In an age of vitriol, public service is an act of courage
Republican N.J. councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, 30, was found shot to death outside her home Wednesday night. The FBI is investigating.
A Feb. 3 piece at Politico just caught my eye. I missed this news:
Wednesday night, New Jersey councilwoman Eunice K. Dwumfour was found in her car with multiple gunshot wounds, according to authorities. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dwumfour, a Republican, was only 30 years old. She was still a newcomer, serving her first term on the Sayreville Borough Council after being elected in November 2021. Her former campaign manager Karen Bailey Bebert told the New York Times that Dwumfour was an “inspirational woman” who was excited to get into politics at a young age.
We know about recent shootings at the homes of politicians in Albuquerque, the attack on former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband that was meant for her, the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and the man with a loaded gun arrested outside the home of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). The threats and vitriol are that much worse for women in politics than men, especially if they are black (Dwumfour).
“Online violence is becoming more prominent because there just isn’t a consequence for it,” said Nina Jankowicz, author of How to Be a Woman Online and lead for the Centre for Information Resilience’s Hypatia Project, which combats online harms against women.
Harasssment has a “chilling effect,” Jankowicz says:
“You just really look at your life very differently. Especially if you have children. You wonder if there’s going to be somebody outside waiting for you,” Jankowicz told Women Rule. “You wonder, when you go walk the dog or bring your child to daycare, if somebody’s going to be there to threaten you.”
The Atlantic‘s Russell Berman ponders why so few people want to run for president. By the night of the State of the Union address in a president’s third year there are usually a cast of potential rivals. Not this year.
Chicken or egg?
Perhaps it is just a lull. On the Republican side, perhaps it is the dampening effect of Donald Trump’s insults have potential rivals tweet-shy (or whatever he’s using). For Democrats, perhaps it is the uncertainty over whether President Biden will run again. Perhaps it is because the job sucks. Perhaps people with families don’t want them put at risk.
One reason the current crop of GOP House members are so unappealing (even to the Koch network) is that political vitriol on and offline and intimidation by armed nutjobs have driven off all but the most narcissistic and — let’s face it — crazy would-be candidates. Public service work now seems like a masochistic invitation to abuse. That is, unless one aspires to a hosting gig on Fox or one of the fringier conservative networks where experience as a congressional bomb-thrower is a resume sweetener. It’s hard to know which came first, decent people avoiding public service or the lunatics who drove them away.
There was a time in this country (as the trope goes) not so long ago, when in time of crisis Americans stepped up to serve, even die, to defend their country and what’s right. Men and women went off to war to fight fascism. Rosies at home stepped up to rivet. Others planted victory gardens and recycled cans and rubber.
Nowadays, Rosies at home have targets on their backs.
Charles Koch. Photo 2019 by Gavin Peters via Wikimedia Commons, cropped (CC BY-SA 3.0).
“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” former President Donald Trump said in a video statement in January. Is it possible that that statement (plus a few insults) are connected to the Koch funds working against Trump in 2024?
The network of donors and activist groups led by conservative billionaire Charles Koch will oppose Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, mounting a direct challenge to the former president’s campaign to win back the White House.
“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” Emily Seidel, chief executive of the network’s flagship group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), wrote in a memo released publicly on Sunday. The three-page missive repeatedly suggests that AFP is taking on the responsibility of stopping Trump, with Seidel writing: “Lots of people are frustrated. But very few people are in a position to do something about it. AFP is. Now is the time to rise to the occasion.”
The Koch network has remained on the sidelines of presidential primaries since 2015 when five candidates it favored lost to Trump. Were the Trump tax cuts were not enough? Apparently not:
Trump’s brand of economic nationalism has clashed with the free-trade inclinations of the Koch network. “The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump wrote on Twitter in 2018, referring to Charles and his brother David, who died in 2019. Trump and the Koch network have been more aligned on opposing foreign interventions and reducing nonviolent criminal sentences.
The AFP memo itself indicates that the Koch network plans to engage earlier in federal and state races where AFP claims its candidates won over 80 percent of their races in 2022:
This was a test for whether our grassroots and data capabilities can make a significant difference in primaries. We learned that they can. So, in 2024, AFP and AFP Action will get engaged in more primaries at every level of office.
AFP believes “the loudest voice in each political party sets the tone for the entire election.” The Koch network doesn’t want that tone set by Trump.
“The American people have shown that they’re ready to move on, and so AFP will help them do that,” the memo continues. If AFP wants “to turn the page on the past several years,” it likely will oppose Ron DeSantis as well, although both go unmentioned by name.
AFP plans to bring its data capapbilities “at i360” and LIBRE, its Latino outreach operation, to bear on electing candidates more to its liking. Presumably, candidates less crazy than the MAGA embarassments now in Congress and more capable of dismantling Social Security and Medicare than Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Dee: Jane, do you ever feel like you are just this far from being completely hysterical twenty-four hours a day?
Jane: Half the people I know feel that way. The lucky ones feel that way. The rest of the people ARE hysterical twenty-four hours a day.
— from Grand Canyon, screenplay by Lawrence and Meg Kasdan
HAL 9000: Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
— from 2001: A Space Odyssey, screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
George Fields: [to Dorothy/Michael] I BEGGED you to get therapy!
— from Tootsie, screenplay by Murray Schisgal
As if the mid-winter blues weren’t enough, there’s been an odd confluence of celestial events recently – a close encounter with a hurtling asteroid, an eerie green comet lighting up the night skies, and the mysterious appearance of a high altitude “spy balloon” the size of three metro buses that has the conspiracy nuts twisting themselves into pretzels. Not that I believe in heavenly portents, but I am feeling the need for some “cinema therapy” right about now.
With that in mind, here are 12 films I’ve watched an unhealthy number of times; the ones I’m most likely to reach for when I’m depressed, anxious, uncertain about the future…or all the above. These films, like my oldest and dearest friends, have never, ever let me down. Take one or two before bedtime; cocktail optional.
Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus directed this mesmerizing 1959 film, a modern spin on a classic Greek myth. Fueled by the pulsing rhythms of Rio’s Carnaval and tempered by the gentle sway of Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s samba soundtrack, Black Orpheus fully engages the senses. Camus and Jacques Viot adapted the screenplay from the play by Vinicius de Moraes.
Handsome tram operator Orfeo (Breno Mello) is engaged to vivacious Mira (Lourdes de Olivera) but gets hit by the thunderbolt when he meets sweet, innocent Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn). As in most romantic triangles, things get complicated, especially when Mr. Death (Ademar da Silva) starts lurking about the place.
You may be scratching your head as to why I’m “comforted” by a story based on a Greek tragedy; but Black Orpheus is graced by one of the most beautiful, life-affirming denouements in cinema; which always assures me that everything is going to be alright.
The Dish – This 2000 Australian sleeper dramatizes the story behind the live televised images of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon in 1969. The worldwide broadcast was facilitated by a tracking station located on a sheep farm in New South Wales.
Quirky characters abound in Rob Sitch’s culture-clash comedy (reminiscent of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero). It’s not all played for yucks; the re-enactment of the telecast is genuinely stirring. Sam Neill heads a fine cast. Director Sitch and co-writers Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, and Jane Kennedy also collaborated on the charming 1997 dramedy The Castle (recommended!).
Diva – Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1981 cult fave kicked off a sub-genre labelled Cinéma du look (e.g. Beineix’s Betty Blue, and Luc Besson’s Subway, La Femme Nikita, and Leon the Professional).
Our unlikely antihero is mild-mannered postman Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a 20-something opera fan obsessed with a Garbo-like diva (American soprano Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). She has never recorded a studio album and stipulates that her live performances are never to be taped and/or reproduced in any medium.
An enraptured Jules attends one of her concerts and makes a high-quality recording, for his own edification. By pure chance, a pair of nefarious underworld characters witness Jules bootlegging the concert, sparking a chain of events that turns his life upside down.
Diva is an entertaining pop-art mélange of neo-noir, action-thriller, and comic-book fantasy. Chockablock with quirky characters, from a pair of hipster hit men (Gérard Darmon and Dominique Pinon) to a Zen-like international man of mystery named Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) who is currently “going through his cool period” as his girlfriend (Thuy Ann Luu) confides to Jules. Slick, stylish and thoroughly engaging.
A Hard Day’s Night – This 1964 masterpiece has been often copied, but never equaled. Shot in a semi-documentary style, the film follows a “day in the life” of John, Paul, George and Ringo at the height of their youthful exuberance and charismatic powers. Thanks to the wonderfully inventive direction of Richard Lester and Alun Owen’s clever script, the essence of what made the Beatles “the Beatles” has been captured for posterity.
Although it’s meticulously constructed, Lester’s film has an improvisational feel; and feels as fresh and innovative as when it first hit theaters all those years ago. I still catch subtle gags that surprise me (like John snorting the Coke bottle). Music highlights: “I Should Have Known Better”, “All My Loving”, “Don’t Bother Me”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, and the fab title song.
Harold and Maude – Harold loves Maude. And Maude loves Harold. It’s a match made in heaven-if only society would agree. Because Harold (Bud Cort) is a teenager, and Maude (Ruth Gordon) is just shy of 80. Falling in love with a woman old enough to be his great-grandmother is the least of Harold’s quirks. He’s a chronically depressed trustafarian who amuses himself by staging fake suicides to freak out his patrician mother (wonderfully droll Vivian Pickles). He also “enjoys” funerals-which is where Harold and Maude Meet Cute.
The effervescent Maude is Harold’s polar opposite; while he wallows in morbid speculation how any day could be your last, she seizes each day as if it actually were. Obviously, she has something to teach him. Despite dark undertones, this is one “midnight movie” that manages to be life-affirming. Hal Ashby directed, and Colin Higgins (who would later write and direct Foul Play and 9 to 5) wrote the screenplay. Outstanding soundtrack by Cat Stevens.
Local Hero – This low-key, observant 1983 social satire from Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth stars Peter Reigert as Macintyre, a Texas-based executive who is assigned by the head of “Knox Oil & Gas” (Burt Lancaster) to scope out a sleepy Scottish hamlet that sits on an oil-rich bay. He is to negotiate with local property owners and essentially buy out the town so that the company can build a huge refinery.
While he considers himself “more of a Telex man”, who would prefer to knock out such an assignment “in an afternoon”, Mac sees the overseas trip as a possible fast track for a promotion within the corporation. As this quintessential 80s Yuppie works to ingratiate himself with the unhurried locals, a “fish out of water” transformation ensues. It’s the kindest and gentlest Ugly American tale you’ll ever see.
Man on the Train – There are a only a handful of films I have become emotionally attached to, usually for reasons I can’t completely fathom. This 2002 drama is one of them. Best described as an “existential noir”, Patrice LeConte’s relatively simple tale of two men in their twilight years with disparate life paths (a retired poetry teacher and a career felon) forming an unexpected deep bond turns into a transcendent film experience. French pop star Johnny Hallyday and screen veteran Jean Rochefort deliver mesmerizing performances. I feel an urge to watch it right now.
My Neighbor Totoro – While this 1988 film was anime master’s Hayao Miyazaki’s fourth feature, it was one of his (and Studio Ghibli’s) first international hits.
It’s a lovely tale about a young professor and his two daughters settling into their new country house while Mom convalesces at a nearby hospital. The rambunctious 4 year-old goes exploring and stumbles into the verdant court of a “king” nestled within the roots of a gargantuan camphor tree. This king rules with a gentle hand; a benign forest spirit named Totoro (an amalgam of every plush toy you ever cuddled with as a child).
Granted, it’s Miyazaki’s most simplistic and kid-friendly tale…but that’s not a put down. Miyazaki’s usual themes remain intact; the animation is breathtaking, the fantasy elements magical, yet the human characters are down-to-earth and universally relatable. A charmer.
Sherman’s March – Filmmaker Ross McElwee is one of America’s hidden treasures. McElwee, a genteel Southern neurotic (Woody Allen meets Tennessee Williams) has been compulsively documenting his personal life since the mid 70’s and managed to turn the footage into some of the most hilarious, moving and thought-provoking films most people have never seen.
Audiences weaned on “reality TV” may wonder “what’s the big deal about one more schmuck making glorified home movies?” but they would be missing an enriching glimpse into the human condition. Sherman’s March began as a project to retrace the Union general’s path of destruction through the South, but ended up as rumination on the eternal human quest for love and acceptance, filtered through McElwee’s search for the perfect mate.
Despite its 3 hour length, I’ve found myself returning to this film for repeat viewings, and enjoying it just as much as the first time. The unofficial “sequel”, Time Indefinite, is also worth a peek.
The Thin Man – W.S. Van Dyke’s delightful mix of screwball comedy and murder mystery (adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s novel by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich) never gets old for me. Story takes a backseat to the repartee between private investigator (and perpetually tipsy socialite) Nick Charles (William Powell) and his wisecracking wife Nora (sexy Myrna Loy). Top it off with a scene-stealing wire fox terrier (Asta!) and you’ve got a winning formula that has spawned countless imitations; particularly a bevy of sleuthing TV couples (Hart to Hart, McMillan and Wife, Moonlighting, Remington Steele, et.al.).
True Stories – Musician/raconteur David Byrne enters the Lone Star state of mind with his subtly satirical Texas travelogue from 1986. Not easy to pigeonhole; part social satire, long-form music video, and mockumentary. The vignettes about the quirky but generally likable inhabitants of sleepy Virgil, Texas should hold your fascination once you buy into “tour-guide” Byrne’s bemused anthropological detachment. Among the town’s residents: John Goodman, “Pops” Staples, Swoosie Kurtz and the late Spalding Gray. The outstanding cinematography is by Edward Lachman. Byrne’s fellow Heads have cameos performing “Wild Wild Life”.
Wings of Desire – I’ve never attempted to compile a Top 10 list of my all-time favorite films (I’ve just seen too many damn movies…I’d be staring at an empty page for weeks, if my head didn’t explode first) but I’m certain Wim Wenders’ 1987 stunner would be a shoo-in. Now, attempting to describe this film is something else altogether.
If I told you it’s about an angel (Bruno Ganz) who hovers over Berlin in a trench coat, monitoring people’s thoughts and taking notes, who spots a beautiful trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) and follows her home, wallows in her deepest longings, watches her undress, then falls in love and decides to chuck the mantle of immortality and become human…you’d probably say “That sounds like a story about a creepy stalker.” And if I told you it features Peter Falk, playing himself, you’d laugh nervously and say, “Oh, look at the time.” Of course, there is more to it-about life, the universe, and everything.
BONUS!
If you really want to go all out for movie night (which is pretty much every night for me), you have to watch a cartoon before the movie, right? Here’s my 2011 review of a Blu-ray box set always guaranteed to lift your spirits. Keep it handy, right next to the first aid kit.
The Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, Vol. 1– During those long, dark nights of my soul, when all seems hopeless and futile, there’s one thought that never fails to bring me back to the light. It’s that feeling that somewhere, out there in the ether, there’s a frog, with a top hat and a cane, waiting for his chance to pop out of a box and sing:
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal
Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart’s on fire…
If you don’t know what I’m
talking about, just go ahead and skip to the next review now.
The rest of you might want to
check out this fabulous 3-disc collection, which features 50 classic animated
shorts (and 18 rarities) from the Warner Brothers vaults. Deep catalog Looney
Tunes geeks may quibble until the cows come home about what’s not here (Warner
has previously released six similar DVD collections in standard definition),
but for the casual fans (like yours truly) there is plenty to please. I’m just
happy to have “One Froggy Evening”, “I Love to Singa”, “Rabbit of Seville”,
“Duck Amuck”, “Leghorn Lovelorn”, “Three Little Bops” and “What’s Opera Doc?”
in one place. The selections cover all eras, from the 1940s onward.
One thing that does become clear, as you watch these restored gems in gorgeous hi-def (especially those from the pre-TV era) is that these are not “cartoons”, they are 7 ½ minute films, every bit as artful as anything else cinema has to offer. Extras include a trio of excellent documentaries about the studio’s star director, the legendary Chuck Jones. The real diamond among the rarities is The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (directed by Jones for MGM), which won the 1965 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.
Trump is trying to get to DeSantis’ right on the issue of transgender rights and it is very, very ugly. This is by Dave Weigel at Semafor:
You’d be forgiven if you missed Donald Trump’s new plan to stop “left-wing gender insanity.” Other Republicans had talked like this for years, and far more media attention went to, say, Ron Desantis getting the College Board to take left-wing voices out of an African American Studies course.
But to both LGBT advocates and social conservatives, Trump’s policy rollout was a watershed moment, one that signaled a hard right turn from debates focused on transitioning youth to a broader attack on the very concept of transgender identity itself.
Trump had already supported efforts by red states to ban gender-affirming care for minors, discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and transgender student athletes. Now, Trump was promising a gag order on federal promotion of gender transition “at any age” and a law “establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”
“The biggest thing here is the pivot away from transgender youth to all transgender people,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “This year is the first time we’ve seen actions, in states, going after adults. That is brand new for Trump.”
Trump’s early emphasis on gender identity in this campaign has also surprised some conservatives, who are delighted that the 2024 presidential race is shaping up into a race to the right on the issue. Trump is currently in an invisible primary with DeSantis, whose own strategy for blocking Medicaid from funding gender-affirming treatment — appointing a medical board that issued an official policy change — was applauded by social conservatives.
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“President Trump recognizes that the tide may be turning politically on this issue,” said Jay W. Richards, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who researches “gender ideology” and its impact on federal law. “I honestly think that he’s trying to get out in front of other likely candidates for the Republican nomination.”
THE VIEW FROM TRANSGENDER ADVOCATES
To some transgender advocates, Trump’s moves confirmed what they had already long warned was the case: Many conservatives do not want them to exist, full stop, and they are pushing for policy to achieve that goal.
“Trans people would regard this as an existential threat,” Gillian Branstetter, a strategist working on gender justice issues at the ACLU, told Semafor. “It would make the United States one of the most unsafe places to be trans in the world, among wealthy countries.”
Giselle Donnelly, a transgender national security expert at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, has criticized “radicalism” among LGBT advocates. But she reached the same conclusion about Trump’s plan: This was war.
“Gone is the we’re-just-trying-to-protect-kids-and-save-women’s-sports façade, replaced by naked efforts to prevent transition for all, regardless of age,” Donnelly wrote in The Bulwark.
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Proposals like Trump’s, advocates warn, would effectively try to prevent as many people as possible from learning about or accessing medical care for transitions when young, while also trying to force existing transgender people to detransition by denying them treatment and turning communities against them. They have warned similar policies and rhetoric would lead to personal attacks, physical and mental health crises, and ultimately suicides.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat who gained national attention when she attacked Republicans for calling pro-LGBT politicians “groomers,” called the Trump plan “dystopian” and “bizarre.”
Trump had won Michigan in 2016 without much focus on “culture wars,” she said. Last year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer steamrolled a GOP challenger who mocked trans-inclusive language like “birthing parent,” and promised to bring DeSantis-style restrictions on LGBT issues in elementary schools to Michigan.
“Our election was largely a rebuke of this kind of politics — trying to demonize the LGBTQ community, specifically the trans community,” said McMorrow.
LGBT advocates also predicted a legal and regulatory slog for Trump or any other president who took office and tried to implement this agenda. It had taken years for the original Obama-era gender identity changes to be adopted; Medicare did not cover gender medicine until 2014.
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And in any coming fight, they noted, the Trump position would be rejected by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which have endorsed gender-affirming treatments.
THE VIEW FROM SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES
Trump staking out this position, this early, was thrilling to social conservatives.
While many Republicans have embraced aspects of their proposals that receive more respectful hearings in The New York Times or The Atlantic — transgender health specialists do debate the proper treatment plan for teens, for example, even if they strongly oppose bans — Trump’s plan was more aligned with their own conversations, where transgenderism is described as a mental illness, a religious affront, and a growing threat to impressionable youth.
To them, the party’s leading presidential candidate had sketched out how the administrative state could unwind a decade of pro-LGBT policymaking.
“Even if you do it the right way, it takes a long time to change,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council. “That was part of the Trump administration’s problem. They didn’t really understand that, and they were a year in before they really figured out what the process was.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told Semafor’s Kadia Goba that she was “so happy that President Trump has taken this issue up,” and wanted to learn more about his position on adult treatments. She has proposed her own legislation that would, among other items, block colleges and universities from teaching how to administer gender-affirming care.
“I personally can’t understand why anybody would mutilate their body,” Greene said. “I’d like to talk to President Trump because I want to know where he stands with that.”
Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project, said that any other Republican candidate for the presidency would need “to meet or beat Trump” on gender. Beyond the policy promises, Trump had promised to investigate “whether Big Pharma or others have illegally marketed hormones and puberty blockers,” and whether hospitals had “covered up horrific long term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich,” questions that the APP had urged Republicans to ask.
“Government shouldn’t be in the business of funding sex changes,” Schilling told Semafor. “That’s just good policy; it’s smart and it’s popular. We pay a lot of money in taxes, as Americans and we don’t want our money to go to this stuff. You want a sex change? Pay for it yourself.”
DAVID ‘S VIEW
Trump, to put it mildly, did not emerge from the religious right wing of the GOP and his recent push into LGBT issues marks a broader return to the topic on the right.
The former president, whose appointees attempted to restore a “biological” binary definition of gender in federal policy, talked little about the issue in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. In fact, he was best known in 2016 for publicly moderating the party’s faith-infused stance on LGBT issues, including opposing North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” and inviting Caitlyn Jenner to use whichever facilities she preferred when on Trump properties. After the Pulse nightclub shooting, he promised to “fight for” the LGBT community better than Hillary Clinton by keeping out Muslim immigrants who harbored anti-gay beliefs.
Trump doesn’t talk like that anymore. As Semafor’s Shelby Talcott has reported, he’s focused more on this topic because he’s seen how much it revs up conservative voters. His video came days after he told a cheering South Carolina audience he would “reaffirm that God created two genders, called men and women.”
It’s true that he’s been fairly tolerant for a wingnut up until now. It was one of those issues that distinguished him from the rest of the field. But this is a good example of how the culture war always ends up being a race to see who can be the most hateful asshole and the party goes further and further toward fascistic policies.
LGBTQ people should be very concerned about this. We all should be. This is going the wrong way in a hurry.
Social Security and Medicare cuts are back on the menu
Whatever “populist” impulse Donald Trump brought into the party didn’t take among hardcore conservatives:
Former Vice President Mike Pence, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, said Thursday that he wants to “reform” Social Security and institute private savings accounts for recipients.
“There are modest reforms in entitlements that can be done without disadvantaging anybody at the point of the need,” Pence told an audience at the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors summit in Washington, D.C. “I think the day could come when we could replace the New Deal with a better deal. Literally give younger Americans the ability to take a portion of their Social Security withholdings and put that into a private savings account.”
Video of the event was obtained by the Democratic tracking group American Bridge 21st Century.
The comments mark one of the first policy proposals from Pence as the field for the Republican nomination is fast taking shape.
Former President Donald Trump, who was first to announce his candidacy, started campaigning in earnest last weekend. And former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is set to launch her campaign for president on Feb. 15.
House Republicans, having retaken control of the chamber, have floated cuts to the popular federal program. But Trump himself, who in 2020 proposed eliminating the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, warned Republicans in January to leave that program and Medicare alone.
“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” he said in a video released by his 2024 presidential campaign.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely considered to be Trump’s chief competitor for the nomination at the moment — if he decides to get in the race — regularly supported increasing the retirement age for Social Security when he was in Congress.
Freedom Caucus members have already said they would like to cut it but have walked it back in this debt ceiling hostage gambit. But they want to do it, don’t kid yourself. They’re just still dealing with Trump and they don’t want to confuse his voters.
DeSantis will actually do it, by the way, if he wins. Don’t kid yourself. He’s very serious about this stuff. He is the living embodiment of everything horrible about the old GOP and the new GOP. There is not one decent thing about him.
Following up on the post below, here’s Dana Milbank with a piece on the new House majorities first orders of business. I confess that I had not heard about the important vote to condemn the Russian Revolution, The Great Leap Forward and the Killing Fields. Frankly, I’m surprised any of the Republicans had even heard of these things but I’m sure their leadership told them it would like, totally own the libs so they enthusiastically signed on:
A CNN poll last week found that about three-quarters of Americans, including nearly half of Republicans, think House Republican leaders aren’t paying enough attention to the country’s most pressing problems.
So this week, GOP leaders set out to rectify the situation. They approved a resolution condemning the Russian Revolution. Of 1917.
But before you call Bolshevik on Republican leaders for being 106 years out of date, I should note, in fairness, that their resolution also took issue with more recent events: Joseph Stalin’s Ukrainian famine, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Pol Pot’s “killing fields.”
For those who haven’t kept up with current affairs, those events happened, respectively, in 1932-1933, 1958-1960 and 1975-1979. Still awaiting legislative action by the new House majority: a condemnation of Genghis Khan’s Siege of Merv in 1221 and the Roman Sack of Carthage during the Third Punic War.
The Republicans’ late hit on 20th-century atrocities served a 21st-century partisan aim — specifically, the insinuation that Democrats are trying to import the “horrors of socialism” to the United States. “Congress denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” the resolution concluded.
It was some good, old-fashioned red-baiting, in the year 2023.
“Socialism is the greatest threat to our economy and freedom and must be defeated,” Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.) warned the House on Thursday, calling the fictional menace “alarming and scary.”
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) joined the caterwauling, saying the Biden administration had seized “control of the means of production” from private industries. “God have mercy on our country!”
And Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) felt qualified after one month in office to declare that the Democratic Party “has been taken over by a radical socialist ideology.”
Most Democrats went along with the resolution — it’s not a good look to be on the same side of a vote as Pol Pot — but not before they had some fun with the red-scare revivalism.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) pointed out that the Paycheck Protection Program might qualify as socialism to Republicans, then asked consent to insert into the record the names of all Republican lawmakers who requested PPP loans and forgiveness.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), leading the antisocialist forces on the floor, leapt to his feet. “I object!” he said.
The attempt to draw an unbroken line from Uncle Joe Stalin to Sleepy Joe Biden was downright silly, but it served a deadly serious purpose. It is part of a broader effort by Republicans that encourages Americans to see enemies everywhere within their government.
This week alone, the new majority used its powers in committee rooms and on the House floor to undermine trust in government on various fronts:
Falsely claiming thatlazy bureaucrats are refusing to go to work, denying Americans their tax refunds, passports and benefits.
Falsely insinuating that the government is forcing Americans to take coronavirus vaccines that are both deadly and useless.
Falsely asserting that the Biden administration is in effect killing Americans by encouraging fentanyl smugglers to enter the country across “open borders.”
Falsely declaring the only Muslim on the House Foreign Affairs Committee a threat to national security and booting her from the panel in a party-line vote.
And, for extra credit, summoning the ghosts of Stalin and Mao to suggest that the administration promotes an ideology of mass murder.
The bureaucrats are cheating you. The vaccine is killing you. Immigrants are drugging your children. Muslims are endangering you. And the bloodthirsty socialists are destroying your way of life. The new majority is using the levers of power to stoke paranoia.
Does it get any dumber? I don’t think it’s possible. The House is literally being run by people with serious brain damage.
There’s more:
Last month, in its first legislative action, the new House majority voted to rescind more than $70 billion in funding for the IRS, much of it intended to improve customer service at the agency.
This week, many of those same Republican lawmakers went to the House floor with a new grievance: They are angry about — wait for it — poor customer service at the IRS.
“The American people have suffered” while waiting “for months for their tax refunds,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, declared on the House floor.
Can the IRS run an irony audit on these guys?
Republicans, some of whom are still scaring Americans with the bogus claim that 87,000 armed IRS agents will be breaking down their doors, now have a new conspiracy theory: The IRS’s backlogs are caused by teleworking. (It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the IRS had its budget slashed by 15 percent since 2010, while the number of returns jumped by nearly 10 million annually.)
Therefore, the new majority passed a bill this week ordering IRS employees and all federal workers to return to teleworking levels that existed in 2019 — before the pandemic forever changed the way people work. The title of the bill is as jumbled as its goal: the Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems Act — a word soup that forms the acronym SHOW UP.
But it’s not really about teleworking. It’s about encouraging Americans to loathe federal workers.
“This legislation asks every member to ask a simple question,” Comer told the House. “Do you put the needs of your constituents first, or do you put the preferences of federal bureaucrats first?”
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the Education and Workforce committee, blamed “bureaucrats in Washington” for making it so that “delay and disarray might as well have become hallmarks of federal agencies and departments.”
The sentiment was much the same at a hearing Comer held Wednesday on waste and fraud in pandemic-relief programs. There, he bemoaned taxpayer dollars “wasted by bureaucrats whose only priority is getting money out the door.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) picked up the theme: “How the heck were these bureaucrats so dang incompetent?”
And over at the Rules Committee, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said bureaucrats “are not getting the work done” — something he knows because he “just hired a girl who’d been with Social Security for 20 years.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) protested the “implied contempt” for federal workers in Republicans’ statements. But really, it’s explicit. “They’re surely collecting their paychecks,” said a sneering Steve Scalise, the majority leader. “It’s long past time that they show up for work.”
The open contempt these so-called leaders show for average working Americans is really something. They have always insulted “the government” or “faceless bureaucrats.” But it’s new to specifically attack the worker bees who are just trying to make a living as being lazy. But then look what they are doing to teachers. Nurses, Scientists. At this point the only people they don’t openly hate are billionaires and farmers.
Meanwhile:
The complaint that federal workers don’t work is contradicted by another complaint — that federal workers are working hard to kill everyday Americans with lethal vaccines and opioid overdoses.
The new House majority passed a bill this week aimed at striking down the “tyrannical” requirement that many health-care workers get vaccinated. It came armed with vials of disinformation.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) announced that it has “been proven false” that the vaccine “stops the spread” and that government agencies “have conceded” this. The original vaccine is “for a virus that no longer exists,” he claimed, and the vaccine “can cause myocarditis, blood clots, strokes and even death.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) joined in, telling the House that the vaccine has “been admitted by our own CDC director, by the CDC, by the NIH, to do nothing to stop transmission.”
That’s just wrong. The vaccines don’t entirely prevent spread — but they reduce it. The vaccines do have rare side effects — but the risk of death from the virus itself is much greater.
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), a doctor, spoke of people shunning the vaccine “based upon fears about fertility” — without mentioning that there is no basis for such fears.
But there is only so much room for vaccine terror in the overworked amygdala of the Republican voter. That’s because they also have to fear migrant drug smugglers crossing our “open borders.”
In reality, illegal border crossings fell by about 40 percent in January, The Post reported this week. Most of the fentanyl seized has been at legal border crossings, typically smuggled by U.S. citizens — not by migrants crossing illegally.
Yet Republicans used the first hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to alarm Americans about “Mexican smuggling cartels exploiting the open border to terrorize U.S. communities,” as Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) put it. “Under President Biden, there is no border, and Americans are paying the price.”
Heck, you should even be afraid that the alleged Chinese spy balloon spotted over Montana might have taken off from Wuhan loaded with bioweapons — as Comer speculated Friday on Fox News. Is it any wonder that Rep. George Santos (N.Y.) and other House Republicans are now arming themselves with lapel pins shaped like tiny AR-15 assault rifles?
Hookay… They did chalk up one major achievement. They booted Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. The leadership tried to suggest it was a matter of national security which is mind-boggling when you consider the crew of Fox News-addled cretins on that committee getting classified briefings.
Anyway, we know it was really all about revenge. The wingut Freedom Caucus types aren’t even trying to hide it:
In a refreshing moment of candor, Republicans on the House Rules Committee on Tuesday night admitted that was B.S.
“This is raw politics. That’s what this is,” acknowledged Roy of Texas.
Massie, of Kentucky, concurred: “It’s a partisan exercise.”
Added Norman, of South Carolina: “The partisanship is real, and I’m glad.”
“When they tell you who they are, believe them” right? It’s a war for them. The question for Democrats is if they are going to be conscientious objectors and just let them win or if they are going to be smart and strategic and foil their crude efforts.
Those of you with gray hair certainly remember Dan Burton, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee during the Clinton years who famously conducted a “forensic experiment” in his backyard to prove that Clinton aide Vince Foster had been murdered (presumably by Hillary Clinton…) The experiment consisted of shooting a watermelon to see if it was feasible that Foster had actually committed suicide.
Well, get ready for his heir, James Comer, the new Chairman of the House Oversight Committee:
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) casually suggested to Fox News on Friday that the suspected Chinese spy balloon floating over the United States could contain “bioweapons” from “Wuhan,” invoking the “lab leak theory” that’s been embraced by Republicans.
After a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over the northern U.S. this week, Republicans have lashed out at President Joe Biden over his perceived “weakness” in his administration’s policy towards China. Calling for the president to “shoot down” the craft, some in the GOP called the president “Beijing Biden” while claiming this is further proof that “Communist China” doesn’t “fear or respect” Biden.
While the Pentagon has balked over conservative demands to take down the ballon, noting that falling debris could injure or kill civilians, the Biden administration has postponed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s upcoming trip to China. China, meanwhile, has insisted the suspected spycraft is really just a “civilian airship” that “deviated far from its planned course.”
Amid the Republican handwringing over the Chinese balloon, Comer appeared on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus to react. And he immediately jumped into conspiratorial waters.
“I have concern this will be another example of the Biden administration’s weakness on the national scale,” he declared. “You look at what happened in Afghanistan. That hurt the reputation of America’s military strength. That hurt the reputation of our commander-in-chief. And now we have China clearly playing games with the United States.”
After saying the balloon “never should have been allowed” to cross over into the U.S., the Kentucky lawmaker then fear-mongered that the craft could be loaded down with weaponized viruses. “My concern is that the federal government doesn’t know what’s in that balloon,” he asserted. “Is that bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?”
Comer, of course, was referencing the theory that COVID-19 was engineered by Chinese virologists at a Wuhan laboratory, possibly with the help and funding of American scientists. Comer, who has promised investigations into the origins of COVID-19, has also alleged that former Biden chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci “was warned early on that the virus appeared manmade” but instead “attempted to cover it up.”
The House Oversight chief, who has also vowed to hold countless hearings on Hunter Biden’s business dealings and “Laptop from Hell,” then seemingly accused the president of working with China when it came to his current classified documents scandal.
“This is very concerning,” Comer breathlessly exclaimed. “Unless China is working with the Biden Administration to help find some of those missing documents that are scattered all over the United States, then this is unacceptable and should not be allowed. And, again, another sign of weakness on the international stage by our commander-in-chief.”
The man is giving Marjorie Taylor Greene a run for her money.
The last I heard from these guys was that COVID is nothing worse than a cold and that it’s the vaccines that kill people. But whatever …
Marcy’s right. If we called the Chinese inflatable a drone, it would be a very different conversation. While it’s not offically a drone, my buddy Barry Summers is on the case.
The plane they have shadowing the #ChineseSpyBalloon has been loitering just west of Nashville for almost 3 hours. It just started moving east a few minutes ago. #Balloon must have loitered over the Grand Ol Opry. pic.twitter.com/LlbmifE28P
It’s in the neighborhood this morning. No, I’m not going outside to look.
Here's a look at the Chinese spy balloon as it flies high over Haywood County, North Carolina moments ago. Photo taken in front of Orchard Coffee in Waynesville. #balloon#haywd#WNCpic.twitter.com/Z6TZNnjyWk
“[W]hat’s been driving income inequality in the United States – and around the world for years – is that the very rich are getting even richer, rather than the poor getting poorer,” Fatema Z. Sumar, executive director of the Center for International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School, wrote in November.
“In every major region of the world outside of Europe, extreme wealth is becoming concentrated in just a handful of people.”
Sumar brought a visual aid (above).
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) is famous for her visual aids. She brought one to her CNN appearance this week.
Social Security adds nothing to the national debt, Porter’s white board insisted. There is, in fact, a more than $2.9 trillion surplus on the program’s books, she said.
Extremist politicians are eying cuts to Social Security under the guise of reducing the deficit—even though, by law, the program adds $0 to our national debt. I used my whiteboard to call out this dangerous lie and stand up for the millions of Americans who rely on the program. pic.twitter.com/jMd4WzOjb6
Why does Porter bring it up again? Because 70 percent of U.S. wealth is not enough for American oligarchs.
On Thursday night, former vice president Mike Pence proposed privatizing Social Security. Just as George W. Bush tried before him. Pence supported that effort as a member of Congress.
“I think the day could come when we could replace the New Deal with a better deal. Literally give younger Americans the ability to take a portion of their Social Security withholdings and put that into a private savings account,” Pence told the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.
“It’s absolutely essential that we generate leadership in this country that will be straight with the American people, that will take us off this trajectory of massive debt that we’re piling on the backs of those grandchildren,” Pence said.
The Bush administration co-located Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in fraudulent rhetoric used to sell its invasion of Iraq as somehow connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. Republicans do the same with Social Security. They mean to dupe Americans into believing that the federal retirement income program is somehow linked to the national debt. Hence Porter’s white-board refutation. *
Wall Street wants its cut of the 25 percent of annual federal revenues made up of social insurance taxes. It covets the administration fees and CEO bonuses attached to seeing mandated Social Security withholdings diverted from the treasury to the financial sector. The same financial sector drove the world economy into a ditch in 2008, drove over six million families from their homes, and erased as much as $19.2 trillion in household wealth in the Great Recession. Americans lost $10.2 trillion in stock s and housing equity just last year.
The same oligarchs want custody of your retirement savings. The audacity of it and the avarice recall a scene from Dog Day Afternoon:
It is the same with investors’ attempts to privatize public schools. Why? Each year, this country collectively spends hundreds of billions on public education. It is the largest slice of the annual budget pie in all 50 states. Wherever there is a nice, near-recession-proof stream of public money, investors want their cut, if not all of it.
“In 2010, Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. has been an ALEC member, declared K-12 public education ‘a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.,” The Progressive reported in 2014. The sector is larger still today.
“It’s really the last honeypot for Wall Street,” Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, toldThe Nation the same year. The think tank tracks the privatization of public assets.
Except public education is not the financial sector’s last honeypot, nor its Big Enchilada. That’s Social Security.
Republicans are not hiding their intentions. Give them credit for that. Just don’t give them your schools or retirement savings.
We’re catching up with Bruno, the now just over 2.5-month-old Gorilla Infant born at Fort Worth Zoo in November.
Baby Bruno is standing (with help from Mom)! Infant gorillas grow and develop much faster than human babies do, so although Bruno is only about 2.5 months old, he’s right on time! You’ll notice him squirming around a lot more these days, reaching out or crawling on his mom when she’s trying to nap.
A gorilla infant can control its head and neck movements shortly after birth and will be able to crawl at about 3 months old.
THE VIEW FROM TRANSGENDER ADVOCATES
DAVID ‘S VIEW
