The Blue Country Gazette is the successor to the Rim Country Gazette, reflecting our evolution to a nationwide political blog for readers who identify as "blue," liberals, progressives, and/or Democrats. Our mission is to provide distinctive coverage of issues during a time of extreme polarization in the U.S. We strive to provide side-stories and back-stories that provide additional insights and perspectives conventional coverage often doesn't include.
Here's a surprise: Republicans are already dedicating millions
in digital advertising to attacking President Joe Biden on everything
under the sun.
The GOP list of complaints is long; however, it’s not particularly pithy according to Politico. Biden
wants to spend too much on infrastructure, he wants to raise taxes,
he's the puppet of dark money forces, something about how he's
responsible for rising crime and gun violence even though it's
Republicans who are blocking gun reform. Here are a few others from
predictable detractors:
Ted Cruz claimed Biden was trying to pack the Supreme Court
with "radical leftist justices" after Biden ordered a commission to
study the courts.
The National Republican Congressional Committee bemoaned Biden halting construction of the border wall.
The Trump fundraising committee has been calling Biden a “washed-up, career politician who has no clue what he is doing.”
The everything-and-the-kitchen-sink barrage suggests
one of two things: Republicans are still desperately searching for the
magic spell that will affix imaginary horns to Biden in the minds of all
their voters; or it means that while no one particular Biden smear has
stuck, they have found microtargeted attacks that speak to certain
voters.
Democrats think it's the former, calling it a "spray and pray" approach to lowering Biden's 50-plus approval rating
before the midterms. And frankly, most strategists say there's nothing
ideal about not finding a single line of attack to hammer away at. The
bottom line is, attaching Biden's name to something simply doesn't mar
it.
“If you wanna stop legislation, you do not call it the ‘Biden
Voting Rights Bill’ because for the broader electorate he’s ... Joe
Biden,” said GOP digital strategist Eric Wilson.
One place Biden's name has anecdotally produced,
reports Politico, is in the arena of fundraising off the right. But
other than that, the GOP’s criticism is unusually diffuse.
In many ways, Republicans’ scattershot approach has freed up
the White House to simply continue playing offense rather than returning
fire on a multitude of issues that don't appear to be getting traction.
“We are laser focused on putting an end to the virus, on
improving the lives of Americans, and on getting our economy back up and
running,” Deputy Press Secretary Chris Meagher said.
In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, corporate America responded,
stopping corporate PAC donation to the 147 Republican lawmakers who
voted to block the results of the presidential election. It eventually
became clear that they were playing both-sides games and stopped giving to Democrats, too, after Republicans raised hell about it.
But many corporate PACs did cut back or zero out the funding they had
been giving to those Republicans, although nearly three dozen of them
have given at least $5,000 to those insurrectionist lawmakers. Then there's Toyota. The car company (with significant operations
in Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky, go figure) has given
$55,000 to 37 of the insurrectionist lawmakers so far this year. That
dwarfs the donations of the remaining corporate donations—it's more than
double what the number two company, Cubic Corp., has given this year.
That puts them in league with the likes of Koch Industries, telecom
giant AT&T, health insurer Cigna and tobacco company Reynolds
American for resuming donations to insurrectionists, but Toyota still
leads.
"We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress
solely based on their votes on the electoral certification," a Toyota
spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Axios Sunday. "Based on our
thorough review, we decided against giving to some members who, through
their statements and actions, undermine the legitimacy of our elections
and institutions." Except for like, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona.
According to "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander, Biggs was one of
the four behind plotting the insurrection.
"I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman
Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and then Congressman Andy Biggs,"
Alexander said a few days after the attack. "We four schemed up of
putting max pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we
couldn't lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans
who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside."
Toyota doubled down on that statement Monday, refusing to address the clear problems with their statement.
This is the same company that makes a big deal out of flying a rainbow flag
at their Plano, Texas, headquarters every June. The company that has
been the darling of progressives for its early introduction of the Prius
hybrid. They're supporting the same party that wants to disincentivize
the sale of those hybrids by slapping extra fees on their drivers to pay
for infrastructure.
Since Toyota refuses to see the error of its ways, maybe a decline in sales will make it clear to the Japanese automaker not to drive around with insurrectionists.
...buying a Toyota because the Japanese automaker gave $55,000 to 37 insurrectionist lawmakers.
A real loyal soldier, right up to the point where it looked like Trump's crew truly intended to topple government and he was going down with the ship when they failed.
In The Atlantic, journalist Jonathan Karl gives us a short look at Trump attorney general William Barr's last weeks in power
according to William Barr himself, who was kind enough to grace Karl
with a series of interviews out of the innate goodness of his heart. Oh,
and because Barr is now seen by many as the most thoroughly partisan
and corrupt attorney general in a generation, which is going to
seriously cut down on future speaking fees if he can't figure out how to
massage the record back into something vaguely defensible.
The actual news out of it is Not Damn Much, but this is a good
opportunity to revisit the First Rule Of News Consumption: Be aware of
the source. From the nation's top powerbrokers to man-on-the-street
interviewees, anyone talking to a reporter about their own doings is
going to tell that reporter the most flattering version of events they
think they can get away with. Many of the most important details about
what Trump and his core team did in their attempts to overturn a United
States election remain murky because those most in the know, like
ex-House Republican turned chief of staff Mark Meadows, are clamming up.
What we can learn from the Atlantic story is that according
to William Barr, William Barr is great. He's always the bravest and most
integrity-filled person in the room, doing the right things despite
pressure on all sides and so on and so forth. This isn't exactly news.
What might be news is that the put-upon Barr believes the time is right
to mete out a bit of punishment on everyone else.
Here's what we learn from Karl's interviews with Barr, then:
First, Barr wants you to know that Sen. Mitch McConnell is a gutless
coward. Barr is willing to recount several conversations with McConnell
in which McConnell, who in public spent most of the post-election period
dodging questions about Trump's increasingly outrageous and dangerous
claims claims, pleaded with Barr to be the one who contradicted Trump by
telling the world that Trump's election "fraud" claims were utter
bullshit.
McConnell told Barr in mid-November that Trump's hoaxes were
"damaging" to both the country and to the Republican Party—no guesses on
which of those was the more pressing concern, for Mitch—but Republicans
"cannot be frontally attacking [Trump] right now," because Mitch and
the others were trying to keep on Trump's good side for fear an open
declaration of Biden's victory would result in an angry Trump sabotaging
Republican election chances in the two Georgia Senate runoff races.
Barr was "in a better position to inject some reality" into Trump's
claims of election fraud.
Barr replied, according to Barr, that he was "going to do it at the
appropriate time." So here we have one slightly interesting tidbit,
then: Even in Barr's own accounting, he was urged to combat Trump's
"damaging" election hoaxes and could only muster up an assurance that he
would be getting right on that ... eventually. After it played out a
bit more. In Barr's account, he was bravely using the Department of
Justice to gather evidence of which claims might be true or might be
false; in the actual news stories of each day, the claims being peddled
by Trump's minions were brazenly fraudulent to begin with.
The second tidbit is that William Barr is, along with multiple other
people inside Trump's inner circle, perfectly willing to tell Karl that
after Barr eventually did publicly nix Trump's claims Trump became quite
batshit unhinged, when finally meeting Barr again. Trump had "the eyes
and mannerism of a madman," sez a source, which we can probably take to
mean "even more than usual," and Barr compared him to the madman
brigadier general of Dr. Strangelove.
"You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump," Trump is said to have
told Barr, which is a pretty dead-on example of a malignant narcissist
in the throes of a decompensating episode. You there, who have
asserted that reality is something other than what I have claimed it to
be? You must have been plotting against me all along.
Great, super. So again we have a situation in which everyone around
Trump was pretty damn certain he had gone off the rails, jumped the
trolley, sprung a brain-leak, and had become devoid of marbles but
nobody in government, from Secret Service on down, was willing to toss
him in a burlap sack, tie it shut, and declare that Mike Pence was
taking charge because the sitting president had developed a serious case
of bananapants.
The rest is not of note. Barr says Barr acted with integrity, despite
everyone else in Trump's orbit pressuring him to help topple the
national government. Barr says Mitch was a spineless weasel who wanted
someone else to save the country from potential violence so Mitch
wouldn't have to. Barr says Trump was an unhinged, raging monster but
Barr, having Integrity and stuff, was loyally willing to stay and then
two weeks later was forced to resign because of the same Integrity after
Trump continued to push the same hoaxes and the likely consequences of
those acts began to become more and more concrete.
How do we sum all this up, then, properly taking into account Barr's
actual record of assisting Trump in hiding evidence from Congress, in
fishing expeditions against Trump's prime political foe, in using the
resources of his office to help discredit American intelligence
officials and in assisting Trump's government-wide purge of inspector
generals, watchdogs, and other whistleblowers—all the petty corruptions
William Barr didn't see fit to highlight, in his own interpretation of
those last days? It appears that William Barr decided after Donald
Trump's loss that no matter what else William Barr was willing to do for
conservatism, he wasn't going to go to jail for Trump or get caught up
in actual crossfire if Trump succeeded in goading violent revolution.
Not so much "integrity," then, as a decision that he wasn't going to
go down with a sinking ship. Self-interest is the usual reason powerful
people recount their lives to waiting reporters, and Barr has more
damage control to do than most.
"What, me worry? I'll just change my tune when the going gets tough."
By taking control of elections and voter suppression, Republicans are destroying American democracy
he G7
meeting focused attention on many challenges facing the world, but it
did not address the most dangerous threat of them all, which is the
transformation of the Republican Party in the US into a fascist movement.
When Donald Trump
was in the White House there was much debate about whether or not he
could be called a fascist in the full sense of the word, and not merely
as a political insult. His presidency showed many of the characteristics
of a fascist dictatorship, except the crucial one of automatic
re-election.
But Trump or Trump-like leaders may not have to face
this democratic impediment in future. It was only this year that the
final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they
replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and
1930s.
Two strategies, though never entirely absent from
Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their
approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence
against their opponents, something that became notorious during the
invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters on 6 January.
The other change among Republicans is much less
commented on, but is more sinister and significant. This is the
systematic Republican takeover of the electoral machinery that oversees
elections and makes sure that they are fair. Minor officials in charge
of them have suddenly become vital to the future of American democracy.
Remember that it was only the refusal of these functionaries to cave in
to Trump’s threats and blandishments that stopped him stealing the
presidential election last November.
Many of them will be unable to perform the same duty
in future elections. The Republican Party across the country is
replacing or intimidating them so they are giving up their jobs or are
being forced from their posts. In Pennsylvania, a state which played a
crucial role in Trump’s defeat, a third of county election officials
have changed as have numerous others in swing states like Michigan and
Wisconsin. Their places are frequently being taken by conspiracy theory
zealots who will have the power to nullify election results that are not
to their liking. A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that
one in three local election officials say that they are being subjected
to harassment and other pressures.
Speeding up this exodus are Republican state
legislatures that have passed laws mandating heavy fines – $10,000 in
Iowa, $25,000 in Florida – for election supervisors who make minor
technical mistakes. Republican officials who refused to say that Trump
won the election are being removed by their party. The Republicans
should be able to do in 2022 and 2024 what they failed to do in 2020,
which is to nullify election results at will so the true outcome of a
poll can be ignored. Put simply, the will of the people will no longer
count for anything.
Authoritarian regimes across the world have found that
it is much easier and more certain to announce the election result they
would like than to go to all the trouble of suppressing votes and
gerrymandering constituencies. Once control of the electoral machinery
is obtained then democracy poses no threat to those in power. Fascist
leaders may use democratic processes to obtain office, but once there,
their instinct is to pull up the ladder and let nobody else climb up it.
Nullification of elections is only the latest step in
the Republican Party’s strange voyage towards becoming a genuine fascist
party. Other steps have a much longer history, notably the moment half a
century ago when President Nixon adopted his “Southern Strategy”
whereby the Republicans capitalised on the Civil Rights acts to make a
political takeover of the American South. The old slave states became
the strongholds of the Republican Party which had once freed the slaves
and defeated the Confederacy.
It is worth listing the chief characteristics of
fascist movements in order to assess how far they are now shared by the
Republicans. Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is
probably the most universal feature of fascism. Others include a
demagogic leader with a cult of personality who makes messianic but
vague promises to deliver a golden future; appeals to law-and-order but a
practical contempt for legality; the use, manipulation and ultimate
marginalisation of democratic procedures; a willingness to use physical
force; demonising the educated elite – and the media in particular;
shady relations with plutocrats seeking profit from regime change.
One by one these boxes have been ticked by the
Republicans until the list is complete. The Tea Party movement was an
important staging post on the road to Trumpism. Trump himself possesses
all the classic features of a fascist leader, though he was somewhat
hemmed in by the institutional and political divisions of power. Yet
these impediments will be less in future as local legislatures, courts,
electoral machinery and Congress itself are colonised by Trumpian
Republicans. This erosion of democracy has a precedent, given that Al
Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 were denied the presidency
though each won a majority of the popular vote, but it is becoming all
pervasive
American fascism differs from its European, Middle
Eastern and Latin American variants because of the history of America,
with its legacy of slavery, and the Civil War still remaining as a great
divider. Slavery was abolished, the Confederacy lost the war, but in
many respects the civil war never ended.
The civil rights legislation of the 1960s provoked a
white counteroffensive that still goes on. Opposition to racial equality
has never ceased. The key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
which declared that changes in state election laws must have federal
approval, was invalidated by Republican appointed judges on the Supreme
Court in 2013. “Our country has changed,” said chief Justice John G
Roberts in a majority opinion, which declared that racial minorities no
longer faced barriers to voting in states with a history of
discrimination. The absurdity of this was immediately demonstrated as
Texas introduced a previously blocked voter ID law.
Voter suppression has ballooned ever since, but never
more than this year. Some 14 Republican controlled states have passed 24
laws criminalising, politicising and interfering in elections to their
own advantage.
What explains the descent of the Republican Party into
fascism? Racial division explains much. The division of American
culture along the same geographical lines as the civil war explains
more. Add to this the frightening dislocation imposed on white working-
and middle-class Americans by technological change and globalisation.
Powerful forces are let loose similar to those that once propelled the
rise of European fascism and is now doing the same in America.
Those were the good old days. But after what they did to Black Wall Street, Tulsa deserved to host this Trump rally flop.
On Thursday evening, Tucker Carlson—whose
combat experience seems to be limited to that time he was kicked out of
an elite Swiss boarding school—decided it would be great to go after
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley. Carlson declared that the
general was “a pig” and “stupid” and “not brave,” all because Milley
had the gall to say that understanding the history of racism is not a
bad thing. This comes a month after Carlson and other right-wing pundits
launched a series of tirades about how the military had become “woke”
and after Fox News played up a Russian commercial as showing that
America is “doomed.”
This follows the years of Donald Trump in which Gold Star families
were treated as traitors, military prisoners gathered scorn because
Trump “liked people who weren’t captured,” and Americans who died in
battle were either “losers” or “suckers,” take your pick. Trump called
John McCain a “loser” for being a prisoner in Vietnam. He also called
George H. W. Bush a “loser” for being shot down in World War II. He
lined up a whole stack of generals to give his White House some
semblance of credibility, then threw them out one by one when they
refused to go along with his degradations of democracy. Oh, and when
Trump was looking for some place to get funds for building his “wall,”
he took the money that had been dedicated to building homes, schools,
and hospitals for military families.
A proper modern Republican hates the generals, hates the troops,
hates the veterans, hates their families, and hates their survivors.
Those same Republicans are, of course, extremely pro-military.
All of this is just one example of how Republicans are drawing a heavy line between what they think of as Real America™
and real America. In one of these, Republicans are the brave upholders
of a stainless Anglo-Saxon tradition that has brought light to the
savages and represents the last best home of civilization. In the other,
they are building on top of a racist foundation with blocks of
ignorance that are actively working to make the lives of every
individual in the nation worse while deliberately risking the
sustainability of the republic. Guess which one is which?
When they claim to be pro-military, Trump, Carlson, Fox News, and the rest don’t mean the actual
military. They certainly don’t mean the thousands of officers and
enlisted who have served with Milley around the world. Or the thousands
of sailors who served under Navy Captain Brett Crozier before he was removed for actually trying to protect his crew.
Republicans don’t support that military, They support the Real Military™. The
animated G.I. Joe military. The John Wayne military. The fictional
military that exists only to provide drama and color for a world full of
guys who feel their time at fake military prep schools is more than
adequate to educate them well above those who had to face enemy fire in
the field. The military that is made up only of scrappy white kids who
love their nation so much that they would happily pitch in to overthrow
democracy whenever the Real President™ asks.
Even Republicans who were in the real military feel obliged to
play up the Real Military™. Just ask former Marine J.D. Vance, who wrote a whole book about
how his fellow recruits were “Black, white, and Hispanic” and how many
of his fellow Marines were “staunch liberals.” That was then. Now Vance
is out there slugging away with claims about how Southern, rural, white
conservatives are carrying all the burdens of the nation. For the sake
of a little untrademarked reality,
California is the biggest source of military recruits; Blacks, Latinos,
Asians, and Native Americans all serve at a higher level, than their
percentage in the population; though the upper ranks are
“disproportionally white”; it’s true that the state with the highest
percentage of military recruits is a red state; but it’s also true that
the state with the lowest percentage of military recruits is a red
state.
Republican claims to be pro-military are all part of their broader claim to be the party of patriots. It’s what The Washington Post described as the “shadow reality world” in which the Republican Party is fighting against a series of imagined threats to protect Real America™.
It’s the reality that’s presented in low-budget films by Dinesh
D’Souza, Mike Lindell, and Overstock.com Chief Executive Patrick Byrne.
All of them are selling an expanded version of the QAnon mythology, in
which Donald Trump is a Christ-like figure at the center of a fight
against the semi-infinite forces of darkness. It’s the reality in which
OAN can suggest that tens of thousands of Americans spread across a half
dozen states, many of them Republican officials, were united in a
secret conspiracy to throw the election—and follow up by suggesting that
those tens of thousands of Americans need to be executed.
It’s a world in which “conspiracy theories that grow more dizzyingly
complex by the day” and where Donald Trump will be back in March, make
that August, make that September, and remember … the Storm is coming!
For white supremacists, it’s a pleasant fantasy world in which their
every failing is the fault of radical Marxists, AOC’s fashion choices,
and critical race theory. Ultimate redemption is always right around the
corner, right around the corner, right around the … anyway, it’s never
more than a Friedman Unit before Hillary will finally go to jail. It’s a
world where the most abhorrent thoughts about torture and murder are
welcome, and where the most outlandish theories get praise. One where
expertise and experience are to be disdained.
“They have their own version of YouTube, their own message groups.
They have their own whole set of publications … You have to wonder what
percent of America is even aware of this shadow reality world,” said
elections expert Harri Hursti. Unfortunately, the answer is nearly
100%. Because while Republicans may be living in Real America™, their actions are impacting real Americans.
Now, let’s all go watch a movie about a sniper who shoots down
brown-skinned terrorists from miles away and never misses while coming
home to his hawt blond wife and driving a pickup on weekends. The
military. We love those guys.
If Republicans had their way, this dude would be the Supreme Commander of the U.S. military.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, declined several
invitations from CNN to appear on air, to explain the cockamamie circus
in Maricopa County (as if she could), so their reporter Kyung Lah caught up with Fann in
the Arizona Capitol parking lot. In the course of the five-minute
interview, Lah notes that all of the cameras and video feeds at the
Coliseum are controlled by One America News Network (OAN), the
“official broadcast sponsor” for the audit. Lah’s tone is skeptical,
prompting Sen. Fann to ask, “Are you saying OAN is not a credible news
source?”
“Yes,” says Lah, that’s exactly what she’s saying.
Fann gets pissy and says, “Oh, I’ll remember that, CNN says OAN is not
credible.” How could anyone think this is not a credible news outlet?
That’s right, Sen. Fann, your official news sponsor for this sham
audit is calling for executions. For readers who can’t watch the video,
OAN’s Pearson Sharp ends by asking:
“What are the consequences for traitors who meddled with our
sacred democratic process and tried to steal power by taking away the
voices of the American people? What happens to them? Well, in the past,
America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors:
Execution.”
If anyone still thinks Cyber Ninjas and the other bamboo-sniffing kooks who stole our ballots (some voter records ended up in Montana) won’t find fraud, they’re dreaming. Ofcourse they will! Chief Ninja Doug Logan said early on there was fraud and suggested trump was cheated of 200,000 votes in Arizona, while most of the “auditors” his firm hired came from a cellar full of conspiracy boobs. So when they find invent fraud, which they will (trump is already banking on it), what next? Executions, sez OAN.
I thought it was bad enough when OAN reporter Christina Bobb, a
former Trump groupie with no journalism background, started
a fundraising campaign for the audit, reportedly bringing in around $150,000.
The host of a program on a pro-Trump cable news network that
has repeatedly peddled conspiracy theories and false information about
the 2020 election is raising money to pay for the Arizona Senate’s audit
of the 2020 election in Maricopa County.
To summarize: OAN is raising money for the thing they are
ostensibly covering, but their coverage is far from objective. In
fact, they’re already gaslighting a level of corruption that leads
“radical Democrats” to the scaffolds. In today’s Arizona Republic Laurie Roberts lays the entire clusterfuck at Fann’s doorstep:
She, alone, is responsible for ordering an election audit despite no evidence of a problem here.
She, alone, is responsible for turning Arizona into a laughingstock and for giving hope to Trump that he’s going to be reinstated.
And now, for supplying oxygen to QAnon whack jobs who fantasize about
summary executions of deep staters who organized the supposed coup.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, OAN is reporting
on election fraud in other states, where again they can be the Official
Broadcast Sponsor, since Republicans deem the lies, propaganda,
conspiracies, and now death threats “credible.”
OAN: If we execute enough people for voter fraud (see crosses in background) we can reincarnate our dear leader. Heil Trump!
If you were to ask me how I wanted to spend my week, I can think of
few things I would enjoy less than spending it among people who tried to
sell the former guy a “campaign theme song”
and spend a lot of time celebrating the idea of mixing “mudding” (which
is actually somewhat enjoyable) with drunk driving, combined with
assaulting women and maybe slashing a throat here and there. If you ask
me, that sounds far more like the plot in a horror movie than anything I
want to join in on. But in Kentucky’s Blue Holler Offroad Park, that’s exactly the kind of action attendees were welcome to enjoy. Welcome home, Mitch McConnell!
What more could you ask for, really? There are certainly attendees
who were not on a Biden-hating bring-back-the-confederacy tilt, but a
quick search of Facebook and YouTube turned up mostly images of vehicles
with Confederate flags, pro-Trump memorabilia, or anti-Biden
and anti-Harris statements. Well, hey, if you’re going to roll around in
the mud, I guess you might as well show who you are, really. The
details are grisly.
By the end of the five-day bash, dubbed the “Redneck Rave,” one
man had been impaled, one woman had been strangled to the point of
unconsciousness, and one throat had been slit. In all, Edmonson
authorities arrested 14 people, and charged four dozen people from five
states.
Oh my! I really want that! That sounds so entertaining! The
opportunity to listen to terrible music, get yelled at by drunks, and
then impaled. Awesome.
Afive-day party in Kentucky ended in 14
arrests and 48 people charged with drug and alcohol, traffic, and
assault-related offenses over their participation in what was billed as
an occasion of “mud, music, and mayhem.”
Numerous others were cited by police, and some were injured after
partygoers descended on Blue Holler Offroad Park in Edmonson County from
June 16-20 for the“Redneck Rave,”an event that reportedly was held twice last year and during which one person died.
“The first vehicle that came through, we found meth, marijuana, and
an open alcohol container,” Sheriff Shane Doyle, who set up checkpoints
in anticipation of trouble,said,
according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “And then one of the
occupants had two active warrants ... We were like, ‘Well, this doesn’t
bode well for the weekend.’”
Doesn’t bode well for the weekend? Just the weekend? I worry it
doesn’t bode well for the hometowns where the attendees will be
returning if they aren’t still locked up or in recovery programs.
Meanwhile, back in the big city, Q-Anonsense is on the ropes.
Kyrsten Sinema, the Senate's biggest pretender. If she weren't from Arizona, where her opponent was a complete boob, she would never have been elected.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat—who apparently has decided
that securing the legacy of mavericky John McCain for herself is … doing
Sen. Mitch McConnell's work?—chose the eve of the procedural vote on
the most consequential legislation for restoring our democracy to double down on her support for the Jim Crow filibuster with an op-ed in The Washington Post.
In it she exposes just how unserious she is about this job she has
taken on, ignoring history, oblivious to reality, and yet glibly
triumphant in declaring principles that are absolute bunk.
It mostly boils down to one idea: Democrats shouldn’t pass things
because Republicans might rescind them. What that translates into in
practice with the For the People Act is that the rights of the Senate
minority are more important than the voting rights of millions of
Americans. The Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to debate on the
bill Tuesday afternoon.
"Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House
and the Senate: to be independent—like Arizona—and to work with anyone
to achieve lasting results," she writes. (They probably also expected
her to look out for their economic interests, but look where that got
them.) "Lasting results," she continues, "rather than temporary
victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that
America’s families and employers depend on." The way to achieve "lasting
results," she apparently believes, is gridlock. "The filibuster compels
moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between
opposing policy poles," she says.
To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to
pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and
have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we
did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and
replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail
in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?
See how she works in the part where she's co-sponsoring the bill to
restore voting rights, while she's working as Mitch McConnell's tool to
make sure it doesn't become law? Nice. We can't do good things for the
country, she says, because that might make bad things happen. Her
argument is really that flimsy. It's also ignoring the reality that
Republicans legislatures all over the country—and in some cases
gerrymandered majorities—are enacting voter suppression laws with
completely partisan votes, shutting the minority Democrats out of the
process entirely. But Democrats should stop that from happening now
because a theoretical future Republican majority might do what those
states are already doing.
To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to
expand health-care access or retirement benefits: Would it be good for
our country if we did, only to later see that legislation replaced by
legislation dividing Medicaid into block grants, slashing earned Social
Security and Medicare benefits, or defunding women's reproductive health
services?
She's forgetting that Medicare, Medicaid and other spending programs
can be completely eliminated with just 51 votes with a budget
reconciliation. And that Republicans used budget reconciliation to jam a
repeal of the Affordable Care Act through with a simple majority. Who
stopped that? Who stood up against McConnell? John McCain, whose mantle
she's trying to assume.
The fundamental incoherence here is mind-boggling. The argument goes
something like this: Democrats should give the minority Republicans a
veto over very popular legislation because it's possible that the new
law will be unpopular and elect more Republicans who will reverse the
law. So by letting the minority veto bill is preventing them
hypothetically repealing that law later.
She's arguing that the gridlocked status quo is better than allowing
the majority—that was elected by huge majorities in the popular vote—to
do what voters elected them to do. That hypothetically any majority
shouldn't be able to enact its policies and then stand or fall with the
electorate in future elections on the basis of that work. In that, she's
disenfranchising voters as much as the Republican legislatures. The
voters chose President Joe Biden. The voters chose a Democratic House
and Senate—again, with huge popular vote margins. She's nullifying every
single vote every Democratic senator received, handing them over to
McConnell and the Republicans because . . . bipartisanship. No, really.
But bipartisan policies that stand the test of time could
help heal our country's divisions and strengthen Americans' confidence
that our government is working for all of us and is worthy of all of us.
You answer violent insurrectionists and a Republican juggernaut
running through the states working to make sure no Democrat ever wins an
election again by . . . letting them do it so Republicans like you and
let you sit with them at lunch.
Sinema has done herself no favors with this effort. She sounds
desperately out of touch with the reality of the Trump Republican Party.
Like, just clueless. She says she wants to be the next McCain. She
can't even touch that. McCain, after all, stood up to McConnell.
Kyrsten broke her foot running some kind of race and there are prosthetics for those kinds of things. It's a good thing she doesn't use her head for mobility because there is no prosthetic for mush.
