dragging the bastards out into the light

I guess all that physical activity of the past several weeks out in the yard have finally caught up with me. I'm sleeping late, never really feel energetic during the day, sleepy and ready for a nap in the afternoons, something I very rarely do. Walking the dog is my big effort for the day. I'm not just physically unmotivated but mentally as well. It's a good thing I've got just about everything done out there what with the rainy or overcast days and ennui. Still have some fertilizing and mulch spreading to do.

Since I have nothing witty or even mildly interesting to share, here's the list of some of the current republican attempts to subvert our constitution, our democracy, our rights, our protections, our public schools intent on controlling what we can read, learn, what medical care we can access, in their goal to turn this country into a far right authoritarian white male dominated christian theocracy that I've been compiling as I come across the stories...

The Republican senate in North Dakota voted down a bill to provide free school lunches to low income children and then turned around and passed a bill that increased their own lunch meal reimbursement to $45 per meal with one legislator remarking that hunger wasn't the state's problem. Apparently funding his extravagant lunches is.

A Texas far right republican anti-abortion judge appointed by Trump has revoked the FDA's approval of the widely used abortion medication mifepristone that has been used safely for two decades making it illegal to prescribe and provide giving the government one week to respond. The same day a federal judge in Spokane ruled protecting the availability of mifepristone so this will be headed to the Supreme Court. Fortunately continuing lawsuits have made the drug still available for now but with some restrictions.

It has been revealed that Republican Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginnie Thomas, who helped underwrite and support the attack on the Capitol, has been accepting expensive vacations and gifts from GOP billionaire Harlan Crow for decades without reporting it. His lame excuse is that 'they' told him he didn't have to. Meanwhile, Thomas has ruled in favor of every case before the Court related to Harlan Crow.

And now it has come to light that the head of a law firm purchased a home/property that had been on the market for 2 years from Justice Gorsuch shortly after Gorsuch was appointed to the SC and has had 22 cases before the Court from which Gorsuch did not recuse himself. Are there any republican justices that aren't ethically compromised?

Texas republican governor Greg Abbott intends to pardon a man just convicted of premeditated murder when he killed a BLM protester during a demonstration against police brutality and racial injustice, a man that a jury of his peers heard all the evidence, watched the video, and rejected his plea of self defense based on the 'stand your ground' law in Texas and convicted him. Apparently Abbott thinks that his conviction was an unfair use of our judicial system.

Conservative Llano county in Texas is considering shutting down it's libraries after a federal judge ordered it to return banned books to the library shelves. Meanwhile, the republican dominated Texas Senate voted to defund libraries that host drag queen story hour.

After screaming about drag queens being groomers of young children for months, once again it's a republican that gets caught. 2022 Republican candidate Joel M. Koskan of South Dakota has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of felony incest for raping a 13 year old family member.

Missouri House republicans have voted to defund the state's public libraries due to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU after Senate Bill 775 passed that resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes.

The Texas House has voted to have the 10 commandments posted in every classroom and next on the agenda is replacing school counselors with 'chaplains'. I fail to see how a chaplain can advise a student on educational directions to support that student's interests and guide them into a profession or trade. That's what the counselors were for when I was in school, not psychological and/or emotional counseling. Even if that was their purpose, and it may be in this age of school mass murders, I'd much rather students have access to a professional therapist than someone whose purpose is to promote their religion and faith.

In the continuing corruption in the Texas legislature, the Texas House passed a bill to put armed officers in every school (as if having armed guards present has ever deterred or prevented a mass shooting at a school). Republican representative Tenderholt, who happens to be a senior partner at a private security company, inserted an amendment to allow contracts with private security companies.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, after two years of bitching and moaning about Biden's 'open border' and the millions of illegals flooding the country (neither of which is true) has now demanded a reduction in funding for Border Patrol as a prerequisite for raising the debt ceiling. He also wants to cut funding for veterans, the people he claims to respect and support.

Republicans in several states including Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Georgia, and South Dakota have either passed laws or are introducing bills to weaken child labor laws allowing children as young as 14 to work to ease labor shortages in industries like meat packing though research shows those industries could attract adult workers if they raised pay and benefits. Instead they want to fill those positions with children and then pay them less than minimum wage.

Montana republicans refused to let state representative Zooey Zephyr, who happens to be transgender, speak on the House Floor for the third day in a row and then had the police arrest seven civil rights protesters who were demanding that she be allowed to represent her constituents.

...and your reminder not to get complacent and VOTE these fuckers out.