Governor Brian Kemp bans Georgia cities and counties from mandating masks

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/16/governor-brian-kemp-bans-georg.html

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Next, he will ban STOP signs. Freedom must be preserved at all costs!

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Unfortunately, repeating again:

Christ, what an asshole.

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“All lives matter”. . . including, apparently, the “lives” of viruses.

(Yes yes, I know…)

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The party of small government and local control in my state, folks…

We’re pretty fucked.

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I don’t see that one holding up in Court.

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Why are these Republicans so intent upon making this pandemic last as long as possible?

Also: Fuck them…fuck them all.

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Cue the viable mass lawsuits.

Also:

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“As you all know Georgia is a state that values life” Brian Kemp said after signing one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

These States’ Leaders Claim to Be ‘Pro-Life.’ So Why Are So Many of Their Citizens Dying of COVID-19?

“…map of states where the highest percentage of Americans embrace Christian nationalism matches up almost exactly with the current map of where COVID cases are surging.”

This is a sickness worse than COVID.

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All this in the midst of a spike in cases, which are about to be followed by a spike in deaths, including in redder, more rural areas of the state.

I hope not, but we’ll see. Hopefully, Mayor Bottoms will lead a lawsuit from municipalities across the state to challenge this very soon.

The GOP has been working to undermine the blue cities, especially ATL across the state for a while now. They are even trying to wrest control of the airport away from the city… With this it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t value the lives of the citizens of this state, no matter their political affiliation. I just hope that voters across the state can see that now.

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Conservatives always try to justify “States’ Rights” as a form of localism, arguing that people near the actual situation are the best people to make decisions about how to deal with it. They demonstrate again and again, that the reason they want states’ rights is that the state is the only level of government where the rural population has a chance of dictating policy to the urban population. Rural people want to stop cities from enacting policies like tolerance to non-binary people, sensible gun laws, and intelligent health policy. The state is the level of government at which conservatives are most likely to be able to dictate their desires to people who disagree with them. The intellectual argument for states rights is a fraud and it should be illegal for the states to dictate this kind of policy to their cities.

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No Jim Jones burns?

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Governor Kemp obtained his position through corrupt means and continues to exercise criminal behavior on an almost daily basis.

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No. Wrong. Very importantly wrong. His goal is to kill as many minorities as he can before the election. Donald Trump may have shown the way, but what he is doing is completely calculated.

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From the local public radio station…

Agreed. But this isn’t just going to hit minority communities, even if it hits harder there. It WILL impact his base, too. Some of the cities listed that have enacted mask ordinances include red cities that are majority white.

He will get blowback from this.

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Yeah, this tracks for a governor that was allowed to oversee his own election…

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Here is me, going back into lockdown (not like I ever really left)…

pNGuqEG

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Maybe. His diehard supporters will happily die for the cause as long as they come out “ahead”. And even if it causes a short term loss, Kemp, DeSantis, et al will not pass up an ethnic cleansing opportunity with the guarantee of feigned media ignorance.

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We do have some of the die hard, trumpist here, no doubt. But the GA GOP is a coalition, because it brought in some blue dog democrats. Kemp is more of the right wing, social warrior type, but he’s had to compromise with the more centrist wing of his party. If he loses the moderate urban/suburban GOP in places like Metro Atlanta (which needs to Black business community in ATL), he can’t sustain his base of support.

As much as he would love to wipe out the power of Black ATL and to push the rural Black population back into segregation, this is more likely to galvanize opposition to him from the Democratic party, who have already made inroads into former GOP strong holds. The fact that they flipped the 6th district is a pretty strong indicator of how things are going here. the 7th is going to be next. The last election there was razor thin, and that district is now minority-majority.

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