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

[Tendrin]

Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services conducted a study in November that showed that areas of the state with mask mandates had lower rates of COVID-19 infection and death than those without–but Gov. Mike Parson (R) never released the department’s findings to the public.

It was Parson’s office that commissioned the study in the first place.
Like many other Republican governors, Parson has attacked local mask mandates despite their (proven) effectiveness against the coronavirus.
Additionally, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), who’s suing counties that have mask mandates, is still pushing through with his war on the mandates even in the face of the study. His spokesperson told Missouri Independent that “[w]e dispute this premise” of the analysis.

Masks work. Yes, in schools too.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/mornin...-mandates-work

[CaptainEurope]

Even though Chris Cuomo was the most popular CNN anchor? So CNN could afford to lose their most popular anchor, but who will replace him? Which CNN anchor can keep up with his ratings.

I'm hoping Jim Acosta. He is handsome, talented and became famous when the former guy kicked him out of the White House.

[worstblogever]

I'm hoping Jim Acosta. He is handsome, talented and became famous when the former guy kicked him out of the White House.

I've preferred Acosta to Cuomo for years.

[worstblogever]

That is pointless, letting the other side say ''You go high, so we can go low'', means they get to win almost all the time, rules are pointless if they do not apply to everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbab8aP4_A

The courts have already been politicized, the cat is out of the bag.

I don't disagree, just saying, that was RBG's impetus. Her noble take on the impartiality of the court is unfortunately undone by the stark reality of the conservative's obsession with stealing power on said same court, without any concern for impartiality.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Not sure if this is true or not, but I read they tried to get to Canada, bunt couldn't get in legally because Canada requires proof of vaccination, which they couldn't provide.

If that can be proven true, then the foolishness of anti-vaxxing screwed them over big time. The irony is delicious.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day" ran a profile of Charles Bishop, a former Alabama State Senator who lost his damned mind in the middle of the state senate and straight up went Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out on State Senator Lowell Barron, only regretting later that he didn’t take the fight outside and finish it. Bishop also regularly spoke in front of the white nationalist organization the Council of Conservative Citizens and was proud to oppose Alabama’s resolution to apologize to African Americans for slavery because “atonement equals reparations”. Bishop lost way back in the 2010 GOP Primary and hasn’t resurfaced in politics.

In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted profiles of former Indiana Governor and Vice President Mike Pence, who was a sitting six-term Congressman from 2001 through 2012, establishing conservative bona fides without any scandals or major gaffes while winning elections comfortably. He actually won a 2010 Straw Poll at the Value Voters Summit where they thought he was their best choice to run against Barack Obama in 2012, but Pence opted instead to run for re-election as Governor of Indiana, and bide his time for what was to be a run in 2016. Then Gov. Pence, the insane true believer in the American culture wars that he is, went and signed Indiana's "religious freedom" law to allow for the legal discrimination of the LGBTQ community, then denied that the point of the bill was allowing discrimination (and making many send him the literal definition of "discrimination" since he seemed unable to understand it) and claiming he was incapable of discrimination because he once participated in an anniversary walk in Selma, Alabama. That only made critics note that during his time in the U.S. House, he actually campaigned on an agenda to " oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's as a 'discreet and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities," or that he called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus" and instead, "Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior". If you’re unclear as to what that means, it’s that Pence wanted money redirected towards gay conversion therapy, which doesn’t actually work, and is considered a human rights violation. But that’s not all. Pence responded to the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act by making the ludicrous claim that it would allow intimidation towards or even charges to be filed against pastors who expressed a Biblical worldview critical to homosexuality, and also tried arguing that the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would, in his words, “weaken unit cohesion” of our military, and once voted for a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Factor in the time Pence is awful enough to women that he voted against all equal pay legislation including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, railed against the Disney cartoon Mulan for implying that women might be able to honorably serve in the military, and actually had an Indiana woman arrested for having a miscarriage because his obsession with cracking down on reproductive rights is that over-the-top insane. We're saying that he was a sponsor of the legislation that tried to defund Planned Parenthood back in 2011, and his "evidence" of wrongdoing was a DIFFERENT doctored fraud of a video produced by friends of Breitbart News hacks like James O'Keefe.

Pence also compared the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act to 9/11, and in early 2015 decided state taxpayer dollars should be allocated towards “JustIN’, a state-run news service with two employees being paid $100,000 salaries to present a point of view where Mike Pence could do no wrong (cancelled after taxpayers called him out on wasting their money on him lying to them). Pence denied a link between smoking an cancer as late as 2001 (he was accepting money from the big tobacco lobby, of course), and denies climate change is a thing to this day.

It was still tough to not make fun of that Pence is so afraid of women he won’t have dinner alone with one unless his wife is there (who he calls “Mother”), or when he showed up at a performance of Hamilton, and acts surprised when the audience booed him.

Mike Pence continued to be a witless turd throughout the Trump administration, trying to simply not be as corrupt as Trump and hope he inherits the presidency… but even at that, he hasn’t kept his nose clean. Where do we even begin with Pence? Let’s just hit the big points… by the end of the first month of the Trump administration, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired, after several FBI investigations into the fact that he had been illegally operating was a foreign agent of other countries came to light. The official story about Flynn’s firing kept changing rapidly, including that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates got fired after hearing Mike Pence go on Fox News and give a story that seemed to indicate he wasn’t aware of Michael Flynn’s activities. Also, he assured the public that no one in the Trump campaign was talking to Russians (they were). Well, as of December 1st, 2017, we know Mike Pence was just deliberately lying, as he is prone to doing, and he knew about Michael Flynn talking to Russians under the radar. In fact, per Flynn’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Pence and Jared Kushner directed Gen. Flynn to do that specifically. This would be similar to how back in October of 2016, Mike Pence went over to Fox News for an interview/tongue bath and scoffed at the idea that the Trump campaign had any communication with anyone from Wikileaks. Except, y’know, we now know that for almost the entire campaign, Donald Trump, Jr. was talking to Wikileaks, and was even getting advice on which of their stories the Trump campaign should share more on social media. And Roger Stone was talking to Wikileaks, which he lied to Congress about.

This isn’t to say that all Mike Pence did was alternate between lying and hiding since becoming vice-president. He still surfaces to waste taxpayer dollars to do things like try to defeat Kim Jong Un’s regime by impotently staring angrily at the Korean DMZ, to lick Donald Trump’s boots in televised Cabinet meetings, or the time he attended a Colts game with the intention of angrily storming if anyone protested by kneeling during the national anthem. He helped funnel money towards Donald Trump’s businesses by manipulating his travel itinerary to stay at Trump resorts and bill American taxpayers for a small fortune. He's also using his office to again direct money towards Christian groups, similarly to what he did with groups that supported gay conversion therapy while in Congress.

In 2018, Pence started to ape Trump’s bigoted rhetoric more, as he praised disgraced former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, defended the Trump White House for banning CNN reporters from covering events (because what’s the big deal about the First Amendment, right?), cited false statistics about how people from the Middle East were sneaking across the U.S./Mexico border with refugees from Central America, or appeared with a fake rabbi who claims Jews who don’t accept Jesus go to hell at an event to honor Jews slain by a Neo-Nazi in Pittsburgh.

And then Covid-19 happened, and a desperately incompetent Trump named Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force in February 26th, 2020. As you might have noticed… Pence done f***ed up. Repeatedly and often. Who would thought the man who botched the response to an HIV outbreak while Governor of Indiana could mismanage a highly contagious respiratory pandemic and that left 325,000 dead by the time he left office?

It was almost worth it to see him so lethargic in his final VP debate against Kamala Harris that he looked dead enough that a fly landed on him.

Mike Pence ended his tenure as Vice-President doing the bare minimum to support American democracy by certifying the electoral votes on January 6th, 2021, and Donald Trump responded to that by sending an armed insurgent mob to Capitol Hill, chanting threats to lynch him. He has made only a handful of public appearances since, and his own party have started booing and mocking him because it’s now a white nationalist, anti-democratic bag of nuts. Which, had he ever stood up for true principles at any point during the Trump administration, or sooner, or invoked the 25th Amendment that obviously needed to be, maybe he wouldn’t be a pariah to both the right and left. We still think he’s planning a 2024 presidential run where Trump will bully him and cause attempts on his life that will make things very awkward for the Republican Party, but they’re all cowards and will defend Trump for doing it. In any event, until he announces a campaign, we’re going to set aside his profile our to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1050-50, since this was established in July 2014.

[worstblogever]

Dion Bergeron

Welcome to what is the 1050th original profile here at “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Dion Bergeron, who was a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, who also had a failed run to join the Indiana House of Representatives in District 9 of that body. He is, and stop me if you’ve heard this before… the latest in a long, long line of Republicans who ran for Congress in 2020 who were adherents of the Qanon conspiracy theory. On Facebook, Bergeron boasted that his “license plate says THANQ on the Indiana 'In God We Trust' plate,” and that his car had “stickers that proclaim Where We Go One, We Go All” on its side windows. He also called Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan/8kun who is believed to have been the originator of Qanon a “patriot”.

We’ll note that Dion Bergeron was nowhere near close to reaching office in the race for Indiana’s 1st District, finishing fifth out of a possible sixth candidates in the GOP Primary, but was shockingly close to becoming a member of the Indiana House of Representatives in that race, getting to run unopposed and getting 43% of the vote in the general election. We’re hoping he’s properly shamed for his support of conspiracy theories going forward, and is not a threat to reach office… because it would be a disaster if he was.

[numberthirty]

I'm hoping Jim Acosta. He is handsome, talented and became famous when the former guy kicked him out of the White House.

I've preferred Acosta to Cuomo for years.

Might as well be telling folks that Curley Joe was your preferred third Stooge...

[numberthirty]

Even though Chris Cuomo was the most popular CNN anchor? So CNN could afford to lose their most popular anchor, but who will replace him? Which CNN anchor can keep up with his ratings.

I'm sure that someone said this almost word for word when FNC showed Bill O'Reilly the door.

[Zauriel]

I've gotta agree with the argument that the right thing for him to do if he wanted to help his brother was resign rather than to have the obvious conflict of interest.

Ironically, Cuomo said on his program in March 2021 that he could not cover any issues regarding the sexual harassment allegations against Governor Andrew Cuomo on the program, acknowledging his obvious conflict of interest. By helping his brother, he created his own conflict of interest which he has been trying to avoid.

Agreed. While I don't condone his decision to help his brother, it's to be expected that most people will try to help family so he should have indeed resigned.

Italian Americans do try to help their family. They are reputed to have strong and close family bonds Blood is thicker than water. What kind of Italian American turns his back on his brother, especially who looked after him, while their father Mario was away on his gubernatorial duties?

Andrew and Chris, being 12 years of age apart, have a close relationship almost like a father and son. Andrew used to act as a substitute father to Chris when their father Mario was busy with his job.

[CaptainEurope]

Look who else blames the school staff for the shooting.

[Zauriel]

I'm hoping Jim Acosta. He is handsome, talented and became famous when the former guy kicked him out of the White House.

Well then let's give Jim Acosta a chance to capture or maybe even top Chris Cuomo's ratings, which were tied with those ratings of Sean Hannity show and Rachel Maddow Show.

[achilles]

Look who else blames the school staff for the shooting.

Me personally, I blame the kid with the gun who did the shooting, and his stupid parents who left a gun unsecured and then fled. What a family.

[achilles]

I'm hoping Jim Acosta. He is handsome, talented and became famous when the former guy kicked him out of the White House.

Acosta has talents? Who knew? What are they?

Besides, I thought Anderson Cooper was their top rated guy.

[babyblob]

I put most of the blame on the parents. But part of it is also on the school. They had a kid that they were worried about, told the parents he needed treatment asap, was caught looking for ammo online, a couple of teachers said after the fact they were worried he would do something and reported this to school officials. Yet after the meeting with the parents the school let him back into class, had no one keep an eye on him, let him wonder around alone. Heck send him home with the parents. Wouldnt be the first time a kid is sent home because he is a behavioral problem at school. It happened when I was at school all the time.

So yes this is mostly on the parents, but why would a school that saw so many red flags and were concerned let this kid walk around freely? They should have to explain this.