Your next US Senator from the state of Georgia

This is it. This is all American politics is capable of producing. 

"Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Walker where he stands on gun control measures such as universal background checks or raising the age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21. 

"Well, you know, it's always been an issue, because as I said earlier on, they wanna score political points ... People see that it's a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel," Walker said. "And that's the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things.

"You talk about doing a disinformation," Walker continued, "what about getting a department that can look at young men that's looking at women, that's looking at their social media? What about doing that, looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way?"

Walker also mentioned "putting money into other departments rather than the department that's wanting to take away your rights," but did not specify any agency.

Earlier this week, Walker struggled to answer a question on gun control from a CNN reporter, only going as far to say, "What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff."

This is all, of course, in response to the latest of the mass shootings that have recurred with greater frequency over multiple decades now.  It's so routine now that it's not even worth raising the question of what is to be done about it.  We already know the answer is nothing. Whatever passes for a policy response can only involve a slight acceleration of the already gushing flow of money directed into police and surveillance.  

Public policy doesn't emerge through democratic process at all anymore. Democracy isn't operating in any meaningful sense. A couple of days ago, John Ganz published an essay where he suggests society itself is barely operating. 

We seem to be in the slow and torturous process of dissolving ourselves as a civil and political society. Laws cannot be changed or passed. No one wants the responsibility of governance. The answer is always “it can’t be done.” But it was done to us. The laws actually were made worse.

I highlight the last bit. It matters that the dismantling has been done on purpose. That there is an ideology at work in this nihilism. It's the desired result of decades of libertarian and neoliberal political program. Ganz identifies that in the essay as well.  

Now each man can be his own commando force, an army of one, each man is the sovereign that can decide on the exception when the laws of society no longer apply, when he can suddenly resort to violence. No one can tell him otherwise: he has a gun. There’s no “legitimate” or “illegitimate,” just force. The only solution on offer is to further distribute sovereignty: make more men their own armed-to-the-teeth statelet to be a check the other guy. The idea is hopefully that will create stasis—if not exactly peace— through mutual fear. Every man his own nuclear-armed power.

The gun fetish is just one manifestation.  But it's far more endemic that just that. The hellworld ideology of distributed sovereignties existing in mutual fear  is also evident anywhere we find "entrepreurial mindset" propaganda. It's what explains the rise of crypto currency and NFT speculation. It's why the dominant mode of oure political response to the pandemic was based in "individual responsibility." It's the animating worldview behind the charter school movement which we now see metastasizing into a full scale retreat from even the idea that public education should be a thing.

What is to be done, or what can be done is difficult to know now. If people had any belief in each other maybe there would be an opportunity to organize a way to change.  If we still had democracy maybe there would be a lever there that organized people could grab onto. But all the evidence now tells us, what the appearance of figures like Senator Herschel Walker tells us, is that no such opportunities exist. It's all just oligarchy made legitimate through nihilism now. And it looks very much like it's on autopilot. 

The baby fit session

The first thing you need to understand about Republicans is they love government. They love it so much they are now calling everybody back to the big government building to do bonus governing. 

Louisiana lawmakers will return to Baton Rouge for an unprecedented session aimed at overriding the vetoes of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, after a majority of legislators signaled their intent to convene the veto session.

House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said in a statement Friday the Legislature will hold the first-ever veto session, which begins next week.

“In accordance with the Louisiana Constitution and the will of the majority of its members, the Legislature will return to Baton Rouge to consider overriding vetoes made by Governor Edward’s this session,” Schexnayder said. “This is democracy in action.”

Is it "democracy in action?" We have to trust that it is, I guess. The other thing we understand about Republicans is that they do love democracy. Which is why they passed bills like these that would have made the elections process more difficult and less accessible for thousands of Louisiana voters had the Governor not vetoed them. In the baby fit session, they could try and override either of those vetoes, or anything else from the list. But probably they will only focus on two. 

The first is Beth Mizell's obscenely cruel ban on trans high school students participating in sports. John Bel had some high minded phrasing in explanation of his veto. 

“As I have said repeatedly when asked about this bill, discrimination is not a Louisiana value, and this bill was a solution in search of a problem that simply does not exist in Louisiana,” Edwards said in a written statement Tuesday. “Even the author of the bill acknowledged throughout the legislative session that there wasn’t a single case where this was an issue.”

“It would make life more difficult for transgender children, who are some of the most vulnerable Louisianans when it comes to issues of mental health. We should be looking for more ways to unite rather than divide our citizens,” Edwards said.

All of that is true. However, I strongly suspect the Governor wouldn't care about any of it were it not for the economic incentive. 

New Orleans officials and tourism leaders have also warned that the legislation could spell trouble for Louisiana’s economy. Sports leagues have boycotted states over gay and transgender restrictions in recent years. The state — and particularly New Orleans — could also lose movie productions, concerts, business conventions and other regular tourism business over such a restriction. 

“[The bill] does present real problems in that it makes it more likely that NCAA and professional championships, like the 2022 Final Four, would not happen in our state,” Edwards said in his written statement about his veto Tuesday.

“They will have a negative impact,” said Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, a Republican official in charge of the state’s tourism efforts, when asked about the proposed transgender restrictions in April. “It would be better for us to open our doors very wide.”

Even Billy Nungesser is sufficiently motivated to let this bill die.  It's hard to imagine the entirety of the Republican caucus holding together to push it through. From the looks of things, there are barely enough of them there to override anything. That is if we can gauge according to where they stood on the question of even being there in the first place.

Of 105 House members, 69 did not send in ballots to cancel the veto session, meaning one short of two-thirds felt a veto session was necessary. In the Senate, 27 of 39 members, one more than two-thirds, signaled support for a veto session.

Maybe they are figuring on doing some arm twisting and favor trading once they all get in the room. But one would think that process would work against an override with real money on the line. 

The other main target of the baby fit is Edwards's veto of Jay Morris's carry-your-gun-around-wherever-you-want-as-a-security-blanket bill.  

Senate Bill 118, sponsored by Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe), would have amended Louisiana’s concealed carry permit law, which requires applicants to pass background checks and pass a nine-hour course that includes live-fire training in order to carry a concealed handgun in public spaces. Louisiana residents can already carry a gun openly in public — referred to as “open carry” — without any special permits as long as the firearm is in plain view. 

Again, though, the path to overriding this veto is not clear. Numerous political formations, including various law enforcement groups are urging lawmakers to let the veto stand.  Given the slim margins and given what looks to be strong political opposition to either of these overrides, one has to wonder what the babies are even having the baby fit session for in the first place.

It's not clear what they're doing there. But it is worth paying attention to what goes on. Even if neither of the marquee issues sees action, all of the governor's vetoes are in play. Maybe they'll pick something less controversial and override that just to see if they can.  Just in case that happens, various lobbying groups are already sending in suggestions.  The Jefferson Parish Chamber, for example, put out a press release today urging overrides in favor of a Barrow Peacock bill that would have imposed limitations on the kind of advertising lawyers can do.  They also are advocating for Rick Edmonds's bill that would have required school districts to share more information with the "Louisiana Checkbook" website.  Neither of those sounds particularly necessary but they're also just innocuous enough to squeak through if the legislators feel like they need to justify their decision to even be there for this.

They also make good test cases if something like this turns out to be the actual project which would also make sense to me.

Correct. Also, the end goal of the other side here is to be able to totally control redistricting. This is a test.

— Mandie Landry (@votelandry) July 16, 2021

What Representative Landry is talking about there is next year's looming fight over redrawing political boundaries based on the 2020 Census results. That promises to be a complex and acrimonious battle fought in several venues and the legislature's theoretical ability to override the Governor is certainly a weapon that could come into play.  The session we are about to see might just be a baby fit. But next year could bring massive convulsions.

How we live now

This is a good article to read for #NationalWalkOutDay. It is primarily about, you guessed it, the damn interminable gun debate.  But it is also about the reasons that debate appears to be so intractable. Mostly, it is because our politics, dominated by neoliberalism as it is, is bad.  

What is neoliberalism? The many competing definitions can be confusing and even misleading. And, since the history of neoliberalism has played out in many different countries, what the word denotes in one place is not necessarily the same in others. But we shouldn’t let nuance and complexity dissuade us from using the term, because neoliberalism is an incredibly powerful concept for understanding not just contemporary American life and politics in general, but our reactions to gun violence and school shootings specifically.

Neoliberalism is at once a subspecies of capitalism and a model of governance, a vision of what politics can and should be. It sees political and social life almost exclusively through the lens of the free market, and asks us to consider ourselves and our fellow citizens primarily in terms of our economic activities: as consumers, as workers, as competitors, as human resources. Under neoliberalism, in other words, the individual is less a human subject with rights that entail obligations from the government, but rather a variable in a broader calculus of efficiency, a site for maximizing revenue and minimizing expenditure. Simply put, neoliberalism is about the withdrawal of government responsibility for political problems in favor of market-based “solutions” and individual “choices.”

It doesn't have to be this way, of course.  There are other ways of organizing politics that emphasize democracy and basic human dignity.  We don't have to swallow this crap forever.  Somebody should really tell the Democrats about this.   

The Senate on Wednesday passed the most significant loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis a decade ago, delivering wide bipartisan support for weakening banking rules despite bitter divisions among Democrats.

The bill, which passed 67 votes to 31, would free more than two dozen banks from the toughest regulatory scrutiny put in place after the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite President Trump’s promise to do a “big number” on the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the new measure leaves key aspects of the earlier law in place. Nonetheless, it amounts to a sweeping rollback of banking rules aimed at protecting taxpayers from another financial crisis and future bailouts.

That's 16 Democrats voting yes. Way to go, guys.  Is that the over/under on Democrats who will vote to confirm the Torture Lady as CIA Director?  I'm gonna take the over there.

The gun debate is boring

It isn't an interesting dilemma. There aren't any complicated politics. It's not one of those things where we all have to sit down and work out a grand compromise that respects the validity of "both sides" regardless of whatever David Brooks says. Also, why are people still worried about David Brooks? The big op-ed pages aren't just bad, they're utterly irrelevant. Don't read that stuff. Don't discuss it. Don't give it any power. That's exactly how we end up behaving as though something completely straightforward like gun control is "controversial" and therefore inactionable  even though that clearly isn't the case.

This isn't a debate at all.  It's just a straightforward assertion of power by a well-focused and funded single-issue lobby.   Also it is boring and predictable. That it remains boring and predictable in the face of the horrors it enables is an obscenity. Nobody's going to stop that by going on CNN to have meaningful dialog with soulless death merchants.  Sure, it's cathartic to watch Dana Loesch and Marco Rubio get owned by a bunch of teenagers. But, really, that's what they want. It isn't going to shame them into yielding. They get to keep the money they were paid to endure it.  Putting them on the stage and beating the hell out of them just reinforces the conceit that they need to be reckoned with.  They don't. They need to be ignored. This is a dumb argument. And people keep dying because we allow it to go on.

Hey guess who else has guns

These guys. Who knew? Why? Who knows?

A Louisiana Supreme Court officer shot and wounded a man during a fight outside of the French Quarter courthouse Saturday night (May 27), according to authorities.

The State Police is handling the investigation into the shooting, which occurred just before 11 p.m. on St. Louis Street between Chartres and Royal streets, said Trooper Melissa Matey, spokeswoman for the agency.

The sociopathy primary

You know, when Ben Carson confirmed to the world that he does not, in fact, experience human emotional responses, it really didn't surprise any of us.

Mr. Carson is also not willing to give any ground on gun rights. In a question and answer session on Facebook this week, he explained that two of his cousins were killed in the streets and that as a doctor he has had to remove many bullets from bodies. Despite the breathtaking nature of such violence, he said, curbing the right to bear arms is not a real solution.

“I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” Mr. Carson wrote.

We've come to expect this kind of sociopathy from our Presidential front-runners. It seems increasingly like a prerequisite for office. My only concern now is that by desensitizing us all to the horror of their stunted behavior that they might also be infecting us with it.

Anyway, what we probably should have expected as soon as we learned about Carson's sickness this morning, was that Bobby Jindal would immediately try to match it.

In a lengthy blog post published on his presidential campaign website Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) claimed the father of Oregon gunman Chris Harper Mercer was a "complete failure" and demanded that he apologize for the shooting.

In the blog post -- titled "We fill Our Culture With Garbage, And We Reap The Result" -- Jindal blamed the prevalence of mass shootings in America on "deep and serious cultural decay in our society," jumping from a condemnation of violence in media and a reference to abortion to a discussion of the reported absence of the father of the Harper Mercer in the young man's life.

"This killer’s father is now lecturing us on the need for gun control and he says he has no idea how or where his son got the guns," Jindal wrote. "Of course he doesn’t know. You know why he doesn’t know? Because he is not, and has never been in his son’s life. He’s a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public. He’s the problem here."

Circle of stupid

Here's a political ad that could have been ripped right out of today's headlines.  It's a candidate for Governor running on a "murders not monuments" platform. It's got an armed robbery at a New Orleans restaurant, and a lizard-brained appeal to the "good guy with a gun" myth. 

It's an ad for Mike Foster from 1995.



Because nothing ever changes and we are doomed to trudge around in the same stupid circle forever. 

Nobody could have predicted

Bobby Jindal "never would have imagined" that this horrible thing that happens with alarming regularity all over the place could happen again.

A KLFY reporter also asked Jindal about gun control. Here was his response:

"Right now we're just learning the details of what happened. ... Let's focus on the victims right now. Let's focus on their recoveries. There'll be a time, I'm sure folks will want to jump into the politics of this. Now is not the time."

At a news conference carried live after his initial comments, Jindal said this:

"Today is a day that not only angers but also saddens all of us. ... we never would've imagined it would've happened in Louisiana or Lafayette. ... (told story about teachers) ... We're going to hear about other acts of selfless heroism. ... I saw family members that were hoping for the best, waiting for information on their loved ones. ... They're praying and fearful and anxious. We've heard from folks all over the country. Now is the time to send them your thoughts, your prayers, your love ... (on first responders) They ran towards danger, not away from it. The first officers could literally still hear the gunshots."

We "never would have imagined" because the very act of allowing for the possibility is indecent to our posture.

@BobbyJindal Mass shootings make for good campaign rhetoric,right? Stop praying & fix the problem!#LafayetteShooting pic.twitter.com/hl58wqDtRr

— Jon Vecellio (@JonVecellio) July 24, 2015

"Now is not the time" to talk about it, though. That would also be indecent.  

Count the days to French Quarter Gun Fail Day 1

This certainly can't end any way but well.

They call themselves the French Quarter Minutemen and are made up of all volunteers who possess concealed handgun permits.

The founder told WDSU they are not vigilantes, but additional eyes and ears in an area of the city very sacred to them.

"We all share a common love for the French Quarter and we want its beautiful history to be preserved," said Aaron Jordan.

Jordan said what inspired him to form the group was the severe beating of jazz musician Doug Potter, who was attacked after a gig in the Quarter right outside the 8th District Police Station.

"That would lead me to believe more citizen involvement can only help," Jordan said.

Spending political capital

Seems like we've heard an awful lot about second term Presidents and their narrow window for getting anything done before lame duckitude sets in. Obama's in the middle of a pretty important fight over whether or not you will ever get to retire. And yet here we are watching him spend all of his chips early in 2013 on gun control. 

Of course we'll all probably benefit from stronger gun laws.  At the same time, I'm under no illusion that the President's proposal is going to end the recurring episodes of violence like the one that precipitated this discussion in the first place.  We'd be better off with it but maybe not at the political cost incurred by the effort to pass it.

Picking this fight now fires up the crazies  and rallies the opposition just in time for it to be extra ornery when the much more crucial debt ceiling debate. If second term Presidents really do have limited capital to spend, I'm not so sure Obama is using his wisely.

Your big political opportunities are never what you think they are

This is from a long article about American gun culture written by Richard Hofstadter in 1970.

In 1968, after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., there was an almost touching national revulsion against our own gun culture, and for once the protesting correspondence on the subject reaching senators and representatives outweighed letters stirred up by the extraordinarily efficient lobby of the National Rifle Association. And yet all that came out of this moment of acute concern was a feeble measure, immensely disappointing to advocates of serious gun control, restricting the mail-order sales of guns. It seems clear now that the strategic moment for gun controls has passed and that the United States will continue to endure an armed populace, at least until there is a major political disaster involving the use of guns.

Gun control advocates believe they have another "strategic moment" on their hands right now.  Don't expect any better results this time around either.

Culture war economy

One common observation about the 2012 result nationally is that the old Republican "Southern Strategy" of relying on white fundagelical resentments based on race, gender, and various iterations of cultural libertine-ism is broken.  At least, in national elections with a high turnout and a Presidential race on the ballot, this is probably true.  The people who show up to vote in those elections aren't going to go for that stuff anymore.

But this probably isn't true regarding off year congressional elections which are typically characterized by a smaller more activist turnout reacting against the incumbent President to some degree. More importantly, because Republicans controlled an overwhelming number of state legislatures during the post 2010 census redistricting process, reactionary conservatism will continue to enjoy a structural advantage in House races for at least the next decade. So, while we can say that Tea Party style social issue politics isn't going to elect a President it isn't going to become suddenly irrelevant either.

But it may be reasonable to speculate that an increasing sense of isolation and paranoia on the part of the more unstable elements of the reaction faction could lead them to seek safety somewhere they can, perhaps, arm themselves in preparation for the new Red Dawn.

In that case, the lonely sovereign citizen looking for a country in the post-Obamalyptic landscape may cast his (always his) eyes upon Louisiana.

That brings us to Tuesday's ballot. Voters will be asked to remove the constitutional language that says Louisiana can pass laws to prohibit concealed weapons. Voters are also asked to rig it so that any law proposed to limit gun rights is just about guaranteed to fail. In order for such a law to survive, it would have to survive the courts' "strict scrutiny," a standard of review that precious few laws survive.

Removing the language that says concealed weapons laws are OK wouldn't take away the Louisiana Legislature's ability to pass restrictions. But it might doom such restrictions to failure. It seems anti-democratic to declare that future lawmakers -- elected by the people -- can't pass laws they deem necessary to keep people safe.

The above is taken from a Jarvis DeBerry column where he worries about the problems this amendment could cause for local law enforcement in dealing with the city's murder problem.  And he's right to do that but isn't it also possible that this law combined with the political circumstances could make Louisiana a new Militia Mecca?

Okay maybe Mecca is a bad word to use here but I'm sure the marketing army at  the Office of Tourism or the CVB or somewhere can come up with something that appeals to the target group more elegantly. Maybe the well-worn "Sportsman's Paradise" already fits the mold.  Anyway, looks to me like we're sitting on a trend-bucking cultural economy opportunity here. All we need to do now is carve out a designated "Hospitality Zone" to turn over to a  militia marketing board to govern as it pleases.  I suggest somewhere near  Bayou Corne. It looks available.

Moments ago I thought I was at the end of my rope

But then I see stuff like this and realize I've got a ways to go still.

U.S. Constitution mandates that citizens purchase a product after all

Just not the one you're thinking about.

Show Us Your Guns

Sorry about the poor video. It's the best I could find.

Supreme Court limits local gun bans

Les Miles finally does something right

LSU's Miles speaks against guns on campus

10:45 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. -- LSU football coach Les Miles has taken sides in a political fire fight, speaking against legislation that would overturn the university's ban on guns.

This morning, WWL radio reported that "some" believe "football coaches should stay out of politics." I disagree. In fact, I have long argued that head football coach should be a publicly elected office.

Update: My new favorite blogger, Jan Moller writes in the Legislative rundown:

The guns-on-campus bill is now drawing opposition from LSU football coach Les Miles, who understandably doesn't want armed men running around his campus after his team's disappointing 8-5 finish last season.