That is the implication from David Badash's piece in AlterNet and it is compelling just after the sunshine lunatic's latest move. Ron DeSantis is forming his own army with the justification it is needed to protect his state. What the state of Florida needs is protection from Ron DeSantis. It will cost millions in taxpayer funds, and one must wonder at this point where the hell the state's residents are in allowing this moron free rein over all their rights.
"also being seen as one more potential attack on science during the coronavirus pandemic era. All National Guard members must be vaccinated. DeSantis opposes all vaccine and mask mandates and has invited unvaccinated, fired police officers from others states to move to Florida – and offering them a $5000 payment."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on his private army...
Here's another take from the media...
Perhaps one of the strongest warnings [against DeSantis] comes from SiriusXM Progress host Dean Obeidallah, who calls it "the beginning of a 'Red Army' as the GOP prepares for war."
And another...
MSNBC's Joy Reid likened the move to fascism, asking: "So… y’all know this is fascisty bananas, right…?"
Does anyone else smell a full-fledged Donald Trump in the making?
Marcus Lamb's Christian Daystar Television Network dedicated hours of broadcasts to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination activists and groups. They persisted in giving their viewers deceptive information...
In July 2020, the Lamb family devoted an hour of their broadcast to "censorship" around the Covid pandemic, featuring the misinformation group America's Frontline Doctors.
"quietly backed by dark money political organizations, evangelizing treatments for or opinions about the coronavirus that most doctors, public health officials and epidemiologists have roundly decried as dangerous misinformation.
Germany just joined Austria in a lockdown on the unvaccinated, initiating mandatory vaccines.
As CNN puts it, Austria took an extraordinary step by ordering Covid vaccinations for the entire population. No one thought it could be done, throughout the entire world. Various absurd enticements have been used, especially in the United States, to coerce citizens to do what they should do without any urging. Austria first...
"introduced a lockdown for the unvaccinated — a restriction that went farther than other European nations in singling out the people who have been driving a worrying surge in hospitalizations."
The virus is soaring across Europe; "The continent is once again ground zero for the global pandemic, despite the widespread availability of vaccines." So far, the U.S. isn't in dire straits, but we are again experiencing a surge in both cases and deaths from coronavirus, and the new, more powerful variant, Omicron, hasn't even taken hold yet. So far, the U.S, has experienced 49,677,021cases, 806,194 deaths. We are well ahead in the world on most of the vital statistics...
#1 Total Cases; New Cases; Total Deaths; and #2 in New Deaths...
Austria protests vaccine mandate...
As the world leader in all the above, doesn't that indicate some kind of preventive strategy is called for? The biggest obstacles are Republican governors like Texas' Greg Abbott, Florida's Ron DeSantis and So. Dakota's Kristi Noem. There are others, all Republicans, but these are the most vocal. Abbott and DeSantis are known as the leading Covid-19 killing machines. With no regard for their residents and constituents, Texas has 74,429 total deaths, Florida, 61,630.
seized on a fast-approaching fiscal deadline to mount fresh opposition to President Biden’s coronavirus vaccine and testing mandates.
Even Moscow Mitch is against a government shutdown, and has made this known to other Republicans. But this idiot, Ron Johnson, is doing his best to use an attack against coronavirus vaccine mandates combined with a potential shutdown to put mandates in a negative light. Okay, it may not be the time, yet, for a lockdown for the unvaccinated in the U.S., but the current trend of cases is up with 82,360 daily, unfortunately probably headed for another 100,000 per day again.
We hope we don't have another Austria, but we must be ready. However, it is, sadly, the unvaccinated in this country who are causing the spikes in cases and deaths. It is this bunch of imbeciles that was targeted by Austria, and maybe we should be thinking about it here.
But the bogus Boebert isn't alone; she is backed by Matt Gaetz, M.T. Greene, Madison Cawthorne and most lately, Arizona's Paul Gosar. The Daily Beast calls them, "Stupid Sycophants and Sickos." I see them as the Republican Party's latest descent into an extremism that is threatening to bring this country down. Until now it has been extreme rhetoric. With Boebert's latest diatribe of anti-muslim discourse, she brought out the worst...death threats against a colleague in Congress.
"Even though their latest publicity and fundraising spectacle is another sad reflection of their party’s dangerous descent into extremism, it nonetheless presents the Democrats with a prime political opportunity to expose the Hate Squad as the modern face and beating heart of the GOP."
There is no doubt this venom emanates from the gang's connection and loyalty to Donald Trump. There is absolutely no inclination in any one of the frightful five to turn their efforts into helping their constituents or doing anything to better the country they represent. As a matter of fact, just the opposite. Paul Gosar "tweeted an anime video showing him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then attacking President Biden with swords."
Watch the perpetual sneer on Boebert's face as she attacks AOC and Pres. Biden...
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy thought it was OK, resulting in only two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, voting to censure Gosar for what he had done. With this display of ignorance of what is right, there is no wonder GOP supporters go off on maniacal tangents that lead them to threaten someone's life. At the same time, Donald Trump continues to spread lies and incite violence like he did in the January 6, Capitol insurrection.
"Greene was stripped of her committee assignments last year for her utterly outrageous social media posts suggesting that Jews control space lasers that start wildfires, questioning whether the 9/11 attacks were real, suggesting that school shootings were “false flag” operations, and amplifying Q-Anon conspiracy theories. A day after 61 Republican
lawmakers voted to remove Liz Cheney from the party’s leadership, just eleven Republicans joined the united Democratic majority in voting to punish Greene in February."
Next is Matt Gaetz...
He is "currently under federal investigation as to whether he paid women, including a minor, for sex. His “wingman” Joel Greenberg, a former Florida official, pleaded guilty earlier this year to sex trafficking and is working with investigators. None of this has inspired fellow Republicans to condemn Gaetz, even as their base increasingly believes the QAnon conspiracy—a domestic terror threat—that liberals are Satan-worshipping child molesters who must be violently removed from office."
"seemingly proposed another “Stop the Steal”-type rally in D.C. this week while sympathizing with the “political hostages” that were arrested and charged for participating in the violent Jan. 6 Capitol riots."
Cawthorne is new to the game of Republican annihilation of our democracy, but, no doubt he will get better at it.
I give thanks to the Daily Beast for the many quotes I have used in this post, and I urge you to read all of the above links. There is so much additional information that I didn't cover, but which is all pertinent to how the Republican Party is attempting to bring down our democracy.
Stephen A. Lawrence died in Tennessee in October. He was 59, recently relocated to Nashville from Garner, NC. He loved helping others but failed to help himself. To a Covid jab. He refused to believe the virus was real; the man must have been unable to assimilate numbers with a raging pandemic going on plastered over all the media of the world. In the end Lawrence even refused to go to the hospital when he couldn't breathe.
"Lawrence leaves behind his 92-year-old mother, his brother, a son and many others who loved him, according to the obituary. After the tragedy, David [his brother] said the family is trying to illustrate how important the battle against COVID is, showing people how Stephen's choice is affecting them today."
One can only wonder the reasoning of a person like Lawrence.
And then there is the appalling story of a man in Maine who as a county lawmaker repeatedly flaunted the coronavirus protocols. But it was his wife who caught the virus, subsequently dying; no word whether she was vaccinated but considering her husband's ideology, probably not. State Rep. Chris Johansen, R-Monticello, resigned from the legislature for the reason that, with his wife gone, he had to take care of the farm.
“Her dedication to the farm allowed me to dedicate the time I needed to the people of Aroostook County,” Johansen wrote. “With her passing I am no longer afforded that time.”
What's appalling? Johansen wouldn't even admit his wife died of the virus. And obviously impassive...
"A few weeks after Cindy Johansen died, Chris Johansen attended an Augusta rally against the state’s vaccination mandate for health care workers."
It is a known fact for several years now the Republicans are known as the 'do nothing' party. They would rather block or sabotage Democrats' issues than come up with meaningful legislation of their own. Moscow Mitch, even in his Senate secondary roll today, has still done damage to the Biden agenda. But it the party's allegiance to Donald Trump that has recently defined Republicans, and it doesn't look like this will change any time soon.
"The Republican Party is becoming a cult. Its leaders are in thrall to Donald Trump, a defeated former president who refuses to acknowledge defeat. Its ideology is MAGA, Trump’s deeply divisive take on what Republicans assume to be unifying American values."
But it has been clear of late that the GOP doesn't really want to unify anything but lies, corruption, deception and violence. Their support of Donald Trump's state after state attempts to invalidate the 2020 election to determine he is a winner is evidence of this. And Trump is the focus, which can be seen here...
"The party is now in the process of carrying out purges of heretics who do not worship Trump or accept all the tenets of MAGA. Conformity is enforced by social media, a relatively new institution with the power to marshal populist energy against critics and opponents."
GOP Green Lights Right-Wing Extremism Within Halls Of Congress... How does the former White House maniac hold on to this loyalty? The answer is we have to accept the fact that there are more double-digit morons out there than we thought. Trump supporters. Poor souls who have blindly, and still are, completely ignoring what this lunatic did during four years in the White House, and since. Hard to believe...but true. Schneider has more insight...
"What’s happening on the right in American politics is not exactly new. To understand it, you need to read a book published 50 years ago by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, "The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970." Right-wing extremism, now embodied in Trump’s MAGA movement, dates back to the earliest days of the country."
In the Lipset and Raab book, the authors conclude, "Right-wing extremism is not about the rational calculation of interests. It’s about irrational impulses, which the authors identify as “status frustrations.” The key words here are "rational" and "irrational," and the Republicans are only guilty of one, obviously the latter. Lipset and Raab also talk about attacking "scapegoats," mostly minority ethnic or religious groups.
Obviously they know nothing about humanity, but there is no better definition of the current thrust of the Republican Party than “the politics of unreason.”
Are gun owners afraid to admit or reveal they own firearms? Maybe it's because they have an arsenal at home and don't want the government to know. The idea the Feds will take your guns way should only concern those who are doing something illegal or unethical in their gun ownership. In a country where there are more guns than people, there are 393 million civilian-owned firearms in a population of 333,728,343. To say the above is absurd is the understatement of the year.
So far in 2021, there have been 40,704 gun violence deaths broken down by 18,792 homicides, 21,912 suicides. There have been 646 mass shooting, in most cases involving an assault weapon, and tragically 1,374 children have died from gun violence and hundreds injured. If you can argue that there should be more guns on the street after seeing those numbers, and deny the fact we need more gun control, then you are a thoughtless, heartless gun nut.
A gun registry could help improve those numbers simply by the fact that a gun used in the killing or wounding of an individual can be quickly traced back to its owner. If you are a law-abiding firearms owner, you have nothing to worry about. However, here is the opposition to the registry,,,
"Republican Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas led 51 of his colleagues in a letter to acting ATF Director Marvin Richardson on Monday, expressing their concern over a proposed rule by the agency that Republicans fear could eventually lead to a backdoor gun registry around Congress’ prohibition."
What the hell is a "backdoor gun registry?" The term implies the fact that it would be wrong to legislate something that could save lives, particularly those of innocent children. Involved is a "20-year burn date that the federal firearms licensees must abide by, requiring them to preserve firearm purchase records older than two decades." Records eventually end up in the hands of the ATF. And what's wrong with the leading gun agency knowing who owns guns?
Gun Violence Today Explained...
This is all ludicrous, but there is even more. This same group of Republicans says...
"The Biden administration is yet again ignoring the real threats against America and instead using political leverage to encroach on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens."
And finally, these gun nuts in Congress make the case for gun control advocacy. They say the new rules...
"will enable the Biden administration to collect more information on law-abiding gun owners, all with the purpose of eventually having a registry of every gun owner in the United States."
