Dems Launch Project 2025 Project in 2024
June 12: Anti-Project 2025 coalition … Is Biden winning?!? … Trump allies eye the draft … Hunter gets a hug …
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So who was it exactly who announced a concerted effort yesterday to oppose the Christian nationalist Project 2025 plan to autocratize and theocratize America?
Oh, right, that’d be the one openly non-believing member of Congress in a country where one out of every five people don’t believe in God.
Not surprisingly, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) is also the co-founder of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, sort of a halfway house for members of Congress who aren’t ready yet to live in the world as open atheists. And yesterday, Huffman announced the creation of a congressional task force to prepare for Project 2025 and start building defenses while it’s still 2024.
The members include Democratic leadership, Caucus Vice Chair Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), and chairs of the Hispanic Caucus, Asian Pacific American Caucus, Equality (LGTBQ+) Caucus, Labor Caucus, and Pro-Choice Caucus. Other prominent Democratic members are Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and #Resistance hero Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who co-founded the Freethought Caucus with Huffman.
Allies of this kind of thing typically include secular stalwarts like American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Center for Inquiry, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Secular Coalition for America, all of which are on board, too.
But this time out, the coalition is even broader, reflecting growing awareness among a wide range of constituencies about the dangers at hand but also a growing willingness for mainstream advocacy organizations to link hands with atheists, despite atheist cooties. As a result, the Project 2025 Project got the backing of leaders from the following groups:
Accountable.US
Center for American Progress
Common Cause
MoveOn Political Action
Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Here’s what members of the task force had to say for the launch of their task force:
Huffman: “Project 2025 is … a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will. This is an unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism, and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the radical right and its dark money backers.”
Lieu: “…reckless policy proposals include banning abortion, removing protections for LGBTQI+ Americans, abolishing the Department of Education, and abandoning efforts to fight climate change.”
Raskin: “This far-right roadmap for a ‘post-constitutional’ America would make January 6th extremism a governing ideology. They plan to centralize all power in the presidency, exercise political control over the Justice Department, implant Christian white nationalism throughout the government, strip tens of thousands of professional government workers of their civil service protections, create an army of political loyalists and sycophants in government, ban abortion nationwide, set up immigrant detention camps, deport millions of people, repeal all climate safety regulations and exact criminal revenge against reporters, judges and Democrats.”
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), chair of the Equality and Labor caucuses: “I look forward to working with members of this task force to thwart Project 2025’s extreme vision for the country, expose their dangerous plot to the American people, and work to safeguard the rights of the queer community and other minorities against this radical manifesto.”
While the task force can obviously push back by telling voters the stakes before Election Day, it’s less clear what can be done now to stop it in 2025 if DCC3FRFP1 Donald Trump wins.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts responded with a statement saying “Project 2025 will not be ‘stopped.’” Which, lol, because even Trump keeps refusing to sign on.
And Huffman’s new task force isn’t alone. The American Civil Liberties Union is both (a) still a thing and (b) already working on emergency legal filings in case re-President Trump goes through with his promised mass deportations. Huffman’s group, meanwhile, will focus on educating not just members of Congress, but the general public, creating a central hub for Project 2025 information and preparation.
But perhaps the single greatest factor in their favor: Like so many “libertarian” right-wing efforts that flare and then fizzle, Project 2025 is a collective effort made up of people who oppose collective efforts. Go team! uncompromising individuals!
Another Way to Stop Project 2025: Win
Hate to rain on your cloud of defeatism, gloomy Democrats, but yer boy Pres. Joe Biden is favored to win the 2024 presidential election. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You don’t have to go home and be depressed, but you can’t do it here.
538 — which you’re still allowed to hate with a raging fire even hotter than that which burns for other pollsters and horserace “pundits” — just launched its official 2024 forecast model. This is the algorithm-and-blues band that does medleys of all the polling data.
That means more than just averaging national polls, it means granularizing all the data, pumping it through the grotesque, obsolete, racist Electoral College machinery that still powers us because we haven’t converted to clean democracy yet, and then totally guessing calculating the odds for each candidate. As of this morning…well, look for yourself, recalcitrant depressives:
As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out in his memo of talking points, “It shows a toss-up.”
Marshall adds that much of Democratic strategy and much much of political punditry is explicitly about or tacitly premised on the “fact” that Biden is losing. It’s so entrenched that journalists matter-of-”fact”ly say the White House is in denial. And that’s got Democrats bummed.
“Demoralized teams lose more often than focused, positive and motivated ones,” Marshall writes. “Demoralized parties waste time in pointless conversations; they fritter away energy on blame games over elections that haven’t even been decided yet. It’s simply not a good way to live in the world, let alone run a campaign.”
His warning is oddly demoralizing in a way. But, it’s no less important! It’s to Democrats’ credit that they’re feeling and acting like losers. It’s mature and smart not to take victory for granted, to ferret out weaknesses in strategy and execution.
But Democrats and the left have to learn to be happy warriors, FDR style, and tell their inner worry wart to stfu but keep driving. Probably the single most effective Republican tactic — always and forever — is simply to act as if things are shitty from the moment a Democratic shoe crosses the threshold at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 20.
Instantly, the media dialogue is transformed to a debate over why things are so shitty. The economy is great by media standards (which I hold in some disrepute, FWIW). Even if Biden isn’t winning, and even if Democrats should still plan and work as if they need to reclaim the lead, it’s important to do all of that with the attitude and affect of winning. Most of America doesn’t want Trump to be president. Biden wins in most of 538’s scenarios. Be thou happy, Newsfuckers!
And if you’re insisting on wallowing in pre-defeat — screaming in your sleep, “But we’ve lost the youth vote!” — may I interest you in this delightful amuse-bouche…
Team Trump Flirting with the Draft
Christopher Miller — who was briefly secretary of defense when DCC3FRFP Donald Trump was cramming for his upcoming pop coup, and whose return has been hinted at — says reviving the draft should be “strongly considered.” And, no, not for the American Climate Corps.
Miller tells the Washington Post — which weirdly keeps saying “national service requirement” instead of “draft” — that military service is a “rite of passage” that would unify America’s youth via “shared sacrifice.”
“It reinforces the bonds of civility,” Miller said, not adding, “like during Vietnam.”
“Why wouldn’t we give that a try?” Miller asked, not remembering that (a) we did, (b) we didn’t like it, and (c) he was speaking out loud to a journalist in a year when Democrats are looking for some way to motivate the youth vote. On top of abortion and legalized marijuana!
Hilariously, the Post reports that Miller isn’t the only Trump figure floating a revival of the draft. And that Miller is part of Project 2025.
And as part of Project 2025, Miller also proposes forcing every high school kid to take a Pentagon test to identify which cog of the military-industrial complex they’d be best at being.
The test, called the ASVAB for Absolute Servitude to Violent Armed Bureaucracy Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, is already forced on students by at least 900 schools. It’s a foot in the door that lets the military target kids (disproportionately those with disproportionately low incomes) and get them on the hook for reeling them into a system which can be rewarding for some but not for all, although they do get outstanding socialized medical care until Project 2025 privatizes the shit out of that.
The point is, a Trump presidency is going to need cannon fodder to defend democracy overseas and stamp it out here at home. Uncle Sham wants YOU!
(In all likelihood, Trump will freak out when if he hears about this, but there’s a halfway decent chance it’ll be too late by then.)
Crime Watch
HUNTER BIDEN Pres. Joe Biden yesterday responded to the criminal conviction of his only surviving son by rushing to his side, wrapping his son in his arms, and gently whispering his fatherly reassurance that he will never, ever pardon him.
Which is a little weird because pardons are supposed to be decided after a lengthy, rigorous process. Circumventing the process to demonstrate that you’re not political is political, and I was led to believe we’re not supposed to do that.
Obviously, if Biden won’t save his own son from the Deep State Swamp, America will just have to elect the one man who loves issuing obviously corrupt, conflicted pardons without going through the process.
In fact, if almost any of DCC3FRFP Donald Trump’s acknowledged offspring committed a crime — anything from falsifying business records to nuking the Hague — there’s zero doubt that Trump would pardon them instantly. Unless he forgot.
Ironically, not pardoning his son may not even help Biden politically. To thoughtless people — y’know, “undecideds”! — it makes Biden look weak and even stupid. The vast majority of “undecided” voters would absolutely pardon their kid without knowing the crime, evidence, or repentance (if any). It’s family, people! It’s not like that’s the definition of nepotism!
Prosecutors told jurors last week that they had to convict Hunter Biden for saying on his buying-a-gun forms that he wasn’t a drug addict because he knew he was. In fact, when you think about it, for Hunter Biden not to realize he was a drug addict, he’d have to be high out of his mind!
I don’t wanna get into the politics of all this, the GOP trying to squeeze this for all the juice they couldn’t squeeze out of their own hearings and investigations, just like they couldn’t squeeze anything out of Benghazi other than sympathy and respect for Hillary Clinton. It’s just stupid and depressing.
And this is already a heartbreaking, depressing story that has almost no systemic implications for people’s lives. So here’s a though: Let’s not focus on it! Let’s not torture ourselves with the details and the sweeping panorama of personal pain. Besides, he might not get jail time, plus he’s gonna appeal so the verdict might not even stand.
So try focusing on something light and uplifting that you’re anticipating. Like Trump’s sentencing hearing! No, wait, he probably won’t get jail time either.
Oh, I know! Sunday is Father’s Day!
…
Goddammit.
(On the other hand, how much would you pay to know which card Hunter picks out this year? “PARDON me, Dad, but today’s your day!...”)
TCB
DCC3FRFP I’m thinking of getting rid of this. I’m not sure I like it anymore. Thoughts?
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Go get ‘em, kids…!
DCC3FRFP = Disgraced, criminally convicted, tridicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
Just “orange felon” will work in replacement..
I say MORE BIGGER acronyms - bold scarlet letters for each of Trump's litany of horrible offenses. Like DDRTBP - Donald didn't rent to black people and DSTTOIMC - Donald systematically tortured thousands of innocent migrant children. I'm definitely in the minority here.