This is not limited government, folks. This is social control. Republicans have a particular ideology and are determined to impose that ideology on citizens holding different views and values.
This is not about freedom, either. Just the opposite: It’s Republicans denying people their freedoms: The freedom to be safe from COVID. Freedom over their own bodies. The freedom to learn the truth about our history. The freedom to vote and participate in our democracy.
Once, Republicans had a coherent view about individual liberties and limiting the role of government. That’s not to say this ideology was beneficial to the country – far from it. But it was coherent, and they were committed to it. Now, they only want to get reelected.
They are misusing government to advance a narrow and restrictive set of values — intruding on the most intimate acts, and banning what’s necessary for people to exercise their most basic freedoms.
This is not mere hypocrisy. The Republican Party now poses a clear and present threat even to the values it once espoused.
Why doesn’t Congress get anything done? Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Bills like –
The Freedom to Vote Act,
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,
The Equality Act,
Background checks for gun sales,
Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act,
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
The Build Back Better Act.
The list goes on…
So why aren’t these crucial bills getting a vote in the Senate? Because the filibuster makes it impossible.
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All told, the House passed over 200 bills since the start of 2021 that have not been taken up in the Senate. Everything from investing in rural education to preventing discrimination against pregnant workers to protecting seniors from scams – bills that have real, tangible benefits for the public; bills that have widespread public support.
So don’t believe the media narrative that Congress is trapped in hopeless gridlock and
both sides
are to blame. One chamber of Congress, led by Democrats, is passing important legislation and delivering for the people. But Republicans in the Senate, and a handful of corporate Democrats, are hell-bent on grinding the gears of government to a halt.Why are Senate Republicans doing this? Because their midterm strategy depends on it. Republicans are blocking crucial legislation so they can point to Democrats’ supposed inability to get anything done, and claim they’ll be able to deliver if you give them majorities. Don’t fall for it.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling and allowed Alabama’s egregious gerrymandered Congressional map to remain in place.
There’s no reason to sugarcoat this. Across the country, Republican state legislatures are using extreme gerrymandering to cement their power for decades, and the window to stop them is closing fast.
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Senate Democrats must use every tool at their disposal to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act before the GOP rigs their way back to power in the midterms.
Know the truth about how we got into this gerrymandering mess - and what we can do to get out of it.
Our best shot at saving our democracy is right now. It’s time to act.
As I’ve considered the real lesson of January 6, I’ve been prompted to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month.
When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States.
But in more recent years I’ve come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It’s a Wonderful Life” speaks to what’s gone wrong and what must be done to make it right.
As you probably know (and if you don’t, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie’s central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall’s building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel’s counsel turns him homeward.
It’s two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter’s social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”
In George’s view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”
When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.
It’s a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that’s fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?
Soon after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.”
The FBI report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”
This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army.
The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration.
Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won’t join together to claim it back.
What would Republicans say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter and you know who.
The in-house Republican battle over the repeal of Obamacare is about to boil over as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are engaged in an increasingly sharp war over words over their disagreements on how to proceed forward with the promised repeal and replace of former President Obama’s signature legislation.
Paul has been waging a war against the House GOP Obamacare repeal and replace plan since even before it was given to the public. Calling it “Obamacare Lite,” Paul has lambasted not only the bill, but his fellow Republicans for their less-than-diligent attempts at getting rid of the unpopular healthcare law. This time, he turned his attention toward Ryan, who has been the bill’s primary spokesman.
“I think that Paul Ryan’s selling [Donald Trump] a bill of goods that he didn’t explain to the President, and the grassroots doesn’t want what Paul Ryan is selling,” Paul told CNN. …
As the battle continues between the conservatives and GOP leadership, the faith of the voters hangs in the balance, according to the conservatives. Paul believes that should the GOP pass “Obamacare Lite,” Republicans will pay for it come election time. Duncan wrote in the Daily Signal that should the bill pass, voters “will feel betrayed.”
If that is true, then winner of the struggle between Paul and Ryan may determine the GOP’s future momentum.
162 years ago today, the Republican Party was formed under the oaks in Jackson, Michigan. The purpose was to advocate for liberty and freedom for all people, a fight that continues to this day. 2016 is a critical year for the future of our nation and our state. As Ronald Reagan said, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
We are the Party of liberty, of freedom, of opportunity, and we need your help to move onward and upward, providing a better America for future generations. Go to www.migop.org and let us know what you’re willing to do to join our fight for freedom.
I want to introduce you to two Nazi terms, Jugendverführer and Jugendverderber: “seducer” and “corrupter” of youth (see: “groomer”). These stereotypes depicted a figure who lured young people into the “epidemic” of Weimer queer and trans communities.
‘Conflating queer/trans with pedophilia helped Nazis rally support for their genocidal policies. In 1935, they changed existing German anti-sodomy law to make it illegal to even “act” queer (whatever that’s supposed to mean). It was all in the name of protecting (Aryan) children.
‘After passing these new laws, Nazis revoked trans peoples’ gender recognition cards. They began arresting sex workers and drag queens. By 1936, they were rounding them up en masse for labor camps. Again, this terror campaign was in the name of stopping supposed “Jugendverderber.”
‘We still have time to combat these anti-queer policies and beliefs. Even if it seems unbearable, knowing they would love to end us, we must continue to fight back. Groomer discourse has a deadly historical grounding we must pay more attention to while speaking out against it.’
It seems the US Republican Party has lost all sense of decency, as it is now doing its best to destroy the lives of all LGBTQA people. They are terrorizing transgender kids in particular .
(No, this is not “unnecessary strong language.” This is exactly what they are doing.)
They have now expanded their war to LGBTQA people in general, using the old tactic of insinuating that queer and trans people are grooming and seducing kids to be queer.
It is time for good Americans to fight back
I must admit that I am more than a little disappointed in the moderate conservatives of the US, as well as the centrists and left wing progressives.
While the right wing extremists are threatening the very democracy of the US, and states like Florida and Texas become increasingly Fascist, the decent part of American politics (which remains the majority) seems unable to counter-attack in any efficient way.
Michigan Senator Mallory McMorrow shows the way
This is why I liked the way Michigan Senator Mallory McMorrow replied when a when a Republican colleague implied she was a “groomer.”
Earlier this week, McMorrow — a Democrat representing Michigan’s District 13 — was mentioned by name in a fundraising email from Sen. Lana Theis (R-22) that accused McMorrow and her party of child abuse. “Progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake) […] are outraged they can’t teach can’t groom [sic] and sexualize kindergarteners,” the email read, warning parents of teachers who were supposedly introducing “gender bending indoctrination” to children and “stealing their innocence” with sexual material.
On Tuesday, McMorrow hit back with a blistering speech in the Senate chamber that struck at the core of Republican bigotry, and almost immediately went viral.
“I realized I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful, scheme,” McMorrow said, addressing Theis obliquely, “because you can’t claim you’re targeting marginalized kids in the name of ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up to say ‘no.’”
McMorrow presented her own bona fides as a “straight, White, Christian” woman whose faith is based in service, referencing examples set by her mother and Father Ted Hesburgh, whose religion led him to help construct the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Call me whatever you want […] I know who I am,” McMorrow said. “I know what faith and service means, and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win.”
“The Culture War” has become a war against culture
The Republican extremists are right when they say that there is a culture war going on. They have, like Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary and the TERFs in Britain, declared war on all the progress we have seen in recent years as far as marginalized groups are concerned.
You do not negotiate with evil. If we have learned anything from the war in Ukraine it is this: You do not try to placate Fascists. You fight them with everything you’ve got. And in this case you rip off their masks and show the world their true nature.
I refuse to believe that the majority of Americans want to turn back the clock to a time when it was OK to erase the identities of trans and queer people.
Our organizations, representing nearly 600,000 physicians and medical students, firmly believe the trusted relationship between a physician and their patient should never be jeopardized by the actions of policymakers, and a physician should not be criminalized or penalized for providing care.
Our organizations have consistently opposed any legislation or regulation that interferes in the confidential relationship between a patient and their physician and the provision of evidence-based patient care for any patient. Patients must be able to discuss health issues like reproductive care, family planning and gender-affirming care with their trusted physician to determine together what care is best for them.
We reiterate that all patients must have access to evidence-based, comprehensive medical care, and that physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their education, training, and experience. This includes reproductive health services and information and gender-affirming care.
We are deeply concerned that legislation and legal opinions across the country will endanger patients and clinicians by allowing private citizens and policymakers to interfere in health care decision-making. The patient-physician relationship, not politics, is the backbone of medicine.
is that white supremacy is a far-right ideology . It’s a white way of life birthed in the white community, regardless of politics, and upheld by those who are vocal for it and silent about the social construct of racial hierarchy they created through white terrorism in countries they conquered through slavery and slaughter or fixed white dominance of power in Europe.
Democratic president Andrew Johnson paused on Black Americans from receiving their land and financial repair (reparations) for chattel slavery (an increasing debt till this day to be paid) before opening up the floodgates to Black Codes and Jim Crow, which never ended just evolved. Republican president Ronald Reagan funneled crack cocaine into Black American communities leading to crack babies and the wave of mass incarcerations.
Democratic president Bill Clinton signed that 1994 (Mass Incarceration) Crime Bill and created the racist ASFA Act that led to the still-standing epidemic of Black American children being removed from their homes for any reason, overwhelmingly to be placed into white homes after kidnapping and child trafficking CPS, and putting the biological families through umpteenth hoops to get them back, if ever. Harts, anyone? Republican president Richard Nixon poured heroin into Black American communities before coining the “War on Drugs” and ushering in mass incarcerations.
Political parties don’t matter. They’re the same mothafuckas.
The GOP establishment hasn’t been so much pro-Trump as anti-anti-Trump since his nomination. They drooled at the stolen Supreme Court pick and decided to go all-in, hoping Trump wasn’t everything that they said he was during the primaries and what everyone else said he was since he started campaigning. The man holds positions that, until last year, were anathema to many of the party’s traditional platforms.
(Note: this is not an endorsement of their traditional platforms, nor is is saying Trump isn’t right-wing.)
Part of the reason for their hitching their horses so firmly to a wagon that should otherwise have ended up on the Island of Misfit Toys is the stark polarization of politics that happened when some black dude slaughtered them on the way to two terms in the White House. The Tea Party took over the GOP with the position that the best defense was a good offense and that truth was irrelevant in politics. Ever since, any defense of conservative issues as being the better answer was all but abandoned in favor of the demonization the left by any means necessary. When some of those means were morally repugnant, rather than the honest defense that it was a minority of bigots who were being repugnant, they decided to attack the accusation and thus normalized bigotry.
(One can argue over the warp and weft of GOP bigotry but that’s a collateral issue.)
Bigotry is ugly, as we see with the ass-clown on that Texas beach and his crying mugshot, and it is powerful. When people in fiction warn against meddling with powerful forces you don’t understand, this is the kind of thing they are talking about. Bigotry has a way of wresting control away from those who would seek to harness it. The GOP decided bigotry was a useful tool against the Obama administration and it led DIRECTLY to Trump and the preposterous distortion of conservatism we’re seeing in power now.
(This isn’t to say they weren’t bigoted before, but that their bigotry was less overt.)
The GOP is engaged in political bull-riding and it’s praying to God it manages 8 seconds because THIS bull is known to gore those it throws.
“Though the US and a few other failed states had all the information that led functioning societies to react appropriately, of course not all was entirely clear. That could hardly have been possible in such tumultuous circumstances. Like others, leading US health officials had some uncertainty about what exactly was happening and how best to handle it. Nevertheless, it was possible to take effective action, as shown by the record of governments that have some concern for their citizens. US intelligence and health officials understood more than enough. Through January and February, they were trying to get through to the White House, but Trump was too busy watching his TV ratings. In the style of petty dictators, he […] surrounded himself with sycophants or comical figures. So, nothing from them. Or from the Republican Party, now trembling in fear of the crowds that can be mobilized by Trump and his corporate sponsors.
"When some dare to inject a little rationality into administration discussions, they quickly learn their lessons, like the physician in charge of developing vaccines who was dismissed in April [2020] for warning against one of the quack medicines that Trump was advertising.
”‘Down with intelligence! Long live death!’“
–Noam Chomsky, “COVID-19 Has Exposed the US under Trump as a 'Failed State,'” in The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), 263
When people band together and use their citizenship, the citizen is the most powerful institution there is. Most people don’t really realize that, and there is an interest in maintaining that ignorance. No other institution has a greater interest in maintaining that interest than Political Parties.
Political parties are dedicated to themselves. The party, whichever one it is, is the top of…
(Washington, D.C. - TNFN) Totally Not Fake News has confirmed through sources that President Donald Trump plans to unveil the Republican’s latest compromise plan to ease the immigration problem. Known as the Work Will Set You Free act, undocumented workers will be allowed to remain with their employers while the government works on their deportation.
“Too many illegal immigrants are detained and jailed at taxpayer expense,” Trump will say in his speech, “all while waiting for deportation proceedings. The delay can last weeks or even months. This will help cushion the blow to our economy by allowing the aliens to remain with their employers. They would be responsible for their own room and board, and we will even offer job placement for aliens currently in detention. There are plenty of menial jobs at prison-labor rates that can really improve the quality of life for these criminals.”
The plan will also save money because rather than government employees keeping tabs on compliance, the government will employ other illegal aliens as Keep America Productive Officers who will insure that those enjoying these privileges are both good employees and stay where they can be found when it’s time to deport them.
“Everyone’s happy: employers are given notice and a timetable for finding replacements, government is kept smaller, the taxpayer saves money on program costs, and the illegal aliens themselves return home with some money in their pockets,” said plan architect Richard Spencer, “Everyone’s happy!” he reiterated.
