As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Michaelangelo Signorile writes about the "Biden boom, GOP bust", how the Republican- wired media continues to be caught wrong- footed, and how Democrats must campaign:
The economy is booming. There is no denying it. The media has had a chokehold on this story, pushing a narrative that was untrue and driven by the GOP. With the news today, the president and Democrats should smash through the media’s narrative once and for all — and condemn the coverage if need be.
Republicans are hellbent on attacking the economy and those attacks just can’t stand. They run from talking about anything regarding January 6th. Democrats have to throw it in their faces, and focus on the complete and total crack up of their party, which has allowed extremists to take control.
Hitting on those two issues — Biden boom and GOP bust — will help Democrats keep the House and Senate this November, hopefully expanding the Senate and getting past obstructionists. That will ensure continued progress for the American people. And it will push back the authoritarian assault on democracy.
Ex-evangelical Chrissy Stroop has a thoughtful read on secularism in the U.S., it's diversity, and how the media (yes, they keep popping up) gets the causes of asymmetric social and political polarization wrong:
... Nonreligious Americans are generally a pro-social bunch, and overwhelmingly in favor of the very rights the anti-social, anti-democratic Christian Right is actively working to take away, like voting rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. Yet, according to the legacy media’s punditocracy, America’s rapid secularization is something we should all be terrified of.
Starting from the demonstrably false assumption that religion is essentially the only source of social cohesion, philanthropy, and pro-social behavior, prominent pundits and religion journalists (who should know much better) continually insinuate that secularization is somehow destroying the fabric of American civil society, and that the nonreligious are somehow to blame for American polarization. How, exactly, is unclear, and it could hardly be otherwise, given that both of these premises are entirely without factual basis.
Think pieces—and often even supposedly “straight” reporting—tend to ignore the empirically demonstrated fact that the social and political polarization that pervades these not-so-United States is asymmetric and significantly worse on the political Right. Not coincidentally, that side of the proverbial aisle consists largely of the conservative, mostly white Christians from whom the newly nonreligious are fleeing. These same conservative Christians, directly encouraged by their defeated president and a host of powerful Republican leaders, attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by means that included a violent Christian nationalist insurrection in which people were injured and killed, very nearly destroying what was left of American democracy, such as it is. But, you know, there are problems with liberals and progressives too, so…
An example of how the radical "Christian" right is extending its disruptive political reach comes via the anti- vax truckers protest in Canada (where 90% of truckers are vaccinated):
The rapid influxes of donations have prompted questions about the origin of the funds and sparked concerns among analysts about the use of the online platforms for financing fringe organizations that could allow the interference of foreign entities.
The convoy began as a protest to U.S. and Canadian rules requiring that cross-border truckers be fully vaccinated to enter either country, and it turned into a movement against many public health measures. The demonstrations have drawn praise from Republican leaders in the United States and left residents on edge — with police saying some have been subject to racist vitriol.
"Freedom convoy" my ass. They're a bunch of loudmouthed, far- right, violent knuckle- draggers.
It's hard to exaggerate just how big a mistake Virginia voters made in electing Trumpist weasel Glenn Youngkin governor. In office less than a month, he's tried to eliminate mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates for Virginia colleges, wants to limit abortion access, promoted laws banning teaching of certain subjects that (white) children might find "disturbing," and set up a snitch line for people to turn in teachers. His "Team Youngkin" campaign staff prefers going after children rather than protecting them, however:
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign lashed out at a high school student as well as Democrat Ralph Northam on Twitter this weekend, tweeting out the teen’s name and photo after the boy shared a news story about part of the Executive Mansion where enslaved workers once lived.
On Saturday afternoon, Ethan Lynne, 17, retweeted a report from the Richmond public radio station VPM suggesting that Youngkin (R) might be scrapping efforts pursued under two previous governors, Northam and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, to highlight the history of enslaved people at the mansion. The report contained an error, which Lynne noted on Twitter hours later, when VPM issued a correction.
But by then, “Team Youngkin” — the official Twitter account for Youngkin’s campaign — had attacked Lynne, posting a photo of the teen with Northam taken at a Democratic fundraiser in October.
“Here’s a picture of Ethan with a man that had a Blackface/KKK photo in his yearbook,” Team Youngkin tweeted a little before 5 p.m., pairing the October photo with a racist picture from Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook that surfaced in 2019.
No matter how bad a campaign the Democrats ran, or the issues they ran on or ignored, you only had to scratch Youngkin's surface to see a typical hypocritical, ambitious, base- pandering Republican who was going to do everything he promised to do once in office. Only a state senate controlled by Democrats stands in his way.
The Washington Post editorial board addresses the seditious, off- the- rails censure resolution by the rotted- out Republican National Committee:
The Republican Party on Friday took an official stand — against truth and democracy. At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, party leaders censured Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and moved to aid her primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who is former president Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat.
The Orwellian censure resolution accuses Ms. Cheney and fellow GOP dissident Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) of engaging in behavior “destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.” Her transgression? Co-leading the House committee investigating the Capitol invasion, an act of political violence Mr. Trump inspired when he was a sitting president charged with protecting the nation from enemies foreign and domestic. The investigation, the censure resolution claimed, is “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” [snip]
Republicans have started their election year by revealing what they really stand for. Voters must remember this moment in November.
Will they? See also Signorile, above.
As usual, Infidel 753 has assembled a kaleidoscopic link round-up covering all manner of topics. We recommend a visit, and also check out his essays while you're in his neighborhood.
