Liepwr Bak

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bak capt 7 25

prolly neglected as abstract SOP

merri ok

SEE AUTHORITARIAN

SEE LIE GASLIGHT (ORIG MOSTLY ABOUT JAN 6 REHAB]

SEE GOP

see biden impeach bs

see dirty tricks GERRY TEXAS ABBOTT PAXTON TRUMP 7 25

see minority rule

SEE OFFENSE AND SUPPRESSIONS

see alt fact post truth

see conservative right

see oppo res AAF CPI benghazi BS weaponization comer

see Fox 7 big lie smartmatic jan 6

see retaliation eg woke corps

see bad faith wedge issues // fear phobia scam soc med

see legal suppression slapp libel defam lawsuit

see state gop

see debt hostage

see local takeover

see dirty tricks/ stop the steal; gerry, vote suppression (really all suppressions?) voter roll purge quiet period 90 days

SEE HYPOCRISY Claim Credit Vote Against

see coordination campaign (both a crime and a dirty trick, tho FEC never gpes after it eg NRA

maybe redumbdent but just want to mark watershed? RBG PBUH

this is probably authoritarian = fascist but before i danced around, so dirty tricks voter suppression, post truth, hypocrisy // aha on offensive

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polarysis 2: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17VKVKfIa01_r_CeAd5AP4OjdkMyREHtSulFIs278dPA/edit

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ABBOTT PAXTON THREAT ARREST/ EXPLUSION

7 25 TEXAS GERRY GAVIN PRTIZKER ILL HOST DEM REP REFUGEE

'This is a war': Hochul joins blue-state push in brewing gerrymander arms race

David Badash

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an 7 25

A prominent U.S. Senator is warning the Republican Party that if it continues its promise to redistrict their states, eliminating some Democratic-held House seats, she will “go nuclear” and work to do the same. It is rare for a state to redistrict at any time except after the decennial census, but top Democrats have indicated they are prepared to take action in several states.

President Donald Trump recently directed Texas to redistrict, declaring he wanted five of the 13 seats in the Lone Star State currently held by Democrats to become Republican. That alone would make Speaker Mike Johnson’s job easier — he currently oversees the narrowest margin in the House in nearly a century.

“I don’t know if it’s unprecedented what they’re trying to do in Texas,” U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told Axios on Wednesday (video below). “They’re trying to pick their voters, right? They’re trying to redraw the lines in the middle of a decade so that they have more seats, right? It is very open and obvious.”

IFrame Content

Senator Slotkin went on to explain that in her home state of Michigan—a critical swing state—voters added a constitutional amendment against gerrymandering, in response to “how bad it is when politicians get to draw their own districts.”

She noted that when the citizens’ commission is in charge of redistricting her state, it makes it more competitive.

“But I will tell you this,” Slotkin warned, “if they’re gonna go nuclear in Texas, I’m gonna go nuclear in other places.”

“I’m not gonna, like, fight with one arm tied behind my back,” said Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official. “I don’t want to do that, but if they’re proposing to rig the game, like, we’re gonna get in that game and fight.”

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has indicated he wants to reorganize the congressional maps in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington state, to help Democrats pick up as many seats as possible—if the courts allow it.

“We have a responsibility of making sure that we look at every single state of the union and do what we can to ensure that we maximize fairness in those jurisdictions,” Jeffries told CNN. “Some of the best and brightest lawyers in the country are looking at every single aspect of what’s possible in these states.”

Elections analyst Philip Germain responded to Slotkin’s remarks.

“Senator Slotkin continues to understand the moment we’re in and charts a course more Dems should follow,” he wrote. “Democrats cannot continue to ‘play nice’ at the expense of being forced into a competitive authoritarian system of government. We must fight now or get locked out of power.”

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) on Tuesday wrote:

“It’s time for Democrats to understand the existential threat. Republicans aren’t playing around and they will do this as long as it takes to keep power. It’s time we dilute VRA [Voting Rights Act] districts. There are plenty of Democratic districts that have 65-80% Dem performance.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

mma

Right-wing media solidify around “able-bodied” myth as Senate GOP weighs Medicaid cuts

Congressional Republicans are set to kick millions off of Medicaid by implementing work requirements, which conservative pundits falsely claim will strengthen the health insurance program

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

:{:{Published 06/04/25}:

As Republicans in Congress negotiate a budget expected to deliver massive tax cuts to the wealthy while decimating the social safety net, right-wing media figures are perpetuating the myth that large numbers of Medicaid recipients are able-bodied people who refuse to work and therefore should be removed from the program.

The messaging from conservative pundits echoes rhetoric from the Trump administration, which denies that its proposals will kick millions of people off of Medicaid. Instead, the White House is arguing that those who will lose Medicaid coverage “didn’t deserve it in the first place,” according to Politico, which further reports that the administration’s goal is to win passage for the bill “by redefining what qualifies as a cut.”

House Republicans passed their version of the bill on May 22. It has now been taken up by the Senate.

### Congressional Republicans push bill to slash Medicaid and deliver windfall to the rich

On May 22, The New York Times reported that the “work requirement in the bill that just passed the House represents the strictest version Republicans in Congress have ever put forward.” The bill “would require childless adults without disabilities who want Medicaid coverage to prove that they had worked, volunteered or attended school for 80 hours in the month before enrollment.” Medicaid enrollees who failed to meet the requirement would also be barred from buying insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges. The New York Times, [5/22/25]

- The Congressional Budget Office, which offers nonpartisan analysis of federal spending, determined that an earlier version of the bill would cause at least 7.6 million people to become uninsured, with 10.3 million fewer Medicaid enrollees. According to an analysis from liberal think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, when other aspects of the House bill’s changes are included — such as cuts to subsidies for people on ACA plans — “roughly 15 million low- and moderate-income people would lose health coverage and become uninsured under the House Republicans’ sweeping and draconian health care agenda.” Politico, [5/13/25; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/29/25]

- Research from KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, determined that 92% of Medicaid enrollees are either working full- or part-time, or could qualify for a work requirement exemption — such as being enrolled in school, having a disability, or performing caretaking duties. A separate study from the University of Massachusetts Boston found that of able-bodied people who would not qualify for an exemption, 79% are women who likely live in rural areas, are taking care of elderly parents or adult children, and have recently left the workforce. KFF, [5/20/25; University of Massachusetts Boston, 5/2025]

- CNBC reported that the Medicaid-slashing bill will deliver its biggest financial windfalls to “to the wealthiest Americans, courtesy of tax-cutting measures such as those for business owners, investors and homeowners in high-tax areas.” Further analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that “the top 1 percent of people would receive tax cuts three times the size of those for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent, measured as a share of after-tax income.” CNBC, [5/23/25; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/22/25]

### Right-wing media figures push myth that Medicaid is overwhelmed by able-bodied people who refuse to work

On Newsmax, former Trump campaign press secretary Hogan Gidley said the bill “strengthens Medicaid by making sure 1.4 illegal aliens aren't on the program stealing from American citizens. It makes sure that able-bodied Americans, those who can work but refuse to work — also cheating from the system — are no longer covered under this.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [6/3/25]

- Fox News host Laura Ingraham lamented the rise of “stay-at-home sons,” and her guest, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren, suggested that they “may be deadbeat folks on Medicaid.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/29/25]

- Fox News contributor James Freeman criticized the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion for opening up the program to “able-bodied, working age people.” The ACA’s expansion has allowed more than 20 million people across 40 states and the District of Columbia to access the health care program. Freeman urged Republican senators to go after the Medicaid expansion, saying, “I think they need to be bolder in the Senate.” He continued: “For example, one big change that Barack Obama made was extending Medicaid, which used to be for disabled people and poor children, to able-bodied working age people. That needs to be rolled back.” He praised the House bill for including work requirements, but argued the entire expansion should be “rescinded, if they want to change the trajectory of federal spending.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [5/29/25; KFF, “State Health Facts,” accessed 6/2/25; KFF, “Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions,” 5/9/25]

- Fox News host Greg Gutfeld: “In terms of cutting Medicaid, let’s be honest about the Medicaid cuts — this is about able-bodied young men and illegal immigrants.” Fox News, *The Five*, [5/28/25]

- The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “Of course, if you are able-bodied and just poor, you should have to work in order to receive Medicaid.” He added that “80 hours a month, again, that’s 20 hours a week, that’s four hours a workday — my kids are in school for like twice that length of time.” Shapiro previously argued that for able-bodied people who aren’t working, it’s “not because of lack of job opportunity,” and told Medicaid recipients to “get off your butt and work.” Despite Shapiro’s blithe dismissals, when Arkansas implemented its work requirements, roughly 1 in 4 Medicaid recipients statewide lost their coverage even though 95% of the targeted population met the requirements or qualified for an exemption. The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [5/22/25, 5/15/25; KFF, “5 Key Facts About Work Requirements,” 2/18/25; New England Journal of Medicine, 6/19/19]

- On the morning the House bill passed, Fox national correspondent Aishah Hasnie said that some Republicans were “worried there were going to be massive cuts,” but that “really, Republicans wanted to go after illegal immigrants that were using Medicaid and able-bodied men that were on Medicaid.” She added: “They wanted to add work requirements, and those work requirements now will start in 2026. It’s a huge win for fiscal conservatives.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [5/22/29]

- Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum claimed that “Medicaid was designed for low-income families with children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people in need of long-term care. It was not designed for able-bodied people who can work and aren't working.” She added that the government should make sure only “people who deserve these benefits can get them.” Fox News, *The Story With Martha MacCallum*, [5/20/25]

- Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “If you're a young, able-bodied, healthy American man — 26 years old, you don't even want to go to work — you can get on Medicaid.” He added: “You can live at your parents’ house, play softball on the weekend, sell ecstasy on the side, not even look for a job — and you can get free health care. That’s what they’re doing. They’re just closing that lazy loophole.” Fox News, *The Five*, [5/19/25]

- Fox News host Charlie Hurt falsely argued that work requirements would strengthen Medicaid. “A major Democrat attack on the bill is they claim it cuts Medicaid,” Hurt said on May 19. “What it actually does is it saves Medicaid by not paying, first of all, people who are ineligible for it, but also because it doesn’t — it puts in work requirements for, you know, 30-year-old, able-bodied males without dependents, and it says, you know, if you are going to get welfare from the government, you're going to need to work, and that seems like a really low standard to a regular person.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [5/19/25]

- Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has simultaneously attempted to portray himself as a defender of Medicaid — by acknowledging that many of President Donald Trump’s voters use the program — while also arguing for harsh work requirements. “We don't have great jobs, and that’s why a lot of MAGA is on Medicaid,” Bannon said. He added: “An able-bodied seaman ought to be putting in, I don’t know, 40-60 hours? If it’s a month they ought to just rack it up.” (Bannon is a former Navy officer and frequently speaks in military slang.) “If you’re able-bodied, you’ve got to show that you’ve got work requirements, minimum,” he concluded. Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [5/13/25; Media Matters, 3/4/25]

---

MAGA media parrot GOP lie about looming Medicaid cuts

Analysts predict millions of Americans will lose Medicaid coverage to fund Republican tax cuts for the rich

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 06/03/25 mma

Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers are getting help from their MAGA media allies to deny the effects of their “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the GOP-controlled House last month and is expected to kick millions of Americans off their Medicaid coverage while cutting taxes for the rich. Journalists and experts are calling out these Republicans for their lies that their bill won’t cut Medicaid.

Following this criticism, the administration is reportedly shifting its argument to falsely claim that the only people who will lose Medicaid coverage will be those who don’t deserve it, specifically “people who are here illegally” and “capable and able-bodied men who refuse to work.” This too, is a lie.

The vast majority (92%) of people on Medicaid already work or engage in caregiving or have disabilities or other statuses that would exempt them from a work requirement. The remaining 8% of the population is overwhelmingly made up of women, not the hypothetical “capable and able-bodied men who refuse to work.” And furthermore, federal Medicaid funding already cannot be used to pay for coverage of undocumented immigrants; states that currently provide analogous health care coverage to undocumented immigrants do so with their own tax dollars.

## Republican officials denied Medicaid cuts will result in enrollment losses

- House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on NBC’sMeet the Pressthat “4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so.” Johnson was defending the work requirements the GOP legislation is adding to Medicaid. NBC News, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Trump Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on CNN’sState of the Union: “No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.” Vought also defended the new Medicaid work requirements, stating: “We have able-bodied working adults that don’t have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even SNAP. And those are something that’s very important to institute. That’s what this bill does.” Politico, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Trump Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a Politico interview, “We’re not cutting Medicaid.” Later in the interview, Oz agreed when interviewer Dasha Burns said that work requirements are “the biggest part of” how Republicans “want to kind of cut and cull” Medicaid. Politico, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on CNBC’sSquawk Box: “There’s a lot of confusion that Democrats have lied about. They went out there, Joe, and said that we’re cutting Medicaid benefits.” CNBC, *Squawk Box*, [_{6/2/25}_]

- Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told a constituent that “we are all going to die” in response to complaints about the GOP bill stripping Americans of Medicaid coverage. This comment followed her claim that only people ineligible for Medicaid would lose coverage. NPR, [_{5/31/25}_]

## Right-wing media have amplified these Republican lies that their bill will not lead to losses in Medicaid coverage

- Breitbart: “Speaker Johnson: ‘No Medicaid cuts in the big beautiful bill.’”Breitbart, [_{6/1/25}_]

- The Post Millennial posted clips of Johnson claiming “we’re not cutting Medicaid,” defending Medicaid work requirements, and framing those requirements as “strengthening the program.” Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_, 6/1/25]

- Daily Caller: “‘We’re not cutting Medicaid’: Dr. Oz seems to confirm Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ will not cut program.” Daily Caller, [_{5/30/25}_]

- Pro-Trump CNBC host Joe Kernen joined Mullin in denying that Republicans are cutting Medicaid, stating: “No one believes that.” CNBC, *Squawk Box*, [_{6/2/25}_; Mediaite, 12/5/24]

- Fox Business host Dagen McDowell: “Anybody on the left, Josh Hawley, anybody crying about Medicaid cuts, there are no cuts. Shut up.” Fox Business, *The Big Money Show*, [_{6/2/25}_]

- Newsmax chyron: “Dems lie about Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill.'” Newsmax host Carl Higbie aired clips of Democrats calling out Republican cuts to Medicaid and said, “They are not exactly telling the truth.” His guest, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), said, “Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security are not getting touched,” after Higbie said: “So no cuts there.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [_{5/29/25}_]

- Newsmax host Marc Lotter cited a Trump post claiming there will be “NO CUTS” to Medicaid when asking a guest, “Do you think, finally, Americans can actually separate the fact from fiction here?” Lotter added: “Democrats use this same rhetoric every time they oppose Republicans.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [_{6/3/25}_]

## Media and issue experts call out Republicans for lies about the bill cutting Medicaid coverage

- Rolling Stone: “Mike Johnson and Russ Vought continue to lie about Medicaid cuts.” The Rolling Stone article noted that Vought vastly exaggerated the rate of “improper” Medicaid payments, and falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are “on the program.” Rolling Stone then cited multiple estimates showing millions of people losing Medicaid coverage if the GOP bill becomes law. A second Rolling Stone article on this topic declared, “Republicans are flat-out lying about their Medicaid cuts.” Rolling Stone, [_{6/1/25}_, 6/2/25]

- Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell mocked the Republican dissembling about Medicaid coverage losses from their bill. Rampell wrote: “OP response to credible estimates that ~8m people will lose insurance due to Medicaid cuts: 1) no one will lose coverage 2) only the freeloaders and bums will lose coverage (not deserving people like you!) 3) look we're all going to die anyway.” Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Public Notice’s Aaron Rupar: “Vought blatantly lies about Medicaid cuts on CNN, claiming ‘no one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.’” Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Rupar: “Mike Johnson blatantly lies on Meet the Press: ‘You can underscore what I'm about to tell you -- there are no Medicaid cuts in the big beautiful bill.’”Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

- Rupar: “CNBC allows Markwayne Mullin to lie with impunity that Republicans aren't cutting Medicaid benefits (they are cutting Medicaid benefits).” Twitter/X, [_{6/2/25}_]

- Chamber of Progress director of economic analysis Tahra Hoops: “This is incredibly false. Millions would lose their coverage under this bill, there is no other result should this pass.” Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

- KFF executive vice president for health policy Larry Levitt: “You can’t argue that cuts to Medicaid of over $700 billion over a decade won’t result in people losing coverage.”Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

- The Atlantic contributing writer James Surowiecki: “If no one will lose Medicaid coverage as a result of the budget bill, then Republicans are telling extraordinary lies about the spending cuts in the bill.” Twitter/X, [_{6/2/25}_]

- Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias: “The CBO says that approximately 7,600,000 people will lose coverage as a result of the bill’s Medicaid cuts.” Yglesias was responding to a clip of Vought denying losses of Medicaid coverage in his CNN interview. Twitter/X, [_{6/1/25}_]

## Independent estimates predict millions of Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage if the bill passes

- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Republicans’ tax bill would cut $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP to fund tax cuts for people earning more than $500,000 annually. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [_{5/16/25}_]

- Politico: The Congressional Budget Office estimated that “the Medicaid portions of the GOP megabill would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the health safety net program and 7.6 million people going uninsured.” According to Politico, this was a partial estimate released by Republicans. Politico, [_{5/13/25}_]

- CBPP: “Roughly 15 million people could lose coverage and become uninsured under House Republican plan.” The CBPP added the expected 7.6 million uninsured from the Medicaid cuts alone to estimates of coverage losses from the House GOP bill’s failure to extend premium tax credits and other cuts to the Affordable Care Act. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [_{5/29/25}_]

- KFF: Forty states and the District of Columbia could see at least 13% of their Medicaid recipients kicked off their insurance, with rates of loss as high as 32%. This is a high-end estimate of state-by-state Medicaid coverage losses from KFF. KFF, [_{5/16/25}_]

- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: New work requirements alone could put “9.7 million to 14.4 million people at risk of losing Medicaid coverage in 2034.” CBPP explained, “Evidence shows that much of the coverage loss due to work requirements would occur among people who work or should qualify for an exemption but nevertheless would lose coverage due to red tape.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [_{5/13/25}_]

- Economic Policy Institute: “Work requirements effectively function like a cut to programs.” EPI explained that “while work requirements do not reliably increase employment, they do significantly increase the administrative burden and costs of applying for safety net programs. This increased administrative burden, in turn, reduces access and take-up.” EPI further explained, “In many cases, the sheer amount of additional administrative burdens levied on adults seeking benefits, and on case workers screening to ensure that work requirements are met, is a major driver in the decline in participation.” Economic Policy Institute, [_{1/24/25}_]

### Fox’s Maria Bartiromo whips Republican support for devastating Medicaid cuts

:{:{05/20/25}:

### Newsmax guest: “The problem with the big beautiful bill is that it doesn't kick enough people off Medicaid”

:{:{06/03/25}:

### Sean Hannity calls Medicaid “a cancer that has metastasized”

05/28/25

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no lnx

Expert warns 'gaslighting' Republican plan does 'much more harm' than just gutting Medicare

John Stoehr June 04, 2025

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still saying 300 yr get SS but now fixed!

raw 625

Late-night Trump brag shattered by 'damning' report issued just hours later

// an 6 25

An analysis by Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler shows the Trump administration is still wheeling out lies months after they’ve been outed.

“This is an example of how, even after falsehoods are exposed, the spin machine keeps working,” wrote Kessler, referring to a March 4 post by President Donald Trump that “government databases list … 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129, 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them.”

In February, the Washington Post published an article documenting the truth of the matter, that Social Security databases rely on an almost 70-year-old computer programming language called COBOL, which doesn’t have a standardized way to store dates.

This means ancient programmers assigned a default date, such as 1875, to people lacking birth information, many of them seniors born before a reliable federal birth recording program was in place. But when Musk’s DOGE team scanned Social Security systems, “they were shocked to find people listed in the system with absurd ages because of the limitations of an old programming language,” writes Kessler.

IFrame Content

People familiar with Social Security’s systems were already aware of the issue, of course. The Social Security Administration has automatically terminated the benefits of people once they reach age 115 since 2015. Kessler reports the U.S. Office of Inspector General had recommended a cleanup of the system in 2023, but Social Security deferred the project because it would “divert resources” from other important work and “would have limited or no benefit to the administration.” A 2023 IG report found the vast majority of beneficiaries who lacked a birth date had already died and been purged from the system anyhow. Plus, any major overhaul could introduce new errors to the system.

Still, the notion of wrongdoers scamming Social Security was “an irresistible talking point,” says Kessler, so much so that DOGE bragged of fixing the “problem” late last month on social media: “After 11 weeks, Social Security has finished this major cleanup initiative: ~12.3M individuals aged 120+ have now been marked as deceased.”

“The post was carefully worded,” said Kessler. “It did not claim that 12 million people had received improper payments. Instead, it said that these people had been marked as deceased. In other words, DOGE appears to have implemented the plan suggested by the IG two years ago.”

Despite that, Kessler said Trump supporters eagerly greeted the news and used it to justify the president's “original false claim.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was one of many cheerleaders jumping aboard a non-moving train, claiming: "No more 300-year-olds getting Social Security checks because of Elon Musk. Thank God President Trump had the wisdom to put Elon in place."

The train included other personalities such as right-wing entertainer Sean Hannity, and Speaker Mike Johnson.

“… [W]ithin the echo chamber of the pro-Trump universe, a problem that never existed now has been fixed,” Kessler said.

Read the original Washington Post report at this link.

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no lnx

How MAGA got brainwashed: The science behind the right-wing’s 50-year propaganda campaign

Thom Hartmann May 14, 2025

Donald Trump has been lying to us ever since he came down that escalator. He just never stops lying because as a lifelong con man, it’s all he knows how to do.

He’s still insisting he won the 2020 election, despite having lost by about 7 million votes and being wiped out in the Electoral College. He lied at the State of the Union about having a mandate to cut Medicaid, as Rep. Al Green (D-TX) pointed out. Along with over 100 other lies he told that day. And now he’s lying about his trade deals with the UK and other governments. Every single day he adds to the pile of lies he’s inflicting on the American people and the world.

Science, it turns out, explains why this works for him.

Not the science of elections: the science of propaganda.

New findings from psychologists at universities in California and Georgia published in the journal Cognitive Research show that the more often a statement — regardless of its truthfulness — is repeated, the more emphatically it’s believed.

The researchers noted:

“Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness.”

While modern science is affirming this truism, it’s been in use a long time. In the past century, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called out Republicans for using what we today call the Big Lie around several issues. Running for re-election in 1944, he said:

“The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself.“The technique was all set out in Hitler's book — and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible — if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”

Back then Republicans were lying that Democrats had caused the Republican Great Depression (as it was called until the 1950s) and that FDR had “failed” to adequately prepare America for war with Germany or Japan (while Republican after Republican took to the floor of Congress to tell us, before the war, that “we can do business with Hitler”).

Now Trump’s lies (like about the election, immigrants, and what Elon Musk is up to) are parroted daily by Republican politicians and usually echoed in the media without pushback. After all, Trump reportedly slept with a collection of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside: he would be fluent in Hitler’s Big Lie strategy.

Besides the addition of Trump’s lies, Republican lies haven’t changed a lot since FDR’s era, although they’re more focused and now repeated daily by thousands of rightwing websites, bloggers, podcasts, Fox “News,” and talk radio shows.

Over the past 44 years, Republican billionaires have built an extraordinary nationwide media propaganda machine. Their goal was directed towards justifying tax cuts for the morbidly rich and the deregulation of polluting industries, but now it’s been taken over by Trump acolytes promoting, among other lies, the idea the Democrats torture children and drink their blood.

The “useful idiots” in this scheme have been the American corporate and billionaire-owned media, who dutifully echo or leave unchallenged the GOP’s regular lies.

One of the Republicans most egregious lies — that America is evenly split 50/50 between Republicans and Democrats and on the issues of the day — is constantly repeated on the political Sunday shows. Always without a single word of pushback from the show’s host.

While the Senate may be more-or-less split 50/50, Democrats in the Senate represent over 40 million more Americans than do Republicans. And on issues like tax cuts for billionaires, the right to unionize, access to Medicare/Medicaid, climate change, the right to abortion, privatizing Social Security, drug prices, Medicaid expansion, free college, and the minimum wage Americans are overwhelmingly on the side of Democrats.

So how did so many Americans end up believing the many lies that are daily pushed by the GOP?

In a word: repetition, just like the science shows works. Here are a few of their greatest hits, with each followed by my rebuttal:

'Tax cuts produce prosperity'

In a remarkable study published by The London School of Economics, looking at 18 wealthy OECD countries over 50 years, the researchers discovered, unambiguously:

“We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”

In other words, tax cuts for the rich make the rich richer and throw the nation into debt, but otherwise have no measurable effect on the economy.

Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been assuring us that if we just give more money to the “job creators,” they’ll use it to open new factories and raise wages. In fact, the morbidly rich simply put that extra money into their offshore accounts and money bins.

In fact, in the 44 years since Reagan started the practice of massive Republican tax cuts for the richest Americans, there has been a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from America’s working class into the money bins of our morbidly rich.

The idea that tax cuts for the rich and corporations would produce prosperity was a lie from the beginning and still is, but Republicans are still repeating it after nearly 50 years of disastrous experience with neoliberal Reaganomics.

...?

In fact, immigrants — legal and undocumented — are far less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. After all, who wants to either get deported or blow up their chances of becoming a citizen of the country they’ve taken such huge and often deadly chances to reach?

And the statistics aren’t even close. In a massive study funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, published by the University of Wisconsin at Madison, scientists discovered American citizens are 200% to 400% more likely to commit violent felonies against persons, drug crimes, and felony property crimes than immigrants, regardless of their immigration status.

But that won’t stop rightwing media from hyping every exception-to-the-rule when an immigrant is caught committing a crime. Lies, after all, are the coin of their realm.

The minimum wage was established in 1938 and has been raised 22 times. If there had ever been — in all that time — even a single year when inflation increases could be tied to increases in the minimum wage, every Republican in America would have the year memorized.

“You don’t want what happened in 1958 to happen ever again!” they’d warn us while wagging fingers in our faces. Except there is not even one single example of an increase in the minimum wage increasing inflation, which is why they never cite a single statistic or year.

When researchers decided to seriously dig into the topic, they found that a massive 10% increase in the minimum wage may have as much as a 0.1% — one-tenth-of-one-percent, or ten cents on a $100 product — impact on inflation, but that’s never been recorded in American history. Wages simply aren’t that large a part of the price of most goods and even most services.

This is a favorite of the multi-billion-dollar union-busting industry to roll out in their mandatory “reeducation” sessions with captive workers who are considering voting for unionization. It’s a complete lie.

Unlike workers’ actual bosses, whose compensation typically goes up with profits, union “bosses” are simply employees of heavily regulated nonprofit organizations (unions) who work on a salary. They earn just a small fraction of what the actual corporate bosses take from the companies they’re trying to unionize.

When they’re successful, however, union bosses do reduce corporate profits by forcing companies to give their workers better pay and benefits. Which is why corporations are willing to pay millions of dollars a day, in some cases, to bring in these high-powered law firms to intimidate workers.

This one depends on how you define “corrupt.” If you mean that dead people are voting or people are voting multiple times in multiple states, that’s so rare as to compete with the Loch Ness Monster for headlines.

After all, with millions of dollars and over a hundred lawyers and lawmakers, Republicans tried in 60 courtrooms (including the U.S. Supreme Court) to prove even a single case of election fraud that may have affected the outcome of the 2020 election: they failed every time.

On the other hand, if you define “corrupt” as Republican elections officials purging millions of voters — most people of color, students, city-dwellers, and the working poor — from the voting rolls, then maybe there’s some truth to it. But that’s not the line Republicans are selling.

This is one of the deadliest lies Republicans promote. A massive study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine found that having a gun in the home doubles the risk of residents of that home being victims of homicide and triples the risk of successful suicide.

Nonetheless, the big gun manufacturers and their Russian-supported National Rifle Association shower millions on Republican politicians all across America, so now guns have become the top cause of death among children here, something that’s never happened in any developed country, anytime in history, anywhere else in the world.

America now has about 120 guns per 100 people, while in most other developed countries the ratio is around 20 guns per 100 people. In many countries — Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example — it’s fewer than one gun per 100 people.

We are awash in blood and gun violence because of this Republican lie.

This lie is vigorously promoted by the Christian nationalist movement, led by multi-millionaire preachers and televangelists who are not only profiting from it but also have acquired considerable political power through it.

America, in fact, was the first democracy in the world that was founded in an entirely and explicitly secular fashion. The only prominent Founder who promoted the idea of America as a Christian nation was “Give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry, who was Virginia’s largest slaveholder and refused to sign the Constitution when it was finished in the fall of 1787.

Jefferson, Franklin, Rush, Washington and numerous others among the Founders didn’t even consider themselves Christians, and those who did — most notably John Adams and James Madison — were outspoken about the dangers of mixing religion and politics.

President Madison’s first veto, in fact, was to strike down a law that gave a DC church money to run a poorhouse. He said in his veto message that it would strike a bad precedent for the American government to give any money whatsoever to any church for a function that government should run itself.

Madison, who was a regular churchgoer (Jefferson attended, too, because until the Revolution the law in Virginia required church membership and attendance as a prerequisite for running for political office), was concerned that government money would corrupt the religion he loved; Jefferson was worried that if “priests” ever became politicians it would lead to the ruin of the republic.

The two debated the issue of which was the greatest danger to America regularly: it turns out both were right.

This is so facially absurd it shouldn’t even require mentioning, but there is literally not a single elected Republican at the federal level (at least that I know of) who will contradict it.

Like with the gun industry, the fossil fuel industry pays their politicians very well, and, since the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision and its predecessors, that money has worked to hold the GOP in the blood-stained clutches of the industry.

And now these Republican lies about climate change threaten all life on Earth.

So much happened during the last Trump administration that Americans can be forgiven for forgetting that Trump, in 2019, promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that he wouldn’t object if Xi brutally crushed the Hong Kong independence movement.

Trump was working on getting Chinese trademarks for his daughter Ivanka’s fashion line and other Ivanka-branded items (including coffins, voting machines, and almost any other category available) so, as CNN reported on October 4, 2019:

“The remarkable pledge to the Chinese leader is a dramatic departure from decades of US support for human rights in China and shows just how eager Trump is to strike a deal with Beijing…”

Trump’s so-called “trade war” with China was a joke. He imposed a few cosmetic tariffs that backfired and the Chinese didn’t take seriously because they were done by executive order rather than an act of Congress.

After hubby Jared got $2 billion for selling America out to Saudi Arabia, Ivanka seems to have lost interest in her business dealings in China. But in the meantime, the democracy movement in Hong Kong was completely crushed and its advocates are now dead or in prison thanks to Trump.

Every one of these lies, among others, are vigorously promoted by GOP-aligned media.

Their constant repetition has led average Republicans to fervently believe them, to the detriment of both the United States and, particularly with climate change, the future of life on Earth.

And now Trump has rolled out a new Big Lie that the media is obediently repeating: surrendering Ukraine to Russia will bring about “peace.” It’s probably the most despicable lie he’s promoted in decades.

FDR was right to call out the Republican Party for their Big Lie strategy back in the day. Tragically, he was 80 years too early for today’s Americans to realize the long, deep roots of the modern GOP’s propaganda strategy.

Over the past 40 years, our media has been largely complicit, echoing these Republican Big Lies. It’s well past time for American media to take its responsibility to present the truth seriously.

NOW READ: The single stupidest statement about Trump ever made

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SEE BAD FAITH LIE TRUMP CONSTANTLY SAYS NO CUT SOC SEC; GOP SAY SAME BUT PASS BILL TO CUT 800M NO OTHER WAY

an 525

'Under cover of night,' Republicans unveil plan to kick over 8 million off healthcare

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an 10 24

Republican election officials are currently being sued in multiple states for purging eligible voters just before Americans go to the polls in November. Now, one watchdog group fighting back argues the purges are part of a larger GOP strategy.

According to the Independent, voters in both Alabama and Tennessee are suing their respective secretaries of state after finding out they had been removed from voter rolls for being "non-citizens." One of the plaintiffs, 49 year-old Alabama resident James Cozzad, is a registered Republican who voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections without incident. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Cozzad said he had been "racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue."

"It feels like they are trying to make me think I’ve broken the law — just for trying to exercise my right to vote. While I hope it was just a mistake, I think if they were just trying to verify something, they would have done so long before the election," he continued. "Now I can understand why some people feel as though their vote isn’t worth casting."

The Independent further reported that thousands more voters have been purged from the rolls in states with Republican election chiefs — including Virginia, where the Department of Justice alleges Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee has also removed thousands of voters. Even though there is no evidence that non-citizens have tried to vote in the Old Dominion State, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin bragged about kicking approximately 6,000 voters from the rolls for allegedly being illegal immigrants.

These voter purges are notably taking place during the so-called "quiet period," in which states are barred from making drastic changes to their election systems and voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Watchdog group Protect Democracy attorney Anna Dorman is arguing that Republican secretaries of state — along with GOP groups filing frivolous lawsuits in the courts — are acting in "bad faith" and that their arguments are "not strong on the merits."

"Their sole purpose is to use the legitimacy of the court system to launder conspiracy theories and make them feel more legitimate, so that if the election results don’t go the way these people want in November, they have some additional conspiracies to put forward to try to undermine peaceful transfer of power," Dorman told the Independent.

The outlet reported that GOP-aligned groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits in 2024 alone, which are largely what Protect Democracy calls "zombie lawsuits." The group uses that term to describe litigation that will almost certainly get thrown out at first glance due to there being no factual basis to plaintiffs' claims of fraudulent activity.

“They’re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,” a Protect Democracy report read. “Regardless of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.”

Earlier this year, both former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago to announce an initiative aimed at curbing non-citizen voting. Johnson unsuccessfully tried to include legislation that would require voters show proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate or a U.S. passport) upon registering to vote in the latest must-pass government funding bill. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated there are several million U.S. citizens who would not be able to meet that burden of proof due to difficulty locating or obtaining citizenship documents, meaning they would be disenfranchised.

Click here to read the Independent's report in its entirety.

READ MORE:['They're just coming after us': Project 2025 org is now harassing voter registration groups

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standup guy

an 9 24

Nebraska is among the few states in the U.S. that splits its electoral votes, and the area around Omaha — which has one electoral vote — has been leaning Democrat in recent years.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has been urging Nebraska to abandon that system and switch to a winner-take-all format.

But Nebraska State Sen. Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat turned Republican, is, according to the New York Times, pushing back against the proposal.

READ MORE:[Trump is 'losing women voters' badly — here's why it may get even worse

In an official statement on Monday, September 23, McDonnell said, "In recent weeks, a conversation around whether to change how we allocate our Electoral College votes has returned to the forefront. I respect the desire of some of my colleagues to have this discussion, and I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change."

McDonnell, according to the Times, said he told Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, "I will not change my long-held position and will oppose any attempted changes to our Electoral College system before the 2024 election."

The Nebraska Examiner's Aaron Sanderford notes that "McDonnell's no on winner-take-all leaves Republicans in Nebraska's officially nonpartisan legislature with no path to overcoming a promised filibuster unless a Democrat or nonpartisan senator defects."

"Part of the GOP urgency is wrapped in national polling that shows a close race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee," Sanderford reports. "Some political observers have argued the 2nd District could break a 269-269 Electoral College tie. Few Democrats were surprised that the fate of winner-take-all largely swung on McDonnell, a former Omaha fire union president who switched to the GOP this spring after facing political pushback from Democrats for backing abortion restrictions."

Sanderford adds, "Several said the abortion debate should have shown Republicans that McDonnell is largely immovable once he has made a controversial position clear. McDonnell said when he switched parties that he would not support winner-take-all. Others said he did what helped him most politically.

READ MORE:[Harris sees 'largest favorability increase for any politician' since Bush post-9/11: report

an 9 24

2024 Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance (R-OH) is facing significant backlash after he admitted his claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio is a lie.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein reported via X: "JD Vance acknowledges the cat and dog stories are urban legends and then rationalizes it (via CNN): 'If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.'"

After Donald Trump parroted the debunked claim during his debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday, a Springfield, Ohio spokesperson told ABC News earlier this week that "these claims are false, and that there have been 'no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.'"

The spokesperson added that "there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic."

A slew of political experts and journalists immediately rebuffed the VP hopeful's Sunday CNN interview admission.

The anti-Trump Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson replied: "'If I have to create stories' will be on his political tombstone."

Marie Claire former contributing editor Karen Schwartz added: "The GOP VP candidate is proud to have made up stories that have lead to closed schools and bomb threats in hospitals."

Zack Beauchamp, Vox senior politics correspondent, said: "Vance isn’t as good at lying as Trump because he feels a deep need to be respected intellectually. So you get humiliating admissions like this"

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote: "If they told you the truth about their plans for abortion rights, health care, and Social Security you wouldn't vote for them so they're making stuff up instead."

National Journal columnist Natalie Jackson added: "I usually refrain from using the f-word on social media, but truly there is no other way to describe this than completely fucked up."

Austin Chronicle culture editor Richard Whittaker commented: "Where I come from, you call people like this liars. It's now perfectly fine to call him a liar - because he acknowledged that he lied."

READ MORE:[Springfield resident who ignited false rumor 'feels' for Haitian community: 'I am not a racist'

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mma

Where did Trump's false claim that schools are providing gender-affirming surgeries come from?

Trump’s campaign was unable to provide a single example supporting his claim, repeated at a rally over the weekend. Similar lies have been spread by right-wing media figures in the past.

Special ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Ari Drennen & Alyssa Tirrell

Research contributions from Vesper Henry

Published 09/10/24

At a September 7 rally in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump again repeated his baseless that schools could be providing gender-affirming surgeries to minors without parental consent.

IFrame Content

Mainstream outlets have debunked Trump's claim, assuring readers that “no children are going to school and receiving surgery there for gender dysphoria.” According to CNN, “Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening.”

But accusations that schools "groom" children into identifying as trans have circulated throughout right-wing media and politics in recent years. Some outlets and media figures have gone even further.

At a 2023 event, Rafael Cruz, father of Texas senator and onetime Trump primary opponent Ted Cruz, claimed that children were being “mutilated” by gender affirming care in public schools. Right-wing outlets including National Review, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire have all promoted claims that public schools are providing cross-sex hormones to children, leaving out of their headlines the important detail that parental consent is required to access this treatment.

The day before Trump made this claim, the account Libs of TikTok also appeared to make the same unsubstantiated accusation by implication.

IFrame Content

The National Center for Youth Law notes that under the law in question, only very specific services can be provided for minors without parental consent, such as STD testing, abortion care, and treatment for sexual abuse. Those services do not include gender-affirming care, which cannot be provided to a minor without parental consent in the state of California.

Libs of TikTok has a documented history of posting misleading and false content. Chaya Raichik, the creator behind the account, has maintained a right to do so as recently as February 2024, asking an interviewer who questioned the policy, "Is there a law against lying?”

While conservative groups have similarly acknowledged that there is zero documented evidence of expensive gender-affirming surgeries being performed in cash-strapped public schools, their resident anti-trans obsessives say that accuracy isn’t the point.

“Are kids getting surgery in school? No they’re not,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice admitted to CNN, insisting, however, that Trump’s statement “grabbed your attention, and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.”

Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Project 2025 partner Heritage Foundation, also defended the claim to CNN. “Just change a couple words,” he said, and the claim “is 100% accurate and correct” — a standard that could be applied to any lie ever told.

Right-wing activists appear to see Trump’s words not as statements to be evaluated for accuracy, but rather as non literal expressions of presidential priorities. And indeed, the former president has laid out a draconian set of policy proposals targeting the trans community in a hypothetical second term.

These proposals include targeting federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care, creating a “new credentialing body” for teachers that promotes conservative ideas about the nuclear family, and asking “Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

When asked about these priorities at the Moms for Liberty event last Friday, Trump issued a chilling reply: “The President has such power.”

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an 8 24

back in 1994, anthropologist Eugenie Scott (founder of the National Center for Science Education) coined a term for a debating technique favored by creationists: the "Gish gallop." That technique, named for creationist Duane Gish, has been used a lot by Christian fundamentalists since then, including those who are prominent figures in the Republican Party.

Writer Madhusudan Katti examines the use of the "Gish gallop" in an article published by Scientific American on August 20, arguing that it has had an extremely negative effect on U.S. politics.

"(Duane Gish's) tactic consisted of talking fast and with confidence, bombarding opponents with falsehoods, non-sequiturs and enough cherry-picked factoids to confuse the audience," Katti explains. "Scientists debating him faced the challenge of sifting half-truths from outright lies and finding the right evidence to refute them systematically, all within the few minutes allowed in response — which effectively meant that when the bell went off, the Gish gallop left the scientist 'stumped' and Gish declaring victory for creationism."

Katti cites Donald Trump's performance during his debate with President Joe Biden in late June as a prime example of the "Gish gallop" being used on an opponent.

"The migration of the Gish gallop from creationist's patter onto the presidential debate stage, and increasingly onto news opinion pages nationwide, exemplifies a dangerous debasement of honest dialogue in American life," Katti warns. "That both the public and its leaders pass over, or applaud, this kind of dishonesty on the highest political stage shows how integrity has taken a back seat to 'winning' power in politics, business and the so-called 'culture wars,' and now, (is) shrouding us in a fog of disinformation."

Trump, according to Katti, has used the "Gish gallop" repeatedly.

"In politics, the Gish gallop is precisely what Trump deployed in the June debate, putting Joe Biden at a significant disadvantage in attempting to refute even some of the falsehoods in the torrent of lies," Katti observes. "Trump, as anyone even half paying attention to his speeches knows, is an expert at the Gish gallop. He projects the utmost confidence while bombastically repeating lie after lie until it overwhelms his audience into either accepting every word he says as the truth, or walking off in disgust because there is no way to get him to acknowledge any truth."

Katti argues that when Vice President Kamala Harris debates Trump in September, she will need to "counter Trump's Gish gallop more forcefully" than Biden did in June.

Katti warns, "She will face a well-practiced con artist and loud dissembler who will flood the zone with enough falsehoods to outshout the former prosecutor and senator…. When it's her turn to respond, Harris should turn the tables on Trump by calling him out as a liar without bothering to refute each lie and refocus the audience on her own message."

FAKE NEWS comeback 7 24? AA reporter april --- starts w/ tough but fair questions, you’re ABC? fake news...

AHA: back in the enemy of the ppl phase, rubber reverse term, you’re the puppet becomes a cudgel to deflect crit [origin in Newt debate had done something horrible to wife, he attacked press out of the gate; become std for GOP to trash press before answering any question as a sort of pre-emptive prophylactic tactic?

IF YOU NEUTRALIZE FACT CHECK, SHARED REALITY YOU GET POLAR ECHO ESCA FROM THE FEVER SWAMP --? ALT FACT EARTH2

ironically there is lots of fake news, it's just all made by the right

eg...

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July 31, 2024, edition of CNN's *CNN News Central

DANIEL DALE (REPORTER): So the controversialness of the claims about Vice President Harris' identity will probably make the most headlines, but I think it's important to note that his claims on that subject are also false. You know, he said that Vice President Harris has only “turned Black” a couple of years ago and before that she was only promoting her Indian heritage. That is just not true. I quickly — just via Google and with the help of CNN's KFile team, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck — found multiple examples of her talking about her Black identity going back decades.

Her biography on the official website of the San Francisco district attorney page identified her as an African American woman. I found an article in Politico that quoted her talking about her Black identity and speaking out against anti-Black racism in 1989, as a law student. So this is not some sort of sudden identity conversion, that's just completely fictional.

And then, guys, it was just a laundry list of old Trump false claims. So, his claim that — well, he said she didn't pass the bar exam. You addressed that. She passed on a second try and was admitted to the bar a year after she graduated law school.

He talked about Democrats allowing the death of babies after birth, suggesting that there's some sort of post-birth abortion. Again, not true, illegal in every state.

He said, “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, this issue returned to the states. No, that's not true. Roe was overwhelmingly popular with about two-thirds of the American public.

He talked again about foreign countries opening up prisons to send people here as migrants — has never provided any proof of that.

Talked about people coming here from mental institutions over the border. Again, provided no proof of that.

And he exaggerated numbers even that could work for him. So, talking about inflation, yes, has been a problem under President Biden, Vice President Harris. He said worst inflation in 58 years and then he said actually over 100 years. Well, it's not even the worst in 20 years right now. It's about 3%. And when it did hit a high under Biden and Harris in 2022, it was a 40-year high. So, he could just say we hit a 40-year high — instead, he made a 58 and then 100-plus, none of which is true.

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Newsmax's Greg Kelly: “Fact-checking is fake, and it's actually kinda dangerous”](https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-kelly/newsmaxs-greg-kelly-fact-checking-fake-and-its-actually-kinda-dangerous)

08/01/24 mma

July 31, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): Speaking of President Trump, he went to the National Association of Black Journalists today in Chicago, and everybody lost their mind when Donald Trump spoke the truth. Now one thing first, the National Association of Black Journalists, NABJ, I don't like it right off the top. Let's see here. It was founded in 1975, stated purpose is to provide quality programs and services and advocate on behalf of Black journalists. I just -- something that divides us.

I mean, I don't know. The National Association for White Journalists, can you conceive of such a thing? No. Nobody could. White people don't have anything really in common. Black people don't have anything in common. We don't look at it that way. Faith, sports, neighbors, jobs, a million other things bring us together or divide us actually other than race. So, and in my experience, Black, white, Asian, the media, they're pretty much all jerks. OK? It really doesn't matter.

Just before Donald Trump took the stage, I had a feeling things were gonna go south because this person here, Rachel Scott is her name from ABC News, laid down the ground rules.

...

Oh my gosh. You can't fact check political speech, rhetoric, I mean, opinion. You can't fact check it. And as we know, Google and all the search engines have now been rigged against conservatives. It sounds great. You hear the audience going crazy. It's not. Fact-checking is fake, and it's actually kinda dangerous.

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maga mike gop tries to stop harris move to top of tkt in ct threat

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an 7 24

Despite facing three criminal indictments, Donald Trump campaigned on a law-and-order message during the 2024 Republican National Convention. Now, with President Joe Biden having dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Trump may be up against a candidate with a long resumé as a prosecutor — first as San Francisco district attorney, then as California state attorney general.

Never Trump conservative David French examines Trump's law-and-order promises in a scathing New York Times column published on July 21 — emphasizing that he promises "peace and stability" despite a history of causing "violence" and "chaos."

"If past performance is any indicator of future results," French warns, "Americans should brace themselves for more chaos if Trump wins. The most egregious example of Republican deception centered around crime. The theme of the second night of the convention was 'Make America Safe Again.' Yet the public mustn't forget that the murder rate skyrocketed under Trump."

French continues, "According to the Pew Research Center, 'The year-over-year increase in the U.S. murder rate in 2020 was the largest since at least 1905 — and possibly ever.' That's a human catastrophe, and it's one that occurred on Trump’s watch. Republicans want to erase 2020 from the American mind, but we judge presidents on how they handle crises."

The Never Trump conservative argues that it is "particularly rich for" Trump to campaign as "the candidate of order" even though the "crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden's."

French notes that Democrats have been the aggressive ones from a foreign policy standpoint, adding that "it's the Democrats who are facing down Russian aggression."

"Trump wants you to be a goldfish," French laments. "He wants you to empty your mind of the past so that he can fill it with his own 'alternative facts.' The Republican National Convention was one long exercise in creating memories of a Trump term that never existed."

French adds, "The real Trump term was chaotic and dangerous from start to finish, and if Americans' memories don't improve soon, the voters who seek peace and stability will instead bring us violence and tears."

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Kentucky strips power of Democratic governor to appoint Mitch McConnell’s successor - Alternet.org

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last cab imp 150 yrs ago 4 25 MAGA MIKE WILL SOON PUT IT UP FOR VOTE?

'No high crime': GOP slammed for 'completely made up accusations' on Mayorkas impeachment - Alternet.org

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an 1 24 no lnx

The 56-year-long crisis of treasonous & illegitimate GOP presidents is happening again

Thom Hartmann

January 27, 2024

Once again, America and the world are watching with horror as a Republican candidate for president — just to win an election — manipulates world affairs in a way that will cause widespread death and destruction while damaging the interests and reputation of America.

There’s a long tradition of Republicans running for president committing what can best called treason, or at least criminal manipulation of international affairs, to advantage themselves and hurt incumbent Democratic presidents.

Yesterday, Mitch McConnell let the proverbial cat out of the bag. A bipartisan group of senators had been working on a bill to provide funding to Ukraine and Israel, with money for the southern border, and when it looked like they were going to produce something that would actually pass the House and Senate, Donald Trump inserted himself, telling the Republicans they should kill the bill.

Trump apparently wants to run on chaos at the border, and solving the problem as this legislation is intended to do would take that issue away from him. But he’s also explicitly opposed to any further US aid to Ukraine. This is a treasonous twofer, putting Trump’s election above the interests of the United States and world peace.

Trump, of course, knows that if it weren’t for Putin’s intervention in the 2016 election, he never would have been president. And he desperately needs a repeat to hold onto his fortune and stay out of jail: he’s in a far greater bind now than when he first ran for president as a hustle to get GE to pay him more for his TV show.

His 2016 Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, after all, admitted that during that election he was handing secret internal campaign polling and strategy information off to Russian intelligence, so they could successfully use it to micro-target vulnerable voters via Facebook, an effort that reached 26 million targeted Americans in 6 swing states.

Now, Trump wants Putin’s help again for 2024. He knows that Putin can do things from overseas, including using deepfakes and posing as Americans to spread explicit lies on social media, that would send people to prison for election interference if done here in the US.

Putin’s number one goal, of course, is to seize control of Ukraine while destabilizing western democracies. So, Trump, wanting Putin’s help, is now trying to deliver Ukraine to Putin by killing US aid.

This pattern of Republican presidential candidates criminally intervening in foreign policy just to win elections started in 1968 and has been a feature — not a bug — of every Republican president who succeeded in taking the White House since: it’s time to seriously discuss the five-decade-long problem we have with treasonous and illegitimate GOP presidents.

It started in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson was desperately trying to end the Vietnam war. It had turned into both a personal and political nightmare for him, and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, who was running for President in the election that year against a “reinvented” Richard Nixon.

Johnson spent most of late 1967 and early 1968 working back-channels to North and South Vietnam, and by the summer of 1968 had a tentative agreement from both for what promised to be a lasting peace deal they’d both sign that that fall.

But Richard Nixon knew that if he could block that peace deal, it would kill VP Hubert Humphrey’s chances of winning the 1968 election. So, Nixon sent envoys from his campaign to talk to South Vietnamese leaders to encourage them not to attend upcoming peace talks in Paris.

Nixon promised South Vietnam’s corrupt politicians that he’d give them a personally richer deal when he was President than LBJ could give them then.

The FBI had been wiretapping South Vietnam’s US agents and told LBJ about Nixon’s effort to prolong the Vietnam War. Thus, just three days before the 1968 election, President Johnson phoned the Republican Senate leader, Everett Dirksen, (you can listen to the entire conversation here):

President Johnson: Some of our folks, including some of the old China lobby, are going to the Vietnamese embassy and saying please notify the [South Vietnamese] president that if he’ll hold out ’til November 2nd they could get a better deal. Now, I’m reading their hand. I don’t want to get this in the campaign. And they oughtn’t to be doin’ this, Everett. This is treason.

Sen. Dirksen: I know.

Those tapes were only released by the LBJ library in the past decade, and that’s Richard Nixon who Lyndon Johnson was accusing of treason.

At that point, for President Johnson, it was no longer about getting Humphrey elected. By then Nixon’s plan had already worked and Humphrey was being wiped out in the polls because the war was ongoing.

Instead, Johnson was desperately trying to salvage the peace talks to stop the death and carnage as soon as possible. He literally couldn’t sleep.

In a phone call to Nixon himself just before the election, LBJ begged him to stop sabotaging the peace process, noting that he was almost certainly going to win the election and inherit the war anyway. Instead, Nixon publicly said LBJ’s efforts were “in shambles.”

But South Vietnam had taken Nixon’s deal and boycotted the peace talks, the war continued, and Nixon won the White House thanks to it.

An additional twenty-two thousand American soldiers, and an additional million-plus Vietnamese died because of Nixon’s 1968 treason, and he left it to Jerry Ford to end the war and evacuate American soldiers.

Nixon was never held to account for that treason, and when the LBJ library released the tapes and documentation long after his and LBJ’s deaths it was barely noticed by the American press.

Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon, was never elected to the White House (he was appointed to replace VP Spiro Agnew, after Agnew was indicted for decades of taking bribes), and thus would never have been President had it not been for Richard Nixon’s treason. He pardoned Nixon.

Next up was Ronald Reagan.

During the Carter/Reagan election battle of 1980, then-President Carter had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr to release the fifty-two hostages held by students at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Bani-Sadr was a moderate and, as he explained in an editorial for The Christian Science Monitor, successfully ran for President of Iran that summer on the popular position of releasing the hostages:

“I openly opposed the hostage-taking throughout the election campaign…. I won the election with over 76 percent of the vote…. Other candidates also were openly against hostage-taking, and overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it [hostage-taking].”

Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr’s help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979.

But behind Carter’s back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran’s radical faction — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini — to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election. Khomeini needed spare parts for American weapons systems the Shah had purchased for Iran, and Reagan was happy to promise them.

This is the story that was finally confirmed just last year with The New York Times’ reporting that we now know how the deal was conveyed to the Ayatollah and by whom, including the lieutenant governor of Texas.

This was the second modern-day act of treason by a Republican wanting to become president.

The Reagan campaign’s secret negotiations with Khomeini — the so-called “Iran/Contra October Surprise” — sabotaged President Carter’s and Iranian President Bani-Sadr’s attempts to free the hostages.

As President Bani-Sadr told The Christian Science Monitor in March of 2013:

“After arriving in France [in 1981], I told a BBC reporter that I had left Iran to expose the symbiotic relationship between Khomeinism and Reaganism.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

And Reagan’s treason — just like Nixon’s treason — worked perfectly.

The Iran hostage crisis continued and torpedoed Jimmy Carter’s re-election hopes. And the same day Reagan took the oath of office — to the minute, as Reagan put his hand on the bible, by way of Iran’s acknowledging the deal — the American hostages in Iran were released.

Keeping his side of the deal, Reagan began selling the Iranians weapons and spare parts in 1981, and continued until he was busted for it in 1986, producing the so-called “Iran/Contra” scandal.

But, like Nixon, Reagan was never held to account for the criminal and treasonous actions that brought him to office. Which is one reason Bush Jr. and Trump believed they could get away with anything.

After Reagan — Bush senior was elected — but like Jerry Ford — Bush was really only President because he served as Vice President under Reagan. And, of course, the naked racism of his Willie Horton ads helped boost him into office.

The criminal investigation into Iran/Contra came to a head with independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh subpoenaing President George HW Bush after having already obtained convictions for Weinberger, Ollie North and others.

And Walsh was now looking into actual criminal activity by Bush himself in support of the Iran/Contra October Surprise.

Bush’s attorney general, Bill Barr, suggested he pardon them all to kill the investigation and protect himself, which Bush did.

The screaming headline across the New York Times front page on December 25, 1992, said it all: “BUSH PARDONS 6 IN IRAN AFFAIR, AVERTING A WEINBERGER TRIAL; PROSECUTOR ASSAILS ‘COVER-UP’”

And if the October Surprise hadn’t hoodwinked voters in 1980, you can bet Bush senior would never have been elected in 1988. That’s four illegitimate Republican presidents.

Which brings us to George W. Bush, the man who was given the White House by five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court.

In the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision in 2000 that stopped the Florida recount — and thus handed George W. Bush the presidency — Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his opinion:

“The counting of votes … does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election.”

Apparently, denying the presidency to Al Gore, the guy who actually won the most votes in Florida and won the popular vote nationwide by over a half-million, did not constitute “irreparable harm” to Scalia or the media.

And apparently it wasn’t important that Scalia’s son worked for a law firm that was defending George W. Bush before the high court (with no Scalia recusal).

Just like it wasn’t important to mention that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife worked on the Bush transition team — before the Supreme Court shut down the recount in Florida — and was busily accepting resumes from people who would serve in the Bush White House if her husband stopped the recount in Florida…which he did. (No Thomas recusal, either.)

More than a year after the election a consortium of newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and USA Today did their own recount of the vote in Florida — manually counting every vote in a process that took almost a year — and concluded that Al Gore did indeed win the presidency in 2000.

As the November 12th, 2001 article in The New York Times read:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won.”

That little bit of info was slipped into the seventeenth paragraph of the Times story so that it would attract as little attention as possible because the 9/11 attacks had happened just weeks earlier and journalists feared that burdening Americans with the plain truth that George W. Bush actually lost the election would further hurt a nation already in crisis.

To compound the crime, Bush could only have gotten as close to Gore in the election as he did because his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, had ordered his Secretary of State, Kathrine Harris, to purge at least 57,000 mostly-Black voters from the state’s voter rolls just before the election. Thousands of African Americans showed up to vote and were turned away from the polls in that election in Florida that Bush “won” by fewer than 600 votes.

The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency.

Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw thousands of African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election but then — when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won — she invented a brand new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.

“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million nationwide) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary: there was no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it.

The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

So, for the third time in 4 decades, Republicans took the White House under illegitimate electoral circumstances. Even President Carter was shocked by the brazenness of that one. And Jeb Bush and the GOP were never held to account for that crime against democracy.

To get re-elected in 2004, Bush used an old trick: become a “wartime president.” In 1999, when George W. Bush decided he was going to run for president in the 2000 election, his parents hired Mickey Herskowitz to write the first draft of Bush’s autobiography, A Charge To Keep.

Although Bush had gone AWOL for about a year during the Vietnam war and was thus apparently no fan of combat, he’d concluded (from watching his father’s “little 3-day war” with Iraq) that being a “wartime president” was the most consistently surefire way to get reelected and have a two-term presidency.

“I'll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker in 2004.

“One of the things [Bush] said to me,” Herskowitz said, “is: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it.

“[Bush] said, ‘If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.’”

Bush lying us into that war was an act of treason against America that cost 900,000 Iraqi lives, over 7,000 American lives (on the battlefield: veterans are still committing suicide daily), and over $8 trillion added to the national debt.

But it did what it was supposed to do: it got Bush re-elected in 2004.

Which brings us to this year’s election.

In 2016, Trump ally Kris Kobach and Republican Secretaries of State across the nation used Interstate Crosscheck to purge millions of legitimate voters — most people of color — from the voting rolls just in time for the Clinton/Trump election.

Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs and the Russian state, and possibly pro-Trump groups or nations in the Middle East, are alleged to have funded a widespread program to flood social media with pro-Trump, anti-Clinton messages from accounts posing as Americans, as documented by Robert Mueller’s investigation.

It was so blatant that it provoked the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of their similar actions during the 2020 election (done while Trump was still president but released in March, 2021) pretty much declaring Trump a “Russian asset.”

It was a repeat, in many ways (albeit unsuccessful this time) of the Russian efforts in 2016. Then, as mentioned, Republican campaign data on the 2016 election, including which states needed a little help via phony influencers on Facebook and other social media, was not only given to Konstantin Kilimnik by Paul Manafort, but Kilimnik transferred it to Russian intelligence.

And now Trump is trying to exacerbate a crisis on our southern border and screw Ukraine in a way that will lead to mass causalities and disrupt the international order — all to give Putin what he wants — the same way Nixon used Vietnam, Reagan used Iran, and Bush used Iraq, just to win a damn election.

While we can’t rewrite history, at least we can try to prevent it from being repeated. Call your members of Congress — your representative and both your senators — and let them know if you agree that Ukraine aid and resolving the issue at the southern border shouldn’t be held hostage to Trump’s need for Putin’s help and approval.

The number for the congressional switchboard is: 202-224-3121.

It’s way past time that America ceased to be the dog wagged by the tail of corrupt Republicans who want to be president.

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1 24 REMINDED OF OBSTRUCTION CAT BY

Laura Ingraham demands Republicans reject deal for government funding to deny Joe Biden “a victory lap” | Media Matters for America

RECALL FOX SOP RAISON D’ETRE IS TO ATTACK DEMS

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mma 1 24 mg

After decisions in two states ruled that Donald Trump was disqualified from the presidential ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021, right-wing influencers called for Republican officials to retaliate in kind by dropping President Joe Biden from the ballot. It took only days for them to find someone willing to play the part: Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s secretary of state and a candidate for governor.

Ashcroft said last week that he would enforce “the new legal standard” against Biden in his state if the Supreme Court sustains Trump’s removal in Colorado. He probably won’t be the last to make such a pitch given the incentives GOP officeholders have to follow the lead of the party’s media propagandists.

Colorado’s Supreme Court generated a legal firestorm when it ruled in December that Trump is ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment’s ban on officials who “engaged in insurrection,” for his “overt, voluntary, and direct participation” in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows subsequently removed Trump from the primary ballot on similar grounds. Trump has appealed both decisions, and the Supreme Court said Friday it would review the Colorado ruling.

Prominent conservative legal scholars have argued in favor of Trump’s removal on 14th Amendment grounds. As conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote with liberal Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, “any disinterested observer who witnessed that bloody assault on the temple of our democracy, and anyone who learns about the many failed schemes to bloodlessly overturn the election before that” would agree that January 6 was “an insurrection for which Trump bore responsibility.”

But Trumpist propagandists have spent the last three years crafting a bogus alternate narrative of January 6 in which the rioters were victims of a government conspiracy and the then-president who incited them based on lies did nothing wrong. And so they’ve responded to the rulings in Colorado and Maine by urging Republican officials to bump Biden from the ballot in retaliation.

“Due process is not taken into account any more in America in 2023 and certainly going into 2024, so Republicans should say Joe Biden is off the ballot in all the Republican-controlled-AG states because of his links, clearly, to bribery schemes,” Donald Trump Jr. offered on his Triggered podcast on December 28, 2023. “There's far more evidence of that than an actual insurrection.”

“I want to see a secretary of state in the next couple of days just put out the press release,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk said Wednesday. “Joe Biden's not going to be on the primary ballot. He's not going to be on the general election ballot.”

Like Trump Jr., Kirk made clear that any explanation for why a secretary of state would do such a thing would be a pretext, saying, “Shot across the bow. Power dynamics. Fight power with power.”

“We need a red state secretary of state to kick Biden off the ballot now,” Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles added Friday morning. “And they can come up with some explanation. It will probably be a more credible explanation than the one that the Democrats have come up with for kicking Donald Trump off the ballot.”

Knowles went on to say that a GOP secretary of state could cite a 2020 tweet by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign asking supporters to donate to a Minnesota bail fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground” there following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

“Certainly we can say Kamala Harris led an insurrection. She personally fundraised for rioters and criminals who were insurrecting against cities around the country during the George Floyd riots,” he explained. “So OK. Make it Kamala Harris, and then Kamala can't appear on the ticket, and you don't even need to go after Joe Biden.”

The incentive structure on the right is such that once major players like Kirk and Knowles start creating a demand for action, Republican officials will supply it. Ashcroft, who is seeking a promotion to governor but faces a competitive GOP primary against candidates including the state’s lieutenant governor, answered the call later on Friday.

“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” the Missouri secretary of state wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”

He subsequently used the story to direct people to his campaign website, saying on X, “Its time to stand and be counted. The future depends on it.”

It can be difficult to tell whether GOP officials are acting in response to right-wing media figures or if they’re converging on the same idea independently because they’re all swimming in the same milieu of Republican base voters. But notably, when Ashcroft discussed the potential rationale he would use to remove Biden from the ballot in an interview with NBC News, it sounded an awful lot like Knowles’ idea from earlier in the day:

Asked how he would disqualify Biden from the ballot for insurrection, Ashcroft said that he's “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, “supported people that were rebelling against the U.S. government during the riots in 2020,” referring to racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

“If this is the standard, does that suddenly mean she's not allowed to run? None of us can say, because there is no standard,” he said.

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'Guerrilla tactics against MAGA bullying': House Republicans opposed to Jim Jordan have a plan - Alternet.org

house Republicans opposed to Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan‘s quest to become Speaker have been executing a plan to ensure he not only loses votes but appears to be designed to ensure he loses credibility and respect and suffers, as some are saying, “humiliation.”

Jordan’s candidacy has been strongly opposed by Democrats, largely based on his ties to Donald Trump and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, along with allegations he ignored years of sexual abuse inflicted on his wrestlers when he coached at Ohio State (OSU).

After Jordan lost more votes in the second round on Wednesday than he lost on Tuesday, CNN’s Melanie Zanona reported House Republicans opposed to a “Speaker Jordan” have been “staggering” their no votes.

“Some of Jim Jordan’s opponents tell me they’ve been purposely staggering their ‘no’ votes over multiple ballots — a strategy designed to show Jordan’s speakership opposition is only growing,” Zanona writes. “And that’s why they tell me Jordan will bleed even more support on a third ballot.”

That third ballot currently is expected to take place Thursday at noon.

“I know it’s inappropriate to take joy in anyone’s suffering but Jim Jordan has spent years being a bully and jerk to his own party and the Democrats. Seeing a bully put in his place is always good,” wrote former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman. Later, responding to Zanona, he added: “This is what happens when you’ve done nothing for your colleagues for years except make their lives harder. Some places call it ‘karma.'”

Veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen wrote, “the House GOP is trying to maximize the humiliation for Jordan by having him lose by more votes every time.”

Former Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett added, “they’re like not only will you not win, we also have a plan to slowly humiliate you.”

Longtime Republican political strategist Mike Madrid called the plan, “guerilla tactics against MAGA bullying.”

Meanwhile, others are taking notice as well. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports, “The non-MAGA GOP finds some backbone — against Jordan and intimidation.”

As NCRM reported earlier, some Republicans are suggesting or even alleging Jordan and his allies have been sending threatening or intimidating messages attacking members of Congress for not voting to elect him as Speaker. Some say their families have also been targeted.

The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany reported that U.S. Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said “in no uncertain terms: The opposition against Jordan is ‘profound.’ He notes that the people who are against Jordan do not want anything but are opposed to him ‘on principle.’ He also says Jordan’s ‘tactics’ have massively backfired.”

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an 8 23 $

no lnx

Dear Republicans: We tried it your way and it doesn't work

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy with RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel and Rep. Tom Emmer in November 2022 (Wikimedia Commons)

Thom Hartmann

August 29, 2023

The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.

Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than anytime in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses; unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.

When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.

The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.

They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.

That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).

Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.

It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:

Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.

Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us.

Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.

“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians. Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.

Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.

Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.

Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.

Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.

Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”

Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.

Instead of happy students when, we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans.

Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.

Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.

Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.

Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss.

Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.

Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.

Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject. They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”

In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.

Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.

As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.

Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.

There was an explosion; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were torn down or left vacant because their products were moved to China or elsewhere. Over 10 million good-paying jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.

Republicans told us global warming was a hoax:they’re still telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their friends in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.

The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming — a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. They succeeded in delaying action on global warming by at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.

And then, of course, there’s the biggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech.”

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.

It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence of dark money unleashed by five Republicans on the Supreme Court.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience.

And now that we know what it is, we’re no longer listening to the Republican politicians who are continuing to try to sell us this bullshit.

We don’t want to hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (that they themselves caused).

Or welfare (that they damaged and then exploited).

Or even whatever they’re calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women to give birth at the barrel of a gun, or burning books.

We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer.

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aha hmm: lying is easiest , fastest way to wage culture info warfare? gop pays no price for it? santos

Tomasky

June 12, 2023

OLD PLAYBOOK

Inside the GOP’s Latest Desperate Attempt to Smear Joe Biden

How low will Republicans go?

Trump arrives at a Waffle House with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday.

If you get your news on planet Earth, you agree with me that the biggest news story of last week was the federal indictment of Donald Trump.

If, however, you get your news on planet Wingnuttia, you have been led to believe that while the Trump matter was certainly news, the bigger deal by several orders of magnitude was the “proof” that emerged last week that Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine and that Representative Jamie Raskin lied about it. You’ve also been told that the timing of the Trump indictment was no mere coincidence—it was handed down precisely to distract America from the “fact” of Biden’s corruption.

If all this is unfamiliar to you, don’t worry. There is no such proof. Raskin, one of the most honorable public servants in America, who couldn’t lie if you tortured him, did not utter a falsehood.

It’s all right out of the playbook the right wing has been using for the last 30 years. They just make up stuff about Democratic presidents and presidential candidates. It has failed more often than it’s worked. But it’s worked often enough that we need to pay some attention to it and understand what’s going on here.

You probably caught wind of the fact that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray back in May. He did this after Senator Charles Grassley received a whistleblower complaint charging that the bureau was in possession of a document that revealed an alleged criminal scheme involving the Biden family and a foreign country.

Comer wanted the document. The FBI refused, citing the need to protect source confidentiality. But under political pressure, the FBI agreed to brief Comer and Raskin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, and show them a partially redacted version of the memo. Then all members of the Oversight Committee were allowed to read it.

Here’s the long and short of it. It involves Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. The confidential source was told by the head of Burisma that he paid bribes of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden.These were basically Rudy Giuliani’s old scotch-fueled rumors.

This all dates, by the way, to June 2020. This is a useful fact to keep in mind, for two reasons. One, it means that all of this is three years old; two, it means that Donald Trump was president and Bill Barr his still-loyal attorney general, when this document, an FD-1023 in FBI-speak, was logged.

Naturally, the Justice Department set out to look into it. Barr appointed Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for western Pennsylvania, to look into Giuliani’s claims.

As Raskin explained several times on cable news last week, the FBI has three levels or phases of investigation: assessment, preliminary investigation, and full investigation. Obviously, assessment means that the bureau looks at the charges and decides whether the evidence is sufficient to move forward to a preliminary investigation.

In this case, the charges didn’t even move beyond the assessment phase. Brady did little, at least that we know of. The only thing he ever did with respect to this matter that made the papers was that he held one four-hour meeting with Giuliani. But he brought no charges, and now he’s back in private life.

So, yes, as Raskin said last week, Barr’s Justice Department did drop the matter. However, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, was conducting a separate, parallel investigation of Hunter Biden, and the Justice Department sent the Giuliani allegations to Weiss. When Barr took issue with Raskin’s description of events last week, he was referring to that. So in theory, the “Justice Department” (which does include the U.S. attorney offices) is still looking into the allegations, but Weiss’s probe is known to be centered around possible tax evasion and gun charges against Hunter.

Raskin said in a statement: “If William Barr has a problem with [my] characterization, his problem is not with me but with the FBI, Mr. Brady, and other high-level officials reporting to him in his own Justice Department who signed off on closing down Mr. Brady’s probe.” His statement also included information about the meeting he and Comer had with the FBI last Monday. They were told, he said, that “in August 2020, [the] assessment was closed after a determination was made that there were no more investigative steps to be taken and the evidence collected did not meet FBI’s standard for opening a preliminary or full-scale investigation.”

So that’s where things stand. These are three-year-old allegations that have never been proven. Even Comer and Grassley admit that these are just allegations—although Comer (and this will give you a sense of his conception of justice) also said that the information in the document “has not been disproven.” Other Republican committee members—notably extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene and biography-enhancer Anna Paulina Luna—read the FD-1023 and pronounced Biden guilty on the spot.

Is it possible that Biden took a $5 million bribe? Sure, anything’s possible. But which is more likely: that Biden, who has been in the public eye for half a century without a single episode of financial scandal to his name, took a bribe (after, by the way, he was out of public life and finally making some serious jack on the lecture and book circuit, meaning that money was the last thing he needed); or that the right wing, which has peddled fiction after fiction about top-ranking Democrats, is lying?

This is what they do. They told 50 lies about Bill Clinton. None of them have been proven. He made no money from Whitewater. He did not protest the Vietnam War in front of the Kremlin. Yes, he had that affair, and he lied about that. But he did not obstruct justice. The zealous Mr. Starr would have found out if he had.

They lied about Al Gore, who never said he “invented” the internet. They lied about John Kerry’s military record—just ghastly, wholly fabricated assertions about a man who held a degree from Yale and could have found 500 ways to get out of military service but went to the Army recruiter’s office and demanded he be sent to the front lines in Vietnam. (By the way: Gore too graduated from Harvard and went immediately to a recruitment office in New Jersey to enlist to make absolutely sure that he would get no senator’s son breaks, while George W. Bush hid out in the Texas Air National Guard.)

They lied repeatedly about Barack Obama, who was not born in Kenya and did not smoke crack with his gay lover and was not a Communist Muslim terrorist sympathizer. They lied nonstop for 30 years about Hillary Clinton. Lying about her was an industry that at one time rivaled the gross domestic product of small nations. She sometimes didn’t help her own cause in the way she handled things, but remember this point, always: The number of “her emails” that were classified was … zero. Did you get that? Zero.

Don’t take this from Hillary. It was affirmed in 2019 by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo’s State Department. (The probe did find that information that department officials considered to be classified wound up in many of her email exchanges, but the number of documents included in her emails that were marked classified was zero.)

Do Democrats lie about Republicans sometimes? I suppose so. But not like this; not this systematically. Lying is core to Republican presidential campaigns. Their positions—give more money to rich people, stop all abortions, take transgender children away from sympathetic parents, ban books, destroy the planet—aren’t popular, and they know this, so they have to make voters hate the Democrat. And corruption is all-purpose. Everyone can be troubled by it, whatever their ideology.

It’s especially useful to them now, with their party being led by the most corrupt person ever to occupy the White House by far. In a week when we learned that Trump admitted in 2021 that he could no longer declassify documents, blowing a huge hole in the case for his defense, Republicans were particularly desperate to dirty up Joe Biden. Comer and Jim Jordan will keep pushing not-yet-disproven narratives, repackaging old allegations as new. The mainstream media—and even, it must be admitted, this magazine, under conservative editors in the 1990s—has a pretty sorry record of falling for this stuff since Clinton’s time. Some Democrats, too, used to give these lies credence. I hope people have learned by now that there’s only one response to all this: Fight.

Michael Tomasky @mtomasky

Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic

---

random

| May 30, 2023

Haley Orion @ Talking Points Memo: How Paul Gosar Became An Icon To Those In The Modern Fascist Movement.
David Edwards @ Raw Story: Trump vows to unilaterally end natural-born citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Ron DeSantis Declares He’s Running For President to ‘Destroy Leftism.’
David Gilbert @ Vice News: The QAnon Shaman Is Out of Prison and Selling Yoga Leggings Now.
Linda K. Wertheimer @ The New Republic: Inside the Christian Legal Crusade to Revive School Prayer.
Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger @ The New York Times: A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Trump’s Megaphone.
Media Matters: Candace Owens: “Do not shop at Target or else you’re gay and you’re a pervert.”
Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Pastor charged with four counts of child cruelty announces bid for Louisiana House.
David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement:House Republicans Tied to J6 Admit Goals: Defeat Debt Ceiling Agreement, Kill Economy, Help Trump Win in 2024.

Tags: Candace Owens Dan Bishop Donald Trump Jacob Chansley John Raymond Paul Gosar Ron DeSantis Round-Up

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fitton trying to get names targets doj fbi retaliate purge

https://www.alternet.org/trump-fani-willis-2660722042/

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beyond voter suppression

bill allows gop guy to negate only biggest cty = dem; 2nd bill any cty?

https://www.alternet.org/republicans-texas-sweeping-power-grab/

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aha note legit use of norm/ moderation perverted, retaliation/ what we used to euphemisitically called hardball, now lie pwr any means

abc local oddly no AN?

WASHINGTON (TND) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has announced she intends to introduce articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.

Greene said during her press conference on the matter on Thursday that Biden should be removed from his office due to his failure to secure the southern border and because he has "deliberately compromised our national security by refusing to enforce immigration laws and secure our border."

It is with the highest amount of solemnity that I announce my intention to introduce articles of impeachment today on the head of this America-at-last Executive Branch that has been working since January 20th, 2021, to systematically destroy this country: the President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden," Greene announced Thursday.

Greene added that Biden has allowed "approximately six million illegals from over 170 countries to invade our country," and that "his administration has willfully refused to maintain operational control as is required by law."

The impeachment articles against President Biden cap off what Greene calls "impeachment week," during which the congresswoman has also made moves to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,

FBI Director Christopher Wray

and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Greene has yet to release the text of her proposed impeachment articles against Biden, but did share on social media a photo of a piece of paper that reads "NEXT NO. H. RES. 420" in bold printed text with the number being handwritten. The words "Impeaching Joseph R. Biden" are scribbled in handwriting at the bottom of the paper.

The impeachment articles against President Biden come as his administration faces what The Washington Post called "one of his thorniest policy challenges yet" as Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that restricted incoming migrants coming from countries where communicable diseases were present, came to an end on May 11.

Over 10,000 migrants were encountered along the southern border on May 9 alone, according to Homeland Security officials. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The National Desk that community leaders have been told there will be "just too many people to even process."

President Biden has already said that "we’re doing all we can" in regard to the U.S. southern border, but added that "it’s going to be chaotic for a while."

More than 2.6 million people have been reportedly expelled from the U.S. under Title 42. Since Title 42 has ended, the impending migrant crisis that so many have warned of seemingly has yet to occur.

The National Desk reports that while the border is still backed up and the reported number of crossings remains high, other than a last-minute surge experienced near the end of Title 42, the situation has been "on par" with the numbers experienced over the last several months.

However, events at the border continue to make headlines and draw criticism. Less than 24 hours before Title 42 was set to end, an Afghan national who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) terror watchlist was arrested at the U.S. southern border. On Wednesday, an 8-year-old child reportedly died while in Border Patrol custody.

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sometimes retaliation FAILs even backfires

// tucker

an 4 23

no lnx vid etc

'The worst case of blackface': Matt Walsh's racist attack on Justin Pearson

Brandon Gage April 12, 2023

Right-wing Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson (D-86th District) a "gutless fraud" and accused Pearson of "doing blackface" as Nashville officials were voting to reinstate him to his office on Wednesday afternoon.

Pearson and State Representative Justin Jones (D-52nd District) – both of whom are Black – were expelled from the chamber last week by Republicans because they protested the GOP's lack of action to prevent gun violence following the deadly mass shooting at the Covenant School in late March.

A third legislator, State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-90th District), who is white, was spared. Jones was reinstated on Tuesday.

READ MORE: 'Miscarriage of justice': Metro Nashville council reappoints Justin Jones

On Easter Sunday, Pearson delivered a Resurrection-themed sermon at the Church of the River in Memphis in which he blasted his right-wing colleagues for their unprecedented assault on the democratic process.

"The Republican-led supermajority of the Tennessee assembly sought to have a political lynching of three of its members because we spoke out of turn against the status quo of the government after the tragic deaths of six people at the Covenant school in Nashville," Pearson said. "The movement for democracy lives or dies in Memphis. The movement to end gun violence lives or dies in Memphis. We’ve seen those who want to kill the movement in the Republican-led supermajority."

Pearson compared Governor Bill Lee to Pontius Pilate, the biblical Roman official who condemned Jesus Christ to crucifixion.

"Because we walked to the well of the house out of turn, resolutions were unjustly and undemocratically filed against us on these trumped-up charges," Pearson stated. "Because we spoke out against the empire of the NRA of the gun lobbyists; because we demanded an end to gun violence, an end to the proliferation of weapons on our streets, an end to the funerals we attend day after day and week after week and month after month and year after year — because we did that, the Republican-led General Assembly with the support of folks even in this district like Mark White, from our own community, thought it better to get rid of our democratic representation in District 86 than to actually solve the problem."

READ MORE: Tennessee lawmaker: 'Partisan' GOP efforts to oust him were a 'gross miscalculation'

Pearson also penned a blistering CNN editorial on Wednesday in which he admonished Republicans for their "gross miscalculation" in having him removed.

"The spectacle was a gross miscalculation by Republicans in the chamber," Pearson argued. "It turns out that most Americans care deeply about democracy. Most people care about equality and progress. And over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common-sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre."

Pearson's powerful oratory triggered a vengeful reaction from Walsh, who launched a racist attack against Pearson:

You know, he doesn't, he, he doesn't really sound like a 1960s civil rights figure, which is what he is trying to sound like and look like. Uh, he sounds like he's doing a parody of one. You know, this is, this is the worst case of blackface that we've seen since Justin Trudeau, except that Pearson's actually Black and he's still doing blackface. Nevertheless, he, he is performing and we know he is performing because now we know what he sounded like before theperformance. It's not at all a convincing performance, of course, in fact, I didn't think I'd see a performance less convincing than Bill and Mulvaney's portrayal of womanhood until Pearson came along. Pearson's really given him a run for his money. This is what the left promotes and encourages – empty performance taken to comical, almost surreal extremes. You know, they give us heroes and leaders who are cartoons. Who are hollow and paper thin, who are, it always turns out conniving, cowards, gutless frauds, andself-aggrandizing performance artists.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: Judges axe Tennessee GOP's halving of Nashville Metropolitan Council: report

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Fascism, full stop': Progressives in Congress condemn expulsion of Tennessee Democrats ›

'Can’t expel truth': Ousted TN lawmaker Justin Pearson highlights hypocrisy of 'country built on a protest' ›

Democrat Justin Pearson erupts at Republicans ahead of vote to expel him from the Tennessee House ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Justin Pearson of 'Tennessee Three' Could Be Reinstated ... ›

Justin J. Pearson: Memphis officials set to vote on returning ousted ... ›

Will Justin Pearson, expelled Tennessee lawmaker, regain his seat ... ›

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many msg show bad trinity knew lying

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/they-knew-it-was-lie-behind-scenes-happenings-fox-while-network-pushed-false-claims-about

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-says-dominion-filings-show-keyhole-view-what-fox-inside

https://www.mediamatters.org/2020-election-lawsuits/two-days-after-2020-election-fox-news-chief-political-anchor-bret-baier

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/abc-susan-glasser-details-how-fox-executives-lied-about-their-panic-over-ratings-amidst

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/cnn-contributor-breaks-down-how-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-shows-fox-promoted-lies-led

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/angelo-carusone-there-will-be-serious-business-consequences-fox-news-because

https://www.mediamatters.org/2020-election-lawsuits/fox-news-lied-about-dominion-and-2020-election-compete-far-right-newsmax

https://www.mediamatters.org/rupert-murdoch/rupert-murdoch-told-fox-ceo-suzanne-scott-fox-news-would-concentrate-helping-any-way

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/new-filing-shows:{-tucker-carlson-tried-get-fox-reporter-fired-correctly-fact-checking}:

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/msnbc-angelo-carusone-explains-how-dominions-new-filing-shows-fox-news

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/angelo-carusone-explosive-new-court-filings-prove-crystal-clarity-fox-knew-it-was-pushing

---

an 2 23

fox News lawsuits will expose the 'dishonest' network and threaten 'alt-reality media': conservative

Sarah K. Burris Raw Story

February 15, 2023

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aha [amanda] earth2 = fascism

an 2 23

The political media fascination with Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who appears to have faked approximately 95% of his life, is such that it was inevitable that it would draw a "savvy" backlash piece scolding the press about their priorities. The wannabe party pooper finally emerged last week at the Washington Post in an opinion column headlined, "Real people don't care about George Santos." In it, self-assigned buzzkill David Byler argued "America doesn't seem to care" about Santos, which he can tell based on Google search traffic.

Our nation was founded by puritans, so as soon as people had a laugh over Santos, inevitably someone would shake their finger disapprovingly. But there were some flaws in Byler's argument, starting with his assumption that Santos' own embarrassed constituents are not "real" people. There's also the fact that Google Trends isn't a very exacting measure of interest in a subject, as it only measures if people are searching out information. It doesn't capture people who read articles they saw on social media or directly on a news website. Traffic to stories about Santos is plenty healthy on that front.

But perhaps most importantly, this narrow-minded focus on search traffic ignores what a lot of the sneered-at political observers saw coming a mile away: The imminent George Santos makeover into MAGA's Next Top Superstar.

Santos may not matter to "average" Americans, but his story is being leveraged directly into the right-wing propaganda machine that currently controls the Republican Party. On Thursday night, for instance, Santos was sanctified into the echelon of MAGA saints by the Pope of neo-fascism himself, Tucker Carlson. In a typically dishonest segment on his wildly popular Fox News show, Carlson painted Santos as a hapless victim of the bigoted news media by pretending that the only thing Santos lied about was his volleyball career. (Which is one of the more minor fake careers and hobbies Santos has claimed on his resume.) Media Matters has a sample of the extremely silly diatribe:

It was a tissue of lies constructed to deceive the American people. There was no volleyball scholarship. There was not a single dollar of volleyball scholarship. George Santos made it all up out of whole cloth, out of thin air. George Santos is an ersatz volleyball player. A fraud, a ghoul. People voted for this man believing he had played collegiate volleyball on a scholarship and he hadn't.

And yet tonight ladies and gentlemen, this thief of volleyball glory strides the halls of the United States Congress unimpeded by law enforcement. It's like another insurrection.

Carlson doesn't really have arguments or evidence, but he does do a bang-up impression of someone sarcastically brushing aside nonsense. Except what he's brushing away is usually pretty serious stuff, such as fascist attacks on democracy, attempts to save lives during a pandemic, or, in this case, unbelievable amounts of fraud that look potentially criminal in many cases. With Santos, the number of lies Carlson is ignoring is truly staggering. Santos lied about his resume, his religion, his marriage, his family history, and claimed connections he doesn't have to the Holocaust, 9/11, the Pulse nightclub shooting, and an assassination attempt that appears fictional. It is really no exaggeration to say it's easier to list the things he hasn't lied about (his age and his birthplace in Queens).

But just as Catholic saints get their status through martyrdom, the saints of MAGAdom must get theirs through falsified tales of victimhood at the hands of "woke mobs" or the "fake news media."

People right-wingers hate are alarmed at Santos and his staggering trail of fraud. So if the "libs" have a negative reaction to Santos, in the troll-based logic that drives the modern GOP, that must mean he's their newest champion. And let's just state for the record that, while Byler may not see left-leaning news consumers as "real people," he probably wouldn't say the same about the millions of Trump voters whose entire worldview is shaped by the crap that Fox News pours into their heads every day.

Carlson didn't reach the conclusion that Santos is the latest MAGA idol all on his own. Practically from the moment that Santos's deceit was exposed by the New York Times, Steve Bannon, the Joseph Goebbels-wannabe who frequently sets the GOP agenda with his popular "War Room" podcast, was championing the pathological liar. Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have also rallied to Santos' side, claiming he's only a target because he's a "fighter." It's unclear who he has ever "fought" for besides himself, but then again, the same could be said of most MAGA figures, from Donald Trump on down.

It's not a mystery why these leaders think the right-wing audience is ready to accept Santos as the next MAGA savior. All that matters to the modern right is "owning the liberals," and who better to do that than someone who lies constantly for no apparent reason other than the sheer thrill of it?

Certainly, Santos seems to grasp that the move that will take him from a low-level con man to the ranks of the richest MAGA grifters is to lean into trolling. So he's been rolling out the standard issue liberal-owning stunts for weeks now: Flashing the white supremacist-aligned "OK" hand signal during a House vote. (He even knew how to do it so it was clear enough to photograph but so quick he could pretend later it wasn't intentional.) Wearing an assault rifle pin while playing dumb about why it offends people to celebrate the preferred weapons of mass shooters. Feeding the press donuts and actinglike they had somehow become complicit in the evil by eating them. Getting into Twitter fights with drag queens, who are the favorite punching bag of the authoritarian right. (Santos seems to have a past as a drag queen, as well, but this is just part of a favorite right-wing trolling tactic, to recruit members of a hated minority to speak out against their own.) Dunking on former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., for criticizing him by tweeting "cry about it."

Reports suggest Santos is delighted by all the negative attention he's getting in the press. An exceptionally short-lived aide recorded a conversation in which Santos was dressing him down, and right in the middle of it, Santos suddenly exclaims, "Don Lemon just texted me — I'm sorry, I'm listening to you — Don Lemon just texted me!" Getting his name on CNN, even during a story on how he is the worst, was just that thrilling to Santos.

Santos even hired former Steve Bannon employee and professional troll, Vish Burra, as a top aide. Burra's defense of Santos is cynical and self-congratulatory: The lying is a form of "shitposting," which is internet speak for saying outlandish things to draw outrage and attention. For the Trumpist right, aggressive trolling is what politics is all about.

Imagining that they're outraging the left is what the GOP audience gets out of this. (No one tell them that the left's reaction to Santos is more amusement than genuine fury.) But there's an even darker reason that Carlson, Bannon, Taylor Greene, etc. have decided to rally round Santos: He's very useful as a weapon in their larger war on truth.

As with Trump, it's overly simplistic to look at these people, with their non-stop disinformation, as mere liars. Liars are people who are sincerely trying to deceive people. In many cases, it's not at all evident that right-wing audiences actually believe the asinine B.S. that is rolled out by the likes of Carlson and Bannon. For instance, the "outrage" over M&M spokescandy shoe choices is less sincere anger than it is a collective bit of performance art. Both Carlson and his audience merely pretend to be mad as a way to keep ironic distance from their own weird sexual hang-ups. Similarly, conspiracy theories like Trump's Big Lie are often less about true belief and more about displaying fealty to their tribe.

There's a point to right-wingers constantly saying and "believing" things they know not to be true. It's about devaluing empirical reality. Fascists want "truth" to flow from what the right-wing authority figures say is "true," not from lived experience or verifiable facts.They are trying to construct a world where facts don't matter, and only power does. The first step is getting their tribal community to agree collectively to stop distinguishing between true and false and to only claim to believe what is convenient for their leaders or their cause.

For that goal, Santos is useful. He is living the fascist dream of a man whose entire existence seems unmoored from the power of facts. If the MAGA leaders can turn him into a hero, he'd be a living exemplar of their post-truth yearnings: "Truth" can be whatever you want it to be. After all, right-wingers already hate the way facts — Trump lost the election, COVID-19 is real, LGBTQ people exist — get in the way of their desires. They just need permission to let go of that last tendril of reality and start living purely in their authoritarian fantasy world. Santos shows the way. It's unlikely he will be going away any time soon.

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an 1 23

no lnx

Corrupt, fixable and usable': Why Trump’s 'decades-old playbook' is finally losing its appeal

Maya Boddie

January 31, 2023

While former President Donald Trump pursues a third presidential run amid a flurry of criminal investigations, it’s clear that the effectiveness of his typical tactics of “defiance and counterattacks” is starting to dwindle, Maggie Haberman at the New York Times reports.

Haberman named nearly six current investigations facing Trump — from his pending classified documents case, rape accusations, potential indictment in Georgia following allegations that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election and more.

New York Attorney General Letitia James recently filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump for “widespread financial fraud.”

READ MORE: Trump hits Bob Woodward with $50 million lawsuit for releasing audio of interviews

Sources close to Trump, Haberman reports, say the former president’s main worry is the potential of facing criminal charges, which “he has worked to avoid since the late 1970s,” under the guidance of his former attorney, the late Roy M. Cohn.

In an attempt to distract officials from pending litigation, Trump has kept Cohn's legacy alive by attempting to ambush the legal system while finessing his way around potential consequences.

“Always distraction, and apparent scorched earth and counterattacks at the start, and after much passage of time, settlement as quietly as possible,” First Amendment attorney and New York Democratic activist Victor A. Kovner said. “And the counterattacks as scurrilous as possible. Mostly from the Roy Cohn playbook.”

Trump has continuously engaged in harmful tactics such as calling Black prosecutors like Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “radical, vicious and racist,” or accusing the Department of Justice of partisanship.

[READ MORE: How a Kansas mayor pulled off a 'coup' using Trump-like tactics: report

As lawsuits come for Trump, he has proceeded to file a few lawsuits himself — most recently against Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.

:{:{}:

But former attorney and FBI official, Chuck Rosenberg, told Haberman that this approach is losing its power.

“You can wear down a private party if they do not have the same resources as you, or you can settle a civil case and make it go away, but criminal cases are not about money,” Rosenberg said. “Criminal cases are about liberty and justice, and it is really rather difficult — if not impossible — to wear down federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. and make them go away.”}:

:{:{}:

Rosenberg continued, “I think he thinks that everything can be bought or fought. And that is just not true.”}:

[READ MORE: 'Acting in bad faith': Trump lawyer in 'judge’s sights' over courtroom stunts and 'frivolous' claims

In the past, and still, according to former Trump Organization employee Alan Marcus, “Trump views the judicial system as he sees everything else: corrupt, ‘fixable’ and usable as a bullying tactic.”

Marcus mentioned that when he worked under Trump in the 1990's, he noticed that Trump would quickly dismiss cases against him as a “waste of time and money” but proceed to search for a “friendlier” judge to take on the case.

Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of South Florida, who fined Trump $1 million this month for his 2016 “frivolous lawsuit” against Hillary Clinton, likely would not be considered a “friendly” judges in Trump’s eyes.

“Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries,” Middlebrooks said. “He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.”

Trump dropped his lawsuit against Letitia James as a result of the $1 million fine, proving Haberman's point that Trump's “decades-old playbook” is becoming worn and torn.

READ MORE: Questions raised about former US attorney who knew the DOJ was protecting Trump

Trump hits Bob Woodward with $50 million lawsuit for releasing audio of interviews ›

Ex-prosecutor: Donald Trump keeps handing investigators 'incriminating evidence from heaven' ›

'He’s done. He’s over': Ann Coulter declares an end to Donald Trump's political reign ›

Autopsy Is Happening Right Now

In the days after Democrats unseated an incumbent president and won unified control of Congress, the victorious party went though a round of self-analysis and recriminations.

The Republicans, who managed a trifecta of losing that hadn’t been accomplished since Herbert Hoover, doubled down. Then they backed up their bets, split 4s, and doubled down again.

People were confused as to why the losing party didn’t conduct an autopsy to try to figure out what went wrong.

Except that they did. It wasn’t a traditional autopsy in the sense that there was no formal committee and the project wasn’t centered around getting more votes in future elections. But it’s clear that Republicans are in the midst of a crowd-sourced attempt to figure out how to win the presidency in 2024.

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There are three ways to capture the presidency:

(1) Win a lot more votes than the opposing candidate.

(2) Get fewer votes, but win pluralities in enough states to get 270 certified and counted Electoral Votes.

(3) Get fewer votes and fewer Electoral Votes, but prevent the official counting and certification of the Electoral Votes—and then win a majority of state delegations when the contest is shifted to Congress.

You can win the presidency even while getting blown out in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, provided your party:

Controls the House and Senate.
Constitutes a congressional majority in 26 states.
Has sufficient raw political will.

Five years ago this scenario would have sounded like a nightmare designed to scare children; democracy’s version of the Baba Yaga.

Today it’s just an alternative path to power.

After all, it’s right there in the rules. How could anyone possibly object?

And if you ask Conservatism Inc. they’ll tell you how beside-the-point “democracy” is, anyhow.

[twt]

---

2. The Republican Game Plan

When Republicans conducted their autopsy, they skipped “How to Win Option 1” and went straight to Options 2 and 3—leapfrogging the question of how to get more votes and focusing on how to use institutional leverage to take power even while losing popular majorities.

Option 2—the path of least resistance—is for Republicans to change voting rules at the state level in the hopes that they can drive down the number of Democratic votes cast and win the Electoral College despite being a persistent minority. A lot has been written about these various initiatives, some of which are more grotesque than others.

But the real cutting edge work being done as a result of the GOP autopsy concerns Option 3: Figuring out how a Republican can win the presidency even while losing the popular vote and the Electoral College.

just go by the numbers: It is likely Republicans will have majorities in the congressional delegations of at least 26 states for the foreseeable future. They have a >50 percent chance of winning the House in 2022 and a pretty good shot at flipping the Senate.

So the first two preconditions for winning the presidency while losing the election are very much on the table.

Which leaves just one project: Mustering the political will to move past both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

In 2020, many elected Republicans lacked the will to use the means that would have been necessary to stop the certification and counting of Electoral Votes:

In Michigan, the election results were certified only because a single Republican member of the state canvassing board, Aaron Van Langevelde, broke party ranks and voted to certify them.
In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused direct requests from the president of the United States to change the official tally of the state’s votes.
In Pennsylvania, enough Republicans in the state legislature declined the president’s entreaty to create an alternate slate of electors.
Once the Electoral Votes were sent to Washington, more than half of the Republican members of Congress objected to the counting of the Electoral Votes—but it wasn’t enough to stop the process.

So the key parts of the Republican autopsy have been (1) building the political will to use raw power next time and (2) removing the Republican officials who were not willing to comply last time.

That’s why Republican state parties have censured nearly every Republican who did not participate in Trump’s attempted coup.

That’s why Brad Raffensperger is the target of a primary challenge in Georgia.

That’s why Michigan Republicans replaced Aaron Van Langevelde with a more reliable partisan on the state canvassing board.

That’s why Nevada Republicans are attacking Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, the only Republican to have won state-wide office in 2018. (Even though she is a Republican, Cegavske refused to go along with the attempt to overturn Nevada’s result.)

That’s why Republicans in Arizona have introduced HB 2720. Here’s the relevant section of the bill:

The Legislature retains its legislative authority regarding the office of presidential elector and by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration may revoke the Secretary of State’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election.

Ladies and gentlemen: Behold the fruit of the Republican autopsy.

---

Meanwhile, Conservatism Inc. is doing its part to devalue and delegitimize democracy, seeding the ground for moving past both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

The Big Lie is actually the biggest insight to come from the Republican autopsy. Republicans and their enablers discovered that if they make false, evidence-free claims often and loudly enough, then the vast majority of their voters will believe them.

And then, once Republican voters were onboard, they found that the rest of the party elites would either join them or stay silent. Only a handful of Republicans dared to object. And those figures are in the process of being either defeated or coopted.

By insisting that Trump was the real winner of 2020, Republicans have created a trifecta of preconditions within their base going into 2024:

There is a pent-up demand for retribution.
These voters will not believe that election results unfavorable to them are legitimate.
These voters will be primed ahead of time to demand that elected Republicans satisfy their desired outcome, by any means necessary.

Which is to say: Republicans are already well on their way to marshaling the political will to do whatever the law even theoretically might allow in pursuit of power.

And even though the success of such a gambit is a longshot given all of the various failure points, since political power is derived from their voters, many Republicans politicians will be incentivized to embrace the challenge anyway, since they will gain power within the party from the voters who have been primed to demand such a fight

The difference between the 2020 and the 2024 elections will be the difference between a reactive Republican party focused on trying to flip the Electoral College and a proactive Republican party prepared to move past the Electoral College to the next pathway to victory.

Those are the lessons of the 2020 Republican autopsy. Ignore them at your peril.

---

This is how authoritarianism starts. A society goes from the rule of law, to rule by law—where the minority gets just enough power to change the laws so that they can amass more power.

And here is a serious question: If Republicans managed enough votes to sustain an objection to counting Electoral Votes, what would our recourse be? Crossing our fingers and hoping that the Supreme Court steps in?

What we are seeing—in broad daylight—is another proof of the idea that democracy runs on the honor system. If you have two parties and one of them is openly attempting to subvert democracy . . . well, good luck.

The time to fight against authoritarianism isn’t December 2024. It’s now.

---

===

an 6 22

some establishment Republicans, when asked about the far-right extremism of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, will engage in “whataboutism” — saying, “What about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar?” It’s a weak, totally disingenuous attempt to downplay the radicalization of the GOP; AOC and Omar can be combative debaters, but they haven’t threatened anyone — and they obviously want to have a conversation with those they disagree with, not intimidate them into silence.

Nonetheless, bogus “whataboutist” comparisons of the AOC/Omar/Rashida Tlaib wing of the Democratic Party and the Greene/Gosar/Lauren Boebert wing of the GOP are common among establishment Republicans. But in an op-ed written by the New York Times’ Thomas B. Edsall and published on June 8, a GOP staffer offered a very different — and more honest and accurate — take on the Democratic Party’s left versus the “MAGA Caucus.”

The Republican staffer, described by Edsall as “high-ranking” and interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the journalist, “They are different in that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The ‘Squad’ seem to me to be more ‘idealist.’ They actually do want to legislate/accomplish the very far-left social ideas they propose. They are willing to cause Pelosi headaches, but they have shown they are not going to go so far as to jeopardize the government (operations) and safety net that so many families depend on from a working government.”

The staffer went on to tell Edsall, “The ‘MAGA Caucus’ members operate more like bullies — legislative bullies. If they have the opportunity, they will gladly hold bills/government funding hostage for the sake of populism and social media. They would take pride in ‘shooting the hostage’ as that would be very popular with their tribal base and their social media.”

The Squad refers to a left/populist alliance of four Bernie Sanders allies, all Democrats, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives: AOC, Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The name “MAGA Caucus” is typically used to describe Greene, Boebert, Gosar, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina (who recently lost a GOP primary) and other MAGA extremists in the House.

Referring to The Squad as “far left” is misleading; their idea of “socialism” is the social democracy of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, not communism as it is practiced in Cuba or North Korea. Nonetheless, the GOP staffer generally made a good-faith argument — the type that is usually absent when Republicans appear on Fox News or Fox Business.

“The Squad and the MAGA Caucus are best known for their most visible members, Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia,” Edsall explains. “Both factions have caused major headaches for their respective party leaders.”

Edsall continues, “Centrist Democrats contend — citing poll data from USA Today Ipsos, Pew Research, a FiveThirtyEight polling summary and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Survey — that support from members of The Squad and their allies for defunding the police has undermined the reelection chances of moderate House Democrats running in purple districts. The participation of members of the MAGA Caucus in events linked to White supremacists have increased the vulnerability of the Republican Party to charges of racism, alienating moderate suburban voters.”

Edsall, adds, however, that there are “major dissimilarities” between The Squad’s methods and the Maga Caucus’ methods.

John Lawrence, former chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Edsall, “The MAGA people seem far more focused on personal celebrity and staking out extremist stances, whereas The Squad — while pushing the policy envelope to some extent — remain reliable party members.”

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, authors of the book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” also offered Edsall a Squad/MAGA Caucus comparison — and saw enormous differences between the two.

Mann told Edsall, “The MAGA Caucus is anti-democratic, authoritarian and completely divorced from reality and truth. The Squad embraces left views well within the democratic spectrum. What’s striking about the MAGA Caucus is that they are closer to the Republican mainstream these days, given the reticence of Republican officeholders to challenge Trump. We worry about the future of American democracy because the entire Republican Party has gone AWOL. The crazy extremists have taken over one of our two major parties.”

Ornstein told Edsall, “The true believers…. think Trump won, that there is rampant voter fraud, the country needs a caudillo, we have to crack down on trans people, critical race theory is an evil sweeping the country and more. The Squad is certainly on the left end of the party, but they do not have authoritarian tendencies and views.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ron-desantis-black-congressional-seats/

===

msnbc 6/6/22?

dem atty desantis ignore gop state scotus 4x? 5? nottime to sue/win for 2022 but there is for 2024

===

6 22 sattler an

who wouldn’t like to see Marjorie Taylor Greene’s career-ending after one uselessly nauseating term in the US House of Representatives?

Who wouldn’t like to see her spending more time chilling with Putin-loving white nationalists, harassing kids who survived school shootings, or groping photoshopped cutouts of Donald Trump?

It’s just the way our brains need things to work.

Q-curious spreaders of Jewish Space Laser conspiracies who incite violence against public servants aren’t supposed to win reelection.

They’re supposed to be defeated – forced to fly away to an even worse fate, like fleeing Congress to run Trump’s failing fake Twitter site.

Our brains are so desperate to make this true that Marcus Flowers, a possible Democratic opponent, has raised almost $5 million with 87 percent coming from donations of less than $200 – even though his home seems to no longer be in Greene’s district in Georgia.

To be honest, it wouldn’t matter whether Flowers, or any Democrat, raised $50 million or even the more than $90 million Amy McGrath spent to lose to Mitch McConnell in 2020, Greene is going to win – likely by more than the nearly 20-point margin, McGrath lost by.

Why?

Because gerrymandering doesn’t care about your feelings.

If picking your voters didn’t work, Republicans wouldn’t bother rigging maps. No one knows better than Republicans that their future as a party depends on turning fewer (and whiter) votes into more power.

A genius candidate with a bursting war chest could overcome a five-point or 10-point or possibly even a 20-point advantage if everything including the earth’s axis swings to her advantage.

But no candidate is going to overcome a 45 percent Republican lean, not in a country whose largest export is now negative partisanship.

Greene could marry Hunter Biden, put her pronouns on her Twitter bio and give herself a real-time abortion on Tucker Carlson’s desk while wearing a rainbow-colored N95 mask – she’d still win.

All she needs are the votes from her party.

They’d vote for a cumquat as long as it had an “R” next to it.

The urge to lance this human boil from our body politic is obviously born of the best intentions. Democrats must contest every race, including in the second-most Republican House district in Georgia. Remember the success of Howard Dean’s “50-state” strategy?

A “whole ballot” strategy is crucial to confronting the menace of a GOP that has chosen Trumpism (aka American Putinism) over democracy.

You could even argue that investing millions in Georgia’s 14th could end up helping Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock, whose race could easily decide control of the upper chamber of the Congress, or Stacey Abrams, who lost to Brian Kemp in her first effort to become the first Black woman governor in US history by a mere .4 percent in 2018.

But whoever runs against Greene is going to have plenty of cash – too much cash, in fact – so why not just give to Warnock or Abrams!

Better yet, donate to Democrats in the House majority who face tight races, including 13 whose races are deemed toss-ups by the Cook Political report. Those races could decide control of the lower chamber of Congress. Even better, how about helping the effort to take control of at least one state House in every key swing state?

I hate lecturing anyone on the best ways for doing politics given the last election I won was for the honor of “Most Talkative” in the ninth grade. But I know one thing. Democracy is on the ballot in 2022.

If the GOP takes both chambers and retains control of legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, the chances of a Democrat being fairly elected president in 2024 will veer dangerously close to zero.

Don’t believe me. Believe election law expert Rick Hasen. He fears that Republicans could swipe the presidency in one of two ways.

Try employing an absurd legal theory giving state control of elections that has support from at least four Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Or try swaying the actual vote count by corrupting state and local election officials or by threatening their non-corrupt counterparts.

All that’s holding up Nightmare No. 1 is Democratic governors in blue states, all of whom are running for election and facing tight races.

Steve Bannon is aiming for Nightmare No. 2 with a laser focus on local elections to pick the hands that guide the machinery of democracy.

On the Democrat’s side, there’s no national figure trying to rally the party in preparation for a full-ballot assault favoring democracy.

Run for Something is an incredible organization. It’s focused on helping young progressives get on the ballot and win.

But Run for Something’s national budget in the last election was less than half of what Marcus Flowers has raised to lose to Greene.

By November, the millions spent on Flowers’ already-decided race may exceed the $39.3 million spent on all the 2020 races for the Michigan House. And Democratic control of the Michigan House could stop the Trump effort to steal that state in 2024 through the legislature, cold.

Patriotic Democrats should have no delusions about the enormity and importance of the challenge they face.

No Democratic president has seen his party hold both chambers of the Congress through his first midterm election since 1978. Rick Hasen has said that if Kevin McCarthy – who’d likely be the Speaker of the House were the Republicans to win in 2022 – were in chargeback in 2020, “I don’t know that we’d have a President Biden right now.”

You can’t beat Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But you can do even better.

You can help stop a plot to destroy democracy. You might even keep Greene mostly irrelevant with zero committee assignments.

This will require matching, then exceeding Republicans’ ruthless focus on winning. That begins with fixating on where our democracy is decided, not burning money to make our brains feel a little bit better.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/second-embarrassing-gop-campaign-ad/

in the space of three weeks, the National Republican Senatorial Committee overseen by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) has watched two ads attacking Democrats that were blatantly misleading pulled off the air, according to a report from MSNBC.

According to Steve Benen of MSNBC, complaints about misrepresentation in attack ads are common, but what is less common is the offending ads being yanked from public view by local TV stations.

"It can be frustrating, but the vast majority of the time, stations don’t want to be in the business of deciding which commercials are so brazenly dishonest that they’re ultimately unsupportable," but that there are exceptions which Scott's committee found out the hard way in less than a month.

The first ad claimed that gas prices under Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) increased 23 percent during her prior tenure as governor -- which turned out to not only be false, but prices actually decreased according to the report the GOP cited.

The second ad went after North Carolina’s Cheri Beasley and accused her of setting free a "child porn offender,” when she served as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

As the New York Times reported, "On Friday, five TV stations in Raleigh and Charlotte said they would pull the ad or that they had 'paused' it pending an examination of its claims, according to emails from the stations to Courtney Weisman, a lawyer working for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which were reviewed by The New York Times. On Thursday, two Charlotte stations took the ad off the air."

According to Benen, who called the two ads an "embarrassing" black eye for Republicans, "For those keeping score, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has now had two television ads pulled over the course of three weeks. Election Day 2022 is still 22 weeks away, and I don’t imagine anyone would be too surprised if that total grows."

===

// voter suppression, filibuster, gerry

an 5 22

minority rule is killing America. This is most obvious in our Senate and Supreme Court, although it’s also hurt the credibility of the presidency and is damaging many of our states.

It’s happening because of two issues dating back to the founding of our republic, which brought us the Electoral Collegeand unequal representation in the US Senate.

First, here’s how the Electoral College came about, stripped of all the mythology (hint: it mostly had to do with avoiding somebody like Donald Trump ending up in the White House):

After the Revolutionary War, the nation was abuzz about one of that war’s most decorated soldiers, Benedict Arnold, once considered a shoo-in for high elected office, selling out to the British in exchange for money and a title.

Arnold‘s name had been floated for president, and it raised the question of how we could make sure that a stooge working for a foreign government — or just for his own enrichment — didn’t end up in the White House.

Back then, America was so spread out it would be difficult for most citizen/voters to get to know a presidential candidate well enough to spot a spy or traitor, Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 68. Therefore, the electors — having no other governmental duty, obligation, or responsibility — would be sure to catch one if it was tried.

“The most deadly adversaries” of America, Hamilton wrote, would probably “make their approaches [to seizing control of the USA] from more than one quarter, chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”

A hostile foreign power influencing public opinion or owning a senator was nothing compared to having their man in the White House. As Hamilton wrote:

“How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy [presidency] of the Union?”

But, Hamilton wrote, the Framers of the Constitution “have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.”

The system they set up to protect the White House from being occupied by an agent of a foreign government was straightforward, Hamilton bragged. The choice of president would not “depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes.”

Instead, the Electoral College would be made up of “persons [selected] for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment” of president.

The electors would be apolitical because it would be illegal for a senator or house member to become one, an injunction that is still in the Constitution.

Hamilton wrote:

“And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.”

This, Hamilton was certain, would eliminate “any sinister bias.”

Rather than average but uninformed voters, and excluding members of Congress who may be subject to bribery or foreign influences, the electors would select a man for president who was brave of heart and pure of soul.

“The process of election [by the electoral college] affords a moral certainty,” Hamilton wrote, “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

Indeed, while a knave or rogue or traitor may fool enough people to even ascend to the office of mayor of a major city or governor of a state, the Electoral College would ferret out such a con man or traitor.

Hamilton wrote:

“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence” of the men in the Electoral College who would select him as president “of the whole Union. . .”

Hamilton’s pride in the system that he himself had helped create was hard for him to suppress. He wrote:

“It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”

Unfortunately, things haven’t worked out that way (as we can see with Trump still clinging to his loyalty to Putin and refusing to condemn Russia’s attack of Ukraine).

By the time the telegraph was in widespread use in the late 19th century, the Electoral College had long outlived its usefulness. And now in the past few decades we have seen two terrible presidents, Bush and Trump, put into the White House over the objection of the majority of American voters.

The Senate is also profoundly unequal in its representation of the American people; this is mostly because different states have different sizes and resource bases.

While this was a small problem at the nation’s founding, today, for example, California’s vast resources (unknown in 1787 — Lewis and Clark were still children and thus hadn’t even hit the Pacific yet) have turned it into a such an economic powerhouse that if it were independent it would be the sixth richest nation in the world.

California alone contains 39 million people, almost nine percent of the entire population of the United States, larger than Canada’s 37 million people, with an economy larger than Russia’s.

And yet it is represented by only two senators, the same as Wyoming which has only a half-million citizens (the size of Micronesia), a tiny economy, and few natural resources.

These inequalities have been exacerbated over the past 40 years both because of these 18th century structural errors built into our Constitution, and because, over the past 40 years, a campaign has been undertaken to exploit them by a small group of rightwing billionaires and religious fanatics, with the Powell Memo as their polestar.

They’ve used the wealth and power they’ve inherited or accumulated to manipulate and seize control of our lawmaking institutions at the federal level and in nearly every state.

And Americans have noticed that fair competition has died:

Neither of the last two Republican presidents, for example, was elected by the majority of Americans; the Senate is massively out of balance; and almost every House seat has been gerrymandered to the point where it is no longer in play.

Which is creating a crisis for our nation.

Humans, like most animals, are wired for fairness. Give five toddlers a cookie each and everything is fine; give one of them an extra five cookies and all hell will break loose.

Democracy is in our genes, as is the case with virtually every other animal species on Earth.

When fish swim, bees swarm, or birds migrate it seems like their actions are coordinated telepathically. In fact, each wingbeat or tail twitch left-or-right is noticed as a “vote” by those around them. When more than 50% of the group are twitching to the left, for example, the entire school, swarm, or flock veers to the left. Democracy.

When a mob showed up at the US Capitol threatening to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House, it was because they genuinely believed Donald Trump’s lie that the majority of Americans had voted for him. People will put their lives and their freedom at risk to right such a perceived minority-rule wrong.

Minority rule almost always ends up producing unfair results that are resented by the majority. We’re seeing this today with a Supreme Court dominated by four rightwing justices who were appointed by presidents who lost the majority vote and who were confirmed by Republican senators who represent 41.5 million fewer Americans than the Senate’s Democrats.

Minority rule has taken over the White House:

We saw it when Bush and Cheney lied us into the war in Iraq after being put in the White House by five Republicans on the Supreme Court, despite having lost the vote to Al Gore by a half-million votes. It provoked the largest demonstrations against a presidential action in the history of the world at the time.

Similarly, when millions protested Trump’s inauguration it was motivated in large part by the widespread knowledge that he’d lost the 2016 election by nearly 3 million votes. Unfairness infuriates people, and rightly so.

Minority rule has taken over our Supreme Court:

A small group of wealthy ideologues spent millions to pack our courts, and we’ll see the backlash in our streets this weekend as people across the nation come out to protest Alito’s assertion that Sir Matthew Hale’s 1670 interpretation of British witchcraft laws should determine the fate of America’s 21st century women.

Minority rule has taken over Congress:

Democrats in the Senate represent 41.5 million more Americans than do Republicans. Yet that minority of Republicans, using the filibuster, have been able to stop everything from voting rights to healthcare to rebuilding our nation from the damage of 40 years of Reaganomics’ neoliberalism.

A total of 77.3 million Americans voted in 2020 for Democrats for the House of Representatives; only 72.8 million voted for Republicans.

Multiple states where the statewide vote is within a point or three of 50/50 (including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Wisconsin) send far more Republicans than Democrats to the US House than their votes would dictate because of Republican gerrymanders.

This fall things will get even worse because of 2021 gerrymanders, meaning that when over half of Americans again (if history and polling holds) vote for Democrats for the House, the GOP will nonetheless likely take control of that body.

Minority rule has taken over multiple states:

Most of the states listed above suffer from the same problem in their own legislatures. In statewide elections, because most voters choose Democrats, all but two of those states ended up with Democratic governors; nonetheless, even though only a minority voted for Republicans, their legislatures are still Republican-controlled because of gerrymandering.

Whenever a minority rises up and tries to rule over a majority, particularly if that rule violates basic principles of fair play and empathy, the result is conflict.

In most minority rule situations, that conflict is managed with the power of guns and jail cells: nations that were once democracies — like Russia, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines, Hungary, Venezuela and others — become police states where dissent and political activity are not tolerated.

We saw Donald Trump, who lost the majority vote in 2016, try this when he ordered Defense Secretary Mark Esper to have our military shoot protestors in the streets of Washington, DC.

We humans, like most animals from the simplest to the most complex, are wired by evolution for majority-rule to make the decisions that will best serve our immediate interests as well as preserve our species.

The principal idea of democracy is that there is wisdom in numbers. That the majority is more often right than any minority. As Aristotle wrote in his Politics, “[I]t is possible that the many, though not individually good men, yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively…”

If we want to preserve this nation, we must try actual representative democracy.

Whoever wins the majority vote becomes president, as 15 states and the District of Columbia — representing 195 electoral votes — have chosen (states representing another 75 votes are needed to end the Electoral College).

Expanding and unpacking the Supreme Court would restore fairness and balance to the head of that branch of government, and adding Washington, DC and Puerto Rico as states would help ease the unfairness of representation in the Senate.

And Congress must pass a federal mandate that every state cease gerrymandering and use nonpartisan redistricting commissions like California and several other Democratic-controlled states have already done to insure fairness and equal representation.

Republicans not only cling to minority rule, they now want to go to the next step and impose a neofascist Taliban-style government on America run by the morbidly rich and fanatically religious.

If the Democratic Party is serious about preserving America as a constitutional republic, they must put democracy at the top of their priority list.

===

https://www.thetrace.org/2018/09/nra-starboard-strategic-campaign-finance-senate-races/

no lnx

Bang for the Buck

Despite FEC Complaint, the NRA Is Still Using a Mystery Firm to Back Senate Candidates

The gun group's first big ad buy of the 2018 cycle was made through a company that, according to an election watchdog, exists only to circumvent campaign finance laws.

By Mike Spies Sep 10, 2018

NRA Youtube

The Trace

The National Rifle Association made its first major foray into the 2018 election cycle last week, unleashing ads on behalf of Republican challengers to Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. And in both cases, the gun group continued to pay a mysterious vendor that, according to one election watchdog, appears to be a shell company set up to circumvent election laws limiting how much the NRA can spend on candidates.

That firm, according to the NRA’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, is Starboard Strategic Inc. As The Trace and Politico Magazine reported in July, Starboard Strategic, which is the NRA’s top election contractor — to the tune of more than $60 million from the gun group since 2014 — appears to be little more than the alter ego of an established firm calledOnMessage, Inc. The two entities share the same office addresses and partners, one of whom registered Starboard’s opaque, skeletal website (after our story was published, the domain registration was privatized).

OnMessage is a prominent consulting firm that works directly with GOP campaigns. According to an FEC complaint that the Campaign Legal Center filed shortly after our investigation, Starboard Strategic and OnMessage are “functionally indistinguishable.” The NRA is free to independently spend as much as it wants on political candidates, so long as the group isn’t coordinating its messaging and strategy with the candidates’ campaigns. Any spending that is coordinated, however, is subject to caps and disclosure requirements. By paying Starboard for ads in support of candidates while OnMessage was working directly with the same candidates’ official campaigns, the complaint says, the NRA “made excessive and unreported contributions…in violation of…reporting requirements and contribution limits.”

In 2014, the NRA paid Starboard millions of dollars for ads in support of three Republican Senate candidates: Tom Cotton in Arkansas; Cory Gardner in Colorado, and Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Simultaneously, those campaigns contracted with OnMessage. All three candidates defeated Democratic incumbents. In 2016, a similar arrangement played out again in Wisconsin: Republican Ron Johnson, who beat back a challenge from Russ Feingold, employed OnMessage. Later in the campaign cycle, the NRA placed anti-Feingold ads through Starboard.

Federal law allows outside groups and campaigns to use common vendors. But the firm working for either client must ensure that employees do not share election-related information. Usually, a firm seeks to prevent coordination by requiring its staffers to read and sign a strict firewall policy, which functions both as an agreement to comply with the law and an acknowledgement that there are penalties for failing to do so. Despite repeated requests, OnMessage has never produced a copy or provided any details of its policy.

The ad the NRA ran against Tester raises fresh questions about potentially illegal coordination. The gun group paid Starboard almost $400,000 for costs relating to the spot. Meanwhile, the campaign of Tester’s opponent, Matt Rosendale, has already paid OnMessage more than $400,000 this cycle.....

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/dear-joe-biden-we-don-t-want-unity-with-fascists-that-s-why-democrats-lose/

cdv salon an 3 22

I voted for Joe Biden in 2020. He was the best option available for defeating Donald Trump and buying time to organize a defense of American democracy against the neofascist assault. More than a year into Biden's first term in office, I have no regrets. I'd make that same decision again.

Despite tremendous obstruction from the Republican fascists (and their "centrist" allies embedded within the Democratic Party) — a group of sadists determined to cause maximum harm to the American people as a way of obtaining, keeping and expanding political power — Biden has accomplished a great deal as president. This includes slowing down the coronavirus plague, resuscitating the economy, taking long-overdue steps to fix the country's infrastructure and restoring America's leadership role in the world.

In a moment of great crisis when Vladimir Putin and Russia are waging war on Ukraine, to know that America has a leader who, unlike his predecessor, is intelligent, experienced and patriotic, as well as mentally and emotionally stable, brings no small amount of relief. Moreover, one does not have to ask the obvious questions that circled around Trump like flies around manure on a summer's day: "Is the president of the United States merely a useful idiot and stooge for Russia, or is he actually an agent and saboteur?" That too brings considerable peace of mind.

RELATED: Biden calls out the attack on democracy: But he didn't just mean Vladimir Putin

By all accounts Joe Biden is a humble, honorable and decent man who loves his family, has experienced great challenges and losses in life but has not succumbed to bitterness. That also signals to a type of wisdom demanded by the many crises facing the United States and the world.

To see Joe Biden, who overcame a significant speech impediment as a child, give the State of the Union address while millions of people around the world watched — and to watch him stammer occasionally while doing so — shows him to be a role model of perseverance, humanity, and vulnerability. He has been weathered by life, sometimes badly beaten down, and is still standing.

But there has always been a lingering doubt that gnaws at me as I watch Biden's presidency unfold in a time of plague and political crisis, and in a moment where America's present and future are nebulous and greatly in doubt. Unfortunately, his State of the Union address only served to reinforce my anxiety.

Joe Biden is a career politician who is now the leader of the free world and arguably the most powerful person on the planet. And like all politicians, he is a disappointment. Biden is far too quick to seek "compromise" with the Republican fascists — which mostly means outright capitulation. He represents the interests of big corporations at least as much as those of the American people. He is a professional centrist. He will in all likelihood never cancel student loan debt or make other efforts at great and lasting economic relief. Although driven by circumstance to embrace more progressive policies, Biden was one of the Clinton-era "New Democrats" who helped unleash neoliberalism and gangster capitalism on American society, greatly damaging the middle class he claims to care so much about.

My greatest worry about Biden is simple: America needs a fighting champion if its democracy is to be saved. To this point, as this week's State of the Union address made clear once again, he does not appear to be up to that challenge.

In total, Biden's speech was an attempt to claim credit for his administration's many successes and to soothe an anxious American public that is deeply worried about the war in Ukraine, the economy and the pandemic. On that account, public opinion polls show that the speech was successful.

At the Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein offers this generous summary, arguing that Biden's speech "portrayed him as a resolute champion of financially squeezed families at home and freedom abroad":

Repeatedly through the speech, Biden rejected stark political choices. Vigorous at points, meandering at others, the speech was neither a full-scale course correction, like Bill Clinton's 1996 declaration that "the era of big government is over," nor a stubborn reaffirmation of the strategies Biden employed during his trying first year in office. The president at times gave each faction in his party reasons to cheer, but did not align entirely with either liberals or centrists.

Instead, the address showed Biden and his advisers trying to define a distinctive political space centered on providing kitchen-table assistance to average families, encouraging greater national unity, and reasserting America's role as the leader of the small-d democratic world against challenges from aggressive autocracies symbolized by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The speech was the performance of a president who remains confident in his political compass, even as the steep and persistent decline in his job-approval ratings since last summer has caused many people in both parties to question it. Throughout, Biden underscored his determination to combine positions often considered incompatible…

Biden also, as Brownstein observes, reverted to his habit of seeking to placate Republicans and to distance himself from Democratic progressives:

Toward Republicans, Biden was alternately conciliatory (proposing "a unity agenda" and praising their involvement in the bipartisan infrastructure bill) and confrontational (denouncing Donald Trump's tax cuts and the surge of red-state laws rolling back civil rights and liberties). He pointedly renounced one of the most polarizing battle cries of his own party's liberal vanguard, calling to "fund the police" rather than "defund the police," while reasserting his commitment to criminal-justice reform and gun control, both enduring priorities for the left.

What was most notably absent from Biden's speech was any forceful and sustained discussion of the country's democracy crisis, the role of the Republicans in creating and amplifying it, and the fact that we now face a moment where the voting rights and civil rights — indeed, the fundamental human rights — of Black and brown people (along with members of other marginalized groups) are under existential threat from a new Jim Crow system.

Black Americans are among the Democratic Party's most important constituencies, and its most loyal voters. Without the support of Black people in both the Democratic primaries and the general election, and especially the support of Black women, Joe Biden would not be president today.

During Biden's victory speech in November 2020, he said: "Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You've always had my back, and I'll have yours." Those are fine words, but in terms of protecting Black America's voting rights and civil rights, Biden and his administration have not lived up to them.

RELATED: Media messes up coverage of voting rights, blames Biden for GOP's racism

His State of the Union speech was one more example of that failure. In several key moments, Biden signaled that he is temperamentally unable to do what is necessary to stop the Republican fascists' attempt(s) to end multiracial democracy.

Biden repeatedly spoke of the need to "unify" Democrats and Republicans. That means seeking "unity" with those who actively tried to nullify the 2020 election and supported a violent coup to prevent him from becoming president. Moreover, the Republican fascists have in no way ended their campaign to end American democracy and terminate Biden's presidency.

Biden often speaks boldly about American democracy being in crisis, and draws eloquently upon the images and legacy of the civil rights movement and Black Freedom Struggle while doing so. But he does not act with the "urgency of now" in seeking to defend that democracy.

The reasons for Biden's behavior are not mysterious. He is the product of an American political regime that is dying, but whose leaders and principal figures have, for the most part, not realized that fact. Biden genuinely believes that as a leading member of the American political caste he can somehow save the country's obsolescent political order. He is a Washington insider, an older white man and a "moderate". Once upon a time that might have meant that Republican leaders would work with him in good faith to find solutions to the country's many problems.

But in believing that is still true, Biden has committed a grievous error: Today's Republican Party and "conservative" movement comprise a revolutionary force, which seeks to destroy American democracy and replace it with fascism or some other form of authoritarianism.

When Biden speaks of "unity" or "compromise" with the Republicans he is giving aid and comfort to the neofascist movement --if not surrendering to it altogether. In a recent essay for the New York Times, Charles Blow echoes these concerns as embodied by Joe Biden's description of Mitch McConnell as his friend:

So, how can Biden maintain that McConnell is an honest, honorable friend?

It seems that Biden suffers from the same blind spot as other white liberal leaders throughout history: looking past the oppressive impulses of other white men to see kinship and commonality. Where the oppressed see an existential threat, men like Biden only seem to see a disagreement among decent men on a political issue. They see them as simply on the "other side" rather than "other than."…

But this version of politics is an extension of the Looney Tunes cartoon of Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, where they are enemies on the clock but are friends off the clock, and is offensive to the people whose very lives are at stake. And yet Biden continues to proclaim his affections for those supporting oppression.

These bonds across bigotry smack of the insecurity of allies. They smack of a privilege of which only white men can boast, because the threat is almost always aimed away for them and at others.

When it comes to the issue of power and politics, the Bidens and McConnells of the world maintain their own affinity group.

In an essay for the Guardian, Thomas Zimmer expands on this:

Over the past few weeks, President Joe Biden has repeatedly emphasized his friendship with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. At the National Prayer Breakfast in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as "a man of your word. And you're a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend."

Biden's publicly professed affinity is weirdly at odds with the political situation. Going back to the Obama era, McConnell has led the Republican Party in a strategy of near-total obstruction which he has pursued with ruthless cynicism. It is true that he has, at times, signaled distance to Donald Trump and condemned the January 6 insurrection. But McConnell is also sabotaging any effort to counter the Republican party's ongoing authoritarian assault on the political system.

The distinct asymmetry in the way the two sides treat each other extends well beyond Biden and McConnell. …

Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option and a return to "normalcy" imminent.

"I actually like Mitch McConnell," Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they're good guys, they'll snap out of it. Promise. It's the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of Republican radicalization — a perspective that severely hampers the fight for the survival of American democracy….

Some weeks ago, a prominent Black comedian asked on Twitter if Joe Biden thought that, because he's a white man, it meant Republicans would work with him in ways they refused to with Barack Obama? The answer to that question appears to be yes.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell's moment of truth: For many whites, Black people aren't real "Americans"

Whiteness is almost never a liability in American society. But when it comes to the Republican fascists, Joe Biden's skin color may not be helping him much. The Republicans, their followers and their media sycophants view Biden as the white leader of a predominantly Black and brown political party. (That is of course false, but the truth is irrelevant to the Republican fascists and larger white right.) In their eyes, Biden is a "race traitor," even if they do not use that exact term. For the Republican fascists and larger white right, no compromise is possible: Their almost-explicit goal is to create a 21st-century Herrenvolk society in which Black and brown people, to quote the infamous words of Chief Justice Roger Taney, have no rights the white man is bound to respect.

Biden and too many other white liberals and moderates continue to believe that compromise with the Republicans is still possible, and that finding "common ground" can redeem this moment of democratic crisis. That kind of white racial innocence may well be America's undoing.

===

this rachets up on builds on d'souza BS about how dems are predatory on POC AA?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/free-base-pipe/

no lnx vid twt?

Right-wing website made up viral fake claim Republicans like Marco Rubio are now pushing: report

[Marco Rubio embarrasses himself again by doubling down on false attack of defense secretary]

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement February 10, 2022

This week Republican lawmakers and voters have had a great time pushing a false claim that the Biden administration is spending tens of millions of dollars to pay for "free crack pipes" for drug abusers. The claim came from a report by the right-wing website Washington Free Beacon, including a quote falsely attributed to an HHS spokesperson, according to The Daily Beast.

It's no surprise The Daily Beast is calling "a lie" made its way to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and a U.S. Senator's Twitter account.

"The Washington Free Beacon seemed to take a big leap to assert that free crack pipes would be part of a harm reduction package," The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberg reports, calling it "a lie rocketed around conservative media."

The report, published Monday and titled “Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity,’” cited an HHS spokesperson as confirming that a sweeping harm reduction package “will provide pipes” to smoke, quote, “any illicit substance.”

The Free Beacon's article reads: “A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

The Daily Beast reviewed the email chain between the Washington Free Beacon and HHS. It's unclear how the Free Beacon made the "any illicit substance" claim, given the HHS email specifically states no federal laws would be broken.

In fact, The Daily Beast reports the HHS spokesperson says the Free Beacon “omitted the information shared with him about the grantees needing to comply with federal, state, and local laws—the very language that would prohibit crack pipes.”

The damage has already been done. The "free crack pipes" claim is now one more myth in conservatives' false reality.

Arizona far-right Republican U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Lesko made the false claim on the floor of the House of Representatives:

:{:{}:

Florida Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, linking to an article literally titled: "Biden administration denies funding programs that hand out crack pipes to prevent infection and promote 'racial equity'" says in a video posted to his Twitter account, "The Biden administration is going to be sending crack pipes and meth pipes, targeting minority communities," a claim he knows is a lie.

:{:{}:

Fox News entertainers Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity both made the most of the claim, with The Daily Mail reporting: "Tucker Carlson slams policy to hand out free crack pipes and needles warning it 'will result in addicts shooting up on the streets.'"

The genie is out of the bottle, and no one on the right has any intention or desire to put it back.

===

salon

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/the-big-lie/

matt r

Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels coined the term "Big Lie." According to the supposed quote, Goebbels said that if you tell "a lie big enough" and regularly repeat it, "people will eventually come to believe it." That said, Adolf Hitler actually did use the phrase "big lie" — but not to describe his own propaganda strategy. In a darkly ironic case of psychological projection, he came up with the expression to defame the Jewish community.

"In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility," Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf," his 1925 autobiographical manifesto. He observed that most people are only comfortable telling small lies, and imagined others would be as uncomfortable as themselves perpetuating big ones. "It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously," Hitler explained. "Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."

Indeed, like many abusers before him, Hitler rationalized his own depraved behavior by falsely accusing his victims of doing the same thing. The story of World War II is, in many ways, a tale of a Big Lie run amok. Germany felt humiliated after its loss in World War I, and thenationalistic pride which had fueled that conflict still burned in the hearts of millions.

This tactic, of a leader hypnotizing vast swathes of the public through the perpetuation of a grandiose falsehood, is a phenomenon that extends well beyond World War II and Adolf Hitler. Recently, the term has been recycled to refer to the falsity that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" in some indeterminate way, a lie that is repeated ad infinitum by Trump and a slew of his supporters at all levels from yard-sign wielding footsoldier all the way up to his closest legal counsel.

The term "Big Lie" is believed to have been first popularized in the Anglophone world by Walter Langer, a psychoanalyst who prepared a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler for the U.S. government in 1943. In that report, Langer wrote:

[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Beyond Langer, psychologists and sociologists throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century have been intrigued by the success of the Big Lie strategy — meaning a story pushed by a political leader that is clearly bald-faced, yet so grandiose as to make it hard to believe that someone would fabricate it. Indeed, it is an intriguing question as to why this works politically, and why so many millions are so quick to believe Big Lies — be it about voting fraud or Jewish conspiracies. The counterintuitive nature of the Big Lie tactic is perhaps what is most peculiar: wouldn't a small lie be easier to pass off than a large one?

Not necessarily, psychologists say.

"Repetition is important, because the Big Lie works through indoctrination," Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor of psychology who is noted as an expert on narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic abuse, told Salon by email. "The Big Lie then becomes its own evidence base — if it is repeated enough, people believe it, and the very repetition almost tautologically becomes the support for the Lie."

Durvasula added that this is amplified by the numerous media platforms which exist in the modern era, as they trick people into thinking a certain falsehood has been reinforced even if all of their media platforms have the same political leanings.

"The banners and hats crucially add an air of silliness to everything. If I can buy a novelty hat about it, can it really be so serious? It's a genius mindf**k."

"Hear something enough it becomes truth," Durvasula explained. "People assume there is an evidence base when the lie is big (it's like a blind spot)."

Indeed,Hitler rose to power through a Big Lie that soothed Germans' wounded egos and targeted already-popular scapegoats: Jews and socialists, who according to the Nazi narrative had betrayed Germany through backroom dealings after the empire had won on the battlefield. All of the "evidence" that Hitler marshaled to support this claim was false (fact-checkers who pointed this out were described as Jews promoting a "big lie"), and for that reason only die-hard Nazis believed the Big Lie — at first. After Hitler gained power, however, he was able to effectively spread both that fabrication and other lies, convincing more and more people that a conspiracy of Jews and leftists were enemies of Europe's supposedly superior races. Dissent was squashed, fascism prevailed and even so-called moderates began to think that there must be at least some truth in the accusations. After all, they were being repeated everywhere.

This omnipresence, apparently, is a big part of what makes it so easy for people to be fooled by a Big Lie.

Logician Miriam Bowers-Abbott, an associate professor at Mount Carmel College of Nursing, stressed the importance of repetition in spreading a Big Lie.

"What's especially helpful is repetition in a variety of contexts," Bowers-Abbott wrote to Salon. "That is, not just the same words over and over — but integration of an idea in lots of ways. It builds its own little web of support."

As a hypothetical example, Bowers-Abbott suggested a scenario where she would want to falsely convince Salon that green grapes are a superfood.

"I need to do more than state, 'Green grapes are a superfood' repetitively, I need to work it into conversations," Bowers-Abbott explained. "'Oh, I see grapes are on sale this week, so much nutrition at such a low price!'; 'My dietician has a great superfood recipe that features kale and grapes!'; 'Yes! Green grapes are green! That's the color of superfoods!'"

Dr. Matt Blanchard, a clinical psychologist at New York University, told Salon by email that this kind of immersion does not have to be merely rhetorical. If the purveyors of a Big Lie are shrewd, they can even incorporate it into a target's physical environment.

"You might think I'm kidding, but.... Nothing sells the Big Lie like novelty t-shirts, hats and banners," Blanchard told Salon. "These items are normally associated with sports teams, not life-and-death political issues. But [former President Donald] Trump and his circle have deftly used these items to generate the kind of unbridled loyalty Americans associate with pro football." Blanchard noted that the mob whichattempted a coup on January 6th was "at points indistinguishable from a rowdy tailgate party. The banners and hats crucially add an air of silliness to everything. If I can buy a novelty hat about it, can it really be so serious? Or a flag featuring Trump as Rambo? The use of these sports fan items allows them to both be attacking the Capitol building and at the same time, just having good clean fun."

He added, "It's a genius mindf**k. This goofy paraphernalia has confused our response to the riot ever since."

Bandy Lee, an American psychiatrist who edited the book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," noted that people embrace outrageous assertions for emotional reasons, and that propagandists play into that as they repeat their narrative.

"Usually, they are trying to find comfort and to avoid pain," Lee wrote to Salon. "This happens in states of lesser health, where one is less inclined to venture into new domains or to seek creative solutions. There is comfort in repetition, and so a people or a nation under duress will gravitate more toward what is repeated to them than what is realistic. Adolf Hitler understood this very well, which is why the American psychologist Walter Langer coined the phrase to describe his method."

Durvasula also speculated that Big Lies benefit from humanity's hierarchical nature, given that "primate groups do tend to organize into tribes with alphas and leaders and hierarchies, and that's us as people." She added that many people are not sufficiently informed about thenarcissistic behaviors that are warning signs "that there are people in our midst that lack empathy, have no care for the common good, are grandiose, arrogant, and willing to exploit and manipulate people for solely their own egocentric needs." Instead "a sort of halo effect imbues leaders with presumed expertise and power — when that is not at all the case (most if not all megalomaniacal leaders, despots, tyrants, oligarchs share narcissism/psychopathy as a trait)."

Obviously, most of those who rally around a Big Lie do not do so from a place of deliberate deceptiveness — and they certainly wouldn't call it that. Take the Big Lie being spread by Trump: That the 2020 election was stolen from him. Like Hitler's Big Lie, all of Trump's "evidence" of fraud has been exposed as spurious, from the dozens of lost legal cases (he never once proved fraud in court) to the fact that his own attorney general and Vice President admitted the election had not been stolen. To believe that the election was stolen, one would have to envision a conspiracy including hundreds of Republicans as well as Democrats and absolutely no "smoking gun" leaks — an absurd concept if one tries to break it down logistically.

"We don't truly 'believe' things, so much as provisionally accept information we find useful."

Yet the lack of substance is precisely the point, as Big Lies are structured to turn attention away from their lack of substance — in most contexts, a person with Trump's personal history and lack of evidence would never be taken seriously — by instead playing on the desires of their targets.

"Everything we know about the human brain suggests it is composed of numerous systems that interact, overlap, excite, inhibit, and often contradict each other, and may even hide information from consciousness," Blanchard told Salon. "So it comes as no surprise that the act of 'believing' is not just one thing that humans do. Instead, this one word represents a wide range of relationships that humans have with information. We don't truly 'believe' things, so much as provisionally accept information we find useful."

As Blanchard put it, people will weigh information that directly impacts their lives differently than information which seems more abstract. The name of the game is proximity.

"For example, a man who suspects his wife is cheating on him (close proximity) may work feverishly to find the truth, plant cameras in the home, hire a private detective, and so on," Blanchard explained. "But if the topic switches to Joe Biden's election (far proximity) the same man probably won't bother to even check a second news source before he decides what to 'believe.'" This can lead to a "pretty careless" relationship with political information because people do not truly appreciate the long-term consequences.

"We tool-using humans look at every object and wonder, 'How can I use this? What is this good for?'" Blanchard told Salon. "Political information is no different. The Big Lie is no different."

He added, "So most people don't whole-heartedly 'believe' the Big Lie, but they are more than happy to provisionally accept it because... why not? It might be entertaining. It might flatter your identity. It might help you bond with other people in your community. Or it might help you vent some rage."

The popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram further exacerbates these trends because they add new elements of social pressure. An individual who has embraced a Big Lie repeatedly in those public settings will feel a level of personal investment that makes dislodging that much more challenging.

"It was easier to dislodge untruths before social media," Bowers-Abbott told Salon. "In social media, people tend to take public positions. When that position turns out to be wrong, it's embarrassing. And backing down is typically seen as weakness. So they double-down on untrue claims to save face and personal credibility."

She added, "We are way too emotionally attached to being right. It would be better for our culture as a whole to value uncertainty and intellectual humility and curiousity. Those values help us ask questions without the expectation of permanent answers."

Durvasula expressed a similar point, arguing that the best antidote to Big Lies is for people to learn more about critical thinking skills.

"Pushback means education in critical thinking (but given that school board heads are facing death threats over teaching critical thinking — that is not likely to happen)," Durvasula wrote. "It means ending algorithms that only provide confirmatory news and instead people seeing stories and information that provide other points of view (again, not likely to happen), creating safe spaces to have these conversations (who will be the referee?), encouraging civil discourse with those who hold different opinions, teaching people to find common ground (e.g. love of family) even when belief systems are not aligned."

"'Belief' is always predicated on usefulness, and useless beliefs do not survive."

Durvasula was skeptical about the idea that you can persuade someone to abandon a Big Lie through evidence — and Blanchard said the same thing. The problem is that, simply put, a lot of people believe the Big Lie because they want to. It helps them. And the only way to stop the Big Lie, in those situations, is to stop the people spreading it.

"Trump's lies have always been about power," Blanchard wrote to Salon. "He demonstrates his power by lying to your face, and when there are no consequences, his power is seen to be confirmed. The actual content of his lies is of secondary importance." As such, Trump and the other spreaders of the Big Lie will only be discredited in the eyes of their supporters if they face their greatest fear — accountability.

"They must be seen to lose at the ballot box, they must be arrested when they break the law, they must be sued for every defamation, they must be pursued with every legal tool available in an open society," Blanchard explained. "Above all else they must be seen as weak. Only then will their lies lose their usefulness for the millions who once saw something to gain -- personally, psychologically, politically, financially -- in choosing to believe."

He added, "As I said above, 'belief' is always predicated on usefulness, and useless beliefs do not survive."

Lee compared disabusing someone of the falsehoods in a Big Lie to treating regular delusions. One rule: Don't put them on the defensive.

"Confronting them, or presenting facts or evidence, never works," Lee told Salon. "You have to fix the underlying emotional vulnerability that led people to believing it in the first place. For populations, it is usually the pain of not having a place in the world, which socioeconomic inequality exacerbates. Deprivation of health care, education, an ability to make a living, and other avenues for dignity can make a population psychologically vulnerable to those who look to exploit them."

===

how MAGA Republicans are 'purging' Democrats from local election boards in a ruthless power grab: report

Alex Henderson

January 31, 2022

The voter suppression bills that Republicans have been pushing in state legislatures all over the U.S. are dangerous not only because of the ways in which they make voting more difficult, but also, because they see...

===

lest we forget orogins? // dirty tricks?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-milton-mankoff/the-reality-based-community-and-trumps_b_13351438.html

no link

The Reality-Based Community And Trump’s Orwellian Dystopia

By Dr. Milton Mankoff

Back in 2004, journalist Ron Suskind interviewed a top aide to President George W. Bush, later identified as Karl Rove. As Suskind reported:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The quote was chilling, because it implied that the most powerful government on earth was confident it could be guided, not by empirical evidence, but by its ideological inclinations. Reality, of course, does matter and Rove and his boss learned, both in Iraq and when the economy collapsed in 2008, that there are costs to denying it. Happily, for them, those costs were primarily borne by those who had little choice but to live in the reality-based community: soldiers and civilians in Iraq; US homeowners and workers....

---

hard to know where line ends on dirty tricks vs flat out crimes?

hayes lays out timeline/linear seq each step of chain looking for vulnerabilities

chris h with asks what if next time it's FBI making offer?

it's just ye now ;) lang rhet interesting/odd

loose end to tidy up == kill?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/kanye-trump-voter-fraud/

grifter/ ideol entre?

publicist for rapper Kanye West is accused of traveling to Georgia in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election and pressuring a poll worker to confess to voter fraud,as alleged by then-President Donald Trump and his allies. Despite their extensive efforts to prove Trump actually won the election, their claims of voter fraud have been consistently debunked and rejected by courts.

According to Reuters, the publicist Trevian Kutti attempted to confront 62-year-old grandmother and poll worker, Ruby Freeman. On Jan. 4, Kutti reportedly arrived at Freeman's home with an unidentified male to discuss the election. Kutti is said to have insisted that she'd come as a representative of a "high-profile individual” to deliver a clear ultimatum: "confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail."

Out of fear, Freeman called 911. “They’re saying that I need help, that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family,” Freeman said on the call. When a Cobb County police officer arrived at the home, he suggested that they all speak at the station. After going there, Kutti spoke with Freeman as she continued to explain the purpose for her visit.

Audio recordings of Kutti's discussion with Freeman have also come to light in the Reuters article. While she did not detail specific consequences, Kutti did appear to issue a veiled threat to Freeman.

“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is reportedly heard saying to Freeman in the audio recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," she said, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

Kutti continued, “You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up."

According to Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, the co-authors of the previously-released book, "The Steal,” Kutti went a step further with her remarks suggesting that Freeman and her daughter provide statements to a U.S. attorney.

“What I would like for you to do is consider talking to a U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgiawho is willing to take a statement from you and your daughter. And who in turn, if you are honest about the course of events that took place at State Farm Arena, will possibly be willing to grant you and your daughter immunity from charges that will imminently be brought,” Kutti told Freeman.

Kutti has not responded to any requests for comments. Watch the video below:

---

silly filibuster args. is dirty trick?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/mitt-romney/

---

an 10 21 amanda

wildest thing about Donald Trump's Big Lie is that his own supporters don't actually believe it.

Oh, they say they do to any pollster who will ask them. A recent Morning Consult poll, like so many before it, shows nearly "7 in 10 GOP voters don't believe the 2020 election was free and fair and/or have little to no trust in the U.S. election system, while 49 percent doubt that next year's midterms will be free and fair."

But when pollsters dug a little deeper, they found that Republican voters don't behavelike people who think the elections are rigged. On the contrary, Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to act like people who both believe that they will get a chance to vote and that their vote will be fairly counted.

"A full 92 percent of self-identified Republican voters said that they planned to vote in the 2022 elections, with just 4 percent saying they did not plan to," explains Meredith McGraw at Politico. "By contrast, just 70 percent of self-identified Democrats said they planned to vote, and 29 percent said they did not plan to."

People who think their vote doesn't matter don't get fired up to vote. So Democratic demoralization, for instance, is perfectly explicable in light of both widespread voter suppression and the rapidly dwindling possibility that President Joe Biden's bold economic promises will ever come to pass. Feeling like your vote never changes anything isn't unreasonable for Democratic voters, and they are accordingly less enthused about voting.

Republicans, on the other hand, are acting very much like people who believe their vote matters. Indeed, as the poll reports, GOP voters who espouse faith in the Big Lie are more likely to believe their vote has power[twt stat]

what gives? How can people both "believe" elections are rigged against them, but behave like people who have total faith in the system?

The likeliest answer is also the simplest one: They're lying.

Like their hero, Donald Trump, Trump voters know full well that the 2020 election wasn't stolen. They just repeat the lie, like a bunch of trolls. It's a useful cover for their true agenda, which is seizing power in 2022 and 2024 by any means necessary — even if doing so requires cheating.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Postnoted on Twitter Thursday morning, "Their collective agreement to pretend the lies about 1/6 and 2020 are true is best understood as a collective unshackling of themselves from any obligation to abide by future election losses -- the precondition to overturning them by whatever means are necessary."

Sargent was responding to reports that Tucker Carlson of Fox News plans to do a "special" to amplify conspiracy theories that the January 6 insurrection was a "false flag" operation. As with the claims that the 2020 election was "rigged," it's important to understand that not only does Carlson not believe this, neither do his viewers — even as they eat up and repeat these conspiracy theories.

We know this for a very simple reason: The same people making claims that January 6 was a "false flag" will, depending on the situation, flip around and make the contradictory claim that the insurrectionists were patriots and martyrs. It's why Carlson will claim one minute that QAnon is a mythliberals made up to smear conservatives, and then the next minute defend the very real QAnon as a bunch of freethinkers resisting liberal hegemony. It's how MyPillow CEO-turned-fascist-propagandist Mike Lindell can keep moving the date for Trump's miraculous reinstallation in the White House without most of his followers starting to ask questions about why his predictions never pan out. It's why Republicans aren't rattled by the failure to turn up any real incidents of "voter fraud" for Biden. It wasn't something they ever believed to begin with.

Contradictions don't faze right-wingers for the same reason they don't change their minds in the face of facts: The truth does not matter. All that matters is power. Trolling through lies and contradictory claims is viewed as a crucial weapon in getting power.

To be certain, there is absolutely nothing new about this observation. On the contrary, it's quite clear that Trumpism is just fascism by another name, and the rhetorical game-playing of fascists is a subject that's been well-scrutinized. Semiotician Umberto Eco wrote in his 1995 analysis of fascist rhetoric, fascism is "a beehive of contradictions," because the point is to destroy rational discourse. To the fascist, Eco writes, "Thinking is a form of emasculation" and should be rejected in favor of a raw will to power. And, of course, there's the popular quote from philosopherJean-Paul Sartreabout how fascists "know that their remarks are frivolous" and they "are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."

This is why conservatives are so impervious to facts and become more so as the GOP slides further and further down the fascist path. Facts are only persuasive to people who believe that truth and empiricism matter. For the authoritarian right, however, facts are understood as inconveniences and obstacles. In that light, it makes sense why they take so much delight in rejecting facts and driving liberals bonkers by doing so. It's a show of power, to relish how reality itself cannot defeat them.

Like many on the left, I was amused watching perennial GOP troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia freaking out at the possibility that her robotic repetition of the Big Lie might actually cause her followers to believe it and choose not to vote. And certainly, there are a small percentage of numpty-heads in the GOP coalition who don't realize it's all a big con and might elect to sit out elections because of it. In close elections, that extremely small percentage of Republicans who aren't in on the joke may matter. But that 92% of Republicans are feeling confident and excited about voting in future elections shows that the faith in the Big Lie is, for the vast majority of them, an act performed for the cameras and not a sincerely held belief.

Republican voters are not misled by Trump's Big Lie. They are empowered by the opportunity to join in. If there's any chance of beating back the rising fascist movement in America, it starts with understanding this crucial difference.

bannon? push/ pull threat, override

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/michigan-gop/

members of Michigan's Republican Party are installing conspiracy theorists for election-related positions.Although the individuals currently in position have years of experience, they are being replaced with Trump enthusiasts who have no political experience. It appears their only qualification is adhering to the Trump agenda.

According to The Daily Beast, a former official for the Michigan Republican Party have weighed in to express their concern about the disturbing shift in the political party's leadership. The publication reports that Michigan Republican officials are working to put canvassers in place who will continue to support Trump's election-related conspiracy theories.

Jeff Timmer, who was the former executive director of Michigan's GOP, expressed concern about what can be expected in the coming months as he suggested the political party is heading down a "rabbit-hole."

"There's no resistance within the Republican Party," Timmer said. "They are wholly invested, almost to a person, in the delusional Big Lie that there was some widespread irregularity and malfeasance in the last election, and that they need to take extraordinary steps, either by changing laws or in this case, changing elections personnel in order to fix a non-existent problem."

With an alarming number of individuals still buying into Trump's "big lie," Timmer explained how alarming Republicans' efforts are to strategically put people in place who have no problem hijacking democracy.

"It's kind of scary-looking ahead because the Republicans are making no secret about their plans to create chaos and throw a wrench in the gears of the next election," Timmer said, adding, "trying to put people in place who will go beyond what the law allows and do things in the next election that they didn't feel they had people in place to do in the last one."

However, the issue isn't just concerning for traditional Republicans but also Democratic lawmakers. Speaking to The Beast,David Knezek, a Democratic commissioner for Wayne County, also criticized the origin of the latest conspiracy-driven movement.

"Across the country there is a sad and systematic effort to create an alternate reality in which Donald Trump won the 2020 election," Knezek said. "Part of that effort is to seat canvassers who want to perpetuate this lie and call into question the validity of all elections across the country. Americans of both political parties must come together to put aside partisanship and protect our system of democracy by passionately advocating for the truth."

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COUP authoritariAN

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/internet-explodes-with-reactions-to-bombshell-senate-judiciary-report-on-trumps-efforts-to-pressure-doj-into-helping-him-overturn-the-election/

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and ⁠— here aresix key takeaways from it.

1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."

The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.

December 15, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (both men assumed office when William Barr left on Dec. 23)
December 23, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 24, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 27, 2020 – Trump-Rosen-Donoghue Call
December 28, 2020 – Trump-Donoghue Call
December 30, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
December 31, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
January 3, 2021 – Trump-Donoghue Call

2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."

Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:

"Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;

Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."

Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.

Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."

The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.

3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark [former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."

After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.

In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:

"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept"and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."

4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."

The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.

They are:

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.
Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"

5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."

When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.

6. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."

On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"

In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.

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omfg

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/28/cia_julian_assange_assassination_plot

yahoo isikoff

did the CIAunder the Trump administration plan to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a shootout in London? That is one of the explosive findings in a new exposé by Yahoo News that details how the CIA considered abducting and possibly murdering Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden for rape allegations, charges that were dropped in 2017. More than 30 former officials say formerCIADirector Mike Pompeo was apparently motivated to get even with WikiLeaks following its publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools, which the agency considered “the largest data loss in CIA history.” Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, lays out the plans and describes how the abduction plan “was one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the entire Trump era,” noting it ultimately spurred the Justice Department to fast-track its legal case against Assange. We also speak with Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson, who says the latest revelations should alarm American citizens, as well as journalists around the world. “This is the CIA talking about conspiracy to kidnap and murder an Australian citizen and an award-winning journalist and editor who has done nothing but publish truthful information.”

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921 amanda

The stakes of the California recall election of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom couldn't be higher. Voting, either by mail or in person, ends Tuesday, and if Newsom is recalled, the bluest state in the country will not just have a Republican governor, but Larry Elder, a right-wing talk radio host who is a loon even by the standards of the party that elected Donald Trump.

If Elder wins, he threatens California's fragile recovery from the pandemic, since, like most Republicans these days, he's running interference for the virus. Plus, he would have the power to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is literally 88 years old, if she were to leave office — and one name that's being floated is Elder's protege and white nationalist former Trump advisor Stephen Miller.

In a normal circumstance, someone like Elder — he suggested Women's March participants are too ugly to rape and argued that it's the descendants of slave owners and not slaves that deserve reparations — would never have a chance of winning the governorship of a deep blue state like California. Unable to win in a free and fair election, however, Republicans in the state have turned to dirty tricks and shenanigans. The entire Republican strategy is built around suppressing voter turnout through confusing and demoralizing the public. The recall ballots are confusing, and may lead voters to not understand that voting yes on recalling Newsom automatically means voting yes on his replacement being a Republican. Republicans are also counting on pandemic-induced disillusionment to keep Democratic voters from bothering to mail in ballots at all.

In other words, the California recall is a microcosm of what has become the GOP's national strategy.

Republicans have given up entirely on the basic premise of democracy. They no longer think that politicians should try to appeal to a majority of citizens to win power. Instead, their focus is entirely on finding ways to circumvent public will and gain power anyway. In some states, this manifests as gerrymandering, outright voter suppression and even a new slate of laws meant to allow Republican officials to simply vacate the results of elections they don't like. In California, it's about forcing an off-year election in the most confusing way possible, hoping to hoodwink voters into accidentally giving themselves a Republican governor.

Regardless of the state-specific method, what holds all of this together is a widespread rejection within the Republican Party of the right of the people to choose their own leaders. Republicans feel entitled to rule, no matter what, and therefore feel entitled to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. The technical legality of the California recall election doesn't change this reality. The spirit of the whole enterprise is driven by a willingness of Republicans to find some backhanded way to force a governor on the state that they know very well the majority of Californians do not want.

Ultimately, it comes down to the increasingly rigid Republican belief that most Americans are not legitimate citizens and therefore have no right to vote Republicans are bound to respect. This belief manifests most commonly in the Big Lie, which is metastasizing beyond Trump's false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to "fraud". Already, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians are prepping their followers for the possibility that Newsom survives the recall with an updated version of the Big Lie, claiming the election is "rigged" and that Newsom will only win through "voter fraud."

No real evidence of actual fraud that could swing an election is ever produced with these relentless Big Lie claims, but then again, it doesn't need to be.

"Voter fraud" is not really a literal belief among Republicans, but more a code phrase to convey the larger belief that most legal voters shouldn't have the right to vote at all. To call these legal voters "frauds" is to contest the legitimacy of their citizenship. It functions in the same way as conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate did, as a way for conservatives to signal to each other a belief that the first Black president is not a "real" American. With the Big Lie, the group of people who conservatives refuse to admit are legitimate citizens has grown to encompass pretty much anyone who votes for the Democrats.

This notion that most Americans aren't "real" Americans and therefore are "fraud" voters has become a majority belief among Republican voters. A recent CNN poll, which found that 6 in 10 Republican voters said that affirming the Big Lie — which again, is code for the belief that Democratic votes are inherently illegitimate — is an important part of being a Republican. We see this in the support for the January 6 insurrection that has been quietly solidifying among the GOP base. It all goes back to a belief that if Republicans can't win a fair election, they should be able to cheat their way into power — or, if that fails, use violent force.

As Igor Derysh reported last week for Salon, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing down a similarly sleazy power grab by Republicans in Michigan. Republicans in the state legislature are trying to pass an anti-voting bill to keep those voters they see as illegitimate — particularly urban residents and Black voters — from casting ballots. To get around Whitmer's veto, they're using the same tactic that California Republicans used to force a recall, exploiting an ill-advised loophole that allows a shockingly small number of petitioners to force the issue.In this case, it's not a recall, but even worse, the ability simply overrule the decision of a duly elected governor. Democrats in the state are accusing Republicans of using a "playbook of losing, lying, and attempting to cheat their way into office."

It's not just a fair accusation, but such an obvious observation that it's verging on banal. It's the playbook that fueled Trump's failed coup and is currently fueling Elder's attempt to seize the California governor's office through the back door. Elections are increasingly not going to be contests of two candidates trying to appeal to voters, but a Democratic candidate appealing to voters while a Republican candidate tries to find some way to get around that pesky "democracy" problem. Newsom will probably survive this recall effort, but the country is going to have a much harder time surviving the relentless GOP assault on democracy.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/steve-bannon/

dart kos

on Wednesday evening made an excellent point: While Democrats and the Biden administration focus on the mundane aspects of trying to do what's best for the American people—passing infrastructure legislation, preserving and protecting the right to vote against GOP measures to suppress it, combating the causes and effects of climate change, and trying to ensure that women retain autonomy over their own bodies, for example—for Republicans, even addressing or staking out a position on these issues has become, at most, a peripheral concern.[wedge issue cult war, own the libs]

You would expect a party that professes some legitimate relationship to the American people to at least set forth its policy views on these matters. But, as Maddow noted on Wednesday, that is not what Republicans are talking about. In reality, the Republicans have only one focus now: the negation of fair and lawful elections that don't go their way. That has been the crux of their entire collective effort since Trump lost the election last November. It is the focus in California, where the racist Fox News crackpot Larry Elder apparently received unpleasant news from his internal polling and is now playing the "fraud" card, in the apparent expectation that he will lose that state's recall election against Gavin Newsom. It is happening in Nevada, where Trump-endorsed candidate Adam Laxalt has preemptively suggestedthat if he fails to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in 2022, it will only be due to some unspecified "fraud."

The "stolen election/voter fraud" theme is now the official GOP talking point. As Maddow observed, Republicans everywhere are now using it and will continue to use it in 2022 and beyond. The tactic is being chiefly promoted and driven by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief of staff, and reinforced through his daily podcasts, which, like NBC News, ProPublica and others have pointed out, are now virtually required listening for most Republican officials, whether elected or intent on being elected. This is where their marching orders are coming from.

While Bannon's podcasts touch obliquely on current events (the latest fixation of their contrived outrage is Afghanistan, for example), the overwhelming emphasis is on conjuring up and amplifying the phony threat of "election fraud," urging on the nationwide bogus, partisan audits and investigations, and providing preordained conclusions to those investigations. As Pro Publica reported in their analysis of Bannon's efforts, this nationalization of Trump's Big Lie has been extraordinarily successful up to this point, prompting a massive surge in local election precinct membership among Trump's most delusional, violent, and white nationalist base of support:

The new movement is built entirely around Trump's insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans can't let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.

Bannon's podcast is a disinformation megaphone the likes of which Josef Goebbels could have only dreamed of, and it is incredibly corrosive to this country's democratic institutions. It is the cynical product of a man who has exercised (or attempted to exercise) an insidious influencenot only on far-right, proto-fascist movements and political parties in Europe but now apparently in Brazil as well, on behalf of would-be dictator Jair Bolsonaro. And the fact that the entire GOP is currently operating in lockstep with—and at the bidding of—such a person tells you everything you need to know about how the 2022 election will be framed: Every contest in which a Republican loses will now be susceptible to an ongoing, malicious attack on that election's integrity, bar none.

And Democrats have every reason to be appalled by this Bannon takeover of the Republican party. (In reality, all Americans should be appalled, but as the listless reaction by the GOP faithful to the terrorist assault of Jan. 6 showed, we cannot expect any fealty to democracy from the vast majority of Republicans.)But there is a silver lining to this seditious perfidy by Bannon and others: it serves to make all forthcoming elections a referendum on Donald Trump, to the exclusion of all else.

Bannon himself has created this effect by tying his entire effort to the 2020 election. (In his podcasts, rather than refer to it directly, he calls it "3 November," as if the bare mention of the date has a mobilizing resonance similar to Jan. 6 or Sept. 11.) All of the invented, phony, and racially tinged rhetoric about voter fraud hawked in his podcasts stem from the given assumption that Trump was wrongfully denied reelection. And Trump himself has been more than eager to support it, as he showed this weekby injecting his assessment of the California recall election as tainted, even before any votes were tallied. Trump's anointed candidates, such as Laxalt and the countless others who will follow him, have all irrevocably signed onto this playbook. That is their sole roadmap.

So be it. Just a few weeks ago, plenty of political prognosticators weregleefully downplaying Democrats' chances in California (and, by implication, the 2022 midterms), touting the fact that Trump was no longer on the ballot. Republicans, by leaping onto the Bannon bandwagon, have now made it essential that he be implicitly on the ballot, even as they resolve to delegitimize any Democratic wins as the product of fraud. Seen in this perspective, every election from this point forward is a referendum on Trump and Trump-ism. Fascist-admirers like Bannon believe that this is a winning strategy, but to an electorate that has already rendered a decidedly negative verdict on Joe Biden's predecessor—a judgment which was amply reinforced by the horrific attacks by Trump supporters on Jan. 6—he may have inadvertently provided the single strongest motivation for Democrats to vote.

When Georgia held its special election on Jan. 5, pitting Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff against two GOP incumbents, it was in the wake of weeks of rhetoric from Trump attempting to delegitimize the electoral process. At that time, Trump's mob of white supremacist terrorists had yet to demonstrate their violent and utter contempt for our institutions by assaulting the Capitol. Many political observers concluded that Trump's efforts sabotaged the GOP's chances by depressing and demotivating the vote. But the converse effect, theconcerted mobilization of the Black vote by Stacey Abrams and others, was perhaps less remarked upon. Far from having its desired effect, the tactic of falsely crying voter fraud hurt GOP turnout.

The entire underlying premise of Bannon's podcast is the illegitimacy of the Democratic voter. But as the elections of Sens. Warnock and Ossoff showed, people react very negatively to attempts to delegitimize them. For many, it simply increases their resolve to vote. While every district is certainly different, if Republicans expect the tactic to work as a national strategy, they have to resign themselves to the fact that the election thereby becomes all about Trump, everything that Trump did in office and has done in the wake of his defeat. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, for example, isdoing just that in Virginia right now.

Trump is the most polarizing figure in American politics, and by and large, all Democrats viscerally despise him. By overtly basing their entire strategy on the petulant lies of a failed president, Republicans who choose to follow down the primrose path Bannon has laid for them may well be giving the Democrats a midterm opportunity of a lifetime.

Democrats should embrace that opportunity: make every election a referendum on Donald Trump, tying every Republican to his attempts to overturn the election. And pull out all the stops to get our voters to the polls.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/rep-kevin-mccarthy/

5 lies in 7 min?

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florida man?

an 621

republican candidate in secret recording says he has access to Russian hit squad and would 'end' opponent's life

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521 edit bd

Journalist John Harwood had a piece in CNN Sunday reflecting on an essay published in 2012 that accurately predicted the coming of today's GOP. "Let's just say it: the Republicans are the problem" was written by Thomas Mann, who was at the time with the Brookings Institution, along with Norm Ornstein, who is still with the American Enterprise Institute. The Republicans, they said, had become "ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Sound familiar?

I have been teaching a class for a few years, on and off, at Yale and Wesleyan on how to understand American politics. I assign Mann and Ornstein's essay every time. But I didn't know some important context Harwood provides, meaning that the essay landed with a thud nine years ago, even among what are now called anti-GOP conservatives.

Hardwood calls on Charlie Dent to comment. He's a former Republican moderate from Pennsylvania, who is now a talking head for CNN. He told Harwood that, "I thought they overstated things." He added: "I don't like where we're heading, but don't think it's inevitable that we get to that terrible place." William Kristol pooh-poohed Mann and Ornstein's essay, too. He told Harwood of his feelings at the time. "People like me were thinking, 'Yeah, there are some kooky people around, but c'mon.'" That was before Donald Trump's ascent and the consequent demise of his magazine, The Weekly Standard. (Kristol later joined other anti-GOP conservatives to found The Bulwark.)

Harwood's piece is good. I encourage you to read it. But I want to make the case for a more prescient essay. It was published in 2004 in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq by The Chronicle Review, an obscure monthly supplement to The Chronicle of Higher Education,itself obscure. I assign it alongside Mann and Ornstein's essay. But if theirs had little impact, Alan Wolfe's had none at all. (No one in the United States Congress or the Washington press corps is being asked how they feel about it now.) With all due respect to Mann and Ornstein, I think Wolfe's is more important, because it gives a name to "where we're heading," a name that even John Harwood seems to avoid.

Alan Wolfe is a political scientist and sociologist at Boston College. He is or was the director of its Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. In 2004, he was searching for ways to explain Republican behavior after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the launch of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was, in other words, doing what Harwood did, but instead of looking to pundits like Mann and Ornstein, Wolfe looked way, way back to scholars like himself, this time to Carl Schmitt, who was briefly the leading exponent of fascist political thought. Fascism is "where we're heading" now, but Wolfe saw the first stirrings of it over 17 years ago.

Using Schmitt's The Concept of the Political as a lens through which to see the politics of the early 2000s, Wolfe wrote that "the most important lesson Schmitt teaches is that the differences between liberals and conservatives are not just over the policies they advocate but also over the meaning of politics itself." Wolfe goes on to explain that:

Liberals think of politics as a means; conservatives as an end. Politics, for liberals, stops at the water's edge; for conservatives, politics never stops. Liberals think of conservatives as potential future allies; conservatives treat liberals as unworthy of recognition.Liberals believe policies ought to be judged against an independent ideal such as human welfare or the greatest good for the greatest number; conservatives evaluate policies by whether they advance their conservative causes.

Liberals instinctively want to dampen passions; conservatives are bent on inflaming them. Liberals think there is a third way between liberalism and conservatism; conservatives believe that anyone who is not a conservative is a liberal. Liberals want to put boundaries on the political by claiming that individuals have certain rights that no government can take away; conservatives argue that in cases of emergency … the reach and capacity of the state cannot be challenged.1

I think Alan Wolfe used the word "conservative" for a couple of reasons. One, because he didn't feeling like being charitable that day. Two, more likely, because "fascist" was not available to him in 2004.I like to think if he were to rewrite this essay, he'd make room for conservatives like Norm Ornstein, or Liz Cheney for that matter, in order to establish the boundaries of acceptable behavior in a liberal democracy in which some things really are above politics, such as the political legitimacy of a rival faction.

"Fascist," however, continues to get side-eye from mainstream commentators like John Harwood, I think because it so easily evokes images of gas chambers. But as Wolfe makes clear, it doesn't take genocide to make a fascist. What it takes a particular and particularly coherent worldview in which everyone outside one's group is the enemy. As Harwood said, Mann and Ornstein were right. Their diagnosis of the GOP is undeniable. But Alan Wolfe was more right. What's more, he gave us a vocabulary.

We should use it.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/end-of-enlightenment/

common dr robt freeman

The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world.

We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others.

The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to return America to the pre-modern, pre-Enlightened darkness of the Middle Ages. If it succeeds, it will reverse more than three hundred years of human progress.

The most egregious of Republican assaults on the modern world is its rejection of Reason. Reason is the way we know what we know. It is not through revelations from God, or the pronouncements of priests or monarchs as had been the case before the Enlightenment.

Reason as a process for discovering Truth started in the Scientific Revolution around 1550. It was so powerful a way of knowing the physical world, the philosophers of the Enlightenment adopted it for knowing—and improving—the social world. It became the foundation of all subsequent Enlightenment thought, and all modern institutions.

The Republican broadside against Reason was on display in the first days of the Trump administration when Trump asserted that his inauguration crowd size was the largest in history. Presented with facts to the contrary, in photographic evidence, his assistant, Kellyanne Conway, proclaimed the existence of "alternative facts." It's been downhill since.

Republican discourse is a never-ending torrent of lies, idiocies, and absurdities—the very antithesis of Reason. The Muslim invasion. The caravan bringing murderers, rapists, drugs, and disease. Democrats eating babies. A satanic cult of pedophiles running the "Deep State." A pandemic that would "disappear, like a miracle." The greatest economy in the history of the world. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head being canceled. Biden's hamburger ban. A rigged election. Massive voter fraud. Terrorists who were really just tourists handing out hugs and kisses. It never ends.

The Republican assault on Reason is an attack not just on truth itself, but on our very capacity to think at all. With their base, Republicans address not the neo-cortex—the thinking part of the brain—but the amygdala—the lizard-brain seat of fight-or-flight. The amygdala subordinates logic, facts, reason, and deliberation to deceit, conspiracy, hysteria, and fear.

It's easier to trigger hatred and fear than thinking and logic. That's why Republicans do it. That's why their base—and increasingly, their "leaders"—sound like zombies, like robots, like members of a cult when they're interviewed for the evening news. They are. They've been programmed to fear and hate and blame, and the reinforcement is unending, [feedback? amplif?] because, to work, it has to be. Otherwise, they become unprogrammed.

It doesn't matter that none of the endless effusion of lies ever turn out to be true or that they are routinely, repeatedly abandoned in favor of newer lies for the next news cycle. What matters is that the lies incite indignation, and that the dopamine high that follows gets its constant, programmed, ever-increasing reinforcement.

Trump's 35,000 documented lies are the embodiment of it all.It is a leprous, insidious disease, an inability to deal with reality, but literally the one by which Republicans define themselves. Glandular excretions are the Republican formula for generating voter turnout: inciting Pavlovian rage based on a torrential fantasmia of lurid lies. It works, but it is the living, suppurating antithesis of Reason.

Another Republican assault on the legacy of the Enlightenment is the attack on Democracy. It was John Locke who, in 1689, wrote that people who were able to think could not be bullied like ignorant people could. If government wanted thinking people's cooperation it could no longer rely on the medieval divine right of kings. It needed to obtain "the consent of the governed." This, of course, became a sacrament of the American political order.

The opening words of the Constitution are, "We the people of the United States…" That is not a paean to monarchy, or to dictatorship. It is a statement that the consent of the people—and only that consent—provides a government its legitimacy. But Republicans are working feverishly to overturn the consent of the governed, to destroy Democracy.

Their assault on the Capitol on January 6th was the most conspicuous effort to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States but it was not the first and will certainly not be the last.Republicans insist that their reason-denying mobs, their goons, their Brownshirts will tell the rest of us how we will be governed. No consent involved, only submission: ours. You can see this in their fevered efforts at voter suppression, explicitly preventing majority rule and the consent of the governed.

Republicans cannot win power on the strength of their ideas and policies. They lost the presidency, the Senate, and the House. Large majorities favor policies backed by Democrats. So, they need to destroy Democracy itself to gain power. To do that, they need to destroy Reason as the way we know what we know. That is the core, the essence, the modus operandi of the Republican enterprise.

Constitutionalism is a third Enlightenment ideal that Republicans are intent on destroying. A constitution defines how a country is to be governed. Before constitutions, it was autocracy that called the shots. Think of Louis XIV's notorious declaration: "I am the state." Decisions were made by caprice, by the rich and powerful, in their own interests, everyone else be damned. Constitutionalism embeds the Rule of Law—another Enlightenment ideal—into a society, making "equal treatment under the law" a modern treasure, however badly it may be realized.

Besides losing all of the branches of the federal government, Republicans failed over and over and over to persuade the judicial branch to sanction their usurpation of the Constitution. So, they resort to performative charades like the farcical ballot laundering farrago in Arizona to try to undo the Constitutionally-ordained process for the peaceful transfer of power. Now, they're taking it to other states. It will not end.

We could go on. Republicans want to destroy the social contract—another Enlightenment ideal—that says you get ahead on the basis of hard work. They insist, instead, that privilege should be based on race, with the best spots reserved for whites. This violates the Enlightenment ideal of equality for all.

Remember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Pure Enlightenment. In the Republican world, however, like in Orwell's Animal Farm which was an allegory of the degradation of Soviet totalitarianism, all men are created equal, but some—whites—are more equal than others.

We should be clear. This is not about peripheral protests over policy preferences. It is a broadside against the foundation, the institutional undergirding of our civilization. It is an attempt to destroy the conceptual milieu that has survived for centuries and that, however flawed it may be, has delivered the greatest freedom, expansion of rights, material progress, and human opportunity the world has ever known.

The measure of our alarm should be that Republicans, with the help of a complicit media, have managed to normalize rampant public lying, the unrestrained desecration of Reason, are carrying out an open, unabashed attack on our democracy, are carrying out notorious, savage assaults on Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, Equality, and more. Our nation is literally under attack by anti-Enlightenment zealots determined to tear it down and it's not at all clear that they will not succeed.

It is indicative that the Republican party's highest priest is a thrice-married pathological liar, an admitted sexual assaulter, a draft dodger, a six-time filer for bankruptcy, a man who inflicted hundreds of thousands of excess deaths on the country, was twice impeached, who lost two successive popular vote counts, and who then attempted to overthrow the government. Read that sentence again and think about its implication.

The Republican hero, the man they model themselves on, the one they want us to bow down to, is a failed business man, a failed reality TV star, a failed president, a career con man who is the most corrupt, certainly the most craven and creepy individual ever known to American politics. This is the best Republicans have to offer. That is who they are, and what they insist on inflicting on all the rest of us, our consent be damned.

The Enlightenment helped the world replace monarchy with republicanism, a world ruled by theology with a world of science, autocracy with the rule of law, aristocratic privilege with the equality of all men, and feudalism with capitalism. No matter how imperfectly it may have been realized, it was as noble a vision as human beings have ever devised. The two worlds are the difference between the "Dark Ages" that went before and the modern world. That is the Republicans' promise to America.

More regression. More destruction of beautiful ideals and noble institutions. More degradation of deserving people. More humiliation of undignified people, themselves being the examples. More carnage. More chaos. More slime spewed on everyone.

There's not a syllable of inspiring vision in anything they have to say, not a word of uplifting ideals in any of it. It is all pathetic self-victimization and a lust for vengeance against those who refuse to respect them. We must all be dragged into the sewer that spawned, that is, and that sustains Donald Trump. That is his and Republicans' retaliation against a people who once had the temerity to believe in majestic ideals, the audacity to strive for them, and who once imagined that they might even be worthy of them.

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an 521

republicans sink to new, amoral lows this week on everything that matters

Joan McCarter Daily Kos

Let's check in on this week in congressional Republicans, just a kind of check up to see how that revered institution of Joe Manchin's is doing vis-a-vis the GOP.

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NOTE ANTI-COMMIE , AUTH EXCUSE TO ABUSE POWER VS BOGEYMAN?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/the-big-lie/

semrau

Since the 2020 presidential election, the phrase "The Big Lie" has been deployed to describe the former president's undermining of American democracy. This phrase has its roots in authoritarian propaganda, most notably in Adolf Hitler's assertion that if you tell a lie often enough, it will become truth in the minds of your audience.

Trump's own "Big Lie" began with a refusal to concede electoral defeat. This deceit was then formalized in frivolous lawsuits and it ultimately inspired an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Since then, members of the GOP have either explicitly endorsed Trump's "The Big Lie" or tacitly allowed it to flourish in the consciousness of their voters, such that 60 percent of Republicans now believe the 2020 election was stolen.

However, Trump's own "Big Lie" is not actually a singular falsehood; rather, it is the culmination of a long attack on our shared reality. The undermining of the democratic process itself is only possible due to the decades of disinformation that preceded it.

Where did the Republican lies begin? The assault on Medicare is a good starting point. In 1961, Ronald Reagan that Medicare was a stealthy vessel for complete government control over not only medicine but society. In this narrative, those who claimed to care for the vulnerable were exploiting the same to usher in socialism. Reagan warned that if Medicare prevailed, Americans would soon be telling their children and grandchildren "what it once was like in America when men were free."

The Republican Party followed Reagan's lead. It didn't take long before all government programs were called "socialism" and were framed as inherent threats to freedom. This GOP project was accelerated by the great white backlash against the passing of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. White people should not only fear the social safety net, they were told, but any government intervention to ensure equal citizenship. cf wisc community ~ hate --> commie repARATION 521]

After the 1960s, the GOP's attack on truth began to encompass not just antipathy towards government, but a broader rejection of institutions. Consider the issue of climate change: In the 1980s and 90s, there was at least some bipartisan recognition of the problem and support for addressing it.. The Republicans mounted a propaganda campaign in response. They were successful. In 2001, there was a 13-point gap between Democrats' and Republicans' belief in climate change. It's 53 points now. The Republican Party had therefore not only undermined government but science, too.

Since then, the Republicans lied about WMDs in Iraq. They lied about Obamacare, calling the market-based plan "socialism" and warning that it would lead to so-called "death panels." Though many did not explicitly lie about Barack Obama's birthplace, most of the Republicans allowed that lie to fester. It was among the biggest of them all: The president of the United States may not be an American given he's Black.

The GOP's status as the party-of-lies was then accelerated by Donald Trump, who told an estimated 30,573 falsehoods during his presidency. From the moment Trump took office and lied about the crowd size at his inauguration—something we could confirm or deny with our very own eyes—it was clear his presidency would be different. Trump proceeded to lie about things as varied as US intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 election to the extraordinary number of men who wept in his presence.

Then came COVID-19. Trump and the Republican Party compared the novel respiratory coronavirus to the flu, rolled their eyes at liberal hysteria, and pushed unscientific treatments with potentially deadly consequences. And, importantly, the Republicans didn't just lie to protect themselves; they actively exploited the crisis for broader cultural and political advantage. This is nowhere more evident than the almost religious fervor they employed to discourage the simple act of wearing a face mask.

Initially, it seemed possible that lying about COVID might finally be the breaking point in the GOP's history of dishonesty. Every other lie the GOP has told had distant effects, allowing them to escape accountability. From attacks on the safety net to climate change, the GOP evaded consequences because the harmful effects of their policies were temporarily distant. It seemed implausible that they could pull off equivalent deceit about COVID. That their falsehoods could overpower the pleas of doctors or the accumulation of hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.

Yet Republican lies took hold even in the face of immediate evidence. The pernicious effects of their disinformation continues. Now, in 2021, the GOP has shifted from being anti-mask to being anti-vaccine, with 43 percent of GOP voters expressing "vaccine hesitancy." Though general anti-vaccination efforts have gained steam over the past decade, there were few partisan divisions prior to COVID. In 2015, for example, Democrats and Republicans both endorsed standard vaccinations in roughly equal numbers. Thus, the political divides about vaccination are relatively new.

It is within this broader context that we should view the "Big Lie." This lie—which strikes at the heart of the democratic process— is only possible because of the GOP's longer assault on truth.Medicare is socialism. Welfare is for greedy, lazy people. Climate change does not exist. The president is Black and therefore not American. Russia didn't interfere in the 2016 election. COVID-19 is just like the flu.

In some ways, it might seem like we have reached the culmination of the GOP's deception. They have so thoroughly radicalized their followers that many no longer value medical advice about their own personal safety, let alone believe the results of a democratic election. How can it get any worse than this? It seems that it can.

Liz Cheney, who committed the crime of recognizing Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, has been expelled from party leadership. Believers of Q-Anon are clawing their way into Congress. Republicans continue to turn a blind eye, despite the clear anti-Semitic and racist nature of the movement. The rest of the party denies their previous leader, Donald Trump, inspired an insurrection against the US government. Now the House GOP leader says he doesn't support a commission to investigate it.

2020 was not just a year in which many denied the results of an election. They put their own health at risk for a culture war. None of this would have been possible if not for decades of deceit. The "Big Lie" is, in fact, the "Long Lie": the generational priming of minds to reject all evidence and view any authority—from the government to scientists—with hostility and distrust. From lies about Medicare to lies about Obama's birthplace, this project has been long in the making. The entire GOP is responsible.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/noam-chomsky-republican-party/

alexh

The United States has had 17 different presidents during Noam Chomsky's lifetime, from Calvin Coolidge to Joe Biden — and the left-wing author, now 92, has lived through major historical events including the Great Depression, Watergate, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chomsky discussed the challenges of the Biden era during a recent interview with author/journalist David Masciotra for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Chomsky discussed his most recent book, "Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance," in the interview with Masciotra, warning that people who are hurting economically can be manipulated by far-right extremists. Chomsky has been a blistering critic of neoliberal economics, which he said continues to fail millions of people in the United States.

"I've seen it over and over," Chomsky told Masciotra. "During the Kennedy and Johnson years, the technocratic and meritocratic elite, my colleagues from Harvard and MIT, were flocking down to Washington to show how the world should be run. Well, in Vietnam, we saw what came of that. It was not unpredictable. Those of us in the streets were warning of it all along. Now, it is the same. Neoliberalism, whatever is in the minds of people who advocate for it — maybe they don't even think about it — is an explicit effort…. to hand power to private institutions, which are dedicated to self-enrichment."

Neoliberalism, Chomsky added, only worsens the divide between the haves and the have-nots in the United States.

"The majority of the population gets by paycheck to paycheck," Chomsky told Masciotra. "Real wages have stagnated for 40 years. The gains of productivity growth concentrate in very few pockets. This leads to…. unfocused anger. Is it surprising? People aren't told what is really robbing them. Instead, they are told that it is immigrants, Blacks, some pedophiles from outer space, if you believe QAnon — anything but what is actually happening."

When economic conditions are unfavorable to the working class, Chomsky noted, Republicans try to distract their voters with "cultural issues."

"The Republicans, who are the party of the superrich, understood in the 1970s that you can't get votes by coming to people and saying, 'I want to rob you, and hand everything you have over to the rich and corporate sector,'" Chomsky explained. "Somehow, that doesn't work. You have to turn to what are called 'cultural issues,' meaning everything but what matters for your life. So, Paul Weyrich, one of the main Republican strategists, by the mid-1970s got a flash of insight and realized that if the Republicans pretend — stress 'pretend'— to be opposed to abortion, they'll pick up the evangelical vote and the northern Catholic vote."

Noting that the Republican Party is becoming "increasingly dangerous and brazenly antidemocratic," Masciotra asked Chomsky to discuss the political climate of 2021. And Chomsky agreed with his description of the modern GOP.

Chomsky said of the Republican Party, "They can mobilize the people they've turned into raging monsters, and get them to attack these communist rats who want the country flooded with rapists and murderers so that the White race suffers genocide. You know the whole story. That's the Republican Party. It's not a political party anymore. It's very dangerous."

The 92-year-old author added that scapegoating is an effective tool of the far right in 2021 just as it was when he was a kid during the 1930s and Jews were targeted by Nazis. He explained:

There are other parts of it that are just as dangerous. For example, just recently, Pew Research Center came out with one of its regular polls on major issues facing the country. They had a choice of 15 major issues, and people were asked to rank them. It was divided between Republicans and Democrats. Take a look at Republicans. At the very bottom — 13 percent — the most important question that has ever arisen in human history:global warming. They don't call it that. They call it "climate change," which is more neutral. But only 13 percent think that is a major problem.It is only the most important problem that's ever arisen — the question of survival. Then you go to the problems they are most concerned about — illegal immigration, the deficit. This is the result of very effective propaganda. Imposing common sense, manufacturing consent, year after year — turning people into the kind of people that supported the Nazis. Going back to my childhood, I remember them right here in the United States. These were the people who wanted to get rid of the Jews, because "the Jews are destroying civilization."

"If people are isolated, atomized, with no support groups, no involvement in constructive activities, they are prey to this attack on their moral and intellectual integrity," Chomsky continued. "Go back to what I said, the Republican leadership is overjoyed at the moves toward some humane behavior on the part of Democrats. They know, especially with (former President Donald) Trump — who is a genius at this —that they can organize and mobilize crazed groups who really believe they need their guns to save the White race from genocide. You can drive people to that."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/never-heard-of-them-anonymous-arizona-gop-ballot-auditing-firm-unknown-its-home-state/

An Arizona judge is demanding more information about a Florida-based ballot firm's audits of the 2020 presidential election results as others raise concerns about the firm's reputation.

According to Politico, Cyber Ninjas consulting firm has caused a stir with its controversial audit of voting results in Maricopa County, and many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are asking: who are the Cyber Ninjas?

In Arizona and the firm's home state of Florida, no one seems to have a clue who they are.

When Christian Ziegler, vice-chair of the Republican Party in Florida was asked about the firm's founder, Doug Logan, she admitted she had no idea who he is. Like many other Florida Republican leaders and lawmakers, Ziegler said, "Doug Logan? Cyber Ninjas? No. I don't know these guys. Never heard of them."

On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) and other Democratic leaders also criticized the firm's audit as Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury in Phoenix demanded more information about it. On Monday, April 26, Hobbs appeared on "Cuomo Prime Time" where she expressed concern about the audit as she insisted it is yet another attempt by Republicans to "appease" the voters in their party.

"A group of Republicans are continuing to try to appease their base who refuse to accept that ... Trump lost Arizona and that he's not the president anymore," Hobbs told CNN's Chris Cuomo.

Hobbs also noted that her office has been focused on working "with a lawsuit that's been filed to try to address the security's concerns at a minimum, but at this point, this seems like such a farce that it would be a good idea to stop it."

Amid Republicans' push for election audits, organizers have reportedly been very selective when it comes to revealing details about who will be conducting the audits and if the selected teams will be bipartisan.

CNN also reports that organizers have "ignored requests from election integrity groups to allow nonpartisan election administration experts to observe the process," adding that "journalists who want to report on the endeavor are allowed to do so only if they agree to participate as election observers, and will be barred from taking notes or video."

Hobbs shared her reaction to the scarcity in the details.

"We have so many concerns about this exercise," Hobbs said Monday. "I kind of don't want to call it an audit. I think that's an insult to professional auditors everywhere because they're making this stuff up as they go along." She added, "I think there was a high level of expectation that whoever had their hands on the ballots and the equipment would adhere to some level of security measures and transparency, and that clearly has not happened."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/arizona-recount/

alexh

Five months after the 2020 presidential election and three months into Joe Biden's presidency, Republicans in the Arizona State Senate are using a Florida-based firm, Cyber Ninjas, to conduct an audit of votes in Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix). And attorneys for the company, according to the Arizona Republic, are asking a judge to keep its procedures for the audit secret and exclude the public and the media from a hearing where documents pertaining to the recount might be discussed.

The Arizona Republic's Andrew Oxford reports that Judge Christopher Coury, on Friday, asked Cyber Ninjas to turn over its plans and procedures for the audit, but attorneys for the company said that filing the documents publicly would compromise the audit's security. And Cyber Ninjas believe the documents enjoy legislative privilege because the company is conducting the audit at the request of the Arizona State Senate.

Coury has since recused himself from the case, and a new judge will need to be assigned to it.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Democratic Party and Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo have filed a lawsuit against the Arizona State Senate to stop the audit altogether and argue that it violates the state's election laws.

According to Oxford, "The prospect that a court might block voters from seeing how their ballots will be handled during the unprecedented undertaking adds to mounting concerns about its transparency, given that its funders remain a mystery and news briefings were immediately placed on an indefinite hiatus."

Oxford quotes Roopali Desai, an attorney representing the Arizona Democratic Party, as saying, "This is a simple case that asks for simple relief: that agents of the Arizona Senate who purport to be conducting an 'audit' of Maricopa County's election results follow state law and ensure the safety and security of ballots, voting equipment, and voters' personal information."

Arizona, which was deeply Republican in the past, has evolved into a swing state in recent years — and Biden was the first Democrat to win Arizona in a presidential election since President Bill Clinton in 1996. Although Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, he acknowledged Biden as president-elect after he won and certified the Electoral College results in his state — much to Trump's chagrin. Ducey has maintained that Biden won Arizona fair and square, but some far-right Republicans in Arizona, including those in the Arizona Senate, have promoted Trump's false and totally debunked claims of widespread voter fraud.

Cyber Ninjas' Maricopa County audit is being livestreamed by One America News Network, a right-wing cable news channel that prides itself on being to the right of Fox News.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/republican-lesson/

no lnx twet

Republicans learned an extremely dangerous lesson from the 2020 election

Alex Henderson April 13, 2021

When candidates lose a presidential election, their party typically performs an "autopsy" and tries to figure out exactly where they went wrong. President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, for example, was arguably the result of three "autopsies" — as Democrats had lost three presidential elections in a row during the 1980s. But Never Trump conservative Jonathan V. Last, in a column for The Bulwark published this week, argues that the Republican response to former President Donald Trump's loss to now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 election was to double down on Trumpism.

"In the days after Democrats unseated an incumbent president and won unified control of Congress," Last writes, "the victorious party went through a round of self-analysis and recriminations. The Republicans, who managed a trifecta of losing that hadn't been accomplished since Herbert Hoover, doubled down. Then they backed up their bets, split 4s, and doubled down again."

Last adds that with the GOP having doubled down on Trumpism following Trump's loss, one of the talking points of "Conservatism Inc." is "how beside-the-point 'democracy' is, anyhow." And Last points to a recent tweet in which conservative writer David Harsanyi wrote, "I'm not pro-democracy, I am pro-freedom. If democracy erodes freedom, (then) it's not something to celebrate."

The conservative Bulwark columnist argues that the GOP, with its post-election "autopsy," isn't trying to figure out how to appeal to a wider range of voters, but trying to discourage voting.

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"When Republicans conducted their autopsy," Last writes, "they skipped 'How to Win: Option 1' and went straight to Options 2 and 3 — leapfrogging the question of how to get more votes and focusing on how to use institutional leverage to take power even while losing popular majorities. Option 2 — the path of least resistance — is for Republicans to change voting rules at the state level in the hopes that they can drive down the number of Democratic votes cast and win the Electoral College despite being a persistent minority. A lot has been written about these various initiatives, some of which are more grotesque than others."

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With biting sarcasm, Last adds, "But the real cutting-edge work being done as a result of the GOP autopsy concerns Option 3: figuring out how a Republican can win the presidency even while losing the popular vote and the Electoral College."

After the 2020 presidential election, Last writes, some Republicans in the state governments in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia had enough integrity to resist Trump allies who wanted them to defy the Electoral College results. But with Option 3, according to Last, the GOP could try to purge state governments of Republicans who will accept Electoral College results even if they don't like an election's outcome.

"So, the key parts of the Republican autopsy have been: (1) building the political will to use raw power next time, and (2) removing the Republican officials who were not willing to comply last time," Last explains. "That's why Republican state parties have censured nearly every Republican who did not participate in Trump's attempted coup."

Last continues, "That's why (Secretary of State) Brad Raffensperger is the target of a primary challenge in Georgia…. That's why Nevada Republicans are attacking Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, the only Republican to have won state-wide office in 2018. Even though she is a Republican, Cegavske refused to go along with the attempt to overturn Nevada's result."

As much sarcasm and scathing humor as Last uses in his column, the Never Trumper concludes it by making a disturbing point and stressing that many Republicans have become overtly "authoritarian" and are undermining checks and balances.

Last writes, "This is how authoritarianism starts. A society goes from the rule of law, to rule by law — where the minority gets just enough power to change the laws so that they can amass more power. And here is a serious question: If Republicans managed enough votes to sustain an objection to counting electoral votes, what would our recourse be? Crossing our fingers and hoping that the Supreme Court steps in?.... The time to fight against authoritarianism isn't December 2024. It's now."

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i forgot fox had them; was there ever any standards/integrity that wd not be crossed/ ppl who wd not quality/ be invited/ refused? if all news, esp on fox is just opinion/bloviator, then no one barred, plus heat is good for ratings, and the purpose of fox is to insult dems, even more than lift gop

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/journalism-lies/

On Sunday, NBC's "Meet the Press" interviewed United States Senator Ron Johnson. ABC's "This Week" interviewed House Minority Whip Steve Scalise. CBS's "Face the Nation" interviewed United States Senator Lindsey Graham. "Fox News Sunday" interviewed United States Senator Rand Paul. They're Republicans and they had a message for a combined television audience of millions: Donald Trump won.

Not in those exact words, but that was the clear implication. This thing or that thing—it didn't really matter what thing—meant in their "view" that the former president was robbed and the legitimacy of the current president, Joe Biden, is somehow suspect.

I bring this up not because yesterday was a disaster for journalism and the integrity of the public square (though it was that). I bring this up because it seems to me an answer to the question that haunts democratic discourse: How does a republic deal with parties that lie so intensely, so voluminously and so shamelessly? Some say we should afford them the same respect we ourselves would expect. If we call them liars, that might encourage them to lie more given the outrage of being called liars. Better to check their facts, state the truth and move on in hopes that they behave in kind.

This was certainly the thinking behind Frank Bruni's latest, titled "Must We Dance on Rush Limbaugh Grave?" The Times columnist said Sunday that while the radio broadcaster, who died last week, was a white-power racist, sexist, fear-mongering, homophobic crank (not his words), it's crude and rough and, worse of all, "screechy" to say as much about a man recently killed off by the cancer. It's one thing to speak ill of the dead, Bruni wrote, "but the pitch of that ill-speak needn't be screechy. The manner of it needn't be savage. It has more credibility—and I think, more impact—when it's neither of these things. And we preserve some crucial measure of civility and grace."

For four decades, Rush Limbaugh had the biggest media megaphone through which he spit poison every day straight into the ears of 20 million Americans. He lied and lied, and he lied and lied. If there were no Limbaugh, there would be no President Trump, who himself told more than 30,500 lies, falsehoods and misleading claims during four years. Their canon of lies included lies about the covid pandemic, culminating in a death toll now exceeding half a million. Their repertoire of lies included lies about the election, culminating in the worst attack on our government since September 11, 2001. Their stockpile of lies included The Big One repeated Sunday by three GOP senators and one GOP House leader to the detriment of millions of television viewers. How does a republic deal with parties that lie nonstop? There's never been an easy answer. Whatever it is, it's not "civility and grace" alone, because they alone do not work.

It's not that I think Bruni is wrong to remind people to follow the Golden Rule. He's correct, in a purely abstract sense, to say that, "If you're going to fling your opinions at the world, you must be braced for the world to fling its reaction back at you. Those are the terms of the contract." But we are not talking about public morality in the abstract. We are talking about public morality in this place and in this time and in the spirit of defending our republic from ghouls conspiring, and still conspiring, to bring it down. Moreover, a Golden Rule that's wholly decontextualized and dehistoricized can be a gag preventing us from speaking the truth and silencing all but the most powerful.

You know who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is. During last week's deep freeze in Texas, she started a fundraiser that has raised, as of this writing, more than $4 million to alleviate hunger and suffering in the Lone Star State. She was doing for Texans what you'd think Texans would do for her (and other New Yorkers). But instead of gratitude, the Texas Republican Party answered generosity with slander:"The gesture is appreciated, but it doesn't remove the fact that her Green New Deal philosophy failed Texans," wrote Chairman Allen West. Fact No. 1: The Green New Deal is Ocasio-Cortez's policy idea. It's not anything more yet. Fact No. 2: Texas has nothing to do with her policy idea. Fact No. 3: Wind power accounts for 10 percent of energy use in Texas. Conclusion: West is smearing Ocasio-Cortez even as she's trying to help.

This is clear later when he writes that Ocasio-Cortez's charity is not charity. What appears to be the Golden Rule is actually something sinister. West wrote: "What Texans found out this week is that wind energy, and solar, are not reliable, dependable, and available energy resources. Therefore, ma'am [Ocasio-Cortez], you're not going to buy off Texans for your green new deal energy pipe dream for $2 million" (my italics). Ocasio-Cortez did not blame Texas politicians for the straits they're in. Her pitch has not been "screechy," as Frank Bruni wrote. Her manner has not been "savage." She has been living up to the Golden Rule according to Bruni's advice. But what does she get in return? Lies, slander, contempt, and rancid accusations of trying to "buy off Texans."

Ocasio-Cortez (as well as Beto O'Rourke, who's also raised impressive sums) is modeling what Texans could expect from a government of, by and for the people. That's a threat to corrupt parties like the Texas GOP. It's therefore in the interest of people like West to run Ocasio-Cortez down, even if he comes off as gauche in the process.Fact is, coming off as gauche might be a good thing, as a lack of manners and etiquette and decorum tends to look like authentic strength, and when that's set side-by-side with kindness, authentic strength usually wins though it's a lie. The real problem, West might as well said, isn't that Texas is corrupt. The real problem isn't that the state's government failed its people. The real problem is carpetbaggers and their "New York values" coming down here, making us look bad. That's not nice.

As I said, Bruni isn't wrong in terms of substance. He's wrong in terms of engagement. He's so aloof as to be extraterrestrial. This is the world we live in. This is the world we struggle to change. It's not going to change if truth stops at the border of politeness.

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aha alt fact/ Big Lie = fascism = rw media [soc med bubble?]= lie win any cost

an 221

js ed bd

This afternoon will see the first leg of Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the United States Senate. The whole journey will last about a week or so. (Roll Call has an excellent item explaining the ins and outs of the proceedings.) The House Democrats will try to prove the former president's guilt in leading an attempt to overthrow the republic. The Senate Republicans will pretend they can't sit in judgment, because sitting in judgement of a former president, they have said, is unconstitutional.

Let me put this as plainly as I can. The very fact that Donald Trump's impeachment trial is happening at all, and that it will be happening over the next seven to 10 days, means it's constitutional. Full stop. The United States Congress is the first branch of the United States government. (Its constitution, after all, is Article I of the United States Constitution.) There is no higher authority. No, the United States Supreme Court is not a higher authority, not when it comes to impeachments and trials.

The very fact that Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate is happening, and that it will be happening over the next seven to 10 days, means it's constitutional. Full stop.

Quite literally, the Senate Republicans are saying it's unconstitutional to prosecute a former (Republican) president, because they want it to be unconstitutional to prosecute a former (Republican) president. But the fact that a former (Republican) president is being prosecuted—starting today—invalidates the premise of their constitutional argument. Indeed, it wasn't an argument. The truth is in plain sight. When it came to a Democratic president who lied to a grand jury, the authority of the Congress would not be denied! When it comes to a (former) Republican president involved in the attempted murder of his enemies, that authority is a bit much, don't you think?

Gerald Ford, when he was the House minority leader during the Watergate era, famously said "high crimes and misdemeanors" are "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers them to be at a moment in history." Same thing for the question of whether it's constitutional to prosecute a former president. If a majority of the United States Senate (or rather a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate in the case of conviction) says it's constitutional, it's constitutional ipso facto. So, again, with feeling: Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate begins today. That it's happening at all, and that it could lead to conviction, means it's constitutional.

With there being zero chance of the United States Supreme Court getting involved in a dispute between the branches of the United States Congress, the question is settled. It's over. Indeed, there never was a question. (The truth has been in plain sight.) Because there never was a question, we should ask ourselves: why are the Republicans pretending there's a question when there's no question? Once you start asking yourself that question, the trial's outcome, which is not in doubt, starts to be less important than the reason the Senate Republicans are asking the question in the first place.

The reason the Senate Republicans are questioning a certainty (i.e., Jesus :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:*God*:{, yes, it's constitutional to prosecute a former president, will you please knock it off already?) is the** same reason all Republicans are so often certain about things that might actually be in question. The truth is always a threat. Deference to truth is always tyranny. :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{What's important is authority. Their authority. Their authority over you *and everyone you love*. And once you start seeing the deep authoritarianism:(style="background-color:#ffcc66ff"):}::{ of most of the Republicans in the Congress, once you start seeing the deep authoritarianism of millions of your fellow Americans**, you also start seeing lying isn't something they do merely to get what they want. Lying is something they do, because lying is the point.

Remember that Rand Paul and other Senate Republicans have something you don't. **They have a:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ global right-wing media apparatus:(style="background-color:#ffcc66ff"):}::{ to not only amplify their lies, but :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:*:{bend perception* :(style="background-color:#ffcc66ff"):}::{away from political reality and toward a favorable fictional one. To lie at this grand a scale is to create a world in which morality is perverted, politics is barbarous, and whole populations can be pushed around and told what to believe, and not only that: they :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:*want to believe*:{, because the lies have become so totalizing that everything being upside down, backwards and prolapsed seems normal, rational and worthy of defended in the name of :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:*muh freedom***:{. When everyone says the sky is green when the truth is in plain sight, everyone is not merely trying to deceive you. Everyone is maintaining a perversion in which speaking truthfully could inspire your murder.

The House Democratic impeachment managers are going to push through the Republicans' lies in order to reveal the whole truth to the American people about their former president, which is this: Donald Trump committed a heinous presidential crime worthy, at the very least, of being disqualified for life from holding public office. This is as it should be, but let's not forget what the lies themselves reveal.

====

===

Insulting' GOP bill would let Arizona lawmakers throw out presidential election results

Meaghan Ellis

February 06, 2021

As Republican lawmakers in Arizona introduce a number of proposed election bills, one piece of legislation has sp...

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still stop steal BS?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/arizona-2020-election/

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trump lies total topped 30k?!

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/economy-republicans/

stoehr edit bd

I trust the New York Times' David Leonhardt knows what he's talking about when it comes to economics and economic policy. But I feel I have something to contribute to the question he posed Tuesday. Why are Republican presidents so bad for the economy? In addition to considering the Gross Domestic Product and other empirical factors, we ought to consider a moral one, to wit:the reason the United States fails to thrive under GOP presidents is because they so often seek out more and better ways to lie to us.

These lies are intentional. They are ubiquitous. They are huge. And the bigger they are, the more pain they cause, over years and over decades. If the lies are not directly related to the economy, they are certainly related indirectly, as most of them are conceived and motivated by the desire for riches, with the net effect being the crowding out of the many from the center of American democracy for the benefit of the few.

Fortunately, truth now has more in its favor than good people doing what they think is right. It has partisanship on its side.

A very, very short list: Tax decreases pay for themselves. Tax increases hurt job-creators. Regulations hurt business. The minimum wage hurts workers. Redistribution is theft. Welfare is addiction. Abortion is murder. Feminism is reverse sexism. Equality is reverse racism. Iraq had WMDs. Obama wasn't an American. Voter fraud is rampant. All/Blue Lives Matter. Political correctness. Cancel culture. Trump won.

There are more, but let's not forget the most obvious and deadly lie in recent years, to our bodies and our republic—that the covid pandemic is nothing much to worry about, indeed worrying about it means you're on the other side of a president trying to root out a conspiracy against "the people" by Democrats in league with a global (Jewish) cabal of satanists who fornicate with children before eating them, a conspiracy so evil the Democrats in the Congress deserve nothing less than capture and assassination.

Donald Trump was the most conspicuous of all the liars, it goes without saying, but Republican presidents going back to my childhood lied with such frequency, felicity and nuance the inevitable result was four years of hourly nonstop fire-hose lying. The outcome of that has been half a million deaths by the covid by the end of this month, and a national economy that hasn't been this bad since 1946. Leonhardt and others are correct, of course, in looking at interest rates, the unemployment rate, GDP and other empirical factors in order to answer the question of why Republicans fail so badly. But let's not forget that lying causes pain and that suffering often comes in economic form.

The bigger the lie, the bigger the pain inflicted on everyone until the lie and the pain are so nearly total that the distinction between believing and not believing the lie is a distinction without a moral difference. The Post reported Tuesday that Ginni Thomas, wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, apologized to her husband's former clerks for her role in supporting the January 6 protest-turned-insurrection. What's astounding isn't that Ginni Thomas admitted obliquely to having some responsibility for the republic's near-death. What's astounding is she seems to continue to believe the lie—Trump won—even after that near-death experience.

Clarence Thomas' former clerks constitute a "blue-ribbon membership," according to the Post, with major influence inside and outside the courts. Yet some of its members appear to believe what Ginni Thomas believes. "Many of my friends and I had been praying our knees off that January 6 would see light and truth being shed on what we believe in our hearts was likely a stolen election," wrote Wendy Stone Long, and that eventually "President Trump would be determined to be the legitimate winner."

What does it mean when a society's cream of the crop continues to believe lies so big they nearly bring down a republic? It means the rest of us, who have nothing like the influence these people have, must spend valuable time and energy sorting through the lies, organizing ourselves and convincing as many people as possible, but especially those at the very top, that lies they espouse or spread or both are causing pain not just to the common people, but to the nation as a whole, including them. In the process, this drains the economy of resources that could be used for something more productive.

Perhaps a more important question: what does it mean when the lies are exposed as lies but the cream continues to espouse them or spread them or both? Well, something's gonna break. Luckily, that's coming in the form of distrust of the Republicans such that even the Times, which envisions itself above political interest, seems to be going through the motions as it worries about "unity," knowing full well Joe Biden and the Democrats are going to use their majorities to enact laws and policies for the good of the country, for the good of those who supported Donald Trump, even when, or especially when, the Republicans refuse to participate.

And fortunately, the break is happening as a result of the truth having more in its favor than good people doing what they think is right. The truth now has political interest in its side, partisan interest, such that the interests of the American republic and the interests of the Democratic Party are moving symbiotically in the same direction. Indeed, that's probably been the case for some years now, but with the Republican Party taking leave of the truth and its senses, that's more apparent than ever.

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aha //: when rove? dismissed fact based journalism, he pitied the fool who was bound by facts, and boasted we get to make up facts/our story will win, it's the only thing that matters: power

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/american-divisions/

alexh

countless political pundits have described the United States as a deeply divided country with two separate realities: a rural Red America that voted to reelect President Donald Trump and consumes Fox News and AM talk radio voraciously, and an urban and suburban Blue America that rejected Trump, made Joe Biden president-elect and is more likely to be consuming the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN. But liberal/progressive pundit Cenk Uygur, in an op-ed published by The Hill on December 21, argues that there are "three tribes" in the United States: (1) "the establishment, (2) "Trumpworld, MAGA Land," and (3) progressives.

Uygur, who hosts "The Young Turks" with fellow liberal/progressive Ana Kasparian, describes "the establishment" as Americans whose "worldview is cemented by the best propaganda the world has ever seen."[AGW DENIAL? 2 STORIES INV HAND BS]

"They've convinced the world that the country that does the most invasions seeks peace, the country that ethnically cleansed a continent seeks equality and the country that enslaved a people stands for freedom," Uygur explains. "And everyone believed it. These days, driven by greed, they are busy convincing people that we can afford war but not health care — and that, somehow, the carnage of war keeps us safer than high-quality medicine. That if the rich have all of the money, the poor will be better off because some small amount will one day trickle onto them."

In other words, Uygur describes "the establishment" as traditional non-Trumpian conservatives. And he draws a distinction between the right-wing "establishment" and "Trumpworld, MAGA Land, where no facts need apply."

"Their worldview is cemented by a neurotic insecurity buttressed by the most brazen propaganda," Uygur observes. "Their alternative facts are wielded as blunt instruments — and that, too, works. So, now we have the largest cult the world has ever seen: 74 million people in an alternate universe where facts are the enemies of the people. This is enormously dangerous."

Comparing the "three alternate realities" in the U.S., Uygur asks, "So, how do we communicate, when we're not even speaking the same language anymore? We progressives think we're speaking the language of logic, and we think the right-wing tribe doesn't understand one word of that language — in fact, it doesn't even think our language should exist. To them, logic is for suckers and losers; winners go for raw power, no matter what the facts are."

Uygur concludes his op-ed on a pessimistic note, lamenting that he doesn't see how Americans can overcome their deep divisions.

"When if you hate the messenger, and even if the messenger is wrong about the particulars, the one thing we can all agree on is that we can't agree on a damned thing," Uygur warns. "Welcome to the parallel-universe portion of our program! There are now three Americas with three distinct realities. We don't just disagree on the issues, we disagree about what planet we live on. So, how does this end? Not well."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-supporters-2649431913/

Do Republican voters really believe that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump? Do they sincerely see Trump's efforts to overturn the election as the legitimate actions of a wronged man trying to defend democracy? When they declare "stop the steal," are they truly unaware that they are the ones trying to steal this election from the rightful winners?

Or are millions of Americans arguing in bad faith, merely claiming to believe Trump is the true winner? Is this all just a disingenuous song-and-dance, meant to put a morally justifiable gloss on what is actually widespread support among Trump voters for a coup? The answer to this question of "delusion or bad faith?" matters quite a bit, as Trump continues to prosecute his futile campaign to steal the 2020 election.

Polls show that a hefty majority of Republican voters — 68%, according to Reuters/Ipsos — say they believe the 2020 election was "rigged" in Biden's favor. Since the election, more than $200 million has flowed into Trump's coffers from Republican donors responding to emails promising to "stop the steal." Are these donors innocent lambs who sincerely believe that Trump is a good man done wrong? Or are they people who areactively seeking to finance a coup, employing the flimsiest of excuses?

Well, as the author of a book called "Troll Nation," it's clear where I stand: By and large, Republican voters who claim that Biden stole the election are arguing from bad faith, not delusion.

This distinction is important because it shows that the intentions of Republican voters (and too many of their elected leaders) are sinister, and need to be taken seriously as an overt assault on democracy. Understanding modern politics means understanding one crucial reality about the current landscape: Conservatives don't hold beliefs, they only have rationalizations.

Many of their long-standing beliefs don't hold up to modern moral standards or rational scrutiny. Rather than give up those beliefs, however, Republicans have developed a series of disingenuous gambits, conspiracy theories and trolling tactics to derail conversations, sow confusion and otherwise distract those who would challenge their indefensible ideology.

Of course, it's morally indefensible to come right out and say you care more about keeping your gas guzzler than protecting the planet. So, instead, conservatives claim to be "skeptical" of climate science, wasting their interlocutor's time by forcing them to prove, over and over and over and over again, that climate change is real. Similarly, open contempt for women's rights is hard to argue, so instead, conservatives will claim concern for "fetal life" to justify support for forced childbirth — even though none of their other policy preferences point to concern about the wellbeing of children, much less fetuses.

Poll numbers showing that Republican voters "believe" that Trump lost the election are more of the same.

Conservatives know better than to openly argue that Democratic votes shouldn't be counted. So instead they concoct this elaborate conspiracy theory, painting themselves as the victims of voter fraud in order to justify an illegal effort to steal the election. The current situation is similar to the last time there was a widespread conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing a duly elected Democratic president. During Barack Obama's presidency, polling showed that large numbers of Republicans, often a majority, expressed "skepticism" that Obama was a natural-born citizen and therefore legally eligible to be president. As is the case now, Trump was a ringleader in pushing this "birther" conspiracy theory, helping to mainstream claims that Obama's presidency was illegitimate.

But did Republican voters really believe that Obama was born in Kenya? Or was it just a cover story for their real but unspeakable racist opposition to a Black man being president?

A 2014 study by Stanford researchers suggests strongly that for most birthers the conspiracy theory was bad faith and not a sincere error. The researchers compared different polls and found that how the poll questions were worded made a huge difference in conservative adherence to birtherism. When pollsters reminded respondents that only "natural-born" citizens can become president, nearly 60% of Republican voters readily denied Obama's citizenship. But when polls framed it as a test of knowledge of facts, by asking respondents where Obama was born, only 31% of conservatives espoused birther beliefs. These findings suggest that most conservatives weren't confused about where Obama was born. The conspiracy theory was just a way to express racist beliefs about the inherent illegitimacy of Black leaders by asking "questions" about Obama's birth certificate.

Trump knows how to tickle this racist impulse in his followers and, unsurprisingly, his claims that Biden "stole" the election follow the same formula. Trump and his main henchman, Rudy Giuliani, have specifically accused Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta — all cities where Black Americans are either a majority or a plurality of residents — of having "dumps" of illegal ballots.

The appeal of this conspiracy theory to racists isn't subtle. It's a way to deny the legitimacy of Black voters without coming right out and saying it. This isn't just a conspiracy theory about Trump's fragile ego. It speaks directly to long-standing right-wing fury at minority voting rights. Historian Jeffrey Herf notes another historical precedent at play, comparing Trump's conspiracy theory to the ones that rose up in Germany between the first and second world wars in a recent Washington Post op-ed:

[Trump's] efforts to deny the reality of defeat and threaten democracy recall the most famous comparable episode in modern European history — the claims by the German military and diplomatic establishment that Germany had not been defeated militarily in World War I. Instead, they argued, Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by liberals, socialists, communists and Jews who somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

In reality, Herf points out, the war was "lost because of the superiority of the Allied military" and German hubris leading to bad battlefield decisions. But claiming to believe otherwise gave conservative Germans a chance to save face and, perhaps more important, an excuse to bash other Germans — mostly leftists and Jews — who they didn't want to acknowledge as equal citizens. Was it bad faith or misapprehension? As I note in a recent newsletter, Jean-Paul Sartre felt strongly it was the former at the time, and argued the "bad faith" case in his famous 1946 essay on anti-Semitism.

So why does it matter?

As Greg Sargent writes at the Washington Post, "What Republican voters think, or say they think, about who really won matters less than the fact that, as a consequence, they actively want their elected representatives to subvert our democracy and keep Trump in power illegitimately."

Unfortunately, the belief that these folks are sincere in their claims that the election was "stolen" puts a glow of innocence on their actions. This leads many observers underestimate the seriousness of a situation where a large percentage of Americans are actively supporting a coup. It also focuses attention away from what needs to be done to fight back. The "delusion" model of understanding Republican behavior suggests that education is the solution. That was thoroughly disproven in the Obama years, when even the release of his long-form birth certificate did little to discourage GOP voters from denying his legitimacy.

Instead, it's important to see those who support Trump's coup for who they are: People who have been radicalized, through racism hateful propaganda and a sense of perpetual grievance, against democracy. They aren't going to change their minds because of new facts, because the underlying belief — which is that they deserve to be in power, no matter what — is the problem here. It's a rising American authoritarianism, and we underestimate it at our peril.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/republican-ags/

With the Trump operation's legal effort to overturn the November election going nowhere, nearly 20 Republican attorneys general have decided to throw their support behind Texas AG Ken Paxton's desperate—and, according to analysts, doomed-to-fail—Supreme Court lawsuit against four key battleground states that have certified President-elect Joe Biden's victories.

Filed on Tuesday and enthusiastically celebrated in right-wing circles, Paxton's lawsuit (pdf) baselessly alleges "significant and unconstitutional irregularities" in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and pleads with the high court to delay next week's scheduled certification of presidential electors for those four states.

That the lawsuit was mocked as "utter garbage" and "factually untethered" by legal experts did not dissuade 18 Republican attorneys general, led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, from expressing support for Paxton's effort.

As of this writing, the Republican attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia have backed Schmitt's amicus brief(pdf) in support of the Texas lawsuit. Arizona Attorney General MarkBrnovich has filed a separate brief (pdf) "respecting" the Texas suit.

The New York Times reported that Trump asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday to argue the case if the Supreme Court hears it, and Cruz has agreed.

Late Wednesday, Trump—who has openly pleaded with the Supreme Court to undo Biden's decisive victory—filed a brief with the high court seeking to intervene in support of Paxton's lawsuit. Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the president's filing "reads like a rally speech."

"Were the Supreme Court to agree to hear this meritless suit brought by Texas," Clarke added, "we might as well toss the Constitution."

More than 3,000 Americans died from covid today, a new record, and instead of saving thousands of lives 18 GOP stat… https://t.co/tuKGOs12Mi

— Ari Berman (@Ari Berman)1607565108.0

The Supreme Court—to which Trump successfully appointed three right-wing justices over his four years in office—has not yet decided whether to take up the case, despite viral right-wing social media posts to the contrary.

In a blog post, Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, called Paxton's complaint "a press release masquerading as a lawsuit." He elaborated:

Texas doesn't have standing to raise these claims as it has no say over how other states choose electors; it could raise these issues in other cases and does not need to go straight to the Supreme Court; it waited too late to sue; the remedy Texas suggests of disenfranchising tens of millions of voters after the fact is unconstitutional; there's no reason to believe the voting conducted in any of the states was done unconstitutionally; it's too late for the Supreme Court to grant a remedy even if the claims were meritorious (they are not).

While Paxton's lawsuit will almost certainly fail, observers warned that the willingness of so many top state law enforcement officials to back the effort to overturn the presidential election highlights the threat the right will continue to pose to democracy long after Trump leaves office.

"The president will leave the White House on January 20. The conservative attorneys who have become radicalized under his influence, however, will remain in power across the country," Slate's Mark Joseph Stern wrote Wednesday. "Paxton's suit asks the Supreme Court to throw out every vote in four states won by Joe Biden—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—then direct each state's legislature to declare Trump the winner."

"This act would constitute the single biggest incident of voter nullification in American history," Stern continued. "Paxton alleges that all four states illegally expanded mail voting, permitted egregious fraud, then concealed evidence that Democrats stole the election. There is no basis in truth for his factual claims and no basis in law for his legal theories."

Clarke of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law added on Twitter, "This is what anti-democratic conduct looks like."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/failed-coup-trump/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/republicans-trump-2648997598/

11/21/20

Donald Trump and his, uh,lawyer Rudy Giuliani are moving into the next phase of Trump's attempted coup, which entertainingly involves Giuliani sweating out the previous day's martinis into his hair dye while barking incomprehensible conspiracy theories at bewildered reporters.

Unfortunately, the less amusing and more worrisome aspect of the whole ordeal involves Trump's efforts to lean on Republican-run state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors in states where Joe Biden clearly won.

Like most people reading this, I, too, wish I had a crystal ball and could look into the future at Jan. 20, 2021, to see how this all shakes out. In the meantime, the main point of concern is that nearly all Republican politicians are, to one degree or another, supporting Trump's efforts. Some, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are flirting with openly seditious behavior by actively trying to get legal ballots thrown in the trash. Most, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are playing word games to avoid saying who they think will be or should be sworn as president in two months. The only Republican senator to speak out so far is Mitt Romney of Utah, who was also the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump after his impeachment trial earlier this year.

The common theory in the political class is that this silence is borne out of fear of Trump and his tweeting fingers. Former President Barack Obama, who has been blunt in his concerns about the threat Trump represents to our democracy, characterized the GOP's passive consent to this coup exactly this way.

"I'm more troubled that you're seeing a lot of Republican officials go along with it, not because they actually believe it, but because they feel intimidated by it,"Obama** told MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart on Thursday.

Obama is right on two out of three counts. It's true that Republican officials don't believe a word of Giuliani's sweaty conspiracy theories, which Heather Digby Parton has described as "going full Infowars." It's also true that this GOP compliance is the real problem here. As I explain in the latest Standing Room Only newsletter, successful coups rely on various bureaucrats and lower level politicians who go along. If Trump pulls this off, it will be entirely because he has the tacit support of both state and congressional Republicans all along the way.

But Obama is wrong on the third front: Republicans aren't doing this because they're scared of Trump. They're doing this because most of them, on one level or another, want him to succeed. And even if he fails, they appreciate him advancing the idea that voters in certain areas — notably, cities where Black people outnumber white people — shouldn't really have the right to vote.

Let's face it: The reason Trump has gotten this far is that he's building on decades of Republican antipathy to democracy, an antipathy borne out of resentment that people they deem as "less" American than themselves — people of color, urban people, people who know what "tempeh" is — have the right to vote at all.

For instance, look at this 2016 article from Heritage Foundation writer John Merline, who argued that Hillary Clinton's popular-vote lead in that election didn't really matter, because if "you take California out of the popular vote equation, then Trump wins the rest of the country."

Breitbart writer Joel Pollak made a similar argument regarding this year's election, claiming on Twitter, "Biden won the popular vote — unless you exclude California." He went on to say that "you shouldn't" exclude California, but implied that this alleged fact is "worth noting," which is only true if you believe California voters are somehow less American than other voters. (For the record, this isn't even true. Biden's overall popular-vote lead now exceeds his 5 million-vote lead in the Golden State.)

This belief of Republicans that some voters shouldn't really be voters is especially evident in their enthusiasm for voter suppression, which has kicked into high gear ever since 2013, when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This kicked off a flood of GOP-sponsored efforts clearly aimed at stopping as many people of color as possible from exercising their right to vote.

While it's become routine these days for pundits to lament Giuliani's supposed fall from grace, the reality is the man was always a virulent racist. As Radley Balko reminded readers of the Washington Post in 2016, Giuliani kicked off his 1993 New York mayoral campaign by helping to incite a racist police riot aimed at denying that elected Black leaders should have any authority over the NYPD. Giuliani led the drunken and armed crowd of cops as they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, waving signs with racist cartoons of then-Mayor David Dinkins, and calling Black elected officials the n-word. The cops also physically terrorized two Black city council members.

Trump and Giuliani's official arguments for why Trump deserves to invalidate the election are a bunch of incoherent and baseless conspiracy theories. The actual argument underlying all that, however, is simple: The coalition Joe Biden built is composed of people who don't deserve the right to vote.

The reason the larger Republican Party isn't pushing back is that they largely agree with this underlying argument. Whatever personal distaste many Republicans may have for Trump's gauche behavior or the alcohol content of Giuliani's shoe polish sweat, they're inclined to see only upside for themselves in letting this play out.

Maybe Trump pulls off a miracle and succeeds in his coup, which means their party captures the White House for four years — or more.

But even in the far likelier event that the Trump coup fails, it's a win-win for most Republicans: He has done an immense amount to advance the goal of delegitimizing huge swaths of the American electorate that prefer Democrats. Besides, "establishment" Republicans don't have to go out to dinner with Trump anymore and listen to his vainglorious monologues. So of course Republicans aren't standing up to him. Why mess with a good thing?

tried to get GA sos to toss ballots?

Legal experts demand Lindsey Graham be investigated

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aha // domin theocracy and qanon? ghost dance

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/mcconnell-treason/

Despite being polarized, Americans really do agree on the fundamentals. Is the president above the law? No. Does every citizen have a right to vote? Yes. Should powers be separated? Yes. Are checks and balances good? Yes. Should people be free to worship as they wish? Yes. Are the people the ultimate sovereign? Yes. And so on.

Theory isn't the same as practice, obviously, but even so, there's only one correct answer to fundamental political questions. If there were other correct answers—if these questions hinged on differences of opinion—we would not be members of a political community whose outlines were established long ago. We would be part of another kind of political community, one none of us would recognize as familiar, legitimate or good. Our nation would be something else. It would not be America.

These fundamentals and the outlines of our political community that were derived from them constitute a contract among and between citizens and noncitizens. We agree to them, consciously or subliminally, because if we did not, we wouldn't participate in the union we all actually participate in. We'd be in something else that does not exist.

In the run-up to Election Day, CNN's Jake Tapper urged counting of every vote. He was not violating the norms of journalism. He was not taking a position. With respect to voting, there's no position to take. Counting every vote is what we do. If we do not count every vote, we are not America. Very few things in this country are either-or, right or wrong, but fundamental questions are. They are, because they must be. They must be, because we want them to be. We want them to be, because we are America.

The president and the Republican leaders are failing the test of fundamentals. Should they recognize as legitimate the outcome of a lawful democratic process? The only answer is yes. That's the only correct answer, because either the American people are sovereign or they are not. If they are not, we do not live in a representative democracy. Anything less than yes indicates unwillingness to participate in the union as it stands. Anything less than an immediate yes indicates a certain softness of dedication to the US Constitution and the republic. Yet Donald Trump, and now Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican Party, are refusing to recognize Joe Biden's victory.

I'm told this is theater. I'm told this is about fundraising. Campaign debts must be paid, after all. I trust some of this is true. I also trust history, though. No president has ever denied the reality of his defeat. (Biden has now eclipsed Ronald Reagan's share of the popular vote, 50.8 percent to 50.7. It is the highest for a challenger since Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover in 1932. And the counting continues.) No president has ever refused to concede in the face of a mathematical certainty. To my knowledge, no political party has ever gotten behind an incumbent's effort to steal an election.

That effort will fail. (I say "will" but honestly I'm as full of dread as you are.) The president's legal scheme has so far floundered. Every one of his suits has been thrown out, because there's no evidence of voter fraud on the scale he's alleging. On the off-chance of one of these lawsuits getting to the US Supreme Court, I'm guessing the conservative justices there will buy themselves legitimacy by dismissing the case outright. Accusations can work in politics, less in court. As GOP Sen. John Cornyn said: "In the end, they're going to have to come up with some facts and evidence."

But even in failure, the president and the Republicans will have accomplished something. (It will benefit the GOP, of course, not the president; Trump will face legal scrutiny the minute he's out of office.)They will have succeeded in three things. One, establishing doubt in Biden's legitimacy. Two, establishing the groundwork for obstructing his agenda. More important, though, is three. They will have deepened an assumption already at work in the background of Republican discourse. Democrats don't count. Anything they do, whether criticizing Republicans or beating them by a landslide in national elections, deserves any reaction up to and including murder.

In a very real sense, the Republicans are constituting a nation inside this nation, a confederacy of the mind and spirit to be made real so "real Americans" chosen by God can dominate the whole in God's name. They are constituting a separate and unequal system inside the one everyone else recognizes as legitimate, in which a small minority is privileged over a majority bound by law but not protected by it. They are, ultimately, on the path toward suicide. When parasites kill their hosts, they kill themselves, too.

The most extreme view among pundits is that the Republicans won't recognize Joe Biden's legitimacy. That's not extreme enough. They are creating a beachhead inside the United States from which to continue covert civil warfare against the United States. The Republicans are committing treason literally, yet they're being afforded respect, as if accepting the outcome of a lawful democratic process were a matter of opinion. Wrong. There's only one correct answer to that fundamental question. Anything less than fully accepting the people's will is desiring an America that will never exist.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/listen-democratic-voters-are-receiving-suspicious-calls-in-effort-to-suppress-votes-on-election-day/

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920 sev articles on all gop pretense now over, lie cheat to win, power at any cost

definitive moral betrayal? LDS on abortion?

[[https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/romney-makes-up-new-precedent-to-say-hell-vote-on-a-trump-supreme-court-nominee/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/weak-and-spineless-mitt-romney-hit-with-twitter-firestorm-over-support-for-gop-supreme-court-vote/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mitt-romney-slams-gop-investigation-of-hunter-biden-as-a-waste-of-taxpayers-money-not-the-legitimate-role-of-government/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/romney-joins-growing-protests-as-more-prominent-republicans-disavow-trump/]]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/republicans-are-waging-all-out-war-on-democracy-and-now-theyre-openly-admitting-it/

no lnx

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah sparked a backlash this week when made an undercurrent of the modern conservative movement and the driving ideology of the Republican Party explicit.

"We're not a democracy," Lee tweeted on Oct. 7.

Twitter's not exactly known for the capacity to have in-depth discussions on political philosophy, but Lee hadn't even come close to using up his 280 characters. After significant outrage stirred by his first tweet, Lee expanded on the idea the following day with a slightly longer message.

"Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and [prosperity] are," he wrote. "We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."

Again, it was a striking sentiment, and it inflamed critics who have accused the Lee and the GOP of systematically trying to disenfranchise constituencies they believe won't vote for Republicans. But Lee didn't back down. He went to the conservative outlet the Washington Examiner, which essentially transcribed his own defense of his claims with little analysis or reflection. He shared a piece from DeseretNews, which offered a more balanced take on the controversy. And Conn Carroll, a spokesperson for Lee, provided a statement to Vox further defending the comments:

"At a time when Democrats want to pack the Court, eliminate the Electoral College, and turn the Senate into the House, it is very good that Americans are re-reading The Federalist Papers to rediscover why the founders put these specific republican checks on democratic passion into the Constitution.

But none of the defenses could shield from the fact that the senator's sentiments reflect a growing and dangerous anti-democratic element on the modern right-wing. The instinct has always been there, in some form or another, but you would nevertheless hear Republicans pay lip-service to the idea of democracy. Cynically, though, they began pushing extremely anti-democratic policies, such as restrictive voter ID laws and racial gerrymandering meant to dilute the votes of minorities and Democrats. They offered pro-forma excuses for these policies, such as voting the virtually non-existent problem of voter fraud, but many surely knew that they were just taking whatever advantage they could to keep power.

Lee's remarks, however, show how those cynical power grabs can merge with an ideology that is intrinsically elitist and whose adherents know it's deeply unpopular. This creates a strong incentive to rationalize opposition to democracy and justify restricting the influence of ordinary citizens on the government. The Utah senator's willingness to be openly dismissive of democracy may signal that his party will be increasingly willing to not even espouse traditional democratic values. This isn't likely to be a popular stance, but if they get their way, that won't matter.

Republicans, after all, already know they need to distort the playing field win and rule. That's why they concoct bizarre and ad hoc excuses for preserving the Electoral College, despite the fact that it was a ham-fisted compromise at the country's founding that has served to put the more unpopular candidate in the White House twice in living memory. That's why they're thrilled to appoint conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, breaking the countless promises they made to leave seats open during a presidential campaign and rushing the process in the weeks before an election. They want their 6-3 conservative court, which can theoretically stand in the way of Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic president from enacting a popular agenda.

Loren Culp, Republican candidate for Washington Governor, articulated the objection to democracy in a recent video:

GOP nominee @LorenCulp to @KATUNews: “The problem with Democracy — you can look at quotes from famous Chinese lea… https://t.co/aOO0QfBxn6

— James Singer (@James Singer)1601749258.0

This is exactly the point. Republicans fear that, if the people are adequately represented in government, the government will have to do things they like, such as providing for basic needs like health care and housing. They deride providing such services as "socialism," which the Republican mind cannot abide.

In a recent column, the New York Times' Jamelle Bouie dispelled the frequently touted nonsense that the United States isn't a "democracy" but a "republic":

'For the founders, "democracy" did not mean majority rule in a system of representation. The men who led the revolution and devised the Constitution were immersed in classical literature and political theory. Ancient Greece, in particular, was a cautionary tale. When James Madison critiqued "democracy" in Federalist No. 10, he meant the Athenian sort: "a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person." This he contrasted with a "republic" or "a government in which the scheme of representation takes place." Likewise, in a 1788 speech to the New York ratification convention, Alexander Hamilton disavowed "the ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated." They "never possessed one good feature of government," he said. "Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

In more modern terms, the founders feared "direct democracy" and accounted for its dangers with a system of "representative democracy." Yes, this "republic" had counter-majoritarian aspects, like equal representation of states in the Senate, the presidential veto and the Supreme Court. But it was not designed for minority rule.

...

If there's substance behind "We're a republic, not a democracy," it's not as a description of American government. There's really no difference, in the present, between a "republic" and a "democracy": Both connote systems of representation in which sovereignty and authority derive from the public at large.

The point of the slogan isn't to describe who we are, but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics — to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things. What lies behind that quip, in other words, is an impulse against democratic representation. It is part and parcel of the drive to make American government a closed domain for a select, privileged few.

The anti-democratic impulse is commonplace on the right. GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel, for example, celebrated on Thursday a series of court rulings that make it harder for the American people to vote:

In the last two weeks alone, Republicans have won cases in: ? ARIZONA ? IOWA ? NEW HAMPSHIRE ? OHIO ? SOUTH CAROL… https://t.co/TgO6RXYBqS

— Ronna McDaniel (@Ronna McDaniel)1602191313.0

Meanwhile, Trump has explicitly said he thinks he needs Barrett to be approved by the Senate because he expects the Supreme Court to determine the result of the November election. He's not satisfied with simply competing in the Electoral College which, at least in 2016, was tilted in his favor. He's run a months-long disinformation campaign attacking mail-in voting, claiming the election will be rigged, and demanding that his supporters become poll-watchers — likely as an attempt to intimidate Democrats who want to cast ballots. He wants chaos, and then he wants his hand-picked justices to hand him the election, regardless of the will of the people.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump sycophant, seems to agree.

"Now, we may have litigation about who won the election, but the court will decide," he said last month. "And, if the Republicans lose, we will accept that result. But we need a full court, and I think that's possible before the election."

So it should be clear that it's not just a Trump phenomenon. Republicans are committed to limiting the power of the voters to keep their hold on power. And in turn, the fact that Republicans need to persuade a minority of the country to win allows them to become more radicalized, thus pushing them to dilute voters' power even more.

And since gutting the Voting Rights Act, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to act to preserve voting rights or increase access to the ballot. With Barrett on the bench, that attitude is almost certain to be further entrenched.

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david n

...

The primary impetus has been the change under which conservatism became a discrete movement intent on seizing the reins of power. In the process, the means—that is, the obtaining of power—became the end. And once the movement became centered around obtaining power, by any means necessary, then ideology became fungible according to the needs of its drive to acquire power, just as it was with fascism. This virtually guaranteed it would become a travesty of its original purpose. The nature of today’s“conservative movement” is no more apparent than in how distinctly un-conservative its actual conduct has been: busting budgets, falling asleep at the wheel of national security, engaging wars recklessly and without adequate planning.

Two things occurred to the conservative movement in this drive for power:

It increasingly viewed liberals not merely as competitors but as unacceptable partners in the liberal-conservative power-sharing agreement that has been in place since at least the New Deal and the rise of modern consumer society. Ultimately, this view metastacizes into seeing liberals as objects to be eliminated.

It became increasingly willing to countenance ideological and practical bridges with certain factions of the extremist right. This ranged from anti-abortion and religious-right extremists to the neo-Confederates who dominate Republican politics in the South to factions of the Patriot/militia movement.

The combination of these two forces exerted a powerful rightward pull on the movement, to the point where extremist ideas and agendas have increasingly been adopted by the mainstream right, flowing into aneliminationist hatred of liberalism. In the process, their own rhetoric has come to sound like that on the far right. A lot of the dabbling in far-right memes has been gratuitous, intended to “push the envelope” for talk-radioaudiences in constant need of fresh outrageousness.AMPL

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/republicans-use-lying-as-primary-governing-technique

no lnx twt

Republicans use lying as primary governing technique

Written by Hunter / Daily Kos September 21, 2020

There is no point in accusing Republican senators of hypocrisy. Absolutely none. Only hours after the death of Supreme Court icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Republicans—who had previously gnashed their teeth at the audacity of the suggestion that the nation’s first nonwhite president had the constitutional power to make nominations to the court at any point during the final year of his term—began declaring that this time around, obviously that new rule no longer applies. And obviously the president of their own party, impeached and transparently corrupt, must be granted a scrambling court even as voters line up to cast early ballots.

Hypocrisy implies there’s a previous ideology being upset; there wasn’t one, and isn’t one, and no serious politics-watcher ever thought otherwise. The principle being upheld by Sen. Mitch McConnell and clan then and now was more simple: Retain power using all available tools, and deny the opposition power using all available tools. There is no “ideology” inside the modern conservative movement, either before Trump’s arrival or afterwards, that can survive its first brush with expediency. Each argument lasts only as long as the soundbites require and will be replaced with a new one immediately, without hesitation, when required.

Expediency as ideology is not a senate-only device. Former Supreme CourtJustice Antonin Scalia practiced it with aplomb, often resulting in lawyers and courts using his past words against him in new cases—a futile gesture. Of his “originalist,” “textualist,” or “institutionalist” allies, the same approach is used by All Of Them.

It’s not hypocrisy if the principle all along was “whatever best increases power.” And it is irrelevant if it is.

The relevant part is that it is accomplished by lying. The practitioners claim some bold new notion of how the world should work, and it is an absolute, baldfaced, bullshit-laden public lie. Those who watch McConnell or Sen. Lindsey Graham in their public appearances can easily identify, at this point, the schtick that makes up their entire persona.

They look the American public in the eye, and they simply lie to them.

It was a lie from the moment he uttered it, and there was not a person in the room who didn’t know it from the outset. = GASLIGHT? The movement is devoted to lying as governing principle. It works because there are countless channels through which those lies can be disseminated, and amplified, and praised. It will continue for as long as it works.

Over and over. About everything, all the time. The Moscow Turtle has never cried a sincere tear in his life, but according to him all Democratic actions are Devastation, all Republican actions are Sorrowfully Required Due To Democratic Existence, and the rest is puppet show. Graham is superb at being outraged in showy defense of the outrageous. Sen. Marco Rubio’s usual deployed device is to respond to each act of corruption or depravity with a Bible verse, typically as non sequitur, and wiping his hands of the rest of it. Sen. Susan Collins is forever concerned by gross incompetence or criminality within her movement, and remains equally as concerned the next time around, and will make good on that “concern” exactly zero times as she votes to enable each concerning act one-by-one-by-one.

It’s not hypocrisy. They’re just liars. Conservatism is a movement of fictions, a series of nonsense falsehoods deployed like a squid ejects ink. Nobody asks the squid whether it stands by the cloud ejaculated in the last crisis. It would be pointless. The squid doesn’t remember, and can’t tell you.

It is not that the nation is run by a movement of “hypocrites.” The nation is run by a collection of liars.

Propagandists.

Those who issue false statements and make false claims relentlessly in order to deceive the public, or to stir their base into new heights of feverishness, or—and this is rather more to the point in this particular year—to justify and endorse criminality in service to the movement. Incompetence, if in service to the movement. A quarter million deaths, if in service to the movement.

The lies are consequential. McConnell and his allies lied their way through the impeachment of a president, simply insisting that the evidence was not evidence and the testimony not testimony. The movement has lied its way through a pandemic, turning even the most rote of pandemic safety precautions—masks, even—into conspiracies and partisan litmus tests.

When Michael Caputo and his aides insisted that children were nearly immune to the virus and could not spread it, it was not ideology. It was a lie meant to keep more of the “economy” open even if the more pertinent metric—deaths—was multiplied.

When the movement claims “antifa”—a group that does not actually exist—is behind police reform protests, it is a lie. It is propaganda intended purely to discredit protestors, and better facilitate state and militia violence against them.

When Sen. Ron Johnson pipelines the work of known Russian operatives into his committee to declare that he has discovered very serious doings, doings that suggest his opponents are secretly corrupt in ways no American law enforcement has ever been able to find, he is fully aware of his own actions. He is not stupid.

When Attorney General William Barr releases a document that grossly undermines a report on Russian election interference that benefited his party, and follows up by launching conspiracy after conspiracy all premised on the notion that it is American law enforcement that is corrupt for going after Republican targets, he is lying to the public for the sake of the party.

The movement of Republicanism is propagandistic in nature. Lies are deployed towards political ends. All involved know they are lies. All involved spread the lies willingly. Fox News exists as propaganda factory. Donald Trump exists as propaganda factory. McConnell exists as propaganda factory. The sitting attorney general,the president’s odd private lawyer—the only through line is relentless lying to the public about everything, all the time, for power.

There’s no textualist in conservatism. Nonsense about precedents and institutions is barely even given lip service. There are no “deficit hawks,” or “small government” idealism. None of those things have survived. The only takeaway from White House press briefings is a single, fundamental point: These are today’s lies. If you don’t like them, there will be others tomorrow.

There is a word for all of this. Declaring that your leaders are allowed to commit crimes while demanding the arrest of enemies on false charges; the rejection of facts and the explicit declaration that the free press is an enemy of the people for presenting information that conflicts with the state’s own preferred interpretations; the altering and realtering of supposed norms so that the opposition is, invariably, declared to be out of control in their requests, so out of control that it is now necessary to alter the rules of government to properly constrain them:

It is authoritarianism. The party is a propaganda movement devoted only to self-preservation. There is not a stitch of prior ideological principle that will survive from 2016 to 2020—or from 2018 on a Monday to 2018 on a Tuesday. The rules are whatever they need to be to suppress the movement’s perceived enemies. Not merely for a desperately needed Supreme Court seat, but for the now-existential election and all its myriad details.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/how-mitch-mcconnell-carried-out-his-sinister-plot-to-take-over-the-federal-courts/

amanda b rekonwith

ever since Donald Trump’s oversized suit-clad carcass first befouled the Oval Office, there’s been talk in the media about if and when he would cause a constitutional crisis. The assumption underlying this discourse is that a constitutional crisis would hit us like a thunderbolt and we would collectively realize, all at once, that the very fate of our democracy was on the line. Instead, there’s been a series of mini-constitutional crises, from Trump stomping all over our laws against foreign emoluments (an old-timey phrase for being bribed by foreign leaders), obstructing justice during Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s role in Russian election interference, blackmailing the Ukrainian president to extract dishonest election assistance and about a dozen other instances it would be tedious to list.

The result has been a steady erosion of the political norms and laws that protect our democracy, culminating in Trump’s last big push to steal or corrupt the 2020 presidential election.

If Trump successfully does that, it could well be the killing blow for our tattered democracy. But it’s important to understand that the credit for orchestrating the demise of our once-great nation should largely go to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a man possessed by the same lust for power and moral turpitude as Trump, but not hobbled by Trump’s stupidity or short-sightedness.

It was McConnell who recognized long ago that he could leverage the undemocratic power of the Senate as a weapon to invade and conquer the federal courts, and then use the latter to vacate any effort by the voters to exert real influence on how this country is governed. During Barack Obama’s presidency, McConnell deliberately slow-walked the confirmations of Obama’s nominations to the federal bench, leaving dozens of seats empty. When Trump was elected, McConnell hit the gas, packing the courts at record speed with an assembly line of nearly identical conserva-bots whose main attributes were youth and a willingness to forgo any intellectual rigor to rubber-stamp the right-wing agenda.

with the death of the Supreme Court’s liberal lion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, McConnell has a real opportunity to complete his mission of crushing democracy completely. Sure, there will still be elections and Democrats may win lots of them, especially this year with so many liberals fired up to throw Trump out of office.But with a possible 6-3 conservative majority on the court, McConnell knows that conservatives can nullify most efforts by those elected officials to pass progressive legislation. McConnell can even stop worrying about Chief Justice John Roberts, who occasionally has a bout of conscience and votes with the liberals to uphold precedent or follow constitutional law.

That commanding court majority won’t just serve as a firewall against new laws passed by a Democratic House and Senate. It will also give Republicans an opportunity to undo decades of progress in human rights. McConnell stole dozens of federal court appointments that legally belonged to Obama, but his crowning jewel, of course, was the theft of the seat left open when Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016. Using the laughably thin pretext that you shouldn’t seat a Supreme Court justice during an election year, McConnell refused even to hold hearings for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” were McConnell’s exact words. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Right now, Democrats are understandably up in arms about McConnell inventing this “not during an election year” rule and then dropping it the second he had a chance to seat a judge during not just an election year, but right in the thick of a presidential campaign.

But in truth, McConnell’s blatant hypocrisy was visible long before that, when he first filled the seat that he stole with Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch. The American people most certainly did not want Trump to fill that seat. The American people picked Barack Obama to fill that seat, when they elected him in 2012. They then chose Hillary Clinton, by a margin of nearly 3 million votes over Trump, to fill that seat.

Consider also that the American people picked Al Gore over George W. Bush in the 2000 election — by about 500,000 votes. If it were up to the American people, it’s arguable that seven of the nine current Supreme Court would be Democratic appointees.

We also know from polling that 62% of Americans believe that the person who fills Ginsburg’s seatshould be the person who wins the election.

Trump is a notorious, pathological liar, but we can’t let that get in the way of seeing that McConnell is just as rotten, and much craftier about being evil, to boot. McConnell loves to resort to high-minded rhetoric about democracy, but he’s clearly laughing up his sleeve the entire time. If Americans had a real democracy, McConnell wouldn’t even hold his leadership position: A majority of Americans have been voting for Democrats in Senate races for years, but Republicans control the upper chamber of Congress because the Constitution gives disproportionate power to rural states with small but overwhelmingly conservative populations.

Even this unfair stranglehold on power isn’t enough for McConnell, however, which is why he has lied, cheated and stolen his way to control the federal judiciary. He intends to use that same judiciary to steal even more power for Republicans at the ballot box, because conservative judges are only too happy to hand down rulings on voting rights and gerrymandering that allow Republicans to further eviscerate Americans’ ability to choose their own leaders.

The ugly, hard truth is that the constitutional crisis has been going on for years, and the architect of our demise isn’t Donald Trump. He’s just a loudmouth bully Republicans can hide behind to get what they’ve always wanted — to hold onto power without being accountable to the voters.

Sure, this presidential election is important, but getting rid of Trump isn’t enough to save us. If Democrats can pull off this election, we will need drastic reform — starting with packing the courts and major voting-rights legislation — simply to begin to undo all the damage done by McConnell and his crew. Not because that’s good for the Democrats, although that would be a likely side effect. But because our democracy is taking its last breaths, and without major intervention it will be lost to us for good.

===