welcome to reality trivia
gop politics
the party of racists and traitors
STEVE SCHMIDT
"THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS AN ORGANIZED CONSPIRACY FOR THE PURPOSES OF MAINTAINING POWER FOR SELF-INTEREST AND THE SELF-INTEREST OF IT'S DONOR CLASS. THERE IS NO FIDELITY TO THE AMERICAN IDEAL OR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY."
march 2024
TO COMMENT CLICK HERE
*conservatism*
excerpt from: THE MAN WHO SAW TRUMP COMING A CENTURY AGO
ANN JONES, TOMDISPATCH
11 APR 2019 AT 11:02 ET
...The (Re)tardiness of Conservatives
As both an evolutionary and an institutional economist (two fields he originated), Veblen contended that our habits of thought and our institutions must necessarily “change with changing circumstances.” Unfortunately, they often seem anchored in place instead, bound by the social and psychological inertia of conservatism. But why should that be so?
Veblen had a simple answer. The leisure class is so sheltered from inevitable changes going on in the rest of society that it will adapt its views, if at all, “tardily.” Comfortably clueless (or calculating), the wealthy leisure class drags its heels (or digs them in) to retard economic and social forces that make for change. Hence the name “conservatives.” That (re)tardiness — that time lag imposed by conservative complacency — stalls and stifles the lives of everyone else and the timely economic development of the nation. (Think of our neglected infrastructure, education, housing, health care, public transport — you know the lengthening list today.)
Accepting and adjusting to social or economic change, unfortunately, requires prolonged “mental effort,” from which the leisured conservative mind quite automatically recoils. But so, too, Veblen said, do the minds of the “abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance.” The lower classes were — and this seems a familiar reality in the age of Trump — as conservative as the upper class simply because the poor “cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow,” while “the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands.” It was, of course, a situation from which they, unlike the poor, made a bundle in an age (both Veblen’s and ours) in which money flows only uphill to the 1%.
Veblen gave this analytic screw one more turn. Called a “savage” economist, in his meticulous and deceptively neutral prose, he described in the passage that follows a truly savage and deliberate process:
“It follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.”
And privation always stands as an obstacle to innovation and change. In this way, the industrial, technological, and social progress of the whole society is retarded or perhaps even thrown into reverse. Such are the self-perpetuating effects of the unequal distribution of wealth. And reader take note: the leisure class brings about these results on purpose.
READ COMPLETE ARTICLE AT: THE MAN WHO SAW TRUMP COMING A CENTURY AGO
As both an evolutionary and an institutional economist (two fields he originated), Veblen contended that our habits of thought and our institutions must necessarily “change with changing circumstances.” Unfortunately, they often seem anchored in place instead, bound by the social and psychological inertia of conservatism. But why should that be so?
Veblen had a simple answer. The leisure class is so sheltered from inevitable changes going on in the rest of society that it will adapt its views, if at all, “tardily.” Comfortably clueless (or calculating), the wealthy leisure class drags its heels (or digs them in) to retard economic and social forces that make for change. Hence the name “conservatives.” That (re)tardiness — that time lag imposed by conservative complacency — stalls and stifles the lives of everyone else and the timely economic development of the nation. (Think of our neglected infrastructure, education, housing, health care, public transport — you know the lengthening list today.)
Accepting and adjusting to social or economic change, unfortunately, requires prolonged “mental effort,” from which the leisured conservative mind quite automatically recoils. But so, too, Veblen said, do the minds of the “abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance.” The lower classes were — and this seems a familiar reality in the age of Trump — as conservative as the upper class simply because the poor “cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow,” while “the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands.” It was, of course, a situation from which they, unlike the poor, made a bundle in an age (both Veblen’s and ours) in which money flows only uphill to the 1%.
Veblen gave this analytic screw one more turn. Called a “savage” economist, in his meticulous and deceptively neutral prose, he described in the passage that follows a truly savage and deliberate process:
“It follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.”
And privation always stands as an obstacle to innovation and change. In this way, the industrial, technological, and social progress of the whole society is retarded or perhaps even thrown into reverse. Such are the self-perpetuating effects of the unequal distribution of wealth. And reader take note: the leisure class brings about these results on purpose.
READ COMPLETE ARTICLE AT: THE MAN WHO SAW TRUMP COMING A CENTURY AGO
Senate report gives new details of Trump efforts to use Justice Dept. to overturn election
National Security Senate report gives new details of Trump efforts to use Justice Dept. to overturn election. A Senate report on President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election offers new details. ... (Washington Post)
National Security Senate report gives new details of Trump efforts to use Justice Dept. to overturn election. A Senate report on President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election offers new details. ... (Washington Post)
ROLL THE TAPE
NANCEGREGGS@DU
WHAT PART OF "FUCK NO!!!" DO REPUBLICANS NOT GET?
AFTER THE OUTRAGE OF ROE V WADE BEING OVERTURNED - WHEN THE VAST MAJORITY OF CITIZENS ARE FOR ACCESS TO SAFE AND LEGAL ABORTIONS - THE GOP DECIDED TO DOUBLE-DOWN ON REMOVING A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE BY PASSING DRACONIAN LEGISLATION THAT EVEN FURTHER RESTRICTS WOMEN'S AUTONOMY OVER THEIR OWN BODIES.
"THINK OF THE INNOCENT CHILDREN WE'RE SAVING," THEY SAID - COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THAT TEN-YEAR-OLD 'CHILDREN' COULD BE FORCED TO CARRY A RAPIST'S BABY TO TERM. LET ME GO OUT ON A LIMB HERE AND SAY THAT MOST AMERICANS, REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL AFFILIATION, FIND THIS ABHORRENT.
THE GOP'S CURRENT STANCE ON ELIMINATING LGBT+ RIGHTS IS EQUALLY ASTOUNDING IN ITS DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY. HOW MANY VOTERS ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT THINGS LIKE SHUTTING DOWN DRAG SHOWS WILL IMPROVE THEIR OWN LIVES? HOW MANY VOTERS THINK THAT DRAG QUEENS READING TO CHILDREN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE FACING THE NATION TODAY?
AND THEN THERE'S THE GOP ASSAULT ON EDUCATION, COMPLETE WITH BOOK BANNING/BURNING. ASIDE FROM THE MOST PIG-IGNORANT ASSHOLES WHO HAVE NEVER EVEN READ A BOOK, WHO IS THE GOP HOPING TO APPEAL TO?
AS WE'VE SEEN FROM THE DEVASTATINGLY LOW TURNOUT AT CPAC, RHETORIC ABOUT BIDEN'S 'FAIIURES' - E.G. JOB CREATION, STUDENT DEBT RELIEF, REBUILDING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE, LOWERING THE PRICE OF INSULIN ARE - TO HEAR THE POWERS-THAT-BE IN THE GOP - NOT NEARLY AS IMPORTANT AS ENSURING THAT EVERY WHACK-JOB IN THE COUNTRY HAS EASY ACCESS TO ASSAULT WEAPONS.
NOW THAT THE 'FACE' OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS MARJORIE "JEWISH SPACE LASERS AND NATIONAL DIVORCE" TAYLOR-GREENE, LAUREN "BIDEN SHUT-DOWN THE COUNTRY DUE TO COVID IN 2020 WHEN TRUMP WAS PRESIDENT" BOEBERT, ET AL, I'M NOT ENVISIONING VOTERS RUSHING TO THE POLLS TO SUPPORT THE PARTY THAT PROMISED THEM LOWER GAS PRICES, AN END TO INFLATION, AND RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT WHEN THEIR RESPONSE TO THESE CHALLENGES TURNED OUT TO BE INVESTIGATING HUNTER BIDEN'S PENIS.
I AM TRULY AT A LOSS AS TO WHO THE REPUBLICANS BELIEVE THEY'RE "WINNING OVER" BY PROMOTING POLICIES THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY HAVE ALREADY SAID FUCK NO! TO IN 2020 AND 2022.
THE FACT THAT THE GOP LEARNED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FROM THEIR OVERWHELMING DEFEAT IN THE 2022 MIDTERMS TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THEIR GRASP ON REALITY, AND THEIR INABILITY TO TAKE FUCK NO! FOR AN ANSWER - NO MATTER HOW LOUDLY AND CLEARLY IT'S SHOUTED.
****party history***
*Republican Party
*VIDEO: REPUBLICANS STRATEGIST ADMITS: "IT WAS ALL A LIE"
*Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret
An interview with Russ Bellant, author of “Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party.” (click)
*Nazis and the Republican Party | The Espresso Stalinist
*American supporters of the European Fascists
*THE DECLINE OF AMERICA UNDER RONALD REAGAN
(ARCHIVES)
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” Charles Dickens
Henry David Thoreau: Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
dick gregory: This sums up Republicans Strategy perfectly! They control of their base (Trump Supporters) because they have the brains of an Ice Cube and the rational of a Toothpick! Republicans have taken Fear, Hypocrisy and Lying to a whole new level.
NANCEGREGGS@DU
YOU'RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER GOD, REPUBLICANS
A FEW HOURS AGO, I WATCHED A VIDEO CLIP OF LAUREN BOEBERT EXPLAINING HOW SHE RAN FOR OFFICE BECAUSE GOD TOLD HER TO.
OF COURSE, THIS IS NOTHING NEW FROM THE GOP. MANY HAVE CLAIMED TO BE "CHOSEN" BY THE ALMIGHTY HIMSELF - NOT THE LEAST OF WHOM IS DONALD J. TRUMP. WE'VE HEARD FROM THE MAGATS FOR YEARS ABOUT HOW THEIR PERSONAL SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST, DIRECTED THEM TO SUPPORT SAINT GRIFTER OF L'ORANGE - AS FINE A CHRISTIAN MAN AS HAS EVER GRACED A NATION.
WELL, NOT FOR NUTHIN', REPUBLICANS - BUT THE GOD YOU WORSHIP HAS PROVEN TO BE AN ABYSMAL FAILURE WHEN IT COMES TO HAND-PICKING POLITICIANS "HIS GOOD WORKS TO PERFORM".
IF YOUR GOD CHOSE TRUMP TO LEAD A NATION, WHY DID HE - BEING ALL-KNOWING AND ALL - NOT FORESEE HIS DEFEAT IN 2020 AND - BEING ALL-POWERFUL - DID HE NOT ENSURE HIS CHOSEN ONE'S RE-ELECTION?
I'VE HEARD THE MAGATS' ARGUMENT THAT GOD OFTEN CHOOSES AN IMPERFECT MAN TO DO HIS BIDDING - BUT WHY DID HE CHOOSE A LYING, CORRUPT, PUSSY-GRABBING ADULTERER? WERE THERE NO REPUBLICANS AVAILABLE FOR THE JOB OTHER THAN A NARCISSISTIC, BUFFOON OF A CON-MAN WHO WOULD GO ON TO DIVIDE A COUNTRY, ENCOURAGE VIOLENCE, PROMOTE RACISM AND INCITE AN INSURRECTION AGAINST THE DEMOCRACY HE SWORE TO PROTECT AND DEFEND?
WE'VE HEARD THE REPUBLICAN CRY OF WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? FOR YEARS NOW. WELL, FROM WHAT I'VE READ OF THE NAZARENE'S WORDS, I DON'T THINK THAT JESUS WOULD BE PROMOTIN' THE ELECTION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE CLEARLY AGAINST FEEDING THE HUNGRY, SHELTERING THE HOMELESS, CARING FOR THE SICK, AND WELCOMING THE STRANGER - NO LESS ADVOCATING BUYING ASSAULT WEAPONS AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK.
SORRY FOR POINTING OUT THE BLEEDIN' OBVIOUS, REPUBLICANS, BUT YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BETTER GOD - ONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO BACK A WINNER, INSTEAD OF THE LOSERS YOU'VE CONVINCED YOURSELVES HE'S BEEN CHOOSING ALL ALONG.
YOU'RE GOING TO NEED AN ALL-POWERFUL, ALL-KNOWING, ALL-OMNIPOTENT GOD WHO RECOGNIZES ASSHOLES WHEN HE SEES THEM - AND DOESN'T STAND ON THE SIDELINES WHEN THEY PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE HIS "CHOSEN" IDIOTS.
*gop lies - hi-lites of gop fools, racism, and hypocrisy
dedicated to the dumber-than-dog-shit people who vote for gop
(sources: raw Story, daily kos, and politicus usa)
5 Republicans Who Worked on Bipartisan Infrastructure Now Won’t Commit to It
Five out of 11 Republicans who previously said they’d support the proposal told CNN that they’re now wary of supporting it — despite the fact that Biden agreed to cut the bill down to almost an eighth of its original size and has given up a large portion of the proposals that had originally excited some progressives and Democrats.
GOP Would Undermine 40 Million Student Debtors to Gain Midterm Leverage
BY Mike Ludwig, Truthout
PUBLISHED October 8, 2022
Republican attorneys from six GOP-led states recently filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s popular plan for canceling student debt, but they face a steep legal challenge in convincing a federal court in Missouri to block the plan from taking effect before the midterms.
If successful, the lawsuit could block the Biden administration’s plan to provide up to $20,000 of student debt relief to federal Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for others making less than $125,000 a year during the pandemic. However, in order to win a preliminary injunction to block the program from taking effect while facing legal challenges, the attorneys general must provide evidence that forgiving student debt will cause “irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs — in this case, the state governments of South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
That’s a tall legal order given that canceling student debt would be a financial boon — and a source of stress relief — for the up to 40 million people the Biden administration estimates to be eligible for debt cancelation. Of those, nearly 20 million could see their entire remaining balance wiped clean after years of living with college debt hanging over their heads. Student debt cancelation is extremely popular among younger voters, and Biden saw his approval ratings improve after announcing the plan.
Ayesha Whyte, a former assistant attorney general for Washington, D.C, said the GOP lawsuit may not sit well with millions of voters with student debt, but there are likely political reasons for attempting to block or delay the program before the midterms.
“The strategy by these six Republican Attorney Generals is to oppose Biden and possibly garner some political favor with their governors or a certain part of their constituents, but these suits can delay debt relief for those that really need it and to ignore that … it’s [thoughtless],” Whyte told Truthout in an interview.
Polling suggests the debt relief plan is popular and bring likely voters out to the polls in November, with 46 percent saying they are more likely to vote thanks to student debt relief.
The Biden administration now faces multiple legal challenges to the student debt cancelation program in addition to the lawsuit from the six states. At least four lawsuits seeking to block the program were filed by activist attorneys, private citizens and right-wing legal groups over the past week, and more are expected, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The lawsuits make similar legal arguments that read like a litany of GOP talking points. The conservatives behind the lawsuits claim Biden’s debt cancelation program, announced in August and set to take effect this month, is illegal without additional legislation from Congress to authorize the executive branch to take action. Democrats say the lawsuits just go to show that the GOP puts profits over working people, while activists call it a “sham.”
The Biden administration claims authority to cancel debt under a 2003 law allowing the secretary of education to protect student borrowers in an emergency, in this case the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans point out that Biden has said that the pandemic is “over,” suggesting we are no longer in an emergency, but it’s unclear if a judge would agree to this alleged discrepancy considering the pandemic’s lingering economic impacts.
Echoing the GOP’s attack lines ahead of the midterms, the state attorneys general also claim that canceling student debt would contribute to inflation, although experts say any economic impact would be minor.
(As Truthout’s Sharon Zhang has reported, Republicans have cited other motives for opposing student debt cancelation, such as maintaining the financial leverage used to coerce low-income people into joining the military.)
The lawsuits also argue that the plan is unfair to private individuals who worked to pay off their student debt, but Whyte said few people have come forward to explain how they would be harmed by the canceling of student debt for themselves or others.
“There are certain people that murmur under their breaths, ‘I paid so you should have to pay as well,’ and, ‘Hey, we don’t want to add to the national debt,’ but those are complaints, they are not legal actions,” Whyte said.
In order to block the plan with a preliminary injunction, the Republican attorneys general must show “irreparable harm” to the plaintiff states, because the lawsuit was brought on behalf of the states, not individual citizens. In the complaint, they argue student debt cancelation could interfere with states’ higher education programs and hurt states financially, but even if states must adjust their budgets, Whyte said these challenges do not rise to the level of “irreparable harm.”
Still, these legal challenges have a political purpose as part of a broader GOP strategy to delay debt forgiveness until after voters head to the polls in November.
“Everyone wants to feel like they are doing something, so what you do is test the water,” Whyte said, describing the GOP litigation strategy. “Will this or that lawsuit move forward? And then each legal challenge is piece of a potential delay. Can we delay this until the midterms, or even delay this until after another election in 2024?”
If successful, the lawsuit could block the Biden administration’s plan to provide up to $20,000 of student debt relief to federal Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for others making less than $125,000 a year during the pandemic. However, in order to win a preliminary injunction to block the program from taking effect while facing legal challenges, the attorneys general must provide evidence that forgiving student debt will cause “irreparable harm” to the plaintiffs — in this case, the state governments of South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
That’s a tall legal order given that canceling student debt would be a financial boon — and a source of stress relief — for the up to 40 million people the Biden administration estimates to be eligible for debt cancelation. Of those, nearly 20 million could see their entire remaining balance wiped clean after years of living with college debt hanging over their heads. Student debt cancelation is extremely popular among younger voters, and Biden saw his approval ratings improve after announcing the plan.
Ayesha Whyte, a former assistant attorney general for Washington, D.C, said the GOP lawsuit may not sit well with millions of voters with student debt, but there are likely political reasons for attempting to block or delay the program before the midterms.
“The strategy by these six Republican Attorney Generals is to oppose Biden and possibly garner some political favor with their governors or a certain part of their constituents, but these suits can delay debt relief for those that really need it and to ignore that … it’s [thoughtless],” Whyte told Truthout in an interview.
Polling suggests the debt relief plan is popular and bring likely voters out to the polls in November, with 46 percent saying they are more likely to vote thanks to student debt relief.
The Biden administration now faces multiple legal challenges to the student debt cancelation program in addition to the lawsuit from the six states. At least four lawsuits seeking to block the program were filed by activist attorneys, private citizens and right-wing legal groups over the past week, and more are expected, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The lawsuits make similar legal arguments that read like a litany of GOP talking points. The conservatives behind the lawsuits claim Biden’s debt cancelation program, announced in August and set to take effect this month, is illegal without additional legislation from Congress to authorize the executive branch to take action. Democrats say the lawsuits just go to show that the GOP puts profits over working people, while activists call it a “sham.”
The Biden administration claims authority to cancel debt under a 2003 law allowing the secretary of education to protect student borrowers in an emergency, in this case the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans point out that Biden has said that the pandemic is “over,” suggesting we are no longer in an emergency, but it’s unclear if a judge would agree to this alleged discrepancy considering the pandemic’s lingering economic impacts.
Echoing the GOP’s attack lines ahead of the midterms, the state attorneys general also claim that canceling student debt would contribute to inflation, although experts say any economic impact would be minor.
(As Truthout’s Sharon Zhang has reported, Republicans have cited other motives for opposing student debt cancelation, such as maintaining the financial leverage used to coerce low-income people into joining the military.)
The lawsuits also argue that the plan is unfair to private individuals who worked to pay off their student debt, but Whyte said few people have come forward to explain how they would be harmed by the canceling of student debt for themselves or others.
“There are certain people that murmur under their breaths, ‘I paid so you should have to pay as well,’ and, ‘Hey, we don’t want to add to the national debt,’ but those are complaints, they are not legal actions,” Whyte said.
In order to block the plan with a preliminary injunction, the Republican attorneys general must show “irreparable harm” to the plaintiff states, because the lawsuit was brought on behalf of the states, not individual citizens. In the complaint, they argue student debt cancelation could interfere with states’ higher education programs and hurt states financially, but even if states must adjust their budgets, Whyte said these challenges do not rise to the level of “irreparable harm.”
Still, these legal challenges have a political purpose as part of a broader GOP strategy to delay debt forgiveness until after voters head to the polls in November.
“Everyone wants to feel like they are doing something, so what you do is test the water,” Whyte said, describing the GOP litigation strategy. “Will this or that lawsuit move forward? And then each legal challenge is piece of a potential delay. Can we delay this until the midterms, or even delay this until after another election in 2024?”
the leader of the gop
Turns out this is about more than the GOP just embracing policies that lead to disease and death - those same policies also win elections while making their morbidly rich campaign donors even richer
Thom Hartmann
3/1/2022
Senator Marco Rubio says he won’t attend the State of the Union address because it requires a Covid test and he’s too busy to swab his nose. Rubio’s bizarre behavior is right in line with the GOP’s embrace of poverty, disease, and death.
According to a popular meme, comedian Noel Casler (the guy who outed Trump’s drug abuse and diaper wearing) asks, “How come everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying?”
He then goes on to note GOP support for assault weapons, opposition to masks and vaccines, opposition to saving the environment, and their all-out war on Obamacare and Medicare-for-All.
Casler may have just been being glib, doing the written equivalent of a standup routine, but his question deserves a serious answer, so let’s look at the evidence.
It’s undeniably true that Republican-controlled “Red” states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:
But are all these things, along with widespread GOP support for Putin, happening because Republicans hate their citizens and worship poverty, death and disease?
Or is there something in the GOP’s core beliefs and stratgegies that just inevitably leads to these outcomes?
It turns out that’s very much the case: these terrible outcomes are the direct result of policies promoting greed and racism that the GOP has been using for forty years to get access to billions of dollars and win elections.
Using racism as a political strategy while promoting and defending the greed of oligarchs always leads to widespread poverty, pollution, ignorance, and death regardless of the nation it’s done in.
We’ve seen it over and over again around the world: it’s happening today in India, The Philippines, Brazil, and Hungary, for example. And the GOP has spent the past 40 years marinating itself in both.
---
But racism alone can’t explain the entire list above. There had to be something else.
The second element embraced by the GOP that filled out the rest of the list above happened in 1980 when they hooked up with religious grifters and greedy rich people.
Prior to that election year, George HW Bush and his wife Barbara were big advocates for Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, had signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law and was also an outspoken supporter of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood.
Similarly, the white evangelical movement prior to 1980 was largely supportive of abortion rights. They were furious, however, when the Supreme Court banned preacher-led school prayer and in the late 1970s Jimmy Carter pulled the tax exemptions of segregated schools run by white evangelicals.
Jerry Falwell had started his “Moral Majority” in 1978 and uber-Christian Paul Weyrich (co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and the guy who famously said, “I don’t want everybody to vote!”) signed up for the Reagan campaign.
---
The GOP also adopted Falwell’s call for a return to school prayer, hostility to sex education, rejection of women’s rights, assertion of patriarchy, and open hatred of homosexuality.
Championing what today we’d call the “culture wars,” Republicans fully embraced the anti-science perspective of Falwell and his colleagues, questioning for the first time the theory of evolution and scoffing at concerns about pollution causing cancer and other diseases.
---
In 1978, in a decision written by Lewis Powell (of Powell Memo fame), the Court extended that right to buy politicians to American corporations (it was extended to international billionaires and corporations in 2010 by Citizens United.)
President Jimmy Carter had championed the average person and the rights of working class people: he even walked from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration rather than take a limousine. Reagan not only brought back the limousine, he turned his inaugural balls into a lavish celebration of wealth and economic power.
The Democratic Party was still, at that time, mostly funded by labor unions; the GOP, however, picked up the opportunity offered them by the Supreme Court four and two years earlier and put up a “for sale” sign, inviting into the party any wealthy person or corporation who’d put up enough money for a Republican candidate to win an election.
The result of this whole sad history is that Red states have been turned into sacrifice zones for Reagan’s racial and religious bigotry and the neoliberal raise-up-the-rich and crap-on-unions economic policies he inflicted on America.
The TV preachers have become multimillionaires with private jets, their parishioners have slid deeper and deeper into poverty and addiction, and the unholy alliance of church and state that Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton warned us about is now arguably — behind great wealth — the second most powerful political force in America.
Turns out Noel Casler was right, but the story is a bit more detailed than the GOP just embracing death and disease. Those same policies also make the morbidly rich — from oil barons to televangelists — vastly richer, and those rich people and their businesses and churches return the favor by pushing their followers and cycling part of their profits back toward Republican politicians.
Now you know the rest of the story.
According to a popular meme, comedian Noel Casler (the guy who outed Trump’s drug abuse and diaper wearing) asks, “How come everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying?”
He then goes on to note GOP support for assault weapons, opposition to masks and vaccines, opposition to saving the environment, and their all-out war on Obamacare and Medicare-for-All.
Casler may have just been being glib, doing the written equivalent of a standup routine, but his question deserves a serious answer, so let’s look at the evidence.
It’s undeniably true that Republican-controlled “Red” states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:
- Spousal abuse
- Obesity
- Smoking
- Teen pregnancy
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Abortion
- Bankruptcies and poverty
- Homicide and suicide
- Infant mortality
- Maternal mortality
- Forcible rape
- Robbery and aggravated assault
- Dropouts from high school
- Divorce
- Contaminated air and water
- Opiate addiction and deaths
- Unskilled workers
- Parasitic infections
- Income and wealth inequality
- Covid deaths and unvaccinated people
- Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)
- People on welfare
- Child poverty
- Homelessness
- Spousal murder
- Unemployment
- Deaths from auto accidents
- People living on disability
But are all these things, along with widespread GOP support for Putin, happening because Republicans hate their citizens and worship poverty, death and disease?
Or is there something in the GOP’s core beliefs and stratgegies that just inevitably leads to these outcomes?
It turns out that’s very much the case: these terrible outcomes are the direct result of policies promoting greed and racism that the GOP has been using for forty years to get access to billions of dollars and win elections.
Using racism as a political strategy while promoting and defending the greed of oligarchs always leads to widespread poverty, pollution, ignorance, and death regardless of the nation it’s done in.
We’ve seen it over and over again around the world: it’s happening today in India, The Philippines, Brazil, and Hungary, for example. And the GOP has spent the past 40 years marinating itself in both.
---
But racism alone can’t explain the entire list above. There had to be something else.
The second element embraced by the GOP that filled out the rest of the list above happened in 1980 when they hooked up with religious grifters and greedy rich people.
Prior to that election year, George HW Bush and his wife Barbara were big advocates for Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, had signed the nation’s most liberal abortion law and was also an outspoken supporter of Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood.
Similarly, the white evangelical movement prior to 1980 was largely supportive of abortion rights. They were furious, however, when the Supreme Court banned preacher-led school prayer and in the late 1970s Jimmy Carter pulled the tax exemptions of segregated schools run by white evangelicals.
Jerry Falwell had started his “Moral Majority” in 1978 and uber-Christian Paul Weyrich (co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and the guy who famously said, “I don’t want everybody to vote!”) signed up for the Reagan campaign.
---
The GOP also adopted Falwell’s call for a return to school prayer, hostility to sex education, rejection of women’s rights, assertion of patriarchy, and open hatred of homosexuality.
Championing what today we’d call the “culture wars,” Republicans fully embraced the anti-science perspective of Falwell and his colleagues, questioning for the first time the theory of evolution and scoffing at concerns about pollution causing cancer and other diseases.
---
In 1978, in a decision written by Lewis Powell (of Powell Memo fame), the Court extended that right to buy politicians to American corporations (it was extended to international billionaires and corporations in 2010 by Citizens United.)
President Jimmy Carter had championed the average person and the rights of working class people: he even walked from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration rather than take a limousine. Reagan not only brought back the limousine, he turned his inaugural balls into a lavish celebration of wealth and economic power.
The Democratic Party was still, at that time, mostly funded by labor unions; the GOP, however, picked up the opportunity offered them by the Supreme Court four and two years earlier and put up a “for sale” sign, inviting into the party any wealthy person or corporation who’d put up enough money for a Republican candidate to win an election.
The result of this whole sad history is that Red states have been turned into sacrifice zones for Reagan’s racial and religious bigotry and the neoliberal raise-up-the-rich and crap-on-unions economic policies he inflicted on America.
The TV preachers have become multimillionaires with private jets, their parishioners have slid deeper and deeper into poverty and addiction, and the unholy alliance of church and state that Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton warned us about is now arguably — behind great wealth — the second most powerful political force in America.
Turns out Noel Casler was right, but the story is a bit more detailed than the GOP just embracing death and disease. Those same policies also make the morbidly rich — from oil barons to televangelists — vastly richer, and those rich people and their businesses and churches return the favor by pushing their followers and cycling part of their profits back toward Republican politicians.
Now you know the rest of the story.
OF COURSE THE GOP AND CORPORATIONS ARE LYING!!!
How the business lobby created the "labor shortage" myth — and GOP used it to slash benefits
Who created the "labor shortage" myth?
How the business lobby created the "labor shortage" myth — and GOP used it to slash benefits
Republican governors weaponized weak jobs report to cut unemployment aid — as the result of a year-long strategy
JON SKOLNIK - SALON
5/19/2021
Earlier this month, the Department of Labor released a less-than-stellar jobs report that sent politicians, economists and leaders in corporate America scrambling for answers. That report details an approximate 71% drop in job growth paired with a slight hike in unemployment, falling far below analyst expectations of a month-over-month boom. This prompted many "mainstream" or conservative pundits, along with Republican elected officials, to point toward a prime suspect: unemployment insurance.
Their logic is simple: if people are getting paid to do nothing, they have no incentive to do anything. But Democrats have argued that the reality is far too complicated to chalk up to one factor. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attributed the disappointing jobs report to a lack of proper child care and lingering fears about the pandemic. Others have pinned the blame on employers, citing low wages and poor working conditions as reasons why Americans might be more hesitant to rejoin the workforce.
Nevertheless, over the past two weeks week, a narrative about "labor shortages'' and the allegedly corrosive effects of overly generous unemployment benefits, has been force-fed to the American public. Within a matter of days, at least 16 state governors — including such nationally prominent Republicans as Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia — seized the opportunity to slash or eliminate aid to the jobless, even as the U.S. struggles to recover from the effects of a global pandemic.
Given how effective this "labor shortage" narrative was in driving reactionary GOP policy, it seems worth unpacking exactly where and how it arose. Several observers on the left have argued that it emerged from "explicitly ideological think tanks and explicitly ideological right-wing projects," as Henry Williams, co-founder of the Gravel Institute, put it in an interview with Salon. It then "trickled outward" through mainstream media sources, effectively cleansed of its right-wing roots.
Conservative think tanks and other institutions, Williams said, "will facilitate studies, analyses and articles that can then be laundered through various communications arms through their press releases." That material then appears in local media or the seemingly neutral business press, he said, and is then widely perceived as apolitical conventional wisdom.
The recent "labor shortage" narrative appeared to arise right after the recent jobs report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a massively influential pro-business lobby with one of the widest reaches of any political organization in the country. Within hours of the report's release, the Chamber released a statement arguing that "paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market" and announced a broad lobbying effort aimed at pressuring both the White House and Capitol Hill to kill jobless benefits.
Republican lawmakers then jumped onto the bandwagon to trash unemployment insurance. "Systematically paying unemployment benefits that are more than a person makes working doesn't create an environment that's particularly conducive to going back to work," Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — a distinctly moderate Republican by current standards — told Fox News in a Friday interview. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also railed against the benefits, calling them a "special bonus for unemployed people to stay home."
But in fact this campaign against unemployment benefits can be traced at least as far back as last July, when the Chamber wrote a letter to then-President Trump urging what it called a "middle-ground approach" to federal assistance — which effectively amounted to a drastic reduction in benefits. "The additional $600 [in weekly benefits] is also causing significant distortions in the labor market and hurting the economic recovery," the group wrote at the time. "We routinely hear from our employer members who report that individuals are declining to return to work because they can take home more money on unemployment."
Other conservative or pro-business organizations were also trying to build public sympathy for the struggles of employers. Mere months after the pandemic had forced millions of Americans out of work, groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute lamented that overly generous unemployment insurance was wreaking havoc on the labor market. As Rachel Greszler, a Heritage research fellow, put it: "Instead of bridging the gap, excessive unemployment payments will only increase the breadth and depth of the economic downturn."
This analysis then bled into the business press, with publications like Forbes and Business Observer publishing seemingly non-ideological stories about a scarcity of labor. Then it reached mainstream news, with a series of anecdotally-driven reports from the perspectives of disgruntled business owners in industries hit hard by the pandemic, including hospitality, construction, manufacturing, nursing, food service and more.
Potential labor shortages, as Williams told Salon, have been a concern for the business community since the pandemic began, with employers "wondering how they're going to bring people back in these conditions." He continued, "The business community was already fighting this proxy battle months ago. The difference was, when these jobs numbers came out, they saw a perfect opportunity … to connect them to this broader lobbying effort and create an economic narrative that they know has a unique power in shaping policy."
Indeed, immediately after April's jobs numbers were released on May 7, business leaders vociferously hammered home this narrative. The National Owners Association, a group of McDonald's franchisees, wrote on May 10 about the "perverse effects of the current unemployment benefits" on hiring. Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius echoed this theory the day, arguing that "labor supply appears to be tighter than the unemployment rate suggests, likely reflecting the impact of unusually generous unemployment benefits and lingering virus-related impediments to working," as Yahoo Finance reported. On the very day the numbers were released, the New York Post published an article featuring testimonials from New York City restaurateurs who blamed jobless benefits for their hiring challenges.
The response of the business class was like a "lightning-flash reaction," said Joseph A. McCartin, executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, in an interview with Salon.
"Employers' associations and conservative groups have been seizing on the jobs numbers to campaign for the rollback of benefits in order to force workers back to work," he said, in hopes of regaining control over the labor supply and controlling wages. "There was a well-organized operation that's been in place for several months by groups who were preparing for the pushback. They knew they couldn't do it two months ago. They were ready for these numbers."
---
Unsurprisingly, many of the GOP governors who were quick to eliminate federal payments also have ties to pro-business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce. Just last year, the Chamber's chief public affairs officer sent several private emails to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and his aides, asking Kemp "to prioritize legal protections for businesses if workers or customers were to contract the coronavirus," as the Washington Post reported.[...]
Their logic is simple: if people are getting paid to do nothing, they have no incentive to do anything. But Democrats have argued that the reality is far too complicated to chalk up to one factor. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attributed the disappointing jobs report to a lack of proper child care and lingering fears about the pandemic. Others have pinned the blame on employers, citing low wages and poor working conditions as reasons why Americans might be more hesitant to rejoin the workforce.
Nevertheless, over the past two weeks week, a narrative about "labor shortages'' and the allegedly corrosive effects of overly generous unemployment benefits, has been force-fed to the American public. Within a matter of days, at least 16 state governors — including such nationally prominent Republicans as Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia — seized the opportunity to slash or eliminate aid to the jobless, even as the U.S. struggles to recover from the effects of a global pandemic.
Given how effective this "labor shortage" narrative was in driving reactionary GOP policy, it seems worth unpacking exactly where and how it arose. Several observers on the left have argued that it emerged from "explicitly ideological think tanks and explicitly ideological right-wing projects," as Henry Williams, co-founder of the Gravel Institute, put it in an interview with Salon. It then "trickled outward" through mainstream media sources, effectively cleansed of its right-wing roots.
Conservative think tanks and other institutions, Williams said, "will facilitate studies, analyses and articles that can then be laundered through various communications arms through their press releases." That material then appears in local media or the seemingly neutral business press, he said, and is then widely perceived as apolitical conventional wisdom.
The recent "labor shortage" narrative appeared to arise right after the recent jobs report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a massively influential pro-business lobby with one of the widest reaches of any political organization in the country. Within hours of the report's release, the Chamber released a statement arguing that "paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market" and announced a broad lobbying effort aimed at pressuring both the White House and Capitol Hill to kill jobless benefits.
Republican lawmakers then jumped onto the bandwagon to trash unemployment insurance. "Systematically paying unemployment benefits that are more than a person makes working doesn't create an environment that's particularly conducive to going back to work," Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — a distinctly moderate Republican by current standards — told Fox News in a Friday interview. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also railed against the benefits, calling them a "special bonus for unemployed people to stay home."
But in fact this campaign against unemployment benefits can be traced at least as far back as last July, when the Chamber wrote a letter to then-President Trump urging what it called a "middle-ground approach" to federal assistance — which effectively amounted to a drastic reduction in benefits. "The additional $600 [in weekly benefits] is also causing significant distortions in the labor market and hurting the economic recovery," the group wrote at the time. "We routinely hear from our employer members who report that individuals are declining to return to work because they can take home more money on unemployment."
Other conservative or pro-business organizations were also trying to build public sympathy for the struggles of employers. Mere months after the pandemic had forced millions of Americans out of work, groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute lamented that overly generous unemployment insurance was wreaking havoc on the labor market. As Rachel Greszler, a Heritage research fellow, put it: "Instead of bridging the gap, excessive unemployment payments will only increase the breadth and depth of the economic downturn."
This analysis then bled into the business press, with publications like Forbes and Business Observer publishing seemingly non-ideological stories about a scarcity of labor. Then it reached mainstream news, with a series of anecdotally-driven reports from the perspectives of disgruntled business owners in industries hit hard by the pandemic, including hospitality, construction, manufacturing, nursing, food service and more.
Potential labor shortages, as Williams told Salon, have been a concern for the business community since the pandemic began, with employers "wondering how they're going to bring people back in these conditions." He continued, "The business community was already fighting this proxy battle months ago. The difference was, when these jobs numbers came out, they saw a perfect opportunity … to connect them to this broader lobbying effort and create an economic narrative that they know has a unique power in shaping policy."
Indeed, immediately after April's jobs numbers were released on May 7, business leaders vociferously hammered home this narrative. The National Owners Association, a group of McDonald's franchisees, wrote on May 10 about the "perverse effects of the current unemployment benefits" on hiring. Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius echoed this theory the day, arguing that "labor supply appears to be tighter than the unemployment rate suggests, likely reflecting the impact of unusually generous unemployment benefits and lingering virus-related impediments to working," as Yahoo Finance reported. On the very day the numbers were released, the New York Post published an article featuring testimonials from New York City restaurateurs who blamed jobless benefits for their hiring challenges.
The response of the business class was like a "lightning-flash reaction," said Joseph A. McCartin, executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, in an interview with Salon.
"Employers' associations and conservative groups have been seizing on the jobs numbers to campaign for the rollback of benefits in order to force workers back to work," he said, in hopes of regaining control over the labor supply and controlling wages. "There was a well-organized operation that's been in place for several months by groups who were preparing for the pushback. They knew they couldn't do it two months ago. They were ready for these numbers."
---
Unsurprisingly, many of the GOP governors who were quick to eliminate federal payments also have ties to pro-business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce. Just last year, the Chamber's chief public affairs officer sent several private emails to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and his aides, asking Kemp "to prioritize legal protections for businesses if workers or customers were to contract the coronavirus," as the Washington Post reported.[...]
|
|
for all the low-income and minorities stupid enough to vote for republicans, enjoy!!!
Michigan Republicans want to make it illegal to prioritize low-income or minority areas for vaccines: report
Matthew Chapman - raw story
February 24, 2021
On Wednesday, Dave Boucher of the Detroit Free Press reported that Republicans in the Michigan state Senate are advancing an amendment that would bar the state from using a "social vulnerability index" to prioritize distribution of COVID-19 vaccine doses — meaning that it would be illegal to prioritize areas based on race, socioeconomic status, or a number of other factors.
State Sen. Jim Runestad justified the bill by complaining that under the state rules, a 20-year-old with "minority status and you don't speak English that well" would get a vaccine ahead of a 65-year-old. This is false, as 20-year-olds are not yet eligible for vaccines in Michigan.
The amendment ultimately passed the Appropriations Committee, although it still needs approval by the broader legislature.
The issue of how to prioritize vaccines has varied from state to state. In Texas, Dallas County was forced to end a program prioritizing vaccine delivery for high-risk communities of color after the state health officials threatened to cut off their doses altogether.
U.S. communities are heavily segregated by race, and Black and Latino workers account for 43 percent of workers deemed essential in the pandemic, which has raised the urgency among many officials to ensure their communities have adequate vaccine supply.
State Sen. Jim Runestad justified the bill by complaining that under the state rules, a 20-year-old with "minority status and you don't speak English that well" would get a vaccine ahead of a 65-year-old. This is false, as 20-year-olds are not yet eligible for vaccines in Michigan.
The amendment ultimately passed the Appropriations Committee, although it still needs approval by the broader legislature.
The issue of how to prioritize vaccines has varied from state to state. In Texas, Dallas County was forced to end a program prioritizing vaccine delivery for high-risk communities of color after the state health officials threatened to cut off their doses altogether.
U.S. communities are heavily segregated by race, and Black and Latino workers account for 43 percent of workers deemed essential in the pandemic, which has raised the urgency among many officials to ensure their communities have adequate vaccine supply.
Republican Party is now a terrorist organization — and none of this is a surprise
Republicans have revealed their true colors in the ugliest fashion — and too many liberals want to look away
By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - SALON
FEBRUARY 16, 2021 11:00AM (UTC)
...In refusing to convict Donald Trump for his crimes against democracy, the Republican Party has announced that Republican presidents are above the law and can act with impunity, as kings or dictators do — and that this is now true for Republican officials on the federal, local and state level as well.
In total, the Republican Party has created a precedent that right-wing political violence and terrorism, including coups and other attempts to overthrow legal elections, are now acceptable in the United States — as long as they are perpetrated by Republicans and their allies against Democrats and others deemed to be "un-American."
This is the essence of fascism and authoritarianism. Such beliefs and values have broad support among Republican voters and other members of the right wing more generally.
Recent public opinion polling and other research shows that Trump Republicans believe that political violence is a reasonable tool for them to advance their goals. This all but guarantees that Trump's coup plot and attack on the Capitol are a blueprint to be followed by members of the white right across the country.
---
Contrary to what many of the hope-peddlers and professional centrists in the news media and elsewhere would like to believe, Trumpism and other forms of American fascism were not exiled by Joe Biden's election victory.
The Age of Trump is not over. Donald Trump will attempt to be a type of shadow president and kingmaker who controls the Republican Party and its public. The Age of Trump will also linger on through what counterterrorism experts warn may be years if not decades of violent right-wing insurgency and terror directed against liberals and progressives, nonwhite people, Muslims, Jews and other groups targeted as the enemy Other. The question is not whether there will be blood, but rather how much more blood will be spilt by Trump's followers and other right-wing extremists and paramilitaries.
In the same essay at CNN, Republican consultant Michael Madrid describes this woeful reality: "They have fed the monster for so long that even when it turns on them, when the barbarians are literally at the gate ... when they were the targets and they were prey, they still will not turn on it. That's how dangerous is the societal threat that we are facing."
The Republican Party's embrace of Trumpism and now full-on endorsement of right-wing violence and terrorism should not be a surprise. Trump's 2016 presidential victory and fake right-wing "populist" movement was fueled by white supremacy, nativism, and other forms of bigotry and hate. That is violence.
White Christian nationalists and right-wing evangelicals are among the most loyal and fanatical members of the American right and the Trump movement. As a group, these Christian fascists are committed to overturning secular democracy and making real their "end times" eschatological and apocalyptic fantasies. That is violence.
The Republican Party and the broader right have embraced gangster capitalism and its ethos that profits are more important than people. Their ideology is Dickensian and social Darwinist: the poor and other marginalized groups are surplus people who should be left to die if they cannot be "self-sufficient" and "productive." That is violence.
Public health experts have repeatedly shown that Republican policies across a range of issues are a danger to the American people, and have literally killed them in higher numbers, as compared to the policies endorsed by the Democrats. This too is violence.
Donald Trump, other Republican and right-wing leaders, and their propaganda disinformation media routinely use stochastic terrorism to encourage violence by their public and followers against Democrats, liberals, progressives and other targeted groups.
Unlike in 2016, no one in America can pretend they were blindsided or surprised or somehow could not anticipate how the Republican Party would finally and fully embrace right-wing terrorism and fascism. The American people have had four years of real-world experience and education from the cruel tutelage provided by Donald Trump and his movement.
As I wrote on Twitter Saturday night, "When this gets very bad — and it will in ways most Americans and the hope peddlers in the news media are still in denial about — 'I didn't know' or 'I had no idea' will not save them. They have been warned for at least five years if not longer. They think you can hide from monsters."
If the American people do not embrace a new maturity about the enduring power of fascism and authoritarianism in America, Biden's presidency will prove to be no more than an interlude or brief respite in the Age of Trump, after which the trauma of Donald Trump's time in office will be viewed as the good old days, when compared to what comes later.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, reportedly told a woman on the street who asked about the kind of government chosen for the new country, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." More than 200 years later, the American people are being tested again. Will they be up to the task?
Too many Americans have convinced themselves that the Age of Trump is now over and his fascist movement vanquished — even though Biden has not been president for a month — and want to throw the last five years down the memory hole without doing the hard work of national reckoning, confrontation, justice and then, perhaps, eventual healing. To this point, my answer is no.
In total, the Republican Party has created a precedent that right-wing political violence and terrorism, including coups and other attempts to overthrow legal elections, are now acceptable in the United States — as long as they are perpetrated by Republicans and their allies against Democrats and others deemed to be "un-American."
This is the essence of fascism and authoritarianism. Such beliefs and values have broad support among Republican voters and other members of the right wing more generally.
Recent public opinion polling and other research shows that Trump Republicans believe that political violence is a reasonable tool for them to advance their goals. This all but guarantees that Trump's coup plot and attack on the Capitol are a blueprint to be followed by members of the white right across the country.
---
Contrary to what many of the hope-peddlers and professional centrists in the news media and elsewhere would like to believe, Trumpism and other forms of American fascism were not exiled by Joe Biden's election victory.
The Age of Trump is not over. Donald Trump will attempt to be a type of shadow president and kingmaker who controls the Republican Party and its public. The Age of Trump will also linger on through what counterterrorism experts warn may be years if not decades of violent right-wing insurgency and terror directed against liberals and progressives, nonwhite people, Muslims, Jews and other groups targeted as the enemy Other. The question is not whether there will be blood, but rather how much more blood will be spilt by Trump's followers and other right-wing extremists and paramilitaries.
In the same essay at CNN, Republican consultant Michael Madrid describes this woeful reality: "They have fed the monster for so long that even when it turns on them, when the barbarians are literally at the gate ... when they were the targets and they were prey, they still will not turn on it. That's how dangerous is the societal threat that we are facing."
The Republican Party's embrace of Trumpism and now full-on endorsement of right-wing violence and terrorism should not be a surprise. Trump's 2016 presidential victory and fake right-wing "populist" movement was fueled by white supremacy, nativism, and other forms of bigotry and hate. That is violence.
White Christian nationalists and right-wing evangelicals are among the most loyal and fanatical members of the American right and the Trump movement. As a group, these Christian fascists are committed to overturning secular democracy and making real their "end times" eschatological and apocalyptic fantasies. That is violence.
The Republican Party and the broader right have embraced gangster capitalism and its ethos that profits are more important than people. Their ideology is Dickensian and social Darwinist: the poor and other marginalized groups are surplus people who should be left to die if they cannot be "self-sufficient" and "productive." That is violence.
Public health experts have repeatedly shown that Republican policies across a range of issues are a danger to the American people, and have literally killed them in higher numbers, as compared to the policies endorsed by the Democrats. This too is violence.
Donald Trump, other Republican and right-wing leaders, and their propaganda disinformation media routinely use stochastic terrorism to encourage violence by their public and followers against Democrats, liberals, progressives and other targeted groups.
Unlike in 2016, no one in America can pretend they were blindsided or surprised or somehow could not anticipate how the Republican Party would finally and fully embrace right-wing terrorism and fascism. The American people have had four years of real-world experience and education from the cruel tutelage provided by Donald Trump and his movement.
As I wrote on Twitter Saturday night, "When this gets very bad — and it will in ways most Americans and the hope peddlers in the news media are still in denial about — 'I didn't know' or 'I had no idea' will not save them. They have been warned for at least five years if not longer. They think you can hide from monsters."
If the American people do not embrace a new maturity about the enduring power of fascism and authoritarianism in America, Biden's presidency will prove to be no more than an interlude or brief respite in the Age of Trump, after which the trauma of Donald Trump's time in office will be viewed as the good old days, when compared to what comes later.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, reportedly told a woman on the street who asked about the kind of government chosen for the new country, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." More than 200 years later, the American people are being tested again. Will they be up to the task?
Too many Americans have convinced themselves that the Age of Trump is now over and his fascist movement vanquished — even though Biden has not been president for a month — and want to throw the last five years down the memory hole without doing the hard work of national reckoning, confrontation, justice and then, perhaps, eventual healing. To this point, my answer is no.
Republicans considering more than 100 bills to restrict voting rights
Restrictions come on the heels of an election in which federal and state officials called it ‘the most secure in US history’
Sam Levine in New York - THE GUARDIAN
Thu 28 Jan 2021 10.00 EST
Happy Thursday,
After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.
There are currently 106 pending bills across 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. That’s a sharp increase from nearly a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive bills pending across 15 states.
Among the Brennan Center’s findings:
The restrictions come on the heels of an election in which there was record turnout and Democrat and Republican election officials alike said there was no evidence of widespread wrongdoing or fraud. There were recounts, audits and lawsuits across many states to back up those assurances. Federal and state officials called the election “the most secure in American history”.
Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, said the surge in anti-voting legislation was “countersensical” given that there were Republican and Democratic wins in key races across the country.
“The volume of anti-voter legislation is certainly revealing that a nerve was struck,” she told me. “There are certainly people who are sensitive to the idea of more progress … It ultimately comes down to an anxiety over the browning of America and people in power are afraid of losing their position.”
Attacking voting by mail
Many of the restrictions have to do with placing new barriers around voting by mail, a process that a record number of Americans used in 2020 (46% of Americans cast a mail-in ballot in 2020, compared with just 19% four years ago). In Arizona, a state that Joe Biden flipped, Republicans are weighing measures that would make it easier to remove voters from a permanent mail-in voting list and to require voters to get their ballots notarized. In Pennsylvania, there are proposals in the GOP-controlled legislature to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting and to make it easier to reject a ballot based on a signature mismatch – an unreliable way to confirm a voter’s identity.
And in Georgia, a state where Democrats won stunning upsets in the presidential race and two US Senate runoffs, Republicans are exploring whether to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and to require voters to submit a copy of their ID when they vote by mail. Again, this comes after an election in which there was record vote by mail turnout, and the state’s top election official, a Republican, loudly pushed back on accusations of fraud.
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, could veto GOP-restrictions. But in Georgia and Arizona, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
There are a host of other voting restrictions states are considering:
Also worth watching …Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow people convicted of a felony to vote while they are in prison, the Appeal reported. If adopted, Oregon would join Maine and Vermont as the only two states in the country that allow this, as well as the District of Columbia.
After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.
There are currently 106 pending bills across 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. That’s a sharp increase from nearly a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive bills pending across 15 states.
Among the Brennan Center’s findings:
- More than a third of the bills would place new restrictions on voting by mail
- Pennsylvania has 14 pending proposals for new voter restrictions, the most in the country. It’s followed by New Hampshire (11), Missouri (9), and Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas (8)
- There are seven bills across four states that would limit opportunities for election day registration
- There are also 406 bills that would expand voting access pending across 35 states, including in New York (56), Texas (53), New Jersey (37), Mississippi (39) and Missouri (21)
The restrictions come on the heels of an election in which there was record turnout and Democrat and Republican election officials alike said there was no evidence of widespread wrongdoing or fraud. There were recounts, audits and lawsuits across many states to back up those assurances. Federal and state officials called the election “the most secure in American history”.
Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, said the surge in anti-voting legislation was “countersensical” given that there were Republican and Democratic wins in key races across the country.
“The volume of anti-voter legislation is certainly revealing that a nerve was struck,” she told me. “There are certainly people who are sensitive to the idea of more progress … It ultimately comes down to an anxiety over the browning of America and people in power are afraid of losing their position.”
Attacking voting by mail
Many of the restrictions have to do with placing new barriers around voting by mail, a process that a record number of Americans used in 2020 (46% of Americans cast a mail-in ballot in 2020, compared with just 19% four years ago). In Arizona, a state that Joe Biden flipped, Republicans are weighing measures that would make it easier to remove voters from a permanent mail-in voting list and to require voters to get their ballots notarized. In Pennsylvania, there are proposals in the GOP-controlled legislature to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting and to make it easier to reject a ballot based on a signature mismatch – an unreliable way to confirm a voter’s identity.
And in Georgia, a state where Democrats won stunning upsets in the presidential race and two US Senate runoffs, Republicans are exploring whether to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and to require voters to submit a copy of their ID when they vote by mail. Again, this comes after an election in which there was record vote by mail turnout, and the state’s top election official, a Republican, loudly pushed back on accusations of fraud.
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, could veto GOP-restrictions. But in Georgia and Arizona, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
There are a host of other voting restrictions states are considering:
- Ten states are considering new voter ID requirements, including six states that do not currently require voters to present ID at the polls, according to the Brennan Center.
- Two states, Mississippi and New Hampshire, are considering placing new limits on the kinds of IDs that can be used.
Also worth watching …Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow people convicted of a felony to vote while they are in prison, the Appeal reported. If adopted, Oregon would join Maine and Vermont as the only two states in the country that allow this, as well as the District of Columbia.
The Republican Party Is Racist and Soulless. Just Ask This Veteran GOP Strategist.
Stuart Stevens says he now realizes the hatred and bigotry of Trumpism were always at the heart of the GOP.
DAVID CORN - MOTHER JONES
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 ISSUE
When Donald Trump decided to back-burner the coronavirus crisis and reboot his reelection campaign with superspreader events in June, he headed to an arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to present his case for four more years. In front of an audience of maskless fans standing side by side, Trump performed his usual routine. He threw out buzzwords (“law and order,” “left-wing radicals”). He boasted. (“I have done a phenomenal job” responding to the pandemic.) He denigrated his opponent as “Sleepy Joe.” He obsessed over personal grievances and slights, devoting much time to slamming news outlets that had recently shown video of him walking gingerly down a ramp after delivering a commencement address at West Point. What was mostly missing from Trump’s speech: ideas.
Although he referred to his tax cuts for the wealthy, his appointment of conservative judges, and his “beautiful” wall on the US-Mexico border, Trump had little to say about economic policy, national security, health care, education, housing, the environment, and other subjects. Moreover, he offered no agenda for a second term other than vague promises of making everything swell. Days later, during a friendly Fox News “town hall,” Sean Hannity asked Trump to spell out his plans for a second term. He replied by rambling on about his inauguration and attacking John Bolton.
All this was nothing new for Trump, who approaches the presidency more as performance artist than policymaker. But in the Oklahoma crowd were many unmasked Republican senators and House members, who clapped along and looked delighted to be props for The Trump Show. Once upon a time, Republican legislators and party leaders claimed they cared deeply about certain foundational issues—the deficit, family values, free trade, hawkish foreign policy. Now they were cheering a twice-divorced adulterer who had run up the federal debt, sloppily imposed tariffs, and embraced the anti-American autocrats leading Russia and North Korea—a man devoid of serious thought and guiding policy principles, a self-fixated candidate who presented no intellectual framework for his presidency. Had the GOP become the party of no ideas?
This seemed a premise worth exploring, so I thought I would check in with veteran Republicans who once were attracted to the party for its conservative ideals but who have become Trump critics. First on my list was Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. I should note that I feel a bit awkward when I talk with Stevens. Plenty of people have asserted that my exposé of the “47 percent” tape in 2012—remember Romney denigrating nearly half of Americans as freeloaders who want the government to take care of them?—played a part in his defeat. But Stevens has always been gracious when we have crossed paths. And this time was no exception. It turned out Stevens had much to say on the current state of his party. Actually, enough for an entire book.
Asked if the Republican Party in the Trump years has become an outfit free of governing ideas, Stevens went even further: “It was all a lie.” He noted that this was word-for-word the title of his forthcoming book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. The modern GOP, he said, never truly cared about the ideas it claimed to care about.
This was a stunning indictment coming from a longtime political consultant who had toiled on five Republican presidential campaigns and numerous Senate and gubernatorial races. “The Republican Party has been a cartel,” Stevens said excitedly. “And no one asks a cartel, ‘What’s your ideological purpose?’ You don’t ask OPEC, ‘What’s your ideology?’ You don’t ask a drug gang, ‘What’s your program?’ The Republicans exist for the pursuit of power for no purpose.”
He huffed that the Republican Party had not merely drifted away from its core positions, as sometimes occurs with political parties: “Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—we’re all against that now. You have to ask, ‘Does someone abandon deeply held beliefs in three or four years?’ No. It means you didn’t ever hold them.” He added: “I feel like a guy who was working for Bernie Madoff.”
Stevens, an erudite fellow who is also a novelist and a travel writer, has become an emblematic ex-Republican. He once believed in GOP ideals and ideas. Now he saw it all as a huge con. His new book is a confession and cri de coeur. The first line is blunt: “I have no one to blame but myself.” In these pages, Stevens self-flagellates, calling himself a “fool” for his decades of believing—and lying to himself—that the Republican Party was based on “a core set of values.” Acknowledging his role, Stevens writes, “So yes, blame me. Blame me when you look around and see a dysfunctional political system and a Republican Party that has gone insane.” The book offers one overarching prescription for the GOP: “Burn it to the ground and start over.”
In our conversation, Stevens exploded with loathing for the party he once faithfully (and lucratively) served. He rejected the common view that Trump had hijacked the GOP. No, he explained, the triumph of know-nothing Trumpism marked the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s “dark side” and its professed ideals. Even William F. Buckley Jr., often hailed as a grand public intellectual and the founding father of the modern conservative movement, was “a stone-cold racist” in the 1950s, Stevens pointed out. (Buckley at that time considered white people more “advanced” and more fit to govern.)
“A lot of us in the party liked to believe the dark side was a recessive gene, but it’s a dominant theme,” Stevens, a seventh-generation Mississippian who was named for Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart, told me. “And it’s all about race. The Republican Party is a white party and there still are more white people than non-white people.” So that is whom the party aims at—even if this will eventually be a losing proposition as the nation’s demographics continue to shift. Ronald Reagan achieved a landslide victory in 1980 by bagging 56 percent of white voters; 28 years later, John McCain lost with 55 percent of white voters. Perhaps the party’s fixation on white voters can work one more time with Trump in 2020. “But we’re talking about the Confederacy—literally,” Stevens said.
And Nazi Germany. On his own, with no prompting, Stevens went straight to the Defcon-1 analogy: “I tell my GOP friends, ‘It’s crazy to say it’s 1934 in Germany…when it’s clearly 1936.’” He insisted that the 1930s are important for understanding the current moment. “When there was rising anti-Semitism, isolationism, and pro-Nazi sentiment, why did the US not become fascist?” Stevens asked. “Because of FDR. Leaders matter, and the GOP has now completely abdicated its role.” Instead, the party has yielded completely to demagoguery and race-baiting to exploit the racism and resentments of certain white voters. Throughout his decades as a Republican, Stevens considered this racist element a bug in the system. He now realizes it has been a feature.
In 2012, Romney enthusiastically sought and accepted Trump’s endorsement, though Trump had been championing the racist birther conspiracy theory. But for Stevens, the decisive moment when the party embraced its ugly heritage came in December 2015, when Trump, then the leading Republican presidential candidate, called for a ban on Muslim travelers to the United States. As Stevens now sees it, Reince Priebus, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, should have declared that the GOP did not support such bigotry and staked out a moral position. Perhaps Trump would still have marched on to victory, but such a move might have distanced the party from a racist candidate. Instead, the party kept mum and eventually folded to Trump. (Romney would go on to be the only GOP senator to vote to remove Trump from office at the end of his impeachment trial.)
Stevens now argues that Trump’s rise was not a fluke that the party can sidestep or survive. “This is the complete moral collapse of a governing party of a major superpower,” he remarked. He wonders how he could have been blind to the GOP’s racism and turpitude for so long. “It is hard to see this when you’re in the middle of it,” he said. “The only analogy I can find is the collapse of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the difference between reality and what is believed became so disjointed. I should’ve seen this. I did see this, but I wanted to believe the crazies were a minority.”
Stevens conceded that had Trump not come along, he still might not have been fully aware of the structural immorality of the GOP: The Republican Party was “a comfortable place for a lot of us. If Trump had lost, I’d probably still be working for a Republican candidate. But Trump made it impossible to deny what the party is. I just don’t get why these Republican senators don’t stand up to him. What’s the worst thing? You’ll be an ex-senator? They are the Trump Generation. It’s how they will be remembered. Like the segregationists of old.”
It was hard to slow Stevens down as he spoke. He had so much to confess. He forecast a bleak future for the party. Citing the demise of the Republican Party in California (where more voters are now registering “no party preference” than Republican), he observed that the GOP was becoming a “regional/Sun Belt party.” And he shared his fear that young political operatives working for the party have drawn the lesson that a candidate must emulate Trump to win—that what most matters is not policy ideas but the ability to attack and exploit fears, divisions, tribalism, and resentments. “Elizabeth Warren can articulate a coherent theory of government,” Stevens said. “There is no coherent theory of government for Republicans right now. Usually a coherent theory versus an incoherent theory carries the day.”
“It’s really incredible how this had happened,” Stevens told me, as I realized I had received far more material from him than anticipated. “This is the last book in the world I wanted to write. It is tough to come to terms with this, and incredibly depressing. If we say we believe in personal responsibility, you have to take personal responsibility and start with yourself. We created this. It didn’t just happen.” Stevens was not pleased or satisfied with his epiphany: Ideas are not the currency for today’s GOP and never truly were. And Trump alone could not be blamed for that. “Republicans only exist to elect Republicans,” Stevens remarked with sadness. “They are down to one idea: How can we win?”
Although he referred to his tax cuts for the wealthy, his appointment of conservative judges, and his “beautiful” wall on the US-Mexico border, Trump had little to say about economic policy, national security, health care, education, housing, the environment, and other subjects. Moreover, he offered no agenda for a second term other than vague promises of making everything swell. Days later, during a friendly Fox News “town hall,” Sean Hannity asked Trump to spell out his plans for a second term. He replied by rambling on about his inauguration and attacking John Bolton.
All this was nothing new for Trump, who approaches the presidency more as performance artist than policymaker. But in the Oklahoma crowd were many unmasked Republican senators and House members, who clapped along and looked delighted to be props for The Trump Show. Once upon a time, Republican legislators and party leaders claimed they cared deeply about certain foundational issues—the deficit, family values, free trade, hawkish foreign policy. Now they were cheering a twice-divorced adulterer who had run up the federal debt, sloppily imposed tariffs, and embraced the anti-American autocrats leading Russia and North Korea—a man devoid of serious thought and guiding policy principles, a self-fixated candidate who presented no intellectual framework for his presidency. Had the GOP become the party of no ideas?
This seemed a premise worth exploring, so I thought I would check in with veteran Republicans who once were attracted to the party for its conservative ideals but who have become Trump critics. First on my list was Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. I should note that I feel a bit awkward when I talk with Stevens. Plenty of people have asserted that my exposé of the “47 percent” tape in 2012—remember Romney denigrating nearly half of Americans as freeloaders who want the government to take care of them?—played a part in his defeat. But Stevens has always been gracious when we have crossed paths. And this time was no exception. It turned out Stevens had much to say on the current state of his party. Actually, enough for an entire book.
Asked if the Republican Party in the Trump years has become an outfit free of governing ideas, Stevens went even further: “It was all a lie.” He noted that this was word-for-word the title of his forthcoming book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. The modern GOP, he said, never truly cared about the ideas it claimed to care about.
This was a stunning indictment coming from a longtime political consultant who had toiled on five Republican presidential campaigns and numerous Senate and gubernatorial races. “The Republican Party has been a cartel,” Stevens said excitedly. “And no one asks a cartel, ‘What’s your ideological purpose?’ You don’t ask OPEC, ‘What’s your ideology?’ You don’t ask a drug gang, ‘What’s your program?’ The Republicans exist for the pursuit of power for no purpose.”
He huffed that the Republican Party had not merely drifted away from its core positions, as sometimes occurs with political parties: “Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—we’re all against that now. You have to ask, ‘Does someone abandon deeply held beliefs in three or four years?’ No. It means you didn’t ever hold them.” He added: “I feel like a guy who was working for Bernie Madoff.”
Stevens, an erudite fellow who is also a novelist and a travel writer, has become an emblematic ex-Republican. He once believed in GOP ideals and ideas. Now he saw it all as a huge con. His new book is a confession and cri de coeur. The first line is blunt: “I have no one to blame but myself.” In these pages, Stevens self-flagellates, calling himself a “fool” for his decades of believing—and lying to himself—that the Republican Party was based on “a core set of values.” Acknowledging his role, Stevens writes, “So yes, blame me. Blame me when you look around and see a dysfunctional political system and a Republican Party that has gone insane.” The book offers one overarching prescription for the GOP: “Burn it to the ground and start over.”
In our conversation, Stevens exploded with loathing for the party he once faithfully (and lucratively) served. He rejected the common view that Trump had hijacked the GOP. No, he explained, the triumph of know-nothing Trumpism marked the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s “dark side” and its professed ideals. Even William F. Buckley Jr., often hailed as a grand public intellectual and the founding father of the modern conservative movement, was “a stone-cold racist” in the 1950s, Stevens pointed out. (Buckley at that time considered white people more “advanced” and more fit to govern.)
“A lot of us in the party liked to believe the dark side was a recessive gene, but it’s a dominant theme,” Stevens, a seventh-generation Mississippian who was named for Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart, told me. “And it’s all about race. The Republican Party is a white party and there still are more white people than non-white people.” So that is whom the party aims at—even if this will eventually be a losing proposition as the nation’s demographics continue to shift. Ronald Reagan achieved a landslide victory in 1980 by bagging 56 percent of white voters; 28 years later, John McCain lost with 55 percent of white voters. Perhaps the party’s fixation on white voters can work one more time with Trump in 2020. “But we’re talking about the Confederacy—literally,” Stevens said.
And Nazi Germany. On his own, with no prompting, Stevens went straight to the Defcon-1 analogy: “I tell my GOP friends, ‘It’s crazy to say it’s 1934 in Germany…when it’s clearly 1936.’” He insisted that the 1930s are important for understanding the current moment. “When there was rising anti-Semitism, isolationism, and pro-Nazi sentiment, why did the US not become fascist?” Stevens asked. “Because of FDR. Leaders matter, and the GOP has now completely abdicated its role.” Instead, the party has yielded completely to demagoguery and race-baiting to exploit the racism and resentments of certain white voters. Throughout his decades as a Republican, Stevens considered this racist element a bug in the system. He now realizes it has been a feature.
In 2012, Romney enthusiastically sought and accepted Trump’s endorsement, though Trump had been championing the racist birther conspiracy theory. But for Stevens, the decisive moment when the party embraced its ugly heritage came in December 2015, when Trump, then the leading Republican presidential candidate, called for a ban on Muslim travelers to the United States. As Stevens now sees it, Reince Priebus, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, should have declared that the GOP did not support such bigotry and staked out a moral position. Perhaps Trump would still have marched on to victory, but such a move might have distanced the party from a racist candidate. Instead, the party kept mum and eventually folded to Trump. (Romney would go on to be the only GOP senator to vote to remove Trump from office at the end of his impeachment trial.)
Stevens now argues that Trump’s rise was not a fluke that the party can sidestep or survive. “This is the complete moral collapse of a governing party of a major superpower,” he remarked. He wonders how he could have been blind to the GOP’s racism and turpitude for so long. “It is hard to see this when you’re in the middle of it,” he said. “The only analogy I can find is the collapse of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the difference between reality and what is believed became so disjointed. I should’ve seen this. I did see this, but I wanted to believe the crazies were a minority.”
Stevens conceded that had Trump not come along, he still might not have been fully aware of the structural immorality of the GOP: The Republican Party was “a comfortable place for a lot of us. If Trump had lost, I’d probably still be working for a Republican candidate. But Trump made it impossible to deny what the party is. I just don’t get why these Republican senators don’t stand up to him. What’s the worst thing? You’ll be an ex-senator? They are the Trump Generation. It’s how they will be remembered. Like the segregationists of old.”
It was hard to slow Stevens down as he spoke. He had so much to confess. He forecast a bleak future for the party. Citing the demise of the Republican Party in California (where more voters are now registering “no party preference” than Republican), he observed that the GOP was becoming a “regional/Sun Belt party.” And he shared his fear that young political operatives working for the party have drawn the lesson that a candidate must emulate Trump to win—that what most matters is not policy ideas but the ability to attack and exploit fears, divisions, tribalism, and resentments. “Elizabeth Warren can articulate a coherent theory of government,” Stevens said. “There is no coherent theory of government for Republicans right now. Usually a coherent theory versus an incoherent theory carries the day.”
“It’s really incredible how this had happened,” Stevens told me, as I realized I had received far more material from him than anticipated. “This is the last book in the world I wanted to write. It is tough to come to terms with this, and incredibly depressing. If we say we believe in personal responsibility, you have to take personal responsibility and start with yourself. We created this. It didn’t just happen.” Stevens was not pleased or satisfied with his epiphany: Ideas are not the currency for today’s GOP and never truly were. And Trump alone could not be blamed for that. “Republicans only exist to elect Republicans,” Stevens remarked with sadness. “They are down to one idea: How can we win?”
PICK A TRAITOR!!!
OP-ED POLITICS & ELECTIONS
Mitch McConnell Is Sacrificing the Entire Economy to Impede Biden Administration
BY William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
PUBLISHED November 16, 2020
Unless something truly extraordinary intervenes, we are on the cusp of what could become the worst winter in living memory. There are 166 days standing between us and a time when most of the country will be back into something akin to warm weather. The remainder of November, followed by December, January, February, March and April, almost 24 weeks of the long, cold dark and the menace of COVID-19, will be the collective fate of much of the country.
“In earlier surges, infections were concentrated in cities such as New York and Chicago, or populous states like Florida and Texas,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Many of the outbreaks then were linked to travelers returning from overseas or so-called superspreading events such as conferences, weddings and rallies. Now, it is everywhere. People are becoming infected not just at big gatherings, but when they let their guard down, such as by not wearing a mask, while going about their daily routines or in smaller social settings that they thought of as safe — often among their own families or trusted friends.”
The COVID pandemic is worse right now than it has ever been, worse by huge and horrifying numbers. Fewer people have been dying because the medical professionals who began this fight wearing trash bags (because … Trump) have, in the intervening months, amassed a compendium of battlefield knowledge they lacked in March. The death counts are back to over 1,000 a day now, however, and with nearly 200,000 new infections expected each day in the next few weeks, the morgues may be lined with refrigeration trucks in big cities and small towns around the country soon enough.
Doctors are quitting, as are some nurses — the titanium backbone of this discombobulated national health care “system.” Many health care professionals are getting sick as this surge overwhelms hospitals again — and again, this is only the beginning of winter. Even doctors in private practice, far from the mayhem of the emergency room, are hanging up their spurs.
We all know why we’re here.
We’re here, in large part, because of a “president” who has minimized this crisis from the beginning, and in the howling center of this new crescendo, cares only to tweet “I WON THE ELECTION!” from the depths of his own midnight.
We are here because of people like Donald Trump’s favorite COVID “expert,” Scott Atlas, who pushes the slow genocide of “herd immunity” while telling states like Michigan to “rise up” against necessary health strictures. The fact that basic precautions have been recast as an affront to liberty, and that people in positions of responsibility are choosing to grandstand on this brazen lie with lives on the line, is how countries collapse from within.
We are here because Trump’s zoo of captive Midwest officials and those who follow them continue to fall over themselves trying to outdo the deadly folly of the other, even as those states suffer the hardest hit from this latest spike… and it is a spike, my friends. By most interpretations, including that of national COVID expert Anthony Fauci, this is still the first wave; it arrived and never ended, because people like those Midwest officials won’t allow it to, because Trump.
And we are here because a large portion of the country has been hypnotized by this rogue-duck president and his ersatz promises of greatness. Too many people squat within their cozy information bubble, listening to the bombastic lies from Fox News and reading the bleakest conspiracy gibberish at Breitbart. Too many people think they’re heroes because the radio tells them they’re patriots for not wearing a mask. Pushing back may feel empowering, until you’ve pushed us all over a cliff.
This is allegedly a nation of rugged individualists. Well, rugged individualists should take responsibility for themselves and their actions. When this thing is over — and it will be, someday — a few million people are going to have to walk on a road of bones before confronting the face they see in the mirror. I envy them not.
At this juncture, however, the only person perhaps as worthy of purest loathing as Trump is his chief enabler, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “If Donald Trump is the Devil waiting at that moonlit crossroads to tune our guitar at the cost of our souls,” I wrote almost two years ago, “Mitch McConnell drove him there and paid for the gas.”
Millions of people remain out of work today. The effect of the first and only stimulus package McConnell allowed for a vote has all but dissipated. Those unemployed millions face the termination of their unemployment insurance at the end of the year, just when the eviction moratorium is set to expire.
When this COVID spike reaches its apex, the country may well be forced into another full shutdown. If McConnell and the Senate do not pass a robust aid package, the economic cost will be unimaginable. Restaurants currently praying for the snow to hold off so their lifeline of outside seating can continue may well be broomed off the sidewalk when the hammer falls, and thousands of other businesses that cannot operate without customers will disappear.
The answer for this is not to pretend it isn’t happening and stack corpses before the altar of can’t-stop capitalism. The answer is for McConnell to allow a large stimulus package to the floor for a vote, one that protects essential workers at places like grocery stores who will be risking their lives so Mitch can have strawberries with his breakfast. The answer is to offer financial protections to the sectors of the populace, including both individuals and businesses, that have been most brutally affected by the pandemic.
McConnell can do this, and he can do it today. The “lame duck” session of Congress has officially begun, and there isn’t a blessed thing on Earth keeping Mitch McConnell from helping his country… except Mitch McConnell, who needs to keep the GOP base fired up so the Georgia runoffs break his way, which means coddling the crossfire hurricane in the Oval Office, which means perpetuating all the fictions that sustain this administration, which means no stimulus, because obviously we don’t need one, right?
Besides, trashing the economy before January 20 will mean Joe Biden’s administration will be buried to the neck before they get through the door, and that’s what matters to Mitch. That’s all that matters.
“In earlier surges, infections were concentrated in cities such as New York and Chicago, or populous states like Florida and Texas,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Many of the outbreaks then were linked to travelers returning from overseas or so-called superspreading events such as conferences, weddings and rallies. Now, it is everywhere. People are becoming infected not just at big gatherings, but when they let their guard down, such as by not wearing a mask, while going about their daily routines or in smaller social settings that they thought of as safe — often among their own families or trusted friends.”
The COVID pandemic is worse right now than it has ever been, worse by huge and horrifying numbers. Fewer people have been dying because the medical professionals who began this fight wearing trash bags (because … Trump) have, in the intervening months, amassed a compendium of battlefield knowledge they lacked in March. The death counts are back to over 1,000 a day now, however, and with nearly 200,000 new infections expected each day in the next few weeks, the morgues may be lined with refrigeration trucks in big cities and small towns around the country soon enough.
Doctors are quitting, as are some nurses — the titanium backbone of this discombobulated national health care “system.” Many health care professionals are getting sick as this surge overwhelms hospitals again — and again, this is only the beginning of winter. Even doctors in private practice, far from the mayhem of the emergency room, are hanging up their spurs.
We all know why we’re here.
We’re here, in large part, because of a “president” who has minimized this crisis from the beginning, and in the howling center of this new crescendo, cares only to tweet “I WON THE ELECTION!” from the depths of his own midnight.
We are here because of people like Donald Trump’s favorite COVID “expert,” Scott Atlas, who pushes the slow genocide of “herd immunity” while telling states like Michigan to “rise up” against necessary health strictures. The fact that basic precautions have been recast as an affront to liberty, and that people in positions of responsibility are choosing to grandstand on this brazen lie with lives on the line, is how countries collapse from within.
We are here because Trump’s zoo of captive Midwest officials and those who follow them continue to fall over themselves trying to outdo the deadly folly of the other, even as those states suffer the hardest hit from this latest spike… and it is a spike, my friends. By most interpretations, including that of national COVID expert Anthony Fauci, this is still the first wave; it arrived and never ended, because people like those Midwest officials won’t allow it to, because Trump.
And we are here because a large portion of the country has been hypnotized by this rogue-duck president and his ersatz promises of greatness. Too many people squat within their cozy information bubble, listening to the bombastic lies from Fox News and reading the bleakest conspiracy gibberish at Breitbart. Too many people think they’re heroes because the radio tells them they’re patriots for not wearing a mask. Pushing back may feel empowering, until you’ve pushed us all over a cliff.
This is allegedly a nation of rugged individualists. Well, rugged individualists should take responsibility for themselves and their actions. When this thing is over — and it will be, someday — a few million people are going to have to walk on a road of bones before confronting the face they see in the mirror. I envy them not.
At this juncture, however, the only person perhaps as worthy of purest loathing as Trump is his chief enabler, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “If Donald Trump is the Devil waiting at that moonlit crossroads to tune our guitar at the cost of our souls,” I wrote almost two years ago, “Mitch McConnell drove him there and paid for the gas.”
Millions of people remain out of work today. The effect of the first and only stimulus package McConnell allowed for a vote has all but dissipated. Those unemployed millions face the termination of their unemployment insurance at the end of the year, just when the eviction moratorium is set to expire.
When this COVID spike reaches its apex, the country may well be forced into another full shutdown. If McConnell and the Senate do not pass a robust aid package, the economic cost will be unimaginable. Restaurants currently praying for the snow to hold off so their lifeline of outside seating can continue may well be broomed off the sidewalk when the hammer falls, and thousands of other businesses that cannot operate without customers will disappear.
The answer for this is not to pretend it isn’t happening and stack corpses before the altar of can’t-stop capitalism. The answer is for McConnell to allow a large stimulus package to the floor for a vote, one that protects essential workers at places like grocery stores who will be risking their lives so Mitch can have strawberries with his breakfast. The answer is to offer financial protections to the sectors of the populace, including both individuals and businesses, that have been most brutally affected by the pandemic.
McConnell can do this, and he can do it today. The “lame duck” session of Congress has officially begun, and there isn’t a blessed thing on Earth keeping Mitch McConnell from helping his country… except Mitch McConnell, who needs to keep the GOP base fired up so the Georgia runoffs break his way, which means coddling the crossfire hurricane in the Oval Office, which means perpetuating all the fictions that sustain this administration, which means no stimulus, because obviously we don’t need one, right?
Besides, trashing the economy before January 20 will mean Joe Biden’s administration will be buried to the neck before they get through the door, and that’s what matters to Mitch. That’s all that matters.
no surprise!!!
Steve Daines got influx of cash after vote to extend an investor visa program “rampant” with fraud
Montana GOP senator met with investor and visa proponent at private resort — then his vote made donations flow
IGOR DERYSH
Republicans have attacked Montana Gov. Steve Bullock for encouraging Chinese investment in his state even though Sen. Steve Daines, a GOP incumbent, voted to reauthorize a visa program that had been criticized for "rampant" fraud.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently released an ad alleging that Bullock, who is challenging Daines in a neck-and-neck race that could decide control of the Senate, has a "dangerous relationship" with China because he urged investment in Montana under the EB-5 visa program, which provides visas to immigrants who invest at least $500,000 in the United States.
The video in the ad was first reported by National Review, which noted that Bullock has called for reforms to the program. The report also noted that the top beneficiary of the fraud-plagued program in Montana has been the Yellowstone Club, a resort in Big Sky, Montana, whose owner has donated to Bullock and where the governor has hosted fundraisers.
The article added that the top executive at CrossHarbor Capital Partners, which owns the club, also donated to Daines, who "has not co-sponsored legislation" that would implement reforms to the program. Investor Brian Su, who advocates for EB-5 visas, donated tens of thousands to Daines and other Republicans after Daines voted to extend the program without any reforms to address potential fraud.
Daines reportedly met with Su, a major Republican donor, at the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners before voting for the extension. He received an influx of donations from the company's executives two days after the vote.
Daines, who has extensive ties to China, and then-Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who later served as President Trump's Interior secretary, met with Su at the Yellowstone Club in 2016 to court Chinese investment in Montana. They promised to provide investors with maximum support and assistance, according to a translation of an article published in the Chinese media outlet Chuansongme.
Su is the founder of the Artisan Business Group, which helps Chinese investors establish relationships in the U.S., and is a "leading authority on EB-5 marketing and promotion." Su visited the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, according to Chuansongme.
Su donated $3,000 to Daines' Big Sky Committee around the time of the meeting, the only individual contribution on the committee's September 2016 Federal Election Commission report. Su has donated $6,500 to Daines' campaign, leadership PAC and super PAC since 2016. He has also donated $10,000 to the Montana Republican Party and more than $59,000 to the NRSC and Republican candidates and political committees.
Su did not respond to questions from Salon.
In September 2016, Daines voted in favor of a spending bill that included an extension of the EB-5 Regional Center Program without any reforms.
Daines voted for the bill despite bipartisan opposition from Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who were opposed because the measure failed to implement necessary changes to a program described as "rampant" with fraud. The senators sent a letter to Senate leaders citing "fraud, securities violations, money laundering, investor exploitation and failed projects as evidence of the need for reforms."
Executives at CrossHarbor Capital Partners and their spouses donated nearly $19,000 to Daines on Sept. 30, two days after the bill passed. William Kremer, the company's co-founder and managing partner, donated $5,400 to Daines' campaign. Tracey Byrne, the wife of co-founder Sam Byrne, donated $5,400 as well. Matthew Kidd, the company's managing director, and his wife Sheena donated another $5,400 to Daines' campaign. Jay Hart, another managing partner, donated $2,500. The executives and spouses have donated a total of $32,000 to the Zinke Daines Victory Account. None of those people, it appears, had donated to Daines before he voted for the bill.
Daines' campaign did not respond to questions from Salon.
"Steve Daines has made pay-to-play his trademark in Congress. Instead of focusing on helping his constituents during a pandemic, Daines uses his office to reward his friends and wealthy donors," Zach Hudson, a spokesman for the Democratic PAC American Bridge, said in a statement to Salon. "Montana families are sick and tired of crooked politicians like Steve Daines doling out favors to the highest bidder."
RELATED: IN KEY ELECTION FOR CLIMATE, SEN. STEVE DAINES DECEIVES MONTANA ON HIS PUBLIC LANDS RECORD
As the climate crisis transforms Montana, the incumbent Republican senator is greenwashing his record.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently released an ad alleging that Bullock, who is challenging Daines in a neck-and-neck race that could decide control of the Senate, has a "dangerous relationship" with China because he urged investment in Montana under the EB-5 visa program, which provides visas to immigrants who invest at least $500,000 in the United States.
The video in the ad was first reported by National Review, which noted that Bullock has called for reforms to the program. The report also noted that the top beneficiary of the fraud-plagued program in Montana has been the Yellowstone Club, a resort in Big Sky, Montana, whose owner has donated to Bullock and where the governor has hosted fundraisers.
The article added that the top executive at CrossHarbor Capital Partners, which owns the club, also donated to Daines, who "has not co-sponsored legislation" that would implement reforms to the program. Investor Brian Su, who advocates for EB-5 visas, donated tens of thousands to Daines and other Republicans after Daines voted to extend the program without any reforms to address potential fraud.
Daines reportedly met with Su, a major Republican donor, at the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners before voting for the extension. He received an influx of donations from the company's executives two days after the vote.
Daines, who has extensive ties to China, and then-Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who later served as President Trump's Interior secretary, met with Su at the Yellowstone Club in 2016 to court Chinese investment in Montana. They promised to provide investors with maximum support and assistance, according to a translation of an article published in the Chinese media outlet Chuansongme.
Su is the founder of the Artisan Business Group, which helps Chinese investors establish relationships in the U.S., and is a "leading authority on EB-5 marketing and promotion." Su visited the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, according to Chuansongme.
Su donated $3,000 to Daines' Big Sky Committee around the time of the meeting, the only individual contribution on the committee's September 2016 Federal Election Commission report. Su has donated $6,500 to Daines' campaign, leadership PAC and super PAC since 2016. He has also donated $10,000 to the Montana Republican Party and more than $59,000 to the NRSC and Republican candidates and political committees.
Su did not respond to questions from Salon.
In September 2016, Daines voted in favor of a spending bill that included an extension of the EB-5 Regional Center Program without any reforms.
Daines voted for the bill despite bipartisan opposition from Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who were opposed because the measure failed to implement necessary changes to a program described as "rampant" with fraud. The senators sent a letter to Senate leaders citing "fraud, securities violations, money laundering, investor exploitation and failed projects as evidence of the need for reforms."
Executives at CrossHarbor Capital Partners and their spouses donated nearly $19,000 to Daines on Sept. 30, two days after the bill passed. William Kremer, the company's co-founder and managing partner, donated $5,400 to Daines' campaign. Tracey Byrne, the wife of co-founder Sam Byrne, donated $5,400 as well. Matthew Kidd, the company's managing director, and his wife Sheena donated another $5,400 to Daines' campaign. Jay Hart, another managing partner, donated $2,500. The executives and spouses have donated a total of $32,000 to the Zinke Daines Victory Account. None of those people, it appears, had donated to Daines before he voted for the bill.
Daines' campaign did not respond to questions from Salon.
"Steve Daines has made pay-to-play his trademark in Congress. Instead of focusing on helping his constituents during a pandemic, Daines uses his office to reward his friends and wealthy donors," Zach Hudson, a spokesman for the Democratic PAC American Bridge, said in a statement to Salon. "Montana families are sick and tired of crooked politicians like Steve Daines doling out favors to the highest bidder."
RELATED: IN KEY ELECTION FOR CLIMATE, SEN. STEVE DAINES DECEIVES MONTANA ON HIS PUBLIC LANDS RECORD
As the climate crisis transforms Montana, the incumbent Republican senator is greenwashing his record.
Why the GOP swallows virus denialism
How anti-choice propaganda trained Republicans to accept Trump's coronavirus denialism
Trump's new medical adviser peddles a familiar model of deceit: Wrap lies and right-wing ideology in a lab coat
AMANDA MARCOTTE - salon
9/2/2020
Donald Trump didn't like what the experts were telling him about the coronavirus pandemic, so he found a guy with "Dr." in front of his name who will tell the president the bedtime stories he wants to hear. Dr. Scott Atlas isn't an expert in infectious disease or epidemiology, as are coronavirus task force advisers Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he has pretty much usurped. Atlas is a radiologist and, more importantly, a senior fellow at the far-right bad-idea incubator known as the Hoover Institution (previously home to the infamous prediction that the U.S. death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic would be around 5,000).
According to the New York Times and the Washington Post, Atlas — who apparently caught Trump's eye the way so many of his advisers do, by peddling BS on Fox News — is ready and willing to say all sorts of medically unsound things that just happen to align with everything Trump wants to believe about the coronavirus. So Atlas has risen rapidly as a power player and is reportedly even getting venerable institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to echo his unscientific beliefs.
Atlas has questioned whether wearing face masks slows viral spread (it does) and pushed for the CDC to change its recommendation on coronavirus testing to cover only people with symptoms, even though the science clearly shows that asymptomatic people are spreading the disease — and may indeed be a principal vector for spread.
Perhaps most distressingly, Atlas is reportedly behind Trump's new enthusiasm for "herd immunity," which is the latest euphemism for a non-policy letting the coronavirus run rampant, like a nationwide chicken pox party. Actual scientific experts in disease are uniformly against this idea, because it would dramatically raise the death rate and likely wouldn't restore the economy anytime soon, as huge percentages of the population would continue to stay home rather than be part of President Bleach-Injector's deadly science experiment.
For pro-choice activists and reproductive health experts, Trump's embrace of a quack in a lab coat is feeling all too familiar. This strategy of putting lies and misinformation in the mouths of people who have an "MD" after their name has been standard practice for the anti-choice movement for decades. This has allowed anti-choice activists to push for policies that harmed public health, especially women's health, while pretending they were doing it in the name of science. The George W. Bush administration, in particular, was fond of using doctors who shamelessly used their medical authority as cover to advocate for harmful ideas with little or no scientific basis.
This strategy, as well as those employed to push misinformation about climate science, helped train Republican politicians and conservative voters in the skills being currently used to muddy the waters around the science of the coronavirus pandemic. The result is that more than 6 million Americans are infected and nearly 185,000 have died, and that number is likely to continue growing at an alarming rate, especially as Trump now has a doctor to hide behind when justifying his hostility to public health.
Bush had a nasty habit of hiring doctors who were eager to use their credentials to justify their promotion of anti-choice propaganda. One of his FDA appointees, Dr. David Hager, was a gynecologist but more importantly a Christian conservative who rarely hesitated to make false claims that depicted both abortion and contraception, which have robust safety records, as medically dangerous. Hager advocated against making emergency contraception available over the counter, falsely implying that doing so posed a threat to the health of teenage girls. Even though the majority of FDA experts disagreed with Hager, the Bush administration blocked the policy based on his opinion.
It later emerged that Hager's ex-wife, Linda Davis, had accused him of abusive behavior during their marriage, alleging that he withheld money unless she had sex with him and giving her sleeping pills so he could sodomize her without consent. Hager is still a popular talking head on the religious right, advocating for using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to forcibly cancel women's abortions.
Under the Obama administration, emergency contraception became legal over the counter, without age restrictions. And there has been no measurable effect on the health of women or teenage girls, unless you count the record low rates of teen pregnancy, which are directly attributable to expanded contraception access under Obama.
Another precursor to Atlas is Dr. Eric Keroack, a Bush appointee to oversee a contraception program in Health and Human Services, who was hired because he opposed contraception use. Like Hager, Keroack was happy to leverage his medical degree to put a scientific gloss on misogynist misinformation. He went so far as to claim that women who have premarital sex become physically incapable of experiencing love and bonding in marriage.
Even Trump's reported manipulation of CDC recommendations to reflect his hostility to virus testing has a precursor with the Bush-era war on sexual health care. Under Bush, the CDC altered information on its website about condom use to mislead readers into believing that condoms weren't effective at preventing sexually transmitted infection transmission.
Beyond just the Bush years, the anti-choice movement in general has a long-standing habit of promoting doctors who will shamefully ignore medical science in order to present their anti-choice and anti-woman views as "science." They even form organizations, like the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that will use the auspices of medical science to create the illusion that there's merit to anti-choice myths such as the claim that abortion causes breast cancer (it doesn't), that abortion causes mental illness (it doesn't) or that abortion is more dangerous than childbirth (it's about 14 times safer).
Trump's coronavirus denialism is spreading past the White House and into the Senate. Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa echoed a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory accusing doctors and hospitals of exaggerating the number of coronavirus cases and deaths, claiming that clinics profit from falsifying that data.
"These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they're doing?" Ernst said.
In reality, medical researchers believe that coronavirus cases are being undercounted, due to lack of testing.
This conspiracy theory also has a precursor in the anti-choice movement: The false claim doctors lie about the effectiveness of contraception in order to trick women into having sex and getting pregnant, so they can get that sweet, sweet abortion money.
This conspiracy theory was endorsed by Bush's HHS appointee Keroack, who ran a "crisis pregnancy center" that claimed birth control "actually increases (rather than decreases) out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion." That myth has since become hardened into common wisdom in the anti-choice world. Abby Johnson, the anti-choice speaker at the Republican National Convention, has repeatedly claimed that contraception access increases the abortion rate by lulling women into believing we "could separate sex from procreation."
It's no surprise that Republican voters so readily sign onto Trump's obvious attempts to spread misinformation about the coronavirus by dressing it up as "science." They've had decades of practice of choosing to believe fake medical science, which is all too often peddled by doctors who should know better. As the Queen in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" astutely observed, the trick in learning to believing impossible things is simply practice.
According to the New York Times and the Washington Post, Atlas — who apparently caught Trump's eye the way so many of his advisers do, by peddling BS on Fox News — is ready and willing to say all sorts of medically unsound things that just happen to align with everything Trump wants to believe about the coronavirus. So Atlas has risen rapidly as a power player and is reportedly even getting venerable institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to echo his unscientific beliefs.
Atlas has questioned whether wearing face masks slows viral spread (it does) and pushed for the CDC to change its recommendation on coronavirus testing to cover only people with symptoms, even though the science clearly shows that asymptomatic people are spreading the disease — and may indeed be a principal vector for spread.
Perhaps most distressingly, Atlas is reportedly behind Trump's new enthusiasm for "herd immunity," which is the latest euphemism for a non-policy letting the coronavirus run rampant, like a nationwide chicken pox party. Actual scientific experts in disease are uniformly against this idea, because it would dramatically raise the death rate and likely wouldn't restore the economy anytime soon, as huge percentages of the population would continue to stay home rather than be part of President Bleach-Injector's deadly science experiment.
For pro-choice activists and reproductive health experts, Trump's embrace of a quack in a lab coat is feeling all too familiar. This strategy of putting lies and misinformation in the mouths of people who have an "MD" after their name has been standard practice for the anti-choice movement for decades. This has allowed anti-choice activists to push for policies that harmed public health, especially women's health, while pretending they were doing it in the name of science. The George W. Bush administration, in particular, was fond of using doctors who shamelessly used their medical authority as cover to advocate for harmful ideas with little or no scientific basis.
This strategy, as well as those employed to push misinformation about climate science, helped train Republican politicians and conservative voters in the skills being currently used to muddy the waters around the science of the coronavirus pandemic. The result is that more than 6 million Americans are infected and nearly 185,000 have died, and that number is likely to continue growing at an alarming rate, especially as Trump now has a doctor to hide behind when justifying his hostility to public health.
Bush had a nasty habit of hiring doctors who were eager to use their credentials to justify their promotion of anti-choice propaganda. One of his FDA appointees, Dr. David Hager, was a gynecologist but more importantly a Christian conservative who rarely hesitated to make false claims that depicted both abortion and contraception, which have robust safety records, as medically dangerous. Hager advocated against making emergency contraception available over the counter, falsely implying that doing so posed a threat to the health of teenage girls. Even though the majority of FDA experts disagreed with Hager, the Bush administration blocked the policy based on his opinion.
It later emerged that Hager's ex-wife, Linda Davis, had accused him of abusive behavior during their marriage, alleging that he withheld money unless she had sex with him and giving her sleeping pills so he could sodomize her without consent. Hager is still a popular talking head on the religious right, advocating for using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to forcibly cancel women's abortions.
Under the Obama administration, emergency contraception became legal over the counter, without age restrictions. And there has been no measurable effect on the health of women or teenage girls, unless you count the record low rates of teen pregnancy, which are directly attributable to expanded contraception access under Obama.
Another precursor to Atlas is Dr. Eric Keroack, a Bush appointee to oversee a contraception program in Health and Human Services, who was hired because he opposed contraception use. Like Hager, Keroack was happy to leverage his medical degree to put a scientific gloss on misogynist misinformation. He went so far as to claim that women who have premarital sex become physically incapable of experiencing love and bonding in marriage.
Even Trump's reported manipulation of CDC recommendations to reflect his hostility to virus testing has a precursor with the Bush-era war on sexual health care. Under Bush, the CDC altered information on its website about condom use to mislead readers into believing that condoms weren't effective at preventing sexually transmitted infection transmission.
Beyond just the Bush years, the anti-choice movement in general has a long-standing habit of promoting doctors who will shamefully ignore medical science in order to present their anti-choice and anti-woman views as "science." They even form organizations, like the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that will use the auspices of medical science to create the illusion that there's merit to anti-choice myths such as the claim that abortion causes breast cancer (it doesn't), that abortion causes mental illness (it doesn't) or that abortion is more dangerous than childbirth (it's about 14 times safer).
Trump's coronavirus denialism is spreading past the White House and into the Senate. Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa echoed a QAnon-linked conspiracy theory accusing doctors and hospitals of exaggerating the number of coronavirus cases and deaths, claiming that clinics profit from falsifying that data.
"These health-care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they're doing?" Ernst said.
In reality, medical researchers believe that coronavirus cases are being undercounted, due to lack of testing.
This conspiracy theory also has a precursor in the anti-choice movement: The false claim doctors lie about the effectiveness of contraception in order to trick women into having sex and getting pregnant, so they can get that sweet, sweet abortion money.
This conspiracy theory was endorsed by Bush's HHS appointee Keroack, who ran a "crisis pregnancy center" that claimed birth control "actually increases (rather than decreases) out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion." That myth has since become hardened into common wisdom in the anti-choice world. Abby Johnson, the anti-choice speaker at the Republican National Convention, has repeatedly claimed that contraception access increases the abortion rate by lulling women into believing we "could separate sex from procreation."
It's no surprise that Republican voters so readily sign onto Trump's obvious attempts to spread misinformation about the coronavirus by dressing it up as "science." They've had decades of practice of choosing to believe fake medical science, which is all too often peddled by doctors who should know better. As the Queen in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" astutely observed, the trick in learning to believing impossible things is simply practice.
'Mind-bogglingly irresponsible': meet the Republican donors helping QAnon reach Congress
Marjorie Taylor Greene received donations from groups tied to Donald Trump’s chief of staff and several party mega-donors, filings show
Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
the guardian
Mon 24 Aug 2020 06.00 EDT
Republican party leaders linked to the White House helped boost the primary campaign of a QAnon supporter with a history of making racist and bigoted statements, campaign finance filings show.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s victory in the 11 August primary runoff for Georgia’s 14th Congressional district all but assures that a backer of the baseless and antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory will be elected to Congress in November. Her primary opponent, John Cowan, ran as a pro-Trump, pro-life, and pro-gun conservative.
The filings reveal donations from:
Meadows was given the opportunity to disavow or denounce QAnon in multiple television interviews on Sunday, but he demurred, claiming not to know what it was.
“Getting involved in a primary on behalf of an absolutely insane, conspiracy-minded, explicitly racist candidate in a seat that is reliably conservative is mind-bogglingly irresponsible,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee who is now political director for Republican Voters Against Trump.
“This is how you signal to the Trump base, ‘We are with you. We are going to go along with the most radical, conspiratorial segment of the Trump base to show that you can trust us, that we’re not going to get ‘cucked’ by the media.’”
Greene has garnered significant media attention for her extraordinary support for QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitic tropes whose followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against a cabal of Democrats, celebrities and billionaires engaged in pedophilia, child trafficking, and even cannibalism. The movement has repeatedly inspired vigilante violence, and has been identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat.
In videos unearthed by Politico, Greene has argued that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the US government, compared Black Lives Matter activists to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, described the election of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as “an Islamic invasion”, and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories about the billionaire financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros.
The Republican Jewish Coalition cited those videos, as well as her refusal to apologize for posing for a photograph with a “long-time white supremacist leader” in its decision to pick sides in a Republican primary and endorse Cowan.
As a blogger for a now-defunct website, Greene promoted QAnon as well as other fringe conspiracy theories, according to NBC News. Archives of the website show that she promoted conspiracy theories about a “Clinton Kill List”, about the 2017 gun massacre in Las Vegas, and about the murder of a young Democratic party staffer.
Madihha Ahussain, Muslim Advocates’ special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry, denounced the “vile, false, violence-inciting rhetoric against Muslims” from Greene in a statement that also addressed anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer’s Republican primary victory. “A failure to disavow this anti-Muslim hate is an endorsement of it,” she added.
Some high-profile Republican leaders spoke out against Greene after Politico unearthed the videos of her making racist statements, and the political action committee (Pac) associated with Koch Industries, KochPac, requested a refund of an earlier donation. But campaign finance filings reveal that her campaign continued to be backed by major Republican donors and influential political leaders.
The Your Voice Counts Pac affiliated with Meadows first donated $2,000 to Greene’s campaign in March. Greene received further support from the Meadows family when the RightWomen Pac, whose executive director is Debbie Meadows, Mark’s wife, endorsed Greene and spent $17,500 to oppose Cowan in the runoff.
Greene also received significant backing from the House Freedom Fund, the Pac associated with the House Freedom Caucus, of which Meadows was a member before he was tapped as White House chief of staff. Meadows is still featured on the House Freedom Fund’s website. In addition to spending more than $30,000 on an independent expenditure campaign to support Greene over Cowan, the House Freedom Fund raised nearly $90,000 from its own donors, earmarked for Greene’s campaign.
These earmarked donations include $5,600 from Barb Van Andel-Gaby, the chairman of the board of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank. Van Andel-Gaby is also a director of the parent company of Amway, which was founded by her father with Richard DeVos, who was in turn the father-in-law of US secretary of education Betsy DeVos. Van Andel-Gaby’s husband, Richard Gaby, also donated to Greene’s campaign through the House Freedom Fund. Van Andel-Gaby did not respond to numerous requests for comment on her support for a candidate who supports QAnon.
Some of Greene’s donors are a touch ironic, given the QAnon movement’s preoccupation with baselessly accusing Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, and billionaires of pedophilia and human trafficking.
Besides Meadows, the House Freedom Fund is also lead by Representative Jim Jordan, who has been dogged for years by allegations that he knew and did nothing to stop sexual abuse of student athletes at Ohio State University when he worked there in the 1980s and 90s. Jordan has denied any knowledge of the abuse.
Greene received $2,800 from John W Childs, the former chairman of JW Childs Associates who stepped down after being charged with misdemeanor solicitation in an investigation related to the suspected human trafficking sting that led to the arrest of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Childs denied the charge at the time and said he had retained a lawyer. Kraft pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor solicitation charges.
Greene also received $2,800 from L Lin Wood, the attorney who represented British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth in his unsuccessful defamation suit against Elon Musk after Musk baselessly called Unsworth a “pedo guy”. Wood also represented the Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann when he sued numerous media outlets for defamation over coverage of a viral encounter between Covington students and attendees of an Indigenous Peoples March.
Wood, whose Twitter biography includes a hashtag associated with QAnon, “#WWG1WGA”, declined to comment on his belief in QAnon, his view of other conspiracies Greene has promoted, or her history of bigoted statements. He confirmed the donation as a matter of public record and said he represented Greene, adding: “You would be wise to leave me out of your propaganda piece.”
Greene also received donations from major Republican donors, including Tatnall Hillman, who was described by Colorado Politics as “a secretive Aspen billionaire who annually makes multi-million contributions to Republican candidates”; Lenore Broughton, who was described by Vermont paper Seven Day as “a Burlington heiress with a history of funding conservative causes”, and Cherna Moskowitz, the head of the Irving Moskowitz Foundation and chair of the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.
Almost all of the Guardian’s attempts to contact donors were unsuccessful. Greene received $5,600 from William Pope, chief executive of NCIC Inmate Communications, a private company that provides phone service to prisons. Asked about the donations and Greene’s support for QAnon, Pope responded by email, “Never heard of her!” He did not respond to follow up questions.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s victory in the 11 August primary runoff for Georgia’s 14th Congressional district all but assures that a backer of the baseless and antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory will be elected to Congress in November. Her primary opponent, John Cowan, ran as a pro-Trump, pro-life, and pro-gun conservative.
The filings reveal donations from:
- groups connected to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his wife,
- the chairman of the board of prominent conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation,
- the attorney who represented “Covington Kid” Nicholas Sandmann in defamation suits against the Washington Post and CNN,
- and multiple Republican mega-donors.
Meadows was given the opportunity to disavow or denounce QAnon in multiple television interviews on Sunday, but he demurred, claiming not to know what it was.
“Getting involved in a primary on behalf of an absolutely insane, conspiracy-minded, explicitly racist candidate in a seat that is reliably conservative is mind-bogglingly irresponsible,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee who is now political director for Republican Voters Against Trump.
“This is how you signal to the Trump base, ‘We are with you. We are going to go along with the most radical, conspiratorial segment of the Trump base to show that you can trust us, that we’re not going to get ‘cucked’ by the media.’”
Greene has garnered significant media attention for her extraordinary support for QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitic tropes whose followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against a cabal of Democrats, celebrities and billionaires engaged in pedophilia, child trafficking, and even cannibalism. The movement has repeatedly inspired vigilante violence, and has been identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat.
In videos unearthed by Politico, Greene has argued that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the US government, compared Black Lives Matter activists to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, described the election of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as “an Islamic invasion”, and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories about the billionaire financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros.
The Republican Jewish Coalition cited those videos, as well as her refusal to apologize for posing for a photograph with a “long-time white supremacist leader” in its decision to pick sides in a Republican primary and endorse Cowan.
As a blogger for a now-defunct website, Greene promoted QAnon as well as other fringe conspiracy theories, according to NBC News. Archives of the website show that she promoted conspiracy theories about a “Clinton Kill List”, about the 2017 gun massacre in Las Vegas, and about the murder of a young Democratic party staffer.
Madihha Ahussain, Muslim Advocates’ special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry, denounced the “vile, false, violence-inciting rhetoric against Muslims” from Greene in a statement that also addressed anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer’s Republican primary victory. “A failure to disavow this anti-Muslim hate is an endorsement of it,” she added.
Some high-profile Republican leaders spoke out against Greene after Politico unearthed the videos of her making racist statements, and the political action committee (Pac) associated with Koch Industries, KochPac, requested a refund of an earlier donation. But campaign finance filings reveal that her campaign continued to be backed by major Republican donors and influential political leaders.
The Your Voice Counts Pac affiliated with Meadows first donated $2,000 to Greene’s campaign in March. Greene received further support from the Meadows family when the RightWomen Pac, whose executive director is Debbie Meadows, Mark’s wife, endorsed Greene and spent $17,500 to oppose Cowan in the runoff.
Greene also received significant backing from the House Freedom Fund, the Pac associated with the House Freedom Caucus, of which Meadows was a member before he was tapped as White House chief of staff. Meadows is still featured on the House Freedom Fund’s website. In addition to spending more than $30,000 on an independent expenditure campaign to support Greene over Cowan, the House Freedom Fund raised nearly $90,000 from its own donors, earmarked for Greene’s campaign.
These earmarked donations include $5,600 from Barb Van Andel-Gaby, the chairman of the board of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank. Van Andel-Gaby is also a director of the parent company of Amway, which was founded by her father with Richard DeVos, who was in turn the father-in-law of US secretary of education Betsy DeVos. Van Andel-Gaby’s husband, Richard Gaby, also donated to Greene’s campaign through the House Freedom Fund. Van Andel-Gaby did not respond to numerous requests for comment on her support for a candidate who supports QAnon.
Some of Greene’s donors are a touch ironic, given the QAnon movement’s preoccupation with baselessly accusing Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, and billionaires of pedophilia and human trafficking.
Besides Meadows, the House Freedom Fund is also lead by Representative Jim Jordan, who has been dogged for years by allegations that he knew and did nothing to stop sexual abuse of student athletes at Ohio State University when he worked there in the 1980s and 90s. Jordan has denied any knowledge of the abuse.
Greene received $2,800 from John W Childs, the former chairman of JW Childs Associates who stepped down after being charged with misdemeanor solicitation in an investigation related to the suspected human trafficking sting that led to the arrest of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Childs denied the charge at the time and said he had retained a lawyer. Kraft pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor solicitation charges.
Greene also received $2,800 from L Lin Wood, the attorney who represented British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth in his unsuccessful defamation suit against Elon Musk after Musk baselessly called Unsworth a “pedo guy”. Wood also represented the Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann when he sued numerous media outlets for defamation over coverage of a viral encounter between Covington students and attendees of an Indigenous Peoples March.
Wood, whose Twitter biography includes a hashtag associated with QAnon, “#WWG1WGA”, declined to comment on his belief in QAnon, his view of other conspiracies Greene has promoted, or her history of bigoted statements. He confirmed the donation as a matter of public record and said he represented Greene, adding: “You would be wise to leave me out of your propaganda piece.”
Greene also received donations from major Republican donors, including Tatnall Hillman, who was described by Colorado Politics as “a secretive Aspen billionaire who annually makes multi-million contributions to Republican candidates”; Lenore Broughton, who was described by Vermont paper Seven Day as “a Burlington heiress with a history of funding conservative causes”, and Cherna Moskowitz, the head of the Irving Moskowitz Foundation and chair of the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.
Almost all of the Guardian’s attempts to contact donors were unsuccessful. Greene received $5,600 from William Pope, chief executive of NCIC Inmate Communications, a private company that provides phone service to prisons. Asked about the donations and Greene’s support for QAnon, Pope responded by email, “Never heard of her!” He did not respond to follow up questions.
The GOP Is Getting Back to Business as Usual — Trying to Gut Social Programs
By Sasha Abramsky, Truthout
PUBLISHED June 20, 2020
Spitting in the face of science, Donald Trump and Mike Pence have spent the week explaining how the COVID-19 pandemic is supposedly behind us.
Now, that may largely be true in Iceland, which flattened the curve early on and then eradicated the virus from its shores — which is why tens of thousands of people, clustered in sub-groups of up to 500, were allowed to safely congregate in Reykjavik this week to celebrate the island-nation’s independence day. But it most certainly isn’t true in the U.S., where somewhere between 20,000 and 28,000 new infections are being identified daily, and where, in many states, new infections are now being recorded at a record pace.
Meanwhile, Trump’s strategy seems to be to bury the science — the coronavirus task force rarely meets, and doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have almost entirely disappeared as public faces of the administration’s response. Moreover, Trump appears to be hoping that, in ceasing to send out usable communiques to the public and to local health authorities, somehow the virus will cease to be a public health emergency. Perhaps most notably, the administration appears determined to bludgeon the economy back to operating at full-throttle no matter the cost in lives.
The Sunbelt now teeters on becoming the new COVID-19 global hot zone, with the governors of states such as Arizona and Florida opening up their economies with scant regard for the public health science, and with cases skyrocketing to the point that health care systems are now at risk of being inundated. Yet, despite this, Trump has doubled down on his claims that all is now normal again, and on his decision to hold huge indoor political events in Sunbelt states, at which attendees will not be socially spaced and won’t be mandated — or even encouraged, given Trump’s personal behavior around the issue — to wear masks. Roughly 20,000 people are expected to cram into an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, later today for a Trump rally, marketed as the first of many this election season; and tens of thousands will be drawn to the convention center and hotels in Jacksonville, Florida, in August to participate in Trump’s coronation as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.
There is something beyond irony in this, given that, in the early days of the outbreak in China, what was a local calamity in Wuhan was magnified into a national and then a global disaster in part by the decision of Communist Party officials there to go ahead with a huge indoor banquet-cum-political rally.
Now Trump and his political minions are repeating the mistake to help the virus reach additional victims in Oklahoma, Florida and, presumably, further afield.
To back up his magical thinking that the virus is now largely contained (hard data notwithstanding), and that Americans are both able and ready to resume pre-pandemic patterns of working and consuming, Trump needs a set of policies in place that will make it look, to casual observers, as if things are back on track. He needs to align himself with long-standing GOP priorities that will provide him with economic bona fides with conservative voters. And there’s nothing more business-as-usual for the GOP than using any and every excuse to take down the pension obligations negotiated over the decades by more liberal states and cities with their public sector trade unions; attacking those who use government services; and blaming the poor, and especially poor people of color, for the sorry state of public finances. Indeed, news outlets reported this week that Trump’s top campaign contributor, Timothy Mellon, described a Faustian bargain in which poor people voted Democrat in exchange for being “awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on.”
The Trump administration is now siding with conservative voices in Congress and conservative coordinating think tanks such as the American Legislative Exchange Council in opposing “bail outs” of hard-strapped cities and states, as well as coming out against an extension past July of the expanded system of unemployment payments that Congress passed back in March and April as state-level stay-in-place orders shuttered much of the economy. If people refuse to return to work out of fears of infection, some states are now encouraging employers to call hotlines to turn them in, thus rendering them potentially ineligible for ongoing unemployment payments.
This comes atop ongoing efforts, even amid the pandemic, to make it more difficult for low-income families to access food stamps. And it comes during a time of renewed chatter about the need to pare back Social Security in order to tackle the federal budget deficit and soaring national debt that accelerated following the 2017 tax cut legislation, and which was further exacerbated by the series of COVID relief packages that Congress passed this spring.
On this issue, Mitt Romney, who has been a vocal, and honorable, critic of many aspects of Trumpism, has joined forces with other conservatives as one of the lead voices calling for a restructuring of Social Security, adding new impetus to “reform” proposals that he has been circulating in Congress for the past year. Supporters of this idea argue that recent reports showing Medicare and Social Security are heading toward insolvency prove the urgency of legislative changes to the programs — while ignoring the possibility of instead injecting more money into these systems through targeted increases in the tax burden faced by high-end earners.
Cumulatively, the accelerating efforts to gut the safety net represent an extraordinary effort to martial federal power to corral employees back to work, despite the accelerating pandemic, and to use the financial chaos unleashed by the pandemic as an excuse to follow through on a long-standing wish list of GOP cuts to entitlement programs. This is an electoral strategy that isn’t even pretending to be concerned with the public health implications or with the U.S.’s ongoing status as the world’s COVID-19 epicenter. It is, in short, a Potemkin Village, a façade of economic policy, intended to dazzle a select audience, which has no coherence, no solidity, once one peels back the veneer.
Trump has spent his years in office selling one Brooklyn Bridge after another to his political followers. The efforts to lower unemployment numbers by attacking unemployment benefits, to lower food stamp enrollment numbers by attacking eligibility, to reduce Social Security payouts by a capricious restructuring of benefits calculations — none of these are efforts to genuinely tackle need, to really grapple with economic hardship. All are, instead, merely additional Brooklyn Bridges for sale, public policy con jobs designed solely for their headline value.
Now, that may largely be true in Iceland, which flattened the curve early on and then eradicated the virus from its shores — which is why tens of thousands of people, clustered in sub-groups of up to 500, were allowed to safely congregate in Reykjavik this week to celebrate the island-nation’s independence day. But it most certainly isn’t true in the U.S., where somewhere between 20,000 and 28,000 new infections are being identified daily, and where, in many states, new infections are now being recorded at a record pace.
Meanwhile, Trump’s strategy seems to be to bury the science — the coronavirus task force rarely meets, and doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have almost entirely disappeared as public faces of the administration’s response. Moreover, Trump appears to be hoping that, in ceasing to send out usable communiques to the public and to local health authorities, somehow the virus will cease to be a public health emergency. Perhaps most notably, the administration appears determined to bludgeon the economy back to operating at full-throttle no matter the cost in lives.
The Sunbelt now teeters on becoming the new COVID-19 global hot zone, with the governors of states such as Arizona and Florida opening up their economies with scant regard for the public health science, and with cases skyrocketing to the point that health care systems are now at risk of being inundated. Yet, despite this, Trump has doubled down on his claims that all is now normal again, and on his decision to hold huge indoor political events in Sunbelt states, at which attendees will not be socially spaced and won’t be mandated — or even encouraged, given Trump’s personal behavior around the issue — to wear masks. Roughly 20,000 people are expected to cram into an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, later today for a Trump rally, marketed as the first of many this election season; and tens of thousands will be drawn to the convention center and hotels in Jacksonville, Florida, in August to participate in Trump’s coronation as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.
There is something beyond irony in this, given that, in the early days of the outbreak in China, what was a local calamity in Wuhan was magnified into a national and then a global disaster in part by the decision of Communist Party officials there to go ahead with a huge indoor banquet-cum-political rally.
Now Trump and his political minions are repeating the mistake to help the virus reach additional victims in Oklahoma, Florida and, presumably, further afield.
To back up his magical thinking that the virus is now largely contained (hard data notwithstanding), and that Americans are both able and ready to resume pre-pandemic patterns of working and consuming, Trump needs a set of policies in place that will make it look, to casual observers, as if things are back on track. He needs to align himself with long-standing GOP priorities that will provide him with economic bona fides with conservative voters. And there’s nothing more business-as-usual for the GOP than using any and every excuse to take down the pension obligations negotiated over the decades by more liberal states and cities with their public sector trade unions; attacking those who use government services; and blaming the poor, and especially poor people of color, for the sorry state of public finances. Indeed, news outlets reported this week that Trump’s top campaign contributor, Timothy Mellon, described a Faustian bargain in which poor people voted Democrat in exchange for being “awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on, and on.”
The Trump administration is now siding with conservative voices in Congress and conservative coordinating think tanks such as the American Legislative Exchange Council in opposing “bail outs” of hard-strapped cities and states, as well as coming out against an extension past July of the expanded system of unemployment payments that Congress passed back in March and April as state-level stay-in-place orders shuttered much of the economy. If people refuse to return to work out of fears of infection, some states are now encouraging employers to call hotlines to turn them in, thus rendering them potentially ineligible for ongoing unemployment payments.
This comes atop ongoing efforts, even amid the pandemic, to make it more difficult for low-income families to access food stamps. And it comes during a time of renewed chatter about the need to pare back Social Security in order to tackle the federal budget deficit and soaring national debt that accelerated following the 2017 tax cut legislation, and which was further exacerbated by the series of COVID relief packages that Congress passed this spring.
On this issue, Mitt Romney, who has been a vocal, and honorable, critic of many aspects of Trumpism, has joined forces with other conservatives as one of the lead voices calling for a restructuring of Social Security, adding new impetus to “reform” proposals that he has been circulating in Congress for the past year. Supporters of this idea argue that recent reports showing Medicare and Social Security are heading toward insolvency prove the urgency of legislative changes to the programs — while ignoring the possibility of instead injecting more money into these systems through targeted increases in the tax burden faced by high-end earners.
Cumulatively, the accelerating efforts to gut the safety net represent an extraordinary effort to martial federal power to corral employees back to work, despite the accelerating pandemic, and to use the financial chaos unleashed by the pandemic as an excuse to follow through on a long-standing wish list of GOP cuts to entitlement programs. This is an electoral strategy that isn’t even pretending to be concerned with the public health implications or with the U.S.’s ongoing status as the world’s COVID-19 epicenter. It is, in short, a Potemkin Village, a façade of economic policy, intended to dazzle a select audience, which has no coherence, no solidity, once one peels back the veneer.
Trump has spent his years in office selling one Brooklyn Bridge after another to his political followers. The efforts to lower unemployment numbers by attacking unemployment benefits, to lower food stamp enrollment numbers by attacking eligibility, to reduce Social Security payouts by a capricious restructuring of benefits calculations — none of these are efforts to genuinely tackle need, to really grapple with economic hardship. All are, instead, merely additional Brooklyn Bridges for sale, public policy con jobs designed solely for their headline value.
Opinion - US policing
Republicans are hypocrites. They happily 'de-funded' the police we actually need
Conservatives claim to love law enforcement - but they cut cops who protect us from powerful and dangerous criminals
David Sirota - the guardian
Mon 15 Jun 2020 05.56 EDT
After two weeks of police violence and protests, Republican politicians have been pretending to have a fainting spell over the phrase “defund the police.”
“There won’t be defunding,” said a pearl-clutching Donald Trump, as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy similarly faked outrage over protesters pushing public officials to reevaluate the nation’s bloated $115 billion police budget.
Republican leaders would have us believe they love law enforcement and cops, but that is belied by an unmentioned fact: These are the same greedheads who have eagerly pushed to defund the police charged with protecting us from the world’s most dangerous and powerful criminals.
Specifically, they have pushed to defund:
Trump has called himself the “president of law and order,” but these efforts to defund the police have created lawlessness and disorder. And yet, that hasn’t been mentioned by the politicians and pundits pretending to be scandalized by protesters’ demands for a change in criminal justice priorities.
Apparently, we’re expected to be horrified by proposals to reduce funding for the militarized police forces that are violently attacking peaceful protesters – but we’re supposed to obediently accept the defunding of the police forces responsible for protecting the population from the wealthy and powerful.
“There won’t be defunding,” said a pearl-clutching Donald Trump, as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy similarly faked outrage over protesters pushing public officials to reevaluate the nation’s bloated $115 billion police budget.
Republican leaders would have us believe they love law enforcement and cops, but that is belied by an unmentioned fact: These are the same greedheads who have eagerly pushed to defund the police charged with protecting us from the world’s most dangerous and powerful criminals.
Specifically, they have pushed to defund:
- The US Chemical Safety Board, which polices major industrial accidents.
- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices corporations’ compliance with civil rights laws.
- • The Consumer Products Safety Commission, which polices industries to make sure their products don’t harm or kill people. The agency now acknowledges that its “funding level has been insufficient to keep pace with the evolving consumer product marketplace.”
- • The Internal Revenue Service, which polices the tax system and which is responsible for making sure the wealthy and large corporations pay the taxes they owe. Thanks to this successful effort to defund the police, the agency “conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent,” according to ProPublica. With 30,000 fewer tax cops on the beat, a recent Treasury Department report found that 800,000 high-income households have not paid more than $45 billion in owed taxes.
- • The Department of Labor, which polices employers and makes sure they aren’t stealing wages, breaking workplace safety rules, ignoring overtime laws, and/or violating workers’ union rights. Amid this particular Republican effort to defund the police, there are now fewer cops scrutinizing employers than ever before and workplace inspections have plummeted – as workplace injuries, deaths and disasters have increased.
- • The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which polices the accounting industry.
- • The Securities and Exchange Commission’s reserve fund, which was established after the financial crisis to bolster the agency’s work policing Wall Street. The agency reports that the number of law enforcement staff “supporting our investigation and litigation efforts remained almost 9 percent lower” today than it was at the start of Trump’s term – and now white collar prosecutions have hit a historic low.
- • The law enforcement agencies that police corporate mergers. This effort to defund the antitrust police has come as mergers have accelerated (and there has been some recent effort to reverse the defunding).
- • The independent law enforcement agency that policed agribusiness monopolies.
- • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which polices the financial industry and works to protect consumers from fraud.
- • The law enforcement offices that police federal agencies and root out waste, fraud and abuse.
- • The federal program that polices local law enforcement agencies.
- • The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for policing polluters. Trump’s first budget proposed to reduce EPA “spending on civil and criminal enforcement by almost 60 percent,” and laying off 200 environmental cops, according to the New York Times. By the middle of Trump’s first year in office, the EPA had “fewer than half of the criminal special agents on the job” during the George W. Bush administration, according to one environmental advocacy group. Bloomberg News noted that Trump’s most recent budget cuts “could hamper the EPA’s efforts to link contamination at hazardous waste sites to companies and others that may be responsible for the pollution.” The result: environmental prosecutions have now hit a historic low.
Trump has called himself the “president of law and order,” but these efforts to defund the police have created lawlessness and disorder. And yet, that hasn’t been mentioned by the politicians and pundits pretending to be scandalized by protesters’ demands for a change in criminal justice priorities.
Apparently, we’re expected to be horrified by proposals to reduce funding for the militarized police forces that are violently attacking peaceful protesters – but we’re supposed to obediently accept the defunding of the police forces responsible for protecting the population from the wealthy and powerful.
Neo-Nazis Helped Elect Republicans In 2018, And Everyone Yawns
How has the GOP become infiltrated with so many extremists without so much as the blink of an eye?
By David Neiwert- crooks & liars
5/10/20 6:58am
One of the more remarkable changes that has slowly crept up on Americans in the age of Trump is the way the identification of a wide bandwidth of far-right extremists—white nationalists, neo-Nazis, unhinged QAnon and “Boogaloo” conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and raving violent nativists—has become, in the eyes of the media and its conventional wisdom, utterly unremarkable.
This week, the Arizona Mirror published results of their examination of leaked chats from neo-Nazi extremists seeking to weasel their influence into the 2018 election—primarily by becoming avidly active in local Republican politics.
The chats—some 10 million messages on over 100 servers on the Discord app featuring neo-Nazi and QAnon content—were made available to the Mirror through the leak organization Distributed Denial of Secrets. One server, named “Red Storm,” in particular targeted participation in the 2018 election.
Notably, its activists weren’t only interested in infiltrating the Republican Party and moving up in its structure as they promoted right-wing politicians. Several also discussed running sabotage operations by posing as Democrats and infiltrating their local political operations as well.
“Maybe be double agents for the Dems here?” one user asked. The group also advised participants which ballot initiatives to vote for.
The GOP initially showed signs of resisting the incoming tide of white nationalists and other extremists infiltrating their ranks of supporters. When onetime College Republican leader James Allsup—who while attending Washington State University and afterwards became an unrepentant white nationalist—attempted to become a local GOP precinct officer, he was summarily tossed out of the party and stripped of his position. (This didn’t slow Allsup from mounting a high-profile career as a white nationalist provocateur recruiting heavily on college campuses.)
However, extremists nonetheless have increasingly been welcomed into the Republican fold. The Oath Keepers, a “Patriot”/militia group, have periodically played semi-official security roles for Trump events on repeated occasions.
“Three Percenter” militiamen have been linking arms with New York state Republican operatives on Facebook. Even when the welcome mat has not been extended, there has been strategic infiltration of the party from white-nationalist groups like Identity Evropa.
The presence of extremists like Rep. Matt Shea of Washington state is not particularly new for the party, and even when their antics reach a critical point—as Shea’s did recently, when an independent investigation found he had engaged in “domestic terrorism”—they manage to hang on to their power. Shea remains in his seat in the Washington House.
The QAnon movement—which often overlaps with the “Patriot” and white-nationalist movements in membership—is also insinuating itself within the Republican Party. Media Matters, which has been keeping a running count of how many Republican candidates around the country have explicitly embraced QAnon conspiracies, reports in its most recent update (via Alex Kaplan) that at least four QAnon-supporting congressional candidates will be on the ballot this coming November. Three of those will be in California, and one in Ohio. Another—candidate Samuel Williams in Texas’s 16th District—faces a primary runoff this summer.
In the meantime, right-wing extremists have been quietly gearing up to attack Democratic events, including the unfurling of a Nazi banner at a Bernie Sanders rally. More recently, a QAnon fanatic from Illinois livestreamed her drive from her home to New York City with a car full of knives as she ranted about her plan to “take out Joe Biden” when she arrived there.
This week, the Arizona Mirror published results of their examination of leaked chats from neo-Nazi extremists seeking to weasel their influence into the 2018 election—primarily by becoming avidly active in local Republican politics.
The chats—some 10 million messages on over 100 servers on the Discord app featuring neo-Nazi and QAnon content—were made available to the Mirror through the leak organization Distributed Denial of Secrets. One server, named “Red Storm,” in particular targeted participation in the 2018 election.
Notably, its activists weren’t only interested in infiltrating the Republican Party and moving up in its structure as they promoted right-wing politicians. Several also discussed running sabotage operations by posing as Democrats and infiltrating their local political operations as well.
“Maybe be double agents for the Dems here?” one user asked. The group also advised participants which ballot initiatives to vote for.
The GOP initially showed signs of resisting the incoming tide of white nationalists and other extremists infiltrating their ranks of supporters. When onetime College Republican leader James Allsup—who while attending Washington State University and afterwards became an unrepentant white nationalist—attempted to become a local GOP precinct officer, he was summarily tossed out of the party and stripped of his position. (This didn’t slow Allsup from mounting a high-profile career as a white nationalist provocateur recruiting heavily on college campuses.)
However, extremists nonetheless have increasingly been welcomed into the Republican fold. The Oath Keepers, a “Patriot”/militia group, have periodically played semi-official security roles for Trump events on repeated occasions.
“Three Percenter” militiamen have been linking arms with New York state Republican operatives on Facebook. Even when the welcome mat has not been extended, there has been strategic infiltration of the party from white-nationalist groups like Identity Evropa.
The presence of extremists like Rep. Matt Shea of Washington state is not particularly new for the party, and even when their antics reach a critical point—as Shea’s did recently, when an independent investigation found he had engaged in “domestic terrorism”—they manage to hang on to their power. Shea remains in his seat in the Washington House.
The QAnon movement—which often overlaps with the “Patriot” and white-nationalist movements in membership—is also insinuating itself within the Republican Party. Media Matters, which has been keeping a running count of how many Republican candidates around the country have explicitly embraced QAnon conspiracies, reports in its most recent update (via Alex Kaplan) that at least four QAnon-supporting congressional candidates will be on the ballot this coming November. Three of those will be in California, and one in Ohio. Another—candidate Samuel Williams in Texas’s 16th District—faces a primary runoff this summer.
In the meantime, right-wing extremists have been quietly gearing up to attack Democratic events, including the unfurling of a Nazi banner at a Bernie Sanders rally. More recently, a QAnon fanatic from Illinois livestreamed her drive from her home to New York City with a car full of knives as she ranted about her plan to “take out Joe Biden” when she arrived there.
GOP launches its new branding for 2020. Soph0571 - Demo Underground
racist gop at work again!!!
MO GOP Won’t Let Pandemic Stop Push For Anti-Immigrant Redistricting Overhaul
By Tierney Sneed
tpm
May 1, 2020 3:47 p.m.
Missouri remains under a COVID-19 stay-at-home order. But that didn’t stop GOP legislators who returned to the capitol this week from reviving a measure that would shore up their political power.
The Missouri House is considering a constitutional amendment that would usher in an anti-immigrant approach to redistricting. The proposal is packaged with several others that would water down an anti-gerrymandering initiative voters approved in 2018.
The House has until May 15 to pass the new measure, in order to put it on the ballot in the fall elections.
Since the so-called “Clean Missouri” constitutional amendment was passed by voters in 2018, lawmakers have tried to get on the 2020 ballot a measure that would undo its key provisions. But their interest in diminishing the political power of immigrant communities predated the approval of the “Clean Missouri” measure.
Since at least 2018 Missouri Republicans have tried to change redistricting so that maps are drawn based on the number of citizens, rather than total population. The failed 2018 proposal to do so came as the Trump administration was trying to do add a citizenship question to the census.
Changing the metric that’s used to draw legislative maps has been a longstanding goal of the GOP. Doing so “would be advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” as a now deceased GOP gerrymandering guru, who pushed for the census citizenship question, once wrote.
It would mean that parts of the country with relatively few noncitizens — i.e. whiter, rural and more Republican regions — would get more representatives while those with higher noncitizen rates — including urban, Democratic-leaning areas — would get fewer.
Missouri’s 2018 attempt at this overhaul proposed adding language explicitly to the constitution mandating that districts were drawn based on citizens rather than total population. Missouri Republicans failed to get the measure out of the legislature and onto the 2018 ballot.
Republicans tried and failed again in their 2019 session, as part of a broader measure to gut the “Clean Missouri” initiative.
But that version did not explicitly make “citizens” or “citizens of a voting age” (which could also cut minors out of the redistricting count) Missouri’s redistricting metric. Rather, the proposal mandated that districts should “be drawn on the basis of one person, one vote.” The current version uses the same language.
The measure’s sponsor Sen. Dan Hegeman (R) admitted at a House committee hearing Thursday that the goal would be to count only citizens when drawing legislative districts. He pushed back at the suggestion that minors — who also don’t vote — could be excluded from the count as well. Hegeman, however, struggled with questions about the legal interpretation of “one person, one vote.”
The current measure has a noteworthy change from the 2019 effort. Republicans removed language that would said redistricting would be done using data “reported in the federal decennial census.” Some believe the change was made because since the 2019 push, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from collecting citizenship data on the decennial census. The administration is now trying to assemble the data based on existing records.
If Republicans successfully get the measure on the ballot and it is approved by voters, the state could provide the test case for whether the Supreme Court would allow noncitizens to be excluded in redistricting.
The Missouri Senate adopted the latest version in February, weeks before the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S. in earnest. The return of Missouri’s legislature this week was the fist time it convened since April 7, and only the second time it gathered since the pandemic curtailed legislative action in mid-March.
The measure was considered Thursday by the House’s General Laws committee, which advanced the measure by a party line vote.
Hegeman, the bill’s sponsor, repeated several falsehoods at the hearing about the measure he is currently trying to pass.
He repeatedly claimed that it was about keeping “illegals” out of the count for legislative maps. Rep. Peter Merideth (D) pointed out that there are several classes of non-citizens and other non-voters in Missouri who are not there illegally. After a staffer ran up to whisper in Hegeman’s ear, he clarified that he meant “non-Missouri citizens.”
Hegeman also claimed falsely that “this was the first time that total population has been inserted into the discussion” and that “in the past, we dealt with citizens in the state being the counted and taken into consideration, not the illegals.” Missouri has historically included noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, in its redistricting count, and a 1875 amendment to the constitution said that apportionment would be done based on the “whole number of inhabitants.”
Additionally, Hegeman insisted that it was “well defined” and “well established” in federal law idea that the idea of “one person, one vote” meant using citizenship rather than total population for redistricting.
Merideth tried to correct him, noting that the question of using in citizens instead of total population has not been resolved by the courts. The case that Hegeman seemed to be referring, Merideth said, settled only the question of whether states could use total population. (The Supreme Court in 2016’s Evenwel v. Abbott unanimously said they could).
“The only court case that has addressed this, as we just talked about, said it could include total population, which is different than what you just said,” Merideth said,
The Missouri House is considering a constitutional amendment that would usher in an anti-immigrant approach to redistricting. The proposal is packaged with several others that would water down an anti-gerrymandering initiative voters approved in 2018.
The House has until May 15 to pass the new measure, in order to put it on the ballot in the fall elections.
Since the so-called “Clean Missouri” constitutional amendment was passed by voters in 2018, lawmakers have tried to get on the 2020 ballot a measure that would undo its key provisions. But their interest in diminishing the political power of immigrant communities predated the approval of the “Clean Missouri” measure.
Since at least 2018 Missouri Republicans have tried to change redistricting so that maps are drawn based on the number of citizens, rather than total population. The failed 2018 proposal to do so came as the Trump administration was trying to do add a citizenship question to the census.
Changing the metric that’s used to draw legislative maps has been a longstanding goal of the GOP. Doing so “would be advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” as a now deceased GOP gerrymandering guru, who pushed for the census citizenship question, once wrote.
It would mean that parts of the country with relatively few noncitizens — i.e. whiter, rural and more Republican regions — would get more representatives while those with higher noncitizen rates — including urban, Democratic-leaning areas — would get fewer.
Missouri’s 2018 attempt at this overhaul proposed adding language explicitly to the constitution mandating that districts were drawn based on citizens rather than total population. Missouri Republicans failed to get the measure out of the legislature and onto the 2018 ballot.
Republicans tried and failed again in their 2019 session, as part of a broader measure to gut the “Clean Missouri” initiative.
But that version did not explicitly make “citizens” or “citizens of a voting age” (which could also cut minors out of the redistricting count) Missouri’s redistricting metric. Rather, the proposal mandated that districts should “be drawn on the basis of one person, one vote.” The current version uses the same language.
The measure’s sponsor Sen. Dan Hegeman (R) admitted at a House committee hearing Thursday that the goal would be to count only citizens when drawing legislative districts. He pushed back at the suggestion that minors — who also don’t vote — could be excluded from the count as well. Hegeman, however, struggled with questions about the legal interpretation of “one person, one vote.”
The current measure has a noteworthy change from the 2019 effort. Republicans removed language that would said redistricting would be done using data “reported in the federal decennial census.” Some believe the change was made because since the 2019 push, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from collecting citizenship data on the decennial census. The administration is now trying to assemble the data based on existing records.
If Republicans successfully get the measure on the ballot and it is approved by voters, the state could provide the test case for whether the Supreme Court would allow noncitizens to be excluded in redistricting.
The Missouri Senate adopted the latest version in February, weeks before the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S. in earnest. The return of Missouri’s legislature this week was the fist time it convened since April 7, and only the second time it gathered since the pandemic curtailed legislative action in mid-March.
The measure was considered Thursday by the House’s General Laws committee, which advanced the measure by a party line vote.
Hegeman, the bill’s sponsor, repeated several falsehoods at the hearing about the measure he is currently trying to pass.
He repeatedly claimed that it was about keeping “illegals” out of the count for legislative maps. Rep. Peter Merideth (D) pointed out that there are several classes of non-citizens and other non-voters in Missouri who are not there illegally. After a staffer ran up to whisper in Hegeman’s ear, he clarified that he meant “non-Missouri citizens.”
Hegeman also claimed falsely that “this was the first time that total population has been inserted into the discussion” and that “in the past, we dealt with citizens in the state being the counted and taken into consideration, not the illegals.” Missouri has historically included noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, in its redistricting count, and a 1875 amendment to the constitution said that apportionment would be done based on the “whole number of inhabitants.”
Additionally, Hegeman insisted that it was “well defined” and “well established” in federal law idea that the idea of “one person, one vote” meant using citizenship rather than total population for redistricting.
Merideth tried to correct him, noting that the question of using in citizens instead of total population has not been resolved by the courts. The case that Hegeman seemed to be referring, Merideth said, settled only the question of whether states could use total population. (The Supreme Court in 2016’s Evenwel v. Abbott unanimously said they could).
“The only court case that has addressed this, as we just talked about, said it could include total population, which is different than what you just said,” Merideth said,
trump's ass-kisser speaks!!!
Lindsey Graham calls to cut coronavirus unemployment benefits by $7/hour: ‘We’ve got to get that fixed’
April 14, 2020
By David Edwards - raw story
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday pointed to impeachment when he was asked to react to a propaganda video President Donald Trump played in the White House briefing room on Monday. He also called to cut benefits for the unemployed by up to $7/hour.
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Graham defended the president’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“The American people understand what you’ve done for them,” Graham reassured the president. “And this effort to destroy Trump no matter the cost to the country is getting a bit old and it’s pissing a lot of people off.”
“The president has made hard calls well and we’re going to be well below the 100,000 minimum expected [deaths],” he continued. “And it’s due to his leadership and the American people working together.”
“What did you think of that video they put together?” Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt wondered. “They put together a timeline of him saying in January, ‘Travel ban.’ Then you had people in the media saying, ‘This is ridiculous, this is going too far.'”
“I thought that was pretty smart on his part,” she added.
“People are dying right now and this president is doing everything humanly possible to work with anybody that will work with him,” Graham replied. “Do you know when impeachment ended? February 6th we voted to acquit the president and Democratic leaders who are criticizing the president now wanted to extend the trial for weeks to call more witnesses.”
“You’ve got to remember the Democratic Party on February 6th was asking the Senate to stay in session to get more witnesses!” the senator added. “These are the people who are criticizing him.”
Graham went on to suggest that coronavirus relief benefits are making workers not want to return to their jobs.
“Here’s the problem,” he explained. “The unemployment benefits in South Carolina are $23/hour to be unemployed. You’ve got a lot of small businesses trying to keep their employees on the payroll paying $16 and $17/hour. One program is undercutting the other.”
“We’ve got to get that fixed,” Graham insisted.
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Graham defended the president’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“The American people understand what you’ve done for them,” Graham reassured the president. “And this effort to destroy Trump no matter the cost to the country is getting a bit old and it’s pissing a lot of people off.”
“The president has made hard calls well and we’re going to be well below the 100,000 minimum expected [deaths],” he continued. “And it’s due to his leadership and the American people working together.”
“What did you think of that video they put together?” Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt wondered. “They put together a timeline of him saying in January, ‘Travel ban.’ Then you had people in the media saying, ‘This is ridiculous, this is going too far.'”
“I thought that was pretty smart on his part,” she added.
“People are dying right now and this president is doing everything humanly possible to work with anybody that will work with him,” Graham replied. “Do you know when impeachment ended? February 6th we voted to acquit the president and Democratic leaders who are criticizing the president now wanted to extend the trial for weeks to call more witnesses.”
“You’ve got to remember the Democratic Party on February 6th was asking the Senate to stay in session to get more witnesses!” the senator added. “These are the people who are criticizing him.”
Graham went on to suggest that coronavirus relief benefits are making workers not want to return to their jobs.
“Here’s the problem,” he explained. “The unemployment benefits in South Carolina are $23/hour to be unemployed. You’ve got a lot of small businesses trying to keep their employees on the payroll paying $16 and $17/hour. One program is undercutting the other.”
“We’ve got to get that fixed,” Graham insisted.
governing by fools!!!
How Tea Party Budget Battles Left the National Emergency Medical Stockpile Unprepared for Coronavirus
Fiscal restraints imposed by Republicans in Congress in the early years of the Obama administration left the U.S. less prepared to respond to the coronavirus pandemic today.
by Yeganeh Torbati and Isaac Arnsdorf - propublica
April 3, 10:42 a.m. EDT
Dire shortages of vital medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile that are now hampering the coronavirus response trace back to the budget wars of the Obama years, when congressional Republicans elected on the Tea Party wave forced the White House to accept sweeping cuts to federal spending.
Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts.
“There are always more needs for financial support from our hardworking taxpayers than we have the ability to pay,” said Denny Rehberg, a retired Republican congressman from Montana who chaired the appropriations subcommittee responsible for overseeing the stockpile in 2011. Rehberg said it would have been impossible to predict a public health crisis requiring a more robust stockpile, just as it would have been to predict the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“It’s really easy to second-guess and suggest we didn’t do as much,” he said. “Why didn’t we have a protocol to protect the Twin Towers? Whoever thought that was going to happen? Whoever thought Hurricane Katrina was going to occur? You tell me what’s going to happen in 2030, and I will communicate that to congressmen and senators.”
There were, in fact, warnings at the time: A 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded report by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials urged the federal government to treat public health preparedness “on par with federal and state funding for other national security response capabilities,” and said that its store of N95 masks should be “replenished for future events.”
But efforts to bulk up the stockpile fell apart in tense standoffs between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans, according to administration and congressional officials involved in the negotiations. Had Congress kept funding at the 2010 level through the end of the Obama administration, the stockpile would have benefited from $321 million more than it ended up getting, according to budget documents reviewed by ProPublica. During the Trump administration, Congress started giving the stockpile more than the White House requested.
By late February, the stockpile held just 12 million N95 respirator masks, a small fraction of what government officials say is needed for a severe pandemic. Now the emergency stash is running out of critical supplies and governors are struggling to understand the unclear procedures for how the administration is distributing the equipment.
The stockpile received a $17 billion influx in the first and third coronavirus stimulus bills that Congress passed in March. But there had not been a big boost in stockpile funding since 2009, in response to the H1N1 pandemic, commonly called swine flu.
After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million.
Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
“We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”
Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.
Congressional Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and House Speaker John Boehner, leveraged the debt ceiling — a limit on the government’s borrowing ability that had to be raised — to insist that the Obama administration accept federal spending curbs. The compromise, codified in the 2011 Budget Control Act, required a bipartisan “super committee” to find additional ways to reduce the deficit, or else it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration.”
Even in the aftermath of the swine flu pandemic, the stockpile wasn’t a priority then. Without a full committee markup, Rehberg introduced a bill that provided $522.5 million to the stockpile, about 12% less than the previous year and $132 million less than the administration wanted. “Nobody got everything they wanted,” Rehberg said.
The Senate version of the funding bill offered $561 million for stockpile funding. Senators said they regretted the cuts even as they voted for the bill.
“In this bill we’re now getting into the bone marrow,” Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa who then chaired the Senate appropriations committee, said at the markup. “Some of these cuts will be painful and unpopular.”
In the bill’s final version, Congress allocated a compromise $534 million for the 2012 fiscal year, a 10% budget cut from the prior year and $121 million less than the Obama administration had requested.
The next year, the “super committee” failed to secure additional savings demanded by the Budget Control Act, triggering the automatic, across-the-board cuts. This “sequestration” was an outcome that the leaders of both parties disliked — and blamed one another for.
“Did either party ever indicate sequestration was welcome, positive or desirable?” Dave Schnittger, Boehner’s deputy chief of staff at the time, told ProPublica. “Sequestration was conceived — not by Republicans, but by a Democratic White House — as a crude mechanism to compel the super committee to do its job. Republicans consistently advocated for reductions in mandatory spending programs that would have prevented sequestration from ever happening.” (Mandatory spending refers to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.)
McConnell’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for Obama, pointed to numerous statements he made in 2013 urging Republicans to compromise, warning that the sequester would weaken economic recovery, military readiness and basic public services.
Gene Sperling, then a top Obama economic adviser, said Republicans focused attacks on the HHS budget, along with the Departments of Labor and Education, which are grouped under the same appropriations subcommittee.
“The Labor/HHS budget is where a significant number of progressive priorities are, from Head Start to (the National Institutes of Health) to the Education Department,” Sperling said. “There’s just so much in there, so it is often the hot spot for where conservative budget hawks who don’t believe in public investment go hardest.”
Under sequestration, the CDC, which managed the stockpile at the time, faced a 5% budget cut. In its 2013 budget submission, HHS decreased its stockpile funding request from the previous year, asking for $486 million, a cut of nearly $48 million. “The SNS is a key resource in maintaining public health preparedness and response,” the administration said. “However, the current fiscal climate necessitates scaling back.”
The decrease caught Rehberg’s attention at a budget hearing to review the request.
“Disaster preparedness is something that has been very important to me,” he said at the hearing. “I just would like to have you explain how such a large reduction can possibly not impact the national preparedness posture.”
Then-HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius answered that the CDC would prioritize replacing expiring drugs such as smallpox vaccines and anthrax treatments.
The next year, the administration again proposed cutting the stockpile’s funding from the 2012 funding level, but it warned that reduced funding could result in “fewer people receiving treatment during an influenza pandemic.”
[...] READ MORE
Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts.
“There are always more needs for financial support from our hardworking taxpayers than we have the ability to pay,” said Denny Rehberg, a retired Republican congressman from Montana who chaired the appropriations subcommittee responsible for overseeing the stockpile in 2011. Rehberg said it would have been impossible to predict a public health crisis requiring a more robust stockpile, just as it would have been to predict the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“It’s really easy to second-guess and suggest we didn’t do as much,” he said. “Why didn’t we have a protocol to protect the Twin Towers? Whoever thought that was going to happen? Whoever thought Hurricane Katrina was going to occur? You tell me what’s going to happen in 2030, and I will communicate that to congressmen and senators.”
There were, in fact, warnings at the time: A 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded report by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials urged the federal government to treat public health preparedness “on par with federal and state funding for other national security response capabilities,” and said that its store of N95 masks should be “replenished for future events.”
But efforts to bulk up the stockpile fell apart in tense standoffs between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans, according to administration and congressional officials involved in the negotiations. Had Congress kept funding at the 2010 level through the end of the Obama administration, the stockpile would have benefited from $321 million more than it ended up getting, according to budget documents reviewed by ProPublica. During the Trump administration, Congress started giving the stockpile more than the White House requested.
By late February, the stockpile held just 12 million N95 respirator masks, a small fraction of what government officials say is needed for a severe pandemic. Now the emergency stash is running out of critical supplies and governors are struggling to understand the unclear procedures for how the administration is distributing the equipment.
The stockpile received a $17 billion influx in the first and third coronavirus stimulus bills that Congress passed in March. But there had not been a big boost in stockpile funding since 2009, in response to the H1N1 pandemic, commonly called swine flu.
After using up the swine flu emergency funds, the Obama administration tried to replenish the stockpile in 2011 by asking Congress to provide $655 million, up from the previous year’s budget of less than $600 million.
Responding to swine flu, which the CDC estimated killed more than 12,000 people in the United States over the course of a year, had required the largest deployment in the stockpile’s history, including nearly 20 million pieces of personal protective equipment and more than 85 million N95 masks, according to a 2016 report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
“We recognized the need for replenishment of the stockpile and budgeted about a 10% increase,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration. “That was rejected by the Republican House.”
Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms on the Tea Party wave of opposition to the landmark 2010 health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The new House majority was intent on curbing government spending, especially at HHS, which administered Obamacare.
Congressional Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and House Speaker John Boehner, leveraged the debt ceiling — a limit on the government’s borrowing ability that had to be raised — to insist that the Obama administration accept federal spending curbs. The compromise, codified in the 2011 Budget Control Act, required a bipartisan “super committee” to find additional ways to reduce the deficit, or else it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as “sequestration.”
Even in the aftermath of the swine flu pandemic, the stockpile wasn’t a priority then. Without a full committee markup, Rehberg introduced a bill that provided $522.5 million to the stockpile, about 12% less than the previous year and $132 million less than the administration wanted. “Nobody got everything they wanted,” Rehberg said.
The Senate version of the funding bill offered $561 million for stockpile funding. Senators said they regretted the cuts even as they voted for the bill.
“In this bill we’re now getting into the bone marrow,” Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa who then chaired the Senate appropriations committee, said at the markup. “Some of these cuts will be painful and unpopular.”
In the bill’s final version, Congress allocated a compromise $534 million for the 2012 fiscal year, a 10% budget cut from the prior year and $121 million less than the Obama administration had requested.
The next year, the “super committee” failed to secure additional savings demanded by the Budget Control Act, triggering the automatic, across-the-board cuts. This “sequestration” was an outcome that the leaders of both parties disliked — and blamed one another for.
“Did either party ever indicate sequestration was welcome, positive or desirable?” Dave Schnittger, Boehner’s deputy chief of staff at the time, told ProPublica. “Sequestration was conceived — not by Republicans, but by a Democratic White House — as a crude mechanism to compel the super committee to do its job. Republicans consistently advocated for reductions in mandatory spending programs that would have prevented sequestration from ever happening.” (Mandatory spending refers to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.)
McConnell’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for Obama, pointed to numerous statements he made in 2013 urging Republicans to compromise, warning that the sequester would weaken economic recovery, military readiness and basic public services.
Gene Sperling, then a top Obama economic adviser, said Republicans focused attacks on the HHS budget, along with the Departments of Labor and Education, which are grouped under the same appropriations subcommittee.
“The Labor/HHS budget is where a significant number of progressive priorities are, from Head Start to (the National Institutes of Health) to the Education Department,” Sperling said. “There’s just so much in there, so it is often the hot spot for where conservative budget hawks who don’t believe in public investment go hardest.”
Under sequestration, the CDC, which managed the stockpile at the time, faced a 5% budget cut. In its 2013 budget submission, HHS decreased its stockpile funding request from the previous year, asking for $486 million, a cut of nearly $48 million. “The SNS is a key resource in maintaining public health preparedness and response,” the administration said. “However, the current fiscal climate necessitates scaling back.”
The decrease caught Rehberg’s attention at a budget hearing to review the request.
“Disaster preparedness is something that has been very important to me,” he said at the hearing. “I just would like to have you explain how such a large reduction can possibly not impact the national preparedness posture.”
Then-HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius answered that the CDC would prioritize replacing expiring drugs such as smallpox vaccines and anthrax treatments.
The next year, the administration again proposed cutting the stockpile’s funding from the 2012 funding level, but it warned that reduced funding could result in “fewer people receiving treatment during an influenza pandemic.”
[...] READ MORE
Dear Never Trumpers. I really appreciate that you hate Trump as much as us. However...
Dennis Donovan @ demo underground
2/19/2020
YOU are the reason we're here now.
YOU were the ones who doggedly harassed President Clinton based on unfounded rumors and half-truths. And, you threw in a completely cuckoo conspiracy theory that he murdered everyone around him to cover up a cocaine business.
YOU created Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (both who built and fed the rise of Donald Trump).
YOU sent a mob to the Miami Dade County office building to disrupt the lawful counting of votes.
YOU ignored a memo entitled "bin Laden determined to strike the US" ONE freaking month before he did and killed 3000 of your countrymen.
YOU smeared a man and his friends, after he was tragically killed, by mocking his memorial service (with bipartisan attendance) as a "campaign event".
YOU participated (or sat back - both are equally bad) in building a gigantic lie around non-existent WMD's in Iraq, got us into a ground war with that country that resulted in thousands of dead US troops and HUNDREDS of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians (not to mention billions of dollars that could've been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure).
YOU applauded a guy who was NOT doing a "heckuva job" while NOLA drowned.
YOU rigged the financial system to the point it threw us into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
YOU harassed the first African American US President by claiming (or remaining silent about it - again, equally bad), despite abundant proof showing otherwise, he wasn't born in this country.
YOU REFUSED to work with this man on ANYTHING. No compromise, nothing. Even when he adopted policies YOU were in favor of, you turned on your heels and DENIED you were ever in favor of it.
YOU denied this man his legal right of selecting HIS SCOTUS nominee.
After all of this, YOU run around with your hair on fire that Trump is a danger to Democracy and he must be stopped. And you have the unmitigated GALL to think YOU have a voice in choosing OUR nominee in 2020.
Let me tell you something.
As usual, our country is DEEP in crisis due to YOU, and it's up to the DEMOCRATS to pull our (YOURS included) collective fat out of the fire.
YOU brought us to this point. YOU don't get to opine on our nominee AT ALL.
Sit the fuck down, we'll roll up our sleeves and fix YOUR fucking mess YET AGAIN.
You're welcome.
YOU were the ones who doggedly harassed President Clinton based on unfounded rumors and half-truths. And, you threw in a completely cuckoo conspiracy theory that he murdered everyone around him to cover up a cocaine business.
YOU created Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (both who built and fed the rise of Donald Trump).
YOU sent a mob to the Miami Dade County office building to disrupt the lawful counting of votes.
YOU ignored a memo entitled "bin Laden determined to strike the US" ONE freaking month before he did and killed 3000 of your countrymen.
YOU smeared a man and his friends, after he was tragically killed, by mocking his memorial service (with bipartisan attendance) as a "campaign event".
YOU participated (or sat back - both are equally bad) in building a gigantic lie around non-existent WMD's in Iraq, got us into a ground war with that country that resulted in thousands of dead US troops and HUNDREDS of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians (not to mention billions of dollars that could've been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure).
YOU applauded a guy who was NOT doing a "heckuva job" while NOLA drowned.
YOU rigged the financial system to the point it threw us into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
YOU harassed the first African American US President by claiming (or remaining silent about it - again, equally bad), despite abundant proof showing otherwise, he wasn't born in this country.
YOU REFUSED to work with this man on ANYTHING. No compromise, nothing. Even when he adopted policies YOU were in favor of, you turned on your heels and DENIED you were ever in favor of it.
YOU denied this man his legal right of selecting HIS SCOTUS nominee.
After all of this, YOU run around with your hair on fire that Trump is a danger to Democracy and he must be stopped. And you have the unmitigated GALL to think YOU have a voice in choosing OUR nominee in 2020.
Let me tell you something.
As usual, our country is DEEP in crisis due to YOU, and it's up to the DEMOCRATS to pull our (YOURS included) collective fat out of the fire.
YOU brought us to this point. YOU don't get to opine on our nominee AT ALL.
Sit the fuck down, we'll roll up our sleeves and fix YOUR fucking mess YET AGAIN.
You're welcome.
|
|
the greatest threat to america!!!
Yale researcher reveals 110 year study finding violent deaths increase under Republican presidents
March 22, 2020
By David Edwards - raw story
Yale psychiatrist and violence expert Bandy Lee revealed on Sunday a study which found that violent deaths tend to increase when Republicans control the White House.
Lee tweeted about the study on Sunday after a follower noted that a Democratic president would have handled the coronavirus threat much differently than the current Republican president.
“I did a study that showed consistently, over 110 years, Republican presidencies increase violent death rates, while Democratic presidencies decrease them,” Lee explained. “Same with economic variables. Ordinarily, we would label one disease and the other health.”
“You do not ordinarily think of the difference of party as a difference of death versus life, and yet here it is,” she added. “Controlling for all other variables, the party difference was decisive.”
Lee also shared some data from the study showing how violent deaths increase during Republican presidencies.
Although the research covers a period between 1900 and 2010, Lee seemed to connect the historic data with President Donald Trump’s current handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the entire study here and view Lee’s tweets below.
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv
@BandyXLee1
I did a study that showed consistently, over 110 years, Republican presidencies increase violent death rates, while Democratic presidencies decrease them. Same with economic variables. Ordinarily, we would label one disease and the other health. https://twitter.com/ClaudiaWheatley/status/1241705785719128064 …
Vote!Vote!Vote!
@ClaudiaWheatley
Replying to @BandyXLee1 @johnpavlovitz
In both cases, the system was blinking red and the GOP POTUS ignored it. In both cases, the Democratic candidate had been closely involved in managing the danger under a Democratic president who’d made it a priority.
WARNING: REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS ARE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.
6:49 AM - Mar 22, 2020
Lee tweeted about the study on Sunday after a follower noted that a Democratic president would have handled the coronavirus threat much differently than the current Republican president.
“I did a study that showed consistently, over 110 years, Republican presidencies increase violent death rates, while Democratic presidencies decrease them,” Lee explained. “Same with economic variables. Ordinarily, we would label one disease and the other health.”
“You do not ordinarily think of the difference of party as a difference of death versus life, and yet here it is,” she added. “Controlling for all other variables, the party difference was decisive.”
Lee also shared some data from the study showing how violent deaths increase during Republican presidencies.
Although the research covers a period between 1900 and 2010, Lee seemed to connect the historic data with President Donald Trump’s current handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the entire study here and view Lee’s tweets below.
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv
@BandyXLee1
I did a study that showed consistently, over 110 years, Republican presidencies increase violent death rates, while Democratic presidencies decrease them. Same with economic variables. Ordinarily, we would label one disease and the other health. https://twitter.com/ClaudiaWheatley/status/1241705785719128064 …
Vote!Vote!Vote!
@ClaudiaWheatley
Replying to @BandyXLee1 @johnpavlovitz
In both cases, the system was blinking red and the GOP POTUS ignored it. In both cases, the Democratic candidate had been closely involved in managing the danger under a Democratic president who’d made it a priority.
WARNING: REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS ARE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.
6:49 AM - Mar 22, 2020
they are great at stealing from taxpayers!!!
GOP Groundhog Day: Why do we keep electing Republicans? They're no good at this
If you're starting to get that special "George W. Bush feeling," you're not alone. Will America learn its lesson?
BOB CESCA - salon
MARCH 17, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
If the slow-on-the-uptake response to COVID-19 by the White House seems a little familiar to you, you're definitely not imagining it. As if we're caught in some sort of "Groundhog Day" loop in the time-space continuum, we've absolutely been here before. Cue "I Got You Babe" on the alarm clock.
I realize too many Americans have gnat-like attention spans and even shorter memories, so I'll be specific. Beyond several details, the Trump presidency is looking an awful lot like the second term of the George W. Bush presidency. To his credit, Mike Pence hasn't shot anyone in the face, but we're seeing a traffic jam of similar events: a crisis with a growing death toll, a painfully tone-deaf, slow and inept government response, a financial meltdown and an out-of-control budget deficit. (Trump promised to eliminate the deficit.) Only now, it's all happening at the same time.
The Republican-led geyser of insanity that landed in our laps between 2005 and 2009 is back for an encore, and it's horrifying.
Do we see a pattern here yet?
We'd have to be blind not to. For reasons that will forever confound historians, 62 million Americans, many of whom were still tangled in the nets of the previous Republican catastrophes, decided it'd be a great idea to "own the libs" by giving the Republican Party another chance at running the federal government, not to mention Congress. This time, however, they landed on a candidate with zero experience, zero aptitude for government work, zero regard for anything other than his own popularity and, as a bonus, a history of personal financial disasters including bankrupted casinos, a fraudulent university and an even more fraudulent charitable foundation.
Trump voters justified this choice by suggesting that an obnoxious, undisciplined "businessman" who sold steaks in Sharper Image mall stores was fully qualified to run the world's most powerful government (which isn't at all like a business). This was like shoving a carnie who runs the Tilt-a-Whirl into the cockpit of a Space-X rocket. Maybe he'll stir things up, they thought, choosing to experiment with the presidency by handing an erratic weirdo the nuclear codes. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the rocket is nosediving, and we're all passengers, including the voters who put us here.
We tried to warn the Red Hats. We tried to remind them what happened the last time around. But rather than employing basic common sense or, at the very least, a Google search for what went down during the previous, slightly less moronic Republican administration, they decided to jam their faces into the GOP propeller blades once again, and here we are. Ned "The Head" Ryerson should be along any second now, refusing to abide social distancing.
Whether it was refusing to acknowledge the onset of the virus or closing down the pandemic response unit a couple of years ago, the Trump White House bungled this from the beginning, likely worsening the death toll and precipitating the collapse of the financial markets. Meanwhile, Trump's tax cuts ended up benefiting Trump's wealthy Mar-a-Lago guests far more than the "forgotten" men and women of America — and there was no way to pay for them, adding still more billions to the deficit. We've also seen this dynamic play out at the state level, for example with former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his tax cut "experiment," which nearly bankrupted the state rather than creating the explosive economic growth he promised.
Say what you will about the Democratic Party, but history has illustrated that Democratic presidents are infinitely better at governing than any recent Republican. I mean, it's shocking that the party that wants to drown government in the bathtub doesn't know how to govern, nor is interested in learning. But notice how Trump and Bush each eagerly embraced "big government" when their asses and legacies were on the line.
Trump arrived in Washington believing he could tweet, blurt foul nicknames and show off his executive orders like a big boy, and everything would work out great. It turns out that being president requires more vision, discipline and actual knowledge than he thought, and that's just the very basic skill set.
Much to Trump's surprise, when the disasters stacked up, he couldn't bullshit his way through like he's done so many times before. If it weren't for his life support system at Fox News Channel, not to mention his loyalists on Capitol Hill, Trump would've been forced to resign after Charlottesville — if he had even been elected in the first place, which would have been doubtful without the late Roger Ailes, Mitch McConnell and, yes, Vladimir Putin. They'll all try like hell now, but I wonder whether they can put President Humpty back together again.
During his inaugural address, Trump referred to the Obama years as "American carnage," and promised to make America great again. It turns out, a "no drama" competent family man who kicked off the heretofore longest economic expansion in history wasn't anything close to being American carnage — that was another Trump lie, eagerly swallowed by his own people. It turns out that while there's always room for improvement, economic growth, job creation and other indicators were equal to or more robust during the so-called "carnage" under Obama.
Indeed, carnage is what we're seeing now as we wake up to our shocking new normal for the foreseeable future. But even before the COVID-19 crisis, even before the financial crisis, there was the "Trump Crisis" — the daily institution-crushing mayhem erupting from Trump's phone, from federal investigators and from the fast-moving process of turning the executive branch into a subsidiary of the Trump Organization. It was only a matter of time before Trump's flimsy, brittle presidency, built on make-believe and held together with masking tape and spit by Fox News, fell apart. Sadly, we're all getting hit by the debris from the crash.
This November, and probably four years after that, I suspect millions of Americans will make the same dumb error in judgment all over again, voting for this incapable poseur despite the madness, even while they themselves are impacted more than most by Trump's amateurish blundering. And the endless loop will continue: A Republican president craps his cage, a Democrat cleans up the mess, short-attention-span voters elect another Republican, and we repeat.
The only way to break this cycle is to take a step back, turn off the Fox News fairy tales about big hands and perfect hair, and reprioritize the question of who ought to be leading the country. As we covered last week, those leaders should never again be slack-jawed morons you hypothetically want to "have a beer with," and they definitely shouldn't be loudmouth wannabe mobsters turned game-show hosts. We're dangerously close to fighting the next pandemic with Brawndo unless this ridiculousness is finally shocked out of our system.
I realize too many Americans have gnat-like attention spans and even shorter memories, so I'll be specific. Beyond several details, the Trump presidency is looking an awful lot like the second term of the George W. Bush presidency. To his credit, Mike Pence hasn't shot anyone in the face, but we're seeing a traffic jam of similar events: a crisis with a growing death toll, a painfully tone-deaf, slow and inept government response, a financial meltdown and an out-of-control budget deficit. (Trump promised to eliminate the deficit.) Only now, it's all happening at the same time.
The Republican-led geyser of insanity that landed in our laps between 2005 and 2009 is back for an encore, and it's horrifying.
- Trump's latest Hurricane Katrina-type blunder comes in the form of his reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, of course, which has been exacerbated by the president's lackadaisical whatevs attitude for the first several months. (The first case emerged in November.) By the way, I would argue his flaccid reaction to the 2018 California wildfires and 2017's Hurricane Maria easily qualify as his other Katrina events.
- Trump's version of the Great Recession also lurks around the corner — in fact, Trump agreed this week that a recession will likely happen soon. Likewise, the Dow collapsed another 3,000 points on Monday, closing at 20,188, a wafer-thin margin above the 19,827 average on inauguration day 2017, erasing all of the Trump gains. For the sake of comparison, Barack Obama presided over a 65.1 percent increase in the Dow during his first three years, while Trump has presided over a 1.6 percent gain and falling — my hunch is that Trump's record on the Dow will be in the negative territory before the end of the week. Hell, Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser, even repeated on Monday, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." John McCain said the exact same words in August 2008, just before the crash. Around and around we go.
- Trump and the Republican Senate are also responsible for a $1 trillion budget deficit, adding nearly half a trillion to the deficit in a little more than three years after the Obama administration cut the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars, from $1.4 trillion to $439 billion. The aforementioned $1.4 trillion deficit was courtesy of George W. Bush. So much for "fiscal conservatism." We can expect Trump's deficits to skyrocket even further now that the government and the Federal Reserve are bailing out businesses and extending liquidity to the banks. Another TARP could be in the works before this is all over.
Do we see a pattern here yet?
We'd have to be blind not to. For reasons that will forever confound historians, 62 million Americans, many of whom were still tangled in the nets of the previous Republican catastrophes, decided it'd be a great idea to "own the libs" by giving the Republican Party another chance at running the federal government, not to mention Congress. This time, however, they landed on a candidate with zero experience, zero aptitude for government work, zero regard for anything other than his own popularity and, as a bonus, a history of personal financial disasters including bankrupted casinos, a fraudulent university and an even more fraudulent charitable foundation.
Trump voters justified this choice by suggesting that an obnoxious, undisciplined "businessman" who sold steaks in Sharper Image mall stores was fully qualified to run the world's most powerful government (which isn't at all like a business). This was like shoving a carnie who runs the Tilt-a-Whirl into the cockpit of a Space-X rocket. Maybe he'll stir things up, they thought, choosing to experiment with the presidency by handing an erratic weirdo the nuclear codes. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the rocket is nosediving, and we're all passengers, including the voters who put us here.
We tried to warn the Red Hats. We tried to remind them what happened the last time around. But rather than employing basic common sense or, at the very least, a Google search for what went down during the previous, slightly less moronic Republican administration, they decided to jam their faces into the GOP propeller blades once again, and here we are. Ned "The Head" Ryerson should be along any second now, refusing to abide social distancing.
Whether it was refusing to acknowledge the onset of the virus or closing down the pandemic response unit a couple of years ago, the Trump White House bungled this from the beginning, likely worsening the death toll and precipitating the collapse of the financial markets. Meanwhile, Trump's tax cuts ended up benefiting Trump's wealthy Mar-a-Lago guests far more than the "forgotten" men and women of America — and there was no way to pay for them, adding still more billions to the deficit. We've also seen this dynamic play out at the state level, for example with former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his tax cut "experiment," which nearly bankrupted the state rather than creating the explosive economic growth he promised.
Say what you will about the Democratic Party, but history has illustrated that Democratic presidents are infinitely better at governing than any recent Republican. I mean, it's shocking that the party that wants to drown government in the bathtub doesn't know how to govern, nor is interested in learning. But notice how Trump and Bush each eagerly embraced "big government" when their asses and legacies were on the line.
Trump arrived in Washington believing he could tweet, blurt foul nicknames and show off his executive orders like a big boy, and everything would work out great. It turns out that being president requires more vision, discipline and actual knowledge than he thought, and that's just the very basic skill set.
Much to Trump's surprise, when the disasters stacked up, he couldn't bullshit his way through like he's done so many times before. If it weren't for his life support system at Fox News Channel, not to mention his loyalists on Capitol Hill, Trump would've been forced to resign after Charlottesville — if he had even been elected in the first place, which would have been doubtful without the late Roger Ailes, Mitch McConnell and, yes, Vladimir Putin. They'll all try like hell now, but I wonder whether they can put President Humpty back together again.
During his inaugural address, Trump referred to the Obama years as "American carnage," and promised to make America great again. It turns out, a "no drama" competent family man who kicked off the heretofore longest economic expansion in history wasn't anything close to being American carnage — that was another Trump lie, eagerly swallowed by his own people. It turns out that while there's always room for improvement, economic growth, job creation and other indicators were equal to or more robust during the so-called "carnage" under Obama.
Indeed, carnage is what we're seeing now as we wake up to our shocking new normal for the foreseeable future. But even before the COVID-19 crisis, even before the financial crisis, there was the "Trump Crisis" — the daily institution-crushing mayhem erupting from Trump's phone, from federal investigators and from the fast-moving process of turning the executive branch into a subsidiary of the Trump Organization. It was only a matter of time before Trump's flimsy, brittle presidency, built on make-believe and held together with masking tape and spit by Fox News, fell apart. Sadly, we're all getting hit by the debris from the crash.
This November, and probably four years after that, I suspect millions of Americans will make the same dumb error in judgment all over again, voting for this incapable poseur despite the madness, even while they themselves are impacted more than most by Trump's amateurish blundering. And the endless loop will continue: A Republican president craps his cage, a Democrat cleans up the mess, short-attention-span voters elect another Republican, and we repeat.
The only way to break this cycle is to take a step back, turn off the Fox News fairy tales about big hands and perfect hair, and reprioritize the question of who ought to be leading the country. As we covered last week, those leaders should never again be slack-jawed morons you hypothetically want to "have a beer with," and they definitely shouldn't be loudmouth wannabe mobsters turned game-show hosts. We're dangerously close to fighting the next pandemic with Brawndo unless this ridiculousness is finally shocked out of our system.
Republicans are learning that "rugged individualism" won't stop the coronavirus
Trump's incompetence is a real problem — but decades of right-wing ideology have also made this crisis worse
AMANDA MARCOTTE - salon
MARCH 13, 2020 5:00PM (UTC)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell smelled an evil liberal conspiracy on Thursday, one designed to steal away his decades of tireless work to kneecap the federal government. The Democratic-majority House had passed a large emergency bill, designed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and McConnell was absolutely certain Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were trying to pull one over on him.
"Unfortunately, it appears at this hour that the speaker and House Democrats instead chose to produce an ideological wish list that was not tailored closely to the circumstances," McConnell said. He accused Democrats of exploiting this situation, saying the bill addresses "various areas of policy that are barely related, if at all, to the issue before us."
There's a lot at stake here, but apparently the big sticking point for McConnell was a provision requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to employees, which McConnell claims would "put thousands of small businesses at risk."
In reality, of course, this is just common sense. As the New York Times editorial board noted, companies that don't offer paid sick leave "are endangering their workers and customers." A lot of workers with public-facing jobs — such as food service workers and retail employees — come into close contact with dozens or hundreds of people a day. But they are the people least likely to be allowed to stay home without losing their jobs, or at least losing a paycheck.
McConnell is so poisoned by his right-wing ideology that he can't see this, or chooses not to. Instead, he's standing firm on the long-standing Republican tendency to view employers as feudal lords who should be allowed to treat employees however they wish — even, apparently, if that means allowing a deadly disease to rip through the population, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people if it is not checked.
So far, most of the panic over the coronavirus outbreak has been driven by the undeniable incompetence of Donald Trump. At every turn, Trump has made this situation worse — even going so far as to try to discourage testing to bamboozle the public and, I suspect, tanking the markets by screwing up an Oval Office address because he's too vain to wear glasses so he can see well enough to read a teleprompter.
That's all true. But it's also important to understand that the larger Republican Party, even without Trump, is also to blame for what looks to be a serious public health crisis. Right-wing ideology, often marketed as "rugged individualism" but perhaps better understood as an aversion to the very concept of a common good, is one major reason why the U.S. government, hamstrung for decades by Republican power, isn't better equipped to handle a crisis.
This isn't just a Trump problem. This is a widespread Republican problem. For decades, GOP strategy has been consistent: Whenever they get power, they slash regulations and gut spending, with the goal of making government less effective. This is a deliberate strategy to make the public broadly distrustful of government, and therefore increasingly open to shifting more and more power to the wealthy individuals who control the private sector.
This ideological commitment to an every-man-for-himself ideology, which is terrible in any circumstances, is exposed as particularly dreadful in the face of a pandemic. Disease is a reminder that humans are a herd species, wholly dependent on each other for survival, and that government must be a way to formally organize that joint survival pattern. It's not some villain in a racism-inflected right-wing morality fable about the importance of "personal responsibility."
Simply put, we need our government to be able to protect us from disease. Republicans have spent years tearing it down, and even in a crisis are incapable of accepting that "small government" is not always a good thing.
As Max Moran at Talking Points Memo argued, the fact that Vice President Mike Pence — deemed a "normal" Republican — is in charge of the coronavirus comforts some people, because they believe he is more adult and responsible than Trump. Pence's track record suggests otherwise. As governor of Indiana, he oversaw an HIV outbreak that led to 10% of the population people in a single county becoming infected because Pence thought preaching the value of personal responsibility was better than following the recommendations of public health experts.
"[A] Pence-led response is dangerous, not in spite of, but precisely because he is a typical Republican," Moran writes, because normal Republicans "apply their competence and considerable resources" to the task of "protection for the powerful, callousness for the afflicted, and a special disdain for the 'other.'"
The right-wing idiocy that is going to get people killed is all over the Republican response to this situation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined McConnell in denouncing the Democratic bill, even though everything in it — including expanding food-stamp spending — will either help slow the spread of the disease or stimulate the American economy to offset the inevitable slowdown caused by this epidemic.
Instead, McCarthy is resorting to racism instead of sensible public health measures, calling the coronavirus the "Chinese coronavirus" for no apparent purpose except to feed the assumptions of the Fox News base than their whiteness and their racist attitudes will somehow protect them. (This assumption, by the way, is leading many older Americans to take serious and completely unnecessary risks with their health.)
The right-wing ideology poisoning is so bad that the coronavirus bill was held up in part because Republicans wanted to inject some anti-abortion language into it. There is absolutely no reason to believe that helping people protect themselves against a viral epidemic will lead to more abortions, but that's the modern GOP for you: They're always worried that somehow or other the Democrats have a sneaky agenda to "let" women have sex. (Which women will undoubtedly do, whether the Democrats authorize it or not.)
Even the so-called Republican "moderates" are to blame for this situation. For instance, Politico reporter Michael Grunwald uncovered this little tidbit about Sen. Susan Collins of Maine from his book about the Obama era.
Zooming out, it's easy to see how decades of damage to our government are likely to make this epidemic worse. Republicans have been stingy about health care spending and have blocked Democratic efforts to increase access, especially when it comes to the Medicaid expansion under the Obama administration. The result is that we have fewer doctors and hospitals ready to handle what we know is coming, and we will probably have a lot of infected people who won't get tested, either because they can't afford it or don't even know where to go for testing and treatment.
By all means, blame Trump for the current crisis. His incompetence is especially central to the panicked reaction of the financial markets. Even a slightly steadier president, whatever his or her party or ideology, would bolster investor confidence a whole lot more.
But this isn't just about Trump. Republicans have a profound hostility to good government, and whatever slapdash response they may grudgingly accept in an effort to save their skins at the ballot box this November will be hamstrung by the fact that they refused, for decades, to invest in the infrastructure necessary to weather the big shock that is hitting us right now. Viruses are the ultimate reminder that humans are interconnected and need each other, and that the ideal of "rugged individualism" is childish and often racist nonsense.
"Unfortunately, it appears at this hour that the speaker and House Democrats instead chose to produce an ideological wish list that was not tailored closely to the circumstances," McConnell said. He accused Democrats of exploiting this situation, saying the bill addresses "various areas of policy that are barely related, if at all, to the issue before us."
There's a lot at stake here, but apparently the big sticking point for McConnell was a provision requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to employees, which McConnell claims would "put thousands of small businesses at risk."
In reality, of course, this is just common sense. As the New York Times editorial board noted, companies that don't offer paid sick leave "are endangering their workers and customers." A lot of workers with public-facing jobs — such as food service workers and retail employees — come into close contact with dozens or hundreds of people a day. But they are the people least likely to be allowed to stay home without losing their jobs, or at least losing a paycheck.
McConnell is so poisoned by his right-wing ideology that he can't see this, or chooses not to. Instead, he's standing firm on the long-standing Republican tendency to view employers as feudal lords who should be allowed to treat employees however they wish — even, apparently, if that means allowing a deadly disease to rip through the population, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of people if it is not checked.
So far, most of the panic over the coronavirus outbreak has been driven by the undeniable incompetence of Donald Trump. At every turn, Trump has made this situation worse — even going so far as to try to discourage testing to bamboozle the public and, I suspect, tanking the markets by screwing up an Oval Office address because he's too vain to wear glasses so he can see well enough to read a teleprompter.
That's all true. But it's also important to understand that the larger Republican Party, even without Trump, is also to blame for what looks to be a serious public health crisis. Right-wing ideology, often marketed as "rugged individualism" but perhaps better understood as an aversion to the very concept of a common good, is one major reason why the U.S. government, hamstrung for decades by Republican power, isn't better equipped to handle a crisis.
This isn't just a Trump problem. This is a widespread Republican problem. For decades, GOP strategy has been consistent: Whenever they get power, they slash regulations and gut spending, with the goal of making government less effective. This is a deliberate strategy to make the public broadly distrustful of government, and therefore increasingly open to shifting more and more power to the wealthy individuals who control the private sector.
This ideological commitment to an every-man-for-himself ideology, which is terrible in any circumstances, is exposed as particularly dreadful in the face of a pandemic. Disease is a reminder that humans are a herd species, wholly dependent on each other for survival, and that government must be a way to formally organize that joint survival pattern. It's not some villain in a racism-inflected right-wing morality fable about the importance of "personal responsibility."
Simply put, we need our government to be able to protect us from disease. Republicans have spent years tearing it down, and even in a crisis are incapable of accepting that "small government" is not always a good thing.
As Max Moran at Talking Points Memo argued, the fact that Vice President Mike Pence — deemed a "normal" Republican — is in charge of the coronavirus comforts some people, because they believe he is more adult and responsible than Trump. Pence's track record suggests otherwise. As governor of Indiana, he oversaw an HIV outbreak that led to 10% of the population people in a single county becoming infected because Pence thought preaching the value of personal responsibility was better than following the recommendations of public health experts.
"[A] Pence-led response is dangerous, not in spite of, but precisely because he is a typical Republican," Moran writes, because normal Republicans "apply their competence and considerable resources" to the task of "protection for the powerful, callousness for the afflicted, and a special disdain for the 'other.'"
The right-wing idiocy that is going to get people killed is all over the Republican response to this situation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined McConnell in denouncing the Democratic bill, even though everything in it — including expanding food-stamp spending — will either help slow the spread of the disease or stimulate the American economy to offset the inevitable slowdown caused by this epidemic.
Instead, McCarthy is resorting to racism instead of sensible public health measures, calling the coronavirus the "Chinese coronavirus" for no apparent purpose except to feed the assumptions of the Fox News base than their whiteness and their racist attitudes will somehow protect them. (This assumption, by the way, is leading many older Americans to take serious and completely unnecessary risks with their health.)
The right-wing ideology poisoning is so bad that the coronavirus bill was held up in part because Republicans wanted to inject some anti-abortion language into it. There is absolutely no reason to believe that helping people protect themselves against a viral epidemic will lead to more abortions, but that's the modern GOP for you: They're always worried that somehow or other the Democrats have a sneaky agenda to "let" women have sex. (Which women will undoubtedly do, whether the Democrats authorize it or not.)
Even the so-called Republican "moderates" are to blame for this situation. For instance, Politico reporter Michael Grunwald uncovered this little tidbit about Sen. Susan Collins of Maine from his book about the Obama era.
Zooming out, it's easy to see how decades of damage to our government are likely to make this epidemic worse. Republicans have been stingy about health care spending and have blocked Democratic efforts to increase access, especially when it comes to the Medicaid expansion under the Obama administration. The result is that we have fewer doctors and hospitals ready to handle what we know is coming, and we will probably have a lot of infected people who won't get tested, either because they can't afford it or don't even know where to go for testing and treatment.
By all means, blame Trump for the current crisis. His incompetence is especially central to the panicked reaction of the financial markets. Even a slightly steadier president, whatever his or her party or ideology, would bolster investor confidence a whole lot more.
But this isn't just about Trump. Republicans have a profound hostility to good government, and whatever slapdash response they may grudgingly accept in an effort to save their skins at the ballot box this November will be hamstrung by the fact that they refused, for decades, to invest in the infrastructure necessary to weather the big shock that is hitting us right now. Viruses are the ultimate reminder that humans are interconnected and need each other, and that the ideal of "rugged individualism" is childish and often racist nonsense.
no surprise, from these bastards!!!
Senate GOP Blocks Emergency Paid Sick Leave Bill From Moving Forward
The legislation put forth by Democrats would guarantee 14 days of paid leave for workers affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
By Dave Jamieson - huff post
3/11/2020
Democrats hoping to pass an emergency paid sick leave bill to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus were stymied by Senate Republicans on Wednesday.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) tried to speed the measure up for a vote on the Senate floor through a procedural maneuver, but an objection from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) prevented the bill from bypassing the Republican-controlled health committee.
Murray noted that many people who don’t have paid leave through their jobs will inevitably miss work due to being sick or quarantined in the coming weeks. She argued that guaranteed paid leave was important both for public health and the good of the broader economy.
“For many of our workers ― restaurant workers, truck drivers, service industry workers ― they may not have an option to take a day off without losing their pay or losing their job,” Murray said. “That’s not a choice we should be asking anyone to make in the United States in the 21st century.”
Alexander said that paid sick leave is a “good idea.” But if lawmakers want to require employers to provide it, then the federal government should have to foot the bill, he argued.
“Employees are struggling, our employers are struggling, and it’s not a cure for the coronavirus to put a big new expensive federal mandate on employers who are struggling in the middle of this matter,” Alexander said.
Although the bill is bottled up for now, Democrats could try to attach the measure to another legislative package aimed at dealing with the virus.
Democrats proposed the emergency legislation in both chambers last week. The bill sponsored by Murray in the Senate and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) in the House would immediately guarantee workers 14 days of paid sick leave in the event of a public health emergency like the current one. Workers would separately accrue up to seven sick days over the course of a year under the bill.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised people stay home from work if they exhibit symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Under the Democratic bill, workers could use the 14 emergency sick days if their workplace or their child’s school is closed, or if they or a family member ends up quarantined.
Many states already have sick leave mandates on the books, including California and Murray’s home state of Washington, both of which have been hit hard by the novel coronavirus. But unlike in most other developed countries, there is no federal law requiring employers to give workers paid time off when they’re sick.
The outbreak has brought unprecedented public attention to the lack of a mandate in the U.S. Seventy-three percent of private sector workers have paid sick leave, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the remaining 27% who don’t have it, many are concentrated in lower-wage service jobs like retail and fast food.
Some companies have moved to institute more generous policies amid the criticism stirred up by the coronavirus emergency. Darden Restaurants, which owns the Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse chains, recently announced that all its hourly employees would now start accruing sick leave. The company has previously opposed legislative mandates on sick days.
Democrats have been trying to pass sick leave measures for years and have succeeded in the House. But the GOP majority in the Senate has prevented such bills from coming up for a vote, arguing that small businesses cannot withstand the cost increases of sick leave.
Murray’s emergency bill was all but certain to die in the Senate, but the measure still afforded Democrats an opportunity to put Republicans on the record in opposing it. Polling shows that the idea of a sick leave mandate tends to be extremely popular, with even a strong majority of Republican voters supporting it.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) tried to speed the measure up for a vote on the Senate floor through a procedural maneuver, but an objection from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) prevented the bill from bypassing the Republican-controlled health committee.
Murray noted that many people who don’t have paid leave through their jobs will inevitably miss work due to being sick or quarantined in the coming weeks. She argued that guaranteed paid leave was important both for public health and the good of the broader economy.
“For many of our workers ― restaurant workers, truck drivers, service industry workers ― they may not have an option to take a day off without losing their pay or losing their job,” Murray said. “That’s not a choice we should be asking anyone to make in the United States in the 21st century.”
Alexander said that paid sick leave is a “good idea.” But if lawmakers want to require employers to provide it, then the federal government should have to foot the bill, he argued.
“Employees are struggling, our employers are struggling, and it’s not a cure for the coronavirus to put a big new expensive federal mandate on employers who are struggling in the middle of this matter,” Alexander said.
Although the bill is bottled up for now, Democrats could try to attach the measure to another legislative package aimed at dealing with the virus.
Democrats proposed the emergency legislation in both chambers last week. The bill sponsored by Murray in the Senate and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) in the House would immediately guarantee workers 14 days of paid sick leave in the event of a public health emergency like the current one. Workers would separately accrue up to seven sick days over the course of a year under the bill.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised people stay home from work if they exhibit symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Under the Democratic bill, workers could use the 14 emergency sick days if their workplace or their child’s school is closed, or if they or a family member ends up quarantined.
Many states already have sick leave mandates on the books, including California and Murray’s home state of Washington, both of which have been hit hard by the novel coronavirus. But unlike in most other developed countries, there is no federal law requiring employers to give workers paid time off when they’re sick.
The outbreak has brought unprecedented public attention to the lack of a mandate in the U.S. Seventy-three percent of private sector workers have paid sick leave, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the remaining 27% who don’t have it, many are concentrated in lower-wage service jobs like retail and fast food.
Some companies have moved to institute more generous policies amid the criticism stirred up by the coronavirus emergency. Darden Restaurants, which owns the Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse chains, recently announced that all its hourly employees would now start accruing sick leave. The company has previously opposed legislative mandates on sick days.
Democrats have been trying to pass sick leave measures for years and have succeeded in the House. But the GOP majority in the Senate has prevented such bills from coming up for a vote, arguing that small businesses cannot withstand the cost increases of sick leave.
Murray’s emergency bill was all but certain to die in the Senate, but the measure still afforded Democrats an opportunity to put Republicans on the record in opposing it. Polling shows that the idea of a sick leave mandate tends to be extremely popular, with even a strong majority of Republican voters supporting it.
Russian meddling is real — but Republicans have broader plans to ruin our elections
GOP doesn't want to hear about Russian interference, and is busy wrecking American elections at ground level
SOPHIA TESFAYE - salon
FEBRUARY 24, 2020 10:00AM (UTC)
Ever since the 2016 election, the U.S. intelligence community has consistently claimed that Russia and its agents continue to work to undermine American elections. When intel officials returned to Congress on Feb. 13 to warn — as required by law — that Russians are already interfering in the 2020 election to aid President Trump, several Republican lawmakers pushed back against the assessment before rushing to the White House to complain.
"I'd challenge anyone to give me a real-world argument where [Vladimir] Putin would rather have President Trump and not Bernie Sanders," Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, told The New York Times after the briefing before the House Intelligence Committee. According to reports, the intelligence community's top election security official told committee members that multiple agencies have concluded that Russia wants President Trump re-elected to serve the Kremlin's interests. Days later, Trump booted the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and replaced him with Richard Grenell, a political lackey who lacks any relevant experience.
This rinse and repeat of Republican corruption and cover-up at the expense of our elections is nothing new. Recall that Robert Mueller's investigation concluded the Russians had hacked both the Democratic and Republican national committees. The DNC's information was released ahead of the 2016 election, while the RNC's information was withheld — presumably to control the GOP. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Republican leader in the Senate, then threatened President Obama that if his administration went public with information about Russian interference, he would tell the voters that it was Obama who was interfering with the election.
At least a dozen Republican congressional campaigns went on to use materials stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. The GOP coverup continued within hours after Mueller's testimony about foreign election interference before the House Intelligence Committee in 2019, when the Republican-controlled Senate moved to block four separate bills to defend the U.S. democratic process.
In a clear demonstration of the principle that rampant corruption always begins at the top, the RNC announced plans this week to support the downriver ripples of Republicans' long-term war against democracy.
Republican lawmakers across the country, faced with losing the popular vote by greater margins election after election, have responded by restricting access to the ballot before elections — and then crippling the power of winning Democratic opponents after an election. In Kentucky, a GOP supermajority in the state legislature just voted to strip some executive powers from newly-elected Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat. Beshear won a closely contested election in which Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, who initially refused to concede.
It's a move replicated by Republicans in North Carolina after losing the governorship in 2016, in Wisconsin after the 2018 defeat of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, and in Michigan, where Democrats swept every statewide office in 2018's midterm elections. Now the RNC, along with Trump's campaign, plans to spend millions to defend the GOP's nationwide efforts to thwart democracy ahead of the 2020 election.
As Politico first reported, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel has committed to spend $10 million in legal fees this cycle to defeat what she called "the Democrats' voter suppression myth" and to defend Republican legislation that imposes draconian restrictions on voter behavior, like Michigan's potential 90-day prison sentence for anyone found guilty of providing transportation to the polls for a person who is able to walk — even a legally blind voter who cannot drive.
"These actions are dangerous, and we will not stand idly by while Democrats try to sue their way to victory in 2020," McDaniel said of lawsuits challenging Michigan voting laws. McDaniel pledged to use the RNC's resources to "aggressively defend the integrity of the democratic process and support the right of all eligible voters to cast an effective ballot."
Republicans in battleground states like Florida are already gearing up for Election Day voter challenges on citizenship and residency grounds, as evidenced by a new GOP bill that allows the political parties to assign poll watchers from outside a given district. In 24 states, any citizen can challenge a voter without documentation to prove his or her eligibility. In Indiana, Republicans are again advancing a bill that would allow county election officials to kick voters off the rolls immediately without notice, even after two federal courts found such a practice violates voters' rights. Republicans in several states have introduced a new crop of voter ID bills ahead of the 2020 elections.
So while Republicans in Congress openly act to support Russian interference in our elections, Republicans in state legislatures across the country are determined to limit the number of Americans who can actually vote. Without these twin assaults on democracy, they know they can't win.
"I'd challenge anyone to give me a real-world argument where [Vladimir] Putin would rather have President Trump and not Bernie Sanders," Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, told The New York Times after the briefing before the House Intelligence Committee. According to reports, the intelligence community's top election security official told committee members that multiple agencies have concluded that Russia wants President Trump re-elected to serve the Kremlin's interests. Days later, Trump booted the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and replaced him with Richard Grenell, a political lackey who lacks any relevant experience.
This rinse and repeat of Republican corruption and cover-up at the expense of our elections is nothing new. Recall that Robert Mueller's investigation concluded the Russians had hacked both the Democratic and Republican national committees. The DNC's information was released ahead of the 2016 election, while the RNC's information was withheld — presumably to control the GOP. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Republican leader in the Senate, then threatened President Obama that if his administration went public with information about Russian interference, he would tell the voters that it was Obama who was interfering with the election.
At least a dozen Republican congressional campaigns went on to use materials stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. The GOP coverup continued within hours after Mueller's testimony about foreign election interference before the House Intelligence Committee in 2019, when the Republican-controlled Senate moved to block four separate bills to defend the U.S. democratic process.
In a clear demonstration of the principle that rampant corruption always begins at the top, the RNC announced plans this week to support the downriver ripples of Republicans' long-term war against democracy.
Republican lawmakers across the country, faced with losing the popular vote by greater margins election after election, have responded by restricting access to the ballot before elections — and then crippling the power of winning Democratic opponents after an election. In Kentucky, a GOP supermajority in the state legislature just voted to strip some executive powers from newly-elected Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat. Beshear won a closely contested election in which Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, who initially refused to concede.
It's a move replicated by Republicans in North Carolina after losing the governorship in 2016, in Wisconsin after the 2018 defeat of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, and in Michigan, where Democrats swept every statewide office in 2018's midterm elections. Now the RNC, along with Trump's campaign, plans to spend millions to defend the GOP's nationwide efforts to thwart democracy ahead of the 2020 election.
As Politico first reported, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel has committed to spend $10 million in legal fees this cycle to defeat what she called "the Democrats' voter suppression myth" and to defend Republican legislation that imposes draconian restrictions on voter behavior, like Michigan's potential 90-day prison sentence for anyone found guilty of providing transportation to the polls for a person who is able to walk — even a legally blind voter who cannot drive.
"These actions are dangerous, and we will not stand idly by while Democrats try to sue their way to victory in 2020," McDaniel said of lawsuits challenging Michigan voting laws. McDaniel pledged to use the RNC's resources to "aggressively defend the integrity of the democratic process and support the right of all eligible voters to cast an effective ballot."
Republicans in battleground states like Florida are already gearing up for Election Day voter challenges on citizenship and residency grounds, as evidenced by a new GOP bill that allows the political parties to assign poll watchers from outside a given district. In 24 states, any citizen can challenge a voter without documentation to prove his or her eligibility. In Indiana, Republicans are again advancing a bill that would allow county election officials to kick voters off the rolls immediately without notice, even after two federal courts found such a practice violates voters' rights. Republicans in several states have introduced a new crop of voter ID bills ahead of the 2020 elections.
So while Republicans in Congress openly act to support Russian interference in our elections, Republicans in state legislatures across the country are determined to limit the number of Americans who can actually vote. Without these twin assaults on democracy, they know they can't win.
Paul Krugman: ‘Zombie Republicans’ are ‘soulless opportunists’ destroying the US with Trump’s approval
February 4, 2020
By Tom Boggioni - raw story
In a column for the New York Times — as well as in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour which can be seen below — Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman unloaded on members of the Republican Party as “zombies” and “soulless opportunists” working in tandem with Donald Trump to ruin the U.S. economy.
Riffing off his new book, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future,” he writes, “Is this the week American democracy dies? Quite possibly.”
Posing the separate question of how the U.S. reached such a crucial point, he put forward his “zombie” theory.
“A zombie idea is a belief or doctrine that has repeatedly been proved false, but refuses to die; instead, it just keeps shambling along, eating people’s brains. The ultimate zombie in American politics is the assertion that tax cuts pay for themselves — a claim that has been proved wrong again and again over the past 40 years. But there are other zombies, like climate change denial, that play an almost equally large role in our political discourse,” he wrote before adding, “And all of the really important zombies these days are on the right. Indeed, they have taken over the Republican Party.”
According to the economist, it all began with what has become known as “voodoo economics.”
“Back in 1980 George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s extravagant claims about the effectiveness of tax cuts “voodoo economic policy.” Everything that has happened since has vindicated his original assessment. Deficits ballooned after Reagan cut taxes; they shrank and eventually turned into surpluses after Bill Clinton raised taxes, then ballooned again after George W. Bush’s tax cuts,” he wrote adding that despite its failures it has become the guiding principle under Republican administrations and has only worsened under the leadership of Donald Trump.
“Voodoo economics has become unchallengeable doctrine within the Republican Party. Even fake moderates like Susan Collins justified their support for the 2017 Trump tax cut by claiming that it would reduce the budget deficit. Predictably, the deficit actually exploded, and now exceeds $1 trillion a year,” he explained. “It’s important to realize that the zombification of the G.O.P. isn’t a recent phenomenon, something that happened only with Trump’s election. On the contrary, zombies have been eating Republican brains for decades … What recent events make clear, however, is that zombie ideas haven’t eaten just Republicans’ brains. They have also eaten the party’s soul.”
“It takes a certain kind of person to play that kind of game — namely, a cynical careerist. There used to be Republican politicians who were more than that, but they were mainly holdovers from an earlier era, and at this point have all left the scene, one way or another. John McCain may well have been the last of his kind,” he elaborated. “A result of decades of zombification is a Republican caucus that consists entirely of soulless opportunists (and no, the fact that some of them like to quote Scripture doesn’t change that fact).”
The columnist goes onto note that one might expect some Republicans to admit that they can’t continue down this road — but that it will never happen while Trump is president.
“What we’ve learned, however — and perhaps more important, what Trump has learned — is that there is no line. If Trump wants to dismantle democracy and rule of law (which he does), his party will stand with him all the way,” he concluded.
RELATED: McConnell-run Senate’s 2019 record a ‘shocking’ and ‘immoral’ failure: Catholic social justice group
Riffing off his new book, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future,” he writes, “Is this the week American democracy dies? Quite possibly.”
Posing the separate question of how the U.S. reached such a crucial point, he put forward his “zombie” theory.
“A zombie idea is a belief or doctrine that has repeatedly been proved false, but refuses to die; instead, it just keeps shambling along, eating people’s brains. The ultimate zombie in American politics is the assertion that tax cuts pay for themselves — a claim that has been proved wrong again and again over the past 40 years. But there are other zombies, like climate change denial, that play an almost equally large role in our political discourse,” he wrote before adding, “And all of the really important zombies these days are on the right. Indeed, they have taken over the Republican Party.”
According to the economist, it all began with what has become known as “voodoo economics.”
“Back in 1980 George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s extravagant claims about the effectiveness of tax cuts “voodoo economic policy.” Everything that has happened since has vindicated his original assessment. Deficits ballooned after Reagan cut taxes; they shrank and eventually turned into surpluses after Bill Clinton raised taxes, then ballooned again after George W. Bush’s tax cuts,” he wrote adding that despite its failures it has become the guiding principle under Republican administrations and has only worsened under the leadership of Donald Trump.
“Voodoo economics has become unchallengeable doctrine within the Republican Party. Even fake moderates like Susan Collins justified their support for the 2017 Trump tax cut by claiming that it would reduce the budget deficit. Predictably, the deficit actually exploded, and now exceeds $1 trillion a year,” he explained. “It’s important to realize that the zombification of the G.O.P. isn’t a recent phenomenon, something that happened only with Trump’s election. On the contrary, zombies have been eating Republican brains for decades … What recent events make clear, however, is that zombie ideas haven’t eaten just Republicans’ brains. They have also eaten the party’s soul.”
“It takes a certain kind of person to play that kind of game — namely, a cynical careerist. There used to be Republican politicians who were more than that, but they were mainly holdovers from an earlier era, and at this point have all left the scene, one way or another. John McCain may well have been the last of his kind,” he elaborated. “A result of decades of zombification is a Republican caucus that consists entirely of soulless opportunists (and no, the fact that some of them like to quote Scripture doesn’t change that fact).”
The columnist goes onto note that one might expect some Republicans to admit that they can’t continue down this road — but that it will never happen while Trump is president.
“What we’ve learned, however — and perhaps more important, what Trump has learned — is that there is no line. If Trump wants to dismantle democracy and rule of law (which he does), his party will stand with him all the way,” he concluded.
RELATED: McConnell-run Senate’s 2019 record a ‘shocking’ and ‘immoral’ failure: Catholic social justice group
North Carolina Officials Aren’t Rushing to Return Pro-Confederate PAC Donations
BY Rebekah Barber, Facing South - truthout
PUBLISHED February 3, 2020
Facing South recently reported on the North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ (NC SCV) organizing of a political action committee in late 2015. The move came just months after the massacre of nine Black people by a Confederate sympathizer in a Charleston, South Carolina, church sparked growing sentiment against public displays of Confederate symbols, to which North Carolina’s Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature responded by passing a law that forbids the removal of public monuments to the Confederacy.
The North Carolina Heritage PAC was officially established in January 2016, according to paperwork on file with the state elections board. Since then, the PAC has contributed to 16 political campaigns in the state. All of those who received money from the PAC are conservative Republicans, and some are high-ranking officials including Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore, and Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.
In all, the North Carolina Heritage PAC has donated over $22,000 to political campaigns to date. But according to elections watchdog Bob Hall, the former executive director of Democracy North Carolina, these contributions may have been made illegally.
On Jan. 22, Hall submitted a complaint to the state elections board requesting a comprehensive investigation and appropriate enforcement action regarding allegedly illegal activity by the N.C. Heritage PAC, NC SCV, and individual leaders and affiliated organizations of NC SCV involved in financing the PAC. Hall’s complaint was based on his own research as well as reporting by The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill, where the NC SCV has been embroiled in the controversy over the school’s Confederate monument, which was pulled down by anti-racist protesters in 2018.
Hall says that NC SCV leaders mistakenly believed their organization — a 501c3 nonprofit that under law cannot engage in political activity — could create and financially support a PAC. He interviewed NC SCV leaders who told him they relied on legal advice that a provision of North Carolina law allowed it.
“But that advice is wrong,” his complaint states. It continues:
I am told that the advice about NCGS 163-278.19(f), no doubt well intended, came from a retired state judge. No one gave me a name, but I note that retired Superior Court Judge Samuel T. Currin is one of the first donors to the NC Heritage PAC, donating $50 on Feb. 24, 2016 and $50 on Feb. 25, 2016. Currin is also a former US Attorney and former NC Republican Party chair. As US Attorney during the intense Jesse Helms vs. Jim Hunt 1984 election, Currin’s office sent incorrect warnings to local election officials asserting, for example, that payments to people who drive voters to the polls are illegal (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/10/02/second-time-a…). Currin was sent to federal prison in 2007 on charges related to tax fraud and money laundering (https://oklahoman.com/article/3119204/former-judge-prosecutor-sentenced-…).
Hall also noted that a staff auditor at the elections board, during a routine review in 2017, asked the Heritage PAC treasurer if NC SCV met the provisions of the law allowing certain nonprofits to make political contributions. The auditor simply accepted NC SCV Commander R. Kevin Stone’s assurances that the contributions were permissible.
The complaint further alleges that NC SCV leaders “deliberately engaged in illegal activities to grow and sustain the NC Heritage PAC,” based on reporting by The Daily Tar Heel and Hall’s own research. These activities include multiple leaders soliciting cash and other contributions during NC SCV local and state meetings as well as some leaders asking NC SCV members to put their names on phony PAC donations as though the money was their own, which violates state campaign finance laws.
Should the state election board verify Hall’s charges, he wants it to terminate the NC Heritage PAC and impose penalties against NC SCV leaders who broke the law. He is also calling on candidates who received funds from the Heritage PAC to return the same amount to the state elections board.
Facing South reached out to the 13 elected officials who received donations from the PAC to find out if they intend to return the money. We heard back from just one — state Rep. Larry Pittman, who represents Cabarrus and Rowan counties. The co-sponsor of a bill that would have removed the ban on secession from the state constitution, Pittman drew widespread attention in 2017 when he stated that the Civil War was “unnecessary and unconstitutional” and compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler. His campaign has received $2,000 from the PAC to date.
“I have asked [the State Board of Elections] and SCV about this,” he wrote in an email. “I have not yet received word that there is actually anything wrong with the contribution. If and when it is verified to me that this was an inappropriate contribution, I will do whatever SBOE deems necessary. Until then, a mere allegation is not enough to justify doing anything about it.”
The North Carolina Heritage PAC was officially established in January 2016, according to paperwork on file with the state elections board. Since then, the PAC has contributed to 16 political campaigns in the state. All of those who received money from the PAC are conservative Republicans, and some are high-ranking officials including Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore, and Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.
In all, the North Carolina Heritage PAC has donated over $22,000 to political campaigns to date. But according to elections watchdog Bob Hall, the former executive director of Democracy North Carolina, these contributions may have been made illegally.
On Jan. 22, Hall submitted a complaint to the state elections board requesting a comprehensive investigation and appropriate enforcement action regarding allegedly illegal activity by the N.C. Heritage PAC, NC SCV, and individual leaders and affiliated organizations of NC SCV involved in financing the PAC. Hall’s complaint was based on his own research as well as reporting by The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill, where the NC SCV has been embroiled in the controversy over the school’s Confederate monument, which was pulled down by anti-racist protesters in 2018.
Hall says that NC SCV leaders mistakenly believed their organization — a 501c3 nonprofit that under law cannot engage in political activity — could create and financially support a PAC. He interviewed NC SCV leaders who told him they relied on legal advice that a provision of North Carolina law allowed it.
“But that advice is wrong,” his complaint states. It continues:
I am told that the advice about NCGS 163-278.19(f), no doubt well intended, came from a retired state judge. No one gave me a name, but I note that retired Superior Court Judge Samuel T. Currin is one of the first donors to the NC Heritage PAC, donating $50 on Feb. 24, 2016 and $50 on Feb. 25, 2016. Currin is also a former US Attorney and former NC Republican Party chair. As US Attorney during the intense Jesse Helms vs. Jim Hunt 1984 election, Currin’s office sent incorrect warnings to local election officials asserting, for example, that payments to people who drive voters to the polls are illegal (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/10/02/second-time-a…). Currin was sent to federal prison in 2007 on charges related to tax fraud and money laundering (https://oklahoman.com/article/3119204/former-judge-prosecutor-sentenced-…).
Hall also noted that a staff auditor at the elections board, during a routine review in 2017, asked the Heritage PAC treasurer if NC SCV met the provisions of the law allowing certain nonprofits to make political contributions. The auditor simply accepted NC SCV Commander R. Kevin Stone’s assurances that the contributions were permissible.
The complaint further alleges that NC SCV leaders “deliberately engaged in illegal activities to grow and sustain the NC Heritage PAC,” based on reporting by The Daily Tar Heel and Hall’s own research. These activities include multiple leaders soliciting cash and other contributions during NC SCV local and state meetings as well as some leaders asking NC SCV members to put their names on phony PAC donations as though the money was their own, which violates state campaign finance laws.
Should the state election board verify Hall’s charges, he wants it to terminate the NC Heritage PAC and impose penalties against NC SCV leaders who broke the law. He is also calling on candidates who received funds from the Heritage PAC to return the same amount to the state elections board.
Facing South reached out to the 13 elected officials who received donations from the PAC to find out if they intend to return the money. We heard back from just one — state Rep. Larry Pittman, who represents Cabarrus and Rowan counties. The co-sponsor of a bill that would have removed the ban on secession from the state constitution, Pittman drew widespread attention in 2017 when he stated that the Civil War was “unnecessary and unconstitutional” and compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler. His campaign has received $2,000 from the PAC to date.
“I have asked [the State Board of Elections] and SCV about this,” he wrote in an email. “I have not yet received word that there is actually anything wrong with the contribution. If and when it is verified to me that this was an inappropriate contribution, I will do whatever SBOE deems necessary. Until then, a mere allegation is not enough to justify doing anything about it.”
"Drop Dead, America" — Signed, the Republican Senate
P.M. Carpenter | the smirking chimp
January 31, 2020 - 8:05am
I really don't know how visibly disheartened Democratic senators can any longer sit and countenance this sham of an impeachment trial. In short order, thanks to the playful brutality of Republican senators this criminal president will possess the adjudicated constitutional authority to do whatever he damn well likes, which, at any rate, he already believed was his right.
Once a Democratic president takes office — if another Democratic president takes office, given that Trump will soon have the unfettered power to hire foreign interference into our national elections with helter-skelter whimsy — his or her authority will, of course, revert to a strict constructionist standard, courtesy the criminal Republican senators whom honorable Democrats must countenance.
Meanwhile, the absurdity to which the majority Senate is so forcefully giving its imprimatur is more astounding than any other grotesquerie in American political or constitutional history.
Trump committed no statutory crime, say Senate Republicans and the president's defense thugs, thus his actions must be unimpeachable. As a former assistant to Ken Starr noted the other day on MSNBC, according to that logic, Trump could announce the names of every secret U.S. agent overseas, and his manifest gutting of our national security (and resulting murder of countless Americans) would have to be deemed faultless.
As already mentioned, Trump will soon be openly free to invite foreign powers to interfere into our presidential election. Russia? China? Ukraine? Come on in, boys, the Trumpian sewer is just fine.
For that matter, given this rather peculiar precedent, every member of Congress will also be free to invite foreign powers to interfere in their elections.
Sen. Mitch McConnell can hire Chinese communist nationals to man all the Kentucky voting booths, Rep. Ted Lieu can hire Taiwanese nationals to oversee his district's democracy, Rep. Eliot Engel can accept millions from everyone who wishes to bomb Iran, and Sen. James Inhofe, most appropriately, can take all the boodle he likes from whatever nation is considered the dumbest on earth. (Problem: That would be us.)
The mind wanders in horror at the destructive consequences of what Republican senators are doing. The absurdity, the grotesqueness, the absolute unAmerican vileness of what these ignorance-elected guttersnipes are about to inflict on this once-great nation causes the mind to recoil in unprecedented despair.
As of this Super Bowl weekend, probably, America will be gone.
Once a Democratic president takes office — if another Democratic president takes office, given that Trump will soon have the unfettered power to hire foreign interference into our national elections with helter-skelter whimsy — his or her authority will, of course, revert to a strict constructionist standard, courtesy the criminal Republican senators whom honorable Democrats must countenance.
Meanwhile, the absurdity to which the majority Senate is so forcefully giving its imprimatur is more astounding than any other grotesquerie in American political or constitutional history.
Trump committed no statutory crime, say Senate Republicans and the president's defense thugs, thus his actions must be unimpeachable. As a former assistant to Ken Starr noted the other day on MSNBC, according to that logic, Trump could announce the names of every secret U.S. agent overseas, and his manifest gutting of our national security (and resulting murder of countless Americans) would have to be deemed faultless.
As already mentioned, Trump will soon be openly free to invite foreign powers to interfere into our presidential election. Russia? China? Ukraine? Come on in, boys, the Trumpian sewer is just fine.
For that matter, given this rather peculiar precedent, every member of Congress will also be free to invite foreign powers to interfere in their elections.
Sen. Mitch McConnell can hire Chinese communist nationals to man all the Kentucky voting booths, Rep. Ted Lieu can hire Taiwanese nationals to oversee his district's democracy, Rep. Eliot Engel can accept millions from everyone who wishes to bomb Iran, and Sen. James Inhofe, most appropriately, can take all the boodle he likes from whatever nation is considered the dumbest on earth. (Problem: That would be us.)
The mind wanders in horror at the destructive consequences of what Republican senators are doing. The absurdity, the grotesqueness, the absolute unAmerican vileness of what these ignorance-elected guttersnipes are about to inflict on this once-great nation causes the mind to recoil in unprecedented despair.
As of this Super Bowl weekend, probably, America will be gone.
a worthless bitch!!!
Collins' true partisan hack colors are showing when it comes to impeachment witnesses
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday January 16, 2020 · 9:25 AM PST
Sen. Susan Collins has never really had to face hard scrutiny in her reelection campaigns, and boy does it show. The lies and obfuscations that roll so easily off the tongues of her fellow Republicans sound absolutely idiotic, naive, and ham-handed coming from her. Consider her reaction to the bombshell revelations from Ukraine plot co-conspirator Lev Parnas Wednesday.
Asked about the documents handed over to the House on Tuesday, Collins decided to attack House investigators. "I wonder why the House did not put that into the record and it's only now being revealed," Collins said. When informed that the House only got those documents this week, Collins sniffed "Doesn't that suggest that the House did an incomplete job, then?"
So she's either a partisan hack or an idiot who hasn't paid any attention to the past several months to any of this process, and the fact that the Trump administration completely stonewalled the investigations. So the Parnas documents can be dismissed, and don't convince her that the Senate needs to have a real trial, gather new evidence, and hear from witnesses. What a far cry from the last impeachment!
Like her appearance on Meet the Press in January 1999. "As one who has advocated allowing them to call unlimited number of witnesses, I think it would be helpful for me to do my job of searching for the truth to hear firsthand from witnesses." And in a press conference that same month: "I need witnesses and further evidence to guide me to the right destination, to get to the truth."
Yeah, I'm going to go with partisan hack. Though that doesn't preclude idiot.
Asked about the documents handed over to the House on Tuesday, Collins decided to attack House investigators. "I wonder why the House did not put that into the record and it's only now being revealed," Collins said. When informed that the House only got those documents this week, Collins sniffed "Doesn't that suggest that the House did an incomplete job, then?"
So she's either a partisan hack or an idiot who hasn't paid any attention to the past several months to any of this process, and the fact that the Trump administration completely stonewalled the investigations. So the Parnas documents can be dismissed, and don't convince her that the Senate needs to have a real trial, gather new evidence, and hear from witnesses. What a far cry from the last impeachment!
Like her appearance on Meet the Press in January 1999. "As one who has advocated allowing them to call unlimited number of witnesses, I think it would be helpful for me to do my job of searching for the truth to hear firsthand from witnesses." And in a press conference that same month: "I need witnesses and further evidence to guide me to the right destination, to get to the truth."
Yeah, I'm going to go with partisan hack. Though that doesn't preclude idiot.
republicans are a lost cause!!!
Republicans are considering Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. for president
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. ranked in the top four of a poll on possible 2024 GOP presidential candidates
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JANUARY 5, 2020 3:00PM (UTC)
A new poll reveals that two of President Donald Trump's children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, rank among the top four Republicans being considered by party voters for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Twenty-nine percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they would consider Donald Trump Jr. for president and 16 percent said they would consider Ivanka Trump, according to a SurveyMonkey poll for Axios. The same survey found that 40 percent of those voters would consider nominating Vice President Mike Pence, 26 percent would consider former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and 15 percent would consider Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
"An early poll like this is largely a measure of name ID," Axios reporter Neal Rothschild wrote in an article explaining the poll results. "But it's also a vivid illustration of just how strong Trump's brand is with the GOP." The article also noted how Donald Trump Jr.'s recent book "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us" reached No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, that a rally in San Antonio chanted "2024!" when Trump Jr. delivered a speech for the president's reelection and that Trump Jr. was the top choice among young Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the survey (Pence won among older voters within that group). Donald Trump Jr.'s political ambitions have caused him to dabble in far right politics in the past, as he follows a number of white nationalists on Twitter and has retweeted some of them.
Although she ranked below Trump Jr. in the poll, Ivanka Trump actually works for her father's administration, while Trump Jr. has stayed behind to manage the president's business empire with his second eldest son, Eric. Ivanka Trump serves as "Advisor to the President" and has championed policies like paid family leave. She recently attempted to downplay her influence with her father, however, when CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan asked her about her father's controversial family separation policy.
“Immigration is not part of my portfolio, obviously,” Ivanka told Brennan. She then discussed "protecting the most vulnerable" as a priority of "border security" and claimed “that includes those being trafficked across our border, which this president has committed to countering and combating human trafficking in an incredibly comprehensive, aggressive way.”
Both Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have faced legal trouble since their father became president. They are each under investigation for their alleged role in their father's inauguration, and Trump Jr. is also under investigation for his alleged role in concealing hush money payments and signing checks reimbursing disgraced former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, has been the subject of controversy for her influential role in her father's presidency, raising accusations of nepotism as well as concerns that she had access to highly classified material while not being held to the same restrictions as other federal employees. Ivanka Trump has also been accused by the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington of violating the Hatch Act by using her Twitter handle for inappropriate political activity.
If either Donald Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump became president in 2024, it would mark the fourth time in American history that a direct descendant of a previous president was elected to the same office. John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824 after his father, John Adams, had been elected in 1800. Benjamin Harrison was elected in 1888 after his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, had been elected in 1840. Finally George W. Bush was elected in 2000, and reelected in 2004, after his father George H. W. Bush was elected in 1988.
Twenty-nine percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they would consider Donald Trump Jr. for president and 16 percent said they would consider Ivanka Trump, according to a SurveyMonkey poll for Axios. The same survey found that 40 percent of those voters would consider nominating Vice President Mike Pence, 26 percent would consider former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and 15 percent would consider Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
"An early poll like this is largely a measure of name ID," Axios reporter Neal Rothschild wrote in an article explaining the poll results. "But it's also a vivid illustration of just how strong Trump's brand is with the GOP." The article also noted how Donald Trump Jr.'s recent book "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us" reached No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, that a rally in San Antonio chanted "2024!" when Trump Jr. delivered a speech for the president's reelection and that Trump Jr. was the top choice among young Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the survey (Pence won among older voters within that group). Donald Trump Jr.'s political ambitions have caused him to dabble in far right politics in the past, as he follows a number of white nationalists on Twitter and has retweeted some of them.
Although she ranked below Trump Jr. in the poll, Ivanka Trump actually works for her father's administration, while Trump Jr. has stayed behind to manage the president's business empire with his second eldest son, Eric. Ivanka Trump serves as "Advisor to the President" and has championed policies like paid family leave. She recently attempted to downplay her influence with her father, however, when CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan asked her about her father's controversial family separation policy.
“Immigration is not part of my portfolio, obviously,” Ivanka told Brennan. She then discussed "protecting the most vulnerable" as a priority of "border security" and claimed “that includes those being trafficked across our border, which this president has committed to countering and combating human trafficking in an incredibly comprehensive, aggressive way.”
Both Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have faced legal trouble since their father became president. They are each under investigation for their alleged role in their father's inauguration, and Trump Jr. is also under investigation for his alleged role in concealing hush money payments and signing checks reimbursing disgraced former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, has been the subject of controversy for her influential role in her father's presidency, raising accusations of nepotism as well as concerns that she had access to highly classified material while not being held to the same restrictions as other federal employees. Ivanka Trump has also been accused by the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington of violating the Hatch Act by using her Twitter handle for inappropriate political activity.
If either Donald Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump became president in 2024, it would mark the fourth time in American history that a direct descendant of a previous president was elected to the same office. John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824 after his father, John Adams, had been elected in 1800. Benjamin Harrison was elected in 1888 after his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, had been elected in 1840. Finally George W. Bush was elected in 2000, and reelected in 2004, after his father George H. W. Bush was elected in 1988.
The Radical Republicans Don’t Want You To Vote
The White Supremacist Party’s Not-So-Secret Plan to Win in 2020—Keep Minorities and Other Democratic Groups Away from Polls
By Terry H Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor
1/1/2020
Set aside the would-be political boomerang effects of impeachment or even of having a presidential re-election candidate who seems to draw sustenance from public insults and personal boasts.
If you’re the Republican Party, apparently it is not enough to use the power of incumbency for re-election, or the argument that you cut taxes or that Donald Trump has been “keeping promises”—at least in a sort-of manner.
Republicans have tagged a coordinated attack on the voter rolls to try to assure electoral victory. Rather than celebrate the fact that more voters may want to join the 40 percent of us who troop loyally to the polls on all sides, Republicans repeatedly seems to be targeting those who might vote against them.
There are other cases as well, in Ohio and Texas, for example, but the trend is clear. The insurance policy Republicans seek is to limit the numbers of people who might vote, particularly in a situation where the thought is that new voters, like college students at a particular campus, or immigrants, might lean Democratic in registration and voting.
Meanwhile, Democratic efforts on voter registration are organized around finding new voters using as lures guns, same-sex issues and family economics. The new Democratic governor in Kentucky, Andy Bashear, has added 140,000 to voter rolls by re-enabling felons who completed their sentences, something tried and squashed in Florida. Local campaigns have focused on campuses around the country.
Add to this the idea of the growing number of court challenges to partisan, gerrymandered districts, including those in North Carolina this year, and you have the outlines of a coordinated campaign. Each of the actions is local, but the overall impact will be felt in national elections.
A National Public Radio has noted, since the 2010 elections, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting. Alabama now requires a photo ID to cast a ballot. Other states such as Ohio and Georgia have enacted “use it or lose it” laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time.
Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot, ”has said that many of the restrictions are part of a broad, continuing Republican strategy to tighten access to the ballot — an effort that was bolstered in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In Georgia, the state moved to block would-be voters if their voter registration application names on the voter registration did not exactly match other state databases, these voters were sent a letter telling them that their applications were pending and they needed to provide more information to election officials. Previously, these voters could show up and vote at the polls with the correct ID, but not vote by mail. If you got a letter in the mail that said there was a problem with your registration, you probably would think that you weren’t eligible to vote.
The Associated Press reported that Justice Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump’s re-election campaign, was caught discussing 2020 voter suppression efforts while at a Wisconsin chapter meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association, though Clark denies it and says he was discussing “false accusations” that the GOP engages in voter suppression.
Clark can be heard on tape at the event saying, “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are.”
Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”With all the talk about Russian attempts to influence the election, perhaps we should be looking closer to home for who’s trying their best to rig election results.
Personally, I wish we could all get behind the idea fundamental to the nation’s values – that everyone should vote, that each vote should count.
Let’s Make America Fair Again.
If you’re the Republican Party, apparently it is not enough to use the power of incumbency for re-election, or the argument that you cut taxes or that Donald Trump has been “keeping promises”—at least in a sort-of manner.
Republicans have tagged a coordinated attack on the voter rolls to try to assure electoral victory. Rather than celebrate the fact that more voters may want to join the 40 percent of us who troop loyally to the polls on all sides, Republicans repeatedly seems to be targeting those who might vote against them.
- In Wisconsin, a judge appointed by a Republican governor recently used an extreme and malicious interpretation of a Wisconsin state voting law to throw about 234,000 voters off state rolls. The decision on a case brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, to force the state elections commission to keep voting rolls up to date and drop voters within 30 days of not answering a letter of confirmation from the elections panel.
- In Georgia, it was the Republican Gov. Brian Kemp himself, the former secretary of state who had overseen voter operations and elections, who summarily disqualified 300,000 would-be voters, overwhelmingly black and rural. It was Kemp who used similar voter suppression techniques to defeat Stacey Adams, the former black speaker of the House for governor. Adams has struck back with state and nationwide campaigns to foster voter registration.
- In Washington, Republicans stuck together to form enough opposition to kill what is called HR 4, a bill to reinstate various portions of the defunct Voters Rights Act to ensure balance in voter registration. The background here is that a decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court had held the Voters Rights Act of 1965 no longer needed because it was adjudged by a majority of the court that states had stopped much of its history of voter suppression by race.
There are other cases as well, in Ohio and Texas, for example, but the trend is clear. The insurance policy Republicans seek is to limit the numbers of people who might vote, particularly in a situation where the thought is that new voters, like college students at a particular campus, or immigrants, might lean Democratic in registration and voting.
Meanwhile, Democratic efforts on voter registration are organized around finding new voters using as lures guns, same-sex issues and family economics. The new Democratic governor in Kentucky, Andy Bashear, has added 140,000 to voter rolls by re-enabling felons who completed their sentences, something tried and squashed in Florida. Local campaigns have focused on campuses around the country.
Add to this the idea of the growing number of court challenges to partisan, gerrymandered districts, including those in North Carolina this year, and you have the outlines of a coordinated campaign. Each of the actions is local, but the overall impact will be felt in national elections.
A National Public Radio has noted, since the 2010 elections, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting. Alabama now requires a photo ID to cast a ballot. Other states such as Ohio and Georgia have enacted “use it or lose it” laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time.
Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot, ”has said that many of the restrictions are part of a broad, continuing Republican strategy to tighten access to the ballot — an effort that was bolstered in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In Georgia, the state moved to block would-be voters if their voter registration application names on the voter registration did not exactly match other state databases, these voters were sent a letter telling them that their applications were pending and they needed to provide more information to election officials. Previously, these voters could show up and vote at the polls with the correct ID, but not vote by mail. If you got a letter in the mail that said there was a problem with your registration, you probably would think that you weren’t eligible to vote.
The Associated Press reported that Justice Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump’s re-election campaign, was caught discussing 2020 voter suppression efforts while at a Wisconsin chapter meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association, though Clark denies it and says he was discussing “false accusations” that the GOP engages in voter suppression.
Clark can be heard on tape at the event saying, “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are.”
Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”With all the talk about Russian attempts to influence the election, perhaps we should be looking closer to home for who’s trying their best to rig election results.
Personally, I wish we could all get behind the idea fundamental to the nation’s values – that everyone should vote, that each vote should count.
Let’s Make America Fair Again.
Russia and the Republicans: How Vladimir Putin got an American subsidiary
Russians went looking for allies on the American left for decades. Then they found Trump and the Republicans
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV - salon
DECEMBER 14, 2019 5:29PM (UTC)
The Russians wasted decades infiltrating the left attempting to gain purchase in American political life. There was the Communist Party USA, of course. Established in 1919, the CPUSA grew through the 1930s and boasted a membership of about 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. A hundred thousand! Whoop-de-doo!
Then there were the spinoff lefty parties like the Socialist Workers Party, the Progressive Labor Party, the Workers World Party, the Socialist Labor Party, the Progressive Labor Party — we could go on listing one splinter group after another with “socialist” or “labor” or “workers” in its title. They were tiny groups with memberships that were sometimes less than 100, and they would all deny being infiltrated by the Russkies, naturally. So would the “New Left” groups that came later, like SDS and The Weathermen. Nobody wanted to admit they were under Russian influence. Everything they were doing, from opposing the war in Vietnam to civil rights to fighting for free speech, was being done for completely pure reasons.
The Democratic Party would deny being under Russian influence as well, of course. But every American political party on the left was jointly infiltrated by Russian agents and the FBI or other American intelligence operations. There was a joke back in the '70s that without membership by Russian infiltrators and FBI agents, the Socialist Workers Party would have gone out of existence. I covered a meeting of the SWP in a loft on lower Broadway in the early '70s for the Village Voice. It looked to me like everyone there suspected everyone else of being either a COINTELPRO agent for the FBI or a KGB agent. You could have cut the paranoia with a butter knife.
I can’t even begin to tell you how boring the Socialist Workers Party meeting was. The loft on lower Broadway was dusty, cluttered with back issues of The Militant and International Socialist Review. I asked someone if there was any beer, and he gave me a stern look and said they didn’t allow drinking at their meetings.
Of course, we’re talking about the Soviet Union back in those days. People on the American left, and even “liberals” to some extent, had an idealized vision of the Russian Revolution and the country it spawned. Some of this idealism was born out of the grim years of the Depression, when farmers were struggling to hold onto their land, factories were closing all over, and people were going hungry and homeless in the streets. Russia, with its Communist version of “a chicken in every pot” and a job for everyone (even if it was on a collective farm) must have looked pretty good compared to the deprivation all around.
Moscow used dissension in the American political ranks to gain a foothold in the left which they would pursue until the House Un-American Activities Committee, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and the Red Scare drove the communist-linked left even further underground than it already was.
I knew some people on the left back in the day. I had a friend in Brooklyn who was a labor organizer in textile factories in the Deep South for “the party.” If he had enough to drink, he would admit to taking his orders from some guys with “connections,” and he wasn’t talking about mob connections. There was a guy I knew from drinking at the Lion’s Head who had been a maritime union organizer who — again, under the influence of a little too much to drink — would admit to knowing a few people with connections “overseas.” He had spent most of the 1950s dodging the FBI. I asked him one night if he really believed he was changing the world, or was he into it for the intrigue and the action. A smile crossed his face as he answered, “Ah, my boy, that’s always been the great question, hasn’t it?”
I remember wondering at the time why Moscow was even bothering with the splintered, weakened left of the '60s and '70s, and yet there they were, wasting their time in Broadway lofts and on factory floors in small towns in North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. It must have seemed to the KGB and Soviet leaders that they would find allies among those working for integration and voting rights during the Civil Rights movement, and they did. The Republican Party of that era would hardly have been a fertile hunting ground.
But it would turn out that they were sniffing around the wrong end of the political spectrum. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the new batch of Russian hardliners who replaced them would find their natural-born allies about 250 miles south in the Republican National Committee in Washington — and eventually in the current occupant of the Oval Office.
We’ve got a president of the United States who praises Russian President Vladimir Putin every chance he gets, yet spent the NATO summit last week looking like his mommy was making him eat his peas and carrots. He’s pressuring the other members of the Group of Seven to let Russia back in the club. At a recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, he told the president of Ukraine he hoped Zelensky could “make a deal” with Putin, clearly indicating whose side Trump was on in the dispute over Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Trump and his Republican puppets have spent the last three months spreading Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, who hacked our 2016 election. When Trump pulled U.S. troops out of northern Syria, he turned over abandoned American bases to the Russians.
Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have parroted his pro-Russia line. “Moscow Mitch” McConnell pushed for lifting sanctions on Russian aluminum company Rusal, which was largely owned by the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a buddy of Vladimir Putin’s who has been under sanctions since he was named in the Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election.
Tucker Carlson, a nightly loudspeaker for Trumpism on Fox News, recently said on his show, “Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? And I’m serious. Why do I care? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.” Carlson later said he was “joking,” before going after MSNBC host Chuck Todd as someone who “really dislikes our country.” He went on, “Putin, for all his faults, does not hate America as much as many of these people do. They really dislike our country. And they call other people traitors?”
How did we get here? London School of Economics professor Anne Applebaum, writing in this month’s Atlantic, traces the collapse of the Republican Party into Russia’s arms to Pat Buchanan, ironically a former aide to Russia-hater Richard Nixon.
Buchanan's books “Death of a Superpower” and “The Death of the West” described America’s descent into “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.” Applebaum writes that “Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is ‘standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.’”
American evangelical Christians have joined Buchanan. “The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders,” Applebaum writes, citing evangelist Franklin Graham and Larry Jacobs of the World Congress of Families as among Putin's admirers, who have described Russia under his leadership as “a moral compass” (Buchanan) and “the Christian saviors of the world” (Jacobs).
So here we are. Republicans have been waiting for somebody like Trump for decades. They wanted someone worse than Nixon, worse than Reagan, worse than Bush. They finally found the avatar of their real values in Trump.
Likewise, the Russians have also been waiting for Trump. Call him what you will — a stooge, a useful idiot, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin — Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Moscow.
Forget that whole “sneaking Sally through the alley” thing Trump pulled with the Russians in 2016. Even during the week the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach him for trying to strong-arm yet another foreign government into damaging one of his political opponents, Trump met privately with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. He’s not even trying to hide it anymore. The Republican Party is right there with him.
Then there were the spinoff lefty parties like the Socialist Workers Party, the Progressive Labor Party, the Workers World Party, the Socialist Labor Party, the Progressive Labor Party — we could go on listing one splinter group after another with “socialist” or “labor” or “workers” in its title. They were tiny groups with memberships that were sometimes less than 100, and they would all deny being infiltrated by the Russkies, naturally. So would the “New Left” groups that came later, like SDS and The Weathermen. Nobody wanted to admit they were under Russian influence. Everything they were doing, from opposing the war in Vietnam to civil rights to fighting for free speech, was being done for completely pure reasons.
The Democratic Party would deny being under Russian influence as well, of course. But every American political party on the left was jointly infiltrated by Russian agents and the FBI or other American intelligence operations. There was a joke back in the '70s that without membership by Russian infiltrators and FBI agents, the Socialist Workers Party would have gone out of existence. I covered a meeting of the SWP in a loft on lower Broadway in the early '70s for the Village Voice. It looked to me like everyone there suspected everyone else of being either a COINTELPRO agent for the FBI or a KGB agent. You could have cut the paranoia with a butter knife.
I can’t even begin to tell you how boring the Socialist Workers Party meeting was. The loft on lower Broadway was dusty, cluttered with back issues of The Militant and International Socialist Review. I asked someone if there was any beer, and he gave me a stern look and said they didn’t allow drinking at their meetings.
Of course, we’re talking about the Soviet Union back in those days. People on the American left, and even “liberals” to some extent, had an idealized vision of the Russian Revolution and the country it spawned. Some of this idealism was born out of the grim years of the Depression, when farmers were struggling to hold onto their land, factories were closing all over, and people were going hungry and homeless in the streets. Russia, with its Communist version of “a chicken in every pot” and a job for everyone (even if it was on a collective farm) must have looked pretty good compared to the deprivation all around.
Moscow used dissension in the American political ranks to gain a foothold in the left which they would pursue until the House Un-American Activities Committee, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and the Red Scare drove the communist-linked left even further underground than it already was.
I knew some people on the left back in the day. I had a friend in Brooklyn who was a labor organizer in textile factories in the Deep South for “the party.” If he had enough to drink, he would admit to taking his orders from some guys with “connections,” and he wasn’t talking about mob connections. There was a guy I knew from drinking at the Lion’s Head who had been a maritime union organizer who — again, under the influence of a little too much to drink — would admit to knowing a few people with connections “overseas.” He had spent most of the 1950s dodging the FBI. I asked him one night if he really believed he was changing the world, or was he into it for the intrigue and the action. A smile crossed his face as he answered, “Ah, my boy, that’s always been the great question, hasn’t it?”
I remember wondering at the time why Moscow was even bothering with the splintered, weakened left of the '60s and '70s, and yet there they were, wasting their time in Broadway lofts and on factory floors in small towns in North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. It must have seemed to the KGB and Soviet leaders that they would find allies among those working for integration and voting rights during the Civil Rights movement, and they did. The Republican Party of that era would hardly have been a fertile hunting ground.
But it would turn out that they were sniffing around the wrong end of the political spectrum. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the new batch of Russian hardliners who replaced them would find their natural-born allies about 250 miles south in the Republican National Committee in Washington — and eventually in the current occupant of the Oval Office.
We’ve got a president of the United States who praises Russian President Vladimir Putin every chance he gets, yet spent the NATO summit last week looking like his mommy was making him eat his peas and carrots. He’s pressuring the other members of the Group of Seven to let Russia back in the club. At a recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, he told the president of Ukraine he hoped Zelensky could “make a deal” with Putin, clearly indicating whose side Trump was on in the dispute over Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Trump and his Republican puppets have spent the last three months spreading Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, who hacked our 2016 election. When Trump pulled U.S. troops out of northern Syria, he turned over abandoned American bases to the Russians.
Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have parroted his pro-Russia line. “Moscow Mitch” McConnell pushed for lifting sanctions on Russian aluminum company Rusal, which was largely owned by the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a buddy of Vladimir Putin’s who has been under sanctions since he was named in the Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election.
Tucker Carlson, a nightly loudspeaker for Trumpism on Fox News, recently said on his show, “Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? And I’m serious. Why do I care? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.” Carlson later said he was “joking,” before going after MSNBC host Chuck Todd as someone who “really dislikes our country.” He went on, “Putin, for all his faults, does not hate America as much as many of these people do. They really dislike our country. And they call other people traitors?”
How did we get here? London School of Economics professor Anne Applebaum, writing in this month’s Atlantic, traces the collapse of the Republican Party into Russia’s arms to Pat Buchanan, ironically a former aide to Russia-hater Richard Nixon.
Buchanan's books “Death of a Superpower” and “The Death of the West” described America’s descent into “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.” Applebaum writes that “Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is ‘standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.’”
American evangelical Christians have joined Buchanan. “The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders,” Applebaum writes, citing evangelist Franklin Graham and Larry Jacobs of the World Congress of Families as among Putin's admirers, who have described Russia under his leadership as “a moral compass” (Buchanan) and “the Christian saviors of the world” (Jacobs).
So here we are. Republicans have been waiting for somebody like Trump for decades. They wanted someone worse than Nixon, worse than Reagan, worse than Bush. They finally found the avatar of their real values in Trump.
Likewise, the Russians have also been waiting for Trump. Call him what you will — a stooge, a useful idiot, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin — Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Moscow.
Forget that whole “sneaking Sally through the alley” thing Trump pulled with the Russians in 2016. Even during the week the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach him for trying to strong-arm yet another foreign government into damaging one of his political opponents, Trump met privately with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. He’s not even trying to hide it anymore. The Republican Party is right there with him.
GOP mass exodus: Far right wing anti-LGBTQ Republican who called Obama a ‘dictator’ announces retirement From Congress
December 5, 2019
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
The GOP mass exodus continues. U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, a six-term Republican representing the people of Georgia, has just announced he will retire at the end of his term. Graves, who is 49 years old, may be best known for calling then-President Barack Obama a “dictator” in 2016.
Rep. Graves announced his retirement just one day after the House completed its third impeachment hearing, and just after Speaker Pelosi announced she has requested the drafting of Articles of Impeachment against President Trump.
Graves becomes the 24th Republican who has resigned or announced their retirement from the House during the 116th Congress.
Graves is virulently anti-LGBTQ and anti-women, He has voted repeatedly against allowing any federal funds to go to Planned Parenthood or to fund abortions. He voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. And in the face of growing support for same-sex marriage, Rep. Graves voted to enshrine the “right” to voice anti-gay opinions into law.
“As we all do, I’m entering a new season in life,” Graves said in a statement announcing his retirement, according to The Hill. “An exciting season. So, the time has come for me to pass the baton. Now it’s my turn to cheer, support and sacrifice for those who have done the same for me over the last two decades.”
Rep. Graves announced his retirement just one day after the House completed its third impeachment hearing, and just after Speaker Pelosi announced she has requested the drafting of Articles of Impeachment against President Trump.
Graves becomes the 24th Republican who has resigned or announced their retirement from the House during the 116th Congress.
Graves is virulently anti-LGBTQ and anti-women, He has voted repeatedly against allowing any federal funds to go to Planned Parenthood or to fund abortions. He voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. And in the face of growing support for same-sex marriage, Rep. Graves voted to enshrine the “right” to voice anti-gay opinions into law.
“As we all do, I’m entering a new season in life,” Graves said in a statement announcing his retirement, according to The Hill. “An exciting season. So, the time has come for me to pass the baton. Now it’s my turn to cheer, support and sacrifice for those who have done the same for me over the last two decades.”
Trump impeachment inquiry
Not just the facts: Republicans' top six impeachment falsehoods
Despite damning evidence from dramatic hearings, the GOP seems determined to reject the evidence of its eyes and ears
Tom McCarthy
theguardian
Sun 24 Nov 2019 09.38 EST
The morning after public impeachment hearings came to an apparent close, the biggest names in conservative punditry were happy to call the ballgame.
At the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan declared that the case against Donald Trump had “been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing”.
“On the substance,” wrote Rich Lowry over at the National Review, “Democrats have won.”
But the color of the sky was different on Capitol Hill, where elected Republicans insisted Democrats had produced no evidence of wrongdoing and Trump had been summarily vindicated.
“I’ve just focused on the facts and it is clear as every day that goes by [sic] that Democrats’ case for impeachment is crumbling,” the New York representative Elise Stefanik, who participated in the hearings, told Fox News on Thursday night.
How can inhabitants of the same ideological ecosystem disagree so sharply? It appears that getting into the bunker with Trump, as the politicians have, requires embracing falsehoods too plain or painful for the pundits to bear.
Here is a list of major falsehoods in the air – or in the recycled air of the bunker, at least:
1 Trump is an anti-corruption champion
Republicans argue that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the gas company Burisma out of a concern about corruption in Ukraine. But that seems to be the single example, in his presidency and from his life, of Trump wanting to fight corruption.
Indeed, from the casino business to New York real estate to national politics, Trump has thrived where corruption thrives. He does not have a problem with corrupt regimes – he openly admires them. He also has a long track record of personal corruption, from running a fraudulent university and charity organization to keeping separate tax records for creditors and the Internal Revenue Service, to installing family members in key government posts, to profiting off the presidency, including through a hotel he has now put on the market. He also tried to steer a contract to host the G7 summit to his own resort. And he is a habitual liar.
2 The witnesses are a cabal
Republicans argue that the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry are “anonymous and unelected bureaucrats” and “Never Trumpers” who were angered to be sidelined under an unconventional president. But the witnesses, whose names were printed on the placards they testified behind, were mostly Trump appointees with long track records in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
It is Trump’s own people who are coming forward, at risk to their careers and under threats to their safety, to say what happened (if, admittedly, not everyone was willing to face those risks). And while certain witnesses, such as the former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former national security council adviser Fiona Hill, did find themselves shut out by the Ukraine scheme, two of the witnesses, the diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, were spearheading the scheme, according to testimony, with Sondland eager to take credit and Volker less so.
3 The Ukraine scheme was a foreign policy
Republicans argue that the 25 July phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and other diplomatic activity at which the witnesses recoiled simply represented a legitimate new direction in foreign policy under Trump. But that exaggerates the motivations and scope of Trump’s narrow interest – investigating Biden and an elections conspiracy theory – in an apparent effort to bring what Trump was doing under the umbrella of his immense presidential powers. Do those powers include the ability to task diplomats to help him win the next election? What’s the difference between that and “l’état, c’est moi”?
Hill drew the distinction plainly, calling the Ukraine scheme “a domestic political errand”, not “national security foreign policy”, and saying: “Those two things had just diverged.”
4 Trump saying ‘no quid pro quo’ is exculpatory
Republicans including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, argue that because Trump said the words “no quid pro quo” on the phone to Sondland, the Ukraine scheme did not exist. But misconduct cannot be undone by saying “there was no misconduct”.
Also relevant: this particular statement from Trump came late in the game, on 7 September, after diplomats and Rudy Giuliani had been working for at least five months to consummate the scheme, after Trump asked Zelenskiy directly for a “favor” – and after it became known that a whistleblower complaint was hanging over the president’s head.
5 No evidence of a Ukraine scheme
Republicans argue that the hearings produced no evidence that Trump ever conditioned a White House meeting or military aid for Ukraine on an announcement of investigations he wanted. But evidence presented in the hearings of such a scheme was substantial, and internally consistent.
The evidence included public statements by Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson; text messages and emails provided by Sondland; testimony by Hill: “It became very clear the White House meeting itself was being predicated on other issues, namely investigations and the questions about the election interference in 2016”; testimony by state department aide David Holmes: “Of course the president is pressing for a Biden investigation before he’ll do these things the Ukrainians want … everyone by that point agreed. It was obvious what the president was pressing for”; testimony by Sondland: “Was there a quid pro quo? … The answer is yes”; and, of course, the summary of the 25 July call as released by the White House.
6 The whistleblower is missing
Republicans argue that the impeachment inquiry was fatally flawed because the intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, refused to call as a witness the whistleblower whose August complaint set off the impeachment proceedings. Schiff in turn has accused Republicans of trying to intimidate or harm the whistleblower as payback for the complaint, and as a resort to character assassination, given their inability to argue the substance.
In any case, the Democrats did not rely on the whistleblower complaint, instead summoning witnesses and obtaining (a few) documents that happened to comport with the complaint while indicating a much greater scope of misconduct and adding a lot of detail.
At the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan declared that the case against Donald Trump had “been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing”.
“On the substance,” wrote Rich Lowry over at the National Review, “Democrats have won.”
But the color of the sky was different on Capitol Hill, where elected Republicans insisted Democrats had produced no evidence of wrongdoing and Trump had been summarily vindicated.
“I’ve just focused on the facts and it is clear as every day that goes by [sic] that Democrats’ case for impeachment is crumbling,” the New York representative Elise Stefanik, who participated in the hearings, told Fox News on Thursday night.
How can inhabitants of the same ideological ecosystem disagree so sharply? It appears that getting into the bunker with Trump, as the politicians have, requires embracing falsehoods too plain or painful for the pundits to bear.
Here is a list of major falsehoods in the air – or in the recycled air of the bunker, at least:
1 Trump is an anti-corruption champion
Republicans argue that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the gas company Burisma out of a concern about corruption in Ukraine. But that seems to be the single example, in his presidency and from his life, of Trump wanting to fight corruption.
Indeed, from the casino business to New York real estate to national politics, Trump has thrived where corruption thrives. He does not have a problem with corrupt regimes – he openly admires them. He also has a long track record of personal corruption, from running a fraudulent university and charity organization to keeping separate tax records for creditors and the Internal Revenue Service, to installing family members in key government posts, to profiting off the presidency, including through a hotel he has now put on the market. He also tried to steer a contract to host the G7 summit to his own resort. And he is a habitual liar.
2 The witnesses are a cabal
Republicans argue that the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry are “anonymous and unelected bureaucrats” and “Never Trumpers” who were angered to be sidelined under an unconventional president. But the witnesses, whose names were printed on the placards they testified behind, were mostly Trump appointees with long track records in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
It is Trump’s own people who are coming forward, at risk to their careers and under threats to their safety, to say what happened (if, admittedly, not everyone was willing to face those risks). And while certain witnesses, such as the former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former national security council adviser Fiona Hill, did find themselves shut out by the Ukraine scheme, two of the witnesses, the diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, were spearheading the scheme, according to testimony, with Sondland eager to take credit and Volker less so.
3 The Ukraine scheme was a foreign policy
Republicans argue that the 25 July phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and other diplomatic activity at which the witnesses recoiled simply represented a legitimate new direction in foreign policy under Trump. But that exaggerates the motivations and scope of Trump’s narrow interest – investigating Biden and an elections conspiracy theory – in an apparent effort to bring what Trump was doing under the umbrella of his immense presidential powers. Do those powers include the ability to task diplomats to help him win the next election? What’s the difference between that and “l’état, c’est moi”?
Hill drew the distinction plainly, calling the Ukraine scheme “a domestic political errand”, not “national security foreign policy”, and saying: “Those two things had just diverged.”
4 Trump saying ‘no quid pro quo’ is exculpatory
Republicans including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, argue that because Trump said the words “no quid pro quo” on the phone to Sondland, the Ukraine scheme did not exist. But misconduct cannot be undone by saying “there was no misconduct”.
Also relevant: this particular statement from Trump came late in the game, on 7 September, after diplomats and Rudy Giuliani had been working for at least five months to consummate the scheme, after Trump asked Zelenskiy directly for a “favor” – and after it became known that a whistleblower complaint was hanging over the president’s head.
5 No evidence of a Ukraine scheme
Republicans argue that the hearings produced no evidence that Trump ever conditioned a White House meeting or military aid for Ukraine on an announcement of investigations he wanted. But evidence presented in the hearings of such a scheme was substantial, and internally consistent.
The evidence included public statements by Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson; text messages and emails provided by Sondland; testimony by Hill: “It became very clear the White House meeting itself was being predicated on other issues, namely investigations and the questions about the election interference in 2016”; testimony by state department aide David Holmes: “Of course the president is pressing for a Biden investigation before he’ll do these things the Ukrainians want … everyone by that point agreed. It was obvious what the president was pressing for”; testimony by Sondland: “Was there a quid pro quo? … The answer is yes”; and, of course, the summary of the 25 July call as released by the White House.
6 The whistleblower is missing
Republicans argue that the impeachment inquiry was fatally flawed because the intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, refused to call as a witness the whistleblower whose August complaint set off the impeachment proceedings. Schiff in turn has accused Republicans of trying to intimidate or harm the whistleblower as payback for the complaint, and as a resort to character assassination, given their inability to argue the substance.
In any case, the Democrats did not rely on the whistleblower complaint, instead summoning witnesses and obtaining (a few) documents that happened to comport with the complaint while indicating a much greater scope of misconduct and adding a lot of detail.
opinion
Stephen Miller is no outlier. White supremacy rules the Republican party
Republican voters made Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. That’s why a resignation from Miller wouldn’t change much
CAS MUDDE
the guardian
Sat 16 Nov 2019 06.20 EST
This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a bombshell article revealing troubling emails that White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller sent to editors at Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet previously led by Steve Bannon.
The emails, which were leaked by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh and predate Miller’s period in the White House, show Miller’s obsession with immigration and his seemingly successful attempts to get Breitbart editors to write anti-immigration stories, some of which were based on openly white nationalist sources like American Renaissance and V-Dare.
The widespread public outrage in response to the revelations is understandable. Miller is the longest serving senior advisor to President Trump who is not related to the president, and is believed to be the architect of the White House’s draconian anti-immigration policies, which doesn’t just target “illegal immigration” but also aims to return to the country to the infamously racist immigration policy of the early 20th century.
In its response to the leak, the White House tried to discredit the source, SPLC, which has had some internal and external problems recently, but is overall a very reliable authority on the US far right (full disclaimer: I regularly collaborate with the SPLC). One White House spokesperson went full “alternative facts” by accusing SPLC of antisemitism, because Miller is Jewish. By doing so, the White House displayed a complete lack of understanding about what antisemitism is, which is no surprise, given that Trump considers himself “the least antisemitic person you’ve ever seen”.
The Democratic responses were predictable and swift as well. Of all the 2020 candidates, Julian Castro went the furthest in condemning Miller – he called him a “neo-Nazi” – but all agreed that he should resign from the White House.
But would Miller’s resignation change anything? While Miller might be behind the concrete policies that harm immigrants, he is not the main white supremacist in the White House. And Trump can easily find someone else to do Miller’s work, particularly now that almost the whole Republican party has fallen in line with their president.
It also externalizes white supremacy, as if it lives in the margins. But it has been hiding in plain sight within the Republican Party for decades. Miller wrote the emails to Breitbart when he was still an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a consistent voice of white supremacy in Congress since 1997. And the Alabama Senator was not alone in Congress either. Representative Steve King has been the most open and unapologetic voice for the cause since 2003. Others, like representatives Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher, might not be as open in their support, but they all encourage white nationalism to varying degrees.
But white supremacy in the Republican party is not limited to just these individual congressmen and women. It runs much deeper than them. White supremacy was at the core of the “Southern Strategy”, dating back to the unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, which was formative for the future conservative movement. Perfected by President Richard Nixon, with the help of speechwriter Pat Buchanan, dog whistles to white supremacy have been at the heart of virtually every Republican campaign since the 1970s.
Talking of Buchanan, more than 25 years ago he gave his now famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention. While the term has become mainly linked to the religious right, Buchanan is at least as much a white supremacist as a Christian fundamentalist. In many ways, he is the intellectual father of the Trump administration, personifying Mike Pence and Donald Trump in one.
This is why calling for Stephen Miller’s resignation wouldn’t change much. Neither Miller nor Bannon “made” Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. And Trump is not the only problem either, as Joe Biden seems to believe. He won the Republican primaries, and presidential elections, not despite white supremacy but because of it.
In short, it is time for Democrats to face and name the ugly truth: the Grand Old Party is a party steeped in white supremacy. It is the basis of its electoral support and this will not change in the near future. By focusing on the most brazen examples, like Stephen Miller, Democrats strengthen the misguided belief that the Republican party is a good party with some bad apples. Ultimately, this will help the Republicans more than the Democrats.
The emails, which were leaked by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh and predate Miller’s period in the White House, show Miller’s obsession with immigration and his seemingly successful attempts to get Breitbart editors to write anti-immigration stories, some of which were based on openly white nationalist sources like American Renaissance and V-Dare.
The widespread public outrage in response to the revelations is understandable. Miller is the longest serving senior advisor to President Trump who is not related to the president, and is believed to be the architect of the White House’s draconian anti-immigration policies, which doesn’t just target “illegal immigration” but also aims to return to the country to the infamously racist immigration policy of the early 20th century.
In its response to the leak, the White House tried to discredit the source, SPLC, which has had some internal and external problems recently, but is overall a very reliable authority on the US far right (full disclaimer: I regularly collaborate with the SPLC). One White House spokesperson went full “alternative facts” by accusing SPLC of antisemitism, because Miller is Jewish. By doing so, the White House displayed a complete lack of understanding about what antisemitism is, which is no surprise, given that Trump considers himself “the least antisemitic person you’ve ever seen”.
The Democratic responses were predictable and swift as well. Of all the 2020 candidates, Julian Castro went the furthest in condemning Miller – he called him a “neo-Nazi” – but all agreed that he should resign from the White House.
But would Miller’s resignation change anything? While Miller might be behind the concrete policies that harm immigrants, he is not the main white supremacist in the White House. And Trump can easily find someone else to do Miller’s work, particularly now that almost the whole Republican party has fallen in line with their president.
It also externalizes white supremacy, as if it lives in the margins. But it has been hiding in plain sight within the Republican Party for decades. Miller wrote the emails to Breitbart when he was still an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a consistent voice of white supremacy in Congress since 1997. And the Alabama Senator was not alone in Congress either. Representative Steve King has been the most open and unapologetic voice for the cause since 2003. Others, like representatives Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher, might not be as open in their support, but they all encourage white nationalism to varying degrees.
But white supremacy in the Republican party is not limited to just these individual congressmen and women. It runs much deeper than them. White supremacy was at the core of the “Southern Strategy”, dating back to the unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, which was formative for the future conservative movement. Perfected by President Richard Nixon, with the help of speechwriter Pat Buchanan, dog whistles to white supremacy have been at the heart of virtually every Republican campaign since the 1970s.
Talking of Buchanan, more than 25 years ago he gave his now famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention. While the term has become mainly linked to the religious right, Buchanan is at least as much a white supremacist as a Christian fundamentalist. In many ways, he is the intellectual father of the Trump administration, personifying Mike Pence and Donald Trump in one.
This is why calling for Stephen Miller’s resignation wouldn’t change much. Neither Miller nor Bannon “made” Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. And Trump is not the only problem either, as Joe Biden seems to believe. He won the Republican primaries, and presidential elections, not despite white supremacy but because of it.
In short, it is time for Democrats to face and name the ugly truth: the Grand Old Party is a party steeped in white supremacy. It is the basis of its electoral support and this will not change in the near future. By focusing on the most brazen examples, like Stephen Miller, Democrats strengthen the misguided belief that the Republican party is a good party with some bad apples. Ultimately, this will help the Republicans more than the Democrats.
Harry Truman on The GOP, something that we should all remember
Sherman A1 - demo underground
11/20/19
On 13 October 1948, President Harry Truman made an appearance in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumping on behalf of both his own re-election campaign and a bid by the mayor of Minneapolis, fellow Democrat Hubert Humphrey, to land a seat in the U.S. Senate. During that appearance in St. Paul, President Truman delivered an address at the city’s Municipal Auditorium which was carried on a nationwide radio broadcast and included the criticism of the Republican Party.
"Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living — a decision which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.
On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.
Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.
Since they won’t tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.
They approve of the American farmer — but they are willing to help him go broke.
They stand four-square for the American home — but not for housing.
They are strong for labor — but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.
They favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.
They indorse educational opportunity for all — but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine — for people who can afford them.
They approve of Social Security benefits — so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.
They believe in international trade — so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.
They favor the admission of displaced persons — but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.
They consider electric power a great blessing — but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
They say TVA is wonderful — but we ought never to try it again.
They condemn “cruelly high prices” — but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.
They think the American standard of living is a fine thing — so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.
And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way — there is another way — the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party."
"Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living — a decision which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.
On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.
Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.
Since they won’t tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.
They approve of the American farmer — but they are willing to help him go broke.
They stand four-square for the American home — but not for housing.
They are strong for labor — but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.
They favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.
They indorse educational opportunity for all — but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine — for people who can afford them.
They approve of Social Security benefits — so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.
They believe in international trade — so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.
They favor the admission of displaced persons — but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.
They consider electric power a great blessing — but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
They say TVA is wonderful — but we ought never to try it again.
They condemn “cruelly high prices” — but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.
They think the American standard of living is a fine thing — so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.
And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way — there is another way — the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party."
History professor explains how ‘racial resentment and brooding white anger’ have defined the GOP for decades
Alex Henderson - salon
October 30, 2019
More than half a century has passed since President Richard Nixon launched his infamous “southern strategy,” which found the Republican Party pursuing the votes of white racists who had angrily left the Democratic Party because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And after all these years, history professor Leonard Steinhorn asserts in an October 30 op-ed for the Washington Post, the GOP is still grappling with its racism problem.
The GOP certainly didn’t start out as the party of racism. The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, who became an ally of the abolitionist movement. And when Republican Teddy Roosevelt was president in the 1900s, African-American neighborhoods in northern cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston leaned GOP. However, the Democratic Party made a lot of inroads with black voters under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal in the 1930s.
In the 1960s, Steinhorn explains, Nixon saw a golden opportunity for his party: appealing to a sense of white grievance. The professor recalls, “Nixon inflamed the ‘silent majority’ and ‘forgotten Americans’ with coded language about race and ‘law and order’ that played to their sense of grievance and victimization.”
Many of Nixon’s positions — from favoring universal health care to the launch of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expanding Medicare — would be deal breakers in the GOP of 2019. Author Noam Chomsky has described Nixon, with some irony, as the United States’ “last liberal president.” But while Nixon supported elements of the New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, he certainly wasn’t shy about using racism to bring white ex-Democrats into the GOP. And Republicans, Steinhorn notes, were reaching out to racists long before Donald Trump ran for president and won the 2016 Republican nomination.
President Ronald Reagan, Steinhorn points out, appealed to racists “with his appeals to ‘states’ rights’ and his condemnation of ‘welfare queens.’ The white populist politics that Trump demagogues are therefore nothing new; he’s simply more unvarnished and unfiltered in using them.”
Steinhorn recalls that back in October 1964, Life Magazine published an article by journalist Theodore White that reflected on the future of the Republican Party. White stressed that the GOP would have to “choose whether it abandons its tradition and becomes the white man’s party or refreshes its tradition by designing a program of social harmony” — and 55 years later, Steinhorn laments, “we know which path Republicans took.”
“One can trace a direct line from what he described in October 1964 to Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory and his ability to conjure up and exploit decades of racial resentment and brooding white anger,” Steinhorn concludes. “The question ahead is whether this next generation will continue to live with the sins of the past — or finally put to rest the politics of backlash. Younger Republicans, are you listening?”
The GOP certainly didn’t start out as the party of racism. The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, who became an ally of the abolitionist movement. And when Republican Teddy Roosevelt was president in the 1900s, African-American neighborhoods in northern cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston leaned GOP. However, the Democratic Party made a lot of inroads with black voters under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal in the 1930s.
In the 1960s, Steinhorn explains, Nixon saw a golden opportunity for his party: appealing to a sense of white grievance. The professor recalls, “Nixon inflamed the ‘silent majority’ and ‘forgotten Americans’ with coded language about race and ‘law and order’ that played to their sense of grievance and victimization.”
Many of Nixon’s positions — from favoring universal health care to the launch of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to expanding Medicare — would be deal breakers in the GOP of 2019. Author Noam Chomsky has described Nixon, with some irony, as the United States’ “last liberal president.” But while Nixon supported elements of the New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, he certainly wasn’t shy about using racism to bring white ex-Democrats into the GOP. And Republicans, Steinhorn notes, were reaching out to racists long before Donald Trump ran for president and won the 2016 Republican nomination.
President Ronald Reagan, Steinhorn points out, appealed to racists “with his appeals to ‘states’ rights’ and his condemnation of ‘welfare queens.’ The white populist politics that Trump demagogues are therefore nothing new; he’s simply more unvarnished and unfiltered in using them.”
Steinhorn recalls that back in October 1964, Life Magazine published an article by journalist Theodore White that reflected on the future of the Republican Party. White stressed that the GOP would have to “choose whether it abandons its tradition and becomes the white man’s party or refreshes its tradition by designing a program of social harmony” — and 55 years later, Steinhorn laments, “we know which path Republicans took.”
“One can trace a direct line from what he described in October 1964 to Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory and his ability to conjure up and exploit decades of racial resentment and brooding white anger,” Steinhorn concludes. “The question ahead is whether this next generation will continue to live with the sins of the past — or finally put to rest the politics of backlash. Younger Republicans, are you listening?”
running out of voting racists!!!
GOP’s reliance on white Christians has made its extinction inevitable: conservative
October 18, 2019
By Tana Ganeva - raw story
Demographic trends don’t bode well for the Republican Party.
Writing in the Washington Post, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin points out that the GOP’s reliance on old, white voters and Christians makes its eventual extinction inevitable. “After a while … you run out of white evangelicals. That is precisely what is happening at an unexpectedly speedy pace,” Rubin writes.
According to a recent Pew poll, there’s been a 12 percent drop in the past decade of people who described themselves as Christian. “The ranks of the most progressive segment of the electorate, religiously unaffiliated (“atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular’ “) have risen to 26 percent, a nine-point bump since 2009,” Rubin writes.
“The problem for Christian affiliation gets worse with each generation,” she adds. The decline of Christianity in the U.S. dooms the GOP because of the electoral playbook they’ve pursued for decades.
“Republicans have created a zero-sum game wherein the increasingly racist and radical appeals to white Christians needed to drive high turnout alienates a substantial segment of the growing nonwhite and/or unaffiliated electorate,” she writes.
“They are doubling down on a diminishing pool of voters as they crank up fierce opposition among the fastest-growing segments (millennials, nonwhites) of the electorate,” she continues. “Soon, the math becomes impossible outside of highly gerrymandered congressional districts and rock-ribbed conservative states.”
Writing in the Washington Post, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin points out that the GOP’s reliance on old, white voters and Christians makes its eventual extinction inevitable. “After a while … you run out of white evangelicals. That is precisely what is happening at an unexpectedly speedy pace,” Rubin writes.
According to a recent Pew poll, there’s been a 12 percent drop in the past decade of people who described themselves as Christian. “The ranks of the most progressive segment of the electorate, religiously unaffiliated (“atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular’ “) have risen to 26 percent, a nine-point bump since 2009,” Rubin writes.
“The problem for Christian affiliation gets worse with each generation,” she adds. The decline of Christianity in the U.S. dooms the GOP because of the electoral playbook they’ve pursued for decades.
“Republicans have created a zero-sum game wherein the increasingly racist and radical appeals to white Christians needed to drive high turnout alienates a substantial segment of the growing nonwhite and/or unaffiliated electorate,” she writes.
“They are doubling down on a diminishing pool of voters as they crank up fierce opposition among the fastest-growing segments (millennials, nonwhites) of the electorate,” she continues. “Soon, the math becomes impossible outside of highly gerrymandered congressional districts and rock-ribbed conservative states.”
Republicans entertaining the boss
you elected the fool!!!
‘Embarrassed you’re my senator’: Joni Ernst torn to shreds for whining about Dem impeachment inquiry
October 10, 2019
By Brad Reed - raw story
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Thursday bitterly complained about House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump — and was quickly torn to pieces by some angry Iowans.
The controversy began after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) posted a story about Ernst repeatedly refusing to answer reporters’ questions about whether they believe it’s appropriate for President Donald Trump to lobby foreign governments to launch investigations of his political opponents.
“Republicans are now refusing to answer the simplest question: whether it’s acceptable for a president to pressure foreign countries to undermine our elections,” Pelosi wrote. “American elections should be decided by Americans, not by ‘favors’ from foreign governments.”
Ernst subsequently fired back at Pelosi by accusing her of using impeachment to invalidate the results of the 2016 presidential election and then shamed her for not passing the president’s trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
The controversy began after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) posted a story about Ernst repeatedly refusing to answer reporters’ questions about whether they believe it’s appropriate for President Donald Trump to lobby foreign governments to launch investigations of his political opponents.
“Republicans are now refusing to answer the simplest question: whether it’s acceptable for a president to pressure foreign countries to undermine our elections,” Pelosi wrote. “American elections should be decided by Americans, not by ‘favors’ from foreign governments.”
Ernst subsequently fired back at Pelosi by accusing her of using impeachment to invalidate the results of the 2016 presidential election and then shamed her for not passing the president’s trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
centrists/moderates are worthless!!!
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman: Trump is ‘unusually blatant and gaudily corrupt’ — but he ‘isn’t an aberration’ in the Republican Party
Alex Henderson - alternet
October 8, 2019
After Democrats lost all three presidential elections in the 1980s, much of the Democratic Party leadership decided that centrism rather than liberalism was the way to go — and there are still plenty of Democrats who liberal economist and veteran New York Times columnist Paul Krugman considers “fanatical centrists.” But with the Ukraine scandal, Krugman asserts in his October 7 column, even the “fanatical centrists” in the Democratic Party are being forced to acknowledge that today’s GOP is a party of extremists who don’t respect “democratic norms.”
“My sense, although it’s impossible to quantify, is that the events of the past several weeks have finally broken through the wall of centrist denial,” Krugman writes.
Those events include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally coming out in favor of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump after learning that during a July 25 phone conservation, Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Centrist Democrats like Joe Biden, Krugman writes, were typical of “people who may have been willing to concede that Trump was a bad guy, but otherwise maintained — in the teeth of the evidence — that our two major parties were basically equivalent: each party had its extremists, but each also had its moderates. And everything would be fine if these moderates could work together.”
But with most Republicans adamantly rallying around Trump despite the Ukraine scandal, Krugman observes, “fanatical centrists” have a hard time denying that extremists now dominate the GOP.
“Things that previously were merely obvious have become undeniable,” Krugman stresses. “Yes, Trump has invited foreign powers to intervene in U.S. politics on his behalf; he’s even done it on camera. Yes, he has claimed that his domestic political opponents are committing treason by exercising their constitutional rights of oversight, and he is clearly itching to use the justice system to criminalize criticism.”
Krugman himself has never claimed to be a centrist. One of the great things about his column is the fact that he is an unapologetic cheerleader for liberalism and skillfully uses political, historic and economic facts to make his case. And the 66-year-old Krugman recalls that even back in 2003, he was arguing that “today’s Republican Party is a radical force increasingly opposed to democracy.”
“For a long time, however, making that case — pointing out that Republicans were sounding ever more authoritarian and violating more and more democratic norms — got you dismissed as shrill, if not deranged,” Krugman explains. But extremism, Krugman adds, was a feature of the Republican Party long before Trump ran for president.
“It’s important to understand that the GOP hasn’t suddenly changed, that Trump hasn’t somehow managed to corrupt a party that was basically OK until he came along,” Krugman emphasizes. “Anyone startled by Republican embrace of wild conspiracy theories about the deep state must have slept through the Clinton years and wasn’t paying attention when most of the GOP decided that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by a vast global scientific cabal.”
Krugman concludes his column on a somber note, stressing that Trumpism isn’t merely an indictment of Donald Trump, but of the Republican Party in general.
“Trump isn’t an aberration,” Krugman asserts. “He’s unusually blatant and gaudily corrupt, but at a basic level, he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for decades. And U.S. political life won’t begin to recover until centrists face up to that uncomfortable reality.”
“My sense, although it’s impossible to quantify, is that the events of the past several weeks have finally broken through the wall of centrist denial,” Krugman writes.
Those events include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally coming out in favor of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump after learning that during a July 25 phone conservation, Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Centrist Democrats like Joe Biden, Krugman writes, were typical of “people who may have been willing to concede that Trump was a bad guy, but otherwise maintained — in the teeth of the evidence — that our two major parties were basically equivalent: each party had its extremists, but each also had its moderates. And everything would be fine if these moderates could work together.”
But with most Republicans adamantly rallying around Trump despite the Ukraine scandal, Krugman observes, “fanatical centrists” have a hard time denying that extremists now dominate the GOP.
“Things that previously were merely obvious have become undeniable,” Krugman stresses. “Yes, Trump has invited foreign powers to intervene in U.S. politics on his behalf; he’s even done it on camera. Yes, he has claimed that his domestic political opponents are committing treason by exercising their constitutional rights of oversight, and he is clearly itching to use the justice system to criminalize criticism.”
Krugman himself has never claimed to be a centrist. One of the great things about his column is the fact that he is an unapologetic cheerleader for liberalism and skillfully uses political, historic and economic facts to make his case. And the 66-year-old Krugman recalls that even back in 2003, he was arguing that “today’s Republican Party is a radical force increasingly opposed to democracy.”
“For a long time, however, making that case — pointing out that Republicans were sounding ever more authoritarian and violating more and more democratic norms — got you dismissed as shrill, if not deranged,” Krugman explains. But extremism, Krugman adds, was a feature of the Republican Party long before Trump ran for president.
“It’s important to understand that the GOP hasn’t suddenly changed, that Trump hasn’t somehow managed to corrupt a party that was basically OK until he came along,” Krugman emphasizes. “Anyone startled by Republican embrace of wild conspiracy theories about the deep state must have slept through the Clinton years and wasn’t paying attention when most of the GOP decided that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by a vast global scientific cabal.”
Krugman concludes his column on a somber note, stressing that Trumpism isn’t merely an indictment of Donald Trump, but of the Republican Party in general.
“Trump isn’t an aberration,” Krugman asserts. “He’s unusually blatant and gaudily corrupt, but at a basic level, he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for decades. And U.S. political life won’t begin to recover until centrists face up to that uncomfortable reality.”
‘The bargain’s been made’: Republicans are more fearful of Trump’s ‘punishments’ than their own voters
October 6, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
While Americans demanded anti-corruption laws in Washington in the 2018 election, and Democrats who won on that promises passed sweeping swamp-draining laws in HR1. However, Republicans are running scared, not from their angry constituents, but from the backslash, they could face from President Donald Trump.
Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told The Washington Post that his ex-GOP colleagues agree that the latest Ukraine scandal represents “new territory” compared to what Trump faced during the Russia investigation.
“There is a concern that he’ll get through it and he’ll exact revenge on those who didn’t stand with him,” Flake said. “There is no love for the president among Senate Republicans, and they aspire to do more than answer questions about his every tweet and issue. But they know this is the president’s party and the bargain’s been made.”
Paybacks are hell in Trump world. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) went into full attack mode against Trump during the 2016 election, Trump not only labeled him with the emasculating nickname “little Marco,” he did enough that Rubio became another of Trump’s followers. The same humiliation was far worse for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose wife and father were attacked by Trump. In the case of Cruz’s father, Trump’s friend David Pecker at the “National Enquirer” began a conspiracy theory that the former Cuban refugee helped assassinate John F. Kennedy.
In the case of Flake or former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), Trump gleefully slugged back so hard against their criticisms that Flake knew he wouldn’t be reelected and resigned. Sanford lost his reelection to a Trump-backed conservative.
“It feels like we’ve been constantly moving the line,” said well-known New Hampshire GOP leader Tom Rath. “We say, ‘Don’t cross this line.’ Okay, you crossed it. So, ‘Don’t cross this line.’ We’re finally at a point where patience is exhausted, reason is exhausted and, quite frankly, the voters are exhausted.”
Another Republican who works with several senators as a strategist called Trump’s Ukraine scandal “a disaster.” The strategist is urging GOP clients to stay as quiet as possible on the topic.
“There just hasn’t been pushback, and in part it’s because of this perception that he’s like Rasputin with the base with magic powers,” said GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who has never been a fan of Trump’s.
Even Trump ally Tucker Carlson confessed in an op-ed for The Daily Caller that “there’s no way to spin” this scandal.
“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion,” one of Trump’s former officials said about GOP senators. “They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a finger, almost completely erased.”
Read the full report.
Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told The Washington Post that his ex-GOP colleagues agree that the latest Ukraine scandal represents “new territory” compared to what Trump faced during the Russia investigation.
“There is a concern that he’ll get through it and he’ll exact revenge on those who didn’t stand with him,” Flake said. “There is no love for the president among Senate Republicans, and they aspire to do more than answer questions about his every tweet and issue. But they know this is the president’s party and the bargain’s been made.”
Paybacks are hell in Trump world. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) went into full attack mode against Trump during the 2016 election, Trump not only labeled him with the emasculating nickname “little Marco,” he did enough that Rubio became another of Trump’s followers. The same humiliation was far worse for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose wife and father were attacked by Trump. In the case of Cruz’s father, Trump’s friend David Pecker at the “National Enquirer” began a conspiracy theory that the former Cuban refugee helped assassinate John F. Kennedy.
In the case of Flake or former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), Trump gleefully slugged back so hard against their criticisms that Flake knew he wouldn’t be reelected and resigned. Sanford lost his reelection to a Trump-backed conservative.
“It feels like we’ve been constantly moving the line,” said well-known New Hampshire GOP leader Tom Rath. “We say, ‘Don’t cross this line.’ Okay, you crossed it. So, ‘Don’t cross this line.’ We’re finally at a point where patience is exhausted, reason is exhausted and, quite frankly, the voters are exhausted.”
Another Republican who works with several senators as a strategist called Trump’s Ukraine scandal “a disaster.” The strategist is urging GOP clients to stay as quiet as possible on the topic.
“There just hasn’t been pushback, and in part it’s because of this perception that he’s like Rasputin with the base with magic powers,” said GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who has never been a fan of Trump’s.
Even Trump ally Tucker Carlson confessed in an op-ed for The Daily Caller that “there’s no way to spin” this scandal.
“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion,” one of Trump’s former officials said about GOP senators. “They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a finger, almost completely erased.”
Read the full report.
How Senate Republicans responded to the memo of Trump's call with the president of Ukraine
"Impeachment over this? What a nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger," Sen. Lindsey Graham said
SHIRA TARLO - salon
SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 8:49PM (UTC)
President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to contact Attorney General William Barr about initiating a potential corruption investigation tied to former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a newly-released memo of a phone call between the two world leaders.
"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son — that Biden stopped the prosecution — and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great," Trump told Zelensky in a July 25 call, referring to his attorney general, William Barr. "Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it . . . It sounds horrible to me."
Those statements and others made by Trump in the mid-July call are at the center of accusations that the president pressured Zelensky to dig up dirt on his political rival in order to boost his own 2020 re-election campaign. (Read more here.)
The call between the two presidents has come under mounting scrutiny since it was reported last week that it is at least partly related to a whistleblower complaint that has been withheld from Congress.
It has prompted a groundswell of support for impeachment among Democrats on Capitol Hill, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on Tuesday announced that she had directed the House of Representatives to initiate an official impeachment inquiry against Trump — a move which she had resisted for months.
Here is how some Republicans in the Senate responded to the memo of the president's call with Zelensky:
Chuck Grassley (Iowa): "I've read the script in its entirety. It shows that there was no quid pro quo . . . Democrats' cries for impeachment grow stronger by the day, but their case for impeachment grows weaker."
Bill Cassidy (La.): "Nothing in the transcript supports Democrats' accusation that there was a quid pro quo."
Thom Tillis (N.C.): "Nancy Pelosi should be embarrassed. The transcript debunks the Democrats' false claims against President Trump and demonstrates that their call to impeach him is a total farce."
Lindsey Graham (S.C.): "Impeachment over this? What a nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger. Democrats have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump. Those who believe that the transcript is a 'smoking gun' for impeachment, do something about it — have the courage of your convictions."
Ted Cruz (Texas): "Despite the wild speculations from the media, career intelligence community staffers and congressional Democrats, the actual transcript of the call reveals no illegal quid pro quo."
"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son — that Biden stopped the prosecution — and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great," Trump told Zelensky in a July 25 call, referring to his attorney general, William Barr. "Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it . . . It sounds horrible to me."
Those statements and others made by Trump in the mid-July call are at the center of accusations that the president pressured Zelensky to dig up dirt on his political rival in order to boost his own 2020 re-election campaign. (Read more here.)
The call between the two presidents has come under mounting scrutiny since it was reported last week that it is at least partly related to a whistleblower complaint that has been withheld from Congress.
It has prompted a groundswell of support for impeachment among Democrats on Capitol Hill, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on Tuesday announced that she had directed the House of Representatives to initiate an official impeachment inquiry against Trump — a move which she had resisted for months.
Here is how some Republicans in the Senate responded to the memo of the president's call with Zelensky:
Chuck Grassley (Iowa): "I've read the script in its entirety. It shows that there was no quid pro quo . . . Democrats' cries for impeachment grow stronger by the day, but their case for impeachment grows weaker."
Bill Cassidy (La.): "Nothing in the transcript supports Democrats' accusation that there was a quid pro quo."
Thom Tillis (N.C.): "Nancy Pelosi should be embarrassed. The transcript debunks the Democrats' false claims against President Trump and demonstrates that their call to impeach him is a total farce."
Lindsey Graham (S.C.): "Impeachment over this? What a nothing (non-quid pro quo) burger. Democrats have lost their minds when it comes to President Trump. Those who believe that the transcript is a 'smoking gun' for impeachment, do something about it — have the courage of your convictions."
Ted Cruz (Texas): "Despite the wild speculations from the media, career intelligence community staffers and congressional Democrats, the actual transcript of the call reveals no illegal quid pro quo."
North Carolina’s sleazy 9/11 veto override is just the tip of the iceberg: Republicans don’t respect democracy
September 14, 2019
By Sophia Tesfaye, Salon - raw story
A change is coming in 2020. Gerrymandered maps are being struck down by courts across the country, and the 2018 midterm elections point to massive turnout in the next election. Republicans, clearly running scared, are preparing for the course correction by breaking, bending and reshaping the rules in an obvious attempt to make a mockery of the democratic process.
From Oregon to North Carolina, GOP lawmakers have used every dirty trick they can to seize power and undermine the power Democrats even after they win elections. They have taken Grover Norquist’s goal — to turn the tone in state capitals toward bitterness and partisanship — to heart in a major way.
“Our goal is to inflict pain. It is not enough to win. It has to be a painful, devastating defeat. Like when the king would take his opponent’s head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see,” Norquist infamously said in the National Review. Except for the shock election of Donald Trump to the presidency, however, Republicans haven’t had the best record of winning of late. Based on their behavior while losing, it seems that the revised Republican goal goes beyond pain to utter destruction.
Take for instance the extreme and ridiculous proposal by a Texas Republican state lawmaker to abolish the state capital of Austin. Apparently upset that the progressive city approved $150,000 in grants to organizations like Planned Parenthood, GOP state Rep. Briscoe Cain called for direct retaliation against the city of more than 950,000 people, saying the Republican-controlled state legislature should get “supreme authority over mayor and council.”
Briscoe’s nonsensical proposal came on the same day that Republicans in North Carolina lied to their Democratic colleagues to kill a state budget proposal expanding Medicaid coverage to low-income patients. While at least one Democratic lawmaker was distracted by a 9/11 memorial service, House Republicans rushed to override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, thereby denying increased health insurance access to thousands of people.
Republicans had promised Democrats they would hold no substantive votes during the 9/11 ceremony, with the GOP rules chair confirming to reporter Laura Leslie that there would be no vote. House Speaker Tim Moore admitted he held the vote to override Cooper’s veto — while many Democrats were absent — simply because the opportunity to break the Democrats’ firewall presented itself.
“This is a travesty of the process and you know it,” Democratic state Rep. Deb Butler complained on the House floor, as the GOP Speaker repeatedly tried cutting her mike. She kept switching mikes and turning them back on. “The trickery that is being evidenced this morning is tantamount to a criminal offense.”
As their 9/11 chicanery makes clear, North Carolina Republicans are some of the worst bad-faith actors in the nation. The Republican-led state legislature led an unprecedented effort to strip Cooper of his powers before he even took office, after an election in which the GOP lost its supermajority in the House and Senate. That was a particularly anti-democratic move, but it is hardly unique to the Tar Heel State.
It’s a replica of efforts by Republicans in Wisconsin in the aftermath of former Gov. Scott Walker’s 2018 defeat, when they attempted to remove Gov.-elect Tony Evers’ power to approve major actions by the attorney general and hand that authority instead to Republican lawmakers. Republicans in Michigan also suddenly wanted to limit the incoming governor’s power after Democrats swept every statewide office in last year’s midterms.
In Florida, when voters overwhelmingly voted to restore voting rights to 1.4 million former convicted felons, Republican lawmakers circumvented the will of the people with a bill that effectively blocked most of them all over again.
And when Republicans didn’t change the rules in response to recent Democratic electoral victories, they ran away and brought the government to a standstill. Republican senators in Oregon fled the state to prevent Democrats from voting on an expansive cap-and-trade bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions earlier this year.
Throughout the country — such as in Tennessee, which has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country — Republicans have tried to block electoral change by imposing egregious restrictions on voter registration drives.
David Frum told us years ago that if conservatives can’t win at the ballot box, they won’t abandon conservatism — they will abandon democracy. Their calls for civility are actually demands for servility. Democrats must understand that, and fight back, before it is too late.
From Oregon to North Carolina, GOP lawmakers have used every dirty trick they can to seize power and undermine the power Democrats even after they win elections. They have taken Grover Norquist’s goal — to turn the tone in state capitals toward bitterness and partisanship — to heart in a major way.
“Our goal is to inflict pain. It is not enough to win. It has to be a painful, devastating defeat. Like when the king would take his opponent’s head and spike it on a pole for everyone to see,” Norquist infamously said in the National Review. Except for the shock election of Donald Trump to the presidency, however, Republicans haven’t had the best record of winning of late. Based on their behavior while losing, it seems that the revised Republican goal goes beyond pain to utter destruction.
Take for instance the extreme and ridiculous proposal by a Texas Republican state lawmaker to abolish the state capital of Austin. Apparently upset that the progressive city approved $150,000 in grants to organizations like Planned Parenthood, GOP state Rep. Briscoe Cain called for direct retaliation against the city of more than 950,000 people, saying the Republican-controlled state legislature should get “supreme authority over mayor and council.”
Briscoe’s nonsensical proposal came on the same day that Republicans in North Carolina lied to their Democratic colleagues to kill a state budget proposal expanding Medicaid coverage to low-income patients. While at least one Democratic lawmaker was distracted by a 9/11 memorial service, House Republicans rushed to override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, thereby denying increased health insurance access to thousands of people.
Republicans had promised Democrats they would hold no substantive votes during the 9/11 ceremony, with the GOP rules chair confirming to reporter Laura Leslie that there would be no vote. House Speaker Tim Moore admitted he held the vote to override Cooper’s veto — while many Democrats were absent — simply because the opportunity to break the Democrats’ firewall presented itself.
“This is a travesty of the process and you know it,” Democratic state Rep. Deb Butler complained on the House floor, as the GOP Speaker repeatedly tried cutting her mike. She kept switching mikes and turning them back on. “The trickery that is being evidenced this morning is tantamount to a criminal offense.”
As their 9/11 chicanery makes clear, North Carolina Republicans are some of the worst bad-faith actors in the nation. The Republican-led state legislature led an unprecedented effort to strip Cooper of his powers before he even took office, after an election in which the GOP lost its supermajority in the House and Senate. That was a particularly anti-democratic move, but it is hardly unique to the Tar Heel State.
It’s a replica of efforts by Republicans in Wisconsin in the aftermath of former Gov. Scott Walker’s 2018 defeat, when they attempted to remove Gov.-elect Tony Evers’ power to approve major actions by the attorney general and hand that authority instead to Republican lawmakers. Republicans in Michigan also suddenly wanted to limit the incoming governor’s power after Democrats swept every statewide office in last year’s midterms.
In Florida, when voters overwhelmingly voted to restore voting rights to 1.4 million former convicted felons, Republican lawmakers circumvented the will of the people with a bill that effectively blocked most of them all over again.
And when Republicans didn’t change the rules in response to recent Democratic electoral victories, they ran away and brought the government to a standstill. Republican senators in Oregon fled the state to prevent Democrats from voting on an expansive cap-and-trade bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions earlier this year.
Throughout the country — such as in Tennessee, which has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country — Republicans have tried to block electoral change by imposing egregious restrictions on voter registration drives.
David Frum told us years ago that if conservatives can’t win at the ballot box, they won’t abandon conservatism — they will abandon democracy. Their calls for civility are actually demands for servility. Democrats must understand that, and fight back, before it is too late.
not only will there be voter suppression now candidate suppression!!!
Republicans to scrap primaries and caucuses as Trump challengers cry foul
The moves, which critics called undemocratic, are the latest illustration of the president's total takeover of the GOP apparatus.
By ALEX ISENSTADT - politico
09/06/2019 05:00 AM EDT
Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.
Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.
The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination — or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.
Trump advisers are quick to point out that parties of an incumbent president seeking reelection have a long history of canceling primaries and note it will save state parties money. But the president’s primary opponents, who have struggled to gain traction, are crying foul, calling it part of a broader effort to rig the contest in Trump’s favor.
“Trump and his allies and the Republican National Committee are doing whatever they can do to eliminate primaries in certain states and make it very difficult for primary challengers to get on the ballot in a number of states,” said former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who recently launched his primary campaign against the president. “It’s wrong, the RNC should be ashamed of itself, and I think it does show that Trump is afraid of a serious primary challenge because he knows his support is very soft.”
“Primary elections are important, competition within parties is good, and we intend to be on the ballot in every single state no matter what the RNC and Trump allies try to do,” Walsh added. “We also intend to loudly call out this undemocratic bull on a regular basis.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld said in a statement, “We don’t elect presidents by acclamation in America. Donald Trump is doing his best to make the Republican Party his own personal club. Republicans deserve better.”
The cancellations stem in part from months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Trump campaign. Aides have worked to ensure total control of the party machinery, installing staunch loyalists at state parties while eliminating potential detractors. The aim, Trump officials have long said, is to smooth the path to the president’s renomination and ensure he doesn’t face the kind of internal opposition that hampered former President George H.W. Bush in his failed 1992 reelection campaign.
Trump aides said they supported the cancellations but stressed that each case was initiated by state party officials.
The shutdowns aren’t without precedent. Some of the states forgoing Republican nomination contests have done so during the reelection bids of previous presidents. Arizona, GOP officials there recalled, did not hold a Democratic presidential primary in 2012, when Barack Obama was seeking a second term, or in 1996, when Bill Clinton was running for reelection. Kansas did not have a Democratic primary in 1996, and Republican officials in the state pointed out that they have long chosen to forgo primaries during a sitting incumbent’s reelection year.
South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick noted that his state decided not to hold Republican presidential primaries in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was running for reelection, or in 2004, when George W. Bush was seeking a second term. South Carolina, he added, also skipped its 1996 and 2012 Democratic contests.
“As a general rule, when either party has an incumbent president in the White House, there’s no rationale to hold a primary,” McKissick said.
Perhaps the closest comparison to the present day is 1992, when George H.W. Bush was facing a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Several states that year effectively ditched their Republican contests, including Iowa, which has long cast the first votes of the presidential nomination battles.
Buchanan said in an interview that the cancellations overall played little role in his eventual defeat, adding that Bush won renomination “fair and square.”
But Buchanan said he was rankled by what he described as a concerted and ultimately successful GOP-led effort to prevent him from appearing on the South Dakota ballot. Buchanan said he felt confident that he could perform strongly in the conservative state, whose contest came just days after a New Hampshire primary that he performed surprisingly well in.
Not being able to compete there crushed him, Buchanan said.
“If you think you can’t fight city hall, try overthrowing the president of the United States,” Buchanan said.
Officials in several states said in statements provided by the Trump campaign that they were driven by the cost savings. State parties in Nevada and Kansas foot the bill to put on caucuses.
“It would be malpractice on my part to waste money on a caucus to come to the inevitable conclusion that President Trump will be getting all our delegates in Charlotte,” said Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald. “We should be spending those funds to get all our candidates across the finish line instead.”
Kansas GOP Chairman Michael Kuckelman estimated it would cost his party $250,000 to hold the caucus, money he said can be deployed to win races.
Trump aides have long said they aren’t worried about a primary challenge and laughed off his Republican challengers. But the president’s political team has pored over past primary results and is mindful that unexpected things can transpire — such as in 2012, when a federal inmate received 41 percent of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia Democratic primary.
Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.
The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination — or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.
Trump advisers are quick to point out that parties of an incumbent president seeking reelection have a long history of canceling primaries and note it will save state parties money. But the president’s primary opponents, who have struggled to gain traction, are crying foul, calling it part of a broader effort to rig the contest in Trump’s favor.
“Trump and his allies and the Republican National Committee are doing whatever they can do to eliminate primaries in certain states and make it very difficult for primary challengers to get on the ballot in a number of states,” said former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who recently launched his primary campaign against the president. “It’s wrong, the RNC should be ashamed of itself, and I think it does show that Trump is afraid of a serious primary challenge because he knows his support is very soft.”
“Primary elections are important, competition within parties is good, and we intend to be on the ballot in every single state no matter what the RNC and Trump allies try to do,” Walsh added. “We also intend to loudly call out this undemocratic bull on a regular basis.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld said in a statement, “We don’t elect presidents by acclamation in America. Donald Trump is doing his best to make the Republican Party his own personal club. Republicans deserve better.”
The cancellations stem in part from months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Trump campaign. Aides have worked to ensure total control of the party machinery, installing staunch loyalists at state parties while eliminating potential detractors. The aim, Trump officials have long said, is to smooth the path to the president’s renomination and ensure he doesn’t face the kind of internal opposition that hampered former President George H.W. Bush in his failed 1992 reelection campaign.
Trump aides said they supported the cancellations but stressed that each case was initiated by state party officials.
The shutdowns aren’t without precedent. Some of the states forgoing Republican nomination contests have done so during the reelection bids of previous presidents. Arizona, GOP officials there recalled, did not hold a Democratic presidential primary in 2012, when Barack Obama was seeking a second term, or in 1996, when Bill Clinton was running for reelection. Kansas did not have a Democratic primary in 1996, and Republican officials in the state pointed out that they have long chosen to forgo primaries during a sitting incumbent’s reelection year.
South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick noted that his state decided not to hold Republican presidential primaries in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was running for reelection, or in 2004, when George W. Bush was seeking a second term. South Carolina, he added, also skipped its 1996 and 2012 Democratic contests.
“As a general rule, when either party has an incumbent president in the White House, there’s no rationale to hold a primary,” McKissick said.
Perhaps the closest comparison to the present day is 1992, when George H.W. Bush was facing a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Several states that year effectively ditched their Republican contests, including Iowa, which has long cast the first votes of the presidential nomination battles.
Buchanan said in an interview that the cancellations overall played little role in his eventual defeat, adding that Bush won renomination “fair and square.”
But Buchanan said he was rankled by what he described as a concerted and ultimately successful GOP-led effort to prevent him from appearing on the South Dakota ballot. Buchanan said he felt confident that he could perform strongly in the conservative state, whose contest came just days after a New Hampshire primary that he performed surprisingly well in.
Not being able to compete there crushed him, Buchanan said.
“If you think you can’t fight city hall, try overthrowing the president of the United States,” Buchanan said.
Officials in several states said in statements provided by the Trump campaign that they were driven by the cost savings. State parties in Nevada and Kansas foot the bill to put on caucuses.
“It would be malpractice on my part to waste money on a caucus to come to the inevitable conclusion that President Trump will be getting all our delegates in Charlotte,” said Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald. “We should be spending those funds to get all our candidates across the finish line instead.”
Kansas GOP Chairman Michael Kuckelman estimated it would cost his party $250,000 to hold the caucus, money he said can be deployed to win races.
Trump aides have long said they aren’t worried about a primary challenge and laughed off his Republican challengers. But the president’s political team has pored over past primary results and is mindful that unexpected things can transpire — such as in 2012, when a federal inmate received 41 percent of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia Democratic primary.
Over 50 House and Senate Republicans urge Supreme Court to rule that discriminating against LGBT people is legal
August 28, 2019
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - Raw STory
Brief falsely suggests LGBTQ people do not exist, but rather are choosing “actions, behaviors, or inclinations.”
53 members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are urging the nation’s highest court to rule against LGBTQ people when it hears three landmark cases October 8. The lawmakers, all Republicans (list below), say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not – and should not be interpreted to – protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, including their own constituents.
In a grotesque and ignorant reading of a key portion of the 55-year old legislation the Republican lawmakers suggest LGBTQ people do not exist, but rather are choosing “actions, behaviors, or inclinations,” which is false.
“Title VII’s sex discrimination provision prohibits discrimination because of an individual’s sex; it does not prohibit discrimination because of an individual’s actions, behaviors, or inclinations,” the lawmakers say in the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court.
“What the statute actually prohibits is discrimination ‘because of [an] individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,’” the Republicans insist.
The Advocate notes the brief “demeans the plaintiffs bringing actions forward to the court,” including claiming one of the plaintiffs only claimed he was gay so he could sue for wrongful termination. It also repeatedly misgenders a funeral director who is a woman and transgender, referring to her as “he.”
The brief also wrongly claims a correct interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBTQ people would “adversely” affect “the protection of women’s rights.”
And in a nod to the Hobby Lobby case, the brief proclaims that the “funeral home is a closely held corporation whose principal is a Christian,” strongly suggesting it is his First Amendment right to fire someone because they are LGBT.
The friend of the court brief was co-authored by Ken Starr, the former head of Baylor University who resigned in disgrace. Starr is also known for having defended Jeffrey Epstein, for being an attorney representing supporters of California’s anti-gay Prop 8, and the infamous special prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
It is unknown if taxpayer funds were used to pay for the brief.
Republican Senators who have signed the amicus brief include Marsha Blackburn, Roy Blunt, Mike Braun, John Cornyn, Kevin Cramer, James Inhofe, James Lankford, and Mike Lee.
Republican Representatives include:
Robert B. Aderholt (AL-04), Rick W. Allen (GA-12), Brian Babin (TX-36), Jim Banks (IN-03), Andy Biggs (AZ-05), Ted Budd (NC-13), Michael C. Burgess (TX-26), Doug Collins (GA-09), Warren Davidson (OH-08), Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Bill Flores (TX-17), Russ Fulcher (ID-01), Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Paul A. Gosar, (AZ-04), Glenn Grothman (WI-06), Michael Guest (MS-03), Andy Harris (MD-01), Vicky Hartzler (MO-04), Jody Hice (GA-10), George Holding (NC-02), Richard Hudson (NC-08), Jim Jordan (OH-04), Steve King (IA-04), Doug LaMalfa (CA-01), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Debbie Lesko (AZ-08), Thomas Massie (KY-04), Mark Meadows (NC-11), Alex X. Mooney (WV-02), Ralph Norman (SC-05), Pete Olson (TX-22), Gary Palmer (AL-06), John Ratcliffe (TX-04), David Rouzer (NC-07), Van Taylor (TX-03), Tim Walberg (MI-07), Mark Walker (NC-06), Randy K. Weber (TX-14), Ron Wright (TX-06), and Ted S. Yoho (FL-03).
53 members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are urging the nation’s highest court to rule against LGBTQ people when it hears three landmark cases October 8. The lawmakers, all Republicans (list below), say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not – and should not be interpreted to – protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, including their own constituents.
In a grotesque and ignorant reading of a key portion of the 55-year old legislation the Republican lawmakers suggest LGBTQ people do not exist, but rather are choosing “actions, behaviors, or inclinations,” which is false.
“Title VII’s sex discrimination provision prohibits discrimination because of an individual’s sex; it does not prohibit discrimination because of an individual’s actions, behaviors, or inclinations,” the lawmakers say in the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court.
“What the statute actually prohibits is discrimination ‘because of [an] individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,’” the Republicans insist.
The Advocate notes the brief “demeans the plaintiffs bringing actions forward to the court,” including claiming one of the plaintiffs only claimed he was gay so he could sue for wrongful termination. It also repeatedly misgenders a funeral director who is a woman and transgender, referring to her as “he.”
The brief also wrongly claims a correct interpretation of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBTQ people would “adversely” affect “the protection of women’s rights.”
And in a nod to the Hobby Lobby case, the brief proclaims that the “funeral home is a closely held corporation whose principal is a Christian,” strongly suggesting it is his First Amendment right to fire someone because they are LGBT.
The friend of the court brief was co-authored by Ken Starr, the former head of Baylor University who resigned in disgrace. Starr is also known for having defended Jeffrey Epstein, for being an attorney representing supporters of California’s anti-gay Prop 8, and the infamous special prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
It is unknown if taxpayer funds were used to pay for the brief.
Republican Senators who have signed the amicus brief include Marsha Blackburn, Roy Blunt, Mike Braun, John Cornyn, Kevin Cramer, James Inhofe, James Lankford, and Mike Lee.
Republican Representatives include:
Robert B. Aderholt (AL-04), Rick W. Allen (GA-12), Brian Babin (TX-36), Jim Banks (IN-03), Andy Biggs (AZ-05), Ted Budd (NC-13), Michael C. Burgess (TX-26), Doug Collins (GA-09), Warren Davidson (OH-08), Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Bill Flores (TX-17), Russ Fulcher (ID-01), Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Paul A. Gosar, (AZ-04), Glenn Grothman (WI-06), Michael Guest (MS-03), Andy Harris (MD-01), Vicky Hartzler (MO-04), Jody Hice (GA-10), George Holding (NC-02), Richard Hudson (NC-08), Jim Jordan (OH-04), Steve King (IA-04), Doug LaMalfa (CA-01), Doug Lamborn (CO-05), Debbie Lesko (AZ-08), Thomas Massie (KY-04), Mark Meadows (NC-11), Alex X. Mooney (WV-02), Ralph Norman (SC-05), Pete Olson (TX-22), Gary Palmer (AL-06), John Ratcliffe (TX-04), David Rouzer (NC-07), Van Taylor (TX-03), Tim Walberg (MI-07), Mark Walker (NC-06), Randy K. Weber (TX-14), Ron Wright (TX-06), and Ted S. Yoho (FL-03).
Don’t be fooled by the GOP backlash against Steve King — Republican racism is alive and well
August 27, 2019
By Alex Henderson, AlterNet - Commentary
Rep. Steve King’s racism and sexism are so extreme that these days, even hard-right Republicans like Liz Cheney (daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are calling him out. The Iowa congressman has said that the term “white nationalist” should not be considered offensive, and he recently cited rape and incest as two ways to prevent low birth rates. But journalist Zak Cheney-Rice, in an article published in New York Magazine this week, argues that GOP attacks on King are merely a smokescreen — and that no matter how many Republicans decide to throw King under the bus, racism and bigotry are alive and well in the GOP.
Although King was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 and has been reelected many times since then, Cheney-Rice notes that he will be fighting a tough battle for reelection in 2020. King, Cheney-Rice points out, has received a “daunting” GOP primary challenge from fellow Republican Randy Feenstra — and if he wins the primary, King will face Democrat J.D. Scholten in the general election (in 2018, King defeated Scholten by only 3%). Moreover, Cheney-Rice writes, GOP donors are abandoning King. But Americans, Cheney-Rice stresses, shouldn’t be fooled by King-has-to-go rhetoric coming from Republicans, as there are many others in the GOP who are quite happy to promote racism.
Cheney-Rice cites Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama as an example, noting that in 2014, the congressman accused Democrats of promoting a “war on whites” and described that “war” as “part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008.” More recently, Cheney-Rice adds, Brooks has pointed to Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar as examples of “the growing influence of the Islamic religion in the Democratic Party ranks.”
“Today’s GOP is marked by sycophants for a president who sought to ban Muslim immigration, who praises white supremacists, and who derides black countries and cities as shitholes and sites of infestation,” Cheney-Rice explains. “It features representatives like Matt Gaetz, who promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros was funding a migrant caravan full of criminals — a theory that later formed the basis for Robert Bowers’ massacre of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue.”
Anti-Latino bigotry, Cheney-Rice points out, is another prominent feature of the GOP in 2019.
In the past, members of the Bush family made a concerted effort to court Latino voters. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican, is a fluent Spanish speaker who has been interviewed in Spanish more than once on the Univision network; his older brother, former President George W. Bush, viewed Latinos as a crucial part of the GOP’s future when he was governor of Texas in the 1990s.
But when Barack Obama was president, Cheney-Rice recalls, many Republicans turned against people with Hispanic names — and “Latinos quickly went from being a coveted voting demographic to being symbolic of all the ways America had gone downhill under Obama.”
Cheney-Rice concludes his New York Magazine piece by emphasizing that King is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to racism in the Republican Party of 2019.
“Even as the Iowa congressman inches closer to defeat,” Cheney-Rice warns, “there’s little evidence to suggest that a post-King GOP will look much different than it does today.”
Although King was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 and has been reelected many times since then, Cheney-Rice notes that he will be fighting a tough battle for reelection in 2020. King, Cheney-Rice points out, has received a “daunting” GOP primary challenge from fellow Republican Randy Feenstra — and if he wins the primary, King will face Democrat J.D. Scholten in the general election (in 2018, King defeated Scholten by only 3%). Moreover, Cheney-Rice writes, GOP donors are abandoning King. But Americans, Cheney-Rice stresses, shouldn’t be fooled by King-has-to-go rhetoric coming from Republicans, as there are many others in the GOP who are quite happy to promote racism.
Cheney-Rice cites Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama as an example, noting that in 2014, the congressman accused Democrats of promoting a “war on whites” and described that “war” as “part of the strategy that Barack Obama implemented in 2008.” More recently, Cheney-Rice adds, Brooks has pointed to Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar as examples of “the growing influence of the Islamic religion in the Democratic Party ranks.”
“Today’s GOP is marked by sycophants for a president who sought to ban Muslim immigration, who praises white supremacists, and who derides black countries and cities as shitholes and sites of infestation,” Cheney-Rice explains. “It features representatives like Matt Gaetz, who promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros was funding a migrant caravan full of criminals — a theory that later formed the basis for Robert Bowers’ massacre of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue.”
Anti-Latino bigotry, Cheney-Rice points out, is another prominent feature of the GOP in 2019.
In the past, members of the Bush family made a concerted effort to court Latino voters. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican, is a fluent Spanish speaker who has been interviewed in Spanish more than once on the Univision network; his older brother, former President George W. Bush, viewed Latinos as a crucial part of the GOP’s future when he was governor of Texas in the 1990s.
But when Barack Obama was president, Cheney-Rice recalls, many Republicans turned against people with Hispanic names — and “Latinos quickly went from being a coveted voting demographic to being symbolic of all the ways America had gone downhill under Obama.”
Cheney-Rice concludes his New York Magazine piece by emphasizing that King is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to racism in the Republican Party of 2019.
“Even as the Iowa congressman inches closer to defeat,” Cheney-Rice warns, “there’s little evidence to suggest that a post-King GOP will look much different than it does today.”
After Trump broke his promise to eliminate the national debt, GOP senators say ‘next term’
"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day." -- Lewis Carroll
JOSH ISRAEL - Thinkprogress
AUG 23, 2019, 10:34 AM
Under President Donald Trump, both the national debt and the annual budget deficit have reached all time highs, despite his 2016 campaign promises to eliminate both. Rather than concede another broken promise, his Republican defenders in the Senate are now claiming that he will solve both — next term.
Candidate Donald Trump made a lot of unrealistic promises. His oft repeated and now abandoned mantra that Mexico would entirely fund a massive border wall across the nation’s entire southern border is the best known, but he also made numerous lofty promises to magically eliminate the $19 trillion national debt and to get rid of the budget deficit almost immediately.
From his 2015 campaign kickoff speech, Trump promised that he would make the debt disappear. “I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers,” he told the Washington Post in 2016. “I would say over a period of eight years.” Trump said he could do this without even raising taxes because of the spectacular trade deals that he uniquely would be able to negotiate if elected.
The national debt is now more than $22.5 trillion, several trillion higher than when Trump took office. Trump has claimed to have the “greatest economy in the history of our country,” but thanks to a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the annual budget deficit is about to exceed $1 trillion for the first time ever (even without purchasing Greenland) years before analysts expected.
Trump recently signed a budget deal — agreed to by the GOP-controlled Senate — that further increased spending, despite his campaign promise to freeze the budget and despite promising last year that he would “never sign another bill” with big spending increases again. Should the widely-predicted economic downturn happen, that would mean even less revenue, which would make spending cuts even more difficult.
According to a Washington Post report on Friday, Trump and his allies have arrived at a solution to the problem: pretending that it will all be fixed in Trump’s second term.
The article notes that Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) recently suggested to the New York Times that Trump’s deficit reduction efforts might come as soon as 2021. “I hope in a second term, he is interested,” he suggested. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.”
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) told the Times: “We’ve brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project.” And Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) added that “it probably takes a second-term president” to prioritize debt reduction.
Back in July, the Post noted, leaks from the White House gave the impression that in a second Trump term, spending cuts and deficit reduction would be coming.
Trump’s track record with debt, however, would suggest that this promise, too, is unlikely to be kept.
Candidate Donald Trump made a lot of unrealistic promises. His oft repeated and now abandoned mantra that Mexico would entirely fund a massive border wall across the nation’s entire southern border is the best known, but he also made numerous lofty promises to magically eliminate the $19 trillion national debt and to get rid of the budget deficit almost immediately.
From his 2015 campaign kickoff speech, Trump promised that he would make the debt disappear. “I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers,” he told the Washington Post in 2016. “I would say over a period of eight years.” Trump said he could do this without even raising taxes because of the spectacular trade deals that he uniquely would be able to negotiate if elected.
The national debt is now more than $22.5 trillion, several trillion higher than when Trump took office. Trump has claimed to have the “greatest economy in the history of our country,” but thanks to a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the annual budget deficit is about to exceed $1 trillion for the first time ever (even without purchasing Greenland) years before analysts expected.
Trump recently signed a budget deal — agreed to by the GOP-controlled Senate — that further increased spending, despite his campaign promise to freeze the budget and despite promising last year that he would “never sign another bill” with big spending increases again. Should the widely-predicted economic downturn happen, that would mean even less revenue, which would make spending cuts even more difficult.
According to a Washington Post report on Friday, Trump and his allies have arrived at a solution to the problem: pretending that it will all be fixed in Trump’s second term.
The article notes that Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) recently suggested to the New York Times that Trump’s deficit reduction efforts might come as soon as 2021. “I hope in a second term, he is interested,” he suggested. “With his leadership, I think we could start dealing with that crisis. And it is a crisis.”
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) told the Times: “We’ve brought it up with President Trump, who has talked about it being a second-term project.” And Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) added that “it probably takes a second-term president” to prioritize debt reduction.
Back in July, the Post noted, leaks from the White House gave the impression that in a second Trump term, spending cuts and deficit reduction would be coming.
Trump’s track record with debt, however, would suggest that this promise, too, is unlikely to be kept.
GOP leadership tells House Republicans to lie about white supremacist gun massacres – call it ‘violence from the Left’
August 17, 2019
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - Raw Story
House Republican leadership has sent a memo to GOP members of Congress directing them to lie about right wing white supremacist gun massacres, and to call it “violence from the left.”
The memo, which The Tampa Bay Times acquired, includes talking points for congressional Republicans to parrot when speaking with reporters or constituents. It instructs them on how to address questions about gun violence, including the domestic terrorism recently perpetrated in El Paso, Texas.
If asked a question like, “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently?” GOP lawmakers are being told to offer this response:
“White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form,” the document directs lawmakers to say, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.”
The El Paso shooting suspect who killed 22 people targeted Hispanic people specifically. He is reportedly a far right wing domestic terrorist who left a manifesto that quoted or echoed President Donald Trump multiple times.
The false claims are not only being sent to Republicans in the House, the lawmakers are sending them to their constituents.
For example, as the Tampa Bay Times notes, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida sent the false “violence from the left” claim in a newsletter to his constituents.
The House Republican leadership talking points also direct lawmakers to falsely conflate mass shootings where there was no political motivation, or an ambiguous motivation, with the left, such as the Dayton shooter.
“The GOP conference talking points ascribed other shootings as leftist violence despite ambiguous, if not contradictory, evidence,” the Tampa Bay Times explains. “The shooter that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat, was paranoid about government and obsessed with the Arizona Congresswoman, a law enforcement investigation found. His political persuasions were mixed and did not appear to be a factor. Nor does it seem that the May shooters at a Colorado high school — both teenagers and bullied students — were motivated by politics.”
Related: White Supremacists Responsible for All Race-Based Domestic Terrorism Incidents in 2018 – DOJ Blocked Report
The memo, which The Tampa Bay Times acquired, includes talking points for congressional Republicans to parrot when speaking with reporters or constituents. It instructs them on how to address questions about gun violence, including the domestic terrorism recently perpetrated in El Paso, Texas.
If asked a question like, “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently?” GOP lawmakers are being told to offer this response:
“White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form,” the document directs lawmakers to say, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.”
The El Paso shooting suspect who killed 22 people targeted Hispanic people specifically. He is reportedly a far right wing domestic terrorist who left a manifesto that quoted or echoed President Donald Trump multiple times.
The false claims are not only being sent to Republicans in the House, the lawmakers are sending them to their constituents.
For example, as the Tampa Bay Times notes, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida sent the false “violence from the left” claim in a newsletter to his constituents.
The House Republican leadership talking points also direct lawmakers to falsely conflate mass shootings where there was no political motivation, or an ambiguous motivation, with the left, such as the Dayton shooter.
“The GOP conference talking points ascribed other shootings as leftist violence despite ambiguous, if not contradictory, evidence,” the Tampa Bay Times explains. “The shooter that wounded U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Democrat, was paranoid about government and obsessed with the Arizona Congresswoman, a law enforcement investigation found. His political persuasions were mixed and did not appear to be a factor. Nor does it seem that the May shooters at a Colorado high school — both teenagers and bullied students — were motivated by politics.”
Related: White Supremacists Responsible for All Race-Based Domestic Terrorism Incidents in 2018 – DOJ Blocked Report
Confused or stupid???
Pro-LGBTQ Republican group endorses the most anti-LGBTQ president since Reagan
"Watching the 2016 GOP convention before Donald Trump took the stage was like a dream fulfilled," the Log Cabin Republicans write.
ADAM PECK - Thinkprogress
AUG 16, 2019, 3:16 PM
Once upon a time, the Log Cabin Republicans were nominally a pro-LGBTQ organization.
“There are still too many Republican candidates who try to capitalize on gay issues by using anti-gay politics,” decried the group’s former executive director Patrick Sammon back in 2008. “I think it’s less effective. We’ll see less of it in the future.”
On Friday, the same group offered its unqualified endorsement of President Donald Trump, a racist, sexist, white supremacist who has spent his first three years in office undermining every protection and right that the LGBTQ community has spent decades fighting for.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, Robert Kabel and Jill Homan, the group’s chairman and vice chairwoman, bend over backwards trying to find a positive spin on the blatantly anti-LGBTQ agenda put forth by this administration, a mental contortion so difficult they were compelled to name drop Apple CEO Tim Cook before they managed to invoke the man they are endorsing.
The crux of their argument appears to be that the Republican Party’s animosity towards the LGBTQ community is more subtle today than it was in the 1990s, and therefore Trump is deserving of praise.
“For LGBTQ Republicans, watching the 2016 GOP convention before Donald Trump took the stage was like a dream fulfilled,” Kabel and Homan write.
“The distance between that event and Pat Buchanan’s hate-filled exhortation against the LGBTQ community in Houston in 1992 is a powerful measurement of how far we’ve come.”
That is the tragicomical bar with which the Log Cabins are measuring Trump’s ally-ship: Pat Buchanan publicly decrying the “radical feminism” of President Bill Clinton’s agenda of “homosexual rights” onstage at the Republican National Convention. And it’s a bar that, as Kabel and Homan acknowledge, the modern GOP clears only barely.
“Some of the moral leaders who stood with Buchanan back then were still there three years ago in Cleveland, to be sure. But this time, they refrained from passing judgment on gays and lesbians,” the endorsement reads. Yes, the only difference between Pat Buchanan’s Republican Party and Donald Trump’s is that the homophobia is now latent. Progress!
Kabel and Homan make a few ham-fisted attempts to point to “accomplishments” by the current administration, and predictably come up short.
They point to Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year in which he promised to end the spread of HIV in 10 years, without offering much in the way of details about how he planned to achieve this.
In fact, in the months since that promise, the Trump administration has done nothing but obstruct access to health care, particularly among those who are most vulnerable to HIV diagnoses.
Trump tried to take credit for a sizable donation of HIV prevention drug Truvada by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, neglecting to mention the donation was widely seen by activists as little more than a public relations ploy by the company in an attempt to head off a potential legal fight over the drug’s expiring patent.
Indeed, Trump’s supposed interest in ending the HIV epidemic flies in the face of his actual record on the issue, including his decision to fire the entire membership of the White House’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in 2017.
The two also hailed the Trump administration’s recently unveiled initiative to fight the criminalization of homosexuality abroad, specifically targeting a list of some 70 countries which have laws expressly prohibiting homosexuality. They point to the selection of Richard Grennell, the highest ranking openly gay member of the administration who was appointed to head up the initiative, to underscore the seriousness with which the administration is addressing the problem.
What a happy coincidence, then, that chief on the list of countries targeted by this initiative is Iran, a country that Trump has spent his entire term attacking. The initiative was announced weeks after Iran publicly hanged a man for being gay, and was seen by many foreign policy experts as a way to gin up international pressure on the country under the guise of concern for human rights abuses.
For a real exploration of the seriousness with which the administration concerns itself with anti-LGBTQ violence abroad, consider the case of Brunei, a country with which Trump has had numerous previous business dealings. Rulers there imposed new draconian anti-LGBTQ laws earlier this year — after the White House’s initiative was launched — that included the death penalty for anyone engaging in “homosexual acts.” The international community erupted in outrage. The Trump White House was silent on the matter.
Also on the list of anti-LGBTQ countries: Saudi Arabia. In April, five men were accused of homosexuality and subsequently beheaded as part of a larger mass execution of nearly 40 people for various charges. One of them reportedly had his dismembered body and head pinned to a pole in a public square.
Trump counts the Saudi royal family among his closest business partners and allies, and has repeatedly sided with them over the United States’ intelligence agencies. His financial ties to the country and its monarchy stretch back decades and into the tens of millions of dollars.
Just how invested is Trump in his administration’s effort to combat international oppression of the LGBTQ community? ...
Kabel and Homan’s last piece of evidence is somehow their most disingenuous. They spend a paragraph extolling the “accomplishments” of this administration, arguing that they benefitted the entire country. And since there are LGBTQ people in the country — ipso facto, presto chango — he must be pro-LGBTQ.
Among the accomplishments they cite: “The president’s tax cuts,” which exploded the deficit and only benefitted the wealthiest Americans at the expense of low and middle class workers; “aggressive negotiations on trade deals,” which have resulted in an economically disastrous trade war with China that had farmers in states like Minnesota booing Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue this week; and “his hard line on foreign policy,” including, among other things, his inhumane policy of forcibly separating children from their parents at the southwest border and demonizing asylum seekers who are fleeing, among other things, anti-LGBTQ persecution in their home countries.
Ignored are Trump’s targeted harassment of the transgender community. Or his refusal to accommodate the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats stationed in the United States. Or a decision announced just this week by the Department of Labor to make it easier for private businesses to fire employees for being gay.
To any discerning human, whatever “support” the current occupant of the White House displays for the LGBTQ community is not owed to a concerted effort to protect a vulnerable, persecuted community, but to a happy accident that affords the administration good optics.
Or, to have the Log Cabin Republicans of 2008 put it another way, “The fact is that there are still people … who lack integrity who are willing to try and use gay people as a political issue.”
“There are still too many Republican candidates who try to capitalize on gay issues by using anti-gay politics,” decried the group’s former executive director Patrick Sammon back in 2008. “I think it’s less effective. We’ll see less of it in the future.”
On Friday, the same group offered its unqualified endorsement of President Donald Trump, a racist, sexist, white supremacist who has spent his first three years in office undermining every protection and right that the LGBTQ community has spent decades fighting for.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, Robert Kabel and Jill Homan, the group’s chairman and vice chairwoman, bend over backwards trying to find a positive spin on the blatantly anti-LGBTQ agenda put forth by this administration, a mental contortion so difficult they were compelled to name drop Apple CEO Tim Cook before they managed to invoke the man they are endorsing.
The crux of their argument appears to be that the Republican Party’s animosity towards the LGBTQ community is more subtle today than it was in the 1990s, and therefore Trump is deserving of praise.
“For LGBTQ Republicans, watching the 2016 GOP convention before Donald Trump took the stage was like a dream fulfilled,” Kabel and Homan write.
“The distance between that event and Pat Buchanan’s hate-filled exhortation against the LGBTQ community in Houston in 1992 is a powerful measurement of how far we’ve come.”
That is the tragicomical bar with which the Log Cabins are measuring Trump’s ally-ship: Pat Buchanan publicly decrying the “radical feminism” of President Bill Clinton’s agenda of “homosexual rights” onstage at the Republican National Convention. And it’s a bar that, as Kabel and Homan acknowledge, the modern GOP clears only barely.
“Some of the moral leaders who stood with Buchanan back then were still there three years ago in Cleveland, to be sure. But this time, they refrained from passing judgment on gays and lesbians,” the endorsement reads. Yes, the only difference between Pat Buchanan’s Republican Party and Donald Trump’s is that the homophobia is now latent. Progress!
Kabel and Homan make a few ham-fisted attempts to point to “accomplishments” by the current administration, and predictably come up short.
They point to Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year in which he promised to end the spread of HIV in 10 years, without offering much in the way of details about how he planned to achieve this.
In fact, in the months since that promise, the Trump administration has done nothing but obstruct access to health care, particularly among those who are most vulnerable to HIV diagnoses.
Trump tried to take credit for a sizable donation of HIV prevention drug Truvada by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, neglecting to mention the donation was widely seen by activists as little more than a public relations ploy by the company in an attempt to head off a potential legal fight over the drug’s expiring patent.
Indeed, Trump’s supposed interest in ending the HIV epidemic flies in the face of his actual record on the issue, including his decision to fire the entire membership of the White House’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in 2017.
The two also hailed the Trump administration’s recently unveiled initiative to fight the criminalization of homosexuality abroad, specifically targeting a list of some 70 countries which have laws expressly prohibiting homosexuality. They point to the selection of Richard Grennell, the highest ranking openly gay member of the administration who was appointed to head up the initiative, to underscore the seriousness with which the administration is addressing the problem.
What a happy coincidence, then, that chief on the list of countries targeted by this initiative is Iran, a country that Trump has spent his entire term attacking. The initiative was announced weeks after Iran publicly hanged a man for being gay, and was seen by many foreign policy experts as a way to gin up international pressure on the country under the guise of concern for human rights abuses.
For a real exploration of the seriousness with which the administration concerns itself with anti-LGBTQ violence abroad, consider the case of Brunei, a country with which Trump has had numerous previous business dealings. Rulers there imposed new draconian anti-LGBTQ laws earlier this year — after the White House’s initiative was launched — that included the death penalty for anyone engaging in “homosexual acts.” The international community erupted in outrage. The Trump White House was silent on the matter.
Also on the list of anti-LGBTQ countries: Saudi Arabia. In April, five men were accused of homosexuality and subsequently beheaded as part of a larger mass execution of nearly 40 people for various charges. One of them reportedly had his dismembered body and head pinned to a pole in a public square.
Trump counts the Saudi royal family among his closest business partners and allies, and has repeatedly sided with them over the United States’ intelligence agencies. His financial ties to the country and its monarchy stretch back decades and into the tens of millions of dollars.
Just how invested is Trump in his administration’s effort to combat international oppression of the LGBTQ community? ...
Kabel and Homan’s last piece of evidence is somehow their most disingenuous. They spend a paragraph extolling the “accomplishments” of this administration, arguing that they benefitted the entire country. And since there are LGBTQ people in the country — ipso facto, presto chango — he must be pro-LGBTQ.
Among the accomplishments they cite: “The president’s tax cuts,” which exploded the deficit and only benefitted the wealthiest Americans at the expense of low and middle class workers; “aggressive negotiations on trade deals,” which have resulted in an economically disastrous trade war with China that had farmers in states like Minnesota booing Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue this week; and “his hard line on foreign policy,” including, among other things, his inhumane policy of forcibly separating children from their parents at the southwest border and demonizing asylum seekers who are fleeing, among other things, anti-LGBTQ persecution in their home countries.
Ignored are Trump’s targeted harassment of the transgender community. Or his refusal to accommodate the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats stationed in the United States. Or a decision announced just this week by the Department of Labor to make it easier for private businesses to fire employees for being gay.
To any discerning human, whatever “support” the current occupant of the White House displays for the LGBTQ community is not owed to a concerted effort to protect a vulnerable, persecuted community, but to a happy accident that affords the administration good optics.
Or, to have the Log Cabin Republicans of 2008 put it another way, “The fact is that there are still people … who lack integrity who are willing to try and use gay people as a political issue.”
I KNOW this sounds crazy, but
NanceGreggs - Demo Underground
8/14/19
… please hear me out. I first had this thought last fall, and I think I might be onto something.
I believe that the powers-that-be in the Republican party want Trump gone.
When they first elected him, I’m sure they saw him as a political rube, someone who could be easily manipulated into doing their bidding due to his lack of political experience, along with an obvious lack of any real enthusiasm for the job.
No doubt he was seen as what he was – a bloviating con artist who could sell the GOP agenda to their low-info, low-IQ ‘base’, while doing what he was told by party higher-ups. He was going to be their ‘president-in-name-only’, a lazy-assed grifter who’d be satisfied with acting the part between golf games.
They’d paved the way for him – getting Evangelical leaders on board who gladly convinced their sheep that a thrice-married adulterer was a good Christian man, tidying up his past as a liar and a cheat by passing him off as a self-made billionaire, convincing Republican voters that the prosperity he had personally achieved would translate into untold success and riches for them as well.
Trump’s nude model wife, Melania, was sold as a model First Lady. Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior and Eric were touted as trusted advisors, despite knowing absolutely nothing about domestic or foreign policy. And the base lapped it up.
It was all so easy-as-pie perfect, a movie script written by a GOP that saw the destruction of the environment, the dismantling of our democracy, and the distancing of our nation’s allies as a means to their ends.
What could possibly go wrong – other than everything?
Once ensconced in the Oval Office, the man the Republican party had dismissed as their puppet turned out to be Putin’s puppet instead – the problem being that he was blatantly obvious about it. The Republican higher-ups that had imagined a pOTUS who’d restrict his word-salad meanderings to anecdotal tales about his alleged prowess on the links were now saddled with a ‘stable genius’ prone to hissy-fits, thousands of ludicrous lies, and public meltdowns. The candidate they’d championed as a man-of-the-people exposed himself as being a man out for himself – the people and the party that supported him be damned.
The PTB in the GOP know that Trump is unelectable to a second term. They know that he has done incredible damage to their ‘brand’. They know that his disapproval numbers are a death knell – and they know that bell tolls for them.
The Mueller report, children in cages, racist rhetoric that led to the deaths of innocents, “very fine people on both sides”, the endless litany of easily-debunked lies, the refusal to believe our own intelligence agents over Putin’s ‘word for it’, paid-off porn stars, meetings with Russian agents about ‘adoptions’, Middle East peace plans concocted by a know-nothing, debt-ridden son-in-law, the ‘very best people’ ending up in prison, Republicans perjuring themselves, the exploded deficit, tariffs that are bankrupting farmers, hate crimes and mass shootings on the rise, a shaky stock market, the distrust of our allies – and the blatant stupidity of a “pResident” who thinks wind turbines cause cancer, and claims the Revolutionary War was won because the colonists shut down the airports in 1775.
As devoted as the Republicans have been in their attempts to defend the indefensible, there comes a time when you realize that your “pResident” has effectively destroyed your party’s chances of winning the votes of Hispanic “rapists”, Muslim “terrorists”, people from “shithole countries”, parents appalled by children in cages, Christians who actually embrace the teachings of Christ, women who want the right to choose, decent people who want assault weapons off our streets, people with morals who don’t want a self-proclaimed pussy-grabber in the White House, and those who don’t want people designated as security risks operating without security clearances that give them valid access to our country’s classified information.
The Trump supporters that are left are just that – Trump supporters rather than GOP supporters. There aren’t enough of them to secure his re-election, and the Republicans know that.
I believe the GOP have abandoned all hope of seeing their fair-haired boy elected to a second term. But at this point, they have no choice but to play along to get along. Offering primary challengers to The Dotard would be an admission that the idiot they’d foisted on their own party was a monumental mistake – and they’re not about to own up to that particular catastrophe. They have no alternative than to dance with the idiot who brought them to the electoral prom, knowing that he’s the guy most likely to shit in the punchbowl before the band finishes their final set.
Trumpism is over, it’s done, and the only people keeping it on life-support are those who simply have no alternative but to pretend that imminent disaster is just part of the same hoax being promoted by such ne’er-do-wells as scientists, economists, political analysts, historians – and the well-educated, well-informed intellectual nut-jobs who give credence to their dire warnings.
The Republican PTB are tired of coming up with creative explanations for their “pResident’s” insanity – and it shows.
The forever-faithful pundits still turn up on the news shows – but looking like they’re facing a firing squad instead of those cameras they were once convinced they could seduce into submission.
Even the Evangelicals are having second thoughts about Trump being the Second Coming – and everyone knows that those ongoing investigations into the Trump Crime Family aren’t going to end in "total vindication, total exoneration!" no matter how many times Twitler tweets exactly that.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do everything possible to get the vote out. We still have a fight on our hands, and all able-minded soldiers are expected to do their part.
But I do believe that our enemies in the GOP have taken as much from Trump as they can swallow. They are watching their party being decimated, their ‘brand’ being trampled into the mud, and their once-touted ‘principles’ being exposed as non-existent.
The party that now spends its every waking hour trying to spin that ridiculous pile of straw that is Trump into gold are hearing the name Rumpelstiltskin louder and louder with every passing day – and they’re as tired of defending this bullshit as we are of hearing it.
They want him gone, maybe as much as we do – or even more so, because it’s not our party that’s being destroyed every time he opens his mouth, it’s theirs.
I believe that the powers-that-be in the Republican party want Trump gone.
When they first elected him, I’m sure they saw him as a political rube, someone who could be easily manipulated into doing their bidding due to his lack of political experience, along with an obvious lack of any real enthusiasm for the job.
No doubt he was seen as what he was – a bloviating con artist who could sell the GOP agenda to their low-info, low-IQ ‘base’, while doing what he was told by party higher-ups. He was going to be their ‘president-in-name-only’, a lazy-assed grifter who’d be satisfied with acting the part between golf games.
They’d paved the way for him – getting Evangelical leaders on board who gladly convinced their sheep that a thrice-married adulterer was a good Christian man, tidying up his past as a liar and a cheat by passing him off as a self-made billionaire, convincing Republican voters that the prosperity he had personally achieved would translate into untold success and riches for them as well.
Trump’s nude model wife, Melania, was sold as a model First Lady. Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior and Eric were touted as trusted advisors, despite knowing absolutely nothing about domestic or foreign policy. And the base lapped it up.
It was all so easy-as-pie perfect, a movie script written by a GOP that saw the destruction of the environment, the dismantling of our democracy, and the distancing of our nation’s allies as a means to their ends.
What could possibly go wrong – other than everything?
Once ensconced in the Oval Office, the man the Republican party had dismissed as their puppet turned out to be Putin’s puppet instead – the problem being that he was blatantly obvious about it. The Republican higher-ups that had imagined a pOTUS who’d restrict his word-salad meanderings to anecdotal tales about his alleged prowess on the links were now saddled with a ‘stable genius’ prone to hissy-fits, thousands of ludicrous lies, and public meltdowns. The candidate they’d championed as a man-of-the-people exposed himself as being a man out for himself – the people and the party that supported him be damned.
The PTB in the GOP know that Trump is unelectable to a second term. They know that he has done incredible damage to their ‘brand’. They know that his disapproval numbers are a death knell – and they know that bell tolls for them.
The Mueller report, children in cages, racist rhetoric that led to the deaths of innocents, “very fine people on both sides”, the endless litany of easily-debunked lies, the refusal to believe our own intelligence agents over Putin’s ‘word for it’, paid-off porn stars, meetings with Russian agents about ‘adoptions’, Middle East peace plans concocted by a know-nothing, debt-ridden son-in-law, the ‘very best people’ ending up in prison, Republicans perjuring themselves, the exploded deficit, tariffs that are bankrupting farmers, hate crimes and mass shootings on the rise, a shaky stock market, the distrust of our allies – and the blatant stupidity of a “pResident” who thinks wind turbines cause cancer, and claims the Revolutionary War was won because the colonists shut down the airports in 1775.
As devoted as the Republicans have been in their attempts to defend the indefensible, there comes a time when you realize that your “pResident” has effectively destroyed your party’s chances of winning the votes of Hispanic “rapists”, Muslim “terrorists”, people from “shithole countries”, parents appalled by children in cages, Christians who actually embrace the teachings of Christ, women who want the right to choose, decent people who want assault weapons off our streets, people with morals who don’t want a self-proclaimed pussy-grabber in the White House, and those who don’t want people designated as security risks operating without security clearances that give them valid access to our country’s classified information.
The Trump supporters that are left are just that – Trump supporters rather than GOP supporters. There aren’t enough of them to secure his re-election, and the Republicans know that.
I believe the GOP have abandoned all hope of seeing their fair-haired boy elected to a second term. But at this point, they have no choice but to play along to get along. Offering primary challengers to The Dotard would be an admission that the idiot they’d foisted on their own party was a monumental mistake – and they’re not about to own up to that particular catastrophe. They have no alternative than to dance with the idiot who brought them to the electoral prom, knowing that he’s the guy most likely to shit in the punchbowl before the band finishes their final set.
Trumpism is over, it’s done, and the only people keeping it on life-support are those who simply have no alternative but to pretend that imminent disaster is just part of the same hoax being promoted by such ne’er-do-wells as scientists, economists, political analysts, historians – and the well-educated, well-informed intellectual nut-jobs who give credence to their dire warnings.
The Republican PTB are tired of coming up with creative explanations for their “pResident’s” insanity – and it shows.
The forever-faithful pundits still turn up on the news shows – but looking like they’re facing a firing squad instead of those cameras they were once convinced they could seduce into submission.
Even the Evangelicals are having second thoughts about Trump being the Second Coming – and everyone knows that those ongoing investigations into the Trump Crime Family aren’t going to end in "total vindication, total exoneration!" no matter how many times Twitler tweets exactly that.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do everything possible to get the vote out. We still have a fight on our hands, and all able-minded soldiers are expected to do their part.
But I do believe that our enemies in the GOP have taken as much from Trump as they can swallow. They are watching their party being decimated, their ‘brand’ being trampled into the mud, and their once-touted ‘principles’ being exposed as non-existent.
The party that now spends its every waking hour trying to spin that ridiculous pile of straw that is Trump into gold are hearing the name Rumpelstiltskin louder and louder with every passing day – and they’re as tired of defending this bullshit as we are of hearing it.
They want him gone, maybe as much as we do – or even more so, because it’s not our party that’s being destroyed every time he opens his mouth, it’s theirs.
This is the face of radical Republican anti-Semitism
August 8, 2019
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory - Commentary
Call the Capitol hypocrisy police: We seem to have another incident needing attention.
This involves the pot calling the kettle anti-Semitic.
For weeks, Republicans, led by Donald Trump and his rally chants, have called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to “go back where she came from” as a naturalized immigrant born in Somalia, in part for anti-Israel policy issues that they see as “anti-Semitic.” They and some Democrats objected to her saying that the pro-Israel lobby was too dominant in lobbying Congress through political donations.
Trump and Republican leaders have strained to make “the vile” Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) the face of Democrats, and dumped on Democrats who don’t drum her out of Congress. Omar is an outspoken, very liberal, Muslim woman.
The criticisms are wrong, but predictable. Now comes the good part.
The Times of Israel newspaper published the heart of campaign letters from Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), head of the Republican National Congressional Committee, that identify three “left-wing radicals” that he says “bought control of Congress for the Democrats.” Emmer writes that George Soros and Michael Bloomberg are Jewish, wealthy and politically involved, just not for Republicans; Tom Steyer, the impeachment guy, was born to a Jewish family but identifies as Episcopalian.
The Minneapolis-based American Jewish World newspaper first saw the letter, on Emmer’s letterhead, which appears to have been circulated in March and July. It says, “the news of impactful, real progress on turning our nation around was undercut by biased media and hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-Republican propaganda put out by liberal special interests, funded by deep-pocketed far-left billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. . . These left-wing radicals essentially BOUGHT control of Congress for the Democrats.”
Difference Between Criticizing Israel and Attacking Jews
In case you have been dead for the last several centuries, this idea that rich Jews use their money for power and control is a standards anti-Semitic trope. On the other hand, there is a distinct difference between debating Israeli policies about occupying the West Bank and supporting more Jewish settlements in the face of United Nations resolutions than in attacking Jews for being, well, Jews.
So, the lesson here seems to be that if the message is from first-year Omar, she should be tossed from Congressional committees, from Congress and the country for not loving America. If essentially the same message is distributed from Emmer on behalf of electing Republicans to Congress, I guess nothing is supposed to happen except sending checks to help out.
Omar apologized for offending anyone who reacted poorly to her tweet that the pro-Israel lobby buys its influence on Capitol Hill. We haven’t heard anything like that from Emmer or Republican leadership. In fact, the NRCC under Emmer has repeatedly accused Democrats of anti-Semitism, especially Omar, the newspaper reported.
Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, criticized Emmer’s letter but told the newspaper that he is “a good friend to the Jewish community in Minnesota.”
Emmer represents Minnesota’s 6th congressional district, and was named the head of the NRCC after the mid-term elections. While Emmer is himself facing accusations of anti-Semitism, MinnPost notes that under his watch, the NRCC has regularly accused Democrats of the same thing. It has made Omar a regular target for accusations of anti-Semitism and has accused some of her fellow House Democrats of anti-Semitism for not outright condemning Omar.
Ruthless Name Calling
Emmer has made it clear in interviews that Repubican Party leadership endorses the name-calling effort. In June, Emmer told Politico his staff has a “direct mandate” from himself and Republican leadership to “to be ruthless,” calling House Democrats “deranged” and “socialists.”
David Goldenberg, the Midwest Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League, told MinnPost that using anti-Semitism for political gain or saying that it is limited to one political party makes it harder to confront.
After several Democratic congress members who are Jewish complained to the NRCC, Chris Pack, the NRCC communications director did not explicitly address how the NRCC defines anti-Semitism as or if he thinks Jewish members can be anti-Semitic. He said, “With anti-Semitism on the rise, it’s important for all sides to be sensitive with regards to this serious issue. It is also important for all sides to hold those accountable who turn a blind eye to the anti-Semites within the House Democratic conference.”
Emmer has been a congressman since 2015, replacing Michele Bachmann. He ran for governor in 2010. He worked for his family’s lumber business, is married with seven children, and is an avid hockey player and coach.
Unfortunately, the hypocrisy cycle grinds away without interruption.
This involves the pot calling the kettle anti-Semitic.
For weeks, Republicans, led by Donald Trump and his rally chants, have called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to “go back where she came from” as a naturalized immigrant born in Somalia, in part for anti-Israel policy issues that they see as “anti-Semitic.” They and some Democrats objected to her saying that the pro-Israel lobby was too dominant in lobbying Congress through political donations.
Trump and Republican leaders have strained to make “the vile” Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) the face of Democrats, and dumped on Democrats who don’t drum her out of Congress. Omar is an outspoken, very liberal, Muslim woman.
The criticisms are wrong, but predictable. Now comes the good part.
The Times of Israel newspaper published the heart of campaign letters from Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), head of the Republican National Congressional Committee, that identify three “left-wing radicals” that he says “bought control of Congress for the Democrats.” Emmer writes that George Soros and Michael Bloomberg are Jewish, wealthy and politically involved, just not for Republicans; Tom Steyer, the impeachment guy, was born to a Jewish family but identifies as Episcopalian.
The Minneapolis-based American Jewish World newspaper first saw the letter, on Emmer’s letterhead, which appears to have been circulated in March and July. It says, “the news of impactful, real progress on turning our nation around was undercut by biased media and hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-Republican propaganda put out by liberal special interests, funded by deep-pocketed far-left billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. . . These left-wing radicals essentially BOUGHT control of Congress for the Democrats.”
Difference Between Criticizing Israel and Attacking Jews
In case you have been dead for the last several centuries, this idea that rich Jews use their money for power and control is a standards anti-Semitic trope. On the other hand, there is a distinct difference between debating Israeli policies about occupying the West Bank and supporting more Jewish settlements in the face of United Nations resolutions than in attacking Jews for being, well, Jews.
So, the lesson here seems to be that if the message is from first-year Omar, she should be tossed from Congressional committees, from Congress and the country for not loving America. If essentially the same message is distributed from Emmer on behalf of electing Republicans to Congress, I guess nothing is supposed to happen except sending checks to help out.
Omar apologized for offending anyone who reacted poorly to her tweet that the pro-Israel lobby buys its influence on Capitol Hill. We haven’t heard anything like that from Emmer or Republican leadership. In fact, the NRCC under Emmer has repeatedly accused Democrats of anti-Semitism, especially Omar, the newspaper reported.
Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, criticized Emmer’s letter but told the newspaper that he is “a good friend to the Jewish community in Minnesota.”
Emmer represents Minnesota’s 6th congressional district, and was named the head of the NRCC after the mid-term elections. While Emmer is himself facing accusations of anti-Semitism, MinnPost notes that under his watch, the NRCC has regularly accused Democrats of the same thing. It has made Omar a regular target for accusations of anti-Semitism and has accused some of her fellow House Democrats of anti-Semitism for not outright condemning Omar.
Ruthless Name Calling
Emmer has made it clear in interviews that Repubican Party leadership endorses the name-calling effort. In June, Emmer told Politico his staff has a “direct mandate” from himself and Republican leadership to “to be ruthless,” calling House Democrats “deranged” and “socialists.”
David Goldenberg, the Midwest Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League, told MinnPost that using anti-Semitism for political gain or saying that it is limited to one political party makes it harder to confront.
After several Democratic congress members who are Jewish complained to the NRCC, Chris Pack, the NRCC communications director did not explicitly address how the NRCC defines anti-Semitism as or if he thinks Jewish members can be anti-Semitic. He said, “With anti-Semitism on the rise, it’s important for all sides to be sensitive with regards to this serious issue. It is also important for all sides to hold those accountable who turn a blind eye to the anti-Semites within the House Democratic conference.”
Emmer has been a congressman since 2015, replacing Michele Bachmann. He ran for governor in 2010. He worked for his family’s lumber business, is married with seven children, and is an avid hockey player and coach.
Unfortunately, the hypocrisy cycle grinds away without interruption.
Nebraska GOP ready to boot Republican senator who accused Trump of "white supremacy"
"The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy," said State Sen. John McCollister. Now the GOP wants him out
IGOR DERYSH - Salon
AUGUST 6, 2019 9:54PM (UTC)
The Nebraska Republican Party called for Republican state Sen. John McCollister to register as a Democrat after he wrote that the GOP is “enabling white supremacy.”
Ryan Hamilton, the head of the state Republican Party, called for McCollister to “tell the truth about his partisan views and re-register as a Democrat” on Monday after he called out the party for being “complicit” to “obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party.”
"John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with the Republican voters in his district by consistently advocating for higher taxes, restrictions on American’s Second Amendment rights, and pro-abortion lobby,” Hamilton said in a statement. “His latest false statement about Republicans should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention, and we’re happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative.”
“I am happy to send a change of voter registration form along to his office so he can make the switch officially and start, for once, telling the truth to voters in his district.”
Hamilton’s statement came just months after he vowed to crack down on racism in the party after an aide to Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts was caught posting wildly racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic comments on a far-right YouTube page run by a far-right activist labeled a white nationalist.
McCollister called out his own party after a shooter who published an anti-immigrant screed on the far-right hate repository 8chan killed 22 people and injured dozens of others at an El Paso Walmart in an attack he said was in response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” echoing the frequent rhetoric of President Trump and Fox News.
"The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country," McCollister tweeted on Sunday. "As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth."
McCollister pointed to Trump’s rhetoric, urging Republicans to stand up to the hate instead of worrying about their poll numbers.
“We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base. He calls certain countries ‘shitholes,’ tells women of color to ‘go back’ to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth,” he wrote. “We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections. No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing.”
McCollister said that he has no intention of switching parties, The Associated Press reported. He told The Lincoln Journal-Star that although “one or two” of his Republican colleagues voiced displeasure, he received “far more support from Republicans” than he anticipated.
There have been numerous reports, including after Trump’s latest outburst telling four congresswomen of color to “go back to the crime-infested places from which they came,” that Republicans have privately criticized Trump’s racist comments but have been unwilling to do so publicly.
“We all like to cite Abraham Lincoln’s Republican lineage when it is politically expedient,” McCollister wrote after the mass shootings, “but NOW is the time to ACT like Lincoln and take a stand.”
Ryan Hamilton, the head of the state Republican Party, called for McCollister to “tell the truth about his partisan views and re-register as a Democrat” on Monday after he called out the party for being “complicit” to “obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party.”
"John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with the Republican voters in his district by consistently advocating for higher taxes, restrictions on American’s Second Amendment rights, and pro-abortion lobby,” Hamilton said in a statement. “His latest false statement about Republicans should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention, and we’re happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative.”
“I am happy to send a change of voter registration form along to his office so he can make the switch officially and start, for once, telling the truth to voters in his district.”
Hamilton’s statement came just months after he vowed to crack down on racism in the party after an aide to Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts was caught posting wildly racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic comments on a far-right YouTube page run by a far-right activist labeled a white nationalist.
McCollister called out his own party after a shooter who published an anti-immigrant screed on the far-right hate repository 8chan killed 22 people and injured dozens of others at an El Paso Walmart in an attack he said was in response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” echoing the frequent rhetoric of President Trump and Fox News.
"The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country," McCollister tweeted on Sunday. "As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth."
McCollister pointed to Trump’s rhetoric, urging Republicans to stand up to the hate instead of worrying about their poll numbers.
“We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base. He calls certain countries ‘shitholes,’ tells women of color to ‘go back’ to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth,” he wrote. “We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections. No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing.”
McCollister said that he has no intention of switching parties, The Associated Press reported. He told The Lincoln Journal-Star that although “one or two” of his Republican colleagues voiced displeasure, he received “far more support from Republicans” than he anticipated.
There have been numerous reports, including after Trump’s latest outburst telling four congresswomen of color to “go back to the crime-infested places from which they came,” that Republicans have privately criticized Trump’s racist comments but have been unwilling to do so publicly.
“We all like to cite Abraham Lincoln’s Republican lineage when it is politically expedient,” McCollister wrote after the mass shootings, “but NOW is the time to ACT like Lincoln and take a stand.”
George Carlin: Ignorant people elect ignorant leaders!!!
Republican congressman delivers wholly misleading attack on the minimum wage
Dan Crenshaw wants people to believe that employers can't spend any more on workers.
JOSH ISRAEL - Thinkprogress
JUL 22, 2019, 10:01 AM
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) claimed on Monday that a proposed raise in the federal minimum wage was “emotionally driven” and “bad for economics.” His reasoning: businesses already have a budget for how much they will spend on workers’ wages and would not possibly increase it.
The first-term Texas Republican was on Fox News, explaining why he voted against the Raise the Wage Act last week. The bill, which passed 231 to 199 on Thursday, would gradually raise the hourly federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 for most workers. If it becomes law, it is estimated that it would raise pay for tens of millions of Americans.
Crenshaw pointed to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to make the case that a higher minimum wage would mean fewer jobs.
“Economically speaking, it causes job loss,” he warned. “The CBO estimates that up to 3.7 million jobs — 3.7 million jobs — would be lost under this kind of bill, and it’s not hard to understand why. When a business is faced with a new minimum wage, well their entire budget for salaries and payroll doesn’t, it doesn’t change. So they have to make changes themselves. They might have to cut hours and they might have to fire people, so while some people get a small increment all in crease others get 100% decrease in their wage because that’s what happens when you fire people.”
What Crenshaw failed to mention is that he selectively shared only the report’s worst case scenario. The actual CBO report predicted that the most likely scenario was that the number of jobs lost would be somewhere between zero and 3.7 million. It noted that while the research is not conclusive, many economic studies “have found little or no effect of minimum wages on employment.”
He also ignores the fact that the report predicted that — in its median prediction — 27 million Americans would get a raise and just 1.3 million would lose their jobs.
Perhaps most misleading is his argument that businesses simply have a budget that includes a fixed amount for wages and benefits, and that this can never go up. Businesses can often use more of their profits to compensate their employees. Larger corporations can scale back things like executive bonuses or private jets, if need be, to make sure their team is not living below the poverty level.
Finally, Crenshaw attempts to create the impression that the CBO predicted that more people would be in poverty with a minimum wage increase.
“It doesn’t help the people you’re trying to help. In some cases it hurts them because a lot of these people at minimum wage are adding to their household income and if they are priced out of the labor market, they can no longer add that income to their household. So a household that was not in poverty could potentially be in poverty and they studied this at the CBO as well. It’s really bad policy overall.”
But while they “studied” this at the CBO, the report’s actual findings largely contradicted Crenshaw’s argument. Overall, the analysis predicted, “The number of people with annual income below the poverty threshold in 2025 would fall by 1.3 million” under a proposal like the Raise the Wage Act.
Crenshaw suggested that the minimum wage should simply be decided at the municipal level, noting that the cost of living is well lower in Lubbock, Texas, than in San Francisco. But the Republican-controlled Texas legislature has not only refused to raise the statewide minimum wage above the federal level, it has also refused to allow local governments from doing so either.
The first-term Texas Republican was on Fox News, explaining why he voted against the Raise the Wage Act last week. The bill, which passed 231 to 199 on Thursday, would gradually raise the hourly federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 for most workers. If it becomes law, it is estimated that it would raise pay for tens of millions of Americans.
Crenshaw pointed to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to make the case that a higher minimum wage would mean fewer jobs.
“Economically speaking, it causes job loss,” he warned. “The CBO estimates that up to 3.7 million jobs — 3.7 million jobs — would be lost under this kind of bill, and it’s not hard to understand why. When a business is faced with a new minimum wage, well their entire budget for salaries and payroll doesn’t, it doesn’t change. So they have to make changes themselves. They might have to cut hours and they might have to fire people, so while some people get a small increment all in crease others get 100% decrease in their wage because that’s what happens when you fire people.”
What Crenshaw failed to mention is that he selectively shared only the report’s worst case scenario. The actual CBO report predicted that the most likely scenario was that the number of jobs lost would be somewhere between zero and 3.7 million. It noted that while the research is not conclusive, many economic studies “have found little or no effect of minimum wages on employment.”
He also ignores the fact that the report predicted that — in its median prediction — 27 million Americans would get a raise and just 1.3 million would lose their jobs.
Perhaps most misleading is his argument that businesses simply have a budget that includes a fixed amount for wages and benefits, and that this can never go up. Businesses can often use more of their profits to compensate their employees. Larger corporations can scale back things like executive bonuses or private jets, if need be, to make sure their team is not living below the poverty level.
Finally, Crenshaw attempts to create the impression that the CBO predicted that more people would be in poverty with a minimum wage increase.
“It doesn’t help the people you’re trying to help. In some cases it hurts them because a lot of these people at minimum wage are adding to their household income and if they are priced out of the labor market, they can no longer add that income to their household. So a household that was not in poverty could potentially be in poverty and they studied this at the CBO as well. It’s really bad policy overall.”
But while they “studied” this at the CBO, the report’s actual findings largely contradicted Crenshaw’s argument. Overall, the analysis predicted, “The number of people with annual income below the poverty threshold in 2025 would fall by 1.3 million” under a proposal like the Raise the Wage Act.
Crenshaw suggested that the minimum wage should simply be decided at the municipal level, noting that the cost of living is well lower in Lubbock, Texas, than in San Francisco. But the Republican-controlled Texas legislature has not only refused to raise the statewide minimum wage above the federal level, it has also refused to allow local governments from doing so either.
Mitch McConnell’s big donors are Wall Street firms — and only 9% of his funds comes from Kentucky
July 20, 2019
By Igor Derysh, Salon - Raw Story
Wall Street contributions helped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raise $3 million last quarter. But just 9 percent of his donations came from individual donors in his home state of Kentucky.
The biggest blocks of contributions to McConnell’s campaign between April and June came from 29 donors at New York’s Blackstone Group, who donated a combined $95,400, and from 14 executives from the financial firm KKR & Co., who contributed a combined $51,000, the Louisville Courier Journal reports. Executives from firms like Apollo Global Management and Golden Tree Asset Management contributed another combined $65,100.
It’s no wonder that McConnell is so well-liked among the New York elites his party so often castigates. McConnell helped lead the charge to slash taxes on corporations, saving big banks billions. He also led the effort to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank law, which was enacted after the 2008 financial crisis.
McConnell also received $88,000 from Georgia-based UPS, nearly $66,000 from Indiana-based pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and $50,000 from Florida-based private prison contractor GEO Group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Most of the money McConnell’s campaign raised last quarter came from out-of-state donors. Just 9 percent of his contributions came from individual donors in Kentucky, according to the analysis. McConnell raised less than $182,000 from Kentuckians while receiving $281,000 from donors in New York and $216,000 from donors in Texas.
Nearly 90 percent of McConnell’s contributions came from “big dollar” donors. Just $340,000 of his donations last quarter came from donors who gave less than $200. Meanwhile McConnell received maximum $5,600 contributions from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, Coors Brewing executive Peter Coors and NRA official Jennifer Baker, none of whom live or work in Kentucky.
Along with his own donations, McConnell raised more than $600,000 from four committees that split funds among Republican senators seeking re-election. Less than $20,000 came from donors in Kentucky.
“This is not a good sign for McConnell in 2020,” the Democratic Party said in a statement, touting the $2.5 million haul Democrat Amy McGrath raised within 24 hours of her announcement that she would challenge McConnell next year.
It’s unclear how much McGrath has raised in total. Her first financial disclosure is not due until October. In her unsuccessful bid for a U.S. House seat last year, McGrath raised about $8.5 million, though roughly 75 percent of her big-dollar contributions came from out of state.
McConnell’s campaign manager Kevin Golden said in a statement that McGrath’s fundraising was also driven by out-of-state supporters like actresses Alyssa Milano and Bette Midler.
“Any liberal name in the phone book will raise millions from Hollywood radicals who can’t stand that Mitch McConnell is the only leader in Washington who isn’t from New York or California,” he told the Courier Journal.
McConnell raised more than $30 million in his 2014 re-election race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who raised nearly $19 million but lost the race by 15 points. Much of McConnell’s money in that race came from dark-money groups made possible by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.
After that ruling, McConnell blocked legislation that would have required dark-money groups to disclose the identity of their donors.
The biggest blocks of contributions to McConnell’s campaign between April and June came from 29 donors at New York’s Blackstone Group, who donated a combined $95,400, and from 14 executives from the financial firm KKR & Co., who contributed a combined $51,000, the Louisville Courier Journal reports. Executives from firms like Apollo Global Management and Golden Tree Asset Management contributed another combined $65,100.
It’s no wonder that McConnell is so well-liked among the New York elites his party so often castigates. McConnell helped lead the charge to slash taxes on corporations, saving big banks billions. He also led the effort to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank law, which was enacted after the 2008 financial crisis.
McConnell also received $88,000 from Georgia-based UPS, nearly $66,000 from Indiana-based pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and $50,000 from Florida-based private prison contractor GEO Group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Most of the money McConnell’s campaign raised last quarter came from out-of-state donors. Just 9 percent of his contributions came from individual donors in Kentucky, according to the analysis. McConnell raised less than $182,000 from Kentuckians while receiving $281,000 from donors in New York and $216,000 from donors in Texas.
Nearly 90 percent of McConnell’s contributions came from “big dollar” donors. Just $340,000 of his donations last quarter came from donors who gave less than $200. Meanwhile McConnell received maximum $5,600 contributions from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, Coors Brewing executive Peter Coors and NRA official Jennifer Baker, none of whom live or work in Kentucky.
Along with his own donations, McConnell raised more than $600,000 from four committees that split funds among Republican senators seeking re-election. Less than $20,000 came from donors in Kentucky.
“This is not a good sign for McConnell in 2020,” the Democratic Party said in a statement, touting the $2.5 million haul Democrat Amy McGrath raised within 24 hours of her announcement that she would challenge McConnell next year.
It’s unclear how much McGrath has raised in total. Her first financial disclosure is not due until October. In her unsuccessful bid for a U.S. House seat last year, McGrath raised about $8.5 million, though roughly 75 percent of her big-dollar contributions came from out of state.
McConnell’s campaign manager Kevin Golden said in a statement that McGrath’s fundraising was also driven by out-of-state supporters like actresses Alyssa Milano and Bette Midler.
“Any liberal name in the phone book will raise millions from Hollywood radicals who can’t stand that Mitch McConnell is the only leader in Washington who isn’t from New York or California,” he told the Courier Journal.
McConnell raised more than $30 million in his 2014 re-election race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who raised nearly $19 million but lost the race by 15 points. Much of McConnell’s money in that race came from dark-money groups made possible by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.
After that ruling, McConnell blocked legislation that would have required dark-money groups to disclose the identity of their donors.
Republicans will never say that racism is "racism." Basically it's because they're racist
There's nothing Donald Trump can ever say or do that's bad enough for most Republicans to admit he's racist
AMANDA MARCOTTE - Salon
JULY 17, 2019 5:30PM (UTC)
Is there any expression of racism that Republicans will actually admit is racism? It's a question on a lot of progressive minds in the wake of Donald Trump demonizing female congresswomen of color with the "go back" canard that white nationalists and other assorted racists have long used to abuse anyone with heritage they dislike, whether that heritage is Jewish, Irish, Italian, African, Latin American or Muslim. Telling someone to "go back" is, in the ranks of racist statements, right up there with calling a person the N-word or some other rank slur. Yet, there still appears to be resistance among Republicans to admitting that is racism, which leads many on the left to wonder: If this doesn't count, then what could possibly count?
The answer, it's becoming quite clear, is that there is no limit. There's no line in the sand, no sentiment so ugly, where most Republicans will cave in and admit, OK, that's racist.
A new poll from Ipsos confirms this. While more than two-thirds of Americans correctly identify the "go back" language as racist, only 45% of Republicans agree with that assessment. Instead, 57% of Republicans agreed that these women should "leave" the country where all four are citizens, and where three of the four were born. A startlingly large majority of Republicans — 70% — also said that the word "racist" is a bad-faith effort to discredit a political opponent's views.
On Tuesday, the Democrats introduced a House resolution to condemn Trump for his remarks. All hell broke loose when Speaker Nancy Pelosi identified Trump's remarks as "racist." Republican House members exploded in outrage, claiming that the word "racist" is a personal insult against Trump, instead of a fair and accurate assessment of what he said (and has insisted on repeating).
In the end, only four Republican members voted for the resolution condemning Trump's racist remarks — and three of them are in swing districts where they barely won in 2018. All other Republicans in the House voted no, standing on the claim that "racist" was a mischaracterization of the president's words.
Why are Republicans so resistant to admitting that Trump is a racist and that his words and deeds are frequently racist? Like many debates, this one gets caught up in semantics. The word "racist" necessarily implies beliefs that are inherently irrational and unfair. To be blunt about it, most conservatives do not agree that certain sentiments — such as insinuating that people of color have less right to call themselves "American" or that people of color owe white people subservience and gratitude — are either irrational or unfair.
On the contrary, what has become clear in recent years is that most conservatives feel like they are hard-headed realists who are being suppressed or attacked by sanctimonious liberals when they try to speak their truth. Trump, with his willingness to air out his beliefs about the superiority of white people, is viewed as a leader in their movement to shake off the shackles of political correctness.
("In your heart, you know he's right," reads a popular Trump meme shared by conservatives on Facebook.)
As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times writes, Trump believes that if "you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship," whereas if "you are not, then you don’t."
For liberals, this belief is irrational and cruel. Trump supporters, on the other hand, see it as rational and just. So they bristle at the word "racist", which carries an obvious level of negative judgment. To admit that these beliefs are racist is to admit that they are bad beliefs, and conservatives aren't willing to do that. Even outright white supremacists often reject the "racist" label, instead calling themselves silly things like "race realists."
This disconnect is at the heart of nearly every debate over racism in this country. Take, for instance, the ugly fight over the writer Sam Harris' embrace of Charles Murray, a right-wing political scientist who has spent much of his career peddling the idea that black people's lower average IQ scores are the result of inherent inferiority instead of a reflection of racial oppression. Harris and Murray argued that this belief was "forbidden knowledge," implicitly comparing themselves to suppressed or persecuted scientific revolutionaries like Galileo. The goal, of course, is to present themselves as objective advocates for truth instead of bigots who distort the evidence to serve racist ends. (Which is pretty clearly what they are.)
On Tuesday, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, clearly thinking he had a great "gotcha" question, asked Republican senatorial candidate and vote-suppression advocate Kris Kobach if he would still vote for Trump if Trump said, "I am a racist."
Kobach refused to give a straight answer, giving Cuomo the viral clip he desired. But the question itself was inherently misleading. Almost nobody in contemporary America will self-identify as "racist." Kobach, for instance, is as racist a politician as they come, but he rejects the label. Everyone superficially agrees that "racist" is a bad thing to be — because it signifies irrational prejudice — and Kobach does not think that he or Trump is being irrational when they hint strongly that white people are more deserving of the designation "American" than other people.
This is why the public debate over the border crisis is so fraught. The issue isn't really over the facts of the matter, which are that Trump and his administration are targeting asylum seekers with inhumane treatment because almost all asylum seekers (at this historical moment) belong to ethnic groups Trump dislikes. The issue is over whether it's a bad thing to target people on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Sure, Trump and his allies bristle and deny that they are specifically targeting Latino immigrants. But that act is deliberately half-hearted and insincere. A more holistic look at Trump's communications to the conservative base makes clear that the actual message being sent is a lot closer to: "Hell yeah, we are targeting brown-skinned people, and we love it."
As Heather Digby Parton pointed out in Salon, the whole purpose of Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lindsey Graham's recent visit to a migrant detention center in McAllen, Texas, was "to reassure their voters that they were treating the scary brown people with much cruelty as they could get away with" by making sure people knew that these men were being crammed into cages, denied sleep and showers, and basically subjected to torture.
You would be hard-pressed to find a conservative who would characterize his own satisfaction at seeing this abuse as "racism." "Racism" by definition is irrational and unfair, and Trump's supporters think their stereotypes about Latino immigrants being criminals are justified.
Racism is hard to eradicate because the racist brain has a robust immune system developed to protect its bigoted beliefs. Efforts to educate about the irrationality of racist beliefs are dismissed as "political correctness." Efforts to stigmatize the expression of racist views are characterized as assaults on "free speech." Unfortunately, that also means that these kinds of public debates about race only make Trump supporters more fiercely defensive of their bigoted beliefs, which the Ipsos polll registered by showing that Republican support for Trump has intensified in the wake of his "go back" comments.
Trump's opponents need to understand what they're up against. This is not a matter of a bunch of confused or stupid people who are bamboozled by Trump and can be gently educated into being better people. (Of course there are a few conservatives at the margins who feel qualms about Trump, and they can be appealed to.) For the most part, these are hardened bigots who love what Trump is doing and cannot be shamed or browbeaten out of it. The only realistic option is for the left to out-organize the right and make sure that the majority of Americans, who reject Trump's agenda, show up to the polls to stop him.
The answer, it's becoming quite clear, is that there is no limit. There's no line in the sand, no sentiment so ugly, where most Republicans will cave in and admit, OK, that's racist.
A new poll from Ipsos confirms this. While more than two-thirds of Americans correctly identify the "go back" language as racist, only 45% of Republicans agree with that assessment. Instead, 57% of Republicans agreed that these women should "leave" the country where all four are citizens, and where three of the four were born. A startlingly large majority of Republicans — 70% — also said that the word "racist" is a bad-faith effort to discredit a political opponent's views.
On Tuesday, the Democrats introduced a House resolution to condemn Trump for his remarks. All hell broke loose when Speaker Nancy Pelosi identified Trump's remarks as "racist." Republican House members exploded in outrage, claiming that the word "racist" is a personal insult against Trump, instead of a fair and accurate assessment of what he said (and has insisted on repeating).
In the end, only four Republican members voted for the resolution condemning Trump's racist remarks — and three of them are in swing districts where they barely won in 2018. All other Republicans in the House voted no, standing on the claim that "racist" was a mischaracterization of the president's words.
Why are Republicans so resistant to admitting that Trump is a racist and that his words and deeds are frequently racist? Like many debates, this one gets caught up in semantics. The word "racist" necessarily implies beliefs that are inherently irrational and unfair. To be blunt about it, most conservatives do not agree that certain sentiments — such as insinuating that people of color have less right to call themselves "American" or that people of color owe white people subservience and gratitude — are either irrational or unfair.
On the contrary, what has become clear in recent years is that most conservatives feel like they are hard-headed realists who are being suppressed or attacked by sanctimonious liberals when they try to speak their truth. Trump, with his willingness to air out his beliefs about the superiority of white people, is viewed as a leader in their movement to shake off the shackles of political correctness.
("In your heart, you know he's right," reads a popular Trump meme shared by conservatives on Facebook.)
As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times writes, Trump believes that if "you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship," whereas if "you are not, then you don’t."
For liberals, this belief is irrational and cruel. Trump supporters, on the other hand, see it as rational and just. So they bristle at the word "racist", which carries an obvious level of negative judgment. To admit that these beliefs are racist is to admit that they are bad beliefs, and conservatives aren't willing to do that. Even outright white supremacists often reject the "racist" label, instead calling themselves silly things like "race realists."
This disconnect is at the heart of nearly every debate over racism in this country. Take, for instance, the ugly fight over the writer Sam Harris' embrace of Charles Murray, a right-wing political scientist who has spent much of his career peddling the idea that black people's lower average IQ scores are the result of inherent inferiority instead of a reflection of racial oppression. Harris and Murray argued that this belief was "forbidden knowledge," implicitly comparing themselves to suppressed or persecuted scientific revolutionaries like Galileo. The goal, of course, is to present themselves as objective advocates for truth instead of bigots who distort the evidence to serve racist ends. (Which is pretty clearly what they are.)
On Tuesday, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, clearly thinking he had a great "gotcha" question, asked Republican senatorial candidate and vote-suppression advocate Kris Kobach if he would still vote for Trump if Trump said, "I am a racist."
Kobach refused to give a straight answer, giving Cuomo the viral clip he desired. But the question itself was inherently misleading. Almost nobody in contemporary America will self-identify as "racist." Kobach, for instance, is as racist a politician as they come, but he rejects the label. Everyone superficially agrees that "racist" is a bad thing to be — because it signifies irrational prejudice — and Kobach does not think that he or Trump is being irrational when they hint strongly that white people are more deserving of the designation "American" than other people.
This is why the public debate over the border crisis is so fraught. The issue isn't really over the facts of the matter, which are that Trump and his administration are targeting asylum seekers with inhumane treatment because almost all asylum seekers (at this historical moment) belong to ethnic groups Trump dislikes. The issue is over whether it's a bad thing to target people on the basis of race or ethnicity.
Sure, Trump and his allies bristle and deny that they are specifically targeting Latino immigrants. But that act is deliberately half-hearted and insincere. A more holistic look at Trump's communications to the conservative base makes clear that the actual message being sent is a lot closer to: "Hell yeah, we are targeting brown-skinned people, and we love it."
As Heather Digby Parton pointed out in Salon, the whole purpose of Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lindsey Graham's recent visit to a migrant detention center in McAllen, Texas, was "to reassure their voters that they were treating the scary brown people with much cruelty as they could get away with" by making sure people knew that these men were being crammed into cages, denied sleep and showers, and basically subjected to torture.
You would be hard-pressed to find a conservative who would characterize his own satisfaction at seeing this abuse as "racism." "Racism" by definition is irrational and unfair, and Trump's supporters think their stereotypes about Latino immigrants being criminals are justified.
Racism is hard to eradicate because the racist brain has a robust immune system developed to protect its bigoted beliefs. Efforts to educate about the irrationality of racist beliefs are dismissed as "political correctness." Efforts to stigmatize the expression of racist views are characterized as assaults on "free speech." Unfortunately, that also means that these kinds of public debates about race only make Trump supporters more fiercely defensive of their bigoted beliefs, which the Ipsos polll registered by showing that Republican support for Trump has intensified in the wake of his "go back" comments.
Trump's opponents need to understand what they're up against. This is not a matter of a bunch of confused or stupid people who are bamboozled by Trump and can be gently educated into being better people. (Of course there are a few conservatives at the margins who feel qualms about Trump, and they can be appealed to.) For the most part, these are hardened bigots who love what Trump is doing and cannot be shamed or browbeaten out of it. The only realistic option is for the left to out-organize the right and make sure that the majority of Americans, who reject Trump's agenda, show up to the polls to stop him.
Republicans respond to Trump's latest tweets. My new @ObserverOpinion cartoon: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/kevin-siers/article232694097.html …
Necessary graphic posted for your convenience.
Good for just about everything a Republican says.
It is not a coincidence that...
guillaumeb - demo underground
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, workers generally make less money.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, women's rights to make health choices are severely restricted.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, injured or disabled people are treated as 2nd class citizens.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, it is much harder for minorities to vote.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, businesses are easily able to exploit their workers.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, taxpayer subsidies for the rich are called smart politics.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, taxpayer help for the poor and needy are called welfare.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, union member ship is lower.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, statues commemorating slavery and slave owners exist.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, the non-rich suffer from lack of access to health care.
No, these things are not coincidences. They are the obvious result of a Party that serves the needs of the 1% exclusively
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, women's rights to make health choices are severely restricted.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, injured or disabled people are treated as 2nd class citizens.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, it is much harder for minorities to vote.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, businesses are easily able to exploit their workers.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, taxpayer subsidies for the rich are called smart politics.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, taxpayer help for the poor and needy are called welfare.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, union member ship is lower.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, statues commemorating slavery and slave owners exist.
It is not a coincidence that in states that are led by the GOP, the non-rich suffer from lack of access to health care.
No, these things are not coincidences. They are the obvious result of a Party that serves the needs of the 1% exclusively
the other traitor!!!
How deep does the Russia collusion go? To McConnell?
by Joan McCarter / Daily Kos - alternet
April 19, 2019
On this Mueller collusion report day, it’s worth remembering the lengths to which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went to cover up what he knew before the election. The Russians were working to elect Donald Trump, and American intelligence agencies knew it. They told McConnell that. He threatened them with all-out political warfare if they tried to make that information public.
In the report, Mueller details Paul Manafort, then Trump campaign manager, instructing his deputy Rick Gates to get internal polling information from battleground states to Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch and friend of Putin, through go-between Konstantin Kilimnik. “Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska,” Mueller found. And Gates did it.
So what does this have to do with McConnell? Good question. Fast forward to January of this year, when Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer forced a vote in the Senate on Trump’s Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to—you got it—Oleg Deripaska. One of those companies is aluminum manufacturing giant Rusal. The vote failed, with McConnell voting no.
Fast forward again to this week, and this: “Russian aluminum giant Rusal spent most of last year under US sanctions. Now it’s pumping $200 million into a new project in Kentucky.” Home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. What a shock, huh? By the way, Rusal is co-owned by Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard (Len) Blavatnik, who donated $2.5 million to McConnell’s GOP Senate Leadership Fund through two of his holding companies during the 2016 campaign and a further $1 million in 2017.
Meanwhile, McConnell launched his re-election campaign Thursday morning, conveniently just as Attorney General William Barr was frantically trying to spin the upcoming disaster of the Mueller report release away. The cornerstone of his announcement was that he’s introducing legislation to raise the age for buying tobacco products to 21. As of now, Kentucky reporter Joe Sonka has tweeted that McConnell hasn’t been asked about the report and the new big investment from Russia in his state.
In the report, Mueller details Paul Manafort, then Trump campaign manager, instructing his deputy Rick Gates to get internal polling information from battleground states to Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch and friend of Putin, through go-between Konstantin Kilimnik. “Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska,” Mueller found. And Gates did it.
So what does this have to do with McConnell? Good question. Fast forward to January of this year, when Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer forced a vote in the Senate on Trump’s Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to—you got it—Oleg Deripaska. One of those companies is aluminum manufacturing giant Rusal. The vote failed, with McConnell voting no.
Fast forward again to this week, and this: “Russian aluminum giant Rusal spent most of last year under US sanctions. Now it’s pumping $200 million into a new project in Kentucky.” Home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. What a shock, huh? By the way, Rusal is co-owned by Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard (Len) Blavatnik, who donated $2.5 million to McConnell’s GOP Senate Leadership Fund through two of his holding companies during the 2016 campaign and a further $1 million in 2017.
Meanwhile, McConnell launched his re-election campaign Thursday morning, conveniently just as Attorney General William Barr was frantically trying to spin the upcoming disaster of the Mueller report release away. The cornerstone of his announcement was that he’s introducing legislation to raise the age for buying tobacco products to 21. As of now, Kentucky reporter Joe Sonka has tweeted that McConnell hasn’t been asked about the report and the new big investment from Russia in his state.
Paul Krugman: Republicans don’t give a damn about the country or its Constitution
“This structure…rewards, indeed insists on, absolute fealty. What this means is that nearly all Republicans in today’s Congress are apparatchiks, political creatures with no higher principle beyond party loyalty.
"In a perverse way, we should count ourselves lucky that Trump is as terrible as he is,” he observes, ominously. “The point is that given the character of the Republican Party, we’d be well on the way to autocracy if the man in the White House had even slightly more self-control. Trump may have done himself in; but it can still happen here.”
*GOP AND ANTISEMITISM
In today's Washington Post...
Grins - demo underground
4/9/19
In today's Washington Post there is this statement from a Republican Congressman about Rep. Ilhan Omar calling Stephen Miller a white nationalist:
“During my time in Congress ...I didn’t once witness another Member target Jewish people like this with the name calling & other personal attacks.” - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.),
Yes, no one from your party ever took on any Jew like, say....George Soros.
Like Richard Nixon
Or Fred Malek.
Or Jim "Eff the Jews" Baker.
Or J.D. Haworth.
Or Pat Buchanan who argued there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court!
Or GOP Rep. Walsh who argued ‘American Jews Aren’t As Pro-Israel As They Should Be’
Or Republican congressional candidate Carl DeMaio who posted a photo of a condom package that said “Israel, it’s still safe to come,” and wrote “Fucking’ Jews” to accompany that picture.
Or Reich-wing hate radio host, Jan Mickelson, who went after Justices Kagan and Ginsburg: "They are both liberal Jews."
Or Michele Bachmann who wrapped up a tour of Israel with a renewed drive to convert as many Jews as possible to Christianity.
Or the focus group with Donald Trump supporters who said they would vote for Trump - even if he proposed a “national registry of Jews.”
Or the Trump supporter in Arizona who said “If she is Jewish, she should go back to her country."
Or the Trump administration's Bible study leader, Evangelical "pastor", Ralph Drollinger who said God doesn't hear prayers of Jews.
Or when Dinesh D'Souza retweeted a tweet with the hashtag "Burn the Jews."
Or America's favorite narcoleptic neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, who said "Jews are great but not always as appreciative as our Christian friends".
Or when Trump tweeted a pic of Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of dollar bills, next to a six-point star.
Or when Trump promoted Nazi Twitter account,"WhiteGenocideTM", that showed him gassing Bernie Sanders.
Or when Trump said to the Republican Jewish Coalition: “you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money” and that “you want to control your own politician.”
Or when Trump said to the Republican Jewish Coalition, "Is there anyone in this room who doesn't renegotiate deals...This room negotiates them - perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in".
Or when Trump said, "The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."
Or when Trump told a Jewish reporter to "sit down" and heatedly denied he was anti-Semitic
Or when Steve Bannon who objected to sending his daughters to a certain school because it had too many Jewish children.
Or when Bannon sponsored an ad claiming Hillary Clinton was "part of a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class," while images flashed on the screen of George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein - all of them Jewish.
Or that Trump omitted omitting any mention of Jews in his Holocaust Memorial Day statement.
Or Bannon's deputy, Sebastian Gorka, who once joined members of the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary.
Or the fascist gathering in Washington, DC that celebrated Trump's election where attendees shouted "Hail Trump!" and gave the Nazi salute.
Or when the Trump campaign's Michael Flynn criticized “the corrupt Democratic machine” and vowed “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.”
Or when an Alaska GOP group ran an ad depicting Jewish candidate Jesse Kiehl, seen stuffing a wad of hundred-dollar bills into his suit.
Or when North Carolina’s state Republican Party depicted Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) doing the same thing.
Or when Republicans in Washington state showed Jewish Democratic congressional candidate Kim Schrier of doing the same thing.
Or GOP candidate Tyler Diep, showed his Jewish challenger Josh Lowenthal tinted in green, with $100 bills in his hands.
Or Connecticut Republican Ed Charamut’s campaign that showed his Jewish challenger holding a stack of cash in front of him, with a crazed look in his eyes.
Or the Trump supporter who clubbed woman and vandalized Jewish center in Colorado.
Or when New York Times' Jonathan Weisman called out anti-Semitism among Trump supporters and was flooded with anti-Semitism comments.
Or the Trump supporting neo-Nazi and white supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, dedicated to solving "the Jewish problem".
Or Mayor Dan Clevenger who "Kind Of Agreed" with the white supremacist who killed three people at Jewish facilities.
Or Jerome Corsi and Sandy Rios who said "Powerful Jewish Forces" will destroy Ameica.
Or when Texas Republican Speaker of the House had to battle anti-Semitism to get RE-ELECTED, and replaced with a "good" Christian.
Or Trump's "America First" foreign policy slogan, adopting the name of the pro-Nazi American anti-Semitic isolationists.
I could go on, but you get the hint, don't you Congressman Zeldin...?
* Updated to add the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/09/rep-ilhan-omar-called-stephen-miller-white-nationalist-gop-critics-accused-her-anti-semitism/?utm_term=.ac6723e34d84
“During my time in Congress ...I didn’t once witness another Member target Jewish people like this with the name calling & other personal attacks.” - Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.),
Yes, no one from your party ever took on any Jew like, say....George Soros.
Like Richard Nixon
Or Fred Malek.
Or Jim "Eff the Jews" Baker.
Or J.D. Haworth.
Or Pat Buchanan who argued there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court!
Or GOP Rep. Walsh who argued ‘American Jews Aren’t As Pro-Israel As They Should Be’
Or Republican congressional candidate Carl DeMaio who posted a photo of a condom package that said “Israel, it’s still safe to come,” and wrote “Fucking’ Jews” to accompany that picture.
Or Reich-wing hate radio host, Jan Mickelson, who went after Justices Kagan and Ginsburg: "They are both liberal Jews."
Or Michele Bachmann who wrapped up a tour of Israel with a renewed drive to convert as many Jews as possible to Christianity.
Or the focus group with Donald Trump supporters who said they would vote for Trump - even if he proposed a “national registry of Jews.”
Or the Trump supporter in Arizona who said “If she is Jewish, she should go back to her country."
Or the Trump administration's Bible study leader, Evangelical "pastor", Ralph Drollinger who said God doesn't hear prayers of Jews.
Or when Dinesh D'Souza retweeted a tweet with the hashtag "Burn the Jews."
Or America's favorite narcoleptic neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, who said "Jews are great but not always as appreciative as our Christian friends".
Or when Trump tweeted a pic of Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of dollar bills, next to a six-point star.
Or when Trump promoted Nazi Twitter account,"WhiteGenocideTM", that showed him gassing Bernie Sanders.
Or when Trump said to the Republican Jewish Coalition: “you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money” and that “you want to control your own politician.”
Or when Trump said to the Republican Jewish Coalition, "Is there anyone in this room who doesn't renegotiate deals...This room negotiates them - perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in".
Or when Trump said, "The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."
Or when Trump told a Jewish reporter to "sit down" and heatedly denied he was anti-Semitic
Or when Steve Bannon who objected to sending his daughters to a certain school because it had too many Jewish children.
Or when Bannon sponsored an ad claiming Hillary Clinton was "part of a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class," while images flashed on the screen of George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein - all of them Jewish.
Or that Trump omitted omitting any mention of Jews in his Holocaust Memorial Day statement.
Or Bannon's deputy, Sebastian Gorka, who once joined members of the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary.
Or the fascist gathering in Washington, DC that celebrated Trump's election where attendees shouted "Hail Trump!" and gave the Nazi salute.
Or when the Trump campaign's Michael Flynn criticized “the corrupt Democratic machine” and vowed “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.”
Or when an Alaska GOP group ran an ad depicting Jewish candidate Jesse Kiehl, seen stuffing a wad of hundred-dollar bills into his suit.
Or when North Carolina’s state Republican Party depicted Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) doing the same thing.
Or when Republicans in Washington state showed Jewish Democratic congressional candidate Kim Schrier of doing the same thing.
Or GOP candidate Tyler Diep, showed his Jewish challenger Josh Lowenthal tinted in green, with $100 bills in his hands.
Or Connecticut Republican Ed Charamut’s campaign that showed his Jewish challenger holding a stack of cash in front of him, with a crazed look in his eyes.
Or the Trump supporter who clubbed woman and vandalized Jewish center in Colorado.
Or when New York Times' Jonathan Weisman called out anti-Semitism among Trump supporters and was flooded with anti-Semitism comments.
Or the Trump supporting neo-Nazi and white supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, dedicated to solving "the Jewish problem".
Or Mayor Dan Clevenger who "Kind Of Agreed" with the white supremacist who killed three people at Jewish facilities.
Or Jerome Corsi and Sandy Rios who said "Powerful Jewish Forces" will destroy Ameica.
Or when Texas Republican Speaker of the House had to battle anti-Semitism to get RE-ELECTED, and replaced with a "good" Christian.
Or Trump's "America First" foreign policy slogan, adopting the name of the pro-Nazi American anti-Semitic isolationists.
I could go on, but you get the hint, don't you Congressman Zeldin...?
* Updated to add the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/09/rep-ilhan-omar-called-stephen-miller-white-nationalist-gop-critics-accused-her-anti-semitism/?utm_term=.ac6723e34d84
Republicans have put America on a path of warp-speed decline — and they want you to think it’s worth cheering for
Thom Hartmann, AlterNet - raw story
07 APR 2019 AT 11:56 ET
Listening to Republicans, it’s apparent they don’t have much respect for the intelligence of the American people.
Over 70 percent of Americans want a national health care system like every other developed country in the world has, but the GOP tells us that we just aren’t smart enough to make it work. It’ll be too confusing and complex for average Americans, they say, and, besides that, if the government “takes over” our health care system, we’re on our way to tyranny.
About two-thirds of Americans think that we should have free college education for anybody intellectually capable of attending, and free trade schools as well—like pretty much every other developed country in the world (and quite a few of the developing countries). Republicans tell us that we can’t use government funds to pay off our nation’s $1.5 trillion in student debt because we just borrowed that exact amount last year to give tax rebates to billionaires, so there’s nothing left. We’re just not smart enough to fix the problem.
And we could never, they tell us, go back to the free college like Thomas Jefferson created (he founded the University of Virginia as a free college), Abraham Lincoln instituted (he pushed for and got legislation to create 54 “land grant” colleges like Michigan State University with enough formerly public land that they could provide free or very cheap tuition), and Ronald Reagan ended in California when he was governor. Grandpa might have been able to pay for college with a part-time job in a gas station or restaurant (as I and most in my generation did), and no other country in the world may have the kind of student debt we have, but it’s just the way it is, they tell us. American’s just can’t figure it out.
Nearly eight out of ten Americans think taxes should be raised on the wealthy, but, the Republicans tell us, that would create economic chaos and destroy the economy. We’d end up like all those other countries where there’s a strong and vibrant middle class, but the billionaires can’t hoard their wealth without limit, and that would be a disaster… because… freedom. Americans who think rich people should pay their fair share of taxes to help the country are just, well, not that bright, says the GOP.
Just under two-thirds of Americans think our minimum wage should be $15 and look at Denmark, where MacDonald’s pays $20 an hour and a Big Mac costs only 80 cents more than in the United States (and Danish workers can easily afford that!). “Can’t we do that or even three-quarters of that?” they ask. “No,” Republicans say, “it’ll be too much of a burden on the poor executives and stockholders who might have to take slightly lower pay and dividends. It’s not possible.” We’re just not clever enough to figure out how to do such things, they tell us.
The Green New Deal is supported by 81 percent of registered voters, but, Republicans tell us, Americans just aren’t as smart as Norwegians (who have 60 percent of all car sales electric now and will totally phase out gas and diesel cars in eight years) or Germans (who produced more than 100 percent of the electricity their country needed a few days last year from renewable sources). We have to keep digging coal and drilling for oil and gas, polluting the planet, causing tens of thousands of cancers, and destroying the biosphere, because, after all, we wouldn’t want to cut the revenue to a vital industry, would we? Republicans even think that Americans will believe them when they say that the Green New Deal will mean we all have to stop eating hamburgers and flying, and must turn our cars over to “jackbooted thugs from the big government.”
A solid majority of Americans think women should make their own decisions on birth control and abortion, and that America should do more to provide prenatal care, and nine out of ten Americans think we should offer government-funded free pre-K daycare. But Republicans point to the states they run, like Mississippi where a woman is more likely to die in childbirth than in Bosnia or Botswana, and tell us that this is just how things have to be. Only by outlawing all abortion, Mississippi Republican Governor Phil Bryant tells us, can Mississippi become “the safest place in America for an unborn child.” Nothing else will work; we’ve lost that “take a man to the moon and bring him home safely” intellect we used to have.
Whether it’s strengthening environmental regulations, breaking up monopolies, restraining CEO pay, fully funding our public schools, or getting money out of politics—all things that have been done by most if not all of the fully developed countries in the world—Republicans tell us we just can’t do those things here in America. We’re just not that intelligent.
The story goes that Lincoln, during his debates with Stephen Douglas, said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Clearly the modern Republican Party, its billionaire funders and its media oligarchs have decided to stick with Lincoln’s logic. As long as they can fool some of the people all of the time, they don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of us; that’s enough to win elections, particularly if they can continue to strategically suppress millions of votes.
They have their plan, and they’re sticking to it. They’re really, really smart.
And, in the process, Republicans have turned the USA into the world’s village idiot.
Over 70 percent of Americans want a national health care system like every other developed country in the world has, but the GOP tells us that we just aren’t smart enough to make it work. It’ll be too confusing and complex for average Americans, they say, and, besides that, if the government “takes over” our health care system, we’re on our way to tyranny.
About two-thirds of Americans think that we should have free college education for anybody intellectually capable of attending, and free trade schools as well—like pretty much every other developed country in the world (and quite a few of the developing countries). Republicans tell us that we can’t use government funds to pay off our nation’s $1.5 trillion in student debt because we just borrowed that exact amount last year to give tax rebates to billionaires, so there’s nothing left. We’re just not smart enough to fix the problem.
And we could never, they tell us, go back to the free college like Thomas Jefferson created (he founded the University of Virginia as a free college), Abraham Lincoln instituted (he pushed for and got legislation to create 54 “land grant” colleges like Michigan State University with enough formerly public land that they could provide free or very cheap tuition), and Ronald Reagan ended in California when he was governor. Grandpa might have been able to pay for college with a part-time job in a gas station or restaurant (as I and most in my generation did), and no other country in the world may have the kind of student debt we have, but it’s just the way it is, they tell us. American’s just can’t figure it out.
Nearly eight out of ten Americans think taxes should be raised on the wealthy, but, the Republicans tell us, that would create economic chaos and destroy the economy. We’d end up like all those other countries where there’s a strong and vibrant middle class, but the billionaires can’t hoard their wealth without limit, and that would be a disaster… because… freedom. Americans who think rich people should pay their fair share of taxes to help the country are just, well, not that bright, says the GOP.
Just under two-thirds of Americans think our minimum wage should be $15 and look at Denmark, where MacDonald’s pays $20 an hour and a Big Mac costs only 80 cents more than in the United States (and Danish workers can easily afford that!). “Can’t we do that or even three-quarters of that?” they ask. “No,” Republicans say, “it’ll be too much of a burden on the poor executives and stockholders who might have to take slightly lower pay and dividends. It’s not possible.” We’re just not clever enough to figure out how to do such things, they tell us.
The Green New Deal is supported by 81 percent of registered voters, but, Republicans tell us, Americans just aren’t as smart as Norwegians (who have 60 percent of all car sales electric now and will totally phase out gas and diesel cars in eight years) or Germans (who produced more than 100 percent of the electricity their country needed a few days last year from renewable sources). We have to keep digging coal and drilling for oil and gas, polluting the planet, causing tens of thousands of cancers, and destroying the biosphere, because, after all, we wouldn’t want to cut the revenue to a vital industry, would we? Republicans even think that Americans will believe them when they say that the Green New Deal will mean we all have to stop eating hamburgers and flying, and must turn our cars over to “jackbooted thugs from the big government.”
A solid majority of Americans think women should make their own decisions on birth control and abortion, and that America should do more to provide prenatal care, and nine out of ten Americans think we should offer government-funded free pre-K daycare. But Republicans point to the states they run, like Mississippi where a woman is more likely to die in childbirth than in Bosnia or Botswana, and tell us that this is just how things have to be. Only by outlawing all abortion, Mississippi Republican Governor Phil Bryant tells us, can Mississippi become “the safest place in America for an unborn child.” Nothing else will work; we’ve lost that “take a man to the moon and bring him home safely” intellect we used to have.
Whether it’s strengthening environmental regulations, breaking up monopolies, restraining CEO pay, fully funding our public schools, or getting money out of politics—all things that have been done by most if not all of the fully developed countries in the world—Republicans tell us we just can’t do those things here in America. We’re just not that intelligent.
The story goes that Lincoln, during his debates with Stephen Douglas, said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Clearly the modern Republican Party, its billionaire funders and its media oligarchs have decided to stick with Lincoln’s logic. As long as they can fool some of the people all of the time, they don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of us; that’s enough to win elections, particularly if they can continue to strategically suppress millions of votes.
They have their plan, and they’re sticking to it. They’re really, really smart.
And, in the process, Republicans have turned the USA into the world’s village idiot.
More Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican Today: Smocking Gun Edition
Fritz67 - demo underground
12/18/18
Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican During the Holiday Season Today:
* "Happy Holidays" is a vile, offensive slur.
* A Turkish saint and a Jewish carpenter from Palestine were both white.
* "A Christmas Carol" is a horror story, the tale of a practical, thrifty Job Creator who was turned into a communist after being stalked and brainwashed by some ghosts.
At this rate, this one will be on every list now.
* Degenerate Perverts Unfit For Office: John Conyers, John Edwards, Al Franken, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener; Great Americans Who Deserve A "Mulligan" or Two Or Three: Joe Barton, Larry Craig, Joe Fain, Will Gardner, Newt Gingrich, Eric Greitens, Curtis Hill (New), Jim Jordan, Brett Kavanaugh, Nathan Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Vance McAllister, Roy Moore, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Sanford, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, and David Vitter (#32, Feb. 2018)
* You spend the entire campaign blasting Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while conducting government business. The daughter Donald Trump has a creepy sexual interest in uses a private email to conduct government business and you don't see anything wrong with it. (#28, April 2017)
* "There is a mandate" = Republicans won the last election. "Be bipartisan and don't overreach" = Democrats won the last election. (#18, April 2015)
And the drama with Pelosi handing Dump his lunch on December 11 leading to a lot of Republican whining about "bipartisanship" when...
* If the Republican-majority House and the Republican-majority Senate cannot pass a bill to be signed by the Republican President in time, the shutdown of the government will be the Democrats' fault. (#31, Jan 2018)
Because, of course, as I stated all the way back in the first list:
* Bipartisanship means Republicans and Democrats coming together to do exactly what Republicans want. (#1, Nov 2010)
All-New More Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican Today:
* You support ending birthright citizenship even though your parents weren't US citizens when you were born, which means you wouldn't be either.
* You push voter suppression laws so draconian that you yourself have trouble voting (lol)
* "Toxic Language" = Reminding people that a number of Trump Administration officials have been indicted
* The Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives is a big victory for Donald Trump!
* But if it wasn't a great victory, it was all John McCain's fault
* Counting every vote in an election is "unethical"
* Breakfast cereal is a controlled substance
* You totally believe that a man who is afraid to go out into the rain would charge a school shooter.
* "Supporting the Troops": Insulting Gold Star families and POWs, then skipping the Veteran's Day memorials.
While we're mentioning double standards about Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump, a far pettier one:
* You were mad about Hillary Rodham Clinton using her maiden name, but not Ivanka Trump Kushner.
* Vocal supporter of public hanging = "outstanding person"
* The thought of LGBTQ children becoming farmers or ranchers terrifes you.
* You like tear gas with your nachos.
* You complain about the "Senate in crisis" when you're one of the ones who put it there.
* Spending $25 million on a probe into election meddling by a foreign power is too expensive. Spending $83 million to send a billionaire on golf trips is not.
* "Happy Holidays" is a vile, offensive slur.
* A Turkish saint and a Jewish carpenter from Palestine were both white.
* "A Christmas Carol" is a horror story, the tale of a practical, thrifty Job Creator who was turned into a communist after being stalked and brainwashed by some ghosts.
At this rate, this one will be on every list now.
* Degenerate Perverts Unfit For Office: John Conyers, John Edwards, Al Franken, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener; Great Americans Who Deserve A "Mulligan" or Two Or Three: Joe Barton, Larry Craig, Joe Fain, Will Gardner, Newt Gingrich, Eric Greitens, Curtis Hill (New), Jim Jordan, Brett Kavanaugh, Nathan Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Vance McAllister, Roy Moore, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Sanford, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, and David Vitter (#32, Feb. 2018)
* You spend the entire campaign blasting Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while conducting government business. The daughter Donald Trump has a creepy sexual interest in uses a private email to conduct government business and you don't see anything wrong with it. (#28, April 2017)
* "There is a mandate" = Republicans won the last election. "Be bipartisan and don't overreach" = Democrats won the last election. (#18, April 2015)
And the drama with Pelosi handing Dump his lunch on December 11 leading to a lot of Republican whining about "bipartisanship" when...
* If the Republican-majority House and the Republican-majority Senate cannot pass a bill to be signed by the Republican President in time, the shutdown of the government will be the Democrats' fault. (#31, Jan 2018)
Because, of course, as I stated all the way back in the first list:
* Bipartisanship means Republicans and Democrats coming together to do exactly what Republicans want. (#1, Nov 2010)
All-New More Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican Today:
* You support ending birthright citizenship even though your parents weren't US citizens when you were born, which means you wouldn't be either.
* You push voter suppression laws so draconian that you yourself have trouble voting (lol)
* "Toxic Language" = Reminding people that a number of Trump Administration officials have been indicted
* The Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives is a big victory for Donald Trump!
* But if it wasn't a great victory, it was all John McCain's fault
* Counting every vote in an election is "unethical"
* Breakfast cereal is a controlled substance
* You totally believe that a man who is afraid to go out into the rain would charge a school shooter.
* "Supporting the Troops": Insulting Gold Star families and POWs, then skipping the Veteran's Day memorials.
While we're mentioning double standards about Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump, a far pettier one:
* You were mad about Hillary Rodham Clinton using her maiden name, but not Ivanka Trump Kushner.
* Vocal supporter of public hanging = "outstanding person"
* The thought of LGBTQ children becoming farmers or ranchers terrifes you.
* You like tear gas with your nachos.
* You complain about the "Senate in crisis" when you're one of the ones who put it there.
* Spending $25 million on a probe into election meddling by a foreign power is too expensive. Spending $83 million to send a billionaire on golf trips is not.
Exclusive: Pic of GOP Senators during recess from Kavanaugh hearing
Who needs Russian dolls when you have Republicans?
As seen on a billboard on an interstate in Indiana.....
Unmasking the GOP as the Party of Negligent Homicide
BY Nicholas Powers Truthout
PUBLISHED
June 24, 2018
In Arizona, a family caring for a child’s heart condition lost their house and car to medical bills they couldn’t pay. In St. Louis, a shelter closed and later a homeless man was found frozen to death in a trash bin. In California, a poor family was found dead in their van from carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Poverty is a death sentence,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a 2016 campaign rally. The audience nodded. They should’ve screamed. Look at the history. Look at the statistics. Conservative and neoliberal policies kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. When Republicans dismantle Obamacare, they kill people. When lawmakers from both parties shred the safety net, they kill people.
Neoliberal Democrats are complicit too. The devastating anti-poor measures that passed under the guise of “welfare reform” in 1996 were championed by Bill Clinton and supported by many Democrats in Congress. It cut cash payment to the poor and may have led to shorter life spans. It led to a 153 percent increase of deep poverty, with Americans living on $2 dollars a day. It led to people selling their plasma or food stamps for quick money.
Republicans, however, have gone even further, consistently shaping the GOP into the party of negligent homicide. They intentionally increase the structural violence of the state. The victims die but we don’t “see” them because our media focuses on the personal, not systemic. We’re trained to see authorities as legitimate, so it’s nearly impossible to recognize them as mass murderers. But the poor are dying in an ongoing crisis that needs a radical, humanitarian politics.
The US Is a Crime Scene
What is negligent homicide? It’s when you expose someone to risks that a reasonable person would say are unjustifiable. Death wasn’t the intention but the result. Like when a self-help guru accidently broiled visitors in his sweat lodge. Or the school driver with a bus full of kids sped over railroad tracks to outrace a train and got rammed.
Many cases involve a vehicle. The biggest case involves the largest vehicle in history: the nation state. In Plato’s oft-cited metaphor from The Republic, the ship of state can be dangerous when steered by the greedy.
When conservatives steer the state, “we the people” are in danger. We lose welfare, lose public land, lose health care, lose access to voting and lose legal protections. The humanitarian side of the state that provides for people is dismantled.
Hierarchy is exploited for the wealthy as police and military are reinforced. Tax crusader Grover Norquist said the goal is to cut government so small, Republicans can “drown it in the bathtub.”
When they kill the state, they kill the many people who need it to live. Right now, someone who never had health care is dying in an emergency room. Right now, a child is screaming from hunger. Right now, a Black woman who has been stressed by racism for years clutches her chest during a heart attack.
In our nation of 325 million, the 40 million poor and 30 million without health care need the safety net to save them or save their lifespans from being cut by stress or sickness. Academic reports say it. Medical journals say it. Protesters say it. So, when our lawmakers dismantle the state, they commit negligent homicide. Any reasonable person can see the math and know the “free market” is an unjustified risk to the poor.
Health Scare
“We are making America great again,” President Trump said as Republicans smiled, big toothy smiles. He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, selling it as the freeing of business from federal red tape and taxes. In reality, Republicans had signed the death warrant for thousands of people.
With a stroke of his pen, Trump ended Obamacare’s individual mandate, which forced people to either buy health insurance or pay a fine. Without it, 13 million people would leave Obamacare and some will die. Weeks earlier, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on CNBC, “When people lose health care, they’re less likely to get preventive care, they’re more likely to defer health care they need and are more likely to die.” Ten thousand people. That’s how many he said would die. Ten Thousand.
And many were already dying. In 2009, a report found that 45,000 lives were lost annually from lack of health care, or one every 12 minutes. In 2010, 49.9 million Americans were uninsured; after Obamacare, it was down to 28 million in 2016. And with that 44 percent decrease, the annual death rate, based on the report, would be roughly, 26,000 people. How is it that they are invisible? How are these preventable deaths not seen as a crime?
In 2009, MoveOn.org made a video in which people held signs: One woman’s sign said her mom is nearly medically bankrupt; a nurse’s sign said her aunt has cancer. Face after face followed. A woman using a wheelchair, a man with a heart surgery scar and another man breathing by tubes — all held signs saying “we can’t wait” for health insurance.
Nine years later, I wonder if they got help. Did they live? Are they at risk of losing insurance as the Republicans attack Obamacare? In a few years, if MoveOn.org reshot that video with those people, how many of their faces would be replaced by gravestones?
The Killing Fields of Poverty
“One thing we’re going to be looking at very strongly is welfare reform,” Trump said at an October 2017 White House meeting. “People are taking advantage of the system and other people aren’t receiving what they need.” He shook his head in a tut-tut, “bad poor people” type of way as the cameras snapped.
On April 10, 2018, he issued an executive order for federal agencies to look at work requirements and block grants to states. It’s an easy target. Republicans are too scared to go after Social Security and Medicare before midterms, so they go after the poor, whom US lawmakers have demonized for decades as “social parasites.”
Last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston traveled from Skid Row to the Deep South to hurricane-battered Puerto Rico. He found a dying US. He documents how the 40 million poor scrape leftover food and compassion to survive day to day. Five million are in desperate conditions.
He saw women bitten raw from bed bugs in their tents. He saw a man whose teeth were rotted, yellow stubs. He smelled sewage spewing from a kitchen sink. He visited homes in Puerto Rico, smashed to splinters and rubble by the storm.
Six years before Alston’s travels, US scientists calculated the number of Americans who annually die from poverty in a 2011 report; it’s 291,000. Divided by the number of days in a year, that comes to 797 people a day. They die invisibly because we choose not to see them. They die away from the cameras. They die alone and scared. Officially, the fatal condition is diabetes, heart attack or high blood pressure, but really, it’s the weathering of the body by stress, grief and hopelessness.
Republicans have signaled to voters that if they’re still in power after the midterms, they plan to use the giant federal deficit caused by their tax bill to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. If they do, the poor will die in the segregated zip codes that Alston visited. They are dying there right now.
The Humanitarian State
“It’s awesome, man,” said Scott Miller, a volunteer dentist for Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit group that sets up mobile medical clinics to give free dental and vision care alongside disaster relief. He just worked on a man’s teeth for four hours. Someone flashed a mirror in front of the patient, who smiled and said he couldn’t recognize himself.
“It’s the only thing I can do,” Miller told ABC News as his voice shook. “I can change somebody’s life just like that.” His sincere joy at repairing lives is a glimpse of what American humanitarian politics could be.
Imagine a politics that acknowledged the ongoing crisis of the poor and planned an immediate intervention. Imagine an administration that took billions from the Pentagon and Homeland Security to scale up nonprofits like Remote Area Medical so it could rent stadiums in the cities and towns for people to come from afar to get free dental care, mammogram tests, basic physicals and glasses.
Imagine a White House that nationalized vacant buildings and renovated them for those without homes. And made sure everyone had a Medicare for All card in their wallet. Imagine if everyone had a college to go to for free and a future they could see.
Americans could touch their new teeth and new glasses, knowing for the first time in generations that negligent homicide actually is a crime. And a lot of people were its victims, including conservative voters.
It sounds like a dream, but it happens everywhere all the time. In civil society, countless groups practice a humanitarian politics. Any “reasonable person” knows that when you heal poverty, a new world may not be the intention, but it is the result.
“Poverty is a death sentence,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a 2016 campaign rally. The audience nodded. They should’ve screamed. Look at the history. Look at the statistics. Conservative and neoliberal policies kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. When Republicans dismantle Obamacare, they kill people. When lawmakers from both parties shred the safety net, they kill people.
Neoliberal Democrats are complicit too. The devastating anti-poor measures that passed under the guise of “welfare reform” in 1996 were championed by Bill Clinton and supported by many Democrats in Congress. It cut cash payment to the poor and may have led to shorter life spans. It led to a 153 percent increase of deep poverty, with Americans living on $2 dollars a day. It led to people selling their plasma or food stamps for quick money.
Republicans, however, have gone even further, consistently shaping the GOP into the party of negligent homicide. They intentionally increase the structural violence of the state. The victims die but we don’t “see” them because our media focuses on the personal, not systemic. We’re trained to see authorities as legitimate, so it’s nearly impossible to recognize them as mass murderers. But the poor are dying in an ongoing crisis that needs a radical, humanitarian politics.
The US Is a Crime Scene
What is negligent homicide? It’s when you expose someone to risks that a reasonable person would say are unjustifiable. Death wasn’t the intention but the result. Like when a self-help guru accidently broiled visitors in his sweat lodge. Or the school driver with a bus full of kids sped over railroad tracks to outrace a train and got rammed.
Many cases involve a vehicle. The biggest case involves the largest vehicle in history: the nation state. In Plato’s oft-cited metaphor from The Republic, the ship of state can be dangerous when steered by the greedy.
When conservatives steer the state, “we the people” are in danger. We lose welfare, lose public land, lose health care, lose access to voting and lose legal protections. The humanitarian side of the state that provides for people is dismantled.
Hierarchy is exploited for the wealthy as police and military are reinforced. Tax crusader Grover Norquist said the goal is to cut government so small, Republicans can “drown it in the bathtub.”
When they kill the state, they kill the many people who need it to live. Right now, someone who never had health care is dying in an emergency room. Right now, a child is screaming from hunger. Right now, a Black woman who has been stressed by racism for years clutches her chest during a heart attack.
In our nation of 325 million, the 40 million poor and 30 million without health care need the safety net to save them or save their lifespans from being cut by stress or sickness. Academic reports say it. Medical journals say it. Protesters say it. So, when our lawmakers dismantle the state, they commit negligent homicide. Any reasonable person can see the math and know the “free market” is an unjustified risk to the poor.
Health Scare
“We are making America great again,” President Trump said as Republicans smiled, big toothy smiles. He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, selling it as the freeing of business from federal red tape and taxes. In reality, Republicans had signed the death warrant for thousands of people.
With a stroke of his pen, Trump ended Obamacare’s individual mandate, which forced people to either buy health insurance or pay a fine. Without it, 13 million people would leave Obamacare and some will die. Weeks earlier, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on CNBC, “When people lose health care, they’re less likely to get preventive care, they’re more likely to defer health care they need and are more likely to die.” Ten thousand people. That’s how many he said would die. Ten Thousand.
And many were already dying. In 2009, a report found that 45,000 lives were lost annually from lack of health care, or one every 12 minutes. In 2010, 49.9 million Americans were uninsured; after Obamacare, it was down to 28 million in 2016. And with that 44 percent decrease, the annual death rate, based on the report, would be roughly, 26,000 people. How is it that they are invisible? How are these preventable deaths not seen as a crime?
In 2009, MoveOn.org made a video in which people held signs: One woman’s sign said her mom is nearly medically bankrupt; a nurse’s sign said her aunt has cancer. Face after face followed. A woman using a wheelchair, a man with a heart surgery scar and another man breathing by tubes — all held signs saying “we can’t wait” for health insurance.
Nine years later, I wonder if they got help. Did they live? Are they at risk of losing insurance as the Republicans attack Obamacare? In a few years, if MoveOn.org reshot that video with those people, how many of their faces would be replaced by gravestones?
The Killing Fields of Poverty
“One thing we’re going to be looking at very strongly is welfare reform,” Trump said at an October 2017 White House meeting. “People are taking advantage of the system and other people aren’t receiving what they need.” He shook his head in a tut-tut, “bad poor people” type of way as the cameras snapped.
On April 10, 2018, he issued an executive order for federal agencies to look at work requirements and block grants to states. It’s an easy target. Republicans are too scared to go after Social Security and Medicare before midterms, so they go after the poor, whom US lawmakers have demonized for decades as “social parasites.”
Last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston traveled from Skid Row to the Deep South to hurricane-battered Puerto Rico. He found a dying US. He documents how the 40 million poor scrape leftover food and compassion to survive day to day. Five million are in desperate conditions.
He saw women bitten raw from bed bugs in their tents. He saw a man whose teeth were rotted, yellow stubs. He smelled sewage spewing from a kitchen sink. He visited homes in Puerto Rico, smashed to splinters and rubble by the storm.
Six years before Alston’s travels, US scientists calculated the number of Americans who annually die from poverty in a 2011 report; it’s 291,000. Divided by the number of days in a year, that comes to 797 people a day. They die invisibly because we choose not to see them. They die away from the cameras. They die alone and scared. Officially, the fatal condition is diabetes, heart attack or high blood pressure, but really, it’s the weathering of the body by stress, grief and hopelessness.
Republicans have signaled to voters that if they’re still in power after the midterms, they plan to use the giant federal deficit caused by their tax bill to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. If they do, the poor will die in the segregated zip codes that Alston visited. They are dying there right now.
The Humanitarian State
“It’s awesome, man,” said Scott Miller, a volunteer dentist for Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit group that sets up mobile medical clinics to give free dental and vision care alongside disaster relief. He just worked on a man’s teeth for four hours. Someone flashed a mirror in front of the patient, who smiled and said he couldn’t recognize himself.
“It’s the only thing I can do,” Miller told ABC News as his voice shook. “I can change somebody’s life just like that.” His sincere joy at repairing lives is a glimpse of what American humanitarian politics could be.
Imagine a politics that acknowledged the ongoing crisis of the poor and planned an immediate intervention. Imagine an administration that took billions from the Pentagon and Homeland Security to scale up nonprofits like Remote Area Medical so it could rent stadiums in the cities and towns for people to come from afar to get free dental care, mammogram tests, basic physicals and glasses.
Imagine a White House that nationalized vacant buildings and renovated them for those without homes. And made sure everyone had a Medicare for All card in their wallet. Imagine if everyone had a college to go to for free and a future they could see.
Americans could touch their new teeth and new glasses, knowing for the first time in generations that negligent homicide actually is a crime. And a lot of people were its victims, including conservative voters.
It sounds like a dream, but it happens everywhere all the time. In civil society, countless groups practice a humanitarian politics. Any “reasonable person” knows that when you heal poverty, a new world may not be the intention, but it is the result.
Allies Of Vladimir Putin Funneled Money To Senior Republicans
by Erica - the intellectualist
6/9/18
Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham are among those who benefited from Russia-linked donations.
A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.
And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.
An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.
In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:
Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.
The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
Click here to read the full story.
A close look at public campaign finance reports reveals a network of Russian oligarchs increasingly contributing to top Republican leadership in recent years, according to Dallas News.
And thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United in 2010, the donations are perfectly legal.
An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s.
The Russian billionaire is one of the U.K.'s wealthiest, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Prior to the 2016 election season, Blavatnik's political donations were bipartisan and meager.
In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
It is unclear why Republicans would knowingly accept donations from such contributors, particularly after Russia's attempt to interfere with the presidential election was known:
Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings.
The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
Click here to read the full story.
gop funnies
|
|
|
|
|
|
Passing those tax cuts was as easy as taking healthcare from a baby! - New Yorker
|
Remember, wait until after Christmas to steal their Social Security and Medicare - New Yorker
|
|
|
GOP - Party of Traitors
|
|
*DONT YOU FEEL LIKE DAMN FOOLS, GOP?
NanceGreggs
From Demo Underground: Because really, you should.
Donald Trump is a proven liar, an adulterer, a self-declared pussy-grabber who has openly boasted of sexually assaulting women. THIS is the man the “Christians” among you have continued to defend, and their leaders have declared to be “chosen by God”.
Donald Trump is a barely-literate, ill-informed idiot who has demonstrated, time and again, that he has no knowledge of the country’s workings, nor the workings of our relationships with our allies. THIS is the man you elected to lead the most powerful nation on earth, the man you insisted was a “brilliant businessman” who would dazzle us all with his intelligence.
Donald Trump is a lazy, do-nothing “pResident” who spends the majority of his time tweeting nonsense, watching TV, and golfing. THIS is the man you encouraged your party members to vote for because he would work tirelessly on their behalf.
Donald Trump cheated hard-working Americans out of their pay when they worked for him, had to settle a court case against him for cheating people out of their money with his phoney “university”, and still has every single product bearing his “brand” manufactured in low-wage countries. THIS is the man you told your constituents would put America first, and would bring jobs back to the US.
Donald Trump has persisted in distancing our nation from its allies, while openly praising our country’s enemies. He continues to pour gasoline on the volatile situations presented by North Korea and the Middle East. THIS is the man you held out as being able to save the nation from Obama’s “mismanagement” of our relationships with the global community.
Donald Trump has appointed inexperienced, incompetent cronies to positions of power and influence. THIS is the man you insisted would surround himself with “the best people” – many of whom are now under investigation and/or have had to resign in disgrace.
Donald Trump has accomplished nothing that betters the lives of Americans. He has not kept a single campaign promise – in fact, he has achieved absolutely nothing other than accusing his political rivals of doing what he himself has done, and calling for endless investigations into anyone who dares point out that your naked emperor has no clothes.
THIS is the man you have lied for, cheated for, even perjured yourselves for. THIS is the man you have abandoned your “Christian” principles for, who you have coddled and defended, who you have made endless excuses for, and whose abject idiocy, ignorance and blatant lies you have defended for over a year.
Ultimately, THIS is the man – the one under investigation for colluding with our enemies as evidence of his guilt mounts every day, whose lies are now the stuff of legend, whose mental competence is clearly questionable, whose buffoonery on the world stage has made our country the laughingstock of the world – that you have chosen to protect-and-defend, while failing to protect-and-defend the rights of your own fellow citizens, the freedoms the Constitution assures them, and the environment in which they live.
In light of all of the above – and much, much more – the obvious questions would be: “Are you not embarrassed by THIS MAN’s displays of incompetence, ignorance, and lies? Are you not totally humiliated by his displays of outright stupidity? Are you not concerned that an obviously mentally-unhinged madman has the nuclear codes at his disposal?”
But sadly, those questions have now been answered. While you busy yourselves trying to cover-up THIS MAN’s apparent incompetence, lies and deceit, your only real focus is trying to take affordable healthcare away from millions of Americans while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. While our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico are dying for lack of food, potable water and electricity, you busy yourselves with undoing the regulations that protect the food, water, and the infrastructure that all Americans depend upon.
The silver lining in all of this is the fact that THIS MAN – the one who you have risked your party’s reputation on – is going down. The evidence against him, his cronies, and his family members is already overwhelming – and it builds by the day. And make no mistake – your party is going down with him. Trump’s collusion with the Russians in order to subvert our democratic elections is becoming crystal clear – and by covering for him, your own complicity is being exposed for what it is.
But by all means, keep on keeping’ on. Keep pretending that your Idiot-in-Chief – the one who handed over classified information to the Russians in the Oval Office – is above reproach. Keep insisting – despite last Tuesday’s election results – that the jerk-off you stand behind is beloved by a nation. Keep telling yourselves that when the shit hits the fan, you will somehow be immune from the storm of feces that is about to be splattered all over your party.
Say what you will about the Democrats – anything you want. Go to it – do your worst. We can handle it – and that’s because it’s YOUR MAN who is drowning in the worst scandal the country has ever seen. We’re just the people standing on the shore, laughing our asses off and thanking whatever deities we believe in, while you sink beneath the waves of your own dishonesty, stupidity, and oh-so-obvious hypocrisy.
Donald Trump is a proven liar, an adulterer, a self-declared pussy-grabber who has openly boasted of sexually assaulting women. THIS is the man the “Christians” among you have continued to defend, and their leaders have declared to be “chosen by God”.
Donald Trump is a barely-literate, ill-informed idiot who has demonstrated, time and again, that he has no knowledge of the country’s workings, nor the workings of our relationships with our allies. THIS is the man you elected to lead the most powerful nation on earth, the man you insisted was a “brilliant businessman” who would dazzle us all with his intelligence.
Donald Trump is a lazy, do-nothing “pResident” who spends the majority of his time tweeting nonsense, watching TV, and golfing. THIS is the man you encouraged your party members to vote for because he would work tirelessly on their behalf.
Donald Trump cheated hard-working Americans out of their pay when they worked for him, had to settle a court case against him for cheating people out of their money with his phoney “university”, and still has every single product bearing his “brand” manufactured in low-wage countries. THIS is the man you told your constituents would put America first, and would bring jobs back to the US.
Donald Trump has persisted in distancing our nation from its allies, while openly praising our country’s enemies. He continues to pour gasoline on the volatile situations presented by North Korea and the Middle East. THIS is the man you held out as being able to save the nation from Obama’s “mismanagement” of our relationships with the global community.
Donald Trump has appointed inexperienced, incompetent cronies to positions of power and influence. THIS is the man you insisted would surround himself with “the best people” – many of whom are now under investigation and/or have had to resign in disgrace.
Donald Trump has accomplished nothing that betters the lives of Americans. He has not kept a single campaign promise – in fact, he has achieved absolutely nothing other than accusing his political rivals of doing what he himself has done, and calling for endless investigations into anyone who dares point out that your naked emperor has no clothes.
THIS is the man you have lied for, cheated for, even perjured yourselves for. THIS is the man you have abandoned your “Christian” principles for, who you have coddled and defended, who you have made endless excuses for, and whose abject idiocy, ignorance and blatant lies you have defended for over a year.
Ultimately, THIS is the man – the one under investigation for colluding with our enemies as evidence of his guilt mounts every day, whose lies are now the stuff of legend, whose mental competence is clearly questionable, whose buffoonery on the world stage has made our country the laughingstock of the world – that you have chosen to protect-and-defend, while failing to protect-and-defend the rights of your own fellow citizens, the freedoms the Constitution assures them, and the environment in which they live.
In light of all of the above – and much, much more – the obvious questions would be: “Are you not embarrassed by THIS MAN’s displays of incompetence, ignorance, and lies? Are you not totally humiliated by his displays of outright stupidity? Are you not concerned that an obviously mentally-unhinged madman has the nuclear codes at his disposal?”
But sadly, those questions have now been answered. While you busy yourselves trying to cover-up THIS MAN’s apparent incompetence, lies and deceit, your only real focus is trying to take affordable healthcare away from millions of Americans while giving tax breaks to the wealthy. While our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico are dying for lack of food, potable water and electricity, you busy yourselves with undoing the regulations that protect the food, water, and the infrastructure that all Americans depend upon.
The silver lining in all of this is the fact that THIS MAN – the one who you have risked your party’s reputation on – is going down. The evidence against him, his cronies, and his family members is already overwhelming – and it builds by the day. And make no mistake – your party is going down with him. Trump’s collusion with the Russians in order to subvert our democratic elections is becoming crystal clear – and by covering for him, your own complicity is being exposed for what it is.
But by all means, keep on keeping’ on. Keep pretending that your Idiot-in-Chief – the one who handed over classified information to the Russians in the Oval Office – is above reproach. Keep insisting – despite last Tuesday’s election results – that the jerk-off you stand behind is beloved by a nation. Keep telling yourselves that when the shit hits the fan, you will somehow be immune from the storm of feces that is about to be splattered all over your party.
Say what you will about the Democrats – anything you want. Go to it – do your worst. We can handle it – and that’s because it’s YOUR MAN who is drowning in the worst scandal the country has ever seen. We’re just the people standing on the shore, laughing our asses off and thanking whatever deities we believe in, while you sink beneath the waves of your own dishonesty, stupidity, and oh-so-obvious hypocrisy.
|
|
no limit on greed!!!
Paradise Papers: The seven Republican super-donors who keep money in tax havens
Paradise Papers show these men, who invest heavily in Super Pacs, share a presence offshore if not a love of Trump
From The Guardian: Seven Republican super-donors helped bankroll the conservative push for power in the 2016 election cycle, between them pumping more than $350m (£264m) into federal and state races.
The Paradise Papers illuminate another aspect of these vastly wealthy men – their propensity to nurture offshore some of their combined fortunes, estimated by Forbes at $142bn, largely beyond the reach of public scrutiny and tax authorities.
The seven have their divisions, especially over Donald Trump. Warren Stephens was a major backer of the Stop Trump movement last year, while Geoff Palmer was among the then Republican nominee’s biggest financial backers.
But they share a presence in tax havens. In turn, they face a legitimate question as they wield influence by investing in Super Pacs with names including “Rebuilding America now”, “Right to rise USA” and “American unity”: are their political principles undermined by their offshore practices?
Warren Stephens
Stephens, a major Republican donor, was the hidden co-owner of a payday lending company US authorities are suing for $50m after it allegedly used predatory tactics to deceive customers about the true cost of their loans.
He is identified in the leaked documents as one of the two main owners of a group of short-term lenders including Integrity Advance, which is accused of violating federal laws.
The Paradise Papers reveal that the billionaire financier, based in Arkansas, holds a 40% stake in the lender’s parent company, which donated widely to US political campaigns over recent years while its link to Stephens was generally unknown....
Charles and David Koch
...Charles and David Koch control Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the US. In 2005, they bought the paper and pulp giant Georgia-Pacific for $21bn.
The Kochs took their new holding private, and in doing so shut the door on public access to information about its internal workings. The Paradise Papers open that door, giving a glimpse of how Georgia-Pacific conducts its affairs offshore.
Within months of the company being acquired by the Kochs, it relocated millions of dollars of profits from high-tax jurisdictions such as the US and UK to low-tax environments in Luxembourg and the offshore haven Bermuda.
At the center of the money shuffle was Georgia-Pacific Britain Ltd, a subsidiary leasing paper production equipment, which was incorporated in Bermuda but controlled and managed out of the UK....
Sheldon Adelson
The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson gave $100m to Republican candidates in 2012, followed by $77.9m in 2016 and $5m to Trump’s inaugural festivities, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Information that Adelson has already made public shows he runs three jets in Bermuda, including two Boeing 747s customized for luxury travel.
The planes are operated alongside Adelson’s fleet of 16 private jets in Las Vegas for the use of his company’s executives and VIP guests.
One of the Bermuda 747s is registered to Sands Aviation Bermuda Ltd, and the other to Interface Operations Bermuda Ltd, which is controlled by Adelson and his wife, Miriam. Interface also owns an Airbus A340.
Geoff Palmer
The billionaire Los Angeles real estate magnate, who has given millions of dollars to Trump and other Republican election campaigns, has an offshore company and a private jet in Bermuda.
Palmer, who once told a reporter “I don’t like paying taxes” and has described affordable housing quotas as “immoral”, last year donated $5m to a Super Pac that supported Trump’s presidential campaign and $310,000 to Trump’s “victory fund”. In 2012, he gave $500,000 to Romney’s failed Republican presidential campaign....
Steve Wynn
Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas and Macau casino mogul, became finance chair of the Republican National Committee in January.
In 2004, Wynn’s empire set up, with the help of the law firm Appleby, an intricate loan agreement that tied together a web of corporations across several tax havens to finance a new casino resort in Macau.
AdvertisementThe mesh of concerns, details of which were made public to the SEC, linked Wynn’s interests in Las Vegas, Hong Kong and the Isle of Man.
The Appleby files record the Republican donor’s offshore presence in the Isle of Man, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and in some cases give frank accounts of the potential tax advantages.
In one of the Paradise Papers, lawyers tell Wynn his businesses are “exempt from taxation in the Isle of Man in terms of the income tax”, a point Wynn Macau Ltd later noted in public filings to the SEC when it declared: “The group is exempted from income tax in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands.”...
Paul Singer
The Paradise Papers show the lengths to which the major Republican donor, hedge fund manager and “vulture capitalist” will go to extract debt from one of the world’s poorer countries.
The leaked documents contain a paper trail relating to one of Singer’s subsidiaries as it pursued entities in Congo-Brazzaville to try to retrieve debt it had bought at a knockdown price.
The practice of distressed-debt acquisitions is a Singer speciality. The leaked documents add new texture to the pursuit of the Republic of the Congo by the hedge fund manager, who gave $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Kensington International Ltd, a Cayman-Islands-based subsidiary of Singer’s Elliott Management, had bought $57m of debts owed by the Congo-Brazzaville government after it borrowed money in the 1980s.
The debt was to be repaid at 8% interest – a good deal as long as the company could eventually retrieve the money. When it failed to do so, Kensington secured a ruling from a court in London in 2003 that increased the amount Congo-Brazzaville owed it to about $100m...
(complete article)
The Paradise Papers illuminate another aspect of these vastly wealthy men – their propensity to nurture offshore some of their combined fortunes, estimated by Forbes at $142bn, largely beyond the reach of public scrutiny and tax authorities.
The seven have their divisions, especially over Donald Trump. Warren Stephens was a major backer of the Stop Trump movement last year, while Geoff Palmer was among the then Republican nominee’s biggest financial backers.
But they share a presence in tax havens. In turn, they face a legitimate question as they wield influence by investing in Super Pacs with names including “Rebuilding America now”, “Right to rise USA” and “American unity”: are their political principles undermined by their offshore practices?
Warren Stephens
Stephens, a major Republican donor, was the hidden co-owner of a payday lending company US authorities are suing for $50m after it allegedly used predatory tactics to deceive customers about the true cost of their loans.
He is identified in the leaked documents as one of the two main owners of a group of short-term lenders including Integrity Advance, which is accused of violating federal laws.
The Paradise Papers reveal that the billionaire financier, based in Arkansas, holds a 40% stake in the lender’s parent company, which donated widely to US political campaigns over recent years while its link to Stephens was generally unknown....
Charles and David Koch
...Charles and David Koch control Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the US. In 2005, they bought the paper and pulp giant Georgia-Pacific for $21bn.
The Kochs took their new holding private, and in doing so shut the door on public access to information about its internal workings. The Paradise Papers open that door, giving a glimpse of how Georgia-Pacific conducts its affairs offshore.
Within months of the company being acquired by the Kochs, it relocated millions of dollars of profits from high-tax jurisdictions such as the US and UK to low-tax environments in Luxembourg and the offshore haven Bermuda.
At the center of the money shuffle was Georgia-Pacific Britain Ltd, a subsidiary leasing paper production equipment, which was incorporated in Bermuda but controlled and managed out of the UK....
Sheldon Adelson
The casino magnate Sheldon Adelson gave $100m to Republican candidates in 2012, followed by $77.9m in 2016 and $5m to Trump’s inaugural festivities, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Information that Adelson has already made public shows he runs three jets in Bermuda, including two Boeing 747s customized for luxury travel.
The planes are operated alongside Adelson’s fleet of 16 private jets in Las Vegas for the use of his company’s executives and VIP guests.
One of the Bermuda 747s is registered to Sands Aviation Bermuda Ltd, and the other to Interface Operations Bermuda Ltd, which is controlled by Adelson and his wife, Miriam. Interface also owns an Airbus A340.
Geoff Palmer
The billionaire Los Angeles real estate magnate, who has given millions of dollars to Trump and other Republican election campaigns, has an offshore company and a private jet in Bermuda.
Palmer, who once told a reporter “I don’t like paying taxes” and has described affordable housing quotas as “immoral”, last year donated $5m to a Super Pac that supported Trump’s presidential campaign and $310,000 to Trump’s “victory fund”. In 2012, he gave $500,000 to Romney’s failed Republican presidential campaign....
Steve Wynn
Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas and Macau casino mogul, became finance chair of the Republican National Committee in January.
In 2004, Wynn’s empire set up, with the help of the law firm Appleby, an intricate loan agreement that tied together a web of corporations across several tax havens to finance a new casino resort in Macau.
AdvertisementThe mesh of concerns, details of which were made public to the SEC, linked Wynn’s interests in Las Vegas, Hong Kong and the Isle of Man.
The Appleby files record the Republican donor’s offshore presence in the Isle of Man, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and in some cases give frank accounts of the potential tax advantages.
In one of the Paradise Papers, lawyers tell Wynn his businesses are “exempt from taxation in the Isle of Man in terms of the income tax”, a point Wynn Macau Ltd later noted in public filings to the SEC when it declared: “The group is exempted from income tax in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands.”...
Paul Singer
The Paradise Papers show the lengths to which the major Republican donor, hedge fund manager and “vulture capitalist” will go to extract debt from one of the world’s poorer countries.
The leaked documents contain a paper trail relating to one of Singer’s subsidiaries as it pursued entities in Congo-Brazzaville to try to retrieve debt it had bought at a knockdown price.
The practice of distressed-debt acquisitions is a Singer speciality. The leaked documents add new texture to the pursuit of the Republic of the Congo by the hedge fund manager, who gave $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Kensington International Ltd, a Cayman-Islands-based subsidiary of Singer’s Elliott Management, had bought $57m of debts owed by the Congo-Brazzaville government after it borrowed money in the 1980s.
The debt was to be repaid at 8% interest – a good deal as long as the company could eventually retrieve the money. When it failed to do so, Kensington secured a ruling from a court in London in 2003 that increased the amount Congo-Brazzaville owed it to about $100m...
(complete article)
party of traitors!!!!
GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia
Ruth May, Contributor
From Dallas News: Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.
Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.
Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.
In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.
Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.
Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.
Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.
Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.
Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.
Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus.
Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.
The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.
Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.
VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.
Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower. Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.
Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.
Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.
In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.
Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.
Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.
Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.
Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.
Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.
Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus.
Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.
The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.
Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.
VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.
Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower. Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fools elect them and they screw you