Originally published at: On Day Griffin Concedes, Another Republican Power Grab In North Carolina Becomes Official
Jefferson Griffin (R) surrendered in his six-month-long battle to steal a North Carolina Supreme Court election from Allison Riggs (D) on Wednesday, the same day that North Carolina Republicans’ other ratfuckery — trying to strip power from the state’s elected Democrats to seize control of election administration in the state — became official. As my…
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Whatever happens, if it’s ‘good’ it’s Trump’s will, and if it’s not ‘good,’ it’s: (a) not his fault, or (b) it really didn’t happen, or (c) he was betrayed by unbelievers; it’s like the venal MF’er is the second coming to MAGA. Actually not inappropriate now that I think of it.
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Those folks are going to have to be dragged out.
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HI! We’re the Republicans. And we will do anything to avoid passing legislation or rendering judicial decisions or issuing executive orders or doing anything else that would actually help members of the American public generally. That is not our job, man.
Our job is to pass legislation or render judicial decisions or issue executive orders or do anything else that will make it easier for us – the Republicans – to hold onto our jobs forever,without ever ever doing that thing we mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Capiche?
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Republicans: Medicaid cuts, what Medicaid cuts?
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Republicans really hate the 20th century. Well, that’s wrong – they seem to hate the entire post-bellum America. The social safety net – tear it down! Election integrity – means not letting “those people” get at a ballot. Regulation of banking, industry, medicine – it hampers making money! Science – those people talk funny and make us feel DUMB!
And so it goes. There are enough of us to stop it. And we’re well educated enough to do it, and can summon the will.
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As the Congressional Budget Office concluded in March, the committee can’t come anywhere near that goal without cutting entitlements.
Since Medicare is even more popular with the public, that leaves Medicaid on the chopping block by default.
A recent survey of 10 battleground districts, conducted by GOP polling firm Meeting Street Insights on behalf of a mental health advocacy group, found that 68% of voters “say cutting Medicaid benefits in order to pay for tax cuts is a bad idea, while only 22% say it is a good idea.”
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Wow. If the world’s most experienced liar can’t figure it out…
Maybe they have painted themselves into a corner this time…
Probably shouldn’t get our hopes up, however.
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They want the tax collection machine. Governance isn’t even an afterthought.
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Headline above: New CBO Estimate: Medicaid Cuts Would Effect Millions
Affect is the correct term.
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House Republicans push to sell thousands of acres of public lands in the West
So let me get this straight: we’re going to sell land to raise money to cover tax cuts for the same people who are going to buy the land?
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and Boliek, within hours of the law taking effect, appointed three Republicans to the North Carolina Elections Board, shifting the majority to Republicans.
Party over all, even over any interpretation of the Constitution.
The Party, for which no Republican can seem to speak.
Stay loyal though. Bondi has them watching us at key, secret checkpoints. DOGE kids are up past their bedtimes. Were you there for the Party?
The Party will decide the truth.
Impeach Trump before he hurts someone
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BINGO. You cracked the code.
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Today, Ruth Ben-Ghiat shares some of the crap the other authoritarians of the world are doing. I’m sure they all share and laugh with our dictator when they drop by the oval office for a friendly chat about how to rule it all.
Some excerpts rom the substack piece: – " We are living today with the consequences of Murdoch’s cowardly decision to instead spread Trump’s Big Lie.
Authoritarians are certainly aware of the power of the media to influence their fate. That’s why they work hard to substitute facts for a version of reality that suits their needs. That requires silence as well as noise. They jail and harm journalists and use defamation suits to intimidate and silence media outlets and public intellectuals, even as they offer us streams of distracting media content.
Look at the cute hashtag #Melodi! These smiling individuals, who pose together at the June 2024 G7 Summit, are experts at generating such content as they cultivate a media climate that benefits them. In her first year in office, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government initiated the most so-called SLAPP cases –lawsuits designed to reduce negative publicity– of any European country. As for Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi, his government has escalated attacks on freedom of the press sufficient to earn India a ranking of 159 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom scale.
…authoritarians disappear people, and they also disappear knowledge that conflicts with their goals or threatens to expose their corruption and violence… Erdogan’s “insult” lawsuits, applied on a vast scale, offer an example of how autocrats are adapting their silencing methods for an age of information warfare, when gaining control of the narrative is everything, and yet achieving such control is much more difficult. His government targets ordinary citizens with defamation and other lawsuits, insult being a broad enough category to be used against anyone he and his government wish to silence, from Olympic medalists to schoolteachers and shopkeepers.
Between 2014 and 2022, a staggering 160,000 Turks were investigated for alleged insults against the president, and almost 39,000 had to stand trial, an average of over 4,800 people per year. With each passing year, Erdogan targets more and more people: in 2023, over 6,000 were tried, and fewer than one-third of those were acquitted. Between 2014 and 2020, over 900 children, 264 of whom were between the ages of 12 and 14, also faced trials for insulting the leader."
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MAGA Remembers That Trump’s Base Uses Medicaid, Too
Wonder if the MAGAts will also remember they use Medicare and Social Security too?
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Way, way too late for that.
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Isolationism ain’t cheap! Trump’s endless whinging has produced no major foreign policy wins. Atlantic writer Tom Nichols suggests now, if ever, is the time for competent statesmanship. Yet Ukraine is already off the table, with the conflict to go at least another year unless a) Russia runs out of money sooner, or b) Putin “retires”. We have India with 180 nuclear warheads and Pakistan with 170, both ready to go at it today. China is reaping the goodwill benefits of the trade war, but that’s not much solice in terms of lost orders, a property crisis and a slowing economy. Israel-Iran. Sudan. Sectarian strife in Syria that could lead to a regional battle royale. Normally, you have diplomats on call to sort out, or continue the generations of heavy lifting, emerging crises. Syria, in particular, is interesting because its most recent domestic conflict stemmed from the 2010 drought that affected not just Syria, but failed grain harvests in Russia and Ukraine. Wheat, for example, efficiently provides energy, nutrition, and fairly good water-equivalency (about half that of rice). It is the preferred grain for political regimes in dry regions, e.g. Egypt, while corn and rice may come into play elsewhere. Bullying and deals just don’t cut it.
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Duh, yeah.
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" No other state auditor in the nation holds power over the state election board."
Well, so much for honoring the will of the voters. s/
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