Please don't insult the Crazy people by comparing us with Republicans Like MTG and the GQP.

Even Gosar's own family thinks he's nuts.

(CNN)


https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5...-of-our-family

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/...-ac360-vpx.cnn

The scum who voted for the bastard don't seem to mind all that much. Even the ones who pretended to disprove of the video intend to vote for that thing.

To me this is the real problem, that in 2020 278,000 people voted for Paul Gosar in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District election, a suburban area north of Phoenix. Despite Gosar's own family members endorsing his opponent, labeling him a pathological liar and a sociopath. There are many pathological liars and sociopaths out there, but few hold elected political office. Someone like Gosar is only possible if Americans support them and over a quarter-million people voted for Gosar in 2020. The election wasn't even close, Gosar won by a landslide with almost 70% of the vote.

Which is a good part of the reason why I'm becoming despondent over America's chances at holding on to democracy.

Just as a nit, the 4th district in AZ is not really suburban. A whole lot of rural - it's really big.

You and me both. It's scary to think about what the future may hold. As I mentioned in a previous post in another thread, the clock is ticking, demographers say by 2045 White Americans will be a minority. That reality is undoubtedly driving a lot of the extremism within the Republican Party. I think becoming a racial minority within the United States is terrifying to these people. That fear allows them to rationalize all kinds of things that were unthinkable just a few short years ago. Allows them to embrace people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar.

You often see the comment, not here but on right-wing forums, 'The system is so bad maybe it is better to destroy it. Then we start all over.' They've even reached the point where they can rationalize destroying our democracy. :(

It's shocking to me how quickly this has become GOP mainstream. :(

The 4th District is where they send all the people who fail the "walk and chew gum at the same time" test.

According to WJCL, an ABC affiliated digital TV station in Savannah, Georgia, Greene told a crowd at a Town Hall meeting Tuesday night in her district that she has never been vaccinated against Covid-19.
She also stated she's been fined close to $60,000 by the Congressional sergeant-at-arms for refusing to wear a face mask on the floor of Congress. Greene was issued a warning in May, ignored it, was then fined $500 for the first offense and then $2,500 for each additional offense.

So she needs to have her wages garnished. Leveling fines with no consequence when they aren't paid isn't an option for most people. Why her?

I'm not sure I would describe Congress deducting fines from members' pay checks as a garnishment of wages. That seems to be more a process when a third party gets a court order after the debtor fails to pay by an agreed date. In this case, Marj doesn't 'fail to pay,' she doesn't have the chance to stiff Congress. The fines are direct-deducted from her pay check. She never sees it or has the chance to refuse to pay. Which she would do, I'm certain, if she could.

But in this year alone she's raised $6.7 million from her 'supporters' so sixty Gs is chump change for her. Especially when, not wearing the mask on the floor of Congress undoubtedly stokes her cash-donating fans.

Unless 2024 is a landslide it might be an actual coup: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...up-republicans

Red state key election officials are being systematically purged and replaced by the crazies.

A coup is an illegal seizure of power. You may not like that the US election system has a lot of discretion, but it does.

Well, illegal seizure of power by falsifying the election results? That's what they are gearing up to do. I don't much care what you call it but "coup" seems rather an accurate term.

The trouble is that the GOP is set up to seize power by legal means due to huge loopholes in election law which weren't closed because the expectation was that people would behave honourably - that expectation is false when it comes to the modern GOP :(

It's worth remembering that herr Hitler was elected and bestowed the Chancellorship entirely legally.

The article doesn't indicate that is the approach. It appears a SoS or some other election official would not certify the results because they think they are invalid. That wouldn't be falsifying.

It would certainly be falsifying unless they have reasonable grounds for declaring them illegal. We can whistle and stop up our ears and pretend that these moves are legal because they are, technically, so far, but I think one would have to be wearing historical blinders to believe at this point that the intent is not, quite simply, to subvert democracy by falsifying election results.

The belief that the results are fraudulent appears to be genuine.

A belief based on the premise that it's impossible for them to lose. Therefore, if they lose, then the election was fraudulent.

Correct.

trump's support has been and continues to be overwhelmingly white, especially among white males. Here's an explanation from Scientific American. It has to do with risk assessment on a very personal level.
Among the trump supporters I know, fear of Black and Hispanic Americans is very high. One man I know has a son who was one of the early organizers for the Tea Party in our area. His son flys the 13 star original American flag from the front of his house. I heard his son explain:
This is where they want to go. And for the first time in their lives they see a man -- trump -- they think might actually be able to pull it off.

I don't believe that for one second. You may if you will, but I don't buy it. Maybe our idiot demented ex believes his own lies and maybe a few of his mindless drones have turned off their brains, but I think most are knowingly committing fraud with the specific intent to disenfranchise their opponents and to murder democratic government. This can be true even if they sincerely believe what they are doing is good and righteous.

Most people in both parties are religious.

The belief that the results are fraudulent appears to be genuine? A belief based on no evidence? When even trump-sanctioned audits found nothing?

Bob you're derailing this discussion and wasting everyone's time with word games and nonsense. A belief that requires ignoring actual evidence is dishonest, either based on ignorance or spite. Intelligent people shouldn't waste their time with it. Keywords being, "intelligent people." ;)

What does that have to do with anything?

Look at Newyorkguys post before this one. They question the sincerity of belief with no evidence and after a process of trying to gather information. That describes religious belief. we know the majority of people believe in something with no evidence. Pointing out there is no evidence doesn't make the case they don't believe it.

Well, this is probably more semantics but I doubt that any state election law would in text and in spirit really allow and approve of actual falsification of election results - even if corrupt and/or deranged officials would certify those false results based on spurious and anti-empirical claims. But even if by some bizarre twist of legal logic and semantics those falsified results would be seen as somehow "legal" it would still be a coup against democracy - and a more direct one can scarcely be imagined as this would amount to directly overthrowing an actual democratic election.

And it seems that this is precisely what the Republicans are preparing for in 2024. If it's as tight as last time, they might actually overthrow legitimate state returns come hell or high water. Hell would certainly come. It's one dangerous, lunatic and fanatic party.

If anyone should be disqualified from voting, it's people who think that people should be disqualified from voting!

I'm sure the Democratic strategy of continuing to do nothing to address this issue will work out fine for them.

Belief doesn't have to be logical or based on reality.

I agree with you. But at the same time, a large amount of white men who believe in their own race and gender superiority are really suffering from very low self-esteem and are fragile egos. Trump is a good example. Men who use derogatory names for women and claim the women like it fall into that category.

Pretty much the definition of religion, there.

It shouldn't matter. If elections are to be meaningful, it should have to be overturned by a courtroom hearing evidence of fraud, not by a political body who maintain a majority via gerrymandered districts. That stops being an election and becomes just a power game.

We know the bloody results of turning the country into that.

The US is a system where elected officials can just choose to take a course of action That is the system; it isn't a coup

Yes, those lawmakers are livin' like Jesus I tell ya (except for the non-Christian ones)!

They have to claim to be religious to get elected in this stupid country. A belief in nonsense is a requirement.

THAT! Most of them are about as truly religious as the rice Christians in China were.

A lot of people think that about Obama, but I don't think I'm going to go broke betting a 60 year old Black male is religious.

It would make for an interesting study to determine in which nations a professed practice of religion is a requirement for the highest office or offices. I suspect the bulk would be classed theocracies or developing. Most of the developed, 'western' democracies certainly place much less emphasis on religion's role in the State, putting in practice one of Democracy's necessary tenets, that there be a clear separation.

The US is warped in this regard. I mean, the WH hosts 'prayer breakfasts'. And in a really twisted conjoining, Trump had that whackadoodle, Paula White, as the Administration's 'spiritual advisor.' A goddamned clown show, this backwards, primitive, and ultimately hypocritical adherence to a Sky Daddy they claim is shepherding the anointed Chosen among nations, to placate the decidedly non-Christian 'Christians that chafe for Gilead.