You Are What You Eat

 

You know, I would have bet anything that being Donald Trump's vice president, if nothing else, would involve eating a lot of shit. After all, he did try to get the last guy lynched. That said, I realized that JD Vance was just the guy for the job. Try to spin Trump's oddball pronouncements into something normal. Be willing to do anything for love of Trump. It's not that I like JD Vance--far from it.  

It's just that he has a very particular set of skills. 

So when Elon Musk has a racist manboy resign over making some very racist social media posts, we can see JD Vance fix his purty mouth to do that thing he does:

He "obviously disagrees" with the idea that marrying outside of your race is abhorrent and anti-Indian hate should be normalized--I assume? So says the JD Vance bio. But this is a kid, and his social media activity is "ruining a kid's life?" 

A 25-year-old posted that last year, player. 

History is Looking at Us

 

Vice President Harris: The patriots at Normandy, Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall… They did not sacrifice only to see us cede our freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. In 7 days, let us turn the… pic.twitter.com/oCrGbk4EAg

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 30, 2024

This isn't about crowd-size or partisanship: do we believe in the arc of history bending towards justice? Do we believe in justice flowing like a river?  Do we believe in this nation, conceived in liberty, shining like a city on a hill? Do we believe in the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Do we believe in the faith of our pilgrim fathers there was a promised land for them? Do we believe that women matter? Are we here for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? And one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? 

Are we the last great hope of the world? 

Or do we think this country is a garbage can? 

Can we have a better movement than what Trump gave us on 1/6/2021?  Like the movement we always did have? 

The War at Home

 

Tonight on ⁦@11thHour⁩ with ⁦@SRuhle⁩: Kansas City shooter was “…fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line”. Grandson says Andrew Lester influenced by conservative media | The Kansas City Star ⁦@MSNBC⁩ https://t.co/IJivWs9Yxx

— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) April 21, 2023

A kid was shot because he knocked on the wrong door.  A girl got shot because she turned into the wrong driveway.  Cheerleaders were shot because they approached the wrong car. A little girl and her family were shot at because a ball rolled into the wrong lawn. 

I try to not just blame the guns--our violence problem is exacerbated by the availability of guns, but that isn't the whole problem. There is a synergy between some kind of overly defensive mindset, some kind of near-paranoia, and the access to weaponry, that is the problem. Something has gone terribly wrong with the basic American brain that it looks for enemies everywhere.

Our gun-related violence statistics are something to behold. The grandson of Andrew Lester talks about the viewpoint of his grandfather and you almost wonder how such shootings aren't more prevalent. 

Even while I understand how the AR-15 became a fetish for certain people, I don't blame the weapons--not entirely, even though I think we should keep them out of the hands of people who have previous assault charges, domestic violence, and restraining orders against them. That just seems logical to me. But we have a whole narrative, an NRA/gun lobby voice, saying having guns is your masculinity and your freedom. It's a solution to problems. The rhetoric isn't just home defense--it's payback and civil war. 

The fixation on violence as a front line tactic is disgraceful and damaging to civil peace. The gunhumpers who facilitated this POV need to understand their bullshit is why so many progressives want to ban various weapons. 

I get that the thing (any long gun, automated or not, any handgun, anything that goes boom and fires a projectile) is just a tool. But the rhetoric of gun nuts has weaponized the people for the sake of selling guns. 

And the people go off, hurting people and sometimes killing them. And that is not acceptable. 

A Solemn Anniversary and the Ongoing Coup

 

Today, President Biden bestowed one of our nation's highest honors, the President's Civilian Medal, to people who held the line for democracy and the truth regarding the Big Lie in the face of the violence promulgated by the promoters of the voter fraud canard and those who did their part to prevent the coup attempt of 1/6 from prospering. 

His words bear some listening:

And let me close with this.  Eighty-two years ago, on this very day in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address that became known as his famous “Four Freedoms” speech, as he defined America’s place in the world. 

He reminded the American people of, quote, the “strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America.  Things that have toughened the fiber of our people, renewed their faith, and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.”  End of quote.

Eighty years ago, after that speech, on this day two years ago, we were reminded about the most fundamental of things: democracy itself. 

As I’ve said before, we face an inflection point in our nation’s history.  On January 6th, it’s a reminder that there’s nothing guaranteed about our democracy. 

There is nothing guaranteed about our democracy. It's a truth our Founding fathers knew. They knew that the price of freedom (the "part where freedom isn't free") was eternal vigilance (regardless of who gets attributed the sentiment). Vigilance against the would-be tyrants, the demagogues, the inciters of crowds and promoters of smashed windows and shot-up homes.  The space where liberty is safe is where truth can gain on a lie even if the lie had a head start, where honest people don't fall for malarkey even when it comes with side-order of strong-arming, where people charged with the duty to protect and serve understand full well what to protect and who is served by it. That liberty isn't the mad abandon of a ravening crowd, but the peace of any citizen under their fig tree and vine, and none shall make them afraid. 

The saboteurs of our democracy want to anoint themselves as "patriots", and they may very well have the money and the barrels of ink behind them to try and rewrite the near-past to create a kind of "lost cause" mythos where maybe the rioters had a point--but they never did. This was not a Civil War, this was just brainwashed thugs supporting Trump because they wanted a reality show host to have another disastrous term because they don't understand how fucking government works. 

Look at right-wing media, or even just the bullshit going on with the Speaker of the House decision--the coup is ongoing, There is a significant part of the Republican milieu that opposes the concept of good government, democracy, that sees partisanship as a religion and opposition to Democrats as part of a holy war.  

Ideally, we would be better than this. It wasn't necessarily true in FDR's time, and it isn't now.  But we must be vigilant, and we must nevertheless hold the line. Just as these good folks who were awarded today had done. 

UPDATE: In a separate ceremony on the Capitol steps, only one Republican showed up to commemorate the day and the efforts of law enforcement in protecting those members and our democracy.  

And in separate news, Trump is still defaming Ruby Freeman, who had done absolutely nothing to him, and whose safety is impacted by his lying words.

These actions seem very revealing to me. The coup isn't over.

The Driest Eye

 I'm obviously not the intended audience for Kyle Rittenhouse's time on the stand, because in my universe, I would never have entertained the idea that putting him on the stand would necessarily elicit sympathy, so it would have been best avoided. But it certainly happened, and somehow, news stories got written with "burst into tears" or the like in them. 

But I don't see any tears here. He looks like he swallowed a hot chip the wrong way. He looks like he tried for a snot bubble and it came up dry. He even looked over to see if anyone was responding to his "breakdown". And I feel very mean for saying this, and you know what? My eyes are dry, too. 

This kid was in a state that was not his, with a gun he had no right to carry, claiming he was offering medical aid which he wasn't qualified to render, in a place where he knew there was physical conflict which meant possible physical threat, but was scared even though carrying that gun. He chose all the things that put him in this circumstance, and his heavily and genuinely weeping mother helped.

The judge appears to be in Rittenhouse's corner. The farce was capped off by us hearing the ringtone of "God Bless the USA". And he also might have been doing some holiday catalog shopping during the trial. That's how much this guy seems to have already decided how the case should go. He doesn't see the people Rittenhouse slew as "victims"--they are the wrong kind of people to be calling "victims". Implying some people are, well. You know. Fine to kill. 

I wish this opinion was a bit more rare, but I see Supreme Court Justice Alito wondering why people shouldn't be armed on the "crime-ridden" city subways, because obviously, shit is just looking to go down in these big cities. Whoa.  We got us a Bernie Goetz fan here. A guy who doesn't miss an opportunity to watch "Death Wish" am I right? (This is a whole part and parcel of our national gun-toting religion.)

See, my problem with this scenario is when the so-called "law and order" people start waxing heroic about vigilantism and extrajudicial violence, when they are supposed to uphold the Constitution which is actually very much about due process and not--that sort of thing. This is why I wonder with a sinking heart how the nearly all-white jury will look at the killers of Ahmaud Arbery. Will they suppose this was a case of a fouled-up citizens arrest? Once again, we have people, with guns, making decisions they had no authority to make, that even duly constituted authorities can get entirely and regrettably wrong. 

I mean, consider this: in a political system built on a framework holding the innocence of the accused as a value until proven guilty, the fatal result of the Charlottesville free-for-all is that "poor" James Fields' fault lay in being the first to ram a car into protesters before elected officials tried to legalize such a thing. Regardless of those people's rights to do....anything at all, Express their First Amendment rights to speak freely or peaceably assemble.  

And so we get to the conservative/fascist problem: the idea that the the law protects some, but the others can have order. At any price. When do we universally acknowledge the price of order is too high if it comes with violent oppression and valorizes privileged lawlessness? 

Not a minute too soon, if you asked me. 

Things Do Happen in Philadelphia

 

Protesters took to the streets for a second night after officers in Philadelphia shot and killed a Black man who was holding a knife in an encounter city officials say raises questions https://t.co/lHvUfovmkE

— CNN (@CNN) October 28, 2020

I see right wing media focusing on the looters rather than the fact that a mentally ill man armed with only a knife was shot multiple times when, having guns, the police officers on the scene could have taken a bit more time, called for back-up, or found some non-lethal means to subdue the young man. 

If he had to be shot--why not once? Why multiple times? He was killed in front of his mom and people on his block who knew him. No one is congratulating anybody for the looting and vandalism or considering that activity to be great activism--but you can't look at one incident and think you get what the whole dynamic of an area is. 

You can't look at the aftermath and decide that the incident itself was suddenly redeemed because of the response. The entire city isn't being "destroyed". We'll still be here. Riots and looting look bad, there's broken glass and strewn merchandise and things look ugly. There are injuries and conflicts. But it's remediable. Sure. It looks bad. 

 Having a police department that scares the shit out of its citizens is also bad though. The looters and rioters don't represent all of the people here, but I watched several city blocks burn on my tv when I was a kid and realized why some people didn't love cops. Many families here have at least some personal knowledge of brutality or police misconduct. Without respect or a good community relationship, though, how are things supposed to be? When law and order means law for some and order (violently imposed if need be, or even if it doesn't need to be) for others? I don't think it does police any good for things to continue as they are either. 

Beautiful things also happen in Philadelphia, and our problems are not about what party our mayor or our governor belong to--they go deeper and have a lot of history. Viewing this incident solely through a partisan lens, like calling looters "Biden's base" or whatever, dismisses the reality that this isn't what any of us want, it's just what is happening right now. In an America where Trump, who is pro-police brutality, happens to be president. 

Trump's original comment that "bad things happen in Philadelphia" was about, in all honestly, lying about voting here, in order to (further) suppress voting. But I feel like he might seize an unfortunate opportunity to lie about us some more. 

There is a bad dynamic in here also that I think is being encouraged--but Philadelphia is bigger than this mess. We are (despite what Boston thinks) the cradle of liberty. 

This city is not here to be disrespected. 

The US 9th Circuit Court Says "Nope"

In what is definitely a red-face moment for the POTUS, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has allowed the Seattle federal judge's TRO to remain in effect. The reasoning seems to pretty much stay with what I noted about the Trump & Co arguments from the previous: there is no obvious pressing threat from the seven Muslim-majority nations indicated in the EO, and the courts have every right to review the legality of what the order means to accomplish.

In this case, the court found in their decision that the Trump argument regarding what the order was supposed to accomplish probably did amount to a "Muslim ban". You know what? This sort of thing was what Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was talking about when she was referencing the indefensibility of the Muslim ban. The fake urgency about terrorism that Trump has been pushing from the bully pulpit to try and make more people scared enough to think his ban is a great idea? Is what his unconvincing interlocutors KellyAnne Conway and Sean Spicer have dissembled about with references to the "Bowling Green Massacre" and a rather dumb repeated reference to Atlanta--which might mean Orlando, which still doesn't apply, and the equally unconvincing list of "attakers".

Thin gruel, in other words.

So will this go all the way to the Supreme Court? Which is what I think President Trump's odd "SEE YOU IN COURT!" Tweet is about, even though the Ninth Circuit and Justice Robart's courts were also, well, court? Well, it's hard to say if they would take it up, but if they did, I don't think Trump is going to have his 9th man snuck in and at 4-4, the TRO remains. He shouldn't want this to go to the Supreme Court. He should actually try to see if another rewrite will be closer to the Giuliani ideal of being a Muslim ban, but legal.

Also, Trump would need to get a Solicitor General who is a mean sumbitch that wants the job. He picked Chuck Cooper, who decided he didn't want the job. (Because, Cooper explains, he didn't want  dragged through the dirt like his good friend Jeff Sessions, who did get confirmed US AG regardless. But maybe he wondered if there was a limit to what can be defended? Odd, given all that he has.)

(As an aside, although I hate to say this, but from a conservative POV, Ted Cruz would probably be the jawn as a US Solicitor General. He's just a really gifted legal mofo. :shrug: Trump people needn't take my word for anything.)

But until Team Trump gets their shit together, the ban is a "nope". And this is a very good thing.

Tom Hayden Passed

It strikes me as weird that part of my mind always located him in the 1960's. even though I wasn't born then and he went on to do other stuff. Anyway, Tom Hayden was a social justice warrior before that was even a thing, and helped construct what later left activism became. The good, useful kind. Not the dudebro bullshit.  The Port Huron statement still rings a tone to this day. He would have been with her.  I admire his questing and questioning activism. He believed in the ability of peaceful protest to make a difference, and he did make a difference. He lives on wherever people get sold on following their conscience and doing their part. I don't know but that he might have been amused at headlines reading "Jane Fonda's Former Husband Died" as he also understood feminism.

He worked for people. That's the best takeaway. He cared about them. He got what mattered to people. He thought incredibly deeply about it.  And he wanted to do right by them.

What else can anyone do? Let this be his sigil: "If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable." Which I think suffers to express the concept of "getting it" as the whole thing can be "got". Humans strive not from our feeling of security, but because of our deep knowledge that shit can get worse. But out of that negativity arises visionaries. He was one.

The Public Flogging Sentence of Raif Badawi has been Upheld

This editorial from The Guardian basically says everything. As I've noted, blasphemy laws are not about religion--they-re about state power.

I don't suppose I need to point out how I feel about this.

And for the record, I am very interested to know what's in the classified section of the 9/11 report pertaining to Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure how keen we should be on "allies" like these.

Things related and not.

You know--last month there were no war casualties. And that seems so much like progress. 

So because I am a Generation X pessimist, I want to take it back--to where we began--with the Secretary of Defense immediately post-9/11 talking about waging war on Iraq.

With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans. And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL" – the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden. 

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld. 

"Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

How many casualties in the time since? Necessary--y/n? I say, "No." This was a clusterfuck of Cheneyian proportions. The hawks done f-ed up.

What say you all?

This Land Was Made For You and Me and LGBT

Although we haven't strictly heard yet whether AZ Gov. Jan Brewer will veto the disturbingly easily passed anti-gay discrimination (or was that made-up religious freedom?) bill, I have a feeling she will veto it, especially since US Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake  have suggested she should, as well as business leaders and even some of the people who had voted for it, most GOP voters, and former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

This gives me great reason to believe this is a very dead bill, and should be decently buried. A similar bill was rejected recently in Indiana, and I think the Georgia bill will be, too. 

The Arc of History and 50 Years of a Dream

I watched a little of the commemoration of the March on Washington and the "I Have a Dream" speech of MLK today. I saw some good speeches (Cory Booker represented) and some not so great (Nancy Pelosi was rambling, but she did have a point about wages), but I think Rev. Al Sharpton laid out where the movement is today regarding civil rights and employment accurately:



When it comes to voting rights, I can't help but say if there is anything that upsets me, it is that people aren't turned away  specifically because of race or color or creed, but because of a statistical likelihood based on the same that they might not vote against their interests. Is there any point of voting but the outcomes of it being the will of the people? When it comes to our economic interests, it upsets me that any of us would be happy with anyone being economically or educationally disadvantaged, as if it somehow equals their own privilege being reinforced. Are we a nation united, or what?

The dream of the civil rights movement still has to go on, because just like our Constitution is about the promise of a "more perfect union", the fight for equality and justice, both economic and social, is an aspirational fight. The arc of history may bend towards justice, but it does so because of the outstretched and calloused hands of people bending the hell out of it. And when Texas and North Carolina and Florida and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania threaten to limit the vote in ways that might exclude any of us, regardless of race or color, but based on certain privileges--it is incumbent on us to make sure people have whatever ID's they need--to vote out the kind of people who would limit the franchise. And when Supreme Court justices pretend to cry crocodile tears over the seemingly cruel decisions they "have to" make, let's look again, and very hard, at why those decisions are being made and who sponsors them. (Because have you read the 15th Amendment?  Or better-has Justice Scalia?)

I felt energized by by watching so many people talking about what we need to do as we march on, and also a little sad knowing about all that needs to be done. But I was glad that we are all still talking about doing, and not resting. Because even if we see today a world better than MLK knew, we can still see a little farther and imagine a little better. And that is what dreams are for.

Huh. A Talking filibuster. That's Nice.

Okay. Let me get this out in the open: I think having a talking filibuster was awfully neat. It showed that a concerned senator could raise substantive issues and discuss tem at length, instead of just putting on a "hold" and, you know, kind of passive-aggressively stop all conversation. Civil liberties got discussed, and after all this time, that was kind of satisfying. It is reasonable to question how this country carries out the business of counter-terrorism with respect to human rights and our own Constitution.

That being said: the 13 hour feat accomplished last night was performed by one freshman senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, and if I am at best, skeptical regarding the care and responsibility afforded to any chief executive with respects to targeting America's enemies (in fact or alleged), I am also skeptical regarding the intent of one Rand Paul, because 1) He's already got presidential designs 2) This is very showy, and 3) Isn't it special for a Republican to attack a Democratic Administration effectively from the Left?

Meh. This is Rand Paul, who can go off on a rant about how government restricts the rights of consumers regarding toilets and lightbulbs, but doesn't care what restrictions are put in the way of a female-bodied person seeking a specific form of medical care. If he's talking a good game about civil liberties today, let's not forget that he hasn't been a fan of civil rights, and that during his long peroration, he mentioned with approval a very bad court case that allowed employers to exploit their workers. His notions regarding abuse of power are definitely aligned with his sense of how that power effects his own interests. *