Another high ranking Republican who is apparently the best friend of another convicted child porn trader has quit in disgrace.

"BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator announced Monday that he would resign following a report that he had traded scores (over 70) of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges.

Republican Ray Holmberg, who rose to become one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers in a career that spanned 46 years, said he would resign effective June 1. His term was scheduled to end on Nov. 30 and he already had announced in March that it would be his last.

“Recent news stories have become a distraction for the important work of the legislative assembly during its interim meetings,” Holmberg, 79, said in a statement announcing his resignation. “I want to do what I can, within my power, to lessen such distractions.”

Maybe don’t be friends with convicted child molesters and kiddie porn purveyors, that might be a good way to lessen, even avoid such distractions…but that would mean ostracizing some of their Republican colleagues and the party leader(s).

You like to shout baseless claims of debauchery among Democrats, I like to point you to specific cases of actual proven debauchery among Republicans, and there’s a never ending stream of them to choose from….child molesters, kiddie porn purveyors, sex traffickers, best friends and wives to child molesters, etc….I know facts and convictions vs baseless claims can’t convince you of anything, you still say the 2020 election was stolen despite there being more evidence that 2016 was stolen, you still say Covid was a Democratic hoax and blame Democrats for Trump’s lack of response and shirking responsibility, you still claim CRT in grade school is a thing, you still claim Jan 6 was a peaceful tour of the capitol by patriots and also an attack on democracy by BLM and ANTIFA, you think Portland is a lawless wasteland of smoldering cinders….facts are for liberals.
(Btw- if Jan 6 wasn’t a Republican led, planned, and executed crime like we all know it was, why were republican representatives (Congressman Ronny Jackson, Congressman Andy Biggs, and Congressman Mo Brooks) petitioning Trump for pardons for their parts in it directly after the failed coup? You know that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt, both logically and by law.)

You can’t be that dumb.

1) these rich people pay our “leaders” to write unfair tax code so they can not pay taxes. Legalized by Republican pushes to allow unlimited corporate donations and bribes. In many cases, they DO in fact write the code, then hand it to those “leaders”.
2) these “leaders” writing tax loopholes for the super rich, all Republicans, are also rich people, legislating for personal gain.

If the top 1% made 80% of all income, they underpayed by more than half if flat tax were the law or in any way fair. In the 50’s, the time period conservatives want to return to, the top 1% paid 91% tax rates, and America was booming. Today it’s actually <24% and you whine.
How much did they pay AFTER their last massive tax cut, much less than 40%….not that I’m taking your word for those statistics, you are hardly a trustworthy source, the actual number in 2018 is 37% of personal income taxes, which ignores a lions share of non income taxes we all pay.

If you count ALL federal taxes, they payed <24% of taxes collected.
Their highest income tax rate for the rich was +-25% (before deductions, exemptions, loopholes, tax heavens, etc), 66% less than in the 50’s. Under Clinton they paid almost 40% income tax (not 24%), and the economy was again much stronger and growing much faster.

Edit: it was possibly the highest share of that portion of federal taxes paid by the top 1% since 1982, although your track record indicates that’s also a huge exaggeration, but if it’s even remotely true that would be because they took (not really earned) that much more income, not because they paid a higher percentage of earnings. In the 90’s they paid 40%, not today’s 25%…yet today they pay more….can you understand what that means? It means they take almost twice as much “income” as they did in the 90’s when the economy was strong.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html

Republicans are ALL stupid people who do not think, proven every time they are forced to think and realize they have everything backwards. You idiots think Covid is a fraud, the election was stolen, and CRT in grade school is a thing.

Such a nonsensical blatant red herring. They often do “just write a check to the irs” btw. I’m not rich, but I don’t take deductions I legally could because I want to pay my share, not weasel out of it. That’s called being patriotic, not attacking congress and shirking any and all civic duties.
Pushing for a fair tax code, unlike Republicans who plan to raise taxes on anyone making under $250k AND end social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and any other social safety nets they can think of, is not just the ethical and moral thing, it’s the only sane economic move based on ALL economic history ever.

Right, stop wasting, like billions wasted on useless monuments to failure (Trump’s failing fence), trillions more on stupid failed trade wars, billions on political stunts like blockading the border (Texas), trillions to try to fix the disastrous Covid (lack of) response thanks to insane mismanagement and the removal of safeguards, billions to fight the non existent CRT in grade school nonsense…etc. you are ecstatic to waste billions-trillions on idiotic Republican nonsense with absolutely zero return for the money, not complaining once while Trump tried to double the debt in 4 years (nearly succeeding), but not on programs that keep the poor from turning to crime because they have literally nothing to lose, or start to fix our crumbling infrastructure, you call that pork. 🤦‍♂️

So fucking stupid, bob. Delusional, dumb, prejudiced, and always wrong. You must be playing the character of ignorant moronic trumptard, no real human being is this deluded or dumb. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, you are like a clock specifically designed to NEVER show the correct time….you actively avoid being truthful.

It’s almost like you forgot that every congressperson charged with child trafficking is a Republican, every one charged with pedophilia a Republican, every one that knowingly covered for years of forced sexual abuse of children a Republican. Everyone trying to pass laws making it legal for adults to marry 9 year old children and have sex with them is a Republican. Every person claiming their political colleagues have wild drug fueled orgies is a Republican.
🤦‍♂️
Every one filmed lusting after 10 year olds and cat calling them in public is a Republican. Every one who said the thing they have most in common with their young daughter is “sex” is a Republican. Every one that bragged about trying to buy their way into their friends wife’s pants repeatedly is a Republican. Everyone we know that left their pregnant wives to sleep with porn stars without protection is a Republican. Every one that hosted private parties for Epstein, some they attended with no other adults allowed was a Republican.
🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️
The way you people project this nonsense makes me believe that somewhere out there is a pizza place with a basement where your elected officials rape, murder, and eat very small children. It sounded completely insane when the accusations were made, but you people ARE completely insane AND guilty of EVERY charge you morons lob at Democrats.

Democrats, on the other hand, are never brought up on child rape and sex trafficking charges, never have photos come out proving their debauchery, do not have a party platform based entirely on scapegoating and hating huge groups based on skin color, nationality, sexual preference, gender, etc….all protected classes under the constitution btw.
Democrats also don’t try to overthrow democracy because they lost an election and can’t accept it.
Democrats also don’t legislate based on frauds like Desantis, don’t put out insane lies about their opponents, accusing them of child molestation without evidence, certainly not just as a fund raising plot. They don’t set up straw men like CRT to give their base something to be outraged about despite it being fantasy. They don’t create a big lie that the election they ran was fraught with fraud (with absolutely zero evidence besides the frauds they committed themselves).

You really should try looking in a mirror sometimes. If you think you hate Democrats over these false charges, you are going to really hate yourself. Party of debauchery….if you really believe that’s the Democratic Party and not Republicans, you had a clinical break from reality and need professional help before you hurt yourself or others.

You are so delusional you could be committed if we only knew your real name.

Edit: I suppose I should thank you for being such a ridiculous blowhard that always buys into the Republican lies, without you I would have no idea what nonsense needs debunking. You couldn’t be a better straight man even if your name was Laurel.

Lol. Turns out the Florida book banning session by Desantis was based not on the books or anything in them, but a supplemental worksheet posted online by “Joe” that had clearly been edited poorly to add things like Maya Angelou being sexually abused by her parents to math problems. Not even remotely CRT even by the fake definition the right uses….but enough for Republicans to start book burning.

Actually the math part of it is before the blatantly fake non sequitur word problem, “Y equals X plus two, three X plus six Y equals 12. Angelou was sexually abused by her mother's blank at age eight, which shaped her career choices and motivation for writing.”

That’s the example given by Desantis to excuse the book bannings. It’s a blatant fake, a fake about math books in Missouri, not Florida.

Your people. Anti education, anti math, anti reality, anti truth. You must be proud.

Edit: I wonder how long it will take you to solve that 4th grade math problem. I’m embarrassed to say it took me over 2 seconds….including reading time.

Please rewrite this first paragraph before I’m forced to publicly lambast your total lack of language skills again as sub par for grade school.

I’ll ignore the bat shit crazy stupidity of what you tried to write for now, just get it in fucking English.

If CRT is….
…then you have nothing….
….,and in YOUR mind nothing would be banned. (Had to read that 6 times to decipher what you were trying to say).

It’s impossible to take you seriously when you write with the skill of a third grader who is failing English….or a Russian troll who also failed English.

CRT is not real outside of law school. It’s a big racist lie. It’s not taught in grade school.

Edit: Yes, if true, actual CRT, the law school class, was banned in grade school, nothing would change….but you want the intentional misuse and bastardization of the phrase to mean any mention of racial disparity, racist actions, slavery, Jim Crow, racist policies including those adopted by the Republican Party at the same time those racist policies were abandoned by Democrats in the late 60’s early 70’s, any mention of lynching, the KKK, the fact that non whites were not allowed to vote, the fact that non whites were not considered full human beings in the constitution, etc to all be under the name “CRT” and want it all to be removed from schools. You want to rewrite history so it resembles the false image you think you project. It’s absolutely moronic, attempted forced ignorance. The Republican plan for children because ignorance makes it easy to abuse and control the populace.

American history is real….and really racist.
By intentionally mislabeling anything about our racist history as “CRT”, a right wing buzz word they have stripped of any actual meaning to create some fantasy racial boogeyman they can point to to excuse blatant racist policy and actions, you think that allows you to pretend it doesn’t exist, to deny it, and to return to it. Removing any mention of our racist history is racist, stupid, and is a ploy to convince right wing morons that racism isn’t real, never happened, and so doesn’t need any fixing or even teaching. It erases an ENORMOUS part of American history, and all of black American history. You love that.

You bold faced liar. That’s EXACTLY what “anti CRT” is about, renaming the slave trade as “Africans immigrating”, calling slavery “job security”, pretending that Lincoln ended racism completely (but being confused because in your mind slavery is a hoax), ignoring the murderous atrocities during reconstruction, ignoring the blatant often deadly racism that was the norm through the 70’s, and the institutional racism that still exists, never mentioning and pretending attacks against blacks like Tulsa and others, mass murders, arsons, terrorism, all by law enforcement so there’s no legal remedies for the survivors….(The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of White residents, some of whom had been deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, US)…never happened. The anti CRT movement is about erasing that history so they 1)don’t feel guilty or uncomfortable for trying to defend or excuse having a murderously racist history, and 2)so it’s easier to return to that racist society with minimal effort because they won’t know where it leads.

Why? Because the senators that were complicit all switched to the Republican Party after the southern strategy, and those who believed in equality and rights for all switched to the Democratic Party. Another bit of racist history you personally love to deny despite it being the historical, undeniable record of our history. They don’t want to be asked, because they either answer truthfully and are proven to be racists, or lie and lose their racist voter base. Racists are nearly all…99%+-, right wingers. They do not belong to the party trying to eradicate racism. They belong to the party that openly accepts and fosters racism, and pretends, often insists it doesn’t exist when they’re in public….your party. The party of racists, white nationalists, insurrectionists, revisionists, anti American, pro Russian, sexist, anti democracy, anti education ignoramuses.

Quit bringing nothing but dishonest bold faced lies and rewritten history to the table. That means you leave, because dishonest bold faced lies and revisionist history are all you ever spout….because you are a dishonest liar and blatant consistent racist….and a sexist.

LBGTOW (little boys going their own way)….that describes you people well, we wish you would follow through. Go on now…shoo. Go your own way, buy your own country and go there. See for yourself just where unopposed right wing nonsense leads, just leave the US out of it. Ask Musk to forget Twitter and buy Guatemala or an island nation, invite Trump to lead for life, then GO! You have so many issues with other people having rights, so GTFO and create your own white male controlled, white right wing utopia…or move to Russia….but don’t expect to get to come back when it devolves into criminal despotism, economic collapse, and ecological disaster.

If it is a CRT is another red herring than you have nothing to worry about. Let it be banned in schools and in you mind then nothing would be banned.

No one wants to ban the teaching of slavery or Jim Crow.

Why would any Republican want to ban the teaching this side of the Democrat party?

Quit bringing false arguments to the table.

You came up before common core, so what’s your excuse?

CRT is another red herring….it’s a law school class misrepresented as a movement to teach white children their ancestors and parents are evil. Total nonsense the right created just to have something to be angry about.
Now the same people want to erase any mention of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, red lining, etc as evil anti white “CRT”….banking on the idea that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

Not surprising to hear your support for modern day book burning.

My kids cam up though common core and it is a mess.

DeSantis is doing a fair job. Don't need CRT or other BS slanted course work.

Get back to basics

Florida officials continued their war on education this week after rejecting more than 50 proposed math textbooks that allegedly “included references to Critical Race Theory.”

The Florida Department of Education announced Friday it would not include 54 of the 132 ― or 41% ― of math textbooks on the state’s adopted list, citing “CRT” as one of the main reasons.

“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the statement said. “The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.”

The state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said without evidence that the math textbooks “included indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.”

DeSantis has been an outspoken critic of CRT, which has become a catchall term ― stripped of its original academic meaning ― for having discussions about racism in the classroom. Since last July, there have been more than 200 instances of public school districts in Florida banning books, the third highest number of incidents of any state in the U.S.

Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith said in a tweet that the governor “has turned our classrooms into political battlefields and this is just the beginning.” - https://www.huffpost.com/

Sorry if I’m being over sensitive….anything that seems to legitimize the bastardized definition of CRT, in my eyes, is buying into the intentional political ruse to paint any anti racism program, plan, or organization, even unpleasant history with the “CRT” label (and everyone knows CRT is the Devil), and I find that upsetting, even when it’s unintentional….maybe more so when it’s unintentional because that means the rebranding and improper conflation is working.

I think you know, CRT is an advanced law class taken by law students, not a racist movement to erase white people from history as the right claims, not a diabolical plan to make all white children self hating BLM activists, and it really irks me how successful the publicly admitted, intentional, blatantly racist scapegoating and misrepresentation has worked.

It seemed you were accepting the right wing definition even as you dismissed the (I assume anti) “CRT” movement by comparing it to unconstitutional anti German/foreign language laws in the past. Apologies if I misunderstood or came across as accusatory.

Please don’t spread the rebranding, intentional bastardization of a 40 year old well known legal analysis class to create a scapegoat, a faux boogeyman for the right to be outraged over.
CRT is not what the Right has falsely branded it, and it’s blatantly obvious they needed to create a racist scapegoat because their old buzzwords like Political Correctness weren’t being taken seriously or sparking outrage anymore.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory

It’s just more bullshit, don’t step in it

off-subject slightly...but how can american history be taught w/o ratting out all the bad american history?

crt isn't much different than this...
https://www.thoughtco.com/meyer-v-nebraska-1923-4034984
...lead by hatred against americans w/german names

even pride in great americans can lead to some dark truths...
https://www.militarytimes.com/video/2017/02/17/eugene-bullard-the-black-swallow-of-death/
...that's someone whose life was worth a chapter in a h.s. history books itself.

all of it !?

how different can american history be that much different than today's news?! a lot of todays' spectacles are hard to behold.

it's all on a scale. bad w/the good. why be afraid?

It’s hilarious to me that the right wing has become so cowardly and infantile that it has absolutely lost it’s shit and given up pretending they aren’t totally racist fucks all because of a law school course discussing incontrovertible systemic racism like people being labeled 3/5 of a citizen and not having the right to vote that their false jingoistic history requires them to deny.

Anyone complaining about CRT should be forced to define it and give examples of it being taught in grade school, then popped directly in the mouth for being a bold faced racist liar.

Whoever came up with the CRT lie is to be commended, it tricked the right into bringing their racism out front as their main party platform. Opposing CRT means anyone calling themselves Republican or right wing has just declared themselves a stupid dishonest racist fuck that can be ignored and ridiculed into suicide without qualms.