Last Call For In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions, Con't

The great Kroog asks:

 

Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage?

 

Short answer: No.

Rural resentment has become a central fact of American politics — in particular, a pillar of support for the rise of right-wing extremism. As the Republican Party has moved ever further into MAGAland, it has lost votes among educated suburban voters; but this has been offset by a drastic rightward shift in rural areas, which in some places has gone so far that the Democrats who remain face intimidation and are afraid to reveal their party affiliation.

But is this shift permanent? Can anything be done to assuage rural rage? 

Long answer: After 30, 40 years of making white rural voters hate everything that isn't a white rural voter? 

 

Hell no. Stop trying and move on already, we're deep into triage mode now. Save who you can.

 

Really Long Answer: Yes, but it's going to take a generation to undo the damage since the Newt Gingrich era, and we have to ask ourselves if we have the time and energy to do that before the fascists gain permanent one-party control of several states, and the hard data shows it's largely too late in places like Ohio, Florida, and Alabama. 

 

The process of reforming these states will take decades and while we have to get started on saving people, the greater good of the rest of the country's federal government has to take priority. 

 

Take it from a person in Kentucky, just one gubernatorial election this year away from one-party Republican rule for the next 20 years.

This has been In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's idea of "criminal justice reform" when the rest of the country is openly questioning the death penalty's efficacy as a deterrent, when thousands of death row inmates have been exonerated by evidence, when prosecutions have been wiped clean due to racism and railroading, is to make it easier to sentence people to die.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday outlined a sweeping criminal justice proposal that came packed with changes that have long been politically popular with conservatives, setting up a fight with outmatched Democrats during the 2023 legislative session.

DeSantis addressed the Florida Sheriffs Association on Monday and rolled out his criminal justice package at the Miami offices of the Miami Police Benevolent Association.

At both events, DeSantis stressed he wanted the GOP-led Legislature to change Florida law to allow juries to administer the death penalty by a supermajority rather than requiring unanimity, which has been state law since 2017. DeSantis has tied this proposal to the case of the Parkland school shooter, who shot and killed 17 people but was spared the death penalty because one of the jurors was against the death penalty.

“One juror should not be able to veto that,” DeSantis said Thursday. “I don’t think justice was served.”

DeSantis also wants lawmakers to crack down on colorful fentanyl pills that look like candy and are commonly referred to as “rainbow fentanyl.” His proposal would make it a first degree felony to possess, sell, or manufacture fentanyl that resembles candy. It would also make it a $1 million penalty for trafficking those pills to children. It’s the second year in the row DeSantis focused on fentanyl. Last year, he championed increased mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl trafficking.

 

Just need eight people out of twelve to kill a person, and a million dollar fine for selling something that doesn't actually exist. 

Meanwhile, last week's Desantism is causing a major ruckus, because there's no possible way it's not outright racism.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing mounting backlash regarding his administration’s decision to prohibit an Advanced Placement high school course on African American studies, with Black leaders rallying in the capital, a prominent civil rights lawyer threatening to sue and state lawmakers urging him to reverse the decision.

Attorney Ben Crump accused DeSantis of violating the federal and state constitutions Wednesday by refusing to permit the course. His legal team noted that a federal judge found a 2010 law in Arizona that banned a Mexican American studies program from Tucson schools unconstitutional and officials “motivated by racial animus.”

The state Department of Education contends that the class is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law.” A new education law championed by DeSantis requires lessons on race be taught in “an objective manner” and “not used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” Some education advocates and teachers say the law is so broadly framed that it is having a chilling effect on the teaching of Black history.

“If he does not negotiate with the College Board to allow AP African American Studies to be taught in classrooms across the state of Florida, these three young people will be the lead plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit,” Crump said before he introduced the students.

Crump has been involved in several high-profile civil rights cases involving Black Americans and vowed that DeSantis “cannot exterminate our culture.”

The latest controversy in Florida education policies began this month, when the DeSantis administration said a pilot Advanced Placement course on Black history would not be approved by the state Department of Education because it violated state law and “lacks educational value.”

 

DeSantis knows he's going to sued. What he's dreaming of is a Supreme Court that will agree with him that Black history has no educational value, and make erasing it from US history nationwide possible.

The Durham Debacle Debate

The NY Times takes a hard look at Special Counsel John Durham and Trump AG Bill Barr, having utterly failed at the charges he brought against Democrats after years of screwing around, and discovers among other things that he sat on apparent wrongdoing that he discovered Donald Trump doing and refused to move on it.

It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.

 

There was never any doubt that the Durham investigation was a completely partisan witch hunt, essentially everything Trump accused the Mueller probe of being, and it was so inept it couldn't find any actual criminal activity.

But he sure did go after Hillary Clinton and George Soros, while completely ignoring Trump's criminal activities.

Maybe Merrick Garland should, you know, investigate.