News loafs 'n culture wars: Rooskis pay Musk to be verified liars; Rewarding the morally worthy; Etc.

From the lying thugs are ruthlessly opportunistic and capitalists give them the opportunities files: This blast of miscreancy come by way of a tip from Larry Motuz. The WaPo writes: 

Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications

The verification means their tweets, mostly opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, are given added prominence

Accounts pushing Kremlin propaganda are using Twitter’s new paid verification system to appear more prominently on the global platform, another sign that Elon Musk’s takeover is accelerating the spread of politically charged misinformation, a nonprofit research group has found. 

The accounts claim to be based outside of Russia, so they can pay for verification without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. But they pass along articles from state-run media, statements by Russian officials, and lies about Ukraine from Kremlin allies, according to the research group Reset, which shared its findings with The Washington Post.

One of the accounts describes itself in English as “No woke. No BLM. No gender pronouns … Just Anti-Imperialism.” Purporting to be based in San Francisco, its profile picture shows a blond woman wearing a fur hat with a hammer and sickle badge. Another account’s biographical blurb says it is “Doing my part to stop Western support for the Ukrainian war machine, one taxpayer at a time.” It regularly tweets videos it says show Russians killing Ukrainian soldiers.

Welp, Musk is delivering the Twitter hellscape/crapscape he promised he would not deliver. Of course as we all know, lies like that are -- ALL RISE! -- protected free speech -- BE SEATED. There is no reason to believe that a person as intelligent as Musk did not know this would happen. He’s acting just like a tax-hating elite American fascist that admires and supports murdering dictators. He’s just doing his best to kill democracy and civil liberties, just like any other self-respecting fascist. 

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Christian nationalist (CN) fangs are sinking into the tax code: I’ve warned many times in multiple blog posts about the intense hate that CN dogma holds for certain hated groups, prominently non-heterosexual people. God demands severe punishment for such evil sinning. In the great state of Texas, a law is being drafted that give tax breaks to heterosexual couples but not same-sex couples. The CN movement desperately wants this done on a national scale, but CN elites need to first control congress and the White House. The Rolling Stone writes:

A NEWLY INTRODUCED Texas House bill proposes property tax cuts for couples who get married, stay married, and have lots of children. There’s a catch though. In order to qualify for the tax benefit, couples need to be heterosexual, never divorced, and their children born or adopted after their date of marriage. LGBTQ couples, single parents, divorced parents, and blended families will not qualify for full benefits.

H.B. 2889 would provide qualifying couples with a 40 percent property tax reduction if they have four children, with the tax break increasing for every additional child. Couples with 10 or more children would pay no property tax at all. Just getting started? A couple that meets the requirements laid out by the bill gets a 10% reduction even before they have children.

“Supporting Texas means supporting Texas families,” said Rep. Bryan Slaton, who introduced the bill. “Texas will start saying to couples, ‘Get married, stay married, and be fruitful and multiply.” 

This law will support only those Texas families and children that the state’s Republican party says are morally acceptable in God’s eyes. Blatant, cruel discrimination like this and accompanying poor public policy is what the modern radical right CN Republican Party stands for. No one can deny or downplay it any more. Enraged, vengeful freaks are in control of the anti-democratic, authoritarian-theocratic GOP. For those who cannot believe such a horrible, cruel thing is possible, some of the proposed law is shown below and the entire act of radical right CN savagery can be read at this link.

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QAnon-level crackpottery & lies: Like it or not blatant lies, culture wars and rising radical right authoritarianism are the new normal. Respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning have all completely fallen for the radical right Republican Party. The AP writes about one of the amazing lies gushing from the radical right propaganda Leviathan:

CLAIM: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case to remove President Joe Biden from office and reinstate former President Donald Trump in his place.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Supreme Court has not decided to hear such a case. On Feb. 21, the justices rejected for a second time to hear a case that cites baseless 2020 election fraud claims to call for the court to oust from office hundreds of elected officials, including Biden, as well as to prevent them from holding any elected government position again. Several days later, a website published an article incorrectly stating that the case was going ahead, but the post has since been taken down.

THE FACTS: Nearly one week after the Supreme Court justices doubled down on their decision not to hear the suit, social media users falsely claimed the opposite.

One Instagram post shared a screenshot of a headline reading: “Supreme Court To Hear Case To Reinstate Donald Trump Over ‘Rigged’ Election.” It had received nearly 1,400 likes as of Wednesday.