One Of These Is Not Like The Other

The Problem

We're watching the process of a small minority taking power in a country where we've spent too much time patting ourselves on the back for being all big-time democratic, and not enough time making sure everybody understands that the whole fucking thing operates on the honor system.

In the various writings of the founders, they expressed fear that eventually, someone without honor would come along and use those writings as a guide book to pull down the republic and install himself as a new monarch.

This whole 'democratic republic' thing depends entirely on people behaving in an honorable way.

We make promises. We take an oath that says we'll honor the rulings of the courts, we'll honor the system of checks and balances, we'll conduct elections in an honorable way, and that we'll honor the outcomes of those elections. Honor.

Enter Donald Trump. And don't get me wrong here - this did not start when Trump came on the scene. He just recognized the opportunity to cash in on what many before him had laid the groundwork for.

There can't be anyone with a living thinking brain who believes the fairy tale that it's all good and peachy here in USAmerica Inc - that all you have to do is work hard, and play by the rules, and save your money, and you'll be livin' in high cotton before you know it - not with legacy admissions to the elite universities coupled with a totally unbalanced public school system, and militarized cops, and "right to work", and and and. This is not what meritocracy looks like.

We've got some bad problems with a system that becomes more corrupt and unfair with practically every passing day.

So there's a kernel of truth in what Trump and all the other dog-ass demagogues have been peddling. The problem is that Trump is in on the scam that was created by - and is now propagated by - people who seek to rule rather to serve. IOW, he's got priority #1 handled. ie: the rubes are completely buffaloed.

So there's been a hostile takeover of the GOP, and now we're seeing the next installment of the ongoing bloodless coup being fronted from a minority position by a guy who has no intention of ever doing anything that could ever be considered honorable.

And his minions are busy. They're always very busy.

The small group of House Republicans who might force a government shutdown

Roughly 10 lawmakers have at various times thwarted Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s proposals for both short- and long-term funding

Moments after a majority of House Republicans hammered out a plan to fund the government in the short and long term last week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) stood up.

Throwing cold water on the discussion in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol, Gaetz defiantly declared that he and several other House Republicans remained staunchly against a short-term funding solution — and there were enough of them to block it. As frequently as they needed to.

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Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who until then had been on the side of the holdouts, stepped up to counter Gaetz’s claim, saying this new stopgap proposal — known as a continuing resolution — had earned his support. For a moment, there was hope among leadership that maybe others could be swayed, too.

Roughly 10 Republicans have dug in on their opposition to any short-term funding deal, blocking the House majority from delivering a bill chock full of their legislative priorities to the Democratic-led Senate in hopes of negotiating a more conservative solution to avoid a government shutdown.

Combined, these hard-right holdouts represent about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but account for 100 percent of the votes halting plans of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to keep the government open. Variations of the group have thwarted McCarthy at every turn during the months-long fiscal fights, turning their distaste for how the House functions and McCarthy’s leadership into a multimedia sideshow of bullhorns, pithy tweets, declarations on the House floor, and live streams from the gym.

The confrontation has left the government only days away from shutting down — closing certain federal agencies, immobilizing several anti-poverty programs, and delaying paychecks to thousands of government employees as well as members of the military.

“If you care to reduce spending, if you care to close the border, then every single day you wait, you are taking away our opportunities for leverage there,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a McCarthy ally, stressing that the holdouts will be blamed if conservatives don’t get anything out of a shutdown. “It results in you being responsible for spending more money, you being responsible for the southern border being open, you being responsible for giving federal employees a paid holiday.”

Gaetz, who is McCarthy’s toughest critic, has been the most vocal of the group, quick with a quotable dig or a bombastic floor speech. Still, the small band of holdouts has no real leader or unifying worldview.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has remained a loyal McCarthy ally until recent spending disputes, has been largely alone in saying her support is solely contingent on funding for Ukraine being excluded from any stopgap bill. While House Republicans have offered a short-term bill with some broad funding cuts, some money for Ukraine is still included because a continuing resolution, by definition, is a continuation of existing funding.

To appease Greene, GOP leaders at one point floated removing Ukraine provisions from any short- or long-term funding measure. But Greene has balked, noting she had asked leadership to do this, but they did not take her demand seriously until she shockingly switched her vote last week to block a bill funding the Pentagon for a full year.

Asked if she would be open to voting for a CR if it didn’t include Ukraine funding, she said, “It depends on what’s in it.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks in opposition to funding for the war in Ukraine on the House steps of the Capitol on Tuesday. (Elizabeth Frantz/For The Washington Post)
A broader group of holdouts are just fed up with how the House functions. They blame leadership for following a decades-old formula to fund the government: Fail to pass 12 individual bills that fund a variety of government departments, then wait until the last minute to pass a short-term bill that keeps the government open long enough for both chambers to hash out a deal to pass a package of long-term spending bills, known as an omnibus.

“Lather, rinse, repeat. The Washington wash cycle,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, who has opposed past CRs.

Congress has been unable to pass all 12 appropriations bills on time through each chamber since 1997, which many House conservatives consider a contributing factor to the federal government spending much more than it takes in, leading to the country’s ballooning debt.

That failure of process is why many of the holdouts insist they will never vote for any stopgap measure out of protest for the status quo. They blame McCarthy for continuing to follow the well-worn funding path, even though he is said to have promised otherwise earlier this year in his quest to gain the speaker’s gavel.

“I’ve been very consistent about opposing a CR,” Rep. Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.) said. “It’s not the way to fund government. It simply extends [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s spending and Joe Biden’s policies. I voted against them for two years, so I’m not going to begin voting for them right now.”

House Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans who lost reelection last year, approved a $1.7 trillion funding package in December 2022 to keep the government open until Sept. 30 of this year. Many conservatives dislike a stopgap bill because it continues existing funding levels for a short time, meaning they would have to vote for levels they voted against last year.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who hasn’t voted for a CR since he took office in 2019, didn’t rule out voting for a CR, but said on Tuesday he couldn’t see himself supporting one “at this point.”

Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) board an elevator after leaving a House Republicans meeting on Sept. 20. (Elizabeth Frantz/For The Washington Post)
Asked whether he’d rather vote for a CR or trigger a shutdown, he responded, “That’s kind of like saying, would I rather have a pencil stuck in my eye or in my ear?”

There is also a group of freshman Republicans — Reps. Eli Crane (Ariz.), Cory Mills (Fla.), Andrew Ogles (Tenn.) and Wesley Hunt (Tex.) — who have self-identified as “Never CR” voices, saying their constituents elected them last year to change how the process works.

“I’m opposed to it because, in principle, it’s what happens up here consistently,” Crane said. “Even as a freshman, I know that, right? It’s the old, ‘Oh, we’re going to do a CR.’ As if we haven’t had nine months to do what we’re supposed to do and pass the appropriation bills.”

Most of the holdouts have specifically called for the passage of all 12 long-term appropriations bills — but those lawmakers have also contributed to inhibiting that process. Roughly 20 holdouts initially blocked leadership from scheduling a vote on a procedural hurdle, known as the rule, to fund the Defense and Agriculture departments for a full year. Those bills eventually moved forward for debate on the House floor as part of a broader package Tuesday, in a win for Republican leaders.

Some in the “Never CR” group also intimate “never say never” when it comes to them possibly supporting a stopgap bill. But that support largely depends on the contours of a bill, and not all are on the same page of what those contours are.

Ogles said he would support a stopgap measure only when the House passes their remaining 11 appropriations bills, especially if they defund the Department of Justice’s investigation of former president Donald Trump — a provision that does not have the full support of the Republican conference.

“At the end of the day, leadership procrastinated and created a mess,” Ogles said. “Now we’ve got to find our way through it. And if that means staying [in Washington] a couple of extra weeks with a shutdown, that’s fine.”

Bishop said Wednesday he remains open to a short-term deal, but cautioned that he would need to see a clear path forward for House Republicans to pass an “acceptable package of appropriations bills.” Three Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations and decisions, said that McCarthy chose to have the House focus on passing full-year funding bills this week in large part because it could show Bishop and possibly others that Republicans are committed to significantly curbing spending.

But not all holdouts agree.

For some like Gaetz — who, alongside holdouts Rosendale, Crane, and Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), never voted for McCarthy in the speaker’s race in January — the opposition at times feels personal. Gaetz has threatened to trigger a vote to depose McCarthy as speaker if he relies on Democrats to help pass a CR, and several other holdouts have suggested they might support such a move.

McCarthy and his allies have denounced the holdouts — though not by name — for remaining so fervently against a CR that it undercuts their goal of passing year-long appropriations bills.

“It’d be concerning to me that there would be people in the Republican Party that will take the position of President Biden against what the rest of Americans want,” McCarthy said Tuesday. “I don’t understand how, at the end of the day, they would stay in that lane.”

But several far-right holdouts and others who support keeping the government open for at least a week or two at a time remain largely in agreement that their relentless pressure on Republican leaders has made it less likely that they’ll try to fund the government this way next year.

“Among Republicans, there are those who don’t think we should make a change to anything that happens up here,” Bishop said. “And I am going to cast every single vote to see to it that the direction changes. We’re going to change the way this institution functions, so far as I have any control of it.”

Democrats understand they're called to serve

Republicans believe they're entitled to rule

Well, Duh

Sentient beings - humans in particular - cannot survive long without being at least somewhat self-aware.

Kevin McCarthy seems unable to grok this concept.

Speaker McCarthy is giving hard-right Republicans what they want. But it never seems to be enough.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Staring down a fast-approaching government shutdown that threatens to disrupt life for millions of Americans, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has turned to a strategy that so far has preserved his tenuous hold on House leadership but also marked it by chaos: giving hard-right lawmakers what they want.

In his eight months running the House, McCarthy has lived by the upbeat personal mantra of “never give up” as he dodges threats to his speakership and tries to portray Republicans as capable stewards of the U.S. government. He has long chided Washington for underestimating him.

But with the House GOP majority in turmoil, all but certain to hurl the country into a shutdown, McCarthy has set aside the more traditional tools of the gavel to keep rebels in line. Instead, he has acceded to a small band led by those instigating his ouster, even if that means closing federal offices.

It’s an untested strategy that has left McCarthy deeply frustrated, his allies rushing to his side and his grip on power ever more uncertain with the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government a week away.

“We still have a number of days,” McCarthy said Saturday as he arrived at the Capitol.

McCarthy struggles to pass a temporary spending bill to avoid a shutdown as others look at options

“I think when it gets crunch time people will finally, that have been holding off all this time blaming everybody else, will finally hopefully move off,” the California Republican said. “Because shutting down — and having border agents not be paid, your Coast Guard not get paid — I don’t see how that’s good.”

Governing with a narrow House majority, the speaker is facing a more virulent strain of the hard-right tactics that chased the two most recent Republican speakers before him, Reps. John Boehner of Ohio and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, into early retirement. Like them, McCarthy has tried various tactics to restore order. But more than ever, McCarthy finds himself swept along as far-right lawmakers, determined to bend Washington to their will, take control in the House.

McCarthy tried to win conservatives’ support by agreeing to their demand for impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and then by meeting their calls for spending cuts, only to be turned back whenever a few of them hold out for more concessions.

All the while, McCarthy has retreated from his budget deal with Biden months ago that established the spending threshold for the year. Instead, he is trying to reduce spending more in line with the level he promised the right flank during his tumultuous fight to become the House speaker.

Yet all the concessions seem to never be enough.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who is leading the fight, crowed to reporters Thursday that, “if you look at the events of the last two weeks, things seem to be kind of coming my way.”

Gaetz said he was delivering a eulogy for short-term funding legislation known as a continuing resolution — a mechanism traditionally used to keep the government functioning during spending debates.

Democrats have been eager to lay blame for the impending shutdown on McCarthy and the dysfunction in the House. Biden has called on McCarthy to stick to the annual spending numbers they negotiated to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

“He handed over the gavel to the most extreme in his party,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, a senior Democrat.

With the House at a standstill and lawmakers at home for the weekend, McCarthy has turned to the plan advanced by Gaetz to start processing some of the nearly dozen annual spending bills needed to fund the various government departments and shelving for now the idea of stopgap approach while the work continues.

It’s a nearly impossible task as Congress runs out of time to find a short-term spending plan.

“We can in no way pass 11 bills in eight days,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat appropriator, referring to the number of bills the House would have to approve before Sept. 30.

DeLauro, a veteran lawmaker, estimated it would take at least six weeks to pass the bills in both chambers of Congress, then negotiate them between the House and Senate. She urged Republicans to embrace a continuing resolution to allow government agencies to stay open.

Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, one of McCarthy’s closest allies, has pointed out that the Senate has advanced legislation at spending levels above those in the deal reached with Biden. He argues that House Republicans need to pass their own bills at the lower numbers to strengthen their hand in negotiations.

For Congress to solve the current impasse, many expect that it will take a bipartisan coalition that leaves McCarthy’s right flank behind. That would be certain to spark a challenge to his leadership.

In the Senate, Democratic and Republican leaders are working on a package that would fund the government at levels far higher than the House Republicans are demanding and include emergency disaster aid and money for Ukraine, which some GOP House members oppose.

“Eventually, we’re going to get something back from the U.S. Senate and it’s not going to be to our liking,” said Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, a leading Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. “Then the speaker will have a very difficult decision.”

You can't appease these assholes, Kev. This is a stomp-or-be-stomped situation. Get with the fuckin' program.

They Can't Stand It

They're afraid. If someone really really really popular comes out in opposition of the assumed predominant populist appeal - well - let the freak out and losing of shit begin.

Very very afraid.

Today's Reddit

Ladies and gents - Marge The Impaler Greene:

New Biden Harris campaign ad just dropped
byu/prlugo4162 inPoliticalMemes

On Banning Books

The Kennedy family reads controversial books while waiting
for a board meeting of the Hamilton East Public Library
Noblesville IN 08-24-2023

(these people are about to be labeled "outlaw" because

they refuse to let a buncha pinch-faced, blue-nosed, puritan biddies

tell them what the can and can't read in a public school)

And BTW, this move against books is another aspect of the "conservative" effort to kill public education. If I can make you believe the schools are so thoroughly fucked up that your kids are being damaged, then it's going to be easier for me to convince you to privatize the system, and let me sell the whole thing to my brother-in-law, who, by some odd coincidence, has recently developed a burning desire to teach children what I think they should know.

Oy

Everything You Need to Know About the Right-Wing War on Books

Here’s your guide to the heroes and villains—plus a list of the 50 most banned books.

Citizens have led fiery campaigns against books they deem objectionable since before America’s founding. As early as the 1650s, Massachusetts Bay colonists banned and burned William Pynchon’s pamphlet “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption” because it allegedly failed to adhere to Calvinist beliefs. Book bans were common in the South in the run-up to the Civil War, and nationwide during the McCarthy era.

But in the last few years, something changed. More people began writing complaints and demonstrating at meetings. They grew far more vocal. And they started to rally around the same texts, slamming them as “pornographic” or for supposedly preaching “critical race theory.” Since 2021, book banning—specifically, blocking access to books in schools and libraries—has become an organized movement, one backed by a powerful network of politicians, advocacy groups, and conservative donors.

More books are being challenged—for possible restriction or removal from libraries and curricula—than have been in decades. In the first half of the 2022–23 school year, PEN America, the free speech organization, tracked nearly 1,500 book bans nationwide, affecting 874 unique titles. Books centering on people of color and LGBTQ+ characters have been disproportionately targeted. In some GOP-controlled states, legislation has led to the widespread removal from schools of books with references to sex and sexuality, as well as race and racism.

The first week of October is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, and to mark the occasion, The New Republic will launch a Bookmobile Tour to distribute texts conservatives have decided children simply should not read.

CENSORSHIP CHIEFS

Ron DeSantis

Under Governor DeSantis, Florida became the first of many red states to enact laws making it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries that they believe are pornographic, deal improperly with race, or can otherwise be considered inappropriate. DeSantis was applauded by a Moms for Liberty (see below) founder for “blazing a trail” on school book bans.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Governor Huckabee Sanders signed a law imposing criminal penalties on Arkansas librarians who knowingly provide “harmful” materials to minors—though a federal judge has temporarily blocked sections of the law, calling them too vague. In January, Sanders also signed an executive order to prohibit “indoctrination” and “critical race theory” in schools.

Greg Abbott

The Texas governor signed a law banning sexually explicit books from schools. The law requires vendors to rate books as “sexually relevant” or “sexually explicit” to determine if they require parental approval or full removal. During the 2021–22 school year, Texas districts banned more books than those in any other state.

Moms for Liberty

Founded in 2021, Moms for Liberty has rapidly expanded into a national organization with almost 300 chapters. Its strategy is to take over school boards and label dissenting teachers, librarians, and parents “groomers.” The organization has also endorsed legislation in line with its goals like “Don’t Say Gay,” the notorious Florida law hamstringing discussions of sexuality in many classrooms. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Moms for Liberty an extremist group.

READING REBELS

Suzette Baker

In March 2022, Baker was fired as head librarian of the Kingsland Branch Library in Llano County, Texas, for “insubordination” and “failure to follow instructions,” which she said included her refusal to take down a display of banned books. Among the titles that have attracted the ire of local officials: Between the World and Me, the Ta-Nehisi Coates book that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Debbie Chavez

Chavez quit her school librarian job in Round Rock, Texas, after a parent met with her to discuss Lawn Boy—a novel that includes a romance between two boys—and secretly recorded the conversation, sharing excerpts on Facebook. Critics claimed she was “grooming” kids and called for her firing. “It was so horrific to see that my words were being used as a rallying cry for the book censors,” she told The New York Times.

Summer Boismier

Boismier, an English teacher at Norman High School in Oklahoma, shared with her students a Q.R. code to Books UnBanned, a program of New York’s Brooklyn Public Library that offers access to books that have been banned or challenged. She received a torrent of abuse and later resigned, claiming there was no way for her to do her job amid passage of a new law limiting instruction related to race and gender.

Anonymous Utah parent

In a protest of legislation making it easier to remove “pornographic or indecent” content, a Utah parent filed a complaint with an eight-page list of objectionable passages from the Bible—successfully forcing a district to remove the text from elementary and middle schools. The decision was quickly reversed.

50 MOST BANNED BOOKS

(Books are listed in descending order by frequency of bans in schools nationwide.)

Gender Queer: A Memoir
by Maia Kobabe

All Boys Aren’t Blue
by George M. Johnson

Out of Darkness
by Ashley Hope Pérez

A Lake Travis, Texas, parent got a book purged from her school’s library after googling “cornhole,” a word that appears in Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, explaining at a school board meeting what she’d learned: “Cornhole is a sexual slang vulgarism” and “means to have anal sex.”

The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison

Lawn Boy
by Jonathan Evison

The Hate U Give
by Angie Thomas

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
by Jesse Andrews

Thirteen Reasons Why
by Jay Asher

Crank
by Ellen Hopkins

The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini

l8r, g8r
by Lauren Myracle

This Book Is Gay
by Juno Dawson

Melissa
by Alex Gino

Looking for Alaska
by John Green

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
by Susan Kuklin

Beloved
by Toni Morrison

A Fairfax County, Virginia, parent tried and failed to get Toni Morrison’s Beloved banned for allegedly being rife with explicit material. Still, the aggrieved citizen went on to star in a Glenn Youngkin campaign ad as he successfully ran for governor in 2021.

This One Summer
by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

Drama: A Graphic Novel
by Raina Telgemeier

Flamer
by Mike Curato

Jack of Hearts (and other parts)
by L.C. Rosen

The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel

The Breakaways
by Cathy G. Johnson

Nineteen Minutes
by Jodi Picoult

All American Boys
by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky

Tricks
by Ellen Hopkins

More Happy Than Not
by Adam Silvera

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer

It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health
by Robie Harris

Monday’s Not Coming
by Tiffany D. Jackson

A Court of Mist and Fury
by Sarah J. Maas

Sold
by Patricia McCormick

The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives
by Dashka Slater

Dear Martin
by Nic Stone

Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson

Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen
by Jazz Jennings

Almost Perfect
by Brian Katcher

Real Live Boyfriends: yes. boyfriends, plural. if my life weren’t complicated, I wouldn’t be Ruby Oliver
by E. Lockhart

The Truth About Alice
by Jennifer Mathieu

Lucky
by Alice Sebold

Killing Mr. Griffin
by Lois Duncan

We Are the Ants
by Shaun David Hutchinson

I Am Jazz
by Jazz Jennings and Jessica Herthel

How to Be an Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi

Two Boys Kissing
by David Levithan

The Infinite Moment of Us
by Lauren Myracle

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds

Seven white school board members voted unanimously in Pickens County, South Carolina, to remove Stamped from libraries and classrooms. It traces the history of racism in the United States, but parents complained that it “promote[s] socialism” and “demonstrates radical Marxism infecting our schools and our culture.”

And Tango Makes Three
by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Source: PEN America data from 2021–22 school year

MORE RIDICULOUS STORIES

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation

An illustrated adaptation of The Diary of a Young Girl was banned from a high school library in Florida because, critics bizarrely claimed, it minimized the Holocaust and—perhaps more important—captured a young girl’s thoughts about other female bodies. A county chapter chair of the far-right group Moms for Liberty led the charge for removal over its “sexually explicit” material.

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

The director of a Florida police union targeted this book about a Black boy killed by police. “Our members feel that this book is propaganda that pushes an inaccurate and absurd stereotype of police officers in America,” he wrote. Further use of the book was paused in a classroom in Broward County.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

A Leander, Texas, parent went after Machado’s surreal memoir about domestic abuse, brandishing a sex toy at a school board meeting while decrying portions of the book detailing a lesbian relationship. “This is what we’re asking our children to read,” the parent said, taking out a pink dildo. The book was ultimately removed from school libraries in the district.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

In January 2022, a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to ban this Pulitzer-winning graphic novel from its eighth grade curriculum. The book depicts Holocaust victims as mice and Nazis as cats. One board member took offense at illustrations of naked mice in the book. “All the way through this literature we expose these kids to nakedness, we expose them to vulgarity.… If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it,” he said.

Heads Up

The Daddy State is still gunning for us. If we're not ready, we're fucked for sure this time.

(these guys are not the good guys)

Today's Reddit

It was an obvious theatrical stunt. He did it to suck up to the ammosexuals, and to reinforce the notion that the law is whatever he says it is at any given time.

ie: The 2nd amendment is absolute and unlimited, so there's no way it can be illegal for me to buy a gun - no matter the circumstances.

Today Trump's spokesman confirmed Donald Trump illegally purchased a gun. Marjorie Taylor Greene on video also verifying it as she was there.
byu/justalazygamer inParlerWatch

Indicted Trump Asks to Buy a Glock at Campaign Stop—Which Would Be Illegal

A spokesperson later corrected himself and said the transaction hadn’t actually gone through.

In a PR stunt gone terribly wrong, former President Donald Trump went gun shopping on Monday with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and asked to buy a Glock pistol on camera—which would have brazenly violated the very same law that recently landed Hunter Biden criminal charges.

Federal law prohibits anyone under indictment from attempting to buy a firearm. Trump has been criminally indicted four times in as many jurisdictions—Atlanta, Miami, New York, and Washington—facing dozens of felony charges that could land him in prison for decades.

So, what "a spokesman" said about the transaction not going thru makes no difference. Trump made the attempt, he did it on camera, he's guilty of yet another felony, and it appears there will be no direct consequences for his obvious violation of federal fucking law.

“I wanna buy one,” Trump said while taking a tour of Palmetto State Armory, a federally licensed gun dealer in South Carolina that's widely revered by firearm enthusiasts.

“Sir, if you want one, this one’s yours,” a person on the tour said, seeming to divert the president away from making an actual purchase.

“No, I wanna buy one,” Trump insisted.

It only added to the fiasco when those present pulled South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson into the photo op—as well as his brother, Julian Wilson, an executive at the private equity company that owns the gun dealer. They are both Republican Congressman Joe Wilson’s sons.

The disaster started when Trump's campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, tweeted that his boss actually went through with the sale.

"President Trump purchases a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!" he posted Monday afternoon.

But the campaign went into damage control mode as soon as firearms journalist Stephen Gutowski and others pointed out that the entire transaction would be blatantly illegal.

“Did he actually go through with the purchase?” Gutowski asked openly in tweet.

Cheung later claimed to CNN that Trump never actually went through with the purchase—and deleted his original statement. The Daily Beast could not immediately independently confirm whether Trump finalized the deal.

The irony is that the federal law Trump appeared to almost violate is the very same one that the feds used to indict President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

The federal law that restricts how someone may buy or sell firearms is 18 U.S. Code § 922, the go-to statute for prosecutors seeking to imprison felons who manage to acquire guns after serving time in prison, straw purchasers who buy a gun with the specific intent to sell it to another person, and other people who aren’t allowed to acquire them. That law is why anyone buying a gun from a licensed dealer must fill out what's called an ATF Form 4473, which asks: “Are you under indictment or information in any court for a felony, or any other crime for which the judge could imprison you for more than one year, or are you a current member of the military who has been charged with violation(s) of the Uniform Code of Military?”

Answer “yes,” and no gun shop can legally sell you a gun. Trump, who is facing criminal charges across the eastern seaboard, would have to answer in the affirmative.

Republicans—and Trump in particular—have been calling on the Department of Justice to hold Hunter Biden accountable for violating the same statute, in his case, for lying about drug use on that form.

A Small (ish) Win

Republicans continue their mighty struggle to beat back the forces of creeping democracy.

Seriously - I can't think of a shittier thing to do than to say you're serving the interests of your constituents by doing things that take away their right to choose their leaders - degrading democracy and claiming you're protecting it.

Our little experiment in democratic self-government seems to be hanging by a thread, even as we get a few faint glimmers of hope from a SCOTUS that has also seemed inclined to fuck us over.

But I'll take a win anywhere any time.

US Supreme Court won't halt ruling that blocked Alabama electoral map

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by Alabama officials to halt a lower court's ruling that rejected a Republican-crafted electoral map for diminishing the clout of Black voters, likely clearing the way for a new map to be drawn ahead of the 2024 congressional elections.

The court's action leaves intact a Sept. 5 decision by a federal three-judge panel in Birmingham that the map approved by the state's Republican-led legislature to set the boundaries of Alabama's seven U.S. House of Representatives districts was unlawfully biased against Black voters and must be redrawn.

That map was devised after the Supreme Court in June blocked a previous version, also for weakening the voting power of Black Alabamians.

President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats are seeking to regain control of the House in next year's elections. With Republicans holding a slim 222-212 majority, court battles like this one are helping to shape the fight for control of the chamber.

Black people make up 27% of Alabama's population but are in the majority in only one of the seven House districts as drawn by the state legislature in both the maps it has approved since the 2020 census.

Electoral districts are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes as measured by a national census. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain. Voting rights litigation that could result in new maps of congressional districts is playing out in several states.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 June ruling affirmed a lower court order requiring state lawmakers to add a second House district with a Black majority - or close to it - in order to comply with the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Black voters tend to favor Democratic candidates.

Following that ruling, the legislature adopted a plan that increased the portion of Black voters in a second House district from around 30% to 40%, still well below a majority. The three-judge panel ruled that this new map failed to remedy the Voting Rights Act violation present in the first map and directed a special master - an independent party appointed by a court - to draw a new, third version of the map ahead of next year's elections.

The latest Republican-drawn map drew swift objections from Black voters and civil rights activists. They said the plan failed to fix the Voting Rights Act violation identified by the Supreme Court, and that it raised concerns under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The Alabama map concentrated large numbers of Black voters into one district and spread others into districts in numbers too small to make up a majority.

The Supreme Court's June ruling was authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and joined in full by the court's three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the judgment in a separate opinion.

Conservative litigants had succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to limit the Voting Rights Act's scope in some important previous rulings.

The Supreme Court's 2013 ruling in another Alabama case struck down a key part that determined which states with histories of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws. In a 2021 ruling endorsing Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, the justices made it harder to prove violations under a provision of the Voting Rights Act aimed at countering racially biased voting measures.

Nutty

... as a squirrel turd.

"In times gone by, the punishment would've been death."

SEASON 2 EPISODE 42: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:

Now we get the just-before-midnight answer to the Gag Order request, as insane as anything else since Friday, written not for legal purposes but to please Trump. Quote: “the proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls. Keenly aware that it is losing that race for 2024, the prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump’s (but not President Biden’s) political speech on pain of contempt)." Trump’s ambulance chasers slipstream behind his threats against NBC, referring to “President Biden and his surrogates (including those in the corporate media.” They dance along the lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses because quote “no witness has suggested that he or she will not testify because of anything president Trump has said.”

It is impossible to believe their rhetoric will have any impact on Judge Chutkan. It doesn’t have to. It was written so Trump could get excited by it. Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer.

And the late response was only the last of a string of insane moments by Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday - ten days after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when he was legally ineligible to do so… Trump in South Carolina bought a gun or tried to, when he was legally ineligible to do so.

And all THAT followed worse. Under 18 US Code 4241 a prosecutor can request that the judge order that the defendant must undergo a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if he’s competent to stand trial and unable to aid in his own defense and when it is proved that he isn’t, the judge can order him institutionalized and Jack Smith should make the request and Judge Chutkan should grant it because in the 72 hours before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against issuing a gag order on him as they did with exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight eastern last night after he’d threatened the court and tried to poison the jury pool, Trump demanded that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed, insisted NBC News was guilty of something he made up called “Country Threatening Treason” because it had published a poll about him that he didn’t like, promised that as president he would make it and other news organizations “pay a big price,” and argued that the homes of all Democratic Senators be raided just cause, and bought a gun or tried to, and conflated the Bush Brothers and I don’t mean Billy.

B-Block (22:45) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS (28:08):

The gold bars are funny but isn't the issue with Senator Menendez the, you know, spying? Fox News was kind enough to just disprove the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/Burisma phony story. And after she gets 35,000 people to register to vote in one day, a GOP propaganda site attacks... Taylor Swift? AND her fans? THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (28:08): Congresswoman Sage Steele? The district they want her to run in wraps around but excludes the ESPN campus. Last year the Congressman won a Family Award. This year his missus says he's abandoned his family. And Kathleen Parker, who infamously wrote it'd be ok even if Trump won, tops herself: insisting Trump is "well-dressed."

C-Block (33:25) THE FINAL WORDS ON DAVID BROOKS AND HIS $78 WHISKEYBURGER TWEET. Obviously, whose words would be better to use, than Brooks' own?