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Month: May 2022

The Primaries

Published by digby on May 25, 2022

A small sigh of relief. Very small.

The horrific shooting in Texas has rightfully seized our attention but last night but there were some primaries as well. This rundown from the Bulwark has the best analysis I’ve seen yet:

Sarah Longwell:

The biggest upset of the night wasn’t Gov. Brian Kemp’s absolute demolition of the execrable David Perdue, but Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger unexpectedly clearing the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff with congressman Jody Hice.

Hice was handpicked by Trump to challenge Raffensperger for refusing to “find” him 11,000 votes in the 2020 election. 

Pundits had been leaving Raffensperger for dead, but there were a couple of signs that the race was in reach: 

1. Focus groups showed that challenger Jody Hice wasn’t breaking through with voters: 

2. Perdue was cratering so badly that Trump steered clear of GA in the months leading up to the election:  

Regardless of your political party, if you care about having elected officials with integrity oversee our elections—especially in contested swing states like Georgia—you should see Raffensperger’s win as a win for democracy. 

Also, beware all the “Trump’s grip on the GOP is slipping” takes coming post-Georgia. I made the case against this analysis in The New York Times a couple weeks back. 

Remember, Marjorie Taylor Green and Hershel Walker also both crushed their primaries in GA last night. The party—and the 2022 GOP candidates—is still overwhelmingly Trumpy. It just turns out that Trump can’t run a C team against a slate of incumbents—especially with the length of Kemp’s coattails. 

Tim Miller:

We have spilled plenty of ink about Georgia, so I feel compelled to draw everyone’s attention to the nauseating result in the Attorney General race in Texas last night. 

Suffice it to say, George P. Bush’s political choices have been pretty gross from my vantage point, so it’s hard to not feel a little vindication in seeing how little they paid off. But I think it’s important to step back and look at this race without any schadenfreude colored glasses. Yes, GPB sucked up to Trump. But he didn’t really go along with the Big Lie. He’s not a criminal. He’s not a racist. He’s a replacement level Republican in MAGA clothing who wouldn’t actually bring about an end to our democracy if push came to shove. And if he’s not your brand of tea well there was another woman Eva Guzman running who was offering basically the same brew with some less Bushy packaging. 

But rather than choose either of those perfectly fine MAGA fakers Texas Republicans overwhelmingly backed America’s Craziest Attorney General (a high bar). The LAW AND ORDER party wants the top cop to be a kleptomaniac, insurrectionist, who was indicted for securities fraud. To add insult to injury as he awaited the returns that would give him a blowout victory, Paxton went on Fox to say that Texas’ response to a school shooting in the state  that resulted in 19 CHILDREN dying on his watch should be arming and training teachers. I guess Ken’s plan is for the 2nd grade social studies teacher to be deft enough to escort her kids to safety while firing a few stray rounds at the next 18 year old shooter wearing military-style tactical body armor. As Paxton put it, the state just doesn’t have the resources to safeguard the schools themselves, so this is the best available option.

In short Texas Republicans voters have decided that they are just fine with the mass murders, corruption, and full frontal attacks on our democracy continuing unabated, as long as the state’s Attorney General is doing his real job of owning the libs. 

Amanda Carpenter:

MAGA hailed Sarah Huckabee Sanders as the new symbol of female empowerment after winning the GOP primary for Alabama governor. Example: Glenn Greenwald gushed, “Sarah Huckabee Sanders poised to smash the glass ceiling, becoming the first woman elected governor in Arkansas’ history.” If only all women had the advantage of inheriting their father’s seat. Imagine how many glass ceilings could be smashed then!  

Spurning Washington to come back home to Arkansas was a big part of her campaign. “When I worked at the White House, nobody ever cheered when I went up to the podium,” she said. “This is different, but I like it a whole lot better.” She must be enjoying the escape from mean jokes, reports about her lying about FBI officials, and getting the proper restaurant service she feels entitled to receive. 

As one would expect, the former Trump White House Press Secretary-turned Fox News Contributor-turned candidate leaned hard into culture war issues and kept close ties to Trump. Although, she did play coy about Trump’s false claims of the stolen election— ” We know there is fraud in every election,” she said. “How far and wide it went, I don’t think that will be something that will be ever determined.” 

She railed against the teaching of critical race theory, supported Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, and said she would have signed a law to ban minors from receiving hormones, puberty blockers, and transition-related surgeries that outgoing GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed.

But it’s the upcoming Supreme Court decision that might overturn Roe v. Wade that could put Sanders and her hardline view on social issues back in the national spotlight. “I am unapologetically pro-life across the board,” Sanders recently affirmed. When asked about exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life, Sanders answered, “I would not push for any exceptions.”

For some reason I don’t feel all that good about these races. I wonder why?

A striking moment

Published by digby on May 25, 2022

Beto O’Rourke crashes the Abbott press conference:

That line-up of white, middle-aged Texas leaders at the press conference pretty much says it all.

We could do this

Published by digby on May 25, 2022

Republicans won’t let us

It’s absolutely possible. They just won’t do it:

Many people around the world are once again asking the same question: Why won’t America take steps to end gun violence?

From the United Kingdom to New Zealand, here are the policy changes some countries have implemented after their own mass shootings.

Britain

In August 1987, Michael Robert Ryan gunned down 16 people in Hungerford, England. The scale of the massacre shocked the country. At the time, The Washington Post described it as the “worst such incident in modern British history.”

Ryan, 27 and unemployed, was armed with a Chinese copy of an AK-47 and a variety of other guns. His motive was never discovered. He killed himself and his mother, his only close relative.

In response to the massacre, British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd called for an investigation into Ryan’s legal ownership of the guns he used. The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, passed with the backing of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party government, outlawed semiautomatic weapons and limited sales of some types of shotguns.

These weapons were rare in Britain, so the impact was limited. But after another mass shooting in March 1996, when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland using Browning and Smith & Wesson handguns, more-sweeping rules were put in place.

Public anger over the killings led to a powerful grass-roots campaign called Snowdrop. The 1997 Firearms Act ended up restricting ownership of almost all handguns. Tens of thousands of guns were collected from owners, who were given market value for the weapons. Police spent years cracking down on illegal gun ownership.

Gun violence peaked in 2005 and gradually declined in the years since.

Relatives of those who died in Britain’s mass shootings have said their experiences could help the United States reckon with gun-control legislation.

“Eyes are going to be on Dunblane, and we don’t need the eyes on Dunblane anymore,” Jack Crozier, whose 5-year-old sister Emma was killed in the massacre, said at an anniversary event in March 2021. “But we need to be looking at what is going on in other countries, and America in particular.”

Australia

Martin Bryant, 29, killed 35 people near the historic Port Arthur prison in Tasmania, Australia, using a legally purchased Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in April 1996. It was the deadliest massacre in Australia during the 20th century and came just weeks after the killings in Dunblane.

The slayings drew widespread attention to Australia’s gun laws, which were especially relaxed in Tasmania. The island, which has its own state government, had required gun licenses only since 1988 and did not require rifles to be registered.

The Australian federal government, then led by center-right Prime Minister John Howard, coordinated with states to restrict the ownership of automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. Within a year, the government bought back 650,000 firearms.

Some studies have indicated that the program was successful and that Australia became a less violent place in the years since the buyback.

In 2013, Howard wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that called on President Barack Obama to follow his model. “Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control,” Howard wrote.

New Zealand

In March 2019, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and killed 51 Muslim worshipers with weapons that included an AR-15-style rifle. Less than 24 hours later, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country would change its gun laws.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand had relatively lax gun regulations and a powerful gun lobby. Before the attack, there were an estimated 250,000 gun owners in the country, which has a population of 5 million people. Tarrant, an Australian citizen who had been living in New Zealand since 2017, had purchased his weapons legally, although he had illegally modified some.

Ardern was able to gather swift support for tougher gun laws, putting temporary measures in place within days. The following month, Parliament made the changes official, with overwhelming bipartisan support and only one lawmaker opposed. Among the plans were a gun buyback scheme, as well as restrictions on AR-15s and other semiautomatic weapons.

Because of the lax tracking of these weapons, authorities were initially unsure how many were in the country. “It’s really an open checkbook,” Joe Green, gun safety specialist and former arms control manager for the New Zealand Police, told The Post, “because they don’t know how many they are buying back.”

A second round of gun laws was passed in 2020, which required setting up a new firearms registry that gun license holders were required to update as they bought or sold firearms.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in June 2019, Ardern said she was bewildered by the United States’ reluctance to pass gun-control laws. “Australia experienced a massacre and changed their laws. New Zealand had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest with you, I do not understand the United States,” she said.

Canada

In April 2020, Gabriel Wortman, dressed in an authentic Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform and driving a mocked-up police cruiser, went on a 13-hour rampage through rural Nova Scotia, killing 22 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern Canadian history.

Police shot the 51-year-old denturist dead at a gas station. Court documents showed that he was armed with two semiautomatic rifles and two pistols. He did not have a firearms license, and some of the weapons were smuggled in from the United States.

Two weeks later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban on more than 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons,” including the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14, which was used in a 1989 massacre that left 14 dead at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. The ban makes it illegal to shoot, transport, sell, import or bequeath those weapons.

Trudeau, who pledged stricter gun-control measures during the 2019 election campaign, said his government had been working on a ban before the pandemic. The Conservative Party said the ban, which was imposed through regulatory measures, was opportunistic.

In response, the federal government introduced legislation that would create “red flag” laws, establish new firearm offenses and allow municipalities to ban handguns through bylaws restricting their possession, storage and transportation.

It also promised to introduce a voluntary buyback program for prohibited firearms, announced last year. An amnesty measure in place through April of this year, extended for some gun owners through the fall of 2023, is meant to allow people a grace period to comply. The government is developing a mandatory buyback program.

We are very, very “exceptional” when it comes to guns. And if anyone thinks that at some point something so terrible will happen that the Republicans will come to their senses and resist the NRA and their own gun-worshiping constituents and pass some sensible gun control, think again. At this point it will take a right wing government deciding it needs to confiscate guns in order to maintain power to change this. Nobody should want that either.

The Biblical Rod of Iron

Published by digby on May 25, 2022

The next generation of right wing gun nuts literally worships the AR-15

Mastriano is involved with a new religious movement that uses the AR-15 in liturgical ritual and believes it is the Rod of Iron from Revelations. I am not kidding:

While his participation in nationwide Christian Nationalist groups, and their attempts to overturn the election—he was subpoenaed by the January 6th committee for his plan to send pro-Trump electors to Congress—matter deeply, it’s also important to note that his ties to these groups date back much further than Trump and The Big Lie. One local Pennsylvania Q-affiliated religious group that Mastriano has repeatedly engaged with—with expansionist tendencies and both national and international interests—is “Rod of Iron Ministries.”

Rod of Iron Ministries is a schismatic offshoot of the Unification Church, often called the “Moonies,” led by Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon—son of the Unification Church’s late founder, Sun Myung Moon—who reorganized his ministry around a particular scriptural interpretation: that the “rod of iron” in Psalm 2:9 and Revelation 2:26 is, in fact, the AR-15. 

The gun church is a messianic movement, planning a kingship when America falls, and has associated itself directly with Trump, QAnon, the “Black Robed Regiment” idea popular in Christian nationalist circles, and, of course, with January 6th, which Sean Moon attended with some of his followers. People like Steve Bannon regularly attend their fall “Freedom Festival”; Eric Trump spoke at the opening of Sean’s brother’s gun store, Tommy Gun Warehouse, in 2016; Lieutenant Governor candidate Teddy Daniels had Pastor Sean bless his campaign for Congress before switching to the race for Lt. Governor. Doug Mastriano is just one of a line of politicians in Pennsylvania who would engage with the church. 

Rod of Iron is expanding its operations outside of Pennsylvania and the internet. They’ve purchased compounds in central Texas—some 40 miles north of Waco, which is relevant to the following commentary—and in east Tennessee. And, with both a gubernatorial candidate and candidate for lieutenant governor attending their events, as well as their interactions with Trump, it’s worth looking into their beliefs. 

What follows is an annotated sermon of Pastor Sean’s from May 27, 2021, in the midst of a period of expansion, and while Mastriano, Daniels and others were actively courting their support.

May 27, 2021, Rod of Iron Ministries

Good morning folks, just remember a recap of Habakkuk Chapter 3,1 and this is where he’s warning about Babylon the whole three chapters exist under Habakkuk prophet. Babylon the Chaldeans are coming to destroy Israel. Why? Because they have left God. 

They have turned their back on God. Why? Because they have accepted pedophilia and child trafficking,2 selling their children to the Babylonian culture, which would you, your, families send their daughters to the Temple prostitute, prostitution temples, Asherah,3 in order that they be deflowered, and raped by random strangers,4 this is how wicked and evil the culture had become, that they thought that was good for the children. 

I mean come on folks, this is so ridiculous. And they, that is over (unintelligible) bounds obviously. And Israel was starting to participate. Young people were getting sucked up in this culture. They saw all the Hollywood stars, they saw all the richness and affluence of Babylon,5 they wanted to be like Babylon, they didn’t want to come and understand their God. They didn’t want to live for principles, they want to live for pleasure. Right? This was a big difference. Because this is what we are facing today isn’t it.6 Will America stay as the light of the hill of the world. Light of the hill. Light on the hill. Will it stay with the torch of liberty burning, or will it die fading into the night? 

As Biden is now electing and trying to nominate, you know, the Waco killer,7 who took pictures of himself standing on top of the burnt dead bodies of children, that he said he was going to protect, and that he mur—that they murdered, as the federal agencies,8 they’re not even their enemies, they’re not even… war fighters don’t even take pictures of their enemies that they shot and killed, but this guy took pictures like a psychopath on top of men, women and children that he just murdered with his whole team, his federal teams, took pictures of them as if he were some kind of tough guy, he’s a total psychopath, who would ever do that? 

These are Americans. These are not foreign troops, these are not enemies of our… these are Americans that they murdered. Because they want to exert tyranny. And they want to exert federal power over the states and over the people. And that was a big wake up call for America,9 but the point is America is slipping and sliding into dangerous territory. 

Of course, call your Senators, call your Representatives to stop and block Chipman from getting to be the ATF head because it is again the ATF that did Waco. But, but in the end it’s a greater question, scenario than that, because America is existentially at crisis right now. 

We’ve left God. We’ve become part of this licentious decrepit, degraded immoral culture. You know we have, we have strayed from God’s principles, defending liberty, being accountable and having responsibility, and into a culture that seeks just pleasure and just emotion and good feeling and licentiousness and hedonism. That will bring the country to destruction. And God will allow it to be judged. Just like he did with the Israelites. If we don’t turn from those things. Pray for America today, pray for the President, pray for one another, get training.10 God bless Godspeed let his kingdom come.11

The NRA Has No Problem Banning Guns

Published by tristero on May 25, 2022

It’s nearly impossible for any rational being to agree with anything the National Rifle Association says or does. But when they’re right, I think it’s very important that we acknowledge that.

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Leadership Forum on Friday. But audience members at the group’s annual meeting, being held this year in Houston, won’t be able to carry guns during his address.

It’s true: No one should be carrying a gun anywhere near a former president. Ever. Then again, no one should be carrying a gun near anyone.

(Adding: Yeah, there probably are a few commonsense exceptions but as a general principle, let’s err on the side of zero guns.)

Why not arm the children?

Published by digby on May 25, 2022

The Republicans have only one solution

Lauren Boebert and family

10 days after an 18 year old male, clad in body armor, wielding a semi-automatic weapon walked into a grocery story in Buffalo New York and targeted ten Black patrons, another 18 year old male, clad in body armor, wielding a semi-automatic weapon walked into an elementary school in Uvalde Texas and killed 22 people, 19 of them children under the age of 10. The echoes of the Charleston massacre in 2015 and the Sandy Hook massacre in in 2012 are deafening. It just keeps happening.

There was a time when we might have thought that the mass shooting of an elementary school would have been the final straw. Targeting tiny children in their schoolrooms, randomly gunning them down in front of their classmates who had to witness the carnage, the horror endured by the families of the victims would seem to be the sort of thing that would shock the collective conscience. And back in 2012, it did. For a little while.

There was bipartisan agreement on Capitol hill, law enforcement and right wing media were in accord and even the NRA’s board understood that this had crossed a line . A teenage boy had obtained a semi-automatic rifle, killed his mother and gunned down 20 kids and six teachers in an elementary school. Something had to be done.

Then Wayne LaPierre, then the undisputed leader of the gun rights movement and the head of the NRA, put his foot down. He appeared at a press conference in Washington at which everyone expected him to offer a compromise on the NRA’s rigid refusal to contemplate any gun reform measures at all. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave a barn burner of a speech in which rather than offering some concessions, he doubled down. He famously proclaimed:

The only way — the only way — to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. What if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security?

All reforms of the gun laws stalled from that point forward. The right, completely in the clutches of the gun lobby, never engaged in good faith again. Even the horrifying image of grade school kids being sprayed with semi-automatic gunfire didn’t move them.

The NRA and Wayne LaPierre have since been disgraced in a series of financial scandals but as is so common on the right, their dishonesty and corruption hasn’t reduced their clout with the GOP. As a matter of fact they are holding their annual meeting in Houston on Friday:

LaPierre’s “good guy with a gun” speech laid down the law that the only acceptable response to mass gun violence was to call for more guns — arming teachers, armed security in public buildings, arming parishioners in churches etc. And it remains in effect today. They speak of “hardening targets” and recommending open carry laws that allow average “good guys” to be armed and ready at all times to try to stop a committed mass murderer. Yesterday, in the wake of the shooting they all dutifully spouted the party line:

When asked why people are opposed to this supposed solution, Fox News’ Jeanine PIrro said it’s because are they are “triggered if there is someone with a gun, they are frightened, that is this new narrative. You see a gun, you should be frightened as opposed to appreciating what they are doing for you!” People being afraid of guns. Imagine that.

As it happens, this fatuous “good guy with a gun” nonsense has been fully refuted by the recent mass killings. The murderers in New York and Texas encountered armed police and security guards and were able to thwart them by wearing body armor, one successfully killing the ex-police officer guarding the store in Buffalo, the other injuring several officers with whom he exchanged fire in Uvalde. It took a SWAT team to finally bring him down.

One would think that banning body armor for personal use would be a no-bainer but it’s widely considered by the gun activists to fall under the 2nd Amendment, so any hope of banning its use is probably also off limits. Gun proliferation zealots say they need it for when the civil war comes and the snowflake libs come knocking on their door. Breaking a filibuster for any gun related legislation is impossible and the far right judiciary probably wouldn’t uphold it anyway.

Ever since 2008 when the Supreme Court declared in District of Columbia v Heller for the first time that the 2nd Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, Republican run states have been loosening their gun laws to the point where in some places they really don’t exist, like Texas. The killer apparently went out on his 18th birthday and bought himself two semi-automatic rifles, no muss, no fuss. (The law that had been in place in Texas barring anyone under 21 from owning and possessing firearms was repealed in 2019.) New York doesn’t bar 18year olds from buying guns either and for reasons that are unclear, the red flag laws designed to alert authorities to a potential shooter with mental illness didn’t work.

Just this week, a federal three judge panel ruled that it’s unconstitutional to deny 18 year olds the right to own guns.

“America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,” Judge Ryan Nelson wrote. “Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.”

One can’t help but think of another 18 year old mass killer, Kyle Rittenhouse, last seen hobnobbing at Mar-a-lago with Donald Trump, feted by everyone on the right for his heroic killing of three unarmed protesters.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court will be handing down a decision backed by the extremist gun rights movement this term that will likely hobble any state that currently has gun restrictions on the books. If the Court goes all the way under a new “text, history and tradition” test they will declare that public safety is no longer the proper rationale for any gun regulation. You have to wonder if they will take into account whether the American “history and tradition” of young men armed with semi-automatic weapons mowing down masses of innocent people should be considered instead.

President Biden spoke to the nation last night in his capacity of mourner-in-chief. He’s always effective at that. And he asked an important question:

“As a nation we have to ask, ‘When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name do we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

The Democrats are more than willing to stand up to the gun lobby. The question is rightfully asked of Republicans who consistently block all gun safety legislation and are prepared to use the courts to unleash a free-for-all of gun violence in the name of “freedom.” If repeated massacres, even of tiny children, automatically evoke calls to put more guns in schools and on the streets I think we know the answer: never. I can’t think of anything that illustrates their nihilism more starkly than that.

The facts speak for themselves

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 25, 2022

Time to update those graphics

Are GunAmericans willing to admit yet …

A) They are insecure cowards who need guns to feel like “real men” (and women).

B) White, Christian, gun-totting American “patriots” are the evilest, most violent people on the planet and a threat to themselves and their communities.

The graphic below is from 4 years ago, covering January 1, 2009 to May 21, 2018. The number of school shootings then was “57 times as many shootings as the other six G7 countries combined.”

In the replies:

@GumLeafWhistler
In Australia we TOOK their damn guns. We didn’t ask. We TOOK them.

My kids will come home today.

@michhastings
The argument that we can’t regulate guns but we can regulate uteruses is really really really remarkable.

pojohkjbkhbjh

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com.

The only good news this morning

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 25, 2022

Works for me.

Remember when conservatives and the Beltway press treated Georgia’s Jimmy Carter as a boorish hick for wearing sweaters around the White House? And for serving cold fast food to the national college football champions? And for kissing the Russian president’s ass? Wait, those last two were former President Trump, the man who would be kingmaker, the suspected election conspirator and coup plotter.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has even less reason to fear filing an indictment against Trump this morning. Trump’s revenge picks for governor and secretary of state went down in flames in Georgia’s Tuesday Republican primary.

Georgia’s incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp trounced Trump-endorsed David Perdue, the former senator, by over 50 points in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Kandiss Taylor, bane of Satan, drew under four percent of the vote.

Incumbent Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defeated Congressman Jody Hice, also endorsed by Trump, by 19 points. Trump vowed revenge against Kemp and Raffensperger for not caving to his demand that they reverse his 2020 presidential loss in Georgia.

“We’re going to go fucking scorched-earth,” Kemp adviser Jay Walker told a group of top donors and advisers earlier this year, reports Politico. “When you got your foot on someone’s neck, you don’t take it off until the race is over, or they’ve run out of oxygen.” Meaning Perdue, who gasped his last on Tuesday.

Graphic accompanying Washington Post story on Trump endorsements.

Trump’s only primary “win” was U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker. The former football star this fall will challenge incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat. Real Clear Politics ranks the fall contest a toss-up. Perhaps Trump will invite Walker to Mar-a-Lago for some congratulatory Chicken McNuggets.

Body-armor-wearing Rep. Mo Brooks of Jan. 6 “taking down names and kicking ass” fame will face a runoff in Alabama’s Republican U.S. Senate primary. Trump withdrew his early Brooks endorsement in the race to replace Sen. Richard Shelby after seeing Brooks’ floundering poll numbers. Brooks had stepped away from promoting Trump’s “stolen election” grievance.

Brooks fell short of the needed 50 percent-plus-one needed to win outright on Tuesday. Katie Britt, a former top aide to Shelby, won 45 percent of the vote, besting Brooks by over 16 points.

Associated Press:

Brooks had continued to run under the banner of “MAGA Mo,” referencing Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. In his Tuesday night speech, Brooks called himself the “America First, MAGA candidate” in the race, and said he has a proven record on issues like border security and opposition to abortion.

Good luck with that.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com.

The Payback Doctrine

Published by digby on May 24, 2022

Viktor Orban and Donald Trump’s shared philosophy

Donald Trump was always known for his vendettas against anyone who crossed him. He’s made no bones about it:

It’s called “Get Even.” Get even. This isn’t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. Other people see you or see you or see and they see how you react.

There are dozens of examples of him explaining that philosophy. And guess what? It may the most important belief he has in common with the like of Ron DeSantis and the undisputed white nationalist philosopher/leader in the world Viktor Orban:

But some of [Orban’s] advice at CPAC Hungary might have reflected his background as a lawyer: “Those who play by their opponents’ rules are certain to lose.” Indeed, since coming to power in 2010, Mr. Orban has written his own rules, promulgating a new Constitution and hundreds of new laws to lock in his gains.

The secret to Mr. Orban’s longevity in office has been using those rules in ways that go far beyond social-conservative culture. He has also deployed his own rules in the realm of material benefits. He has effectively used political payback to inflict economic pain on his opponents while bestowing financial benefits on loyalists.

And it appears his American conservative admirers have taken notice. During Donald Trump’s presidency and in red states like Florida, political punishment has become a way of doing business.

Certain Republicans and Mr. Orban share political payback as a strategy of governing and a way for the state’s economic power to consolidate partisan political power. The rules are simple: Make your enemies pay; let your friends prosper.

[…]

In Hungary under Mr. Orban, political payback is common. Mr. Orban first targeted the independent and opposition media by directing state-funded advertising to pro-government outlets. He has used state regulatory power to shift business from unfriendly hands to friendly ones, starting with a law that required tobacco sellers to be licensed by the state. (Many of those licenses were awarded to government supporters.) With tobacco as a model, Mr. Orban opened similar efforts in the banking, energy and telecom sectors. Owners whose businesses failed to support the governing party have been sidelined, while party loyalists gained. When discontent with Mr. Orban overflowed and his party lost many of the country’s big cities in the 2019 local elections, he cut major sources of revenue for opposition cities so that their mayors would appear incompetent without resources.

As president, Mr. Trump was accused of political partisanship in many cases affecting blue-state voters and governments. He refused to greenlight the New York Gateway tunnel project. His administration initially refused to provide wildfire assistance to California and was accused of raising hurdles in distributing hurricane relief in nonvoting Puerto Rico. When the media reported unfavorably on Mr. Trump’s presidency, he — like Mr. Orban — picked fights with perceived opponents, repeatedly threatening Amazon in order to punish Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, and openly criticized the merger of AT&T and CNN’s owner at the time, Time Warner.

Some red states are now catching on to the politics of payback. In 2018, Georgia’s Republican legislature approved a bill that stripped out a tax break that would have benefited Delta Air Lines after the company decided to end a promotional discount for National Rifle Association members. A Texas legislator recently threatened to introduce a bill that would prevent Citigroup from underwriting Texas municipal bonds unless it stopped its policy of paying the travel expenses of employees who seek abortions outside the state.

Probably the best-known recent efforts have come from Florida, where Republican lawmakers voted to revoke Disney’s special tax status after the company condemned Gov. Ron DeSantis’s education law (known by critics as “Don’t Say Gay”). This sounded familiar. Last summer, Mr. Orban passed a law banning the display of L.G.B.T.Q. content to minors.

Retribution is the method of the bully. By punishing opponents for minor or even imagined infractions, all but the bravest opponents slink away. And it generates compliance. That’s precisely why it is a useful tactic. Only a few need to be targeted for many to toe the party line. Payback also generates loyalty. Friends stay close when they benefit from government largess.

In Hungary, this is all legal, because Mr. Orban doesn’t play by opponents’ rules. He makes his own. As a clever lawyer, Mr. Orban knows that if he can legalize anything, he can use state resources to punish enemies and benefit friends without liability.

Mr. Orban’s party controls everything that matters in Hungary, so he controls the law. Like Mr. Orban, Mr. DeSantis is also a clever lawyer — and for now, his party controls the offices of secretary of state, attorney general and both chambers of the state legislature in Florida.

If Mr. Trump is succeeded by a more disciplined party leader who can control all three branches and lock in partisan advantage by law, then payback could become the currency of the realm.

Even if Trump himself wins in 2024, he and his minions will have learned that they can get away with anything, so the payback will be fierce. For him it may all be personal but I’m sure that plenty of other Republicans in a new GOP government will deploy this tactic to consolidate their power.

This is an important insight from Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University who lived and worked in Hungary for many years. I hope that democracy advocates are preparing for the possible eventuality,

“What are we doing???”

Published by digby on May 24, 2022

I wrote this seven years ago (with other versions many years before that) and nothing’s changed. Nothing.

Would sensible gun control put an end to violence?  Of course not. Will it stop all murder and suicide? Obviously not. But we are experiencing an epidemic of gun violence in this country the likes of which no one else in the world has to live with. And the way to deal with that is by treating it as an epidemic.

There is a famous story about a British doctor by the name of John Snow who had a theory that cholera was spread through water contaminated by sewage. In the 1850s, it was widely assumed that the disease was caused by breathing vapors or a “miasma in the atmosphere” and Snow was unable to convince his colleagues otherwise. In 1854 there was a bad outbreak in the London suburb of Soho, where Snow happened to live. He suspected that the outbreak was due to a very busy public water pump in the center of town and set about tracking it meticulously through hospital records and interviews. By creating a geographical grid to chart of deaths, connecting them to the pump and eliminating other possible sources, Dr Snow was able to create what he considered proof that the drinking water was causing the outbreak. He took the evidence to the town officials and convinced them to take the handle off the pump. The epidemic ceased almost immediately.Advertisement:

It was years before the medical profession fully understood the bacteriological basis for the disease and develop treatments for it. But the point is that it wasn’t necessary to cure the disease to end the epidemic. What ended it was shutting down that pump.

What Clinton said in her statement yesterday is indisputably true. We have all the epidemiological evidence we need to know that gun control will save lives. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, after DC banned handguns, gun homicides fell by 25 percent and gun suicides fell by 23 percent. Even more dramatically, after Australia banned automatic, semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and initiated a buyback program to take 700,000 guns out of private hands after a horrific mass shooting nearly 20 years ago, they have not had a single mass shooting since. Gun homicides fell by 59 per cent and firearm-related suicides fell by 65 per cent with no consequential rise in homicides and suicides by other means.

They didn’t cure violence or hatred or depression or death.  They just shut down the pump. We could too. It’s really not that complicated.

But they just won’t do it. This is scheduled for this week:

I’m sure it will be just as inspiring as this speech in 2018: