The Muslim Ban is the Policy of the Republican Party

Ronald Reagan pictured here with notable racist/traitor Richard Nixon and notable criminal Spiro Agnew in 1971.  Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, with a speech emphasizing "states rights" just a couple miles from where civil rights workers had been the victims of state-sanctioned murder.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are the leaders of the Republican Party and they endorse Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees.  The order is the policy of the mainstream Republican Party.  This is important to emphasize because many people including the Clinton campaign, have engaged in the habit of going after Trump personally, but at the same time letting Republicans off the hook.

Trump and the Republican Party are one in the same.  Trump is the perfect expression of the Republican id:  Racist, nationalistic, greedy, anti-intellectual, fear mongering, and worshipers of the prosperity gospel.  This white nationalism did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him.  Watch the primary debates again, if you can stomach it; they all endorsed some iteration of the Muslim ban. Watch how many Republicans vote for Jeff Sessions.  This is why it is important to go after the whole party.

Trump is crazier than a generic Republican candidate is, but all the policies are the same.  The party will own everything Trump does until they decide to impeach him.

Get Ready

If the schedule of the confirmation hearings is any judge, expect a lot of bad legislation to come out of congress in coming days and weeks.  This legislation needs to be fought at every turn.  If the ACA's replacement (for example) is anything less than Medicare for all...oppose it.

Oppose all of Trump's cabinet appointments, but particularly Sessions, DeVos, Pruitt, Carson, and Price.  I may be missing some, the lightening speed of the hearings has my brain going in all directions (this is a deliberate effect), but the point is:  Universal opposition can work. 

Get ready to protest, boycott, and be disobedient.  Get ready to call your elected officials more often. 

The left is going to lose far more battles than it will win.  There is no preventing this, but we have to try.  Ultimately if we can tie the Republicans to Trump and vice-versa, and get people to show up to the polls, we will win. 

Liberals Suck at Politics

I attended an emergency community meeting the other night sponsored by the AFL-CIO and I came away with one giant take-a-way:  Liberals/progressives suck at politics.  I've actually known this for a while, but it was reinforced by some of the denial that I witnessed.  With the election of Trump, I think it's critical that liberals understand some things.

1. Don't care what the opposition thinks.  There is value in listening to other perspectives and understanding other points of view.  That being said, energy is much better spent trying to get non/low propensity voters to show up to the polls than to persuade conservatives to change their minds.  Are you really going to convince someone who completely disregards the scientific community and thinks climate change is a hoax that climate change is real?  No.  Are you going to persuade someone who thinks that black people have major advantages over white people that racism exists?  Not likely.  Are you going to sway someone who thinks that there is no difference between the two parties that Social Security and Medicare are more likely to be cut if they elect a Republican?  Maybe.
2. Understand the opposition.  If I had to choose Obama's biggest failing as a President, it would be not understanding conservatives.  I think that Obama thinks, that all conservatives are like the ones he met at Harvard (think David Brooks).  They're not. Newsflash:  People who allow your citizenship to become a defining issue for the first part of your presidency are not operating in good faith.  People who impeach a president over lying about a blowjob are not operating in good faith.  People who hold the economy hostage by credibly threatening not to raise the debt ceiling, are not operating in good faith.  People who refuse to even hold hearings for your SCOTUS nominee are not operating in good faith.
3. Emphasize the stakes.  You know what I didn't hear from the Clinton campaign?  I didn't hear about the Supreme Court.  I didn't hear about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.  I didn't hear about climate change.  I didn't hear about college tuition.  I didn't hear about building infrastructure.  Clinton had policies to improve these things, but they rarely if ever came up. Not in her ads, not in the debates.  The only things I heard were "Trump is a monster" (true) and "Go to HillaryClinton.com" which is the single worst phrase a candidate can utter.
4. Bipartisanship is a means not an end.  Working with the other side is fine if it aimed at achieving a greater good even though you don't get everything you want, but that is never where you should begin the conversation.  Working with the other side is bad if it ends with overly complicated policies that barely address the problem and make it easy for conservatives to label government ineffective.   Too often I see Democrats beginning from a negotiated position before negotiations have even started.  Set high goals and aim for them to be implemented broadly (like Social Security), that way if they're repealed they fuck over a much larger chunk of the population.
5. Politics happens more than once every four years.  Generally speaking, if Democrats show up to the polls, they win.  The problem is, they only show up occasionally and usually only for a presidential election.  Republicans show up to nearly every election like clockwork and that is why they control the majority of statehouses, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and soon the Presidency and the Supreme Court.  Democrats didn't even show up in high numbers in the primary where there was the possibility for real divergence from the party elite.  As brilliant film director and sexual predator, Woody Allen said, "80% of life is showing up".
6.  You don't need to like the politicians you elect.  I very seldom vote for someone I like as a human or don't have some serious disagreements with.  You have to be a little off to run for office, so don't expect these people to be perfect.  At the end of the day, you're electing someone to do a job.  Politicians are vehicles for change, not the catalyst.  It's crazy to place a whole lot of trust in politicians, so regard all of them with skepticism.
7. Voting is a collective act, not personal expression, or a consumer choice.  Refer back to rule six.  If voting was supposed to be a form of self-expression, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be anonymous.  Voting is a collective action to assign power.  Nothing more, nothing less.
8. Expect them to cheat.  People cheating to gain power?  Next thing you'll tell me is people lie on their resumes.  Seriously, they cheat because they know the electorate as a whole is not on their side.  What's the best way to respond?  Get more people to vote.
9. Politics is about power.  This is rule number one of political science, but it seems completely lost on many people.  Ultimately, power is being assigned and divided up.  The only difference between democratic forms of government and undemocratic forms of government is how power is assigned.  If you want to understand politics don't watch The West Wing, watch Game of Thrones.

Someone Get Jeb! a Puppy

I'm not sure there has ever a presumptive nominee of a major party that has embarrassed himself with such regularity and veracity.  He is regularly emasculated by Trump, suffering insults at every turn. He has spent at least $82 million dollars and best I can tell the only person he has convinced to vote for him is his mom. She seems luke-warm on the idea...

Just when I thought Bush couldn't do anything to embarrass himself further, he begs the crowd for applause...

I never thought I'd feel bad for a Bush, but I do.  Please someone, get this man a puppy!

The Art of the Grift

Wikimedia Commons

Something amazing is happening in this Republican presidential primary, it is my belief that many of the candidates including the two front-runners have no intention of ever being President or holding any kind of public office.  These candidates are after something far more rewarding, profitable, and easier...the grift.

The most obvious example of these grifters is Mike Huckabee.  Huckabee is running for president you say?  I can forgive you if you forgot, but yeah, I mean he is pretending to anyway.  Huckabee hasn't held political office since 2007.  He ran for President in 2008, which got him a nice seven years of a television show on Fox, numerous media appearances, book deals, speaking tours, and supplement sales.  Since 2014, Huckabee has made just short of 1 million dollars in speaking fees alone.  His show on Fox News gave him a reported annual salary of $500,000, and has used his fame and weight loss story to hawk "natural" diabetes supplements.  Huckabee gave up his show to "pursue" the presidency but rest assured he'll have a job at Fox News when it's all said and done.

Should We Charge 47 Senators With a Violation of the Logan Act? No.

Sen. Tom Cotton

This trend of me defending people I find reprehensible is unsettling.  If I wanted to defend scumbags, I would have gone to law school.  I'm writing about the petition circulating right now asking that the justice department pursue charges against the 47 Senators who wrote a letter to Iranian leadership saying that any deal reached wouldn't be upheld after President Obama leaves office. The petition reads:

On March 9th, 2015, forty-seven United States Senators committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.
At a time when the United States government is attempting to reach a potential nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, 47 Senators saw fit to instead issue a condescending letter to the Iranian government stating that any agreement brokered by our President would not be upheld once the president leaves office.
This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason.