Ron DeSantis does to one state what Cheeto wants to do to the entire country

As this is something of a family friendly blog (quit guffawing now :) ), I won't say precisely what DeSantis did to Florida (and what Cheeto wants to do to the US, but it rhymes with "truck over".

From The New Republic -

Ron DeSantis Insists Voter Intimidation Tactics Are No Big Deal

The governor defended turning Florida into a police state over the abortion rights ballot initiative.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doubled down Monday on his decision to dispatch state police to investigate thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November.

Following a roundtable discussion with condominium owners in Miami Lakes, Florida, DeSantis was asked to respond to reports that state residents felt “intimidated” after police officers were instructed to show up at their homes to verify signatures collected supporting an amendment that would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.

Arizona's legislative Rs attempt to influence another body

[Begin sarcasm]

I know, you're as shocked as I am that they've overstepped their bounds. Or tried to use their positions to put their fingers on the scale.

[/end sarcasm]

:)

From KTAR -

Arizona Senate Committee accuses Clean Elections of unlawful debate rule change

The Arizona Senate Committee claimed on Thursday that the Clean Elections Commission has illegally barred the Green Party’s U.S. Senate candidate from participating in upcoming general election debates.

Eduardo Quintana, 2024 Arizona Senate candidate and chair of the Green Party in Pima County, won his side of the primary as a write-in candidate but is not featured in the Oct. 9 debate to be broadcasted across several platforms by Arizona Media Association. As is, the scheduled debate will feature Republican Kari Lake and Democrat U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.

The accusation was submitted via letter by Committee Chairman Jake Hoffman in response to Clean Elections’ recent rule change that requires a candidate to have received at least 1% of total ballots counted in their primary election. According to Arizona Media Association, that 1% minimum threshold was 12,400 votes for Quintana, who only garnered 282.

I presume that the "committee" in question is Senate Government; Hoffman is chair of two Senate Government and Senate Executive Nominations aka Senate Inquisitions Committee.  And this isn't about a nomination.

Cheeto again pledges to go full dictator if he gets a 2nd term as POTUS

The story didn't mention if his statement was accompanied by foot stamping and whining.

I'm guessing that it was.

From USA Today -

Donald Trump rails against cheating in 2024 election without evidence, threatens prison sentences

Former President Donald Trump is again threatening to use executive power to jail political opponents if he's elected this fall and fraud is documented in the 2024 election, expanding his target list to include election volunteers and poll workers this fall.

In a Truth Social post late Saturday, Trump said his lawyers and other allies would be watching polling stations for alleged "cheating," echoing the false claims he has long made about the 2020 election.

Republican VP nominee JD Vance thinks that mass shooting are a "fact of life": Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz disagrees

Vance made his comment, minimizing school shootings, in Phoenix.

From Politico -

It’s ‘not a fact of life’: Walz responds to Vance’s school shooting comments

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sharply criticized Sen. JD Vance’s response to this week’s school shooting in Georgia, telling an LGBTQ+ advocacy group Saturday evening that such events are “not a fact of life.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, Walz and Democrats have fiercely condemned Vance’s comments about the shooting after he responded to a reporter’s question Thursday by saying: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life.” A 14-year-old boy is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. At least nine others were wounded.

[snip]

On Saturday evening, Walz recalled Vance’s comments as he addressed the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ+ advocacy group, during its annual dinner in Washington.

“It’s a fact of life some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools,” Walz said.

“That’s not a fact of life,” he added. “Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”

Vance's comments:

From the linked AP story, emphasis added by me -

JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said Thursday that he lamented that school shootings are a “fact of life” and argued the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.

“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”

Vance has an interesting definition of dealing with it - deride and oppose efforts to address mass shooting.

Certain folks (OK, MAGA types and other Rs) like to complain that the MSM is biased against them

But then CNN cuts them some slack (undeserved slack, IMO).

From CNN (emphasis added by me)

How some of the biggest right-wing social media stars became unwitting mouthpieces of Russian propaganda

They’re not on any of the major television networks, but they have millions of viewers. Now, the Justice Department is alleging that some of the biggest stars in right-wing social media were, unwittingly, part of a sinister Russian operation to influence the 2024 US election.

The personalities weren’t directly named or accused of wrongdoing by the Justice Department, but court documents unsealed Wednesday revealed Russian state media producers funneled nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based online media company. The company, identified by CNN as Tenet Media, boasts a slate of high-profile right-wing commentators as “talent,” including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen and Dave Rubin, collectively boasting millions of followers across social media platforms

"Unwitting"? 

My ass.

They may be vile people, but they aren't stupid ones.

Legislative schedule - week starting 9/8/2024

Nada, as in there is nothing scheduled at this point.

72 people burned to death in England; a large corporation contributed to that; they also contributed to the Republican Governors Association (RGA)

Wonder if the RGA will ever return its blood money.

Not gonna hold my breath while waiting for that to happen. :)

From CBSNews (emphasis added by me) -

Grenfell Tower fire inquiry says U.S. company Arconic "deliberately concealed" dangers of building materials

The public inquiry into the deadly 2017 fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower, a high-rise public housing apartment building in central London, published its final report Wednesday on the disaster that killed 72 people. The blaze — London's deadliest since World War II — was blamed on a litany of failures, from shoddy construction and materials to poor local management and inadequate fire safety standards.

Retired judge Martin Moore-Bick, who headed the inquiry, said all the deaths were avoidable, and that while no single cause could be blamed for the disaster, a number of factors and entities "contributed to it in one way or another, in most cases through incompetence, but in some cases through dishonesty and greed."

[snip]

In a statement to CBS News on Wednesday, Arconic said it rejected "any claim that AAP [Arconic's subsidiary, Arconic Architectural Products SAS] sold an unsafe product," and insisted it had "regularly conducted tests of its materials using third-party testing bodies."

From the website of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) -

I went looking through FEC records for a direct tie/donation from their PAC to an AZ candidate and didn't find one though there was one tie between AZ and the RGA when Arconic donated to the RGA.

Arconic gave money to the RGA in 2022.

Know who was co-chair of the RGA in 2022?

Former AZ governor Doug Ducey.

In 2022, the RGA spent a LOT of money in efforts to defeat Katie Hobbs.

It didn't work, but it seems some the money spent qualifies as "Ill Gotten Gains."

AZ is in play and Rs are trying to scam the folks here, and in other swing states, with ersatz third party candidates

From AP, written by Brian Slodysko and Dan Merica -

GOP network props up liberal third-party candidates in key states, hoping to siphon off Harris votes

Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer drive to put Cornel West on North Carolina’s presidential ballot last spring when he received an unexpected call from a man named Paul who said he wanted to help.

Though Medelius, co-chairman of West’s “Justice for All Party,” welcomed the assistance, the offer would complicate his life, provoking threats and drawing him into a state election board investigation of the motivations, backgrounds and suspect tactics of his new allies.

His is not an isolated case.

[snip]

Now {Paul} Hamrick is playing a prominent role to place West’s name on the ballot in competetive states. Hamrick surfaced in Arizona two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a document was fraudulently submitted in her name to Arizona’s secretary of state in which she purportedly agreed to serve as an elector for West. She said her signature was forged and she never agreed to be an elector.

After the AP published her account, Hamrick said he spoke to the woman’s husband, trying to rectify the situation and “gave some information.” Hamrick declined to say what information was shared. He also tried to persuade another elector who backed out to recommit to West, according to interviews and voicemails.

The next day, with the deadline to qualify for the Arizona ballot just hours away, Brett Johnson, a prominent Republican lawyer, and Amanda Reeve, a former GOP state lawmaker, made house visits to each as they tried to persuade both to sign new paperwork to serve as West electors.

Johnson and Reeve work for Snell & Wilmer, which has done $257,000 worth of business for the Republican National Committee over the past two years, campaign finance disclosures show.

Hamrick declined to comment on the role of Johnson and Reeve. They did not respond to requests for comment.

West did not qualify for the Arizona ballot.

[snip]

Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Farnoush Amiri in Chicago and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

West may not be on the ballot here, but there will be third party candidates on the ballot.

From the website of the Arizona Secretary of State (emphasis added by me) -

A vote for anyone other that Kamala Harris is a vote for Cheeto.

Warren Petersen can write letters. So can I.

Yesterday, I authored a post on how the president of the AZ State Senate wrote a letter to Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California.

Today, I wrote my own letter to Governor Newsom

Dear Governor Newsom,

It recently became public knowledge that the president of the Arizona State Senate, Warren Petersen, wrote a letter to you advising you to not not create more regulations for petroleum refineries.

I'm going to advise you to do what's best for the people of California; your salary is derived from taxes and your authority is derived from their consent.

Sen. Petersen's wish to protect the profits of Big Business and disregard for the public good is a problem for the people of 

Arizona to address (or not address,  if we don't flip control of the state senate and make him a former president of that body.)

Regards,

Craig McDermott

P.S. - I'm from AZ, and not from Sen. Petersen's district there.

What I wrote to him about taxes and consent is something that I believe is true for *all* public employees, elected, appointed, or hired - they work for us.

Not just wealthy people, not just well-connected people, and not just the people who agree with them or line their pockets with "contributions.".

Guess all of AZ's problems are solved

Apparently, that bores AZ's Senate President, because now he's telling CA what to do.

From KTLA -

Arizona Senate leader voices concern over California’s proposed oil industry regulations

The leader of the Arizona State Senate has sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday expressing concern over proposals to further regulate the oil industry.  

“Our state relies on California for over 1/3 of our fuel supply, and I’m concerned that the rush to pile on policies without considering implications to states like ours will further burden our citizens,” the letter from Senate President Warren Petersen said

.

It seems Petersen  is now trying to influence CA's issues.

Either that, or some Big Oil lobbyist visited Petersen and tugged on his leash

Wonder which it is?

Legislative schedule - week starting 9/1/2024

Nada, as in there is nothing scheduled at this point.

Just when you think that Cheeto and his campaign can't go any lower...

They try to use dead military servicemembers as a photo op.

From NPR -

Trump campaign staff had altercation with official at Arlington National Cemetery

Two members of Donald Trump's campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official at Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony, NPR has learned.

A source with knowledge of the incident said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.

[snip]

In a statement to NPR on Tuesday, Arlington National Cemetery said it "can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed."

"Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign," according to the statement. "Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants."

I should stop believing that they won't go lower.  

They will always prove me wrong.

In Texas, R AG uses his position to persecute Latino Democrats

Want to know what a 2nd Cheeto term will look like?  Move to Texas.

From CBS News -

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton raids Latino Democrats' homes, including those of LULAC members

The nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization, LULAC, is one of several entities in Texas targeted in voter fraud raids led by state Attorney General Ken Paxton, CBS News has learned.

In a letter first obtained by CBS News, LULAC requested that the Justice Department investigate Paxton's office for Voting Rights Act violations. The organization is accusing Paxton's office of carrying out illegal searches premised on voter fraud. 

"These actions echo a troubling history of voter suppression and intimidation that has long targeted both Black and Latino communities, particularly in states like Texas, where demographic changes have increasingly shifted the political landscape," LULAC CEO Juan Proaño and the group's national president, Roman Palomares, said in the letter.

R strategist describes RFK Jr. as "kind of a looney tune"

And he's endorsed Cheeto.

Which is appropriate since millions of Americans think the same thing about Cheeto.

Except many of us don't bother with the "kind of" part.

From The Hill -

GOP strategist cautions Trump on joining forces with RFK Jr: ‘He’s kind of a looney tune’

Republican strategist Scott Jennings advised former President Trump to be careful now that he has seemingly joined forces with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing the independent presidential candidate is “kind of a looney tune.” 

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Jennings Friday if Kennedy’s endorsement could “end up backfiring” on the former president, considering the environmental lawyer’s controversial views on vaccines and embrace of some conspiracy theories. 

Legislative schedule - week starting 8/25/2024

Nada, as in there is nothing scheduled at this point.