Category Archives: History and Politics

Supporting segregation makes you look racist, banning abortion is a moral, conservative Christian duty

Mehdi Hasan lays out the grim history of how determined, organized American reactionaries, realizing segregation was a bad look in the Civil Rights era, galvanized Evangelical Christians behind the religious Catholic doctrine that a fetus, even a one minute old zygote, is a fully formed human life and made opposition to abortion the unifying principle of the extreme right.

Nothing racist about forcing women, even if they’re poor and Black, to carry even a rapist’s seed to term. It’s God’s will, motherfuckers, ask Jesus!

The Scheme to capture the federal courts, part 14

The fourteenth installment of Sheldon Whitehouse’s excellent The Scheme series, outlining very clearly how far right extremists have captured the federal judiciary for preordained political ends, funded with unlimited dark money from undisclosed extremely wealthy reactionaries intent on preserving their privileges at all costs. 

The only shame is that this chillingly true presentation was not made, and widely disseminated, ten years ago, in time for voters and legislators to stop the infernal machinations of dark money funded reactionary zealots, before these fiendishly determined motherfuckers won their long war to turn back the clock and protect their own rights at the expense of everyone else’s.  

Joe Manchin casts vote to sink legislating Roe, along with all 50 MAGA senators

John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina who held many important positions including being the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832, while adamantly defending slavery and protecting the interests of the white South. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states’ rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South’s secession from the Union in 1860–1861

Remind you of anyone?

In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states’ rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs.

The John Birch Society is the current GOP

The John Birch Society was, at the time of its creation in 1958, the lunatic fringe of the far right. Formed by several wealthy right wing businessmen in a rage against the “activist” Supreme Court that unanimously declared segregation of public schools unconstitutional, Birchers believed this communist judicial activism was leading us down a slippery slope toward “forced integration”, integrated labor unions, full rights for women and other abominations of majoritarian tyranny. Movement conservatives steered clear of these rich extremists who saw commies everywhere, pulling the strings, making intolerable outcomes happen — like forcing whites who honestly hated Blacks to send their children to school with… you know. The lunatics who started this paranoiac right-wing interest group (which is still alive today, google these insane funsters) included wealthy fossil fuel baron Fred Koch, admirer of Mr. Hitler and father of American far-right titan and architect of the modern Republican party, Charles Koch. They’ve come a long way since 1958, taking over the Republican party with the vitality of their big ideas, as Heather Cox Richardson explains:

In Michigan, Republican Ryan Kelley, who is running for governor, has openly attacked the idea of democracy. “Socialism—it starts with democracy,” he said. “That’s the ticket for the left. They want to push this idea of democracy, which turns into socialism, which turns into communism in every instance.” Kelley’s distinction between “democracy” and a “constitutional republic” is drawn from the John Birch Society in the 1960s, which used that distinction to oppose the idea of one person, one vote, that supported Black voting.

In turn, the Birchers drew from the arguments of white supremacists during Reconstruction after the Civil War, who warned that Black voters would elect leaders who promised them roads, and schools, and hospitals. These benefits would cost tax dollars that in the postwar South would have to be paid largely by white landowners. Thus, white voters insisted, Black voting would lead to a redistribution of wealth; by 1871, they insisted it was essentially “socialism.”

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Democracy, a dirty, slippery slope down to providing equal rights and equal protection of the law to everyone. Where does this decadent slide toward socialism end? Socialized medicine, a so-called right to affordable health care in the richest nation in human history? Making billionaires, who made two trillion in pocket change during the pandemic, pay more than 8% tax on that money? Jesus, socialism is un-American, as anti-American as anti-fascism and the millions of unhinged “woke” maniacs protesting when one black guy, with a criminal record, no less, gets accidentally killed by four cops. God save our flawed vessel king! Who are you gullible dummies going to believe, the fake news or Jesus Christ Himself?

Nice presentation on how the right took over the Supreme Court

Spend unlimited amounts of money on non-profit right wing think tanks, create dozens, if not hundreds. The opinions emerging from these think tanks will then be disseminated through the mass media and often dominate public discussion of the issue at hand. Employ the brightest partisan lawyers you can find, to craft court cases to change the law to what you want it to be. Spend millions on learned amicus briefs that give the Supreme Court all the learned arguments and citations they need to overturn any inconvenient precedent. Vet your nominees to the federal bench to ensure loyalty to the judicial principles you inculcate in your judicial fraternity.

When a nominee has an openly partisan history like Kavanaugh’s, hide thousands of pages of compromising legal writings that could be used to question his judicial integrity. When credible accusations about his past behavior and candor are made against him, have the FBI open a five day investigation and make sure all tips that come in, 4,500 we’re told, are routed directly to the lawyer for the White House who is determined to get him appointed – none reach the FBI. Don Fucking McGahn had one job as White House counsel, to get as many Federalist Society judges as he could on the Supreme Court. He pushed Gorsuch and then Kavanaugh. Two for two. Don McGahn, American patriot and hero of authoritarians. This piece is an excellent short course in how the right-wing ecosystem works, how it attains and consolidates power.

Heather on right-wing voter suppression since 2000

The steps to totalitarian control by a small, determined minority are always the same. First, end “majoritarian tyranny” and the “coercive state” by limiting the right to vote to your supporters. It is helpful to control advertising and media prior to elections by spending billions to make sure your supporters vote the right way. The US Supreme Court, by a one vote majority, has approved both of these techniques, ruling that enforcement of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and that anonymous donors can spend unlimited amounts to influence electoral outcomes. In each state, we have legislatures, so-called independent state legislatures, that march to the same drumbeat of social control. Here’s the Florida version, going back to 2000.

Good old fashioned invidious disenfranchisement in de land of cotton. Supreme Court Federalist Society majority holds that politics is not de business of de Supreme Court, no suh!

Liberal journalistic “restraint”

As though everything that happens in the world must be seen through a strictly partisan lens. See if you can spot my objection to this paragraph in an otherwise excellent analysis of the many crimes of Mark Meadows.

On the call, the president told Raffensperger: “I just want to find 11,780 votes” to win the state. That has led Democrats to assert that Trump was seeking to interfere with an election.

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You dig, in the name of “fairness” we, the liberal media, have to suggest that only Democrats claim this call to pressure the man responsible for certifying the twice recounted election results in a state Trump lost, by 11,779 votes, could be seen, perhaps, as an attempt to interfere with an election.

Read or listen to this detailed, well-researched exposition Inside Mark Meadows’s final push to keep Trump in power and see if you can explain to yourself why Merrick Garland is so squeamish about having it never look political, as though holding an unhinged enabler of an unhinged maniac responsible for his illegal actions is a political position. As Democrats allege, of course… while Meadows and his co-conspirators defy subpoenas, lose, appeal, obstruct justice and/or plead the Fifth ten times a minute, Democrats have claimed. . .

Come on, “liberal media”

I’ve got a lot of bones to pick with the NY Times, though they do excellent and important investigative work from time to time.  Their default position seems to be that whatever benefits Wall Street is more or less good for our well-educated readers and there’s no point to seem one-sided in balancing the grim and desperate needs of the oppressed and the ongoing bright prospects of the perpetually challenged well-to-do. 

The Grey Lady often does this balancing in a somewhat subtle manner, which makes it look like cranky caviling to take issue with it much of the time, though once a while something obvious jumps out and punches me.  Like the headlines they post, amplifying right wing talking points, on the same day government reports come out highlighting the success of any one of Biden’s several major economic initiatives. On the same day the US economy reported another record month for job growth, the Grey Lady offered this on page one:

Nobody at the NY Times has access to google?   Five seconds with that arcane search engine and you discover that Biden, in spite of cheery jobs numbers, low unemployment numbers, infrastructure repair jobs booming and other good things he has done against determined, sometimes insane opposition, may not have all that much to do with Worldwide inflation.

Read the Times headline, against the backdrop of brutal anti-Biden propganda in the FOX infotainment universe and you come away thinking not only has Biden jeopardized the economy of the US with run away inflation, he’s fucked just about every other wealthy country too!   Check out the damage he’s done!

A few seconds on Google, and you have the beginning of a more nuanced, realistic picture of global inflation

Belgium 8.3%

Brazil 11.3%

Canada 6.7%

European Union 7.8%

Germany 7.4%

Hungary 8.5%

India 6.95%

Mexico 7.68%

Netherlands 9.7%

Poland 12.3%

Spain 8.4%

UK 7%

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There are lower inflation numbers in Scandinavia and other places, Japan 1.2%, Afghanistan is doing fantastic (relative to inflation, that is), with only 1.56%, and higher ones, 16.7% in Russia, 13.7% in Ukraine, 69.97% in Turkey, but the US numbers are not out of line with inflation in other wealthy nations in the aftermath of a massive global disruption due to a deadly pandemic.   We are also aware of the unimaginably gigantic windfall profits the richest individuals and corporations raked in during that same deadly period.   Oh, well.  Biden may be doing some things right, against tremendous odds, but… look at that fucking record inflation he is causing!  Everywhere!!!