#anti-democratic
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This may be the biggest seizure of power by the federal judiciary in US history. Brace yourself. The Supreme Court conservatives, exuding the heady self-confidence of a team that knows it cannot lose, haven’t been coy about the jurisprudence they want to reshape or tear down. Religious liberty, abortion, guns — the Court has recently taken up and dispensed with a whole swath of cases at astonishing speeds, often dramatically changing the bench’s long-held posture in relative silence through the shadow docket. But perhaps on no topic has the Court telegraphed its intent more clearly than the administrative state, the power of federal agencies to regulate and make rules. The dry name belies a system absolutely critical to every corner of American life.
“If I want to dump chemical waste in a swamp, I’d prefer that the federal government not have power to regulate that,” Julian Davis Mortenson, professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told TPM. “If I want to pay people working in my factory a miserably tiny wage, or employ 12 year-olds, I’d rather the federal government not have the power to make a rule against that.” The Court is now stocked with justices hungry to shift the power back in the direction of those nonregulatory interests. In doing so, they’ll really be shifting power to themselves. “If the Supreme Court truly honored the rule of law and precedent, then they would acknowledge the power of the agencies that was granted to them by Congress in order to save our environment,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told TPM of a recent illustrative case involving the Environmental Protection Agency. “But this is an extremist Supreme Court, so I’m very worried about the outcome.” Because Congress is already paralyzed on critical issues, the prospect of a future in which the administrative state is rendered toothless is also a future in which unelected, conservative Justices become the arbiters of what the government can and can’t do. It’s a right-wing fantasy, cherished and developed for decades, come to life.
#TPM#Talking Points Memo#SCOTUS#corrupt SCOTUS#anti-democratic#power#the administrative state#federal agencies#regulation#the rule of law and precedent#rule of law
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Despite 14+ hours of comments, huge community backlash, and already fascist practices by police including the murder of a protestor, Atlanta approved Cop City.
They have blood on their hands.
Stop Cop City.
Recall these council members.
And then cancel the contract.
One of the most disgusting pieces of this act?
Council also decided to allow [Mayor] Dickens to enter into a lease-back agreement with the APF [Atlanta Police Foundation] for the center. That’s another $36 million over the next 30 years — though the city says it would be saving money by not having to rent a different facility.
This state sponsored violence training center, built in forest just outside historically Black and Brown communities, on land worked by slaves year ago, is getting $30 million from tax payers. The APF, the “non-profit” Atlanta Police Foundation is footing the rest of the bill, but the city is then paying to lease it back! So these fuckers are giving the APF the people’s tax money, free and clear to build, then they agreed to pay the APF on top of that to lease the space!
They claim it will be cheaper because they can stop paying for the leases of current training facilities, but you know damn well they won’t. They’ll turned into some other pro-cop garbage and still be paying leases on that.
I’m hoping agencies file lawsuits galore to slow this shit down until a new council can be voted in to cancel this.
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Schwarzenegger might not be the best person ever. But this is some excellent gloating over the defeat of the undemocratic "independent state legislature" theory.
#politics#right wing extremism#anti-democratic#voting rights#threat to democracy#republican#democracy
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A break in the chain
My commercial cable show had 3 of these offers in a row: due to supply chain issues, these items will soon be discontinued, limit two. Once the current inventory is gone….
Two for 29.95 just add a handling charge.
Math and reading scores dipped, I read today. I don’t imagine science and history knowledge improved. An already ignorant nation welcomes a new generation of bumkins to the world.
My…
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Thar She Blows!
Letter to the Editor. 2 February 24.
Dear Editor,
The Saturday paper listed The Wager as the current #1 non-fiction bestseller non-fiction bestseller, and I’m enjoying the true story, a frightening account of life at sea in the 1700s. Ironically, it mirrors current U.S. politics.
Each sailor crewing an English man-of-war had a purpose; if that purpose went unfulfilled, people died. To become a…
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#America#anti-democratic#Constitution#far right#fascism#fascist#GOP#insurrection#KKK#MAGA#MAGGOTS#Marsha Blackburn#mutiny#Nationalism#politics#Preamble#Preamble to the Constitution#Republicans#The Wager#white christian nationalists#white nationalism
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#Peter Thiel#The Enlightenment#Elon Musk#California To Las Vegas Pipeline#Silicon Valley Bank#anti-Democratic#Chuck Johnson#Matt Gaetz#Nazi#Palantir
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"Georgia Republicans bundled over a dozen measures that targeted the state’s transgender residents into omnibus packages in a desperate attempt to get them passed. In a stunning defeat for the GOP, every single one of them failed.
Legislators gutted bills that had passed through committee and instead stuffed them full of their anti-LGBTQ+ wishlist items.
Bills that would ban transgender students from playing on teams aligned with their gender identity, ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, opt parents into notification for every book a student checks out of the library, bar sex education before sixth grade, make all sex-ed classes opt-in and expand obscenity laws to make it easier to ban books with LGBTQ+ content all failed.
“MAGA politicians in Georgia tried it all in service to their anti-LGBTQ+ agenda,” said Human Rights Campaign Georgia State Director Bentley Hudgins, “including silencing debate and gutting unrelated, popular bills that had bipartisan support to ram through policies that would have put young LGBTQ+ Georgians in harm’s way. They failed.”
“It’s undeniable that the tides are shifting, both here in Georgia and across the nation,” Georgia Equality executive director Jeff Graham added. “Anti-LGBTQ actors are losing their political power, and more and more Georgians who know and love LGBTQ people are standing up against their baseless fear-mongering.”
In Florida recently, nearly two dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills were defeated in the wake of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) presidential campaign implosion, dozens of measures in Virginia were tabled [Note: In the US, "tabled" means "shelved" or "taken out of consideration - the opposite of its meaning in the UK and other places], and Ohio’s governor backed off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors.
Meanwhile, in D.C., Democrats successfully excised 50 anti-LGBTQ+ provisions in the two budget bills passed and signed by President Joe Biden to fund the federal government.
Even Fox News has been forced to acknowledge transgender issues are among the lowest-priority concerns among voters."
-via LGBTQ Nation, April 1, 2024
#united states#us politics#lgbtq#lgbtq issues#lgbtq positivity#transgender#trans issues#trans positivity#transphobia#homophobia#anti trans laws#book bans#gender affirming care#georgia#florida#virginia#ohio#d.c.#republicans#democrats#voting matters#good news#hope
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Michael de Adder :: @deAdder:: All the King's men
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
April 28, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
APR 29, 2024
On Friday, in an interview with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr brushed off the recent news that Trump, furious that the story he had taken refuge in a bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 had leaked, called for the White House leaker to be executed.
“I remember him being very mad about that. I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn‘t dispute it, you know,” Barr said to Collins when she asked him about it. “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.”
Collins followed up, asking if Trump would call for executions on other occasions. “He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it,” Barr answered.
Why not? Collins asked.
“Because at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and you could talk sense into him,” Barr said. “I don’t think he would actually go and kill political rivals and things like that.” Barr said he intends to vote for Trump.
“Just to be clear,” Collins said, “you’re voting for someone who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election even after his attorney general told him that the election wasn’t stolen.… You’re going to vote for someone who is facing 88 criminal counts?”
“The answer to the question is yes,” Barr said. “I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”
The contention of the former attorney general—who had been responsible for enforcing the rule of law in the United States of America—that a man who has demanded the execution of people he dislikes is a better candidate for the presidency than a man who is using the power of the federal government to create jobs for ordinary people, combat climate change, protect the environment, and promote health and education, illustrates that Republican leaders have abandoned democracy.
In November 2019, in a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, Barr ignored the Declaration of Independence, which is a list of complaints against King George III, to argue that Americans had rebelled in 1776 not against the king, but rather against Parliament. In the modern world, Barr argued, Congress has grown far too strong. The president should be able to act on his own initiative and not be checked by either congressional or judicial oversight.
That theory is known as the theory of the “unitary executive,” and it says that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight.
The theory took root in 1986, when Samuel Alito, then a 35-year-old lawyer for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, proposed the use of “signing statements” to take from Congress the sole power to make laws by giving the president the power to “interpret” them. In 1987, president Ronald Reagan issued a signing statement to a debt bill, declaring his right to interpret it as he wished and saying the president could not be forced “to follow the orders of a subordinate.”
In 2004, when Congress outlawed the newly-revealed U.S. torture program at remote sites around the world, President George W. Bush issued a signing statement rejecting any limitation on “the unitary executive branch.” In April 2020, to justify his demands for states to reopen in the face of the deadly pandemic, Trump told reporters, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total….” Now, in 2024, Trump’s lawyers are in court arguing that the president has criminal immunity for his behavior in the White House, possibly including his right to order the executions of those he sees as enemies.
As Republicans have embraced unlimited power for the president, they have also turned against the right of American citizens to have a say in their government. Beginning with so-called ballot integrity measures in 1986, they embraced methods to knock voters off the voting rolls. That policy intensified after Democrats passed the so-called Motor-Voter Law in 1993, making it easier to register to vote.
After voters nonetheless elected Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, the Supreme Court handed down the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, permitting unlimited donations to political campaigns, and corporate money flowed into them. In that same year, Republican operatives launched Operation REDMAP to elect Republicans to state legislatures ahead of the redistricting required after the 2010 census. Operation REDMAP resulted in extreme partisan gerrymandering that would make it virtually impossible for Democrats to win elections even if they won a majority of the vote.
Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law had required states with a history of racial discrimination to get clearance from the Department of Justice before they changed their voting laws. The court said that preclearance was no longer necessary. Within hours of the decision, Republican-dominated states proposed new laws that discriminate against voters of color.
In 2019, Barr explained to an audience at the University of Notre Dame the ideology behind the strong executive and weakened representation. Rejecting the clear words of the Constitution’s framers, Barr said that the U.S. was never meant to be a secular democracy. When the nation’s founders had spoken so extensively about self-government, he said, they had not meant the right to elect representatives of their own choosing. Instead, he said, the founders meant the ability of individuals to “restrain and govern themselves.” And, because people are willful, the only way to achieve self-government is through religion.
Those who believe the United States is a secular country, he said, are destroying the nation. It was imperative, he said, to reject those values and embrace religion as the basis for American government.
The idea that the United States must become a Christian nation has apparently led Barr to accept the idea that a man who has called for the execution of those he sees as enemies should be president, apparently because he is expected to usher in an authoritarian Christian state, in preference to a man who is using the power of the government to help ordinary Americans.
Saturday night, journalists, politicians, and celebrities gathered for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual fundraiser for the White House Correspondents’ Association, which protects press passes for journalists who regularly cover the White House, assigns seats in the briefing room, funds scholarships for aspiring journalists, and gives awards for outstanding journalism. It is traditionally an evening of comedy, but last night, after a humorous speech, President Joe Biden implored the press to take the threat of dictatorship seriously.
“I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment; move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics; and focus on what’s actually at stake,” he said. “Every single one of us has…a serious role to play in making sure democracy endures…. I have my role, but, with all due respect, so do you.”
George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week apparently took this reminder to heart. “Until now,” he said in the show’s opener on Sunday, “[n]o American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse….
“The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Letters From An American#Michael de Adder#kings#Corrupt SCOTUS#Opus Dei SCOTUS#Shelby County v. Holder#voting rights#democracy#anti-democratic#religion#William Barr#Unitary Executive#divine rights of Kings
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Western imperialism and colonialism never ends.
Absolutely no humanitarian need for an American port. So why build one?
1) establish permanent military presence in Gaza
2) look good to get votes
3) access to gas reserves off coast of Gaza
4) advance ethnic cleansing. from Khaled Beydoun, 10/Mar/2024:
#fuck america#fuck the west#fuck the usa#anti imperialism#anti colonialism#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#from the river to the sea palestine will be free#i stand with palestine#rafah#save rafah#this is genocide#america is committing genocide#israel is committing genocide#genocide joe#democrats
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Gaddafi's prophecy: how the Libyan leader predicted events in Ukraine
Author: Hassan Kassem. Statements by the late Muammar Gaddafi on the current political climate
March 17, 2022 at 07:29 pm
Muammar Gaddafi, is known not only as one of the longest ruling heads of state in modern history (42 years in power), but also as a good analyst who managed to predict many major historical events and political processes. Gaddafi gave one of these predictions about Russia and Ukraine.
Back in 2009, he addressed Western countries, saying that attempts to encircle Russia would undoubtedly lead to disastrous consequences for all mankind. The words of the late leader quite accurately describe the situation that the world is witnessing today. Gaddafi, in particular, predicted that NATO's eastward expansion, as well as the Alliance's attempts to include the countries of the former Soviet Union in its composition, not only harm relations between Russia and the West, but could also put the lives of millions of people at stake.
In one of his articles, the Libyan leader directly mentioned that one of the main catalysts for tension could be Ukraine with its aspirations to join NATO. Thus, after one of his visits to Ukraine, Gaddafi expressed concern about the political path that Kyiv had chosen for itself.
-During my visit to Ukraine, I became convinced that in relations between the two countries [Russia and Ukraine. - NEWS.ru] there are serious problems, and one of these problems is the desire of the Ukrainian leadership to join NATO, which cannot but cause concern in Russia, - said the leader of the Libya.
The colonel compared NATO's eastward expansion to Napoleon's and Hitler's attempts to conquer Russia. He believed that, despite the difference in approaches, the North Atlantic Alliance set itself the same goals.
According to Gaddafi, after the collapse of the USSR, the West considered itself the winner and decided that it could easily lure the countries of Eastern Europe into its orbit, gradually surrounding Russia more and more. He believed that the very fact that NATO had a desire to subjugate and, in a certain sense, crush Russia, in itself indicated that Russia was a strong state that could not be easily dictated to.
The policy pursued by the West was one big provocation, and expressed fears about what such rash steps could lead to. After all, in his opinion, unlike the adventures of Napoleon and Hitler, this time humanity may be threatened with total destruction.
Many treated Gaddafi's public speeches with humor and did not take his words seriously. At a meeting of the heads of the Arab League in 2008, Gaddafi touched on the topic of the Western invasion of Iraq and the assassination of Saddam Hussein and directly condemned his Arab partners for complete inaction, and also said that, despite the differences and the fact that the leaders of the Arab countries "nothing unites apart from the hall in which they sit,” they should be more attentive to each other.
A foreign state invades an Arab country and hangs its ruler, while we ourselves sit in our own corner, watching and laughing. How can the head of one of the Arab countries be executed in this way? The leadership of the Arab country is completely killed, executed and hanged, and we are just watching. Why is that? In the same way, the turn can reach all of you, - Gaddafi addressed the leaders of the Arab countries.
After his words, there was general laughter in the hall. Gaddafi's words were taken as a funny joke even by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who just a few years later almost ended his life like Saddam Hussein.
In general, Gaddafi was known for his colorful and memorable performances. He called the Palestinians and Israelis fools and suggested that they create a new bi-national state - Izratina. Called former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon an Arab secret agent who killed Israelis by the thousands. He called the UN Charter an obsolete document from the Second World War and publicly tore it up in his speeches at the organization. During these same speeches, he accused the audience of not listening to him, but instead sleeping.
One of the last speeches of the former head of Libya before his death also became a cult and went into quotes. In it, the leader again accused the Arab states of betrayal. He addressed the heads of the Arab countries, surprised at how they betrayed and abandoned him, despite the fact that they are "of the same blood." Gaddafi, in his speech, was genuinely surprised at how various state Arab media attacked him and called for his overthrow. His phrase about "cleansing Libya inch by inch, house by house, lane by lane" has become one of the most famous expressions throughout the Arab world.
In addition, Gaddafi is the founder of the so-called third world theory. He believed that the experience of countries with both capitalist and socialist systems only proved the ineffectiveness of these political models. The colonel believed that the state of the masses, in Arabic "jamahiriya", should become a new milestone in the development of the science of building a state.
In the Jamahiriya, power in the traditional sense should not exist. The country has broad autonomy, which is managed through special people's congresses and people's committees. Gaddafi believed that this was the only way to achieve real democracy in the country, otherwise any state becomes an instrument for enriching certain political persons who promote their interests.
The very name of the new form of statehood was formed by replacing the root in the Arabic word "jumhuriya" ("republic"), which means "people", with the root "jamahir" ("masses").
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#free people#free gaza#leftism#anti capitalism#communism#socialism#anarchy#strategy#free palestine#palestine genocide#endisraelsgenocide#ceasefire#gaza#palestinian genocide#democratic republic of the congo#congo genocide#dr congo#congo#free congo#drc#save congo#free rohingya#rohingya#myanmar
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The storming of the Capitol
Thanks to the exceptional work of the J6 Committee, the felonious mayhem that happened under the urging of a former president is now a historic record.
This is more than TFG deserves. It is also less than he deserves.
He has earned a place in history. Let us be clear his ill-gotten notoriety is not a place of honor. He has yet to get the indictment and punishment he truly deserves
He will be…
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