3 Things: GOP’s Continuing Deadly Assault on America

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

The GOP hasn’t stopped since January 6, 2021 and years earlier. They want to wreak maximum damage on this country and blame anybody and everybody but themselves for it.

We’re supposed to believe they’re the arbiters of what’s right for this country but everything they do is demoralizing and destabilizing.

It’s almost as if they were acting on behalf of another hostile country.

One only need to look at how the GOP have handled state and federal response to the mass shooting in Uvalde and elsewhere to see they don’t care how many Americans die so long as they continue to get their blood money.

If uncontrolled guns were the only damage they inflicted on this country, but no – the Grand Old Party of Death goes wide.

~ 3 ~

The pandemic isn’t over. It’s not ending because far too many right-wing Americans have been brainwashed by the right-wing ecosphere into believing vaccines, boosters, masks, and social distancing are evil.

The logic fails over and over; it doesn’t help when The New York Times continues to run crap by David Leonhardt which undermines encouraging mask wearing up to and including mandates.

It also doesn’t help when corporations are too damned greedy to the point of short-sightedness, screwing both their own business and Americans at the same time.

But it’s not just the continued onslaught of disinformation and misinformation which is hurting this country. It’s the GOP refusing to keep Americans safe; they’ve refused to provide funds necessary for vaccines, boosters, therapies, and development of new boosters designed for the current dominant Omicron variants.

15-MAR-2022White House begs Congress for Covid funding amid concern about Omicron sister variant

30-MAR-2022Biden presses Congress for new COVID funding, gets second booster shot

But Senate Republicans have balked at setting aside additional money, saying they want a full accounting of earlier spending, and House Democrats subsequently rejected a plan to repurpose money already pledged to states.

While federal regulators on Tuesday authorized a fourth shot of vaccine for Americans 50 and older, U.S. officials have said they do not have enough funding to place advance orders for additional vaccine doses to cover all Americans, unless Congress passes the stalled package.

27-APR-2022Fact Sheet: Biden Administration Underscores Urgent Need for Additional COVID-⁠19 Response Funding and the Severe Consequences of Congressional Inaction

09-MAY-2022U.S. will limit next-generation Covid vaccines to high-risk people this fall if Congress doesn’t approve more funding

21-MAY-2022As COVID funding runs out, U.S. could see rationing of supplies

Months now they’ve dragged their feet because it might help Democrats; their party’s levels in broken public opinion polls don’t fair as badly as Biden’s because the media hasn’t held them accountable for their intransigence.

The GOP doesn’t care a whit if it hurts their own voters because a red state remains red even when the bodies pile up in the morgue.

Older people are the most reliable voters and the ones who vote GOP most often, but these deaths don’t matter to the GOP because media about these deaths hurts Democrats more.

It’s death by GOP passive-aggression.

~ 2 ~

The GOP wants to kill girls’ sports in public education. Ohio is the vanguard leading the way by passing a bill in its state house allowing anybody to contest a minor child’s gender identity which would then require a physical examination of the child’s genitals if that child is enrolled in a school participating in interscholastic sports.

Read that Twitter thread and the bill linked in it. That bill is an utter dumpster fire.

It’s sexual assault by the state sanctioned by the GOP. It’s little different from Larry Nassar’s assaults on gymnasts who didn’t consent to his abuses; these minors likewise can’t consent/dissent and their parents will be obligated to consent on their behalf if the child participates in sports.

The bill doesn’t obligate male-identifying minors to go through the same invasive inspection which means this bill is clearly aimed at controlling female-identifying bodies.

It’s literally Trumpy “grab ’em by the pussy” governance beginning in K-12 education. It’s not small government and it’s not freedom; it’s anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women Trumpism, and sane parents would rather not allow their children to be subjected to this abuse for the sake of interscholastic sports.

The GOP means death to girls’ sports, and in a secondary fashion, death to public education for girls.

Next up: mandatory burkhas – not out of line to assume this since obligatory inspection of girls’ bodies is something the Taliban would insist upon.

~ 1 ~

The GOP claims it’s the party of life but that ends with birth. They literally don’t care if American babies died of starvation.

They also don’t give a flying fuck if children starve, assuming they aren’t already dead from mass shootings.

Morley pointed out the provision for funding school lunches was in the Build Back Better bill which the GOP rejected.

Stay cool this summer, kiddies, and starve; thank the GOP while you do so.

The GOP is about as helpful to America’s children as Uvalde TX police at a mass shooting.

~ 0 ~

Regular community members consider yourselves warned this week could see a surge in trolls and trolling. The right-wing has been casting about for an approach to offset the anticipated bad news coming from the House J6 Committee hearings this week; so far they haven’t settled on one thing partly because they are dealing with blowback about gun rights and police militarization. They’ve tried blaming Antifa repeatedly; some of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol claim the Capitol Police set them up and Antifa was responsible.

Sure, sure. Looks like a set up.

But the head troll has sent up a bat signal for the fascist horde to flood the zone with their usual shit.

Let’s not forget this bat signal isn’t just about the January 6 hearings but about Bannon’s own butt. His contempt of Congress case is back in court on June 15, coincidentally 10 days after this shout for troll mobilization.

There will be much less tolerance for bullshit here primarily because there will be more bullshit than moderators to shovel it. Bear with us, thanks.

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83 replies
  1. Rayne says:

    The GOP is a death cult. How the media can continue to both-sides an organization which wants to destroy them and the democracy on which a free press relies is beyond me.

    • Fraud Guy says:

      “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
      Upton Sinclair

      • Rayne says:

        I think they know damned well what they’re doing. They’re literally paid to promote guns by the gun lobby, and by the gun lobby’s sponsors (Russia, for one). Their calculus is that they’ll kill more BIPOC/LGBTQ+/non-compliant women and disabled who in turn are more likely to vote Democratic.

        They’re compensated for death.

        • Fraud Guy says:

          I was referring to the media in general. Crises drive views; views drive advertising; advertising pays salaries.

          Except for Fox and its imitators; I believe they get most of their funding from cable subscription fees.

        • Rayne says:

          People need to pay attention to the streaming market — Tubi is Fox. Don’t fucking watch Tubi.

        • gmoke says:

          Living in permanent crisis is a symptom of an addictive system according to Anne Wilson Schaef in When Society Becomes an Addict and The Addictive Organization.

          Of course, the hallmark of late stage capitalism is also addiction (ask the Sackler family) so they (you know, THEM) have got us coming and going.

    • coral says:

      Thanks so much for this, Rayne! GOP is a death cult, and the acceptance of murder of our children in schools is nothing less than human sacrifice. Some events are so shocking that one never gets over them–Sandy Hook and all subsequent school shootings shock me to the core. It is as if the GOP is waging war on Americans, and I am at a loss for how to effectively fight back. Voting, urging others to vote, send gobs of money to Democrats I had hoped to fight for our children’s lives….even when we win, the shadow of death looms ever closer, ever darker.

      When Biden won I had some hope flicker, but now I just don’t know. I’ve never seen this country in worse shape. Perhaps it was in the lead-up to the Civil War.

      The difference I see between now and, say, the McCarthy period, or the Vietnam War period, is that then there was hope that citizen action, voting, organizing, etc, could make meaningful change possible.

      When all elected politicians allow our children to be massacred time after time in our nations schools…it is a sign of moral and societal decay so fundamental that one simply cannot see a way forward.

    • JVO says:

      The GOP machine shovels a lot of $$$ into the media, including for the GQP wing of the party. The media has gotta pay its bills too!

      Hell, Putin is still making billions daily selling oil/gas to EU, so taking Bonesaw’s $$$$ is not that big a thing, right Tiger? But The Shark is swimming in that stuff!

      Billy Joel should update the lyrics to We Didn’t Start the Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

    • darms says:

      Rayne, Digby posted something Sunday that really got to me. She linked to a piece by Melissa Ryan about the GOP and mass shootings that, simply put, stated “For the Right, mass shootings are a feature, not a bug.” Another telling quote – …”Mass shootings are a tactic of the Right. Deployed to terrorize Americans. Priming America for authoritarianism. The Right doesn’t stop mass shootings or work to curb gun culture.”… I dunno the answer but this sure seems like an accurate description of the problem and imho seems to explain a lot – https://digbysblog.net/2022/06/05/mass-death-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        If Texas is a lab experiment, and they do believe mass shootings reflect a mental health crisis, then the Texas GOP proved this point by cutting over 200 million in funding for mental health. Decrease the funding, increase the crisis, and watch the massacres pile up.

        Then blame it on teachers opening doors, or video games, or socialists canceling Jesus. Just keep up the war chant until the rest of us with our tears and rage and demands for change go away.

        • darms says:

          Ginevra, “mental health” is imho just another smokescreen, what I think Melissa (and Digby) are saying is that the right-wing authoritarians (aka Trumpies aka republicans) actually want these massacres to occur on a regular basis in order to 1) “numb” the populace to mass killings on a regular basis & 2) to prepare a “fertile ground” for their authoritarian (i.e. el presidente) rule. Again, these monsters think these regular massacres are a GOOD THING. Which is why they will take no action to prevent future massacres as many of them are quite safe in their gated communities and private schools…

  2. ThomasH says:

    Thanks Rayne for this post. I expect the death cult, the GOP, are practicing their dance moves. Moves for dancing on the graves of their victims when the SCOTUS drops the rest of their bombs this summer.

  3. joel fisher says:

    Your piece, with which I agree in every respect, reminded me of this from John Note at Breitbart last Fall:

    “In other words, I sincerely believe the organized left is doing everything in its power to convince Trump supporters NOT to get the life-saving Trump vaccine.”

    It seems that by saying, “Get the shot”, lefties–knowing what RW morons would think: “Nobody can tell me what to do”–got their intended outcome of dead Trumpsters. Nolte gives the left more credit for organization than I do.

    I won’t provide a link as it’s easy enough to find and sending people to Breitbart is just wrong.

    • Rayne says:

      What an idiotic statement, part of the disinformation campaign against Democrats and any science left of center. The data showed they were killing themselves but it didn’t matter, bashing the left mattered more than saving their own lives.

      As I said, a death cult.

      • joel fisher says:

        In fairness to Breitbart, I do mourn the death of Trumpsters with significantly less anguish that I feel for than regular people. All right I’m lying: the death of Phil Valentine brought me joy.

  4. Spencer Dawkins says:

    Rayne, thank you for this post. I wish I thought you were wrong, but I think you’re dead right.

  5. Peterr says:

    It’s hard to imagine being able to shoe-horn more military-adjacent language into such a short message than Steve Bannon accomplished in the screenshot in the post.

    Stand back and stand by, everyone.

  6. Lemoco says:

    All of the GOP talk of second amendment remedies, 1776, the blood of patriots, etc., leans into the idea that power comes from the barrel of a gun, and I think that message has grown legs. The GOP is transforming itself from a political party, into an insurgency, and Donald Trump – Little Big Dick – is their warlord.

    • harpie says:

      26. From in and around December 2020, through in and around January 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants, [NORDEAN, BIGGS, REHL, TARRIO, and PEZZOLA], did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree, with other persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States and by force to prevent, hinder, and delay the execution of any law of the United States.

      Purpose of the Conspiracy

      27. The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force, by opposing the authority of the Government of the United States and by preventing, hindering, or delaying by force the execution of the laws governing the transfer of power, including the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution and Title 3, Section 15 of the United States Code.

      MARCY’s writing about it here:
      https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1533895913751531520
      3:37 PM · Jun 6, 2022

  7. James Sterling says:

    An octogenarian, I recall Americans proudly calling ourselves “can do” people. The GOP wishes to reduce us to “can’t do” people. Let’s push back. Register, donate, vote.

    • Tom says:

      When U.S. troops fought their way ashore at Normandy seventy-eight years ago today, the America they put their lives on the line to defend was not the twisted and perverted mutation of the country that the GOP is now trying to bring to pass.

  8. Ddub says:

    I keep seeing the unraveling body politic in the USA as a race against time. Will the regressive, revanchist forces gain enough power in the next 2 voting cycles to overturn Democracy, or will more people see the dire threat and respond.
    In my own reading the wave is very nearly peaked, or has already, although the painful effects will be felt for years. Putin’s colossal blunder in invading Ukraine is the main turning point.
    It also seems there is a massive generational turning of the wheel, and I say this a retiree, that leaders in all fields are hanging on way past time to find the door please! New blood is vital yet these egoists can’t see the forest – Thank you judge Breyer.
    On a speculative level, it is curious to try to imagine the attitudes of our own Oligarchy, seeing a threat to Business and traditional power centers? Manageable? The Governors of FL and TX would prompt some reflection one would think.

    • Bobster33 says:

      I tend to think it’s the economy stupid. I live in SoCal and people cannot get by on anything near minimum wage. Until our current system starts investing in the working class and people in general, we are going to get a series of crazier elections and even dumber policies until we lose our democracy.

      • P J Evans says:

        Couldn’t do that in 1997, either. I blame the CEOs who need ever-increasing incomes. For themselves.

        • Greg Hunter says:

          There are a great deal of threads that have been fascinating to study and I have tried to understand what happened to America. Controlling the levers of power in America became necessary for the continuance of corporate profits, no matter the out come for people or the environment. Corporations controlling the narrative, especially in old stodgy companies, was the driver behind Neutron Jack Welch.

          Now that tech companies are reaching a plateau, those that emulated his tactics are entering the fray and they too will go the way of General Electric. Unfortunately it seems the GE motto applies in reverse. Whats bad for GE, is also bad for America.

          Jack rooting for Bush in 2000 is all you need to know.

          https://www.npr.org/2022/05/31/1102165413/did-jack-welch-break-capitalism

  9. Rugger9 says:

    With the GQP, the other principal narrative is about how these are all deranged lone wolves doing the shooting, but TX Gov. Abbott was already called out last week for cutting 217 m$ in mental health spending to undermine how he’s solving the ‘real’ problem. Unfortunately, the courtier press hasn’t continued to push that point.

    John Oliver had a very apt debunking of the cops with guns solution of choice as well yesterday.

    • Rayne says:

      IMO, Three Toes has a handler, that’s what this is. He needs money, she needs somebody who’s connected to right-wing media ecosphere.

      • Molly Pitcher says:

        To think about the level of crazy in the room when those two meet is mind warping.

        • Peterr says:

          This could make the MTG reaction to the Jan 6 hearing on Thursday rather . . . interesting. As you say, the office conversations about how to respond would be rather twisted.

  10. FiestyBlueBird says:

    Fuck ’em. I bought extra popcorn this week. (And that is a fact.)

    We find out soon if a retired Admiral will get a shot at Grassley this fall. Abby’s near fail on signatures was not an indicator of high competence, so I hope Dems prefer
    Mike.

    We finally got a nice soaking rain, so things will be turning lush without (not yet, anyway) brutal heat.

    So fuck ’em. I’m eating popcorn and watching a Liz Cheney production Thursday night, regardless of anything else.

    Before then I ain’t doing anything more consequential than watching for monarchs by day and lightning bugs and Curry threes by night. (There will be more lightning bugs and threes than monarchs, but I do expect a non-zero number of monarchs.)

  11. wetzel says:

    I do not know if it is descriptive enough to call the GOP a death cult. I think their party is swept up in totalitarian unconsciousness. I think they know these mass killings do not disempower them, despite their culpability. A school massacre is terroristic violence. It has an expressive dimension and it is a command which forces the entire country to accommodate to inhumanity. This increases the terror state where a criminal Other is always terrorizing us and can be the scapegoat for Big Brother’s retribution. American violence is an atrocity exhibition that feeds totalitarian unconsciousness and empowers the GOP. Our failure to save the children makes us culpable in the genocide on ourselves. It accommodates us to the idea that human life is not sacred.

    I have been trying to think about how a social system can transition from one state to another and whether you can talk about transitions needing ‘work’ or being ‘spontaneous’. You can’t really describe a social system using the same language as if it were a living cell or a chemical system in a beaker. Different system levels are incommensurable in systems theory, but you can talk about how the transition of a living cell to a senescent state in aging can’t be reversed or how achieving chemical equilibrium is spontaneous, so I am thinking that the transition to fascist totalitarianism is spontaneous and irreversible if a path can be found.

    These ideas are very reductive, but I think that is why the GOP feels no impetus to do anything meaningful about school shootings. The school shootings empower fascism by increasing terror. Thank you, Rayne, for your thought provoking post.

    • Rayne says:

      Lord Acton put it best: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The GOP we see today is the distillation of white supremacy which has always existed in what is now the U.S.; it has always had power because it built the system we live in. It has had absolute power because the system was built of, by, and for them. That power has absolutely corrupted them; they believe they are entitled to it and that no other system in which they are not supreme and dominant is legitimate.

      There will be a change as the nation becomes less white because this country’s potential is a true liberal democracy in which each citizen has the vote. The question is whether change to realize the fullness of potential comes with increasing violence or not. The GOP is fine with more violence because any resulting deaths are more likely to support their grip on power by diminishing their opposition.

      • Greg Hunter says:

        Overtime the white supremacists seem to need less of a trigger to attack and I fear for the future. I recently discovered Throughline and their podcasts have seemingly helped me understand some of what I see from my cohort as well as what is considered “acceptable” when killing Americans.

        The links to the Vietnam war and the prosecution of Tim McVeigh are the throughlines to January 6th and even Cheney seems to get what the GOP has wrought by elevating the white power base.

        https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1102394528/the-modern-white-power-movement-2020

      • Sonso says:

        Totally agreed; are we at a “tipping point”, where people who have, heretofore, been peaceful resort to violence as a last, best option? In such a heated environment, false flag events can be catalysts for a total breakdown in social order. It’s happened around the world in many instances, so it could happen here, too.

  12. Tom says:

    I’m inclined to think that there will be far more people curious to see and hear what the January 6th Committee has to offer–I’m sure every Republican will be tuned in–than will be interested in any GOP “counter-programming”, especially if said counter-programming consists mainly of Grandpa Trump’s smelly old fishing stories about ‘the one [i.e., election] that got away’.

    The May 27th episode of “This American Life” included a story about a father whose little boy was murdered at the Sandy Hook school shooting, and whose tragic death was exploited by the execrable Alex Jones. The story described how the father fought back against Jones’s claims that Sandy Hook was a hoax, and how the father had to deal with the harassment and threats inflicted upon him by Jones’s followers. But I was surprised to hear the father say that some of the people who initially tormented him eventually came to realize that he was telling the truth and accepted that the Sandy Hook massacre actually happened. The father said that a few of these people even offered to help him.

    So there may well be a group of MAGA types who will tune in to see what the January 6th Committee has to present and may possibly change their minds about who is really to blame for the attack on the Capitol and which party is the real threat to American democracy. Hemingway’s Jake Barnes might comment, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” but that’s what I’m hoping for. After all, the worst doesn’t always happen and sometimes the good guys win.

    • Peterr says:

      My vision of GOP counter-programming is more ominous than simply Trump going on a rant on Fox. I could easily imagine a bomb going off somewhere in order to cut into the live coverage of the hearings and shift the attention away from their work. I’m not saying a bomb at the Capitol or anything that direct, but a simple violent outburst of some kind to turn the cameras away from DC. I could also imagine some much more deadly scenarios to accomplish the same end.

      I also wonder about what folks in Russia’s Department of Meddling in US Politics might have in mind for Thursday, given how they jumped quickly to try to stifle the attention of the media to the Access Hollywood “Grab ’em by the pussy” tape by releasing the Podesta emails.

      • Opiwan says:

        I fear this, as well, like the plot to Wag the Dog only live and in color in our living rooms.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        There are plans like this afoot, Peterr. It’s not just speculation. Nothing as organized or focused as J6, but still ostensibly targeting “antifa.” It is interesting to me how that label has turned into an all-purpose permission slip for violent actors on the right. Bill Barr, who wielded it cynically (the way he does most things), will always have blood on his hands for the currency his invocations gave it.

    • Rayne says:

      Oof.

      The email is part of the intensifying Justice Department investigation focused on the Trump campaign’s interactions with so-called alternate Republican electors in states Trump lost and whether a scheme to organize them could be charged as a crime.

      The Georgia email has not been disclosed publicly until now. It was sent by Robert Sinners, Trump’s election day operations lead in Georgia on December 13, 2020, 18 hours before the group of alternate electors gathered at the Georgia State Capitol, according to multiple sources familiar with it.

      Emphasis mine.

      Have to wonder if there were similar requests in the other states with fraudulent certifications produced by false electors, like Michigan.

      Wonder if the DOJ is firewalling a larger January 6 investigation focusing on subsets like the false electors.

  13. Jonathan says:

    Re Rayne’s post and the Ohio law targeting trans athletes. As a male runner, I am …. amused at my fellow men who seem to care so much about who competes in women’s sports. Maybe the women should decide??

    So far this hasn’t really been a huge problem in real life, other than in a few prominent cases such as that of the world class South African 800 meter runner Caster Semenya. For those who are not familiar, she was banned from running her favorite distance because of supposed genetic/ male(?) advantages she has due to her naturally high testosterone levels. (It is conjectured that she was born intersex). IMO that ban was a travesty — there was no question of her having transitioned to a new gender, and I know of no credible accusations against her regarding banned substances. Perhaps the case of the collegiate trans woman swimmer recently reported by NYT will someday matter more, who can say?

    But if this issue becomes a real problem at the elite level, I hope that women athletes will solve it. Maybe by setting up an Olympic level commission composed of prominent female athletes and the appropriate medical/ scientific experts to study and report.

    The Ohio legislature is, as you say, just trolling for headlines at the expense of any girls forced to submit to such invasive exams.

    [Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use a more differentiated username when you comment next as we have several community members named “Jonathan” or “Jon.” Thanks. /~Rayne]

    • Rayne says:

      Semenya is one of the best examples I can think of which this Ohio bill fails. Her hormones indicate she’s not woman enough for Ohio’s GOP though she was born with female organs, but let’s be honest with ourselves that being a person of color also makes Semenya less acceptable to conservatives who will question the validity of any inspection which indicates she was born female.

      Semenya has been “handicapped” by being a woman, subjected to enormous harassment based on her congenital attributes, and still she wants to run in women’s sports. I say let her run if she’s willing to do it in the face of so much bigoted disapprobation.

  14. newbroom says:

    Would that consciousness insisted on non violence. Violence is nature’s bailiwick.

  15. Tom says:

    For Fox News to decide they’re not going to cover the January 6th hearings seems like the same mistake Kevin McCarthy made when he decided the GOP was not going to have representatives sit on the January 6th committee.(the mutineers Cheney & Kinzinger excepted). If I were a regular Fox viewer, I’d be mighty curious about what it is the Fox TV hosts don’t want me to see.

    • MB says:

      Fox will be sorta covering the 1/6 hearings – on Fox Business Network, with lesser-known anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.

      Otherwise, they can’t afford to interrupt the firehose of propaganda on the main “news” channel…

  16. harpie says:

    DHS bulletin warns US could see more volatile threats fueled by election misinformation and upcoming Supreme Court abortion ruling
    https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/dhs-bulletin-threats-election-misinformation-supreme-court-abortion/index.html June 7, 2022

    The Department of Homeland Security is warning that threats in the US could become even more volatile throughout the summer and midterm election season, fueled by election year misinformation and potential violence surrounding an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights. […]

    DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/06/07/dhs-issues-national-terrorism-advisory-system-ntas-bulletin Release Date: June 7, 2022

    Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the continued heightened threat environment across the United States. This is the sixth NTAS Bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since January 2021 and it replaces the current Bulletin that was set to expire at 2:00 PM ET today. […]

    • harpie says:

      https://twitter.com/SeamusHughes/status/1533873991416434691
      2:10 PM · Jun 6, 2022

      “In my thirty-eight-plus years of law enforcement, this is the most complex threat environment I’ve ever seen,” [John] Cohen [who served as the acting chief of intelligence for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President Biden until this April] said…”I am really fucking concerned about where we are.” [link]

      Links to:
      Two January 6th Defendants and the Consolidation of Right-Wing Extremism As Congress searches for accountability, Guy Reffitt and Jessica Watkins remain defiant.
      https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/two-january-6th-defendants-and-the-consolidation-of-right-wing-extremism
      Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz June 6, 2022

    • Rayne says:

      Because we all know how violent the wimmen folks are when their rights are degraded.

      Like that unarmed mom who went into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde to rescue her kids after being stopped and handcuffed by Uvalde police. So violent. ~sigh~

      Betting the threat will be used by the right-wing just the way Antifa was blamed for January 6.

      • Rugger9 says:

        Ted Cruz tried to blame BLM today for the rise in violence, specifically citing the 2020 riots, which in many cases the violence was done by cops (on and off duty) trying to provoke headlines.

        • Rayne says:

          Cruz is such a stupid ass. But he’s not the only one who’s tried to blame violence on people of color — that Trumpy Senate candidate Blake Masters spilled his racism this past week:

          “It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly. And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that.”

          Utterly disgusting.

        • harpie says:

          And how about those librul big cities?:

          New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America Rising homicide rates don’t tell the whole story. When you dig deeper into data on deaths, you’ll find the more urban your surroundings, the less danger you face. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america Justin Fox
          June 7, 2022, 6:00 AM EDT Corrected June 7, 2022, 2:17 PM EDT

          New Yorkers are only about as third as likely to die in transportation accidents of any kind as Americans are overall. Put homicide and transportation risks together, and New York starts looking like a refuge from the American carnage.
          [links to TRUMP’s inaugural address…LOL!]

        • harpie says:

          Note: I don’t understand statistics at all, so I don’t know if any of this is correct, or if the logic is shoddy.

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          That article is conflating homicides and traffic accident deaths. But anyone who studies violent crime knows that it tracks with social disadvantage–poverty, lack of opportunity, despair and now the near-ubiquity of guns.

          Anyone interested in this should look up the FBI’s database of statistics on crime (at fbi.gov). Asking the right questions rewards a researcher with fascinating information but no simplistic sound bytes, especially not of the Fox variety.

          The highest per capita rates of violent crime, for example, tend to be in smaller cities, often in red states, typically in segregated (by race but also by economic disparity) neighborhoods. A good way to discover this is to pretend you’re buying a house in the city, and do a neighborhood search; real estate sites will steer you away from certain areas, which you can then look up on fbi.gov.

          Or, you know, live in or visit a city and actually pay attention to those around you, their lives and what sustains or thwarts them.

  17. klynn says:

    Just had a friend suggest a nationwide AR-15 “buy-back or tax back” along with high capacity ammo included in the buy-back/tax-back and then ship the weapons and ammo to Ukraine.

    Interesting suggestion.

    • Rayne says:

      Not the first time I’ve seen this suggested, but I’d be worried about the blowback, like the Stinger missiles and training provided to the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. We could still see blowback even with the weapons we’re seeing now, but they’re easier to trace than AR-15s.

    • christopher rocco says:

      Not sure about the ‘send them to Ukraine” part, but the buy back idea is good, and I have suggested to my congessman’s office that a look at the the 1934 National Firearms Act, which put the Tommygun out of business via a hefty excise tax, might serve as a model. If semi-auto assault style weapons had a $4000 to $5000 tax on them, they might be less attractive.

  18. harpie says:

    Scoop: Jan. 6 committee’s secret adviser
    https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/jan-6-committee-adviser-james-goldston
    Jun 6, 2022

    The House’s Jan. 6 committee has turned to a renowned former network news executive to hone a mountain of explosive material into a captivating multimedia presentation for a prime-time hearing Thursday.

    James Goldston — former president of ABC News, and a master documentary storyteller who ran “Good Morning America” and “Nightline” — has joined the committee as an unannounced adviser, Axios has learned.

    Why it matters: I’m told Goldston is busily producing Thursday’s 8 p.m. ET hearing as if it were a blockbuster investigative special. […]

  19. Jenny says:

    And let’s not forget the religious side of hate preaching executing gays. Here is an example.

    https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1534207173034758144
    hemant mehta on twitter: 12:14 PM · Jun 7, 2022·Twitter Web App

    On Sunday, Christian hate-preacher Dillon Awes said that the government should execute every gay person. All of them.
    “They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That’s what God teaches. That’s what the Bible says.”

    • Rayne says:

      When I saw that in my timeline yesterday, my first thought was “deeply-closeted self-hating gay.” I hope somebody is already digging into Awes’ background.

      • Jenny says:

        Yes. I totally agree with you Rayne. When these so called Christian pastors preach hate and violent giving permission to their followers to kill, I always go back to a quote my Gandhi:

        “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        Awes seems to be just one more mouthpiece for the Stedfast Baptist Church’s message of hate (so designated by SPLC in 2014). He follows in the tradition of Donnie Romero, who praised the Pulse nightclub killer, and another more recent guy whose platform consists of repeating gay slurs to demonstrate “what side” he is on. They all seem consistent, unoriginal, and untethered to the Gospel, although the second guy does invoke Deuteronomy to recommend “stoning” of slothful or refractory teens.

        Because death gives them so much energy and drive? I’m at a loss here.

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