Tag Archives: Majority Report

Political Rants

What’d they say?

All right, so, I watched most of the debate last week, and the thing I came away with was something like what Anand Giridharadas said the weekend after – that I had watched what should amount to Joe Biden’s retirement party. The odd thing about that phenomenon is that almost no one on mainstream television appears to agree with that. In fact, some of the usual pundits were saying that this was Biden’s best night of the three debates. I have to scratch my head when I hear this stuff – did they see the same show I saw? Or is it just that they have lowered the performance bar for Biden to such an extent that he basically can do no wrong. That is not the Biden I saw.

His worst moment, namely his response to the question about the legacy of slavery in America, was aptly dissected by the Majority Report crew, who I think nailed it on the head. In his halting way, Biden began his response by talking about his fight against segregation, then pivoted quickly, recalling that this was a trouble area for him. He then talked about education, specifically poor kids in inner city schools, and once again he equated black kids with being poor. His solution sounded positively draconian: let’s send social workers into these kids’ homes, because their parent(s) don’t know how to handle them. What? Kind of astonishing, but that’s where the guy is coming from, so he was doing a public service of sorts.

Get off my lawnism.

The health care debate was probably the most contentious that forum got. This is probably where the usual pundits got the notion that Biden did better than usual. He was old man-splaining Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as to why Medicare for All can’t work and is too expensive. The questioning, of course, sought to support Biden’s case – It will raise taxes, right? Right?? The ABC team, like their predecessors at CNN and MSNBC, are trying their best to generate a soundbite of Warren saying “Yes, I’m going to raise your taxes!” If they ever succeed, they’ll probably blow some kind of ship horn. Biden seemed to think that $1,000 out of pocket was no big deal. Not surprised that that wasn’t the headline.

I think the biggest threat on that stage is the possibility of Biden becoming the nominee. I don’t know how to tell centrist Democrats this, but nominating him would be like rewinding to 2016 and running it again. We’ve already seen that show – let’s get someone on that ticket who will inspire the masses, not grab a couple of centrists here and there. That didn’t work out real well in the last election, and it won’t this time either.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

White rage.

I hear Tucker Carlson is worried about an ensuing race war. Sounds like a problem for old Tucker. I guess he should keep the musket loaded and ready back at the homestead. Tucker has heard all these people on television complaining about white male privilege and now he’s feeling a little picked on. Like Lindsay Graham, he feels squelched. White men just can’t get a word in edgewise, what with all of these stories of abuse and marginalization.

This obsession of Tucker’s did not start with the Kavanaugh nomination, but the Supreme Court justice wannabe certainly stoked the flames with his shrill rebuttal of accusations of sexually violent behavior back in his high school and college days. In fact, the judge was white aggrievement personified on that occasion, which played very well with white republican / conservative men both on the Senate Judiciary Committee and off. Now he’s well on his way to being a white dude folk hero, even if a miracle happens and he doesn’t end up on the high Court for life.

Judicial temperment ca. 2018I’ll be honest – I don’t shock easy, but Kavanaugh’s testimony last Thursday was freaking shocking. I have never seen a grown person, let alone a federal judge, act in such a juvenile manner. Much has been made of his incivility and hyperpartisanship, but I have heard relatively little with regard to the childishness of his performance. The man was so humiliatingly sophomoric and petulant, I very nearly felt sorry for him. If you haven’t seen this performance, I urge you to take the time to do so. The Majority Report has posted the entire thing on their YouTube channel. It is flabbergastingly ridiculous.

Before this testimony, I had thought there was a fairly strong possibility that Kavanaugh had grown out of whatever rowdy drunk phase he had gone through. I thought Dr. Ford’s allegations were credible and convincing, but I thought maybe, just maybe, this fellow had learned to be a more controlled, less loutish person. After that speech and subsequent questioning last Thursday, I am convinced that he is exactly the same person as Dr. Ford was describing – a little older, perhaps, but not fundamentally changed. His childishness is, in and of itself, reason enough to keep him off the court. There are many others, but that one is as plain as the nose on his face.

My guess is that he will be made associate justice over the next week. Not sure what is next in this sorry saga, but I have a bad feeling about this.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Hostage crisis.

It took more than a week of growing pressure, but it appears Trump has blinked on the policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border. That hasn’t stopped them from using these people as hostages in an effort to pass draconian revisions to the country’s immigration laws. More than 2,300 minors, including many under 5 years old, remain in detention facilities across the country, under separate administrative jurisdiction than the entities that are holding their immigrant parents. Very little has changed, in effect, for these families that have been dismembered by this bigoted administration, acting out the fever-dreams of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and would-be school shooter Steven Miller (a.k.a. worst speechwriter in the history of the profession) in an effort to seem “tough” on those dark foreigners their constituents love to hate.

Miller, pictured here after drinking a tall glass of children's tears.As reported by Chris Hayes and commented on by the folks at The Majority Report, more than 90% of the adults with children caught crossing the border are being charged with a federal misdemeanor. So for a “crime” equivalent in the federal government’s eyes to transporting water hyacinths (title 18, section 46) or improperly using the image of Smokey the Bear (section 711), you can have your children taken away. That sounds fair, right? Still, to hear many Republican legislators or garden-variety Trump supporters describe it, a substantial number of these people are either (1) human traffickers posing as families, or (2) crisis actors deliberately trying to make Trump look bad. The first one is hilarious. In what world does a human trafficker bring just one kid across the border, let alone in a manner likely to get them arrested? Pretty bad business model for someone trying to profit off of human misery. (Claim #2 is just too ridiculous to comment on.)

My substandard Congressional representative, the fragrant Claudia Tenney, made a statement about this matter that parrots the administration, right down to the invocation of MS13, a Los Angeles-born gang whose terror is forcing many of the people she denounces into refugee status in the first place. No surprises there. For Trump and his GOP allies, like Tenney, this is really just a test of zero-tolerance policy moving forward. If we swallow this, what else can they put on our plates? It doesn’t require a lot of imagination to guess where they might go next. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, give or take a few hundred thousand. If Trump and company choose to go “zero-tolerance” on them, we will end up with that “deportation force” he was threatening to establish during the campaign. Very likely, this is just the beginning, particularly as the White House is ranging around for ways to light a fire under their base in advance of the mid-term elections.

Collectively (and individually), we have to decide how much of this thuggish behavior we’re willing to tolerate before we ALL stand in the street. Stay tuned.

luv u,

jp