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New Breed Leader
New Breed Leader's Journal
New Breed Leader's Journal
June 24, 2022
Read the whole thing here: https://establishmentbar.blogspot.com/2022/06/france-scotus-january-6th-and-our.html
Liberal Librarian: Our Duties as Citizens
Voting isn't supposed to be "fun". If you can get excited over a candidate with a special charisma who also has the good of the country at heart, that's great. But getting starbursts in your crotch shouldn't be the determinative factor in whether or not you vote. In a democracy, the citizen is sovereign. Not the president. Not the senator. The most powerful person in a democracy is the voter. From her all power flows, both for good and ill. If one doesn't vote, one cedes that power to someone else. They cede that power to someone who may not have their best interests at heart. One surrenders agency and the ability to determine one's own life. Voting isn't an inconvenience; in a democracy, it's the one secular sacral act. It's the act which renews the state, which keeps it functioning as a free polity. Without the vote, we may as well return to feudalism. The vote is the guarantor of legitimacy. Without it, and without its judicious exercise, we are nothing but a collection of atomized interests, never combining to perform communal acts of betterment.
Read the whole thing here: https://establishmentbar.blogspot.com/2022/06/france-scotus-january-6th-and-our.html
June 20, 2022
TX GOP adopts resolution rejecting Biden's 2020 win
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1538919885413261314
June 9, 2022
How about we put Boof Boy through active shooter drills
https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1534605050441371648
June 3, 2022
https://twitter.com/jayobtv/status/1532717929887940608
DeSatan bullies The Special Olympics into pulling their vaccine requirement
https://twitter.com/jayobtv/status/1532717916331950080https://twitter.com/jayobtv/status/1532717929887940608
May 30, 2022
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1531296637674569732
Election 2020 denier Cleta Mitchell is back
In the days after the 2020 election, Ms. Mitchell was among a cadre of Republican lawyers who frantically compiled unsubstantiated accusations, debunked claims and an array of confusing and inconclusive eyewitness reports to build the case that the election was marred by fraud. Courts rejected the cases and election officials were unconvinced, thwarting a stunning assault on the transfer of power.
Now Ms. Mitchell is prepping for the next election. Working with a well-funded network of organizations on the right, including the Republican National Committee, she is recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists monitoring elections.
In seminars around the country, Ms. Mitchell is marshaling volunteers to stake out election offices, file information requests, monitor voting, work at polling places and keep detailed records of their work. She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups that promote misinformation and espouse wild theories about the 2020 election, including the fiction that President Biden’s victory could still be decertified and Mr. Trump reinstated.
One concern is the group’s intent to research the backgrounds of local and state officials to determine whether each is a “friend or foe” of the movement. Many officials already feel under attack by those who falsely contend that the 2020 election was stolen.
Some former election officials say they are hopeful that when election skeptics observe the process they may finally be convinced that the system is sound. But several who examined Ms. Mitchell’s training materials and statements at the request of The New York Times sounded alarms about her tactics.
Ms. Mitchell’s trainings promote particularly aggressive methods — with a focus on surveillance — that appear intended to feed on activists’ distrust and create pressure on local officials, rather than ensure voters’ access to the ballot, they say. A test drive of the strategy in the Virginia governor’s race last year highlighted how quickly the work — when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud — can disrupt the process and spiral into bogus claims, even in a race Republicans won.
Now Ms. Mitchell is prepping for the next election. Working with a well-funded network of organizations on the right, including the Republican National Committee, she is recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists monitoring elections.
In seminars around the country, Ms. Mitchell is marshaling volunteers to stake out election offices, file information requests, monitor voting, work at polling places and keep detailed records of their work. She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups that promote misinformation and espouse wild theories about the 2020 election, including the fiction that President Biden’s victory could still be decertified and Mr. Trump reinstated.
One concern is the group’s intent to research the backgrounds of local and state officials to determine whether each is a “friend or foe” of the movement. Many officials already feel under attack by those who falsely contend that the 2020 election was stolen.
Some former election officials say they are hopeful that when election skeptics observe the process they may finally be convinced that the system is sound. But several who examined Ms. Mitchell’s training materials and statements at the request of The New York Times sounded alarms about her tactics.
Ms. Mitchell’s trainings promote particularly aggressive methods — with a focus on surveillance — that appear intended to feed on activists’ distrust and create pressure on local officials, rather than ensure voters’ access to the ballot, they say. A test drive of the strategy in the Virginia governor’s race last year highlighted how quickly the work — when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud — can disrupt the process and spiral into bogus claims, even in a race Republicans won.
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1531296637674569732
May 29, 2022
SMDH
"He doesn't speak in beautiful syntax" GOP says of Herschel Walker
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/29/gop-senate-herschel-walker-georgia-00035851Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who talked with Walker for three hours at his campaign HQ, told POLITICO they talked about “everything from being a candidate to being a senator to thinking about debating Warnock and how to handle debates.”
Gingrich, now a Fox News commentator, said Walker will immediately become a national figure in the Republican Party and will help the GOP appeal to Black voters. He added that the GOP needs “aggressive competitors who like to win” and that Walker personifies it.
“I think [people] are going to be surprised by how calmly confident he is, and how impossible it is for Warnock or anyone else to intimidate him,” Gingrich said.
“He doesn’t speak in beautiful syntax, by any means,” said Robinson, the GOP consultant. “But, you know, I think his voters will say what they said about Trump quite often, ‘Well, I know what he was trying to say.’”
SMDH
May 22, 2022
Legislators in Florida and North Carolina did not face as much pressure to overturn the election because Mr. Trump carried both states. In Nevada, Democrats control the Legislature, and though the state Republican Party pushed for alternate electors, no legislators took action.
These fictions about rigged elections and widespread fraud have provided the foundation for new laws that make it harder to vote and easier to insert partisanship in the vote count. In three states, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state lawmakers successfully pushed for investigations that sowed doubt about the results and tested the boundaries of their oversight.
And yet The Times’s analysis also shows that these efforts have encountered significant resistance from key Republican figures, as well as Democrats. In most states, the lawmakers who challenged the 2020 results do not yet have the numbers, or the support of governors, secretaries of state or legislative leaders, to achieve their most audacious aims.
They have advanced, but not enacted, legislation that would make it easier for politicians to overturn elections. And it is only a minority of Republican lawmakers who promote the legally dubious view that they — and not the votes of the people — can select the electors who formally cast a ballot for the president in the Electoral College.
Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.
“In 2020, the plan of Trump and his allies hinged ultimately on getting state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group. “If past is prologue, that same strategy is likely to be central to efforts to subvert an election in the future.”
The Times’s review provides only a glimpse of the ways that state legislatures fueled the movement to deny and challenge the 2020 results. The analysis focused on concrete actions and did not include lawmakers’ posts on social media or statements they made in campaign speeches.
Some legislators who were among the most vociferous in their support of subverting the election have tried to use their 2020 efforts as a springboard to higher office, all while still pledging to further remove democratic guardrails.
Doug Mastriano, the Republican state senator from Pennsylvania who won his party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday, has pushed the Justice Department to investigate debunked election conspiracies, held a legislative hearing with members of Mr. Trump’s legal team and promised to enact new voting restrictions if elected. Mark Finchem, a Republican state representative in Arizona who has pursued the dubious theory of election decertification, is a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona.
Mr. Trump’s defeat was undisputed among election officials and certified by Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, with slates of electors signed by Democratic and Republican governors. None of the many recounts or audits altered the outcome. Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump lost more than 50 of his post-election challenges in court.
His campaign to overturn the defeat played out differently across the states. Mr. Trump won Florida and had no reason to pressure lawmakers to agitate over the result, though they used distrust in the election as justification for new voting restrictions. But in Texas, another state Mr. Trump won, the deeply conservative Legislature was eager to show voters it was taking action and lawmakers introduced a bill that included provisions to overturn results in future elections.
NYT: How Trump's 2020 Election Lies have gripped state legislatures
https://twitter.com/alfonslopeztena/status/1528393765542670337Legislators in Florida and North Carolina did not face as much pressure to overturn the election because Mr. Trump carried both states. In Nevada, Democrats control the Legislature, and though the state Republican Party pushed for alternate electors, no legislators took action.
These fictions about rigged elections and widespread fraud have provided the foundation for new laws that make it harder to vote and easier to insert partisanship in the vote count. In three states, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state lawmakers successfully pushed for investigations that sowed doubt about the results and tested the boundaries of their oversight.
And yet The Times’s analysis also shows that these efforts have encountered significant resistance from key Republican figures, as well as Democrats. In most states, the lawmakers who challenged the 2020 results do not yet have the numbers, or the support of governors, secretaries of state or legislative leaders, to achieve their most audacious aims.
They have advanced, but not enacted, legislation that would make it easier for politicians to overturn elections. And it is only a minority of Republican lawmakers who promote the legally dubious view that they — and not the votes of the people — can select the electors who formally cast a ballot for the president in the Electoral College.
Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.
“In 2020, the plan of Trump and his allies hinged ultimately on getting state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group. “If past is prologue, that same strategy is likely to be central to efforts to subvert an election in the future.”
The Times’s review provides only a glimpse of the ways that state legislatures fueled the movement to deny and challenge the 2020 results. The analysis focused on concrete actions and did not include lawmakers’ posts on social media or statements they made in campaign speeches.
Some legislators who were among the most vociferous in their support of subverting the election have tried to use their 2020 efforts as a springboard to higher office, all while still pledging to further remove democratic guardrails.
Doug Mastriano, the Republican state senator from Pennsylvania who won his party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday, has pushed the Justice Department to investigate debunked election conspiracies, held a legislative hearing with members of Mr. Trump’s legal team and promised to enact new voting restrictions if elected. Mark Finchem, a Republican state representative in Arizona who has pursued the dubious theory of election decertification, is a candidate for secretary of state in Arizona.
Mr. Trump’s defeat was undisputed among election officials and certified by Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, with slates of electors signed by Democratic and Republican governors. None of the many recounts or audits altered the outcome. Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump lost more than 50 of his post-election challenges in court.
His campaign to overturn the defeat played out differently across the states. Mr. Trump won Florida and had no reason to pressure lawmakers to agitate over the result, though they used distrust in the election as justification for new voting restrictions. But in Texas, another state Mr. Trump won, the deeply conservative Legislature was eager to show voters it was taking action and lawmakers introduced a bill that included provisions to overturn results in future elections.
May 22, 2022
Rick Scott defends his evil tax plan on CBS Face The Nation
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1528386636073078786
May 18, 2022
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1527011040730435586
5th Circuit just stripped the SEC of its regulatory power
https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1527009488301170688https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1527011040730435586
May 12, 2022
Read the rest here: https://establishmentbar.blogspot.com/2022/05/they-worked-for-fifty-years-are-we.html
They worked for fifty years. Are we willing to do so, as well?
What the right figured out very quickly is that one issue can serve as a Trojan horse for a host of others. Before abortion, it was civil rights. That issue didn't resonate, because the times were moving in a direction which made Black civil rights something to support. In abortion, they found the issue which would get voters out, and lead to spill-over effects in other areas.
Now the right has gifted us with an opportunity to turn the tables. Just as abortion was a wedge issue for it, it now has the capacity to be one for our side. And Roe is more than just abortion. Roe is about bodily autonomy. Roe is about privacy rights in general. This is an issue which can motivate our voters. But, like the right, we have to all be singing from the same hymn book. No more purity contests. No more noble failures. Politics ain't whiffle ball. It's mean and dirty and bloody, and we had better get that through to our heads. If you can't compromise, if you can't make deals, if you can't get stuck in, you're not needed.
Read the rest here: https://establishmentbar.blogspot.com/2022/05/they-worked-for-fifty-years-are-we.html
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