What to do About Guns in America?

What do we do about weapons in the United States? 3 things, at minimum---all common sense and not complicated. These won't solve all our problems, no, certainly not but they'll go a long way to curing some of our nation's ills and keeping people from getting shot and/or killed.

1) Require background checks, coast to coast, for ALL weapons purchases, for mental stability and criminal history, 2) Put into law a waiting period for receiving a gun after purchase and 3) Ban assault weapons. Again. Period.

Where We Are Now and Some of, a Lot of How We Got Here

Some of the poignancy of Rush Limbaugh and his passing. Ms. Cox Richardson is particularly enlightening today.

Heather Cox Richardson

February 17, 2021, Wednesday

The crisis in Texas continues, with almost 2 million people still without power in frigid temperatures. Pipes are bursting in homes, pulling down ceilings and flooding living spaces, while 7 million Texans are under a water boil advisory.

Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, put on Facebook: “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!... If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your lazy is direct result of your raising! [sic]…. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW will work and others will become dependent for handouts…. I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves!... Bottom line quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!” “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish [sic],” he said. 

After an outcry, Boyd resigned.

Boyd’s post was a fitting tribute to talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who passed today from lung cancer at age 70. It was Limbaugh who popularized the idea that hardworking white men were under attack in America. According to him, minorities and feminists were too lazy to work, and instead expected a handout from the government, paid for by tax dollars levied from hardworking white men. This, he explained, was “socialism,” and it was destroying America.

Limbaugh didn’t invent this theory; it was the driving principle behind Movement Conservatism, which rose in the 1950s to combat the New Deal government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure. But Movement Conservatives' efforts to get voters to reject the system that they credited for creating widespread prosperity had little success.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, an attorney for the tobacco industry, wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce outlining how business interests could overturn the New Deal and retake control of America. Powell focused on putting like-minded scholars and speakers on college campuses, rewriting textbooks, stacking the courts, and pressuring politicians. He also called for “reaching the public generally” through television, newspapers, and radio. “[E]very available means should be employed to challenge and refute unfair attacks,” he wrote, “as well as to present the affirmative case through this media.”

Pressing the Movement Conservative case faced headwinds, however, since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforced a policy that, in the interests of serving the community, required any outlet that held a federal broadcast license to present issues honestly, equitably, and with balance. This “Fairness Doctrine” meant that Movement Conservatives had trouble gaining traction, since voters rejected their ideas when they were stacked up against the ideas of Democrats and traditional Republicans, who agreed that the government had a role to play in the economy (even though they squabbled about the extent of that role).

In 1985, under a chair appointed by President Ronald Reagan, the FCC stated that the Fairness Doctrine hurt the public interest. Two years later, under another Reagan-appointed chair, the FCC abolished the rule.

With the Fairness Doctrine gone, Rush Limbaugh stepped into the role of promoting the Movement Conservative narrative. He gave it the concrete examples, color, and passion it needed to jump from think tanks and businessmen to ordinary voters who could help make it the driving force behind national policy. While politicians talked with veiled language about “welfare queens” and same-sex bathrooms, and “makers” and “takers,” Limbaugh played “Barack the Magic Negro,” talked of “femiNazis,” and said “Liberals” were “socialists,” redistributing tax dollars from hardworking white men to the undeserving.

Constantly, he hammered on the idea that the federal government threatened the freedom of white men, and he did so in a style that his listeners found entertaining and liberating.

By the end of the 1980s, Limbaugh’s show was carried on more than 650 radio stations, and in 1992, he briefly branched out into television with a show produced by Roger Ailes, who had packaged Richard Nixon in 1968 and would go on to become the head of the Fox News Channel. Before the 1994 midterm elections, Limbaugh was so effective in pushing the Republicans’ “Contract With America” that when the party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952, the Republican revolutionaries made him an honorary member of their group.

Limbaugh told them that, under House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Republicans must “begin an emergency dismantling of the welfare system, which is shredding the social fabric,” bankrupting the country, and “gutting the work ethic, educational performance, and moral discipline of the poor.” Next, Congress should cut capital gains taxes, which would drive economic growth, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and generate billions in federal revenue.

Limbaugh kept staff in Washington to make sure Republican positions got through to voters. At the same time, every congressman knew that taking a stand against Limbaugh would earn instant condemnation on radio channels across the country, and they acted accordingly.

Limbaugh saw politics as entertainment that pays well for the people who can rile up their base with compelling stories—Limbaugh’s net worth when he died was estimated at $600 million—but he sold the Movement Conservative narrative well. He laid the groundwork for the political career of Donald Trump, who awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a made-for-tv moment at Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address. His influence runs deep in the current party: former Mayor Boyd, an elected official, began his diatribe with: “Let me hurt some feelings while I have a minute!!”

Like Boyd, other Texas politicians are also falling back on the Movement Conservative narrative to explain the disaster in their state. The crisis was caused by a lack of maintenance on Texas’s unregulated energy grid, which meant that instruments at coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants froze, at the same time that supplies of natural gas fell short. Nonetheless, Governor Greg Abbott and his allies in the fossil fuel industry went after “liberal” ideas. They blamed the crisis on the frozen wind turbines and solar plants which account for about 13% of Texas’s winter power. Abbott told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.” Tucker Carlson told his viewers that Texas was “totally reliant on windmills.”

The former Texas governor and former Secretary of Energy under Trump, Rick Perry, wrote on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s website to warn against regulation of Texas’s energy system: “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” he said. The website warned that “Those watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals. Two phrases come to mind: don’t mess with Texas, and don’t let a crisis go to waste.”

At Abbott’s request, President Biden has declared that Texas is in a state of emergency, freeing up federal money and supplies for the state. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sent 60 generators to state hospitals, water plants, and other critical facilities, along with blankets, food, and bottled water. It is also delivering diesel fuel for backup power.

Link:

Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

Let's Compare Presidential Administrations, Shall We?

Yes, by all means, let's compare Presidential administrations--and in a couple ways.

First, let's compare the administrations on a one-to-one basis as to which has and has had the most--and least--criminal indictments, convictions and prison sentences.

Then, after that, let's compare them Democrats vs Republicans, shall we?

Illuminating, don't you think?

On Presidents, Honesty and Released Tax Returns

Check out the list.

And clearly Republicans are, to date, okay with this.

To quote another Republican:

"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook." 

--President Richard Milhouse "Tricky Dick" Nixon. Also famously--or infamously--a Republican it should be remembered.

"Once More Unto the Breach..."

We survived Nixon. We survived Reagan. We survived George W.

Hoping we survive this.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!

Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,

Have in these parts from morn till even fought

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.

Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;

For there is none of you so mean and base,

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

Link:

Clueless, Reckless, Graceless, Mindless and Heartless: Our President-Elect

How Dangerous Would/Will A Trump Presidency Be?

How bad could a Donald Trump presidency be, you ask?

This dangerous.

From Professor Robert Reich's Facebook page today.

Trump has named Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) as his director of the Office of Management and Budget. Among Mulvaney’s chief duties will be overseeing the most dramatic overhaul of the nation’s tax code since President Ronald Reagan – cutting taxes on corporations from 35% to 15% and on wealthy individuals. 

How will Mulvaney accomplish this while avoiding larger budget deficits? By cutting spending. Since Trump wants to increase military spending, where will those spending cuts come from? Medicare and Social Security.

Here are 4 things you need to know about Mulvaney:

1. When Mulvaney, 49, was elected to Congress in 2010, he quickly staked out ground as one of Congress’s most outspoken fiscal hawks — playing a key role in the 2011 showdown between President Obama and House Republicans that ended in the passage of strict budget caps.

2. Mulvaney is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about three dozen conservative hard-liners that has used its leverage to push Republican leaders to the right, and pushed House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) out of power in 2015.

3. Mulvaney is also an advocate of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

4. Mulvaney is a close ally of Paul Ryan (who wants to turn Medicare into vouchers) and of Scott Pruitt (Trump’s pick to head Health and Human Services, who wants to repeal Obamacare).

So if you like 

--cutting tax rates for the already-wealthy because, hey, they need more money, right?

--and cutting taxes still farther for corporations because why should they have to help pay for the nation's infrastructure?

--and if you like the idea of increasing our military spending still further because hey, we only outspend the rest of the nation's military budgets several times over. Let's go bigger!

--and if you like huge, multi-billion dollar budget deficits 

--and if you think cutting Medicare so Americans get still less medical needs met

--and if you think cutting Social Security to grandma and grandpa is a good idea because hey, they're moochers....

THIS IS THE PLAN FOR YOU, AMERICA!

Why be fiscally responsible?

If you like the Kansas "trickle down economics" and their results, with all the budget deficits--$359 million, to date---you're going to LOVE the Donald Trump administration.

Let's never forget, too, folks---these are Republicans. This is the Republican Party doing this to you, to us all. They did it to Kansas and now they want to do it to America.

Links:

The Dangers of Donald Trump

Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?

The clear and present danger of Donald Trump

The dangerous fantasy behind Trump's normalisation

Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy

The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump

Trump's Choice For Budget Director Doesn't Understand Debt Ceiling Default

On Tonight's Immigration Speech by Pres. O

Whither now?

I've thought for a long time that the "turning point" for us, the United States of America, was John F. Kennedy's assassination. A long time.

It's not that it has anything to do with me, of course, and my generation at all. I've thought that, in a much larger sense, a historical sense, that it was at that point that we were no longer the naive, well-intentioned people we were, up to that point. I don't think I'm being naive here, either.

And ever since then, through the 70's, 80's, 90's up to today, it seems we've been going downhill, as a nation.

It was after that that Jack's brother was also killed, then Martin Luther King, and they were both intelligent, strong people who wanted us all to be better--to be a better people--to be the people we could be.

Then there was Milhouse (the lying scumbag), and a brief window of time with a weak follow-up President. After that, a weak one-termer who, again, wanted us to be better people but he got caught up in minutiea of his Presidency (carrying his own bags, for God's sake) that he didn't get to the important matter of his own work. Besides, we didn't want to save energy, anyway.

Then 8 long years of an affable idiot whom way too many people loved--and who almost wrecked us.

A dolt to follow him but who, unlike his son, kept us out of Iraq.

Then 8 important, good years by a man who couldn't keep himself in his pants.

That brings us to now to this nearly fatal time with a self-absorbed man of small imagination, organization and strength who, along with his friends, is also long on greed.

So we come to a point in time where the dollar is at record lows, energy at record highs and we've seemingly lost nearly all control we ever might have had.

And the issue, now, comes to this: if a barrel of oil is pegged to the euro soon--again, God forbid--you may mark it down in any history book to come, that it was at that exact point in time at which the United States became the Britain of a new world order. In short, a second-rate power.

May this not happen anytime soon, if ever.

(Be sure to look below at a great "Zippy the Pinhead" comic from yesterday and some new pictures).