We the People

 

The GOP Agenda

 

 

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in 2022, “The Republicans are pretty simple actually, and pretty straightforward. They say, ‘I want you to be very miserable, and I want you to be very angry. And I want you to vote for us, and we’ll make it worse, but we’ll blame them.’”

 

 “Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

― David Frum, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

AlterNet exposes the "conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy"

What if Donald Trump's conspiracy is even more sinister than we suspected?

Almost a Democracy

 

Republicans vs Democrats

 

Why the Repubicans are afraid of wokeness.

Let's talk about Republicans claiming victory in Kansas....

Those who cause chaos use it for their own gain

 

We can point to Ronald Reagan's terms as the start of a lot of our problems.

When you are losing, cheat!

 

Now it is your turn to let freedom ring

Mr. Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death, to be published upon the day of his funeral.

July 30, 2020

"While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

Paul Krugman after the election

So where does this leave us? What, as concerned and horrified citizens, should we do?

One natural response would be quietism, turning one’s back on politics. It’s definitely tempting to conclude that the world is going to hell, but that there’s nothing you can do about it, so why not just make your own garden grow? I myself spent a large part of the Day After avoiding the news, doing personal things, basically taking a vacation in my own head.

But that is, in the end, no way for citizens of a democracy — which we still are, one hopes — to live. I’m not saying that we should all volunteer to die on the barricades; I don’t think it’s going to come to that, although I wish I was sure. But I don’t see how you can hang on to your own self-respect unless you’re willing to stand up for the truth and fundamental American values.

Will that stand eventually succeed? No guarantees. Americans, no matter how secular, tend to think of themselves as citizens of a nation with a special divine providence, one that may take wrong turns but always finds its way back, one in which justice always prevails in the end.

Yet it doesn’t have to be true. Maybe the historic channels of reform — speech and writing that changes minds, political activism that eventually changes who has power — are no longer effective. Maybe America isn’t special, it’s just another republic that had its day, but is in the process of devolving into a corrupt nation ruled by strongmen.

But I’m not ready to accept that this is inevitable — because accepting it as inevitable would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The road back to what America should be is going to be longer and harder than any of us expected, and we might not make it. But we have to try.

That or declare war on Canada and then surrender....

From books to pork

The 10 most challenged books of 2013.

Sticking with XP..  if you care.

Jesus's wife.

Super rats?

Showtime's climate change scientist:

An evangelical Christian, married to a pastor, living in conservative West Texas, and widely regarded as a top-notch climate scientist, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is a rare breed on paper — in person, she’s even rarer. Deftly moving between topics like science, religion, and gender with equal parts insight and levity, Hayhoe is an unassuming force of nature.

Rabid Christianists trying to get rid of no-fault divorce.  As if making it harder to divorce will make marriages better....

What democracy?

We're number one!

How safe will our pork be if the Chinese are in charge of production?  Here are the companies that Smithfield owns:

The acquisitions have caused concern among regulators in the United States regarding the company's control of the food supply. After Smithfield's purchase of Murphy Family Farms, the Agriculture Department described it as "absurdly big."[6] As of 2006 four companies – Smithfield, Tyson, Swift & Company, and Cargill – were responsible for the production of 70 percent of pork in the United States.[14] 

The company had 46,050 employees in the United States, Mexico and Europe as of 2012, and an annual revenue of $13 billion. It raises 15.8 million pigs a year, producing 3.8 billion pounds of fresh pork and 2.7 billion pounds of packaged meat, sold as 50 brands of pork products and 200 gourmet foods.[15] Along with specialty brands such as Paula Deen Collection, and international brands such as Weight Watchers, the company's 12 core brands are Armour, Carando, Cook's Ham, Curly's Foods, Eckrich, Farmland, Gwaltney, Healthy Ones, John Morrell, Kretschmar, Margherita, and Smithfield.[16] The company also operates The Genuine Smithfield Ham Shoppe and a restaurant, Taste of Smithfield, both in Smithfield, Virginia.[17]

Because we need somebody like FDR right about now...

I'll quote again Roosevelt's prescient statement:

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.

Koch brothers? Meet FDR

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Why Wisconsin matters

From Chris Hayes' article:

The other problem is that our system is responsive only to voices at the top of the social pyramid—the bankers and businessmen who are raking in record bonuses and the professional upper middle class, which is recovering much faster than the nation as a whole. In a 2007 paper titled “Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness in the United States,” Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens analyzed 2,000 survey questions from 1981 to 2002, looking for the relationship between public opinion and policy outcomes. He found that “when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear little relationship to the preferences of poor or middle income Americans.”

There is only so much social distance a society can take. The social science literature shows that as social distance increases, trust declines and aberrant and predatory behavior increases. The basic mechanisms of representation erode, and the social fabric tears. “An imbalance between rich and poor,” Plutarch warned, “is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

It’s against this backdrop of creeping dissolution that the word “union” takes on a renewed power. That’s why the struggles of the protesters in Wisconsin have resonated so profoundly. In banding together to oppose Republican Governor Scott Walker’s power grab, the students, teachers, cops, firefighters and neighbors have willed themselves to shrink the social distance those in power are cynically using to pit constituencies against one another. Walker exempted cops and firefighters from his bill’s radical limits on collective bargaining, but they joined the protests anyway. “An assault on one is an assault on all,” proclaimed Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association president Mahlon Mitchell.

It’s in Wisconsin and across the Midwest that union members like Mitchell and his allies are showing us the antidote to the social distance that threatens the core of American democracy.

Take back our democracy

Did you ever want democracy so bad...

That you strapped bread to your head?

What democracy?

In his film Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore squares off with the free-market system for its role in leveraging the United States's wealth into the hands of a few.

But in one clip cut from the documentary -- which Moore provided exclusively to RAW STORY -- he interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who explains how capitalism is actually contributing to the very downfall of the human race and the "degradation of the planet."

"All sorts of people who have spent their lives studying climate change, from Bill McKibben on down, have warned us that we don't have a lot of time left," Hedges said. "So it's not just that capitalism has destroyed our economic system and hijacked our political system, but it literally is extinguishing the system that sustains life. If that's not thwarted soon...then we will begin to see massive dislocations, environmental refugees, further depleting of natural resources. Overpopulation is also an issue. The UN estimates that by 2050 the size of the planet will double."

The very concept of capitalism, Moore declares in the film, is the problem because it inevitably leads to a system where the richest few control the means of production as well as the levers of power -- leading to a "plutonomy," a term used in a leaked Citigroup memo from 2005, in which the finance juggernaut concluded that the United States is no longer a democracy.

In the interview, Hedges decries America's turn toward supply-side economics over the last three decades as the cause of stagnating middle class incomes, contrasting it with the increasingly lavish fortunes of the wealthy and the aid they often receive from the government at the expense of working people.

A petition to stop indefinite detention

The ACLU's letter:

Stop Indefinite Detention

A debate over the fundamental character of our democracy is heating up: whether or not we can imprison people for an indefinite amount of time without charging them with a crime and without holding trial.

We need everyone who believes in the Constitution and the American system of justice to let the President know that preserving our values and the rule of law is a top priority -- before indefinite detention becomes a reality.

Send President Obama a message. Let him know that -- whether through legislation or executive order -- you are firmly opposed to indefinite detention. We will also send the message to your members of Congress, letting them know of your concern.

The petition:

The debate over indefinite detention is heating up in Washington and I want you to know of my concerns. I believe that the administration is going down the wrong path in putting forth a policy which would indefinitely imprison individuals without charge or the chance of a trial, beginning with the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Indefinite detention is a violation of due process and the American principles of justice and fairness. Therefore, I urge you to reject any policy or proposal that would indefinitely imprison individuals without charge or the chance of a trial.

The issues surrounding the closing of Guantánamo are difficult and incredibly complex, but we cannot afford to go down a path that violates our own Constitution. I respectfully ask that you do what is in your power to reject indefinite detention -- whether through legislation or executive order.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Get your goggles, umbrella, and a bottle of bleach

It's going to get fugly out there.

Josh Marshall:

But you need to play close attention to the McCain campaign's final weeks' strategy under and just above the radar. McCain's final strategy relies on two pillars. The first is aggressively playing to voters' fears of electing a black president. Make no mistake: not just his campaign in a general sense, but McCain himself and his top handful of advisers, are banking on the residual racism in a changing America to get them over the finish line. The second is an aggressive use of innuendo to convince casual voters that Obama is in league with Islamic terrorists bent on killing Americans.

(Notice how they've tried to keep Bridget McCain out of the conversation?)

Roy Edroso of the Village Voice:

But there was one area in which this drive to lower the tone was a resounding success: among the Republican candidates themselves.

On the stump, both McCain and Palin suggested that Obama's plans for America amounted to "socialism." Palin also said she loved visiting the "pro-American parts of the country," presumably more than she enjoyed the anti-American parts. And a McCain advisor told MSNBC that only the Republican parts of her home state were the "real Virginia," because they were "more southern in nature, if you will."

Rightbloggers were beside themselves with glee. "McCain finally calling Obama what he is… a Socialist!" crowed Tennessee Talk. They rushed to defend their newly wised-up champions. Michelle Malkin explained what Palin meant, showing shots of obnoxious protests in San Francisco, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon. (Don't worry, she still hates New York, too.)

Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof notes Bill Kristol's denial of anti-Islamic rhetoric:

That right there should tell you that Mr. Kristol has obviously taken leave of his senses. The anti-Islamic rhetoric, demagoguery, and hysteria that took over this country after September 11, 2001 is not only well-documented in case after case of vandalism, threats, physical assaults, terror alerts, and other acts of mindless hysteria, it has never stopped. It is still going on today and is playing a major role in the presidential campaign -- Obama is a Muslim! His middle name is Hussein! For Mr. Kristol to say that there was no "Islamophoba or xenophobia" is pretty much the same as saying that there was no popular hysteria or scapegoating of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

The political rhetoric of the McCain campaign has loosed the rabid hounds:


The Right Wing Smear Machine going after ACORN has led to very predictable violence. David Neiwert:

John McCain has played a leading role in whipping up this frenzy of hatred. In Wednesday's debate, he charged:

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

This is consistent with the hateful language being spewed from the right by the likes of Lou Dobbs, who has taken to routinely characterizing ACORN as a "radical left-wing activist group" as well as "a Democratic Party adjunct".

In fact, the hysteria's being generated across a broad spectrum of the Right, from Outer Malkinite Wingnuttia to Inside Beltway Villagers, from McCain and Palin to the frothiest freepers.

And we can see what's coming, too: We're being set up for a running yammer from the right after Obama wins questioning his legitimacy because of a supposedly "tainted" vote. Conspiracy theories and talking points from the right will circulate, driving up the temperature and feeding the right-wing populist frenzy.

Neiwert points out why this hateful focus on ACORN:

Sometimes you have to wonder what Republicans have against democracy.

Because that's what this whole "voter fraud" foofara is about. John McCain and Sarah Palin and Lou Dobbs and the rest of the right-wing torch brigade that have been after ACORN and the Ohio Secretary of State aren't concerned about protecting people's right to vote -- and in fact, their efforts largely go toward directly stripping citizens of their legitimate voting rights.

Glenn Greenwald discusses Colin Powell's disappointment over John McCain's demonizing Muslims and makes this observation:

A major enabling factor in convincing the population to support unnecessary and brutal wars -- and to perceive the "need" for endless expansions of federal surveillance and other police powers -- is the demonization of large groups of people both inside and out of the country. The Right's ongoing, intense obsession with demonizing Muslims and Arabs is, for that reason, not only repulsive but also quite destructive. The core of the Republican Party has degenerated into the unrestrained id of its worst impulses, and it was good to see Powell specifically cite (and condemn) those elements as a principal reason why he is turning away from the party he has served for so long, and instead supporting the Democratic nominee.

Via Morse of the Media Needle:


Remembering the good old days of McCarthyism, Rep. Michele Bachmann:

In a television appearance that outraged Democrats are already describing as Joseph McCarthy politics, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed on Friday that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle held anti-American views and couldn't be trusted in the White House. She even called for the major newspapers of the country to investigate other members of Congress to "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball, Bachmann went well off the reservation when it comes to leveling political charges against the Democratic nominee.

Take hip-waders to the polls, but vote. Vote as if your life depended on it!

Update: A horrific example of voter intimidation.