Putin's one hope will remain. The #Kremlin will desperately await its savior from Mar-a-Lago – who one #Republican reportedly called “Orange Jesus.”
Whether #Trump’s return to the Oval Office really would end the ordeal that Putin created for himself is another story. For now, Russia is once again heading for failure in Ukraine.
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-trump-is-putins-only-hope-now/
Missouri GOP gov candidate says he's only an "honorary" klansman
https://nationalzero.com/2024/02/29/missouri-gop-gov-candidate-says-he-was-just-honorary-klansman/
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/republican-plot-against-america
The #Republican Party and Their #Billionaire Backers’ Plot Against #America
#THOMHARTMANN
..."Predictably, now that Republicans and the morbidly rich billionaires who own them have broken most of the social contract and systems that held the middle class together (and our middle class has gone from being almost two-thirds of us to fewer than half of us), people are looking for a change.
Politicians have been promising that change—a break with Reagan’s neoliberalism—since the 1990s.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned on change but missed or ignored most of their chances to stop the disintegration of the middle class, and Bush, Bush Jr., and Trump all doubled down on Reaganomics.
Finally now, many Americans—particularly “low information voters”—have reached a breaking point.
Their kids carry hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt.
Forty-one percent of American families have more medical debt than they can handle.
As Republican governors roll out voucher programs, our schools are failing and simultaneously under attack from fanatic bigots.
Fox “News” and other hate-driven media have convinced them that the U.S. is being “invaded” by brown-skinned people.
They’re in a constant state of hysteria about CRT, DEI, BLM, Antifa, drag queens, Taylor Swift, and any other boogeymen they can come up with.
These are the people Republicans are counting on to support transforming America from a democratic republic into a strongman authoritarian oligarchy. The GOP’s bet is that if they can keep things broken and bad enough long enough, then people will demand a dictator “who can get things done.”
They even hatched a scheme called Project 2025 that hyper-concentrates political power in the White House, pre-positioning the next Republican president to be America’s first dictator.
The good news is that President Biden is actually doing something about each of these areas where Republicans have worked so hard for the past 43 years to break our country. And his work is producing good fruit: Inflation is down, employment is up, wages are up, and consumer confidence is growing."...
#Carlson’s pro-Russia #Republican associates advance Putin’s interests in Congress. The self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” himself normalizes the Russian dictator who spent a quarter century invading his neighbors, jailing his critics, and exterminating his opponents. Business as usual.
Instead of building on the momentum, helping Ukraine win the war, and aligning with the White House, the Senate, and America’s allies, pro-Russia Republicans repeatedly throw the Kremlin lifelines.
https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-tucker-carlsons-moscow-visit/
#RussianAggression #Imperialism #RussiaInvadedUkraine #pro-Russian #America #propaganda #WWII #StandWithUkraine
AUSTIN, TX—A star who has experienced a meteoric rise in right-wing circles, 28-year-old conservative phenom Mason Finley is known solely for wearing a Nazi armband and crying, sources confirmed Tuesday. “Finley amassed millions of conservative viewers on his Discord channel, where the up-and-coming young GOP figure uploaded videos in which he is seen sobbing alone in a room as he sits with a swastika strapped to his arm,” said Republican strategist Gary Woodfall, claiming that despite being virtually unknown even a few months ago, the teary-eyed young man who wears Nazi memorabilia has already appeared at CPAC as well as Turning Point USA summits. “Something about the way he never stops crying and openly identifies as a Nazi has really struck a chord with the GOP rank and file. They see a lot of themselves in Finley when he blubbers and gives his weak little ‘Sieg heil’ salutes.” At press time, Finley’s popularity within the Republican Party had reportedly reached a fever pitch after he was seen bawling his eyes out and getting an SS symbol tattooed on his neck.
#conservative #republican #nazi #crying #satire #lol #funny #humor #TheOnion
Colorado’s 4th Congressional District has low standards, but not Lauren Boebert low
Lest you think I'm just being petty claiming that "Colorado’s 4th Congressional District has low standards," consider this FTA: The bad news is that three of the four people ahead of her in that poll bragged (alongside Boebert and two others) about being arrested. [emphasis mine]
On the bright side, this means that one of the four people who beat her didn't brag about being a criminal! (Yay?) I'm tempted to hope that's the person the 4th District ends up electing, although one is left to wonder whether they didn't brag about it because they're not a criminal, or simply because they (unlike the rest of them) don't view it as a badge of honor. Either way, they're the best of the lot.
"Republicans don’t want to fix the [immigration] problem; they want to campaign on it," the department said in a statement
House Republicans released articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, prompting the federal government to respond in a scathing memo calling the impeachment effort “unconstitutional [and] evidence free.” In addition to accusing Mayorkas of not following immigration laws, the GOP’s articles claim Mayorkas “terminated contracts” to build Donald Trump’s wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Republican House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green said in a statement on Sunday, “These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment.”
“Republicans don’t want to fix the problem; they want to campaign on it,” DHS wrote in a memo responding to the articles. “That’s why they have undermined efforts to achieve bipartisan solutions and ignored the facts, legal scholars and experts, and even the Constitution itself in their quest to baselessly impeach Secretary Mayorkas.”
The statement continued, saying that the “farce of an impeachment is a distraction from other vital national security priorities and the work Congress should be doing to actually fix our broken immigration laws.”
. . .
#republican #politics #gaslighting #DHS #impeachment #farce #UScongress #RollingStone #magazine
#Project 2025, if allowed, will cement #America as a #rightwing #authoritarian state
BARRINGTON SALMON
JANUARY 16, 2024
..."Project 2025 is a sweeping rightwing blueprint for the next #Republican #president, Trump or not, to run the country for the foreseeable future. Funded by The Heritage Foundation, Koch Brothers and a vast and secretive dark money network, the project has recruited at least 80 far-right organizations and entities to the cause.
Conservative warriors’ plan “to defund the Department of Justice, dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce,” the 30-chapter, 920-page tome says.
The president would have “complete power over quasi-independent agencies such as the FCC, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump’s political existence in the last few years. And they want to ensure that what remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative — not just for the next president but for a long time to come — and that the White House maintains total control of it.”
Project 2025 offers proposals to deregulate targeted industries, privatize government functions and help American corporations to make more money at the expense of American workers, the middle class and everyone except the oligarchs and the 1%.
Meyerson, editor-at-large at The American Prospect, said far-right conservatives and The Heritage Foundation have an extensive enemies’ list that includes “welfare recipients, lazy and liberal civil servants, anti-business regulators, environmentalists, and union bosses, “scientists, woke bureaucrats, woke educators, woke diplomats, woke generals and admirals, woke G-men, and anyone who doesn’t indulge the next Republican president’s every whim (an adaptation to the likelihood of a Trump nomination),” in the commentary titled, “The Far Right Has a Plan to Remake America. They Even Wrote It Down.”
Those in charge in the incoming administration are prepared to purge those deemed disloyal after identifying and interviewing “every Treasury Department official who participated in its DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) activities and programs, and make such activity ‘“per se grounds for termination of employment.”’
Leonard Leo, a major right-wing donor who significantly influenced and shaped the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority under Trump, has been a major fundraiser for Project 2025. (On Nov. 30, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted to subpoena Leo “as part of an ethics probe into undisclosed financial ties to U.S. Supreme Court justices.”)
According to a press release from the nonprofit Accountable.US, recent reporting from NBC shows that “The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, stepped up efforts to boost its Project 2025 initiative by ramping up grants to the venture aimed at creating a ‘government-in-waiting’ for the next Republican presidential administration, according to a new tax filing.
“The foundation distributed over $1.67 million in grants in 2022 — including a total of $965,000 to organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, tax records show. These donations accounted for 58% of Heritage’s total grant-making in 2022.
“Project 2025’s board of more than 80 conservative organizations includes nearly 40 that have received funding from dark-money groups linked to Leonard Leo … a prolific fundraiser, Leo is affiliated with an extensive network of tax-exempt groups, including DonorsTrust, a donor-advised nonprofit that directs money to other organizations and groups seeking to influence policy.”...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/rick-scott-debbie-mucarsel-powell-florida-senate
Could a #Democrat Beat #RickScott in #Florida’s #US #Senate Race?
Democrats are hoping Debbie Mucarsel-Powell can help them keep control of the Senate in 2024.
BY ABIGAIL TRACY
..."Whereas Scott is one of the wealthiest members of the US Senate, Mucarsel-Powell is an #immigrant who worked at a donut shop for minimum wage as a young teen in America; while Scott arguably made himself the face of the #Republican Party’s effort to gut entitlement programs, Mucarsel-Powell wrote the bill in the US House to expand #Medicare; and as Scott expressed support for federal #abortion restrictions and backed Florida’s six-week ban, Mucarsel-Powell continued to be an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights.
Democrats hope that Mucarsel-Powell is the right messenger for the moment. With the candidate being a Spanish-fluent Latina woman running for US Senate in Florida, Democrats argue that she is uniquely positioned to win back the support of the state’s Hispanic community, which the Democratic Party has bled in recent cycles. “Can Debbie find the money to be competitive, and can she change the numbers among Hispanics? I think the more that she can do [that], the more the money’s going to come,” said Schale, who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Florida. “I definitely think Florida’s trended Republican—I’m not an idiot. But I don’t think it’s gone from a state that Obama won by three or four points, or a state that was basically a dead tie five years ago in the governor’s race, to a 20-point Republican state overnight. It hasn’t happened. And a lot of that top of the ticket has been impacted by the fact that we’re doing terrible with Hispanics here.” ...
https://terikanefield.com/no-time-to-panic/
No Time to Panic
Teri Kanefield
..."The way to make sure #Trump loses the #election is not to spread panic because people who can’t tolerate all the crisis and spectacle will stop listening. The way to do it is the old-fashioned way. Talk to people about #issues that matter to them. Do they care about the right to choose? Make sure they know that women are being prosecuted for having abortions and some women are having their health endangered by being denied medically-necessary abortions. Do they care about the environment? Talk to them about #Republican #policies about the environment. Do they care about economic fairness? Talk to them about the implications of Republicans tax policies.
Panic is Draining and Leads to Burn Out
No one can do the work necessary to save democracy if they’re worn out from all the panic. Susan B. Anthony, Thurgood Marshall, and Pauli Murray didn’t panic when they saw the injustice around them. They got to work. (To find out what you can do to help with the next election, click here.)
Panic (like shock) comes from faulty thinking
Part of the faulty thinking goes like this: “All was going well until Trump appeared and now we are in trouble!” The faulty thinking comes from the idea that nothing like this has ever happened or would ever happen in the United States. (If you think the United States has never had an autocratic regime, think about what life was like for a Black woman in 1850.)
The heros of the past have brought us a long way, but there is always more work to do, and democracy is always fragile.
The Anecdoate to Panic is Knowledge and Perspective
The better we understand the current political situation in the context of American history, the better able we are to understand how to move forward. History teaches us possibilities.
Here are a few suggestions (I posted this list previously):"...
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/08/brandon-williams-interview-video-former-aides-00130713
Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) told POLITICO that his former chief of staff and former legislative director attempted to retaliate against him using his 27-year old daughter’s account on OnlyFans, a popular forum for people to charge for access to sexually explicit content.
For many on the American right, the Palestinians are a proxy for Iran and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are "criminals".On the left, the Palestinian issu...#AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #aljazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #democrat #gazawar #israel #latestnews #newsheadlines #palestine #republican #thebottomline #unitedstates
On Palestine, the gap between the US right and left is huge | The Bottom Line
Here's what happens if Donald Trump dies while running in the 2024 #presidential election
Sonam Sheth Nov 25, 2023, 4:11 AM ESTDonald Trump is currently the #Republican frontrunner heading into the 2024 election.
He is 77 years old and will turn 78 in June.
The GOP’s Secret to Protecting Gerrymandered Electoral Maps? Claim Privilege.
Through new and expansive assertions of privilege, #Republican legislatures around the country are shielding their work on allegedly discriminatory #voting maps to prevent the public from finding out how and why they made their decisions.
https://www.propublica.org/article/electoral-maps-gerrymandering-texas-voting-elections-privilege
A small rally in support of Palestinians was dispersed by a squad of riot police in Lyon, while thousands pro-Israel rally marched in show of Solidarity to I...#AlJazeera #AlJazeeraEnglish #alJazeera #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralive #aljazeeravideo #alaqsa #aljazeeraEnglish #aljazeeralatest #aljazeeralive #aljazeeralivenews #democrate #doublestandards #gaza #gazaunderattack #hypocrisy #hypocrite #instagram #islam #israel #israelunderattack #jerusalem #jewish #latestnews #newsheadlines #palestine #republican #savepalestine #telaviv #truth
Pro-Palestinian rally dispersed in France
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hkPawxJBY
9:22 min video
#maga #EchoChamber #republican
