Category: Neo-Facism

DeSantis Dickitude

The Daily Escape:

Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef NP – September 2022 photo by Mary Warner

Pretty sure everyone saw the news about planes landing on Martha’s Vineyard full of Venezuelan immigrants. From the NYT:

“The migrant group, which included children, arrived on two planes around 3 p.m. without any warning, said State Senator Julian Cyr, a Massachusetts Democrat representing Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Officials and volunteers from the island’s six towns “really moved heaven and earth to essentially set up the response that we would do in the event of a hurricane,”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) took credit for sending the planes with migrants. This is frat-boy behavior from a dick Republican governor. Not to be outdone in showing his big dickitude, Texas governor Greg Abbott (R) sent two busloads of migrants to the home of VP Kamala Harris in Washington DC.

DeSantis isn’t the first to do this. The JFK Library twitter account reminds us that in 1962:

“To embarrass Northern liberals and humiliate Black people, southern White Citizens Councils started their so-called “Reverse Freedom Rides,” giving Black people one-way tickets to northern cities with false promises of jobs, housing, and better lives.”

Maybe DeSantis and Abbott should have read a few history books before deciding to ban books.

DeSantis knows that Florida is home to 60% of the Cubans living in the US. These immigrants fled to the US to escape poverty, violence, and a Communist dictatorship. Many didn’t follow immigration laws at the time. More still try to reach Florida every week. Is DeSantis saying that he doesn’t want Venezuelan migrants but sure, more Cuban migrants are ok?

MA State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, whose district includes Martha’s Vineyard, tweeted: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The Governor of one of the biggest states in the nation has been spending time hatching a secret plot to round up & ship people—children, families-lying to them about where [they’re] going just to gain cheap political points on Tucker [Carlson] and MAGA twitter….These immigrants were not met with chaos, they were met with compassion. We are a community & nation that is stronger because of immigrants.”

Another thing: Have these plane/bus operators committed crimes? Airlines usually file manifests about who is onboard and where they’re going. Why would they, most likely private/charter operators, agree to be part of a political stunt?

The companies that transported the migrants should be told that while Abbot or DeSantis can hire them, the transport companies also have legal obligations to their passengers. If the charter companies are MAGA and won’t comply, they could have their permission to operate revoked.

And one more thing: Why are people who may not qualify for asylum being sent to other parts of the US rather than being sent back to their country of origin? And by self-professed law-and-order type governors?

DeSantis says he’s a Christian, but he’s not clothing the naked or feeding the hungry. He’s doing the opposite: Driving them from his state, not because it’s required legally, but because he can use them to advance his political ambitions. He’s using vulnerable human beings for his personal advancement. That’s evil personified.

Are we now a country of political gotcha? Should Chicago and NYC send their gang bangers to Florida and Texas? What do any of these stunts solve? From Digby about DeSantis:

“…his despicably cruel, racist worldview has been embraced by conservative Christians [for] as long as I can remember. Certainly in the years after 9/11 it was on display everywhere you looked. Their view of Christianity is that Jesus loves white people like them, period. Everyone else can literally go to hell.”

There is nothing Christian or Conservative about what DeSantis did. The folks in Martha’s Vineyard, who welcomed the immigrants, were the ones who acted as Christians. DeSantis is surely aware of the passage in Matthew:

“Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me.”

The requirement of that passage is what a Christian church on Martha’s Vineyard did to help these migrants. All that DeSantis and his friends do is complain that they can’t have their preferred prayers said in public schools.

Christian nationalism as it is practiced today in the US is becoming the worst and most destructive heresies to afflict American Christians. More about this tomorrow.

This incident on Martha’s Vineyard is another reminder that a central conceit of Republican politics is that everyone is secretly as cruel as they are. And because of that, no one would be genuinely willing to help the people Republicans pack into planes and buses and ship off to liberal land.

They’re wrong.

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Corporate Money Is Flowing To Senate Republicans

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Housatonic River, New Milford CT – 2022 photo by Tony Vengrove

There are just 55 days left until the 2022 midterm elections, and Wrongo’s crystal ball remains cloudy. For example, take the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman leads Republican Mehmet Oz by 48.5% to 40.4% in the 535 average of polls as of September 8. Sounds like a big lead, no?

But the US Chamber of Commerce told Axios on Sept. 11 that it was donating $3 million to support Oz’s campaign. Who is the US Chamber? They are an industry group that represents virtually every major American corporation. From Judd Legum:

“Corporations — whether individually or through a trade organization like the Chamber — are prohibited from donating $3 million directly to Oz’s campaign. (Corporate PAC donations are capped at $5,000 per election.) So instead, the Chamber is routing the money through the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC set up by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell….The Senate Leadership Fund can raise unlimited funds from any source and spend them to boost Oz and other Republican candidates.”

In a statement, Chamber EVP Neil Bradley described Oz as “a pro-business champion” and said Fetterman “subscribes to a far-left, government-knows-best approach.”

So, America’s big corporations are against Fetterman. Sounds like a reason to be for him.

Legum takes a deep dive into where the US Chamber gets the millions it is donating to promote Oz’s candidacy: It comes from dues paid by member corporations. And which corporations are members? The Chamber keeps its membership list secret. More from Legum:

“We know, however, that virtually every major American corporation is a member of the Chamber. The Chamber’s board of directors includes representatives from FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb, Facebook, AT&T, United Airlines, Abbott, 3M, Microsoft, Deloitte, Fidelity, Chevron, Intuit, Xerox, Pfizer, Dow, AllState, Delta, and many others.”

And most member companies don’t have a board seat. Their donations are secret as well, but CVS disclosed that it paid $500,000 to the Chamber in 2021 and $325,000 to a related organization, the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. And CVS isn’t a board member! Imagine how much the really big guns paid.

A few major corporations aren’t members. Apple, for example, resigned its membership in 2009 in protest of the Chamber’s policy on climate change.

Sadly, corporations are not accountable (or even visible) in their support of the extreme policies of the GOP when they donate through vehicles like the US Chamber. We have to hope that as the Republican message gets ever more extreme, corporations will have a harder time continuing their support for this type of Citizens United chicanery.

This shows just how scummy our politics have become with the help of the Roberts Court and the Federalist Society. If it’s illegal to donate a certain amount directly to this person or organization, we simply create a PAC or a Super-PAC, and then donate huge sums directly to them.

If creating a PAC achieves this result, how is the individual limitation protecting democracy?

There’s an old joke about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion and taxes. If you know a lot about politics, your issue is campaign finance reform.

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that could determine which Party holds the majority in the Senate. While Fetterman has a lead, Pennsylvania is still a competitive state, with money pouring into its governor’s race as well. This $3 million from the Chamber could have a real impact on the outcome.

It’s important to understand that more than 40% of the Pennsylvania electorate seems to want what Oz is offering. That’s scary, and it speaks to something that many in the media don’t want to address. They’re actually scared to address what the Republican Party has become. It isn’t surprising because the media are both a large part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

And when Biden accurately calls out what the Republican Party has become, when he says that Republican behavior and beliefs are inimical to what America is supposed to be, the media says he’s being divisive.

Oz is an example of what happens when one Party creates an existential situation out of whole cloth. When it’s backed by their 30 years of increasing extremism, the existential threat to democracy is now real.

No, America’s corporations aren’t going to save you. Giving money and time to Democratic Senate candidates like Fetterman, or Georgia’s Warnock (up by 2%), or Arizona’s Kelly (up by 2%), or New Hampshire’s Hassan (up by 4%), or Ohio’s Ryan (up by 1%), or North Carolina’s Beasley (up by 1%) MIGHT save you.

Do what you can.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 11, 2022

It’s 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:

Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:

If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:

  • We’ve nearly lost our social cohesion
  • We aren’t dealing with income inequality
  • We’re seeing racism grow
  • We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:

“From Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn’t last long. The US today meets both conditions.”

MAGA asks the wrong question:

When you have no policies, this is what you get:

Let’s close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Here’s part of what Horch said:

“My responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasn’t even concrete. It was dust….I started to feel the presence of spirits…not very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible and…it was more than just the people that I was working with…it was energy left behind….One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didn’t know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter and…out of the building. I didn’t feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.”

And here’s Carpenter’s “Grand Central Station”:

 

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Saturday Soother – July 30, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Chatham, MA – July 2022 photo by Bob Amaral Photography

We are 100 days away from the midterms. That’s usually a blink of an eye in political time. But it can also be an eternity in politics under the right circumstances. And in this year of all years, nothing can be assumed. The Jan. 6 drip of negative information about Trump and his Republican henchmen, and the looming revolution that the judicial overturning of Roe has caused, might mean that anything is possible.

For more than a year, the news media have snowed us with their conventional wisdom about the mid-terms, insisting that the president’s Party will lose seats in Congress. But, Josh Marshall has thoughts about this (paywalled):

“New Georgia Senate poll out this morning from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Warnock 46%, Walker 43%….Meanwhile, three new congressional generic polls have come out over the last 24 hours, two of which give the Democrats a six point advantage and one of which gives a 4 point margin. One of those 6 point margins is actually a Republican Party poll.”

Given the Republican advantage in Red states, six points may not insure that the Dems hold Congress. But we clearly shouldn’t give up, because right now, the House isn’t a lost cause.

Positive polling momentum brings with it both the energy and hope that a political turnaround is possible, even in 3+ months. Momentum is a thing in sports. Players and coaches usually cite momentum as a reason for victory in close contests. Maybe we’re seeing Biden and the Democrats building some political momentum.

It’s also true that Republicans aren’t reading the national mood as well as they think they are.

Just hours after the Republicans worked with Dems to pass the Chips and Science Act (CHIPS) which includes $52 billion in subsidies for chipmakers building new foundries in the US, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a deal to revive big portions of the Build Back Better (BBB) bill.

Sen. Manchin (D-WVA) had walked away from negotiations with Schumer on a scaled-down BBB tax bill that could only pass via Reconciliation two weeks ago. Then Senate Minority Leader McConnell let his guard down, and allowed Republicans to vote for CHIPS, which was popular with Senate Republicans.

Apparently Schumer and Manchin waited until the CHIPS bill cleared the Senate before announcing agreement for an even more scaled-down BBB program now called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has both significant funding for climate and a minimum corporate tax. It too will need to be passed by reconciliation, since it will have zero Republican support.

Schumer’s move caused a McConnell meltdown. Under orders from Mitch, Republicans got revenge by voting against a procedural vote to advance a bill that would expand health care access for military veterans who became ill after being exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a near-legendary playing of McConnell by Schumer and Manchin. And it infuriated McConnell so much he took the bill to give medical care to dying veterans exposed to toxic burn pits hostage. It was a bill that Republicans had helped to pass overwhelmingly just a few weeks ago (it needed a technical fix). Blind sided veteran groups erupted in anger and indignation.

The GOP revealed itself to be, at least for now, incapable of making decisions that promote the common good. Their decision to turn against veterans was a grave miscalculation that will hopefully rouse a few million of the recalcitrant, alienated, apolitical 100 million Americans who typically decide not to vote in elections, to get straight to the polls.

This family-sized combo of a revival of the Biden agenda and angry Republicans making terrible choices on popular legislation may help the Dems in November.

Maybe a cosmic ray beam hit Washington and gave Schumer the Machiavellian cunning of a Republican and McConnell the guileless ways of a Democrat.

Had enough for this week? Wrongo certainly has. Let’s try to grab a few minutes and not think about the state of the world, or why Republicans insist on speaking like neo-Nazis. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

The drought in New England still has the upper hand. We have little need to cut our grass every week. We’re watering a few specimen plants, but since our water source is a well, we must be careful.

Time to grab a mug of cold brew (or iced tea) and find a seat under a tree. Now watch and listen to Yo-Yo Ma perform “In the Gale”, which was shot outdoors in late spring. It is from The Birdsong Project, a community dedicated to the protection of bird life.

This performance includes many wild birds accompanying the cello:

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Normalizing Violence Will End Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Bodie Island Lighthouse, Nags Head, NC – June 2022 photo by Jordan Hill Photography

America’s in a dark period, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can come out of it.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way say:

“The Republican Party…has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the US constitutional order. The United States isn’t headed toward Russian – or Hungarian-style autocracy…but something else: a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.”

They say we’re heading into a period of protracted instability. They aren’t saying we face a civil war. It’s more subtle: a future of intermittent armed conflict, something like “The Troubles” in Ireland.

You’ve probably seen the campaign ad by Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens, where he struts into a home after some camo-clad associates have broken in, saying their purpose is “RINO hunting”. After the team busts into the house, Greitens walks in through a cloud of smoke and says:

“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Hunting down one’s political enemies with guns hasn’t been the American way, but it sure is becoming so now. It’s only a matter of time before racial, sexuality and politically-based violence occurs at scale in America. The Brennan Center found that 17% of America’s local election officials have been threatened during the 2020 election cycle. There’s a growing domestic terror threat to civil servants.

But it was only two weeks ago that Republicans found it easy to have moral clarity when authorities arrested a man and charged him with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The suspect turned himself in before anything happened. However, Republicans were outraged and questioned why Biden and other Democrats did not condemn what happened.

Candidates say outrageous things all the time in the heat of the moment and lately, hitting below the belt is often rewarded. But that is a far cry from a call to hunt down your political enemies in order to “save the country.”

The GOP is normalizing violence, and it became clear after the Republican response to J6. From Robert Hubbell:

“The Republican National Committee described the events of January 6th as ‘legitimate political discourse.’ Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde said that video of the attack on the Capitol looked like ‘a normal tourist visit.’ Mike Pence, whom rioters wanted to hang, said on Monday that Democrats were using the January 6th hearings ‘to distract attention.’”

Republicans try pretending that they have no idea what’s happening (“I haven’t seen the ad, so I cannot comment”). But the right thing is to take the risk that someone will yell at them on Facebook and Twitter and condemn it by saying loud and clear, “This isn’t the way for a candidate to conduct himself.”

Unless Republicans change their act, the normalization of violence will move toward its logical conclusion — election officials and politicians will be wounded or killed by someone who believes that violence is a legitimate political tool.

GOP candidates are posting ads about killing us in our homes. The Texas state GOP party wrote a campaign platform calling for the repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and seceding from the US, while saying that gay people should get back in the closet. They passed a resolution declaring that Biden’s election was illegitimate.

This is the platform of the governing party of the nation’s second largest state, and no non-Texas Republican has complained.

Pundits keep saying that Democrats have no chance in the 2022 mid-terms because of Biden’s low approval ratings. Wrongo has repeatedly said that there are “persuadable” voters who can be reached before the Fall. Proof of that is in the 6-point increase in public support for indicting Trump since the start of the J6 hearings.

If pundits argue that Biden’s unpopularity will affect the 2022 races despite Biden’s absence from the ballot, they must also agree that other issues not on the ballot— the J6 conspiracy, the Supreme Court abortion decision, Texas secession, and yes inflation, will also affect the 2022 races.

The 2022 election (not the 2024) will determine our future. Will people vote this Fall based on the price of gas? Or the threat of a recession? Or, will they understand that there’s a real possibility that democracy as we know it in the US could vanish?

Democracy is what’s on the ballot in 2022. Inflation comes and goes. Recessions come and go. If we lose our democracy, it won’t be returning any time soon.

Americans understand democracy. They’ve fought and died for it. Dems can make voters see that democracy is on the ballot this year, while inflation and other issues sadly need to take a back seat.

Let’s not make the mistake of selling Americans short. Democracy is more important than our pocketbooks. People will vote for democracy.

The slogan should be “Vote Democratic And Save Democracy”.

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Judge Says Jan. 6 Was a “Seditious Conspiracy”

The Daily Escape:

Sandhill Cranes, Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, CO – February 2022 photo by Rick Dunnahoo

Most of us had few expectations that the organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection would face any legal consequences. Indeed, we’ve had almost zero confidence that the truth about what led up to that day would ever be known.

That just changed. Politico reported that:

“Joshua James, one of the 11 Oath Keepers militia affiliates indicted earlier this year on a charge of seditious conspiracy alongside the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, on Wednesday became the first person to plead guilty to the sedition-related charge in connection with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

James admitted that he tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power and that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes had a “plan” for accomplishing that disruption. The plea deal statement describes planning that occurred in November 2020 in the DC area and VA:

“On November 14 and 15, 2020, James met with Rhodes and others in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and at Caldwell’s Virginia farmhouse and learned about the start of their plans to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.”

The November planning meetings are important, because they suggest broader coordination with “others” at the Jan. 6 March. Perhaps the most interesting detail of the statement describes a plan to report to White House grounds and secure the perimeter:

“In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, Rhodes instructed James and other co-conspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter and use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard or other government actors who might be sent to remove President Trump as a result of the Presidential Election.”

This begs the question of who is suicidal enough to plan to meet as an armed group at the White House grounds, unless they believed they were invited there and cleared for entry by Trump. Absent that, they should have expected to be arrested or shot on sight.

We’re looking at a plea of seditious conspiracy. From the WaPo:

“Federal law defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

This means we can now legally describe Jan. 6 as a conspiracy to commit sedition. For those among us who were wondering what Merrick Garland’s DOJ has been doing for the last year, it’s this: January 6 was officially a sedition, at least for Joshua James.

That says things are getting very interesting, particularly when we add to it this from the WaPo:

“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.”

In a court filing in a civil case in California, the Committee’s lawyers said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman, and others could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people by illegally obstructing the counting of Electoral College ballots.

The Committee made the statement in a court filing to force Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, to turn over documents to the Committee. Eastman is the attorney who advised Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could reject the electoral ballots.

The Committee also released an email written in the middle of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, to Eastman from Greg Jacob, a Pence advisor:

When you read the email above, don’t gloss over this sentence: “I share your concerns about what the Democrats will do once in power.” That shows he is a hard-right partisan. But he closes with the big point:

“…thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege”.

Short-term, despite the way the media is breathlessly talking about the Select Committee’s court filing, the Joshua James guilty plea is more interesting.

He connects the dots with the Oath Keepers’ leader, Stewart Rhodes. James was also in contact with Roger Stone, which begs the question of what Stone knew about their plans, or more troublingly, what Stone might have directed them to do.

Let’s not get too excited, but it seems that it’s now remotely possible that Trump, Roger Stone, and others will discover that in America, it’s true that no one is above the law.

Cook up some popcorn and watch the show.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 30, 2022

Well, this was predictable. NPR reported that China’s ambassador to the US warned that the US could face a possible “military conflict” with China over Taiwan:

“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the US, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict.”

It isn’t a coincidence that China raises the specter of war while the US is focused on a possible threat by Russia in Ukraine. This week, 39 Chinese military aircraft flew near Taiwan, including two of China’s most advanced warplanes, their J-16D jets. Military analysts think that the J-16D has capacity to interfere with Taiwan’s defense radar systems and could make a huge difference in combat.

This is more evidence of how strategically fraught America’s legacy global policies are in a multi-polar world. Russia is threatening NATO and our Western allies, while simultaneously, China threatens our strategic position in Asia. We haven’t fought a two-theater war in 77 years, and haven’t won a war since.

It’s ironic that neither Taiwan nor Ukraine are formal mutual defense treaty partners with the US, yet US defense hawks think we should defend either or both. On to cartoons.

Surviving is difficult when you live in the wild:

Some voices on the Right support Russia:

Breyer retires, but opinions differ on who owns the right to replace him:

There seems very little Republicans can do to stop Biden from filling this seat, since there’s no filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. That was taken away by Mitch McConnell, during the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Mitch looks for a loophole:

The never-ending Republican hissy fit:

Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “MAUS”, is a memoir about the Holocaust. It was banned last week by a school board in Tennessee. In the book, the cats are the Germans while the mice are the Jews:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 21, 2021

The Rittenhouse verdict is in. The jury has spoken, and in our system, regardless of who agrees or disagrees with it, it’s decided, and we move on.

Whether justice was done by a “not guilty on all counts” verdict is a question that can will never be fully answered, but he WAS found innocent, and there’s no appeal. That says more about us than it says about him. The problem isn’t our laws, either about gun ownership, or self-defense, although Wisconsin’s self-defense law could be better. Not so long ago, we had exactly the same laws and we lived in a (mostly) decent society that wasn’t armed to the teeth.

But we no longer live in that society now. We now live in an angry society where vigilantes are praised. The Republican Party has turned this little son of a bitch into a murderer and then, into their little pet hero.

Rittenhouse is a hero to the entire American Right Wing, which is represented politically by the Republican Party. Doubt that? Consider this tweet from Rep. Anthony Sabatini, Republican representing Florida’s 7th Congressional district:

On to cartoons. The Rittenhouse trial checked all  the boxes:

Wrongo heard a pundit on NPR say the Rittenhouse verdict was a win for Constitutional rights. Wrong! It had nothing to do with the Constitution:

Rep. Gosar’s murder tweet didn’t even register with the elephant:

The difference between the Parties:

Bannon plans to make his taking of the 5th Amendment a long slimy road:

2021’s Thanksgiving seating plan:

 

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Saturday Soother – February 27, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Boulder Beach, Acadia NP February 2021 photo via Scenes of Maine Photography

It’s Saturday, so we have a lightning round of news you can use. First, the Daily Beast reports:

“A pickup truck parked at the US Capitol and bearing a Three Percenter militia sticker on the day of the Jan. 6 riot belongs to the husband of freshman Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, who approvingly quoted Adolf Hitler a day earlier,”

The Three Percenters are a para-military group who wish to overthrow the US government. And before you ask, yes, Rep. Miller is a new Republican Congresscritter, who spoke at a pre-coup “Moms for America” rally in front of the Capitol the day before the riot. She said:

“Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future…”

This is Republicanism today. She later apologized for the remarks. Sure.

Second, a new poll on Covid vaccine skepticism shows that since last fall, it has come way down for Blacks and Hispanics. Skepticism remains high among white Republicans. Nearly 60% of White Republicans will either not take the vaccine or are unsure:

Source: Civiqs

One of the great challenges during the pandemic has been establishing public trust, particularly among racial minorities who have a long history of both exploitation and neglect by the medical establishment and the government.

The good news is that vaccine skepticism is falling substantially over the past few months. It now appears that the only barrier to achieving herd immunity is White Republicans.

Their skepticism about government involvement in health is part of a long trend among Republicans. In the 1960s, Reagan was against Medicare, and called any expansion “socialized medicine”. He refused to acknowledge the AIDS crisis. In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich blocked Clinton’s health care plan, although he was in favor of a similar program that was adopted by Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts.

The Romney plan was the template for Obamacare, which all Republicans opposed, including Newt Gingrich, who was for it before he was against it.

It isn’t just ideological resistance, it’s a bone-deep antipathy to any collective attempt to have high quality public health in America. Their antipathy toward health is beyond ideology, it’s pathology.

Finally, a few words about just how old and out of touch members of Congress have become. Demo Memo, a site Wrongo highly recommends, posted about the demographics of Congress. The bottom line is that the Baby-Boom generation dominates both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“According to an analysis of the 117th Congress by Pew Research Center, Boomers account for a 53% percent majority of the House and for an even larger 68% percent of the Senate…”

House: number (and percent) of members of the 117th Congress by generation

Millennials: 31 (7%)

Gen Xers: 144 (33%)

Boomers: 230 (53%)

Silent: 27 (6%)

Senate: number (and percent) of members of the 117th Congress by generation

Millennials: 1 (1%)

Gen Xers: 20 (20%)

Boomers: 68 (68%)

Silent: 11 (11%)

The ages of the 117th Congress range from 25.5 years to 87.7 years. The median age of the House is 58.9. The median age of the Senate is 64.8. That may explain why Sen. John Thune (R-SD), can reminisce about working for $6/hour in a restaurant in 1978, as part of his objection to a $15/hr. wage.

A $6/hr. wage in 1978, adjusted for inflation, would equal $24.07/hr. in 2021. A person making $24.07 an hour, working 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year would earn over $50,000 a year before taxes. And a person working the same hours and earning the proposed wage of $15/hr. would earn just over $31,200 a year before taxes.

A person working the same hours and earning the current national minimum wage of $7.25/hr. earns just over $15,080 a year, before taxes today.

Time to let go of the DC merry-go-round for a few minutes and enjoy a brief Saturday Soother. It’s going to rain in Connecticut today, helping to melt some of the snow remaining on the ground. So, settle back and watch this stunning video from “Playing for Change” who we’ve featured a few times in the past. Here, Peter Gabriel is singing his song “Biko”, that he wrote and performed in 1980.

It’s a tribute to the South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died while in police custody. More than 25 musicians from seven countries join Gabriel for this global rendition, including Beninese vocalist Angélique Kidjo, Silkroad’s Yo-Yo Ma, and bass legend Meshell Ndegeocello:

Lyric:

You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out a fire. Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.

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Monday Wake Up Call – Extremists in the Military Edition, February 22, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Lake Willoughby VT – February 2021 photo by John Rowe Photography

For decades, domestic extremists have flaunted their ties to the US military, seeking to attach themselves both to the military’s credibility, and their tactical skills.

The January attack on the US Capitol showed us that the ties between US military members and the extreme right are deeper and more pervasive than we thought. Among the Capitol crowd were many military emblems: Some waved Marine Corps flags, many wore military gear, or specific unit patches signifying their time in service.

The AP found that at least 21 active-duty US Army and law enforcement personnel were present at the riot. We know that about 207 people have been arrested so far. The Military Times reported that 32 of the participants in the US Capitol coup had previously served in the military. If you want to get a current reading on the attitudes of the military to the Capitol coup, read the 640 comments on the article. It’s chilling.

How big is the problem? Last year, the FBI told the Pentagon that it had opened criminal investigations that involved 143 current or former service members. Sixty-eight of those involved domestic extremism and the vast majority involved veterans, not active-duty troops. Importantly, the Defense Department has no central database for tracking the allegations or disciplinary actions related to extremism.

Also, military regulations allow service members to have extremist affiliations and use extremist rhetoric if a service member doesn’t act upon them. In fact, the Pentagon reported in 2020 that only 21 service members had been disciplined or discharged over the previous five years for extremist activities. It’s doubtful that reflects the true scope of the problem.

According to a Pentagon report delivered to Congress last October:

“Despite a low number of cases in absolute terms, individuals with extremist affiliations and military experience are a concern to US national security because of their proven ability to execute high-impact events….Access to service members with combat training and technical weapons expertise can also increase both the probability of success and the potency of planned violent attacks.”

Military leaders say tackling the problem is difficult because the Constitution protects freedom of speech, and the law prohibits criminalizing affiliations that are deemed fundamentally political in nature, rather than a threat to harm the public. New defense secretary, Gen. Lloyd Austin, vowed at his confirmation hearing in January to:

“…rid our ranks of racists and extremists, and to create a climate where everyone fit and willing has the opportunity to serve this country with dignity.”

And Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Feb. 3:

“Extremism has risen to a top priority as the new secretary called in the service secretaries and Joint Chiefs of Staff…directing them to conduct a 60-day stand-down for leaders to speak with troops about the problem….”

Monitoring the potential extremist activities of 1.3 million active-duty service members is challenging. It’s difficult to distinguish between the casual gestures of some troops and the real warning signs of potentially illegal extremist activity by others.

Another concern is that 35 US Capitol Police officers are being investigated for their actions during the Capitol riot, and six have been suspended. In addition, the NYT reports that at least 30 police from around the country took part in the rally before the Capitol riot. Many are being investigated, and three have been arrested on federal charges related to breaching the Capitol.

The military appears to be less politically representative of society, with a long-term downward trend in the number of officers identifying as Democrats. Instead, identification with the Republican Party has become the norm. The junior officer corps, apart from its female and minority members, appears to be overwhelmingly hard-right Republican. And military personnel have for the past decade been voting in greater percentages than the general population.

In many ways, the military and civilian police seem to have, as Samuel Huntington wrote in 1957, “the outlook of an estranged minority.”

Time to wake up America! We can’t bury our heads in the sand, hoping that the linkage between the military, our police, and groups like QAnon and the fringe of the GOP won’t grow stronger. We need to call out the problem whenever and wherever we see it.

To help you wake up, listen to the group Kiwi Jr.’s “Maid Marian’s Toast” from their brand-new album “Cooler Returns”:

Sample Lyric:

now you’ve got something we want

it’s the Twenties and you’ve got something we want

so you’ve made the decision to make the decision

now spare us all from these half-assed revisions

you’ve got something we’ve always wanted

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