Florida's Road To Autocracy Under Ron DeSantis

Click here for an article in Mother Jones entitled "Ron DeSantis Is All In -- on Creating an American Autocracy," by Pema Levi. The subtitle is "His plan to outflank Trump would scale up the calculated system of repression he designed in Florida."

It's a long article. It details the first time that DeSantis fired a democratically elected county prosecutor, Andrew Warren (he's fired another one recently).  

DeSantis has proven his “willingness to routinely use the machinery of the state to punish rivals,” explains Harvard government professor Steven Levitsky. “That’s authoritarianism at its core. That’s what authoritarians do.”

Levi says: 

To stifle dissent, in 2021 DeSantis signed a law that would ramp up penalties for rioting but that civil rights groups warned would ensnare peaceful protesters; this spring he pushed legislation to unleash speech-­chilling lawsuits against news outlets.

It tells how DeSantis won a squeaker of an election in 2018 -- winning by 32,000 votes out of over 8,000,000 votes cast -- "by sucking up to Trump on Fox News and securing his primary endorsement."

DeSantis has taken steps to capture State agencies:

One way DeSantis has created space to operate is by hollowing out state government, filling key posts with donors and loyalists—the academic term is “autocratic capture”—perhaps most notably on the state Board of Medicine, which has supported his agenda to put new limits on gender-affirming care. An analysis by the Democratic super-PAC American Bridge 21st Century found that over his first term, DeSantis installed 75 percent more donors in senior government roles than his predecessor, Republican Rick Scott, did in the same span. Such power grabs are “a cornerstone of authoritarianism,” explains Ben-Ghiat, and “create a climate where you can more efficiently transform everything.”

There's a lot here -- it's a long article -- but it's worth reading at a time when Florida's democracy is being lost as the state slides into autocracy.

Update On The Corruption Of Clarence Thomas

Click here for an article listing a bunch of the lavish gifts of travel, private aircraft, and luxury resorts which are the life of Clarence Thomas. The article is at ProPublica, titled  "Clarence Thomas' 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel, by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierieski.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

Billionaires Tony Novelly, Wayne Huizenga, David Sokol,  and Harlan Crow are all right-wing Republicans, and all met Thomas (surprise, surprise!) after his appointment to the Supreme Court.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous! There are detailed descriptions of the opulence Thomas's Supreme Court position has brought him. (Justice Elena Kagan turned down an offered gift of bagels and lox from old high school friends at a reunion because of the appearance of possible impropriety -- what a sucker!)

"The job (on SCOTUS) is not worth doing for what they pay," says Clarence Thomas

Click here for an article at MSNBC.com, by James Downie, entitled "Enough is enough. Clarence Thomas must resign -- or be impeached." 

A quote from the article: 

“The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” Clarence Thomas said in a 2001 speech. “But it is worth doing for the principle.” (The link is to another article at The Washington Post detailing a litany of offenses by Thomas over the years.)

The article is headed with a picture of far-right activist Ginni Thomas. After Trump lost the election on November 3, 2020, this is the text of an email message she sent to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows two days later, on November 5:

"Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc.) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming daya, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition."
 

"Trump's Introduction Of Violence, The Threat Of Violence, And Targeted Harassment Into The Dynamics Of Our Political System"

 Great short article from The Atlantic today focuses on the remarkable jury instructions from Judge Lewis Kaplan in the Trump/Jean Carroll civil litigation: "The Judge Who Understood How Trump Operates."

The judge’s advice sounded less like a legal requirement than like the words of a parent to an older teenager, imparted without any ability to enforce. Kaplan apparently did not give a specific reason for his statement. But he didn’t need to. Everyone knows how things can unfold for people who challenge Trump, and jurors who find against him in court are highly vulnerable to whatever he might do.

Trump’s political legacy is often measured by his policy impact: restrictions on immigration, lower taxes for the rich, conservative Supreme Court justices who deliver on a stridently right-wing agenda. Those changes are significant, but are also largely answerable through the same political process, voting, that made Trump only a one-term president.

Trump’s real, enduring legacy is his successful introduction of violence, the threat of violence, and targeted harassment into the dynamics of our political system, as if they were all just a natural extension of democratic disagreement.

The January 6 insurrection is the most obvious example. Regardless of whether he directed the exact violence on Capitol Hill that day—which delayed, and came dangerously close to denying, the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president—Trump welcomed it. For weeks before, he encouraged a legal strategy of fake electors and promoted false allegations of voter fraud. His plans to remain in office could best be executed if Congress were hindered in performing its constitutional duty.

Violence was part of the scheme, because it could buy him time to interrupt the proceedings, sow confusion, and perhaps intimidate Trump's noncompliant vice president, Mike Pence, into fleeing the Capitol.

But the specter of violence was hardly new. From a presidential-campaign announcement that portrayed the U.S. as a victim of Mexican aggression, to a dark inauguration speech that described “American carnage,” to his use of social media to direct outrage toward elected officials and reporters who dared to get in his way, Trump understood how to whip some of his followers into a frenzy.

Trump may seem irrational at times, but he is also a sophisticated student of incitement. His verbal technique promotes violence while allowing him plausible deniability.

---

“Be there, will be wild!” he said on Twitter in the run-up to the January 6 riot. His language is intended to make its targets, including not only elected officials and judges but often just civil servants or average citizens, feel uncomfortable, defensive, vulnerable.

Concerns for jurors’ safety are commonplace in criminal trials involving mob figures. Kaplan was presiding over a civil trial. Yet even before the verdict, Trump was using his media platform, Truth Social, to attack the proceedings as a witch hunt. “The greatest witch hunt of all time,” he declared after the verdict. Hunt is an evocative term; it suggests that you are either predator or prey.

Without overtly saying so, the judge was telling the jurors in the civil case: Don’t be prey. To allow yourself to be identified might gain you 15 minutes of fame, but the downside could be a whole lot worse.

(Ironically, Kaplan was speaking in easily deciphered code, much as Trump does.)

Kaplan surely knows that the Manhattan judge who will oversee a criminal trial against Trump has faced threats. Trump has already promised to appeal Carroll’s victory, so perhaps Kaplan was speaking obliquely to avoid some future challenge to his objectivity. But Kaplan wasn’t being paranoid; he was acting pragmatically and cautiously, and he asked the same of the jurors.

“If you’re one who elects to speak to others and to identify yourselves to others, I direct you not to identify anyone else who sat on this jury,” Kaplan said from the bench. ”Each of you owes that to the other, whatever you decided for yourself.”

The jurors have one more public duty: They have a continuing responsibility to protect others and, by extension, the sanctity of a jury trial protected by our Constitution. Because that, like many other processes that enshrine our democracy, is under threat.

Ari's Outrage

Ari Fleischer, W's press secretary, says on Fox News that Republicans should retaliate for what they see as unjustified persecution of Donald Trump: 

Here's what I hope happens, Sean. I hope conservative prosecutors in rural areas of America indict Bill Clinton, indict Hillary Clinton, indict Hunter Biden.

He doesn't elaborate as to just what terrible crimes they should be indicted for. Who cares? Just indict them!

"Paid What They're Worth"? I Don't Think So.

This is a video (4 minutes, 24 seconds) attached to a tweet (or is that an X?) by Robert Reich, Clinton's Secretary of Labor. I like this quote, near the end, about inherited wealth:

The biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history will occur over the next 25 years, as the richest 1.5% of Americans hand down some $36 TRILLION to their children and grandchildren. This doesn't make those heirs superior: It makes them lucky.

The idea that everyone is "paid what they're worth" has proven to be a cruelly effective way to put the blame on workers for not getting ahead — while giving the rich and powerful cover to rig the game for their own benefit.

Don't buy it. pic.twitter.com/kckQuOjZ2w https://t.co/yN0omnYZ6p

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 25, 2023

Frightening

Frank Luntz, Republican pollster: "This is the most alarming political ad I've seen this year."

Here’s a reaction, Frank. This is horrific, a set of despicable lies that will incite violence. What Russians produced it? And who helped them from inside this country? https://t.co/SWMtJjVdNI

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) July 25, 2023

Politics Girl - "Amazingly Inspirational Woman"

 

Amazingly inspirational woman who is reminding us to do better https://t.co/rhjNYULe5X

— Teresa Szczepaniak (@Teresa_LS) July 23, 2023

Ocoee Massacre (Orlando, FL), 1920

Click here for the Wikipedia article on "Ocoee massacre."

I had never heard of it until today. I caught a snippet of a TV news clip a couple of days ago that mentioned another massacre similar to the Tulsa massacre of 1921 (Black Wall Street) -- which I had never heard of until about six months ago. 

The Ocoee massacre was a mass racial violence event that saw a white mob attack numerous African-American residents in the northern parts of, Ocoee, Florida [a suburb of Orlando]. The massacre took place on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential electiion. 

By most estimates, a total of 30–35 black people were killed in the violence. Most African American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out of town by the threat of further violence being used against them. Thus, Ocoee essentially became an all-white or "sundown" town. The massacre has been described as the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history".

The attack was intended to prevent black citizens from voting. Black people had essentially been disenfranchised in Florida since the beginning of the 20th century. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year.

In November 1920, Mose Norman, a prosperous African-American farmer, tried to vote but was turned away twice on Election Day. Norman was among those working on the voter drive. A white mob surrounded the home of Julius "July" Perry, where Norman was thought to have taken refuge. After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots, killing two men and wounding one who tried to break into his house, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County. The mob laid waste to the African-American community in northern Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. They took his body to Orlando and hanged him from a lightpost to intimidate other black people. Norman escaped, never to be found. Hundreds of other African Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions.

"Most of the people living in Ocoee don't even know that this happened there", said Pamela Schwartz, chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, which sponsored an exhibit on it. For almost a century, many descendants of survivors were not aware of the massacre that occurred in their hometown.

Then there's the incident of National Guard troops opening fire on students demonstrating on a university campus in 1968 -- 3 killed, 28 injured. 

Did you just assume I was referring to Kent State? No, that was 4 killed, 9 injured, and it happened in 1970. Surely the whole world knows about Kent State, when the National Guard opened fire on students demonstrating, an incident immortalized in this picture:

 

And in Neil Young's song, Ohio:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Tulsa, Ocoee, Orangeburg -- these things aren't well publicized, are they? I wonder why that is?

Republican Values

I originally said this as a joke, but on reflection, I came to believe it's true:

The core of Republican economic policy is this: The poor have too much money and the rich have too little.

It's Robin Hood in reverse.

Here's Jon Stewart with something along the same lines:

Who else thinks Jon Stewart would be an outstanding Senator? Drop a 🩵 and RT if you agree! pic.twitter.com/GLmtV00dEb

— Rob Bon Vivant🌊 (@77SunnyAndClear) July 22, 2023

And here's the body of a tweet later the same day from Robert Reich:

Why is it that when progressive policies that help the bottom 90 percent are proposed, the question always seems to be, "How will you pay for it?" But when the top 1 percent ask for bailouts, tax cuts, and subsidies, the question always seems to be, "How much do you need?"

Quora Question Answered: The Fall Of The GOP

 This is a question posed on Quora:

How do you explain the high proportion of Republicans that are utterly devoid ethics, morals, decency and lack perceptible dignity and integrity? They seem to have an abundance of liars and fraudsters. E.g., Lindsey Graham asking for dead bodies!

 And here's the answer:

The rot started a long time ago. This didn’t start with Fatso45. Not at all.

In fact, Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Republican who once ran for president, predicted what we are seeing now

[1]

:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

It started back in 1964, after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the parties divided along racial politics. One side endeavored to expand rights for people, the other side, stuck in tradition, did not. And the people who were against change like women’s rights, minority rights, gay rights, and were for the Vietnam war led a campaign against those who wanted that change.

Damn. He really nailed it, didn’t he?

That’s when we started to see all the talk about people on the left being communists, immoral, unAmerican, etc. That’s when the right started all the talk about feminism being immoral as women started coming into the workforce and Roe became the law of the land, allowing women to exercise control over their reproductive systems and sex lives by being able to obtain abortions legally for the first time along with legal and widely available birth control. When we saw all the talk about blacks being criminals and taking jobs from whites with the advent of affirmative action. When nonwhite immigrants were accused of taking jobs from the white man or after 9/11, being terrorists. When we saw war protesters, many of whom were young draft age white men who refused to go to war, left the country to avoid it, protested it, dressed weird, listened to rock and roll, and stopped going to church/taking up nonChristian beliefs like Buddhism and Hari Khrisna as immoral and anti-American. But the Republican party had enough people running the party and government who were housebroken enough to contain the worst actors to the fringes of the party and to moderate the opposition to the forces of change.

But the fringe wasn’t going to stay there. Oh, no. Not when you think your cause is righteous. and destruction is imminent if you lose.

It took off with right wing radio in the 80s and 90s, most notably by Rush Limbaugh. They started spewing caustic, racist, sexist talk designed to gin up the working class white population, mostly men. Together with people like Newt Gingrich in the House, the right started to talk about their opponents on the left as enemies of America. Evangelical Christians also saw these changes as a moral threat to America’s soul as well, particularly the changes to women’s rights, increasing acceptance of sex outside of marriage, and gay rights, and joined hands with the fringe element to become a key voting bloc called the “Moral Majority”. The Moral Majority gave people like Gingrich a moral shield to what he was doing—when Clinton was impeached by the House he led, Gingrich’s affair with his now wife, Callista, that was going on at the same time was essentially ignored by that same group of Christians who condemned Clinton for his affair. All Gingrich had to do was say he was a practicing Catholic, quote some Bible to them, and that was all those Christians needed to hear—all was forgiven as long as he could take out the hated Clinton and stop the Democratic agenda.

The left was painted by people like Limbaugh as well as the Moral Majority and their representatives in Congress as being a mortal threat to America and that they had to be stopped before judgement rained down on this country. Limbaugh in particular became the poster boy for the right, even acting as a kingmaker in political circles—if you pissed him off, you literally could lose your political career, and if you wanted one, you have to sound just like him and if you could, be a regular guest on his show. Sound familiar?

Then Fox News added to the chorus being sung by the right regarding the left being anti America and pushed the narrative that the mainstream media was being run by leftists who were out to get “traditional America” and could not be trusted. With Fox pushing the right wing narrative against women’s rights, minority rights, and more and more, LGBTQ rights, and the growing belief among the conservative base that all other media could not be trusted, Fox became the go-to network for the right, with all of the stars in the right wing political universe making appearances on their shows. Other right wing talk shows sprung up as well to reinforce/establish the right wing media universe and world view.

All of this talk rested increasingly on twisting the truth and reducing the arguments to simplistic, belligerent “us vs. them” scaremongering talk and bumper sticker policy that was easy for the Republican base to understand and for politicians to campaign with. And as time went on and the right wing media became more entrenched and widespread, twisting the truth evolved into outright lies about the Democrats and their agendas and beliefs as well as war talk. And that talk angered and frightened a greater proportion of the mostly white, rural, churchgoing/traditional values crowd who lapped it all up. Those hosts were speaking to everything they believed, and they started voting for people who were willing to reinforce their beliefs about a new America that was out to get them—an America that was made up of nonwhite, nonChristian/atheist, and women who didn’t want to marry young (or at all), birth baby after baby and stay at home (and thanks to Roe, they didn’t have to anymore). An America that if taken over by Democrats, would kill them and drive America to the very gates of hell if we, the righteous, don’t stop them.

Well, when you start talking about your opponents as being a threat to you and your country, and you have leaders who twist the truth or outright lie about them, and you are frightened that your country will be harshly judged by God if you don’t get things back the way they were before 1964, you start getting the mindset that it is “all hands on deck”—whatever it is you have to do to stop your country going down the drain, you do. Whoever is on your side is your friend, and we aren’t going to care what kind of person you really are because you believe like I do. And if the people leading you into battle are ginning you up on lies and twisted versions of the truth and a dark view of America under your opponent’s rule, and you therefore support them because you think they are the last wall between you and destruction, well, you are already on the road to hell. You’re not going to really care too much about what those people who are leading you are really doing and saying as long as they are fighting by your side for your very soul.

But up until the advent of the Tea Party in the late 2000s, the Republican establishment and apparatus were still able to keep the housebroken members in the top offices and to put a lid on the crazy. People like Mitt Romney, John Boehner, John McCain, George H. W. Bush were still in control at the highest levels of government, and they tamed/tamped down/ostracized a lot of the more feral members. But the Tea Party managed to send a significant number of these feral Congressional members to the House to the point where they made up a major part of the Republican caucus and could no longer be stuffed in a box. They made Speaker Boehner’s life hell, hell to the point where he and Paul Ryan, his successor, just couldn’t govern their caucus. Both Boehner and Ryan eventually ended up resigning as Speaker and left politics altogether. In all likelihood they knew that what they were seeing was the likely future of their party, and they refused to continue to deal with it.

The firewall just couldn’t hold for much longer. With each election the base was becoming more and more radical, more and more wanting to push back against the changes they saw, ginned up by all the forces I’ve talked about above. And eventually the dam broke—with John McCain’s and Mitt Romney’s losses to Barack Obama, a black man with a funny name running the country, the right wing sphere went into overdrive, casting Obama as a Muslim and not as American as they were because he had a Kenyan father and blaming McCain’s and Romney’s losses on them not being real Republicans—a RINO.

After that loss in 2012, it was on. The base, after eight years of Obama, and getting drunk on right wing lies, doomsday talk, and racist talk about Obama from Fox, right wing media, Republican politicians, and conservative Christian leaders, did not want any more McCains or Romneys—they wanted fighters, brawlers.

Enter Fatso45.

He was as crude and direct spoken as they were. He talked in simplistic language and made threats to people. He called Democrats and other establishment Republicans names and he said all the stuff they were thinking about women, immigrants, minorities and gay people. He sucked up to the Christian right with his talk about appointing judges. And he was a rich man, a household name, with a pretty wife so he must know what he is talking about. He sounded like Rush Limbaugh, someone they had long supported and loved. The fact that he was a crooked businessman, had been married three times and had cheated on all of his wives didn’t matter.

By the time Fatso came on board, the base was ready to take whoever would beat back “the left”. And you know the rest—it’s been turtles all the way down since. The base looked the other way or cheered outright when Fatso started crapping like a diarrhetic Christmas goose all over the law and the Constitution and what most people would consider decent behavior—all the stuff they would have lynched Obama for had he done even a tenth of what Fatso did.

Since the housebroken people have now largely been drummed out of visible politics on the Republican side there are no more adults in the party to check this stuff. Those that used to be considered traditional Republicans like Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Mitt Romney are keeping quiet—they don’t want to lose their seats or invite threats or harassment from the base like Liz Cheney did. It’s a feral, feces throwing, free for all over there with the radical members holding people like Kevin McCarthy hostage—McCarthy is now doing the two step with ferals like Majorie Taylor Greene, Matt Geatz, Paul Gosar, and others in order to become Speaker. Anyone who wants to run for office, even a clown like Santos who literally lied his way into office and will be seated as a Congressional member while McCarthy, the putative Speaker, looks the other way has a place in today’s Republican party.

It’s sad that there is nobody in the Republican world that is just willing to just say, “STOP!”. The Republican congressional leaders are leaving it largely to non-Republicans to do a job they should be doing—exposing this rot and cleaning it up. But not only are these leaders refusing to do that, they condemn anyone, Democrats or Republicans who aren’t down with Fatso and his crowd who try to insert some saneness and standards back into the equation.

But as I’ve shown, it’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Our buddy who we started this off with, Goldwater in the 60s saw it coming. It just took a while. Would that the Republican party heeded his words:

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. ”

So, the upshot is, the TLDR is,

For at least 60 years, the Republican party was primed to accept any soldier they could find who would advance their goals: to wipe out the Democrat/progressive portion of the country and restore America to what it was pre-1964 when white, straight, Christian men had all power in all corners of American life and everyone else had to shut up and salute. When you are at war, you take any body you can, and that is what the Republican party is down to now: If you are on our side and will help us fight, we don’t care what you are and when you do something you shouldn’t do or you are outright criminal, we are going to defend you or just look the other way if we can’t defend you because we need you for battle.

Simple Photo Editor

I got this from Bob Rankin: 

Click here for Pixlr, a free photo editor. 

Anxiety!

I can open this, but maybe it's because I have an Instagram account; I hope others can too.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Happy Faces Goal™ (@happyfacesgoal)

21st Century Labor Wars

Click herefor a post by Robert Reich entitled "The larger meaning of the Hollywood strike."

It's labor v. capital -- and capital has an overwhelming advantage.

Consider: Stock gains this year have been concentrated among five giant digital firms: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. Their combined market capitalization is now over $8 trillion, a figure that exceeds the GDP of every country but the United States and China.

Netflix’s Reed Hastings got a 2022 compensation package worth $51.1 million, up 25 percent from the year before. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO got $39 million. Comcast’s CEO, $32 million. Paramount’s CEO, $32 million. Disney’s CEO, $24 million.

Amazon’s Bezos and Meta’s Zuckerberg are raking in more than all these executives combined.

Meanwhile, the people who create the content are getting shafted. They have less and less bargaining power.

I’m talking about writers, designers, artists, musicians, software designers and developers, photographers, graphics specialists, coders, sound engineers, animators, singers, songwriters, architects, showrunners, journalists, and everyone who stores or delivers these creations.

Over the last decade, the pay of TV writers has fallen by 23 percent. The typical actor has also been on a downward escalator (last year, averaging $26,276). So have the pay, benefits, and job security of most other content creators.

In other words, what’s happening in Hollywood is also happening in a huge and growing portion of the U.S. economy.

This gap between the declining rewards going to digital creators and the soaring rewards going to the executives of the giant corporations that manage digital creations has become a chasm, and it’s becoming ever larger.

The Biden administration has been fighting valiantly for the little guy -- the most labor-friendly administration since FDR's --  but look at the 6-3 Supreme Court. Don't expect many victories for minorities, women, or labor for a couple of decades at least.

I Agree With Marjorie Taylor Green!

She thinks this is an attack on Biden:

Who said people can't change? @RepMTG just gave a glowing endorsement of President Biden. pic.twitter.com/1EqifCfRPE

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 17, 2023

Prescient

Barry Goldwater, (1909-1998), was a five-term US Senator, the Republican Party nominee for President in 1964. He was a Major General in the US Air Force Reserves. 50 years ago, he was worried about what he called "the Religious Right" --at the time, they were calling themselves "the Moral Majority" -- and their ever-tightening grip on the Republican party.

 

Smart words to ponder: pic.twitter.com/Dwr9JxwzgE

— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) July 13, 2023

And Goldwater continued:

There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'

Statement by Rosa Parks on Clarence Thomas, 1991

STATEMENT OF MS. ROSA PARKS
On the Nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas
To the United States Supreme Court
September 13, 1991

     Without a doubt, Judge Thomas has achieved remarkable
success in his career, raising himself up from humble beginnings
to the nomination for the highest court in the land.  That is to
his great credit, and I applaud him for it.

     Yet I have to believe that his confirmation to the highest
court in the land would not represent a step forward in the road
to racial progress but a U-turn on that road.  The record and
rhetoric of the man leaves me little confidence that his
confirmation would in any way help address the profound racial
problems and divisions that drag our country down.  His
statements on the Brown v. Board of Education case on
affirmative action, and even on Roe v. Wade, to me indicate
that he wants to push the clock back.

     African Americans I believe want to have confidence in the 
promise of the courts; we want to believe that they are a place
we can turn for redress of racial discrimination and many
deprivations that are still clearly rampant in our country.  The
Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education
instilled in us that hope nearly forty years ago, as did many
others that subsequently followed.

     Yet much has changed in recent years.  The Supreme Court now
appears to be turning its back on the undeniable fact of
discrimination and exclusion, ruling that anti-discrimination
laws and remedies have gone too far.  I believe that Judge Thomas
will accelerate that trend, and that will be destructive for our
nation.

Click here for the Wikipedia entry on Rosa Parks (1913-2005).

Great Tweet By Robert Reich: Union Participation and Income Inequality

 

The share of the national income going to the super-rich was lowest when union membership peaked.

It's not about economics. It's about power. pic.twitter.com/XX1lubl4qF

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 8, 2023

Sotamayor and Jackson v. Affirmative Action Decison

Click here for the text of the dissenting opinions by Justices Sotamayor and Jackson to the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard lawsuit, a 6-3 decision by which the radical conservative majority ended the 50-year policy of affirmative action.

It's 98 short pages; Sotamayor's is first, and Jackson begins on page 70.

Just What We Need.

Click here for an article at Business Insider article entitled "New assault rifle being sold to civilians is twice as powerful as the AR-15 and capable of shooting through bulletproof vests, report says."

That's the Sig Sauer MCX-SPEAR.

The gun fires bullets with twice the kinetic energy of those from an AR-15 has a longer range, and has a noise suppressor that could make a gunman harder to locate, the outlet reported.

Lovely. Let the fun begin.

Yes, Jill, This Says It All

This says it all! pic.twitter.com/kb1SmXMQbv

— Jill Wine-Banks (@JillWineBanks) July 7, 2023

Donald Trump: American (would-be) Tyrant

From Steve Schmidt, Mitt Romney's campaign manager in 2012 and a solid Republican -- until Trump took over the party.

"The greatest threat our country faces is that our republic will fall to a tyrant. Donald Trump is the tyrant and there should be no mistake about that."

More on why the Democratic Party is currently the most important institution in America: https://t.co/rdMUgtjmWb pic.twitter.com/GgimqVookp

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) July 7, 2023

A Software Engineer's Thoughts On Elon Musk

I truly believe this is one of the most important things anyone has ever said about Elon Musk. The quote below summarizes perfectly how much his presence in the public sphere wastes everyone’s time and is on many occasions profoundly dangerous as well as premeditatedly dishonest. pic.twitter.com/EGefe1z0Dl

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 18, 2023

Robert Reich's Graph: Income Inequality

I'd like to draw your attention to the point on the graph at 1980 -- the election of Ronald Reagan.

 

Since the pandemic, the top 1%’s share of income is at a record high.

Folks, this is unsustainable for our economy and democracy. pic.twitter.com/7VdXak4r9O

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 18, 2023

"No Labels" Is Not An Anodyne Bipartisan Organization; That's a Masquerade

Click here for an article at Raw Story by Thom Hartmann entitled "The 'No Labels' agenda is more disturbing than you know."

Historians and futurists tell us that we are moving into a new era, a Fourth Turning. It certainly feels that way.

But the people who have been in charge the past few decades — particularly Republicans on the Supreme Court, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and the Republican Congresses associated with them — have so rigged the game that it’s going to be a real challenge to dislodge the corrupt systems they’ve put into place.

The article concludes:

Can we overcome the damage the corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have done to our nation with their twin doctrines of corporate personhood and money-as-speech?

It turns out that Supreme Court opinions aren’t carved in stone. Congress can change and regulate the Court (as I detail extensively in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America). It’s a big lift, but Congress can also simply pass laws that, in most cases, can reverse Supreme Court decisions.

It’s thus within the power of Congress — if it can overcome the corruption injected into it by five Republicans on the Court — to undo much of the damage of Citizens United and the Court’s preceding decisions that set the stage for it.

Our best recent shot at doing this was the For The People Act, which would have reversed large parts of the Citizens United decision and publicly funded federal elections. But a handful of billionaires poured their cash into the coffers of Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin — and every single Republican in the Senate — and the legislation, which passed the House, died at the hands of a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

It’s still possible, if Democrats take a large enough majority in state houses this November and at the federal level next year, to pass that legislation or something like it and begin the process of reclaiming our democracy from this corrupt Supreme Court and the billionaires it has handed our country over to.

If we fail, America will almost certainly devolve into a full-blown oligarchy like Trump’s beloved Russia, and our democratic experiment will be suspended for another generation and perhaps irretrievably.

The stakes have never been higher. If ever there was a time to engage in politics, this is it. Spread the word.

 

Charlie Pierce: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid

 Click here for an article by my favorite columnist, Charlie Pierce, at Esquire, entitled "The Basic Idea of Self-Government Is at Stake," subtitled "The New York Times has produced a truly scarifying piece of reporting that leaves no doubt what's at risk in courtrooms right now."

And yes, Charlie's English is fine; he's referring to a Bart Simpson bit when he uses the word "scarifying." 

His opening paragraph:

Rest assured, there are already plans in place to turn this country into Argentina under Galtieri, if not Chile under Pinochet. The New York Times has produced a truly scarifying piece of reporting that leaves no doubt what's at stake in courtrooms right now, and at the polling stations all over the country in 2024. It is no exaggeration to say that what's on the line is not only the American democratic experiment, but also the basic idea of self-government itself.

He inflicted great harm on the DOJ and the FBI during his disastrous term of office, and he promises to do much worse if reelected: "He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power." He claims that Trump "simply took existing conservative policy prescriptions and applied them crudely and stupidly because he is, well, crude and stupid."

Pierce says: 

The most powerful conservative think tanks are working on plans that would go far beyond “reforming” the F.B.I., even though its Senate-confirmed directors in the modern era have all been Republicans. They want to rip it up and start again.“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of the conservative movement since the Reagan years. He added, “Small-ball reforms that increase accountability within the F.B.I. fail to meet the moment. The F.B.I. must be rebuilt from the ground up — reforming it in its current state is impossible.”

“The F.B.I. has become a political weapon for the ruling elite rather than an impartial, law-enforcement agency"? Utter nonsense; in fact, the opposite of the truth. The FBI is (basically) an impartial law-enforcement agency, and Roberts, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the Republican cabal are determined to make it into "a political weapon for the ruling elite" -- namely, them.

 

 

Trump's Indictment

It All Began With The Powell Memo ...

The corporate takeover of American politics was rapid and ruthless.

In the 1970s, I watched as thousands of corporate lobbyists descended on Washington. Fast forward to today, and lobbying has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

It all began with the Powell Memo. pic.twitter.com/3tG35qI29h

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 1, 2023

Robert Reich On The U.S. Minimu Wage

Federal minimum wage in:

2009: $7.25
2010: $7.25
2011: $7.25
2012: $7.25
2013: $7.25
2014: $7.25
2015: $7.25
2016: $7.25
2017: $7.25
2018: $7.25
2019: $7.25
2020: $7.25
2021: $7.25
2022: $7.25

The result: It's now worth 41% less today than it was in 1968.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) May 28, 2023

Thoughts and prayers ...

Brett Cross, father of a child killed in Uvalde, Texas, testifies in a committee in the Texas legislature:

🚨🚨🚨Holy shit: A father of a child who was killed in the Uvalde school shooting SLAMMED Texas legislators for their “useless thoughts and prayers.”

Brett Cross boldly testified in front of a Texas House committee in support of legislation that would raise the minimum age to… pic.twitter.com/W1tWGWssCq

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 24, 2023

This is a tweet by Kevin M. Cruse, an excerpt from the "Southern Strategy" chapter of his book, Myth America.

Seeing how @tedcruz has completely dodged @AOC's question about "what happened to the parties after [1964]?" I'll go ahead and post the answer from my Southern Strategy chapter in MYTH AMERICA. https://t.co/lgxahv92Wd pic.twitter.com/TrZpT02CCm

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) May 23, 2023

Firefox Features

Click here for an article at How-To Geek entitled "10 Firefox Features You Should be Using."

I learned how to use Firefox's screenshot feature, but there are other interesting ones as well.

Trump: A British perspective

This is an answer by Andre Lieven on Quora to the question: What is your unedited opinion of Donald Trump? Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" 

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response: 

 "A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. 

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. 

 Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. 

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down. 

 So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. 

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

Jack Nicholson Oscar Award Speech, 1975

Happy birthday JACK NICHOLSON - 86 years old today! When he won a BAFTA for Chinatown, he accepted the award from the set of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. It's one of the great acceptance speeches. pic.twitter.com/AIO9P2plt7

— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) April 22, 2023

Prescient 2016 Article By Neocon Robert Kagan

Click here for a prescient article titled "This is how fascism comes to America," by Robert Kagan, first published in the Washington Post on May 18, 2016, six months before Trump was elected president.

Kagan is a neocon who cofounded PNAC with Bill Kristol, and I'm not a big fan -- but he got this one right.

This article was reposted on April 22, 2023, by another neocon, David Frum. While Frum is an ally as a solid anti-Trumper, he's an unreformed "conservative" whose ideas I take with a healthy dose of salt. Of course, he's famously the author of the ridiculous term "axis of evil," which he claimed was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

Kagan writes: 

The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.

What is Trumps appeal?

But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.

It's all about devotion to a single leader:

Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how.

The power of demagoguery:

In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox Dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. [e.g. John McCain]

Kagan concludes:

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac "tapping into" popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

The thing that has saved the United States is that Trump is as stupid as a box of rocks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Reich On The Debt Ceiling, April 2023

Click here for an article by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, entitled "Disinformation about the debt ceiling."

At a speech at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy affirmed the Republicans’ plan to use the rapidly approaching debt-ceiling deadline to extract spending cuts and other policy concessions from President Biden. Put simply, they plan on holding the American (and world) economy hostage. Yet the media continues to hide this truth behind its “both sides” reporting.

Reich cites three myths commonly published not just on the right, but in the mainstream media:

Myth #1: Both sides are to blame.  

Myth #2: The fight is over controlling the national debt.  

Myth #3: When it comes to the national debt, both parties have been fiscally irresponsible. 

Reich goes on to debunk these three myths. 

Click here for an article at Pocket entitled "The Best Writing About Punctuation. Full Stop."

There are articles entitled "A History of Punctuation"; "I Stopped Using Exclamation Points and Lost All My Friends"; "How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen"; "The Virtues of the Semicolon; or, Rebellious Punctuation"; "The Commas That Cost Companies Millions"; "Can You Tell An Author's Identity By Looking at Punctuation Alone?"; "The Em Dash Divides"; "The Mysterious History of the Ellipsis, From Medieval Subpuncting to Irrational Numbers"; "Elitist, Superfluous, Or Popular? We Polled Americans on the Oxford Comma"; "Kill the Apostrophe!"; "Definitive Ranking of English Grammar Punctuation"; "The Best Grammar and Punctuation Books"; and "Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation."

Patricia Nilsen, Superstar!

Click here for Patricia's Facebook page commemorating the "Fearless Stenographers Conference" in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 13, 2023, and her second-place finish (to Mark Kislingbury) in a five-minute speed test -- at 320 words per minute!

She also won the regular speed contest, placing first in the Jury Charge and Literary portions and coming second in the Q&A. Fantastic!

Tennessee, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida - The Slide Toward Fascism

Click here for an article by Robert Reich at Substack entitled "Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party?"

I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity toward authoritarianism. Okay, fascism.

I thought the election of a Democratic judge, tipping the balance in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, was a gigantic win for the Ds -- but that may not be the case:

While liberals celebrated the election on Tuesday of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court because she’ll tip the court against the state’s extreme gerrymandering (the most extreme in the nation) and its fierce laws against abortion (among the most stringent in America), something else occurred in Wisconsin on election day that may well negate Protasiewicz’s victory. Voters in Wisconsin’s 8th senatorial district decided (by a small margin) to send Republican Dan Knodl to the state Senate.

This gives the Wisconsin Republican Party a supermajority — and with it, the power to remove key state officials, including judges, through impeachment. Several weeks ago, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Protasiewicz. Although he was then talking about her role as a county judge, his interest in impeaching her presumably has increased now that she’s able to tip the state’s highest court.

There's a lot more, and it's scary.

 Reich concludes:

I don’t believe Trump alone is responsible for the birth of modern Republican fascism, but he has legitimized and encouraged the vicious rancor that has led much of the GOP into election-denying fascism.

Susan Boyle's Audition, "Britain's Got Talent," 2009

If you haven't seen this, it'll knock your socks off.

Randy Rainbow On Trump's Indictment

Click on the "Watch on YouTube button": definitely not safe for work.