THESE GUN CRAZED DIS-UNITED STATES...

 

Getting ready for a prairie dog mass attack.... or a feral pig...

The Second Amendment absolutists can not marshal any legitimate argument against raising the legal age to purchase firearms, banning assault weapons, banning large magazines, expanded background checks, or red flag laws.   Instead they rely on absurd contentions like South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune's defense of AR 15's for "shooting prairie dogs" or Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy's claim that they are essential for killing "feral pigs."   Perhaps those senators and their gun loving constituents are also spectacularly bad shots, which is how they justify allowing the public to purchase extra large magazines for these weapons of war.   Another refrain from the gun obsessives is that any regulation- no matter how innocuous and inconsequential- would lead America down a "slippery slope" to yanking all guns out of the homes and armories of every American citizen waiting to defend his or her home against the hordes erupting from lawless cities, murderous rapists and burglars, and a potentially tyrannical government which apparently can be stymied by a few homeowners with an AR 15 hanging over the mantle.  

    The obvious rejoinder is that every law and every regulation can be likened to starting down a slippery slope.    Speed limits on our highways, requiring seat belts and air bags could lead to automobile confiscation.   Banning pouring toxic waste into a river could lead to the end of all manufacturing in America and a new Depression.    And so on.   However, there is a slippery slope in America- but it's not one covered in good intentions and government regulations.   It's covered in blood.  The blood of our children.  The blood of police officers and security guards shot by suicidal bullet proof vest wearing maniacs wielding AR 15's and firing cop killer bullets.    The blood of over 40,000 annually who die from firearms, including three year olds accidentally shooting their five  year old siblings with the family .40 caliber Glock.

https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/

    The fact is that an overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress to do something effective that will reduce the carnage that exists in only one ostensibly "civilized" nation on earth.   And there are plenty of possible methods that Congress can choose to enact such laws, politics notwithstanding.    The headline on a recent story was "US House passes gun bill doomed to fail in Senate."   

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61742732

The law passed by the House of Representatives would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 and ban large capacity magazines.    But why should such a measure- any measure- be "doomed to die" in the United States Senate?

    Of course there is a one word answer:  filibuster.    Anything passed by the House, which still operates on the antiquated democratic principle that "majority rules," is doomed to die in the Senate, which has managed to turn minority created deadlock into its sole operating protocol, one which is more dear to the hearts of at least two ostensibly Democratic senators than children's lives or democracy itself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/21/filibuster-voting-rights-manchin-sinema/

    And this is where members of the ruling majority in the House need to get creative.   First of all, no gun control bill (or voting rights bill, for that matter) should contain more than one matter.    Don't combine raising the age to purchase assault weapons with instant background checks or a ban on large magazines.   Each bill should be a stand alone, and each should be put before the Senate as one item only, no amendments allowed.   If Republicans want to vote in favor of allowing super large magazines- for which no justification has ever been offered (other than the "slippery slope" nonsense), then make them go on record.   If they want criminals and insane people to be allowed to purchase firearms without having to go through a background check, then put them on record on that, too.

    But more importantly, just as a judge tells a person jailed for civil contempt of court for defying a court order that he has "the keys to the jail cell"-   meaning that he can get out of jail simply by doing what the court has ordered, the House has the key to unlock the Senate filibuster and render it useless.   And the key is found in Article I, Section 7 of the United States Constitution:   "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives..."

What that means is that no money can be spent by the Federal government for anything- not for that  air base in South Dakota, those Army bases in Kentucky and Texas, that levee in Louisiana, those price supports for wheat in Kansas for corn in Nebraska or in Wisconsin for milk- all states with two Republican senators- unless it originates in an appropriations bill in the House.   The House holds the ultimate power of the purse over everything, and Democrats facing an existential crisis- whether it is to the lives of our children or the existence of our democracy- should not hesitate to use it, to hold it as a Sword of Damocles over every Republican senator who refuses to vote to change Senate rules to dispose of the filibuster.     

    Conventional Democrats will argue that this would be a poison pill that would doom Democrats' hopes for mid term electoral success.   I would argue that in a world where the national media  has already buried their party's hopes to retain control of either or both houses of Congress in the midterms, presumably because media "experts" have concluded that voters care more about the price of gasoline and groceries than their freedom to live in a democracy or their own children's safety in school,  what have you got to lose?    Existential means that your existence is threatened.   Perhaps you should act accordingly.

HOW TO WIN THE MID TERMS IN 2022....

 

For anybody reading this who wants Democrats to win the midterms but doesn't know how to have an impact, try copying and pasting this and sending it to any Democratic Congressman or Senators or candidates for those offices that you can:

"Dear Representative/Senator/Candidate:

There are three things that you should keep in mind if you want to win the election for your district/state and if you want Democrats to retain control of the House of Representatives and increase the number of seats in the Senate enough to eliminate the filibuster and get voting rights legislation passed to save our democracy:

(1) You are not going to win over hard core right wingers and even making an overt effort to do so by trying to appeal to their desires will discourage the people who already believe in the cause of democracy and who are willing to support and vote for you.

(2) No data driven argument, no feat of logic, no words coming from you- or any untrusted source, no matter how correct, how verifiable, how dripping with the essence of truth or morality, will persuade enough swing voters or former Democrats who switched in the last 14 years and started voting Republican. It will take personal appeals from people just like them- Republican voters but who refuse to engage in a suicide pact, and who will go on camera and tell their fellows in a very personal appeal why they will no longer support the Republican Party or its hypocritical, lying, death dealing candidates. It is anecdotes that win elections, not statistics or positive campaign ads. You need real people, just like the voters you want to impress and recruit and sway, who will go on camera, real people who actually live in your district and in your state, and different people- not the same man or woman in every ad, but enough of them to give the voters who would otherwise reject everything you say to give them permission to see reality and to recognize the misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, bullying, lying, death cult to which they have thrown their support.

(3) Vaccinate. Don't ignore the awful, lying attack ads that will inevitably be hurled against you: "Democrats want to defund the police. Democrats want to disarm you so that the brown people from the cities or across the border can come to your suburban neighborhood and rape your women and steal your babies. Democrats are for Socialism- godless Venezuelan Socialism that will destroy your family business. Democrats are for inflation. Democrats want to turn your small children into gay trans people to win athletic contests.

Whatever the ad, don't try to outdo it: actually take the ad itself and inject parts of it- the worst parts- into your campaign ads, accompanied by an actual local citizen who is a Republican who now repents his ways who will tell his friends why the attack ad is a lie- and what the actual truth is. Try to get whatever station or platform is running the attack ad to run yours right after it. (One of my legislative proposals would actually make this mandatory on all FCC controlled television stations with the response ad to run free of charge after every attack ad. Time enough for that if you can manage to win the midterms.)

Those three ideas above should be enough, should you decide that you are willing to try something different- but not so different. The Lincoln Project has been doing things and running ads like this with some effect but with no overall support from the DNC or any PAC's with enough hundreds of millions of dollars to saturate the air waves in all 50 states. And Raphael Warnock has been a bit of an outlier with his wonderful "puppies" ad that he ran in the Fall of 2020, anticipating the awful attack ads that would be launched against him. Those efforts should have inspired the DNC to coordinate national ad campaigns- but so far, they haven't.

But just in case, here's a starter campaign ad kit (and I'm no professional marketer or ad man or campaign consultant- just a guy at a table in his house with a computer):

A man in his early 40's, wearing a plaid shirt, 5 days grown of beard mixed with gray, and a ball cap, sitting in a diner. He looks at the camera and says:

"I've been a life long Republican, voting every election for the Republican candidates. But that stops now. My wife is on dialysis for her kidney disease, and she needs a transplant. But the Republican (senator/Congressman) who represents me voted to repeal the very law- the Affordable Care Act- that has kept her alive. He supported the Republican President who created tariffs that just about bankrupted my family farm. Then he told me and my wife that we shouldn't take a vaccine, even though my wife is at risk of dying if she catches Covid. We have an 8 month old daughter and we can barely find any baby formula, but I just found out that my Republican Congressman voted against funds to make baby formula more affordable. I can't support this clown show any more. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This Fall I'm voting for the Democrat. I want good government, not loudmouths trying to get me to hate anybody who doesn't look like me."

This ad should run in every state, in every Congressional district in the country, with variations. But every ad should feature an actual person whose story is true- Republicans who would have died, or family members would have died without the Affordable Care Act. Farmers who almost lost their farm or small businessmen who almost lost their businesses over Trump's tariffs. People hurt by the policies from Trump or who would be devastated if the Republicans regained power.

Another ad might go like this:

"I've voted Republican in every election since I turned 18. I believed what my elected officials said and I trusted them. But as I've gotten older I realized that all Republicans want to do is make me want to hate or distrust my neighbors if they don't look like me or worship the way I do or talk like me or love the same people I love. I'm a Christian and I wasn't raised that way. I have friends who are gay and friends who are straight. I work with people from different parts of the world, including immigrants from Southeast Asia, from Mexico, from Central America and from the Middle East. They are people, too: people with husbands, wives, children, who care about their families the same as I do. I'm tired of being fed a load of bull about foreigners coming to take my jobs or make me- as a white person- a second hand citizen by "replacing me." They are human beings, and as a Christian, I wasn't taught that Jesus wanted us to hate our fellow human beings. As I said, I've voted Republican in every election since I was old enough to vote. But that party scares me, and all they are trying to do is win elections by scaring other people like me. I've had enough, and I'm never voting for them again."

Another ad would feature a retired police officer:

"My name is ______________. I worked for _______ police department for 35 years. I had always voted Republican. But that day stopped when Republicans in Congress dumped all over my fellow men and women in blue who were attempting to defend their very lives against a T***p incited mob that attacked the Capitol and physically battered police officers in uniform. As for those Republican ads claiming that Democrats want to "defund the police," I challenge those liars to come up with a single legislative proposal in Congress to lower funding for any police department. The truth is that those Republican hypocrites who claim to back the blue voted against every Democratic bill that tried to increase funds and assistance for local police departments. Well, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice- then you're a lying Republican hypocrite, and you're never getting my vote again."

I'm sure that Madison Avenue has more than a few talented ad people who can come up with dozens of ads as telling as those. Every one a tug at the heart strings. Every one a door slammed in the face of a vicious, lying Republican attack ad.

Thank you for your time and your attention.

Sincerely yours,