If it were harder to buy a senator

In this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation (available to donors) hosts Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior talked for 51 minutes about the disaster CNN Town Hall with the nasty guy. I mentioned this yesterday. The hosts called this a “snuff film” or a Klan rally. It’s a snuff film in that it was all about supremacists (the audience) watching another supremacist (the nasty guy) beat up someone (the female host Kaitlan Collins) they believe should be beneath them. CNN knew exactly what they were doing and very much intended the result they got. Collins isn’t an innocent lamb led to slaughter – she has a background in Fox News and knew her job in this disaster. Yes, CNN leadership did it for the money (though TV viewership was low). They also did it because they want the supremacy the nasty guy is peddling. This means CNN isn’t all that different from Fox News – well, there is a little difference in that CNN occasionally does real reporting. Chalupa and Kendzior also discussed how this whole mess could have been prevented if the leaders of the Capitol attack were brought to justice. They haven’t because Attorney General Merrick Garland was installed to run out the clock to make sure they aren’t. In some cases the statute of limitations (I have no idea for which crimes) has or is about to run out. Bringing them to justice should be important because it will be very easy to stage a second coup in January of 2025. Republicans know they can’t win on votes and they’re working to make sure they don’t need to win on votes. The hosts have been saying over several years that Biden and Congressional Democrats had two years to protect democracy. They didn’t. And now we see they can’t. Sigh. As much as I appreciate the warnings that Chalupa and Kendzior put out I had enough and stopped listening at 39 of the 51 minutes. In a tweet from three weeks ago Ben Franklin quoted Cheri Jacobus:

There is only one reason why Merrick Garland hasn’t indicted Trump, his insurrectionists in Congress, and his thug allies. And it’s not because he’s still dotting i’s and crossing t’s. The truth is too horrible to accept and his cheerleaders lulled you into complacency. #gullible

Franklin added:

In the weeks after the Jan 6, when nothing was done to punish the high level plotters, the nature of the Biden administration became clear. There was no sense of danger, no sense of urgency, ultimately no meaningful action. Everything since has been a variation on this theme. Merrick Garland is giving Trump all the space and legal protection he needs to continue the authoritarian takeover, just like everybody else, and he’s doing it because that’s what Biden wants him to do.

As much as I like what Biden has done, it is the things he hasn’t done, like this, that cause me to be suspicious of him. Back at the end of April I discussed a report from the end of March about the money companies make in administering the Republican rules that one must work to get food assistance benefits. That report was reported by Krissy Clark on the NPR program Marketplace. Yesterday, Clark was back with another segment on the rich getting richer through administering work requirements laid on the poor. Much of the segment repeated the points made earlier, though it started off with a new one: Those companies have been lobbying Republicans in other states and at the federal level (see the demands around the debt limit) to institute work requirements so their business will grow. This is a case where the rich have yet another an incentive to keep poor people poor. Adam Jentleson wrote a book about the racist history of the filibuster and why it needs to be eliminated. He is now Chief of Staff for Senator John Fetterman. He recently tweeted about hearings of one of the recently failed banks.

John Fetterman just asked the Silicon Valley Bank CEO if there should be work requirements for CEOs who crash banks and dear reader, I almost fell out of my chair.

He almost lost his seat because Fetterman added that line on the spot. It wasn’t a part of hearing prep. Ryan Burge is an American Baptist (not Southern Baptist) pastor and creates graphs about religion. White Evangelicals (those Southern Baptists) are seen as a big force behind conservatives and the Republican Party. But Burge has the graphs to show the group most active in politics, most likely to donate to and volunteer for campaigns is atheists. They are closely followed by Jews. Also towards the top are Agnostics, Buddhists, and mainline Protestants. Then there is a gap before we get to the next bunch, which includes White Evangelicals. Michael Harriot tweeted:

All 10 largest Protestant denominations in America are the result of schisms within their denominations Nine of the schisms were over racial issues

The 10th, the Lutheran Church, split over LGBTQ issues in 2009. The United Methodist Church is currently undergoing a split over LGBTQ issues. The predecessor denomination, the Methodist Church, did split over racism, though I think that was back in the 1840s. The two parts reunited in the 20th century (I don’t remember when) though the black churches and black pastors were treated separately until the United Methodist Church was formed in 1968. Harriot mentioned all that at the end of a thread. I had long known that many churches use “First” in their names. When my family lived in Ohio we attended “First –” churches (though I just found out the one we attended in Cleveland has closed). When we moved to Michigan we attended a “First--” church, though it renamed itself after the community. There have been several others I and my siblings attended in various cities. But why did so many churches in so many communities named themselves that way? And why does Detroit have Second Baptist and Second Grace United Methodist? Harriot explains it all. The “First” church is the white church, the “Second” church is the black church. Sometimes one is across the street from the other. Black people knew this and when moving into a city knew to look up “Second” church. And Harriot contends most white people don’t know that. I didn’t. Signe Wilkinson tweeted a cartoon showing a young man with several guns holding a sign that says “2nd Amendment.” A woman with a toddler says:

I so agree! To which well-regulated militia do you belong?

The Hoarse Whisperer tweeted a meme:

It would be harder to buy a gun if it were harder to buy a senator. The real ‘concealed carry’ is half the senate being in the NRA’s pocket.

A couple days ago Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about debt ceiling hostage situation. I mention it not so much of the status of the negotiations (which would be pretty much out of date two days later), but on the discussion of the consequences of default. First, payment to people – federal employees would not receive a paycheck. Neither would our soldiers. No Social Security benefits. No payment for health care services for Medicare. No food assistance, no housing assistance. Those with savings or pensions funded by US Treasury bonds (which is many of us) would miss payments. With these people losing income they stop buying and have trouble with rent or mortgage. Here comes a recession. There is another aspect McCarter only touched on. The federal government has always paid its debts. Defaulting means Treasury notes will no longer be seen as a safe investment. Investors, domestic and more importantly foreign, will turn elsewhere. That will ripple through the world markets and turn an American recession into a global one. And too many Republicans are just fine with that.