Republicans: continued

[Tero]

sierracascadia
43m
The Media isn't telling you something clear to anyone paying attention: THE GOP IS IN TOTAL DISARRAY OVER THIS SHUTDOWN
Trump House passed a CR and has no votes scheduled. They've said "we aren't budging an inch."
Trump Senate is like "Gosh, you should just agree to an extension and we pinky promise to maybe talk to you about health care in the future. If you don't, the White House might get very mean."

[Brian Peacock]

.... Reminds me of some scenes from Brazil.

Or even The Boys from Brazil.

[Tero]

Mike Johnson got a little excited describing the able bodied 30-year olds sitting in mom's basement getting Medicaid. Muscles were discussed.

I think he is gay.

[Sean Hayden]

Probably just overly worried about becoming gay, definitely seen a dude or two when he wished he hadn’t.

[Brian Peacock]

He's not actually gay - he just sometimes has sex with guys who are.

[Sean Hayden]

[L'Emmerdeur]

JD Vance apparently thinks that if he tugs his forelock hard enough the MAGAs will consider him the heir to the throne. Maybe it'll work but being an ostentatious arse-kisser may not be the ideal resume for a greasily hopeful princeling. In this post he goes the creepy AI video route. The tune being played is from a right-wing metal band (Avenged Sevenfold). The lyrics are 'inspiring.'

Hail to the King

[Verse 1]
Watch your tongue or have it cut from your head
Save your life by keeping whispers unsaid
Children roam the streets, now orphans of war
Bodies hangin' in the streets to adore

[Pre-Chorus]
Royal flames will carve a path in chaos
Bringing daylight to the night
Death is riding into town with armor
They've come to take all your rights

[Chorus]
Hail to the king
Hail to the one
Kneel to the crown
Stand in the sun
Hail to the king
(Hail! Hail! Hail)
The king

[Verse 2]
Blood is spilt while holding keys to the throne
Born again, but it’s too late to atone
No mercy from the edge of the blade
Dare escape, and learn the price to be paid

[Pre-Chorus]
Let the water flow with shades of red now
Arrows black out all the light
Death is riding into town with armor
They've come to grant you your rights

[Chorus]
Hail to the king
Hail to the one
Kneel to the crown
Stand in the sun
Hail to the king
(Hail! Hail! Hail!)
The king

[Guitar Solo]

[Bridge]
There's a taste of fear
(Hail! Hail! Hail!)
When the henchmen call
(Hail! Hail! Hail!)
Iron fist to tame the land
(Hail! Hail! Hail!)
Iron fist to claim it all

[Chorus]
Hail to the king
Hail to the one
Kneel to the crown
Stand in the sun
Hail to the king
Hail to the one
Kneel to the crown
Stand in the sun
Hail to the king
(Hail! Hail! Hail!)

[Brian Peacock]

JD will seek hails until he gets what he wants.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Just bleating out the racist agenda openly now.

'Red state lawmaker triggers alarms with call to "overturn Amendment 14"'

A red state lawmaker quietly called on the Supreme Court to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment, but plenty of people are calling out the stunning remark.

"Say what now?" Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kyle Whitmire wrote on X, reacting to comments from Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter on Friday.

The GOP state Speaker told local media, "I certainly hope the Supreme Court will overturn Amendment 14," as the state moves to redistrict. The Fourteenth Amendment promises equal protection under the law, as well as due process and birthright and naturalized citizenship.

...

Ledbetter told the press that the Alabama House is still seeking more power to change their state's elections, saying, "all we need now is the courts to overturn Fourteen, and we can look at the election."

...

Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, noted that "this is the same legislative body a court found engaged in intentional racial discrimination in drawing voting maps."

[Brian Peacock]

Seem to recall that about 30% of Alabama is non-white, and about 80% of the non-white population is black. Presumably they think it would be great to remove the right to vote from about a quarter of their population, but are they willing to rescind Alabama's representation in Congress if they do?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Nominally about Trump, I think this piece speaks more to the Republican Party and what its embrace of Trump says about a significant number of Republicans. I think that's been said here any number of times, so feel free to skip it but the analysis is difficult to refute, in my opinion.

I know Republicans personally who fit the bill, one who I don't think does. I visit a discussion board made up almost entirely of Trumpists. It used to be more balanced but the owner put a Trumpist in charge and he wielded his power with a heavy hand. More than one of the remaining members claims to find Trump personally distasteful but still fully supports the things he does, including ridiculous and self-aggrandizing things like the 'ballroom.' This article makes the claim that it's untenable to separate Trump's toxic personality from the autocracy he's been building during his second stint in the White House, with the cooperation of Republicans in Congress and in the Supreme Court.

'Trump’s vulgarity is poisoning public life'

Donald Trump is a vulgarian. We know this — it has long been a defining feature of his public and private lives. But a new report from the Washington Post quantifies what many people have sensed: Trump’s use of profanity, insults and combative language has grown much worse since his return to power in January 2025.

In Trump’s first term, about 40% of his speeches contained at least one use of vulgarity. During just the first 16 months of his second term, that figure stands at 93%. The president’s profane or insulting posts on social media have also tripled as compared to his first term. The barrages are coming much later; most of his posts are made between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., indicating the president, who has always been nocturnal, is even more so as he approaches his 80th birthday in June. His Truth Social posts are more self-referential and egomaniacal: in 2026, half of his posts have used first-person pronouns — sometimes more than 12 times in a single post. That is up from 30% from 2018.

But this goes beyond numbers. Trump’s vulgar behavior and cruelty are not incidental. They are structural, and a defining feature of his policies, his view of democracy and society, and his relationship to the American people and the world.

Empowered by the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, the president has been elevated as America’s first de facto king and aspiring dictator. His apparent desire to end real democracy and the rule of law — replacing it with competitive authoritarianism through the Big Lie, voter nullification, voter suppression, and the threat of the Insurrection Act and martial law — are accelerating features of his political project.

Trump launched a war of choice against Iran and has repeatedly threatened to destroy its civilization — actions that are crimes against humanity. His administration is transparently corrupt and ethically compromised, with his personal and family wealth estimated to have grown by billions of dollars.

The president is a crude racist who has shared an artificial intelligence-generated video of the Obamas as apes. He routinely insults the intelligence of Black people — and Black women specifically — as “low IQ.” He says that non-white immigrants are “poison” in “the blood” of the nation and parasites. He has repeatedly shown himself to be a sexist and a misogynist.

These are not character flaws or just bad behavior. Collectively, they are attacks on basic principles and norms of democracy, civility, decency, equality, fairness, and dignity that American civic life nominally rests on.

... It is not a coincidence that Trump’s language and behavior has coarsened in direct proportion to the acceleration of his authoritarian project.

...

Speaking to the Post, historian Julian Zelizer called Trump historically unique in his use of profanity and how it “meshes with a very aggressive presidency” and a high-dominant leadership style. A curse word, Zelizer noted, is more than just that; the president’s profanity is a signal, a threat, directed at anyone who opposes him, of just how far he is willing to go.

Public opinion polls and focus groups have repeatedly shown that Trump’s MAGA followers admire that he “tells it like it is” — that he ignores “political correctness,” and talks like them. In an example of an unhealthy leader-follower dynamic and mass disinhibition, the president’s diehard MAGA followers yearn to have such power and ability to act without consequence.

...

Presidents are role models and teachers for a nation. Earlier this month, Trump invited a group of children to the Oval Office to celebrate the return of the Presidential Fitness Test. Instead of an age-appropriate conversation about the importance of exercise and health, he decided to give the children a crude lesson about the need for national strength and vitality, Iran, the possibility of imminent nuclear apocalypse, and how Iranian protesters — including women — were shot in the head by snipers.

Trump even went so far as to ask the children to think about all the death a nuclear war would cause, and if they would even be alive right now if the United States had not attacked Iran. “You might be too young for this,” Trump told them. But that didn’t stop him from warning them that “[y]ou can’t let a bunch of lunatics have a nuclear weapon or the world will be in a lot of trouble.”

At one point in this lesson, Trump pressed his finger to his forehead to demonstrate how Iranian protesters were shot between the eyes. He also warned the children about transgender women in sports, calling them predatory.

Several children looked visibly upset. They should have been. Trump was actually teaching them about violence, strength and nationalism, and grooming them to fear the dangerous Other –– the organizing values of fascism.

Since the president’s return to power, I keep coming back to “Slouching Towards Gomorrah,” the 1996 book by federal judge — and failed Supreme Court nominee — Robert Bork. The book was a defining work for the right-wing culture wars, beating the drum for a moral panic about how liberals’ supposed wickedness, immorality and crudeness were destroying the traditional values that American civilization and Western society depended on.

Three decades later, it is a dark and rich irony to see the immorality and cultural degradation that Bork railed against made manifest in the person of Trump — and in his red hat-wearing followers. The irony is dark, but as historian Rick Perlstein has sharply argued, it is really not that surprising.

“What I got wrong about the American right was the idea that it succeeded in the 1960s by purging its crazier, more reactionary, more paranoid elements and becoming respectable,” he told the late journalist Bill Moyers in a 2017 interview. Historians are beginning to rethink that formulation, which is really the conservative’s own self-representation. It’s a very self-congratulatory representation. What if the crazy paranoid fringe was in fact the vanguard?”

Donald Trump did not conquer or otherwise take over the Republican Party and “conservative” movement, nor has he corrupted their innocence. He just gave them permission to be their true selves.

[Tero]

Trump is Hitler. They never had a Hitler before. All their attempted Hitlesrs before this were ridiculous and could not convince anyone to go and get them elected. But perhaps we never had MAGA then.

Worked well for Project 2025. Trump will have appointed 5 Supreme Court justices when he leaves or drops dead. Thomas better get going. The Billionaires should just pay his retirement.

[pErvinalia]

That's an interesting idea. Pay off the ancient members and then install younger members who'll ensure maga lives on for decades.

[Svartalf]

there no longer are republicans, until the frump in chief and everybody influenced by his style and politics are out of the party, and the people who let whatever influences led to such people reaching power are either out too, or put their rifle on the other shoulder, there are no republicans, there is only the repugnant party.

[Brian Peacock]

...

'Trump’s vulgarity is poisoning public life'

...

Presidents are role models and teachers for a nation...

Since when?