NRA – immigrationcourtside.com

🔫WELL, ACTUALLY, TOTALLY CONTRARY TO THE GOP BS, GUN CONTROL LAWS DO SAVE LIVES! — “The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e8e45d47-c3b3-4b69-862f-6cc848e9bb43

David Lauter in the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.

This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.

“The most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said to MSNBC a few hours after a shooter killed at least 21 people in Uvalde, Texas. “Inevitably, when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work.”

The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.

Broad agreement

on some measures

And yet, significant agreement does exist.

Poll after poll has shown for years that large majorities of the public agree on at least some limited steps to further regulate firearms.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that, by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”

The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.

So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?

One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.

Asked in that same Pew survey whether mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.

The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.

“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”

The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.

Go back 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Since then, California repeatedly has tightened its gun laws, while Florida and Texas have moved in the opposite direction.

California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.

Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.

Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.

California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.

The overall pattern is clear, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.

Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.

Gun law opponents harden positions

Hard-core opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.

Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.

Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.

Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.

. . . .

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

Read David’s complete article at the link.

Unfortunately, the much ballyhooed polls on this issue turn out to be highly misleading. The polls showing widespread support for gun control suggest that there should be a heavy political price to pay for GOP gun zealots who mock the need for rational measures to protect kids, worshippers, shoppers, and others from mass firearms’ assaults.

However, the exact opposite is true. As Chuck Todd recently pointed out on NBC News, even in the “post-Sandy-Hook” era, no incumbent politician has lost his or her position for opposing reasonable firearms controls. The converse is not true.

Todd also pointed out that we now have more guns than people in the U.S., a situation that didn’t exist a decade ago. The irrational response to more gun deaths, lead by the NRA and GOP politicos, has been more guns — NOT common sense, concern for the common good, or courageous bipartisan problem solving.

That perhaps explains how sleazy immoral characters like Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz, VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and a host of other corrupt “guns are the answer to all problems” GOP politicos remain in office as innocent kids and others die and the problem gets worse.

As the article suggests, lack of urgency and priority also might be a reason why the polls are so completely misleading on this issue. For the “guns trump human lives crowd,” adhering to positions promoting irresponsible “absolutist” firearms agendas are a “litmus test.” Apparently, for too many of those in the “majority,” saving some kids and other human lives is in the “nice to have, but not essential” category.

So, despite their immoral and irrational stand on guns, the GOP controls a majority of state and local Governments. Nationally, thanks to the electoral college, gerrymandering, and local control of national voting, the GOP appears poised to sweep back into power on the national level and impose their anti-individual-liberty, anti-democracy, anti-humanity, pro-guns and big corporations agenda on all until the last shadow of American liberal democracy is wiped out.

It’s clear from the “in your face” reactions of Cruz and other GOP pols that they expect no fallout from their latest, deadly policy failures. Indeed, I think they fully anticipate a political boost from their ridiculous and widely-panned suggestions and their ever more outrageous fact-free “shoot ‘em up — ignore the real problem” proposals. Kid deaths and grieving parents who can be fobbed off or ignored have become a “gold mine” for valueless GOP politicos to exploit and demean.

Sadly, they probably are correct. Despite the perhaps “over coverage” by the media obsessed with public demonstrations, the GOP has little to fear politically from outraged parents of dead kids, students walking out of classes, newspaper editorials, or demonstrators outside the NRA Convention.

Unless and until gun control proponents can find a way to make arrogant GOP pols on all levels “pay a price” for their immoral actions and horrible positions, the latest “surge in public sentiment” will be just as meaningless as the polls they engender. That means reaching out to the rural Americans who drive the GOP’s pro-gun agenda and changing at least some minds with facts. That’s something that Dems as a whole have failed to do over decades, as the GOP developed a stranglehold over rural America.

While GOP politicos like Abbott and Cruz (who, let’s remember, fled with his family to a resort in Mexico while ordinary Texans suffered through Abbott’s mismanagement of the power grid) babble nonsense, parents who have lost children understand exactly who is to blame for preventable mass murders:

“There’s no reason for just an average citizen to have these types of weapons,” she said. Adding, “What for? What do you need them for? Is it worth my kid? These kids?”

https://apple.news/ABvfx3I_pRjubQAjtOz4c-A

Of course, as the article acknowledges, gun control won’t solve all problems or prevent all mass shootings. But, contrary to widely promoted GOP myths, such laws would be a major step in the right direction that demonstrably would preserve some human lives.

The GOP gun lobby’s outrageous “expand the universe of gun ownership and military-style firepower” agenda clearly results in more unnecessary deaths. Even more significantly, there is no case for the proposition that reasonable firearms restrictions and limitations on military assault-type weapons place any unreasonable burden on sportsmen, target shooters, or other types of legitimate gun owners.

No private citizen in America needs an assault weapon for self defense or sporting purposes! Pro-gun commercials suggesting that assault weapons are necessary for self-defense at home or to “protect America” are the pure BS! But, they apparently are much more effective than angry demonstrations, school walkouts, or tearful testimonials from those deprived of their loved ones and colleagues by preventable mass gun violence.

Tougher laws might, however, stop at least a few kids or angry folks from getting their hands on military-grade weapons of mass destruction and murder.

Significantly, it now appears that about the only folks who “did the right thing at the right time” during the Uvalde mass murder were the unarmed kids who, risking their lives, called, sometimes repeatedly, those authorized to use deadly force and assault-style weapons for public protection. But, it was largely to no avail, as the so-called “good guys with guns” stood around as kids died — they were afraid they might get shot by an 18-year-old kid armed like a combat soldier. Their teachers, not the “good guys with guns” were the ones willing to sacrifice their lives in an attempt to save others.

Also, while Texas seems to revel in “anti-Federalism,” it’s worth noting that the slaughter only stopped when Federal Border Patrol Officers ignored local police leaders and confronted the shooter.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-29-22

MITCH McCONNELL & HIS GOP CRONIES ARE INSURING THAT OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL CONTINUE TO BE IN UNNECESSARY DANGER OF RIGHT-WING TERRORIST GUN VIOLENCE NO MATTER WHO IS PRESIDENT – Judges Can Be “Stooges” Too, & That’s The Litmus Test For The NRA’s Wholly-Owned Subsidiary, GOP Enterprises & Its “CEO!”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/senate-republicans-gun-control-judges.html

Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate:

The Republican Party has no real plan to stop the epidemic of mass shootings that has turned American life into a gruesome Hobbesian nightmare. It’s easy to see why. All available evidence confirms that the guns are the problem: The United States’ patchwork of lax firearms laws allows Americans to slaughter civilians with astonishing ease. To stop mass shootings, lawmakers will need to tighten both federal and state gun laws, which Republicans refuse to do. We must remain sitting ducks, waiting to learn—in Sen. Marco Rubio’s memorable phrasing—whose “turn” it is next to be massacred.

Shortly after the El Paso, Texas, shooting on Saturday, the New York Times published an article that inadvertently presaged Republicans’ nonresponse to the imminent bloodbath. Senate Republicans, the Times noted, have passed virtually no legislation of any kind so far this year. In the face of mounting crises, the Senate’s GOP leaders have allowed little deliberation and few votes. They certainly won’t bring H.R. 8, a universal background check bill that already passed the House of Representatives, to the floor.

Instead, the Senate operates as “an approval factory” for Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, the Times found. Under Trump, the Senate has confirmed two Supreme Court justices, 99 district courts judges, and 43 federal court of appeals judges. Today, nearly 1 in 4 judges on the powerful courts of appeals was nominated by Trump. The president is reshaping the judiciary in the image of the Republican Party’s far-right conservative wing.

Today, nearly 1 in 4 judges on the powerful courts of appeals was nominated by Trump.

It would be a mistake to claim that the Senate has taken no action on gun control. While the House passes gun safety measures, the Senate installs judges who are eager to strike such measures down. Republican lawmakers have taken the long view: They may lose majorities in Congress and state legislatures, but Trump’s judges will sit on the bench for decades to come. Any future firearms restrictions may be invalidated; many existing gun safety laws are in serious jeopardy. The GOP may have no plan to stop mass shootings, but it does have a plan to ensure that Democrats can’t stop them, either.

To understand the dynamic here, it’s important to remember that the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions have been fairly narrow. In 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that the amendment protects law-abiding individuals’ right to keep handguns in the home for self-defense. In 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago, the court held that this right applies against state and local governments. Thus, the Constitution prevents the government from outlawing the possession of a handgun in the home. Under current precedent, the Second Amendment poses no threat to the vast majority of proposed gun regulations.

Try as it might, the National Rifle Association and its allies have failed to persuade the Supreme Court to go any further. The court has declined to hear challenges to a ban on assault weapons, a requirement that guns be stored in a lockbox, a prohibition on concealed carry, and a mandatory waiting period between firearm purchases. A majority of the justices have simply refused to expand Heller and McDonald to curb Americans’ ability to protect themselves from the gun massacres that plague us today.

Trump’s judges are desperate to change that. Start with his Supreme Court nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. In 2017, Gorsuch joined Justice Clarence Thomas in declaring that states may not ban civilians from carrying concealed weapons in public. Their dissent accused the court of treating “the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.” By joining Thomas’ opinion, Gorsuch signaled that he would force every state to allow concealed carry—even though states with looser concealed carry laws have more gun deaths. Gorsuch and Thomas also dissented from the Supreme Court’s refusal to block the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, which were used in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

Kavanaugh, too, proved to be a gun extremist during his tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In a 2011 dissent, Kavanaugh declared that D.C.’s ban on assault weapons infringed upon the Second Amendment. The District argued that the ban would save lives, since these guns are disproportionately used in mass shootings. Kavanaugh, however, claimed that Heller established a right to purchase assault weapons because there “is no meaningful or persuasive constitutional distinction” between semi-automatic handguns and rifles. (In fact, a typical semi-automatic rifle bullet exits the muzzle with far more powerthan the typical semi-automatic handgun bullet, making it substantially more devastating to the human body.)

Trump’s lower-court nominees are now openly lobbying the Supreme Court to strike down more gun laws. These judges have advanced an ambitious argument that limitations on the right to bear arms must pass strict scrutiny, the most stringent constitutional standard available. A strict scrutiny test would effectively kill any legislation that was not “narrowly tailored” to advance a compelling state interest—and preventing a mass shooting may not be a good enough reason.

In July 2018, four of Trump’s nominees to the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals condemned a federal law that bars licensed dealers from selling handguns to out-of-state residents. The law does not ban interstate gun transfers; it merely requires handguns to be transferred to a dealer in the state where the buyer resides.

There is nothing especially burdensome about this law. Congress intended dealers to ensure that every handgun transfer complies with the laws of the state where the buyer resides. A panel of judges for the 5^thCircuit upheld the law, and the full court voted not to disturb that ruling. Yet seven judges, including four Trump nominees, dissented, arguing that the law is unconstitutional. Judge James Ho, one of Trump’s most outwardly partisan nominees, scorned the government’s reasoning that “to protect against the violations of the few, we must burden the constitutional rights of the many.” Ho applied strict scrutiny, arguing that because there are “less restrictive alternatives,” like “better information sharing,” the law is not narrowly tailored.

In December, Judge Stephanos Bibas, another Trump nominee, wrote a similar dissent to a decision by the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A panel of judges upheld New Jersey’s ban on large-capacity magazines (or LCMs). The majority noted that LCMs “have been used in numerous mass shootings” and result “in increased fatalities and injuries.” Without access to LCMs, shooters “must reload more frequently,” giving bystanders opportunities to flee or intervene. Applying intermediate scrutiny, the majority found that the New Jersey law “reasonably fits the State’s interest in promoting public safety.”

Bibas’ dissent could’ve been ghostwritten by the NRA’s lawyers. “The Second Amendment is an equal part of the Bill of Rights,” he wrote. “We may not water it down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy.” Bibas argued that the New Jersey law impaired the “core right” of self-defense and must therefore be subject to strict scrutiny. He found that the statute flunked that test, dismissing the “armchair proposition that smaller magazines force shooters to pause more often to reload.”

Many of Trump’s nominees appear to agree that some unknown number of people must be shot to death before the government can limit access to firearms.

“Armchair proposition”? Here, Bibas questioned a fact that countless mass shooting survivors can confirm: When a shooter pauses to reload, his intended victims have more time to escape. Bibas’ casuistry demonstrates a flaw in the conservative approach to the Second Amendment. Trump nominees keep demanding that any firearm restriction be subject to heightened scrutiny. But this test is a chilling mismatch for the Second Amendment, because when we talk about “tailoring” gun restrictions, we are really asking how many people must die before the government can justify its laws.

U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez, a George W. Bush nominee, illustrated this grisly truth in June 2017. Benitez blocked a California measure that outlawed large-capacity magazines, finding that it failed heightened scrutiny. Why? “Of the ten mass shooting events that occurred in California,” Benitez wrote, “only two involved the use of a magazine holding more than 10 rounds.” The ban’s “marginal good effects”—that is, the lives it would’ve saved—did not justify it. Because “only two” California mass shootings involved LCMs, the law was not reasonably tailored to protect the public.

The next year, a man walked into a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, and killed 12 people. He used large-capacity magazines that he purchased legally. The weapons would have been illegal if Benitez had not blocked California’s ban on LCMs.

Many of Trump’s nominees appear to agree that some unknown number of people must be shot to death before the government can limit access to firearms. Others take an even more extreme approach. In his 2011 dissent, Kavanaugh suggested that courts must look to “text, history, and tradition” to gauge the legality of gun control laws. They cannot deploy any kind of “interest-balancing test.” Unless a gun restriction is “longstanding,” Kavanaugh wrote, it is unconstitutional. This standard—which Ho cited favorably—would prohibit the government from experimenting with any new gun safety law. We would be stuck with the small set of regulations deemed “longstanding” by the courts. No matter how many bodies piled up, we would be helpless to protect ourselves against the butchery.

Trump’s judges are hoping the Supreme Court will kickstart this Second Amendment revolution. They might not have to wait long. This fall, the justices will hear a challenge to New York City’s restriction on the transportation of guns outside the home (unless it’s dismissed as moot). They may use the opportunity to enshrine a new Second Amendment standard into law. The conservative majority could demand that gun laws survive strict scrutiny. Or it could hold that any law that’s not “longstanding” be struck down, as Kavanaugh prefers.

Whatever the justices decide, scores of Trump judges in the lower courts will be waiting to vigorously enforce their decision, knocking down as many gun restrictions as possible. Republican senators will continue to confirm judicial nominees at a record pace. To the extent that the GOP has a plan to address mass shootings, this is it: stack the courts with more judges who will prevent American from addressing gun violence. Trump and the Senate are working together to build a judiciary that renders our government permanently powerless to take action against the bloodshed.

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

No perversion too great, no cause too grotesque for the GOP and their “Head Turtle.” While Mitch & Co. might think that their kids, because of their White Supremacist lineage, will be immune from bullets fired by White Supremacists and other hate mongers, there is no scientific evidence that is true. On the other hand, to be in today’s GOP is to ignore scientific evidence (except for the pseudo-science behind racism and restrictionist immigration policies).

At some point after the U.S. disappears as a nation, historians will look back in awe at how stupid a supposedly advanced country could be by empowering scam artists like Trump, McConnell, and the GOP. Indeed, “fiddling while Rome burns” would be an apt analogy for most of today’s GOP on gun control, immigration, climate change, heath care, debt control, income inequality, realistic taxes, retirement security, infrastructure, education, global cooperation, trade, and a host of other pressing issues.

PWS

08-05-19

THE DAILY INTELLIGENCER: AMERICA’S “TOADY IN WAITING”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/mike-pence-first-toady.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily Intelligencer – December 6, 2017&utm_term=Subscription List – Daily Intelligencer (1 Year)

Ed Kilgore reports for The Daily Intelligencer in NY Maggie:

“Most reactions to McKay Coppins’s vast new profile of Vice-President Mike Pence have focused on an October 2016 incident wherein the then-candidate for veep offered to replace Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in the wake of the Access Hollywood revelations, which for a moment looked likely to bring the mogul down.

But the far more enduring picture Coppins paints is very different: Mike Pence as a man who decided early on in his relationship with Trump that no one could look in the mirror at night and see a browner nose.

In Pence, Trump has found an obedient deputy whose willingness to suffer indignity and humiliation at the pleasure of the president appears boundless. When Trump comes under fire for describing white nationalists as “very fine people,” Pence is there to assure the world that he is actually a man of great decency. When Trump needs someone to fly across the country to an NFL game so he can walk out in protest of national-anthem kneelers, Pence heads for Air Force Two.

This willingness to serve as First Toady was evident in Pence’s initial interview — on a Trump golf course — as a potential running mate:

Pence had called Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, whom he’d known for years, and asked for her advice on how to handle the meeting. Conway had told him to talk about “stuff outside of politics,” and suggested he show his eagerness to learn from the billionaire. “I knew they would enjoy each other’s company,” Conway told me, adding, “Mike Pence is someone whose faith allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good.”

True to form, Pence spent much of their time on the course kissing Trump’s ring. You’re going to be the next president of the United States, he said. It would be the honor of a lifetime to serve you. Afterward, he made a point of gushing to the press about Trump’s golf game. “He beat me like a drum,” Pence confessed, to Trump’s delight.

This set the pattern for Pence, notwithstanding anything he might have contemplated during the brief but intense hours after the Access Hollywoodrevelations.

What makes Coppins’s take on Pence especially valuable is his understanding that sucking up to Trump was entirely in keeping with the Hoosier governor’s sense that God was working through the unlikely medium of the heathenish demagogue to lift up Pence and his godly agenda to the heights of power. Just as it has been forgotten that the Access Hollywood tapes nearly brought Trump down, it has rarely been understood outside Indiana that Pence was down and possibly out when Trump reached out to him to join his ticket.

The very fact that he is standing behind a lectern bearing the vice-presidential seal is, one could argue, a loaves-and-fishes-level miracle. Just a year earlier, he was an embattled small-state governor with underwater approval ratings, dismal reelection prospects, and a national reputation in tatters.

Pence’s apparent demise, moreover, came after his careful plans to position himself to run for president in 2016 went awry via his clumsy handling of a signature “religious liberty” bill and a fatal underestimation of the resulting backlash from the business community.

All of a sudden, he was lifted from this slough of despond and placed a heartbeat away from total power thanks to his ability to, as Kellyanne Conway put it, “subvert his ego” in the presence of his deliverer, whose own ego has no limits. He clearly has not forgotten this lesson of an ambition fed by self-abasement rather than self-promotion. And according to Coppins, he even has a theological justification for blind loyalty to Trump:

Marc Short, a longtime adviser to Pence and a fellow Christian, told me that the vice president believes strongly in a scriptural concept evangelicals call “servant leadership.” The idea is rooted in the Gospels, where Jesus models humility by washing his disciples’ feet and teaches, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.”

Usually the idea is to be the “slave” of one’s followers and of the less fortunate, not the slave of the billionaire POTUS, but Pence has the “humility” part down pat.

Pence’s presumed reward in this redemption story could, of course, extend beyond the power he exercises as one of the more influential vice-presidents in history, and as Trump’s designated mediator with the Christian right and with those Republican elected officials who aren’t themselves in the great man’s retinue. He would be the obvious successor to Trump in 2024, when he will still be a relatively youthful 65 — whether or not Trump wins a second term in 2020. And in the meantime, as in the panic-stricken hours after the Access Hollywood tapes were released, Republicans will look to Pence as a reassuring and unifying figure whenever Trump’s presidency is endangered, whether it’s by the Mueller investigation or his own erratic conduct.

Pence has indeed come a long way since he was airlifted out of what was probably a losing gubernatorial race to the role of worshipful sidekick to Donald Trump. And he’s earned his actual and potential power via a habit of slavish loyalty that he may consider godly, but others find infernally corrupt if effective.”

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

I’ve called Pence a sycophant. But, sycophant, toady, you get the picture: spineless, and when you get beyond the disgustingly un-Christian and un-Jesus brand of intolerant religious zealotry that Pence passes off for Christianity (thus giving Christians a “bad name”) you get a guy that no thoughtful American should want for President. Doesn’t, of course, mean that he won’t be President; just that he shouldn’t be.

Now, there is a school of thought around “The Swamp” that “Mikey the Toady” is “going down” along with The Trumpster in “Russiagate,” leaving us with the “Weaselly Badger” Paul Ryan as President. Before you get too excited about that prospect, however, best to read the following article to understand that in addition to being a spineless coward who isn’t as smart as he and his backers think he is, Ryan is a “Joint Venture” (50-50 ownership for you non-corporate types) of the National Rifle Association and the Koch Brothers. Yeah, I know that this is a “fake news” satirical piece by none other than the New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz. Sadly, however, it contains more accuracy than a standard White House press briefing by Sarah Huckabee Sanders (a disturbingly low standard to be sure — where oh where is “Spicey” when we need him?). In the end, he could turn out to be just as damaging to America and the world as Trump and Pence.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/koch-brothers-and-nra-reach-timeshare-agreement-over-ownership-of-paul-ryan

“WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a unique accord, the billionaire Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association have reached a timeshare agreement over the ownership of House Speaker Paul Ryan, representatives of both parties have confirmed.

Speaking on behalf of the Kochs, Charles Koch said that he contacted the N.R.A.’s executive director, Wayne LaPierre, with the timeshare proposal “so that we could all get the maximum enjoyment out of owning Paul.”

The arrangement is intended to minimize conflicts between the Kochs and the gun group that have arisen in the past when both co-owners have wanted to use Ryan at the same time, Koch said.

“I said to Wayne, ‘This is craziness,’ ” he said. “ ‘Let’s work something out where you get Paul half the year, and we’ll take him the other half.’ ”

Under the timeshare deal, the Kochs will have the exclusive use of Ryan during the months when tax cuts and environmental deregulation are put to a vote, while the N.R.A. will have him for the months when gun legislation is to be defeated.

Additionally, each co-owner is responsible for insuring that Ryan is well maintained and in good condition when the other’s period of using him commences.

Koch indicated that, if the timeshare agreement is a success, the two parties are likely to work out a similar deal for their longtime joint ownership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

So, what’s a self-respecting country to do? The answer is actually pretty obvious. Stop putting Republicans in elective office. No, that won’t cure all the country’s ills; indeed, just repairing the damage already done by this Administration could take decades.

But, at least we’ll have some folks in office who are working for the common good and trying to solve the nation’s and the world’s problems (yes, amazingly, they are interrelated) rather than actively making them worse every day. And, that would be a start!

PWS

121-08-17

David Lauter in the LA Times:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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