Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

Freud is often misquoted as say "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." In other words, not every simple statement has deep and hidden meaning.

Well, sometimes a failed assassin is just a failed assassin - and not the object of a grand conspiracy.

Just a day after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, I viewed post after post on my Facebook page claiming the shooting was part of a conspiracy, orchestrated by Trump to either distract from the war and unreleased files, or to get his big ballroom built.

I found this very disappointing. While the right-wingers love to engage in their many conspiracy theories, most Democrats and left-wingers tend to stick with the facts.

Many jumped on Karoline Leavitt's pre-dinner statement, "It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room." Come on people! She was obviously just referring to the "shots" Trump would take in his speech at the media and his political enemies.

Others found it mysterious that the shooting happened at the only WHCD that Trump has attended. But the others had comedians hosting that would take jabs at Trump - and Trump is notoriously thin-skinned. This time he was able to make sure no comedian would host (instead it was a mentalist), and he would be the one giving the verbal jabs.

It may make some feel good to engage in the conspiracy theory of a staged shooting, but there are no real facts to support it. 

As Democrats and left-wingers, let's stick to the facts. Leave the conspiracy theories to the right-wingers.

Right-Wingers Plan For A Fascism And We Must Stop It!

Today's right-wing still call themselves conservatives, but they have gone far beyond conservatism. They are planning to turn our representative democracy into a fascist state. If you doubt that, just read their Project 2025 plan. It is obvious, and it's up to the voters to stop it in November.

Robert Reich gives us 11 suggestions on what we can do to save our democracy between now and Election Day. Here are those suggestions:

1. Try not to allow issues such as whether Biden should resign, or his degree of responsibility for Gaza, to get in the way of your determination not to let Trump back into the White House. Regardless of our differences over these issues, they pale compared to the threat Trump poses. 

1. 2. For the same reason, please don’t decide to leave the top of the ticket blank or to vote for a third party or not to vote at all. All make it easier for Trump to win. Instead, make sure you and everyone you know and trust is registered to vote, and votes for Joe Biden or whomever is the Democratic candidate for president. 

   
   

2. 3. Don’t become so upset with politics that you drop out, stop reading the news, or give up on activism. The stakes are just too high. Even if you cannot take much time out of your normal life, you need to help organize, mobilize, and energize others. 

   
   

3. 4. Focus your time and energies on convincing people who still have open minds, to oppose Trump. Mobilize those who don’t normally vote, to vote. Organize get-out-the-vote efforts in your community. Get young people involved.

   
   

4. 5. Counter lies with truth. When you hear someone repeating a Trump Republican lie, correct it. 

   
   

5. 6. Do not tolerate bigotry and hate. Call it out. Stand up to it. Denounce it. Demand that others denounce it, too.

   
   

6. 7. Do not resort to violence, name-calling, bullying, or any of the other tactics that Trump followers may be using.

   
   

7. 8. Be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition. Understand why someone may decide to support Trump, but don’t waste time and energy trying to convert them. 

   
   

8. 9. Don’t waste your time and energy commiserating with people who already agree with you, or criticizing Democrats for failing to communicate more effectively. None of this will get you anything except an upset stomach.

   
   

9. 10. Demonstrate, but don’t confuse demonstrating with political action. You may find it gratifying to stand on a corner in Berkeley with a sign asking drivers to “honk if you hate fascism” that elicit lots of honks, but it’s as politically effectual as taking a warm shower. 

   
   

10. 11. Finally, don’t let any sensationalized news of the day divert your eyes from the goal: protecting American democracy during one of the greatest stress tests it has had to endure, fueled by one of the worst demagogues in American history. 

Musk Made Twitter A Right-Wing Propaganda Platform

The following is part of a post by Robert Reich:

Twitter started to become a right-wing media hot spot when Elon lifted bans on thousands of accounts that had spread disinformation about the pandemic and the 2020 elections.

More recently, Tucker Carlson has said he would revive his show on Twitter after losing his Fox News slot (Musk has denied that Twitter has signed a deal with Carlson). It’s also been reported that The Daily Wire, a right-wing, anti-democracy media outlet, will make Twitter the home for all its podcasts.

Unquestionably, Twitter is benefiting from the dissatisfaction of the anti-democracy movement with Fox News. Elon can claim to be outside the mainstream media world of Rupert Murdoch.

But Elon wants to be a force on the right because he wants total control. That’s been his business MO since the start, and it’s now his political MO. 

Not content to be the (or among the) richest on the planet, not satisfied with taking over one of the biggest media machines in the world, Elon wants to impose his will on America and the world directly. Like … the former guy.

Elon said Tuesday he isn’t formally backing any Republican candidate. But his eye is focused on Trump. Right now, Elon wants to send Trump the message that he — Elon — has the power to make life difficult for Trump if Trump so much as hints at making life difficult for Elon. 

Elon knows that the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him — show unremitting force and ally with other opposing forces. Which is why Elon is helping DeSantis. And why, earlier this week, Elon retweeted a campaign kickoff video for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. 

Elon is only 51. He’s barred from becoming president (he was born in Pretoria, South Africa), but otherwise there’s no end to the power he can wield over America and the world during the next decades. And make no mistake: He plans to wield it. 

What should be done? 

Start with what America did at the turn of the last century to the robber barons of the Gilded Age: We enforced the antitrust laws. We busted up the giant railroads and oil companies. Now we should bust up media monopolies like Twitter. 

But don’t stop there. Musk is a walking illustration of the damage exorbitant wealth can do. We need a wealth tax on billionaires.

"Election Denialism" Is Increasing Right-Wing Violence

It seems that right-wing violence is increasing in this country, and one of the reasons is the GOP claim that elections (the ones they lose) are rigged. The latest is in New Mexico, where a candidate who lost his election to the state legislature paid others to shoot up the houses of Democratic officials.

Here is how Zeeshan Aleem describes it at MSNBC.com:

A Republican election denier who failed to win his race for the New Mexico state House has been arrested on the suspicion that he orchestrated shootings at the homes of Democratic elected officials. While details of the case are still coming out, the situation is a reminder of how election denialism can prime its proponents for political violence when they don’t get their way.

Solomon Peña lost his state House race in November to the incumbent Democrat by a large margin. Mimicking what then-President Donald Trump did following his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, Peña never conceded. Days after the election he endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid and said he was “researching my options” regarding what to do about the race that he wouldn’t admit his opponent had won.

According to multiple reports, it appears that one of the options he pursued was harassing government officials who say Peña showed up at their homes and confronted them about what he said were false election results.

​​One of those officials, Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, told NBC News that Peña came to her house after the election, acted aggressively and made semi-intelligible points about “how many doors he knocked on and how the number of votes didn’t match.” She called the police after he left. Former County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley described a similar experience of being tracked down at her home and accosted over the results in November.

“He was angry about losing the election,” she told NBC News. “He felt the election was unfair and untrue.” O’Malley also alerted law enforcement.

After those reported encounters, a series of shootings took place at the homes of four government officials, including Barboa, O’Malley, a state senator and a state representative. Fortunately nobody was injured or killed. But those shootings could’ve easily resulted in tragedy. Some of the bullets burst into the bedroom of the daughter of one of those state lawmakers.  

Police claim that Peña was the “mastermind” behind the shootings, and that he paid cash to four men to carry them out. Police say they’re still investigating, but that one of the alleged members of the conspiracy is acting as an informant, and that they believe Peña may have been motivated by his election loss.

It is a stroke of fortune that the shootings didn’t cause physical injury or death. But they underscore a disturbing trend of rising political violence in the U.S. that will not be reversed until the right firmly disavows both political violence and the ideology that incentivizes it.

When influential Republicans delight in mocking the brutal assaulton former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the base notices. When Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., shares cartoons that depict him killing his Democratic colleagues — and most of his party stands by his side — the base notices. When Trump celebrates his fans beating up critics at his rallies and calls for people to get “wild” and “fight like hell” at the U.S. Capitol, the base notices. 

But even without Trumpism’s nonchalance over real and fantasized  violence, it seems only logical that election denialism would lead to violence. If the right keeps telling the lie that the entire electoral system is being rigged against them, then it makes sense that some people will be convinced that use of force is an attractive “option.” The right-wing authoritarian playbook includes sapping right-wingers of any faith that the political establishment can be trusted. It seems inevitable that those susceptible to that lie will increasingly come to perceive anti-government violence as a reasonable response. 

It's Not Both Sides - Most Political Violence Is From The Right

Republicans would like for you to believe that both sides are engaging in political violence. That's just another GOP lie. By far, most political violence is done by those on the far right -- not the far left. Here is part of how Max Boot Puts it in The Washington Post:

It should not be controversial to say that America has a major problem with right-wing political violence. The evidence continues to accumulate — yet the GOP continues to deny responsibility for this horrifying trend. . . .

Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period. But we can’t allow GOP leaders to get away with this false moral equivalency. They are evading their responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that all too often motivates extremist actions.

The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats.

There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of Trump. The former president and his followers use violent rhetoric of extremes: Trump calls President Biden an “enemy of the state,” attacks the FBI as “monsters,” refers to the “now Communist USA” and even wrote that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has expressed support for executing Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) has tweetedthat “the America Last Marxists … are radically and systematically DESTROYING our country.”

That type of extremist rhetoric used to be confined to fringe organizations such as the John Birch Society. Now it’s the GOP mainstream, with predictable consequences. The U.S. Capitol Police report that threats against members of Congress have risen more than tenfold since Trump’s election in 2016, up to 9,625 last year.

The sickness on the right was on display after news broke about the attack on Paul Pelosi. While leading Republicans condemned the horrific assault, the MAGA base seethed with sick jokes making light of the violence and insane conspiracy theories. (Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza suggested that the attack was “a romantic tryst that went awry.”)

There was, alas, no sign of the GOP taking responsibility for fomenting hatred. Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor of Arizona, blamed“leftist elected officials who have not enforced the laws.” Naturally, Republicans accuse Democrats of being “divisive” for citing Republican rhetoric as a contributing factor to political violence.

It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats.

So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.

Our Democracy Is Still In Danger From The Right

This op-ed is by Max Boot in The Washington Post:

Near the end of last week’s Jan. 6 House committee hearing, former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, a perpetually cheerful former Marine, said the attack on the Capitol “emboldened our enemies by helping give them ammunition to feed a narrative that our system of government doesn’t work, that the United States is in decline. China, the Putin regime in Russia, Tehran, they’re fond of pushing those kinds of narratives — and by the way, they’re wrong.”

But are they wrong? They certainly have been to date; the United States has been defying predictions of doom for more than two centuries. But, as the ads for mutual funds say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. We need to take seriously the possibility that the United States could become a failed democracy, if only to avert that dire fate. There’s a good reason that 85 percent of respondents in a recent surveysaid the country is headed in the wrong direction. 

A lot of the gloom and doom is due, of course, to the high rate of inflation, which will subside in time. But there are more intractable problems, too, such as the persistence of racism and income inequality. That we have far more gun violence than other advanced democracies and yet can’t implement common-sense gun-safety regulations (such as a ban on military-style assault rifles and high-capacity magazines) is a damning indictment of our democracy. So, too, is our failure to do more to address climate change even as temperatures spike. When we do act, it often makes the situation worse, not better.

Unleashed by a right-wing Supreme Court, Republican legislatures around the country are repealing or restricting abortion rights. This is producing horror stories that I never thought I would see in the United States. A woman in Texas had to carry a dead fetus for two weeks because removing it would have required a procedure that is also used in abortions. A woman in Wisconsin bled for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage because medical staff would not remove fetal tissue. A 10-year-old girl was raped in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion.

These are the kinds of human rights violations we would be protesting if they occurred in other countries. That they are happening in the United States is an ominous sign of what lies ahead, because other countries in recent years that have taken away abortion rights — Poland and Nicaragua — have also taken away political rights.

We already live in a “backsliding” democracy, where voting rights are being restricted and freedom is under siege. The most severe threat comes from an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party whose maximum leader is an unindicted and unrepentant coup plotter.

Despite the yeoman work of the Jan. 6 committee, former president Donald Trump remains the leading contender for the 2024 GOP nomination — and on the current trajectory he could defeat President Biden, whose unpopularity continues to plumb new depths. We need to be clear about what another Trump term would mean: It could be the death knell for our democracy.

Jonathan Swan of Axios has an alarming report on the preparations in Trump World for returning to power: “Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority – go after the national security apparatus, ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the ‘woke generals’ at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.”

One of the instruments of Trumpian purges would be Schedule F, a new category of federal employment that Trump created in 2020 (and Biden rescinded), which would have removed tens of thousands of federal employees from civil service protections. By reviving Schedule F, Trump could fire career officials and replace them with ultra-MAGA loyalists. “F” might as well stand for “fascism,” because that is what we will get if Trump were to appoint his most fanatical acolytes to the most powerful positions in government.

I wish I could say that such a scenario is implausible, but it is all too realistic. I used to be an optimist about America’s future. Not anymore. There’s a good reason that so many people I know are acquiring foreign passports and talking about moving somewhere else: The prognosis is grim.

As political scientist Brian Klaas just wrote in the Atlantic, given that the GOP has become “authoritarian to its core,” there are two main ways to save America: Either reform the Republican Party or ensure that it never wields power again. But a MAGA-fied GOP is likely to gain control of at least one chamber of Congress in the fall and could win complete power in 2024.

We seem to be sleepwalking to disaster. If we don’t wake up in time, we could lose our democracy. Just because we’ve avoided a breakdown in the past doesn’t mean we will stave it off in the future.

New "University Of Austin" Is Just A Right-Wing Scam

 

Right-wingers can no longer be scammed out of their money by taking courses from Trump University. But some discredited journalists and teachers have formed another "university" to continue the grift. It's called the University of Austin, and it will teach racist and anti-LGBTQ ideas. It is not accredited, offers no degrees, and its courses cannot be transferred to a real college or university. 

Here is part of the op-ed on the new "school" by Katelyn Burns at MSNBC.com:

Earlier this week, a group of conservative and contrarian academics and journalists announced they were launching a new venture called the “University of Austin.” The “school” purports to teach to students “unthinkable” ideas that the founders say they are currently being persecuted for espousing in traditional academia.

But the supposed university is unaccredited — and it doesn’t offer any degrees. Instead, it appears to be the latest, and largest, in a long line of cancel culture-related grifts. . . .

Polls have revealed that an increasing number of people are afraid of being “canceled” over their opinions. And what sprang up in response was an ever-increasing network of resources designed to garner support for celebrities, academics and journalists who’ve been canceled. . . .

The general idea is that there are certain social rewards that come with being canceled. So-called controversial or forbidden ideas have a veneer of guilty pleasure. Things that are illegal or taboo have always been attractive to people, like having your first drink of alcohol when you’re a teenager.

It’s this attractiveness that helps cancel culture grifts pay off. There’s no universally agreed upon definition of “getting canceled” and it’s claimed for a wide variety of consequences for terrible speech or actions, from losing a job to getting doxxed to mild intellectual disagreement.

This open-ended definition allows nearly anyone to claim canceled status and subsequently rake in the increased attention and financial rewards that now come with that status. . . .

It appears that a group of self-described “heterodox” academics and journalists (who all happen to have the same opinions on the the two topics they collectively discuss most often, trans rights and racism) want in on the action.

The list of founders and those listed in the university’s initial launch announcement reads like a who’s-who of contrarian personalities, including: former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, who appeared to spearhead the organizing; British academic and gender critical former professor Kathleen Stock, who recently resigned from the University of Sussex, first claiming she was driven out by protesting students before shifting the blame onto another professor she says had a disagreement with; and journalist Caitlin Flanagan, who always seems to be in the middle of these discussions.

But there appears to be no substance behind the allegedly academic effort. None of the instructors are expected to produce research in their field; none of the programs provide credits that could be accepted at actual colleges. Instead, the University of Austin appears to be a clearinghouse for online videos or classes, where people like Stock can say whatever she wants about trans people or columnist Andrew Sullivan can lecture about racial IQ without official consequences. And students will presumably be paying money to access this material, of course. . . .

As New York Magazine’s Sarah Jones noted, the University of Austin’s founding ideal is nothing new. But the grift at play here is clear. The University of Austin isn’t designed to benefit its students. It’s meant to be a soft landing spot for formerly disgraced academics, or controversial journalists, who it should be noted, mostly have no experience in academia. And while the instructors rake in cash from the aggrieved masses, the only value the school will deliver to students is an ability to indulge in the guilty pleasures of racism and transphobia.

Unvaccinated / Donald Trump/ Conservative Media Are The Most To Blame For COVID-19 Resurgence

 The chart above is from the Axios / Ipsos Poll. It shows that the entities blamed the most for the virus resurgence are the unvaccinated, Donald Trump, and conservative media. The survey was conducted between July 30th and August 2nd of a national sample of 999 adults, and has between a 3.0 and 3.4 point margin of error.

Right-Wing Homegrown Terrorism Continues To Rise

 

Radical Right: From "Stop The Steal" To "Stop The Vaccine"

The radical right loved Donald Trump, because he made them feel it was OK to pour out their hate for this country and many of its citizens. That's why they happily jumped on board to back Trump claim of having the election stolen from him. They happily signed on to the "Stop the Steal" movement, and many of them showed up on January 6th to invade Congress. That didn't work out too well for them. 

President Biden was sworn in as our 46th president, while the rioters went to jail. They could have just admitted they were wrong, but they didn't. They just transferred their hate to a different issue. Now many of them have joined the anti-vaxxers, and they are trying to stop the vaccination of Americans against the Coronavirus. Evidently, they want President Biden to fail to bring the pandemic under control (hoping it will result in the return of their favorite orange demagogue).

The following is part of an article in The New York Times by Neil MacFarquhar:

If the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, its supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.

Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chatrooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.

These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control. “If less people get vaccinated then the system will have to use more aggressive force on the rest of us to make us get the shot,” read a recent post on the Telegram social media platform, in a channel linked to members of the Proud Boys charged in storming the Capitol.

The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.

“They rode the shift in the national conversation away from Trump to what was happening with the massive ramp up in vaccines,” said Devin Burghart, the head of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors far-right movements, referring to followers of QAnon. “It allowed them to pivot away from the failure of their previous prophecy to focus on something else.”

Apocalyptic warnings about the vaccine feed into the far-right narrative that the government cannot be trusted, the sentiment also at the root of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The more vaccine opponents succeed in preventing or at least delaying herd immunity, experts noted, the longer it will take for life to return to normal and that will further undermine faith in the government and its institutions. . . .

In the months since inoculations started in December, the alliance grouping extremist organizations with the anti-vaccination movement has grown larger and more vocal, as conspiracy theories about vaccines proliferated while those about the presidential vote count receded. . . .

The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon followers for years has helped to create a shared vocabulary among far-right organizations, experts said, which smoothed the way for spreading false information about the vaccines. “The last year with Covid has just been a perfect storm that whatever your crazy conspiracy belief is, there is someone who has a Covid conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.

Right-Wing Media Has Older Audience Than Left-Wing Media

 The charts above reflect what the Pew Research Center found in a survey of who watches certain media site. 

It turns out, according to the survey, about 25% of Republicans tune in only to right-wing media outlets (like Fox News or talk radio). And about 25% of Democrats tune only to left wing media outlets (like MSNBC, CNN, and The Washington Post).

This 25% (in both parties) are the more hardcore party members -- those activists who do most of the work for the parties.

But there's a big difference between the parties when you look at the ages of these two 25% groups. The Republican group is made up of mostly older people, while the Democratic group is mostly younger people. About 79% of Republicans were over the age of 50, while only about 22% were under 50. About 40% of Democrats were over 50, while about 60% were under 50.

In general, those numbers are better for the Democrats than the Republicans.

Right-Wingers Pose Danger With Their Shutdown Protests

Austin, Texas

Huntington Beach, California

St. Paul, Minnesota

 Orlando, Florida

Salem, Oregon

Lansing, Michigan

Our nation is in the middle of a pandemic that has cost nearly 40,000 lives already, and will undoubtably cost many thousands more before it is over -- even if we cooperate with the social distancing measures put in place in most states. Unfortunately, there is a tiny minority (composed mostly of radical right-wingers) that refuses to cooperate.

Right-wingers took to the streets in many states this weekend to protest the shutdown measures being taken by most states. Those measures have saved lives, and since there is no vaccine or cure for the Coronavirus, represents our only hope to control the pandemic. Those right-wingers don't care. They claim the shutdown somehow violates their "rights", and they're evidently willing to unnecessarily kill thousands more people to protect those "rights".

No one's rights are being violated. The government has the responsibility to act to protect public health, and it is being done only until the very dangerous virus has been controlled.

These right-wing nutters have the right to protest, and to expose themselves to the virus by doing that. If they were the only ones to get sick because of their protest, I probably wouldn't mind. After all, you can't fix stupid! But anyone stupid enough to attend one of these protests is probably too stupid to quarantine themselves for a couple of weeks after doing so. Instead, they will carry the virus back to their families and friends, and anyone else crazy enough to get close to them.

These ignorant protesters say they want the economy reopened, but their actions will likely do just the opposite -- spread the virus and cause the shutdown to last even longer. Sadly, Donald Trump is encouraging their dangerous actions, and so are some other Republican officials. They are playing politics with the lives of American citizens (especially older Americans).

This is inexcusable -- and it shows once again that the radical right (and their political leaders) are the most dangerous element this country faces.