Taiwanese lawmaker absconds with bill

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/21/taiwanese-lawmaker-absconds-with-bill.html

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That’s well within the range of possibilities. The Taiwanese Parliament has a history of getting physical.

Here’s an article listing just a few of the major brawls over the last couple decades:

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Given that the opposition are the KMT, a strategy of running away when losing seems nicely on-brand.

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7 May 2004: Legislator Zhu Xingyu grabbed legislator William Lai and tried to wrestle him onto a desk and headbutt him, and jabbed him in the stomach, due to disagreements over legislative procedures.

Twenty years later, William Lai is the new president.

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And then someone recovered the fumble and ran it back for passage and the conversion.

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I hope this doesn’t give MTG any ideas.

But then again not many bills seem to be making it to the floor these days.

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Huh. Mine is that the whole time he was running he was going whooo-whooo-whooo-whoo, like Curly Howard/Dr. Zoidberg.

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“Do you want Arnold Schwarzenegger elected? Because this is how you get Arnold Schwarzenegger elected.”

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How would stealing the bill even slow things down? Just print another one or do everything electronically.

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Wait, you can just do that?

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That’s exactly my thought. At what point do candidates start running on their size and strength and MMA ability?

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Sometime between today and 2505?

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“The speed of an American football player” ?!

Pshaw. There are retired baseball catchers with bad knees who are faster than Mr Khaki Flash there.

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unclear whether the bill in question was ultimately passed

Per the Jomboy breakdown, he lateraled it and was tackled, but there was a flag on the play.

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WWF wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected Mayor of Brooklyn Park in 1990 and Governor of Minnesota in 1999 (the first, but not the last, muscle-bound actor from The Predator to be elected State Governor).

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He turned out to be a real anti-progressive piece of shit, too. But he never beat up any political opponents.

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He was also anti-torture, which was (depressingly) considered to be a liberal position in the years following 9/11.

Also, his positions on progressive causes and many other issues were mixed at best, but FWIW he vocally defended gay rights and was pro gay marriage years before the Obergefell decision. Here’s a news article about that from 2004, when even many prominent Democrats hadn’t come out in favor of marriage equality yet:

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He was a 9/11 Truther too. Basically a weirdo who was all over the map, politically speaking.

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I think he identifies himself as a libertarian, so I think his various positions make sense in that light. :woman_shrugging: Anti-government and pro-freedom… While most libertarians are just using the term as an excuse to be right wing shitheads, some aren’t…

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Though interestingly he chose to run as a member of the Reform Party (and is their sole major electoral victory to date), then switched to the Independence Party of Minnesota, then the Green Party. He still hasn’t ever affiliated himself with the Libertarian Party, even before they basically turned themselves into another wing of the far-right movement.

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