News from Redstatelandia: America's future unfolds today

Given where the US is headed, brief news updates from red states seem to be in order. These fiddly bits entertain us as fascism slowly creeps over the land and poisons everything it touches.

First off, is Arizona and its move toward a police state. This one starts slowly, but over time one can expect the law to harden into fascist police state brutality. Azcentral writes:

People will no longer be allowed to take close-range recordings of Arizona police under a new bill signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey on Wednesday. House Bill 2319, sponsored by Rep. John Kavanagh, makes it illegal for anyone within 8 feet of law enforcement activity to record police. Violators could face a misdemeanor, but only after being verbally warned and continuing to record anyway.

The farther away people are kept, the less evidence of policy brutality their videos will contain. The original draft law had the limit at 15 feet, but it got changed to 8. It will take some years to harden this law based on to 1st Amendment concerns. The Supreme Court will need to nibble away at the 1st by creating exceptions for police activity.

We all knew this was coming. From South Carolina, a proud leader in fascism, we have more abortion restrictions on the horizon. From the NYT:

Nearly two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade, South Carolina lawmakers became the first to consider more restrictive legislation. The state had already decided to outlaw abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. But on Thursday its legislature, now empowered to consider even greater restrictions, offered the first glimpse of a state taking early steps into a post-Roe America.

 

Not quite yet there feller, hold yer horses

Abortion is going to be murder

The red state stampede to be the most fascist about abortion is on. Big herds of red state legislators states are thundering ahead in a massive cloud of thick dust. The race is on to be the first and worst. It will be of some interest to those with inquiring minds to see the unintended consequences unfold, including lives destroyed.

From Wisconsin he have an update on fascist election subversion:

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court barred the use of most ballot drop boxes on Friday and ruled voters could not give their completed absentee ballots to others to return on their behalf, a practice that some conservatives disparage as “ballot harvesting.” For years, ballot drop boxes were used without controversy across Wisconsin. Election clerks greatly expanded their use in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic as absentee voting hit unprecedented levels.

That speaks for itself. The question is how effective will it be at boosting Republican votes while suppressing Democratic votes? That is the intent.

Next is a fun snippet from federal Redstatelandia. This is about how the IRS will be turned into a tool to obliterate those darned anti-fascists, not to be confused with Antifa people. Well, maybe there will be some comingling. Whatever. The NYT writes about the IRS tax audit to two people that T**** hated and wanted to see dead, so they got the next best thing just short of outright murder 😊, an intense IRS tax audit 😵‍💫:

How Unlikely Is It That the Audits of Comey and McCabe Were a Coincidence? A Statistical Exploration. The chances are minuscule. But minuscule is not zero.

But gee whiz, it really was just a coincidence!

Honest!!

In the statistical analysis, there were other ways of calculating how likely it was that T**** had sicked the IRS on McCabe and Comey.[1] The odds of random chance at play were always so small that one can be about as certain as reasonably possible that the IRS intentionally targeted those two yahoos because T**** told it to do that. That's just how fascists do politics. Nixon tried to do the same fascist thing. But way back then, Republican politicians still had some respect for democracy, truth, the rule of law and the Constitution. Those days are gone and not coming back.

There's your exciting update from Redstatelandia. The folks there want to succeed from the Onion, er, Union. Maybe it's time to let 'em go? 

Footnote: 

1. It is hard to have sympathy for Comey. He was the Republican jackass that announced an FBI investigation of Hillary about a week before the 2016 election. IMO, that was a necessary factor in Clinton's loss to T**** (necessary but alone not sufficient). Naturally, Comey's devastating investigation fizzled into the nothingburger it always was. That left Clinton grievously wounded just days before the election. 

Some time after his fascist Republican investigation fiasco, Comey got pensive and philosophical and whatnot. His idiotic reaction to what he did was something stupid about like this:

Gee willikers, golly and shucks. I hope I didn't have any effect on the election. That would have been awful if it hurt Hillary. Gosh, dang and darn. That would have been not good. I'm all aflutter just thinking about it! Jeez. mumble . . . . mumble . . . . mumble

Lame Republican crap like that is enough to inspire one to buy an AR-15 (or two) and a few thousand rounds of ammo. For self-defense, of course. Peace out man! 

Peace out 2022

It's been real!

Devout Christian nationalist morality & propaganda tactics

Scott DesJarlais - the irresistible,

fornicating man stud

The NY Times Intelligencer Magazine writes:

For some insane reason, tea-party Representative Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee taped himself pressuring his mistress into getting an abortion back in 2000, the Huffington Post reports today. DesJarlais, now a pro-life Republican congressman, was a doctor at the time, and met the woman when she had a foot problem during a rocky time in his marriage. “You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais tells the woman, according to a transcript of the recording obtained by HuffPo. “This is not fair to me. I don’t want you in my life,” the woman says. “Well, I didn’t want to be in your life either, but you lied to me about something that caused us to be in this situation, and that’s not my fault, that’s yours,” DesJarlais responds. The woman counters, “Well, it’s [your] fault for sleeping with your patient.”

DesJarlais, who currently holds an edge over Democratic challenger Eric Stewart, beat sitting Democrat Lincoln Davis in a nasty 2010 race that included other skeletons from the doctor’s 2001 divorce. Their couple’s divorce filing “included allegations that he held a gun in his own mouth for hours in one instance and that he ‘dry fired’ a gun outside his wife’s bedroom in another,” charges DesJarlais denied at the time.

But this is a whole other thing, based on the transcript:

“You told me you would have time to go with me and everything,” the woman complains.

“I said, if I could, I would, didn’t I? And I will try,” DesJarlais says. “If I can [find] time, you’re saying you still will?”

“Yeah,” the woman answers. […]

“Well, we’ve got to do something soon. And you’ve even got to admit that because the clock is ticking right?” he says at another point.  

Craziest of all is that DesJarlais allegedly made the tape himself, in an attempt to save his marriage. According to DesJarlais’s 2010 opponent, the cheating doctor’s ex-wife confirmed the recording’s provenance: “She said he did it himself. She said the doctor did. She said, ‘He recorded it and let me listen to it,’” Davis said. “She confirmed to me that Scott DesJarlais is the one who actually did the recording, and let her listen to it.”

DesJarlais does not deny the call’s existence, but gave deflection a shot in a statement: “Desperate personal attacks do not solve our nation’s problems, yet it appears my opponents are choosing to once again engage in the same gutter politics that CBS news called the dirtiest in the nation just 2 years ago,” he said. But he brought this one upon himself.

There we go, blame that evil CBS for desperate personal attacks, i.e., truth, and false allegations of gutter politics. That will distract most rank and file Republicans for sure. Not sure what it will do for most non-Republicans.

Note that the fine people of Tennessee voted the DesJarlais scumbag into Congress, knowing about his fornications and pro-abortion mindset. Banning abortions is fine for everyone except Republican politicians and other wealthy and/or powerful elites. Their sanctimonious claims of moral superiority do not apply to themselves. 

Poor Democratic challenger Eric Stewart. He doesn't stand a chance in Tennessee. He is an unworthy, immoral, evil Democrat. They are not chosen by God. For their immorality and evil, God condemns all Democrats to eternal screaming agony in hell. That is according to Republican Party Christian nationalists and GOP propaganda generally.

Fornicators of a feather flock together

😍

Where's Jeff Epstein when you need him?

The Church invasion of the State

A report by Rolling Stone has been picked up by several other sources. The reporting appears to be factually accurate and genuine, but take this with caution until other sources have independently verified it. It feels highly plausible in view of the total lack of ethical standards that most Republican politicians and elites routinely operate with. RS writes:

SCOTUS Justices ‘Prayed With’ Her — Then Cited Her Bosses to End Roe

A right-wing evangelical activist was caught on tape bragging that she prayed with Supreme Court justices. The court’s majority cited a legal brief that her group filed while overturning Roe v. Wade

At an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the downfall of Roe v. Wade last week, a prominent Capitol Hill religious leader was caught on a hot mic making a bombshell claim: that she prays with sitting justices inside the high court. “We’re the only people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber said.

This disclosure was a serious matter on its own terms, but it also suggested a major conflict of interest. Nienaber’s ministry’s umbrella organization, Liberty Counsel, frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court. In fact, the conservative majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights, cited an amicus brief authored by Liberty Counsel in its ruling.

In other words: Sitting Supreme Court justices have prayed together with evangelical leaders whose bosses were bringing cases and arguments before the high court.

Nienaber is Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the Supreme Court. She spoke to a livestreamer who goes by Connie IRL, seemingly unaware she was being recorded. “You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the livestreamer asked. “I do,” Nienaber said. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.” She did not specify which justices prayed with her, but added with a chortle, “Some of them don’t!” The livestreamer then asked if Nienaber ministered to the justices in their homes or at her office. Neither, she said. “We actually go in there.”

Nienaber intended her comments, broadcast on YouTube, to be “totally off the record,” she says in the clip. That’s likely because such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. [no surprise in that non-response] 

Nienaber told Rolling Stone, “I do not socialize with the justices.” Yet she has posed for photos with Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas, calling the latter a “friend” in a Facebook post, praising him for “passing by our ministry center to attend church and always taking time to say hello.”

In addition to her proximity to conservative power players, Nienaber has championed the plaintiffs who have brought right-wing religious causes before the Supreme Court. Ahead of oral arguments, she prayed with Joe Kennedy, the football coach who recently succeeded in his suit to allow prayer during football games. Liberty Counsel also filed an amicus brief in that case, calling on the court to rule that the school district “engaged in viewpoint discrimination against Coach Kennedy’s private speech.”

As usual for Republican politicians in hot water, the Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. The good old KYMS (keep your mouth shut) propaganda tactic once again comes to the rescue of the corrupt, the immoral, the mendacious and the fascist.

This is exactly what a slow fascist coup looks like. We are witnessing in real time a greedy, aggressive Christian nationalist political wealth and power movement that now has the power to destroy all Church-State separation. Destroying it is the agenda, regardless of public opinion or the health of democracy. 

To be logged in the WTH files:

Supreme Court Justices 'Prayed With' Anti-Roe Activist Before Ruling . https://t.co/2zzwMyIvyg

— Katie S. Phang (@KatiePhang) July 6, 2022

Nienaber praying outside the Supreme Court in 2007 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Freeze Peach for bringing the RS article to my attention. 

Is the Democratic Party finally waking up?

The Washington Post writes:

President Biden took the stage at an Independence Day barbecue just a few hours after the latest horrific shooting to upend an American city — but at his first opportunity to address the nation in person about the Highland Park killings, he did so only obliquely.

“You all heard what happened today,” Biden said. “Things will get better still, but not without more hard work together. .... We’ve got a lot more work to do. We’ve got to get this under control.”

In contrast, J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, delivered a fiery response that took direct aim at those blocking gun control legislation. “If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry,” he said, seething while Biden was consoling. “I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence.”

In the view of many distraught Democrats, the country is facing a full-blown crisis on a range of fronts, and Biden seems unable or unwilling to respond with appropriate force. Democracy is under direct attack, they say, as Republicans change election rules and the Supreme Court rapidly rewrites American law. Shootings are routine, abortion rights have ended and Democrats could suffer big losses in the next election.

Biden’s response is often a mix of scolding Republicans, urging Americans to vote Democratic and voicing broad optimism about the country. For some Democrats, that risks a dangerous failure to meet the moment.

“There is a leadership vacuum right now, and he’s not filling it,” said Adam Jentleson, a Democratic consultant and former top adviser to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid of Nevada. “I sympathize with the argument that there’s very little they can do legislatively. But in moments of crisis, the president is called upon to be a leader. And when people are feeling scared and angry and outraged, they look to him for that, and they’re not getting much.”  

But as the Democratic rank-and-file’s thirst for a more combative attitude becomes increasingly evident, other party leaders are beginning to showcase an alternative tone, one that goes far more sharply at Republican attitudes and tactics. Pritzker mocked the notion that “you have a constitutional right to an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine” — something Biden has done previously — and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been displaying a notably pugnacious spirit.  

On July Fourth, Newsom took the unusual step of airing an ad in Florida, .... 
“Freedom? It’s under attack in your state,” Newsom said in the ad, addressing Florida residents and citing book bans, voting restrictions and laws on classroom instruction. “I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight. Or join us in California — where we still believe in freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love. Don’t let them take your freedom.”  

Biden has, if anything, been criticized at times for going too far in his tone, his aides note, as when he compared modern-day Republicans to 1960s-era segregationists, incurring the wrath of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others, including some in his own party.

In case anyone missed the point, Ian Calderon, the Democratic former majority leader of the California State Assembly, tweeted, “Governor @GavinNewsom is the only Dem that seems to understand that democrats everywhere want their leaders to push back with a strong message and to stop letting the GOP control the narrative. Republicans are loud and it’s time for Democrats to get louder.”  

Biden has dismissed other ideas by saying they would be struck down in court or would never pass Congress. His critics say he should be pushing on all fronts, not second-guessing actions before attempting them.

“What the president and the Democratic Party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe, this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez said recently NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This is a crisis of legitimacy, and President Biden must address that.”

Clearly, some Democratic Party elites are aware of the danger the GOP poses to democracy, truth and civil liberties. Biden and his team defend what Biden does, but from what I can tell, his messaging is weak. Republicans, not the Democrats, control the narratives, which are mostly lies and outrageous slanders. 

Biden's supporters citing Republican pushback for calling Republicans 1960s era segregationists is lame. The allegation is more true than false. McConnell expressing outrage does not change inconvenient truth into a lie. Most modern Republican elites are a lot like 1960s era segregationists, whether they know it or believe it or not. Maybe most of the rank and file is too. Republicans now openly support elimination of existing civil liberties, including freedom from racial segregation. Defense of civil liberties was the point of the Newsome ad in Florida.

Going forward, it appears that Biden will stay in character. He apparently believes that what he is doing now is the best way to deal with rising fascism in the Republican Party, assuming he sees any fascist threat, which he may not. It is not clear that he has major concerns about rising laissez-faire capitalism, which is also a deadly serious threat to democracy, truth and civil liberties. Biden is a neoliberal and pro-corporation. He appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the power and intent of major corporations to take our democracy down, whether they know it or believe it or not.[1]

Footnote: 

1. This point needs to be made over and over and over: When corporations are deregulated, power always or almost always flows from government and its ability to defend the public interest, civil liberties and the environment. Power flows back to the corporations, which operate mostly without much or any social conscience. For the most part, profit is the only moral value of major concern. All of that is sacred laissez-faire capitalist dogma. 

“Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”  -- Economist Milton Friedman, The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays, 1969

“Like the raging, blind ideologue he was, Milty-poo conveniently ignored the gigantically inconvenient fact that major corporations and sectors of commerce buy politicians with campaign contributions, a/k/a, free speech. Corporations literally write the rules of the game for the purchased politicians to insert into federal laws. The corporation’s rules of the game legalized corruption, deception and fraud. The rules of the game are rigged to serve special corporate interests at the expense of the public interest, including the environment. Wealth influences policy, not public opinion or the will of the people.”  -- Germaine Descant, Dissident Politics, July 6, 2022