#if any republican wins the presidency they are GOING to try and get rid of the SAVE plan and the cap on insulin prices

[lazorsandparadox]

The us government is going to do shitty things whether theres a democrat or a republican in the presidency or controlling the senate, but one of those options will do it a lot worse AND roll back all the good policy changes weve gotten in the last 4 years, which will result in people like me suddenly being unable to afford a lot of their basic necessities.

sorry but i want to hit every american talking about not wanting to vote democrat anymore with hammers. lol

[woman-respecter]

okay one last rant about chappell cuz i'm sure you're sick of herr (same):

i'm soooo tired of white people. i hate how chappell acts about palestine because it's SO "i learned activism from the internet and i have insane white guilt and i feel guilt for being a privileged white american" and that helps no one. bonus: she has republican parents so she has to force the activism even harder to compensate for her shitty family. i hate both sides as well but i'm not a stupid ass white person who won't be affected as much by not voting and not backing kamala.

chappell is so embarrassing like even taylor swift said i support kamala. her internet activism means that she would rather say guyssss both sides bad :/ than actually do anything of any value (it feels like she wants to be leftist so baddd that she ends up a fool... "all presidents bad i can't support any" girl you're high up in the evil capitalist music inudstry i wouldn't judge too hard if i were u..) but that's current activism for you doe. why make any change when you can just complain and do nothing? besides, leftists rn would tear any change apart to shreds cuz they expect everything to be fixed immediately. i've seen so many leftists get upset seeing progress of anything rn because because g-g-genocide!

leftists: you evil white gays celebrate improved gay rights in a red state ur so evil ugh a genocide is happening and ur happy? you need to blow yourself up to prove your loyalty to palestine and to understand what they're going through!

lastly everything chappell and ethel cain does for palestine is so forced and fake lol. it's all to make them feel better about being white and privileged. ethel cain makes jokes about killing the president girl! 🤔 youre enjoying your nice white life in a comfortable position in the music industry...you'd never give that up and stand on business cause ur all words no action..

ethel made a song for palestine and it was good but since she graduated with honors from the school of internet activism i cannot take it seriously. everything she does screams "sorry for being white :("

and then hunter from euphoria got praised for getting arrested at a JVP PROTEST (LMAO). like that rich white girl getting arrested and then nothing happened to her is not revolutionary it's actually giving kendall pepsi ad ! i will say it's more than ethel and chappell put together but still pathetically whitee.

lastly hayley from paramore ethel hunter chappell none of them actually support palestine. they try so hard to be leftist and activists which is ironic because they are capitalizing on palestine to look good, to overcompensate for their whiteness and privilege and because of guilt. their "support for palestine" are just large pr stunts that bring them more fans and more money. look at ethel. she LOVES florence (i believe they are good friends) and florence is besties with taylor swift and endorsed kamala. all bark no bitee :)

i HATE all of the performative leftist celebs you mentioned (except hayley from paramore) so fucking much. it’s obvious that their priorities are getting rid of their white guilt, being edgy, and winning clout points with the online left. they do not give an actual shit about palestine. the funny thing is that if taylor’s endorsement really does help keep trump out of the white house she will have done more for palestine than all those losers combined. sorry!

and yeah its funny that ethel, and almost every pop girlie, is at most like 2 or 3 degrees away from someone who is friends with taylor or idolizes taylor. sorry haters it really is that way. she’s your favorite artist’s ACTUAL favorite artist

[mariacallous]

Whatever happens next, one day historians will have to explain why a candidate who earlier this year had been presented as disciplined started to veer off into unrestrained racist rhetoric and dancing for 40 minutes to his own playlist. Was it age, as plenty of commentators have speculated? Was it a brilliant attempt to balance dehumanizing attacks on minorities with an effort to make himself look human?

A much more sinister explanation must be taken seriously. We still assume that we are witnessing two campaigns for the presidency. But what if we are witnessing one campaign and one slow-motion coup, whose organizers need to go through the motion of campaigning for the plan to work? Since winning at the ballot box does not matter, taking a break to listen to Pavarotti isn’t a problem; conversely, a festival of racism and conspiracy theories, as at Madison Square Garden, is not about convincing any undecided voter, but motivating committed Trumpists to go along with another coup attempt.

To be sure, this can also sound like conspiracy theory. The point is not prediction, but to call for preparedness. After all, there is an overwhelming number of reasons why, should Trump lose, he will once more try to take power anyway. His followers have long been primed to assume that evil Democrats will steal the election. The unchecked racism fits into a logic of far-right populism more generally: far-right populists claim that they, and they alone, represent what they call “the silent majority” or “the real people” (the very expression Trump used on January 6 to address his supporters).

If far-right populists do not win elections, the reason can only be that the majority of the electorate was silenced by someone (liberal elites, of course). Or, for that matter, people who are not “real people” – fake Americans – must have participated in the election to bring about an illegitimate outcome. This explains the Republican obsession with finding proof of “non-citizen” voting.

Dozens of lawsuits have already been launched to put election results into doubt. As in 2020 and early 2021, Trump is likely to make sharing his lies a test of loyalty.

Here analogies with other far-right populists are again illuminating: it is doubtful that all followers of the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland truly believe that relatively liberal prime minister Donald Tusk had colluded with Russians to have the country’s president, a member of PiS, killed in a plane crash in Smolensk in 2010. But professing the Smolensk conspiracy theory was not about making an empirical statement; it became a means to signal membership of a political tribe.

In theory, Republicans could seize the chance at last to break with Trump, who, after all, has only delivered defeats to the party. He has stated that he will not run again (though it would of course be naive to take any of his promises at face value). Yet there were already plenty of incentives to get rid of Trump in early 2021, and still Republicans did not disown, let alone impeach, him.

Most worryingly, Maga members have been primed to resort to violence. Trump and his allies ��� including the world’s richest man, who just happens to be a rightwing extremist – have framed the election as an apocalyptic battle. If Democrats win, Musk has claimed, there will not be any proper elections ever after; they will bring in more foreigners to secure a permanent majority. It is already half forgotten that Trump held his first major rally this election cycle in Waco, Texas.

Who knows whether Trump can really mobilize large numbers of people on the streets; it might be enough to prolong a sense of chaos. Vance has claimed that the 2020 election was problematic, because so many citizens had doubts about its “integrity” and Democrats prevented a “debate” which the country needed to have (never mind that Republicans had created the doubts in the first place). How long a debate would Vance like, exactly? Incidents like the infamous Brooks Brothers riot, where rightwingers in fancy suits stopped a recount in Florida in 2000, might accompany this debate. After all, as Jack Smith has claimed, Trump campaign operatives in 2020 already issued the order: “Make them riot.”

The hope may well be that, if decisions are kicked to the correct court, things could still go Republicans’ way. Trumpists know from the US supreme court’s decisions about ballot access and immunity earlier that some parts of the judiciary have given up on any conventional legal logic; they are likely simply to deliver whatever benefits Trump. The conservative justices’ decision this past week allowing the removal of voters from the rolls in Virginia so close to the election – a clear break with precedent – might well have been a preview of what a court captured by Trumpists is willing to do.

To be sure, the system as a whole is less vulnerable than in 2020. What is officially known as the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 makes it harder to challenge results in Congress; the theory that legislatures could overturn the outcome – popular among Trumpists in 2020 – has not found much legal support. But since Trump has everything to lose (including his freedom, given the charges still pending), there’s every reason to think that he’ll try everything.

[heathersdesk]

THIRD PARTIES IN AMERICAN POLITICS ARE POINTLESS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL AND IF YOU VOTE FOR THEM IN 2024, YOU'RE A CLOWN

All right. Civics for Dummies from the American History nerd. Sit down. If any of you suggests voting third party anywhere near me between now and November, I'm going to throw chalk at you. And we're going to talk about why right now, so there's no more confusion.

The Electoral College makes voting third party the stupidest, most unproductive thing you can be advocating for right now.

To become president under the system we have now, you need to reach 270 electoral votes. It is physically impossible for a third party candidate to do that with two other parties at the table. It's not that it won't happen. It's that it CAN'T happen.

As long as we have the Electoral College, voting for third parties for president is a waste of a vote. You might as well stand outside of your polling place and piss on a wall, for all the good it does anyone.

There are two ways forward if you're tired of the way things are. You're not going to like either one of them because they're both hard.

1. Get rid of the Electoral College

2. Get rid of both of the parties we have and replace them with different ones who will do what we want instead of engorging themselves on our money like the corrupt, bloated ticks they all are.

Get rid of the electoral college?

You need a Constitutional amendment to do that. You need 2/3 of the states to hold a Constitutional Convention, then 3/4 of either the Conventions or the state legislatures to ratify and pass it.

Make the list right now. Go ahead. Find me 38 states that would pass an amendment to get rid of the electoral college, so you can vote for whichever socialist is promising you they can somehow get people in red states to listen to them without starting a civil war.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Y'all can't even agree on which socialist without a snowball's chance in hell of winning you expect people to vote for instead of Joe Biden in November!

You've had since October 7th of last year to come up with one and you haven't done it! It's over! Pack it up and call it a day! We don't have time for this! Start picking who you want to replace Biden in 2028, if we're not in the middle of a civil war by then.

Why do I keep saying that? Because I went through a Civil War phase and we've been checking the boxes off one by one for years now in how that war started. Down to states trying to remove the opposition candidate from the ballot in an election year.

Anyway, Constitutional amendment sounds too hard? We're going with the party dunk tank approach?

Cool. This is the one I actually think we could achieve in the next 20 years.

Before you can get a third party candidate to win, you need a party that has mass appeal that people would actually want to join, then have it usurp and replace an existing party. Then that party runs a candidate that could win in a national election. But at that point, they're not a third party candidate anymore.

Ever heard of a Whig? Seen one on a ballot? Exactly. We have a history in the US of ditching parties that have outlived their usefulness. It's been a few centuries, but at least there's a precedent for it.

I don't know if y'all recognize what you're looking at, but this is already happening within the Republican party. They've been infiltrated by fascists and foreign agents, and any Republicans who aren't down with their corruption are currently getting tossed out of the cuckoos nest. Republicans can't win elections through democracy anymore, so they're just going to get rid of democracy now.

WHEN THE LDS CHURCH STARTS TELLING YOU IT'S OKAY NOT TO VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS, Y'ALL NEED TO WAKE TF UP AND REALIZE THAT PARTY IS GONE NOW, AND IT'S NEVER COMING BACK.

So the Democratic Party is what we have left now, and they suck. We know they suck. They've sucked since Jimmie Carter, and even then the poor guy was in over his head. Their leadership is full of hypocrites and liars who are too busy taking Israeli PAC money, putting kids in cages at the border, letting Facebook engage in genocides across the globe, and banning TikTok to have a conscience. They squander every opportunity they have to truly fight back effectively against anything, and they're never going to change. I've lost all respect for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. If they won't let go of power, it's time to take it from them. I agree with that sentiment 100%. I mean, I think it's better to primary the old guard, but y'all want radical change! So let's talk about it!

You want to usurp the Democratic party with another party? You need a well-funded coalition of people in every state, fully mobilized with quality candidates they can run locally, to get the ball rolling. That needs to go on for many years. It needs to be a party that attracts the disaffected from the left and right, and has a platform they all can agree on. What Republicans and Democrats won't do, this party would need to do. It would need celebrity endorsements. It would need to be something that the vast majority of Americans would pull out their wallet right now and give money to because they believe it's capable of change that will actually help them.

You want to replace the Democrat and Republican establishment with something better? You put it together correctly and it can be done. Like I said, I think y'all could get that done in the next 20 years.

You don't have 20 years?

Exactly! You're not getting any of that done before November! I don't care how hard you try.

Fastest amendment to ever be ratified was the repeal of Prohibition. 3 months and 10 days. This ain't that. No one wants to vote for your inexperienced socialist candidates as badly as they wanted to drink during the Great Depression. To give you some perspective, it took 41 years to pass the women's suffrage amendment. THAT'S a more realistic timeline.

As for forming a party... why do you think the opposition is doing a hostile takeover of the Republican party instead of forming their own and starting from zero?

Because it's easier and faster!

People on the left who are still talking about third parties in this country will literally do anything but build a coalition with those they consider morally inferior to themselves. But the problem is, they can't do anything with the microscopic group of people they consider to be morally acceptable. They can't pass an amendment to get rid of the Electoral College. They can't form an alternate party to replace the Democrats. They can't do a hostile takeover of the Democrats. They can't unite behind a single candidate and get them funded to win campaigns except in the bluest districts of blue states. And they're totally unprepared to take any idea they have on the road to the Midwest or the South where they'd truly have to deal with people who don't trust them.

All y'all have to offer is the same dysfunctionalism we already have.

There's no way forward into the future where you get the kind of policies you want AND to opt out of being in community with people you don't like. You have to pick a struggle. If you don't have the skill set and temperament to work with Democrats, you don't have what it takes to replace them either. You just don't. Not in this economy. Not in any economy. Not on this timeline or any other.

I don't care how much you don't like Joe Biden. That's who we're voting for in November because there's no one else. Y'all waited until Gaza was on fire for the umpteenth time to become a single issue voter, and you want all of us to jump off the cliff of the moral high ground with you?

Nah. I've decided I'm going to live through this.

I'm strategizing what to do if Biden dies in office and how to primary Kamala Harris as a potential incumbent in 2028. And if (God forbid) Trump wins, I'm picking out people at church who would hide me in their basement when the round ups start. Because I live in the purple section of Boise, surrounded by nothing but Klan members and neo-Nazis in the middle of the desert. It's nothing but Confederate wannabees for hundreds of miles in every direction.

When you're ready to get serious, you're welcome to join.

[clwhowrites]

A Rant

Warning there is going ti be swears in this, if you are offended, grow the fuck up! You are a fucking child! There is no excuse to be offended by "fuck" or "shit," they are just fucking words! Grow the fuck up you child!

As I sit here, fireworks going on all over this city I can't help but think: I hate this country. I hate the politics, I hate the culture, I hate the ramped anti-intelectualism, the fake democracy, the media, the disrespect for facts and truth, the ramped religiosity, the capitalist religion, the corporate socialism that is what the economy actually is, the constant lying, the lionization of people who were no smarter or more moral than anyone else their class and time, and the synthetic divisions. When I look at this country I see a country of corruption and lies.

We have a presidential debate and all the democrats freak out, as if this debate will be remembered when election day comes. What did you democrats think would happen? Biden is a stupid old man, a shit president and a shit person. And I'm not being ageist here, he was a stupid young man, a stupid middle ages man and now he is a stupid old man. Did you people think a shit stain of a person who 81-years-old would do any better than what he did? Are you that fucking deluded?

If Trump wins it will be the fault of the democrats. Why is he the nominee? Why didn't you get rid of him months ago? Why the fuck was Joe shit stain of a human being Biden the democratic nominee in 2020? Of all the people who were trying to be the 2020 democratic nominee why was he selected? He was and is literally the worst of them all. Why was Hillery selected in 2016? She was unelectable! And Bernie wouldn't have been any better of a candidate, he is an out socialist in a country that hates socialists (and yet is a corporate socialist country, the third worst kind of socialism). Why were they even in the running for the democratic nomination!? Because democrats are fuck ups. The democrats fucked up repeatedly, because you are fuck ups. It should be stupid easy to defeat Trump, it is stupid easy to defeat Trump. Trump won in 2016 because the democrats fucked up and if Trump wins this time it will be cause the democrats fucked up.

You republicans are not safe here, the democrats are fuck ups but you are stupid. Trump is a lying idiot and sex offender who failed his way to the top. He is not a moral man, a good man, he is not even a man as he has the mind of a fucking child. He is a shit stain of a human being too, and you people voted for that shit stain of a human being. He doesn't care about you and will not do anything that will help you, he is a selfish narcissistic sociopath that surrounds himself with yes men, and if he thought raping you and your children would benefit him, he would do it and never regret it.

The best example of republican stupidity isn't even the lying narcissistic sex offender Trump, it is the fake culture war. The "culture war" was made up by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, the two multibillionaires who started Fox News. There is no culture war! It is all a distraction as the oligarchy economically rapes you and your family. Politicians talking about trans "predators" using bathrooms, a distraction while they economically rape you and your family, people complaining about a black Little Mermaid, a distraction while they economically rape you and your family, "this or that is woke," a distraction wile they economically rape you and your family, "illegal immigrants coming over the border," a distraction wile they economically rape you and your family.

"Well if you don't like this country leave it." Fine, you get me a work visa, find me a job, a place to live, and pay to move my shit from here to there. You don't want to do that? If it was so easy I would have done it by now, I would have abandoned this country long ago if I could but I can't, I'm stuck here. You are stuck with me. Open borders could solve this but would mean more brown people coming over the borders and you are scared of them because shitty politicians keep claiming they are smugglers, criminals, gang members, and rapist, all while these same politicians economically rape you and your family!

You are both fucking morons. You both vote for stupid shit stain people while letting the oligarchy fuck your lives and your children's futures. Fuck both of you!

[jesin00]

Thank you for openly admitting that you aren't ashamed to vote for a genocider. Most democrat voters try to hide their support for genocide, so it's nice to see some honesty for a change.

Either you don't understand the situation we are in or you don't understand what "support" means. If withholding my vote cannot lead to the genocide stopping sooner or any lives getting saved, then casting that vote cannot have been "support for genocide" in any way that makes sense.

I expect to vote against Biden in the primary. I expect to vote for any pro-Palestine or pro-ceasefire candidate I can find in the congressional races (both primary and general). If you can vote for anyone on this list of cosponsors of the pro-ceasefire House resolution, or if you can find anyone in favor of a ceasefire in your area's primaries, please vote for them.

As for the general election, I live in a purple state, which means if a Democrat loses in my state, a Republican wins and nobody is surprised about it. Have you heard what the Republicans are saying about Israel and Palestine? Last I checked, the Republicans mostly believe that Israel should completely overrun Palestine, whether to fulfill Biblical prophecy or to rid the world of the Muslims / brown people they hate or both. The Republicans are in fact worse on this issue.

If Biden wins the primary and loses the general election because he lost somewhere like Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, or Nevada, nobody will be shocked and the Democrats will probably chalk it up to being "not centrist enough". If you want the Democrats to learn the right lesson from losing a Presidential race in 2024, they need to lose somewhere like California, Vermont, or Massachusetts, ideally while pro-Palestine Democrats win their races in those areas. If you can scare them by putting Barbara Lee (D-CA, voted for ceasefire) into office with ballots where the President slot is blank or 3rd-party, by all means do that.

Also remember there are other actions you can take besides voting! Protests and other sorts of actions are going on in lots of places!

If you want me to sell out myself and my queer friends and family by letting a Republican win in a swing state, you better have a rock-solid plan for how this will actually save lives, and right now I am not convinced you have one.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 30, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 30, 2023

“[O]ne of the things that I hear some of you guys saying is, ‘Why doesn’t Biden say what a good deal it is?’” President Joe Biden said to reporters yesterday afternoon before leaving the White House on the Marine One helicopter. “Why would Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote? You think that’s going to help me get it passed? No. That’s why you guys don’t bargain very well.”

Biden’s unusually revealing comment about the budget negotiations was actually a statement about his presidency. Unlike his Republican opponents, he has refused to try to win points by playing the media and instead has worked behind the scenes to govern, sometimes staying out of negotiations, sometimes being central to them.

The result has been, as Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf summarized today, historic. Biden has worked to replace 40 years of supply-side economics with policies to rebuild the nation’s economy and infrastructure by supporting ordinary Americans. The American Rescue Plan gave the United States a faster economic recovery from the COVID pandemic than any other major economy. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has already funded more than 32,000 projects in more than 4,500 communities in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and U.S. territories.

The Inflation Reduction Act made the biggest investment in addressing climate change in our history, and according to University of Washington transportation analyst Jack Conness, it and the CHIPS and Science Act have already attracted over $220 billion in private investment, much of it going to Republican-dominated states: Tennessee, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oklahoma have each attracted more than $4 billion; Ohio, more than $6 billion; Arizona, more than $7 billion; South Carolina, more than $9 billion; and Georgia, more than $13 billion.

Victoria Guida in Politico yesterday reported that the reordering of the economy under Biden and the Democrats has reversed the widening income gap between wage workers and upper-income professionals that has been growing for the past 40 years. The pay of those making an average of $12.50 an hour grew by almost 6% from 2020 to 2022, even after inflation.

Those gains are now at risk as pandemic measures end and the Fed raises interest rates to bring down inflation, although the wage increases are only a piece of the inflation puzzle: Talmon Joseph Smith and Joe Rennison of the New York Times today reported that companies raising their prices to “protect…profits” are “adding to inflation.” In other words, companies pushed prices beyond normal profit margins during the pandemic and the economic recovery, then maintained those higher profit margins with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and continue to maintain them now.

The fight over the debt ceiling is both an example of the different approaches to negotiation on the part of Biden and Republicans like House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and part of the larger question about the direction of the country.

On January 13, 2023, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned McCarthy that the Treasury was about to hit the borrowing limit established by Congress and that she would have to resort to extraordinary measures in order to meet obligations until Congress raised the debt ceiling.

On March 9, as part of the usual budget process, Biden produced a detailed budget, which was a wish list of programs that would continue to build the country from the bottom up. He told McCarthy he would meet with the speaker as soon as he produced his own budget, which McCarthy could not do because the far-right House Freedom Caucus (these days being abbreviated as HFC) wanted extreme cuts to which other Republicans would never agree.

On April 26 the House Republicans passed a bill that would require $4.8 trillion in cuts but was quite vague about how it would do so apart from getting rid of much of the legislation the Democrats had just passed. HFC members said they would not raise the debt ceiling until the Senate passed their bill. That is, they would drive the United States into default, crashing the U.S. and the global economy, until the president and the Democrats agreed to their policies. Even then, they would raise it only until next spring, with the expectation that it would then become a key factor in the 2024 election.

Biden insisted all along that he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, which pays for money already appropriated under the normal process of Congress and which Congress raised three times under former president Trump even as he added $7.8 trillion to the national debt. Biden said he would happily negotiate over the budget. McCarthy, meanwhile, was out in front of the cameras and on social media insulting Biden and insisting that it was Biden’s fault that talks took so long to get started.

Late Saturday, the two sides announced an agreement “in principle” to raise the debt ceiling for two years—clearing the presidential election. As the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell noted, it protects current spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; keeps tax rates as they are; increases spending on defense and veterans’ programs; leaves most other domestic spending the same; cuts a little from the expanded funding of the Internal Revenue Service; and tweaks both the permitting process for energy projects and the existing work requirements in the food assistance program.

As Rampell points out, “this much-ballyhooed ‘deal’ doesn’t seem terribly different from whatever budget agreement would have materialized anyway later this year, during the usual annual appropriations process, under divided government. To President Biden’s credit, the most objectionable ransoms that Republicans had been demanding are all gone.”

Now the measure has to get through both parties, with congressmembers back in Washington today after the holiday weekend. Freedom Caucus members are howling at the deal. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) is threatening to bottle the measure up in the House Rules Committee, which decides what bills make it to the floor. The Freedom Caucus forced McCarthy to stack that committee with far-right extremists as part of his deal for the speakership (it has nine Republicans but only four Democrats on it). But Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests that McCarthy’s alliance with Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) might pay off here, since the two have thrown their weight behind the measure.

Even if the measure does pass before the June 5 deadline when the Treasury runs out of money, it has had an important effect. As Rampell noted, it has weakened the United States. It has enabled both China and Russia to portray the U.S. as unstable and an unreliable partner. As if to prove that criticism, Biden had to cancel a trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea, where he was strengthening the Indo-Pacific alliances designed to weaken Chinese dominance of the region. (And Russia continues to involve itself in U.S. politics: today Tara Reade, the woman who in 2020 accused Biden of sexually assaulting her, appeared on Russian television next to alleged spy Maria Butina to say she has fled to Russia out of fear for her life in the U.S.)

Writing in Foreign Policy, Howard W. French sees a more sweeping problem with the debt ceiling fight: it “highlights America’s warped priorities.” “[W]hen a rich and powerful country finds it easier to cut back on the way that it invests in its people, in education, in science, and in making sure that the weakest among them are not completely left behind than to curtail useless and profligate weapons spending,” he said, “there are reasons to worry about the foundations of its power.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mun-auroralore]

Fun fact: this is all true, and it's indicative of something even worse that will happen if Trump wins.

A lot of Republicans are planning on trying to get rid of democracy and put in a dictatorship if Trump or any other Republican wins. It's called Project 2025. There's even a Wikipedia page about it.

All of the above about what are essentially concentration camps for immigrants are going to happen, and thing are going to get worse for immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and anyone that isn't straight white cis man if Trump and the Republican party wins in the November election this year.

Educate yourselves, go out and vote Democrat in November, no matter who is the Democratic nominee.

DO NOT PROTEST BIDEN BY REFUSING TO CHOOSE A CANDIDATE IN THE PRIMARIES OR THE NOVEMBER ELECTION, BECAUSE THAT WILL ENSURE THAT REPUBLICANS WIN AND THEY WILL TAKE OUR DEMOCRACY DOWN WITH THEM.

If Trump wins, democracy will be gone and we will not even be allowed to protest anything involving the events in Palestine with any Republican as president.

At the very least, with Biden president, we can hold him accountable for the events in Palestine if he wins- and if he's not fit to hold office, his VP can and we can hold the VP accountable in return. We won't get that chance if Trump wins.

Trump will make things for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, women,and anyone that isn't white or a man, and Trump WILL make what's happening in Palestine worse if he wins- and there will be nothing we can do to help Palestine if Republicans get hold of the presidential office.

Do not refrain from voting in November; vote Democrat and make sure Republicans and Trump never get a chance to destroy our democracy.

[sometimesiammybpd]

i feel bad for not posting all the time. i just like. don't know what to say when it's not a longform post. i still don't reeeeeally know who i am, so yeah. anyways hi.

to put this bluntly, i quit my job a week ago. after trump won the election, i spiraled. because i was one of the mistaken leftists (i don't consider myself a leftist at ALL but it's the most fitting term here.) who believed kamala had such a fighting chance that there was no way in hell he would win . . . and then he did. when i went to bed on the 5th, i went high as shit because i knew i wouldn't be able to handle any of this. i was and still am right about that. but when i woke up on the 6th and saw he won the election (yes, i saw the outlets that were calling it for him before even 2 am that night.), i couldn't process it at first. and then it hit me about an hour after i woke up and i still couldn't process any of it. except the thought to quit my job.

and i'll be real, i don't know if it was more self-destructive or what i'm about to say. cause in the moment, i said i wasn't going to work under my boss anymore because he's a massive trump supporter and i was losing it. i know that's true but it's moreso the question of if it's a scapegoat-type excuse or a genuine excuse. that i don't know. but i quit. i no-called, no-showed and then didn't show the next day and was fired. and that was that. yeah, he blew me up. i fucked over people that i didn't want to fuck over. but it meant more to me than just "he's a trump supporter." i am trans. i am a woman. and he voted to take away my rights, cis women rights, immigrant rights, the right to criticize the government, the separation of church and state, and so much more. and while i do believe it's partially me trying to just ruin my life because of where i was mentally, i just. even hearing his voice makes me angry. because how can you be "supportive" of anything you say you are and then vote for him? you can't be supportive just when it's convenient for you. you can't take away someone's right to choose, vote for themselves, get divorced, etc., and then still pretend like you're the good guy. and that's my issue with this entire fucking situation.

yes, i am angry with the right. i will always be angry with the right. but i'm so much angrier with the left. because for starters, kamala wasn't a fucking democrat. she ran under the guise of being a democrat, but she isn't one. she's an old-school republican and it showed based on her policies and the way she handled her campaign. and yes, she's better than biden in a lot of areas (they're both fucking awful in terms of the stance on israel / palestine and don't get me started on that). but it's been proven that "i'm not biden" is not good enough. that "i might ask for a ceasefire as president" is not good enough. that camo hats, threatening to close the border like MAGA has been for decades, not addressing ANYTHING regarding the working class to actually help us like fucking proper student loan payment, raising the minimum wage, supporting getting rid of the electorial college (i love tim walz for that stance but i hate the harris campaign for making him back down), literally anything. i voted for kamala and it felt like a wasted vote. i was excited in the moment because it was my first presidental election i could vote in, but it felt wrong and felt like a wasted vote. i wasn't going to not vote or vote third-party. and i'll be honest, i'm afraid of what's to come. i'm afraid i'm going to get arrested for not being supportive of trump. i'm afraid if they find out i'm trans, i'll be arrested for that (i still do not pass at all. i actually look insanely masculine which i HATE). i'm afraid of my friends losing their rights and of the thought that we will never have another free election in this country as long as i am alive because of this election.

they're just fears, i keep telling myself. even though there most definitely will be a mass deportation attempt on day one. even though they've already started attempting to pass bills to give trump more freedom to do whatever he wants, including taking down who he considers to be political enemies. they're just fears. except i don't believe that and i have no hope left to be able to use to undo that. i don't want to be a pessimist in this. i know people will still fight. i know it's not over unless we give up. but the democrats don't seem to give a flying fuck as they're blaming fucking transgender people for THEIR LOSS. FOR THE MISTAKES THEY FUCKING MADE.

i'm gonna be real. i felt so hopeless on november 6th that i was ready to take my life. i didn't want to abandon my friends, but i didn't want to be here anymore. because how was january 6th not enough? i was 17 and watched that happen in REAL TIME. i was physically shaking and that was most genuine fear and anger i felt until now. i cannot fucking believe i have to live in a country where a convicted felon has more supporters than any other politician. where he IS GETTING TO BE PRESIDENT TWICE. i can only begin to imagine what it must feel like for anyone who trump SA'd.

i don't know. maybe in four years, democrats will finally LEARN and something good will happen. but even if we are able to get it back, who's to say we'll have a country in 4 years worth taking back? who's to say we'll have a world that's still worth fighting for? and i don't think anyone right now realizes how long it'll be before anything he puts in place over the next 4 years gets undone. keep in mind that losing RvW was his fault, but it happened AFTER he got out of office. that's how much he's already fucked up this country. we have collectively voted to give the 2-year old who can't stop shitting their pants to form a coherent sentence the keys to the car and letting them drive cross-country for almost half a decade.

i don't know. i don't want to talk about this anymore.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I've long said that a second American civil war would break out because of a new Nullification Crisis, and I think the Texas abortion law may be that crisis.

In the 1800s, South Carolina decided it didn't have to pay federal taxes because its lawmakers believed the constitution was an unenforceable agreement between the states, something they could opt out of at any time (they said they never would have joined the Union in the first place if they had known the government would be telling them what to do). The federal government, of course, disagreed with their decision, and the Supreme Court ruled that the president had the power to mobilize the national guard to enforce federal laws if the states refused to enforce it themselves. The states cannot unilaterally nullify federal law. The federal government has authority over them unless the Court explicitly cites a breach of the 10th Amendment.

Texas is breaking federal law by violating Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court hasn't explicitly overturned Roe, so it still stands as the law of the land, which Texas is just outright ignoring because they want to. They're trying to nullify federal law, so unless the conservative majority on the court specifically overturns Roe (they very well could, which would be a legal can of worms in and of itself), Joe Biden has the legal authority to mobilize the national guard to enforce the law and stop the abortion ban. This would lead to legal challenges at best and full scale civil war at worst because the Texas guard would refuse to mobilize under his authority or would mutiny against him. But by NOT enforcing the law, the precedent is set that suddenly NO federal laws are enforceable. What's stopping a blue state from banning guns if a red state can ban abortions? Banning guns would be illegal, but if states can nullify federal law and supersede the constitution then everything is fair game. This too would lead to war as gun nuts would take up arms against the state government for trying to ban them (and chances are the blue state guard would side with the nut jobs over the government, selectively enforcing the laws for one party over the other). Damned if you do, damned if you don't; enforcing federal law could lead to war, but so could ignoring it. The ball is in the conservative's court; they can't have it both ways, they can't carve out an exception for themselves but expect the other side to keep playing along as if nothing has changed. The laws either apply to everyone or no one.

We are teetering on the edge of history right now. This could be a turning point in our republic, and I think pundits on both sides are quietly hoping it'll all blow over. They want to just sweep it under the rug so it doesn't escalate, but pressure has been building for decades, especially in the last 5 or 10 years, so something's gotta give.

You never know what's going to be a major historic event until after it happens. Maybe this becomes the new normal and abortion simply becomes illegal in a ton of states, or maybe this catalyzes a long overdue revolution. Will this end with a whimper or a bang? Who can possibly tell? I pray this isn't normalized. I pray we don't grow complacent. I pray we don't just let this happen. We need to act, we can't keep expecting old rich elites to act for us; Congress doesn't have or best interests in mind, they've proven that time and time again by failing to act on important issues from civil rights to healthcare to the minimum wage and now abortion. Half the elites want us dead, so why should we keep looking to the other half to stick their necks out for us? The solution isn't to have "good" elites combat the bad ones, it's to get rid of the elites altogether.

I don't want to undersell this. We can't just act like it's okay for Texas to ban abortions, this is a major fucking deal! But at the same time, I don't want to blow this out of proportion either. Very few things wind up in the worst case scenario, and we've made it through similarly bad situations in the past, so this might not necessarily explode into something bigger. But we just don't know how bad this will be until the consequences start piling up. Once women start seeking abortions and doctors start getting arrested and wannabe vigilantes start claiming bounties on them, then we'll know just how far the country is willing to bend before it breaks.

Either the law means something, or it doesn't. If Republicans are allowed to break whatever law they want, then they're giving Democrats carte blanche to do the exact same thing. You can't cheat and then get mad when your opponent cheats right back; you've thrown out the rules, so why would you expect the other side to keep following them? How can you possibly hold them to a higher standard then yourself?

Democrats need to understand: If your opponent cheats, you can't win by playing by the rules. There's no shame in stopping to their level; they can't claim the moral high ground from down in the mud.

[thisismenow3]

A lot of people ignoring the fact that when democracy is at stake you have to REALLY do all you can to stop authoritarians. Will Wheaton almost sounds sensible until you think about how George Clooney ain’t a great medical authority and that there is no alternative. Honestly just that last point is what matters. We’ve seen time and again that the conservative justices will make shit up to create the conservative theocratic oligarchy they crave. Why wouldn’t they speedrun a case lodged tomorrow that wants to say you can’t sub in a nominee for president this close to the election? Actually having merit, following precedent, not going against the constitution in spirit or plain text are all things this right wing court and most federal bench below them don’t give a shit about. Changing Biden out even for Kamala Harris begs this to happen.

And then you get into what previous posters have said; the people with power closest to the top democratic officials mostly don’t want Harris (at least the ones openly trying to dump Biden), the only candidate with track record, with squint and it’s kind of precedent for subbing in, who is a part of or associated with the mostly unsung wins of the last 4 years. So dumping Biden for someone who ain’t Harris is foolish and that’s what getting rid of Biden gets us.

When Republicans wanted to keep packing courts and deregulating business, and killing unions and killings schools, did they drop Reagan before his second term because of his obvious and far along Alzheimer’s? No, cause a president is only as important as the people they surround themselves with through appointments. The lion’s share of things that an administration does is thought up and executed by these people and their subordinates. A second term president can just sit there and have very little to offer other than broad strokes things like “fix economy and climate change but don’t hurt non white people to do it,” and it ends up not too different from a very involved president who doesn’t have experience directly in the related fields. Is it ideal? Obviously not, but we have to resist the urge to shoot ourselves in the foot when fighting authoritarian takeover. Waiting for perfect lands us with worse. If our democracy is to survive we have to bite the bullet and vote for a “Harris behind the throne” presidency at worst, dude with a life long stutter who is also 81 at best. Based upon Biden as he’s presented the last 15 years, neither choice is really that different, especially in regards to fixing what needs to be fixed. George Clooney may not be a news anchor, but he’s acting like one with this stunt attempting to make the Democratic Party act unstrategically cause even a small chance of getting exactly what he believes is better is more important to him than taking no chances and protecting people with less money, privilege, etc. Will Wheaton is being similar frankly in that by being rich he can afford to be moronic about how the media and Supreme Court would fuck this because of his privileges. I don’t believe either are doing this on purpose, they just ain’t the source of strategic wisdom for shit like this. And dems HAVE to win for us to have any chance fixing things for non white people, the climate, our economy for workers, etc.

“Clooney wrote of the “profound moment” the country is currently in, noting how just last month he hosted the “single largest fundraiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election.” “I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote. “As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.” “But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” he continued. “None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F—ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” Regarding the debate, in which the 81-year-old President stumbled continually, Clooney wrote that “our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.” “We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, who we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question,” he wrote.”

—

George Clooney calls on Biden to drop out to “save democracy” — just weeks after hosting fundraiser

George Clooney has nothing to gain and everything to lose, by telling the truth right now. Politicians and their supporters hold grudges for eternity. He’s speaking up and saying this now, knowing exactly what the stakes are for him, and for our country.

This is what I’ve been wanting to know. This is what the campaign has been hiding from us: WE all saw that President Biden had a bad night. The question the demands an answer is: was it a bad night? Or has time and age caught up with the president? Are we going to believe our lying eyes, or clap louder?

We don’t vote for just a president; we vote for an administration. For the most part, this administration has been fantastic, more progressive than I ever dreamed, to say nothing of rebuilding a nation out of the wreckage of four years of Trump.

And all of that is going to be burned to ash if President Biden can’t mount an effective campaign to defeat fascism and its leader. Since the debate, the campaign has kept him behind teleprompters and away from unscripted interactions. That’s alarming, and a tacit admission that he can’t fight like he once did, that the person we saw at the debate is the person he is most of the time.

If we lose this election, America will be plunged into decades of authoritarian, theocratic, christian nationalist fascism. The stakes will never be higher, and President Biden and his team need to do what is best for the country.

We will not win this election by clapping louder and gaslighting ourselves. We need — this crisis demands — a candidate who can clearly and easily refute Trump’s lies, and simply and clearly explain to voters what the stakes of this election are. The 2020 Joe Biden could do that; the 2024 Joe Biden doesn’t seem to be capable of that, anymore, and that puts our entire nation and way of life at risk. George Clooney is telling us that he literally just saw, privately, what we all saw in public, and it was not a one-off. He also reveals that every single elected Democrat he talks to agrees with him, but they are too afraid to speak up. That’s horrifying, and I desperately hope it isn’t true.

But if George Clooney is telling us a hard truth, risking the wrath of countless powerful political players, and we should listen to him; not because he is rich and famous, but because he was literally in a room with President Biden and his supporters, and is now on the record that the President Biden we saw at the debate is not a guy with a cold or whatever, and now journalists can follow up with other people who were there to confirm or deny George Clooney’s observations.

These are tough questions that demand answers, now, because we are four months out and this shouldn’t be close, at all. America hates Trump, and he has lost every election since 2018 as a result.

President Biden and the Democrats need to run up huge margins in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Ohio, to overcome the inevitable MAGA fuckery. We need a candidate who is fifteen points ahead of Trump, not someone who has been in the margin of error for his entire presidency – which is fucking insane when you look at all of Trump’s felonies, judgments, impending trials, and all of his corrupt criminality that the SCOTUS MAGA Majority twisted itself into knots to protect.

This should be a landslide against Trump and MAGA. It’s close because the candidate running against him isn’t – likely can’t – be out there, every day, banging the podium and forcing a change in the narrative. 

Did you see my governor after the debate disaster? He was on fire. That guy would destroy Trump in a debate. Vice President Harris would be laser focused on prosecuting the case against him. President Biden is the only candidate who Trump could drag into a fucking dick waving contest about golf scores when the fucking future of American Democracy is at stake. There is not a single other credible candidate who would take that bait. My god.

President Biden has done so much more than I ever thought possible. He doesn’t get credit for all his progressive achievements, for pulling America out of a economic calamity (caused by Trump and his allies), forgiving student debt, his appointments to the FCC, FTC, and other regulatory agencies that had been captured by industry during the Trump regime.

All of that will be wiped out in a matter of days, if Trump seizes power again.

George Clooney is warning us that President Biden doesn’t have the stamina and focus to win reelection and secure not just his legacy but the future of our country. He is saying out loud and as publicly as possible that we are not crazy, that we really did see what we saw.

This is DEFCON 1 for Democracy. This isn’t politics as usual. This is a moment of tremendous existential danger that only gets worse with each passing day. IF President Biden remains the candidate, I will vote for him, obviously. But I hope that he will fire everyone involved in preparing him for the debate, because they failed him, they failed America, and if Biden is going to take the fight to Trump and MAGA the way he needs to, it he needs a team who understand who they are fighting against, how to punch Trump in the nose, and what the stakes are.

[theme-park-concepts]

I've tried to think of many ways to say this...to hopefully try to reach out to people that see things differently...but it's a challenge to say this briefly and in a way that will not make them turn away. But I'm going to try.

The current situation the United States finds itself in is not politics as usual. Donald Trump, specifically, is a man that delights in causing chaos, making inflammatory statements, and getting rid of anyone who doesn't agree with him.

Hopefully, one can see why this is dangerous. Our governmental system, like our currency, or famous people, only work because a lot of people have faith that it works. And Trump seeks to decrease faith in a whole wealth of institutions, to further politicize them, and decrease our ability to trust their independence.

And perhaps you haven't had much faith in them to begin with...to be honest that's a fair assessment: they have rarely worked as well as they could or with as much impartiality and integrity as one would hope. But the reason why Donald Trump is dangerous, and the reason this not a normal election or normal politics, is that he sees this truth: that our institutions aren't perfect, that they are all a little bit corrupt, as a perfectly valid reason to then corrupt them further. "All politicians lie a bit, so I'll lie about everything. "All attorney generals are a little bit sympathetic to the president so I'll appoint one to do all my bidding". "Everyone knows that elections are a little more beneficial to the people in power, so obviously the whole thing is completely rigged and I'm the true winner".

This is dangerous. This is how democracies can fail and have failed...and this is not hyperbole...just because we're America does not mean it can't happen here. Our institutions and systems are what keep things on the rails and unfortunately Donald Trump prefers flying.

Additionally the republicans in congress have decided to be blindly loyal to Trump in the interest of passing their policies...and I want to stress here I'm not saying you're a bad person if you voted for republicans in the past...I think very few people foresaw them acting in this way. I think there are noble causes among the traditional republican values, but the people in office right now do not reflect those values and I hope everyone can see that.

Without institutions and systems that everyone can trust in, there is no country. Donald Trump and the republicans in congress have taken every cynically-minded action one can imagine...making it harder then ever to believe that our systems are trustworthy and impartial and able to properly represent the people. They are more concerned with winning the game, and in particularly that strategy is worrying because it makes everyone else focus more on winning the game as well - including the democrats. And we do not want to live in a country where BOTH parties are out to win the game at all costs. The system HAS to come first.

So all of this is to implore each and every one of you to vote this fall and vote the current republicans and Donald Trump out. Because of the intracies of the electoral college, gerrymandering, and such Joe Biden is who I'd recommend but honestly just vote against them in any way you can. The senate and house races matter even more than the presidential race. Just please vote them out...I am quite serious when I say it is absolutely possible that this is the last election where voting actually matters. I completely understand that this might mean voting against your values, particularly if you are republican - and hopefully that's a bridge you can cross later. But right now the systems themselves are at risk and the people in charge must be removed before there is no trust left.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 14, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, news broke that, under pressure from Republican leaders, Republican-dominated Tennessee will no longer conduct vaccine outreach for minors. Only 38% of people in Tennessee are vaccinated, and yet the state Department of Health will no longer reach out to urge minors to get vaccinated.

This change affects not only vaccines for the coronavirus, but also all other routine vaccines. On Monday, Tennessee’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tim Jones sent an email to staff saying there should be "no proactive outreach regarding routine vaccines" and "no outreach whatsoever regarding the HPV vaccine." The HPV vaccine protects against a common sexually transmitted infection that causes cervical cancer, among other cancers.

Staff were also told not to do any "pre-planning" for flu shots events at schools. Any information released about back-to-school vaccinations should come from the Tennessee Department of Education, not the Tennessee Department of Health, Jones wrote.

On Monday, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, Tennessee's former top vaccine official, was fired without explanation, and Republicans have talked about getting rid of the Department of Health altogether, saying it has been undermining parents by going around them and straight to teens to promote vaccines.

Video editor J.M. Rieger of the Washington Post put together a series of videos of Republicans boosting the vaccine and thanking former president Donald Trump for it only to show the same people now spreading disinformation, calling vaccines one of the greatest scandals in our history, and even comparing vaccines to the horrors of the Nazis.

This begs the question: Why?

Former FBI special agent, lawyer, and professor Asha Rangappa put this question to Twitter. “Seriously: What is the [Republicans’] endgame in trying to convince their own voters not to get the vaccine?” The most insightful answer, I thought, was that the Republican’s best hope for winning in 2022—aside from voter suppression—is to keep the culture wars hot, even if it means causing illness and death.

The Republican Party continues to move to the right. During his time in office, the former president put his supporters into office at the level of the state parties, a move that is paying off as they purge from their midst those unwilling to follow Trump. Today, in Michigan, the Republican Party chair who had criticized Trump, Jason Cabel Roe, resigned.

Candidates who have thrown their hat into the ring for the 2022 midterm elections are trying to get attention by being more and more extreme. They vow to take on the establishment, support Trump and God, and strike terror into the “Liberals” who are bringing socialism to America. Forty QAnon supporters are running for Congress, 38 as Republicans, 2 as Independents.

And yet, there are cracks in this Republican rush to Trumpism.

Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) admitted that "Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He legitimately got elected." Trump supporters immediately attacked McCarthy, but the minority leader is only too aware that the House Select Committee on the Capitol Insurrection will start hearing witnesses on July 27, and the spotlight on that event is highly unlikely to make the former president—and possibly some of the Republican lawmakers—look good.

Already, the books coming out about the former administration have been scathing, but tonight news broke of new revelations in a forthcoming book by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Leonnig and Rucker interviewed more than 140 members of the former administration and say that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley was increasingly upset as he listened to Trump lie about having won the election, believing Trump was looking for an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.

Milley compared the former president’s language to that of Hitler and was so worried Trump was going to seize power that Milley began to strategize with other military leaders to keep him from using the military in illegal ways, especially after Trump put his allies at the head of the Pentagon. “They may try, but they’re not going to f---ing succeed,” he allegedly said.

In addition to damaging stories coming out about the former president, news broke yesterday that Fitch Ratings, a credit rating company, is considering downgrading the AAA rating of the United States government bonds. The problem is not the economy. In fact, the Fitch Ratings report praises the economy, saying it “has recovered much more rapidly than expected, helped by policy stimulus and the roll-out of the vaccination program, which has allowed economic reopening…. [T]he scale and speed of the policy response [is] a positive reflection on the macroeconomic policy framework. Real economic output has overtaken its pre-pandemic level and is on track to exceed pre-pandemic projections....”

Although the report worries about the growing debt, we also learned yesterday that the deficit for June dropped a whopping 80% from the deficit a year ago, as tax receipts recover along with the economy. Year-to-date, the annual deficit is down 18% from last year.

The problem, the report says, is politics. And it is specific. “The failure of the former president to concede the election and the events surrounding the certification of the results of the presidential election in Congress in January, have no recent parallels in other very highly rated sovereigns. The redrafting of election laws in some states could weaken the political system, increasing divergence between votes cast and party representation. These developments underline an ongoing risk of lack of bipartisanship and difficulty in formulating policy and passing laws in Congress.”

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Notes:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/07/13/tennessee-halts-all-vaccine-outreach-minors-not-just-covid-19/7928701002/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/09/gop-fox-news-rush-turn-vaccine-door-knockers-into-terrifying-straw-men/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/14/under-trump-republicans-touted-coronavirus-vaccines-now-under-biden-theyre-questioning-them/

Tim Hanrahan @TimJHanrahanKevin McCarthy on Fox News, when asked about Trump's continued election claims: "Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He legitimately got elected. " On if Trump should run again: "Donald Trump has to make that decision whether he wants to run for president or not."408 Retweets1,373 Likes

July 13th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/13/party-extremists-gop-primary-contenders-struggle-break-out/

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/here-are-qanon-supporters-running-congress-2022

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/michigan-gop-director-who-said-trump-blew-it-in-2020-resigns/ar-AAMa7oM

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/politics/house-select-committee-first-hearing-democrats-capitol-police/index.html

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-affirms-united-states-at-aaa-outlook-negative-13-07-2021

CNBC @CNBCJUST IN: The U.S. budget deficit for June plunged to $174 billion. @ylanmui has the numbers. 309 Retweets669 Likes

July 13th 2021

Asha Rangappa @AshaRangappa_Seriously: What is the GOP’s endgame in trying to convince their own voters not to get the vaccine?5,083 Retweets45,461 Likes

July 13th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joint-chiefs-chairman-feared-potential-reichstag-moment-aimed-at-keeping-trump-in-power/2021/07/14/a326f5fe-e4ec-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/politics/donald-trump-election-coup-new-book-excerpt/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[klbmsw]

Today Americans were roiled by an article in The Atlantic,

Today Americans were roiled by an article in The Atlantic, detailing the method by which the Trump campaign is planning to steal the 2020 election. The article was slated for The Atlantic’s November issue, but the editor decided to release it early because of its importance.The article’s author, Barton Gellman, explains that Trump will not accept losing the 2020 election. If he cannot win it, he plans to steal it. We already know he is trying to suppress voting and his hand-picked Postmaster General is working to hinder the delivery of mail-in ballots. Now Trump’s teams are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 states to challenge voters at polling places; this will, of course, intimidate Democrats and likely keep them from showing up.But if those plans don’t manage to depress the Democratic vote enough to let him declare victory, he intends to insist on calling a winner in the election on November 3. His legal teams will challenge later mail-in ballots, which tend to swing Democratic, on the grounds that they are fraudulent, and they will try to silence local election officials by attacking them as agents of antifa or George Soros. The president and his team will continue to insist that the Democrats are refusing to honor the results of the election.Gellman warns that the Trump team is already exploring a way to work around the vote counts in battleground states. Rather than appointing Democratic electors chosen by voters, a state legislature could conclude that the vote was tainted and appoint a Republican slate instead. A Trump legal advisor who spoke to Trump explained they would insist they were protecting the will of the people from those who were trying to rig an election. “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” the adviser explained. The election would then go to Congress, where there would be two sets of electoral votes to fight over… and things would devolve from there.They would likely end up at the Supreme Court, to which Trump this morning said he was in a hurry to confirm a new justice so there would be a solid majority to rule in his favor on the election results. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices, and I think the system’s going to go very quickly,” he said. "Having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation."Amidst the flurry of concern over The Atlantic piece, a reporter this afternoon asked Trump if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. "Well, we’re going to have to see what happens," Trump said. "You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster." He went on to say: "Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation."In response to this shocking rejection of the basic principles of our government, Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted, “This is how democracy dies.” He said: “This is a moment that I would say to any republican of good conscience working in the administration, it is time for you to resign.” But only one Republican, Mitt Romney (R-UT,) condemned Trump’s comments as “both unthinkable and unacceptable.”On Facebook, veteran journalist Dan Rather wrote of living through the Depression, World War Two, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, Watergate, and 9-11, then said: “This is a moment of reckoning unlike any I have seen in my lifetime…. What Donald Trump said today are the words of a dictator. To telegraph that he would consider becoming the first president in American history not to accept the peaceful transfer of power is not a throw-away line. It's not a joke. He doesn't joke. And it is not prospective. The words are already seeding a threat of violence and illegitimacy into our electoral process.”There is no doubt that Trump’s statement today was a watershed moment. Another watershed event is the fact that Republicans are not condemning it.But there are two significant tells in Trump’s statement. First of all, his signature act is to grab headlines away from stories he does not want us to read. Two new polls today put Biden up by ten points nationally. Fifty-eight percent of Americans do not approve of the way Trump is doing his job. Only 38% approve of how he is handling the coronavirus. Voters see Biden as more honest, intelligent, caring, and level-headed than Trump. They think Biden is a better leader.Trump’s headline grabs keep attention from Biden’s clear and detailed plans, first for combatting coronavirus and rebuilding the economy, and then for reordering the country. The Republicans didn’t bother to write a platform this year, simply saying they supported Trump, but Trump has not been able to articulate why he wants a second term.In contrast, Biden took his cue from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and has released detailed and clear plans for a Biden presidency. Focusing on four areas, Biden has called for returning critical supply chains to America and rebuilding union jobs in manufacturing and technology; investing in infrastructure and clean energy; and supporting the long-ignored caregiving sector of the economy by increasing training and pay for those workers who care for children, elderly Americans, and people with disabilities. He has a detailed plan for leveling the playing field between Black and Brown people and whites, beginning by focusing on economic opportunity, but also addressing society's systemic racial biases. Biden’s plans get little attention so long as the media is focused on Trump.The president’s antics also overshadow the reality that many prominent Republicans are abandoning him. Yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain’s widow Cindy endorsed Biden. “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There's only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is [Biden].” She added “Joe… is a good and honest man. He will lead us with dignity. He will be a commander in chief that the finest fighting force in the history of the world can depend on, because he knows what it is like to send a child off to fight."McCain is only the latest of many prominent Republicans to endorse Biden, and her endorsement stings. She could help Biden in the crucial state of Arizona, especially with women. "I'm hoping that I can encourage suburban women to take another look, women that are particularly on the fence and are unhappy with what’s going on right now but also are not sure they want to cross the line and vote for Joe. I hope they’ll take a look at what I believe and will move forward and come with me and join team Biden," McCain said.That McCain’s endorsement stung showed in Trump’s tweeted response: “I hardly know Cindy McCain other than having put her on a Committee at her husband’s request. Joe Biden was John McCain’s lapdog…. Never a fan of John. Cindy can have Sleepy Joe!”And, of course, Trump’s declaration has taken the focus off the Republican senators’ abrupt about-face on confirming a Supreme Court justice in an election year. The ploy laid bare their determination to cement their power at all costs, and it is not popular. Sixty-two percent of Americans, including 50% of Republicans, think the next president should name Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement.The second tell in Trump’s statement is that Trump’s lawyers confirmed to Gellman that their strategy is to leverage their power in the system to steal the election. Surely, they would want to keep that plan quiet… unless they are hoping to convince voters that the game is so fully rigged there is no point in showing up to vote.Trump’s statement is abhorrent, and we must certainly be prepared for chaos surrounding this election. But never forget that Trump’s campaign, which-- according to our intelligence agencies-- is being helped by Russian disinformation, is keen on convincing Americans that our system doesn’t work, our democracy is over, and there is no point in participating in it. If you believe them, their disinformation is a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans prefers Biden to Trump.Trump’s statement is abhorrent, indeed; but the future remains unwritten.

Heather Cox Richardson September 23, 2020 (Wednesday)