They respond by being even more extreme and punitive

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been talking about what it was like to be in the Capitol during the insurrection. Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported on it:

“I thought I was going to die,” the New York representative stated to more than 100,000 viewers. In the video captioned “What Happened at the Capitol,” Ocasio-Cortez also talked about being a survivor of sexual assault, compound traumas, spirituality, her belief that being told to “forget what’s happened” without even an apology is the same tactic abusers use, and that these stakes are about more than just a difference of opinion; it’s about “basic humanity."

A big reason why Republicans are circling their wagons around the nasty guy, according to David Neiwert of Kos, is because of Republican voters.

It’s becoming much clearer why Republicans in Congress are so reluctant to acknowledge factual reality—such as the reality that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly, or that Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked Congress and ransacked the U.S. Capitol—and have doubled down on their embrace of anti-democratic disinformation that fueled the insurrection. If the Republicans dare admit any of it is real, they risk the insane wrath of the millions of GOP voters out there who have wholly swallowed all that false Trumpian propaganda.

Neiwert’s evidence for this is what the state parties are doing to those who don’t uphold the lies. His list is long. There are, of course, GOP members who keep the crowd stirred up to keep themselves in power. And there are news outlets that do the same to keep their dollars flowing. In contrast, Walter Einenkel of Kos reported thousands of voters across many states that are changing their party affiliation away from the Republican Party. He lists 10,000 in Pennsylvania, about 6,000 in North Carolina, 4,600 in Colorado and similar counts in many other states. The Democratic House leadership is quite annoyed with the incendiary comments of Marjorie Taylor Greene. They said the GOP leadership has three days to remove Greene from committee assignments. If the GOP doesn’t the Dems will. I’ve heard they are preparing the bills to do just that. It would force the GOP members to go on record whether they approve of Greene’s behavior, though that’s not enough. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that Greene tweeted:

If Democrats remove me from my committees, I can assure them that the precedent they are setting will be used extensively against members on their side once we regain the majority after the 2022 elections.

Clawson wrote:

But make no mistake, this is a typical Republican response. The threat is always out there that if Democrats respond to Republican extremism, Republicans will respond by being even more extreme and even more punitive. Democrats bring a knife to a gun fight, metaphorically speaking, and Republicans are so outraged that Democrats didn’t bring a spork that they use it to justify bringing a grenade launcher. So the threat here is that if Democrats take Greene off a committee overseeing education because she mocked the deaths of children in schools, Republicans will use that as an excuse to strip, say, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of her committee assignments just for being herself.

Greene also accused many Republicans of being too wimpy. Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted:

McDonald’s worker in the US: $9/hr McDonald’s worker in Denmark: $22/hr, 6 weeks of annual vacation, a union, 1 year of paid family leave, life insurance and pension. America must join the rest of the industrialized world and ensure that our working class can live with dignity.

Dan Price, whose Twitter bio says he cut his own CEO pay by a million so his workers are sufficiently paid (at least $35/ hour), tweeted:

So to recap we told people to stay home for the last 325 days and gave them $1,800. That's $5.54 a day. Meanwhile, they pumped about $3 trillion in to the stock market for corporations, which then turned around and did record layoffs anyway.

Meteor Blades, in his night owl column for Kos thinks Biden should go on a hiring spree. Yeah, there are lots of open positions because the nasty guy gutted so many government departments. Blades quoted Eleanor Eagan of the Revolving Door Project, writing for The American Prospect, who wrote the size of the government hasn’t kept up with the size of the population. There aren’t enough of such people as workplace inspectors and tax auditors. It’s one reason why the government fumbled recent crises. There is a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. States that join it agree that their Electoral College vote will divided according to the state’s popular vote, rather than winner take all. This is as close as we can get to a true popular vote until the EC can be repealed. The compact won’t go into effect until states with a combined 270 EC votes join the compact. So far states with a combined EVs of 196 have joined. Stephen Wolf of Daily Kos Elections reported we might be stuck there for a while. Virginia just withdrew a bill to add their 13 EVs to the pot. Nevada’s attempt was vetoed by it governor and Maine rejected their bill (NV would have added 6 and ME 4). And that could be all for a while. There are no more states with Democrats in complete control of the state legislature. And Republicans see that the EC gives them an advantage. Black Lives Matter has been nominated for next fall’s Nobel Peace Prize! A nice start to Black History Month. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported the nomination came from Petter Eide, a member of the Norwegian Parliament. Eide explained his nomination to NewsNation:

I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality. Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. In the United States alone, an estimated twenty million people have taken part in Black Lives Matter protests, and millions more have made their voices heard all over the world. This illustrates that racism and racist violence is not just a problem in American society, but a global problem, including Sweden.

Other threats get the privilege of being defused

The Republican Nationalist Convention is thankfully over. The nasty guy gave an acceptance speech in which he droned on for more than an hour – the only acceptance speech longer than this one is the one he gave four years ago.

Kos of Daily Kos summarized it this way:

So we’ve had a convention where half the time they pretend Covid-19 never happened, touting job numbers that are long obsolete, woefully out of date. The other half, they’re claiming that only Trump can save us from the problems that were created in Trump’s America.
…
Republicans just spent four days proving that they are incapable of crafting a message that frees their president of culpability for the state of the nation.

Kos included a tweet from Joe Biden:

President Trump doesn’t want a second term. He wants a do-over.

And one by Zach Schonfeld:

Every RNC speech is like "This dangerous national unrest that is occurring now, three years into the Trump presidency, will NOT happen when Donald Trump is president."

Even with a snooze of a speech from the nasty guy, and the one from the vice nasty guy wasn’t much better, there were alarming things in this convention. I’ve covered many of the illegal things. Here’s an alarming thing, tweeted by Leah McElrath:

Trump’s daughter is speaking from behind the Presidential seal.

This isn’t an accident.

They’re trying to normalize nepotism and lay foundation for a fascist dynasty.

Michael McFaul listed several other alarming things – methods, messages, and symbols that autocracies use. Some of them:

* Cult of personality.

* Government resources for personal electoral gain (yeah, he used the White House as a backdrop).

* Blatant disregard for law and for facts.

* Us v. Them populism, though populist leaders have little in common with “the people.”

* The opposition is the “enemy of the people.”

* Good tsar v. bad boyars. The leader’s problems are because of bad regional managers.

There is one important difference. We still don’t know the outcome of the election.

Jen Hayden of Kos reported that some people who attended the RNC convention in person have already tested positive for the virus.

In another tweet McElrath quoted Aaron Rupar:

"The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order" -- Kellyanne Conway makes a case that the killings of peaceful protesters will benefit Trump politically.

McElrath responded:

Authoritarians create the conditions for chaos and violence to enable them to justify oppression the name of law and order.

This is textbook authoritarian rhetoric.

(Remember when I used to do “Authoritarianism Alert” at the bottom of tweets and was ridiculed as an alarmist?)

Greg Sargent tweeted a thread with a link to an article from the Washington Post:

The extraordinary juxtaposition on Tuesday night -- open lawbreaking combined with an invented narrative in which Biden and Dems are the corrupt party -- showed a GOP that has unshakable confidence in its ability to act with utter impunity.
...
Trump is using levers of government to illicitly hold power:

* Lawbreaking at convention

* Senate Rs manufacturing fake Hunter/Ukraine probe

* Bill Barr downplaying 2016 Russian sabotage

* Intel officials muting truth about Russian meddling right now

In a sense Trump campaigned in 2016 on his own corruption: All politicians are crooked, so elect me; I'll break rules for *you.*

Media treats this as populist grandstanding.

But now we need to be clearer. Trump is trying to hold power via illicit means.

McElrath tweeted, discussing either the nasty guy campaign or the RNC (it makes no difference):

They aren’t worried about swaying American voters because they aren’t intending to win the election in a legitimate way.

All of this is for him.

And his cultists.

That’s why they’re creating a false reality. They’re speaking only to him and those who live within his delusion.

Andrea Chalupa tweeted a bit from what Hillary Clinton told Joe Biden:

Don't concede if the election is close.

She added this is going to drag out.

Imani Gandy tweeted:

if trump is reelected, he’s likely getting four more SCOTUS appointments.

Breyer and RBG won’t make it 4 more years. Thomas and Alito might bounce to make room for younger more right wing conservatives.

By 2025, 6 of the 9 justices could be trump appointees.

Marinate on that.

We literally cannot let this happen.

We just can’t.

Those 6 justices will make sure that NOOOOOOOTHING progressive gets done. No healthcare. No Green New Deal. But religious people will sure as hell be able to discriminate against pretty much whomever because religious freedom.
...
With Biden we have a way forward. We don’t have a way forward with trump.

Progressive policy will be dead on arrival until 2065.

Trevor Noah of The Daily Show commented on the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Blake was hit in the back by seven bullets and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Noah commented that wild animals on the loose get less lethal treatment, and added.

I never thought I would wish for Black people to be treated at least like a wild bear, but here we are.

After Blake was shot there were, of course, demonstrations. A 17 year old proto supremacist came to Kenosha with his guns and shot three people, killing two. Noah said:

It made me wonder, it really made me wonder why some people get shot seven times in the back while other people are treated like human beings and reasoned with and taken into custody with no bullets in their bodies.

How come Jacob Blake was seen as a deadly threat for a theoretical gun that he might have and might try to commit a crime with, but this gunman who was armed and had already shot people, who had shown that he is a threat, was arrested the next day, given full due process of the law, and generally treated like a human being whose life matters?

How did Dylann Roof shoot up a church, James Holmes shoot up a movie theater and both live to tell about it? Why is it that the police decide that some threats must be extinguished immediately while other threats get the privilege of being defused?

I'm asking these as questions, but I feel like we know the answer. The answer is that the gun doesn't matter as much as who is holding the gun. Because for some people, Black skin is the most threatening weapon of all.

Jen Hayden of Kos reported the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team decided that the situation in nearby Kenosha was no time for sports. They sat out their Wednesday game. The other NBA teams followed suit, as did Women’s NBA, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer. The Bucks called on the Wisconsin state legislature to reconvene to deal with police accountability and brutality. The football season hasn’t started (and, depending on the virus, may not). The Detroit Lions canceled Wednesday’s practice, as did the Indianapolis Colts.

A game was about to start between the Mets and the Marlins baseball teams. The Mets were already on the field. As the first Marlin approached the batting box both teams came out of their dugouts, formed lines, took their hats off, and held a long moment of silence. Then both teams walked off the field, leaving a Black Lives Matter t-shirt covering home plate.

Well done.

The flavor of support

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has a long history of social activism. The company has declared its support for Black Lives Matter through a tweet. They said, “Choosing to be silent in the face of such injustice is not an option,” and asked readers “to join us in not being complicit” in devaluing black people.

Since B&J is known for puns in the flavors of their product – they honored Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead with Cherry Garcia – a few tweets in support of B&J proposed new flavors: Cherry-it Tubman, Underground Rocky Railroad, Rainbow Coalition, Thurgood Marshmellow, Rum & Raisin Awareness, EmpowerMint, and No Justice – No Peach.



Back in 2008 Hillary Clinton did an interview with Philadelphia Gay News in which she promised to include global LGBT rights as an active part of foreign policy. She kept that promise, though as Secretary of State instead of President. She also promised to speak with the paper again if she became the Democratic nominee.

Eight years later she kept that promise too, though writing an op-ed rather than doing an interview. Clinton calls for the passage of the Equality Act and says we must address the ongoing violence against LGBT people.

Donald Trump was offered space to write an op-ed. He declined.

Black lives, black votes

A couple weeks ago I quoted this phrase from D.R. Tucker:

It’s simply not enough to declare that black lives matter; black votes must matter, too.

He was saying to make sure black lives matter we must make sure that black voters have unimpeded access to the voting booth and are encouraged to use their vote.

Terrence Heath turns it around:

Black votes matter, because black lives matter.

You want the black vote? Care about black lives. The black vote could determine the Democratic nominee and also the next president. Black voters are not going to turn out for the GOP candidate in large numbers, but they could stay home thinking it has nothing to do with them. That's why both Bernie and Hillary are paying a lot of attention to black voters. But black voters aren't interested in lip service. Tell us how you intend to improve our lives and convince us you will follow through once elected. So far, neither Bernie nor Hillary have made the "true and radical shift in their thinking" that will excite black voters and leadership, though there are signs they are on their way.

Democrats had been very careful about policies to improve the lives of blacks because they didn't want to alienate the white working-class voters. But with shifting demographics, that is a much smaller issue. The GOP faces the flip side – alienate too many people of color (something they appear very good at) and there won't be enough white voters to win.

Pay raise

A couple things from Washington Spectator:

D.R. Tucker, in a Speaker's Corner article, writes about race. His last sentence sums it up well:

It’s simply not enough to declare that black lives matter; black votes must matter, too.

Sarah Anderson of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has an editorial about who needs a raise. The rich like to say increasing inequality just happens. This is one way it "just happens."

At General Electric, CEO Jeff Immelt closed his company’s worker pension plan in 2011, substituting it with a riskier 401(k) plan. Immelt’s company-sponsored retirement assets have ballooned to more than $82 million.

Yeah, it is as simple as the CEO cutting the compensation of the workers and being rewarded with a big raise for doing so.

This discussion came up in WS because Social Security has said there will be no cost of living increase in 2016. Inflation on the economy as a whole may be close to zero, but seniors don't benefit from dropping gas prices and are hardest hit by increasing prices on medications.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has responded with a Seniors and Veterans Emergency Benefits Act (SAVE Benefits Act). It would give seniors a much needed boost. Retirees, not CEOs, need a raise. To pay for it the act would eliminate unlimited tax deductions for stock options and other "performance based" pay.

The chance of getting through Congress? Slim. Increased inequality "just happens"? No, there are specific policies that make it happen.

Coming from the grassroots

Sarah van Gelder, writing for Yes! Magazine, lists six trends of 2015 that she suggests could be at a turning point in America and in the world.

* Leadership in the health of the climate is coming from the grassroots – activists resisting dirty infrastructure projects, such as mines and pipelines, and state and local ordinances for carbon taxes and against fossil fuel infrastructure. It helps that the drop in oil prices means it isn't such a good investment and that there has been a boom in renewables.

* Black Lives Matter is changing hearts.

* Bernie Sanders has forced the power of Wall Street and inequality into the national debate.

* The politics of vilifying and scapegoating people is running out of people to vilify. Gay people? Mormons march in the Utah Pride. Black folks? South Carolina took down the Confederate flag. Immigrants? Political advisors warn both parties that the Latino vote is critical. Muslims? Beyond the GOP extreme Americans are standing with their Muslim neighbors. Who does that leave? Women. Sigh.

* Yeah, American actions made a mess of the Middle East, but Americans now see it as a quagmire. That prompts a much bigger conversation. What is the global role of the US military? What happens when we reduce our use of fossil fuels and no longer rely in Saudi Arabia? It is a discussion worth having.

* America is turning away from the prison state. Both Dems and GOP are looking for ways to reduce and avoid incarceration.

Showing America it has a big problem

Terrence Heath reports on the accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement.

* The Mapping Police Violence project documented who was killed by the 60 largest American police departments. 41 of the 60 killed blacks at a rate higher than their black population. 14 of these departments killed only blacks. High levels of violent crime did not correlate to likelihood that police would kill.

* The movement is challenging Democratic candidates, telling them clearly do something about this situation or we'll stay home on election day. Don't assume we'll vote for you because the GOP is so unwelcoming to us. Bernie and Hillary are listening and now speaking. The movement knows they will get a chilly reception in the GOP, so isn't wasting time there.

* They are asking candidates to support a specific 10 point plan that includes such things as community oversight of the police, limit the use of police force, use of body cams, demilitarization of police, and end for-profit policing (where the police dept. or the court system fund their budgets through fines).

* They are changing public opinion. A Pew poll in 2010 found 17% of respondents said racism in America was a "big problem." This year that number is 50%. Up through last year an average of five police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter every year. This year it was 15.