The Echo Chamber: Variations on a Theme

One of the "Christian" right's favorite themes is how all of our problems come from turning away from God (by which they mean Jehovah, the only true god -- never mind that all of them are true gods, but have more sense than to claim to be the only one: after all, they tend to come in families).

First variation, from Franklin Graham, who blames it all on Hollywood (the "Christians'" favorite Satan avatar) and the gays (also a favorite target):

Here’s a topic that probably won’t be mentioned in the upcoming Democratic debate. An incredible 2.4 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed across the U.S. just last year alone. Hollywood is busy promoting promiscuity to the world — almost every movie, every television show is focused on sex. The saying goes, “sex sells.” Well, the statistics in the CNN article verify that there’s a price to pay, and it is a very heavy price. God made us male and female and gave sex for us to enjoy inside a marriage relationship between a man and a woman — not two men, not two women. The Bible says that anyone who sins sexually, sins against their own body. How true. What’s the protection the world is looking for? It’s simple — follow God’s guidelines. Have only a monogamous relationship with your husband or wife.

Well, that's pretty much standard for the con men passing themselves off as "holy men". But, mix in a little gloating from none other than Tony Perkins:

Personnel is policy. And that’s what makes the difference in this administration. We’re not on the outside looking in. We’re on the inside working out. And we are so grateful for the men and women who are serving in this administration.

I was just at the White House – I had to take a break and go meet with the chief of staff and some others – and look, we have values voters in the White House.

If that doesn't scare you, it should.

And so, in the natural course of this sort of thing, we have our esteemed (ahem) Attorney General, William Barr, who has the answer to all of our ills:

Attorney General William Barr blamed secularism in society for a series of problems such as drug overdoses, violence and poor mental health while speaking at Notre Dame’s law school.

Barr, in a speech largely focused on the role of religion in law, decried what he described as an effort to drive religion away while promoting secularism. “We see the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism,” he said.

“Basically every measure of this social pathology continues to gain ground.” A spokesman for the university told the South Bend Tribune this week that the topic of Barr’s speech would be “religious freedom.”

How totally inappropriate is it for the nation's top law officer to be giving a speech like this at a law school?

If Barr were the only one, we could call it an aberration -- but he's not. Check out the record of well-known "Christian" Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, who's done everything she can to gut public education in favor of private (read "teligious" and for-profit) schools. I'm sure you can come up with other examples, but quite frankly, Trump's Cabinet is like flash cards: by the time you recognize a face, it's been replaced with an "acting" whatever.

So, the bottom line is, the Dominionists, after forty-plus years of taking over the GOP, are now taking over the whole country.

I like the idea of lions.

Guess What's In the News Today?

And yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. . . .

I couldn't resist:

Here's an interesting take on the rationale behind the wall impasse:

(And if you thought it was the "breaking news" about Trump being a Russian asset -- we knew that.)

Today's Must Read: Fascist America, Part ?

Tom Sullivan has a follow-up on yesterday's piece about the crackdown on American citizens who happen to be brown. It's gets much worse:

"It's working. Don't let anyone tell you different," Charlie Pierce laments.

Pierce responded to news yesterday that a man in Encino, California phoned a series of death threats to the Boston Globe. Pierce worked there for nine years and has lots of friends and one relative there still. The Boston Globe itself reports the suspect Robert Darrell Chain, 68, was arrested by the FBI Thursday and charged with making a threatening communication in interstate commerce:

Federal prosecutors said that Chain made 14 calls to the Globe’s main newsroom number between Aug. 10 and 22 after the newspaper’s editorial page called on media outlets to unite in opposition to Trump’s angry rhetoric against the press, including repeated references to reporters as “the enemy of the people.”

The guy's obviously mental:

NBC News' David Douglas reports that after his court appearance in Los Angeles, Chain told reporters, "“America was saved when Donald J. Trump was elected President."

This piece by Digby just reinforces the general trend.

Greg Sargent sounds an alarm. It's loud:

At his rally on Thursday night in Indiana, President Trump unleashed his usual attacks on the news media, but he also added a refrain that should set off loud, clanging alarm bells. Trump didn’t simply castigate “fake news.” He also suggested the media is allied with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe — an alliance, he claimed, that is conspiring not just against Trump but also against his supporters.

“Today’s Democrat Party is held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep-state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake-news allies,” Trump railed. “Our biggest obstacle and their greatest ally actually is the media.”

And this should come as no surprise. From Fox News' favorite Nazi Barbie:

Fox News host Laura Ingraham made a stunning suggestion on her Friday night show, arguing that the American government should take over private social media networks so that they can be regulated.

Actually, that sounds more like Josef Stalin to me. But then, there's not a lot of difference between Stalin and Hitler.

Footnote: Because Trump only hires the best people.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

You've no doubt run across stories about the push to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize -- based on something he had nothing to do with. There are a couple of posts at Hullbaloo that I really wish could have been combined, but they weren't, so I'm doing it.

The first is about the Peace Prize nonsense, from Digby:

Sure, of course. Makes perfect sense:

The campaign to award a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize to the current president — regularly criticized for delivering personal attacks on Twitter — is heating up, following news of this week’s historic summit between North and South Korea that could mark the first step toward denuclearizing the peninsula.

Thanks to the tentative progress being made on the Korean peninsula, at least one British bookie has predicted that Trump has favorable odds of winning a Nobel this year — and some of Trump’s top defenders are falling in line.

“After North Korea triumph Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not Obama,” declared a Fox News op-ed published on Friday.

Offhand, I can't think of a bigger travesty right now. "Peace through strength"? Excuse me? Is that what he's been doing?

And the cherry on top is everyone's favorite Fox News bully:

However, for those of us in the reality-based universe, Digby also posted this:

The only reason I bring this up is because Trump is saying that nobody ever did what he has done etc, etc as usual and well, it's wrong. There have been other talks and they may end up being seen as the precursors to some kind of rapprochement between the two countries. They did not deter North Korea from pursuing their nuclear weapons program and it's highly unlikely, considering the message America has sent to the world about the consequences of giving them up. (America will invade you and your leaders will be killed.)

Trump will strut around like a conquering hero and we'll all be forced to kiss his hem as the living God he is, but it won't make it true. If this happens it will be because there has been a very slow, long term thaw and a tremendous amount of pressure coming from all directions over the course of many years. Trump's tweets will not have been the reason.

The bulk of the post is a timeline of meetings in this century between leaders of the two Koreas, and summaries of the substance/results of those meeting.

But, this is Trump: he has a history of taking credit for other peoples' accomplishments. (See "Obama, Barack H.") And the idea that his policies, whatever they are (even he doesn't know from minute to minute) are going to bring about world peace is beyond ludicrous.

She's Baaack!

Well, Laura Ingraham has returned from her "vacation" and seems to have fallen into the standard right-wing "I know you are, but what am I?" shtick:

Laura Ingraham returned to her Fox News show Monday night after a week-long vacation amid a boycott by at least 20 top advertisers. And she returned fighting. The "Ingraham Angle" host painted those on the left as "intolerant," violent, "speech czars." And she told viewers that the boycott against her show, which was initiated by high school mass shooting survivor David Hogg in response to her mocking him, is "Stalinist."

. . .

In the 10-minute intro (video below) kicking off her return Ingraham wailed against what she called "The Left's Plot to Silence Conservatives."

"Many of you have become accustomed to editing yourselves, let's face it. Expressing views that just five or 10 years ago were considered mainstream can now get you fired. It can cause to you lose a promotion, or you could be branded a hater, or, yes, you can get boycotted," she complained.

It's always a "plot", which, coming from a wing of American politics that is tightly organized, has its fingers in every area of public discourse (including, and especially, broadcast media), and has long-term strategies for establishing a "permanent majority", is somewhere beyond ironic.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. The gist of her diatribe is that she's angry because society is changing, what was once normal is no longer socially acceptable, and "conservatives", like everyone else, have to face consequences for their words and actions.

Go ahead and read the whole thing -- and if you have the stomach for it:

Be warned: it's ten minutes of Ingraham off the rails. And the comments at YouTube have all got to be from Russian bots. They have to be.

Hypocrite du Jour

I could make this a regular department -- there are so many possible subjects, but today's hypocrite, d/b/a Franklin Graham, seems to have made an extra effort to hit the news:

“Reverend, you just told me that this country has a sin problem and I know you’ve no doubt heard that the president is accused of having his lawyer pay $130,000 to a former porn star allegedly for her silence about his sexual encounter while he’s married,” Witt said. “The previous allegations as well, that access “Access Hollywood” tape, does that challenge your faith in the president?”

“Does the president have a sin problem?” Witt asked.

“I can promise you he is not President Perfect,” Graham replied.

His rationale is jaw-dropping:

"Well first of all, President Trump I don’t think has admitted to having an affair with this person and so, this is just a news story, I don’t know if it’s accurate,” Graham deflected.

Just try to imagine what Graham would be saying if Trump were a Democrat. I guess if you're a prominent evangelical "Christian," moral standards are negotiable.

For those with strong stomachs, or who just want to watch Graham dodging and weaving, here's the video:

Today's Must-Read: Double-Barrel

A pair of posts from Hullabaloo on the NRA and how it's weaseled its way into the core of the conservative movement. The first is from Digby, focusing on this NYT OpEd from Charlie Sykes, whom she characterizes as a "right-wing apostate":

For years, Republicans have effectively outsourced their thought leadership to the loudmouths at the end of the bar. But perhaps the most extreme example of that trend has been the issue of guns, where the party has ceded control to a gun lobby that has built its brand on absolutism.

And now, again, we are about to see the consequences of that abdication. Congress did nothing in the wake of the mass murder of children at Sandy Hook, and except for a largely symbolic ban on bump stocks, it’s likely that nothing meaningful will happen in the aftermath of the shootings in Las Vegas. Instead, Republicans will round up all the usual clichés and excuses for inaction.

We’ve seen this before, and it is a script written by the National Rifle Association. The N.R.A.’s blessing of restrictions on bump stocks — devices that make semiautomatic weapons fire faster — is designed to pre-empt anything more serious by giving the illusion of action. It substitutes accessory control for actual gun control.

He goes on to relate his experiences in Wisconsin, when concealed carry was set to pass, with appropriate training and licensing requirements -- the NRA thought that was too restrictive.

And it's not just guns:

Last fall, the N.R.A. started its own television news outlet, known as NRATV. As Adam Winkler, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and the author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” notes, NRATV does not focus merely on guns. “Now it’s focused on immigration, race, health care,” he told The New Republic. “We’re seeing the N.R.A. become an extreme right-wing media outlet, not just a protector of guns.”

It’s actually more than that. The N.R.A. has effectively turned itself into the Id of the right. Despite the largely symbolic ban on bump stocks, the result is paralysis, both political and moral.

And as if that weren't bad enough, Tom Sullivan details how the gun lobby controls the discussion. This, from David Frum, is especially noteworthy:

The deadliest mass shooting in American history has restarted the long debate whether something can be done to impede these recurring slaughters. That debate is conducted pursuant to rigid rules. . . .

Rule 3. The debate must always honor the “responsible gun owners” who buy weapons for reasonable self-defense. Under Rule 1, these responsible persons are presumed to constitute the great majority of gun owners. It’s out of bounds to ask for some proof of this claimed responsibility, some form of training for example. It’s far out of bounds to propose measures that might impinge on owners: the alcohol or drug tests for example that are so often recommended for food stamp recipients or teen drivers.

Rule 4. Gun ownership is always to be discussed as a rational choice motivated by reasonable concerns for personal safety. No matter how blatantly gun advocates appeal to fears and fantasies—Sean Hannity musing aloud on national TV about how he with a gun in his hands could have saved the day in Las Vegas if only he had been there—nobody other than a lefty blogger may notice that this debate is about race and sex, not personal security. It’s out of bounds to observe that “Chicago” is shorthand for “we only have gun crime because of black people” or how often “I want to protect my family” is code for “I need to prove to my girlfriend who’s really boss.”

He goes on to note Josh Marshall's argument that the unlimited ability to "collect" as many guns -- and ancillaries -- as one wants is itself a public health hazard, finishing with a story of his own:

Stories go around the business community I work in about a colorful character we might loosely describe as a "gun nut." I won't name him, but he's known by a nickname straight out of "The Dukes of Hazard." In one of the stories, he shoots himself in the leg while practicing his fast-draw. In another, his house catches fire. But his basement was crammed full of gunpowder. By the time firemen arrived, canisters of the stuff were exploding and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were "cooking off." The fire department backed away to a safe distance and let it burn.

Other than that, one of the NRA's responsible gun owners, not violent, and just the kind of guy you'd want living next door to your house with a basement no one knows is filled with explosives.

For the love of pete, you can't legally drive in any state in this country without passing a whole battery of tests and getting a license. But the NRA wants to eliminate all requirements for carrying an AR-15 around?

Trump vs. the NFL

And also the NBA. There are stories on this all over the place, so I don't need to link to them, but Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof has nailed it, I think:

I suppose if a dictator was threatening to blow up the West Coast, Congress was about to humiliate your plans to stomp on the legacy of your hated predecessor once again, three hurricanes in a row had devastated whole cities and wiped out the infrastructure and crops of a territory, and a special counsel was about to issue indictments for a former White House official, you’d be desperately looking for something to distract the attention of the media and start a Twitter storm.

He also links to a couple of articles that pretty much summarize the whys and wherefors, such as this report from NYT:

On three teams, nearly all the football players skipped the national anthem altogether. Dozens of others, from London to Los Angeles, knelt or locked arms on the sidelines, joined by several team owners in a league normally friendly to President Trump. Some of the sport’s biggest stars joined the kind of demonstration they have steadfastly avoided.

It was an unusual, sweeping wave of protest and defiance on the sidelines of the country’s most popular game, generated by Mr. Trump’s stream of calls to fire players who have declined to stand for the national anthem in order to raise awareness of police brutality and racial injustice.

What had been a modest round of anthem demonstrations this season led by a handful of African-American players mushroomed and morphed into a nationwide, diverse rebuke to Mr. Trump, with even some of his staunchest supporters in the N.F.L., including several owners, joining in or condemning Mr. Trump for divisiveness.

Julius Thomas, a Miami Dolphins tight end who had previously stood for the anthem, knelt for it on Sunday with several players.

“To have the president trying to intimidate people — I wanted to send a message that I don’t condone that,” Thomas said, echoing the opinion of most N.F.L. players. “I’m not O.K. with somebody trying to prevent someone from standing up for what they think is important.”

Of course, it's not about race -- says the White House:

The White House legislative affairs director has insisted President Donald Trump does not see the issue of NFL players kneeling to protest police brutality towards African Americans “through a racial lens.”

On the other hand:

Every day, and in countless and unexpected ways, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, finds new ways to divide and demoralize his country and undermine the national interest. On Tuesday, he ranted from the lectern of the U.N. General Assembly about “Rocket Man” and the possibility of levelling North Korea. Now he has followed with an equally unhinged domestic performance at a rally, on Friday evening, in Huntsville, Alabama, where he set out to make African-American athletes the focus of national contempt.

In the midst of an eighty-minute speech intended to heighten the reëlection prospects of Senator Luther Johnson Strange III, Trump turned his attention to N.F.L. players, including the former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and asked a mainly white crowd if “people like yourselves” agreed with his anger at “those people,” players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest racism. . . .

“People like yourselves.” “Those people.” “Son of a bitch.” This was the same sort of racial signalling that followed the Fascist and white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is no longer a matter of “dog whistling.” This is a form of racial demagoguery broadcast at the volume of a klaxon. There is no need for Steve Bannon’s behind-the-scenes scriptwriting. Trump, who is desperate to distract his base from his myriad failures of policy, from health care to immigration, is perfectly capable of devising his racist rhetoric all on his own.

(Via BarkBarkWoofWoof.)

He's right -- it's way beyond dog whistles.

By the way -- it looks like he really has taken on the entire NFL (via Joe.My.God.):

All but two of the NFL’s 32 team owners and CEOs issued statements Saturday night and through Sunday in response to Trump’s crusade against protesting NFL players, which began in earnest during a rally Friday night in Alabama. After making a thinly veiled allusion to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate by taking a knee before August 2016 preseason games to protest police violence against minorities, Trump called on NFL coaches to get the “son of a bitch” players off the field if they continued to kneel. The president repeated his call with no less intensity on Twitter on Saturday and Sunday morning.

And just in case you've forgotten what a caring, compassionate sort of guy Trump is:

Speaking to supporters in Alabama on Friday night, he decried Kaepernick and later assailed rules meant to improve player safety, saying they hurt the game’s entertainment value and pointing to declining television ratings for NFL games.

What's a little brain damage if people are entertained, right?

Today's Must-Read: Understanding Fly-Over Country

This, from RawStory, points out, I think, a basic flaw in all the analyses of Trump's base -- and the Republican base in general:

As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is still being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: “Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”

Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out.

One aspect of this that the author points out is that, unless you are one of them, they're not going to listen to anything you say that disputes what they already believe. There is a deep distrust of "outsiders" at play here -- I've run into samples of it while visiting family in the North Carolina hills: if you're not in some way connected, you're suspect.

It's longish, but it's worth reading in full.

Today's Must-Read: A Case Study

The case study, in this instance, is the press and its coverage of politics.

Paul Krugman leads into this by disassembling Paul Ryan very neatly in this column:

Many people are horrified, and rightly so, by what passes for leadership in today’s Washington. And it’s important to keep the horror of our political situation up front, to keep highlighting the lies, the cruelty, the bad judgment. We must never normalize the state we’re in.

At the same time, however, we should be asking ourselves how the people running our government came to wield such power. How, in particular, did a man whose fraudulence, lack of concern for those he claims to care about and lack of policy coherence should have been obvious to everyone nonetheless manage to win over so many gullible souls?

No, this isn’t a column about whatshisname, the guy on Twitter, who’s getting plenty of attention. It’s about Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House.

I’m writing this column without knowing the legislative fate of the American Health Care Act, Mr. Ryan’s proposed Obamacare replacement. Whatever happens in the House and the Senate, however, there’s no question that the A.H.C.A. is one of the worst bills ever presented to Congress.

And if you're asking yourself how such an empty suit got to be Speaker of the House, Krugman has an answer:

You see, until very recently both news coverage and political punditry were dominated by the convention of “balance.” This meant, in particular, that when it came to policy debates one was always supposed to present both sides as having equally well-founded arguments. And this in turn meant that it was necessary to point to serious, honest, knowledgeable proponents of conservative positions.

Enter Mr. Ryan, who isn’t actually a serious, honest policy expert, but plays one on TV. He rolls up his sleeves! He uses PowerPoint! He must be the real deal! So that became the media’s narrative. And media adulation, more than anything else, propelled him to his current position.

It's fairly short. Read it.

Via RawStory.

President Bannon Lays Out His Agenda

C'mon -- we all know who's running the White House. This report on Bannon's speech at CPAC is, for some, an eye-opener, I'm sure:

Steve Bannon — President Trump’s chief White House advisor — just made a very revealing statement while addressing right-wing activists.

The overall theme of Bannon’s speech was “deconstruction of the administrative state,” when taking into account the policies he is pursuing. He also told the audience that Trump’s cabinet appointees “were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.”

Bannon’s remarks help give context to President Trump appointing ideological enemies of certain federal agencies to then lead those same agencies. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was recently confirmed as EPA administrator despite suing the EPA 14 times over environmental regulations, usually on behalf of oil companies. On his own LinkedIn, Pruitt describes himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

The statement also explains why Trump appointed former Goldman Sachs executives Steve Mnuchin to head the U.S. Treasury and Jay Clayton to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mnuchin is an avowed opponent of financial regulations, and pledged to repeal them as Treasury chief. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has called for the defunding of public housing, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who now heads the Department of Energy, couldn’t even remember its name while calling it for it to be abolished during a presidential debate.

Betsy DeVos was appointed Secretary of Education without having any experience in public schools, and stating that she wanted to force public schools to teach Christian dogma. Even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is purging the State Department of longtime staff, including senior-level officials, suggesting American foreign policy may soon take a “deconstruction” approach.

This should really come as no surprise -- Bannon has described himself as a avowed Leninist who wants to do away with the government, and he has the perfect puppet in Trump, who will go along with it as long as he's free to fill his pockets and watch TV. And being, as they are, sociopaths with no concern for anyone but themselves, they don't care about the consequences for the rest of us.

Via commenter David L. Caster at Joe.My.God., in the comment thread on a story about AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessons III reversing DOJ's move toward eliminating private prisons, which itself is worth a read.

Today's Must-Read: The Slide Toward Autocracy: A Checklist

Via Digby, this list from Amy Siskind of "Trump atrocities" of the week.

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you'll remember. Here's my list for week 9[.]

Digby just shows this week's list, but has links to the previous eight.

I found this one possibly the most worrisome:

35. Human Rights Watch issued it's annual report of threats to human rights around the world. For the first time in 27 years, the US is listed as a top threat because of the rise of Trump.

Here's Human Rights Watch's article on the 2017 World Report. Just one salient section:

Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

“The rise of populism poses a profound threat to human rights,” Roth said. “Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and nativism. They all claim that the public accepts violations of human rights as supposedly necessary to secure jobs, avoid cultural change, or prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, disregard for human rights offers the likeliest route to tyranny.”

Roth cited Trump’s presidential campaign in the US as a vivid illustration of the politics of intolerance. He said that Trump responded to those discontented with their economic situation and an increasingly multicultural society with rhetoric that rejected basic principles of dignity and equality. His campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture. Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.

I'm wondering again whether New Zealand is far enough away.

A Thought (Updated, and Again)

(A Note: I may be adding links to this as the day goes on, when I find stories that illustrate some of my points.)

This spins off of a comment I left at this post at AmericaBlog, which concerns itself with how James Comey -- working against DoJ and FBI policy and quite possibly in violation of the Hatch Act -- announced "new evidence" in FBI's investigation of Clinton's State Department e-mails and how the FBI is building on it that leak. Aravosis has done a Facebook Live session on it in which he's done a good job of pulling together all threads of the various FBI leaks over the past week and going back to Comey's press conference in July when he announced the results of the e-mail investigation (which itself caused some raised eyebrows, especially considering how he went out of his way to indict Clinton without being able to call for an indictment). You'll have to watch that at the post, since I can't embed Facebook videos. You can skip the first couple of minutes, when he's fiddling with the camera, but it is worth watching.

Here's the comment that sparked my larger thought, and my response:

crazymonkeylady • 5 hours ago

Even if Donald Trump Doesn't win, he has scarred elections for years. And Comey has undermined the trust we have in the FBI for the future. Who do we have left to trust? Nobody.

rmthunter -- crazymonkeylady • 37 minutes ago

This is just another step in what I see as the Republicans' long-term effort to undermine the American system -- shutting down the government when they don't get a budget that guts the safety net, questioning the integrity of the courts when there's a decision they don't like, refusing to fill a Supreme Court vacancy until they can make it a blatant political appointment, using their power of "government oversight" to instigate political witch-hunts against their opponents, and now undermining our trust in not only our electoral system, over and above voter suppression, but also in our federal law enforcement agencies.

After all, a healthy democracy and an oligarchy are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Think back to the Clinton years and the investigations that led to his impeachment. Can you say "fishing expedition"? And shutting down the government when the Republican budget -- no deficit, no revenues -- failed to pass. (That bit them in the ass, happily.) Stonewalling Obama on everything -- it's a good thing the ACA passed when it did, and a good thing the Democrats in Congress took the reins on DADT repeal. Fast forward to the "investigations" of Benghazi!!1! (ten so far?) and E-Mails!!! (which some Republican senator, I've forgotten which one, was dumb enough to admit was purely political against Hillary Clinton).

And how about the reaction to Obergefell? And now, refusing to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Not stalling, not holding interminable hearings, just flat-out refusing until a Republican president can make the appointment. We don't even have the pretense of compromise any more.

I don't think this is random. The pattern is too clear, and while I don't think it's the result of any grand strategy (sorry, I don't do tinfoil hats, and the Republicans aren't that together), it's the inevitable playing out of a trend, with each new player ready and more than willing to build on what's gone before. The Republicans' goal is quite clear, and they've been quite open about it: a permanent majority, by whatever means necessary. (They can't do it by honest elections, because what policies they do have most Americans find distressing, at best. In spite of what the press has been telling us, the only way we've moved to the right in this country is by measure of which wingnuts get elected, and that, more often than not, is not the result of honest elections -- not after all the gerrymandering and voter ID laws and dangling chads.)

I'm a great believer in the processes of history, which itself is a series of reactions. I think right now we're seeing the tail end of the reaction to the liberalism of the 1960s and early '70s -- conservatism has gotten too radical for most Americans to tolerate, and the advent of Trump - and something like Trump was inevitable -- painting the picture in somewhat garish colors is starting to turn people off. My basic optimism says the pendulum will start to swing back.

But, a thought experiment: Way back, when Bill Clinton right after assuming office took the first steps toward open military service for gays and lesbians, the reaction was swift and violent. What you don't hear about these days is that it was a group of generals who went flying to Congressional Republicans to put a stop to it. Now, given that it's at least as likely that there is a group of mid-level officers at the Pentagon who are as unhappy with the left as that group of disgruntled agents at the FBI, transpose that little rebellion to the armed forces.

If that doesn't set you tossing and turning in your sleep, nothing will.

Footnote: When I said "By any means necessary" I meant it. Check out this from Joe.My.God. and think who has the Russian connections.


Update: Just ran across this from the Guardian, which throws some light on the chaos at the FBI:

Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.

Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.

“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

Add this Update, from Rachel Maddow:

This week, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that there has been, I guess you’d call it, like, a breakout? There’s been a breakout from this otherwise insular little Breitbart.com corner of conservative media and political activism.

Those two papers reported that apparently there are Breitbart.com fans, there are Breitbart.com true believers, there are people who buy this stuff who are working inside the New York field office of the FBI.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal were first to report that the New York field office of the FBI used that anti-Hillary Clinton book, and the DVD of the same name, from the Breitbart.com guys, from the Breitbart.com editor and his boss who’s now the head of the Donald Trump campaign, the one funded by Donald Trump’s biggest donor, right? They actually used that Breitbart.com, anti-Hillary Clinton book as their source for launching a local FBI inquiry into Hillary Clinton. That was their evidence. That was their research.

And let's not forget this (via Joe.My.God.):

There is no denying that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has become one of the most significant surrogates of this campaign cycle.

Mr. Mayor has been going to bat for his longtime pal Donald Trump in just about every conceivable media arena, and recently seemed to slip in a bit of surprising information to Martha MacCallum of Fox News. At the conclusion of an interview on October 26 about the presidential election, Giuliani (while speaking about FBI Director Jim Comey) said, “I think he’s got a surprise or two you’re going to hear about in the next two days. I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.” When MacCallum prompted the Mayor for follow-up, he coyly continued, “You’ll see.”

Don Lemon reported it on his show. Video at the link.

Maybe I'd better rethink this whole "no grand conspiracy" thing.

The Truth Slips Outt

Once again, the Hairpiece tells it like it is. Speaking in Colorado -- of course, it was about how the election is going to be stolen from him by election workers destroying ballots they "don't like" -- he came up with this:

Later in his speech, Trump reiterated: "I don't love the concept of ballots."

Now, we already know he doesn't like elections:

Donald Trump suggested today that the election should be canceled and called for him.

Speaking in Ohio, the Republican presidential nominee questioned why the election was even being held, saying that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's policies are "so bad."

"In just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?" he said. "Why are we even having it for? What are we having it for? Her policies are so bad. Boy, do we have a big difference."

Trump is not an outlier among Republicans: they've been trying to de-legitimize our whole system for years, with attacks on the courts, putting fundamental rights up to popular vote, chipping away at women's rights, voting rights, and now marriage rights, to the extent that Trump's statements are the logical next step.

And the scary thing is, a significant number of his supporters are on board with that.

Today in Trump's America: The Kaepernick Reaction

So now it's worked its way down to high-school football games:

The announcer of the Friday night football game at McKenzie High School in Alabama's Butler County had something to say to those who may choose not to stand for the national anthem.

"If you don't want to stand for the national anthem, you can line up over there by the fence and let our military personnel take a few shots at you since they're taking shots for you," the announcer said at the game versus Houston County High School, according to Facebook poster Denise Crowley-Whitfield.

Crowley-Whitfield said the crowd went "crazy cheering" following the speech.

The announcer was identified as Pastor Allen Joyner, of Sweet Home Baptist Church in McKenzie, according to Joyner's relatives and friends, who also posted to Facebook and praised the statement.

I'd like to say, "Well, it's Alabama," but that's too easy. (Of course, considering Alabama's history with minorities of all kinds over the past -- 240 years? -- it makes sense that something like this would happen there.)

Strangely enough, all those Facebook posts praising this asshole got deleted pretty quickly. Maybe because of reactions like this:

Mark Bender, a 22 year Air Force veteran from Texas, spoke out against Joyner in a post on the Sweet Home Alabama Baptist Church's Facebook page, calling the pastor's words "abhorrent and disgusting."

He said he is "deeply offended and saddened" by Joyner's "hateful rhetoric.

"We fight so that all Americans retain their rights and freedoms to protest," Bender wrote. "I would never turn a weapon on my own countryman simply because they protest by remaining seated during the national anthem, by refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance, refusing to stand or pledge during any act. These things we do, these pledges, these songs, these are not compulsory acts. They are acts that we are all free to join or not.

"I am proud that we have that freedom whether or not I agree with someone's non-violent protest," he continued. "You, on the other hand are promoting extremist violence by way of state sanctioned executions. You are obviously standing for the compulsory actions by way of preaching hatred, jingoism, American exceptionalism -- all because people do not believe or think as you do. I am grateful that the majority of Americans do not thirst for their brother's blood as you do. You are a disgrace, those who agree with you are a disgrace, and you are a black mark upon this great nation. You should certainly hang your heads in shame."

Maybe they stopped and thought about it? Enough to think that maybe something like this might be, just a wee bit, socially unacceptable?

And this is priceless: the church of which he is pastor claimed that not only were this jerk's comments taken out of context, but he was misquoted as well. A twofer.

Oh, and they deleted that comment within an hour.

Another Demagogue -- with an M.D.

Just what we needed:

Tech site Gizmodo, which notes, "wi-fi has not been shown to harm humans in any way," on Monday posted this transcript:

Person from crowd: My school district is rapidly moving towards one-to-one computers. Can you speak to the health issues? [inaudible with clapping]

Jill Stein: Wonderful, health issues... social issues... you name it. But to be staring at screens... we already know that kids who get put in front of TVs instead of interacting, this is not good in all kinds of ways. And it’s just not good for their cognitive, it’s not good for their social development, I mean, that is incredible that kids in kindergarten... We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education, not moving into them. 

And this is another corporate ruse. This is another gimmick to try to make a buck. To make big bucks in fact. And education, and teachers, and communities suffer. So we need to stand up to that.

Person from crowd: What about the wireless?

Jill Stein: We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless—maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.

OK -- we do know that it's not good for kids' social development to park them in front of the TV. To go from there to "it's harmful to their brains to expose them to WiFi" is quite a leap.

The answer is not to get rid of computers (as if that were possible at this point). The answer is, Talk to your kids. Interact. Send them out to play with their friends.

It's hard to know whether this woman is an idiot or just pandering in the hope of -- what? She's sure not a viable candidate for President. (And all you pouting Sanders supporters, are you listening? This is better than Hillary Clinton?)