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

[BeastieRunner]

Texas Education Authority (now Agency) was the go-to 5th-12th grade history textbook for 30 plus states and thousands of districts for 20-30 years before they went belly up on thr ability to print text books.

For what is worth.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Make of this what you will:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/statu...01374245687296

The cynic in me suspects the recent tanking of the markets, negatively affecting Rupert Murdoch's bottom line resulted in that plea from Hamhocks. When Fucker Carlson and Laura Ignoramus make similar pleas, THEN I'll take it seriously.

[worstblogever]

Speaking of people spreading misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, Marjorie Taylor Greene's dumb ass was doing exactly that and it got her a temporary ban from Twitter.

[Malvolio]

Make of this what you will:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/statu...01374245687296

The cynic in me suspects the recent tanking of the markets, negatively affecting Rupert Murdoch's bottom line resulted in that plea from Hamhocks. When Fucker Carlson and Laura Ignoramus make similar pleas, THEN I'll take it seriously.

FOX News's lawyers may have also had a hand in this, I would think.

[worstblogever]

Back on this date in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on Sarah Palin, the former Vice-Presidential Candidate and Governor of Alaska (who quit halfway through her first term amidst various abuse-of-power scandals). We covered as many possible insane quotes, gaffes, or word-salad speeches as we could, from "Seeing Alaska from her house", to not being able to name a newspaper she read, to trying to look presidential by pardoning a turkey in Alaska while others were butchered and drained of blood while she gave a speech unaware... Sarah Palin is one of the most deranged, brain-addled members of the GOP we've ever run a profile on. We're honestly grateful that he hasn't held or run for office for a long enough period of time that we have to update our readers on all the continuing moments where she gets in front of a microphone for the attention and says clueless, bigoted, or nonsensical things.

It was in 2015 that we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of former perennial Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, the failed former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who lost the company about $700 million in its worth, got thousands of employees laid off, then took her golden parachute settlement after being pushed out by disatisfied stockholders and fellow executives. She then tried parlaying this collossal failure into a political career, where she first became one of the worst campaign proxies in existence for the 2008 McCain campaign before challenging Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat in 2010 and still getting shellacked after she ran a bizarre "demon sheep" ad. For whatever reason, Fiorina took her vast unpopularity and tried to run for president in 2016, where her main strategy in debates seemed to be to lie her arse off. She demonized workers for "watching porn all day" as an economic problem, claimed the Obama administration "broke every rule" in negotiations with Iran, and that Hillary Clinton had "blood on her hands" because of Benghazi. Since we wrote that profile of Carly last July, she tried gaining attention in the GOP Primary by perpetuating as many of the horror stories about Planned Parenthood started by the Center of Medical Progress as she could, and making graphic descriptions of babies being dismembered to be sold for profit in the "sting" videos (that were a hoax), and her cries about "baby parts" were the sort of rhetoric that inspired Roland Dear to go on a shooting spree against a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs as a stochastic terror trigger. Fiorina eventually had to abandon her own campaign, and then tried joining forces with Ted Cruz, singing creepy songs at Sen. Cruz's children, and then falling off a stage comically after introducing the runner-up for the GOP nomination. Fiorina remains ridiculous, and unlikely to ever hold office in any sane part of the country.



In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and in 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the eleven-term U.S. House Representative for Ohio’s 1st Congressional District, Steve Chabot, who felt it necessary during Congressional testimony regarding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from former Attorney Genereal Loretta Lynch to give her a history lesson about that time that Bill Clinton was receiving fellatio from Monica Lewinsky, and they went and tried impeaching the president. What does that have to do with Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, or Hillary Clinton, directly at all, you ask? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. But for whatever reason, Chabot thought it relevant to remind everyone that Bill Clinton got a hummer in the Oval Office one upon a time, just in case Loretta Lynch or the public had never heard before.That isn’t entirely an isolated incident regarding Hillary Clinton getting smeared by Rep. Chabot, though, as after several Benghazi hearings over three or four years that have turned up no evidence of any wrongdoing, no rumored “stand down” order, and no evidence that an order to send in the military would have saved the lives of any of the four people who died in the attack on the embassy, he still has told the public that a “smoking gun” proving Clinton’s involvement was criminal was found.

But don’t worry, he doesn’t save his baseless accusations for Hillary Clinton alone. When news first broke over the supposed “IRS Scandal” (which ended up not showing any targeting of conservative groups, specifically by the IRS), Steve Chabot seized on the opportunity to wonder “How high up does this go?” and insinuating that it was on an order that went all the way to the Obama White House. This isn’t to say that Rep. Chabot is a boy scout, himself exactly. Shortly after he was re-elected back into office in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, he hosted his first town hall in his district (while his fellow Republicans were in the process of gerrymandering to make more favorable to him by the 2012 elections). And during that 2011 Town Hall, Chabot ordered police present to begin confiscating cameras so that no one could photograph or film what was happening for “security reasons” that were never explained… Chabot apparently wanted to control what might get out and onto Youtube, also taking care to only allow pre-screened questions to be asked by those present. This plan to restrict his constituent’s rights backfired because it was caught on camera by the media, whose cameras were NOT confiscated.

Anyway, over his decades in the House, Chabot has one of the more partisan records not just for legislation he’s supported, including being a co-sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, voting for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky,voting for a constitutional amendment to allow government buildings to erect monuments of the Ten Commandments, and an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He has voted for a myriad of strict anti-choice legislation, has twice tried to defund Planned Parenthood, and is so conservative in terms of pro-life that he voted for the Terry Schiavo Incapacitated Persons bill. Chabot’s record on bank legislation is disastrous, as he voted for the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, which repeals key parts of the Glass-Steagall Financial Regulation Act, and opens the door for big banks to create the 2007 Sub-Prime Mortgage Housing Crisis, and against Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, to resolve that crisis. He voted for the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. Chabot voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, and then voted to keep the government closed when the time came to reopen it.

Our biggest update on Steve Chabot would be that after he showed Americans he was a man who back in 1998 was more than happy defend the integrity of the investigators who were rabidly digging into every aspect of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s lives in the hopes of getting them impeached… that same guy suddenly would like to point out that the investigators working on the Mueller investigation show some signs of bias because 9 of them at some point in their careers donated money to Democratic candidates, and not a single member of Mueller’s team has ever donated money to Donald Trump’s political campaigns. Never mind that Mueller himself, and most of his investigators are registered as Republicans, or that it’s perfectly legal for them to donate money to whatever political campaign they choose… suddenly, twenty years after he wanted the Lewinsky investigation to be declared non-partisan… NOW Steve Chabot can’t believe FBI investigators would be above reproach when hunting for the truth about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluding with Russians to get him elected.

[worstblogever]

Well, outside of that, his voting record also shows he’s a partisan hack:

• December 18th, 2019: Chabot 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: Chabot votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Chabot 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: Steve Chabot 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. Chabot 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: Steve Chabot 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: Chabot votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Chabot 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: Steve Chabot votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Chabot votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels indifferent about Americans suffering in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Chabot 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).
• May 19th, 2021: Steve Chabot votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.

Ohio’s 1st Congressional District has a +5 Republican lean, and Chabot barely survived re-election in 2020, only netting 52% of the vote. He currently is trying to avoid looking like an utter hypocrite for having voted for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but refusing to even consider doing so for Donald Trump, and his only defense is the lies Donald Trump has told “weren’t under oath”. Please note, he at least acknowledges Trump lies about committing crimes. And he doesn’t care.

Steve Chabot is currently taking the brunt of the scandal that he’s too clueless to have noticed that one of his own campaign staffers successfully embezzled $1.4 million dollars from his 2018 re-election campaign, and Chabot is refusing to talk to the media regarding how such a thing could happen. He’s also going to have to worry about redistricting that is likely to alter the partisan make-up of his district so it’s harder for a Republican to win office there.

What we’re saying is, keep your fingers crossed, but there’s a good chance that Chabot’s bounced from office after about a quarter-century of bumbling around DC.

[Tami]

Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket meme'd for its, er, unique shape

While Jeff Bezos was floating in space Tuesday morning, the internet was confounded and somewhat delighted by the shape of his rocket and capsule, New Shepard.

As images of the rocket, launched by the billionaire Amazon founder's spaceflight company Blue Origin, spread across social media, users and even many in the press couldn't help but comment on the phallic shape of the craft.

And soon, a score of memes were blasting off online.

Uhhh....well, if you are rich enough to build your own rocket, I guess you're rich enough to make it look any way you want. Even if it is somewhat obscene.

[AnakinFlair]

Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket meme'd for its, er, unique shape



Uhhh....well, if you are rich enough to build your own rocket, I guess you're rich enough to make it look any way you want. Even if it is somewhat obscene.

And some people said Jeff Bezos couldn't get it up.

BA-DUM-DUM!

[kidfresh512]

Fauci getting good and spicy with Rand Paul today in the hearing. He is over the bs!

[AnakinFlair]

Fauci getting good and spicy with Rand Paul today in the hearing. He is over the bs!

I do love how Dr. Fauci is done with Rand Paul, and doesn't mind showing it.

[BeastieRunner]

Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket meme'd for its, er, unique shape



Uhhh....well, if you are rich enough to build your own rocket, I guess you're rich enough to make it look any way you want. Even if it is somewhat obscene.

And some people said Jeff Bezos couldn't get it up.

BA-DUM-DUM!

Bezos looks an awful lot like Dr. Evil.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket meme'd for its, er, unique shape



Uhhh....well, if you are rich enough to build your own rocket, I guess you're rich enough to make it look any way you want. Even if it is somewhat obscene.

It wouldn't surprise me if Bezos purposely designed his rocket to look like a penis for the express purpose of publicity. Even though Bezos was the second billionaire who soared into space, the world is talking about him, not Richard Branson who had been first.

[Robotman]

Make of this what you will:

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/statu...01374245687296

The cynic in me suspects the recent tanking of the markets, negatively affecting Rupert Murdoch's bottom line resulted in that plea from Hamhocks. When Fucker Carlson and Laura Ignoramus make similar pleas, THEN I'll take it seriously.

There’s definitely an ulterior motive. There’s no way Hannity suddenly cares about the well-being of others and “trusts the science”.

The Fox bosses see the writing on the wall. Now that there’s literally a vaccine for the virus there’s no one left to blame for the rise in cases except the misinformation campaigns. Also the largest rises in cases are in the states with the majority of Fox News viewers.

[babyblob]

It wouldn't surprise me if Bezos purposely designed his rocket to look like a penis for the express purpose of publicity. Even though Bezos was the second billionaire who soared into space, the world is talking about him, not Richard Branson who had been first.

Branson was firsy but Bezos went higher and had a penis shaped rocket that carried his kids and an 82 year old woman he wins clearly.

[Malvolio]

Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket meme'd for its, er, unique shape



Uhhh....well, if you are rich enough to build your own rocket, I guess you're rich enough to make it look any way you want. Even if it is somewhat obscene.

In all fairness, aren't all rockets somewhat phallic-shaped?