Only Democrats have agency (and other links)

Murc’s Law (coined for a commenter at Lawyers, Guns and Money) is a belief that only Democrats have agency. If Brett Kavanaugh’s on the Supreme Court, it’s because Democrats didn’t wanted him, not because the Senate Republicans had a majority. If Republicans elect Trump, it’s because liberals forced them by caring about minorities too much. And now anti-Trump anti-feminist conservative Mona Charen, who Tweets stopping Trump is 100 percent on Democrats. Faced with Sen. Warren’s growing strength in the polls, Charen writes a “harsh column” and tweets “Please, Democratic Party, pick someone else. It’s kind of important.”

Not, you’ll notice, “Please, Republicans pick someone else” — which admittedly, is not going to happen. No, it’s all on us: if we don’t pick a candidate Republicans can stomach, it’s our fault they vote Trump. As a friend of mine quipped, you can just imagine Republican laughter if Democrats told them to pick a candidate we want to vote for or we’ll just nominate a Stalinist.

Charen’s article supposedly catches Warren lying, telling stories of insurers who canceled health insurance when families faced an expensive emergency. Except Charen admits it’s not a lie, it’s happened thousands of times, but Obamacare bans it, so it’s not relevant — after all, nobody’s trying to repeal Obamacare are they (she didn’t phrase it that way, but it was implied). I suspect Charen’s virulent antifeminism (she despises independent women who aren’t her, and thinks feminism causes date rape — I’ll cover that in another post) and general conservative has much more to do with opposing the top woman candidate than anything else.

Other conservative are equally horrified Warren jokes that someone who thinks marriage is only man/woman should “only marry one woman, then.” OMG, the right-wing freaks out at her lack of civility! And then freaks out more!

In other links:

Oh noes! Trump legal mouthpiece and religious conservative William Barr warns that the left wing is soooo intolerant it’s engaging in “savage social media campaigns!” Yeah, that’s exactly like what happened at the Salem witch trials, isn’t it? It fits with the left wing’s brutal tradition of sending “snarky vitriolic” emails to people.

I have a Republican friend who insists Trump is more persecuted than any president in history. I’m sure she’s not as outraged by right-wing bullshit artist Scott Lively claiming Obama overthrew the Ukraine’s government in 2014 because he was gay.

Dave Daubenmire’s bullshit is even dumber, but he’s being invited as keynote speaker to an Ohio Republican Party event (“He is a great inspiration to myself and many others. He is the voice of reason; he is the guy you would want to be in the foxhole with when things are at the worst.”). Being a bigoted, misogynist, anti-Semitic asshat no longer puts you outside the mainstream.

Remember when Brett Stephens, champion of free and unfettered debate, had a meltdown about being criticized on Twitter? He agreed to debate the guy responsible, but refused to do it publicly.

Then we have the children of prominent politicians (Meghan McCain, Donald Trump Jr.) who sneer that Hunter Biden only got where he is because of his father.

Trump’s plan to gut Medicare while pretending to save it.

If Trump’s defiance of the impeachment inquiry becomes an issue for the courts, will Republican judges side with him? Ken Starr certainly will: the former independent counsel whose work led to Clinton’s impeachment hearing assures us Trump’s done nothing impeachable.

Another reminder that when the elephant steps on the mouse’s tail, neutrality only helps the elephant. And under Trump, we’re siding with the elephants.

Why authenticity is a lousy standard to judge politicians by. Nor is it a good idea to judge Democrats by whether a right-wing writer thinks they’re too liberal to win.

“This — this video — is what Trump voters signed up for.”

Is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sucking up to Trump? More here.

A cop making a “wellness check” on a black woman sees her in her house and shoots her. Radley Balko says while the cop may have thought he had a reasonable fear of his life, “reasonable isn’t the same thing as legitimate or accurate. And if police officers are seeing threats where there clearly are none, it makes sense to start asking why.”

Dressing like the Punisher, who kills people without a trial, is a bad look for cops.

To end on an upbeat note, here’s a story from 2016 about John Oliver spending $60,000 to erase $15 million in medical debt. Florida man Andrew Levy proved you don’t need that much money to make a difference: he paid off $944 in school-lunch debt for kids in Jupiter, Fla.

And I’ll give credit to conservative Republican pastor O’Neal Dozier for actively coming out in favor of impeachment.