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Month: April 2018

“The heart of the danger he poses for all of us”

Published by digby on April 3, 2018

“The heart of the danger he poses for all of us”

by digby

This piece by Josh Marshall is worth reading in its entirety and I hope you will click over and do that. Let me just say that I agree with his thesis 100%.

Over the last three days, a GoFundMe account for fired former acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe has raised more than $500,000 for legal defense expenses. In response I’ve seen a number of people pillory the effort as a sort of liberal do-gooderism gone off the rails. Rather than flooding money on a guy who is at worst very solidly in the upper middle class, people should focus their charity on climate activism or poverty or cancer research. In a similar vein, Damon Linker has this column up about Donald Trump’s criticisms of Amazon. As he puts it, “Liberals find the president so morally repulsive and so transparently dishonest that they now respond to everything he says with instantaneous outrage and disgust, while presuming in each and every case that his statements are made in bad faith, concealing baser motives.” As he later concludes, “On Amazon, he’s indisputably right.”

I think this approach to Trump and Trumpism is wildly misguided. I credit the benign intentions and in Linker’s case I understand he is focused on the narrower point of Amazon’s business practices. But again, this whole way of looking at the matter is profoundly misguided.

Let’s review some basic points.

If we credit his account, Andrew McCabe unintentionally gave incomplete or misleading testimony in the course of an inspector general’s investigation and then corrected it as soon as he realized the error – rather than in response to further scrutiny. Let’s remember that the underlying actions he was describing were ones that – whether correct and proper or not – clearly had the effect of damagingHillary Clinton.

On the Amazon front, readers will know from my own writing that I think Amazon is guilty of a number of predatory and monopolistic business practices. Though it’s not really the case now, there’s no question that Amazon’s rise was fueled to a significant degree by the regulatory and tax gap which allowed people to buy online without paying sales taxes brick and mortar businesses had to charge. I routinely buy things from Amazon. But its existence has decimated or destroyed almost countless retail operations and replaced them with low wage, rush-rush warehouse jobs sitting on the edges of big cities across the country. One notable thing that people seldom discuss is that with a mix of constant growth, cultivation of market confidence and restraint Amazon has managed to be one of the most successful businesses in American history and pay close to no federal taxes for the simple reason that it’s careful to always operate at a more or less a break-even P&L. In other words, on many fronts Amazon creates huge negative externalities which society at large is subsidizing.

For the purposes of this conversation, however, I would say none of that matters.

It is perfectly obvious that President Trump’s long run of personal attacks on Andrew McCabe weren’t driven by his possible unfairness to Hillary Clinton or possible misleading testimony about those actions. Trump’s attacks on McCabe are part of his efforts to attack the FBI in order to discredit the investigation into his campaign’s collusion with Russia and related crimes. McCabe has been a useful target since his wife earlier ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the state legislature in Virginia. That is useful in identifying him as an anti-Trump deep state zealot. Full stop.

The fact that the FBI is an imperfect institution, ran COINTELPRO, surveilled Martin Luther King and a million other things is beside the point. And confusing the point by raising these issues is either dishonest or blinkered. President Trump isn’t trying to even the scales for these past misdeeds. He’s trying to create a system that is dramatically worse.

It is equally clear that low wage warehouse jobs, upending of retail businesses, disintermediation of publishers or tax avoidance are not things Donald Trump cares anything about. Indeed, the one thing he really focuses on with Amazon – Amazon ripping off the Post Office – seems pretty clearly not to be true. Amazon is Trump’s target because of The Washington Post.

Amazon doesn’t own The Washington Post. But it is owned by Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. So close enough. President Trump’s attacks on Amazon are entirely part of his attacks on independent and even mildly critical media. Full stop.

When someone says it’s folly to give money to Andrew McCabe’s legal defense fund as opposed to cancer research, that might have some logic if it were really a zero sum proposition. But of course it’s not. The $20 you gave to McCabe wasn’t going to cancer research. And for the vast majority of givers being out that $20 bucks doesn’t make you any less able to give another $20 to the lung cancer foundation. Contributions are a form of visible protest as much as turning out for protests is and buttressing the confidence of future Trump targets that they won’t be bankrupted by his attacks has a salutary effect.

But the bigger point is that it’s not really about McCabe or Amazon. Having a sitting President launching scaling personal attacks on a federal law enforcement officer and demanding his firing or imprisonment for personal and political motives is wildly outside the norms that govern the American system. Similarly, a President who routinely threatens prosecutorial or regulatory vengeance against private companies because they are not sufficiently politically subservient to the President personally is entirely outside of our system of governance. At present, Donald Trump is an autocrat without an autocracy. The system mostly resists his demands because it’s not designed to operate that way and we have centuries worth of norms that are remarkably resilient. But systems change. And it’s clear that ours is already starting to change under his malign influence.

Something bad is happening with this behavior.He’s being normalized and dismissed. Even people I respect are saying this doesn’t matter, his influence is benign, these institutions and systems are evil and the president is doing a public service even if his intentions are bad. That is wrong. Empowering an autocrat simply because he’s goring your own hated oxen is very short-sighted. And we know this because there are historical parallels.

This is an attack on the free press and law enforcement and singling out economic actors simply because they are critical of Trump. I don’t care if he isn’t able to destroy the press with his tweet or that Bezos is a bad guy who is apparently ruining everything that is good and pure in this world. Trump is the most powerful man on earth and he is changing everything about how our system, politics and culture have worked up until now in ways that we will not fully understand for quite some time. Normalizing him as just another blowhard who doesn’t really wield real power is a mistake.


Please read the rest of Marshall’s piece. It’s important.

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The wicked witches are back baby

Published by digby on April 2, 2018

The wicked witches are back baby

by digby

Run against the evil ones. You know who they are:

Republicans are running attack ads blasting Hillary Clinton as an out-of-touch elitist. Fox News prime time is blanketed with reports about Clinton investigations. Trump 2020 campaign rallies in key presidential swing states feature “lock her up!” chants.

If you follow campaign news, it may seem like the 2016 campaign never ended. And in at least one way for some Republicans, it hasn’t: The GOP has gone negative on Clinton for more than 25 years — and they don’t think her absence from the ballot is reason enough to stop now.

So far, at least three Republican candidates or groups have released ads over the past week slamming Clinton, in what amounts to an early midterms election-year beta test of her continued utility in firing up the conservative bas

“The Democrats want to take us back in another direction. Nancy Pelosi — I was there the last time she was speaker. I’m telling you, you don’t want to see that happen again,” Pence said, according to a person in the room.

“That was when they got Obamacare,” continued Pence, who served in Congress from 2001 to 2013. “They thought you grow an American economy by raising taxes and expanding regulation. They want to bring it all back.”

In the battle for the House, Republicans have made it clear they plan “put Nancy Pelosi on trial and prosecute the case,” as the leader of one major GOP super PAC told NBC News.

So some Democrats are ducking out of the courtroom.

In Pelosi’s home state of California, arguably the central battleground for the House this year, a survey of 34 Democratic candidates by The Mercury News found only two willing to publicly commit to voting for Pelosi to be their leader if they make it to Congress next year.

The goal of the Republican attacks on Pelosi is both to mobilize the GOP base as well as to try to convince swing voters that the Democratic candidate, no matter how much they profess independence, will ultimately empower the San Francisco liberal who leads her party in the House.

Lock her up.  Lock both of them up.

Obviously, this has nothing at all to do with sexism and misogyny. That goes without saying. It’s just that Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden aren’t trying to destroy the country the way these two harpies are.  These two female Democrats just happen to be bringing the whole party down. It’s a shame.

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This can’t be good

Published by digby on April 2, 2018

This can’t be good

by digby


The Monmouth poll on attitudes toward the media:

More than 3-in-4 Americans believe that traditional major TV and newspaper media outlets report “fake news,” including 31% who believe this happens regularly and 46% who say it happens occasionally. The 77% who believe fake news reporting happens at least occasionally has increased significantly from 63% of the public who felt that way last year.

Just 25% say the term “fake news” applies only to stories where the facts are wrong. Most Americans (65%), on the other hand, say that “fake news” also applies to how news outlets make editorial decisions about what they choose to report.

“These findings are troubling, no matter how you define ‘fake news.’ Confidence in an independent fourth estate is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Ours appears to be headed for the intensive care unit,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

The belief that major media outlets disseminate fake news at least occasionally has increased among every partisan group over the past year, including Republicans (89% up from 79% in 2017), independents (82% up from 66%), and Democrats (61% up from 43%). In addition to the fact that a clear majority of Democrats now believe that traditional media outlets report fake news at least occasionally, the poll also finds that a majority of Republicans (53%) feel this happens on a regular basis (up from 37% in 2017).

A plurality of the public (42%) say that traditional news media sources report fake news on purpose in order to push an agenda. Fewer Americans (26%) believe that major media sources tend to report these stories only by accident or due to poor fact checking. Another 7% feel both reasons are equally prevalent. The remainder are either not sure or do not feel that fake news is reported by traditional media outlets. The number who believe this type of false reporting is done on purpose has not changed much from a year ago when it stood at 39%. The number who say it is done accidentally has increased from 17% a year ago as more people feel that the traditional media engages in reporting fake news stories.

Fully 83% of Americans believe that outside groups or agents are actively trying to plant fake stories in the mainstream media. Two-thirds (66%) say this is a serious problem – including 74% of Republicans, 68% of independents, and 59% of Democrats.

“According to the public, fake news is the result of both outside agents trying to plant fabricated stories and the editorial processes of mainstream media outlets that disseminate false narratives. The perception of this problem couldn’t be more pervasive,” said Murray.

And Lyin’ Trump?

The Monmouth University Poll also finds that Pres. Trump is trusted less as source of information than three cable news outlets – except if you ask Republicans. Nearly half the American public (48%) trusts CNN more than Trump, compared with one-third (35%) who trust Trump more than CNN and another 13% who trust both equally as a source of information. The results are similar when Trump is pitted against the left-leaning MSNBC – 45% trust MSNBC more, 32% trust Trump more, and 16% trust both equally. The right-leaning Fox News also bests the president as a trusted information source – 30% trust Fox more and 20% trust Trump more, although a plurality of 37% trust both equally.

The results for the president versus MSNBC have not changed much in the past year (47% trusted MSNBC more, 33% trusted Trump more, 15% trusted both equally in March 2017). The pendulum has swung slightly but not substantially away from Fox News and toward Trump in that matchup (37% trusted Fox News more, 17% trusted Trump more, 36% trusted both equally in March 2017). CNN was not included in the 2017 poll.

It should come as no surprise that many more Republicans trust the president as an information source than either CNN (12% versus 75% for Trump) or MSNBC (11% versus 72% for Trump). But Republicans are also somewhat more likely to trust Trump (35%) over Fox News (21%), with 40% trusting both GOP-aligned sources equally. In 2017, 29% of Republicans trusted Trump more, 26% trusted Fox more, and 44% trusted both equally, marking a slight gain for the president in the current poll.

“One bright lining in the whole fake news debate is that major cable news operations are still more trusted than a single officeholder. Unless you are a Republican, in which case Trump’s Twitter feed may be your go-to news source,” said Murray.

No worries. It’s only tens of millions of people.

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A well-oiled machine

Published by digby on April 2, 2018

A well-oiled machine

by digby


Sure this makes sense:

A webpage that focused on breast cancer was reportedly scrubbed from the website of the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH).

The changes on WomensHealth.gov — which include the removal of material on insurance for low-income people — were detailed in a new report from the Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project and reported by ThinkProgress.

A spokesperson for HHS told ThinkProgress the page was removed Dec. 6, 2017 “because content was not mobile-friendly and very rarely used.”

“Before we update any of the information … we engage in a comprehensive audit and use analysis process that includes reviewing other federal consumer health websites to ensure we are not duplicating efforts or presenting redundant information,” the spokesperson said.

I don’t know what the real story is here. It seems weird. But the idea that anyone in the Trump administration did something out of an analytical process or a “comprehensive audit” is not credible. The HHS is a mess just like every other agency.

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Cherish is the word he uses to describe … Lou Dobbs

Published by digby on April 2, 2018
Cherish is the word he uses to describe … Lou Dobbs

by digby

The Daily Beast reveals who is the president’s most trusted economic adviser:

It is difficult to fully understand the Trump presidency without first understanding Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business powerhouse host and one of the main precursors to Trumpism. 

It’s not just that President Donald Trump loves Dobbs’ show and his on-air style. It’s not just that the president asks West Wing aides and confidants if they’ve seen specific, recent segments of Dobbs’ program, or that Trump calls the cable-news personality semi-regularly to gossip or solicit counsel, or that he’s boosted Dobbs on his Twitter account. It’s not just that the president has sat for a friendly interview with Dobbs or that he is on a first name basis with “Lou.” 

Indeed, much of this can describe Trump’s relationships with various other television personalities. What sets Dobbs apart is the degree to which the president views him as a political and populism godfather, the #MAGA Socrates to Trump’s Plato. 

As such, Dobbs doesn’t get to just interview and socialize with the president, he is involved in some of the administration’s more sensitive discussions. During the first year of the Trump era, the president has patched Dobbs in via speakerphone to multiple meetings in the Oval Office so that he could offer his two cents, according to three sources familiar with these conversations. Trump will ask Dobbs for his opinion before and after his senior aides or Cabinet members have spoken. Occasionally, he will cut off an official so the Fox Business host can jump in. 

Dobbs, these sources all independently recounted, has been patched in to senior-level meetings on issues such as trade and tax policy—meetings that featured officials such as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, former top economic adviser Gary Cohn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. 

During the more intense days of the tax-bill push, Trump made sure to have his White House personal secretary get Dobbs on the line. And toward the conclusion of one memorable meeting, when the line was disconnected and Dobbs said farewell, Trump looked up, smiled, and simply told the room, “Love Lou.” 

“He cherishes Lou,” a senior White House official told The Daily Beast. And the feeling is, evidently, quite mutual.

Lou Dobbs is a certified loon. But you knew that. And he is the source of a lot of Trump’s paranoid ramblings:

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said it is “time to declare war” against the “deep state” he says is present in the FBI and Justice Department.

“It may be time to declare war outright against the deep state and clear out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department,” Dobbs said Tuesday. “Yes, I said ‘the rot.’”

Dobbs is the latest in a series of conservative media figures to speak about the “deep state,” alleging that high-level officials in U.S. intelligence agencies are conspiring to take down President Trump.

“The FBI and the DOJ have broken the public trust by destroying evidence, defying oversight and actively trying to bring down the Trump presidency,” Dobbs said.

He’s not just an economic adviser …

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President Trump faces his first great crisis: Ann Coulter is mad at him

Published by digby on April 2, 2018

President Trump faces his first great crisis: Ann Coulter is mad at him

by digby

I wrote about Trump’s new kitchen cabinet this morning for Salon:

Keeping with the old American tradition of lying, slagging immigrants and threatening America’s southern neighbor in order to celebrate Passover and Easter Sunday, the president of the United States spent the weekend tweeting:

One his way to church later that morning, he elaborated:

For many Americans and other people throughout the world, this might not have seemed like an appropriate day to deny hundreds of thousands of young people the security of living legally in the only country they have ever known. But our president is laboring under a tremendous pressure to deal with the worst crisis facing his still-young administration: Ann Coulter is very, very upset.

That is just one of dozens of scathing Coulter tweets and columns excoriating Trump for his failure to build the wall. One can understand why he felt he needed to address the problem on the Christian world’s greatest day of celebration.

All the leaking from the White House indicates that Trump has now taken the reins and plans to do exactly what he wants. But just because he is rejecting the advice of actual experts and professionals does not mean there’s no one around he will listen to. There are still people he respects, namely hardcore right-wing gadflies like Coulter, along with other ideological extremists, cynical media toadies and sycophants from the fever swamps. Those folks he still trusts.

This really isn’t anything new. Think about it. Before Trump ever ran for president his closest buddies were the likes of legendary McCarthyite lawyer Roy Cohn and wacko Nixonian dirty trickster Roger Stone. When he seriously considered a run for president in 2011, he positioned himself as a fringe conspiracy-theory player, the king of the birther movement, waging a crusade to find Barack Obama’s supposedly missing birth certificate. We all remember Trump’s semi-victorious 2016 campaign, which featured the issues that have animated him since the 1980s — paying back foreigners for “laughing” at the United States and “treating us unfairly,” along with draconian criminal justice and civil liberties crackdowns, including a sharp increase in capital punishment. Frankly, those are the only topics in which Trump has ever showed much interest and his beliefs about them have always been based on simplistic “guy at the end of the bar” observations, never informed by real facts or expertise.

Some ideas came up during the 2016 race that were simply instinctive, like, “Torture works, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise” and “I’d bomb the shit out of ’em and take the oil.” You don’t need to read a briefing book to hold such lizard-brain beliefs. But the rest of Trump’s alleged populist agenda was gleaned mostly from talk radio and presented to him in the form of reports about what the far right cares about. Everything from immigration to the Muslim ban to Common Core and the border wall came from that indoctrination into the thinking of Wingnut Land. That was the basis for Trump’s ideology, such as it is.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni referred to Coulter as Trump’s “muse” and “oracle” in an interview this weekend, correctly noting that it was her book “¡Adios, America!” that inspired  Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric claiming that Mexicans rapists and criminals were flooding into the country. His adoption of Coulter’s xenophobic rants led her to declare at a 2015 rally, “Since Donald Trump has announced that he is running for president, I felt like I’m dreaming” and to support him enthusiastically throughout the primaries. She explained to Bruni:

Every day, you’d wake up and they’d be arguing about anchor babies and sanctuary cities. We never saw that before, not on Fox, not on MSNBC. You never saw people talking about it.

That’s true enough. But right-wingers had been talking about it on talk radio nonstop, along with crackpot conspiracy theories about the “NAFTA Superhighway” and Sharia law taking over the country and a generalized fear of foreigners of all persuasions, which dovetailed nicely with Trump’s long-held prejudices. By that time, Breitbart News had been on the racist xenophobic beat for several years as well. White nationalism has always undergirded the ideology of the far right, but it had bubbled up very close to the surface before Trump came along to give it some star power.

Bruni’s Times interview with Coulter confirms that she has been to the White House to advise the president in person. Apparently, she was the only one who would tell him he came off like Eva Perón for hiring Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, whom she despises, when others like Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Peter Thiel all refused. (No doubt Trump was confused about why Coulter claimed he reminded her of a Broadway singer.)

This wasn’t unusual, of course. Even Trump’s professional political staff were creatures of the far right. Kellyanne Conway, David Bossie, Bannon and Miller, among others who worked on the campaign, had been involved in right-wing smear operations or were ideological extremists. But once in office Trump did manage to hire a handful of more mainstream figures who most people hoped might tutor him and sand off some of the worst hate-radio edges. We know how that worked out.

As the Washington Post put it in this comprehensive round-up of all the recent changes: “White House stabilizers gone, Trump calling his own shots.” He’s doing that to be sure, but he’s getting a little help from his friends.

Trump took yet another extended weekend at Mar-a-Lago over the Easter holiday, and when he wasn’t playing golf or watching “Fox & Friends” he spent it dining with people he trusts. He had dinner with the boxing promoter and pardoned killer Don King, who reassured him that the Stormy Daniels story was “ridiculous.” (One wonders what King thought about Trump’s furious tweets condemning California Gov. Jerry Brown for pardoning five immigrants.) He also spent time with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, both of whom can be counted upon to tell him exactly what he wants to hear.

On Good Friday, Trump dined with the man who might just be his most trusted adviser of all these days, Fox News host Sean Hannity. According to a club member, the president “seemed very, very happy,” which makes sense since nobody in this world loves Donald Trump more unconditionally than Hannity.

All these far-right extremists and fringe characters are delivering the same message: Let Trump be Trump. What they really mean by that is to let Trump do what they want him to do, which also happens to be what he wants to do. He is one of them, and he’s now decided they are all the help he needs to run the country.

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Lawmakers Determined To Get Guns In Schools @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on April 2, 2018

Lawmakers Determined To Get Guns In Schools

 by Spocko

Right now the NRA and their supporters are using the Parkland shooting as an opportunity to get multiple people carrying guns into schools all around the country. I’ve been watching legislative sessions and Town Halls in Kansas, Tennessee and Florida where lawmakers are voting to create and fund armed teachers programs.


Here is Republican Randy Fine during a Town Hall on March 28th sponsored by Florida Today   First he said that in his meeting with 12 Parkland students, they didn’t ask about gun control. Then, “What I’ve heard is you like more guns in schools. You just want them to be SROs.”

The NRA strategy in Florida (and other states) is to go to lawmakers who are in charge of school safety and say, “Fund the programs that put people with guns in and around schools.” Then that money gives the NRA lawmakers financial leverage over school safety programs. The money goes to NRA approved gun programs like Eddie the Eagle for kids in schools, and programs to train teachers to use guns.

I’ve watched education resources in Tennessee and Florida get carved up for programs designed to put guns in schools.  When people asked to move that training money to totally different areas that didn’t involve guns, they found it could only go to sheriffs. If a school district didn’t want armed teachers, they couldn’t use that training money for other programs.   In Florida if a school declines to participate in the Armed Teacher Program that money goes to other schools that want armed teachers.

The NRA concept of school safety starts with a flawed premise, “People with guns must be around students to keep them safe from mass shooters.” The gun lobby pushes the need for multiple people with guns in every school.

In Florida the Armed Teachers Program training budget was based on 10 armed teachers or staff in each school.  (Link to Fine in video at 30:15 )

This message of more guns is being pushed not just to lawmakers, but to school board members, principals, administrators, parents, teachers and students.   And it’s working.

School board Vice Chair Tina Descovich explained that her goal is to have a minimum of one SRO for every school (Link to Descovich in video at 32:30)

The pro-gun people use the same slogans, false data, anecdotes, movie quotes, hero fantasies, legal maneuvers, money leverage and bullying they have successfully used on legislators for years.  People who don’t want guns in schools need to be prepared to destroy the frame that putting more people with guns in schools increases safety.  School boards, principals and educators need facts so they can respond to the pro-gun arguments.

But don’t underestimate the power of a good slogan, especially one where the speaker can put himself in the role of hero and protector of children.  It doesn’t matter to them that the slogan starts out with a blatantly false statement.  ‘The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun….is with a good guy with a gun. “ This is not true! 

The FBI examined 160 active shooter incidents  (Active Shooter Incidents in the United States  2000-2013.  “Most of the time, if you’re talking about a civilian stopping a mass shooter, it’s the unarmed guy without the gun because they’re right there,” John Donohue, a law professor at Stanford University, co-author of a National Bureau of Economic Research study that examined how gun violence.

I know there are communities of parents who believe in more guns in schools. They will bully, argue and leverage money obtained by the state to get armed teachers and/or School Resource officers.

Listen to Senator Ty Masterson (R) NRA A+ from Kansas during the insurance committee hearing on arming teachers make a statement about gun-free zones based on cooked data from discredited research by John Lott. Then listen to Representative Parker shut him down

( I loved Parker’s response, but it would be great to see someone get Masterson to admit his data is wrong and to promise to stop using it in the future.)

We have to push back in powerful, compelling ways.  As my friend Eric Milgram of the Newtown Action Alliance said about the work of parents after Sandy Hook who were trying to change gun laws and attitudes,  “We were too polite.”

Is this happening in your state? I recommend finding old videos of your state legislators discussing School Safety Programs in committees. I will bet you 10 Quatloos it’s happening in your state right now since it’s a nation-wide NRA strategy.

Check to see your school board is having meetings. Are they only composed of school safety people who come from a gun culture? Are they addressing problems that many people don’t even believe exist? Like creating a militarized school environment.  Are they claiming they can manage the problem with black and brown kids being disproportionately sent to prison from school? (BTW, in Florida they are offering 8 full hours of diversity training for the armed teachers to fix the problem.)

Guilt: If You Don’t Accept SROs It’s Your Fault If People Die

What I’ve been seeing is that if lawmakers fail to actually put guns in schools via the teachers, they move onto other armed people options.  The order of preference is first, School Resource Officers (SROs), since they claim “everyone agrees are the best option.” Second is armed police officers as security guards. Third is armed administrators, coaches,  janitors and staff. Forth is armed teachers.

I use the phrase, “Everyone agrees SROs are best,” to reflect the talking point I’ve heard legislators use. Sadly, I’m also hearing this from educators, parents and students who don’t want armed teachers, but who accept the premise that guns must be around students to keep them safe from mass shooters. This, “everyone agrees” bit on how great school resource officers are is especially insidious since everyone does NOT agree.

Deferring to NRA premises for your school safety decision is a trap. Using a gun to stop a shooter is not the only model. There are safety models that protect people in real time.  There are defensive measures that can actually stop bullets. For example, the Parkland students who met with Fine asked for bullet proof doors, like in airplane cockpits.

The Big Picture: More Guns, More Gun Accidents

In Kansas Rep. Carpenter talks up the success of armed teachers in Texas and other states by saying, “If there was a problem, I’m pretty sure we would be hearing about it.” No he would not. But there are problems.  A friend just compiled a list of 22 accidents in schools in the last 5 years in school.   But looking at accidents just in schools is NOT a sufficient comparison.

If any place where a new group of people starts using guns there WILL be gun accidents. That’s based on looking at gun accidents in the entire population for years. These accidents include cops, gun instructors, licensed concealed carriers and novices.  According to the National Center for Injury Protection and Control, each year more than 70,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for non-fatal gunshot injuries. 

What evidence do lawmakers use to support adding guns to schools? 

FLORIDA TODAY hosted a town hall meeting concerning school safety on Wednesday in their community room.The moderator was Isadora Rangel, public affairs and engagement editor. The guest speakers were, left to right, Sarah Adams, a Satellite High senior, State Representative Randy Fine, School Board Vice Chair Tina Descovich, State Senator Debbie Mayfield, and State Representative Thad Altman. TIM SHORTT/FLORIDA TODAY

At the same Town Hall  in Florida, Brevard County Republican Thad Altman,was asked what informed his vote. Were there any studies that supported the idea that adding more guns in schools will make it less likely that people will be shot. Altman, couldn’t, so he turned to Russia and the Beslan school hostage crisis and massacre carried out by armed Islamic militants, mostly Ingush and Chechen.  His conclusion was:

“They [the Russians] have stopped that by adding more weapons and security in their schools.”  Link 34:30

Based on what I’ve been seeing, the pro-gun crowd will use all their tools and tricks to get more people with guns in schools while ignoring the consequences and costs.

If you don’t believe more guns in schools is the solution, you have to make that clear to multiple audiences.  That means explaining this to multiple legislators who sit on multiple committees. That means showing up and standing up to sheriffs, school boards, principals and parents, many of whom want to arm teachers and who sincerely believe it works.

In Florida they are using the argument that the armed teacher programs are voluntary for the school districts, but as one parent said, if a school district decides to put a gun in my child’s school, it’s no longer a voluntary for them.. 

A change is gonna come by by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 2, 2018

A change is gonna come
by Tom Sullivan

There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will

Laura Ingraham’s “preplanned vacation” seems like a watershed moment. A mean-spirited Wednesday tweet from Ingraham about outspoken Parkland, FL massacre survivor David Hogg’s rejected college applications has her sponsors jumping as if from the rails of the Titanic. Ingraham announced Friday she would be taking a week-long “Easter break” from Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

Judd Legum of Think Progress listened to her Thursday show:

Benjamin Hart writes at New York Magazine that a few short weeks after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the gun control movement led by teen survivors seems to have broken the grip of the NRA. Second Amendment defenders have come to depend on the country’s attention rapidly moving on. After Sandy Hook, after the Pulse nightclub, after Las Vegas, the public’s attention wavered. Until now:

As the media-savvy students blanketed the airwaves with their eminently reasonable arguments, the big questions were whether the momentum they created could actually last, and, if it did, whether it might actually result in major changes to the country’s gun laws, a goal that has eluded activists for decades.

The second question is still up for debate, though initial signs are surprisingly positive. But the answer to the first question is clear: In just the last few weeks, there has been a significant change in the conversation around guns, one that seems likely to stick.

Parkland students never learned you can’t fight the NRA.

From my days writing op-eds, I learned there are two reliable signs you have hit political opponents’ soft spot. Either they go silent, as Ingraham has for now, or they lose their composure and get ugly.

Hart observes:

Another clear sign that the winds of opinion are changing is that right-wing commentators have largely abandoned their well-rehearsed talking points about guns themselves in favor of ad hominem attacks against the Florida students.

As conservative websites peddle outrage and easily disprovable conspiracy theories about the students, commentators like Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson have adopted a strangely aggressive attitude toward David Hogg. Lesser residents of the fever swamps have followed suit with the insults. On Saturday, gun zealot and White House guest Ted Nugent said that the Parkland student activists are “soulless” liars, and Hollywood also-ran Frank Stallone called Hogg a “pussy.”

Threatened by an unarmed, skinny teenager.

Legum observed at Think Progress:

Shortly after The New York Times announced Billy O’Reilly and Fox News paid millions of dollars to five women who said they were sexually harassed by O’Reilly, 77 advertisers left the show in a mass exodus.

O’Reilly subsequently announced he would be taking a “scheduled” vacation that he had planned — but he never returned. O’Reilly was supposed to return on April 24 of last year, but on April 19, Fox News let him go.

If that happens to Ingraham, the Second Amendment right will suddenly wail that its First Amendment rights have been violated by the fascist left. That is, as Parkland students say, BS. National TV platforms are not constitutionally guaranteed. Big gummint will not have closed down Ingraham, but capitalism. The Market giveth and the Market taketh away.

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A GOP role model in Texas

Published by digby on April 2, 2018

A GOP role model in Texas

by digby

They just make the crooked wingnuts a little more interesting in the Lone Star state. TPM has the latest on the lunatic former congressman Steve Stockman:

Outlandish former Texas congressman Steve Stockman resurfaced last spring when he was arrested by federal agents while trying to board an international flight and subsequently slapped with a 28-count felony fraud indictment, which he said was the work of the “deep state.”

Stockman’s trial is currently in its second week in a federal court in Houston. And it’s a doozy.

The far-right Republican firebrand is accused of using hundreds of thousands in charitable donations from two conservative mega-donors for personal expenses in what prosecutors call a “white-collar crime spree.” They say he’s used the money to spy on political rivals with Inspector Gadget-style tools, to pay off his credit card debt, to go on dolphin boat rides, and to buy up copies of pop-up Advent books published by his brother.

Stockman, who served in the U.S. House from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2013 to 2015, earned a reputation as a tea party favorite eager to buck his party’s establishment. He invited Ted Nugent to President Obama’s State of The Union speech, and his campaign once produced a bumper sticker saying: “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.”


Stockman is facing multiple counts of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to make false statements, and money laundering, among other charges. Federal prosecutors have compiled reams of evidence, including texts, emails, and records of bank transactions and wire transfers. Their case has been aided by cooperation from two of Stockman’s former aides, who struck plea deals with the government.

But Stockman is fighting the charges while free on $25,000 bond. An anonymous private benefactor is ponying up the funds for his trio of defense lawyers after he told a judge last year that he had only $17 in his bank account.

You have to read it all. It’s just such a perfect illustration of the overwhelming corruption of the GOP. Trump is their creature not the other way around.

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