1. #34891

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    Johsie Cruz

    Welcome to what is the 1036th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Johsie Cruz, who was a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District, and a challenger to Democratic incumbent Hank Johnson, who’s about as beloved as any member of Congress by his constituents that you might find. Cruz won the GOP Primary on the benefits of running unopposed, and her election strategy seemed to be to just s***post on social media as much as possible and see what happened.

    And while over time, Johsie Cruz has bought into several conspiracy theories, in particular she was quite taken with Qanon content, which she referred to as “a new type of war. Perhaps her most unhinged moment, of many, was when she responded to news that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush criticizing Donald Trump for refusing to take a stand and criticize the theory by posting a reply:

    Johsie Cruz failed to get even 20% of vote against Hank Johnson, losing to him by 60 points in the 2020 election. She prides herself on her Twitter account that she refused to concede this glaring loss. She has spent most of the past year trying to “expose” members of the Lincoln Project in Georgia (who she calls Marxists), declaring the majority of Georgia Republicans RINOs, and spreading election fraud conspiracies and Covid-19 misinformation. Most of her posts are censored or link to content removed by Twitter, and the bulk of her posts are just Retweets where she uses the @ to tag other users to also see… almost as if she’s not sure how the platform’s supposed to be used, because her account is incoherent.

    Probably because she doesn’t have a true word she’s got to say.
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  2. #34892
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    Thinking about the Chapelle special. I don't think he was anti-trans the way many Christian Fundamentalist/Republicans are. I think he is very "live and let live" about it. I think he was manly offended that after a few jokes about trans in a previous special, he felt he was unfairly attacked by the trans community, who were not accurate about what he said. (I have not looked back at this to see what was said). I think he decided to use this in his knew show to "get the record straight". And while doing so, told some more jokes at Trans' expense.
    My take is, he just should have just let it go. Whatever his feelings about what he said, and what the reaction was, just take a knee dude and move on. Say "Sorry if you took offense, I'll try to do better". Which is passive aggressive anyway and doesn't imply guilt.
    I am sure somewhere he is thinking, "No one should tel me what should be in my act". True, but I am sure you decide to leave things out all the time. Hell, you walked away from your show because your jokes were being taken as aligning with some racists ideas, instead of exposing them as you wanted.
    So in the end, he just shouldn't have gone there.
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  3. #34893

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    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, and is not terribly missed.



    In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as in 2020, “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.

    Yeah, that really happened. But 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:
    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.

    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.
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    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.

    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 two years or so:

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  5. #34895

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    xxx



    Now, while Ohio’s 4th Congressional District has a +20 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, but Jordan already has a Democratic challenger raising huge sums of campaign funding to try to knock him off in the 2022 mid-terms, and given how much Jordan’s fate seems tied to the results of the January 6th Committee investigation, it’s still somehow plausible that he could be bounced out of office for being a seditious motherf***er. We’ll settle for a less fascist moderate from his own party if we have to.

    We’re crossing our fingers, and hoping that after fourteen years if madness, his reign of douchebaggery comes to an end.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 10-21-2021 at 10:05 PM.
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  6. #34896
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    China-linked disinformation campaign blames Covid on Maine lobsters

    In mid-September, Marcel Schliebs, a disinformation researcher at the University of Oxford who had been tracking messaging that Chinese diplomats and state media spread on Twitter for 18 months, spotted the emergence of a surprising coronavirus origin theory.

    Zha Liyou, the Chinese consul general in Kolkata, India, tweeted an unfounded claim that Covid-19 could have been imported to China from the United States through a batch of Maine lobsters shipped to a seafood market in Wuhan in November 2019. It marks the latest in a series of theories that have been pushed by pro-China accounts since the start of the pandemic.

    With some further digging, Schliebs uncovered a network of more than 550 Twitter accounts, which he shared with NBC News, spreading a nearly identical message, translated into multiple languages — including English, Spanish, French, Polish, Korean and even Latin — at similar times each day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. China Standard Time.

    Some of the accounts were “unsophisticated sock puppets” with “very few or zero followers,” Schliebs said, while others appeared to be accounts that were once authentic but had been hijacked and repurposed to spread disinformation.
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  7. #34897
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Calling Sinema an Obstacle to Progress, 5 Veterans Quit Her Advisory Council

    WASHINGTON — Five veterans tapped to advise Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, resigned from their posts on Thursday, publicly accusing her of “hanging your constituents out to dry” in the latest sign of growing hostility toward a centrist who has emerged as a key holdout on President Biden’s agenda.

    In a scathing letter obtained by The New York Times, the veterans took Ms. Sinema to task for her refusal to abolish the filibuster and her opposition to parts of Mr. Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social safety net, education, climate and tax plan, stances that have stymied some of his top priorities.

    “You have become one of the principal obstacles to progress, answering to big donors rather than your own people,” the veterans wrote in a letter that is to be featured in a new advertisement by Common Defense, a progressive veterans’ activist group that has targeted Ms. Sinema.

    “We shouldn’t have to buy representation from you, and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming,” they added.
    The resignations add to a crescendo of anger and pressure that Ms. Sinema is facing from erstwhile allies who say they are perplexed by her recent tactics. She has resisted major elements of Democrats’ sprawling social safety net and climate bill, including raising individual income and corporate tax rates to pay for it. Because Democrats control the Senate with only 50 votes, even one defection could spell defeat for the measure, giving Ms. Sinema outsize influence to determine what can be included.

    Ms. Sinema has also steadfastly opposed changing the Senate’s filibuster rule, which effectively requires 60 votes to move forward on any major bill, even as Republicans have used it as a procedural weapon to block voting rights legislation and a bill to avert a federal debt default.
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    Only her losing money and pressure like this will do anything other than replacing her by her constituents. Her opposition to popular proposals is just stupid. And she doesn't even seem to have any shame either flat out helping the GOP obstruct only.

  9. #34899
    Horrific Experiment JCAll's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    Somewhere, Chappelle was watching that debacle and laughing his ass off, happier than a pig in slop over the chaos he fomented with his act.
    Actual internet troll humor. That's why he doesn't need to tell real jokes or even care what he says, because the backlash is the punchline. The million dollar Netflix special equivalent of the guy that spams insults in someone's Twitter feed until they get blocked, then proudly posting a screenshot of them being blocked like it's a trophy. Chappelle was brilliant, it's just depressing seeing him become just another Troll.

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    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kidfresh512 View Post
    Only her losing money and pressure like this will do anything other than replacing her by her constituents. Her opposition to popular proposals is just stupid. And she doesn't even seem to have any shame either flat out helping the GOP obstruct only.
    She really won't talk to the press, or give any straight answers. All responses from her or her office are couched in simple phrases that mean nothing.

    It's hard to get inside her mind and figure out what she is up to. Gradually she is acting more and more like a Republican. Perhaps she has let it all got to to her head and isn't thinking clearly. Or perhaps she is being her true self and has pulled a massive con job on the people of AZ.

    Either way, I would find it hard to imagine her being reelected for a second term.
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  11. #34901
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tami View Post
    She really won't talk to the press, or give any straight answers. All responses from her or her office are couched in simple phrases that mean nothing.

    It's hard to get inside her mind and figure out what she is up to. Gradually she is acting more and more like a Republican. Perhaps she has let it all got to to her head and isn't thinking clearly. Or perhaps she is being her true self and has pulled a massive con job on the people of AZ.

    Either way, I would find it hard to imagine her being reelected for a second term.
    And that's the biggest thing. If you want to be against everything at least talk about what you DO want. And what exactly will make you get on board with moving forward.

    Other than just being Mitch's toadie

  12. #34902
    Ultimate Member babyblob's Avatar
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    I wonder if what Tami said about this being a con job is more real then not. She runs on the platform she did, gets voted in then starts her obstruction and not fallowing through with anything she ran on. And as far as becoming reelected. Maybe she switches parties and names herself a GOP after she has shown the GOP in her state that she was really on their side all along running on the "I was a Dem but I just couldnt back them anymore after what I say and heard. I am on your side now." The GOP will eat that up.
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    Gov. Greg Abbott’s pick for top Texas election post worked with Trump to fight 2020 results

    Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday appointed John Scott — a Fort Worth attorney who briefly represented former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania — as Texas' new secretary of state.

    As secretary of state, Scott would oversee election administration in Texas — a task complicated in recent years by baseless claims of election fraud from Republicans in the highest levels of government, fueled by Trump. The former president has filed a flurry of lawsuits nationwide and called for audits in Texas and elsewhere to review the results of the 2020 presidential elections. Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud nationwide, and in Texas, an official with the secretary of state’s office said the 2020 election was “smooth and secure.”

    Scott could not immediately be reached for comment.
    Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, which supports Democrats for elected office, said Abbott's "surrender to Donald Trump betrays every Texan."

    "Texas' already chaotic Secretary of State's Office will be headed by someone intent on paving the way for Trump's 'Big Lie,'" Angle said in a statement. "By appointing a known vote suppressor to oversee our elections, Abbott is knowingly putting Texas elections in jeopardy and our future at risk just to cruelly hang on to power."
    Abbott's announcement of Scott's appointment did not mention Scott's work for Trump — even as Abbott has endured mounting pressure from Trump supporters to call for an audit of the 2020 elections.

  14. #34904
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    If Democrats could exchange Sinema for a Republican - Sinema switches to Republican and the Republican becomes a Democrat, who should they pick? As in, is there a moderate Republican nin the Sennate that might switch parties if the incentive was good enough?

    I'm thinking of possibly Lisa Murkowski.
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  15. #34905
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by babyblob View Post
    I wonder if what Tami said about this being a con job is more real then not. She runs on the platform she did, gets voted in then starts her obstruction and not fallowing through with anything she ran on. And as far as becoming reelected. Maybe she switches parties and names herself a GOP after she has shown the GOP in her state that she was really on their side all along running on the "I was a Dem but I just couldnt back them anymore after what I say and heard. I am on your side now." The GOP will eat that up.
    The con job angle doesn't match her background.

    She was a social worker who ran for state legislature twenty years ago as a green party affiliated candidate.

    I think there's some other explanation.
    Quote Originally Posted by Zauriel View Post
    Dylan Roof's Trial was also a sensitive trial. It took the jury one year and ten months to convict him. Covid didn't happen when the sentence was announced. Nikolas Cruz trial is much longer.


    Put him in a mental hospital. Sentence him to prison for life without parole. Sentence him to death. I don't care what his sentence is going to be. I just wish the Nikolas Cruz trial would end sooner than wasting taxpayer money.
    The right to a speedy trial is for his defense to request if they want it. They chose to spend more time prepping.

    Because his defense could do that, it helps out anyone in a more ambiguous situation. It's all for the good.

    Quote Originally Posted by ChadH View Post
    That is the sentiment:





    Read the parts in bold. Rejecting sympathy for the weak and infirm. Complaing it's up to them to protect themselves. I specifically mentioned children with cancer and he downplays the risk people with damaged immune systems face when in the hospital. At the end he invokes a pile of nonsense about rugged individualism.
    It seems he doesn't think it would work. Granted, Powell's case is unusual enough that it doesn't have serious policy implications (a small segment of the population having a form of cancer which minimizes the effectiveness of vaccines is hardly proof vaccination is ineffective for most people) even if he views it differently. Plus, it is his responsibility to articulate his views.
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