Make more online, for less. Buy a domain and everything else you need.
Donald Trump is an Insecure, Petty Man, and Mike Johnson, Greg Abbott, and other Republicans are His Pathetic, Unpatriotic Abettors
Anna Betts, reporting for The Guardian:
American flags at the US Capitol will fly at full-staff for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington DC on Monday, despite a White House order for flags to remain at half-staff for 30 days after the death of former president Jimmy Carter last month.
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, first announced the change on Tuesday. In a post on social media he wrote: “On January 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump.” He added: “The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter.”
How does the Speaker of the House get to decide what happens to flags on the Capitol? Isn’t that federal property, under the control of (still) President Joe Biden?
This, of course, follows Donald Trump’s childish griping about the flags being flown at half-staff during his inauguration, calling Democrats “giddy” about it. As I noted previously, no one is giddy, it’s the law. But apparently no one has to follow the law anymore if it makes them feel insecure.
It’s not just Trump and his Johnson worried about being at half-staff. Robert Jimison at the New York Times reports:
Republican governors in Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska and Florida also announced that flags in their states would be raised on Monday and returned to half-staff the next day.
Plus the Republican governors of Texas, North Dakota, Idaho, and Tennessee, according to Iris Seaton at the Asheville Citizen Times.
These “leaders” have no respect for the flag or the laws of this country. They’ve pledged fealty to one man, patriotism or common decency be damned.
In Trump’s social media whining, he also wrote:
[…] the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast.
He’s wrong, of course. From the January 21, 1973 edition of the New York Times, in which R. W. Apple Jr. wrote about the second inauguration of Richard Nixon:
The President spoke from temporary portico erected adjacent to the Capitol, with the United States Marine Band, in scarlet tunics, arrayed before him. All flags on the Capitol were still at half‐staff in memory of former President Harry S. Truman, who died last Dec. 26.
Even Nixon had more integrity and empathy.
J.D. Vance is GOP VP nominee
Donald Trump, today:
After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio.
Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.
I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a--hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler.
I’m not a Trump supporter, but I even feel a certain attachment, and I get a little bit cheery when he says certain things on the campaign trail, when he criticizes the elites.
Says the bestselling author, Yale Law School graduate, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and protege to billionaire Peter Thiel (who donated $10 million to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign).
Also:
Vance, whose full name is James David Vance, will turn 40 in August.
Not yet 40, with eighteen months of political experience, and he’s now the GOP’s Vice Presidential nominee. Sounds right.
A reminder that Sarah Palin was older (44), and more experienced (a two-term mayor, and Governor of Alaska for eighteen months) when she was selected as John McCain’s VP pick. We remember how well that turned out.
So my only question is: Who plays J.D. Vance on SNL?
My pick is Seth Rogen.
A Sad American Legacy Continues
Some moments in our life we recognize immediately as capital-H Historic. They are seared into our memories. Mine include the Space Shuttle Challenger, Barack Obama, 9/11, and COVID-19.
What we witnessed on Saturday afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania was certainly history. Assassination attempts on current or former presidents are, regrettably, much more common than we might expect—or like—in a democracy, and former president Donald Trump is now part of a sad American legacy of political violence, one perpetrated exclusively with guns.
Somehow, a man with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle managed to avoid Secret Service and local police, climb a roof, and shoot at the former president during an outdoor rally—grazing him in the ear, killing at least one attendee, and critically injuring two more. Mere fractions of an inch and this moment in time would be tragically Historic.
It may yet prove historic. One of Trump’s indisputable skills is that he instinctively intuits a media moment. Those instincts resulted in a photo for the ages. Getting shot at, clipped, and then rising, bloodied, fist raised in defiance, yelling “Fight!” to his audience… those optics may well solidify his supporters and propel him to the White House. A Hollywood screenwriter could scarcely script it better.
Which is not to say Trump is assured of—or somehow now deserves—another term. Nor does it mean that his opponents should stop calling out his dangerous rhetoric. Quite the opposite. It’s imperative they now work doubly hard to defeat him.
This abhorrent act against a former president and current presidential candidate must serve as a reminder that political violence is never acceptable, no matter the target, and that violent rhetoric has real-world repercussions. Yet we must not mistake from where that rhetoric often comes.
Just minutes after the shooting, J.D. Vance wrote on X/Twitter:
Today is not just some isolated incident.
The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.
This is transparent, self-serving bullshit. Vance is a leading vice presidential contender for a candidate who calls his opponents “vermin,” agitates for immigrants to be concentrated into camps and deported, and reportedly inspired 54 cases of violence, threats, and alleged assaults in his name. It’s unsurprisingly characteristic for their party to blame the other side rather than looking inward at their standard bearer.
President Biden’s call to “lower the temperature” is welcome and necessary, as long as we remember which side generates most of the heat.
It’s right for President Biden to call the attack “sick,” and state unequivocally that “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” even as the other side uses violent imagery.
It’s appropriate to call for “unity”, as long as we aren't meeting fascists “halfway” to fascism.
Meanwhile, let’s not ignore the nature of the assault itself. It is practically Shakespearean that the would-be assassin’s weapon of choice was an AR-15, which the GOP fetishizes and the NRA once called “America’s Rifle”. This is a party whose members wear AR-15 rifle pins, pose with assault-style rifles for Christmas, oppose gun-free zones (unless they’re in those zones), and have no intention of addressing gun violence.
Beyond “unity” and “lowered temperatures,” what we should be calling for are laws restricting access to AR-15 style assault weapons (and bump stocks, recently deemed legal again by the far-right Supreme Court majority), plus stricter restrictions on who can buy any gun and when.
I want Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to immediately offer bills in the House and Senate today. Call it, I dunno, the “Tough Republicans Uniting for Maximum Protection Act” and dare Mike Johnson, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the GOP to block it.
Taking the attempted assassination of a former president with an AR-15, and using it to ban those weapons?
That would make this moment absolutely Historic, in the best possible way.