Sane, responsible, non-delusional voters won't support what these seditious lawmakers are selling, so they have to keep pandering to the chrisitan nationalists, white supremacists and government haters to ensure they get the votes they need to stay in office. They've done this to themselves. They can't quit the crazies now, or they won't have any support, so they keep enflaming them through lies, fake investigations, right-wing, nutjob media and assorted treasonous behaviors that undermine our government and democracy. The term public servant is incomprehensible to these greedy, power-hungry, selfish excuses for humans.

Republican leadership still 'flirting' with Jan. 6 extremists: report - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/republican-leadership-flirting-with-extremists/

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPSelfishSociopaths

"Republicans with an eye on the 2024 general election don't want to talk about the Jan 6th insurrection over fears that it will cripple their chances of retaking the White House and the Senate, but that doesn't mean that they are shunning far-right extremists who are still pushing conspiracy theories that it was instigated by the "deep state."

According to a report from Politico's Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney, some GOP members of the House -- including some members of the leadership -- continue to pander to voters who believe the riot that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives was a righteous cause.

According to the report, "At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late."

The report notes that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) "encapsulates the half-hearted embrace. He angered some allies on the right this year by defending a Capitol Police officer’s decision to shoot a Jan. 6 rioter who was attempting to breach a room adjacent to the House chamber. But he’s also provided exclusive access to thousands of hours of security footage to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who’s used the film to demean and distort police officers’ actions."

Add to that, House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) has been focusing on Jan. 6 issues when he isn't holding hearings on the "weaponization" of the Department of Justice.

"Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) did recently release a wider report that accused the FBI of artificially conflating the number of Jan. 6-related investigations. The report and a subsequent hearing also included testimony from whistleblowers who lost their security clearances due to improper actions related to Jan. 6," Politico is reporting.

The report added, "Jordan also fired off new Jan. 6-related letters, one asking for more information on the FBI’s investigation into pipe bombs found near the Capitol the day of the attack and another expanding a probe into record-sharing with federal investigators. But those efforts make up a small slice of his collective, sweeping investigations."

Without the greedy, obscenely wealthy people who just want more money and less taxes and regulations propping up the deplorable racists, nazis, supremacists and Christian nationalists on the far right, they would never stand a chance in our democracy. But with those wealthy, greedy sleazeball's help, our democracy is in danger.

"So, to the question about what’s really behind the war Republicans are waging against American democracy, the answer is simple: rightwing billionaires who want more, more, more money and are willing to make common cause with bigots, fascists, and wannabee killers to get it.:"

What’s Behind the GOP’s War Against Democracy? https://hartmannreport.com/p/whats-behind-the-gops-war-against?

#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPUsesDeplorables4Votes

"...As German industrialist Fritz Thyssen writes in his apologetic book I Paid Hitler, he pressured German President von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, and then lobbied the Association of German Industrialists, that country’s and era’s version of the US Chamber of Commerce, to donate 3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the 1932 election.

While Thyssen did it primarily because he wanted tax cuts for morbidly rich people like himself and government contracts for his company, his efforts combined with Hugenberg’s media empire brought Hitler and his bigots to power.
...
If the German people were victims, Hitler told them, the villains were German minorities, promoting degeneracy like jazz and swing music, tolerance of homosexuality and transgender people, and the “international Jewish conspiracy.”

Once the Nazis took power they banned books, outlawed drag shows and homosexuality, changed school curricula to remove mention of their atrocities in WWI, and rewrote election laws so they’d never again lose an election.
...
This is all echoed in the crisis today facing both the GOP and the Democratic Party’s opposition to it.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote:

“My friends, the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy. It is rapidly becoming the American fascist party.”

Rightwing American billionaires, parroting Fritz Thyssen, have spent the past decade pouring money into Republican-aligned groups working to change school textbooks, ban library books, outlaw healthcare for queer people, criminalize trans participation in civil society, and make it harder for college students and Black people to vote.

Like Thyssen, most probably aren’t all that bigoted themselves: their primary motivation is lowering their own taxes and increasing their companies’ government purchases and subsidies.

But to get there they must have Republicans in power, and the GOP’s base — while they don’t much care about billionaire’s taxes or corporate deregulation — are fervent bigots.
...
There are signs that a few of the billionaires funding the modern neofascist wing of the GOP’s rise to power are having second thoughts, much as Fritz Thyssen ultimately did in Germany.
...
The billionaire-funded movement to pass anti-voting, anti-trans, anti-Black history, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and anti-public school legislation and policy is roaring down the track, as is the billionaire-owned media campaign to promote fascism.

And since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with Citizens United, the deck remains stacked in their favor.

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox “News,” 1500 rightwing radio stations, hundreds of subsidized rightwing podcasts and media sites, The Wall Street Journal, ALEC, Heritage Foundation, Musk’s rightwing reinvention of Twitter, Facebook’s GOP-leaning algorithms, or the hundreds of other state and national policy operations and think tanks.

The American people, however, seem to be waking up even in the face of this onslaught of billionaire-owned and -funded media and political infrastructure.

The velocity with which Republican governors are leaving ERIC so they can quietly purge people from their voting rolls (now that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized that in 2018) and passing over 400 new make-it-harder-to-vote laws shows how concerned they are about this trend.

So, to the question about what’s really behind the war Republicans are waging against American democracy, the answer is simple: rightwing billionaires who want more, more, more money and are willing to make common cause with bigots, fascists, and wannabee killers to get it.

Given how far we are down this road to fascism — and how the GOP’s fascist faction is being supported by both American billionaires and outsiders like Orbán, Putin, and Xi — the 2024 election may well be the equivalent of the November, 1932 German elections: a make-or-break moment for American democracy."

Wanted to make sure people had a chance to see this attempt to make sense of the GOP that I recently refined and shared.

Teasing apart the various sick layers--and I do mean sick like mentally ill or pathological--of the GOP can be challenging. It is such an unholy alliance!

At the top of this alliance are the obscenely wealthy who only want more money, possessions, and power and couldn't care less about anybody else. Then below them, steering and controlling much of the GOP (McConnel, McCarthy, MGT and their amoral ilk) are the servants/sycophants of the wealthy, trying to earn some of the obscenely wealthy's largesse and get some of the crumbs that fall from their ravenous maws. They are tasked with holding together and consolidating the lower levels of this unholy alliance; the true believers.

These are the fundamentalists/Christian nationalists, the racists/white supremacists, the nazis/fascists, the conspiracy theorists, etc.. None of these groups have enough members to win major elections. Yet if you can rope them all together, fund them and use them to support the policies and tax cuts of the obscenely wealthy, while throwing them breadcrumbs like the abolition of the separation of church and state, racist dog whistles, fascist, authoritarian policies, and some Qanon conspiracy-like theories, you can win elections while mostly just implementing the wealthy's wish lists.

But, over time, some of the true believers, run for office and get elected. They aren't true believers in the obscenely wealthy over all others cult, they believe in stupid things like abortion is evil, we need religion in schools, we need to persecute minorities and immigrants, and take away the rights and power of those on the left. It's kind of like a bug of the obscenely wealthy's alliance rather than a feature and thus you get people like this woman. She fervently believes being gay or trans is evil more than she worships the wealthy.

Together all these groups make up the GOP unholy alliance devised to give the wealthy control of a democratic country.

#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich

This mother would rather have her daughter commit suicide than be trans. What a sick piece of work!
Teasing apart the various sick layers--and I do mean sick like mentally ill or pathological--of the GOP can be challenging. It is such an unholy alliance!

At the top of this alliance are the obscenely wealthy who only want more money, possessions, and power and couldn't care less about anybody else. Then below them, steering and controlling much of the GOP (McConnel, McCarthy, MGT and their amoral ilk) are the servants/sycophants of the wealthy, trying to earn some of the obscenely wealthy's largesse and get some of the crumbs that fall from their ravenous maws. They are tasked with holding together and consolidating the lower levels of this unholy alliance; the true believers.

These are the fundamentalists/Christian nationalists, the racists/white supremacists, the nazis/fascists, the conspiracy theorists, etc.. None of these groups have enough members to win major elections. Yet if you can rope them all together, fund them and use them to support the policies and tax cuts of the obscenely wealthy, while throwing them breadcrumbs like the abolition of the separation of church and state, racist dog whistles, fascist, authoritarian policies, and some Qanon conspiracy-like theories, you can win elections while mostly just implementing the wealthy's wish lists.

But, over time, some of the true believers, run for office and get elected. They aren't true believers in the obscenely wealthy over all others cult, they believe in stupid things like abortion is evil, we need religion in schools, we need to persecute minorities and immigrants, and take away the rights and power of those on the left. It's kind of like a bug of the obscenely wealthy's alliance rather than a feature and thus you get people like this woman. She fervently believes being gay or trans is evil more than she worships the wealthy.

Together all these groups make up the GOP unholy alliance devised to give the wealthy control of a democratic country.

Montana GOP lawmaker's disturbing remarks about (not) saving her daughter's life https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/28/2166375/-Montana-GOP-lawmaker-just-said-she-preferred-her-daughter-commit-suicide-than-transition

#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#InsecurityComplex

"I need to introduce you to someone.

Republican “pro-life” Montana state Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, who sponsored an anti-trans bill in the Montana legislature, gave a speech that essentially said she’d rather her own daughter be dead than be trans.

In her disgusting rant, Crowe makes herself out to be the victim by equating her daughter’s mental health struggles to manipulation.

Just earlier this week we had to listen to the infamously awful Marjorie Taylor Greene telling Randi Weingarten that she’s not a real mother because her kids weren’t “biological.” Well, I’m pretty damn sure Crowe’s poor daughter would have loved the opportunity to be with an adopted loving mother instead of the one she was stuck with.

How do you argue with people this depraved?

California Rep. Ted Lieu weighed in by saying it’s not the government’s role to make personal decisions for families. Thank God, because who wants someone like this making your personal decisions?

This is the part that really struck me:

Someone once asked me, 'Wouldn't I just do anything to help save her?' And I really had to think and the answer was, 'No.'"

When I argue over gun safety after yet another school shooting that leaves dead children behind, I sometimes ask, “What if it was your child?” I see now that I might be wasting my time with this approach.

For some people, their hatred is more important than anything, even their child’s life. "