Author: Josh

Categories
Dear Leader

Trump is Democidal

The Washington Post has a schadenfreude-tastic article this morning where GOP strategists are concerned that Dear Leader’s baseless attacks against Mail-In Voting might leave the GOP baseless.

The GOP fears that enough dumbass MAGAhats will skip voting this year because their president is attacking the only safe way to vote during a pandemic. Republican candidates are getting blowback from their constituents whenever they advise on how to vote for them by mail. That’s fewer votes for Cory Gardner, Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins, Thom Tills, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell. Suits the hell out of me.

Trump has made over 60 completely fabricated claims warning about the “fraudulent” nature of voting by mail. As usual, Donald Trump is wrong, and the evidence is negative.

The right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation came out with their most damning evidence about voter fraud in America. Their document Truth about Voter Fraud can be found on the White House’s website. In large-font all-caps against a scary red background, you the reader are first alerted with their summary of “1071 PROVEN INSTANCES OF VOTER FRAUD”. Since 1988… That averages out to what… about 67 per election? So?

Out of this list of 1071 voter fraud cases spanning over three decades, a whopping 70 of them relate to absentee voting. These charges include eye-popping crimes such as the 1988 crime of Mr. Ernest Newton, former state senator of Connecticut, who agreed to pay a civil penalty of $1,000 for assisting in filling out someone else’s absentee ballot.

In the 2016 election, there was precisely ONE case of mail-in voter fraud. The case was in Iowa, where Terri Lynn Rote pleaded guilty for voting for Donald Trump twice.

In contrast, 18,610 votes were not counted in Florida in 2000 due to dimpled or hanging chads. Katherine Harris’s “Scrub List” erred in kicking off about 26,000 eligible voters that were neither felons nor dead. The United States Commission on Civil Rights found that African-Americans made up 11% of Florida 2000 voters and 53% of the uncounted votes. Again, these numbers are for one election in one state. The comparison is not even close.

There are a lot of issues of ballot access in the United States. Voting by mail is a solution, not a problem. The evidence shows overwhelmingly and unambiguously that voting by mail is a great way to vote. Voter fraud is vanishingly small and insignificant in our election system. The embarrassingly low number of cases that The Heritage Foundation uncovered in their 3-decade nationwide search is proof positive. But Trump supporters are immune to evidence by definition. Dear Leader told them it was a problem, so now they think it’s a problem. Surely, politics are in play (gasp!), but according to a recent NYT/Siena College survey, 88% of Biden supporters support expanding vote-by-mail in a pandemic, and 72% MAGAhats oppose it.

New Jersey’s Primary this year was mostly by mail. Five states–Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Utah, are completely vote-by-mail. Utah voted for Trump in 2016. Arizona, which went for Trump last time, is about 80% vote-by-mail. Even before Before COVID changed everything, twenty-one states allowed voting by mail to anybody who wanted it. Access has only increased since voting by mail became the obvious public-health-conscious solution to preserving our democracy in a pandemic. Evidence shows that both Democrats and Republicans are elected by mailed-in ballots.

So a funny story about Trump supporters refusing to vote has extremely dire consequences. Trump is amplifying his message of two possible outcomes. Either Trump wins the election, or the election is fraudulent. And if recent surveys of vote-by-mail opposition approximate MAGAhats’ adoption of Trump’s worldview of the 2020 election, we will have a large bloc of people baselessly believing that the election was stolen from Dear Leader.

Absolutely nothing in Trump’s history gives any confidence that he will accept the results of an election where he is the biggest loser on the biggest stage on the planet. He still doesn’t accept the 2016 election that he lost by nearly 3,000,000 votes but still got the office.

Trump knows there is nothing wrong with mail-in ballots. He is attacking elections because he does not want an election. As was true for the past 3 and a half years, Trump fancies himself a dictator, and the dictator is attempting to pre-emptively nullify the election. He is actively, relentlessly, daily, attacking the very fabric of democracy. Nothing less than the peaceful transfer of power hangs in the balance. Trump is unambiguously clear on his position.

Categories
Dear Leader

Trump is a Goddamn Traitor

News broke that Russia is paying the Taliban bounties for killing American soldiers. Trump responded by attacking the New York Times for reporting it.

I hope that anyone who voted for this shit last time will think long and hard about that sequence before voting for this goddamn traitor again. There is not a lot of evidence that the MAGAhatted are capable of thinking. After all, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me 19,128 times, I must be a Trump supporter.

But this one is simple. In the happy times before Trump received the fewest votes and became President, if we found out that Russia is paying a terrorist group to kill American soldiers, we expect the President of the United States to support America.

Not Trump.

“Nobody briefed or told me, [Vice President] Pence or Chief of Staff [Mark Meadows] about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News . . . Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us. […] nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump administration.”

Trump, via Twitter, June 28, 2020

As usual, none of what he says is true. And also, as usual, the facts are damning and worse than expected. It is not, to use the President’s word against him again, “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax.”

The most generous explanation is that Trump didn’t know about any of this because Trump installed the two dumbest motherfuckers in America into some of the most critical positions in Washington.

His Chief of Staff is Mark Meadows, a Tea Party lunatic and the former chair of the House Freedom Caucus. His previous accomplishments include ousting John Boehner for being too moderate, shutting down the government thinking that Obama would end Obamacare, angling for the United States Congress to default on America’s debt, and then trying to shut down the government again. He thought that Republicans shutting down the government a second time would make the Democrats look bad.

His Director of National Intelligence is Trump’s lap poodle, John Ratcliffe. He’s an ambulance chaser turned Tea Party blowhard, turned Trump loyalist. Ratcliffe’s National Intelligence resume includes dramatically overstating his involvement in investigating money funneling to Hamas, and completely fabricating a story that he used to arrest 300 “illegals” a day. Ratcliffe was so comically unqualified to run America’s $60,000,000,000 National Intelligence infrastructure that Senate Republicans forced him to withdraw the first time Trump brought it up. Even amongst the Tea Party hivemind, Ratcliffe shows a nearly Trump-level immunity to facts, evidence, logic, and reason. It’s hard to think of a worse person in government to be the DNI, so he’s a perfect catch for the Trump administration. His disingenuousness and bad-faith approach to government fits perfectly.

It is entirely possible, if not reasonable, to conclude that these dumbasses were just too incompetent to receive the information. And if they did receive the information, it would be charitable to assume that they were just too incompetent to figure out what to do with it. In fact, that was precisely the opening party line, with a dig at the media, of course.

“We are still investigating the alleged interference referenced in media reporting and we will brief the President and Congressional leaders at the appropriate time. […] Unfortunately, the unauthorized disclosures now jeopardize our ability to find out the full story with respect to these allegations.”

“The selective leaking of any classified information disrupts the vital interagency work to collect, assess, and mitigate threats and places our forces at risk. It also, simply put, a crime.”

DNI Ratcliffe, through a statement on Monday, June 28, 2020

The Director of National Intelligence should know that when the government so maliciously aligns itself against American interests that they’ll let Russia get away with paying terrorist groups to kill American soldiers, the American intelligence officers will go to the press. This is precisely why the First Amendment protects the press. And now we know that the truth, and the truth is horrifying.

We know from none other than John Bolton that the White House knew about this since March 2019. Trump was briefed again and again since February. Updates were in his PDB since this Spring. Trump has known for over a year… a year (!!!) that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill American Soldiers.

But the White House is playing dumb.

A specific message for Moscow? No, because he has not been briefed on the matter.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, June 30, 2020

Still not briefed? We’re supposed to believe that shit? Think of all of the times that Trump has protected Russia since March 2019. It feels like 400 years ago, but March 22, 2019, is when Barr received the Mueller report and March 24 is when he presented his “findings”. On May 3, Trump calls Putin and jabbers for an hour, braging about the end of the Mueller investigation. On June 28, Trump and Putin meet privately at the G20 for 90 minutes, and Trump proudly proclaims to the press that the topic of their conversation is “none of your business.” On July 25, the Republican-controlled Senate Intel report found that Russia penetrated all 50 states in their attack on our election. Trump’s response, that very day, was to call the President of Ukraine to extort them, in part, to invent evidence that rogue actors in Ukraine were behind the 2016 election attack instead of Russia. On July 31, Trump and Putin again share a phone call that nobody knew about until Russia reported on it. On August 20, Trump proclaims that Russia should be back in the G8, which is a call he has repeated and repeated up until just last month!

Trump’s propaganda network at Fox News can claim that there is “no corroborating” evidence, and our nakedly partisan DNI John Ratcliffe can bitch about the damaging “leaks”. None of their arguments stand up to actual financial evidence and the chorus of career intelligence professionals, both inside and outside the United States. The only damaging thing about the leaks is that it exposes, once again, that the President of the United States is the worst possible person in this country to hold this office.

Get this fucking traitor out of the White House.

Categories
Black Lives Matter Police

Black Lives Matter

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over. Our people have already made this major and difficult decision, but we cannot underestimate the challenge of hundreds of minor decisions yet to be made. Our inherent human charity and our religious beliefs will be taxed to the limit. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice. We Georgians are fully capable of making our judgments and managing our own affairs. We who are strong or in positions of leadership must realize that the responsibility for making correct decisions in the future is ours.

Governor Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Address
Atlanta, Georgia
January 12, 1971

I have watched countless documentaries about my grandfather’s life and career in politics. Nearly every single video starts with newly-elected Governor Jimmy Carter standing in front of the gold dome of Georgia’s Capitol, addressing a mixed-race crowd of about 5000 people. The video clips to him declaring “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.” The crowd erupts in applause.

In 1970, Lester Maddox campaigned against my grandfather by promising to continue his hardened stance on segregation. He proudly campaigned that he still refused to serve black people at his restaurant near Georgia Tech, in flaunting defiance of the then-six-year-old Civil Rights Act. George Wallace, one of our country’s most destructive racists, was preparing for his next term as Governor of Alabama after a decade of proclaiming, “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” And a peanut farmer from South Georgia used his first official address to call for the end of racial discrimination.

Unfortunately, it has been almost 50 years since my grandfather called for that end. As we see with the killing of George Floyd and Raychard Brooks and Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and Philandro Castile and Freddie Gray and Alton Sterling and Delrawn Small and Breonna Taylor and Michael Lorenzo Dean and many, many, many other black people, racial disparities in justice are still a source of profound national shame. And as we see with Donald Trump, racism is still being used as a tool by politicians to gain and wield power.

It is disgusting, appalling, and sickening to see death after death after death of unarmed black people at the hands of our government. We all watched George Floyd pulled out of the back of a police car, held down by 2 officers, neck crushed by a third, and fourth just watching impassively for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. At the same time, we all watched white lunatics strapped with AR-15’s protesting public health measures to battle COVID-19, and they were peacefully dispersed from Democratic Governor’s Mansions. We watch the police murder a black Wendy’s patron on his daughter’s 8th birthday at the same time we see white self-proclaimed militiamen peacefully arrested after someone fires 4 rounds into a crowd removing a statue of a mass murderer.

Police kill about 1000 Americans every year. Statistically, a police encounter is 2.4x deadlier for black people than white people.

Deaths by police per race
Source: Washington Post Police Shooting Database – Deaths Jan 2015 – June 2020

This is a profound moment in American history where we can make permanent, lasting, groundbreaking change. America was specifically designed so that our government is responsible, and accountable, to us. This is what a government By The People and For The People actually means. We have the power to tell our government what to do, how to act, and how not to act.

It is time for us to listen. It is time for us to look at the actual results of our nation’s policies and see how they actually affect our own American citizens, so we can change it.

50 years later, the time for racial discrimination is still over.

There are almost 19,000 distinct law enforcement agencies in the United States. Georgia alone has about 630. There is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this policing problem. We need a multi-pronged approach, and we need to remember that the police exist to serve us. And we should also remember that police officers, by and large, have chosen a career of public service. There is a lot of room for mutual respect.

Policing in America will only change when we follow through with new laws that protect us, the citizens. Policies matter tremendously because they create the pressure that forces the changes we need.

Every police department needs a Use of Force Policy. It should not be up to the individual officers to determine when, and how, to use lethal and non-lethal force. The police are a public function, and they have the public trust. Violations of the public trust need to be severe. The Use of Force Policy should have teeth, and violations need to include the ability to bar an offender from ever wearing a badge again.

Every community needs a citizens review board. The purpose of a citizens review board is to provide a communications channel between the community being policed and the police department. These are effective when the police chief and local leaders are involved and active. Citizens can provide feedback on how they are policed, the police can provide updates on how they are serving their community, and the mayor and police chief can provide corrective action. Not every tragedy will hit the top of the The Washington Post and not every police action is negative and unwarranted. It is the goal of these citizens review boards to build trust between the police and the community. They need to be everywhere.

Every police shooting needs to be investigated by the state’s Attorney General. The current process in the majority of the country is to have the District Attorney investigate the police shooting. The problem with this arrangement is that the District Attorney relies on their local police departments to investigate and enforce District action. There’s an obvious conflict of interest when someone is investigating the exact same people that they rely on to do their jobs. When the investigations move to the Attorney General’s office, the investigators are no longer investigating their effective co-workers.

The reason it is so hard to put abusive police in jail is because whenever a cop is charged with using violence, all they have to prove is that the use of violence was “reasonable”. In theory, that sounds, well, reasonable. In practice, nearly every single police action can be explained as reasonable. That’s why it’s so hard to convict. Requiring that deadly force only be used when “necessary”, we will raise the bar of acceptable police shootings and lower the body count.

These are the kinds of pressures we need to enact on policing in America. We are the people, we have the power to change it.

Josh

Categories
Barack Obama George Floyd

Barack Obama

Barack Obama is one of the greatest people who has ever lived.

Categories
Dear Leader George Floyd

Father Robert Hendrickson

This is an awful man, waving a book he hasn’t read, in front of a church he doesn’t attend, invoking laws he doesn’t understand, against fellow Americans he sees as enemies, wielding a military he dodged serving, to protect power he gained via accepting foreign interference, exploiting fear and anger he loves to stoke, after failing to address a pandemic he was warned about, and building it all on a bed of constant lies and childish inanity.

Father Robert Hendrickson
Rector
St. Philips in the Hills Epicopal Church
Tucson,AZ
Categories
Dear Leader

Donald Trump is Anti-American

The President of the United States ordered the United States Military to fire tear gas and rubber ammunition into a crowd of peacefully protesting Americans, on American soil. Reporters, who Trump has decried as “The Enemy of the People” were assailed and beaten by his government. This is the lowest point of the lowest presidency in the history of our country.

Peaceful assembly and free speech is the cornerstone of this democracy. There is nothing more American and more cherished than the First Amendment of our Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees that the government cannot retaliate against its citizens for protesting injustice.

This administration’s outright disdain for the Constitution was featured on Monday. The top law enforcement agent in the United States, US Attorney General Barr, ordered the beating, shooting, trampling, gassing, and clearing of peaceful Americans so that the President could walk over to a church, unwelcome, and use it for a bible-clad propaganda fashion shoot. And then he left.

The President of the United States has no awe, no reverence, and no appreciation for the Constitution. He has no respect–at all–for the founding documents, our founding fathers, for our history, for who we are as Americans. We protest. In the exact same vein of the civil rights movement, of the gay rights movement, of the suffrage movement that gave women the right to vote. Americans protested until we ended the war in Vietnam. We now protest the government’s aggression and impunity in harassing, beating, and murdering black people. We protest institutionalized white supremacy.

We The People have the absolute right to protest and petition their government because We The People built this government specifically so the government answers to us. That is America.

Categories
George Floyd

Joe Biden

Categories
George Floyd

Kamala Harris

Categories
George Floyd

Donald Trump’s America

An American in our government’s custody was pulled out of the back of a police car and killed, on camera. The murderer, sworn to protect and serve the citizens of his community, expected impunity since he wore a shield and the victim was a black man. Three other police officers watched impassively as George Floyd gasped for breath until he couldn’t, from under Derek Chauvin’s knee.

This match is thrown into the racist powder keg that Donald Trump spent his entire political career pressurizing. In the middle of the worst pandemic anyone alive has ever seen, violence has erupted in at least 25 major American cities. This country has not seen this level of rebellion since Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Donald Trump built his entire political career out of racism, division, and hatred. Our President is incapable and entirely uninterested in delivering words of calm, comfort, or unity. He sees the destruction of this country as an opening to inflame and demean, and he is using every single opportunity. And all I can do is cry.

There are real leaders. Keisha Lance Bottoms, my Mayor, told everyone in Atlanta that they are heard, that change will happen, and that Atlanta will continue the great work that we have already done. Half of our police force are minorities. One third of our police force are women. Atlanta will continue to improve. We are heard. The City of Atlanta’s Police Chief is a small white woman. Before the protests in Atlanta started, on YouTube, she told the City of Atlanta that George Floyd’s murder disgusts her to her core. This is leadership in the right direction. Keisha’s speech to the City of Atlanta was the most powerful speech I have heard from a government official in 4 years. These are proven leaders. Atlanta is tense but quiet, tonight.  

In contrast, Donald Trump started commenting on the protest by dusting off the Civil Rights era phrase “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That phrase was the rallying cry behind the 1967 Miami Police Chief Walter Headley’s institutionalized police brutality against young black men. For 20 years, Miami had a policy of beating up young black people. Chief Headley would defend his institutional assault on black people by calling out “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. … We don’t mind being accused of police brutality.” His use of that phrase was not an accident.

Doubling down on the most divisive course of action, as usual, he followed with this Twittertantrum.

Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService. They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe. They let the “protesters” scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone got too frisky or out of line, they would quickly come down on them, hard – didn’t know what hit them. The front line was replaced with fresh agents, like magic. Big crowd, professionally organized, but nobody came close to breaching the fence. If they had they would have been greeted with the most viscious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and good practice.” As you saw last night, they were very cool & very professional. Never let it get out of hand. Thank you! On the bad side, the D.C. Mayor, @MurielBowser, who is always looking for money & help, wouldn’t let the D.C. Police get involved. “Not their job.” Nice! The professionally managed so-called “protesters” at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily. Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???

Donald Trump

Donald Trump delivered not a single true statement, but at least it’s racist and divisive.

As the grandson of the President of the United States, I have observed the Secret Service protecting the President my entire life. I have a very close perspective of their honor, devotion, and professionalism.

I know for a fact that their first line of defense is not “the most vicious dogs,” and Donald Trump does too. Trump knew that the vision of attack dogs against Civil Rights activists was too rich to ignore. Channeling Bull Connor, he drove that wedge into our nation’s heart.

There is not a single Secret Service agent anywhere in the world, especially within Presidential Protective Detail, that would giddily report to their protectee that they have put their youngest and bloodthirstiest agents on the front line against angry rioters, loving every minute of it. But a statement like that drives home the Us vs. Them brand of politics that he has brought to America. It’s not helpful for a peaceful solution. Trump knows this. That’s why he said it.

The D.C. Police Department works hand-in-hand with the Secret Service at the White House, all the time. These two professional law enforcement organizations coordinate like they always have. It is entirely false to declare that the D.C. Police Department would not coordinate with the White House Secret Service. But Mayor Muriel Bowser is a Democratic black woman, and what would a racist screed be without a black target?

Ensuring the message of division and hatred continues, his next message of “calm” was this:

“The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical leftwing groups who are terrorizing the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses and burning down buildings. We cannot and must not allow a small group of criminals and vandals to wreck our cities and lay waste to our communities. I will not allow angry mobs to dominate.”

President Trump with no evidence, and no facts.

There is zero evidence that Antifa is organizing the riots. But Trump made sure his message of division infiltrated the other wings of the corrupt disaster of a government that he built. U.S. Attorney General William Barr declared that the violence was being planned and organized by “anarchic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics.”

Barr admits that he does not have any evidence that Antifa is behind it, so he makes up a completely new category of violence and declares it “Antifa-like tactics.” There are no previous instances, no previous tactics that exist from Antifa in the real world. Facts have never stopped this administration from finding someone, anyone, else to blame.

I am an extremely privileged person. I have never, ever, ever worried that the police officer in the car behind me is going to drag me out of my car and stomp on my neck until I die like George Floyd. I have never worried that the police officer in my neighborhood is going to show up at the wrong address, bust down my door, and kill me like Kathryn Johnston. When I was in High School, I never thought that someone ten years older would hunt me like Trayvon Martin, and I certainly never thought they could get away with it. I never worried that a police officer would choke me to death like Eric Garner. I have never worried that as an 18-year-old, I would be shot a half dozen times in the chest by the police like Michael Brown. As a 12-year-old, I never thought I would be murdered by the police like Tamir Rice. I don’t worry about being murdered by the police in front of my children like Philandro Castile. I do not worry about having my spinal cord snapped Freddie Gray. I am not Alton Sterling, Delrawn Small, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Laquan McDonald, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Billy Ray Davis, Tyree Crawford, Bettie Jones, Janet Wilson, Randy Nelson, Darius Robinson, Paul O’Neal, Eric Reason, Breonna Taylor, Michael Lorenzo Dean. I am not George Floyd.

I am white. These people are black. My experience should be the American experience, and all Americans demand and deserve the same.

We see today a massive movement of people demanding the end to racial injustice systemic in the American experience, and we see a much smaller group of people rebelling violently against a government that has never worked for them. The President of the United States, who is only capable of division, victimhood, and racism, is incapable of unity and calm. This is a profoundly volatile moment in American history.

Categories
George Floyd

Joe Biden

These last few days have laid bare that we are a nation furious at injustice. Every person of conscience can understand the rawness of the trauma people of color experience in this country, from the daily indignities to the extreme violence, like the horrific killing of George Floyd. We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us. We are a nation exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us.

Joe Biden – Saturday, May 30, 2020