Democracy is on the ballot this year

 

 There are many theories of modern democracy, but in practice the indicator on which almost all people and organizations agree is free and fair elections. That's why Donald Trump has hand-picked election-deniers-- people who deny that Biden won in 2020-- to run in Republican primaries for positions including Sec of State, AG and Governor-- positions that are crucial to the proper administration and overseeing of elections. Last week, two of these hand-picked  loyalists were selected at a Republican convention in Michigan to run on the Republican ticket there in November. Michigan, of course, is one of the battleground states Trump lost in 2020. At a recent rally, Trump said of his picks-- Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state:

“This is not just about 2022. This is about making sure Michigan is not rigged and stolen again in 2024.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/30/well-that-was-crazy-michigan-gop-divided-over-election-falsehoods/

 Secretaries of State  oversee the administration of elections and the certification of results in most states. They can also play a major role in the  interpretation and implementation of election laws in ways that either make it easier or harder to vote. In Georgia, Trump endorsed Jody Hice to unseat his nemesis, Republican Brad Rafensberger, who famously stuck to non-partisan principles refusing to cave in to Trump's demand that he "find 12,000 votes" to overturn the Biden win there. Trump intends to replace any such principled officials (many of whom have left their former jobs in fear or exhaustion anyway) with loyalists who would do his bidding wherever possible. Hice entered the race in March, and already has raised $1.6 million to the incumbent Rafensberger's $600,000. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democracy-is-on-the-ballot-in-these-11-secretary-of-state-and-attorney-general-elections/  In Arizona, Trump has endorsed the once-obscure, now well-known (at least in "America First" circles) troublemaker,  Mark Finchem. Finchem is a member of the Right Wing extremist militant group, Oathkeepers, has ties to Q-anon, and was scheduled to speak at the 1/6 Stop The Steal, rally. It is chilling to think that such a man could be charged with overseeing the next Presidential election. These are not isolated cases, but part of Trump's plan to eliminate any and all officials that might stand between him and a victory should he run in 2024. Even if he doesn't run, he wants to leave in place a pathway to the White House for other Trumpists that do so with (or even without) his support.

 

When, in 2020-2021, Trumpists waged war against the faceless and usually taken-for-granted officials who work to insure that our votes are counted properly, many were relieved that non-partisan principles and protocols prevailed over Trump's attempts to intimidate these officials whether they were Republicans or Democrats.  Some in the media have said that "American Democracy was tested, and it passed," because courts dismissed absurd cases and Secretaries of State, AGs and others held to principles. For example, in a now famous phone call,  Trump intimidates Georgia's Republican Sec. of State, Brad Rafensberger, going as far as to threaten him with a criminal investigation if he does not "find the votes" needed  to deliver a Trump win. Rafensberger stood up to Trump.

 But it is the existence of these once obscure officials that Trump has since done as much as possible to weaken or take down, replacing them with sycophants. Remarkably, though we hear about "Democracy vs. Authoritarianism" everyday in the news now, nobody is paying much attention to the frontline between them right here at home.

We often remember Trump's attempt to overturn election results in terms of the violent insurrection of 1/6. But even that insurrection was ancillary to the real goal that day: to intimidate VP Mike Pence to invoke powers he does not have to change the outcome of the election, as per the legal memo of John Eastman https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248-eastman-memo. The path to overthrowing the legitimate government of the US (the elected Biden administration) was always two-tracked. It was a) legalistic and  b) populist, with each track feeding into and reinforcing the other. The goal was to use elected or appointed officials to subvert the election. But in order to get 2/3 of the Republican House members to vote (hours after 1/6) to overturn the election results, they must first fear the wrath of their "base." Not only must they fear losing future elections, but also fear for their safety. The disturbing drone of death threats during 2020 made by anonymous Trump supporters to government officials, and the sight of gallows erected for Mike Pence on that day were never denounced by Trump.  When asked to repudiate The Proud Boys in a television debate, Trump instead addressed them the way a military commander might, "Stand back and stand by." Thuggish intimidation was something of a specialty for Trump. But so are his attempts to use legal and political positions designed to serve democracy to subvert it instead.

 

This fact is preserved for all to see in the above-referenced call to Rafensberger. It is preserved in the amicus brief signed by 17 Republican-leaning states in a lawsuit brought forward by Texas that was designed to nullify election results in four other states where Trump lost. 17 states. That's more than a third of all states in the union endorsing an effort to disenfranchise voters in those states by ostensibly legal means. It was disgracefully preserved, of course, in the record of votes recorded several hours after the Insurrection of 1/6. There 139 of 221 Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election, while 8 of 51 Republican Senators did the same. That's two-thirds of the Republican House!  https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-TRUMP/LAWMAKERS/xegpbedzdvq/ They know that most Republican voters (over 70% in most recent surveys) believe that Trump was the "real" winner in 2020.

It's hard to imagine a situation like this going unaddressed by the Administration that actually won--i.e. The Biden Administration, and the Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress. We speak of "red lines" in wars, but is there no red line drawn to prevent  all this from ever happening again? Far from it. Biden has yet to mention Trump by name, and despite a vocal minority of the country complaining about these things on social media, all the momentum going forward belongs to the would-be usurpers of our electoral system-- the pivot of US democracy. 

A few voices have emerged urging Americans to take this more seriously, but the scale of the response is small and comes late in the game. Still, no effort to thwart Trump's plan to eviscerate democracy from within the system is wasted effort. Amy McGrath, who lost a challenge to Mitch McConnell in 2020, started a PAC called SOS devoted to solving this problem last month.  Here's the video that launched the PAC followed by a link for those inclined to contribute.

https://twitter.com/AmyMcGrathKY/status/1519798208800645120

 

 

See also this related long-read by Richard L Hasen on Election Subversion. It appeared in The Harvard Law Review in April: https://harvardlawreview.org/2022/04/identifying-and-minimizing-the-risk-of-election-subversion-and-stolen-elections-in-the-contemporary-united-states/

The ultimate Christian nationalist goal for abortion: A total national ban

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.” -- Attributed to cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead

The Christian nationalist political and social movement is directed and controlled by a small group of wealthy and powerful but thoughtful and committed individuals who are hell-bent on changing the secular world into a religious world. Tyranny of the minority is possible in America today. -- Political theorist Germaine

The New York Times writes:

The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban

Advocates and some GOP lawmakers have started mobilizing around potential federal legislation to outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancy

Leading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.

The discussions reflect what activists describe as an emerging consensus in some corners of the antiabortion movement to push for hard-line measures that will truly end a practice they see as murder while rejecting any proposals seen as half-measures.

Activists say their confidence stems from progress on two fronts: At the Supreme Court, a conservative majority appears ready to weaken or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that has protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years. And activists argue that in Texas, Republicans have paid no apparent political price for banning abortion after cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.  

While a number of states have recently approved laws to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy — the limit established in the Mississippi legislation at the heart of the case pending before the high court — some activists and Republican lawmakers now say those laws are not ambitious enough for the next phase of the antiabortion movement. Instead, they now see the six-week limit — which they call “heartbeat” legislation — as the preferred strategy because it would prevent far more abortions.  

“This is a whole new ballgame,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, one of the country’s biggest antiabortion groups, said in an interview. “The 50 years of standing at the Supreme Court’s door waiting for something to happen is over.”

Assuming the Republican Christian nationalist nationwide abortion ban passes, most women will usually be forced to be much more careful about birth control or be forced to carry a pregnancy to birth. One can reasonably think that in that case, women caught in an abortion will be prosecuted and jailed, maybe executed for 1st degree murder in some states. 

Women who have a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage will be grilled by religious zealot Christian inquisitors. Some of those women, especially non-Whites and non-Christians, will be wrongly prosecuted. Some will be wrongly jailed or executed. 

The elites vs the rank and file

My estimate is that nearly all (~99% ?) CN elites, e.g., elected Republican politicians, professional Republican propagandists like Faux News and major GOP donors know exactly what they are doing and what they want. By contrast, probably no more than about 30% of the rank and file fully understand what it is they support. The CN movement is deeply mendacious, deceptive and opaque about its real goals. 

Once the Republican CN total abortion ban passes, some of the woke rank and file will come to regret their own role in this. Most will rationalize it in the name of God or whatever excuses the GOP and CN propagandists will provide for them to believe.

The newly forming face of public school: Aggressive Christian nationalism

Christian nationalism was prominent 

at the 1/6 coup attempt 

I have pointed out here many times that a key goal of Christian nationalism (CN) is to  get rid of all, 100%, of taxpayer-funded secular public education. The CN goal includes replacing it with taxpayer-funded Christian education. CN is a no-compromise (authoritarian) Christian fundamentalist political and social movement.

The CN social-political movement is acutely aware that young minds need to be trapped and enslaved in servitude to the loving, righteous God to push back on the evils and horrors of secularism and pluralism in society, government and law. Evils and horrors of secularism and pluralism is exactly how the CN movement sees this “problem” in its holy war on all Americans, including dissenting Christians, non-heterosexuals, atheists, people of non-Christian religions, non-White people, women and non-European ethnic groups. 

The skirmishes in the war to force out secularism in public education are intensifying. The Freedom from Religion Foundation writes:

Nearly a dozen parents and students, with help from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a high-profile federal lawsuit today over a Christian revival in a West Virginia school that prompted a recent student walkout.

More than 100 students, led by Huntington High School senior Max Nibert, staged a dramatic walkout on Feb. 9 to protest some students being forced to attend an evangelical Christian revival at the school on Feb. 2. The walkout, with students chanting “Separate the church and state” and “My faith, my choice,” was covered not only nationally by the Washington Post, NPR and CNN but also internationally.

The legal complaint in the case, Mays v. Cabell County Board of Education, notes, “For years, school system employees have violated the constitutional rights of students by promoting and advancing the Christian religion, as well as by coercing students into participating in Christian religious activity.” The lawsuit charges that two Huntington High School teachers during homeroom on Feb. 2 escorted their entire classes to the revival. Students, including a Jewish student who asked to leave but was not permitted to do so, were instructed to bow their heads in prayer and raise up their hands and were warned they needed to make a decision to follow Jesus or face eternal torment. Adult volunteers from a local church went into the crowd to pray with students. Plaintiff students observed teachers and administrators praying with church volunteers. Huntington High Principal Daniel Gleason was present at the assembly along with assistant principals.

Evangelist Nik Walker, who runs Nik Walker Ministries and had been leading revivals in Huntington for weeks, even prayed to thank God for the fact “that you are not going to let these students leave without . . . knowing you.”

FFRF has written several legal complaint letters over adult proselytizing, prayer and religious practices aimed at students within Cabell County Schools, which have been ignored.

Huntington East Middle School held separate Nik Walker Ministries assemblies on Feb. 1. It is FFRF’s understanding that a staff member requested the events and that some students attending those assemblies did not do so voluntarily. It seems parents were not informed in advance.

The lawsuit contends, “At the behest of adult evangelists, Huntington High School held an assembly for students that sought to convert students to evangelical Christianity. Some students were forced to attend. Regardless of whether attendance is mandatory or voluntary, the defendants violate the First Amendment by permitting, coordinating and encouraging students to attend an adult-led worship service and revival at their school during the school day. Parents and students bring this suit to stop these practices.”

Note the scare tactic, accept and submit to Jesus or face eternal torment. That propaganda tactic is no different from the scare tactics that radical right propaganda outlets like Faux News routinely employ to scare, enrage and foment hate among conservatives and Republicans. The same kind of apocalyptic rhetoric flows from both CN propagandists and neo-fascist sources like Faux.

In the coming years, this lawsuit and more like it will probably be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. It is too early for the court to rule as the six Republican CN judges would like by forcing Christianity on all students right now. Instead, they are likely to give the CN movement small, incremental power increases over time. That will slowly drain the vitality from secularism and pluralism. Assuming it ever happens, it will probably years before American society will accept mandatory Christian indoctrination for public school students. Society still moving away from radical fundamentalist Christianity, so the CN movement needs to, and is actively trying to, squelch and reverse that natural social progression.  

To be clear, the ultimate goal is to impose Christian sharia on society, government and law. The CN movement does not recognize any separation between church and state. The separation is openly rejected and attacked. The CN movement urgently wants and believes it fully deserves control of our tax dollars to glorify God and fulfill his commands. 

A core CN myth (lie) is that America was founded by God as a White Christian nation to rule over all other nations. In that Christian nation, White heterosexual Christian men rule over all others who are subordinate. If one can wrap their mind around that idea, one can start to get a feel for the kind of all-encompassing threat to democracy, the rule of law, truth, rationality, science, secularism, pluralism and civil liberties that the CN movement actually is.

If an end amounting to an American theocracy ever comes about, this could be the beginning of that end.

There ain’t no arguing with that, it just is

The drought is tightening it's grip on the Southwest

The first straw: That was where Lake Mead water  

for Las Vegas used to come from

Two straws (water intakes) are left

The AP writes:

A massive drought-starved reservoir on the Colorado River has become so depleted that Las Vegas now is pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead where other states downstream don’t have access.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority announced this week that its Low Lake Level Pumping Station is operational, and released photos of the uppermost intake visible at 1,050 feet (320 meters) above sea level at the lake behind Hoover Dam.

“While this emphasizes the seriousness of the drought conditions, we have been preparing for this for more than a decade,” said Bronson Mack, water authority spokesman. The low-level intake allows Las Vegas “to maintain access to its primary water supply in Lake Mead, even if water levels continue to decline due to ongoing drought and climate change conditions,” he said.

The move to begin using what had been seen as an in-case-we-need-it hedge against taps running dry comes as water managers in several states that rely on the Colorado River take new steps to conserve water amid what has become perpetual drought. 

“We don’t have enough water supplies right now to meet normal demand. The water is not there,” Metropolitan Water District of Southern California spokesperson Rebecca Kimitch said this week. The agency told some 6 million people in sprawling Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week, effective June 1, or face stiff fines.  

The surface level of another massive Colorado River reservoir, Lake Powell, dipped below a critical threshold in March — raising concerns about whether Glen Canyon Dam can continue generating power for some 5 million customers across the U.S. West.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.  

In Arizona, falling Colorado River levels have prompted an emphasis on conservation and raised fears of reduced water deliveries to desert areas that include metro Phoenix, Tucson, tribal lands and farms.

At Lake Mead, the new pumps are fed by an intake drilled nearer to the bottom of the lake and completed in 2020 to ensure the ability to continue to draw water for Las Vegas, its casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million residents and 40 million tourists per year.

The “third straw” draws drinking water at 895 feet (272.8 meters) above sea level — below a point at which water would not be released downstream from Hoover Dam.  

“Without the third intake, Southern Nevada would be shutting its doors,” said Pat Mulroy, former longtime chief of the Las Vegas-based water authority, who is now a consultant. “That’s pretty obvious, since the first straw is out of the water.”

Once the lakes are drained, most of the American Southwest will revert to dust. The underground aquafers are dropping, so that source of water is going away too. 

Maybe some coastal areas can survive if they can build enough desalination plants soon enough. In California, starting construction usually requires a lead time of about 12-15 years for environmental reviews, bureaucratic red tape and bumbling, and lawsuits. The lawsuits are filed by NIMBYS, eco-freaks who oppose everything and all other malcontents with a complaint(s) and money to pursue it in court. Congress has been broken and gridlocked by the neo-fascist Republicans, so it is not able to help. Given that state of affairs, it’s not clear if there is enough time to avoid major catastrophe. 

We live in interesting times. 

The power of toxic infotainment wars

The New York Time writes:

Tucker Carlson had a problem.

After years in the cable wilderness, he had made a triumphant return to prime time. And his new show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” had leapfrogged to the heart of Fox News’s evening lineup just months after Donald J. Trump’s upset victory shattered the boundaries of conventional politics.

Newly planted in Fox’s newly vacated 8 p.m. time slot — previously held by the disgraced star Bill O’Reilly — Mr. Carlson told friends and co-workers that he needed to find a way to reach the Trump faithful, but without imitating Mr. Hannity. He didn’t want to get sucked into apologizing for Mr. Trump every day, he told one colleague, because the fickle, undisciplined new president would constantly need apologizing for.

The solution would not just propel Mr. Carlson toward the summit of cable news. It would ultimately thrust him to the forefront of the nationalist forces reshaping American conservatism. “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the host and his producers decided, would embrace Trumpism, not Mr. Trump. The show would grasp the emotional core of Mr. Trump’s allure — white panic over the country’s changing ethnic composition — while keeping a carefully measured distance from the president himself. For years, as his television career sputtered, Mr. Carlson had adopted increasingly catastrophic views of immigration and the country’s shifting demographics. Now, as Mr. Trump took unvarnished nativism from the right-wing fringe to the Oval Office, Mr. Carlson made it the centerpiece of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” 

He began seeking out stories, one friend observed, that were sometimes “really weird” and often inaccurate but tapped into viewers’ fears of a trampled-on American culture. He inveighed against Macy’s new line of hijabs, and devoted a segment to “Gypsy” refugees in a Pennsylvania town who Mr. Carlson said had left “streets covered — pardon us now, but it’s true — with human feces.” (It was not true: Local officials ultimately documented a single instance of a refugee child who had pulled down his pants outside because he couldn’t make it back home in time.) He cataloged, and magnified, overlooked instances of what he cast as growing discrimination against white Americans. Stories about the threat of immigration had long been a feature of Fox. But Mr. Carlson dialed up the intensity, expertly weaving tropes borrowed from the far right into a narrative that would come to define “Tucker Carlson Tonight”: falling birthrates among the native-born, big-city crime, lax immigration policies designed to forcibly alter American society — all engineered or encouraged by a “ruling class” desperate to censor public discussion of its own failures.  

Mr. Carlson’s darkening arc foreshadowed a transformation beginning to sweep through Fox itself. As Mr. Trump fought to build a border wall and keep Muslims out of the United States, Fox’s journalists and right-wing commentators would clash repeatedly over what many longtime staff members saw as a creeping invasion of the news divisions by allies and functionaries of the higher-rated, pro-Trump prime-time hosts. Mr. Carlson would be both instigator and beneficiary of Fox’s civil war. He forged a relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, the Murdoch family’s heir apparent, who would become his most public supporter at Fox. And while Mr. Murdoch and Fox executives have often couched their defense of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” as a protection of free inquiry and controversial opinions, the reality is less high-minded. From the beginning, Mr. Carlson’s on-air provocations have been part of a painstaking, data-driven campaign to build and hold Fox’s audience, according to former Fox executives and employees — an experiment that has succeeded wildly in bolstering Mr. Murdoch’s profit machine against the long-term decline in cable news subscriptions.  

The network’s leadership takes a broader view of Fox’s financial and ratings success. A spokeswoman for the network provided the following statement: “Fox News Media has grown through strategic innovation, redirecting investments in journalism to encompass more than 50 percent of the budget while expanding our footprint beyond one legacy linear network to eight thriving platforms. As a result, we’ve doubled our audience, achieved unrivaled results, and have become the destination that more Democrats and independents choose for their news coverage, while our competitors have lost dramatic levels of viewership. We couldn’t be prouder of our entire team, whose commitment to excellence in journalism and opinion has led Fox News Media to all-time ratings records and delivered the best in class to our viewers.”

Here Faux News exemplifies the neo-fascist elite focus on entertainment, power and profit over inconvenient truth, sound reason and service to the public interest. The tactics are clear, deploy irrational emotional manipulation and crackpot reasoning wrapped in thick clouds of deceit, blatant lies and sleazy slanders. 

For Faux, “strategic innovation” is moving toward entertaining propaganda, lies and deceit posing as honest news. It is a winning strategy. 

A final thought. The NYT commented that Carlson refused to comment for the article. That is standard practice for the radical right and lying grifters. The KYMS tactic (keep your mouth shut) is highly effective in not alienating the base while maintaining the shield of plausible deniability.

Preacher: Teachers “grooming” kids should be beheaded on live TV

 After falsely calling LGBTQ-accepting teachers “groomers,” Jason Graber called for their executions

A fundamentalist Christian preacher is calling for LGBTQ-accepting teachers to be shot in the head or beheaded on live television because he believes the conservative lie that they’re “grooming” kids.

New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher Jason Graber of Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane, Washington made the comments last week during a weeknight service. It’s not clear from the video how many people were in the church that night.

Still, for a guy who’s previously called for the execution of gay people, it’s a sign that he’s taking his fundamentalism in an even more extreme direction.

https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1518564439263531008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1518564439263531008%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fonlysky.media%2Fhemant-mehta%2Fpreacher-teachers-grooming-kids-should-be-beheaded-on-live-tv%2F

… And apparently… states back East, you know, they’re having all kinds of… this grooming stuff going on in schools today…

… Apparently in schools today, they’re literally grooming the kids to… be just ready to be taken advantage of…

… Any teacher that would… show this type of lewd… I mean, basically what I’ve heard is that
they’re… basically, they’re showing pornographic images to children. To young children. Which is against the law—I’m pretty sure it’s… I think it’s a felony—but, you know what? Preachers need to get up and say… well, teachers that do this, they should be put to death. They need to be taken out and shot in the back of the head. Because they’re… they’re pedophiles!

Any teacher that’s gonna show pornographic images to young children, they are a predator! And the reason that they’re doing that is because they want to take advantage of young children…

… And these teachers, they’re showing these pornographic images to these young children, and literally grooming them, those teachers need to have the fear of God put in them. And you know what? That’s what the government is for. In Romans 13, the Bible talks about that the government’s job is to execute judgment with the sword, okay? So maybe… we need to put aside the guns and we need to get the sword back out. And we need to make these executions public. We need to find these teachers that are showing pornographic images and grooming children, we need to find them, try them, get the television out, we need to get FOX News, CNN, every YouTube channel out there, put it on television. We need to show them being publicly beheaded.

That’s what needs to happen to these people. Because you know what? Otherwise our nation is gonna turn into a literal Sodom and Gomorrah.

He went from the claim that teachers are showing pornographic images to kids (which is a lie), to saying they must be pedophiles (a lie), to saying they should be executed with a gun to the head (WTF…), to saying we should publicly behead those teachers on live television (WTF²).

Somewhere in there, he tried to mitigate his violent fever dreams by saying the government ought to do this, not that vigilantes in the congregation should take it upon themselves, but it doesn’t make this any better. The end result is that he wants liberal teachers, including LGBTQ teachers and their allies, to be murdered by someone… because he blindly accepts the right-wing conspiracy theory that teaching tolerance, inclusion, kindness, and non-whitewashed U.S. history amounts to predatory behavior.

How long will it take before someone in that congregation decides he should take the law into his own hands and make Jesus proud?

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/preacher-teachers-grooming-kids-should-be-beheaded-on-live-tv/?__vfz=medium%3Dstandalone_content_recirculation_with_ads