With Friends Like These....
Without even a curtsy, Kyrsten puts a dagger through the heart and hope of voting rights
It’s not surprising. Stunning, maybe. Not surprising.
After a week of pushing a rescue plan for voting rights, exactly one week after calling out the ongoing coup attempt, just hours before urgently confronting Congress with the imperative to limit the filibuster, President Biden ran into the theatrical sucker punch that defines Kyrsten Sinema. There’s nothing like a big spotlight to bring out the outrageousness and bizarre thinking of Sinema.
She whacked Biden.
Embarrassed him. Raised a middle finger to Arizonans who put her in the Senate. Handed 2022 and 2024 to Kevin McCarthy and the Trumpian horde that will certainly impeach Biden and dispatch Voting Rights to the 1950’s.
In announcing her decision to leave the filibuster alone, Crazy Kyrsten talked nonsense about bringing the nation together, about treating the “disease” of division. Is she presenting herself as someone who can singlehandedly overcome Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Mo Brooks, Jim Jordan and the other insurrectionists who will NEVER compromise? Remember when some guy proclaimed “I alone can fix it”?
Well Kyrsten, you can’t. Devastatingly, your ridiculous decision won’t allow the adults in the room to actually take care of the problem
What now?
Democrats must pivot quickly to winning the governing mechanisms at the state level. The power to control elections lies there, with secretaries of state and county-level administrators. We saw their courage when the Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors eviscerated the Cyber Ninja’s “audit.” We also see the threat from Big Lie secretary of state candidates like Mark Finchem, now on the road teaching other states how to destroy the vote.
As for Sinema, we’re stuck with her idiocy for five more years. Primary challengers like Congressman Ruben Gallego need to get ready. It’s time for Kyrsten to curtsy and exit stage Right. The Right, after all, is where she’s seems most at home.
AN ICE CREAM MAN IN FULL
Doug Ducey has many awful qualities, none more nauseating than his boundless arrogance.
The governor really turned up the volume with his final (thankfully) State of the State address, an excruciating 52 minutes of fantasy and FU’s to his enemies. The Duce layered it on thick, drawing from a mix of mainstream Republican talking points while throwing some red meat to the gun toting white nationalists, many of whom were state legislators sitting in the audience.
He’s planning re-education “summer camp” to brainwash kids who may learn in history class that America is a racist nation. He’ll complete the border wall and turn out his laughable “Border Strike Force” to arrest asylum seekers. He’ll “expand school choice any way we can” continuing to dismantle traditional public education. Taxes will be cut, cut, and cut again as he “takes that baseball bat” to the bureaucracy Arizonans depend on to run a modern government. A pugnacious ice cream salesman, playing to his only base, an Arizona business community that demands and gets almost zero regulation. Read the whole awful mess here, and pay close attention to this quote:
“We intend to keep Arizona a place where we honor and value our cops and all of law enforcement, including correctional officers and first responders. A place where public safety matters. No riots. No smash and grab. And a news flash for the DOJ and Merrick Garland: Mr. Attorney General, instead of attacking Police Chief Jeri Williams and her officers for risking their lives and keeping Arizona streets safe during civil unrest, your time would be better spent protecting the federal courthouses in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. Do your job.”
If “your job” as a law enforcement officer includes:
murdering people of color,
falsely charging protestors with felonies for exercising their rights,
harassing homeless people,
and acting like a street gang with badges, then Arizona has a place for you.
Back in 2020 after the George Floyd demonstrations, activists including faith leaders met with Ducey in hopes that he’d better understand Arizona’s horrendous and well-documented culture of racism and police violence. They left the meeting with zero commitment for change and in wonderment of his White privilege.
Two years later, the Governor is still enjoying his vanilla ice cream.
YOU CAN’T SPELL CRAZY…
A quick round-up of the nuttiness that is the governing class of State 48. No, it’s not funny. It’s dysfunction at an epic level. These folks are in charge.
The wheels came off for Cyber Ninjas with fines and a whining attorney who can’t get paid.
Arizona is well represented amongst those facing charges in the January 6 insurrection, and that includes the big arrest of Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo.
The absolute idiocy spewed by Republican gubernatorial front runner Kari Lake is rivaled only by the Mad King’s delusions about the 2020 election.
We’ve got not one, not two ,but THREE names on the list of America’s scariest politicians. How did Gosar and Biggs not make the cut?
Retired Department of Corrections boss Charlie Ryan is in custody after pointing a gun at police in Tempe. If he was Black, they would’ve killed them. Instead, Ryan was arrested and hospitalized. How ironic it would be if Ryan ended up in the prison system he created, where cell doors can’t lock, medical care is non-existent, and inmates set fires and assault corrections officers.
Really Cool. No, literally, REALLY COLD!
My favorite story of the week. Surfing in subzero temps on Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota. Wow.
And, we leave you with a spectacular sunset NOT from Arizona.
This one followed us for an hour last week driving through Oklahoma… where the wind was sweeping down the plain.
