Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Tuesday Male Beauty

 

Youngkin's Precarious Position of Rewarding the Far-Right

Glenn Youngkin ran a very good campaign if the truth and honesty are not a consideration.  One of the truths Youngkin sought to obscure was his strong ties to extremists in the Virginia far right, especially Christofascist organizations like The Family Foundation and Family Research Council, the latter being a certified hate group and the former clearly deserving such a certification.  Both groups have trafficked in lies and disinformation for decades and Youngkin patterned much of his campaign on the deceptive tactics regularly employed by both groups.  The backing of both likely were what won him the GOP nomination and helped turn out extremist voters.  Now both - as well as other far right groups will want their reward for putting him in office.  The down side and danger for Youngkin is that the agenda of both organizations that have white supremacist antecedents, are hysterically anti-abortion and anti-gay, and demand special rights for far right Christians - using that label losely since these people threw Christ's social gospel down the tilet years ago - is radioactive among suburban voters.  Please these factions and alienate suburban voters. A column in the Washington Post looks at Youngkin's precarious position in this reggard.  Here are excerpts:

Election outcomes create expectations that the victors will reward those who got them there — through legislation, patronage and honoring ideological allegiances and IOUs both actual and imagined. That’s raw, transactional politics as old as the republic itself.

It’s not only appropriate but a fundamental duty to make good on objectives pledged to voters during the campaign.

Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) is strongly positioned to make good on some policy-specific pledges that were at the heart of his campaign. Those include cuts to business regulations and state taxes on groceries and gasoline, boosting funding for law enforcement and public education, opening more charter schools and imposing tougher curriculum and testing standards. Some steps he can take unilaterally without legislative approval, such as overhauling state agencies, particularly the problem-plagued Virginia Employment Commission, Department of Motor Vehicles and the Parole Board.

The uneasiness for him comes on issues dear to the Republican far-right that never took center stage in a campaign designed not to alienate suburban moderates but that he signaled tacitly — sometimes explicitly when he assumed he was among friends.

It appears he has calculated the risk/reward ratio and decided to focus first on the kitchen-table reforms that appeal to a broader swath of Virginians. As The Post reported, he’s pushing the culturally freighted issues of abortion restrictions and gun rights to the back burner. That won’t sit well with hardliners and pro-Trump Republicans.

Youngkin will find it far more difficult as governor, with his hands on the levers of power, to appease the GOP far-right without alienating moderates and independents — particularly White women — than it was during his campaign.

Through Election Day, Youngkin and his advisers had some latitude because they knew conservative hardliners had nowhere else to go other than to vote Republican. . . . . Now the stakes are higher. The hardliners believe that Youngkin owes them, and they will not afford him the indulgence he got as a candidate. He can extend peace offerings by placing hardline conservatives in various at-will agency positions or on state boards and commissions. But those won’t be satisfying substitutes for policy victories on such impassioned causes as gun rights and restricting abortions.

The far-right has shown that it can punish those it views as too willing to work across the aisle or too cordial with the mainstream media it despises.

Consider what befell R. Kirk Cox, a conservative Republican who spent 32 years in the House of Delegates — the last two as speaker — but now finds himself out of politics after finishing fourth in a seven-candidate field for the gubernatorial nomination. The GOP base never forgave Cox for permitting legislation that expanded Medicaid coverage to nearly 400,000 additional Virginians to pass the House in 2018.

Youngkin would be wise to resist pressure from the far-right and not pick fights on those divisive issues — at least for the first half of his term while Democrats still control the Senate. Not only would he likely fail by pushing divisive issues, but those issues could also rally Democrats ahead of the 2022 congressional midterms and the 2023 Virginia legislative elections when control of the Senate will be at stake.

A little forbearance would serve both Youngkin and his party’s restive far-right well.

Youngkin's problem is that for these far right elements, forebearance is an unknown concept.  They likely will not be quiet and will take actions and make statements that wake up suburban voters to the dangers of a Republican occupying the Executive Mansion.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Monday Male Beauty

 

The Right's Manufactured "War on Christmas"

It's the holiday season once again and we are yet again hearing both bleating and rage from the far right and the usual suspects among Christofascists groups about the "war on Christmas."  In reality, there is no war on Christmas, but for these right wing elements anything that is perceived as limiting their ability to ride rough shod over others is deemed to be a loss of privilege on their part.  Moreover, the claims that Christmas is under attack are yet another way to stoke white grievance for both political and ratings gain.  The burning of the Fox News Christmas tree by a demented individual is now another excuse to attack religious minorities and bemoan the perceived loss of white Christian dominance over others in society. The claims are ludicrous, of course, given that one cannot escape Christmas if one tried - go out to any store and it's everywhere.  Even in the office/shopping development where I work Christmas music is wafting through the air.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at some of those behind the phony war on Christmas (not surprisingly, Trump and Tucker Carlson are part of the group).  Here are highlights:

Some maniac set fire to the Fox News Christmas tree this week. Fortunately, the perpetrator was tackled within seconds, the fire extinguished, and Fox News personalities were given an early Christmas gift of a fresh new outrage against which to fulminate.

Tucker Carlson had a different, much darker interpretation. “Torching Christmas trees,” he reasoned, “is an attack on Christianity” — not on all religions but on one religion. Having deemed the attack a “hate crime,” he proceeded to reveal a shocking fact: The Biden Justice Department has no statistics to tabulate the number of Christmas-tree burnings that occur in the United States. “The DOJ can tell you precisely how many Qurans were burned in the United States last year, but they don’t keep track of Christmas trees,” he complained. “Why is that? Well, because they could care less.”

I would hypothesize that the DOJ’s failure to monitor Christmas-tree attacks is explained by their extreme rarity and the lack of any connection to a hate-crime motive. Indeed, in this case, police said the incident “didn’t appear to be premeditated or politically motivated” — which is to say, it was not a hate crime at all.

Carlson’s dark insinuation that the Biden DOJ refuses to monitor Christmas-tree burnings implies, absurdly, that the department used to keep track of such incidents under Donald Trump before the liberal Merrick Garland regime decided to start covering up this spate of hate crimes.

But what matters to Carlson is not the facts but the story they purport to reveal: that the liberal authorities are solely concerned with the rights of religious minorities while refusing to lift a finger to stop the ongoing “War on Christmas.”

Most liberals consider the conservative War on Christmas trope so ridiculous on its face that it hardly merits analysis. After all, the ubiquity of Christmas in American life is self-evident; everybody has heard the cliché that Christmas decorations, music, sales, movies, and so on begin earlier every year. But conservatives do not see this as a joke. The lawyer and self-styled intellectual Hugh Hewitt earnestly told Trump in an interview this week that he had been “the best president for Christmas.

The War on Christmas has had a place in Trump’s regular spiel since his candidacy began. Indeed, he’s the first major Republican candidate to make this a part of his message. It’s an idea easily laughed off as shtick, but it needs to be taken seriously as an important part of modern reactionary thought.

I grew up in suburban Detroit. My parents were drawn to what was reputed to be the “best” public-school system in the state and moved into one of the new subdivisions that were breaking ground in the 1970s. When my brother and I started elementary school, the curriculum in December was so focused on Christmas our parents pulled us out of school for most of the month. But as more Jews moved into the district — Jews in Detroit tend to clump together — the school’s Christmas celebrations gave way to more restrained, nonsectarian “holiday” observances with gestures of inclusivity . . . . this had produced a backlash strong enough to inspire the creation of a grassroots group formed to reverse it. The leader of this group was Ronna Romney, whose daughter (also named Ronna) attended my district’s other high school. . . .

Ronna had married a son of former Michigan governor George Romney. I remember hearing adults say that George, known as a moderate, did not approve of Ronna’s activism. If there was a schism in the family, it has certainly continued generationally: Mitt Romney is now the leading anti-Trump Republican in the country, while the younger Ronna, now Ronna McDaniel, dropped the Romney name to secure Trump’s support to lead the Republican National Committee.

Romney’s group was called Taxpayers Organized to Restore Our Cultural Heritage, or TORCH. . . . One community member supporting TORCH compared the secularization of public schools to the communist system he had fled. Another supporter warned darkly of “certain groups” that had gained “undue influence” over the school system.

I’m sure many people in the community had motives other than anti-Semitism for lamenting the loss of traditions they cherished and were forced to give up because a bunch of newcomers had moved in. To feel discomfort when your community changes is a common sentiment from which no group is immune.

The American passion for Christmas is deeply bound up in nostalgia. That can be, and usually is, a beautiful, perfectly innocent emotion connected to family and childhood celebrations. The likes of Trump and Carlson have figured out that it can also be a powerful lever to pry open resentment toward religious minorities and the rather minor accommodations the majority has to make toward them.

One of TORCH’s arguments, which the Christian right has used many times, is that schools or the government should celebrate Christmas because it is “our national holiday.” Carlson’s monologue has the benefit of stripping away this pretext, describing the Christmas tree as a symbol specifically of the Christian religion. I doubt the contradiction bothers any of them, but at least it’s clarifying.

Jews have never been at the top of the list of those most threatened by the ugliness Trump unleashed. But if you think the Jews face no risk, you’re unable to see what lies about an inch below the surface. You do know who the enemy is that is supposedly waging the War on Christmas, right?

Jews, godless gays, non-Christians - we are all the manufactured enemies of white "conservative Christians."

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

California to Consider Gun Legislation Modeled on the Texas Abortion Law

As the saying goes, sometimes one needs to be careful about what they wish for and/or how they go about getting it.  It's a lesson so-called conservatives may soon get in a harsh and very much deserved way.   In Texas, the GOP controled legislature thought it would be coy and pass anti-abortion legislation that in effect made private citizens vigilantes who could sue anyone involved in an abortion imposing a $10,000 civil fine on anyone found guilty of involvement as well as court costs and attorneys fees for the vigilantes filing the lawsuit.  The law was structured as a means to try to shield state officials from federal lawsuits to block the law.  Last week, the U.S.Supreme Court ruled that abortion providers could still sue state officials but left the mechanics of such lawsuits murky.  Now, California's governor and lawmakers are considering using a similar legal framework to target conservatives' sacred cow: guns.  If enacted, gun dealers and other traffickers in guns could find themselves facing lawsuits with simialr fines.  I have always favored strict liability for gun manufacturers and gun owners that would make them liable for any actions taken using a gun to commit a crime or harm others.  Such a law would likely put gun owners in a situation where they'd have to choose between their guns and homeowner's insurance - a requirement of mortgage lenders.  The result would be akin to insurance carriers that refuse to insure homes with dog breeds considered dangerous, such as pit bulls.  The California apprach would not go that far but could greatly increase the pressue on gun dealers and drive up insurance costs considerably.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the proposal:

Angered by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to continue allowing private citizens to sue Texas abortion providers, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Saturday called for a similar law giving ordinary residents legal standing to file lawsuits against purveyors of restricted firearms.

“SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, tweeted. “If that’s the precedent, then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets. If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.”

In a statement released on Saturday evening, Mr. Newsom said he had instructed his staff to work with California’s Legislature and attorney general to write a bill that would let citizens sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts” in California. The governor called for damages of at least $10,000 per violation, plus costs and attorney’s fees.

“If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” Mr. Newsom said in the statement.

The governor’s response seemed to explicitly position California opposite Texas in the divisive battles over abortion rights and gun control — and to position him personally on a national front in the culture wars.

Relatively secure now in his prospects for re-election, the governor has increasingly raised his national profile. He has undertaken a national book tour to promote a children’s book he has written on dyslexia, a lifelong challenge. And as tornadoes swept through Southeastern states, leaving a path of devastation, Mr. Newsom publicly offered assistance to states such as Kentucky, deploying specialized urban search and rescue resources.

The governor’s vow to use California courts against gun violence followed the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to let stand Texas’ ban on most abortions. The law allows private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion performed after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That development typically occurs around six weeks and often before women realize they are pregnant.

Supporters of abortion rights have criticized Texas for drafting its abortion ban to evade review in federal court, where it might be blocked. It effectively deputizes ordinary citizens, including those outside Texas, to sue clinics and others who violate the ban, awarding them at least $10,000 per illegal abortion if they are successful.

Mr. Newsom’s response seemed to fulfill warnings that if the high court backed Texas’ legal strategy, liberal-leaning states might use the same tactic to limit rights dear to conservatives, such as gun rights.

The governor said that “if states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.”

The reference was a swipe at a court ruling this year in which a federal judge overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, comparing the powerful guns, frequently used in mass shootings, to military pocketknives.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty