Expand The Court

The only way it's going to happen is to get a solid Democratic majority in both the House and Senate. THIS CAN BE DONE if we just get people off their asses!

The GOP Wonders Why Young People (And Others) Don't Want To Vote For Them

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

    1. Your Reagan-era "trickle-down economics" strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
    2. You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You're forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
    3. You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
    4. You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
    5. You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
    6. You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it's as if you've made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.
    7. You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day
    8. You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
    9. You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
    10. You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
    11. You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation's youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to "protect the children" while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
    12. You pretend to be offended by "anti-semitism" while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate "cancel culture" despite the fact that you invented it and it's basically all you do.
    13. Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
    14. You're so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
    15. You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.
    16. You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.
    17. You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire "administration" was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.
    18. You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we've ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your "legitimate" appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).
    19. You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
    20. You are the reason we can't pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The 'For the People/Freedom to vote' Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.
    21. You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.
    22. Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

The Reality of Trump Supporters

From Green Eagle:

We are hearing from everyone that there is a difference of world-view between Democrats and Republicans.  The current version of this is between Democrats, who believe that massive evidence exists that the lawless Trump has brazenly broken endless laws- financial laws, laws against sexual abuse, and the grossest misuse of his position of the power of the Presidency, and Republican, who believe the whole thing is a manufactured witch-hunt over insignificant acts, while true Democratic criminals are allowed to roam free.

Well, I've got news for you, buddies: that is completely false.  In fact, except for a vanishingly small collection of the terminally ignorant, no one in the Republican base believes Trump is innocent.  They all know what he did and is continuing to do, just like we do.  And it is not just that they don't care.  They care with every fiber of their being.  It's that for this frighteningly large group of white haters, being a criminal monster that puts Al Capone to shame is exactly what they want in a President.

You see, we have talked about something for years, but they have incorporated it into their souls.  That is the fact that White people are on the edge of no longer being a majority in this country; in fact in many parts of it, they already do not have the votes to win elections without gerrymandering, cheating, violent intimidation and every other tactic of dictators.  They know that they are about to lose power in this country if it continues to uphold the principles that have set it apart from other countries for two and a half centuries, and they know that, if they have to chose between power and principles, they will not hesitate to make the same decision that Hitler and Mussolini and Franco and Pol Pot and Idi Amin have made before them.

And now let me be blunt, and speak in their language and Trump's language.  White supremacists have maintained their power since the beginning of this country by stomping on the necks of the niggers and spics and kikes and chinks, and on the necks of any white race traitors who give a damn about those people.  Now that they cannot win elections fairly any more, they intend to go right on stomping, just stomping harder.  That demands a leader who does not give a damn about democracy or majority rule or fairness or common human decency; who does not care in any way about the lives and welfare of different kinds of people, no more than Hitler cared about Jews and Slavs and Gypsies.  That is why they have reduced their Presidential race to the two most morally hateful candidates in their field, Trump and De Santis, our current versions of Hitler and Stalin, one of whom will slaughter his enemies with glee, the other with a blank, empty countenance.  The contest between these two does not appeal to an electorate that merely ignores their deficiencies, because their voters glorify in criminality, in contempt for right and wrong.  They know this moral debasement in their leaders is the only way they can keep power, and they have committed themselves to move in that direction as fast as they can.  The Republican voting base is consciously auditioning to find the lowest criminal they can put into the White House, because only the lowest criminal can be counted on to give them what they want.

Do these people know that Trump lies to the country every time he opens his mouth?  Sure they do, but they don't care, because they know he is telling them the truth about the only issue that they really care about- crushing all opposition to white minority rule.  They think, stupidly, that this will usher in a paradise in which they will all be rich and powerful, and all own the mansions and yachts and private jets that they have always deserved,  while their perceived enemies will grovel in misery in situations little better than the slums of Victorian Europe.  And they will adore their leader for giving them this victory, just as Germans adored Hitler, until he started losing.  They are looking for the worst person on earth to lead them to this promised land, and they have found him in Trump.

I have been shocked at how many of my fellow Americans have been willing to sign on to this hateful agenda, but maybe I should have read Richard Evans and William Shirer a little closer, and opened my eyes a little wider to what they were really telling us.  Well, it is upon us now.  Thankfully, the bastard has lost the last two electoral cycles, and his understudy De Santis seems more suited for a bureaucratic role like Himmler, than to be the Fuehrer or Duce himself.  Maybe we can hold the fort until demographics completes its work, and it is they who are getting drowned in the bathtub instead of the rest of us.  But it is hardly certain.  If we had been told twenty years ago that we would see in this world an outbreak of white race hatred as malignant as the Nazis, let alone see it right here in the United States, very few of us would have accepted the truth, but here we are.  God have mercy on us.

From NPR:

A popular Orlando burger restaurant known for regularly featuring drag shows is suing the state of Florida and its governor, Ron DeSantis — arguing that the state's new law targeting drag shows violates First Amendment rights.

The owners of Hamburger Mary's in Orlando say their First Amendment rights were violated after DeSantis signed a bill, SB 1438, last week that restricts children from attending certain draw show performances, according to a federal lawsuit obtained by NPR.

The restaurant's Orlando location is asking the court to block the implementation of the state's new law. Other Hamburger Mary's locations across Florida and the rest of the U.S. are not part of the suit.

"It is apparent from the actions of the State of Florida, that it intends to consider drag shows to be a public nuisance, lewd, disorderly, sexually explicit involving public exposure and obscene and that it is necessary to protect children from this art form, in spite of evidence to the contrary," the lawsuit says.

LGBTQ groups sue Florida over the so-called 'Don't Say Gay' law

The owners of Hamburger Mary's in Orlando say the establishment has regularly hosted drag shows since 2008.

They argue in the lawsuit that the drag performances are appropriate for children and that there is "no lewd activity, sexually explicit shows, disorderly conduct, public exposure, obscene exhibition, or anything inappropriate for a child to see."

The owners also claim Florida's new law is too vague, and they allege their bookings fell 20% after the restaurant, out of caution, told customers this month that they could no longer bring children to drag shows.

Florida state Sen. Clay Yarborough, the bill's sponsor, and DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment on the lawsuit.

The owners of Hamburger Mary's declined NPR's request for an interview. In a statement posted on Facebook, the owners explain their decision behind filing the lawsuit.

Some States Want To Say Where You Can And Can't Be In Drag

"This bill has nothing to do with children, and everything to do with the continued oppression of the LGBTQ+ community," Hamburger Mary's Orlando said in a statement.

"Anytime our [legislators] want to demonize a group, they say they are coming for your children. In this case, creating a false narrative that drag queens are grooming and recruiting your children with no factual basis or history to back up these accusations AT ALL!" the statement adds.

Florida's new law, referred to as the "Protection of Children" act, prohibits children from attending any "adult live performance."

An "adult live performance" is described in the law as "any show, exhibition, or other presentation in front of a live audience which, in whole or in part, depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities … or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts."

Florida House passes controversial measure dubbed the 'Don't Say Gay' bill by critics

Those who are found in violation of the new law could face prosecution, in addition to thousands of dollars in fines and having their licenses revoked.

The law is just one of several related to anti-LGBTQ+ topics that were introduced by Florida's Republican-controlled legislature this session.

Last week, DeSantis signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, restrictions on discussion of "preferred pronouns" in schools and restrictions on using bathrooms that don't match one's assigned sex at birth.

More than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were filed in 2022 during state legislative sessions. However, only 29 of those bills were signed into law.