Trump has nominated Billy Long, a former U.S. Representative from Missouri, to head the IRS. I saw the name “Billy Long” and alarms went off. Sure enough, I’ve mentioned him before. This is from 2022, in a post about the specimens who were running to take over retiring Senator Roy Blunt’s seat: “Billy Long is the fellow who resembles a talking potato and who believes abortion rights are the leading cause of mass shooting.”
I’ll come back to Long’s theory connecting mass shootings to abortion. The more pressing issue is that he’s already pressured the IRS to strip the Humane Society of its tax-exempt status.
In 2011, Long signed a letter pushing the IRS to launch a probe of the tax-exempt status of the Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal cruelty. The letter followed the Humane Society’s support of a successful Missouri ballot measure strengthening regulations on dog breeders.
The dog breeders in this case were unregulated puppy mills. This has been a contentious issue in Missouri going back years. These puppy mills keep female dogs in tiny, dirty cages so they can produce one litter after another. Often the puppies get sold through legitimate pet stores for a hefty profit. Here are the regulations that Missouri voters approved in 2011:
New regulations pushed by animal advocates, approved by voters and ultimately modified by the legislature limited the number of dogs a breeder could have at any given time. It also banned the stacked cages with wire floors that proved so damaging to paws, required breeders to offer sufficient space for dogs to move in their enclosures and mandated dogs get adequate rest between breeding cycles.
The puppy mills had been an issue going back years, as I remember, but the legislature resisted regulating them. The puppy mill owners had some clout in Jefferson City, and some of the legislators from rural counties didn’t think The Gubmint should be telling folks what to do with their animals. And, unfortunately, the state is still ground zero for puppy mills. Here’s a 2024 report from a St, Louis television station. I take it the laws aren’t really being enforced. And some in the legislature want to weaken the 2011 law.
Anyway, closing down puppy mills and seeing to it dogs are treated humanely is a major focus of the Humane Society. Billy Long thinks this is political extremism that needs to be shut down. Long also signed a separate letter in 2015 demanding the IRS investigate the tax status of the Clinton Foundation.
It’s clear Long won’t be shy about using the IRS to punish nonprofits he doesn’t like, which no doubt is why Trump nominated him. And there’s a pending House-passed bill that would give the Trump administration new powers to rescind the tax status of groups it deems “terrorist supporting organizations,” I’m sure Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Sierra Club will be labeled terrorist and denied tax-exempt status. This is serious.
Back to Billy Long’s issues with abortion — if you can’t access the Vanity Fair article I linked in 2022, here’s a Newsweek article for you.
Rep. Billy Long, who serves Missouri, made the startling claims on Columbia radio station 93.9 The Eagle. The 66-year-old said: “It’s a systemic problem. When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now, we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society, and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mother’s wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks.”
Billy Long was born in 1955, Wikipedia says. If you want to check out the homicide rate in Springfield, Missouri, in the 1950s and 1960s compared to now, be my guest. I do know I’ve read that ownership of semiautomatic “assault” weapons was unusual before 1970 or so. It’s also the case that the homicide rate in Missouri has climbed since tne nutjob state legislature voted to eliminate any gun control law they could find. I don’t believe there’s another state that has laxer gun laws than Missouri. They tried to nullify federal gun laws, you might remember, but the courts eventually slapped that down.
The puppy mill ban also launched the career of Jason Smith, the do-nothing Missouri rep who is currently chair of Ways and Means and whose work ethic makes Long look like Paul Bunyan.
I will repurpose a quote of the great Calvin Trillin to describe Long for those who do not know him:
"Billy Long is one of the few people who could stand in the intellectual shadow of Donald Trump and never see the sun."
Love the quote. Yep, I know Jason Smith. When I was still living in Missouri he was my representative. Before the 2022 midterms we got an absolutely hilarious robo-call from him ranting that legalizing pot would lead to teaching Critical Race Theory in schools. I think he won the district by something like 80 percent of the vote, but I'd have to check.
Yes, Smith is my rep. Did you ever hear him speak in public? What a ghastly experience.
Animals do a very good job of behaving like animals. Humans are the animals whose behavior is the biggest problem. The mix and the interaction of humans with animals is quite telling. Quite often the result is quite distressing to even observe.
The native planes Americans were quite dependent on the American Bison, commonly called the buffalo, for survival. The native Americans honored the Bison and respected its relationship with it. They knew they were in this life together and dependent on the great beast.
Too many modern Humans have no such respect. They tend to deny their dependence on other life forms and treat them with disrespect. When you are high on the food chain, this is not proper behavior. Your position depends on all life forms that give you your standing. Without them you eventually fail to exist.
Kennedy appointed the best and the brightest or at least attempted to do so. Trump seems to be going for the under-socialized and the malcontent. I am still going with perverted elitism as the most apt descriptive of his political movement or cult if you will. The Trump did play golf with Rush Limbaugh. a product of the boot heel of Missouri. It is a disgrace the game of golf will never live down.
The horror continues.
I'm reading reports, possibly groundless speculation, that Biden will issue "preemptive pardons" of the people on Trump's hit list. People like Liz Cheney, Adam Schift, Nancy Pelosi. And the outrage from the right is a bright spot in these dark days.
Democratic leadership seems to be opposed to the idea. There's some merit to letting Trump let loose the dogs of political persecution because it will be covered and the judicial system SHOULD toss the cases. But Trump, like the borg, continually adapts. He'll try to circumvent the system to exact revenge. If I was in the crosshairs, I'd be nervous. But leaving everybody exposed means Trump's politicization of the DOJ will be on full display for voters.
If Biden issues pardons, Trump will be incensed and there won't be much he can do about it. That's a good move. Also, Trump knows that going after high-profile Democrats will dominate the news so he can do other stuff relatively unnoticed. At this point it's mostly screams from the right but I hope Biden kicks Trump in the golf balls by taking away what Trump lusts to do.
Here's the problem: if Republican were sane, Biden could issue pardons, and Republicans would say "makes sense, Kash Patel is crazy."
But Republicans aren't sane. They'll say "pre-emptive pardons are clear signs of corruption!" which is 100% true, 99% of the time.
People are often thinking, like, "let's protect Schiff, and Cheney, and X, and Y, and Z…". But right now, "America" is pretending Trump is sane and lawful, so pardoning anyone is like Trump pardoning the J6ers (which, sure, he'll do, but…).
So we lost our chance for a bloodless revolution. People are going to prison, and people will die, because hateful people voted Trump into power, and Trump will do what evil people do when they get power.
Don't get me wrong: I'd like to protect people. But if you protect Black people from getting beatdowns from the cops, by preventing their marches, maybe civil rights legislation doesn't get passed, and signed. Without Stonewall, maybe gay rights never come into being.
I'm afraid we'll need an American krystylnacht (or however that's spelled) before there's even a chance of rolling things back to normal. Hatred is ugly, but people need to look it full in the eye, to see *how* ugly.
It's a bad idea because pardon implies that there was a crime. They need an exemption from persecution, which we citizens think we already have.
Seems to me now that we have hit bottom, and the addictive lure of fame and fortune has finally given evildoers more than enough rope to hang themselves.
I'm sure if Liz Cheny is convicted by a military tribunal (she was never in the military) to circumvent her right to a jury trial and sentenced to thirty years with no avenue to appeal, she'll be happy that she didn't accept a pardon that implied she's guilty.
I hear you – louder than you might think.
I'm saying, without that 30 year sentence, people might keep saying "Trump would never have done that, so why a pre-emptive pardon, which would have looked *hideous* for, e.g., Iran Contra, or even for Nixon?"
*With* the 30 year sentence, people can't say "he would NEVER" and would have to deal with "he sure as hell fookin' *did*."
(Me grandda is Irish, so I think I'm entitled to use "fookin'" instead of… you know.)
Again: I'm saying, I think we lost the chance for a bloodless revolution, and I'd hate to see *anyone* go down, but, I think we'll see people go down. I hate that it's the good people, who did the right thing, but, that's what happens when fascism rises, and, it has risen.
I'd love to be wrong.
You are right. There will have to be "Kent State Massacres" caught on video with dead bodies to substantiate the crimes. I may be among the victims – I have no fear of protesting, even with risk.
Liz should be able to refuse a pardon if she's comfortable facing the risk of gross injustice to make a point. I don’t have the moral authority to demand she take the risk.
It's a bedrock principle linked to protesting that may morph into non-violent civil disobedience. Which may result in police overreach and almost certainly arrest. It's an individual choice. I hope others will stand with me but it's not an obligation.
Horror unveiled:
From Dan Diamond at the WP.
Somehow this discontent was suppressed and still is to a large extent. It should not take an act of horrific violence to get the lid off of seething problems like this. The appointment of malcontents who are underqualified and under-socialized will just fuel this discontent. Such a display of hardened feeling and repressed animosity to what the public sees as a health care system that many view as a lethal adversary. So much so that this blatant murder is seen by hoards without empathy.
Horror exposing another horror as we charge toward a shoot the messenger approach toward problem solving.
If you watch the first… just under two minutes of this clip, you may see in Grant's generals the fault too much of the Trump opposition suffers from. Namely, overestimating what Trump can get away with by mentally awarding him a victory or victories he has not earned. This is what the Union Army generals were doing after Lee scored some serious hits.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=grant+strategy+to+beat+lee
Trump is assembling a team of twisted cabinet heads. It seems each embodies a different facet of the truly evil alliance – white supremacists, Nazis, misogamists, Christian nationalists (with dreams of a theocracy), Old-school Republicans who lust to end Social Security, greedy opportunists only out to make a buck…. I've left about a few.
Most of the people Trump has selected have big mouths and little-to-no administrative experience. The courts will not give Trump a free pass. I think some of the media will continue to speak the truth. Regular Americans with the power of a camera in their phones (combined with social media) may be the most potent weapon. I do not think the military will turn their backs on their oaths. Some, yes. Not all. Officers were trained to protect the Constitution.
A lot of bad stuff will come down. But Team Trump is already engaged in back-biting and dissent. And they suffer from gross incompetence. In the House, they will begin with a two-vote margin. In the Senate, Democrats can stop anything except a budget by reconciliation. The war has barely begun – Trunp is not sworn in – and many have and are surrendering and fleeing the field.
They aren't as tough as we're making them out to be. The Constitution has endured serious challenges before and survived. It's past time to start talking about what we can do to Team Trump.
Yes, Grant in the Wilderness, May 1864. A pivotal moment in the War.
So called Assault weapons are involved in less than 1% of gun deaths in America. Their legality has as little to do with the overall murder rate as abortions do.
But assault weapons were involved in 99 and 44/100ths percent of cases of gun fetishes. Let's see if this one floats.
It is not the primary purpose of an Assault Weapons ban to reduce the overall national murder rate. This issue is rate-of-fire and muzzle velocity. Rate-of-fire makes it possible to kill many more people in a mass murder event and muzzle velocity (an possibly ammunition design) results in orders of magnitude more damage inside the human body once the bullet enters, making death far more likely. So the bottom line is percentage of deaths per shot.
These weapons are designed for military use in active war zones. We don't need them to be in the hands of our fellow citizens.
Have you ever seen someone kill 20 people with single shots from an abortion 20 round magazine?
I'm only asking, because your statement left you bare-assed begging to have someone point out your sloppy thinking, and you're not worth spanking.
Just what I figured, clean miss, flew right over. A normal symptom of a level 4 gun fetish. It's an uncontrolled epidemic with a guy with a brain worm taking over. He won't get it either.