The SAVE Act is a Threat to Democracy

Thankfully, word is that the heinous, disenfranchising, election-rigging SAVE Act is unlikely to pass the Senate. Not for lack of trying, though. Not only has TFG been furiously jumping up and down on levers of power, trying to move Congress to nuke the filibuster to get this thing passed, but the PR game has been ramped up. I’ve seen several memes hitting Facebook via my conservative friends and their Conservative Media Bubble talking points, claiming that A) it’s just a voter ID, and B) it’s no big deal to obtain the required documents. Funny how it’s always “no big deal” for someone ELSE to jump through hoops.

Naturally, they omit the vast problems with this bill, like the time and cost involved in the not-so-simple task of tracking down and obtaining long-lost documents or replacing ones that are no longer acceptable.

The part about how a married woman’s birth certificate is no longer acceptable is particularly insidious. That’s a huge swath of Americans who immediately become disenfranchised for doing absolutely nothing wrong, other than taking their husband’s name (which is something Republicans tend to want women to do).

Consider how the GOP created this standard, on purpose. Why do you think that is? Tell me how it can be anything but the continued devaluation of women because of their perceived bias toward voting Democratic. (Which is a self-created problem due to their pursuit of limiting reproductive rights. Maybe if they weren’t trying to limit women to being incubators, they might have a better image in their eyes.)

So it’s not like it’s an oversight or something. In fact, they’ve had more than enough opportunities to remove that onerous requirement, but they’ve actively resisted doing so.

No, this is how they want it. They want fewer women to vote.

They could also create a Voter ID plan that would garner public support if they created a simple means of obtaining a valid document. But they won’t do that either.

They’re even willing to disenfranchise their own base. Look at how the SAVE Act affects red states:

Their stated basis for all of these new requirements is supposed to be about preventing voter fraud. That’s what they keep returning to in every argument: tall tales about illegal aliens affecting elections. This is the hollowest argument of all. There is no individual voter fraud in any statistically relevant case.

The only voter fraud found has been at the institutional level: doctoring voting machines, “losing” or pre-filling ballots, and providing incorrect details on where and when to vote. And this is in addition to the “soft” voter-prevention techniques of limiting early voting, voting by mail or drop-off, closing voting precincts, limiting hours, and threatening to have ICE teams monitoring urban voting locations. On the latter point, they’ll SAY that ICE is only looking for undocumented immigrants, but we have already seen through that. They’re rounding up anyone who fits the visual or linguistic description. If I were a legal immigrant, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a voting booth, because I wouldn’t want to risk my freedom. And that’s exactly what they want.

And ALL of these voter suppression actions were taken by Republicans. NONE of these things would be prevented by individual voter ID requirements.

Despite there being practically zero voter fraud, Republicans are insisting that a significant portion of our population wade through months of red tape to acquire new documents, counting on the fact that many won’t have the time or inclination.

This is what a political party does when they know their message is not landing. And this group has entrenched itself in positions of power, with no intentions of ever giving them up. Because they know that if they do, many of them are going to jail, from the standard minions to the top of the org chart.

There’s literally nothing they won’t do to prevent that from happening. Just look around.

Source

Truth is Another Casualty of War

This may be the first war in my lifetime where we can’t find out what’s happening on the evening TV news. This administration has a throttle on war news and will never release information that doesn’t glorify their mission.

Recall in previous wars, bombings, or raids, there was plenty of film being shown on TV: missiles hitting their marks, airfields blown up, mobile anti-missile guns wiped out, etc. We all remember that famous footage from the Iraq War of one of our missiles going through the window of some fortified bunker. It was an impressive display of American war skills. We’re getting a little of that, but not much. And we’re certainly not seeing what Iran is doing in their own defense.

Remember a few months back when the Defense Department made all journalists who covered the “war” beat swear an oath that they’d only report what the Pentagon gave them? Remember how the honest journalists quit and were replaced with friendly flaks who were only too eager to push propaganda? Well, that’s why we’re not going to get an honest take on Iran War activity.

Also note that recent events have created a whole new web of Administration-friendly national news outlets. Besides Fox “News” (and the minor cloned conservative outlets), CBS has succumbed to MAGA fever, and now CNN is heading there as well (after CBS/Paramount’s successful bid to take over the Warner Brothers universe). Add the Sinclair chain of stations, and you have a massive broadcasting voice that is willing to repeat whatever the Administration wants. And they’re certainly not going to air anything that runs counter to the claims of excellence and victory.

I’ve been seeing some alternate viewpoints on Facebook, but I don’t really trust them. There was a time when I could rely almost 100% that the liberal assertions were true, but that’s becoming increasingly unreliable.

This is the most truthful thing I’ve ever seen from a Republican.

I’ve read several outrageous claims I initially believed (because they were completely in character with other known MAGA outrages) that turned out later to be false. Either Liberals are now participating on Conservatives’ reality-distorting playing field, or the Russians/Iranians/Chinese are trying to make it look that way. Then, people don’t know what to believe, which is right where they want us.

One claim was that there was an order that went out from military commanders to all their soldiers that they were to think of the Iran attack as a holy war to bring about Armageddon. That tracks with the new Whisky Pete’s new Christian Nationalist military, but Snopes later debunked it as unproven.

But the main issue here is with the other claim I saw, that Iran has completely blown up at least 30 of our air bases in the Middle East; blown up as in completely wiped out. Billions of dollars blown to dust and operational surveillance up in smoke. Many details added depth and realism to the claim.

My take is that there have been some bombs or drones that have landed (see: our seven known casualties to date), even some key radar installations included, but we’re still operational.

But I totally believe that if such a thing DID happen, we’d have to find out from foreign news sources who are not beholden to the US government. Word would eventually leak out as the bodies came home (or disappeared en masse), but it would take a while. In the meantime, just like these guys want, I’m sitting here not knowing what to believe.

The problem is that in some of these FB newsgroups, anyone can post, which means the quality and veracity of the message varies. Usually, a commenter will call the hinky stuff into question, but, of course, you have to look. I hope these groups will begin to police themselves. I think anyone who posts misinformation should have their posting rights removed or just dropped from the group. The one advantage we’ve enjoyed for so many years is that the points put across by Dems and Liberals have generally been factually correct (compared to those of Republicans and Conservatives, the expert purveyors of logical fallacies, especially in TFG’s era). If we lose that edge, we fall even further behind in the fight for hearts and minds in the coming elections, which will be tough enough to win. And it will be even tougher to have that win count for anything, with a giant orange thumb on the scale. 

Bomb-Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb Iran

So, like everyone who was paying attention last week predicted (myself included), we’re at war with Iran. I’m sure the president expects the country to rally around him the way everyone did with Bush II during the Afghanistan War. There’s nothing he’d like better than to see himself portrayed as a battle-hardened wartime president.

And I don’t think there is much support for Iran’s theocratic regime either. There’s no question that the Middle East would be better off without them in command. Word is that the Supreme Leader was blown up over the weekend, along with the people the Administration thought would be next in line. In fact, they even had plans to work with them to set up a new government. It probably would have worked better if they hadn‘t blown them to bits.

Who knew we had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in our arsenal?

I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a plan to capture some of the clerics in charge, so they could be debriefed. I bet TFG would love to hear more about how these few people used religion to keep the masses in line and themselves in power indefinitely. That’s a good source of knowledge gone to waste.

So while it seems like good news on the surface, I still have nagging doubts. Right off the bat, you have to have a hard time believing any information that comes from this White House. This is an administration that has turned lying to your face into an art form. There’s no assertion too ridiculous to pursue if it’s something the president sputtered out. So excuse me if I don’t believe anything until I’ve seen confirmation from outside the Administration. And with the consolidation of national news media under Republican control, we can’t trust many of them to report independently. I expect most will simply parrot whatever the White House tells them.

The other thing is, these are people who go off half-cocked regularly. The president says what he wants, and they fly into action. Where’s the plan? How do we even know that there is one? These guys have cocked up a bunch of initiatives only to have to walk them back amid unforeseen consequences.

For all we know, he may be angling for a new Trump Tower in Tehran. He might be acting on someone else’s behalf, maybe someone who has compromising information on him, like we all suspect Israel and Russia do. Maybe his defense contractor donors need another influx of cash, so they request that we use up some of our weapons stockpile so that they may sell us replacements. Or maybe he and Whisky Pete just want to see some things go boom, and feel that swelling in their man parts, like so many other fake tough-guys. And for whatever reason, this “Operation Epic Epstein Fury” (thanks Hackwacker) certainly provides the distraction that they so desperately need. Before too long, we’ll be hearing that they’re far too busy with this war to worry about pursuing Epstein-related charges.

As for American casualties, that’s just an abstraction for this Administration. They don’t give a rusty fuck about losing our servicemen. “Suckers and losers,” remember? They’re just assets on a balance. You can tell by the way they’ve essentially neutralized the VA, making an already overwhelmed institution even more ineffective, by starving it of money and resources.

And if they don’t care about our losses, they sure don’t give a shit about Iranian civilians caught in the bomb zones. Right out of the chute, the first thing we heard was that we blew up a school for girls. Granted, when this first came out, I had doubts about the veracity. I mean, it’s right there in the Middle East playbook: Declare losses of benign entities and claim victimhood. You see it every time, when they claim we blew up a school, or a hospital, or a falafel factory. They omit the part where the factory was making falafel AND IEDs.

But by now, I’ve seen a lot of confirmation and nothing to the contrary, so I believe the part about the girls’ school now. And I also believe that no one in the Administration cares. Do you think they’ll seriously admit to a mistake? About anything? Not these guys. If asked, they’ll come up with some kind of ridiculous rationalization.

But it makes you wonder, that with all our famed intel and spy capabilities, how did we come to bomb a girls’ school? That’s not a great way to change the hearts and minds needed to foment a new West-friendly government. It’s just more evidence to them that we’re a well-armed Goliath who can’t be trusted.

Late Development

New reports call into question the White House's rationale for the bombing, that Iran's attack on us was imminent. Not so, says the Pentagon, in a Congressional briefing:

Oops. But again, it just goes to show how easily this Administration lies to us.