Last Call For These Disunited States, Con't

Trumpists are busy trying to purge their ranks of the unbelievers and destroy them as much as they are trying to destroy America, maybe even a little more so as the party makes it clear that loyalty to Dear Leader is the only thing that every mattered. 

 

Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is finding this out the hard way as her political career may not survive this year, let alone a 2022 reelection campaign, after her vote to impeach Donald Trump last week.

 

On top of all this, GOP caucuses in states like Wyoming are now openly floating seceding from a Biden-led United States.

 

The chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party on Friday said Western states are "paying attention" to the effort by some in Texas' far-right to try to secede from the United States.

Appearing on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last week to discuss Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump, Eathorne made the comment in response to a Bannon question about what conservatives should keep in mind in light of their movement's recent political losses.

“We need to focus on the fundamentals,” Eathorne said on the broadcast, which was recently banned by YouTube for peddling misinformation about the 2020 election. “We are straight talking, focused on the global scene, but we’re also focused at home. Many of these Western states have the ability to be self-reliant, and we’re keeping eyes on Texas too, and their consideration of possible secession. They have a different state constitution than we do as far as wording, but it’s something we’re all paying attention to.”

After a Star-Tribune reporter reached out for comment, Eathorne said the idea has not been a topic discussed by the Wyoming GOP.

"Only a brief conversation with the Texas GOP in earlier work with them," Eathorne wrote in the text. "Won't come up again unless the grass roots brings it up."

Bannon, who earlier in the program said that the populist, nationalist, conservative movement "is what people want,” pushed back on Eathorne’s statement, saying that as a native of Richmond, Virginia — the heart of the Confederacy — he was completely against any sort of secession. However, Bannon followed that statement by saying he would be open to talking about it further with Eathorne on a future program.

A 15-year-old fringe right-wing movement in the Lone Star State called “Texit” suggests it is not illegal for individual states to leave the United States — an occurrence that has not happened since the lead-up to the American Civil War.

Suggestions of secession have come up before. A week after the 2012 presidential election, nearly 700,000 Americans from all 50 states signed 69 petitions through the White House’s online petition system calling for the country to consider allowing states to peacefully secede from the United States — an opinion shared by one-quarter of Republican voters at the time, according to one 2012 poll. California once saw a fringe, left-wing movement to secede gain some momentum, and in 2017, Oklahoma state Sen. Joseph Silk introduced a bill seeking to remove the word “inseparable” from the sentence in the state constitution describing Oklahoma as “an inseparable part of the Federal Union.”

However, the question has been thrust into the mainstream in recent months as far-right groups have begun openly floating the idea.

In December, the conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh raised the subject to his 15.5 million listeners, saying in one broadcast, “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession.” A Mississippi state representative recently suggested to his Twitter followers that his own state — which had Confederate battle flag imagery in its state flag up until this past year — should consider breaking off from the country and forming its own state.

Earlier this month, Texas Republican Rep. Kyle Biedermann announced he would be sponsoring a bill in that Legislature’s 2021 session to put the question of secession to voters this fall, a step that comes roughly four years after the Texas Nationalist Movement came within two votes of adding Texas independence language to the state’s Republican platform.

 

You can be damned sure they're not going to be wanting "peaceful secession" from the Union this time. 2021 is going to continue to be an even worse year than 2020.

From Deportation Nation To Immigration Nation

Incoming President-elect Joe Biden is making it clear that reversing the racist, white supremacist deportation policies of Stephen Miller and the Trump regime is among his top priorities heading forward this week, and Democrats controlling Congress are already on board. WaPo's Seung Min Kim:

President-elect Joe Biden will roll out a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws the day he is inaugurated, including an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status and an expansion of refugee admissions, along with an enforcement plan that deploys technology to patrol the border.

Biden’s legislative proposal, which will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, also includes a heavy focus on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, a key part of Biden’s foreign policy portfolio when he served as vice president.

The centerpiece of the plan from Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris is the eight-year pathway, which would put millions of qualifying immigrants in a temporary status for five years and then grant them a green card once they meet certain requirements such as a background check and payment of taxes. They would be able to apply for citizenship three years later.

To qualify, immigrants must have been in the United States as of Jan. 1, a move meant to blunt any rush to the border.

Beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — which granted key protections for “dreamers” — and the temporary protected status program for migrants from disaster-ravaged nations could apply for a green card immediately. The details were described by transition officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The president-elect’s plan has been met with praise from pro-immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers who have toiled to overhaul the immigration system for decades. But it also comes at a time when the Republican Party, led by President Trump, has shifted far rightward on immigration, complicating efforts at a deal that can get enough GOP support.

In a significant contrast with the Obama administration — which was heavily criticized by the Latino community for not tackling immigration when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the White House early in President Barack Obama’s tenure — Biden has made immigration his chief legislative priority behind the immediate health and economic relief stemming from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Having leadership makes a big difference,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in an interview Monday. “You cannot achieve immigration reform without presidential leadership, and from what I see, the seriousness of their purpose to start off with gives me a real good feeling that the president-elect is actually going to use capital to try to make this happen.”

The Biden effort would mark the most substantial attempt at a comprehensive immigration overhaul since the Senate passed legislation in 2013, only to have it collapse in the House, then controlled by Republicans, the following year.

After that collapse, pressure from Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates pushed Obama to issue a wide-reaching effort aimed at protecting parents of U.S. citizen children and green-card holders in the country illegally, but that action promptly was blocked in the courts.

Good for Joe Biden and his team.

Now if they will only choose to do something about the fact that Senate Republicans will never, ever allow a word of this plan to become law, and realize that the Roberts Court will never allow a word of this to pass muster as an Executive Order.

We'll see.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

You know what?

 

I've written more than a hundred posts about this subject since 2009 and I swear to Christ I hope Joe Biden finally makes these assholes a top priority in his administration, because yes, they are basically engaging in conspiracies to commit white supremacist domestic terrorist attacks like the US Capitol attack and even this FBI has no choice but to go after them.

A heavy-metal guitarist, the alleged leader of a Colorado paramilitary training group and two self-styled militia members from Ohio have been charged with taking part in the riot at the Capitol last week, as the FBI ratchets up its investigation into the role extremist groups played in storming the building.

Jon Schaffer, an Indiana musician, turned himself in to the FBI on Sunday afternoon, officials said. On Jan. 6, Schaffer was photographed inside the Capitol, wearing a hat that said “Oath Keepers Lifetime Member.” Schaffer founded Iced Earth, a heavy-metal band, and music fans quickly recognized him as the FBI circulated wanted posters with his face on them.

Schaffer was charged with six counts, including engaging in an act of physical violence. Authorities said Schaffer was among the rioters who targeted U.S. Capitol Police with bear spray.

Also charged in a court filing made public Sunday was Robert Gieswein, 24, of Cripple Creek, Colo. Court papers say that Gieswein is affiliated with an Oath Keepers-related extremist group called the Three Percenters, and that he assaulted federal officers outside the Capitol with bear spray and a baseball bat; “encouraged other rioters as they broke a window of the Capitol building; entered … and then charged through the Capitol building.”

Gieswein runs a private paramilitary training group called the Woodland Wild Dogs, and a patch for that group was visible on a tactical vest he wore during the attack on Congress, an FBI affidavit said.

Gieswein gave a media interview in which he echoed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the affidavit said, and said his message to Congress was “that they need to get the corrupt politicians out of office. Pelosi, the Clintons … every single one of them, Biden, Kamala.”

Also arrested Sunday were Donovan Crowl, 50, a former U.S. Marine, and Army veteran Jessica Watkins, 38. A bartender, Watkins recently told the Ohio Capital Journal that she formed the “Ohio State Regular Militia” in 2019 — a unit of the Oath Keepers, the FBI said — and that the group has appeared at a dozen protests to “protect people.”

The FBI said Watkins posted to Parler a photograph of herself in uniform on Jan. 6, writing, “Me before forcing entry into the Capitol Building. #stopthesteal #stormthecapitol #oathkeepers #ohiomilitia.”

Watkins and Crowl were among about 10 individuals recorded at the U.S. Capitol wearing combat helmets, ballistic goggles, tactical vests and Oath Keepers patches who “move[d] in an organized and practiced fashion and force[d] their way to the front of the crowd” to lead the siege and break-in, FBI affidavits said.

Lawyers for the four defendants could not immediately be identified.

The Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist group with ties to white nationalism, have drawn particular attention from FBI agents investigating the attack on Congress, as they work to determine whether those groups organized or directed the violence to block certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory. Officials have said the Proud Boys in particular are an important focus of the FBI investigation.

 

Would sure be nice if a hell of a lot more of these assholes ended up in the hole on providing material support and conspiracy charges.

Just saying.