The Tucker Carlson Hate Machine Unplugged

Let's just get to the facts. This Monday morning, without ceremony or forewarning, Fox Not-News kicked their prime-time fearmonger Tucker Carlson to the curb. To refer to David Folkenflik at NPR:

In an austere, four-sentence statement, Fox News announced Monday that prime-time star Tucker Carlson is leaving the network, effective immediately.

"FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," the network said in a statement released by a spokesperson. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."

Fox said Carlson's last day hosting his show was Friday, April 21. Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executives of Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. respectively, had decided Carlson's fate on Friday, a source with knowledge told NPR...

The ouster of Fox's top opinion host comes less than a week after Fox settled an epic defamation lawsuit by an election technology company for more than $787 million. Dominion Voting Systems sued over segments promoting bogus claims that election fraud cheated then-President Donald Trump of victory in 2020...

Oddly enough, the follow-up reporting on Carlson's ouster wasn't the damaging revelations from Dominion's civil suit - although it should have been the reason - it had more to do with the pending damage involving the lawsuits from former show producer Abby Grossberg, who claimed a harmful sexist workplace and apparently had the receipts to back her up.

In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment, alleging that his show's workplace was replete with examples of misogyny. Her lawsuit claims, among other things, that mocked-up photographic images depicted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage" and that staffers were polled — on two separate occasions — on which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would rather have sex with.

"Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client," said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg's lawyers, in a statement Monday afternoon. "Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the S.D.N.Y. case and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term."

All that said, let's go to the man in the street to get his opinion on how Tucker Carlson deserved this shoddy mistreatment by his billionaire bosses. (checks notes) Actually let's go to Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog for more:

Whatever is happening, it's odd. Fox put election denialism on the air in 2020 because rejecting one of the Fox audience's core beliefs was seen as likely to damage the Fox brand. But in 2023 nothing could damage the Fox brand in the eyes of viewers more than letting Tucker Carlson go. Has Rupert Murdoch stopped caring about the brand? Or does he resent Carlson's demagoguery about "globalism," which he might regard as an indictment of people like himself?

I assume everything will settle down soon. There'll be a Jesse Watters or Greg Gutfeld show in Carlson's slot and the vitriol will be flowing again as if it never stopped.

But Carlson was worse than other Fox hosts, and it will be good to have him gone -- possibly for a while. Does he have a non-compete clause? If so, how long will it silence him? For a long time, I hope.

As Steve notes, the Fox Not-News network was chugging along just fine with its brand of Far Right toxic fearmongering before Tucker showed up. After all, he filled the gap left open by Bill O'Reilly, who also departed under a cloud of sexual misconduct. And the network will happily plug in a fresh face who'll figure out the proper mix of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism that made Tucker their number one guy (until he was a millstone).

That Tucker is getting forced out over the same troubles with women that O'Reilly departed, and considering how Roger Ailes' tenure as network overlord ended over sexual harassment charges, we should all notice how misogynistic that whole network seems to be (they may hire a lot of women but they sure as hell mistreat them).

But Tucker Carlson was a monster in his own right, a horrifying blend of upper-class privilege and white-boy grievance. He began with a conservative bent and skewed further rightward towards fascism. If Tucker wasn't shilling lies about the January 6th insurrection, he was sucking up to Putin and his dreams of Russian empire.

What made Tucker truly dangerous was his mostly-open support of the odious Replacement Theory at the base of every racist, anti-Semitic attack on American norms. It formed the foundation of every rant, every outrage towards The Dread Other - immigrants (mostly Hispanics), Blacks, Jews, women - that Tucker aired on his shows.

For all of Tucker's - and Fox Not-News' - pretensions of being a journalist, this was all he ever was: A Fearmonger. He spewed lies about others in order to have his audiences recoil in fear and then respond in anger. Tucker - and many other Far Right pundits and writers and celebrities - reveled in the controversies he stirred up, playing himself a victim to "woke" critics and getting his followers more addicted to the hate he sold.

Everything about Tucker Carlson and Fox Not-News echoed the practices of the authoritarian regimes of a fictional dystopia, Orwell's 1984. In that work, the powers running Oceania behind the leadership of Big Brother organized daily sessions of Two Minutes Hate, where workers were brought together and overwhelmed by propagandistic showings of "enemies of the state":

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started...

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically...

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. - 1984, George Orwell

This was what Tucker Carlson brought to Fox Not-News every night. This is what Fox Not-News wanted every night. They served up Fear and Hate like drugs and their audiences got addicted to it even more.

And gods help us, the Fox Not-News overlords will find a replacement for Tucker who will provide another session of Two Minutes Hate for a full hour (minus the 27 minutes for ad space).

None of this is going to end until the whole nation wakes up to the reality that the Hate Speech Tucker and his Far Right allies are shilling - getting us to shout at screens at enemies of their state of mind - is a danger to us all. None of this is going to end until the Murdoch family and their business partners owning Fox can no longer profit from this Hate.

They unplugged Tucker Carlson today. The rest of us need to unplug Fox Not-News and finish this moment.

The Damage of Far Right Lies

I don't know if I'd mentioned this on the blog, but one of the outcomes of the 2020 post-election madness - where trump claimed "rigged" or "stolen" voting happened, to incite his followers into acts of insurrection - was that one of trump's targets decided to fight back against the Fox News network for promoting trump's falsehoods.

Dominion, one of the companies that manufactures voting machines, got targeted with allegations of rigging their machines to where it cut into their ability to win contracts with states (and I believe other nations). So they filed a massive defamation lawsuit against Fox, and thanks to the discovery process of acquiring evidence to back their suit, revealed a lot of intraoffice scheming and plotting by the media corporation to shill trump's lies to keep their audiences and their profits.

To quote from Adam Serwer at the Atlantic (paywalled):

Fox News lies to its viewers. Its most prominent personalities, among the most influential in the industry, tell their viewers things they know not to be true. This is not accusation, allegation, or supposition. Today, we know it to be fact...

The most compelling example of Fox News consciously lying to its viewers, however, arrived yesterday with the evidence in the defamation lawsuits filed by the voting-machine company Dominion, over claims aired on Fox News echoing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been fixed by compromised voting machines. Dominion’s latest filing argues that privately, Fox News hosts admitted that the allegations of election fraud being floated by Trump allies were baseless, but they kept airing them, in part because they feared another right-wing network, Newsmax, was stealing their audience. The filing shows that when Fox News reporters shot down the allegations publicly, the network’s big personalities were livid, complaining internally that telling their viewers the truth was hurting the network’s brand.

“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the Fox News executive Bill Sammon wrote to a colleague about the network’s coverage of the “fraud” conspiracy...

The Fox executives knew they were violating journalistic ethics - yes, those do exist - in pursuit of ratings.

The Dominion filing drives home a few points. One is that there is a Fox News propaganda feedback loop: The network inflames right-wing conspiracism, but it also bows to it out of partisan commitment and commercial incentive. Another is that despite the long-standing right-wing argument that conservatives distrust mainstream media outlets because they do not tell the truth, Fox News executives and personalities understand that their own network loses traction with its audience when it fails to tell the lies that the audience wishes to hear. There are infinite examples of the mainstream press making errors of omission, fact, or framing. But as the private communications in the Dominion filing show, the mainstream media’s unforgivable sin with this constituency is not lying, but failing to consistently lie the way conservative audiences want them to...

Not only is there a closed wingnut echo chamber, that chamber is bolted shut by an audience that wants to remain ignorant of the facts and angered by their own fears.

There is also a story here about how social media and analytics can compel even powerful media institutions to meet a strong demand for falsehoods. Fox News executives understood the election-fraud allegations were nonsense, and they also understood their audience wanted to hear them. Misinformation and propaganda are not novel problems, but modern technology renders the incentives to lie to an audience particularly clear, and the means to reach that audience particularly easy to access. There will always be a potentially profitable demand for self-flattering lies; ethical people and institutions resist supplying them. The ability of individual hustlers to amass an audience of sycophants by feeding them conspiracies puts pressure on more mainstream outlets to gently appease conspiracism, if not to fully capitulate to it.

This is where decades of Fox Not-News - and other Far Right media figures like Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh and James O'Keefe (who's not having a good month anyway) - twisted free speech protections to shill conspiracy instead of facts, lies instead of truth.

There shouldn't be a First Amendment right to lie, especially when those lies are malicious, designed to enrage a handful of followers into acts of violence driven by unfounded fear and hatred. We've seen the effects of conspiracy "replacement theory" racism towards Blacks and Jews that have led to mass shootings and constant harassment of innocent Americans.

What Fox Not-News does on a nightly basis - promoting fear, selling rage - has done legitimate harm to the American political discourse. This lawsuit by Dominion could well put a clamp on that harm, but we need to understand that the Far Right punditry will continue to shill that fear and rage until they can no longer profit from it.

We are long past due bringing out the big guns of fraud charges and going after that Far Right Noise Machine with professional malpractice laws. Go after Tucker Carlson's and Sean Hannity's wallets, people. Every penny they earn comes from lying, and no one should be allowed to profit from lies.

This 2022 Midterms Cycle Matters, Our Lives and Freedoms Literally On the Line

Early voting for the 2022 Midterms has already started across several states, meaning we are in the final round of finding out whether America survives the Far Right attempts to degrade our democracy into a nightmare.

Every election cycle, I've been like this: anxious and hopeful and terrified and heartbroken and angry. I haven't felt safe about any election year since 2010, ever since the gaslighting of the Fox Not-News faithful using Tea Party rabble to distort the realities of an Obama administration's efforts to rebuild from the tax-cutting and deregulatory failures and wartime mismanagement of the Dubya years.

And here we are again, on the edge of an election that the polling is telling us is siding just a little bit towards the Republicans gaining some serious wins at the state and federal level that should be impossible in any sane reality, after all the damage trump and his wingnut allies have done and are still doing to the American body politic.

I know, I know: after almost a full decade of getting told how fucked up our nation's political narratives are, and how partisan and deadlocked most voters have become - mostly thanks to that Far Right Narrative overwhelming everyone's senses - I ought to be used to this situation. However, it just unsettles the mind and the soul how broken everyone else around me has to be; in order to view the Republicans' open agenda to destroy democracy, turn women into second-class breeding stock, gut Social Security and Medicare, and break the federal government in order to build a Christianist Fascist utopia dystopia as somehow "normal political campaigning".

/headdesk 

It's no secret what would happen if the Republicans even reach their modest goal of flipping the U.S. House to their control. Not only with the obvious agenda of forcing President Biden to surrender on the Far Right economic goals of nuking Medicare and Social Security, but also with the plan to humiliate Biden by attacking Biden's family especially his son Hunter. 

The Far Right still believes that all of the criminal and civil investigations into donald trump - and on trump's family, who are involved in most of what trump's done the last 20 years - are all partisan attacks on an "innocent" and "clearly great, God-anointed" trump. Never mind there are honest-to-God allegations into trump's illegal misdeeds: To the Far Right, none of those investigations and charges are legal. And so, they must have revenge.

Therefore, attacking Biden - and Biden's family - in the same manner as the attacks on trump is all fair game. There's already been a long investigation into Hunter Biden and his business dealings, which will arguably get dragged up in House Committee sessions meant to embarrass Hunter and by proxy his President dad. We'll even get Hunter Biden's laptop - a key piece of Qanon conspiracy-mongering which the FBI refused to touch because there's solid evidence too many other people have gotten access to it and meddled with its files, as well as the possibility the laptop is a Russian disinfo campaign - shoved down our throats every day of the week by gleeful GOP hacks in both Congress and mainstream media.

The House Republicans are already primed to file Impeachment proceedings on Biden and Vice President Harris, simply for winning the Presidency in 2020. Not only to promote the Big Lie that trump "really won" because of stolen ballots (or fake ballots, or the Ballot Fairy jinxing trump, or...), but in order to override the election results and put a Republican replacement - the House Speaker thanks to the 25th Amendment - in the White House in spite of the 81 million Americans who voted Biden/Harris. Don't be surprised if the Republicans win the House that they put donald trump in as Speaker - it's not a joke, ANYONE could be made Speaker it doesn't have to be an elected Representative - and then force Impeachment votes to oust Biden/Harris every chance they get.

It'll be a big stunt, the constant impeaching, because unless the Republicans win 2/3rds control of the Senate neither Biden nor Harris will get removed. But to the Far Right, humiliating Biden every time will be worth it. Five impeachments, twenty impeachments, fifty impeachments, it won't matter if they stick or not. Making Biden the most-impeached President ever - to undo the historic infamy laid on trump's twice-impeached ass - without just cause will still be worth it, because the GOP will think the history books will ignore the real reasons why (that House Republicans were partisan assholes), they will only see the impeachment counts and deem Biden the "worst-ever" just on that.

And that's all we'll really get in a Republican-controlled House. No reforms, no sensible legislation, no bipartisan dealings. They will attack and obstruct Biden at all costs, even including government shutdowns over the debt ceiling to derail our economy in the belief that those shutdowns will kill any Biden re-election hopes in 2024. The GOP even hopes their efforts to force the U.S. government to default period will work, because it will kneecap a federal government they would love to drown in Grover Norquist's bathtub. And they will never get the blame for it.

If there's any good news this midterms cycle, it's the belief from most polling that the U.S. Senate will stay Democratic. However, there is no guarantee of that. If the Republicans gain control of BOTH houses of Congress, things will get dramatically worse. A Republican Senate will deny Biden ANY further judicial appointments, and even deny him any Cabinet postings if he has to replace a department head. The Republican Congress will pass legislation looking to undo every Democratic gain made under Biden, even the infrastructure bills that promise to rebuild the entire nation. They will seek to repeal (and not replace) Obamacare again. They will pass a national abortion ban, and national bans on transgender rights and medical procedures, and an assault on any education that would dare teach the dangers of racism. They will do this knowing Biden will be there to veto all of it, but even then they will use the threat of shutdown and federal default to get Biden to "compromise" on something that will hurt people to satisfy Republican cruelty.

And Gods help us at the state level if Republicans retain control of most of our states. They're already making women suffer with their anti-abortion laws, and they are looking at ways of making it worse for women. Republican-led states are getting caught defrauding the poor families, or failing to help the citizenry recover after disasters, or allowing gun violence in our schools with nary a concern at the death tolls.

I have some hope that not all of that will happen. Voter turnout for early polling is at 2018 levels, which resulted in a nice Blue Wave for the Democrats. There's evidence from the surprising Kansas voter turnout by women in the primary cycle that suggests a lot of angry women are voting Blue to help restore Roe and abortion rights. Turnout is the one best thing the Democrats have against the GOP onslaught against our entire nation's rights.

So again I implore the plurality of Americans who are registered Democrats: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. I implore the majority of Americans who favor the woman's rights to choose: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. I implore the majority of Americans who want gun reforms: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. I implore the majority of Americans who want more taxation and financial regulation on the wealthy: GET THE DAMN VOTE. And for the Love of GOD, vote Democratic across the entire ballot.

This election matters, more than any other previous election our nation has seen since 1860.

We dare not let the cruelty and greed of the Republican Party to win in any way this year.

With My Mind, It Makes It Unreal

Okay, with all the craziness in the past twenty-four hours, there's a little too much about trump's legal woes to cram into one blog article at the moment, but I will focus on this (via Crooks & Liars):

No, seriously, what the hell?

I understand a little that trump is desperate to gaslight his way out of a legal jam here, by claiming every classified document the FBI recovered at Mar-A-Lago was secretly declassified - so he can avoid the serious espionage charges he's facing - but he can't fit those lies into the reality that NOBODY who worked for him can confirm he gave any "standing order" to declassify the documents he kept. So he's taking the "when the President does it, it means it's legal" argument and pushing it into the meta-level by claiming "when the President THINKS IT, it means it's legal."

That argument still runs into the problem that NOBODY ELSE CAN READ HIS SHIT-FILLED MIND, and can confirm what documents were declassified or not.

Jesus. This is like claiming "Well, in my mind I ate a slice of pie, so that pie must have been real." Or worse, imagining that you're secretly married to (insert current fantasy sexy actress/model) and that it's alright to stalk her now.

YOUR MIND DOESN'T MAKE IT REAL, trump. THE LAW MAKES IT REAL. And the law says you took documents you had NO RIGHT to take.

Insert GIFs of President Bartlet headdesking to infinity here.

Today: Going Public on Insurrection

After about a year of relatively cloistered investigation, aside from charging a number of Republicans refusing to testify with Obstruction - Hi, Peter Navarro! - The House Investigation Into donald trump's "Proud Boys Capitol Conniption Carnage" of January 6 2021 is going to air public presentations on what they've uncovered starting tonight after Jeopardy! finishes up.

So how should the average American tuning in to this program view it all? Let's steal entire content, uh link to Ben Jacobs at Vox for more:

The legal and political impacts the public hearings will have are uncertain. Even with all the attention they are sure to get, few expect findings will massively shake up public opinion or shift the political winds for Democrats, who currently face dismal poll numbers for midterms elections. There is no scenario in which the work of the select committee leads to Donald Trump being frog-marched out of Mar-a-Lago, or even with top Republicans publicly denouncing him in the same way they did in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Instead, the test for many on the Hill is whether the hearings can, at the very least, produce sufficient momentum to ensure passage of reforms they hope would prevent efforts like the one taken after the 2020 election from happening again...

Well, I don't care what Jacobs says about the unlikelihood that trump will get arrested at the end of all this: The real hope out here is that the congressional hearings will provide enough spark to get Attorney General Merrick Garland OFF HIS TIMID ASS AND ARREST EVERY TRUMPIAN ASSHOLE - trump INCLUDED - WHO RIOTED IN OUR NATION'S CAPITOL! LINE 'EM UP AGAINST THE WALL MOTHERF--- Ahem, back to Jacobs:

Thursday’s primetime hearing will be the first installment in a series of hearings throughout this month and perhaps into the summer. It will begin at 8 pm ET and be carried live by the major broadcast networks, most cable networks and online (but not on Fox News)...

That's because Fox Not-News pundits have been warned by their legal counsel that anything they say in televised rebuttal can be used against them in a court of law. But I digress.

The committee’s goal over the course of the summer is to lay out the effort to overturn the 2020 election in detail, not just its culmination in the attack on the Capitol but the step-by-step effort by Trump to reverse his loss, including efforts to pressure local officials and plotting with figures like lawyer John Eastman and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to provide some sort of legal justification for his actions.

Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia, a member of the committee, told Vox that the hearings will provide an “opportunity for people to have a comprehensive, chronological and thorough” accounting of the events leading up to January 6...

The real test is simply what revelations come from the hearings. The past 18 months have seen an endless trickle of news out about the events leading up into the attack on the Capitol. This hasn’t just happened in court documents filed by the committee or in leaks about its proceedings. There have been best-selling books on the topic that have broken new ground.

The question is whether what emerges from the hearing, either as a new discovery or as a viral moment of some kind, can break through. And, of course, even if it does, it’s unclear what impact it will have on public opinion...

In truth, the Far Right MAGA cultists won't believe any revelations will be criminal for them, because they genuinely believe they're the good guys in all this.

But this should help Democratic voters - and the Independent voters who are still rely on coherent thought - remind themselves of what's at stake in the upcoming midterms and the importance of turning up to vote to ensure the Republican wailing about "fake votes" is too overwhelming for them to lie about.

For myself, I'm hoping there's enough evidence already to indict trump's inner circle who ran the riot war rooms, and that by the end of the month we'll have handcuffs on not just Navarro but also Bannon, Stone, Eastman, and the rest of that clown car of chaos.

Get to it, Garland! ARREST THOSE MOFOS (rage rage rage)

(why YES, I am biased just a little against goddamned rioting seditionists)

Blood on the Streets of Buffalo

Welcome to America, where every public place - our schools, our churches, our movie theaters, our music concerts, our city halls, our grocery stores - are just wonderful targets for the gun nut mass shooters who want to rack up a body count. Yesterday, Buffalo joined the list of cities that have suffered gun violence by an AR-15 wielding asshole (per Carolyn Thompson, John Wawrow, Michael Balsamo, and Dave Collins with AP News):

A white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others Saturday in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.”

Police said he shot 11 Black and two white victims before surrendering to authorities in a rampage he broadcast live on the streaming platform Twitch...

One of the things these mass shooters love to do, they love to show off how easy it is for them to kill others.

The massacre sent shockwaves through an unsettled nation gripped with racial tensions, gun violence and a spate of hate crimes. In the day prior to the shooting, Dallas police said they were investigating a series of shootings in Koreatown as hate crimes. The Buffalo attack came just one month after another mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway train wounded 10 people...

The article didn't mention the shootings in Milwaukee the night before, or the number of domestic violence shootings that happen pretty much every day, but we've become so overwhelmed by gun violence the past 20 years it's all a blur now.

The suspected gunman in Saturday’s attack on Tops Friendly Market was identified as (name redacted because the SOB wants to be famous), of Conklin, New York, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Buffalo.

It wasn’t immediately clear why (redacted) had traveled to Buffalo and that particular grocery store. A clip apparently from his Twitch feed, posted on social media, showed (redacted) arriving at the supermarket in his car.

The gunman shot four people outside the store, three fatally, said Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia. Inside the store, security guard Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer, fired multiple shots. A bullet hit the gunman’s bulletproof armor but had no effect, Gramaglia said.

The gunman then killed the guard, the commissioner said, then stalked through the store shooting other victims...

There was a "good guy with a gun" at the store, just as the pro-gun advocates say we need to really stop gun violence, but guess what? The mass shooters have access to body armor too, and they plan ahead for that shit. The "good guy with a gun" excuse doesn't work, it never really did. All we have now are just more and more heavily armed people believing they have license to shoot anybody they want.

The shooter also drove over 200 miles, literally going out of his way to find a place where he could find enough targets for his rage to shoot at. This is similar to the shooter who drove eight hours across Texas to attack a Wal-Mart in El Paso.

And much like the mass killer in El Paso, the mass killer in Buffalo was driven by racism, programmed with hateful ideology based on a "Replacement Theory" lie that "Jews and Blacks are going to replace Whites in a massive genocide." Photos of the gunman's assault rifle highlighted the number "14", which refers to the word count of the wingnut motto. Witnesses noticed the N-word painted on the rifle as well. There shouldn't be any confusion about what motivated the mass murderer. Back to the AP article:

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that investigators were looking into whether he had posted a manifesto online. The official was not permitted to speak publicly on the matter and did so on the condition of anonymity.

Buffalo police declined to comment on the document, circulated widely online, that purports to outline the attacker’s racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic beliefs, including a desire to drive all people not of European descent from the U.S. It said he drew inspiration the man who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019...

Each of these mass shooters do not work in a vacuum. They watch others who share the same rage and who share the same bullshit White Power lies. If it's not Christchurch it's getting inspired by the murderer in Norway, or the church shooter in Charleston, or the synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh. These aren't lone wolves: They are part of a global violent movement, raging against the world, feeding off of each other's ill-formed conspiracy junk.

Only it gets worse here in America, because the goddamned Second Amendment is - thanks to an increasingly wingnut Supreme Court - no longer an amendment allowing states to well-regulate their militias, it's become a license for death-worshipping gun nuts to shoot anybody they hate.

And it's worse here in America where we have a Far Right media environment that pumps out that "Replacement Theory" bullshit on a daily basis to where it's programmed White extremists into a conniptic rage. This is an article from last week about Fox Not-News pundit Tucker Carlson (via Cynthia Miller-Idriss at MSNBC):

Before he was indicted on charges of killing 22 people and injuring 26 others in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019, the identified gunman had been linked to a document posted online that referred to a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The motivation behind that horrific incident — that there is an intentional, global plan orchestrated by national and global elites to replace white, Christian, European populations with nonwhite, non-Christian ones — gets at the core of a recent three-part New York Times series on the rise and ideology of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

In part one of the series, journalist Nicholas Confessore describes Carlson’s efforts to stoke “white fear” of immigrants and changing U.S. demographics as “recasting American racism to present white Americans as an oppressed caste.” In so doing, Confessore shows, Carlson has drawn repeatedly on the leading far-right conspiracy theory of demographic change, known as the “great replacement.”

Coined by a French scholar more than a decade ago, the term was quickly taken up globally by white supremacists, for whom the theory now provides a single, overarching framework for ideas that had already been percolating for years. Last September, Media Matters reported that Carlson spent a year embarking on a “dedicated campaign to insert the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory … into mainstream Republican discourse.” Carlson has repeatedly used the language of replacement to suggest or directly argue that Democrats are orchestrating “demographic replacement” to gain political power. The day before the September Media Matters report, Carlson told his viewers that President Joe Biden aimed to “replace ‘legacy Americans’” and “change the racial mix of the country” for political gain... 

It's not just Carlson and Fox Not-News (via a report from the Anti-Defamation League):

One of the most visible Great Replacement propagandists is Fox media personality Tucker Carlson, who claimed during a September 22 broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that the point of Biden’s immigration policy is “to reduce the political power of the people whose ancestors live here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly-arrived from the third world.” He went on to refer to the policy as “The Great Replacement” which he explained is “the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.”

Carlson’s rhetoric was immediately echoed by U.S. Rep Brian Babin (R-TX-36) in a September 23 Newsmax interview, when he said that Biden and the Democrats are using immigration to "replace the American electorate with a third world electorate."

One day later, Charlie Kirk of the far-right student group Turning Point USA said on his show that Texas should “deputize a citizen force and put them on the border” to protect “white demographics in America.” He added that the left is focused on “bringing in voters that they want, and they like, and honestly, diminishing and decreasing white demographics in America.”

The same day, during an appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show, Tucker Carlson criticized the ADL for calling out his Great Replacement comments and reiterated his view that the Democrats are “going to change the composition of the population and bring in people who will vote for” them.

On September 25, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL-1) voiced his support for Tucker Carlson and The Great Replacement theory, tweeting, “@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America. The ADL is a racist organization.”

White supremacists celebrate: “We are mainstreaming now...”

All of this talk isn't just talk. It builds up an environment that encourages believers to act out, commit violence towards their targets, justified in their fear and hate that the ones they're killing "deserved" to die. It's known as the George Tiller Effect, where Far Right pundit Bill O'Reilly openly named an abortion doctor often as a threat to the unborn, driving a gunman to kill Tiller in Tiller's own church.

What's happened here - like in El Paso and Charleston and a hundred other racially-motivated mass shootings - is formally known as Stochastic Terrorism: Using a constant barrage of rhetoric and accusations to encourage others to commit violence for your cause. It's stochastic because there's no one specific target named, just a general population to pick and choose, making it "random" enough that the demagogues fueling the rage can claim they weren't responsible. But it's not random, when you look at the bigger picture.

It's still Terrorism: These Far Right White Power wingnuts are convinced they need to kill ethnic minorities, and that they've been given license to do so.

This is the war the Far Right wants: The wingnut pundits and politicians who stoke their audiences to commit acts of insurrection and public displays of violence, they love this shit because they will go onto those Far Right media outlets and actually flip the narrative around to make themselves still be the victims of our outrage while dead bodies pile up in our streets.

They're not even hiding their glee for it anymore.

Goddamn them all.

When, for the Love of God, is someone in our federal government going to recognize these mass shootings are not isolated, they are all part of the same terrorist movement of White Separatist bullshitters, and we need to officially declare them a domestic threat under the Patriot Act? When are we going to admit we're in an actual shooting war with extremists who want to destroy everything a free and diverse America represents?

Why Fox Not-News, and the Rest of the Far Right, Loves Putin and Not America

So Putin chose war this week. The invasion of Ukraine is underway and bloody already.

(Also, did they send troops to CHERNOBYL?!?! Where one bad artillery exchange could CRACK OPEN THE GODDAMNED RADIOACTIVE TOMB TO REACTOR NUMBER FOUR?!?!?! Do you want mutant radioactive bears, Putin? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET MUTANT RADIOACTIVE BEARS.)

In the past couple of days, the Western leaders making up NATO - formed in opposition to a belligerent Soviet Union and stayed in alliance to keep the peace across Europe when the USSR fell - have done what they can in the early stages: Sanctions issued, diplomatic representatives recalled, public outrage, and promises of future action if Russia doesn't stop the invasion and walk their troops back. It's a delicate matter: blindly rushing in with NATO troops or issuing our own No-Fly Zone over Kyiv to stop Russian air bombings would clearly escalate to a broader war.

This is a serious moment for the United States. Much like previous situations where our foreign policy compels our nation to act in defense of our allies and interests overseas, you would think this is a moment similar to previous struggles like the Berlin Airlift, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or our nation's reactions to 9/11.

A moment for national unity regarding a grave and potentially tragic matter - straight-up war in Europe! - that almost assures American troops going into harm's way to end the conflict on our best possible terms.

Except you wouldn't know that if you tuned into Fox Not-News for all your Putin-loving, pro-Russia propaganda. Everyone on the Far Right - from the usual suspect donald "Putin's BFF" trump to Tucker Carlson - is taking Putin's side instead of President Biden's (via Meryl Cornfield at Washington Post (paywalled)):

As the United States seeks to rally its allies and impose tough penalties for Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, a vocal group of Republicans and right-leaning commentators is expressing praise and admiration for the president’s strength and shrewdness. President Vladimir Putin, that is.

While most congressional Republicans back Biden’s tough line against Moscow — or argue it should be even tougher — a faction made up of conservative Republicans, supporters of former president Donald Trump and conservative media figures says Putin should be left alone, or even congratulated, by Americans.

Trump complimented Putin on Tuesday, saying it was a “smart move” by the Russian president to send “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the Ukraine border.

“This is genius,” Trump said in a conservative talk radio interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort, echoing his past praise of the Russian president. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re going to go out and we’re going to go in and we’re going to help keep peace.’ You’ve got to say that’s pretty savvy...”

Of course trump is parroting Putin's lie about "peacekeepers" going into Ukraine. This is the same idiot who as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) essentially did everything he could to give Putin more global prestige and even met with him in a meeting so private not even our own Intelligence agencies know what was shared.

In the meantime with the likes of Carlson:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, like many others on the right, minimized Russia’s move to invade and overpower a neighboring country as a “border conflict” that should not concern Americans.

“It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: ‘What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much?’” Carlson said Tuesday. “‘Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?’”

In Carlson's view, the Far Left critics and progressives here in the United States are more his enemy than Putin is. So to him, Democrats are Evil and Russian autocratic kleptomaniacs are Good. All because Carlson and those autocrats are on the same wavelength.

There are several vulgar ironies at play.

Back when our nation faced a foreign policy crisis of this magnitude, it was 9/11. Middle Eastern terrorists had directly attacked our major cities and caused the deaths of thousands. War against those terrorists - primarily hiding in Afghanistan - required our nation to mobilize for war.

Fox News was one of the greatest voices screaming for war. And not just in Afghanistan: Fox punditry and other Far Right commentators pushed for an invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2002 into 2003, based on flimsy evidence and long-standing rage towards Saddam Hussein. President George W. Bush (The Lesser) pushed for that invasion, and anyone protesting against that - protesting against Dubya - felt the full wrath of Fox News' outrage.

Now here we are 20 years later, and with the United States edging to a war-time footing these same pundits - who proudly waved the Stars and Stripes screaming "USA! USA!" and demanded the rest of us obey their bloodlust - are now pushing for division and criticism of the current President and rooting for the other side... partly because this current President is a Democrat (boo hiss).

The horrifying thing is that the major reason why Fox Not-News and the rest of the Far Right Noise Machine is supporting Putin is because they share the same belief: This nationalist, Christian White Power identity common between Russians and racist extremists across Europe and the U.S.

Here's an NBC News report by Matt Bradley from 2017:

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is working to empower Europe’s far-right and Eurosceptic parties with offers of cooperation, loans, political cover and propaganda. Such love has not gone unrequited: European populists are answering back with fulsome praise for Russia, its foreign policy and its strongman leader...

From the Russian side, empowering anti-European Union populists has the obvious benefit of helping erode the strength of European institutions that Moscow has long considered enemies.

For Europe’s extreme right, the benefits of embracing Putin are more abstract and ideological, said Markus Wagner, a political science professor at the University of Vienna. They see Putin as the kind of patriotic hero who prizes national traditions and realpolitik over the internationalism and openness that have long characterized Western liberalism...

Here's a report by Michael Edison Hayden from the Southern Poverty Law Center about one such link to an extremist White Supremacist group:

Hatewatch found an email address ending with a Russian domain name referenced across the source code of a network of three extreme, far-right websites that operate primarily in the U.S. Those three websites share the same Google Analytics account, one that was first used by a notorious pro-Kremlin propagandist named Charles Bausman.

All three websites feature bylines used by members of The Right Stuff, a white nationalist organization that helped plan and promote the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The Right Stuff is also the same white nationalist organization for which U.S. State Department Official Matthew Q. Gebert covertly recruited members, as Hatewatch first reported in 2019. At least two of the websites have published inflammatory, racist rhetoric in response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that have erupted across the U.S. in recent months. Members of The Right Stuff have also defended eruptions of far-right violence in response to civil unrest this year...

Bausman has a long history of promoting Russian President Vladimir Putin to an English-speaking audience and communicated with a pro-Putin oligarch about money around the time Russia Insider first launched.

In 2015, the website The Interpreter published emails showing Bausman asked for money from pro-Kremlin Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev through his associate, Alexey Komov. The U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned Malofeev in December 2014 “because he is responsible for or complicit in, or has engaged in, actions or polices that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine and has materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of [pro-Kremlin separatist activity].”

Natalia Antonova, a journalist and Russia expert who lived in Moscow for seven years, overlapping the time when Bausman launched his website, told Hatewatch the timing of Russia Insider’s creation is significant, because it launched when Putin needed positive press in the U.S., due to backlash over Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.

“Russia Insider is founded in 2014, which is the same year that Russia attacks Ukraine. And Konstantin Malofeev is fingered as a financial link between so-called rebels in Ukraine and Moscow,” Antonova explained. “Russia was feeling embattled [by the Western press] because most people were not big fans of what Russia was doing to Ukraine. Then, here comes [Russia Insider] where if your takes are too extreme for [Kremlin controlled] Russia Today, that’s where you can get them published...”

This has been happening for a long time, almost a decade, and Putin's been cultivating these relationship with American hate groups to achieve his own agenda against Ukraine.

And the Far Right - the hate-driven, the money-driven - enjoy this cultivation because it gives them both money and power. Remember Russia's involvement with the National Rifle Association? The NRA got suckered into a money laundering scandal, all because they saw the money and they saw the chance to spread their hateful rhetoric with the aid of a foreign dictator they admired.

What's involved here is Christian Nationalism, an underlying ideology for a lot of the White Supremacist militias running around rioting in our streets and nation's Capitol. It's an ideology that abhors a diverse and open culture, and therefore rails against democracy, civil rights, women's choice, and everything else under the sun. It's an ideology reflected in Russia through Putin's alliance with a Russian Orthodox church that promotes the same anti-gay, anti-woman, racist trash you hear from Far Right Republicans every day (especially now in Texas and Florida, God help us).

The (mostly) White Evangelical crowd that makes up the Far Right voting base, and the Fox Not-News audience, worships the likes of Putin - and trump, who poses as a similar autocratic leader - because Putin offers them a chance to remake their own nation in their own Christianist image. In spite of the reality that Putin's (and trump's) actions and statements are so clearly in opposition to Jesus' teachings.

The hypocrisy of such adoration from the Far Right is lost on them. Their greed and their ideology blinds them to the reality that the United States - a nation formed, if flawed, on basic democratic norms and human rights - has to stand against the likes of Putin, who openly mocks everything we've built from 1776 to 1865 to 1945 to 1965 to 1991 to now.

Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and the rest of the Far Right media are convinced they are backing the right side, even when it's in full opposition to their own nation's security and interests.

Goddamn them.

Part of me wants Biden to ask Congress to declare a state of war existing between the United States and Russia, not so that we are prepared to defend our NATO allies when (not if) Putin escalates the violence in Eastern Europe, but because that declaration would trigger certain laws that would make it harder for the goddamn wingnuts to openly praise Putin and even cut into all the business dealing they've got with Russia.

We're at war against all the spiritual wickedness - violence, corruption, deceit - that Putin represents, thou hypocrites. There's two sides: America's, or the bloody kleptocratic dictator Putin.

You're choosing poorly, Fox Not-News, you're all one step removed from outright treason against the United States. Keep it up, and you'll deserve to pay for your folly.

Ukrainian Paradox

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin Putin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

-- Princess Leia, updated for 2022

Well, it's official: The Cold War is back. Russia is marching in troops to Ukraine 30 years after the Soviet Union broke up: Intensifying hostilities with a Western Europe sensing Putin's enmity towards NATO, and an Eastern Europe not wanting to fall back under Russian control.

To quote Tom Nichols at The Atlantic (paywalled):

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a long speech full of heavy sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now he has declared war against the international order of the past 30 years.

Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope. He had the presence not of a confident president, but of a surly adolescent caught in a misadventure, rolling his eyes at the stupid adults who do not understand how cruel the world has been to him...

Even discounting Putin’s delivery, the speech was, in many places, simply unhinged. Putin began with a history lesson about how and why Ukraine even exists... But Putin’s point wasn’t that the former subjects of the Soviet Union needed to iron out their differences. Rather, he was suggesting that none of the new states that emerged from the Soviet collapse—except for Russia—were real countries. “As a result of Bolshevik policy,” Putin intoned, “Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’. He is its author and architect.”

It is true that Soviet leaders created the 1991 borders. That is also true of what we now call the Russian Federation. Putin, however, went even further back in history: “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.”

By that kind of historical reasoning, few nations in Europe, or anywhere else, are safe...

If you follow a lot of foreign policy and intelligence punditry in the U.S. media - I tend to read first from Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice who's been covering the Russia/Ukraine conflict for years now - you may have noticed a number of observations how Putin was attempting a game of brinkmanship (and failing): Threatening over the past year to escalate the border conflict ongoing since 2014, in order to force concessions from NATO nations that NATO could never fully concede.

The reason NATO could never concede on what Putin wants, was because what Putin wants is total subjugation and submission of Ukraine to Russia's his control. And only Ukraine - their politics, their people - can decide that.

And Ukraine wants nothing to do with Russia. This is from Steven Pifer at Brookings back in 2017:

Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukraine and Russia maintained relations that at times were testy, but their differences largely appeared manageable. That changed in 2014, when the Kremlin used military force to seize Crimea and then supported armed separatism in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. As a result, attitudes within Ukraine toward Russia have hardened to a consider­able degree, and the appeal of Western institutions such as the European Union and NATO has grown...

One result of the ongoing conflict is hardening attitudes among the Ukrainian population toward Russia and Russians. When Ukraine first regained its independence in the early 1990s, some nationalists held sharply anti-Russian views, but they constituted a small minority. The large majority of Ukrainians generally hoped to get along with Russia; many spoke Russian as their first language and had family and/or friends in Russia.

Russia’s aggression changed that dramatically. Since 2014, a Ukrainian national iden­tity has taken hold. It includes a strong anti-Russian animus. In an April 2017 public opinion survey conducted by Rating Group Ukraine, 57 percent of Ukrainians polled ex­pressed a very cold or cold attitude toward Russia, as opposed to only 17 percent who expressed a very warm or warm attitude...

Those opinions in favor of NATO and the EU have only grown since then: in 2019 they added a constitutional amendment seeking eventual membership in NATO. Today, a solid majority of Ukrainians want NATO and EU membership in direct spite of Russia's growing hostility over that.

Pifer is only noting the current animus between the two bordering nations. A deeper look into history shows a harsh, often violent connection between Russia and Ukraine that underscores a lot of bad blood. Caught between the imperial rises and falls of neighboring Poland and Russia - from the 1600s until the rise of the Soviet Union in the 1920s - Ukrainians became second-class citizens in their own region. Treatment under the Soviets was no better: Between 1932 to 1933 Stalin's regime starved out the population with famine, an act of genocide leading to the deaths of about 3 million people. It's the sort of thing Ukrainians can't ignore or forgive.

And yet here comes Putin, claiming - like most other Russians will - that Ukrainians and Russians are the same ethnicity, the same people: Even though he'll more than likely resume treating Ukrainians as second-class citizens the way they were treated for centuries by Russians.

If we refer to a relationship metaphor: It's like Russia is the drunken abusive boyfriend to Ukraine, who has had to put up with decades if not centuries of emotional abuse, gaslighting, insults, and the occasional beating from a Russia that doesn't understand why Ukraine doesn't love them as much as they should.

(How do you say "Why do you make me keep hitting you, sweetie" in Russian? Also "The beatings will continue until morale improves" would work here...)

Hence the paradox the world faces today.

Russia (Putin) doesn't want Ukraine to go running off to another European alliance like NATO or the EU, but they can't offer anything to Ukraine that would honestly entice Ukrainians to take Russia back as a political/economic partner. So instead, Russia (Putin) will try to "encourage" their relationship by force, not caring that such bullying behavior will only drive Ukrainians more towards joining Western Europe against Russia.

Ukraine is never going to give in to Russia's demands here, they will not agree to any deal absolutely barring them from even thinking about joining NATO. They dare not. Even the mere threat of joining NATO is the only leverage Ukraine has against outright invasion and occupation. Paradox: Every move Russia makes to stop Ukraine from joining NATO only pushes Ukraine further towards joining NATO.

And yet, when you look at it from Russia's perspective - and you do have to give them some sympathy here - the possibility of having a Western-oriented military alliance physically on their border if Ukraine joins NATO would be a straight-up threat to national security. Their own history of invasion and occupation - from Mongols to the East, Napoleon and Hitler from the West - has helped make the Russians a little paranoid about their safety. Being in an ideological Cold War vs. the United States and the West for most of the 20th Century hadn't improved things.

There has always been cultural and political differences between Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Whereas Russia prides itself on being more European than Asian - being one of the nations to straddle those two continents - there are still Western cultural norms that aren't normal to them, which keeps them wary and feeling unwelcome. Their history of corruption and human rights abuses doesn't endear them much in Western eyes as well. 

So to the Russians, having some kind of geographical barrier between them and the West makes some kind of twisted sense. In the post-World War era, that meant occupying Eastern Europe to forge a Warsaw Pact to divide Europe against itself for 40 more years. Today, it means trying to undermine democratic institutions across all of Europe to break up NATO and bring nations like Ukraine and Poland back under Russian influence.

And yet, the more Putin and Russia does all this, the more this will drive Ukraine further into siding with the West and guarantee a NATO agreement that would fulfill Putin's darkest fears. It's also forcing NATO members to reaffirm their agreement and support for each other, meaning Putin's efforts to break it up is going for naught.

Everything going on right now as Putin sends more troops closer to Kyiv and closer to outright war with Ukraine is a downward spiral that neither side can stop. Ukraine can't because their very existence as a nation and as a people are under direct threat. Putin and Russia can't because they dare not leave themselves vulnerable to a Western Europe that would challenge their corruption and abuse. NATO and the United States can't stop because Putin threatens our economic integrity (yes, we have some at least compared to him) and our own political/cultural institutions.

The one who COULD stop all of this is Putin. He's the one really triggering all of this and pushing it all into a downward spiral of conflict. But he won't. He's fully committed to this agenda, if he stops himself he will become weak to his own corrupt allies, so he will keep forging ahead until either Ukraine falls completely or Russia collapses from its own failings.

Until then, all the rest of the world can do is push back as best they can, avoiding outright war if we can.

Because THAT kind of war can spiral well out of control and turn the whole Earth to ash.

Gods help us. 

Biden FINALLY Escalated Against the Wingnuts

There's no other way to describe this: I think Joe Biden has gotten tired of your shit, you anti-masking anti-vaxxing GOP wingnuts (via Alana Wise and Tamara Keith at NPR):

President Biden on Thursday unveiled a series of steps to combat the newly surging pandemic, including the announcement of a forthcoming federal rule that all businesses with 100 or more employees have to ensure that every worker is either vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing for the coronavirus.

"We're in a tough stretch, and it could last for a while," Biden conceded, as the delta variant of the coronavirus has caused cases, hospitalizations and deaths to rise across the country. But, he added: "We can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19."

Speaking from the White House, Biden said the new emergency rule for private sector employers, which will be issued by the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, would apply to 80 million workers...

The Republicans, of course, want to be the babies throwing a conniption:

The Republican National Committee on Thursday night announced its plan to sue the Biden administration.

"Forcing main street to vax or pay a fine will not only crush an economy he's put on life support—it's flat-out un-American," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote on Twitter. "To Joe Biden, force is more important than freedom. Americans won't stand for it..."

These Republicans, by the by, are the same sons-of-bitches who are pushing anti-abortion laws that would deny the freedoms of women who need to make their own medical choices.

The Republicans are also ignoring - because they've been ignoring the majority of Americans for decades now - that a sizable number of  Americans who are vaccinated and trying to fight a COVID pandemic are supporting stronger mandates and health safety in workplaces and schools.

I'm with John Cole on this:

I am tired of screwing around with these fucking imbeciles, I’m tired of loosing innocent people, I’m tired of destroying our medical community and wasting resources on idiots who refuse to get vaccinated, and I am not interested in watching my health insurance go through the fucking roof because of Y’All-Qaeda’s refusal to vaccinate. I am well beyond the No Fucks Left to Give stage, and am in favor of enacting sweeping regulations and letting the courts sort it out. Go overboard, let corporate America go half way to cover their asses, and even if the shit gets struck down, we’ll have advanced the ball.

I am sick of this shit. Fuck your freedoms, get the vaccine, wear a mask, and shut the fuck up.

If the wingnuts want to fight this in the courts, so be it. Odds are they'll lose, because Biden's legal team likely worked on these mandates ahead of time to ensure even the Far Right judges out there would have to concede the need for emergency pandemic responses.

It will depend how soon these legal fights get resolved, but it better be quick because we are STILL GETTING SICK AND DYING OUT HERE, America.

The Big Lie And the One Truth (w/ Update)

(Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio for adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up! As always, you're invited to leave a comment and visit the rest of the blog. Today (Wed. May 12) is looking like it's going to be an insane day...)

So the Republican downward spiral seems to be gaining speed. Via Zach Beauchamp at Vox: 

Remaining in the GOP’s good graces requires that elected officials either actively embrace lies about 2020 or, at very least, refuse to condemn them. As a result, 2020 conspiracy theories are exerting a dominant influence on the party — shaping both legislation and the base’s worldview...

From top to bottom, the GOP has been conquered by the Big Lie (note: trump claiming the 2020 results were stolen and that he won both the Popular Vote and the Electoral College). Much as North Korean state press proclaims that Kim Jong Il invented the hamburger, Republicans must now proclaim that was something fishy about Joe Biden’s victory...

Trump’s pronouncements, endorsed and spread by a number of prominent Republicans, radicalize the base — undermining faith in democracy itself. Republicans inclined to challenge this view realize they’re out of step with the party and mostly stay quiet; those that do speak up publicly, like Cheney or Raffensperger, get marginalized or stripped of their power. This weakens the constituency to challenge any future lies from Trump and other like-minded Republicans.

It’s a one-way ratchet, where a faction of the GOP elite led by Trump pushes the party further and further down an anti-democratic road. And there’s no obvious way to stop it...

What is happening now is that the Republican Party and all of its apparatus - not just the elected officials but the party handlers and above all their media punditry allies at Fox Not-News and elsewhere - are stuck defending an incredibly Big yet easily-disprovable Lie. 

They got stuck partly because they got stuck with a Big Lying Bullshitter in trump placing himself at the head of their table. trump came in lying on Day One, proclaiming himself the most popular and most beloved even at the emptiest Inauguration in memory, and forced not only his underlings to shill that lie but got the rest of the GOP to either buy in or stay silent (which re-enforced the lie's power).

I said it before: Once you become trump's Bitch you will ALWAYS be trump's Bitch. Once he gets you lying for him to prove your worth, he will make you lie even more with even flimsier bullshit until your reputation is worthless.

But this isn't entirely trump's fault the Republican Party has caught itself trapped defending an indefensible Big Lie.

The Republicans are stuck with the Big Lie because it happens to fit this One Truth:

The Republican Party cannot and will not share power with a Democratic Party they view as un-American and thus illegitimate.

Somewhere back in time - you can argue happening between the rise of the conservative Southern Strategy in the late 1960s or the rise of Saint Ronnie in the 1980s or the corruption of Newt's Contract On America in the 1990s - the Republican Party bought into the idea that only they were true God-fearing God-chosen Gun-worshiping patriots. (Letting the Far Right Christian forces take control of the Party had a lot to do with that mindset winning out)

The ongoing slander of accusing liberal Democrats of being Socialists or Communists or both from the 1940s grew like a cancer into the belief - even as Socialism faded and Communism collapsed in the 1990s - that Democrats are destructive and anti-American. It doesn't help that a lot of liberalism brought Blacks and Jews (and slowly among more Women) in large numbers into the Democratic ranks to where the Republican paranoia fell even more into racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism.

All of that fuels the fear and anger and paranoia of not only the Republican voting base but also a Republican leadership that has driven out any moderating voices and replaced them with more rabid and aggressive haters. It's gotten harder and harder for the GOP to even reconsider its world-view against Democrats because it keeps adding more members to their ranks who will never change their hatred of the Dreaded Other Democrats.

This Republican Truth - Democrats Should Never Hold Power That Rightfully Belongs To Us - fits easily into trump's Big Lie - Democrats Stole My God-Given Rightful Power - and now those two parts have fused into one.

But the Republicans have a problem. Where their One Truth was merely a world-view that did not expose itself to self-destructive implosion (Republicans could keep believing it and still function rationally in polite society), the Big Lie is a direct attack on the Real World that sooner rather than later is going to hit the Brick Wall of Unbreakable Facts. The Big Lie compels trump's believers into direct action - SEE the January 6th Insurrection - and these actions have legal consequences where the Big Lie has not and cannot prevail.

The Republicans are betting on their Big Lie carrying them forward into the future. But it's a Big Lie stuck in the past of a failed 2020 election, pushed constantly by a Big Liar in trump who cannot avoid his impending fate either in civil or criminal courts.

The Republicans' One Truth has become their Big Lie.

It's just a question now of when they pay for that lie, because it's too big to avoid.

A trumpian Plague of Madness

Let's open with a photo taken of a recent protest organized around "re-opening" the states while in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It comes from this article of The Columbus Dispatch, the photo is from Joshua A Bickel:

taken by Joshua A. Bickel

If it looks like a photo from the Zombie Apocalypse, it's because we're kind of living through a Real-Life version of one. NOTE: Zombie movies have long been a stand-in for a lot of cultural fears, one of which is the rapid spread of infection. The CDC and other pandemic experts use the "threat" of film zombies to model out how those things can happen for real. And now we're seeing it ourselves.

What do you see, really, in that photo?

I see a bunch of privileged, angry White folk screaming about "their rights" and a desire to have all the businesses and places shut down by the Coronavirus to re-open to serve "their" needs at the expense of everybody else.

It's been a month - ever since March 16 when trump FINALLY gave in to the medical reports that COVID was here and was killing Americans - and all of the MAGA-hat angry people are marching for... "Freedom"?

Freedom to get the virus from other people? Freedom to ignore the social distancing to reduce the risks? Freedom to pass that virus on to others, sending yourself and others to overwhelmed hospitals that STILL are not getting the supplies they need to SAVE LIVES?

This is less a "bite-your-arm turn-into-a-ghoul" type of horror movie and more "a plague of madness" spread by ideology, by this "Don't Tread On Me" libertarian-esque mindset that one's individual rights supersedes everyone else's right to NOT GET SICK.

These recent marches by the Confederate-flag waving rage-driven trumpian voters in many of these states are being pushed by trump and Fox Not-News as both a distraction and a rally cry to their hard-core audience. Take a count of how many of these marches are being done in states with Democratic governors, in an attempt to make those governors seem tyrannical and evil. This isn't about freedom, this is about making Democrats look bad.

And in the process, they're getting more people exposed, not just the protesters themselves but the police who have to patrol these marches, the reporters covering them for stories, any employees and workers there at the state capitals or anybody they meet along the way.

We are getting to the point of the pandemic where the backlash by the naysayers and non-believers - a lot of them having lived in their own physical bubbles for years - are kicking into high gear, all because they haven't been infected (yet) or care about any of the ones who HAVE been infected.

These protesters are basically a bunch of privileged citizens who are more annoyed by the discomfort the lack of public services they're used to having - fancy restaurants, vacation spots, easy travel across the planet - and are now screaming bloody murder to get that all back.

Never mind the costs of what they want, which have already been paid by thousands of low-wage employees who provided those services for years, many of them now sick and dead by exposure to COVID and many more of them threatened with exposure should they ever be forced back to work. Which isn't screaming bloody murder, it IS bloody murder.

Gods help them, those low-wage Americans, because they're being burdened with the demands of the unhappy and unreasonable Far Right cult of death.

trump Cannot Comprehend A Damn Thing: COVID-19 Crisis Edition

Back to the "donald trump SAID WHAT" in the news again (via Allyson Chiu and Timothy Bella at the Washington Post):

President Trump cast doubt Thursday on New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s assertion that his state, which has become the epicenter for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, will need 30,000 ventilators to properly care for the influx of patients anticipated to flood hospitals in coming weeks.

“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a phone interview. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

trump seems to genuinely think all you need is one or two ventilators per hospital. As though hospitals should have only one or two beds for patients to share, or one or two IV bags or... excuse me. I just need to scream for a second here JESUS GODDAMN CHRIST TRUMP IS A GODDAMN IDIOT WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK ARE WE... ahem, back to the report:

The president’s comments came shortly after the New York Times reported that the White House had abruptly called off a plan to announce this week that General Motors and Ventec Life Systems would be partnering up to produce as many as 80,000 ventilators, citing concerns with the deal’s $1 billion price tag.

For those of us not fully informed to what a ventilator is and why they can get a bit pricey, here's our NIH government website about it:

A ventilator (VEN-til-a-tor) is a machine that supports breathing. These machines mainly are used in hospitals. Ventilators:
* Get oxygen into the lungs.
* Remove carbon dioxide from the body. (Carbon dioxide is a waste gas that can be toxic.)
* Help people breathe easier.
* Breathe for people who have lost all ability to breathe on their own.

A ventilator often is used for short periods, such as during surgery when you're under general anesthesia (AN-es-THE-ze-ah). The term "anesthesia" refers to a loss of feeling and awareness. General anesthesia temporarily puts you to sleep.

The medicines used to induce anesthesia can disrupt normal breathing. A ventilator helps make sure that you continue breathing during surgery.

A ventilator also may be used during treatment for a serious lung disease or other condition that affects normal breathing.

Some people may need to use ventilators long term or for the rest of their lives. In these cases, the machines can be used outside of the hospital—in long-term care facilities or at home.

A ventilator doesn't treat a disease or condition. It's used only for life support.

Simple explanation for why a ventilator is needed: Without a ventilator, the patient is going to drown in their own lungs.

Given how such a machine is working on keeping the lungs going, it's kind of hard to imagine forcing more than one person to get plugged into such a machine. So if a state is BEGGING for 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators at one time, it's because that state is realizing they're going to have 30,000 to 40,000 people needing it at one time.

/headdesking

Given what the ventilator does, it has to manage the flow of oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, so it needs a number of sensors and computers monitoring all of that, upping the price. There needs to be backups installed to avoid any part of the ventilator failing at any given moment. Ever notice in the medical TV shows that tall stand of digital equipment next to each hospital bed? That's the ventilator. Don't think something like that can get put together for $100 each.

There's more than one state needing ventilators, by the by.

There's supposed to be a law called the Defense Production Act that a President can activate to get manufacturers to redirect efforts towards making specific equipment. There's supposed to be a DPA order in effect right now... except President the Loser of the Popular Vote trump is delaying and tying up the orders to make more ventilators and respirators (fancy word for masks). Without that law, states are fighting with each other over resources becoming more scarce by the minute.

Again, trump does not understand, does not comprehend the forces at play here. He can't comprehend the scope of the crisis, he refuses to admit to earlier missteps which leads to making even more missteps now.

trump CANNOT COMPREHEND A GODDAMN THING IF IT'S SOMETHING HE CANNOT PERSONALLY PROFIT FROM. And unless you're a hoarder you cannot profit off a plague.

And that means the rest of us are screwed.

Addendum: Peter Wehrer's article in the Atlantic is a must-read:

...But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

So as the crisis deepens—as the body count increases, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the economy contracts, perhaps dramatically—it’s reasonable to assume that the president will reach for the tools he has used throughout his life: duplicity and denial. He will not allow facts that are at odds with his narrative to pierce his magnetic field of deception...

Again. We're screwed.

A Nation Divided By The Comfort of Right Wing Lies

As the impeachment proceedings into trump's scandalous behavior with Ukraine soldier forward, the likelihood of it ending in peace and with some national solace in justice served grows less.

Mostly because the Far Right of this nation will never believe the truth of it. Via David Frum at The Atlantic:

...Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, opened today with a statement attacking media reporting on the Trump administration. He singled out six stories for attack...

Nunes can complain about this story, but it has since been corroborated by the haul of text and other evidence uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump lied about the deal again and again, on Twitter and from his own lips. For Nunes to suggest that Trump was somehow a victim of false reporting on the Trump Tower Moscow project is to endorse that lying.

Nunes knew that his intended audience would not bother to review the history as you and I just did. Nunes is not interested in talking with anyone who is interested in checking claims, or verifying statements. He is talking only with people locked into a closed and sealed knowledge system.

This closed knowledge system entraps millions of Americans in a universe of untruth, in which Trump is a victim and the allegations against him are “fake news.” The prisoners and victims of this system live in a dreamworld of lies. Yet it would not quite be accurate to describe them as uninformed. They are disinformed, and on a huge scale. The false-knowledge system supported by Nunes is closed and sealed, but also vast and intricate.

The Ukraine allegation against President Trump is simple and straightforward. It can all be summarized in a few sentences of plain English: Trump wanted dirty help for his 2020 reelection campaign. He sent messages demanding that dirty help to the Ukrainians directly on the phone and via his henchmen. He stalled military aid to extort the help. The Ukrainians nearly surrendered, until the whistle-blower report reached Congress on September 9 and knocked loose the aid on September 11.

Now watch Fox News or read the pro-Trump websites. Suddenly the story becomes very long and very complicated. It can hardly be summarized at all; it can only be alluded to indirectly by a litany of callout phrases: “Burisma.” “Hunter Biden.” “Where’s the whistle-blower?” “Vindman’s conflict of interests.” “Star chamber.” “#coup has started.” The intricate tale is animated by a burning rage of injustice against “fake news”—most of that “fake news” (like the story about Trump Tower Moscow) in fact true and corroborated...

The House Republicans’ underlying argument is too jumbled and confusing even to be agreed with. It can only be absorbed. It is to be repeated, not to be analyzed. It is not even really an argument at all. It is a hypnotic litany, a creed of faith—a faith all the more compelling for defying sense and experience.  

At Fox News, on talk radio, and on the web, American conservatives have built a communications system that effectively consolidates in-group identity. Much of the time, the talkers and listeners do not themselves understand what they are saying. They use key words and phrases as gang signs: badges of identity that are recognized without necessarily being understood.

This system of communication tightly bonds in-group members. That bond, in turn, exerts tremendous power over American politics.

The price paid for this achievement is that the communications system lacks any means to convince nongroup members. How can you convince people when they cannot understand what on Earth you are talking about?

Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and the others have fenced off conservative Americans from the rest of American society. Within that safe space, insiders hear only what is familiar and comforting. When those protected insiders step outside into the larger world, they find themselves completely unprepared for it. To those not immersed in the fantasy franchise, people like Devin Nunes sound like crazy people. Which in turn, of course, only drives them crazier...

Frum knows the world of which he speaks: Formerly a speechwriter for Dubya (infamously responsible for the Axis of Evil speech), he's since moved away from a Republican Party he can't even speak to anymore.

But it's not even with the upper echelons of the Republicans. Buzzfeed is reporting now how Facebook, a social app with millions plugged in, is inundated with fly-by-night pro-trump groups that form, spread false reports about the impeachment hearings, and close out before the company can close them down. Staying on just long enough to convince the MAGA crowds and confuse the rest.

The entire Republican Media Bubble is self-sustaining now. Holding the pundits and politicians accountable won't stop the GOP base from perpetuating their own bullshit.

The only thing the rest of us can do is vote the bastards out of power. Prevent them from causing more damage within our legal and political and economic systems.

It won't stop their bullshit or their hatred of fellow Americans. It might not even make us safer, because they've been riled up now to the point of violence.

But it's the only way to bring the United States back to some level of sanity.

Gods help us.