Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

So, it looks like when the Dems call for insurrection, it's fine and dandy, and somehow patriotic, right?

So, it looks like when the Dems call for insurrection, it's fine and dandy, and somehow patriotic, right?

Builder wrote:

So, it looks like when the Dems call for insurrection, it's fine and dandy, and somehow patriotic, right?

It appears you are afraid of women, that's so sad. Is it your mothers fault?

California congressman makes play for Dianne Feinstein’s seat, which is being eyed by at least three other candidates

Adam Schiff, the California congressman who became a household name as the lead prosecutor in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, said he will seek the California Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein.

“I wish I could say the threat of Maga extremists is over,” said Schiff, 62, in a video announcing his campaign. “We’re in the fight of our lives – a fight I’m ready to lead as California’s next US senator”.

[...]

He [Schiff] has launched his campaign emphasizing his antagonizing of Trump and his allies. “If our democracy isn’t delivering for Americans, they’ll look for alternatives, like a dangerous demagogue who promises that he alone can fix it,” Schiff said.

“I think that record of leadership, that record of staunch defense of our democracy, and the way that I’ve championed an economy that works for everyone, I think are a powerful record to run on,” he said.

Schiff was first elected to Congress in 2000 and represents parts of Hollywood. Before that, he was a federal prosecutor and served in California’s state senate, where his tough on crime record has been criticized by criminal justice and immigrants rights advocates.

His record in Congress veers more centrist than that of Porter, Lee or Khanna.

A far-right journalist with links to the Kremlin has been accused of being behind a Koran-burning stunt that has infuriated Turkey and threatened Sweden’s attempt to join NATO.

Chang Frick, who previously worked for RT (formerly Russia Today) and sister agency Ruptly, paid the administrative fee for the demonstration outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm where far-right MP Rasmus Paludan torched the holy book.

The involvement of the 39-year-old has raised fears that Russia may have plotted the incident to disrupt the expansion of NATO. Frick’s Twitter feed includes pictures of him posing in a Putin T-shirt and showing off a Putin calendar.

An effigy of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was strung from a lamppost a week earlier. Turkey also wants Sweden to extradite people it says are militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

After the Koran-burning stunt, Turkey immediately cancelled a visit to Ankara by Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jannson and threatened to block its NATO accession.

Paludan, is Danish far-right politician who also holds Swedish citizenship, has previously sparked riots in Sweden by announcing a “Koran-burning tour” during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He has burnt the book in Denmark and been found guilty of racism there three times receiving suspended or one-month jail sentences.

But he told Swedish media that Frick, who runs the right-wing populist site Nyheter Idag and hosts a show on a TV station funded by the nationalist Sweden Democrats party, paid for this stunt. He said Frick even promised to cover any damages Paludan incurred as a result of the action.

In 2019, The New York Times profiled Frick in a report on how the Kremlin was befriending and amplifying divisive voices in Sweden. Frick accused The New York Times of misrepresentation on Twitter after the article was published, saying RT was his client but not his employer.

Frick, who was in a relationship with a Russian woman at the time, told the newspaper he had been invited to observe Russian elections and meet Vladimir Putin.

While denying he worked for Russia, he jokingly pulled out a wad of rubles from a trip to the country and said: “Here is my real boss! This is Putin”.

Analysts said Frick’s involvement in the Koran-burning suggested possible direction from Moscow.

“The person who most stands to benefit from NATO not expanding eastward towards Russia’s border is Putin,” said Paul Levin of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University.

While there was not yet enough evidence to establish causality, Levin said it was nonetheless “suspicious”.

“It does have some of the flavours of a possible Russian active measure,” he told London Daily Telegraph. Swedish newspaper Syre was the first to report Frick’s association with the Koran-burning protest.

Frick, who denies working for RT after 2014, told the paper he only paid for the permit to support free speech, claiming the protest had been organised by a reporter from Exakt 24, another right-wing publication. But the reporter for Exakt 24 was insistent that Frick was the main organiser.

He denied attempting to sabotage the NATO application, posting denials to social media and telling Swedish journalists: “If I, by paying 320 kroner in an administrative fee to the police, sabotaged the application, it was probably on very shaky ground from the beginning”.

Sweden and Finland filed applications for NATO membership in May.

New members are admitted to NATO by the consensus of existing members, giving Turkey a veto.

Rural resentment has become a central fact of American politics — in particular, a pillar of support for the rise of right-wing extremism. As the Republican Party has moved ever further into MAGAland, it has lost votes among educated suburban voters; but this has been offset by a drastic rightward shift in rural areas, which in some places has gone so far that the Democrats who remain face intimidation and are afraid to reveal their party affiliation.

But is this shift permanent? Can anything be done to assuage rural rage?

The answer will depend on two things: whether it’s possible to improve rural lives and restore rural communities, and whether the voters in these communities will give politicians credit for any improvements that do take place.

This week my colleague Thomas B. Edsall surveyed research on the rural Republican shift. I was struck by his summary of work by Katherine J. Cramer, who attributes rural resentment to perceptions that rural areas are ignored by policymakers, don’t get their fair share of resources and are disrespected by “city folks.”

As it happens, all three perceptions are largely wrong. I’m sure that my saying this will generate a tidal wave of hate mail, and lecturing rural Americans about policy reality isn’t going to move their votes. Nonetheless, it’s important to get our facts straight.

The truth is that ever since the New Deal rural America has received special treatment from policymakers. It’s not just farm subsidies, which ballooned under Donald Trump to the point where they accounted for around 40 percent of total farm income. Rural America also benefits from special programs that support housing, utilities and business in general.

In terms of resources, major federal programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, in part because such areas have a disproportionate number of seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare. But even means-tested programs — programs that Republicans often disparage as “welfare” — tilt rural. Notably, at this point rural Americans are more likely than urban Americans to be on Medicaid and receive food stamps.

And because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside. These subsidies don’t just support incomes, they support economies: Government and the so-called health care and social assistance sector each employ more people in rural America than agriculture, and what do you think pays for those jobs?

What about rural perceptions of being disrespected? Well, many people have negative views about people with different lifestyles; that’s human nature. There is, however, an unwritten rule in American politics that it’s OK for politicians to seek rural votes by insulting big cities and their residents, but it would be unforgivable for urban politicians to return the favor. “I have to go to New York City soon,” tweeted J.D. Vance during his senatorial campaign. “I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there.” Can you imagine, say, Chuck Schumer saying something similar about rural Ohio, even as a joke?

So the ostensible justifications for rural resentment don’t withstand scrutiny — but that doesn’t mean things are fine. A changing economy has increasingly favored metropolitan areas with large college-educated work forces over small towns. The rural working-age population has been declining, leaving seniors behind. Rural men in their prime working years are much more likely than their metropolitan counterparts to not be working. Rural woes are real.

Ironically, however, the policy agenda of the party most rural voters support would make things even worse, slashing the safety-net programs these voters depend on. And Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to point this out.

But can they also have a positive agenda for rural renewal? As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent recently pointed out, the infrastructure spending bills enacted under President Biden, while primarily intended to address climate change, will also create large numbers of blue-collar jobs in rural areas and small cities. They are, in practice, a form of the “place-based industrial policy” some economists have urged to fight America’s growing geographic disparities.

Will they work? The economic forces that have been hollowing out rural America are deep and not easily countered. But it’s certainly worth trying.

But even if these policies improve rural fortunes, will Democrats get any credit? It’s easy to be cynical. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new governor of Arkansas, has pledged to get the “bureaucratic tyrants” of Washington “out of your wallets”; in 2019 the federal government spent almost twice as much in Arkansas as it collected in taxes, de facto providing the average Arkansas resident with $5,500 in aid. So even if Democratic policies greatly improve rural lives, will rural voters notice?

Still, anything that helps reverse rural America’s decline would be a good thing in itself. And maybe, just maybe, reducing the heartland’s economic desperation will also help reverse its political radicalization.

Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?

Quote:

Rural resentment has become a central fact of American politics — in particular, a pillar of support for the rise of right-wing extremism. As the Republican Party has moved ever further into MAGAland, it has lost votes among educated suburban voters; but this has been offset by a drastic rightward shift in rural areas, which in some places has gone so far that the Democrats who remain face intimidation and are afraid to reveal their party affiliation.

But is this shift permanent? Can anything be done to assuage rural rage?

The answer will depend on two things: whether it’s possible to improve rural lives and restore rural communities, and whether the voters in these communities will give politicians credit for any improvements that do take place.

This week my colleague Thomas B. Edsall surveyed research on the rural Republican shift. I was struck by his summary of work by Katherine J. Cramer, who attributes rural resentment to perceptions that rural areas are ignored by policymakers, don’t get their fair share of resources and are disrespected by “city folks.”

As it happens, all three perceptions are largely wrong. I’m sure that my saying this will generate a tidal wave of hate mail, and lecturing rural Americans about policy reality isn’t going to move their votes. Nonetheless, it’s important to get our facts straight.

The truth is that ever since the New Deal rural America has received special treatment from policymakers. It’s not just farm subsidies, which ballooned under Donald Trump to the point where they accounted for around 40 percent of total farm income. Rural America also benefits from special programs that support housing, utilities and business in general.

In terms of resources, major federal programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, in part because such areas have a disproportionate number of seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare. But even means-tested programs — programs that Republicans often disparage as “welfare” — tilt rural. Notably, at this point rural Americans are more likely than urban Americans to be on Medicaid and receive food stamps.

And because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside. These subsidies don’t just support incomes, they support economies: Government and the so-called health care and social assistance sector each employ more people in rural America than agriculture, and what do you think pays for those jobs?

What about rural perceptions of being disrespected? Well, many people have negative views about people with different lifestyles; that’s human nature. There is, however, an unwritten rule in American politics that it’s OK for politicians to seek rural votes by insulting big cities and their residents, but it would be unforgivable for urban politicians to return the favor. “I have to go to New York City soon,” tweeted J.D. Vance during his senatorial campaign. “I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there.” Can you imagine, say, Chuck Schumer saying something similar about rural Ohio, even as a joke?

So the ostensible justifications for rural resentment don’t withstand scrutiny — but that doesn’t mean things are fine. A changing economy has increasingly favored metropolitan areas with large college-educated work forces over small towns. The rural working-age population has been declining, leaving seniors behind. Rural men in their prime working years are much more likely than their metropolitan counterparts to not be working. Rural woes are real.

Ironically, however, the policy agenda of the party most rural voters support would make things even worse, slashing the safety-net programs these voters depend on. And Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to point this out.

But can they also have a positive agenda for rural renewal? As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent recently pointed out, the infrastructure spending bills enacted under President Biden, while primarily intended to address climate change, will also create large numbers of blue-collar jobs in rural areas and small cities. They are, in practice, a form of the “place-based industrial policy” some economists have urged to fight America’s growing geographic disparities.

Will they work? The economic forces that have been hollowing out rural America are deep and not easily countered. But it’s certainly worth trying.

But even if these policies improve rural fortunes, will Democrats get any credit? It’s easy to be cynical. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new governor of Arkansas, has pledged to get the “bureaucratic tyrants” of Washington “out of your wallets”; in 2019 the federal government spent almost twice as much in Arkansas as it collected in taxes, de facto providing the average Arkansas resident with $5,500 in aid. So even if Democratic policies greatly improve rural lives, will rural voters notice?

Still, anything that helps reverse rural America’s decline would be a good thing in itself. And maybe, just maybe, reducing the heartland’s economic desperation will also help reverse its political radicalization.

krugman

The video of the assault on Paul Pelosi is in circulation. I wonder if it will assuage the concerns about police coverups or concocted stories that someone had?

And an apology for being a hate-mongering dipshit would be fine but that ain't something we'll see here.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paul-pelosi-nancy-pelosi-attack-david-depape

Excerpt:

Listed years ago in voting records as a Green party supporter, DePape said he also took to the streets with activists who opposed a successful push to ban public nudity in San Francisco, the Chronicle also reported.
More recently, Gene DePape and Mark DePape said, David maintained a Facebook account containing multiple conspiracy-laden posts.
—————————

Looks like mental illness was the biggest influence, but he voted Green and lived a liberal lifestyle. He also bought some views that right wingers believe.

Of course, with upcoming elections, it benefits Democrats to cast him as purely right wing.

What we know so far ... Fri 28 Oct 2022 23.41 BST

Some figures on the right went so far as to spread conspiracy theories about the attack, falsely suggesting that DePape held liberal views. DePape’s internet activity actually indicates he promoted far-right beliefs and dabbled in fringe political movements.