Republicans: continued

[Tero]

Hunter Biden selling art amounts to...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama- ... secret.amp
...money laundering? ..yeah, that is what they say.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The Cyber Ninjas are nearly done with their carnival 'recount' of votes in Arizona, so now it's time to count the ballots. Again. I've lost track but I think this will be something like the fifth time and Karen Fann, one of the main clowns that's been behind the 'recount,' is suggesting that there may be yet another 'recount' afterwards.

'Arizona Senate plans its own recount of ballots at fairgrounds as audit nears end'

The Arizona Senate will conduct its own recount of the total number of Maricopa County ballots cast in last fall’s election, Senate President Karen Fann said Thursday.

The Senate has purchased two paper-counting machines to serve as a check on the work done by its contractor, Cyber Ninjas, as well as the count done by county elections officials.

Fann called it a “triple-check” on the number of ballots cast as the audit is winding down toward a possible end late next week.

”We’re going to run all the ballots through to see how they match up,” she said in an interview an hour after stopping by the audit’s new location in a muggy, swamp-cooled building at the state fairgrounds.

“If there ends up being a difference, we’d have another count,” Fann said.

[Seabass]

[Tero]

Republican women (whoever, but why?) no longer supporting Bobert and Greene.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gop ... ssion=true

[Tero]

More Texas tricks
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/arti ... oting/amp/

[L'Emmerdeur]

[Image/meme of Representative Cawthorn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Cawthorn

This smug dunderhead knows his gullible/paranoid audience. What about the United States Postal Service? They send agents to people's houses most days of the week! Next thing you know they'll be marching in, grabbing your guns 'n Bibles!!!!!

'Rep. Madison Cawthorn Suggests Biden's Vax Outreach Is a Plot to Steal Bibles'

As President Joe Biden promised a renewed push to vaccinate more Americans amid stalling inoculation rates, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said Friday that the immunization drive sounded more to him like a nefarious plot to begin confiscating firearms and doing away with religion. Biden promised that his health department’s new approach would involve trusted local figures like doctors and pastors “literally knocking on doors,” to which the freshman Republican responded, “Now they’re talking about going door-to-door to bring vaccines to the people. Think of the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing. Think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could then go door-to-door to take your guns, to take your Bibles.”

[JimC]

The only safe response is to shoot through your front door when you hear a knock! Or at random, just in case!

[L'Emmerdeur]

Stop the presses. This article links to a number of sources, but the paper that seems to be at the heart of it is 'Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support'.

From the article:

The main finding of the paper ... is that support for the former president was driven primarily by negative feelings toward discrete social groups primarily associated with the Democratic Party: African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and gays and lesbians.

Hmm, whattaya know?

[Tero]

Boebert is a little, tiny Trump. The state party is in the same place as the country GOP. They can run Boebert in 2022 and maybe get 45-50%. Any other republican will lose to a Democrat.

More than 7,000 people voted in the poll that asked “What do you think about Congresswoman Lauren Boebert?

The poll was posted on Jan. 19 and had four responses to the question.

Leading the poll with more than 47% was “She should resign immediately.”

“I love her, keep it up!” was second with close to 28%.

With nearly the same amount of votes with both responses a little more than 12% was, “She is good for Colorado and the U.S.” and “She reflects poorly on Colorado’s 3rd District.”

https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/western ... b662b.html

Grand Junction (Western CO)

[Seabass]

[Brian Peacock]

[Tero]

No shortage of dingbat women in GOP
Dallas (CNN)South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem questioned the grit and instinct of fellow GOP governors who enacted Covid-19 measures like mask mandates and business closures to stop the spread of the virus in their states last year, warning that some of them are now "rewriting history" about their records as the threat wanes across the country.

[Joe]

Lauren Boebert's got to be auditioning for Trump's running mate in 2024.

[Seabass]

Remember, both Hitler and Mussolini failed their first coup attempts.

Trump makes Ashli Babbitt, killed in the Capitol riot, into a martyr. Why that's so dangerous.

When Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, 35, was shot dead by police while trying to force her way through a barricaded door protecting members of the House of Representatives from a mob of rioters inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, she was energized in part by then-President Donald Trump's big lie that Democrats were hard at work stealing the White House from its rightful Republican owners.

Far from dampening support for the big lie, Babbitt's death is being amplified by Trump loyalists into a powerful rallying symbol for far-right anti-government extremists the FBI calls terrorists, who now find aid and comfort within a Trumpified GOP.

Babbitt's canonization as a right-wing martyr is a dangerous development for a Republican Party with members increasingly comfortable pressing for and defending political violence. Trump himself seems to want to use outrage over Babbitt's death as a blast furnace to heat up his 2024 political comeback — but cheerleading extremism is more likely to send the country up in smoke.

"Who was the person who shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman?" Trump asked Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, before interrupting himself to offer an answer: "I will tell you, they know who shot Ashley Babbitt. They're protecting that person. I've heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official — a Democrat."

Trump's rumors have been firmly rejected by law enforcement, according to reporting by NBC News. A senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter said the officer involved was not a member of a security detail provided to a specific member of Congress.

Trump's speculation is also refuted by the video evidence freely available to the public, which clearly shows that Babbitt was not "innocent." She was shot while trying to force entry into a restricted area and disregarding multiple police orders to stop. We also know Babbitt arrived at the Capitol fired up by Trump's conspiracy theories, which she spelled out on her social media profiles alongside threats to Democratic elected officials, such as the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, and Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

In any case, it is doubtful that anyone in the GOP is actually interested in uncovering the truth about what happened on Jan. 6. Back in May, Republicans loudly and proudly refused to support a bipartisan investigation into the riot. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona went so far as to accuse the FBI of secretly having organized the attack itself — a conspiracy theory amplified by his GOP colleagues Louie Gohmert of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Matt Gaetz of Florida.

But the danger is greater than the now-typical muddying of the waters about what really happened during a day that threatened U.S. democracy. It represents a new tactic to further the spread of propaganda and distortion that courts — rather than denounces — the most dangerous elements of American society. The open embrace of the Jan. 6 rioters as "peaceful patriots" by parts of the GOP signals a grim reality: Republicans simply cannot afford to lose the votes of far-right domestic terrorists.

Under Trump, the GOP party line drifted so far to the right that extremists like Babbitt, the more than 500 radicals arrested and accused of invading the Capitol and their defenders now represent a major constituency in one of America's two national parties. In May, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 66 percent of self-identified Republicans believed Joe Biden stole the presidency. It stands to reason that Republicans will do whatever is necessary to make sure those extremists are in voting booths instead of jail cells next year.

That desperation is walking Republican leaders down a dark path made infamous by the Nazi propaganda machine. I am aware that comparing one's political rivals to the definitional party of hatred and violent fascism is a serious charge, one none of us should make lightly. Unfortunately for the GOP and for our nation, in this case the brown shirt fits with frightening ease.

As Matthew Rozsa wrote in Salon this week, Trump's elevation of Babbitt to the status of MAGA martyr bears a shocking resemblance to the story of Horst Wessel, a Nazi brownshirt in the Sturmabteilung ("Assault Division"), or S.A., which comprised Hitler's paramilitary terrorism force. Hitler seized on Wessel's death in 1930 as a propaganda gold mine, quickly elevating Wessel into a fascist folk hero.

"After a dispute with his Communist landlady — which was likely over unpaid rent, not politics — Wessel was shot on the street by two other Communists," Rozsa writes. The Nazis recast Wessel as a sacrificial hero of the fascist movement. And it worked. "Nazi propaganda outlets depicted him as a hero. His funeral procession was viewed by 30,000 people who lined the streets of Berlin. He became the subject of a major motion picture and was honored by numerous monuments and books."

Wessel's role as Hitler's martyr served dual purposes: It allowed Nazi leaders to claim victimhood — these dirty communists want to oppress and kill you just like they did Wessel — while energizing their movement with a clear enemy: These communists killed one of ours. Are you going to let that stand?

When Trump claims, falsely, that Babbitt was killed for "no reason" and that he has information connecting Democrats to her killing, groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who now evoke the brownshirt division of the GOP, hear the same message: What are you going to do about it? Having tried democracy and come up short, Trump and many others in the GOP are experimenting with a dose of old-style fascist strong-arming.

Ashli Babbitt was radicalized and then led to her death partly by a collective fiction about a stolen election amplified and encouraged by prominent Republican officials, including Trump. Now the ex-president has mutated Babbitt's death into its own collective fiction that could radicalize others like her into a pro-Trump cult in which violence is an acceptable response to the democratic process. Americans must reject these deadly fantasies before they incite another dangerous attempt to undermine our democracy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/t ... cna1273750

[Tero]

They have to stay out of state to Aug.

4D3219A1-07CC-4C77-BFBA-35C7D5105799.jpeg (83.09 KiB) Viewed 781 times

refusing to be present to vote on Texas voting law.
They cannot arrest outside Texas. They can ask states to arrest lawmakers, then bring them home.