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Why Zaidi believes Giants prospect Meckler can be ‘special'
Why Zaidi believes Giants prospect Meckler can be ‘special’ originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
No one in the Giants organization has risen quicker through the ranks this summer than 23-year-old outfielder Wade Meckler.
Meckler, an eighth-round pick by San Francisco last year, started the 2023 season with High-A Eugene. He was promoted to Double-A Richmond after 20 games, and again to…
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Sister My Sister (1994) dir. Nancy Meckler
#sister my sister#film stills#first watch#⭐⭐⭐⭐#movie#british cinema#nancy meckler#women directors#1990s cinema
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Kyle Mantyla at RWW:
Right-wing activist Mark Meckler is calling for New York City to be expelled from the United States in response to the conviction of former President Donald Trump for trying to cover up his adulterous affair with an adult film actress out of fear that its revelation would hurt his 2016 presidential campaign.
Meckler is a radical Christian nationalist who serves as president of the Convention of States Foundation which seeks to get state legislatures to call for a dangerous Article V convention that will propose constitutional amendments to dramatically limit the power of the federal government.
From the start of Trump’s trial, Meckler has repeatedly demanded that Republicans “engage in full lawfare” against Democrats as retribution, calling on every district attorney in every conservative county in every red state to bring “the most brutal changes we can possibly bring” against every Democrat they can. But now Meckler has kicked things up a notch by calling for New York City to be walled off and removed from the union.
“We ought to build a wall around New York City. We ought to close off the bridges and we ought to separate them from the United States of America,” Meckler declared, saying he was only being “semi-facetious.” “There is no rule of law in New York City anymore. There is no due process in New York City anymore. There is no United States Constitution in New York City anymore. It operates as if it doesn’t believe in the rule of law, it doesn’t believe in the United States Constitution, so let’s just cut them out. Let them figure it out on their own. Let’s see how well New York City does without the rest of the country.”
Deranged MAGA Cult member Mark Meckler wants NYC expelled from the US in retaliation of the verdict that convicted Donald Trump on 34 felonies regarding business records falsification.
#Mark Meckler#New York City#Secession#United States#People of New York v. Trump#Convention of States#MAGA Cult#Right Wing Extremism
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Sister My Sister (Nancy Meckler, 1994)
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Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US Constitution.
Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call a constitutional convention in the hope of baking far-right conservative values into the supreme law of the land.
The goal is, in essence, to turn the country into a permanent conservative nation irrespective of the will of the American people. The convention would promote policies that would limit the size and scope of the federal government, set ceilings on or even abolish taxes, free corporations from regulations, and impose restrictions on government action in areas such as abortion, guns and immigration.
“This is another line of attack strategically,” Bannon told his viewers last month. “You now have a political movement that understands we need to go after the administrative state.”
By “administrative state”, Bannon was referring to the involvement of the federal government and Congress in central aspects of modern American life. That includes combating the climate crisis, setting educational standards and fighting health inequities.
Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (COSA), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show. “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said.
Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.”
The “structural fix” involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America’s foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US Constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge.
Were a convention achieved, it would mark the zenith of conservative state power in American politics. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party, Republicans have extended their grip to more than half of the states in the country, imposing an increasingly far-right agenda on the heartlands.
Now the plan is to take that dominance nationwide.
Article V of the Constitution lays out two distinct ways in which America’s core document, ratified in 1788, can be revised. In practice, all 27 amendments that have been added over the past 244 years have come through the first route – a Congress-led process whereby two-thirds of both the US House and Senate have to approve changes followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states.
Meckler, working alongside other powerful interest groups and wealthy rightwing megadonors, is gunning for Article V’s second route – one that has never been tried before. It gives state legislatures the power to call a constitutional convention of their own, should two-thirds of all 50 states agree.
The state-based model for rewriting the US Constitution is perhaps the most audacious attempt yet by hard-right Republicans to secure what amounts to conservative minority rule in which a minority of lawmakers representing less-populated rural states dictate terms to the majority of Americans. Russ Feingold, a former Democratic US senator from Wisconsin, told The Guardian that “they want to rewrite the constitution in a fundamental way that is not just conservative, it is minoritarian. It will prevent the will of ‘we the people’ being heard.”
Feingold has co-authored with Peter Prindiville of the Stanford constitutional law center The Constitution in Jeopardy, a new book that sounds the alarm on the states-based convention movement. “Our goal is not to scare people, but to alert them that there is a movement on the far right that is quietly getting itself to a point where it will be almost impossible to stop a convention being called,” he said.
His urgency is underlined by how active the movement has become. A convention resolution framed by COSA has passed so far this year in four states – Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia and South Carolina.
The group has also been busy around November’s midterm elections, using its muscle and some $600,000 (£528,252) of its reserves to support candidates amenable to the idea. “We have built the largest grassroots activist army in American history,” Meckler told Bannon, probably hyperbolically.
Bannon’s other guest on the War Room, Rick Santorum, a former Republican US senator from Pennsylvania who advises COSA, told Bannon: “This is something that can happen very quickly. We are a lot further along than people think.”
They are also much better funded than people might think. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which monitors the constitutional convention movement, estimates that it pulled in $25M (£22M) in 2020, the last year for which figures are known.
The funds were split between COSA and other influential groups on the right. They include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a network of state politicians and corporate lobbyists which has taken up the cry for a constitutional amendment to force balanced budget restrictions on Washington.
Much of the income is dark money, with the origins hidden. CMD has managed to identify some key donors – among them the Mercer Family Foundation set up by reclusive hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, and a couple of groups run by Leonard Leo, the mastermind behind the rightwing land grab in the federal courts.
More than $1m (£880,265) has also been donated in the form of Bitcoin.
The attraction to these groups and donors of pursuing a states route to rewriting the US Constitution is easily explained. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party in 2010, Republican activists have deployed extreme partisan gerrymandering to pull off an extraordinary takeover of state legislatures.
In 2010, Republicans controlled both chambers of just 14 state legislatures. Today, that number stands at 31.
“Republicans are near the high watermark in terms of their political control in the states, and that’s why the pro-Trump rightwing of the party is increasingly embracing the constitutional convention strategy,” said Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director.
Should a convention be achieved, the plan would be to give states one vote each. There is no legal or historical basis for such an arrangement but its appeal is self-evident.
One vote per state would give small rural conservative states like Wyoming (population 580,000) equal leverage to large urbanized progressive states like California (39.5 million). Collectively, small states would be in the majority and control would tip to the Republicans.
Last December Santorum spelled out this minoritarian vision at a private ALEC meeting. In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Santorum said: “We have the opportunity, as a result, to have a supermajority, even though we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”
Pearson decried such thinking as “a profoundly anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic strategy that gives small rural states most control”.
With the counting system skewed towards the conservative heartlands, the list of amendments that might be pursued is disconcertingly large. Though Meckler and his allies largely avoid talking about culture war issues, it is quite conceivable that a nationwide ban on abortion and a rescinding of gay marriage would be on the table.
More openly, advocates have talked about imposing balanced budget requirements on the US government that would dramatically shrink federal resources. Some have even proposed making income tax unconstitutional.
One of the more popular ideas circulating within rightwing constitutional convention circles, initially floated by the talk show host Mark Levin, is that states should grant themselves the ability to override federal statutes and supreme court rulings. It is hard to see how the federal rule of law could be sustained under such an arrangement with its unmistakable civil war undertones.
Under Article V, 34 states would have to call for a constitutional convention to reach the two-thirds requirement. COSA has so far succeeded in getting 19 states to sign up, with a further six in active consideration.
ALEC, which sets a narrower remit for a convention focused on its balanced budget amendment, has gone further with 28 states on board.
Either way, there is a shortfall. To address it, constitutional convention leaders have invented increasingly exotic mathematical formulas for attaining the magic number, 34. “We used to call it fuzzy math, now we call it wacky math,” Pearson said.
Advocates filed a lawsuit in Texas in February that tried to get the courts to force a constitutional convention on grounds that they had reached 34 states already – they cobbled together unrelated state convention calls, including some dating back to the 1800s. In July two bills were also introduced to the US House requiring Congress to call a convention immediately.
David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the willingness to adopt outlandish logic should sound further alarm bells. It raised the stakes even higher for the November elections.
“The midterms are crucial,” Super said. “Changes at state-level matter, but will not get them to 34 states. If they can take control of Congress, they could bridge the gap.”
Paradoxically, what happens to Congress in the midterms could have the biggest impact on the future prospects of a states-based constitutional convention. Should the Republicans take back control of the US House and Senate they would be in a position to advance radical Republicans’ demands.
“We’ve already seen a willingness to play fast and loose with the math on all sorts of things in Congress,” Super said. “I would not be surprised if they were to make a serious attempt to adopt one of these bizarre accounting theories should they take control of both chambers in November.”
That could mean a rapid dash for a convention before most Americans would have woken up to the danger.
“If the Republicans prevail in Congress, they could try to call a convention right away,” Feingold said. “People should know that when they go to vote in November – this could fundamentally undermine their rights in a way that is both disturbing and permanent.”
#us politics#news#the guardian#2022#constitutional convention#steve bannon#war room podcast#alt right#gop#republicans#conservatives#Mark Meckler#tea party#Convention of States Action#us constitution#article v#Russ Feingold#Rick Santorum#Center for Media and Democracy#American Legislative Exchange Council#Robert Mercer#Leonard Leo#gerrymandering#mark levin#david super
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https://rumble.com/v4k9hq5-rob-carson-with-mark-meckler-convention-of-states-is-the-only-thing-that-ca.html
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Johan Camargo takes 10. Last worn by Isan Díaz earlier this season.
Wade Meckler takes 53. Last worn by Heliot Ramos in 2022.
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Now Available: In Parentheses Magazine (Volume 7, Issue 4) Summer 2023
In the Summer 2023 Edition, our 24th release to date, we have featured the following esteemed contributors.
Cacti Circles / KJ Hannah Greenberg / July 2023 Summer / Volume 7 / Issue 4
IP Volume 7: In Parentheses Magazine (Volume 7, Issue 4) Summer 2023 The Summer 2023 issue of In Parentheses Literary Magazine. Published by In Parentheses (Volume 7, Issue 4
The Summer 2023 Edition of In Parentheses is now available on print and digital platforms! This issue is the final of Volume 7.
Click here to…
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#2023#aaron sholar#adam john miller#al amin al hassan#alex andy phuong#alexander burdette#amy meckler#august reynold#babak movahed#benjamin goluboff#cora tate#daithi kearney#dan raphael#dana kinsey#devaki devay#donald patten#editorial#edward lee#elizabeth wadsworth ellis#emma wells#eugene datta#gavin boyter#heikki huotari#In Parentheses#issue#jan karlo lopez#john grey#john kucera#john m davis#joshua sabatini
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Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call a constitutional convention in the hope of baking far-right conservative values into the supreme law of the land.
WHICH BILLIONAIRES? WHICH CORPORATIONS? NAME THEM. OPPOSE THEM NONVIOLENTLY.
#p1p#the parasite one percent#newer news from nowhere#steve bannon#we eat you because we are full#eat the rich#eat the fucking rich#eat the 1%#convention of states action#cosa#mark meckler
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Sister My Sister (1994) dir. Nancy Meckler
#Nancy Meckler#sister my sister#women directors#first watch#⭐⭐⭐⭐#british cinema#1990s cinema#film still
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Republicans are laying the groundwork to completely remake the U.S. Constitution through state legislatures, and there’s a good chance they could succeed.
That makes it imperative for Democrats to focus their energies on strengthening the party’s representation at the state level to stop this attack on our democracy.
According to recent reporting by Insider, GOP party leaders are making arrangements to amend the Constitution via Article V. In order to build a forever-conservative nation, Republican leaders want state legislators to start thinking long-term about what it takes to pass a constitutional amendment—and many GOP lawmakers from across the country met last month in Denver to discuss launching a constitutional convention.
This plan, spearheaded by the group Convention of States Action (COS), has received millions from the Donors Capital Fund, as well as from numerous other high-profile Republican donors. COS is led by Mark Meckler, the interim president of the conservative-friendly social media site Parler, and Eric O’Keefe—a longtime right-wing political operative. COS also has the support of high-profile conservatives and Republicans such as Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro, Mark Meadows, and Ben Carson. It’s even endorsed by prominent GOP elected officials, including Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, as well as Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.
Article V lays out two ways to add amendments to the Constitution.
The first is through the federal government, which requires two-thirds of Congress to pass a joint resolution. By design, this rarely happens (we’re only at 25 amendments, 235 years after the Constitution was ratified). And in today’s highly polarized Senate, where Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities, a new amendment any time soon is all but unthinkable.
But the second option, a convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures in the nation, is a path Republicans are very close to making possible.
Republicans already control 30 state legislatures—they’d only need three more to be able to call a constitutional convention. This means the upcoming November elections—especially at the state level—may be the deciding factor on whether the GOP has the power to radically remake the Constitution.
And lest there be any doubt as to the motivation behind a state-driven constitutional convention, COS has stated that limiting the federal government's power is its main goal in a constitution amendment proposal.
Melissa Murray, a NYU Law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, expressed serious concern over this idea. “With amendments that only limit the power of the federal government, there’s actually quite a lot Republicans could do,” said Murray. “Taking away power from the federal government could mean curbing some of the powers of the federal government to enforce the 14th Amendment, it could also mean expanding protections of the 2nd Amendment.” This plan has been in the works for years, according to Murray.
With Republicans mounting egregious attacks in state legislatures on the right to vote and abortion access—as well as expanding partisan gerrymandering—it should not come as a surprise that a constitutional convention is now a part of the GOP playbook.
“When we talk about these issues in silos, we fail to realize this is all joined together,” said Melissa Murray. “They (Republicans) are connecting everything under the same organizing principle: to consolidate Republican power in state legislatures. It’s why we have gerrymandering and even why we have voter suppression laws.”
This crisis has been over 10 years in the making. During the Obama administration, Democrats were singularly focused on advancing federal legislation, like the Affordable Care Act. Democrats assumed this would translate to similar victories in state legislatures. Ultimately, this strategy came with a cost, a major one: Democrats lost 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats. Moreover, they didn't explain to their base of young, diverse, minority voters that the issues that played into local state elections were equally important as the election of the first Black president.
Republicans during this time launched effective organizing groups, such as the Tea Party, which vehemently advocated for a version of “states’ rights” that was in conflict with the American system of federalism—the idea that power should be shared between the federal government and the states. The GOP made sure its supporters understood that there was political power outside of Washington—and that it existed in state and local government.
In the middle of Obama’s first term, Republicans in 2010 were able to win control of the once-in-a-decade electoral map drawing process that defines competitive elections at the state level. This made the district maps easier for them to run candidates in races where it was nearly impossible for them to lose.
Democrats now have to change their strategy. Instead of simply telling voters to give them control of Congress and the Senate, Democrats must emphasize to voters that Republicans still control most state legislatures, and if they remain in power, they can drastically change the Constitution. Furthermore, Democrats running for the state house must drive home the oft-forgotten political maxim that “all politics is local.” The people in state houses and city halls often have a lot more to do with the policies that affect your day-to-day life and the health of your community than whoever’s in charge in Washington.
Amanda Litman, a senior political strategist and co-founder of Run for Something—an organization that recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office—has been working to get more progressives elected in state legislatures. “Republicans have a longstanding infrastructure even in blue states that give their candidates a leg up. They have been investing in the local races for much longer.”
When asked what Democrats can do to fight back against the threat of a constitutional convention, Litman replied, "Democrats should take the threat seriously. Republicans always tell us what they want to do. We should believe them and think broadly and in the long term of where we should be working to stop this from happening.”
There should be no doubt that Republicans are launching an all-out attack on American institutions, whether it’s the conservative Supreme Court majority removing Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion or state legislatures passing hundreds of measures to limit voting rights. Democrats cannot afford to waste time. This November, they need to invest heavily in every single state legislature race. Every American needs to understand the GOP’s constitutional plans threaten our way of life.
The Constitution has never been a perfect document. In its origin, it permitted the gross inhumanity of slavery and fell short in granting women and all ethnic minorities the right to participate in the political process. But the Founding Fathers, flawed though they were, had the wisdom to create parameters that would allow the Constitution to change with the times.
If Republicans are permitted to run wild with Article V of the Constitution, decades of progress to make our country more fair, equitable, and just could be undone.
#us politics#news#the daily beast#2022 midterms#2022 elections#2022#Republicans#conservatives#gop#us constitution#constitutional crisis#article v#constitutional convention#Convention of States Action#Donors Capital Fund#Mark Meckler#Eric O’Keefe#Melissa Murray#Strict Scrutiny#tea party
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youtube
#ArticleV#ConventionofStates#constitutional rights#founding fathers#federal government#fiscal responsibility#term limits#limit power#michael farris#Mark Meckler#Youtube
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She Will, Charlotte Colbert (2021)
Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash (1991)
The Piano, Jane Campion (1993)
The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola (1999)
The Secret Garden, Agnieszka Holland (1993)
Angela, Rebecca Miller (1995)
The Juniper Tree, Nietzchka Keene (1990)
I Am Not A Witch, Rungano Nyoni (2017)
Poison Ivy, Katt Shea (1992)
Sister My Sister, Nancy Meckler (1994)
More!
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we won 7-2 last night it was so beautiful and yaz is back and he got an opposite field homer and meckler bunted and beat it out with his insane speed and just mmmmm. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Sister My Sister (1994) dir. Nancy Meckler
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