Watching Oppressive Republicans dismantling free speech and freedom of the Press!!!

End of the First Amendment; Free Speech and Freedom of the Press: This says it all about what the Republicans Party has become.  

"Republican Greg Gianforte declared victory in Montana's special congressional election, barely a day after he was charged with misdemeanor assault following accusations that he (body) slammed a journalist to the ground. Gianforte: “It's unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ" ... it's another example of a candidate being rewarded by voters for behaving badly. So what's the incentive for good behavior?

Security Protection for the Press? Why not? Have you heard what Trump has said about them?

Meanwhile Trump racks up Security Costs:

Congress would allocate more than $120 million in additional money to help cover the escalating costs of protecting the Trump family and Trump Tower.

Shoot the Democratic Enemies of the State: And woe to anyone who disagrees with the Republicans authority; protests will not be tolerated, resistance is futile:

A Texas Republican threatened to “put a bullet in one of his colleague’s heads” during a scuffle on the House floor over the state’s new anti-‘sanctuary cities’ law. Representative Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, made the comment to Democratic Representative Poncho Nevárez during a dispute that began when Rinaldi told two Hispanic lawmakers that he called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Senate Bill 4 protesters at the Capitol.

“I made it clear that if he attempted to, in his words, ‘get me,’ I would shoot him in self defense,” Rinaldi said. “I would shoot him in self defense. I am currently under DPS protection.” 

"Populist" Right Wing Authoritarians now need Protection from the Public? This isn't a new idea. Scott Walker played up "threats" (even created a few) during the massive protest in 2011, resulting in the elimination of open public forums. He now appears at closed corporate speaking engagements with captive employees:

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that in 2013 taxpayers spent $2.23 million for the 10 state troopers who protect Walker and his family, GOP Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and dignitaries from other states and countries who visit Wisconsin … up from $657,457 paid out by Walker’s predecessor, Democrat Jim Doyle during his last year in office in 2010. Walker’s security bill inched higher in 2014, to $2.3 million. A large part of the increase came because Walker had added five members to what is officially known as the Dignitary Protection Unit in the wake of the Act 10 protests. 

Security Protection for Right Wing Authoritarian Campus Speakers: The rise of white supremacist groups, gun rights militias, and anti-liberal Republicans are now getting the speaking time they've demanded for years, thanks to a Walker Republican bill to threaten severe punishment for University of Wisconsin campus student protests. Their work since the 60's might just pay off this time around:

A Republican campus speech bill requires University of Wisconsin System institutions to punish students who take part in disruptive protests … requiring universities to expel any student who violates the policy three times … students who engage in “violent or other disorderly conduct that materially and substantially disrupts the free expression of others.”

Outright admission that conservatives deserve extra protections: Despite dominating government, our talk radio outlets, and churning out large numbers of conservative college students:

Republican members argued that their ideas are under fire on college campuses from left-leaning students and faculty, saying the legislation was needed to preserve open debate at UW institutions and protect the free speech rights of controversial speakers. Rep. Joan Ballweg, R-Markesan, said the bill would ensure “there is no idea or issue that will be shouted down in a public forum.”

It would chill free speech on campus and infringe on regents’ authority to govern their institutions themselves. “The very bones of this legislation are diseased,” said Democratic Rep. Jimmy Anderson.

“Don’t you see a concern about two left-wing or two right-wing students raising an issue with perceived activity by students attending an event?” Rep. Gary Hebl said. “Don’t you see the floodgates opening?” Republican Rep. Jesse Kremer asked Hebl if he had a better idea. Hebl responded that he couldn’t see any way to make the bill better.

Republican Rep. Travis Tranel told the committee he had heard from college students in his district that they’re afraid to express conservative views in class for fear the professor could dock their grades. Hebl and fellow Democrat Terese Bereceau both cut him off, challenging him to prove his anecdote was true. Hebl accused Tranel of making things up without any evidence, comparing him to Joe McCarthy.

Even Unconstitutional Repressive Laws can't be Criticized: If Republicans decided tomorrow to shred the Constitution and arrest every known liberal, UW system professors would be banned under penalty of law to say anything:

It also states that System institutions must “strive to remain neutral” on public policy controversies. 

Conservative groups could organize and systematically eliminate their opposition with ease:

Another amendment requires universities to launch an investigation and hold discipline hearings if they get two or more complaints alleging someone violated the policy.

Cities Next: Portland Republican says party should use militia groups after racial attack: 

The top Republican in the city said he is considering using militia groups as security for public events. James Buchal said: “Yeah. We’re thinking about that. Because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.”

The Oath Keepers are described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the US,” recruiting current and former military and law enforcement personnel. They have recently appeared at rallies from Berkeley to Boston. The Three Percenters are described by Political Research Associates as “a paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership.” They were a highly visible presence in Burns, Oregon, before and during the occupation of the Malheur wildlife refuge by rightwing militia early in 2016.

James Buchal issued a statement in which he bemoaned a “criminal conspiracy to commit crimes of riot” ... lament(ing) “rising lawlessness” in Portland ... a video of Buchal addressing a Multnomah County Republican Central Committee meeting depicts Buchal making a fiery pro-Trump speech. He says of the President, “His enemies are my enemies and his enemies are all our enemies. Our enemies are more dangerous than ever. We are really in a life and death battle for the future of our society. And these globalist people are not going to give up. If we don’t tell out fellow citizens that there are these dark forces in the government, like the CIA and the shadow government, who are trying to take Trump down with lies, who is going to tell them?” 

Spencer Sunshine, an associate researcher at Political Research Associates who last year co-authored a major report on the growth of the far-right Patriot Movement in Oregon, said: “Consideration of the use of unaccountable, private paramilitary groups by one of the main political parties is a dangerous lurch to the far right.”

Republicans: The Not-So Freedom & Liberty Party!!!

This story out of Texas should tell you all you need to know about the true meaning of freedom and liberty espoused by Republicans, the party that loves to wave their pocket Constitutions in the air.

The list of lost freedoms and liberty's below seem almost hard to imagine, much less put to words in written bill after written bill. Remember when Republicans were repulsed by liberal social engineering? Can you say projection. Also known as a conscience clause, the vilification continues:

1. Allow medical professionals to deny care to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people and emergency contraception for rape survivors.

2. Allow pharmacists to deny birth control to women and hormone therapy to trans people.

3. Allow state-funded adoption and foster care agencies to turn away applicants on religious grounds, denying parents who are LGBT, or even those who are Jewish, Muslim or atheist.

4. An amendment added at the last minute to a nursing care bill, HB 2950, would bar the Texas Board of Nursing from punishing discriminatory actions if they are committed in the service of a nurse’s “religious beliefs” ... a nurse could “cite his religious beliefs as a reason to refuse to care for a gay patient on the grounds that he believes homosexuality is a sin” or is against his faith. “A nurse who believes that men are the head of the household,” the group also notes, “could breach client confidentiality to disclose a woman’s medical condition to her husband against her wishes.”

5. Pharmacists could opt-out of the practices that are standard based on personal religious convictions. A pharmacist could decide not to fill a prescription for hormone therapy for a transgender customer ... Or a “pharmacist could use religion as a justification to refuse to serve African-American customers because they believes the Bible mandates the segregation of the races.”

6.  Two bills that would regulate legal services, SB 302 and SB 303, now have amendments which allow for religious refusal by state-licensed attorneys ... an attorney could deny his or her duty to inform a client about his or her rights in a divorce proceeding, for example, even trying to talk the client out of getting a divorce, all based on the attorney’s religious objection to divorce.

Fighting for the Freedom and Liberty to buy things?

Yikes, the only real "freedom and liberty" conservatives seem to be fighting for are...shopping choices.

The freedom to BUY a gun, the freedom to BUY or not BUY health insurance, the freedom to BUY a big gulp soda, the freedom to BUY an incandescent light bulb, and now...the freedom to BUY from a list of school options.

The freedom to shop is ludicrous. One question; what do people know about medical care and educational opportunities? Nothing of course, yet we're supposed to shop for highly professional services most people don't know anything about:

Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for education secretary, would fight for parents' educational options.

It's like parents don't have enough to do in their jobs, buying a home and car, home and auto insurance, shop for food and clothes, parenting children that might be quirky genius', always in trouble, or emotionally challenged, save and choose a college, deal with family health issues, aging parents, keep up-to-date and hold our politicians feet to the fire...well, you get the idea.

Now we're all supposed to shop and buy health insurance every year till we die, and manage a K-12 educational savings account so we can screen dozens of private educational choices filling our mailboxes with fancy promotional pamphlets claiming they're the best. 

Maybe it's a way to wear us down mentally. 

GOP regulates Private Business with RTW: Right-Wing falls for meaningless references to "Freedom," "Liberty," and "Choice."

Democrats lost the right-to-work argument early in this Extraordinary Session, when they forgot to use the Republicans own rhetoric to kill the idea. 

Every ridiculous use of  the words "freedom," "liberty" and "choice," words liberals have used in meaningful ways for years fighting for women's health rights, unionization, net neutrality, and protesting were twisted into a pretzel by Republicans. Workers already have the right to work in a union shop or not. Here's an example of a jam packed line of bullshit from one of the best spin meisters:

"We're fighting for every worker in the state to have their own personal liberty," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said. "Worker freedom. Individual choice. Getting to make your own way in life."

It was an upside down and highly successful way to inject big Republican one-size-fits-all government into the private sectors supposed free market business model. That's changing too.

Democrats missed the following opportunities to drive their point home:

1. There is no “right to work” in the constitution, the one place rights are protected and in some cases enumerated. Democrats could have taken this constitutional approach away from these “constitutional conservative” phonies. 

2. Government control over Private Businesses:  Forget the free market and a private business owner’s freedom to work with unions in their workplace.

3. People have the “Freedom” to look for work elsewhere: No one is forcing job seekers to work at a business with union contracts. They don't even have to join unions. They have the freedom and liberty to move on to those supposed higher wage non-union workplaces.

4. The “Freedom” and “Liberty” answer to everything they can’t defend: Seriously, this whole freedom and liberty thing is so over the top, that's it's intellectually insulting.

Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, argued the bill was about freedom. "We stand today for a simple and yet very powerful concept, the concept of worker freedom," Knudson said. 
Rep. Andy Jorgensen, D-Milton, joked if anyone following the debate at home played a game requiring them to drink every time someone said the word "freedom," the would have "cashed out yesterday afternoon. I want to say this has nothing to do with freedom, it has nothing to do with choice. It had everything to do with divide and conquer," Jorgensen said, referencing comments Gov. Scott Walker made in 2010. 

5. Right-to-Work is Wrong for Wisconsin: I can't tell you how much I hate this mindless slogan. We could have used the Republicans own talking points against them. The base normally hates government meddling, exactly what the Republicans are doing right now. There was a slim chance of reaching a few conservatives voters struck by the hypocrisy. 

6. Impressed by our Fighting Democrats: After watching Wisconsin Eye and a few camera phone videos of the right-to-work debate, I felt the Democrats did a great job disproving every empty Republicans reason for the law. Sadly, not only did almost none of this got local news coverage, but Democrats failed to brag about their debate victories.     

Walker's odd vision of being "free...as possible," whatever that means.

Something Scott Walker said in the state-of-the-state speech oddly stood out for me, and I haven't been able to shake it off, so here it is; Walker proudly quoted the first line of the state constitution:

"All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain and inherent rights...."

Walker went on to personalize it for the nation and the rest of the anxious world, by suggesting:

"Unlike other places around the world, this document says that in Wisconsin, it doesn't matter what class you were born into, or what your parents did for living, here, opportunity should be as equal as possible. As equal as possible!"

Yes, Walker even repeated his odd twist on the meaning of our constitution. Perhaps the state's founders should have hedged their bets a little on how much freedom is allowed, by writing...:

"All people are born as equally free as possible..."

Check it out, with Walker's interpretation at about :55 seconds:

Jindal to nation: "People are ready for a Hostile Takeover of Washington D.C.!!!

Besides the title quote, Jindal played up this false premise:

Jindal: "The left is trying to silence us." 

An absurd, impossible idea that oddly makes sense to conservatives. And yet conservatives in Wisconsin are overjoyed by Scott Walker's attempts to silence protesters at the Capitol. Is Walker "trying to silence us?"

Overthrow Alert: It looks like the U.S. is headed for a “hostile takeover.” We're seeing it take shape in the militia movement, the open carry protests, a tea party candidate talking about “Second Amendment remedies,” and the Cliven Bundy lunacy that culminated in the deaths of two policemen in Las Vegas.

Of course Republicans will deny they had anything to do with the consequences of their irresponsible advocacy of lone gunmen revolutionaries. But some like Jindal see these individual uprisings as a beginning to a patriotic movement:

AP: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke at the annual conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, accused President Barack Obama and other Democrats of waging wars against religious liberty and education and said that a rebellion is brewing in the U.S. with people ready for "a hostile takeover" of the nation's capital.

"I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States," Jindal said, "where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren. I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them. The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore."

A false premise that not just sounds stupid, but doesn't seem possible, unless I missed the FEMA detention camps dotting our nations landscape. It's the conservative world of opposites and contradictions. Take for instance Bobby Jindal’s response to Common Core. Despite his own parties attacks on Obama for usurping congress with executive orders:

Earlier this week, Jindal signed an executive order to block the use of tests tied to Common Core education standards in his state.

So Jindal's call for a revolution or a takeover of our nations Capitol, sounds like the constitutions own definition of treason to me, or sure comes close. 

Wisconsin Business Owner who opposes Work Place Safety Regulations sees 8 employees injured in catastrophic accident.

We need to get Obama out of the way and unlock the shackles of regulation so businesses can grown and "create jobs."

That was the mantra of one big mouth conservative business owner in Wisconsin who may now have to spend a lot more money on increased liability insurance premiums and attorney's fees defending himself in court over a number of injured employees. Still believe these guys are "fiscal conservatives?"

HuffingtonPost: Lance Johnson, president of Johnson Brass & Machine Foundry Inc., in Saukville, Wisconsin, told The Wall Street Journal in a Nov. 2, 2012, campaign story (that) President Barack Obama's workplace safety inspectors were burdening him and killing jobs with too much red tape.

On Monday, Johnson's foundry was the site of a horrifying industrial accident. As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a "catastrophic failure" of machinery sprayed molten metal on workers, injuring eight and sending four of them to the hospital. According to a statement from Johnson issued Tuesday, the molten metal hit workers on their legs and backs. According to OSHA records, Johnson's company was hit with proposed penalties of $9,638 for exposing workers to apparent hazards in 2011.

Through a spokesman, The Huffington Post asked Johnson if he still believed OSHA regulation was too burdensome. He had no immediate response.

Let’s be Honest: Republicans Hate really Freedom and Liberty!

The CBO’s latest report on ObamaCare said people will be better off getting health care, all the while allowing over 2 million people the ability to leave the workforce for any number of good reasons.

The horror. That prompted this flip flop from Paul Ryan:

Ryan: “It's adding insult to injury…As the welfare state expands, the incentive to work declines. Meaning, grow the government, you shrink the economy.” – Rep. Paul Ryan

But on May of 2009, Paul Ryan had a different idea (he wanted to end employer based insurance and provide employees with a subsidy instead):

Ryan: “The key question that oughta be addressed in any health care reform legislation, is are we going to continue “job lock,” or are going to allow individuals more choice and portability to fit the 21st century workforce?”

Travis Rowley wrote in GoLocalProv this common right wing refrain:

Democrats continued to characterize socialism as an economic driver … as they celebrated a utopian world of guarantees, and self-indulgence over labor.

Yes, liberals are ridiculously in love with labor. But Rowley wasn't done bashing freedom and liberty:

Rep. Gwen Moore (D) argued that “people are going to have freedom and choice…Liberty! Something we thought Republicans were for…They’ll be able to be entrepreneurs, because they won’t be stuck in job-lock.” Nancy Pelosi (said the) legislation “captures the spirit of our Founders” by enabling people to pursue “a healthier life and the liberty to pursue a person’s happiness, to be free of constraint, be job-locked because they’re policy-locked…So if you wanted to be a cameraman, a writer, you want to be self-employed, if you want to be, start a business, if you want to change jobs, whatever it is you want to do, you are free, you have the liberty to do.”

That’s the entrepreneur spirit…or is it? Despite the GOP plans to provide subsidies (that’s other people’s money too, folks), that same money via the Affordable Care Act is all wrong.

Pelosi forgot to mention “stay in bed” in her list of people’s potential activities. 

Welcome to the modern Democratic Party – where dependence on others is actually “health independence;” and forcing others to pay for your healthcare is referred to as “liberty.”

I thought the following ironic statement from our Republican school yard bully seemed odd:

Welcome to the modern Democratic Party – where everyone gets to act like a college sophomore for the rest of their lives!