America has a gun problem: the proliferation of guns in American homes
has led to a largely silent epidemic of accidental shootings, intimate
partner murders, and suicides.
While the sky-high fatalities from these everyday shootings are
personal, quiet tragedies, the extremely public tragedies of mass
shootings are both statistical outliers and rallying points for sensible
gun policies in line with the rest of the world.
As welcome as the attention from high-profile atrocities is, there is
danger that they will shift our focus to the extremely low likelihood
that you will be shot by a deranged stranger in a public place and away
from the much higher likelihood that someone you know (possibly you,
yourself) will shoot you in your home.
One way this manifests is in an emphasis on “protecting” schools from
mass shootings. At first, this was a minor hustle, with some petty
grifters picking up small-money contracts designing “active shooter
lockdown drills” for schools.
But after the Parkland shooting, the gun lobby and its purchased
lawmakers came up with a new talking point: the solution to gun violence
was to flood our schools with heavily armed mercenaries (or, worse yet,
teachers!) who would execute would-be shooters. This strategy could be
backstopped by buying all kinds of “anti-shooter” fixes, like
bulletproof doors, bulletproof coffins that children could cower inside
of, and Batman utility-belt gadgets like smoke cannons that could flood a
school with choking, blinding clouds as a countermeasure against
shooters.
This was a evilly brilliant move: by creating a “solution” that was tied
to high-ticket procurements, the gun lobby created a self-perpetuating
lobby machine for tooling up the schools of America – hucksters who
would divert some of their profits to pressuring governments to
diverting more education dollars to weapons and armor, generating new
profits and thus new lobbying dollars – lather, rinse, repeat.
The hive of scum and villainy that is the tooled-up school industry is
the sort of thing to make you vomit in your mouth: it is an unholy
alliance of lying dickheads like “Joe the Plumber”
(yes, that fucking guy is back) and a former US Army Ranger whose sales
patter includes warnings that ISIS terrorists might start hurling
molotov cocktails inside of schools. These military-industrial grifters
are in a weird alliance with one of the Parkland parents, whose response
to the tragic loss of his son is to advocate for massive school
expenditures on these gadgets and guns.
It’s working. Across America, the cash-starved schools are spending
money they can’t find for books, computers, desks, black mold
remediation, art class, and other fripperies on armored doors, armed
school guards, and yeah, actual literal smoke cannons.
Anyone still unsure of how (or even whether) they’ll vote in the midterms should consider this: All three branches of government are now under the control of one party, and that party is under the control of Donald J. Trump.
With the addition of Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court is as firmly Republican as are the House and Senate.
Kavanaugh was revealed as a fierce partisan – not only as a legal advisor who helped Kenneth Starr prosecute Bill Clinton and almost certainly guided George W. Bush’s use of torture, but also a nominee who believed “leftists” and Clinton sympathizers were out to get him.
He joins four other Republican-appointed jurists, equally partisan. Thomas, Alito, and Roberts have never wavered from Republican orthodoxy. Neil Gorsuch, although without much track record on the Supreme Court to date, was a predictable conservative Republican vote on the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit – which is why the Heritage Foundation pushed for him and Trump appointed him.
Even under normal circumstances, when all three branches are under the control of the same party we get a lopsided government that doesn’t respond to the values of a large portion of the electorate.
But these are not normal circumstances. Donald Trump is President.
Need I remind you? Trump is a demagogue who doesn’t give a fig for democracy – who continuously and viciously attacks the free press, Democrats, immigrants, Muslims, black athletes exercising First Amendment rights, women claiming sexual harassment, anyone who criticizes or counters him; who treats the executive branch, including the Justice Department, like his own fiefdom, and brazenly profits off his office; who tells lies like other people breathe; and who might well have conspired with Vladimir Putin to swing the election his way.
Trump doesn’t even pretend to be the president of all the people. As he repeatedly makes clear in rallies and tweets, he is president of his “base.”
And his demagoguery is by now unconstrained in the White House. Having fired the few “adults” in his Cabinet, Trump is now on the loose (but for a few advisors who reportedly are trying to protect the nation from him).
All this would be bad enough even if the two other branches of government behaved as the framers of the Constitution expected, as checks and balances on a president. But they refuse to play this role when it comes to Trump.
House and Senate Republicans have morphed into Trump acolytes and toadies – intimidated, spineless, opportunistic. The few who have dared call him on his outrages aren’t running for reelection.
Some have distanced themselves from a few of his most incendiary tweets or racist rantings, but most are obedient lapdogs on everything else, including Trump’s reluctance to protect the integrity of our election system, his moves to prevent an investigation into Russian meddling, his trade wars, his attacks on NATO and the leaders of other democracies, his swooning over dictators, his cruelty toward asylum-seekers, and, in the Senate, his Supreme Court nominees.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has emerged as Trump’s most shameless lackey who puts party above nation and Trump above party. The House leadership is no better. House intelligence chair Devin Nunes is Trump’s chief flunky and apologist, but there are many others.
Now that Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court, you can forget about the Court constraining Trump, either.
Kavanaugh’s views of presidential power and executive privilege are so expansive he’d likely allow Trump to fire Mueller, shield himself from criminal prosecution, and even pardon himself. Kavanaugh’s Republican brethren on the Court would probably go along.
So how are the constitutional imperative of checks and balances to be salvaged, especially when they’re so urgently needed?
The only remedy is for voters to flip the House or Senate, or ideally both, on November 6th.
The likelihood of this happening is higher now with Kavanaugh on the Court and Trump so manifestly unchecked. Unless, that is, voters have become so demoralized and disillusioned they just give up.
If cynicism wins the day, Trump and those who would delight in the demise of American democracy (including, not incidentally, Putin) will get everything they want. They will have broken America.
For the sake of the values we hold dear – and of the institutions of our democracy that our forbearers relied on and our descendants will need – this cannot be allowed.
It is now time to place a firm check on this most unbalanced of presidents, and vote accordingly.
This is so important. I am not American but as somebody who has studied politics and as a German growing up with the history of my country let me tell you – never take democracy for granted, you gave to fight for it. Democracies don’t always die with a big bang bloody revolution, more often they are slowly sabotaged by people in power and they die if the majority stays silent. Vote. Demonstrate.
This means you vote the Democratic party ticket, for the record. The time to shift the party to the left is during the primaries. Right now? You vote the goddamned ticket. Even if that means voting for Manchin, or some equally despicable Democrat.
Because let’s be very, very clear about this: if Manchin isn’t re-elected, it’ll be Patrick Morrisey in that seat: a Republican, who will vote the Republican party line on basically every fucking issue (because Republicans tend to have better party discipline than Democrats, at least at the Federal level), and a Republican who helps keep committee control in the hands of the Republicans and procedural control in the hands of the Republicans, instead of a Democrat who helps shift both those things into the hands of a group of people who actually want to block Trump’s agenda. By all means, vote Manchin out—but we cannot afford for you to do it right now. Do it in the primaries in 2024. Right now? You show up to vote, and you vote the goddamned ticket.
Yes, political parties suck. Yes, they force you, frequently, to gather with people who don’t believe 100% the same things as you. Suck it the fuck up. Sometimes compromise is necessary in adult life! That’s just how it works! This isn’t about one Democrat. It’s not about your Democrat at all. It’s about blocking the Republicans. And the only way to do that effectively at this point in time is to vote the Democratic ticket. Top. To. Bottom.
Reblogging for the @greywash comment especially. Vote like a grownup.
Thank you for saying this! Yes, it has to be democrats! Third party cannot win this one guys!
because the Republican he’s running against is far worse and Democrats need to retake the Senate, period. You can’t do anything without a majority, that’s just how the whole thing works
Normally I would very much agree, but like…if a “Democrat” habitually votes with the Republicans, then how are they actually Democrat? Manchin’s voting recording is scarcely better than that of Rand Paul and Susan Collins. If you can’t rely on a politician as a Democratic vote, then you don’t have them as part of your potential majority. What good is a vote you can’t rely on?
The Democrats having a majority means they control all committees, which means they control what legislation comes *out* of committees and gets a vote, and what never comes to the floor. They have final say over the rules of parliamentary procedure. They can block Presidential nominees. Controlling Congress, even because of one shitty conservative Senator, basically gives the Democrats the institutional advantage and ability to influence legislation that they completely lack right now, which is why we’re in such constant crisis. People are constantly urging them to fight harder, as if this will materialize a majority out of thin air. If they don’t control either the House or the Senate, they are virtually powerless.
Manchin represents a state that voted 68.5% for Trump, which was literally his largest margin of victory. In West Virginia, Manchin is consistently attacked for being “too liberal.” And like, let’s not forget that “scarcely better” than Rand Paul and Susan Collins still means something, because there’s still a lot of room between the most conservative Democrats and “moderate” Republicans these days. Last summer, Manchin voted against the ACA repeal, while Paul voted for it. Manchin voted against the tax bill while Collins voted for it.
Also, the primary is over. In November he’s up against a Republican, not a more progressive Democrat. It’s going to be one of them seated in the Senate in 2019. Even if control of the Senate were not in play, there is no way anyone on the left could honestly look at his opponent Patrick Morrisey’s positions and conclude it would be better to have him in the Senate. I hope that Manchin gets sidelined in a Democratic controlled Senate, but I’m not willing to risk everything just to punish him for this cowardly, disgusting vote.
Kids, this is strategy not philosophy. You need to look at this at a very, very base level, and that base level is: every red tick in the Houses is an obstacle, every blue tick in the Houses is, at the very least, A LACK OF OBSTACLE.
This is called “hold your nose” voting. Hate Manchin a lot? That’s totally legit. If you’re in the appropriate area, right now it is absolutely also a good idea to start looking for a Democratic challenger to get rid of Manchin for NEXT time. And you should do that now, because it may well TAKE all the rest of the time working to get the right momentum to unseat Manchin. But that’s next time.
For this time, you don’t have another Dem option. You have Manchin, or a red tick. A red tick is REALLY. REALLY. BAD. Manchin is kinda crappy.
If it’s NOT MANCHIN then it will be THE RED TICK. There is no “neither” option. That option is not available to you. There is no “neither”. There is Manchin, or part of the GOP machine.
Is it crappy that this is where things are? For sure. Should it be different? Yes. It will take a lot of work to make it different, and that work does not start by handing that seat to a Republican because Manchin sucks. In fact, that will prevent the work from being done.
Triage. Prioritize. You are trying to get to a point where you will have the breathing room to do real work: to try and bring the landscape up to where you can have better options than Manchin. If a Republican takes that seat, YOU WILL BE FURTHER FROM THAT PLACE.
Voting Manchin in DOES NOT MEAN you’re saying “I approve of everything they do and think shit is solved if Manchin gets elected”. You can (and SHOULD) vote Manchin in AND THEN KEEP PUSHING.
But in this mid-term you have two choices. One of them adds strength to the GOP machine that is a problem. One of them doesn’t.
One of them means your bigger project of Changing Things stops dead in the water or worse, gets pushed backwards. One means it doesn’t, even if it doesn’t help.
That’s a no-brainer.
Please do not let Evil win because Good is too effing stupid to be able to set up a long-term ongoing strategy to effect our goals.
people on the left love the concept of “harm reduction” when it comes to public health, but often struggle with embracing it when it comes to voting.
You don’t run a needle exchange for addicts because you think it is awesome that people are injecting themselves full of dangerous narcotics and you think the opioid epidemic is neat. Running a needle exchange isn’t a mark of fealty for intravenous drug use. It just means that you know running a needle exchange means fewer people die than NOT running a needle exchange, and evidence shows that it helps more people get into addiction treatment, and addicts using them are more likely to get other kinds of healthcare, and it reduces used needles in public, and it reduces overdoses, it saves a TON of money, it reduces the burden on first responders, and in general it is still not the best case scenario (no one being addicted to drugs) but it is light years ahead of the alternatives (HIV/AIDS/Hepatitis outbreaks, spikes in ODs, people dying of preventable conditions bc they are scared of going to health care providers, hospitals being overwhelmed with drug cases they have a limited ability to treat, etc etc).
You don’t vote for a Manchin because you think it is awesome that he sucks so much of the time or because he is your ideal candidate. You vote for a Manchin because even as bad as he can be, he is still light years ahead of what his Republican opponent would be and would cause and would enable. You vote for a Manchin so that someone can primary him next time, instead of losing YEARS to more Republican fuckery. You vote for a Manchin because Republicans are literally pro-rape fascists running concentration camps for children at this point, and keeping ANY more resources out of their hands is actually a moral imperative, way more so than whether or not you get to vote for someone you think is a “good” candidate.
Harm reduction is not a strategy for living in a perfect world, but it is one that works to mitigate damage and destruction in the broken systems that we actually have. It is one that gets us closer to building a world we want, and where you actually get to vote for people who represent you.
Christianity and conservatism are not compatible ideologies. Conservatives, socially, are against refugees, against equality, and fiscally are against social programs and financial aid to those in need.
Jesus demanded they help refugees, demanded equality, and demanded aid to the poor.
To be conservative means to not be Christian, and to claim you are both is to be a hypocrite.
Something Jesus also condemned.
I don’t think you know much about either ideology
Sincerely, a conservative Christian
I’ve read the bible six times, I know what it says.
I’m also a polisci student, and pay attention to what conservatives do. In fact I’ve studied conservatism, in addition to the other political ideologies that exist in our world.
Jesus said:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat
them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your
native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
(Leviticus 19:33-34)
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very
edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go
over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.
Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. (Leviticus 19:9-10)
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the
foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are
to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in
Egypt.(Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and
you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I
needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I
was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25:25-36)
Just to quote a very, very few.
Conservatives repeatedly repeal and cut back programs that feed the poor ,including poor children, cut back education, and cut back healthcare, all things vital to the poor. Conservatives repeatedly want no refugees, want no immigrants (travelers), including children. In fact, many conservatives want to throw the existing immagrants (travelers) out of the country (and need I remind you, Jesus was not a “legal” immagrant, so to claim ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigrants are any different is still to ignore what the bible has commanded of you.
I know exactly what each ideology is about. You are a hypocrite, and not a Christian. You only call yourself one while flaunting what was commanded of you.
in the field of religious studies, we often call jesus one of the first radical leftists. he was a social anarchist with communist leanings, and that’s why his draw was such a threat to the imperial system—because he was calling for the dismantling of oppressive power structures. the conservative romans were the ones who killed jesus, and conservatives after are the ones continuing to kill his message thousands of years after his death.
Don’t forget he fought against slut-shaming, embraced alcoholics and the homeless, and straight up said you can’t get into heaven if you die rich.
When I say conservative Christians would deport Jesus if they actually saw him or blacklist him if they heard him…this is why.
And it’s funny because those fools are the Pharisees and can’t even see that.
The greatest commandment of Christianity is to love your neighbor like yourself and that’s not what conservatives do.
News reports and personal accounts from people who knew him show that
Brett Kavanaugh lied again and again at his Senate confirmation
hearing. How can this sputtering, raging, serial liar possibly be
considered for the role of a Supreme Court justice?
In last Thursday’s confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh lied repeatedly
about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that she was sexually
assaulted by him at age 15.
Kavanaugh repeatedly lied that her account had been “refuted” by
witnesses. He also lied about his behavior in high school and college.
And he lied many times about policies he worked on during the presidency
of George W. Bush.
“Kavanaugh is such a brazen liar that many of his false claims have been entirely refuted by reporting,” Media Matters for America says in this comprehensive list of his lies under oath before the United States Senate.
Kavanaugh repeatedly claimed Ford’s accusation has been
“refuted” by others who she said attended the party – even though the
other attendees have said no such thing. Kavanaugh seized on the word “refuted” when responding to Ford’s report, claiming in five instances
that the three people who Ford says were at the party when Kavanaugh
sexually assaulted her had “refuted” her account. That’s an obvious
misrepresentation of what those people have said. They have actually all
said that they don’t recall
the party in question – a major difference from saying something
didn’t happen. And Ford’s friend Leland Keyser has said that although
she doesn’t remember the party in question, she believes Ford is telling the truth.
Kavanaugh said he “did not travel in the same social circles” as Ford, but he did. During prepared remarks, Kavanaugh said
that Ford “and I did not travel in the same social circles. It is
possible that we met at some point at some events, although I do not
recall that.” But Ford testified that she went out with one of
Kavanaugh’s friends, whose name appears 13 times in Kavanaugh’s calendar.
Kavanaugh attempted to fabricate an alibi by suggesting he
did not drink on weekdays and was out of town almost every weekend night
of the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh claimed
that the incident Ford described “presumably happened on a weekend” and
suggested that he and his friends didn’t drink during the week because
of their jobs while adding he was “out of town almost every weekend
night before football training camp started in late August.” In doing
so, Kavanaugh attempted to falsely imply that he did not attend the type
of get-together that Ford described. Kavanaugh’s lie is readily
apparent in the calendars he provided the committee and a contradictory statement
he made acknowledging “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at
friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.”
In particular, great attention has focused on his July 1 calendar entry – a Thursday – that showed he was having “[brew]skis” with some of the people Ford said were at the party.
Kavanaugh said he had no connection to Yale University prior
to attending undergrad and law school there, but he was a legacy
admittee. While denying that he was a heavy drinker in college who drank to the point of blacking out, Kavanagh said,
“I got into Yale Law School – that’s the number one law school in the
country. I had no connections there; I got in there by busting my tail
at college.” In fact, Kavanaugh’s grandfather Everett Edward Kavanaugh attended Yale, making Kavanaugh a legacy student.
Kavanaugh denied every blacking out from drinking and
downplayed his alcohol consumption as a young man, but numerous Yale
classmates say he was a belligerent drunk. Kavanaugh became
angered under questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) after she asked
him if he ever blacked out from excessive drinking. In response,
Kavanaugh pressed Klobuchar if she had ever blacked out and claimed that he doesn’t have a drinking problem. The New York Times reported
that “nearly a dozen” of Kavanaugh’s classmates “said they recalled his
indulging in heavy drinking, with some characterizing it as outside the
norms of college life.” His freshman roommate James Roche said Kavanaugh was “frequently unusually drunk” and would become “belligerent and mean,” while classmate Charles “Chad” Ludington said Kavanaugh was “a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.” Classmate Elizabeth Swisher called
Kavanaugh’s claim he never blacked out “a lie” based on her observation
of his behavior at the time. Classmate Lynne Brookes told CNN that she
and her former classmates were texting each other during the hearing
that Kavanaugh was lying about his college drinking habits.
California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes (previously)
has been one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, who has used his office
as Head of the House Intelligence Committee to promote the evidence-free conspiracy theory that Obama’s FBI spied on the Trump campaign.
Historically, Nunes has set himself apart from his fellow Republicans:
willing to compromise on immigration reform, and hailing from the
predominantly Democratic state of California.
Nunes’s Californian roots have been key to his electoral success; his
campaign literature, press interviews and public appearances make great
hay out of his family’s dairy farm in California.
What Nunes’s materials don’t mention is that his family
secretly relocated the family farm to Iowa in 2006, to the town of
Sibley (a town best known for having unsuccessfully sued a resident for putting up a website complaining about the “rotten blood and stale beer odors” produced by a dog-food factory).
Esquire’s Ryan Lizza went to Sibley to investigate the Nunes family’s
move and its shroud of secrecy and found himself mired in an American
gothic small-town mystery, shadowed everywhere he went by Nunes family
members in SUVs (he put Gopros in his car and used them to record his
watchers, who creepily circled every spot he parked; he was later able
to identify them on Facebook).
Lizza spoke to multiple sources who described the town and its dairy
industry’s dependence on undocumented labor (including multiple sources
who claimed direct knowledge of undocumented workers employed on the
Nunes family farm), and the town’s growing disenchantment with Donald
Trump and their Congressman, Steve King (previously) a white supremacist xenophobe
who is the Republican’s strongest anti-immigration advocate (Sibley is
in Osceola County, and was the county’s strongest Trump-voting district,
going 79% for Trump) (Nunes’s father has only ever donated to two
federal candidates: his son, and Steve King).
As Lizza chased down the story, his sources showed signs of
intimidation. The Nunes family reportedly called a local newspaper and
demanded that it remove a nine-year-old article that celebrated the
Nunes family’s move to Iowa.
