Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[Traveler]

Well, it looks like Garland took the gloves off. Now that the list of classified info just came out, including nukes, the POG doesnt know what to do. They had a very bad week so far. Partly why I am back.

[AnBr]

I was just thinking about how you had not posted here in a while.

[Traveler]

Finally came out of a funk, politics wise. The forces of evil might have finally overreached, so wanted to share the fun (?).

[LFC]

Mike Pence is fascist-lite.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday urged congressional Republicans to stop waging war with the FBI following the agency’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last week.

Congressional Republicans have cried tyranny, revenge and civil war in the past week after FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago for classified White House records that the former president was supposed to turn over to the National Archives at the end of his presidency. Some Republicans went so far as to demand the FBI be defunded. It’s all part of a broader GOP effort to paint the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago as some politicized weaponization of law enforcement by the Biden administration, all designed to target Trump.

During a political event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Pence took issue with Republicans’ ongoing attack on the FBI. Pence told GOPers to direct their ire at the attorney general and said Republicans could hold the Justice Department and FBI accountable “without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel,” according to the New York Times and video from the Associated Press.

“Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop,” Pence said. “Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”

Notice how he defends the police, not the rule of law. Lawbreaking by his side and wildly corrupt ex-boss is just hunky, dory.

[LFC]

CPAC flexes its fascism. The instant Republicans gain the White House again they will go hammer and tongs at replacing everybody in the federal government who is not a sycophant with their own lap dogs. And the only thing standing in their way would be an utterly partisan, inconsistent, corrupt Supreme Court. I bet Roberts is thrilled about all of what is being "accomplished" by the "Roberts Court." Should democracy survive in America his name, to a fair degree deservedly so, will be a stain on American history.

For certain conservative power brokers, however, the base’s fear and loathing toward the FBI and DOJ presents something of an opportunity. “They are totally, absolutely corrupt,” Steve Bannon roared to his audience at CPAC Dallas. “They’re absolutely power mad. And they’re lawless. They will use anything.”

Bannon, though, is talking about more than just the FBI. He, and others on the far right, have long advocated for the dissolution of the civil service — a body many think of as a stolid bureaucracy but which Bannon would like you to see as a malign deep state tearing at the fabric of the American way of life. Particularly objectionable, for Bannon and those who think like him, is that the civil service enjoys job protections that insulate its members from pressure to bend or break the rules to benefit political leaders. As early as 2017, Bannon began advocating for the “deconstruction of the administrative state”; neoreactionaries have pushed the idea of “RAGE” (“Retire All Government Employees”) for significantly longer.

Trump’s presidency, culminating in his ultimately foiled effort to subvert the 2020 election, provided hard lessons about the roadblocks an independent civil service can offer and the attendees of CPAC seemed to have taken them to heart. Onstage, a mere 36 hours before the now-infamous FBI raid, Trump stated that a major priority for the next president would be “to remove rogue bureaucrats and root out the deep state. Congress should pass groundbreaking reform, empowering the president to ensure that any federal employee who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told, ‘You’re fired.’ You ever hear that? You’re fired? ‘You’re fired.’”

The policy plank echoed Bannon’s fiery speech the night before. “This is more than a bureaucracy,” he thundered. “This is an organic thing that’s grown. It has its own courts. It puts its own legislation out in the federal register. It has its own enforcement capability. It’s an absolute government that must be taken apart. Brick by brick. And Kash gave us — Kash showed us how. Axios has been reporting it.”

Bannon here refers to “Schedule F,” an executive order quietly signed into law by President Trump in October of 2020 and just as quietly repealed by Biden in 2021, and to Kash Patel, Devin Nunes’ former congressional aide who in four short years climbed spider-like into Trump’s inner circle and — very nearly — into the deputy directorship of the CIA during Trump’s last desperate efforts to remain in power. (He wound up as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense instead.)

The climber is still climbing. Axios reports that Patel is driving efforts to revive Schedule F come 2025. The order as signed during the Trump administration sought to remove job protections for any civil service job that influences public policy in any way — an estimated 50,000 positions — and allowed the executive branch to fill those positions with loyalists and lackeys loyal not to the country but to the President. It represents the culmination of a certain strain of thinking on the right — a policy with a hint of RAGE built in — but the Trump administration did not manage to act on it before its time ran out.

Next time will be different, various CPAC attendees promised. “We’re gonna have a well-trained cadre of people that will hit the beach day one,” Bannon continued. “And their number one thing is to start taking apart the federal bureaucracy brick by brick.”

[pnwguy]

From a friend of mine who I share political alignment:

I have been saying for a long time that what we are likely to see is going to look a lot more like Belfast than Bull Run. (Have you watched Derry Girls?)

I know you don't do social media - if you did you would have more insight into the other side.

Facebook keeps suggesting that I may know this woman - I do - although we were never friends. She was a cheerleader in high school, very smart, very popular and not particularly religious. Take a look at what she is posting.

Here is an excerpt if you don't want to go down the rabbit hole:

There is a war going on, and of course I can’t say what’s going on exactly. But from the time and research I have invested over the last two years, I have a very good idea who is causing the majority of the chaos. They are a well organized group known under many names…the illuminati, the globalists, the World Economic Forum, Davos, the deep state, the New World Order, Build Back Better, the Khazarian mafia, the Freemasons. It’s all the same people with the same sinister agenda for humanity. They have been using Ukraine to hide much of their illegal activities of money laundering, child sex trafficking, and bioweapons labs. Putin is fighting back to protect his own country from it. And if the war is escalating in an ugly way, involving civilians, it follows that it is the deep state who is causing that. They are all about destruction and chaos. I’m not saying I’m on the side of Putin and the Russians. I’m just very much against the New World Order globalists. They perpetrated covid on us, because they are trying to herd us into a totalitarian society where they control us digitally. That’s why I posted the above video. It’s all linked. We have to recognize the real enemy!

[LFC]

These people are literally insane. They have lost all touch with reality. They are the very people who burned and drowned witches, burned and tortured "heretics", and gleefully went to war over ... whatever. Their righteousness allows them to excuse all manner of immorality on their own side.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” --Voltaire

[pnwguy]

Aug 19, 2022 1:59:06 GMT LFC said:

These people are literally insane. They have lost all touch with reality. They are the very people who burned and drowned witches, burned and tortured "heretics", and gleefully went to war over ... whatever. Their righteousness allows them to excuse all manner of immorality on their own side.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” --Voltaire

Around Portland, I've been fearing the zombies that the latest strains of meth are creating, roaming the streets.  But this other brain eating disease is more dangerous.  A meth zombie on the streets has seldom anything more than a knife or self-made spear.  The other braindead out in the rural areas usually has more guns than empty beer cans. 

[pnwguy]

Time to update the poem?



It was six journalists of Mediastan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the GOP Elephant
Though all of them were blind,
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant
And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me, but the Elephant
Is very like a Big Beautiful Wall!"

The Second, feeling the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis very clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like an AR-15 with bayonet for queers!"

The Third approached the animal
And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
"I see," quoth he, "The Elephant
Is very like a pipeline, for oil to take!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most the wondrous beast is like
Is very plain," quoth he;
"Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a cross to burn at a Klan rally!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said, "Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can:
This marvel of an elephant
Is very like a parchment with an insurrection plan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a slave master's whip and rope!"

And so these talking heads of Mediastan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong.
Though each was partly in the right,
None of their conclusions were in the wrong!

So, oft in political wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about the mythical GOP
Whose totality none one of them have seen!

[Bact PhD]

Supreme Emperor’s attempt to regulate speech in the workplace is struck down…at least for the time being. Bold mine—a beaut:

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/florida-stop-woke-act/

In a ruling that took aim at one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s top priorities, U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker said Florida has turned “the First Amendment upside down” by trying to regulate how employers train employees on topics such as racial inclusion and gender equity.

“Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely,” Walker wrote, comparing the state to the television series “Stranger Things.” “But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”

[snip]

In an unusually pointed opinion, Walker trashed many of Florida’s defenses of the “Stop Woke Act.” In addition to ruling that the law was a clear violation of the First Amendment, Walker also said it violated the plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.

[snip]

At the root of the 44-page ruling is Walker’s skepticism that the state of Florida should get to decide what employees may find to be objectionable. He said the state had vague interpretations for the eight provisions of the law, including those that addressed what may cause someone to feel discomfort or anguish in the workplace.

[LFC]

Aug 19, 2022 13:47:34 GMT Bact PhD said:

Supreme Emperor’s attempt to regulate speech in the workplace is struck down…at least for the time being. Bold mine—a beaut:

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/18/florida-stop-woke-act/

In a ruling that took aim at one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s top priorities, U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker said Florida has turned “the First Amendment upside down” by trying to regulate how employers train employees on topics such as racial inclusion and gender equity.

“Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely,” Walker wrote, comparing the state to the television series “Stranger Things.” “But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”

[snip]

In an unusually pointed opinion, Walker trashed many of Florida’s defenses of the “Stop Woke Act.” In addition to ruling that the law was a clear violation of the First Amendment, Walker also said it violated the plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.

[snip]

At the root of the 44-page ruling is Walker’s skepticism that the state of Florida should get to decide what employees may find to be objectionable. He said the state had vague interpretations for the eight provisions of the law, including those that addressed what may cause someone to feel discomfort or anguish in the workplace

DeSatanist is pure fascist. Trump is more pure greed and the fascism came along for the ride as the best way to grift.

[LFC]

Calling for the incarceration of a political enemy who has done nothing illegal is sooooo 2016. Now the crazies need a stronger dose to get their high and that means literally calling for the execution of those you don't like. Outright calling for or at least sharing cartoons / memes about execution is now normalized within the GOP. The last step before actually doing it is to call for public execution but that's a baby step from where they are now.

Republican candidate for Congress in western New York said in a radio interview that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “should be executed” for authorizing a search former President Donald Trump’s home, before clarifying later in the show that he wasn’t being serious.

Sure. He wasn't serious. He fed his base the drugs they craved and then tries to step back. I'm actually surprised they're still even trying. Aside from that comment his defense literally boils down to "he's an ex-president." Yes, an ex-president you very well may have stolen nuclear weapons secrets. If he defends that then he's no real American. (Spoiler Alert: He's not.)

“So we have a couple of unelected people who are running our government, in an administration of people like Garland, who should be not only impeached, he probably should be executed,” Paladino said. “The guy is just lost. He’s a lost soul. He’s trying to get an image, and his image, his methodology is just terrible. To raid the home of a former president is just — people are scratching their heads and they’re saying, ‘What is wrong with this guy?’”

[LFC]

The fascist Federalist Society who has given us the current crop of results oriented justices, including several deemed flat out unqualified, just received a massive amount of money to continue their assault on democracy. The American oligarchs continue to push our nation towards being more like Russia where they can do almost anything they wish without all those pesky laws and regulations that benefit the serfs at their expense.

The Judicial Kingmaker

The New York Times has an important story out this morning on an unusual and ginormous donation by a conservative businessman to a new nonprofit group run by Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the Federalist Society.

In his role at the Federalist Society and at the nexus of the conservative dark money network, Leo is the judicial kingmaker on the GOP side.

Now Leo’s vast influence will be boosted by the $1.6 billion donation to his new group: the Marble Freedom Trust.

The Times explored the series of transactions in which the electronics manufacturing mogul Barre Seid donated 100% of the stock of his company to Leo’s group right before the company was sold to an Irish conglomerate.

Leo has been deeply involved in the nomination and confirmation of every Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice since Clarence Thomas.

[Bact PhD]

Aug 22, 2022 15:20:47 GMT LFC said:

The fascist Federalist Society who has given us the current crop of results oriented justices, including several deemed flat out unqualified, just received a massive amount of money to continue their assault on democracy. The American oligarchs continue to push our nation towards being more like Russia where they can do almost anything they wish without all those pesky laws and regulations that benefit the serfs at their expense.

ProPublica has some backstory, as well — too lengthy and involved for excerpts to do it justice:

www.propublica.org/article/dark-money-leonard-leo-barre-seid

“…more like Russia,” indeed.

[LFC]

This is how democracy gets demolished by authoritarianism. The former is still trying to hold onto the rules, norms, and basic decency that define it. The latter only cares about gaining and holding power.

Here’s a question that’s more difficult than you’d think: What do you do when wrongfully elected politicians try to fundamentally change the state constitution?

Even the North Carolina Supreme Court doesn’t quite seem to know.

The court ruled Friday that actions taken by an unconstitutionally gerrymandered state legislature may be invalid — but only in certain cases — because lawmakers elected to office cannot claim to represent the people.

The ruling concerns two constitutional amendments proposed in 2018 by a supermajority of Republican lawmakers, who had been elected under maps that federal courts had already struck down due to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. One of the amendments was an income tax cap; the other mandated photo ID for voting.

The issue at the heart of this case is an important one: If a legislature is elected through inherently undemocratic means, is it still a democratic body? Are its actions constitutional, even if its path to power was not?

The court’s answer was a muddled “it depends.”

The idea that a legislature could impose its ill-gotten power on future legislatures through a tax cap and on future elections through voter ID seems obviously unjust. It’s trickier, though, to determine how such an injustice should be corrected, and the fact that both amendments were technically approved by a majority of voters in the 2018 election makes it an even thornier issue.

Is it prudent, for instance, to allow every legislative decision made over the course of nearly a decade to be challenged and possibly nullified? What about laws or amendments enacted when districts were gerrymandered by Democrats in the 1990s? Probably not, and that’s a distinction the court appears desperate to make.

A line needs to be drawn somewhere, and the ruling attempts to arbitrate one. Ordinary laws passed by the legislature are not presumptively invalid, the court said, but constitutional amendments are fundamentally different.

[LFC]

Little Lindsey clearly things he'd look snappy goose stepping in a black SS uniform and those shiny leather knee high boots. "Political whore" doesn't even begin to tap into the bad places this kind of behavior comes from.

Shorter Graham: Don’t Make Us Hurt You

The GOP’s turn away from democracy and toward a low-key fascism (or not so low key, depending on your point of view), hasn’t come in one sudden lurch or entirely at the behest of Donald Trump himself. It’s been a steady transition enabled by countless so-called establishment Republicans. No one quite embodies the elected-Republican-as-enabler quite like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Graham’s comments over the weekend that there will be riots in the streets if Trump is criminally charged walked a fine between predicting violence and threatening it, Philip Bump notes.

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) took it a step further: “We see people like Lindsey Graham who are essentially saying, ‘Either allow [Trump] to get away with what he’s doing, or there will be more violence.’ That’s a fascist statement. It’s the use of violence for political means.”



But there’s another element to MAGA’s use of violence, its threats of violence and the incipient violence it celebrates: MAGA loves to blame the victim. We’ll have no choice but to unleash violence if you keep doing what you’re doing. If we get violent, you made us do it. Our violence is your fault.

Or as Ali Alexander (more below) put it over the weekend, as he rejected being called an insurrectionist: “I’d say be careful what you wish for, because you could accidentally gaslight the right into actually becoming insurrectionists.”

Tails I win, heads you lose.

[LFC]

Aug 30, 2022 16:20:03 GMT LFC said:

Little Lindsey clearly things he'd look snappy goose stepping in a black SS uniform and those shiny leather knee high boots. "Political whore" doesn't even begin to tap into the bad places this kind of behavior comes from.

Lawrence O'Donnell covered this story by starting with Little Lindsey's bootlicking history and the historically awful low Lindsey hit by "predicting" violence over prosecution of actual criminal acts. To see a highly likely explanation watch at least 9:45-12:20. Lindsey is likely scared of what the FBI might discover about his own personal knowledge of and/or involvement in Trump's theft of classified documents. It's the same reason he's dodging the grand jury in Georgia. He's been up to his little ears in traitorous, fascist, and likely illegal activity and he's scared.

[AnBr]

Aug 30, 2022 16:20:03 GMT LFC said:

Little Lindsey clearly things he'd look snappy goose stepping in a black SS uniform and those shiny leather knee high boots. "Political whore" doesn't even begin to tap into the bad places this kind of behavior comes from.

Shorter Graham: Don’t Make Us Hurt You

"Nice little democracy you have going here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

[goldenvalley]

A series of questions about Biden's speech last night.

1. Why didn't ABC, CBS, or NBC cover it live?
2. No major editorials on it really from either WaPo or NYT. Why?
3. Partisan speech or not? Does it matter?
4. Why give it now? Was it a warning to those who seek to disrupt the November election?

[jackd]

The networks may have deferred so as not to be under pressure to cover Trump and other Republicans' political speeches live.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 2, 2022 16:59:44 GMT jackd said:

The networks may have deferred so as not to be under pressure to cover Trump and other Republicans' political speeches live.

Is it your opinion that the networks viewed this as a partisan speech or did they just not want to deal with the howling and the pressure?

[Bact PhD]

Sept 2, 2022 17:16:43 GMT goldenvalley said:

Sept 2, 2022 16:59:44 GMT jackd said:

The networks may have deferred so as not to be under pressure to cover Trump and other Republicans' political speeches live.

Is it your opinion that the networks viewed this as a partisan speech or did they just not want to deal with the howling and the pressure?

My hypothesis is the latter—rather than even the possibility of the perception of “playing favorites” (never mind that Biden IS the sitting POTUS), the major networks all decided to punt.

[Bact PhD]

Sept 2, 2022 16:10:01 GMT goldenvalley said:

A series of questions about Biden's speech last night.

1. Why didn't ABC, CBS, or NBC cover it live?
2. No major editorials on it really from either WaPo or NYT. Why?
3. Partisan speech or not? Does it matter?
4. Why give it now? Was it a warning to those who seek to disrupt the November election?

Re (2), both Robinson and Sergeant at WaPo have pieces that went up in the last little while. Or are you talking about a piece “from the Editorial Board”?

I suspect item (4) is very much the rationale — head off the potentially “worst case” scenarios at the pass. POTUS may have more intel about the undercurrents of the MAGA movement than has been reported in the media.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 2, 2022 17:34:17 GMT Bact PhD said:

Sept 2, 2022 17:16:43 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is it your opinion that the networks viewed this as a partisan speech or did they just not want to deal with the howling and the pressure?

My hypothesis is the latter—rather than even the possibility of the perception of “playing favorites” (never mind that Biden IS the sitting POTUS), the major networks all decided to punt.

Which, in effect, means that everything is partisan these days. Media decisions fuel that narrative.  They either "both sides it" or they stick their heads in the sand which allows those that want everything to be partisan gets to set the storyline.

[Bact PhD]

Agreed, sadly.