Election Fraudit Is Expensive

$550,000

Legal fees paid so far by Arizona Senate Republicans to defend their refusal to release records related to their “fraudit” of the 2020 presidential election. The Senate president has called lawsuits aimed at forcing the Senate to release the records “frivolous,” but judges have consistently ruled in favor of organizations who argue the Senate has failed to comply with Arizona law.

Trumpster Navarro Sputters When Asked if VP Harris Can Throw out Results of 2024 Election

Peter Navarro
Peter Navarro

HuffPost: “Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro apparently thinks it would have been OK for then-Vice President Mike Pence to challenge the 2020 election results, but not for current Vice President Kamala Harris to do the same in 2024. After claiming that Pence has the ability to throw votes that might be ‘suspicious’ back to the states, Navarro got into a bit of a tizzy when MSNBC’s Ari Melber asked him on Thursday: ‘It would follow, from your contention, that Vice President Harris should ultimately have the call over who should be president, regardless of the results in the next election?’…

‘It’s not for the vice president to determine who wins. The only thing Pence had the authority to do was go back to the states and let the states look at the votes,’ he said. Of course, Navarro ignored the most basic point of his plan: The votes can’t go back to the states unless a vice president like Pence or Harris goes along with the scam.”

US Senate Candidate in Louisiana Burns Confederate Flag in Campaign Ad

The Hill: “Gary Chambers, a U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana who went viral last month for smoking a blunt in a campaign ad, burned a Confederate flag while decrying restrictive voting laws in his latest video released on Wednesday.

“In a one-minute video titled ‘Scars and Bars,’ Chambers is seen wearing a camo jacket as he pins a Confederate flag on a clothesline and ignites it with a lighter — right after he cites the famous Declaration of Independence line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

As the flag burns, the Louisiana Democrat argues that inequality lingers and ‘remnants of the Confederacy remain’ in the South. The candidate mentions gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting laws as “byproducts” of the Confederacy.

“‘The attacks against Black people, our right to vote and participate in this democracy, are methodical,’ he said. ‘Our system isn’t broken. It’s designed to do exactly what it’s doing, which is producing measurable inequity.'”

Fascists Hold an Old Fashioned Book Burning in Tennessee

Book burning in Tennessee
Book burning in Tennessee

Nashville Scene: “Last week, McMinn County made news when the school board voted to ban beloved graphic novel Maus — a Holocaust story told with anthropomorphic mice and cats — due to instances of swear words and nudity. While the vote happened in early January, it went viral following a report from TN Holler.

“Last night, Mt. Juliet pastor and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Greg Locke decided to turn it up a notch by organizing an old-fashioned book burning. The books included millennial staples like Harry Potter and Twilight — hits of the early Aughts that were targeted by Christian book burnings back in the day.

“In a sermon preceding the bonfire, Locke described beefing with ‘Free Mason devils’ and said ‘I ain’t gonna be ‘suiciding myself’ no time soon.’ Locke also said people aren’t mad that they were burning books, but mad because of the books they were burning — implying that his critics, even other pastors, were devil and witchcraft supporters.

“You can see the footage in Locke’s Facebook video of the event — the burning starts about an hour in.”

[…]

Why do Republicans Oppose Biden’s Promise to Pick a Black Woman for SCOTUS

View of United States Supreme Court Building, Washington, DC.
Five-Thirty-Eight examines the GOP resistance to President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. In a word, it’s racism.

As Stanford professor and FiveThirtyEight contributor, Hakeem Jefferson, tweeted, “Conservatives didn’t get upset when Trump promised to nominate a woman to the bench because the qualifier ‘white’ was simply implied.” He later added that it’s the misogynoir, or unique biases Black women experience, not the pledge, that is the problem.

Read the rest here.

The Guardian: ‘America Has Entered Fascism’s Legal Phase’

The Guardian: “’Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.’

“So began Toni Morrison’s 1995 address to Howard University, entitled Racism and Fascism, which delineated 10 step-by-step procedures to carry a society from first to last. Morrison’s interest was not in fascist demagogues or fascist regimes. It was rather in ‘forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems.’ The procedures she described were methods to normalize such solutions, to ‘construct an internal enemy,’ isolate, demonize and criminalize it and sympathizers to its ideology and their allies, and, using the media, provide the illusion of power and influence to one’s supporters…

“The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.”

Palin: ‘It’ll Be over My Dead Body That I Get a Shot’

Salon.com : “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) suggested on Sunday that she would rather die than be vaccinated for Covid-19…

“‘We were led to believe that we wouldn’t have to have the shot,’ Palin said. ‘Well then they changed their tune and now those of us who have had Covid, they’re telling us that even though we’ve had it and we have natural immunity now that we still have to get a shot…There are more of us than there are of them!’ she exclaimed. ‘You need to all look around and realize as you stiffen your spine and take those positions and we know our rights, especially when it comes to the government telling us what we have to inject in our own bodies, realize that those around you — as you stiffen your spine — their spines too will stiffen.'”