Is Trump inciting violence?

CNN is getting credible death threats of mass shootings:

A Michigan man was arrested after allegedly threatening to shoot and kill CNN employees, WGCL-TV reported Monday.

The FBI launched an investigation after the man, who is unnamed in the CBS report, reportedly called CNN 22 times about a week ago.

“Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down,” the man told a CNN operator, according to court documents obtained by WGCL-TV.

He allegedly later called CNN again, saying, “I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.”

“I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f—ing gun every single last one of you,” he said.

The FBI were able to trace the call and arrested the man over the threats.

Trump probably used the White House phone.

But seriously folks, this is starting to sound a lot like Brigham Young stirring up the Saints in Utah until they dressed up like Paiutes and massacred 120+ men, women and children in Mountain Meadows. Or like Henry II throwing a tantrum asking “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest??” (They promptly dashed off to lop off the top of Thomas Beckett’s head while he was praying in a cathedral).

So, you know, words are powerful. Especially when you’ve spent the last decade making people think they are under attack by their neighbors.

Bad, Donald, BAD DOG! No biscuit for you.

Someone should check to see that he hasn’t violated any laws against the press. Or incited violence. This is serious shit, right up there with Saddam Hussein.

The Football.

I’m not talking about the upcoming super bowl, which is leaving people in Pittsburgh conflicted. Theoretically, we should be for the Eagles because nobody likes the Patriots. But then, we don’t like the Eagles. Oh well. I’m sure we’ll watch it anyway and will cheer whenever Tom Brady gets sacked.

No, the football I’m talking about is DACA. There’s a cynical game being played here. Political junkies have seen how this is played before. Republicans are particularly adept at playing this because they live by the sword. But as one character said to another in Game of Thrones last season, “I’m sure that cutting off people’s heads is very satisfying but it’s not a particularly good way to get people to work together.”

There will be no deal on DACA because Republicans don’t want one. Check out Greg Sargent’s Twitter thread where he explains it all. They want to dangle it out there like Lucy with the football and Democrats will go to the White House trying to make a deal on it only to have either the White House advisors or the Republican house and Senate leaders whip the football away at the last minute. They sometimes tag team each other. Ryan will call chief of staff Kelly to work on Trump to make sure he holds the line.

We’re talking about the lives of 800000 people here, cynically used as pawns in this giant power struggle.

I have no idea what Democrats are going to do but it’s rather pointless to put the blame on them for not negotiating. They don’t have the numbers on either side of Congress to force the Republicans to do anything. And it’s actually Ryan and McConnell who can’t get their own people to vote for the budget. They can’t even strong arm their own numbers to pass this horrible thing. That’s why they’re playing Lucy with the Football with Democrats, trying to wear them down to the point that they’ll accept any damn thing. As if they have a choice.

The principled thing is to hold ground. Just wait it out until the Republicans can get their own ducks in a row. We’ll see how that goes.

But one thing is for sure, the lives of 800000 Dreamers and 9 million children on CHIP and the pay of thousands of military personnel, those people are really not very important to Republicans. They’re determined to lop off some heads. It’s just not a very good way to get people to work with you.

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Podcast recommendation: The Ezra Klein Show. He has the best guests, the interviews are long enough so you get the most from them. He tackles a mix of topics. Last week was the future of virtual reality, this week is with Krista Tippet, host of On Being. Tippet herself is an extraordinary interviewer who explores what we believe. She has a beautiful voice. The topic is how to oppose Trump without becoming like him. In other words, how not to lose your soul when his supporters seem to have no problem losing theirs.

Some things that Tippet gets to the heart of:

For all the magnificence of the symbolism behind Obama’s Presidency, it obscured that there was still unfinished business with respect to racism in the country. This is what this blog has been saying for years. Obama was not a predominantly civil rights person. Not like Jesse Jackson or John Lewis. Obama was an aspirational President. And a lot of academic liberals projected their idea of an end to racism onto him. Many liberals thought that voting for Obama meant that they had become better people. They failed to see the warning signs that the country was headed for a financial disaster and that Obama was being heavily funded by Wall Street and moderate Republicans. What happened after is that real racism came back with a vengeance because Obama in the end was primarily a symbol, not a solution. And it didn’t help that the Obama contingent stampeded liberals to the polls by weaponizing the word racist. We’ve gone over this before. This blog saw it in real time.

The second thing she points out that I’ve been struggling to articulate is the idea that as a country we have elevated wealth and celebrity. Trump is a manifestation of this tendency on the right to venerate his billions and his reality TV show persona.

But it’s not a whole lot better on the left when we see the reaction to Oprah Winfrey possibly running for President. Suddenly, many people on the left are just as eager to jump on her bandwagon for almost the exact same reason the right voted for Trump. She’s rich. She’s a celebrity. She’s a black woman. A twofer! What she isn’t is a politician. And when it comes to the top spot in the nation, experience counts. It’s meaningful to people’s lives in the end. This is something that the last three presidents have lacked in one way or another. Bush was a governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial governorship. Obama was primarily a lawyer who had served in the Illinois legislature (performance reviews definitely mixed) and was in the US senate for less than a year before he decided to run. He had very little practical experience in Washington. That was considered an asset because he also hadn’t been forced to make hard decisions and vote on them like Clinton had. Now there’s Trump whose selling point was being an alpha male who is going to bully people to do what the base wants. But he has no concept of what it is to actually hold office or work with other branches. Maybe that’s an asset for others. I think it’s a severe liability.

She also says we should reach out to people who have lived isolated lives and turned to Trump because they don’t hear differing opinions or only fights between the most extreme positions. But also we need to give up on people who are lost to us. I think that would include people who are still clinging to Trump no matter what he does. I think she’s right here. There are a lot of undecided voters and non-voters from 2016 that I think *are* reachable. The fact that they were undecided indicates that they were not entirely sold on Trump.

But the die hard Trump fans? I think there’s something else going on with those people. For them, there is no internal struggle. They are responding to something entirely different and no matter how you try to get through to them whether by extreme rhetoric or reason, you will be met with a brick wall. We have to write them off. They’re a minority. A dangerous minority. But their votes are never going to be up for grabs.

The Democrats are challenging every seat this year. This is in contrast to the Obama era when many seats in the south went unchallenged. Indeed this was Obama’s strategy. (Yeah, Obots, he really wasn’t a political animal. Witness what a disaster the DNC was during his presidency. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was *his* pick) Just write off the south. But what Krista is getting at is you need to present voters with local alternatives that they can listen to and respect. This I think was the key to Doug Jones’ win in Alabama. And he ran as a true blue Democrat, presenting voters with an alternative to the Republican message machine they had been hearing all their lives. Roy Moore’s pedophilic curious tendencies may have actually helped his candidacy. The race was already close before that news came out. So voters were already responding to Jones before they knew about Moore being banned from the mall.

#womensmarch2018 Pittsburgh.

Hi all! I’m here! It looks like it’s going to be about as large a crowd as last year. I bought a pink pussy hat.

I’m going to share pics below so I can get them off my phone.

“November is Coming”

Update: I had to leave the rally to go to another event this afternoon. But I will say this: if you didn’t go because you have this notion that Trump is somehow good for this country, then you should know that history is on OUR side and the momentum is with US.

The Blue Tsunami is coming. And we want Trump and the GOP OUT. They’re a disgrace to our country.

At the bus station.

more to come…

Best sign so far:

we’re moving.

Oh, yeah, Mr. Manbun

A message to all the anti-choice women.

Cadet Bone Spurs vs The Queen

Caught this on Twitter this morning:

If I recall correctly, Princess Elizabeth trained as a mechanic and served towards the end of the war. She also lived in London during the Blitz when she was 14. Her finest hour and all that.

Trump and his family have no honor or shame apparently.

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5 hours to a march here in Pittsburgh! I’m so excited. It looks like cloudy skies with only a slight chance of rain. Other cities marching today: Miami, Albuquerque, Portland, Phoenix, Toledo, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Australia, Barcelona and Seville Spain, Paris France, Manchester England, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, Germany, etc, etc.

It’s never too early to grow a conscience and march with us. I noticed a lot of men in the crowd yesterday. Meet us at the City County building today at 11:30am.

More memorable signs from yesterday:

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This song has been running through my head all night. I love the Gillian Welch version:

Nobody puts Tammy in a corner

This clip of Tammy Duckworth today will make you angry and keep you laughing all night long.

For those of you who have had your head in the cave called Fox News, Senator Duckworth is an Iraq War veteran who lost most of both legs in after a missile hit the helicopter she was flying. She landed the helicopter *after* she was hit.

The first two minutes are an instant classic. Thank you Tammy for giving me the perfect phrase for my sign tomorrow.

#womensmarch2018 #powertothepolls weekend

Just a reminder, there are marches all over the country again this weekend. Here in Pittsburgh the March is tomorrow at 11:30am. Meet in front of the city-county building downtown.

You can catch it live all over the nation on the Periscope app.

I need your help to come up with a catchy sign to take with me tomorrow. Leave suggestions down below. Not you, Niles.

Some good images from today’s #womensmarch2018:

Go, Wichita!!

These people have been resisting for 3000 years.

Lololololol!!

Why the Dreamers matter and what they represent.

Never again.

Keep those words in mind while I tell you why the Democrats are holding the line on DACA and why they have to do it.

Masha Gessen, the journalist who had to leave Putin’s Russia has been writing the last year about what it’s like to live in an autocracy. One of her suggestions at the beginning of the One Party Rule- Trump Presidency era is to make a list. The list will be of things and principles you once held dear that you will gradually cede to the autocrat. These concessions will start to feel normal and that’s where the danger lies. Amy Siskind has been keeping the list. You may need to refresh your memory.

One of those things surely has to be how we allow the current government and its base to treat human beings it has identified as the scapegoats and the cause of all its problems. We are now at the point where we, each individual, has to decide if we can accept inhumane and immoral treatment of immigrants, specifically the ones who were brought here as children, had no choice in the matter, made America their home and in every possible way are culturally American.

Are we going to let this autocrat and his base strip these people of their rights as human beings to seek justice and protection? Are we going to throw them out of the only country they’ve ever known? Are we going to force them to adhere to draconian restrictions on their livelihoods, force them to leave their families and belongings behind as they are quickly rounded up and deported without recourse?

Think about this carefully. Because this is what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1930’s.

Oh, surely, you exaggerate, RD. The Dreamers are nothing like the Jews. Really? Let’s review.

They had been living in Germany all their lives, considered themselves German. And they were stripped of their citizenship, professions, and property. They became the targets of angry mobs who vandalized their places of business and harassed them. But even that wasn’t enough for the base. No, once they were identified and targeted, they were rounded up and deported to collection centers for forced labor or death, whichever came first.

Think of the logistics of finding and deporting the Dreamers. And it won’t stop with them because Trump wants to throw all illegal immigrants out as quickly as possible reaching into the heartland to find and destroy every one of them.

How is he going to move all of those millions of people? We’re talking about the Dreamers and all the other Salvadorans, Haitians, Mexicans. There will be raids in the middle of the night. Children will live in fear of having their parents taken away from them. (This is already happening). Their property will be confiscated. Their jobs will be gone. They’ll be rounded up in some detention center until they can be returned to the country in which they were born.

How will they be moved to these detention centers when the deportations start? When they get there, how will they be fed? Who will give them health care? Are they even entitled to that? If appropriate detention centers can’t be built to house all of them, will they be sent to prisons run by private industry? We’re talking about millions of people.

Who gets all the stuff they leave behind? What if the base doesn’t want to spend even one more penny feeding them and housing them and taking care of them when they’re sick? We have a country that is loaded with guns and indignant white guys who are ready to form their own militias to give ICE a hand. If some get shot, what are they going to do? Have Dreamers Lives Matter protests? Do they have the right to gather and petition the government to address their grievances like all American citizens do?

It could, and WILL, get very ugly, very fast. But the Dreamers and illegal immigrants are just the start. Because the base blames all kinds of people for its problems. Gay people, black people, women, poor people, sick people, Muslims. They’ve already started their own little wars against those groups. Think of the 9 million poor children on CHIP whose lives are held hostage now. This is the GOP’s way of practicing politics. Take two groups hostage and force the rest of us to decide who lives: the sick kids or the Dreamers.

This is why Democrats have to hold the line until Trump and his hard ass advisors give in. They don’t like it, it’s bad politics. But sometimes, none of our options are good and we are forced to go with the one that has the potential for a better overall outcome in the end.

The reasoning behind the Trump treatment of the Dreamers is immoral. It’s petty. It’s dangerous. It’s beneath us. What does it cost us to let Dreamers stay in this country with a clear path to citizenship? Why are we so intent on making their lives so hard? Why? How does that make US better people? Richer people? More content people? How does exerting power over a helpless targeted group materially or morally improve our lives?

Put it on your list and ask yourself, can I as a citizen of this nation live with this?

If the answer is no, if you have a different vision for the future where we all thrive together, then tomorrow, we march.

Rs vs Ds budget talks

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Tweet du Jour

And now for something completely different

Have you ever wondered where Monty Python got it’s crazy sketch ideas? Start here, with the very first 10 minutes of broadcast of BBC 2. Note that it starts with technical difficulties.

God, I needed that after this:

The next battleground district: PA 18

A few months ago, Republican House Representative, Tim Murphy, was busted by his former mistress who said he encouraged her to get an abortion. Curiously, Tim Murphy was one of those typical “family values/pro-life” candidates during campaign season and a typical movement conservative in Congress. Anyway, he decided to quit so he could spend more time with his family or something. 🙄

So, the PA-18 House seat is up for grabs and there will be a special election in March. The two candidates currently contending for the seat are Conor Lamb- Democrat and Rick Saccone- Republican.

Here are brief descriptions of each from a recent Reuters article on the race:

But the fledgling candidacy of Conor Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine veteran and former assistant U.S. attorney, has Democrats there dreaming of an upset in a special congressional election that could offer the best test yet of the strength of a possible Democratic wave forming for November’s congressional elections.

…

Saccone is a staunch Christian conservative, backing gun rights, opposing abortion rights and introducing a resolution declaring 2012 to be “the year of the Bible.” While Democrats were surprised a more moderate candidate was not chosen to oppose Lamb, Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania-based Republican consultant, said Saccone “fits the district.”

The district is largely suburban, exurban and rural. It went for Trump by 20 points in 2016.

To be honest, I don’t meet too many Trumpers in Pittsburgh. Clinton won Allegheny county by a whopping number and beat Obama’s 2012 tally by 14000 votes. But I have relatives who I think are in Murphy’s district and except for one of them, they are none too keen on Trump. Appalled would be more descriptive.

Anyway, this will be a good one to watch. I think the key is going to be getting the vote out. How many potential Clinton voters stayed home in 2016 because the media couldn’t stop harping on her emails? I’m guessing that there are a lot. There may be a way to turn this district blue. We’ll see.

Here’s a map of my district, represented by Mike Doyle (I live approximately where the O is) and PA 18. Yep, very close.

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