Brian Tyler Cohen and attorney Marc Elias inform us that, with the SCOTUS’s latest wretched ruling on Section 2 of the VRA, Repug-run states mainly in the deep south are going to “move heaven and earth” to try and redraw their maps for this election cycle, and all of this is completely by design...kind of makes me wonder why Dems as a party haven’t made SCOTUS reform a higher priority all this time (some notable exceptions here are Dem Senator Sheldon Whithouse of Rhode Island) - beyond infuriating to see the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR just continue to take away our rights year after year while all we hear from the national Dem organization is a “tut tut” in response (and I think Dem governors should have tried to create some kind of a “consortium” or something like that long ago to come up with a joint strategy against voting nonsense like this, and likely for other reasons also, including standing up to the jackbooted ICE neanderthals)...looks like Louisiana is up first with their redistricting nonsense (this too), followed closely by Alabama, and then after that, it’s a “grab bag” of states taking their turns, as Elias puts it...Cohen and Elias are about 150 percent right when they say that Dem states need to step up, and I believe NJ Dem guv Mikie Sherrill “got that memo” as noted here...
...and awwww...Melania has hurt fee fees about Jimmy Kimmel making a joke about her old man potentially croaking on us, as Mike Figueredo tells us...good job by Zeteo to produce the clip of all of the hateful garbage from this pestilence of a ruling regime...and OF COURSE the FCC under human thumb Brendan Carr is going to use this moment to review ABC’s broadcast license, or something...and don’t expect much (or likely, any) corporate media outrage over this, since they’ve been effectively cowed by this godawful administration...nice to see the rantings of Cancun Cruz and Big Hair Blackburn (another southern state Repug who will probably skate into the governor’s mansion, along with “Coach Quitter” Tuberville) get called out here...nice job by Figueredo to remind us again about the bullsh*t DOJ inquisition into the SPLC...didn’t know about the YEAR-LONG detention of Columbia student Leqaa Kordia for protesting on behalf of the Palestinians...Democrats “need to be the threats that Republicans said they were” indeed, again, if we manage to take back power, and we need to keep working towards that goal (very NSFW/H)...
...and sticking with media stuff, Kyle Kulinski tells us that it looks like there was some stuff left out of the Gropenfuhrer’s recent “60 Minutes” interview, and as Kyle says, #47 screamed all over the place about editing of Kamala Harris’s interview by that program/network (which was likely just standard for what they did for ANY guest to squeeze the interview into the allotted time period), but as always, when it comes to yelling about “liberal bias,” working the refs and all the typical conservative horsesh*t, IOKIYAR...and as Kyle says, the SPLC funds informants to right-wing groups to get intel on these groups, and the SPLC turns over whatever information they get to law enforcement, but leave it to Cheetoh Hitler to get that EXACTLY WRONG...and by the way, one thing to do in response to this lying madness is to make a donation to the SPLC, and you can do that from here (NSFW also)...
...and this item form Melissa Chan of the German news service DW tells us about Japan, South Korea and Taiwan dealing with the unpredictability of the closure/non-closure of the Strait of Hormuz...as the report says, there’s a lot more of an emphasis on military spending by these countries now, and given the madness reigning politically here, who can blame them?...and yeah, the phrase “both alone and with the US” as stated by correspondent Rik Glauert is indeed more than a bit of a “tell” (and we know Japan is an industrial power now in itself and is nothing like what it was 80-90 years ago, but the thought of nationalism potentially taking over there again is discomforting to say the least)...as the report says, the biggest threat hanging over all of this is China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, which would be terrible both militarily and economically, and arguably, that has been made more of a possibility by our weakened military posture because of this latest Mideast madness in Iran...of all the ways that Bronzer Beelzebub has ruined the prestige this country once enjoyed, destroying alliances with our longtime allies (and this story is part of that IMO) is part of that for sure (doing the bidding of Vlad The Butcher once again like the Russian operative #47 truly is)...
...and this “cold open” from SNL recently brings us Colin Jost as SecDef Kegseth and Aziz Ansari as Kash Patel – when all else fails, there is always ridicule available in response to these cretins...
...and RIP Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving member of The Ronettes.
