Regina is All

Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket:

Senate Republicans confirmed Todd Blanche as the 88th U.S. attorney general, formally placing one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest loyalists at the helm of the Department of Justice (DOJ). With the Senate’s 50 to 49 vote early Saturday, Blanche, one of the president’s former criminal defense attorneys, will formally take control of the DOJ as it continues to carry out Trump’s anti-voting crusade and his retribution campaign against his political enemies. In the process of approving Blanche’s nomination, Senate Republicans also signed off on a corrupt deal giving Trump and his family immunity from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits — an extraordinary protection for a family that has aggressively avoided paying taxes for decades. Only two Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), voted against his confirmation.  Blanche already has a track record of serving as the president’s anti-democratic legal attack dog.  As acting attorney general over the past three months, he has overseen the DOJ’s ongoing efforts to obtain sensitive voter records, intimidate election officials and interfere with state election administration.  Under Blanche’s watch, the department has worked to implement and defend Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict mail voting. Among several dangerous directives, the order instructed the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to only deliver ballots to voters pre-approved by the federal government.

[...] Republican Sens. Tom Tillis (N.C.) and John Cornyn (Texas) briefly delayed Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the DOJ’s unprecedented settlement with Trump to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit he and his eldest sons filed against the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury. But the senators advanced Blanche’s nomination after he claimed to terminate the president’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” which the DOJ established as part of the settlement. However, other provisions of the agreement remain in place, including the sweeping immunity from IRS audits.

Overnight on the US Senate floor, Trump lackey Todd Blanche was confirmed to the AG post in a 50-49 vote nearly along partisan lines, as 2 Republicans (Collins [ME] and Murkowski [AK]) voted no to confirming Blanche along with all Democrats.

See Also:

HuffPost: Senate Confirms Todd Blanche As Attorney General Despite All His Corruption

A century later, a second oligarchy emerged, the robber barons. They were men who amassed fortunes through their railroad, steel, oil, and financial empires — men such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Mellon. They ushered the nation into an industrial revolution that vastly expanded economic output. They also corrupted government, brutally suppressed wages, generated unprecedented levels of inequality and urban poverty, pillaged rivals, shut down competitors, and made out like bandits — which is why they earned the sobriquet “robber barons.” World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s eroded most of these robber barons’ wealth. And most of their power was eliminated after the elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. For the next half-century the gains from growth were more widely shared, and democracy became more responsive to the needs and aspirations of average Americans. Although America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen, there was still much to do — civil rights and voting rights for Black Americans, wider economic opportunities for them and for women and Latinos, protection of the environment. Yet by almost every measure the nation was making progress. A third American oligarchy emerged starting around 1980. Since then, the share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled (from 0.8 percent to 3.7 percent).

Gosh! What*ever* could have happened in 1980 that caused all of the rich people to morph into the Oligarchy/Epstein Class? 🤔

No wifi or bluetooth connections. No touch screens. No predictive behaviours. No account log in. No fancy bullshit nonsense.

A fridge that does nothing but keep your food cool. A washing machine that washes clothes, the fucking end. And actually on the washing machine note: they would all have optional two-tap ports, so you CAN use the machine to heat the water if you need to, but you dont HAVE to, if youre in a home that has a massive hot water tank or whatever. AND, it would have fast cycles. None of this two hour minimum bullshit. Fuck outta here with that nonsense. 20 minute half-sized fast loads, 45 minute full sized regular loads, and a two hour option for those of you who like things slow or wanna give your towels an extra good long wash or whatever.

Anyway moving on. Dumb clothes dryers that just dry things, at a manually set array of temperatures, not an auto-temp chosen by the machine based on the detected type of fabric or size of the load. Dumb toasters. But QUALITY. None of this "its just fifteen bucks but it will last five minutes" shit. Dumb TVs. With various different ports, while we're at it. You want a security camera, but want full control of who accesses the recordings? Done. Dumb elevators, that go up and down at the press of a button and have no complex bullshit that takes out the whole lift whenever it experiences an internet outage.

DUMB CARS. WITH NO TOUCH SCREENS OR TRACKING TECH OR OTHER BULLSHIT.

GIVE ME MY APPLIANCES AS DUMB AS A BOX OF ROCKS. I DONT WANT THEM MAKING DECISIONS FOR ME. I DON'T WANT THEM "HELPING" ME. I DONT WANT TWO THIRDS OF THE BULLSHIT THATS IN THEM THESE DAYS.

I tried to buy a washing machine recently. They were ALL SOME DEGREE OF FUCKING "SMART." And yeah you can simply opt to not set it up, which is what i ended up doing, but it still prompts me even now to "complete set up?" AND it pushed the overall price of washing machines up because even though I dont plan to USE any of their STUPID smart tech, it was still included in the model! So it costs more! Because its "smart"!

The goal: For women to have nowhere to run

They won't stop until the women of America are second class citizens- forced to give birth against their will like chattel. There are 8 billion people on the planet, so why are Republicans obsessed with birth rates? Two reasons- control over women, and a "domestic supply of infants."

Without reproductive freedom, women have less access to higher paying jobs, education, and are more reliant on male relationships. The elimination of reproductive rights is a well coordinated annihilation of equality!

It's no exaggeration to suggest Republican's goal is the subjugation of women to second-class citizens. They are fixated on women as reproductive machinery. The christo-facist takeover is here unless we act. Republicans are actively working to create the American Gilead. Women and girls don't count as "people" to Republicans. They are simply vessels for men.

Trump Media & Technology Group burned through a staggering $712 million last year while bringing in a mere $3.7 million in revenue, a ratio as upside-down as Trump has turned the country.