Why does MAGA spread hate and violence?

The MAGA mind virus

Stephen Robinson

The disastrous choice American voters made in last year’s presidential election was put on grim display earlier this month in response to the politically motivated shooting of Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses by a right-wing extremist named Vance Boelter.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responded to the violence like a decent human being and condemned the shooting as an attack on all Americans and our very civic order.

“We are not a country that settles our differences at gunpoint,” a somber Walz said during a press conference. “We have demonstrated again and again in our state that it is possible to peacefully disagree, that our state is strengthened by civil public debate. We must stand united against all forms of violence — and I call on everyone to join me in that commitment.”

The president, meanwhile, responded to the shootings like — well, like a maniac.

Trump rejected Walz’s call for unity and as always refused to even pretend he’s supposed to be the president of the entire United States.

“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. Why would I call him?” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?”

Trump’s predecessors responded more humanely to gun violence. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Republican president George W. Bush immediately reached out to Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine and offered his support and sympathy. 

Four years later, when 19 people, including Rep. Gabby Giffords, were shot in Tucson, Arizona, President Barack Obama offered Republican Gov. Jan Brewer — a vocal political opponent — the full resources of the federal government.

Unfortunately, 77 million Americans surrendered these moments of shared humanity when they put Trump back in the White House. The tragedies that once united us now only result in more division. And no one, including his supporters, should have expected anything else.

Two South County right-wing nuts win delegate slots to Republican National Convention

Lots of questions for Rhode Island Republicans to answer

By Will Collette

If you were wondering whether Rhode Island’s Republican Party had succumbed to Trumpmentia like the GOP nationwide, RI's April 2 Presidential Preference Primary provided an answer.

While, as expected, Trump (and Joe Biden) easily won, although both saw around 20% of primary voters vote for someone else or selected “uncommitted”, the more interesting results were seen in the vote count for individual delegates.

All of Rhode Island’s Republican delegates are pledged to vote for Donald Trump. Delegates pledged to other candidates, such as Nikki Haley, lost. That included prolific Westerly Sun letter-to-the-editor writer Scott Bill Hirst of Hopkinton who only received 751 votes out of 12,905 GOP votes cast.

The three slots for Congressional District 2 Republican delegates were filled by three peculiar choices. In order, the three elected were:

#1: Lacey McGreevey with 3,781. McGreevy was an unsuccessful Tea Party candidate for state Representative for South Kingstown in 2014 losing to present incumbent Kathy Fogarty (D).

#2: Justin Price with 3,749. Price was a Tea Party state representative from Richmond, first elected in 2014, the same year McGreevey lost. Price achieved national notoriety as an insurrectionist, MAGA devotee and far right crank. Incumbent Megan Cotter (D) ousted Price from office in 2022.

#3: Sean Todd with 3,326. Todd is a former East Greenwich town council member who first drew statewide attention for an incredibly sexist comment in 2017 that led to protests, calls for his resignation and ultimately his ouster from office in 2018.

All three are Trump delegates.

In Charlestown, 153 Republicans voted, giving Trump 86.9% which is higher than Trump’s margin statewide. 98 of them also picked Price over McGreevey.

These vote totals now justify challenging every Rhode Island candidate running as a Republican whether they support Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda: his national ban on abortion and punishment for any woman who gets one; his racism; his pro-Nazi, pro-Putin authoritarianism; his calls for violence and death for his opponents; His corruption and lies; And this is hardly an all-inclusive list.

If you are an “R” where do you stand on these issues?

Let’s take a closer look at the two top GOP vote-getters, Lacey McGreevey and Justin Price.

You may not remember McGreevey since she was only a blip on the political scene with her 2014 state rep bid. But I remember her well. Here’s how I wrote about her in 2014:

Progressive Charlestown: September 17, 2014

Kathy Fogarty will now go on to battle Lacey McGreevy (R) in the November 4 general election. I swear I am not making this up, and working hard to not make this sound sexist, but when McGreevy announced her candidacy, she gave her frequent efforts as a beauty pageant contestant as her main qualification.  

Sarah Palin also included this in her resume, but she also had Mayor of Wasilla and a view of Russia from her window to complete her qualifications.

 

From McGreevey's campaign website

Here’s how she describes herself in her campaign bio: “Lacey McGreevy attended South Kingstown high school then went on to Southern New Hampshire University with a double major of marketing and fashion merchandising. She currently works as a trade show consultant and helps to keep women safe with princess pepper spray.” [emphasis added and I am NOT making this up.]

Kathy Fogarty went on to win the Representative District 35 seat by thumping McGreevey by 16 points.

Here she is with The Donald. Where is Trump's left hand?

McGreevey pretty much fell off the political map after that, perhaps too busy home schooling her kid. She was an early Trumpnik, even posting a link to Amazon and a $20 Trump pool float ring. On her Facebook page, she has only increased her love for Trump and posted photos of her and Trump. In one of them, you’re left guessing where Trump’s left hand is.

So, do you think Lacey is going to try running for local office again? What exactly does she stand for other than Trump-love and Trump tchotchke?

Finally, let’s look at Justin Price and how renewed RI GOP support for him raises questions about where they stand, not to mention whether they plan to back him if he tries a General Assembly comeback.

Price was a part of what I called “The Revenge of the Swamp Yankees.” In 2014, three of the best members of the General Assembly – Donna Walsh, Cathy Cool Rumsey and Larry Valencia – were beaten by three right-wing nuts: Blake “Flip” Filippi, Elaine Morgan and Justin Price.

All three were hard-right, but Price was really out there. In his four terms as state Representative, Price accomplished nothing other than garnering state and national exposure for his positions not only on guns and taxes, but - believe it or not - “chemtrails,” an obscure right-wing conspiracy theory that contrails from high-flying jets are actually spewing mind-altering chemicals on an unsuspecting public.

If there was even a germ of truth to this, I guess Price must have been an early victim.

His great legislative achievement was winning passage of a bill to create a “geo-engineering” study commission" to study chemtrails and other far right boogeymen. The commission never met and of course issued no findings.

Absolutely none of this is true.

Price managed to top that by being one of several serving state legislators to participate in the January 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2000 election.

He responded to calls for his resignation by claiming that (a) he didn’t actually enter the Capitol building though he has never said how deep into the fray he went and (b) that he saw Antifa actually lead the attack.

Both claims are bullshit and here’s why.

I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years out of an office in the United Methodist Building just across the street from the Capitol. I know the area well and how the Capitol Police set up security cordons. For major events, police “do-not-cross” lines are set well away from the building.

It is virtually impossible for Price to have not breeched those lines and certainly must have done so if we are to believe his claim that “Antifa did it.”

As for the briefly popular Antifa conspiracy claim, we now know beyond a doubt that the insurrection was planned by Trump supporters as well as right-wing militias and white supremacists including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

The Antifa theory never made sense since there is no reason the Left would storm the Capitol to overturn Joe Biden’s rightful election victory.

But Price also needs to account for his conduct and subsequent statements. His Antifa claim is either a lie or an admission that he breeched his own sworn oaths. 

As a member of the Marine Corps and as a member of the General Assembly, Price sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution and to protect the country from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

If he truly believed he saw Antifa (or for that matter anyone), attacking police and the Capitol Building, why did he rise to defend against these enemies of the nation? It was his sworn duty, and he admits he did nothing. So is he a liar or a coward? 

Can Rhode Island Republicans explain why this ignorant man is going to represent them at their national convention? Oh, oh, oh…wait, I forgot. Donald Trump. Never mind.

How did we end up with such a corrupt Supreme Court?

Clarence Thomas has been bought by the worst people

Joan McCarter for Daily Kos

The oddest thing to emerge in the whole Thomas-Crow affair—the sugar daddy relationship between Texas billionaire Harlan Crow and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—has to be that painting. You know the one:

Who are those guys, and why is the painting so weirdly realistic and yet idealized at the same time? Let’s start with the easy part: the identification, starting bottom left.  

That “some law clerk who doesn’t matter” is indeed a former clerk of Thomas, and he actually matters. He’s Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, now serving as Dean and Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. He doesn’t just hang around with his former boss at the venue for this painting—Camp Topridge, the 105-acre compound in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, owned by Crow. 

He stays in touch regularly by briefs, amicus briefs, and petitions filed at the Supreme Court. Dozens of them over the years. Of course he’s a “contributor” to the conservative Federalist Society, meaning he has “spoken or otherwise participated in Federalist Society events, publications, or multimedia presentations.” He is, in short, a cog in the conservative legal effort to undermine everything we care about.

By Michael deAdder

Speaking of the Federalist Society, that’s who the next guy is—the actual founder (and former director) of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo isn’t just the guy who funneled lots of money to SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas through Kellyanne Conway, and who “stacked the GOP court,” he is the architect of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court and the guy responsible for reshaping select federal district and appeals courts since the George W. Bush administration. 

Basically, Republican presidents don’t nominate judges unless the Federalist Society approves them. Every terrible Supreme Court decision in the last quarter century can be laid at his feet.

Leo’s reach also extends deep into the U.S. Senate, as he needs those people to close the deal on his judges. That includes famed “moderate” Susan Collins, who got a nice financial boost from him during her last reelection campaign, perhaps as a “thank you” for her making Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh a reality. 

We're not going back, GOP

This Women’s History Month, out of touch lawmakers are rolling out economic plans that would set women back generations. 

By Domenica Ghanem 

A lot has changed since 2011, the year I graduated high school. Tiktok was invented, there are now 12 Kardashian grandchildren, and I’m about to turn 30. But some things never change.

Back then, at the height of the Tea Party era, conservative Republicans threatened to default on the U.S. debt — not reduce it, mind you, but default on it — unless they could choke federal spending that makes the economy work better for everyone.

If you’re experiencing deja vu, it’s because they’re now doing it again, threatening to tank the economy unless they get deep, harmful social spending cuts.

And as we enter Women’s History Month, it’s impossible to ignore the impacts this will have on women in particular. These right-wing lawmakers are essentially using their old playbook to renegotiate women’s place in the economy.

Let me explain. The pandemic exposed a child care system on the brink of collapse, a widespread lack of paid leave options for workers, and a gutted social safety net that left millions without food, health care, or enough cash to pay the rent.

There was a time when at least some Republicans cared about the environment

Putting the “conserve” back in “conservative”

Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News

Last Sunday, an influential British conservative sent up a red flag in the Times of London. Sensing a sharp turn in the policy direction of new Prime Minister Liz Truss, William Hague wrote “conservatives must always be environmentalists.”

In other words, the British Right is in deep trouble if it follows the path of America’s Right.

But — from Teddy Roosevelt to Richard Milhous Nixon to Ronald Reagan — it wasn’t always that way here.

So, in this sharply divided country, how do we get back to a time when millions of us don’t equate clean air with bad taste? Maybe a tour of more than a century of Republican history could guide us.

A Third of America is Lost to Hate: Is It Time to Move On?

Hate may be incurable

By Thom Hartmann for the Independent Media Institute

It’s time to stop normalizing and accommodating the white supremacists among us. They may be a third of America, but they’re the lost third, longing for return to a time we will never revisit. 

Instead of looking forward, they’re stuck to a past that will never be revived, no matter how many elections they rig or people they terrorize or kill. 

 

The America I was born into and grew up in as a kid was a very different place from today. In the 1950s the country was firmly under the control of straight white men:

• ·         Black people (and other minorities, varying by region) were confined to certain parts of town and were routinely beaten, arrested, or even killed for stepping into whites-only areas.
• ·         In 1951 only about 15% of Black people were successful in registering to vote in all of the former Confederate states.
• ·         With few exceptions, the only minority faces seen in media were those portrayed as either buffoons or criminals.
• ·         Abortion was illegal, and in many states you could go to jail, even if you were married, for possessing birth control of any sort, including condoms, in your own home. IUD’s and birth control pills did not exist.
• ·         Schools, restaurants, hotels, and most private businesses were racially segregated.
• ·         Women (even white women) couldn’t sign a contract, get a credit card or open a bank account in their own names without the signature of a father or husband.
• ·         Immigration into America was regulated to maintain the country’s racial balance.
• ·         Gays and lesbians were routinely beaten, imprisoned, raped, and murdered with no consequence to their tormentors.
• ·         Police had carte blanche to terrorize and kill minorities of all types.

Since then, a lot has changed:

• ·         The browning of America began in a big way in the 1960s with egalitarian changes to our immigration, voting, and public accommodations laws.
• ·         The Women’s Rights movement picked up steam after the legalization in 1961 of birth control pills and Roe v Wade in 1973, although Republicans have successfully blocked the Equal Rights Amendment to this day.
• ·         Full citizenship for LGBTQ people picked up in the 1990s and was finally realized (in law, at least) when Vice President Biden and then President Obama endorsed gay marriage and the Supreme Court ratified it in June of 2015.

Are Trump & His Cronies Guilty of Mass Murder?

Thousands of Americans died horrible deaths from COVID because of Trump

By Thom Hartmann for the Independent Media Institute

EPA-EFE

Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they draw their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary. 

All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000 people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. 

They happened because of decisions made by a small group of people led by Donald Trump.

If you or I made any decision, grounded in the desire to gain a political or other type of benefit, that caused even one single person to die we’d be on our way to prison. Look at people who simply decide to text while driving…and then kill a pedestrian. Prison. 

Trump not only caused over 130,000 Americans to die unnecessarily (according to Dr. Deborah Birx’s sworn testimony before Congress last week), but there’s a pile of evidence — which I’ll lay out below — that he did it because he believed the virus was hitting Blue states and Black people the hardest.

If this is true (and I’m building a case here that it is), it’s called second-degree murder, which, to use the definitions of the State of Florida where Trump lives (there is no federal homicide law) constitutes:

“The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life…”

VIDEO: 'Reopen' protest movement created, boosted by fake grassroots tactics

It's called "astroturf" - fake grassroots
Marc Ambinder, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Many Americans have been under strict stay-at-home orders, or at least advisories, for more than a month.

People are frustrated and depressed, but have complied with what they’ve been asked to endure because they trust that state and local public health officials are telling the truth about the coronavirus pandemic.

There has been passionate – and honest – argument about how many people are likely to get sick and die under different circumstances and sets of official rules.

It’s not clear how uncertain and evolving scientific findings should affect extraordinary government measures that restrict citizens’ basic freedoms.

In recent days, there have there been public protests against continuing the lockdown. The people who are doing the demonstrating may really be frustrated and upset, but new research, and journalistic investigation, is revealing that there are powerful forces behind them, egging them on, who want their influence to remain secret.

Thank you, Tea Party

How Tea Party budget battles left the national emergency medical stockpile unprepared for coronavirus
By Yeganeh Torbati and Isaac Arnsdorf for ProPublica

Dire shortages of vital medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile that are now hampering the coronavirus response trace back to the budget wars of the Obama years, when congressional Republicans elected on the Tea Party wave forced the White House to accept sweeping cuts to federal spending.

Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. 

Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts.

“There are always more needs for financial support from our hardworking taxpayers than we have the ability to pay,” said Denny Rehberg, a retired Republican congressman from Montana who chaired the appropriations subcommittee responsible for overseeing the stockpile in 2011. 

Rehberg said it would have been impossible to predict a public health crisis requiring a more robust stockpile, just as it would have been to predict the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“It’s really easy to second-guess and suggest we didn’t do as much,” he said. “Why didn’t we have a protocol to protect the Twin Towers? Whoever thought that was going to happen? Whoever thought Hurricane Katrina was going to occur? You tell me what’s going to happen in 2030, and I will communicate that to congressmen and senators.”

There were, in fact, warnings at the time: A 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded report by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials urged the federal government to treat public health preparedness “on par with federal and state funding for other national security response capabilities,” and said that its store of N95 masks should be “replenished for future events.”

Toilet paper alternatives

Evolution

Is This Trump’s Vision For America?

In His Budget, You Can See a Country That Looks Like a Police State

By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief

Donald Trump plans to turn the federal government into a much more militaristic and paramilitary policing organization while making drastic cuts in the civilian workforce, including non-uniformed law enforcement, a July 7 budget memo shows.

The memo says that the budget for our government’s 2019 fiscal year, which begins on Oct.1, 2018, “will build on the ambitious plans laid out in the president’s first budget” especially through “reducing the federal civilian workforce.”

No major news organization has reported on the three-page directive from Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Mulvaney is a Tea Party Republican from South Carolina who opposes any restrictions on guns and opposes any federal spending on Planned Parenthood. In 2015, the former Congressman was willing to shut down our federal government to block all funding for Planned Parenthood.

The memo refers to increasing spending only on militarism and enforcing immigration laws as part of “broader efforts to streamline government by ensuring that the federal government spends precious taxpayer dollars only on worthwhile policies, and in the most efficient, effective manner.”

Mulvaney instructed civilian agencies to not even ask for more money. His memo requires agencies to identify programs for reduction or elimination. He suggests significant savings can be found by focusing on “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Trickle-down health care

For more cartoons by Jen Sorenson, CLICK HERE.

Do you hate the Guv'mint?

For more cartoons by Jen Sorenson, CLICK HERE.

This one is for Jim Mageau

First, read Mageau's latest Kool-Aid inspired rant by CLICKING HERE.

 

Indivisible: A practical guide for resisting the Trump agenda

Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.

Angel Padilla, Billy Fleming, Caroline Kavit, Ezra Levin, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Jennay Ghowrwal, Jeremy Haile, Leah Greenberg, Matt Traldi, Sara Clough, and Sarah Dohl

We are former progressive congressional staffers who saw the Tea Party beat back President Obama’s agenda. We see the enthusiasm to fight the Trump agenda and want to share insider info on how best to influence Congress to do that.

If you want to do your part to beat back the Trump agenda and understand that it will require more than calls and petitions. For that reason, we prepared Indivisible, 2016 to help you resist. You should use this guide, share it, amend it, make it your own, and get to work.

Donald Trump is the biggest popular vote loser in history to ever call himself President-Elect.

In spite of the fact that he has no mandate, he will attempt to use his congressional majority to reshape America in his own racist, authoritarian, and corrupt image.

Democrats Reclaimed GOP Values and Made Them Better

Democrats seize the optimism that Trump surrendered.

By Richard Zombeck 

Thanks to Donald Trump, Democrats can now show America that they are the party of family values, business, patriotism, and national pride.

An unintended and, at least for the GOP, unexpected consequence, of having Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president is that the Democrats seem to be poaching themes normally used by the right.

Trump’s Trickle-Down Ticket

Donald Trump's VP pick signals a commitment to slashing taxes for millionaires and cutting services for everyone else.

By Josh Hoxie

It was easy to get caught up in the circus that was the Republican National Convention. Rousing speeches (plagiarized and original) and raucous floor votes make for great television and funny internet memes.

Unfortunately, as we’ve come to expect from events organized by Donald Trump, the convention was decidedly light on substance. For an inkling of what a Trump administration might actually do, we have to look elsewhere.

Let’s start with Mike Pence, the newcomer to the ticket and a relative unknown to most voters.

The self-described Tea Partier served six terms in the House of Representatives and one term as governor of Indiana. He’s best known for his staunchly conservative stances on social issues, notably on reproductive health and LGBT rights.

But Pence also stands way outside the mainstream on economic issues, with a clear track record of coddling the wealthy. He’s an ardent supporter of trickle-down economics, the debunked idea that giving more money to the wealthy will somehow help the rest of us.

As a congressman in 2010, for instance, Pence made the bizarre claim that raising income taxes would decrease federal revenue. Unsurprisingly, Politifact — the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking group — rated that false.

More recently, Pence put his ideas into action in Indiana, enacting a major tax cut that helped give his state one of the most regressive tax structures in the country.

Winning by Destroying

Trump and Gingrich

By Robert Reich

When I was a boy and lost just about every sporting event I tried, my father told me, “What counts isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.”

Most parents told their kids this. It was part of the American creed. But I doubt Fred Trump passed on the same advice to little Donald, who seems to have learned the opposite: It’s not how you play the game but whether you win or lose.

If there’s one idea that summarizes Donald Trump — his character, temperament, career, business strategy, politics and worldview — it’s winning at any cost. That’s the art of the deal. 

Playing the game well or honorably is irrelevant.

Now that he is the presumed Republican nominee for the highest office in the land, this view is outright dangerous.

Government is about process. Democracy is about law. The Constitution establishes the rules of the game. A tacit social contract binds us all together.

How the Tea Party got thrown overboard. At us.

Review of "Poison Tea", by Jeff Nesbit

By Peter Dykstra for Environmental Health News

Every time I run into Jeff Nesbit, he makes another implausible claim about some accomplishment in his life: He helped FDA Commissioner David Kessler roll Big Tobacco on regulations. 

He was a Washington correspondent and a writer of 19 inspirational novels. He’s in the record books for a 24-foot long jump for Duke’s track team. He helped the National Science Foundation fend off a very un-sciencey George W. Bush Administration and Congress. And he was Vice President Dan Quayle’s chief spokesman.

Each time I resist the temptation to stage an impromptu intervention to get this poor man out of Walter Mittyville. The problem is he’s actually done all of these things. 

Now, along comes one more:

Poison Tea is his new investigative book, and let’s just say it’s less inspirational and more infuriating than his other books. Nesbit, who now runs the influential climate communications group Climate Nexus, was in a position to write this book because he was once a communications consultant for a wildly successful Koch Brothers front group.

Really.