🇺🇸BLACK LIVES MATTER AT THE POLLS: African-American Voters’ Extraordinary Efforts In Georgia Key To Ending GOP’s Jim Crow Kakistocracy, Saving American Democracy! — A “Blueprint” For Voting The Party Of Racists, Grifters, & Domestic Terrorists Out Of Their Undeserved Political Power Across America?

https://apple.news/AEyxZl76nQ86rGOIEK0E5uA

Ryan Brooks reports for BuzzFeed:

Democrat Jon Ossoff won his tight Senate race, with both Georgia Democrats defeating their Republican runoff opponents in historic victories for a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump in a state that had been a Republican stronghold for years. With Ossoff joining Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Senate, their party will be able to take total control of Congress.

Warnock is the first Black person elected to represent Georgia in the Senate and will be one of only three Black people in the Senate once his term begins. Ossoff, 33, would be the youngest member of the Senate.

The results are a testament to the decades-long political organizing of Black women in Georgia who worked toward expanding the electorate and protecting voting rights in the state.

“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate. Thank you for the trust that you have placed in me,” Ossoff said in a video streamed online on Wednesday morning. Hours before, the campaign of his opponent, Sen. David Perdue, said it “will require time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate.”

It is a close race. Decision Desk HQ has projected Ossoff will win. The vote-counting firm currently has Ossoff leading Republican Perdue by about .4% of the vote — about 16,000 votes — which is within the .5% threshold that allows Perdue to call for a recount. Georgia officials will continue counting the few remaining votes today, which are expected in areas that lean Democrat.

Ossoff’s win would push the Senate into a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. The split would effectively give Democrats control of the Senate, removing the chamber from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s iron grip and dramatically expanding the possibilities for President-elect Joe Biden’s first years in office.

A litany of Black women-led voter registration groups like Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter fanned out across the state in recent years to register new voters and to protect voters from being purged from rolls. In the weeks ahead of the runoff, Progressive grassroots groups organizing across the state made the shift toward door knocking and in-person canvassing after the party largely avoided the strategy during the general election because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, on the other hand, spent the intervening two months claiming Georgia’s election was rigged against him — it was not, as the state’s Republican elected leaders frequently reminded him — attacking establishment Republicans in the state, and undermining the Republican base’s faith in the electoral process, and pushing lawsuits that largely focused on invalidating votes in majority Black cities. Perdue and Loeffler, then both serving in the Senate, often echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud on the campaign trail and in the final days of the race they announced that they would support Senators who objected to certifying the electoral college results.

The runoff was defined by Trump’s meddling in the state’s election results after his loss in November and his failed last-ditch attempt to get more direct aid to people in the coronavirus relief package that passed Congress in December.

. . . .

*************

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Congrats and deep appreciation to the amazing Stacey Abrams and her colleagues for bailing out America with their smarts, courage, hard work, and determination to stand up to the White Nationalists and beat them at the polls. Working harder and being smarter than the GOP!

The GOP has now “come out of the closet” and embraced (or empowered) its once-obscured “core beliefs” of treason, lies, racism, hate, selfishness, ignorance, incompetent governance, and destruction of our democracy. Even today, traitors Ted Cruz & Josh Hawley disingenuously try to play the “victim” in the face of calls to hold them responsible for their false and treasonous criminal conduct.

These guys knowingly promoted lies and White Nationalist conspiracy theories that helped stroke the totally unjustified “anger” of Trumpist GOP thugs who actually endangered the safety of Congressional members of both parties! How sick 🤮 is that! Talk about folks who deserve condemnation and removal from public office, if not jail sentences!

The majority of us who believe in democracy, diversity, humanity, truth, our Constitution, and social justice must redouble our efforts to insure that the anti-American cancer of GOP minority rule never infects our nation again!

The folks in Georgia have shown us that no matter how difficult or time consuming the fight might be, it can be won through democratic institutions; with effort, courage, and perseverance, our nation can be rescued from the GOP traitors who have “held us hostage” for the past four years!

The GOP has “hitched its wheelless and soulless wagon” to one of the vilest human beings and biggest losers in our national political history. We can’t let them off the hook!

Belatedly, Congressional toadies like Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, and Cabinet toadies, like Mrs. Mitch and Betsy D, who happily enabled and furthered the violent, racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller and the rest of the thugocracy/kakistocracy are trying to put some distance between themselves and their party’s treason and mis-governance. I heard mindless and dishonest Trump supporters on local TV try to disclaim the logical consequences of their supporting and voting for an immoral, dishonest, anti-American, insurrectionist scumbag!

Just think of the total disaster that would have ensued if the maliciously incompetent traitor they voted for had actually won, rather than being thrashed by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes! These folks are threatening my country, our health and safety, and the world’s future with their ignorance, lies, and disloyalty. I’m tired of them and their vile White Nationalist nonsense that played out at my Capitol this week!

Don’t let them get away with this deadly, disingenuous, BS! Follow Stacey Abrams and others! Start working hard now to throw every elected GOP traitor out of office in 2022! Democracy and the modern GOP are incompatible! This is a battle for our country, the heart and soul of our nation, and humanity. We can’t afford to let the party of treason and racism win!

Yes, as Joe Biden says, America needs a legitimate, principled opposition party. Sadly, the GOP party doesn’t fit the bill and won’t unless it jettisons its White Nationalist racist agenda of lies, false narratives, and wacko conspiracy theories and moves into the 21st Century with the rest of us!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-08-21

U.C. DAVIS LAW DEAN KEVIN R. JOHNSON SPEAKS OUT ON TRUMPISTS’ ASSAULT ON OUR DEMOCRACY!🇺🇸⚖️🗽

From ImmigrationProf Blog:

On the unprecedented events at the U.S. Capitol

By Immigration Prof

Share

Earlier today, I shared this message with the UC Davis School of Law community. I share it with you as we try process the events yesterday:

Dean Johnson addresses unprecedented events at the U.S. Capitol

A message from Dean Kevin R. Johnson

Jan. 7, 2021

Yesterday was a deeply troubling day in one of the most challenging times in U.S. history. But make no mistake: We will get through this as a community.

Our nation saw an unprecedented and appalling assault on the rule of law and our deep and enduring democratic traditions. As Congress carried out its constitutional duty of accepting the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, a mob stormed our Capitol. Whatever our political views, we should all condemn such behavior. There is a stark difference between peaceful protest, which is constitutionally protected, and violence designed to undermine democratic processes.

As we process this traumatic challenge to our democracy, please take to heart the observations of Chancellor Gary S. May. He reminds us of something incredibly positive that greeted us all yesterday:

. . . I awoke this morning . . . buoyed by the thoughtful reflection shared by newly elected Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, who said that the hands of his 82-year-old mother that were once “used to pick somebody else’s cotton” were just used to vote for the first African American senator in the history of his state. I lived much of my adult life in the state of Georgia. . . . I have attended several services in Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he is pastor and Martin Luther King Jr. once was. I always enjoyed his sermons and was uplifted by the progress his story represented. . . .

There are other reasons for optimism. Our institutions are strong. Our commitment to the rule of law, which is more important now than ever, is unwavering. Although yesterday saw an unprecedented challenge to the rule of law, we also witnessed its triumph. After a violent mob stormed our Capitol, the rule of law prevailed. Following the process set forth in the Constitution, Congress accepted the results of the Electoral College. A new president and vice president will be inaugurated in a matter of days. These events demonstrate why the law and what lawyers do matter so much. Let us try to focus moving forward constructively and positively.

I am hopeful that we as a community can schedule a time to discuss the serious issues facing the nation. We will be in touch as plans develop. Please stay healthy and take good care.

KJ

January 7, 2021 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

*************

Thanks Dean Johnson!

Due Process Forever!🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼

PWS

01-08-21

NEWS FROM THE FASCIST ☠️CLOWN🤡 — “After Multiple Deaths And A Mob Riot, Trump Finally Admitted His Presidency Is Ending”

Storming The Capitol by Randall Enos, Easton, CT
Republished under license

Trump Clown — Donald J. Trump
Famous American Clown
(Officially titled “Ass Clown”)
Artist: Scott Scheidly
Orlando, FL
Reproduced by permission

In a video otherwise filled with lies and inaccuracies, the president said a new administration would take over on Jan. 20.

Read the report from Matt Berman @ BuzzFeed News here:

After Multiple Deaths And A Mob Riot, Trump Finally Admitted His Presidency Is Ending

**************

After four years of non-stop lies, malicious incompetence, unbridled racism, cruelty, stupidity, sedition, corruption, grift, graft, unnecessary deaths, and other “crimes against humanity,” the evil 🦹🏿‍♂️ clown show 🤡 pulls out of town leaving Joe, Kamala, and the decent folks in America (their supporters — i/o/w, us) to deal with The Party of Treason, its scumbag “core traitors,” (Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, et al), toady enablers of treachery (McConnell, Graham, et al), and anti-American supporters.

🗽⚖️🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-21

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: “Levin Report: Donald Trump, Fascist Clown, Tells Domestic Terrorists He Loves Them, Will Never Forget This Special Day”🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻⚰️🤮

Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

At some point on Wednesday, someone clearly told Donald Trump that he needed to act “presidential” or at least give himself some plausible deniability re: inciting the violent mob that stormed Capitol Hill and where at least one person was killed. We know this because he appeared in a video telling his supporters to “go home” and tweeted something to a similar effect. And we know he didn’t mean a word of it, and was clearly loving the domestic terrorism occurring in his honor, because of everything else he said.

In the video, he continued to insist that he won the election and told the angry horde, like only a truly insane person can, “You’re very special” and “we love you.” That is not how a normal person tells a bloodthirsty mob to disperse. In a subsequent tweet, he wrote this historically crazy series of words, as though he was signing the yearbook of his favorite homegrown terrorist: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Shortly thereafter, Twitter deleted both the video and the post:

That followed Facebook’s call, with an executive for the company writing:

Unfortunately, Trump is clearly so far gone that he is still—at this very moment!—claiming he not only won the election but did so in a “landslide,” so we’re sure he’ll find a way to continue getting his message out, even if it means taking a major news network hostage in order to air his incoherent rants, or releasing a series of videos on whitehouse.gov featuring him humming the tune of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” to his supporters. No, no, he totally wants them to leave and definitely isn’t loving or encouraging any of this.

***************

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Bess!

Many of us who have witnessed the illegal, immoral, and inhuman treatment inflicted by Trump and his neo-Nazi thugs, both inside and outside government, on migrants and asylum seekers have been sounding the alarm for the past four years.

Now, everyone is suddenly waking up to the anti-American conduct of the party of thugs, racists, traitors, and cowards that is today’s GOP.

And, we shouldn’t forget the shameful role of the corrupt, unqualified, and spineless GOP majority of the Supremes, whose disgraceful failure to protect the rights and humanity of the most vulnerable among us from abuse by Trump, Miller, and their group thugs has led to this entirely predictable moment.

Reforming the Supremes will require the disempowerment of the treasonous GOP and the eventual establishment of a Democratic super majority that can reform the broken Federal Judicial system, starting with the mess on our highest Court.

Almost from day one of this lawless regime, the Supremes’ GOP majority has failed miserably to defend our democracy and humanity from tyranny, racism, and neo-fascism. We need and deserve better from our highest level of life-tenured Federal Judges!

Don’t believe the GOP BS💩 and the disingenuous “fake outrage”from members and enablers of the Party of Treason. Trump’s treason is an entirely predictable, even inevitable, outcome of modern Republicanism and a disgraceful party that gives “cover” to scumbag traitors and instigators like Cruz, Hawley, Johnson, McCarthy and others. These anti-American insurrectionists and purveyors of conspiracy theories, racism, lies, and anti-Constitutionalism should also be held accountable for their crimes!

You can read the rest of The Levin Report, including the disgusting antics of Trump’s scumbag kids, at this link:

https://mailchi.mp/33011e243e27/levin-report-trumps-heart-bursting-with-sympathy-for-his-buddy-bob-kraft-2910970?e=adce5e3390

Here’s Bess’s bottom line on Ivanka, Eric, & “super moron” Donnie, Jr:

In sum, the stupidity is an inherited trait and the president’s offspring apparently think they’re going to be able to launder their images.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever! The GOP of treason, 🤮☠️🏴‍☠️never!

PWS

01-07-21

🇺🇸⚖️🗽AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, GEORGIA VOTERS, WARNOCK, OSSOFF, BIDEN, HARRIS, ABRAMS, AFRICAN AMERICANS BIG WINNERS — Racist Grifters Loeffler & Perdue Ousted, Mitch Dethroned, Trump Biggest Loser In US History, GOP Sedition Thwarted, Even As Trump, “Traitor Ted,” & Other Anti-American Lowlifes Seek To Destroy Our Democracy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/06/georgias-voters-end-trump-era-definitively/

E. J. Dionne in WashPost:

Thanks to the voters of Georgia, the 2020 election looks very different than it did 48 hours ago. Barring a highly unlikely shift in the vote count, President-elect Joe Biden will now govern with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. The margins will be thin, but the power of Republicans to obstruct has been sharply diminished.

And the political map of the United States looks very different, too. Four years ago, it was unimaginable that Democratic control of the elected branches of the federal government would be cemented by victories in Senate races in Georgia. The Rev. Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff leads in a state that had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in two decades.

The likely outcome put an exclamation point on Biden’s success and a dagger into the Trump era. President Trump almost certainly hurt Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both directly and indirectly.

Trump’s insistence, against all the evidence, that the November vote in Republican-led Georgia was fraudulently counted split his party and may have discouraged GOP turnout on Tuesday. And Republicans will confront the reality that some voters drawn to the polls when Trump is on the ballot have no interest in participating when he’s not. They are more Trumpublicans than Republicans.

But the president did still more damage to his party by denigrating the $600 stimulus checks in the recently passed economic relief package and calling for $2,000 payments instead. His unexpected veto threat played directly into the argument made by both Warnock and Ossoff: that only Democrats could be trusted to deliver relief to the economically ailing, including the middle class.

Ossoff was unabashed in appealing directly to voters’ immediate interests: “You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate, and we will put money in your pocket.” Biden was equally direct when he campaigned for the Democratic duo on the eve of the election. “If you send Jon and the reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks are going out the door, restoring hope and decency and honor to so many people struggling right now,” Biden said. “If you send Sens. Perdue and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there. It’s just that simple.”

Last November, exit polls showed that voters most worried about the pandemic tended toward Democrats, while those worried about the economy leaned Republican. This led critics on the Democratic left, but also from elsewhere in the party, to argue that its candidates had failed to define a clear economic message.

Warnock and Ossoff did not make that mistake when they were given a second chance in the runoffs. Their defining issues were economic, and their victories would make it far easier for Biden to enact a large new relief package, a major infrastructure program, and expansions in health-care coverage and child care — as well as democracy reforms and voting-rights protections.

Georgia’s outcome also showed that the swing of middle-class suburban voters toward the Democrats was not a one-off reaction to Trump. Democrats feared and Republicans hoped that, with Trump defeated, at least some Republican-inclined anti-Trump voters would come home to the GOP on Tuesday. They didn’t — and were likely put off when Perdue and Loeffler embraced Trump’s efforts to nullify the November votes of their own state and elsewhere.

The contest also lifted up the power of organizing. Led by Stacey Abrams, the Democrats’ 2018 gubernatorial candidate, civil rights and voting rights groups registered hundreds of thousands of new Georgia voters. They lifted Biden to his 11,779-vote victory in the state and then went back to work, registering more voters for the runoff and getting them to cast ballots. The result: turnout for the runoff that came remarkably close to matching November’s levels while Warnock and, likely, Ossoff secured margins larger than Biden’s.

. . . .

****************

Read the full article at the link.

Thank you, Georgia!

With the “Demented Fascist Sore Loser” and “Traitor Ted” Cruz & company stoking the fires of sedition in the streets and revving up an attack on the Capitol through their knowingly bogus anti-American, White Supremacist hate speech, false narratives, vile lies, and baseless conspiracy theories, it’s time to put the GOP to bed for good.

There also should be a move to censure and eventually remove from office through the ballot box Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, Johnson and the rest of the GOP clowns and traitors whose lies and pandering to Trump stoked this outrage and have brought our nation to the precipice of anarchy. The voters of Georgia have showed us how with hard work, the right pro-humanity message, even against the odds, the anti-democracy GOP can be removed from office at all levels.

Not surprisingly, the Traitor Trump Treason Twitter Account has been “locked.” Too little, too late!

Moscow Mitch and other GOP toadies’ protestations in support of American democracy are far too little, far too late! They are the nihilists who have joined Trump in subverting American democracy and committing “crimes against humanity.” They should not escape accountability!

Then there are still GOP scumbags who refuse to condemn Trump or acknowledge the crimes of his thug rioters! They must be removed from public office, now!

The 81 million of us who saved American democracy need to work hard through legal means to make sure that the anti-democracy minority (“GOP”) never seizes power again! The GOP has proved its disloyalty to our Constitutional order.

It’s time for the GOP to be dissolved and replaced by a legitimate opposition. Even now, scummy GOP legislators insist on delaying the electoral process with bogus claims. I’m tired of indulging these evil clowns and subversives, and particularly, their ignorant anti-American supporters.

⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-21

👍🏼🇺🇸MICHAEL GERSON @ WASHPOST: EXPOSING THE GOP’S COWARDLY ANTI-DEMOCRACY TRAITORS🤮🏴‍☠️☠️: CRUZ, HAWLEY, JOHNSON, MCCARTHY, ET AL🦹🏿‍♂️👎🏻 — “They have demonstrated their unfitness for office and called their own patriotism into question.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/let-the-anti-constitutional-republicans-reveal-themselves/2021/01/04/d3fafee0-4eb6-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html

Opinion by Michael Gerson

January 4 at 2:32 PM ET

The great virtue of President Trump’s smoking subversion tape is that it clarifies the goals of all concerned.

The president’s stated objective is not to expose abuses in the electoral system. It is to pressure the Georgia secretary of state into manipulating the electoral system to squeeze out 11,780 additional votes — Trump specifies the exact number — in his favor. His cynical, delusional justifications are beside the point. He would say anything — invent any lie, allege any conspiracy, defame any opponent, spread any discredited rumor — to perpetuate his power.

This, in turn, illuminates the motives of his congressional enablers. In light of Trump’s clarifying call, the term “enablers” now seems too weak. When Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and their GOP colleagues try to disrupt and overturn a free and fair election, they are no longer just allies of a subversive; they become instruments of subversion. They not only help a liar; they become liars. They not only empower conspiracy theories; they join a conspiracy against American democracy. They not only excuse institutional arson; they set fire to the Constitution and dance around the flame.

Their pathetic motivations no longer matter. Some are simple cowards, frightened by angry people wearing red hats. Are we supposed to indulge their cravenness out of pity? Are we supposed to sympathize with people who want to keep their jobs at the cost of their country? Others eventually want the angry people in red hats to support their political ambitions. Are we supposed to humor people who seek the presidency by spitting on the institution of the presidency? Are we supposed make allowances for a selfishness so comprehensive that it eclipses duty, loyalty and love of country?

We are witnessing what happens when treacherous politicians run in packs. A solitary betrayal of the constitutional order by a member of Congress is a source of shame and, perhaps, a cause for expulsion. When 100 and more Republicans join hands and betray the constitutional order, it is a populist cause. They gain the confidence, even the thrill, of shared disloyalty. But their oath of office — in every single case — has been dishonored. They have demonstrated their unfitness for office and called their own patriotism into question.

So maybe it is for the best that they stand up and be counted. Maybe it is best for Americans to know who will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — and who will not. By all means, let’s engrave their names into a marble slab — a roll call of those who failed the most important test of self-government in our lifetimes. There are a lot of monuments honoring bravery. Let’s have one dedicated to abject cowardice.

. . . .

It is fortunate for the country that Trump is a clownish figure. In his subversion tape, he ricochets between ominous threats and pathetic lunacy. He is not capable of an organized thought, much less an organized coup. Any revolution with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood in the vanguard is likely to end in the joke bin of history.

And yet: Trump and his congressional implementers have purposely placed a virus in the public order. A significant portion of the country has expressed support for the triumph of anger over institutions. These are potential recruits for anarchy. Trump, Hawley, Cruz and the others may be laying the path for a rougher beast slouching toward Washington. They are shredding the careful work of America’s founders. And they deserve nothing but contempt.

*********************

Read Michael’s full op-ed at the link.

Evil clowns🤡, cowards🤮, traitors🏴‍☠️, all of them! American needs an opposition party with some integrity. But, the hopes of getting one out of the debris of today’s anti-democracy, corrupt GOP seems pretty slim. The majority of us are going to have to figure out a way to move forward into the future even with this ballast dragging us down. Hopefully, it’s not “mission impossible.”

Biden and Harris are much smarter, more capable, and better qualified than Trump & Pence. But they can’t do it alone. They are going to need lots of help from the majority of us who still believe in our national democracy and are willing to stand up for it. (The “New Due Process Army” for one).🇺🇸

Due Process Forever! ⚖️🗽

PWS

01-05-21

REALISTIC POSSIBILITY OR JUST MORE “WISHFUL THINKING” FROM LIBERALS? — Could Romney, Sasse, Collins, Murkowski, The Lincoln Project, & A Few Others Start A New Conservative Opposition Party, Leaving The GOP’s Racist Nonsense, Religious Bigotry, Anti-Science, & Anti-American Sedition 🏴‍☠️ Behind? — “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.” But, 11 GOP “So-Called Senators” & Dozens Of GOP “So-Called Representatives” Do!

Professor Heather Cox Richardson writes in “Letters From An American” (01-02-20):

. . . .

It seems clear that, with no chance of proving this election fraudulent, Trump is now trying to incite violence. Nonetheless, Republicans who are jockeying for the 2024 presidential nomination want to make sure they can pick up Trump’s voters. While McConnell doesn’t want Senators to have to declare their support either way, those vying to lead the party want to differentiate themselves from the pack.

On Wednesday, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he would join the efforts of his House colleagues to challenge Biden electors from Pennsylvania and perhaps other states. This will not affect the outcome of the election, but it will force senators to go on record for or against Trump. In a statement, Hawley listed Trump talking points: the influence of “mega corporations” on behalf of Biden and “voter fraud.” Hawley seems pretty clearly to be angling for a leg up in 2024.

On Wednesday night, Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) made his own play for the future of the Republican Party. He refuted point by point the idea that Trump won. He scolded his colleagues who are signing on to Trump’s attempt to steal the election, calling them “institutional arsonists.”

“When we talk in private, I haven’t heard a single Congressional Republican allege that the election results were fraudulent – not one,” he wrote on Facebook. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will “look” to President Trump’s most ardent supporters.” They think they can “tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” he wrote, but they’re wrong. “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”

Today, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, launched his own bid to redefine the Republican Party with an attack on Trump’s apparent botching of the coronavirus vaccine rollout. In a press release, Romney noted “[t]hat comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”

But he didn’t stop there. Romney went on to say that he was no expert on vaccine distribution, “[b]ut I know that when something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge reality and develop a plan—particularly when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.” He offered ideas of his own, offering them “not as the answer but as an example of the kind of options that ought to be brainstormed in Washington and in every state.” After listing his ideas, he concluded: “Public health professionals will easily point out the errors in this plan—so they should develop better alternatives based on experience, modeling and trial.”

Romney’s statement was about more than vaccine distribution. With its emphasis on listening to experts and experimenting, it was an attack on the rigid ideology that has taken over the Republican Party. Romney has said he comes to his position from his own experience, not his reading, but he is reaching back to the origins of conservative thought, when Irish statesman Edmund Burke critiqued the French Revolution as a dangerous attempt to build a government according to an ideology, rather than reality. Burke predicted that such an attempt would inevitably result in politicians trying to force society to conform to their ideology. When it did not, they would turn to tyranny and violence.

Sasse’s point-by-point refutation of Trump’s arguments– complete with citations—and Romney’s call to govern according to reality rather than ideology are suggestive. They seem to show an attempt to recall the Republican Party to the true conservatism it abandoned a generation ago.

********************

Get today’s “full Letter” and all th others here: https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkE1uhDAMhU8zWSLnB8gssuhmFr0ECokHokJCE9MpPX0zw6pSJcuWbD89fc9Zwinlw2ypEHu2gY4NTcRHWZAIM9sL5iF403INoCXzRnmuW81CGe4ZcbVhMZR3ZNs-LsFZCik-BQJaKdls9KgtR9dKjnDXnVMd3r0CUFLzdhz709buPmB0aPAL85EissXMRFu5yLeLuNWa0dKM2aXvHNxssy8pNmUfC1n30bi01h8Wqq3gwEFAL5SEhjcPyQ-e1efPelGwTuKPhmXzjjGGOBUu6t2m5bWuLEOd6x4DHQNGOy7oT0w6w3qBDxNGzDVEP1gyvINr2wvRg9L8xKo5SOiE6K6SVV-fqiqa_1B-AX8mhyo

Much as the idea appeals to me, and much as I admire Professor Richardson, it seems like an noble, yet unrealistic, hope rather than a slice of reality. As noted by Professor Richardson, the current GOP abandoned any real values at least a decade ago. They now rely on the “anti-democracy right” to keep them in business as a party that wields political strength out of proportion to the minority of voters it represents.

I find it perversely amusing, yet fundamentally disturbing, to have heard a Trump voter on TV recently claim to have “voted for the GOP platform” not the man in the last election. She was woefully ignorant of the fact that the GOP had no platform in 2020 other than “whatever Trump says.”

The history of those in the GOP who have been openly critical of Trump and his cult supporters is that they generally either 1) fall into line behind Moscow Mitch and Trump on most issues (e.g., Romney, Collins, et al.) or 2) head for the hills (e.g., Flake, Corker). Unlike the Dems, where spirited opposition is always threatening to rock the boat, true opposition and public dialogue are nearly non-existent in today’s GOP.

Nor does the lack of GOP soul searching and public recognition of Trump’s toxic, highly dishonest, and fundamentally anti-American “non-leadership” and responsibility for his own defeat, as well as the disastrous course his “maliciously incompetent non-leadership” has set for America, lead me to believe that the GOP will head in a “new direction” any time in the foreseeable future.

For example, as I’m writing this Cruz and ten other corrupt GOP “Senators” (or “Senators-elect”) are openly spreading lies and preaching sedition 🏴‍☠️ in the U.S. Senate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/02/cruz-johnson-9-other-gop-senators-say-they-will-not-vote-certify-electors-unless-audit-is-conducted/

That shows where the anti-American “Party of Putin and White Nationalist Extremists” ☠️🤮🤥 is headed these days. They might be the minority in their party, but you can bet that they won’t suffer any censure, much criticism, or real consequences from the rest of the GOP for essentially fomenting treason and seeking to undermine the credibility of an election fairly and overwhelmingly won by Biden and Harris.

The real hope for America’s survival is that under Biden and Harris, the Dems can finally figure our how to turn their numerical advantage in the general elections into actual political power to govern. Remains to be seen. Certainly hasn’t happened to date! That’s why we’re in this position, with Dems having won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, but held the Presidency after only five of those seven elections.

While I agree with some of what Romney says these days, he is somewhat unique in the GOP. He is one of the few GOP Senators with sufficient independent standing in his home state to be largely immune to criticism and attacks by Trump and his cronies.

Based on their overwhelming refusal over the past four years to put our national interests above Trump’s personal agenda, I (unfortunately) think that a “loyal opposition” springing from today’s GOP is more of a “Dem pipe dream” than a realistic possibility.

PWS

01-02-20

PATHETIC LOSER THOUGH THEIR SUPREME LEADER 🤡🤮MIGHT BE, THERE IS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THE GOP’S OUTRAGEOUS, OVERT, SUBVERSION OF DEMOCRACY — Jamelle Bouie in The NYT

Jamelle Bouie
NY Times Opinion Columnist
Creative Commons License

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/opinion/trump-republicans-texas-lawsuit.html

. . . .

Then again, it was only two weeks before Election Day that four of the court’s conservatives announced their potential willingness to throw out votes on the basis of this theory of state legislative supremacy over electoral votes. It is very easy to imagine a world in which the election was a little closer, where the outcome came down to one state instead of three or four, and the court’s conservatives could use the conflict over a narrow margin to hand the president a second term.

With no evidence that Republicans have really thought about the implications of a victory in the courts, I think we can say that these briefs and lawsuits are part of a performance, where the game is not to break kayfabe (the conceit, in professional wrestling, that what is fake is real). Still, we’ve learned something from this game, in the same way we learn something about an audience when it laughs.

We have learned that the Republican Party, or much of it, has abandoned whatever commitment to electoral democracy it had to begin with. That it views defeat on its face as illegitimate, a product of fraud concocted by opponents who don’t deserve to hold power. That it is fully the party of minority rule, committed to the idea that a vote doesn’t count if it isn’t for its candidates, and that if democracy won’t serve its partisan and ideological interests, then so much for democracy.

None of this is new — there is a whole tradition of reactionary, counter-majoritarian thought in American politics to which the conservative movement is heir — but it is the first time since the 1850s that these ideas have nearly captured an entire political party. And while the future is unwritten, the events of the past month make me worry that we’re following a script the climax of which requires a disaster.

**************

Read Jamelle’s full op-Ed at the link.

Always interesting for those of us who grew up during the Cold War, to see how the Commie-fighting, “law and order” GOP has become a party of neo-Stalinists and nihilists!

Although the GOP right claims to shudder at the threat of ”socialism,” (most probably have little or no idea what that actually means) dangerous clowns 🤡 like Ted Cruz would have been right at home in a Leninist-Stalinist dictatorship, its cult of personality, its utter disdain for the “real will of the people” and the common good, and its brutal suppression of both truth and dissent in favor of a politically fabricated “party line.”

America needs and deserves better from its opposition party. Whether we’ll get it seems doubtful based on current performance.

PWS

12-11-20

“TORTURE” UNDER U.N. DEFINITION! ☠️— “GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED CHILD ABUSE!” — WHAT HAVE WE BECOME AS A PEOPLE & A NATION? — AMERICA HAS PUT NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSERS AND SHAMELESS “PERPS” OF “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” IN CHARGE — We Now Have A Chance To Throw Them Out & Start The Return To Human Decency As An Overriding National Value! 🗽

Here’s an array of reports on how America under the Trump regime has joined the ranks of dictatorships, torturers, child abusers, persecutors, and human rights criminals!

Eugene Robinson
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post
Source: WashPost Website

Eugene Robinson @ WashPost:

What kind of people are we? As a society, are we so decadent and insecure that we show “toughness” by deliberately being cruel to innocent children? Is this what our nation has come to? Or are we better than that?

This election demands we answer those questions. The choice between President Trump and Joe Biden is not just political. It is also moral. And perhaps nothing more starkly illustrates the moral dimension of that decision than the Trump administration’s policy of kidnapping children at the southern U.S. border, ripping them away from their families — and doing so for no reason other than to demonstrate Trump’s warped vision of American strength.

We learned this week that some of those separations will probably be permanent. As NBC News first reported, 545 boys and girls taken as many as three years ago — the children of would-be immigrants and asylum seekers, mostly from Central America — have not been reunited with their parents and may never see their families again.

These are not among the nearly 3,000 families separated at the border in 2018, when children were kept in cages like animals or shipped away to facilities across the country, hundreds or thousands of miles from the border. We now know, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union and other pro bono lawyers, that an additional 1,500 children were torn away from their families beginning in 2017, when the Trump administration conducted a trial run of the separation policy.

Please think about that. The shocking scenes we saw two years ago did not result from a sudden spasm of presidential anger. They didn’t stem from a Fox News segment Trump might have seen one evening. Rather, the administration rehearsed this form of cruelty.

What the administration did not plan for was how to reunite the children taken in 2017 with their families. Many of the parents were deported, and their children were placed in shelters around the country, then ostensibly released to parents or guardians, placements that the ACLU is still trying to confirm.

[Our Democracy in Peril: A series on the damage Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term]

The ACLU and other organizations have sent investigators to towns and villages in Central America in an attempt to find the kidnapped children’s families — an effort complicated not just by time and distance, but also by the covid-19 pandemic. Parents of 545 children have not been found, the ACLU reported this week.

Disturbingly, the Department of Homeland Security suggested that some of the parents declined to get their children back so they could remain in the United States. Keep in mind that most of these families were seeking asylum from deadly violence in their home countries. The Trump administration changed immigration guidelines to make it unlikely that the families would ultimately be allowed to stay in the United States, but federal law gives them the right to apply for asylum and to have their cases heard. They did nothing wrong. They should never have been asked to choose between parenting their children and getting them to safety — not by their home countries, and not by the United States.

Trump’s racism and xenophobia have been hallmarks of his presidency from the beginning, so perhaps it should be no surprise that he would preside over such an outrage. But he didn’t do this by himself. He had plenty of help.

Former attorney general Jeff Sessions seized an opportunity to make his rabid antipathy toward Hispanic immigration into policy. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide in the Senate, was the architect of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. Then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said in 2018 that the children taken would be “taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.” Former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said last year that she regretted that “information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place” — but not the separations themselves.

. . . .

Read the rest of Eugene’s article here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-we-tolerate-the-kidnapping-of-children-this-election-is-our-chance-to-answer/2020/10/22/0f60d17c-1496-11eb-ad6f-36c93e6e94fb

***********************

Elise Foley
Deputy Enterprise Editor
HuffPost
Photo Source: HuffPost.com

Elise Foley @ HuffPost:

President Donald Trump’s administration started and carried out a policy that took more than 4,000 children from their parents, at least 545 of whom are still split apart years later. But at Thursday’s debate, the president insisted that he did nothing wrong at all ― blaming his Democratic predecessors and even insisting the kids are doing fine.

“They are so well taken care of,” Trump said of the children taken from their parents by his administration. “They’re in facilities that were so clean.”

Trump’s first term was marked by a full-out assault on immigration, both legal and unauthorized. The most dramatic was his “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized border-crossing, used in a 2017 pilot program and expanded more broadly in 2018, that led to criminal prosecution of parents and locking up their kids separately. Splitting up families was intentional and calculated, according to multiple reports.

Thanks to mass public outrage and a court order, Trump was forced to stop his family separation policy. Most families were reunited, but the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of the lawsuit against the government that stopped the policy, said this week that at least 545 kids are still away from their parents.

“Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden said during the debate. “And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Elise’s article here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-debate-family-separation_n_5f924368c5b62333b2439d2b

********************

Washington Post Columnist Ruth Marcus, moderates a panel discussion about chronic poverty with Education Secretary John B. King and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during the National Association of Counties at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. U.S. Department of Agriculture photo by Lance Cheung.

Ruth Marcus @ WashPost:

545.

That is the number of children still separated from their families by the Trump administration — separated deliberately, cruelly and recklessly. They might never be reunited with their parents again. Even if they are, the damage is unimaginable and irreparable.

545.

Even one would be too many. Each one represents a unique tragedy. Imagine being ripped from your parents, or having your child taken from you. Imagine the desperation that the parents feel, the trauma inflicted on their children.

545.

That number represents an indelible stain on President Trump and every individual in his administration who implemented this policy, flawed at the conception and typically, gruesomely incompetent in the execution. It is, perhaps in the technical sense but surely in the broader one, a crime against humanity. It is torture.

545.

That number — I will stop repeating it, yet it cannot be repeated enough — represents a moral challenge and responsibility for the next administration. If Joe Biden is elected president, he must devote the maximum resources of the federal government to fixing this disaster. The United States broke these families; it must do whatever it takes to help them heal.

Nothing like that would happen in a second Trump term, because Trump himself doesn’t care. He doesn’t grasp the horror that he oversaw. He doesn’t comprehend the policy, and he is incapable of feeling the pain it inflicted.

Those truths could not have been clearer cut than during Thursday night’s debate.

Moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News asked the president a simple question: “How will these families ever be reunited?”

First, Trump misstated the situation: “Their children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here, and they used to use them to get into our country.”

No. These are children separated from their families, not separated from smugglers. They are children brought by their parents in desperate search of a better life, desperate enough that they would take the risk of the dangerous journey.

Then Trump pivoted to the irrelevant: “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers. And we let people in, but they have to come in legally.”

Welker persisted: “But how will you reunite these kids with their families, Mr. President?”

Trump responded by pointing his finger at his predecessor: “Let me just tell you, they built cages. You know, they used to say I built the cages, and then they had a picture in a certain newspaper and it was a picture of these horrible cages and they said look at these cages, President Trump built them, and then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him.”

This is typical Trumpian deflection, bluster undergirded by ignorance. The “cages” are ugly but irrelevant to the topic at hand: the deliberately cruel plan to deter border-crossing by separating children from parents. That was a Trump administration special, implemented with callous sloppiness and so extreme that even the Trump administration abandoned it.

Welker, for the third time: “Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their families?”

At which point Trump made clear that he did not: “We’re trying very hard, but a lot of these kids come out without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.” The children, he added later, “are so well taken care of, they’re in facilities that were so clean.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Ruth’s op-ed here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/545-children-are-still-separated-from-their-families-what-if-one-of-them-were-yours/2020/10/23/63d3be04-154f-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html

********************

Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

Bess Levin @ Vanity Fair:

The third and final presidential debate gave Donald Trump and Joe Biden the opportunity to make their final pitch to the American people before the 2020 election. For the Democratic nominee, that meant driving home the point that he believes in science, that he’ll take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, that climate change is real, and that systemic racism must be dealt with. For Trump, it meant making it clear that in addition to being a science-denying, QAnon-promoting dimwit, he’s also an actual monster who thinks separating small children from their parents, in some cases permanently, is absolutely fine.

Asked by moderated Kristen Welker about the news that parents of 545 children separated at the border—60 of whom are under the age of five—cannot be located, Trump defended the policy and gave no explanation for how the government plans to find these people and reunite their families. “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country,” Trump said, which is objectively false, as they are brought here by their parents, which is why it’s called the family separation policy. “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers and we let people in but they have to come in legally.”

Noting that Trump hadn’t answered the question, Welker pressed: “But how will you unite these kids with their families?”

“They built cages, they used to say I built cages…that was him,” Trump said, pointing to Biden and referring to the fact that the Obama administration did build temporary enclosures but failing, naturally, to mention that his predecessor did not separate families.

“Do you have a plan to reunite the kids with their parents?” Welker asked a third time. Again, Trump responded by claiming that the children “come without the parents, they come over through cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.”

At this point, Joe Biden was given a chance to weigh in and used his time to describe the policy implemented by Trump as the horror show all non-sociopaths know it to be. “Parents, their kids were ripped from their arms and they were separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone, nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”

Then Trump interjected with what he apparently believed was an important point that would cast his administration in a much more favorable light and perhaps might even win it some awards or sainthood by the Catholic church. “Kristen, I will say this,” he told the moderator, of the children stolen from their parents. “They’re so well taken care of. They’re in facilities that are so clean.

With regard to that claim, NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff weighed in on that after the debate, telling Rachel Maddow: “I was one of the reporters I guess the president mentioned, they invited me to go to the epicenter of this policy…what I saw was little children sitting on concrete floors, covered by mylar blankets, supervised by security contractors in a watchtower, it makes me sick every time I recall it. And Physicians for Human Rights…called this torture…the American Academy of Pediatrics called this state-sanctioned child abuse, and the president of the United States I guess interprets that as children being well taken care of.”

Read the rest of The Levin Report here:

https://mailchi.mp/c4319dce073e/levin-report-trumps-heart-bursting-with-sympathy-for-his-buddy-bob-kraft-2882762?e=adce5e3390

********************

Jacob Soboroff
NBC Correspondent
Jacob Soboroff at the ABC News Democratic Debate
National Constitution Center. Philadelphia, PA.
Creative Commons License

Here’s a video from NBC New’s Jacob Soboroff, who has actually been inside “Trump’s Kiddie Gulag.” Surprise spoiler: It’s not “nice.” More like “torture” and “child abuse.”

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/soboroff-the-conditions-of-migrant-children-trump-described-as-well-taken-care-of-made-me-sick-94450757764

*********************

And, here’s another video from NBC News’s always incisive and articulate Julia Edwards Ainsley:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/10/21/lawyers-cant-find-parents-of-545-migrant-children-separated-by-the-trump-administration.html

*******************

There is neither moral nor legal justification for what the Trump regime has done to asylum seekers and other migrants over the past four years as part of their racist, White Nationalist, nativist agenda. But, we can show that we’re a better country than his horrible vision by voting him and all of his enablers out of office! Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out!

PWS

10-25-20

WE ALWAYS KNEW THE GOP SENATE 🤮 WAS A HAVEN FOR SLEAZE-BALLS — So Why Be Surprised When They Act The Part? — The Solution Is Simple — Vote ‘Em Out! — Start Rebuilding Our Democratic Republic Before It’s Too Late!

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 1933-2020
Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Photographer: Steve Petteway
Public Realm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/20/senate-republicans-are-showing-us-why-they-should-lose-their-majority/

Karen Tumulty in WashPost:

. . . .

In fact, McConnell’s actions are totally in keeping with the opportunism with which he has led the Senate. Given a chance, he will always abuse his power. Branding McConnell a hypocrite misses the point. Hypocrisy — coupled with an utter lack of shame — is not a character fault in his eyes. It is a management style, a means to an end.

[Obituary: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court justice and legal pioneer for gender equality, dies at 87]

And would we have expected anything different from Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the shape-shifting chairman of the Judiciary Committee?

Back in the days when he pretended to care about something more than sucking up to power, Graham used to say Republicans would have to live with what they had done to Obama’s 2016 nominee, Merrick Garland. In October 2018, shortly before taking the gavel of the committee that will consider Trump’s nomination, Graham promised: “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait till the next election.”

Now — surprise! — Graham has promised, via Twitter: “I will support President @realDonaldTrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.” His rationale, if you can dignify it by calling it that, is that Democrats did things that offended him. So it’s payback time.

Oh, and let’s consider the sanctimonious and pseudointellectual Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), whom Trump has said he would consider for future openings on the court. When running for president in early 2016, he loftily declared to NBC’s Chuck Todd: “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year. And what this means, Chuck, is we ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the Supreme Court.”

What Cruz said wasn’t true, as is so often the case. There had indeed been instances of presidential nominees being confirmed during election years. In February 1988, a Democratic-led Senate voted 97-0 to put Ronald Reagan’s pick, Anthony M. Kennedy, on the court.

But this was only the beginning for Cruz. When it still appeared that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016, he also suggested that the court could get along just fine with only eight members indefinitely. Now — surprise! — Cruz is warning that having an even number of justices constitutes a “grave danger.”

. . . .

******************

Read Karen’s complete op-ed at the link at the link.

As political sage Willie Nelson would say: “Vote ‘Em Out, Vote ‘Em Out!”

The best, perhaps only, way to honor RGB’s legacy and life work is to remove from office the party of inhumanity, inequality, and unbridled corruption who would spit and stomp on her legacy, NOW! Think about the “cultists” running around in “Fill Her Seat” shirts! Do you want these “princes and princesses of darkness, ignorance, bias, racism, and institutionalized inequality” to be running YOUR nation and determining the future of YOUR children and grandchildren? Pull out all the stops, open your wallets, and tell all your family, friends, and neighbors to register and vote for Joe and Kamala. It’s clearly “the last stand” for American democracy and human decency as we envision it (but also a great opportunity to make America better by voting for Biden/Harris)!

PWS

09-22-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻🤡HOW THE GOP SOLD OUT AMERICA TO RACISM & MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE: “Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance — all of it was well-known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery. But for them, it was simply a challenge to overcome, another hurdle that fate had placed between them and their holy grail of judges and tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot, with absolutely zero leadership qualities one ordinarily looks for in someone aspiring to become the chief executive of the world’s remaining superpower.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-useful-idiot-book_n_5f4bf594c5b697186e379058

The following is excerpted from “The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus,” by S.V. Dáte.

A pandemic never occurred to them. The idea that Donald Trump would ever be required to sit still, pay attention and make rational decisions that would determine whether hundreds of thousands of Americans would live or die not once crossed the minds of those who put him into the Oval Office.

Oh, they all had their various reasons for wanting him there. For white evangelical Christians, he had explicitly promised to appoint the federal judges they had so longed for to turn back the nation’s cultural clock. For Mitch McConnell, a Trump win — as unlikely as it seemed — was the only real path to making sure Republicans retained control of the Senate and he himself remained majority leader. And for Vladimir Putin, having Trump in the White House — as unlikely as it seemed — would be a dream come true, an opportunity to wreak havoc on his longtime adversary and weaken its historic alliance with Western Europe.

Russia’s dictator, of course, was not remotely interested in what Trump’s ascension might mean for Americans in the event of an actual calamity. If they were dumb enough to vote for him, well, they deserved whatever they got. In any event, it was not his problem.

As for Trump’s American supporters, perhaps so much time had passed since Sept. 11, 2001, that the idea of a genuine national emergency was but a faded memory. Perhaps the quiet competence that President Barack Obama’s team had employed with the 2009 flu pandemic and later with the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak had diminished the perceived threat that a simple virus could present.

For whatever reason, even as they watched the noise and chaos and nonsense generated by candidate Trump for a full year and a half, the consequences of a real crisis requiring real leadership actually happening on the watch of a President Trump had never really dawned on them.

True, there existed then — and continues to exist today — a significant cadre of Republican voters who genuinely believed that the Trump they watched on “The Apprentice” was the real Donald Trump. That he was a real billionaire, based on his own efforts and smarts. That he was capable of making rational, quality decisions based on the facts presented to him.

That excuse, though, does not work for those Republicans from McConnell on down to the congressional candidates who had occasion to speak with Trump in person. As one top Republican National Committee member told me after his first face-to-face encounter with Trump two months before the 2016 election: “OK. Our guy is insane.”

His was not a minority view, by the way. Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance — all of it was well-known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery. But for them, it was simply a challenge to overcome, another hurdle that fate had placed between them and their holy grail of judges and tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot, with absolutely zero leadership qualities one ordinarily looks for in someone aspiring to become the chief executive of the world’s remaining superpower.

It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country. In our two-party system, both have a duty to weed out candidates who fail the threshold test of commander-in-chief and, relatedly, emergency-manager-in-chief. Through the summer and fall of 2015 and then the early nominating contests of 2016, it was clear as day that Trump was not credible in those roles, and yet neither the remaining candidates nor the party leadership made a serious effort to ensure his defeat.

True, there were some who voiced warnings. Jeb Bush called Trump a “chaos candidate” who would bring us a “chaos presidency.” But there was also Ted Cruz, who literally praised Trump for the better part of a year, refusing to criticize him in the hopes of one day inheriting his voters. By the time Cruz did unload on him, it was seen as sour grapes. Such was the cynicism and game-playing that put us where we are.

. . . .

****************
Read the full article at the link.

It’s what happens when immoral and unprincipled GOP politicos can’t tell the difference between a “useful idiot” and a “total blithering (racist) idiot.”

“It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country.” As usual, it’s left for the Dems and the majority of us to clean up the the GOP’s disgraceful (and fundamentally un-American) mess! That’s why in addition to expelling the “Clown Prince” it’s essential to remove the GOP and “Moscow Mitch” from their abusive and destructive control of the Senate!

Check out this page from “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson:

“Caste” Isabel Wilkerson — “Caste”
By Isabel Wilkerson
Random House

Sound familiar? It should! Trumpism and Nazism share a common “core strategy:” Racism based on “dehumanization” of “the other” before the law — otherwise known as “Dred Scottification.” It’s in full operation by the Trump regime. And, most shockingly, a majority of our Supremes have “gone along to get along!” Very similar to the cowardly, complicit, and ultimately disastrous and deadly performance of the German judiciary in the face of Hitler’s racism!

There is no excuse for Trump, and there is no way that our our democratic republic can withstand another four years of his lies, bias, racism, “breathtaking ignorance,” corruption, cowardice, bullying, and “malicious incompetence!”

This November, vote like your life and future of the world depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

09-06-20

NY TIMES BLASTED FOR GIVING FORUM TO WHITE NATIONALIST PROPAGANDA FROM CIS SHILL! — “The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science ‘research’ papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language.”

Sebastian Murdock
Senior Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-times-anti-immigration-op-ed-hate-group_n_5e21d9d8c5b673621f752f9c

The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

BY SEBASTIAN MURDOCK

SENIOR REPORTER

HIUFFPOST

The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.

The column, published Friday, was written by , “a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,” according to the biography listed under his byline.

CIS, which calls itself “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.

“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with an anecdote about how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims “many liberal Democrats” want illegal immigration to run rampant:

Now many liberal Democrats, including those who call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seek to erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Under the banner of inclusiveness, equality, human rights, racial reconciliation and reparations for American interventions in the third world, those liberals demand sanctuary for those who make it past the Border Patrol or overstay a visa. Few speak openly of open borders, but that is essentially what they are calling for.

Throughout the piece, Kammer seems set on reminding readers that he is liberal, even if his views might suggest otherwise.

“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist,” Kammer, a former journalist, writes. “I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.”

White House adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, has cited CIS when speaking about immigration, and in 2011, the group released a report attempting to connect immigration with the creation of future terrorists, calling them “terror babies.”

The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science “research” papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, “longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.”

Running a column by an author employed by a known hate group is the latest in the Times’s run of publishing racist pieces in its opinion section. In December, columnist and known bedbug Bret Stephens cited a study by a white nationalist that falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ than other races. The study he cited “traffics in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes,” according to the SPLC.

Do better, New York Times.

****************

Ben Mathis-Lilley
Chief News Blogger
SLATE

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/times-op-ed-white-nationalist-center-for-immigration-studies.html

THE SLATEST

Times Taps White Nationalist Organization for Thought-Provoking Perspective on Immigration

By BEN MATHIS-LILLEY

JAN 17, 20206:42 PM

The New York Times opinion section under editor James Bennet ostensibly aims to challenge the paper’s predominately liberal readers by presenting them with thoughtful critiques of their worldview. In practice, it runs pieces like this recent argument that launching a war against Iran would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East—which was written by a veteran of the Bush administration who had predicted confidently in a 2003 piece also published by the Times that launching a war against Iraq would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East. There was no acknowledgment in the new piece of the old one, as an opinion section committed to intellectual honesty might require, nor was it particularly challenging in the sense of being difficult to rebut. But it did make people on the left feel bad, and like they were losing their minds, which is the bar that Bennet’s section requires an argument to clear.

The essay “I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” published in the Times Thursday, may represent the nadir of this approach. It makes a familiar argument: that “the left” believes in a “post-national” system of open borders which sacrifices the interests of native-born working Americans to the interests of low-skilled foreign immigrants who drive down wages and disrupt the cultural cohesiveness of their communities. It argues for respecting a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and asserts that Donald Trump’s position on immigration can be appreciated, in a non-racist way, as “a patriotic battle to defend common people.” It accuses Trump’s critics of having had their minds addled by “tribal passions” and a fetish for conflict “between ethnic groups,” and it proposes a “conciliatory” policy that would offer amnesty to existing undocumented workers but institute a crackdown regime of visa enforcement that would prevent future undocumented individuals from finding jobs.

The familiarity of the article’s arguments is matched by the familiarity of its flaws. While large-scale immigration is, in fact, believed by some non-racists to flatten wages at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s also known to accelerate rather than retard economic expansion overall, and tends to be supported by progressives who advocate for other means of increasing working-class wages and sharing the benefits of GDP growth. The distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigration is not some ancient, race-agnostic pillar of global affairs, but rather a concept that was instituted in the United States in the early 20th century to explicitly discriminate against Asian, southern European, and eastern European individuals and expanded in the 1960s to explicitly discriminate against Mexicans. Trump’s support is strongest in areas where there are fewer undocumented immigrants, not more, and he lost four of the five states that have the highest undocumented populations per capita. Many of the most immigration-heavy and ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. are also the safest and wealthiest and are considered so desirable to live in by migrating native-born Americans that they are experiencing housing crises.

As to whether criticizing an administration that instituted the premeditated, systematic separation of young children from their parents after they applied legally for asylum is a matter of unseemly “tribal passions,” or whether support for the principles of inclusive American citizenship described on the Statue of Liberty constitutes “post-national” anti-patriotism, perhaps we can agree to disagree.

More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece’s provenance: It’s written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: “I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist.” He expresses regret that “odious people” with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a “bad name.”

What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a “European-American majority, and a clear one at that”; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent “credibility.”

Kammer does write that he disagrees with “some of the center’s hard-line positions.” Among his more hard-line colleagues at CIS are a writer named Jason Richwine, who contributed to a journal founded by white supremacist Richard Spencer and who has said that “IQ” is the “most important” difference between racial groups. (As the SPLC has documented, CIS has circulated literally hundreds of articles by explicit white supremacists like Spencer via links in its weekly newsletter. Its director once accused Barack Obama of trying to “foment race war.”) A statement of purpose on the CIS website is credited to longtime Tanton collaborator Dan Stein, who once complained that mass immigration was a tool developed by “Ted Kennedy and his political allies” in approximately 1958 to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.”

In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called “The Intellectual Roots of Nativism.” It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant’s contribution to society as “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” The piece expressed concern that “otherwise sober-minded conservatives” and “reasonable critics of immigration” were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically “dirtier.”

Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the “odious people” that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate “European-American” and “Anglo-Saxon” superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!

**************************

So, we have a White Nationalist in the White House assisted by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller actually turning nativism into “Government policy.” Other white supremacists are scattered in key positions throughout the Government, particularly the immigration bureaucracy. Trump tweets and right-wing media put out a constant barrage of nativist lies, misrepresentations, false narratives, and racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.

So, just why is it that the “mainstream media” owes White Nationalists yet another forum to spread their nativist propaganda?

It’s not limited, of course, to just the Times. The WashPost regularly publishes largely fact and value free right-wing blather from professional shills like Marc Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt under the guise of “op-eds.”

And Chuck Todd regularly invites GOP congenital liars and Trump toadies like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to spread their lies, false narratives, and debunked “conspiracy theories” from the “bully pulpit” of “Meet the Press.” To top it off, Chuck then appears to be flabbergasted that when he confronts these guys with truth and facts, they “double down” continuing to lie to his face, ignore established facts, and spread Putinesque conspiracy theories.

Fact is, most of the Trump agenda is corrupt, counterfactual, unethical, inhumane, divisive, and corrosive to American democracy. We receive enough of it from lots of sources every day, pretty much 24-7-365. Is it really necessary for those supposedly dedicated to truth and democracy to give more free “air time” to nativist shills spreading their racially corrosive, divisive, anti-democracy propaganda?

PWS

01-18-20

FRANK RICH @ NY MAGGIE: TRUMP TOADIES WILL FACE A RECKONING — “With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it . . . .”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/what-will-happen-to-trumps-republican-collaborators.html

What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? Look to Nixon’s defenders, and the Vichy collaborators, for clues.

By Frank Rich

@frankrichny

Photo: Getty Images

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

Irony, declared dead after 9/11, is alive and kicking in Trump’s America. It’s the concepts of truth and shame that are on life support. The definition of “facts” has been so thoroughly vandalized that Americans can no longer agree on what one is, and our president has barreled through so many crimes and misdemeanors with so few consequences that it’s impossible to gainsay his claim that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Donald Trump proves daily that there is no longer any penalty for doing wrong as long as you deny everything, never say you’re sorry, and have co-conspirators stashed in powerful places to put the fix in.

No wonder so many fear that Trump will escape his current predicament scot-free, with a foregone acquittal at his impeachment trial in the GOP-controlled Senate and a pull-from-behind victory in November, buoyed by a booming economy, fractious Democrats, and a stacked Electoral College. The enablers and apologists who have facilitated his triumph over the rule of law happily agree. John Kennedy, the Louisiana senator who parrots Vladimir Putin’s talking points in his supine defense of Trump, acts as if there will never be a reckoning. While he has no relation to the president whose name he incongruously bears, his every craven statement bespeaks a confidence that history will count him among the knights of the buffet table in the gilded Mar-a-Lago renovation of Camelot. He is far from alone.

If we can extricate ourselves even briefly from our fatalistic fog, however, we might give some credence to a wider view. For all the damage inflicted since Inauguration Day 2017, America is still standing, a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump, and the laws of gravity, if not those of the nation, remain in full force. Moral gravity may well reassert its pull, too, with time. Rather than being the end of American history as we know it, the Trump presidency may prove merely a notorious chapter in that history. Heedless lapdogs like Kennedy, Devin Nunes, and Lindsey Graham are acting now as if there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come eventually, whatever happens in the near future, and Judgment Day could arrive sooner than they think. That judgment will be rendered by an ever-more demographically diverse America unlikely to be magnanimous toward cynical politicians who prioritized pandering to Trump’s dwindling all-white base over the common good.

All cults come to an end, often abruptly, and Trump’s Republican Party is nothing if not a cult. While cult leaders are generally incapable of remorse — whether they be totalitarian rulers, sexual Svengalis, or the self-declared messiahs of crackpot religions — their followers almost always pay a human and reputational price once the leader is toppled. We don’t know how and when Donald Trump will exit, but under any scenario it won’t be later than January 20, 2025. Even were he to be gone tomorrow, the legacy of his most powerful and servile collaborators is already indelibly bound to his.

Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.

That selective short list doesn’t take into account any new White House felonies still to come, any future repercussions here and abroad of Trump’s actions to date, or any previous foul deeds that have so far eluded public exposure. For all the technological quickening of the media pulse in this century, Trump’s collaborators will one day be viewed through the long lens of history like Nixon’s collaborators before them and the various fools, opportunists, and cowards who tried to appease Hitler in America, England, and France before that. Once Trump has vacated the Oval Office, and possibly for decades thereafter, his government, like any other deposed strongman’s, will be subjected to a forensic colonoscopy to root out buried crimes, whether against humanity or the rule of law or both. With time, everything will come out — it always does. With time, the ultimate fates of those brutalized immigrant and refugee families will emerge in full. And Trump’s collaborators, our Vichy Republicans, will own all of it — whether they were active participants in the wrongdoing like Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, Mike Pompeo, and William Barr, or the so-called adults in the room who stood idly by rather than sound public alarms for the good of the Republic (e.g., Gary Cohn, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson), or those elite allies beyond the White House gates who pretended not to notice administration criminality and moral atrocities in exchange for favors like tax cuts and judicial appointments (from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr.).

. . . .

************************

Read the rest of Rich’s article at the link.

“Tomorrow will come, eventually.” Yup!

Just yesterday, the usually reliable “Trump Toadies” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) were whining and sputtering upon learning what toadyism really means after being “treated like Democrats” during an insulting and clownish “after the fact briefing” on Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/impeachment-watch-january-8/index.html .

But, that moment of lucidity and outrage will pass quickly, and they will undoubtedly rejoin their colleagues like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Teddy Cruz (R-TX), Sen. John “Vladimir” Kennedy (R-LA), Lindsey “Braindead” Graham (R-SC), and the rest of the “Party of Putin” in groveling before their Clown-in-Chief.

I would include the Article III judges who tanked in the face of tyranny and failed to protect the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable in the list of those whose misdeeds, spinelessness, and complicity in the face of tyranny eventually will be “outed.”

PWS

01-09-20

HISTORY W/ HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Remembering Dec.7, 1941, Exposing Those Who Betray Its Legacy —“The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel.”

Heather Cox Richardson
Historian
Professor, Boston College

December 7, 2019

Dec 8

On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship. In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller sheltered the captain behind the ship’s conning tower. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower. Miller had not been trained to use the guns because, as a black man, his naval assignment was to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

That night, America declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America the next day, and four days later, on December 11, 1941, Italy and Germany both declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the mongrel Americans had been corrupted by Jews and “Negroes,” and could never conquer their own organized military machine.

The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought would destroy democracy once and for all.

Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.

The efficiency of World War One inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.

This system of government was called “fascism,” after the Latin word “fasces,” which were a bundle of sticks bound together. The idea is that each stick can be easily broken alone, but as a bundle are unbreakable. (It was a common symbol: in fact, Lincoln’s hand rests on fasces in the statue at the Lincoln Memorial.) Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.

America fought World War Two to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men from 18-50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that Hitler’s codebreakers never cracked.

The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t— but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.

Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?

Based in the principle that all men are created equal, democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities—a mongrel population– the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.

But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.

In June 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that democracy is obsolete. He believes that a few oligarchs should run the world while the rest of us do as we are told, and he is doing his best to destroy both American democracy and the international structures, like NATO, that hold it in place. The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel. Astonishingly, that affinity has recently come out into the open. Some of our leaders are publicly echoing Putin’s propaganda, apparently willing to work with him to undermine the principles on which our nation rests so long as it means they can stay in power.

Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?

When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality. He did so until 1943, when he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the U. S. S. Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank in minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.

I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the oligarchs will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.

Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.

**************************************************

Who would have thought that Putinist fascism would take over such a large portion of the U.S. Government without firing a shot?

“Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?” Interesting question on which, unfortunately, the jury is still out.

Anyone who watched Ted “Out Of Cruz Control” (R-RUS) suck up to and double down on V. Putin’s & Trump’s favorite false narrative about the Ukraine on “Meet the Press” yesterday couldn’t be too optimistic for the survival of our democracy if the GOP has any say in the matter! Chuck Todd was left almost speechless by Cruz’s outright lies and Putinist propaganda!

PWS

12-09-19

RUDE AWAKENING? — Some In GOP Finally Concerned About Idiotic Actions Of White Nationalist “Tariff Man” — But Don’t Expect Much Action Given GOP’s Endemic Cowardice In The Face Of Trump!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/us/politics/republicans-mexico-tariffs.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fcatie-edmondson&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Catie Edmonson & Maggie Haberman report for the NY Times:

June 4, 2019

WASHINGTON — Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message on Tuesday, warning that they were almost uniformly opposed to President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, just hours after the president said lawmakers would be “foolish” to try to stop him.

Mr. Trump’s latest threat to impose 5 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, rising to as high as 25 percent until the Mexican government stems the flow of migrants, has prompted some of the most serious defiance in the Republican ranks since the president took office.

Republican senators emerged from a closed-door lunch at the Capitol angered by the briefing they received from a deputy White House counsel and an assistant attorney general on the legal basis for Mr. Trump to impose new tariffs by declaring a national emergency at the southern border.

“I want you to take a message back” to the White House, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told the lawyers, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Cruz warned that “you didn’t hear a single yes” from the Republican conference. He called the proposed tariffs a $30 billion tax increase on Texans.

“I will yield to nobody in passion and seriousness and commitment for securing the border,” Mr. Cruz later told reporters. “But there’s no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”

The president’s latest foray into a global trade war has troubled economists and roiled stock and bond markets. The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, hinted on Tuesday that the central bank could cut interest rates if the trade war started to hurt the economy. The remarks sent stocks higher for their strongest day in months.

But senators were mindful of the long-term stakes for their home states.

[Mr. Powell’s comments sent a signal that the central bank was watching Mr. Trump’s trade wars warily.]

Texas would be hit the hardest by the proposed tariffs on Mexican products, followed by Michigan, California, Illinois and Ohio, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A 25 percent tariff would threaten $26.75 billion of Texas imports.

“We’re holding a gun to our own heads,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

If Mr. Trump were to declare an emergency to impose the tariffs, the House and the Senate could pass a resolution disapproving them. But such a resolution would almost certainly face a presidential veto, meaning that both the House and the Senate would have to muster two-thirds majorities to beat Mr. Trump.

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said he warned the lawyers that the Senate could muster an overwhelming majority to beat back the tariffs, even if Mr. Trump were to veto a resolution disapproving them. Republicans may be broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s push to build a wall and secure the border, he said, but they oppose tying immigration policy to the imposition of tariffs on Mexico.

“The White House should be concerned about what that vote would result in, because Republicans really don’t like taxing American consumers and businesses,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Trump, just hours before at a news conference in London with the British prime minister, Theresa May, said he planned to move forward with imposing tariffs on Mexican imports next week as part of his effort to stem the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

“I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on, and we’ll probably be talking during the time that the tariffs are on, and they’re going to be paid,” Mr. Trump said. When asked about Senate Republicans discussing ways to block the tariffs, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they will do that.”

He said, “I think if they do, it’s foolish.”

Republicans are still holding out hope that the tariffs can be avoided. Mexico’s foreign minister is leading a delegation to Washington this week to try to defuse the situation with the Trump administration. A White House meeting with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday could prove pivotal.

“There is not much support for tariffs in my conference, that’s for sure,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “Our hope is that the tariffs will be avoided, and we will not have to answer any hypotheticals.”

A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

Leaving the lunch, lawmakers complained they were facing too many such hypotheticals. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, asked the lawyers what the precedent for imposing tariffs through an emergency declaration would be. His question was left unanswered. In fact, since the National Emergencies Act was signed in 1976, it has never been used to impose tariffs on a single country.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said he “would not be inclined to vote on a tariff against a friend,” but ventured that “what you’re likely to see is the Mexican government and our government finding some way to work on this collaboratively and not reach a tariff.”

Others were less convinced.

“He’s committed to this,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, who spoke with Mr. Trump on Sunday and was sure the president would proceed with the tariffs, regardless of the concerns. “He’s serious as four heart attacks and a stroke. He’s moving forward.”

Opponents of the tariffs would use the same motion of disapproval that they tried to use to block the president from grabbing federal money for a border wall that was not appropriated for that purpose. That motion did pass Congress with significant Republican support, but not enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s veto.

Mr. Johnson warned White House officials that they should not count on a veto override vote going the same way. But Mr. Trump has supporters, and Republicans, especially in the House, have been loath to oppose him on immigration. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once a moderate on immigration policy, took to Twitter to say the president was within his rights to use tariffs to force Mexico’s hand.

Marco Rubio

✔@marcorubio

The law provides @potus broad authority to control transactions with other nations if there is an unusual & extraordinary threat to the national security &/or economy of the U.S.. Unlawful migration & drug flow transiting through #Mexico into U.S. clearly poses such a threat.

1,347

6:28 PM – Jun 3, 2019

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840 people are talking about this

Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, expressed support for the president, as did Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for re-election in 2020 and faced blistering criticism after flip-flopping this year on whether he would vote to disapprove the president’s emergency declaration to build the wall.

“I think Mexico could help us solve the crisis down at the border,” Mr. Tillis told reporters. “What’s the tax on handling 80,000 additional illegal immigrants coming across the border, housing them, adjudicating them? You’ve got to look at the total cost of the prices.”

If a revolt comes to pass, it would start in the Senate, but House Republicans would have to join the effort to overturn a veto.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, declined to forecast whether the House would try to block the tariffs on Mexico.

“The administration’s tariff policy is erratic and all over the place,” he said. “We will see what the Senate Republicans ultimately decide to do, but we will certainly strongly consider proceeding in a way that is appropriate and consistent with our legislative powers.”

Mr. Trump seemed unimpressed when a reporter noted that Mexican officials said that they had increased the number of migrants they had apprehended coming into their country from elsewhere in Central America. He offered no specifics on what it would take to keep the tariffs from being imposed.

“Look, millions of people are flowing through Mexico,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Catie Edmondson reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from London. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Emily Cochrane and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington.

**************************************************

Rubio’s pro-Trump tweet seems pretty off-base. Other than the fact that Trump is incompetently using Border Patrol on a self-created emergency that could be handled by Inspectors and Asylum Officers at ports of entry, allowing Border Patrol Officers to focus on more important law enforcement duties, there doesn’t appear to be any known connection between families from the Northern Triangle turning themselves in and applying for legal asylum under our laws and “drug smuggling.” Nor do such individuals who turn themselves in present any known threat to either national security or our economy (particularly since Trump plans to bar them from working unless and until they actually receive asylum under a system he has intentionally skewed against them). Indeed, smugglers would have to be pretty stupid to use individuals who intended to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol at the border as “drug couriers.”

On the other hand, Trump’s incompetent handling of the border situation, his gross misuse of national emergency and tariff authorities, and his attacks on trade with Canada and Mexico, two of our major allies and trading partners, does promise to threaten both our econommy and our national security. Rather ironic that the asylum applicants are the ones using our legal system while Trump is the one trashing it in multiple ways.

Sen. Tillis also seems out of bounds. Individuals have a right to apply for ayslum. Undoubtedly, the number of individuals now applying could be processed fairly and legally for much less than Trump’s tariffs would cost U.S. consumers, not to mention the money wasted on useless walls, unnecessary detention, and misuse of American troops. Even spending some money on helping Mexico improve its system and joining Mexico’s initiative to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle would be more cost effective than tariffs.

Why would Tillis expect Mexico, a smaller and poorer country, to do a better job of stopping the flow than the U.S. has? How would he expect Mexico to process all the migrants without major human rights violations? Wouldn’t wrecking the Mexican economy, along with our own, restart the flow of Mexicans going north that actually has been reversed in recent years? Pretty scary how little the GOP understands about migration and sound immigration policies.

When policy is made based on irrational factors such as White Nationalism, racism, contempt for foreign countries, and disregard for human rights, bad things are going to happen. But, I’m still not betting on the GOP to stand up to Trump. Lots of grumbling; but, in the past, such grumbling has seldom been turned into action.

PWS

06-05-19

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

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This November, vote like your life and future of the world depend on it! Because they do!

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