Month: August 2023

Most Iowa Caucus Voters Think Trump Won in 2020

Buck Banks

51%

A majority of voters likely to attend the Iowa Republican caucuses believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election over Joe Biden, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. Asked whether “you believe or not believe Donald Trump’s claims he won the 2020 presidential election,” 51% of likely Republican caucusgoers say they believe them, 41% do not and 8% are unsure.

DeSantis’ Vote-Suppression Tactics Are Working in Florida

Pensito Editors


In May 2021 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 90, which effectively cleared the voter rolls of Florida citizens who had requested mail-in ballots. Previously, Florida voters could file one request for mail-in ballots and would receive one for any and all elections.

No more.

Although a federal judge removed several of the most egregious provisions of the law, it nonetheless is still suppressing mail-in voting, according to the Florida Reporter:

Studies show that voters who are registered to vote by mail are more likely to cast a vote.The impact on voting by mail from this new law is already coming into sharp focus: last year, Miami-Dade County had 438,000 mail ballot voters, but as of July 1st of this year, a mere 92,000 voters were enrolled in vote by mail. In Hillsborough County, only 70,000 voters are signed up to vote by mail as of July 1st, down from 320,000 before the new law went into effect. In Broward County, it’s even more dramatic: a recent review confirmed just 35,000 vote by mail sign-ups, compared to 428,000 last year. In Orange County, only 23,000 voters have requested mail-in ballots for the upcoming cycle after 140,000 voters used them in 2021.

GOP Attorney General Candidate Claims Abortion Pills Are Laced with Fentanyl

Buck Banks

“Republican attorney general hopeful and current Solicitor General Liz Murrill dropped the collab of the summer nobody asked for or expected when she mixed two classic Republican strawmen — the drug war and abortion — into a single, unexpected and wholly unsubstantiated talking point: Nefarious drug pushers are lacing online abortion pills with fentanyl.”

— New Orleans Times-Picayune

Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?

Pensito Editors

cnn.com

In a subscribers-only piece in The Bulwark, Jonathan Last pretends we could go back in time to January 2017 and tell people that in six years:

  • Trump will have been impeached twice.
  • He will have been found guilty of rape by a jury of his peers.
  • He will have been soundly defeated for re-election, but refused to concede the loss.
  • In an effort to remain in power he will put in motion a vast conspiracy to overturn the result through extralegal methods.
  • When this conspiracy fails he will incite a violent insurrection in which he directs his armed supporters to invade the Capitol and prevent the certification of Electoral College votes.
  • He will be indicted in four separate criminal cases.
  • He will seek a return to the White House explicitly for the stated purpose of “retribution.”
  • And he will be leading the Republican field by >30 points.

    • “My point is that six years ago I don’t think many people on either side would have believed that today’s reality was likely. Or even possible. Yet here we are, actually living in something close to the worst-case scenario.

    “And yet we are so habituated to this dark reality that we’ve come to see it as normal.”

    Georgia Judge Sets Trump’s Bond at $200,000

    Buck Banks

    $200,000

    A Georgia judge set a $200,000 bond for Donald Trump on Monday in the Fulton County case that accuses the former president and 18 others of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ABC News reports.The “consent bond order” bars Trump from intimidating witnesses or from communicating with any of his co-defendants about the case.

    Jesus Is too Woke for Trump’s Evangelicals

    Pensito Editors
    eternitynews.com.au

    Hey, christianists! It’s like they say: “You can’t misspell ‘hypochristy’ without ‘Christ.'”

    Apparently, turning the other cheek don’t sit so well with our American evangelical brethren anymore. No, the literal Jesus of the literal Bible is simply too woke for 21st century Southern Baptists. Check this from an NPR interview with Russell Moore, a former leader in the Southern Baptists cult:

    It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — “turn the other cheek” — [and] to have someone come up after to say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,” the response would not be, “I apologize.” The response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.

    “[A]lmost every part of American life is tribalized and factionalized,” said the Baptist, who is not Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Methodist or Christian Scientist or Mormon or — you get it.

    “I think if we’re going to get past the blood and soil sorts of nationalism or all of the other kinds of totalizing cultural identities, it’s going to require rethinking what the church is,” Moore told NPR.

    At Pensito, we are 100% in favor of “rethinking what the church is.”