Stephan: This is what political whoring looks like giving a measure of the corruption of Congress. With gas over $5 and as much as $7 in some areas, the Republicans, in service to their corporate masters who rented them, blocked legislation to stop corporate price gouging. I hope you Republican voters are happy.
Rep. McMorris Rodgers on Monday claimed that making it illegal for oil companies to price gouge is “socialism,” something that’s done in places like “Soviet Russia,” not in America.
“The promise of America is free enterprise, not socialism, not government price controls,” she claimed, as she complained about the price of gas, which just hit a new record high.
Here is the Republican from Washington just one week ago saying it’s time to “get these prices under control.”
The bill would not set price caps as some Republicans suggest, rather, it would empower the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate if oil and gas companies are price gouging consumers.
Republicans on the powerful House Rules Committee on Monday blocked the bill, H.R. […]
Stephan: Just when I think MAGAt world could not get any weirder... well, I read the day's news and am proven wrong. Did you know about the "satanic portal" visible above the White House? Neither did I. But Roger Stone, who ought to be in prison, can see it.
Roger Stone is due to appear in court in Florida on Friday. Credit: Saul Loeb / AFP
Notorious GOP dirty trickster and longtime Donald Trump advisor Roger Stone believes there is a portal to hell that is visible above the White House.
In April, Right Wing Watch reported, ““Elijah Streams” is a daily program produced by the Elijah List, a website with a mission to “’find and publish the most credible prophetic words possible.’ Generally, the content produced by both the website and the livestream program consists of wild conspiracy theories, often about how God is supposedly working to save the United States through modern-day ‘prophets’ and former President Donald Trump.”
Stone appeared on the program to discuss Satan’s entryway.
“Stone asserted that a friend had sent him photos showing a ‘satanic portal’ appearing over the White House after President Joe Biden took office, and so he reached out to conspiracy theorist and ‘prophet’ Robin Bullock to arrange an appearance on ‘Elijah Streams’ so he could share the startling news and photos,” the site reported.
Stephan: Here is some good news about the transition out of the carbon era. Biden and the Democrats are far from perfect in this process, but they are so much better than Trump and the Republicans.
A grizzly bear catches salmon in Cook Inlet, Alaska. Credit: Enrique Aguirre Aves / The Image Bank / Getty
President Joe Biden’s Interior Department confirmed on Wednesday that it has canceled three lease sales that would have opened millions of acres of ocean to oil and gas drilling.
Two of the lease sales would have taken place in the Gulf of Mexico and a third would have taken place off the coast of Alaska in Cook’s Inlet, The Washington Post reported.
“Due to lack of industry interest in leasing in the area, the Department will not move forward with the proposed Cook Inlet OCS oil and gas lease sale 258,” the Interior Department wrote in a statement shared by journalist Sara Cook on Twitter. “The Department also will not move forward with lease sales 259 and 261 in the Gulf of Mexico region, as a result of delays due to factors including conflicting court rulings that impacted work on those proposed lease sales.”
Environmentalists celebrated the news. Climate and wildlife advocates have long opposed the Cook Inlet sale because it […]
Stephan: The Republicans have been working since the 1970s to create a Supreme Court that would support their corruption, their racism, and their moving their religious beliefs into government. With Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell they succeeded, and we now have a court with political hacks in black robes. The three justices still committed to a court based on nonpartisan justice undertand this and are repelled by it.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan Credit: Jack Gruber / USA Today
In a decision Monday that liberal Justice Elena Kagan warned will further corrupt the nation’s money-dominated political system, the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority struck down a campaign finance regulation limiting federal candidates’ ability to use campaign funds to repay personal loans.
Established by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the rule barred candidates from using more than $250,000 in campaign funds collected after an election to recoup their loans to their own campaign.
“When they give money to repay the victor’s loan, they know he will be in a position to perform official favors.”
The legal challenge to the cap was brought by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who intentionally violated the $250,000 cap during his 2018 reelection bid in order to pursue a repeal of the limit, which he characterized as a violation of free speech.
A day before he was reelected in 2018, Cruz loaned his campaign committee $260,000, $10,000 over the limit—laying the foundation for his legal challenge to the cap… [H]e could have been repaid in full by […]
Stephan: Kevin Stitt a Republican, of course, is a racist christofascist cretin personally, I wouldn't hire him to clean our lane, but the people of Oklahoma thought he was just what they needed to lead their state. And that I think is the problem we are not talking about. Large portions of Red state voters are White supremacist male dominance fascists riven by fear, resentment, and hatred, and they vote people like Stitt into office again and again, either not knowing, or not caring, that their own quality of life will be diminished by that act. It can be unequivocally established by social outcome data but it doesn't seem to make any difference, they do it anyway, as states like Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana as a partial list demonstrate daily.
Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt Credit: Screen capture
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, has warned the states of many Native American tribes that if they allow abortion on sovereign land he will intervene.
“Oklahomans will not think very well of that if tribes try to set up abortion clinics,” Stitt said on Fox News Sunday.
“You know, the tribes in Oklahoma are super liberal,” he said. “They go to Washington, D.C. They talk to President [Joe] Biden at the White House; they kind of adopt those strategies. So yeah, we think that there’s a possibility that some tribes may try to set up abortion on demand. They think that you can be 1/1,000th tribal member and not have to follow the state law. And so that’s something that we’re watching.”
Native American tribes are allowed to govern themselves on their own land. Their sovereignty is the reason that they can have things like casinos in states where it is banned. Once known as Indian Territory, the state has more than 40 tribes in its borders.
