Arizona -- Thanks for sharing this. Rachel Maddow has been covering it extensively. What is so frustrating is that these "criminals" are doing this in the open and fully expect to get away with it. If a Grand Jury brings charges, can we find an eleven-panel jury without one diehard Trump supporter?

Would Merrick Garland even feel it is worth his time to go after them? In my mind this is the biggest voter fraud attempt in history. It can't be left to history to judge. The history is NOW.

Thanks Arizona. I suspected violence against women was much worse in America but didn't take the time to do the research. Thanks for sharing that. Domestic spousal abuse is perhaps a better term as it does involve abuse by both partners. According to the statistics, "1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact, sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.2"

"The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%."

"72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female."

Statistics (ncadv.org)

We are a violent country, and I would expect that the Trump years have exasperated the situation. I see so much anger in the media. Just look at the Fox News hosts...always angry about something.

Well yes, I agree that the media are not fair and balanced. The media, however, has many forms -- TV networks, cable TV shows, radio, newspapers, mail, e-mail, countless internet websites -- Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and more. Most young people get their "news" and "fake news" (if you can call it that) from browsing websites on their cellphones.

The First Amendment allows for all that: facts and fiction, truths and untruths, as long as someone isn't slandered, and even then, hard to prove in lawsuits.

The indoctrination comes from people choosing their media sources and not showing any curiosity about "alternative views or facts". They choose their like-minded friends and shut out the "other".

This is where various cognitive biases can be applied by psychologists -- there's a long list of them on Wikipedia. I don't pretend to know which ones apply. But being rather old-fashioned, I'm sure you'll agree that repetition of lies leads it to become fact in a person's mind. That's why we have the same endless mindless TV commercials repeated over and over again. Oh, and then there is this famous quote:

“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” -- Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.

I think Trump actually believes his own lies.

I wouldn't use the word "stupid". Ignorance and apathy are perhaps more appropriate for much of the populace. We take our democracy for granted. However, for those diehard Trump supporters attending his rally, it is not apathy or even ignorance, for that matter. They fit the psychological profile of authoritarian followers, and perhaps make up 25 to 35 percent of society. They know full well that Biden won Arizona legitimately after all the countless audits, but they "choose" to embrace the Big Lie because it makes them feel good. It is a choice. It is the same psychological factors that ran rampant in Europe in the 1930s. And in the United States. Few people know that the USA had a Fascist Party of America founded in 1907 and embraced the rise of European fascism in the 1930s. Those people didn't go away. They now reside in the Republican Party.

They are a minority, but they use fear and intimidation to make up for their short comings in numbers. And maybe blackmail as well. I would not be surprised if many of our Congressional members have thick secret dossiers ready to be used against them by Trump and fellow Republicans for not towing the line. They deal in "dirt", either real or manufactured.

How about that Lindsey Graham -- chief Trump bootlicker after once being a strong critic of Trump.

MSN/AFP: Austria raises alarm about 'dramatic' femicide plague

"Painted in blood red on an improvised memorial in Vienna, the number 31 is a stark reminder of a grim toll: the women killed by men in Austria last year.

"After several particularly horrific cases among the killings were widely reported in the media, the issue of femicide is now squarely under the spotlight."

In the United States, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. It was reauthorized several times, but in 2019 Republicans in the Senate opposed it because the NRA opposed the added measures to restrict women from abusive "boyfriends".

Huffington Post, April 2019: 157 Republicans Just Opposed Renewing The Violence Against Women Act

"Under current federal law, only people convicted of domestic violence offenses against spouses or family members can lose their gun rights. The VAWA would add people convicted of abusing their dating partners, closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” It would also prohibit people convicted of misdemeanor stalking offenses from owning or buying firearms, as well as abusers subject to temporary protective orders."

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I don't mean to single out Austria. They probably do much better in stopping violence in general. However, the article caught my eye because of the inaction by Congress to renew the VAWA. And why? Because it would restrict gun sales to boyfriends or other people accused of conducting acts of violence against women. The NRA speaks for most Republicans in that regard.

Sheesh!

But now Austria as well? Why? Is it the covid impact on people's temperament?

I cannot begin to understand Krysten Sinema's mind any more than I can understand Lindsey Graham's mind.

Sinema says, "Eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come. It is clear that the two-party strategies are not working. Not for either side. And especially not for the country."

She believes in the "60-vote threshold" to safeguard our democracy. Sheesh! But in our 50 states, there is no 60-vote threshold being applied as red and purple state after state applies undemocratic voter laws that seek to undo our democracy. It is fascism. It is Trumpism.

Sinema is either blind to what is happening all around her or she loves her donor base too much.

Various emotions are running rampant now. Fear mongering, stoking anger, and reviving hate against the "other" are all emotional responses that Trump has stimulated to his benefit. People are not thinking clearly now. The stock market going up and down on just about any trivial point is just an example of the volatility -- not so much of economic factors -- but rather of our temperaments. Nothing makes much sense anymore if you try applying logic and science.

The "American psyche" is on a rough, bumpy road now as their indoctrinated view of "American exceptionalism" fails them.

Yes, I also believe the term "Brownshirts" is appropriate, but maybe as well "Blackshirts". Their symbolism today is perhaps more defined by red MAGA caps. Same mentality, same DNA...different time.

The subject is "what will 2022 bring". In some ways 2022 may bring us 90 years back to the past.

I note that reading articles and seeing clips of his Florence, Arizona rally that he still maintains there was voter fraud by Biden amongst many other grievances. The "thousands" that attended his rally flew in from other states. One falsehood reported by the New York Times: “The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating, white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics.”

It still astounds me the amount of control he exerts over the minds of his supporters. He continues to raise big money off of them, so it's the gift to him that just keeps giving and giving. Psychologists will be writing about Trump and his rally supporters for the next hundreds of years.

Carlitos used to write on this website about Modern Monetary Policy and debt. He made a halfway believer out of me, and I don't worry about the nation's debt much anymore. Lots has been written about deficit spending and its effect on the economy, but I'll refer you to the Congressional Research report on the subject.

Congressional Research Service: Deficit Financing, the Debt, and “Modern Monetary Theory”

No matter what you believe though, deficit spending has always been an "attack tool" of Republicans while Democrats are in office, and a way of making themselves (Republicans) look good with more and more tax cuts when they are in office. As long as Americans do not see any difference between federal government spending and household spending, it will always be contentious. Too complicated? Not really, but it depends on who is making the case.