As always, please go to the links for the full articles / op-eds.
More electoral mischief in Wisconsin, which is shaping up to be the "tip of the spear" for Republican voter suppression in coming elections:
"The Republicans behind Wisconsin’s investigation into the 2020 election have made little effort to hide their intentions. Many of those supporting the investigation have connections to the Trump campaign. Leading the investigation is former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, no neutral arbiter but rather a man who told a group of supporters of former president Donald Trump in November 2020 that the election had been stolen. Asked last week if he had voted for Mr. Trump, he proudly declared: 'You bet I did.'
No surprise, then, that the 136-page draft report released last week by Mr. Gableman was full of debunked claims of misdeeds, accompanied by Mr. Gableman’s suggestion to state lawmakers that they consider 'decertifying' Wisconsin’s 2020 election results. That ridiculous suggestion, made during a state Assembly committee hearing, has no legal basis. Even Mr. Gableman conceded there would be no practical effect to such a move: Joe Biden is the president, and he can only be impeached or voted out of office."
There are Michael Gablemans throughout the corrupt and delusional Trumpist Party / Cult who will use whatever raw power they have to deny citizens their choice in elections. He and people like him are a threat to democracy.
Former Vice President Mike "Fly Guy" Pence is trying to separate himself from the stench of the Malignant Loser that he served so slavishly, using Trump's idolatry of Putin as a point of attack:
"Gearing up for what appears to be a run for president in 2024, former Vice President Mike Pence is seeking to put some daylight between him and his former boss. In a speech to Republican donors on Friday, Pence declared, 'There is no room in this party for apologists for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.'
Former President Donald Trump, of course, has been an Olympic-level Putin apologist for years. Just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump praised Putin's actions in Ukraine as 'savvy' and 'genius.'
Trump's long bromance with Putin provides Pence with a handy political opening to distinguish himself, especially since polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back increased economic sanctions against Russia, according to a CNN poll.
But if Pence thinks this will give him a significant leg up over Trump, he has misjudged both the former president and his supporters. A man who could pay an adult-film star hush money and publicly attack a Gold Star family during his first presidential campaign is hardly going to get tripped up because of his longstanding embrace of Putin."
After all, the Malignant Loser's ugly, multiple vices didn't stop right-wing Christofascists from embracing him as their Golden Calf, so this is unlikely to work, too. However, keep the heat on him anyway.
The U.N. released an important report on climate change that makes it clear that a lot of misinformation is being spread by right-winger conspiracy mongers in the U.S.:
"The expert panel’s report released last week mostly focused on the increasing risk of catastrophe to nature and humanity from climate change. But it also laid out clear evidence of how misinformation about climate change and the “deliberate undermining of science” financed and organized by “vested economic and political interests,” along with deep partisanship and polarization, are delaying action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to their impacts.
The assessment describes an atmosphere in which public perception about climate change is continually undermined by fossil fuel interests’ peddling of false, misleading and contrarian information and its circulation through social media echo chambers; where there’s an entrenched partisan divide on climate science and solutions; and people reject factual information if it conflicts with their political ideology.
Sound familiar? It should, because the climate misinformation landscape is worse in the United States than practically any other country.
While the section on misinformation covers only a few of the more than 3,600 pages in the report approved by 195 countries, it’s notable that it’s in a chapter about North America and calls out the U.S. as a hotbed for conspiracy theories, partisanship and polarization. A 2018 study of 25 countries that was cited in the IPCC report found that the U.S. had a stronger link between climate skepticism and conspiratorial and conservative ideology than in any other nation tested. These forces aren’t just a threat to democracy, they are major roadblocks to climate action and seem to have sharpened with the Trump presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic."
Finally, it's worth stopping by Infidel 753's eclectic and readable round up of links to a variety of posts around the internet. Always good stuff.
