Oliver Willis on why the Supremes' Dobbs decision is a disaster for Republicans:
"It is a perfect example of what happens when conservatism is put in power. The ideology has failed over and over again, on fiscal policy, international policy, and social policy. It doesn’t work because it is divorced from reality and exists to control people, oppress certain classes of people, and empower those who already wield much of the power in our society."
#Republicans #abortion
https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/republicans-try-to-paper-over-their
"With fascism on the rise in the United States, we cannot laugh off the fact that the dominant political party in the country’s second-most-populous state [i.e., Texas] flat-out refuses to recognize the authority of the duly elected POTUS, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr."
~Greg Olear
#Texas #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BigLie
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https://gregolear.substack.com/p/acting-presidents-and-lone-star-sedition
"Texas has the third lowest voter turnout of any state in the union; only West Virginia and Arkansas are worse. Part of that is by apathy, but part is by design. The Texas GOP, which has controlled the state legislature for decades, has turned voter suppression into an art form. The result is the most corrupt and ineffectual governor/lieutenant governor/attorney general troika in the United States."
#Texas #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BigLie
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"With fascism on the rise in the United States, we cannot laugh off the fact that the dominant political party in the country’s second-most-populous state [i.e., Texas] flat-out refuses to recognize the authority of the duly elected POTUS, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr."
~Greg Olear
#Texas #Republicans #fascism #democracy #BigLie
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https://gregolear.substack.com/p/acting-presidents-and-lone-star-sedition
"The GOP has a crowded field of habitual liars. But Ramaswamy is perhaps the current master of what Kate McKinnon’s SNL version of Laura Ingraham described as 'feel facts, which aren’t technically true but just feel true.'
Ramaswamy’s favorite rhetorical tactic is to label a transparent falsehood as a 'truth,' and to then declare that a corresponding fact is a 'hoax.'”
~ David Lurie
#Vivek #Ramaswamy #lies #ConspiracyTheories
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/vivek-ramaswamy-rise-explained
As Max Burns notes, the limelight Vivek Ramaswamy enjoys after the Republican "debate" has come with some challenges to him:
Namely, he keeps making statements which show that he knows very little about how government works — though he has proposed a civic test for prospective voters.
He's young, callow, brash, and arrogant, and while that may carry the MAGA crowd, sober folks will look twice before supporting him.
#Vivek #Ramaswamy #Republicans
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4177498-vivek-ramaswamys-no-good-very-bad-week/
They'll try things like, "I'm with the Democrats, but Biden has done nothing at all to help people economically."
Cite them chapter and verse about Biden's remarkable accomplishments to mend an economy badly broken by Trump (and the pandemic), and they'll flatly deny the facts or tell you, "Well, some people have benefited from economic recovery. But not working-class people."
These folks don't want the facts or to have an honest discussion. That's not their game.
#SocialMedia #solidarity
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A kind of trolling we can expect to see a lot of on social media leading up to the 2024 elections in the US:
Folks logging into other folks' feed, pretending to be "liberals," whose sole goal is to sow seeds of divisions among those fighting to keep the Republicans and Trump from regaining control of the federal government.
These fake "liberals" are operatives. They aren't who they claim to be. They're engaged in disreputable divide-and-conquer work.
#SocialMedia #solidarity
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nostr:npub1j5xwn3vhyftsuc4g0js2rdvzp4hfd3ec4tvtqkpc9r3xryc50jmqfef7hw Thanks for the long-distance diagnosis! Yep. We're done.
5. At the bottom of this claim is the determination to weaponize Christianity and use it to beat down those perceived as a threat to established power — the "demons."
6. In Catholic culture, this all gets tied up with reassertion and power of the clergy, who feel under siege in a rapidly changing world. The more these folks blather about demons and their unique power to vanquish demons, the more empty their claims to dominance become.
#demonic #exorcism #MattSchlapp
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3. Reactionary men (and women who ally with them) are driving reactionary Christianity today.
4. The claim that I and my allies can cast out demons is a claim of superiority: I'm on God's side. You're not. This is on the face of it an astonishing claim for Matt Schlapp and folks like him to make.
#demonic #exorcism #MattSchlapp
The fixation on demons and exorcism in reactionary Christianity today tells us much:
1. This kind of fixation predictably emerges when cultural shifts are underway, and entrenched power structures feel threatened.
2. Men in many cultures feel threatened, feel that their long-taken-for-granted privilege and entitlement based solely on being penis-endowed is under assault.
#demonic #exorcism #MattSchlapp
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“An anti-democracy party, as the GOP has now become, inevitably reaches a point where the chief obstacle to its achieving power is the very operation of the rule of law. The system itself becomes the enemy.
Those pesky judges and civil rights lawyers, for example, are constantly blocking laws that the red state legislatures manage to pass.”
~ Big Picture, Jay Kuo
#Republicans #democracy
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/gop-prosecutors-authoritarian-trump-willis?utm_medium=email
nostr:npub1gxtz8dz7ujqcy9hrnyhrykk6xujgpukgccvhpea7evhev7xzpsdqnej9na If they don't serve McDonald's "burgers" and fries with ketchup, what would Trump even want to eat at that banquet?
nostr:npub1drcfyzwlfku08h973sehg27trygtdsxxkhdg5ay9crly34slxjksr9s7v5 Agreed! Well-stated.
nostr:npub1gh54py2ftw4xcprrp3sj39vd308ay44jeyjm7ef88ggsnmddjrwsqnpyrc If this event unfolds the way anything Trump touches, you'll be proven right!
nostr:npub1fd9cxhsnnqcz73q0xkxs683m64u56xnfd9jsdy6s4sl50dc6fdkq2sr3z5 Yes, it seems that way to me. And my suspicion is that only now is Trump willing to try to raise money for him because he fears Giuliani may spill the beans under pressure, if he's not funded.
nostr:npub1tjt7zkzn22s6njuwtn2x39ar0zfdel2f286tk048cu4qmexvxaxq3crzd8 Makes you almost think what many folks claimed to see in Giuliani before he hooked with Trump was never there in the first place.
nostr:npub14wvtlv8kv7s6vxkhad8eupuk40pg5axv4eheyuq2kmc7cd5c6h5qdz67me No, I don't think you're losing it. I think you're correct.
nostr:npub1383k9kcwt0lf8lv0l3fazalus8cky635l8282qacn64wr6rlvedqe7frpr I agree. The problem is that, though we see that and know that about him, he has powerful super-rich funders who help buy media time to spin him as an "alternative" candidate with "another side." And there's a tranche of American voters who claim to be liberal who are hopelessiy infatuated with folks like this. Look at how many bought Jill Stein's act in 2016, throwing the election to Trump by voting for her.