Author: clearandpresentdanger

There have been many moments when Trump’s destruction of the Republican party has been readily apparent, and this debate is one of those moments. The party, and the candidates representing it, has become meaner, dumber, and wholly divorced from the issues Americans actually care about.

What did the Republican candidates identify as the problems plaguing America? Hunter Biden. Teachers’ unions. George-Soros-funded district attorneys. Critical race theory in schools and trans kids in locker rooms.

What did they shrug off? Climate change and the deadly disasters it has caused. Endemic gun violence that is now the leading killer of American children. The man who will likely beat them all for the Republican nomination being indicted for a slew of crimes.  Parents’ concerns over teacher shortages, old school buildings, and the Republican assault on history and school libraries.

This country is worse thanks to today’s Republican party, and today’s Republican party is among the worst aspects of this country. Over and over again, Republican politicians and conservative commentators talk about all of the ways in which life in America has deteriorated, how we are no longer as great as we once were. They often pin the blame on immigrants, feminists, racial justice activists, Democrats, and changing social mores. But if Americans really want to see a striking example of our national nosedive, they needn’t look further than at the ridiculous men (and one woman) on the Fox News “debate” stage.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/24/who-won-the-republican-debate-our-panel-reacts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The House Freedom Caucus issued a series of ultimatums Monday, outlining the demands it wants met before the right-wing group’s members will support a measure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and continue to fund the federal government. Among them: an end to the myriad criminal cases pending against former President Donald Trump (and the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department against conservatives), as well as ensured passage of a draconian immigration law and an amorphous demand to end “woke” policies in the U.S. military. “Furthermore, we will oppose any attempt by Washington to revert to its old playbook of using a series of short-term funding extensions designed to push Congress up against a December deadline to force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget busting, pork filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill at year’s end.”

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/house-freedom-caucus-let-trump-walk-or-well-shut-down-the-government

The definition of stupid.

On the surface, this sounds like a sad story.  It’s not.  It’s an example of what happens to anyone who follows Trump.

Yesterday, Glenn Youngkin was back to doing what he most likes to do – namely, posing as a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate, pandering to the Trumpist “base” of the party, kissing the a** of far-right media figures, etc. – while AVOIDING doing what he LEAST likes to do – namely, doing the job he was “hired” to do, namely be the governor of Virginia.

So for 30 minutes yesterday, Youngkin spoke at an event in Atlanta called “The Gathering,” hosted by right-wing radio host Erick Erickson– who among other things has said that “males dominate females in the ‘natural world’ and it was only ‘science’ for men to be the breadwinners for their families”; “it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness”; Michelle Obama is a “Marxist harpy”; “President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize because of an ‘affirmative action quota’”; etc.

During his half hour with “Erick, Son of Erick,” as Jon Stewart likes to call him, Youngkin had a lot to say, almost all of which was either false or heavily distorted from reality.  See below for a blow-by-blow account of this freak show.

• Erickson started by telling a whopper, that Youngkin’s appearance on his panel was NOT about his presidential ambitions. Alrighty…sure! LOL
• Youngkin started by praising right-wingnut Erickson as supposedly doing “great work” and carrying a “message of commonsense.” Again, see here for what Erickson’s actually all about.
• Youngkin falsely claimed that there’s such a thing as “conservative commonsense policies” and that they “work.” Apparently, he thinks that denying climate science, attacking LGBTQ kids, waging war on public education, pushing for tax breaks for the wealthy, etc, etc. are “commonsense policies.” Youngkin further claimed that Virginia went from being “totally blue to being red” (in fact, Dems had a trifecta for two years, but that didn’t mean Virginia was “totally blue” and it’s certainly not totally “red” now) and that Virginia went from being “bottom third in job growth to top four in job growth” (source on that? also, how much of Virginia’s economic growth is due to Youngkin’s policies? presumably zero, since he just got into office in January 2022 and claims that Senate Dems have blocked his policies), that we supposedly went “from having schools that were driving people to move away” (that’s just wildly false), blah blah blah.
• Youngkin then went into his (false) spiel about how Republican governors are amazing in every way (ABSURD LIE), that “Democrat [sic] governors” are a failure (LIE), that Joe Biden’s been a “failure” (HUGE LIE; Biden’s been one of the most successful presidents in terms of transformative legislation EVER, while the economy is booming and inflation’s down to around 3%) that the Democratic Party is “extreme” (COMPLETE LIE; the Democratic Party is in the majority or plurality on the vast majority of issues and also has won the popular vote for president in all but one election since 1988, including by millions of votes in 2016 and 2020) and “throws out everybody who’s reasonable” in their primaries (WTF? where does he get his crap from?), etc.
• Youngkin then recited a litany of lies and distortions of what VA Senate Democrats did in the last session, including on fentanyl (“they chose dealers over victims” – completely false), “we’re gonna side with social media companies over families” (that’s not at all what VA Senate Dems did), that supposedly VA Senate Dems “outsourced our government to California and now requires Virginia to follow the mandates on what car you buy…so in 2024, Virginians will have to start buying electric vehicles based on California’s decisions…the last place Virginians want to be is California” (WTF is he even ranting about? does he really not understand how any of this works?), wild distortions on what Senate Dems have said about “tax relief” (Senate Dems have offered multiple compromise proposals, including significant “tax relief,” but Youngkin’s holding out for permanent tax cuts slanted towards the wealthy and corporations), and a whopper about how Virginians are “way overtaxed” (in fact, Virginia ranks 13th-LOWEST in state “tax burdens”), etc. He then claimed, falsely, that he has to “battle every day with folks who really are extreme” (“the far left”) – huh? Crazy, delusional shit.
• Youngkin claimed that he won Hampton Roads and Greater Richmond in 2021, yet still only just won the governor’s race with 52% of the vote. In fact, he got crushed in Richmond and Henrico and Norfolk and Newport News and only won the election with 50.6% of the vote.
• Youngkin also claimed that Republicans need to NOT just talk to their base…while talking to hard-right Erick Erickson, and while he goes on Fox “News” and other right-wing media ALL THE TIME.
• Youngkin argued disingenuously, as he often does, that “kids belong to families…not the state.” Of course, kids don’t “belong” to the state and nobody on the Democratic side is arguing that. And parents obviously *do and should have a big say in their kids’ upbringing*! But that does NOT mean that a small minority of loud, right-wing individuals gets to tell the *majority* of parents what should happen to THEIR kids, and that’s exactly what Youngkin’s doing – putting the power of the state behind his preferred (right-wing) policy choices, the books that he and his followers think should (and shouldn’t) be read, the history that he and his follower thinks should (and shouldn’t) be taught, the kids that should (and shouldn’t) be treated with dignity, etc.
• Youngkin’s been called on this a million times, but he just keeps lying and claiming he *won* the Hispanic and Asian votes in 2021 and got a higher % of the Black vote than usual. In fact…he got trounced among all three groups, per CNN exit polls.
• Youngkin falsely claimed that the “spirit of Virginia” supposedly “[went] to sleep” under “really oppressive left policies.” That’s all just completely false. In fact, Gov. Ralph Northam was one of the best governors in Virginia history, dealing with massive challenges, including the COVID pandemic and Trump’s assault on our democracy. So the challenges to the “spirit of Virginia” were really from the MAGA *right*, Donald Trump, etc, not from some mythical “oppressive left policies” that Glenn Youngkin invented in a fever dream or something…
• Youngkin also lied about Virginia schools being “locked tight” a year longer than in Georgia; in fact, by the fall of 2020, Virginia schools could choose what mix of learning (in-person, remote, hybrid) they would conduct, with appropriate safeguards against the deadly COVID pandemic. And no, Democrats weren’t claiming that remote learning was as good or better than in-person learning, but that there was a deadly pandemic and that until there was a vaccine, there was a significant health risk that needed to be considered in how best to educate kids (while keeping them, their teachers, their families, etc. safe).  And no, this had nothing to do with “progressive left” (whatever that means) policies, as Youngkin keeps repeating; it had to do with legitimate health concerns, while Donald Trump was president by the way, and in both “blue” and “red” states…
• Finally, Youngkin did what he loves to do – bashed teachers, as supposedly not caring about educating kids (WTF???) but about being all about advancing Democratic and progressive politics. This guy’s a real piece of work…

To those of you that couldn’t bring yourself to vote for Hillary although she was one of the most qualified people to ever run for President; all of you who kept calling her “the lesser of two evils;”  who blamed her for the indiscretions of her husband; who raved about “her emails”.

This is what you caused:

This Supreme Court is your fault.

You killed Roe v. Wade.

You caused the Jan 6 coup attempt.

All the evil for which you blame Trump is your fault.

Now you have a chance to do the right thing.

Third-party candidates can not and will not win.  Any “Democrat” who runs against Biden will not and cannot win.

If you vote for anyone other then Biden-Harris, you are re-electing Trump

If you want to play games go to an arcade.  If you want to “send a message,” use your phone.

The rest of us want to save democracy. We want to save ourselves and our children from mass shootings. We want to give women control of their bodies.  We want to recognize and embrace the LGBTQ+ community.  We want to celebrate African Americans and our history.  We want every citizen to be able to vote.  We want to keep America great, strong, and the most effective member of the world community.

Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Black history course is banned in the state because it spreads “hate” against the U.S.

WTF???

Does anyone else here dueling banjos playing in the background?  Can she even read the course?

Remember:  She is the one who signed a state law allowing children as young as 12 to work in factories.

This is the future of America under Republican rule:  Lily-white and stupid.

There’s fresh evidence pointing in the opposite direction. From the latest national polling report from Quinnipiac University.

In the wake of a federal indictment accusing former President Donald Trump of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Americans 54 — 42 percent think Trump should be prosecuted on criminal charges, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University national poll released today.

Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac polling analyst, explained, “Not only do a large majority of Americans regard the federal charges as serious, more than half of Americans think the former president should face prosecution.”

Not surprisingly, the partisan gaps were enormous — 95% of Democrats think Trump should be criminally prosecuted for his post-defeat efforts, 85% of Republicans do not — but the survey results found that independents are not siding with the former president: By a 57%-to-37% margin, Quinnipiac found independent voters agreeing that Trump should be prosecuted.

The top-line results do not appear to be an outlier: The latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted shortly before this week’s Fulton County indictment, also found that 53% of Americans “approve of the Justice Department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election.”

In Virginia, one Ronald Hedlund is a member of the Republican Party of Virginias (RPV) Central Committee, the decision-making body for the state party.  Hedlund recently attended a Little League baseball tournament in his area where he erected two signs, pictured below.

One sign — not readily visible — is an inflated tower that reads “FUCK BIDEN.”

The other sign is a 16-foot long penis with the words “BIDEN SUCKS”, mounted on a trailer so he can tow it around and display it.

This was at a Little League baseball tournament attended by kids and their parents and NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN HAS STOOD UP AND TOLD HEDLUND TO STOP IT.  NOT ONE.