Republicans are a Blight Upon the Entire Planet
America, addressing you as a collective entity, you need to get clear about your Republican Party. There is not one single value, principle, initiative or policy they get right. No, not even economic or international business policies. They’re flawed with fearful retrogressive contraction in their thinking, as opposed to courageous expansion and innovation. Those who are fearful embrace authoritarianism and control, and gravitate toward other-identification and cult thinking. They repeatedly do the exact wrong thing in any situation, any crisis, any and all potential watershed moments.
The party of Lincoln has become a malignant growth upon the nation, and has been metastasizing in this direction for around a half a century, for at least as long as I have been observing it closely, at least since Nixon, growing ever worse, with more toxic permissions, under Regan and Reaganomics, Reagan’s Evangelical “anti-environmentalist” Secretary of the Interior from 1981 to 1983, James G. Watt (he’s still alive and still at it, preaching at heavily Republican-attended talks and seminars that the destruction of the planet and the exhaustion of all Her resources is God’s plan for the Earth so as to fight, militarily, Satan’s minions, meaning Communists — used to be Soviet Russia, now it’s Communist China — and bring about Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, and the Thousand Year Kingdom of God on Earth. No shit!). Also Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, and both Bushes.
The GOP has become increasingly out-front racist, misogynist, pro-guns in every man, woman and child’s hands (if not AR-15 automatic assault weapons), anti-gun control legislation, antiabortion, anti-birth control, anti-Reproductive Rights for Women, anti-LGBTQ Rights, anti-universal Human and Civil Rights, anti-sex education, anti-infrastructure and universal health care, overtly despicable and generally diabolical in its leanings. It is now, with its support of Trump, his Big Lie and his multiple criminal activities (which are legion — far too many to enumerate here, though Garland and the DOJ have leaked a few headliners with which to hang him), the confessed Party of Armed White Supremacism and The Theocratic/kleptocratic State.
Here’s a new list of Republican malefactors:
“A startling number of GOP reps oppose anti-human trafficking bill; We knew the bill to combat human trafficking would pass. The only question was whether anyone would oppose it. The answer turned out to be surprising.”
July 28, 2022, 5:40 AM PDT
By Steve Benen
There was never any doubt that the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act would pass. The only question was whether anyone would oppose it.
The answer turned out to be surprising. USA Today reported:
Twenty Republicans on Wednesday voted against legislation that would reauthorize programs to combat human trafficking. The bill, called the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022, passed the House by a tally of 401–20.
This bill updates an earlier version that was approved more than two decades ago with almost no opposition. Indeed, there just aren’t many objectionable provisions in the bill.
As a report in The Hill explained, the anti-human trafficking bill builds on the existing system, focusing resources on local agencies operating in high-intensity sex-trafficking areas, while reauthorizing the Department of Homeland Security’s Angel Watch Center, which is meant to prevent international sex tourism travel perpetrated by child sex offenders.
The same report added that the bill would invest new funds for housing options that would help women get away from abusers.
And yet, these 20 Republicans, each of whom knew the measure would pass, voted against it:
Brian Babin of Texas
Andy Biggs of Arizona
Lauren Boebert of Colorado
Mo Brooks of Alabama
Ken Buck of Colorado
Andrew Clyde of Georgia
Matt Gaetz of Florida
Louie Gohmert of Texas
Paul Gosar of Arizona
Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia
Andy Harris of Maryland
Jody Hice of Georgia
Thomas Massie of Kentucky
Tom McClintock of California
Mary Miller of Illinois
Troy Nehls of Texas
Ralph Norman of South Carolina
Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
Chip Roy of Texas
Van Taylor of Texas
“There are, to be sure, some familiar names on this list, but the fact that Gaetz opposed an anti-human trafficking proposal was especially notable because the Florida Republican is reportedly under investigation — for alleged sex trafficking.”
