Explaining Fox, the Right Wing and Today's Republican Party

Carl Sagan said it so right and true, all those years ago. And now it's all made worse, much worse, with Donald Trump and his supporters.

Don't think it's true? Search the headline: Republican reps declare Jan.6 insurgency 'a normal tourist visit' from 'peaceful patriots'

The New Jim Crow Republican Party

What's going on right now, folks. They're trying to, anyway.

(Click on the picture for bigger, easier viewing and reading).

A Reality Game Show Host and White America's Identity Crisis

Follow and listen to Matthew Cooke, y'all. You'll learn a great deal.

Have a great day and week, y'all.

More Americans Need to See and Hear This

If you don't already follow Matthew Cooke on YouTube, I can't recommend it or him enough. Time and again, as here, he addresses national situations and issues extremely clearly and spot on, both with our problems as well as with solutions. Enjoy. I think this video and his logic and intelligence is especially poignant now, with CPAC meeting this weekend and none other than Donald Trump set to speak today. Let's get to this, America.

It's Difficult to Believe This is Where We Are with These People

But this is, in fact, who they are and this is where we are with them, America. God help us.

Quote of the Day -- Humanist Edition

From The Word Lady @TheRealRynnstar Dec 12, 2020 "Forever wondering if I’m truly far left or if I’m just an empathetic person living in a late capitalist hellscape where I get called a commie for saying "hey maybe poor people don’t deserve to starve.'"

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

During This Black History Month

I wish more Americans, yes, more white Americans in particular, would watch all of this debate between writer James Baldwin and Right Wing conservative William F. Buckley. I wish they'd see and understand it. All of it.

It took place in 1965 at Cambridge University and still very much resonates today.

Quote of the Day -- On Trumpism

 

It is revealing how a political movement that claims to be dedicated to the recovery of national greatness has so readily and completely abandoned many defining national ideals. Donald Trump’s promise of American strength has involved the betrayal of American identity.

One of the most important strands of our founding ideology is civic republicanism. In this tradition, the common good is not automatically produced by a clash of competing interests. A just society must be consciously constructed by citizens possessing certain virtues. A democracy in particular depends on people who take responsibility for their communities, show an active concern for the welfare of their neighbors, demand integrity from public officials, defend the rule of law, and respect the rights and dignity of others. Without these moral commitments, a majority is merely a mob.

What type of citizen has Trump — and his supportive partisan media — produced? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) still holds her job in Congress because she is representative of ascendant MAGA radicalism. Those who reflect her overt racism, her unhinged conspiracy thinking and her endorsement of violence against public figures are now treated as a serious political constituency within the Republican Party. Trump has come down firmly on Greene’s side. One participant in the Jan. 6 attack sent a video to her children saying: “We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part. We were looking for Nancy [Pelosi] to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.” The detail that gets to me? She sent this to her children. She was living in a mental world where vile, shameful things are a parent’s boast. And she saw her actions as the expression of a public duty — an example of doing her part.

From the article:

Trumpism is American fascism

Links:

Michael Gerson - Wikipedia

Fascism | Definition of Fascism by Merriam-Webster

Republicans and Their Right Wing Are Just Getting More Threatening -- And Frightening

Republicans and Right Wingers just seem to be getting more extreme, more bizarre, even more threatening, nearly day by day. All Americans need to know this. A brief synopsis from yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson

January 27, 2021

The contours of politics today look much like they did yesterday. President Biden is forging ahead through executive actions — today pausing oil and gas leases while switching the government to electric vehicles — while the two factions in the Republican Party claw for supremacy.

Dead center of both of these political fights is the future of this country. Will Trump and his supporters seize control of the government — by means legal or illegal — or will the country steer itself back to the norms and values of democracy?

The dangers of Trumpism are becoming clearer each day. Today, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin that warned of violence from domestic extremists angry over “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” and emboldened by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bulletin expires at the end of April.

Law enforcement has moved National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in part to guard against violence on March 4, a day that QAnon supporters who still believe Trump is part of an elaborate trick to reclaim the nation from the Democrats think will be the day on which the former president is finally sworn in for his second term. (March 4 was the nation’s original inauguration date; it changed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937.)

In testimony yesterday, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington told the House Appropriations Committee that at least 65 officers filed reports of injury after the January 6 attack. The chair of the Capitol Police officers’ union, Gus Papathanasiou, put the number closer to 140. “I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake,” he said. One officer died of injuries sustained on January 6. Two officers have since taken their own lives.

Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.

The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.

Republican lawmakers seem to be siding with Trump’s supporters, turning against the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. In the House, Trump supporters are trying to throw Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of her spot in the party’s leadership, and the former president’s new political action committee is ginning up anger against her as it urges primary challengers to jump into the race in 2022.

Increasingly, Republican lawmakers are pushing to let Trump off the hook on impeachment. In the Senate yesterday, Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted that a former president could not be tried on an impeachment charge, and 45 Republicans agreed with him. This is not necessarily a signal of how the eventual Senate vote will go, but Paul said it was: he insisted this was a sign that Trump would not be convicted. Republican lawmakers seem to be coming down on Trump’s side as polls show that while most Americans are horrified by the attack on the Capitol and blame Trump for it, most Republicans — 78% — don’t blame him. Republican lawmakers are accusing Democrats of divisiveness in their move to hold the president accountable.

Some Republicans are, though, alarmed at the idea that a president might get away with inciting an insurrection that endangered our elected representatives and our government itself — remember the next three people in line for the presidency were in the Capitol when the rioters stormed it — and which came perilously close to making good on threats against individuals, including then-vice president Mike Pence.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) dismissed the idea that the country could have unity without addressing the causes of the current anger. “I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? If you said that, then I’m happy to listen to you talk about other things that might inflame anger and divisiveness,” he explained to Dennis Romboy of Deseret News. “But if you haven’t said that, that’s really what’s at the source of the anger right now.”

Also notable is the firm stance of Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who has bucked his party to speak out against the former president’s attacks on the election and incitement of the rioters. “I’ve felt very isolated in my party,” Kinzinger told Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post.

While the Republican Party’s apparent embrace of Trump and all he now stands for is grabbing headlines, Biden and his administration officials are taking on the radicalization of his opponents in a new and promising way. They are demonstrating an approach to sidelining Trumpism by shifting the focus off the exhausting drama of the former president and his supporters and onto a functioning government that is working for ordinary Americans.

When a reporter today asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if the administration had any comment on Greene, Psaki made it clear the administration was not going to give any oxygen to her or those like her. “We don’t, and I am not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room,” Psaki said.

While Biden is starving the Republicans of oxygen, he is also working to address the conditions that have fed desperate conspiracy theories and divisions. In America, such societal breakdown is associated with periods in which ordinary people face economic hardship. Biden is moving quickly on a range of issues that are popular among ordinary voters of both parties, including addressing the country’s extreme inequality. After all, one of the complaints that drew voters to an outsider in 2016 was the belief that government no longer worked for the people and needed to be shaken up.

Today’s executive order on addressing climate change talks at length about creating “good-paying union jobs” and “tapping into the talent, grit, and innovation of American workers.” It calls for the government to buy zero-emission vehicles made in the U.S., and to rebuild federal infrastructure, creating construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades jobs. Job creation and infrastructure development were both promises the previous president made in 2016 that boosted his support but which never really came to pass. If Biden can actually deliver on them, he could reclaim those Trump voters for the Democrats, as well as addressing climate change and our failing infrastructure.

Biden’s people are also making sure we see a White House that is addressing issues that created concern in the past administration. They are upholding old norms — holding daily press briefings, for example — honoring science, restoring government websites, and treating members of the media with respect.

They seem to be trying to remind us how our democracy is supposed to work.

God help us, folks. God help the United States of America. We thought Trump was bad.  Of course, we knew it. What we didn't know was that he was just getting them started.

Look What Uber Right Wing Republican Said Trump Should Concede!

Peggy Noonan, folks! Check that out!

A Bogus Dispute Is Doing Real Damage – Peggy Noonan

Conspiracy theories are damaging the country today and will hurt Republicans tomorrow.

No hard evidence of widespread fraud, no success in the courts or prospect of it. You can have a theory that a bad thing was done, but only facts will establish it. You need to do more than what Rudy Giuliani did at his news conference Thursday, which was throw out huge, barely comprehensible allegations and call people “crooks.” You need to do more than Sidney Powell, who, at the same news conference, charged that “communist money” is behind an international conspiracy to rig the U.S. election. There was drama, hyperbole, perhaps madness. But the wilder the charges, the more insubstantial the case appeared.

More than two weeks after the election, it’s clear where this is going. The winner will be certified and acknowledged; Joe Biden will be inaugurated. But it’s right to worry about the damage being done on the journey.

Even very Right Wing, very, very, uber conservative PEGGY NOONAN calls Trump's attempts at voter fraud a "bogus dispute" and that i's doing "real damage" to the nation! Even Peggy Noonan gets it!

Yes!

For once, I agree with her!

Concede, Mr. Trump or #Throwthebumout

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Republican Party

 Yes, Mr. and Mrs. America, here is your Republican Party and Right Wingers and conservatives, down through American history.

So proud, no doubt.

And now they have Donald J Trump.

God help us all.

We're Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take It Any More

 What the Republicans just did.

Senate Confirms Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court Just Over a Week Before Election Day

Senate Republicans are breaking 231 years of precedent and becoming the first majority to confirm a Supreme Court Justice this close to a presidential election day.

This nomination is part of a decades-long effort to tilt the courts towards the right to accomplish through the courts what Republicans could never accomplish through Congress.

A warming planet. Workers falling behind. Dark money flooding politics. The curtailing of the right to choose. The limiting of voting rights.

Those are the consequences of this nomination.

We will never not stop fighting for the health care, lives, and freedoms of Americans.

--Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer

This is what just took place.

"Last night Senators from a minority party representing less than half of America confirmed the 5th justice appointed by minority party presidents who lost the popular election after they, including Rubio, insisted no nominee should be confirmed in an election year. Illegitimate."    --Walter Schaub @waltschaub

They got first Thomas, Clarence Thomas then Brett "the Fratboy Drunk" Kavanaugh and now Amy Coney "Handmaiden" Barrett.

What we must now do, folks, is one of two things.  We must either impeach both "Justice" Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett or we must pack the Court.

We must.

It's intrinsic on what we, America, are all about. That is, fairness and justice, true justice and not just rule by the few for the already-wealthy and corporations.

Let's do this.

Then check this out. As if this whole situation weren't just already disgusting enough.

'Should Be Ashamed': After Installing Barrett, McConnell Adjourns Senate for Recess With No Covid Relief in Sight

Meanwhile, after that very depressing news yesterday with the Republicans shoving a very Right Wing Supreme Court nominee down our collective throats in the last minute before a Presidential election, there is this hopefulness that broke today.

Accused rapist Donald Trump can't shield himself with the Justice Department

"Accused rapist and current Oval Office occupant, Donald Trump’s, attempt to use the taxpayer-funded resources of the United States Department of Justice to defend himself against a defamation suit brought against him by his alleged victim, former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, has been rebuked by the federal judge overseeing that case."

We'll get him yet. This and the state of New York on his taxes.

Link--Lots of good, forward-thinking information here:

Tough talk on dealing with repairing the damage to SCOTUS

Quote of the Day -- Dangerous President Edition

From Conservative, very Right Wing, Republican Bill Kristol today.

I hope President Trump has a swift and complete recovery from COVID. 

I hope the United States has a swift and complete recovery from President Trump.

From his keyboard tray to God's eyes.

Let's do this, folks.

86 45

BYEDON

#BlueWave2020

Another Insane, Obscene Ruling From This Supreme Court

Did you see this?

Supreme Court: religious schools can discriminate when hiring

In one of these cases being tried, a teacher was fired from a religious school because she it was discovered she had breast cancer.

You would think religious schools would fight to make sure organizations COULDN'T discriminate when hiring. Dear God--pun intended--I hope they don't call or consider themselves Christians.

More Right Wing insanity.

And hypocrisy.

Thanks, Republicans.

Quotes of the Day -- On Dangerous Denial of Science

"Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity."

"Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves."

"One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet."

All from Carl Sagan.

It's as though he's still alive and speaking of this President and his supporters.

Thanks, Republicans.

Happy Sunday

Try to have a nice day.

Senator Hawley Just Got Dangerous

I just saw this article Missouri's Senator Josh Hawley had published by the extreme Right Wing source, The Federalist.

Sen. Josh Hawley: The Left Wants A Civil War

I can't be more emphatic when I say this is not just wrong and he is not just incorrect, mistaken or misguided but that this is dangerous. This is dangerous talk and it is a dangerous conclusion to even make, let alone to throw out there for the rabid Right Wing to gobble up.

A bit from the article:

We’ve got a lot of problems in America today. A pandemic. A recession. A surge of violence in our major cities drowning out a nationwide call for justice and hope.

We have work to do in this body and in this city to solve these problems and to heed that call. And our voters sent us here to make things better. To rebuild. To heal.

But that’s not what we’re doing.

No, for the last several weeks, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and their allies in the media, and some professional political activists on a payroll, have been trying to divide us against each other, to paralyze us, to stoke resentment of our fellow citizens and hatred of this nation that we all call home.

It’s really remarkable, if you think about, that just a few short weeks ago we were united in outrage at the murder of George Floyd. We were united in impatience for justice for his family.

And nothing has changed about that. All people of good will still want justice to be done. I do. But the call of the marchers has been weaponized by partisans, who want nothing more than to say that only some Americans really support equal justice under the law. Only some institutions of government are really committed to that cause. Only one party can be trusted to govern in good faith. Only one political coalition is righteous enough to rule over the other.

ou don’t hear talk of unity watching MSNBC or reading the New York Times these days. Instead those outlets are drawing up a list of new villains.

Not Floyd’s killer. No, not him. We’re way past George Floyd now, I guess. Now we’re talking about new grievances — “structural” evils endemic to America itself. The police. The military. The flag. Oh, and of course, the president.

It’s always about the president...
Well, yes. It is always about the President. Because he is President and because he's also been very divisive and has said blatantly ugly, divisive and yes, racist things.  They are documentable. He has also "misrepresented the truth", if you get my meaning, as he did with the coronavirus pandemic, as just one of many examples.

This is what we get for having killed the Fairness Doctrine in our media back in Reagan's era. We get and got Fox and Breitbart and  Rush Limbaugh all the other Right Wing media sources.

Senators and any and every other government representative are all supposed to be representatives of ALL the people, not just some, not just their own political party.

This  isn't just divisive, however. This is, again, dangerous. He's saying that "other group" of Americans wants to attack "us."

Right. The Left is going to attack a bunch of gun-toting fellow citizens.  Sure. Makes perfect sense.

The article goes on to, more and more, feed and stoke Right Wing flames or resentment, at least, if not out and out hate, for fellow Americans---you know, "libtards." Fortunately, he doesn't go that far but nearly.

Ironically, in the article, Sen. Hawley quotes Abraham Lincoln and mentions something about coming together as a nation, as a people.

His article does the exact opposite.

He and his article declare an "us vs them" mentality and all but declares Democrats, the Left, Progressives the enemy.  Fellow citizens, fellow Americans.

Toward the end of his article he states:

This great nation and its good people cannot continue our life of freedom together if we vilify and destroy each other from within.
His entire article is about nothing but villifying people he and the Right Wing don't agree with.

This Missouri Senator just got dangerous, folks.

The "Left", Democrats, the Left Wing, Progressives no way "want any Civil War. To declare they--we--do, is a dangerous untruth and ugly fuel for the Right Wing, Conservatives and the Republican Party.

We would, however, like more justice and equality. For all Americans.

Surely they're heard of those.

Even Right Wing Rupert Murdoch and His Wall Street Journal Are Trashing This President

As said in the title, this is great. Even uber Right Wing, ultra conservative Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is calling this President out for what and who he is now, thank goodness.

WSJ slams Trump for ‘hurting the country’ by ‘debasing’ the presidency: ‘Ugly even for him’

The article:

A Presidential Smear

A bit of the article:

Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him. Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman...

...There’s no evidence of foul play, or an affair with the woman, and the local coroner ruled that the woman fainted from an undiagnosed heart condition and died of head trauma. Some on the web are positing a conspiracy because the coroner had left a previous job under a cloud, but the parents and husband of the young woman accepted the coroner’s findings and want the case to stay closed...

...Mr. Trump always hits back at critics, and Mr. Scarborough has called the President mentally ill, among other things. But suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman’s death isn’t political hardball. It’s a smear. Mr. Trump rightly denounces the lies spread about him in the Steele dossier, yet here he is trafficking in the same sort of trash.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, had it right when he tweeted on the weekend: “Completely unfounded conspiracy. Just stop. Stop spreading it, stop creating paranoia. It will destroy us.”

We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop. Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.

I love the smell of Right Wing and Republican Party destruction in the morning.

And afternoon. And evening.

Don't you?

Think happy thoughts.  Have a great day.

And vote blue, folks.

Links:

New Polls Show Trump’s Re-election Chances are Diminishing

Anxious About the Virus, Older Voters Grow More Wary of Trump

Finally, Older Voters are Starting to Move Away from Trump

Jack Cashill Comes Out Against Mass Transit?? Say It Isn't So!

BREAKING NEWS TODAY!! (last week?)

None other than very Right Wing, conservative JACK CASHILL has come out SQUARELY AGAINST MASS TRANSIT here in the Kansas City area!

Shocking!

Imagine that!!

A middle-aged (senior?), very white, middle- to upper-class, again, Right Wing, conservative--Republican? Libertarian?---coming out against MASS TRANSIT!!

Naturally, I first read of this shocking, shocking development over at some local blog.

KANSAS CITY URBAN PLANNER FACT CHECK: CONSERVATIVE JACK CASHILL EXAMINES DENSITY & PUBLIC TRANSIT ROLE IN DEADLY CORONAVIRUS!!!

Thank goodness I checked that out! (Thanks for the heads up, Ton...)

You just can't get any more controversial or daring than that!

Be able to take light rail from, say, the airport to downtown? Or out in the city??

Have the city bisected by light rail with East/West and North/South routes??

This daring Right Winger is having nothing of it!

And Mr. Cashill so rightly makes a DIRECT CONNECTION between this MASS TRANSIT NONSENSE and the current CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC!!

We knew there was one, right??

So what if light rail is successful in St. Louis and Denver and, oh, I don't know, Chicago and New York and EVERY OTHER CITY it's in ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD!!

Next thing you know, people will want to---oh, I don't know--SAVE MONEY and SAVE TIME and have it be CONVENIENT and POLLUTE LESS??

I say again---GET AROUND THE ENTIRE METROPOLITAN AREA EASIER AND FASTER AND MORE CONVENIENT AND LESS EXPENSIVE AND POLLUTE LESS??

We'll have none of that!

We'll be gripping our steering wheels UNTIL WE DIE, right Jack??!!

Thank God someone, someone is taking on these tough, tough, controversial issues in this day and age and area!

God bless you, Jack Cashill!

Keep up that great, ground-breaking, courageous work, sir!!  We're right with you!!

Back here in the 1890s.

(I'm dyin' ovah heyah).

Links:

Mass Transit System - Advantages of Mass Transit System

Mass Transit and Smart Growth Save Time, $ and the Environment

Take Public Transportation - Save Money, Save The World

The Environmental Benefits of Riding Public Transit

Can We Please Stop Pretending Cars Are Greener Than Transit?

Cars, Mass Transit and the Efforts to Reduce Emissions