The Big Lie, Con't

Arizona Republicans failed to steal the 2020 election for Trump, so they're proposing giving themselves the right to do so legally in 2024.

An arch conservative member of Arizona’s state House of Representatives has proposed a mammoth overhaul of the state’s voting procedures that would allow legislators to overturn the results of a primary or general election after months of unfounded allegations and partisan audits.

The bill, introduced by state Rep. John Fillmore (R), would substantially change the way Arizonans vote by eliminating most early and absentee voting and requiring people to vote in their home precincts, rather than at vote centers set up around the state.

Most dramatically, Fillmore’s bill would require the legislature to hold a special session after an election to review election processes and results, and to “accept or reject the election results.”

The proposal comes after President Biden became the first Democrat since former President Clinton to win Arizona’s electoral votes. He defeated former President Trump there by just under 11,000 votes, or about three-tenths of a percentage point.

Ever since, Arizona Republicans have been riven between election denialists who have pushed to investigate or overturn those results and more mainstream legislators — and Gov. Doug Ducey (R) — who have tried to move on. An audit, conducted by an inexperienced firm called Cyber Ninjas, failed to uncover evidence of fraud or miscounting.

But Fillmore said at a committee hearing Wednesday he still does not believe the reports he has seen, though he maintained his skepticism has little to do with the ultimate winner.

“I don’t care what the press says. I don’t trust ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox or anybody out there. Everybody’s lying to me and I feel like I have a couple hundred ex-wives hanging around me,” Fillmore said. “This is not a President Biden thing. This is not a the other red-headed guy thing.”

“We should have voting in my opinion in person, one day, on paper, with no electronic means and hand counting that day. We need to get back to 1958-style voting,” he added.

 

And there it is. Vote on election day in person, one day, and that's it. Eliminate all mail voting, eliminate all early voting, and give the state legislature the final say on if the vote is legitimate. If this has been in place in 2020,  Trump would have been awarded the state and chaos would have followed for sure.

Remember, the whole point was to throw the election to the House because neither Trump nor Biden would have had the 270 electoral votes and Trump would have been declared the winner. The whole point was to obfuscate, smokescreen, and gaslight the process.

Arizona Republicans want to set up the ability to do so in 2024. More GOP state legislatures will follow.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

America's economy grew at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years but I'd bet you a majority of Americans believe we're in a recession right now thanks to our broken media.

The U.S. economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest full-year clip since 1984, roaring back in the pandemic’s second year despite two new virus variants that rocked the country.

The growth was uneven, with a burst of government spending helping propel a fast start, even as a surge in new cases and deaths in the second half of the year created new pressures. The economy grew by 6.9 percent from October to December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, a sharp acceleration from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter.

In a powerful rebound from 2020, when the economy contracted by 3.4 percent — its worst result since 1946 — 2021′s strong growth created a record 6.4 million jobs. But it also brought a host of complications, helping fuel the highest inflation in 40 years and creating supply chain snarls as consumers hungry for products overwhelmed the global delivery system. To beat back rising prices, the Federal Reserve is now shifting its strategy and preparing for interest rate hikes this year, convinced it has given enough support to help the labor market and now must keep the economy from overheating further.

Although the omicron variant had begun surging by the end of 2021, economists didn’t expect to see any fallout in Thursday’s data. Rather, forecasters anticipated that the GDP report would represent a year of blockbuster growth despite the unpredictability of the pandemic economy, from labor shortages to supply chain backlogs to inflation.

Earlier in the year, economists worried that global supply chain problems would keep businesses from being able to fully stock shelves. But a rush by companies in the final months of 2021 to bolster their inventories ultimately drove GDP much higher.

Many, such as Georgia hospitality software firm Agilysys, are building up inventories to guard against disruptions in supply chains. The company, which specializes in technology such as hotel check-in systems, has increased its inventory levels by 175 percent in the past nine months to “mitigate supply chain risk,” Chief Financial Officer Dave Wood said on a recent earnings call.

But even that silver lining comes with the reminder of how parts of the economy remain extremely disrupted.

“We’re hitting on all cylinders producing goods, and that’s good,” said Ben Herzon, executive director at IHS Markit. “But it’s also bad, because the economy wasn’t really set up to produce goods at the level that it’s producing now. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing some of the problems on the supply side.”

 

But you'd think we were in worse shape now than in the Trump Depression.