Republicans: continued

[JimC]

[Tero]

Democrats and guns
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Democrats were trying to confiscate US citizens' guns.
"They're also trying to take away your guns," Jordan said.
Facts First: Some Democrats have supported a mandatory gun confiscation buy-back. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, instead supports a voluntary buy-back program.
Along with banning the "manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines," Biden's plan includes mandating that people who own assault weapons either sell theirs to the federal government or properly register them with the authorities.

China travel ban
While the President has come under fire for his administration's response to the coronavirus, two speakers at the Republican convention Monday night praised the travel restrictions he had imposed on China.
Natalie Harp, an advisory board member for the Trump campaign, spoke about the Trump-supported Right to Try legislation and its role in her fight against bone cancer. Harp commended Trump for fighting for Americans, saying that if not for him, "In January, there would have been no China travel ban. Millions would have died."
Donald Trump Jr. said that after the coronavirus came to the US, "The President quickly took action and shut down travel from China."
Facts First: These comments are misleading on two counts: Trump imposed partial restrictions on travel from China, not a complete ban, and they were announced in January but effective February 2. There is no evidence that the travel restrictions on China saved millions of lives.
You can read a longer fact check here. (The restrictions also did not apply to US citizens returning from Europe as well as permanent US residents and certain family members of both citizens and permanent residents.)

Postal workers
After weeks of increasing political furor over recent cuts at the US Postal Service, President Donald Trump on Monday said he would not support agency cuts.

"We're taking good care of our postal workers. That I can tell you," the President said on the first night of the Republican National Convention. "Believe me, we're not getting rid of any our postal workers, you know." He went on to claim, "If anyone does it's the Democrats, not the Republicans."

Facts first: This is false. Internal USPS documents obtained by CNN contradict the President's statement. Before Postmaster General Louis DeJoy suspended many changes until after the election, the USPS was planning to drastically cut work hours in at least one district. Also, Democrats have not proposed laying off postal workers.

In documents obtained by CNN, USPS managers held a "stand up talk," around July 13, telling workers they would be cutting roughly 100,000 to 124,000 work hours across the district, in all sectors — retail, delivery and processing. It was unclear how management would be implementing the changes. The USPS planned on cutting so many work hours in mail processing operations — 124,000 — the documents say it would be the equivalent of closing all processing plants in the Appalachian district for 29 days or eliminate an entire shift of workers for 86 days.
Delivery in urban areas would be reduced by 110,983 work hours. The documents equated the work hour cuts to: not delivering mail for 13 days, or stopping 43 city routes, or ending mail delivery by 25 minutes every day.

It also included clerk and retail operations, which management was going to cut by 112,475 work hours. That's the equivalent of shutting post office retail operations for 90 days, district wide, according to the documents.
The initiative to cut work hours has since stopped because DeJoy paused them after intense public scrutiny. But union officials CNN has spoken to fear the changes will be brought back after the 2020 election.
They also are concerned because past work hour cuts have led to job cuts.
In his congressional testimony, DeJoy alluded that significant changes are still coming to the USPS, they're just coming after the election now.
DeJoy operates independently of the President, but has significant ties to him as a mega-donor and the former finance chair for the Republican National Committee.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/politics ... index.html

Police funding
Top Congressional Republicans attacked the Democrats on police funding.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan implied Democrats want to "defund the police" and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said "The left wants to defund the police."
Facts First: While some Democrats have joined calls for a radical shift in police policy, including a reduction in police budgets, top congressional Democrats and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have not supported calls to "defund the police."
Biden's published criminal justice plan called for a $300 million investment in community policing efforts -- including the hiring of more officers.
On June 8, Biden told CBS, "No, I don't support defunding the police," Rather, he said, "I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness. And, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, told CNN, "Defunding police departments are not the answer." House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline and Karen Bass have also spoken out about the phrase, CNN reported in June.

[Brian Peacock]

well, maybe he should have done that back when she was fucksome.

Any comment on hubby's fucksomeness?

Aye. It' snot her features or attributes that make her, erm, unlovable. It's her personality.

[pErvinalia]

That's snot very nice.

[Tero]

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America has a constitution! It's special! It has freedoms, which the educated are trying to steal.
https://mobile.twitter.com/govkristinoem

[Scot Dutchy]

Who is this "god" that gives out liberties? Totally disillusioned poor woman.

[Sean Hayden]

It's scary because it won't matter how bad things get under their leadership, they'll never recognize the problem. They'll always find someone else to blame.

--//--

...also, obviously, because you can't help people like her. There's nothing to work with.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Accusations of inciting violence may be slightly overblown, but lying sack of shit Mikey Pence and talking turd Tucker Carlson are condoning it.

'Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson encourage violence, while faking concern for "law and order"'

Under Donald Trump's leadership, Republicans have figured out their election strategy for 2020: Actively incite and encourage violence, and then turn around and feign outrage while promising voters "law and order."

It's a strategy Trump employed in Washington, D.C., when he ordered federal police to tear gas peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, clearly hoping to use the chaotic images that ensued to bolster a lie about protester violence. He did it in Portland, Oregon, sending in federal police for the sole purpose of causing violent clashes he could blame on protesters. He tried to pull the same stunt at his "comeback" rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but failed because local police didn't take the bait and avoided attacking peaceful protesters.

But while Trump's provocations have backfired as often as not, his strategy of instigating violence and then blaming it on "the left" has started to spread among the Republican ranks and Fox News. Wednesday night, at both the Republican National Convention and on the party's favorite propaganda network, the tactic of inciting violence under the guise of "law and order" was on full display.

...

[The Kenosha shooter], a Trump supporter with an adolescent fascination with police, had gone from his hometown in nearby Illinois to Kenosha to join militia groups who claimed they were there to "help" maintain order. Any fool can see that was not their real purpose. This was a bunch of right-wingers who have spent years soaking in violent fantasies and see the protests as an excuse to lash out against people they demonize as "social justice warriors." These militias are all too often openly supported by police, who may be less interested in keeping order than in cracking down on protests.

Unsurprisingly, then, the presence of the militia led to more disorder and violence, not less. And it's truly rich for Carlson to claim some enthusiasm for "order" when he's actively glorifying a young man who is accused of murder — whereas no BLM protesters in Kenosha have killed anyone, or been accused of doing so.

Vice President Mike Pence might have been more subtle with his rhetoric, but he was no less guilty than Carlson of encouraging right-wing violence in his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.

After claiming to believe that the "violence must stop," Pence went on to lament the death of Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal police officer "who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland."

This claim was wildly misleading. Pence clearly meant his audience to believe that BLM protesters (or antifa, or other "radicals") had killed Underwood. In fact, those accused are Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo and an accomplice named Robert Justus, who appear to be affiliated with the far-right "boogaloo" movement.

Boogaloo adherents want to turn the current racial tensions brought on by Trump's overt racism and police violence into an occasion for a new civil war, and have been openly plotting to exploit BLM protests as cover for violent acts that they hope will to kick off such a conflict.

In Facebook messages just before the killing, Carrillo explicitly said, "We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage."

While feigning outrage over Underwood's killing, Pence was giving the alleged murderer exactly what he wanted: A bait-and-switch in which BLM protesters are blamed for violence caused by the right. It may have been more sophisticated than what Carlson was doing, but Pence was still encouraging right-wing militiamen to act on their violent fantasies, by signaling that they'll be rewarded by the Trump administration helping them elevate their false narratives.

[Brian Peacock]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Gandhi.

[pErvinalia]

Don't know that we are at the winning stage yet.

[Hermit]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Gandhi.

Misattributed

[Tero]

Before his Wednesday night show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was staring at a narrative problem. Wisconsin officials had issued an arrest warrant for 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in connection with the fatal shootings Tuesday night of two people at protests in Kenosha, Wis., over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Quickie biographies indicated that Rittenhouse, who is White, supports both President Trump and the Blue Lives Matter movement.

A member of the extended Fox News tribe, in other words, was alleged to have committed heinous, high-profile acts.

What could Carlson do? Ignoring the matter would have been simple enough:
Over the past four or so years, Carlson has glided right past all manner of Trump scandals and indiscretions — omissions that his audience will never penalize. Or, he could concoct some way of blaming Rittenhouse’s alleged crimes on something outside the Fox News community.

With a grave mien, Carlson blasted through Door No. 2. “We do know why it all happened, though,” said Carlson after noting the lack of confirmed details. “Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it. People in charge, from the governor of Wisconsin on down, refused to enforce the law. They stood back and they watched Kenosha burn,” he said.

“So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? Everyone could see what was happening in Kenosha. It was getting crazier by the hour,” Carlson said.

Not only was this a stunning rationalization for vigilante killing, but the argument contradicted the self-righteous theme of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” vis-a-vis this summer’s protests. When violence broke out after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, Carlson thundered, “Democracy cannot exist when people are rioting. Rioting is a form of tyranny. The strong and the violent oppress the weak and the unarmed.”

Boldface added to highlight a poignant turnabout. When the “unarmed” were allegedly under siege in the unrest associated with the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis, well, that was a crisis. When the “unarmed” were actually (and allegedly) under siege in Kenosha from a White adherent of Blue Lives Matter, well, the conduct must be excused. So warped is Carlson’s worldview that vigilantism of the AR-15 variety ranks among understandable reactions to civil unrest. (Given Carlson’s previous bloviating about democracy, you might suppose that he would accept no response other than circulating petitions, writing op-eds, lobbying politicians, canvassing.)

“Our cities are burning because the people in charge have allowed them to burn,” Carlson said Wednesday. “Tonight, the White House is sending hundreds of additional National Guardsmen and military policemen to Kenosha and that is a very good thing.” Officials had already acknowledged that they’d been caught off guard by the roving civil-rights protests in this lakeside city in southeastern Wisconsin.

Yet Carlson’s simple prescription — more cops! — grinds against collective experience. As Maggie Koerth and Jamiles Lartey noted in a Marshall Project piece in June, researchers have poured 50 years of analysis into policing civil-rights protests. One conclusion is that “when the police respond by escalating force — wearing riot gear from the start, or using tear gas on protesters — it doesn’t work. In fact, disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful.” Patrolling protests with the appropriate use of force is particularly knotty when the thing that’s being protested is inappropriate use of force.

Heather Ann Thompson, a University of Michigan professor whose book on the 1971 Attica riots won the Pulitzer Prize, tells the Erik Wemple Blog, “It is always vitally important that we don’t send in more members of law enforcement because that always tends to fuel the flames.” She cited unrest at Attica and in Chicago and Orangeburg, S.C., in 1968. As Arizona State University professor Edward Maguire noted in a 2015 paper, the prevailing approach to protests in the 1960s and 1970s was known as “escalated force,” in which police used large and scary deployments to ensure compliance with their wishes. The model, according to Maguire, had these effects:
. . . a lack of appreciation or respect for protesters’ First Amendment rights; an intolerance for community disruption and a tendency for police to equate civil disobedience with anarchy; a minimal level of communication or negotiation between police and protesters; the widespread use of arrest, often under tenuous or legally questionable circumstances, as a means to control protesters; and an overreliance by police on the use of force.

The night after Tuesday’s mayhem in Kenosha, the streets were calmer. “Both police and the self-declared militia members who were ever-present on Tuesday mostly stayed away from protesters Wednesday night,” noted a Post story by Jaclyn Peiser, Mark Guarino and Mark Berman.

Don’t mistake Carlson for a person of principle. He told a conservative audience in 2019, “I just have reactions to things, as you can tell." One steadfast argument, though, has unified Carlson’s roughly four years as a prime-time anchor at Fox News: the idea that the “progressive left," and not the police or right-wingers, are responsible for most political violence in the United States. This plank of Carlsonism reared its head in May 2017, after Greg Gianforte, then a Republican congressional candidate in Montana, body-slammed a reporter.

Carlson said: "America does face a threat of political violence. It does not come, by and large, from baby boomer evangelicals in Montana. Nor does it come from President Trump, whatever his flaws. The threat today comes from the progressive left and its growing enthusiasm for force as a political tool.”

In the civil rights era, notes Thompson, there was an alliance between local police and “white communities that felt aggrieved and under threat by the possibility of actual black equality. As the Kenosha videos show, that alliance remains and white vigilantes count on it.” A big mistake, she says, is to view the comments by Carlson as new or fresh in any way. “The attempt to spin legitimate protests against civil rights injustices as irrational and violent riots is not only familiar,” she says, “but it’s perhaps even more incendiary now than it was in the ’50s and ’60s. We’ve had victories in the civil rights movement and we’re not going back.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ium=social

[Tero]

People want this referendum on the ballot, but some lawyer is holding it up. "It's against the state constitution!"

[Brian Peacock]

It's against the state constitution to ask voters if they'd like a change in the law. That just ain't democratic.

[Tero]

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That Antifa gets around. What's his first name?