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.
If there was ever a moment in time when we needed to stand together in SOLIDARITY, this is that moment.
Corporate greed is running rampant as the people on top become richer
than any time in history, while working families struggle to pay for
health care, housing, food, education and other basic necessities.
Corporate power is undermining American democracy as the big money
interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign
contributions to defeat a legislative agenda strongly supported by the
American people.
The greed, arrogance and power of the big money interests has never been more apparent.
And working people, with incredible courage and determination, are fighting back.
Time and time again, I have stressed that real change never occurs from the top down. It always happens from the bottom up.
Real change only happens when people demand it and are prepared to
challenge the status quo — in the voting booth, in peaceful
demonstrations and at the workplace.
This year, in the midst of a terrible pandemic, we have seen workers
standing up for basic rights and dignity on the job in a way that we
have not seen for years. And we have stood with them. We have supported
workers on strike against the corporate greed of the John Deere company
and Kellogg's. We have supported nurses on the west coast who stood up
to an unfair contract offer from Kaiser Permanente. We have supported
the brave employees at Starbucks who, for the very first time, organized
a union shop in that giant corporation against enormous opposition.
That's what SOLIDARITY is all about. And that's the SOLIDARITY we must continue.
Reef fish swim above recovering coral colonies
on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia. Scientists
and tourism operators are using unique technologies to spurn coral
growth which has been hurt by climate change. (photo: Lucas
Jackson/Reuters)Chris Arsenault/Al Jazeera28 December 21
From new protected areas to ozone layer gains, this year saw some positive trends, even as myriad problems persist.
But amid a year of worsening environmental stress – including mostly ineffective international climate negotiations in Glasgow, locust plagues ravaging crops in East Africa, and an entire town being destroyed by fire in western Canada – some small shoots of hope have emerged.
When it comes to the state of planet Earth, scientists and
conservationists have highlighted five of the most important good-news
stories from 2021:
1) The ozone layer is healing
It was one of the key environmental causes of the 1980s: trying to
prevent the hole in the ozone layer, which protects the planet from
harmful UV rays, from getting any larger. Activists mobilised street
protests and politicians held summits.
And change is happening, according to a recent study
by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR): Because of
the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global deal to regulate nearly 100
man-made chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, 443 million Americans
will likely be spared from skin cancer through the end of this century.
The hole in the ozone layer remains enormous – about the size of North America – but it is recovering at a rate of one to three percent every 10 years, according to the UN.
The hole over parts of the northern hemisphere is expected to heal
completely by the 2030s, with full repair over the southern hemisphere
and polar regions expected by the 2060s, according to UN data.
Global action on the problem via the Montreal Protocol has prevented
more than 99 percent of potential health effects that would have
otherwise occurred from ozone destruction, NCAR reported.
Environmentalists hope the relative success in the movement to protect the ozone layer can be replicated in the fight against climate change; so far, that has not happened.
2) ‘Coral IVF’ aids Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
This year, however, has seen some recovery on the Great Barrier Reef.
Scientists have been using man-made pools in a process comparable to in
vitro fertilisation (IVF), moving eggs from areas of the reef where
coral has been growing. These are then transferred in an effort to
regenerate areas hit by bleaching or destruction from storms.
The process of assisted spawning, dubbed “coral IVF”, aided the birth
of billions of new coral babies this year, in an explosion of colour.
The reef is still facing substantial dangers, but scientists and
conservationists hope these types of technologies can spur broader recovery in the world’s reefs, home to roughly a quarter of marine life.
3) China’s giant pandas no longer ‘endangered’
Home to more than 1,800 giant pandas
living in the wilderness, China reported in July that the iconic bears
are no longer officially “endangered”. Thanks to conservation efforts,
they are now classified as just “vulnerable”.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, an independent tracking group, made a similar assessment several years earlier.
Partial credit for the improvement in the giant panda
population can be traced to an expanded network of protected areas in
the world’s most populous country, covering about 18 percent of China’s
landmass, according to Chinese authorities.
4) Renewable energy generation hits all-time high
Despite supply chain problems stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was expected to set an all-time high for new renewable energy production capacity.
With new solar installations, wind farms and other technologies, the
world added 290 gigawatts of renewable power production capacity this
year, according to a report published this month
by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. By comparison, that is
twice as much as Canada’s total electricity generating capacity of about
145 gigawatts.
Based on these trends, renewable energy
capacity could exceed the current global capacity of fossil fuels and
nuclear energy combined by 2026. Globally, more than 90 percent of new
electricity generating capacity in the next five years is projected to
come from renewables. The pace of growth, however, is still not fast
enough to reach the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
5) Protected area expands around Galapagos Islands
In the 19th century, amazing animal life on the remote Galapagos
Islands inspired Charles Darwin to pen On the Origin of Species and
pioneer the theory of evolution.
This past November, Ecuador’s president announced that a marine-protected area around the Galapagos would be expanded by 60,000sq km (37,282 sq miles).
Home to giant tortoises, marine iguanas, penguins, sea lions and
frigatebirds, among other species, the area is under threat from climate
change, illegal fishing
and other challenges. Environmentalists hope expanding the protected
area will help preserve its unique natural beauty and wildlife.
Good news on the environment front is scarce, but let's pause to recognize a few victories achieved in 2021.
Ivanka Trump has spent the past five years trying to position herself
in the public’s mind as the “reasonable” Trump. Granted, that's a
pretty low bar. All she really needed to do is show up as “warm-blooded”
on infrared surveillance cameras, and she was basically there. Another useful tactic? Avoid appearing on video every 10 minutes, like the unofficial spokesperson for pure Colombian cocaine.
No, for Ivanka, the trick is to tacitly endorse every horrible thing
her father does. She stood around cow-eyed and mute while the country
unraveled, only to then gurgle pro-civilization shibboleths like “we
need better child care” and “let’s all get the vaccine” to make it seem
like her dad didn’t just spend the past half-decade menacing the nation
like an aimless Macy’s Angry Birds balloon with explosive diarrhea.
The problem for Ivanka, though, is that MAGA devotees aren’t much
interested in civilization—or at least the parts where we pass laws for
the common good, do our civic duty by paying our taxes and vaccinating
ourselves and our children, and accept the results of free and fair
elections. The parts of civilization that produced at least 10 discrete varieties of Bud Light? Now you’re talking.
And so the reaction to Ivanka’s Wednesday announcement on Instagram
and Twitter that she got the COVID-19 shot was fairly predictable.
This seemingly benign act—which, I’m old enough to recall, would have
been seen as the one and only responsible adult choice 30 or so years
ago—was straight-up savaged by the MAGA mob.
Now, given that at least 12 chromosomes in the Trump genome are devoted exclusively to evil, you have to give Ivanka some credit for doing the right thing. If only her “fans” agreed.
Instagram was a particular cesspool
of disinformation and hate. You can click through to view the backlash
in its red-hatted entirety, but here’s a representative sample.
I hope you support freedom of choice for vaccines.
Yeah, they’re almost all like that. It’s astounding, really. Maybe
she should have specified that she asked for the vaccine without the
preinstalled copy of Windows Vista.
The Trumps now find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. One horn is
that the vaccines were developed while Trump was president, and he
desperately wants to take credit for them. The other is that Trump’s
popularity lives and dies based on the conspiracy theories he regularly
nurtures, and that’s the horn that may end up gouging not just him but
his throngs of addlepated fans as well.
And there’s nothing Ivanka can do to unravel that mess now. She had
numerous chances to do the “responsible” thing, and yet Donald Trump was
never once locked in a closet all that time he was terrorizing us.
So thanks for getting the shot, Vanky, but this is still a big fail.
You could have told people that covid wasn’t a “dem hoax”.
You could have told people Covid wasn’t going to “disappear like a miracle”, or with the “warmer weather.”
You could’ve helped stop hundreds of thousands of American deaths but you didn’t.
You didn’t.
So you’re too late.
I guess when your entire shtick is based on fantasy and lies, the
people you lied to get upset when you fail to overturn your election
loss by ordering Space Force to beam Joe Biden off the inaugural dais at
the Zero Hour.
Now the Proud Boys of all groups are desperately fleeing the sinking
garbage barge that was the T**** administration, and it’s a beautiful
sight.
In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app
Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an
election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail
Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Mr. Trump had
changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in
the same Telegram channel on Monday.
AsMr. Trump departed the White Houseon
Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have
also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social
media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun
calling Mr. Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to
messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters
to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the
Republican Party.
You mean they actually thought DJT had a plan? He’s never
had a plan for anything. For four years he governed like a housefly with
one wing pulled off. Did they really think he could pull off a fucking coup?
Oy.
On social media, Proud Boys participants have complained about
his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol
rampage was an act of betrayal. And Mr. Trump,cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.
Oh, noes! He’s losing his grip on his death cult! And that’s all he had left!
One day I will cry a single briny tear for our forlorn fuck toad. But today is all about joy and celebration.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Doesn’t that feel good?
You probably wouldn't want these guys moving in next door, but when they turn on The Donald who brung them to this dance, you have to give them a big "hip hip, hooray!"
Steve Bannon has mapped out a clear and
present strategy for using our own electoral system to turn the US into a
fascist dictatorship.
There is only one barrier to the takeover:
a powerful progressive grassroots election protection movement that’s
savvy and well-funded and capably organized enough to defeat him.
Bannon’s plan is clear and simple. As he explained it on his Real America Voice program:
“We're
going to take over the election apparatus. [Trump cultists with
military and police training] are now going to volunteer to become a
precinct committeeman, they're going to volunteer to become an election
official, they're going to come and run for county clerk and overthrow
these county clerks and they're going to take over the secretaries of
state…And we're going to be relentless and we're not going to give
up…And we're going to take over elections.”
Without massive clear-eyed grassroots opposition, there is no reason Bannon’s plan would not work.
With
fanatic fascists as secretaries of state, the election apparatus in key
swing states in the Heartland, old Confederacy and elsewhere would go
straight to the Trump right, no matter how the public votes.
As
we saw in Georgia 2020, Trump personally called the Republican Secretary
of State demanding he swing some 12,000 votes. To his credit, Brad
Raffensperger refused. But a Steve Bannonite would not. That’s their
reason for putting him in there.
Bannon’s further point is to not
let the vote count get even that far. His blitzkrieg is already rolling
with foot soldiers whose military and police training…and guns of their
own…will be difficult for ordinary citizens to withstand.
Through
local elections or other means, Bannon’s “patriot” brown shirts will
seize control of county and local election boards, running the voting
however they like. That will certainly entail systematic Jim Crow
elimination and intimidation of potential voters of youth and color,
plus other suspected non-fascists, who will either be denied ballots, or
will have them pitched in the trash.
In essence, nearly the
entire national electoral system will be turned back to the pre 1960s
South, and can be shaped to fit any electoral outcome Bannon wants.
As
in school boards around the country, the assault on current election
board officials is already being perpetrated with countless death
threats pouring in over telephones and by other means. Physical
intimidation is an essential element of a fascist takeover and the
Bannonites are not shy.
The Democratic Party’s staggering lack of
strategic focus, organized action, passion, and their inability to
prioritize fighting back against a dangerous, highly organized, well
funded, and fully transparent fascist authoritarian right wing movement
can ultimately result in the destruction of our cherished democracy. The
party’s abject failure in the recent Virginia governor’s race shows
that the corporate Democrats are unprepared and incapable of opposing
this assault. Bannon’s choreographed, focussed attack on our electoral
system is far more than the Clintonites can handle. Their first response
will be denial, followed by failure, followed by blaming the left.
Thus
the resistance must come from the progressive grassroots, the election
protection movement that has grown over the past two decades to demand
universal registration, paper ballots, protected voting procedures,
reliable vote counts and much more. It will need to self-fund, diverting
donations from the Democrats to events like the upcoming Voting Rights
Summer now being organized by election protection activists from
throughout the country, working with established long-time progressive
leaders prepared to do what must be done to save our democracy (www.grassrootsep.org).
In
particular, all Bannonite Jim Crow operatives must be explicitly
opposed. Local democracy centers must carefully monitor board elections
and support pro-democracy candidates. Volunteer positions must be filled
with supporters of universal suffrage. Every aspect of the electoral
process from the precinct to the state must be dissected, understood and
protected.
It would help if the movement could divert much of
the tens of millions of contributors’ dollars the corporate Democrats
perennially waste on worthless TV ads and high-priced consultants, as
they just did in Virginia.
But make no mistake—-this is the battle of our lifetimes, for our democracy, our planet, our survival.
Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing. Do we?
Look up "Satan" in my dictionary and you will find a picture of Steve Bannon.
Republican lawmakers this holiday season are unwrapping a rare and valuable gift: congressional seats for life.
Thanks
to a breathtaking abuse of redistricting in GOP-controlled states, all
but an unlucky handful of members of Congress will henceforth be exempt
from listening to those god-awful whiners called “voters,” spared those
bothersome contests known as “elections” and protected from other
disagreeable requirements of “democracy.”
This year Republicans
have managed to take fully 40 percent of competitive House seats out of
play. All but about 25 seats of the 435 in the entire country will be
insulated from the will of voters even during wave elections — not just
for 2022, but for a decade.
The move might limit Republicans’
upside in next year’s midterms (they had to toss Democrats a few more
safe seats to shore up their own), but it could also keep them in the
majority for years, even if the national popular vote goes consistently
against them. Already, Republicans could lose the popular vote by two or
three percentage points and still control the House.
The changes
guarantee more extremism in Congress (the only competitive elections
will be primaries, which on the GOP side favor the far right), and
whichever party is in control will have a slim, ungovernable majority.
The worst offender is Texas, where President Biden got nearly 47 percent of the vote in 2020 and Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke got more than 48 percent in 2018. Republicans redrew maps
to give themselves both of Texas’s new congressional seats (even though
most of the population growth was in Democratic-leaning communities of
color), and they reduced the number of competitive House seats from six
to one.
Democrats get nearly half the popular vote in Texas, but
they can expect just a third of the House seats (13 of the 38). In order
to get above 37 percent of the seats (that is, more than 14 seats),
they would have to win an inconceivable 58 percent of the statewide
popular vote. Republicans “have rendered elections meaningless,
basically,” Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for
Justice, a voting rights group, tells me. And “it’s all at the expense
of communities of color.”
Dave Wasserman, redistricting maven
with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, forecasts a 30 percent to
40 percent decline in competitive House races from the 51 there were in
2020. Using slightly different measures, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee
(NDRC), formed by former attorney general Eric Holder, calculates that
15 of 38 competitive seats from the 2020 election (meaning those decided
by 5 percentage points or fewer) have already been redrawn as safe
seats.
In addition to Texas, other redistricting abusers include North Carolina, where Biden got 48.6 percent of the vote but Republicans are attempting to control 11 of the state’s 14 House seats; and Ohio, where Biden got 45.2 percent of the vote but Republicans aim to control 13 of 15 congressional seats. Red states are similarly using redistricting to achieve supermajorities in state legislatures.
Democratic states have abuses, too (Donald Trump got 32 percent
of the vote in Massachusetts, which has no Republicans in its 9-member
House delegation), but Democrat-run states generally leave redistricting
to bipartisan commissions, to produce fairer results.
“That has
left Democrats playing with one hand tied behind their back,” Wasserman
tells me. He calculates that such commissions cost Democrats 10 House
seats they could have had if Democratic partisans instead seized the
map-drawing in California, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado and
Virginia. Were Democrats to practice the extreme measures Republicans
have used, they could conceivably eliminate all but three GOP House
seats in California (from the current 11) and all but three in New York (from the current eight).
Marc
Elias, a Democratic elections lawyer who is fighting several of the new
maps, says the bipartisan commissions were sabotaged by pro-Trump
Republicans who refused to negotiate. “Never entrust democracy to any
process that requires Republicans to act in good faith,” he has
concluded, noting that such commissions in Virginia and Connecticut couldn’t even produce maps.
Democrats
might be tempted to imitate the Republicans’ extreme methods — but that
would only confirm democracy’s demise. Kelly Burton, president of the
NDRC, says it is “taking every tool in our toolbox to prevent them from
annihilating the battlefield.”
But will it be enough? The Senate, formed when the nation’s urban population was 5 percent (now it’s over 80 percent),
inherently gives lopsided power to rural, Republican states. The
ferociously partisan Roberts Court has blessed gerrymandering and gutted
enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, setting up a House Republican
majority immune from the vicissitudes of the voters.
January’s coup failed. Twelve months later, democracy’s death spiral continues.
Candidates
like Dean Heller have tried to play both sides of the hoax, refusing to
acknowledge Biden's win while staying mostly silent on the lies used by
his party to stoke those doubts.
The hoax claims that
our current elections have been "rigged" against Republicans—claims that
continue to be provably false—continue to be used to stoke the
convenient fear and outrage of a base that now increasingly believes the
party is justified in taking control of the government through the
erasure of future election results or, as happened on Jan. 6, through
violence.
The party is not just anti-democracy: It is demanding
adherence to a lie that has already resulted in deaths and will result
in more, and purging anyone unwilling to go along.
This is the behavior of a cult. It is also the behavior of fascist
movements throughout history, movements in which false propaganda is
used to rally support for the violent "remaking" of nations.
That is the context in which this CNN report on Republican candidates' near-universal adoption of the Big Lie
should be considered. CNN does well enough in identifying the absolute
falseness of the Republican claims, and a Republican pollster provides
the grotesque context: If a Republican candidate openly admits that
Donald Trump was beaten not by fraud, but legitimately, "the
consequences are probably that you are going to lose" your Republican
primary.
"This is a deeply held value by Republicans," the pollster says. And "logic just doesn't work" here.
That, of course, is a product of the hoax. It is self-fulfilling. If
at any point Republican officeholders pushed aside their cowardice and
told the base that Trump was lying to them, the lie would have
evaporated. Donald Trump himself is a delusional, decompensating
narcissist who has claimed "fraud" every single time one of his schemes
hasn't worked out throughout his business, entertainment, and political
"careers." It is his go-to excuse for his own failures; he not only
openly broadcast that he would be using it again in the months before
the election, there are plenty of quotes from the bumbling oaf over the
decades to show that the gutless preener responds to countless defeats by claiming his plans only didn't work out because everyone else was working against him. It is what he does.
At any point during Trump's new delusional claims, Republicans could
have taken the decent, noncrooked, patriotic path of cutting him loose
to wallow in his failed authoritarian dreams by himself. Instead, the
party went with him. From raised-fist Josh Hawley to the co-conspiring
Lindsey Graham's efforts to throw Georgia, the party decided to boost
Trump's delusions as a new party platform, seek to overturn the election
results based on provable fictions, and assist in—or at least
overlook—an attempted coup.
That is the context CNN is missing. It is very interesting, to be
sure, to tick down the list of Republican candidates for state and
national office and see that nearly to a person, all of them
are either loudly promoting the Big Lie that led to an insurrection or
are attempting to toe the line of neither overtly endorsing the hoax nor
objecting to it. But it is not a campaign question. It is an ongoing
act of sedition.
The Republican Party goaded their base into so believing false conspiracies about why Republicans lost a handful of races that they would have preferred to win, during
a year in which American voters were presented with an incompetent,
bumbling, buffoonish response to national emergency and death, that they were able to rally a crowd to violently attempt to erase the next government outright.
If they are still pursuing the same hoax, almost to a person, then it
is intended as sedition. Stoking violence, seeding contempt for
democratic elections, urging the base to reject those elections and
replace them with new versions the party can be more sure of
winning—these are the acts of traitors. The Republican candidates, from
Josh Mandel to J.D. Vance to Dean Heller, are keeping the seeds of
violent insurrection in their back pockets. Not to use, necessarily, but
to keep the base occupied. And paranoid. And ready to accept other
lies, if the future requires it.
The only reason to demand fealty to an abject hoax even after it has
been proven, proven for all the world to see, that the hoax has resulted
in violence and an attempted coup is because you believe the same
violence and sedition may prove useful in the future. It would have cost
the party not a damn thing to reject Trump's criminal farce after
violent insurrection proved the party could not serve both his whims and
their country, but they did not. Across the country, they repeat it.
They endorse it. They look to use it in their own campaigns.
This is a party that has chosen itself over democracy, over America,
and over reality itself. These are candidates willing to betray their
country—candidates who are betraying their country every time
they whimper out their cowardly excuses. That is the context CNN is
missing here. That this is not an effort to soothe one wealthy but
gutless man's ego. That man attempted violence. That man sat in the
White House after rallying a crowd to assault lawmakers rather than
abide by our democracy, sat and waited to see what effect it might have, sat and ignored even allies calling for help while he waited to see if his gambit would win.
The candidates who back him now back him over their own country. They
stand in silent—or not so silent—alliance with the first attempt to
overthrow American democracy since the Civil War. It is an act of
ongoing sedition. They are lying about our elections explicitly so to make it easier to nullify them, and are saying that out loud, and are writing the state laws to do it.
That is the context. A fascist coup. It is not a coup "in slow
motion"—it is being carried out with the same speed that past versions
were. A first attempt, an evaluation of what didn't work, a purge of
those unwilling to go along, new laws passed wherever the coup
supporters have enough power to do it, in order to dismantle the
specific roadblocks that held things up, an absolutely rabid
demonization campaign against whichever public officials foiled the
attempt, and an unrelenting campaign to drill the same pro-coup hoaxes
even deeper into the public brain. This is how it's done.
These candidates are promoting a proven hoax, even after it led to violence, even after members of their party specifically
used it to incite violence. There is no innocuous explanation. They are
using a hoax intended to discredit democracy and replace it with
something else. This is propagandism. It is specifically crafted to
deceive.
Call these candidates what they are: anti-American. Enemies of our Constitution. Cowards. Corrupt.
There is no excuse for promoting, defending, or even staying silent
on a hoax of this magnitude. The only reason to do it is a belief that
your own political career is of more value than the peaceful transfers
of power that America once held sacrosanct. Not a goddamn one of those
people has any business in a position of power, and there is no version
of journalism that should present spreading a dangerous anti-democratic hoax intended to mislead an entire nation as anything but the acts of corrupt, dangerous thugs.
Donald Trump himself is a delusional, decompensating
narcissist who has claimed "fraud" every single time one of his schemes
hasn't worked out throughout his business, entertainment, and political
"careers."
