News bits: Fear paralyzes Biden; The radical right openly questions Democracy

PD comments about the increasingly dire Afghan refugee situation and Biden's paralyzing fear of the radical right:

To be fair the Afghan Adjustment Act does have broad bi-partisan support, but predictably those who opposed it are Republicans-- and they did so on bogus grounds. In particular, Chuck Grassley and Mitch McConnell went out of their way to make sure it was not included in the 2022 year-end spending bill. These are 2 of the most immoral politicians in the Senate, and they're good at being effective immoralists with decades of practice and chops behind them.

As Krish Vignarajah said in the PBS interview above, if one of the MAGA candidates becomes president [in 2024], these Afghan allies will be screwed beyond repair.

That said, even the Dems and Biden have been intimidated into slowing efforts to do the right thing by these right wing radicals you discuss so often. As Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of the Jewish refugee agency, HIAS (the world's oldest refugee agency) aptly stated, due to Republican pressure and criticism, "This [Biden] administration is scared to death of immigration issues." He compared current efforts to resettle those in emergency situations to "an ambulance that moves at a glacial pace." He points out that the Refugee Resettlement Act gives the executive all the powers Biden needs to resettle those who so badly need it in a way that results in a path to citizenship, yet they relied on temporary measures like "humanitarian parole" which is now set to expire. It expires after 2 years for those it covers, and so is NOT a long-term solution to a very long term problem. The Ukrainians have fared a little bit better, but not nearly enough. Again, we arm them yet fail to adequately respond to the staggering refugee crisis that ensues. And it's worse for non-Europeans and non-whites generally.

As Noah Gottschalk (Oxfam America) said,

Ukrainian refugees absolutely deserve protection. But [the White House is] basically creating a loophole for them by doing this while leaving mostly black and brown refugees out in the cold.

Biden needs to lead from principle and not from fear. Unfortunately, we can't change the crazies on the Right. We must bring more pressure to bear on the too-cautious Biden Admin when it comes to this issue. I understand there are real challenges when it comes to immigration, but we can-- and must-- do better than this. (info source: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/23/biden-russia-ukraine-refugees-00019829)

Once again, radical right bigotry and racism are poisoning American politics, policy and moral standing.

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America's slide into authoritarianism and theocracy continues: Politico writes about a terrifying trend among elite young radical right Republicans. They are now openly grappling with the concept of authoritarianism-theocracy over democracy and civil liberties:

The Federalist Society Isn’t Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore

After recent Supreme Court wins, the society’s youth arm debates the next stage for the conservative legal movement

It was the start of the second day of the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium — an annual gathering of conservative and libertarian law students hosted by the conservative legal behemoth ....

“The people I met at student conferences a decade ago are now sitting federal judges,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law and a fixture of the Federalist Society speaking circuit. “The people you meet here and the networks you build up over years — they’re very, very important.”  

This year’s gathering was even more important than most. As the first student symposium since the Supreme Court handed conservatives a historic package of victories on gun rights, religious freedom, environmental deregulation, and, of course, abortion, the weekend offered a window into the shifting priorities and preoccupations of the youngest and most elite members of the conservative legal movement, at a time when the future of the movement as a whole is quietly unsettled. 

The first major clue about those preoccupations came from the symposium’s theme, which the organizers had designated as “Law and Democracy.” As the programming unfolded over the next day and a half, it became alarmingly clear that, even among the buttoned-up young members of the Federalist Society — an organization not known for its political transgressiveness — the relationship between those two principles is far from settled. From radical new theories about election law to outlandish-seeming calls for a “national divorce” the symposium-goers were grappling with ideas that raised fundamental questions about American democracy — what it means, what it entails, and what, if anything, the conservative legal movement has to say about its apparent decline.

That approach made sense for conservatives when they still saw the federal judiciary as a liberal force dragging the country to the left. But now that conservatives have secured a solid majority on the Supreme Court — and voters in several red states have soundly rejected hard-line positions on abortion — a spirited debate is underway within the Federalist Society about the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities as a matter of principle.

Think about this for a minute: The radical right openly questions the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities. What, exactly, is that? It is authoritarianism speaking loud and clear, fascism in my opinion. The authoritarianism can be some form of fascism, brass knuckles capitalism, and/or Christian nationalist theocracy. Those are the main ideologies currently on the table the radical right is dining at. 

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Beyond shameless hypocrisy: The Guardian writes:

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

In true hypocritical manner, the ex-president has quickly forgotten why the two sectors are in shambles

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”

Not my fault, Joe Biden did it!

Hillary did it! No Joe! No Barak Hussein!

No HUNTER BIDEN did it!