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Friday, December 31, 2021

Defeating Greed With Our SOLIDARITY

 Defeating Greed With Our SOLIDARITY

Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty) 

Bernie Sanders / Reader Supported News 

readersupportednews.org

 If there was ever a moment in time when we needed to stand together in SOLIDARITY, this is that moment.

Corporate greed is running rampant as the people on top become richer than any time in history, while working families struggle to pay for health care, housing, food, education and other basic necessities.

Corporate power is undermining American democracy as the big money interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat a legislative agenda strongly supported by the American people.

The greed, arrogance and power of the big money interests has never been more apparent.

And working people, with incredible courage and determination, are fighting back.

Time and time again, I have stressed that real change never occurs from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up.

Real change only happens when people demand it and are prepared to challenge the status quo — in the voting booth, in peaceful demonstrations and at the workplace.

This year, in the midst of a terrible pandemic, we have seen workers standing up for basic rights and dignity on the job in a way that we have not seen for years. And we have stood with them. We have supported workers on strike against the corporate greed of the John Deere company and Kellogg's. We have supported nurses on the west coast who stood up to an unfair contract offer from Kaiser Permanente. We have supported the brave employees at Starbucks who, for the very first time, organized a union shop in that giant corporation against enormous opposition.

That's what SOLIDARITY is all about. And that's the SOLIDARITY we must continue.



Thursday, December 30, 2021

Five Good-News Environmental Stories From 2021

Five Good-News Environmental Stories From 2021 Reef fish swim above recovering coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia. Scientists and tourism operators are using unique technologies to spurn coral growth which has been hurt by climate change. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

From new protected areas to ozone layer gains, this year saw some positive trends, even as myriad problems persist.

Chris Arsenault / Al Jazeera  

readersupported news.org

From record heatwaves causing devastating wildfires in Russia’s Siberia, to a prolonged drought hitting South America and the worst floods to hit South Sudan in 60 years, there has been plenty of bad news when it comes to the state of the global environment in 2021.

But amid a year of worsening environmental stress – including mostly ineffective international climate negotiations in Glasgow, locust plagues ravaging crops in East Africa, and an entire town being destroyed by fire in western Canada – some small shoots of hope have emerged.

When it comes to the state of planet Earth, scientists and conservationists have highlighted five of the most important good-news stories from 2021:

1) The ozone layer is healing

It was one of the key environmental causes of the 1980s: trying to prevent the hole in the ozone layer, which protects the planet from harmful UV rays, from getting any larger. Activists mobilised street protests and politicians held summits.

And change is happening, according to a recent study by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR): Because of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global deal to regulate nearly 100 man-made chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, 443 million Americans will likely be spared from skin cancer through the end of this century.

The hole in the ozone layer remains enormous – about the size of North America – but it is recovering at a rate of one to three percent every 10 years, according to the UN. The hole over parts of the northern hemisphere is expected to heal completely by the 2030s, with full repair over the southern hemisphere and polar regions expected by the 2060s, according to UN data.

Global action on the problem via the Montreal Protocol has prevented more than 99 percent of potential health effects that would have otherwise occurred from ozone destruction, NCAR reported.

Environmentalists hope the relative success in the movement to protect the ozone layer can be replicated in the fight against climate change; so far, that has not happened.

2) ‘Coral IVF’ aids Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

The world’s largest living structure is under threat from rising ocean temperatures linked to climate change, which have caused coral bleaching.

This year, however, has seen some recovery on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists have been using man-made pools in a process comparable to in vitro fertilisation (IVF), moving eggs from areas of the reef where coral has been growing. These are then transferred in an effort to regenerate areas hit by bleaching or destruction from storms.

The process of assisted spawning, dubbed “coral IVF”, aided the birth of billions of new coral babies this year, in an explosion of colour. The reef is still facing substantial dangers, but scientists and conservationists hope these types of technologies can spur broader recovery in the world’s reefs, home to roughly a quarter of marine life.

3) China’s giant pandas no longer ‘endangered’

Home to more than 1,800 giant pandas living in the wilderness, China reported in July that the iconic bears are no longer officially “endangered”. Thanks to conservation efforts, they are now classified as just “vulnerable”.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an independent tracking group, made a similar assessment several years earlier.

Partial credit for the improvement in the giant panda population can be traced to an expanded network of protected areas in the world’s most populous country, covering about 18 percent of China’s landmass, according to Chinese authorities.

4) Renewable energy generation hits all-time high

Despite supply chain problems stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was expected to set an all-time high for new renewable energy production capacity.

With new solar installations, wind farms and other technologies, the world added 290 gigawatts of renewable power production capacity this year, according to a report published this month by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. By comparison, that is twice as much as Canada’s total electricity generating capacity of about 145 gigawatts.

Based on these trends, renewable energy capacity could exceed the current global capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined by 2026. Globally, more than 90 percent of new electricity generating capacity in the next five years is projected to come from renewables. The pace of growth, however, is still not fast enough to reach the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

5) Protected area expands around Galapagos Islands

In the 19th century, amazing animal life on the remote Galapagos Islands inspired Charles Darwin to pen On the Origin of Species and pioneer the theory of evolution.

This past November, Ecuador’s president announced that a marine-protected area around the Galapagos would be expanded by 60,000sq km (37,282 sq miles).

Home to giant tortoises, marine iguanas, penguins, sea lions and frigatebirds, among other species, the area is under threat from climate change, illegal fishing and other challenges. Environmentalists hope expanding the protected area will help preserve its unique natural beauty and wildlife.

Good news on the environment front is scarce, but let's pause to recognize a few victories achieved in 2021.

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

MAGA world rages after Ivanka caves and succumbs to the Fauci ouchie

WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 27: Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump and White House senior adviser, addresses attendees as Trump prepares to deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination on the South Lawn of the White House August 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump is scheduled to deliver the speech in front of 1500 invited guests.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"Accept the vaccine, plebs! Your queen demands an Illuminati sacrifice!"

Ivanka Trump has spent the past five years trying to position herself in the public’s mind as the “reasonable” Trump. Granted, that's a pretty low bar. All she really needed to do is show up as “warm-blooded” on infrared surveillance cameras, and she was basically there. Another useful tactic? Avoid appearing on video every 10 minutes, like the unofficial spokesperson for pure Colombian cocaine.

No, for Ivanka, the trick is to tacitly endorse every horrible thing her father does. She stood around cow-eyed and mute while the country unraveled, only to then gurgle pro-civilization shibboleths like “we need better child care” and “let’s all get the vaccine” to make it seem like her dad didn’t just spend the past half-decade menacing the nation like an aimless Macy’s Angry Birds balloon with explosive diarrhea.

The problem for Ivanka, though, is that MAGA devotees aren’t much interested in civilization—or at least the parts where we pass laws for the common good, do our civic duty by paying our taxes and vaccinating ourselves and our children, and accept the results of free and fair elections. The parts of civilization that produced at least 10 discrete varieties of Bud Light? Now you’re talking.

And so the reaction to Ivanka’s Wednesday announcement on Instagram and Twitter that she got the COVID-19 shot was fairly predictable.

This seemingly benign act—which, I’m old enough to recall, would have been seen as the one and only responsible adult choice 30 or so years ago—was straight-up savaged by the MAGA mob.

Now, given that at least 12 chromosomes in the Trump genome are devoted exclusively to evil, you have to give Ivanka some credit for doing the right thing. If only her “fans” agreed.

Instagram was a particular cesspool of disinformation and hate. You can click through to view the backlash in its red-hatted entirety, but here’s a representative sample.

tash_poonka

No thank you! I have immune system for a reason.

Because of the 99.8% survival rate of a virus they’ve never identified? Anthony Fauci and Andrew Cuomo would be proud.

kenny_vv

Hell no. Why would you post this?

rmgvd

Bummer. I was hoping you were above this kind of virtue signaling.

sk_oksana

Nope. I don’t trust you people. Never had flu shots and NEVER I will give my body to experiment on me... No No No

katherineljackson

Hell no. Quit telling perfectly healthy people to take this so called "vaccine".

mark.anthony.35110418

Unfollowed

I hope you support freedom of choice for vaccines.

Yeah, they’re almost all like that. It’s astounding, really. Maybe she should have specified that she asked for the vaccine without the preinstalled copy of Windows Vista.

The Trumps now find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. One horn is that the vaccines were developed while Trump was president, and he desperately wants to take credit for them. The other is that Trump’s popularity lives and dies based on the conspiracy theories he regularly nurtures, and that’s the horn that may end up gouging not just him but his throngs of addlepated fans as well.

And there’s nothing Ivanka can do to unravel that mess now. She had numerous chances to do the “responsible” thing, and yet Donald Trump was never once locked in a closet all that time he was terrorizing us.

So thanks for getting the shot, Vanky, but this is still a big fail. 

Today, I got the shot!!! I hope that you do too! Thank you Nurse Torres!!! 
Image
Image
You could have told people that covid wasn’t a “dem hoax”. You could have told people Covid wasn’t going to “disappear like a miracle”, or with the “warmer weather.” You could’ve helped stop hundreds of thousands of American deaths but you didn’t. You didn’t. So you’re too late.

Too late, indeed.

Monday, December 27, 2021

'Trump will go down as a total failure': Even the Proud Boys are jumping off the MAGA Train

Enrique Tarrio of Proud Boys 
What's new.  Donald Trump has always preyed on the poor, and now the Poor Boys are feeling it too.

I guess when your entire shtick is based on fantasy and lies, the people you lied to get upset when you fail to overturn your election loss by ordering Space Force to beam Joe Biden off the inaugural dais at the Zero Hour.

Now the Proud Boys of all groups are desperately fleeing the sinking garbage barge that was the T**** administration, and it’s a beautiful sight.

The New York Times:

In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.

But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Mr. Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel on Monday.

As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.

You mean they actually thought DJT had a plan? He’s never had a plan for anything. For four years he governed like a housefly with one wing pulled off. Did they really think he could pull off a fucking coup?

Oy.

On social media, Proud Boys participants have complained about his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol rampage was an act of betrayal. And Mr. Trump, cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.

Oh, noes! He’s losing his grip on his death cult! And that’s all he had left!

One day I will cry a single briny tear for our forlorn fuck toad. But today is all about joy and celebration.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Doesn’t that feel good?

You probably wouldn't want these guys moving in next door, but when they turn on The Donald who brung them to this dance, you have to give them a big "hip hip, hooray!"

Sunday, December 26, 2021

Steve Bannon's MEIN KAMPF for a Fascist America Must Be Defeated

Steve Bannon's MEIN KAMPF for a Fascist America Must Be Defeated  Steve Bannon: Unabashedly pure evil.  Maybe there really is a Satan.  (photo: Thibault Camus/AP) 

Steve Bannon has mapped out a clear and present strategy for using our own electoral system to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship.

There is only one barrier to the takeover: a powerful progressive grassroots election protection movement that’s savvy and well-funded and capably organized enough to defeat him.

Bannon’s plan is clear and simple. As he explained it on his Real America Voice program:

“We're going to take over the election apparatus. [Trump cultists with military and police training] are now going to volunteer to become a precinct committeeman, they're going to volunteer to become an election official, they're going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow these county clerks and they're going to take over the secretaries of state…And we're going to be relentless and we're not going to give up…And we're going to take over elections.”

Without massive clear-eyed grassroots opposition, there is no reason Bannon’s plan would not work.

With fanatic fascists as secretaries of state, the election apparatus in key swing states in the Heartland, old Confederacy and elsewhere would go straight to the Trump right, no matter how the public votes.

As we saw in Georgia 2020, Trump personally called the Republican Secretary of State demanding he swing some 12,000 votes. To his credit, Brad Raffensperger refused. But a Steve Bannonite would not. That’s their reason for putting him in there.

Bannon’s further point is to not let the vote count get even that far. His blitzkrieg is already rolling with foot soldiers whose military and police training…and guns of their own…will be difficult for ordinary citizens to withstand.

Through local elections or other means, Bannon’s “patriot” brown shirts will seize control of county and local election boards, running the voting however they like. That will certainly entail systematic Jim Crow elimination and intimidation of potential voters of youth and color, plus other suspected non-fascists, who will either be denied ballots, or will have them pitched in the trash.

In essence, nearly the entire national electoral system will be turned back to the pre 1960s South, and can be shaped to fit any electoral outcome Bannon wants.

As in school boards around the country, the assault on current election board officials is already being perpetrated with countless death threats pouring in over telephones and by other means. Physical intimidation is an essential element of a fascist takeover and the Bannonites are not shy.

The Democratic Party’s staggering lack of strategic focus, organized action, passion, and their inability to prioritize fighting back against a dangerous, highly organized, well funded, and fully transparent fascist authoritarian right wing movement can ultimately result in the destruction of our cherished democracy. The party’s abject failure in the recent Virginia governor’s race shows that the corporate Democrats are unprepared and incapable of opposing this assault. Bannon’s choreographed, focussed attack on our electoral system is far more than the Clintonites can handle. Their first response will be denial, followed by failure, followed by blaming the left.

Thus the resistance must come from the progressive grassroots, the election protection movement that has grown over the past two decades to demand universal registration, paper ballots, protected voting procedures, reliable vote counts and much more. It will need to self-fund, diverting donations from the Democrats to events like the upcoming Voting Rights Summer now being organized by election protection activists from throughout the country, working with established long-time progressive leaders prepared to do what must be done to save our democracy (www.grassrootsep.org).

In particular, all Bannonite Jim Crow operatives must be explicitly opposed. Local democracy centers must carefully monitor board elections and support pro-democracy candidates. Volunteer positions must be filled with supporters of universal suffrage. Every aspect of the electoral process from the precinct to the state must be dissected, understood and protected.

It would help if the movement could divert much of the tens of millions of contributors’ dollars the corporate Democrats perennially waste on worthless TV ads and high-priced consultants, as they just did in Virginia.

But make no mistake—-this is the battle of our lifetimes, for our democracy, our planet, our survival.

Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing. Do we?

Look up "Satan" in my dictionary and you will find a picture of Steve Bannon. 

Saturday, December 25, 2021

This Christmas, Republicans Are Giving Themselves Congressional Seats for Life

This Christmas, Republicans Are Giving Themselves Congressional Seats for Life 

'This year Republicans have managed to take fully 40 percent of competitive House seats out of play.' (photo: Getty)

Republican lawmakers this holiday season are unwrapping a rare and valuable gift: congressional seats for life.

Thanks to a breathtaking abuse of redistricting in GOP-controlled states, all but an unlucky handful of members of Congress will henceforth be exempt from listening to those god-awful whiners called “voters,” spared those bothersome contests known as “elections” and protected from other disagreeable requirements of “democracy.”

This year Republicans have managed to take fully 40 percent of competitive House seats out of play. All but about 25 seats of the 435 in the entire country will be insulated from the will of voters even during wave elections — not just for 2022, but for a decade.

The move might limit Republicans’ upside in next year’s midterms (they had to toss Democrats a few more safe seats to shore up their own), but it could also keep them in the majority for years, even if the national popular vote goes consistently against them. Already, Republicans could lose the popular vote by two or three percentage points and still control the House.

The changes guarantee more extremism in Congress (the only competitive elections will be primaries, which on the GOP side favor the far right), and whichever party is in control will have a slim, ungovernable majority.

The worst offender is Texas, where President Biden got nearly 47 percent of the vote in 2020 and Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke got more than 48 percent in 2018. Republicans redrew maps to give themselves both of Texas’s new congressional seats (even though most of the population growth was in Democratic-leaning communities of color), and they reduced the number of competitive House seats from six to one.

Democrats get nearly half the popular vote in Texas, but they can expect just a third of the House seats (13 of the 38). In order to get above 37 percent of the seats (that is, more than 14 seats), they would have to win an inconceivable 58 percent of the statewide popular vote. Republicans “have rendered elections meaningless, basically,” Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights group, tells me. And “it’s all at the expense of communities of color.”

Dave Wasserman, redistricting maven with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, forecasts a 30 percent to 40 percent decline in competitive House races from the 51 there were in 2020. Using slightly different measures, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), formed by former attorney general Eric Holder, calculates that 15 of 38 competitive seats from the 2020 election (meaning those decided by 5 percentage points or fewer) have already been redrawn as safe seats.

In addition to Texas, other redistricting abusers include North Carolina, where Biden got 48.6 percent of the vote but Republicans are attempting to control 11 of the state’s 14 House seats; and Ohio, where Biden got 45.2 percent of the vote but Republicans aim to control 13 of 15 congressional seats. Red states are similarly using redistricting to achieve supermajorities in state legislatures.

Democratic states have abuses, too (Donald Trump got 32 percent of the vote in Massachusetts, which has no Republicans in its 9-member House delegation), but Democrat-run states generally leave redistricting to bipartisan commissions, to produce fairer results.

“That has left Democrats playing with one hand tied behind their back,” Wasserman tells me. He calculates that such commissions cost Democrats 10 House seats they could have had if Democratic partisans instead seized the map-drawing in California, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado and Virginia. Were Democrats to practice the extreme measures Republicans have used, they could conceivably eliminate all but three GOP House seats in California (from the current 11) and all but three in New York (from the current eight).

Marc Elias, a Democratic elections lawyer who is fighting several of the new maps, says the bipartisan commissions were sabotaged by pro-Trump Republicans who refused to negotiate. “Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith,” he has concluded, noting that such commissions in Virginia and Connecticut couldn’t even produce maps.

Democrats might be tempted to imitate the Republicans’ extreme methods — but that would only confirm democracy’s demise. Kelly Burton, president of the NDRC, says it is “taking every tool in our toolbox to prevent them from annihilating the battlefield.”

But will it be enough? The Senate, formed when the nation’s urban population was 5 percent (now it’s over 80 percent), inherently gives lopsided power to rural, Republican states. The ferociously partisan Roberts Court has blessed gerrymandering and gutted enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, setting up a House Republican majority immune from the vicissitudes of the voters.

January’s coup failed. Twelve months later, democracy’s death spiral continues.

Bah, humbug on the elephant who stole Christmas.

Friday, December 24, 2021

Fascism: Republican candidates are now near-unanimous in backing the Big Lie

NORTH LAS VEGAS, NV - FEBRUARY 21:  U.S. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) speaks during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) at the Texas Station Gambling Hall & Hotel on February 21, 2016 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Rubio is campaigning in Nevada for the Republican presidential nomination ahead of the state's Feb. 23 Republican caucuses.  (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Candidates like Dean Heller have tried to play both sides of the hoax, refusing to acknowledge Biden's win while staying mostly silent on the lies used by his party to stoke those doubts.

Republicanism is now fully a fascist movement. 

The hoax claims that our current elections have been "rigged" against Republicans—claims that continue to be provably false—continue to be used to stoke the convenient fear and outrage of a base that now increasingly believes the party is justified in taking control of the government through the erasure of future election results or, as happened on Jan. 6, through violence. 

The party is not just anti-democracy: It is demanding adherence to a lie that has already resulted in deaths and will result in more, and purging anyone unwilling to go along.

This is the behavior of a cult. It is also the behavior of fascist movements throughout history, movements in which false propaganda is used to rally support for the violent "remaking" of nations.

That is the context in which this CNN report on Republican candidates' near-universal adoption of the Big Lie should be considered. CNN does well enough in identifying the absolute falseness of the Republican claims, and a Republican pollster provides the grotesque context: If a Republican candidate openly admits that Donald Trump was beaten not by fraud, but legitimately, "the consequences are probably that you are going to lose" your Republican primary.

"This is a deeply held value by Republicans," the pollster says. And "logic just doesn't work" here.

That, of course, is a product of the hoax. It is self-fulfilling. If at any point Republican officeholders pushed aside their cowardice and told the base that Trump was lying to them, the lie would have evaporated. Donald Trump himself is a delusional, decompensating narcissist who has claimed "fraud" every single time one of his schemes hasn't worked out throughout his business, entertainment, and political "careers." It is his go-to excuse for his own failures; he not only openly broadcast that he would be using it again in the months before the election, there are plenty of quotes from the bumbling oaf over the decades to show that the gutless preener responds to countless defeats by claiming his plans only didn't work out because everyone else was working against him. It is what he does.

At any point during Trump's new delusional claims, Republicans could have taken the decent, noncrooked, patriotic path of cutting him loose to wallow in his failed authoritarian dreams by himself. Instead, the party went with him. From raised-fist Josh Hawley to the co-conspiring Lindsey Graham's efforts to throw Georgia, the party decided to boost Trump's delusions as a new party platform, seek to overturn the election results based on provable fictions, and assist in—or at least overlook—an attempted coup.

That is the context CNN is missing. It is very interesting, to be sure, to tick down the list of Republican candidates for state and national office and see that nearly to a person, all of them are either loudly promoting the Big Lie that led to an insurrection or are attempting to toe the line of neither overtly endorsing the hoax nor objecting to it. But it is not a campaign question. It is an ongoing act of sedition.

The Republican Party goaded their base into so believing false conspiracies about why Republicans lost a handful of races that they would have preferred to win, during a year in which American voters were presented with an incompetent, bumbling, buffoonish response to national emergency and death, that they were able to rally a crowd to violently attempt to erase the next government outright.

If they are still pursuing the same hoax, almost to a person, then it is intended as sedition. Stoking violence, seeding contempt for democratic elections, urging the base to reject those elections and replace them with new versions the party can be more sure of winning—these are the acts of traitors. The Republican candidates, from Josh Mandel to J.D. Vance to Dean Heller, are keeping the seeds of violent insurrection in their back pockets. Not to use, necessarily, but to keep the base occupied. And paranoid. And ready to accept other lies, if the future requires it.

The only reason to demand fealty to an abject hoax even after it has been proven, proven for all the world to see, that the hoax has resulted in violence and an attempted coup is because you believe the same violence and sedition may prove useful in the future. It would have cost the party not a damn thing to reject Trump's criminal farce after violent insurrection proved the party could not serve both his whims and their country, but they did not. Across the country, they repeat it. They endorse it. They look to use it in their own campaigns.

This is a party that has chosen itself over democracy, over America, and over reality itself. These are candidates willing to betray their country—candidates who are betraying their country every time they whimper out their cowardly excuses. That is the context CNN is missing here. That this is not an effort to soothe one wealthy but gutless man's ego. That man attempted violence. That man sat in the White House after rallying a crowd to assault lawmakers rather than abide by our democracy, sat and waited to see what effect it might have, sat and ignored even allies calling for help while he waited to see if his gambit would win.

The candidates who back him now back him over their own country. They stand in silent—or not so silent—alliance with the first attempt to overthrow American democracy since the Civil War. It is an act of ongoing sedition. They are lying about our elections explicitly so to make it easier to nullify them, and are saying that out loud, and are writing the state laws to do it.

That is the context. A fascist coup. It is not a coup "in slow motion"—it is being carried out with the same speed that past versions were. A first attempt, an evaluation of what didn't work, a purge of those unwilling to go along, new laws passed wherever the coup supporters have enough power to do it, in order to dismantle the specific roadblocks that held things up, an absolutely rabid demonization campaign against whichever public officials foiled the attempt, and an unrelenting campaign to drill the same pro-coup hoaxes even deeper into the public brain. This is how it's done.

These candidates are promoting a proven hoax, even after it led to violence, even after members of their party specifically used it to incite violence. There is no innocuous explanation. They are using a hoax intended to discredit democracy and replace it with something else. This is propagandism. It is specifically crafted to deceive.

Call these candidates what they are: anti-American. Enemies of our Constitution. Cowards. Corrupt.

There is no excuse for promoting, defending, or even staying silent on a hoax of this magnitude. The only reason to do it is a belief that your own political career is of more value than the peaceful transfers of power that America once held sacrosanct. Not a goddamn one of those people has any business in a position of power, and there is no version of journalism that should present spreading a dangerous anti-democratic hoax intended to mislead an entire nation as anything but the acts of corrupt, dangerous thugs.

Donald Trump himself is a delusional, decompensating narcissist who has claimed "fraud" every single time one of his schemes hasn't worked out throughout his business, entertainment, and political "careers."

Thursday, December 23, 2021

PENNYFARTHING: Ted Cruz still appears to think he'll be president one day

US Sen. Ted Cruz R-TX, asks questions to Mr. Steve Satterfield, Vice President, Privacy & Public Policy, Facebook, Inc. as he testifies during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on September 21, 2021. - The hearing is titled Big Data, Big Questions: Implications for Competition and Consumers. (Photo by Ken Cedeno / various sources / AFP) (Photo by KEN CEDENO/AFP via Getty Images) 
As hideous on the inside as he is on the outside.

Oh, hey, Ted Cruz still wants to be president! Of course he does. The “breaking” part of this news is that he still seems to think it’s possible. Though, to be fair, Ted did snag a lot of primary votes in 2016—and that was before the beard. Imagine the mojo he’s got workin’ now!

Of course, Ted is universally loathed among warm-blooded vertebrates, so he’s forced to run as a Republican. And he’s also apparently forced to break big news via The Truth Gazette, which sounds like the name of a publication a Republican 15-year-old would come up with. And here Cruz is sitting down with 15-year-old Brilyn Hollyhand, who started the conservative media outlet “to fight the Fake News.”

Watch:

HOLLYHAND: “What are your thoughts on the field of potential candidates going into 2024, and would you ever consider another run for president?”

CRUZ: “Absolutely. In a heartbeat. You know, I ran in 2016. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. We had a very crowded field. We had 17 candidates in the race—a very strong field—and I ended up placing second. And, you know, there’s a reason historically that the runner-up is almost always the next nominee, and that’s been true going back to Nixon or Reagan or McCain or Romney—that has played out repeatedly. You come in with just an enormous base of support.”

Sure, Ted. Of course, the difference between you and Nixon, Reagan, McCain, et al., is that they hadn’t spent the previous eight years perfecting their impression of Trump’s second-least-favorite butt plug.

Cruz will run for president if the guy who called his wife ugly and suggested his father helped assassinate JFK says it’s okay. Otherwise, forget about it. It’ll also be interesting to see if anyone challenges Cruz’s eligibility, since you have to be a natural-born citizen to run, and Ted’s larval husk originally busted open in Canada. Of course, Ted’s proved his loyalty to our country time and time again, most recently by fleeing to Mexico when his constituents were freezing to death as a result of the holy free-market principles Ted is so proud of. 

And now he wants to bring his electric personality and failed Texas electric grid to the whole country. Well, I say let’s not fall for it.

Lyin' Ted incognito on his way to Cancun as "y'all" his constituents freeze in that political wasteland known as Texas.  Go get 'em, Beto!