The loss of the Republican soul just to win at any cost is one of the most dangerous trends facing our democracy today. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh is more proof of how far Republicans are willing to go to undermine our democracy just to “own the libs.”
Let’s take a moment and check to see how far we have come.
Sexual Assault – Republicans have no problem with sexual assault, this is very clear first voting for Donald Trump, who bragged about his ability to grab a woman’s pussy because he’s famous, and the large support behind Brett Kavanaugh. They’ll question her motivation for coming forward now in the 11th hour, ignoring the fact that she came forward before Kavanaugh was even nominated. They’ll deflect and claim Dr. Ford was lying because she said she was afraid of flying yet she took an airplane to Washington D.C., ignoring the reality that many of us are afraid of needles but we still get our flu shots and this has no effect on our credibility. Democrats turned on Al Frankin when his sexual assault accusations became public, Republicans have shown they are only interested in protecting victims of sexual assault when it is politically convenient for them.
Cheating – Republicans wouldn’t give Merrick Garland a hearing, a violation of their Constitutional duties, then invoked the ‘nuclear option’ to force two and possibly more partisan activist judges on the Supreme Court. They’ll give bullshit answers like, “Oh the Biden rule!” which didn’t apply to the Garland situation and nobody ever took seriously enough to even consider it as a rule. Or “Oh Democrats are obstructionists!” forgetting they obstructed ALL of Obama’s federal judge nominees and Merrick Garland, and there are 49 Democrats in the Senate… if every Republican votes together Democrats have no power! The lies they will tell themselves to rationalize their cheating is outrageous.
Perjury – Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath. He repeatedly claimed Ford’s accusation has been “refuted” by others who she said attended the party — even though the other attendees have said no such thing. Kavanaugh said he “did not travel in the same social circles” as Ford, but he did. Kavanaugh attempted to fabricate an alibi by suggesting he did not drink on weekdays and was out of town almost every weekend night of the summer of 1982, but his calendar clearly refuted this. Kavanaugh said he had no connection to Yale University prior to attending undergrad and law school there, but he was a legacy admittee. Kavanaugh cited Maryland’s drinking age in explaining his behavior, even though he was too young to legally drink in any case. These are just a few examples of lying, under oath, while in a job interview for a seat on the highest court in the country. Republicans do not see a problem with this.
Law and Order – It’s a sham. Republicans are only out to win at all costs. (See: Merrick Garland, nuclear option, Kavanaugh) The FBI investigation was limited by the White House to only 9 individuals that did not include Dr. Ford or Brett Kavanaugh, which is typical for an investigation of this type, as well as the over 40 individuals who came forward and was willing to give their testimony. There was no effort to look into the lies Kavanaugh told under oath. Now the Kavanaugh confirmation process is over they can now go back to protecting Donald Trump, the first president to ever continue to own, operate, promote, and receive profits from over 400 businesses he has never divested from, and which as we learn more and more through intrepid reporting, Trump is a tax cheat.
The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process has shown Republicans have not learned from their support of credibly accused sexual predators, such as Donald Trump, and instead are willing to ignore women, ignore their credible stories, ignore broken laws, willing to accuse Democrats of their own sins, and cheat their way to victory at any cost.
At Stop The Donald Trump we are constantly pointing out Fox News has spent a lot of energy in creating an alternative reality for their viewers by ignoring key facts, withholding context, and making stuff up.
Fox also uses strategy of vilifying the rest of the news media (“The liberal media!”, “The mainstream media”) which has been so successful that most Fox News viewers only get their information from Fox News.
This is a dangerous recipe that makes it very easy for Fox to get away with overtly racist arguments because if you’ve lived in this worldview they created and maintained for the past 20+ years it is all very normal.
So when Fox News ignores systemic racism and on a daily basis repeats ideas like “blacks must try harder to get ahead”, “Irish, Italians, and Jewish minorities overcame prejudice and now it’s African American’s turn”, and generations of slavery and Jim Crow is not a factor in discussions on upward mobility, what would seem cruel, ridiculous, and missing important context to the rest of the world, a regular Fox News viewer doesn’t blink.
Like remember when Megyn Kelly shoutted “Santa Claus is white kids! He just is!” and nobody on her panel did a double-take.
This is because their viewers have been conditioned for decades to fear minorities, foreigners, other religions, paint liberals as Jesus-hating communist baby murders who want to turn your kids gay, and because of the mistrust they instill of other actual news media, they can outright lie to their viewers.
Some examples include:
Saying the United Nations was laughing with Trump and not at him.
Giving full credit to a booming economy Trump was gifted to by Obama.
Claiming the FISA judge was unaware the Steele Dossier was funded as opposition research.
There has been two specific moments that normalized white supremacy enough where Fox News has been able to be more open with their racism.
Milo Yiannopoulos’ “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right”
The candidacy and election of Donald Trump.
What Milo did in his successful Breitbart article was paint the alt-right as just another conservative movement by downplaying the white supremacist origins and made the ideas of a white nation more palatable to a larger audience.
And people forget that article was widely shared, written about, and discussed in conservative circles, including months of sympathetic portrayals of the alt-right on Fox News, right up until (and during) Charlottesville.
That really pushed white nationalism into the open and mainstream.
And I could talk for hours about Trump, but in short his election validated his racist, sexist, and xenophobic comments and made them more everyday normal. Case in point, Trump attacked a sexual assault survivor to a cheering crowd and it’s not a scandal today.
If we recognize we live in a country where racism has all been normalized because of the efforts of Fox News and Republican radio hosts, it makes sense that someone like Tucker Carlson can literally repeat talking points of the KKK verbatim (“It’s okay to be white”) and it is seen as acceptable and popular to a Fox New audience.
So nobody should be surprised the outcome had nothing to do with Russia.
Second, this has everything to do with Russia.
Robert Mueller’s Prize isn’t Paul Manafort, it’s Donald Trump. And as many experts have noted Mueller is approaching this like a RICO case, that requires flipping smaller fish, getting them to cooperate with you, in order to get the next biggest fish, until you get the biggest fish you can.
The reason this trial existed is because Mueller found Paul Manafort’s illegal activity and he refused to flip and turn state’s evidence.
So, just like in any normal RICO case, you put that person on trial with the evidence you have against them, such as hiding income from the IRS, and you keep turning the screws until they flip to get you that next bigger fish.
This is why Mueller has Manafort on another trial next month regarding his money laundering for Russian oligarch-backed Ukrainians.
Why continue to have multiple trials even though Manafort was found guilty and will probably spend the rest of his life in jail? Again it’s not about Manfort but Trump. Mueller wants the information Manafort has. As a prosecutor you can continue to put pressure on Manfort until it becomes too great for him, then you can give him the incentive to go back and reduce his sentence should he flip and cooperate with the Special Council.
So to believe the claim that Manafort’s conviction has nothing to do with Russia, you’ll really need to ignore all context surrounding the trial, and why it went to trial to begin with.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un just completed the first ever meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a leader from North Korea and to Trump’s (and mostly to South Korean President Moon‘s) credit, they pulled off a first-of-its-kind summit.
But after the world had a chance to get past the spectacle, and look at the substance, it was a major bust.
The end of the summit culminated in a document signed by Trump and Un that promises a lot, and isn’t clear on how.
For example the agreement does not elaborate on what steps North Korea will take to denuclearize, no new commitments, no timetables, no definitions, all very important items for an international agreement. There were no real breakthroughs other than two leaders shaking hands.
This was the most bare-minimum statements our two countries could hope for, and right-wing news is already promoting it as the biggest event in human history.
The reality is the only actual positive good for world peace the agreement commits to is holding further negotiations led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a “relevant” North Korean official at “the earliest date possible.”
More diplomacy is always better than no diplomacy, but make no mistake what happened in Singapore was nothing but a photo op, as Fox News would say, between two dictators.
While Fox News made a slip of the tongue, we’re not. Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies that were on full display on foreign soil, such as:
Trump praised the dictator Kim Jong Un as “handsome.”
And as a sign of our newly found friendship with foreign dictators, Trump really went out of his way for appeasement and to make a good impression by not pushing hard on any of his stated goals, while giving up major concessions.
What North Korea Got
Agreed to “denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula,” this is language favored by North Korea for more than a quarter century.
Got America to agree to no demands for “verifiable” or “irreversible” denuclearization. A break from CVID (complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization) agreements in the past, such as the Iran deal that Trump ripped up for being “too weak.”
In 1992 North and South Korea signed a joint agreement of denuclearization, to not “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.’’ North Korea broke this agreement and since done all but use them on an adversary.
In 1993, North Korea entered into bilateral talks with the United States, and promised to abandon the “threat and use of force, including nuclear weapons.”
In 1994, North Korea accepted the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework/Six-Party Talks, under which Pyongyang offered to freeze its plutonium producing reactors and “eventually” dismantle them. They broke it.
In 2000, North Korea released a U.S.-DPRK joint communique in 2000 pledging a freeze of work on long-range missiles “of all kinds.” They broke it.
In 2005, North Korea agreed to six-party talks and to the “verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner.” A year later they detonated their first nuclear bomb.
In 2007, North Korea agreed to normalizing relations and to an Action Plan to “shut down and seal” the plutonium-producing reactors at Yongbyon, with a view to its “eventual abandonment.” They didn’t.
Later in 2007, North Korea entered into a second round of implementation plans with the U.S., pledging to “disable” all of its nuclear facilities, again with a view to later “abandonment.” They now have a nuclear weapon they can put on a missile that can hit America.
Why we got screwed
Donald Trump fashions himself this great deal-maker, but by almost any count we came away with nothing concrete on the side of North Korea and gave them concession after concession after concession.
Of course the recovery of American remains is important, especially to the families of our fallen, which we’ll be sure to see plastered all over Fox News for a few weeks to boost Trump’s historically low approval ratings.
But at the end of the day if Kim Jong Un still has nukes that can hit Denver, we’re not checking his promises, we’re not interested in inspecting his facilities, we’re asking for North Korea to be honest and just volunteer how much nuclear material they have, and there are less U.S. troops stationed in the Korean DMZ and we’re no longer coordinating with our allies in the region, these are all dangerous recipes for future families asking for the remains of their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.
Right-wing news is pushing a new nutjob conspiracy theory to discredit the FBI and the Mueller investigation.
This one is surrounding Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who reported George Papadopoulos’ drunken boasts that Russia was working with the Trump campaign to the FBI, which then launched the Russia probe.
The theory, first floated in this Hill article, is that Downer gave $25 million to the Clinton Foundation to fight AIDS, therefore because he has a tie to Hillary Clinton the entire investigation is bogus.
A couple of problems.
First, it makes zero logical sense. A claim is true or false regardless of the source, and George Papadapolous did make these statements and he’s also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts and collusion with Moscow.
Second, the article completely obscures the fact that Downer at the time was the Australian Foreign Minister, and as part of Australia’s overall commitment to fighting epidemic such as AIDS, it was his responsibility to direct billions of dollars each year to many different charities. One of the various charities was the Clinton Foundation, who had an 4/4 rating from Charity Navigator and an A rating from Charity Watch, and was given a small fraction of Australia’s aid budget.
The Australians dedicate over 2 billion USD to development assistance each year and the Australian government, not any individual, is the bilateral donor.
So for this conspiracy theory to stand, it had to be Downer’s own money, it wasn’t, it had to be directed at Hilary Clinton, it wasn’t, and it had to be unique or substantial, it wasn’t.
With Vice President Mike Pence casting a tiebreaking vote giving the GOP enough votes for the motion to proceed to bring the Senate Obamacare replacement bill to the floor, called Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), we really need to take a step back and understand what unprecedented event just happened here today… and it is the collapse of American democracy in Congress.
This is not hyperbole. Let me explain.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who already proved he has no problem blowing up democratic norms, did not follow the exact same democratic legislative process for the BCRA which every bill that has ever went to the Senate floor in our entire lives went through.
Bill gets introduced to the full Senate and objections are heard.
Bill gets referred to a committee, where amendments are submitted or proposed.
Bill is made publicly available for all to read.
Bill needs unanimous consent in committee to go before full Senate.
Bill is debated and amendments are submitted or proposed.
Bill is voted on.
For the Better Care Reconciliation Act NONE OF THIS PROCESS WAS FOLLOWED, instead McConnell’s own newly minted Senate Rule 14 was invoked for the first time, taking the BCRA from step 1, written in the dark by thirteen Senators and lobbyists, and then took it right to step 6. No committees, no public debate, nothing.
This means ALL FUTURE BILLS CAN BE PASSED THIS WAY.
Republicans in the Senate have just sent a clear signal to both parties that democratic norms simply don’t have to be followed to pass a bill and because of Mitch McConnell, Congress no longer has to tell the public what is in a bill, or get a CBO score, and can draft bills in total secrecy even from members of their own party. This vote today by Republicans fundamentally changes Congress and pushes us farther away from a representative democracy envisioned by the founding fathers.
If you are a Republican, you should be very upset at this. Not just because of the destruction of our democratic norms, but because Fox News and Republican media have been telling for 7 years that this is how Obamacare originally passed.
“Democrats on Capitol Hill are working behind the scenes on a plan aimed at jamming this massive health spending bill through Congress against the clear wishes of an unsuspecting public.”
Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, then representing Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, said Democrats were “sacrificing the trust of the American people” by discussing healthcare in secret.
With Democrats discussing health care in secret, they're sacrificing the trust of the American people.
As a side note, of course these Republicans and Fox News was fucking lying to you. Obamacare went through the same normal legislative process as every bill before it, was publicly debated on for 11 months, multiple town hall events were held to engage with the public, the bill went through 72 committee hearings, had dozens of amendments by Republicans accepted, and a vote was put on hold for the entire summer so a “Gang of Six” with three Republicans and three Democrats could find a consensus. Then-President Barack Obama even held a televised town hall at the actual Republican Party Retreat in Baltimore to debate healthcare with the entire GOP, and wiped the floor with them I might add.
But these facts shouldn’t matter to a Republican. They were angry at this (false) narrative that Obamacare was passed in secret with no public debate, their anger shouldn’t change just because now their team is engaging in the same behavior you were told was once reprehensible.
So with Republicans in charge, and with their already proven willingness to invoke nuclear options and break down democratic norms just to get their way, we will see this new path used more and more to enact radical legislative changes.
And this now becomes the new normal, this option to avoid all public debate and transparency is now available for both parties who will use it when it suits them.
What we saw today is the collapse of American democracy in Congress, brought to you by Mitch McConnell and the GOP.
President Donald Trump proclaimed he was withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord, a sweeping step that fulfills a campaign promise while acutely dampening global efforts to curb global warming.
In his speech he made quite a few factual inaccuracies about climate science, but it wasn’t picked up on in Republican media. This is because right-wing news has spent a good amount of money and effort on a misinformation campaign to muddy the waters around man-made climate change.
This makes things extremely difficult and next to impossible to talk to conservatives about man-made climate change because they are playing with alternative facts.
So we would like to walk everyone through the link between CO2 emissions and climate change, so if you are ever confronted in an argument you’ll have a better understanding of why the climate denialist is a complete fool, review some common rebuttals, and it’s actually very cool and interesting stuff to know.
TL;DR
If you are looking for evidence then you don’t have to look any farther than the vast amount of scientific literature spanning back over a century that has the overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide [CO2] in the atmosphere is the primary driver of a rate of climate change that this planet has never before seen in millions of years.
The science, in short, says the following. CO2 lets through short wave light, the kind that passes through our atmosphere, but traps long wave radiation, the kind that gets reflected from the surface and travels back into space. This extra heat retained in the atmosphere warms the planet.
The Science
So let’s start at the beginning and talk about the science behind CO2 in the atmosphere.
Science has been aware for over 150 years that carbon in the atmosphere will retain heat. The year was 1859 to be exact, and it was scientist John Tyndall who made the discovery that carbon in the atmosphere trapped heat. Since his discovery every observation in climate science has reinforced this finding.
You could actually see this in a laboratory today, should your local university have the equipment. You can watch a scientist pump air into an artificial chamber, and see them shine an infrared light through the sample. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light very efficiently, so the amount of infrared absorbed can be used to calculate the amount of CO2 in the sample.
Or you can try an experiment yourself at home!
Then in 1896 Svante Arrhenius calculated that, based a simple principle of physics, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would raise global temperatures. Arrhenius was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate the extent to which increases in CO2 atmospheric will increase Earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.
In fact, the formula he developed was so accurate it is still used today. These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused CO2 emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to cause global warming.
That’s it.
In order for any climate denialist to win their argument, they’ll need to first successfully dispute these two very easily provable facts.
Instead, these two discoveries are the cornerstones of climate science, in 150 years have yet to be disputed, and instead continues to be confirmed by observation. Once again, these are not controversial but proven a thousand times over.
Our Carbon Output
How do we know for sure that humans are the cause of more CO2 in the air? The answer is so simple and irrefutable, isotopes.
For those who might be a little rusty on chemistry, there are different types of a same element, called isotopes, which are differentiated by the number of neutrons.
So what scientist can do is look at the ration between Carbon-12 (which has 6 neutrons if you are playing at home) and Carbon-13 (which has 7 neutrons). What they do is look at the ratio between the amounts of C12 and C13 in fossil fuels, and they have found all fossil fuels have a common ratio, being from dead plants millions of years ago.
There are many other methods of proving humans are the cause of carbon output. For example looking at the amount of carbon burned into the atmosphere, which has increased, and comparing that to the trend of carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere over centuries. And that has shown a recent drop in oxygen in the atmosphere.
The human fingerprint on climate change is easily provable, you just have to take the time to look at the science.
In Conclusion
While there are still a lot of questions left about the exact rate climate change will happen and what the precise effects will be, there is no doubt it is happening and humans are causing the Earth’s climate to change at a rate never before seen.
This site has compiled a list of just a handful of the published scientific papers of laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties, ranging from 1861 all the way up to 2008.
Knowing this evidence, and much much more, scientist reached a consensus a long time ago that CO2 is indeed a contributor to global warming.
Again, you can read all of this stuff yourselves, the evidence is there for you.
And just to reiterate here, Donald Trump and other climate denialist’s acceptance of science predates the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War, and the First Transcontinental Railroad. This is the equivalent trying to attack a state-of-the-art military drone with a Civil War era musket.
Appendix: Typical Denialist Responses
1. It’s a hoax invented by the Chinese!
What is lost to some people here is science isn’t some closed off secret conspiracy. You can read every scientific paper ever written yourself, in many cases for free, and perform the tests yourself and see if you can come to the same conclusions.
In fact scientists want this, it’s called “peer review”, it happens all the time and is part of the scientific method. If results can’t be recreated then the findings do not get accepted by the scientific community.
So go. Do your research and submit your work to a scientific journal and prove everyone wrong. We’ll wait. (No we won’t.)
2. But the Earth has been this warm before!
It’s not about the warmth that scientists are concerned about, but the rate of warming, which we have never before seen.
3. It’s a trick by scientists to get rich!
This is a stupid conspiracy theory that some have put forth that it is more likely a small group of scientists are spending their limited operating budgets in a massive conspiracy theory to create a hoax and ruin the economy.
That’s just a tad silly.
Like seriously, when you think of a climate scientist is the first image that pops in your head is some nerd in a labcoat with a Maserati and a massive mansion with a swimming pool full of cash? Probably not.
4. We didn’t have record keeping that went back thousands of years!
This is just one of the many types of “proxy data” that scientists use to take a look into the past.
See those zebra stripes? Pairs of dark and light areas? That is actually one year of trapped snow and ice, the light one is summer and the darker one is winter, and inside are tiny pockets of trapped air from that year.
What scientists can do is start off and look at recent years, see what parts-per-million carbon, methane, and other gases are trapped in the air bubbles. Then through calculations known as a model, make predictions about the makeup of those air bubbles for this year and the next. If those predictions are accurate, and others double-check the and come to the same conclusions, then they have a working scientific model they can use to test all of the remaining previous years.
Some of the longest ice core samples go back 800,000 years and are hoping to get one that is 1.5 million years, so scientists can indeed have a very accurate snapshot of the temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions of an area long before humans existed.
5. Every ice age was ended by global warming without help from man
That’s true, but it also doesn’t refute any of the climate science above. In fact, the only way you knew about ice ages and why they ended is through the same measurements and tests that unequivocally prove climate change is happening and humans are the primary driving force for a rate never before seen.
6. It’s snowing outside! So much for “global warming!”
Hahah! Hahaha! Hahaha! Oh you’re so effing funny. Hahah! Oh what a joker you are! Hahaha! You know what else is hilarious? Your willful ignorance of the English language and not recognizing there is a clear difference between “weather” “and climate“.
Here’s a video for kids to help you understand that weather is the state of the atmosphere right now, and climate is a trend of weather over a very long period of time. And if you watch the entire thing you get a sticker and a cookie!
7. I’m a science skeptic not a science denialist! I just haven’t seen any evidence that proves climate change!
No, you’re a denialist. It’s good to be skeptical, it’s good to approach new information critically, but there is an other side of skepticism that you are completely ignoring.
If someone presents evidence with a stronger veracity than your currently held information or belief, then you admit you are wrong and accept the new information.
I think today is a good day to have a conversation with our friends and family who vote Republican, and find out why they would support such a heartless effort to remove healthcare for 24 million people, allow insurance companies to deny coverage for preexisting conditions, push the sickest of us to underfunded high-risk pools, while giving a massive tax break to the millionaires and billionaires.
Ask them why they think that making the AHCA even more cruel, by removing protections for preexisting conditions, was the only way Republicans in the House were able pass an Obamacare repeal?
Do they know that if they are over 50 years old, Obamacare regulated the insurance industries so they could only charge 3 times more than the lowest bronze plan, and now the Republicans made a change so insurance companies can charge them 5 times more than a bronze pan? Why would they want to support Republicans who just raised they insurance premiums?
Do they know without preexisting condition protections, it will be inevitable that a percentage of people without healthcare will die. That’s right, they won’t be able to have access to insurance and will die. Did they cheer? Were they happy?
Do they know Obamacare is funded mostly by millionaires and billionaires? If they make $250,000/year or more they’ll pay about $250/year for Obamacare, otherwise they pay right now $0 in taxes for Obamacare. That’s right. All of those protections are free!
Obamacare was debated on for 18 months, had a transparent and open debate. Republicans had no plan after 8 years, cobbled together pieces of Paul Ryan’s 2012 health care reform in a secret room that fellow Republican Rand Paul couldn’t even get in to, and they rushed the legislation through so fast the Congressional Budget Office did not have time to score it. Did they know Republicans were so sure of the negative effects of their plan they shielded themselves with exemptions?
The Senate will now take up the bill and only 2 Republicans need to say “no” in order to kill this bill, and send it back to the House. But once it returns, the House Republicans will no longer have the budget reconciliation process used to shove the ACHA through. There is a limited time between now and that Senate vote. And it would be nice to know where your Republican friends and family stand on the health of their friends and family.
CNN paid contributor, and Donald Trump surrogate, Jeffrey Lord made a very interesting and newsworthy statement during the usually stale morning news cycle, that President Donald Trump compares to the Reverend and Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
During an appearance on CNN’s New Day program, Lord said Trump should be thought of as the “Martin Luther King of health care.”
In case you missed it, here is the entire exchange:
Fellow CNN commentator Symone Sanders, a Democratic activist, fired back immediately. saying, “Jeffrey, you do understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that looked like me were being beaten? Dogs were being sicked on them. Basic human rights were being withheld from these people merely because the color of their skin. So let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to the vagina-grabbing President Donald Trump.”
Jeffrey Lord went on later that day to defend his statements on both Anderson Cooper‘s and Don Lemon‘s nightly show, again making the same racially insensitive statements.
Notably the African-American commentators were upset, and rightfully so. Lord was comparing Donald Trump, who even his own supporters agree he’s not the Pope, to someone who fought for equal justice which opened up opportunities for them and, quite frankly, who all of America owes a great debt to.
But the problem with Jeffrey Lord is that he isn’t just a tone-deaf partisan hack, but also his arguments are always just total crap, and this recent controversy is a perfect example. So rather than focus on the comparison of the morality of two historical personalities, as was much of the discussion on CNN, I would like to focus on the exact argument Lord is trying to make.
Jeffrey Lord’s Position
What Jeffrey Lord was trying to argue, which he also laid out in a CNN opinion piece, is in his fight for civil rights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used a tactic of suffering in order to bring to light to the rest of the population a great injustice of inequality.
Donald Trump, is now threatening to refuse to subsidize healthcare to the poorest Americans, who would undoubtedly experience suffering. And just as the endless stream of beatings of black Americans by their government on the nightly news in the 60’s brought about social change and legislation, Jeffrey Lord believes that so too would images of today’s poor dying without access to healthcare thereby forcing the Democrats to join Trump in his fight to repeal the big bad Obamacare, which he believes everyone is suffering under because it is mandated by the government.
On one point Jeffrey Lord is correct, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers did use a tactic of non-violent disobedience which regularly involved the suffering of African-Americans, sometimes even creating situations that put themselves in a position to suffer. The resulting attention from people witnessing such an obvious injustice, such as armed state police beating defenseless non-violent citizens, would cause the rest of the population start to question the legitimacy of national policies, and forced their representatives in Congress to make legislative changes.
This part is not controversial, Dr. King was very clear he was following a civil disobedience playbook that was very successfully used by Mahatma Gandhi.
Along with marches and hunger strikes, Gandhi staged many mass protests that put him and his followers in harms way from a repressive British government that was ruling India at the time.
On example during the Dharasana Satyagraha protests, which was a protest against the British salt tax, was a non-violent raid of the Dharasana Salt Works. During the march there was a very real possibility that violence would be used against them, but they marched anyway.
Watch:
(I know this was a re-enactment from the 1982 movie Gandhi, but this is how it actually went down as reported.)
When Dr. King organized his March to Selma, he and his fellow protesters knew the threat of personal harm was a possibility, as they had been attacked and bombed many times before, but they chose to march anyway.
Watch:
Look at those clips, what did you notice?
Each protester VOLUNTEERED to receive their beating. Each person VOLUNTEERED to walk forward, look another man right in the eyes, and accepted the pain and suffering from physical harm they knew was coming.
What Jeffrey Lord fails to recognize in his shit argument is there is no growing mass movement of people under Obamacare volunteering to suffer so it can be repealed. This is President Donald Trump threatening to FORCE the suffering of 24 million people by removing the affordability of their healthcare, just so he can bring Democrats to the table for a deal to remove healthcare for that same 24 million people.
(Seriously whoever bought into this idea Trump was this master deal maker?)
In Conclusion
There is a clear difference between volunteering for suffering to fight an injustice and forcing people to suffer.
This fight for equality is something that is so fundamental to Dr. Martin Luther King’s own beliefs, Jeffrey Lord severely misses King’s point.
So Lord has to know his statement was incompatible with Dr. King’s own explanation of his tactics, but was willing to twist logic to fit his own narrative. There is a word for this, “liar.”
CNN should let this man go, fire him, get rid of him, send him on a “planned vacation“, whatever it takes. Jeffrey Lord does nothing to add to the national conversation except at times like these, when we are astonished that he can make really bad arguments over and over and over and over again.
Jeffrey Lord a dark stain on a venerable news station, the same way the hiring of Corey Lewandowski, who was working at CNN while still working and being paid as a member of Donald Trump’s campaign.
CNN has to recognize this isn’t balance, it’s bullshit.
Today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell triggered the “nuclear option” and changed Supreme Court nominations from a 3/5ths majority, which is 60 votes, to a simple majority, 51 votes. The Republican theft of the Supreme Court is complete, with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch.
Ever since Ronald Reagan nominated the anti-civil rights Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and failed, the civil discourse in selecting judges to sit on the highest court in the land have steadily eroded. And now the Republicans have killed it.
Republicans have obstructed federal judge appointments for decades, causing Democratic Senator Harry Reid to change the filibuster for lower court judges in 2013. And then when the shoe was on the other foot the Republicans all went ballistic when Democrats refused to appoint just 10 of George W. Bush’s most radical nominations, out of a total of 214.
Finally, after Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia unexpectedly passed away, within an hour Mitch McConnell made an unprecedented move to refuse his Constitutional duty and made it clear he would deny any nomination by then-president Barack Obama, who had 11 months left in his term.
Democrats could have made trouble, they could have broke the rules, but they didn’t. In this hyper-partisan environment, the Republican answer was to ensure going forward things will be even more partisanship and we will continue to see more traditions and norms that are not set in law fall away.
