Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,323]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

The best place to be in a global nuclear war is inside one the blast zones. 😉 

Xenon and iodine radiation will kill you.

[Vesper 28,796]

On 15/07/2024 at 21:39, Vesper said:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-15-dangerous-authoritarian-russell-vought-trumps-grand-vizier/

 

Then-President Donald Trump listens as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks during an event at the White House, October 9, 2019, in Washington.

 

Christian nationalism is a dangerous, far-right ideology that advocates abolishing the separation of church and state, and on behalf of a truly warped religious vision. Indeed, Christians opposed to Christian nationalism have denounced it as a “cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation,” a theocratic and fascist movement with no trace of the radical generosity shown by Jesus in the Bible. Borrowing from the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that welcoming nonwhite immigrants into Western countries is a plot to supplant the cultural and political influence of white people, Christian nationalism has influenced acts of racist violence, such as the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015.

So it’s alarming that this is the ideological worldview espoused by Russell Vought, a career conservative activist and former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director under President Trump, who is reportedly under consideration to be White House chief of staff in a potential second Trump administration. Currently, Vought leads a Trump-aligned think tank, the Center for Renewing America, producing endless reams of viciously cruel proposals.

For decades, Vought has been something of a reverse Robin Hood. Some examples include: leading a pressure campaign while at the Heritage Foundation urging Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act; heading up the Republican Study Committee (RSC), during a time when the ultraconservative caucus wrote a “highly unbalanced” budget (which is to say, it was full of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the poor) to offset relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina; heading policy for the House Republican Conference; and of course working under the Trump OMB. Vought seems to have a particular animus toward programs helping the very worst-off. He drafted a cruel budget where he proposed eliminating the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides federal assistance to cover utility costs for low-income families, cutting nutrition assistance for low-income families, and throwing 90,000 children off of the Head Start program, which helps children from low-income families with their cognitive, emotional, and social development.

After all, who can forget the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who snatch bread out of the mouths of widows and orphans?”

Vought’s contempt for his fellow Americans is not limited to the poor and children—civil servants also draw his ire. He has long advocated for the Schedule F policy initiative, which would allow for the dismissal of up to 50,000 federal civil servants (to be replaced by Trump lickspittles and toadies) in a bid to purge the so-called “deep state.” President Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F executive order before any employees were affected, but Vought is one of the chief architects of Project 2025’s plan to resurrect Schedule F—and this time it would be done right away, rather than at the end of the administration. Nonpartisan federal employees, including those with specialized expertise, would be replaced with witless Trump acolytes by the tens of thousands.

Needing an outlet for his Christian nationalism after leaving the White House, Vought locked arms with other Trump devotees and founded an organization under the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) umbrella called the Center for Renewing America (CRA). CRA hosts a clown car of former Trump officials such as the recently indicted Jeffrey Clark, Ken Cuccinelli, and Kash Patel. CRA was founded on the premise of renewing “consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests worthy of defending that flow from its people, institutions, and history, where individuals’ enjoyment of freedom is predicated on just laws and healthy communities.” The think tank’s “Christian” bona fides truly shine through with charitable policy proposals such as utilizing state war powers to target undocumented immigrants, opposing DEI or any other “woke” social measures, fighting the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and enthusiastically supporting voter suppression.

CRA, as part of CPI, lays the groundwork for potential policymaking and lobbying efforts in a hypothetical second Trump administration. Vought affirmed his Christian nationalist beliefs in a CRA document revealing that he and his influential think tank plan to infuse Christian nationalism into the very fabric of the federal government. In the same document, CRA proposed invoking the Insurrection Act to quell protests and prohibiting use of congressional funds for specific projects.

Vought’s efforts to provide the infrastructure for a second Trump administration do not end with CRA. As noted above, he is also involved with Project 2025, for which he wrote a section of the Mandate for Leadership memo. In it, he interprets the Constitution as giving the president full control over the executive branch—no more independent agencies overseen by Congress, but just the office of the president. The former OMB director goes so far as to say that civil servants and Congress effectively get in the way of a conservative executive branch.

Vought has chastised “the Left’s legal theorists” for adopting “an approach to interpreting the Constitution based on it being a ‘living’ document, meaning that its provisions should be understood to be malleable, keeping up with a modernizing nation.” But if the left has a flexible view of the Constitution, Vought wants to burn it to ashes. There can be no other conclusion when someone supports Trump, a man who attempted to overthrow the very concept of government by “we the people” and install himself as dictator. As Politico’s Heidi Przybyla put it, Christian nationalists are “bound” by the belief that inalienable rights—for them, not for others—come from God, not the law.

When the office of the White House chief of staff was established in 1953 under the Eisenhower administration, it was meant to help guide the president through the policymaking process and coordinate with the federal government. Russell Vought would turn the position into a sort of grand vizier for King Trump. Such a man, who spits on the Constitution, hates civil servants, Congress, and democracy itself, has no business anywhere near power.

Breaking.....

Trump just announed he is likely going to give Vought a Cabinet level position

[Vesper 28,796]

Trump has chosen President of the World Wrestling Entertainment to lead the Department of Education

Linda McMahon was a co-founder with her husband, Vince, of the wrestling company and also Trumps campaign co-chair.

 

 

smdh

[Vesper 28,796]

The ‘now they’re going to find out’ argument is flawed

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters?

https://www.editorialboard.com/the-now-theyre-going-to-find-out-argument-is-flawed/

 

There’s an argument I want to discuss. It goes something like this: Donald Trump’s policies are going to alienate some of the people who voted for him. To be sure, many of them wanted something done about the economy. Prices were too damn high. But they didn’t sign up for tariffs, deportations and cuts to social services, like food stamps.

As a liberal pundit put it, Trump seems poised to follow through with that policy agenda, though going through with it is “political suicide.”

My question is why. 

Why are we expecting so much from Trump voters? I’m not making a distinction between his base and those who chose to go along for the ride. I mean all of his supporters, and I’m asking: Why should we place our democratic faith, and the future of the republic, in their hands? 

It’s not like Trump had an agenda to bring down the cost of living. All he said was “Make America Great Again.” Deport “illegals.” Suppress transgender rights. Beat down weak and marginalized folks. Voilà! 

His one economic plan was tariffs. A tax on imported goods from China and elsewhere will raise prices on everything, not just imports, as retailers will price-gouge under cover of inflation. Tariffs are the opposite of what you do to reduce costs. And that’s why he lied. Trump said nations would pay the tax, not companies bringing goods in. 

His voters chose to believe him. 

So let me get this straight.  

People who can’t or won’t understand tariffs are going to deduce all by themselves that tariffs are the reason they’re now paying three and four times more for their sneakers, T-shirts and video-game consoles? 

People who voted against their own economic interests are going to figure out on their own what exactly those interests are, but only after they’ve been screwed over by the president they voted for?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would be easier to continue scamming these people than convince them that they’ve been scammed. 

And the scamming will continue.

The rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, prevented these voters from knowing what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had done for the economy, inflation, wages and the GDP, but especially for the material interests of the white working class. Biden and Harris literally ditched 40 years of supply-side consensus in favor of growing the economy, as Biden liked to say, from the bottom up and middle out. But no one who watches Fox or listens to Joe Rogan or reads The Daily Wire or sees YouTube ads for gold bullion knows any of that. 

This same rightwing media apparatus, which has only grown larger since 2020, is going to prevent Trump voters from knowing who’s responsible for price hikes, job losses and soaring interest rates that will be directly attributable to deportations, tariffs and other insane policies. If there’s someone to blame, it won’t be Donald Trump. It will be RINOs or “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialists” or immigrants. 

If Trump voters are not especially attuned to the rightwing media apparatus, they will nevertheless feel its ambiance, as the Washington press corps habitually launders Trump’s talking points and, as we have seen, appeases him by either self-censoring or acting as if already under threat of investigation or prosecution by his administration. 

If Trump voters are able to see through the fog of the rightwing media apparatus and the Washington press corps, they still might not understand the damage done by Trump’s economic policies, as his administration will almost certainly try to corrupt government data. The jobs report, inflation index, consumer spending – there will huge incentive to fudge those after Trump commits “political suicide.”

If Trump voters are able to connect all the dots and blame him for everything he did or didn’t do, as they blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for everything they did and didn’t do, so what? Is Trump going to respond to the backlash as if he were a normal president? 

He doesn’t care about his party. He doesn’t care about the next election (presuming he doesn’t run again). It’s hard to see any incentive outside his self-interest that would move him to back off anything.

And I haven’t mentioned the fact that these voters, even the ones who chose to go along for the ride, inhabit a world of fantastical fiction, absolute trash reality, that none of us should put our hopes in. 

These people believe mothers “abort” babies after they’re born or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. They believe a student goes to school as a girl and comes back as a boy or if they don’t believe it, they don’t mind people who say so. Even if we give them the maximum benefit of the doubt, and treat them more like children than adults, are we going to trust them to realize Trump is bad for them?

And even if Trump voters turn against Trump, thus creating an opportunity for the Democrats to win them over, are they going to recognize what the Democrats are offering in terms of economic policy given the hold the rightwing media apparatus has on them and given their past record of voting against their own economic interests?

I’ll pass. 

I’ll pass on believing these people are going to find out anything after having fucked around. They don’t take democracy seriously. They don’t take their own lives seriously, much less the fate of a free republic. 

I’ll put my faith in good people who seek out good trouble in the name of liberty, equality and justice for all. They’re a minority these days, but that’s OK. The world never changed for the better because a majority wanted it to. It changed because a righteous minority demanded it.