MAGA who leave comments on my posts.

Brain worms. 🪱

Calls Itself the "Law and Order" Party

Nominates a Felon to the White House

I wish this was a parody. He actually said that. He said presidents have absolute immunity and the only method to hold a president accountable for an "official act" is via a guilty verdict in an impeachment trial.

And it's even worse than "congress being cool with it". Congress can be almost entirely against it and it'll still pass (according to Trump's logic) because to achieve a guilty verdict in an impeachment trial requires a 2/3 majority vote in the senate.

So really it only takes a little over a third of the senate, which is 34 senators, to be cool with it, in order to make presidentially ordered assassination of political rivals legal (again, according to Trump).

And even worse. These 34 senators could be representing as few as 17 states and as few as 24 million people, or only 7.5% of the country.

The Court of Appeals rejected this interpretation outright, but the fact that Trump chose to present this argument and continues to spew it in his rallies is a major concern.

I know I'm preaching to the choir talking about it on Tumblr, but Trump wants to be a dictator. And the Republican Party are supporting him in this effort.

Abolish the Republican Party. They're not a legitimate political party anymore. They're a hostile fascist entity trying to overthrow America's democracy and they need to be dealt with accordingly.

The majority of Americans want protection for transgender people, new poll shows

The current onslaught on transgender people in the US is extreme and destructive, and it is easy to get the impression that most Americans have become rabid transphobes. That is in no way the case.

On April 26 Fox News published a poll that showed that for the most part the majority of Americans do not support the Republican "culture war."

When asked about  the most important issue facing the country today, only 1% answered "Wokeness/Transgender issues".  

The fact that the survey saw wokeness and transgender issues as one and the same thing, says a lot about Fox, but the answer says even more about Americans.  Transgender people are not seen as a threat.

So what did Americans see as important? "Economy/Jobs" (24%),  obviously, followed by "Inflation/Cost of living" (16%) and "Gun control/Gun violence" (12%).

Targeting families with trans kids is seen as a major problem by Americans

60% of the respondents say that school boards banning books is a major problem. There is no call for censorship of LGBTQA books in schools.

57% say that "Families with transgender children being targets of political attacks" is a major problem. The number for Democrats is 69%, Republicans 43%. Let that sink in for a moment: 43% of Republican voters think the transphobia has gone to far.

Mixed views of trans people

This does not mean that a majority of Americans go all in on the transgender side. We have seen this in other polls too. Americans tend to believe that trans people have the right to live their lives in peace and without harassment, but they are skeptical, for instance,  of transgender women's competing in women's sports (57%).

However, if we look at this from a glass half full perspective, this means that the Republicans have not managed to turn the argument against trans athletes into a broader support for full fledge anti-trans hate, which is good.

The fact that 48% say that "Overly accommodating transgender policies" is "a major problem" can be seen as serious challenge for trans people. It is.  On the other hand, 50% see this  as a minor problem or not a problem at all, which tells us – again– that a majority of Americans are not buying the Republican driven moral panic.

Conclusion

This merits repeating: A majority of Americans support trans people's right to live their lives as they see fit. A great majority of Americans do not buy the Republican war against "wokeness".

This is a shortened version of an article originally published over at Crossdreamers.

See also: Americans’ Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues

Photo: Дмитрий Ларичев

"I think a lot of people in this country are out of touch with reality and will accept anything Donald Trump tells them. You had a jury that said that Donald Trump raped a woman. And that doesn't seem to be moving the needle. There's a lot of things about today's electorate that I have a hard time understanding." -- Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), January 17, 2024.

Mitt Romney was the most recent Republican Presidential nominee not named Donald Trump, yet he might as well be Rutherford B. Hayes or Charles Evans Hughes because that's how far away the Republican Party of 2012 seems to be from the GOP of 2024.

"The Democratic Party: Hey, We're Not As Shitty As The GOP!"

It really shouldn't be a campaign policy. How do we vote for that Target guy instead?

By Julia Conley

Common Dreams

April 8, 2024

"As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them," said a Democratic National Committee spokesperson.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s stated platform in the 2024 presidential race centers on promoting an "honest government," a "clean, healthy environment," and the protection of civil liberties—but his New York State director last week boiled down the Independent campaign's true goal at a meeting with Republican voters: ensuring former President Donald Trump wins the election.

Speaking at a meeting last Thursday, Rita Palma first checked to make sure there were "no Biden voters in the house" before telling her audience that her "No. 1 priority" is to ultimately take electoral votes away from President Joe Biden.

"The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter," said Palma, "our mutual enemy is Biden."

States including New York, California, and "most of the Northeast" are likely to vote for the Democratic president, she continued, but if Kennedy, whom Palma referred to as Bobby, is on the ballot in New York, the campaign could help "get rid of Biden."

She urged the assembled GOP voters to give their "vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing Biden's 270 [electoral votes]."

"Two hundred seventy wins the election," added Palma, who was hired by Kennedy's campaign after she canvassed for Trump in 2016 and 2020. "If nobody gets to 270 then Congress picks the president, so who are they gonna pick if it's a Republican Congress? They'll pick Trump, so we're rid of Biden either way."

Political observers have noted in recent months that Kennedy has drawn support from right-wing billionaires, but Palma's blunt description of her plan to "block Biden from winning the presidency" left critics stunned as the video of the event circulated on social media on Monday.

"Whole thing is an epic fraud. Kennedy is spouting Russian propaganda, is now openly betraying the country," said political strategist Simon Rosenberg, referring to the candidate's recent comments about Russia's claim that it aims to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.

"RFK Jr.'s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud," Matt Corridoni, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. "As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them: RFK Jr.'s campaign isn't building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes, they're building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office."

"The gerrymandering alone undermines Wisconsin’s status as a democracy. If a majority of the people cannot, under any realistic circumstances, elect a legislative majority of their choosing, then it’s hard to say whether they actually govern themselves."

--Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times

Jamelle Bouie points out the disturbing way that Republicans in Wisconsin have basically destroyed democratic representative government on all levels by:

Creating an unbreakable gerrymander to ensure a Republican legislative majority, even if more people vote for Democrats.

Weakening the power of a Democratic governor,.

Targeting a liberal Wisconsin supreme court justice for removal or suspension so that the state SC won't have the power to rule against gerrymandered districting maps, and won't be able to prevent a 19th century ban on abortion from becoming law.

This is chilling. Below are some excerpts from the column:

For more than a decade, dating back to the Republican triumph in the 2010 midterm elections, Wisconsin Republicans have held their State Legislature in an iron lock, forged by a gerrymander so stark that nothing short of a supermajority of the voting public could break it. [...] In 2018, this gerrymander proved strong enough to allow Wisconsin Republicans to win a supermajority of seats in the Assembly despite losing the vote for every statewide office and the statewide legislative vote by 8 percentage points, 54 to 46. No matter how much Wisconsin voters might want to elect a Democratic Legislature, the Republican gerrymander won’t allow them to. [...] Using their gerrymandered majority, Wisconsin Republicans have done everything in their power to undermine, subvert or even nullify the public’s attempt to chart a course away from the Republican Party. In 2018, for example, Wisconsin voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, in the governor’s mansion, sweeping the incumbent, Scott Walker, out of office. immediately, Wisconsin Republicans introduced legislation to weaken the state’s executive branch, curbing the authority that Walker had exercised as governor. Earlier this year, Wisconsin voters took another step toward ending a decade of Republican minority rule in the Legislature by electing Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee county judge, to the State Supreme Court, in one of the most high-profile and expensive judicial elections in American history. [...] “Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court,” my newsroom colleague Reid J. Epstein reports. “The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.” Republicans have more than enough votes in the Wisconsin State Assembly to impeach Justice Protasiewicz and just enough votes in the State Senate — a two-thirds majority — to remove her. But removal would allow Governor Evers to appoint another liberal jurist, which is why Republicans don’t plan to convict and remove Protasiewicz. If, instead, the Republican-led State Senate chooses not to act on impeachment, Justice Protasiewicz is suspended but not removed. The court would then revert to a 3-3 deadlock, very likely preserving the Republican gerrymander and keeping a 19th-century abortion law, which bans the procedure, on the books. If successful, Wisconsin Republicans will have created, in effect, an unbreakable hold on state government. With their gerrymander in place, they have an almost permanent grip on the State Legislature, with supermajorities in both chambers. With these majorities, they can limit the reach and power of any Democrat elected to statewide office and remove — or neutralize — any justice who might rule against the gerrymander. [color/emphasis added[

"It’s that breathtaking contempt for the people of Wisconsin — who have voted, since 2018, for a more liberal State Legislature and a more liberal State Supreme Court and a more liberal governor, with the full powers of his office available to him — that makes the Wisconsin Republican Party the most openly authoritarian in the country."

--Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times

[edited]

They won’t call it by name but they’re referring to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to fill thousands of governor positions with obedient Trump loyalists. The goal of course is to have an army of RepubliKKKan drones that will do anything Trump, or another potential Republican president, asks for no matter how illegal. The end result is a fascist state and the end of all our freedoms and the beginning of the Purge against us.

They also voted to block to student debt relief, cut tax breaks and subsidies for renewable energy, added work requirements for financial assistance, take back COVID relief money from states, and boost fossil fuel production.

And a very insidious cap on government spending that only grows 1% every year (less than the rate of inflation). Meaning that every year would necessarily require even more cuts.

The worst part is that they made it all a condition for the federal government to pay its debt. Their plan being that if Biden doesn't capitulate to their demands, the US government goes into default, which would cause a global financial crisis.

Oh, and don't think that the 4 Republicans who voted Nay are reasonable. They're voted against it because this bill didn't go far enough for them.

The good news is that the Democrats control the Senate and White House, so this bill won't get enacted.

TL;DR: House Republicans passed an extorsion bill that threatens to blow up the world economy if Biden doesn't capitulate to their demands to hurt poor Americans and make climate change worse.

Abolish the Republican Party!