. It wasn’t long before the upstart Tea Partier’s act had begun to wear thin with the more mainstream Republican Party of Texas, forming a Texas version of the House Freedom Caucus whose concept of “freedom” seems to be to spitefully sabotage any and all legislation from EITHER the GOP or Democrats because… well… he’s just an irritant, really. Still, Stickland did manage to co-sponsor legislation that got passed, although we’re reasonable certain that courts will overturn a law that allows adoption agencies to deny services based on the religion of the applicants for those adoptions. Past that, his creepy brand of misogyny reared its ugly head again in May 2017 when he asked the Texas Parliamentarian to “smile for him” during the daily session of the legislature, and that’s the sort of behavior you get when he isn’t calling for the complete abolition of abortion at the state capitol, or that labeled himself a “former fetus” on his office door at the capitol. The Texas Republican Party, however, chose not to have anyone primary Jonathan Stickland, the embarrassment that he’s been the past three years or so, and instead, Stickland only had to face off against Democrat Steve Ridell in the 2018 general election in November for Texas’ District 92. Which isn’t to say that Stickland let himself get bored. Instead, he inserted himself into the race for Euless, Texas City Council, where he attacked the Muslim religion of the Pakstani candidate for that office, Salman Bhojani, in social media posts, and blamed him for “the Koran being read in a Euless City Council meeting”, and described Bhojani’s representation of his religion as “sneaky”. This bigoted effort at least failed, with Bhojani winning the race by 37 votes. Stickland himself has developed such a streak of being an incompetent hack that both sides of the aisle in Texas seem intent on getting rid of him, and that’s why nobody hesitated to carry out an ethics investigation after he and his aides were caught forging witness affirmation forms for testimony they had no intention of ever giving at the capitol. They only narrowly avoided being criminally prosecuted for this endeavor. However… we have some great news. In June of 2019, Jonathan Stickland announced that he would not be running for re-election in 2020, and his career will mercifully come to an end. He was honored in 2019 by Texas Monthly by not just being named the “Worst Legislator of the Year” again, but instead, being given the award of a new title on his way out… “Cockroach”.. In one of his last controversial Twitter posts as he left office in 2020, Stickland opined the extremely strange statement that “IF aliens are real, salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way they enter Heaven.”

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Vance Boyd, a 56 year-old former bull rider/stuntman, and former mayor of Anson, Texas who ran for U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ # District in 2020, looking to knock Congressman Jodey Arrington out of office in the GOP Primary for that seat. Boyd, who once did stuntwork on Walker, Texas Ranger, believed in zero restrictions on the Second Amendment and building Donald Trump’s stupid, useless f***ing border wall on the U.S./Mexico border. The potential blue collar guy approach to knocking off the incumbent was not his main angle on reaching office, it was to dig in hard on his personal belief in the Qanon conspiracy theory. When NBC News and CNBC began reporting on Facebook’s efforts to remove Qanon related posts from their platform, Boyd responded to the Twitter article by saying in his own post, “Truth will not be tolerated”, and “you cannot cancel truth”, while dropping a Qanon hashtag. Vance Boyd ended up getting 10.6% of the vote in his challenge of Arrington. It’s also likely he got his original Twitter account suspended, because it’s no longer available for view, since all his posts from his Qanon days are blocked and it’s now bizarrely in Russian… and he’s posting here instead (we reported a possible ban evasion to Twitter, just in case, like good Samaritans would).



On this date one year ago, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled Texas State Senator Bob Hall, who was first elected to District 2 of that body since first being elected in the 2014 elections. From the jump, it was clear he had guano on the brain, warning during his initial campaign for office warning how Barack Obama wanted public schools to teach a “communist indoctrinaton”, raving about the the threat of the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, touting the ability of states to nullify federal law (which they can’t do), calling Texas State Senator Wendy Davis a “baby killer”, saying of his Democratic opponent “Satan must have a stranglehold on him” and that his opponent’s support of end-of-life rights “would have codified—that is, made it law in Texas—medical death panels just like you’ll find in Obamacare”.

Y’know, just boiler plate policy talk.

Bob Hall has not changed since arriving in office. In April of 2016, he actually warned during a special session of the legislature of the threat of EMP lasers being fired from space installations down onto planet Earth and crippling the global electrical grid, warning that one missile would lead to “America being snuffed out”.

And we’ll point out that in 2021, the Texas power grid failed due to a friggin’ winter storm, meanwhile this idiot and Gov. Greg Abbott were worried about non-existent space weapons destroying it.

Now, it’s not just love for conspiracy theories and partisan rhetoric that concern us about Hall, either. It’s his passionate defense of self-admitting white nationalists. One of his good buddies is Ray Myers, who on social media, has openly identified as a white nationalist, and once commented about “a rope and a tree” as a solution to an African American woman supervising elections in Broward County, Florida. In 2019, Hall was in Washington D.C., staying at the Trump Hotel (always a welcome place for white nationalists) and he posted a photograph of himself spending time with Myers. When the Texas Observer asked Hall about Myers’ awful comments, he didn’t play dumb and say he hadn’t seen or heard them… he defended Myers and claimed he was the victim of “political correctness”:

“Those who sit on a self-appointed seat of judgment where they view others through the faulty prism of perverted extreme political correctness, rather than the clear glass of honesty, will always see the ugly they seek to see rather than the truth.”

When reporters followed up to ask Hall about his feelings that Myers had identified himself as a white nationalist, he again, didn’t back down, saying, “According to the dictionary I use ‘nationalism’ is defined as ‘Devotion and loyalty to one’s own country’ and ‘white’ is a socially accepted term for Caucasian. It is clear that his statement was made based on these definitions.”

Not surprisingly, Hall has also appeared alongside Islamphobic conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney, and John Guandolo, who actively treat Islam as a threat to American national security.

Bob Hall is not a man in possession of any kind of critical thinking skills. Perhaps no greater example came than in April of 2019 during debate on sex education in public schools, wherein Hall started in on a conspiracy theory that abortion clinics want “initial sex education courses for the purpose of increasing their supply line of young women for abortions”. You see, he claims it somehow leads to MORE teen pregnancies (it absolutely doesn’t, and does the opposite for informing young people about the effectiveness of contraception), and that by getting kids educated about sex, they have more, more of them get pregnant, and it stirs up business for abortion clinics. After his witness rebutted his claim, he insinuated that she had “dodged his question”, when he never ASKED one.

[worstblogever]

Bob Hall’s voting record outside of all of that is completely reprehensible, where he hasn’t just voted for, but sponsored some of the worst bills that have come forth in the Texas legislature. A quick sampling:

• April 28th, 2015: Bob Hall co-sponsors SB 2065, which would allow religious organizations to decline marriage services, specifically those of same sex couples, in defiance of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
• January 24th, 2017: Hall co-sponsors SB 6, a bill which would require individuals to use public bathrooms according to the gender on their birth certificate, kicking off a transphobic pattern of legislation he supports.
• March 30th, 2017: Bob Hall votes for SB 258, a bill which unnecessarily requires women getting abortions to bury or cremate the fetal remains.
• May 1st. 2019: Hall votes for SB 535, to permit guns to be carried inside of churches and places of worship, which was Texas Republicans’ stupid solution to trying to avoid another Southerland Springs shooting, even though it only makes it MORE likely to cause a shooting in a church.
• January 22nd, 2021: Bob Hall co-sponsors HB 1280, which would outlaw abortion in Texas if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
• March 5th, 2021: Hall sponsors a voter suppression bill, SB 1114, which would “cross-reference” voter rolls with the DMV’s records and kick anyone off the voter rolls whose information does not “match”.
• March 30th, 2021: Bob Hall sponsors SB 8, another anti-choice fetal heartbeat bill aimed at outlawing abortion at 6 weeks, before most mothers even know they’re pregnant.
• July 16th, 2021: Hall votes for SB 3, a bill to ban the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” in public schools, who are teaching no such thing, nor do they have any intention to.
• September 8th, 2021: Hall sponsors SB 20, to conduct a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election aimed at proving Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about election fraud.
• September 20th, 2021: Bob Hall sponsors SB 3, a transphobic bill aimed at forcing schoolchildren to only be able to participate in activities of “their biological sex”.
• September 21st, 2021: Hall sponsors SB 36, which would place prohibitions on the use of state money to enforce federal vaccine or treatment mandates and on required COVID-19 vaccinations. Because why let the federal government save lives when you, as the state of Texas can funnel money away to keep ‘em dying?

Bob Hall won re-election in his conservative district in 2022 after not facing a challenger in the GOP Primary. He has resumed his extremist ways, already sponsoring legislation in the new session to allow pharmacists to refuse to give women Plan B contraception based on their “religious principles”, they can do things like carry their rapists’ babies to term, and a far more puzzling bill to require food products that are made from aborted fetuses to require labeling stating that’s in their ingredients… even though food products already require ingredient lists through the FDA, and no such food products exist.

This guy is beyond the pale deranged.

[Jack Dracula]

not following your notion of corruption here - are you assuming some sort of egalitarian ideal? A majority state functions by practically serving its major population's interests and minority populations live on the margins. Given that state have been formed around homogeneous populations for as long as nation states have existed it is a standard to which they tend toward as a matter of functionality.

I’m saying Majoritarianism in itself isn’t necessarily wrong, it is after all the method some of our electoral processes in the US are based on.
Sometimes, it’s used as a method of persecution of minorities or as a means of solidifying corruption, especially if laws or regulations intended to ensure fairness are eroded to the point where the oppressed minority has no hope of becoming or challenging the majority. As we’ve seen happening in some states over the last few years.

[4theEarth]

Truth is important because Reality can't be papered over by nice words, and using lies to paint specific targets as the origins of your problems allows the real reasons to go unchallenged. Truth isn't an agreed upon belief, it's based on facts and factual reality. I've posted many times about truth and how everyone on the public dime should be subject to strict punishments for lying or spreading misinformation so it's not about 'the status quo'.

A reference isn't a declaration of cancellation, it's a reference and you can watch MST3k on Youtube for lots of referential humor as examples. Considering HeeHaw was cancelled before I was born I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with modern sensibilities or cultural norms.

Deliberately disenfranchising specific groups of people in order to enrich a specific one is cruel, dehumanizes others, and causes them to want to overthrow and punish the specific group that was on the top. It's also very illegal in the US as all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, even if those who wrote those words owned slaves. For another response to this you can see Chad's post. As George Carlin and others have said, there's nothing inherently racist about the words used as racial slurs in and of themselves.

Why do you dislike factual truth and those who stand up for it?
Why is sticking to truth and facts so limiting for you?
Why is treating others as equals something troublesome to you compared to punching down at minorities which you've encouraged?
Why do your posts change from erudite & understandable to angry & senseless so often?

Facts and truth are two different things if you have been following the philosophy argument that was attached to the Jan 6 thread in which it has emerged that this is where we are as a society in the epistemology of truth and its relationship to facts. The word non foundational crops up a lot meaning a culture's truths are based on a constructed story where we can only use metaphor to communicate about relations of things and attitudes. I don't like or dislike "factual truth" because it makes no sense the way you equate it. What you seem to like is the narrative and truth construct that is attached to the values that you see as standing against the cruel or hierarchic and the attacks the natural rights constructs, circular though the later they may be. Detached from this anchor of "fact" what really terrifies your POV is that people would be free to choose selfishness, hate and any number of evil things your secular religion holds dear. Yes, free to choose and that is what is so limiting as if being of good manners and bien pensant ways were all that a world should aim for. Your consistency is crippling as well if you consider that perhaps it is the very contradiction of economic inequality and legal equality that may have contributed to America's success in the world. Is not Capitalism predicated on inequality and people getting more and less? Why do you want to control people? Why are you so afraid of breaking the state's grip on people?

I can't say your fear of freedom isn't shared by some of the very people who have unearthed our amoral universe and the construction of social reality as there are linguists still trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

Questions about the role of metaphor in reasoning are at the heart of cognitive science. The topic is inherently interdisciplinary – drawing on insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, computer science, and neuroscience; and shedding light on basic questions about how people integrate novel information with prior knowledge, in general, as well as specific questions about the relationship between language and thought

[numberthirty]

Ladies and germs, I give you the leader of the Howler Monkey Caucus!



Marjorie Taylor Greene Shouts 'Liar' At Joe Biden During State Of The Union

Every single time someone attempts to mock this person?

They cement this person's seat at the table.

You mock her? She wins.

[Dalak]

Facts and truth are two different things if you have been following the philosophy argument that was attached to the Jan 6 thread in which it has emerged that this is where we are as a society in the epistemology of truth and its relationship to facts. The word non foundational crops up a lot meaning a culture's truths are based on a constructed story where we can only use metaphor to communicate about relations of things and attitudes. I don't like or dislike "factual truth" because it makes no sense the way you equate it. What you seem to like is the narrative and truth construct that is attached to the values that you see as cruel or hierarchic and attacks natural rights constructs circular though they may be. Detached from this anchor of "fact" what really terrifies your POV is that people would be free to choose selfishness, hate and any number of evil things your secular religion holds dear. Yes, free to choose and that is what is so limiting as if being of good manners and bien pensant ways were all that a world should aim for. Your consistency is crippling as well if you consider that perhaps it is the very contradiction of economic inequality and legal equality that may have contributed to America's success in the world. Is not Capitalism predicated on inequality and people getting more and less? Why do you want to control people? Why are you so afraid of breaking the state's grip on people?

I can't say your fear of freedom isn't shared by some of the very people who have unearthed our amoral universe and the construction of social reality as there are linguists still trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

The first definition of Truth everywhere is the following or words to the effect: That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. Google can help you there. The fact that you are going on about how truth isn't tied to fact is a philosophical veil of bullshit. I do not fear that people choose to hate, but I demand they are as clear about choosing it as you have been. That they can fool others into choosing to support bigots across the country by disguising their hate under similar philosophical veils of bullshit and scapegoating voters actual concerns onto convenient stereotypes is what disturbs me, and you are a willing tool of that.

The Paradox of Tolerance easily refutes your claims of fearing freedom, and more BS about the state when we are talking about truth independent of it is telling. If facts and truth support the state as it is then it's only logical to support it, and if they show that it's not worth supporting then it's logical not to support it. Working together and not abusing each other is what allowed humanity to rise from the cavemen we used to be, as evidence has shown that humanity interbred with neanderthals rather than wiping them out. Infighting & wanton destruction sets humanity back as a species, and as that's your stated goal I can see why you encourage and excuse it.

[Mister Mets]

Hard to convince people to vote for something that you don't believe in enough to follow. Of course, leadership is a foreign concept to Cruz, much less lead by example.

I don't think term limits is the answer, either. There's other things, like campaign finances, that should be addressed first.

Campaign finance reforms wouldn't really address issues connected to term limits. Restrictions would tend to favor incumbents who have the advantage of higher name recognition and a platform that allows for free press.

I was wondering if Republicans are more likely to play the game of taking advantage of laws they criticize, although we do see it on the left on some contexts. For example, Democrats supporting the The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact don't want it to apply until 270+ electoral college votes worth of states have signed on.

Every single time someone attempts to mock this person?

They cement this person's seat at the table.

You mock her? She wins.

It is reasonable for Democrats to think this is a good thing. They want her to be more prominent, so they can use her to taint Republican candidates in swing districts.

[Tami]

Every single time someone attempts to mock this person?

They cement this person's seat at the table.

You mock her? She wins.

We're not mocking her. We're just point out how self-mocking she is. She's basically doing all the work herself.

[4theEarth]

I’m saying Majoritarianism in itself isn’t necessarily wrong, it is after all the method some of our electoral processes in the US are based on.
Sometimes, it’s used as a method of persecution of minorities or as a means of solidifying corruption, especially if laws or regulations intended to ensure fairness are eroded to the point where the oppressed minority has no hope of becoming or challenging the majority. As we’ve seen happening in some states over the last few years.

I am not discounting that persecution or its political tool of scapegoating minorities but one does not follow from the other causally but opportunistically. The notion of fairness is something which a majority would extend before the law in its own self interest not knowing if they might be the next minority in a kind of Rawl's veil of ignorance but why the expectation of challenging the majority? What states are you referring to? US states or nation states?

[numberthirty]

We're not mocking her. We're just point out how self-mocking she is. She's basically doing all the work herself.

Politely?

There's no real difference when it comes to this person.

She's like Candyman.

If you are even mentioning her name?

You are keeping her alive.

[Kirby101]

Campaign finance reforms wouldn't really address issues connected to term limits. Restrictions would tend to favor incumbents who have the advantage of higher name recognition and a platform that allows for free press.

I was wondering if Republicans are more likely to play the game of taking advantage of laws they criticize, although we do see it on the left on some contexts. For example, Democrats supporting the The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact don't want it to apply until 270+ electoral college votes worth of states have signed on.

It is reasonable for Democrats to think this is a good thing. They want her to be more prominent, so they can use her to taint Republican candidates in swing districts.

I think it is more important for Campaign Finance Reform to put checks on the wealthy controlling the government in terms of how legislators vote. The phrase "The best government money can buy" comes to mind.

So you want Democrats to agree to something that the Republicans won't do and their by ensure their defeat? Where do you see the Democrats taking advantage of the Electoral College? Are they aren't the ones who got two losing Presidents into office because of it? Your example doesn't fit your premise.

[Tami]

Politely?

There's no real difference when it comes to this person.

She's like Candyman.

If you are even mentioning her name?

You are keeping her alive.

How else do you expect us liberals to enjoy ourselves if not for finding humor in the most ridiculous and pathetic members of what is left of the GOP?

[Kirby101]

How else do you expect us liberals to enjoy ourselves if not for finding humor in the most ridiculous and pathetic members of what is left of the GOP?

I think 30s point is why talk about this woman who is a leader in the Republican caucus when we can spend more time criticizing everything Biden does.