Once again the topic this Thursday morning is just how shitty for all good things are Republicans, and they are tending to even get worse as each day passes, a sequence of incidents which confirm how f*cked this country and the world. Rod Serling and George Orwell working tirelessly together couldn’t script our current scenario; even they aren’t capable of describing the terrifying danger posed by that most-evil of contemporaneous monikers, GOP.
Or as I’ve likened lately to dub it, the G – Q (for QAon) – P.

Not only are Republicans holding back progress in getting a curb on the COVID pandemic, right-nutted conservatives also are throwing blankets on attempts to bring climate change down to manageable levels (or human species survivable) — “Donald Trump has been to climate regulation as General Sherman was to Atlanta,” and this: climate change “was created by and for the Chinese” — so it only natural Republicans following a character like that would say fuck-you to decency, and doing the right thing. And the climate crisis is indeed a full-blown emergency which requires a full-worldwide effort, and quickly.

Meanwhile, America is going the route of Hungary, Poland, Turkey — once free, now not — ‘The number of people living in democracies now accounts for 46-percent of the world population, the lowest figure since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.‘
And this morning, another squirt of fuel on the fire:

DeSantis is signing bill to roll back voting access after Dems used vote by mail more than Republicans for first time in state history & won’t even let media other than Fox cover it. Democracy literally dying in the dark https://t.co/XylcGdIaou

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) May 6, 2021

This action by Ron DeShithead is just the latest in the pell-mell dash by state Republicans to restrict/curb voting rights across the country — more than 300 bills across nearly 50 states since January alone — and the end is nowhere in sight, mainly because that’s all the GQP has in its arsenal of governance, certainly not policies or such.
On the Florida shit — via NBC News this morning:

DeSantis’ signature enacts a host of changes into Florida’s election laws, including limits on where drop boxes could be placed, restrictions on who can drop off a voter’s ballot, a mandate that drop boxes be staffed while open, new powers for partisan poll watchers as well as a requirement that voters must request to vote-by-mail more frequently.

The governor has gained prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in conservative circles, where he’s seen as one of the top Republicans jockeying for a future presidential bid.
Fox & Friends has become a mainstay for Republican politicians, and a show former President Donald Trump has lavished with praise.

Local reporters said that they were not allowed into the event and were told it was exclusive to Fox.
DeSantis confirmed later Thursday that he was “happy to give them the exclusive on that.”

A Fox News spokesperson told NBC News that the show “did not request or mandate” that the event “be exclusive” to the network.

The new laws go into effect immediately, in time for local elections, the forthcoming special House election to replace the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., and next year’s midterms, which will include elections for governor and the U.S. Senate.

Well, of course, the shit starts immediately, if not sooner.
Yesterday, I posted on this same type subject of just how dangerously-shitty are Republicans and how the Liz Cheney fiasco has even-further enlightened the smell of rotten — Joe Biden got into the fray, nearly-naively proclaiming, “I don’t understand the Republicans,” despite actually knowing exactly what’s wrong with the sonofabitches.
And in my post, I supplied an interesting, terrifying and eye-opening discussion from a Republican operative on the horrible state of the GQP, and then last night, Chris Haynes at MSNBC’s “All In,” had Stuart Stevens on the show, and Stevens, a former Republican strategist guy and now a senior advisor on The Libcoln Project, also talked candidly and right-on about the state of the GQP — also frightening (h/t tengrain).
Via the ‘All In‘ transcript:

“Look, I don`t think this is a tipping point for the Republican Party. I think the Republican Party has tipped. I think it`s a tipping point for America. The greatest danger is not to realize the greatest danger. And what we have here is a moment that appears normal in many ways. We have a normal president who`s going about the business of running a normal, very functional government, but this is an extraordinary moment.

“And we shouldn`t look to the past to say, OK, it`s just like 1964, it`s just like `68, it`s like `52, because this really never happened in America, at least not since 1860. We should look abroad, like Hungary. This is a Viktor Orban moment. And what the Republican Party has become, and it`s painful for me to admit this because I spent decades working in it, it has become a major anti-democratic force, little D democratic force in America.

“It is a dangerous organization that wants to end the American experiment. And the sooner we get about realizing that and understanding it and quit trying to pretend that it`s not, the safer will be and the more we`ll be equipped to deal with it. Because our society is not really ready to deal with what we`re forced to deal with now, not by our choosing.”
…
“Well, I mean, we assume that Kevin McCarthy has shame. I think that`s giving him a benefit of the doubt. I think Kevin McCarthy is quite happy. I don`t think he feels debased. I think he feels powerful. These are people that are different than us. They are people who have decided that they are defined by power, power to no purpose. And it`s a very dangerous reality.”

And onto to some heavy:

“And what happened when those Republican senators voted not to hold Trump responsible is I think will be recorded as the equivalent of the Munich accord of our time. It is when you attempt to appease something that you know is evil to gain power and to gain this.

“Now, Chamberlain was certainly a much more noble figure than anyone involved in this in the Senate. At least he was anti-war in a very legitimate way with dreadful consequences. But look, this is — we should not grant them the privilege of assuming they will revert to normality. This is normal to them. This is what they want.”

And the only thing they’re after — unless you also consider MoscowMitch’s statement yesterday he’s “100-percent” focused “on stopping” Joe Biden’s endeavors, not anything for the people or what-not, just GQP shit only.
Also in a shout-out for a different angle on the same subject, Vixen Strangely posted this morning on the horrors of Republicans and history, slavery, racism and ‘woke’ cultural — great read, including this emotional, personal graph near the end:

My whiteness doesn’t bother me (does your conscience bother you–tell the truth?) What bothers me is whether I do right.
I think the problem is seeing morality as an identity and not a practice. You aren’t good because of whiteness, blackness, wokeness, religion, or any other “ness” or “ism.”
You have to live your correct life. That means taking in what is and isn’t so, and what did and didn’t happen.
Facts matter, and reasons why matter. Intent matters. Results matter. But in the end, it’s what you do. Right now. History doesn’t hurt you — it informs, even if it vicariously tears at your soul to know what others have lived through, even if it should tear at you to know what people live through right now.
That is the human condition.

Right on…whiteness demands protocols:

“Hold it, hold it, what the hell is that shit?”

(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée [Exploding Raphaelesque Head],’ found here).