No better than China,Russia,North Korea, Myanmar, Syria ?
What a crock !
TrumpReich in action
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jserraglio
- Posts: 11942
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 7:06 am
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Re: TrumpReich in action
That was in the 19th century. We're much worse now!jserraglio wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 3:06 pmA bit of cockney & bull, to be sure; but worse than Australia? Oh, don’t mention that dreadful vulgar place. —Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
Re: TrumpReich in action
GOP's continuing assault on LBGTQ's, being a little more subtle than was the 3rd Reich:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/arkansas-bec ... 45950.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/arkansas-bec ... 45950.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Interestingly, I could not find any defined penalties for doctors and/or providers that might ignore this rather short (10 page) bill. Besides granting recipients of such treatments the right to bring an action against their providers, all I could find as remedies was in this text at the very end:Rach3 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:26 amGOP's continuing assault on LBGTQ's, being a little more subtle than was the 3rd Reich:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/arkansas-bec ... 45950.html
(d) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an action under this
7 subchapter may be commenced, and relief may be granted, in a judicial
8 proceeding without regard to whether the person commencing the action has
9 sought or exhausted available administrative remedies.
10 (e) In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of this
11 subchapter, a prevailing party who establishes a violation of this subchapter
12 shall recover reasonable attorneys’ fees.
13 (f)(1) The Attorney General may bring an action to enforce compliance14 with this subchapter.
IOW, there are no jail terms or fines, let alone suspension or revoking of any medical licenses specified for violators of the provisions in this new law. That vagueness is, to me, bizarre.
I hope that, as with the various voter-repression laws now being rolled out, someone, like the AMA, brings a lawsuit to stop the implementation of this nonsense. The bill totally contradicts established medical findings and procedures for this vulnerable population.
Re: TrumpReich in action
It appears the Arkansas legislature , like most persons up to no good, tries to obscure the Act's effect a bit. As I read the Act :
Violation of the Act is per se "unprofessional conduct " subject to "discipline" by the State licensing authority.Therefore, a doctor is at risk, no doubt considerable risk, his license will be revoked. 20-9-1504 (a), 27-31.
Not only will the doctor have his own considerable legal expense in defending against any action brought against him by the State or a private party, but the doctor will also have to reimburse the complaining party for their legal expenses, the latter usually not the case in most civil actions. A person, a minor at the time of a procedure, who has a change of mind later, can bring action against a doctor for up to 20 years after obtaining their majority, a much longer period than usual. 20-9-1504(c)(2) and (e), 10-12.
Finally,the Act appears to authorize the State to also bring an action not only under the Act, but also "under any law other than" the Act , which might include Arkansas criminal law, eg.criminal assault or fraud.20-9-1504(f)(2) , 15-18.
Re: TrumpReich in action
OUCH! 
Got it, thanks. You are indeed the "legal eagle" here, and I appreciate the clarification.
Somebody's going to sue to block this cr@p!
Got it, thanks. You are indeed the "legal eagle" here, and I appreciate the clarification.
Somebody's going to sue to block this cr@p!
Re: TrumpReich in action
What, Me Worry ?!
Experts are concerned about a 10% increase ; Iowa GOP Governor Reynolds not concerned about an 18 % increase.
Any “path” that is "leading" to ANY more Iowa deaths should be a “concerning path” , but obviously not to failure, dangerous, alt.right hack Reynolds.
Per Des Moines Register newsletter today :
"On Tuesday, IDPH data showed Iowa's seven-day rate of positive coronavirus tests was up 500 people compared to a week ago, an 18% increase after a steady decline in cases since the winter.
"While we have monitored a slight uptick in positivity rate, we've not seen evidence to suggest it's leading down a concerning path," Gov. Kim Reynolds said during her weekly news conference on Wednesday.
Nationally, experts have expressed concern about the number of new cases creeping up across the nation. Average daily cases are up 10% compared to a week earlier."
Florida's cretin DeSantis announces today vaccine "passports" will be illegal in Florida.Just another reason never to set foot in Florida , apart from Florida being ridiculously over-priced in Winter, insufferably hot and humid in Summer, a top hurricane target in Fall, and always over-crowded.
Experts are concerned about a 10% increase ; Iowa GOP Governor Reynolds not concerned about an 18 % increase.
Any “path” that is "leading" to ANY more Iowa deaths should be a “concerning path” , but obviously not to failure, dangerous, alt.right hack Reynolds.
Per Des Moines Register newsletter today :
"On Tuesday, IDPH data showed Iowa's seven-day rate of positive coronavirus tests was up 500 people compared to a week ago, an 18% increase after a steady decline in cases since the winter.
"While we have monitored a slight uptick in positivity rate, we've not seen evidence to suggest it's leading down a concerning path," Gov. Kim Reynolds said during her weekly news conference on Wednesday.
Nationally, experts have expressed concern about the number of new cases creeping up across the nation. Average daily cases are up 10% compared to a week earlier."
Florida's cretin DeSantis announces today vaccine "passports" will be illegal in Florida.Just another reason never to set foot in Florida , apart from Florida being ridiculously over-priced in Winter, insufferably hot and humid in Summer, a top hurricane target in Fall, and always over-crowded.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Not to mention that there's really nothing much to do there except grow old and die.Rach3 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 5:21 pmWhat, Me Worry ?!
Experts are concerned about a 10% increase ; Iowa GOP Governor Reynolds not concerned about an 18 % increase.
Any “path” that is "leading" to ANY more Iowa deaths should be a “concerning path” , but obviously not to failure, dangerous, alt.right hack Reynolds.
Per Des Moines Register newsletter today :
"On Tuesday, IDPH data showed Iowa's seven-day rate of positive coronavirus tests was up 500 people compared to a week ago, an 18% increase after a steady decline in cases since the winter.
"While we have monitored a slight uptick in positivity rate, we've not seen evidence to suggest it's leading down a concerning path," Gov. Kim Reynolds said during her weekly news conference on Wednesday.
Nationally, experts have expressed concern about the number of new cases creeping up across the nation. Average daily cases are up 10% compared to a week earlier."
Florida's cretin DeSantis announces today vaccine "passports" will be illegal in Florida. Just another reason never to set foot in Florida , apart from Florida being ridiculously over-priced in Winter, insufferably hot and humid in Summer, a top hurricane target in Fall, and always over-crowded.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Who attacked the Capitol Jan. 6 ?
By Alan Feuer NYT
April 6, 2021
Updated 11:35 a.m. ET
When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.
But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.
If Mr. Pape’s initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”
“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Mr. Pape said. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”
One fact stood out in Mr. Pape’s study, conducted with the help of researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago. Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location.
Law enforcement officials have said 800 to 1,000 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, and prosecutors have spent the past three months tracking down many of them in what they have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. In recent court filings, the government has hinted that more than 400 people may ultimately face charges, including illegal entry, assault of police officers and the obstruction of the official business of Congress.
In his study, Mr. Pape determined that only about 10 percent of those charged were members of established far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers militia or the nationalist extremist group the Proud Boys. But unlike other analysts who have made similar findings, Mr. Pape has argued that the remaining 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are part of a still congealing mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put “violence at its core.”
Other mass movements have emerged, he said, in response to large-scale cultural change. In the 1840s and ’50s, for example, the Know Nothing Party, a group of nativist Protestants, was formed in response to huge waves of largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. After World War I, he added, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival prompted in part by the arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the so-called Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North.
In an effort to determine why the mob that formed on Jan. 6 turned violent, Mr. Pape compared events that day with two previous pro-Trump rallies in Washington, on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. While police records show some indications of street fighting after the first two gatherings, Mr. Pape said, the number of arrests were fewer and the charges less serious than on Jan. 6. The records also show that those arrested in November and December largely lived within an hour of Washington while most of those arrested in January came from considerably farther away.
The difference at the rallies was former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pape said. Mr. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 rally in advance, saying it would be “wild” and driving up attendance, Mr. Pape said. He then encouraged the mob to march on the Capitol in an effort to “show strength.”
Mr. Pape said he worried that a similar mob could be summoned again by a leader like Mr. Trump. After all, he suggested, as the country continues moving toward becoming a majority-minority nation and right-wing media outlets continue to stoke fear about the Great Replacement, the racial and cultural anxieties that lay beneath the riot at the Capitol are not going away.
“If all of this is really rooted in the politics of social change, then we have to realize that it’s not going to be solved — or solved alone — by law enforcement agencies,” Mr. Pape said. “This is political violence, not just ordinary criminal violence, and it is going to require both additional information and a strategic approach.”
Mr. Pape, whose career had mostly been focused on international terrorism, used that approach after the Sept. 11 attacks when he created a database of suicide bombers from around the world. His research led to a remarkable discovery: Most of the bombers were secular, not religious, and had killed themselves not out of zealotry, but rather in response to military occupations.
American officials eventually used the findings to persuade some Sunnis in Iraq to break with their religious allies and join the United States in a nationalist movement known as the Anbar Awakening.
Recalling his early work with suicide bombers, Mr. Pape suggested that the country’s understanding of what happened on Jan. 6 was only starting to take shape, much like its understanding of international terrorism slowly grew after Sept. 11.
“We really still are at the beginning stages,” he said.
Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/p ... e=Homepage
By Alan Feuer NYT
April 6, 2021
Updated 11:35 a.m. ET
When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.
But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.
If Mr. Pape’s initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”
“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Mr. Pape said. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”
One fact stood out in Mr. Pape’s study, conducted with the help of researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago. Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location.
Law enforcement officials have said 800 to 1,000 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, and prosecutors have spent the past three months tracking down many of them in what they have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. In recent court filings, the government has hinted that more than 400 people may ultimately face charges, including illegal entry, assault of police officers and the obstruction of the official business of Congress.
In his study, Mr. Pape determined that only about 10 percent of those charged were members of established far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers militia or the nationalist extremist group the Proud Boys. But unlike other analysts who have made similar findings, Mr. Pape has argued that the remaining 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are part of a still congealing mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put “violence at its core.”
Other mass movements have emerged, he said, in response to large-scale cultural change. In the 1840s and ’50s, for example, the Know Nothing Party, a group of nativist Protestants, was formed in response to huge waves of largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. After World War I, he added, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival prompted in part by the arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the so-called Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North.
In an effort to determine why the mob that formed on Jan. 6 turned violent, Mr. Pape compared events that day with two previous pro-Trump rallies in Washington, on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. While police records show some indications of street fighting after the first two gatherings, Mr. Pape said, the number of arrests were fewer and the charges less serious than on Jan. 6. The records also show that those arrested in November and December largely lived within an hour of Washington while most of those arrested in January came from considerably farther away.
The difference at the rallies was former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pape said. Mr. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 rally in advance, saying it would be “wild” and driving up attendance, Mr. Pape said. He then encouraged the mob to march on the Capitol in an effort to “show strength.”
Mr. Pape said he worried that a similar mob could be summoned again by a leader like Mr. Trump. After all, he suggested, as the country continues moving toward becoming a majority-minority nation and right-wing media outlets continue to stoke fear about the Great Replacement, the racial and cultural anxieties that lay beneath the riot at the Capitol are not going away.
“If all of this is really rooted in the politics of social change, then we have to realize that it’s not going to be solved — or solved alone — by law enforcement agencies,” Mr. Pape said. “This is political violence, not just ordinary criminal violence, and it is going to require both additional information and a strategic approach.”
Mr. Pape, whose career had mostly been focused on international terrorism, used that approach after the Sept. 11 attacks when he created a database of suicide bombers from around the world. His research led to a remarkable discovery: Most of the bombers were secular, not religious, and had killed themselves not out of zealotry, but rather in response to military occupations.
American officials eventually used the findings to persuade some Sunnis in Iraq to break with their religious allies and join the United States in a nationalist movement known as the Anbar Awakening.
Recalling his early work with suicide bombers, Mr. Pape suggested that the country’s understanding of what happened on Jan. 6 was only starting to take shape, much like its understanding of international terrorism slowly grew after Sept. 11.
“We really still are at the beginning stages,” he said.
Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/p ... e=Homepage
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jserraglio
- Posts: 11942
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 7:06 am
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Re: TrumpReich in action
Absolutely. You could tell that just from looking at their dress and pricey equipment. It’s a myth fondly adhered to by Trumpologues that the Maganderthals come from the working class. Not so, Deplorables on average make over $70k/yr.“You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites . . .”
Re: TrumpReich in action
Beat me to it, Rach3! I was just about to post this! 
This is just the beginning of the unraveling of the mythology about January 6, 2021 that is being promulgated by the rabid Right.
More to follow.....
Never forget.
This is just the beginning of the unraveling of the mythology about January 6, 2021 that is being promulgated by the rabid Right.
More to follow.....
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
And thus ideal targets for Trump’s automatic fund raising crimes just uncovered.jserraglio wrote: ↑Tue Apr 06, 2021 11:42 amAbsolutely. You could tell that just from looking at their dress and pricey equipment. It’s a myth fondly adhered to by Trumpologues that the Maganderthals come from the working class. Not so, Deplorables on average make over $70k/yr.“You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites . . .”
Re: TrumpReich in action
Thatfund-raising is unbelievable. It's clearly fraud. Are there going to be repercussions, or will Trump just ride it out like everything else, backed by his cult fantasists?
Re: TrumpReich in action
I'd be willing to bet that the Justice Dept. is looking into that issue right now, especially after the media reporting that's happening here. I'm also quite sure that those who were ripped off are having strong doubts about contributing again to a Trump 2024 campaign. Stay tuned.....
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
April 7, 2021 NYT :
"The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”
And call the Proud Boys on you ?
"The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”
And call the Proud Boys on you ?
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jserraglio
- Posts: 11942
- Joined: Sun May 29, 2005 7:06 am
- Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Re: TrumpReich in action
Come on now, their threat was clearly uttered with tongue-un-check.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Republicans are still trying to bully their way into power. I have a feeling that this tactic really won't work this time around.Rach3 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:48 amApril 7, 2021 NYT :
"The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”
And call the Proud Boys on you ?
Troglodytes have a true learning disability, don't they?
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Suicidal. Gives a new definition to the phrase "flash mob."
Do you think any of them were also carrying AK-47's?
Re: TrumpReich in action
--Ramsey Clark“A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain: You cannot have either until you have both.”
“A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.”
No matter what Republicans do, these two truths remain.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The criminal GOP and Trump morons will kill us through lies and stupidity as well.From WAPO today:
" ... some U.S. politicians have begun to boast that their communities are nearing herd immunity. This weekend, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told the hosts of “Fox News Sunday" that it is a "whole lot more difficult" for the virus to spread to people in that state. Vaccination data show otherwise. Scientists do not have a firm threshold for when herd immunity will be reached – but infectious-disease specialists were confident that Texas, where 19 percent of people are fully vaccinated, isn't there yet.
Achieving herd immunity will require widespread vaccination. But as many as 1 in 4 Americans say they will not get the vaccine, a recent poll found. Of those people who don't plan on getting shots, half trust the advice of President Donald Trump either somewhat or a lot. Trust in President Biden or Anthony S. Fauci, the country's top infectious-disease doctor, was in the teen percentages."
Re: TrumpReich in action
GOP Trump suck-up Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds surprisingly proposed an anti-racial profiling ban this year that would have required law enforcement agencies to report race and ethnicity data on the people they stop, but it died in the GOP controlled Legislature. AxiosDesMoines 4/14
Re: TrumpReich in action
Republicans in two rural Georgia counties censure Gov. Brian Kemp and others
The actions were driven by anger over the governor’s refusal to overturn the state’s 2020 results in favor of Trump.
By Lisa Lerer
Published April 13, 2021
Updated April 14, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ET
Republican Party officials in two deeply conservative counties voted to censure Gov. Brian Kemp and two other top party leaders in recent days, a sign that the Georgia governor continues to face grass-roots opposition from loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, and the possibility of a primary challenge next year.
In Whitfield county, in the northwest corner of the state, Republican officials unanimously voted to condemn Mr. Kemp, saying he “did nothing” to help Mr. Trump after the November election.
“Because of Kemp’s betrayal of President Trump and his high unpopularity with the Trump GOP base, Kemp could end up costing the GOP the governor’s mansion because many Trump supporters have pledged not to vote for Kemp under any circumstances,” reads the resolution, which was adopted by acclimation.
A similar resolution was adopted in Murray County, also in northern Georgia, by a nearly unanimous vote. It was opposed by only three of the dozens of members in attendance. Both counties also voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The resolutions hold no binding power over elected officials. Rather, party officials say their resolutions were intended to send a message to Mr. Kemp and other Republican lawmakers that their jobs may be in jeopardy.
“I’d vote for Mickey Mouse before I would Kemp,” said Tony Abernathy, chairman of the Murray County Republican Party. “I know what I’ve got with Mickey Mouse. A RINO is useless.” RINO is the dismissive acronym for Republican in Name Only.
After infuriating Mr. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp has faced months of attacks, protests and opposition from his party’s base. Conservatives like Mr. Abernathy were particularly frustrated by Mr. Kemp’s refusal to call an election-focused special session of the state House to further probe the results. Mr. Trump has encouraged Republicans to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose Mr. Kemp in the primary next year.
Mr. Kemp and his aides saw a path to redemption within the party in the controversial election bill that the legislature passed last month, which the governor has forcefully defended in dozens of public appearances even as the new law adds new limits to the right to vote in Georgia.
Other resolutions adopted by the counties supported a bill passed in the Republican-controlled Statehouse stripping Delta of a $35 million jet fuel tax break and urged Georgians to boycott Major League Baseball and “woke companies” that criticized the election law.
“The Republican grass roots are angry,” said Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist, who helped distribute drafts of the resolutions and encouraged Trump supporters to attend the local meetings. “These resolutions will let Gov. Kemp, Lt. Gov. Duncan and Secretary of State Raffensperger know we’re going to work against them in the Republican primary next year.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political correspondent, covering campaigns, elections and political power.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/p ... l-surfaces
The actions were driven by anger over the governor’s refusal to overturn the state’s 2020 results in favor of Trump.
By Lisa Lerer
Published April 13, 2021
Updated April 14, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ET
Republican Party officials in two deeply conservative counties voted to censure Gov. Brian Kemp and two other top party leaders in recent days, a sign that the Georgia governor continues to face grass-roots opposition from loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, and the possibility of a primary challenge next year.
In Whitfield county, in the northwest corner of the state, Republican officials unanimously voted to condemn Mr. Kemp, saying he “did nothing” to help Mr. Trump after the November election.
“Because of Kemp’s betrayal of President Trump and his high unpopularity with the Trump GOP base, Kemp could end up costing the GOP the governor’s mansion because many Trump supporters have pledged not to vote for Kemp under any circumstances,” reads the resolution, which was adopted by acclimation.
A similar resolution was adopted in Murray County, also in northern Georgia, by a nearly unanimous vote. It was opposed by only three of the dozens of members in attendance. Both counties also voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The resolutions hold no binding power over elected officials. Rather, party officials say their resolutions were intended to send a message to Mr. Kemp and other Republican lawmakers that their jobs may be in jeopardy.
“I’d vote for Mickey Mouse before I would Kemp,” said Tony Abernathy, chairman of the Murray County Republican Party. “I know what I’ve got with Mickey Mouse. A RINO is useless.” RINO is the dismissive acronym for Republican in Name Only.
After infuriating Mr. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp has faced months of attacks, protests and opposition from his party’s base. Conservatives like Mr. Abernathy were particularly frustrated by Mr. Kemp’s refusal to call an election-focused special session of the state House to further probe the results. Mr. Trump has encouraged Republicans to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose Mr. Kemp in the primary next year.
Mr. Kemp and his aides saw a path to redemption within the party in the controversial election bill that the legislature passed last month, which the governor has forcefully defended in dozens of public appearances even as the new law adds new limits to the right to vote in Georgia.
Other resolutions adopted by the counties supported a bill passed in the Republican-controlled Statehouse stripping Delta of a $35 million jet fuel tax break and urged Georgians to boycott Major League Baseball and “woke companies” that criticized the election law.
“The Republican grass roots are angry,” said Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist, who helped distribute drafts of the resolutions and encouraged Trump supporters to attend the local meetings. “These resolutions will let Gov. Kemp, Lt. Gov. Duncan and Secretary of State Raffensperger know we’re going to work against them in the Republican primary next year.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political correspondent, covering campaigns, elections and political power.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/p ... l-surfaces
Re: TrumpReich in action
Where is General Sherman when we need him ?!
Re: TrumpReich in action
From a longer WAPO article:
"Among journalists who say they have been harassed following segments on Carlson’s show, there is a reluctance to speak publicly about what happened for fear of inciting a new round of negative attention and hostility. One female journalist expressed fear of a “Tucker wave” of harassment if she were to be featured in this story."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/20 ... s-threats/
From a longer WAPO article:
"A Nebraska corrections official resigned in protest this week after his superiors tried to block a recently admitted inmate from getting an abortion, highlighting tensions over health-care access for female prisoners at a time when women represent the fastest-growing part of the incarcerated population.
Hayden Thomas, who served as disability coordinator at the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, wrote in a scathing resignation letter to the director Monday that it was unlawful and immoral for the department to deny the woman’s request for an abortion.
“Your ill-thought decision has violated the special trust that the public has placed in our organization and has brought shame to the very notion of public service,” Thomas wrote in the letter, which was shared with The Washington Post and first reported by the Omaha World-Herald. “I can no longer in good faith or [conscience] remain a member of this organization,” Thomas added, “as it is evident that our values, ethics and commitment to both the Constitution and the rule of law are different and presently irreconcilable.”
Shortly after Thomas resigned, a federal judge issued an emergency order requiring corrections officials to transport the inmate to a nearby Planned Parenthood for the abortion. The woman’s attorneys told The Post on Wednesday that she had “received the abortion care she was previously denied.”
A representative from the department of corrections didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... -abortion/
As the virus surges in Michigan, from a longer article at CNN:
"And now the same governor -- Whitmer -- is faced with a (virus) crisis similar to the one from last spring when, despite the threats, she stood her ground.
This time, she has blinked. She is not demanding a return to the unpopular but effective Covid-19 restrictions, a decision questioned by the head of the CDC.
But perhaps her experience with the last Michigan lockdown, which included not only the storming of the capitol building, but threats on her life and that of her family, is weakening her resolve. Given the intensity of those threats, I can understand her hesitancy. What I cannot understand is why Trump didn't use his influence among his base to make abundantly clear that planned or executed violence, including kidnapping, is not permissible. A clear and consistent message condemning threats to the governor could have made all the difference.
Perhaps what sets Michigan apart cannot be fully explained by the B.1.1.7 viral variant or reopening schools or not getting vaccines yet to younger people. Rather, perhaps this is another consequence of the unthinkable threats to the governor. She has become more tentative about doing the necessary thing and locking down her state, knowing the personal risk it might invite. The Lansing rioters of last spring may have set out to liberate Michigan but in their blind rage may have succeeded only in encumbering it with the dizzying danger of a runaway pandemic."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/opinions ... index.html
"Among journalists who say they have been harassed following segments on Carlson’s show, there is a reluctance to speak publicly about what happened for fear of inciting a new round of negative attention and hostility. One female journalist expressed fear of a “Tucker wave” of harassment if she were to be featured in this story."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/20 ... s-threats/
From a longer WAPO article:
"A Nebraska corrections official resigned in protest this week after his superiors tried to block a recently admitted inmate from getting an abortion, highlighting tensions over health-care access for female prisoners at a time when women represent the fastest-growing part of the incarcerated population.
Hayden Thomas, who served as disability coordinator at the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, wrote in a scathing resignation letter to the director Monday that it was unlawful and immoral for the department to deny the woman’s request for an abortion.
“Your ill-thought decision has violated the special trust that the public has placed in our organization and has brought shame to the very notion of public service,” Thomas wrote in the letter, which was shared with The Washington Post and first reported by the Omaha World-Herald. “I can no longer in good faith or [conscience] remain a member of this organization,” Thomas added, “as it is evident that our values, ethics and commitment to both the Constitution and the rule of law are different and presently irreconcilable.”
Shortly after Thomas resigned, a federal judge issued an emergency order requiring corrections officials to transport the inmate to a nearby Planned Parenthood for the abortion. The woman’s attorneys told The Post on Wednesday that she had “received the abortion care she was previously denied.”
A representative from the department of corrections didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... -abortion/
As the virus surges in Michigan, from a longer article at CNN:
"And now the same governor -- Whitmer -- is faced with a (virus) crisis similar to the one from last spring when, despite the threats, she stood her ground.
This time, she has blinked. She is not demanding a return to the unpopular but effective Covid-19 restrictions, a decision questioned by the head of the CDC.
But perhaps her experience with the last Michigan lockdown, which included not only the storming of the capitol building, but threats on her life and that of her family, is weakening her resolve. Given the intensity of those threats, I can understand her hesitancy. What I cannot understand is why Trump didn't use his influence among his base to make abundantly clear that planned or executed violence, including kidnapping, is not permissible. A clear and consistent message condemning threats to the governor could have made all the difference.
Perhaps what sets Michigan apart cannot be fully explained by the B.1.1.7 viral variant or reopening schools or not getting vaccines yet to younger people. Rather, perhaps this is another consequence of the unthinkable threats to the governor. She has become more tentative about doing the necessary thing and locking down her state, knowing the personal risk it might invite. The Lansing rioters of last spring may have set out to liberate Michigan but in their blind rage may have succeeded only in encumbering it with the dizzying danger of a runaway pandemic."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/opinions ... index.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Latest from the racist Iowa GOP, per Cedar Rapids Gazette op ed.Original bad bill I reported earlier now made even worse:
"This is part of a concerted, nationwide effort to crack down on protests and to strip law enforcement and local government of any discretion to respond to them.
The House bill subjects protesters, and perhaps others perceived as protesters, to severe harm and penalties:
• If protesters block traffic and do not have a permit, a driver who plows into them and hurts or kills someone would be immune from civil liability in most circumstances, even if the driver was negligent or grossly negligent. Whether or not we agree with everything protesters do, they do not deserve to be injured or die.
• The penalty for engaging in a “riot” is increased from an aggravated misdemeanor to a class “D” felony, which could result in up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights. The penalty for engaging in an “unlawful assembly” is increased from a simple misdemeanor to an aggravated misdemeanor, which could result in two years in prison. These severe penalties might be appropriate for activities resulting in serious harm, but the definitions of “riot” and “unlawful assembly” are broad and vague enough to include situations where little or no harm occurs.
• It would be a serious misdemeanor to obstruct any street, sidewalk, highway, or other public way with the intent to prevent or hinder its lawful use by others.
• It would be a serious misdemeanor not to stop for an “unmarked” law enforcement vehicle driven by a plainclothes law enforcement officer. Those in the BIPOC community, women, and others driving at night would have to pull over for anyone with red or red/blue flashing lights, no matter how unsafe it may be. The penalty for failing to do so could be up to a year in jail.
In addition to imposing severe punishments for a wide range of conduct, the House bill also strips away local discretion by preventing law enforcement or local government from deciding, based on circumstances, not to enforce a provision of state, local or municipal law. A local government found in violation would be denied state funds for the following fiscal year. In other words, the bill effectively defunds both law enforcement and municipal operations for exercising discretion they have always had.
It is impossible to enforce every single law all the time. Given limited budget and personnel resources, local discretion to determine enforcement priorities is critical to keeping both the public and law enforcement officers safe. Tying the hands of law enforcement — giving them no choice but to enforce — is a recipe for increased tensions and conflict. "
Bill also cuts ALL State aid to cities if they " defund " the police budget to any degree.
"This is part of a concerted, nationwide effort to crack down on protests and to strip law enforcement and local government of any discretion to respond to them.
The House bill subjects protesters, and perhaps others perceived as protesters, to severe harm and penalties:
• If protesters block traffic and do not have a permit, a driver who plows into them and hurts or kills someone would be immune from civil liability in most circumstances, even if the driver was negligent or grossly negligent. Whether or not we agree with everything protesters do, they do not deserve to be injured or die.
• The penalty for engaging in a “riot” is increased from an aggravated misdemeanor to a class “D” felony, which could result in up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights. The penalty for engaging in an “unlawful assembly” is increased from a simple misdemeanor to an aggravated misdemeanor, which could result in two years in prison. These severe penalties might be appropriate for activities resulting in serious harm, but the definitions of “riot” and “unlawful assembly” are broad and vague enough to include situations where little or no harm occurs.
• It would be a serious misdemeanor to obstruct any street, sidewalk, highway, or other public way with the intent to prevent or hinder its lawful use by others.
• It would be a serious misdemeanor not to stop for an “unmarked” law enforcement vehicle driven by a plainclothes law enforcement officer. Those in the BIPOC community, women, and others driving at night would have to pull over for anyone with red or red/blue flashing lights, no matter how unsafe it may be. The penalty for failing to do so could be up to a year in jail.
In addition to imposing severe punishments for a wide range of conduct, the House bill also strips away local discretion by preventing law enforcement or local government from deciding, based on circumstances, not to enforce a provision of state, local or municipal law. A local government found in violation would be denied state funds for the following fiscal year. In other words, the bill effectively defunds both law enforcement and municipal operations for exercising discretion they have always had.
It is impossible to enforce every single law all the time. Given limited budget and personnel resources, local discretion to determine enforcement priorities is critical to keeping both the public and law enforcement officers safe. Tying the hands of law enforcement — giving them no choice but to enforce — is a recipe for increased tensions and conflict. "
Bill also cuts ALL State aid to cities if they " defund " the police budget to any degree.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Iowa is beginning to look like a totalitarian state.
I wonder how many provisions in this new legislation resemble what the CCP is using to crack down on protestors in Hong Kong?
Of course all of this should be challenged on Constitutional grounds.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Boebert and Greene vote against National bone marrow donor law :
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-reps-lau ... 23417.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-reps-lau ... 23417.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
"Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is launching a new "America First" caucus, her office confirmed Friday, bringing together a group of far-right lawmakers known for their controversial rhetoric.
Punchbowl News obtained a flier promoting the new caucus, which calls for a " common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions" and pushes a series of conspiracy theories about election integrity. The flier also outlined a nativist argument warning that "mass immigration" poses a threat to "the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/politics ... index.html
Punchbowl News obtained a flier promoting the new caucus, which calls for a " common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions" and pushes a series of conspiracy theories about election integrity. The flier also outlined a nativist argument warning that "mass immigration" poses a threat to "the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/politics ... index.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Rach3 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 8:24 pm"Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is launching a new "America First" caucus, her office confirmed Friday, bringing together a group of far-right lawmakers known for their controversial rhetoric.
Punchbowl News obtained a flier promoting the new caucus, which calls for a " common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions" and pushes a series of conspiracy theories about election integrity. The flier also outlined a nativist argument warning that "mass immigration" poses a threat to "the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a unique identity."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/politics ... index.html
I guess that she and like-minded fellow travelers don't believe in the Statue of Liberty's inscription: "Give me your tired, your poor, your humbled masses yearning to breathe free..."
This thread of exclusionary nativism has always been present in our politics. The "Anglo-Saxon" reference is meant to assure support from Neo-Nazis, I'm sure. Does that mean that, say, Italian immigrants are now, again, to be discriminated against? Poppycock! I expected nothing less from MJT.
America has always prospered from the many waves of immigration that have been a feature of our continued growth and prosperity. Where, exactly, does she think she and her ancestors came from anyway?
A technical note: I don't understand why the CMG software is underlining everything in my Reply this time. I surely didn't do that.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The whole flier, fww, a GOP "Mein Kampf." https://tinyurl.com/4m254f9w
Re: TrumpReich in action
These monsters now claim they had no such plans.
But, GOP House leader McCarthy did not have the guts to call her out by name.Nor did Liz Cheney.
Apparently,NO GOP members or voters own mirrors, or see well even if they do.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/17/politics ... index.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Liz Cheney's tweet was rather compelling, even while the irrepressible Matt Gaetz backed up MJT:
Airing your dirty laundry in public is not a good thing for your party, is it?
I do hope Democrats take advantage of this in the coming mid-terms.
Never forget.
D'ya think Republicans are divided?And GOP conference chair Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, responded to the reporting about the new caucus from Greene in a tweet."Republicans believe in equal opportunity, freedom, and justice for all. We teach our children the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage," she wrote. "Racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism are evil. History teaches we all have an obligation to confront & reject such malicious hate."
Airing your dirty laundry in public is not a good thing for your party, is it?
I do hope Democrats take advantage of this in the coming mid-terms.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
WAPO
April 22, 2021 at 12:14 p.m. CDT
The Supreme Court on Thursday reversed its recent movement toward leniency for minors convicted of serious crimes and instead said judges need not specifically find a juvenile murderer beyond rehabilitation before sentencing him to a lifetime in prison.
Former president Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees were key to the 6-to-3 ruling, which was written by one of them, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
The “argument that the sentencer must make a finding of permanent incorrigibility is inconsistent with the court’s precedents,” Kavanaugh wrote. The court upheld the life-without-parole sentence a Mississippi court imposed on a 15-year-old who stabbed his grandfather to death in a dispute over the boy’s girlfriend.
All that is constitutionally required is for the judge to have discretion and consider the defendant’s youth, Kavanaugh wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor replied in a biting dissent that the decision will mean “far too many juvenile offenders will be sentenced to die in prison.”
Limiting that punishment only to those beyond redemption was the very point of the court’s previous rulings, she wrote, arguing the majority undermined those decisions without acknowledging the change.
“Such an abrupt break from precedent demands ‘special justification,’ ” Sotomayor wrote, taking the words from a Kavanaugh opinion written last term. Because the majority did not provide one, she wrote, “the Court is fooling no one.”
The case could be representative of changes the court’s fortified conservative majority will make now that Trump’s nominees fill seats once held by a moderate and a liberal justice.Kavanaugh in 2018 replaced Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who had played a key role in the rulings on juvenile offenders. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the majority in all of the decisions that granted more leniency, and her spot on the court has been filled by conservative Amy Coney Barrett.In those previous decisions, when it contemplated how the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment applies to juveniles, the court’s movement had been in one direction.
In 2005, the court ended capital punishment for those whose crimes were committed before age 18. In 2010, it barred life without parole in non-homicide crimes.
In 2012, it forbade mandatory life-without-parole sentences even for murder, in Miller v. Alabama. And four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court said those sentenced under the old rules could challenge their permanent imprisonment.
That decision said life without parole should be reserved for “the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”
That meant Brett Jones, the now-31-year-old Mississippian at the center of the case, deserved a new sentencing hearing for the 2004 murder of his grandfather.
But Kavanaugh said it was enough that the state’s allowance of life without parole for a juvenile was discretionary and that the judge took Jones’s youth into consideration.
In Miller, Kavanaugh wrote, "the Court mandated 'only that a sentencer follow a certain process — considering an offender's youth and attendant characteristics — before imposing' a life-without-parole sentence."
And in Montgomery, Kavanaugh wrote, "the Court flatly stated that 'Miller did not impose a formal fact-finding requirement' and added that 'a finding of fact regarding a child's incorrigibility . . . is not required.' "
Kavanaugh downplayed Sotomayor's fiery dissent as reflecting "simply . . . a good-faith disagreement" over "how to interpret relevant precedents."
"The dissent thinks that we are unduly narrowing Miller and Montgomery," Kavanaugh wrote. "And we, by contrast, think that the dissent would unduly broaden those decisions."
Besides Barrett, Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.
Sotomayor was not appeased. She said the majority decision ignores the key holding of the cases — that life without parole should be extremely rare — and violates stare decisis, the court's general rule of upholding precedent.
"The Court simply rewrites Miller and Montgomery to say what the Court now wishes they had said, and then denies that it has done any such thing," wrote Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, who wrote the court's decision in Miller.
"How low this Court's respect for stare decisis has sunk," Sotomayor wrote.
Kavanaugh and Sotomayor also sparred over the consequences of the court's decisions in Miller and Montgomery.
"Miller's discretionary sentencing procedure has resulted in numerous sentences less than life without parole for defendants who otherwise would have received mandatory life-without-parole sentences," Kavanaugh wrote.
He cited a report that said a majority of states have abandoned life-without-parole sentences in concluding that "a discretionary sentencing procedure has indeed helped make life-without-parole sentences for offenders under 18 'relatively rar[e].' "
Moreover, he said, more states are free to get rid of life-without-parole (LWOP) sentences or require the kinds of specific findings of permanent incorrigibility that the dissenters desire.
Sotomayor responded that since the court required new sentencings for juveniles, "more than a quarter of Mississippi's resentencings have resulted in the reimposition of LWOP," while the rate was an "astonishing" 57 percent in Louisiana.
Additionally, she said: "The harm from these sentences will not fall equally. The racial disparities in juvenile LWOP sentencing are stark: 70 percent of all youths sentenced to LWOP are children of color."
Sotomayor also sketched out Jones's life story: His father abused his mother, and then his violent stepfather told Jones he would kick his mother and brother out of the house if he did not leave. His grandparents picked up the then-14-year-old just two months before the murder and brought him to Mississippi, where he lost access to the drugs he took for mental health issues.
His grandmother testified on his behalf at his resentencing.
Kavanaugh acknowledged that Jones "articulates several moral and policy arguments for why he should not be forced to spend the rest of his life in prison."
He added, "Our decision allows Jones to present those arguments to the state officials authorized to act on them, such as the state legislature, state courts, or Governor."
Sotomayor: “ Having deprived Jones of his constitutional right, the Court gestures at a potential lifeline from other institutions, including the Mississippi Legislature or Governor… But “the remote possibility” of such action “does not mitigate the harshness of the sentence” that Jones now faces … The Eighth Amendment guarantees juvenile offenders like Jones a basic constitutional protection against dis- proportionate punishments. The Court should not leave the vindication of such important legal rights to others, or to chance.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html
April 22, 2021 at 12:14 p.m. CDT
The Supreme Court on Thursday reversed its recent movement toward leniency for minors convicted of serious crimes and instead said judges need not specifically find a juvenile murderer beyond rehabilitation before sentencing him to a lifetime in prison.
Former president Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees were key to the 6-to-3 ruling, which was written by one of them, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
The “argument that the sentencer must make a finding of permanent incorrigibility is inconsistent with the court’s precedents,” Kavanaugh wrote. The court upheld the life-without-parole sentence a Mississippi court imposed on a 15-year-old who stabbed his grandfather to death in a dispute over the boy’s girlfriend.
All that is constitutionally required is for the judge to have discretion and consider the defendant’s youth, Kavanaugh wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor replied in a biting dissent that the decision will mean “far too many juvenile offenders will be sentenced to die in prison.”
Limiting that punishment only to those beyond redemption was the very point of the court’s previous rulings, she wrote, arguing the majority undermined those decisions without acknowledging the change.
“Such an abrupt break from precedent demands ‘special justification,’ ” Sotomayor wrote, taking the words from a Kavanaugh opinion written last term. Because the majority did not provide one, she wrote, “the Court is fooling no one.”
The case could be representative of changes the court’s fortified conservative majority will make now that Trump’s nominees fill seats once held by a moderate and a liberal justice.Kavanaugh in 2018 replaced Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who had played a key role in the rulings on juvenile offenders. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the majority in all of the decisions that granted more leniency, and her spot on the court has been filled by conservative Amy Coney Barrett.In those previous decisions, when it contemplated how the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment applies to juveniles, the court’s movement had been in one direction.
In 2005, the court ended capital punishment for those whose crimes were committed before age 18. In 2010, it barred life without parole in non-homicide crimes.
In 2012, it forbade mandatory life-without-parole sentences even for murder, in Miller v. Alabama. And four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court said those sentenced under the old rules could challenge their permanent imprisonment.
That decision said life without parole should be reserved for “the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”
That meant Brett Jones, the now-31-year-old Mississippian at the center of the case, deserved a new sentencing hearing for the 2004 murder of his grandfather.
But Kavanaugh said it was enough that the state’s allowance of life without parole for a juvenile was discretionary and that the judge took Jones’s youth into consideration.
In Miller, Kavanaugh wrote, "the Court mandated 'only that a sentencer follow a certain process — considering an offender's youth and attendant characteristics — before imposing' a life-without-parole sentence."
And in Montgomery, Kavanaugh wrote, "the Court flatly stated that 'Miller did not impose a formal fact-finding requirement' and added that 'a finding of fact regarding a child's incorrigibility . . . is not required.' "
Kavanaugh downplayed Sotomayor's fiery dissent as reflecting "simply . . . a good-faith disagreement" over "how to interpret relevant precedents."
"The dissent thinks that we are unduly narrowing Miller and Montgomery," Kavanaugh wrote. "And we, by contrast, think that the dissent would unduly broaden those decisions."
Besides Barrett, Kavanaugh was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.
Sotomayor was not appeased. She said the majority decision ignores the key holding of the cases — that life without parole should be extremely rare — and violates stare decisis, the court's general rule of upholding precedent.
"The Court simply rewrites Miller and Montgomery to say what the Court now wishes they had said, and then denies that it has done any such thing," wrote Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, who wrote the court's decision in Miller.
"How low this Court's respect for stare decisis has sunk," Sotomayor wrote.
Kavanaugh and Sotomayor also sparred over the consequences of the court's decisions in Miller and Montgomery.
"Miller's discretionary sentencing procedure has resulted in numerous sentences less than life without parole for defendants who otherwise would have received mandatory life-without-parole sentences," Kavanaugh wrote.
He cited a report that said a majority of states have abandoned life-without-parole sentences in concluding that "a discretionary sentencing procedure has indeed helped make life-without-parole sentences for offenders under 18 'relatively rar[e].' "
Moreover, he said, more states are free to get rid of life-without-parole (LWOP) sentences or require the kinds of specific findings of permanent incorrigibility that the dissenters desire.
Sotomayor responded that since the court required new sentencings for juveniles, "more than a quarter of Mississippi's resentencings have resulted in the reimposition of LWOP," while the rate was an "astonishing" 57 percent in Louisiana.
Additionally, she said: "The harm from these sentences will not fall equally. The racial disparities in juvenile LWOP sentencing are stark: 70 percent of all youths sentenced to LWOP are children of color."
Sotomayor also sketched out Jones's life story: His father abused his mother, and then his violent stepfather told Jones he would kick his mother and brother out of the house if he did not leave. His grandparents picked up the then-14-year-old just two months before the murder and brought him to Mississippi, where he lost access to the drugs he took for mental health issues.
His grandmother testified on his behalf at his resentencing.
Kavanaugh acknowledged that Jones "articulates several moral and policy arguments for why he should not be forced to spend the rest of his life in prison."
He added, "Our decision allows Jones to present those arguments to the state officials authorized to act on them, such as the state legislature, state courts, or Governor."
Sotomayor: “ Having deprived Jones of his constitutional right, the Court gestures at a potential lifeline from other institutions, including the Mississippi Legislature or Governor… But “the remote possibility” of such action “does not mitigate the harshness of the sentence” that Jones now faces … The Eighth Amendment guarantees juvenile offenders like Jones a basic constitutional protection against dis- proportionate punishments. The Court should not leave the vindication of such important legal rights to others, or to chance.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Interesting since during his confirmation hearings " I like beer" Justice Kavanaugh, who wrote this opinion,asserted he should not be judged on his misdeeds as a teenager or even a frat boy.
From "Men Yell At Me" newsletter today:
" Men are exercising their rights to their bodily autonomy by not getting vaccinated. MEANWHILE, we are still litigating Roe v. Wade. Humans who don’t want you to abort a mass of cells are fine with condemning teens to a cell for life."
Re: TrumpReich in action
The cruelty of white frat boys has never ceased to astound me.Sotomayor was not appeased. She said the majority decision ignores the key holding of the cases — that life without parole should be extremely rare — and violates stare decisis, the court's general rule of upholding precedent."The Court simply rewrites Miller and Montgomery to say what the Court now wishes they had said, and then denies that it has done any such thing," wrote Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, who wrote the court's decision in Miller."How low this Court's respect for stare decisis has sunk," Sotomayor wrote.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Republicans Aren’t Done Messing With Elections
Not content with limiting voting rights, they are threatening the integrity of vote counting itself.
By Richard L. Hasen
Mr. Hasen is the author of several books about elections and democracy. Last year he proposed a 28th amendment to the Constitution to defend and expand voting rights.
April 23, 2021
A new, more dangerous front has opened in the voting wars, and it’s going to be much harder to counteract than the now-familiar fight over voting rules. At stake is something I never expected to worry about in the United States: the integrity of the vote count. The danger of manipulated election results looms.
We already know the contours of the battle over voter suppression. The public has been inundated with stories about Georgia’s new voting law, from Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta to criticism of new restrictions that prevent giving water to people waiting in long lines to vote. With lawsuits already filed against restrictive aspects of that law and with American companies and elite law firms lined up against Republican state efforts to make it harder to register and vote, there’s at least a fighting chance that the worst of these measures will be defeated or weakened.
The new threat of election subversion is even more concerning. These efforts target both personnel and policy; it is not clear if they are coordinated. They nonetheless represent a huge threat to American democracy itself.
Some of these efforts involve removing from power those who stood up to President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Georgia law removes the secretary of state from decision-making power on the state election board. This seems aimed clearly at Georgia’s current Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, punishing him for rejecting Mr. Trump’s entreaties to “find” 11,780 votes to flip Joe Biden’s lead in the state.
But the changes will apply to Mr. Raffensperger’s successor, too, giving the legislature a greater hand in who counts votes and how they are counted. Michigan’s Republican Party refused to renominate Aaron Van Langevelde to the state’s canvassing board. Mr. Van Langevelde voted with Democrats to accept Michigan’s Electoral College vote for Mr. Biden as legitimate. He was replaced by Tony Daunt, the executive director of a conservative Michigan foundation that is financially backed by the DeVos family.
Even those who have not been stripped of power have been censured by Republican Party organizations, including not just Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, but also Barbara Cegavske, the Republican secretary of state of Nevada who ran a fair election and rejected spurious arguments that the election was stolen. The message that these actions send to politicians is that if you want a future in state Republican politics, you had better be willing to manipulate election results or lie about election fraud.
Republican state legislatures have also passed or are considering laws aimed at stripping Democratic counties of the power to run fair elections. The new Georgia law gives the legislature the power to handpick an election official who could vote on the state election board for a temporary takeover of up to four county election boards during the crucial period of administering an election and counting votes. That provision appears to be aimed at Democratic counties like Fulton County that have increased voter access. A new Iowa law threatens criminal penalties against local election officials who enact emergency election rules and bars them from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
A Texas bill would similarly stymie future efforts like the one in Harris County to expand access to the ballot and give challengers at the polls the ability not only to observe but also to interfere with polling place procedures meant to ensure election integrity. According to a new report by Protect Democracy, Law Forward and the States United Democracy Center, Republican legislators have proposed at least 148 bills in 36 states that could increase the chances of cooking the electoral books.
State legislatures and others also have been taking steps to amplify false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, solidifying the false belief among a majority of Republican voters that the November vote count was unfair. It’s not just the hearings featuring charlatans like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell spewing the big lie. It’s also steps like the Arizona State Senate demanding the seizure of November ballots from Democratic-leaning Maricopa County and ordering an audit of the votes to be conducted by a proponent of the bogus “Stop the Steal” movement who falsely contended that the election was rigged against Mr. Trump. Never mind that Arizona’s vote count has been repeatedly subject to examination by courts and election officials with no irregularities found.
Combating efforts that can undermine the fair administration of elections and vote counting is especially tricky. Unlike issues of voter suppression, which are easy to explain to the public (what do you mean you can’t give water to voters waiting in long lines?!?), the risks of unfair election administration are inchoate. They may materialize or they may not, depending on how close an election is and whether Mr. Trump himself or another person running for office is willing to break democratic norms and insist on an unfair vote count.
So what can be done? To begin with, every jurisdiction in the United States should be voting with systems that produce a paper ballot that can be recounted in the event of a disputed election. Having physical, tangible evidence of voters’ choices, rather than just records on electronic voting machines, is essential to both guard against actual manipulation and protect voter confidence in a fair vote count. Such a provision is already contained in H.R. 1, the mammoth Democrat-sponsored voting bill.
Next, businesses and civic leaders must speak out not just against voter suppression but also at efforts at election subversion. The message needs to be that fair elections require not just voter access to the polls but also procedures to ensure that the means of conducting the election are fair, auditable and verifiable by representatives of both political parties and nongovernmental organizations.
Congress must also fix the rules for counting Electoral College votes, so that spurious objections to the vote counts like the ones we saw on Jan. 6 from senators and representatives, including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, are harder to make. It should take much more than a pairing of a single senator and a single representative to raise an objection, and there must be quick means to reject frivolous objections to votes fairly cast and counted in the states.
Congress can also require states to impose basic safeguards in the counting of votes in federal elections. This is not part of the H.R. 1 election reform bill, but it should be, and Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress wide berth to override state laws in this area.
Finally, we need a national effort to support those who will count votes fairly. Already we are seeing a flood of competent election administrators retiring from their often-thankless jobs, some after facing threats of violence during the 2020 vote count. Local election administrators need political cover and the equivalent of combat pay, along with adequate budget resources to run fair elections. It took hundreds of millions of dollars in private philanthropy to hold a successful election in 2020; that need for charity should not be repeated.
If someone running for secretary of state endorses the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, they should be uniformly condemned. Support should go to those who promote election integrity, regardless of party, and who put in place fair and transparent procedures. Ultimately, we need to move toward a more nonpartisan administration of elections and create incentives for loyalty to the integrity of the democratic process, not to a political party.
We may not know until January 2025, when Congress has counted the Electoral College votes of the states, whether those who support election integrity and the rule of law succeeded in preventing election subversion. That may seem far away, but the time to act to prevent a democratic crisis is now. It may begin with lawsuits against new voter-suppression laws and nascent efforts to enshrine the right to vote in the Constitution. But it is also going to require a cross-partisan alliance of those committed to the rule of law — in and out of government — to ensure that our elections continue to reflect the will of the people.
Richard L. Hasen is a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/opin ... e=Homepage
Not content with limiting voting rights, they are threatening the integrity of vote counting itself.
By Richard L. Hasen
Mr. Hasen is the author of several books about elections and democracy. Last year he proposed a 28th amendment to the Constitution to defend and expand voting rights.
April 23, 2021
A new, more dangerous front has opened in the voting wars, and it’s going to be much harder to counteract than the now-familiar fight over voting rules. At stake is something I never expected to worry about in the United States: the integrity of the vote count. The danger of manipulated election results looms.
We already know the contours of the battle over voter suppression. The public has been inundated with stories about Georgia’s new voting law, from Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta to criticism of new restrictions that prevent giving water to people waiting in long lines to vote. With lawsuits already filed against restrictive aspects of that law and with American companies and elite law firms lined up against Republican state efforts to make it harder to register and vote, there’s at least a fighting chance that the worst of these measures will be defeated or weakened.
The new threat of election subversion is even more concerning. These efforts target both personnel and policy; it is not clear if they are coordinated. They nonetheless represent a huge threat to American democracy itself.
Some of these efforts involve removing from power those who stood up to President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Georgia law removes the secretary of state from decision-making power on the state election board. This seems aimed clearly at Georgia’s current Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, punishing him for rejecting Mr. Trump’s entreaties to “find” 11,780 votes to flip Joe Biden’s lead in the state.
But the changes will apply to Mr. Raffensperger’s successor, too, giving the legislature a greater hand in who counts votes and how they are counted. Michigan’s Republican Party refused to renominate Aaron Van Langevelde to the state’s canvassing board. Mr. Van Langevelde voted with Democrats to accept Michigan’s Electoral College vote for Mr. Biden as legitimate. He was replaced by Tony Daunt, the executive director of a conservative Michigan foundation that is financially backed by the DeVos family.
Even those who have not been stripped of power have been censured by Republican Party organizations, including not just Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, but also Barbara Cegavske, the Republican secretary of state of Nevada who ran a fair election and rejected spurious arguments that the election was stolen. The message that these actions send to politicians is that if you want a future in state Republican politics, you had better be willing to manipulate election results or lie about election fraud.
Republican state legislatures have also passed or are considering laws aimed at stripping Democratic counties of the power to run fair elections. The new Georgia law gives the legislature the power to handpick an election official who could vote on the state election board for a temporary takeover of up to four county election boards during the crucial period of administering an election and counting votes. That provision appears to be aimed at Democratic counties like Fulton County that have increased voter access. A new Iowa law threatens criminal penalties against local election officials who enact emergency election rules and bars them from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
A Texas bill would similarly stymie future efforts like the one in Harris County to expand access to the ballot and give challengers at the polls the ability not only to observe but also to interfere with polling place procedures meant to ensure election integrity. According to a new report by Protect Democracy, Law Forward and the States United Democracy Center, Republican legislators have proposed at least 148 bills in 36 states that could increase the chances of cooking the electoral books.
State legislatures and others also have been taking steps to amplify false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, solidifying the false belief among a majority of Republican voters that the November vote count was unfair. It’s not just the hearings featuring charlatans like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell spewing the big lie. It’s also steps like the Arizona State Senate demanding the seizure of November ballots from Democratic-leaning Maricopa County and ordering an audit of the votes to be conducted by a proponent of the bogus “Stop the Steal” movement who falsely contended that the election was rigged against Mr. Trump. Never mind that Arizona’s vote count has been repeatedly subject to examination by courts and election officials with no irregularities found.
Combating efforts that can undermine the fair administration of elections and vote counting is especially tricky. Unlike issues of voter suppression, which are easy to explain to the public (what do you mean you can’t give water to voters waiting in long lines?!?), the risks of unfair election administration are inchoate. They may materialize or they may not, depending on how close an election is and whether Mr. Trump himself or another person running for office is willing to break democratic norms and insist on an unfair vote count.
So what can be done? To begin with, every jurisdiction in the United States should be voting with systems that produce a paper ballot that can be recounted in the event of a disputed election. Having physical, tangible evidence of voters’ choices, rather than just records on electronic voting machines, is essential to both guard against actual manipulation and protect voter confidence in a fair vote count. Such a provision is already contained in H.R. 1, the mammoth Democrat-sponsored voting bill.
Next, businesses and civic leaders must speak out not just against voter suppression but also at efforts at election subversion. The message needs to be that fair elections require not just voter access to the polls but also procedures to ensure that the means of conducting the election are fair, auditable and verifiable by representatives of both political parties and nongovernmental organizations.
Congress must also fix the rules for counting Electoral College votes, so that spurious objections to the vote counts like the ones we saw on Jan. 6 from senators and representatives, including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, are harder to make. It should take much more than a pairing of a single senator and a single representative to raise an objection, and there must be quick means to reject frivolous objections to votes fairly cast and counted in the states.
Congress can also require states to impose basic safeguards in the counting of votes in federal elections. This is not part of the H.R. 1 election reform bill, but it should be, and Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives Congress wide berth to override state laws in this area.
Finally, we need a national effort to support those who will count votes fairly. Already we are seeing a flood of competent election administrators retiring from their often-thankless jobs, some after facing threats of violence during the 2020 vote count. Local election administrators need political cover and the equivalent of combat pay, along with adequate budget resources to run fair elections. It took hundreds of millions of dollars in private philanthropy to hold a successful election in 2020; that need for charity should not be repeated.
If someone running for secretary of state endorses the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, they should be uniformly condemned. Support should go to those who promote election integrity, regardless of party, and who put in place fair and transparent procedures. Ultimately, we need to move toward a more nonpartisan administration of elections and create incentives for loyalty to the integrity of the democratic process, not to a political party.
We may not know until January 2025, when Congress has counted the Electoral College votes of the states, whether those who support election integrity and the rule of law succeeded in preventing election subversion. That may seem far away, but the time to act to prevent a democratic crisis is now. It may begin with lawsuits against new voter-suppression laws and nascent efforts to enshrine the right to vote in the Constitution. But it is also going to require a cross-partisan alliance of those committed to the rule of law — in and out of government — to ensure that our elections continue to reflect the will of the people.
Richard L. Hasen is a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/opin ... e=Homepage
Re: TrumpReich in action
Rach3 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:50 pmWAPO
April 22, 2021 at 12:14 p.m. CDT
The Supreme Court on Thursday reversed its recent movement toward leniency for minors convicted of serious crimes and instead said judges need not specifically find a juvenile murderer beyond rehabilitation before sentencing him to a lifetime in prison.
Op ed from WAPO today.While it appears Brett Jones and his girlfriend were White,the snide comment (slip?) by the Mississippi sentencing Judge suggests his Confederate sensibilities were offended, thus Jones remains in prison forever :
Ruth Marcus,OpEd,WAPO
April 23, 2021 at 4:43 p.m. CDT
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege, the son of a Beltway lobbyist and the product of the Ivy League. Mississippi prisoner Brett Jones has endured a life of misery and abuse, the son of an alcoholic father who brutalized his mother and a stepfather who beat him.
As fate would have it, their lives converged this week: In an opinion released Thursday, Brett Kavanaugh upheld Brett Jones’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his grandfather just 23 days after his 15th birthday. (And, yes, let us pause here to note a certain irony in the fact that the opinion was written by a justice whose confirmation hearings featured discussion about how people can change after high school.)
The 6-to-3 ruling in Jones v. Mississippi was notable not only for the juxtaposition of the two Bretts. It offered a snapshot of a court transformed by the arrival of Kavanaugh and two other conservative justices named by President Donald Trump. And it demonstrated how a conservative majority bent on reshaping the law can do so without the showy fanfare of explicitly overruling precedents.
Until Thursday, the arc of the court’s rulings on severe punishments for juvenile offenders bent toward leniency. Driven by former justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom Kavanaugh clerked and whose seat he now occupies, the court repeatedly ruled that the fact of a criminal offender’s youth made all the difference in the constitutionality of the punishment.
In 2005, the court banned the use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders. Five years later, calling a life sentence without any possibility of parole “an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” it barred such sentences for minors convicted of crimes short of murder.
In 2012, it ruled that mandatory sentences of life without parole could not be applied to minors even for murder; sentencing authorities, the court said, must distinguish “between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.”
And in 2016, the court, emphasizing that “a lifetime in prison is a disproportionate sentence for all but the rarest children” and that “children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change,” applied that decision retroactively, to the 2,100 prisoners already sentenced to life without parole for the crimes they committed as juveniles.
Jones was one of them. But at a new sentencing hearing, a Mississippi judge said that life without the possibility of parole was warranted, even after considering factors “relevant to the child’s culpability.” The judge made glancing reference to Jones’s youth — he noted that Jones thought he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, “which demonstrates that the defendant had reached some degree of maturity in at least one area.” But the judge didn’t consider whether Jones was among the “permanently incorrigible” who could be put away for life with no hope. That was the issue that made its way through the Mississippi courts to the Supreme Court.
Leave aside the question of whether a civilized society should ever consign a child to life behind bars, with no hope of release. The newly bolstered conservative majority said the court didn’t even have to address the question of permanent incorrigibility. As long as there is some leeway to consider the offender’s age, it said, “a discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.”
This is cruel and unnecessary: Requiring a judge to find that minors are “permanently incorrigible” before putting them away for life would not hurt Mississippi’s ability to severely punish heinous crimes. If minors are deemed incorrigible, they can be denied any chance of parole. And if they don’t fall into that worst of the worst category, the state still doesn’t have to grant parole. It just has to hold out that hope.
“Please give me just one chance to show the world, man, like I can be somebody,” Jones told the sentencing judge.
In eliminating that possibility, Kavanaugh and his colleagues pretended that they were simply applying the court’s precedents — indeed, that they were forced by the previous decisions to reject Jones’s claim. The flimsiness of this claim was underscored by Justice Clarence Thomas. Concurring, Thomas said the majority had overruled its most recent precedent, “in substance but not in name,” but simply wasn’t willing to own up to it.
The dissenters were more biting, saying that the ruling “guts” the court’s precedents, rewriting the cases on juvenile life without parole “to say what the Court now wishes they had said” and then denying it had engaged in such dishonesty. “The Court is fooling no one,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the two other remaining liberals, Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan.
And here is where Jones v. Mississippi resonates beyond the sad circumstances of Brett Jones, who at 31 has spent more than half his life behind bars.
“How low this Court’s respect for stare decisis has sunk,” lamented Sotomayor, referring to the doctrine by which the court only overturns its precedents when there is “special justification” for acting. “Not long ago, that doctrine was recognized as a pillar of the ‘rule of law,’ critical to ‘keep the scale of justice even and steady, and not liable to waver with every new judge’s opinion.’ ”
She was quoting from a Kavanaugh concurrence last year, outlining his approach to reversing precedent. Fine, noble words — undercut by the actions of a conservative majority that now has its thumb firmly on that scale.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Rubin is spot-on.America faces a domestic threat greater than any external threat ever in our history.
WAPO
Jennifer Rubin
April 26, 2021 at 11:43 a.m. CDT
The Republican Party seems to be getting worse. In some cases, it has exceeded the level of dishonesty, bigotry and anti-democratic fervor that it displayed when its MAGA cult leader was in office.
Last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had the gall to question the effort to vaccinate people despite their hesitancy. As he told a conservative radio host: “If you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not?” This he said at a time when combating vaccine aversion is most difficult among recalcitrant Republicans. Even the former president wants people to get vaccinated.
Elected Republicans are certainly more disconnected from reality than they were in that fleeting moment after the Jan. 6 attack when they took exception to the disgraced former president’s role in fueling the insurrection. Now, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is flat-out lying about the former president’s responsibility for inciting violence, arguing that Donald Trump was unaware of events at the Capitol during a phone conversation that day and acted promptly to diffuse it. This is contrary to McCarthy’s own previous account of the phone call, as well as accounts from others, making his latest spasm of political opportunism at the expense of democracy, truth and decency all the worse.
Meanwhile, right-wing media stars, having imbibed a white supremacist “replacement” myth, are now decrying the conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. It is little wonder why nearly half of Republicans believe the jury in Chauvin’s trial reached the wrong verdict.
Whether the political insanity and cruelty of elected Republicans drives the right-wing media or the right-wing media drive Republican politicians to new lows, the result is a party that refutes the basic tenets of multiracial democracy and shows zero interest in actual governance.
Conservative Peter Wehner recognizes this phenomenon in a column for the Atlantic. “Having alienated college-educated suburban voters, many consequential Republicans decided their best bet is to keep their contracting coalition in a state of constant agitation and fear, combatants in a never-ending culture war, ‘embattled warriors making a last stand against the demise of everything,’” he writes. “And that, in turn, requires them to feed the base even greater falsehoods.”
Republican pols would rather blather about “woke corporations” than negotiate a badly needed infrastructure bill. And they would rather suppress voting to extend white dominance than craft responsible legislation to protect elections. (Indeed, as voting guru Richard L. Hasen points out in a New York Times op-ed, the most dangerous trend is the Republican state-level effort to lay the groundwork to corrupt the administration of elections so that pesky officials will not certify Republican losses.)
It would be lovely if Republicans “reformed from within,” as some nostalgic conservatives insist is possible. It would be a relief if the party responded to conservatives telling them hard truths. But if Jan. 6 only made them more deranged and Chauvin’s conviction only cemented their view that racism is nonexistent in policing, perhaps it is time to stop dreaming we can drain their cauldron of toxic lies, rampant racism and juvenile narcissism (I won’t wear a mask 'cause you’re not the boss of me!).
In this context, the media should stop bemoaning President Biden’s “failure” to find congressional Republican support for his policies. Notwithstanding Sen. Joe Manchin III’s fantastical search for reasonable Republicans, Biden is not dealing with a normal party that is capable of transactional politics or that concerns itself with the common good.
Faced with an authoritarian, irrational and racist Republican Party, Biden and congressional Democrats have no choice but to accomplish as much of their agenda as possible, try to secure some basic voting reforms and then beat back the scourge of an increasingly dangerous party in 2022. The stakes could not be higher.
WAPO
Jennifer Rubin
April 26, 2021 at 11:43 a.m. CDT
The Republican Party seems to be getting worse. In some cases, it has exceeded the level of dishonesty, bigotry and anti-democratic fervor that it displayed when its MAGA cult leader was in office.
Last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had the gall to question the effort to vaccinate people despite their hesitancy. As he told a conservative radio host: “If you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not?” This he said at a time when combating vaccine aversion is most difficult among recalcitrant Republicans. Even the former president wants people to get vaccinated.
Elected Republicans are certainly more disconnected from reality than they were in that fleeting moment after the Jan. 6 attack when they took exception to the disgraced former president’s role in fueling the insurrection. Now, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is flat-out lying about the former president’s responsibility for inciting violence, arguing that Donald Trump was unaware of events at the Capitol during a phone conversation that day and acted promptly to diffuse it. This is contrary to McCarthy’s own previous account of the phone call, as well as accounts from others, making his latest spasm of political opportunism at the expense of democracy, truth and decency all the worse.
Meanwhile, right-wing media stars, having imbibed a white supremacist “replacement” myth, are now decrying the conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. It is little wonder why nearly half of Republicans believe the jury in Chauvin’s trial reached the wrong verdict.
Whether the political insanity and cruelty of elected Republicans drives the right-wing media or the right-wing media drive Republican politicians to new lows, the result is a party that refutes the basic tenets of multiracial democracy and shows zero interest in actual governance.
Conservative Peter Wehner recognizes this phenomenon in a column for the Atlantic. “Having alienated college-educated suburban voters, many consequential Republicans decided their best bet is to keep their contracting coalition in a state of constant agitation and fear, combatants in a never-ending culture war, ‘embattled warriors making a last stand against the demise of everything,’” he writes. “And that, in turn, requires them to feed the base even greater falsehoods.”
Republican pols would rather blather about “woke corporations” than negotiate a badly needed infrastructure bill. And they would rather suppress voting to extend white dominance than craft responsible legislation to protect elections. (Indeed, as voting guru Richard L. Hasen points out in a New York Times op-ed, the most dangerous trend is the Republican state-level effort to lay the groundwork to corrupt the administration of elections so that pesky officials will not certify Republican losses.)
It would be lovely if Republicans “reformed from within,” as some nostalgic conservatives insist is possible. It would be a relief if the party responded to conservatives telling them hard truths. But if Jan. 6 only made them more deranged and Chauvin’s conviction only cemented their view that racism is nonexistent in policing, perhaps it is time to stop dreaming we can drain their cauldron of toxic lies, rampant racism and juvenile narcissism (I won’t wear a mask 'cause you’re not the boss of me!).
In this context, the media should stop bemoaning President Biden’s “failure” to find congressional Republican support for his policies. Notwithstanding Sen. Joe Manchin III’s fantastical search for reasonable Republicans, Biden is not dealing with a normal party that is capable of transactional politics or that concerns itself with the common good.
Faced with an authoritarian, irrational and racist Republican Party, Biden and congressional Democrats have no choice but to accomplish as much of their agenda as possible, try to secure some basic voting reforms and then beat back the scourge of an increasingly dangerous party in 2022. The stakes could not be higher.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Yes.In this context, the media should stop bemoaning President Biden’s “failure” to find congressional Republican support for his policies. Notwithstanding Sen. Joe Manchin III’s fantastical search for reasonable Republicans, Biden is not dealing with a normal party that is capable of transactional politics or that concerns itself with the common good.
Faced with an authoritarian, irrational and racist Republican Party, Biden and congressional Democrats have no choice but to accomplish as much of their agenda as possible, try to secure some basic voting reforms and then beat back the scourge of an increasingly dangerous party in 2022. The stakes could not be higher.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
As expected.
No consequences, no action.
Quiery: Can the government sue the government for defamation?
Re: TrumpReich in action
Despite large majority of very Red state Missouri voters surprising the neo-Fascist Missouri GOP on the 2020 ballot issue by approving Medicaid expansion , the Missouri GOP trots out the same old GOP mantras about workers being too lazy to work and suggest get job-related insurance, while also urging repeal of the ACA. Of course the expansion mostly helps the working poor and people of color, who usually vote Democratic.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate on Wednesday voted against paying to expand Medicaid as called for by voters last year.The late-night Senate vote locked in the House’s decision to refuse funding for the program, likely setting up a court battle with supporters of greater access to health care.The vote divided Republicans and came after hours of sometimes-heated debate.Several Republicans, including the Senate budget leader, argued that expanding Medicaid would obligate the state to pay for an expensive program that could mean a huge financial hit to the state’s budget in the future. ( Rach 3:Most of the expansion money comes from the Federal government.)
“I’m sorry, if you’re a healthy adult, you need to get a job,” said Manchester Republican Sen. Andrew Koenig, arguing that those newly eligible for Medicaid should instead get employer-based health insurance.
Democrats countered that many people who would get access to Medicaid are already working multiple jobs but still can’t afford health care.“We have a working class that cannot afford for-profit health insurance, and I’m one of those people, that could be one illness or one injury away from bankruptcy,” St. Louis-area Democratic Sen. Brian Williams said. “And those are people who go to work every single day.”
https://www.ky3.com/2021/04/29/missouri ... expansion/
Iowa GOP wants to enact a new , 1-week waiting period after lose a job before get a check. Same “lazy” dog whistles in Iowa with the usual “fraud” claims added, also affecting disproportionately Democratic voters. From Cedar Rapids Gazette :
“Union representatives also said the delay did not seem like a fair way to achieve savings of up to $23 million when the state’s unemployment trust fund is solvent.
J.D. Davis of the Iowa Association of Business & Industry told subcommittee members Iowa needs to “modernize” its jobless benefits system, including implementing the one-week waiting period that would make Iowa consistent with 41 other states and the same of its neighboring states in the Midwest. He also said the delayed start would give Iowa Workforce Development officials time to check for fraud and other details of legitimate claims.
He said going through a pandemic where businesses were paying people not to work for health and safety reasons “taught us many lessons” about administering the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund and keeping it solvent.”
Also : https://www.telegraphherald.com/news/op ... a9add.html
“Republicans also want to change the way unemployment is calculated when a company like Flexsteel closes its doors in Dubuque and moves production to Mexico. Under current law, a claimant receives one half their wage credit for 39 weeks. The proposed changes would treat these claims like a regular claim and cut the amount of money and duration the unemployed would receive under the current law. The unemployed are already in jeopardy of losing health insurance and pension benefits.This legislation will make it harder for the state to recruit and maintain workers, especially in the building trades, who rely on this benefit to bridge the gap between construction jobs.”
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Senate on Wednesday voted against paying to expand Medicaid as called for by voters last year.The late-night Senate vote locked in the House’s decision to refuse funding for the program, likely setting up a court battle with supporters of greater access to health care.The vote divided Republicans and came after hours of sometimes-heated debate.Several Republicans, including the Senate budget leader, argued that expanding Medicaid would obligate the state to pay for an expensive program that could mean a huge financial hit to the state’s budget in the future. ( Rach 3:Most of the expansion money comes from the Federal government.)
“I’m sorry, if you’re a healthy adult, you need to get a job,” said Manchester Republican Sen. Andrew Koenig, arguing that those newly eligible for Medicaid should instead get employer-based health insurance.
Democrats countered that many people who would get access to Medicaid are already working multiple jobs but still can’t afford health care.“We have a working class that cannot afford for-profit health insurance, and I’m one of those people, that could be one illness or one injury away from bankruptcy,” St. Louis-area Democratic Sen. Brian Williams said. “And those are people who go to work every single day.”
https://www.ky3.com/2021/04/29/missouri ... expansion/
Iowa GOP wants to enact a new , 1-week waiting period after lose a job before get a check. Same “lazy” dog whistles in Iowa with the usual “fraud” claims added, also affecting disproportionately Democratic voters. From Cedar Rapids Gazette :
“Union representatives also said the delay did not seem like a fair way to achieve savings of up to $23 million when the state’s unemployment trust fund is solvent.
J.D. Davis of the Iowa Association of Business & Industry told subcommittee members Iowa needs to “modernize” its jobless benefits system, including implementing the one-week waiting period that would make Iowa consistent with 41 other states and the same of its neighboring states in the Midwest. He also said the delayed start would give Iowa Workforce Development officials time to check for fraud and other details of legitimate claims.
He said going through a pandemic where businesses were paying people not to work for health and safety reasons “taught us many lessons” about administering the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund and keeping it solvent.”
Also : https://www.telegraphherald.com/news/op ... a9add.html
“Republicans also want to change the way unemployment is calculated when a company like Flexsteel closes its doors in Dubuque and moves production to Mexico. Under current law, a claimant receives one half their wage credit for 39 weeks. The proposed changes would treat these claims like a regular claim and cut the amount of money and duration the unemployed would receive under the current law. The unemployed are already in jeopardy of losing health insurance and pension benefits.This legislation will make it harder for the state to recruit and maintain workers, especially in the building trades, who rely on this benefit to bridge the gap between construction jobs.”
Re: TrumpReich in action
Good grief!
The budget ax is still swinging!
When will voters wake up?
This is "freedom?" As in freedom to go bankrupt from healthcare costs and unaffordable housing? Not to mention all the hospitals that will continue to close because they are forced to care for so many uninsured patients.
No wonder so many folks are buying vans and dying young as our average lifespan becomes shorter and shorter compared to other developed countries while opioid overdoses rise (81,000 in the twelve months before May 2020).
How dare they go against the will of the people that they represent?
Republicans did the same in Florida when a ballot measure to allow ex-felons to vote was approved last year.
Where is the outrage?
Never forget.
The budget ax is still swinging!
When will voters wake up?
This is "freedom?" As in freedom to go bankrupt from healthcare costs and unaffordable housing? Not to mention all the hospitals that will continue to close because they are forced to care for so many uninsured patients.
No wonder so many folks are buying vans and dying young as our average lifespan becomes shorter and shorter compared to other developed countries while opioid overdoses rise (81,000 in the twelve months before May 2020).
How dare they go against the will of the people that they represent?
Republicans did the same in Florida when a ballot measure to allow ex-felons to vote was approved last year.
Where is the outrage?
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Not just Iowa , of course:
The MIRA bill, “ Make Iowa Right Again” law. Per IPR tonight:
"One of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ (GOP) school choice priorities for the legislative session is now awaiting her signature. The Iowa Senate has given final approval to an expansion of state funded charter schools. The charters could be started by private founding groups that have no affiliation with the local school district and would receive state funding based on the number of students who enroll."
Names for new schools : Murdoch High ? Fox High ? Freedom High ? Koch High ? Hannity High ?
The MIRA bill, “ Make Iowa Right Again” law. Per IPR tonight:
"One of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ (GOP) school choice priorities for the legislative session is now awaiting her signature. The Iowa Senate has given final approval to an expansion of state funded charter schools. The charters could be started by private founding groups that have no affiliation with the local school district and would receive state funding based on the number of students who enroll."
Names for new schools : Murdoch High ? Fox High ? Freedom High ? Koch High ? Hannity High ?
Re: TrumpReich in action
Frankly, I think they're all high on something!
It's all about indoctrinating kids, isn't it?
Hitler youth, anyone?
Never forget.
It's all about indoctrinating kids, isn't it?
Hitler youth, anyone?
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The real Arizona fraud. It's way past time for you to disown your GOP friends and relatives:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics ... index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics ... index.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
The entire Republican-controlled Arizona Senate is in on some sort of conspiracy here:Rach3 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:19 pmThe real Arizona fraud. It's way past time for you to disown your GOP friends and relatives:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics ... index.html
This will not end well.Maricopa's supervisors -- four out of five of whom are Republicans -- initially refused to release the 2020 ballots to the Arizona state Senate. The Senate, with broad subpoena powers, took the county board to court and a judge ordered the supervisors to comply.
Never forget.
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