Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ ip eds.

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog writes about what Democrats' focus should be on in the coming months and year:

We need to remind Americans that we can't raise the minimum wage, fight climate change, pass sensible gun laws, increase taxes on the super-rich, or protect reproductive freedom because a solid bloc of Republicans won't allow us to. We need to hammer home the fact that Republicans back or at least tolerate COVID denialism and vaccine skepticism, that they want to restrict voting rights and probably overturn the results of future elections, that they want to scapegoat trans youth everywhere in America, that they believe it's okay to run over peaceful protesters in your car, that they want to return to the days of the Wall and family separations at the border.

Trump could go to prison tomorrow and all this would still be true. It's all true even though January 6 rioters are in prison and up on charges now.

Accountability is fine, but it won't save us. Talking about the ongoing threat posed by ordinary Republicanism might.

Pummeling a radical, anti- democracy party to run against, as well as touting your popular achievements, would be a powerful 1-2 punch.

Virginia Heffernan writes about the demise of the LowIQAnon cult:

QAnon’s demise, in fact, is well underway. Its leader, Q, a figure from the internet’s dark side, is now widely suspected to be the creation of Jim and Ron Watkins. The Watkins men are a seedy father-son duo in Asia who serve up pornography and hate speech online.

If the Watkins hypothesis is true, it means that Q is not exactly the patriotic, principled avenger crusading against sex trafficking that his followers have put their faith in.

Q has also been silent for seven months. The cryptic things Q used to post, tone poems that served as Rorschach tests for his followers’ projections, have stopped appearing. They no longer headline the rave at 8kun, the horrifying online image board, administered by Ron Watkins, where they first appeared.

We have full confidence it will be replaced by other equally demented ones.

Dr. Peter J. Hotez, of Baylor University, writes about "America's deadly flirtation with anti- science and the medical freedom movement" throughout its history, concluding that today COVID anti- vax, anti- science must be countered more forcefully:

Medical and health freedom and its antiscience tenets represent grave threats to American public health in this new century. We must urgently seek broad and innovative solutions that tap guidance and expertise in multiple areas. For example, we might consider a federal interagency task force across several branches of the US government in order to identify new levers for countering antiscience groups (1). These might extend beyond the standard approaches focused on amplifying provaccination advocacy, instead driving harder to remove nefarious antiscience internet content and other forms of harmful communication. We cannot afford a status quo now thwarting desperate efforts to save lives or reduce COVID-19 long-haul injuries.

The US was the deadliest location worldwide for the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, and in 2021, we will hold our breath as the new variants emerge and potentially sweep through the country. The high death toll from SARS-2 coronavirus transmission was exacerbated by a medical freedom ideology linked to political extremism. It is vital to US public health and homeland security that we find ways to defuse antiscience organizations, messaging, and health consequences.

The highly contagious Delta (India) variant is already here.  Our vaccines are effective against it. Get vaccinated, dammit. 

On a related, but more amusing note, Dana Milbank tells us how the "magnetized" COVID vaccine turned him into a Republican:

It took some getting used to, but I’ve begun to enjoy my newly magnetic personality. In fact, I’ve tried to maximize my magnetism by getting a third vaccine dose, and a fourth — Pfizer, Moderna and J&J. Now I no longer have to pay Metro fares; I simply run toward a moving train and peel myself off its side when I get to my stop. Whenever I go to the beach, the tide comes in as soon as I arrive.

[Anti- vax conspiracy nut Sherri] Tenpenny and her ilk also say the vaccine alters our DNA. Those fun-sponges at the CDC say “the vaccines cannot affect or interact with our DNA in any way.” But I’m not so sure. Since taking the vaccine, I’ve stopped believing in anything resembling science in favor of stuff I read on social media. I’ve become totally immune to what “experts” call “facts.” And I have a feeling that my magnetic powers have become so great that the whole universe revolves around me.

See? The vaccine did change my DNA: It turned me into a Trump Republican.

Finally, please head over to Infidel 753's link round- up for a comprehensive array of links to interesting and varied topics from around the Internet.  You'll find something to pique your curiosity, guaranteed (by us, not Infidel!).

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Is the Republican Party a hate group?  Leonard Pitts, Jr., has our answer, which we've excerpted at length:

Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.

It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” [snip]

Granted, in its “official statements or principles,” the party doesn’t meet the SPLC standard. Its activities and the statements of its leaders are, however, another matter. [snip]

For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of healthcare, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.  [snip]

Donald Trump is the payoff of that devil’s bargain. His “innovation” has been to shred subtlety and abandon code. With blunt, brutish clarity, he tells four black and brown women to “go back” where they came from, and if you don’t see racism there, you’ll never see it anywhere.

Yet bad as that is, the monstrous part is that his audience, trained by 50 years of appeals to their basest selves, cheers him on. They no longer need fig leaves. That should tell you something. As should the fact that the GOP seems to have abandoned policy altogether.

What do they stand for? Do they still care about the national debt? Do they have a strategy to combat global warming? What will they do about Russia and Iran? Who knows?

Because all they are now is the party of “Send her back!” — of outrage over Colin Kaepernick kneeling and April Ryan asking questions. That’s what passes for ideas in today’s GOP. And if that’s what Trump has made them, it’s not like they fought him tooth and nail.

So is the GOP a hate group? It’s sobering that the question can even be asked. But the inevitable answer is downright chilling. Because the SPLC offers a fair and cogent definition of that term.

And the GOP fits it with room to spare.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

No matter how they try to distract and deflect*, racism is part of their DNA, and they have their leader who has given them permission to hate and to act on that hate.

Virginia Heffernan tells us not to buy into the media narrative of Trump's juggernaut base:

Back in the arena at East Carolina University, the bellowing helped the modest-sized rally make up in volatility what it lacked in numbers. Trump lied again. He said there were no empty seats. There were empty seats. Trump’s aide Brad Parscale took on the Spicer role, crowing on Twitter that 20,000 people were in the venue. Accurate counts put attendance at about 8,000. (For comparison, an average of 18,000 people attend every single men’s basketball game at the University of North Carolina.)  [snip]

Trump’s support is clearly not all phony. Polls show Republicans approve of the job he’s doing in high numbers, which raises the question of how big that polling pool really is. Trump’s critics, in any event, do their cause a grave disservice by following his lead and exaggerating his support, which gets people buzzing and may generate a bandwagon effect: real support following simulated support.

Or something even more sinister could happen. Anti-Trumpers might become cowed and discouraged enough to stay away from the polls because they are convinced the specter of a massive GOP base can’t be beat.

Don’t listen to Trump’s lies, skip the alarmism, and turn down the “send her back” volume. Above all, remind yourself that Trump’s Gallup approval rating has fluctuated between terrible (36.8%) and bad (42.7%). He isn’t our all-time favorite. Period.

Skip the alarmism, stay focused and work like hell.  That's how we excise the tumor in the White (Supremacist) House.

Greg Sargent explains why the "send her back" chant at Trump's North Carolina rally was a breaking point:

What changed? Well, the Times also reports that Trump advisers privately warned against letting these sentiments get out of control at his rally.

So I submit to you that the key difference is twofold: Trump’s naked hatred and cruelty was captured on live television, and along with it, so was the seething anger of the hard-core Trump base.

The whole nation saw in dramatic fashion that Trump voters understood his meaning perfectly well, and watched them not just agree with it but also amplify it with as ugly and hate-curdled a chant as one could imagine.

Sargent has much more about the Republican panic that has set in around their heretofore muted racism being exposed in such raw form.  And, of course, the "send her back" chant was led by Trump's rally leaders.

*Distraction/ deflection watch:  Lest we forget (we won't), there's the testimony Wednesday of Robert Mueller that has Putin's puppet in a state of agitation, and the connections between sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein with fellow predator Trump, something that's also never far from Trump's "mind."

As always, Infidel 753 has been laboring to bring us an impressive array of links to interesting items around the internet and beyond.  Go see what we mean!

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

As we await Trump consigliere Barr's redacted Mueller report (now expected Thursday morning), following an aggressive spin campaign by defenders of Putin's puppet, Lawfare's Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes offer nine suggestions for the media on "how not to screw up" their reporting like most did when Barr released his coverup 4- page letter.  Here are a just few selected points:

... the press should be careful not to confuse prosecutorial judgment with facts. This was a huge problem at the time of the original Barr letter. A decision not to prosecute someone provides important information about whether a prosecutor believes that a federal offense has been committed and the admissible evidence of that offense is “sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction,” as our colleague Paul Rosenzweig has detailed. A 400-page report will contain plenty of other information beyond the top-line conclusion, however. That additional material does not erase the overarching prosecutorial judgment, but neither does the prosecutorial judgment erase whatever additional material the report sets out. The press, in other words, would do well to keep as separate as possible the task of explaining Mueller’s prosecutorial judgment from the task of analyzing and describing the factual record he found. [snip]

... the decision not to prosecute a person for some alleged conduct is not a historical judgment that the conduct didn’t happen. The absence of a conspiracy indictment may mean there was “no collusion,” but it may not mean that. It may mean, rather, that the specific form of “collusion” (whatever that means) doesn’t happen to violate the law or that the evidence of misconduct, while compelling, is insufficient for a criminal case. And even if it does mean “no collusion,” it doesn’t erase the factual record that we already know to exist. The Trump Tower meeting still happened, after all; and the Trump Tower Moscow effort still went on, and Michael Cohen still lied about it. [snip]

... keep in mind that the decision not to prosecute someone based on the factual record does not end the analysis of that record. It just ends the prosecutorial analysis. Mueller’s job as a prosecutor was to investigate and reach decisions about whether or not to bring cases based on that evidence (which is exactly why his apparent decision to hold back on reaching a conclusion as to evidence of obstruction has caused many former prosecutors to scratch their heads). But indictability is not the only legitimate standard of evaluation. It may be perfectly appropriate for Mueller to decline a case and yet for observers to conclude that the conduct at issue merits the opprobrium of all decent people.  [snip]

... keep in mind that the declination of criminal charges does not answer counterintelligence questions that the same fact patterns may raise. Repeated contacts between a foreign government and its cutouts and people associated with a political campaign may involve no violation of any law, while at the same time raising serious counterintelligence concerns.

It's a good cautionary guide for the media and the public as well.

This would explain a lot about the actions of Trump ass- kisser Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham (R-Trump's colon):

An investigation has been ongoing into Republican Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham’s connections to Russia by a number of transparency groups, including money he has used in his political campaigns that would amount to possible felony campaign finance violations.

The Democratic Coalition, one such group led by activist Scott Dworkin, has been elaborating on analysis done in the Dallas Morning News that detailed $800,000 that Graham’s political action committee took from Len Blavatnik, a dual citizen of the US and UK who emigrated from the USSR in the 1970s with his family and returned to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The report out from the Dem Coalition cites Blavatnik at the outset, and the millions he made from the sale of a private Russian oil company to the state-owned Rosneft. In fact, the Dworkin Report cites many of the key players whose names keep surfacing as the Congressional probes continue: Blavatnik, Viktor Vekselberg, Oleg Deripaska, and the many businesses and shell companies those people have maintained — and contributed to GOP candidates from.  (our emphasis)

Hmmm, no wonder Huckleberry's so anxious to distract attention from the Mueller report and Trump's Russia connections. What else do the Russians have on him? (Found via blogging brother Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors.)

Hannah Levintova talks about another constituency being hit by Billy Big Rigger Trump and his Republican wealthfare tax cut?  Long- haul truckers:

Trucking is a popular vocation, employing about 3.5 million drivers nationwide, making it, by some counts, the most common job in 29 states. While all but three of those states went to Donald Trump in 2016, the tax overhaul enacted by the president and the GOP Congress in 2017 hit American truck drivers hard by stripping a key exemption for dining and living expenses while on the road. Millions of long-haul drivers employed by trucking companies are finding themselves slapped with massive and unexpected tax bills, according to accountants, professional trucking associations, and drivers.

Virginia Heffernan reminds us why Julian Assange, the not- a-hero, not- a- journalist Russian intelligence cutout, found himself in Ecuador's London embassy in the first place:

Though a prodigy programmer who has worked as a hacker for three decades, Assange, through his lawyers, now maintains that when he collaborated with Manning he was nothing but a journalist working a source, presumably one entitled to constitutional protections.

It should not be lost in the inevitable portrayal of Assange as a 1st Amendment martyr that he originally sought asylum from Ecuador not because of computer meddling but because of allegations that he had committed rape in Stockholm. Sweden, stymied by the protection offered him in the embassy, stopped pursuing the investigation in 2017; on Friday, the chief prosecutor said the case could be reopened.

Assange never claimed with any consistency that the sex-crime charges were trumped up by the global enemies of freedom. Instead, he affected irritation. He denied being a rapist but he admitted in his autobiography to being a “male chauvinist pig.” His Swedish accusers were bitter, he said, because he had spurned them. His ideology seems to include overman privilege with women as a sacred civil liberty.

As always, we end our reading recommendations with our blogging brother Infidel 753's blog round- up.  Every week, he culls the internutz for really interesting, provocative, amusing topics.  Take some time and go have a look.

QOTD -- But Are They "Likable?"

"Demeaning dancing and texting the word “whore” to a woman who scares you is, when you think about it, pretty laughable. And to have the dynamic laid bare is almost a relief.

No wonder Pelosi is running the House, Warren is running for president, Tlaib is calling it as she sees it, and Ocasio-Cortez is dancing. Their enemies are losing strength, while they’re gaining it."  -- Virginia Heffernan, commenting on the right- wing trolls attacking their worst nightmare -- powerful Democratic women.  To paraphrase Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, don't hate them cause you ain't them, fellas!