Republicans break laws and then use their law breaking to restrict other peoples' rights

"There must be an in-group whom the law protects but, does not bind and an out-group whom the law binds but, does not protect.  - Frank Wilhoit

Brushed aside as old news was the revelation Trump lover Dennis Molla lied about his Camper, home, garage and cars being burned & vandalized by liberals just before the 2020 election.  Faux News and on-line rightwing blabbermouths endlessly hyped Molla's lies as proof of the BLM + Antifa terrorism afflicting America. Worse still, despicable Molla was willing to burn his dogs to death for this fraud too.

This genre of rightwing lies, i.e. being attacked for displaying rightwing paraphernalia goes back years.  Of course, far, far worse are the rightwingers who lie about laws themselves. 

Predictably pernicious and particularly potent are rightwing lies about elections and voting.

‘We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence,’ Rudy Ghouliani 

One of the Republicans running with evidence-free theories about Voting Fraud, is Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling.  Sheriff Schmaling is one of those rightwing lunatics who believes he is the highest authority in the Land based on 9th century English Jurisprudence about Shire-Reeves so he's spent the last two years claiming all sorts of voting fraud.  He's also done so without evidence, which didn't stop Sheriff Schmaling from calling for the arrest of Wisconsin Elections Commission.  And then, as rightwing Sheriff's often do, when faced with a lack of evidence, Schmaling and his co-conspirators decided it was time to make the evidence themselves.

Sheriff Schmaling worked hand-in-hand with the Neo-Fascist Racine based HOT government group to commit Voter Fraud.  As always, after they've committed crimes, Reactionary Neofascists demand other people need to have their rights restricted.  These disingenuous and bad faith attacks on democracy are what appeal greatly to the rightwing lizard brain.  Since, conservatives are the "Patriots", since right-wingers are the "Real Americans", since Republicans are the only "legitimate" government officials their actions are ipso facto always righteous and they aren't really breaking the law just showing how the laws could be broken by other people.  And as elder white people they simply want their Country back.

What MAGA has always meant is stop letting those people have political power and stop them from being able to exercise their larger political power through casting a larger number of votes.  It's an idea which stretches back in conservatives thinking to the American Civil War.  Most MAGAts don't comprehend the truth of their movement distilled down as bluntly as, 'We don't like democracy and want to be the only ones who exercise political power' but, that's what it is.  More people voting is less political power for them and conservatives demand they be the only ones who count. 

Wisconsin is a battleground state.  Local Republicans have worked tirelessly to gerrymander the State Legislature.  Russian Ron Johnson is vying for his 3rd term in the United States Senate.  Ron Johnson was going to be the Senator on Jan6th to hand Mike Pence the false slate of Electors to undermine the 2020 Election.  The election President Jospeh R. Biden Jr won decisively...

As I watched election night coverage in 2020 with trepidation of a 2016 repeat, it became increasingly clear that Jospeh R. Biden won the Presidency that night and this conviction became more and more concrete as the next couple of days passed.  Even Faux News had called Arizona for President Biden putting a stake in the heart of Traitor Trump's chances.  But, the media dithered and this created a nice little niche for conservatives to claim Trump won.  And into that niche flooded the vile liars and evil villains intent on overturning the election results and stealing the Presidency for Donald John Trump.

"Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen" - Trump after his election loss looking for others to break the law for him in one of his many schemes to defraud the United States and the American people.  

However, since the 2020 election, Republicans have increasingly turned to believing Trump's BIG LIE and this year seek political office to be able to steal the next election by bureaucratic means.  To be certain Republicans have always employed anti-democratic methods, voter oppression, intimidation, and the apparatus of government to disenfranchise and deny many Americans free and fair representation.

But, with these elections in 22, we are looking at the GQP simply declaring themselves the winners, regardless, and daring the Democratic Party and American people to do something about it.  That's the Era of Election Fraud conservatives dream about and yearn for.  They Win, you Lose.

And at that point, no amount of laws, will stop conservatives from setting up the Ultimate Law Breaking Neo-Confederate state they desire and declaring it's time to round-up and eliminate the Non-MAGA.

The Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 21: Shooting the (Grand) Rapids, death by Cop

Big Toad Barr's Wild Ride

Lester Holt: Can we talk about the big lie?
Bill Barr: Which one is that?
LH: Well you write about the big lie being black live matter...
BB: Yeah [smirks]
LH: What did you mean by that?
BB: Well Black Lives Matter is based on the premise that the main threat to black welfare in the inner city are out of control police force that gratuitously kill African Americans and that's simply not borne out by the facts. - From an interview of the odious toad Bill Barr by Lester Holt, as the Corporate Media again helps to polish despicable conservative turds and allow a flagrant criminal to re-enter polite society while hawking his book about the Trump White House.

I suppose we had gone too long without an extrajudicial killing of a person of color.  Often Officers will tell me, as I express dismay at these incidents, 'Yeah well police kill far more white people than black.' And I'm not sure how to tell them that this is not a good argument other than to reply like Chidi in The Good Place,  

"Okay. But That's Worse. You, You Do Get How That's Worse, Right?"

And watch them brush off such sarcastic retorts. Why? Well, I don't know but, Police in the United States kill far too many people for any claims by such a noxious criminal asshole like Bill Barr to be taken seriously (of course he is taken seriously by the Corporate Media). In fact, violence and death at the hands of the Police is so pervasive Police and the Federal Government routinely undercount the true number. A study found that over 31,000 people died from Police encounters, but only 14,000 were classified as such;

More than half of all police killings since 1980 do not appear in official government data, according to an explosive new study in The Lancet, a top medical journal. The researchers reveal how “systemic misclassification” in the federal database that tracks the causes of death in America has produced, over four decades, an undercount of more than 17,000 deaths at the hands of police. The proportion of undercounted police killings of Black Americans is even more extreme, the research shows, rising to 60 percent.

So, an unidentified Officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan shot and killed Congolese refugee Patrick Lyoya around 8am on April 4th. Predictably, the incident arises from a traffic stop for improper registration and then escalated out of control ending with the unnamed Officer shooting Lyoya in the back of the head while on top of him.

Now, here's where the bad faith actors will get involved. First off, there's going to be the subjective fear for my life defense. It's impossible to disprove the Officer wasn't scared therefore his killing of Lyoya is justified. Secondly, there is going to be the weapons involved defense. Call it the Kyle Rittenhouse Defense; i.e. there's a gun involved therefore I am afraid the "Criminal" will take the gun from me and kill me with my own gun; ergo we are back to subjective fear for your life defense. Third, every white rightwing asshole including those who justify the January 6th violence against Police, will declare with finality Lyoya should just have complied. And lastly, the video evidence is going to be parsed and dissected frame-by-frame for the simple fact that individual still images from the videos can then be presented in a way to present a wholly different picture as opposed to what went down in real time.

Decades ago Police Departments began crafting these Use-of-Force continuums to create justification of violence against people as began to point out police violence is a problem. To justify the extrajudicial killing of Lyoya. It will be something like this:

1. Lyoya get out of the car (escalation).
2. Lyoya ignores "commands" to get back in the car (defiance).
3. Lyoya runs from the scene (presumption of guilt).
4. Lyoya grabs the taser and ignores commands to drop the taser (active "aggressor")
5. Lyoya continues to "fight" the Officer, they go to the ground, the force of Lyoya's fighting is such that it deactivates the Office's body-worn camera (fear for life)

And thus the Arbitrator will be able to reframe the encounter as Lyoya being the aggressor, who is responsible for the escalation of violence and the passive voice of Officer involved shooting will dominate the narrative until voila the official statement is Justified Shooting.

7-10 years ago I would have concluded the Officer would not have faced consequences but, with the increased high profile incidents and despite Bill Barr's mendacious bullshit, I think once the initial investigation is completed charges may be recommended for the still unnamed Officer.