Here's your welfare fraud

 As with voter fraud, it's squarely in the GOP.

l.

Tomorrow will be a dress rehearsal for the midterms

 

Hangings in Mississippi

All eyes are in Mississippi this week after two men were found dead, hanging from trees on Monday, Sept. 15, just hours apart. Investigations into both deaths are ongoing.

Demartravion "Trey" Reed, 21, of Grenada, was found early in the day on the Delta State University campus in Cleveland. The young Black man was a student, and investigators initially ruled his death a suicide.

Cory Zukatis, 36, of Brandon, was found later in the day near a Vicksburg casino. Police are still investigating the death.

Investigators say misinformation about both men is spreading online fast, including what the Bolivar County coroner described as inaccuracies about Reed's limbs being broken. Many people shared photos of the wrong Cory Zukatis in relation to the stories.

The cases have drawn national attention from civil rights organizations. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has referred to Reed's death as a lynching, a concern that's resounding across social media.

[...]

Police don't believe the deaths are related.

Zukatis was discovered in a wooded area near Ameristar Casino. He is described as a white male who was homeless.

  Clarion Ledger

Flashback, August 2021:

There is no more blatant form of racial intimidation against a Black person that one can use than that of a noose. The practice of lynching was used against enslaved Black people, but it was an especially popular form of violence against Black Americans after slavery ended.

It is considered a more dated form of violence today, but a story in the Washington Post reports that the practice of lynching never truly stopped.

Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond, has been conducting her own research into lynching in Mississippi and found that at least eight Black people have been lynched in the state since 2000.

  America's Black Holocaust Museum

 That's probably not the best photo for this story, Mother.

May 28, 1963

 The early days of Civil Rights Activism.

MAGA 

How long will this be allowed to be taught?

ICE quota

 

The South is alive and well in Mississippi

 

MAGA

 

Another day, another American mass shooting

Too bad we can't do anything about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:25 am:

Another misogynist mass killer

A common thread among mass killings is misogyny. Add another one.

A lone gunman killed six people including his ex-wife and stepfather Friday at multiple locations in a tiny rural community in northern Mississippi, the sheriff said, leaving investigators searching for clues to what motivated the rampage.

Armed with a shotgun and two handguns, 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum opened fire at about 11 a.m. and killed a man in the driver's seat of a pickup truck parked outside a convenience store in Arkabutla, near the Tennessee state line, Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance said.

Deputies were working the crime scene when a second 911 call alerted authorities to another shooting a few miles away. After arriving at a home, they found a woman, whom the sheriff identified as Crum's ex-wife, shot dead and her current husband wounded.

Lance said deputies caught up with Crum outside his own home and arrested him. Behind the residence they found two handymen slain by gunfire — one in the road, another in an SUV. Inside a neighboring home, they discovered the bodies of Crum's stepfather and his stepfather's sister.

  NPR

Great timing. According to the misogynistic Supreme Court, women shouldn't be allowed to have control over their own bodies or to be protected from men with guns.

It's Sunday

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The judge should be impeached

But in Mississippi, I'm guessing the chances of that happening are even higher than that Clarence Thomas being impeached.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

JFC - Coney Barrett is there for the rest of her life

A little too Handmaiden if you ask me....

Read this thread.  Read it and weep.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

SCOTUS ruling

Setting up what has been called a “critical” moment on access to abortion in the United States, the nation’s Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge by the Biden administration and abortion providers to a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on the procedure.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, said Friday they will decide whether the federal government has the right to sue over the law. Answering that question will help determine whether the law should be blocked while legal challenges continue. Arguments are set for November 1.

[...]

The Texas law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it more difficult to directly sue the state. Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits.

[...]

On December 1, the court will be hearing arguments on a case from Mississippi, a state that is asking the high court to uphold its ban on most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.

  alJazeera

I don't feel good about any of this. I think Roe v. Wade will be undercut sooner rather than later. The US is well on its way to becoming a rule-by-minority country. And that minority is right-wing religious. American Democracy had its run.

MAGA to the dark ages

Inmates at an Arkansas prison said they weren’t told that they were treated for COVID-19 with the drug Ivermectin, a known livestock de-wormer, according to The Associated Press.

In an interview with the newswire, three inmates at a Washington County, Ark., jail said they didn’t know they were given the anti-parasite drug as medication for the virus until last week.

Inmate William Evans said that inmates felt that they were being tested as guinea pigs for the medication, saying he was given the drug two weeks after testing positive for coronavirus, the AP noted.

[...]

“I asked what are they, and they’d just tell me vitamins,” Inmate Edrick Floreal-Wooten told the AP.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

We'll be finding out in which century America sits

Mississippi needs a new governor

On top of the 90 percent match, the stimulus bill President Joe Biden signed Thursday would give Mississippi, the poorest state in the country, an estimated $600 million over two years to expand Medicaid to the roughly 200,000 to 300,000 people in the state who would be eligible. Nearly 60 percent of people who’d gain health insurance as a result of Medicaid expansion in Mississippi would be people of color. The vast majority of those people are Black.

[...]

During the pandemic, Mississippi has had the highest COVID-19 death rate of any state outside the Northeast. On Friday, the state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, said he remained committed to denying access to Medicaid for constituents near the poverty line, even though expanding eligibility would make money for Mississippi as a result of the new stimulus bill.

“My position has not changed. I am opposed to expanding Medicaid in Mississippi,” Gov. Reeves said during a press conference covered by the Mississippi Free Press. When asked by Vox if the prospect of additional funding might make him reconsider his opposition to Medicaid expansion, Reeves said, “No, sir, it will not.”

[...]

Reeves is forfeiting hundreds of millions of dollars to deny his constituents health care in the middle of a pandemic.

  Mother Jones

Apparently he doesn't want his poor (black) constituents to have access to healthcare. The poor need to stay poor. And blacks need to die sooner anyway. It's God's will.

And he's not the only one...

Twelve Republican-led states have refused that offer, leaving about 2.2 million of their constituents without health insurance.

Reeves also doesn't like transgendered people.

Reeves signed a bill on Thursday that blocks transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams. Mississippi is the first state to enact such a law.

[U]nder the ACA, the federal government already covers 90% of the costs of expanding Medicaid. As Vox recently explained, the Democrats' new COVID relief package ups the ante: "[N]ewly expanding states would also receive a 5 percent bump in the federal funding match for their traditional Medicaid programs for two years. Because the traditional Medicaid population is significantly larger than the expansion population, the funding bump is projected to cover a state's 10 percent match for expansion enrollees and then some over those two years." It led Jon Chait to joke, "Now states taking the Medicaid expansion would have more than 100 percent of the cost covered by Washington. They would literally have to pay for the privilege of denying coverage to their poorest citizens."

[...]

In an interview with Mississippi Today, Senate Public Health Committee Chair Hob Bryan (D) added that there "will be more money in the state treasury if we expand Medicaid than if we don't."

  MSNBC

Only the most backward red states have refused to implement expanded Medicaid. Those states are now seeing a lot of their rural hospitals closing down, with many more rural hospitals in deep financial trouble.

[...]

In the last decade, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed across the country, according to the University of North Carolina's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. And an analysis by the management consultancy firm Navigant found that 21% of rural hospital in the United States are in danger of closing, too, if their finances don't improve.

Rural hospitals face a variety of challenges. They tend to serve aging communities that suffer from poor health and require expensive treatments. There are often severe doctor shortages in rural areas, and gaps in insurance coverage if patients have insurance at all. And, several studies show that rural hospitals are closing at a faster rate in states that chose not to expand Medicaid coverage to poor residents under Obamacare.

  Daily Kos

The other states that have refused to expand Medicaid: Wyoming, Texas, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas and Florida. Missouri only recently expanded Medicaid through a ballot initiative, defying its GOP leaders.

I get the impression that the GOP doesn't care to govern by the will of the people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No more laws in Mississippi!

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced this week he would lift all restrictions and mask mandates in the state, while Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said the state was "getting out of the business of telling people what they can and can't do."

  The Hill

That'll be a nice surprise for many Mississippians. Pro-choice proponents for one.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement [...] "We are ensuring that all businesses and families in Texas have the freedom to determine their own destiny."

  CBS

Again...fat chance! Only if what they determine matches the rabid religious right's dictates.

As Texas and Mississippi move to join a dozen other U.S. states without statewide mask requirements, many major retailers and employers aren't ready to nix face covering requirements amid a pandemic that killed more than 1,800 Americans on Tuesday alone.

The governors of both states said they are dispensing with mask mandates and allowing businesses to operate at full capacity.

They're about two weeks from a spike in covid cases.

Despite the push to reopen, Texas and Mississippi residents will still need to wear face masks if they want to step inside many supermarkets and other large retail chains. The retailers, which include Kroger, Target and Walgreens, cited guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in continuing to require masks and take other measures to protect workers and consumers from the virus.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Line 'em up.  They're goin' down.

UPDATE:

Ohio.  Where's Ohio?

It's on

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday morning in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Trump and Giuliani, in collaboration with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, conspired to incite the riots to keep Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. It claims they did so in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect both formerly enslaved African Americans and lawmakers in Congress from white supremacist violence.

[...]

The lawsuit recounts Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 riots, building a case against him in similar fashion to House impeachment managers. It cites Trump's remarks during “Save America” rally as evidence that he mobilized and directed insurrectionists to storm the Capitol. After his supporters entered the halls of Congress, the lawsuit alleges, Giuliani called lawmakers individually, asking them to try to “slow down” the Electoral College vote count.

[...]

Filing suit now, Thompson and the NAACP argue, will help prevent a second insurrection.

[...]

The plaintiffs also point to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s remarks following Trump’s acquittal, in which they claim he encouraged litigation against the former president, saying he was still vulnerable to legal action for his actions while in office.

And they plan to underline the fact that Republicans had an opportunity to pursue that litigation themselves.

“While the majority of Republicans in the Senate abdicated their responsibility to hold the President accountable, we must hold him accountable for the insurrection that he so blatantly planned,” Thompson said in a statement. “Failure to do so will only invite this type of authoritarianism for the anti-democratic forces on the far right that are so intent on destroying our country.”

  Politico

When you follow Trump off a cliff

The number is an increase from the 26 lawmakers and 10 others originally reported to have contracted the virus, state health officer Thomas Dobbs said, attributing the increase to more people receiving test results.

  The Hill

LOL.

[Republican Gov. Tate] Reeves earlier this week warned that allowing people to contract and recover from the virus was unlikely to be a long-term solution for the pandemic.

“We would need to TRIPLE our worst day [of cases]—every day—for a year,” Reeves tweeted. “I’m not one of these guys that immediately dismisses any idea that challenges the expert status quo talking points. I’m pretty skeptical by nature. That’s healthy. But herd immunity is not anything like a realistic solution in the short or mid-term. I wish it was.”

Last Thursday, the governor ordered 13 counties in the state to require masks and banned large gatherings, saying at a press conference “Mississippi is in a fight for our lives.”

So quit following the orange asshat.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The dog whistle has been replaced by a megaphone

"I'm concerned about voter registration in Mississippi," [Mississippi election commissioner Gail Welch wrote on her Facebook page]. "The blacks are having lots (of) events for voter registration. People in Mississippi have to get involved, too."

[...]

"I was just trying to strike a match under people and get them to vote — to get everybody to vote," she said. "This was not intended to be anything."

[...]

"We've always in the past had whites really participating in registering to vote. So many people don't seem to be concerned about (voting)."

She said in an interview Monday that she thought she was sending a private message, but the comment was shared publicly on Facebook.

"This was an error on my part," she said.

  Hattiesburg American

Indeed.