But Scott, this is the type of thing I worry about.
Welcome to the cultural authoritarianism era
The current cultural clampdown in red states needs to be understood as a threat to our political system.
April 28, 2022, 9:02 AM PDT
By Alan Elrod, president and CEO of The Pulaski Institution
Lawmakers in Missouri this week debated the possibility that adults up to age 25 could be covered by a set of bills designed to limit the access of minors to gender-affirming health care. In Idaho, legislation was proposed that would have restrained trans health care only for minors — but made it a crime for their parents to take them out of state to obtain it. (The bill was ultimately blocked in the Idaho Senate.) In Texas, it’s the parents of transgender children who fear facing legal penalties, as the state government has sought to charge them with child abuse.
The measures drafted in Missouri, Idaho and Texas are expansive in their attempts to control the residents of their states, and they are hardly exceptions. A flurry of bills that show a breathtaking disregard for individual rights on topics from abortion to race are flying through legislatures in these and many other red states.
The trend in these red states represents a high-water mark of illiberalism in 21st century America. To call this phenomenon merely a new manifestation of the long-ranging culture wars, as so many are, is a mistake.
To criminalize seeking out-of-state services is a clear affront to the ability of people in this country to enjoy freedom of movement. To expand the constraints on adults to make their own health care decisions and to allow neighbors to act as bounty hunters on transgressors, as Texas law does when it comes to abortion, frays the relationship people have with their bodies and their neighbors. To threaten parents with abuse investigations for medical treatment doctors endorse is to fundamentally warp the nature of how the state relates to the American household.
Across the country, local and state politics are beset by transgressions of liberal values. To be clear, I don’t mean progressive values. I mean what might be called capital-L Liberalism, those beliefs in the freedom of the individual and the commitment to tolerance, rights and conscience that are commensurate with a free society.
Taken together, the trend in these red states represents a high-water mark of illiberalism in 21st century America. To call this phenomenon merely a new manifestation of the long-ranging culture wars, as so many are, is a mistake. It is no less than cultural authoritarianism, a strategy that has been modeled by the self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and adopted by populist political leaders in Central Europe, South America and Asia, as well. A number of America’s right-wing figures have become open cheerleaders of Orbán’s government and even frequent travelers to Budapest.
Texas parent speaks on Gov. Abbott’s push for investigations into gender-affirming care
The term “illiberal democracy” is apt because, as is true in Hungary, the majority of voters in many of these red states have put such illiberals in power. Orbán has proven his case that a hostile approach to ideas and speech he deems unfriendly, as well as to positions on hot-button social issues that don’t conform with conservative Christian values, can be democratically successful — and that, when the nation gives you such a mandate, the rights and dignities of those on the losing end can easily falter.
This connection is important to underscore, because for all the focus on the threat to American-style democracy by challenges to the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and voter disenfranchisement throughout the country, the current cultural clampdown needs to be understood as a threat to our political system, as well.
Unfortunately, the successful deployment of cultural authoritarianism in the ostensibly democratic world is hardly limited to Hungary — demonstrating the strength of its appeal. Poland, Hungary’s illiberal partner within the European Union, has engaged in a significant rollback of abortion rights, with Amnesty International noting that abortion in Poland has become “almost impossible” for those who are eligible to obtain. LGBTQ rights are also under threat with the rise of so-called LGBT-free zones, which the BBC calculated to be about 100 Polish towns and regions that passed resolutions (some later repealed) declaring themselves free of “LGBT ideology.” Beyond Europe, elected populists Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines have demonstrated even more brutal civil society and cultural clampdowns.
Of course, the U.S. has much stronger safeguards against cultural authoritarianism than these countries. State governments aren’t simply free to do as they please. Americans have constitutional protections. Last year, a federal judge halted a bill passed in my own state of Arkansas that would have banned gender-affirming treatment for youths. Judges in Texas have also intervened in the efforts to prosecute parents of trans children for child abuse. But fighting state laws in the courts is a time-, labor- and cost-intensive endeavor. In some cases, the law is murky, and right-wing courts, particularly the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, can’t be relied upon to intervene in defense of minority rights.
That a wide range of deeply illiberal violations of freedom and dignity can exist below the federal level is nothing new in American political history. But this particular movement comes as we are facing a democratic crisis in this country, and both must be acknowledged.
Democracy is a process. And while it’s one that produces winners and losers, liberal democracy is one in which the losers aren’t abused and in which they can be assured that their right to remain and participate in society won’t be abrogated. Today, in state capitals across the country, a spate of illiberalism threatens that security. _____ My friend who I knew in high school is married to a great guy in Brazil. She is very worried about the same situation. I know you think I'm going crazy but I'm not.
We have resisted this from day one.
Unless enough Republican people understand the risk we could lose it.
Laying groundwork for a potential 2024 presidential campaign, Florida’s Trump-like governor, Ron DeSantis, has positioned the state as the last stronghold of liberty in America. The governor and his supporters have labeled as a “groomer” anyone who believes children can learn LGBTQ+ people exist, arguing that simply by talking about gay relationships to a child, you are sexualizing that child. DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for example tweeted: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”
To be gay, in their view, is to be inherently sexualized, a threat to innocence in a way that straight Americans are not.
There are scriptural laws in the Hebrew Bible in proximity to the Ten Commandments which state that it is an "abmomination" for two people of the same sex to engage in sexual intercourse. Those laws also say it is an "abomination" to eat pork or catfish or horsemeat or camel or shrip or lobsters or oysters. It is also an "abomination" to touch a dead body or either a human or an animal.
Perhaps all that should be written into punishable Texas and Florida law.
Water mismanagement Bronson Mack, public outreach officer for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said." Note: " generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
KansasDemocrat said... Water mismanagement Bronson Mack, public outreach officer for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said." Note: " generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
you may have to do the math for dopie (VERY lo iq) and roger
As Republican primary voters get closer to the polls, it’s beginning to feel like mid-2016 again: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are on opposing sides.
The former president’s late backing of J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania is directly at odds with the Texas senator’s favored candidates in two brutal Senate primaries that conclude next month. Cruz endorsed his candidates before Trump — Josh Mandel in Ohio and David McCormick in Pennsylvania — and didn’t exactly plan to go toe-to-toe with his 2016 presidential rival. But Trump’s late interventions certainly aren’t scaring him off.
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In fact, Cruz is dropping into Ohio this weekend to try and push Mandel across the finish line just days before the May 3 primary. And he says he’ll probably head back to Pennsylvania to bolster McCormick against Oz ahead of the May 17 contest.
Trump’s blessing is boosting Vance and Oz, but both states’ Republican primaries are tight enough to be toss-ups. The races amount to a test of whether Trump’s attraction to celebrity candidates can sway the GOP base more than Cruz’s preference for doctrinaire conservatives. And it’s a reminder that before they were allies during Trump’s presidency, the two had very different ideas about the direction of the Republican Party.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said." Note: " generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said." Note: " generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
Don’t forget Meade is 500’ above sea level so the water depth is half
G.O.P. Concocts Fake Threat: Voter Fraud by Undocumented Immigrants
Far from the U.S.-Mexico border, Ohio’s Senate primary shows how the Republican obsession with the fiction of a stolen election has spawned a new cause for fear of illegal immigration.
By Jazmine Ulloa
April 28, 2022Updated 6:54 p.m. ET
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Six years after former President Donald J. Trump paved his way to the White House on nativist and xenophobic appeals to white voters, the 2,000-mile dividing line between Mexico and the United States has once again become a fixation of the Republican Party.
But the resurgence of the issue on the right has come with a new twist: Republican leaders and candidates are increasingly claiming without basis that unauthorized immigrants are gaining access to the ballot box.
Voter fraud is exceptionally rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are voting have been repeatedly discredited. Yet that fabricated message — capitalizing on a concocted threat to advance Mr. Trump’s broader lie of stolen elections — is now finding receptive audiences in more than a dozen states across the country, including several far from the U.S.-Mexico border.
In Macomb County, Mich., where Republicans are fiercely split between those who want to investigate the 2020 election and those who want to move on, many voters at the county G.O.P. convention this month said they feared that immigrants were entering the country illegally, not just to steal jobs but also to steal votes by casting fraudulent ballots for Democrats.
“I don’t want them coming into red states and turning them blue,” said Mark Checkeroski, a former chief engineer of a hospital — though data from the 2020 election showed that many places with larger immigrant populations instead took a turn to the right.
Tough talk on illegal immigration and border security has long been a staple of American politics. Both Republicans and Democrats — especially the G.O.P. in recent years — have historically played into bigoted tropes that conflate illegal immigration and crime and that portray Latinos and Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners in their own country or, worse, an economic threat.
But the leap from unsecure borders to unsecure elections is newer. And it is not difficult to see why some voters are making it.
In Ohio, where Republicans vying in a heated Senate primary are discussing immigration in apocalyptic terms and running ads showing shadowy black-and-white surveillance video or washed-out images of border crossings, Mr. Trump whipped up fears of “open borders and horrible elections” at a rally on Saturday, calling for stricter voter ID laws and proof of citizenship at the ballot box.
The campaign commercials and promos for right-wing documentaries that played on huge television screens before Mr. Trump’s speech seemed to alternate between lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and overblown claims blaming unauthorized immigrants for crime. Speakers in one trailer for a film by Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and filmmaker Mr. Trump pardoned for making illegal campaign contributions, denounced “voter trafficking,” compared the work of what appeared to be voter outreach groups to the “Mexican mafia” and referred to people conveying mail-in ballots to drop boxes as “mules.”
It is legal in some states for third parties, like family members or community groups, to drop off completed ballots — a practice that became vital for many during the pandemic.
Yet the messages seemed tailor-made for rally attendees like Alicia Cline, 40, who said she believed that Democrats in power were using the border crisis to gin up votes. “The last election was already stolen,” said Ms. Cline, a horticulturist from Columbus. “The establishment is, I think, using the people that are rushing over the borders in order to support themselves and get more votes for themselves.”
The latest fear-mongering about immigrants supposedly stealing votes is just one line of attack among many, as Republicans have made immigration a focal point in the midterms and Republican governors face off with the Biden administration over what they paint as dire conditions at the border.
Last week, governors from 26 states unveiled “a border strike force” to share intelligence and combat drug trafficking as the Biden administration has said it plans to lift a Trump-era rule that has allowed federal immigration officials to turn away or immediately deport asylum seekers and migrants.
USD was King. BIDEN failed to defend the dollar, US domination in Energy and now he gets out smarter.
"Germany's power utility Uniper—one of Germany's largest gas importers—will pay for Russian gas deliveries in rubles in accordance with the new payment procedure announced by Russia last month..
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described how Russian forces came close to capturing or assassinating him in the early hours of the invasion.
Zelenskiy has been widely lauded for his response to the invasion in the 65 days since the first Russian troops entered Ukraine. He has addressed the US Congress, the World Bank and the Grammy Awards; Boris Johnson is among the high-profile figures eager to be seen in his company.
But his time as the leader of a country under attack from a far more powerful neighbour could have ended within hours of the invasion beginning, according to interviews in Time magazine.
How Zelenskiy’s team of TV writers helps his victory message hit home
Speaking to reporter Simon Shuster, who spent a fortnight in the presidential compound in Kyiv, Zelenskiy described how Russian troops came close to finding him and his family as they attempted to seize the capital’s government district on day one of the conflict.
While many of his memories of those first few hours remained “fragmented”, Zelenskiy said the predawn of 24 February stood out.
After the bombing had started, he and his wife, Olena Zelenska, went to tell their daughter, 17, and son, nine, to prepare to flee their home. “We woke them up,” Zelenskiy told Time. “It was loud. There were explosions over there.”
The Ukrainian military told Zelenskiy that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family. “Before that night, we had only ever seen such things in the movies,” Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, told the magazine.
Gunfights broke out around the government quarter as night fell on the first day of the war, Shuster wrote. “Guards inside the compound shut the lights and brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelenskiy and about a dozen of his aides.”
One of the few officials who knew how to use the weapons was Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service. “It was an absolute madhouse,” Arestovych told Time. “Automatics for everyone.”
The eccentric tech billionaire is being hailed as an unlikely hero by far-right groups, from the Proud Boys to white nationalist activists and conspiracists—many of whom have been banned from Twitter. “We (Patriots) have a lot of unfinished business left to settle on Twitter,” an influencer named “Qtah” wrote on Telegram, which was echoed by QAnon figure Ron Watkins. “LETS F-CKING GOOO,” posted white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes, who was banned from Twitter last year. “We’re back.”
The deal is not set to close for another three to six months, but Musk has made no secret of his disdain for some of Twitter’s moderation policies. He has indicated that he envisions a more hands-off approach to make the platform a haven for unfettered expression, only removing content if it’s required by law. “If it’s a gray area, let the tweet exist,” Musk said in a TED Talk last week, echoing his previous statements that he thinks the company’s efforts to moderate legal but problematic, controversial, or offensive content have gone too far. Republicans and conservative groups have criticized these policies for censoring their voices and viewpoints. (Research from Twitter shows that rightwing partisan news sources have received a greater boost from Twitter’s algorithm than moderate or left-leaning news sources in the past.)
But former employees, analysts, and experts have warned that efforts to roll back Twitter’s recent policies could lead to an uptick in disinformation, extremist content, harassment, and hate speech that the company has tried to crack down on for years. These stricter rules were developed slowly over the past decade as social media companies learned how bad actors could manipulate their platforms. In some countries, leaders have used Twitter to harass and silence critics, manipulate public opinion, and incite ethnic and religious violence. “Musk’s takeover does represent a really chaotic and uncertain moment, and in those kinds of chaotic moments it’s the forces that are most organized and most passionate that usually get their way,” says Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “And right now that is the far-right, right now that is hateful voices which were excluded from Twitter previously.”
Why is any illegal immigration acceptable, you fucking sot?
Because an endless stream of fresh democrat voters is required to backfill those once-democrat voters who have figured it out and have said "fuck this shit" to the democrats.
But former employees, analysts, and experts have warned that efforts to roll back Twitter’s recent policies could lead to an uptick in disinformation, extremist content, harassment, and hate speech that the company has tried to crack down on for years.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Private broadcast internet companies have the right to choose, and regulate, what they want their customers say.
The first amendment rights do not apply to privately owned business. For example, if you write a letter that you want the newspaper to publish it, they have the right to choose to publish it, or not. The same rights apply to Twitter and Facebook or any other privately owned business. And you don't have the right to sue them.
Libertarians think they have it all figured out. But they’re totally wrong.
As proof, just try to name even one country in the history of the entire world that has ever successfully run along libertarian lines. There are none, and never will be.
There are also no countries that have failed because of “too much democracy.”
In fact, no country in the world has ever had to dissolve itself because its citizens voted themselves “too much free stuff.”
It turns out people are practical: even the most democratic countries in the world, like the Scandinavian nations, stick to basic “freebies” that have been considered appropriate government functions since the days of ancient Greece.
These typically include healthcare, education, and publicly owned infrastructure like roads, public buildings, and fire departments.
They may raise taxes on the morbidly rich to pay for some of these things, but the result of that is a less severely unequal — and thus happier — society.
And the rich people in those countries can still accumulate more money than they could ever spend in a normal person’s lifetime.
Which brings us back to Rand Paul’s affection for Russia.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, when Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” went to Russia in the early 1990s to privatize that nation’s economy, they largely hewed to libertarian ideology.
They privatized most Russian government functions, producing a bumper crop of oligarchs who run or supply everything from Moscow’s infrastructure to their social welfare programs to their military. (We’re seeing the results of that experiment in Ukraine, with Russian soldiers wearing cardboard “bulletproof vests” so the oligarchs could skim off the profits.)
The simple reality is that Rand Paul’s beloved libertarianism can only be truly realized in an authoritarian oligarchy where average people lack the resources or political power to have a meaningful say in how the state is run.
Private broadcast internet companies have the right to choose, and regulate, what they want their customers say.
Keep that in mind alky as Musk rolls back all of Twitters censorship of the right, and fully restores free speech to Twitter.
We've always understood that Twitter had the 'right' to censor. It was always the principle that mattered. And now you will witness it's undoing, and I don't want to hear a fucking peep out of you.
Silencing the opposition because one couldn't compete in the marketplace of free ideas always was and is the mark of a fucking coward.
And speaking of cowards, it seems that Sloppy Joe has just created his own little Ministry of Truth within DHS, appointing some leftist twat to 'regulate free speech' and combat 'disinformation.'
Always remember alky -
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Saber-rattling and rhetoric between Moscow and the West have become notably more aggressive this week, prompting concerns that a direct confrontation between the two power blocs could be more likely.
In the last few days alone, for example, Russia stopped gas supplies to two European countries and has warned the West several times that the risk of a nuclear war is very “real.”
In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that any foreign intervention in Ukraine would provoke what he called a “lightning fast” response from Moscow, while his Foreign Ministry warned NATO not to test its patience.
For their part, Western officials have dismissed Russia’s “bravado” and “dangerous” nuclear war rhetoric, with the U.K. calling on Western allies to “double down” on their support for Ukraine.
Thommy Boy Hartmann - paid Putin stooge on Russia Television.
Hartmann hosted a one-hour daily TV show at 7 pm. ET Monday to Friday, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, which was editorially directed by his wife and was broadcast from the Washington, D.C., studios of the RT news network. The show featured many conservative guests who routinely sparred with Hartmann. Hartmann co-produced the program with RT, who provided studio and carriage, while Hartmann retained full editorial control of his programming. The RT network aired the program via Dish Network, DirecTV, and on selected local-origination and public-access television cable TV channels globally.[31] After hosting the program for seven years, Hartmann announced his departure as host on September 29, 2017.
In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that any foreign intervention in Ukraine would provoke what he called a “lightning fast” response from Moscow, while his Foreign Ministry warned NATO not to test its patience.
Hey alky, can we get some perspective on this from Thomm Hartmann, seeing as he was Putin's piss-boy for so many years?
BREAKING: In the case of US v. Keith Raniere, three forensic experts, including a former FBI Special Agent of 20 years, have filed affidavits affirming that the FBI tampered and planted the child porn evidence presented at trial, in motion to stay appeal.
This case was local and Raniere is a world class piece of shit, but watch him get off on a technicality because the FBI is the most corrupt law enforcement agency of all time.
Maybe some yellow bellied R in congress should speak out to the value of a united europe and Nato instead of piss ass stupid comments from a worthless ag school drop out and divorcee!!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON (AP) — The worst possible moment for bringing Trevor Reed home turned out to be the best.
With U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point in decades, it seemed an improbable time to hope for the release of Reed, a former Marine detained in Russia for almost three years. Yet this week the Biden administration completed the type of transaction it had earlier seemed resistant to, exchanging Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut.
A series of events and considerations in the last two months helped facilitate the swap, including escalating concerns over Reed’s health, a private Oval Office meeting between his parents and President Joe Biden and a secretive Moscow trip by a former diplomat on the cusp of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
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“All those three forced the White House to make a decision that they hadn’t made before,” said Mickey Bergman, vice president at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement.
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How the war — and the breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations — affected the deal isn’t clear. U.S. officials stressed that the negotiations for Reed’s release were narrow in scope, focused squarely on the prisoners and not on Russia’s war and not reflective of any broader diplomatic engagement. But while the timing of the deal was startling, it’s also clear that the groundwork for it had been laid before the conflict had begun.
“I did it,” Biden told reporters Wednesday about the deal. “I raised it. I raised it three months ago.”
Just as the war was about to commence, Bergman and his colleague, Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ex-New Mexico governor, flew to Moscow on the plane of FedEx chief executive Fred Smith for a meeting with Russian government officials. It was a continuation of negotiations they’d been having for the release of Reed and another jailed American, corporate security executive Paul Whelan.
They left with the contours in place for the one-for-one swap that ultimately took place.
In Texas, Joey and Paula Reed were worrying that Russia’s war with Ukraine, and resulting tensions with the U.S., could close off communication channels and prevent any common ground for negotiations. During meetings with administration officials in the last year — including with the Justice Department, which prosecuted Yaroshenko — the couple expressed support for a swap but say they weren’t led to think that was a viable option.
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“They didn’t say: ‘Oh, we agree with you, that’s a great deal. That’s a good point,’” Paula Reed said in a February interview with The Associated Press. “They didn’t say anything like that. They just said: ‘We hear you. Thank you very much.’”
But weeks into the war, the couple did something that got the White House’s attention.
You mean like beating a Black woman silly every fucking day to the point where she had to get law enforcement involved resulting in a restraining order, or referring to Blacks as NEGROES on your Twitter feed?
This case was local and Raniere is a world class piece of shit, but watch him get off on a technicality because the FBI is the most corrupt law enforcement agency of all time.
Only Trump and his GOP supporters can beat the FBI in being dishonest and willing to give up democracy for white power!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Too bad red states are not as open about crap like this......white power is in the open and will drive the GOP to whatever means to achieve supremacy!!!!
Opinion New York’s courts stood up to gerrymandering. Congress should, too Image without a caption By Henry Olsen Columnist | Follow Yesterday at 3:05 p.m. EDT
Demonstrators protest against gerrymandering at a rally at the Supreme Court in 2019. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
Share Wednesday’s decision by the New York State Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s congressional and state Senate maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders is great news for Republicans. It should also spur members of both parties to finally outlaw this scourge upon democracy. Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
No serious person can deny that the state’s proposed map was a skillful partisan gerrymander. It ruthlessly eliminated one Republican-held seat and redrew three other GOP strongholds such that, had they been in place during the 2020 election, President Biden would have carried them by at least 9.5 points. State Democrats did so with aplomb, crossing mountain ranges, rivers and even the Long Island Sound to advance their cause. As a one-time redistricter, I appreciated the effort as an artist would applaud a masterpiece. As a Republican and advocate for fair redistricting, it sent shudders down my spine.
The plan’s audacity surely helped its demise. All seven of the justices on the New York court were appointed by Democrats, yet five joined a majority opinion to strike down the plan. (One justice dissented in part because he believed the procedural flaws accompanying the map’s adoption were sufficient to render it unconstitutional, making a substantive finding as to the plan’s partisan effects unnecessary.) My one foray into redistricting 40 years ago ended when a 6-to-1 Democratic majority on the California Supreme Court threw out a plan I drew on a — wait for it — 6-to-1 vote. Losing five members of your own party’s judicial appointees is practically unheard of.
Why gerry mandering works....water down the population that you don't need to support nut jobs......LOLOLOLOL
Maya King By Maya King April 29, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Less than a 30-minute drive from Atlanta, Powder Springs embodies the changes reshaping Georgia politics. Shops and restaurants owned almost entirely by Black proprietors line its downtown center and are frequented by a growing population of young and racially diverse residents. The suburban city elected its first Black mayor in 2015, and the county where it sits, the former Republican stronghold of Cobb, voted for President Biden by 14 percentage points in 2020.
There is one other big change: Powder Springs, a majority Black city, may soon be represented in Congress by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
That development, the result of new district maps drawn by Georgia state legislators, was part of a Republican drive to blunt Democrats’ power. But for residents, the prospect of Powder Springs and another predominantly Black suburb, Austell, being represented by perhaps the most far-right Republican in Congress is raising questions that go beyond partisan politics. Some say they have little trust that Ms. Greene will pay them the same attention and respect that she gives to her white, Republican constituents and fear their voice in Congress won’t speak for them.
“It’s about having someone that’s going to take your phone calls, who’s going to work on your behalf, who’s going to care what happens to your children, who is going to care about making sure you get to your job,” said State Representative David Wilkerson, a Black Democrat who lives in and represents the communities now drawn into Ms. Greene’s congressional district. “That’s what people are looking for.”
The newly drawn 14th Congressional District is a result of a tactic called “cracking,” the practice of breaking up blocs of voters and scattering them across multiple districts to dilute their voting power. It is common and legal under federal law, unless found by a court to be deliberately used to prevent voters of the same race from electing a representative of their choice.
Ms. Greene, who is best known as a bomb-thrower on social media, has said little about how she would represent the communities new to her district if she wins re-election in November. She did not respond to requests for comment.
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!! The goat fucking idiot again posts his inane gibberish and own brand of stupidity!!!!!!!!!!! BTW.....the #1 trump endorsed senate candidate Walker is nothing but a Token lying asshole who NEVER Graduated from his free UGA education!!!!!!!!! Warnock in his brief tenure has been shown to be a thoughtful, caring and smart representative, something sorely lacking from the Trump party!!!!!! Walker on the other hand thinks evolution is junk science and trump won!!!!!!!
Not one single republican has criticized Putin for his invasion and atrocities.....while many R's would vote for putin over biden in an election.....a sad commentary on the GOP of trump!!!!
69 comments:
It's actually funny 😁
But Scott, this is the type of thing I worry about.
Welcome to the cultural authoritarianism era
The current cultural clampdown in red states needs to be understood as a threat to our political system.
April 28, 2022, 9:02 AM PDT
By Alan Elrod, president and CEO of The Pulaski Institution
Lawmakers in Missouri this week debated the possibility that adults up to age 25 could be covered by a set of bills designed to limit the access of minors to gender-affirming health care. In Idaho, legislation was proposed that would have restrained trans health care only for minors — but made it a crime for their parents to take them out of state to obtain it. (The bill was ultimately blocked in the Idaho Senate.) In Texas, it’s the parents of transgender children who fear facing legal penalties, as the state government has sought to charge them with child abuse.
The measures drafted in Missouri, Idaho and Texas are expansive in their attempts to control the residents of their states, and they are hardly exceptions. A flurry of bills that show a breathtaking disregard for individual rights on topics from abortion to race are flying through legislatures in these and many other red states.
The trend in these red states represents a high-water mark of illiberalism in 21st century America. To call this phenomenon merely a new manifestation of the long-ranging culture wars, as so many are, is a mistake.
To criminalize seeking out-of-state services is a clear affront to the ability of people in this country to enjoy freedom of movement. To expand the constraints on adults to make their own health care decisions and to allow neighbors to act as bounty hunters on transgressors, as Texas law does when it comes to abortion, frays the relationship people have with their bodies and their neighbors. To threaten parents with abuse investigations for medical treatment doctors endorse is to fundamentally warp the nature of how the state relates to the American household.
Across the country, local and state politics are beset by transgressions of liberal values. To be clear, I don’t mean progressive values. I mean what might be called capital-L Liberalism, those beliefs in the freedom of the individual and the commitment to tolerance, rights and conscience that are commensurate with a free society.
Taken together, the trend in these red states represents a high-water mark of illiberalism in 21st century America. To call this phenomenon merely a new manifestation of the long-ranging culture wars, as so many are, is a mistake. It is no less than cultural authoritarianism, a strategy that has been modeled by the self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy” of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and adopted by populist political leaders in Central Europe, South America and Asia, as well. A number of America’s right-wing figures have become open cheerleaders of Orbán’s government and even frequent travelers to Budapest.
Bounty hunters. The wild wide west
Texas parent speaks on Gov. Abbott’s push for investigations into gender-affirming care
The term “illiberal democracy” is apt because, as is true in Hungary, the majority of voters in many of these red states have put such illiberals in power. Orbán has proven his case that a hostile approach to ideas and speech he deems unfriendly, as well as to positions on hot-button social issues that don’t conform with conservative Christian values, can be democratically successful — and that, when the nation gives you such a mandate, the rights and dignities of those on the losing end can easily falter.
This connection is important to underscore, because for all the focus on the threat to American-style democracy by challenges to the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and voter disenfranchisement throughout the country, the current cultural clampdown needs to be understood as a threat to our political system, as well.
Unfortunately, the successful deployment of cultural authoritarianism in the ostensibly democratic world is hardly limited to Hungary — demonstrating the strength of its appeal. Poland, Hungary’s illiberal partner within the European Union, has engaged in a significant rollback of abortion rights, with Amnesty International noting that abortion in Poland has become “almost impossible” for those who are eligible to obtain. LGBTQ rights are also under threat with the rise of so-called LGBT-free zones, which the BBC calculated to be about 100 Polish towns and regions that passed resolutions (some later repealed) declaring themselves free of “LGBT ideology.” Beyond Europe, elected populists Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines have demonstrated even more brutal civil society and cultural clampdowns.
Of course, the U.S. has much stronger safeguards against cultural authoritarianism than these countries. State governments aren’t simply free to do as they please. Americans have constitutional protections. Last year, a federal judge halted a bill passed in my own state of Arkansas that would have banned gender-affirming treatment for youths. Judges in Texas have also intervened in the efforts to prosecute parents of trans children for child abuse. But fighting state laws in the courts is a time-, labor- and cost-intensive endeavor. In some cases, the law is murky, and right-wing courts, particularly the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, can’t be relied upon to intervene in defense of minority rights.
That a wide range of deeply illiberal violations of freedom and dignity can exist below the federal level is nothing new in American political history. But this particular movement comes as we are facing a democratic crisis in this country, and both must be acknowledged.
Democracy is a process. And while it’s one that produces winners and losers, liberal democracy is one in which the losers aren’t abused and in which they can be assured that their right to remain and participate in society won’t be abrogated. Today, in state capitals across the country, a spate of illiberalism threatens that security.
_____
My friend who I knew in high school is married to a great guy in Brazil. She is very worried about the same situation.
I know you think I'm going crazy but I'm not.
We have resisted this from day one.
Unless enough Republican people understand the risk we could lose it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/texas-florida-red-state-states-culture-war-abortion-trans-rights-rcna26354
Illiberalism. Your favorite 😍
Laying groundwork for a potential 2024 presidential campaign, Florida’s Trump-like governor, Ron DeSantis, has positioned the state as the last stronghold of liberty in America. The governor and his supporters have labeled as a “groomer” anyone who believes children can learn LGBTQ+ people exist, arguing that simply by talking about gay relationships to a child, you are sexualizing that child. DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, for example tweeted: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”
To be gay, in their view, is to be inherently sexualized, a threat to innocence in a way that straight Americans are not.
https://www.rawstory.com/martial-law-2657230720/
There are scriptural laws in the Hebrew Bible in proximity to the Ten Commandments which state that it is an "abmomination" for two people of the same sex to engage in sexual intercourse. Those laws also say it is an "abomination" to eat pork or catfish or horsemeat or camel or shrip or lobsters or oysters. It is also an "abomination" to touch a dead body or either a human or an animal.
Perhaps all that should be written into punishable Texas and Florida law.
Alky, none of your rhetoric is even in the same galaxy as reality, but it is nice to see you scumbags running scared.
You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind, and karma is a fucking BITCH.
🖕Bidenomics flashes Stagflation.🖕
I know you think I'm going crazy but I'm not.
That's right alky. No one who is in lock down in the looney bin is crazy.
No one at all...
Got that door code yet?
LOL.
No one Hates God like James.
😃know you think I'm going crazy but I'm not😊
Well , you live with a man .
You can't move out.
You are in deep debt that has you cancelling your May 7th, 2022 wedding.
And you believe you are engaged to a former model.
thebradfordfile
https://twitter.com/thebradfordfile/status/1519507791710412806
Elon Musk didn't even need two weeks to flatten the woke.
actually 2 weeks to flatten the curve was misinformation and anyone who propagated that should be banned from Twitter, right?
http://retsports.com/mlb/angels.php
In your browser you can watch the Angels 😇 free
The US GDP dropped.
"Russia has made $66 billion from fuel exports since it invaded Ukraine - and the EU is still its biggest buyer"
Just think if Biden would act boldly and restore the US to Energy independence.
Lake Mead, the loss of hydro electric generation.
Get ready for higher utility bills and more outages, and 3rd world reliability.
Benny Johnson
VIDEO:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1519768707626582023
CNN's Jim Acosta sets a trap for MTG— BACKFIRES immediately when the Congresswoman hits back.
CNN left in stunned, shaking silence
A chance to see CNN FAKE NEWS in action
hopefully it will disappear soon
or at least be banned by Twitter
fair, right ?
Water mismanagement
Bronson Mack, public outreach officer for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said."
Note:
"
generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
Sloppy Joe had a major synapse misfire -
https://twitter.com/i/status/1519698983513432065
Catturd ™
https://twitter.com/catturd2/status/1519737729847865346
The basement dummy thinks he’s the President of Ukraine.
probably because he's still cashing their checks
make that Hunter
and the "big guy"
Ukraine sure got its moneys worth
Richard Grenell
https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1519772745025744896
Trump was right!
NEW: Under pressure from the Europeans, Germany finally says it will allow EU sanctions on Russian pipeline.
This is a total defeat for Joe Biden, U.S. Senate Democrats, & the Merkel government who all dropped the Trump sanctions.
look what they all caused
KansasDemocrat said...
Water mismanagement
Bronson Mack, public outreach officer for the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said."
Note:
"
generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
you may have to do the math for dopie (VERY lo iq) and roger
As Republican primary voters get closer to the polls, it’s beginning to feel like mid-2016 again: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are on opposing sides.
The former president’s late backing of J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania is directly at odds with the Texas senator’s favored candidates in two brutal Senate primaries that conclude next month. Cruz endorsed his candidates before Trump — Josh Mandel in Ohio and David McCormick in Pennsylvania — and didn’t exactly plan to go toe-to-toe with his 2016 presidential rival. But Trump’s late interventions certainly aren’t scaring him off.
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In fact, Cruz is dropping into Ohio this weekend to try and push Mandel across the finish line just days before the May 3 primary. And he says he’ll probably head back to Pennsylvania to bolster McCormick against Oz ahead of the May 17 contest.
Trump’s blessing is boosting Vance and Oz, but both states’ Republican primaries are tight enough to be toss-ups. The races amount to a test of whether Trump’s attraction to celebrity candidates can sway the GOP base more than Cruz’s preference for doctrinaire conservatives. And it’s a reminder that before they were allies during Trump’s presidency, the two had very different ideas about the direction of the Republican Party.
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said."
Note:
"
generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
And the wonderful people at GA Power are about to bring the first 2 nuke reactors, in the US, in 30 years on line.
Fuck the blue states
Lake Mead hit 1,060 feet above sea level on April 4 and stands at 1055 feet as of Wednesday, he said."
Note:
"
generate power once the water level falls below 1,050 feet. @ Hoover Dam
Don’t forget Meade is 500’ above sea level so the water depth is half
This will continue the econo.ic health of Georgia.
"And the wonderful people at GA Power are about to bring the first 2 nuke reactors, in the US, in 30 years on line.
Fuck the blue states, Cali
51 nuclear plants are being built, most in China.
Only 2 in the USA.
Stupid .
G.O.P. Concocts Fake Threat: Voter Fraud by Undocumented Immigrants
Far from the U.S.-Mexico border, Ohio’s Senate primary shows how the Republican obsession with the fiction of a stolen election has spawned a new cause for fear of illegal immigration.
By Jazmine Ulloa
April 28, 2022Updated 6:54 p.m. ET
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Six years after former President Donald J. Trump paved his way to the White House on nativist and xenophobic appeals to white voters, the 2,000-mile dividing line between Mexico and the United States has once again become a fixation of the Republican Party.
But the resurgence of the issue on the right has come with a new twist: Republican leaders and candidates are increasingly claiming without basis that unauthorized immigrants are gaining access to the ballot box.
Voter fraud is exceptionally rare, and allegations that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are voting have been repeatedly discredited. Yet that fabricated message — capitalizing on a concocted threat to advance Mr. Trump’s broader lie of stolen elections — is now finding receptive audiences in more than a dozen states across the country, including several far from the U.S.-Mexico border.
In Macomb County, Mich., where Republicans are fiercely split between those who want to investigate the 2020 election and those who want to move on, many voters at the county G.O.P. convention this month said they feared that immigrants were entering the country illegally, not just to steal jobs but also to steal votes by casting fraudulent ballots for Democrats.
“I don’t want them coming into red states and turning them blue,” said Mark Checkeroski, a former chief engineer of a hospital — though data from the 2020 election showed that many places with larger immigrant populations instead took a turn to the right.
Tough talk on illegal immigration and border security has long been a staple of American politics. Both Republicans and Democrats — especially the G.O.P. in recent years — have historically played into bigoted tropes that conflate illegal immigration and crime and that portray Latinos and Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners in their own country or, worse, an economic threat.
But the leap from unsecure borders to unsecure elections is newer. And it is not difficult to see why some voters are making it.
In Ohio, where Republicans vying in a heated Senate primary are discussing immigration in apocalyptic terms and running ads showing shadowy black-and-white surveillance video or washed-out images of border crossings, Mr. Trump whipped up fears of “open borders and horrible elections” at a rally on Saturday, calling for stricter voter ID laws and proof of citizenship at the ballot box.
The campaign commercials and promos for right-wing documentaries that played on huge television screens before Mr. Trump’s speech seemed to alternate between lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and overblown claims blaming unauthorized immigrants for crime. Speakers in one trailer for a film by Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and filmmaker Mr. Trump pardoned for making illegal campaign contributions, denounced “voter trafficking,” compared the work of what appeared to be voter outreach groups to the “Mexican mafia” and referred to people conveying mail-in ballots to drop boxes as “mules.”
It is legal in some states for third parties, like family members or community groups, to drop off completed ballots — a practice that became vital for many during the pandemic.
Yet the messages seemed tailor-made for rally attendees like Alicia Cline, 40, who said she believed that Democrats in power were using the border crisis to gin up votes. “The last election was already stolen,” said Ms. Cline, a horticulturist from Columbus. “The establishment is, I think, using the people that are rushing over the borders in order to support themselves and get more votes for themselves.”
The latest fear-mongering about immigrants supposedly stealing votes is just one line of attack among many, as Republicans have made immigration a focal point in the midterms and Republican governors face off with the Biden administration over what they paint as dire conditions at the border.
Last week, governors from 26 states unveiled “a border strike force” to share intelligence and combat drug trafficking as the Biden administration has said it plans to lift a Trump-era rule that has allowed federal immigration officials to turn away or immediately deport asylum seekers and migrants.
Beaners and Mooslibs
spawned a new cause for fear of illegal immigration
Why is any illegal immigration acceptable, you fucking sot?
Biden’s Ministry of Truth
Created within the DHS
To censor free speech .
USD was King.
BIDEN failed to defend the dollar, US domination in Energy and now he gets out smarter.
"Germany's power utility Uniper—one of Germany's largest gas importers—will pay for Russian gas deliveries in rubles in accordance with the new payment procedure announced by Russia last month..
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described how Russian forces came close to capturing or assassinating him in the early hours of the invasion.
Zelenskiy has been widely lauded for his response to the invasion in the 65 days since the first Russian troops entered Ukraine. He has addressed the US Congress, the World Bank and the Grammy Awards; Boris Johnson is among the high-profile figures eager to be seen in his company.
But his time as the leader of a country under attack from a far more powerful neighbour could have ended within hours of the invasion beginning, according to interviews in Time magazine.
How Zelenskiy’s team of TV writers helps his victory message hit home
Speaking to reporter Simon Shuster, who spent a fortnight in the presidential compound in Kyiv, Zelenskiy described how Russian troops came close to finding him and his family as they attempted to seize the capital’s government district on day one of the conflict.
While many of his memories of those first few hours remained “fragmented”, Zelenskiy said the predawn of 24 February stood out.
After the bombing had started, he and his wife, Olena Zelenska, went to tell their daughter, 17, and son, nine, to prepare to flee their home. “We woke them up,” Zelenskiy told Time. “It was loud. There were explosions over there.”
The Ukrainian military told Zelenskiy that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family. “Before that night, we had only ever seen such things in the movies,” Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, told the magazine.
Gunfights broke out around the government quarter as night fell on the first day of the war, Shuster wrote. “Guards inside the compound shut the lights and brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelenskiy and about a dozen of his aides.”
One of the few officials who knew how to use the weapons was Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service. “It was an absolute madhouse,” Arestovych told Time. “Automatics for everyone.”
The eccentric tech billionaire is being hailed as an unlikely hero by far-right groups, from the Proud Boys to white nationalist activists and conspiracists—many of whom have been banned from Twitter. “We (Patriots) have a lot of unfinished business left to settle on Twitter,” an influencer named “Qtah” wrote on Telegram, which was echoed by QAnon figure Ron Watkins. “LETS F-CKING GOOO,” posted white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes, who was banned from Twitter last year. “We’re back.”
The deal is not set to close for another three to six months, but Musk has made no secret of his disdain for some of Twitter’s moderation policies. He has indicated that he envisions a more hands-off approach to make the platform a haven for unfettered expression, only removing content if it’s required by law. “If it’s a gray area, let the tweet exist,” Musk said in a TED Talk last week, echoing his previous statements that he thinks the company’s efforts to moderate legal but problematic, controversial, or offensive content have gone too far. Republicans and conservative groups have criticized these policies for censoring their voices and viewpoints. (Research from Twitter shows that rightwing partisan news sources have received a greater boost from Twitter’s algorithm than moderate or left-leaning news sources in the past.)
But former employees, analysts, and experts have warned that efforts to roll back Twitter’s recent policies could lead to an uptick in disinformation, extremist content, harassment, and hate speech that the company has tried to crack down on for years. These stricter rules were developed slowly over the past decade as social media companies learned how bad actors could manipulate their platforms. In some countries, leaders have used Twitter to harass and silence critics, manipulate public opinion, and incite ethnic and religious violence. “Musk’s takeover does represent a really chaotic and uncertain moment, and in those kinds of chaotic moments it’s the forces that are most organized and most passionate that usually get their way,” says Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “And right now that is the far-right, right now that is hateful voices which were excluded from Twitter previously.”
https://time.com/6171272/elon-musk-twitter-disinformation/
Why is any illegal immigration acceptable, you fucking sot?
Because an endless stream of fresh democrat voters is required to backfill those once-democrat voters who have figured it out and have said "fuck this shit" to the democrats.
Latinos and blacks for the most recent example.
But former employees, analysts, and experts have warned that efforts to roll back Twitter’s recent policies could lead to an uptick in disinformation, extremist content, harassment, and hate speech that the company has tried to crack down on for years.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Private broadcast internet companies have the right to choose, and regulate, what they want their customers say.
The first amendment rights do not apply to privately owned business. For example, if you write a letter that you want the newspaper to publish it, they have the right to choose to publish it, or not.
The same rights apply to Twitter and Facebook or any other privately owned business. And you don't have the right to sue them.
With the exception of Native Americans, we are all, either immigrants or descents of immigrants.
This article applies to Scott too
Libertarians think they have it all figured out. But they’re totally wrong.
As proof, just try to name even one country in the history of the entire world that has ever successfully run along libertarian lines. There are none, and never will be.
There are also no countries that have failed because of “too much democracy.”
In fact, no country in the world has ever had to dissolve itself because its citizens voted themselves “too much free stuff.”
It turns out people are practical: even the most democratic countries in the world, like the Scandinavian nations, stick to basic “freebies” that have been considered appropriate government functions since the days of ancient Greece.
These typically include healthcare, education, and publicly owned infrastructure like roads, public buildings, and fire departments.
They may raise taxes on the morbidly rich to pay for some of these things, but the result of that is a less severely unequal — and thus happier — society.
And the rich people in those countries can still accumulate more money than they could ever spend in a normal person’s lifetime.
Which brings us back to Rand Paul’s affection for Russia.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, when Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys” went to Russia in the early 1990s to privatize that nation’s economy, they largely hewed to libertarian ideology.
They privatized most Russian government functions, producing a bumper crop of oligarchs who run or supply everything from Moscow’s infrastructure to their social welfare programs to their military. (We’re seeing the results of that experiment in Ukraine, with Russian soldiers wearing cardboard “bulletproof vests” so the oligarchs could skim off the profits.)
The simple reality is that Rand Paul’s beloved libertarianism can only be truly realized in an authoritarian oligarchy where average people lack the resources or political power to have a meaningful say in how the state is run.
Like Russia.
Thom Hartmann
https://www.rawstory.com/rand-paul-libertarian/
Blogger The Real Halfbaked Soars Pundit said...
Private broadcast internet companies have the right to choose, and regulate, what they want their customers say.
Keep that in mind alky as Musk rolls back all of Twitters censorship of the right, and fully restores free speech to Twitter.
We've always understood that Twitter had the 'right' to censor. It was always the principle that mattered. And now you will witness it's undoing, and I don't want to hear a fucking peep out of you.
Silencing the opposition because one couldn't compete in the marketplace of free ideas always was and is the mark of a fucking coward.
And speaking of cowards, it seems that Sloppy Joe has just created his own little Ministry of Truth within DHS, appointing some leftist twat to 'regulate free speech' and combat 'disinformation.'
Always remember alky -
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
NOVEMBER is coming...
Blogger The Real Halfbaked Soars Pundit said...
Thom Hartmann
Is Thommy Boy drawing a pension from Putin for his stint on Russia Television?
LOL.
Traitorous fucking weasel.
Saber-rattling and rhetoric between Moscow and the West have become notably more aggressive this week, prompting concerns that a direct confrontation between the two power blocs could be more likely.
In the last few days alone, for example, Russia stopped gas supplies to two European countries and has warned the West several times that the risk of a nuclear war is very “real.”
In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that any foreign intervention in Ukraine would provoke what he called a “lightning fast” response from Moscow, while his Foreign Ministry warned NATO not to test its patience.
For their part, Western officials have dismissed Russia’s “bravado” and “dangerous” nuclear war rhetoric, with the U.K. calling on Western allies to “double down” on their support for Ukraine.
Thommy Boy Hartmann - paid Putin stooge on Russia Television.
Hartmann hosted a one-hour daily TV show at 7 pm. ET Monday to Friday, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, which was editorially directed by his wife and was broadcast from the Washington, D.C., studios of the RT news network. The show featured many conservative guests who routinely sparred with Hartmann. Hartmann co-produced the program with RT, who provided studio and carriage, while Hartmann retained full editorial control of his programming. The RT network aired the program via Dish Network, DirecTV, and on selected local-origination and public-access television cable TV channels globally.[31] After hosting the program for seven years, Hartmann announced his departure as host on September 29, 2017.
He is exactly correct about rrb and unfortunately Scott except that he is not a racist rodent bastard like Jimmy Hitler Jr.
He actually was the only American broadcaster in Russian history and he is not a supportive of Putin. But that escapes rrb's mind.
In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that any foreign intervention in Ukraine would provoke what he called a “lightning fast” response from Moscow, while his Foreign Ministry warned NATO not to test its patience.
Hey alky, can we get some perspective on this from Thomm Hartmann, seeing as he was Putin's piss-boy for so many years?
Thanks in advance, alky.
LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGfXiIXTpE0
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-biden-covid-health-europe-5f34f79c02af565591d3692ad21547db
Well would you look at THAT:
BREAKING: In the case of US v. Keith Raniere, three forensic experts, including a former FBI Special Agent of 20 years, have filed affidavits affirming that the FBI tampered and planted the child porn evidence presented at trial, in motion to stay appeal.
https://twitter.com/nickiclyne/status/1519830860819836928
This case was local and Raniere is a world class piece of shit, but watch him get off on a technicality because the FBI is the most corrupt law enforcement agency of all time.
Maybe some yellow bellied R in congress should speak out to the value of a united europe and Nato instead of piss ass stupid comments from a worthless ag school drop out and divorcee!!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON (AP) — The worst possible moment for bringing Trevor Reed home turned out to be the best.
With U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point in decades, it seemed an improbable time to hope for the release of Reed, a former Marine detained in Russia for almost three years. Yet this week the Biden administration completed the type of transaction it had earlier seemed resistant to, exchanging Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut.
A series of events and considerations in the last two months helped facilitate the swap, including escalating concerns over Reed’s health, a private Oval Office meeting between his parents and President Joe Biden and a secretive Moscow trip by a former diplomat on the cusp of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
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“All those three forced the White House to make a decision that they hadn’t made before,” said Mickey Bergman, vice president at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
Live updates | Germany slams Russian missile strike on Kyiv
New gas pipeline boosts Europe's bid to ease Russian supply
Biden seeks $33B for Ukraine, signaling long-term commitment
EXPLAINER: Why US needs a law to sell off oligarchs' assets
How the war — and the breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations — affected the deal isn’t clear. U.S. officials stressed that the negotiations for Reed’s release were narrow in scope, focused squarely on the prisoners and not on Russia’s war and not reflective of any broader diplomatic engagement. But while the timing of the deal was startling, it’s also clear that the groundwork for it had been laid before the conflict had begun.
“I did it,” Biden told reporters Wednesday about the deal. “I raised it. I raised it three months ago.”
Just as the war was about to commence, Bergman and his colleague, Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ex-New Mexico governor, flew to Moscow on the plane of FedEx chief executive Fred Smith for a meeting with Russian government officials. It was a continuation of negotiations they’d been having for the release of Reed and another jailed American, corporate security executive Paul Whelan.
They left with the contours in place for the one-for-one swap that ultimately took place.
In Texas, Joey and Paula Reed were worrying that Russia’s war with Ukraine, and resulting tensions with the U.S., could close off communication channels and prevent any common ground for negotiations. During meetings with administration officials in the last year — including with the Justice Department, which prosecuted Yaroshenko — the couple expressed support for a swap but say they weren’t led to think that was a viable option.
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“They didn’t say: ‘Oh, we agree with you, that’s a great deal. That’s a good point,’” Paula Reed said in a February interview with The Associated Press. “They didn’t say anything like that. They just said: ‘We hear you. Thank you very much.’”
But weeks into the war, the couple did something that got the White House’s attention.
Racist, alky?
You mean like beating a Black woman silly every fucking day to the point where she had to get law enforcement involved resulting in a restraining order, or referring to Blacks as NEGROES on your Twitter feed?
THAT kind of racist, alky???
Your projection never sleeps alky.
This case was local and Raniere is a world class piece of shit, but watch him get off on a technicality because the FBI is the most corrupt law enforcement agency of all time.
Only Trump and his GOP supporters can beat the FBI in being dishonest and willing to give up democracy for white power!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Too bad red states are not as open about crap like this......white power is in the open and will drive the GOP to whatever means to achieve supremacy!!!!
Opinion New York’s courts stood up to gerrymandering. Congress should, too
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By Henry Olsen
Columnist
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Yesterday at 3:05 p.m. EDT
Demonstrators protest against gerrymandering at a rally at the Supreme Court in 2019. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
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Wednesday’s decision by the New York State Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s congressional and state Senate maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders is great news for Republicans. It should also spur members of both parties to finally outlaw this scourge upon democracy.
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No serious person can deny that the state’s proposed map was a skillful partisan gerrymander. It ruthlessly eliminated one Republican-held seat and redrew three other GOP strongholds such that, had they been in place during the 2020 election, President Biden would have carried them by at least 9.5 points. State Democrats did so with aplomb, crossing mountain ranges, rivers and even the Long Island Sound to advance their cause.
As a one-time redistricter, I appreciated the effort as an artist would applaud a masterpiece. As a Republican and advocate for fair redistricting, it sent shudders down my spine.
The plan’s audacity surely helped its demise. All seven of the justices on the New York court were appointed by Democrats, yet five joined a majority opinion to strike down the plan. (One justice dissented in part because he believed the procedural flaws accompanying the map’s adoption were sufficient to render it unconstitutional, making a substantive finding as to the plan’s partisan effects unnecessary.) My one foray into redistricting 40 years ago ended when a 6-to-1 Democratic majority on the California Supreme Court threw out a plan I drew on a — wait for it — 6-to-1 vote. Losing five members of your own party’s judicial appointees is practically unheard of.
Why gerry mandering works....water down the population that you don't need to support nut jobs......LOLOLOLOL
Maya King
By Maya King
April 29, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — Less than a 30-minute drive from Atlanta, Powder Springs embodies the changes reshaping Georgia politics. Shops and restaurants owned almost entirely by Black proprietors line its downtown center and are frequented by a growing population of young and racially diverse residents. The suburban city elected its first Black mayor in 2015, and the county where it sits, the former Republican stronghold of Cobb, voted for President Biden by 14 percentage points in 2020.
There is one other big change: Powder Springs, a majority Black city, may soon be represented in Congress by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
That development, the result of new district maps drawn by Georgia state legislators, was part of a Republican drive to blunt Democrats’ power. But for residents, the prospect of Powder Springs and another predominantly Black suburb, Austell, being represented by perhaps the most far-right Republican in Congress is raising questions that go beyond partisan politics. Some say they have little trust that Ms. Greene will pay them the same attention and respect that she gives to her white, Republican constituents and fear their voice in Congress won’t speak for them.
“It’s about having someone that’s going to take your phone calls, who’s going to work on your behalf, who’s going to care what happens to your children, who is going to care about making sure you get to your job,” said State Representative David Wilkerson, a Black Democrat who lives in and represents the communities now drawn into Ms. Greene’s congressional district. “That’s what people are looking for.”
The newly drawn 14th Congressional District is a result of a tactic called “cracking,” the practice of breaking up blocs of voters and scattering them across multiple districts to dilute their voting power. It is common and legal under federal law, unless found by a court to be deliberately used to prevent voters of the same race from electing a representative of their choice.
Ms. Greene, who is best known as a bomb-thrower on social media, has said little about how she would represent the communities new to her district if she wins re-election in November. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Alky will be wrong today, can't wait to see on what.
And the goat fucker will again prove why the GOP is doomed to mediocrity and white power!!!!!!!!!
How cute, Dopie sucks Alkys nut sac.
Really, doomed Economy .
😂Got GDP🤣
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!! The goat fucking idiot again posts his inane gibberish and own brand of stupidity!!!!!!!!!!! BTW.....the #1 trump endorsed senate candidate Walker is nothing but a Token lying asshole who NEVER Graduated from his free UGA education!!!!!!!!! Warnock in his brief tenure has been shown to be a thoughtful, caring and smart representative, something sorely lacking from the Trump party!!!!!! Walker on the other hand thinks evolution is junk science and trump won!!!!!!!
Not one Socialist here is telling us any more about "The Great BIDEN Economy"
Got GDP ?
Lol
Bidenomics flashes Stagflation
"Pending home sales index March- down 1.2%"
Not one single republican has criticized Putin for his invasion and atrocities.....while many R's would vote for putin over biden in an election.....a sad commentary on the GOP of trump!!!!
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