Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Gun Crime

Americans believe that crime is increasing, out of control. People in the middle of the country believe that the coastal cities are literally on fire, with looting and rioting and robbing and raping going on everywhere you look. They're afraid to come here. Every night the news goes on and on about escalating crime, and people believe it.

But the odd fact is that crime has been declining, even in the cities, for the past couple of decades. The country is safer than it ever was. Of course we can blame the media for this misinformation, and in particular we can blame their habit of going to the police for their facts. Police spokesmen have their own point of view, they want funding for the department and they want job security for officers and you can't blame them for that. But the result is not necessarily an objectively accurate narrative assessment of crime in the US, you might say.

On the other hand, one kind of crime is increasing. If this category gets recognized at all, it is typically called "violent crime." It includes homicides and felony assaults. Like, after a guy shot up the Van Ness neighborhood last week, just across the line from our little county, the Washington Post had this information in their news story:

[D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III] noted that on Friday and Saturday, police responded to a total of 10 shooting incidents with 15 victims, including a shooting of a man in a wheelchair and the shootings of three people in Brightwood Park. Both attacks occurred as police were in the midst of tracking down the sniper, evacuating buildings and securing the area around Van Ness.

Also over that 48-hour period, a construction worker directing traffic was shot by a person on a ride-share bicycle who was upset with delays, and a man was fatally shot and stabbed during an argument at a birthday party. On Monday, as the mayor’s briefing was wrapping up, a person was fatally shot in Northeast Washington.

Police said they have seized 969 illegal guns in the District this year, a 50 percent increase from this point in 2021.

School was in sniper’s ‘crosshairs,’ but link is unclear, D.C. chief says

That's a lot of violent crime. But let's give it a more accurate name: gun crime. These are all incidents where someone shot someone with a gun. These deadly crimes might have been fistfights or shouting matches, except somebody had a gun.

Gun control has become one of those things that politicians can hardly talk about, because the rightwing noise machine will drown them out. Remember, "Obama's gonna take our guns away?" Whatever happened with that? They hated him because he was going to take their guns away, which he never mentioned and never tried to do. He should have, but the issue is simply too controversial to touch, even for a skilled negotiator like President Obama.

If you try to peel away the layers, you conclude that the problem is too complicated to solve. And yet, the Unites States is the only country on the planet that has 1.this kind of belief that guns are sacrosanct, and 2.this kind of murder rate. The problem is not complicated; everybody else has figured it out. Somebody just has to do something.

New York's subways had a mass shooter a couple of weeks ago, guy shot ten people and a bunch more were injured in the crowd scene. Good guys with guns did not prevent the crime, or interrupt it. The subway system is swarming with cops -- last January the mayor announced a plan to have uniformed police on every platform in the whole system. There were cops all over the place when the shooter caused havoc and then got off the train, exited the station, and wandered around the city until he phoned in his own location for them to come arrest him. Police did not stop him or catch him, even though the NYPD's budget is more than ten billion dollars.

In other words, you cannot solve the gun problem by increasing the number of armed policemen. That sort of escalation does not work for one simple reason, which is that the "bad guy with a gun" always has the advantage of surprise. You could have one cop for every citizen, trailing them around, watching their every move, and still a citizen could grab his gun and shoot somebody before the cop could respond. Sorry, but that's the truth. Constant police surveillance is not the solution. Also, I don't know why anybody would even want to live like that.

The solution is to do what every other civilized country does: control access to guns. Yep, take 'em away. Melt 'em down. Use the metal in the supply chain. Nobody needs an AR-15 in their house. Nobody needs magazine clips with unlimited capacity. People with arrest records for violent crimes can do enough damage with their fists, they don't need the power of bullets when they lose their self-control. There ought to be some training for gun owners, some screening, periodic testing. Other countries do it, we can do it.

People around the world look at American gun violence and say, "That is crazy." And any reasonable person has to agree, this is crazy. Guns do not make anyone safer, they only make everyone less safe. And yet there is no serious movement to do anything about the problem.

It's as if there were a religious taboo on this subject, we are not culturally permitted to mention it. The Second Amendment is, for one thing, not grammatically clear, and for another, it was written during a time when "arms" were primitive compared to what Joe Shmoe can get now. Guns have a place, hunting is a worthwhile thing to do, and a pistol might make you feel safer in your house. But ... back to the guy last week at Van Ness, from the same Post piece:

Raymond Spencer had six firearms in the apartment on Van Ness Street, including three fully automatic rifles, the chief said at a news conference Monday. He said police found thousands more rounds of ammunition inside another residence in Fairfax County, Va., and parts to assemble three additional firearms.
Now come on, you know this is crazy. It's time for reasonable people to speak common sense about this topic and solve this uniquely American problem.

200 Comments:

Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...


"The country is safer than it ever was.....On the other hand, one kind of crime is increasing. If this category gets recognized at all, it is typically called "violent crime.""

good point..

other than all the violance, the country is very safe

got it

"Like, after a guy shot up the Van Ness neighborhood last week, just across the line from our little county"

I think the guy was actually went to high school in our "little" county

you know, "little", as in, smaller than LA county

people in very liberal areas have a lot of suppressed rage from the intrusive government micromanaging of their lives that tends to explode in their more unstable citizens from time to time

right now, there is a lot of pent-up anger from the over-restrictive COVID measures

in few places in the free world were the restrictions as extreme as here

"If you try to peel away the layers, you conclude that the problem is too complicated to solve. And yet, the Unites States is the only country on the planet that has 1.this kind of belief that guns are sacrosanct"

it's not that guns are sacrosanct, freedom is

if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them

doesn't sound like freedom to me

"The problem is not complicated; everybody else has figured it out."

and yet, people are flocking to get inside our borders

go figure

"Somebody just has to do something."

remember when Rudy Guiliani did something?

stop tolerating petty crime

NYC became one of the safest places in America

then, the TTF=type liberals took over and things went south

"Police did not stop him or catch him, even though the NYPD's budget is more than ten billion dollars."

how about the US Capitol Police?

they have a bigger budget than the city of Atlanta's police force

and they couldn't stop a few hundred unarmed protestors from breaking into the Capitol

there's more than money involved

the rhetoric Dems used about "defund the police" is not a problem because of dollars but because of a hostile attitude toward law enforcement that they have engendered

"In other words, you cannot solve the gun problem by increasing the number of armed policemen. That sort of escalation does not work for one simple reason, which is that the "bad guy with a gun" always has the advantage of surprise."

by jove, you're on to something

we'll just make it illegal for bad guys to have guns and then none of them will because, you know, bad guys just hate to do anything illegal

April 28, 2022 6:18 AM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...


"Constant police surveillance is not the solution. Also, I don't know why anybody would even want to live like that."

it's like I always say

government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem

"The solution is to do what every other civilized country does: control access to guns."

this kind of thinking is why Ukraine got rid of its nukes

look how that's worked out

"People with arrest records for violent crimes can do enough damage with their fists, they don't need the power of bullets when they lose their self-control."

you might want to consider moving to Iran, they cut off your hands if you commit a crime with them

why would taking guns away from people without arrest records stop people with arrest records from having guns?

"There ought to be some training for gun owners, some screening, periodic testing."

by jove, you're on to something

just train them how to use the guns better and they will stop shooting people by accident and just get their intended victims

"Other countries do it, we can do it."

I thought the other countries melted the guns down

now, you're saying they train people to use them

are you just making this up?

"People around the world look at American gun violence and say, "That is crazy.""

sure, people on the Sputnik network and RT say that all the time

"The Second Amendment is, for one thing, not grammatically clear,"

you think that's bad?

the right to abortion and homosexual marriage isn't even written at all so you can't argue about grammar

who can analyze invisible ink?

add abortion and AIDS together and you have more deaths than gun violence

"Now come on, you know this is crazy. It's time for reasonable people to speak common sense about this topic and solve this uniquely American problem."

in America, places with stricter gun control don't have less crime

it's easy to see, without looking too hard, that gun control doesn't make people safer, just more vulnerable

April 28, 2022 6:18 AM  
Anonymous here's a great idea: we'll defund the police and, then, we'll have whatever cops are left round up all the guns in America... said...


It’s becoming increasingly clear that after the economy, crime is a hot-button issue driving voter sentiment in the lead-up to the November elections.

But despite voter concern, Democrats continue to be divided over the “defund the police” mantra that has grabbed headlines for the past two years, and it’s hurting their prospects for the fall elections.

The mixed messaging of party leaders versus the call to defund by progressives, especially extreme comments by members of the Squad, has become a costly roadblock to retaining the House as voters lose confidence in Democrats’ ability to address rising violence across the country.

Even a cursory look at statements by Democratic leaders and radical backbenchers opposed to increased funding of police explains the party’s dilemma.

On Feb. 13, George Stephanopoulos raised the issue of Rep. Cori Bush’s statements calling for defunding the police during an interview with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “With all due respect in the world to Cori Bush,” she replied, “that is not the position of the Democratic Party.”

Pelosi then declared, “Defund the police is dead.”

Two weeks later, in his State of the Union address, President Biden called for increased funding for police: “We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them.”

Apparently, Squad member Bush didn’t get the message. In a tweet after the speech, she said, “With all due respect, Mr. President, you didn’t mention saving Black lives once in this speech. All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result? 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings. Defund the police. Invest in our communities.”

A month later, a gunman shot up a New York subway train, and an inconvenient 2019 letter from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerrold Nadler and other liberal New York House members resurfaced. The letter to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo opposed a plan to put 500 new Metropolitan Transportation Authority officers in the subways to reduce crime.

But AOC was having none of it. She and her fellow members wrote that the MTA funding for increased police presence in the subways would be better spent on “desperately needed resources” like “subway, bus, maintenance, and service improvements,” telling Cuomo, “The subway system is now safer than before.”

Last week, Rep. Abigail Spanberger called defunding the police “a terrible idea,” while a Politico story said, “As the midterm elections pick up, Democrats are calling for more police funding and attempting to co-opt traditionally Republican talking points on crime.”

“Defund the police” may no longer be the position of the Democratic Party, but when Cori Bush, AOC or any member of the Squad weighs in on any issue, the Twittersphere lights up like a cop car in hot pursuit. It seems the media can’t get enough of the Squad, and polling shows that this intraparty fight over the issue of policing and crime has not only become a major headache for Pelosi but is also taking a toll on the Democrats’ credibility.

When the electorate was asked in the Winning the Issues (WTI) February survey if they believed that we need to defund the police, only 21 percent believed the statement, while 64 percent did not. Independents were even more adamant that defunding the police was a bad idea, coming in at an overwhelming 12 percent for and 70 percent against.

Despite Biden and Pelosi’s efforts to stem the bleeding by offering up more funding to stop gun violence and invest in community policing, the WTI research shows that Democrats are losing the issue, with more voters believing that the Democratic Party supports defunding the police than not by a margin of 48 percent to 34 percent.

April 28, 2022 6:31 AM  
Anonymous here's a great idea: we'll defund the police and, then, we'll have whatever cops are left round up all the guns in America... said...


There are three main reasons for the Democrats’ troubles on this issue. First, there is widespread recognition of just how serious rising violent crime is becoming, with 7 out of 10 voters believing that across America, violent crime is escalating.

Six out of 10 voters agree with the statement that “families, communities and small business are being endangered and experiencing the devastating effects of rhetoric about defunding the police and police department budget cuts at the hands of politicians.”

These views extend across party, ideology, age and region, making a concept like defunding the police totally out of tune with most voters who oppose it by a 3-to-1 margin.

There’s a second reason for the Democrats’ weakness on the crime issue. The president and other Democrats have tried to have it both ways — trying to pose as supporters of the police while only reluctantly, if at all, acknowledging that crime is a major problem.

On the White House website list of priorities, crime doesn’t even make the list. The White House's lack of acknowledgment and often dismissive rhetoric about crime, particularly in cities with progressive mayors and prosecutors, has led directly to its weak standing on the issue.

As a result, when voters were asked in the March survey whether they believed Democrats would focus on law enforcement efforts to deal with violent offenders, they were split, with 44 percent believing they would and 43 percent believing they wouldn’t. Independents were even more skeptical, with 36 percent believing and 46 percent not believing.

In contrast, voters by a 61 percent to 27 percent margin believed that Republicans would stand with law enforcement in their efforts to ensure the safety of our communities and the protection of America’s families and children.

Not surprisingly, Democrats trail on the handling of the crime and safety issue by 12 points (48 percent favoring Republicans, 36 percent favoring Democrats) and among independents by 13 points (42 percent-29 percent, with 29 percent undecided). The Democratic Party’s silence about threats to safety has left Democrats supporting a policy position that voters find alienating.

Finally, with police officers, Democrats have chosen the wrong group to vilify. The police have a very favorable brand image (72 percent favorable, 20 percent unfavorable in the March WTI survey). Congressional Democrats have a negative brand at 44 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable. By affiliating themselves with the defund the police movement, they are seen by voters as opposing a very positive group of public servants who are well liked and supported by the electorate.

By trying to straddle the fence on crime and safety, Biden, Pelosi and Democratic members fearing primaries have been unwilling to take on their anti-police progressives. If the trend continues, this issue will haunt Democrats this November and for a long time to come.

April 28, 2022 6:34 AM  
Anonymous when will Dems apologize to blacks for failing inner city economies, failing inner city schools, and racist inner city police departments that they have overseen for decades? said...

Every day you read how the “climate crisis” is real, and rapidly getting worse. Humans burning fossil fuels to support out-of-control consumerism have brought the earth to the brink of disaster. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and plagues of every sort are proliferating. Of course, you are feeling all the natural human reactions: fear, dread, not to mention overwhelming guilt at your own role in causing the crisis through the grave sin of enjoying your life. In short, you have entered the state known to the experts as “climate anxiety.”

The New York Times, as usual, was way out front on this issue. Back in July 2021 they published a long piece by Molly Peterson with the headline “How to Calm Your Climate Anxiety.” Subheadline: “Between wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes, we’re all feeling nervous about the future. But stewing or ignoring the problem won’t ease your burden.” Yes, if you are a writer for the New York Times you fully expect that among the readership it is accurate to say that “we’re all” feeling the climate anxiety. How could we not? Kindly, Molly, tell us how bad it is. Excerpts:

Evidence that climate change threatens mental health is mounting, according to a recent report from Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation. Higher temperatures are tied to depressive language and higher suicide rates. Fires, hurricanes and heat waves carry the risk of trauma and depression. . . . Young people especially report feeling debilitated by climate anxiety and being frustrated by older generations. “They try to understand, but they don’t,” said 16-year-old Adah Crandall, a climate and anti-freeway activist in Portland, Oregon. “I am scared for my future because of the inaction of adults in the past.”

But, as that Times headline concedes, “stewing and ignoring the problem” won’t ease your excruciating angst. You’re looking for real solutions here. You want to “do something.” Fortunately for you, a whole new mini-profession of psychologists has sprung up to advise you.

I recently learned about this subject in connection with my upcoming college reunion (50th — ouch!). The college was Yale — I know, one of the looniest institutions on the planet. One of my classmates got wind that they were planning some kind of panel on climate change, and he suggested me for the occasion. But it turned out that the organizers (surprise!) had something different in mind. Another one of our classmates, a guy named Mick Smyer, is one of these psychologists specializing in the “climate anxiety” game, and they have turned the panel over to him. It appears that Smyer is going to offer his services to help us all “cope.”

The hypothesis here that you are required to believe to participate in the game is that there is a climate crisis and the cause is human CO2 emissions. If you believe that, one would think you might be concerned, for example, that China has permitted some 47 GW of new coal-fired power plant capacity for construction this year alone. At the emissions rate given by our EIA for coal-fired power plants of 2.23 pounds of CO2 per kWh, that would mean that China’s new coal power plants just this year are going to be emitting around 460 million tons of CO2 annually once they are up and running.

April 28, 2022 6:48 AM  
Anonymous when will Dems apologize to blacks for failing inner city economies, failing inner city schools, and racist inner city police departments that they have overseen for decades? said...


Against that, what does Dr. Smyer suggest to ameliorate your “climate anxiety”? My classmate who had proposed me for the panel did some digging into Smyer’s prior pronouncements, and came up with a list of proposed actions that he suggests you can take, along with supposed CO2 emissions savings from each. Here are some of my favorites (figures in parentheses are supposed annual CO2 emissions reductions in tons):

Replace the air filters on your air conditioning system regularly (0.30). Well, at least he’s not proposing to get rid of air conditioning entirely. That would be beyond the pale.

Composting. I’m not sure exactly how that’s supposed to work here in Manhattan.

Buy fresh food one time more per week (buying all your food from local sources saves up to 100 tons per year). I find that estimate of a 100 ton annual CO2 emission reduction highly dubious, but put that aside. Has Smyer noticed that around this part of the country we go a full six months per year (about November to April) without any local fresh fruits or vegetables of any kind? And then there are things like coffee, oranges, avocados, rice, etc., etc., that are just not grown around here. I guess it’s back to carrots, turnips and potatoes in the root cellar.

Recycle. Aren’t we all doing that already under mandatory government edict?

Move to a smaller home. Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter — voluntary poverty. I’ll bet you could save even more by going into a monastery.

And here’s my personal favorite: Turning water off while brushing teeth can save 0.05 tons per year. That will really put those ChiComs in their place! Unfortunately, as I understand it, here in Manhattan the water system up to six stories works by pure gravity and without electricity.


As absurd as Dr. Smyer’s proposals may appear, he has nothing on Ms. Peterson of the New York Times. For her article, she tracked down something called the Good Grief Network:

The nonprofit Good Grief Network offers support for climate distress through a 10-step process, introduced at weekly meetings that culminate with a commitment to “reinvest in meaningful efforts.” . . . “We don’t see any single approach as a silver bullet” against climate anxiety and inaction, said Sarah Jornsay-Silverberg, the Good Grief Network’s executive director. Instead, the goal is to do things, small or large, that mean something to you, and reflect the internal shift in your outlook.

So what’s an example of a concrete step? Here’s what one subject of the article did:

Using noncombustible materials and sustainable defensible space, they have rebuilt. And next to their new home, they planted a flowering tipu tree, which can spread a canopy of shade within just a few years. “The idea was, we’re not going to be defeated by this thing,” he said.

OK then. People just seem to have a burning desire to confess their sins — real or imagined — and seek some kind of atonement.

April 28, 2022 6:48 AM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland ... LOL !.. said...

Immediately following Elon Musk’s official buyout of Twitter, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was back at her podium not only casually mentioning that the Biden administration still works with Big Tech to censor information they don’t like, but also stressing their commitment to “reforming” Section 230 and pushing new antitrust laws.

Democrats’ calls for Section 230 reform are nothing new. President Joe Biden has gone on record saying it should be eliminated, and past reforms have passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. The partisanship arises in the very different reasons Republicans and Democrats have for wanting 230 fixed.

The left doesn’t think Silicon Valley oligarchs do enough to censor speech that Democrats claim to be misinformation. In their view, Section 230 gives Facebook and Twitter too much protection when those companies don’t immediately strip content questioning the efficacy of Covid vaccines, for instance.

It’s for the exact opposite reason that conservatives have long lobbied for reforms to Section 230, which has been weaponized against the right by malign Big Tech websites. Those giants have hidden behind 230’s immunity with the defense that they’re neutral platforms. But then they’ve turned around and proved themselves to be just the opposite: Twitter, Facebook, and the rest are partisan publishers that decide who can speak and what gets published, the same way newspaper editorial boards do.

For example, you’ll remember the Hunter Biden laptop story that came out just 20 days before the 2020 presidential election and contained information damning to then-candidate Joe Biden, specifically that he lied about lacking knowledge of his son’s Ukrainian business dealings.

Neutral platforms, the kind of public forums and common carriers protected by 230, would have let the story remain on their websites and borne no responsibility for it. Facebook and Twitter, however, couldn’t let a piece of hard-hitting journalism unfavorable to their candidate get amplified unhindered, and opted for editorializing. They suppressed and nuked the story, which corporate media have since admitted was legitimate, in true left-wing publisher fashion.

Republican outcry was obviously warranted. Section 230 was never supposed to empower partisan oligarchs to violate the principles of the First Amendment with censorship of their opponents, which Democrat-style reforms would empower them to do with greater ease. GOP lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley got to work on fixing loopholes like the “Good Samaritan” clause, which has empowered Big Tech to censor speech they deem “harassing,” “violent,” or “otherwise objectionable” if they do so in “good faith.”

But when that censorship favors the left, as it did when the Hunter Biden story got suppressed, many of them plus a number of short-sighted libertarians fired back with the predictable “private companies!” retort. Twitter and Facebook are private companies and can thus do whatever they want without violating the First Amendment, they said. “Build your own,” they added. Section 230 is fine, they argued.

April 28, 2022 6:54 AM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland ... LOL !.. said...


That’s why it’s just remarkable how these folks have changed their tune. Yesterday, Section 230 was fine and private companies could do whatever they wanted. But today, democracy hangs in the balance and we need to update Section 230 and our antitrust laws? What changed?

We all know what’s changed. It’s not just that Musk has taken over Twitter — that much is clear — but it’s what the Musk buyout represents: a threat to Democrats’ power. And all their whimpering about it has exposed glaring hypocrisy. Here they are, hoping regulators nuke Musk-owned Twitter, immediately after all their uproar at Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for “bullying” a private company when he sought to remove special privileges for woke, anti-parent Disney.

The hypocrisy is evident in the White House’s “antitrust” absurdity too. Right after Twitter accepted the buyout offer from Musk, who also controls SpaceX and Tesla, Psaki said the administration would “support … enacting antitrust reforms.”

Tesla and SpaceX have nothing to do with Twitter and aren’t monopolies, however, and thus antitrust reforms don’t apply. Meanwhile, the left has no problem with the Amazon mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos — whose company dominates online commerce and also controls major sectors of brick-and-mortar stores, delivery transit, entertainment, production of goods, and artificial intelligence — also buying and controlling legacy media through The Washington Post.

And what about the market domination of YouTube and its owner Google, which have worked together to silence conservative voices and suppress so-called misinformation that later turned out to be true, such as election claims and Covid treatment information? It exposes Democrats’ “antitrust” concerns as pure hogwash.

The whole Musk-Twitter ordeal has reinforced the conservative arguments for fixing Section 230. Namely, Twitter and other tech giants should be treated under the law as common carriers or utilities, just like Verizon or Comcast. As common carriers, they would have no ability to censor Americans based on their political or religious beliefs but they would also share no responsibility for the things those people say. They would serve everyone equally. In that world, it wouldn’t matter one iota who owned them.

The left, however, will never allow this. They must control everything, and they must have the ability to change how they control it and what they do with that control on a whim.

How else would they spread their misinformation about global viruses and their miserable responses to them? How else would they win elections or groom children into a perverted sexual worldview? How else would they favor their own voices on issues like abortion, inflation, health care, voting, vaccines, sex, the border, the military, churches, riots, presidents, or foreign policy without algorithmic manipulation?

Democrats such as the Biden administration don’t really care that much about Section 230 or antitrust, and they certainly don’t care about free speech. They care about power, and they’re afraid Elon Musk isn’t going to let them keep all of it.

April 28, 2022 6:54 AM  
Anonymous Conservatives want free speech, but only when it serves their controlling agenda said...

Texas Residents Sue Over Public Library's Book Ban

A federal lawsuit accuses Llano County officials of censoring library books, including illustrated children's "butt" and "fart" books.

Texas residents allege in a federal lawsuit that Llano County officials are violating their constitutional rights by stripping books from public libraries “because they disagree with the ideas within them.”

The lawsuit filed Monday by seven residents of the central Texas county of about 20,000 residents accuses the county judge, commissioners, library board members and the library systems director of systematically censoring patrons’ right to access material both digitally and on shelves.

The censorship campaign, the suit says, was disguised as a means “to protect the community’s children from graphic sexual and ‘pornographic’ materials. In reality, none of the books targeted by Defendants is pornographic or obscene.”

Books the suit says have been censored include Maurice Sendak’s “In The Night Kitchen,” which features illustrations of a naked child, and children’s books on sexual health. The county also targeted illustrated “fart” and “butt” books, such as “I Need a New Butt!” and “Larry the Farting Leprechaun,” the complaint says.

One of the defendants requested that library children’s books be moved to the adult sections, calling them “pornographic filth” and saying permission from a parent should be required for a child to check them out, according to the suit.

Adult books that were censored included “Caste, The Origins of Our Discontent,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and the memoir “Being Jazz: My Life As A (Transgender) Teen,” by LGBTQ activist Jazz Jennings, according to the suit.

“The censorship that Defendants have imposed on Llano County public libraries is offensive to the First Amendment and strikes at the core of democracy,” the lawsuit states.

The suit portrays the 10 defendants as power-hungry crusaders bent on total control of what library patrons read. They replaced library board members with individuals favoring censorship, held secret meetings, fired a head librarian opposed to the censorship and removed the library system’s entire digital book collection after failing to find a way to censor individual books, the suit says.

“Privately, Defendants have admitted that they are banning books because they disagree with their political viewpoints and dislike their subject matter,” the suit adds.

One defendant, now vice-chair of the library board, says in an email cited in the lawsuit that relocating troubling books was “the only way that I can think of to prohibit future censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”

April 28, 2022 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Conservatives want free speech, but only when it serves their controlling agenda said...

The censorship efforts eventually got the support of Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who in November instructed the library system director to remove “all books that depict any type of sexual activity or questionable nudity” from shelves, the suit says. Cunningham also prohibited librarians from purchasing new books. Cunningham’s office declined to comment, citing the litigation.

The following month, the county’s three libraries were closed for three days so the defendants could conduct a private review of the “appropriateness” of books in the teen and children’s sections. The defendants consulted a list of 850 books that state Rep. Matt Krause, a Republican running for state attorney general, found objectionable, according to the lawsuit.

In January, the suit says, county commissioners voted to dissolve the existing library board and replace it with pro-censorship individuals, including those who had advocated banning health picture books and volumes that appeared on Krause’s list, the suit alleges. The new board closed meetings to the public and staff librarians, and prohibited note-taking for fear that they might be considered public records, the suit claims. Why, that doesn't sound suspicious at all, does it?

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ellen Leonida, told the Texas Tribune that she plans to seek a preliminary injunction this week to get the books back on the shelves and to restore digital access while the lawsuit advances.

“They can’t censor books, unequivocally, based on viewpoints that they disagree with,” Leonida said.

They can if they call it all "grooming."

April 28, 2022 10:02 AM  
Anonymous sayonara, gay agenda! said...


public libraries aren't places where every book ever written is available

they provide reading material, purchased with tax dollars, that the consensus believes is beneficial

this is perfectly appropriate

an objectionable form of censorship would be for the government to confiscate and ban certain books sold at private book stores

again, we see that TTF cannot distinguish betwixt the public and private realms


April 28, 2022 10:41 AM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is doomed..... said...

At a time when President Biden is at 33 percent approval while Congress sits at 21 percent, there’s one politician who is seeing his numbers rise briskly: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.).

Overall, 57 percent of West Virginia voters approve of Manchin’s performance in the Mountain State. That’s a 17-point jump since Joe Biden took office in early 2021. No U.S. senator has seen a bigger increase in support than Manchin. More notably, the former governor has doubled his approval ratings among West Virginia Republicans, with a whopping 69 percent approving of his performance. For context, Biden’s approval in the state sits at 18 percent.

The 57 percent overall approval makes Manchin the country’s most popular Democratic senator in their own state. But how could this be, since he’s been on the other side of this kind of media coverage:

“Manchin deals a devastating blow to Biden and to democracy” — Washington Post

“How Joe Manchin Knifed the Democrats — and Bailed on Saving Democracy” — Rolling Stone

“Joe Manchin’s Incoherent Case for Letting Republicans Destroy Democracy/The most powerful senator ties himself in knots” — New York magazine

“How Joe Manchin Aided Coal, and Earned Millions” — The New York Times

“At every step of his political career, Joe Manchin helped a West Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action,” the Times says in a story published not in the opinion section but in the news section.

Yes, Manchin had the audacity to question the claims by President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that flooding the system with trillions more in new federal spending would lower inflation and the federal deficit. As you may have heard, inflation sits at a 40-year high. And adding so much money to the system, according to many top economists, will only devalue the dollar while pushing inflation even higher.

“Once again, we are witnessing that the threat of inflation is real,” Manchin said after rejecting Biden’s “Build Back Better” spending plan earlier this year. “Inflation taxes are draining the hard-earned wages of every American, and it’s causing real and severe economic pain that can no longer be ignored.”

“We must get serious about the finances of our country,” Manchin added. “It’s time we start acting like stewards of our economy and the money the American people entrust their government with.”

Manchin is echoing President Clinton after Clinton and fellow Democrats took a shellacking in the 1994 midterms, losing 53 seats and ushering in the era of Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) as House speaker. Clinton, due to either self-preservation or good political instincts, would go on to declare that “the era of big government is over” while working with Gingrich to pass welfare reform and a balanced-budget amendment.

April 28, 2022 10:59 AM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is doomed..... said...


Manchin is a true moderate, unlike the phony one in the White House who moved to “Squad Left” upon taking office in an attempt to transform the country despite having no mandate to do that.

So, could Manchin ever win over his party’s progressives, such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), if he did decide to seek the Democratic presidential nomination? Of course not.

But given his appeal with independents and with the kind of Blue Dog Democrats who helped Clinton win reelection quite easily in 1996, Manchin could be far more appealing than any far-left candidate who might try to unseat Biden. And if the current president decides not to seek a second term (a majority of Americans don’t believe he will), then a wide-open primary would be political chaos. And as we learned in 2020, most Democratic voters right now don’t have much appetite for anyone too far from the center.

The 2020 CNN exit polls tell a story that is not widely reflected by traditional media, which is unambiguously biased against the right. Only 24 percent of voters identify as liberal, according to the network’s findings, while 38 percent say they’re conservative; as for those who identify as moderate, that number also stands at 38 percent. Add it all up, and more than three-quarters of Americans say they’re conservative or moderate, while less than one-quarter identify as liberal.

That lines up nicely for Manchin, who in 2021 was ranked as CQ Roll Call’s most bipartisan senator. Its rankings find that he crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP on 38.5 percent of all votes taken in 2020. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who also has been attacked relentlessly as a threat to democracy, came in second.

“I have always prided myself on my efforts to reach across the aisle to work with my colleagues and do what is best for West Virginia and our nation. I am proud this ranking from CQ Roll Call reflects those efforts,” Manchin said in a statement at the time.

Despite all the partisan food fights we see on cable news and on Twitter, Americans ultimately want compromise on major issues such as health care and immigration. Some thought they were getting that with “Uniter-in-Chief” Biden. Instead, they got the opposite. A plurality of Americans now believe Biden has done more to divide the country than bring it together.

The 2024 presidential race will begin in earnest in January 2023 — less than a year from now. It could be a rematch of Trump-Biden. But no one would have predicted Clinton-Trump in 2016, let alone Trump actually winning. So don’t dismiss Manchin as a viable candidate and as the savior of the Democratic Party in two years.

“The Squad” may loathe him, as do many of their allies in the media. But given how poorly the president and Congress are performing, and given how unpopular policies far away from the center-left are, why couldn’t the West Virginian win the nomination?

April 28, 2022 10:59 AM  
Anonymous Constitution: est. 1789, reaffirmed by voters, 2016 said...

how the media lied about Florida's parental rights bill:

https://freebeacon.com/media/watch-the-media-reframe-floridas-parental-rights-in-education-bill/

April 28, 2022 11:59 AM  
Anonymous economy goes full Biden... said...

Gross domestic product unexpectedly declined at a 1.4% annualized pace in the first quarter, marking an abrupt reversal for an economy we had previously reverted to the pre-COVID stage, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a 1% gain for the quarter. GDP measures the output of goods and services in the U.S. for the three-month period.

The news doesn't support hopes that the U.S. can avoid a recession as voters go to the polls in November.

Said Simona Mocuta, chief economist at State Street Global Advisors. “It reminds us of the reality that growth has been great, but things are changing and they won’t be that great going forward.”

The Biden administration's failure to cope with rising Covid omicron infections to start the year hampered activity across the board, while inflation surging at a level not seen since the early 1980s and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, emboldened by Biden's weakness, also contributed to the economic stasis.

Prices increased sharply during the quarter, with the GDP price index deflator rising 8%, following a 7.1% jump in Q4.

A deceleration in private inventory investment weighed on growth. Other restraints came from exports and government spending across state, federal and local governments, as well as rising imports.

An 8.5% pullback in defense spending was a particular drag, knocking one-third of a percentage point off the final GDP reading.

A burgeoning trade deficit helped shave 3.2 percentage points off growth as imports outweighed exports.

Economists see risks of an outright recession rising.

Goldman Sachs sees a chance of negative growth a year from now. Deutsche Bank sees the chance of a “significant recession” hitting the economy in late 2023 and early 2024, the result of a Fed that will have to tighten much more to tamp down inflation than forecasters currently anticipate.

April 28, 2022 12:49 PM  
Anonymous Hey, It's MTG - several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law said...

"they provide reading material, purchased with tax dollars, that the consensus believes is beneficial

this is perfectly appropriate"

Ahh, then removing bibles from libraries is entirely appropriate, given the whole "separation of church and state" thing, and of course all of the rape, incest, murder and genocide that goes on in the bible.

Thanks for clearing that up.

April 28, 2022 1:12 PM  
Anonymous First, you get the books out of the library, then you burn them - what could possibly go wrong? said...

Tennessee Republicans advanced legislation Wednesday that would place more scrutiny over what books are placed in public schools libraries, moments after the bill’s House sponsor said any inappropriate book should be burned.

The measure is just one of several proposals introduced in Tennessee this year designed to impose more scrutiny and transparency in public school libraries amid a national spike in book challenges and bans. School librarians have become the target of scorn from Republican lawmakers pushing for more oversight on materials provided to children — particularly those that touch on racism and LGBTQ issues.

Republican Rep. Jerry Sexton, from Bean Station, introduced a last-minute amendment this week to a school bill that would give the state’s textbook commission — which is made up of politically appointed members — veto power over what books end up on school library shelves. Schools would have to provide the commission a list of their library materials.

Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons, from Nashville, asked Sexton what he would do with books deemed to be inappropriate.

“You going to put them in the street? Light them on fire? Where are they going?” Clemmons asked.

“I don’t have a clue, but I would burn them,” Sexton said on the House floor.

Earlier this year, Sexton had lashed out at librarians during a legislative hearing that included testimony from some who alleged without proof that educators were attempting to “groom” children with sexually explicit materials found in libraries.

“I don’t appreciate what’s going in our libraries, what’s being put in front of our children and shame on you for putting it there,” Sexton said at the time.

Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson, from Knoxville, said the legislation aimed at libraries was taking “Tennessee in a dangerous direction.”

Librarians have countered throughout this debate that schools already have policies in place for parents and educators to review school library books. They stress the need for better resources and possibly adding a state library coordinator to promote literacy and education across the state — which the General Assembly has advanced this year.

Book banning put Tennessee in the national spotlight recently after a rural school board in McMinn County voted unanimously to remove “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the district’s curriculum. Meanwhile, in Williamson County, an affluent region just south of Nashville, school board members agreed to remove “Walk Two Moons” — a book that depicts an American Indian girl’s search for her mother — after parents complained about it.

April 28, 2022 1:21 PM  
Anonymous really love impeachment, wanna shake that tree.... said...


"First, you get the books out of the library, then you burn them - what could possibly go wrong?"

ah, now TTFers are resorting to demagoguery

that's kind of like saying "first you use a knife to slice your orange and then you cut your neighbor's throat- what could possibly go wrong?

truth is, we always decide what is and is not appropriate in public school libraries

you support that

let me know if you'd like examples

right now, you're just flinging crap around because you're mad that society will prevent you from indoctrinating kids with the gay agenda

sorry, Charlie

you're in a backlash now!

April 28, 2022 2:32 PM  
Anonymous The new magic word is "groomer" said...

"truth is, we always decide what is and is not appropriate in public school libraries"

Indeed. That has been going on quietly for decades.

Now the radical right has started flinging around the "grooming" accusation as cover for removing any and all materials they don't like, despite not ever actually showing that any grooming has occurred, or how even some of these materials are indoctrinating people with "teh gayz agenduh."

"Maus" is about the holocaust and "Walk two Moons" is about and Indian girl. And don't even get me started on the math books.

"you're in a backlash now!"

You mean like in Texas, where they're taking the Christian book-banners to court because they got their knickers in a twist about a farting leprechaun?

Don't stand behind any unicorns - it's well known they fart rainbows.

April 28, 2022 3:54 PM  
Anonymous Dems rue the day they nominated Sleepy, Slidin' Biden said...

"Indeed. That has been going on quietly for decades."

indeed, all the decades back to when Ben Franklin started the first library

again, it's not inappropriate for librarians and various stakeholders, aka taxpayers, to have a say in what's appropriate material for children

there are myriad books you would exclude as well

btw, Elon Musk has secular humanists knickers in a twist because he wants adults to have their speech uncensored

yet, they also have their knickers in a twist because the public doesn't want kids exposed to perversion

ever reflect on what a hypocrite you are?

"the "grooming" accusation"

it's more than an accusation

lunatic fringe gay advocates are trying to room young children to a perverted world view

"as cover for removing any and all materials they don't like,"

why would they need to do that?

the composition of library collections paid for by taxpayers is something they don't need an excuse to have an opinion on

"You mean like in Texas, where they're taking the Christian book-banners to court"

who is they?

what "Christians" are "banning books"?

say, you're aren't being purposely vague to avoid further embarrassment for looking stupid, are you?

April 28, 2022 5:09 PM  
Anonymous If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her said...

"the "grooming" accusation"
"it's more than an accusation
lunatic fringe gay advocates are trying to room young children to a perverted world view"

Really?

Please show us a specific example of "lunatic fringe gay advocates are trying to room young children to a perverted world view."

You know, so it doesn't look like you are "being purposely vague to avoid further embarrassment for looking stupid"

A book title and some actual quotes from it would be most helpful.

Otherwise you are accusing lots of innocent LGBTQ people harming children without any evidence.

April 28, 2022 6:54 PM  
Anonymous Hey it's Donald - Has anyone seen my pillow guy? He was supposed to get me back in the Oval Office by now. said...

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's latest quest against the results of the 2020 elections involves filing lawsuits aimed at throwing out voting machines across the United States.

While appearing on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, however, Lindell lashed out at right-wing media outlets whom he accused of ignoring his new crusade.

"Since Friday, since this case dropped, the left media is the ones that have picked it up!" Lindell complained. "You have Business Insider, Newsweek, these guys did articles. Where's Fox News? Where are they to report this?"

Bannon then asked Lindell to speculate on why Fox News and Newsmax have given nothing but "total crickets" on his lawsuit.

"Fox, I believe they're just traitors to the country," he replied. "And I believe Newsmax are cowards. Simple as that -- cowards and traitors, cowards and traitors."

Despite his bold claims, none of Lindell's lawsuits so far have been successful, including a much-hyped effort last year that he promised would get heard by the United States Supreme Court before it eventually petered out with a whimper.

April 28, 2022 7:27 PM  
Anonymous Hey Pillow Guy, maybe Fox News not talking to you has something to do with that $1.3B lawsuit said...

Voting company Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne can move forward, a judge ruled Wednesday, as Dominion and rival company Smartmatic pursue 11 defamation lawsuits over baseless election fraud claims about their voting machines.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols ruled Dominion had a defamation case against Byrne and “that a reasonable jury could find Byrne acted with actual malice” in spreading provably false assertions about Dominion and its voting machines.

Dominion sued Byrne, who has become known for spreading election conspiracy theories after stepping down from Overstock in 2019, in August, alleging the businessman “manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen” using Dominion voting machines, and accused him of doing so in order to boost his own investments in blockchain voting technology.

Denver-based Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January against pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who has been the most prominent person spreading the fraud claims, seeking $1.3 billion in damages, and Nichols denied Powell’s motion to dismiss the case in August.

Nichols also ruled lawsuits Dominion filed against attorney Rudy Giuliani, MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell can move forward—though the cases against them and Powell may not go to trial until late 2023 or 2024, based on a schedule the judge set in early March.

Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021 alleging the network had knowingly spread false news about its machines to improve failing ratings, and a Delaware state judge denied Fox’s motion to dismiss the case in December.

Dominion sued One America News Network (OANN) and anchors Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb in federal court and Newsmax in Delaware state court in August, alleging the two far-right networks promoted fraud allegations on their network knowing they were false and “​​helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings, and Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by rigging the vote.”

Smartmatic sued Fox News and its anchors Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo in February 2021, alleging the defendants “engaged in a conspiracy to spread disinformation about Smartmatic,” and New York Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen ruled in March that the $2.7 billion lawsuit can move forward against those defendants.

Smartmatic sued MyPillow and Lindell in January for defamation and deceptive trade practices in federal court, alleging the CEO spread “lies” about the company and “intentionally stoked the fires of xenophobia and party-divide for the noble purpose of selling his pillows.”

Smartmatic also sued OANN in federal court and Newsmax in Delaware state court in November, alleging both networks “reported a lie” and spread fraud claims about the company—whose machines were only used in California in 2020—knowing they were false; those lawsuits and Lindell’s suit are still pending.

April 28, 2022 7:32 PM  
Anonymous A Major ‘Alt-Right’ Figure Just Disavowed White Nationalism said...

Evan McLaren, who played a pivotal role in the American white supremacist “alt-right” movement and attended a deadly fascist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, published a surprise statement Thursday renouncing his past racist and anti-Semitic activism.

“I am not and never will be connected to the far-right again,” McLaren wrote in the statement, published on Substack. “My revulsion for conservatism and the political right wing is total. I reject and disavow my past actions, views, and associations.”

In his statement, McLaren, 37, said he is sorry for his white nationalist activism ― which he described as “a desperate, foolish mistake, damaging to others, to myself, and to society” — but says he doesn’t expect, and isn’t asking for, any kind of absolution.

The next day, McLaren and Spencer participated in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the largest American white supremacist gathering in over a generation, which culminated with a neo-Nazi driving his car into a crowd of antifascist protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 people. McLaren was arrested during the day’s events and later convicted on a charge of failing to disperse from a park after being ordered to do so by police.

“Brothers and sisters across the alt-right — this is a taste of how it feels to be the tip of the spear entering our civilizational crisis,” McLaren tweeted a day after the violence in Charlottesville.

During his tenure at NPI, McLaren frequently talked to the media, sometimes attempting to soften the alt-right’s image.

“We’re not Nazis. We’re not Confederates. We’re not KKK members,” he told PennLive in 2017, weeks after marching alongside Nazis, neo-Confederates and KKK members in Charlottesville. “We’re dedicated to the preservation of white heritage and identity. We’re talking about European culture and identity.” McLaren clarified in other statements at the time that he did not consider Jewish people to be white.

Through late 2017 and into 2018, McLaren helped organize speaking engagements for Spencer at college campuses, including Michigan State University and the University of Florida, events that both involved violence. Following the event in Florida, three fans of Spencer were arrested after one of them fired a gun at protesters.

Around this time, McLaren, originally from central Pennsylvania, passed the state bar exam and was poised to begin practicing law. “Hail victory!” he tweeted in celebration, using the English translation of the Nazi cry “Sieg heil!”

“I apologize to everyone who was affected in any way by my past activities,” he wrote in the Substack statement. “The main purpose of this statement, however, is not to apologize. I do not realistically expect to repair my public reputation, to the extent that it meaningfully exists, or to heal rifts with people I have alienated. I don’t hope or expect to be forgiven.”

In 2017 McLaren was named executive director of the National Policy Institute, a racist think tank — funded by a reclusive millionaire — that sought to give white supremacism an intellectual veneer so as to better fold explicit ethno-nationalism into the mainstream Republican Party.

April 29, 2022 12:27 AM  
Anonymous A Major ‘Alt-Right’ Figure Just Disavowed White Nationalism said...

At NPI, McLaren was the right-hand man of the group’s leader, Richard Spencer, and helped organize a series of events that became flashpoints in the rise of the so-called “alt-right,” the American fascist movement that proliferated online during the ascendancy of former President Donald Trump.

McLaren and Spencer were among the white men who infamously marched with torches across the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville the night of Aug. 11, 2017, chanting “You will not replace us!” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil!”

The next day, McLaren and Spencer participated in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, the largest American white supremacist gathering in over a generation, which culminated with a neo-Nazi driving his car into a crowd of antifascist protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 people. McLaren was arrested during the day’s events and later convicted on a charge of failing to disperse from a park after being ordered to do so by police.

“Brothers and sisters across the alt-right — this is a taste of how it feels to be the tip of the spear entering our civilizational crisis,” McLaren tweeted a day after the violence in Charlottesville.

During his tenure at NPI, McLaren frequently talked to the media, sometimes attempting to soften the alt-right’s image.

“We’re not Nazis. We’re not Confederates. We’re not KKK members,” he told PennLive in 2017, weeks after marching alongside Nazis, neo-Confederates and KKK members in Charlottesville. “We’re dedicated to the preservation of white heritage and identity. We’re talking about European culture and identity.” McLaren clarified in other statements at the time that he did not consider Jewish people to be white.

Through late 2017 and into 2018, McLaren helped organize speaking engagements for Spencer at college campuses, including Michigan State University and the University of Florida, events that both involved violence. Following the event in Florida, three fans of Spencer were arrested after one of them fired a gun at protesters.

Around this time, McLaren, originally from central Pennsylvania, passed the state bar exam and was poised to begin practicing law. “Hail victory!” he tweeted in celebration, using the English translation of the Nazi cry “Sieg heil!”

But by the summer of 2018, McLaren says he’d started to grow disillusioned with NPI, an organization he described as an “utter wreck and a mess.” He also described Spencer as “toxic.”

McLaren resigned from NPI in August 2018 and later moved to Norway, where, he says, he slowly began “deconstructing and thinking through” white nationalism, a movement that he says he realized “was leading nowhere and is leading nowhere.”

McLaren said his eventual rejection of white nationalism doesn’t mean he’s now a moderate conservative or Republican. Rather, he sees white nationalism and conservatism in America as inextricably linked movements that feed off of and energize each other. (This relationship, he thinks, has intensified since he left the alt-right.) He describes his views today as leftist.

April 29, 2022 12:33 AM  
Anonymous A Major ‘Alt-Right’ Figure Just Disavowed White Nationalism said...

A handful of other prominent alt-right figures involved in the Charlottesville rally later claimed to renounce their far-right activism. Jeff Schoep, former leader of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement, and Matt Heimbach, former leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party, both professed to disavow white nationalism.

However, those disavowals drew intense skepticism from observers across the political spectrum, and with good reason. Evidence emerged in a Charlottesville-related lawsuit that suggested Schoep was still involved in the movement, and Heimbach eventually appeared to abandon any pretense of having given up on extremism -- relaunching his hate group under a different name, and telling one media outlet: "Do I particularly like Judaism as a religion? No."

Over the past few years, McLaren has kept a low, offline profile at his new home in Norway, where he lives with his wife and child. He declined to name his employer, but said he works at a “production” job. He listens to leftist podcasts like “Majority Report” and “Some More News” and focuses his time on his family, his hobbies and fixing his house.

McLaren said that a few recent incidents, which he didn’t describe in detail, compelled him to break his silence on Thursday ― even if, as his statement acknowledges, “it’s likely that the best move for someone who messed up as badly as I did is simply to go away and be quiet.”

“That people may assume I still hold radical views or remain actively connected to far-right political causes concerns me,” McLaren wrote in the statement. “I would understand, for example, if people in my local community who learned about me might worry about what I am up to, whether I hold and promote extremist views, or whether I’ll resume disruptive political activity in the future. Possibly worse, in my daily life I occasionally encounter Trump supporters, closet racists, and right-wingers of various stripes who learn about me and assume that I am some sort of sympathetic fellow traveler.”

McLaren’s statement concludes with the hope that in the future, people who search his name online might, after reading all the news stories about him, also find his disavowal of it all.

“My only purpose here,” he wrote, “is that, on those occasions when someone happens to explore the Internet search results related to my name, they might also find this statement as an indication that, while I was a source of toxic energy and opinions in the past, I am at least not that anymore.”

April 29, 2022 12:33 AM  
Anonymous maybe Hillary and Trump should run again in 2024.. wonder who would win? LOL!!!!!!!....... said...


"Please show us a specific example of "lunatic fringe gay advocates are trying to room young children to a perverted world view.""

oh, that would be pointless because we don't agree on what a "perverted world view" would be

"You know, so it doesn't look like you are "being purposely vague to avoid further embarrassment for looking stupid""

well, I didn't pretend I was citing a specific incident

you did - and still haven't replied about something you said was happening in Texas

my point is that homosexuality is perverted and lunatic fringe gay advocates are trying to groom young kids into considering homosexuality is normal

do you deny that?

because if that isn't happening, why all the pearl clutching among drag queens about the parental rights bill in Florida that bans it?

"you are accusing lots of innocent LGBTQ people harming children without any evidence"

I think you are confused

I'm accusing lunatic fringe gay advocates of doing that

most lunatic fringe gay advocates aren't gay at all, just crazed liberals looking for the latest way to undermine civilized society

"Hey it's Donald - Has anyone seen my pillow guy?"

frankly, the only place I ever hear about this guy is here

I remember a few years back he had some commercials on cable but I generally fast forward through them

I also heard he supports Trump

and now you're saying he's paid for election lawsuits alleging irregularities with the 2020 election

so what?

Dems almost always challenge close elections and the funds come from their wealthy supporters

meh

truth is, Dems used the pandemic as an excuse to loosen quality control over elections so that it is almost impossible to prove anything

there is no point trying to go back and undo it

and I agree it's better for the country to move on and enact voter integrity measures for 2022, which is what's happening

still, the doubt surrounding the 2020 election is the result of Dem manipulations

"A Major ‘Alt-Right’ Figure Just Disavowed White Nationalism"

other than a fringe, all Americans oppose white nationalism

TTFers have been trying desperately to associate Republicans with neo-Nazis for decades

you can go back to when John McCain was the nominee and you will find TTF posts alleging his supporters were neo-Nazis

it's all very absurd

but just so you don't miss a chance for self-reflection, consider this:

it's the same excuse the evil Vladimir Putin has used to invade Ukraine

did he get the idea from you?

April 29, 2022 5:58 AM  
Anonymous on the advice of "experts", for the first time in history, we quarantined the healthy instead of the sick - it didn't go well said...

hey, here's a little TTFism I missed

I said:

"they provide reading material, purchased with tax dollars, that the consensus believes is beneficial

this is perfectly appropriate"

a lunatic fringe gay advocate made an attempt at trying to argue against rationality and said:

"Ahh, then removing bibles from libraries is entirely appropriate, given the whole "separation of church and state" thing, and of course all of the rape, incest, murder and genocide that goes on in the bible."

well, to begin with, the consensus among the public is that the Bible is beneficial

indeed, references so permeate our common culture and history that it is difficult to see how someone could call themselves educated without reading it

you would simply be clueless

and, meantime, life outside would go on all around you

as for "all of the rape, incest, murder and genocide that goes on in the bible", homosexuality is there too

but not in amoral context

the books that would not be in children's libraries are those that try to normalize homosexuality

the public consensus is that having such books in the children's library is not beneficial

private libraries and bookstores are free to stock them, as are the regular section of public libraries

but taxpayer funds shouldn't go to exposing young kids to a perverted world view!

April 29, 2022 6:20 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Joe Biden and his family are not above the law said...

The news that the US economy unexpectedly shrank over the first quarter of the year is an absolute body blow to Democrats already reeling amid growing economic concerns ahead of the 2022 midterm election.

The country's gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 1.4% between January and March -- a stunning reversal from the 6.9% GDP growth that the US recorded in the final quarter of 2021. (The GDP is seen as a broad guide to the overall health of a nation's economy.)

And in a decidedly ill omen, the GDP shrinkage was the worst performance of the measure since the economy went into recession amid the shutting down of the country in the spring of 2020.

Addressing recession fears on Thursday, Slidin' Joe Biden, as clueless as ever, said: "Well, I'm not concerned about recession."

Thanks Joe. We all feel much better now!

The GDP news comes on the heels of newly released polling data from Gallup that suggested that economy confidence is extremely low among the American public.

More than four in ten (42%) of Americans said that economic conditions in America were "poor," while another 38% said that they were only "fair" in Gallup's April survey. Just 2% said economic conditions were "excellent," while 18% said they were "good."

Congressional Republicans now have a 10-point lead in the generic ballot test ahead of November’s mid-term elections, according to a new poll from The Federalist and Susquehanna Polling & Research - that was taken before the shocking news yesterday that GDP FELL 1.4%!!!!!!!.

The new poll found that 49 percent of likely voters would vote for Republicans if the elections were held today, versus just 39 percent who said they would pull the lever for the Democrat candidate. In a previous poll released by The Federalist in February, Republicans had a 47-41 lead in the generic ballot test. Additionally, the new poll found widespread support for anti-groomer laws and Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover bid and widespread opposition to attempts to force female athletes to compete against men who claim to be women.

The poll found that Slidin' Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to just 39 percent, with 54 percent of likely voters saying they disapproved of Slidin' Joe Biden’s job performance thus far, for a net disapproval rating of 15 percent. In The Federalist’s February poll, 42 percent of voters approved of Slidin' Joe Biden’s job performance while 52 percent disapproved.

April 29, 2022 6:34 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Joe Biden and his family are not above the law said...


Slidin' Joe Biden’s numbers didn’t get much better when voters were asked to rate his performance on specific issues. According to the poll, 52 percent disapproved of Slidin' Joe Biden’s handling of the illegal immigration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, 56 percent disapproved of his handling of record-high gas prices, 61 percent disapproved of Slidin' Joe Biden’s handling of inflation, and 54 percent disapproved of his handling of crime throughout the country.

Slidin' Joe Biden’s personal favorability ratings weren’t much better according to the poll, with 43 percent of respondents saying they had a favorable opinion of Biden and 52 percent saying they had an unfavorable opinion of him. In contrast, 45 percent of voters said they had a favorable opinion of former President Donald Trump, while 46 percent said their opinion of him was unfavorable.

When asked about their opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., just 31 percent of voters said they had a favorable opinion of her. Vice President Kamala Harris is 15 points underwater on the favorability question, with 38 percent saying they had a favorable opinion of her compared to 53 percent who said their opinion of Harris was unfavorable.

Disapproval of Slidin' Joe Biden and his policy agenda cuts across party lines. Fifty-nine percent of independents disapprove of the job Slidin' Joe Biden has done as president, and 63 percent of independents disapprove of how he has handled inflation. Even among self-described progressive liberals, 56 percent disapprove of Slidin' Joe Biden’s handling of inflation.

Voters also seem to be deeply pessimistic about the state of the economy, the poll found. A whopping 75 percent of respondents said they expected the U.S. economy to be in a recession within the next six to 12 months. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed also said they believed the economy had gotten worse over the last six months.

April 29, 2022 6:34 AM  
Anonymous Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Goresuch laugh over a coupla of brewskies every happy hour... said...

Over the last month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his like-minded legislature have escalated a feud with the Walt Disney Company. Last week, the state stripped Disney of its unique land privileges and tax advantages. What began over a contested Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law has grown into a cautionary tale in corporate woke.

The law prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity lessons in kindergarten through third grade and — this feature has been far less publicized — forbids school personnel from concealing “healthcare services” for older kids from their parents. Dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by media partisans, the law has become a parents’ rights lightning rod.

Pressured by the Human Rights Campaign and woke employees, unable to dodge the issue, Disney chief executive Bob Chapek unwisely capitulated to the activists: “It is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights.”

“You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry,” he added. “We are increasing our support for advocacy groups to combat similar legislation in other states.” The president of Disney’s General Entertainment Karey Burke, in charge of content, has announced that upcoming projects will feature 50 percent LGBTQIA and racial minorities characters.

For those raised on a different, sunnier, apolitical Disney, and attached to its characters and magic kingdoms, these new corporate obligations feel like a betrayal or a double cross.

As it happens, the Biden White House also “condemns the proliferation of dangerous anti-transgender legislative attacks” and endorses “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents. For progressives, “gender-affirming care,” the current term of art for altering sex with puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery, has become a hill to die on.

“The political games and harsh and cruel attempts at laws, or laws that we’re seeing in some states like Florida, that is not a reflection of the country,” wept press secretary Jen Psaki. In fact, limiting the LGBT blitzkrieg in schools has vast popular traction and resonance.

Sex education is a perennially controversial “health” subject. If schools are stuck with state-mandated curricula, public disagreements over content, latitude, and candor are inevitable. “The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit,” Friedrich Nietzsche once said, and this is never so true as in adolescence and young adulthood (and not so true in first grade). There is nothing more human than sexuality, and each era and culture makes elaborate judgments about what is permitted and taboo.

If anything, misguided emphasis by adults on genital sex in elementary schools is confusing and invasive to children. Especially in public places like the classroom, where kids are ever vigilant for teacher and peer approval, violations of privacy and ridicule can be scarring, humiliating, and contemptuous of home-held values.

Private schools can and typically do minimize “health” and “emotional” lessons. They explain the mechanics of reproduction in science and biology courses, leaving the rest to parents and their agents, instructional media, and precocious classmates. To be sure, many tony prep schools are right now pursuing queer voices and gender rapture, but that is very new, less than a decade old, and is mainly style and live-action roleplaying.

Even the most levelheaded teachers are under great pressure to accept every family, child and lifestyle uncritically. As a result, educators and school boards speak in neutral, stilted, legalistic ways that will hold up in court. They learn to identify and object to all impositions of “cultural superiority.” Moral education, they say, is “fighting racism” or “respecting differences.”

Yet sex radicals and sympathetic educators welcome conflict, claiming trauma to silence their critics. San Francisco’s LGBT+ coalition and its allies dominate the district’s official order of business.

April 29, 2022 9:47 AM  
Anonymous Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Goresuch laugh over a coupla of brewskies every happy hour... said...


The view that families, clergy, and non-school agencies should monitor juvenile sexuality is not what guidance counselors, psychologists, emotional fitness advisers, nutritionists, and self-esteem facilitators want to hear. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, National Association of School Nurses, and the National Wellness Institute — “A society that truly applies a wellness approach as a pathway to optimal living is by nature inclusive and multicultural” ­— have vocational and financial interests in current therapies and elixirs, however lame or toxic.

The Sex Information and Education Council (SEICUS) — the longtime teen contraception, abortion and AIDS “awareness” advocacy — pushes Sex Ed for Social Change, “working to dismantle the systems of power and oppression which perpetuate disparate sexual and reproductive health outcomes and incubate stigma and shame around sex and sexuality across the intersections of age, race, size, gender, gender identity and expression, class, sexual orientation, and ability.”

Corporations like Disney add to the problem when key employees demand their company ventilate contested political views, and in Disney’s case, positions at odds with its entertainment business, audience preferences, shareholder interests, and a venerable brand.

In not caving to Disney’s dicta, in standing up for beleaguered parents — as did Glenn Youngkin in Virginia — DeSantis demonstrates incisive political instincts. This is not the first time. He got it right on masking, leaving the Covid tyrants sputtering at his composure.

Withdrawing special privileges to compel a uniquely influential corporation to cease and desist its political meddling is a bold strategy. DeSantis is well aware that his move invites judicial review of state power. (A Harvard Law School grad and military lawyer in Iraq, he was briefly a high school history teacher.)

Disney is not going to pick up its vast real-estate holdings and move. According to the New York Times, it can apply to reestablish its special designation. Does the company have the capacity to acknowledge its excesses? So far, Disney’s unhappy position provides an object lesson in the perils of woke capitalism.

Whatever the outcome, DeSantis can rest secure that parents nationwide support his resolve, and unlike the Biden administration, see “gender-affirming care” as a crime against children and nature

April 29, 2022 9:49 AM  
Anonymous GOPers hate for LGBT people is evident said...

Haters "see “gender-affirming care” as a crime against children and nature"

Loving parents support their children and don't support conversions therapy like Peter Spriggs did:

"“I certainly hope that this administration will pull back from some of the aggressive activism that the Obama administration engaged in,” said Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, a powerful conservative lobbying group in Washington that is active in supporting sexual reorientation efforts.

President Obama’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy publicly stated that “‘conversion therapy’ is not sound medical practice” and that such programs “are harmful and are not appropriate therapeutic practices.”

“Conversion therapy’ has been outlawed for licensed mental health providers in California, Oregon, New Jersey, Vermont, Illinois and the District of Colombia, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group.

The Family Research Council and Sprigg have helped fight legislative proposals in 20 other states that would make gay “conversion therapy” illegal.

“They certainly should not be outlawed. They certainly should not be prohibited by law,” Sprigg said in an interview to be broadcast this Friday on the ABC News program “20/20” in an investigation of gay “conversion therapy” programs.

“As a Christian, I believe that the Bible teaches that to choose to engage in homosexual conduct is a sin,” he said, adding that he believes therapy can cause people to make different choices."

Even though thousands of people have been harmed by so-called "conversion therapy" and ex-gay ministries have folded and asked for forgiveness.

https://time.com/3065495/9-ex-leaders-of-the-gay-conversion-therapy-movement-apologize/

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2013/june/alan-chambers-apologizes-to-gay-community-exodus.html

https://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/conversion_therapy_advocate_issues_formal_apology_renounces_ex_gay_past/

In fact Peter Sprigg, CRC's advocate against the MCPS sex ed curriculum, has said, "there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior."

"MATTHEWS: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?

SPRIGG: Well, I certainly...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I‘m just asking you, should we outlaw gay behavior?

SPRIGG: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the sodomy laws in this country, was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.

MATTHEWS: So, we should outlaw gay behavior?

SPRIGG: Yes. "

April 29, 2022 10:17 AM  
Anonymous breaking news: the GOP controls the Senate .... said...


"Haters "see “gender-affirming care” as a crime against children and nature"

Loving parents support their children"

yes, loving parents do support their children

which is why loving parents would stop kids from making a fateful decision before they are old enough to appreciate the implications

parental support for “gender-affirming care” is a euphemism for criminal-level parental irresponsibility

you know most people would agree. which is why you spend the rest of your comment in a change of subject

too late

lunatic fringe gay advocates have badly overplayed their hand and won't recover from this backlash in this generation

did you he GOP controls the Senate right now?

Twenty-five months into the pandemic, Capitol Hill saw yet another week sullied by COVID.

Fresh off a two-week recess, lawmakers returned to Washington on Monday with plenty of pressing business to attend to: nominations to assess, aid for Ukraine to appropriate and coronavirus relief funding to broker.

But a flurry of COVID infections among Democrats on Tuesday complicated life for the majority party, which has only Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote to fall back on in the evenly split and bitterly partisan Senate.

Harris said Tuesday that she had tested positive and would quarantine at Number One Observatory Circle, the vice president’s residence.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, both tested positive, too.

As quick as an antigen test, Republicans effectively had a 50-to-48 majority in the Senate, the virus had vanquished hopes of a normal return, and a new shadow fell on urgent work ahead.

The cases also raised questions about how long a heavily vaccinated President Biden can dodge infection, and injected COVID jitters into this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a gathering of about 2,600.

April 29, 2022 11:16 AM  
Anonymous if the globe is warm, why is the air so cool?............ said...


Good news!

Yet another investigation into Donald Trump has come up empty.

Which means the gay-friendliest President, like ever, will be able to run for President in 2024!

Time to get out your MAGA hats!!!!!!!!

When some two dozen New Yorkers filed into a Manhattan courthouse this week to finish out their grand jury service, the case against a man who would have been the world’s most prominent criminal defendant was no longer before them.

That man, Donald J. Trump, was facing potential criminal charges from the grand jury this year over his business practices. But in the weeks since the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, stopped presenting evidence to the jurors about Mr. Trump, new signs have emerged that the former president will not be indicted in Manhattan in the foreseeable future — if at all.

At least three of the witnesses once central to the case have either not heard from the district attorney’s office in months, or have not been asked to testify, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

In recent weeks, a prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office who played a key role in the investigation has stopped focusing on a potential case against Mr. Trump, other people with knowledge of the inquiry said — a move that followed the resignation earlier this year of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.

And the remaining prosecutors working on the Trump investigation have abandoned the “war room” they used to prepare for their grand jury presentation early this year, the people said, leaving behind an expansive office suite and conference room on the 15th floor of the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan.

The grand jury’s expiration at the end of the month does not preclude prosecutors from impaneling another jury, but the developments underscore the reduced possibility that Mr. Trump will face charges under Mr. Bragg, who along with several other prosecutors had concerns about proving the case. Some people close to the inquiry believe that it will not result in an indictment of the former president unless a witness cooperates unexpectedly — a long shot in an investigation that has been running for more than three years

April 29, 2022 11:38 AM  
Anonymous Too hot to grow wheat said...

NEW DELHI (AP) — An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields, raising questions about how the country will balance its domestic needs with ambitions to increase exports and make up for shortfalls due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Gigantic landfills in India’s capital New Delhi have caught fire in recent weeks. Schools in eastern Indian state Odisha have been shut for a week and in neighboring West Bengal, schools are stocking up on oral rehydration salts for kids. On Tuesday, Rajgarh, a city of over 1.5 million people in central India, was the country’s hottest, with daytime temperatures peaking at 46.5 degrees Celsius (114.08 Fahrenheit). Temperatures breached the 45 C (113 F) mark in nine other cities.

But it was the heat in March — the hottest in India since records first started being kept in 1901 — that stunted crops. Wheat is very sensitive to heat, especially during the final stage when its kernels mature and ripen. Indian farmers time their planting so that this stage coincides with India’s usually cooler spring.

Climate change has made India’s heat wave hotter, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College of London. She said that before human activities increased global temperatures, heat waves like this year’s would have struck India once in about half a century.

“But now it is a much more common event — we can expect such high temperatures about once in every four years,” she said.

India’s vulnerability to extreme heat increased 15% from 1990 to 2019, according to a 2021 report by the medical journal The Lancet. It is among the top five countries where vulnerable people, like the old and the poor, have the highest exposure to heat. It and Brazil have the the highest heat-related mortality in the world, the report said.

Farm workers like Baldev Singh are among the most vulnerable. Singh, a farmer in Sangrur in northern India’s Punjab state, watched his crop shrivel before his eyes as an usually cool spring quickly shifted to unrelenting heat. He lost about a fifth of his yield. Others lost more.

Punjab is India’s “grain bowl” and the government has encouraged cultivation of wheat and rice here since the 1960s. It is typically the biggest contributor to India’s national reserves and the government had hoped to buy about a third of this year’s stock from the region. But government assessments predict lower yields this year, and Devinder Sharma, an agriculture policy expert in northern Chandigarh city said he expected to get 25% less.

The story is the same in other major wheat-producing states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

“I am afraid the worst is yet to come,” Singh said.

April 29, 2022 12:26 PM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...

yeah, those Indians need to wise up and stop burning so much coal

here in America, our carbon output keeps dropping and it's freezing today!

April 29, 2022 12:48 PM  
Anonymous economy goes full Biden said...

A measure that the Federal Reserve focuses on to gauge inflation rose in March, likely cementing the central bank’s intention to hike interest rates by half a percentage in May.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which measures costs that consumers pay across a wide swath of items and accounts for how behavior changes in response to market dynamics, increased 5.2% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Including volatile food and energy prices, the PCE index accelerated by 6.6%, the fastest pace since January 1982. Headline inflation was up 0.9% from February, much faster than the previous 0.5% increase.

April 29, 2022 9:12 PM  
Anonymous i wonder how long her sentence will be.... said...


Evidence continues to mount that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to launder fraudulent opposition research through U.S. intelligence agencies.

Newly published internal emails reveal that before Fusion GPS hired Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, the opposition-research firm began peddling several of the same Russia collusion lies that the former MI6 agent would later detail in the Steele dossier. This fact highlights a significant aspect of the Spygate scandal that deserves further focus and condemnation: Democrats’ outrageous exploitation of intelligence credentials and connections to launder scurrilous accusations against a political enemy.

Since early 2018, when the then-Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes exposed in a four-page memorandum evidence that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2016 presidential election cycle, Americans open to reality have been slowly learning of the breadth of the Spygate scandal.

Attention during this time rightly focused first on FISA abuse and the FBI’s use of unverified “intel” to obtain a court order to surveil former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. As the scandal continued to unravel, the categories of impropriety multiplied, from deep-staters illegally leaking to the media to build the collusion narrative and later to force the appointment of a special counsel, to the selection of the “right people” in the form of rabid partisans to staff the Crossfire Hurricane team.

Another underlying aspect of the scandal only became clear recently with the prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. Proceedings in Special Counsel John Durham’s false statement criminal case against Sussmann reveal Democrats paid credentialed individuals connected to U.S. intelligence agencies to pass, to both the press and the government, invented evidence of Trump colluding with Russia

April 29, 2022 10:27 PM  
Anonymous have a nice weekend, ladies and germs,,, said...


As Joe Biden’s Hindenburg of a presidency continues its fiery descent into historically low popularity, the whiz kids at the White House think they have a solution. Their answer, amazingly, seems to be to double down on their cavalcade of failed policies and get Mumbly Joe out in front of the American people more.

That’s right, the man who rode to the presidency hiding in his basement is supposed to electrify voters and save the Democrats in the midterm.

But the headwinds faced by the party of Jefferson and Jackson are not stylistic. This isn’t a messaging problem, its a policy problem. It’s several policy problems.

Take education. At a time when Republicans are having electoral success taking aim at critical race theory and gender ideology in our schools, the White House’s answer is to say that none of it is even happening, a demonstrable lie to almost everyone with a kid in a public school. All of this while Biden is telling teachers they, not parents, should decide what kids learn: “They are not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.” Just utterly erasing the influence of outraged suburban moms who are flocking to the GOP. Let’s just pretend Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia for this exact reason.

On the economy, inflation is so high that a trip to the grocery store almost requires taking out a second mortgage. Biden’s answer: To spend and print more money, which is obviously how we got here in the first place. Meanwhile the Gross Domestic Product is in the red by 1.4% all while the president pretends he’s doing a fantastic job with his American comeback. In addressing this stark decline in the economy the president blamed “technical factors.” Technical factors? This is meaningless gibberish at a time when Americans are financially suffering.

Another move the Democrats are pondering, which seems designed specifically to piss off every American without a college education, is the forgiveness of student loan debt. Every plumber who decided not to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree in Gender Studies would pony up to pay the tab for those who did.

Down on the border, to the extent we even have a border, the administration wants to abandon Title 42, the last vestige of Donald Trump’s effective policies, and throw open the gates to illegal migrants, gang members, terrorists, and deadly drugs. Despite poll after poll showing people want a stronger border, Biden’s “plan” is to make it easier to transfer illegal immigrants around the country.

The list of bad issues for Biden is a CVS receipt of crime, rising gas prices and hapless foreign policy — and that doesn’t even include his constant gaffes and the White House having to walk back every other thing that comes out of the president’s mouth.

It honestly seems as though the Democrats want to lose. How else is there to explain their absolute refusal to pivot on anything? They are like a blackjack player raising the bet when they already busted. There have been no firings or resignations, not a single significant policy shift on anything, the polls are in the tank and the Democrats want to send Joe Biden all across the country to say, actually, I’m doing great!

Maybe they have already thrown in the midterm towel in anticipation of a mighty red wave. Maybe they have admitted to themselves that Biden’s reelection prospects are dimmer than dusk. Maybe they really think the best thing they can do is fill up their remaining months in power with their woebegotten wish list of progressive priorities and the wishes of the American people be damned. If the White House made adjustments to any of the parade of policy nightmares listed above they might catch a spark, they might create some energy and support.

But they won’t, and so the slow motion car wreck continues apace. The only polling and electoral question left is how low can they go? At this rate, they are far, far from the bottom.

April 30, 2022 6:28 AM  
Anonymous They're good people, on both sides said...

That seems to be the case between Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who, while both outspoken far-right lawmakers, aren’t exactly “buddy-buddy,” according to a Politico story published Friday.

In fact, the two apparently got into a heated argument last month when the House Freedom Caucus board of directors gathered for a meeting.

Witnesses told Politico that Boebert is considered more of a team player with her fellow GOP members than Greene is, and that she wasn’t happy that Greene made an appearance in February at a white nationalist rally organized by segregationist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

Greene later claimed she was unaware of Fuentes or the group’s views ― even though she and Fuentes were photographed together.

The argument between Boebert and Greene was mostly verbal, according to Politico, but one onlooker reportedly feared the two would come to blows.

However, another member of the Freedom Caucus was able to de-escalate the situation, according to three people connected to the group.

One caucus member said the reported conflict could be a bad sign for the group going forward.

“I like the principles that the Freedom Caucus was founded on, but I think that if we can’t work together as a group and push our ideas in a civil manner, then we’re not going to be very effective,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) told Politico.

-----------------------------------

"One caucus member said the reported conflict could be a bad sign for the group going forward."

Indeed. You wouldn't want to get the white nationalists upset by making them think they're no longer welcome in the Republican party.

Anyone else find it odd that they're more worried about signs of an internal conflict than they are of being in be with all those white sheets? Or have you just become to expect that from Republicans these days?

April 30, 2022 10:41 AM  
Anonymous "Free speech for me, compliance for thee" said...

"all their uproar at Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for “bullying” a private company when he sought to remove special privileges for woke, anti-parent Disney."

Just imagine the epic brain-melting across MAGAworld if a Democratic governor in a blue state so much as whispered about punishing Hobby Lobby or Chik-fil-A for their political positions.



April 30, 2022 5:26 PM  
Anonymous you can always count on Dems to blow it when they have a lead said...

"The argument between Boebert and Greene was mostly verbal,"

actually, I'm sure it was all verbal

and this little rhetorical game is the same as a lie

I think I'll start using it

Slidin' Joe Biden had Rising Joe Manchin come over to the White House to berate him about Build Back Better

but it was mostly verbal

LOL!!!!!!!!!!

there's no fool like a TTF fool

cause a TTF fool don't stop

"but one onlooker reportedly feared the two would come to blows"

one onlooker?

remember when objective news organization would only print things that were corroborated

grandpa, tell me bout the good ol days

sometimes it seems like

the world's gone crazy

grandpa, take me back to yesterday

when the line between right and wrong

didn't seem so hazy

"One caucus member said the reported conflict could be a bad sign for the group going forward."

bad sign?

if anyone tells Greene she's a fool, that's a great sign

"“I like the principles that the Freedom Caucus was founded on, but I think that if we can’t work together as a group and push our ideas in a civil manner, then we’re not going to be very effective,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) said."

don't work with Greene, Scott

you'll be much more effective

"Just imagine the epic brain-melting across MAGAworld if a Democratic governor in a blue state so much as whispered about punishing Hobby Lobby or Chik-fil-A for their political positions."

you mean like when certain blue state governments ban Chik-Fil-A

or when the government attacked Hobby Lobby in a case that went to the Supreme Court?

April 30, 2022 11:58 PM  
Anonymous game changer for Slidin' Biden.... said...


we are amazed
but not amused
by all the things
you say you do
we're much concerned
but not impressed
by decisions
that are made by you

and we are sick and tired
of hearing your song
how you are changing right
from wrong

cause if you really want to hear our views

you haven't done nothin'

CNN's Harry Enten reports Biden’s approval rating among Black Americans is "really down," a 20-point drop: "It's really down, you can see at the beginning of his term, he was at 87%, look where he is over the last few months, 67%, that's a 20-point drop.

May 01, 2022 7:09 AM  
Anonymous Kamala Harris.....LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! said...


Former Obama advisor Van Jones said Friday morning on CNN about the Biden administration: "When you overpromise so much in the beginning of the year and underdeliver at the end of the year... you suddenly end up with a disappointment factor plus inflation."

May 01, 2022 7:12 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Joe Biden: the Grand Poobah of failure ! ................ said...


Skyrocketing inflation is robbing Americans of their raises.

Total compensation costs for civilian workers declined 3.7% over the past 12 months ending in March, after accounting for inflation, according to the Employment Cost Index report published Friday.

It's the largest decline since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began inflation-adjusted records in 2001. What's more, it comes at a time when compensation costs -- which includes the wages employers pay plus health, retirement and other benefits -- are rising swiftly, before accounting for inflation, as employers try to fill positions and hold on to their staff.

The data, which tracks changes in employers' labor costs, quantifies the pain that people are feeling as prices rise faster than they have in the past 40 years. The increasing cost of food, gasoline and housing are eating away at workers' paychecks.

The inflation-adjusted cost of wages and salaries fell 3.6%, while benefit costs dropped 4.2%, both the largest decreases since the series started 21 years ago.

"For workers, this is bad news," Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said of the inflation-adjusted data. "Wages are falling very rapidly over the last year and are way below where they were two years ago."

May 01, 2022 1:32 PM  
Anonymous you have to wonder if Dems will ever win again, after they are thrown out of Congress this fall.... said...

One of the most remarkable developments in the last two national elections was the surge in voting among young people, historically a low-turnout crowd who proved pivotal to Democrats winning a House majority in 2018 and Joe Biden winning the presidency.

A lingering question has been whether that was a Trump-era anomaly or whether it marked an enduring change in voting behavior.

The good news, according to a new poll of 18-to-29-year-olds released this week by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, is that turnout among the young is on track to be as high as it was in the 2018 midterms. However, that may bode ill for Democrats — more young Republicans are eager to vote this year than in 2018, and among Democrats, the mojo is fading.

The share of young Republicans saying they will definitely vote in 2022 is up 7 percentage points over this time four years ago; definite Democratic voters are down 5 points. The erosion was especially steep among young Black voters, who now seem less likely to vote than young Republicans.

Among likely voters under 30, 55% still prefer Democratic control of Congress compared with 34% preferring Republican control. But that is about half the 41-point partisan advantage Democrats enjoyed in the spring 2018 poll, when 69% favored Democratic control and 28% preferred Republican control.

This poll is only the latest of several recent surveys showing that President Biden’s approval rating is sinking among young voters. That could take a toll on Democrats in the midterm elections, and is putting pressure on Biden to act on youth-oriented issues such as student loan debt forgiveness and climate change before election day.

Dems found a new agenda, this new socialist agenda that was so popular. I think what happened is the first thing they -- the Democratic Party became wealthy that bicoastal elite through globalization got these global markets, and you have a whole professional class that is not subject to any ramifications of these utopian ideas, whether it's climate change, or defund the police and never boomerangs back on them.

Then they said, well, we don't have the people, but we have the institutions, corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, K through 12 academia, so we can influence opinion without having a majority of opinion.

And then of course, they changed the demography. We've had about 40 million people come in the last 40 years, and right now, we have 50 million American residents that were not born in the United States, and they feel that the majority of them will be loyal to the Democratic Party that invited them in.

And still, it's not enough. Still, they are looking at a disaster in November. So now they're saying, well, you know what, in good Jacobin or Bolshevik fashion, we've got to re-educate young people, get them while they're young, indoctrinate them. And so, they're trying to do that, and they want to change the system.

May 01, 2022 1:44 PM  
Anonymous you have to wonder if Dems will ever win again, after they are thrown out of Congress this fall.... said...


They're saying, well, if we can't indoctrinate them, maybe we can get rid of the filibuster, get rid of the Electoral College or pack the Court or have a national voting law, but all of us has a common denominator, and that is they are the party of the elite now. They are the party of the wealthy, the party that despises the Middle Class, and they seek power for an agenda that nobody wants, and they have these crises to do like January 6th or the Ukrainian war, whatever the thing is, they use these levers of influence and power and it is still -- I don't think it's going to be enough.

I think they're looking at a landslide of rejection in November and I think that Elon Musk is a precursor. So, was the C-SPAN implosion, so was the Disney implosion, so was the Netflix implosion, so was the Virginia election implosion, a lot of indicators, a lot of symptoms that they have a reckoning. That's terrifying them...

Yes, I think it is. Because you see, it's not just political. People, as you say, they are not really interested just in the issues, it is existential. They can't find food that they can afford, they can't fill up their car, they don't feel safe when they go into a big city.

They don't feel their kids are being educated or they're being propagandized. So it's a 360 twenty four-seven phenomenon. It's a totalitarian effort. And you can see the pushback in social media. You can see it with some grassroots school board. It's not just political, they feel their very lives are at stake. It is not going to be sustainable if these people are in control any longer because they don't care.

Slidin' Joe Biden doesn't care about the price of gas. Elizabeth Warren doesn't care if people can't afford, you know, plywood at the lumber store. They don't care.

They are revolutionaries. They are ideologues. Again, they'd rather be wrong and they would rather lose and be right than be wrong and win. That's how ideological they are.

May 01, 2022 1:45 PM  
Anonymous more of them polls that TTFers like so much!!!!!!!!!!........... said...


Broad Republican advantages in trust to tame inflation and handle crime are keeping the party in a strong position for the 2022 midterm elections in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Americans trust the Republican Party over the Democrats to handle inflation, by 19% points; the economy more generally, by 14 points; and crime, by a dozen points. Trust in the Republicans to handle crime is its highest in ABC/Post results back 32 years.

52% of Americans disapprove of Slidin' Biden’s performance overall, versus 42% who approve. Those who “strongly” disapprove outnumber strong approvers by a 2-1 margin, potentially indicating motivation to vote in the fall.

Moreover, with inflation its highest in 40 years, Slidin' Biden’s rating for handling inflation is dramatically bad in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates: 68% of Americans disapprove. Fewer but still 57% disapprove of his work on the economy more broadly.

May 01, 2022 2:55 PM  
Anonymous Conservatives say it was a "normal tourist visit." Apparently it was seditious conspiracy said...

Brian Ulrich, 44, is the second member of the far-right gang to plead guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

A member of the extreme right-wing Oath Keepers gang has pleaded guilty to a seditious conspiracy charge for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Brian Ulrich, 44, wept during a court hearing on Friday after pleading guilty to two felony charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and seditious conspiracy. Ulrich is one of 11 members of the Oath Keepers ― a far-right militant group ― who are facing sedition-related charges after authorities uncovered chat messages the group members used to plan for violence and disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Five people died and more than 100 officers were injured in the ensuing violence.

“Did you do that, agree with [Oath Keepers leader Stewart] Rhodes and develop a plan to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power, by force, on Jan. 6, 2021?” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta asked during the hearing on Friday.

“Yes, your honor,” Ulrich replied.

Ulrich, who will cooperate with the Justice Department in its prosecution of his fellow gang members as part of his plea agreement, reportedly cried during the hearing. Mehta asked if Ulrich needed a moment to compose himself.

“It’s not going to get any easier,” Ulrich said before crying again.

Court documents detail the inner workings of the Oath Keepers’ plans days before the attack.

“Someone can tell me if I’m crazy but I’m planning on having a backpack for regular use and then a separate backpack with my ammo,” Ulrich messaged in a chat on the app Signal in December. “I will be the guy running around with the ‘budget AR.’”

The day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Ulrich and other Oath Keepers “forced their way past law enforcement officers trying to guard the Rotunda,” according to the FBI .

The group’s leader, Rhodes, was recently ordered to remain in jail until his trial after a federal judge determined that he “presents a clear and convincing danger.”

Along with Ulrich, Oath Keepers member Joshua James has also pleaded guilty to a charge of seditious conspiracy and will cooperate with the Justice Department. Ulrich faces up to six years in prison.

May 01, 2022 4:56 PM  
Anonymous Digby said...

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he was seen as a "populist" right-wing politician railing about free trade and immigration to push an isolationist worldview, all of which was out of step with what we knew as the modern conservative movement up to that moment. Sure there had been a rump group of paleoconservatives, like Pat Buchanan, who had staged a couple of fringe presidential campaigns in prior decades. The independent candidacy of millionaire Ross Perot had raised some of the same issues and appealed to many of the same voter concerns. But it was Trump whose TV celebrity and flamboyant personality managed to take those ideas straight into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Trump's populism was (and is) extremely shallow, however.

His "tariff policy" was based upon some crude anti-foreigner impressions he had from the 1980s when he saw Japanese cars coming off the dock in Long Beach harbor. He never understood that it was actually the American consumer who paid the tariffs with which he thought he was punishing foreign manufacturers.

By contrast, his anti-immigrant screeds rarely touched on economics, which had always been the excuse the right had raised to excuse their xenophobia. Trump instead said from the beginning that the problem was that immigrants were either all criminals rampaging through the United States or terrorists bent on killing as many Americans as possible. He didn't even try to couch his hate with the usual "stealing our jobs" rhetoric.

The America First agenda Trump touted was simply a way for him to excuse browbeating allies while sucking up to tyrants. That happened mostly because he really didn't understand anything about world affairs in the first place, so he blustered his way around the world chasing wealthy oil sheiks and succumbing to ostentatious flattery while alienating anyone he sensed could see through his ignorant posturing.

In the end, Trump basically accomplished nothing and simply reaped the rewards of an economic recovery long in the making. His promises to create a better health care plan ("it will be so easy") never came to fruition and his pledge to protect Social Security and Medicare was never challenged. His biggest legislative accomplishment was the massive tax cut bill for the rich, rammed through by the GOP majority in 2017, the establishment GOP Holy Grail. Meanwhile he increased military funding, an odd achievement for a supposed isolationist.

Trump proposed 10 pieces of legislation he planned to pass in the first 100 days. They included a proposed Restoring Community Safety Act, End Illegal Immigration Act, Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act, Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act, School Choice and Education Opportunity Act, American Energy and Infrastructure Act and the End the Offshoring Act. Other than the tax cuts and the military spending increases, none of that ever happened.

All in all, despite the constant bragging about his allegedly monumental achievements in office his administration was really nothing more than lots of drama, one scandal after another, and very few accomplishments. He didn't even get that stupid wall built. And if he was supposed to be the guy who pushed the GOP in a new policy direction, one that was more attuned to working people and less to the elites, he sure didn't have a lot to show for it.

May 02, 2022 10:19 AM  
Anonymous Digby said...

Trump signed a piece of bipartisan legislation in 2018 that was truly out of character for him personally and a jarring departure from standard GOP policy: the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill. It was actually a very good bill, probably the best thing he did as president. The First Step Act shortened mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. It eased the "three-strike rule" from life to 25 years. And it gave judges more discretion when dealing with nonviolent drug offenses. It also improved prison conditions, required federal prisons to create programs to reduce recidivism, ban the shackling of pregnant women (I can't believe I'm writing that in 2022) and expanded the use of credits for good behavior. It was a start on a vitally necessary movement to reduce mass incarceration in America.

It had been in the works for a long time with bipartisan support but was blocked by Republican senators including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama. The Trump White House actually picked up the ball and shepherded it through a difficult legislative process culminating in then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, under pressure from the Koch Brothers and Kentucky constituents, using some parliamentary wizardry to get the bill past Cotton. It was passed.

I can't think of any other process that worked as normally as that one during the entire administration and it was largely thanks to Jared Kushner and ... Kim Kardashian.

According to a CNN report at the time, this really was Kushner's baby and Trump was always on the fence, worried about another Willie Horton embarrassing him although he did believe it could buy him some support from Black voters in 2020. Kardashian convinced him that he would be remembered for pardoning Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who had been serving a life sentence for money laundering and a nonviolent drug offense, and Trump relented, agreeing to sign the bill.

That's right. Trump's best piece of legislation was passed because they brought in an attractive reality TV star to talk him into it.

But it will come as no surprise to learn that Trump quickly soured on the whole concept and other Republicans are backing away from it as well. According to Politico, a spike in crime has the GOP right back in its 1980s "tough on crime" mindset.

"On Capitol Hill, Republicans made stiffer criminal sentencing a main focus during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Discussions of rising crime are a daily focus on Fox News. And out on the campaign trail, GOP candidates are running ads demonizing Democrats for not doing enough to support police."

Trump is leading the charge. But then he has a history doesn't he?

[Image of the "full-page advertisement Donald Trump took out calling for the execution of the Central Park Five. They were later exonerated by DNA evidence, although President Trump maintains that they are guilty."]

The man who wrote that grotesque statement signing the First Step Act 30 years later was one of the few astonishing-in-a-good-way moments of his otherwise misbegotten presidency. So naturally, he and his party are repudiating it. Incarcerating Black people is just too fundamental to right-wing ideology. They can't give it up.

May 02, 2022 10:20 AM  
Anonymous more of them polls that TTFers like so much...... said...

More Americans want to see former President Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 than want to see President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, the latest data from the I&I/TIPP Poll show.

Registered voters across the country were asked in April's I&I Poll, "Who do you want to see run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024?" That was a companion question to a similar one asked about the Democrats.

While this is not the same as taking a poll of a head-to-head matchup between two specific candidates, the results do indicate preferences and political leanings within both major parties and among independents that will powerfully affect the results of upcoming elections.

Some 23% of all those queried said they wanted Donald Trump to head the Republican presidential ticket, compared to just 19% for Biden.

Comparing the data for Biden and Trump gives a clear indication of the political hills both would have to climb to win in 2024, especially within their respective parties.

Clearly, Biden is in serious trouble within the Democratic Party, garnering just 29% support, a clear sign of the toll on his popularity taken by his struggling presidency.

Trump, by comparison, gets 49% support from Republicans, making him a formidable political presence within his own party for the next two years at least.

As far as 2024 goes, Biden's support among key Democratic support groups is shockingly weak.

Take the youngest voters, ages 18-24, who are traditionally liberal in their political leanings. Among this group, 23% want Trump as the Republican candidate, vs. just 11% for Biden.

Voters under 30 gave huge majorities to Biden in 2020, a study from Tufts University showed, and Democrats will need those voters again to win in 2024. But those voters also helped push the Democratic Party sharply toward the progressive left, which may now be costing it mainstream political support.

That may help explain Biden's sudden change of heart on student loan forgiveness, as he last week embraced a plan that would write off more than $1 trillion in student loans.

But it isn't just the young. Right now, every age group prefers a Trump candidacy to a Biden one. Only the 25-44 year old category is close, with 25% favoring Trump and 24% Biden.

Women are another weak spot for Biden, with 20% wanting Trump to run, compared to just 14% wanting Biden. As a voting bloc, men are a bit tighter, at 29% Trump to 25% Biden.

Minority voters are split. Just 8% of Black voters say they would like Trump to be the GOP candidate, well below the 27% that prefer Biden. One anomaly: 14% say they want Mike Pence, his highest score with any demographic group.

Where Biden runs into serious trouble is among Hispanic voters. Among this key voting group, 22% lean toward Trump, while only 12% give Biden the nod. Ironic, given how hard he media tried to cast Trump as anti-immigrant.

One other insight comes from considering the geography of both candidates' support. Biden edges Trump among urban dwellers by 25% to 19%. But Biden loses to Trump in the suburbs, 19% to 16%, and gets trounced by Trump in rural areas, 33% to 14%.

May 02, 2022 10:47 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Merrick Garland. I believe in the Constitution right of free speech, as long as the speakers agree with me. otherwise, they're domestic terrorists !!!!!!!!!!... said...

A Florida mother is filing suit and issuing a stark warning to parents nationwide after her transgender child transitioned at school without her consent.

Florida mom and mental health professional January Littlejohn and her attorney Vernadette Broyles discussed the lawsuit and why she is "outraged" over the incident.

"This is happening all over the nation," Littlejohn warned on Monday. "This same protocol is in place in many, many schools across districts everywhere, and even the guides being used to dictate these transgender support plans that cut parents out even have the same language."

"So this is a very systematic way that parents are being excluded from important decisions occurring with their children, and further, social transition is a medical intervention that schools are grossly unqualified to be taking these steps without parental involvement," she continued.

According to Littlejohn, her daughter, who was 13 years old at the time, expressed confusion over gender during the pandemic after a group of friends transitioned to the opposite sex.

She eventually found out the school was working on a "transgender support plan" with her child, but the school initially declined to allow her involvement given she was "protected by a nondiscrimination law."

"Eventually we did see the transgender support plan, which was a six-page document that they completed with my daughter, that was 13 at the time behind closed doors, where they asked her questions that would have absolutely impacted her safety, such as which restroom she preferred to use and which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips," Littlejohn said.

This comes after Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona after a 12-year-old Florida girl reportedly attempted to commit suicide after undergoing secret gender transition talks with her school.

"There are lawsuits in Wisconsin, Maryland, Oregon, California," Broyles said. "This is a national agenda, and parents need to recognize they have the right to direct the upbringing, education, care, medical decisions, mental health decisions of their child."

"They need to assert that right with their school," she continued.

May 02, 2022 12:32 PM  
Anonymous The new magic word is "groomer" said...

"social transition is a medical intervention"

Social transition is NOT a medical intervention - that's why they call it SOCIAL transition - it does not involve any medical procedures.

This is like claiming "a veggie burger is a type of hamburger" and vegetarians should avoid it because it has meat in it like hamburgers.

This smells a lot like the kind of story right-wingers invent to freak people out.

Anyone can decide they want to "social transition" by dressing appropriately and asking those around them to respect their new pronouns. It does NOT take a medical intervention of any kind.

May 02, 2022 12:46 PM  
Anonymous Finally, some justice for Scott Johnson said...

A man told police he killed American mathematician Scott Johnson in 1988 by pushing the 27-year-old off a Sydney cliff in what prosecutors describe as a gay hate crime, a court heard on Monday.

Scott White, 51, appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court for a sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty in January to the murder of the Los Angeles-born Canberra resident, whose death at the base of a North Head cliff was initially dismissed by police as suicide.

White will be sentenced by Justice Helen Wilson on Tuesday. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

“I pushed a bloke. He went over the edge,” White said in recorded police interview in 2020 that was played in court.

White said in the interview he lied when he had earlier told police that he had tried to grab Johnson and prevent his fatal fall.

A coroner ruled in 2017 that Johnson “fell from the clifftop as a result of actual or threatened violence by unidentified persons who attacked him because they perceived him to be homosexual.”

The coroner also found that gangs of men roamed various Sydney locations in search of gay men to assault, resulting in the deaths of some victims. Some people were also robbed.

A coroner had ruled in 1989 that the openly gay man had taken his own life, while a second coroner in 2012 could not explain how he died.

His Boston-based brother Steve Johnson maintained pressure for further investigation and offered his own reward of 1 million Australian dollars ($704,000) for information. White was charged in 2020 and police say the reward will likely be collected.

White’s former wife Helen White told the court that her then-husband “bragged” to their children of beating gay men at the clifftop well-known for gay meetups.

Helen White said she read a newspaper report in 2008 about Johnson’s death and asked her husband if he was responsible.

“It’s not my fault,” Scott White allegedly replied. “The dumb (expletive) ran off the cliff.”

“I said, ‘It is if you chased him,’” Helen White told the court. She said her husband did not reply.

Under cross-examination, Helen White denied she had been aware of a AU$1 million reward for information on Johnson’s murder when she reported her former husband to police in 2019. She said she only became aware of a reward when the victim’s brother, Steve Johnson, doubled the sum in 2020.

Steve Johnson said in his victim impact statement that, “With a vicious push, Mr. White took Scott and he vanished.”

“This man (Scott Johnson) who once told me he could never hurt someone even in self-defense died in terror,” the brother added.

Steve Johnson said he appreciated White’s guilty plea.

“If he had turned himself in after his violent action, I would have had a little more sympathy. If he had grasped Scott’s hand and pulled him to safety, I would owe him everlasting gratitude,” the brother said, his voice choked with emotion.

Scott Johnson’s sisters Terry and Rebecca Johnson, his partner Michael Noone and Steve Johnson’s wife Rosemarie Johnson also gave victim impact statements.

Rosemarie Johnson described the initial police failure to investigate Scott Johnson’s death as “indefensible and inhumane.”

Rebecca Johnson, a younger sister, said the police report of suicide “made no sense.”

“How could a community fail so spectacularly that they created boys capable of such horror?” she asked, referring to media reports of gay beatings in Sydney being described as a sport.

Prosecutor Brett Hatfield said the precise details of the murder were not known and that White’s accounts had varied.

White’s lawyer Belinda Rigg said her client was gay and had been concerned that his homophobic brother would find out.

In January, White yelled repeatedly in court during a pre-trial hearing that he was guilty, having previously denied the crime.

His lawyers will appeal that plea in the Court of Criminal Appeals and hope he will be acquitted at trial.

Scott Johnson was a doctoral student at Australian National University and lived in Canberra. He was staying at Noone’s parents’ Sydney home when he died.

May 02, 2022 12:55 PM  
Anonymous Conservatives want free speech, but only when it serves their controlling agenda said...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) laid into his colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), on Sunday after her lawyers characterized her as a victim, not a perpetrator, of the U.S. Capitol attack.

“For Marjorie Taylor Greene to say she’s a victim. It’s amazing how folks like her attack everybody for being a victim,” Kinzinger said on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

“I mean, she assaulted I think a survivor’s family from a school shooting at some point in D.C.,” he said. “She stood outside of congresswoman’s office and yelled at her through a mail slot and said she was too scared to come out and confront her.

“And then when Marjorie Taylor Greene is confronted, she’s all of a sudden a victim and a poor helpless congresswoman that’s just trying to do her job.”

“That’s insane,” he added.

Kinzinger was seemingly referring to two videos of Greene in 2019 before she was elected to Congress. In one, she is seen persistently harassing Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg near the U.S. Capitol. In another, Greene screams abuse at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through the mailbox to her office, telling her to “stop being a baby and stop locking your door and come out and face the American citizens that you serve.”

Last week, lawyers representing Greene in a legal battle to keep her name on the primary ballot in Georgia argued in a court filing that Greene “was not a participant in the January 6th violence—she was a victim.”

“She was sequestered for hours, she was scared and confused, and she and her family feared for her life,” lawyers argued.

--------------------------

"GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde (Ga.) defended his description of rioters walking through the Capitol on Jan. 6 appearing to look like a “normal tourist visit” during a committee meeting on Tuesday."

So MTG was scared, confused, sequestered for hours and feared for her life because tourists came to visit the Capital?

Something doesn't add up here!

May 02, 2022 1:03 PM  
Anonymous Amanda Marcotte said...

"There's one thing that I know for sure," declared Gene Bailey, the pastor of Eagle Mountain Church International, before a crowd of thousands recently gathered at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma. "The raw truth was on Nov. 3, 2020, President Donald J. Trump won the election."

Later during the summit on the 2020 presidential election, which was broadcast live to a Facebook audience of over 300,000 followers, Hank Kunneman, the pastor of One Voice Ministries, proclaimed: "There is a payback coming!"

The pastor went to rave about how President Joe Biden belongs in prison for "treason" and a "demonic agenda."

The late April event is chilling — but remarkable, mainly for how unremarkable it is.

Forget Jesus Christ and the "good news" about salvation. All across red state America, the true faith of evangelical churches lately often seems more about Donald Trump and trumpeting the Big Lie. As Charles Homans at the New York Times wrote in late April:

In the 17 months since the presidential election, pastors at these churches have preached about fraudulent votes and vague claims of election meddling. They have opened their church doors to speakers promoting discredited theories about overturning President Biden's victory and lent a veneer of spiritual authority to activists who often wrap themselves in the language of Christian righteousness.

In the mainstream media and the eyes of much of the public, there's a secular cast to the false claims that Biden "stole" the 2020 election, which is being used to justify a national GOP campaign to actually steal the election for Trump in 2024.

From Rudy Giuliani sweating through his hair dye to Steve Bannon's self-aggrandizing to the hard-drinking Proud Boys, the face of the Big Lie is that of the all-American dirtbag, someone who is more likely to be out on Saturday harassing women in bars than up early on Sunday for church. But while those figures certainly get attention, the larger threat to democracy likely comes from the well-organized, well-funded white evangelical movement, which has managed to reorganize itself around Trump's Big Lie out of the glare of much mainstream media attention.

May 02, 2022 2:32 PM  
Anonymous Amanda Marcotte said...

From the beginning, the religious right was the backbone of Trump's Big Lie. As Kathryn Joyce reported for Salon on the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, in the run-up to the riot, "allegations about the 'stolen' election became nearly inseparable from messages of apocalyptic faith." The crowd that turned out that day was largely driven by religious fervor. Popular religious right figures were responsible for sending thousands of people to the Capitol to do Trump's bidding. Since then, the Christian nationalist devotion to the Big Lie has only grown stronger. Six out of 10 white evangelicals claim Biden stole the 2020 election, compared to 37% of white Christians from mainline churches.

The enthusiasm for the Big Lie among white evangelicals comes back primarily to one thing: Racism.

Scrape away the easily disproven conspiracy theories about voting machines and stolen ballots and what you're left with is the animating belief of the Big Lie, which is that conservative white people are entitled to rule, no matter what. The Big Lie puts a moral gloss on this argument, by recasting the opponents of democracy as the "victims" of a "stolen" election. Actions like trying to throw out the vote total in racially diverse cities in 2020 and rewriting election laws to marginalize voters of color, however, tell the true story. The Big Lie is about preserving white supremacy, even if the cost is ending democracy.

nthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America" explained the history of the evangelical movement last year in an interview for Religion & Politics.

"There's a prevalent belief around evangelicalism that the movement was formed in the 70s in response to Roe v. Wade," she noted. In reality, however, "It wasn't abortion that fired them up—it was integration, taxation, busing, and similar issues."

As Dartmouth historian Randall Balmer has carefully documented, while religious right leaders like Jerry Falwell liked to portray their movement as anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ, it really started as a pro-segregation movement. Falwell first made a name for himself by preaching about the evils of integration. He started really getting into political organizing around the issue of the federal government stripping tax-exempt status from private schools, such as his own Lynchburg Christian School, which barred Black students. Falwell later publicly recanted his segregationist beliefs, but only in the most surface of ways. White supremacy is still foundational to white evangelical culture, which is why they continue to be Trump's strongest base of support.

May 02, 2022 2:32 PM  
Anonymous Amanda Marcotte said...

It's easy to see how much racism is in the DNA of white evangelical culture in a recent New Yorker article about Liberty University, which was founded by Falwell and, until recently, was run by his son Jerry Falwell, Jr. University leadership talks a big game about racial diversity, but whenever there's even a hint of a challenge to white supremacy on campus, the administration comes down on students like a hammer. As Megan K. Stack reports, "members of the student government drafted an anodyne condemnation of white supremacy" in response to the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, but the administration functionally blocked it. Falwell then defended Trump's claim that the neo-Nazis and other white nationalists were "very fine people."

A similar fight went down when a small group of students tried to organize a demonstration in support of Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The administration totally panicked in response, as Stack notes:

They were told to stop using the words "Black lives matter" and "protest"; "demonstration," they recalled the administrators admonishing them, sounded less violent. They were asked to organize an academic discussion instead of a protest, or perhaps an athletes-only gathering in one of the sports halls. "They were just being very passive-aggressive," Williams said. "They were just trying to water down the statement 'Black lives matter.' "

When the students continued to press forward with the plans, the administration refused to provide campus police protection. Afterward, the school released a statement emphasizing that it was "student-led and student-created," lest anyone mistake them as supporting this anti-racist movement.

A November PRRI poll found that while they espouse anti-racist views when asked directly about race, 78% of white evangelicals agreed with the statement that "America is in danger of losing its culture and identity." To my mind, that question is an excellent measure of white supremacist sentiment, as it's hard to imagine what else people are thinking of when they talk about American culture and identity. They certainly aren't reacting to the long-standing tradition of America as a nation of immigrants, the traditions of secularism, or any of the other progressive values about equality and freedom that the liberal majority of Americans believe in. Instead, what they clearly believe is that people like them are the only legitimate rulers and that it's "fraud" if the majority of Americans disagree.

The truth is that white evangelicals are, in fact, a shrinking portion of the American public, but not because of immigration or Black Lives Matter or antifa or any of the other bogeymen that Republican propagandists prop up. It's because of evangelicals' own intolerance and bigotry. Younger Americans simply don't truck with it — even at Liberty University, students speak out about it! — and so are leaving the pews in large numbers. Heaven forbid, however, that evangelicals admit they only have themselves to blame and change their views to become more accepting of diversity. Instead, white evangelicals are embracing conspiracy theories, Trumpism, and, ultimately, a war on democracy itself.

May 02, 2022 2:33 PM  
Anonymous Birds of a feather grope together said...

Former president Donald Trump on Sunday made a closing pitch for a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, stepping deeper into a primary that has divided Republicans in this staunchly conservative state.

Trump appeared at a rally in Greenwood with Charles Herbster, a businessman who has advised the former president on agricultural policy and has donated to his campaigns. The visit came after a recent Nebraska Examiner report in which eight women, including a state senator speaking on the record, accused Herbster of touching them inappropriately. Last week, another one of the eight women alleged on the record that Herbster had groped her. He has denied the accusations.

According to state Sen. Julie Slama (R), Herbster reached up her skirt without her consent and touched her inappropriately as she walked by during a local Republican fundraiser in a crowded ballroom in 2019. Elizabeth Todsen, a former aide to a state senator, said Herbster grabbed her buttocks after stopping to greet her table at the same event. Multiple women told the Examiner that Herbster touched them inappropriately when they greeted him or posed for a photo.

Both Trump and Herbster sought to dismiss the allegations on Sunday, taking a defiant posture without discussing the accusations in specific terms. The former president called Herbster a “very good man” who had been “maligned.” Trump said Herbster was “innocent” of what he called “despicable charges.”

“I defend people when I know they’re good,” Trump said. “A lot of people, they look at you and say: You don’t have to do it, sir. I defend my friends.”

The former president invited Herbster onstage during his remarks. The gubernatorial candidate used his time to talk about being one of Trump’s earliest supporters in 2016.

Trump, who has faced and denied multiple allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape, has backed other candidates who have been accused of sexual misconduct or domestic violence and denied the allegations.Advertisement

They include Herschel Walker, a U.S. Senate candidate in Georgia who has been accused of threatening the lives of two women, as well as Sean Parnell, who ended his U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania last year amid domestic abuse allegations, and Roy Moore, a 2017 candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama who was accused by two women of initiating unwanted sexual encounters when Moore was in his 30s and they were 16 and 14...

May 03, 2022 9:56 AM  
Anonymous Garland, Alito, Goresuch, Thomas, Brewski Kavanaugh, Amy Coney, and the Jack of Hearts..ROFL!!!!!!!!!!.... said...


Roe v Wade is now history, just like slavery.

Next up, Obergefell and Lawrence v Texas.

Just stop and think: if you hadn't nominated Hillary, it might all be different.

Hope supporting that lying weaselette was worth it.

The Supreme Court's draft majority opinion document leaked and published late on Monday evening discloses that the Supreme Court will overturn 50 years of constitutional protection for abortion "rights" — and threaten other fundamental "rights" that have only been recently conjured up, including same-sex marriages.

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the fundamental "right" of same-sex couples to marry each other in Obergefell v. Hodges, a landmark case for the recognition of LGBTQ+ "rights". Now, the reasoning suggested by Justice Samuel Alito to overturn Roe v. Wade will threaten this and other recently conjured up "rights".

In the document, Alito writes that Roe and Casey must be overturned because "the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision."

This will end federal protection of abortion "rights" across the country.

People gathered outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on May 2, 2022, in Washington, D.C. to protest the leaked opinion.

Alito's argument for overturning Roe v. Wade is built around the idea that the right to abortion does not fall in the category of those rights "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" and "implicitly in the concept of ordered liberty"—a direct mention to the Washington v. Glucksberg case, in which the Supreme Court voted against a physician who had challenged the state of Washington's ban on assisted suicide.

In that case, the court ruled that helping a terminally ill patient to die went against the country's traditions and practices.

Alito points out that abortion was "entirely unknown in American law...until the latter part of the 20th century," a statement that would apply to other fundamental "rights" only conjured up in the past decades, including LGBTQ+ "rights".

Commenting on the document, Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern notes that while Alito assures key rulings on interracial marriages, contraception and others will not be jeopardized by overturning Roe and Casey, the judge never mentions Lawrence v. Texas or Obergefell v. Hodges—crucial cases in establishing LGBTQ+ "rights" —in the list of safe precedents.

tee-hee-hee....

In 2003, with Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court overturned state sodomy laws, making same-sex sexual activities legal across the whole country, and punishment or sanctions against it unconstitutional. In 2015, with Obergefell v. Hodges, the court ruled it unconstitutional for states to ban or refuse to recognize same-sex "marriage".

May 03, 2022 11:36 AM  
Anonymous TTF thinks it's a Big Lie but voters think otherwise.... said...

Despite President Joe Biden’s assault on election integrity efforts in several states, voters in record numbers are demanding that identification be presented to get a ballot and want reforms across the board in all 50 states.

New polling provided to Secrets Monday showed that 84% want voter ID, and huge percentages of black and Hispanic voters are behind the surge in support as the nation readies for the fall congressional midterm elections.

The polling from the Honest Elections Project for two groups, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the National Conference of State Legislatures, is the latest to show that the push by Biden and his media allies has fallen flat, especially among minorities who the president claimed would be hurt by election integrity laws passed in states such as Georgia.

“Photo ID laws are a case in point: Support for photo ID laws is seven points higher than a year ago. Left-wing special interests and politicians like President Biden carried out an intense, often misleading, campaign meant to stir opposition to policies like strong voter ID. Their efforts have had the opposite effect. More people than ever — including most black and Hispanic voters — back photo ID laws,” said the polling analysis provided to Secrets.

May 03, 2022 11:43 AM  
Anonymous global warming is a conspiracy theory.... said...


A new United Nations report has revealed the disturbing news that the number of global disasters has quintupled since 1970 and will increase by another 40 percent in coming decades. They find that more people are affected by disasters than ever before, and the UN Deputy Secretary-General warns humanity is “on a spiral of self-destruction.”

Astonishingly, the UN is misusing data, and its approach has been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Its finding makes for great headlines—but it just isn’t grounded in evidence.

When the UN analyzed the number of disaster events, it made a basic error—and one that I’ve called it out for making before: It basically counted all the catastrophes recorded by the most respected international disaster database, showed that they were increasing, and then suggested that the planet must be doomed.

The problem is that the documentation of all types of disasters in the 1970s was far patchier than it is today, when anyone with a cellphone can immediately share news of a storm or flood from halfway around the world.

That’s why the disaster database’s own experts explicitly warn amateurs not to conclude that an increase in registered disasters equates to more disasters in reality. Reaching such a conclusion “would be incorrect” because the increase really just shows improvements in recording.

You would think that the UN would know better especially when its top bureaucrats are using language that sounds like Armageddon is here.

Unsurprisingly, climate change is central to the UN agency’s narrative. Their report warns there is a risk of more extreme weather disasters because of global warming, so the acceleration of “climate action” is urgently needed. Somehow, the huge international organization has made the same basic fallacy that many of us do when we see more and more weather disasters aired on the TV news. Just because the world is more connected and we see more catastrophic events in our media doesn’t mean that climate change is making them more damaging.

So how do we robustly measure whether weather disasters really have really become worse? The best approach is not to count the catastrophes, but to look instead at deaths. Major losses of life have been registered pretty consistently over the past century.

This data shows that climate-related events—floods, droughts, storms, fires, and temperature extremes—are not actually killing more people. Deaths have dropped by a huge amount: In the 1920s, almost half a million people were killed by climate-related disasters. In 2021, it was less than 7,000 people. Climate-related disasters kill 99% fewer people than 100 years earlier.

May 03, 2022 11:46 AM  
Anonymous Rachel Maddowand Jamie Rasking have a conspiracy theory : overturning Roe v Wade makes America the Handmaid's Tale !!!!!!!.... said...

Thank goodness that Rachel Maddow and Jamie Raskin, two moral and intellectual giants are on the case now

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After nearly 50 years of settled law, the Supreme Court appears primed to strike down the historic 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade. During her MSNBC show on Monday, a stunned Rachel Maddow shared her initial thoughts and concerns about the decision being overturned.

“It is shocking both in substance and it is also shocking in terms of what it means about the court, we and what it means about the stakes here that someone is willing to do this,” Maddow said.

Roe v. Wade guaranteed constitutional protections of abortion rights. However, an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and obtained by Politico overturns the landmark case as well as the subsequent 1992 decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed a woman’s right to choose.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

With 21 states reportedly planning to ban abortion if Roe is in fact overturned, women across the country may find they have lost the right choose how or when they are pregnant.

“This draft opinion saying that the Supreme Court is about to clear the way just for that, means that we're on the precipice of becoming a very different country,” Maddow said. “And our daughters and granddaughters are living in a very different world.”

As for what exactly that different world might be, Maddow’s guest, Maryland congressman and House judiciary committee member Jamie Raskin, believes it might very well look like something from a popular Hulu series.

“This would appear,” he said, “to be an invitation to have Handmaid’s Tale-type anti-feminist regulation and legislation all over the country.”

May 03, 2022 12:42 PM  
Anonymous Wiki vs. Trump U grads said...

Nice opinion piece by Bjorn Lomborg, Doctor of Political Science, who has had a variety of differing opinions on climate change over they years like these:

In a 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Lomborg summarized his position on climate change: "Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world."

Lomborg's approach has evolved in a direction more compatible with taking action to restrain climate change. In April 2015, he gained attention when he issued a call for all subsidies to be removed from fossil fuels, on the basis that "a disproportionate share of the subsidies goes to the middle class and the rich", making fossil fuel so "inexpensive that consumption increases, thus exacerbating global warming".

As of 2020, Lomborg is a visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.

Several of Bjørn Lomborg's articles in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Telegraph have been checked by Climate Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists who collectively assess the credibility of influential climate change media coverage. The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility ranged between "low" and "very low".

May 03, 2022 12:55 PM  
Anonymous Clueless Collins surprised that nominees lied to her during nomination hearings. But now that they are no longer accountable to US citizens, what do they care? said...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed disappointment Tuesday with the leaked Supreme Court draft that would overturn abortion rights, saying if it’s true, she was misled by the justices during their confirmation hearings.

“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said, as reported by CNN.

Collins’ reaction is notable because she is one of the only Republican senators who claims to back abortion rights. Yet, she nevertheless voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — even though both sides widely viewed them as likely votes to overturn those same rights. (She voted against former President Donald Trump’s other pick, Amy Coney Barrett.)

Her support was a significant disappointment for abortion rights supporters, who hoped they could convince her to shed her partisan allegiances and see this threat to Roe v. Wade.

The vote was much closer on Kavanaugh (51-49). Collins repeatedly suggested that Kavanaugh wouldn’t vote to end the national legal right to abortion access.

“Protecting this right is important to me,” Collins said in a Senate floor speech, adding that Kavanaugh revered precedent and would hesitate to overturn past decisions.

Collins said she based her faith in Kavanaugh on his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as private conversations she had with the nominee.

“When I asked him whether it would be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said no,” Collins said.

“I do not believe Brett Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade,” Collins told CNN in 2018.

In 2019, when Kavanaugh dissented from a Supreme Court decision blocking a Georgia law aimed at restricting abortion access, Collins denied that she had been wrong about his stance on Roe.

“To say that this case, this most recent case, in which he wrote a very careful dissent, tells you that he’s going to repeal Roe v. Wade I think is absurd,” she told CNN.

Yet according to the leaked draft decision from February obtained by Politico, Kavanaugh ― and Gorsuch ― were among the five conservative Supreme Court justices who were in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. While drafts often undergo changes before being made public, that vote tally hasn’t changed, according to the news outlet.

May 03, 2022 1:01 PM  
Anonymous The new magic word is "groomer" said...

A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible.

In petitions sent to public school superintendents across the state, Chaz Stevens asked the districts to "immediately remove the Bible from the classroom, library, and any instructional material," Stevens wrote in the documents, which were shared with NPR. "Additionally, I also seek the banishment of any book that references the Bible."

His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools.

Liberals have been critical of the legislation. After passage, the state's Democratic leader, Lauren Book, lamented Florida's joining "places like Russia and China, modern-day examples of what happens when free thought and free speech are tightly restricted in all levels of society, including in school."

So, with Florida the latest flashpoint in the culture wars, Stevens decided it was time to take up arms. His target: The Bible. "My objection to the Bible being in your public schools is based on the following seven points, offered for your learned consideration," Stevens wrote.

Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?"

He also took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide. "In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons," he wrote.

The 57-year-old Deerfield Beach man says his ire was stoked after Florida lawmakers decided this month to ban 54 math books that were claimed to have incorporated topics such as critical race theory. "I love the algebras," says Stevens, who studied applied mathematics in college. "And those Tally [Tallahassee] loons just banned a bunch of arithmetic books?"

Stevens sent the petitions as a way to point out the hypocrisy, he said. "If you want to teach morality and ethics, do you really want to turn to a book that wants you to dash babies against rocks?" he told NPR, pointing to Psalm 137:9.

Stevens, who doesn't have any children attending Florida public schools, says he hasn't heard back from any of the school districts yet. But his group is tracking when the emailed petitions are opened. As of late Monday, the Pasco County School District had shared the email internally 35 times, he said — and Duval County reached out to the state capital for guidance.

"My activism in the past has been wildly successful," Stevens said. "And, I imagine, will continue on a similar trajectory."

Stevens said he is particularly interested in drawing attention to the hypocrisy. "I don't have the votes," he said. "My job is merely to turn hypocrisy on itself and let the bureaucrats eat each other for lunch."

It's not the first time Stevens has made waves for his activism. In 2015, he petitioned 11 South Florida municipalities to either drop the prayer that opens their city commission meetings, or let him lead a prayer in the name of Satan.

After Stevens' requests, some Florida cities ended up dropping their moment of prayer altogether. "The satanic stare withered them down," Stevens told the Sun Sentinel.

May 03, 2022 1:52 PM  
Anonymous Biden made the biggest transfer of military equipment to terrorists in history !!!!!!!!!............. said...

AOC, Squad Leader, says overturning Roe v Wade, will mean pro-homo rulings will also be going in the trash heap

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Monday warned progressives that the Supreme Court “isn’t just coming for abortion” after the Supreme Court affirmed the authenticity of the draft of the ruling that will overturn Roe v. Wade.

“As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion — they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on which includes gay marriage + civil rights,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

aaaarrrrgghh!

LOL!

“Manchin is blocking Congress codifying Roe. House has seemingly forgotten about Clarence Thomas. These 2 points must change,” the liberal firebrand continued, causing a round of laughter from conservatives nationwide, taking shots at Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

A draft ruling on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that mistakenly made abortion a constitutional right nationwide, was leaked by Politico on Monday night, spurring celebrations among decent people across America. The opinion was drafted by Justice Samuel Alito, perhaps the most brilliant jurist on the court.

The opinion concludes that Roe and the court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey both have no grounding in the Constitution.

“Alito’s draft opinion explicitly criticizes Lawrence v. Texas (legalizing sodomy) and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalizing same-sex marriage),” AOC wrote. “He says that, like abortion, these decisions protect phony rights that are not ‘deeply rooted in history.’ ”

Ocasio-Cortez ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted that he thinks the Senate needs to end the filibuster in order to codify Roe v. Wade into law. Ocasio-Cortez specifically targeted Manchin in her tweet following his previous stance, along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), to keep filibuster rules in place in the upper chamber.

In late March, Ocasio-Cortez and others called on Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or face impeachment for “his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”

LOL!

May 03, 2022 2:28 PM  
Anonymous Polls trolls ignore, just in time for the midterms! said...

TOPLINE

The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and let states outlaw abortion, according to a draft opinion reported by Politico, and while a review of national polls shows many Americans consistently split between identifying between the partisan labels “pro-choice” or “pro-life,” a clear majority supports keeping the procedure legal—though that support drops quickly depending on the circumstance.

KEY FACTS

Broad support for abortion rights: Gallup polls show Americans’ support for abortion in all or most cases at 80% in May 2021, only sightly higher than in 1975 (76%), and the Pew Research Center finds 59% of adults believe abortion should be legal, compared to 60% in 1995—though there has been fluctuation, with support dropping to a low of 47% in 2009.

The share of Americans in Gallup’s poll who say abortion is morally acceptable reached a record high of 47% in May, up from a low of 36% in 2009, and a Quinnipiac poll found support for abortion being legal in all or most cases reached a near-record high in September with 63% support.

Steady support for Roe: Support for the Supreme Court’s abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade is similar, with a November Quinnipiac poll finding that 63% agree with the court’s ruling; and 72% of respondents in a January Marquette Law School poll and 69% of January CNN poll respondents oppose it being overturned.

If Roe is overturned: A January CNN poll found a 59% majority want their state to have laws that are “more permissive than restrictive” on abortion if Roe goes away, while only 20% want their state to ban abortion entirely (another 20% want it to be restricted but not banned).

Strongest support for abortion—within limits: An Associated Press/NORC poll in June found 87% support abortion when the woman’s life is in danger, 84% support exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and 74% support abortion if the child would be born with a life-threatening illness.

When abortion support drops: The further into the pregnancy, with AP/NORC finding 61% believe abortion should be legal during the first trimester, but only 34% in the second trimester and 19% in the third, and an April Wall Street Journal poll finding more Americans approve of 15-week abortion bans than disapprove.

Partisan split—but not in all cases: Democrats are statistically far more likely to support abortion rights than Republicans, with Quinnipiac finding in September that only 39% of Republicans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases versus 89% of Democrats—though 70% and 76% of Republicans support exceptions for rape and incest and when the mother’s life is at risk, respectively.

The religious support abortion rights—except for White evangelicals: Pew found Americans with religious affiliations are far more likely to oppose abortion than the nonreligious (82% of whom believe abortion should be legal), but with the exception of white evangelical Protestants (77% of whom believe abortion should be illegal), a higher share of every religious group polled—white non-evangelicals, Black Protestants and Catholics—favor abortion rights.

Gender split—not as big as you might think: Women are slightly more likely to support abortion than men, with Pew finding 62% of women want abortion to be legal versus 56% of men.

Asian Americans most supportive: Pew’s polling found majorities of every race support abortion being legal, though support was higher among Black (67% believe should be legal) and Asian (68%) respondents than those who are white and Hispanic (57% and 58%, respectively).

Support drops with age: The Pew poll found support for abortion highest among those ages 18-29 (67% believe should be legal), compared with 61% of those 30-49, 53% of those ages 50-64 and 55% of those ages 65 and up.

Support increases with more education: Pew found 68% of college grads want it legalized versus 61% of those with some college and 50% with a high school education or less (a Washington Post/ABC poll found a similar correlation).

May 03, 2022 2:41 PM  
Anonymous Polls trolls ignore, just in time for the midterms! said...

Parents less likely to support abortion rights: All In Together’s poll, conducted in September with Lake Research and Emerson College Polling, found 36% of those with children in their house opposed the Texas near-total abortion ban versus 54.9% without kids, and the Post/ABC poll similarly found 58% of parents want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade versus 62% of non-parents.

Cities support more: Those in the Northeast are the most supportive of abortion rights, with the Post/ABC finding 71% there want Roe v. Wade to be upheld versus 58% in the Midwest, 53% in the South and 66% in the West, and urban residents are more likely to support Roe v. Wade (with 69% support) than those in suburban or rural areas (56% and 57%, respectively).

Support rises with income level: The Post/ABC poll found 59% of those earning less than $50,000 per year wanting the court to uphold the law versus 62% of those making between $50,000-$100,000 and 65% of those earning more than $100,000.

SURPRISING FACT

While support for whether abortion should be legal has remained relatively stable since 1995, the share of Americans identifying as “pro-choice” or “pro-life” has not. Gallup found 49% of Americans now identify as pro-choice and 47% as pro-life, as compared with 56% and 33% who said the same in 1995, respectively. Though at least a plurality of Americans have always supported abortion being legal in at least some circumstances, more respondents actually identified as pro-life than pro-choice in 2019, 2013, 2012, 2010 and 2009.

TANGENT

Americans’ support for abortion falls behind many other countries, with a May 2021 Ipsos poll finding 66% of Americans believe abortion should be permitted in at least some circumstances, versus a global average of 71%. Support for abortion is highest in Sweden (88% support), the Netherlands (85%) and France (81%), while the countries whose abortion views rank lower than the U.S. are Brazil, India, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, Peru and Malaysia.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

The Supreme Court is reportedly likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, as the court prepares to issue an opinion in a case weighing Mississippi’s 15-week abortion bans and whether states can restrict abortion even before a fetus is viable. According to a draft of the opinion obtained by Politico, the court intends to use the ruling to overturn Roe and its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey— which said states can’t impose an “undue burden” on people seeking abortions—with Justice Samuel Alito writing Roe “was egregiously wrong from the start.” The court’s opinion has not yet been finalized or officially released and abortion still remains legal, with the final ruling expected by late June.

KEY BACKGROUND

Abortion first became legal nationwide with the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the federal right to an abortion. The court then affirmed that ruling in 2016, when it ruled in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that states cannot enact abortion restrictions that impose an “undue burden” on the procedure. Republican state lawmakers have repeatedly targeted abortion with an eye toward getting the Supreme Court to reconsider its precedent, however, with the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute reporting states have imposed more than 1,300 abortion restrictions since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, including more than 100 last year alone. Abortion opponents received several victories in 2021, as the conservative-leaning Supreme Court decided to take up the challenge to Mississippi’s abortion ban and reconsider Roe v. Wade. Texas then imposed the strictest restrictions on abortion in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade when its Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) went into effect on September 1, banning nearly all abortions after six weeks, which Idaho and Oklahoma have now copied themselves.

May 03, 2022 2:41 PM  
Anonymous Adoption has a supply-and-demand problem. Amy Coney Barrett and her pals on the Supreme Court have the solution said...

"Less abortion, more adoption. Why is that controversial?"

That was the response of Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, to Politico's bombshell revelation Monday night: a leaked Supreme Court majority opinion suggesting that we face the imminent reversal of Roe v. Wade.

About halfway through the 98-page opinion, which was authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito — and which Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged on Tuesday as genuine — came a familiar argument: that "modern developments," including the availability of "safe-haven" laws, which allow parents to anonymously relinquish babies without legal repercussions, have rendered abortion unnecessary. The opinion noted that "a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home."

Tucked into a footnote for that statement was a telling citation from a 2008 CDC report that found "nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent."

hat passage strongly resembled the argument Justice Amy Coney Barrett made last December, when the case in question, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, concerning Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, came before the court. During oral arguments, Barrett, who is herself an adoptive mother, suggested that the existence of safe-haven laws and adoption in general rendered moot the pro-choice argument that abortion access protects women from "forced motherhood." Rather, she continued, "the choice, more focused, would be between, say, the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks, or the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion."

Critics quickly pointed out that safe-haven laws are so rarely used that in many states the number of infants relinquished through them each year can be counted in single digits.





Being pregnant for 9 months is no cake walk, and being denied an abortion means there will be forced birth.

It doesn't get much more Handmaid's Tale than that.

May 03, 2022 3:20 PM  
Anonymous *&%$!@))((^#@)! said...

"Climate Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists who collectively assess the credibility of influential climate change media coverage"

biased, by definition

their opinion is worthless

it's like asking a TTFer if perversion is good

"Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed disappointment Tuesday with the leaked Supreme Court draft that would overturn abortion rights, saying if it’s true, she was misled by the justices during their confirmation hearings."

She is so stupid. Maybe you should fund politicians that run against her and get her voted out of office!

oh, that's right

you already tried that

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

Collins’ reaction is notable because she is a moron. She actually voted against feminist icon, Amy Coney Barrett.

Collins disingenuously suggested that Kavanaugh wouldn’t vote to end the national legal "right" to kill unborn children.

Collins said she based her faith in Kavanaugh in a check she got from Mitch O'Connell.

Kavanaugh ― and Gorsuch ― were among the five conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the egregious Roe v. Wade.

"A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible."

The Bible has plentiful discussion of all types of behavior. Versions that kids under third grade are exposed to are sanitized as appropriate already. The homosexuals who pound on Lot's door to demand homosex with his visitors or descriptions of David leering at Bathsheba aren't usually part of Bible story time in kindergarten.

"Additionally, I also seek the banishment of any book that references the Bible."

sorry, no can do, Chaz

Constitution says you can't prohibit the FREE exercise of religion

just ask Susan Collins

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

"His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials."

Chaz, thanks for your support of Florida's terrific new law protecting children

I don't your specific suggestion will be supported by many other parents

but, keep trying

you'll hit on something someday!

"Liberals have been critical of the legislation."

really?

why?

don't they want children protected?

"After passage, the state's Democratic leader, Lauren Book, lamented Florida's joining "places like Russia and China, modern-day examples of what happens when free thought and free speech are tightly restricted in all levels of society, including in school.""

Lauren, I know your psychiatrist has probably already told you this but, you need to stop worrying. All societies limit what they expose small children to. It's not just "places like Russia and China"

"Stevens proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its "casual" references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. "Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?""

I think most people agree with that. But the Bible is not that readable for young children. They won't stumble across any of that easily, even in the unlikely event they pick it up and start reading.

"The 57-year-old Deerfield Beach man says his ire was stoked"

he could try an anger management program

"Stevens said he is particularly interested in drawing attention to the hypocrisy"

don't start attacking TTF

May 03, 2022 3:34 PM  
Anonymous homosexual marriage is an inherently sado-masochistic arrangement that should be discouraged by any civilized society..... said...


let's see

TTF idol, Joseph Biden, is sliding in the polls

and I mean, sliiiding

and right now, Donald Trump leads polls for 2024

Joe Machin has thwarted the socialist plans of the Squad

Elon Musk is taking over Twitter, preventing the lunatic fringe progressives from censoring free speech

most Americans have signaled they believe asking for photo ID is reasonable when someone comes to vote

Ukraine has made it clear that any society is better off if most of its upstanding citizens have guns

Kyle Rittenhouse is free and suing the liars

the special prosecutor is closing in on Hillary's attempt to negate the 2016 election by spreading misinformation

the NY attorney general's office has admitted it has no case against Donald Trump

voters are rejecting the gay agenda, throwing it out of public schools

Roe v Wade is overturned under reasoning that will also apply to Obergefell and Lawrence v Texas

it's like a TTF nightmare

it just keeps getting worse and worse...

May 03, 2022 4:41 PM  
Anonymous How soon they forget said...

In time the bodies start showing up. A lot of people have forgotten that when you take away abortion rights, people who are pregnant and don’t want to be will still seek to terminate their pregnancies. They will try to do so, with sometimes horrific and tragic results.

Sam Alito cannot take away people’s reproductive choices; he can only take away their ability to make such choices safely and legally. Now we can all be forced to remember why this was such a big fight in the first place.

May 03, 2022 5:06 PM  
Anonymous defund the Dems said...

bookies are taking bets on how long it will be before Obergefell and Lawrence v Texas are overturned

odds give both less than two years

May 03, 2022 5:07 PM  
Anonymous Alito treats women as ambulatory uteruses who have no more right to reject a pregnancy than your refrigerator has a right to reject holding your milk and eggs.  said...

"Roe v Wade is overturned under reasoning that will also apply to Obergefell and Lawrence v Texas"

It will apply to Griswold v. Connecticut too.

Good-bye birth control!

May 03, 2022 5:09 PM  
Anonymous beware the Biden-Clinton-Anthony Weiner complex said...

"people’s reproductive choices"

evil people always have euphemisms for murder

May 03, 2022 5:10 PM  
Anonymous Dems and the Taliban both tear down statues said...

liberals are so deluded about the heroes they choose

usually, their idols are narcissists that wind up doing damage to their cause by their addiction to adulation

Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo are good examples

but one that really takes the cake is Ruth Bader Ginsburg

canonized by the left, her admiration for herself is probably the biggest reason that Roe is now history

everywhere you go you see bumper stickers, t-shirts, posters, art work, even movies, made celebrating her nobility as the ultimate feminist icon

truth is, if she had stepped down during Obama's first term, he'd have nominated a moderate liberal who'd uphold Roe

instead, she persisted through old age until she died in office, because she loved being the center of attention, allowing conservatives to install the decisive vote on the court

personally, I'm quite pleased with the turn of events

but it amazes me to see Ruth Bader Ginsburg exalted as a feminist saint

LOL!

"It will apply to Griswold v. Connecticut too.

Good-bye birth control!"

I doubt any state will ban birth control so Griswold will probably not be overturned

btw, just because something is not a constitutional right, that doesn't necessarily mean it will be banned

abortion will still be allowed in some states, for now

someday there will be a case that makes the point that unborn children deserve equal protection under the law

that's when the Supreme Court will ban abortion

it will be interesting to see what happens with gay marriage when Obergefell is overturned

it may be still allowed in some places

Nevada, for example, permits prostitution

so someplace like that may still do gay "marriages"

California, maybe

likely, Alabama will do away with it

May 04, 2022 6:29 AM  
Anonymous you guys could always try France, I hear they will let anyone in... said...


J.D. Vance, the venture capitalist and bestselling author who landed former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in Ohio’s crowded, combustible and expensive Republican Senate primary, has won his party’s nomination.

The Associated Press projected Vance’s victory a little more than two hours after polls closed at 7:30 pm ET.

Vance’s win is also seen as a victory for the former president, highlighting Trump’s position as the Republican Party’s most popular and influential politician.

In his victory speech at his primary night headquarters in Cincinnati, Vance gave a major nod to Trump, saying "I have absolutely got to thank the 45th President of the United States."

May 04, 2022 6:37 AM  
Anonymous IF GLOBAL WARMING THREATENS LIFE ON THE PLANET WHY DO DEMS OPPOSE NUCLEAR ENERGY AND FRACKING?!? said...

Roe v. Wade “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” That was the conclusion in the Yale Law Journal of pro-choice legal scholar John Hart Ely.

“One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” That's liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe.

It’s near-consensus among legal scholars, even those who believe abortion should be legal, that Roe was a shoddy decision, not grounded in the Constitution.

“You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result,” wrote pro-choice scholar Kermit Roosevelt in the Washington Post.

“This is not surprising,” Roosevelt continued. “As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent.”

The Constitution quite obviously does not protect abortion as a fundamental right. Roe relied on a “right of privacy” “emanating” from a “penumbra” cast by actually enumerated rights. It was clearly motivated reasoning.

Subject to scrutiny, Roe falls, and abortion defenders need to convince politicians to vote in order to strip unborn babies of any legal protections.

This is why the pro-Roe side is relying on threats to protect Roe. Democrats promise that they will declare the Supreme Court illegitimate if it doesn’t uphold their decision. That directly implies that they believe the federal government and state courts should disregard any subsequent rulings from the court.

Some Democratic senators already declare the Supreme Court is illegitimate. That means they don’t believe in the Constitution and thus have violated their oath of office.

Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts is threatening to pack the court — add four or more additional justices so that Democrats have a majority. (You can imagine the one-upping cycle this would set off.)

Bullying a court to rule along with the party in power has a storied history (FDR did it), but it doesn’t exactly smell of good norms.

Chuck Schumer even threatened violence against the majority if they overturned Roe. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch,” Schumer said. “I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Supreme Court justices don't face elections, and so Schumer was obviously calling for violence. He apologized for that, but expect more to come these days.

Sonia Sotomayor, the most political and least judicial of the nine justices, even threatened that overturning Roe would harm the legitimacy of the court. "Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception?" she asked during oral arguments.

All this to protect a Supreme Court decision that protects abortion up until the moment of birth, when everybody acknowledges that is the killing of a human being.

When you have the scientific facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the Constitution on your side, argue the Constitution. When you have only a dishonest precedent on your side, threaten the judges.

May 04, 2022 6:45 AM  
Anonymous They want to abolish everyone's right to privacy said...

""It will apply to Griswold v. Connecticut too.

Good-bye birth control!"

I doubt any state will ban birth control so Griswold will probably not be overturned"

Not that Trump U would ever teach law properly.

Here you go, study up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut#Opinion_of_the_Court

"Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship."

GOPers want to control people's loving relationships.

Shame on them, they should mind their own business.

May 04, 2022 7:17 AM  
Anonymous Forced birth should never be a reality but here it comes, courtesy of McConnell/Trump court packing. said...

It Worked Well When Barr Did It With the Mueller Report…
-tristero

Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy, but Stops Short of Exonerating President on Obstruction

No, the leak isn’t as serious as the decision to force American women to give birth against their will. It’s not even as serious as the naked vehemence and maliciousness of Alito’s language. Still, this leak had a very serious purpose.

The leak waters down the impact of the official release of the decision (a la Barr and the Mueller Report). When it’s finally official, it will be old news. Also, the “premature release” of the decision throws into disarray any planning for protests and legal/legislative opposition to the overturning of Roe. Those opposed thought they had until June to organize. Now, they’re scrambling. And for extra measure, the heads up that Roe will be killed (with extreme prejudice) is useful for all those pushing forced birth bills in Republican-led states.

Despite the ravings of the right on social media, I can’t think, as per Digby, of any good reasons why this would have been leaked by someone interested in affirming Roe. Everyone knew it was coming and many could have guessed it would be written as belligerently as possible. It serves no purpose for those in opposition to the overturn and would surely lead to a firing.

I think it was most likely leaked with the full knowledge of at least one of those in the majority. This stunt has all the hallmarks of far right political activism.

May 04, 2022 7:21 AM  
Anonymous Pure politics to deny women health care said...

What brought the court to its current precipice was not a fundamental shift in American values regarding abortion. The majority of Americans still support abortion rights. It was the shameless legislative maneuvering of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who jammed three Trump-nominated justices onto the court.

May 04, 2022 8:00 AM  
Anonymous as Roe goes, so goes the nuthouse........ said...


"GOPers want to control people's loving relationships.

Shame on them, they should mind their own business."

no, the GOP doesn't favor that

your lying won't change the ruling on Roe v Wade

"Despite the ravings of the right on social media, I can’t think, as per Digby, of any good reasons why this would have been leaked by someone interested in affirming Roe."

you should read more broadly

most observers believe it was leaked by a pro-abortion individual on the staff at the SCOTUS

the motivation is not complicated: to increase political pressure on one of the justice to change their mind before the ruling is officially issued

indeed, the justices voted months ago and the end of April has usually ben regarded as the deadline to change such a vote

when that didn't happen last weekend, the pro-abortion group became desperate, hence the release of the draft to try to stop the inevitable

let us know if you have anything further questions

"What brought the court to its current precipice was not a fundamental shift in American values regarding abortion. The majority of Americans still support abortion rights. It was the shameless legislative maneuvering of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who jammed three Trump-nominated justices onto the court."

as long as you're going to cut-and-paste the easily refuted Washington Post editorial from this morning, why not past the entire editorial

likely because the Post editorial was so illogical and stuffed with false notions that it would be embarrassing to post it

May 04, 2022 9:49 AM  
Anonymous Far-right Republican Robert Regan loses race in heavily red state House district Regan said he tells his daughters that ‘if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it’ said...

Democrat Carol Glanville beat far-right Republican Robert Regan in a special state House election Tuesday, flipping a heavily red district in the state Legislature.

Regan lost the support of some of the Republican establishment after he said that he tells his daughters that “if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it,” called the war in Ukraine a “fake war just like the fake pandemic,” and shared a meme saying that feminism is a “Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.”

“My opponent’s extreme, violent, and antisemitic views have no place in state government, and tonight the people of the 74th District made clear that they won’t stand for extremism,” Glanville said.

The district includes suburbs around Grand Rapids, including Grandville, Rockford and Walker.

Republicans have held the current 74th House District since it was drawn following the 2010 census. Former President Donald Trump won the area by nearly 16 points in 2020.

Former state Rep. Mark Huizenga (R-Walker) won a special Senate election last year, leaving the House seat vacant.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee noted the race is its first state legislative seat flip of 2022 nationwide.

“This victory is the result of Carol Glanville’s hard work, an extremist Republican on the ballot, and Democratic enthusiasm in the wake of the potential fall of Roe,” said DLCC President Jessica Post. “Congratulations to Representative-elect Carol Glanville on this unprecedented victory. This election was a referendum on the extremism that is now the norm in the Republican Party and is clear evidence that voters are fired up about the right-wing assault on abortion rights.”

May 04, 2022 10:04 AM  
Anonymous If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament said...

"most observers believe it was leaked by a pro-abortion individual on the staff at the SCOTUS"

Bullshit.

That's the unsupported claim of OPERATION RESCUE parolees.

Anti-abortion zealots target Sotomayor aide as source of leak: Their threats are no joke
Evidence is thin for Operation Rescue's claim — and the group's harassment has repeatedly gotten people killed


Almost as soon as Politico published its explosive story on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's leaked draft opinion, which strongly suggests the court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade, conservatives responded by focusing not on the content of the news, but how it was obtained. Online Monday night, there were nearly immediate calls to find and punish the leaker. In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insistently told reporters that the prospect of recriminalizing abortion was "not the story for today," but rather the supposedly dangerous precedent of the leak.

Also on Tuesday afternoon, Operation Rescue, the notorious anti-abortion activist group responsible for some of the movement's most outrageous tactics, joined the fray, issuing a press release declaring that the leak had most likely come from the office of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

That claim traced back to pretty thin sourcing: a Twitter thread posted by a Republican political strategist who, about an hour after Politico published its story Monday night, suggested he'd solved the mystery: One of Sotomayor's staffers had joined hundreds of classmates in opposing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and, at an earlier point, had been quoted in Politico regarding a case on which he'd assisted.

Within hours, the staffer's name had become a hashtag and his picture was plastered across Twitter, along with abundant calls for the individual's disbarment, incarceration for life or prosecution for treason.

On Tuesday, Operation Rescue took it a step further, repeating the unfounded allegations in a press release along with the claim that the leak had been designed to "foment social unrest that would apply pressure and intimidate the conservative justices to the point of changing their support for overturning Roe and Casey." The group's president, Troy Newman, went on to charge that if the claims proved true — which is quite an "if" — Sotomayor should be impeached or forced to resign; anyone else involved, he continued, should be "arrested immediately for sedition and fomenting an insurrection against the Judicial Branch."

There's abundant irony here — now the right cares about "insurrection"? — as well as, apparently, some basic confusion about how journalism works. But there's also the more troubling prospect that Operation Rescue, which has long treaded a fine line between vitriolic advocacy and anti-abortion terrorism, and was deeply implicated in the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, could again be stoking vigilante violence against its political enemies.

May 04, 2022 10:21 AM  
Anonymous If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament said...

Cheryl Sullenger, the author of Tuesday's Operation Rescue press release, served two years in prison for conspiring to blow up an abortion clinic in California in 1988. In its campaigns against various abortion providers, the group has blockaded clinics; commissioned raucous and graphic "Truth Trucks" to drive through neighborhoods where abortion-clinic staffers live; threatened clinic employees that unless they quit they will be subjected to "campaigns of exposure," including vigils outside their homes; and posted "WANTED" posters with abortion providers' photos — a tactic that, in Florida, preceded the murder of two other abortion providers and a clinic volunteer, and has since been ruled in court to be tantamount to a death threat

For seven years before Tiller was murdered in his church, the group conducted a wide-ranging campaign against him, including mobilizing state legislators to try to bring bogus criminal charges against him and round-the-clock harassment. After Scott Roeder — who donated to and organized alongside Operation Rescue, and claims he discussed "justifiable homicide" over lunch with Troy Newman — killed Tiller, Sullenger's phone number was found on his car dashboard. It would later emerge that Sullenger had supplied Roeder with information about Tiller's whereabouts and schedule.

In many ways, Operation Rescue's campaign against Tiller lines up with a phrase that became popularized during the Trump era: "stochastic terrorism," meaning the public demonization of a person or group that leads, almost inevitably, to violence. In 2009, that pattern was still rare enough to be notable; today, it's the air we all breathe.

"The vilification of abortion rights supporters generally and even the Supreme Court has contributed to a one-way history of harassment, violence and threats of violence over time," said Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates as well as author of "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy," which focuses extensively on anti-abortion violence. In 1985, Clarkson pointed out, someone shot out a window in the home of Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the 1973 majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. Before the attack, Blackmun had received numerous violent and graphic threats from anti-abortion activists, and over the previous year, seven abortion clinics and related facilities in and around Washington, D.C., had been bombed.

"Beyond this, the history of bombings, arsons, assassinations and more always lurk in the background of the politics of abortion," continued Clarkson. "In today's environment, when violent mobs storm the Capitol and other governmental institutions across the country, unproven claims like this add volatility. Cheryl Sullenger served prison time for her involvement in an attempted clinic arson. So she is certainly familiar with what it means to add fuel to the fire.".

May 04, 2022 10:21 AM  
Anonymous the final nail in the gay agenda coffin.... said...


Abortion isn't the only right that could be under threat by the Supreme Court's draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

If the draft opinion, published Monday by Politico, takes effect, it would open the door to reconsideration and potential reversal of other established rights, including same-sex marriage, according to activists.

"I think gay marriage is right on the heels of this" in terms of potential legal challenges and legislative proposals, said Kierra Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, a national LGBTQ rights organization.

Worry about the fate of gay marriage stems not just from the potential overturning of Roe, but the language used to justify it in the draft opinion, reportedly authored by Justice Samuel Alito with the backing of a court majority. One argument leveled against abortion in the court draft is that abortion rights are not enumerated in the Constitution, a circumstance that also could be applied to same-sex marriage, legal experts said.

May 04, 2022 10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And the privacy enjoyed by families too...

May 04, 2022 10:24 AM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has said: no loonies in the ladies loo !... said...

just because abortion is not a constitutional right and states should not be forced, under the constitution, to marry homosexuals to each other, doesn't mean any family's privacy will be violated

you could make the same argument that you're using to prevent enforcement of child abuse laws

abortion kills someone and they have the right to life as well as equal protection under the law

even if they're inconvenient and interfere with the family budget

"the leak had most likely come from the office of Justice Sonia Sotomayor"

there's a good enough evidence of motivation that this individual should be investigated

despite your two long posts, you failed to establish why he shouldn't be a suspect

May 04, 2022 10:33 AM  
Anonymous Alito treats women as ambulatory uteruses who have no more right to reject a pregnancy than your refrigerator has a right to reject holding your milk and eggs.  said...

In his draft, Alito wrote “Nothing in this opinion should … cast doubt on (other) precedents”

Alito’s draft emphasizes that his ruling was a narrow one and would not spillover to decisions on issues like same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), sex between gay couples (Lawrence v. Texas) and the right to contraception [actually to privacy in your own bedroom] (Griswold v. Connecticut).

“Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” Alito wrote.
But many who read the opinion were unconvinced. Alito’s draft is fueling questions about whether rights that are seen as having a thin historical record and which are not explicitly referenced in the Constitution — so-called “unenumerated rights” — would remain on a firm footing if the draft becomes law.

Like 1965's Griswold decision that established the right to privacy and became the basis of many rights granted.

May 04, 2022 11:05 AM  
Anonymous Fifty-two years ago today the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college students during a war protest said...

Kent State University commemorates 52nd anniversary of May 4 shootings

KENT, Ohio — Kent State University will commemorate the 52nd anniversary of the May 4, 1970 shootings Wednesday.

At 12:24 p.m. at the May 4 site, also known as Taylor Hill, the campus community and visitors will gather to remember the moment gunfire erupted. The Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college students during a war protest, killing four students and injuring nine others.

Not all of those hurt or killed were involved in the demonstration, which opposed the U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

The four students killed were Allison Krause, 19, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Sandy Lee Scheuer, 20, Youngstown, Ohio; Jeffrey G. Miller, 20, Plainview, N.Y., and William K. Schroeder, 19, Lorain, Ohio.

The confrontation, sometimes referred to as the May 4 massacre, was a defining moment for a nation sharply divided over the protracted war, in which more than 58,000 Americans died. It sparked a strike of 4 million students across the U.S., temporarily closing some 900 colleges and universities. The events also played a pivotal role, historians argue, in turning public opinion against the conflicts in Southeast Asia.

Many people were looking forward to the activities planned for the 50th anniversary of May 4, in 2020, but the pandemic caused the annual commemoration to be virtual.

For the commemoration, this year's keynote speaker is presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, who will add historical context to the events, according to Kent State University.

https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2022/05/04/kent-state-university-commemorates-52nd-anniversary-of-may-4-shootings

May 04, 2022 11:49 AM  
Anonymous fortunately, Obama and Garland were stopped so we have a terrific Supreme Court now!!! said...


"to reject a pregnancy"

what you call a "pregnancy" is actually a life

I think anyone would object if the government made up a euphemism to describe their life and then made it not just legal, but a constitutional right, to kill them

the whole idea is sick

no less so because the lives are unable to advocate for themselves

"Alito’s draft emphasizes that his ruling was a narrow one and would not spillover to decisions on issues like same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), sex between gay couples (Lawrence v. Texas)"

actually, he pointedly didn't mention Obergfell or L vs T

they are next to go

the gay agenda is over

"fueling questions about whether rights that are seen as having a thin historical record and which are not explicitly referenced in the Constitution — so-called “unenumerated rights” — would remain on a firm footing"

no question about it

they won't

"Kent State University commemorates 52nd anniversary of May 4 shootings"

kind of a sick thing to "commemorate"

with the children of the sixties ever cease exalting their ancient stories as the pivotal point in history?

May 04, 2022 12:26 PM  
Anonymous GOPeeping Toms said...

"actually, he pointedly didn't mention Obergfell or L vs T

they are next to go

the gay agenda is over"

He didn't have to mention other cases also based on Griswold and the right to privacy it created. He wants to gut them all.

GOPers are already feverishly writing new laws to prevent women from accessing the abortion pill through the mail and from travelling to other states to obtain abortions, which they will now feel free to criminalize. Missouri, for instance, is contemplating a bill that would expand its already draconian abortion law to "abortions obtained out of state by Missouri residents and in other circumstances, including in cases where 'sexual intercourse occurred within this state and the child may have been conceived by that act of intercourse.'" How do they expect to know such information?

That's where we're going with this, folks, right into the bedroom. Justice Samuel Alito has written an opinion designed to destroy the right to privacy so that he and his compatriots can metaphorically pull up a chair at the end of your bed and decide what you are allowed to do and with whom. It won't end with abortion. It's never just been about abortion.

May 04, 2022 1:06 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if there is any part of the Constitution that TTFers feel they can live with... said...

"He didn't have to mention other cases"

yes, that was my point

Obergefell will soon be history

"GOPers are already feverishly writing new laws"

LOL!

feverish, as in the last 50 years

the patience of pro=lifers has paid off!

"That's where we're going with this, folks, right into the bedroom."

hey folks, he's lying

the laws in those states protecting children conceived there will not require anyone to sit at the end of your bed

abortions aren't done in the bedroom

it would obviously be enforced after the fact, if it is commonly known where the child is conceived

just don't kill an unborn kid and you'll be alright

"It won't end with abortion. It's never just been about abortion."

well, that's what we're discussing now

you can worry about your delusions when they come to pass

right now, we're discussing whether there's a constitutional right to kill unborn children

May 04, 2022 1:54 PM  
Anonymous Peek-a-boo said...

1:54PM 5/4/22. "we're discussing whether there's a constitutional right to kill unborn children"



12:26PM 5/4/22 "actually, he pointedly didn't mention Obergfell or L vs T

they are next to go

the gay agenda is over"


May 04, 2022 2:10 PM  
Anonymous it's no wonder everyone calls the party of Slidin' BIden and Clueless Kamala the Dumbocraps......... said...

sad

let's see where we agree

Roe is gone

Obergefell is in hospice

but none of this means anything will be banned

but it does mean it's a matter of community discussion

not a settled constitutional matter

May 04, 2022 2:45 PM  
Anonymous GOPrudes think sex is for procreation and all should abstain until marriage. said...

And they really do think a woman who chooses to have sex is worse than a man who rapes. They punish the former, vote for the latter. It is as simple as that.

May 04, 2022 3:15 PM  
Anonymous Who remembers this? said...

New Bush Administration Policy Promotes Abstinence Until Marriage Among People in their 20s

May 04, 2022 3:18 PM  
Anonymous Terry McAuliffe ....LOL!!!!!!!...... said...

"GOPrudes think sex is for procreation and all should abstain until marriage"

I have a feeling there is a variety of opinion in the GOP

those who are conservative Christians would believe the latter but not the former

Roman Catholics are not conservative Christians, btw

"And they really do think a woman who chooses to have sex is worse than a man who rapes. They punish the former, vote for the latter. It is as simple as that."

well, that's a lie

"New Bush Administration Policy Promotes Abstinence Until Marriage Among People in their 20s"

do you have a problem with that?

May 04, 2022 3:38 PM  
Anonymous government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem said...

Democrats and their journalist allies are in the process of convincing themselves that the Supreme Court's leaked decision supplanting Roe v. Wade will be an electoral game-changer.

That may turn out to be true.

It may not.

Or, perhaps more likely, it will be a mixed bag that helps Democrats in some races, helps Republicans in others, and ends up being a marginal factor in most contests.

One of the underlying assumptions of the "backlash" analysis is that the issue clearly favors Democrats overall,

but fresh polling once again underscores that abortion-related public opinion is actually more complicated than that.

New numbers underscore the complexity and quasi-incoherence of public opinion on the subject.

The poll shows that a substantial majority opposes overturning Roe – but majorities also support state-level restrictions recently implemented in places like Texas, Florida and Mississippi.

There's a disconnect, and it's gaping. In case you were curious, women favor the Mississippi and Florida-style 15-week restrictions by double digits

How to square the strong support for maintaining Roe with these other findings?

I believe it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding, driven by a decades-long misinformation campaign by abortion supporters and the news media to convince people that "overturning Roe" is synonymous with "abortion is banned."

That is not true, as we explained yesterday.

Roe falling means that states will again pass their own abortion laws, which will range from very liberal to very restrictive, with quite a few falling in between.

The Mississippi law, which is featured in the Dobbs case before the Court, is very mainstream, by both American and global standards:

Even Texas' so-called "heartbeat" bill heavily restricting most abortions after six weeks ekes out majority support in the new survey.

Neither of these laws would be permissible under the prevailing (for now) Roe (1973) / Casey (1992) regime.

People say they want Roe to stand because they don't want all abortions to be illegal.

Many of these same people would like to see various limitations put in place on the practice, which is only possible in various states if Roe and Casey are no longer binding precedent.

Meanwhile, Democrats have decided that the smart political play is to force Republicans to vote on a bill "codifying Roe," which is actually a sham.

The Roe/Casey precedent permits states to regulate and restrict abortions in multiple ways, including heavy limits after the point of fetal viability (which isn't exactly a strictly constitutional standard, needless to say). The Democrats' bill is a truly radical departure from the current permissive precedent, which is already a global outlier.

Republican messaging should be simple:

The end of Roe does not mean the end of all abortion.

States and representatives will once again form policies, including varying degrees of common-sense limitations in certain places.

Democrats say they want to enshrine Roe in law, but what they actually want is abortion-on-demand, financed by taxpayers, up until the moment of birth – which very few Americans support because they're against flagrant inhumanity.

May 04, 2022 3:49 PM  
Anonymous Trolllyingagain said...

"what they actually want is abortion-on-demand, financed by taxpayers"

Look who forgot about the HYDE Amendment which is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape.

May 04, 2022 4:12 PM  
Anonymous Girls just wanna have fun! said...

"New Bush Administration Policy Promotes Abstinence Until Marriage Among People in their 20s"

do you have a problem with that?"

LMAO

I am not a person in my 20s, but I'll tel you this, I sure as hell did not abstain in that decade of my life.

I had lots of fun!

Your question would get the real answer if you asked lots of 20 year olds nowadays.

I'd say a good number of them will think that your question is very funny.

Abstain through their 20s and then only have sex to make babies!

Yeah right, whatever floats your boat.

We US citizens are free to pursue happiness no matter what your religion says.



May 04, 2022 4:18 PM  
Anonymous if Biden is innocent why not have Tara over for tea with Jill? said...


The leak of a draft majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood — and with it our 50-year regime of legalized murder of the unborn — has rightly captured the nation’s attention. It is without question the most important news story in the country, and, if the draft decision stands, the most important political development in a generation.

But it is also more than these things. Whether the draft opinion stands or falls, this is a great moment of moral clarity for the nation — and a time of great peril. Now we see, as we rarely have over the past five decades, the severity of what Roe inaugurated in 1973 and Casey sustained in 1992.

By snatching the question of abortion from the American people and their elected representatives, and doing so with such shoddy jurisprudence that it has since distorted many other areas of constitutional law, Roe divided the nation and sowed the seeds of a constitutional crisis. The contours of that crisis are now coming into view.

What’s clear already is that the left is willing to destroy every institution of American civic life to preserve their abortion regime. The day after the leak, the president of the United States, a man who once pushed for a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe but has since surrendered to the demands of his party’s ascendent left wing, took the extraordinary step of weighing in on an undecided Supreme Court case. (While he was at it, he spouted exactly the kind of nonsense we have come to expect from him.)

He wasn’t alone. Nearly every leading Democrat made a statement about the case Tuesday. Some, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren in her breathless indignation, managed to be both pathetic and malevolent.

The upshot is that it seems Democrats, no less than their courtesans in the media, are prepared to use every available tool at their disposal to intimidate the Supreme Court and bend it to their will. It is not too much to say, as my colleague Mollie Hemingway did yesterday, that both the leak of the opinion and the ensuing reaction on the left amount to yet another insurrection attempt. This time the target is not the Trump White House but the Supreme Court.

We know already that President Biden and the Democrats are willing to pack the court if they conclude they have lost control over it. They admitted as much during the 2020 election. “Packing the court” is just a euphemism for destroying it, as it would then become just another political branch of the federal government. This should not surprise us. Whenever the left feels they have lost control of an institution, they try to destroy it.

In addition to the Democrats’ political warfare, we’re seeing another powerful and familiar tool of the left emerge: the violent mob. As if on cue, a chorus arose Monday night and Tuesday morning among pro-abortion activists on Twitter that if Roe is overturned, they would “burn it all down.”

Such incendiary language might have once been considered figurative or rhetorical, but after the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, we know they really mean it. When the decision comes down, if Roe is overturned, expect riots and worse. In the near-term, expect threats on the lives of the justices who vote with the majority.

May 04, 2022 4:18 PM  
Anonymous if Biden is innocent why not have Tara over for tea with Jill said...


Some have taken a rather more benign view of all this, suggesting that if the draft opinion is adopted and Roe is overturned, federalism will allow us to sort out our differences on abortion. Some states will ban it outright, as Texas and a dozen other states have prepared to do with so-called “trigger laws.” Some will enshrine abortion access in law, as California has already done. Once we are all sorted, the two sides can live and let live.

But I do not think it will happen quite like that. One reason is that the left will not allow it. To the left, abortion is sacred. More than any other political issue or policy preference, it encapsulates a worldview that insists on limitless personal autonomy and recognizes no unchosen obligations. It declares that some people deserve absolutely no protection under the law. In that sense, it transcends politics. It is a kind of creed, an inversion of our Founding creed: all men are not created equal.

That should sound familiar, because this is not the first time such a creed has been adopted by a vast swath of the country. There is no polite way to say it (and the left hates it when you point it out), but the historical antecedent to the modern left’s fervor for abortion is the antebellum south’s fervor for chattel slavery. Like the abortion regime, the southern slave regime also had a rigid worldview at odds with the Constitution and natural law. It, too, was willing to destroy the country rather than relinquish its worldview and way of life.

The intellectual architects of the Slave Power were honest about their project. They meant to overthrow the Constitution, which John C. Calhoun thought was based on the lie that all men are created equal. Today’s pro-abortion lobby is finally coming around to something close to that level of honesty. It is hard to imagine a more candid exposition of their view than when Virginia Del. Kathy Tran, during a legislative hearing in 2019 for a bill that would have loosened restrictions on late-term abortions, admitted that her bill would allow for abortion up to the moment of birth.

Abraham Lincoln understood the southern slave creed for what it was. He knew that compromise with the slave regime was not possible, that the United States could not endure permanently half slave and half free. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided,” he said in his famous 1858 speech. “It will become all one thing or all the other.”

This is not 1858. We are not on the precipice of a civil war. But it is not too soon to recognize this crisis for what it is, to admit that we cannot endure with half the country allowing the murder of the unborn and half outlawing it. Eventually, we will become all one thing or all the other.

May 04, 2022 4:22 PM  
Anonymous Like Trump had Ivana, Marla and Melania all over for tea? said...

And of course these ladies too

1 Accusations filed in court against Trump
1.1 Ivana Trump (1989)
1.2 Jill Harth (1992)
1.3 E. Jean Carroll (1995 or 1996)
1.4 Summer Zervos (2007)
1.5 Alva Johnson (2019)
2 The New York Times May 2016 story
3 Recording controversy and second 2016 presidential debate
4 Public allegations since 2016
4.1 Jessica Leeds (1980s)
4.2 Kristin Anderson (1990s)
4.3 Lisa Boyne (1996)
4.4 Cathy Heller (1997)
4.5 Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
4.6 Amy Dorris (1997)
4.7 Karena Virginia (1998)
4.8 Karen Johnson (early 2000s)
4.9 Mindy McGillivray (2003)
4.10 Rachel Crooks (2005)
4.11 Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
4.12 Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
4.13 Jessica Drake (2006)
4.14 Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
4.15 Cassandra Searles (2013)
5 Pageant dressing room visits
5.1 Mariah Billado, Victoria Hughes, and three other Miss Teen USA contestants (1997)
5.2 Bridget Sullivan (2000)
5.3 Tasha Dixon (2001)
5.4 Unnamed contestants (2001)
5.5 Samantha Holvey (2006)

May 04, 2022 4:26 PM  
Anonymous "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything." - DJT said...

"The end of Roe does not mean the end of all abortion."

Yeah, and the last 3 justices convinced Senator Collins they had no interest in overturning R vs W, and yet here we are.

It may not mean the end of all abortion right away, but you can bet good money conservatives will make every possible effort to to just that. It took them nearly 50 years to overturn it in the first place. After that high, they're certainly not going to stop trying to kill it elsewhere - along with gay marriage and possibly even contraception - because hey, why not?

Some states are already looking at making it illegal for women to leave the state and get an abortion elsewhere - it shows they will never be content with just making it illegal in red states.

We now have 2 generations of women who grew up never knowing what a women's ward looked like filled up with women seriously injured from back-alley illegal abortions. It looks like they will find out soon.

Making abortions illegal will be about as successful as prohibition was in stopping alcohol consumption.

There will be lots of women harmed from this, and some of them will die. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be a good way to attract voters to your side. But if you're busy gerrymandering and choosing who gets to vote, that doesn't matter much.

May 04, 2022 4:48 PM  
Anonymous Handmaid's Tale said...

"Some states will ban it outright, as Texas and a dozen other states have prepared to do with so-called “trigger laws.” Some will enshrine abortion access in law, as California has already done. Once we are all sorted, the two sides can live and let live."

Not if the forced birth states will not allow their female citizens to travel to other states where abortion is legal.

That must be a form of kidnapping in addition to forced birth.

But she deserves that because "a woman who chooses to have sex is worse than a man who rapes."

Just ask Aunt Lydia.



May 04, 2022 5:47 PM  
Anonymous Dems, who can't abide the Constitution, are planning sedition to overthrow the Supreme Court......... said...


"Yeah, and the last 3 justices convinced Senator Collins they had no interest in overturning R vs W, and yet here we are"

well, I didn't mean for a second that decent people won't continue to attempt to stop the evil practice of abortion

but evil people, such as you, will have every opportunity to pursue your evil ends by the democratic process

if you think you're right, you'll need to persuade voters

that makes you uncomfortable because you know you are an evil person defending an evil practice

so, it's uncomfortable for you to be confronted by the arc of history, which bends toward justice

"It may not mean the end of all abortion right away, but you can bet good money conservatives will make every possible effort to to just that."

yes, they will

indeed, eventually a case will be brought that abortion does not give unborn children equal protection under the law

then, abortion will be illegal everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks for clearing that up!

"It took them nearly 50 years to overturn it in the first place. After that high, they're certainly not going to stop trying to kill it elsewhere - along with gay marriage"

oh, I agree

the nail has gone into the gay agenda coffin and soon homosexual "marriage" will no longer be considered a constitutional right

"and possibly even contraception"

it may cease to be a constitutional right, but will never be banned

"- because hey, why not?"

because the voters want contraception to legal

"Some states are already looking at making it illegal for women to leave the state and get an abortion elsewhere"

sounds like a great idea!!!!

"- it shows they will never be content with just making it illegal in red states."

oops, looks like you weren't fooled

"We now have 2 generations of women who grew up never knowing what a women's ward looked like filled up with women seriously injured from back-alley illegal abortions. It looks like they will find out soon."

actually, countless generations prior to 1973 also didn't know what a women's ward looked like filled up with women seriously injured from back-alley illegal abortions

"Making abortions illegal will be about as successful as prohibition was in stopping alcohol consumption."

yes, despite laws against murder, they still happen every day

"There will be lots of women harmed from this, and some of them will die."

on balance more females will live because they won't be murdered in their mother's womb

and a bonus: it is innocent victims whose lives will now be saved

"Somehow, that doesn't seem to be a good way to attract voters to your side."

we'll see

Dems were headed to an electoral defeat for the ages

maybe this will help them

if nothing else, by changing the topic

"But if you're busy gerrymandering"

you mean like the Dems in Maryland?

"and choosing who gets to vote,"

no, the Constitution does that

like any competent government, the red states require documentation that you've met Constitutional requirements

also, no loonies in the ladies loo!!!!!!!!!!!!

"that doesn't matter much."

oh, it does

women deserve privacy so we can't have loonies in the ladies loo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May 04, 2022 6:14 PM  
Anonymous Born, not unborn said...

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

May 04, 2022 7:00 PM  
Anonymous What does a SCOTUS decision on Roe v. Wade mean for Maryland residents? said...

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — As protests continue at the supreme court, pro-abortion rights activists and lawmakers in Maryland are stressing an eventual ruling by the court will not affect access to abortions in that state.

Montgomery County Delegate Arian Kelly, a Democrat, has been a leading advocate for abortion rights in the statehouse. She points out that Maryland legalized abortion with a referendum in 1992. More than 60% of Maryland voters approved what was called “Question 6” which prohibited “state interference with a woman’s abortion decision before the fetus is viable.”

"The most important thing for Maryland women is to know is their clinics are still open they’re gonna stay open they’re gonna be able to receive abortion care if they need to for the foreseeable future," said Kelly.

But that creates another potential issue if other states outlaw abortions said another pro-abortion rights lawmaker, Senator Cheryl Kagan, (D)Montgomery.

“I hope it does not become a tourist destination for abortion but that’s gonna be part of our reality and we have to be ready for it," said Kagan.

This is why she said the legislature overrode Governor Larry Hogan's veto to pass Maryland’s new abortion care act.

Starting July 1, nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and trained physician assistants are allowed to perform abortions. Most insurance providers will be required to pay for abortions with no copay, and the state will be required to provide $3.5 million per year for abortion care training. Delegate Kelly sponsored the bill.

“What we wanted to do is make sure is that women in Maryland don’t see a reduction in their access to care as we’re figuring out how to care for these out-of-state patients," said Kelly.

Laura Bogley of Right to Life Maryland agrees that Maryland law is settled but said she’ll keep fighting taxpayer support for abortion. She is hoping Gov. Hogan won’t release the first batch of funding for the bill.

“Public policy should be supporting the lives of mothers and children, said Bogley. “And public funding should be prioritized to life-saving alternatives to abortion.”

May 04, 2022 8:11 PM  
Anonymous Most Americans don't want the US to become a theocracy said...

"that makes you uncomfortable because you know you are an evil person defending an evil practice"

You like to smear me as an evil person, but the simple fact of the matter is that I'm not. I'm just pragmatic. If you're old enough and have enough lady friends, you know that some of them had to deal with some very difficult decisions in their lives. And for a variety of difficult reasons, sometimes abortion is the best of several bad choices.

I've never had an abortion, nor have I ever even hinted that a woman should get one. However, if she needs one, it should be available for her.

Ideally, there would be plenty of parents ready and able to take the unwanted child off here hands if need be. As there are now gay marriages, there are more parents available to do that then there otherwise would be.

But we have thousands of kids all across the country bouncing around care givers and foster families desperately hoping to find parents that will love them and take care of them properly. Shortly, there will be tens of thousands more in that situation or even worse.

But I'm sure the government will take care of all these unwanted children just fine, right?

May 04, 2022 9:30 PM  
Anonymous fan of our current Supreme Court said...


Dems, who have howled about a few hundred protesters on January 6 2021, saying they were trying to overthrow the government, are now trying to overthrow the Supreme Court. They are talking about packing the court to replace it with a political institution so they can turn Roe v Wade back on next year.

Meanwhile, police began to install high fences around the Supreme Court, to deter violence of the kind that erupted on Wednesday night by protesting abortion advocates.

An abortion rights protest in downtown Los Angeles turned violent on Wednesday, leaving two police officer injured and leading to a citywide tactical alert to be declared.

A group of hundreds of rabid abortion supporters marched from the U.S. Courthouse to Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles Tuesday night in a protest organized in response to the Supreme Court ruling that Roe v. Wade has no constitutional basis. Shortly after midnight, eastern time, police said the group began blocking an intersection and throwing rocks and bottles at officers.

"A group of protestors began to take the intersection. Officers attempted to communicate, clear and provide dispersal order to the group. The crowd began to throw rocks & bottles at officers. One officer injured. Citywide tactical alert has been declared," the Los Angeles Police Department tweeted.

"As protests continue at the supreme court, pro-abortion rights activists and lawmakers in Maryland are stressing an eventual ruling by the court will not affect access to abortions in that state."

that's true in many places

if you want to allow unborn children to be killed, work through the legislators to enact your evil plan

stop trying to coerce courts into overriding the democratic process

"You like to smear me as an evil person,"

smear?

I'm not making anything up

you have gone on record here saying there is a constitutional right to kill unborn children if they are inconvenient or too expensive

"but the simple fact of the matter is that I'm not. I'm just pragmatic."

rationalizing it doesn't change anything

"And for a variety of difficult reasons, sometimes abortion is the best of several bad choices."

the only legitimate reason would be to safe the life of the mother

otherwise, they are no "variety" of reasons justifying the killing of an unborn child

"But I'm sure the government will take care of all these unwanted children just fine, right?"

you have no right to decide for an unborn child that it is better to be dead than unwanted

May 05, 2022 5:49 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"Government IS the problem"... until it comes to controlling your own uterus.

There are a number of childhood birth defects that are terminal. The government will now force you to bring that child into the world where they will suffer - maybe a few weeks, a few months, or rarely, even a couple of years before they succumb to the inevitable and die.

A mother and doctor are far better positioned to make that decision than the government is. The state has no compelling interest in making her and and the child suffer until it predictably dies a few months after being born.

You need to update your perennial complaint to be honest:

"Government IS the problem - unless it allows the religious right to dictate their morals and beliefs on the rest of the US."

Oh, and don't forget - there is no constitutional right to contraception.

May 05, 2022 7:36 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"you have gone on record here saying there is a constitutional right to kill unborn children if they are inconvenient or too expensive"

Actually I haven't. That is the conclusion you drew for yourself. It's part of your reading comprehension problem - when you don't understand or agree with what I say, you make up your own conclusions and attribute them to me.

It looks like the religious "right" has finally figured out how to motivate people on the left to vote. It took destroying the long-standing (and admittedly imperfect) political neutrality of the Supreme Court, and turning it into a rubber stamp for the far right, but it appears to have worked.

May 05, 2022 7:43 AM  
Anonymous Uteruses are more regulated than guns said...

These judges make lying fun. It's the Black Robe Comedy Tour!

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1521979659977588737?

Kavanaugh: As a judge, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. By "it," I mean Roe v. Wade

Senator Durbin: Do you believe it is the settled law of the land?
Alito: Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court.

Barrett: I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey. I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law.

Thomas: I believe the Constitution protects the right to privacy

Senator Durbin: Roe v. Wade. Do you accept that?
Gorsuch: That's the law of the land. I accept the law of the land.


These are lies these now-Justices told during their confirmation hearings.

These five liars now plan to overrule "the settled law of the land" and "an important Supreme Court precedent" and Thomas' stated belief "the Constitution protects the right to privacy.".



May 05, 2022 9:33 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Merrick Garland. I believe in the Constitution right of free speech, as long as the speakers agree with me. otherwise, they're domestic terrorists !!!!!!!!!!... said...

"There are a number of childhood birth defects that are terminal. The government will now force you to bring that child into the world where they will suffer - maybe a few weeks, a few months, or rarely, even a couple of years before they succumb to the inevitable and die.

A mother and doctor are far better positioned to make that decision than the government is. The state has no compelling interest in making her and and the child suffer until it predictably dies a few months after being born"

I don't know where you live but the state of Maryland would agree with you

your whole argument above is fine to make in a debate on state and local law

it's just not a constitutional right

the Supreme Court is not supposed to be a legislature

"Government IS the problem - unless it allows the religious right to dictate their morals and beliefs on the rest of the US."

well, government is supposed to protect innocent life

I thought we all agreed on that

"Oh, and don't forget - there is no constitutional right to contraception."

not to worry, polls show that, unlike abortion, that Americans are heavily in favor of contraception

"Actually I haven't. That is the conclusion you drew for yourself. It's part of your reading comprehension problem - when you don't understand or agree with what I say, you make up your own conclusions and attribute them to me."

OK, do tell us when you think it is alright to kill an unborn child

"It looks like the religious "right" has finally figured out how to motivate people on the left to vote. It took destroying the long-standing (and admittedly imperfect) political neutrality of the Supreme Court, and turning it into a rubber stamp for the far right, but it appears to have worked."

LOL!

that remains to be seen

most Dems, even if they support the legalized killing of unborn children, aren't all that excited about the issue

indeed, most feel a bit guilty about it

witness the violent pro-abortion mobs last night only numbered in the hundreds

not exactly outraged masses

if inflation is still raging in November...it's the economy, stupid

"Kavanaugh: As a judge, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. By "it," I mean Roe v. Wade

Senator Durbin: Do you believe it is the settled law of the land?
Alito: Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court.

Barrett: I have no agenda to try to overrule Casey. I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law.

Thomas: I believe the Constitution protects the right to privacy

Senator Durbin: Roe v. Wade. Do you accept that?
Gorsuch: That's the law of the land. I accept the law of the land.

These are lies these now-Justices told during their confirmation hearings."

no justice guaranteed to not listen to any arguments

nor should they

every case must be considered

indeed, Barrett stressed that Roe is not a super-precedent because it was never widely accepted

"These five liars now plan to overrule "the settled law of the land" and "an important Supreme Court precedent" and Thomas' stated belief "the Constitution protects the right to privacy."

there are ways to protect innocent life without violating anyone's privacy

May 05, 2022 9:51 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"not to worry, polls show that, unlike abortion, that Americans are heavily in favor of contraception"

That's irrelevant since republicans have stacked SCOTUS:

From 2019:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/08/29/u-s-public-continues-to-favor-legal-abortion-oppose-overturning-roe-v-wade/

"The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted July 22-August 4 among 4,175 adults, also finds little support for overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. Seven-in-ten say they do not want to see the Roe v. Wade decision completely overturned; 28% say they would like to see the Supreme Court completely overturn the 1973 decision.

Consistent with these views, a majority of Americans say their greater concern is that some states are making it too difficult (59%) rather than too easy (39%) for people to be able to get an abortion."

From the leaked draft it appears that Mitch's stacked court is going the way of the 28% rather than the 70%.

May 05, 2022 10:28 AM  
Anonymous after setting up a Ministry of Truth, Joe Biden's new Secret Service name is 1984... said...


"That's irrelevant since republicans have stacked SCOTUS"

much like Dems, the GOP has nominated and confirmed justices that agree with their judicial philosophy

the GOP believes in the Constitution and works to apply it

Dems don't like much about the Constitution and would like the justices to re-interpret many parts of it out of existence

I'd agree that contraception is not a constitutional right but Griswold won't be overturned because there is no state that will ban contraception and, thus, no challenge to Griswold is likely

Dems think overturning Roe will flip the script on the election but they're in for a surprise

The SCOTUS allowed the Texas law to stand last year and everyone thought there would be a backlash

Terry MacAuliffe campaigned hard on it and lost big to Glen Youngkin in Virginia.

Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey — a state that Joe Biden won by 16 points — sparred with his Republican opponent over Roe at debates and on the campaign trail. The race wasn’t able to be called on Election Night; Murphy eked out a win by barely 3 points.

This week Americans learned that Roe v. Wade, almost certainly the most famous Supreme Court precedent and which recognized a constitutional right to abortion, will be overturned, leaving the question of abortion up to the states. In the immediate aftermath of the biggest breach in Supreme Court history, political pundits across the spectrum appeared to be in near-universal agreement that this would have an enormous impact on the midterm elections.

Last year, they predicted that Republicans could experience a political backlash over abortion. Instead, Republicans saw near universal gains across the country. Why were they wrong? Because after 50 years of abortion politics sorting voters, maybe there is nobody left to lash back.

Almost a year since the Texas law went into effect, politically speaking, abortion was the dog that didn’t bite.

May 05, 2022 10:53 AM  
Anonymous more of them polls that TTFers like so much...... said...


President Joe Biden and his administration appear perilously close to an irreversible severing of public confidence in his capacity to deliver prosperity and financial security as stiff economic challenges balloon into huge political liabilities.

A CNN poll released Wednesday shows that the President's repeated efforts to highlight undeniably strong aspects of the economy's post-pandemic rebound and to offset blame for its bad spots aren't working.

The main culprit is inflation, a corrosive force that the White House initially underestimated and has failed to tame. It's been decades since Americans have experienced this demoralizing cycle of spiraling costs for basic goods and services. That shock is twinned with punishing gasoline prices that also hammer family budgets and spread pain across the population -- in a way that a regular recession, which can destroy millions of jobs but not hurt everyone -- may not.

The result is a looming political disaster for Democrats, with voters in a disgruntled mood ahead of midterm elections that were already historically tough for a first-term President.

The depth of voter disquiet about the economy also suggests that a potential backlash against the Supreme Court possibly overturning the nationwide right to abortion may not save Democrats in November.

The party seems stuck in a dangerous political position of insisting the economy is doing well while voters think it's in the tank.

The CNN poll, conducted by SSRS from April 28 to May 1, showed that a majority of Americans think Biden's policies have hurt the economy, while 8 in 10 say the government is not doing enough to combat inflation.

May 05, 2022 10:59 AM  
Anonymous AOC is hitting on Elon Musk again... said...

First, they ban abortion. Next will be a contraception ban. Then a ban on same-sex and even interracial marriage. Soon we will all be living in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

That’s the parade of horribles that Democrats and the media are trying to sell Americans after the leak of the Supreme Court opinion repealing a constitutional right to abortion.

If Roe v. Wade falls, it “would mean that every other decision related to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” President Biden warned Tuesday. “Does this mean that in Florida they can decide they’re going to pass a law saying that same-sex marriage is not permissible?” If we can borrow a word he likes, the President is peddling disinformation.

The press is full of similar pearl-clutching about which precedent the Supreme Court might strike down next. Is it Obergefell (2015), which enshrined gay marriage? Griswold (1965), which overturned a state law prohibiting married couples from buying contraceptives? What about even Loving v. Virginia (1967), which guaranteed interracial marriage?

The correct answer is none of the above, as Justice Samuel Alito’s draft takes pains to emphasize. The leaked opinion is explicit about distinguishing Roe and its 1992 legal revision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, from cases on unrelated social topics.

“None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion,” the draft says. “They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way.”

It’s true that those past decisions have been criticized by conservatives. Griswold is where the Court said the Bill of Rights has “emanations” that create “penumbras,” a phrase long lampooned by the right. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Obergefell asserted that the Constitution guarantees rights for free Americans to “define and express their identity.” Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent compared that line to “the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Yet unlike Roe, both of those decisions have established themselves as durable precedents with broad public acceptance. A Gallup poll in 2019 found that 92% of Americans believed using birth control to be “morally acceptable.” That was up three points since 2012, and it included 90% of the respondents who identified as conservative or very conservative.

On gay marriage, 70% of people told Gallup last year that the law should treat such unions no differently than traditional ones. That’s up from 58% the year Obergefell came down. As for Loving, Gallup says 94% support black-white marriages.

That stands in contrast to abortion, which remains a contested moral and political issue. As Justice Alito’s draft opinion points out, even Roe acknowledged that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting “potential life.” There’s a reason that thousands of Americans have spent nearly 50 years enduring the January cold in Washington at the annual March for Life.

May 05, 2022 11:17 AM  
Anonymous AOC is hitting on Elon Musk again... said...


In 1975 Gallup found that 21% of Americans said abortion should be always legal, 22% never legal, and 54% legal only in certain circumstances. Last year the figures were 32% always legal, 19% never, and 48% sometimes. Whatever the High Court thought it was doing in Roe and again in Casey, it didn’t come close to settling the debate. And judges are ill equipped to draw the distinctions in abortion policy that a plurality of Americans say they want.

In the marriage cases, there are also what the Court calls “reliance interests” at stake. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are married to people of the same sex. The Supreme Court isn’t going to invalidate those unions and disrupt so many lives. The same goes for interracial marriage. By the way, Justice Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman.

Roe also stands apart on what Justice Alito’s opinion calls “workability” grounds. Roe has continued to inspire a mass of litigation as modified by Casey’s “undue burden” test. No one really knows what that burden is, so states bring case after case to contest it. By contrast, Obergefell, Griswold and similar rulings have not been challenged by what Justice Scalia called “give-it-a-try” litigation.

Democrats don’t want Americans to know all this because their political goal is to frighten them into believing that Justice Alito is some black-robed Pharisee bent on invading their bedrooms. It’s simply not true. Repealing Roe would merely return abortion policy to the states and democratic debate. That’s all.

May 05, 2022 11:17 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"Repealing Roe would merely return abortion policy to the states and democratic debate. That’s all."

And I have a bridge to sell you.

"Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973, so it has been on the books for a long time," he said. "It is a precedent that has now been on the books for several decades. It has been challenged. It has been reaffirmed." -- Samuel Alito, 2006

Gorsuch was then-President Donald Trump's first nominee to the Supreme Court, chosen after Trump vowed during his presidential campaign to put "pro-life justices on the court" with the explicit goal of overturning Roe.

During Gorsuch's confirmation hearing in early 2017, he refused to take a position on Roe. He told Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that he "would have walked out the door" had Trump asked him to overturn Roe.

Gorsuch took the uncontroversial line that Roe is a precedent. Precedent is the "anchor of law," he said. "It is the starting place for a judge."

"I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the United States Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed," he said. "A good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other."

One telling exchange came with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who asked about a book Gorsuch wrote in 2006 advocating against legalizing assisted suicide.

In the exchange, Gorsuch acknowledged that the Supreme Court had held that a fetus is not a person for the purposes of the 14th Amendment's due process clause, a legal underpinning of Roe v. Wade.

"Do you accept that?" asked Durbin.

"That is the law of the land. I accept the law of the land, senator, yes," Gorsuch replied. (2017)

"Judges do not make decisions to reach a preferred result. Judges make decisions because the law and the Constitution as we see them compel the results," he said in his opening remarks.

In particular, much was made of a private meeting between Kavanaugh and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who said the nominee had told her he considered Roe to be "settled law."

But Kavanaugh stopped short of repeating that line in his hearing, instead focusing on Roe's status as Supreme Court precedent.

"It is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis," he said. "The Supreme Court has recognized the right to abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. It has reaffirmed it many times." Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh (2018)

May 05, 2022 2:25 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"In the marriage cases, there are also what the Court calls “reliance interests” at stake. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are married to people of the same sex. The Supreme Court isn’t going to invalidate those unions and disrupt so many lives."

Tell that to the gay couples who were legally married in California before churches and a lot of Mormon interference from Utah got Prop 8 passed.

May 05, 2022 2:35 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

“We’re going to lose this campaign if we don’t get more money,” the strategist, Frank Schubert, recalled telling leaders of Protect Marriage, the main group behind the ban.

The campaign issued an urgent appeal, and in a matter of days, it raised more than $5 million, including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a misleading advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.

As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.

“California is a huge state, often seen as a bellwether — this was seen as a very, very important test,” Otterson said.

First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

The canvass work could be exacting and highly detailed. Many Mormon wards in California, not unlike Roman Catholic parishes, were assigned two ZIP codes to cover. Volunteers in one ward, according to training documents written by a Protect Marriage volunteer, obtained by people opposed to Proposition 8 and shown to The New York Times, had tasks ranging from “walkers,” assigned to knock on doors; to “sellers,” who would work with undecided voters later on; and to “closers,” who would get people to the polls on Election Day.

An e-mail message sent to 92,000 people who had registered at the group’s Web site declaring a “code blue” — an urgent plea for money to save traditional marriage from “cardiac arrest.” Mr. Schubert also sent an e-mail message to the three top religious members of his executive committee, representing Catholics, evangelicals and Mormons.

“I ask for your prayers that this e-mail will open the hearts and minds of the faithful to make a further sacrifice of their funds at this urgent moment so that God’s precious gift of marriage is preserved,” he wrote.

On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.

“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he said in a phone interview from Orem, Utah.

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, roughly half of $40 million raised for the measure was contributed by Mormons.

May 05, 2022 2:46 PM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...


thanks for the four-part post in what could have been transmitted in a couple of lines

since Obergefell there multiple degrees more homosexual "marriages" so I doubt the court will overturn it

hope you're right though

we're a better society without homosexuals married to each other

May 05, 2022 4:01 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"we're a better society without homosexuals married to each other"

Not really, but it's been nice that you haven't been ranting all about how "gays will destroy marriage" and "gay marriage will destroy America" and all that BS like you did before it was legal.

Kind of a bummer the whole sky didn't fall when you said it would, hey Chicken Little?

May 05, 2022 6:36 PM  
Anonymous here's an idea: let's live and let live...not live ad let kill..... said...


"Kind of a bummer the whole sky didn't fall when you said it would, hey Chicken Little?"

even though I never said that, I guess the sky not falling is always a good thing

not a bummer, man

wanna toke?

still, we're a better society without homosexuals "married" to each other

homosexual "marriage" is a sado-masochistic arrangement that is discouraged by a healthy society

indeed, true marriage, which homosexual "marriage" is not, is how life is perpetuated

which I guess is kind of a bummer to people like you who aren't pro-life

May 05, 2022 7:16 PM  
Anonymous TTF is such a slob.... said...

Joe Biden’s presidency has been replete with foreign policy disasters, from a botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 American servicemembers dead, to an embarrassing diplomatic flub with longtime American ally France, to the complete sellout of American interests in an effort to return to the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal. Yet despite these failures, the Biden administration continues to pursue the same losing approach to national security that has undermined American interests at every turn. Here are just a few examples.

1. Biden Has Precipitated the Worst Border Crisis in History

Arguably the most immediate threat to national security precipitated by the Biden administration is the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where millions of completely unvetted foreign nationals are escaping or are simply being released into the interior of the country. Each successive month continues to set new records for border encounters, with more than 220,000 in March of this year alone. In addition, Biden’s failure at the border has paved the way for a massive increase in drug smuggling and human trafficking, bringing untold suffering to families and communities in Latin America and the United States.

Recent data released by the Department of Homeland Security also shows that 42 individuals on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the border since Biden took office. In a hearing on the DHS budget last week, DHS Secretary Mayorkas couldn’t say if any of these terrorists had been released or provide any assurances that more people on the terrorist watch list hadn’t escaped detection and entered the country.

Yet in the midst of the worst border disaster in history, Biden is plowing ahead with repealing Title 42, a move that border experts warn would exacerbate the already unmanageable situation at ports of entry.

2. Biden Abandoned Energy Security to Pursue a Radical Climate Agenda

On January 27, 2021, while signing executive orders that would cut oil and gas production, Biden said that “climate change will be at the center of our national security and foreign policy.” This is one promise Biden has certainly made good on, with Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby saying in October that the threat of China and climate change are “equally important.” Last month, Biden also vowed to make the U.S. military “climate-friendly.”

But the disastrous consequences of those policies have been made all too clear for working Americans as gas prices have reached all-time highs. Now, Biden has resorted to begging OPEC for oil, leaving the U.S. at the mercy of hostile foreign powers.

3. The Military’s New Chief Concern: Going Woke

As China grows more aggressive in the South Pacific, Russia is on the move in Eastern Europe, and American adversaries in the Middle East threaten more attacks on American soil, the Biden administration is preoccupied with wokeifying the military instead of gearing up to face down threats to the country.

Military personnel under President Biden have been subject to discharge on account of refusing the vaccine and forced to embrace left-wing ideologies like Critical Race Theory. As if that weren’t enough, under Biden’s FY2023 budget proposal which claims to be “one of the largest investments in our national security in history,” military funding would not keep pace with inflation, and over the long haul would allow China to close the defense spending gap.

Biden’s budget would also cut thousands of personnel across all branches and shrink the size of the United States Army to its lowest point since 1940. Moreover, after Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal saw his administration turn its strategic attention to the Indo-Pacific region, the budget would ultimately lead to a smaller naval fleet – even as China and Russia build ships at a frantic pace.

May 05, 2022 7:20 PM  
Anonymous TTF is such a slob.... said...

4. Biden’s Economic Policies Have Left the Country Vulnerable to Economic Warfare

As events of recent years from the COVID-19 pandemic to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have shown, economic security is national security. In an increasingly interconnected global economy, great power struggles are now often decided in financial markets or trade wars, rather than on battlefields with tanks and rifles.

Donald Trump understood this, and ensured U.S. national security by creating a strong national economy. But less than two years into Biden’s presidency, failed Democrat economic policies have led to record high inflation and falling real wages. Consumer sentiment is now at a decade low, and the share of small businesses reporting inflation as their top problem is the highest it’s been since 1981 – and yet Democrats still want to spend trillions more.

The drastic implications of this economic downturn for U.S. national security are clear; in recent weeks, China’s President Xi has signaled that his country aims to outpace U.S. economic growth this year. Already, according to April’s IMF World Economic Outlook, China is on track to do just that. The stronger China’s economy grows relative to the U.S. economy, the more the country is at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.

5. Biden Has Done Nothing to Secure Supply Chains and Food Supplies

It comes as no surprise that data trends show a strong economy and food security go hand in hand. But Biden recently warned of “real” food shortages following sanctions on Russia, highlighting a serious national security issue that his administration has failed to solve here at home. Fertilizer, glyphosate, and diesel prices – critical elements of crop production – are exorbitantly high, a trend which Biden appears powerless to stop.

Already, the USDA forecasts that “all food prices are now predicted to increase between 4.5 and 5.5%” in 2022 – and that’s after an expensive 2021. Food banks are also increasingly turning up empty shelves across the country.

Notably, other countries around the world are already kicking off a wave of protectionism to secure their own food supplies. But in the United States, Biden is doing nothing of the sort, and is instead proposing a new death tax which would, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, be “devastating to American agriculture and the broader U.S. economy.” Moreover, it would reduce GDP by an estimated $100 billion over ten years.

The most important job of any leader is to protect his or her people, which in turn helps build a strong and confident nation. On both counts Biden has failed spectacularly, and his polling numbers have reflected as much. Should Biden actually want to fulfil his sworn duty to the American people, he would do well to look to the strength displayed by past U.S. Presidents in times of crisis – particularly his most recent predecessor.

May 05, 2022 7:20 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"wanna toke?"

Nope. I've never touched the stuff, and it doesn't seem to have helped you any.


"still, we're a better society without homosexuals "married" to each other"

You've made your opinion ABUNDANTLY clear. But you have never managed to find any real facts to support you; which I guess is kind of a bummer to people like you.

"homosexual "marriage" is a sado-masochistic arrangement"

Only if that's your kink - but you'll have to negotiate that with your partner - don't spring on them without any warning - that could be considered assault.

"that is discouraged by a healthy society"

Again, that is only your opinion, and you have never managed to come up with any facts to support your case, just all sorts of apocalyptic doom and destruction rhetoric. Harold Camping built a multi-million dollar radio business predicting the end of the world and blaming it on the gays, but when he died, and the apocalypse didn't happen, a bunch of his followers required mental health therapy. It wouldn't hurt you to take a cure there.

Blaming gays is great for pumping money out of frightened conservatives, but the radical right has never shown any real harm from society accepting gay people. Conservatives are just really bummed that there are consequences now for harassing them.

"indeed, true marriage, which homosexual "marriage" is not, is how life is perpetuated"

We have a whole planet full of life, only one species of which (as far as we know) has ever gotten "married." And it is the same one that is currently causing a mass extinction event on the only planet we know where life exists.

But maybe that's only a coincidence, and some of those married people will wake up and start to realize that the rest of life on our planet can't handle all their over-breeding.

It will be far, far better for their kids if they do.

May 05, 2022 8:14 PM  
Anonymous remember Brett Kavanaugh? he was the final nail in the gay agenda's coffin said...

"Nope. I've never touched the stuff"

Don't worry. I won't turn you in. That would be a bummer, man...

"You've made your opinion ABUNDANTLY clear. But you have never managed to find any real facts to support you; which I guess is kind of a bummer to people like you."

what kind of facts are you looking for?

males and females have complementary characteristics and produce stable families that are the foundations of any healthy society

further, true marriages produce life itself

I know you will say there are "studies" that prove that a couple of homosexuals with a kid is the optimal family arrangement but objective research is impossible given that no one is our society appears neutral on the matter

"just all sorts of apocalyptic doom and destruction rhetoric"

I just said society would be better off without homosexual "marriage"

I never said it would destroy our civilization

May 06, 2022 7:12 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden is not the solution to the Dems' problems, Slidin' Biden is the problem... said...

Critical race theory originated in the family of critical studies and seeks to promote what its adherents believe is a pervasive and inescapable racist legacy in the U.S. legal system. The theory has been packaged to children in K-12 schools and teaches them that America is a fundamentally racist country.

An Illinois high school history teacher, Frank McCormick, said that he decided to blow the whistle on what was being taught at his school because parents are being "gaslit into this lie that CRT does not exist in [K-12] education."

"It’s not explicitly taught," he said, "but it’s used as a lens through which curriculum and lessons are filtered … based on …presuppositions that racism is … systemic [in America]."

Critics say that when the theory's concepts are applied to curriculum for K-12 schools, it is an utter disaster.

Erec Smith, an associate professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania, said in an op-ed, that while "third-graders aren’t reading legal theory from the 80s written by people in their 80s, … their teachers have likely read the literature, and when trying to put this theory into practice, things go horribly wrong."

Smith argued that there should be a bipartisan push against CRT because it is "adamantly opposed" the foundation of liberty – "free speech, equality, individuality, and the concept of merit."

"You can imagine what kind of 'education' would ensue if teachers implicitly and explicitly demonize these concepts," he said.

May 06, 2022 9:22 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden is not the solution to the Dems' problems, Slidin' Biden is the problem... said...


A schoolteacher from New York City, Paul Rossi, said in Bari Weiss' "Common Sense" Substack that his students are frustrated with the indoctrination pedaled through Grace Church High School.

"[M]y school is asking me to embrace ‘antiracism’ training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful … [for] any [teacher] who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding," he said. "[Students] report that, in their classes and other discussions, they must never challenge any of the premises of our 'antiracist' teachings, which are deeply informed by Critical Race Theory."

Additionally, he claimed the school is keeping a lookout for students who are not acclimating to the propaganda culture.

Tony Kinnett, a former Indiana school administrator who was placed on leave after exposing CRT curricula at his school in a video posted on Twitter, also said that parents are overtly being lied to about CRT.

"Parents, when we tell you critical race theory isn't taught in our schools we're lying. Keep looking," the whistleblower said. "It means one thing, go away and look into our affairs no further."

Moreover, some left-wing K-12 teachers openly admit they approve and seek to transmit CRT concepts to their students. A current assistant principal at the Castle Bridge School in Washington Heights, New York, David Rosas, said on Chalkbeat that the controversial topic "is not something I will shy away from… Critical race theory is interwoven in all that I do."

"I needed space to be a teacher who was racially literate and racially radical," he continued.

A Detroit superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, publicly admitted during a school board meeting that CRT was embedded within the schools' curriculum.

"Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English, language arts, and the other disciplines," Vitti said. "We’re very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials and embedding critical race theory within our curriculum."

Despite these facts, the denial of CRT in K-12 has reached some of the highest levels in American politics.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has claimed the fascination with CRT is merely a tool of the right to win a culture war - a viewpoint also shared by the National School Boards Association.

When asked how he would respond to the claim that CRT is only taught in law schools, Kinnett said, "That is an incredibly ignorant way of viewing what graduate-level theories are for."

Kinnett explained that during the course of his Master's studies he was taught CRT and how to apply it into lesson plans in K-12 classrooms.

"We learned all kinds of educational theories that we were expected to put to use in the classroom," he said.

Kinnett added that CRT concepts taught in classrooms include telling "students that every problem is a result of White men. And that … everything Western civilization built is racist capitalism and a tool of white supremacy – those are straight out of Kimberlé Crenshaw's main points verbatim in [her book Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement]."

May 06, 2022 9:26 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden is not the solution to the Dems' problems, Slidin' Biden is the problem... said...


Mike Gonzalez, a CRT expert at the Heritage Foundation, says its goal is to begin a rallying cry for revolutionary changes. "The … Marxian belief [holds] that the purpose of theory is revolution, not just intellectual debate," he said in "The Critical Classroom," a book delving into CRT's verticals in American society.

Another example included when a third-grade teacher in Cupertino, Calif., reportedly instructed students on how to "deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their ‘power and privilege.’"

During a diversity training, teachers at Cherokee Middle School, a middle school in Springfield, Missouri, were provided a handout and were instructed to locate themselves on an "oppression matrix," according to City Journal. The training also denounced "socially unacceptable" White supremacy, which included "education funding from property tax, colorblindness, calling the police on black people, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) as Halloween costumes, not believing experiences of BIPOC, tone policing, [and] white silence."

Additionally, the left-wing media works overtime to flatly deny the prevalence of CRT in the U.S. education system and to silence debate on the matter.

For example, on MSNBC's "The ReidOut," host Joy Reid has repeatedly said that CRT is only found in law schools.

"Law school is the only place where [critical race theory] is taught. NBC has looked into everywhere, and it's not taught in elementary school," Joy Reid said in June 2021.

Her guest, Chris Rufo, who has been exposing CRT curriculum across the country, asked to interject and explain his position. "This should be a dialogue, right? Am I right?"

Reid replied, "Well, it's my show, so it's how I want to do it."

May 06, 2022 9:27 AM  
Anonymous i wonder how long Hillary's sentence will be.... said...

More than a century ago, Mark Twain identified two fundamental problems that would prove relevant to the COVID pandemic. “How easy it is to make people believe a lie,” he wrote, “and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

No convincing evidence existed at the pandemic’s start that lockdowns, school closures and mask mandates would protect people against the virus, but it was remarkably easy to make the public believe these policies were “the science.”

Undoing this deception is essential to avoid further hardship and future fiascos, but it will be exceptionally hard to do. The problem is that so many people want to keep believing the falsehood.

Adults meekly surrendered their most basic liberties, cheered on leaders who devastated the economy and imposed two years of cruel and unnecessary deprivations on their children. They don’t want to admit these sacrifices were in vain.

They’re engaging in what social psychologists call “effort justification,” which has been observed in studies of painful initiation rituals for fraternities and other groups. Once people endure the pain, they convince themselves that it must have been worthwhile even when their reward is actually worthless.

If one brief bad experience can transform people’s thinking, imagine the impact of the pandemic’s ceaseless misery. It’s been a two-year-long version of Hell Week, especially in America’s blue states, with Anthony Fauci and Democratic governors playing the role of fraternity presidents humiliating the pledges.

Americans obediently donned masks day after day, stood six feet apart, disinfected counters and obsessively washed their hands while singing “Happy Birthday.” They forsook visits to friends and relatives and followed orders to skip work and church. They forced young children to wear masks on the playground and in the classroom — a form of hazing too extreme even for Europe’s progressive educators.

To undo the hazing’s effects, we need to not only present the facts but also reassure people that they’re not to blame for the useless suffering. They submitted to it because they assumed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention knew how to control disease and scientists and public-health officials would provide sound scientific guidance about public health.

Those were reasonable assumptions. They just turned out to be wrong.

CDC leaders terrified the public with worst-case scenarios based on computer models — and then used those blatantly unrealistic projections to claim unprecedented powers and experiment with untested strategies. They ordered lockdowns without even pretending to weigh the hypothetical benefits against the tangible economic, medical and social costs — not to mention the intangible costs in emotional hardship and lost liberty.

May 06, 2022 9:32 AM  
Anonymous i wonder how long Hillary's sentence will be.... said...


Randomized clinical trials conducted before the pandemic had repeatedly shown that masks did little or no good at preventing viral spread, but the CDC proclaimed them effective against COVID and promoted mask mandates nationwide. Federal officials stubbornly ignored the hundreds of studies around the world showing that, except in a few isolated places, lockdowns did not reduce COVID mortality and mask mandates were generally ineffective and senselessly harmful in classrooms. Instead of heeding all this evidence of their mistakes, officials did their best to suppress it and silence dissenters.

The public needs to learn what went wrong during the pandemic, but they’re not going to hear it from the Biden administration. For now, the best opportunity for a public airing of the facts may be the 2022 election campaign. Some candidates are already attacking the lockdowns and mask mandates, and pandemic strategies could become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, especially if Ron DeSantis runs on his success as Florida’s governor.

Florida employed some of the least restrictive COVID policies, avoiding lockdowns and mask mandates, and it still fared as well or better than the national average in measures of age-adjusted COVID mortality and overall excess mortality (how many more deaths than normal from all causes occurred during the pandemic).

Florida flourished economically by comparison with other states, especially California, which imposed singularly strict COVID mandates and suffered one of the nation’s worst surges in unemployment. Yet California’s overall death toll has been slightly worse than Florida’s.

If California’s cumulative rate of excess mortality equaled Florida’s, about 5,000 fewer Californians would have died during the pandemic. And if California’s unemployment rate equaled Florida’s last year, 500,000 fewer Californians would have been out of work.

Those are the hard truths that Americans need to hear after two years of COVID hazing. It won’t be easy convincing them that they fell for a deception, but it can be done, as DeSantis demonstrated at a recent appearance when he urged a group of high-school students on the podium to take off their masks. “We’ve got to stop with this COVID theater,” he said. “If you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”

Some students on the podium kept their masks on, looking like meek pledges during Hell Week, but a few were emboldened to uncover their faces and breathe fresh air. At least for the moment, they were free to wonder whether this ridiculous fraternity was worth staying in anymore.

May 06, 2022 9:34 AM  
Anonymous Republican Candidate Charged with Murdering Cancer-Stricken Wife Wins Primary from Jail said...

Andrew Wilhoite won a Republican primary in Indiana on Tuesday night after being arrested in the murder of his wife Nikki Wilhoite, who had just finished her last round of chemotherapy.

In March, police said the couple had a heated argument that ended with Andrew hitting Nikki in the head “with a blunt object” before dumping her in a creek. Her body was discovered in the early hours of March 26, partially submerged.

“She just finished chemo and stuff,” a neighbor told WXIN of the late 41-year-old. “She was trying to get well and for him to do something like that to her it’s not right.”

Andrew Wilhoite, 40, received 60 votes and will appear on November ballot for the Clinton Township Board. There were two other winners in the primary to fill the three available seats. He will remain in jail until his trial – at the very least. A trial date has not been set.

“There is no legal reason he can’t be a candidate,” an Indiana election official told the Tribune Star. “Under our system you are innocent until you are proven guilty. If a person is convicted of a felony, then they are no longer eligible to be a candidate and are ineligible to hold office.”

WXIN reported that Nikki had filed for divorce a day before her last chemotherapy treatment.

Andrew said that Nikki attacked him during their argument and that he swung at her face “with a gallon-sized concrete flower pot.”





May 06, 2022 9:58 AM  
Anonymous Dems are desperate desperados said...

60 votes for someone who got in a fight with his spouse and accidentally killed her?

sounds like you're desperate to change the depressing Democrap story...

May 06, 2022 10:39 AM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has known that two genders are necessary to make a marriage said...


Democrats are unlikely to see the surge of angry abortion rights voters they hope for on midterm Election Day.

Many are genuinely aggrieved by the expected rollback of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade, which was revealed by Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked majority opinion. But, as with so much that party officials flap in the public’s face, it is mostly a desperate, opportunistic attempt to deflect attention from the Democrats’ biggest political challenge this year.

As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York argues , voters are sour because President Joe Biden and the Democrats have turned a strong economy into a damaged and worrying one. Every issue other than this pales in voters’ minds, much though abortion is the more profound moral problem.

But even if Democrats could set aside the fact that economic woes crowd other matters out, it’s not clear they’d benefit electorally from controversy over Roe. They routinely overstate public support for the party’s abortion policies. Although 57% in one poll said abortion should be mostly legal, 43% want it banned outright or permitted only in special circumstances.

Fully 75% reject the claim that it is simply “a woman’s right to choose.” Most actually agree with the 15 weeks' gestation threshold of the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court is adjudicating. Democrats call the law extreme, but the public doesn’t agree. Pro-abortion slogans from noisy protesters on the court steps don’t reflect public opinion. Activist rhetoric never does. Democrats are drinking their own Kool-Aid when they suggest otherwise.

Republicans, remember, were motivated to vote in 2016, giving President Donald Trump his victory, partly because they hoped for precisely the justices he nominated, who account for three of the five who subscribed to Alito’s proposed demolition of Roe. Recent evidence therefore suggests that the powder keg to which the SCOTUS leaker lit the fuse is as likely to backfire against Democrats as it is to detonate under Republicans.

My phrasing implies what I suspect, which is that the person who smashed the court’s traditional confidentiality was a pro-abortion activist intent on undermining the decisions and authority of a bench now dominated 6-3 or at least 5-4 by originalist and textualist justices. The Left has been doing this for years, for example with three decades of attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas for having the temerity to be both black and conservative.

The ripest in-genre ad hominem rebuttal came from Speaker Nancy, who said, “Several of these conservative justices, who are in no way accountable to the American public, have lied to the US Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation.” This string of falsehoods merely tries to shoot the messenger, cheaply linking conservatism, democratic illegitimacy, and dishonesty.

Pelosi sent me a fundraising email immediately after the leak, declaring, “I’m absolutely sick to my stomach” about the Alito draft. But it is doubtful that as many voters as she hopes share her sense of nausea. Still, you can’t blame Democrats for grasping at straws as they drown in an election year.

May 06, 2022 10:45 AM  
Anonymous and, now, a word from our sponsors... said...

If the obscenity that is Roe v. Wade is overturned, you can blame Democrats for two reasons. The first is that for 50 years — despite countless opportunities — Democrats did nothing legislatively to legalize abortion. (Why would they when solving the issue would dry up fundraising and ginning up the base?) Secondly, rather than agree to limits on abortion, limits a vast majority of Americans see as reasonable, Democrats instead demanded the legal right to commit straight-up infanticide.

Back in the 1990s, abortion was nowhere near as controversial as it is today. Why? Because former President Bill Clinton and the Democrat party pushed the idea of abortion being “safe, rare, and legal.” Now, that was not my opinion of abortion at the time, nor is it my opinion today. I want all abortions outlawed — and I am allowed to say that because, as I write this, I’m identifying as a woman — a black woman, actually; a lesbian black woman.

Where was I?

So, despite my own beliefs on the issue, a wide swath of America was pretty comfortable with the abortion issue.

We had a national consensus around “safe, rare, and legal.”

Then we didn’t…

Most civilized countries place limits on abortion, anywhere from 12 to 20 weeks. This is why in most civilized countries, abortion is not a galvanizing issue. Most people agree abortion should be legal, most people agree that there must be time limits, and the abortion laws reflect that consensus.

The same is true with Americans. Regardless of my own opinion of the atrocity of abortion, there’s no question that 1) a majority of the public want abortion to remain legal and 2) an even bigger majority want limits placed on abortion.

But Democrats don’t want limits on abortion, and by “Democrats,” I mean Democrat politicians because a whole lot of everyday Democrats do want limits.

The problem is that the Democrat party is now fully owned by its extremists, and so we now have a Democrat party that went from “safe, rare, and legal” to “give-birth-to-a-healthy-baby-and-let-it-die-of-exposure.” That’s not an exaggeration. Who said the following? Was it Herman Goering or former Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA)?

When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physician—more than one physician, by the way—and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s non-viable. … If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

Even Bill Clinton was eventually pushed into openly championing the outright horror that is partial-birth abortion, a procedure that is exactly what it sounds like: slaughtering a living baby that can live outside the womb after it’s been born.

Partial birth abortion is infanticide.

May 08, 2022 7:05 AM  
Anonymous and, now, a word from our sponsors... said...


But it wasn’t just the fact that Democrats began to openly demand legalized infanticide, there was also the matter of their rhetoric.

No sane person, no decent person, not even someone who is pro-abortion, sees abortion as anything other than an unfortunate event. And that’s how Democrats and their corporate media allies used to discuss abortion, as an unfortunate but sometimes necessary thing. Their tone around abortion was solemn and thoughtful; this was not something to be taken lightly.

The only way to describe the left’s tone around abortion today is demonic.

What was solemn has become strident and boastful. What was not taken lightly is now championed — including the harvesting of dead baby organs. The murder of the unborn is now outright celebrated and cheered. It is beyond grotesque, and how can any person of good conscience sit back and allow such evil against helpless innocence to carry the day?

Democrats can never take “yes” for an answer because taking “yes” for an answer removes the issue as a fundraiser and get-out-the-vote ploy. Everything was fine until Democrats decided abortion was “beautiful” and “magical” and their right to choose included the right to choose to let a healthy baby die of exposure.

Let me put it to you this way… What made Democrats believe that a country that puts pregnancy warnings on wine coolers would accept this?

May 08, 2022 7:05 AM  
Anonymous anthropogenic global warming is a conspiracy theory said...


The corrupt Biden crime family has been unethically mixing business and politics for half a century, and now the American people have the smoking gun: Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter’s laptop provides indisputable proof of just how entangled and compromised “The Big Guy,” a k a President Biden, is in his son’s criminal behavior.

When Republicans take control of the House in the midterms, we’ll make sure to investigate as a matter of national security.

Hunter Biden is currently under investigation by federal prosecutors for a litany of criminal allegations. But for almost two years, Joe Biden, the 2020 Biden presidential campaign, the Biden administration, Congressional Democrats, the mainstream media, and Big Tech colluded to prevent the American people from knowing the truth that the Hunter Biden laptop was real.

They touted a letter from now-discredited former “intelligence officials” who claimed without proof that Hunter’s laptop was a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Russia. In addition, I strongly suspect that current intelligence officials will be implicated in the illegal scheme to suppress the facts and news coverage regarding the laptop.

Big Tech prevented dissemination of the initial New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop on their platforms while Biden’s presidential campaign and mainstream media falsely accused anyone who dared reference the laptop as a Russian asset.

Now we know the truth that Hunter’s laptop was real, and Joe Biden is compromised.
We recently learned that Francis “Fran” Person, an associate of Hunter Biden who emailed with Hunter Biden and his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, frequently visited the Obama-Biden White House seven times after becoming head of a company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

This reporting came just days after another report that Schwerin visited the Obama-Biden White House at least 27 times during the Obama-Biden administration.

Every day the drip, drip, drip of new information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and business partners and associates gaining White House access continues.

Yet the Biden administration continues to deny any wrongdoing, just as the Biden campaign denied the validity of Hunter’s laptop. The good news is that the American people are smart, and they know that the media has worked shamefully to cover up for the Biden family.

May 08, 2022 7:09 AM  
Anonymous global warming is a conspiracy theory.... said...


However, despite the daily deluge of new information from Hunter’s laptop, there are still many unanswered questions. This is why there must be a thorough Congressional investigation into the Biden crime family as a matter of national security.

The American people have a right to know if Joe Biden has been compromised by his son’s foreign business dealings with Communist China; if Joe Biden has profited from these dealings; why is Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire who paid Hunter Biden $3 million in 2014, missing from the Biden administration’s list of sanctioned Russian oligarchs?

Despite having no demonstrable qualifications, why was Hunter Biden picked to manage a Ukrainian energy conglomerate, help facilitate the sale of a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from an American company to a Chinese company, and provide counsel on the intricacies of Romanian criminal law?

Is Biden likely to avoid IRS audit that could’ve revealed if he made money from Hunter’s deals? Who communicated about the inception, drafting, editing, signing, publishing, or promotion of the “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” that was used to cast doubt on the validity of the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story?

Republicans on the House Judiciary and House Committee on Oversight and Reform are already laying the groundwork to answer these questions for the American people.

But most importantly, the American people deserve to know why Joe Biden, the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, the mainstream media, and Big Tech colluded to prevent a free and fair election from occurring in 2020.

Make no mistake, Republicans will hold the Biden crime family and their mainstream media and Big Tech allies accountable.

In a Republican majority, we will use our Congressional power of oversight to get to the bottom of this — so every American knows the truth.

May 08, 2022 7:12 AM  
Anonymous Roe falling means that states will again pass their own abortion laws, which will range from very liberal to very restrictive, with quite a few falling in between. said...

"Some states will ban it outright, as Texas and a dozen other states have prepared to do with so-called “trigger laws.” Some will enshrine abortion access in law, as California has already done. Once we are all sorted, the two sides can live and let live.

But I do not think it will happen quite like that. One reason is that the left will not allow it."


No. Be Honest. The reason is that Republicans will not allow it:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned in an interview Saturday that a national ban on abortion is “possible” if the Supreme Court guts Roe v. Wade as it’s expected to do — and federal lawmakers then pass a law prohibiting abortion across the country.

That would mean pregnant Americans would have to travel out of the U.S. to obtain an abortion.

McConnell discussed the future of abortion rights in the U.S. in an interview with USA Today in the wake of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion gutting Roe v. Wade along with a half-century of reproductive freedoms for women.

“If the leaked opinion became the final opinion, legislative bodies — not only at the state level, but at the federal level — certainly could legislate in that area,” McConnell said.

He raised the possibility of a national ban when asked in the interview if such a thing was “worthy of debate.”

If the draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and published by Politico turns out to be the final decision, “that was the point,” McConnell said, “that it should be resolved one way or another in the legislative process. So yeah, it’s possible,” he added, referring to a national ban on abortion.

McConnell indicated it’s “clear” that Republicans oppose abortion.

“With regard to the abortion issue, I think it’s pretty clear where Senate Republicans stand,” McConnell told USA Today.

“And if and when the court makes a final decision, I expect everybody will be more definitive,” he added. “I don’t think it’s much secret where Senate Republicans stand on that issue.”

May 08, 2022 9:33 AM  
Anonymous Decent folk can not wait until Amy Coney Barrett gets a gander at a homosexual marriage case !!.. said...


"No. Be Honest. The reason is that Republicans will not allow it:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned in an interview Saturday that a national ban on abortion is “possible” if the Supreme Court guts Roe v. Wade as it’s expected to do — and federal lawmakers then pass a law prohibiting abortion across the country."

I'd like to think killing unborn children would be illegal everywhere in America but pro-life advocates would need a filibuster-proof majority

Also, is an outright Federal ban constitutional? I thought the Feds could only do that when parties cross state lines. Also, they could deny Federal funding of some kind to pressure states. Not sure, but it seems unlikely that states would be overriden.

"That would mean pregnant Americans would have to travel out of the U.S. to obtain an abortion."

that isn't what happened prior to 1973

once Roe is overturned, there will be a vast shift to the pro-life position

still, there are a few outlier states where it will probably remain legal before viability, although science may eventually make every embryo viable

May 09, 2022 6:13 AM  
Anonymous because of violent Dems, we now have a fence around the Supreme Court.... said...


It was a horrific scene at a baseball field in Alexandria, Va. five years ago. Five people were shot while practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. Among the wounded was Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was in critical condition while undergoing several surgeries to stop internal bleeding. Fortunately, he would survive, as would the other victims.

They were extremely fortunate that three Capitol Police officers were present because they were assigned to Scalise given his leadership position in the House of Representatives. But if Scalise hadn’t been at practice that morning, the gunman would’ve had several more minutes before police arrived and could’ve killed or seriously injured more people.

One would think that our leaders in Washington would have learned from this terrible day and would be doing everything in their power to condemn similar acts of violence from happening again.

But the Biden White House doesn’t seem to care that angry mobs have gone to the homes of six conservative Supreme Court justices to protest the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade after a draft document stating such, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked earlier this week. A liberal firestorm followed, as the overturning of the 1973 decision would send abortion law back to the states.

One liberal group, “Ruth Sent Us,” has published online the home addresses of Justices Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts. Several of these justices have children at home, including Barrett, who has seven.

“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights. We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics,” the group said earlier this week.

May 09, 2022 6:20 AM  
Anonymous because of violent Dems, we now have a fence around the Supreme Court.... said...

Correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki about the planned protests earlier this week.

“Do you think that progressive activists that are now planning protests outside some of the justices’ houses are extreme?” asked Doocy.

“Peaceful protest? No, peaceful protest is not extreme,” Psaki retorted.

“Some of these justices have young kids,” Doocy followed. “Their neighbors are not all public figures. So would the president think about waving off activists who want to go into residential neighborhoods in Virginia and Maryland?”

“I think our view here is that peaceful protests — there’s a long history in the United States, in the country, of that. And we’ve certainly encouraged people to keep it peaceful and not resort to any level of violence,” Psaki replied.

“These activists posted a map with the home addresses of the Supreme Court justice,” Doocy countered. “Is that the kind of thing the president wants to help your side make their point?”

“The president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” Psaki said. “We obviously want people’s privacy to be respected. We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest. That is certainly what the president’s view would be.”

“I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest,” she added.

Interesting. Would the White House position be the same if angry pro-life protesters showed up at the private residences of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Psaki’s herself? Almost certainly it would not.

Team Biden should condemn this and urge protesters to make their voices heard at the Supreme Court. Instead, by not condemning it, they are tacitly approving the intimidation of justices at their homes.

And by the way, Title 18, Section 1507 of the United States Code provides an official position of the U.S. government that the press secretary could not provide.

“Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Perhaps another reporter in the daily briefing can circle back on this. Because this is clearly an attempt to influence judges on a pending case. There’s also potential danger to these judges and their families, which should be of great concern to the president.

This isn’t the first time President Biden has refused to condemn harassment. In 2021, activists harassed and filmed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) while she was using a bathroom at Arizona State University. (Note: Filming someone in a bathroom in Arizona is a Class 5 felony.)

“I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody,” Biden said at the time. “The only people it doesn’t happen to are the people who have Secret Service standing around them … So, it’s part of the process.”

No, Mr. President. Chasing a female senator into the ladies’ room and into a stall with a camera is not “part of the process.” The man who ran on unifying the country had a chance to bring down the temperature but failed to show the compassion he campaigned on.

The White House had a chance to say the right things here. As a substitute, they said all the wrong things. After the baseball field shooting and the Capitol Hill riot four years later, one would think the lessons had been learned. But they have not been.

May 09, 2022 6:21 AM  
Anonymous to tell the truth, TTF doesn't really want anyone to teach the facts..... said...

The Biden administration has set up a Disinformation Governance Board, its mission to expose, intercept, and otherwise chivy any form of untruthiness that might threaten the national security of the United States, especially if it comes from Russia. I haven’t laughed so hard since Jen Psaki, one of the nation’s top sources of disinformation, said she would continue to front another top source of disinformation, the White House press office, while under contract to join a third source of disinformation, MSNBC.

The good news is that this "Ministry of Truth" will be run by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS is the DMV of federal agencies. Its multitentacled powers of snooping and scanning are matched only by the moronic incompetence of its staff. The DHS couldn’t spot disinformation if it came singing the “Song of the Volga Boatmen” and was wrapped in a $3 bill. That’s why it's brought in an academic expert, Nina Jankowicz, to determine what is true and what is white supremacy or shilling for Russia or whichever thoughtcrime opposes the Democratic narrative of the day.

Misinformation is incomplete or mistaken. Disinformation is, as the Russians say, “active measures.” The full truth is deliberately edited and misrepresented. Carefully curated untruths are woven into fragments of fact to create a plausible atmosphere of truthiness. You can be misinformed from innocence or its cousin at the DHS, ignorance. But disinformation is intentional. It’s “information warfare,” part of a political program.

Jankowicz knows all about disinformation. As our very own Jerry Dunleavy reported, Jankowicz has obfuscated the nature of the anti-Trump “Russian collusion” dossier compiled by the ex-British spook Christopher Steele. Jankowicz was not misinformed when she reminded Sen. Lindsey Graham that the dossier “began as a Republican opposition research project,” but he was disinformed. It’s also true that Adolf Hitler began as a painter, but it would be disinformation to leave it there.

And that is exactly where Jankowicz leaves it. For some reason, she shows little interest in the full story of what even a mid-level DHS employee might conclude was Watergate on steroids: a scheme to hobble a presidential candidate that actually got beyond the slush fund and burglary stage and was cheered all the way by almost all of the media, the Washington Post included. All she has said is: “Your party funded the dossier first.”

Jankowicz also repeatedly dismissed the veracity of the emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the Justice Department concluded are real. “We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz told the Associated Press in October 2020, raising doubt as to “whether the laptop actually belongs to Hunter Biden.” She has not criticized Twitter's or Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post’s laptop story in the weeks before the 2020 elections.

May 09, 2022 6:29 AM  
Anonymous to tell the truth, TTF doesn't really want anyone to teach the facts..... said...


Fortunately, we have Psaki’s word that the Disinformation Governance Board will be “nonpartisan” and “apolitical” — just like the complex of nongovernmental organizations that give Jankowicz her professional credentials. She has worked at the National Democratic Institute, a National Endowment for Democracy spinoff. Its current chairman is Derek Mitchell, a former official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and its funders include the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. That’s more spin than a campus laundromat.

The Democrats are turning the arsenal of democracy on their domestic enemies. Threats to democracy include “ Republicans and other disinformers ,” anyone who mocks the absurd authoritarian vanity of the Democrats, and Elon Musk, whose desire to make Twitter a freer place Jankowicz called an attack on “marginalized communities all around the world.”

“People are dying because of misinformation,” said former President Barack Obama, the Socrates of Martha’s Vineyard. Actually, they’re dying because they can’t afford Obamacare. Obama tells us that we must burn the village of free speech in order to save it. The Disinformation Governance Board’s task is to recommend whose house burns first — to identify, the DHS said, “how disinformation influences the threat environment” and how federal agencies should monitor people with the wrong opinions.

The Disinformation Governance Board will stamp false coinage with the imprimatur of the federal government. That will flatter the prejudices of Democrats, further confirm Republicans’ conviction that the state is the enemy, and render all of us more susceptible to disinformation. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

May 09, 2022 6:31 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

""That would mean pregnant Americans would have to travel out of the U.S. to obtain an abortion."

"that isn't what happened prior to 1973"

That is EXACTLY what happened. One older American woman was telling her story of how she had to go to Mexico for her abortion pre-'73 just the other day. I suspect you'll be seeing more of those in the news, as well as horrible stories about abortions gone bad.

May 09, 2022 10:03 AM  
Anonymous Jackson will be the last Dem nominee to teh Supreme Court in a looooong time.... said...

did you know that in Europe most countries have abortion laws that mirror every closely the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court will uphold in the next few weeks?

they don't consider it a constitutional rights issue and have arrived at a democratically determined compromise

"That is EXACTLY what happened. One older American woman was telling her story of how she had to go to Mexico for her abortion pre-'73 just the other day."

sorry, this is not what happened in most cases

which is how you characterized it

May 09, 2022 10:49 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden is making inflation great again !!!!!!!!!!.......... said...

another one of them polls that TTFers like so much:

Sometimes understanding political opinion is complicated. For example, electoral observers will be trying to comprehend the rise of Donald Trump in American politics for years to come.

The story of public opinion ahead of the 2022 midterms, on other hand, is, at this point, an easy one to understand: "It's the economy, stupid," and unless the economy improves, President Joe Biden and the Democrats are in major trouble.

Take a look at our latest CNN poll.

The No. 1 issue is the economy, and nothing else is even close. Half of all respondents (50%) said it was the most important issue. The next closest was the war between Russia and Ukraine at 14%.

An examination of the inner workings of the poll reveals just how universal feelings about the economy are. It's the top issue for every single one of the over 20 demographic and political groups. It's as important to White Americans (50%) as it is to people of color (49%). It matters as much to people age 45 and under (51%) as to those 45 and older (48%). The list goes on.

You rarely see that type of universal agreement across groups.

What makes this especially amazing is how rapidly this concern over the economy developed and how rapidly it's become more important to more Americans.

A year ago, 54% of Americans said the economy was good. Just 45% said it was bad.
Today, 23% say it is good, and a super majority of 77% believe it is bad.

Another way to see this change in action is to look at the CNN poll from November, which had the economy as the top issue, but only 36% of Americans put it at the top of their list. Whenever you see an issue jump in importance by 14 points in a relatively short period of time, you know it's at the forefront of the American psyche.

May 09, 2022 10:50 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden is making inflation great again !!!!!!!!!!.......... said...


But something else has also happened that speaks to the toxicity of the issue politically: the blame game.

The last time the economy was viewed in as bad of a shape as now was January 2012. Then-President Barack Obama had an approval rating of 47%. He was polling at 49% against Mitt Romney, his eventual GOP opponent in that year's election.

Biden's approval rating is at 41%, with a disapproval rating of 59%, according to the CNN poll.

Obama was polling better back then compared with Biden now not because voters cared less about the economy. In fact, Gallup polling at the time showed Americans cared significantly more about the economy than they do now.

But what's different today is that a clear majority (55%) of Americans, according to our latest poll, believe Biden's economic policies have worsened the shape of the economy.
A decade ago, a significantly lower 37% had the same belief of Obama's policies and the economy.

Unfortunately for Biden and the Democrats, the problem is getting worse. In December, 45% believed Biden's policies had worsened things. You could imagine a universe in which that percentage was survivable politically. But when 50% think the economy is the top issue and 55% think your policies have made things worse, that's very difficult to overcome.

This shouldn't be a surprise. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released last weekend found that 50% of US adults said Republicans were better able to handle the economy. Thirty-six percent said the same about Democrats.

You'll notice that the 14-point edge for Republicans over Democrats on handling the economy is very similar to the 10-point gap between those who say Biden's policies have hurt the economy (55%) and those who say they have either improved it (19%) or had no effect (26%).

It makes sense then that Republicans are sporting a lead on the generic congressional ballot.

There will no doubt be other political battles over the next six months until the midterm elections. The battle over abortion rights could end up being front and center, for example.

Republicans would be wise to keep their electoral eye on the economy, which they seem to try to be doing.

And with the worst inflation in 40 years, it will be difficult to displace the economy as the top issue. Given how poorly Biden and the Democrats are polling on the issue, that's very good news for Republicans and very bad news for the Democrats.

May 09, 2022 10:50 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"sorry, this is not what happened in most cases
which is how you characterized it"

Really? Where did I say that?

Maybe I did and forgot about it, but it looks like you're just making stuff up - or your reading comprehension problem is rearing its ugly head again.

May 09, 2022 10:56 AM  
Anonymous when will Slidin' Biden retire?... said...


keep playing games with words

it's working so well!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL

May 09, 2022 11:58 AM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

Ok, so you couldn't find where I said that either. I'm not surprised.

I guess if you can't make a cogent argument, making up a strawman to knock down is the next best thing.

May 09, 2022 12:23 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

what do you mean by other? did you look for it? LOL

I could show you how you said it but it would take pasting a few of your comments

not worth the time

how about this?:

do you think, if the remote possibility that abortion was outlawed throughout he US came to pass, that most women would travel out of the country for abortion?

do you think that most women traveled out of the country for abortions before 1973?

May 09, 2022 12:54 PM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't even bothering to lie about it anymore. They are now coming for birth control said...

AAs much as the National Republican Senatorial Committee would like Republicans to stay away from the abortion issue except to insist they are compassionate and caring about life, it isn't really working. That line is hardly a natural fit for a party that had a collective hysterical tantrum against Barack Obama's Affordable Health Care Act and proposes taxing the poor anyway. They are the "Fuck Your Feelings" party, after all, not the empathy and mercy crowd.

There is little hope of eliding the consequences of their decades-long crusade to send women back to back-alley butchers. Nonetheless, they are haplessly trying to pretend that they are truly committed to helping all the people who will be forced to give birth against their will once the right to abortion is overturned. It's not credible:

Brian Tyler Cohen
@briantylercohen
Mississippi Gov. Reeves just said, "We must prove that being pro-life is not just about anti-abortion... we want to continue to focus on ensuring that those expected mothers have the resources that they need."

Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the country.
1:45 PM · May 8, 2022


According to the National Women's Law Center, Mississippi has the highest poverty rate for women in the nation, one of the highest uninsurance rates for women in the nation and ranks last in the country for women's and children's health outcomes. If they revere life so much, why have they been punishing the poor women and children in their state who chose not to get abortions for the past 50 years?

Mississippi's Gov. Tate Reeves wasn't the only Republican governor to make this disingenuous claim. So-called moderate Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas also said he thinks they should increase services for women who are in "difficult circumstances" with their pregnancies.

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson last year signed a bill banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. Pressed on that by ABC, he says his "heart goes out" to women who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest.

Watch on Twitter
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1523345613706137601?
12:54 PM · May 8, 2022


Hutchinson signed that bill willingly and he's not the only one. In fact, as Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian reported last week, since 2019, when Republican House leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that removing exemptions for rape and incest simply went too far, "at least 11 US states – including Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas – have passed legislation that bans abortion without any such exceptions." The idea has taken off like wildfire:

May 09, 2022 1:11 PM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't even bothering to lie about it anymore. They are now coming for birth control said...

"Where Republicans once believed that absolute bans were unpalatable and "toxic" with voters, the party's legislators have now adopted the language once promoted by the most extreme anti-abortion activists in the country who say any such exceptions are "prejudice against children conceived in rape and incest"."

According to the Guardian, this rapid change in attitude is attributed to the work of an anti-abortion group called Students for Life of America (SFLA), another astroturf production sponsored by big money GOP donors and co-chaired by Leonard Leo, the far right Federalist Society leader who shepherded Donald Trump's three arch-conservative, anti-abortion justices on to the Supreme Court. They seem to be very serious about their work and very good at getting it done.

And as much as they insist that they aren't coming for contraception — they're coming for contraception.

SFLA's executive director, Kristan Hawkins, has said that in her ideal world the pill and IUDs would be "illegal." She's certainly not the only conservative with those views although according to the official talking points they are supposed to lie about it and insist they have no intention of banning contraception.

Here's Mississippi's Reeves again, clearly uncomfortable with the topic:

Justin Baragona
@justinbaragona
Jake Tapper, after noting that Louisiana and other states are looking at possibly criminalizing IUDs: "I’m not making this up... But just to be clear, you have no intention of seeking to ban IUDs or Plan B?"

Tate Reeves: "That is not what we are focused on at this time."

Watch on Twitter
https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1523293366683058176?
9:26 AM · May 8, 2022


Others are not so reticent:

Blake Masters
@bgmasters

May 7, 2022
Replying to @bgmasters
Had you gone about this ethically — had you written to our real email address more than an hour before publishing — I would have said (and let’s see if you update your story and quote me):

I am pro-life. And of course I don't think contraceptives should be outlawed.

Blake Masters
@bgmasters
In Griswold, the justices wholesale *made up a constitutional right* to achieve a political outcome. I am opposed to judges making law. It’s the job of the legislative branch to create laws, not the courts. This is separation of powers 101.
11:12 AM · May 7, 2022


Here's a somewhat chilling video with a very calm and almost robotic Iowa State Rep. Brent Crane, a Republican, discussing state interference in women's most intimate decisions and bodily functions as if he's talking about a bond issue for the local water district. He blandly admits that his caucus would certainly consider banning Plan B and IUDs. The good news is that he says the caucus isn't currently talking about prosecuting women for crossing state lines to obtain abortions or trying women who get abortions for murder — yet.

And for those suggesting that any talk of criminalizing miscarriage is just more left wing hysteria, they would do well to inform themselves of the incidents that have already happened around the country. Mother Jones reported a horrific story about one Oklahoma woman who was convicted of manslaughter for having a miscarriage. In fact, there have been more than 70 cases of women being prosecuted for pregnancy related "crimes" in the state since 2007. If various "personhood" laws recognizing equal rights of the fetus are passed, you can expect to see more of this.

They are talking about this stuff and more all over the country.

May 09, 2022 1:11 PM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't even bothering to lie about it anymore. They are now coming for birth control said...

Governors and statehouses are already passing draconian laws, testing novel new legal theories and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable even two years ago. Yet Republicans have been all over social media and cable news over the last week insisting that Democrats are being overwrought in their reaction, that they aren't going to see much change in the status quo and everyone just needs to calm down. But as you can see, the status quo is changing very, very quickly.

Even before the leak we knew that anti-abortion activists and members of congress were working together on a nationwide ban on abortion. How that would work legally is anyone's guess, but let's just say these anti-abortion crusaders aren't going to rest on their laurels. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told USA Today that it's possible a national ban will be proposed but he insisted that there will be no carve out of the filibuster "on any subject." (That's a joke — he carved out the filibuster to put three ultra-orthodox wingnuts on the Supreme Court so his word isn't exactly gold on that subject. If McConnell thinks it will shore up his power he will do it without blinking an eye.) For right now he's having it both ways. As usual.

Senate Majority Leader Schumer, D-N.Y., will be putting up a show vote this week on the Women's Health Protection Act which would codify Roe v Wade. It has been passed by the House but was shot down in the Senate last February, 46-48 with six senators not voting. It is unlikely to pass this time and is subject to the filibuster anyway. Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have already said they would not vote to lift the filibuster to pass it, so that's that.

Schumer says this will illustrate for the American people where the Republicans stand. The thing is, everyone already knows where these Republicans stand on Roe. They haven't been keeping that a secret. But do we know where they stand on the prosecution of women for their pregnancy losses? On banning Plan B and IUDs? On exemptions for rape and incest? On spending the kind of money it would take to ensure that poor women and their children have the support some of them are promising? Where are the Republicans on religious exemptions such as those claimed by some Jewish organizations who say that banning abortion violates their first amendment rights? How about proposals such as the one by GOP Pennsylvania candidate for Governor Doug Mastriano, who would not only deny exemptions for rape and incest but also the health of the woman. Are they for that?

If you want show votes to really expose what the right is proposing, then make these members of Congress vote on the specifics of what's at stake. If nothing else it will divide the Republicans, many of whom, even in the Senate, are anti-abortion fanatics who will vote for some of these things and it will tie the others up in knots.

These aren't hypothetical ideas anymore.

They are actually happening all over the country and as soon as Roe is overturned they will expand at a record pace. The problem is, the country doesn't know about it. The Democrats need to tell them and one way to do that is to have a big debate on all these fiendish proposals and phony promises in the House and Senate.

May 09, 2022 1:11 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...


"what do you mean by other? did you look for it? LOL"

I looked for something that would relate to this:

"sorry, this is not what happened in most cases
which is how you characterized it"

And I didn't find anywhere that I indicated that it "happened in most cases."

When I search for "other," this is what comes up:

"That is EXACTLY what happened. One older American woman was telling her story of how she had to go to Mexico for her abortion pre-'73 just the other day."

As best I can tell, you have confused the idiom "the other day" with something that implies "most." It does not, so let me lay some learnin' on ya:

From:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/other-day--the#:~:text=The%20other%20day%20is%20a,remember%20exactly%20when%20something%20happened.

"MORE ABOUT OTHER DAY, THE
What does the other day mean?

The other day is a phrase that means the recent past or a day that occurred close to the present day, as in I was walking my dog the other day when I saw a bald eagle.

Often, the other day is used to refer to the recent past in general, especially when a person can’t remember exactly when something happened. Generally, the other day is used to refer to moments in time that began at least two days ago, because the word yesterday is used to refer to the day before the current one.

Because it is so general, the other day can often be substituted for similar phrases such as a few days ago or recently.

Example: There was a minor earthquake while I was at Becky’s house the other day."

Hopefully, that helps un-confuse your reading comprehension problem.


"do you think, if the remote possibility that abortion was outlawed throughout he US came to pass,"

Well since you asked nicely, I don't think that possibility is "remote." I'm quite sure that Christian Dominionists will continue to twist what's left of our democracy to their own theocratic ends. They will not stop trying to ban abortions nationwide, and this ruling could well spur them on to banning gay marriage and even contraception, using the same flawed excuses Alito made up for abortion.

I'm not the only one that thinks that. What is interesting is that Frank Schaeffer is also concerned about the power grab of Christian Dominionists.

Frank Schaeffer once produced propaganda films that helped launch the Christian right. Now he feels regret for what he calls an 'anti-family' movement.

His interview with Christiane Amanpour is quite an eye-opener for anyone that never thought they'd hear an Evangelical say the quiet part out loud:

"Why this former anti-abortion activist regrets the movement he helped build":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25JyC5Whhvc

What Frank says starting around minute 12 defines the conservative movement of today.

"that most women would travel out of the country for abortion?"

Of course not. Only rich women will be able to afford to travel out of the country for abortion. I suspect "most" women will desperately try to get "Plan B" or similar pills to stop the pregnancy. If that isn't available, then their options get more dangerous very quickly.

May 09, 2022 1:39 PM  
Anonymous it's alarming how charming I feel... said...


"Hopefully, that helps un-confuse your reading comprehension problem"

what preceded this statements appears to be a cry for help

look fella, there's nothing to get panicky about

it seems we both agree that few women chose to leave the US to get abortions elsewhere prior to 1973

and so that would be unlikely if abortions are banned now?

right?

"Well since you asked nicely, I don't think that possibility is "remote." I'm quite sure that Christian Dominionists will continue to twist what's left of our democracy to their own theocratic ends. They will not stop trying to ban abortions nationwide,"

well, pro-lifers won't stop but they aren't just Christian believers

as I stated earlier, in Western Europe laws tend to be similar to the one in Mississippi that the court will uphold in a few weeks

few pro-lifers there are Christian, or are they from any other religion

even secularists recognize the moral issue involved

killing sentient humans who have no defense and can't advocate for themselves

is evil

"and this ruling could well spur them on to banning gay marriage and even contraception"

it is true that neither of those is in the Constitution but it is unlikely anyone will bring a case to overturn hem

"I'm not the only one that thinks that. What is interesting is that Frank Schaeffer is also concerned about the power grab of Christian Dominionists."

it's an age-old tale

Roe's daughter is pro-life, O'Hair's son favors prayer in schools

"Of course not. Only rich women will be able to afford to travel out of the country for abortion."

thanks for admitting to your error

May 09, 2022 2:08 PM  
Anonymous Dems try to steal another election... said...

The privilege of voting is precious to the people and is coveted around the world. Participating in elections is a hallmark of our citizenship. It is arguably the most consequential way that citizens can influence the direction of our republic. Lawmakers have an obligation to guard that privilege vigilantly, but the Biden administration has chosen instead to weaken the protections that ensure the integrity of the ballot.

Last year, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting.” This directed every federal agency, agencies that are staffed through partisan appointments, to create a plan to register and mobilize voters. It also orders these agencies to work with organizations such as activist groups to register and mobilize voters in whatever manner they see fit. In doing so, the Biden administration has politicized election processes that were uniquely guarded as a nonpartisan since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.

There are few details about what the relationship between the federal bureaucrats and state election administrators would look like or where any oversight would occur. And the president has been even more opaque about who will decide which third parties will be selected to participate in these registration and mobilization schemes. As a result, the Foundation for Government Accountability filed a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2021 to obtain various documents pertaining to the executive order.

Nine months later, the Biden administration has yet to provide any meaningful, substantive response or produce any documents that would fulfill the public records request. This is in direct violation of the Department of Justice’s 20-day FOIA response rules. As such, the Foundation for Government Accountability has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida with the expectation that the court will obligate the Department of Justice to release the requested FOIA materials.

The Biden administration's silence should concern all citizens. Silence, a lack of transparency, and an unwillingness to answer reasonable questions foster doubt in our election processes and election results at every level of government.

Democrats in Washington, led by the president, have tried to maintain unnecessary pandemic-era election policies while creating frivolous new ones. Their efforts would do grave harm to the nation’s electoral process by expanding federal control over state voting norms. Using taxpayer funds to pay political activists to join with federal bureaucrats is an unprecedented seizure of power from voters.

In the meantime, we have no choice but to ask: What is the Biden administration trying to hide?

When Biden took office in January 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki pledged in her first press conference that the administration would “bring transparency and truth back to government.” It clearly hasn’t kept this promise.

The public has the right to know what the government is doing, especially if it is undermining fundamental rights

May 09, 2022 2:21 PM  
Anonymous here's a funny story - I hope the Dems try to impeach Kavanaugh during the 2022 election campaign..HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!......... said...

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a self-styled moderate who postures as a defender of reproductive rights, has said repeatedly in recent years that she would not support a Supreme Court nominee who demonstrates "hostility" to Roe v. Wade.

But late Monday, "Politico" reported that moderate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — who Collins voted to confirm — supported a 67-page opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito that will spell the end of Roe v. Wade and imperil abortion rights across the United States.

While abortion rights advocates, citing the judges' records, vocally warned at the time of their confirmation hearings that both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh posed an existential threat to Roe, Collins brushed such warnings aside when it came time to usher them through the Senate, pointing to their private assurances to her that they would not vote to overturn the 1973 decision.

In a statement issued Tuesday morning, Collins finally conceded that, perhaps, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were not being fully honest with her in their closed-door conversations about Roe.

Marie Follayttar, executive director of Mainers for Responsible Leadership — a group that has long targeted Collins over her right-wing voting record — said that it "looks like it's time for her to call for impeachment" of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

"If Senator Collins believes that both Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh lied to her and to the public during the confirmation processes, we demand that she lead the charge calling for their immediate impeachment," Follayttar added. "We cannot let public trust in our judicial system — the final check and balance of our democracy — become eroded."

Indivisible, a national progressive advocacy group, quipped in response to Collins' statement, "If only there had been some warning signs about Kavanaugh's dishonesty."

After "Politico" published its story on Alito's far-reaching draft opinion — which the Supreme Court confirmed as authentic on Tuesday — a video compilation resurfaced of Collins declaring on multiple occasions in 2018 her belief that Kavanaugh would not vote to overturn Roe:

"The Daily Beast's" Eleanor Clift argued in a column Tuesday that "the one person most responsible for the looming loss of abortion rights—aside from the president who appointed three anti-Roe justices — is Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who in October of 2018 became the 50th and deciding vote in the Senate for Brett Kavanaugh."

"He would not have been confirmed if it weren't for Collins, who wanted women to believe as she did that he would keep his word to her," Clift wrote. "Maybe his fingers were crossed because whatever he said to Collins, it was a lie. Kavanaugh's confirmation on a bare 50 to 48 vote was the beginning of the end for Roe v. Wade, and everybody knew it except maybe Collins."

"Susan Collins told the women of America that they could trust her to protect their reproductive freedom," Clift added. "She let us down."

May 09, 2022 3:08 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"thanks for admitting to your error"

You couldn't understand my statement and the use of "the other day" idiom in a sentence and then accuse me of making an error.

Rich.

Your reading comprehension is so poor it makes me wonder if English isn't your first language. I personally don't have a problem with that, but you shouldn't blame other people for your comprehension problems. I already have to dumb down what I say so you can understand it. I'm not going to stoop to the "bumper sticker" level of explanations that have driven conservative dogma for the past 40 years though. At some point, some of you will finally have to realize you can't solve all the world's complicated problems with simplistic slogans that all fit on a bumper sticker.

"even secularists recognize the moral issue involved"

Of course we do. But just because we don't all fall on the "ban all abortions" side of the fence doesn't mean we are "evil."

"killing sentient humans who have no defense and can't advocate for themselves
is evil"

So is bringing a child into the world when you have no innate ability, learned competence, or even desire to raise that child in a healthy home. If parents decide the best way to handle a viable, non-deformed fetus is to abort it, they probably shouldn't be parents in the first place. No child deserves to suffer through that.

God forbid the child has issues that need extra attention, like Lacey Fletcher:

https://nypost.com/2022/04/29/louisiana-woman-found-dead-in-neglect-case-melted-into-couch/

A 36-year-old Louisiana woman who suffered from locked-in syndrome was found dead in her parents’ home — with her emaciated and feces-covered body “melted” into the couch.

The body of Lacey Ellen Fletcher was found Jan. 3 sunken into a hole in the living room couch at the Slaughter home of Lacey Fletcher and her parents, Sheila and Clay Fletcher, NOLA.com reported.

Sheila called 911 that morning from the home on Tom Drive, where responding police officers encountered a gruesome scene and a strong stench, District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla told the outlet.

In what officials said was one of the worst cases of neglect in memory, the East Feliciana Parish coroner ruled Lacey’s shocking death a homicide – leading to a criminal investigation.

“The caretakers just let her sit on the couch. She just urinated and used the bathroom on the couch,” D’Aquilla told NOLA.com this week.

May 09, 2022 3:09 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

“It was so horrific,” he said, adding that it was unclear when Lacey had last moved from the spot in the house near Hog Bayou, but it might have been years.

D’Aquilla told the news outlet that he will ask a grand jury on Monday to bring second-degree murder charges against her parents.

According to the Daily Mail, Lacey suffered from locked-in syndrome, a rare neurological disorder characterized by complete paralysis of voluntary muscles, except for the eyes.

The coroner, Dr. Ewell Bickham, told the Mail that Lacey had not seen a doctor in 20 years.

When she was found, her feet were crossed under her — dug deep into the hole she’d worn through the upholstery and foam padding, which was filled with stool and urine, NOLA.com reported.

Severe ulcers also covered her underside, which appeared “rotten to the bone,” D’Aquilla told the outlet.

He said Lacey weighed only 96 pounds and also was infected with COVID-19.

“The question on everybody’s mind is, how could they be caretakers living in the house with her and have her get in a condition like that?” D’Aquilla told NOLA.com.

The parents’ lawyer, Steven Moore, said in a statement to WBRZ: “They don’t want to relive the pain of losing a child through the media. They have been through a lot of heartache over the years. Anyone who had lost a child knows what it’s like.”

The mother was a town alderman who resigned from her post in February, according to WBRZ. The father is reportedly an officer of the Baton Rouge Civil War Roundtable, a nonprofit whose mission is “to educate and foster an appreciation for the sacrifices made by all during the Civil War.”

The parents told detectives on Jan. 18 that Lacey was sound intellectually until the end, according to the outlet.

D’Aquilla also said she had developed “some degree of Asperger’s syndrome,” a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum.

She reportedly attended Brownfields Baptist Academy in Baton Rouge through ninth grade before entering a home-school program.

Lacey experienced severe social anxiety and met several times with a psychologist over three years, NOLA.com reported.

Her parents considered getting a commitment order to place her in a medical facility, but it never happened after she balked, D’Aquilla told the outlet, citing a police report.

Last fall, she began eating less, the parents reportedly told investigators detectives.

Sheila told police she last saw her daughter alive at 10 p.m. that night and awoke in a chair in the living room to find her dead.

Second-degree murder charges carry a mandatory sentence of a life prison sentence with no parole for adults upon a conviction.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can't speak for Lacey, but if someone had asked me before I was born if I wanted to die rotting on my parent's couch, sitting in years worth of urine and feces, or be aborted in utero, I'm pretty sure I'd pick the latter.

May 09, 2022 3:14 PM  
Anonymous Hi, it's Andrew Cuomo. Rememba me? I was the big hero of COVID who was thrown out because I like girls. Should I run for President?... said...


"Your reading comprehension is so poor it makes me wonder if English isn't your first language."

now that your pathetic ploy to mislead has been found out, you resort to racism

eres una gran basura

"you will finally have to realize you can't solve all the world's complicated problems with simplistic slogans that all fit on a bumper sticker"

it's not complicated

you think it's a constitutional right to kill unborn children if they are inconvenient and expensive

it's hard to imagine a more evil view

"Of course we do. But just because we don't all fall on the "ban all abortions" side of the fence doesn't mean we are "evil.""

no, it's because you think the strong have a right to kill the weak

"So is bringing a child into the world when you have no innate ability, learned competence, or even desire to raise that child in a healthy home"

no. it isn't

it'd evil to think u can decide what life is worthy of survival

here's a more humorous topic:

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif spent the last week frantically typing out prescription refills for his young transgender "patients", trying to make sure they had access to their "medications" for a few months before Alabama made it illegal for him to prescribe them.

He also answered questions from anxious "patients" and their "parents": What will happen to me if I suddenly have to stop taking testosterone to artificially mess up my gender? Should we go out of state for help in trying to fake out our bodies?

A new state law that took effect Sunday makes it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to trans people under age 19. A judge has not yet ruled on a request to block the state from enforcing the law.

The measure is part of a wave of legislation in states focused on protecting kids from lunatic fringe gay advocates trying to trick kids into fateful choices at a young age. Bills have been introduced to limit discussion of gender and sexual identity issues in younger grades and to prohibit kids from using school restrooms that don't match their gender or playing on sports teams that don’t align with their sex at birth.

The backlash is in full swing!

Abdul-Latif said he understands that some people may be skeptical over the medical treatments for transgender kids.

May 09, 2022 3:53 PM  
Anonymous Republicans showed Dems how it is acceptable to stack the Supreme Court said...

"now that your pathetic ploy to mislead has been found out, you resort to racism"

I never said anything about race. For all I know you're a white Russian troll, entirely unfamiliar with simple idioms like "the other day."

But once again, lacking a cogent argument, you make up a strawman to knock down.

"you think it's a constitutional right to kill unborn children if they are inconvenient and expensive"

I have never said that or written that. Your reading comprehension skills are floundering again, so you make up another straw man. Where do you get all that straw, man?

"no, it's because you think the strong have a right to kill the weak"

I certainly don't believe that at all. I've fought against bullies all my life, and I'm sick and tired of them making people suffer.

Just because you've deluded yourself into believing you can read my mind, doesn't mean you know what I think.

"it'd evil to think u can decide what life is worthy of survival"

I never said I could. You just keep making that stuff up.

I just don't think a bunch of Christian Dominionists and the government know how to handle a woman's reproductive health better than that woman and her doctor(s). Conservatives have shown by their health care policies that they really don't give 1 single f*#! for a child's well-being once they are born. BEFORE a fetus born however, they have no problem being the Ultimate Uterus Police. It's a power trip for you guys, nothing more.


"here's a more humorous topic"

Not really. Again, it is one of those complicated issues that you think can be solved with all the careful nuance of a political bumper sticker.

Conservatives spend most of their time denying science. The shouldn't be allowed control over any important issues that involve science - like medical care, climate analysis, or even math, given their inability to ever balance a budget.

Cancer treatment involves injecting bodies with toxic poisons - stuff you would never put into a healthy person - they make you sick and very often all your hair will fall out. But it's better than the likelihood of the person dying without treatment.

Treatment for gender dysphoria is not easy - and no one who does not exhibit the signs of it should request, or be allow such treatment. For those who DO show the symptoms though, they need the treatment that has been shown to be the most effective for the past 70 years.

Just because Christian Dominionists are convinced they know better than doctors and parents how to raise other people's kids, doesn't mean the law should enforce their ignorance on the rest of us.


May 09, 2022 4:51 PM  
Anonymous every time an American pays more for anything than they did last year, they think about Sleepy Slimy Slidin' Biden.... said...


"lacking a cogent argument"

good point

just to clarify, what is it I lack a cogent argument about?

I think we were discussing how evil you are because you think there's a constitutional right to kill defenseless sentient human beings

and then you were denying what we all read from you

sorry we can't make it into something arcane that you can use to disguise your evil intentions

calling it "reproductive rights" or "women's health care" is not creating a complicated enough maze for you to hide in

"I've fought against bullies all my life, and I'm sick and tired of them making people suffer."

well, if you both sick AND tired, why don't you give it a rest?

just calm down and tell us what you do think about whether killing an innocent and defenseless unborn child is a constitutional right

go ahead, we're listening....

"Just because you've deluded yourself into believing you can read my mind,"

oh, I'm not completely sure you have a mind at all

I'm just responding to your increasingly desperate words

"I just don't think a bunch of Christian Dominionists and the government know how to handle a woman's reproductive health better than that woman and her doctor(s)."

see, you're talking like an amoral creep again

there are two lives involved

and our whole society has just learned, for two years, a very expensive lesson about what happens when doctors aren't put in a position of authority

"Conservatives have shown by their health care policies that they really don't give 1 single f*#! for a child's well-being once they are born."

so, in your mind, and I realize your "mind" is a big hypothetical, unless the government provides free health care, we shouldn't have laws against killing..

some top-notch logic is your supposed "mind"

"Not really. Again, it is one of those complicated issues that you think can be solved with all the careful nuance of a political bumper sticker."

actually, better than a bumper sticker:

laws against harming children by allowing them to make consequential decisions before they are adults

lunatic fringe gay advocates think-

"if you can't kill 'em before they're born, let's groom them for a lifestyle where they won't reproduce"

leaving more resources for you, of course

you're like the Big Purple Guy from the Avenger movies

"Conservatives spend most of their time denying science"

pro-choice is completely unscientific

transgenderism is almost as bad

"Treatment for gender dysphoria is not easy"

it's the only delusional psychotic state where we try to change reality as a way to "treat" the delusion

"Just because Christian Dominionists are convinced they know better than doctors and parents how to raise other people's kids, doesn't mean the law should enforce their ignorance on the rest of us"

unfortunately for you, polls show most people, even Rabid Materialists, think kids should not be involved gender-altering attempts until they are old enough to make such a decision

May 09, 2022 9:44 PM  
Anonymous remember Brett Kavanaugh? he was the final nail in the gay agenda's coffin said...

After the 2020 election, government officials and their allies in the media repeated the mantra that the election was the “most secure in American history,” Dinesh D’Souza pointed out before the premiere of his new documentary film 2000 Mules at Mar-a-Lago, Wednesday night.

But how would they know that? D’Souza wondered. Even if they couldn’t prove the election was rigged, “it still doesn’t follow that it was the most secure election in history,” he said. “The only way you could prove that would be if you were to compare the amount of fraud in 2020 with 2016, with 2012, with 2008, with 2004, and show that there has been less fraud now than in any of those elections.”

D’Souza’s question is a good one.

Did election officials study the security of every election prior to 2020 to make the determination that the 2020 election was “the most secure ever”? Or were they just spinning another false narrative that benefits one side of the aisle?

The movie 2000 Mules handily answers that question.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the film convincingly makes the case that the 2020 presidential election was perhaps the most unsecure election ever, and was stolen from former President Trump.

The election intelligence organization True The Vote gathered geospatial and temporal data—amounting to a total of 10 trillion cell phone pings—between Oct. 1 and Nov. 6 in the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The researchers looked at data surrounding ballot drop boxes in targeted areas, as well as UPS stores and select government, commercial, and non-governmental organization (NGO) facilities.

This data, coupled with the surveillance video of the drop boxes, provide damning evidence of a coordinated illegal ballot trafficking operation across critical swing states.

“Without free and fair elections, we are not a democracy, we are a criminal cartel masquerading as a democracy,” D’Souza argues in the movie.

2000 Mules features commentary from TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager, conservative commentator Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Christian author and talk show host Eric Metaxas, and conservative writer and talk show host Larry Elder. Before seeing the data, most of the them had believed that there was something very off about the election, but were unconvinced that there was enough evidence to prove it. After seeing the data, every one of them was a true believer.

The research was spearheaded by True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, and former welfare reform and health and human services executive Gregg Phillips.

May 09, 2022 10:22 PM  
Anonymous remember Brett Kavanaugh? he was the final nail in the gay agenda's coffin said...


According to Engelbrecht, the fraud begins with dirty voter rolls— inflated voter lists packed with invalid registrations.

“The way that the ballots were collected becomes this multi-tentacled hydra. There’s all manner of ways that those ballots came in but the important take away is that dirty voter rolls allow for a big portion of this grift,” she explained in an interview last month.

Each trafficker—or mule—went to an average of 23 ballot drop boxes,” according to the researchers. The mules collected ballots from stash houses in the targeted areas and deposited them in drop boxes—often in the wee hours of the morning, from 1:00 to 5:00 a.m.

Over the course of several weeks, the vote traffickers made multiple trips to drop boxes using gloves to conceal their fingerprints, and taking photos to secure payment. D’Souza notes that the traffickers started wearing gloves a few days after a ballot harvesting case in Arizona secured indictments based on fingerprint evidence.

In the movie, True the Vote reveals that it also analyzed cell phone pings from some of the 2020 riots, and found that many of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa radicals who were involved in the riots went on to become ballot traffickers.

True the Vote estimates that 20 thousand votes were illegally trafficked in Arizona, 14 thousand in Wisconsin, 275 thousand in Pennsylvania, 125 thousand in Michigan, and 30 thousand in Georgia, totaling 380 thousand votes, which is more than enough to sway the election. Minus these illegal ballots, Trump’s Electoral College votes would have been 279 to Biden’s 259, D’Souza says.

The organization notes that these numbers are based on the definition of a mule as “at least 10 visits to drop boxes.”

” If the bar is lowered to count those making at least 5 visits, the estimated affected votes increases by more than double,” the group says.

D’Souza argues that their data is “systematic, comprehensive, and well-presented enough” to convince any “reasonable person.”

“The Democratic Party has subverted the Democratic process itself,” D’Souza said Wednesday night.

In remarks before the screening of 2000 Mules in a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, former President Trump stressed that the stolen election had dire ramifications for the nation.

“We see terrible things happening,” Trump said, citing the unsecure border, inflation, and the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan as a few of the lamentable debacles the nation has seen since Biden took office. The former president argued that Putin decided to invade Ukraine after seeing “the incompetence and stupidity” of the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan.

Trump said none of the disasters would have happened had the election not been rigged.

May 09, 2022 10:25 PM  
Anonymous beware the Biden-Clinton-Anthony Weiner complex said...

President Biden’s crackdown on free expression began well before he stood up the Disinformation Governance Board and placed at its head a Hunter Biden laptop denier and Christopher Steel promoter.

The state-sponsored speech police have been active since Mr. Biden took office. If you say something they don’t like you’re in trouble. They’re taking names to shut up critics.

The irony is that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the DGB startup at an April 27 House hearing as he was spouting disinformation. The southern border is secure, he testified, as Mexican cartels funnel thousands in.

Another irony is that Mr. Biden himself should be reported to the DGB.

In his infamous Atlanta speech, while likening his opponents to segregationist Democrat Bull Connor, Mr. Biden talked of civil rights heroes, claiming to be one.

He told the audience, “Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well. You think I’m kidding, man. It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.”

He was not there and didn’t get arrested.

He said he drove an 18-wheeler. He didn’t. He said he was a lifeguard at Lake Oswego in New York that doesn’t exist. He was a lifeguard at a Wilmington swimming pool.

In March 2021 he said the Afghanistan withdrawal would be “safe and orderly.” After American deaths, a U.S. airstrike on an Afghan family and airport chaos, Mr. Biden told ABC News, “But the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens.”

Mr. Biden said he never discussed his son Hunter’s foreign financial hauls. We know on two occasions he huddled with Hunter and his partners at an L.A. bar and D.C. restaurant.

He said his son’s incriminating laptop computer was created by Russia.

For the Democrats to set up the DGB after fostering the greatest political hoax in history — the anti-Trump Steele dossier — is ironic. Democrats tried to sabotage a candidate and presidency with Kremlin lies, using the FBI and press.

There are other Biden crimes against free expression — steps announced before left-wing propagandist Nina Jankowicz became the most important bureaucrat in D.C. A TikTok star, she now heads the DGB and can target you for anti-Biden speech.

In July 2021, press secretary Jen Psaki urged information technology firms to report the names of people who commit mis- or disinformation. This was a warmup for the DGB.

“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team,” she said, describing the censoring process.

“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” she said. “We’re working with doctors and medical experts … who are popular with their audience with accurate information. So, we’re helping get trusted content out there.”

May 10, 2022 4:36 AM  
Anonymous beware the Biden-Clinton-Anthony Weiner complex said...


In February 2022, Ms. Psaki encouraged the Spotify platform to censor podcaster Joe Rogan, who presents guests with different COVID-19 views.

I’ll add this:

The federal government has been a prime conduit for wrong info. Mr. Biden said if you get the vaccine you won’t get COVID-19. False. The CDC pushed masks as a way to stop the bug, but later said cloth mask models have limited effectiveness. U.S. officials, such as virus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, dismissed China’s Wuhan lab as the coronavirus source. Another false one. Meanwhile, China lies about the virus’s origin on American social media, absent any outcry from Biden people.

Ms. Psaki herself has put out some whoppers, such as the DGB was started by former President Donald Trump. She said this after Mr. Mayorkas testified before Congress that Biden appointees “just recently constituted” a “misinformation disinformation governance board.” In other words, it’s a startup. Not a Trump legacy. She gave out misinformation on her new disinformation panel.

Ms. Psaki also said Republicans led the way on defunding the police, the Democrats’ biggest political debacle of 2021. When Mr. Biden was told at a town hall event that Republicans blame Democrats for defunding the police, the president called them “liars.”

In March, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy ordered social media platforms to submit their collection of misinformation to the government. This means search engines, community postings and big social media sites. In other words, he wants names and content.

In May 2021, Mr. Biden unleashed the kind of censorship used by “woke” activists seeking to demolish someone. Mr. Biden directed federal agencies to assess how financial firms address climate change — a message he wants banks to limit financing of the fossil fuel industry.

His order came after executive orders to throttle energy exploration, an anti-Trump crunch that drove up the price of oil and gasoline sparking high inflation.

Mr. Biden adopted this financial coercion despite a letter from a dozen Republican senators to John Kerry, the president’s special climate envoy who worried Mr. Putin would be distracted from climate issues amidst his ruthless rape of Ukraine.

“We are concerned by reports you have been pressuring banks to make extralegal commitments regarding energy-related lending and investment activities,” said the letter, headed by Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. “These commitments would result in discrimination against lawful U.S. energy companies and their employees, higher energy costs for American consumers, and slower economic growth.”

They suggested Mr. Kerry had created a “whimsical and capricious administrative state.”

“Your recent comments about President Joe Biden’s forthcoming global warming executive order suggest a government that is not based on law, but on coercion,” the senators said, citing a Kerry statement that he wanted to rearrange how capital is distributed.

Around the same time the White House was ordering reports from social media titans and demanding fossil-fuel stinginess from banks, the woke-dedicated Pentagon began an unprecedented surveillance operation on what troops say online. Even a “like” could scuttle a career if the subject promoted “extremism” whose definition remains sketchy.

I asked the ACLU in an email if the group would comment on the DGB. I received no reply.

May 10, 2022 4:39 AM  
Anonymous question: why are we hearing so much about homosexual marriage in connection with the overturning of Roe? answer: abortion is indefensible... said...

The reported leak of a Supreme Court decision returning the question of abortion laws to the states drove the leftist media into a state of outrage and indignation. But after so many years of fundraising and voter mobilization based on the threat of Roe being overturned, it seems the Left has forgotten its arguments in favor of the unrestricted right to abortion. Instead, it is struggling to find an argument that is consonant with their present focus on race-based injustice as the through line for all social and political debate.

Amid the predictable race-and-gender based invective against the three white men among the five-justice majority indicated by the leaked draft, there is a discernible effort to steer the discussion away from the issue at hand. We are told that this decision will be quickly followed by reversals of the right to contraception access, state-sanctioned homosexual marriage, or interracial marriage. While there is no clear connection amongst these issues beyond a reliance on “substantive due process,” implication is that the Left would prefer to deflect from talking about abortion itself toward more comfortable subjects.

But abortion, even for its proponents, involves very specific ideas about when a human fetus becomes worthy of protection by the state, and the dubious notion of “viability.” It involves distasteful realities that cannot be elided via euphemism. Today’s abortion rights absolutists insist on a right to terminate a developing fetus well past the point of “viability,” and become incensed by any mention of what would be involved in terminating a fetus at 40 weeks.

While abortion remains one of the few issues still framed by progressives as central to the interests of “women” in the old sense, it is also one of the few issues in which race cannot be centralized and the logic of disparate impact cannot be readily employed. The reality that black women get more abortions per capita than anyone else would be widely known if abortion supporters thought it supported their case. But mentioning the prolific number of terminated black pregnancies is not a politically palatable injustice to raise in defending legal abortion.

Fewer black births may not be the intended result of those in favor of upholding Roe, but it was an explicit desire for early American advocates of family planning, including Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alluded to the eugenic roots of abortion in a 2009 interview, when she remarked that, “at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

As noted in the leaked draft, many of the favorite arguments of pro-abortion activists have grown stale. Single mothers are no longer stigmatized in America in any significant way; about a third of children under 18 live in single-parent households, 75 percent of which are headed by mothers. An astounding 72 percent of black American households are single-parent, so the implied suggestion in the old pro-Roe arguments that single-parenthood is less than optimum is a fraught third rail for abortion advocates, who don’t want to be seen as stigmatizing a way of life that characterizes most black children.

May 10, 2022 4:46 AM  
Anonymous question: why are we hearing so much about homosexual marriage in connection with the overturning of Roe? answer: abortion is indefensible... said...


As for employment-related consequences for working mothers, women are protected from employer discrimination based on pregnancy, paid family leave is increasingly common. There are protections for women who wish to give up a child they don’t wish to raise themselves, and adoptions are closely monitored and potential adoptive parents extensively vetted.

Even the reliable slogan, “My Body, My Choice” has lost some of its logical grip, given the recent dedication to vaccine mandates by many of the same activists alarmed by the return of abortion regulation to the states. Indeed, the standby position of the feminist movement, that abortion laws are designed to control women’s bodies, becomes “problematic” for a Democrat party that asserts men can become pregnant, too. California Governor Gavin Newsom forgot this new doctrine when repeating a trope popular among older abortion enthusiasts, “If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.” And so the preferred euphemism employed by Democrats for decades when discussing abortion, “women’s health,” is invalidated two ways: abortion is obviously not healthy, and according to the Left’s own standards, it’s not exclusive to women.

But the most problematic aspect of dusting off their old pro-abortion talking points is the lack of a racial angle. The Democrat Party is struggling to portray the opponents of mass abortion in the black community as white supremacists. But complaining that blacks will lose access to a system facilitating the large-scale erasure of their pregnancies does not strike the right note. Worrying that lack of access to abortion in the later trimesters will result in more “unwanted” children (disproportionately black) begs the question of who doesn’t want them. Liberal economist Steven Levitt famously argued that legal abortion led directly to a reduction in the crime rate a generation later; blacks may not be quite as enthused at this clever approach to crime reduction as the Freakonomists.

Many abortion advocates have objected to a potential overturn of the “settled” issue of abortion. But even as blacks continue to experience abortions at a rate that elsewhere might be described by progressives as a disparate impact, the overall abortion rate in the U.S. is falling. The abortion rate increased from 1973, the year of the Roe decision, to 1980, but never reached that level again and is now lower than at any time since Roe. One might infer that the popularity of abortion with the American people is not completely settled.

The vehemence of the arguments in its favor has never been able to conceal the reality that abortion is deeply unpleasant. The Mississippi law referenced in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health prohibits abortion after 15 weeks. It is not a heartbeat law, as heartbeats are discernible much earlier. The 15-week standard comes from the understanding that most abortions after 15 weeks require “dilation and evacuation procedures which involve the use of surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child.” It is no surprise that advocates shy from discussing these devilish details.

May 10, 2022 4:48 AM  
Anonymous Dems rue the day they let Slidin Biden win the Dem nomination... said...


American families are already deeply concerned about violent crime, and the Biden administration seems content to let the crisis rage on. The president has even attempted to end the use of Title 42 – one of the few tools it has to avoid even more chaos at the border.

Rather than take any sort of productive action to address the border crisis, the Biden administration has consistently tried to play the blame game. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently claimed the Administration "inherited a broken and dismantled system." There’s no question our immigration system is in need of reforms, but it must be noted that the Biden administration is playing on the same field as previous administrations.

President Biden has had 15 months to use his authorities to address the border crisis or, better yet, work with Congress on a legislative solution. I’ve repeatedly offered my Bipartisan Border Solutions Act as a starting point for negotiations. The bill already has bipartisan, bicameral support, but the Biden administration has refused to engage, and instead published a plan that fails to invest the resources necessary to deter mass migration.

The humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border will not go away on its own, and Congress cannot undertake broader immigration reforms until the border crisis has been addressed.

While the American people fear crime and violence, cartels and criminal organizations get rich off the chaos at our southern border. The Biden administration can’t continue to allow the border to act as a corridor for drugs and criminals to reach our communities.

May 10, 2022 4:54 AM  
Anonymous when we party, we party hearty and the TTFers could hardly be any glummer !!!!!!!!!!............ said...


Candidates backed by conservative political action committees (PACs) swept Texas school board elections held on Saturday, as last year's nationwide pushback against critical race theory materializes into on-the-ground victories.

Among the big winners was the 1776 Project PAC, a group that defines itself as forwarding those who "want to reform our public education system by promoting patriotism and pride in American history."

All 15 candidates endorsed by the PAC won their races across six school districts representing suburban Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, the group announced through Twitter.

"The election victories are evidence parents are still motivated to transform public education," 1776 Project founder Ryan Girdusky said on Monday. "For decades, conservatives sat out of these important elections – and we're happy that the 1776 Project PAC could play a small part in these victories."

Girdusky highlighted during an interview that his organization has a perfect record so far this year, and he hopes to continue the success with the upcoming school board elections in Georgia and MARYLAND!

Another group that found success over the weekend was Grapevine-based Patriot Mobile, a cellphone company that poured half a million into a PAC to support candidates in Tarrant County school districts, according to The Texas Tribune.

Out of 11 endorsed candidates by Patriot Mobile Action, 10 won their races.

"It's a sign that the issues we're prioritizing are the ones that win elections," Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi said of the conservative victories to The Dallas Morning News. "You're gonna see us broaden the scope of the number of races we will be involved in in the future."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, also touted the victories through his Twitter account on Sunday.

"Parents are more involved and active in school elections and school policies than ever before," Abbott wrote. "No one cares more about children than their parents. The power of parents will continue to expand in Texas."

May 10, 2022 1:08 PM  
Anonymous a reckoning will soon arrive for global warming alarmists, just like it did for the gay agenda and CRT.... said...

Does anyone wonder where all the global warming destruction is? After all, the media are unrelenting in telling us how much climate change caused by man is affecting us. Yet no existential threat has emerged. There’s something off with the story.

The climate alarmists have based their predictions of doom on computer models that have been projecting global temperature increases, the likes of which, they tell us, are unsustainable. We must cut our carbon dioxide emissions, even if (actually, especially if) it hurts developed world economies.

This is the narrative we’re bombarded with on a daily basis. And it’s wrong.

Those models that have been used to fuel the fright are, without a doubt, unreliable. According to a recent story published in Nature magazine written by a group of climate modelers, “a subset of the newest generation of models are ‘too hot’ and project climate warming in response to carbon dioxide emissions that might be larger than that supported by other evidence.”

The authors, though, are careful to preserve the narrative, warning that “​​whereas unduly hot outcomes might be unlikely, this does not mean that global warming is not a serious threat.” They can’t help themselves.

While the modelers in the Nature article point specifically to problems with “a subset of the newest generation of models,” it’s obvious that the older models are no better. Last fall we covered a ScienceDaily report which noted that some researchers had concluded “a possible flaw in climate models” had been exposed, as the models failed to reproduce an observed event.

“When the history of climate modeling comes to be written in some distant future,” economist Robert L. Bradley Jr. wrote some months ago for the American Institute for Economic Research, “the major story may well be how the easy, computable answer turned out to be the wrong one, resulting in overestimated warming and false scares from the enhanced (man-made) greenhouse effect.”

May 10, 2022 1:15 PM  
Anonymous a reckoning will soon arrive for global warming alarmists, just like it did for the gay agenda and CRT.... said...


Despite claims of models’ near infallibility, their record is tainted:

Two years ago, a University of Michigan study found “that some of the latest-generation climate models may be overly sensitive to carbon dioxide increases and therefore project future warming that is unrealistically high.”

In 2017, economist David Henderson and consultant Charles Hooper wrote under the headline “Flawed Climate Models” that the “elaborate computer models that use physics to calculate how energy flows into, through, and out of our planet’s land, water, and atmosphere” have “serious limitations that drastically limit their value in making predictions and in guiding policy.”

Eight years ago, Reason’s Ronald Bailey wrote about “​​Ugly Climate Models,” noting that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was unable to “explain the last 15 years.”

“Most temperature records show that since 1998 the models and observed average global temperatures have parted ways,” Bailey wrote. “The temperatures in the models continue to rise, while the real climate has refused to warm up much during the last 15 years.”

Simply averaging the many climate models “to come up with the forecast for warming in the 21st century,” as has been done over and again, is a poor practice, because “there is now evidence that giving equal weight to each available model projection is suboptimal.” The modelers behind the Nature article made the same point three years later, emphasizing that it’s appropriate to give “more weight to those that agreed with historical temperature observations.”

A decade ago, Richard Lindzen, then the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, said real-world observations and the models were not in sync. “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”

The hot models have contributed to a hot mess of climate predictions, which is more feature than bug for the alarmists, who long ago reached the point that they would say anything to further their agenda.

May 10, 2022 1:16 PM  
Anonymous Violent Crime: Let's give it a more accurate name: gun crime said...

Vital Signs: Changes in Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates — United States, 2019–2020

Abstract
Introduction: The majority of homicides (79%) and suicides (53%) in the United States involved a firearm in 2020. High firearm homicide and suicide rates and corresponding inequities by race and ethnicity and poverty level represent important public health concerns. This study examined changes in firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates coinciding with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Methods: National vital statistics and population data were integrated with urbanization and poverty measures at the county level. Population-based firearm homicide and suicide rates were examined by age, sex, race and ethnicity, geographic area, level of urbanization, and level of poverty.

Results: From 2019 to 2020, the overall firearm homicide rate increased 34.6%, from 4.6 to 6.1 per 100,000 persons. The largest increases occurred among non-Hispanic Black or African American males aged 10–44 years and non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) males aged 25–44 years. Rates of firearm homicide were lowest and increased least at the lowest poverty level and were higher and showed larger increases at higher poverty levels. The overall firearm suicide rate remained relatively unchanged from 2019 to 2020 (7.9 to 8.1); however, in some populations, including AI/AN males aged 10–44 years, rates did increase.

Conclusions and Implications for Public Health Practice: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the firearm homicide rate in the United States reached its highest level since 1994, with substantial increases among several population subgroups. These increases have widened disparities in rates by race and ethnicity and poverty level. Several increases in firearm suicide rates were also observed. Implementation of comprehensive strategies employing proven approaches that address underlying economic, physical, and social conditions contributing to the risks for violence and suicide is urgently needed to reduce these rates and disparities.

May 10, 2022 5:54 PM  
Anonymous Violent Crime: Let's give it another name: another problem Joe Biden can't handle... said...


Sorry, the last paragraph in the previous comment had some typographical errors. It should read as follows:

Conclusions and Implications for Public Health Practice:

In the aftermath of the Defund the Police initiative by the Democratic Party, the firearm homicide rate in the United States reached its highest level since 1994, with substantial increases among several population subgroups. These increases have widened disparities in rates by race and ethnicity and poverty level. Implementation of comprehensive strategies employing proven approaches that address underlying economic, physical, and social conditions contributing to the risks for violence and suicide is urgently needed to reduce these rates and disparities. The most recent successful strategy was employed earlier in the millennium when a GOP mayor in New York City, Rudy Giuliani began pursuing enforcement of petty crime and increasing police engagement in communities.

May 11, 2022 6:23 AM  
Anonymous Violent Crime: let's give it a more accurate name: abortion... said...


Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is a masterpiece of jurisprudence and a long-overdue victory for the preborn. It is also the vindication of decades of tireless effort from pro-life advocates and the conservative legal movement.

We should take a moment to appreciate the historic nature of this decision. While the decision in Dobbs will not ban abortion in America—despite what its detractors would have you think—it would be a monumental step forward. For the first time in nearly 50 years, legislatures in every state, democratically elected by voters, will be able to regulate abortion as they see fit.

Undoubtedly, many states will make decisions I find grievously wrong, but others will be free to enact laws that protect all human life. States will be free to acknowledge in law the truth that abortion is not health care, and that a preborn child is a distinct, unrepeatable human life.

The moment is not without some sense of loss, however. I am deeply upset that an employee of the Court could betray the trust of the justices and the judicial process by leaking the draft opinion. Yet, I am confident that this attempt to exert political pressure on the Court will ultimately not succeed.

None of that can overshadow the great victory that appears to be just around the corner. What lies before the Supreme Court now is the test of weathering the political storm. The line has been drawn, Roe will soon be overturned.

Countless mothers and children in states across the nation will be spared the violence of abortion.

All it takes is persistence, even in the face of daunting odds and decades of setbacks. People of conscience came together and stood for the truth, and victory is near.

­­­­­­­Justice Alito’s draft opinion is also a victory for sound constitutional interpretation. Gone will be the days when the Court masqueraded as politicians dressed in black robes, reading their own political views into clauses of the Constitution and neglecting federalism.

Roe now resides alongside Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. United States, and other Supreme Court decisions that were "egregiously wrong" from the day they were decided.

By making Justice Alito’s draft opinion its official holding, the Supreme Court will again demonstrate that it can learn from its mistakes and make right a wrong.

But the fight is not over. The pro-life movement goes on, and it will continue until we have changed the hearts and minds of all Americans so that every state is safe for the preborn.

Pro-lifers will now advocate to voters and officials in states to not protect life but to enact policies that strengthen families, and allow mothers, preborn babies, and children generally to flourish.

I know we will be as successful in that effort as we have been here. Countless Americans yet to be born are counting on us.

May 11, 2022 6:34 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden on the Constitution: no problem at all.... said...

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr blasted the Department of Homeland Security's new Disinformation Governance Board to combat online disinformation on Monday, calling it "Orwellian," "un-American" and "unconstitutional."

Carr made the argument on Monday, stressing that the disinformation board should be shut down.

He also argued that "there is a broader game afoot."

Carr provided an example: "You have White House press secretary Jen Psaki from the White House podium saying they are coordinating with Big Tech to take down posts, flagging posts for them."

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced during testimony late last month before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security that DHS had created the Disinformation Governance Board.

"The goal is to bring the resources of DHS together to address this threat," Mayorkas said during the hearing, adding that the department is focused on the spread of disinformation in minority communities ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Federal and state lawmakers, constitutional scholars and other experts are expressing concerns with the Department of Homeland Security's new misinformation board, which they argue is the Biden administration's attempt to stifle free speech.

In fact, Republican-led states are threatening legal action against the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) new "Disinformation Governance Board," which they also deem "un-American" and chilling to the free speech of Americans.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is leading GOP attorneys general in sending a letter to Mayorkas demanding that the department "cease taking action" contributing to a "chilling effect" on free speech.

"This is an unacceptable and downright alarming encroachment on every citizen’s right to express his or her opinions, engage in political debate, and disagree with the government," wrote the 20 attorneys general.

The Republicans raised concerns over the timing of the board's creation, saying it comes after the Biden administration has "flagged problematic posts" on social media and worked with Big Tech companies and the private sector to take down "misinformation" off its platforms.

In addition, they say the timing is suspect due to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter, and his commitment to ensuring free speech and transparency on the platform.

"This is a broader effort by this administration to drive dissent from the public square," Carr argued, stressing that that is why he is "glad" that the attorneys general are trying "to get to the bottom of this."

"I think it’s pretty clear that there is coordination happening and if there is, then that does potentially make these entities state actors, which means they’re limited by the First Amendment," he continued.

May 11, 2022 6:44 AM  
Anonymous Masks and Abortions: My Body My Choice said...

Of course Lying GOPers don't want disinformation weeded out of public discourse.

They and their Russian troll allies mass produce disinformation, especially during election years.

But thanks for all the lying right wing crap you post, boring us to death.

It reminds readers how great is it to be happy to be alive and not hung up on trying to force others to believe our beliefs and hate our hates.



May 11, 2022 9:49 AM  
Anonymous Hi, it's Andrew Cuomo. Rememba me? I was the big hero of COVID who was thrown out because I like girls. Should I run for President?... said...


"Masks and Abortions: My Body My Choice"

abortions involve more than one body

they actually intentionally kill another sentient human being

how evil of you to defend it...

"Of course Lying GOPers don't want disinformation weeded out of public discourse"

way to channel Big Brother from 1984

the Biden administration has already demonstrated that they are happy to spread any disinformation that supports their agenda

have you heard the one about how 2020 was the most secure election in history?

how could that even be possible?

have you heard that Hunter's laptop was planted by Russian agents?

not anymore

how about that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election?

and yet, despite a special prosecutor, Congress, every intelligence agency, law enforcement body, and reporter in the world looking into it, no evidence was ever found of such a thing

that Trump is a sly fox, huh?

how about yesterday when Biden said higher taxes and more regulations will reduce inflation?

not only is that disinformation

it is certifiably insane

"But thanks for all the lying right wing crap you post, boring us to death"

the terror you feel over the looming grim future for the gay agenda is hardly boring

it's thrilling

"It reminds readers how great is it to be happy to be alive and not hung up on trying to force others to believe our beliefs and hate our hates."

nervousness produces bad grammar every time

I know, you want to censor all views other than your own

then, you won't have to "force others to believe your beliefs"

they won't hear anything else

not to worry, Mr. Slidin' Biden won't get away with it

May 11, 2022 12:12 PM  
Anonymous Alito's leaked draft decision goes back almost a thousand years to illustrate abortion bans in living color!! Let’s party like it’s 1022 baby! said...

There is much to be shocked by in Justice Samuel Alito's screed of a draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but his evocation of centuries-old common law shouldn't be one of them. As it turns out, this is not unusual, particularly among jurists who argue that certain ideas are so firmly entrenched in the culture that there no longer remains any question on their validity. That is not to say, however, that Alito's use of ancient misogyny to undergird his arguments isn't disgraceful. In fact, it's nothing short of grotesque. He goes all the way back to the 13th century to cite Judge Henry de Bracton's  "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae," a text about English law and custom that explained that if a person has "struck a pregnant woman, or has given her poison, whereby he has caused an abortion, if the foetus be already formed and animated … he commits homicide" to argue that abortion has been considered murder for centuries.

As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank points out, Alito failed to mention some of Bracton's other words of wisdom about fraudulent pregnancies and proper torture techniques. Neither did Alito reference the fact that Bracton believed "women differ from men in many respects, for their position is inferior to that of men." As Milbank writes, Bracton did think women have certain rights:

"When a virgin is defiled," Bracton writes, "let her defiler be punished in the parts in which he offended. Let him thus lose his eyes which gave him sight of the maiden's beauty for which he coveted her. And let him lose as well the testicles which excited his hot lust." The truth of the victim's accusation would "be ascertained by an examination of her body, made by four law-abiding women sworn to tell the truth as to whether she is a virgin or defiled."

Perhaps the rapidly accelerating right-wing movement to deny abortion even in cases of rape and incest across the country can adopt this process as a compromise? It wouldn't be that far out, after all. A few years back when South Dakota passed an abortion ban, state Rep. Bill Napoli was quoted saying that he might accept a rape exception under similar circumstances:

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Never let it be said that conservatives have no compassion for rape victims — as long as they are virgins who have been horrifically brutalized "as bad as you can possibly make it." Napoli would fit right in 1250.

May 11, 2022 2:12 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

.
"but his evocation of centuries-old common law shouldn't be one of them"

no, it shouldn't

and yet you make a pathetic attempt to mock common law, vainly hoping to convince, maybe yourself, that killing innocent defenseless sentient life is not evil



May 11, 2022 2:22 PM  
Anonymous another one of them polls that TTFers like so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!............... said...


President Slidin' Joe Biden has repeatedly blamed President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine for the soaring rate of inflation in the U.S., but Americans aren't buying the White House's excuses, according to polling.

Biden again cited "Putin's price hike" in his Wednesday address on April's consumer price index report, which showed an 8.3 percent rise in the 12 months ending in April, after hitting 8.5 percent in March. Meanwhile, the president's approval rating remains low among voters, especially when it comes to how he is handling the economy.

A new poll published Monday found that Biden's approval rating fell again this month, nearly plunging to his previous record low by a single percentage point. The survey from Investors Business Daily/TIPP found that only 39 percent of U.S. adults approve of the president's performance, while 47 percent disapproved. Website FiveThirtyEight showed him with a 41.7 approval rating as of Wednesday.

In the IBD/TIPP poll's results, Slidin' Biden notably struggled to gain ground among independent voters, with 58 percent disapproving of his job as president.

Americans appear to be increasingly concerned about the president's handling of the economy. Almost half of those surveyed in the poll disapproved, while only 29 percent approved.

Let's face it: Slidin' Biden took an economy that was briskly recovering from the worst pandemic in a century, and he created a catastrophe!

May 11, 2022 3:25 PM  
Anonymous another one of them Senate votes that pro-lifers like so much.... said...


The Senate fell far short Wednesday in a rushed effort toward enshrining Roe v. Wade abortion access as federal law.

The tally promises to be the first of several efforts in Congress to preserve the old court ruling, which declares a constitutional right to abortion services but will be overturned this summer by the Supreme Court.

President Joe Biden called on the Congress controlled by Democrats to pass legislation to protect abortion services for millions of Americans. The vote was 51-49 against Roe v. Wade.

“The American people are watching," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ahead of the vote. “The public will not forget which side of the vote senators fall on today."

Congress has battled for years over abortion policy, but the Wednesday vote to take up a House-passed bill was given new urgency after the disclosure of a draft Supreme Court opinion to overturn the Roe decision that many fools had believed to be settled law.

The outcome of the court's actual ruling, expected this summer, is sure to reverberate around the country and on the campaign trail ahead of the fall midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

Violent pro-choice activity meant security was tight at the Capitol where Vice President Kamala Harris presided, and it has been bolstered across the street at the Supreme Court after protesters turned out in force last week following the leaked draft.

Scores of House Democratic lawmakers marched protest-style to the Senate and briefly watched from the visitor galleries.

Harris can provide a tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 split Senate, but that was beside the point on Wednesday.

The majority of Senators oppose Roe v. Wade.

May 11, 2022 5:10 PM  
Anonymous ha-ha said...

that's right!

majority......

May 11, 2022 5:12 PM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has known that two genders are necessary to make a marriage said...

interesting....

the majority of the Supreme Court opposes Roe v Wade

the majority of the Senate opposes Roe v Wade

the majority of the Constitution opposes Roe v Wade

the majority of Western European nations opposes Roe v Wade

I used to think the despicable day of anti-family forces is nearing nightfall

the sun's down

May 11, 2022 10:40 PM  
Anonymous take your damn mask off already...geeez... said...


I see yesterday that Slidin' Biden is trying to fight Donald Trump with a derisive slogan:

The Great MAGA King

so sad....

truth is, people don't find Trump very likable

but Slidin' Biden is just reminding them that Trump was actually making progress on making the country great again and Slidin' Biden is a big step backward, in just about every area

May 12, 2022 10:48 AM  
Anonymous Terry McAuliffe, he did more to end the gay agenda than anyone else....thanks, Terry!!!!!!!!!!!................ said...


Why can’t the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) bring itself to use the word ‘woman’?

Having obliterated the words "marriage" and "family" by completely redefining them, the gay agenda is now trying to eliminate the word "woman."

Is it any wonder why we're in a backlash?

In the wake of the leaked Supreme Court opinion, suggesting that Roe v Wade could soon be overturned, the ACLU has stepped up its campaigning. Roe v Wade has guaranteed the legality of abortion across the United States for the past 50 years. Its demise would give a green light to the many red-state legislators who are chomping at the bit to introduce new bans and restrictions on abortion.

The ACLU supports legal abortion as a fundamental liberty. But some of the reasons it now gives for this position are perplexing, to say the least.

In a recent tweet, the ACLU asserted that: ‘Abortion bans disproportionately harm: black, Indigenous and other people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants, young people, those working to make ends meet and people with disabilities.’

Conspicuously missing from the ACLU’s long list of victimized identities is the one group that truly matters: women. After all, it is only women who can get pregnant, and it is therefore only women who need access to abortions.

Not according to the woke worldview of the ACLU. Apparently, ‘people’ of all genders can get pregnant. Even gay men, it seems – and ‘disproportionately’ more so than women.

The problem with this mindset is not just that ‘women’ are reduced to merely one of many ‘identity groups’ whose right to abortion might need defending. Nor is the problem just that heterosexual, ‘cisgender’ women have been placed lower down the intersectional pecking order than, say, trans women or black men. The real problem is that woke ideologues would apparently prefer it if we stopped referring to ‘women’ at all.

The ACLU has form on this front. Last year, on the anniversary of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the ACLU celebrated RBG’s pro-choice views with a butchered version of a famous quote:

‘The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] wellbeing and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.’

Of course, as the square brackets show, RBG did not say ‘person’, ‘people’, ‘they’ or ‘their’ – she said ‘woman’, ‘women’, ‘she’ and ‘her’. But talk of ‘women’ specifically needing abortions is an affront to the trans ideology, now swallowed whole by the ACLU, that says biological sex must play second fiddle to gender identity – even when it comes to matters such as pregnancy.

The ACLU is in deep trouble here. It has tumbled so far down the woke rabbit hole, and it has become so deferential to trans ideology, that it has forgotten which rights are specific to women. Just think about this for a moment: the US’s premier civil-liberties organisation has become squeamish about articulating the case for women’s sex-based rights – the rights that secure the liberty of half of the population.

You cannot defend women’s rights if you cannot say the word ‘woman’.

May 13, 2022 6:15 AM  
Anonymous every time you drive down the street and see the price signs at the gas station, you are reminded how stupid America was to elect Slidin' Joe Biden... said...

"Having obliterated the words "marriage" and "family" by completely redefining them, the gay agenda is now trying to eliminate the word "woman.""

how about "women's health care"?

that's now the term for killing unborn females in their mothers' wombs

May 13, 2022 6:21 AM  
Anonymous They call themselves "pro-lifers" said...

Republicans Criticize Biden For Not Starving Undocumented Immigrant Babies

GOP lawmakers blasted the Biden administration for providing baby formula to detained undocumented immigrants during a shortage.

Why is there a shortage?

Ask Abbott Nutrition:

U.S. to boost baby formula imports to ease nationwide shortage after Abbott Nutrition recall
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/us-to-boost-baby-formula-imports-to-ease-shortage-after-abbott-nutrition-recall.html

The U.S. will increase baby formula imports as part of an effort to ease a nationwide shortage, senior Biden administration officials said on Thursday.

The scarcity of formula was triggered in part by the closure of a Michigan manufacturing plant after two infants who consumed its products caught bacterial infections and died.

The Food and Drug Administration will announce specific actions to boost formula imports in the coming days, the officials said. The U.S. produces 98% of the infant formula its consumes. Chile, Ireland, Mexico and the Netherlands are potential sources for additional imports, according to the officials.

Abbott Nutrition, the nation’s largest baby formula manufacturer, issued a recall in February for several powered formulas. The move came after four infants who consumed products from its Sturgis, Michigan, plant were hospitalized with infections from the bacteria Cronobacter sakazakii. Two of the infants died.

May 13, 2022 8:12 AM  
Anonymous Why Adoption Is Not An Appropriate Clapback In The Abortion Debate said...

I remember after we adopted our first two daughters, hearing a lot of people say to us, “Thankfully their birth moms chose adoption instead of abortion. They chose life!” This exclamation and off-handed compliment came across as pious and assuming. I’ve been a mom by adoption for almost twelve years, and I’m here to tell you that adoption is not the clapback to the abortion debate.

I’ve heard it all. Adoption is the loving option. Adoption gives the child a chance at a better life. Adoption is a gift. Adoption is the polar opposite of abortion. I need to clear the air and tell you, none of this is accurate. Clapping back at abortion with adoption is dismissive, short-sighted, and naïve, and here’s why.

Before I share with you why no one should throw adoption into the abortion conversation, I want you to know that I’m not going down the rabbit hole of the pro-life versus pro-choice debate. Instead, I’m going to share with you what I’ve seen and what I know about the adoption community, and what you need to know, too. No matter where you stand on the abortion issue, you must stop with the adoption praise and promotion when sharing your views on abortion. The following is from hearing thousands of adoption stories from friends, family, and followers.

When we first entered the adoption community, as a young couple who knew that adoption was the best way to build our family, I thought the best thing we could do is call every local Christian adoption agency. After all, we were Christians, so why wouldn’t we use an agency that believed as we did? This was mistake number one.

First, not all Christians are alike. We do not hold the same values, moral standards, or expectations just because we are under the term Christian. Second, a Christian adoption agency doesn’t equate, by default, an ethical adoption agency. Ethical adoptions are of the utmost importance. At the heart of it, an ethical adoption means that all parties are well-informed, well-supported, and child is always at the center of every decision made, every step of the way. It sounds remarkably simple, right? Do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, always. However, that’s not how much of the adoption industry works. (Luckily, we ended up adopting from a different, much smaller, and much more ethical agency.)

Oh yes, I said industry. Some ethical adoption agencies exist to help expectant mothers, no matter what they decide to do during their pregnancy. Unfortunately, these are few and far between and difficult to find. The reality is that domestic infant adoption can be quite expensive. Some expenses are expected and reasonable, including court fees, lawyer fees, paperwork and background check fees, fees for the social worker’s time to conduct interviews and a home inspection. Having separate legal representation for the birth family is one the adoption can be more ethical. A homestudy is a massive document written by a social worker that thoroughly lays out the investigation conducted on the hopeful adoptive parent, proving that they are capable, reliable, and safe. There are also the fees to operate an adoption agency, including employee salaries, a building, and supplies. Depending on how the agency uses the fees that are paid by the hopeful adoptive family says a lot about what they’re in the business of doing, and not doing.

May 13, 2022 9:22 AM  
Anonymous Why Adoption Is Not An Appropriate Clapback In The Abortion Debate said...

Some states allow hopeful adoptive parents to “help” an expectant mother by paying all of her living expenses for months and months on end prior to the child’s birth. If that sounds a bit like quid pro quo, you’d be right. Not only does this put immense pressure on the mom to place her child for adoption to the couple she “owes” so much to, but it can set the hopeful adoptive parents up to be scammed or to lose thousands of dollars. Money talks, right? This subject is controversial in the adoption community. Some believe that reasonable expenses are permissible, others believe they are outright unethical, and others believe “go big or go home.”

Some agencies charge hopeful adoptive parents based on their income. Again, I wonder why this is. Shouldn’t there just be a reasonable, ethical, set adoption fee? Why hike or discount the price of the process based on income? There’s no reasonable explanation other than that the agency is in the business of selling babies, not finding families for children. This also makes me uncomfortable, because it conveys that whomever has the most money “wins.” They have more options. However, being wealthy doesn’t mean those hopeful parents would be better parents or provide a better home for a child.

Some agencies move expectant mothers from one state with stricter laws to a state where the adoption laws allow the mother to surrender her parental rights as quickly as twenty four or forty eight hours after the birth of the child. Some agencies operate posh maternity homes and promise expectant mothers all sorts of assistance, like help with their college tuition, after they place their child for adoption. If you’re reading this and feel gross, you should. It’s playing dirty. A mother, who is likely in a place of crisis, shouldn’t be lured with dangling, and temporary, carrots in exchange for her child.

Here’s the real kicker. Some agencies charge hopeful parents different placement fees based on the race of the child. Yes, you read that correctly. Healthy, white infants are in the highest demand. Bi-racial, Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and babies of other races are sometimes less desirable to hopeful parents. Now, I’m not advocating for anyone to adopt a child of color if they aren’t fully prepared for what the child will need. As a mom of four Black children, I can tell you that transracial adoption is a huge responsibility and honor, one that requires a lot of education and work. What I don’t understand is why the adoption process costs more or less based on a child’s race. (It doesn’t).

Adoption creates loss, even when the adoption is ethical. The birth parents lose their child, the child loses their birth parents, even when the adoption remains open, meaning, there’s ongoing communication between the families. Loss creates grief, confusion, and future difficulty. For example, adoptees attempt suicide at four times the rate of those who were not adopted. Talk to any adult adoptee, and listen to their journey. You might hear about RAD (reactive attachment disorder), trauma, isolation, and all of the unknowns that accompany some adoptions.

Click on some of the most prominent adoption agency websites, and you’ll see that the first thing under the “I’m pregnant and need help” button is a listing of hopeful adoptive parents, including Pinterest-worthy photos and descriptions of their lives. There’s extensive bullet-pointed lists of the benefits of adoption. What’s not listed is the potential for deep and forever loss of the child, the possibility of never seeing him or her again, the guilt and resentment of not raising the child, and the trauma that can occur from placing a child for adoption. These are significant, but they are not listed. Unethical adoption agencies paint adoption as a win-win-win scenario.

May 13, 2022 9:22 AM  
Anonymous Why Adoption Is Not An Appropriate Clapback In The Abortion Debate said...

ou might be wondering why I’m not sending you down a rabbit hole of links to agencies, lawyers, and other adoption professionals who unethically practice. First, I’m not giving them free advertising, giving them the opportunity to secure more “business.” Second, the truth is in the experiences of those who have been maliciously, or sometimes naively, misled by the adoption industry. I implore you to talk to those in the adoption community, including those who were adopted and those who placed children for adoption, who can tell you the reality of what we have also learned.

People tell me all the time how beautiful adoption is. There are beautiful pieces of each of my kids’ stories. I absolutely adore my family, and I’m thankful for our open adoptions as well as having the opportunity to work with ethical adoption agencies. However, adoption is complex and bittersweet, and anyone who paints it as a fairy tale has no idea what they’re talking about. Adoption changes everyone, the parents, the birth parents, and arguably most of all, the adoptee.

I’m not here to discourage anyone from considering adoption, but I absolutely think we must stop saying that abortion’s perfect solution is adoption. Telling someone to “just give up your kid for adoption” when she’s pregnant is dismissive and insulting. Treating adoptees like they’re prizes to be won rather than people to respect, is heartless. The adoption industry is wrought with unethical practices and people and shouldn’t be trusted by default. So the next time you are thinking about throwing adoption into the abortion debate, please, think before you speak.

May 13, 2022 9:22 AM  

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