In extremely gerrymandered Ohio the Republican majority in the state legislature (many of whom attained office due to said extreme gerrymandering) are trying to make it more difficult for ballot initiatives to pass. Why now? So glad you asked -- you see, there is an active ballot initiative designed to protect reproductive rights in the state constitution, & it is currently polling at 59%. If that holds, & the legislature gets its way, the initiative will fail. On it’s face it’s obviously anti-democracy to make it harder for the people to have their voices heard, but don’t let that obscure the deep hypocrisy & irony of this situation: The Supreme Court, when it backhanded away 50 years worth of precedent on reproductive rights last summer, suggested that it was merely giving this decision "back to the states." Well, it seems that “conservative” states don’t care to hear what the people have to say. The Republican crusade to undo hard-fought & won reproductive rights has made a mockery of democracy from the illegitimate activist radical conservative super majority on the Supreme Court all they way down to the fact-resistant fools running Ohio. These geniuses fast-tracked legislation to arm Ohio school teachers because, duh, what our under-siege school kids need are already stressed, harried, underpaid teachers bringing weapons into the classroom.

I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again: the modern GOP is anti-democracy & has been since at least Newt Gingrich undermined congress in the 1990s. The MAGA crowd didn’t make it this way, but they have made it clear just how antithetical to personal freedom it is to allow ideologues, impervious to fact & instead reliant on their interpretation of their religion, to have power.

It’s like the false conundrum conservatives like to trot out about tolerance — how can you claim to be tolerant but not tolerate my hateful, racist, exclusionist views? Well, dear MAGA, while we tolerate your right to harbor irrational hate against whoever your “leaders” tell you to hate, but we are not going to stand by while the tools you choose as leaders undermine equality & codify discrimination.

Meanwhile more than 250 military promotions are being held up by the college football coach/senator from Alabama. This has left the Marine Corps without a senate-confirmed Commandant. Why is this asshole, who according to former players does not resemble the fellow who coached them, holding up all military promotions? Because he thinks military members who are raped should be forced to carry their rapist’s baby to term. Meanwhile the rest of his “we support the military” party is not calling him out. Ironically, it is Republican policy that made it necessary for the Department of Defense to update its reproductive healthcare policies in this post-hobbs world where depending on which state you live in & how much money & mobility you have, you have have no choice but to use a coathanger. Oh, and coach ran for Senate on a platform designed to appeal to Alabama’s large veteran population. The mainstream media has mostly ignored this story so it’s safe to assume that all those veterans living in Alabama have no idea that the guy they voted for is proudly actively hurting serving military members & in turn putting our national security at risk. Perhaps since President Biden finally came out & said something about it on Thursday we will finally see elected Republicans stand up to this saboteur.

This is but one example of the MAGA politician handbook at work: perform a stunt to grab headlines & energize the “Evangelical Christian” base even when that means short-circuiting representative democracy & harming the country. MAGA is all about “owning the libs” while refusing in no uncertain terms to even consider the consequences.

The aforementioned saboteur said the quiet part out loud on a different subject this week, trying to obfuscate the fact that white nationalism is racism. That this know-nothing body-snatched unethical ball of hate is allowed to remain in the U.S. senate is an indictment of the entire U.S. body politic.

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Videos

480 Minutes / 2023 Episode 25/Overall Episode 838