Open Letter to Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Senator Thune,

I am a lifelong Democrat. I’m sure we disagree on most policy issues, but I’m also sure we agree on the importance of our country’s national security. I have to believe that you are as concerned as I am about many of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections (Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Matt Gaetz). The risks of these individuals are obvious, so I won’t elaborate further.

As you know, members of the Senate have a duty to advise and consent to the cabinet and judicial nominees of the president. With Trump’s nominees, it is more important than ever for Senators to take this duty seriously, and not to be just a rubber stamp.

For this reason, I write to you to strongly urge that you set a clear standard for these and future nominees, that the Senate will hold no confirmation hearings for a nominee who fails to obtain a national security clearance. This standard should be the bare minimum that the American people deserve for the unelected bureaucrats who are in charge of our national defense, our national intelligence, our health, and our law enforcement.

I write this not as a partisan Democrat, but as an American concerned for the welfare of our country. I hope that you will also put politics aside and put our shared national interest ahead of partisanship.

Earlyworm

In past election cycles, I've made an effort to recommend how to get the best bang for your buck in political donations.

If you're among the three people who followed those efforts, you may be wondering why I haven't done so this cycle. The answer is mostly laziness and life getting in the way.

But also! I recently discovered an organization who does a better job of helping you get bang for your buck than I ever could.  It's called Earlyworm, and I just donated the maximum amount to the various worthy organizations on it main page as my wife would allow.

I've also been doing a lot of letter writing for Vote Forward, as usual.

Trump Campaign Goes Full Fash

Although it's been said many times, many ways, the mask is truly off for the American GOP:

Police in Springfield, Ohio, said Monday they had received no credible reports of immigrants harming pets, contradicting a claim by Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance. 

The senator from Ohio, as well as other Republican lawmakers and several conservative commentators, have in recent days asserted without evidence that the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Haiti had created chaos in Springfield. 

In a post on X, Vance wrote Monday that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” 

The Springfield Police Division said in a statement that they were aware of the “rumors” and had no information to support them.

This is a tactic authoritarians --- yes, including the Nazis --- have used for years. Dehumanize the most vulnerable and give people reason to despise them. Then claim that only you can solve the problem --- by any means necessary.

If people believe your outlandish claims, they'll support anything you want to do, no matter how monstrous. After all, these immigrants are eating our pets --- and the opposition candidate won't even admit there's a problem!

These fascist lies come just two days after Trump himself made an ominous promise:

At his weekend rally in Wisconsin, Trump brought up his sadistic plan to deport millions of immigrants, and he spun a dizzyingly dishonest tale about immigrants: “In Colorado they’re so brazen they’re taking over sections of the state. And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story . . . ."

I am but a humble software developer. I don't know everything that needs to happen to defeat American fascism. But I know that it starts with everyone who still believes in American democracy, freedom of speech, and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness needs to get to a polling station this November and vote for every candidate with a D next to their name.

 

 

Team Biden Passed First Gun Safety Legislation in 21st Century

What everyone knows is that a shooter tried to assassinate Donald Trump last weekend.

What was ignored in all of the coverage is that the primary reason people like Thomas Crooks are able to open carry a weapon like the AR-15 is because Republicans like Trump and the GOP have fought tooth and nail to block all gun safety legislation for decades.  Trump himself has proudly proclaimed that as president, he "did nothing" about gun violence.

Trump was afraid to stand up to the NRA, but Biden wasn't. In June 2022, Biden signed the first federal gun safety legislation of the 21st century, after the Uvalde school shootings (Trump has promised to repeal this law if elected):

The legislation, which passed the House 234-193 Friday night following Senate approval Thursday, includes incentives for states to pass so-called red flag laws that allow groups to petition courts to remove weapons from people deemed a threat to themselves or others.

In addition, the bill expands an existing law that prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun to include dating partners rather than just spouses and former spouses.

It also expands background checks on people between the ages of 18 and 21 seeking to buy a gun.

Team Biden Got it Right in Afghanistan

We all know that Joe Biden is suffering in the polls.  While current polling of the presidential race basically has it as a coin flip between him and Trump, Biden's approval ratings have been under water for some time now.

Pretty much since Biden made the decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

That was an unpopular decision, but no doubt the right one.  Charles A. Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations writes:

The ineffectiveness and collapse of Afghanistan’s military and governing institutions largely substantiates Biden’s skepticism that US-led efforts to prop up the government in Kabul would ever enable it to stand on its own feet. The international community has spent nearly 20 years, many thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars to do good by Afghanistan – taking down al-Qaeda; beating back the Taliban; supporting, advising, training, and equipping the Afghan military; bolstering governing institutions; and investing in the country’s civil society.

Significant progress was made, but not enough. As the Taliban’s speedy advance has revealed, even two decades of steady support failed to create Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.

That is because the mission was fatally flawed from the outset. It was a fool’s errand to try to turn Afghanistan into a centralized, unitary state. The country’s difficult topography, ethnic complexity, and tribal and local loyalties produce enduring political fragmentation. Its troubled neighborhood and hostility to outside interference make foreign intervention perilous.

Despite what it cost him in political capital, Biden deserves credit for doing the right thing.  Even more so, Biden deserves credit for doing it despite knowing that it would cost him politically --- something that Bush, Trump, and even Obama weren't willing to do:

Instead, the past three administrations have equivocated, or worse. In May of 2003, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that U.S. forces had ended major combat operations in Afghanistan, a claim that he and his field commanders knew was false. In December of 2014, Barack Obama made a similar announcement, announcing that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending,” and “the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.”

As Craig Whitlock, the author of “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War”, told an interviewer recently, “Of course, that wasn’t true, either. We still engaged in combat for years to come. Scores of Americans died in combat, and thousands of Afghans did. So there’s this deliberate attempt by different presidents and their administrations to reassure Americans that the war was in hand when it really wasn’t.”

No one is a fan of the Taliban; it would have been great if the U.S. could have swept them aside to make way for democracy in Afghanistan. But wishing doesn't make it so. It was a fool's errand to invade Afghanistan in the first place, and Joe Biden deserves a great deal of credit for having the courage to end it.

Team Biden: Protecting Overtime Pay

It's no exaggeration to say that the Biden administration has done more for the working class than any administration for the past 50 years (or more).  Here's just one example:

Note that these rules are indexed to inflation, so the schedule resets every 3 years.  This means that overtime pay will rise with inflation, unless a future administration (like Trump, if re-elected) rolls back the rule.

Compare this to Trump's Project 2025 plan, which promises to basically eliminate overtime pay, unless you consistently work overtime week after week.

Trump is a Crook, a Clown, and a Fascist

It is, of course, critically important that Trump not be sworn in for a second term as president. The reasons are almost too numerous to list, so I won't bother trying. Instead, I'll leave that task to folks much more eloquent than I:

• Philadelphia Inquirer: To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race
• New York Times: Donald Trump is Unfit to Lead
• Los Angeles Times: One candidate is patently unfit for the White House. It's not Biden 
• 26 of Trump's former cabinet members 
  

Team Biden's Crucial Support of Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has dragged on for nearly two and a half years now, and so doesn't get the attention that it once did. The fact that it's no longer considered major news is a good thing --- it means that Putin still doesn't have the victory that he thought would take him mere days --- and Joe Biden deserves a great deal of the credit for it, in at least two ways.

First, Biden made the decision not only to back Ukraine financially, but to share U.S. intelligence with Ukraine, making it easier for Ukrainians to find and destroy Russian military targets:

Information about the location and movements of Russian forces is flowing to Ukraine in real-time, and it includes satellite imagery and reporting gleaned from sensitive U.S. sources, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the cooperation.

“The intelligence is very good. It tells us where the Russians are so that we can hit them,” one Ukrainian official said, using his finger to pantomime a bomb falling on its target.

In the early days of the conflict, there was some concern that providing this intelligence put the U.S. at risk of Russian retaliation, but this conspicuously has not happened. It is a key policy measure aiding in the massive damage Ukraine has done to Russia's military.

The other bit of magic the Biden administration managed to pull off was to continue sending aid to Ukraine at all.  This fact, too, has been lost in recent weeks, but for a long time, it appeared that House Republicans would cut off all funding to Ukraine (largely at the behest of Putin's pal and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump).

But in mid-April, Biden managed to get House Speaker Mike Johnson to see reason, allowing an additional $60.8 billion in aid to get sent to Ukraine.

If Trump returns to the White House in January, Ukraine will be lost, strengthening Russia, and making the world a more threatening place for the U.S. and its allies.

Team Biden Spurs Growth in "Forgotten" Counties

The perception that the economy has underperformed under Biden is a stubborn one, even though it has been historically strong --- even in the rural areas where people tend to vote Republican:

The pandemic recession hit those counties harder than the rest of the country, just as the Great Recession did. But their recovery has been much stronger this time. Left-behind counties added jobs five times faster in the first three years of the Biden administration than they did in the first three years of the Trump administration. The flow of residents leaving them for better opportunities slowed.

Perhaps most strikingly, they have shared in a new-business boom that has swept the country since the pandemic. That didn’t happen after the Great Recession. From 2009 to 2016, for example, Bay County, Mich., lost 8 percent of its business establishments. Since 2020, it has gained 12 percent.

Hopefully, folks with think about this before voting in Trump and his economic policies which are almost certain to push the economy into recession.

How Biden Broke OPEC

This is an amazing story, and almost no one is talking about it.  Fundamentally, between 2022 and 2024, President Biden took away OPEC's power to dictate global oil prices, and gave that power to the United States instead.

I'm having difficulty finding much mention of it in the U.S. media (there is a paywalled article in The Economist), other than this video segment from All in with Chris Hayes.

Basically, when oil prices were at record highs in 2022, Biden let the world know that the United States would do what it takes to drive prices down, including flooding the market with oil from our strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), a cache of millions of barrels of oil the U.S. government keeps on hand for emergencies.

He then proceeded to sell off 180 million barrels of crude oil at $95 a barrel.  This had three significant effects, all of which benefited the U.S.:

1. It brought in $17 billion in revenue to the U.S.
2. It drove down global oil prices by flooding the market with oil.
3. It put world markets on notice that the U.S. had the resources and resolve to push prices down, causing a further drop in oil prices.

And that's not all!

Two years later, when oil prices are lower and OPEC nations are increasing production, Biden is putting oil back into the SPR at lower prices.  In other words, he sold high, and now he's buying low.

And that's not all!

Since the U.S. has the capital to prop up oil markets, and keep global prices from bottoming out, this has helped domestic oil producers as well.

The net result of which is that OPEC is no longer calling the shots when it comes to world oil prices.  The United States is, and it's all thanks to Joe Biden.

Expand the Court

If the Democratic party were ever to pick up one of my suggestions and run with it, please let it be this one!  This is a reposting of a thread I originally posted on Bluesky.

Today, I'm going to show you something that you rarely see on social media: Someone admitting they were wrong.

Last week on Bluesky, @lolgop.bsky.social said that Biden should campaign on expanding the court, and I disagreed. But I was wrong. He should 100% campaign on expanding the court.

Name almost any issue with broad support. The conservative bloc on SCOTUS is the reason why it can't get implemented. Reproductive rights? Obviously not going to happen with this SCOTUS. We need to pass pro-choice legislation anyway, but that's not enough. And it's not just reproductive rights!

Legal folks can point out other issues better than I can, but just for a start --- There's the EPA. SCOTUS won't let it protect the environment.

Affirmative action? Not for you! And of course, it's fair to say that this court, like America generally, gives deference to White men over women and people of color.

This SCOTUS not only wants to decide what the EPA does, but OSHA as well. And not surprisingly, it wants to uphold the anti-science, anti-public health, anti-vaxx position held by the fascists.

As long as SCOTUS is deciding all public policy for the federal government, why not block Biden from fulfilling his campaign promise to forgive student loan debt (to Biden's credit, he has found creative ways around this adverse ruling)?

Mind you --- IANAL, but it's my understanding that when blocking administrative actions of the EPA, OSHA and student debt relief, the court is unconstitutionally overruling the black & white letter of the law.

And that's not the only way SCOTUS is exceeding its authority! It's hearing cases and handing down rulings to litigants who have no standing! SCOTUS is literally cherry-picking meritless cases, just so it can make policy!

And if cherry-picking cases isn't enough to get the rulings the fascists want, well hey --- they'll just lie about the facts of the case, like they did in Washington State to justify erasing the line between church and state.

Not satisfied with overruling executive agencies one at a time, SCOTUS is on the verge of simply declaring it has authority to approve or reject the actions of ALL executive agencies (this ruling hasn't happened yet, but is likely to).

Fixing gerrymandering? SCOTUS has ruled that only racially-based gerrymandering is bad. If one party has set up a gerrymander based not on race, but only on the goal of constructing a permanent legislative supermajority, SCOTUS has ruled that's okay.

To summarize: SCOTUS is locking America in to the fascist-approved position on:

• Reproductive rights
  

• The environment

• Worker safety

• Affirmative action

• Gerrymandering

And is on the verge of making all executive agency actions under its review. And there's almost certainly more I'm missing!

Like gun safety, for example! How have I not mentioned gun safety?!?

On top of this, add the outright corruption of the many of the court's conservative members.

• Kavanaugh: Sexual assault (the FBI purposely limited its investigation of him prior to his confirmation)

• Gorsuch: Financial impropriety

• Thomas: Don't get me started

All of this tees up SCOTUS as the perfect entity for Biden to campaign against. Want reproductive rights? Give me a Democratic House and Senate, and we'll deliver reproductive rights by expanding the court! Want (thing X)? Help me expand the court!

Right now, expanding the court isn't a winning campaign argument, because practically no voters even understand what that means. But if Biden and the Democrats educate them, I think 'Expand the Court' can not only be a winning message, but it can develop a MANDATE for real change!

EXPAND THE COURT!