Arizona is a blasted hellscape

[Bal]

The AZGOP is fucking incredible to watch. Being so desperate to unify the party in the wake of their brobdingnagiest defeat EVER they've settled on censuring the wife of the most popular republican in AZ history. What a fucking clown show

[Thad]

they've settled on censuring the wife of the most popular republican in AZ history.

Oh man, they censured Susan Goldwater too?

[Bal]

I knew this joke was coming as I typed that sentence.

[Mongrel]

I mean, if you'd have told me that was the unvarnished truth, I'd have believed it.

[Thad]

Yeah, I was making a joke (and Bal's right, an obvious one at that), but given her comments on Trump, I would not be at all surprised to pull up azcentral.com and see "Arizona GOP censures Susan Goldwater" as an actual headline.

[Thad]

Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward rejects call for audit of party elections

On KFYI, Ward said there was “no procedure, process, rule that allows for it to be done, and you certainly don’t allow a challenger who lost an election to demand something that they don’t have the right to, and we don't have the responsibility for providing.”

I mean, pointing out Republican hypocrisy is kinda like trying to argue with Guild, but just in case somebody needed a sentence to gawp at, there you go.

[Mongrel]

So, basically, the AZGOP is on fire (possibly literally soon, at least wherever they store the internal election records), rolling downhill in a dumpster which is accelerating towards a novelty cake shop straddling the intersection at the bottom

[Thad]

They still own the state legislature (and are currently trying to pass a law that lets the legislature throw out votes), though they're down to a two-seat majority in each house. We've still got a Republican governor, though he's term-limited out in '22, our AG is a fucking insurrectionist, and Republicans still have a majority on our corporation commission (and not a majority with Bob Burns, the only Republican in the state who's worth a damn, on it; he was term-limited out this last election). Plus Ducey has packed the state supreme court (and I'm using the original definition of "packed the court" here; he added two seats to it). We're still mostly-Republican at the state level, though Democrats are making headway. And our representation in the US House has been 5 D/4 R since the last census, and, well, you know about the US Senate.

Given the way things usually go in midterms, I'd still give Republicans the edge at the state level in 2022, but they're slipping, and yes, the party leadership under Ward is a brobdingnagian reason why. I think they can hang on a little bit longer but that the current trend line has them in brobdingnagian, brobdingnagian trouble. Which is why they're pushing crazy shit like a law empowering themselves to decide which votes count and which don't. (Though even if the bill passes, I don't expect it to survive a court challenge, even with a Ducey-packed state supreme court.)

[Thad]

Also worth adding that while we've got 4 Republicans in the US House, 3 of them are fringe bloody loonies in the Ward mold (the other is more of a run-of-the-mill crook in the classic AZGOP tradition). While it's fair to say that Ward's extremism is hurting her party at the state level, there are still districts where it plays very, very well.

[Thad]

Further thoughts: I already mentioned that I don't think the "let the legislature throw out votes" bill would survive a court challenge, but I'm not even sure Ducey would sign it. He's been unwilling to play along with the election fraud conspiracy theories (which is why the AZGOP censured him).

Ducey is awful, but he's awful in a conventional way, not a conspiracy loon/insurrectionist way. We could definitely do a lot worse, and have -- indeed, as I think on the seven Arizona governors I can remember and rank them, Ducey falls dead-center at #4. Which, in case you're wondering just how faint the praise I'm giving him is, means he's better than two governors who were impeached and one who signed SB1070.

So I dunno. I wouldn't be too surprised if he signed the legislature's antidemocratic power grab, but I wouldn't be surprised if he vetoed it, either.

[Thad]

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates

According to Arizona Department of Corrections whistleblowers, hundreds of incarcerated people who should be eligible for release are being held in prison because the inmate management software cannot interpret current sentencing laws.

[...]

Senate Bill 1310, authored by former Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, amended the Arizona Revised Statutes so that certain inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses could earn additional release credits upon the completion of programming in state prisons. Gov. Ducey signed the bill in June of 2019.

But department sources say the ACIS software is not still able to identify inmates who qualify for SB 1310 programming, nor can it calculate their new release dates upon completion of the programming.

“We knew from day one this wasn’t going to work” a department source said. “When they approved that bill, we looked at it and said ‘Oh shit.’”

[Brantly B.]

And yet when I try to argue that our current datamining software doesn't support GDPR I get threatened with tens of thousands of transnational civil suits. Where's the justice, I ask you?

[Bal]

I once again find myself sitting and staring at the wall thinking to myself "God in heaven, Kristen Sinema was the best choice. What kind of life is this?"

[Friday]

Well, it's not the worst of all possible worlds, because TF2 exists.

And it's not the best of all possible worlds, because then they fucked it up with too many hats.

[Thad]

State-operated vaccine sites open up for Arizonans 16 and older

Arizona is opening up COVID-19 vaccines to anyone 16 and older at the sites it operates in Maricopa, Pima and Yuma counties starting 8 a.m. Wednesday.

I checked podvaccine.azdhs.gov and it doesn't appear to have been updated yet; it's still showing no events available for my priority group. Still, hopefully we'll be able to get it soon.

[nosimpleway]

Stands to reason Arizona would get there ahead of anyone else, given how much of their population is already covered by the 65+ age bracket and how many Q-poisoned ultraconservatives are skipping the vaccine entirely.

[Thad]

Yeah, similar situation going on in Tennessee.

[Thad]

Got my first jab (Pfizer) this morning.

[Destynova]

Pfizer poke a couple days ago for 1st time.

[Grath]

I got first dose of Moderna two weeks ago, second dose in two weeks. Got lucky and a pharmacist in one of the Pokemon Go discords I'm in had spare doses, and I was one of the first people to respond that I wanted one.