These are typical, sleazy, disingenuous attacks by Republicans and people on the right who know they can't survive politically without lying early and often! This isn't about democracy or the health of our country, this is only about the power they and their donors want and their attempts to destroy our democracy and undermine it with lies to get their way! They have no integrity and they aren't interested in being public servants. They are addicted to money and power and are psychologically and emotionally sick and deranged! Yet the people they manipulate are oblivious to the ring they have put in their noses!

Jim Jordan spearheads 'cynical' and 'wildly partisan' GOP effort to chill anti-disinformation research - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/jim-jordan-2661568445/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPTreason

"A combination of universities and think tanks have been sounding the alarm about disinformation, warning that outright lies could influence the outcome of elections in the United States. But some Republicans, according to the New York Times, are not happy about their work — including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (D-Ohio) and former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller.

In an article published by the New York Times on June 19, journalists Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel report that Jordan and others GOP lawmakers are claiming that the anti-disinformation efforts are designed to suppress conservative speech online.

"The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public," Myers and Frenkel explain. "It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough…. Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online."

In Louisiana, Miller, who heads the MAGA group America First Legal, has filed a class-action lawsuit against anti-disinformation researchers — making, Myers and Frenkel report, similar claims to Jordan on the House Intelligence Committee. The Trump ally has described his lawsuit as "striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex," but Miller's critics believe he is the one trying to silence those he disagrees with.

Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, views the GOP attacks on anti-disinformation researchers as disingenuous and misleading.

Hanocck told The Times, "We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do…. We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research, but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules."

Jameel Jaffer, who serves was executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at New York City's Columbia University, is critical of the Republican lawmakers as well.

Jaffer told the Times, "I think it's quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research.""

The GOP leaders and elected representatives plot daily to undermine our democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian oligarchy/theocracy. They violate their oaths of office and are antisocial, greedy, power-hungry sociopaths! And, their supporters/base are all on board with this it seems. They are fine with voter suppression, insurrection, discrimination and violence against minorities, gaming the judiciary and installing a gun-worshipping theocracy as long as it maintains their privileges and prejudices. Sad and discouraging but at least they are a minority and we know what we are up against.

The GOP is an anti-America party - Republicans hate America and don’t care about national security -- Salon
https://read.letterhead.email/standing-room-only/letter/16388?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPHatesTheConstitution

"Republicans hate America and don’t care about national security

In the least surprising results ever, a new poll from CBS shows only 12% of Republican voters think it’s a crime now to steal nuclear secrets and put them in a ballroom for Russian and Chinese spies to thumb through. Trump was right that they’d forgive him if he committed murder. After all, he sent a mob to murder Mike Pence, and they don’t have a problem with that.

This news is still causing centrist pundits to reel, because they believed the lie that Republicans are a “national security” party. If they ever were — a big if! — that time has long passed. This isn’t just about loyalty to Trump. The GOP has become an anti-American party, so of course they don’t really care if foreign adversaries gain knowledge they could use to undermine or even destroy us.

Harsh, I know, but consider this: Trump attempted a coup to overthrow our democracy. His reward has been that he’s fast-tracked to the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. His fellow Republican politicians talk about him like he’s their god. This isn’t because they’re unaware that he’s a fascist. It’s because they agree with him and think he’s still got the best shot at accomplishing the goal of ending the American experiment.

That’s why Republicans don’t care if truly evil actors like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping get some kind of leverage against the U.S. Tearing the U.S. down and replacing it with a fascist government is also the goal of GOP primary voters. In that sense, foreign adversaries are their allies. For the fans of Tucker “I Heart Putin” Carlson, having some outside help as they rip this country apart is a good thing. So of course they shrug at Trump violating the Espionage Act. "

'Zero courage': Ex-GOP strategist torches members who stand by Trump
https://www.rawstory.com/zero-courage-ex-gop-strategist-torches-the-sergeant-schultz-brigade-of-republicans-defending-trump-2661189855/?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"An MSNBC panel on Sunday fiercely rebuked the defiantly nonchalant reactions by many Republicans to the historic federal felony charges filed against former President Donald Trump.

"I don't know. After reading those forty-nine pages, it was impossible for the special counsel to not indict Donald Trump," host Jonathan Capehart opined.

Capehart's guest, ex-Republican strategist Matthew Dowd, showed no mercy toward Trump's defenders.

"Well, you know, it, it's as if, if Mike Pence is saying, 'if Donald Trump breaks the law, nobody should ever hold him accountable.' That's actually what he's saying. And as I listen to Christina, who's absolutely right about this, about Mike Pence — but Mike Pence is just one of many — is that I'm reminded of what Maya Angelou said, which is courage is the most important of all the virtues because it's the only one that allows us to practice the other virtues consistently," Dowd said.

"There is a complete abject lack of courage of Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, every, uh McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy," Dowd continued. "All these others have zero cur courage, zero courage, and the other one — so you put that in one bucket — the other bucket that I think is most, is also upsetting is the sort of 'Sergeant Schultz Brigade' of the Republican Party, which is, I see nothing. I know nothing. I'll say nothing.

"And they just sit by apathetically understanding Donald Trump and the corruption that exists around Donald Trump and the danger of Donald Trump, but will absolutely act like their fingers are in their ears. They close their eyes and they want nothing to do with saying or doing anything about 'em. And I put Mitch McConnell in that bucket.""

He should have been expelled long ago, but he fit right in with the general corruption, dishonesty and lack of integrity that the rest of the GOP wears like a badge of honor. They lie to their constituents, they lie when they take their oath of office to defend the Constitution, and they and their votes are for sale to the highest bidder. He fits right in with the them! If he wasn't so flagrant and obvious, that it calls attention to their own sleaziness, they'd happily embrace him forever. Even then, most of the GOP voted not to refer him.

Video: 221-204: The House votes to send Democrats’ resolution to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to the House Ethics Committee.

#GOPCorrupt
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPLongGrift

https://flip.it/rV9bW0

The GOP doesn't care about gay marriage or trans people, they care about riding their vilification into power so they can entrench themselves and their rich people-first policies. They are, the lowest of the low!

Republicans deny they want to erase trans people — Montana silencing Zooey Zephyr proves otherwise
https://www.salon.com/2023/04/28/montana-proves-wants-to-silence-trans-people/

#GOPLovesPower
#GOPFascism
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#NothingChristianAboutTheGOP

"...They do care very much about doing whatever they can to silence, erase, and yes, eradicate trans people. As Zephyr told NBC News, she is not being "hyperbolic" when she says Republicans are killing people with anti-trans bills. Studies show anywhere from 40-56% of trans and non-binary young people have attempted suicide, with higher rates in red states.
...
Republicans have been shown these statistics again and again, but they keep banning this life-saving care anyway. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Republicans would rather have young people be dead than trans. Sounds harsh, but this is the same party that's more avid about banning books than banning guns, as well. And the same party that is passing draconian abortion bans, even as the evidence piles up that it's maiming and will likely start killing women to do so. Republicans simply don't care who their policies kill, so long as they get to control who you are, how you use your body, and even what you're allowed to think about.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Republicans would rather have young people be dead than trans.

With Gianforte, the cruelty is incredibly personal. His own son, David Gianforte, identifies as non-binary and has publicly pleaded with his father to veto this anti-trans bill, writing that "these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights." Yet Gov. Gianforte has publicly demurred when asked if his own child's concerns bother him enough to reconsider signing a bill he has been eagerly supporting so far. I wouldn't hold your breath, however, waiting for Greg "Body Slam" Gianforte to start showing signs of humanity.

Meanwhile, outside of Montana, the genocidal impulse towards LGBTQ people continues to animate the Republican Party.

In Florida, Republicans dramatically expanded the "don't say gay" bill to high school students, in an overt effort to force teenagers back into the closet. They also passed provisions to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, threatening parents and medical providers with prison if they want to save the lives of trans youth. To make the situation uglier, Florida Republicans have also passed a bill that would make it legal for the state to remove trans children from the homes of parents who support their gender identity.

The United Nations classifies the abduction of children to "re-educate" them as a "grave violation." ...Taking someone's child to brainwash them to hate themselves and/or their family is taken that seriously as a human rights violation, for good reason. Not that Republicans care how much psychological damage they would do to children by going this route. Causing pain to those who they see as "different" is the entire point.

Zephyr, for her part, remains defiant. During her speech before she was officially banned from the floor, she said she refuses "to be complicit in this legislature's eradication of our community."

Republicans simply don't care who their policies kill, so long as they get to control who you are, how you use your body, and even what you're allowed to think about.

Rex Huppke of USA Today argued there is "some good to be found in seeing what the smallness of Republicans in the Montana Legislature did to Zooey Zephyr. By trying to silence her, they made sure she was heard."...Just by being visible, Zephyr is doing the necessary, if basic, work of showing people that may not know much about trans people that she is not a scary figure at all. She's just a woman trying to do her job and live her life. She's not a threat to kids, but she is trying to protect them.

That visibility terrifies Republicans. It's why they threw a national tantrum over Budweiser sending some beers to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. They see Mulvaney, who has 1.8 million Instagram followers, as a threat simply because she's cute and charming. She reveals the truth they want so badly to hide, which is trans people are fine the way they are and should be allowed to be themselves. Not erased from existence, as Republicans clearly intend with their anti-trans legislation. "

All the GOP wants is power!! They really don't care at all about democracy! They lie, cheat and steal to have power and this woman has been behind this dogged determination to disenfranchise voters and entrench the GOP in power for decades. Why? Could be Christian nationalism, could be fear of liberalism and progress, could be racism, could be she hungers for power and the rewards the obscenely wealthy lavish on her to enact their agenda. She is a traitor to our democracy and she has lots of company there!

"EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Trump coup attorney Cleta Mitchell wants to "combat" voting on college campuses, citing North Carolina and Wisconsin, and says that when Republicans win the state Senate in Virginia, they can eliminate 45 days of early voting and same day voter registration."

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#ChristianNationalism
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich

Here's a link to the audio:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1649075730687352833

Great video by Robert Reich detailing how the Republican party is now antithetical to democracy and all about fascism! Please give it a watch.

How Republicans Are Stepping Closer to Fascism - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp2D-PMW47c

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPFascism #GOPLovesPower

"Today's GOP is devoted to three ideas:

1) Power is only legitimate if Republicans wield it
2) Power must be acquired by any means necessary
3) The party is accountable to no one once it has it
Folks, the Republican Party is rapidly becoming the American fascist party."

The mainstreaming of the Republican effort to suppress the vote. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/republican-effort-to-suppress-the-vote.html

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPFascism
#GOPTreason

"It’s bad enough when a trio of voter suppression groups led by charlatans gets together at an annual secret conference that is sponsored, in part, by a group created by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo to talk about all the ways they might make it harder for people to register or vote in future elections. But it is much worse when the participants in that secret conference also include secretaries of state and other top election officials from 13 Republican-led states, plus Don Palmer, a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission, plus counsels to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the House Administration Committee’s Republican staff, and a sitting Texas state senator. The entire conference—whose existence was revealed in a blockbuster report by the Guardian and Documented last week—shows that there is a thriving network of interlocking organizations working with elected and election officials to use unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to try to mess with fair elections for partisan advantage.
...
Dark money donors capture the courts and the levers of government to make actual vote tallies irrelevant to who holds power. This story didn’t start in Tennessee or the Amarillo district court. For nearly two decades, we have been chronicling the actions of members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad who have been active in perpetuating claims of voter fraud to make it harder for people to vote.
...
former President Donald Trump’s aborted Voter Fraud Commission. Documents from that commission later revealed a purposeful effort to generate enough smoke around nonexistent election shenanigans to cajole Congress into allowing states to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. In other words, the commission was an elaborate search for a solution to a problem that never existed, but it made a play that has since been repeated elsewhere.
...
All of this voter suppression requires an infrastructure. To help support it, Heritage and PILF have teamed up with Leonard Leo’s Orwellian-named “Honest Elections Project” (HEP), headed by Jason Snead, to run a new conference for election officials and the representatives of Republican lawmakers. Leo, lest we forget, has been in charge of reshaping the federal courts, selecting Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, and figuring out how best to spend gobs of billionaire-donated money to reshape culture and democracy. The chillingly dishonest HEP not only supports these efforts to make voting harder but also the “independent state legislature theory,” ...
The election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
this is no longer just a lobbying effort shored up with big, often untraceable money, coming from players outside the system. What’s no longer hidden is the involvement of lawmakers and their staffs, who say the quiet parts out loud. Their enthusiastic participation in these efforts shows that these groups are not offering false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud merely to raise funds or even to delegitimize Democratic electoral victories by convincing the Republican base that when Democrats win elections, it is inevitably by fraud. Instead, the conference is powerful evidence of coordination between the decades-old voter fraud–industrial complex and state and government officials who actually have the power to make rules over how elections are run. To put it in the simplest terms, the election suppression noises are truly coming from inside the house.
...
Finally, the very existence of this conference also highlights the coming together of the fringe elements of the Republican party with its allegedly saner mainstream."

Opinion | At the NRA convention in Indianapolis, nonsense floated on guns - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/16/nra-convention-republicans-guns-democracy/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GunsBeforeReason

"The nonsense floated in Indianapolis — based on the idea that our national addiction to high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with America’s unique mass shooting problem — speaks to a deep ailment in our democracy. It has both partisan and (perverse) philosophical roots.

The GOP’s conversion to gun absolutism is the heart of the problem. But politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It often follows from cultural and moral innovations.

For roughly four decades, American conservatism has identified firearms as a marker of a manly rejection of urban cosmopolitanism and gun ownership as a right more important than any other. As DeSantis said in his video, the right to bear arms is “the foundation on which all our other rights rest” and essential to Americans’ “ability to rule themselves.”

“Why do Joe Biden and the liberals want our guns?” asked Gov. Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota, another speaker. “Because it will make it easier for them to violate all our other rights.”

It comes down to a variant of the old Maoist slogan: All liberty grows out of the barrel of a gun. When Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a White House rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, “Let’s have trial by combat,” he was speaking for a sentiment that runs deep in the gun rights movement.

A particularly dramatic example of how opposition to gun regulation is increasingly linked to efforts to undermine democracy itself: the Tennessee House Republicans’ recent vote to expel two duly elected legislators for protesting against the body’s inaction on guns after the Nashville school massacre.

It was no accident that the two since-reinstated representatives, Democrats Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, are not only both young and Black but also represent urban areas — Jones is from Nashville, Pearson from Memphis. Republican legislators, in Tennessee as elsewhere, regularly diminish the power of the big metro areas through gerrymandering and state overrides of local control.

Republican legislators may tout states’ rights, but with many cities in red states growing into significant islands of Democratic influence (and support for gun regulation), local control is not part of the GOP’s program.

Undercutting the ability of voters to cast ballots is another habit of those who privilege the Second Amendment over all the others. As Politico’s Kathy Gilsinan reported, Tennessee’s election laws allow gun permits as voter IDs but not college student identifications. There is no waiting time to buy a gun, but citizens have to register at least 30 days before an election. “It is absolutely easier to get a gun than to vote in Tennessee,” Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver told Gilsinan.

Our attitudes toward guns are often ascribed to our frontier past and a veneration of the Old West. But in truth, radical opposition to gun regulation is a relatively recent development, even in the NRA. Founded in 1871 by two Union Civil War veterans and a former New York Times reporter, the organization was initially devoted to improving urban marksmanship.

The group was long open to sensible rules around weapons, and the NRA helped Franklin D. Roosevelt draft the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act. It was not until 1977 that the NRA was engulfed by extreme ideologues. Our country, including the Supreme Court, thus embarked on a dangerous new path.

The good news in this story is that radical opposition to sensible gun laws is not embedded in the American character. It’s the product of an ideology that overtook a less dogmatic form of conservatism and seized control of a political party.

With Americans increasingly angry over the violence wrought by weapons of war in our schools, our banks, our shopping centers — pretty much everywhere we gather — the era of gun absolutism could finally be over, if the popular will on guns is allowed to prevail. But this depends on defending the democracy that so many, at the Indianapolis gathering and in Tennessee, deeply mistrust."

This whole article is well worth reading. In essence, the fear of prosecuting a president/leaders of our government has resulted in moral atrocities going unpunished and encouraging the next round of moral atrocities. Impunity is a powerful lure, especially to Republicans apparently. Nixon's GOP election team convinced South Vietnam not to sign a peace treaty before the election, just so that Nixon could win, the war could go on for 6 more years and 20,000 more Americans could die. Johnson knew that Nixon had committed treason and yet "for the good of the country" chose to sweep it under the rug rather than bring him to justice. And then for the same stupid reasons, and to protect the GOP, Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be prosecuted for the travesty of Watergate!

That led to Reagan's GOP election team working out a deal with Iranians to hold onto the hostages until after the election so that Reagan could defeat Carter. Then Reagan's administration, you remember Oliver North-nutjob, and the Iran-contra affair, arranged to illegally sell weapons to Iran so they could illegally funnel the proceeds to the contras. Again, rather than prosecuting them, the prevailing wisdom was America couldn't handle such a scandal, so most of it was swept under the rug and impunity reigned again.

All of this then led to Bush lying us into a needless war in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands dead and yet no punishment for any of the people who orchestrated that atrocity! How could we be surprised that Trump would attempt to steal the election, after all, no one ever gets punished for these crimes if they are president. Needless to say, it is way past time for an end to impunity and a boatload of justice and punishment!

I've Been Waiting For This For 55 Years https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/31/2161407/-I-ve-Been-Waiting-For-This-For-55-Years

#GOPIsLawless
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#NoImpunity
#ProsecuteTrump
#ProsecuteGOPTraitors

"Donald Trump has been indicted. My new hero, the courageous D.A., Alvin Bragg, has ignored all the fatuous blather about “whether this is good for the country” or whether “it might boost Trump.” What happened is that an amoral, psychopathic scumbag and career criminal broke the law, and now he’ll be held accountable. If convicted, he’ll have to pay, just like we would.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for 55 years, since 1968. That was the year that Richard Nixon won the presidency by committing treason... Check out the full article at link...

This indictment couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. He has flaunted and broken the law virtually his entire life and gotten away with until now because rich person with lawyers blah, blah, blah, unequal justice. Just days ago he was inciting violence against Bragg. He didn't learn anything from Jan 6th, except that he was seemingly untouchable. This isn't about partisan politics, this is about the law, which he has broken repeatedly, and whether he or anyone, including presidents, should be above the law, or untouchable while trying to destroy our democracy.
Let's see how his base and the GOP handle this moving forward. Do they care about the law, or do they really just care about power and getting their way? Some do care, others couldn't care less. Fortunately, the uncaring autocratic, fascistic, Christian nationalist-leaning ones are a minority in the country as a whole. It is good to know that they would sell out our democracy and the rest of us for their mentally-imbalanced, warped priorities. Now we can stop pretending that they are actual partners in our democracy, rather than committed to destroying it and replacing it with an autocracy for their own selfish, insecure and developmentally-stunted needs.
It's time to strengthen the guardrails and ensure that democracy works and thrives moving forward. And to treat Putin and other leaders who actively seek to destroy our democracy (Yes, I'm thinking of you Mike Flynn, the Claremont Institute, and so many others) as our real enemies and stop pulling punches, because they never stopped pulling theirs. This isn't being nice, or mature or kind, this is about recognizing we are in a death-struggle for our democracy with forces that have actively been seeking to destroy it and lord it over us for their own emotionally immature reasons! None of these people are mentally sound or mature, they are all damaged goods that we can't allow to gain control over our country or the rest of us. Just ask women and gays how it feels to have them imposing their decisions and morality upon them.

Stormy Weather (with Mark Plotkin) - PREVAIL by Greg Olear https://gregolear.substack.com/p/stormy-weather-with-mark-plotkin?

#MentallyImbalanced
#InsecureNFearful
#TheyNeedToControlUs
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheObscenelyRichRSick
#TrumpIsMentallyIll
#TrumpsBaseIsMentallyIll

"It happened. It actually happened.

Late yesterday afternoon, the breaking news alert of all breaking news alerts came through: a grand jury in Manhattan—the gleaming New York borough regarded with covetous desire by the rich kid from Queens, and long the seat of his empire, such as it is—voted to indict Donald John Trump. He is expected to surrender to authorities on Tuesday.

Whatever the outcome of the case, FPOTUS can no longer employ the Mogilevich Defense. His MAGA legions can bitch and moan all they like, but Trump’s aura of invincibility is gone forever. His ketchup-hurling energies will now be dedicated to staying out of prison. When his mugshot is released, the world will finally catch a glimpse of the—what’s his Twitter handle? Oh right—RealDonaldTrump.

Now that the beleaguered Alvin Bragg has broken the proverbial seal, more indictments may yet come—weightier indictments, from different jurisdictions, for crimes of far greater magnitude. For now, it looks like hush money paid to Stormy Daniels is what pushed the orange boulder down the hill. This is ironic, because bragging about bedding a beautiful porn star, rather than covering up the dalliance, would have probably endeared him to his base even more.

While there are those in the rightwing social media bubble who believe the indictment will help Trump’s prospects in 2024, here on planet earth, we know the opposite is true. This is not Mandela or Navalny wrongly imprisoned for their political views; this is a lifetime of crime finally catching up to a money laundering tax cheat and rapist with deep ties to the Russian mob and the Kremlin. In a word, this is justice.

The Republican party and the right-wing couldn't care less about our democracy. They just want power and their way! This has been brewing for quite some time, and there is no way to avoid this fact any longer. They don't care what the majority of the people in the country or their districts want. Whether it's being dedicated to serving the obscenely wealthy donors they suck up to, or completely buying into the insane Christian nationalism, fascism or racism that now makes up a large part of their base, they have abandoned liberal democracy and are marching in lock step towards some kind of autocratic, oligarchic totalitarian fever-dream/nightmare.

We can't do anything about this threat to our democracy and country if we remain in denial about what they are increasingly telegraphing is their ultimate intention.

Donald Trump's Congressional Friends Are Keeping Him Up to Date On Committee Goings-On https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43454466/trump-congressional-committee-communications/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPFascists
#ChristianNationalism
#Oligarchy

"The Republican Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign.

To the surprise of approximately nobody, there is some serious colluding going on between the campaign of the former president* and the new and narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives. But CNN took the time to go long on the developing puppet show:

'That dynamic has been on full display over the past week, as top House Republicans attempted to intervene in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation of hush money payments Trump allegedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. That’s led to an acrimonious back and forth between three powerful Republican committee chairs and Bragg over what, if any, jurisdiction Congress has over the DA’s work. House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, has become a key point person for Trump on Hill investigations. The New York Republican talks to Trump roughly once a week, and often more, frequently briefing him on the House committees’ work, three sources familiar with their conversations tell CNN. Trump often calls her as well, the sources said.'

The report goes on to describe the connections between the campaign and the various snipe-hunting congressional committees that sprang up when the House changed hands last fall. It also details the coordination between the Trump operation and the various outside conservative groups, some of which are dissatisfied both with the pace of congressional action, and with the apparent clumsiness of the Republican leadership of the investigative committees. These qualms are based, of course, in the permanent victimhood through which the prion disease has encased the conservative brain:

'A number of these Trump-affiliated groups have urged the GOP-led committees to move more aggressively against Biden.“We can’t have two years of hearings and then a report,” President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton told CNN, referring to the pressure his group has placed on Congress to act immediately on the abuses of power that he sees happening, including “censoring Americans and trying to jail those who are perceived as political opponents.”'

So it is not merely the Republican Party that—willingly or otherwise, it hardly matters any more—has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign, but also the entire modern conservative movement, mind, body, and donor class. Any anti-Trump movement within the party or the movement is doomed to fail, and anyone involved in it will find themselves praying outside the camp pretty quickly. Half of the time will be spent rehabilitating the former president* and revenging itself on everyone and everything that done him wrong. The other half will be dedicated to electing him again so that he can commit all the crimes again, and a whole raft of new ones, besides. It's all hands on deck on the plague ship."

It's hard not to agree with this attorney. When it comes to upholding the law, Garland has done a weak ass job! There should be serious penalties on the GOP for trying to steal an election and then stonewalling investigations. We are, after all, talking about losing our democracy, and virtually the entire GOP is in on the plot to take it down in one form or another. All the ones with balls and sanity have already walked or been thrown out. All that's left are the ones who don't care about our democracy, their oaths of office or are total cowards. Perhaps Biden and Garland still haven't woken up to the fact that politics as usual is now pretty much dead. When the other side isn't willing to play by the rules or even play the game democracy, you have to change your tactics. It doesn't matter if you alienate a good chunk of the GOP base, they are already alienated and living in a pseudo-reality that is virtually impenetrable. Come on Biden (use the damn bully pulpit) and Garland! Be above board and transparent, follow the law, but don't sit back timidly and let them trample our democracy into dust!

Legendary Attorney Eviscerates Garland ‘Resign or Be Fired!’ and Has Harsh Words for Biden ‘Defend the Country from Trump!’ | PolitiZoom https://politizoom.com/legendary-attorney-eviscerates-garland-resign-or-be-fired-and-has-harsh-words-for-biden-defend-the-country-from-trump/

#TreasonMatters
#SeditionMatters
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#DemsNeedBackbones

"It can be difficult at times to truly appreciate what’s happening to this country. We are right on the brink of a dictatorial overthrow of the government, which is exactly what’s going to happen if Trump is CLOSE in the next election. The Republicans fully believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch will not settle the Dominion case precisely because he doesn’t want to have to issue an on-air apology and admit they were wrong. He would rather absorb the loss than lose his audience. He wants his viewers happy, and they’re happy to think that Trump actually won. In that sense, they believe they’re owed a victory in 2024. If that election is close, at all, they will claim victory and use whatever Electoral College tactics it takes to lift Trump to victory. If all else fails, they’ll fight.

Meanwhile, Democrats will stand back and ask why it is we’re FORCED to share the presidency when Democrats now always win the popular vote, next time – in my opinion – by ten million.

And we’re at this stage in our history because Merrick Garland has utterly failed on every level. I won’t tolerate hearing from anyone that “these things take time,” or that they’re doing something “big” soon. Fine. I hope so. But that doesn’t excuse that JUST NOW, Mike Pence is fighting a subpoena, and not in July 2021 but 2023, only after Trump has started campaigning!! Trump was largely HATED for months after 2021, and the vaccine was starting the economy again. That was the time to investigate Trump AND only the rioters who violently injured cops. Instead, Garland set about using massive resources to arrest people who broke windows, letting Trump go. Indeed, from the outside, it appears it was only Congress’s successful investigation that pushed DOJ into investigating Trump. After all, DOJ was asking Congress for its transcripts.

Now legendary attorney John Flannery, who often appears on MSNBC, looks like Robert Redford, you know him, has had enough. He wants Garland to resign or be fired. Garland has failed to protect and defend the Constitution. He also chastises Biden for not standing up for the judicial process, not calling out Trump to shut up about judges and the FBI. It is truly a must-see video"

Donald Trump Threatens District Attorney as Indictment Looms in New York https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43409082/trump-threats-alvin-bragg/

#TrumpFascist
#Bothsidesism
#JournalistsInNameOnly
#NewsMediaInNameOnly
#Sedition
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but the former president* of the United States is a dangerous fcking lunatic and he's decompensating quickly. Read this goddamn thing, it's the kind of stuff that makes people change subway cars.

Trump's TruthSocial Post:
"WHY WON'T BRAGG DROP THIS CASE? EVERYBODY SAYS THERE IS NO CRIME HERE. I DID NOTHING WRONG! IT WAS ALL MADE UP BY A CONVICTED NUT JOB WITH ZERO CREDIBILITY, WHO HAS BEEN DISPUTED BY HIGHLY RESPECTED PROFESSIONALS AT EVERY TURN. BRAGG REFUSES TO STOP DESPITE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY. HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL WHO JUST DOESN'T CARE ABOUT RIGHT OR WRONG NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HURT. THIS IS NO LEGAL SYSTEM, THIS IS THE GESTAPO, THIS IS RUSSIA AND CHINA, BUT WORSE. DISGRACEFUL!"

It no longer matters whether or not he's playing a role or playing everyone for fools. He knows what his more dangerous devotees actually hear when he starts raving like this. It no longer matters whether or not he's doing all this out of abject terror of being hauled before the bar in two states and the District of Columbia. Even quaking on his golden throne, he can still bring the temple down on his own head. Especially since the entire Republican Party is lending him its support. And he knows it, too, because he won't shut his digital gob.

"What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?...Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!"

Not even the fundamental incoherence, the random capitalization, or the laughably bad spelling matter any more. An ungrammatical death threat is still a death threat. Not all dangerous lunatics can write like Ted Kaczynski.

If it wishes to save itself, the entire system must devote itself to the task of getting this guy out of public life forever. Every criminal prosecution should hit the afterburners. Every civil suit must proceed apace. The Democratic Party should dedicate itself, body and soul, to hanging this decrepit bag of poison around the neck of every Republican, local and national.

If you have Republicans on your town council, they must answer for him as surely as his congressional acolytes and enablers must. His name should be a political curse for generations to come. This is going to require people in my business to unshackle themselves from some of the more staid norms and customs of the tribe. This is a time for plain-speaking, with as much contempt and derision as we can muster. All the chips are falling, and we should take as a guide-star the principles articulated by William Lloyd Garrison when he launched The Liberator in 1831.

'I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.'

The time for moderate alarms is long past."

The GOP has only been interested in power, not the welfare of the country. So they have supported and defended Trump and even now can't muster the courage or backbone to disagree with him or cut him off. They are trading our democracy for the hope of more power and the support of crazy, maga voters. They have violated their oaths of office and none of them should be in a position of power or responsibility as they have clearly shown they are not deserving of such trust or positions.

Kevin McCarthy’s desperate plea to MAGA reveals a glaring GOP failure
Greg Sargent

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/20/mccarthy-protest-indictment-trump-stormy-daniels-maga/

#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPRSpineless

"This moment vindicates those who long insisted the GOP must hold Trump accountable for the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, if only to send a signal to GOP voters. Republicans instead squandered years of opportunities to categorically side with law enforcement — and for the proposition that violence and lawlessness have no place in our politics — because those stances might put them crosswise of MAGA.

Now, with Trump possibly facing indictment in Manhattan over hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, his advisers are publicly demanding that leading Republicans stand behind him. Trumpworld reportedly believes this will be problematic for presumed 2024 rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who are trying to win support among MAGA Republicans while also appealing to party elites who want to move past Trump.

Asked about this Monday, DeSantis tried to have it both ways, going out of his way to draw attention to the seamy nature of the case (“Look, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star”) while blaming the possible indictment on George Soros.

Non-MAGA hopefuls have also struggled with their responses: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has remained quiet, while former vice president Mike Pence, who has denounced Trump over Jan. 6, blamed the situation on the “radical left.”

Republican leaders themselves are to blame for this quandary. That’s because GOP lawmakers and influencers have, for six years, dismissed legitimate probes of grave crimes against the country — into very real Russian interference in the 2016 election, into Trump’s extraordinary assault on U.S. constitutional democracy, into his hoarding of state secrets — as a witch hunt perpetrated by the “deep state.”

Just after Jan. 6, genuine constitutional conservatives and scholars of democratic breakdown alike warned that the conduct of GOP leaders would be critical in determining whether rank-and-file Republican voters accepted the need to hold Trump accountable to preserve the rule of law.

Political science holds that elite signaling sends important cues to voters on how to understand politics. And sure enough, polling now shows that an overwhelming majority of GOP voters still believe Trump was the wronged party in 2020.

“Trump and elected Republican leaders have trained their base to think of any law enforcement activity that looks into Trump as a witch hunt,” Natalie Jackson, ...told me. “When we get to a possible indictment now, it’s just seen as more of the same.”
...
But that’s not what McCarthy and other Republicans are doing. McCarthy did dismiss an indictment as “the weakest case” that could be brought against Trump. But he went much further, slamming it in advance as a “political” prosecution. Pence — who, again, is casting himself as non-MAGA — did the same. Can anyone really deny that Republicans will do this no matter what Trump is indicted for?

Republicans are now seemingly required to cast any and all law enforcement activity directed at Trump as inherently illegitimate. At the same time, McCarthy knows it’s politically lethal for his party to be associated with outbreaks of MAGA lawlessness or violence. So he’s calling for calm in response to any indictment — while simultaneously endorsing Trump’s claim that it can only be the result of a witch hunt against him.

That straddle is absurd and unsustainable. To paraphrase a great poet of responsibility and regret, if Republicans are now potentially stuck with a leading candidate for the 2024 nomination who is facing a criminal indictment — one they can’t even cite to persuade GOP voters it’s time to move on — it’s their own damn fault."

These greedy capitalists just want to make money and they don't care who they hurt to do it! They aren't interested in making the jobs safer, they just want money, less regulations and lower costs. They've sold their souls for money and greed. And the GOP lawmakers are fine taking their donations and doing their bidding because they have lost their souls too, and just want money and power. These are the kinds of people we should be keeping out of government and corporate management because of the havoc they wreak in their attempts to slake their never-ending hunger for money and power.

Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country: Amid increasing child labor violations, lawmakers must act to strengthen standards | Economic Policy Institute https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/

#GreedKills
#GOPGreed
#GOPLovesPower
#TheGreedyRAddicts

"At a time when serious child labor violations are on the rise in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs, several state legislatures are weakening—or threatening to weaken—child labor protections. The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections, in pursuit of longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country. Children of families in poverty, and especially Black, brown, and immigrant youth, stand to suffer the most harm from such changes.

Summary of findings
Both violations of child labor laws and proposals to roll back child labor protections are on the rise across the country. The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37% in the last year and at least 10 states introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years.
Attempts to weaken state-level child labor standards are part of a coordinated campaign backed by industry groups intent on eventually diluting federal standards that cover the whole country.
Youth labor force participation declines over the past 20 years reflect that a steadily growing share of young people are choosing to complete high school and obtain additional education in order to increase their long-term employability and earnings. Putting off work in order to obtain more skills and education is a positive trend—for both individuals and the economy—not one that should be slowed or reversed.
State and federal lawmakers must act to protect and advance the rights of workers of all ages and backgrounds while protecting poor and/or immigrant youth from exploitation. Policy recommendations include raising the minimum wage (and eliminating subminimum wages for youth), ending the two-tiered system of standards for agricultural and nonagricultural work, enforcing wage and hour laws, passing key immigration reforms, and supporting workers’ right to organize and form unions.

Yet another example of Fox News covering for Trump and the GOP, and acting more like a cheerleader and ally, than a real news organization. Also, yet more examples of Trump and his lieutenants being in bed with and beholden to Putin. Putin did everything he could to get Trump elected and was hoping for a big payoff for his efforts. Treason was running through the highest levels of the Trump administration, including Trump. Yet, the GOP and their base turned a blind eye to all this so they could have power, control, own the libs and more tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy. They would sell out our entire country to get their way yet strut around like they are real patriots. They are just the opposite, they are treasonous and adversaries of our democracy!

Trump Said He Might Have Let Russia “Take Over” Parts of Ukraine. Fox News Edited It Out. – Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/trump-ukraine-hannity-fox-news-russia-take-over/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#TrumpWasPutinsBitch

"Last week, Donald Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he could have stopped the invasion of Ukraine by allowing Russia to “take over” parts of the country.

“I could have negotiated. I could’ve made a deal to take over something,” Trump said in a radio interview Monday. “There are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.” The Daily Beast reported last week that Hannity left those newsworthy remarks out of excerpts of the interview that he played that night on his primetime show.

What seems most notable here is that Trump is explicitly saying he might have given Russian president Vladimir Putin something the leader has sought since 2016.

The deal Trump said he could’ve “worked” sounds a lot like the “peace plan” that Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate Intelligence Committee described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” pressed on Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chief, in a secret meeting in August 2016 at a New York City cigar bar. The two men continued to discuss the plan until 2018, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Manafort famously gave Kilimnik some of the Trump campaign’s polling data to pass on to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was known to be close to Putin. What gets less attention is what else happened in the same meeting. Kilimnik also asked Manafort to seek Trump’s support for a plan to end fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, along lines highly favorable to Russia. The idea was to create an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving the Kremlin sway over a valuable industrial area, along with continued control of Crimea, which Russian troops seized in 2014. Kilmnik later said in an email to Manafort that the plan needed only “a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push)” from Trump if he won in 2016.

Remember: Russia was helping Trump through its hack and leak of Democratic emails. (Kilimnik himself “may have been connected to the hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the Senate Intelligence Committee report said.) The Trump campaign—both Mueller‘s investigation and the Senate’s found—worked to capitalize on Russia’s leaks. That makes Trump’s comments especially interesting. Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller deputy who prosecuted Manafort, later wrote that the plan for an autonomous republic outlined to Manfort by Kilimnik was the “quo” Putin wanted for the “quid” of assisting Trump against Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton..."

Revealing Fox News texts point to the right’s long war on the truth
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/08/fox-news-texts-tucker-carlson-dominion-lawsuit-media-history/

#FoxLies
#RealityAverse
#EyesScrewedShut
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPBaseIsBrainwashed

"...This fear — that viewers might see telling the truth about Donald Trump’s loss as betrayal — was widespread inside the network, according to newly released texts among Fox News figures. In the texts, they fumed that candor about 2020 was driving the audience away, prompting viewers to defect to competitors who offered a more comforting cocoon. On the air, some of those personalities kept doling out what they privately admitted were lies.

This is one of the most extraordinary scandals to ever buffet a major American network. But it also points to an even bigger story: The right wing media’s long war on the truth. For decades, conservative media outlets have expressly sought to build and capture an audience that would accept only their version of events, and would be cordoned off to place them beyond the reach of mainstream news sources entirely.

“Right wing media have been engaged in a 70-year project to ensure that their audiences only trust conservative news outlets,” Nicole Hemmer, who tells this story in “Messengers of the Right,” her excellent history of conservative media, told me. “They’ve worked to discredit other sources of more-objective information, so that their audiences are unwilling to trust outlets more rooted in reality.”

The success of this project is illustrated by the texts, which were released as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News. For instance, the network’s accurate call of Arizona for Biden came in for special fury among hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, as The Post reports:

“We are all officially working for an organization that hates us,” Ingraham wrote in one text thread with Carlson and Hannity.
In another, in mid-November 2020, as they watched Fox viewers flip to more conservative upstart channels, Ingraham wrote to the group, “My anger at the news channel is pronounced.”
In short, the hosts saw the truth as a threat to their hold on their viewers.

This bid to capture millions in a bubble of falsehoods was also acknowledged by the news side, when a top news editor called the constant lying an “existential crisis” for Fox News ’s journalism. But as Matthew Gertz of Media Matters notes, the prime-time personalities had a clearer read than the news operation on the real source of Fox News’ success: its role as a “propaganda machine that accumulates money and power by lying to its viewers.”

Hemmer traces the genesis of this broader ideological project to the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the time, she tells me, leading figures on the right made a concerted decision to “create their own media outlets” in the form of periodicals such as Human Events, while spreading “the message that all nonconservative media are deeply biased.”

This intensified during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, who turned Vice President Spiro Agnew loose to make snarling speeches attacking the television networks, which were growing in power.
...
The influence of right-wing media intensified in the late 1980s with the explosion of talk radio. This capture of conservative audiences was aided, Hemmer notes, by the success of Rush Limbaugh and others who made the message about biased mainstream news “entertaining and profitable.”

Enter Fox News, which was founded in the mid-1990s and attained its commanding heights in the right-wing information ecosystem in the early 2000s. Behind Fox News’s “We report, you decide” slogan, Hemmer says, lurked its real message: “You should trust us, and not other outlets.”
...
Nothing, however, has compared to the current scandal. “It’s a pretty clarifying moment,” Hemmer told me. The network’s own personalities, she concluded, have now admitted that “we have to tell our audience not what happened, but what they want to hear, or we’re going to lose them.”'

The "christians" who supported and pushed through these bans don't care about people, their suffering, or the lives these bans cost. They only care about making sure they themselves feel ok by knowing they have deprived others of something they don't support. This isn't about abortion, this is about some crazy, imagined moral issue that keeps these purported Christians up at night and ensures they are motivated enough to kill abortion doctors, picket clinics and spend their time forcing their ideas of what is right on everybody else cause they can't stand thinking about what others are doing! And let's not forget the republican politicians and "advocacy" groups that use these issues to rev up their base to get votes and money! There is nothing Christian about the abortion movement!

Details in lawsuit against Texas abortion ban shock the conscience https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/09/abortion-lawsuit-texas-six-week-ban/

#AbortionBans
#GOPLovesPower

"Five pregnant women and two doctors filed suit in Texas this week claiming that the state’s six-week abortion ban violates the state constitution’s due process and equal protection guarantees. The complaint asks that, at a minimum, the court declare a woman can obtain an abortion when a physician in good faith finds the patient suffers a condition of complication that “poses a risk of infection, bleeding, or otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe for the pregnant person; a physical medical condition that is exacerbated by pregnancy” that can’t be effectively treated or where “the fetus is unlikely to survive the pregnancy and sustain life after birth.”
...
Amanda was forced to wait until she was septic to receive abortion care, causing one of her fallopian tubes to become permanently closed. When Lauren M. learned one of her twins was not viable, she was forced to travel out of state for the abortion she needed to save her and her other baby’s life, who is due in several weeks...Anna was forced to fly across multiple states after her water broke, risking that she would go into labor or septic shock on the journey.
...
The complaint points out that in case after case, the story is essentially the same: Necessary health care is denied; doctors are prevented from treating patients according to long-standing standards of care; and “pervasive fear and uncertainty throughout the medical community regarding the scope of the life and health exceptions have put patients’ lives and physicians’ liberty at grave risk.”
...
Moreover, the ban in Texas comes when its maternal mortality rate, already higher than the national average, is rising. Non-Hispanic Black women are twice as likely as White women to die from pregnancy-related causes. ...
Contradictory and vague language in the Texas abortion ban “leaves physicians uncertain whether the treatment decisions they make in good faith, based on their medical judgment, will be respected or will be later disputed.” The law created chaos, leading to denial of care or forcing women to show “hemorrhaging” or “active signs of infection before they will be offered abortions.”
...
The complaint’s 92 pages bombard the reader with a barrage of evidence — not predictions or opinions, but glaring, unarguable facts. Reading through the excruciating details set out in the complaint, several conclusions become indisputable.
...
When judges and lawmakers arrogantly assume the power to dictate who gets what sort of treatment, the results are bound to be calamitous. This is why we have licensed doctors who are held to recognized standards of care — not forced to follow the dictates of ideologues.

The suffering, dehumanization and abuse of women as a result of these bans should shock any decent human being. If any other group of Americans were put through the trauma, uncertainty, risk and expense to obtain appropriate medical care for, say, a heart condition, the howls of protest would be deafening. And yet, it is only pregnant women who are treated as pawns of the state and denied the best care of their doctors.
...
Her assessment is spot on — and a reminder that abortion bans are not “pro-life” but barbaric and dangerous."

The GOP and their base are not coming to their senses. If anything they are becoming more extreme, more illiberal, more fascistic, more racist and more reactionary. The GOP and its base no longer care about truth and democracy. They are angry, aggrieved, longing for power and in their delusional models of reality, certain they are victimized and justified in hating and hurting their "enemies." They have been weaponized by the obscenely wealthy, the power hungry and their religious and cultural demagogues, to destroy democracy and create an oligarchic, Christian nationalist government. The base only knows they are angry, economically hurting and victims and they are primed to destroy whatever their demagogues tell them is to blame for their woes. It's not the wealthy who have impoverished them and it's not the religious leaders who have misguided and used them, it's the minorities who have stolen their jobs, their privileges and their cultural dominance. There are no economic, industrial, educational or political policies they are being offered by their leaders that will help them. Instead they are being directed to hate and destroy real education, economic opportunities, health care, political and voting reform and progressive policies that could actually benefit them and their children. They are being primed to destroy our democracy, our progress and our society. We must not lose sight of this or we are all doomed.

Opinion | Has the GOP Lost Its Brain? Hardly. | Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/has-the-gop-lost-its-brain-hardly

#GOPFascism
#GOPRacism
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPAreTheToolOfTheRich
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPAuthoritarianism
#GOPTheocracy

"The GOP might be confused about what it is for. But it is crystal clear about what it is against.

And while the nasty skirmish about Kevin McCarthy’s House Speakership might have centered on “egos and power rivalries,” it is a fact that McCarthy, Elise Stefaniak, Steve Scalise and their attack dog Marjorie Taylor Greene in short order came together with Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar—all of whom voted to undo Joe Biden’s election as president—to commit themselves to a culture war against the left and indeed against cultural modernity itself.

Today’s GOP contains idiots and nihilists and pathological liars like George Santos. It contains sheer opportunists such as Mitch McConnell and even McCarthy himself. And since 2016, it has been dominated by a group of right-wing ideologues, inside and outside of government, who have fueled and been fueled by Trump and who are emphatically committed to a reactionary nationalist, racist, and authoritarian vision of “American Greatness.” Whether this vision is carried forward by Trump, or DeSantis, is for them quite beside the point. For that is the GOP vision.
...
They surely inhabit a strange intellectual and moral universe of their own deluded contrivance. But they are not without ideas. They are fanatics, in possession of and possessed by very dangerous ideas. These ideas helped to promote an insurrection. They continue to sustain lies about the legitimacy of the Biden administration and to justify efforts to undermine democratic procedures, voting rights, and racial and gender equality. And they are currently being instrumentalized to reshape K-12 education and higher education in the U.S.

These ideas are very dangerous. And in order to defeat them we need to treat them with the seriousness they deserve."