Scott Lang @ScottLang@democracy.town

@lufthans
I guess we have the answer to this question now. Thanks, Air Force!

He also claims he's in the mainstream because he was able to serve in government for all these years. I don't know what argument he thinks he's making, since his thesis is about a fantastical fascist regime.

@SteveRogers

I try never to listen to the ghoulish Rick Scott, but I caught him on Face The Nation. He's trying to scare voters with the words "open border" and "ballot harvesting" but after that, he really started threatening Americans. He released this plan last month, but Margaret Sullivan asked him about it today.

Scott has a plan that ends Social Security, Medicare, and every single other federal program that people depend on after five years.

Congress raided the Medicare and Social Security trust funds over and over again and allocated this money to the general treasury. Congress owes this money back to Medicare and the two Social Security funds. The way to fix this is for Congress to reallocate the general tax revenue to Social Security and Medicare. Money is fungible. It is not simply gone. All it takes to fix Medicare and Social Security is for Congress to vote to do so.

#ElectDemocrats who will save the programs you and other Americans depend on.

https://www.wamc.org/commentary-opinion/2022-04-15/senator-rick-scott-wants-to-sunset-social-security-and-medicare

I keep getting stuck on the statements repeated by so many so-called pro-life politicians, that they believe children are valuable. (besides the fact that stages of pregnancy exist and an egg that's been fertilized for 15 minutes or 15 weeks isn't a child.)

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I really would like to be wrong here) but have any of these vocal pro-birth advocates said the same thing about women and all pregnant people? All they'd have to say is, "I really value the woman here, too" or "We also have to consider the pregnant person's life." And mean it.

But they don't value them. They only value the role they want them to play: child-bearer.

Carrying a child to term is already dangerous in the US. Imagine if Republicans poured their energy into prenatal care and the important support children and families need once a successful pregnancy happens. That, not forced birth, would actually be pro-life.

What Alito Doesn’t Understand About Pregnancy-
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/roe-overturn-high-risk-pregnancy-late-abortion/629921/

Both the 2022 and the 2024 elections hinge upon the answer to a pivotal question: Will the majority of voters favor further progress toward multiracial, one-person-one-vote democracy or will the majority vote Republican?

Will voters favor honesty or mendacity? Facts or delusions? Science or quackery? Democracy or autocracy? Equality of opportunity or plutocratic oligarchy?

Will the Republicans continue to successfully sustain and advance plutocracy while garnering support from populists who vote their fears and animosities rather than their own economic interests?

As voters we can prevent this, but we have to vote.

The Republican Party has become the party of increasingly open wanna-be autocrats and proto-facists. The more races they win, the more likely the future of this nation will be anti-democratic. And the rest of the media needs to cover these issues as such.

The Election Denier Who Could Run Michigan’s Elections:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/kristina-karamo-secretary-of-state-michigan-election/629922/

The honest answer is that there isn’t much either party can do about inflation.

We have an imbalance between demand and supply due to the pandemic and Putin’s war. It’s a worldwide problem and all that can be done is to mitigate the pain. Democrats are trying to do that. Republicans can't even support supplying baby formula as a group.

The Republicans never have a plan to build anything good. Remember Obamacare? Republicans ranted and raved about how awful it was and how it would ruin the country, but when asked where their health care plan was, they never had one. They never came up with a single alternative.

Republicans legislate using fear. Whatever the Democrats want or do, they get out the fear machine, but when asked what they would do: it's nothing. No answers, no plan, no helpful contributions, nothing. Just more fear. That is the utterly useless Republican Party in a nutshell.

Opinion | Psst: Republicans don’t have a plan to fight inflation, either:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/19/republicans-have-no-plan-to-lower-inflation-prices/

Top court in Kansas says okay to Kansas but top court in New York says not okay to New York.

However, this story is much less about how it hurts Democrats and much more about the fact that this is racial gerrymandering by a party that knows it can’t win elections based on the merits of their policy arguments.

They used to try and hide their racism with tricky language. Now it's just out in the open. Get involved in politics at the local level. It's the one real way any of this can change down the road.

Swing Left is a great organization that provides free resources for organizing voter registration drives and letter writing campaigns in contested states which, as not as 2022 as it might sound, actually works.

Here's the link for Kansas, but you can find any state on the site.
https://swingleft.org/targets/state/ks

Kansas Supreme Court upholds Republican congressional map-
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/18/kansas-supreme-court-republican-congressional-map-00033407

Lots of Republicans still loving this guy and lots of Republicans loving the former guy who loves him, the guy causing a global famine.

Putin’s Black Sea blockade leaves millions facing global famine-
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-black-sea-blockade-leaves-millions-facing-global-famine/

In from the pro-birth crowd is the clear message that after you're born, they don't care about life.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/18/politics/house-votes-baby-formula-shortage/index.html

@TonyStark
If the Dems put forth a viable solution to end world hunger, the GOP would object. Guaranteed.

Oklahoma is 48th in education in the U.S., 42nd in health, 44th on public safety and 37th on the economy. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oklahoma

When it comes to maternal mortality rates, Oklahoma has 21.1 deaths per 100,000 births; California has 4 per 100,000.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/maternal-mortality-rate-by-state

These are the issues Oklahoma Republicans should be thinking about. Instead, they're more interested in terrorizing women and inflicting their misogyny on the people of the state.

Everyone is free to practice their own religion or none. Try to convice others that you're right if you want, but there is no to right to force self-declared religious views on others.

We are going down a fast slope towards theocracy when the views of a religious minority are imposed on others in this country that prides itself on freedom.

Oklahoma lawmakers pass bill banning abortions after ‘fertilization’-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/19/oklahoma-abortion-ban-fertilization/

Folks, we have a major problem here. The GOP has been saying the quiet part out loud for a while now, but now they’re using a bullhorn. This is outrageous and out of control. #Orban is a disaster.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099680587/a-prominent-conference-of-american-conservatives-is-taking-place-in-hungary

@TonyStark So tired of these Republicans telling other people what they is supposed to happen inside their bodies.

@TonyStark If only we had a Supreme Court that was interested in fairness and said no to racial gerrymandering, period. Instead, we have New York courts following New York anti-discrimination law, and Kansas courts following the Kansas law which doesn't care if there's discrimination.

@MariaHill
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see GOP-controlled states passing legislation, with penalties for enforcement, in support of their beliefs that the sun rotates around the earth, or maybe that the world is flat.

The complete rejection of scientific evidence and years of medical research as to when a fetus is viable outside the womb is being cast aside in this quest for religious intrusion.

@MariaHill
They wonder why people keep showing up at protests at their houses.

@TonyStark @MariaHill
This new bill is obviously devastating for anyone who needs abortion care. However, this law would also have devastating--and potentially deadly--impacts to others who are not seeking traditional abortion care. Notably, the law prohibits the use of the procedure except to save the life of the mother "in a medical emergency"-- an undefined term.

One example: under this law, a doctor may decide not treat a woman experiencing a missed miscarriage, instead forcing her to wait until the (nonviable) tissue expels itself--possibly risking sepsis and death. As another example, the doctor may decide not to treat an ectopic pregnancy until the mother is experiencing a "medical emergency"--again, whatever that term means--imposing severe risk on the mother. This is about as anti-life as it gets.

@DrHankPym
Sounds about Republican. Thank you for explaining the implications clearly.
@TonyStark

Well, at least Madison Cawthorn can fall back on his college education and Navy career. Oh, wait.

One insurrectionist down, many more to go.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/17/politics/madison-cawthorn-chuck-edwards-north-carolina/index.html

@TonyStark

I hope he fades into obscurity, but I imagine we'll hear from him in the police blotter before too long. Carrying a loaded handgun on a plane, sexual harassment, insurrection, sedition. Who knows what else!

@MariaHill
At least in the House then-
@TonyStark