Month: March 2021

After the second mass shooting in only a week, this one (at last count) claiming the lives of 10 people, it becomes clearer by the day that the GOP is far, far beyond being a political party. With their opposition to masks, vaccines, and support of guns, they make it clear that there is no one they won’t kill or let die (including themselves) to advance whatever their current goals are. Were it not for abortion, guns, religious discrimination of the LGBT community, and white supremacy, there wouldn’t even be a Republican party. I challenge anyone to state clearly what the current GOP’s policy goals are. “Cancel culture”, the cause du jour for the current right wing, is not only not an issue, but not an issue where legislation would be constitutional and effective. But while claiming to be pro-life, the GOP absolutely love murder, if not in practice, at least the idea of it. For example, they support endless wars with non-state enemies, murder by gun owner, cop killings, the death penalty, and murder by attempted coup, and that’s only the direct murders. They also believe the government has no role in preventing the indirect deaths caused by businesses killing you with bad food, pollution, or opioids, by allowing people and in fact encouraging people to not wear masks and take vaccines. and by allowing hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths each year through lack of health coverage. And yet, they carve out one tiny exception to their death urge for embryos, while ignoring the life of the person carrying it. (Abortion of viable fetuses is already illegal, so any claim that this is happening and that’s what they’re trying to prevent is a lie.) They really seem to embrace the Hobbesian view that life in civilization, as opposed to the state of nature where civilization has collapsed, should be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For everything that’s not an embryo, that is.

The newly elected Senator from Georgia has been killing the GOP (with words) lately. For the people he is talking to and about, words are ineffective, since their whole idea of power is about the pure exercise of it without consequence, and that power in the south and in the rural areas is always, always aimed at non-whites and non-christians, or anyone who opposes their shared delusions, even if those people are in the majority. Senator Warnock had this to say about the filibuster, which is currently standing in the way of most major federal legislation: “The filibuster, at the end of the day, is about minority rights in the Senate. How are you going to insist on protecting minority rights in the Senate, while refusing to protect minority rights in the society?” And on the topic of guns in Georgia after a brutal killing spree: “This shooter was able to kill all of these folks the same day he purchased a firearm but right now what is our legislature doing? … [Preventing] people from being able to vote the same day they register.” He is finding a truth that is unassailable, and then lambasting them with it, with no defense available.

Governor Kemp, who likely stole the governorship through similar underhanded tactics, signed the latest voting “rights” bill in Georgia, which criminalizes handing out water to people waiting in line to vote, amongst other penalties and barriers for people simply trying to exercise one of their most basic constitutional rights–the right to vote. The beauty of how evil this is is that the GOP is the one causing the long voting lines in the first place. And their voters, who cannot see the danger that these fascist tactics pose, continue to vote for the GOP for one of two reasons…guns or abortion or both. I cannot see another reason people would support their party, except for the white supremacy thing that their party is unable to purge. The Republicans are so lost now that they can’t even vote for popular legislation at the national level, which is why they all voted against the COVID stimulus bill.

And Senator Warnock is correct–no other issue will be important if Republicans are successfully able to steal democracy away from the majority. If they’re willing to do something this blatant, citing a vague non-reason of “election security” while failing to adequately define what that is and why it is necessary, then it will be hard to imagine what they would do when their fascistic takeover of democracy is finished.

Yesterday, both houses of Congress passed an historic 1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that seeks to alleviate some of the pain that Americans have been enduring throughout the pandemic of the last year. It’s popularity among Americans is about 70%, which in America means it’s incredibly popular. And yet, not a single Republican in either chamber voted in favor of it. That means that they voted against a bill that, based on the percentages, their constituents actually want and need. And yet, all I could think of was, how long would it be before Republicans start taking credit for what’s in the bill? The answer: immediately. One of the senators from my own state, Mississippi, helped write an amendment called the RESTAURANTS Act, which was intended to help struggling restaurants. Then, he voted against HIS OWN AMENDMENT and against the bill altogether. But he touted the bill as a positive, while failing to mention that he voted against it. The smart thing to do from a political perspective is to make each of these GOPers pay a political price whenever any of their constituents receive aid from the package by pointing out that their senators and representatives voted against it. Hammer it home. Run advertisements on TV and the web. Campaign on it. And as the benefits continue on for the next 6 months or more, continue to point it out. This is what you call a meatball in baseball–a middle-middle fastball that is begging to be hit for a home run. Let’s hope the Dems are ready to hit.

This week, after Governor Greg Abbott blamed Antifa BLM the green new deal (which doesn’t even exist, and especially doesn’t exist in Texas) for their power outages, and Ted Cruz blamed his daughters for why he was in Cancun at the time, it’s clear the modern GOP does not take accountability for anything. The reason is, taking care of their constituents is far down their list of priorities, and way WAY far down from their actual priorities..maintaining power so they can rule by fiat without consequence and generating money from the donor class. Everything else appears to be ancillary concerns. This is why taking money out of politics would be such a great idea…if the Republicans were forced to run on ideas alone, they would lose in landslides all over the country.