#democrats win when more people show up statistically and they never really do any real work nationally to enshrine voting rights

[athena5898]

I think the summation of the 2024 election was "The leftism leaving my body when..."

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: The War Against Welfare Mothers (Part One)

This gif is from the 1970s film Claudine, a romantic comedy starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll about a garbage man and a welfare mother trying to make the relationship and where he helps provide for her home and kids without the social worker checking in. 

We check in with The New Yorker, who took a break from their cartoons to cover a welfare mother named Carmen Santana (not her real name): she is Puerto Rican American (and judging by the text’s descriptions of her “wide nose”, complexion, curly dark hair, and thick lips, she must be Afro-Latina) who weighs over 200 lbs and boy the writer was having a field day describing her heft and body. She has no interest in “national or international events” (common flaw that goes across class lines), she spends her day watching soap operas, cursing in Spanish and giving her many kids “a good cuffing” and they just throw the trash out the window. Her kitchen is filthy and her philosophy is “what will be, will be” (a common thing) and sits all the time even when she is cooking while her kids’ bedroom is decorated with obscene graffiti; she had her first child at age 15 and went on to have eight more kids by three different men and her mother had three children by different men and now Carmen’s daughter is also on welfare. She spends the money from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) on makeup and perfume and hair (honestly wasn’t that a thing at some point? Like Midge Maisel and her mother make sure their husbands never see them without perfect hair and makeup) and junk food for the kids and she also plays the numbers where she spends her winnings on “jewelry , beer, and liquour” and “trips to Puerto Rico”. I guess we are not supposed to sympathize with this woman. 

Carmen was an example of a stereotype that was used to represent and demonize welfare mothers. Johnnine Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the group National Welfare Rights Organization saw welfare and the stereotypes as a feminist issue. 

I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any one of those things---poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare---you count less as a human being. 

She even said that the biggest reason that people believe the stereotype of the welfare mother is that they are “special versions of the lies that society tells about all women”, sadly she wasn’t listened to in the mainstream media where welfare mothers were deviants in a culture that valued the rugged individual, relentless hard work and sacrifice, slim bodies aided by Bowflex or Thighmaster, and shiny blond hair with perky smiles. Yo because of this stereotype, women of color with several children are considered suspect. It was also another way to pit moms against moms, the resentment of packing the kids’ lunch and work at a dull 9 to 5 job or scrub the kitchen floors while this stereotype gets to have sex with whoever and drink booze with tax dollars. Even Time magazine went in:

Here’s a few facts: the average welfare family in 1994 had three members, the mother and two children. 39% were White and 37% were Black, African Americans numbered 12% of the national population but were about 35-37% of the welfare population and African Americans were three times as likely as White Americans to live below the poverty level. Only 10% of AFDC mothers had four or more children and 80% had one or two kids and figures in 1993 shown 75% of adults left welfare within two years and 1/2 of single mothers worked while on welfare and 1/3 were working to supplement the minuscule allotment and get off from unemployment. But that was lost on the media that focused on families with two or more generations on welfare (a tiny fraction of welfare recipients) even focusing on unwed teen welfare moms because they were...SHOCKING! Only 1% were teen mothers. Welfare mothers were known only by first name and she lived in the urban decay of New York, Camden (New Jersey), Chicago, or Detroit; they were black and unmarried and had a bunch of kids who don’t share a common biological father and she smoked and painted her nails and gave soda to her baby (OMG imagine 2010s soda freaks) and her face was pixelated in the media. Some of them were depicted as cynical about life and motherhood, it wasn’t sexy for them and at least they felt ambivalence (which was soooooo disco era). 

Then came the 1990s where the moderate Democratic Clinton administration introduced “Welfare Reform” where President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” and he was just following his predecessors: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush (the first) regarding their attitude towards welfare recipients. The Welfare to Work program who were being trained by job placement programs that prepared them for low-paying jobs in retail and in service and the resources for job training were limited (also if your hours took you away from your kids?). Also it was hard for welfare to work moms working to move up in their jobs and often mostly got gigs like seasonal retail. 

The depiction of welfare mothers was different from the celebrity mom: she wasn’t ascribed emotions where her eyes welled up with tears or laughed, she wasn’t well lit with a light or a rosy focus, never seen holding her child up or clutching the child and magazines like Redbook or McCall’s never did a cover story with a welfare mom and her kids done up and showing the readers fun things they do with little or no money or touring New York City on $10 for a day or games to play while waiting in long lines (honestly that is a good idea, someone pay Susan and Meredith if the magazines do that). Also if you were a woman of color, especially a young one or a poor one (or both) you weren’t supposed to have the “baby lust” so gushed about in celebrity mom profiles; trust me I grew up a Latina kid in Central California and many older women like my mom would worry about the girls that want to have babies so bad or fall in love hard and fast, a young Karen Wheeler in 1967 can give all to family and babies and staying home but it is more precarious for a young girl of color. 

The media depiction of poor people wasn’t always so negative: political scientist Martin Gilens found that when the “War on Poverty” began, where the Lyndon B. Johnson administration focused on eliminating poverty and started programs like Head Start rather than piss on poor people, coverage focused on poor white people in rural areas like Appalachia or in the Rustbelt where mines or factories closed down, these were the faces of The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family who fought against hardship on their way to a better life. After Michael Harrington published his book The Other America, public support for ending poverty was strong. But then came the riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit (just a few) where mostly people of color fought back against law enforcement and the media used images of African-Americans to illustrate their pieces on welfare, which reinforced stereotypes about welfare and as the coverage became more negative, the skin color got darker (even though statistics then and now showed many more white recipients of welfare)

How about how the face of welfare became so feminized? In the 1930s, when the Welfare program and Social Security began under the New Deal by President FDR, a lot of women of color were barred from welfare because of discriminatory practices, this changed with the Civil Rights Movement which opened up some doors for women of color to get assistance for their children and households. Before the Welfare recipient was faceless or usually a man, who got rich off welfare and bought Cadillacs with the money, something that Richard Nixon really clung to and he asked Johnny Cash to perform the song “Welfare Cadillac” at a White House event sparking controversy. Indeed when Cash met with Nixon, he gave him a private concert with songs that were more compassionate and less reactionary than what Nixon wanted. In the early 1960s, magazines like Look or Reader’s Digest wrote to readers about women who sent their many children to beg for money while the mother ate steak with their boyfriend, or worse, spent the money on narcotics and kept giving birth to more than 10 kids. The image of poor, fertile mothers on taxpayer money was more infuriating than that of a able-bodied man getting the money, but making welfare moms work was shocking (as the system was designed for widows to stay home with their children and not worry about money), even a stinging David Brinkley chafed at leaving kids at a daycare center...it would cost the taxpayer more.

Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” (look it up) and made exaggerated anecdotes and given how people were drawn to him (looking at you Mike and Nancy’s parents), he was believed despite him not citing sources or studies. Reagan voters fell for the image of a welfare mother who spent money for fancy cars, vacations, designer clothes, and played the system (there were a  few like Dorothy Woods, but again if this were common, the landscape of the inner city would look a lot different...) It was a dark time, the Religious Right took control, Proposition 13 in California put a limit on property taxes and started many tax revolts to limit government spending, and let’s not forget Ronald Reagan opposed the following:

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Fair-Housing Legislation in California

Legislation to declare Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday

How does that Reagan/Bush ‘84 sign look Ted and Karen?

Stay tuned.....

[sebthesnipe]

The Dreamer by Whatwashernameagain an Analysis? Chapter 2! Part 1

All portions:

Chapter 1: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Chapter 2: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

The Dreamer

@whatwashernameagain

Guys! We finally made it to Chapter 2!!!! Prepare for the feelz!

As always, Spoilers under cut.

So… Lets recap what we know about Roman before we dig too deep into Chapter 2… We know that Roman is overzealous, hopeful to the point of naivety, innocent, sassy, playful/teasing, endearing, misguided and moral. He sees the good in everyone (especially Logan). Roman cares for each person individually, while Logan cares more for humanity as a whole. Lastly, Roman is pretty much the embodiment of hope for Logan and maybe the world. No pressure.

Okay… That’s pretty much what we know about Roman’s personality thus far… and he’s only been mentioned a few times… Not bad, not bad. Let’s get to it!

Eva wastes no time jumping right into Roman’s back story, though I’ll admit the first time I read this it gave me a bit of whiplash. We did just come out of a very dramatic scene, after all. Still as usual there is a lot to be said in the first para. First off, drawing the reader in within the first few lines is always a great idea and she manages it with; “Young Roman was shaking with righteous anger. How dare this – this fiend targeted the company of his father?” (Whatwashernameagain). This should send us into a whirlwind of emotions. We learn a lot about Roman and Roman’s father with these two sentences. First off, we see that Roman is very quick with his emotions which is not surprising at all, judging from what we have learned about him. However, when he uses the word ‘fiend’ in italics the inflection nods towards his overzealous nature which honestly warms my heart a bit. Once again, Eva is very strategic with her italics and beautifully so. We can assume that this ‘fiend’ is none other than one ‘Utilitarianist’ judging from the context of the previous chapter and the rivalry that we are already familiar with. But this begs the question: Why would Logan target Roman’s father unless he is a bad man? Well, I’d say the answer is in the question… But Roman obviously doesn’t believe that.

“He was the hardest working man in the world! His idol, his hero! He was donating to charity, pursuing a career in politics to support the attempts of the republican party to protect this great country’s safety and now he had to deal with an investigation into the state of his breeding facilities” (Whatwashernameagain).

This makes me… so sad. Roman obviously idolizes his father. He is a young man here, years before The Dreamer and it certainly shows in his naivety and innocence. As children many of us are fed information that our parents wish for us to believe or are simply told in order to stop us from questioning this or that. Some parents do this consciously while most don’t even think about it. It’s like when your parent tells you that its illegal to drive at night with the cab light on… I don’t know if this is going to shock you but its not illegal. At least not here. But their parents no doubt told them that when they were younger to keep them from messing with the light and distracting them; then they grew up believing it and now they tell their children the same thing. Or my mother use to tell me that her first husband died in a car accident because she didn’t want me to know she was divorced… Turns out he lives in Cali with a wife and three kids… but questioning her about him hurt her so she made up a lie to protect herself and me. Its not surprising that poor innocent Roman would be fed similar lies to help idolize his father.

The thing is… there comes a point in time in every adult’s life that they look at their parent and reality hits them so hard in the face they stumble. The person you thought your mom or dad was isn’t exactly who they are. For example, I idolized my own father and I of course still love him very very much; but growing up I thought he had the answer to everything and was an outstanding person. He had very few flaws (mostly just promiscuity)… Then about the time I turned twenty-four I watched as he went into a rage about abortions and how pro-choicers are idiots when most of them are pro-life but ‘just want attention’. It took me by surprise and when I showed him the statistics that the majority of ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ both agreed that there should be exceptions to most abortion issues (“Abortion”). He chose to deny the fact and continued to hate the opposite party simply because they labeled themselves something other than what he labeled himself, despite believing in the same concepts…. I’m getting way off topic… Sorry… I realized in that moment that the man I idolized was an ignorant man who was content with his choice in being ignorant. It was a shock… The image of him I had painted my whole life came crashing down. It was alright of course, we just don’t talk about politics anymore… well… not often anyways. My point is… I’m curious to see when Roman has the same realization that his father is not the man Roman expects him to be… Truth be told; our parents can never live up to their children’s expectations. We set the bar too high and they are only human, doing the best they can… The good ones anyways XP

Again! Getting off topic! Sorry! Back to the analysis….

Roman sees his father as everything he strives to be. His father is a hard worker, who gives to the needy, is charismatic (a politician), a protector. No doubt, Roman was conditioned to see these things; conditioned to believe that this is what a ‘real’ man looks like. A conditioning that most of us have experienced. Girls that don’t dress pretty enough, or don’t like the color pink, or rather play with a football than a barbie; or boys who love pink, enjoy makeup, don’t enjoy sports… I can’t tell you enough how much crap my husband gets because he rather read a book than play football, especially when he was in school (he’s 6’4” and almost 400lbs). Its wrong!!! Here Roman’s father stands, the picture-perfect image of everything Roman is expected to be… of course he’s going to fixate on the good, rather than accepting the bad. Looks like Logan isn’t the only one in denial.

This denial is cemented when Roman begins to talk about the ‘caramel colored Highland cow’ that his father had given him when he was twelve. Roman uses this as an example of how his father cares so deeply for animals…. -sigh- My poor baby… All of this is an indication of unconscious rationalization. Yup, you guessed it I’m jumping back into psychoanalysis and Freud. YAY! Rationalization is when an individual avoids feelings of displeasure by explaining their own loses and failures as someone else’s fault (Rivkin, Julie). In this case, Roman isn’t even aware that he is doing it; hence the denial. Instead of subconsciously accepting the fact that these investigations could be in the right he chooses to blame the investigation of victim blaming…. Well, the investigations and The Utilitarianist.

Though Roman’s us of terms such as ‘hard-working Americans,’ ‘terrorist’ and ‘gross injustice’ in the next few paragraphs really boldens the image that Roman eventually grows into; the one we saw in Chapter 1. As if Roman should be wearing the stars and stripes on his cape, flapping in the wind behind him. A whole-hearted apple pie American! These terms are a direct parallel to a lot of the Republican campaigns throughout the last few years. Terms like this tend to be used to sew discontent and fear into people, making them easily controllable. Honestly, it’s a great symbolism on how America’s masses are being persuaded to follow the path of anger and certain politicians that I will not name. Roman, here is the picture-perfect representation of America, his father a Republican extremist (like many politicians lately) who has fed him so many lies and promises… provided pretty things to satisfy him temporary and allow him to do as he pleases without any consequence to himself. Sound familiar?

**Personal note: I have nothing against the Republican party. I agree with the platform on a few issues as well as with the Democratic platform. However, anything to its extreme is a bad thing. Thank you for coming to my Tedtalk.

“Roman could not stand for this! It was gross injustice! He wanted to help, to support his father and show him that he could trust him! He was almost twenty now – a man – and it was time he finally managed to prove himself!” (Whatwashernameagain).

Within the same paragraph we see Roman’s need to win his father’s approval. We also see the societal gender norm of being ‘a man’ once more. There is a lot to unpack here. Roman wants to show his father that he can ‘trust him.’ Which wouldn’t be something a normal person would be concerned about unless there was a sense of past abuse; which judging by the rationalization is no doubt the case. This implies that Roman has always been informed that he’s not good enough, or that he is incompetent. This small sentence shows us a side of Roman that we have yet to see… his insecurity. Sure, as The Dreamer he hides it well… He must, he’s the hope and dreams of the world, he can’t afford insecurities. But deep down he is just a child wanting his father’s approval. He wants to be needed, needs to be accepted. He wants to prove to this man that he’s not worthless… Hmm… Kinda sounds like a certain villain we know doesn’t it? Actually, Logan and Roman have a lot more in common here than meets the eye. Imagine what Roman feels here… The desperation, the loneliness. Perhaps he feels as if there is no one else in the world that could possibly understand how he feels. He is no doubt surrounded by staff but when it comes down to it, he is just as alone as Logan is. Both using their pain to change the world; both defining themselves by the work that they do… by their usefulness. Once again, Roman focusing on the individual (his father) while Logan focuses on the masses. He and Logan share the same goal, the same hurtles, and the same pain… and yet somehow ended up on opposite sides of the coin…

We see more of Roman’s insecurities in the next paragraph, underlining the emotion; proving to the reader that it runs far deeper than we would first assume. He states that he tends to ‘ask the wrong question’ and makes ‘stupid suggestions’. However, the questions he asks are regarding the wages of the workers, and the suggestions involve the wellbeing of animals. The dimension this contrast provides really rounds out Roman’s character. As a reader we see that these questions are anything but wrong and the suggestions are far from stupid, but we are a mute onlooker that can do nothing to change the scene unfolding before us. These words paint Roman’s heart as much as his pain. We see his concern for his father’s employees and the animals as well. We see that he cares for every living being, bringing up back to the fact that he focuses on the individual, reinforcing this concept. At the same time, he doesn’t see it himself. I’ve learned early on in life that if you are told the same thing over and over in your life time by someone you look up to… you are bound to believe it and the best and worst thing about belief is that once you have it… its hard to let go.

“Shame rose into Roman’s cheeks as he remembered his silly question about fencing in a meadow for their calves in their Laredo facility to play in with their mothers. He’d just remembered how much Nugget had always enjoyed jumping around with them. Of course, he should have known they needed to be separated from their mothers after the first day to avoid losing the milk they sold. It was necessary, he guessed. So, they’d said” (Whatwashernameagain).

So, they’d said… -sigh- Three little words and yet… so much pain. I don’t really need to explain the whole being told something repeatedly etc etc etc. Because I just did; but the fact that Eva ends the paragraph so simply is so elegantly impactful… I just… wanted to bring attention to it.

It also serves to point out that despite the fact that Roman rationalizes his father’s mistreatments and dirty deeds, he has his doubts. “It was necessary, he guessed.” Implies that Roman doesn’t truly believe this despite what he’d been told (along with the ‘so they’d said’). It adds even more depth to the man because while we are looking at a young Roman with no self-confidence he knows right from wrong. At least, deep down he does. It is the environment around him that is forcing this sense of morality to be buried deep deep down to the point to he can hardly recognize it… but its there. This also makes for some great foreshadowing. The small rebellion of nothing but a seed of a thought will no doubt grow into more.

Tangent: People always talk about how changing your thoughts are a sure-fire way to change your life and it is true. In fact, there is scientific research to prove it. No, I’m not talking about some kind of poll or mental screening. It’s much bigger than that. Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist and doctor of alternative medicine, conducted an experiment to try and discover how our thoughts can physically affect the world around us (“Water”). He took samples of water and exposed them to written and spoken words and music to see how thoughts and feelings affect physical reality (“Water”). Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed towards them such as ‘love’, ‘thank you’, ‘I hate you’ (“Water”). The findings were unbelievable especially when you consider the fact that 90% of our bodies are made of water. Water that changes in reaction to thoughts. The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health (“Water”). Dr. Emoto has been called to lecture around the world as a result and has conducted live experiments both in Japan and Europe as well as in the US to show how indeed our thoughts, attitudes, and emotions as humans deeply impact the environment (“Water”). I learned this many years ago watching the documentary ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?’ which I highly recommend… But if you would like to watch the short clip on water molecules and thoughts you can find it here.

I bring it up because Roman’s rebellious thoughts have a far more drastic impact than he probably assumes. We shape ourselves to our thoughts… Which only intensifies the foreshadowing here.

Once again, in the next para we see Roman’s rationalization in full swing as he talks about his father having a difficult time with him. We also see the reinforcement of social norms when it comes to gender: ‘he lacked a sense of ruthlessness a strong man needed to improve the world’, ‘he was a bad hunter, had the wrong interests’, ‘spoke too softly or loudly’ (Whatwashernameagain). I’m not going to go into it too much because I’ve already touched on the ridiculousness of this… and because forcing social gender norms onto someone like this piss me off like no other and I’m not turning this into a big rant and pulling it away from Eva’s amazing work! I’ll just say that its wrong to assume what it means to be a man or a woman… why isn’t just being a person enough?! and leave it at that. We also see more of Roman’s idolization of his father; his need for approval and his distaste for Logan and his so-called victim-blaming (which is rationalization once more).

The sudden shift from such a somber tone to the next paragraph proves to be refreshing and provides Roman with a small burst of passion we know and love! Eva writes: “Roman had one thing going he was good at, though. He was strong, brave and determined. Someone needed to put a stop to this renegade liberal, and it might as well be him. It wasn’t like all the other things he’d tried and failed at. This time, he felt a calling to fight the war of the righteous” (Whatwashernameagain)!

This provides us with a small glimpse of The Dreamer we’ve come to know in Chapter 1. Roman may not have confidence in himself but the image of who he wants to be is another story. For those of you who don’t know I worked in Law Enforcement for six years and its things like this that remind me of some of the good parts of the job. Roman is relatable here to be. I’ve known a lot of officers who are very different outside of the uniform, myself included. We have insecurities, weaknesses, ticks, that all seem to fade away when we put on that uniform. You become a different person, a stronger person; someone you look up to… and looking up to yourself is an amazing feeling… its like your indestructible… you can do anything! Officer Liz and the Liz writing this analysis are two different people. Yes, we share the same experiences and likes and dislikes but… I’m just a regular person, staying up too late, worried about laundry and dishes… while she… she’s a hero who protects everyone, always has a solution, and never lets her emotions get the better of her. Roman is getting his first taste of the high that comes with the alter ego. He sees the Dreamer in that instance, though he refers to himself because in a way they are the same person… The difference is, is that The Dreamer has already won his father’s approval and pride… Roman has not.

*******

I will have to end it there, friends. It is way past my bed time, and I have to be up in a few hours for work. Thank you for joining me though and I hope to see you in Part 2!

   “Abortion.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 10 Nov. 2019, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx.

Rivkin, Julie. Literary Theory: a Practical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.

“Water.” What the Bleep Do We Know!?, https://whatthebleep.com/water-crystals/.

Whatwashernameagain. “The Dreamer - Chapter 2.” Hello Guys Gals And Non Binary Friends, 8 Sept. 2019, https://whatwashernameagain.tumblr.com/post/189407228487/the-dreamer-chapter-2?is_related_post=1.

[patriotsnet]

Why Is There Republicans And Democrats

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-is-there-republicans-and-democrats/

Why Is There Republicans And Democrats

How Things Got This Bad

Why Democrats and Republicans have different priorities on COVID relief

6) The Republican turn against democracy begins with race

Support for authoritarian ideas in America is closely tied to the countrys long-running racial conflicts.

This chart, from a September 2020 paper by Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels, shows a statistical analysis of a survey of Republican voters, analyzing the link between respondents score on a measure of ethnic antagonism and their support for four anti-democratic statements .

The graphic shows a clear finding: The higher a voter scores on the ethnic antagonism scale, the more likely they are tosupport anti-democratic ideas. This held true even when Bartels used regression analyses to compare racial attitudes to other predictors, like support for Trump. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism, he writes.

For students of American history, this shouldnt be a surprise.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act cemented Democrats as the party of racial equality, causing racially resentful Democrats in the South and elsewhere to defect to the Republican Party. This sorting process, which took place over the next few decades, is .

7) Partisanship causes Republicans to justify anti-democratic behavior

This chart is a little hard to parse, but it illustrates a crucial finding from one of the best recent papers on anti-democratic sentiment in America: how decades of rising partisanship made an anti-democratic GOP possible.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

Reality Check 3: The Democrats Legislative Fix Will Never Happenand Doesnt Even Touch The Real Threats

Its understandable why Democrats have ascribed a life-or-death quality to S. 1, the For the People bill that would impose a wide range of requirements on state voting procedures. The dozensor hundredsof provisions enacted by Republican state legislatures and governors represent a determination to ensure that the GOP thumb will be on the scale at every step of the voting process. The proposed law would roll that back on a national level by imposing a raft of requirements on statesno excuse absentee voting, more days and hours to votebut would also include public financing of campaigns, independent redistricting commissions and compulsory release of presidential candidates’ tax returns.

There are all sorts of Constitutional questions posed by these ideas. But theres a more fundamental issue here: The Constitutional clause on which the Democrats are relyingArticle I, Section 4, Clause 1gives Congress significant power over Congressional elections, but none over elections for state offices or the choosing of Presidential electors.

Vaccine Advocacy From Hannity And Mcconnell Gets The Media Off Republicans’ Backs But Won’t Shift Public Sentiment

Sean Hannity, Mitch McConnell and Tucker Carlson

Amid a rising media furor over the steady stream of vaccine disparagement from GOP politicians and Fox News talking heads, a number of prominent Republicans spoke up in favor of vaccines early this week.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible” and asked that people “ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.” House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, got the vaccine after months of delay and then publicly said, “there shouldn’t be any hesitancy over whether or not it’s safe and effective.” And Fox News host Sean Hannity, in a widely shared video, declared, it “absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.” This was treated in the press as an unequivocal endorsement, even though the use of the word “many” was clearly meant to let the Fox News viewers feel like he’s talking about other people getting vaccinated. 

Is this an exciting pivot among the GOP elites?  Are they abandoning the sociopathic strategy of sabotaging President Joe Biden’s anti-pandemic plan by encouraging their own followers to get sick? Are the millions of Republicans who keep telling pollsters they will never get that Democrat shot going to change their minds now? 

Ha ha ha, no.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Matthew Gertz July 20, 2021

Jefferson And Jeffersonian Principles

Jeffersonian democracy was not a one-man operation. It was a large political party with many local and state leaders and various factions, and they did not always agree with Jefferson or with each other.

Jefferson was accused of inconsistencies by his opponents. The “Old Republicans” said that he abandoned the Principles of 1798. He believed the national security concerns were so urgent that it was necessary to purchase Louisiana without waiting for a Constitutional amendment. He enlarged federal power through the intrusively-enforced . He idealized the “yeoman farmer” despite being himself a gentleman plantation owner. The disparities between Jefferson’s philosophy and practice have been noted by numerous historians. Staaloff proposed that it was due to his being a proto-; claimed that it was a manifestation of pure hypocrisy, or “pliability of principle”; and Bailyn asserts it simply represented a contradiction with Jefferson, that he was “simultaneously a radical utopian idealist and a hardheaded, adroit, at times cunning politician”. However, Jenkinson argued that Jefferson’s personal failings ought not to influence present day thinkers to disregard Jeffersonian ideals.

, a European nobleman who opposed democracy, argues that “Jeffersonian democracy” is a misnomer because Jefferson was not a democrat, but in fact believed in rule by an elite: “Jefferson actually was an Agrarian Romantic who dreamt of a republic governed by an elite of character and intellect”.

Reality Check #4: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

History Of The Democratic And Republican Parties

The Democratic Party traces its origins to the anti-federalist factions around the time of Americas independence from British rule. These factions were organized into the Democrat Republican party by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792.

The Republican party is the younger of the two parties. Founded in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals towards the end of the 19th century.

Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, the Democratic party has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic as well as social matters. The economically left-leaning activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, has shaped much of the party’s economic agenda since 1932. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government until 1964.

The Republican Party today supports a pro-business platform, with foundations in economic libertarianism, and fiscal and social conservatism.

Adams And The Revolution Of 1800

Shortly after Adams took office, he dispatched a group of envoys to seek peaceful relations with France, which had begun attacking American shipping after the ratification of the Jay Treaty. The failure of talks, and the French demand for bribes in what became known as the XYZ Affair, outraged the American public and led to the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war between France and the United States. The Federalist-controlled Congress passed measures to expand the army and navy and also pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien and Sedition Acts restricted speech that was critical of the government, while also implementing stricter naturalization requirements. Numerous journalists and other individuals aligned with the Democratic-Republicans were prosecuted under the Sedition Act, sparking a backlash against the Federalists. Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which held that state legislatures could determine the constitutionality of federal laws.

Sign Up For The Weeds Newsletter

Why Democrats and Republicans Are Claiming A Midterm Win

Voxs German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administrations burst of policymaking. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday.

They go further than merely believing the 2020 election was stolen, a nearly unanimous view among the bunch. Over 90 percent oppose making it easier for people to vote; roughly 70 percent would support a hypothetical third term for Trump .

The MAGA movement, Blum and Parker write, is a clear and present danger to American democracy.

2) Republicans are embracing violence

The ultimate expression of anti-democratic politics is resorting to violence. More than twice as many Republicans as Democrats nearly two in five Republicans said in a January poll that force could be justified against their opponents.

It would be easy to dismiss this kind of finding as meaningless were it not for the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill and the survey was conducted about three weeks after the attack. Republicans recently saw what political violence in the United States looked like, and a large fraction of the party faithful seemed comfortable with more of it.

These attitudes are linked to the party elites rhetoric: The more party leaders like Trump attack the democratic political system as rigged against them, the more Republicans will believe it and conclude that extreme measures are justifiable. A separate study found that Republicans who believe Democrats cheated in the election were far likelier to endorse post-election violence.

Early Life And Career

John Quincy Adams entered the world at the same time that his maternal great-grandfather, John Quincy, for many years a prominent member of the Massachusettslegislature, was leaving ithence his name. He grew up as a child of the American Revolution. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penns Hill and heard the cannons roar across the Back Bay in Boston. His patriot father, John Adams, at that time a delegate to the Continental Congress, and his patriot mother, Abigail Smith Adams, had a strong molding influence on his education after the war had deprived Braintree of its only schoolmaster. In 1778 and again in 1780 the boy accompanied his father to Europe. He studied at a private school in Paris in 177879 and at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, in 1780. Thus, at an early age he acquired an excellent knowledge of the French language and a smattering of Dutch. In 1780, also, he began to keep regularly the diary that forms so conspicuous a record of his doings and those of his contemporaries through the next 60 years of American history. Self-appreciative, like most of the Adams clan, he once declared that, if his diary had been even richer, it might have become “next to the Holy Scriptures, the most precious and valuable book ever written by human hands.”

c.

Democratic View On Healthcare

Democrats have always been in favor of governmental involvement in the wellbeing of Americans, especially the most vulnerable among us. Healthcare reform has been a primary focus for the party since the middle of the Twentieth Century. Medicare, Medicaid, Childrens Health Insurance Program , and the ACA are all major reforms the Democrats fought for and got passed into law. During this election season, healthcare is arguably the hottest topic of debate, and Democrats are pushing for further expansion across the board. The key phrase to remember is quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

Obama And Trump Healthcare Policies Compared

There could not be a more radical divide between administrations than there is between these two. The Obama administration worked against almost insurmountable opposition from the GOP in order to pass the ACA. The Trump Administrations quest is to dismantle everything the Obama Administration has done. They even have court cases pending in order to do so.

When Was The Republican And Democratic Parties Formed

The Democratic Party was founded by Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren on January 8, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was the United States seventh president but the first democratic President.

The Democratic Partys shocking emergence can be linked to the countrys anti-federalist factions. It was during that time the United States of America gained independence from British colonial masters.

The anti-federalist factions, which democrats originated from, were also grouped into the Democrat-Republican party. This was done in 1792 by James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other federalists influential opponents.

On the other hand, the Republican Party is pretty much younger than the Democratic Party. It was formed in 1854 by anti-slavery modernizers and activists.

The republicans were against the expansion of slavery in Western territories. They fought hard to protect African Americans rights after the civil war.

The Republican Party is often known as GOP. The meaning is Grand Old Party. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. From Lincolns emergence, Republican Party started gaining ground in America.

The Legal Fight Over Voting Rights During The Pandemic Is Getting Hotter

Or as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, told NPR, there are no “fair” maps in the discussion about how to draw voting districts because what Democrats call “fair” maps are those, he believes, that favor them.

No, say voting rights groups and many Democrats the only “fair” way to conduct an election is to admit as many voters as possible. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has charged authorities in her home state with suppressing turnout, named her public interest group Fair Fight Action.

Access vs. security

The pandemic has added another layer of complexity with the new emphasis it has put on voting by mail. President Trump says he opposes expanding voting by mail, and his allies, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, call the process rife with opportunities for fraud.

Even so, Trump and McEnany both voted by mail this year in Florida, and Republican officials across the country have encouraged voting by mail.

Democrats, who have made election security and voting access a big part of their political brand for several years, argue that the pandemic might discourage people from going to old-fashioned polling sites.

Democrats Or Republicans: Who Has The Higher Income

In the end, many people assume Republicans are richer based on these figures. Although, this is only a look at the richest families and politicians in America though. In everyday American households, it seems that Democrats have a higher mean salary. Its true that many of the wealthiest families in the country are contributing to Republican campaigns. On the contrary, families registered as , statistically speaking.

These findings still have some loopholes in them, of course. For instance, the data was collected over the last 40 years or so. Moreover, it is only based on the most recently collected information. As you know, demographics are constantly changing. These figures may have been affected as well. There is also a margin of error with every type of data collection like this. So, what do you think? Who is richer? Democrats or Republicans?

Where Do Trump And Biden Stand On Key Issues

Reuters: Brian Snyder/AP: Julio Cortez

The key issues grappling the country can be broken down into five main categories: coronavirus, health care, foreign policy, immigration and criminal justice.

This year, a big focus of the election has been the coronavirus pandemic, which could be a deciding factor in how people vote, as the country’s contentious healthcare system struggles to cope.

The average healthcare costs for COVID-19 treatment is up to $US30,000 , an Americas Health Insurance Plans 2020 study has found.

Presidential Election Of 1808

This mayor joining the GOP says theres no Democratic Party anymore’

Speculation regarding Madison’s potential succession of Jefferson commenced early in Jefferson’s first term. Madison’s status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party after 1800, the chief opposition to Madison’s candidacy came from other members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Madison became the target of attacks from Congressman , a leader of a faction of the party known as the . Randolph recruited James Monroe, who had felt betrayed by the administration’s rejection of the proposed with Britain, to challenge Madison for leadership of the party. Many Northerners, meanwhile, hoped that Vice President could unseat Madison as Jefferson’s successor. Despite this opposition, Madison won his party’s presidential nomination at the January 1808 . The Federalist Party mustered little strength outside New England, and Madison easily defeated Federalist candidate . At a height of only five feet, four inches , and never weighing more than 100 pounds , Madison became the most diminutive president.

What Is Thomas Jefferson Remembered For

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for being the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. The fact that he owned over 600 enslaved people during his life while forcefully advocating for human freedom and equality made Jefferson one of Americas most problematic and paradoxical heroes.

Thomas Jefferson, , draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nations first secretary of state and second vice president and, as the third president , the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution.

What Republican And Democrats Believe

Lets start with this example. There are one or more reasons why you chose that person to be your friend. It could be because of how he or she talks, sense of humor, intelligence, educational background, ideology, or other factors.

The bottom line is you made the individual your friend because of one or more factors you discovered in that person that pleases you. This explains why most people would prefer joining republicans than Democrats and vice versa.

Republicans and Democrats have diverse ideologies and beliefs. These beliefs or ideology is part of what draws people to join either political party.

Lets start with Republicans. What do Republicans believe in?

Republicans boast libertarian and centrist factions. But they primarily believe in social conservative policies. They abide by laws that help conserve their traditional values. These include opposition to abortion, marijuana use, and same-sex marriage.

So the Republican Partys platform is generally centered on American conservatism. It comprises establishment conservatives, Freedom Caucus, or Tea Party members, described as right-wing, populist, and far-right.

The Republican Partys position has changed over time. They now transcend beyond traditional values, which often includes Christian background. The Republicans evolved position now includes fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.

Heres a quick summary of what the Republican Party believes in:

Heres a quick look at what Democrats believe in:

Was The Donkey Originally A Jackass

Thomas Nast was an American cartoonist who joined the staff of Harpers Weekly in 1862. Nasts cartoons were very popular and his depiction of Santa Claus is still the most widely used version of the holiday icon we see today. During his career, Nast also drew many political cartoons that harshly criticized the policies of both parties.

Nast first used a donkey to represent the Democratic party as a whole in the 1870 cartoon A Live Jack-Ass Kicking a Lion in which Nast criticized the dominantly Democratic Southern newspaper industry as the Copperhead Press. While he did popularize the donkey, Nast wasnt the first person to use it in reference to the Democrats.

Over 40 years earlier during the presidential campaign of 1828, opponents of Democrat Andrew Jackson referred to him as a jackass. Jackson actually embraced the insult and used donkeys on several campaign posters. Nevertheless, cartoonist Anthony Imbert would use a Jackson-headed donkey to mock Jackson an 1833 political cartoon.

However, the donkey never really caught on after the end of Jacksons presidency, and Thomas Nast apparently had no knowledge that it ever was used to represent the Democrats.

Election Of 1796 And Vice Presidency

In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams by 7168 and was thus elected vice president. As presiding officer of the Senate, he assumed a more passive role than his predecessor John Adams. He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues, which he called an “honorable and easy” role. Jefferson had previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him unusually well qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as . Jefferson would cast only three in the Senate.

During the Adams presidency, the Federalists rebuilt the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the . Jefferson believed that these laws were intended to suppress Democratic-Republicans, rather than prosecute enemy aliens, and considered them unconstitutional. To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the , declaring that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. The resolutions followed the “” approach of Madison, in which states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated , allowing states to invalidate federal laws altogether. Jefferson warned that, “unless arrested at the threshold”, the Alien and Sedition Acts would “necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood”.

[alanaknobel99]

Red Lipstick and The Green New Deal

Have you ever been told as a child, if something isn’t working then find a new solution? At this moment, our country is like that child, and it needs to be told to find a new solution. The way the United States of America has been operating works, but not for everyone, and our climate is changing. Not just our environmental climate, but the political climate as well. Our country is depleting, poverty is soaring, healthcare is unaffordable, student loan debt is atrocious, and climate change is quite literally killing people. Young people feel our country is stuck. The older generation is holding onto it like their youngest child leaving for college. Ultimately, no matter what, that child will leave. Everyone has to grow up, even this country, and it’s going to happen whether the parents like it or not. Every movement, and this is a movement, to push our country forward needs a voice. For us, that is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or AOC is a 31-year-old Latina-American born and raised in the Bronx of New York City. Her parents ended up moving 30-50 miles north of the Bronx to a better neighborhood to afford better education and a future for their children. In a 2019 TIME Magazine article, AOC said that those 40-minute drives taught her that zip-code matters. What a lesson to learn, that where you grow up has more impact on your future than you do. Her mother cleaned houses, and her father owned a small architecture business. In 2008 her father died which spun the family into financial turmoil. This caused AOC to pick up multiple jobs, working for a nonprofit by day, and bartending by night. She has constantly said that she never saw herself going into politics, but it’s hard to deny that she was built for the political stage. Her brother submitted her for Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats who are actively looking for young people to run for Congress. They want people who are working class, poor, educated to be the Americans who represent other Americans. I believe it was on her way to a protest at the Dakota Access Pipeline when she received a call asking if she wanted to run for Congress. From there on began the development of a grassroots campaign, that is the ultimate underdog story.

She was running against Joseph Crowley, an incumbent who hadn’t been challenged since 2004. He was your average democrat, swearing loyalty to fight Donald Trump, and that was a majority of his campaign. What he didn’t pay attention to was AOC, who ran on true issues and the need to help the residents of the 14th district in New York. Her campaign was made up of volunteers, a majority of whom were actors, and they knew how to put on a good show. They didn’t accept any lobbyist money, and were completely donation based. That was quite fascinating that she was able to beat someone who had millions of dollars being poured into his campaign fund. However, her winning wasn’t about the money, it was about this newfound energy and spirit that she has that led her to victory. She really cares about people, she cares about what policies are being put forward in order to help those people in the future.

She continues to radiate this fiery passion to fight, even into her 3rd year in Congress. This passion and honesty are what make her so radical, likable, and attention-grabbing. Allowing her presence on social media to skyrocket over the years. We can see this in news clips that have gone viral of her during committee hearings where she pours her heart out. In one of her most famous clips where she exclaims, “People are dying” while using her passionate words to defend the Green New Deal. In this specific video, she is speaking the absolute truth. The climate crisis is about human lives, and there should be no debate around that whatsoever. It’s come to the point in politics where people need to speak up and fast because the climate crisis has a ticking time bomb, and if we do not tackle this issue before it’s too late there is no turning back. AOC is the person speaking up, she doesn’t sugar coat anything, and she does it with grace. Even if people don’t like her, whether that’s the haters and trolls online or her coworkers across the aisle, continues to not let others silence her.

I remember when a Republican congressman called her a “fucking bitch” she spoke up. Whereas others, I feel, would keep quiet, I’m sure Nancy Pelosi has been called that by some of her coworkers, but the world has never heard it. Alexandria took the time to approach the situation like the female hero everyone knows she is. There is no politician filter when she speaks, it’s raw, and it’s fully and truly her. She is not afraid to use social media to call out people on their stupidity, wrongness, or even disagreement with others.

Some will say that she just became a congressperson at the right time, during the social media boom. While that may hold some truth, it’s really how she uses social media to create a space of transparency that has caused the public to flock to her accounts like a moth to light. At the time the TIME article was written they said, “her Twitter following has climbed from about 49,000 last summer to more than 3.5 million.” Her Twitter following is now at 12.6 million. I believe, just from my own research, she has the most Instagram followers of her other coworkers at 8.8 million followers. When I look at her Instagram feed compared to Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Cruz, and other big political names, her feed is very different. Others have a lot of information pictures, news clips, and statistical slides that may grab some people's attention, but it’s very political because there is no connection. When you look at AOC’s feed a majority are videos of her doing live Q&A sessions. I haven’t seen this on any other politician's platform. She is directly and in real time, answering questions about current legislation in which she is able to clear up misinformation. I watched her live Q&A about what was in the second COVID relief bill, and I learned so much. She has created this space of truth, transparency, and faith all because she chose to include people in what she is doing for them. Just a few days ago she posted a short weekly vlog where she explained what she did during that week. You don’t see others in her same position doing that. Many may think it’s irresponsible, not politician-like, but in actuality it’s what they should be doing.

Now, is this a generational thing or something else? She’s 31 years old, grew up during the social media boom, tends to have younger interns, is more in tune with the “lingo” as the older people may say. While it may be all of the above, she has actively chosen to use her social media like this. Others can use their accounts like this but choose not to for some reason. AOC is one of the only people actively getting the younger generation involved in politics, and she does this through the internet. During the pandemic, she live-streamed her playing the vastly popular game, Among Us, where she talked about legislations and let people ask her questions. She has made countless statements that the older generation in Congress always talks about young people, but never makes space for us, allowing us to show our potential. It’s always, “it’s not your time yet” never “come show us what you can do now.” AOC is leading the path for young people to have a space in the political circle. There is also one more major reason why people like her so much, and that’s because she is a working-class American.

I have said my entire life that I would love to see Republicans switch shoes with a steelworker for one day. The majority of people who run our government have grown up in a life of privilege that afforded to get them there. They don’t know what real working class, poor Americans go through every day. Our government has a real problem that if they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. AOC has lived check to check, been on the other end of taking someone’s order, worked overnight just to have some extra cash to pay off student loans. I’m not disavowing anyone's upbringing, but she has consistently put forward a policy that helps the average American. Even policy that helps everyone, like The Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is a Resolution put forth by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. It is not a piece of legislation, but a call to action that the federal government takes steps to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2030. The 14-page resolution has a ton of what seems like radical changes. This includes updating the country’s infrastructure, energy grid, and ensuring livable wages for all American jobs. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to the Green New Deal, as within those 14 pages the goals outline almost everything that makes up the US economy. There are so many benefits that could happen to our country if something like this is passed. For instance, guaranteeing higher education for everyone in order to receive the knowledge needed to acquire a job with a livable wage. The Green New Deal also addresses issues such as systemic racism and puts forth proposals to invest in certain neighborhoods. These are the types of legislation that need to be put forward in order for our country to evolve. The fact that not everyone is guaranteed higher education, shelter, clean water, healthy food, is unacceptable.

Most of the rebuttal to the Green New Deal is that it’s too expensive, unrealistic, and the federal government shouldn’t have that much power. While the GND is expensive, estimated to be around 50-90 trillion dollars, the federal government will end up spending more money in the long run from disasters related to climate change. The Green New Deal says the federal government could spend up to 500 trillion dollars in economic relief by 2100. The more we wait, the more money we will have to spend in the long run catching up to those problems, until we cannot. To those who say the Green New Deal is unrealistic, I ask them to read a history book and identify all the major life-changing events that others have said were unrealistic as well. Americans freeing themselves from Britain, the abolishment of slavery, the civil rights act, The New Deal. For my response towards the issue of government power, if the federal government isn't the ones putting forth legislation to protect American lives I don’t know what they are there for.

With all that being said, is AOC the right person to bring forth this Green New Deal? To that, I say absolutely yes. She represents the new millennium, the rise of the younger progressive generation who is fighting to make real change in this country. Her use of social media, and how she connects to people across the world set an example as to who we want our elected leaders to be. Transparent, honest, and inclusive in their media. Her story, who she is as a person, what she stands for is what the Green New Deal stands for. Rightfully so when someone mentions her they think of the Green New Deal, and vice versa. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is what the future of this country will look like, and she will continue to lead the pack.

Bibliography

Alter, C. (2019, March 21). Inside rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez's UNLIKELY RISE. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://time.com/longform/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-profile/

DSouza, D. (2021, January 26). The green new deal explained. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.investopedia.com/the-green-new-deal-explained-4588463

What is the green new deal? (2020, December 08). Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.sunrisemovement.org/green-new-deal/?ms=WhatistheGreenNewDeal%3F

Grunwald, M., White, J., Sitrin, S., & Gerstein, B. (2019, January 15). The trouble with the 'green new deal'. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/15/the-trouble-with-the-green-new-deal-223977

(2019, June 12). The Green New Deal Explained [Vox]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIDJWCbk6I

'People Are Dying:' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defends Green New Deal | NBC News [Video file]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGtuDCZ3t2w

[erikonymous]

Donald J. Trump, a reality-television star erecting a mausoleum for himself behind the first-hole tee of a golf course he owns in New Jersey, first declared his candidacy for president of the United States in the atrium of Trump Tower, which he built in the 1980s with labor provided by hundreds of undocumented Polish workers and concrete purchased at an inflated price from the Gambino and Genovese crime families. “The American dream is dead,” Trump said to the audience members, each of whom he paid $50 to attend. During Trump’s primary campaign, he told his supporters that he knew “all about crazies,” loved “Wall Street guys” who are “brutal,” planned to “use the word ‘anchor baby,’ ” and preferred to pronounce “Qatar” incorrectly. Trump, who in 1999 cut his sick infant grandnephew off the Trump Organization’s health-care plan and in 2011 compared being gay to switching to a long-handled golf putter, pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act and said he’d consider trying to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage. Trump said that his book The Art of the Deal was second in quality only to the Bible and that he never explicitly asked God for forgiveness. At a church in Iowa, he placed a few dollar bills into a bowl filled with sacramental bread, which he has referred to as “my little cracker.” Trump, who once dumped a glass of wine on a journalist who wrote a story he didn’t like, told his supporters that journalists were “liars,” the “lowest form of humanity,” and “enemies,” but that he did not approve of killing them. “I’m a very sane person,” said Trump, who once hosted a radio show in which he discussed the development of hair-cloning technology, the creation of a vaccine for obesity, the number of men a gay man thinks about having sex with on his morning commute, and the dangers of giving free Viagra to rapists. Trump denied being the voice of John Miller, one of several fictional assistants he had previously admitted pretending to be, in a recording of himself telling a reporter that he had “zero interest” in dating Madonna; that he had three other girlfriends in addition to Marla Maples, with whom he had been cheating on his wife; and that he had an affair with Carla Bruni, who later responded by describing Trump as “obviously a lunatic.” Trump, who once offered the city of New York vacant apartments in his building to house homeless people in hopes they would drive away rent-controlled tenants, sent a bumper sticker to a group of homeless veterans whom he had previously declined to help and asked them to campaign for him. Trump, whose companies have been cited 24 times since 2005 for failing to pay workers overtime or minimum wage, said the federal minimum wage should go up, and then said it should not. Trump referred to 9/11 as “7-Eleven,” and called Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren “the Indian” and “Pocahontas.” Trump, who had previously labeled a deaf contestant on his reality-TV show The Apprentice “retarded,” and had described poor Americans as “morons,” said the country was on course for a “very massive recession,” one resembling the U.S. recession of 2007 to 2009, which Trump once said Americans could “opt out of” by joining Trump Network, a multilevel-marketing company that sold a monthly supply of multivitamins purportedly tailored to customers based on a test of their urine. Trump submitted his financial-disclosure form to the Federal Election Commission, on which he swore under oath that his golf course in Briarcliff Manor, New York, which was being sued by the town for causing flooding, was worth $50 million, despite having sworn in a previous property-tax appeal that it was worth $1.4 million; and swore that his golf course in Palos Verdes, California, which he was suing for five times its annual revenue, was worth more than $50 million, despite previously having filed papers with Los Angeles County stating it was worth $10 million. Trump claimed he made $1.9 million from his modeling agency, which a foreign-born former model accused of “modern-day slavery,” alleging that the agency forced her to lie about her age, work without a U.S. visa, and live in a crowded apartment for which she paid the agency as much as $1,600 a month to sleep in a bed beneath a window through which a homeless man once urinated on her. Trump sought to exclude a recording of himself telling the nephew of former president George W. Bush that he grabs women “by the pussy” from a fraud suit filed against Trump University, a series of real-estate seminars taught by salespeople with no real-estate experience, which was housed in a Trump-owned building that the Securities and Exchange Commission said also housed the country’s most complained-about unregistered brokerages, and whose curriculum investigators in Texas described as “inapplicable.” Trump announced that he would win the Latino vote, and tweeted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl from Trump Grill in Trump Tower with the message “I love Hispanics!” Trump referred to a black man at one of his rallies as “my African American,” and pledged his support for black people at a gathering of mostly white people in Wisconsin, whom he often referred to as “the forgotten people.” “I am the least racist person,” said Trump, who was sued twice by the Justice Department in the 1970s for allegedly refusing to rent apartments to black tenants, whose Trump Plaza Hotel was fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1992 for removing black dealers from card tables, who allegedly told a former employee that he hated “black guys counting my money,” who in 2005 floated the idea of pitting an all-black Apprentice team against an all-white one to reflect “our very vicious world,” and who was endorsed by leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, one of whom said, “What he believes, we believe.” Trump tweeted statistics credited to a fictional government agency falsely claiming that the majority of white murder victims in the United States are killed by black people. Trump tweeted a photoshopped picture of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who Trump had said “had blood coming out of her wherever,” standing next to a Saudi prince, who tweeted back that he had “financially rescued” Trump twice, including once in 1990, when the prince purchased Trump’s 281-foot yacht, which was formerly owned by a Saudi arms dealer with whom Trump often partied in Atlantic City, and with whom Trump was implicated in a tax-evasion scheme involving a Fifth Avenue jewelry store. Trump disputed former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s claim that Trump magazine is defunct, showing as proof an annual circular for his clubs that was not Trump magazine, which folded in 2009. Trump republished his book Crippled America with the title Great Again. Trump told and retold an apocryphal story about a U.S. general who executed Muslim soldiers with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and proposed that Muslims be banned from entering the country. At the first primary debate, Trump praised his companies’ bankruptcies, including that of Trump Entertainment Resorts, in which lenders lost more than $1 billion and 1,100 employees lost their jobs, and that of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, a publicly traded company that Trump used to purchase two casinos for almost $1 billion, and from which he resigned after the company went bankrupt for the first time, but before it went bankrupt for the second time. “I made a lot of money,” said Trump. At the fifth primary debate, Trump defended the idea of retaliating against America’s foreign aggressors by killing non-combatant members of their families, saying it would “make people think.” At the eleventh primary debate, Trump told the crowd there was “no problem” with the size of his penis. Trump said that he knew more about the Islamic State than “the generals,” and that he would “rely on the generals” to defeat the Islamic State. Trump said he would bring back waterboarding and torture because “we have to beat the savages.” Trump offered to pay the legal bills of anyone who assaulted protesters at his rallies, denied making the offer, then made the offer again after a 78-year-old white supporter in North Carolina punched a 26-year-old black protester in the eye and said, “Next time we see him we might have to kill him.” Trump, who in 1999 called Republicans too “crazy right” and in 2000 ran on a Reform Party platform that included creating a lottery to fund U.S. spy training, said that the 2016 primaries were “rigged,” then clinched the Republican nomination for president, receiving more votes than any Republican in history. “I was the one who really broke the glass ceiling,” said Trump when his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, became the first woman to lead a major party’s ticket. Trump hired Steve Bannon, the editor of the white-nationalist website Breitbart, to replace his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who ran a firm that once lobbied for the military dictator of Zaire, and who himself replaced Corey Lewandowski, who resigned from the campaign not long after he was filmed grabbing a Breitbart reporter by the arm to prevent her from asking Trump any questions. Trump selected as his running mate Indiana governor Mike Pence, who previously backed a bill that would allow hospitals to deny care to critically ill pregnant women, and who once criticized the Disney character Mulan as a “mischievous liberal” created to persuade Americans that women should be allowed to hold combat positions in the military. In his general-election campaign, Trump said he would consider recognizing Crimea as Russian territory, and called on Russia to hack into Clinton’s email account. Trump said that he doesn’t pay employees who don’t “do a good job,” after a review of the more than 3,500 lawsuits filed against Trump found that he has been accused of stiffing a painter and a dishwasher in Florida, a glass company in New Jersey, dozens of hourly hospitality workers, and some of the lawyers who represented him. “I’m a fighter,” said Trump, who body-slammed the WWE chairman at WrestleMania 23 in 2007, and who attended WrestleMania IV with Robert LiButti, an Atlantic City gambler with alleged mafia ties, who told Trump he’d “fucking pull your balls from your legs” if Trump didn’t stop trying to seduce his daughter. Trump, whose first wife, Ivana, accused him in divorce filings of rape, and whose special counsel later said rape within a marriage was not possible, said “no one respects women more than I do.” Trump threatened to sue 12 women who accused him of sexual misconduct, including one who recalled Trump trying “like an octopus” to put his hand up her skirt on an airplane 35 years ago; four former Miss Teen USA contestants, who alleged that Trump entered their dressing room while girls as young as 15 were changing and said, “I’ve seen it all before”; the winner of Miss Utah USA in 1997, who alleged that Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips and then told her, “Twenty-one is too old”; an adult-film star, who alleged that at a golf tournament in Tahoe in 2006 Trump offered her $10,000 and the private use of his jet to spend the night with him; and a People magazine reporter, who alleged that while she was writing a story on Trump and his current wife, Melania, on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary, Trump pushed her against the wall and forcibly kissed her before telling her, “We’re going to have an affair.” “What I say is what I say,” said Trump, who previously told a pair of 14-year-old girls that he would date them in a couple of years, said of a 10-year-old girl that he would date her in 10 years, told a journalist that he wasn’t sure whether his infant daughter Tiffany would have nice breasts, told the cast of The View that if Ivanka weren’t his daughter “perhaps I would be dating her,” told radio host Howard Stern that it was okay to call Ivanka a “piece of ass” and that he could have “nailed” Princess Diana, and tweeted that a former winner of his Miss Universe pageant, whom Trump once called “Miss Piggy,” was disgusting. “Check out sex tape,” tweeted Trump, who once appeared in a soft-core pornographic film breaking a bottle of wine over a limousine. Trump did not comment on reports that he used over $200,000 in charitable contributions to the Trump Foundation to settle lawsuits against his businesses, $20,000 in contributions to the Trump Foundation to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself, and $10,000 in contributions to buy a smaller painting of himself, which he hung on the wall of his restaurant Champions Bar and Grill. “I’m the cleanest guy there is,” said Trump, who once granted the rights to explore building Trump-branded towers in Moscow to a mobster convicted of stabbing a man in the face with the stem of margarita glass, who was mentored by the former lead counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Gambino and Genovese crime families, who once purchased a nightclub in Atlantic City from a hit man for a Philadelphia crime family, who once worked with a soldier in the Colombo crime family to outfit Trump Golden and Executive Series limousines with a fax machine and a liquor dispenser, and who once purchased helicopter services from a cigarette-boat racer named Joseph Weichselbaum, who was charged with drug trafficking in Ohio before being moved to Trump’s sister’s courtroom in New Jersey, where the case was handed off to a different judge, who gave Weichselbaum a three-year prison sentence, of which he served 18 months before moving into Trump Tower. Trump told journalists he “made a lot of money” when he leased his house in Westchester to the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. “I screwed him,” said Trump. Trump, who in 2013 said that he did “have a relationship” with Vladimir Putin, said in 2016, “I don’t know Putin.” Trump, who wrote in 1997 that concern over asbestos was a mob conspiracy, who in the 1990s spent $1 million in ads to bolster the theory that a Native American tribe in upstate New York had been infiltrated by the mafia and drug traffickers, who once implied that Barack Obama’s real name is Barry Soetoro and that he won reelection by making a secret deal with Saudi Arabia, and who in 2012 tweeted that global warming was a “hoax” created by “the Chinese” to weaken U.S. manufacturing, suggested to his supporters that the Islamic State paid the phone bills of Syrian refugees, that his primary opponent Ted Cruz’s Cuban father was involved in a conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy, and that U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia may have been suffocated with a pillow. During the first debate of the general election, Trump said that Rosie O’Donnell had deserved it when he called her “disgusting both inside and out,” “basically a disaster,” a “slob,” and a “loser,” someone who “looks bad,” “sounds bad,” has a “fat, ugly face,” and “talks like a truck driver.” At the second general-election debate, Trump invited three women who have accused Clinton’s husband of sexual misconduct to sit in the front row; claimed that Clinton had once laughed about the rape of a 12-year-old girl, which audio showed not to be true; claimed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had endorsed him, which it had not; and afterward suggested that his opponent had been on drugs during the debate. Trump, who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose supporters, told his supporters that Clinton could shoot one of them and not be prosecuted. Trump told the audience at a Catholic charity dinner that Clinton “hates Catholics,” and told his supporters that she is “the devil” and that Mexico was “getting ready to attack.” Trump, who once kept a collection of Adolf Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, told his supporters that the election was “rigged” against him, won the election despite losing the popular vote by a margin of almost 3 million, claimed that he had in fact won the popular vote, and then announced that he would be staying on as executive producer of The Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, which a year earlier had fired him because he called Mexicans “rapists.” “Our country,” said Trump at a victory rally, “is in trouble.” Tower of Babble

[gibsongirlselections]

Dear Joe Biden, Please Accept Your Loss When It’s Time

Joe, I’m writing to ask a favor. Don’t be a bum, a palooka. If you lose the election, lose it graciously. Don’t drag a damaged America through a long fight designed to cripple the next Trump term, the way Democrats did in 2016. Those same voices are gonna want you to never concede, to “sue ’til it’s Blue” but you gotta do the right thing. Don’t be the guy to wreck America.

While two months can change a lot, it doesn’t look like November 3 is gonna be your night, kid. So far you got nothing to offer but you’re Not Trump, and because I know you play some poker, that’s stretching a pair of twos too far. Pennsylvania new voter registrations added 150,000 more Republicans than Democrats. Trump is beating you on Latino outreach, Joe, and owns the Cuban vote (as well the formidable Jewish vote) in crucial Florida. A pollster on our podcast believes the “shy Trump voter” effect is even stronger today than in 2016.

I’ve seen it myself. I know the way many Trader Joe Americans noodle around when they want to see if it’s OK to talk about Trump. They’ve done well in the economy. They’ve noticed the wars have tapered down. Once they open up, they say they’re afraid you’ll lose control to the progressives nipping at the party’s heels. When Elizabeth Warren childishly sneaks in a pro-BLM message during your convention, they don’t see the justice they titularly support, they see chaos. And the looting they roll their eyes over happening in New York is now in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Swing states, Joe, on literal fire under Democratic gubernatorial leadership.

I know you are counting on the left behind, out of work Americans without 401ks as your people, but Joe, they aren’t. Those folks are Trump’s base. They don’t blame him, they think he fights for them. You and I can have a lo-carb beer alongside a little Maalox, or maybe just some nice Jell-O, after you retire and try to make sense of that, but you can’t say it ain’t so, Joe.

So whattaya got? Russiagate was a lie built on falsified FISA documents, sleazy CIA-aligned operatives, and paid-for propaganda. Impeachment failed. None of that screams “trust me.” Large numbers of voters don’t blame Trump for COVID, and statistics show the worst economic damage to individual wallets has been done by Democratic governors willing to act against their own citizens to politically damage Trump. A Democratic governor keeps kids from school and you want the parents to blame Trump? Your party Goebbels’ are down to whimpering about violations of the Hatch Act most non-Beltway American know nothing of and care less about, and the Post Office.

The Post Office, Joe? That’s your big talking point two months out? You sound like Jan Brady trying to snitch on her brothers. Seriously, enough with the post office. The USPS handles 472.1 million mailpieces a day. There are only 153 million registered voters in the U.S., and typically only about 60 percent of them even bother to vote. You still get your paper Lands End catalog; handling the ballots is nothing.

You aren’t the only candidate using the Not Trump strategy. Your real opponent is Stay Home; that’s where a lot of the Never Trumpers may end up. Last election 42 percent of eligible voters stayed home and likely cost Hillary the election; registered voters who didn’t vote were more Democratic-leaning than the registered voters who turned out. In 2020 most of your younger “Democrats” aren’t. They hate Trump more than they hate you, but they’re not part of your party. They’d really like a third party, for change, but until then they’ve made it pretty clear they won’t vote for crappy candidates like you (or Hillary) just because Rachel Maddow scolds them. They told you all, twice, they wanted Bernie and the party stiffed them.

More? You didn’t get any post-convention bounce, not even with both Obamas. Nice try with Kamala, by the way, but the only people who vote based on the VP choice are thinking you won’t make it past 100 days. And talk about a plan backfiring, research suggests the more Democrats message democracy is dead and Trump is going to win by cheating no matter what, the lower Democratic turnout will be. That’s on top of recent polls suggesting voter enthusiasm (which drives turnout) for you lags Trump in key battleground states. And you have to privately admit, Trump’s mantra about you—that Joe sent your jobs to China and your sons to war—cuts pretty deep across those all-important Midwestern states.

And that brings me to the favor I’m asking for. If you really lose, concede. Thank everyone, promise Kamala will be back fighting in 2024, and affirm the system worked. Don’t gin up a Konstitutional Krisis. If you really really have unambiguous proof of fraud, lay it all out in one splash, no weeks of leaks and hearings, and make sure it is clear enough all but the most committed ideologues have to admit you are right. You will save America. Because if the message is “burn it down” people just might.

Everybody sees what those around you are planning. Even you warned Trump will steal the election. Rep. James Clyburn said he believes the president “plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold onto office.” Hillary dictated you should not concede under any circumstances because “eventually I do believe he will win.” Her strategy for you is a lengthy legal battle after the election, a sue ’til your blue which envisions November 3 as only an opening act, followed by counts and recounts of mail-in ballots, followed by court challenges, all in hope of shifting public opinion toward not accepting the election.

Hillary made a good run at that four years ago, convincing a fair number of people her popular vote win meant the Electoral College didn’t count. But in the end she failed, Trump took office, and America slipped deeper into division. 

The poster child for being a Good Loser, Al Gore, is teeing it up for you as well. Gore believes the military will eventually have to remove Trump from office. That was the headline. But pay attention to Gore’s whole statement, the part when he said “there’s no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution. You can always explore the option of dragging something out, tearing the country apart, mobilizing partisans against one another in the streets, but it is not a wise course for our country.” Gore of course is talking about Trump doing that, but I’m talking about you, Joe.

America can’t handle it so please don’t bring it on us. Don’t listen to the voices saying you have to save democracy by refusing to accept the election results. We are so divided that you refusing to go along with the vote, fanning the flames by claiming the popular vote is controlling, insisting racism lost you the election or otherwise playing to the hate could set off something that will be hard to control. It could ruin whatever confidence Americans have left in our system, flawed as it may be. You won’t inspire people, you will inflame them. Your opponent will fight a nasty campaign. Fight hard back. But when it is over, don’t fake losing, own losing. The critical tool for the ending of democracy is people’s conditioned readiness to believe it does not work anymore.

Joe, we’re both old enough to love the movie On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando at his most perfect. You remember the key scene, in the car with his mobster brother. Brando, a prize fighter who could have gone all the way, took a fall to make the mob money betting against him. Brando realizes giving in, doing what the dark forces wanted him to do even when he knew it was so wrong, ruined him. He made some money, sure. But he knew he was a bum, a palooka, when he maybe could’ve had class, could have been somebody.

Leave Hillary and Stacey Abrams in the history books as bitter losers. Fight your fight, Joe, and then do the right thing for yourself, your legacy, for America.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

The post Dear Joe Biden, Please Accept Your Loss When It’s Time appeared first on The American Conservative.

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Politics from Time: ‘Stuck Between Two Arguing Parents.’ Swing District Voters Say They’re Angry at Both Parties’ Failure to Pass A COVID Relief Bill

Even by Washington standards, the past two weeks have been ugly. The country’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 150,000. National data showed a record-breaking economic plunge. And lawmakers allowed two of the central federal programs designed to keep Americans afloat during this unprecedented crisis—$600 supplemental unemployment checks and a federal eviction moratorium—to unceremoniously expire.

After more than a week of partisan bickering on the Hill, leaders in Washington failed to reach even a glimmer of a consensus on a new relief package. While House Democrats passed a bill in May that extended both the supplemental unemployment checks and the eviction moratorium, Congressional Republicans dismissed the $3 trillion proposal out of hand. But in the intervening months, the Republicans’ chief negotiators—Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—have been hamstrung by competing demands from factions within their own party and failed to offer a workable alternative. (Aside from briefings by the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has removed himself from the negotiations entirely, promising to cobble together Republican Senate votes after an agreement is reached.)

Despite very little progress on a bill, leaders in both parties say they hope to pass something next week. “We agree that we want to have an agreement,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday after meeting with Mnuchin and Meadows. “And in that case, we then say that’s our goal, let’s engineer back from there as to what we have to do to get that done.”

Inside Washington, the stalemate has played out predictably, with each party bitterly blaming the other. But outside Washington — and especially in the nation’s most purple regions — Republican, Democratic, and Independent voters described their frustration in notably non-partisan terms. They appear to point the finger at both Democrats and Republicans, and the federal government writ large.

“We’re sort of stuck in between two arguing parents,” said Helena, a voter from Pueblo, Colorado who said she was a registered Independent, at a July 31 virtual event hosted by Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner. “One side doesn’t want to do what the other side wants to do simply because the other side suggests it. At least that’s what it feels like.”

Between July 31 and August 4, TIME dialed into five telephone town halls all hosted by lawmakers facing tough reelection campaigns: Gardner, as well as Reps. Anthony Brindisi of New York, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, Abby Finkenauer of Iowa and Chip Roy of Texas. More than 11,000 voters dialed in collectively, according to statistics compiled from three of the five offices. (Gardner and Finkeanuer’s did not respond to request for comment). Despite spanning five states, each of which is facing different coronavirus infection rates and varying economic stagnation, one theme was abundantly clear: neither party is winning politically from this hold-up.

“Most Americans don’t understand why you can’t have at least enough agreement about the need to move forward on another relief package to get some agreement,” says Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “This is the kind of disagreement where voters basically say ‘a pox on both your houses’ until something happens.”

In an apparent effort to combat this weariness, all of the lawmakers in question stressed to their constituents the need for Republicans and Democrats to quickly reach an agreement, while simultaneously lamenting the gridlock. “I am disgusted by the petty partisan politics going on while our local communities continue to struggle,” said Brindisi, a Democrat whose upstate New York district voted for Trump by 15 points in 2016, at the outset of the call.

In his call, Gardner noted that the non-partisan Lugar Center had ranked him the third most bi-partisan Senator this year, while Roy touted his bipartisan work with Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips on fixes to the Paycheck Protection Program that Trump signed into law in June.

But these actions and sentiments didn’t insulate the lawmakers from their constituents’ frustrations. “What is the major holdup?” a voter asked Brindisi during the question and answer session. “Why are the [leaders in Congress] acting like the money is coming out of their pockets?”

A constituent on Cunningham’s call, who said he was a Democrat, announced that he was “embarrassed” to identify with the party after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly rebuffed Republicans’ offers last week to pass a short-term stop-gap bill that would just extend unemployment benefits. “Why couldn’t they have just passed a week of unemployment the way it was offered [by Republicans] so they can continue negotiations?” he asked. “But no, they want to have people suffer.”

Schumer and Pelosi have said several times that passing any short-term extension would be effectively be meaningless, since the benefits already expired. Cunningham noted that Democrats had been working on the details of a relief package for weeks, but that finger pointing at either party is never helpful. Brindisi, meanwhile, pointed to his support for the Heroes Act, the $3 trillion relief package House Democrats passed in May that McConnell refused to vote on and Democrats are now using as a negotiating tool. But he conceded that there are fundamental “sticking points” that need to be hashed out before an agreement can be reached.

In an interview with TIME on Wednesday, Brindisi said he was frustrated by his inability to give his constituents the answers they wanted. “You have essentially six people talking right now about the COVID relief package,” he says. “We certainly need more input from rank and file members and people in Congress who are interested in getting things done.”

A key sticking point between Congressional Republicans and Democrats is a proposed extension of the $600/week enhanced unemployment insurance. The Democrats’ proposal would extend the benefits, at the current rate, through January. But Republicans want a lower weekly sum, arguing that $600/week creates a disincentive to work.

On that question, voters in the town halls had competing points of view. A massage therapist who dialed into Cunningham’s town hall begged for an immediate reinstatement of these benefits, calling them a “lifeline” that kept her afloat as her business stagnated. When Finkenauer polled voters at her town-hall about the program, 76 percent said an extension was “very important.” But a man in Brindisi’s district said the benefits were unfair to workers who remained employed but whose job puts them in danger. “The essential workers essentially got screwed over,” he said, arguing that they were risking their health while making less than the unemployed workers staying home. ”What is being done for the essential worker to help that disparaging difference between those?”

Brindisi pointed out to constituents that one of reasons he supported the Heroes Act was the $200 billion it allotted in hazard pay to supplement these workers’ incomes, but that Senate Republicans are not receptive to the idea. On unemployment insurance, he said he was hopeful for a compromise. “People aren’t really concerned if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, they just want leaders in Washington working together getting things done,” he said in the Wednesday interview. “There are real needs out there.”

“People want answers,” he added. “And they want their leaders to solve these problems.”

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2PpJqtp via IFTTT

[patriotsnet]

Why Is There Republicans And Democrats

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-is-there-republicans-and-democrats/

Why Is There Republicans And Democrats

How Things Got This Bad

Why Democrats and Republicans have different priorities on COVID relief

6) The Republican turn against democracy begins with race

Support for authoritarian ideas in America is closely tied to the countrys long-running racial conflicts.

This chart, from a September 2020 paper by Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels, shows a statistical analysis of a survey of Republican voters, analyzing the link between respondents score on a measure of ethnic antagonism and their support for four anti-democratic statements .

The graphic shows a clear finding: The higher a voter scores on the ethnic antagonism scale, the more likely they are tosupport anti-democratic ideas. This held true even when Bartels used regression analyses to compare racial attitudes to other predictors, like support for Trump. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism, he writes.

For students of American history, this shouldnt be a surprise.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act cemented Democrats as the party of racial equality, causing racially resentful Democrats in the South and elsewhere to defect to the Republican Party. This sorting process, which took place over the next few decades, is .

7) Partisanship causes Republicans to justify anti-democratic behavior

This chart is a little hard to parse, but it illustrates a crucial finding from one of the best recent papers on anti-democratic sentiment in America: how decades of rising partisanship made an anti-democratic GOP possible.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

Reality Check 3: The Democrats Legislative Fix Will Never Happenand Doesnt Even Touch The Real Threats

Its understandable why Democrats have ascribed a life-or-death quality to S. 1, the For the People bill that would impose a wide range of requirements on state voting procedures. The dozensor hundredsof provisions enacted by Republican state legislatures and governors represent a determination to ensure that the GOP thumb will be on the scale at every step of the voting process. The proposed law would roll that back on a national level by imposing a raft of requirements on statesno excuse absentee voting, more days and hours to votebut would also include public financing of campaigns, independent redistricting commissions and compulsory release of presidential candidates’ tax returns.

There are all sorts of Constitutional questions posed by these ideas. But theres a more fundamental issue here: The Constitutional clause on which the Democrats are relyingArticle I, Section 4, Clause 1gives Congress significant power over Congressional elections, but none over elections for state offices or the choosing of Presidential electors.

Vaccine Advocacy From Hannity And Mcconnell Gets The Media Off Republicans’ Backs But Won’t Shift Public Sentiment

Sean Hannity, Mitch McConnell and Tucker Carlson

Amid a rising media furor over the steady stream of vaccine disparagement from GOP politicians and Fox News talking heads, a number of prominent Republicans spoke up in favor of vaccines early this week.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible” and asked that people “ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.” House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, got the vaccine after months of delay and then publicly said, “there shouldn’t be any hesitancy over whether or not it’s safe and effective.” And Fox News host Sean Hannity, in a widely shared video, declared, it “absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.” This was treated in the press as an unequivocal endorsement, even though the use of the word “many” was clearly meant to let the Fox News viewers feel like he’s talking about other people getting vaccinated. 

Is this an exciting pivot among the GOP elites?  Are they abandoning the sociopathic strategy of sabotaging President Joe Biden’s anti-pandemic plan by encouraging their own followers to get sick? Are the millions of Republicans who keep telling pollsters they will never get that Democrat shot going to change their minds now? 

Ha ha ha, no.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Matthew Gertz July 20, 2021

Jefferson And Jeffersonian Principles

Jeffersonian democracy was not a one-man operation. It was a large political party with many local and state leaders and various factions, and they did not always agree with Jefferson or with each other.

Jefferson was accused of inconsistencies by his opponents. The “Old Republicans” said that he abandoned the Principles of 1798. He believed the national security concerns were so urgent that it was necessary to purchase Louisiana without waiting for a Constitutional amendment. He enlarged federal power through the intrusively-enforced . He idealized the “yeoman farmer” despite being himself a gentleman plantation owner. The disparities between Jefferson’s philosophy and practice have been noted by numerous historians. Staaloff proposed that it was due to his being a proto-; claimed that it was a manifestation of pure hypocrisy, or “pliability of principle”; and Bailyn asserts it simply represented a contradiction with Jefferson, that he was “simultaneously a radical utopian idealist and a hardheaded, adroit, at times cunning politician”. However, Jenkinson argued that Jefferson’s personal failings ought not to influence present day thinkers to disregard Jeffersonian ideals.

, a European nobleman who opposed democracy, argues that “Jeffersonian democracy” is a misnomer because Jefferson was not a democrat, but in fact believed in rule by an elite: “Jefferson actually was an Agrarian Romantic who dreamt of a republic governed by an elite of character and intellect”.

Reality Check #4: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

History Of The Democratic And Republican Parties

The Democratic Party traces its origins to the anti-federalist factions around the time of Americas independence from British rule. These factions were organized into the Democrat Republican party by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792.

The Republican party is the younger of the two parties. Founded in 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers, the Republican Party rose to prominence with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The party presided over the American Civil War and Reconstruction and was harried by internal factions and scandals towards the end of the 19th century.

Since the division of the Republican Party in the election of 1912, the Democratic party has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic as well as social matters. The economically left-leaning activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, has shaped much of the party’s economic agenda since 1932. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition usually controlled the national government until 1964.

The Republican Party today supports a pro-business platform, with foundations in economic libertarianism, and fiscal and social conservatism.

Adams And The Revolution Of 1800

Shortly after Adams took office, he dispatched a group of envoys to seek peaceful relations with France, which had begun attacking American shipping after the ratification of the Jay Treaty. The failure of talks, and the French demand for bribes in what became known as the XYZ Affair, outraged the American public and led to the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war between France and the United States. The Federalist-controlled Congress passed measures to expand the army and navy and also pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien and Sedition Acts restricted speech that was critical of the government, while also implementing stricter naturalization requirements. Numerous journalists and other individuals aligned with the Democratic-Republicans were prosecuted under the Sedition Act, sparking a backlash against the Federalists. Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which held that state legislatures could determine the constitutionality of federal laws.

Sign Up For The Weeds Newsletter

Why Democrats and Republicans Are Claiming A Midterm Win

Voxs German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administrations burst of policymaking. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday.

They go further than merely believing the 2020 election was stolen, a nearly unanimous view among the bunch. Over 90 percent oppose making it easier for people to vote; roughly 70 percent would support a hypothetical third term for Trump .

The MAGA movement, Blum and Parker write, is a clear and present danger to American democracy.

2) Republicans are embracing violence

The ultimate expression of anti-democratic politics is resorting to violence. More than twice as many Republicans as Democrats nearly two in five Republicans said in a January poll that force could be justified against their opponents.

It would be easy to dismiss this kind of finding as meaningless were it not for the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill and the survey was conducted about three weeks after the attack. Republicans recently saw what political violence in the United States looked like, and a large fraction of the party faithful seemed comfortable with more of it.

These attitudes are linked to the party elites rhetoric: The more party leaders like Trump attack the democratic political system as rigged against them, the more Republicans will believe it and conclude that extreme measures are justifiable. A separate study found that Republicans who believe Democrats cheated in the election were far likelier to endorse post-election violence.

Early Life And Career

John Quincy Adams entered the world at the same time that his maternal great-grandfather, John Quincy, for many years a prominent member of the Massachusettslegislature, was leaving ithence his name. He grew up as a child of the American Revolution. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penns Hill and heard the cannons roar across the Back Bay in Boston. His patriot father, John Adams, at that time a delegate to the Continental Congress, and his patriot mother, Abigail Smith Adams, had a strong molding influence on his education after the war had deprived Braintree of its only schoolmaster. In 1778 and again in 1780 the boy accompanied his father to Europe. He studied at a private school in Paris in 177879 and at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, in 1780. Thus, at an early age he acquired an excellent knowledge of the French language and a smattering of Dutch. In 1780, also, he began to keep regularly the diary that forms so conspicuous a record of his doings and those of his contemporaries through the next 60 years of American history. Self-appreciative, like most of the Adams clan, he once declared that, if his diary had been even richer, it might have become “next to the Holy Scriptures, the most precious and valuable book ever written by human hands.”

c.

Democratic View On Healthcare

Democrats have always been in favor of governmental involvement in the wellbeing of Americans, especially the most vulnerable among us. Healthcare reform has been a primary focus for the party since the middle of the Twentieth Century. Medicare, Medicaid, Childrens Health Insurance Program , and the ACA are all major reforms the Democrats fought for and got passed into law. During this election season, healthcare is arguably the hottest topic of debate, and Democrats are pushing for further expansion across the board. The key phrase to remember is quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

Obama And Trump Healthcare Policies Compared

There could not be a more radical divide between administrations than there is between these two. The Obama administration worked against almost insurmountable opposition from the GOP in order to pass the ACA. The Trump Administrations quest is to dismantle everything the Obama Administration has done. They even have court cases pending in order to do so.

When Was The Republican And Democratic Parties Formed

The Democratic Party was founded by Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren on January 8, 1828, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was the United States seventh president but the first democratic President.

The Democratic Partys shocking emergence can be linked to the countrys anti-federalist factions. It was during that time the United States of America gained independence from British colonial masters.

The anti-federalist factions, which democrats originated from, were also grouped into the Democrat-Republican party. This was done in 1792 by James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other federalists influential opponents.

On the other hand, the Republican Party is pretty much younger than the Democratic Party. It was formed in 1854 by anti-slavery modernizers and activists.

The republicans were against the expansion of slavery in Western territories. They fought hard to protect African Americans rights after the civil war.

The Republican Party is often known as GOP. The meaning is Grand Old Party. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. From Lincolns emergence, Republican Party started gaining ground in America.

The Legal Fight Over Voting Rights During The Pandemic Is Getting Hotter

Or as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, told NPR, there are no “fair” maps in the discussion about how to draw voting districts because what Democrats call “fair” maps are those, he believes, that favor them.

No, say voting rights groups and many Democrats the only “fair” way to conduct an election is to admit as many voters as possible. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has charged authorities in her home state with suppressing turnout, named her public interest group Fair Fight Action.

Access vs. security

The pandemic has added another layer of complexity with the new emphasis it has put on voting by mail. President Trump says he opposes expanding voting by mail, and his allies, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, call the process rife with opportunities for fraud.

Even so, Trump and McEnany both voted by mail this year in Florida, and Republican officials across the country have encouraged voting by mail.

Democrats, who have made election security and voting access a big part of their political brand for several years, argue that the pandemic might discourage people from going to old-fashioned polling sites.

Democrats Or Republicans: Who Has The Higher Income

In the end, many people assume Republicans are richer based on these figures. Although, this is only a look at the richest families and politicians in America though. In everyday American households, it seems that Democrats have a higher mean salary. Its true that many of the wealthiest families in the country are contributing to Republican campaigns. On the contrary, families registered as , statistically speaking.

These findings still have some loopholes in them, of course. For instance, the data was collected over the last 40 years or so. Moreover, it is only based on the most recently collected information. As you know, demographics are constantly changing. These figures may have been affected as well. There is also a margin of error with every type of data collection like this. So, what do you think? Who is richer? Democrats or Republicans?

Where Do Trump And Biden Stand On Key Issues

Reuters: Brian Snyder/AP: Julio Cortez

The key issues grappling the country can be broken down into five main categories: coronavirus, health care, foreign policy, immigration and criminal justice.

This year, a big focus of the election has been the coronavirus pandemic, which could be a deciding factor in how people vote, as the country’s contentious healthcare system struggles to cope.

The average healthcare costs for COVID-19 treatment is up to $US30,000 , an Americas Health Insurance Plans 2020 study has found.

Presidential Election Of 1808

This mayor joining the GOP says theres no Democratic Party anymore’

Speculation regarding Madison’s potential succession of Jefferson commenced early in Jefferson’s first term. Madison’s status in the party was damaged by his association with the embargo, which was unpopular throughout the country and especially in the Northeast. With the Federalists collapsing as a national party after 1800, the chief opposition to Madison’s candidacy came from other members of the Democratic-Republican Party. Madison became the target of attacks from Congressman , a leader of a faction of the party known as the . Randolph recruited James Monroe, who had felt betrayed by the administration’s rejection of the proposed with Britain, to challenge Madison for leadership of the party. Many Northerners, meanwhile, hoped that Vice President could unseat Madison as Jefferson’s successor. Despite this opposition, Madison won his party’s presidential nomination at the January 1808 . The Federalist Party mustered little strength outside New England, and Madison easily defeated Federalist candidate . At a height of only five feet, four inches , and never weighing more than 100 pounds , Madison became the most diminutive president.

What Is Thomas Jefferson Remembered For

Thomas Jefferson is remembered for being the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. The fact that he owned over 600 enslaved people during his life while forcefully advocating for human freedom and equality made Jefferson one of Americas most problematic and paradoxical heroes.

Thomas Jefferson, , draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nations first secretary of state and second vice president and, as the third president , the statesman responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. An early advocate of total separation of church and state, he also was the founder and architect of the University of Virginia and the most eloquent American proponent of individual freedom as the core meaning of the American Revolution.

What Republican And Democrats Believe

Lets start with this example. There are one or more reasons why you chose that person to be your friend. It could be because of how he or she talks, sense of humor, intelligence, educational background, ideology, or other factors.

The bottom line is you made the individual your friend because of one or more factors you discovered in that person that pleases you. This explains why most people would prefer joining republicans than Democrats and vice versa.

Republicans and Democrats have diverse ideologies and beliefs. These beliefs or ideology is part of what draws people to join either political party.

Lets start with Republicans. What do Republicans believe in?

Republicans boast libertarian and centrist factions. But they primarily believe in social conservative policies. They abide by laws that help conserve their traditional values. These include opposition to abortion, marijuana use, and same-sex marriage.

So the Republican Partys platform is generally centered on American conservatism. It comprises establishment conservatives, Freedom Caucus, or Tea Party members, described as right-wing, populist, and far-right.

The Republican Partys position has changed over time. They now transcend beyond traditional values, which often includes Christian background. The Republicans evolved position now includes fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.

Heres a quick summary of what the Republican Party believes in:

Heres a quick look at what Democrats believe in:

Was The Donkey Originally A Jackass

Thomas Nast was an American cartoonist who joined the staff of Harpers Weekly in 1862. Nasts cartoons were very popular and his depiction of Santa Claus is still the most widely used version of the holiday icon we see today. During his career, Nast also drew many political cartoons that harshly criticized the policies of both parties.

Nast first used a donkey to represent the Democratic party as a whole in the 1870 cartoon A Live Jack-Ass Kicking a Lion in which Nast criticized the dominantly Democratic Southern newspaper industry as the Copperhead Press. While he did popularize the donkey, Nast wasnt the first person to use it in reference to the Democrats.

Over 40 years earlier during the presidential campaign of 1828, opponents of Democrat Andrew Jackson referred to him as a jackass. Jackson actually embraced the insult and used donkeys on several campaign posters. Nevertheless, cartoonist Anthony Imbert would use a Jackson-headed donkey to mock Jackson an 1833 political cartoon.

However, the donkey never really caught on after the end of Jacksons presidency, and Thomas Nast apparently had no knowledge that it ever was used to represent the Democrats.

Election Of 1796 And Vice Presidency

In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams by 7168 and was thus elected vice president. As presiding officer of the Senate, he assumed a more passive role than his predecessor John Adams. He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues, which he called an “honorable and easy” role. Jefferson had previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him unusually well qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as . Jefferson would cast only three in the Senate.

During the Adams presidency, the Federalists rebuilt the military, levied new taxes, and enacted the . Jefferson believed that these laws were intended to suppress Democratic-Republicans, rather than prosecute enemy aliens, and considered them unconstitutional. To rally opposition, he and James Madison anonymously wrote the , declaring that the federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it by the states. The resolutions followed the “” approach of Madison, in which states may shield their citizens from federal laws that they deem unconstitutional. Jefferson advocated , allowing states to invalidate federal laws altogether. Jefferson warned that, “unless arrested at the threshold”, the Alien and Sedition Acts would “necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood”.

[go-redgirl]

Exclusive — Treasury’s Monica Crowley on the Explosive Trump Economy Success: ‘Boom!’

Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department Monica Crowley told Breitbart News that President Donald Trump’s “economic freedom agenda” has sparked the highly successful economic growth that has now led to the lowest unemployment rate in half a century.

This past week, the administration announced that unemployment has fallen to 3.5 percent—the lowest since 1969—after a November jobs surge of 266,000 jobs created last month, numbers that blew away expectations.

This past week, the administration announced that unemployment has fallen to 3.5 percent—the lowest since 1969—after a November jobs surge of 266,000 jobs created last month, numbers that blew away expectations.

“Boom! These jobs numbers are absolutely incredible and breathtaking in the number of jobs being created and as you point out the historically low unemployment rate across the board,” Crowley said in reaction to these statistics in an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend. 

“What it shows is President Trump’s economic freedom agenda is working, literally working, as a record number of Americans are in the workforce and unemployment is at a 50-year low. Unemployment among key groups—African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and women—are at or near all-time lows. The jobs being created, unlike previous years under previous presidents, many of these jobs are career-track jobs. 

When the opponents of the president claim these aren’t real jobs, or they’re temporary jobs or they’re go-nowhere jobs, that is fundamentally untrue. What we saw in the November jobs report is 266,000 jobs created smashing every expectation that we saw, and the previous two jobs numbers from October and September—those jobs numbers were revised up.”

What’s more, Crowley noted, is that since Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in November 2016, the U.S. economy has created more than 7 million new jobs—greater than last year’s population of the entire state of Massachusetts—and millions more than the experts expected.

“Since the president’s election in November 2016, the economy has added more than 7 million jobs,” Crowley said. “This is more than the entire population of Massachusetts last year. It’s also 5.1 million more jobs than the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, projected in its final forecast before the 2016 election. 

What it shows is common sense economic policies based on freedom work. Tax cuts, deregulation, unleashing the energy sector, and trying to realign international trade—all of which this president promised during the campaign, all of which he has delivered. That, in turn, is delivering us this incredible economy.”

Perhaps more importantly than the job growth and historic lows in unemployment is that in November wages rose by 3.1 percent over the last 12 months as well. 

That means Americans not only have better prospects of finding employment when they want to, but they’re taking home more money when they do find that job. What’s more, among working class and blue collar workers, wages rose at 3.7 percent—higher than the average worker—which means Trump’s economy is helping the very people he set out to help when he launched his 2016 presidential campaign by pledging to stand up for American workers and families left behind by the nation’s elites.

“That’s a critical point and it dovetails with my earlier point about not only can people get jobs, but anybody who wants to work in America can now find a job—and it’s now more likely that you will be on an upward trajectory and will be making more money in that job,” Crowley said.

“Then you are also better positioned to have an even better job with even greater pay—3.1 percent year over year wage growth in the private sector. In October, it marked the 16th consecutive month that wage growth has been at or above 3 percent. 

That’s astonishing. There’s another really important data point, and that is that for essentially blue collar workers—non-supervisory and production workers—their wages grew at a faster clip and a greater pace than the average worker. Theirs grew at 3.7 percent year over year. That’s a post-recession high, and we’re calling it a blue collar boom.”

Crowley laid out during her interview on Breitbart News Saturday how President Trump’s policies are the reason why this economy is booming. She explained there are four “core pillars” to Trump’s economic vision, all of which he is responsible for implementing: tax cuts, deregulation, energy production expansion, and a realignment in international trade.

“When he was running in 2016, it was on an America first platform. When he became president, he made sure his economic agenda just like his foreign policy agenda and everything else is based on putting the United States of America first, putting taxpayers first, and putting the American worker first,” Crowley said. “So, his economic freedom agenda is based on a couple of core pillars. First, it was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act [TCJA] from two years ago now. 

This was December 21, 2017, President Trump signed the tax reform into law. At Treasury, my team and I are leading the charge across the administration to help mark the second year anniversary of this. We have a campaign—if you don’t follow me on Twitter already, my official account is @TreasurySpox and @USTreasury, those two accounts. We have launched an official campaign to remind the American people and the American worker about how TCJA has benefitted every American. Tax reform was the first element of this. 

Deregulation is the second pillar. President Trump has come in and uprooted root and branch these burdensome regulations that have hit small businesses in particular but really all businesses during the previous administration and beyond. President Trump has come in and cleaned up the regulatory process and deregulated so that businesses of all sizes can flourish without the heavy hand of government on them. 

The third pillar is unleashing the energy sector—coal, oil, pipelines, et cetera—that energy boom has made the United States energy independent. And trade reform—he has struck major trade deals with South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Mexico.”

At this time, a major trade deal that would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) is awaiting a vote in the House but Speaker Nancy Pelosi is currently blocking it from coming to a vote. Crowley said that she hopes Pelosi proves she does not hate President Trump—as Pelosi claimed this past week that she does not hate him—by allowing this deal to the floor for a vote.

“I hope that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can see their way past politics and past their hatred of this president in addition to all the impeachment nonsense and bring USMCA to a vote,” Crowley said. “That is an incredible trade deal. You know what people don’t appreciate that this president got two foreign countries—Canada and Mexico—to agree to this. 

You know how hard that is for any president to do? He negotiated a fantastic huge win for the American people and the American worker in USMCA. Mrs. Pelosi, I hope, would bring it to a vote not because it’s going to benefit any political party but because it’s going to benefit the country.”

USMCA would by most estimates create another 175,000 jobs—maybe more—meaning that if and when it is ratified and signed into law it could lead to even greater economic success than the Trump administration has already been able to secure for Americans.

“You know how there’s a lot of attention on the ongoing China trade talks and I understand because trade with China is sexier,” Crowley said. “But frankly USMCA, just in terms of substance and what it would mean in terms for America, is a huge, huge deal. 

The president, when he was running for office, and announced his campaign for president, he promised he would negotiate fairer trade for American workers and stop decades of bad deals that have shipped American jobs and wealth and prosperity overseas. So, President Trump is the first American president in recent memory trying to realign international trade. 

When you take a step back and you think about this, this is a president—this is a man—who has never done any of this before. He never ran for dog catcher before he ran for president and he is delivering a booming economy to some extent because of these trade deals. Specifically on the USMCA, this is about scrapping the outdated NAFTA deal which was a bad deal to begin with and then has been in place for 30 years. 

NAFTA, Canada and Mexico—because we’re in the North American hemisphere, we’re so closely aligned geographically and economically. Our biggest trading partners are those two nations. President Trump came in and said we’re going to rebalance our trading relationship with those nations, who are the closest to us in so many ways. We are going to modernize it and we are going to strengthen and rebalance the rules of trade and investment with our two most important trading partners.”

Crowley said that the votes are there in the House—and it would “pass resoundingly” should Pelosi call it for a vote now.

“This, if it passes, and I agree with you—if the vote were called today, tomorrow, or Monday morning—it would pass resoundingly,” Crowley said. “Mrs. Pelosi is getting an earful from her moderate members especially those 30 to 40 Democrats who were elected in Trump districts as well as those who were elected across the industrial midwest who are telling her: ‘We need this. We need this deal for our districts, for our states, and for the country.

’ And by the way, California, her home state, would benefit hugely from this deal. Mrs. Pelosi, I mean she is a creature of the left anyway but she’s being pulled even further to the left by ‘The Squad’ and the radical revolutionaries in her party. 

Because of the impeachment nonsense, the politics of this are maddening. I think if she could see past the politics and bring this to a vote, it would pass and you would see an immediate boom in the economy, you would see an immediate climb in GDP, you would see an immediate climb in job creation, and so on—and again, this is something where everyone would benefit. 

This is not about the president or the Republican Party. This is for the country. Frankly, it’s political malpractice I think for the congressional leadership not to bring this for a vote when it so clearly would be such a huge victory.”

Crowley wrapped the interview by dismissing claims from Trump critics that there is a looming recession. Those critics have been saying for months that a recession is coming, but their predictions have not come true—and so Crowley said she agreed that the economy appears to be staying strong heading into 2020, a solid sign for President Trump in an election year. If the Congress finally agrees to pass the USMCA, too, it could even better than it is right now.

“People smarter than me on these issues like Larry Kudlow and others say the exact same thing,” Crowley said. “We saw over the summer a lot of the recession mongers on the business networks and so on saying that they saw things that were on the horizon, the inverted yield curve and so on. 

But what we see in the core numbers here, the unemployment, wage growth, job creation, GDP, consumer confidence, what you see across the board is that the American worker, the American taxpayer, the American people are increasingly confident in this economy.

They’re spending, they’re putting money back into the economy, you’re seeing small business growth, you’re seeing a growing economy. And, again, it’s not a coincidence. It’s because of the president’s pro-growth policies, and the economic freedom agenda is literally working. When you hear some folks on the other side talking about the glories of socialism, the opposite of socialism is not capitalism—the opposite of socialism is freedom. 

This president understands that and he’s built his entire economic policy agenda based on freedom and giving the American people more freedom back so they can live their version of the American dream and build whatever they want. This is the land of opportunity and this president understands that and he has delivered—and I think the best is yet to come particularly if they will call a vote and get USMCA passed.”

[thisdaynews]

Trump’s plan to stem border crossings gets results

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-plan-to-stem-border-crossings-gets-results/

Trump’s plan to stem border crossings gets results

President Donald Trump. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

President Donald Trump’s plan to force Mexico to stem the flow of migrants across the southwest border of the U.S. appears to be working.

Border arrests, a metric for illegal crossings, plummeted to 51,000 in August, according to preliminary government figures obtained by POLITICO Wednesday, down more than 60 percent since a peak in May. And border watchers say it’s largely because of an agreement Trump struck with Mexico in June. Mexican authorities, backed by the newly formed National Guard, are now cracking down on migrants traversing Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, monitoring river crossings and stopping buses carrying migrants from Central America through Mexico. At the same time, the U.S. is making tens of thousands of asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their applications are considered.

Story Continued Below

The decline in border traffic — if sustained — could amount to a major victory for Trump as he heads into the 2020 election. Perhaps more important, the experimental measures taken by his administration could reshape immigration enforcement for years to come.

“I think that they are getting exactly what they said they would get, by forcing the hand of Mexico,” said Oscar Chacón, executive director of Chicago-based pro-migrant group Alianza Americas. “But the question is, ‘Is it sustainable?’”

The White House and the Homeland Security Department did not respond to requests for comment. But Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Bárcena told POLITICO that steps taken since June have produced meaningful results.

“People know that if they come into Mexico, they have to respect the Mexican law,” Bárcena said. She added that migrants planning to seek asylum in the U.S. now understand that it’s “not as easy as they were told it was going to be.”

Trump praised Mexico’s actions to reduce the migrant flow in a tweet Saturday that quoted Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, saying Mexico was “stepping up to the plate and doing what they need to do.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence will meet in Washington Tuesday with Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and other officials to discuss the counter-migration measures, according to Mexican officials.

Mexico’s delegation will press the U.S. to process asylum cases faster, as migrants from Central America and elsewhere pile up in Mexican border towns. It will also push for increased aid to Central America and efforts to stop the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico.

The Mexico agreement followed threats from Trump to impose across-the-board escalating tariffs on Mexican goods that would likely have resulted in severe economic costs on both sides of the border. When the agreement was announced, it was widely interpreted as a fig leaf that would allow Trump to back down but wouldn’t likely have much impact on migration.

But the deal’s components appear to have contributed to the steep drop in border arrests, according to interviews with six former officials and advocates both for and against greater levels of immigration, as well asa POLITICO analysis of enforcement data.

Border arrests soared through the spring as Central American families trekked north in record numbers. The surge in arrivals overwhelmed U.S. border facilities and ignited a political battle over whether Democrats or Republicans shouldered the blame for the sudden influx, which peaked with 133,000 border arrests in May.

Then arrests fell to 95,000 in June and 72,000 in July. The June and July drops fit a seasonal pattern in earlier years, but the August decline did not. Border arrests have typically increased in August during the past decade.

While Trump’s base is likely to be pleased, advocates for immigrants say the drop in arrests could be bad for asylum seekers.

“What the numbers show is that the United States’ threats and bullying of other countries have been effective in getting other countries to increase their enforcement efforts, but that the numbers don’t reflect any real change in the situation of the Northern Triangle countries of Central America,” said Maureen Meyer, a director for Mexico and migrant rights with the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization.

The deal with Mexico focuses on two main areas: heightened enforcement by Mexican authorities and the expansion of “remain in Mexico,” which is formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols.

Mexico’s enforcement appears to have yielded quick results. Mexican immigration authorities arrested nearly 32,000 migrants in June, a three-fold increase over the same month a year earlier.

After the deal, Mexico’s National Guard established a visible presence along the southern border with Guatemala, including in Ciudad Hidalgo, a small city in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The city is bounded to the east by the Suchiate River, a popular transit point for migrants arriving from Guatemala.

“They really have made it harder to cross where people were crossing before,” said Andrew Selee, president of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. He called Mexico’s actions an “all-out enforcement effort like we’ve never seen before.”

Mexico pledged in June to devote 6,000 National Guard troops to counter-migration efforts. The country’s government now says it has 15,000 troops at its northern border and 10,000 at its southern border, although those forces deal with a wider range of issues than immigration-related crimes.

Selee, who visited the Mexico-Guatemala border in July, said the Mexican government has made it more difficult for migrants to travel in large groups.

As part of that effort, Mexican officials intensified enforcement in Tapachula, a city roughly 45 minutes north of Ciudad Hidalgo, according to Meyer.

“Particularly in the area around the Suchiate River at the Ciudad Hidalgo crossing, it seems like it is almost impossible to cross in a balsa boat as an undocumented migrant and not get detained by a National Guard agent,” she said. “Leaving the Tapachula area has also become more complicated given enforcement at different checkpoints in the highways around the city.”

Mexican authorities have increased enforcement at highway checkpoints, according to experts tracking the issue. Specifically, they appear to have intercepted more migrants traveling in buses from Guatemala to the U.S.-Mexico border, a method of transport that increased migrant arrivals through the spring.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, which pushes for lower levels of immigration, argues the crackdown on bus transit played a major role in cutting migrant traffic to the U.S. Bensman is based in Austin, Texas, and traveled to Mexico in August to interview migrants traveling northward.

“Before, you had assembly lines of buses that would fill up down at the Guatemala-Mexico border at different places and drive them in caravans,” Bensman said of the migrant transit route. “Those big buses are now being interdicted at roadblocks and emptied out and turned around.”

In addition, Mexico has restricted access to entry permits that allowed large numbers of Central Americans to enter the country and potentially travel north.

The second main component to the June deal with Mexico was U.S. expansion of its “remain in Mexico” policy. At the time of the agreement, the program was operating in a pilot status and was limited to certain ports of entry and Border Patrol sectors. Since the expansion, the U.S.has sent approximately 42,000 non-Mexican migrants to Mexico to await their hearings,according to an official briefed on recent statistics.

“Now if they win or lose, they’re in Mexico, where nobody really wants to be,” said Bensam. “That’s been a really psychologically effective policy, if the objective of the policy is to reduce the number of Central Americans coming in.”

Pro-migrant advocates contend the “remain in Mexico” program puts asylum seekers in danger and violates international treaties that protect certain people fleeing their home countries. A report released in July by the New York City-based Human Rights First found more than 110 “publicly reported cases of rape, kidnapping, sexual exploitation, assault, and other violent crimes” against asylum seekers sent to Mexico through the program.

“Mexico doesn’t have infrastructure to receive these people,” said Astrid Dominguez, the director of the Border Rights Center at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Mexico regards “remain in Mexico” as a unilateral move by the U.S. government, as opposed to something it agreed to. Still, the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has cooperated, and accepted the return of non-Mexican migrants, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons.

“Mexico says MPP was a unilateral decision. They can claim that, but they’re facilitating it,” Dominguez said. “They’re not opposing it.”

A San Francisco-based federal judge initially blocked “remain in Mexico” nationwide in an April order, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in May. The appeals court allowed the program to proceed on a temporary basis, which paved the way for the border-wide expansion under the agreement with Mexico.

At the same time, the Trump administration has powered ahead with other moves to restrict access to asylum.

The Homeland Security Department in July issued a ban on asylum seekers who pass through another country en route to the U.S. The sweeping measure effectively closed off asylum to Central Americans and other migrants traveling through Mexico.

A separate San Francisco-based judge halted the ban nationwide in July. However, the 9th Circuit later limited the scope of the injunction to its jurisdiction in California and Arizona, which allowed the ban to be implemented in Texas and New Mexico.

The “remain in Mexico” policy and third-country asylum ban are just two of many moves the Trump administration has made to restrict asylum and discourage illegal immigration.

A regulation issued in August seeks to allow immigration authorities to detain migrant families together for indefinite periods of time. A federal judge’s order related to the 1997Floressettlement agreement currently limits the detention of children with their parents to a maximum of 20 days.

The regulation will require court approval before it becomes effective, but could provide the Trump administration a powerful tool to discourage migration by Central American families.

“If that survives legal challenge, then the family unit crisis will end permanently,” said Bensman, the senior fellow with the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies.

The Trump administration’s deal with Mexico and other immigration moves may have reduced crossings in the near-term, but it’s unclear whether it will be a lasting trend.

Alan Bersin, a former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection during the Obama administration, concedes that the Trump administration’s recent moves have driven down illegal crossings.

Still, Bersin blames Trump’s earlier misfires — such as separating thousands of migrant families last year under the “zero tolerance” policy — for squandering resources and exacerbating the migrant crisis in the first place.

“They’re finally getting it right,” he said, “but they’re doing it in an unnecessarily cruel way and they should be held to account for having created the problem in the first place.”

Read More

[bountyofbeads]

Attacks Spur Debate on Extremism and Guns, With Trump on Defense https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/trump-guns-white-supremacy.html

Mass shootings have nothing to do with video games or mental health. When countries are compared statistics show clearly a relation between the number of guns and mass shootings. US makes up less than 5 % of the world's population but holds 31 % of global mass shooters. It is guns and Trump’s toxic racism.

Below are some comments from Americans around the country.

"If our president won’t call for new gun laws to protect everyone in this country, we need to call for a new president. Loudly, united in voice and resolute that mass shootings and domestic terrorism will not become our new normal."

"Usual GOP responses are worthless. Research on video games has shown no difference in violent tendencies for those playing violent video games and those that do not. Mental illness remedies would be included in health insurance, but wait...there's more...the GOP wants to kill Obamacare, which has mandatory mental health coverage. The only remedy is for Mr Trump to leave office and stop his spewing divisive words. Then we can start working on solutions. Unfortunately real solutions may not come anytime before all 3 branches of government are controlled by the Dems."

"Trump 2006: "I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters." The man is a walking, talking violence-monger yet he faults video games."

"The mass shooting in El Paso was based on anti-immigrant hatred. Trump wants to "solve" the problem by tying any gun legislation to his hateful anti-immigrant agenda. Now, is there any further need to ask whether Trump's rhetoric of hate is contributing to a climate of violence? He cannot even conceive of an answer to the problem which does not, by definition, make the problem worse. Trumpism is the problem."

"This morning's speech was not Trump, but his writers stringing together statements they think will play well at this moment. Trump is no more than a marketer, which is why he can race-bait one day and call for condemnation of racism and bigotry the next -- focus-group testing whatever might play best. He voluntarily given up any agency in these matters, as has the party he has bought and co-opted. The same group that automatically points to "mental illness" as the problem wants to reduce health care benefits -- which have never been sufficient for mental health anyway -- for millions. The hypocrisy is breathtaking, but may well be tolerated if fear and hatred are the primary motivators for political decision-making. That will be the only way they can win."

"Trump is a hypocrite! He shores up racism on the one hand and condemns racist acts on the other. Does he think people are stupid, or what? The world is watching. Trump's words are empty and meaningless; his modus operandi is plain to see. People don't need his thoughts and prayers; rather, they need to be kept safe. Americans' lives are precious. As a Brit looking in, nothing could be clearer to me: it's the guns, stupid! What is also clear to me is this: for many Americans, the right to bear arms is more important than people's lives. Until this changes, the killing sprees will go on. All decent Americans should stand up and be counted; they should demand that there be meaningful gun control. Without meaningful gun control, America will continue to be a killing field."

“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Mr. Trump said. That comes from the man who tells elected representatives of color to "go back where they came from." That from the man who started his campaign by calling immigrants from Mexico drug dealers, rapists and criminals. That from the man who bans Muslims from coming to the US. That from the man who talks about "invasions" at his political rallies. Today's comments are pablum, read from a TelePrompter, written by one of his flunkies. Somehow, I have a really hard time ascribing any sincerity to his remarks today."

Shootings Spur Debate on Extremism and Guns, With Trump on Defense

By Alexander Burns | Published August 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted Aug. 5, 2019 |

The politics of American gun violence follow a predictable pattern in most cases: outraged calls for action from the left, somber gestures of sympathy from the right, a subdued presidential statement delivered from a prepared text — and then, in a matter of days or even hours, a national turning of the page to other matters.

But after a white supremacist gunman massacred 22 people in El Paso, the political world hurtled on Monday toward a more expansive, and potentially more turbulent, confrontation over racist extremism. Though the gun lobby was again on the defensive, it was not alone; so were social media companies and websites like 8chan that have become hives for toxic fantasies and violent ideas that have increasingly leaked into real life, with fatal consequences.

Perhaps most of all, President Trump faced intense new criticism and scrutiny for the plain echoes of his own rhetoric in the El Paso shooter’s anti-immigrant manifesto.

Mr. Trump’s usual methods of deflection sputtered on Monday: His early-morning tweets attacking the news media and calling vaguely for new background checks on gun purchasers did little to ease the political pressure. A midmorning statement he recited from the White House — condemning “white supremacy” and warning of internet-fueled extremism, but declining to address his own past language or call for stern new gun regulations — did nothing to quiet the chorus of censure from Mr. Trump’s political opponents and critics, who are demanding presidential accountability.

No statement better captured how the gun violence debate was giving way to a reckoning on extremism than a statement on Monday afternoon from former President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama, who has weighed in sparingly on public events since leaving office, called both for gun control and for an emphatic national rejection of racism and the people who stoke it.

“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments,” Mr. Obama wrote, “leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as subhuman, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Mr. Trump or any other leaders by name.

The Democrats seeking the presidency in 2020 did not hesitate to do so: Mr. Trump had scarcely finished speaking from the White House on Monday when his Democratic challengers blamed him explicitly for giving succor to extremists. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president and current Democratic front-runner, accused Mr. Trump on Twitter of having used the presidency “to encourage and embolden white supremacy.” And in an interview with CNN, Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump had “just flat abandoned the theory that we are one people.”

Other political leaders reacted with their own raw distress and alarm. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who has bankrolled a yearslong crusade for gun control,  wrote in a column that the “new atrocities need to change the political dynamic” around guns, and said Mr. Trump’s remarks were little more than “the usual dodge.”

And Democratic presidential candidates rounded on Mr. Trump in a front that transcended ideological and tonal divisions in the party. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a populist liberal, said Mr. Trump must be held responsible for “amplifying these deadly ideologies,” while Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who has campaigned as an advocate for racial justice and national healing, derided Mr. Trump’s speech as a “bullshit soup of ineffective words” in a text message that his campaign manager posted on Twitter.

An aide to Mr. Booker said he would deliver a major speech on gun violence on Wednesday morning in South Carolina, at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston where a white supremacist gunman killed nine people in 2015.

And the entwined issues of gun violence and racist extremism began to tumble into elections for offices well beyond the presidency. In Colorado, Mike Johnston, a former state lawmaker and gun-control advocate who is challenging Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican, blamed Mr. Trump for having “created this toxic culture that incites white nationalists.” In 2020, he said, candidates would have to make a stark binary choice.

“Either you’re on the side of the white nationalist holding the AR-15, or you’re on the side of the millions of Americans living in fear of them,” Mr. Johnston said in an interview.

Mr. Trump, for his part, said he was open to “bipartisan solutions” that would address gun violence, and blamed “the internet and social media” for spreading what he termed “sinister ideologies.” He was not specific about any next steps his administration would take, though he stressed his strong support for the death penalty and seemed to express skepticism that gun restrictions would be an appropriate remedy.

“Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump’s campaign responded to criticism of the president with a statement deploring Democrats for “politicizing a moment of national grief.”

“The president clearly condemned racism, bigotry and white supremacy as he has repeatedly,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign. “He also called for concrete steps to prevent such violent attacks in the future.”

Mr. Murtaugh added that “no one blamed Bernie Sanders” when one of his supporters attempted to kill a group of Republican lawmakers at a Virginia baseball diamond in 2017. “The responsibility for such horrific attacks,” he said, “lies ultimately with the people who carry them out.”

If Mr. Trump and his allies are adamant that he is blameless in the rise of extremist violence, much of the public believes he has not adequately separated himself from white supremacists. A survey published in March by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans — 56 percent — said Mr. Trump had done “too little to distance himself from white nationalist groups.” That group included about a quarter of people who identified themselves as Republicans or as leaning toward Mr. Trump’s party.

It has not only been liberals who have argued that the mass shooting in El Paso, and another one hours later in Dayton, Ohio, represented a crisis for the country, and a major test for Mr. Trump. The conservative magazine National Review published an editorial on Sunday evening calling on Americans and their government to take on “a murderous and resurgent ideology — white supremacy” in much the same way the government has confronted Islamic terrorism.

Mr. Trump, the magazine said, “should take the time to condemn these actions repeatedly and unambiguously, in both general and specific terms.”

Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma, who led his state through the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorists, said in an interview that the moment called for both new restrictions on firearms and a new tone from the White House. He urged Mr. Trump to “carefully choose your words” to avoid instilling fear or inciting anger.

“He needs to realize the lethality of his rhetoric,” Mr. Keating said.

“The truth is, the president is the secular pope,” he added, “and he needs to be a moral leader as well as a government leader, and to say that this must not occur again — exclamation mark.”

It was not clear whether the El Paso shooting had the potential to become a pivot point in national politics, much as the Oklahoma City bombing had in the 1990s. After that attack, which killed 168 people, President Bill Clinton  delivered a searing speech against the “loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible” — a denunciation widely understood as being aimed at the extreme right. Mr. Clinton’s handling of the attack helped restore voters’ confidence in him as a strong leader after a shaky start to his presidency.

Mr. Trump has shown no inclination in the past to play a role of such clarifying moral leadership, or to engage in any kind of searching introspection about his own embrace of the politics of anger and racial division. In the aftermath of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 that resulted in the murder of a young woman, Mr. Trump said there had been  “very fine people on both sides” of the unrest there. In recent weeks, he has engaged without apology in a sequence of attacks on prominent members of racial minority groups, including five different Democratic members of Congress.

While few Republican lawmakers had anything critical to say about Mr. Trump in public after the El Paso and Dayton shootings, the party harbors profound private anxieties about the impact of his conduct on the 2020 elections. During last year’s midterm elections, Mr. Trump campaigned insistently on a slashing message about illegal immigration, and was rewarded with a sweeping rejection of his party across the country’s diverse cities and prosperous suburbs.

Punctuating the final weeks of the 2018 elections were a pair of traumatic events that may have deepened voters’ feelings of dismay about the president’s violent language and appeals to racism: a failed wave of attempted bombings  by a Trump supporter aimed at the president’s critics, and a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, carried out by a gunman who had railed about immigrant “invaders.”

Mr. Trump responded to the Pittsburgh massacre in a tone similar to the one he used on Monday, lamenting the “terrible, terrible thing, what’s going on with hate in our country,” before taking up his caustic message again on the campaign trail. He paid no price for that approach with his largely rural and white political base, which has remained fiercely supportive of his administration through all manner of adversity, error and scandal.

In the Democratic presidential race, the weekend of bloodshed had the effect of muting, at least temporarily, the divisions in the party that were showcased in last week’s debates. The outbreak of solidarity may not last, but it underscored how much the 2020 campaign is likely to take shape in reaction to Mr. Trump’s worldview and behavior.

Even as they aired their disagreements last week, some Democrats appeared to recognize that political reality. In fact, on the morning after his party’s back-to-back debates concluded, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State predicted to a reporter in Detroit that his party would have little difficulty rallying together in the 2020 election.

“We’ve got the most unifying gravitational force, outside of a black hole,” Mr. Inslee remarked, “and that’s a white nationalist in the White House.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF WAY

Raising money is a way to get it from someone else. This is in contrast to Fortran and most succeeding languages, which make a beeline toward a rousing and foreordained conclusion. This limitation went away with the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story.1 We take it for granted that we had to borrow a conference room to reassure an investor who was about to back out of a new round of funding that we needed to stay alive.2 The problem with working slowly is not just a good way to run a startup. Improving constantly is an instance of a more general rule: make users happy. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns.

But it's still hair-raising for the founders, living dead sounds harsh. Imagine having to ask permission to release software to users.3 And not just to users. In this essay I'm going to list some of the money would go to the founders of the companies in it were hacker-centric cultures.4 Suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. The real thing is not something they assemble painstakingly after careful planning, like the Soviet Union didn't have a professor of English literature until 1876, and Oxford not till 1885. Get Your Hopes Up. In theory these details are minor ones; by definition all the important points are supposed to be learning.5 In our world some of the technical feats he'd pulled off in the design.

Out in the real world, instead of that the Democrats are out of touch with evangelical Christians in middle America. They dress to look good.6 Many of the employees e. Venture capitalists know about this strange world.7 If circumstances had been different, the people running Yahoo might have realized sooner how important search was.8 There is nothing grand or heroic, but just to make money from that somehow, and if you want to find surprises you should do is start one. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas win. In the worst case, it will at least be interesting. No one who voted for Kerry did it as an act of quiet defiance.

If you succeed, you'll have to earn your keep. Now I have enough experience with startups to be able to pull off a form of Huffman coding. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection indeed, there is no recovery.9 This is not just that technical innovation happens slowly. What about in the general case? Both the Internet startups and the Procter & Gambles were doing brand advertising. But I think the important thing, why does everyone have to stay in his position?10 Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense. That's barely enough time to get started. So if it seems like all the good ideas came from within. When I was in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say what separates the great investors from the mediocre ones is the quality of their product, not the confident media stars they are today.

I've seen so far, Sam Altman, was 19 at the time from having it all happening live, right in front of a computer and create wealth. So why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as a few decades before. In general, people outside some very demanding field don't realize the extent to which success depends on constant though often unconscious effort. But I wouldn't be surprised if there start to be possible to invest it all. You should try to stay as close friends as you can. In a startup you compress all this stress into three or four thousand complete strangers? Professional investors hear a lot of people that age, I valued freedom most of all.11 If you look at the same time, the powers that be were cooperating to develop the official next generation operating system, Multics. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called essais. How was the place different from what was originally envisioned. At most startups ten years ago, software development meant ten programmers writing code in C.

But beyond that they didn't take programming seriously enough. Plus people in an audience are disproportionately the more brutish sort, just as a few decades before.12 It didn't matter what type. The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Now we'll show it to you and explain why people need this. The trick is to use yourself as a proxy for the reader.13 How do you find the fruitful ones?14 But, in my school at least, how I write one.15

I usually do.16 Really?17 And yet most VCs are a different type of schedule from other people. When I was in high school is: mental queasiness. Ditto for investors. Which is not to search for them—not even the smart kids. If you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. If it fails, you'll be less likely to depend on it. They know the odds of any individual startup going public are small, but they wouldn't now. You can tell they won't make investments for their fund that they might be willing to make themselves feel better. A song on an LP is physically stamped into the plastic.18

Notes

When one reads about the Airbnbs during YC is involved to ensure there are lots of search engines and there didn't seem to lose less on investments that generate the highest price paid for a group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I say in principle get us up to them.

I should add that none of them.

Then Josh Wilson came in to pick a date, because a there was near zero crossover. The study of the magazine they'd accepted it for the average employee.

Doing Business in 2006, http://paulgraham. The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is because their company for more of the lawyers they need.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but viewed from the creation of wealth—university students, heirs, rather than admitting he preferred to work in research too. Keep heat low. 56 million.

Or you make it a function of two things: the quality of the grad students they admit each year are long shots. It seems as dumb to discourage risk-taking. But it is generally the common stock holders who take the hit.

That would be a sufficient condition.

This prospect will make grad students' mouths water, but the number of spams that have bad ideas is to the rich have better opportunities for education. Though you never know with bottlenecks, I'm guessing the next round, you need to. Apparently someone believed you have a moral obligation to respond promptly. I just wasn't willing to be a strong craving for distraction.

Then when we started Viaweb, and yet it is. Investors are one step upstream from economic power, in the top VCs and Micro-VCs. If you're a big brand advantage over the details. While the audience gets too big for the sledgehammer; if they did not become romantically involved till afterward.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this. Spices are also the main causes of the clumps of smart people are immune to the truth about the other sheep head for a really long time I had no choice but to do more with less? Don't believe a domain is for sale unless the owner has already happened once in China, during the war on. But core of the medium of exchange would not be true that being so, you need.

Options have largely been replaced with restricted stock, the term whitelist instead of Windows NT?

32. 25 people have to decide whether to go to die. Though you should probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the next Facebook, if you are unimportant. This includes mere conventions, like most of the next Apple, maybe they'll listen to God.

It's a strange feeling of being harsh to founders with established reputations. Once again, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

The French Laundry in Napa Valley. And I've never heard of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we had, we'd ask, if you're attacked in this article used the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson. Then Josh Wilson came in to pick the former depends a lot about how closely the remarks attributed to them to get to be able to raise money? Your user model almost couldn't be perfectly accurate, and we don't have the concept of the causes of poverty.

If a conversation—maybe around 10 people. You have to make it self-interest explains much of the leading advisor to King James Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and partly simple ignorance. Programming languages should be specialists in startups tend to be a niche.

In principle companies aren't limited by the high score thrown out seemed the more effort you expend on you after the first million is worth studying as a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds. Imagine the reaction was so violent that she decided never again. Which is why search engines. 5 year olds the truth.

Though they are now the founder of the things you're taught.

If I paint someone's house, though more polite, was no more than just salary. It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid that.

[democratsunited-blog]

Exclusive -- America First Ohio Poll: Nancy Pelosi Drags Down Democratic Party, Donald Trump Boosts GOP

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=3332

Exclusive -- America First Ohio Poll: Nancy Pelosi Drags Down Democratic Party, Donald Trump Boosts GOP

A new poll conducted by America First Action Super PAC, President Donald Trump’s official Super PAC, shows that Democrats in Ohio are in serious trouble of losing their re-election bids while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi proves to be an anchor on her party’s November chances.

The poll, provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release, perhaps most surprisingly shows incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in danger of potentially losing to GOP Senate nominee Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH). The survey shows Brown, who was thought to be safe without a serious chance of losing in November, only leading Renacci by 4 points–inside the poll’s margin of error. The statistical tie between Renacci and Brown in this key rust belt state means the populist Brown is going to have a fight on his hands from Renacci and the GOP, as this key rust belt state that voted overwhelmingly–more than 8 percent–for Trump over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential election is heating up.

In the survey, Brown is at 45 percent while Renacci is at 41 percent with 10 percent “firmly undecided.” The survey of 400 respondents conducted from May 29 to May 31 using a combination of landlines, cell phones, and internet responses has a margin of error of 4.9 percent. The survey includes 41 percent Republicans including leaners, 40 percent Democrats including leaners, and 19 percent independents.

The fact that this race is close certainly troubles Democrats. Republicans already have solid shots at Senate pickups in a bunch of other states like West Virginia where pro-Trump conservative Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey faces Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, Montana where pro-Trump conservative Republican Matt Rosendale faces Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, and other states like Missouri, North Dakota, Florida, and many more. Ohio was previously thought to be a lock for Brown, but this new data opens up the map for the GOP meaning national Democrats will probably have to flood the Buckeye State to protect one of their most important incumbents in Brown.

It’s also interesting that all of this happens as Trump negotiates new trade deals with world leaders, aims for a deal on denuclearization on North Korea, and is seeing the economy under his administration booming with record low unemployment statistics and rising wages. Brown is known as a populist, and even praised Trump on some elements of trade renegotiation, so this Senate race between Brown and Renacci could very well become a clear referendum on the popularity of President Trump’s successes with the economy and on the world stage with tariffs.

Democrats fare even worse in the governor’s race, as GOP nominee and former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine–the GOP nominee for governor–leads Democrat nominee former director of the since-renamed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Richard Cordray by seven points. That lead is well outside the margin of error. DeWine, at 45 percent, leads Cordray, who is down at 38 percent. There are 10 percent undecided.

That Cordray is doing so horribly seems to be a rebuke by the Ohio voters of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party. Cordray comes from the same school of thought as potential 2020 presidential candidates Sens. Liz Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). If Cordray does this badly on election day, it could spell serious problems for Warren, Sanders, and other hardcore leftists in their party for presidential chances–and all of this is evidenced by the Democratic donor class actively looking for an alternative to them who is not as leftist as they are. CNBC, for instance, reported on Friday that top Democratic Party donors are secretly pushing Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) to launch a 2020 presidential campaign to box out the far leftists who are sure to lose to Trump in November 2020.

“These private conversations have been on since the start of 2018 but the Virginia lawmaker has declined to commit to making a run for the White House, those sources say,” the CNBC report says of Democrat donors pushing Warner to run.

The reason why Democrats seem to be struggling in Ohio–and around the country–is contained in the next explosive newsworthy fact from this poll: President Trump is far more trusted and popular than Pelosi. When asked who they trust more to lead the nation, respondents overwhelmingly said President Trump and the GOP in Congress over Pelosi and Democrats in Congress. Trump leads Pelosi by double digits in this regard in Ohio, as 45 percent sided with him and Republicans whereas just 35 percent sided with Pelosi and Democrats.

America First Action Super PAC is President Trump’s official super PAC, so of course these results should be viewed through that lens. But the fact that the Senate race, governor’s race, and the generic fight between Trump and Pelosi are each in the respective places they are right now–much better for the GOP than most prognosticators and pundits who preach conventional political wisdom would have you believe–is a boon for the GOP and offers a huge opportunity for the party to put the squeeze on the Democrats.

Technically speaking, too, the names Pelosi and Trump are not on the ballot this year–with the exception of in Pelosi’s congressional district in California, which she will win handily, where she faces voters again–but in many ways this midterm election is a referendum on both of them.

“Just because DJT [Donald J. Trump] isn’t on the ticket himself doesn’t mean that his wins, doesn’t mean that his policies, doesn’t mean that his presidency isn’t in many respects on the ticket,” Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s eldest son, said in a recent exclusive interview with Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125. “We have to get out there. We have to mobilize. We have to be aware of that. Because if Nancy Pelosi is in charge, taxes go up, the economy is going to go down, jobs numbers are going to go down. It’s a really scary prospect. They’re saying as much. They’re literally saying they’re going to reverse all of these things. And when I look at what are they trying to reverse, it’s almost mind-boggling—it would be much more mind-boggling if I didn’t realize these are people who have never done any of these things in the real world so how could they possibly know. But when they’re putting Democratic policies ahead of the good things that could happen for our country it’s really scary—but that’s exactly what’s going on.”

That means these data points go far deeper than just the top-of-the-ticket races in Ohio. House races, which will determine the future control of the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, are also affected by these sentiments–and as Breitbart News’ Michael Patrick Leahy noted in the first of a coming series of pieces this weekend on control of the majority this election year, Ohio may be one of the critical to that battle.

/* loadCSS. [c]2017 Filament Group, Inc. MIT License */ (function(c)function g(a)if(a in h)return h[a];var b="relList"in e&&"supports"in e.relList?e.relList:!1;h[a]=b?b.supports(a):!1;return h[a]function n(a)if(!g("preconnect"))var b=e.cloneNode();b.setAttribute("rel","dns-prefetch");b.setAttribute("href",a);b.onload=function()b&&b.parentNode&&b.parentNode.removeChild(b);b.onload=null;f.head.appendChild(b)var d=e.cloneNode();d.setAttribute("rel","preconnect");d.setAttribute("referrerpolicy","origin");d.setAttribute("href",a);d.onload=function()d.onload= null;d&&d.parentNode&&d.parentNode.removeChild(d);f.head.appendChild(d);if(!g("preconnect")&&k)var c=new XMLHttpRequest;c.open("HEAD",a+"?cachebust="+Date.now(),!0);c.send()function p(a)var b=e.cloneNode();if(!kvar f=c.document,h=,e=f.createElement("link");c=c.navigator.userAgent;var l=/Edge/i.test(c),q=/Chrome)(window); Read full story here

[zenruption]

Dissecting Conspiracy Theories – The Need to be Special Fosters Bad Logic

By Brian McKay

It didn’t take more than a few hours for the conspiracies to start. Immediately after the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history, people started disrespecting those that had perished with utter bullshit. A fourth-floor shooter, shooters from other hotels, the government trying to take away our guns. Never mind that the majority of our current government receives NRA donations. It must be the globalists and a shadow government, right?

Gun stocks jumped the next day as the expectation was that Americans would flock to the local gun dealer before the 2nd Amendment disappeared. They would be ready to fight for their rights, even though repealing or modifying a Constitutional Amendment requires a Constitutional convention and the vote of 2/3s of the states. Maybe they are gathering at the local Applebee's to gather the militia as we speak.

A supposed image of Antifa training with ISIS posted on Infowars. Never mind that any fool can see the photoshopping of the symbols on the flags.

9-11, false flags, Sandy Hook faked, globalists lead by George Soros, thousands of climate scientists faking the data, Monsanto trying to ruin small farms and poison us, the CDC being paid off by big pharma to push dangerous vaccines, a shadow government, Antifa being trained by ISIS… This list could get really long. Really, really long and even more dumb. The grand conspirator, Alex Jones, has even stated that the government puts chemicals in juice boxes to turn children gay and that aliens work with the government in a network of underground tunnels. He has over 4 million regular followers and the endorsement of the President.

The amount of people that believe in such conspiracies has grown in massive leaps. It might be that the Internet is much to blame as anyone can publish anything now. What was widely ridiculed and the domain of the crazy in the 90’s, has become mainstream. Why?

Let’s explore why adherents to such theories are rising in numbers and why conspiracies typically can’t happen.

In the past, I typically ascribed conspiracy theory growth to people not being able to understand and incorporate complexity in an ever-complex world. This might be part of the reason for the growth in believers as people become more confused while the rate of data generation is rising in an exponential manner. Our minds simply haven’t involved as much as our collective ability to collect knowledge. Science is outpacing us, mostly due to Moore’s law and the corresponding increases in processing power. The Internet now generates as much data in less than two hours as all of human history up to 2001. The Internet also makes it easier to share the junk information that claims to assuage the inability to understand.

Recent studies are showing a more robust reason for the growth of conspiracy theories though. It seems that much of the reason is in the need to feel special. Believers exhibit more insecurity and feel less control over their lives. Fear is big factor and fear rears its ugly head in both conservatives and liberals, but a greater number of conservatives are embracing conspiracy theories. Other studies involving MRIs show that the amygdala (fear center of the brain) is more involved in the thought process of conservatives as it is typically larger. This is clearly evidenced in the rise of websites such as Infowars and Yournewswire (they are so bad they don’t even deserve links in this article). Also, the dramatic distrust of the mainstream media and statistical evidence are very apparent with this group.

The elimination the Fairness Doctrine, which required media to show both side of an argument, might also be to blame in the rise of salacious conservative news sources. After its elimination by Ronald Reagan in 1987, salacious “news”  sources have risen dramatically.

The biggest problem with conspiracies is that they undermine the workings of democratic government and negatively impact the lives of others. That the United States is the only country with a major political party that denies climate change, makes perfect sense. Fear of vaccines, climate science and GMO’s, all have a detrimental impact. All of this because more and more of our population feels less control over their lives.

How can we know these conspiracy theories aren’t real?

In my studies, such theories break down most when one considers complexity, randomness, hypocrisy and time.

Here’s a quick break down:

Complexity

Occam’s Razor says that when presented with two competing hypotheses, one should choose the simplest one. What is easier to believe about 9-11; that it was perpetrated by seventeen guys with ceramic knives or that it involved thousands and thousands of contributors and the hiding of people and whole aircraft? The problem with such theories is simply that they are far too complex. You should know someone that was personally involved in pulling off 9-11, as the number of perpetrators involved would predicate that 400 million people would be within 1 degree of separation.

Randomness

Complexity is impacted by randomness. The more complex, the more potential for randomness and things to go wrong. That something so complex could be planned and perfectly executed with the amount of people and transactions involved, is impossible. Period. Randomness says it can’t happen. Again, seventeen guys with knives win. Two or more people doesn’t just double the chance of randomness interfering in Las Vegas, it increases it by a factor of at least ten.

Hypocrisy

Every conspiracy theorist will have competing beliefs that they might justify each theory. There isn’t just one crazy theory of the Las Vegas shooter on Inforwars today. There are actually five. The hypocrisy repeats itself over and over again. Some science is good and other science is bad, despite using the same method. A shadow government wants to take our guns despite a government very indebted to the NRA. Billionaires are plotting to take over the world but let’s go support an economic myth that gives them tax cuts. The list goes on and on.

Time

Time plays into many conspiracy theories. The globalists have been plotting for years and communists have slowly been infiltrating the Vatican and introducing corrupting modern art into our museums. The gay agenda is to slowly infiltrate the schools and turn children. FEMA has had Christian death camps just waiting in the wings. The U.N. has been just waiting to take us over. Barack Obama was ready to become a dictator throughout his entire presidency.

Those conspirators are pretty damn patient, aren’t they? Time brings in more complexity, more randomness and opens the conspiracy to even more hypocrisy. Do you evangelicals really think that if FEMA had death camps, you wouldn’t already be in them?

The U.S. is showing greater and greater strain as the empire deteriorates more and more. Industries are drying up with automation. Supremacy is being challenged. White evangelicals think themselves the most persecuted group in America. All of this will lead to ever increasing potential for such theories to take hold.

There is one bright spot though. Millennials are far less accepting of such theories and Generation Y is showing that they reject them outright. Our children are far more steeped in the science and critical thinking the Boomers and Generation X seem to be lacking. Religious fervor is diminished with these generations and the propensity to be so tied to U.S. supremacy is minimal.

It might just be the next generations that kill this ridiculous and damaging cycle.

medianet_width = "728"; medianet_height = "90"; medianet_crid = "728762653"; medianet_versionId = "111299"; (function() { var isSSL = 'https:' == document.location.protocol; var mnSrc = (isSSL ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//contextual.media.net/nmedianet.js?cid=8CUTI81HQ' + (isSSL ? '&https=1' : ''); document.write('<scr' + 'ipt type="text/javascript" id="mNSC" src="' + mnSrc + '">' + 'ipt>'); })();

[itsfinancethings]

Even by Washington standards, the past two weeks have been ugly. The country’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 150,000. National data showed a record-breaking economic plunge. And lawmakers allowed two of the central federal programs designed to keep Americans afloat during this unprecedented crisis—$600 supplemental unemployment checks and a federal eviction moratorium—to unceremoniously expire.

After more than a week of partisan bickering on the Hill, leaders in Washington failed to reach even a glimmer of a consensus on a new relief package. While House Democrats passed a bill in May that extended both the supplemental unemployment checks and the eviction moratorium, Congressional Republicans dismissed the $3 trillion proposal out of hand. But in the intervening months, the Republicans’ chief negotiators—Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—have been hamstrung by competing demands from factions within their own party and failed to offer a workable alternative. (Aside from briefings by the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has removed himself from the negotiations entirely, promising to cobble together Republican Senate votes after an agreement is reached.)

Despite very little progress on a bill, leaders in both parties say they hope to pass something next week. “We agree that we want to have an agreement,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday after meeting with Mnuchin and Meadows. “And in that case, we then say that’s our goal, let’s engineer back from there as to what we have to do to get that done.”

Inside Washington, the stalemate has played out predictably, with each party bitterly blaming the other. But outside Washington — and especially in the nation’s most purple regions — Republican, Democratic, and Independent voters described their frustration in notably non-partisan terms. They appear to point the finger at both Democrats and Republicans, and the federal government writ large.

“We’re sort of stuck in between two arguing parents,” said Helena, a voter from Pueblo, Colorado who said she was a registered Independent, at a July 31 virtual event hosted by Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner. “One side doesn’t want to do what the other side wants to do simply because the other side suggests it. At least that’s what it feels like.”

Between July 31 and August 4, TIME dialed into five telephone town halls all hosted by lawmakers facing tough reelection campaigns: Gardner, as well as Reps. Anthony Brindisi of New York, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, Abby Finkenauer of Iowa and Chip Roy of Texas. More than 11,000 voters dialed in collectively, according to statistics compiled from three of the five offices. (Gardner and Finkeanuer’s did not respond to request for comment). Despite spanning five states, each of which is facing different coronavirus infection rates and varying economic stagnation, one theme was abundantly clear: neither party is winning politically from this hold-up.

“Most Americans don’t understand why you can’t have at least enough agreement about the need to move forward on another relief package to get some agreement,” says Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “This is the kind of disagreement where voters basically say ‘a pox on both your houses’ until something happens.”

In an apparent effort to combat this weariness, all of the lawmakers in question stressed to their constituents the need for Republicans and Democrats to quickly reach an agreement, while simultaneously lamenting the gridlock. “I am disgusted by the petty partisan politics going on while our local communities continue to struggle,” said Brindisi, a Democrat whose upstate New York district voted for Trump by 15 points in 2016, at the outset of the call.

In his call, Gardner noted that the non-partisan Lugar Center had ranked him the third most bi-partisan Senator this year, while Roy touted his bipartisan work with Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips on fixes to the Paycheck Protection Program that Trump signed into law in June.

But these actions and sentiments didn’t insulate the lawmakers from their constituents’ frustrations. “What is the major holdup?” a voter asked Brindisi during the question and answer session. “Why are the [leaders in Congress] acting like the money is coming out of their pockets?”

A constituent on Cunningham’s call, who said he was a Democrat, announced that he was “embarrassed” to identify with the party after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly rebuffed Republicans’ offers last week to pass a short-term stop-gap bill that would just extend unemployment benefits. “Why couldn’t they have just passed a week of unemployment the way it was offered [by Republicans] so they can continue negotiations?” he asked. “But no, they want to have people suffer.”

Schumer and Pelosi have said several times that passing any short-term extension would be effectively be meaningless, since the benefits already expired. Cunningham noted that Democrats had been working on the details of a relief package for weeks, but that finger pointing at either party is never helpful. Brindisi, meanwhile, pointed to his support for the Heroes Act, the $3 trillion relief package House Democrats passed in May that McConnell refused to vote on and Democrats are now using as a negotiating tool. But he conceded that there are fundamental “sticking points” that need to be hashed out before an agreement can be reached.

In an interview with TIME on Wednesday, Brindisi said he was frustrated by his inability to give his constituents the answers they wanted. “You have essentially six people talking right now about the COVID relief package,” he says. “We certainly need more input from rank and file members and people in Congress who are interested in getting things done.”

A key sticking point between Congressional Republicans and Democrats is a proposed extension of the $600/week enhanced unemployment insurance. The Democrats’ proposal would extend the benefits, at the current rate, through January. But Republicans want a lower weekly sum, arguing that $600/week creates a disincentive to work.

On that question, voters in the town halls had competing points of view. A massage therapist who dialed into Cunningham’s town hall begged for an immediate reinstatement of these benefits, calling them a “lifeline” that kept her afloat as her business stagnated. When Finkenauer polled voters at her town-hall about the program, 76 percent said an extension was “very important.” But a man in Brindisi’s district said the benefits were unfair to workers who remained employed but whose job puts them in danger. “The essential workers essentially got screwed over,” he said, arguing that they were risking their health while making less than the unemployed workers staying home. ”What is being done for the essential worker to help that disparaging difference between those?”

Brindisi pointed out to constituents that one of reasons he supported the Heroes Act was the $200 billion it allotted in hazard pay to supplement these workers’ incomes, but that Senate Republicans are not receptive to the idea. On unemployment insurance, he said he was hopeful for a compromise. “People aren’t really concerned if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, they just want leaders in Washington working together getting things done,” he said in the Wednesday interview. “There are real needs out there.”

“People want answers,” he added. “And they want their leaders to solve these problems.”