I won't go into every disagreement I have with Sen. Manchin's explanation of why he'll vote against the For the People Act when it comes up, since my disagreements number approximately one per point made, but let's just focus on his statement that the For the People Act is a "partisan" bill. How do we know it's a "partisan" bill? Not from him describing any parts of it, that's for sure, because he doesn't! No, we "know" it's "partisan" because no Republicans support it, and for no other reason. Hasn't he figured out after 11 years that Republicans don't support anything that might actually help people? Here's the punchline, though: an actual bipartisan majority of voters support the For the People Act in poll after poll! (Also, the bill earns 79% support in Mr. Manchin's state, West Virginia. You'd think that'd matter to him.) Yes, it turns out that ending gerrymandering and disclosing big campaign contributors and prohibiting racist de-registrations (to name three more things in the For the People Act than Mr. Manchin did!) are all actual bipartisan concerns!. Lesson: the actual bipartisanship of the American people should matter more than the drama-infused "bipartisanship" of politicians.
Janine Jackson at FAIR notices the Washington Post putting up a "native" ad (i.e., an ad that sure looks like news!) about Amazon's support for a higher minimum wage, though Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Post. This was just a few short hours after the Washington, D.C. Attorney General announced an antitrust suit against Amazon. Anyway, Jeff Bezos's support for the federal minimum wage doesn't emanate from the goodness of his heart -- it emanates from the activism of good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR, and their number may have included you. There's another name for ads that look like news, as Ms. Jackson suggests: fake news. I know, a certain former President has abused that term, but it does refer to actual phenomena.
Ho hum, the Proud Boys are trying to take over the Multnomah (OR) Republican Party, and they sure do some dick-swinging in their emails. I remember my heart being this full of hate once, but you know what happened? Several decades passed, and I became a man and put away childish things. Then again, what grown man calls himself a "boy," let alone a "proud" one? (Also, how amazing is it that the Oregon Republican Party of Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Vic Atiyeh has come to this?)
I should have realized that Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, one of the biggest supporters of that ridiculous "audit" of Maricopa County votes, belongs to the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), notorious pusher of right-wing legislative initiatives for over three decades -- but I didn't know she was actually their second highest-ranking board member! This is another good time to remind everyone that ALEC said it was getting out of the vote-suppression game after taking all that flack for all those Voter ID laws -- but clearly they didn't mean that.
Finally, Donald Trump has apparently warmed to the idea of running for a U.S. House seat in the hopes that Republicans will take back the House and he can then be Speaker, and thus third-in-line for the Presidency, but I find it extremely unlikely that he's only now thought of this -- I thought of it months ago, and I'm not a thug like he is. The district in which Mr. Trump currently lives is quite Democratic -- Rep. Frankel won by 18 points in 2020 -- but maybe Florida Republicans, who control all the branches of government, can "fix" that via redistricting. I kid, of course -- I'd be shocked if they didn't.
Comments