Misc Political Posts

[AnBr]

[jackd]

I mean, I like Joe, you know, but a dandelion?

[LFC]

I bet we won't see a hand slap or hand pullback from Jill. This is what you see in a marriage built on love and respect, not money and opportunism.

[AnBr]

I feel sad for any marriage that does not have moments like this. Light hearted play and affection at any age.

[AnBr]

[Deleted]

Those who know history well can verify if Robert Reich's statement is indeed factual. I suspect strands of paranoia, xenophobia, racism, abject lying were forever present in American life, even in the media of those days, albeit they may not have been labeled as right-wing yet. America First as a slogan was effective then, just as now.

[jackd]

Also, FDR had clear majorities in both houses of Congress. There was plenty of right wing press in those days, over the top rumors and claims and a significant authoritarian culture.

[Traveler]

Maybe the part about right wing media is correct?

[andydp]

May 2, 2021 15:46:30 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Those who know history well can verify if Robert Reich's statement is indeed factual. I suspect strands of paranoia, xenophobia, racism, abject lying were forever present in American life, even in the media of those days, albeit they may not have been labeled as right-wing yet. America First as a slogan was effective then, just as now.

Throughout the Roosevelt Administration, Pres Roosevelt was referred to (by certain groups) as "That man in the White House".  

[LFC]

Susan Collins continues to be a miserable little shit stain with no principles and no spine. She stands for nothing.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) steadfastly refused to reveal on Sunday whom she voted for in last year’s presidential election, waving off the question with a laugh while saying that she’s going to keep her vote “private.”

[Traveler]

She's terrified of the maggot consequences if she admits she voted for Biden.

[LFC]

Abott the Idiot is at it again.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that Texas will build a border wall along the state’s boundary with Mexico — but provided no details on where or when.

Abbott declared his plans during a press conference in Del Rio. He said he would discuss the plans next week. The Biden administration issued a proclamation that stopped border wall construction on his first day of office.

Abbott announced the news while discussing a slew of border initiatives, such as a $1 billion allocation for border security in the state budget lawmakers just passed and a plan to establish a Governor’s Task Force on Border and Homeland Security with public safety and state government officials.

“It will help all of us to work on ways to stem the flow of unlawful immigration and to stem the flow of illegal contraband,” Abbott said, while seated next to officials from the National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Division of Emergency Management.

At the conference, Abbott also announced plans to increase arrests along the border — and increase space inside local jails.

"They don't want to come to across the state of Texas anymore because it's not what they were expecting," Abbott said before being met with applause from those at the conference. "It's not the red carpet that the federal administration rolled out to them."

He also announced an interstate compact with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to resolve the border "crisis," and called on other states to do the same.

Abbott's announcement comes after Republican former state Sen. Don Huffines said he will challenge the governor in next year's GOP primary — and as part of his campaign also promised to finish border wall construction in Texas.

"We will completely shut down the border until the crisis is solved and eliminate all taxpayer-funded subsidies to illegal aliens," Huffines tweeted earlier this month. "I am not afraid to take on the federal government."

[Deleted]

Trying their luck once again in court. In the meanwhile Abott collects brownie points from the prancing.

[goldenvalley]

There's just no pleasing some people.  And this sure points out the need for some basic education on the realities of modern economic life. 

Dennis Beckett wasn't even sure he wanted to cash his stimulus check, especially after he received a letter from President Biden announcing its arrival. Beckett, a retired pipe fitter, owns 25 firearms and staunchly opposes the president's call for restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

After thinking about it for a few days, Beckett finally decided to use the money to fix up his century-old home, recently purchased for $30,000.

But even as the stimulus makes his renovation possible, Beckett also blames it for the rising cost of the construction materials he needs. “Ever since January 20th, everything has shot up,” Beckett said, referring to the day Biden was inaugurated. “Just look at gas — it’s $3 a gallon, when it had been $1.79.”

Beckett’s ambivalence is echoed across Monroe County, made up of small towns and family farms tucked in the Appalachian region of southeastern Ohio.

In this impoverished pocket of the United States, the most recent round of stimulus payments — $1,400 for Americans who earn up to $75,000 — was the difference between getting a medical treatment and not, enrolling a child in college and not. But political divisions are deep here, and Trump voters, who make up the great majority of residents, are blaming the payments for a range of ills.

Some here say the Biden stimulus checks are keeping people from work, fueling a sense that the undeserving are exploiting the system. As the price of basic goods climbs, others worry that the stimulus will lead to runaway inflation on wood, cars, even milk.

“My God-honest opinion was at first that it was nice that the government was helping people,” said Brad Jeffries, 50, a truck driver who was laid off for most of last year and used the stimulus to pay off bills. “But since we got that, everything has went up, so how is that helping people out?”

[Bact PhD]

For Dems who have been clutching the rope of “changing demographics will bring in fresh voters for the party”, maybe it’s time to rethink, if not retire, that mantra:

www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/07/latinos-will-determine-future-american-evangelicalism/619551/

In 2007, when Obe and Jacqueline Arellano were in their mid-20s, they moved from the suburbs of Chicago to Aurora, Illinois, with the dream of starting a church. They chose Aurora, a midsize city with about 200,000 residents, mostly because about 40 percent of its population is Latino. Obe, a first-generation Mexican American pastor, told me, “We sensed God wanted us there.” By 2010, the couple had “planted a church,” the Protestant term for starting a brand-new congregation. This summer, the Arellanos moved to Long Beach, California, to pastor at Light & Life Christian Fellowship, which has planted 20 churches in 20 years. Their story is at once singular and representative of national trends: Across the United States, more Latino pastors are founding churches than ever before, a trend that challenges conventional views of evangelicalism and could have massive implications for the future of American politics.

[snip]

Latinos are the fastest-growing group of evangelicals in the country, and Latino Protestants, in particular, have higher levels of religiosity—meaning they tend to go to church, pray, and read the Bible more often than both Anglo Protestants and Latino Catholics, according to Mark Mulder, a sociology professor at Calvin University and a co-author of Latino Protestants in America. At the same time, a major demographic shift is under way. Arellano, who supports Light & Life’s Spanish-speaking campus, Luz y Vida, told me, “By 2060, the Hispanic population in the United States is expected to grow from 60 million to over 110 million.” None of this is lost on either Latino or Anglo evangelical leadership: They know they need to recruit and train Latino pastors if they’re going to achieve what Arellano describes as “our vision to see that the kingdom of God will go forward and reach more people and get into every nook and cranny of society.”

This is the tell:

Although Latino congregations are too diverse to characterize in shorthand, one of the few declarative statements that can be made about Latino Protestants is a fact borne out with numbers: They are likelier than Latino Catholics to vote Republican. The expansion of Latino evangelicalism bucks assumptions that Democrats and progressives will soon have a clear advantage as the white church declines and the Hispanic electorate rises. “Some counterintuitive things that have happened [in our national politics] would make more sense if we better understood the faith communities that exist within Latinx Protestantism,” Mulder told me over the phone, alluding to the differing perspectives Latinos hold on many issues, including immigration, and how more Latinos voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 than in 2016. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, Protestant affiliation correlated more with Hispanic approval of Trump’s job in office than age or gender.

It’s difficult to know why exactly. Mulder speculated that many Latino Catholic traditions emphasize social justice, whereas Protestant theology in general tends to be more focused on a personal relationship with God and individualism, corresponding with Republican arguments about “personal responsibility,” which some Latino voters have said appeal to them. Rodriguez, who describes himself as a political independent but has both advised and publicly defended Trump, told me that Latino Protestant support for Trump was about abortion, explaining that he himself is an anti-abortion-rights “diehard.” Meanwhile, Elizabeth Rios—a Florida-based Puerto Rican pastor with Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal fellowship—told me that after prominent pastors such as Rodriguez aligned themselves with Trump, many Latino Christians, especially first-generation immigrants, trusted their judgment, because “they believe that God uses [pastors] as a mouthpiece.”

It was striking to me that as recently as the late 1980s, a piece in the Miami Herald illustrated how much young women were still male-dominated, to
the point that even if a young woman was a college graduate and earned her own living, she was *expected* to live in the family home until marriage. Ergo, I don’t underestimate the role gender politics plays in this dynamic—not one bit.

[jackd]

It will be interesting to see how the Latino evangelicals react as the white superiority element among the Trumpers becomes more and more active. Anti abortion is a powerful motivator but so is racism.

[Bact PhD]

Jul 28, 2021 14:46:08 GMT jackd said:

It will be interesting to see how the Latino evangelicals react as the white superiority element among the Trumpers becomes more and more active. Anti abortion is a powerful motivator but so is racism.

In that vein, it will also be interesting to see what segment of those Latino evangelicals actually see themselves as “white” and therefore not really the target of Trumpian ire.

[jackd]

True. It might give those thinking of themselves as "white" some pause to look at our immigration quotas.

[AnBr]

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[LFC]

Interesting take from a TPM reader on the "moderate" Democrats. In full:

The Rage of the Mods
By Josh Marshall | September 7, 2021 12:41 p.m.

There are various points here from TPM Reader PT that I disagree. I don’t think there was ever a “Clinton / Gore / Lieberman wing of the party”. I also think it’s hard to argue that moderate or conservative-leaning Dems are obsolete when they have it entirely within their power to sink the President’s entire agenda. But there are enough accurate points that I wanted to share PT‘s take.

I’ve been paying a modicum of attention to the ongoing freakout of conservative Democrats in Congress, as I’m sure you have been as well. I have a couple of thoughts about them that I’d like to share with you.

First thought: to understand what’s going on, it’s helpful to think of this faction as a kind of ethnic group within the Democratic Party, and one that has until recently been at the top of the status hierarchy of their society (that society being, again, the Party). They were always the ones you needed to get things done; they could tank — or rescue — any legislation, they were the ones who could cut deals with the less conservative Republicans, they were the ones whose interests were always catered to. If you wanted to get ahead in national politics in the Democratic Party, you had to make sure everyone knew you were in the Clinton / Gore / Lieberman wing of the party, and not with that collection of leftists who didn’t know how to win an election.

But then, in the 20 years since 9/11, something happened. The nation changed, the party changed, the Republicans changed. Seemingly overnight, the conservative wing of the Democratic Party became obsolete. Two consecutive winning Presidential tickets had a person of color on them. Joe Biden, formerly the Senator from MBNA, started his administration far to the left of his past positions, far to the left even of the Obama Administration. Republicans engineered a near-total blockade of good-faith cooperation with Democrats, leaving their vaunted skills at cross-party coalition building useless. Republican extremism — from the refusal to even hold hearings on Merritt Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, to everything the Trump Administration did with nary a peep of protest from others in the party — so thoroughly discredited their party that getting Republican approval for legislation, for nominations, for Administrations, was in any event counterproductive even it it could be achieved.

And then, the final indignity: the left wing of the Democratic Party was threatening to sink legislation that the conservative wing had painstakingly constructed, in the kind of bipartisan compromise that the conservative Democrats found so enthralling; and rather than rejecting their threats, the party’s leadership endorsed the principle that the bipartisan infrastructure bill would never become law unless the reconciliation bill crafted by the more liberal parts of the party did as well. The conservative wing, so accustomed to being ascendant over the rest of the party, was now on the receiving end of the sort of threats that the conservative wing had used so effectively, and so frequently, for so long. It was a loss of relative status of their ethnic group relative to others. And, as often happens, it seems to have left them asking, “If my group can’t be the dominant one in this society, does this society still deserve my loyalty?”

This, I think, is what’s behind the emotion, the aggression, with which the conservative Democrats are reacting to the infrastructure / reconciliation bill issue. It’s a desperation to recover the relative status that they had come to see as their entitlement, combined with an absolute rage that the groups in the party they perceive as their lessers are daring to assert themselves — to assert that they aren’t second-class citizens of the Party anymore.

But I think there’s more to it than that, and it brings me to my second point.

The conservative Democrats have always argued that bringing Republican support onto a bill invariably improves the quality of the resulting legislation, and its robustness. I think that part of what’s happening is that it’s becoming clear to them that this is, at least under present circumstances, a mirage. After scraping and compromising and descoping their bipartisan bill to keep the Republicans on board, the left then shows up with its gargantuan reconciliation bill and the party leadership is falling all over itself to pass it as-is! All of their ostentatious bipartisan process led to them accepting half a loaf, while the other side of the party simply said that they weren’t going to do that and may well get everything they wanted.

And this brings the third point: the quality of outcomes between the two bills, as well as the earlier Covid rescue bill, gives the lie to their entire schtick about the beauty of the filibuster and all the other ridiculous Senate rules and traditions that impede legislating. While they’ve been running around swearing their eternal allegiance to supermajority requirements, what everyone who’s paying attention can see is that, actually, legislating with a simple majority is producing better results. Their entire tired kabuki drama of finding 10 Republican Senators who can be cajoled into supporting legislation is a counterproductive waste of time, made necessary only by their stubborn refusal to face the facts and kill off the filibuster and any other supermajority rules that get in the way. And they know it. And everyone who’s watching knows it. Their proclamations convince nobody.

[jackd]

Plus, the defenders of the filibuster refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that the Republicans, when in power, will never let the Democrats use it on anything of importance like Supreme Court nominations (remember Bill Frist and the threat to use the "nuclear option"?).

[goldenvalley]

...gives the lie to their entire schtick about the beauty of the filibuster and all the other ridiculous Senate rules and traditions that impede legislating...

Absolutely correct.  Lauding the filibuster as a device to encourage bipartisanship never made any sense to me.  Did it ever serve that alleged purpose?  

[LFC]

Sept 7, 2021 18:34:40 GMT goldenvalley said:

...gives the lie to their entire schtick about the beauty of the filibuster and all the other ridiculous Senate rules and traditions that impede legislating...

Absolutely correct.  Lauding the filibuster as a device to encourage bipartisanship never made any sense to me.  Did it ever serve that alleged purpose?  

I've become a firm advocate of destroying the filibuster. Yes I understand that if the GOP gets power that means they'll be able to pass all sorts of laws. That's the way it was for most of U.S. history, before the use of cloture became the norm, and I say let them. Then they have a track record to run on. If the people agree with the laws the create they'll be rewarded at the ballot box. If not they'll be punished. Right now they have decided doing next to nothing other than tax cuts is in their best interest. It's so much easier to campaign without having a record that requires defending.

[AnBr]

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[AnBr]

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