Expecting a Fascist Win
A lot of people these days feel like the fascists are going to win. There aren't very many of them and it is not clear what they stand for, but they are committed, they are loud, they cheat behind the scenes as well as out in the open, and they have the support of the media. Their political positions are so dumb that it seems like a waste of time to even argue with them, and so they keep claiming new ground. They're banning books, censoring history lessons, they fight -- often violently -- in favor of perpetuating the covid pandemic, they support police brutality and vigilante violence. Apparently white nationalist fascism "makes sense" to some people. But their points are so ... not-rigorous ... that it is impossible to debate or negotiate with them.
The startling thing is that it's so asymmetrical. You've got Republicans being investigated for human trafficking and large-scale sexual abuse, multimillion-dollar financial crimes, working secretly for foreign governments, and yet the media will focus on how wasteful and hypocritical it is for Joe Biden to fly home to Delaware for the weekends. They have literally criticized him for going to church. Biden's biggest scandal is the unproven assertion that his son's laptop had bad stuff on it, personal sex videos and files from his druggie days. Not even Joe Biden's own laptop, his adult son's. And the allegation is almost certainly false. On one hand, we have flagrant criminals hoping the next election will save them from going to prison for real crimes. On the other hand, we have a religious family man with a hint of a stutter and some policies that our country has long needed, as we slip farther behind the rest of the developed world in almost everything except incarceration, infant mortality, gun violence, and covid deaths.
The Republican Party has stopped having a platform. They can't say what it is they want to do for our country. They dropped the idea of proposing policies for the last election and won't have anything next time, either. Also, for the next Presidential election they have already said they're not going to debate. Because, honestly, it doesn't matter what they'd say. They are against something, and that's all it takes, fear and anger. The Democrat will propose a problem solution and the Republican will say, "I'm against it," and that's their position. That's the debate, so why bother? They do not have solutions to any problems, only complaints, and you don't need to commit yourself to a platform or debate anybody for that.
It won't matter that the GOP does not stand for anything. White people are mad after years of progress by minorities and they are blaming everything on inclusive liberal politicians. People don't know what Biden has done for them, because the media are not saying anything; the public is vaguely aware that there was a "spending bill," because, everybody knows, spending is what Democrats do. But nobody knows what was in the last bill, or the next one.
This week Newt Gingrich said the January 6 commission should go to jail. You remember the "Lock Her Up" chants that Trump's followers so enjoyed. You might remember when the federal government killed Michael Reinoehl, Trump said, "This guy was a violent criminal, and the US marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this." Rand Paul says that Anthony Fauci deserves five years in prison. In the coming America, this is how it will be. They won't bother with arresting people and fluffy stuff like trials; troublesome political rivals will get what they deserve, administered by government goons and rightwing hit-men, like in a bad movie.
These are people with no understanding and no respect for the Constitution and the justice system we have in place. Violence replaces lawfulness, as one group ascends to unearned dominance over all others in the country. And it is hard to oppose them when their message is this dumb. Joe Biden is not a communist, or even a progressive, he is a mainstream Democrat who holds popular views on most things. Fauci is not a sadistic monster and big fat liar. Vaccination does not kill you or make you turn socialist or shrivel your testicles and masks do not infringe on your personal expression. Russia should not be attacking Ukraine, and refugees and homeless people need help, not more punishment. Yes, there is racism; various groups in the US are treated unfairly. The earth really is getting warmer, there is a reason for the fires and the huge storms. The 2020 election was fair and Joe Biden won it. It is tedious to argue about these things. They are not real controversies, they are made-up issues that don't make sense, have no evidence to support them, and reasonable people really don't want to have to spend their time talking about this.
These aren't things worth arguing about, and it's hard to get regular intelligent people engaged with these topics when there are real problems that need solving now. So while Democrats are trying to make things better, conservatives are threatening violence over nutty non-issues. They are changing the rules for voting, moving district boundaries, putting their own people in charge of monitoring elections, putting judges in place, school board members. You can't vote them out of office if they have twisted the voting laws so they can win with a minority. Unless you have a better idea.
posted by JimK at 9:34 AM
198 Comments:
Pope Francis on Wednesday called on parents around the world to not condemn children if they are gay.
Francis made the comments while speaking about the biblical figure Joseph during his weekly general audience. He addressed parents facing difficult situations in the lives of their children, such as kids who are sick, imprisoned or killed in car accidents.
But he also addressed parents "who see that their children have different sexual orientations, how they manage that and accompany their children and not hide behind a condemning attitude.”
“Never condemn a child,” he said.
Church teachings consider homosexual activity “intrinsically disordered,” though it calls for gay and lesbian people to be respected.
In 2013, Francis said he would not "judge" gay priests, telling reporters, “If someone is gay, and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?”
He has also called gay and transgender people children of God and jendorsed civil unions.
"Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God," Francis said in an interview for the 2020 documentary “Francesco.” "You can't kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered."
There are two political parties in the United States. One is the Democratic Party, a big-tent conglomeration of people who can't get along (including former Republicans, who don't formally belong and may be just visiting). This disparate group shares something in common: a belief in liberty, justice and constitutional principles. The group is diverse politically, racially, socially, sexually and any other way we divide ourselves into smaller groups.
The other party calls itself the Republican Party, but it's really the fascist party. This party just wants to rule — whether a majority of Americans agree with them or not. What does this party actually stand for? What do they want to do?
In a recent two-hour long press conference that will either go down as a historic and unique attempt to talk to the press, or the high-water mark of embarrassment (depending on which Big Media Voice you pay attention to), President Biden asked that question. Of course, Biden is often criticized for his own trouble communicating with the public — after all, he does a horrible job selling the world on reality, much less his ideas to solve our problems.
He had one great success in his first year in office; getting an infrastructure bill passed with the help of his Republican "friends." He celebrated the signing of that bill with a crowd of nearly a thousand people on the South Lawn of the White House this fall. But his victory contained the seeds of future failure.
McConnell, whom Biden still calls a friend, leads the Republican Party in a perpetual circle-jerk and hardened his heart after the infrastructure bill. He abhors consensus. He thrives on division and is set on denying Biden any other victories while at the same time blaming him for Congress' inaction. This has been his agenda for "leading" since he ascended to leadership of his party. Biden was part of the Obama administration and saw this first hand. The question for him this time around is: Why didn't he see this coming? Biden says things have gotten worse since Obama. No kidding. The insurrection should have told him that. His inability to outmaneuver McConnell and the fascists is perhaps the single greatest cause for concern among those who wish to avoid further division — and seat a new Supreme Court justice.
The senior senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky is nothing if not consistently ignorant and arrogant. The last time he pulled this stunt, he not only thwarted most of Obama's agenda, including a Supreme Court nominee, but helped give us Donald Trump — a man McConnell loathes. McConnell is either naïve about the consequences or simply doesn't care, as long as he can get total control to pack the courts and gerrymander enough districts to successfully press forward a fascist agenda. That saucy little minx flashed us his racist Freudian slip in his recent comment about minority voters, "The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans." But at the end of the day McConnell doesn't care. He's every bit as narcissistic as the former president.
Which brings us back to Biden's question: If the Fascist-Republicans have their way, then what do they stand for? What will they do?
By now, it should be obvious. The fascists are for enhancing their stature and power and crushing souls to do it. Pick an issue: Taxes. Race. Voting rights. Unions. Health care. On virtually every issue, they stand in the minority and on the wrong side of history. They want to build walls, both metaphorically and concretely, while trying to convince people that liberty can be obtained by denying it and turning those who have less into human chattel. The cherry on top? Many of them want to do this in the name of almighty GAWD! (Can I get an Amen or a Hallelujah?)
This is no "existential threat" to our country. This is a direct threat. The members of the fascist party stand together and support the "Big Lie." Some are responsible for planning to overthrow the U.S. government. All of them who fail to speak against it are complicit in the plot.
All that stands in their way from dominating the government is a ragtag group of disgruntled former soldiers of the Empire, and a motley crew of well-meaning do-gooders that include aging hacks, minor criminals, mumbling centrists and bumbling leftists who — while they don't necessarily like each other — at their core believe in the Constitution to the best of their sometimes limited understanding. Where are Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker? We could use the help.
The United States faces the distinct possibility of consuming itself in a paroxysm of violence, followed by many years of fascism, if current trends continue and the most dire pundits of doom have their way.
But I don't think it will go down that way.
If you want to really see America, then visit its many diverse neighborhoods. It isn't a packed house of aging white men with bladder control and erectile dysfunction issues. It is filled with multiracial people of all ages, of many religious backgrounds and national origins and from a variety of socioeconomic groups. And a whole lot of them live in suburbia, where there is a nearby city park with swimming, skateboarding, hiking and miniature golf. The drinking water is clean. There are no potholes in the well-paved roads nearby. Electricity is reliable. Public schools are within walking distance. Food is available day or night. I live in such a neighborhood.
A variety of work opportunities exist for the unskilled and the highest skilled here. My nearby neighbors include an elderly retired woman, living on an assisted income. A young Hispanic couple who do yard and house work live nearby with their three children. One neighbor is nearly my age and experiencing fatherhood for only the second time in his life. The African American gentleman down the street is a scientist, and so is his wife. Their children love Harry Potter. Next door to him lives a Hispanic extended family that owns a small-time plumbing business. My other neighbor is a former hippie redneck who won't get vaxxed and always smiles at me. We all have a lot in common — we're just trying to get through the day without a major conflagration.
Every time I look out my window at my neighborhood, I still have hope. I think about the one word Biden uses to describe the United States: "Possibilities." We remain a land of possibilities — but we face a day of reckoning in the midterm elections that will decide what those look like for many years to come.
Does the majority rule or does a vocal and powerful minority? Do we jail those who violated our Constitution or do we jail those who investigate the crime? How do we build our future?
Though we are a nation of possibilities, some of them are quite grim. Avoiding the worst of them requires focus on a big picture many of us cannot or do not wish to see — and others eagerly anticipate.
The spectacle of picking a new Supreme Court justice, and how that plays out, will be one of the key issues that decide exactly which "possibilities" come to fruition.
the new TTF post is a sad bit of projection
everyone sees clearly which party is favored by the media and who is willing to violate the constitution any time they don't get their way through Democratic processes
NEW YORK (AP) — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was spotted dining out at a New York City restaurant two days after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee’s visit Wednesday to the upscale Manhattan eatery Elio’s drew attention from photo-snapping bystanders. It came shortly after she was in the news over her positive test for COVID-19, which had forced the postponement of a trial in which she is suing The New York Times.
Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines call for people to isolate themselves for at least five days after the onset of symptoms or a positive test.
Palin had also dined at the same restaurant on Saturday, despite a city rule requiring patrons dining indoors at restaurants to be vaccinated.
Palin, 57, has publicly said she won’t get the shot.
2000 UNVAXED AMERICANS DIE EVERY DAY.
Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they will not vote for any candidate who admits Biden won 'fair and square'
Despite a mountain of evidence showing the 2020 presidential contest wasn’t rigged against Donald Trump, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (57 percent) now say they will not vote in upcoming elections for any candidate who admits that Joe Biden won the presidency "fair and square."
Only 17 percent say they would consider voting for a candidate who accurately characterizes Biden’s victory as legitimate.
These numbers underscore the degree to which Trump’s “big lie” claiming Biden cheated his way into the White House — a falsehood that three-quarters of Trump voters (74 percent) now believe — has become a litmus test for the entire GOP, crowding out other issues and strengthening Trump’s grip on the party ahead of the 2022 midterms.
For his part, Trump has made it clear that supporting his election fabrications is key to his own personal endorsement. Indeed, the former president is backing primary candidates against state officials who bucked his attempts to overturn the election.
The poll data also helps explain why Republican presidential hopefuls such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now want to spend millions of dollars on special “election crimes” police units tasked with finding fraud where they previously insisted there was none.
“The way Florida did it, I think, inspired confidence,” DeSantis said immediately after the 2020 election. “That’s how elections should be run.”
The survey of 1,568 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Jan. 20 to 24, found that when asked which issue they want future candidates to focus on the most, the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say “stopping Democrats from rigging and stealing elections” (17 percent) — something that Democrats are not doing — is statistically equivalent to the share who say “bringing down inflation” (19 percent).
Other core conservative policies don’t even come close: “ending COVID restrictions” (10 percent), “fighting crime” (8 percent), “outlawing abortion” (5 percent), “cutting taxes” (5 percent), “appointing Supreme Court justices” (2 percent) and “giving parents more controls over schools” (2 percent). Only “securing the border” (23 percent) ranks higher.
Likewise, if the GOP wins control of Congress in November, 56 percent of Republicans say they want the party to launch yet another investigation of the 2020 presidential election — twice the number (28 percent) who say the opposite.
"Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was spotted dining out at a New York City restaurant two days after testing positive for the coronavirus."
a little misleading
she dined indoor on Saturday night before testing positive, although without a vaccine card
on Wednesday she returned to apologize but ate in a private outdoor shelter
"Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines call for people to isolate themselves for at least five days after the onset of symptoms or a positive test."
there is almost no risk to vaccinated people and even little risk yo unvaccinated people from someone in a private outdoor shelter
the current CDC guidelines say you need to be in a positive person's for 15 minutes to have a chance to get infected
so, even a masked waiter would be safe
"Palin, 57, has publicly said she won’t get the shot."
her business
the only people put at risk would be others who chose the risk
"2000 UNVAXED AMERICANS DIE EVERY DAY."
they chose to take the risk
"Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they will not vote for any candidate who admits Biden won 'fair and square'"
Biden won under the rules
but 'fair and square' is a bit much
the media intentionally withheld relevant information from the voters
even now, virtually every media story says something like "experts say the 2020 was the most secure in history"
that is plainly false since voter integrity rules were suspended because of the pandemic
right now, for example, the media is waging war on the new election rules in Georgia, which are more lenient than those of NY, NJ, and Delaware
the WSJ editorial page today has a chart of voter participation since 2014, when the Supreme Court said Georgia no longer needs OOJ supervision of its elections
voter participation for every race group has since increased
When a publisher stops printing an old Dr. Seuss book nobody read because it contained harmful racial stereotypes, Fox News and the entire Republican party lose their minds over “cancel culture.”
But when conservatives across the country start banning and censoring dozens of books at a time from school libraries, they’re "just trying to protect the kids."
Having already turned school boards into an angry political morass, conservatives are now targeting school libraries in what experts are calling a historic and concerted book banning effort.
That includes “Maus,” a graphic novel that conveys the horrors of the Holocaust in cartoon form, with Jews depicted as mice and Nazis as cats. A Tennessee school board voted unanimously this month to ban the Pulitzer-winning book from their eighth-grade curriculum, citing “objectionable language” and nudity.
[Fascists banning books that make Nazis look bad... not suspicious at all.]
Similar campaigns are underway in school districts in at least 30 other states, a Stateline investigation found, often condemning as “pornographic” books depicting the experiences of LGBTQ and Black characters.
“We haven’t seen or heard of challenges like these probably in the last 40 years,” Shirley Robinson, executive director of the 5,000-member Texas Library Association, told Stateline. “It’s definitely become politicized.”
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has capitalized on a highly public effort to pull “pornographic or obscene” books from school libraries, following the efforts of state Rep. Matt Krause (R), who’s circulated a list of more than 800 books that purportedly cross the line.
Both politicians are up for reelection this year.
It’s unclear how Krause compiled his list, the contents of which suggest he either didn’t have a clear set of criteria or is unsettled by a puzzling range of information. The vast majority of the books were written by women, people of color and LGBTQ writers, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Yet the list also includes “The Gale Encyclopedia Of Medicine,” a five-volume set containing medical information for the layperson, and “Eyes on Target: Inside Stories From the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” which is available on ChristianBook.com.
One book that’s not on Krause’s list: “The Kite Runner,” a 2003 novel that was among 16 books recently put in “quarantine” by Polk County Public Schools in Florida, after a campaign by County Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative group.
Asked why the group settled on the books they did, CCDF leader Jimmy Nelson told the Lakeland Ledger that “the books speak for themselves,” but struggled to articulate why The Bible, which also deals with adult themes, should not also be “quarantined.”
When discussing the fact that Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” depicts the brutal rape of a boy by a teenaged boy, Nelson was asked if all books containing rape should be banned.
“I’m not going to go into that with you,” Nelson said. He became irritated when it was pointed out that the Bible and William Shakespeare plays contain rape, incest and adultery, and asked if he wanted the Bible or Shakespeare removed, too.
[Of course not! Rape and incest in God's name is an entirely different matter! All the better to indoctrinate children with!] [Heeeyy! Get away father O'Malley!]
Amusing though the hypocrisy may be at times, censoring books causes real, lasting damage to children, says the National Coalition Against Censorship.
“Libraries offer students the opportunity to encounter books and other material that they might otherwise never see and the freedom to make their own choices about what to read,” the organization said in a December statement warning of the ongoing “organized political attack on books.”
“It is freedom of expression that ensures that we can meet the challenges of a changing world. That freedom is critical for the students who will lead America in the years ahead. We must fight to defend it.”
""Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they will not vote for any candidate who admits Biden won 'fair and square'"
Biden won under the rules
but 'fair and square' is a bit much"
No liar, it was not a "bit much" -- Biden won by a "BIG MUCH."
Biden won by 7,052,770 votes (81,268,924 for Biden to 74,216,154 for Trump) and by 74 electoral college votes (306 for Biden and 232 for Trump).
Every court case brought by Trump's kool-ade drunkard lawyers claiming the election was not "fair and square" has failed to change the election outcome.
Some law firms even moved to drop their representation in lawsuits challenging results of the election. Another law firm bails out on Trump campaign
You need to flush the kool-ade out of your system, but instead you keep proudly drinking the kool-ade with your fascist heroes and spewing your delusions for all to see.
Ex-Fox News host Gretchen Carlson slammed her former network, saying “there’s a big difference between having a conservative opinion and having one that supports conspiracy theories.”
“Conservative television news is certainly not the conservative news that was out there even just five years ago,” Carlson told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Thursday.
“Slowly but surely, this has morphed into eradicating any other point of view since the Trump era that is not just opinion,” said Carlson, who left Fox in 2016.
She reportedly received a $20 million settlement over sexual harassment allegations against then-CEO Roger Ailes.
“It’s gone from an opinion, which was fine, to completely devolving into non-fact-based conspiracy theories and outright dangerous rhetoric, in my mind, and I think it’s a complete disservice to our country,” she told Acosta.
“This is not going to end well, in my mind,” Carlson added.
Washington State Trooper Robert LaMay, who grabbed headlines when he blew up at Gov. Jay Inslee (D) over vaccine mandates, has died of COVID-19, KIRO news radio reported Friday.
He was 50.
LaMay signed off on his last day on the job on video saying: “Jay Inslee can kiss my ass.”
LaMay started his career in 1999, and worked all over the state. He retired last October with his memorable farewell rather than be vaccinated.
“We don’t do vaccines,” he told Fox News in an interview last year after he quit, referring to himself and his family. “We don’t do flu shots or any of that stuff.”
LaMay told Fox that he obtained a religious vaccine exemption, but that he decided that required changes in his job due to his unvaccinated status were unacceptable.
Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste said of LaMay in a statement Friday: “I am deeply saddened over the news that our former friend and colleague Trooper Robert LaMay has passed away.”
This “agency’s prayers and remembrances are with his family and loved ones. Rob served honorably for over two decades and we were disappointed to see him leave the agency this past October. His service to this state and agency will be long remembered and appreciated.”
Earlier this week, Judge Kimberly Priest Johnson promised to deliver a quick decision on whether or not Oath Keeper founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes would be allowed to wait for his Jan. 6 trial at home rather than in jail. And now he has that answer: Nope.
As CNN reports, Johnson made it clear that the "totality of the evidence showing Defendant's leadership and strategic involvement in and advocacy for armed and violent actions against the federal government, combined with Defendant's preparedness and ready access to weapons sufficient to carry out such violent activities” made Rhodes a “significant risk.”
In addition to the government arguing that allowing Rhodes to leave jail would represent a threat to the public, it probably didn’t help that his wife testified at his hearing. Only his wife—who now lives several states away—didn’t ask for Rhodes to receive bail. She testified that the thought of him getting out was “a living nightmare.”
In addition to expressing concerns for her own safety, Rhodes’ legally separated wife also testified the Oath Keepers founder abused their children and “would regularly brandish guns in their house.”
As WFAA reports, Rhodes’ former wife says that he is abusive, unbalanced, and violent. And she describes him in terms that would seem to fit others involved in the Jan. 6 coup attempt.
"You know, he's not the only narcissist, sociopath out there. There's a whole lot of them. And most of the times the victims never get believed. And I am in this strange, strange little window here where other people can see what he's like,”
Also on the Excellent Reasons That Steward Rhodes Should Remain in Jail list was news that the white supremacist militia leader "installed elaborate escape tunnels in the couple's backyard, hid unregistered cars in the woods, and purchased hundreds of dollars of razor wire, which Defendant intended to install around the perimeter of the property, concealed from view, 'in case the feds ever came to his door.'"
So Rhodes was a flight risk, a threat to his wife and children, a general threat to the community, and had vowed not to be captured for his crimes. These are not the kind of things that make a judge grant bail.
"When a publisher stops printing an old Dr. Seuss book nobody read because it contained harmful racial stereotypes, Fox News and the entire Republican party lose their minds over “cancel culture.”
But when conservatives across the country start banning and censoring dozens of books at a time from school libraries, they’re "just trying to protect the kids.""
thanks for pointing out the hypocrisies of progressivism
currently howling about the effort to keep certain material from children
when they routinely do the same
the truth is, every society puts these kind of limits on what children are exposed to before that have reached a level of maturity to handle complex themes
if you're to compare that to Nazism, you make the egregious mistake of normalizing Nazism
the issue was that Nazis banned adults from reading books, not that they kept porn from kids
"To the kool-ade drunkard"
it's spelled Kool-aid
"No liar, it was not a "bit much" -- Biden won by a "BIG MUCH.""
the phrase "fair and square" is what I said was a bit much
it wasn't a fair election because the media withheld information from the public that was relevant and otherwise operated as an advocate for Biden
furthermore, Biden deceived the public by claiming to be a moderate when he actually has pursued some of the most socialist proposals of any President in history
further, voter integrity rules, in place for decades, were discarded for the sake of the scamdemic, making it difficult to know for sure how much fraud occurred, if any
but it a fact that a few thousand votes in key states would have given Trump victory
"Ex-Fox News host Gretchen Carlson slammed her former network, saying “there’s a big difference between having a conservative opinion and having one that supports conspiracy theories.”"
as opposed to the mainstream media, which didn't just fall for the Russia hoax, they participated in it
that would be a conspiracy theory
"She reportedly received a $20 million settlement over sexual harassment allegations against then-CEO Roger Ailes."
ah, sounds like she would not be an objective observer
"Washington State Trooper Robert LaMay, who grabbed headlines when he blew up at Gov. Jay Inslee (D) over vaccine mandates, has died of COVID-19, KIRO news radio reported Friday.
He was 50."
fascinating
so what?
""Good people" on both sides?"
that quote is taken out is context from Donald Trump's comments about Charlottesville
you have a lot of nerve calling anyone else a liar
Titles from Maus – a Pulitzer Prize-winning series about the Holocaust – made up nearly half of Amazon’s 10 best-selling comics and graphic novels Friday after one of the books was controversially banned by a Tennessee school district.
More than 42 years after the first graphic novel was released, a collection of the complete Maus titles is the top-selling graphic novel on Amazon, and it’s ranked 16th on the platform’s list of best-selling books from all genres.
Maus I, a Maus I and Maus II paperback box set and Maus II are also all in the top 10 of Amazon’s graphic novel best sellers.
The surge in sales followed a vote by a school board in Tennessee to ban Maus in its eighth-grade classrooms over what they claimed was the novel’s “unnecessary use of profanity and nudity” and depictions of violence and suicide, according to a statement from the district.
Maus, in which Nazis are shown as cats and Jews are drawn as mice, has been used widely in U.S. schools to educate students about the Holocaust.
The vote was held earlier this month, but news of it spread internationally this week as International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked Thursday.
Criticism from all over the world followed, including from the national U.S. Holocaust Museum, which said in a statement it’s “more important than ever” for students to learn about the genocide.
The banning of Maus is part of a wave of conservative actions to change school curriculums. Books dealing with gender and sexuality, social inequality and race have been banned from schools across the U.S., while a number of red states have banned critical race theory from being taught in public schools, including Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona, and North Dakota. Late in his term, former President Donald Trump signed an act to promote “patriotic education” that downplayed slavery in the nation’s history.
The Maus series is based on cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s relationship with his father, a Polish Jew who survived Nazi occupation during World War II. The first chapter of Maus was published in 1980 in comics anthology Raw, and was serialized in each following issue until 1991, when the magazine shuttered. Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and remains the only graphic novel to have ever won the prestigious award.
"thanks for pointing out the hypocrisies of progressivism
currently howling about the effort to keep certain material from children
when they routinely do the same"
There you go again conflating two things that aren't the same to pretend that they are and try to make a point - and fail miserably.
It was the folks who had the ownership rights to publish Dr. Seuss titles who decided not to publish certain titles that they own anymore.
That is ENTIRELY different from the state governments deciding to ban books, especially in a country the claims to protect citizens from government interference in free speech. Especially when the government is trying to hide the truth from its young citizens. Downright Orwellian. Wouldn't be surprised if they try and ban "1984" next - so kids won't know what their plan is.
"furthermore, Biden deceived the public by claiming to be a moderate when he actually has pursued some of the most socialist proposals of any President in history"
Looks like someone needs a refresher on FDR.
As for deceiving the public, how many pesos did Rumpie get from Mexico for building his wall? Nada. Who did he say was going to pay for it again?
"it wasn't a fair election because the media withheld information from the public that was relevant and otherwise operated as an advocate for Biden"
Not unlike how the FBI kept its investigation of Rump quiet while re-igniting a bogus "investigation" of Hillary in 2016.
"further, voter integrity rules, in place for decades, were discarded for the sake of the scamdemic, making it difficult to know for sure how much fraud occurred, if any"
And yet they still managed to catch several Republicans who voted twice, including one who voted for his deceased wife and then made a big public deal out of it for Republican propaganda.
"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
-Various Villains, 'Scooby-Doo'.
"There you go again conflating two things that aren't the same to pretend that they are and try to make a point - and fail miserably."
actually, you are the one who chose the example, not me
just to get to clarify, what is your position on exposing kids to racist material?
"That is ENTIRELY different from the state governments deciding to ban books,"
actually, deciding what material is appropriate for exposing children to in school is not "banning books"
the kids are free to go on Amazon, visit their library, or ask their parents
no state government in the US is "banning books"
"especially in a country the claims to protect citizens from government interference in free speech"
we used to be such a country
now, the government is considering how to regulate speech that conducted in digital format
additionally, legislators have applied a lot of pressure on social media sites to censor speech
"Looks like someone needs a refresher on FDR."
Biden never campaigned on a New Deal and people chose him because his opponents did campaign on that
"Not unlike how the FBI kept its investigation of Rump quiet while re-igniting a bogus "investigation" of Hillary in 2016."
if you think James Comey was secretly trying to get Trump elected, you may be beyond hope
"And yet they still managed to catch several Republicans who voted twice, including one who voted for his deceased wife and then made a big public deal out of it for Republican propaganda."
most Republican didn't take advantage of the new protocols
but with dropboxes and no in-person checking of ID, it's preposterous to say undetectable fraud could have occurred
Poor Joe Sleepy Slidin' Biden Nothing seems to move the needle. His approval ratings are still stuck in the mud and neither the president nor his team seems able to turn around the Titanic.
It’s not for lack of trying, or creativity. The First Cat announcement trended on Twitter and got a nice plug from NBC News. Unfortunately for Team Biden, the headlines over Dr. Jill’s latest pet (Willow, if you’re interested) faded quickly.
Sleepy Slidin' Biden even tried retracing a popular gambit from the campaign trail, making an unscheduled visit to an ice cream store recently; he was no doubt disappointed that sampling frozen treats in mid-winter failed to excite the press corps.
Of more consequence, the announcement that Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer would soon retire set the president up to make history by appointing a Black woman to the court. The New York Times and other reliable sources furiously debunked speculation that the White House had purposefully leaked the news to generate a positive news cycle, almost guaranteeing that such a behind-the-scenes effort took place.
Though the Sunday shows dutifully focused on the upcoming court nomination, the reality is that a new liberal replacing an existing liberal vote on the bench is not riveting. Also, the president pretty much gave away his "aha!" moment by promising to nominate a Black woman last year when competing for the African American vote days before the South Carolina primary.
The list of candidates is short; there will be dutiful speculation about which female jurist the president will elevate, but it will not quell anxieties over more pressing issues, like rents spiking 20% or more in some markets and gasoline prices rising by almost half.
The search and subsequent confirmation process is also a downer for Sleepy Slidin' Biden in that Republicans are unlikely to give the nominee the Brett Kavanaugh treatment; they won’t indulge in disgraceful character assassination, thus eliminating any hyped-up charges of racism that could energize Democrat voters.
The public’s patience with Sleepy Slidin' Biden’s use of identity politics to drive hiring has come to an end.
Even worse for the president, the public’s patience with Sleepy Slidin' Biden’s use of identity politics to drive hiring has come to an end. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll shows 76% of Americans, including over half of Democrats, think Biden should consider "all nominees" for the position on the court; a mere 23% approve of his narrowing the field to only Black women.
The truth is, Sleepy Slidin' Joe Biden is running out of ideas and also running out of gas. The deflation of the commander in chief is visible day by day and was especially on view recently when he traveled to Pittsburgh, as part of his new plan to Get Out More and tell Americans How Well Things are Going.
The outing got off to rocky start when several Pennsylvania Democrats suggested that, like Stacey Abrams recently in Georgia, they had "scheduling conflicts" that would prevent them joining Biden. Democrats across the country are increasingly nervous about attaching their campaigns to an unpopular president, and several are keeping their distance.
It continued to underwhelm as Biden attempted to tout his multitrillion Build Back Better proposal which has been stymied by Sens. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. Biden’s pitch sounded tired, as though even he was losing faith in the glories of his enormous spending program. He mentioned BBB only a couple of times, sometimes appearing to confuse that stalled agenda item with other bills before Congress.
Biden’s audience seemed tired, too, applauding only sporadically and mainly when the president called out local politicians or projects. They’d heard it all before.
Biden continues to argue that his multitrillion-dollar plan would not cost a penny, would reduce the deficit and would – amazingly – also curb inflation.
All those arguments have been widely debunked as inflation has accelerated in the wake of trillions in government spending, but Biden soldiers on, still offering up the endorsement from "14 Nobel laureates in economics [who] wrote to me, telling me that it will also diminish the impact of inflation."
In fact, those economists were suggesting that in the long term, some investment in human and physical capital might ease inflationary pressures. Pushed by fact-checkers to corroborate Biden’s optimism that the spending plan could soon provide relief to the millions of Americans struggling with soaring costs of groceries or housing, many have backpedaled.
Daniel McFadden from the University of California at Berkely wrote, in response to a query from the Washington Post, "increasing current government deficits by a shakily financed BBB could add to [general inflationary expectations.] Others were equally non-committal.
Biden spent much of his address reminiscing about his ties to Pittsburgh and the good old days when the town was a union stronghold and steel-making powerhouse, reminding his audience, "Some of you have been around long enough to remember how this city lost 100,000 steel jobs between 1970 and 1990."
The union workers in the audience might also remember that Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972, was in Congress during those years. They might recall that he voted to normalize trade with China in 2000 by allowing that country to join the World Trade Organization, a measure that facilitated those job losses. Biden also voted in favor of NAFTA in 1994 when Bill Clinton was president and more recently backed the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty until someone told him that "free trade" – i.e., sending jobs overseas – was no longer popular.
Biden’s rambling "memory lane" speech in Pittsburgh will not drive people to vote for his party in November or reboot his presidency. As Step One in the reset program he laid out in his recent press conference, it was a dud.
We cannot wait to see Step Two, the importation of new "experts" to give him advice. I could do that for free. Biden needs to put aside his fixation with race and attend to issues that matter most to voters: inflation, rampant crime and our broken border. In reality, it could be too late.
Americans aren’t happy with the way things are going in this country. That’s according to the most recent NBC News poll, released last week, which found that 72 percent of respondents believe that “things are off on the right track.” Only 22 percent answered that things are “headed in the right direction.”
That pretty closely mirrors Gallup, which asked if respondents were “satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going.” Last December, the polling group found that 21 percent of Americans were satisfied, with 79 percent saying they were dissatisfied. That’s the kind of number that gets circulated around Washington as an argument against the ruling party’s agenda. And it will surely be called a death knell for Democrats ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
Inflation usually creates dissatisfaction. When price increases exceed wage increases, it means that the effective pay of most families is falling. That has happened in the U.S. over the past year.
It’s partly a reflection of rising inflation around the world. Prices have increased because Covid-19 disruptions have reduced the supply of many goods while government stimulus programs have put extra money into families’ bank accounts. More demand plus less supply equals higher prices.
But inflation is especially high in the U.S. The main reason is probably that this country spent more money on pandemic stimulus than many other countries. Slidin' Biden's unnecessary stimulus in early 2021 essentially threw gasoline on a fire. A second reason is that daily life here remains more disrupted than in much of Europe or Asia because of Slidin' Biden's mismanagement of the pandemic mitigation efforts.
An inflation rate that exceeds wage growth does not automatically make Americans grumpy. In both 1984 and 1988, when Republicans held the White House, inflation was also eating up wage gains. “Yet, Republicans won both elections by large margins by running on the economy.”. They were able to do so because economic confidence was high.
Today, it is not because in 1984 and 1988, Reagan was making progress against the lingering inflation from the Johnson through Carter years. In Biden's case, we aren't making progress, we're going back to the 1970s.
And even if you forget about inflation, the experience of living and working in the U.S. economy is often unpleasant right now.
Among the problems: Public buses and subways are unreliable, mostly because of Covid absences, lengthening commutes. School buses and after-school activities are unreliable, creating child-care gaps. Grocery stores are routinely out of items. Retail lines are long. Doctor’s appointments can be hard to get.
According to the most recent NBC News poll, released last week, only 22 percent answered that things are “headed in the right direction.”
That pretty closely mirrors Gallup, which asked if respondents were “satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going.” The polling group found that 21 percent of Americans were satisfied, with 79 percent saying they were dissatisfied.
The experience of living and working in the U.S. economy is often unpleasant right now.
How can you people let this go on?
Biden is wasting what is probably his last few relatively healthy years in miserable and hopeless failure.
The country is suffering.
For the good of both, you need to convince Biden to resign.
Since Gallup has been taking the regular poll about how satisfied people are with the country's direction, the high point, 78%, was at the end of the Clinton administration, six years after Clinton pivoted away from progressivism and turned to the kind of positions that Joe Manchin takes now.
Which us to best case scenario for the Dems:
1. Biden nominates Kamala to the SCOTUS
2. Biden nominates Machin for VP
3. Biden resigns and Manchin becomes President
4. Manchin nominates Sinema for VP
WALA!
Dems are freed from the two Senators who block Senate passage and are favored to keep the White House in 2024.
Biden is the oldest President ever and clearly in decline
His exposure to the public is limited and Jill usually has to hold his hand and lead him to the podium where he says embarrassing things
The White House should not be an assisted living facility
The last president thought ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ was the answer to some kind of difficult intelligence that he should brag about.
"The last president thought ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ was the answer to some kind of difficult intelligence that he should brag about."
did you know Biden declined a cognitive test at his most recent annual exam?
and how about this?:
Trump conceived of Operation Warp Speed
the genius of the plan was to guarantee Big Pharma a certain level of sales even if their vaccines didn't work
result: several vaccines were ready to be distributed less than a year after the pandemic began
Biden, not a genius, ended Operation Warp Speed
so when a successful viral pill was announced a few months ago, we still don't have an adequate supply
IQ shown by results
The Monmouth University poll found 43 percent of survey-takers that identified as Republicans said that they are against the teaching of historical racism in public schools, as opposed to only 5 percent of Democrats who said the same thing. Ninety-four percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans said they were in favor of teaching about the history of racism.
"Ninety-four percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans said they were in favor of teaching about the history of racism."
obviously, schools should teach about racism
you can't understand our history without doing that
so, I find it hard to believe that 46% of Republicans don't agree
and even CRT, is OK as a theory
the problem was that teachers have been indoctrinating kids and not having nuanced discussions at the appropriate age levels
the result is a divisive society rather than a color-blind one
In debates about critical race theory and other manifestations of identity politics, Americans are being confronted with a particularly virulent form of Marxism, which some call cultural Marxism. Its adherents think they can create a new reality, because at bottom they do not believe in objective nature. Conservatives engaged in an important conversation over the exact proportion of natural law and natural rights must ensure their attention is not diverted from sworn opponents who deny the existence of either.
Very roughly, the natural-law crowd emphasizes society’s “common good,” while those on the natural-rights side stress individual liberties. They have bigger problems than each other though.
Adherents of a new left have no time for fundamental truths, but believe that each era’s conceptual framework is what creates reality. Man may apprehend natural phenomena through his senses, but he can only comprehend the world through society’s reigning concepts.
Marxists believe those in power create this perceptional superstructure. “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” Marx himself wrote in “The Communist Manifesto.” Max Horkheimer, the neo-communist who led the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and ’40s and first came up with Critical Theory, was as usual more wordy, but essentially said the same thing.
“The power of healthy human understanding, or common sense … are conditioned by the fact that the world of objects to be judged is in large measure produced by an activity that is itself determined by the very ideas which help the individual to recognize that world and to grasp it conceptually,” Horkheimer wrote in a foundational 1935 essay.
To critical race theory, an American mutation of critical theory, that powerful conceptual framework is white supremacy. In fact, the first task of CRT, wrote the editors of the 1995 collection of essays that serves as the theory’s tablet (which they refer to as “The Big Red Book”), is “to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America.”
It is embedded in the “‘ordinary business’ of society,” wrote Richard Delgado in his far slimmer primer on CRT.
The obvious implication is that, if you eliminate the conceptual framework — presto! you change nature and reality. Horkheimer says this is what happens with each passing historical era: “There are connections between the forms of judgment and the historical periods. A brief indication will show what is meant. The classificatory judgment is typical of prebourgeois society: this is the way it is, and man can do nothing about it…. Critical theory maintains: it need not be so; man can change reality” (italics added for emphasis).
From this, we can extrapolate why members of this new left believe that man can change his sex, which is just “assigned” at birth: because they are both Godless and materialist, they believe man is omnipotent. Things are not as they are because God or nature made them that way. Things are as they are because we conceive them so. Man creates reality.
This turns philosophy and theory on their head. Philosophy studies the true nature of things. But since there is no fundamental truth, philosophy becomes the motor to create a new reality.
Marx himself, once again, started it, writing in 1843, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Five years later, he added in the Manifesto, “Communism abolishes eternal truths. It abolishes all religion and all morality.”
About a century and a half later, Harvard University’s Derrick Bell, the godfather of CRT, wrote, “As I see it, critical race theory recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with the radical assessment of it.” The works of CRT are suffused with calls for “theoretical deconstruction” and the like.
These are the true foes of those who want to conserve what is good about America (i.e., conservatives). They see all of American society as an oppressive hegemonic narrative that should be destroyed and replaced with a counter-narrative. “I believe we all have work to do to keep dismantling the organizing principle of this society,” says Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, a force that has already done a lot of cultural dismantling.
But starting in late 2020, a force has risen to push back: parents. “It didn’t take long for parents of all races to figure out that their children were being indoctrinated into a repellent ideology. Since the implementation of CRT at the school level began, genuine parental resistance to it bubbled up,” writes Abe Greenwald in a Commentary piece chronicling the counter-revolution.
Bright conservative minds engaged in an intellectual debate over the future of conservatism cannot forget this other fight against our common enemies.
On one side of the conservative debate (and this is an oversimplification) are some who believe the emphasis should be on natural law (the eternal precepts that govern man’s action); on the other are those who stress the natural rights, or the individual rights, that man has because of his nature.
As Catholic University’s Melissa Moschella recently told me, they are tied at the hip, however. We have a natural right to free speech because our nature permits us to speak, but also because free speech is a prerequisite for discovering truth, an aspect of human flourishing. Our nature also permits us to commit murder, but we have no right to exercise that capacity because it is contrary to human flourishing, and therefore to natural law.
These distinctions, let me assure you, are lost on Marx, Bell, or Garza.
I have good friends and mentors on both sides of the conservative debate. They are intelligent, patriotic, and courageous. Their issues do matter. But let’s remember who are the real enemies of fundamental truth, and not become immersed in internal debates over theological principles, as the Byzantines did in 1453 when the Ottomans were at the gate
if you’re a Democrat, things are going very, very badly for you. And it’s not going to get better.
According to a recent McLaughlin and Associates study, 65 percent of likely voters believe that the United States is on the wrong track. That’s hardly surprising considering the multitude of poor decisions the fascists in charge have made since taking power.
The McLaughlin study also showed that Joe Biden’s approval rating has crumbled to 41 percent, which is high compared to Quinippiac’s 33 percent. NBC poll numbers were so bad that noted corporate propagandist and regime cheerleader, Chuck Todd, who masquerades as a journalist for that network, admitted that Biden’s numbers put Democrats in the “shellacking” range for the midterms. Todd noted that the overwhelming majority of voters think Biden is “no longer seen as competent and effective.” Of course, it’s been many decades since anyone in their right mind saw Biden as anything resembling competent and effective. But it is noteworthy that others are catching on.
For some perspective on how bad Biden’s numbers are for the fall, in 2010 Obama’s approval rating was down in the mid-40s. In those midterms Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and seven in the Senate. Now take Biden’s numbers, which are anywhere from five to 12 points worse than Obama’s and you get the picture. In short, Grandpa Dementia is the proverbial albatross around the necks of Democrats who were already wearing concrete boots and standing on the edge of a watery abyss.
But while everyone is focused on the federal elections—and with Trafalgar’s Congressional Generic poll showing Republicans with a nearly 14 point lead, it does look like a wipe out at that level—we shouldn’t forget the state and local level opportunities this fall. In the 2010 midterms Democrats lost 680 state legislative seats and six governorships as Republicans also picked up six state attorney general races and six secretary of state races.
In short, Biden’s terrible numbers and a midterm wipeout at the federal level have implications at the state level as well for Democrats in 2022. There are 36 gubernatorial races with key pick up opportunities in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania among others. There are 30 attorney general races, with Wisconsin and Michigan also having pickup opportunities and 27 secretary of state races this year, with key pickup opportunities as well in Wisconsin and Michigan.
We should also be mindful of the parents’ revolt at the school board level. Parents of all political stripes have had enough. That is the real story of what took place in Virginia: Republican, Democratic, and independent parents all revolted against the school boards’ insanity of lockdowns, mandates, refusal to teach advanced courses, and CRT. That dynamic is playing out all across the country and with gale-force political winds likely pushing these issues in the fall, we would do well to make sure thousands of right-thinking parents are actually running for those school board positions.
Many Americans are realizing how much power has been taken away from us. The dynamics of 2022 and the current political climate give us a chance to start taking that power back if only we will choose our leaders wisely and put political power in the hands of people who want to protect our freedoms rather than strip them away.
If ever there was a year for freedom-loving people to run for office, 2022 is that year at all levels of government—federal, state and local. Much like Ed Durr, the trucker who beat the New Jersey state Senate president in 2021, there will be people who win this fall simply because they put their names on the ballot and are not “not them.” So let’s make sure we bury the unAmerican Left this year and then turn our sights to taking back the White House in 2024.
Former President Donald Trump said he would ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports nationwide if he were re-elected president.
“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” Trump said during a rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday. “So ridiculous.”
He then criticized "Lia" Thomas, the trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer who sparked international debate last month breaking multiple records at a meet in Ohio. Trump, referring to Thomas by the pronouns corresponding to biological gender, sparked outrage among lunatic fringe liberals.
Trump’s language mirrored that of officials in many states over the last few years. Last year, more than 30 states considered bills that would ban transgender student-athletes from playing on sports teams that align with their imagined gender identity. Ten states have enacted such measures. So far this year, 17 states are considering similar bills.
Trump has previously denounced trans-inclusive sports teams. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, last year, Trump called trans female athletes “biological males.”
“Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males,” Trump said. “It’s not good for women. It’s not good for women’s sports, which worked for so long and so hard to get to where they are.”
He later added, “If this does not change, women’s sports as we know it will die.”
Thomas’ critics say her success proves that trans women shouldn’t be allowed to compete on women’s sports teams, or at least the rules governing their participation need to be stricter to mitigate any competitive advantage they may have due to the effects of testosterone from endogenous puberty.
A majority of Americans, 62 percent, said trans athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that correspond with their gender assigned at birth, while 34 percent said they should be able to play on teams that match their imagined gender identity, according to a Gallup poll released last year.
In an email kept from public view for more than five years, a top U.S. State Department official in Kiev wrote to Washington superiors at the end of the Obama-Biden administration that Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine "undercut" U.S. efforts to fight corruption in the former Soviet republic.
The email was written on Nov. 22, 2016 by former U.S. embassy official George Kent, one of the Democrats' star witnesses in their first effort to impeach former President Donald Trump.
It was classified "confidential," the lowest level of secrecy, by then-U.S. Ambassador to Kiev Marie Yovanovitch, another of the Democrats' impeachment witnesses, and was not produced as evidence to House lawmakers during impeachment. Contrary to federal law, the State Department failed to acknowledge the existence of the document to the court or to media in multiple Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the State Department seeking records on Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine.
Most importantly, the email's stark message directly conflicts with the narrative the mainstream media, State Department witnesses and Democratic congressmen gave the public two years ago, when they insisted Hunter Biden's lucrative job with the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings — while creating the appearance of a conflict of interest — had no impact on U.S. efforts to fight corruption in that country.
The recipients of the email included Jorgan K. Andrews, then the-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Kent's email described an intense pressure campaign by advocates for Burisma — including a former U.S. ambassador — to rehabilitate the Ukrainian company's corrupt reputation and to get Ukraine prosecutors to drop their criminal investigations of the company.
Kent even relayed to higher-ups that he had confirmed with Ukrainian prosecutors that Burisma officials had paid a $7 million "bribe" to make one of the cases against the company disappear. The bribe was paid at a time when Hunter Biden was serving on the Burisma board, a job that landed his firm more than $3 million from the Ukrainian energy company.
Kent explained to the officials in Washington that Burisma's long reputation for alleged corruption and anecdotes like the bribe were one of the main reasons Hunter Biden's affiliation with the company proved harmful to U.S. efforts to fight Ukrainian corruption.
"Ukrainians heard one message from us," Kent wrote, "and then saw another set of behavior, with the BIden family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules in the oil/gas sector."
Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member on the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, played a key role in defending President Trump in the 2019-20 Ukraine impeachment scandal. He said Tuesday night that lawmakers and Trump's defense team were not given the Kent email.
"This is frightening," Jordan said. "And the fact that we didn't have this information during the impeachment, I think is maybe the biggest concern. I mean, the President of the United States is defending himself from a ridiculous impeachment process that the Democrats bring on him."
"And now we find out wasn't allowed to have information that he's entitled to have to put on his defense. I mean, frankly, we Republicans who were in the rooms in that bunker in the basement of the Capitol, we'd have liked to have this information that you just described, and other information that wasn't available to us as well, that you've written about."
State Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday about the memo.
Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor who was a member of Trump's impeachment defense team, said the withholding of Kent's email and other evidence Just the News reported earlier this week was a "very serious constitutional violation" of what is known as the Brady rule requiring all potentially exculpatory evidence be turned over to defendants.
"The United States Supreme Court in the Brady decision ruled that when a defendant is on trial, the prosecutors cannot withhold evidence that could be exculpatory, or in any way helpful to the defendant," Dershowitz said.
"And obviously, that has to apply to impeachment proceedings even more so," he added. "Because in impeachment proceedings, the American public has the right to know all the evidence. And if the people who impeached President Trump — obviously I was one of the lawyers on the other side — were aware of exculpatory evidence or evidence that would in some way mitigate the charges, they had an obligation to turn it over to us so that we could use this information in defending our client."
On December 18, 2021, General Michael Flynn, Trump lawyer Sidney "Kraken" Powell and the former CEO of Overstock.com somehow got into the White House and proposed to Trump that he sign an Executive Order naming Powell as Special Counsel to investigate the alleged election fraud and order the military to seize the voting machines. What we didn't know until the NY Times and CNN reported it this week is that Trump had earlier tried to get former Attorney General William Barr to have the Justice Department seize machines and Barr told him he could not do it because it would require probable cause and there wasn't any. (Barr resigned not long after.)
We also learned that when the idea of an Executive Order to the Penatagon was shot down by Rudy Giuliani and others, Trump directed Giuliani to see if the Department of Homeland Security could do it. And there was reportedly yet another draft Executive Order drawn up to that effect. In the end, none of the Executive Orders were signed and no one agreed to seize the voting machines. (Just imagine if they had actually tried to do that ...)
Until now, Trump has been portrayed as sort of passive in all this, simply receiving proposals from his minions and henchmen and not directing any of the action. It was never particularly believable except to the extent that he played the role of the mob boss who only has to quirk an eyebrow and his lieutenants know what to do. Fortunately for the country, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte points out, Trump was saved by his lackeys and accomplices, either because they were too inept to carry out the coup or because even they had reached the end of the line with his lunacy.
But Trump can no longer hide behind his henchmen. We now know that Bill Barr told him that seizing the voting machines was illegal without a court order which requires probable cause and there was none. Yet he still entertained the proposal that he issue executive orders to the Pentagon and DHS to do it anyway. And according to the Times, Trump also made overtures to state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania to have law enforcement agencies take control of voting machines, which were rebuffed. He was clearly convinced that if he could get someone to seize those machines it could turn the tide and somehow overturn the election.
Was it that he believed Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn's inane conspiracy theories that said the machines were rigged by the very dead Hugo Chavez or had been surreptitiously sent to Italy to have the votes changed? Or did he just think that making such a dramatic move would change the dynamic and make the state actors take action to change the electoral count? It's hard to know. Trump believes that he can change reality simply be saying things over and over again (and it works on about 35% of the population.) Maybe he just thought he could will it to be true.
These latest revelations do show us just how different these days are than 48 years ago when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had tried to get the CIA to block the FBI's investigation into Watergate. That was known as the "smoking gun" in that case and it made dozens of Republicans and conservative Democrats turn against him. He resigned days later.
What Trump did was worse.
He tried to use the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (and for all we know the CIA and the Department of Education too) to overturn a legal election that he lost. And his party shrugs. Worse than that he is the front runner for the nomination in the next presidential election. If, for some reason, he is actually held to account for any of this -- or anything at all -- it won't be because the Republican Party lifted a finger to make it happen.
"These latest revelations do show us just how different these days are than 48 years ago when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had tried to get the CIA to block the FBI's investigation into Watergate. That was known as the "smoking gun" in that case and it made dozens of Republicans and conservative Democrats turn against him. He resigned days later.
What Trump did was worse.
He tried to use the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (and for all we know the CIA and the Department of Education too) to overturn a legal election that he lost. And his party shrugs."
well, for one thing, Trump is no longer President
Nixon was
What Trump TRIED to do was not worse than what Obama and Hillary did.
In 2012, Obama used the IRS to prevent and harass Tea Party opposition to his re-election
it was a close election, and his use of a government agency for political purposes may have made the difference
Hillary tried, as Trump did, to overturn the election results when she lost in 2016
her actions, in creating the Russian hoax, was much more damaging to the national interest, halting progress while we spent three years focusing on these falsehoods
she should have been charged
and Trump was thwarted by Republicans in his administration and Congress in his attempts to overturn the election
"Worse than that he is the front runner for the nomination in the next presidential election. If, for some reason, he is actually held to account for any of this -- or anything at all -- it won't be because the Republican Party lifted a finger to make it happen."
Nixon, Obama, and Hillary weren't held to account
Nixon was pardoned, Obama is treated like an elder statesmen, Hillary may run again
but if Americans look at what Trump TRIED to do and vote for him anyway, that's their prerogative
Congress doesn't have a veto
odd that you accuse Trump of trying to overturn an election result but feel Congress should have a veto over the the choice of the electorate
do you ever, in a reflective moment, realize what a hypocrite you are?
Disagreements on policy and a crowded Senate to-do list are further complicating Democrats’ path to passing their sweeping social safety net and climate package in some form or another.
Sen. Joe Manchin III said Tuesday he views the bill in its current form as “dead” and wants to tackle other legislative goals first, indicating Democrats aren’t any closer to a deal with the West Virginia centrist on spending provisions than they were weeks ago.
Manchin and several other Democratic senators confirmed Tuesday larger-scale talks on the package have yet to resume, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., dismissed the idea of negotiating any relief from a $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, another issue dividing the caucus. In the Senate, Democrats can’t lose any votes and pass the roughly $2 trillion budget bill through the reconciliation process, which bypasses united GOP opposition and allows for a simple majority vote.
Manchin said Tuesday that Democrats will need to start talking about the package eventually, but that he wants to address government funding, which is set to run out Feb. 18, and efforts for bipartisan election overhaul legislation first.
Further restricting Democrats' options on "Build Back Better," or even a bite-sized version of it, is the fact that Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who suffered a cerebral stroke, is out recuperating from brain surgery, his office said Tuesday. That leaves Democrats short of votes to pass anything without GOP support in the 50-50 chamber.
Manchin said he didn't know if he could support a slimmer version of the previous package, which exceeded his fiscal targets and included some provisions he didn't like. “We’ll see what people come up with,” he said.
Manchin, who leads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources panel, had expressed support in recent weeks for the roughly $500 billion of clean energy provisions in the bill, but on Tuesday he suggested that too could be up for further debate.
“There’s still some things we’re working on there,” he said. “We’re looking at everything now. Inflation’s different than it was. Everything’s different than what we had before.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by failing to properly disclose stock shares his wife received for advising a Colorado-based financial technology trust company.
This egregious violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act's disclosure provisions, which exist to promote transparency and defend against financial conflicts, comes at a time of significant national attention for the Raskins.
Jamie Raskin is a notorious congressman who led the second failed impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. Sarah Bloom Raskin is President Joe Biden's nominee to fill the position of the government's most powerful banking regulator and is set to face a key Senate panel on Thursday.
If confirmed, Sarah Bloom Raskin would become vice chairwoman of supervision at the Federal Reserve.
Yet she faces an uncertain confirmation path among moderates in the Senate given that she has called for harsher financial regulations aimed at combating the climate crisis and supports tougher oversight on big banks.
The omission from congressional reports of the shares she held in Reserve Trust is likely to hand another round of ammunition to Republicans, who want to stall Biden's nominees. At least one conservative watchdog group is already questioning whether she used her past Fed connections to help the fintech trust.
Conservative Pundit Warns Just How Unhinged A Second Donald Trump Presidency Could Be
Amidst all of the bizarre scenes from the Trump presidency’s twilight attempted coup, pay attention to this one.
As the defeated president flailed around for ways to keep his grip on power, he considered having the military seize voting machines.
But the scheme was blocked by … Rudy Giuliani.
This is worth pondering for a moment. Trump’s coup attempt had become so barking mad that it was too much for the Melting Mayor of Four Seasons Landscaping.
The conflict between the former New York mayor and Trump’s bizarre legal team reached a crisis at a meeting in the Oval Office on December 18, 2020.
At the meeting, Mr. [Michael] Flynn and Ms. [Sidney] Powell presented Mr. Trump with a copy of the draft executive order authorizing the military to oversee the seizure of machines. After reading it, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Giuliani to the Oval Office, according to one person familiar with the matter. When Mr. Giuliani read the draft order, he told Mr. Trump that the military could be used only if there was clear-cut evidence of foreign interference in the election.
Ms. Powell, who had spent the past month filing lawsuits claiming that China and other countries had hacked into voting machines, said she had such evidence, the person said. But Mr. Giuliani was adamant that the military should not be mobilized, the person said, and Mr. Trump ultimately heeded his advice.
Ponder this.
George Conway
@gtconway3d
Imagine being in a room, let alone a venerated oval one, in which the voice of reason and rationality belongs to Rudy Giuliani. https://t.co/87BLd3yMpT
Maggie Haberman @maggieNYT
Giuliani was vehement with Trump that the military could not be used, as Powell and Flynn were suggesting Trump engage in. https://t.co/q8rUzL8nWH
February 1st 2022
1,654 Retweets 13,188 Likes
Afterward, Giuliani would contact the Department of Homeland Security with a similar request to seize the machines, but that also went nowhere. That outreach came after Attorney General Bill Barr had also rejected suggestions that the Department of Justice join in the attempt to overturn the election.
The NYT reports:
The meeting with Mr. Barr took place in mid- to late November when Mr. Trump raised the idea of whether the Justice Department could be used to seize machines, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump told Mr. Barr that his lawyers had told him that the department had the power to seize machines as evidence of fraud.
Barr, who had been Trump’s loyal Roy Cohn-like attack dog and defender, turned him down flat.
Mr. Barr, who had been briefed extensively at that point by federal law enforcement officials about how the theories being pushed by Mr. Trump’s legal team about the Dominion machines were unfounded, told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no basis for seizing the machines because there was no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed.
By then, as he later told author Jonathan Karl, he’d had enough of Trump’s lies.
“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told me. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”
As the coup gathered momentum, Barr resigned, effective December 23, 2020. He managed, however, not to publicly break with the president, or to warn the country at the time.
A few weeks later, Vice President Mike Pence would refuse to play his part in the attempt to overturn the election.
So, this is worth thinking about: Pence, Barr, and Giuliani were not merely Trump loyalists: over the last four years, they had repeatedly shown a willingness to rationalize, lie, cover-up, bully, bluster, and bend the law for Trump’s benefit.
But it turned out there were lines they would not cross. There was a Barr-Pence Line — and apparently even a Giuliani Line — beyond which there be dragons.
There were signs that there may even have been a Mitch McConnell Line, in the days after the attack on the Capitol, but those political lines proved to be porous, malleable, and ultimately disposable. (See Nikki Haley, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Gallagher, etc.)
But within the administration itself — in Trump’s own inner circles — some of the insanity was held at bay in the weeks before the inauguration. In today’s Bulwark, Mona Charen makes the point:
A little-noticed feature of the stories about Trump’s thus-far unsuccessful efforts to stage a coup is that even among the MAGA crowd, some things were considered beyond the pale. Barr was willing to swallow a lot, but he couldn’t go along with lying about imaginary vote fraud. The high-ranking lawyers at the Justice Department were Trump appointees, but they would resign en masse rather than see Clark subvert the department for plainly unlawful ends. Brad Raffensperger voted for Trump but refused to lie for him. Cuccinelli was Trump’s loyal immigration hawk, but he couldn’t see his way to using his Homeland Security post to confiscate voting machines and commit fraud. And though Mike Pence, pressed hard by Trump for the last full measure of devotion, wavered (he phoned Dan Quayle for advice), in the end, he did what he knew was right.
Why did they draw those lines? Why did they come so far only to say, at a crucial moment, no further? Charen notes that a healthy body politic “needs certain automatic defenses,” and even after four years of Trump, some members of his administration retained what she calls “the vestigial antibodies of a healthy democracy.”
“The people who made those crucial decisions were acting out of a sense that anything less would be dishonorable and would be perceived as such by the whole society.”
For all their many faults, Pence, Barr, and even Giuliani came from a different era of American politics, with lingering (and rapidly fading) memories of the rule of law and a (more or less) decent respect for the opinions of mankind.
But in a second Trump term, they won’t be there. It will be all Kayleighs, Bannons, Epshteyns, McEntees, Bonginos, D’Souzas, and Stephen Millers.
So consider this: In Trump 2.0, we may look back on Bill Barr, Mike Pence, and — God forgive me — Rudy Giuliani with a certain sense of nostalgia, because where are those lines now?
"So, this is worth thinking about: Pence, Barr, and Giuliani were not merely Trump loyalists: over the last four years, they had repeatedly shown a willingness to rationalize, lie, cover-up, bully, bluster, and bend the law for Trump’s benefit.
But it turned out there were lines they would not cross. There was a Barr-Pence Line — and apparently even a Giuliani Line — beyond which there be dragons."
you guys are priceless
Pence, Barr, and Giuliani were all good men who served their country by restraining a sociopathic narcissist who became President
the country is in their debt for performing this thankless task
Giuliani, in particular, had a long career, universally praised as a prosecutor who took down the mob in New York and a mayor who inspired the nation with his leadership after 9/11
history will also remember his service in the Trump White House
and it won't look kindly on the current Trump Derangement Syndrome
Sixteen teammates of Penn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas sent a letter to the school and the Ivy League arguing that Thomas has an unfair advantage in the pool and shouldn't be allowed to compete.
The letter obtained by the Washington Post on Thursday asks that the institutions decline to take legal action that could clear a path for Thomas to compete at next month's NCAA championships.
Thursday's letter was sent by 1984 Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar. She's the chief executive of women’s sports advocacy organization Champion Women and a critic of Thomas' presence in the pool as a women's competitor. The 16 Penn swimmers who supported the letter remained anonymous, according to the Post.
"It’s time that we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives."
7 out of 10 Americans now agree with that statement, according to a poll released Monday from Monmouth University.
The problem for Joe Biden, of course, is that the remaining 30 percent of the country is pretty much definitionally his base. The bluechecks and teachers unions have eaten their own cooking. They are hoping to “work from home” until the end of time, leaving their Brooklyn apartments only to get booster shots. Hey, maybe Amazon can deliver those too.
Never get high on your own supply.
Too late now.
The non-woke (sleepy?) majority of the country has also registered the failure of the vaccines. Support for mandates is melting as quickly as Uncle Joe’s approval rating (surely no coincidence). Only 43 percent of Americans support requiring proof of vaccination to work in an office, down from 53 percent in September.
Support for mask mandates has fallen even more quickly over the same period, from 63 percent to 52 percent.
Polls have consequences. I think/hope we have seen the last gasp of Covid hysteria in the blue states. The restrictions will come off bit by bit this spring, as Omicron cases fall (or even if they don’t - the Europeans are no longer bothering to wait). Even in blue states, the rules are generally unenforced anyway outside major cities.
The big question going forward will be what harm - if any - the mRNA vaccines have done to the development of long-term post-infection immunity; that is, what level of Omicron or future variant reinfections and deaths will we be forced to live with?
But it’s clear that even a thousand or more deaths a day in the United States and the equivalent in big European countries is no longer enough to move the needle on policy, no matter how much the bluechecks and public health authorities scream.
Virus gonna virus, and everybody knows it. Well, 70 percent of everybody, and that’s enough.
The U.S. job market came through January in much better shape than expected despite a winter wave of coronavirus infections.
Employers added 467,000 jobs last month, according to a new tally from the Labor Department, far outpacing even the most optimistic forecasts. The gains came despite a surge in COVID-19 cases tied to the omicron variant.
"Omicron, Schmomicron," economist Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a research note. "This is a much stronger report than expected."
Revised figures also show job gains in November and December were significantly larger than initially reported. That suggests the economy had more momentum coming into the new year and weathered the latest pandemic punch with far less pain than expected.
"That suggests the economy had more momentum coming into the new year and weathered the latest pandemic punch with far less pain than expected."
that's very exciting for Jeff Bezos and government workers
but average Americans have lost thousands a year to the inflation caused by Biden's unnecessary stimulus last year
and hope they don't have to replace their car or move anytime soon since car prices and rental rates are through the roof
and you'll pay much more for food, if you can find it
Unemployment is at 4%.
And you formerly praised Rump for his record:
The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers.
-The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%.
-Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.7% after inflation.
-After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.
-The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016.
-The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
-The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
-Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
-Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016.
-Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 16.7%. Carbon emissions from energy consumption dropped 11.5%.
-Handgun production rose 12.5% last year compared with 2016, setting a new record.
-The murder rate last year rose to the highest level since 1997.
-Trump filled one-third of the Supreme Court, nearly 30% of the appellate court seats and a quarter of District Court seats.
The claim: Trump is the worst jobs president in history
Millions of jobs were lost during Donald Trump's presidency, according to a Nov. 1 Facebook post.
A chart posted to the Center for American Progress Action Fund page on Facebook showed negative job growth numbers for Trump compared with 12 of his predecessors. Trump is "the worst jobs president in history" with job losses totaling 4 million, according to the post's caption.
Per the chart, Trump is the only president in the last 80 years to net job losses during his presidency. President George W. Bush is the runner-up with 1 million jobs added during his administration. Bush's successor, Barack Obama, is credited with 12 million jobs.
.
.
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Our rating: True
We rate this claim TRUE, based on our research. More jobs were lost during the Trump administration than any other in history. Approximately 4 million fewer people were employed from January 2017 to September 2020, according to the most recent publicly available data.
Our fact-check sources:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct. 2: "THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — SEPTEMBER 2020"
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed Nov. 5: "Impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on The Employment Situation for September 2020"
USA TODAY, July 16: "Fact check: Trump doesn’t outperform other presidents despite 2 months of strong job gains"
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed Nov. 5: "All Employees, Total Nonfarm [PAYEMS]"
USA TODAY, Nov. 3: "Trump or Biden: Who would boost growth, restore jobs faster? Here’s an Election Day guide on the economy"
CNN, Oct. 6: "Trump has the worst job losses on record heading into the election"
Conversation with Jesse Lee, Senior Adviser at the Center for American Progress, Nov. 16
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oct. 2: "Employment Situation News Release"
U.S. employers added a burst of 467,000 jobs in January despite a wave of omicron inflections that sickened millions of workers, kept many consumers at home and left businesses from restaurants to manufacturers short-staffed.
The Labor Department’s report Friday also showed the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to 4%. Estimated job growth for December was also revised much higher, from 199,000 to 510,000.
To put this in perspective, Biden added about the same number of jobs in his pandemic year - 6.569 million (Feb 2021 - Jan 2022) As Trump did in his first THREE NON-pandemic years - 6.5 million (Feb 2017 - Jan 2020). Comparing this to Trump's DISASTEROUS pandemic year (Feb 2020 - Jan 2021) is even more telling - thanks to Trump's incompetent handling of the pandemic, the economy LOST 9.111 million jobs.
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
The strong hiring gain, which was unexpected, demonstrates the eagerness of many employers to hire even as the pandemic maintains its grip on the economy. Businesses appear to have seen the omicron wave as having, at most, a temporary impact on the economy and remain confident about longer-term growth.
The still-high number of people who have remained on the sidelines of the workforce has exacerbated a labor shortage and led employers to raise pay to try to draw them back in.
The overall outlook for the job market remains bright, with openings near a record high, the pace of layoffs down and the unemployment rate having already reached a healthy level. The nation gained more jobs last year, adjusted for the size of the workforce, than in any year since 1978. The unemployment rate fell by nearly 3 percentage points — from 6.7% to 3.9% — the sharpest yearly decline on records. Much of that improvement represented a rebound from record job losses in 2020 that were driven by Trump's pandemic recession.
Omicron infections are likely slowing the economy in the January-March quarter, particularly compared with the rapid expansion in the final three months of 2021, when it grew at a robust 6.9% annual rate. Some analysts have forecast that growth will weaken to an annual rate as low as 1% in the first three months of this year.
One reason for the slowdown: Americans cut their spending in January as the spread of the coronavirus discouraged some people from eating out, traveling and going to movies and other entertainment venues.
Yet as omicron fades, there are signs that consumers are poised to spend again. Auto sales jumped in January after several months of declines. Carmakers have managed to slowly ramp up production. And Americans’ incomes rose at a solid pace last month, providing fuel for future spending.
Meanwhile, conservatives are having conniption fits about masks, vaccine mandates, and anything else they can think of to try and blame on Biden to make him look bad, and distract from all the investigations into last year's failed right-wing insurrection attempt.
"Meanwhile, conservatives are having conniption fits about masks, vaccine mandates, and anything else they can think of to try and blame on Biden to make him look bad, and distract from all the investigations into last year's failed right-wing insurrection attempt."
The troll's demonstration is a few comments above here and it goes like this:
"..history will also remember his service in the Trump White House
and it won't look kindly on the current Trump Derangement Syndrome
Sixteen teammates of Penn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas sent a letter to the school and the Ivy League arguing that Thomas has an unfair advantage in the pool and shouldn't be allowed to compete..ru.."
We see who has become deranged by Trump, going from Giulini praise to trans issues.
When you believe Trump's lies, you are lying to yourself.
Rudy played a grandmother on SNL but that doesn't mean he is trans.
Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., are blasting the Republican National Committee for moving forward with a resolution to formally censure them for their work on the House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s role in the insurrection.
“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy,” Cheney said in a statement. “I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what.”
“I’ve been a member of the Republican Party long before Donald Trump entered the field,” Kinzinger said in his statement. “My values and core beliefs remain the same and have not wavered. I’m a conservative who believes in truth, freedom, and upholding the Constitution of the United States.
“Rather than focus their efforts on how to help the American people, my fellow Republicans have chosen to censure two lifelong Members of their party for simply upholding their oaths of office,” Kinzinger continued. “They’ve allowed conspiracies and toxic tribalism hinder their ability to see clear-eyed. My efforts will continue to be focused on standing up for the truth.”..
The measure rebukes the two Congress members for their involvement on the Jan. 6 committee but stops short of calling for their expulsion from the House Republican Conference — something that Trump ally and RNC member David Bossie had initially proposed.
Cheney and Kinzinger are two of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the riot at the Capitol, and both are fierce critics of the former president.
Just this week they lashed out at Trump’s suggestion that if he is reelected, he would consider pardons for those who have been convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 assault.
“Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election,” Cheney tweeted. “He’d do it all again if given the chance.”
SALT LAKE CITY — None of the officials assembled here for the Republican National Committee’s winter meetings are writing off former President Donald Trump. They all recognize his singular hold over the party’s electoral base.
But a distinct chasm is emerging between Trump’s obsessions and the issues many GOP operatives consider crucial to winning the midterm elections in November. Republican candidates need to make voters' concerns a central focus, as opposed to Trump’s day-to-day attacks, RNC members suggested this week.
Few will put it quite so bluntly; they are loath to antagonize Trump and possibly drive off his hard-core followers. Yet in interviews, party officials showed little appetite for organizing the GOP around Trump’s grievances.
A winning message would emphasize inflation and parental rights, they said — not the 2020 election, which Trump falsely insists he won. Strengthening the party would require opening it up to new voters — not punishing Republicans who have disagreed with Trump, they added.
The sentiments echo those of local GOP leaders, who said late last year that they were ready to move beyond the 2020 election, even if Trump wasn’t. They wanted to put issues like border security, the Afghanistan troop withdrawal and education front and center.
A goal of the RNC winter meetings, members said, was for Republicans to project “unity.”[Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah Reuters: Biden calls for unity as nation marks 20th anniversary of 9/11, CNBC: Biden calls for unity and healing after Electoral College certifies his victory, and NPR: Biden Calls for Unity In His Inaugural Address.] Yet Trump remains a source of division that has spilled into the party’s gathering. One of his allies, RNC member David Bossie of Maryland, submitted a symbolic resolution that would call upon congressional Republicans to expel Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., from the House GOP conference. Both voted last year to impeach Trump.
The resolution was watered down to a censure Thursday amid criticism from some members that it undercut efforts to show the party tolerated dissenting views.
"The Republican National Committee hereby formally censures Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and shall immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior, which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the conference," read the resolution, which was obtained by NBC News.
That version passed the RNC subcommittee on resolutions unanimously Thursday evening. Whether the full RNC will approve it at its general meeting Friday is unclear, and a source familiar with the process said there could still be additional changes.
"I believe if you’re trying to build a big church, as I’m trying to build in Illinois, you don’t excommunicate people who are alleged to have sinned," state GOP Chairman Don Tracy said Wednesday. "Politics is about addition, not subtraction."...
William Palatucci, an RNC member from New Jersey, said there are things Trump could do to help the party heading into the midterms but things he shouldn't do, as well.
Trump "needs to figure out a way to be constructive and not destructive: Help the party raise money; stay out of primaries unless there’s a really good reason," Palatucci said. "Picking fights with really good candidates is not a good idea!"..
You can’t make this stuff up:
The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.
The Republican National Committee’s voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.
On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
They wrote it and they signed it. Afterwards they said they didn’t mean to excuse the violent insurrectionists when they said Cheney and Kinzinger’s participation in the January 6th Committee was “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
But the censure, which was carefully negotiated in private among party members, made no such distinction. It was the latest and most forceful effort by the Republican Party to minimize what happened and the broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. In approving it and opting to punish two of its own, Republicans seemed to embrace a position that many of them have only hinted at: that the assault and the actions that preceded it were acceptable.
I think trying to appease the Orange Julius Caesar has finally fried their brains.
Meanwhile, down in Florida, we have Mike Pence trying mightily to walk the GOP tightrope without falling to his political death.
He did say "President Trump is wrong....Ihad no right to overturn the election."
Good luck to him. The Federalist Society members didn’t exactly launch into ecstatic applause although they did stand at the end of his speech. But he said it and it’s out there.
So let the games begin. So far Dear Leader must be in his bed eating his feelings because we haven’t seen a response just yet.
The United States desperately needs a Republican Party that is a sane alternative to the ruling Democrats who have lurched to the coercive left. On that score, Americans should welcome Mike Pence’s stand Friday for constitutional principle on elections no matter its political cost.
The former Vice President defended himself against Donald Trump’s charge that Mr. Pence could have overruled state electoral vote tallies on Jan. 6, 2021 at the Capitol. Mr. Pence was presiding over the vote counting as President of the Senate, but he refused Mr. Trump’s pressure to disqualify electors from some closely contested states. It was Mr. Pence’s finest hour.
But Mr. Trump won’t let it die, and last week he claimed again that Mr. Pence could have overturned the election, all but admitting that he hoped to use the gambit to stay in power. Speaking Friday to the Federalist Society in Florida, Mr. Pence rebutted Mr. Trump.
“I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said. “The Presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President.”
Mr. Pence explained that his decision was rooted in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. He rightly pointed out that the Founders were skeptical of concentrated power, which is why they created the Electoral College and gave states the authority to choose electors. The only power they gave Congress regarding the electoral tally is counting and certifying the votes. The Vice President’s role is ceremonial in presiding over that counting.
Mr. Trump claims that Congress’s current talks to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 show Mr. Pence had the power to overturn electoral votes. But Congress isn’t debating this law because it agrees with Mr. Trump’s mistaken interpretation of what we and many others believe is an unconstitutional statute. The Members want to make sure that no one can pull Mr. Trump’s stunt again and misread the Electoral Count Act to use Congress and the Vice President to overturn an election despite losing in November.
This threat is bipartisan, by the way. After the 2004 election Barbara Boxer, then a California Senator, joined a House colleague in objecting to electors from Ohio, the decisive state that year. This forced votes in both chambers, which failed. The next time they lose a close election, Democrats aren’t likely to be as ham-handed as Mr. Trump and his allies were after 2020.
“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election, and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Mr. Pence said Friday, underscoring the risks when Republicans put the will to power above the Constitution.
Mr. Pence stands out as a rare Republican these days willing to stand up to Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election. Too many in the GOP seem to have lost their constitutional moorings in thrall to one man.
The conventional wisdom now is that Mr. Trump controls the Republican Party and can have the 2024 nomination if he wants it. But someone should remind voters that Mr. Trump ended as a three-time election loser. He mobilized Democrats against him in historic numbers to cost the GOP the House in 2018, then the White House in 2020, and finally the two Georgia Senate seats in 2021.
Mr. Trump had significant policy successes, but Mr. Pence has received too little credit for his policy and personnel advice. His conservative network and instincts helped to avoid more than one Trumpian self-implosion. He was loyal to Mr. Trump, and the President repaid him by pressuring him publicly and privately to commit an unconstitutional act. Loyalty has always been a one-way street for Mr. Trump.
We wrote often during his Presidency that Democrats couldn’t defeat Donald Trump, but Mr. Trump could defeat himself. He did, and his post-election behavior compounded the harm to his party. Republicans who want to repeat the experience may find the electoral result is the same—and this time without the fortunate presence of Mike Pence.
Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police
https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1491525010997096449
she's a moron but so sad that mocking an obvious moron is the only thing you have left....
You may recall last month when President Biden was holding a news conference and a reporter asked him how he planned to regain support from independents and 2020 voters who polling showed had soured on his presidency. His response was unusually curt.
“I don’t believe the polls,” he said.
This is almost certainly not true, of course. Biden may not believe a Quinnipiac University poll showing his national approval at 33 percent, as might be suggested by the extent to which his team sought to tamp down confidence in that result. But he’s been doing this long enough to know that polls are an important indicator of popular support. He does believe the polls; he just doesn’t want Democratic legislators or his supporters to put much stock in them.
Unfortunately for Biden, things have not improved since that news conference. On Thursday, CNN released a new poll conducted by SSRS that showed Biden’s approval sinking to 41 percent. That helped push his average approval rating lower as well, as calculated by FiveThirtyEight. Biden’s approval rating is now worse than any modern president at the same point according to FiveThirtyEight, save one: Donald Trump. And even in contrast to Trump, Biden is only running about even.
What must be particularly galling about the new CNN poll to Biden’s team is that CNN’s polls had been consistently outperforming the average in recent months. As the average dropped late last summer, CNN’s polling stayed up near 50 percent. Then, in January and February, it slipped by nearly 10 points.
You can see that shift when we break out various demographic groups, looking at Biden’s peak in CNN’s polling (last April), his November pre-drop numbers and the most recent poll. Over and over, demographic groups slipped a bit from April to November and then turned more sharply downward.
The two shifts that you’ll want to make particular note of are the numbers for non-Whites and Democrats. Among the first group, Biden’s approval sits at only 57 percent. Among Black Americans, 92 percent of whom supported Biden in 2020, it’s only 69 percent. Ninety-five percent of Democrats voted for Biden but only 83 percent currently approve of the job he’s doing.
Approval ratings are volatile, so this could turn around but in recent years they aren’t that volatile. Since about 2010, approval ratings have mostly been a partisan tug-of-war, with the president’s party strongly backing him and the opposition strongly opposing him. Independents are in the middle and generally drive the overall figure, so Biden’s 15-point drop with that group since last April is important. But the good news, such as it is, is that Biden likely can’t fall too much more; 60 percent of his current approval comes from Democrats and another third from independents, most of whom are likely independents who tend to lean Democratic anyway.
You may wonder why it matters that Biden’s approval ratings are low, which is certainly fair. There are two key concerns for Democrats, however.
The first is control of Congress. Holding a narrow majority in the first midterm of a presidency is always hard for the president’s party, but when the president is deeply unpopular, that becomes all but impossible. In 2018, for example, economic indicators suggested that Republicans would not get blown out. But Trump’s lousy approval rating suggested that they would, and they were. What followed was the opposition taking power in the House and new pressure on Trump’s presidency.
Even before then, though, Biden needs legislators to join him in votes. If embattled Democrats from swing districts think that allying with Biden is toxic to their reelection chances, as he may be, they’re going to be less likely to provide the last few votes to pass controversial legislation. Or they may be perfectly comfortable not having that legislation come to a vote. If Biden’s plan is to pass more legislation targeting his priorities, you can see how a perception that he’s political poison is disadvantageous.
The biggest drops on issues, unsurprisingly, came from Biden’s handling of the pandemic (down from 66 percent in April to 45 percent now) and the economy (from 51 percent to 37 percent). But there’s another bit of data from CNN’s poll that may be the thing Biden wants to believe least of all.
In January of last year, after the attack at the Capitol, CNN asked respondents if Trump’s presidency was a success or a failure. Forty-one percent said it had been a success; 55 percent said a failure.
Asked the same question now about Biden’s presidency, the numbers were almost exactly the same.
"Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police"
so, one of the nutty conservatives had a Freudian slip
it's so nice that Dems can have a little merriment
to help them ignore that horrible sinking felling that just won't go away
their doom in November is a foregone conclusion
more COVID deaths than Trump even though they had a vaccine ready when they took over
skyrocketing crime after they attacked and defunded the police
the return of runaway inflation after a gratuitous stimulus bill they pushed through in Spring 2021 kicked it off
Russia and China openly threaten us after they see that Biden couldn't handle the Taliban
students' test scores cratering after two years of unnecessarily screwed up schooling - and the Dems tell parents to mind their own business
illegals pour across the border after Biden let them know he won't enforce the law
meanwhile, Dems can't get anything through Congress because they can't agree among themselves and extremists hold them hostage
minorities and blue collar workers are fed up with the Dems' focus on climate change and the gay agenda
and the polls make it crystal clear what the voters intend to do in November
After factoring in inflation, blue collar workers, the type that once voted or Dems, received a pay cut in January.
I think we all know who they are going to blame!
The tightest labor market in years is fueling rapid wage gains for most workers – the only problem is that red-hot inflation is quickly eroding those increases.
The Labor Department reported on Friday that average hourly earnings for all employees actually declined 1.7% in January from the same month a year ago when factoring in the impact of rising consumer prices. On a monthly basis, average hourly earnings increased by just 0.1% in January, when factoring in the 0.6% inflation spike.
By that measure, the typical U.S. worker is actually worse off today than they were a year ago, even though nominal wages are rising at the fastest pace in years. That's because inflation is also surging: The government reported Thursday morning that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 7.5% in January from a year ago, marking the fastest increase since February 1982, when inflation hit 7.6%.
And there is no economist predicting an end to this any time soon.....
Black voters are fleeing President Biden in droves. And it’s hard to see a scenario under which they come back anytime soon.
A majority of Democrats don't even want Joe Biden to run again in 2024, with just 48 percent supporting the idea. This is unheard of after just one year.
Two more big numbers to consider: Less than 7-in-10 Black voters (69 percent) support the 46th president. This is significant, because more than 9-in-10 Black voters (92 percent) voted for him in 2020.
So, we're talking about an almost 25-point drop in a relatively short period of time. Inflation obviously is playing a huge role here, with the Wall Street Journal estimating that the higher price of goods is costing families an extra $276 per month, or an additional $3,300 or so annually. Many poor and middle-income families and single parents and individuals simply cannot afford that while living paycheck-to-paycheck.
It bears repeating: Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination for president because he wasn't Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and won the general election because he wasn’t Donald Trump.
But his handlers thought he had a big mandate to be the next FDR, to radically change the country by expanding government in ways never seen before. Trillions in new spending have already been signed into law. Trillions more were proposed via Build Back Better, with the administration arguing that such spending would reduce inflation and the deficit, which makes zero sense.
Sensible Americans, including two key members of Biden's own party in Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), rejected the radical proposal. Ultimately, many voters, some suffering from Trump fatigue that came from non-stop drama in the White House, just wanted a return to normalcy, and not a jump to a socialist America.
And now we're seeing an administration like a rudderless ship at sea, seemingly with no port.
“I don’t think he has lived up to a lot of the campaign promises that he made, especially given the role of Black voters in helping him become the president of the United States,” Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist who is also a former president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, said recently.
“We pointed out issues related to mass incarceration, to economic inequality, of course, and to what is in the news now with the push to advance voting rights,” Armstrong added. “I feel like Biden is basically doing the bare minimum in terms of being attentive to the needs and issues facing the Black community.”
Black Americans had a rough 2021, particularly with COVID-19. They had a 2.5 times higher chance of dying of the virus than whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Black unemployment rate is at 6.9 percent, which is double the white unemployment rate. And crime continues to hit urban areas the hardest, with 16 cities setting homicide records in 2021.
Dean Obeidallah: You write about going into the Capitol on Jan. 6, bringing your daughter Tabitha and your son-in-law Hank with you. So during the siege, you weren't just worried about yourself, you had to worry about your family. We have the footage of this horrific attack on our Capitol by people dressed in Trump regalia and chanting, "Fight for Trump." Yet now we know, thanks to the work of your committee, that Donald Trump, for 187 minutes, watched that and did nothing, even when Ivanka Trump came in twice asking him to intervene. What does that say to you about how Trump viewed this event?
Jamie Raskin: The violence was strategic and political, but it was also sadistic too. He [Trump] had unleashed primitive impulses in this mass demonstration, which became a mob riot. I view the activities of Jan. 6 as being in three rings of sedition, Dean. There was the mob riot, which surrounded the ring of the insurrection. And that was the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Aryan Nation, different white nationalist groups, the Militiamen, the First Amendment Pretorians, there were some religious cults in there. These people had trained for battle and they were the first ones to come and smash out our windows and attack our police officers. They helped convert the demonstration into a mob riot and an attack on the officers. But the scariest ring was the innermost ring, the ring of the coup, which is a strange word to use in American political parlance, because we don't have a lot of experience with coups.
We think of a coup as something that takes place against a president, but this was a coup orchestrated by the president against the vice president and against the Congress. And the whole purpose was to get Mike Pence to declare lawless, extra-constitutional powers, to exclude and reject and repudiate Electoral College votes coming in from Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania to lower Biden's total from 306 to below 270. That would have triggered, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, a contingent presidential election. And you ask: Why would Donald Trump want Speaker Pelosi's Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to decide who's president? Well, in a contingent election, we're not voting one member, one vote. We're voting one state, one vote.
After the 2020 elections, they had 27 state delegations, we had 22 and one, Pennsylvania, was split down the middle. So even had they lost the at-large representative from Wyoming — my new best friend, Liz Cheney — they still would have had 26 votes to declare Donald Trump president and seize the presidency for another four years. I think they were also prepared at that point to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law, and finally call on the National Guard, that had been held back, to put down the insurrectionary chaos he had unleashed against us.
Dean: Are you surprised that we don't even hear an inkling that Trump is being investigated by the Department of Justice for potential crimes?
Jamie: Well, yeah. I mean, I'm a little bit softer on Attorney General Merrick Garland than some people are, because he's my constituent. I still remember, so bitterly, how they prevented him from even getting a hearing when he was nominated by President Obama to the Supreme Court. But look, people were on Garland's case about the fact that there had been no indictments for seditious conspiracy. And then there was a huge indictment on seditious conspiracy against the Oath Keepers, and presumably more to come. They obviously weren't the only group there. There were these overlapping circles of conspiracy to knock over the Capitol and take down our government. I mean, that was the interruption of the peaceful transfer of power, for the first time in American history, for four or five hours. And we didn't know which way it was going to go.
Trump will get his comeuppance. I know how maddening and frustrating it is to people. I share that feeling, having been an impeachment manager. I mean, he's as guilty as sin. He's a one-man crime wave, and it's amazing that his dad's money and this pack of lawyers he travels with have been able to get him off everything up until now. But I'm with Dr. King that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice. It's going to catch up with Donald Trump too...
Dean: After Watergate, Congress passed reforms to try to rein in a runaway president in Richard Nixon. I know some have been proposed now. Is there any hope of legislation that will curtail another potential Trump or another person cut from that cloth, regardless of party, who really tries to abuse their power?
Jamie: In a certain sense, this is what we've been trying to do with all the voting rights legislation. We've been trying to solidify and protect the right to vote and protect the integrity of elections against these outrageous efforts to convert bipartisan or nonpartisan election commissions into partisan election commissions, or to put them directly under the control of GOP legislatures. The problem is that the Republican Party, which is a minority party and a shrinking minority party — remember, Hillary beat Trump by three million votes and Joe Biden beat him by seven and a half million votes. The young people are coming in our direction.
That demography is totally against the GOP, but they've got this bag of tricks that include the most anti-democratic instruments in the country. It's voter suppression statutes. It's the filibuster. It's right wing court packing and judicial activism. It's manipulation of the Electoral College. It's a race between the will of the majority, trying to defend democratic institutions and liberal democracy, against one-party rule, which is what they want. They are a rule-or-ruin party, and I've been calling that them that for a while. I was glad that President Biden picked that up in his democracy speech because they either are going to rule or they're going to ruin our ability to make any progress as a country.
Dean: With the Jan. 6 committee, you're going to have public hearings coming up at some point this year. I'm not sure if there's a schedule that we don't know about. Is there any sense of what we might expect to see, or the types of witnesses that you might bring forward in these hearings?
Jamie: I'd hoped it would happen in March. I think because of all the obstruction and roadblocks thrown up by the entourage around Donald Trump — Mark Meadows, who's kind of doing the hokey pokey, one foot in one foot out, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone — that it's going to be later in the spring, April or May more likely. But I think these could be the most important hearings in American history, certainly up there with the Watergate hearings. I hope we will do them during prime time. I hope we will see them every single day, so we can tell a complete story to the American people about how this took place. It's obviously enormously complex. But people are following it closely.
The vast majority of Americans who we've approached as witnesses have testified. So most people, including people who participated, are cooperating. They understand that they've got not just a legal obligation but a civic obligation to help us figure out what happened. It's only when you get right to that bullseye core around Donald Trump and his innermost confidants that people think they're somehow above the law and can just give the finger to the U.S. Congress.
Hip-hop finally headlined the Super Bowl halftime show, and Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar came loaded for bear to represent.
By the time the white boy-born Marshall Mathers took a knee in an unspoken salute to banished quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s stance against racism and police violence, it was clear that this was not your Grandad’s classic rock show-and-tell.
In fact, looks like the NFL just got tackled on its big day by five deft icons who decided not to play ball.
Kicking off with 1999 tune “The Next Episode” and a chant from now Death Row Records owner Snoop for the West Coast “to make some noise,” it was all California love, literally and figuratively, on the field for the much-anticipated halftime show. Exactly 26 years to the day since Tupac Shakur’s iconic All Eyez on Me album was released, the Dre-produced tune had Inglewood’s jam-packed SoFi Stadium crowd on its feet fast. A “Family Affair” and “No More Drama” bedazzling Mary J, Lamar and then Eminem kept the fans pumped to the beat.
More than 50 years after the now most popular musical genre in the world was born in the Bronx, N.W.A alum Dre promised surprises leading into this weekend. The Grammy winner and crew delivered, with Dre protégé and unannounced guest 50 Cent bringing his 2003 banger “In da Club” to the NBC-broadcasted party.
Despite a rousing version of Lamar’s 2016 “Alright,” the nostalgia-leaning show initially looked like it was going to veer more VH1 than MTV. However, by the time Eminem popped up to unleash his Oscar-winning “Lose Yourself” anthem from 2002’s 8 Mile with help from Anderson .Paak on drums, the tone shifted to something harder. When the rapper went down on one knee for almost a minute as Dre tellingly played Tupac’s “I Ain’t Mad at Cha,” it was pretty obvious it won’t be taking half a century for hip-hop to be back at the Super Bowl halftime.
Or put it this way: With an ambitious and multi-level set of L.A. County up-close-and-personal, the wait for hip-hop to take center stage has been too long to come, and says far too much about the NFL. In that vein, the endgame of Sunday’s halftime show certainly sought to make up for lost time. Rolling through one mega-hit after another, the Jay-Z produced mixtape of a show from the multi-platinum quintet may not have eclipsed the gold medal of Prince’s legendary 2007 halftime performance, but it now certainly holds the silver.
Still, with Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL execs probably bursting an artery or two over Eminem’s political homage to Kap’s protest that started in 2016, the league may slap on a longer tape delay next time round.
For today, at a packed and mainly maskless SoFi Stadium already jacked up over the hometown L.A. Rams’ 13-10 lead over the Cincinnati Bengals at halftime, the $7 million-budgeted play for the big players of 1990s West Coast rap was almost destined to be a victory lap from the jump. Expectations were already heightened before the traditional coin toss from gospel duo Mary Mary and the LA Philharmonic’s youth orchestra’s awe-inspiring performance of Black America’s unofficial national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s high-octane introduction of the game, and (after a wandering camera incident from NBC) the triumphant rendition of the national anthem by country star Mickey Guyton.
Birthed out of the multi-year partnership between the NFL and Roc Nation to perfume the stench of racism that envelopes the league, this evening’s megastar-filled halftime show dropped some serious rhymes and for most of the time walked a fine line in the much-desired slot. Planting a primarily SoCal flag with Motor City native Mathers and Power Book II: Ghost star Blige awarded honorary City of Angels status, the approximately 14-minute concert looked to be technically a marvel but merely a fairly bounce-heavy middle of the road for America 2022.
Until Eminem made his dramatic move – which was clearly the classified plan. If you think this was sanctioned by the league, watching NBC’s cameras whip off the MC’s kneel made it obvious this was not what the NFL hoped was going to happen. (UPDATE: 7:10 PM PT: The NFL is now saying that it knew the knee incident would occur and are good with it. “We watched all elements of the show during multiple rehearsals,” a stated a rep after the halftime show.)
Still, it takes a lot of hits to exhume the ostracizing of ex-49ers quarterback Kaepernick for his on-the-field fight against discrimination and brutality and, more recently, former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores’ discrimination lawsuit against the league.
As well as the tens of millions watching at home on NBC, Peacock and Telemundo, the show took place in the Rams House in front of a celeb-rich crowd that included L.A. Lakers kingpin LeBron James; Oscar winners Charlize Theron, Sean Penn, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck; plus former halftime headliners Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé. In addition, soccer star Alex Morgan, director Reggie Hudlin, Larry Wilmore, Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, director Taika Waititi, Snoop Dogg pal Martha Stewart and more agents than a Friday night at Craig’s were among the fans at the 80,000-capacity venue. Also in the audience was last year’s top-notch halftime performer The Weeknd sitting near superstar Cardi B. Notably, the outspoken latter rebuffed the NFL’s attempts to have her perform at Super Bowl LIII because of the league’s treatment of Kaepernick.
As hip-hop moves solidly into middle age, it took four would-be AARP members and a Pulitzer Prize winner to take pro-football back to the streets — in the best way. Let’s see the Beijing Olympics follow that tonight.
Americans increasingly agree:
for fraudulently trying to overturn the voters' verdict in 2016, in ways deleterious to our national interest, Hillary Clinton belongs in jail!
As Hillary Clinton prepares to take the political stage in a speaking engagement that has spurred talk of a 2024 campaign for the White House, a new poll says most Democrats want Clinton to be investigated over concerns that her 2016 campaign manufactured phony evidence in the Russiagate probe as a political dirty trick to smear former President Donald Trump.
The poll was taken last month — before special counsel John Durham filed a document Friday that offered a new allegation concerning the way the Clinton campaign’s tentacles sought to manipulate the federal government into investigating the bogus claim.
The poll from TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics found that 66 percent of the Democrats surveyed want Durham to focus his investigation on Clinton, according to the Daily Mail. When TIPP asked that question in October, 44 percent of Democrats wanted Clinton investigated.
A probe of what Clinton did and when she did it was supported by 91 percent of Republicans, up from 80 percent last fall, and 74 percent of independents, up from 65 percent last fall. No margin of error for the survey was released
Look who is stuck in 2016.
Americans increasingly agree:
for fraudulently trying to overturn the voters' verdict in 2020, in ways deleterious to our national interest, Donald Trump belongs in jail.
As Trump prepares to take the political stage, trying to stir talk of a 2024 campaign for the White House, a new poll says most Americans want Trump to be investigated over concerns that his 2020 campaign's manufactured phony evidence about voting machines as a political dirty trick to try to steal election outcomes from voters.
Six million more voters voted for Biden than Trump in 2020 and 3 million more voters voted for Clinton than Trump in 2020.
Lying GOPers cannot admit or accept these truths.
Correction
3 million more voters voted for Clinton than Trump in 2016.
Alan Garten, Esq.
The Trump Organization
Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer 725 Fifth Avenue
RECEIVED NYSCEF: 02/14/2022
Mazars USA LLP
135 West 50th Street
New Yorki New York 10020
Tel' 212.812.7000 www.mazars .us
New York, NY 10022
Re: Statement of Financial Condition for Donald J. Trump - 2011-2020
Dear Alan,
We write to advise that the Statements of Financial Condition for Donald J. Trump for the years ending June 30, 2011 - June 30, 2020, should no longer be relied upon and you should inform any recipients thereof who are currently relying upon one or more of those documents that those documents should not be relied upon.
We have come to this conclusion based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources. While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances, we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate.
As we have stated in the Statements of Financial Condition, Mazars performed its work in accordance with professional standards. A subsequent review of those workpapers confirms this.
Due in part to our decision regarding the financial statements, as well as the totality of the circumstances, we have also reached the point such that there is a non-waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization. As a result, we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization.
As of this writing, there are only a limited number of tax returns that still remain to be filed, including those of Donald J. Trump and Melania Trump. We will be providing you a list of those returns and their status towards completion separately.
The due date to file those returns is February 15, 2022. We believe the only information left to complete those returns is the information regarding the Matt Calimari Jr. apartment. As you know, Donald Bender has been asking for this information for several months but has not received it. Once that information is provided to your new tax preparers, the returns can be completed However, if those returns are filed late, there may be a late filing penalty of $10,000 per return , which will likely be subject to abatement. We also believe that due to prior tax payments, there was an overpayment of taxes, thus, there should be no late payment penalty if these returns are in fact filed late.
Mazars will continue to do everything reasonably possible to facilitate a smooth transition to your new tax preparers.
Best regards,
William J. Kelly
"Look who is stuck in 2016."
could you explain this non sequitur?
it doesn't really seem to have any relationship to reality
"Americans increasingly agree:
for fraudulently trying to overturn the voters' verdict in 2020, in ways deleterious to our national interest, Donald Trump belongs in jail."
as the poll I posted clearly shows, Americans want Hillary held accountable for the fraud she committed that derailed our national agenda for three years
that was way more consequential than Trump going to courts to request recounts
indeed, Dems do the some on a regular basis
"As Trump prepares to take the political stage, trying to stir talk of a 2024 campaign for the White House, a new poll says most Americans want Trump to be investigated over concerns that his 2020 campaign's manufactured phony evidence about voting machines as a political dirty trick to try to steal election outcomes from voters."
really? can you show us the poll?
"Six million more voters voted for Biden than Trump in 2020 and 3 million more voters voted for Clinton than Trump in 2020."
our country is about a quarter of a millennium old and we have never elected the President by popular vote
we have an electoral system that protects minority rights from a tyranny of the majority
"Lying GOPers cannot admit or accept these truths."
you have a lot of nerve saying that when you defend the Clintons and Biden
Trump told the truth about his positions and faithfully tried to keep his campaign promises
no one will ever say that about Biden
Biden promised to be a moderate but the inflation monster created by Biden's socialist policies is rampaging across our land
Wholesale prices accelerated again in January as strong consumer demand and pandemic-related supply chain snarls continued to fuel the highest inflation in decades.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that its producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches consumers, surged 9.7% in January from the year-ago period, slightly below the 12-year high of 9.8% notched in November and December. But in an unexpected turn, prices rose 1% in January on a monthly basis – well above the revised gain of 0.4% in December.
Economists surveyed expected producer inflation to rise by 9.1% on an annual basis and 0.5% from the previous month.
Core inflation at the wholesale level, which excludes the more volatile measurements of food and energy, increased 0.9% for the month, well above the 0.4% estimate. Over the past 12 months, core prices were up 6.9% – nearly matching the record level hit in 2021.
INFLATION IS COSTING MOST AMERICANS AN EXTRA $276 A MONTH
The surge in wholesale prices comes on the heels of a separate Labor Department report released last week that showed consumer prices climbed 7.5% in January from the previous year, the biggest increase since February 1982, when inflation hit 7.6%. Consumers are paying more for everyday necessities, including groceries, gasoline and cars.
Families are bracing for bank balances to suffer when the middle of January comes and the monthly child-tax-credit payment doesn’t.
More than 30 million households started getting up to $300 per child in July after Congress temporarily transformed an annual tax break into a near-universal monthly benefit. The full expanded credit went to households with incomes up to $75,000 for individuals, $112,500 for many single parents and $150,000 for married couples. Families spent the money on essentials like groceries and stashed it as emergency savings, researchers found.
Democrats hailed the expansion as a simple yet groundbreaking policy that sharply cut child poverty and confidently proclaimed the credit would prove so popular and beneficial that Congress wouldn’t let it lapse.
It just lapsed.
The House-passed version of Democrats’ $2 trillion education, healthcare and climate bill would have extended payments through 2022, but the GOP and the latest benefactor of GOP's aid, Joe Manchin, killed it.
They are members of the pro-birth party.
"Families are bracing for bank balances to suffer when the middle of January comes and the monthly child-tax-credit payment doesn’t."
we don't have the money and, thanks, to Biden's wasteful COVID stimulus bill last Spring, we don't have the capacity to borrow it
maybe we could make a deal: eliminate the Dept of Education and use the savings to send people money
right now, there are plentiful job opportunities, unlike in Marie's France
the GOP has said they will block BBB and polls show Americans believe them and will vote for them
Republicans have opened up a substantial lead over Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a new poll conducted in February among likely general election voters.
A poll from the Convention of States Action (COSA) in partnership with the Trafalgar Group showed Republicans enjoyed 54.4 percent support in the upcoming midterms, compared to just 41.9 percent for Democrats.
That represents a GOP lead of 12.5 percent over Democrats as the party is hoping to retake the House of Representatives and the Senate, allowing Republicans to stymie President Joe Biden's agenda.
The poll was conducted from February 2 to 6, among 1,073 likely general election voters. It had a margin of error of 2.99 percent.
The Trafalgar Group enjoys an A- rating from poll tracker FiveThirtyEight.
Just 3.7 percent of the respondents said they were undecided on their candidate preference in the 2022 elections.
While Republicans are aiming to block President Biden's agenda, the COSA/Trafalgar Group poll shows that most likely general election voters believe the GOP will achieve this goal if they win control of Congress.
When respondents were asked how confident they were that Republicans "will follow through on their promises to try to block or undo Biden's policies and agenda," 46.1 percent said they were very confident the GOP would do so.
A further 35 percent were somewhat confident that Republicans would block Biden's agenda, while 10.7 percent weren't very confident and 8.2 percent weren't confident at all.
"When respondents were asked how confident they were that Republicans "will follow through on their promises to try to block or undo Biden's policies and agenda," 46.1 percent said they were very confident the GOP would do so.
A further 35 percent were somewhat confident that Republicans would block Biden's agenda, while 10.7 percent weren't very confident and 8.2 percent weren't confident at all."
funny how the media and their associated minion wings, like the TTF blog, continually characterize the GOP as liars
and yet 81.1% of voters say they believe the GOP will do what they say they are going to do
the FACT is that the voters have seen that the GOP tries to fulfill its campaign promises and the Dems say one thing in the campaign and do another when in office
again, Biden won the nomination because he wasn't Bernie Sanders but his agenda has been modeled after Bernie
he won the general election because he was a moderate alternative to Trump but his agenda has been an extreme progressive alternative to Bill Clinton
Dems are liars, and the voters see that
"Dems are liars, and the voters see that"
And yet millions more voters have supported the Democrat over the GOPer in the past several elections in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000, 1996 and 1992. Last the time GOPers got more votes was 2004 and 1988.
We can all clearly see who's lying yet again.
Facts are so pesky for liars.
"We can all clearly see who's lying yet again."
as you are well aware, I was talking about the polls right now
you should probably avoid lying when you're accusing someone else of doing it
I haven't told any lies
btw, did you know that Dems wouldn't have won an election since 1964 if it weren't for support by over 90 percent of the black vote?
just a 10 percent drop would have lost them those elections
well, blacks haven't gotten much for that support and they have run out of patience
“Why Joe Biden Is Bleeding Black Support” was the headline of a New York magazine article in late January. Not whether, but why. And if the polling since then is indicative, the hemorrhaging continues.
Blacks have been throwing some 80% of their support to Democrats since the late 1960s. Since President Obama left office, however, the party’s grip on this key voting bloc has loosened somewhat. Hillary Clinton’s underperformance among blacks in such swing states as Pennsylvania probably cost her the presidency in 2016, when people in heavily black neighborhoods voted more Republican than they did in 2012.
Democrats normally don’t worry about blacks voting Republican. They just worry about blacks not voting at all. That, too, may be changing. Black voter turnout in 2018 was the highest on record for a midterm election. Yet New York magazine reports that in the House races that year, “Democrats actually won a smaller share of the African American vote than they had in the 2016 presidential election—even as the party’s overall popular-vote edge in the midterm was five points higher than Hillary Clinton’s two years earlier.”
Joe Biden won 92% of black voters in 2020, no doubt benefiting from having been Mr. Obama’s vice president, but it’s been all downhill since then. The president’s job-approval rating among all voters has fallen, but among blacks it has been cratering. An NBC News poll last month found that black support for the president, which stood at 83% last April, had dropped to 64%. A Quinnipiac survey released around the same time showed a 22-point decline in black support for Mr. Biden during his first year in office. And a CNN poll from last week puts black approval of the president’s job performance at just 69%. Democrats know they can’t win elections without much higher levels of black support.
Mr. Biden has been doing what Democrats normally do to buck up black support. He’s resorting to identity politics. He’s promised to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. He supports legislation that would address imaginary voter suppression. He wants to expand the welfare state. If, as the recent polling suggests, this sort of racial pandering no longer works like it used to, America’s making some progress.
The country has witnessed a lot of political norm-breaking in the Donald Trump era. Less black fealty for the Democratic Party could be part of the trend. It’s easy to forget how bad things were for blacks economically during the Obama presidency. Black unemployment didn’t fall below double digits until the third year of Mr. Obama’s second term. Prior to the pandemic, black unemployment under Mr. Trump reached record lows, and black wages rose at a faster rate than white wages. Mr. Obama symbolized racial progress, but you can’t pay the rent with symbolism.
That black experience partly explains why minority support for Mr. Trump ticked up in 2020. It might also explain why blacks have soured on Mr. Biden. Inflation, which the current administration first denied and then played down, is at a 40-year high. Blacks are overrepresented among low-income workers, who are watching prices rise faster than their wages. In addition, the president wants to raise the taxes that Mr. Trump cut and reregulate sectors of the economy that Mr. Trump deregulated. If black voters aren’t eager to return to the pre-Trump economy, who can blame them?
Mr. Biden’s efforts to appease his party’s progressive wing are also costing him black support. Black politicians and activists tend to be far more liberal than the average black voter. On issue after issue—school choice, defunding the police, voter ID, racial preferences—individual black Americans hold more conservative views than the elites who claim to represent them. The political scientists Ismail White and Chryl Laird argue in a 2020 book, “Steadfast Democrats,” that black partisan loyalty is less issue-based and has to do with social pressure from other blacks. But as the black middle class grows and black interests become less unified and more varied, the solidarity politics we see among black voters will inevitably start to wane, as it has with other racial and ethnic groups.
These are the larger trends that Mr. Biden and his party are up against, and the question is whether Republicans will take advantage of the situation. The Republican National Committee is currently preoccupied with settling scores for Mr. Trump, which could come at the cost of expanding the GOP’s appeal at a time when Democrats look vulnerable. The economic gains we experienced prior to the pandemic were real, and no one benefited more than blacks did. The establishment media mostly ignored the story, but Republicans could do worse than talk about it nonstop between now and November.
as many may have forgotten, TTF was a blog formed to protect the status quo school board that operated as a fiefdom with disregard for the desires of parents
Terry MacAuliffe perfectly encapsulated the TTF attitude
and lest you think only parents in red or purple counties care about their kids, consider what just happened in royal blue San Francisco
Three San Francisco School Board members were removed from their positions by voters on Tuesday, CNN projects, following a tough recall campaign that pitted Democrats against Democrats as interlocking controversies over school closings and renamings fueled a well-funded backlash.
The successful effort in one of the country's most liberal cities is likely to embolden Republicans who have channeled parental anger over school reopenings and mask mandates into a powerful wedge issue, including last fall in Virginia. For Democrats, especially those making decisions in blue states, the vote highlighted internal divisions over how to handle the pandemic as cases decline but the threat of another surge looms.
More than 70% of voters supported the recall of School Board President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison Collins as of Wednesday morning, according to preliminary results from the San Francisco Department of Elections. Their temporary replacements will be named by Mayor London Breed, a Democrat who in announcing her support for the recall last year said the city was at a "crossroads" and called the board's priorities "severely misplaced."
The seeds of anger that led to the recall effort were planted early in the coronavirus pandemic, when the board considered changing the names of as many as 44 public schools in a city that was still grappling with how to safely reopen them. The discussions, which became the subject of some head-scratching in national media, touched off angry confrontations between the city's liberal establishment and movement progressives.
The successful recall campaign will be applauded by conservatives around the country, who have made "parents' rights" a rallying cry as they seek to win over mainly suburban voters turned off by former President Donald Trump. Republicans, like new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, have sought to translate parental frustration over Covid-era mandates into political gain, a political tactic that is also overlapping with wider right-wing campaign to counter progressive propaganda teaching in schools across the country.
Here’s a quick quiz: How do we know the new developments in special counsel John Durham’s investigation are important?
Answer: Because the New York Times and Washington Post claim they aren’t important.
Big Media’s messengers for the Deep State are nothing if not consistent. For years they sold the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax as the greatest story ever told. And now that the entire story is being unmasked as a figment of Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambition, the same suspects insist there’s nothing to see here.
Move along, they say. And by the way, did you see what Donald Trump did today?
It is awfully late in the game to be surprised that our national press corps puts its political agenda ahead of the national interest, but the refusal to treat the Durham probe with the seriousness it deserves takes the dereliction to a new level. The refusal involves deliberate attempts to mislead the public.
Then again, the motive is obvious. Giving Durham his due would require the media to re-examine its role in perpetuating the dirtiest dirty trick in American political history.
They won’t do that re-examination now for the same reason they wouldn’t do it after Robert Mueller couldn’t find the Trump-Russia collusion the press and Democrats insisted was in plain sight. The truth of how they screwed up would destroy careers and ruin reputations.
A deep dive into the facts would prove all those collusion “exclusives” were flat-out wrong. In that case, scores of anonymous sources would have to be requestioned and outed and the Pulitzers and other awards would have to be returned.
Hillary Clinton was tight-lipped when The Post caught up to her Tuesday amid new allegations that her campaign paid for computer research to tie rival Donald Trump to Russia -- and just two days before a major speech that could launch her on a renewed quest for the White House.
That would be a horror show for the cream of the media crop — and so it can’t be allowed to happen. Most of all, the outlets that bet their business on turning Trump into a traitorous monster couldn’t bear to see him crowing in vindication at their expense. So they are battening down the hatches and sticking to their story.
Yet even now, nearly six years after the Russia lies first burst into the headlines, it still boggles the mind that the scam succeeded for as long as it did. Key among the unanswered questions is how Clinton operatives managed to sell the FBI, the Obama-Biden White House and the Washington media the lie that Russia and Trump were working together to steal the 2016 election.
What we do know is that once that sale was made, all the rules about fairness and due process were jettisoned like so much trash. In the rush to demonize Trump and elect Clinton, trusted institutions abandoned their standards and shattered their public trust.
And to judge from the reaction to Durham’s latest court filings, those same individuals and institutions intend to defend their misconduct with all their power.
The Friday filings relate to an earlier indictment of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer charged with lying to the FBI. Sussmann allegedly tried to convince the bureau that a private internet executive found reams of evidence that the Trump campaign had established secret connections with a Russian bank.
Asked the name of his client, Sussmann allegedly said no one, he was there on his own as a private citizen. In fact, Durham alleges, Sussmann was working to help Clinton get the FBI to investigate Trump. As proof, the indictment says Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for his FBI meetings.
The new filings go a giant step further in claiming the tech executive working with Sussmann, Rodney Joffe, used researchers and his own special access to gather “derogatory information” about Trump from computer traffic at Trump Tower and later, the White House.
Those actions were allegedly in addition to the collusion narrative Clinton had created with the phony Steele dossier.
If Durham can prove these broad new claims, he will have performed a huge public service. Indeed, that was his assignment — to investigate the role of the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies in spying on the presidential nominee of the opposition party. So far, all roads lead to Clinton.
Durham’s probe has been slow-moving, partly because of COVID and partly because it has been difficult cutting through the tangled web of deceit, parts of which include classified documents.
But his pace does not justify the sneering tone of the Dems’ media handmaidens. In its Tuesday story, the Times was especially dismissive, with a headline on a supposed straight news story declaring that “Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track.”
The article insisted that “The latest alarmist claims about spying on Trump appeared to be flawed” and essentially argued that journalists should feel free to ignore them.
The Washington Post also framed the story as nothing new with a headline that said, “Here’s Why Trump Is Once Again Claiming ‘Spying’ by Democrats.”
In both papers, the obvious intent to undermine the idea that Trump was the victim of government spying should be recognized for what it is: disinformation.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for Twitter or the rest of Big Tech to label it as such. In this case and others, they are part of the disinformation complex.
“Democracy dies in darkness,” reads the Washington Post’s motto. “All the news that’s fit to print” declares the Times.
If only they practiced what they preach.
Pesident Joe Biden had a worse first year in office than former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, according to a new poll of likely voters conducted earlier this month.
The poll by the Senate Opportunity Fund asked respondents which president they believed had the best first year. Biden was tied for third place with former President George W. Bush. The survey is the latest poll to find Americans take a dim view of President Biden, and also showed Republicans ahead of Democrats on the generic congressional ballot ahead of the midterm elections this November.
When respondents were asked which of the last four presidents had the best first year in office, just 12 percent chose Biden. A further 34 percent said former President Trump had the best first year in office, while 32 percent chose former President Obama.
Biden was tied with former President Bush on 12 percent. The 9/11 terror attacks took place during Bush's first year in office.
The survey found that 61 percent of likely voters believed the country was on the wrong track, compared to 33 percent who thought the U.S. was going in the right direction, and 5 percent who didn't know or had no opinion. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they disliked Biden, compared to 47 percent who liked him, but the poll also found that opposition to the president stood at 54 percent, while 44 percent supported him.
""Dems are liars, and the voters see that"
"We can all clearly see who's lying yet again."
as you are well aware, I was talking about the polls right now"
No actually what everyone can see in these words is you were talking about "the voters."
It's too bad for you but the fact is the majority of US voters have shown their preference for the Democrat over the Republican in every US election since 1988 other than in 2004.
You remember 2004 don't you? That's when GOPers were so excited about Bush's popular vote victory that year, they said Bush had a MANDATE.
Idiot GOPers here formed the CRC and tried to keep facts about human sexuality out of the MCPS sex education curriculum.
Stop Denying the Fact That There Definitely is a Bush Mandate
by Edwin J. Feulner is the founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation.
If the folks at the Heritage Foundation believe what they wrote about Bush's 2004 win, you have to wonder what they really think about Biden's much bigger win over Trump in 2020.
"No actually what everyone can see in these words is you were talking about "the voters.""
there you go again, Dimmy
the poll, which I specified, was taken of likely voters in the next election
"It's too bad for you but the fact is the majority of US voters have shown their preference for the Democrat over the Republican in every US election since 1988 other than in 2004."
actually, I am a libertarian
the US consists of fifty states and the Dems' support is concentrated in a few very populous ones
we have an electoral system intended to prevent a large population state from tyrannizing the rest of us
the GOP usually has the most broad-base support and carries the majority of states
"You remember 2004 don't you? That's when GOPers were so excited about Bush's popular vote victory that year, they said Bush had a MANDATE."
I do remember 2004
the GOP generally has claimed a mandate wen they have widespread support
you know: majority of the House, Senate, state legislatures, governor mansions
right now, the Senate is evenly divided and the Dems act like here's some injustice when 52 Senators vote against their bills
LOL!!!!!!!!
Dems had a mandate to restore normalcy in 2020
they turned out to be liars and have sought instead to fundamentally change our country
the VOTERS will give them a job performance review in November
and it's not lookin' good!!!!!!!
"Idiot GOPers here formed the CRC and tried to keep facts about human sexuality out of the MCPS sex education curriculum."
well, they sought truth but the school board chose propaganda
still, CRC had more success than you'd expect in one of the most liberal counties in America
they got the fist curriculum tossed and they got a guy from the Family Research Council inputting on the second
And the scripted sex ed curriculum CRC won (along with Montgomery County tax dollars) has been scrapped so now teachers are free to discuss all aspects of human sexuality the students bring up.
FRC's Peter Sprigg, the former collegiate actor, wanted the curriculum to include information about the possibility of becoming ex-gay, and idea which has since been widely repudiated by leaders in the field (9 Ex-Leaders of the Gay Conversion Therapy Movement Apologize), and to remove the vignette about a transgender student as well as a video demonstrating the proper way to use and dispose of condoms.
Jim already told us how that worked out. See here
Last night the MCPS Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development voted to make some minor changes to the sex-ed curriculum. These changes were actually recommended by a previous citizens advisory committee and rejected by the district in 2007, and now a new committee has asked the Superintendent again to recommend to the Board that they modify the curriculum.
Last year the Maryland chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to the Montgomery County Public Schools noting that some statements that had been recommended for inclusion in the curriculum were rejected, and urged the Board of Education to consider adding the material. The letter was partly a reaction to an anti-gay fake pediatric group contacting the school district. The statements are:
-Homosexuality is not a disease or a mental illness (teachers currently can only say this in response to a question)
-Sexual orientation is not a choice and the American Medical Association opposes "therapies" that seek to change sexual orienyation that are premised on the assumption that people can or should change their sexual orientation
-Children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as those raised by heterosexuals, and are no more likely to be homosexual
-Children who have fleeting same-sex attractions may assume incorrectly that they are gay or lesbian. Mere fleeting attraction does not prove orientation.
-Homosexuals can live happy, successful lives; they can be successful parents
The citizens advisory committee voted 9 to 3 yesterday to add these recommendations to the curriculum, removing the words "can or" from the second item.
the statements cited in the previous post are not scientific facts but value judgements
they are not based on any empirical or peer-reviewed or replicated research
but that's yesterday's news
which is, I'm sure, what you'd prefer to discuss
the point I made originally is that TTF was formed to protect the school board
and a reckoning is coming to school boards in Democratic counties and states across America who have imposed unnecessary lockdowns and remote learning and mask mandates and testing and quarantines on children who were not at any consequential risk and caused irreparable harm to the development and educational progress of students
most countries have not done this and think America is barbaric to abuse their children this way
that a school board recall happened in San Francisco shows it can happen anywhere
it turns out that even in royal blue counties most parents care about their kids
the school board in Montgomery County shouldn't sleep well thinking about November and sycophantic groups like TTF won't save them
The San Francisco school board has seven members, all Democrats, but only the three were eligible to be recalled.
Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed will now appoint board replacements to serve until another election in November.
No one is expecting the new school board to bring prayer back or eliminate sex education in San Francisco pubic schools.
Something for lying GOPers to think about -- when did the last Republican get elected to public office in Montgomery County. Maryland?
Even Hogan didn't do better than 44.5% here, though that was the best any GOPer did here since Spiro Agnew in 1966.
"Something for lying GOPers to think about -- when did the last Republican get elected to public office in Montgomery County. Maryland?"
if you think one-party rule is something to crow about, you should move to North Korea
there, you can support the status and they'll even tell you what to think so you don't have to worry about too much figurin'
MCPS made the same mistakes that the SF board did
they shouldn't feel comfortable
even the socialists of MC are very fond of their children
SMETHPORT, Pa. (AP) — Some Democrats here in rural Pennsylvania are afraid to tell you they’re Democrats.
The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, the few that remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities.
Democratic candidate for the Pennsylvania U.S.senate seat in the 2022 primary election, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, center, talks with people during a campaign stop at the Mechanistic Brewery, in Clarion, Pa., Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. The Democratic Party's brand is so toxic in some parts of rural America that liberals are removing bumper stickers and refusing to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly.
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. “I feel like we’re on the run.”
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation's political landscape.
The shifting climate helped Republicans limit Democratic gains in 2020 — the GOP actually gained House seats despite former President Donald Trump's loss — and a year later, surging Republican rural support enabled Republicans to claim the Virginia governorship. A small but vocal group of party officials now fears the same trends will undermine Democratic candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, states that will help decide the Senate majority in November, and the White House two years after that
Make that
Even Hogan didn't do better than 44.5% here, though that was the best any gubernatorial candidate GOPer did here since Spiro Agnew in 1966.
"if you think one-party rule is something to crow about, you should move to North Korea"
If you're saying living in a blue county with a red governor is one-party rule, well you're just another lying GOPer.
"No one is expecting the new school board to bring prayer back or eliminate sex education in San Francisco pubic schools."
I never said they were
I think few people would want liberal teachers leading prayer groups
and everyone wants sex education, just not the false sex ed of MC
oh, in San Fran, the issues were the unreasonable COVID measures, woke excesses about removing Washington and Lincoln from schools, and the progressive indoctrination that parents were able to see when classes went online
"Something for lying GOPers to think about -- when did the last Republican get elected to public office in Montgomery County. Maryland?
Even Hogan didn't do better than 44.5% here, though that was the best any GOPer did here since Spiro Agnew in 1966."
I've got news for you
only 6% of San Francisco voters are republican
and the Board members were recalled by between 75 to 79%
still feeling good about the school board TTF has slavishly supported in MC?
"still feeling good about the school board TTF has slavishly supported in MC?"
There you go, lying again.
Name one MCPS school board member who TTF has "slavishly supported" and provide the date of that "slavish support."
The best MCPS school board member was Pat O'Neill, who died last year.
See: http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2021/09/the-passing-of-pat-oneill.html
"If you're saying living in a blue county with a red governor is one-party rule, well you're just another lying GOPer"
I'm saying the county has one-party rule
this is despite the fact that any Republican running is a moderate
the issues are irrelevant
the county is ruled by the teachers' union
as a matter of fact, in a twist unseen elsewhere, a candidate can't be endorsed by the teachers' union unless that agree to fees to the union
"Name one MCPS school board member who TTF has "slavishly supported" and provide the date of that "slavish support.""
TTF has slavishly supported the entire Board from the establishment of the blog until now
"The best MCPS school board member was Pat O'Neill, who died last year."
really?
Name one thing she did that was extraordinary and and provide the date of that action
the current school board as acted in the interest of the teachers' union and not for the welfare of the students
a reckoning is coming
they shouldn't get too cozy in their positions
they will be looking for something new next year
maybe Dancing with the Stars with Marc Elrich!!!!!!!
"they will be looking for something new next year"
Just as assuredly as we had the President Huckabee you predicted!
"I read banned books"
scientists have been searching for ways to prove the existence of parallel universes for years
they should try looking at the minds of the typical TTFer
clearly their ideas are coming from an alternate reality
their latest redefinition of a phrase in the English language is "banning books"
no one on America is advocating banning books
what is being discussed is what material is appropriate for student in public schools
that's a discussion everyone has ideas on, including progressives
of course, the wokesters don't just want to ban books
that have mere words and ideas that they think should be banned
Amid fear and censorship, FL school districts are pulling books off shelves in public schools
In Central Florida, in a county named Polk, the “The Kite Runner,” a bestseller, is in quarantine.
In Flagler County, in Northeast Florida, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” has been pulled from school library shelves.
And in Hillsborough County in the Tampa Bay area, “The Bluest Eye” was challenged by a parent who felt the novel’s explicit content was inappropriate for school-aged kids. The author: The late Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner.
While some advocates and lawmakers fear more books will be banned or challenged for telling the stories of LGBTQ people and racial minorities, GOP lawmakers are working to make it easier for parents and community members to weigh in and challenge books available for students in school libraries, potentially taking them off the shelves for weeks at a time or permanently.
Legislation moving through the 2022 legislative session would require that each new book or other material be open for “reasonable opportunity” for public comments.
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Book Ban Busters | Moms across the country fight to stop book banning at schools
LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — It seems like more and more reports of groups attempting to have certain books banned from schools and libraries pop up almost daily in 2022. From Texas to Oklahoma, to Loudoun County, Virginia, school boards are being asked to take books off the shelves.
According to the New York Times, the pace at which groups of parents, officials and lawmakers are challenging books has reached a speed many haven’t seen in decades.
Katie Paris is an Ohio mom and founder of Red, Wine and Blue, the group behind Book Ban Busters.
“The pandemic is exhausting enough, we don’t need book bans too,” said Paris.
Book Ban Busters is a campaign made up of suburban moms and other partners who aim to fight against banning books from schools and libraries.
Paris feels like the need to fight grows daily as it seems there is new book ban news in the local and national media constantly. She pointed to a book-burning event reported near Nashville as an example of why the fight is so urgent.
“This is horrifying, but hardly surprising,” Paris said. “Because there is a straight line from book banning to book burning.”
In November 2021, Spotsylvania school librarians cleared shelves of books that were deemed “sexually explicit.” The school board voted unanimously to remove the books, with two members even advocating burning the offensive books.
"FL school districts are pulling books off shelves in public schools"
again, deciding what is appropriate for kids is not "banning books"
and progressives have plenty of their own ideas of what is appropriate for kids
indeed, the ideas of conservatives only apply to kids in public schools
kids can go on the internet, the public library, the local bookstore, or ask their parents to see anything that is not available in public schools
what threatens liberals is that their ongoing attempt to brainwash kids without parental knowledge or involvement is being thwarted
liberals want to censor ideas from everyone
they oppose free speech
When people complain about “compliance costs,” they’re usually lamenting hundreds of billions of dollars spent unproductively by businesses forced to deal with ever more red tape. It hinders growth and undermines prosperity.
Every hour spent on compliance is an hour stolen from creativity and productivity. Banks have spent $50 billion more on compliance in each of the 12 years since the Dodd-Frank Act became law in 2010. Small businesses lose 3.3 billion hours and $64.6 billion annually meeting demands made by Obamacare.
This is vast financial damage and lost opportunity. Yet America’s compliance culture is surely even more corrosive to our general thriving — to can-do optimism, self-reliance, willingness to take risks, self-worth, even happiness.
These qualities, now pushed relentlessly into retreat by the expanding frontiers of public and private sector conformity, were central to America’s fabulous historical success. And as they wither, we become a less impressive and capable country, a less outgoing and confident people.
Examples are everywhere.
Some are so trivial as to be absurd and thus inflict damage by humiliation, obliging sensible, high-functioning grown-ups to jump through hoops uselessly. Empty performance displaces substance. We’ve all gotten used to the tedious, performative security of taking our shoes off at airports, even though other countries don’t require it. Another air travel regulation limits passengers to two carry-on bags. The result is that airport staff tell us to cram surplus bags into the permitted two. It doesn’t reduce the mass of luggage by an ounce but checks a useless box. The compliance cost is reduced self-respect as autonomous adults obey pointless diktats.
Some corrosive compliance is much more tangible, such as the requirement to write “diversity statements” for admission to law school or to get a university job. Applicants must say not simply what race and gender they are, which is bad enough — I was recently asked both questions merely applying to refinance a mortgage — but also what steps they’ve taken to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Under the guise of tolerance, these statements stamp out true diversity and fairness and impose an inflexible, radical, left-wing standard, the compliance cost of which is intellectual freedom.
A 2020 survey by the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans, nearly two out of every three people, fear speaking freely in case others dislike their views. Anxiety is unevenly distributed: 58% of staunch left-wingers feel they can say what they want, but 52% of less adamant liberals self-censor, as do 64% of “moderates” and 77% of conservatives. The more your opinions are out of line with left-wing dogma, the more you fear attack and cancellation. The compliance cost of self-censorship is freedom of speech.
The proliferation of useless rules, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, has fostered uncertainty, making people unnecessarily cautious in circumstances where once they’d have happily relied on instinct and basic good sense. It’s common to see people enter a restaurant, store, or other public facility wearing masks and then, seeing that others are unmasked, sheepishly take their own off and comment, “Oh, I didn’t know what the rule was.” They’re not worried about masking as a matter of health. They’re worried about not fitting in, about doing what everyone else does, and about being unmasked as a flouter of government commands. The compliance cost is lost competence and initiative.
Lost also is consent, the vital link in flourishing democracies between the laws by which we live and the engaged agreement of citizens. Increasingly, we must live not according to guidelines we can see are sensible and important but under coercive restrictions we recognize as bossy and pointless. It is not healthy. The compliance cost of unwanted, unreasonable, and peremptory restrictions is democracy itself.
Fortunately, government excess and arrogance have (one hopes finally) enraged the public enough to make ordinary people rebel. They have suffered enough, and they are poised to punish the party that torments them.
States run by Democrats are scrambling to abandon their mask mandates. They pretend that this is because the science has changed, but it has not. Only the opinion polls and proximity to November’s elections have. These blue governments are merely getting a year late to the point at which Republican-run states arrived a year ago. What is happening is that those who turned the crisis of the pandemic into an excuse to heap a backbreaking load of new impositions on the public realize that they have pushed voters too far.
They find it doesn’t work anymore to denounce the recalcitrant as racists, fascists, and MAGA peddlers of misinformation. The sell-by date on those grotesque insults passed last year. Finally, the cost of compliance has become greater than America is willing to bear. Like so many other empires that overextended and then collapsed, the culture of compliance appears to be cracking and falling apart.
In a widely watched special election this week, angry San Francisco voters recalled three school board members in a landslide. The other four, more recently selected, would have been expelled had law permitted it.
San Francisco’s municipal government is an embarrassment, and Exhibit A is its antic board of education. Some three quarters of city voters wanted them gone, and good riddance.
The recall’s success also pitted what remains of the city’s pragmatic Democratic “establishment” against woke radicals, as elected officials including the mayor disavowed unpopular progressive policies and backed the removal. District attorney Chesa Boudin, facing his own recall election on June 7, might be the next to go.
San Francisco is 8 percent registered Republican, but the losers blame right-wing funders and Fox News for the outcome. In fact, the recall evidences a seismic upsurge in parent resentment over public school closings, one that has been toppling boards across the country. Parents rubbed raw by remote learning and mask-and-vax mandates have encountered dogmatism and negligence, but none more egregious than San Francisco’s.
The city’s rapid descent from sparkling preserve of technocrats and internet millionaires to incipient hellhole continues. The public schools are only one facet of civic collapse. Open drug dealing, crime and carjacking are backdrops to the 2022 recalls. City Hall’s failure to police homelessness and major crime are going bust with shaken blue-city voters high and low, and the recalls are powerful evidence of the dismay.
Drenched in natural beauty and clement climate, Northern California has long suffered from precious self-regard. We-Are-the-Future tech triumphalism in the giddy post-2007 era and the anything-goes psychedelic spirit were arguably its undoing. San Francisco is a magnet for adventurers, malcontents, and sketchy people, and some would say has been since its beginnings. But it also attracts some of the smartest, most inventive, stylish and enterprising people on the planet. Regrettably, many affluent San Franciscans see themselves as citizens of the world with a pleasant view of the Golden Gate Bridge, not as locals. Having the money to wall themselves and their children off from urban decay, they leave municipal politics to the proles and crazies.
The public schools are a mess. The district faces a $125 million budget shortfall and threat of state takeover. Money is drying up in part because parents are withdrawing their children and moving elsewhere, or enrolling their children in private schools, that is, running away from academic collapse. A third of San Francisco’s children are already privately schooled.
From March 2020 to August 2021, the city’s public schools went remote, and stayed there in spite of parent opposition and student distress. Operations remain at best uneven. The anti-recall United Educators of San Francisco can be thanked, along with the school board, for this yet untallied cost in learning in a district bloated with make-work staff and “para-educators.”
During the disruptions, the board acted to “desegregate” highly selective Lowell High School, a local icon and one of nation’s top schools, boasting powerful, professional alumni who venerate the place. It cited “pervasive systemic racism” and lack of diversity, which meant 60 percent Asian and 15 percent white. This attack on opportunity and excellence enraged Asian parents, many of them ruthlessly performance-oriented. (San Francisco’s public schools are officially 31 percent Asian, a clumsy racial designation that includes Chinese and Indians but not Filipinos.)
Then the board proposed to erase Paul Revere, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, James Russell Lowell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dianne Feinstein’s names, among others, from local schools on account of vaguely framed racial and political sins.
The proposal drew universal scorn. Among other things, the contretemps revealed the board’s staggering ignorance. The move “was so poorly executed that it made a mockery of the broader push for historical reckoning in the United States,” the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial endorsing the board’s recall. “It alienated instead of educated, and invited national ridicule.”
Yet the board’s follies continued undaunted. Last week, it approved a resolution in “Support of Equitable Representation and Services for Two-Spirit Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) Parents and Families and Creation of a Queer Transgender Parent Advisory Council (QTPAC),” claiming to affirm student rights.
The initiative is set to cost the district $480,000, which will include salary and benefits for a full-time liaison, a project manager, and signage for more than 1,000 single-stall restrooms throughout the district. QTPAC will try to ensure that all things Krafft-Ebing are included in courses and school activities and will report on its oversight periodically. No one in the city establishment has yet repudiated this “equity” effort, one that degrades and replaces instruction at a time of fiscal crisis.
Up from the projects and billing herself as the city’s first black woman mayor, London Breed has spent her life as a public client and operative. One San Francisco observer calls Breed “a windsock,” just like her ally and fellow pragmatist, Governor Gavin Newsom. No one blows with the political wind better than the suave Newsom.
Breed does have a super-acute survival instinct, and she knows she’s in electoral trouble. Trying to make hay out of the recall, and by law able to fill the board vacancies, she cannot ignore what a city and its people need to function: sewers and water, hospitals and schools, firefighters and police, tax and sales revenues. While caught up in far-left suppositions about drugs, vagrancy and homelessness, Breed is now wondering to the press whether Boudin’s policies are protecting San Franciscans, saying his office should focus attention on crime victims, not accused criminals.
Breed and Newsom — Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi too — channel the collective will of Northern California’s semi-visible power brokers and donors, a small world that includes congenial federal judges and activist billionaires. Woke is no longer a fringe in high-end California politics or the Democratic Party.
Between pragmatic elected Democrats and the void stand ambitious progressives, also elected, who seek to transform US society from a commercial, constitutional republic into something else, what, no one can quite be sure. State senator Scott Weiner, a gay climate and gender activist, hopes to take Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat upon her retirement. Weiner himself supported the school board recall.
The more belligerent district attorney Chesa Boudin is one of several George Soros-supported progressive prosecutors nationwide who seek to reduce “tough on crime” prosecutions and jail sentences, hold police accountable for misconduct, and open jails. The mayor and Boudin have recently clashed over crime control and management of the drug addicts that haunt downtown. Facing pressure from his force, police chief Bill Scott has joined Breed, signaling support for Boudin’s recall.
The left is in a jam. The board of education’s frivolous initiatives and tiger parents’ unyielding academic demands cannot be reconciled. One frame of mind or the other will eventually dominate educational and social policies far and wide. Woke considers itself ascendant and indestructible — inevitable — and nowhere more so than in San Francisco. Whether or not this is destined to be is the political question of the decade.
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices, a judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., to comply with subpoenas issued in December by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump and his two children must sit for a deposition within 21 days, Engoron said.
“In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so.” Engoron wrote in his decision.
The ruling is almost certain to be appealed, but if upheld it could force the former president into a tough decision about whether to answer questions, or stay silent, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination.
“The mob takes the Fifth,” Trump told a campaign crowd in Iowa when running for president.
James, a Democrat, said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.
Eminem Responds To Rudy Giuliani
I'm sure Donald Trump has engaged in some sleazy transactions but it doesn't seem like endless investigations have uncovered anything
right now, they're saying he underestimated the value of his property for property tax purposes
huh?
doesn't NY assess property and the taxpayer have a right to contest?
President Slidin' Joe Biden is now so unpopular that he is now slidin' below even Donald Trump’s dismal showing at this point in his presidency.
Real Clear Politics average of presidential approval polls has Slidin' Biden at 41% approval and 53% disapproval. Trump’s corresponding 2018 approval number edges Biden at 41.4%, with disapproval at 53.9%.
How did it come to this? Biden started out with much higher approval than Trump, who was hampered in his first year by the false Russian collusion narrative and highly negative news coverage. But by the start of Trump’s second year, his numbers began slowly to improve; Slidin' Biden’s have continued to sink. Now those converging lines have crossed.
“Lower than Trump” is hardly the first year result the White House expected. Slidin' Biden received the most popular votes of anyone ever elected to the presidency. “Working class Joe” ran as a moderate who would restore sanity to Washington and move Americans forward together. He used the word “unity” eight times in his inaugural address.
But then came the bait and switch. In office, Slidin' Biden veered to the left, pursuing a “big and bold” progressive legislative agenda. Things looked good at first; Slidin' Biden’s honeymoon period of robust poll numbers stretched into July.
Then the hits began to pile up. The White House declared July 4 was Independence Day from the COVID-19 pandemic, but was blindsided by the delta variant, followed by the omicron wave. Public confidence in Slidin' Biden’s ability to manage the crisis plummeted.
In August, the botched pullout from Afghanistan and surprise Taliban entry into Kabul also drove numbers lower. Though many expected this to be a temporary blip, by Labor Day, Slidin' Biden’s approval rating was firmly underwater and heading down.
The legislative foibles of the fall and winter – the collapse of the Build Back Better bill, the defeat of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and no progress on immigration reform, minimum wage or student debt relief – sent the message that this White House could not deliver.
Then came inflation. The White House downplayed it, joked about it, said it was temporary, then slammed NBC News anchor Lester Holt for even asking about it.
And as reports of worsening inflation began piling up, Slidin' Biden touted the supposed "strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years." No wonder Obama adviser David Axelrod says it’s time for Slidin' Biden to start "painting a credible, realistic picture."
Comparing the numbers in the latest Economist/YouGov poll with those of a year ago shows how decisively Slidin' Biden has lost his mojo:
►His approval on managing the economy went from plus 13 to negative 7, with 70% now rating economic conditions either just fair or poor.
►59% now call inflation “very serious,” when a year ago it was such a nonissue the poll did not even ask about it.
►On handling the COVID-19 pandemic, Slidin' Biden dropped from an optimistic plus 19 to negative 9.
►Slidin' Biden’s general favorability plunged from plus 9 to minus 10, and his reputation for being a strong leader cratered from plus 7 to minus 30.
With midterm elections looming this fall, Slidin' Biden is below where President Barack Obama was when his party suffered the 2010 electoral shellacking.
Being at the bottom of the approval heap does not augur well for Slidin' Biden’s 2024 reelection chances, either, should he choose to run, something a majority of Democrats would rather not see happen.
Slidin' Biden's government seems less to be charting its own course than the product of events beyond its control. And despite his historically bad approval numbers, the White House still seems unaware or unconvinced that Slidin' Biden's presidency is failing.
Maybe miracles will happen. COVID will ebb, inflation will fade, the economy will bloom, Russia will retreat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will cave, progressives will rally, Republicans will cooperate, unity will prevail, and those sub-Trump approval numbers will shoot right back up.
Maybe. But don’t bet on it.
The parents’ revolution has notched another win.
This week, three members of San Francisco’s Board of Education — Gabriela López, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga — suffered overwhelming defeat in a recall election brought by angry parents who felt they were more concerned with lefty politics than with children’s welfare. The parents’ case was strengthened by the fact that they were, well, right.
Siva Raj, one of the recall organizers, said, “The city of San Francisco has risen up and said this is not acceptable, to put our kids last.”
As COVID raged, the school board paid more attention to renaming schools — it wanted to rename Abraham Lincoln HS because its namesake didn’t show “that black lives ever mattered” to him — than educating kids. Again and again, the board placed woke politics before its actual job. (Collins had even accused Asians of using “white supremacist thinking” to get ahead.)
When parents objected, they were ignored, called racists or worse. And not just in San Francisco. In Loudoun County, Va., teachers and administrators ran a secret group aimed at taking action against parents who opposed their system’s commitment to critical race theory. One of them, school-board member Beth Barts, resigned her position after her role came out. Others face recalls organized by angry parents.
What some have called the “parents’ revolt” is spreading across the country, with parents in numerous other jurisdictions organizing around school-board elections and education policy. (Many more, of course, are quietly voting with their feet, taking their kids to private school or homeschooling rather than submitting to the diktats of woke and incompetent educational authorities.)
They face opposition. It wasn’t just Loudoun County education officials who went after critical parents. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona encouraged the National School Boards Association to ask Attorney General Merrick Garland to declare those parents domestic terrorists. The NSBA sent that letter, and Garland quickly obliged. An FBI whistleblower then reported that the FBI was employing counterterrorism tactics against parent groups nationwide.
After a firestorm of criticism, the NSBA retracted its letter, Garland issued a mealymouthed apology — and the FBI may even have stopped investigating people for peaceful complaints about government policies, though I wouldn’t bet on that.
We can learn a couple things from all this.
The first is the brittle, arrogant and defensive response of our ruling class to any kind of political opposition nowadays. What kind of mind turns parents complaining at a school-board meeting into some sort of “domestic terrorism” threat? (The same kind that turns peacefully protesting truckers into “insurrectionists,” I suppose.)
In what previous age of American history would secret targeting and federal investigations of people engaging in a bedrock institution of participatory democracy have been seen as appropriate? Who calls people racist for wanting their kids to learn?
In this age, alas, those things happen, and the people doing them — the people who are supposed to be our society’s leaders, the best and the brightest, the level-headed non-extremists of the establishment — are frankly more than a little bit crazy.
No sane person would respond this way, and yet respond this way they do, over and over again. (And every time they do, they label their opponents racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, etc., wielding those adjectives like magic curse words, even though they’re pretty much always bogus.)
But here’s the other lesson: It doesn’t work. In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor largely on the strength of the parents’ revolt. Virginia parents had had enough of the nonsense imposed upon their kids under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam.
People who care about their kids — which is almost everyone — don’t trust government officials who don’t trust them, especially when much of what those officials are doing seems objectively insane. And calling them racists, bigots, etc. doesn’t scare them away — it angers them.
Likewise in San Francisco, one of the farthest-left jurisdictions in the nation. This was a revolt of liberal Democrats against “woke” Democrats, and the liberals had had enough. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “Successful recalls are rare, and it takes real effort to lose by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1.” Citing Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton’s characterization of the recall movement as “closet Republicans,” it observed, “that must be some closet.”
The truth is, people want sensible government by sensible people who listen to their constituents. That’s not rocket science, but it seems to be a stretch for today’s Democrats. May the defeats continue until they learn
When Black Lives Matter or other liberal protest groups block a road for an evening, there is no shortage of calls for violence. Right-wing legislators hastily pass laws that would make it legal to run over protesters, and conservative pundits flood the airwaves and social media to decry the unspeakable horror of holding up traffic for a few hours.
But now that a very loud but ultimately small group of white people in Canada have disrupted the flow of goods and people for weeks, their tone is, predictably, different. Black people and their allies protesting police brutality is an affront to the American project. But fighting for the liberty to contract an infectious disease and give it to your neighbor? That’s called freedom, baby.
It’s no coincidence that the BLM protests — large and diverse in nature — are treated differently than a small minority of white people protesting public health measures. The protests, which have altered significant parts of daily Canadian life, are providing American conservatives a taste of what they’ve been dreaming of for so long: white minority rule.
Conservative news media and other supporters of the Canadian truckers have made it a point to prioritize the feelings and wants of a perpetually aggrieved white minority who believe their so-called freedoms are more important than the health and livelihood of the majority of Canadians.
In late January, hundreds of truckers gathered in Ottawa to rail against COVID-19 health measures such as mask and vaccine mandates. Although many of the restrictions were enacted by provincial governments, the demonstrators parked their trucks in the national capital and demanded an end to restrictions. The protests escalated with demonstrators spilling into residential areas, blocking U.S.-Canada border crossings, and generally being a huge nuisance.
Now, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act to allow his government to ban travel and public assembly, and cut off the flow of money to the protesters.
The extreme move has provided the truckers’ American supporters with new talking points. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson lamented that Trudeau had turned his country into a dictatorship. In his telling, a government just crushed a working-class revolt. I suppose it’s a lot easier to pretend you’re not clamoring to turn the U.S. into a racist ethnostate if you can gloss over it with the magic words.
Conservative American pundits are dead wrong about what kind of demonstrations these are. Far from a working-class revolt, these truckers have gotten millions of dollars from wealthy outside donors in the U.S. and Canada, according to leaked data from the GiveSendGo crowdfunding platform. And they’re not a representative group: 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, and labor unions and industry groups representing truck drivers have strongly condemned the protests.
The wider Canadian public has high vaccination rates as well, with more than 80% of the population fully vaccinated. But if you watch Fox News, as millions do, you might think that Canada is overrun with unvaccinated people and that the protesters are fighting valiantly instead of throwing a tantrum.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is concerned that Republican attacks on the Democrats' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have "alarming credibility," according to a slide deck obtained by SFGATE.
The DCCC, which is the main campaign arm for House Democrats and is currently chaired by New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, worked with outside consulting groups to conduct an online poll of voters in the 60 most competitive House districts for the upcoming 2022 midterms. The poll was conducted from mid-January to early February, had approximately 1,000 respondents and a 3.1% margin of error.
Findings from the poll were presented to DCCC officials Thursday morning. One slide in the presentation, which was shared with SFGATE by someone who attended the presentation and was granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst's ethics policy, states, "Many of the Republican attacks tested have alarming credibility," including Republican attacks on COVID-19 policy. (The presentation does not clarify what it means by "credibility.")
The poll found that that 57% of voters in competitive congressional districts agree with the statement, "Democrats in Congress have taken things too far in their pandemic response," and 66% of self-defined "swing" voters in competitive districts agree with that statement.
The DCCC found that critiques of COVID-19 restrictions were slightly less potent than other issues. In swing districts, 64% of voters agreed with the statement that "Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street." The internal poll found that 80% of self-defined swing voters in competitive districts agreed with the same statement.
Sixty-two percent of voters in contested districts agreed with the statement, "Democrats in Congress have created a border crisis that allows illegal immigrants to enter the country without repercussions and grants them tax-payer funded benefits once here." Seventy-eight percent of swing voters in those districts agreed.
Sixty-one percent of swing district voters agreed with the statements, "Democrats in Congress are spending money out of control," and, "Democrats are teaching kids as young as five Critical Race Theory, which teaches that America is a racist country and that white people are racist." And 59% agreed with the statement, "Democrats are too focused on pursuing an agenda that divides us and judging those who don't see things their way."
The DCCC presentation also contained a slide showing that the top two concerns of voters in competitive districts are inflation and health care, with the COVID-19 pandemic coming in third. Medicare/social security and climate change rounded out the top five. At the bottom of the list were voting rights, taxes and racial justice/equality.
“right now, they're saying he underestimated the value of his property for property tax purposes”
Trump also mis-valued properties to defraud banks of loan money and we all know Trump has failed to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars on loans he took out.
WSJ: Evidence Suggests Trump Organization Falsely Valued Assets to Get Loans and Tax Breaks, New York Attorney General Says
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have asked a judge to quash subpoenas or put them on hold until parallel criminal case concludes
“What kind of mind turns parents complaining at a school-board meeting into some sort of “domestic terrorism” threat?”
If that’s all parents and hot heads did, they’d be wrong, but when people make threats against teachers, board members, and their family members, those are domestic terrorism threats.
For example: Authorities Charge Mom Who Threatened To Bring Loaded Guns to Her Kids’ School Over Mask Mandate
A 42-year-old woman in Virginia has been charged after saying she would bring “every single gun, loaded and ready” to her children’s school if a campus mask mandate went into effect.
--https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/21/virginia-masking-turmoil-continues/
More examples:
https://www.wkyt.com/2021/09/14/man-accused-bringing-gun-school-board-meeting/
https://www.wowt.com/2021/11/10/man-brings-gun-school-board-meeting-raising-concerns-over-safety/
https://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/14/florida.meeting.shooting/index.html
And more:
School boards get death threats amid rage over race, gender, mask policies
Death threats, online abuse, police protection: School board members face dark new reality
Pennsbury’s board president received threats of death and rape. She’s not alone.
FBI to investigate threats made against school board members, teachers
Death threats and doxxing: The outcomes of mask mandate and critical race theory fights at a Texas school board
"Trump also mis-valued properties to defraud banks of loan money"
well, for one thing, "value" is a matter of opinion
but, what kind of bank doesn't do an appraisal?
seriously, after years of investigating, this is all they can come up with?
I assumed Trump had done something sneakier
he must be cleaner than we knew
"If that’s all parents and hot heads did, they’d be wrong, but when people make threats against teachers, board members, and their family members, those are domestic terrorism threats."
actually, the case that prompted the egregious Merrick Garland to do this involved the Loudoun County school board telling a father whose daughter had been raped by a transgender that she was lying
"More examples:"
all should have been handled locally, not by the FBI and constitutionally dubious anti-terrorism laws
Dems actually used to champion civil liberty
And GOPers used to honor police authority but GOPers clearly showed on Jan 6, and at school board meetings, and on airplanes that they champion violence over civil behavior.
"Mazars Warning: The statements of Donald J. Trump should not be relied upon."
I think you misunderstand Mazars' position
they are simply saying that statements of Trump's personal financial position that they had previously produced can no longer be relied on
"statements of Donald J. Trump" phrase is misleading for the layman
"And GOPers used to honor police authority"
LOL!
no GOPer ever suggested defunding the police
nor do they support the CRT position that police departments are systematically racist institutions that were created to protect white people from blacks
they are plenty of Dems who did support both of those ideas
consequently, we have a crime wave sweeping across blue regions of America
the reckoning started in San Francisco Tuesday and will hit full force in November
Dems across America are furiously scrambling to change their positions but it's too late
video of their past statements is all over the internet
blacks, who don't buy CRT and want to live in safe neighborhoods are reconsidering their long allegiance to the Dems and deserting the party
"but GOPers clearly showed on Jan 6,"
GOPers support prosecuting anyone who assaulted police and vandalized property on Jan 6
however, the Dems are hyping the incident as an attempt to overthrow the government
yet, the only person killed was an unjustified shooting of a woman crawling in through a broken window
no, the GOP doesn't support killing unarmed citizens although it's twisted to imply that means they don't "honor police authority"
like all all public servants, police are accountable
so, no, the GOP doesn't support a police state
if the January 6 protesters were trying to overthrow the government, why did they leave their guns at their hotel?
they've been asked that and they said it was because carrying weapons is illegal in DC
LOL!
yeah, sounds like a serious coup attempt
"and at school board meetings,"
Dems seem to think yelling and verbal harassment is violence
they're wrong
parents are not terrorists and the warped idea that they are is also part of the reckoning Dems faced in San Francisco and will face in November
"and on airplanes"
please show us a statement by any GOPer supporting violence on planes
"I think you misunderstand Mazars' position
they are simply saying that statements of Trump's personal financial position that they had previously produced can no longer be relied on"
Don't be stupid. Mazar's statement is a classic "CYA" move - they want to get out in front of accounting "irregularities" that put them at risk of criminal prosecution, and put the blame clearly at the source of the problem.
It's a smart move. They must have a very stable genius working for them.
well, it could be that, like the bank, they should have done better due diligence
but they are obligated by professional standards to issue such a statement if presented with proof that the information is not correct
it's not just CYA, any CPA would do the same
again, you are being misleading by suggesting that their statement is about anything other than the personal financial statements they had prepared for the Trumps in the past
government ain't the solution, it's the problem
true dat
“police departments are systematically racist institutions that were created to protect white people from blacks”
That’s right.
What you won’t find is a group of four black cops kneeling on a white guy who cries for his mother until they kill him for passing a fake twenty dollar bill, or a single black cop putting a white guy in choke hold until he kills him for selling cigarettes on the street trying to feed his family, or a black cop wrestling a white teenager mall fighter to the ground and cuffing him but pushing the black teenager co-fighter onto a seat with no cuffs.
Go ahead and lie to us blacks and whites are not treated differently by cops and that race has nothing to do with with that different treatment.
“if the January 6 protesters were trying to overthrow the government, why did they leave their guns at their hotel?”
If they were not trying to overthrow the government, why did they build a gallows and chant “Hang Mike Pence” and arm themselves with stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats, and flagpoles wielded as clubs. Cops are still looking for the thug who planted pipe bombs on Jan 5.
Richard Barnett was photographed sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with his feet up on a desk. Barnett, who self-identifies as a "white nationalist," was seen in that photo with what federal law enforcement later identified as a "ZAP Hike N Strike 950,000 Volt Stun Gun Walking Stick." According to a product description, the weapon "delivers 950,000 volts of knock down power, causing loss of muscle control and disorientation that bring attackers to their knees and makes them incapable of further aggression."
Jonathan Mellis can be allegedly seen on footage from a Metropolitan Police Department body camera "repeatedly striking and making stabbing movements towards the officers" using a large stick. According to court documents, Mellis appears to be "attempting to strike the officers' necks between their helmets and body-armor where they are not protected."
Federal prosecutors have called Michael Foy "one of the most violent of the Capitol rioters" and have said that evidence shows him "brutally assaulting law enforcement officers" with both a hockey stick and a "sharpened pole" during the riot.
When did trying to kill or maim cops become "legitimate political discourse" for GOPers?
"That’s right."
no, it's wrong,
and twisted
when police are defunded, it is the minority neighborhoods that suffer
many more blacks are killed by other blacks than by whites
it's not even close
"What you won’t find is a group of four black cops kneeling on a white guy who cries for his mother until they kill him for passing a fake twenty dollar bill,"
nobody disagrees that Derek Chauvin is a monster and he has wound up where he belongs
btw, two of the four officers weren't white
one was black and the other Asian
further, Chauvin was a former co-worker with Floyd and it's not clear that racism was the motive
"Go ahead and lie to us blacks and whites are not treated differently by cops and that race has nothing to do with with that different treatment."
I've never said that. I'm saying police forces weren't specifically created to repress minorities
The real problem is the way cops are trained in America.
like you, they go loco when their authority is questioned
btw, more innocent whites are killed by cops than blacks every year
not sure what percentage are black cops but there are no doubt some
"If they were not trying to overthrow the government, why did they build a gallows and chant “Hang Mike Pence” and arm themselves with stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats, and flagpoles wielded as clubs. Cops are still looking for the thug who planted pipe bombs on Jan 5."
if you're a local, surely you know that these elements exist at every demonstration that takes place in DC, on both sides
and there are many demonstrations annually so the DC and Capitol police are familiar with this
the real question is why this crowd was allowed to get out of control
"Richard Barnett was photographed sitting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with his feet up on a desk."
what a heinous crime!
...he actually sat at Pelosi's desk?
aaarrrggghhh!
I remember a similar scene when students protesting the war in Vietnam in the sixties and took over the Dean's office at Columbia...and a hippie was photographed sitting at the Dean's desk
oh, the horror of it all
"Barnett, who self-identifies as a "white nationalist," was seen in that photo with what federal law enforcement later identified as a "ZAP Hike N Strike 950,000 Volt Stun Gun Walking Stick." According to a product description, the weapon "delivers 950,000 volts of knock down power, causing loss of muscle control and disorientation that bring attackers to their knees and makes them incapable of further aggression.""
really? did he use it?
"Jonathan Mellis can be allegedly seen on footage from a Metropolitan Police Department body camera "repeatedly striking and making stabbing movements towards the officers" using a large stick. According to court documents, Mellis appears to be "attempting to strike the officers' necks between their helmets and body-armor where they are not protected."
Federal prosecutors have called Michael Foy "one of the most violent of the Capitol rioters" and have said that evidence shows him "brutally assaulting law enforcement officers" with both a hockey stick and a "sharpened pole" during the riot.
When did trying to kill or maim cops become "legitimate political discourse" for GOPers?"
well, they all have charged or their crimes
but they represented a tiny sliver of the crowd that engaging in legitimate political discourse
the Dems have tried mightily to say that alleging voter fraud is a crime against humanity
it's not
it's protected speech
that's why Hillary Clinton is still free after claiming the election was stolen from her
when Trump says that, the media invariably calls it the BIG LIE
when Hillary says it, the media joins in
"again, you are being misleading by suggesting that their statement is about anything other than the personal financial statements they had prepared for the Trumps in the past"
Don't be even more stupid. My post suggested nothing beyond the words that I actually put in the post, none of which said anything about when they were prepared or what they were for.
Try reading it again:
"Don't be stupid. Mazar's statement is a classic "CYA" move - they want to get out in front of accounting "irregularities" that put them at risk of criminal prosecution, and put the blame clearly at the source of the problem.
It's a smart move. They must have a very stable genius working for them."
"if you're a local, surely you know that these elements exist at every demonstration that takes place in DC, on both sides"
I am "a local" and I've been to a Pride march in DC. And there was absolutely NOTHING like the conservative extremists of Jan 6th that day. The biggest problem was folks getting heat stroke from high temps and needing water and ice. Turnout was far larger than expected and many people had to stand for hours waiting for their part of the march to move.
No buildings were stormed, no cops were assaulted, no one had to use pepper spray or tasers, and no one got shot. Full disclosure - one of the chants used the "F" word if I recall correctly.
Those extremists elements may exist in all the conservative demonstrations that YOU go to, but don't lump the rest of the country into your angry little basket.
"My post suggested nothing beyond the words that I actually put in the post, none of which said anything about when they were prepared or what they were for."
except that's what Mazar was referring to so your statement is misleading
they were only saying that the statements of personal financial position that they a=had prepared in the past shouldn't be relied on
you took the statement out of context in a way that's misleadng
"I am "a local" and I've been to a Pride march in DC."
that's different
rather than a political demonstration is a celebration of perversion
exhibitionism and simulated sex acts are among the degradations present
"Those extremists elements may exist in all the conservative demonstrations that YOU go to, but don't lump the rest of the country into your angry little basket."
those elements are always present at political demonstrations on the mall, including leftist ones
"rather than a political demonstration is a celebration of perversion
exhibitionism and simulated sex acts are among the degradations present"
Only in your wet dreams.
It was a political protest for Gay Marriage and other political rights for LGBT people - that's why it was in DC.
I know you like polls, but here's one you're really not going to like:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/329708/lgbt-identification-rises-latest-estimate.aspx
This is from what is perhaps the most interesting table:
(I hope the spacing works out.)
_._._.__._._.__._._.__._._.__._._. %LGBT ._._ %Straight ._ %No opinion
Generation Z (born 1997-2002)_._._. 15.9 ._._._ 78.9 _._._._ 5.2
Millennials (born 1981-1996) _._._._ 9.1 ._._._ 82.7 _._._._ 8.1
Generation X (born 1965-1980)_._._._ 3.8 ._._._ 88.6 _._._._ 7.6
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964)_._._._ 2.0 ._._._ 91.1 _._._._ 6.9
Traditionalists (born before 1946)._ 1.3 ._._._ 89.9 _._._._ 8.9
Bottom Line
At a time when Americans are increasingly supportive of equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people, a growing percentage of Americans identify themselves as LGBT. With younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBT, that growth should continue.
The pronounced generational differences raise questions about whether higher LGBT identification in younger than older Americans reflects a true shift in sexual orientation, or if it merely reflects a greater willingness of younger people to identify as LGBT. To the extent it reflects older Americans not wanting to acknowledge an LGBT orientation, the Gallup estimates may underestimate the actual population prevalence of it.
One of the biggest recent advances in LGBT rights was the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide.
Looks like Republicans are working hard to lose the next generation of young voters.
"Only in your wet dreams.
It was a political protest for Gay Marriage and other political rights for LGBT people - that's why it was in DC."
that's untrue
the parades continue, even though all types of preferences have been instituted for homosexuals
the parades are so debauched that many gays refuse to participate
"I know you like polls, but here's one you're really not going to like"
why would I be bothered by that poll?
it reaffirmed ideas I have mentioned on this blog many times
"At a time when Americans are increasingly supportive of equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people, a growing percentage of Americans identify themselves as LGBT. With younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBT, that growth should continue.
The pronounced generational differences raise questions about whether higher LGBT identification in younger than older Americans reflects a true shift in sexual orientation, or if it merely reflects a greater willingness of younger people to identify as LGBT. To the extent it reflects older Americans not wanting to acknowledge an LGBT orientation, the Gallup estimates may underestimate the actual population prevalence of it."
you may want to reflect on the finding that almost 60% of gays say they are bi
meaning that they choose whether to pursue relationships with those of the opposite sex or those of the same same sex
"One of the biggest recent advances in LGBT rights was the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide."
well, it's not an advance for society because heterosexuality is how life is perpetuated
so same-sex relationships are anti-life...
and there is no "orientation"
it's a choice
btw, back in the 70s and 80s, gays considered the idea of gay marriage as a repressive conforming to heterosexual worldviews
it only caught on when Andrew Sullivan wrote an article for the New Yorker in the late 80s suggesting it as a political tactic
new AIDS variant coming:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/new-highly-virulent-hiv-variant-discovered/ss-AATP9FJ?ocid=msedgntp
time or the court to set the gay agenda straight!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-to-hear-colorado-clash-over-lgbtq-rights-and-religious-liberty/ar-AAUatXw?ocid=msedgntp
let's recap:
-evidence that homosexuality is a choice
-news AIDS variant is on the way
-Supreme Court will declare forced service to homosexuals, disguised as ant-discrimination laws, to be unconstitutional
not exactly a week of LGBT advances!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
The U.S. Supreme Court is taking on the conflict between laws requiring heterosexuals to assist the gay agenda and religious rights.
The court on Tuesday agreed to review a case brought by Lorie Smith, a prospective web designer who wants to start a wedding website business but has not done so because Colorado law bars not being willing to advance same-sex couples in their quest for normalcy. She believes that providing her work for same-sex couples would conflict with God's will.
In 2017, the court heard a very similar challenge to Colorado's gay preference law from a baker who objected to creating cakes for same-sex weddings, which he considered sinful.
In one of his last opinions writing for the court's majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy chided the state's civil rights commissioners for comments disrespecting the baker's religious convictions.
Gay rights advocates have long worried that the new pro-constitution supermajority on the court might enforce the constitution and take away some hard won LGBTQ preferences. This time the court is likely to defend freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as intended by the nation's founders.
Arguments in the case will be heard in the court's next term, which begins in the fall. Which is fortuitous because the old white liberal, Stephen Breyer, will be gone and replaced by a common sense black liberal lady from South Carolina.
This generation will see the final smackdown of the horrid gay agenda!
"you may want to reflect on the finding that almost 60% of gays say they are bi
meaning that they choose whether to pursue relationships with those of the opposite sex or those of the same same sex"
It is no secret that some people are bi - that is the "B" in LGBT. It is also no secret that when young people are first coming out, especially in LGBT-hostile environments, they will claim that they are "bi" to try and diminish the repercussions from parents and schoolmates. Many will settle into exclusively gay or lesbian relationships after harassments from people around them have settled down.
That doesn't change the fact that some people are exclusively gay or lesbian. And whether they choose to be that way is entirely irrelevant anyway - it's not for you to try and let your fascist urges control.
"This generation will see the final smackdown of the horrid gay agenda!"
Apparently you forgot to look at the age groups - the most intolerant deplorables are in their 70s and 80s, and won't be around much longer. The fact that 78.9% of Gen Z don't identify as straight (compared to 89.9% of traditionalists) means that, at over 20%, non-straight people make a percentage of the population that is simply too large to ignore - and that's before you count all their straight allies who aren't about to let Christian Dominionists roll back the clock on gay marriage.
Gen Z got to such a large percentage because the anti-social, anti-science, and anti-gay agenda of the Christians in the US have been so utterly abusive and obnoxious that no reasonable person can maintain that position unless they already grew up indoctrinated into that anti-gay Christian culture. And even many of those people leave. It is really no surprise that church affiliation has been dropping at the same time.
Please, keep doing what you're doing - it's working SO well!
"It is no secret that some people are bi - that is the "B" in LGBT."
according to the poll you were so ecstatic about it, about 60% of people who identify as gay also say they are bi
it's a little beyond "some people"
"It is also no secret that when young people are first coming out, especially in LGBT-hostile environments, they will claim that they are "bi" to try and diminish the repercussions from parents and schoolmates. Many will settle into exclusively gay or lesbian relationships after harassments from people around them have settled down."
any studies showing that
surely, something that is "no secret" has some proof
also, social repercussions are not likely to diminish from claiming to be bi
the truth is, this all points to all people having a capacity for sexual perversion, given the right situation
"That doesn't change the fact that some people are exclusively gay or lesbian."
there are likely ew such people
to the extent there are, that's, by definition, a mental illness: the inability to function normally
"And whether they choose to be that way is entirely irrelevant anyway - it's not for you to try and let your fascist urges control."
I'm not telling them what to do, I have libertarian instincts
but they are imposing on the rest of us, saying we must recognize their relationships as "marriage", we must force everyone to work to celebrate their "marriage", must bring drag queens in to do shows for elementary school children, allow them to parade down the streets in decadent and exhibitionist floats that wouldn't be OK for straights, must allow literature with sexually explicit passages for young kids if the content is gay, must allow biological males to squeeze out biological females in sports competitions, must allow biological males to prance through the ladies room, ET AL
"Apparently you forgot to look at the age groups"
you forgot to look at the age of the Supreme Court justices that believe in the Constitution
"that's before you count all their straight allies who aren't about to let Christian Dominionists roll back the clock on gay marriage"
all religions and other moral codes believe homosexuality activity is wrong
it's not a distinctively Christian idea
"Gen Z got to such a large percentage because the anti-social, anti-science, and anti-gay agenda of the Christians in the US have been so utterly abusive and obnoxious that no reasonable person can maintain that position unless they already grew up indoctrinated into that anti-gay Christian culture."
public schools have indoctrinated the younger generations but that's happened before and the backlash has begun
prior to AIDS, back in the seventies, America was very tolerant of homosexuality
"Please, keep doing what you're doing - it's working SO well!"
thanks
that Supreme Court thing really is working well, isn't it?
"that's before you count all their straight allies who aren't about to let Christian Dominionists roll back the clock on gay marriage"
LOL!
the power of liberals is diminishing as they steadily lose support in minority communities who are repulsed by being associated with the normalization of homosexuality
The numbers in the polls say otherwise.
So does the lineup of shows on TV.
MARCH 29, 2021
U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time
BY JEFFREY M. JONES
https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
In 2020, 47% of U.S. adults belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque
Down more than 20 points from turn of the century
Change primarily due to rise in Americans with no religious preference
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.
Generational Differences Linked to Change in Church Membership
Church membership is strongly correlated with age, as 66% of traditionalists -- U.S. adults born before 1946 -- belong to a church, compared with 58% of baby boomers, 50% of those in Generation X and 36% of millennials. The limited data Gallup has on church membership among the portion of Generation Z that has reached adulthood are so far showing church membership rates similar to those for millennials.
The decline in church membership, then, appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong. The change has become increasingly apparent in recent decades because millennials and Gen Z are further apart from traditionalists in their church membership rates (about 30 points lower) than baby boomers and Generation X are (eight and 16 points, respectively). Also, each year the younger generations are making up an increasingly larger part of the entire U.S. adult population.
Still, population replacement doesn't fully explain the decline in church membership, as adults in the older generations have shown roughly double-digit decreases from two decades ago. Church membership is down even more, 15 points, in the past decade among millennials.
I pray you guys keep doing what you're doing!
Democrat Keturah Herron won a special election for a vacant Kentucky state legislative seat on Tuesday, a victory that will make her the first-ever openly LGBTQ member of the state House of Representatives.
Herron, an activist and former policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, played an instrumental role in the Kentucky state legislature’s passage of a law that limited the use of no-knock warrants in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman whom Louisville police shot and killed after raiding her home in March 2020.
Herron, who is Black, has also advocated for and helped draft other potential changes to state law, including legislation that would permanently restore voting rights to Kentuckians convicted of felony convictions.
Herron easily defeated Republican opponent Judy Martin Stallard in the race for the Louisville state legislative seat, which opened when longtime state Rep. Reginald Meeks (D) retired last year.
"Hey, it's Ukraine - why was it that Rumpie withheld all the military aid again?"
Hi Ukraine
I don't know if you've heard but Trump isn't the president any more
it's a guy known as Sleepy, Slidin' Joe Biden
he needs a kick in the ass to get going, so ask him to airlift massive amounts of arms to you and do some real sanctions
"The numbers in the polls say otherwise.
So does the lineup of shows on TV."
could you be more specific here?
"U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time"
what type of "churches"?
the mainline white liberal churches have ben declining for a while
"Democrat Keturah Herron won a special election for a vacant Kentucky state legislative seat on Tuesday, a victory that will make her the first-ever openly LGBTQ member of the state House of Representatives."
so what?
"Herron, an activist and former policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, played an instrumental role in the Kentucky state legislature’s passage of a law that limited the use of no-knock warrants in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman whom Louisville police shot and killed after raiding her home in March 2020."
if we can outlaw no knock warrants, I'm all in favor
she sounds promising
kind of like the moderate black woman from South Carolina that Biden will nominate to replace the extreme progressive white liberal, Stephen Breyer
"Herron easily defeated Republican opponent Judy Martin Stallard in the race for the Louisville state legislative seat, which opened when longtime state Rep. Reginald Meeks (D) retired last year."
so, a Democrat replaced a Democrat in an inner city district?
this earth-shaking development merits a blog post?
things are rough for the gay agenda these days...
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday ordered the state child welfare agency to investigate reports of "gender-transitioning procedures" as child abuse.
The move came one day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a written opinion defining gender-affirming care as child abuse under state laws.
Transgender advocates will be investigated for their role in this child abuse.
Social conservatives praised the move.
"The Paxton opinion means nothing if it’s not enforced," said Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler. "The truth is, though, that we need a special session immediately to address this now that we have the backing of the attorney general’s office. We are not going to back down on this."
The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter, throwing the future of the high-stakes inquiry into serious doubt.
The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.
Sen. Rick Scott laid out a conservative blueprint this week for a GOP takeover of Congress, and included in his "11-Point Plan to Rescue America" are a number of proposals that would counter the gay agenda.
The document outlines policy objectives on everything from the economy to abortion, but the point that caused the most alarm to lunatic fringe gay advocates was in a section titled "Gender, Life, Science."
"Men and women are biologically different, 'male and female He created them,'" Scott wrote. "Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science."
In this section, Scott — who served as Florida's governor from 2011 to 2019 — called for nationwide bans on government forms that “include questions about ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual preference’”; gender-affirming procedures on minors; and transgender women and girls participating on female sports teams.
"We will protect women’s sports by banning biological males from competing," the policy outline states. "It is hugely unfair and would erase many of the gains women have made in athletics over the last 50 years."
Scott's proposals echo the rising backlash against the gay agenda sweeping America.
So far this year, conservative state lawmakers have filed more than 170 bills countering the gay agenda. The majority of the bills target transgender minors' ability to receive gender-affirming health care or participate in sports.
President Joe Biden's approval ratings remain stubbornly low even in the Democratic strongholds of New York and California, new polls have found.
A majority of New York state residents don't rate the president's job performance as "good," according to a Siena College Research Institute study released on Tuesday. Just 25 percent of respondents considered Biden's job performance "good" while 38 percent said it was "poor."
The commander-in-chief's national approval rating has been in negative territory since August 30 and several recent polls suggest there is not likely to be a rapid improvement as the U.S. heads toward crucial midterm elections.
When Siena College, based in Loudonville, New York, asked respondents to rate the job President Biden is doing, 11 percent opted for "excellent."
Another 25 percent said Biden was doing a "fair" job while just 1 percent said they didn't know or had no opinion.
New York has long been a deep blue state and Biden won it in 2020 with 60.9 percent of the vote to Donald Trump's 37.7 percent. No Republican presidential candidate has carried New York since 1984.
In California—a state that Biden won with 63.5 percent in 2020—a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll has found that 48 percent of residents disapprove of Biden, while 47 percent approve of the job he's doing.
Allocation of Electoral College votes is changing for 2024 based on the results of the 2020 census, bt New York and California will still have the most Electoral College votes. California will have 54 votes up for grabs and New York will have 28 at the next presidential election.
Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight tracks Biden's approval based on a large number of surveys and its own system of pollster rating. It gives the president an approval rating of 42.3 percent, while disapproval stood at 52.9 percent.
All these ratings will prove significant in November's midterms, when Republicans are favored to take back the House of Representatives and the Senate. Biden's record will be a key factor in GOP campaigns and when the party takes one or both chambers of Congress, it will be able to stymie the president's agenda for the following two years.
President Slidin' Biden's approval rating has hit a new low of 38 percent, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released Friday.
Seventeen percent of registered voters said they "strongly approve" of Slidin' Biden's job in office while another 21 percent said they "somewhat approve."
The findings come as Slidin' Biden grapples with the violent Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as record-high inflation stateside. Slidin' Biden is set to address the nation on Tuesday, delivering his first State of the Union remarks to Congress. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....
"On the eve of his State of the Union, the president has hit a new low as inflation and economic anxiety hit new highs. The president is now underwater on every top domestic and foreign policy issue," said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey.
The same poll found that 64 percent of registered voters said Slidin' Biden is "too lenient" with Russia, while 31 percent said he handles Russia "just right." Five percent said he's "too tough."
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey of 2,026 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 23-24. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.
It's like a nightmare
It just keeps getting worse and worse.....
Rising inflation, a continuing pandemic, a foreign policy misstep in Afghanistan and Democratic infighting all marred President Slidin' Biden's first year, and now a majority of respondents to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll say his first year was a "failure."
In all, 56% said Slidin' Biden's first year in office was a failure, versus just 39% who said it was a success.
What's more, 54% said he's not fulfilling his campaign promises, and 52% said he has done more to divide the country than unite it, despite uniting the country being a pillar of Slidin' Biden's 2020 presidential run.
The president is clinging to just a 39% overall approval rating, a 36% approval for his handling of the economy and 47% for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Just 30% of respondents said they think the U.S. is headed in the right direction, days before Slidin' Biden is set to give his first formal State of the Union address.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ........
All are the worst marks of his presidency in the survey.
"These are sort of rock-bottom numbers," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. "It's about as low as you're going to see him Biden."
Topping Americans' concerns in the survey is inflation, as 38% said they think it should be Slidin' Biden's top priority.
That far outpaces other issues, including the pandemic — which just 11% said they think should be his top priority — voting laws (11%), foreign policy (10%) and violent crime (10%).
The rise in foreign policy as an issue comes as the Ukraine crisis is front and center. Again, here, it's bad news for Slidin' Biden: Just 34% approve of how he's handling the situation, while 50% disapprove. The poll was conducted before Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The pressing pocketbook concerns of Americans could spell more trouble for Slidin' Biden if the Ukraine crisis deepens and it means additional pain at the pump.
Seven in 10 respondents said they feel generally optimistic that the end of the pandemic is nearing. And while that optimism is potentially good news for Slidin' Biden and the country, the president likely won't benefit politically until inflation and prices come down.
Slidin' Biden is having real problems with three key groups — independents, suburban voters and a lack of intensity of support among his base.
1. Just 29% of independents now approve of the job the president is doing. In fact, the percentage of them who disapprove is more than double (64%) the percentage who approve.
That is particularly alarming for Slidin' Biden, considering he won independents in the 2020 presidential election, and it continues a long trend of the crucial swing group sliding away from Slidin' Biden in the past six months or so.
2. Just 38% of respondents who live in the suburbs approve of the job he's doing, down 11 points from December. Critically, especially ahead of the 2022 midterms, he has seen a double-digit decline with suburban women in just the past two months, from 57% to 45%.
3. Compounding his problems, there is strong intensity of disapproval against Biden — about as high as the share who strongly disapproved of then-President Donald Trump. But unlike Trump, Slidin' Biden is lacking in intensity of support.
In this survey, just 14% strongly approve of the job Slidin' Biden is doing, worse than at any time for Trump during his presidency.
But one thing has become clear, Miringoff added: Slidin' Biden's efforts to try to win over Republicans has been a strategic failure.
"The Republicans are not for the getting," he said.
say what you will, I think Dems made an excellent choice when they nominated Joe Slidin' for President
a top rate choice...........
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"say what you will, I think Dems made an excellent choice when they nominated Joe Slidin' for President"
I don't know
I'm hoping they do me a solid and nominate Andrew Cuomo for President in 2024
he and his brother Fredo should make for a highly entertaining race!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe now that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is well underway, the implications of President Vladimir Putin’s actions against the United States in 2016 will finally sink in, especially for Republicans in Congress. The Vladimir Putin who planned, staged and launched a large-scale war on Ukraine is the same Vladimir Putin who ordered an aggressive, multifaceted, clandestine campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Putin’s Ukraine goal: pull that country from the West and back into Russia’s sphere of influence. His U.S. goal in 2016: undermine the democratic process, disparage and undercut Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president, and help elect Donald Trump.
The outcome of his Ukraine campaign is yet to be decided. His U.S. effort found full success.
But more than a personality contest was at stake five years ago. To be sure, Putin had his reasons for loathing Clinton. As Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she took a hard line on Russia. She was a vocal supporter of the 2011 protests of Putin’s government. But Putin also had his reasons for wanting Trump in the Oval Office. As with the buildup in his campaign to take Ukraine, Putin was clearly playing a long game: put in place a U.S. president who would pursue policies that weaken the European Union and NATO, the bulwarks against Russian expansion into former Soviet countries. Trump was the answer.
In Trump, Putin finally had a U.S. president who generated more anti-American sentiment in Europe than the Kremlin could ever have hoped to produce on its own.
Perhaps now, Republicans will reappraise reports — which many of them discounted — of Russian social media campaigns aimed at provoking discord in this country. The Russian disinformation campaign to bolster domestic support for an invasion into Ukraine reminded me of the targeted disinformation operations in the 2016 election by the Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg and allegedly controlled by a Russian oligarch tied to Putin.
Now that Russian government hackers have probably penetrated Ukrainian military, energy and other critical computer networks to collect intelligence, skeptical Republican partisans might come to accept the evidence that the Russian intelligence service known as the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. Maybe Republicans who turned a blind eye to 2016 will now accept findings that the GRU agents stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks.
Now that it has been reported that Russian propaganda and misinformation campaigns have been launched on social media platforms and have targeted websites, including those of Fox News in the United States, Le Figaro in France, La Stampa in Italy, and Der Spiegel and Die Welt in Germany, maybe more people in this country will believe findings that the Internet Research Agency purchased political advertisements on social media in the names of Americans and U.S. organizations, and even staged political rallies within the United States in support of Trump.
The simple truth is that Putin believed Russia would benefit from having Trump in the White House, and he pushed his intelligence services to help secure that outcome. Just as he perceives that a subjugated Ukraine benefits Russia and is now working to achieve that end.
There’s a lesson in this for the United States.
Putin said he would not invade Ukraine. He lied. He said Russia did not interfere in our 2016 presidential election. He lied about that, too.
In the present crisis, President Biden has been stalwart in rallying a unified response from NATO and the West. If Americans didn’t believe it before, they sure should believe it now: Putin sees Biden, as he saw Clinton, as an impediment to what he wants.
And Trump, who calls Putin a “genius” and accepts his lie about the presidential election, wants back in.
Russia had success with its information-warfare playbook in 2016. Count on a Russian influence operation conducted through social media to disparage Biden, undermine his leadership and stoke support for his opposition. The goal: defeat an American political enemy.
It worked once before. Wake up, America, to another Russian threat. This time, no one can claim to have not seen it coming.
"It's important to keep our eyes on unhinged lunatic egomaniacs"
yes, it is
and we always have
at the same time, you need to find more intelligent
"Maybe now that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is well underway, the implications of President Vladimir Putin’s actions against the United States in 2016 will finally sink in, especially for Republicans in Congress. The Vladimir Putin who planned, staged and launched a large-scale war on Ukraine is the same Vladimir Putin who ordered an aggressive, multifaceted, clandestine campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election."
nobody, including Republicans, deny that Russia has waged a propaganda war to promote whatever US presidential candidate they perceive to be in the best interest
they have always done such things, going back to the Bolshevik revolution
unless they are using malware to disable systems or make software not work properly, most of what they did is protected free speech
"Putin’s Ukraine goal: pull that country from the West and back into Russia’s sphere of influence. His U.S. goal in 2016: undermine the democratic process, disparage and undercut Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president, and help elect Donald Trump."
in America, everyone, including non-citizens, are entitled to undermine, disparage and undercut any presidential candidate
to equate that with a military assault is quite psychotic
"The outcome of his Ukraine campaign is yet to be decided. His U.S. effort found full success."
there is no reason to believe their efforts were determinative
Russians try to inflame any tendencies but they rarely create any
in the 60s, they tried to exploit dissatisfaction with Vietnam but they didn't create it
the Dems on 2016 were vulnerable because they had abandoned the interests of their blue collar base and proposed filling the Supreme Court with people who wanted to change the meaning of the Constitution without going through an amendment process
the Russians didn't create either issue
open borders were a mistake, Merrick Garland was mistake, failure to address minority unemployment was a mistake, hobnobbing with tech billionaires and Hollywood celebs was a mistake, climate alarmism was a mistake
all those were on the ballot and Russia didn't put them there
"Putin was clearly playing a long game: put in place a U.S. president who would pursue policies that weaken the European Union and NATO, the bulwarks against Russian expansion into former Soviet countries. Trump was the answer."
Trump was willing to offend NATO allies by insisting they increase their defense budgets
that wasn't in Russia's best interest
"Perhaps now, Republicans will reappraise reports — which many of them discounted — of Russian social media campaigns aimed at provoking discord in this country."
it's scary that Dems want the government to regulate speech because they lost an election
false information is fought with truth in a democracy, not by censorship
once you start trying to control information, the enemy has won
"Now that Russian government hackers have probably penetrated Ukrainian military, energy and other critical computer networks to collect intelligence, skeptical Republican partisans might come to accept the evidence that the Russian intelligence service known as the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee."
as has been documented, the Dems were sloppy with their cyber-security
if the Russians could get in, so could the media
Russians tried to hack the GOP too
"Maybe Republicans who turned a blind eye to 2016 will now accept findings that the GRU agents stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks."
no one denies that
"Now that it has been reported that Russian propaganda and misinformation campaigns have been launched on social media platforms and have targeted websites, including those of Fox News in the United States, Le Figaro in France, La Stampa in Italy, and Der Spiegel and Die Welt in Germany, maybe more people in this country will believe findings that the Internet Research Agency purchased political advertisements on social media in the names of Americans and U.S. organizations, and even staged political rallies within the United States in support of Trump."
none of that is illegal, nor should it be
"The simple truth is that Putin believed Russia would benefit from having Trump in the White House, and he pushed his intelligence services to help secure that outcome. Just as he perceives that a subjugated Ukraine benefits Russia and is now working to achieve that end."
even simpler, it's OK to try and do that with free speech, it's not OK to do it by military force
see the difference now?
btw, Russians did favor Trump because he had an approach to relations that they favored
you can make a good argument that Trump was wrong but he clearly thought it was in the best interest of our country
as important, he explained his approach to voters in 2016 and they voted for him
he was honest about what he wanted to do
after she lost, Clinton lied
"Putin said he would not invade Ukraine. He lied. He said Russia did not interfere in our 2016 presidential election. He lied about that, too."
well, he and Hillary and competing for the lying championship
"In the present crisis, President Biden has been stalwart in rallying a unified response from NATO and the West."
it's true that he has sought an allied response in the last few weeks but his approach has been a disaster
most Americans think Biden has screwed this up
Obama failed to provide military equipment after the Crimea invasion and with the Afghan debacle, Russia saw Biden as just as weak
Biden should been flooding Ukraine with the military equipment the brave Ukraines need to make Russia miserable
once his panic set in, it was ll too late
A majority of American voters say that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had former President Trump still been in office, according to a new survey released on Friday.
A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president.
A majority of Americans polled — 59 percent — also said they believed that the Russian president moved on Ukraine because Putin saw weakness in President Biden.
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine late Wednesday, President Biden condemned what he described as an "unprovoked and unjustified attack" and expressed solidarity with Ukraine. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russian financial institutions, Russian elites and their family members, the Nord Stream 2 AG — the parent company of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — and, the White House confirmed Friday, Putin himself, among other entities.
However, Biden has resisted calls to kick Russia out of the SWIFT international banking system, despite appeals from Ukrainian officials and U.S. lawmakers.
The polling comes after Biden has suffered low approval ratings in recent months. Since taking office, the president has had to navigate a multitude of issues, including a lingering COVID-19 pandemic, a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, infighting among Democrats over the administration's legislative agenda and now the invasion of Ukraine.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey was conducted between Feb. 23 and Feb. 24 with 2,026 registered voters.
I like to be
under the sea
right where Biden's
approval rating resides
he'd let us in
he's stupidly him
he's pushing BBB
again!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to be
under the sea
right where Biden's
approval rating has slid
he'd let us in
he's stupidly dim
he's gonna push BBB
again!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to be
under the sea
about where Biden's
approval is slidin'
he'd let us in
we're all his friend
he'll get us BBB
again!!!!!!!!!!
I'd like to be
under the sea
in Slidin' Joe's garden
he ain't got a clue
he'd let us in
he needs any friends
who don't mind inflation
again!!!!!!!!!!
Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) on Sunday castigated fellow Republican lawmakers who recently spoke at a white nationalist conference in Florida, calling the event “evil” and likening those attending to “morons.”
“There’s no place in either political party for this white nationalist or racism. It’s simply wrong. It’s, as you’ve indicated, speaking of evil, it’s evil as well,” Romney told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
He went on to call out Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for speaking at the third annual America First Political Action Conference, which was organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes in Orlando, Florida.
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers and Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, both Republicans, also spoke at the event in a pre-recorded video.
“I don’t know them,” he said of Greene and Gosar, “but I’m reminded of that old line from the ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ movie where one character says, ‘Morons, I’ve got morons on my team.’ And I have to think anybody that would sit down with white nationalists and speak at their conference was certainly missing a few IQ points.”
Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Romney was also quick and vocal with his denouncement of fellow Republicans who have sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he believes any such support is “almost treasonous.” He also said he hopes many of them are “changing their stripes” in the wake of the ongoing violence.
“How anybody in this country, which loves freedom, can side with Vladimir Putin, which is an oppressor, a dictator, he kills people. He imprisons his political opponents. He has been an adversary of America at every chance he’s had. It’s unthinkable to me,” he said. “It’s almost treasonous and it just makes me ill to see some of these people do that but, of course, they do it because they think it’s shock value and it’s going to get them more eyeballs and maybe make a little more money for them or their network. It’s disgusting and I’m hopeful that you’re seeing some of those people recognize just how wrong they were.”
Romney held back in directly condemning former President Donald Trump when questioned by Bash about whether he believes Trump’s past praise of Putin is treasonous. He did say: “Standing up for freedom is the right thing to do in America and anything less than that, in my opinion, is unworthy of American support.”
Poor Mitt. He so desperately wants to be important. So sad.
A newly revealed federal diversity program greatly expands earlier critical race training by creating a whole new minefield of “microaggressions” that some could believe are stereotypes and racism.
In the training package used at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, offering a black student a basketball should be considered offensive.
Not only are federal workers urged to consider what they say, but also how their comments are received. In one chart, a white male is shown saying he is “colorblind.” The black woman shown beside, however, takes as an insult that the white is denying her “racial/cultural being.”
And, it advised men, don’t interrupt a woman speaking because they hear, “Women’s ideas are not valued.”
The document was prepared by the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and obtained by Judicial Watch.
It urged federal workers to blow the whistle when they hear racial or offensive “microaggressions.” But it also asks accusers to give the “perpetrator” space to “unpack” his or her errors.
The training package is just the latest example of federal, state, and local governments pushing well past traditional training handbooks to eliminate offenses, real and perceived.
“Federal Agencies shouldn’t abuse tax dollars for CRT indoctrination, which makes a mockery of serious race and sex discrimination issues,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This document from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shows critical race theory is alive and well in the Biden administration,” he added.
Trump ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Trump pushed out Marie Yovanovitch in 2019, after his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani mounted a smear campaign against her. Yovanovitch was perceived as disloyal to Trump.
The move apparently advanced Russia’s geopolitical interests at Ukraine’s expense. As the House impeachment report details, it hampered the United States’ ability to develop relations with Ukraine amid a “period of transition” — Zelensky was then a new president — and amid efforts to fend off Russian aggression.
Trump froze military assistance to Ukraine.
Well before extorting Zelensky, Trump alarmed officials by freezing military aid to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated, but without meaningful policy justification. Crucially, officials subsequently testified that granting this aid was important in dissuading Russian aggression, which would be in European and American interests.
Trump withheld a White House meeting from Zelensky.
In 2019, Trump communicated in various ways to Zelensky that a much-sought-after White House meeting would be conditioned on doing his corrupt dirt-digging on Joe Biden.
Numerous high level officials later testified that this meeting was critical to Zelensky. It would grant him prestige and send an international message that the United States was siding with Ukraine against Russian aggression.
Trump turned Ukraine policy over to Giuliani.
This was one of the most shocking subplots: Trump repeatedly instructed Zelensky to contact Giuliani to discuss what Zelensky would be required to do to please Trump. Giuliani’s circumvention of national security protocols deeply alarmed officials.
That effectively handed potential influence over the future of U.S.-Ukraine relations to Trump’s personal lawyer — to the ringleader of the scheme to pressure Ukraine into helping Trump further corrupt our own elections.
All this has important forward-looking implications, now that Trump may run for president again. As president in 2025, he’d be stewarding relations with Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but after this war has unfolded.
Right now we’re seeing extraordinary unity among the U.S. and its allies as it imposes harsh sanctions on Russia and otherwise tries to dissuade Putin’s invasion. Trump would almost surely rupture that.
Trump spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
As early as 2017, Trump began voicing the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. This was one of the things Trump pressured Zelensky to “investigate” while withholding military aid.
It’s complete nonsense, and crucially, it echoed Russian propaganda that had a geopolitical purpose. Putin himself reportedly put this idea in Trump’s head. And Fiona Hill, then a top national security official, testified that this propaganda helped Russia by deflecting attention from Russia’s own interference in 2016 and by dividing the United States from an ally.
And don’t forget: At the time, some Republican lawmakers lent support to Trump’s lie about Ukraine, thus advancing “Russian interests,” as Hill put it.
Are you a conservative who praised Putin, but now need to hate him? Ask your doctor about Tyranol.
Donald Trump never says a bad word about Vladimir Putin. Even as Ukraine is invaded, he calls Putin "very savvy." When he tried to extort Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and was impeached, the Republican Party refused to convict.
One thing is certain, the GOP is the #PartyOfPutin.
There aren't many conservatives praising Putin
Trump is an amoral Kissinger-type realpolitick guy
his comments about Putin have doomed his comeback chances
still, if he were President, this wouldn't be happening
he'd have made a deal with Putin
not saying that's the right thing to do but it's just the facts
also, there are isolationists on both sides, always have been
more important, Putin chose this moment because of the weakness apparent in Biden
he keeps telling Putin what we won't do
I'm sure Vlad appreciates the intel
right now, why is he allowing the continued purchase of oil from Russia?
we're literally funding this horror
we need to get back to the energy independence we had before Biden and the Squad took over
also, we should be using undetectable drones to wipe out the convoy and take out Russian aircraft
even crazy Putin won't launch a nuclear weapon
New research by a pair of social psychologists suggests that Donald Trump's presidency unleashed racial animus and white supremacist ideology in ways that will shape American society for years or decades to come.
The study by Benjamin C. Ruisch of the University of Kent in England and Melissa J. Ferguson of Yale, published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Human Behaviour, is entitled "Changes in Americans' prejudices during the presidency of Donald Trump." The authors summarize their findings this way:
"In 13 studies including over 10,000 participants, we tested how Americans' prejudice changed following the political ascension of Donald Trump. We found that explicit racial and religious prejudice significantly increased amongst Trump's supporters, whereas individuals opposed to Trump exhibited decreases in prejudice."
Ferguson and Ruisch explain this by referencing the power of "social norms," which, they say,
"do not exert a uniform effect on people's attitudes. Rather, adherence to social norms occurs largely along group boundaries: People primarily assimilate to norms that are held by 'social reference groups', that is, individuals and groups that they personally respect and admire. In the highly polarized political landscape of the United States, this translates into the prediction that Trump's counter-normative behaviour should not have uniformly affected the attitudes of all Americans. Rather, it should have increased expressions of prejudice primarily amongst those who view him positively, that is, his supporters."
The authors offer additional details about how prejudice against Muslims, Black people and other minority groups changed during Trump's term in office, and on the impact of support for him on those dynamics:
"The previous nine studies demonstrate that prejudice in the United States changed during the presidency of Donald Trump. Critically, however, the direction of this change differed dramatically as a function of support for Donald Trump. We find that Trump supporters not only deviated from the widely documented societal trend towards decreasing expressions of prejudice but also showed significant increases in prejudice towards a range of minoritized groups. Those who were opposed to Trump, conversely, showed significant decreases in expressed prejudice over this same time period. We next turned to examining the mechanism behind these effects. Our interpretation of the correlational changes in prejudice that we observed is that Trump's political ascent may have changed the social norms (that is, standards) for expressing prejudice, leading his supporters to feel that prejudice against minoritized groups had become more acceptable. [Emphasis added.]"
Ferguson and Ruisch advance the ominous conclusion that "the presidency of Donald Trump may have substantially reshaped the topography of prejudice in the United States."
What else do we also know about the role of race and racism in the rise of Trumpism and the American neofascist movement that he symbolizes or leads?
It was never accurate to describe Trump's voters as predominantly belonging the "white working class," with which mainstream news media became so obsessed. In reality, the average Trump voter in the 2016 Republican primaries had a household income of $72,000, substantially above the national median at the time. Moreover, researchers have shown that Trump's followers who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were more likely to be from suburban communities experiencing "demographic change" than from economically disadvantaged working-class communities.
We also know that white Americans who believe that white people are "victims" of racism — and, even more fantastically, that white people are more "oppressed" than Black and brown people — are significantly more likely to support Trump and his movement. Social scientists and other experts have demonstrated that a large percentage of white Trump supporters are willing to give up democracy for authoritarianism in order to avoid sharing political or social power on an equal basis with Black and brown people.
Trumpism, like other forms of fascism, is largely driven by social dominance behavior, hostile sexism, a yearning for "tradition" and the "good old days" when the in-group had supposedly uncontested power over society, an attraction to violence and what psychologists describe as the "dark triad" of human behavior (sociopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism).
Ultimately, Ferguson and Ruisch's research serves as further confirmation of the damage that Trumpism and the American fascist movement has done — and is still doing — to American society. How much worse the damage will get, and how or whether it can be repaired, remains to be seen.
The American news media and the larger political class, along with the public as a whole, need to accept the frightening reality that the fascist movement energized by Trump will be a fixture on America's social and political landscape for years to come. Those who support real democracy need to develop and then enact a plan to defeat them.
America does not need another "national conversation" about race and racism. That "conversation" has continued for centuries, with no just conclusion in sight. What America — and specifically white America — really needs is a degree of clarity, sobriety and introspection regarding the destructive forces of racial authoritarianism it has birthed, nurtured and unleashed, which not only inflict harm on Black and brown people but white people and the entire society.
White Americans must confront a final and terrible question: Do you love white privilege and white supremacy more than you love democracy? I suspect I know the answer, yet I still maintain the perhaps-naive hope that a different answer may emerge in the 21st century than ever has in previous centuries. The future of America rests on that question.
"he'd have made a deal with Putin
not saying that's the right thing to do but it's just the facts"
No troll, that is not a fact, it is only your fantasy.
Go tell President Huckabee all about it.
"that is not a fact, it is only your fantasy"
62% of Americans disagree with you
Biden projects weakness
our enemies worldwide are scrambling to take advantage by 2024. when it will all end
Russia is just going down a trail blazed by the Taliban last summer
Sixty-two percent of no group cares about your Trump fantasies.
How can TTFers keep convincing themselves that black is white?
A majority of American voters say that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had former President Trump still been in office, according to a new survey released on Friday.
A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president.
A majority of Americans polled — 59 percent — also said they believed that the Russian president moved on Ukraine because Putin saw weakness in President Biden.
We know by observation that one of our major politcal parties has all but rejected democracy in this country. The former president from their party openly cosied up to dictators and autocrats, cheered on by the Republicans’ propaganda arm. We know also that plutocrats’ longterm goal has been to roll back the 20th century to the last Gilded Age. It seems now there is a more feral global movement to go even further, to roll back the Enlightenment that breathed life into the U.S. Constitution as well. Pray that the rest of the world quickly will disabuse them of that delusion.
Tom, you have a problem with reality that prevents from observing
btw, lunatic fringe gay advocates in NYC have decided to go along with free speech after all:
A group of LGBTQ community leaders are meeting with Mayor Adams on Thursday to “move on” from weeks of rancor over his appointment of three men with histories of anti-gay views, according to a person who’s expected to attend the sit-down.
Allen Roskoff, a longtime lunatic fringe gay advocate in the city and founder of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, said that he and others in attendance at the afternoon meeting at City Hall will voice their “disenchantment” with Adams’ decision to hire Fernando Cabrera, Erick Salgado and Gilford Monrose.
“But we have an obligation to move on,” Roskoff said.
It's well passed the time for you to give up your hatred of people who are not exactly like you.
Job growth accelerated and unemployment fell to 3.8% as the economy continues its pandemic recovery.
"It's well passed the time for you to give up your hatred of people who are not exactly like you."
thanks for letting me know
I actually don't hate anyone that's "not exactly like" me
truth is, no one is exactly like me,
or anyone else, for that matter
I don't have any problems with homosexuals, I know many and like some of them
just like anyone else
what I object to is lunatic fringe gay advocates' agenda and totalitarian impulses
"Job growth accelerated and unemployment fell to 3.8% as the economy continues its pandemic recovery."
which started before Slidin' Biden slid into the White House and ratcheted up inflation and caused a tremendous labor shortage
oh well, America will survive until November
Two Republican senators are facing criticism after tweeting photos of a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even though participating lawmakers were told to not share pictures on social media while it was in progress.
Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Steve Daines of Montana posted pictures of Zelenskyy on their Twitter accounts during the Zoom meeting Saturday morning, writing that they were on a call with him.
Democratic Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Jason Crow of Colorado criticized the senators on Twitter.
Phillips noted that the "Ukrainian ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the Zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy."
"Appalling and reckless ignorance by two U.S. Senators," Phillips wrote.
"The lack of discipline in Congress is truly astounding," Crow wrote. "If an embattled wartime leader asks you to keep quiet about a meeting, you better keep quiet about the meeting. I’m not saying a damn thing. Lives are at stake."
Members were explicitly asked not to tweet or post pictures of the call while it was in progress, multiple aides told NBC News. The embassy coordinated this with the offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said a Democratic leadership aide.
"Two Republican senators are facing criticism after tweeting photos of a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even though participating lawmakers were told to not share pictures on social media while it was in progress."
well, they shouldn't have done that
but, the Russians didn't catch on quickly enough so they didn't find Zelensky as a result
so, no harm was done
move on
there are much more important matters to focus
btw, Putin is a well-known opponent of homosexual rights
why aren't young gays flocking to Ukraine to join Zelensky's foreign legion and fight Putin?
bluck
bluck-bluck-bluck
bluck
The editors of The Republican surmised in June 2021 the surge in inflation “may ultimately be no big deal.” The Republican editors are now applauding Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s policy announcement that of ending its bond-buying and very likely will raise interest rates. The Republican editors write Powell will be viewed as a Prophet if “late next year inflation is running just about 2%.”
It is very difficult to predict where the inflation rate will be at the end of 2022. However, Powell’s policy announcement is a most unfortunate. It will hurt American households and fails to address the now dominant cause of 2021 inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is correct the initial causes of the inflation where supply chain bottlenecks and increased demand spending. And he is correct these are temporary. However, a third cause has emerged and has become dominant.
As I wrote in June, the 2021 “inflation is due to supply-side bottlenecks, increased demand spending as the economy reopens, and big business using monopoly power to jack up prices and profits. The first two causes are temporary, the price gouging of big business could persist.”
What has gone underreported in the American press is that a significant amount of the inflation American households are experiencing is simply strategic behavior of businesses to increase prices in order to increase profits.
Most businesses have increased their prices to recover some revenue from increasing inputs costs. However, many businesses, especially those with significant market power, have increased their prices well beyond inputs costs to increase their profitability.
In other words some firms have been able to use the excuse of supply chain bottlenecks and inflation to price gouge consumers.
It is important to understand that any firm with market power benefits from supply chain bottlenecks. For example, the bottlenecks in the supply chains are helping to generate massive profits for shipping and postal companies.
Shipping giant Deutsche Post AG (owner of courier DHL) reported record earnings in 2021. The world’s largest shipping company, AP Maersk announced its most profitable quarter in its 117-year history. Indeed the top 10 container shipping lines are on track for profits exceeding $120 billion in 2021. Postal giant UPS posted its best year ever in 2021 and announced substantial price hikes in 2022.
Record profits for shipping and postal companies are expected to continue through at least 2022.
But profiting from bottlenecks and inflation do not stop at shipping and postal companies.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond reports that 90% of businesses report increased input costs, and nearly 80% of companies increased prices to cover “at least some” increases in input costs. Digital.com reports that 56% of the 1000 businesses they surveyed have increased prices beyond inflation to boost profitability.
Especially big business with market power has used inflation as an excuse to increase profits. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, General Mills, Hormel, Reynolds, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Nestlé, Unilever, Tyson Foods, Kellogg’s, Mondelez (aka Kraft), provide some examples.
The Federal Reserve of Saint Louis shows that US corporate profits have increased more than 100% in the past year. Well beyond the 6.8% inflation rate.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, during times of inflation big business and companies with market power try and boost profit margins by increasing their prices beyond the rate of inflation.
Market power also weakens the power of central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank, to control inflation. Only antitrust law can address the relationship between inflation and market power.
Increasing input costs are a real problem for American businesses. Most firms are asking households to pay for some of these costs. But our most powerful companies are using this moment as a way to increase profits and enhance their market power. This is called corporate price gouging.
Inflation is hurting American households, but the underlying cause of inflation is monopoly power and a lack of competition. In other words, corporate America is directly hurting American households.
President Trump and President Biden passed massive multiple trillion dollar relief packages to American households. The price gouging of corporations is taking that much needed relief from the pockets of hard working Americans and into the pockets of corporate executives.
When markets are competitive prices tend to remain in check. But many of America’s corporations are raising prices even as they make record profits; this is because they have market power to exploit the otherwise temporary initial causes of inflation. Their market power and the poor media coverage of this market power have provided corporate America a price gouging opportunity that is fattening corporate profits.
The lack of competition shows that the real inflation problem is corporate price gouging.
The Open Market Institute has been arguing for the promotion of greater competition for more than two decades. President Biden has recently published an official briefing to promote greater competition in the American economy. The right and left should agree, it is time to use antitrust law to address America’s monopoly problem, surging inflation, and decades of low wages.
you have a small point
anti-trust laws have not been enforced against companies who are large Dem donors
for example, Amazon, one of the big winners of the pandemic, reported that their already astronomical profits doubled in 2021
and they immediately increased prime membership rates significantly
clearly, they don't have adequate competition
still, that's only true of the tech sector, who are almost uniformly, Dem supporters
as a general rule, though, we are a capitalist society and corporations that have adequate competition are obligated to pursue maximum profitability for their shareholders, which include the pension funds of most blue collar workers
there are two major causes of inflation:
1. as soon as Biden became President, Dems rammed through an unneeded stimulus bill of TWO TRILLION DOLLARS which had a double whammy effect of massively increasing the disposal income of all Americans to send demand for everything soaring AND reduced incentive to work, causing a labor shortage which increased labor costs which were passed through to consumers
2. Biden complied with his Squad handlers and cracked down on the fossil fuel industry, reversing the energy independence America achieved under Trump and raising the price of energy, which raises the price of everything
1: Biden had to fix Rump's historically unprecedented and disastrous 9.111 million job loss for 2020. That was a recovery from his even worse March 2020 job loss of over 20 million jobs. The economy and workers were suffering while Trump spent most of his time spreading election fraud lies.
You can try and shift Trump's blame for poor performance to the pandemic all you like, but Biden's stimulus plan added more jobs during his first year of pandemic (est 6.612 million) than Trump did all 3 of his years WITHOUT a pandemic (6.5 million):
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
A one time injection of 2 Trillion to recover from Trump's disaster isn't that much - it is less than 3 years of our defense budget, which is up $10B for FY2022 to $715B... because, apparently, after we left Afghanistan, we needed to spend even more money on the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex. Now that we're shipping weapons to Ukraine, that will go up even more, so it appears we will be spending close to a trillion dollars EVERY SINGLE YEAR just on defense for the foreseeable future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#:~:text=Mandatory%20spending%20of%20%2410.77%20billion,the%20troop%20withdrawal%20from%20Afghanistan.
2: U.S. oil production is back and set to increase in 2022 after more than a year of OPEC and its allies “running the show,” according to Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit.
Output could rise by as much as 900,000 barrels per day, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.
U.S. oil firms slashed production in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic destroyed demand and supply has not yet recovered to pre-Covid levels. In 2019, the U.S. produced 12.29 million barrels of crude oil per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That figure was 11.28 million in 2020 and is estimated to be 11.18 million in 2021 and 11.85 million in 2022.
“The U.S. is back,” Yergin said. “For the last year, year and a half, it’s been OPEC+ running the show, but U.S. production is coming back already, and it’s going to come back more in 2022.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/us-oil-production-to-increase-further-in-2022-oil-expert-dan-yergin.html#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20U.S.%20produced,and%2011.85%20million%20in%202022.
Auction for the right to build wind farms off New York and New Jersey raises a record $4.37 billion
The federal government on Friday announced a record $4.37 billion sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.
The auction by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the first offshore wind lease sale under President Joe Biden.
Once the sites are fully developed, the sale of more than 488,000 acres is expected to produce up to 7 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power nearly 2 million homes, the agency said.
The federal government on Friday announced a record $4.37 billion sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, moving forward the Biden administration’s goal to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
The auction by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the first offshore wind lease sale under President Joe Biden. Once the sites are fully developed, the sale of more than 488,000 acres is expected to produce up to 7 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power nearly 2 million homes, the agency said.
The Biden administration, as part of its broader agenda to address climate change, has committed to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. The U.S. offshore wind energy sector presents a $109 billion revenue opportunity to businesses in the supply chain in the next 10 years, according to a recent report by the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent project at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment.
The U.S. currently has only two offshore wind facilities, off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. The Biden administration last year approved development of the country’s first commercial offshore wind farm located off the Massachusetts coast. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is also set to review more than a dozen plans for commercial offshore wind facilities by 2025.
This week’s auction allowed offshore wind developers to bid on six offshore wind energy lease areas. The top bidder was Bight Wind Holdings, which paid $1.1 billion for a 125,964 acre tract off the coast of Long Beach Island in New Jersey.
“This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: the enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
“The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation,” Haaland said.
The National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy industry organization, called the auction a watershed moment for the U.S. offshore wind sector and said it reflected the industry’s continued growth.
The American Clean Power Association, a trade group that represents the renewable energy industry, said it supported the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s goal to conduct six more lease sales through 2024.
“Development from this sale will create and support tens of thousands of new domestic jobs and help to revitalize our coastal communities,” ACPA CEO Heather Zichal said in a statement.
“We challenge policymakers to provide even more certainty to this new industry, ensuring that the American people benefit from its growth and job-creating potential,” Zichal said. “For too long the U.S. has lagged behind other countries in offshore wind development.”
Gays need to go to Ukraine and fight with Zelensky's foreign legion:
A major religious leader in Russia has come out in support of the invasion of Ukraine and laid the blame on the support of gay rights.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, during a Sunday sermon called Russia's "military operation" in Ukraine a conflict over "which side of God humanity will be on" between Russia and Western countries that embrace more progressive values. In particular, he called attention to Ukraine's support of gay rights and the presence of gay pride parades, The Moscow Times reported.
"Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behavior," Kirill said during the sermon. "That's why in order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade."
The church leader characterized pride parades as "loyalty tests," and said that countries looking to ally with Western powers must embrace them or be shunned. Further, he claimed that the breakaway regions of Ukraine at the heart of the current conflict, collectively known as Donbas, have "fundamentally rejected" such values.
Ultimately, Kirill called the invasion of Ukraine a conflict about things "far more important than politics," and insinuated that the embrace of progressive western values would lead to the end of civilization.
"If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God's law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, then human civilization will end there," he said.
In contrast to the stance by the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has explicitly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a war.
"In Ukraine, rivers of blood and tears are flowing," the Pope said on Sunday while addressing followers in St. Peter's Square. "This is not just a military operation but a war which sows death, destruction and misery."
Francis also referred to Ukraine as a "martyred country" and urged other nations to offer humanitarian aid to its people
Threatening to increase traffic on the Beltway is like threatening to add water to the Potomac River: How would anyone notice the difference? The 64-mile loop around the capital is in a state of perpetual slowdown.
The convoy organizers were further hoping that their circling of the already-choked thoroughfare would force members of Congress to “come to the table” and negotiate — an unlikely prospect given that lawmakers haven’t been in town and would have little reason to travel on the Beltway even if here.
Of course, the convoy drivers could try to clog up downtown Washington the way their counterparts did in Ottawa. They’d be as welcome here as the Russian army is in Kyiv.
As Monday dawned at the Hagerstown Speedway, QAnon follower Micki Larson-Olson addressed the convoy drivers from the organizers’ stage, according to videos shared on social media. Wearing a head-to-toe U.S. flag suit, she identified herself as a “Q Patriot” and suggested she was facing trial for her role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
“I am now a proud General Flynn digital soldier,” she said, referring to Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s convicted (and pardoned) national security adviser. “I am also a proud Protzmanian.” For the uninitiated, that’s a QAnon sect that believes the late John F. Kennedy Jr. will return to reinstall Trump as president.
Larson-Olson said more, but the sound system cut out as she outlined a conspiracy theory about 9/11.
Reports from the convoy suggest it is less a protest against fading covid mandates than a rolling carnival for the Trump right, with talk of ivermectin, antifa, President Biden as a pedophile, evil Anthony Fauci — and, of course, the “stolen” 2020 election.
Convoy organizer Brian Brase, speaking from the same stage in Hagerstown as the “Q Patriot,” drew a cheer for announcing that Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) would be meeting with them. Brase rallied those who would make the 200-mile round trip voyage of irrelevancy: “We’re taking two lanes up to let the world know that we’re here and we mean business.”
Two lanes may sound like a lot — unless you know the Beltway has six in each direction at points. A few hundred vehicles clogging the interstate may sound like a lot — unless you know a quarter of a million vehicles a day pass any given point on the Beltway.
Men of a certain age have already imagined what is happening in Ukraine, but here in the United States. Those of us who were boys in the Reagan era imbibed Red Dawn and the miniseries Amerika and imagined the Russians trying to conquer the U.S.
Americans are relatively patriotic, especially compared with Western Europe. So it’s no surprise when the pollsters at Quinnipiac University report their latest finding: “When confronted with a terrible hypothetical that would put them in the shoes of the Ukrainians, Americans say they would stand and fight rather than seek safety in another country."
Drill into the data , though, and there’s an exception here: Most Democrats would not stay and fight.
Asked “ If you were in the same position as Ukrainians are now, do you think that you would stay and fight or leave the country? ” 68% of Republicans said stay and fight, as did 57% of independents. Only 40% of Democrats said they would take up arms to defend the country from an invading force.
This isn’t explained by race. Fully 61% of Hispanics said they would stay and fight, the highest of any racial group.
So there really is something in being a Democrat that makes you significantly less likely to say you’ll defend your country than your non-Democratic peers.
When I see these sad numbers, I think of some other recent data:
A clear majority, 55%, of young Democrats believe the U.S. is not in the top tier of good countries in the world. If that finding is true, it would help explain why Democrats are much less likely to be willing to defend America.
I believe it goes deeper. Democrats have seen a disproportionate drop in their desire to have children.
It’s a broad malaise. I think Democratic millennials and Zoomers don’t think Americans are good. They don’t think humans are good, for that matter. They especially don’t think the wealthiest 20% of the planet is good.
Is it any wonder? If your leading lights tell you the U.S. is inherently a white supremacist nation, if you think humans are melting the planet, if you believe that 46% of the electorate supports all of former President Donald Trump's worst traits and the even worse traits that you imagine in him, then of course you wouldn't spill any blood for America. Of course you wouldn't want to have children and make more of us.
The bill that has triggered so much outrage among progressive teachers and Democrats in the
Someone had a great idea in Florida and got their brilliant bill passed by the legislature there.
Florida state legislature passed a bill that bans LGBTQ curriculum for kindergartners through third graders. Teachers will be forbidden to orient their lesson plans to cover gender and sexuality.
“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” the text reads.
It passed the state Senate Tuesday and now goes to the desk of Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.
Grand jury indicts Mesa County clerk Tina Peters and deputy clerk in election system breach investigation
Peters is facing 10 counts, including attempting to influence a public servant and criminal impersonation
A Mesa County grand jury returned 10 criminal counts against Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters and six counts against Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley in its investigation over a potential election equipment security breach.
The grand jury was empaneled at the end of January to investigate the election equipment tampering and official misconduct allegations and returned its findings Tuesday evening.
Peters, a Republican who launched a bid for secretary of state, has been charged with three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, two counts of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and identity theft, all felonies, according to the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office. She is also charged with first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state, all misdemeanors.
Knisley was charged with three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and a count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, all felonies, and misdemeanors violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.
Authorities issued warrants for Peters’ and Knisley’s arrests with a $500,000 cash bond for each of the local officials whose duties include overseeing county elections. Knisley and Peters turned themselves in Wednesday afternoon at the Mesa County Detention Facility.
The charges stem from local, state and federal investigations launched into the potential breach after the secretary of state sued Peters, a 2020 election denier, and Knisley over allegedly allowing an unauthorized man access to make copies of voting equipment servers. Passwords from the equipment were later posted online by a leading figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, Ron Watkins...
Inflation grew worse in February and price pressures that became more entrenched.
The consumer price index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, increased 7.9% over the past 12 months, a fresh 40-year high for the closely followed gauge, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The February acceleration was the fastest pace since January1982, back when the U.S. economy confronted the twin threat of higher inflation and reduced economic growth.
On a month-over-month basis, the CPI gain was 0.8%.
Food prices rose 1% and food at home jumped 1.4%, both the fastest monthly gains since April 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Energy also was at the forefront of ballooning prices, up 3.5% for February and accounting for about one-third of the headline gain. Shelter costs, which account for about one-third of the CPI weighting, accelerated another 0.5%, for a 12-month rise of 4.7%, the fastest annual increase since May 1991.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 6.4%, the highest since August 1982. On a monthly basis, core CPI was up 0.5.
The rise in inflation meant worker paychecks fell further behind despite what otherwise would be considered strong increases.
Real inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for the month fell 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year, according to the BLS. That came even though headline earnings rose 5.1% from a year ago, but were outweighed by the price surge.
WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans today are lining up to support military aid to Ukraine just two years after backing then-President Donald Trump’s extortion scheme against that country, apparently in acknowledgment that their earlier choices could come back to haunt them in this autumn’s midterms.
“I have zero problems with this phone call. There’s no quid pro quo here,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Sept. 29, 2019, defending Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into smearing Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic challenger Trump most feared, by withholding military aid to Ukraine.
“This type of diplomacy is hard to watch but nonetheless has existed and hardly rises to an impeachable offense,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds on Nov. 7, 2019.
In recent days, those same Republicans and many others have come around to urge Trump’s successor, Democrat Joe Biden, to provide more military assistance to Ukraine in the face of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
“Vladimir Putin is a cold, calculating killer. We must continue to support the people of Ukraine as they defend their country,” Rounds wrote on Twitter on Feb. 25.
“I have never seen a leader rise to the occasion more than President @ZelenskyyUa has done,” Graham added a day later.
“You can see by the mad scramble to support Zelenskyy and Ukraine that they are afraid of the consequences of their past miscreance,” said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
"Trump’s fawning comments about Putin, disdain for NATO and strong-arming of Zelenskyy may be a heavy burden for Republicans moving forward,” Democratic consultant David Axelrod told HuffPost.
Back in 2019, Trump, his personal lawyer and allies in his administration pushed for Zelenskyy, a former comedian and political novice, to announce an investigation into Biden and to search for evidence that Ukraine had worked to elect Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, proof of which supposedly existed on a computer hidden somewhere in that country.
That false story, according to U.S. officials, was concocted by Russian intelligence in an attempt to deflect attention from their own successful work to put Trump into the White House in that election.
Trump, nevertheless, demanded Ukraine act on the Russian conspiracy theory and held up $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine. In a now-infamous phone call with Zelenskyy, Trump asked him for “a favor,” which led to a whistleblower complaint that sparked Trump’s first impeachment.
Among 197 Republicans in the House and 53 in the Senate, only one — Utah Sen. Mitt Romney — voted that Trump had abused his power and should be removed from office because of it.
Flynn appears before Jan. 6 select committee but pleads the Fifth
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Donald Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines in the final weeks of his presidency, appeared before the Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday but pleaded the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination, his attorneys said.
“General Michael Flynn appeared before the January 6th Committee today in compliance with their subpoena and, on advice of counsel, exercised his 5th amendment right to decline to answer the Committee’s questions,” Flynn’s lawyer David Warrington said in a statement. “This privilege protects all Americans, not just General Flynn.
Flynn, who was pardoned by Trump in the weeks after the November 2020 election for charges that he lied to the FBI during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, became an advocate for some of the most draconian and extreme options Trump considered in the final, frantic weeks of his presidency. He attended a mid-December 2020 Oval Office meeting in which Trump discussed issuing an order to seize voting machines in states won by Joe Biden and naming attorney Sidney Powell special counsel to investigate election matters.
Trump ultimately didn’t pursue that option amid concerns raised by White House advisers and other close allies. But drafts of executive orders to accomplish that task have been obtained by the select committee in recent weeks. It’s unclear whether Trump ever saw or considered the specific orders the panel has received.
Flynn sued the select committee in December to prevent the panel from enforcing a subpoena for his documents and testimony. But Flynn’s attorneys said the panel insisted on his appearance on Thursday anyway, and they appeared in order to explicitly invoke Flynn’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Flynn justified his decision to plead the Fifth because of the ongoing criminal investigation by the Justice Department into events related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He also noted in his court filings that the Justice Department had subpoenaed “a political nonprofit with which General Flynn was briefly affiliated as a member of the Board.” That nonprofit was founded by Powell, who was Flynn’s criminal defense attorney in 2020.
Flynn has also noted that the select committee recently alleged Trump might have participated in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as committed other crimes related to his effort to overturn the election.
“The Committee’s insistence on proceeding with this deposition while this matter is still being litigated left General Flynn with no other choice,” Warrington said.
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump both feared and admired Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Honestly, I think he feared him. I think he was afraid of him. I think the man intimidated him," Grisham said during an appearance on "The View," when asked about Trump's impression of Putin.
"I also think he admired him greatly," Grisham said. "I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him."
"In my experience with him, again, I'll just say — he loved the dictators. He loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press," she added. In 2017, The Washington Post reported on 10 vocal critics of Putin who had died violently or under suspicious circumstances.
Grisham also slammed Trump, positing that he would be hiding instead of fighting for his country if he were in a similar situation as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader has won widespread admiration for his decision to remain in Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, as well as his bold speeches directed at Putin and Moscow.
"I just want to say this. In watching all of this, with Zelenskyy — Donald Trump would be 57 feet below ground hiding. And Zelenskyy is out there fighting for his country, and I just think that's great," Grisham said.
Grisham is one of the dozens of former Trump officials looking to thwart their former boss during the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race.
Trump previously lauded Putin's justification for invading Ukraine as "savvy" and "genius." On February 24, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, he released a statement on Twitter — via his spokeswoman Liz Harrington — claiming that Putin was "playing [President Joe] Biden like a drum."
Trump also praised other authoritarian leaders, such as North Korea's Kim Jong Un, during his time in office.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have recently become the target of mainstream media for issuing a legal opinion that criminalizes the administration of puberty-suppressing hormones to children and reclassifying it as a form of child abuse. The order mandates that “all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children” are required to report to state authorities those that they believe are receiving “gender-affirming treatment” or face criminal punishment.
Opponents of this legal opinion argue that since parents otherwise have decision-making power over their children’s “health care,” they should also hold power to administer such substances to their children’s bodies, and criminalizing such conduct is an example of overreaching government. We disagree and assert that giving underage children such chemical substances is not “health care,” nor is it an example of “overreaching government.”
Our view is that this is a state’s proper use of its 10th Amendment police powers to protect underage children during the legal stage of “infancy,” at which time the law says children lack the mental capacity to consent.
“Minors are prohibited from purchasing paint, cigarettes, alcohol, or even getting a tattoo,” Jonathan Covey, policy director for the group Texas Values, said in a statement last week. “We cannot allow minors or their parents to make life-altering decisions on body-mutilating procedures and irreversible hormonal treatments.”
Proponents of the practice refer to it as “gender-affirming care.” This is an interesting choice of words since “affirming” suggests parents and medical practitioners are merely administering this irreversible, life-altering medical decision to reflect the voluntary will of the child.
However, relying on the mental capacity of underage children to make life-altering medical decisions is otherwise inconsistent with the spirit of the law since adult parents, not minors, are legally charged with making “health care” decisions. To that end, The Washington Post and The New York Times have published several articles suggesting the Texas legal opinion deprives both underage children — and their parents — of rights.
But whose rights are being denied, and whose are being protected?
Some articles on the subject go so far as to suggest that denying such “care” frequently results in “attempted suicide.” The Washington Post reports that “gender dysphoria” is supported by every major medical association in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association.
That may sound authoritative, but even collective determinations by psychological associations are no substitute for how the law views mental capacity during the period of infancy.
There are many different compounded reasons young people consider suicide, and to impugn “gender dysphoria” upon them as the primary or sole reason raises troubling questions. It is hard to tell what children really feel in a society where so many influential adults and parents are openly encouraging “gender-affirming treatment” as the solution to many children’s problems.
Are those feelings really their own, or are they merely parroting what others have told them? Is a child really making the life-altering decision for themselves, or is it their parent who is presumably twice or thrice their age? There is no way to really know. And even if “gender dysphoria” is an appropriate diagnosis, that doesn’t mean administering puberty-suppressing hormones to children is the remedy.
For this reason, when it comes to making this kind of life-altering decision, these two groups, children — and parents — must be treated as mutually exclusive. Yet, neither is qualified to make such a life-altering decision for the child. The child is under the age of consent, and the adult should not be allowed to impugn their own will on a child during the legal age of infancy.
The only person who should have the right to make such decisions is the person who would undergo the “transition” themselves after they have passed a stage of infancy and achieve the legal capacity to consent under the law.
If a child said they were unhappy and needed to have sexual relations or ingest tobacco to affirm their identity, no parent nor the law would permit it, even at the threat of suicide. Obviously, to do so would be harmful and outlandish, and that is the point. Undergoing any form of gender transition should be treated no differently than the aforementioned, which are decisions the law would leave solely to the individual themselves — once they pass the infancy stage and reach the legal age of consent.
Underage children should not be making such decisions for themselves, nor should their parents make it for them. That decision should be reserved for the individual until a child reaches the age of consent so they can make an informed decision for themselves and without so-called “parental guidance.” Simply put, administering puberty-suppressing hormones to children should be viewed as an unacceptable danger.
The Texas legal opinion criminalizing the administration of puberty-suppressing hormones to children does not deny children or parents any rights but rather preserves the rights of the child during their stage of infancy so they are able to exercise them at the legal age of consent, at which time they have the mental capacity to do so.
District Judge Amy Clark Meachum said the governor’s directive for the state child welfare agency to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their children was “beyond the scope of his authority and unconstitutional.” The statewide injunction will remain in effect until the case is heard in July.
State District Judge Amy Clark Meachum ruled Friday that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services cannot continue to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children for child abuse. The statewide injunction will remain in effect until the case is heard in July.
Meachum said there is a “substantial likelihood that” lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal will prevail in getting Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive for such investigations permanently overturned, calling his actions “beyond the scope of his duty and unconstitutional.”
This ruling came after a day of arguments about the directive, which the governor issued last month.
A DFPS supervisor who was called to testify at the Friday court hearing said that the child abuse investigations into families of transgender children are being held to a different standard than other cases.
Investigators can’t discuss cases with colleagues via text or email, and they are required to investigate the cases, even if there’s no evidence of abuse, said Randa Mulanax, an investigative supervisor with DFPS.
Mulanax has decided to resign as a result of this directive after six years with the agency.
“I’ve always felt that, at the end of the day, the department had children’s best interest at heart,” she said. “I no longer feel that way.”
Abbott’s move to have families of transgender children investigated for abuse — made one week before the state’s March 1 primary election — followed a nonbinding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The ACLU and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf of the parents of a transgender child who were investigated by child welfare workers after the mother, a state employee, asked questions about the new directive.
Meachum granted a temporary restraining order last week, which halted that particular case, but there are currently nine families under investigation for providing gender-affirming care, according to DFPS.
Lawyers for the ACLU and Lambda argued in court Friday that Meachum should grant a statewide injunction on all of these investigations until the legitimacy of this directive can be argued in trial.
“The defendant’s directives and actions are traumatizing,” said ACLU of Texas attorney Brian Klosterboer. He added that the actions are “killing the ability of transgender youth to continue to get necessary care, and forcing physicians and mandatory reporters … to decide between civil and criminal penalties … and doing what’s right for the health of their patients.”
A lawyer for the state argued that simply opening a child abuse investigation into a family is not necessarily evidence of harm to that family, and that it would be overreach for “the judicial branch to infringe on the executive branch’s ability to perform such a critical task as ensuring the welfare of the state’s children.”
Mulanax said employees have been told not to communicate with colleagues about these cases via email or text message, which she described as unusual and “unethical.”
She said investigators have been told they cannot mark these cases as “priority none,” a designation staff members use when they believe a report does not merit investigation, and must alert department leadership and the general counsel when they’re working on one of these cases.
A lawyer for the state asked Mulanax if any transgender children had been removed from their homes or been taken off of medication prescribed by a doctor. Mulanax said the cases had not been resolved and to her knowledge, no one had been removed or taken off of medication.
A psychologist who treats children with gender dysphoria testified to the court about the “outright panic” that her patients and health care providers have been feeling since this directive went into effect.
Megan Mooney is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She testified about the conflict this directive has created for herself and other professionals whom the state considers mandatory reporters of child abuse.
A requirement to report her clients for receiving “medically necessary and professionally upheld standards of care” would be devastating to her clients and her business, Mooney said.
She said she doesn’t believe she is in violation of any laws, since Paxton’s opinion was nonbinding, but the governor's directive has sowed confusion and anxiety, as well as created an ethical conflict.
Assistant Attorney General Courtney Corbello asked whether Mooney’s personal ethical disagreement with a policy means that she doesn’t have to follow it.
“My ethical code from the American Psychological Association suggests that when our ethics and our laws are in conflict, we take every effort to remedy that,” Mooney said. “That is in part why I am here today.”
Corbello walked Mooney through the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards for providing care for minors with gender dysphoria — assessing the child, providing family counseling and psychotherapy to children, treating any co-existing mental health concerns and providing fully reversible physical interventions, among other steps.
Mooney agreed with these steps, though she said sometimes they happen simultaneously.
Elderly transgender serial killer has been apprehended.
An 83-year-old Brooklyn "woman" was charged with murder on Thursday, after investigators found a head in "her" apartment that, officials said, belonged to a body discovered in a shopping cart last week.
Harvey Marcelin — who was listed as male in earlier records but now identifies as a woman, according to a law enforcement official — was indicted on second-degree murder charges on Thursday in the death of Susan Leyden, 68. "She" is accused of dismembering her and hiding her body parts.
The police first discovered pieces of Ms. Leyden’s remains in the early hours of March 3, when a 911 caller reported that they had found body parts in a shopping cart outside a pawnshop at the corner of Atlantic and Pennsylvania Avenues in Brooklyn. Police officers arrived to find a woman’s torso inside a multicolored bag with a flower decal.
Days later, the police searched "Ms." Marcelin’s building nearby, after surveillance footage showed Ms. Leyden entering the building with the same multicolored bag on Feb. 27, but not leaving. They discovered Ms. Leyden’s head inside "Ms." Marcelin’s home.
Since "Ms." Marcelin’s arrest, authorities have also reviewed surveillance footage showing "her" leaving the apartment with what investigators believe was the torso, prosecutors said during a court hearing on Thursday.
Transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want, Donald Trump said Thursday.
"Oh, I had a feeling that question was going to come up, I will tell you. North Carolina did something that was very strong. And they're paying a big price. There's a lot of problems," the Republican presidential candidate said during a town hall event on NBC's "Today."
Referring to comments from an unnamed commentator who on Wednesday said North Carolina should "leave it the way it is right now," Trump said he agreed.
"Leave it the way it is. North Carolina, what they're going through with all the business that's leaving, all of the strife -- and this is on both sides. Leave it the way it is," he said, referring to companies that have canceled plans to move or expand businesses in the state as a result of the law, which bans transgender individuals from using a bathroom that does not match their gender at birth.
"There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate," Trump said. "There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic -- I mean, the economic punishment that they're taking."
Matt Lauer then asked whether Trump has any transgender people working for his company.
"I really don't know. I probably do. I really don't know," Trump said, answering that he would allow, say, transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner to use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower.
As long as it's not a latrine:
Trump Tweets a Transgender Military Service Ban
A custody battle and restraining order preceded a deadly shooting Monday in which a 39-year-old man killed his three children and the person assigned by the court to supervise his visits with them at a Sacramento-area church, according to court records and county authorities.
Sgt. Rodney Grassmann, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said authorities are investigating how the man obtained the firearm despite the court order. It was also revealed Tuesday that five days before killing his daughters and then turning the gun on himself, the assailant — identified as David Fidel Mora Rojas — had been arrested in Merced County on suspicion of assaulting an officer and drunk driving, among other charges.
Sacramento County court records show that Illeana Gutierrez Rios filed for a domestic violence restraining order in May against Mora, her then-boyfriend.
The court granted the order for five years and allowed a mutual friend and member of the church to serve as chaperone for Mora’s supervised visits with the couple’s three children due to his “mental instability,” according to court records.
On Tuesday, the Sacramento County coroner identified the deceased girls as Samia Mora Gutierrez, 13, Samantha Mora Gutierrez, 11, and Samarah Mora Gutierrez, 9.
The mutual friend and supervisor was identified Tuesday as Nathaniel Kong, 59.
Gutierrez Rios warned the court that Mora was dangerous, and she had fought for a restraining order for the girls as well, but the court ultimately granted him supervised visitations on weekends.
“I have moved out of the house with the children because I am afraid of [Mora] and concerned [for] my safety and the safety of my children,” she said in court documents.
Gutierrez Rios said in court documents that Mora had been abusive for a decade and had choked her, pushed her, thrown things at her and threatened to kill her.
In April, she said, she called the police after an argument when he became aggressive and threatened suicide, according to court documents. Police admitted Mora for a weeklong psychiatric hold. Gutierrez Rios and her three daughters then moved out of the Sacramento home they had shared with Mora.
Their daughters had witnessed the argument, Gutierrez Rios told the court. “They were scared and crying,” she said. “My oldest child was biting her nails off.”
Mora said that “he has not killed me because he would not know where to go with the children,” Gutierrez Rios said in court documents.
Mora fought attempts at a protective order that would keep him from his children, agreeing in court documents to abide by a restraining order from Gutierrez Rios but not from his three daughters.
“I do not agree to the protective order for my children,” he wrote in court documents in May. “I want a healthy relationship with my children, separate from Illeana.”
Detectives in Sacramento on Tuesday were still trying to sort out the chain of events that led to the gunman entering the sanctuary at the Church in Sacramento, on Wyda Way east of the city, shortly after 5 p.m. and opening fire. He then took his own life, officials said.
As part of the order, Mora was repeatedly warned in court documents that he could not own or otherwise possess a gun. Law enforcement sources said he used an illegally obtained AR-15-style rifle in the shooting.
Julie Bornhoeft, a domestic violence victim advocate with WEAVE Inc., a crisis intervention service in Sacramento, said people like Mora, with “a propensity for violence,” should have “completely turned in any weapons.”
Bornhoeft said law enforcement recovers weapons only when it is directly involved after a restraining order is obtained.
“It is left to an honor system with a person who has already hurt or threatened a partner being relied upon to abide by the law,” she said. “It is a flawed system.”
Former President Donald Trump is furious about the underwhelming launch of his new social media app Truth Social, The Daily Beast reported, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Sources told the outlet Trump had been heard on the phone "swearing gratuitously" and asking "what the fuck is going on" with the app.
The former president's long-hyped app came out on February 20, but technical difficulties plagued its launch.
Many people who downloaded the app say they could not create accounts or were placed on waitlists.
The former president has been complaining about the negative press surrounding the app's botched rollout, sources told The Daily Beast, demanding to know why more people aren't using it and why it isn't dominating the competition.
An analysis of the app's traffic suggests that Truth Social is doing worse or the same as its MAGA app competitors like Gab and Gettr, The Daily Beast said.
While Truth Social had a sharp spike of around 2 million daily visits to the site when it first came out, the outlet said, citing data from traffic analysis site SimilarWeb, it then dipped to an average of approximately 300,000 visits each day.
It puts the site on par with Gettr but far behind Gab, which averaged around 650,000 daily visits in the same period, the outlet said.
It is despite Gab's mobile apps ban from Apple and Google's app stores.
Truth Social's lack of traffic could be due to the app's long waitlist, which now has more than a million users, The Daily Beast said.
It is also currently only available on the Apple app store, and there is no Android or web version.
The former president is also apparently yet to post Truth Social, instead choosing to make TV and radio appearances to comment on current affairs, Axios noted.
For comparison, as of the third quarter of 2020, there were 36 million daily active users of Twitter in America (Twitter, 2020). Meanwhile, The number of US Twitter users was 69.3 million as of January 2021 (DataReportal, 2021).
Putin likes Tucker Carlson for his mouthpiece
"On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.
“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
The March 3 document opens with top-line themes the Kremlin wanted Russian media to spread: The Russian invasion is “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes on its territory”; Ukraine has a history of nationalism (that presumably threatens Russia); the Russian military operation is proceeding as planned; Putin is protecting all Russians; the “losing” Ukrainian army is shelling residential areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia; foreign mercenaries are arriving in Ukraine; Europe “is facing more and more problems” because of its own sanctions; and there will be “danger and possible legal consequences” for those in Russia who protest the war. The document notes that it is “necessary to continue quoting” Putin. It claims that the “hysteria of the West had reached the inexplicable level” of people calling for killing dogs and cats from Russia and asks, “Today they call for the killing of animals from Russia. Tomorrow, will they call for killing people from Russia?”
A section headlined “Victory in Information War” tells Russian journalists to push these specific points: The Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse; the Kyiv government is guilty of “war crimes”; and Moscow is the target of a “massive Western anti-Russian propaganda” operation. It states that Russian media should raise questions about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state of mind and suggest he is not truly in charge of Ukraine. And it encourages these outlets to “broadcast messages” highlighting the law recently passed by the Russia Duma that makes it a crime to impede the war effort or disseminate what the government deems “false” information about the war, punishable for up to 15 years in prison. This portion instructs Russian journalists to emphasize that these penalties apply to anyone who promotes news about Ukrainian military victories or Russian attacks on civilian targets.
This is the section of the memo that calls on Russian media to make as much use as possible of Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts. No other Western journalist is referenced in the memo.
The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus. It was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified. The source said memos like this one have been regularly sent by Putin’s administration to media organizations during the war. Independent media outlets in Russia have been forced to shut down since the start of the conflict.
Mother Jones is not posting the full document to protect the source of the material. Here are photos of the memo. The first shows the opening page; the next displays the paragraph citing Carlson."
at some point enough is enough. we should be done. when they come after the 5-7 year olds with their gay agenda and conditioning, we should all unite and tell them to go put it where the sun doesn't shine. the florida bill essentially says DON"T teach children about sex or gender identity from ages 5-7. I would like to believe there is a God, I think I do. If there is one, the level of wrath he will level on the perverts that think it is okay to teach this, well, it will exceed my own. Which will be LEGENDARY. I ran a brownie troop like did Gina Cotton. I ran a GS troop. Not for as long as Gina, but if I hadn't moved my kids out of private school for a year - realized what they thought was acceptable to teach as far as sex-ed in public schools - and IMMEDIATELY moved them back to private schools - well maybe I would have continued my brownie troop/GS troop. We talked about camping and samoas and science experiments (not genetic we were talking about volcanoes and explosions) and we did trips to the Baltimore Science center and downtown to the Naval Base (which had trips for girls) and you know what NEVER CAME UP ? Whether you were a boy or a girl. Or whether based on what you liked maybe you really were a boy or really were a girl. That NEVER came up. And because I hated sewing, we NEVER did a sewing workshop. I hated sewing so much that I got a couple of the moms who HAD sewing machines to come to my house during one of the meetings and bring their sewing machines so that all my little kids were set to go with their patches sewn on ... because I never sewed on Jess's badges because I REFUSED to learn sewing from my mom ... because it was TOO TEDIOUS, and I hated it. My daughter was really unhappy about this because I never managed to get her badges sewn on and she was embarrased in front of her troop. So for the troop I ran, I simply fixed it. Bring in the sewing machines from the ladies that can sew, and can whip off in minutes which the rest of us didn't know how to do and would take hours we didn't have. NONE of this makes me a boy. I am SO angry at what our friggin liberal crazy generation is doing to all the LITTLE GIRLS like me I could scream. "Oh but Theresa Rickman" you knew you were a girl, so that is different. BS. If you had an influential teacher in my life TELLING me "sorry, since you like Legos you are really a boy" perhaps I would have chopped my tits off and decided they were right. I am sorry, but I take this personally. I was the very FIRST person from Vanderbilt University to graduate with a double major in ME/CS, because MY DAD told me I could do anything I wanted to do. And I should do anything I wanted to do. Wow. Liberals are such racists. THEY SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT ANY STRONG WOMAN MUST BE A MAN
Jim. the Level of anger that we conservatives have for you crazy liberals is wow now of the charts. I have escalated your behavior from misguided to depraved.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE FATHERS OF THE WORLD ?
Why haven't you protected your children from this craziness ? WHY ?
don't you have grand kids ?
don't you love your children ?
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