User Controls
THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's
-
2021-05-31 at 12:35 AM UTCThe odds of the genic sequence of the virus being natural is 1 in 11 billion.
-
2021-05-31 at 4:22 AM UTCSource?
-
2021-05-31 at 4:26 AM UTCAssociated Press
EXPLAINER: How Texas Republicans aim to make voting harder
By ACACIA CORONADO, Report for America/Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas took a major step Sunday toward becoming the nation’s largest state where the GOP is making voting harder following the 2020 elections , with the Senate approving a bill that would empower poll watchers, create criminal penalties and add new restrictions on where, when and how to vote.
Texas Republicans dug in Saturday, May 29 for a final weekend vote on some of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S., finalizing a sweeping bill that would eliminate drive-thru voting, reduce polling hours and scale back Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls.
Advocates say the changes would disproportionately affect minorities and people with disabilities.
The legislation still has two remaining steps before it becomes the law in Texas: a final vote of approval in the GOP-controlled House that was expected Sunday, which would send the bill to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is is expected to sign off.
America's largest red state already has some of the tightest voting restrictions in the country and is regularly cited by nonpartisan groups as a state where voting is especially difficult. It was one of the few states that did not make it easier to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, instead sending droves of voters to the polls to cast their ballots in-person.
Senate approval of the wide-ranging legislation happened at 6 a.m. Sunday, hours after after a final version of the 67-page bill was released from private negotiations on Saturday. Democrats questioned Republicans about the legislation for eight hours in their final attempts to block the changes from becoming law.
The timing gives the public little time to review — or protest — the overhaul during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and the legislative session ends by law Monday.
So what's included in the planned changes and how did they come about? Here are some details:
WHAT THE LEGISLATION MEANS FOR VOTERS AND ELECTION OFFICIALS
The GOP legislation — known as Senate Bill 7 — proposes cutting back on early voting, banning drive-thru voting and making it a felony for elected voting officials who send unsolicited mail ballot applications to Texas voters. Harris County — which includes Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, and is a Democratic stronghold — introduced drive-thru voting for November's election but courts blocked election officials from sending mail voting applications to all registered voters.
Final wording of the legislation also adds a voter ID requirement to mail ballot applications, requiring voters to submit a driver's license or social security number.
Early voting on Sundays also could not begin before 1 p.m., which Democrats say would depress turnout among Black churchgoers who cast their ballot after morning worship services in “souls to the polls” efforts.
Additionally, the bill would require people who are helping voters to disclose their relationship to the voter, whether they were paid to help and whether the voter is eligible to receive assistance and could face a state jail felony for violations
But partisan poll watchers — looking to raise concerns to their political party — would have more access and election workers could be charged with a crime if they block a poll watcher’s view.
“It is a solution in search of a problem,” said Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier, chairwoman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. “I don’t know what they are trying to address. They won the election, I don’t know where the voter fraud is occurring.”
The answer from Republican state Rep. Briscoe Cain, one of the lead authors of the bills: "We don’t need to wait for bad things to happen to protect the security of the election.”
HOW DID THE LEGISLATION GET HERE?
Republican lawmakers in Texas are looking to add restrictions similar to those their GOP colleagues in Florida, Georgia and Arizona made into law using former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud to justify new rules in the name of election security. (Elections experts say election fraud is exceedingly rare.)
In Texas, the GOP has insisted that the changes are needed to restore confidence in the voting process, and not a response to Trump’s false assertions. Republicans in Texas continued seeing their margins of victory shrink in November but still won up and down the ballot.
Originally, GOP members of each chamber had submitted their own omnibus voting legislation just before the state’s filing deadline. Sunday’s combined legislation added 12 additional pages of new restrictions. The latest version also deleted language that would allow election officials to have poll watchers removed if they breach the peace.
PROBLEMS WITH TRANSPARENCY
The final version of the bill was hashed out behind closed doors by a 10-person, bipartisan committee of lawmakers from both chambers before it was sent back to the full House and Senate for final votes. Known as a conference committee, the panel is majority Republican, so the party that proposed the restrictions remained in control.
Voting rights advocates were alarmed that the committee met without making its negotiations public. And some Democratic members of the committee said they had little to no input on the final contents of the bill. -
2021-05-31 at 6:22 AM UTC
-
2021-05-31 at 11:27 AM UTCToo many poll watchers, voting after the election is over and criminal penalties for voter fraud are baaaaad.
- stl1 -
2021-05-31 at 12:14 PM UTCJUNE IS HOING TO BE HOT HOT HOT FOR THE DEMS AND RINO'S
-
2021-05-31 at 1:27 PM UTCThe Wall Street Journal.
Texas Democrats Prevent Republicans From Passing Restrictive Voting Bill
AUSTIN, Texas—Texas Democrats pulled off a dramatic, last-ditch walkout in the state House of Representatives on Sunday night to block passage of one of the most restrictive voting bills in the U.S., leaving Republicans with no choice but to abandon a midnight deadline and declare the legislative session over.
The revolt is one of Democrats’ biggest protests to date against nationwide GOP efforts to impose stricter election laws and they used the spotlight to urge President Biden to act on voting rights.
But the victory may be fleeting: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who had declared new voting laws a priority in Texas, said he would call for a special session to finish the job. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing” but didn’t say when he would bring lawmakers back to work.
“We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case,” Democratic state Rep. Carl Sherman said.
One by one, Democrats left the House chamber until there was no longer the 100-member quorum needed to pass Senate Bill 7, which would have reduced polling hours, empowered poll watchers and scaled back ways to vote in Texas, which already has some of the nation’s strictest voting laws.
They gathered later outside a Black church, driving home their anger over a last-minute change to the bill that would have prohibited Sunday voting before 1 p.m., when many Black worshipers go to the polls. Democrats said they didn’t go into the vote intending to break quorum, but instead became fed up after Republicans repeatedly refused to take their questions while racing to pass the bill.
It was an stunning turnabout from just 24 hours earlier, when the bill seemed all but guaranteed to reach Mr. Abbott’s desk. The Texas Senate had signed off before sunrise earlier Sunday after Republicans, who hold an 18-13 majority in the chamber, used a procedural move to suspend the rules and take up the measure in the middle of the night.
But as the day wore on, the GOP’s chances wobbled. State Rep. Chris Turner, the Democratic House leader, said he sent a text message to members of his caucus at 10:35 p.m. telling them to leave the chamber. But even by that point, the exodus was already well under way.
“We knew today, with the eyes of the nation watching actions in Austin, that we needed to send a message, and that message is very, very clear: Mr. President, we need a national response to federal voting rights,” Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said.
Republicans showed restraint in criticizing Democrats for the move.
“I am disappointed that some members decided to break quorum,” said Republican state Rep. Briscoe Cain, who carried the bill in the House. “We all know what that meant. I understand why they were doing it, but we all took an oath to Texans that we would be here to do our jobs.”
Texas is the latest big battleground in Republicans’ campaign to pass more restrictive voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump’s unproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida also passed new voting restrictions, and on Saturday, Mr. Biden unfavorably compared Texas’ bill to election changes in those states as “an assault on democracy.”
Under revisions during closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language to the 67-page measure that would have made it easier for a judge to overturn an election. The bill would have also eliminated drive-through voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris County—the state’s largest Democratic stronghold—introduced last year.
Major corporations joined the backlash, including Texas-based American Airlines Inc. and Dell, warning that the efforts could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections and in some cases, ripped business leaders for speaking out. By the time the Texas bill was poised to pass over the Memorial Day weekend, the opposition from businesses had faded.
Since Mr. Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws, according to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. It has also counted nearly 400 bills filed this year nationwide that would restrict voting.
It wasn’t the first time Texas Democrats—who have been out of power in Austin for decades—have been able to block contentious legislation despite being outnumbered.
They twice broke quorum in 2003 to stop Republican efforts to redraw voting maps, at one point leaving the state for Oklahoma. A decade later, former state Sen. Wendy Davis ran out the clock on a sweeping antiabortion bill with a filibuster that lasted more than 11 hours.
But in each instance, Republicans ultimately prevailed.
“We may have won the war tonight but the battle is not over,” Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier said. “We will continue to fight and speak out against those measures that attempt to silence our voices.” -
2021-05-31 at 1:37 PM UTCPurging voter rolls of non-residents, dead people and illegal aliens is baaaaad, says stl1.
It's funny how these leftwit clowns cry to high heavens about how bad the new voter laws are, but never once state exactly in which way they are "bad". Their fake news idiots never state how either. All they do is snivel and whine and stamp their little feet, but that's it.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-05-31 at 1:45 PM UTCThe Hill
Juan Williams: GOP extremism is poisoning the nation
Juan Williams, opinion contributor
More and more fights breaking out on airplanes. Why? The short answer is that wearing masks to protect against COVID-19 remains a politically divisive statement.
Nine killed by gunfire in another mass shooting.
Hateful attacks on jedis and Asians rising.
All of that happened in the last week.
Americans should be coming together in celebration of declining coronavirus infections this Memorial Day.
Instead, the bursts of public violence and hate reflect deep political division.
Sixty-four percent of voters now see political divisions as a major threat to the "stability" of the nation, according to a Fox News poll released last week. It is the highest-ranked major threat to the nation in the poll.
The depth of the division can also be seen in recent Ipsos/Reuters polling that shows most Republicans continue to believe former President Trump is the "true president," and 56 percent believe the 2020 election was stolen from him.
How can so many Republicans still believe the "Big Lie," almost five months after President Biden was inaugurated following Congress certifying Biden's national victory by 74 electoral college votes and more than seven million popular votes?
And why do 57 percent of Republicans think of Democrats, their fellow Americans, as their "enemies," according to a February CBS/YouGov poll?
This extremism among Republicans is paralyzing Congress.
It can't find the votes to better regulate guns. It can't fix a broken immigration system.
Similarly, Republicans can't compromise enough to reach a bipartisan deal to repair the nation's decrepit infrastructure. Incredibly, Congress can't even agree on a bill to protect the right to vote.
Last week, Congress hit a new low. It blocked a commission to investigate the attempted overthrow of the U.S. government. Now that is dysfunction.
Jan. 6 saw the worst violent domestic insurrection since the Civil War. But it won't be the last - unless we as a country face the truth about how much trouble we are in.
This begs the question: What are the Republicans so afraid of?
Why did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- Ky.) ask his caucus for a "personal favor," according to CNN, to vote to stop creation of the commission?
The Republicans' talking point on opposition to the commission is that they want to move on from the insurrection and shift the nation's focus to debates over Biden's policies.
But Biden and his policies - ranging from his plan to spend big on infrastructure to his spending on Covid relief - are all popular in a range of polls.
What Senate Republicans are really avoiding is the truth that Trump's lies and slash-and-burn, truth-be-damned politics drove some of them to play along with him. They are implicated in the insurrection - not in a criminal sense, but in a moral sense.
Think back to Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) power salute to the people rushing the Capitol. Think back to the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the election.
So, McConnell is convincing Senate Republicans it is in their best interest to cover up the truth and let the country balkanize further rather than stand up to Trump and his followers.
As Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) noted in her speech before being voted out of her leadership position: "Ignoring the lie emboldens the liar."
The ongoing power of the 'Big Lie' is fed daily with conspiracy talk and misinformation by social media, talk radio and cable opinion shows.
"We are in an era of endemic misinformation - and outright disinformation," Max Fisher wrote in the New York Times earlier this month.
"Plenty of bad actors are helping the trend along."
Those bad actors produce divisive content because they see a ripe market for stories, memes and videos that make political opponents look bad - particularly when they mock Democrats for the entertainment of Republicans.
In the last year, the whole country has been storm-tossed.
There is the rollercoaster ride of living through a pandemic that has killed almost 600,000 Americans.
Then there is the cultural and racial change taking place.
The fast changing realities of American life are particularly threatening for the Trump base of white, non-college educated, rural voters. It makes them open to what social scientists call "ingrouping."
In other words, people seek the company of people like themselves in terms of economic class, race, and political ideology.
And they turn against people outside their club, blaming them for their problems.
A prime example comes from an in-depth look at the people who took part in the attack on the Capitol that Republicans don't want to review.
Of the almost 400 people arrested or charged, most are white males and they typically come from cities and towns "where the non-White populations are growing fastest," Robert Pape, the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, wrote in an April column in The Washington Post.
Are those rioters upset about loss of jobs?
No, according to Pape. The primary factor, he wrote, is "fear of the 'Great Replacement.'"
"Great Replacement theory has achieved iconic status with white nationalists and holds that minorities are progressively replacing White populations due to mass immigration policies and low birthrates," according to Pape.
Happy Memorial Day, indeed.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel. -
2021-05-31 at 1:50 PM UTCNever mind the "Big Lie". It's the "Big Steal" that matters.
-
2021-05-31 at 2:03 PM UTCthe people holD the power,, we grant it to the elected we have the right to take it back when it is abused,,
ABUSE IS DISCRIBED LIKE THIS,, IF WE GIVE THE POWER TO THE ELECTED AND THEY GO AGAINST THE PEOPLE AND THERE FREEDOMS THAT IS ABUSE. -
2021-05-31 at 2:32 PM UTCMight Makes Right. No war was ever won through peace.
-
2021-05-31 at 2:35 PM UTCRepublicans are dishonest, dishonorable creatures who pledge their allegiance to their orange false god who will lead them to their own destruction. They can no longer compete fairly and have resorted to having to rig the system in their favor. They used to claim to be the party of family values and fiscal restraint. What they have become under Trump is a party of fools who believe in lies and QAnon space lasers and raped baby pizzas.
They are shameful regardless of their lack of shame.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-05-31 at 3:19 PM UTC
-
2021-05-31 at 9:56 PM UTC
Originally posted by stl1 Republicans are dishonest, dishonorable creatures who pledge their allegiance to their orange false god who will lead them to their own destruction. They can no longer compete fairly and have resorted to having to rig the system in their favor. They used to claim to be the party of family values and fiscal restraint. What they have become under Trump is a party of fools who believe in lies and QAnon space lasers and raped baby pizzas.
They are shameful regardless of their lack of shame.
I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I -
2021-05-31 at 10:08 PM UTC.
-
2021-05-31 at 10:11 PM UTCYOU TAPPIN NEW PUSSY YET OR ARE YOU STILL WIMPERING IN THE CORNER?
-
2021-05-31 at 10:24 PM UTCMake
America
Go on as a democracy
Always
The Wall Street Journal.
Biden Calls for Defense of Democracy on Memorial Day
Ken Thomas
WASHINGTON—President Biden honored American military service members who died in the line of duty, using a Memorial Day address to call for a defense of democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.
“Democracy must be defended at all costs. For democracy makes this all possible,” Mr. Biden said Monday at an amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. “Democracy. That’s the soul of America. And I believe it’s a soul worth fighting for, and so do you, a soul worth dying for.”
Mr. Biden’s comments followed remarks he made earlier in the weekend, when he called voting measures in Texas, Florida and Georgia “an assault on democracy.”
Republican-backed bills with voting restrictions in several states have become a battleground between the GOP and Democrats recently. Texas Democrats walked out of the state House on Sunday to impede passage of a measure with voting restrictions.
Republicans say the laws protect election security and prevent fraud while Democrats say they restrict access to polls, including among minorities.
Speaking after a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Mr. Biden said the nation’s soul was “animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts, which we’ve seen of late, and our better angels. Between ‘me first’ and ‘We the people.’
“The mission falls to each of us, each and every day. Democracy itself is in peril here at home and around the world,” Mr. Biden said. “What we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen, will determine whether democracy will endure.”
Mr. Biden is preparing to take his first overseas trip as president next month. He will join with other world leaders for the G-7 meetings, along with gatherings from NATO countries and the European Union. At the end of his trip, Mr. Biden will hold a summit in Switzerland with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During a speech Sunday marking the holiday near his hometown of Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden said he would make a case for human rights when he met with Mr. Putin.
Mr. Biden was joined at the Memorial Day services by Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. -
2021-05-31 at 10:26 PM UTC.
-
2021-05-31 at 10:27 PM UTC
