and even Ohio, even though they voted GOP for most statewide races.

in lame duck session, Republican state legislatures are taking extreme lengths to weaken the incoming Democratic governor. Same thing that was done when Pat McCrory held that L in North Carolina.

Similar measures are being done in Michigan to dilute the work done
in ballot measures to raise the minimum wage and make sick leave paid.

In Ohio, a "stand your ground" law was passed alongside the most restrictive anti-abortion law.

If Gillum and Abrams won, I do not DOUBT that the GOP would have done the same thing in those states.

When you hear some wingnut running his mealy mouth about the US turning into "Venezuela" because SoCiAlIsM...

this is actually what Maduro does in Venezuela and what Bolsonaro does in Brazil (only that asswipe goes so far as to jailing the strongest opposition).

the right wing can not be trusted.

Links: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/05/wisconsin-gop-scale-back-democratic-power/2212625002/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/lame-duck-push-michigan-republicans-vote-gut-wage-paid-leave-n943741

liberal media my ass.

this shit should be wall to wall coverage on every major news program. along with outright republican election fraud in nc.

add this on to the usual voter suppression and gerrymandering.

the republican party has said fuck democracy. in the united states of america.

but the media will spend the day fawning over and sanitizing the record of a republican president who once lured a black high school student near the white house and entrapped him into a drug school just as a political ploy to throw more black people in jail.

theyre not just letting this happen without speaking out but......does it matter? will that make them stop this?

what can we actually do to stop them from doing this?

the results could be a mixed bag and heavily determined by the ideological makeup of the state supreme court. nc supreme court has a healthy liberal majority and has been putting the brakes on a lot of this shit from their repub legislature. wi has a conservative majority supreme court that has usually allowed gov walker and repubs to run wild (even killed a corruption investigation into walker). but dems can take a majority there by holding a seat next year and gaining 1 in 2020. in mi, there is a conservative majority on the court but one of those judges has bucked the party in major ways before (including protecting one of the ballot measures that repubs are writing a bill to overrule).

but the real problem is a major political party going full authoritarian, a large amount of voters being perfectly okay with it, and major media outlets reluctant to devote the appropriate amount of coverage/exposition to it because its not as profitable as the daily diary of president manbaby.

this is exactly how democracies die.

i think most gop voters dont care. more coverage would probably just serve to have them defend this as an attack by the liberal media.

i do see some people getting upset and violent as a reaction. gop is really pushing it. i dont know how this gets fixed without turning ugly first.

we had an administration ripping kids from parents and throwing them into cages. but the media harped on the incivility of people interrupting republicans dinner.

the media definitely has problems, he is just focused on the wrong parts for selfish reasons.

the chase for ratings and profits in media is stupid.

they enabled him. gave him billions in free campaign promotion. killed critical stories about his russian ties, ny mob ties, and hush money deals with various women. disproportionately produced and amplified damaging stories about his opponent. then sought to normalize him and his racism.

i mean...even to this day they are still trying to sell the trump presidential pivot and heaping praise on him for simply acting like a normal human being.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1070079566050418688

'trump may not be good for america...but he is damn good for cbs' (c) les moonves, cbs chairman

they created this monster. it would be poetic justice to be eaten by him too.

>https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1070079566050418688

The media has completely failed.

"Toned down Trump" thats word to Van Jones

i think there was another time he didnt act a fool and the time he bombed syria?

i really try to avoid this noise.

the media calls it a win.

"Today a toned down Trump resisted his natural urge to shit in his own hand then hurl it at the crowd, did he come president today?"

NBC and NYT seem the worst, but I try to ignore it too- Reeq probably knows more.

We are lucky he is such an impulsive fucking idiot. If he just went into hiding for a month- no tweets, no press conferences, nothing- he would crack the top 5 Presidents NBC poll or some shit.

the 1st speech to congress and the syrian airfield bombing.

this shit is an insult/mockery at this point. like complete disdain for intelligent readers.

and the way they thumb their nose at genuine good-faith constructive criticism from liberals is pretty disgusting.

its crazy how the right is constantly demonizing/invalidating the media but the media would rather make enemies out of the people who still value/support it.

because of a photo op for a hypothetical bill that has no chance getting through a repub chamber of congress (and trump prolly doesnt really wanna sign it anyway).

remember when the media drooled over his daca and nra round tables?

they gotta be getting paid to do this shit. no way they can continually be this obtuse.

Straight up said we don't want them passing laws we won't like.

because they know their uneducated flock are gonna continue to vote for them.

heres the crazy thing tho. urban areas..which are usually dem leaning...are insulated from a lot of regressive repub policies. cities have the infrastructure, the technology, the social services, the labor force, the well-knit communities, etc to help provide for the needs of their citizens to a basic degree (at least).

but rural areas...which are voting more and more heavily repub...are literally voting for the people who are killing them. allowing polluters to contaminate their waterways, halting their social services, pushing opiods into their communities, closing their hospitals and medical facilities, etc.

life expectancy in this country has dropped for a 3rd straight year. almost unheard of in a developed industrial nation. that only happens when large amounts of the majority demographic are dying off. and this is largely due to white people overdosing and committing suicide (both rising).

the suicide rate in rural areas is *double* the rate of urban areas. yet rural voters are still voting for the people perpetuating the conditions they live/die under.

its like white people are perfectly fine being driven into extinction by white people.

The rural Republican motto.

This is a white people thing

Like the plan to integrate their schools somewhat doesn't even seem particularly radical.

Don't want to make it seem like this is a thing that only applies to rural folks (many of whom aren't at all Republicans.)

death, taxes, and us voting against our own interests.

(c) rural voters

An operative for a GOP Congressman from the 9th district got caught harvesting absentee ballots from likely Democratic voters and just losing them so they never got delivered. At least in one case, they tried to fill out a ballot FOR an older black woman in a senior center. Basically the most clear cut example of actual institutional voting fraud, but it didn't involve immigrants, so who cares.

A beautiful state with a pretty progressive history (that people like to ignore) that somehow always has the worst political situation going on at any moment.

But I believe that outgoing governor Scott Walker survived a recall attempt a little while ago. I'd bet dollars to donuts that these GOP legislators have nothing to worry about either.

What a sham.

the definition of a rigged system.

this is why repubs can carry on the way they do. they continue to subvert the will of the people and never really face any negative backlash from the media as a whole.

in fact...they often get rewarded for it. like the dc pundit class portraying mcconnell as some wiley tactician when he really just breaks/changes every rule and democratic norm in the senate to suit his objective.

this same pundit class damn near had a heart attack for hillary clinton using a private email server tho.

GOP: oh we know you wanted that, voted for it, and won, but its not happening.

Voter: Fuck Voting

basically 'elections are irrelevant. we are still in power regardless.'

https://twitter.com/NYTNational/status/1069796439780454400

i swear the press is perfectly okay with slow walking us into fascism.

these are the same folks who said trump was a dove, the fbi suspected no links between russia and the trump campaign, and trump would be the most pro-lgbt republican president of all time.

So the crazy right-wing, Mormon owned legislature, after threatening to overrule it entirely, passed a law restricting it well beyond the heavy regulations already in the referendum.

They call it a 'compromise.' A compromise between the citizens and... their representatives?

Someone should do a post on how badly big religion has hurt democracy and this country in general.


And they are also going to ignore a voter-passed initiative to undo gerrymandering.

Why are the new elected officials not put into place as soon as election results are certified?
It should be: presidential election on Nov 6th. Results certified Nov 10th. New President Nov 11th.

Is lame duck a relic of the horse and buggy days, or is there a legit reason for it?

I could be wrong, but I think the Prime Minister is expected to be ready to move out of 10 Downing Street the day after the election.

It used to last until March, but I want to say they changed that to January in maybe FDR's time, because people could actually get to and from DC semi-reasonably by then.

I get it from a perspective of transitioning staff and orientation (not sure if in other countries the new leader just keeps the old leader's staff or what,) because particularly if you're a newly-elected legislator that's unfamiliar with DC/your state's capitol city there's a lot to learn just about day to day process.

But two full months seems excessive in the 21st century.

and to have the option to abuse their power like in this case.

What is to stop the Dems from just undoing this shit when they take over?

At this point, I'm basically hopefully waiting for Dems to take over in '19 and hopefully on a larger scale in '21.

With that, though, I am hoping Dems can legally make some changes and have the spine to do so.

to have repub majorities in both state legislative chambers even when dems win the popular vote by considerable margins.

in order for a dem gov to reverse this...it would take a dem legislature sending him/her the bills to sign.

theres no way for dems to get a majority in the legislature until after redistricting in 2020-2021 when the maps are redrawn. and even then...repub majority legislatures will prolly turn the redistricting process into a shit show that the gov will have to veto and send to the courts (which are mostly controlled by repubs).

thanks

Yeah the system is straight broken.

Link: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-voters-said-no-to-right-to-work-republican-lawmaker/article_365c4f4a-3303-5cde-a44e-b6324bf2ab59.html

Let this have been some "liberal" shit

them right wingers would be apoplectic.

almost 2/3 of the voters in missouri voted for that ballot initiative.

a lot of those same voters voted the politicians whose disdain for the states workers even made that initiative necessary. and if those same politicians work to undermine it now that it has been approved...those same voters will still prolly vote for them again.

its like all the people who want pre-existing conditions protected but voted for people who worked in congress or through the courts to gut those same pre-existing conditions.

a lot of people love/need liberal policies. they just havent figured out that you have to vote for liberal politicians to enact/protect them lol.

>a lot of people love/need liberal policies. they just havent
>figured out that you have to vote for liberal politicians to
>enact/protect them lol.

how to build that brand.
I know the key one: actually follow through with good policy.
but getting people to take that chance is crazy.

makes me think theres been a whole bunch of election fraud going on in rural counties for a while. shit is damn near impossible to police unless it is as blatant as it was here (and it even happened over several election cycles here).

rural counties have been putting up eye popping margins for repubs across the nation lately. like in the fl election...you had some rural counties with like 70+% turnout.

even if its not orchestrated by the actual party or operatives...you cant tell me some of these fox news watching repub office staffers or clerks aint tryna stick it to the libs by any mean necessary.

When you hear the people involved in this stuff talk, they don't even think it's something illegal. Probably because of how common this has been.

Also, if this was a Dem, every single national Democratic politician would be forced to answer for this. As is, NC Republicans might possibly actually condemn this (they won't and it will all be forgotten in a month.)

of the board of elections. because he didnt wanna taint the investigation with *accusations* of partisan bias by repubs since the dem chair posted some tweets criticizing trump a while ago.

even tho the bipartisan board voted unanimously to not certify the election results.

smh.

this is a big reason why dems lose. holding themselves to some perfect samaritan standard that repubs invent (only for dems) and then force them to uphold.

meanwhile repubs are claiming partisan bias anyway (even tho all repubs on the board joined with dems) and they are actually crying foul that the board wont certify the election results *while* the investigation into fraud is taking place.

repubs stole an election and are playing the victims and even got a democrat to quit over it lol.

dems still dont have a clue about the game thats being played.

A second woman, Cheryl Kinlaw, tells me she was paid $100 by McCrae Dowless to pickup absentee ballots. She said she never thought it was illegal because Dowless "has been doing it for years." She says needed extra money for Christmas presents. #NC09 #ncpol @wsoctv

https://twitter.com/JoeBrunoWSOC9/status/1070014297923833857

county boards, state party, prosecutors. and *nobody* did anything about it.

the dude who just lost the repub primary in this district (a respected incumbent at that) notified the state party of suspicious activity. and they did nothing.

imagine your party being so corrupt that you accept election fraud from candidates against other candidates in your own party lol. some similar shit happened in the kansas repub primary with kobach but his opponent ultimately decided not to press the issue and just conceded.

this shit in nc was so rampant and out in the open that people are giving local news interviews admitting to participating in the scheme and not thinking anything is wrong.

you *know* repubs are doing this all over the country.