The New "Grooming" Lie
This new "grooming" thing is weird and scary. The roots of hypocrisy run insanely deep on this one, and I just hope that ordinary people have some lick o' sense and can tell when the TV personalities, preachers, and politicians have gone too far.
The Washington Post explains, on this morning's front page:
In the charged debate over what and how children should learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, some mainstream Republicans are tagging those who defend such lessons as “groomers,” claiming that proponents of such teaching want children primed for sexual abuse.
Further, "some mainstream Republicans" are using the same slanderous concept to slime old-school Republicans who do not take the new fascism far enough.
Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that said that prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and her inner circle of advisors, were conducting some sort of child-trafficking sex ring. It was bizarre theory that saw secret pedophile code-words hidden in emails and secret messages implied in business logos, and somehow it came down to a punk-rock pizza place, just outside our little county, a place with artichoke pizzas and ping-pong tables, a place you took the family, where the team would celebrate a win. These nuts were sure that Hillary and her people had babies in the basement of the pizza place and were killing them and sumpn sumpn sex stuff.
QAnon continued that theory and expanded on it, where Donald Trump was going to secretly lock up all the child-molesting Democrats and purge the world of this cabal of powerful pedophiles. This is crazy stuff, yet conservatives are consumed by fantasies about pedophilia.
I was going to share a list of prominent Republicans arrested for child molesting and child pornography, but the list had almost 300 names on it and was just too much to post here. Oh, one of the names on the list was not a pedophile but was having sex with a mule, which ... how do you get caught doing that? Their latest thing is for Republicans to promote state bills dropping the age requirement for marriage, so adult men can marry children. Real pedophilia is an actual problem for conservatives. Trying to turn the tables on liberals is a little, uh, obvious, and it is hard to tell whether rank-and-file conservatives buy this stuff but history suggests that a lot of them will.
What we today call "conservatism" can almost be defined as the defiance of hypocrisy. Doing what they accuse others of is their calling-card. Liberals are criticized when they are inconsistent; it would be too tiring to treat Republicans the same way.
Now these people have started accusing liberals of "grooming" children for sex, by teaching them about sexual orientation and gender identity in middle-school and high school sex-ed classes.
It is serious to accuse someone of child molesting. It is irresponsible to make those accusations with no evidence, sometimes accusing blanket groups of people of sexually molesting children, again without a grain of substance. This is not a matter of differences of opinion. This kind of lie is intended to make Republican voters despise and hate Democrats, to think of them as devious sexual predators, to see them as legitimate targets of violence.
It is frankly depressing. These people will say anything, they really don't care if it's true or not. There are gay people, for real, and there are transgender people. It may be hard for Republican voters to understand, but it is an objective fact of the real world. Gay and trans people exist, and have since the beginning of time, in all societies. Everybody is not the same, and some of the differences fall on dimensions having to do with romantic attraction and gender.
Teaching students about this does two important things. First, for that minority of students who are becoming aware that their sexual orientation or their gender identity is not the same as most of the other kids, it gives them a way of understanding themselves, and learning they are not alone. They learn what it's called, and they can read and learn more if they want. This is much better than sitting there feeling like the only freak in the universe who has ever felt this way.
The second thing is that it teaches the heterosexual, cisgender majority of students that variations in orientation and identity are a normal kind of diversity. Everybody's different, and some people are different in these ways. It isn't something they chose, it's just how some people are, and they can still make good friends and colleagues, just like everybody else. Making fun of them only makes you look ignorant, like the Congresswoman who said, "[gay Cabinet member] Pete Buttigieg can take his electric vehicles and his bicycle, and he and his husband can stay out of our girls' bathrooms." A small amount of education could have prevented that embarrassment.
The thing is, these are some deluded people. We see them trying to end American democracy, they even tried to disrupt traffic on the Beltway hee-hee-haw-haw-haw. They are obviously not real smart about thinking things through, and they are prone to behaving impulsively on the basis of unfounded rumors.
So when rightwing TV pundits and politicians and preachers start saying that liberals are grooming children, as if we were all child molesters, they are putting innocent people in danger. You don't reason with pedophiles, jail is not good enough for them, when Bubba finds out somebody "likes kids" he feels violence, even murder, is appropriate.
It is important to teach about human sexuality. Our society is sexually twisted into knots, there are so many things -- untested rape kits, blocked investigations, churches moving priests around, pay disparities, this would be another long list -- and a little objective reality can only help. Yes, you learn about sperm and Fallopian tubes, and you learn that your armpits will stink and your pubic hair will grow, and you learn that most teenagers will be attracted to the opposite sex but some will not, and some small number of people have been assigned the wrong sex at birth, and they may need to begin to correct the problem before puberty changes their bodies in permanent ways. It doesn't hurt anybody to take a few days of class time to go over these topics. It does not encourage anybody to turn gay or decide to change their gender. And it has nothing to do with cultivating a generation of sexual victims for perverted liberals. These are just facts about human beings, and we all make better choices when we are better informed.
posted by JimK at 9:51 AM
210 Comments:
Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. support for legal same-sex marriage continues to trend upward, now at 70% -- a new high in Gallup's trend since 1996. This latest figure marks an increase of 10 percentage points since 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all states must recognize same-sex marriages.
These data are from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 3-18.
Today's 70% support for same-sex marriage marks a new milestone in a trend that has pointed upward for a quarter of a century. A small minority of Americans (27%) supported legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages in 1996, when Gallup first asked the question. But support rose steadily over time, eventually reaching the majority level for the first time in 2011.
By the time of the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, support for gay marriage had reached 60%. Since then, the issue has been less prominent in U.S. politics, and public support for same-sex marriage has continued to increase.
Gallup has recorded other shifts in Americans' ideas on marriage over time, historically, including expanded support for interracial marriage which had 87% approval as of Gallup's 2013 update.
Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans' views...
As would be expected at a high-water mark in national support for same-sex marriage, all age groups are the most supportive they have been to date. Still, age differences remain, with 84% of young adults, 72% of middle-aged adults, and 60% of older adults saying they favor same-sex marriage.
Once opponents of legalization, Republicans have mostly come to back it. Court and legislative challenges to the legal status of same-sex marriage have simmered down since the Supreme Court issued its decision. Meanwhile, older U.S. adults, who were once holdouts in support for gay marriage, now come down on the same side of the issue as young adults.
Gallup's trend illustrates that Americans' views can shift in a relatively short time span, creating a new consensus -- even as polarization on other measures intensifies.
"What we today call "conservatism" can almost be defined as the defiance of hypocrisy. Doing what they accuse others of is their calling-card."
Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sparked an Olympic sprint of sorts as politicians run away from their abysmal records regarding Vladimir Putin. Few are running faster than former President Barack Obama, who this week tried to rewrite the history of his own Russia policies.
“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”
As for Mr. Putin, the former U.S. President purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way—I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”
Mr. Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.
Start with Mr. Obama’s claim he was a champion of harsher measures against Russia after the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. His Administration imposed only mild, targeted sanctions on Russia—and then joined with Moscow to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. He refused to sell Javelin antitank weapons to Ukraine. Germany pushed ahead with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in this era with nary a peep from Washington until the Trump Administration.
Mr. Obama also can’t claim as much ignorance as he does now about Mr. Putin’s intentions and methods at the time. Mr. Putin had risen to power allegedly by bombing apartment buildings in Russia, as U.S. intelligence no doubt knew or highly suspected, and even Mr. Obama concedes Mr. Putin’s 1999 assault on Grozny in Chechnya was “ruthless.”
There also were the 2006 assassinations of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, Mr. Putin’s provocative speech criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Munich in 2007, and the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.
In 2009 Mr. Obama nonetheless dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva to negotiate a “reset” on relations with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. In 2012 Mr. Obama accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of hewing to a retrograde 1980s foreign policy for viewing Russia as a threat, while telling Putin henchman Dmitry Medvedev when he thought no one was listening that he’d have more latitude to cut Mr. Putin some slack after the U.S. election.
Some reset. In addition to the Crimea and Donbas invasions, 2014 saw the shoot-down of a Malaysian Airlines flight by Russia-linked forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s cluster bombing of Aleppo in Syria followed in 2015-16. Mr. Putin’s suppression of domestic dissent accelerated, and he amped up his rhetoric against NATO and an independent Ukraine. And don’t forget the meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, which Mr. Obama punished with wrist-slap sanctions only after Donald Trump won.
Mr. Obama’s main concession to Russian reality was to lobby NATO allies to increase their annual defense spending to 2% of GDP, although for the most part they ignored him. One can almost understand why they did, since they saw him cozying up to Mr. Putin on Iran while talking down the Russia threat.
***
All of this is relevant now because the Biden Administration is loaded with men and women who worked for Mr. Obama and shared his misjudgments about Russia. The conceit in many quarters on the left is that Mr. Putin has changed, or is deranged, such that his Ukraine invasion couldn’t have been foreseen.
But Mr. Obama’s weakness toward Russia, reinforced by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is one reason Mr. Putin felt he could act with increasing aggressiveness and get away with it. No one should believe Mr. Obama’s varnished Russia history.
Hunter Biden has been making lots of headlines in recent weeks. The corporate media has finally decided to tell the truth about the corrupt behavior of America’s most problematic First Son, and they’re now reporting what most have known since October 2020. Hunter Biden is a corrupt man who has used his famous last name to sell American political access to wealthy foreigners from countries adversarial to the United States. This is a five-alarm fire of political corruption, and Americans deserve answers – as well as to know the extent of Joe Biden’s awareness of his son’s activities. Joe Biden once described Hunter as the “smartest man” he knew. Given the media firestorm on his doorstep today, he may be re-evaluating that opinion.
This new wave of coverage comes after liberal media outlets spent months battening down the hatches in a coordinated effort to protect the Biden family name from legitimate scrutiny. Recall how in October 2020 – just weeks before the 2020 election – the New York Post accurately reported that Hunter Biden had abandoned a laptop full of incriminating information about his foreign activities at a computer repair shop. Corporations like CNN and Twitter acted quickly, sowing doubt on the Post’s reporting, de-platforming the outlet from social media in a brazen act of censorship, and inevitably describing the very real scandal as “misinformation.”
The contents of the laptop – which the New York Times has now confirmed as legitimate — were as concerning then as they are now. For one, emails showed that a Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC – a group with ties to communist dictator Xi Jinping and China’s military – paid Hunter and his associates millions of dollars to grow their presence in America. Let’s be clear about what that means. Chinese communist oligarchs, working for a totalitarian dictator devoted to overtaking the United States, collaborated with the Vice President’s son to set up a beachhead for the CCP on American soil.
Is it even worth speculating what the media reaction would be if this was one of President Trump’s children?
This doesn’t just have ramifications for Hunter, however. Joe Biden is part of this too. A joint venture between CEFC and Hunter Biden in 2017 was designed with a very special condition: that “10 percent” of the profits would be “held by H [Hunter] for the big guy.” Tony Bobulinski, a one-time Hunter Biden associate who accurately described Hunter’s ties to China before they became widely known, has gone on the record confirming the “big guy’s” identity. Need a hint? His approval ratings are plunging to 40% or lower, he spends more time on vacation in Delaware than he does solving problems, and he’s the reason you’re paying more than ever to fill up your car.
There is reason to believe that Joe Biden was well-aware of Hunter’s pay-for-play schemes. Not only was he referenced in the CEFC deal, but he shared a bank account with Hunter Biden for years – including while Hunter was wheeling and dealing with dictatorships abroad. Joe Biden and Hunter Biden even paid each other’s bills, and Joe even owed Hunter money. President Biden’s historic mismanagement of the economy makes more sense when you consider that he’s been in debt to a man who has confessed to smoking parmesan cheese upon running out of crack cocaine.
CNN, initially eager to cover for the Bidens, has now admitted that a federal probe into Hunter’s finances is “heating up,” and other outlets have reported that Joe Biden might be targeted. Perhaps that’s why the media has changed its tune. However, it’s too little too late. There’s no question that liberal media outlets frequently bend over backward to defend Democrats, but this marks a particularly devastating blow to their credibility. Joe Biden’s son used his father’s influence to make money with dictators while he was sharing a bank account with the former Vice President and future President. The media looked the other way.
Federal prosecutors might not do the same.
However this era of angry polarization, crime and violence ends, it will be left to historians to decipher how America got so far off track. Instead of building on our unprecedented prosperity and role as the world’s ultimate superpower, we declared war — cultural, political and social — on each other. Even our nation’s Founders are not spared.
The reasons will be better understood in hindsight, but it’s hard to believe the 2016 presidential campaign won’t be seen as an inflection point. Our move toward disunion didn’t begin then, but it certainly gained steam and vitriol during and after the election of Donald Trump.
Two recent developments illustrate how that campaign remains a radioactive hot spot. With both developments centering on Hillary Clinton, they underscore her role and the depths of her venality.
Just when you think you’ve seen the worst of her, proof emerges that she was even more duplicitous than we knew.
The first evidence came in a little-noticed decision from the Federal Election Commission. It ruled on a complaint from the Coolidge Reagan Foundation that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee violated federal law by hiding how they funded the odious Christopher Steele dossier, perhaps the most destructive disinformation document in United States history.
The FEC agreed with the complaint and ruled that Clinton and the DNC, which she effectively controlled, hid their payments to Steele as merely “legal fees,” without mentioning him or his work. In fact, the money was funneled through a law firm, Perkins Coie, which then hired the smear merchants at FusionGPS, who hired Steele, a former British spook.
The layers and false claim about legal fees were intended to put distance between Clinton and Steele because knowledge of the truth would have destroyed her campaign. Although her lawyers and the DNC argued they did nothing wrong, they agreed not to contest the findings and quietly paid fines totaling $113,000.
If this effective admission on funding the dirtiest dirty trick in presidential politics is news to you, don’t blame yourself. Much of the media ignored or downplayed the finding and Clinton’s fine, saying the issue was just one of “misreporting” or “mislabeling” the Steele payments.
That’s because the truth would make them look guilty, too. To report on the election commission’s significance would force the Dems’ propaganda arm to acknowledge its own culpability.
By treating the Steele dossier as if it were holy writ, or at least credible, the media furthered Clinton’s campaign to paint Trump as a Russian stooge.
Of course, the FBI was also complicit, using the dossier as a crutch to justify its unjustifiable spying on a presidential campaign. A remaining question is, under Jim Comey’s leadership, was the FBI the dumbest ever or the most venal?
Probably both but whatever the answer, J. Edgar Hoover finally can rest in peace.
The second recent development involves a new court filing by special counsel John Durham in the case of Michael Sussmann, a Clinton lawyer and campaign operative who is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016. His alleged role expands the deception annals by showing Clinton’s team wasn’t relying only on Steele’s farrago of lies, lies and more lies.
Perhaps doubtful that Steele, even with his FBI friends and media contacts, could make up for her unpopularity, Clinton financed a bookend to his dossier with another fabrication.
This second scam had Sussmann, a tech executive and the same smear merchants try to sell the FBI on a concocted story about a Trump computer secretly communicating with a Russian bank.
Durham calls the effort a “joint venture” of the conspirators, a phrase that gives a sense of the plot and the players. There wasn’t a scintilla of truth to back up the computer nonsense, and even though the FBI saw through the tissue-thin claim, many in the media naturally fell for it.
They managed to find in this particular lie a confirming detail of the larger lie Steele was spinning — that Trump was a toady of Vladimir Putin and was colluding with him to steal the election.
The case is a criminal one because Durham accuses Sussmann of lying by saying he was not representing any clients as he tried to spin a top agency official on the computer connection. In fact, Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign, which he billed for the meeting, and the tech executive, identified as Rodney Joffe.
Although Sussmann pleaded not guilty, Durham released a text message in which Sussmann explicitly tells the FBI he is not representing any clients.
His trial, scheduled for next month, has the potential to be a breakthrough in Durham’s long-running effort to reveal voluminous wrongdoing by Clinton and the federal government against the Trump campaign.
Based on his court filings, the prosecutor appears to be planning to link Sussmann’s efforts to the dossier, in part because of the role his firm, Perkins Coie, played in both scams. Also, Durham said Sussmann met with Steele and FusionGPS in Perkins Coie offices and raised the possibility that Steele could testify.
Even before a verdict, the case moves the responsibility closer to where it ultimately belongs–in Clinton’s lap. Whether Durham will ever be able to show her fingerprints on any criminal conduct is the great unknown, but in one sense, it’s also beside the point.
We already know with 100 percent certainty that she is guilty of igniting the false accusations of Russian collusion that continue to shape our culture and politics. Although Trump was hardly a model president, the widespread claim by her party and the media that he was an illegitimate president wasn’t just dirty politics. It was a nuclear attack on the spirit that has always held our nation together, however tenuously.
Clinton lost the election and Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe came up empty, yet the collusion narrative lives on among major elements of the political left. To judge from the tumultuous years since, many of those who subscribe to her lie are using it as a license to try to destroy America.
Tragically, they are having a good deal of success.
What a bore.
Go fling your poo somewhere else, you big gorilla.
"Thanks for yet more right wing crap
What a bore."
Obama refused to send military equipment to Ukraine after the invasion of Crimea
so that can't be what you're talking about.
Hunter Biden's laptop has been conceded by the mainstream media to be authentic and that the data that suggests Slidin' Joe got a cut needs to be investigated
so that can't be what you're talking about.
a special counsel has found Hillary paid third parties to concoct the Russian collusion hoax and agreed to pay fines to the FE for illegally concealing the payments
so. gee, that can't be what you're talking about.
what the heck are you talking about?
"Go fling your poo somewhere else, you big gorilla."
I've noticed that metaphors used by homosexuals often involve feces
they seemed unusually attracted to the substance
And we all see you keep coming back for more.
A significant subset of the U.S. evangelical community, particularly white conservatives, has been developing a political and emotional alliance with Russia for almost 20 years. Those American believers, including prominent figures such as Graham and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, see Russia, Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as protectors of the faith, standing against attacks on "traditional" and "family" values. At the center is Russia's spate of anti-LGBTQ laws, which have become a model for some anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the U.S.
Now, with Russia bombing churches and destroying cities in Ukraine, the most Protestant of the former Soviet Republics, American evangelical communities are divided. Most oppose Russia's actions, especially because there is a strong evangelical church in Ukraine that is receiving attention and prayers from a range of evangelical leaders.
Nonetheless, a small group of the most conservative American evangelicals cannot quite break up with their long-term ally. The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin.
On that trip, Putin reportedly explained that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under Communist rule. Graham in turn praised Putin for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia's "positive changes" with the rise of "atheistic secularism" in the U.S.
But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world's greatest threat to their faith.
They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia, still a country with low church attendance and little government tolerance for Protestant evangelism, has become a symbol of the conservative value [including hatred for LGBTQ folks] that some American evangelicals proclaim.
"Evangelicals love for Putin explained"
here's an explanation: it doesn't exist
"A significant subset of the U.S. evangelical community, particularly white conservatives, has been developing a political and emotional alliance with Russia for almost 20 years"
well, you could make the same statement about any "subset" of the American population
we all wished that Russia would become a democratic society where human rights were respected
"Those American believers, including prominent figures such as Graham and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, see Russia, Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as protectors of the faith,"
actually, evangelical churches view Orthodox churches the same as they do Catholic churches: what the protestant revolution was protesting
read much history?
"standing against attacks on "traditional" and "family" values. At the center is Russia's spate of anti-LGBTQ laws, which have become a model for some anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the U.S."
well, most evangelicals would favor a society with "traditional" values but not any that used coercive and repressive governmental action to achieve it
but, you can't really generalize about evangelicals because, polls consistently show, they are the most diverse group in America as far viewpoints go
so, when you say "evangelicals" and try to attribute the views of a "significant subset." whatever that is, too all of them, you are making the same biased error that racists do when they say all blacks are violent because of crime in inner cities
"Now, with Russia bombing churches and destroying cities in Ukraine, the most Protestant of the former Soviet Republics, American evangelical communities are divided."
no, they aren't
"a small group of the most conservative American evangelicals cannot quite break up with their long-term ally"
an alliance which is, notably, a figment of your imagination
"The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin."
so famous I've never heard of it
The observation that Democrats face daunting midterm election prospects has become somewhat of conventional wisdom at this point. Democrats are defending razor-thin majorities in Congress at a time when voters are pessimistic about the state of the country, frustrated by inflation and feel that the party is out of touch.
At the same time, President Biden’s inability to strengthen his political position — even amid a strong jobs report, low unemployment, leading the international response to a war and a historic Supreme Court confirmation — bodes poorly for Democrats’ election chances in 2022 and 2024.
To be sure, Americans generally vote for whichever party they feel can improve their own personal circumstances — in 2022, for instance, Americans will back the party that they feel can remedy rising prices, lower crime and address other major issues — rather than based on a candidate’s personal liabilities. There is no better example of this in modern history than the election of Donald Trump.
That being said, an issue within the Biden family is rapidly developing — the investigation into Hunter Biden and his business ventures — and this familial matter now threatens to spill over into becoming a mainstream election issue.
The investigations into Hunter Biden, which are currently underway in Delaware and in the Justice Department are — for now — confined to Hunter Biden and President Biden’s brother, James. However, as more information comes to light, the risk of this becoming a problem for the president is increasing.
So, what needs to happen for the saga surrounding Hunter Biden’s business ventures to turn into a mainstream election issue?
If, as chief of Staff Ron Klain stated on ABC last week, this remains a private family matter — and if the investigations find that Hunter Biden and the Biden family did not in fact do anything illegal — then most voters will not hold the president accountable politically.
This was the case with Billy Carter, the brother of President Jimmy Carter, whose connection to Libya was investigated in the early 1980s but ultimately did not become a major political liability for President Carter.
However, there are distinct developments that are unique to the Hunter Biden case, which could reasonably lead to Hunter’s actions becoming a damning mainstream political problem for the president and his party.
Notably, there there are lingering questions over revelations in Hunter Biden’s emails that outlined profit-sharing agreements in a joint venture between his company and CEFC China Energy Company, a Chinese state-owned energy firm.
In the email, Hunter’s business partner asked, “10 (%) held by H for the big guy?” Tony Bobulinski — a whistleblower, and the former business partner of Hunter Biden — has stated that President Biden is “the big guy” referred to.
Further, Bobulinski has released text messages which seem to corroborate allegations of then-citizen Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s murky deals with Chinese companies.
One such text between Bobulinski and another associate of Hunter Biden’s from 2017 reads: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”
To that end, there are also questions that have been raised as to why Hunter Biden was on Air Force 2 when he flew to China to launch his most lucrative business deal there.
If it is proven that President Biden was not only involved in but profited from Hunter’s business deals with Chinese state-owned firms, it would be a politically calamitous development for the president.
If this was the case — and I caution against leaping to conclusions without all of the facts — it is easy to see how the Hunter Biden saga will move from a private family matter to a much larger political issue that calls President Biden’s integrity into question.
Indeed, if there is evidence that President Biden was actively facilitating the business interests of Hunter for the collective benefit of the Biden family, there will be real political damage.
As with the questions over the “10%” being held, we do not yet have concrete evidence that Joe Biden — either as vice president or president — actively assisted his son’s business ventures. However, there is some circumstantial evidence that this occurred.
An executive from Bursima — the Ukrainian energy company Hunter was on the board of — emailed Hunter in 2015, during the Biden-Obama administration: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
One day before that email was sent, then-vice president Biden dined with Hunter and his business associates from Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan at a dinner in Washington, D.C.
To be sure, I do not mean to imply that these developments point to a larger, more nefarious story than the one the administration has repeatedly offered, which is that President Biden was not involved in, did not facilitate, and did not speak to his son about his business dealings.
However, if concrete evidence emerges — either that President Biden profited from his son’s business ventures or used his position as vice president or president to benefit himself or his family — voters will not take kindly to this revelation, and the president and his party will face real, tangible political consequences.
Ultimately, if complicity is shown — and that is still a very big if — what is now likely a red wave election could turn into a massive blowout that is more substantial than anything seen in recent history
For the good of the nation, a way needs to be found to replace Kamal Harris.
"Now these people have started accusing liberals of "grooming" children for sex, by teaching them about sexual orientation and gender identity in middle-school and high school sex-ed classes."
Well, they have literalized the phrase "grooming" beyond its recent connotation but I find it hard to sympathize with you when that is the common MO of the gay agenda. Maybe you can sue for royalties, or something.
And, btw, liberals may not be "grooming" specific kids for sex, but they are certainly seeking to fortify a worldview in kids that dismisses traditional sexual morality and even characterizes traditional sexual morality as evil. And, no Jim, it's not limited to middle-school and high school. The gay agenda is currently staging a blitzkrieg to force Florida to teach 5 to 8-year-olds about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Lunatic fringe homosexual advocates could have consolidated their gains and laid low for a while. Instead they chose to push it...
and the backlash is upon us
"The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin."
so famous I've never heard of it
Aren't you the one who asked "read much history?"
Well lookie here what you missed:
https://twitter.com/franklin_graham/status/849245272991559680?lang=en
Evangelist Franklin Graham Loves Putin's Antigay Policies
NOVEMBER 03 2015 7:12 PM EST
Conservative Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, on a trip to Russia last week, praised President Vladimir Putin and the nation’s so-called gay propaganda law for “protecting Russian young people” and criticized LGBT-accepting U.S. churches as well as President Obama.
“I very much appreciate that President Putin is protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda,” Graham told Russian newspaper Moskoviskij Komsomolets, according to a translation by Right Wing Watch. “If only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves. Again, homosexuals cannot have children, they can take other people’s children.”
Russia’s “propaganda” law, enacted in 2013, prohibits “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations” — basically, anything that portrays LGBT people in a positive light or endorses LGBT equality — in venues accessible to minors.
Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was founded by his father, also told the paper that while he considers Obama “a very nice person,” he thinks the U.S. president is “taking a stand against God.”
“He supports and promotes policies that contradict the teachings of God,” Graham said. “As a Christian I believe that abortion is murder, he supports it. Homosexuality and same-sex marriage — those are sins against God, and the president is promoting them. I’m not against homosexuals as people. But God commanded that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
During his Russian sojourn, Graham met with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, and decried trends in the U.S. “Many churches in America have started to support homosexuality,” Graham told Kirill, according to another Russian paper translated by Right Wing Watch. “This is terrible, it’s a sin, and it’s against God.”
Graham also reportedly told the patriarch that Obama “promotes atheism” and “does not have a Christian worldview.” Putin, he said, “is protecting traditional Christianity.”
"Aren't you the one who asked "read much history?""
yes, I am
"Well lookie here what you missed"
wow, you only missed the Protestant Revolution, one of the most influential events of the second millennium, and I didn't hear about the son of a famous evangelist "famously" meeting with Vladimir Putin
of course, there's the possibility that I heard of it at the time and paid no attention to it since it's not a particularly significant event
"Conservative Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, on a trip to Russia last week, praised President Vladimir Putin and the nation’s so-called gay propaganda law for “protecting Russian young people” and criticized LGBT-accepting U.S. churches as well as President Obama."
personally, I'd agree with both Franklin and Putin on this
there is value in society protecting kids from homosexual propaganda
"Graham told Russian newspaper Moskoviskij Komsomolets, “If only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves. Again, homosexuals cannot have children, they can take other people’s children.”"
sounds about right
just wait until they're adults before you push this crap on them
“He supports and promotes policies that contradict the teachings of God,” Graham said. “As a Christian I believe that abortion is murder, he supports it. Homosexuality and same-sex marriage — those are sins against God, and the president is promoting them. I’m not against homosexuals as people. But God commanded that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
that statement sounds fine to me, why do you think he has no right to his religious views?
we do have freedom of religion here in the US of A
"Graham also reportedly told the patriarch that Obama “promotes atheism” and “does not have a Christian worldview.” Putin, he said, “is protecting traditional Christianity.”""
unfortunately, that second part is wrong
Putin has aggressively attacked Christian churches in Crimea and the Donbas that aren't Russian Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox has no independence from the state, a matter the Baptist church, Franklin's, is quite insistent on
still, your problem is that you think society should not only tolerate perversion but endorse and celebrate it
people in America, people in Ukraine, people in Russia, agree on one thing: kids should be protected against homosexual propaganda
sorry, fella,
the backlash is afoot!!!!!!!!!!
LOL!!!!!!
If the grand jury in Delaware investigating Hunter Biden’s business ventures does its job properly, it will be pulling on the threads that lead to the president, and already there are signs that is happening.
Regardless of the extraordinary statement last week by White House chief of staff Ron Klain, that the president is confident his son has done nothing wrong, and that the inquiry has nothing to do with Joe Biden or anyone else in the White House, publicly available evidence says otherwise.
It is not just the emails and other material on Hunter’s abandoned laptop that point to Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s multimillion-dollar global influence-peddling schemes when he was vice president.
There is also the six-hour interview Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski gave to the FBI last year, along with a trove of documents, emails and encrypted messages.
Bobulinski has publicly named Joe Biden as the “Big Guy,” referenced in emails, whose 10% equity in a joint venture with Chinese energy company CEFC was held for him by Hunter.
Now the identity of the Big Guy has become a topic for the Delaware probe.
At least one of the witnesses before the grand jury has been asked: Who is the Big Guy?
Sources familiar with the investigation say Bobulinski has yet to appear, but if he does not testify before the grand jury, something is very wrong.
The pressure on Weiss is immense, as the four-year investigation into the president’s son and his business partners, including his uncle James Biden, Joe’s younger brother, threatens to become an election issue in November.
Alarm bells are starting to ring in Democratic circles as the White House stonewalls in the face of increasing media inquiries. In two absurd statements in recent days, White House spokespeople said the president stands by his pre-election statement that Hunter never received any money from China, and he continues to deny that he knew anything about his son’s overseas business dealings.
The White House position is unsustainable.
First, there are the Treasury Department documents presented by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, along with bank statements on Hunter’s laptop showing millions of dollars paid by CEFC to Hunter and his business partners.
Then there is evidence, from Bobulinski and from the laptop, that Joe met Hunter’s foreign business partners on multiple occasions while he was vice president.
In addition, there is evidence on the laptop that Hunter and his father had commingled finances and shared bank accounts, and also that Hunter paid some of Joe’s household bills, including a monthly phone bill and maintenance and renovations on one of his Delaware properties.
On the other hand, Eric Trump and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg spent hours pleading the fifth over 500 times when questioned about the Trump Organization.
Ivanka, former White House advisor, on the other hand, freely answered Jan 6 committee questions for 8 hours after Jared, former Senior White House advisor, did the same for 6 hours.
Other Trump associates, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, Jr. who were involved in the Jan 6 insurrection and have refused to testify, have been found in contempt of Congress.
And of course Trump pardoned a whole lot of his co-conspirators, like Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Kusher (Jared's dad), etc.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-donald-j-trump-2017-2021
It's clear as day why you fling your lies.
You seek to deflect from the discovery of actual crimes when Trump and his cronies attempted to overthrow our duly elected government on Jan 6, 2021.
These criminals have a lot to hide.
We were right and Anthony Fauci was wrong. The person I never expected to hear say this, however, was Anthony Fauci.
Fauci finally admitted to the nation this weekend what has been obvious to everyone, except the most hysteria-prone slice of the population, since last summer: that the pandemic is now endemic. That means it’s here to stay, no matter what we do, so let’s learn to live with it. There is no point to the insane restrictions people insist on like latter-day Puritans denouncing each other for failing to carry out the prescribed rites to ward off the Devil.
“This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”
Great! But what has changed? This is exactly the message Fauci needed to deliver to the people . . . approximately a year ago.
Let’s talk next steps. What’s he going to do to make up for all of the needless misery he caused? I’m not asking him to think like his fellow Italian Marc Antony and fall on his sword, so let’s turn our minds to the moderate and reasonable options. How many days is Fauci volunteering to place himself in stocks set up on the National Mall so that we can all pelt him with rotten eggs? One day for every completely wrong thing he ever said would be fair, but then he’d be there all summer. So let’s be charitable and just make it a long holiday weekend.
The nation’s 4-year-olds should be allowed to get to the front of the line, if any of them can squeeze in some time between appointments with all of the speech pathologists and psychotherapists they need because of Fauci’s insane policies.
“We’re at that point where, in many respects, that we’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” Fauci also said Sunday.
COVID doves such as Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of San Francisco, saw all of this coming: wearing a rag over your face wasn’t going to stop an incredibly transmissible virus.
“We’re going to get it,” she predicted last September. “Unless you just sit in your room, you’re going to get it in your nose. But at least in this country, it will be manageable.”
“The emergency phase of the disease is over,” Stanford professor and health economist Jay Bhattacharya said last summer. “Now, we need to work very hard to undo the sense of emergency . . . panicking over case numbers is a recipe for continuing unwarranted panic,” because the vaccines provide superb protection against death or hospitalization.
Yet as recently as November, Fauci said, preposterously, that he was going to put off calling the virus endemic until we got the thing cornered: “We want control and I think the confusion is at what level of control are you going to accept it in its endemicity.”
Huh? Asserting “control” has nothing to do with “accepting its endemicity.” When you do the latter, you’re acknowledging the former isn’t possible. COVID is not subtle: ever since we learned in the middle of last year that even vaccinated people can catch it and spread it, it has been flashing a message as unmissable as the American Eagle signage in Times Square: “You can’t control me, bro. I’m coming for everybody. Get vaccinated and you’ll live.”
You may have missed it, but Fauci said something even stupider than “We gotta control this thing before we admit it’s endemic” in the November interview: that we shouldn’t get too excited about the distinction between such COVID outcomes as “getting killed” and “missing a day of work.”
Why did he say something so absurd? Because he’s Larry Lockdown and loves to create confusion and panic. Like another blustering egomaniac, the guy he used to work for, he can’t handle the idea of an America in which everyone isn’t talking about him all the time. In post-COVID America, guess who doesn’t get invited on Colbert and Kimmel and Meet the Press every week?
“I think we better be careful to not make too sharp a distinction between protecting against infection that’s symptomatic versus protection against hospitalization and deaths,” Fauci said in November. “I don’t know of any other vaccine that we only worry about keeping people out of the hospital. I think an important thing is to prevent people from getting symptomatic disease.”
By that reasoning, a head cold and stage-four lymphoma are the same thing. Ladies, and gentlemen, America’s doctor!
Fauci couldn’t grasp that the virus is two different animals depending on whether you’re vaccinated: A jab turns a venomous 100-foot dragon into an ill-tempered dog. For vaccinated and boosted Americans, you are at much higher risk of dying in a car accident than from the virus, yet people choose not to fear the Corolla the way they fear the Corona.
“Get vaccinated, then get on with your life,” should have been Fauci’s message from the start, except for small children, who were never at great risk in the first place and should therefore never have had to deal with idiotic restrictions such as mask mandates.
Vaccinated children are as well protected as vaccinated adults, and yet we continue to torture little kids by making them wear masks in day care, in schools, and on mass transit.
Economist Emily Oster wrote in the Atlantic, “Based on the science, the kids-last approach makes no sense. Kids should face fewer restrictions than their parents, not more.”
COVID apartheid has been bad policy for many months. Why segregate, shame and insult those nasty unvaccinated people and force masks onto wriggling toddlers if a) these folks posed very little risk to the vaxxed and b) the vaxxed were passing it among ourselves the whole time?
We’ve seen a hilarious celebrity demonstration of the uselessness of non-pharmaceutical approaches to COVID in the past couple of weeks, when the Bubble Boys and Girls who did the most to try to seal themselves off from the virus — the D.C. political establishment and the Broadway community — all came down with it anyway.
D.C.’s Gridiron Dinner turned out to be a superspreader event that has led to dozens of new infections, and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have all tested positive for the virus. Jen Psaki has had it twice. Eric Adams, a guy who sometimes wears a mask even outdoors, caught it.
Meanwhile, on Broadway, which is to masks what Linus is to his security blanket, and which requires virtually everyone in the building to show proof of vaccination before entering, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker and Daniel Craig all came down with COVID anyway. Their shows, and the musical “Paradise Square,” shut down. If Broadway COVID is as hot as tickets to “The Music Man,” that’s a pretty strong indicator that you can’t shut it out from even a sheltered sub-subculture.
Evidence suggests cloth masks do nothing to prevent the virus from spreading anyway. And we knew that before the even more transmissible Omicron and BA.2 variants emerged. Which is why Dr. Leana Wen, the CNN talking head who represents conventional Democratic Party medical thinking, famously let slip that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations” last Christmas.
Her goal was to make people double (or triple, or quadruple) down on masks. “No thanks,” said most of us.
David Leonhardt, a progressive New York Times columnist who likes the idea of masking, noted with dismay last month, that, although masking, school closures and fear of gatherings are far more widespread in blue America, “Nationwide, the number of official COVID cases has recently been somewhat higher in heavily Democratic areas than Republican areas.”
Oh? Leonhardt insists such precautions work but concedes “the lack of a clear pattern” — i.e., evidence.
Even if non-pharmaceutical interventions did work, we’d still need to subject them to the same cost-benefit analysis as any other policy. Somehow, though, millions listened to whatever Saint Fauci said as though he had come down from Mount Bureaucrat with all of this ideas carved on stone tablets. Blue America resolved to do whatever he said, “even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff,” as Ned Flanders might put it.
States that went full Fauci imposed pointless suffering on their residents: kids missed school and fell prey to depression and crippling developmental problems, adults lost jobs and lives to suicide, alcohol and opioids.
A study published this week that attempted to measure the overall health of states found that the three worst-performing ones were New Jersey, Washington D.C. (which was treated as a state for the purposes of the study) and New York. The top performers — Utah, Nebraska and Vermont — were run by non-panicky Republicans. Florida was sixth best, and despite its having ditched most restrictions very early, the state’s age-adjusted death rate is tied with Connecticut at 21st best.
Don’t expect to hear any apologies from anyone about anything, though. Hey, you guys have Zoom and Netflix, why complain about how the Faucians drove tens of thousands of people into deaths of despair and ruined a few million childhoods?
Sure, they may have destroyed people, but it was out of an abundance of caution.
"None of the details about Hunter and James Biden’s business dealings with Chinese interests implicate President Biden in any wrongdoing"
the activities of Biden's family were clearly to sell influence to Senile, Slidin' Joe Biden
it's clear Slidin' knew that and still provided access
if not before, after the November elections, we will get to the bottom of the activities and compensation of the Big Guy
impeachment is coming and the facts will be so evident that any Dem Senator that votes against conviction may as well retire
I thought TTFers were committed to teaching the FACTS..
say, is that just a catchy phrase designed to push the normalization of perversion on America's youth?
"On the other hand, Eric Trump and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg spent hours pleading the fifth over 500 times when questioned about the Trump Organization"
not a bad idea when the Dems are clearly on a witch hunt to prosecute the Trump Organization for activity that is not that unusual
"Ivanka, former White House advisor, on the other hand, freely answered Jan 6 committee questions for 8 hours after Jared, former Senior White House advisor, did the same for 6 hours."
why wouldn't they?
congressional committees aren't part of the justice system
"Other Trump associates, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino, Jr. who were involved in the Jan 6 insurrection and have refused to testify, have been found in contempt of Congress."
there is a legal process to unfold yet
"And of course Trump pardoned a whole lot of his co-conspirators, like Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Kusher (Jared's dad), etc."
obviously, he should have done more
"It's clear as day why you fling your lies."
since you used the plural, you shouldn't have any trouble citing just one of these "lies'
"You seek to deflect from the discovery of actual crimes when Trump and his cronies attempted to overthrow our duly elected government on Jan 6, 2021."
deflect from what "discovery of actual crimes"?
the idea that Trump is responsible because some people who believe what he said got violent is risible
there is no "discovery" that has been made, simply an excuse to keep up the same unconstitutional drone
by your line of thinking, Nancy Pelosi should be tried because someone who believed what she said shot Steve Scalise
"These criminals have a lot to hide."
yes, they do
they should have picked up their laptop from the repair shop
crooks do the dumbest things
that was like leaving the water running whenever they robbed the White House
"It is important to teach about human sexuality."
except that the liberal establishment will only allow it to be discussed amorally
unless homosexuality is treated as a gay, carefree fairy tale, the lunatic fringe cries about discrimination
not to worry
we are finally sorting this all out
the backlash is afoot
Alone among major U.S. cities, Philadelphia soon will again require masks indoors at all restaurants, shops, offices, and other indoor public spaces again next week, the city health department announced Monday. Businesses can opt to require proof of vaccination instead of requiring masks.
The mandate takes effect April 18, city health commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said, to give businesses time to adjust, though she encouraged Philadelphians to start wearing masks indoors in public spaces immediately. The move came amid rising COVID-19 cases in recent weeks that triggered the city’s metrics to return to masks.
“I sincerely wish we didn’t have to do this again,” Bettigole said. “I wish this pandemic was over just as much as any of you.”
Philadelphia established a benchmark system in March that uses case counts, hospitalizations, and the rate of case increase to determine which safety strategies are needed. The seven-day daily average of cases, 142 as of April 8, and a 60% increase in case counts over the past 10 days met the standards to reintroduce the indoor mask mandate. There were 44 people hospitalized in the city Monday, a slight decrease from last week.
By resuming the indoor mask mandate, city officials hope to stave off another surge in hospitalizations and deaths that could accompany the current case increase that appears to be caused by the BA.2 omicron subvariant.
“If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations and a wave of deaths, it’ll be too late for many of our residents,” Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said during a briefing Monday.
Bettigole noted that 750 Philadelphians died in three months over the winter during the omicron wave.
“We don’t know if the BA.2 variant in Philadelphia will have the kind of impact on hospitalizations and deaths that we saw with the original omicron variant this winter,” Bettigole said. “I suspect that this wave will be smaller than the one we saw in January.”
Hospitalizations may be the key in determining how long the masks will stay on, Bettigole said.
“This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic, to put our masks on until we have more information on the severity of this variant.”
"Alone among major U.S. cities, Philadelphia soon will again require masks indoors at all restaurants, shops, offices, and other indoor public spaces again next week, the city health department announced Monday."
did they just wake up from a Rip Van Winkle nap?
we now realize masks do little, if anything, to stop the virus
every single variant wave begins in places with the most restrictions
every..
single..
variant..
wave..
even the Health Pope, his excellency, Anthony Fauci admits it:
"Fauci finally admitted to the nation this weekend what has been obvious to everyone, except the most hysteria-prone slice of the population, since last summer: that the pandemic is now endemic. That means it’s here to stay, no matter what we do, so let’s learn to live with it. There is no point to the insane restrictions people insist on like latter-day Puritans denouncing each other for failing to carry out the prescribed rites to ward off the Devil.
“This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”"
preach it, brother!!!!!
what a bunch of fools!
20 years from now, the most educated new college graduates will be those who had the fortune of growing up in red states
and, in November 2022, nutty blue state politicians will pay for what they've done to the kids in their state
all because of Trump Derangement Syndrome
When I was 19, I had surgery for sex reassignment, or what is now called gender affirmation surgery. The callow young man who was obsessed with transitioning to womanhood could not have imagined reaching middle age. But now I’m closer to 50, keeping a watchful eye on my 401(k), and dieting and exercising in the hope that I’ll have a healthy retirement.
In terms of my priorities and interests today, that younger incarnation of myself might as well have been a different person — yet that was the person who committed me to a lifetime set apart from my peers.
There is much debate today about transgender treatment, especially for young people. Others might feel differently about their choices, but I know now that I wasn’t old enough to make that decision. Given the strong cultural forces today casting a benign light on these matters, I thought it might be helpful for young people, and their parents, to hear what I wish I had known.
I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.
It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay. If I had confessed my interest, what might have developed? Alas, the rampant homophobia in my school during the AIDS crisis smothered any such notions. Today, I have resigned myself to never finding a partner. That’s tough to admit, but it’s the healthiest thing I can do.
As a teenager, I was repelled by the thought of having biological children, but in my vision of the adult future, I imagined marrying a man and adopting a child. It was easy to sacrifice my ability to reproduce in pursuit of fulfilling my dream. Years later, I was surprised by the pangs I felt as my friends and younger sister started families of their own.
The sacrifices I made seemed irrelevant to the teenager I was: someone with gender dysphoria, yes, but also anxiety and depression. The most severe cause of dread came from my own body. I was not prepared for puberty, nor for the strong sexual drive typical for my age and sex.
Surgery unshackled me from my body’s urges, but the destruction of my gonads introduced a different type of bondage. From the day of my surgery, I became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life. I must choose between the risks of taking exogenous estrogen, which include venous thromboembolism and stroke, or the risks of taking nothing, which includes degeneration of bone health. In either case, my risk of dementia is higher, a side effect of eschewing testosterone.
What was I seeking for my sacrifice? A feeling of wholeness and perfection. I was still a virgin when I went in for surgery. I mistakenly believed that this made my choice more serious and authentic. I chose an irreversible change before I’d even begun to understand my sexuality. The surgeon deemed my operation a good outcome, but intercourse never became pleasurable. When I tell friends, they’re saddened by the loss, but it’s abstract to me — I cannot grieve the absence of a thing I’ve never had.
Where were my parents in all this? They were aware of what I was doing, but by that point, I had pushed them out of my life. I didn’t need parents questioning me or establishing realistic expectations — especially when I found all I needed online. In the early 1990s, something called Internet Relay Chat, a rudimentary online forum, allowed me to meet like-minded strangers who offered an inexhaustible source of validation and acceptance.
I shudder to think of how distorting today’s social media is for confused teenagers. I’m also alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition. I had to persuade two therapists, an endocrinologist and a surgeon to give me what I wanted. None of them were under crushing professional pressure, as they now would be, to “affirm” my choice.
I may well have transitioned even after waiting a few years. If I hadn’t transitioned, I likely would have suffered from the world in other ways. In other words, I’m still working out how much regret to feel, but I’m comfortable with the ambiguity.
What advice would I pass on to young people seeking transition? Learning to fit in your body is a common struggle. Fad diets, body-shaping clothing and cosmetic surgery are all signs that countless millions of people at some point have a hard time accepting their own reflection. The prospect of sex can be intimidating. But sex is essential in healthy relationships. Give it a chance before permanently altering your body.
Most of all, slow down. You may yet decide to make the change. But if you explore the world by inhabiting your body as it is, perhaps you’ll find that you love it more than you thought possible.
Wow! the whole nation seems to have awakened to the danger the homosexual agenda presents to the nation's youth
thanks to Corrina Cohn, for sharing a personal and tragic tale how the liberal fantasy destroyed a life....
The computer repair shop owner who turned over Hunter Biden's alleged laptop to the FBI now says that many reports about photographs on the device are "misinformation."
During an interview with Real America's Voice, host Ed Henry asked John Paul Mac Isaac if he observed disturbing images of children on the laptop.
But Mac Isaac, a Trump supporter, explained that he contacted the FBI about the laptop because he was concerned about "national security" implications.
"That's what caused me to do a deep dive into the laptop once it became my property," Mac Isaac said. "During that time, I saw a lot of photos. I did not see a lot of photos that are being reported to be seen."
"I do know that there have been multiple attempts over the past year and a half to insert questionable material into the laptop as in not physically, but passing it off as misinformation or disinformation as coming from the laptop," he added. "And that is a major concern of mine because I have fought tooth and nail to protect the integrity of this drive."
"we now realize masks do little, if anything, to stop the virus"
Only conservatives "realize" that.
The problem is that facts do very little to stop their stupidity.
A new QAnon "documentary" out this week is pushing a new conspiracy theory about COVID-19 vaccines that NBC News reporter Ben Collins describes as "more insane than usual."
According to Collins, the documentary is called "Watch the Water" and it's currently "blowing up among anti-vaxxers."
The documentary posits that the vaccines contain a mixture of magnets and snake venom with the goal of transferring "Satan's DNA" into human bodies.
Clips posted by Collins on Twitter show the purported "experts" discussing using dynabeads in the vaccine that they falsely claim result in vaccinated people getting magnetized.
Another clip shows the expert explaining how he believed God told him that he needed to "tell the world" about his theory about Satan DNA in vaccines by speaking to him through a fortune cookie.
"I cannot stress how deeply stupid the last shot of this little movie is," comments Collins. "Must be seen to be believed."
"thanks to Corrina Cohn, for sharing a personal and tragic tale how the liberal fantasy destroyed a life"
yes, thanks, Corrina
Maybe a kid can be saved from the ruination you suffered at the hands of lunatic fringe homosexual advocates
"Maybe it's got Hillary's emails and Obama's birth certificate too!"
misplaced mockery will accomplish nothing for you
the senile and failing US President, your hero, is named in emails on his son's laptop as getting a kickback for providing US government access to hostile foreign parties
it doesn't look good, and needs investigating
"The computer repair shop owner who turned over Hunter Biden's alleged laptop to the FBI now says that many reports about photographs on the device are "misinformation.""
frankly, the only place I hear about these photos is here
pictures aren't the problem
evidence of influence peddling by the current President is
"Only conservatives "realize" that." (that masks don't work)
"The problem is that facts do very little to stop their stupidity."
let's look at some facts
every new wave that begins starts somewhere with strong mask mandates
We’ve seen a hilarious celebrity demonstration of the uselessness of non-pharmaceutical approaches to COVID in the past couple of weeks, when the Bubble Boys and Girls who did the most to try to seal themselves off from the virus — the D.C. political establishment and the Broadway community — all came down with it anyway.
D.C.’s Gridiron Dinner turned out to be a superspreader event that has led to over 70 new infections, and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have all tested positive for the virus. Jen Psaki has had it twice. Eric Adams, a guy who sometimes wears a mask even outdoors, caught it.
Meanwhile, on Broadway, which is to masks what Linus is to his security blanket, and which requires virtually everyone in the building to show proof of vaccination before entering, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker and Daniel Craig all came down with COVID anyway. Their shows, and the musical “Paradise Square,” shut down. If Broadway COVID is as hot as tickets to “The Music Man,” that’s a pretty strong indicator that you can’t shut it out from even a sheltered sub-subculture.
Evidence suggests cloth masks do nothing to prevent the virus from spreading anyway. And we knew that before the even more transmissible Omicron and BA.2 variants emerged. Which is why Dr. Leana Wen, the CNN talking head who represents conventional Democratic Party medical thinking, famously let slip that “cloth masks are little more than facial decorations” last Christmas.
Her goal was to make people double (or triple, or quadruple) down on masks. “No thanks,” said most of us.
David Leonhardt, a progressive New York Times columnist who likes the idea of masking, noted with dismay last month, that, although masking, school closures and fear of gatherings are far more widespread in blue America, “Nationwide, the number of official COVID cases has recently been somewhat higher in heavily Democratic areas than Republican areas.”
Oh? Leonhardt insists such precautions work but concedes “the lack of a clear pattern” — i.e., evidence.
"A new QAnon "documentary" out this week is pushing a new conspiracy theory about COVID-19 vaccines that NBC News reporter Ben Collins describes as "more insane than usual.""
what would TTF do without QAnon?
most people just ignore them but you hang on every word
remember, Florida came out of this all in better shape than California, New York, and New Jersey
and they dropped the masks early
"remember, Florida came out of this all in better shape than California, New York, and New Jersey"
There you go cherry picking data. When you look at the whole picture red states did quite poorly, and New York, the first state to get hit badly at the beginning of the pandemic before vaccines were available, did better than 9 red states. Mississippi was the worst (#1) while California was #39. Florida was the 17th worst:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
## USA Deaths/
State 1M pop
1 Mississippi 4,171
2 Arizona 4,078
3 Alabama 3,960
4 Tennessee 3,810
5 West Virginia 3,780
6 New Jersey 3,750
7 Arkansas 3,750
8 Louisiana 3,697
9 Michigan 3,582
10 Oklahoma 3,541
11 New York 3,525
12 Georgia 3,520
13 New Mexico 3,517
14 Indiana 3,490
15 Pennsylvania 3,472
16 South Carolina 3,437
17 Florida 3,426
18 Kentucky 3,393
19 Rhode Island 3,329
20 Nevada 3,289
21 Missouri 3,282
22 South Dakota 3,270
23 Ohio 3,265
24 Wyoming 3,103
USA Total 3,059
25 Montana 3,049
26 Texas 3,039
27 Connecticut 3,031
28 Iowa 2,996
29 Illinois 2,982
30 Delaware 2,962
31 North Dakota 2,954
32 Massachusetts 2,924
33 Kansas 2,918
34 Idaho 2,740
35 Wisconsin 2,468
36 Maryland 2,379
37 Virginia 2,334
38 Colorado 2,271
39 California 2,266
40 Minnesota 2,250
41 North Carolina 2,217
42 Nebraska 2,158
43 District Of Columbia 1,887
44 New Hampshire 1,808
45 Oregon 1,734
46 Maine 1,653
47 Washington 1,650
48 Alaska 1,634
49 Utah 1,475
50 Vermont 998
51 Hawaii 976
52 Puerto Rico 1,233
How is Jared’s fishy-as-heck $2 billion Saudi windfall not a crime?
by Will Bunch
There was a notorious 20th century criminal by the name of Willie Sutton who’s best remembered for what he told an interviewer who asked him why he liked to rob banks. “Because,” Sutton replied, “that’s where the money is.”
The Willie Sutton mindset was apparently in full force for Donald Trump and his family after they unexpectedly landed in the White House. In a world brimming with big problems, Team Trump made its No. 1 project getting to know the oil-rich despots of the Persian Gulf — none more so than the monarchs of Saudi Arabia, whom the American president blessed with his first foreign visit in early 2017.
Trump’s eager point man on the Saudi project was his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose brief career bringing his family’s East Coast real estate empire to the brink of bankruptcy made him the perfect candidate to bring peace to the Middle East after 75 years of trauma. Kushner barely budged the region’s core conflicts like resolving the future of Palestine, but he did dote on his new best friend Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, the Saudis’ young crown prince and de facto ruler.
Kushner palled around with bin Salman in the marble luxury of Riyadh and chatted late at night with the prince on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp — coincidentally or not, right as MBS was deciding which rivals to lock up and detain in a swank-hotel-turned-prison. When bin Salman’s goons disappeared the body of Saudi-dissident-turned-Washington-Post-columnist Jamal Khashoggi with the help of a bone saw, Kushner ran interference to preserve America’s special relationship with the blood-soaked regime. When some in Congress began to question why U.S. weapons were powering Saudi war crimes in the endless conflict in Yemen, Kushner and his father-in-law touted an $110 billion U.S. weapons deal (the actual amount is disputed) with Team Bone Saw.
There’s another criminal saying which I just made up: Every outrageous quid deserves a quo. That shoe dropped Sunday night when the New York Times reported a development as predictable as a Flyers’ third-period collapse: A Saudi-government-backed wealth fund has invested some $2 billion in a venture-capital outfit founded by Kushner called Affinity Partners. The Times noted that the Saudi fund developed an affinity for Kushner’s venture even though the 41-year-old son of a felonious New Jersey developer has zero experience in his chosen new field, has drawn few investors outside of the Persian Gulf, and is charging excessive fees — not to mention the “public relations risk” for the butchers of Riyadh in associating with the Trump family.
The timing on the Times’ Kushner scoop was somewhat remarkable, as the ne’er-do-well offspring and in-laws of our presidents seem to be having a moment in the spring of 2022. Surely you’ve heard by now about President Biden’s son Hunter and the Delaware laptop-from-hell. And while the junior Biden’s foreign business deals are the subject of a federal probe, the laptop affair arguably isn’t even the second worst case of White House familial misconduct in the news. That honor belongs to Donald Trump Jr., who texted his dad’s chief of staff Mark Meadows two days after the 2020 election won by Biden to say “we have multiple paths” to keep the 45th president in power despite the results — also known as a coup.
"misplaced mockery will accomplish nothing for you"
My mockery wasn't misplaced at all - it landed exactly where I aimed.
You just don't like it when one of your own favorite rhetorical weapons is pointed right back at you.
Minutatim perfruere!
More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s time to draw some conclusions about government policy and results. The most comprehensive comparative study we’ve seen to date was published last week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and it deserves wide attention.
The authors are University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They compare Covid outcomes in the 50 states and District of Columbia based on three variables: the economy, education and mortality. It’s a revealing study that belies much of the conventional medical and media wisdom during the pandemic, especially in its first year when severe lockdowns were described as the best, and the only moral, policy.
The study shows the state ranking based on a combined score of the three variables. Utah ranks first by a considerable margin over Nebraska and Vermont. The Beehive State scored well across all three categories: fourth on the economy, fifth in education (as measured by lost days in school), and eighth in Covid mortality adjusted for a state population’s age and the prevalence of obesity and diabetes (leading co-morbidities for Covid deaths). The authors used a regression analysis for the economy that adjusted for state industry composition.
The top 10 in the rankings are smaller states with the notable exception of Florida, which ranks sixth. Recall how the Sunshine State’s decision to open itself relatively soon after the first lockdowns was derided as cruel and destructive. Gov. Ron DeSantis was called “Governor DeathSentence.”
The study ranks Florida 28th in mortality, in the middle off the pack and about the same as California, which ranks 27th despite its far more stringent lockdowns and school closures. But Florida ranks third for the least education loss and 13th in economic performance. California ranks 47th overall because its shutdowns crushed the economy (40th) and in-person school (50th).
In other words, Florida did about average on mortality as other states, but it did far better in protecting its citizens from severe economic harm and its children from lost schooling. “The correlation between health and economy scores is essentially zero,” say the authors, “which suggests that states that withdrew the most from economic activity did not significantly improve health by doing so.”
The NBER working paper presents the data straight without policy conclusions, but here’s one of ours: The severe lockdown states suffered much more on overall social well-being in return for relatively little comparative benefit on health.
The most extreme example of this tradeoff is Hawaii, an isolated island state with an economy heavily dependent on tourism. The state came closest of any to imposing a version of China’s zero-Covid policy as it shut down travel to the islands. The result was a stellar performance on mortality—first by a big margin. But it finished last in economic performance and 46th in education.
The bottom 10 are dominated by states and D.C. that had the most stringent lockdowns and were among the last to reopen schools. Their economies are for the most part still behind most others in recovering from the pandemic.
New York, whose former Governor Andrew Cuomo was celebrated as a Covid hero, ranks 49th. Albany’s severe and overlong economic shutdown (48th) had no payoff in mortality (47th). New Jersey ranks last with a miserable performance across the board. Gov. Phil Murphy didn’t save lives, but he did savage the economy and punish students as he followed the teachers union demands on school closures to rank 41st on education.
Another lesson we’d draw that the authors don’t in their paper: Thank the U.S. Constitution for our federalist system of government. States were largely able to implement their own policies. The outcomes would have been much worse had Washington imposed a single national policy as dictated by the federal bureaucracy.
Let’s hope we absorb the lessons of these state outcomes for how to respond to the next pandemic—and there will be a next one.
"My mockery wasn't misplaced at all - it landed exactly where I aimed."
you didn't land anything
you mocked a couple of irrelevant ideas, Hillary's email crimes and Obama's difficulty finding his birth certificate
but Hillary and Barack are gone
Biden, who appears to have taken kickbacks, is currently the President
"You just don't like it when one of your own favorite rhetorical weapons is pointed right back at you."
I realize you've never had an original thought but I don't avoid the subject
you know like you're doing to avoid discussing Biden's crimes and Corrine Cohn's indictment of TTF-style involvement in schools and the damage it causes kids
I don't often discuss HB's laptop for several of reasons:
Republicans in congress already investigated him and didn't find and didn't find anything to charge him with. Somehow conservative news sites let that go by very quietly.
The govt has had Biden's laptop for several years now, and every few months, right-wing conspiracy nuts make up another new story about terrible things somebody has supposedly found on his laptop. They get more horrific and less believable with every iteration. I'll happily wait until a serious investigation is complete and someone in authority announces a crime has actually been committed - or not.
Until then all the breathless right-wing efforts to keep it in the news look like their bogus birth certificate nonsense and a smear attempt not unlike their TEN unsuccessful Benhazi investigations into Hillary - they didn't find any crime to charger her with, but they kept her under a shroud of suspicion, and thanks to the electoral college, out of the Oval Office. (Did you know that Obama was secretly a Muslim?)
Cry "wolf" all you like, but I'm not going to buy it. Especially when we know Trump and his kids had business interests in Russia and China, and Trump made no effort to avoid conflicts with emoluments clauses while he was in office.
"I realize you've never had an original thought but I don't avoid the subject"
I have plenty of original thoughts. Most of them appear to go right over your head due to a variety of reading comprehension issues.
By sticking with small words, short sentences, and throwing your style back at you, there may be some small chance you'll understand a few of the points I'm trying to make. But I don't hold my breath for that.
As for Corrina, sure, let's talk about this:
"I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.
It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay. If I had confessed my interest, what might have developed? Alas, the rampant homophobia in my school during the AIDS crisis smothered any such notions."
Where did that rampant homophobia come from?
Who perpetuated it, and how do we stop it?
Why was it so severe that it turned what could have been a happy gay man into a regretful transwoman?
Shouldn't we try and stop that kind of treatment of our kids?
Why don't we educate kids as they are starting to go through puberty that roughly 95% of kids are straight, about 5% are gay, and maybe 0.5% are trans, and all of those are fine - and you shouldn't be bullied, harassed, or "converted" because you're not in the 95%.
But those thoughts are probably to "original" for you and you'll fall back to your total unoriginal accusations of TTF folks indoctrinating children with the "gay agenda." You guys haven't had a new accusation at least since Anita Bryant - when anti-gay activists stirred up enough animosity to get Harvey Milk murdered.
There is no delusion that you harbor ANY sympathies for Corinna Cohn's situation. You just found her particular story fit your narrative and will exploit for every inch you can wring from it. At the same time, you will happily ignore, discount, and reject any and all evidence of trans people whose lives have been saved by transitioning. One regretful person simply does not cancel the success of thousands of others.
"Where did that rampant homophobia come from?"
well, "homophobia" is a propaganda term
no one is scared of homosexuality
they believe it is immoral
Alabama yesterday enacted a law to protect children, making it a felony for a parent to facilitate chemical intervention to change a child's biological gender
and don't forget that inflation is now running at
eight
and
a half
percent
"Where did that rampant homophobia come from?"
well, at the time, the practices of random promiscuity and general bacchanalia among homosexuals had incubated and established a new, invariably fatal disease in our population and poisoned our blood supply, causing death and horrible suffering to people who got transfusions, including the elderly and small children
all so gays could get their jollies, acting like a bunch of animals
so, naturally, a certain antipathy developed toward homosexuality
even Elton John renounced his homosexuality and married a female
understand where that rampant homophobia come from now?
The rampant homophobia was pervasive and harming people long before the AIDS crisis.
I know, I was a kid in the 1970's and was accused, harassed, and assaulted for being a "faggot" for years before I even knew what one was, and LONG before I ever had a sexual encounter.
Rampant homophobia was corrosive enough to contribute to Harvey Milk's assassination on Nov 27th, 1978.
The first cases of what would later become known as AIDS were reported in the United States in June of 1981.
Your attempt to rewrite history didn't work, Orwell.
A week before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, a former aide to Republican political consultant Roger Stone joined a conference call with supporters of then-President Donald Trump and urged them to “descend on the Capitol” to pressure lawmakers not to certify the 2020 election, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Jason Sullivan, a right-wing communications specialist and QAnon promoter, reportedly told listeners on a Dec. 30, 2020, call that the 2020 election had been stolen and directed them to go to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 to make members of Congress “sweat” when they convened to finalize the electoral count.
“If we make the people inside that building sweat, and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said, according to the Times, which obtained a recording of the call.
While claiming he was “not inciting violence or any kind of riots,” Sullivan also told listeners that Trump would impose a form of martial law that day and would not be leaving office.
“[Joe] Biden will never be in that White House,” he reportedly said on the call. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”
It’s not clear if anyone on the call went on to participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a statement to the Times via a lawyer, Sullivan said he did not condone the violence of any protesters and characterized his remarks as merely sharing “some encouragement” with what he called “disenfranchised” voters.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recently revealed that it had sufficient evidence to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal charges over his role in planning the effort to overturn the election, though it had not yet decided on a course of action.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a co-chair of the committee, said the panel has a “tremendous amount of testimony and documents that I think very, very clearly demonstrate the extent of the planning and the organization and the objective” of Trump and his allies.
The Justice Department is also widening its Jan. 6 investigation to examine the potential culpability of other Trump associates and allies involved in the planning and execution of the Capitol attack. The federal investigation previously focused primarily on the rioters who stormed the Capitol that day, leading to more than 700 arrests.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been removed from voter rolls by election officials in North Carolina while he is being investigated for possible voter fraud, according to local TV station WRAL.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation last month began investigating whether Meadows, who served as a congressman in North Carolina before his time in the Trump White House, illegally registered to vote using an address where he reportedly never lived.
Meadows used the address — a mobile home in a remote area in the western part of the state — to vote by absentee ballot in 2020, according to The New York Times. The owner of the home said Meadows’ wife stayed there once, but there’s no indication Meadows, who no longer lives in the state, ever visited.
Providing a false address on a voter registration form is a federal crime.
Meadows’ former boss, Donald Trump, talked up the purported threat of voter fraud countless times throughout his public life. The former president is still actively lying about the 2020 election despite zero evidence of widespread fraud.
Meadows himself was scheduled to be the keynote speaker of an Arizona anti-voter fraud event just days before the North Carolina probe was announced. He never appeared.
Meadows isn’t the only former Trump administration aide who potentially violated federal voting law. Matt Mowers, a leading Republican primary candidate looking to unseat Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), voted twice during the 2016 primary election season, according to the Associated Press.
Of all the Democrats’ gestures of contemptuous indifference toward ordinary people, President Joe Biden’s 8.5% inflation rate is the most provocatively insouciant. Bidenflation, more than any of his many other culpable failures, will prompt voters to respond in November with a gut punch to the party’s solar plexus.
One should not minimize the impact of other blows to public morale from outrages such as the cultural revolution against every traditional norm, the disgrace of U.S. capitulation to a ragtag army of medieval Afghan farmers, Biden’s abandonment of national sovereignty at the Mexican border, or the performative diktats of his tinpot COVID bureaucrats. All these contribute to our sour national mood.
But although the federal government has flicked its middle finger repeatedly at Joe and Jane Sixpack since early 2021, it has not done so in any case where the causal link between its policy folly and calamity for everyone else is so clear as it is on prices. Biden’s decision to print money, enthusiastically backed by congressional Democrats, has produced the sharpest inflation spike in four decades. This was entirely predictable and frequently predicted. And it is being felt not just by the Sixpacks but also by Mr. and Mrs. Middlebrew, whose pain will surely swing Congress decisively to the Republicans.
"I don't often discuss HB's laptop for several of reasons:"
That was the strategy the mainstream media, aka the PR department of the Democratic Party, took. Worked long enough to get this criminal elected President.
But may not be enough to keep him in the Oval Office for three more years.
"Republicans in congress already investigated him and didn't find and didn't find anything to charge him with."
Is this you trying to be original again?
It took decades of law enforcement work to nail Al Capone. Crime families like the Bidens become very skilled in covering their tracks.
In the Russian collusion hoax, a congressional committee wasn't the end of it. Congress doesn't investigate crimes or enforce laws. It's "investigations" are for the purpose of gathering information to assist them in considering legislation.
Didn't you take government and politics class in school?
We need an independent prosecutor appointed.
Not to worry, November is closer than you think.
"The govt has had Biden's laptop for several years now, and every few months, right-wing conspiracy nuts make up another new story about terrible things somebody has supposedly found on his laptop. They get more horrific and less believable with every iteration."
All I've heard about, other than here amongst the nut trees of TTF, is about the emails that indicate Slidin' Joe Biden got a cut of the proceeds from an influence peddling scheme. The other stuff, the kind of stuff TTF seems to focus on, is the nuts of TTF and the nuts of the right yelling at each other. The rest of us just ignore it.
"I'll happily wait until a serious investigation is complete and someone in authority announces a crime has actually been committed - or not."
Funny how that wasn't sufficient during the investigation that centered around Hillary's Russian collusion hoax. Her day in the court, btw, is fast approaching. During Mueller's investigation we saw daily posts about how Mueller is closing in on Trump.
Robert Mueller...LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
"unsuccessful Benhazi investigations into Hillary - they didn't find any crime to charger her with,"
they were Congressional investigations
they aren't supposed to "find any crime to charger her with,"
LOL!
they found what we all knew: people died because of Hillary's incompetence, negligence, and lies
no one ever suggested she committed a crime
"but they kept her under a shroud of suspicion, and thanks to the electoral college, out of the Oval Office."
she was kept out of office by the Constitution, which requires someone to have widespread, rather than provincial support, to become President
the President needs to have a constituency beyond the coastlands
"Did you know that Obama was secretly a Muslim?"
actually, he is a secular, materialist humanist who went to a Muslim grade school in Indonesia
just like his anti-American father, who he wrote a book about
so, more Muslim than the average American
"I have plenty of original thoughts."
go ahead and post a few
we won't laugh
promise
"Most of them appear to go right over your head due to a variety of reading comprehension issues."
hmmmm,,,,let's hear about some of these various "reading comprehension issues"
I know that, unlike me, you only read that which reinforces your foregone conclusions
take your head out of the gopher hole and you'll find out the sky is blue
"By sticking with small words, short sentences, and throwing your style back at you,"
you did?
when?
"there may be some small chance you'll understand a few of the points I'm trying to make. But I don't hold my breath for that."
well, we don't want you to be breathless, like those annoying people who insist we find out if Slidin' Joe Biden is the Big Guy
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't often discuss HB's laptop
but when I do....
In his “free speech” campaign against Twitter, Elon Musk didn’t mention it but millions of Americans were thinking of it: the national media’s belated interest in the Hunter Biden laptop story that Twitter and other conventional and social media outlets previously suppressed.
As if waking from a coma, the Washington Post last week finally asked, “Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now?” Alas, the paper entitles its editorial “an opportunity for a reckoning,” because, you know, opportunities can be turned down. And the Post does. Instead it justifies the suppression by saying that, because the press was the “unwitting tools of a Russian influence campaign in 2016,” it was “only prudent to suspect a similar plot lay behind the mysterious appearance of a computer stuffed with juicy documents and conveniently handed over to President Donald Trump’s toxic personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. ”
Skip past the overreliance on modifiers (mysterious, toxic, conveniently), a hallmark of bad argumentation and bad writing. Newspapers are supposed to be skeptical about everything but as an aid in pursuing the truth, not as an excuse not to pursue the truth.
The Post repeatedly invokes the word “hack” for the laptop disclosures as if unknown persons had posted information of unknown provenance on the web. This is not remotely what happened. An established news organization, the New York Post, had vetted digital records with a known backstory, described by named, credible sources, starting with the Delaware technician in whose repair shop Hunter reportedly abandoned the laptop.
The tabloid’s competitors had plenty of leads to confirm or disprove the story. Hunter and his father could be asked to deny it (which they never did). Recipients or people named in the published emails could be rung up, including the onetime Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski.
In addition, the press is not forbidden to don its thinking cap: Faking a laptop drive with hundreds of thousands of documents would be ridiculously disproportionate to any aim the Kremlin might hope to achieve. The Kremlin has easier ways to put fake information into circulation. This is the real lesson of those previous “Russian influence campaigns.” Occam’s razor strongly suggested that the laptop, if not every document on it, was exactly what it was purported to be—and intelligent journalists everywhere knew it.
The job of “newspapers of record” is to establish the truth or falsity of important matters in the public sphere, and whether the laptop was real or not certainly qualified. But instead of doing its job, the press preferred to line up behind 50 former U.S. intelligence officials who (without evidence, even they admitted) claimed the story was Russian disinformation.
This is where the Post editorial really falls down on the reality principle, the lodestar of our business. The media did so because the laptop story was plainly a threat to Joe Biden’s election. They’d seen this movie before—with James Comey’s late intervention in 2016—and “knew” Donald Trump’s re-election would be a disaster for the country. If you don’t see the same presumption already working overtime and on steroids in advance of 2024, you aren’t paying attention. This is why the “reckoning” the Post mentions is so urgent and the paper’s performance such a disappointment.
My own prayer is Mr. Trump won’t run and that somebody half-decent will, but I don’t lie to myself that the survival of the republic depends on my preferences being fulfilled. History has its own mind. Hard to describe as anything but neurotic, however, is a press that preferred an unsupported assertion about a Russian plot to the self-evident facts of the laptop case—or, for that matter, believed a badly typed collection of anonymous claims about Donald Trump and Russia (aka the Steele dossier) was the secret record of the greatest political conspiracy in history.
What seems closer to certain is that the rule of law and our democratic system are in greater danger when elite institutions work to discredit their outcomes than when self-proclaimed “deplorables” do. Our national press cowards, though, aren’t about to admit how much they strengthened Mr. Trump, almost re-elected him and made “stop the steal” credible to millions of Americans because, starting in 2016-17, they chose to oppose him with lies instead of the truth.
If the problem were one Washington Post editorial, nobody would care. But it’s not. Our media could use a period of intensive cognitive behavioral therapy to help it get back to seeing what’s in front of its eyes and reporting accurately. In those hopefully rare occasions when the press still feels it must lie (say, to defeat Donald Trump), at least it could be honest with itself about what it’s doing.
Two Florida men at The Villages admit to voter fraud in 2020 election
Two Florida men charged with filing ballots in two states in the 2020 presidential election confessed to voter fraud, according to court records.
Charles F. Barnes and Jay Ketcik, residents of The Villages in Sumter County, Fla., pleaded guilty to casting more than one ballot in the election. Voter fraud is a third-degree felony that can result in a maximum five-year prison sentence.
Barnes, 64, and Ketcik, 63, will be able to defer prosecution if they abide by the court-ordered requirements that State Attorney Bill Gladson set, according to pretrial intervention documents. The men will avoid further punishment if they complete 50 hours of community service, attend a 12-week adult civics class and meet regularly with a supervising officer, among a handful of other requirements.
“If you comply with these conditions during the period of deferred prosecution, no criminal prosecution concerning this charge will be instituted in this county,” Gladson wrote. “If the defendant violates the terms of this agreement, and this case is returned to the court’s docket, this document shall be admissible as an admission of guilt.”
Ketcik, a registered Republican, was among three Central Florida residents who had expressed support for former president Donald Trump before being arrested in December following reports that they cast more than one vote during the 2020 election, according to various Florida news media outlets. Barnes, who has no party affiliation, was arrested in January and faced similar charges. Both men were released from jail after paying a $2,000 bond. Neither man responded to efforts to reach them for comment.
Ketcik voted by mail in Florida along with casting an absentee ballot in Michigan, prosecutors say. An arrest report shows that Barnes previously had an address in Connecticut.
And as we all know, Trump lost the popular vote anyway, 81,268,924 to 74,216,154
"Republicans in congress already investigated him and didn't find and didn't find anything to charge him with."
"Is this you trying to be original again?"
No, that was just me restating the facts. It thought that would be obvious. I realize it's not as imaginative as right-wingers making up new conspiracy theories every month, but some of us have to live in reality land to keep things running around here.
"It took decades of law enforcement work to nail Al Capone. Crime families like the Bidens become very skilled in covering their tracks."
Right wingers have been accusing the Clintons of killing off the "inconvenient" people around them for decades. Yet they've never been brought to trial for a single murder. How long does it take for a motivated, conservative judge or lawyer to bring someone to trial when there is so much apparent "evidence" floating around right-wing fever dream land to convict them?
"In the Russian collusion hoax, a congressional committee wasn't the end of it. Congress doesn't investigate crimes or enforce laws. It's "investigations" are for the purpose of gathering information to assist them in considering legislation."
Congress also refers people they find potential evidence of crime on to the DOJ for prosecution - haven't you been paying attention to the Jan 6 committee?
Didn't you take government and politics class in school?
I did. It was many decades ago now, but I probably got an "A" in it - I was ranked 3rd when I graduated from my private high school.
"the President needs to have a constituency beyond the coastlands"
Hillary got votes in all 50 states. She lost because of a particular concentration of 77,000 votes in just 3 of those states. Somehow she still managed to lose with some dignity, rather than try to overturn our democracy with a multi-pronged misinformation campaign about voter fraud, sending in fake elector votes, pressing elections officials to "find" thousands of votes for her, lean on a VP to cancel results, and inciting a mob to storm Congress just before they were set to certify Biden.
"Two Florida men at The Villages admit to voter fraud in 2020 election"
you sad TTFers
you don't realize that, regardless of who the fraudster supported, this shows that the GOP is right and we do need voter integrity rules
if this possible
"And as we all know, Trump lost the popular vote anyway, 81,268,924 to 74,216,154"
first of all, this is a lie
no popular vote was held
if we elected President by popular vote, millions more would have likely voted in California and New York
and, beside that, we don't elect President like we do dog-catcher
the Constitution requires a candidate show broad-based support to be elected President
Trump won more states and states in more regions
"No, that was just me restating the facts. It thought that would be obvious. I realize it's not as imaginative as right-wingers making up new conspiracy theories every month, but some of us have to live in reality land to keep things running around here."
actually, parties on both sides indulge in conspiracy theories
you cling to the ones on the right because, let's be honest, you have no other argument
"Right wingers have been accusing the Clintons of killing off the "inconvenient" people around them for decades. Yet they've never been brought to trial for a single murder. How long does it take for a motivated, conservative judge or lawyer to bring someone to trial when there is so much apparent "evidence" floating around right-wing fever dream land to convict them?"
most right wingers don't believe this
but we were discussing Benghazi anyway
you said there were 10 Benghazi investigations and no criminal acts were found
you just seem oblivious to the fact that Congressional investigations aren't for the purpose of law enforcement
"Congress also refers people they find potential evidence of crime on to the DOJ for prosecution - haven't you been paying attention to the Jan 6 committee?"
not a lot, because the premise is flawed
the defendants charged have been by DOJ and the FBI
"I did. It was many decades ago now, but I probably got an "A" in it - I was ranked 3rd when I graduated from my private high school."
I didn't know they gave grades in reform school
"Hillary got votes in all 50 states. She lost because of a particular concentration of 77,000 votes in just 3 of those states."
glad to hear you concede the popular vote is irrelevant
"Somehow she still managed to lose with some dignity,"
you mean when she ran around blaming everyone lese for her loss and defrauded the United States by paying to have a Russian collusion hoax created?
yeah, that was a touch of class alright
In a surprising response to a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country, the U.S. Air Force is offering medical and legal help to military families personally impacted by state laws against gay and transgender children. The military service is also offering to help service members leave those states if needed.
Air Force leaders announced in a March press release that there are medical, legal and other resources available to help support members and their families in these times. So far, it's the only U.S. military branch to do this.
"The health, care and resilience of our [Air Force] personnel and their families is not just our top priority – it’s essential to our ability to accomplish the mission,” Under Secretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones said in the release. “We are closely tracking state laws and legislation to ensure we prepare for and mitigate effects to our Airmen, Guardians and their families."
In the release, Air Force leaders recommended families needing help with screening, treatment or mental health support, first consult with Air Force medical treatment facilities. They also said military legal personnel could help provide free counsel to families that need help understanding legal protections.
Air Force leadership also told members they could rely on the Exception Family Member Program if they need to be relocated to a different state. “As is the case with all of our family members, if the support a family member needs becomes unavailable, commanders can work to get the service member to an assignment where their loved ones can receive the care they need,” Jones said.
The Air Force's announcement follows a push from Republicans across the country targeting LGBTQ youth ahead of this year's mid-term elections. In February, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate certain gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth as child abuse.
the majority of Americans agree that underage children should not be chemically or surgically altered to resist their biological gender
you're telling me the Air Force is fighting against the state laws
yet another reason that Biden's approval ratings are a catastrophe of historic proportions:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
btw, the radical left persists in calling gender reassignment surgery and abortion "medical care"
neither are, although medical care is sometimes needed to ameliorate the problems they cause
Corrina Cohn, someone who victimized by transgender lunacy as a child, recently wrote movingly about the suffering trangenderism causes
We already knew that Hollywood and corporate America are filled with total frauds on issues related to "human dignity" and "social justice," but here's your latest example. Before I get to that punchline, recall that the entertainment industry made a big show of opposing Florida's popular new parental rights law. Boycotts were threatened, Disney blessed an employee "walkout" while weighing in heavily, and other forms of public pressure were applied. At the Oscars, the three emcees "said gay" onstage – the Florida bill in no way bars the saying of gay, but such details are beside the point – to loud audience cheers. This was before The Slap, of course. Stunning and brave:
Hollywood stands firmly behind the LGBTQ community, you see. Queer erasure will not stand. We say gay!*
*Exceptions apply:
References to a gay relationship in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” were edited out of the movie by Warner Bros. for the film’s release in China. Only six seconds of the movie’s 142-minute runtime were removed. Dialogue that was edited out alluded to the romantic past between male characters Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen). “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling revealed Dumbledore was gay in 2009, but the movies had never explicitly referenced the character’s sexuality until this third “Fantastic Beasts” entry. Warner Bros. accepted China’s request to remove six seconds from the movie. The dialogue lines “because I was in love with you” and “the summer Gellert and I fell in love” were cut from “The Secrets of Dumbledore” release. The rest of the film remained intact...
“As a studio, we’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors,” Warner Bros. said in a statement to Variety. “Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators but historically we have faced small edits made in local markets.” “In the case of ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,’ a six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros. accepted those changes to comply with local requirements but the spirit of the film remains intact,” the statement added. “We want audiences everywhere in the world to see and enjoy this film, and it’s important to us that Chinese audiences have the opportunity to experience it as well, even with these minor edits.”
What a statement. "Nuanced" and "minor" edits were "necessitated" by "local requirements." But don't worry: "The spirit" of the film, with the LGBT references carefully excised, remains in place. And mission accomplished: The film debuted in China before it was released in the United States (meaning that the "don't say gay" version appeared on silver screens over there before Americans could see the uncensored original), it won the Chinese box office in its opening weekend, and the studio raked in millions – despite the minor complication of 25 million people in Shanghai being forbidden from leaving their homes, by government decree. Those people might be slowly starving, but other regions carried the Warner Brother release to a multi-million-dollar victory. Nice "win" for Hollywood. Audiences in Xinjiang providence, ground zero of the ongoing CCP genocide, were unavailable for comment.
The Chinese Communist Party demands gay characters be literally erased from movies before they're shown to domestic audiences. Hollywood, which preens and postures on these issues back home, eagerly salutes – as it does on various censorship orders from Beijing.
Will Disney encourage its Chinese employees to walk out of work in protest of this? At least the ones who haven't been forcibly locked into their apartments for weeks?
Will we get a statement from the CEO lamenting another industry heavyweight bowing to systemic homophobia?
Absolutely not.
This is a company, after all, that thanked the CCP for the privilege of shooting a film near concentration camps holding millions of ethnic and religious minorities. They censored other content to whitewash China's human rights abuses.
So they'll say gay all day, so long as it's within the context of appeasing woke activists and domestic employees eager to attack the Republican governor of Florida.
They'll sit down and shut up the nanosecond Chairman Xi tells them to.
While we're on the subject of sniveling hypocrisy, will any major Western corporate sponsors have anything to say about the upcoming FIFA World Cup?
Adidas, for example, made a big show of running a trans athlete ad during March Madness.
Are they comfortable sponsoring the upcoming overt bigotry at the World Cup, based on their own alleged "values"?
Or does their "commitment" to the cause stop the moment their bottom line is potentially threatened?
We all know the answer.
After all, we just saw the same farce play out with Woke Corporations' bankrolling of Beijing's Genocide Games.
Believe whatever you'd like about the Florida law.
But performative opponents who say nothing in the face of bona fide oppression and bigotry when it suits their financial interests should be ignored, if not aggressively called out.
Silence is violence – is it not, activists?
"Corrina Cohn, someone who victimized by transgender lunacy as a child, recently wrote movingly about the suffering trangenderism causes"
When Corrina Cohn was a child, almost no one knew about transgender care or where to get it. Depending on where she lived, she may have had to drive or fly several states away to find a doctor that would treat her. Transgender activists weren't even a thing. That didn't happen until after the internet got into the majority of people's homes.
When you read her article, what you really see is her fear of being gay, being labeled as gay, and of never being able to have a relationship with a man while she had a man's body. It is an insidious case of being indoctrinated with enough homophobia to hate oneself.
This is a totally predictable consequence of living in a society where gay people are regularly maligned, harassed, assaulted, and even murdered for being gay.
When the Religious "Right" stops their centuries long denigration of LGBT people, and everyone is treated with dignity and respect no matter what their gender identity or sexual preference is, gay boys will grow up to be happy gay men, marry each other and have a fulfilling life, rather than contemplating bodily change to conform to the dictates of Christian Dominionists who insist that everyone follow their rule book as they interpret it from their 2000 year old, lost in translation, "Goat Herder's Guide to the Universe."
A Washington, D.C., jury has ruled against an Ohio man who pinned the blame for his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot on Donald Trump.
Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, was found guilty Thursday on all six counts, including charges related to disrupting Congress’ efforts to formally certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. He also stole a coat rack and two bottles of liquor from the Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered Thompson to be detained until his sentencing because he considers him a flight risk. The judge excoriated the defendant, saying he believed Thompson was “weak-minded” and had lied on the stand about what he was thinking that day.
Walton also had choice words for Trump.
“The insurgency ― and it was, in effect, that ― is very troubling,” Walton said. “I think our democracy is in trouble because unfortunately we have charlatans, like the former president, in my view, who don’t care about democracy and only care about power.”
Testifying earlier this week, Thompson told the courtroom he viewed the then-president’s speech that day as his marching orders. Trump had ended his “Save America” rally outside the White House by urging his supporters to “fight like hell” against Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.
“If the president is giving you almost an order to do something, I felt obligated to do that,” Thompson said, according to NBC News.
He told jurors he grew up without any strong male role models, and felt like he “had to do something to gain [Trump’s] respect, his approval,” CNN reported.
Defense attorney Samuel Shamansky portrayed Trump as a man who shamelessly encouraged Thompson and other supporters to “do his dirty work” the day of the attack by attempting to overturn the election results. Shamansky portrayed his client as being in a vulnerable state at the time, having lost his job in the coronavirus pandemic.
Prosecutors countered the defendant’s arguments by reminding the court he was an adult capable of making his own decisions.
In his closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Dreher encouraged jurors not to overlook Thompson’s actions because of all the time spent in the courtroom on Trump’s actions. At one point in the trial, jurors heard the entirety of Trump’s rambling speech from Jan. 6, 2021.
“Defense counsel wants you to focus so much on what President Trump said on the morning of Jan. 6. He wants you to forget what his client did on the afternoon of Jan. 6,” Dreher said, per Politico.
Thompson had a co-defendant, Robert Anthony Lyon, who was also charged in connection with the attack but took a deal with prosecutors that involved pleading guilty. The two men drove together from Columbus, Ohio, to Silver Spring, Maryland, to attend the “Save America” rally. They took an Uber into Washington that morning.
Thompson’s trial was the third so far for a Capitol rioter; the other two also resulted in guilty verdicts. While many of the nearly 800 defendants have been taking plea deals, others are still awaiting trials of their own.
"When Corrina Cohn was a child, almost no one knew about transgender care or where to get it."
she had the availability to make consequential decisions
"When you read her article, what you really see is her fear of being gay, being labeled as gay, and of never being able to have a relationship with a man while she had a man's body. It is an insidious case of being indoctrinated with enough homophobia to hate oneself."
what you see is someone who was too young to make a decision with devastating ramifications
someone who was fooled by transgender nuts and someone who wishes they hadn't been allowed to do it
most Americans want to protect kids like Corrina was
"When the Religious "Right" stops their centuries long denigration of LGBT people, and everyone is treated with dignity and respect no matter what their gender identity or sexual preference is, gay boys will grow up to be happy gay men, marry each other and have a fulfilling life, rather than contemplating bodily change to conform to the dictates of Christian Dominionists who insist that everyone follow their rule book as they interpret it from their 2000 year old, lost in translation, "Goat Herder's Guide to the Universe.""
homosexuality is not considered normal or moral by any major religions
it's not a Christian idiosyncrasy
The coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen. Two years later, even after schools reopened and vaccines became widely available, many parents have chosen to continue directing their children’s educations themselves.
Homeschooling numbers this year dipped from last year’s all-time high, but are still significantly above pre-pandemic levels, according to data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press.
Families that may have turned to homeschooling as an alternative to hastily assembled remote learning plans have stuck with it — reasons include health concerns, disagreement with school policies and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.
In 18 states that shared data through the current school year, the number of homeschooling students increased by 63% in the 2020-2021 school year, then fell by only 17% in the 2021-2022 school year.
Around 3% of U.S. students were homeschooled before the pandemic-induced surge, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The rising numbers have cut into public school enrollment in ways that affect future funding.
Old adage: if they're a gay predator, they are probably a major Dem donor!
Ed Buck, once a fixture of West Hollywood’s political scene, was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison for drug and sex crimes that included providing lethal doses of methamphetamine to two men.
To the outside world, Buck was a champion of causes such as fur bans and AIDS awareness, and a donor to Democratic officeholders.
But behind the walls of his Laurel Avenue apartment was a nightmare. For nearly a decade, the wealthy, white Buck lured young Black men at the lowest points in their lives — homeless, addicted, resorting to subsistence-level sex work — into what he called “party and play” sessions.
Amid squalor that belied his reputation as a man who had achieved great wealth at a young age, Buck plied the men with drugs and then sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious or immobile. In two cases, he injected his victims with fatal amounts of methamphetamine.
A jury convicted Buck last year of a host of felonies, including distributing methamphetamine resulting in death and enticement to cross state lines to engage in prostitution.
"what you see is someone who was too young to make a decision with devastating ramifications
someone who was fooled by transgender nuts and someone who wishes they hadn't been allowed to do it"
What you see is a young person taking drastic measures to try and fit into the heteronormative society she grew up in, and the internalized homophobia she was indoctrinated with.
She is one of the lucky ones. She figured out a way to survive those years and live to tell about it. A number of young gay men of that generation couldn't imagine a future in which they could be happy and live their lives in peace, loving the person they wish. They committed suicide instead.
"most Americans want to protect kids like Corrina was"
Americans certainly want to protect their kids - especially parents that have trans kids. The religious right has just made Corinna's story their latest talking point in their war on LGBT people. It is designed to rile up their base, rake in some money, and get out the vote to save society from destruction by "teh gayz". It also keeps the working poor of the republican base blissfully distracted so they never figure out that all those tax breaks for corporations were never intended to actually help them out.
If you really want to protect kids, you'll do something about the way our criminal justice system treats rapists.
If you’ve not heard of Bowen Turner, don’t worry — that’s by design.
See, Turner is a 19-year-old South Carolina man who since 2018 has been charged with two sexual assaults. In one case, the alleged victim is now dead. In the another, the alleged victim watched as he violated the terms of his house arrest at least 20 times — and on Friday learned that he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge that won’t even have him register as a sex offender. There was a third allegation, but law enforcement never brought charges. To this day, Turner is free.
And all of this proves one thing: The judicial system is working just fine.
I don’t want to bore you with details, but in 1789 or thereabout, a bunch of white men decided “to establish the judicial courts of the United States,” which was signed into law by the president, the founding father George Washington. The system created by white men, for white men was basically enacted to issue justice fairly and properly to white men, because no one else mattered but white men. Slaves (Black people) couldn’t even testify against white men, and even if they were hit by a white person, they (slaves, Black people), couldn’t hit them back. White women were leaps and bounds above slaves, but they were still less than white men. They didn’t have the right to own property, they couldn’t keep their own money, and they couldn’t vote. But they were still considered a person — granted a second-class citizen, but a citizen nonetheless.
Basically, “White Cis-Male Lives Matter,” and little has changed since then.
Which brings us back to Turner.
In 2018, Turner, then 16, was at a party with Dallas Stoller. Stoller was a popular teen who was the president of her senior class. Stoller came home from the party, intoxicated and covered in bruises, and reportedly told her father that Turner had sexually assaulted her.
“It was very upsetting obviously, and very disheartening,” her father, Karl Stoller, told South Carolina outlet WCSC. “And very, I like to use the word, ‘tragic,’ once we found out who the alleged individual was.”
Turner was arrested and charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Bamberg County in January of 2019, according to public records cited by WCSC. He was required to wear a GPS monitor and was released on bond. After only a few months, the judge allowed him to remove the monitor.
Six months after his first arrest, Turner, who was still out on bond, was arrested again and charged for a second time with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The victim, who was 16 at the time of the assault, claimed that the incident happened at a party in Orangeburg County in June 2019. While minors are not usually named in sexual assault cases, Chloe Bess has since come forward to say that she was the victim of the alleged 2019 assault.
Chloe Bess claims that she walked outside of the pond house, where the party was happening, to call a friend when Turner approached her. Bess told authorities that Turner pulled her behind a truck, pulled her to the ground, yanked her shirt down and then pulled off her pants and underwear and “forced himself sexually” on her.
“I just remember being so petrified, like, I was frozen,” Bess said. “I honestly just remember sitting there looking at the stars just praying for it to be done, waiting for it to be over with, so I could run away.”
Turner was initially denied bond. But that was granted after only a few months, and he was given another GPS monitor and put on house arrest. He was only to leave the house to see his attorney, for mental health appointments or for a medical emergency. Court documents found that he violated this order as much has wanted — “including 19 trips to golf courses, as well as outings to restaurants, sporting goods stores and even a car dealership,” WCSC reported.
He even left the city to visit Columbia and Graniteville. He also took a trip to Brunswick, Georgia, because why not? It’s not like anyone was going to do anything about it.
“[He has] multiple bond violations,” Darren Bess, Chloe’s father, says. “He was out on bond when this happened to Chloe. It’s like he keeps getting pass after pass after pass.”
Maybe that’s because Turner’s attorney is powerful state Sen. Brad Hutto, who promptly took to the courtroom to slut-shame Bess.
From the Times and Democrat:
Hutto argued that after the incident, the victim allegedly said, “I felt ashamed.”
“Well, guess what? You just had sex on the ground with a boy you didn’t really know and you got up and you feel ashamed, you feel regret, that’s not rape,” Hutto said.
Hutto said Turner and the victim were mutually engaging in sexual behaviors with each other at the party.
“She did not object, she did not scratch, she did not push, she did not call out. When asked point blank if she said, ‘no,’ she didn’t. When asked point blank if she said ‘stop,’ she didn’t,” Hutto said.
And get this: The first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge against Turner in the alleged Stoller incident has been dismissed because Stoller died in November 2021 and therefore can’t testify.
“Where are the victims’ rights?” Brette Tabatabai, Stoller’s sister, asked. “There are no victims’ rights. It’s been 3-and-a-half years, where are they? And he’s dismissing that because she’s passed away.”
The Stoller family didn’t say how Dallas died, but they told WCSC that the gossip and stress from the alleged incident weighed heavily on the young woman even after high school.
On Friday, Turner pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of assault and battery, allowing him to avoid having to register as a sex offender. “Circuit Judge Markley Dennis sentenced him under the Youthful Offender Act not to exceed six years, suspended to five years of probation. The probation term may not be shortened,” The Times and Democrat reports.
“It’s like when you go into a convenience store and you rob it at gunpoint, but then you get charged with stealing a candy bar,” Bess said.
"What you see is a young person taking drastic measures to try and fit into the heteronormative society she grew up in, and the internalized homophobia she was indoctrinated with."
yes, that's why the laws that you are desperately trying to stop make so much sense
kids will tend to take drastic action that may be irreversible and life-changing
they are not emotionally mature
it's nothing that can't wait five years
you pathetic people use kids as pawns for your political games
"She is one of the lucky ones. She figured out a way to survive those years and live to tell about it."
yeah, so lucky
old and alone without prospects for happiness
"Americans certainly want to protect their kids - especially parents that have trans kids."
if they did, they'd be happy to comply with the law and stop their kids from making a drastic, irreversible, life-altering decision until they are mature enough to make it
"The religious right has just made Corinna's story their latest talking point in their war on LGBT people."
really? I haven't heard any religious figure mention it
I found the story on a secular news site
"It is designed to rile up their base, rake in some money, and get out the vote to save society from destruction by "teh gayz"."
actually, it wasn't designed at all
it is cited to counter the false narrative by creeps like you that undergoing sexual reassignment surgery is a trip to fairy-tale bliss and a guaranteed trip to happily ever after
"It also keeps the working poor of the republican base blissfully distracted so they never figure out that all those tax breaks for corporations were never intended to actually help them out."
the working poor were infinitely better off under Trump
now, their real wages, after adjusting for inflation, are going down significantly
they won't be voting on transgender issues
LOL!!!!!!!!!!
"If you really want to protect kids, you'll do something about the way our criminal justice system treats rapists."
perhaps there are ways to do that but it's always a problem because there are rarely any witnesses
remember, you are innocent until proven guilty
the real solution is to not have situations where unmarried people of different genders are unchaperoned
that was the solution for eons until the sexual revolution made premarital intercourse to be expected
"If you’ve not heard of Bowen Turner, don’t worry — that’s by design."
who designed that
it was in public courts
the media didn't find it aof sufficient interest to sell their papers
"yes, that's why the laws that you are desperately trying to stop make so much sense"
No, that is why it is so important to stop the anti-gay propaganda the religious right keeps putting out - it is harmful to children, and sometimes leads to suicide. Way to COMPLETELY miss the point. There's that reading comprehension problem of yours again.
"it's nothing that can't wait five years"
Unless of course, they commit suicide before the 5 years is up.
"if they did, they'd be happy to comply with the law and stop their kids from making a drastic, irreversible, life-altering decision until they are mature enough to make it"
Parents who finally come to accept that their kid may be trans have typically tried MANY "fixes" before they eventually come to seek transgender therapy. Irreversible decisions are left until after they turn 18 - when they are legally considered an adult.
"it is cited to counter the false narrative by creeps like you that undergoing sexual reassignment surgery is a trip to fairy-tale bliss and a guaranteed trip to happily ever after"
No one has ever claimed anything like that. There is only one thing thing that SRS can cure, and that this Gender Dysphoria. Approval for surgery requires the patient demonstrating to at least 2 psychiatrist that living life in the chosen gender allows them to function better in society and reduce suicidal ideation for at least for a year (up to 2 in some countries) before being allowed surgery.
The narrative you claim is your own straw man argument, an Corinna's story promotes your talking point without regard to the facts.
"the working poor were infinitely better off under Trump"
Over 20 million people in April of 2020 lost jobs thanks to Rump's disastrous handling and lying about CV-19. By the end of 2020 he managed to whittle that down do a loss of 9.498 million jobs, ending his 4 year term with a net loss of 2.876 million jobs.
Many of those jobs were among the working working poor, who not having jobs during the summer of 2020 had time to go out on BLM marches.
Biden brought back 6.704 million jobs during his first 12 MONTHS in office - or 103% of the jobs Rump brought in during his first 3 YEARS in office.
There are plenty of working poor that would prefer to deal with some inflation rather than being jobless.
"now, their real wages, after adjusting for inflation, are going down significantly
they won't be voting on transgender issues"
And yet Republican politicians keep voting anti-trans bills into law. Utah's governor vetoed the one the came to his desk, noting that there were only 4 trans kids in high schools in the whole state, and only one of them was on any sports team.
While stirring up a lot of anti-trans sentiment among their base, they voted to override their governor to keep one trans person out of sports in Utah. Somehow, news about how they were helping the working poor -if they ever did- never seemed to bubble up to the top of the news.
Priorities.
"remember, you are innocent until proven guilty"
Rest assured, I never forgot that. But that doesn't stop the religious right from slandering LGBTQ people with accusations of pedophilia on a regular basis, or even accusing them of teaching elementary students about "fisting."
I'm not the one that needs to be reminded.
"the real solution is to not have situations where unmarried people of different genders are unchaperoned
that was the solution for eons until the sexual revolution made premarital intercourse to be expected"
Well, that and the birth control pill. But that was at the beginning of the 1960's, you know the decade that the boomer kids became known as the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" generation - famous for love-ins and lots of muddy hippie sex at Woodstock. Then of course there was "swinging" that got big in the '70s among married couples - you remember - back when only straight people could get married.
Yet, I don't ever recall over the past 40 years the religious right making any concerted effort for more chaperoning.
Why is that?
After all, given how much sexual violence occurs, wouldn't it be worth a try at least?
From: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence
> Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation
> 5.8% of students have experienced stalking since entering college.
> Female college-aged students (18-24) are 20% less likely than non-students of the same age to be a victim of rape or sexual assault.
It certainly seems like protecting women from sexual assaults - at least on college campuses - might be a worthwhile task to work on. It could save millions of women from harm all over our country. But the last Republican BOE Secretary made it HARDER for women who were raped to prosecute their cases.
And I don't recall Utah politicians protecting any one of the thousands of college-aged women in their state from sexual assault.
Rest assured though - those women won't have to worry about that one trans girl in the state lapping her in the swimming pool.
"If you’ve not heard of Bowen Turner, don’t worry — that’s by design."
"who designed that
it was in public courts
the media didn't find it aof sufficient interest to sell their papers"
Nor did Republican politicians find it a sufficiently interesting to motivate any of their base to the polls. In fact, it might DE-motivate them - it would make it much harder to get some of their Supreme Court nominees through the Senate.
But dig up a handful of stories about trans kids, and you've got enough grist to grind out new discriminatory laws in dozens of states, and sound bites that will keep Republican politicians at the top of conservative news feeds for months.
Seems pretty well designed to me.
Trump demanded that Saudi Arabia cut back production back in 2020. According to Trump, he worked out a deal where OPEC producers would all agree to reduce their output. The reason we now have high oil prices is that they have not returned their production to pre-pandemic levels. Hey, by the media’s standards of what makes a politician responsible for an event in the world, this is practically airtight.
It’s more than a bit bizarre that Donald Trump literally boasted about getting oil producers to cut production, but somehow President Biden is held responsible for high gas prices.
"Trump demanded that Saudi Arabia cut back production back in 2020. According to Trump, he worked out a deal where OPEC producers would all agree to reduce their output. The reason we now have high oil prices is that they have not returned their production to pre-pandemic levels. Hey, by the media’s standards of what makes a politician responsible for an event in the world, this is practically airtight.
It’s more than a bit bizarre that Donald Trump literally boasted about getting oil producers to cut production, but somehow President Biden is held responsible for high gas prices."
wow!
thanks for setting yourself up
during the Trump administration, America was energy independent
if other countries reduced oil production, that was in our favor
Biden has reversed that situation and made us once again dependent on these unsavory characters
one of the many reason he will have no ability to enact any agenda after November and the GOP will hold the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governors' mansion and state legislatures, and the Supreme Court after November 2024
btw, the Dems have a short window of a few months where they could make a few gains if they moderate their positions enough to satisfy Manchin and Sinema
the gay agenda, currently suffering backlash because of overreach is not a priority
it's history!
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (7News) — Members of the robotics team at Alexandria City High School wrapped up final checks and diagnostics on their robot Friday night. On Monday, they leave for Houston, Texas, the site of this year's world championships.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a sport more intellectually grueling than robotics or find a team tighter than the Titans.
“It’s been amazing just seeing how much the team has grown," said Saleh Hassen, team mentor.
“I probably spend more time on this than my school work and I’m unapologetic about that," said Virginia Arnold, team leader and Titan senior.
Next week, all that toil pays off when they compete against the best teams on the planet.
“This year’s game is mostly focused on shooting into a goalpost," said Hassen.
The Titans click in this complex competition of coding, engineering, and design for a variety of reasons. For starters, no one pays a penny to play. This allows students from under-resourced backgrounds to join and thrive.
“We have this no cuts, no fees policy," Arnold added. "If you want to be on the team, you can be on the team.”
They also encourage diversity.
“Here you are never going to be the only girl in the room, ever," said Arnold.
In fact, senior Isabel Cruz Rivera operates the robot along with Max Gordon.
“I control the climb, when we shoot, picking up balls. Stuff like that," said Rivera.
More than half of the team identifies as non-male and more than half as a part of the LGBTQ community, rarities in STEM.
“I definitely feel like this is my second home basically," said Hazel Belmont, a sophomore.
Hazel Belmont identifies as female.
“I don’t think I would be as comfortable with myself as I am now if it weren’t for this robotics team. I would have these internal struggles. I don’t. Not anymore," Belmont added.
When you combine a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive environment along with a passion for problem-solving and community-building you've got a template for success. This leads to the famous saying in robotics that it's the only sport where everyone can go pro.
“Right now, I’m a software engineer at Google," Hassen said.
That's right. The team's mentor is a STEM professional. Hassen was on Titan's first robotics team back in 2015.
“The robotics team made the biggest impact in terms of giving me a sense that oh, I can do engineering. I love leveraging technology to solve problems. This was a huge stepping stone in my career of pursuing engineering," Hassen added.
While winning would be welcome, this STEM program is about so much more than the elegant arc of a ball falling into a basket. It’s about immersing students, of all kinds, in a nuanced, real-world, problem-solving environment.
“I plan to study physics and computer science," said Rivera.
One that will take them as far as their drive allows.
For more information on the great community work the Titans participate in and how you can support the team as they head to Houston click here.
"No, that is why it is so important to stop the anti-gay propaganda the religious right keeps putting out - it is harmful to children, and sometimes leads to suicide."
it's not a matter of right and left
nor, is it propaganda
all major religions believe homosexuality is immoral
allowing one to artificially change their gender before they are ready is harmful to children
"Way to COMPLETELY miss the point. There's that reading comprehension problem of yours again."
that's what Putin keeps saying to Zelensky
of course, everyone who disagrees with the gay agenda, like, completely misses the point and totally has a reading problem...
"Unless of course, they commit suicide before the 5 years is up."
before you were saying they'd commit suicide because all the anti-gay propaganda
now, you think they'll commit suicide is they aren't allowed to change their gender by artificial means?
if you want to be properly "comprehended", you need to learn to be consistent
who knows how many people made this decision in their youth and regretted it, causing suicidal thoughts
Corrina related all the things that weren't explained: straight guys will never be interested in someone who used to a guy, sex will never be enjoyable, and one becomes a life-long medical patient
someone needs to be an adult before taking this horrible step
how crazed does one need to be to not see that?
"Approval for surgery requires the patient demonstrating to at least 2 psychiatrist that living life in the chosen gender allows them to function better in society and reduce suicidal ideation for at least for a year (up to 2 in some countries) before being allowed surgery."
oh no....
what if they commit suicide during that year or two?
they can wait until adulthood
it comes faster than anyone expects
Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s border stunt is a mess. In protest of the Biden administration's decision to again allow asylum seekers to cross the border, Abbott began subjecting commercial vehicles to additional police checkpoints on top of the normal federal immigration and customs inspections. But what Abbott called a security measure to stop human traffickers and drug dealers has turned into a crisis of his own making that has strained supply chains and frustrated business leaders.
After the Biden administration announced that it would move to terminate pandemic-era border restrictions in May, Abbott said he would take “unprecedented” action to secure the border from what he says will be an influx of criminals: In addition to a promise to bus undocumented immigrants from Texas to the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., the Texas governor last week said his administration would subject commercial vehicles to even more stringent safety checks as they crossed the border. He acknowledged, at the time, that it would “dramatically slow” traffic. But that may be an understatement. He's drawn expected criticism from immigration advocates and the White House. But now, the Texas governor is receiving blowback the business community, which has been caught in the middle of his protest.
The initiative created a logjam, which has been a “direct hit to Texas businesses, businesses that are already facing increasing costs in fuel, fertilizer, labor, and packaging,” Bret Erickson, senior vice president of business affairs for Texas-based Little Bear Produce, told the Washington Post Thursday.
“We would typically be receiving 10 to 12 loads of watermelon per day from Mexico, as well as different kinds of herbs and greens,” Erickson continued. “Since the middle of last week, we have received zero of those shipments of watermelon.”
Thousands of commercial vehicles cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day. The “enhanced safety inspections” have led to eight-mile backup for the trucks, resulting in major delays that have roiled supply chains on both sides of the border. It also led truckers on the Mexico side of the border to block traffic on the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, the busiest commercial crossing in the Rio Grande Valley, in protest. “It’s just something we don’t need right now,” Ermilo Richer, owner of a Laredo logistics company, told the Texas Tribune last week.
“This is destroying our business,” added Dante L. Galeazzi, CEO and President of the Texas International Produce Association, “and the reputation of Texas.”
Abbott had justified the measure as necessary to stop drugs and undocumented migrants from crossing the border. But, as the Tribune reported Wednesday, a week of enhanced inspections has not seemed to result in any drug seizures or immigrant apprehensions.
"Over 20 million people in April of 2020 lost jobs thanks to Rump's disastrous handling and lying about CV-19. By the end of 2020 he managed to whittle that down do a loss of 9.498 million jobs, ending his 4 year term with a net loss of 2.876 million jobs."
Trump handled COVID better than either Hillary or Slidin' Joe Biden would have. Before China unleashed this virus on the world, Trump had the lowest unemployment in history and inflation was non-existent. People lost employment because blue state government shut everything down without any good reason. But Trump prevented widespread suffering with his PPP and CARES programs. More to the point, his Project Warp Speed was an historic accomplishment. If Trump hadn't been President, we would be in a depression and, if we were lucky, vaccines might start becoming available right about now.
"Many of those jobs were among the working working poor, who not having jobs during the summer of 2020 had time to go out on BLM marches."
oh my gosh
Under Trump, minority unemployment reached it's lowest point in history
Biden borrowed and gave away TRILLIONS, overheating an economy that was doing fine and brought inflation not expected to subside any time soon
the working poor are the ones suffering from his mismanagement and contempt the most
"Republican politicians keep voting anti-trans bills into law. Utah's governor vetoed the one the came to his desk, noting that there were only 4 trans kids in high schools in the whole state, and only one of them was on any sports team."
if it didn't affect anyone, why the rage?
"Priorities"
yes, instead of chasing pointless Green New Deal fantasies, why not pursue energy independence for America
"Yet, I don't ever recall over the past 40 years the religious right making any concerted effort for more chaperoning."
most religions, right or left, whatever that means in a religious context, do discourage young people to avoid situations where they might be tempted
you must not be on the email lists
"Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation"
here's an idea, get rid of co-ed dorms
most conservative Christian don't have them
"It certainly seems like protecting women from sexual assaults - at least on college campuses - might be a worthwhile task to work on."
yes, parents pay astronomical fees to send their kids to schools where promiscuity and drunkenness are the norm
changing that culture would protect women
Coming of age in the early ’90s in a small city in southeastern Wisconsin meant growing up in a time and a place when no one said “gay” (or “lesbian” or “bisexual” or “transgender” or “non-binary” or any other part of the LGBTQ+ community), and the only time you heard “queer” was if you were being called one by one of the kids who took turns making your life a nightmare like doing it was their dream job. Like it was their proudest joy.
My town didn’t need legislation like Florida’s disgusting new “Don’t Say Gay” law that specifically prohibits discussing sexuality and gender identity with kids in kindergarten through third grade, but which is strategically so vaguely worded it could possibly apply to kids in any grade.
That’s just how it was. Everywhere. Always.
“Don’t Say Gay” was a way of life. Our way of life.
There were no gay people in Racine, Wisconsin, then ― and if there were (which of course there were), they didn’t talk about it. No one talked about it.
It was believed the world of wicked queer people doing wicked queer things was somewhere else, out there, miles away, in big cities where bad things happened to bad people. Most of the small towns in America ― and even many parts of the big ones ― believed the same thing.
But, just the same, there was still a danger glowing a queasy, otherworldly glow somewhere in the uncomfortably not-distant-enough distance and it required that good, God-fearing citizens vigilantly defended themselves and their families against it — or else who knows what might happen?
Or else everyone knew exactly what might happen.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo.
I’ve been gay since the second I sauntered out of my mom at St. Luke’s Hospital in July 1978. Not just gay ― gay gay. The kind of gay that people would whisper about. The kind of gay that people would worry about. The kind of gay that I could do nothing about. And for the first four or five years of my life, the kind of gay that I didn’t ever think to think about because it was just who I was and I still didn’t know I needed to hate or hide it.
Once I started kindergarten, I quickly learned how boys behaved and how girls behaved and, consequently, that how I behaved wasn’t how I was supposed to behave. But no matter how hard I tried to change, nothing changed.
So, I spent the next six months begging God to make me straight. Worried a simple prayer each night before bed wouldn’t suffice for such a momentous request, I wrote him letters instead. Every night after dinner, I sat at my desk and poured my heart out to him while listening to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” which was my favorite album at the time and felt particularly appropriate for the spiritual task at hand. (I told you I was gay ― so gay that even when I was pleading with God to rewire me so I was no longer the gaudy pink lamp perilously shooting sparks across the living room, I couldn’t help but do it as gayly as possible.)
And guess what happened?
Nothing.
I was still gay and headed straight to hell ― aka high school.
And it was hell. When I tell you I had no friends in ninth grade, I mean I had no friends. My gayness made me odious. Poisonous. Dangerous.
I hadn’t come out ― that was just not an option ― but everyone still knew. How could they not? My gayness was undisguisable. Unavoidable. Inescapable.
No one wanted to be seen with me or talking to me ― unless they were torturing me ― so I spent all of my time alone. Hiding. Holding my breath. Futilely trying to make my body melt into the furniture in whatever room I found myself in.
The torture was relentless and enthusiastic and horrific.
I was called every awful name you can think of.
One Saturday afternoon, someone called my house pretending to be another incredibly unpopular boy in our class and when I picked up the phone, an artificially soprano voice with a preposterous lisp said, “Hi, Noah! This is your gay lover!” Then the voice suddenly changed to a deep growl and it spit, “WATCH YOUR BACK BECAUSE I HATE FAGGOTS” through the receiver and into my ear.
I was held down in the gym locker room and doused in spray-on deodorant.
I was tripped down a flight of bleacher steps after a pep rally I had been desperately trying to teleport myself away from.
I could go on, but I won’t.
This was 1992. Not only did we not say gay at school (or anywhere else), but there was no Ellen or “Pose” or “Queer Eye” or Lil Nas X. RuPaul hadn’t even released “Supermodel of the World” yet. You had to use your imagination to find queer people on TV or in the movies or on the radio (or, if they were there, they were the villain or the butt of some nauseating joke). You had to squint to see yourself in the world. And too often, even if you could catch a glimpse — even if you could take a few seconds out of your busy day of hating or half-heartedly defending yourself from your tormentors to dare to dream of a future that didn’t include a wife, a grave or a life of suffering and loneliness — there was no marriage equality. There was no gay adoption.
My parents were — are — amazing. They loved my uncle. And looking back now, I know that if I had come out to them, they would have supported me (and, of course, they knew all along ― how could they not?). But at the time, there was simply no reality in which I believed that could happen.
My shame was so thick it suffocated anything good that I had in my life and I didn’t think there was any way I could ever explain how hard I hurt — or who I was, especially after we lost my uncle — to them. I just couldn’t do that to them. That’s how revolting I believed I was. But I know with every dizzy electron spinning in my body that I would not be here today without the love I received from my family. Still, it almost wasn’t enough.
Because God never got around to making me straight and because I wasn’t sure I could face another day of high school ― or whatever horrors most certainly awaited me if I were to somehow make it out of high school ― I decided to take matters into my own hands and I began to look for ways to kill myself. I’ll spare you the grisly specifics but let’s just say if you can think of it, I thought of it. I researched it. I fantasized about it. Several times I got as close to the edge as you can get and then hovered there, frozen, before finally slowly backing away.
Not saying gay ― not hearing gay or seeing gay or knowing that there were gay people somewhere out in the world living healthy, happy lives (or that being gay and living a happy, healthy life was even a possibility) almost killed me. It almost made me kill myself.
I left my high school a few weeks into 10th grade after telling my parents I wasn’t happy. I didn’t tell them exactly how unhappy I was or why, but four days later, I was at a new school. Once there, I forced myself to try to “butch up” as best as I could. Since I wasn’t going to die, I had to survive, and it seemed like my best bet.
I still wonder who and how I’d be if I had been able to be who I was supposed to be. I still think about that little boy and everything that was stolen from him.
Just because I didn’t die doesn’t mean I lived. Not for a long time. It took years before I had the confidence to do something as simple as order a pizza or ask a stranger for directions. Before I no longer cowered when someone got too close to me. Before I felt worthy of being seen or heard or known ― of wanting to be seen and heard and known, even by my own self.
Thirty years later, I’m proud to call myself gay and to identify as part of the queer community. So much has changed over the last three decades but so much hasn’t and I know there are kids who feel the way I felt. Even with all of the progress we’ve made. Even with all of the victories we’ve had.
Kids are who they are. Teaching them about queer people doesn’t make them queer. Teaching them about straight people doesn’t make them straight. Instead, laws like “Don’t Say Gay,” which are now being pushed in at least a dozen other states besides Florida, teach kids that being queer is not only not OK, it’s so offensive and dangerous we have to do whatever we can to not talk or know about it. And that has very real consequences.
I know. I lived through it. But just barely. But nearly not. And too many others like me didn’t make it. Too many others like me won’t make it.
So, we must do something about it.
I have been so moved by the kids ― queer and not queer ― in this country who have walked out of their schools in protest of these laws, and who have taught classes on queer history in their history classes despite the trouble it could cause.
They are who I wish I had been ― but this is not who they should have to be or how they should be spending their young lives.
They should be anywhere doing anything but fighting to tell and hear the stories of the queer people ― famous or unknown, courageous or petrified, triumphant or forgotten ― who have existed on this planet since this planet has existed.
They should be anywhere doing anything but fighting to exist exactly as who they are, wherever they are.
These kids are growing up in a different world ― an objectively more diverse world with more examples of who and how to be than I had, and that comforts and excites me. But we haven’t won ― we have so much more work to do and our enemies are furiously working to see that we don’t do it. That we never feel seen or safe. And, unfortunately, too many of them hold positions of power and they are cruel and crafty enough to not only stop us, but to also force us backward.
But never again.
From now on, when someone says we shouldn’t say gay (and trans and lesbian and bisexual and queer and all the other words they’re scared of) ― say it anyway. Say it louder and more often than you might have if things were otherwise. Say it to your elected officials. Say it to yourself when you’re voting for your elected officials. Say it to your kids. Say it whenever you can and especially wherever they say you shouldn’t or can’t. Tell them you can. Tell them you will. Tell them you never won’t.
Tell them how we’ve heard this story before and it does not ― we will not let it ― end the way they think it will or want it to.
Tell them this story you heard about this kid in Wisconsin who wanted to die a few decades ago because he was made to believe he was a sin, a slur, a scourge ― completely unworthy of anything resembling goodness or grace or a day without the deepest kind of despair.
And then tell them how he lived ― tell them how alive he is right this very minute despite all of the silence and the sorrow and the terror he was steeped in.
Tell them he is finally, most days, happy, but it took too many years and too many tears to get here.
Tell them that while it might sound like a miracle, there are no miracles ― there’s just the truth.
Tell them the truth is we have come too far and we refuse to ever go back.
"allowing one to artificially change their gender before they are ready is harmful to children
So is denying treatment to a trans child who desperately needs it. That's why doctors and parents who deal with trans kids (or any kid how might think they are trans) go out of their way to carefully diagnose the them, follow them for years, and give them every opportunity to change their minds without harsh judgement or penalties before they do anything permanent.
"all major religions believe homosexuality is immoral"
Many religions do not, and a number of them have officially changed their stance on homosexuality over the past few decades. It is likely that more of them will become more accepting with the passage of time.
The "beliefs" of the homophobic holdouts don't give them veto power over how the rest of society raises their children.
"of course, everyone who disagrees with the gay agenda, like, completely misses the point and totally has a reading problem..."
No, not everyone. But you've demonstrated poor writing and reading comprehension skills for over a decade. Remember when I had to explain to you about "Volia" is not spelled "Wala"?
"Unless of course, they commit suicide before the 5 years is up."
"before you were saying they'd commit suicide because all the anti-gay propaganda
now, you think they'll commit suicide is they aren't allowed to change their gender by artificial means?:"
And there is your reading comprehension problem again - otherwise, you are being deliberately obtuse. As can be seen by Noah's story, the predilection for suicide comes from the toxic affects of rampant homophobia.
"someone needs to be an adult before taking this horrible step
how crazed does one need to be to not see that?"
Years of suffering by these children can be avoided if they are treated properly, and nothing irreversible is done until after they reach adulthood. A point you insist on ignoring.
You can not see that because you are too busy trying to push your anti-LGBTQ agenda down the throats of parents and children you have never met; all the while pretending some anonymous troll like yourself knows more about their needs than they do.
The only regret some trans people have is not being able to transition when they were much younger.
Corrina's story would have been of a happy young gay boy growing up to being a happy gay man if it wasn't for toxic homophobia shaming her into the belief that she could only have a relationship with a man if she was a woman. If you want to stop kids from trying to change their gender for the wrong reasons, stop your efforts to marginalize, demonize, and disappear LGBTQ youth from our society.
Just because you make their lives miserable doesn't mean they won't exist. You may have fewer of them because they decide that suicide is a better option than the society you compulsively and obsessively promote, but the rest of us won't stop fighting for better lives.
"Under Trump, minority unemployment reached it's lowest point in history"
It was well on its way there before Rumpie took office - job growth was faster during Obama's last 3 years than it was during Trump's. That's a simple fact. As such, it would have reached that milestone sooner and likely lasted longer if Obama's policies had been left in place.
"Biden borrowed and gave away TRILLIONS, overheating an economy that was doing fine and brought inflation not expected to subside any time soon
the working poor are the ones suffering from his mismanagement and contempt the most"
The US has been printing money since Ronnie Raygun nearly tripled the national debt. It was almost under control during Clinton's terms. And Obama had to fix the mess the Bush II left behind - the worst recession since the Great Depression. Inflation has been in the cards for decades - how long did you think the US govt could keep printing money without it causing inflation, or worse yet, major debt crisis? There was a reason Bush I called Regan's tax cut and spend philosophy "Voodoo Economics."
Biden was stuck fixing Trump's 9.1 million jobs loss catastrophe. And we now know that many American companies taking advantage of supply chain disruptions to gouge customers on prices, while they make record profits. Do you want Biden to stop them from making so much profit?
"Biden borrowed and gave away TRILLIONS, overheating an economy that was doing fine and brought inflation not expected to subside any time soon"
Ah, I see, 9.1 million people out of work is "fine" but inflation is not in your book. I bet the 9.1 million people still out of work at the end of 2020 would beg to differ with you on that point.
Working people can still buy food and pay for rent with inflation. 9.1 million non-working people are stuck with food stamps and the kindness of friends and strangers.
"yes, instead of chasing pointless Green New Deal fantasies, why not pursue energy independence for America"
And once again your reading comprehension problem rears its ugly head. What part of going to renewable wind, solar, biogas, better insulation standards and new technologies do NOT promote energy independence for America?
"here's an idea, get rid of co-ed dorms
most conservative Christian don't have them
yes, parents pay astronomical fees to send their kids to schools where promiscuity and drunkenness are the norm
changing that culture would protect women"
If you guys put half as much energy into actually protecting women as you do demonizing the LGBTQ community, maybe you could actually do some good for society, and earn back some of the respect you guys lost during your slanderous campaign against gay marriage.
Maybe then churches in America would see increasing numbers rather than decades of continued decreasing.
Just a thought. But it's probably too original for you.
sorry, your post was long and boring so no one read it
I did peruse the end though
"If you guys put half as much energy into actually protecting women as you do demonizing the LGBTQ community, maybe you could actually do some good for society,"
I hate to break it to you but most conservative Christian colleges are quite fanatic about protecting the women who attend there
there are no co-ed dorms and situations where single men and women are alone together are heavily discouraged
where do you get your "information" from?
you seem to think the only possible solution is eliminating civil rights and ensuring automatic convictions of all accused
I imagine since you aren't straight, you think straight males shouldn't have civil rights
sad
btw, no one is "demonizing the LGBTQ community"
just defending their right not to celebrate it
A fascinating element to the controversy over teaching sex topics to very young children in public schools is the knee-jerk reaction by leftists in the media, not to dispute that kids are being taught sex stuff, but to defend that they are!
In an “analysis” piece both hilarious and infuriating, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake this week attempted to explain away official guidelines in New Jersey for the state’s school teachers in educating children on sexual and gender identity and expression.
“Conservative media oversell New Jersey’s guidelines for teaching gender,” read the headline.
True, in recent days Republicans and conservatives have drawn attention to New Jersey to back up the argument that new policies regulating how and when children are taught about sex are needed in more states and school districts. Florida is the most well-known example of a state crafting and passing legislation expressly for that purpose.
The reason for making an example out of New Jersey is because earlier this year, one school district promoted materials offering first-grade teachers lessons on “honest sexuality education” that would “Define gender, gender identity and gender role stereotypes.”
Included in that sweet-sounding literature was instruction for teachers in discussing the young students’ body parts. “You might feel like you are a boy, you might feel like you are a girl,” it says. “You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts. You might feel like you’re a girl even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both.”
This is, again, material made available by the school district to teachers of first-grade children.
But not so fast! Blake was ready to demonstrate why this is all nothing. “Repeatedly, Fox News and others have framed this as something amounting to actual school curriculum,” he wrote. “But the school district and the advocacy group both say that’s not the case — that these were sample materials that the district shared as it reviews the state guidelines.”
Don’t you see? This isn’t “actual school curriculum.” It’s only “sample materials” that were “shared”!
Blake helpfully included a quote from district Superintendent Raymond González, who offered this simple explanation: “The cited sample plans were part of a website that was included as a link to illustrate the type of possible resources for school districts shared by the N.J. Department of Education. We have said repeatedly that these are resources only and that they are not state-mandated.”
It makes all the difference, doesn’t it? The guidance on talking with first graders about how their “‘boy’ parts” and “‘girl’ parts” make them feel isn’t “state-mandated.” They’re just “possible resources for school districts”!
Furthermore, up until just days ago, New Jersey’s Department of Education had official guidelines on its website for how to talk with public-school children about gender identity and sexual orientation. Second-grade teachers are instructed to “discuss the range of ways people express their gender and how gender role stereotypes may limit behavior.” (The guidelines have since been taken down.)
Editor: Um, Aaron, it actually looks like this school district was instructing teachers to talk with young children about sex topics.
Blake: Yeah, but conservatives are overselling it. I asked, and it’s not the actual school curriculum. It’s not state-mandated. Hit publish.
This isn’t even hair splitting. It’s some kind of weird back-door admission. Yeah, some teachers might be talking with first graders about their privates, but this isn’t what it seems.
It’s exactly what it seems, and people like Blake are defending it
Nebraska Republican state Sen. Julie Slama said she was “in shock” when Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster allegedly put his hand “up my dress” at a GOP dinner.
Slama detailed what she has described as an “assault” in 2019 in an interview Thursday, the day the Nebraska Examiner reported that she and seven other women had accused the Republican businessman of groping them.
“As I was ... walking to my table, I felt a hand reach up my skirt, up my dress and the hand was Charles Herbster’s,” Slama said, her voice shaking, in an interview on News Radio KFAB in Omaha. “I was in shock. I was mortified. It’s one of the most traumatizing things I’ve ever been through.”
Slama added: “I watched as five minutes later he grabbed the buttocks of another young woman. ... This was witnessed by several people at the event.”
Slama talked of the intimidating, “huge power differential” in that situation between herself, then a newly appointed 22-year-old state senator, and “one of the biggest donors in the Nebraska Republican Party.”
Herbster has denied all the accusations as “libelous fake news” and is now threatening to sue to protect his reputation. He called the timing of the allegations just weeks before the primary suspect.
“As I was ... walking to my table, I felt a hand reach up my skirt, up my dress and the hand was Charles Herbster’s,” Slama said, her voice shaking, in an interview on News Radio KFAB in Omaha. “I was in shock. I was mortified. It’s one of the most traumatizing things I’ve ever been through.”
Slama added: “I watched as five minutes later he grabbed the buttocks of another young woman. ... This was witnessed by several people at the event.”
Slama talked of the intimidating, “huge power differential” in that situation between herself, then a newly appointed 22-year-old state senator, and “one of the biggest donors in the Nebraska Republican Party.”
Herbster has denied all the accusations as “libelous fake news” and is now threatening to sue to protect his reputation. He called the timing of the allegations just weeks before the primary suspect.
Trump has hailed Herbster, who considers himself a born-again Christian, as a “tremendous supporter of America First.”
The allegations against Herbster aren’t likely to shake Trump’s endorsement. Trump has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct. He was also recorded boasting about “grabbing” women “by the pussy.”
Omaha’s former mayor reportedly responded to the accusations by saying that he wanted to put Slama on the witness stand to ask her what she was wearing when she was allegedly groped. So Slama showed him — and emphasized to KFAB that “clothes don’t equal consent.”
Under Nebraska state law, touching a person inappropriately without consent on the outside of their clothes constitutes third-degree sexual assault.
"sorry, your post was long and boring so no one read it"
Of course you didn't. Why expose yourself to facts that contradict your beliefs?
That might cause you to reconsider your viewpoint, and then you wouldn't be able to just regurgitate sound bites by spinning "The Wheel of Conservative Talking Points."
"btw, no one is "demonizing the LGBTQ community"
Riiiiight, and Russia isn't invading Ukraine and didn't start a war - it's just a "special military operation."
BTW, Biden and NATO aren't sending military equipment to Ukraine like Putin keeps complaining about, it's just "special exercise equipment."
Those Ukrainians are gonna be extra healthy at the end of Putin's "special military operation."
Oh, and the Moskva didn't sink - it just suddenly initiated submarine operations.
Hundreds and hundreds of Republican pedophiles
"Of course you didn't. Why expose yourself to facts that contradict your beliefs?"
this is rich, coming from a TTFer
a group that only reads sources they know will reinforce their predetermined delusions
blogs are designed for brief exchanges
there are plenty of sites and even, amazingly enough, printed publications that explore diverse viewpoints
you should try reading something you disagree with sometime
then, you could start calling yourself educated
you wouldn't mind that, would you?
"Riiiiight"
brilliant comment
that's the best you can do, I guess
no examples of anyone "demonizing the LGBTQ community"
to TTFers, you either demonize or celebrate and their ain't no neutral ground
LOL!
"BTW, Biden and NATO aren't sending military equipment to Ukraine"
this is an insult to the leaders of NATO, grouping them with the feckless fool, Slidin' Biden
they've had to drag him along to oppose Putin
Slidin' Biden is afraid of making Putin mad
Boris Johnson wants to capture him and try him for war crimes and will provide Ukraine whatever they need
VICTORIA, Texas — Infowars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the website's founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones faces defamation lawsuits over his comments that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
The bankruptcy filing Sunday in Texas puts civil litigation on hold while the business reorganizes its finances.
In its court filing, Infowars said it had estimated assets of $50,000 or less and estimated liabilities of $1 million to $10 million. Creditors listed in the bankruptcy filing include relatives of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut.
The plaintiffs in that case have said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers because of the hoax conspiracy that Jones promoted. Jones has since conceded the shooting did happen. The families have already won defamation lawsuits against Jones.
Another newly filed lawsuit accuses Jones of hiding millions of dollars in assets, but an attorney for Jones has called that allegation “ridiculous.”
So Alex Jones hides his money while those actually killed kids he claimed lived remain actually dead and their parent continue to grieve their killed children and deal with Jones' nutcase fans never-ending lying harassment.
"a group that only reads sources they know will reinforce their predetermined delusions"
Hardly - I have to wade through pages of the repetitive right-wing drivel you post here. It's always the same re-cycled left & lgbtq bashing, occasionally sprinkled with a new catch phrase the right latches onto, like "Critical Race Theory," which the right has redefined so broadly that it means any and everything they don't like when someone even just mentions race. It's the new "SOCIALIST!" moniker they plaster on everything to trigger their base into immediately ranting against it, whether it's actually "socialist" or "critical race theory" or not.
"blogs are designed for brief exchanges"
Yet that doesn't stop you from copying and pasting pages of outraged right-wing rants, and then ignoring what anyone else posts by claiming it's "long" and "boring" rather than actually addressing the issues. That's actually one of your tactics - absolutely ignoring issues - like young gay people committing suicide because of the toxic culture right-wing fanatics promote - because you don't have a answer for it and the less time and space that issue get, the better it is for you.
Just pretend it's not there and everyone will be better off. It's the quiet version of holding your hands against your ears and yelling "La la la I can't hear you!"
"they've had to drag him along to oppose Putin
Slidin' Biden is afraid of making Putin mad
Boris Johnson wants to capture him and try him for war crimes and will provide Ukraine whatever they need"
Biden was out using our intelligence to warn the world of Putin's imminent invasion while Zelenskyy was telling him he was overreacting. Biden got millions of dollars of equipment moving there in days, and since then, that number has increased to billions. Somehow I haven't heard a peep from Republicans about how much money he's spending on Ukraine now, and how that's adding to inflation.
Anyone who has a brain is afraid of making Putin mad. The man has direct control over thousands of nuclear weapons that he can send all around the world, no one knows precisely what his trigger point is, and he has a perfect track record of not caring about human causalities on any side.
The more he feels he's directly in a war with the US and NATO, the more likely he is to "escalate to deescalate" - the Russian doctrine of using nuclear weapons to scare the enemy into backing off.
That's not a point anyone in the world wants to reach - sure the US could retaliate in kind, but who is going to stop a nuclear tit-for-tat after that? It certainly wouldn't be Putin.
The longer Putin can be kept losing just in Ukraine, the longer he is being slowly boiled like a frog. His conventional military is degraded on a daily basis, and Russian resentment against him slowly grows at home. The best outcome for the world is Russians removing him from office themselves, and replacing him with someone who isn't a megalomaniacal sociopath.
As for war crimes, just about everyone in the west wants to see Putin stand for trial on those - with the possible exceptions of Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the idiots who believe them.
I'm surprised TTFers don't like Alex Jones.
He is the same kind of conspiracy theorist as Hillary Clinton. Back when she was First Good Wife, supporting her sexual predator husband , she said there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" attacking her. Then, when she lost the election against Trump, she paid to create a Russian collusion conspiracy theory to explain her failure.
Slidin' Biden's approval rating among Hispanics has plummeted as the historically Democratic bloc's support for Republicans continues to increase, presenting an electoral problem for Democrats, whose immigration policies have fueled much of this shift.
Only 26% of Hispanic voters approve of Biden's job performance, compared to 54% who disapprove, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday.
Perhaps most striking, the poll found a staggering 41% of Hispanic voters "strongly disapprove" of Slidin' Biden's handling of the presidency, while just 12% "strongly approve."
Hispanics represent the country's second largest voting bloc by ethnicity.
A downward trend in Hispanic support for Slidin' Biden has been ongoing for months.
Slidin' Biden comfortably won the Hispanic vote in 2020 with 59%, according to the Pew Research Center. Since then, however, Hispanic support for the president has plummeted, reaching the 30s last year and now the 20s. Even polling finding a higher approval rating for Slidin' Biden among Hispanics today still shows a 20-plus-point drop over the past year.
Hispanics aren't just disapproving of Slidin' Biden, though. They're also moving away from Democrats in general.
The National Republican Congressional Committee's Battleground Survey Project, for example, found that Republicans have made substantial gains among Hispanic voters since the 2020 elections, narrowing the gap by almost 20 percentage points.
Other polling has shown Hispanics evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, a seismic shift from what was once a lopsided balance in favor of Democrats.
Even polling finding a less dramatic shift still shows Hispanics are now migrating across party lines to the GOP.
One sign of this shift manifesting in electoral politics was last year's Virginia gubernatorial race. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican victor, won the Hispanic vote by about a dozen points, once an unthinkable margin.
Slidin' Biden's immigration policies appear to be one reason for the Hispanic migration away from the Democratic Party. Over the past year, polling has consistently shown a strong majority of Americans — and upwards of 70% of Hispanics — disapprove of Biden's handling of immigration, including of the southern border.
The number of people crossing the southern border illegally has skyrocketed since Biden entered office, reaching nearly 2.3 million illegal border crossings from February of last year to this past February, the last month for which there's publicly available data. By comparison, there were just over 626,000 such crossings from January 2020 to January 2021, former President Trump's last year in office.
Critics argue Slidin' Biden's rhetoric and policies have lured illegal immigrants to cross the U.S. at a historically high rate. Some of these critics said that Democrats think their words and actions on immigration will increase their support among Hispanics when in reality the opposite has occurred.
In the summer of 2020, Ruth Ben-Ghiat was putting the final touches on her history of modern autocracy. She had to do it, though, without the benefit of knowing whether one of her most important subjects would remain in power come November.
But she wasn’t exactly in the dark either.
She had seen enough of Donald Trump’s behavior over the preceding five years to know how neatly he lined up with other strongmen she had studied and how his autocratic tendencies would influence his behavior whether he won or lost.
“I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner,” Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University told me recently. “He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t have good endings and they don’t leave properly.”
Nearly two years later — after a riot, an impeachment, and a monomaniacal campaign to punish the Republicans who tried to hold him accountable — Ben-Ghiat has ample proof of her thesis. And she professes even more concern that Trump’s sway over the GOP has permanently transformed the party’s political culture. “He’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture,” she told me. “So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent.”
With the midterms and some key governors races approaching, Ben-Ghiat is looking around the corner again. She sees dangerous signs of autocracy seeping into state houses and governors’ mansions where leaders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are executing policies and enacting laws that mimic Trump but with a smoother, less bombastic style.
She insists her urgent warnings should not be construed as fatalism. Throughout our interview she leavened her direst predictions with a pragmatic if not sunny optimism. Political violence is more likely than an actual civil war; a Republican takeover in November would be catastrophic but she remains heartened by the ability of American voters to “interrupt an autocratic personality who’s in the middle of his project;” and ballot box victories alone don’t stop autocrats but the law can. “It takes prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults,” Ben-Ghiat said. “That’s what it takes.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Michael Kruse: We’re coming up on seven years since Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. I’m wondering where in your estimation we are in this country in the timeline of increasing authoritarianism.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: When somebody like Trump comes on the scene and holds office, it’s really like an earthquake or a volcano, and it shakes up the whole system by gathering in this big tent all the extremists, all the far-right people, and giving them legitimation. The GOP was already going away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level. Some of these things were on the agenda way before he came in, like getting rid of abortion rights and stuff like that. But these states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas.
The final thing I’d say is machismo [is] up there as a tool of rule alongside propaganda and corruption. Getting ahead as a man [in this political system] means being more like Trump. And so you saw Mike Pompeo, who started talking about “swagger” and he was a very different kind of State Department head. And now you have people like Ron DeSantis who even absorbed the hand gestures of Trump. And so at the elite level, the political system is shaped by Trump, and every day we see his legacy.
Kruse: What would you say to those in this country who say, “No, the Republicans aren’t the autocrats. It’s the Democrats who are the autocrats. It’s Joe Biden. It’s other Democrats with power who are making us wear masks or take vaccines we don’t want to take. They’re the ones who are behaving more in autocratic ways, not the Republicans.”
Ben-Ghiat: One of the big talking points and strategy of right-wing authoritarianism, is to label democratic systems as tyrannical. Mussolini was the first to say that democracies are tyrannical, democracies are the problem. And there’s a whole century’s worth of the strategy of calling sitting Democrats, who you want to overthrow, dictators. Biden as a social dictator, [is] a phony talking point. It has so many articulations from “They’re forcing us to wear masks.” And you have people like DeSantis who are doing this very subversive thing of saying, “Florida’s the free state. You can have refuge from the dictatorship of Biden here.” And what this is designed to do is discredit the sitting democratic administration in order to create, a myth of freedom. January 6 was actually marketed as the violence [being] in the service of freedom, and you were overthrowing a dictator.
Kruse: Where is Trump in his own timeline? Is he in your estimation getting weaker, getting stronger, in a holding pattern?
Ben-Ghiat: The genius of the “big lie” was not only that it sparked a movement that ended up with January 6 to physically allow him to stay in office. But psychologically the “big lie” was very important because it prevented his propagandized followers from having to reckon with the fact that he lost. And it maintains him as their hero, as their winner, as the invincible Trump, but also as the wronged Trump, the victim. Victimhood is extremely important for all autocrats. They always have to be the biggest victim.
So the “big lie” maintained Trump’s personality cult versus seeing him as just another president who was voted out of office. Americans traditionally always accepted that when your time is up, no matter how popular you were, you were gone. Trump disrupted that because he’s different from any other president, Republican or Democrat. He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t have good endings and they don’t leave properly. And I predicted — I had to turn in [my] book in the summer of 2020 — and I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner. The “big lie” allowed him to psychologically never leave. So he’s in this kind of limbo. As an authoritarian, his other job has been to make sure to keep hold of the party so no rivals emerge, so that he could [not] be eclipsed by a younger version of himself. And that would be DeSantis.
Kruse: Have you been surprised at how successful he’s been in this regard, especially considering he doesn’t have Twitter? As you referenced, Truth Social has been more or less a failure to this point. He is doing this through emails and [conservative] media hits.
Ben-Ghiat: The Twitter was for the masses, to keep the masses indoctrinated, and I see Trump as one of the most successful propagandists of the early 21st century. He tweeted over 120 times a day. But that was for the masses. I wasn’t talking about voters as much as how has he kept the elites tethered to him. And that has nothing to do with Twitter. That has to do with what he’s always done: collecting compromising information, threatening, and he’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture. So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent. And it’s not just when the leader was going to be impeached. In February 2021, during the second impeachment, and Republicans who voted to impeach him had to buy body armor because they were being threatened.
The big question will be what will happen in the coming months so that he can retain that power because he’s very toxic. There’s always this worry that maybe the investigations will bring more things out, so it’s not a done deal that he will get the nomination. But he’s been remarkably successful in ways that don’t surprise me at all. Because that’s how authoritarians are. They’re personality cults, even if they rule in a democracy like [Italy’s former prime minister Silvio] Berlusconi did. Berlusconi’s personality cult did not deflate until he was convicted, which he eventually was. That’s what it takes. It takes prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults.
Kruse: You recently wrote, “Ron DeSantis is turning Florida into his own mini-autocracy.” Why is he an autocrat?
Ben-Ghiat: He has autocratic tendencies. What’s so interesting is he was a Reaganite and then he had clearly some kind of epiphany when Trump came on the scene. He had that campaign video that showed his house being transformed into an altar for Trump. And he got the endorsement. He has absorbed the lessons of what you need to get ahead in the GOP today. And that is to be a forceful bully, even to high school students. The way he carries himself and speaks has gotten much more aggressive. And he’s also very smartly tried to turn Florida into this refuge for all who are oppressed by Biden. He invited New York city cops and people from all over the nation who are oppressed by federal government vaccine [rules], or state mandates, [to] come to Florida and be free. And so that’s one way he’s setting up Florida to be the fiefdom of a certain politics, a certain ideology, that he clearly then wants to take national. And in fact his spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, says, “Make America Florida.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis has governed like an extremist. He’s stoked racial animosity. He’s disregarded the 73,000-plus Floridians who have died from COVID-19. He’s scapegoated LGBTQ youth. He’s forced the state Legislature to cede power to him in the redrawing of congressional districts that likely diminish Black representation. He’s got autocratic tendencies, inflicting revenge on anyone who dares to disagree. DeSantis has not been punished politically — on the contrary, he’s benefited. For all the harm he’s done to the Sunshine State, DeSantis is meeting at least some voters where they are. Some even consider him the most powerful governor in recent history. Very few people, including many Democrats, doubt he will win reelection in November. Maybe his antics are all part of his purported plan to run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But in the Sunshine State, his approval ratings remain high (58%, according to a February poll). TOP VIDEOS × Part of the blame for this one-man rule falls on Florida Democrats’ ineptitude at winning elections. In this case, they have yet to discover how to counter the governor’s political messaging machine and the “socialist” label the GOP has attached to them. Florida has become more red and less purple in recent elections. Donald Trump won the state twice. The number of registered Republican voters outpaced the number of Democrats last year. Florida has become MAGA Central.
Kruse: Is it fair to see DeSantis as a very capable, committed student, whereas Trump is more of an instinctual autocrat?
Ben-Ghiat: There are limits to the comparison because Trump truly is an autocratic individual. He was as a businessman and he has surrounded himself with people from [Paul] Manafort and [Roger] Stone to [Steve] Bannon who have decades of experience helping and working for dictators. They’re on a crusade to ruin democracy. And DeSantis had a very different career path. And so what’s notable about him is he has sensed, like all smart politicians, what you need to get ahead in today’s America, in today’s GOP, what kind of leader you need to seem to be, what policies, what talking points, [such as] election fraud. What you need to do is turn citizens against each other, which he does with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. His election security office has a hotline where you can call and tip off your fellow Floridians doing bad things. These are in themselves all things that match up with autocratic policies. Yes, he’s a very capable student of what is going to have success in today’s GOP and with today’s electorate.
Kruse: Is Ron DeSantis the non-Donald Trump politician doing this in the most stark, arguably most effective way, or are there others that you are paying attention to?
Ben-Ghiat: There are lots of others. In terms of his policies and his aggression, Greg Abbott stands out, of course. I’ll never forget that he posed smiling with his target practice sheet and joked about shooting journalists during the Trump years. But Ron DeSantis stands out because, one, he has made clear his aspirations to national leadership, and two, he’s smooth. Just as [Viktor] Orbán is a more palatable Putin — you don’t hear about poisoning [enemies], you don’t hear about people falling out of windows — DeSantis doesn’t have all that baggage Trump has. He’s younger and he’s smoother. He’s more measured in what he says. He’s trained as a lawyer. Trump is a much more outrageous personality and that’s the source of Trump’s charisma, but DeSantis is extremely popular. And so he has his own form of relating to audiences that people like.
Kruse: Given Trump, DeSantis, Abbott and so on, is the United States of America still a full democracy?
Ben-Ghiat: It’s deceptive because Trump did an enormous amount of damage. And that was why he was there. He was there to wreck our democracy. And then he was voted out. We can never forget that in the middle of a pandemic, 80 plus million people turned out to get rid of him. And that’s very rare in history where you interrupt an autocratic personality who’s in the middle of his project. And now the individual states are continuing this. And what’s so worrying is that they’re continuing it in a very accelerated fashion.
Also, the midterms are so close. I do believe if [Republicans] capture Congress after the midterms, you always have to assume the worst with people who have been very open about wanting to wreck democracy. And so that’s why they float these scary things, like making Trump speaker of the House. You have to realize that these people have left democracy, and nothing is off the table. And that’s why to go back to DeSantis, it’s very ominous that he established this office of election security. It’s very bad because it has its own prosecutors, and it makes things that used to be a misdemeanor a felony. If you look at the details of it, it’s not only an intimidation machine. It has some prosecutorial powers, and it has informing mechanisms, the tip line, and the whole idea of election integrity as this buzzword, which really means how are we going to start making elections come out the way we need to, is a very anti-democratic thing.
Kruse: So the answer I heard to the question — “Is America still a full democracy?” — was … maybe not?
Ben-Ghiat: No. David Pepper, who wrote this book Laboratories of Autocracy, has always said that many states are no longer functioning democracies. I would say that nationally, we are a functioning democracy. That’s how we got rid of Trump. But the system has been eroded and many states are shifting, are evolving over time to a condition where votes are going to mean less. And then you get into a situation which is like what happened in Hungary where over time Viktor Orbán has developed a system where it’s almost impossible for the opposition to win.
Kruse: Is it fair then to see the U.S. as an “anocracy,” neither completely democratic nor completely autocratic?
Ben-Ghiat: It’s in transition. However, I do believe it’s extremely important to never fall into fatalism. I believe it’s my job to warn people what could happen, but it’s very important — that’s why I keep bringing up the 2020 election and also the 2018 midterms — that these are recent events, and there is this energy of protest and love for democracy and freedom, real freedom, not the Republicans’ idea of freedom, that we can’t lose, because once you decide that it’s all rigged and there’s nothing you can do, then you do lose democracy.
Kruse: There has been increasing talk of the inevitability of civil strife, of civil war. And full democracies don’t have civil wars. Autocracies also don’t have civil wars, right? It’s sort of those places that are in some worrying state of transition that might be susceptible to that kind of violence. Are we on the way to civil war?
Ben-Ghiat: I actually believe the possibility of true, active civil war — meaning violence on both sides — is not likely. It’s something that the Republicans, the right, wants us to think is happening, and they use that to get people on their side as armed up as possible, as weaponized, literally weaponized, as possible, as fearful as possible. But I don’t think that we would fall into that state. It’s much more likely that the midterms go the Republicans’ way, and you fall into a system where your vote doesn’t mean much. I do see perhaps an increase of another round of protests. Often protests, big protests, materialize around an event. So the Women’s March was the shock of Trump winning and coming to power. Then you had George Floyd, which sparked the Black Lives Matter protests. I respect a lot Barbara Walter, who wrote the book about our likelihood [for civil war], where we’ve passed these guardrails. But the ones who really want a civil war, it’s only the extremist Republicans. Because civil war is bad for business. Civil war is bad for health. It’s bad for the nation. And so it’s really a scare talking point.
Kruse: A scholar who studies violent conflict, Thomas Homer-Dixon, recently wrote, “By 2025 American democracy could collapse causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” Does that sound right to you or too extreme?
Ben-Ghiat: It could happen in a quieter way. I think that it’s not out of the realm of possibility, because if the Republicans tried to impeach Biden and impeach Harris, there would be protests. Whether that becomes a civil war is very different because it’s predominantly only one side which is armed, first of all. So Walter is right. She wanted to point out how far our democracy has eroded. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we could end up with some kind of form of autocracy because that’s what’s being set up by all of the assaults on our electoral system. And Bannon’s been working very hard at this, too, from his own vantage point. It’s intimidation of voters, removing voters, look at all these threats to election officials — so you get them out of the system — this all corresponds to what we call “autocratic capture.” There’s a movement going on. This is what I mean by more — it’s more legalistic and quieter. And that doesn’t tend to bring out people into the streets. Because it’s an evolution and it’s happening slowly, slowly, slowly, and big protests are occasioned by an event.
Kruse: Are there signs in these developments of a particularly American style of autocracy?
Ben-Ghiat: The wild card is guns. No other country in peace time has 400 million guns in private hands. And no other country in peacetime has militias allowed to populate, has sovereign sheriffs, has so many extremists in the military, and that matters because of these other things. And in fact, if January 6 didn’t bring out a massive protest, what is going to bring out a massive protest? Because that showed that groups of people who were there were people unaffiliated with any Proud Boys or any radical group. And Robert Pape, who studied them, called them middle-aged, middle class, but they were all armed. Some of them had private arsenals and they showed up at January 6. So that’s the wild card. That’s one thing that’s extremely American, that violence, that the population believes it has the right to rebel against tyrannical government. Like Matt Gaetz says: The Second Amendment is not just about hunting. And here we go back to the idea of Biden as a dictator. And that only works if your citizenry is armed and ours is to a degree that no other country is in the entire world.
Kruse: Given the stakes, what are Democrats doing wrong right now?
Ben-Ghiat: The reason that Trump was able to shift the political culture, Trump and his allies, is that he imposed an authoritarian party culture [with] unified messaging. Propaganda needs to be repeated with small variations. All the different Fox News hosts, all the GOP politicians, you can tell when the various talking points come up, because they get echoed by all these lawmakers and throughout Fox. Now Democrats by their nature are not going to impose unified messaging. And so Democrats don’t have that force of concentration of message, that repetition, and that’s a failing in this environment.
how brilliant: a three-part cut-and-paste of a story we all have already read
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ACNN panel blasted President Biden's lack of leadership and cratering political support in an analysis of his poor approval numbers on Sunday's "Inside Politics."
CNN's latest poll puts Biden at a 39% approval rating, while recent Quinnipiac University polling revealed 33% of Americans approve of Biden's job performance compared to 54% who disapprove.
"Inside Politics" panelists Jordan Fabian, Bloomberg White House correspondent, CNN Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona, and Time Magazine National Political Correspondent Molly Ball weighed in on how Biden is hemorrhaging support from all political demographics.
Republicans are largely unhappy with his lackluster economic efforts (inflation surged to 8.5% in March, marking a 40-year high), while environmental progressives are recently upset over the administration's announcement it was going to resume the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land.
"It's an environment of overall discontent," host Abby Phillip said.
"People correctly perceive that he's not in control of the situation," Ball said of Biden. She argued that his public support began to wane after his botched handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last August.
"And I think ever since that Afghanistan last summer, people have had - voters overall - have not had a sense of leadership from the White House, have not had a sense that there's a president in control, who is strong and consistent and knows what he's doing and can project a consistent message from one day or the next," she said.
Even at a time when Americans may "agree" with some of his decisions, such as his moves during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ball said Biden continues to "step on his own messaging," an apparent reference to the contradictory statements the president has made, and which have consistently planted the White House in damage control mode.
Another posting of poll numbers...
Do you get paid by the polling companies to do that? Do you get paid more if you exceed 3 times per day?
How does one line up such a cushy job?
I guess lacking things that Biden has actually done any worse than Rump on, you're desperately hope hoping Biden won't win another term by claiming he's bad because his poll numbers are bad.
"Another posting of poll numbers...
Do you get paid by the polling companies to do that? Do you get paid more if you exceed 3 times per day?
How does one line up such a cushy job?"
well, he campaigned on the idea of bringing the country back together
so, I'm just giving him credit for this one accomplishment
Americans have become united in their disgust for his performance
his method is a little odd
but, thanks, big ol' Sloppy Joe!!!!!!!
"I guess lacking things that Biden has actually done any worse than Rump on, you're desperately hope hoping Biden won't win another term by claiming he's bad because his poll numbers are bad."
yes, you got me
I'm just desperately hope hoping
ROFL!
under Trump, inflation was non-existent and minority unemployment was at the lowest point in history, but that's splitting hairs
and crime was lower and police were supported but that could have happened to anyone
and illegal immigration was a fraction of what it is now but what is Biden supposed to do about it?
and Russia didn't invade any countries and the Taliban didn't rule Afghanistan and North Korea didn't test intercontinental missiles but at least Biden is confusing the enemy by contradicting himself every other day
oh, Trump did have fewer COVID deaths and cases and didn't even have a vaccine to work with
but that's just a coincidence
btw, I notice that you only say that Slidin' Biden "hasn't done any worse then Trump"
isn't it telling that you wouldn't dare say Biden has done any better?
I guess you hoping not to look too foolish!
Have you tried them yet?
Do you feel like your testosterone level is higher now?
A simple google search shows plenty of Biden vs. Trump comparisons out there.
https://www.investopedia.com/comparing-the-economic-plans-of-trump-and-biden-4843240
https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/analysis/biden-trump-us-policy-china
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Donald-Trump-vs-Joe-Biden
But facts are meaningless to trolls, especially facts like Trump lost to Biden by over 7 million votes in 2020, 74,216,154 to 81,268,924.
Go tan your testies and pray it helps you act more like a man and less like a troll.
Looks like the next poll may show Biden's approval at near-zero.
Well, he'll always have Jull and Hunter.
President Biden is also lucky to have a dog, because he’s losing friends within his own party while facing midterm combat from Republicans.
Surging inflation has forced Biden to seek ways to generate more oil and natural gas production, to bring down gasoline prices well above $4 per gallon, along with heat and electricity costs that have been soaring as well.
Biden began his presidency with the most aggressive environmental agenda ever in the White House, including a pathway to a no-carbon power sector by 2035.
Yet Biden has accomplished few of his climate goals, with little sign of a breakthrough any time this year.
Meanwhile, climate activists who have strongly supported Biden are now charging him with abandoning the cause, leaving Biden unpopular on both sides of the energy and climate debate.
Late in the day on the Friday before Easter, the Biden administration said it would restart auctions for leases to drill on public land. As a presidential candidate in 2020, Biden vowed to ban new drilling on public land, and a week after he took office he did so, pending a review of the issue. Several states filed suit and Biden backed off, with lease auctions on again, then off again, for the last several months, based on court action.
On April 15, with many people away for the Easter weekend, the Biden administration said it would offer leases on about 144,000 acres of federal land and offshore waterways, a clear break with Biden’s no-drilling stance as a candidate. But the area open to drilling will be just a portion of what it could have opened, and the government will boost the royalty rate drillers must pay by 50%. Biden is trying to please everybody, by offering drillers something rather than nothing, while boosting the fees they must pay for mining on public land.
But he’s satisfying nobody. New leases for future projects won’t do anything to lower energy prices today, and oil executives say the royalty increase could raise costs rather than lower them. They’re frustrated Biden is asking foreign countries such as Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, instead of creating incentives for American companies to produce more.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, accuse Biden of selling out to industry. The Center for Biological Diversity said the plan to move forward with drilling leases is “a reckless failure of climate policy.” The Sierra Club published objections to the Biden move from a number of regional activists, including one who pleaded, “how much more death, destruction and devastation do we have to see before this administration takes action?”
"But facts are meaningless to trolls, especially facts like Trump lost to Biden by over 7 million votes in 2020, 74,216,154 to 81,268,924."
here's a fact you may not like:
we didn't hold a popular vote so it's misleading to say Biden won because he got more votes
everyone knew that's not how we elect Presidents so many in large blue states didn't see the point in coming out
if we had a popular vote those decisions would have been different
by how much?
no one knows
and that's a fact
President Biden and Democrats are losing their grip on young voters.
Millennial and Gen Z voters who were monumental in helping to give former President Trump the heave-ho and give Mr. Biden’s party total control of Washington are losing faith in Democrats’ performance after less than two years, according to a series of polls. The surveys suggest that young voters want more action on their pet issues, including climate change, gun violence and student loans.
“I guess I am really not surprised — especially by the drop off of excitement after 2020,” said Christine Sinicki, chair of the Milwaukee Democrats. “Democrats were running last time against basically Public Enemy No. 1 in Donald Trump.”
“I think 2020 was an unprecedented year,” she said. “It was lots of excitement, and now that excitement has waned and we are developing plans to engage more of our young people.”
It is a tenuous situation for Democrats, who have less than seven months to figure out how to re-energize voters born roughly between 1981 and 2012, without Mr. Trump in office.
Mr. Biden won 65% of 18 to 24-year-olds, and 60% of 18 to 29-year-olds and, according to 2020 exit polls, on his way to becoming the oldest person to assume the presidency.
That support is eroding.
A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Mr. Biden had a negative rating of 21% approval to 58% disapproval on his job performance among 18-to-34-year-olds.
“This is a big drop from a year ago when he had a positive 48 - 42 percent job approval among 18-34-year-olds,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “No doubt he is losing ground with younger voters.”
A Gallup survey released last week also painted a grim picture: Mr. Biden’s approval rating has dropped 20 percentage points among Gen Z and millennial votes since the beginning of 2021.
“As a result, older Americans are now more likely to approve of the president than younger Americans are,” the Gallup poll analysis said.
The new reality is shaping Mr. Biden’s approach. He is leaning more and more on executive orders in an attempt to show he is fighting for the disgruntled youth.
This includes his push to address inequality in the federal government, as well as his recent extension of a moratorium on student loans and flirtation with eliminating some level of student debt.
Ms. Sinicki, who is also a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, said addressing student debt in such a way would “absolutely” inspire young voters.
“I think student debt is one of the top issues - especially for our young people and our young families,” she said. “That would be a turning point.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that Mr. Biden’s use of executive action to cancel some federal student loan debt is “still on the table,” with a decision expected in the months ahead.
It is not the first time Mr. Biden has had to smooth things out with young voters.
Mr. Biden had to build trust with these voters — many of whom had backed democratic socialist Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont — in the 2020 primary election.
Since taking office, Mr. Biden and Democrats have struggled to deliver on key parts of their agenda, thwarted by the inability to keep all their members on the same page. Democrats have been unable to move forward with a partisan voting-rights bill and with Mr. Biden’s $1.75 trillion social-welfare package.
Mr. Biden also has faced a barrage of questions over whether he is mentally fit for the job — as evidenced by far-right commentators mocking him last week for appearing to shake hands with thin air after a speech in North Carolina.
The idea that Democrats have become a bit dated also surfaced in recent reports questioning whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, 88, was too old to do her job, and lingering speculation over whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82, would fulfill her promise to give up the gavel if Democrats shock the political world by holding the House in November.
Ten Democrats have broken ranks with President Biden to side with the GOP over the ending of Title 42, a Trump-era border policy that allows for expedited deportation of migrants and prevents them from seeking asylum.
"Right now, we have a crisis on our southern border. Right now, this administration does not have a plan. I warned them about this months ago," Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said over the weekend. "It’s going to be, to be honest, it’s going to be a crisis on top of a crisis."
Kelly is just one of several Democrats now speaking out against the Biden administration's move, along with the 9 other Democrats.
The list includes Democrats from border states, with fellow Arizona Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, joining Kelly in opposition.
"Arizona communities bear the brunt of the federal government’s failure at our border, so we’re stepping in and protecting border communities by ensuring the Administration works hand-in-hand with local leaders, law enforcement, and non-profits to put a comprehensive, workable plan in place before lifting Title 42," Sinema said of ending the policy.
President Biden has told former President Obama that he is planning to run for reelection in 2024, two sources tell The Hill.
The admission to Obama is the latest indication that Biden is likely to run for a second term, something the president has spoken about publicly.
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday refused to apologize for the White House’s now-debunked claim that Border Patrol agents were whipping Haitian migrants during a confrontation near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Images emerged in September of Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, showing agents on horseback blocking migrants from entering the U.S. and, in one case, grabbing onto a migrant’s shirt.
Many Democrats and media outlets falsely described the agents’ long reins, which they use to control their horses, as "whips."
Psaki at the time slammed what she called "brutal and inappropriate" behavior by Border Patrol agents.
Psaki said: "We’ve watched the photos of Haitians gathering under a bridge, many with families, and the horrific video of the CBP officers on horses using brutal and inappropriate measures against innocent people."
President Biden weighed in on the controversy, saying "those people will pay."
"There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences," Biden said at the time. "There will be consequences."
The agents have since been cleared in the investigation but have been on desk duty since the incident.
Psaki was asked Monday afternoon when the president would apologize to the Border Patrol agents.
Psaki evaded the question, saying that the matter is being handled by the Department of Homeland Security and she could not provide any more updates.
When asked whether she would apologize, Psaki said the investigation into the matter "would play out."
Long gone is the Democratic Party of your parents’ generation. They have morphed and contorted themselves into a political party no longer relatable or recognizable to most of America.
Today’s Democratic Party embraces the extreme gay agenda, rewards the radical socialist movement, shuns sensible voter integrity laws, and caters to the contemptible cancel culture.
Not too long ago there were Democrats who were concerned about the finances of the country. They were affectionately referred to as "Blue Dog Democrats" who were worried about deficits and debt. There is no place for them in today’s Democratic Party. Slidin' Biden and Clueless Kamala just introduced the largest budget ever with the largest tax increase ever requested. There are very few "Blue Dogs" in Congress, and they are on their way to extinction.
Leftist policies have become so extreme, even traditional liberals no longer recognize today’s Democratic party. With never ending mask mandates, mandatory vaccinations, and control of individual self-determination, liberalism has been abandoned.
In the case of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) they have altered their liberal approach to free speech for everyone, no matter what they say. Now the ACLU that first considers if it is an assistance to the progressives. They even went so far as to justify mask mandates, stating, "Far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further them." Really?
Ira Glasser, the outspoken former ACLU Executive Director in January 2022 told Bill Maher, ""The ACLU has become … more of a political partisan, what they call ‘progressive’ organization."
Today’s Democratic Party prioritizes illegal entry into the USA while abandoning the rule of law. They fight for the suspected and convicted criminals while ignoring the victims.
Often you will hear Democrats refer to rural America with contempt, labeling them as clinging to their guns and their religion while simultaneously lumping them together as uneducated. Rarely do you here them talk about "middle America" nor express a genuine understanding of what life is like outside of New York, Washington, and San Francisco.
Bill Hogseth, chair of the Dunn County Democratic Party in Wisconsin, in 2020 wrote in Politico, "The pain and struggle in my community is real, yet rural people do not feel it is taken seriously by the Democratic Party. My fear is that Democrats will continue to blame rural voters for the red-sea electoral map and dismiss these voters as backward."
Democrats are losing blue collar workers, parents, young voters, Hispanics, etc. It is difficult to find an area of growth for Democrats today.
It is policy that is repelling the voters. Inflation, energy, foreign policy, immigration, taxes, crime, and extreme positions on mask mandates, gender, and education all are driving people away from the Democratic Party.
Beyond the policy positions, they also lack dynamic leadership. Clinton and Obama were charismatic personalities that brought people into the party. Not anymore.
Slidin' Biden was supposed to be a uniter, a man with a plan, and a seasoned senator who could get things done in Congress. None of those turned out to be true. Combined with his poor communication skills, and a Vice President who speaks incoherently, there is not much hope for the Democratic Party’s future. They have failed to build a bench of upcoming leaders that relates to anyone outside New York and San Francisco.
With policy that lurched to the far left and leadership that is aging out, today’s Democratic Party is dead. While the leaders of the Democratic Party wonder out loud, "Why don’t they like us more," most Americans understand today’s party is no longer offers them a home.
Disney is slipping … going light to dark. Think J.R.R. Tolkien … East of Gondor, south of Mirkwood, lies Mordor, the “land of shadows” in Tolkien’s make-believe world. A Black Gate is guarded by Towers of Teeth, and what could be good is bad. Disney is slipping toward Mordor, away from innocence, goodness, and light. Disney is now Communist China’s ally, promoter of social dysfunction, place of fear, and trepidation for parents who want healthy children. Why?
First, Disney went “woke,” pushing adult themes on little children, abnormal as normal, infusing what was happy, innocent entertainment with darkness, leftist jargon, and characters.
Then, Disney moved into a tight relationship with Communist China’s government. That relationship, well documented, involves revenues from contracts with a government guilty of heinous human rights violations and seems to be encouraging Chinese content in America.
Now, we see something stranger still. Parents fear for young children and feel under siege. They witness leftist, power-centering, coercive policies pushed into public schools. Media and government push what – only a few years ago and objectively – is inappropriate content.
When parents speak at school board meetings, the Biden Justice Department investigates them under the rubric of “terrorism.” Parents discover Marxist curricula, Critical Race Theory, sexual misinformation, open disenfranchisement of girls, and mass erosion of Title 9 gains.
In Florida, parents have finally stood up – and said “enough!” They banded together and asked the governor to protect young children in public schools – kindergarten to third grade. They wanted an end to lessons causing children fear, confusion, and doubt about gender, sexuality, and identity.
How many little children do you know, or ever in time knew, know those words – as they were taught to read, write, do math, and gain confidence? None until now.
Even worse, parents were told they had to shut up, no remedy. Their kids were being taught that they might not be boys or girls, after all – not what God, science, history, common sense, and parents teach, but fungible and, worse, fixable. Confusing does not begin to reflect the anger parents feel.
All this would worry any parent because it steals parental prerogatives, what parents are there to do – teach and nurture, love and educate, and morally ground their children. That is not the job of a politically motivated, morally indifferent, or openly immoral government of a company.
So, Florida’s parents and governor passed a law to stop the government from teaching little children to question their sexuality, gender, or life identities, ending political and wrong-headed life lessons.
The state restored parents’ long-held rights, including when and in what way to speak and teach, medically and morally educate, protect, and advance their children’s lives.
Sensible, except here comes Disney. Disney – once “motherhood and apple pie” – now seems in league with those advancing profoundly inappropriate questions for little children, causing them to question political and sexual identities, in effect grooming, cultivating, and indoctrinating the young.
Disney slammed parents and the governor for preserving parental rights in areas as important to child development as it gets, that being security, identity, and proper timing for understanding sexuality.
The real question is why? Why did Disney decide to advocate for child confusion, moral depredation, misinformation, and miseducation, using their longtime positive image to drag children into Mordor, a place of worry, fear, confusion, and questioning of their parents?
How did a paragon of virtue, a place of relief and entertainment, a company known for supplanting worry with hope, fear with joy, anxiety with jubilation – become the reverse, a source of an attack on families, parents, childhood security, and a place of anxiety, worry, and political correctness?
Children in America are suffering from social isolation, COVID aftereffects, and suspension of traditional educational grounding. They are being cared for by stressed parents in an age of political histrionics, a unique blend of insecurity. The last thing they need is to be told they should question if they are, in fact, a boy or girl.
And the last thing parents need is to fight a company once a wholesome source of comfort and entertainment for children – suddenly leveraging that relationship to push politics and sex.
Bluntly, leftists in government and detractors of family rights and childhood security in the corporate world are working to shape children and undermine childhood security, confidence, and social peace. This woke business model must stop.
Disney has lost its way. The time is now for those who think this way to stop. Parents have the right to raise their children, protect them, and guide their education in personal and sexual matters. In no world – not even J.R.R. Tolkien’s darkest Mordor – are little children used as social experiments. Parents across America are right – Disney’s new identity is wrong.
The courts have ruled that there is no scientific basis for mask mandates and the Slidin' Biden administration will continue to fight science until the voters kick Dems out of Congress in November.
Jolly good show.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it will appeal the ruling that lifted the federal mask mandate on planes, trains and transit systems, pending a decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the order is still required for public health.
In the day since a federal judge in Florida struck down the CDC’s requirement, numerous airlines and public transit systems have announced that masks were optional.
"The Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disagree with the district court’s decision and will appeal, subject to CDC’s conclusion that the order remains necessary for public health," the Justice Department said in a statement.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the travel mask mandate was unlawful.
"The Department continues to believe that the order requiring masking in the transportation corridor is a valid exercise of the authority Congress has given CDC to protect the public health," the Justice Department said in a statement. "That is an important authority the Department will continue to work to preserve."
Appealing also comes with risks. While Mizelle's decision brought national enforcement of the mandate to a halt, it carries little national precedent. But if her ruling were allowed to remain by a circuit court, it could further hamper the federal government's authority to issue a mandate in the future.
The CDC’s mask mandate, which was enacted in February 2021 to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, was most recently extended through May 3.
Ahead of the most recent extension last week, the country's largest airlines lobbied the federal government to let the mandate expire. They argued that enforcement has become difficult and that mandates in cities and states across the country were being lifted.
Maybe it’s time to end the mask mandate for airplanes, trains and public transport. Maybe it’s prudent to keep it in place. I’m not sure, but I do know this: That decision should be made by federal policymakers — not by a single district court judge who was ideologically predisposed to strike down the mask rule and who then contorted the law to achieve that goal.
Another day, another activist Trump judge legislating from the bench.
This latest is Kathryn Kimball Mizelle of Tampa. She was one of the last Trump judges to be confirmed, in an unusual vote by the lame-duck Senate after President Donald Trump lost reelection, and, at 33, his youngest judicial nominee. A member of the Federalist Society and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, Mizelle was deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association because of “the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience.”
Now she’s on the bench for life. On Monday, she ruled that the Biden administration lacked the authority to impose the mask mandate.
"On Monday, she ruled that the Biden administration lacked the authority to impose the mask mandate"
she cited the precise wording of the law Congress used
tell us how she's wrong
"That decision should be made by federal policymakers — not by a single district court"
judges routinely determine if agencies have exceeded their authority under the law
you seem to disagree with the separation of powers
say, is there any part of the Constitution you feel you can live with?
As Joe Biden’s presidential approval numbers continue to slip, it is reasonable to ask at what point is the Biden administration politically unsalvageable.
The clear evidence is that the Biden policies are not working well for most, including for Biden voters. A trend of buyer’s remorse is developing among young, independent, women (you don’t have to be a biologist to read poll numbers either), and minority voters.
Tellingly, Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign pollster, John Anzalone, is lowering expectations ahead of the bloodbath by saying it is "the worst political environment" he’s seen in three decades. Democrats on the Hill have doubled down on the most radically left policy agenda including cheerleading the end of American energy independence, inflation-inducing runaway government spending and a cornucopia of perverse woke cultural oddities.
Even if a voter likes the new lefty policies, the overall numbers are sobering.
A Quinnipiac poll released last week has only 33 percent of Americans approving of Biden’s job performance—the lowest approval rating in his presidency. It’s even worse among crucial independent voters, of whom only 26 percent approve of Biden. Biden has now strung together three quarters of dangerously low approvals.
Presidents have rebounded from low numbers in the past, but the longer he stays at or below 40 percent, the more Democrats on the Hill will abandon him and his pet projects. In fact, there is already a clear trend of Democrats in tough races not inviting Biden or Harris to campaign alongside them. The next step will be shrewd Republicans finding precious video footage of Biden with said Democrat candidates. That video will be somewhat tough to find with a president who hides out more than hangs out.
Other strategists have echoed similar concerns to Anzalone. Former Hillary Clinton pollster Mark Penn called Biden’s numbers "spectacularly low" and speculated that his record disapproval makes Biden’s re-election a "virtual impossibility." In diving through Gallup presidential approvals for the last 5 plus decades, both Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter seem like fitting models. However, President Bill Clinton, who was elected with a minority of Americans but still managed to win a second term, should be their model. After attempting to socialize healthcare and using his office to satisfy his base, he found himself with dangerously low approvals. Voters in 1994 flocked to Republicans no matter how marginal.
Practiced at begging for mulligans, Clinton famously went to Congress to proclaim "the era of big government is over," and hired an infamous Republican strategist to help him run against Washington, Democrats in Congress, and the status quo. The lesson from Clinton was there is redemption but only with hard turn to the center right.
The strategy was less successful for one-termers Johnson and Carter. Carter’s economic failures combined with a perceived weakness towards the twin evils of an expansionist Soviet Union and a terrorist theocratic Iranian regime and our hostages in their grip, sealed his fate.
Johnson was one of the most able politicians of his age and had been the Master of the Senate. But the presidency and its previous occupant dwarfed the public image of LBJ.
Biden, who has been in elected office his entire adult life, has long pined for the presidency. He now has the role he always wanted, but the bad habits that ended previous presidencies have combined with the ravages of the clock. Even those who admire him must wince when they see him dazed and confused at public events.
This is not a good moment for the presidency.
Johnson knew the uphill battle he faced. With an unpopular war and terrible approval numbers, he made the decision himself to pull the cord and not seek reelection. Candidly, it is difficult to imagine Biden understanding his situation well enough to make a similar decision. The unique question with Biden is will team Obama eventually determine that the Biden gig is up? After all, they played the biggest role in promoting Biden and seem to populate the big jobs in his administration. Team Obama’s incentive is to keep up appearances and run the show, but how much longer can the public circus continue?
Regardless of the palace intrigue at the White House, President Biden is in as bad political shape as any post World War II president. There are no scenarios that can salvage Democrat losses in November. Democrats will be rejected by voters because their policies are so radical that they can’t even survive school board elections in San Francisco. It is simply too much, and most Americans are tired of the war waged by the culture elites on the goodness of America and the necessity of her founding.
If sizable losses in November are inevitable, the important question is what lesson will be learned. Will the Socialist Democrats take the losses as a rejection of their policies, or simply as speed bump on their road to transforming America?
Will Biden realize after the midterms that his political future is over and choose the Johnson course, or will he go down in a historic defeat like Carter? Perhaps he will wake up and realize that America is a center-right country and choose the Clinton course. I wouldn’t put my money on him rejecting socialism but, for the sake of the country, I hope he does
for regurgitating fox new opinion crap for us.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-polling-democrats-midterms-matt-schlapp
"for regurgitating fox new opinion crap for us"
it's very revelatory that the only argument you have against anything Fox News says is....nothing
you have no way to respond to their very factual story
so you just say "Fox News"
it's called demagoguery and very common among radical progressives
when conservatives read some ridiculous crap from AOC or the Bern, they carefully explain why it's wrong
because they can
when radical progressives read a story from Fox News they don't carefully explain why it's wrong
because they can't
very revelatory
I'm sure everyone can see that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah tore into President Joe Biden's management of inflation on Wednesday, torching the administration's handling of the economy and inflation as Americans grapple with the worst price hikes in decades.
"President Biden needs to ditch his woke advisers and surround himself with people who want to get the economy working again," Romney wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
He blamed the Biden administration for stoking inflation with a stimulus law that issued "stay-at-home" checks for Americans, and citing moves like oil and gas production limits and a pro-union stance. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
A former GOP presidential nominee, Romney remains a fairly staunch conservative on economic and foreign policy. The Utah Republican said in his op-ed he favors Congress establishing a bipartisan commission to "rescue our federal entitlement programs from impending collapse."
He has cut a more centrist path in recent years in other areas, particularly when it comes to opposing former President Donald Trump. Romney was famously the first senator in American history to vote to convict a president of his own party facing impeachment.
Since Biden took office, Romney was just one of just three GOP votes to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, one of 17 Republicans to vote for Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure plan, and one of six Republicans to vote for an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attacks.
"I mean it sincerely — but I want to thank three Republicans who voted for Judge Jackson," Biden said outside of the White House on April 8 while celebrating Jackson's historic confirmation. "And Mitt Romney, whose dad stood up like he did. His dad stood up and made these decisions on civil rights."
Romney's push to make Biden more moderate on economic policy underlines a growing Republican talking point. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently said that if the GOP retakes the Senate they will "make sure Joe Biden is a moderate."
Romney's attacks illustrate how Republicans want to use historic inflation to bash Democrats ahead of November's midterm elections. The Consumer Price Index, a closely-watched inflation gauge, rose 8.5% year-over-year in March, the biggest one-year surge in 40 years.
Axios reported this week that Republican lawmakers have mentioned inflation six times more than Democrats since January 1.
"In any crisis situation, the first three rules are focus, focus and focus," Romney writes. "President Biden's domestic focus must be on inflation."
Former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said on Tuesday she hopes Slidin' Biden acts on his reported admission to Barack Obama that he plans to run for reelection in 2024 at age 82.
Bachmann, a star of the Tea Party movement, said Biden undoubtedly will be in "negative territory" poll-wise by then, given his continuing slippage in popularity.
"He totally means it – that's what nobody can believe. He totally means this," she said of questions about whether his reported admission to Obama is true.
"And I say, have at it -- he's losing millions of votes a month. If you figure he got 81 million in the 2020 election [and] what his approval ratings are right now, he's been steadily, slowly but surely losing millions and millions and millions a month. So by the time he gets to2024, he's going to be in negative territory."
In that case, she remarked, Republicans couldn't ask for a bigger gift from the Democrats: "I'm all for it."
The interviewer referenced the Democratic presidential bench of potential candidates, which, depending on the current analysis, includes Vice President Harris, USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas Wolf, and former New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu.
"Have you seen a thinner bench?" he asked Bachmann, noting that no one in such a list "excites" as much as the Tea Partiers did for the GOP a decade ago.
The host went on to play several clips of Slidin' Biden, including a 2019 statement at a Wilmington pool where he recounted having "hairy legs that turn blond in the sun" as a youth lifeguard, as well as a statement from a 2020 campaign debate about "making sure kids have the record player on at night."
"No, there is nobody over there," Bachmann said of the Democratic Party's future prospects. "But nobody in the Biden White House seems to upset about the fact that the United States of America's economy is literally falling apart. Our presence on the world stage is literally falling apart. The president isn't breaking a sweat about it."
"This is weird. You have a president that is completely disconnected with the people that he's leading."
Thank you, Mr. President,
I didn't expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd district had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself. So I sat on it for a while, wondering why me, and then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow hateful scheme, because you can't claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of quote, parental rights if another parent is standing up to say ‘no.’ So then what?
Then you dehumanize and marginalize me. You say that I'm one of them. You say, ‘she's a groomer. She supports pedophilia. She wants children to believe that they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they're white.’
Well, here's a little bit of background about who I really am. Growing up, my family was very active in our church. I sang in the choir. My mom taught CCD. One day, our priest called a meeting with my mom and told her that she was not living up to the church's expectations and that she was disappointing. My mom asked why. Among other reasons, she was told it was because she was divorced and because the priest didn't see her at mass every Sunday.
So where was my mom on Sundays? She was at the soup kitchen with me. My mom taught me at a very young age that Christianity and faith was about being part of a community; about recognizing our privilege and blessings; and doing what we can to be of service to others, especially people who are marginalized, targeted, and who had less often unfairly.
I learned that service was far more important than performative nonsense, like being seen in the same pew every Sunday or writing Christian in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to target and marginalize already marginalized people. I also stand on the shoulders of people like father Ted Hesburgh, the longtime president of the University of Notre Dame, who was active in the Civil Rights Movement, who recognized his power and privilege as a white man, a faith leader, and the head of an influential and well-respected institution. And who saw Black people in this country being targeted and discriminated against and beaten and reached out to lock arms with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was alive, when it was unpopular and risky, and marching, alongside them to say, ‘we've got you.’ To offer protection and service and allyship to try to write the wrongs and fix injustice in the world.
So who am I? I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slave slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense. No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery, but each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. Each and every single one of us decides what happens next and how we respond to history and the world around us.
We are not responsible for the past. We all also cannot change the past. We can't pretend that it didn't happen or deny people their very right to exist. I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom. I want my daughter to know that she is loved, supported, and seen for whoever she becomes. I want her to be curious, empathetic, and kind.
People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment or that healthcare costs are too high or that teachers are leaving the profession. I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight white and Christian. We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people's lives. And I know that hate will only win, if people like me stand by, let it happen.
So I want to be very clear right now. Call me whatever you want. I hope you brought in a few dollars. I hope it made you sleep good last night. I know who I am. I know what faith and service means and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win.
Mallory, grow up
President Joe Biden’s standing among Americans is embarrassingly bad. According to a Quinnipiac poll released last week, when asked if they “approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president,” a meager 33% of respondents said they approved, 54% expressed disapproval, and 13% said they didn’t know or had no opinion.
As you might expect, the numbers are different depending on which party a respondent belonged to, with far more Democrats giving the President the thumbs up than Republicans. The real telling number though was among Independent voters, where only 25% approved of the job Mr. Biden is doing.
Independent voters will be the real decision-makers in upcoming elections, so one has to wonder, how is it that only one out of four think our President is doing his job? What happened?
*** ALERT Biden got 255,000 ‘excess’ votes in fraud-tainted swing states in 2020, study finds***
To answer that question, the logical place to start would be to understand American priorities. An IBD/TIPP poll this past week asked Americans to select the country’s top three economic issues. There were no surprises.
The number one response was gasoline prices. That was selected as one of the top three by 51% of respondents. The average driver in the United States drives 14,263 miles annually. Taking into consideration an average fuel economy of 24.2 miles per gallon and the current price of gas, each driver will spend an extra $800 this year. It is easy to understand why that is a priority for people.
The second most chosen economic issue was inflation. Forty-six percent chose inflation among their biggest concerns. The latest CPI report shows that prices increased 8.5% year over year. That is the highest jump since 1981, meaning for about half of Americans, it is the highest inflation in their lifetime. A paycheck doesn’t go as far when you are paying a lot more than you used to, for the exact same thing.
The third most concerning item for people asked about the American economy was food prices. Thirty-seven percent listed skyrocketing food prices among their three. A family can choose whether or not to buy a new car or take that Disney vacation, but no one gets to choose whether or not to eat.
Ironically all three are related. When the price of gas goes up, it is a major factor in driving inflation. It costs more to deliver any product, or even any ingredient in any product during production, thus, the end product must charge more to recoup its costs and make a profit. This is especially true for food. It costs more for the farmer to raise crops or livestock. It costs more to get the food to the wholesale market. It costs more to distribute and stock any item, all of which means it costs more at the cash register.
If gas prices were still $1.89 a gallon as they were during Trump’s final year in office, we wouldn’t be seeing the same jump in costs for virtually everything else. What happened?
Joe Biden happened.
Actions have consequences. Immediately upon taking office as President, Mr. Biden pulled an administrative dirty trick and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. That meant any plans to get regular oil shipped safely into the United States from Canada were gone. Next Mr. Biden stopped oil and gas leases on federal lands. More than 20% of fuels produced in the United States come from federal lands.
Oddly, at the same time, Mr. Biden gave his blessing to the completion of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany.
Mr. Biden inherited an energy-independent country from President Trump. Mr. Trump’s policies effectively meant that no longer was the United States subject to the whims of OPEC or other oil-producing nations. By reversing Mr. Trump’s policies, Mr. Biden managed to make the U.S. energy-dependent again within 16 months. At the same time Mr. Biden vilified domestic production, America imported more from Russia, simultaneously filling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war chest with the proceeds. That’s a double whammy from Mr. Biden’s policies.
America was the number one producer on the planet, but that was nixed by Mr. Biden and the result was less oil and gas on the world markets. Less supply means higher prices. From inauguration day until the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, gasoline prices in the United States shot up 48%. If you consider the average price during Mr. Trump’s final year in office that increase was even higher.
The Biden administration tells us all of this was done in the name of saving the planet from the doom of global warming. No one will be able to afford food or gas, but somehow these actions will save us. Greenies haven’t been real clear on the end result or when we can expect it, but trust them, they are saving the world, one-tenth of a degree per decade at a time.
How does America feel about that logic? Record gas prices? Record inflation? Not good. In fact, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly want the US to be energy independent again. When asked if they agreed with the following statement, “The United States should pursue energy independence even if it means relying on domestic fossil fuels at the expense of climate change priorities,” 64% of Americans agreed somewhat or strongly. Twelve percent were unsure.
That leaves less than one in four Americans that think jacking up your gas prices, home fuel, car costs and grocery bills are just part of the price society must pay for an ill-defined battle against climate change.
Broken out by party affiliation, 73% of Republicans want energy independence. So do 68% of Democrats. Sixty percent of Independents feel the same way.
After two years of denying that his policies had anything to do with higher gas prices, Mr. Biden announced a reversal of course on one major item, allowing a resumption of leasing for oil and gas drilling on federal lands. He also put through an emergency order allowing the sale of ethanol in fuel at a 15% blend, which environmentalists have long howled will damage the earth.
Mr. Biden’s policies have created results that have caused his popularity, and that of his party, to plummet. Does this recent reversal mean he is now willing to sacrifice his core constituency of radical environmental leftists in an effort to try and win back some more moderate friends? The problem for Mr. Biden is that his sudden reversal is a tacit admission that it was his own misguided policies that caused the problem in the first place.
More action is necessary of course. Sixteen Republican state attorneys general want the Biden administration to reverse course and resume construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Getting energy from Canada seems more stable than from Venezuela or Iran.
Mr. Biden can’t help himself, however. His administration announced Tuesday it reimplemented core protections to an environmental law on infrastructure projects, a climate-related regulation that former President Trump had rolled back.
So after spending two years spouting off about the absolute imminent necessity of infrastructure projects throughout the United States, Mr. Biden now is making them more expensive and slower to achieve.
The bottom line is this: Only one in three Americans think Mr. Biden is doing his job. Most are hurting at the gas pump, at the grocery store and in everyday life. An overwhelming number want energy independence for the United States so our nation can control our own destiny and economy.
Despite all of that Mr. Biden has prioritized global warming above all else. A recent Rasmussen poll showed only 4% of Americans put climate change at the top of their priority list, but Mr. Biden, John Kerry and the liberal media don’t care. They are convinced they know better than you or me or hundreds of millions of Americans. They would literally rather see Americans suffer and have a decreased quality of life than take a step back from the cult of global warming.
What happened to America? Joe Biden happened, that’s what.
With redistricting wrapping up nationwide, candidate recruitment nearly done and fundraising for the fall already going gangbusters, the fight for the House majority can now be seen with some degree of clarity. And the picture is a dire one for Democrats.
On Wednesday, two nonpartisan political handicappers issued new House race ratings, moving a slew of seats into more vulnerable categories for Democrats.
"President Biden's approval rating remains stuck at 42 percent, and if anything the political environment has deteriorated for Democrats since January as inflation concerns have soared and Build Back Better has stalled," wrote David Wasserman, the House editor for the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. "That means no Democrat in a single-digit Biden (or Trump-won) district is secure, and even some seats Biden carried by double-digit margins in 2020 could come into play this fall, giving the GOP surprising 'reach' opportunities."
To back up that analysis, Wasserman moved eight Democratic-held seats into more a competitive territory -- including two seats held by Nevada Democrats (Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford) and Virginia's Abigail Spanberger into its "toss up" category.
The Cook Political Report now has 27 Democratic-held seats in its "toss up" category or worse, as compared to just 12 similarly rated seats for Republicans. (Wasserman adds that once redistricting processes conclude in New Hampshire and Florida, those numbers are likely to get worse for Democrats.)
The story is the same at the University of Virginia Center for Politics' "Crystal Ball," which shifted race ratings for 11 seats on Wednesday -- all in favor of Republicans. Those moves include moving four GOP-held seats from "likely Republican" to "safe Republican," as well as moving seven Democratic-held seats into more electoral jeopardy.
"Our main question about the House continues to be not whether Republicans will flip the House — although we would not completely shut the door on Democrats' retaining control if the political environment improves markedly — but rather how big the Republicans' eventual majority will be," wrote UVA's Kyle Kondik.
These changes come amid a political environment that looks bad -- and may be getting worse -- for Democrats. As Wasserman pointed out, Biden's approval ratings are hovering around the low 40s -- or worse. Inflation is at a 40-year high. Gas prices remain elevated -- although they have come down from highs reached late last month. And as I wrote here, Biden is facing a revolt from his own party on his administration's decision to rescind Title 42, a public health measure that has allowed border patrol agents to turn away migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
The new ratings also land in a historical context that looks equally bad for Democrats. As Nathan Gonzales, who runs the nonpartisan Inside Elections tipsheet, has noted, the president's party has lost an average of 30 House seats in midterm elections over the last 100 years.
Those numbers -- as documented by Gallup -- are even more daunting when the president is unpopular. As of 2018, the average seat loss for the president's party when his approval rating is below 50% was 37 seats. (Presidents with job approval over 50% saw their party lose an average of 14 seats in the midterm elections.)
There are 202 days left before Election Day 2022. Which is, in theory, enough time for Democrats to change the trajectory of the political environment. But it's hard to see how they would go about doing that. And right now, things look pretty bleak.
President Biden is ordering all agencies in the federal bureaucracy to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” That language, from a March 2021 executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” may sound benign. It isn’t, and it may conceal an abuse of power. The administration is making it difficult for the public to find out.
Promoting voter registration and participation—i.e., mobilizing voters—is an inherently political act for a partisan president. The resulting efforts can be directed at groups expected to vote for the president’s party and may take the form of pressure to support the party or its policies. A president has every right to sway potential voters on the campaign trail. He has no right to influence them using the force of the federal government.
The Constitution doesn’t grant the president authority over federal elections. It reserves that power to the states and to a lesser extent Congress. Mr. Biden’s order ignores that prohibition by expanding the role of federal agencies in elections. Congress hasn’t approved such an expansion, and election legislation Mr. Biden backs is stuck in the Senate.
The White House refuses to release the plans that various agencies created under the executive order. Agencies submitted their plans by September, yet the administration has provided only overviews of slightly more than a dozen, with little detail. Their full plans should be available, and so should those of hundreds of other agencies. With the federal government throwing its weight behind voter registration and participation, Americans have a right to see what it’s doing and which voters it’s targeting, especially with crucial midterm elections in November.
In July, the Foundation for Government Accountability submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to key agencies covered by the executive order. That includes the Justice Department—specifically the Civil Rights Division and its Voting Rights Section—as well as agencies overseeing welfare programs. Many of these programs, including food stamps and Medicaid, have recently been expanded to cover more people, who may therefore be more receptive to rewarding the administration with their votes.
Our FOIA requests focused on agencies named in a December 2020 plan by the left-wing group Demos, which bears a striking resemblance to the president’s order. Demos urged the incoming administration to turn the bureaucracy into “voter registration agencies.”
Not a single agency has provided the documents we’ve requested, and most of them haven’t responded at all. The Justice Department is a case in point. It blew past the federal requirement that it acknowledge our FOIA request within 20 days. The only note we have received—more than 200 days after we filed, and only after we followed up—indicated that our request was referred to additional staff. The department hasn’t invoked any legal exemptions, requested more time, or asked that we narrow the scope of our request, as the law requires. More than nine months after we asked for its voting-rights plans and related communications with the White House, we are still in the dark. So is America.
This week we are filing a lawsuit that seeks to right this wrong. Having exhausted all other legal remedies, we are asking the federal courts to compel the Justice Department to turn over the documents we requested within three weeks, thereby ensuring that Americans can learn if anything inappropriate is happening before they cast their midterm ballots. We aren’t yet filing suit against other agencies in the hope that a federal ruling in our favor will spur them to follow the Justice Department lead.
The administration’s stonewalling is an insult to Americans and a potential threat to election integrity. The president has no authority to push such voter registration and mobilization efforts and no right to withhold the details from the public. Americans deserve transparency and trust in the outcome of our elections.
Democrats celebrated the confirmation of the nation’s first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court at the White House earlier this month. And when Justice Stephen Breyer retires in June and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is officially seated on the high court, there will likely be more festivities to highlight this historic pick – 2022 is an election year after all. Democrats should enjoy the party. Not only is Jackson the first justice they have confirmed in 12 years but, thanks to a blockade by Republicans and structural bias that favors them holding power in the Senate, she could be the last justice seated by Democrats for many years to come.
Republicans are likely to take back the Senate this fall, with Democrats defending seats in swing states Biden narrowly won or where his approval ratings are now profoundly underwater: Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Because of those polls, pickups in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, or Wisconsin look like fantasy.
Two years from now Democrats face a terrible map and will be defending red-state or swing-state incumbents in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, West Virginia, and Montana. Population and voting trends will make it increasingly difficult for Democrats to win and control the Senate. Ticket-splitting is declining, and Democrats aren’t likely to hold Senate seats in red states much longer. Republicans have an advantage winning Senate seats in less populous areas and can hold power with only 43% of the cumulative national vote total, according to a Daily Kos study of two decades of Senate vote totals. Analysis by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service projects half of the U.S. population will reside in the nine states of New York, California, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, and Florida by 2040 and will be represented by less than a quarter of the Senate.
In addition to their electoral advantage, Republicans have changed the game when it comes to controlling the Supreme Court, one of their top priorities as a party. While both parties have indulged a partisan corrosion of the process for confirming Supreme Court justices in recent years, the Republicans’ initiation of a blockade in 2016 has likely altered it forever.
Sen. Mitch McConnell said that if the GOP controls the Senate next cycle there will be no vacancy filled in 2024, and he refused to comment on how he would handle a vacancy in 2023. “I choose not to answer the question,” he said when asked by Axios. Political observers credit McConnell with many victories, tactical and strategic. He has succeeded in helping transform the court into a conservative branch of government, through thousands of decisions and efforts large and small. Yet his greatest achievement, if one wants to call it that, was blocking Merrick Garland in 2016 during President Obama’s last year in office.
McConnell, who paid no political price for his intransigence, has changed the paradigm. Confirming Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election was appropriate, McConnell rationalized, because the judge was nominated by a president from his party. He couldn’t allow Garland a hearing because it was an election year when Republicans controlled the Senate and a Democrat was in the White House. In 2023, which is not an election year, McConnell just won’t feel like it.
His lieutenants are on the same page. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is running for reelection at age 88, will chair the Judiciary Committee next year if he wins, and he’s heavily favored. Grassley refused to speculate about future appointments, pretending “that would be like me hoping somebody’s going to die on the Supreme Court,” though Grassley knows full well that some justices do retire before their death – it just happened.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chaired the Judiciary Committee until Democrats took back the majority in January of 2021, said (of a vacancy next year), “I don’t know. We’ll just cross that bridge when we get there.” Graham declared Jackson wouldn’t have gotten a hearing in a Republican Senate. “She would not have been before this committee. You would have somebody more moderate than this,” he said.
The idea that Republicans would allow the confirmation of a moderate judge to the high court is laughable. Garland was a moderate choice and Jackson was confirmed on a bipartisan vote last year for the circuit court with Graham’s support. When the time comes, what qualifies a Democratic-nominated judge as a “liberal activist” will be in the eye of the Republican beholder.
When asked about McConnell’s refusal to commit to a regular process in 2023, Sen. Joe Manchin said “That’s so wrong. I think that’s our responsibility. We take an oath of office to do our job,” and added: “I just hope he doesn’t mean that.” But Manchin, and every other Democrat, and every Republican, knows that McConnell means it.
It does seem bold that Republicans would, essentially, admit in advance that a permanent blockade is in the works for next year, and perhaps forever, when it comes to Democratic-nominated judges to the high court. Manchin’s right: It is so wrong. And that would be a powerful message for Democrats in the midterm elections this fall, but their party has never prioritized the court, and so they face long-term minority status there. Plus, these days Democrats wouldn’t know a winning message if it hit them in the nose.
Democrats’ path to saving their narrow Senate majority comes down to defending four states this fall. And in all of them, President Joe Biden is underwater in the polls.
Biden’s drag on swing-state incumbents is emerging as a pivotal factor in the midterm Senate elections, where the loss of just one Democratic-held seat in November could put Republicans in control.
Acutely aware of the need to get distance from the president, the four most endangered Democratic incumbents — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan — are increasingly taking steps to highlight their independence from the president and underscore their differences.
Their public pushback against Biden’s plan to lift the Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 is the most visible expression of the effort to get distance from the president. But the four Democrats are also finding other ways of signaling to voters. They’ve visited the border wall and blocked his nominees. A month before a Trump-appointed judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate on mass transit, three of the four voted in favor of a Republican bill to do just that.
On social media, where they shy away from praise of the president and instead focus on their efforts to prod the White House to action, it’s hard to tell they’ve voted in line with Biden no less than 96 percent of the time.
“In these four states, these are senators just doing the work, keeping their head down, getting things done for their states while the Republicans are obviously tearing each other apart in these primaries,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic ad maker who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“They are not people who go looking for conflict, they’re not grandstanders. They’re hard working senators willing to say, ‘Yes, I agree with Biden on child tax credits or health care, but look, I’ve got an issue on this issue, or that issue.’”
Less than two years ago, Biden carried Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire. Today, however, his approval rating is dangerously low in each of them. In Nevada, a Suffolk University poll released last week put the president’s approval rating at an anemic 35 percent.
Numbers like that explain why the four senators haven’t mentioned Biden or touted the Democratic brand in their ads this year. Nor have the liberal outside groups buying television spots on their behalf tied them to Biden. In Nevada, when the Democratic super PAC American Bridge launched an ad Tuesday praising Biden’s accomplishments, there was no mention of Cortez Masto, the Democratic senator atop the ticket this year.
Both Warnock and Kelly have declined to answer questions about whether they would welcome Biden campaigning with them. But, when presented with the opportunity Tuesday, Hassan chose to welcome him, appearing with the president on Tuesday in Portsmouth, where he touted passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill — and her role in passing it. Afterward, Hassan tweeted that she would continue to work with Biden and her “colleagues on both sides of the aisle” to deliver results for constituents.
The event stood in stark contrast to Hassan’s recent visit to Texas and Arizona, where she filmed a video in front of the border wall, calling on the Biden administration to provide more resources to the Border Patrol and to improve “physical barriers” along the border.
“Her going to the Texas border, standing in front of Donald Trump’s wall and calling for more border infrastructure is a lot more than just concern for Title 42. It shows the serious issues that she has with voters,” said Dave Carney, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire, who is working for Republican Chuck Morse’s Senate campaign.
“It’s not that I think she’s in trouble or Republicans think she’s in trouble, she knows she’s in trouble.”
Republicans remain confident that Biden will prove too much of a drag for vulnerable Democratic incumbents — or challengers — to overcome.
Carney joked that Republicans will need to list “President Biden and his policies as a massive in-kind contribution,” calling his presidency “the gift that keeps on giving” and likening his performance to a “‘Saturday Night Live’ parody.”
Alluding to polling suggesting Biden’s erosion among key Democratic constituencies, Chris Wilson, CEO of the polling firm WPA Intelligence, said, “Democrats don’t have the ability to incite the minority vote like they used to.”
Wilson, the pollster for Republican Adam Laxalt’s campaign in Nevada, pointed to both internal and external surveys of likely voters that show he is maintaining a lead over Cortez Masto.
“As you watch Republicans talk about education, when we used to run away from it, and Republicans run massive outreach campaigns to minorities when we’ve done a pretty pathetic job of it the last few cycles — those are going to be game-changers for us,” he said
That's quite a reaction to Sen. McMorrow's take down of GOPer lies.
Look at all that right wing crap you posted above in response to it.
Your fear is as palpable as your hatred for some of God's creations.
I actually didn't respond to McMorrow's comments that you pasted here
the truth is that the GOP is making the point that exposing the youngest children to a homosexual perspective conditions them to consider it a foregone conclusion
so, technically, this is "grooming" them to develop this perverted viewpoint
I understand that the term has also been used for a specific type of "grooming" in recent years so it may be an unfair rhetorical tactic
it's pretty hard to sympathize, however, since unfair rhetorical tactics and word games describe precisely the Dems' MO and TTFers especially
anyone who voted for Trump is called a white supremacist
anyone who supports voter integrity rules is called an enemy of democracy
anyone who protested the loosening of election rules in 2020 is called an insurrectionist
don't dish it out if you can't take it
...On the state level, Republican lawmakers have focused their energies on crushing LGBTQ rights with "don't say gay" laws, bans on gender-affirming care, and even forcing CPS workers to harass families with trans kids. On the Senate level, Republicans have circled back to the idea of overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. In Tennessee, a bill meant to remake marriage into a straights-only institution has already been filed.
What's notable about all these efforts is that ... Republicans rarely bother to make coherent arguments against LGBTQ rights. Instead, their rhetorical strategy is focused mainly on trolling, primarily in the form of calling anyone who argues against these bigoted policies a "groomer." No one who flings that word around, of course, actually thinks that LGBTQ people and their allies are in a conspiracy to sexually abuse children. It's a pure troll, meant to be so beyond the pale that even responding to it slimes the person falsely accused. Republicans are so excited by this troll that they even used it to smear Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson with similar insinuations during her Senate confirmation hearing. No one believed the accusations — in fact, her approval ratings went up in response — but persuasion is not the point. The point of the troll is to get everyone arguing about the false accusation of "groomer" so that they're not arguing about the real issue here: LGBTQ rights.
Not surprising from a party that is so unable to defend their policy preferences that they got rid of the party platform and have pulled out of nationally televised debates. When Sen. Rick Scott of Florida tried to issue a shadow party platform that called for ending Social Security and raising taxes on disabled people and veterans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded with anger. No one is to puncture the bubble of secrecy that's been established around what Republicans actually stand for. No one knows better than Republican leaders that their actual ideas are indefensible. Instead of trying to defend their ideas, they instead mire the public debate in bullshit and noise through relentless trolling.
It works in no small part because ordinary Republican voters care little about policy, and are mainly focused on tribalistic hatred and resentment of liberals. "Triggering the liberals" is the main reason for being a Republican these days. The new class of Republican leaders are selected mainly for their trolling skills. That's why people like McConnell or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy may be the nominal leaders of the GOP, but the people they answer to are insurrectionist dirtbags like Georgia's Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. These folks have nothing positive to offer the world, but they are extremely good at trolling. The result is that the official party leaders cater to the trolls, letting them set the agenda and never putting up any real resistance to their excesses.
Of course, the most dramatic example of this phenomenon is former president Donald Trump, a man who loves Vladimir Putin and declared on national television that injecting bleach into your lungs might be a good cure for COVID-19. He's a man without conscience and without reading skills beyond the third grade. He is also the god-king of the GOP. He sits on his throne in Mar-A-Lago, watching Republican politicians debase themselves before him to get his approval out of the hope that his trollish grace will result in electoral wins. They don't respect him or like him, but he is a very good troll who reliably triggers the liberals, so they must pay fealty...
America’s supposed racial divide has a class element that we are all supposed to ignore. But for the past two years, I couldn’t ignore the number of media outlets and supposed intellectuals who have discarded the legitimate concerns of the middle class because they, the elite, supposedly know what’s best for us and our children.
The anti-racism movement has come to Main Street, and no one asked for its arrival.
The average American isn’t very ideological because that is a luxury most Americans can’t afford when they’re trying to make ends meet and support their families, unlike the economic and intellectual elite. Men and women who have made their entire careers hypothesizing about the makeup of America never actually listen to Americans.
We recoil listening to their conception of American life for all races. Then the ideologues gaslight us, claiming we fight it because of our hatred of the truth rather than our disgust for radical elitists who find pleasure in telling us how to behave.
Anti-racists use race as a weapon for compliance and domination over the sensibilities of good people. Their intention is to hyper-racialize Americans by having you see all aspects of life through the prism of race — including education for your children. If you are white and choose to resist, you are labeled a white supremacist, and if you are black and resist, you are labeled a sympathetic character for a white-supremacist society. The only solution in their eyes is compliance, not dialogue.
When parents showed up to school-board meetings across the country because they don’t like this vision that has been imposed on their children, the anti-racists slandered them for resisting their new dogma. Critical race theory was also used to overshadow parental complaints about masking their children, inappropriate discussions of sex with their kids and gender ideology.
Take Ibram X. Kendi’s latest piece in The Atlantic, in which he claims the Republican Party is “the party of white supremacy.”
Understand, when anti-racists like Kendi write books and op-eds about their desire to deconstruct America’s white-supremacist social structures, they never discuss deconstructing the one social construct that allows racism to exist: race itself. It’s because “race” for them is a mechanism for power over guilt-riddled white Americans, control over the narrative and political leverage. In many ways, they’re our new cultural gatekeepers.
They are the ones who decide what we discuss and how we discuss it in the mainstream because many of our formerly sacred institutions are run by the elite who have bought into the anti-racist ideology. Elites find a favorable boutique framework of race in America palatable as it distracts from the effects of class privilege in favor of supposed racial privilege — and is always willing to accept money as a form of forgiveness.
America’s “racial reckoning” is being financed by the very people who benefit from there being a class division. If everything negative in our society is rooted in white supremacy, then class warfare will remain invisible and void of discussion.
They want you to believe the resistance from parents throughout America was an organized Republican mass hysteria fueled by white supremacy when much of it was an organic resistance against the credentialed class of ideological educators. It wasn’t an avoidance of uncomfortable American history surrounding race because we’ve always learned about these things in school. Discussing topics like slavery and Jim Crow is commonplace in American high schools.
This was a resistance to an exaggerated ideological framework that is foreign to the uncredentialed underclass. This was a guttural disgust at how the credentialed class, supported by the economic elites, used race essentialism to paint your average white American as inherently immoral and black Americans as victims of their immorality.
Individuality is a hate crime to these anti-racist collectivists. As such, me explaining my personal failures of economic strife and homelessness as not being the “white man’s doing” but a manifestation of my own bad decisions is still not enough to avoid being seen as a victim in their eyes or just another “black face of white supremacy.” They do not want black people to overcome like I was able to because there is more money in pitying black people.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has yet to explain his post-election texts with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that CNN revealed last week. Those texts contradict his public statements that he was surprised in early January when told of Trump lawyer John Eastman’s plot to undermine the election; instead, they detail his intense effort to compel state legislatures to provide “something” that would contravene the will of the voters.
Rather than explain his conduct, Lee is hiding from the media. His home-state paper, the Salt Lake Tribune, reports, “Sen. Mike Lee refused to answer questions on Tuesday about recently published text messages that offer detail on his role at the center of a plot to overturn former president Donald Trump’s election loss.”
If Lee had acted ethically and in accordance with his oath, he should have no compunction about taking questions. Instead, the Tribune reports, “Approached by a Salt Lake Tribune reporter at the Summit County Republican Party Convention in Kamas, Lee staffers blocked access to the senator.” (Lee’s behavior is unacceptable, but so is that of aides, who are employed and paid by taxpayers. They are not Lee’s private security force.)
This raises an interesting question for Lee: Does he plan on hiding until Election Day? Will he decline all debates where this might come up?
Evan McMullin, the Utah conservative running as an independent to replace Lee in the Senate, has not minced words. He tells me, “Senator Lee, a self-described constitutional conservative, committed an unpardonable betrayal of his oath and the public trust by conspiring with others to overthrow the republic to keep a defeated president in office against the will of the people." McMullin adds, “Whether Lee accepts it or not, we are still a democracy and he is still accountable to us. … He owes Utahns and the entire country a full, honest accounting of his role in this brazen treachery. He has no place in the U.S. Senate, and I’m asking Utahns of all party affiliations to hold him accountable.”
At the root of Lee’s betrayal was his determination to enlist state legislatures absent evidence of fraud to throw sand in the wheels of the electoral college process or overrule the choice of voters. The Trumpian mentality that rules can be twisted to serve the Great Leader seems to have metastasized throughout the GOP.
One portion of the Lee-Meadows discussion illustrates this mind-set. As Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias writes for Democracy Docket, Lee in his texts to Meadows at one point asked how many ballots in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were “tossed” under state law. “The issue Lee refers to in his text to Meadows specifically relates to the timing of the receipt of mail-in ballots,” Elias explains. The GOP doggedly pursued lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court to prevent ballots received after Election Day from being counted. “Only after his candidate of choice lost the election did Lee suggest that he might actually want them counted after all,” Elias writes. Does Lee think it would have been legal to defy the courts and count the ballots received late if doing so would help his side?
“Fraud,” in GOP vernacular, refers to Republicans losing elections. But they are apparently okay with changing the rules to ensure the MAGA crowd stays in power. Put differently, Elias observes, “Republicans are all for counting your votes, but only when their party is the winning team.”
Maybe that is why so many of the actual cases of alleged fraud in the 2020 election were carried out by Republicans. And maybe that is why Republicans are so intent on allowing GOP-controlled legislatures to displace neutral election officials. Republicans seem to believe that nothing — not state law, the Constitution or voters — should stand in the way of their assuming power.
"there is more money in pitying black people."
Thanks again for yet another pack of GOPer lies, which were published here:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/critical-race-theory-advocates-are-gaslighting-americans-for-power-and-profit/
"...On the state level, Republican lawmakers have focused their energies on crushing LGBTQ rights with "don't say gay" laws,"
there are no "don't say gay" laws
this is a deceptive term to describe laws determining what age children are mature enough for certain topics
introducing sexual orientation at an early age is an attempt to groom kids to a perverted homosexual perspective
"bans on gender-affirming care,"
again, this only applies to kids
one should not be subject to gender suppression and alteration until one is an adult and emotionally capable of making such a decision
"and even forcing CPS workers to harass families with trans kids."
CPS stands for child protective service
protecting kids against this kid of thing seems appropriate
"On the Senate level, Republicans have circled back to the idea of overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. In Tennessee, a bill meant to remake marriage into a straights-only institution has already been filed."
Obergefell is nonsense
it was only issued because Roberts was afraid of the radical homosexual agenda
there is no constitutional right to redefine marriage as gender-neutral
"No one who flings that word around, of course, actually thinks that LGBTQ people and their allies are in a conspiracy to sexually abuse children."
no. it's a conspiracy to indoctrinate into a viewpoint about homosexuality
"Republicans are so excited by this troll that they even used it to smear Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson with similar insinuations during her Senate confirmation hearing."
the Republicans who did that weren't talking about homosexuality at all
there were discussing her history of leniency in rulings on child porn cases
still, the Republicans who did that were reprehensible
not as reprehensible as the Dems' who attached Kavanaugh, but still, reprehensible
"Not surprising from a party that is so unable to defend their policy preferences that they got rid of the party platform and have pulled out of nationally televised debates."
the GOP has no trouble at all defending their policy preferences
the current debate paradigm, formed in the late 80s, is biased in favor of progressivism
there is no need for a moderator
the candidates can pose questions to each other
then, Dems would need to address issues the MSM helps them avoid
"It works in no small part because"
it works = the GOP is winning the debate
partly because the official Dem party leaders cater to radical progressives out of touch with America
"Of course, the most dramatic example of this phenomenon is former president Donald Trump, a man who loves Vladimir Putin and declared on national television that injecting bleach into your lungs might be a good cure for COVID-19. He's a man without conscience and without reading skills beyond the third grade. He is also the god-king of the GOP. He sits on his throne in Mar-A-Lago, watching Republican politicians debase themselves before him to get his approval out of the hope that his trollish grace will result in electoral wins. They don't respect him or like him, but"
quite a rant
problem for you is Trump is not running in 2022
and Dems are in a bind, way behind
If you've seen video of Joe Biden mumbling in public recently — and we bet you have — there's probably not anything we could tell you tonight that's going to surprise you.
At this point, other people are not real to Joe Biden. He lives in a world of ghosts and fog shrouded memories, but you knew that because you've seen the tape. Maybe the only thing that would surprise you about Joe Biden, 15 months into his presidency, is learning that he plans to run for reelection. Now, that would be outlandish, impossible really, ridiculous.
Where Joe Biden is somehow able to stay in the White House, he would be 86 years old by the end of his second term. Do the math on that. Even now, at 79, past the life expectancy of the average American man, Joe Biden can barely speak English and that is not a trend that will improve with time.
What kind of president would Joe Biden be by the year 2028? You shudder to think about that, though you can bet that more Botox and hair plugs would not improve him.
The whole idea is grotesque.
Weekend at Bernie's White House Edition.
It's an insult to the principle of self-government, but that doesn't mean it's not coming. According to a piece this week in The Hill newspaper, Joe Biden has confided in his old boss, Barack Obama, that he does in fact plan to run for reelection.
Joe Biden believes he is "the only one who can beat Donald Trump," which, if nothing else, suggests that Joe Biden believes he beat Donald Trump the first time. "Hey, guys, I got 81 million votes. Maybe I'll get 500 million next time." So how did Barack Obama respond to that? Well, The Hill newspaper didn't say. We do know that earlier this month, Obama referred to Joe Biden as "vice president," so you can guess.
Obama never hid the fact that he didn't like or respect Joe Biden.
Obama thought Biden was fake and incompetent, old, white and annoying,
and that was 10 years ago.
So, you can imagine how Obama feels about the prospect of an 86-year-old President Joe Biden.
Now, Michelle Obama, by contrast, will have just turned 60 by the time the next presidential election rolls around. So clearly it's her turn.
It's not just Obama who feels this way, a lot of Democrats agree.
Just for the sake of amusement this morning we tried to find a Democratic Party official who be willing to go on the record to endorse a second Joe Biden candidacy and we couldn't find a single one.
Now, keep in mind, these are the same people who are delighted to tell you that you can change your biological sex just by wishing it so, like Dorothy clicking her heels at Oz.
Boom, you're transgender now.
They consider that believable.
Yet they will not tell you that Joe Biden should be president again.
A Biden reelection campaign is just too absurd, even for them.
It strains credulity past the breaking point.
Joe Biden?
Come on.
That's the consensus in Washington tonight and for once it is correct. So given that, now you know what is going on with the news media. Joe Biden's most loyal constituency has turned on him with a vengeance. After getting the mannequin elected, the White House press corps is telling you night after night he's a loser. Why are they saying this? Because they don't want him to run again. They know he will lose.
Joe Biden is now less popular than most sexually-transmitted diseases.
In an act of pure vengeance, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that he was using his powers to expand this week’s special session in a push to strip Walt Disney World of the special taxing district that independently governs it.
It’s clear that the governor has been nursing a towering grudge against Disney ever since the company had the nerve to listen to its employees and — belatedly, but rightly — speak out against the “Don’t say gay” bill, withholding political campaign contributions in Florida.
And it may be that the taxing district, which has been around since 1967 and encompasses two cities, is an outdated concept. The district functions much like a government, with the ability to issue tax-free bonds, provide police and fire service and, notably, build its own nuclear power plant, something DeSantis seized on as shocking.
But there are ways to handle changing that, such as proposing legislation during the regular session — which happened in 2019, though the measure died — and allowing the issue to be fully aired and a logical conclusion reached. That would be thoughtful.
That would be normal.
This? This is the stuff of Richard Nixon and his enemies list.
For those who may not remember, the country’s 37th president kept a list of enemies that was revealed during the Watergate scandal. Its purpose, according to Nixon’s assistant in a 1971 memo, was to plan “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
And that’s what’s going on here. DeSantis is using the levers of government to crush his enemy.
DeSantis is no fool. He’s covering his tracks, though with the most transparent of excuses, by saying that he wants the Legislature to consider getting rid of all special taxing districts that were enacted before 1968 and haven’t been reestablished since. So far it looks like that would include just a handful of districts along with Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District.
House Speaker Chris Sprowls defended the governor’s move, saying the House has long contemplated this action. That doesn’t pass the smell test. In the war between Disney and DeSantis, this isn’t a grenade, it’s a precision missile strike, and it’s aimed right at Central Florida.
Back in 1971, Nixon’s list had 20 names on it. Over the next few years, it grew to 576 names. We all know how that ended. Now we have DeSantis’ frightening misuse of power. It must stop here, and that starts with lawmakers stiffening their backbones.
Today, it’s Disney. Tomorrow, who knows?
"In an act of pure vengeance, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that he was using his powers to expand this week’s special session in a push to strip Walt Disney World of the special taxing district that independently governs it."
Vengeance?
Disney was given special consideration because it was an organization of exceptional benefit to society.
Now that they work against a bill to protect children from the homosexual agenda, they have squandered that benefit and there is no need to continue its special consideration.
Why should they have an advantage over Universal and Sea World?
The move by DeSantis is perfectly transparent and common sense. Nothing Nixonian about it
Disney had no business taking a political stand opposing the rights of parents in Florida
check it out...Donald Trump is the most popular politician in America
how did the Dems blow it so fast?
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/good-times-at-mar-a-lago-donald-trump/comments?s=r
President Biden is the oldest president in American history—at 78 years old when inaugurated, he was already older than previous record holder Ronald Reagan, who left office while still 77. Now Biden is reportedly planning to run for a second term. Sources tell The Hill that he has informed Barack Obama to this effect. If he wins and serves out another four years, he would be 86 at the end.
Now, this may not actually happen. The Hill is not exactly a reliable source, and it is generally politically unwise for a president to announce long in advance that they are not running for a second term even if that is the case, since it makes them a lame duck and sets off an instant succession scramble. But it is still indicative of a political party looking down the barrel of a huge power vacuum because its elderly leadership has not paved the way for any successors.
Biden is 79, but he is still younger than the entire House Democratic leadership. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are both 82, while Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is 81. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is a comparative spring chicken at just 71, though Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin is 77. At 57, Vice President Kamala Harris is by far the youngest top-ranked Democrat, and she is still ten years older than Barack Obama was when he was inaugurated in 2009. As Christopher Ingraham points out, this makes the average age of the president and the leaders of the House and Senate higher than it has ever been in American history.
Worse, there is not even a middle-aged heir apparent for any of these positions. So far, reporting on Pelosi’s plans to retire has been contradictory, but if she does give up the speakership both her lieutenants will likely also quit, and it would be a succession free-for-all. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is the likely successor to Schumer in the Senate, but she is just as old. Harris would take office if Biden were to die before his term was up, but if he does not run again, insiders are already predicting a bitter primary battle because her approval ratings are so soft—just under 40 percent approval in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, though to be fair Biden’s numbers are just as bad—and she has relatively little firm support in the Democratic establishment.
This is not to say that all politicians should be under, say, 60. Some people can and do function in top form long into their eighties, like West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who expertly guided his country through the chaotic post–Second World War years. Moreover, a political party can benefit from a few graybeards to pass along political wisdom and institutional knowledge.
But it is one thing to have a single elderly leader, and quite another to have most of the top ranks of an entire political party composed of people well into their twilight years.
Moreover, high-functioning octogenarians like Adenauer tend to be the exception. Science tells us that as people age, they tend to lose cognitive capacity, particularly the ability to process new information quickly. The onset of serious cognitive decline can be quite fast, as well—witness Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose memory problems have been discussed for years and who now reportedly struggles sometimes even to remember the names of her own colleagues in the Senate.
A few bad rolls of the actuarial dice, and Democrats will be embroiled in an apocalyptic succession struggle—like when they lost a Supreme Court seat because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused suggestions to retire in 2013, when she had already had two exceptionally deadly cancers. Being a political leader is a difficult job, which is precisely why one of its most important tasks is preparing a second-in-command to take the reins.
the backlash against the gay agenda is more fun than a barrel o' monkeys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
"Disney had no business taking a political stand opposing the rights of parents in Florida"
Disney stood up for the parental rights of LGBT kids, who have parental rights too same as parents of straight kids.
But you and GOPers like DeSantis seem to think you have the right to oppose giving parental rights to the parents of LGBT kids to protect their kids from harm at school.
Who said only straight kids' parents have parental rights in our schools??
This is America where we celebrate that we all share certain inalienable rights.
DeSantis is wrong to deny parental rights to parents of LGBT kids.
And DeSantis is also wrong for thinking Disney is evil!
Anyone can see how evil Disney is with it's millions of dollars in charitable giving year after year:
https://impact.disney.com/charitable-giving/
< eye roll >
The one opposing parental rights is DeSantis.
"The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
what was the first one?
"Disney stood up for the parental rights of LGBT kids, who have parental rights too same as parents of straight kids."
oh, well, their kids aren't being forced to learn something that is dubious
if parents don't want their kindergarteners to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, they should b abke to send their kids to school without some teacher trying to warp their values
that doesn't interfere with the "parental rights of LGBT kids", whatever that means
"But you and GOPers like DeSantis seem to think you have the right to oppose giving parental rights to the parents of LGBT kids to protect their kids from harm at school"
talking about sexual orientation and gender identity doesn't protect any kids
your rhetoric is spinning out of control
as usual, the gay agenda thrives by redefining terms
in this case, "right"
there is no reason to bring this up to kids that age
"Who said only straight kids' parents have parental rights in our schools??"
natural law
"This is America where we celebrate that we all share certain inalienable rights."
pushing weird world-views on kids is not a right
"DeSantis is wrong to deny parental rights to parents of LGBT kids."
they don't have the right to force other kids to learn a gay worldview
"And DeSantis is also wrong for thinking Disney is evil!"
could you provide the quote you're referring to?
Good news!
Our nest President will be taking down Dems this fall:
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is expanding his network with plans to campaign for his fellow Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.
Kristin Davison, senior adviser for Youngkin’s political activity, confirmed on Thursday that the governor launched two organizations to support his work in politics that can accept contributions. There is no maximum donation size.
One of the groups is a 527 political action committee dubbed Spirit of Virginia, and the other is America’s Spirit, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization.
Davison said that the two new organizations will expand on the themes Youngkin spoke about during his own campaign for the governor.
“Looking to 2022, Gov. Youngkin will continue to grow that movement and help other candidates win, especially those that will turn blue states red, just as he did in Virginia last year,” Davison said.
Spirit of Virginia has already started running advertisements, one of which focuses on passing a budget that “helps all Virginians.” The video specifically advocates for eliminating the grocery tax, cutting taxes for veterans and returning a tax surplus to Richmond lawmakers.
Youngkin won Virginia’s gubernatorial race in November, besting former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to become the first Republican to win a statewide election in the commonwealth since 2009
Just days after the Jan. 6 riot, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy told a fellow Republican lawmaker that he would recommend to then-President Donald Trump that he resign, according to audio of a call shared with MSNBC and aired Thursday night.
In the Jan. 10, 2021, call, McCarthy can be heard telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that he planned to tell the president he should step down following the violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
McCarthy, R-Calif., also indicated that he thought impeachment would succeed in the House and possibly the Senate.
“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said in audio that aired on "The Rachel Maddow Show."
The New York Times on Thursday reported the contents of the call, which is included in the coming book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, due out May 3.
McCarthy denied the Times report, calling it "totally false and wrong" in a statement on Twitter.
The Times later shared audio of the call with MSNBC.
"Are you hearing that he might resign? Is there any reason to think that might happen?" Cheney asks.
McCarthy responds that he's "had a few discussions," adding that he was planning to call Trump later that night but was doubtful that Trump would "ever walk away."
"But what I think I’m going to do is I’m going to call him," McCarthy says.
"This, this is what I think: We know that it’ll pass the House. I think there’s a chance it’ll pass the Senate, even when he’s gone," McCarthy says, apparently referring to an impeachment resolution.
NBC News has reached out to McCarthy’s and Cheney’s offices for comment on the new audio.
The revelations could complicate McCarthy's path to the speakership should Republicans win back control of the House in the November midterm elections. He will likely need Trump's support to secure the speaker's gavel if there's a GOP majority.
Three days after McCarthy's phone call with Cheney, he said on the House floor that Trump “bears responsibility for” the “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and “should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”
He went on to say Trump “needs to accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President-elect Joe Biden is able to successfully begin his term.”
But by the following week, McCarthy had reversed course, telling reporters, “I don’t believe he provoked it, if you listen to what he said at the rally” on Jan. 6. Days later, McCarthy met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, seeking to repair their relationship.
I think there would be no more fitting end to Kevin McCarthy’s dream of becoming speaker than the “scandal” of him being exposed as privately believing the right and moral thing.
Until last week, Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records obtained by The Fact Checker.
The overlap lasted about three weeks, and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina.
A man in California was arrested and charged with making anti-LGBTQ threats against dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.
Jeremy Hanson was arrested Tuesday and charged with “interstate communication of threats to commit violence,” according to the Department of Justice.
Last October, Hanson allegedly sent multiple messages to Merriam-Webster through its “Contact Us” page and in the comments section on its pages for the words “girl,” “female” and “woman.”
Under the dictionary’s definition of “female,” someone commented that it was “absolutely sickening” that the company “tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda,” adding that there was “no such thing as ‘gender identity’” and saying the person who wrote that “should be hunted down and shot.”
Through the Contact Us page, the messages accused them of being “commies” and “part of the Left’s efforts to corrupt,” included an anti-trans slur and said the company’s headquarters should be “shot up and bombed.”
“Hate-filled threats and intimidations have no place in our society,” U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in the Justice Department’s news release, condemning the “threatening and despicable messages related to the LGBTQ community that were intended to evoke fear and division.”
Investigators found “related threats” to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, a New York City rabbi and others.
Hanson will appear in federal court again later this month.
Over the past year, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly passed anti-trans legislation across the country.
Disney’s decision to oppose Florida’s “don’t say gay” law is all about appealing to consumers. Conservatives just can’t handle the fact that their political ideology is toxic in the American marketplace.
“The market is rational and government is dumb,” Dick Armey, one of the leaders of the 1994 Republican Revolution, liked to say. That used to be a cornerstone of conservatism. Today, it’s increasingly the reverse. While they still mouth free-market platitudes, Republicans fulminate against corporate America for taking political positions that they oppose—without any apparent awareness, or a refusal to recognize, that such decisions reveal the free market in action: Conservatives’ culture-war positions are broadly toxic to a majority of American consumers.
The latest example comes courtesy of Disney, which after initially staying quiet on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law condemned it because “it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, nonbinary, and transgender kids and families.” (That, in fact, was the bill’s ill-hidden point.) State legislators responded this week by punishing Disney: The Senate and House both voted to revoke Disney World’s special tax designation, which, as The New York Times explains, is “a privilege that Disney has held for 55 years, effectively allowing the company to self-govern its 25,000-acre theme park complex.” Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law on Friday afternoon.*
Conservatives rejoiced. “If corporations choose to exit the free market by seeking media and legal dispensation from anti-market Leftists pushing radical social values, don’t count on those of us who love free markets to defend you,” political arsonist Ben Shapiro tweeted on Thursday. “F*** around and find out.” This perfectly captures the thrust of GOP logic: Rather than wait to see whether the free market will punish companies for speaking out against regressive right-wing legislation, the party instead will wield the dumb government against these rational actors.
Shapiro is just the blunt end of the spear. Fox News agitator Laura Ingraham had previously warned that if companies like Disney didn’t “stay in their lane”—focusing on maximizing profit, but shutting up about politics—“everything will be on the table” if Republicans return to power in November, including “your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself.” GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn denounced Disney’s criticism as “how the woke left extremists are using corporations to push their agenda.”
It wasn’t long ago that a state’s major employer publicly opposing legislation could stir corporate-cozy Republicans to adjust course. As recently as 2015, then–Indiana Governor Mike Pence—no culture-war slouch—signed a revised “religious freedom” law when the original drew outrage from, among others, the Indianapolis-based National Collegiate Athletic Association, because it legalized anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The NCAA was also a key influencer of North Carolina’s decision to water down its infamous anti-trans “bathroom bill” in 2017.
But this was before the Trumpian weaponization of political power became a higher principle in the Republican Party than limited government. You can trace the evolution through subsequent clashes over Georgia’s voting restrictions last year and now over Texas’s anti-abortion law: Republicans threatened legislative punishment when Major League Baseball pulled its All Star Game from Atlanta and did the same when Citibank stated that it would cover expenses for its Texas-based employees to travel out of state for an abortion. But Florida, where DeSantis’s 2024 presidential ambitions are as subtle as his culture-war bomb throwing, took the next step of actually delivering on its threats.
Here’s the irony, though: While Disney controls municipal functions in Reedy Creek, its special tax district, it also foots the bill—for the fire department, sewer treatment, and so on. The elimination of that special status thus will save Disney $163 million annually, passing on $1 billion in debt to taxpayers and forcing massive local tax hikes. So what in the name of Adam Smith’s invisible hand is going on here?
The bill’s supporters mouth words from the party’s old hymnal, arguing that Reedy Creek distorts the free market by giving Disney unfair advantages. But both the move’s timing and less guarded rhetoric belie that story. “If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County,” state Representative Spencer Roach, the first lawmaker to suggest revoking the special status, tweeted last month. Randy Fine, another legislator who sponsored the bill, opined that if Disney executives wanted to “consider how they behave,” they may yet be able to retain their special privileges.
Conservatives remind one of Finley Peter Dunne’s definition of a fanatic: They are only doing what the market, in this instance, would do if it knew the facts of the case. And that’s the crux of their problem. The free market isn’t going to penalize Disney any more than it will reprove Citibank or that it did Major League Baseball or the National Football League over kneeling during the anthem. The polling on LGBTQ rights is loud and clear.
The right’s conception of the free market, like its culture-war grievances, is rooted in the latter half of the twentieth century, when many LGBTQ people stayed in the closet and corporations had a blinkered focus on their bottom lines. The GOP’s social and economic agendas could easily mesh because market dictates largely didn’t clash with traditional mores.
But twenty-first century America is more diverse and accepting, a change which the free market logically reflects. You can see it in the growing corporate focus on Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria and, most prominently, in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 declaration that the purpose of a corporation was no longer to focus exclusively on bottom-line shareholder value, but on the interests of other stakeholders such as employees, consumers, and the community. Conservatives decrying this shift as “woke” corporate infiltration and subjugation are ignoring a simpler explanation: Companies are responding to market forces.
Compounding the injury with insult, the Republicans who most yearn to make America “great” again—aging, rural, white men—are at the bottom of the consumer totem pole and lack the financial clout to swing the free market. “Corporations consider it good for their brand, and for business, to cater to younger consumers (and their own younger employees) that tend to embrace social liberalism and the latest fashionable causes,” National Review’s Rich Lowry observed in Politico on Thursday. Rational, market-following CEOs having thus gotten away from them, these Republicans have to resort to government power instead. They are running the same plays here that they have in electoral politics, trying to use the levers of government to retain power rather than responding to changing public values.
The difference, of course, is that Republicans don’t have a gross structural advantage in the free market like they do in the American political system. So they now stand futilely athwart corporate America, yelling Stop.
Emmanuel Macron is re-elected French President, defeating Marine Le Pen.
"In the Jan. 10, 2021, call, McCarthy can be heard telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that he planned to tell the president he should step down"
so what?
"McCarthy, R-Calif., also indicated that he thought impeachment would succeed in the House"
obviously, he was right
"and possibly the Senate."
the Senate doesn't impeach, it convicts
he was right, it was possible
of course, that's not saying much
"“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said"
it was days before he left office
after that, the American people could decide if Trump would become President again
right now, he's leading in the polls for 2024, and has a higher approval rating than any other major politician on America
despite a relentlessly hostile media, a shut out from social media platforms, and a never-ending Congressional investigation
nice job, Dems
"But by the following week, McCarthy had reversed course, telling reporters, “I don’t believe he provoked it, if you listen to what he said at the rally” on Jan. 6. Days later"
so, after reviewing the evidence, he changed his initial, as did most Americans
thanks for riveting post with no point
"Until last week, Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records obtained by The Fact Checker.
The overlap lasted about three weeks,"
so what?
"and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina."
that's like saying Trump might have lost in 2016 if he had not campaigned all night on election eve while Hillary kicked back at the hotel with a bottle of chablis
"Disney’s decision to oppose Florida’s “don’t say gay” law is all about appealing to consumers. Conservatives just can’t handle the fact that their political ideology is toxic in the American marketplace."
Disney decided to get involved in politics and paid the price
consumers actually don't want more involvement in politics by the entertainment industry, they want less
polls show Americans overwhelmingly agree with the Florida parental rights bill
.
"Emmanuel Macron is re-elected French President, defeating Marine Le Pen."
YAWN!!!!!!!!!!!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............
Our country’s economy has spun out of control.
Across America, millions of families are struggling to pay for food at the grocery store, fill their cars up with gas, and cover the cost of their electric and heating bills; yet Slidin' Joe Biden is refusing to take any responsibility for the skyrocketing prices, and he’s doubled down on the radical agenda that caused this problem.
In July 2021, Slidin' Joe Biden stated, "Our experts believe and our data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen were expected and expected to be temporary."
As time would show, Slidin' Joe Biden could not have been more wrong.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index surged to a 40-year high of 8.5 percent.
Inflation forces families to borrow from their future to stay afloat today. By spending more money to put food on the table, keep the lights on, and keep up with normal expenses, millions of Americans are not able to save their money, invest, or pay off debt. For parents, this means not being able to invest in their children’s college funds. For a budding entrepreneur, this means not being able to save up and start their own business.
Inflation is especially damaging to the most vulnerable, and these costs add up.
Bloomberg News reports that U.S. households will spend, on average, an extra $5,200 per year because of increased prices.
Because of Slidin' Joe Biden’s inflation crisis, blue-collar workers – who experienced rising wages under President Trump – are seeing their weekly earnings reduced by 6 percent and their hourly earnings down by 2.7 percent.
Instead of enacting policies that would reduce energy costs, Slidin' Joe Biden has done the exact opposite. By declaring war on American energy, banning drilling on public lands, and killing the Keystone pipeline, Slidin' Joe Biden has increased electricity and home heating costs and caused the price of gasoline to skyrocket to record levels.
By ramming Democrats’ radical $1.9 trillion spending bill through the House and Senate in March 2021, Slidin' Joe Biden advanced his far-left agenda at the expense of hard-working American families. Their trillion-dollar spending spree ignited inflation, and as a result, low-income and middle class families are depleting their paychecks and savings accounts just to be able to afford everyday goods and services.
Compared to last year, gas at the pump costs 48 percent more, the price of used cars has increased by 35 percent, most utilities are up 22 percent, appliances are up 12 percent, and food prices have increased by 8.8 percent.
No matter how the Slidin' Joe Biden White House tries to spin it, Democrats own this inflation crisis.
At first, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain promoted the idea that the inflation and supply chain issues negatively impacting the United States were just "high class problems."
How could the most senior advisor to the President of the United States be that out of touch with everyday Americans?
Now, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are trying to create a new narrative: skyrocketing inflation and energy prices are a result of Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.
Here’s the truth: over the past ten months, the Consumer Price Index rose above 5 percent – a clear indicator that prices were accelerating long before Russia attacked Ukraine.
When inflation becomes rampant, businesses struggle to stay afloat without raising prices.
In the National Federation of Independent Business’ latest survey of small businesses, inflation was listed as the number one problem facing small businesses and entrepreneurs.
A recent poll from CBS News found that 66 percent of respondents expressed that higher prices have been "difficult" for their families, and 65 percent said that Slidin' Joe Biden "could do more" to lower gas prices.
What stood out the most: 69 percent of respondents disapproved of Slidin' Joe Biden’s handling of inflation, and 53 percent said that they are cutting back on food and groceries as a result of higher prices.
The inflation rate was 1.7 percent in February 2021, the first full month of Slidin' Joe Biden’s presidency. Today, the inflation rate is 8.5 percent.
This is disgraceful.
Democrats’ out-of-control spending, extreme climate policies, and regulatory assault on our economy are wreaking havoc on every American at the gas station and the grocery store.
We deserve better.
"In the Jan. 10, 2021, call, McCarthy can be heard telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that he planned to tell the president he should step down"
so what?
When asked if he said told her that, McCarthy lied and said he did not. When the NYT reported what he said, McCarthy said the NYT was lying, but the audiotape the reporters produced a few hours later proved McCarthy was the one lying about what he said.
This fact that McCarthy is clearly a liar has been well established.
But lying doesn't matter to lying GOPer trolls like you -- even though lying can be a crime as well as a sin -- because lying is in the DNA of every Trump voting GOPer.
U.S. companies posted record profits in 2021, even as Americans struggled with rising consumer prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Corporate pretax profits surged 25% year over year to $2.81 trillion, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Wednesday. That’s the largest annual increase since 1976, according to the Federal Reserve.
When taxes are factored in, last year’s corporate profit increases were even more of an outlier. They soared 37% year over year, more than any other time since the Fed began tracking profits in 1948.
The considerable jump in corporate profits highlights how businesses have passed off rising production and supply costs to consumers and lends weight to criticism by top Democrats that outsize price hikes are at least partially responsible for rising inflation.
“Corporate greed is motivating large companies to use the pandemic and supply-chain issues as an excuse to raise prices simply because they can,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said during a February inflation hearing.
Democrats will likely keep the topic of rising corporate profits front and center ahead of a Senate Budget Committee hearing next week titled: “Corporate Profits Are Soaring as Prices Rise: Are Corporate Greed and Profiteering Fueling Inflation?”
The group Groundwork Collaborative, which focuses on economic issues and has repeatedly criticized corporate America for its price hikes during the pandemic, was also quick to come out with a statement after the corporate profit data was released.
“CEOs can’t stop bragging on corporate earnings calls about jacking up prices on consumers to keep their profits soaring—and today’s annual profit data shows just how well their inflation strategy is working,” Groundwork’s executive director Lindsay Owens said. “These megacorporations are cashing in and getting richer, and consumers are paying the price.”
Consumer prices jumped 6.7% in 2021 as snarled supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic sent commodity prices and other products that businesses rely on soaring. And that trend has continued into this year, with recent inflation data showing consumer prices up 7.9% year over year in February, the biggest gain since 1982.
The average American’s wages have increased 11% to offset some of those price increases, but real wage growth—a measure of wages adjusted for price increases—has been under pressure recently.
“Wage gains are not just due to the rapid recovery from the COVID-19 shock that may ease as the economy loses some steam,” Morgan Stanley economists Julian Richers and Ellen Zentner told Bloomberg. “Instead, higher wage growth in excess of productivity is likely to be the norm, not the exception, for some time as the labor share of corporate income normalizes.”
In the fourth quarter of 2021, corporate profit growth did slow sharply, rising just 0.7% from the previous quarter. Still, in every quarter of 2021, U.S. corporations’ overall profit margin remained above 13%, a level reached during only one previous quarter in the past 70 years.
For the last several months, corporate executives have been loudly lamenting the rising cost of doing business due to supply-chain disruptions and labor shortages.
Indeed, inflation at levels not seen since the early 1990's has shown itself to be both larger and more persistent than almost anyone is comfortable with.
Roughly four out of five companies surveyed by the Richmond Federal Reserve reported hiking up prices for consumers to cover "at least some" of the input costs they were experiencing.
But those same execs have been a bit more discreet — apart from their quarterly earnings calls — about celebrating the record profit margins they've been able to achieve by not only passing costs on to customers, but by charging even more.
More than half of the companies surveyed by the small business services reviews website Digital.com reported raising prices beyond what was required to offset rising input costs.
"In other words, businesses are inflating already inflated prices in order to turn a bigger profit amid people's fears over uncertain times," the sites small business expert, Dennis Consorte, said in a statement.
Additionally, large firms were more likely to engage in this practice than small businesses, the survey found.
In fact, the latest data from the US Commerce Department shows that the last time corporate profit margins were so large was December 1950.
Even as ports battle bottlenecks, oil prices subside, and workers fill jobs — easing pressure on corporate margins — elevated prices have drawn accusations of gouging from President Joe Biden.
"Gas supply companies are paying less and making a lot more, and they do not seem to be passing that on to the consumers at the pump," Biden said last week. "Instead, companies are pocketing the difference as profit. That's unacceptable."
The upshot for workers of some of these price increases is that higher sales makes employers more willing to raise wages and compensation. And wages in some sectors have managed to stay ahead of inflation, marking a real increase in individuals' purchasing power.
"Businesses in the aggregate can safely say that when they spend more money on workers, that's going to be a situation where there is more revenue coming back to them," Robert C. King, an economic forecaster, told Bloomberg.
Still, gains in US corporate profits over the past year (37%) has vastly outstripped both inflation (6.2%) and compensation increases (12%), leading Morgan Stanley to recommend a return to a more equitable arrangement.
Even at their peak in the 1990's, corporate profit margins were roughly half of what they are today. Companies have been able to grow those margins to what they are today in part by paying workers a smaller share of what they produce.
The Morgan Stanley researchers write that the widening gap between company profits and worker compensation since the 1990's is unprecedented and poses a threat to the health of the economy.
Reducing that gap, they write, could be the key to unwinding the current inflationary cycle.
Washington D.C. – Government watchdog Accountable.US released a new analysis of earnings data of the ten largest U.S. retailers by market capitalization finding that they all raised consumer prices while collectively reporting $24.6 billion in increased profits during their most recent fiscal years. These same companies also ramped up spending on shareholder handouts by nearly $45 billion year-over-year for a total of $79.1 billion.
“When corporate profits are at their highest levels in nearly 50 years and companies are showering their shareholders with billions in new benefits over the last year, it raises serious questions whether industries like retail have had to hike prices on families to such excessive degrees. How can any company that’s raking in billions upon billions more than the year before honestly say that the market forced them to dig so deep into consumers’ pockets?” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US. “It’s time corporations finally help shoulder the burden average Americans have taken on throughout the health crisis. Corporations can start by stabilizing prices for consumers instead of pursuing even higher profits — on top of finally paying their fair share in taxes.”
The new analysis follows Accountable.US’ previous report revealing that the top three corporations in several major categories under the CPI all raised prices on consumer staples and/or benefited from increased costs while making $151 billion in increased profits from their last reported earnings periods. Accountable.US also released an analysis finding that 18 of Congress’ most vocal defenders of corporate price hikes have taken over $5.7 million from major corporations that saw profits soar amid rising prices.
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE REPORT:
Amazon—which announced price increases to its Amazon Prime subscriptions in February 2022 and plans for a $10 billion stock buyback program the next month—saw its 2021 net income increase by over $12 billion to over $33 billion as its CEO pay ratio increased from 58-to-1 to 6,474-to-1.
Walmart, which credited “price management and mix” for an increase in its gross profit rate, saw its most recent FY 2022 net income increase by $163 million to over $13.6 billion while its shareholder handouts grew by $7.2 billion to nearly $16 billion in FY 2022, with plans to spend “at least $10 billion” on stock buybacks in FY 2023.
After Home Depot’s CEO admitted that the company was “taking cost” to pass along to consumers, the company reported a 27% increase in annual net earnings, increased stock buybacks by $14 billion and spent nearly $7 billion on dividends, with plans to increase quarterly dividends by 15%.
Costco—whose CFO admitted that inflation “ha[d] passed through” onto consumers in the form of increased prices up to 5%—touted its “record-breaking” $5 billion net income, grew its shareholder handouts by over $4.5 billion to over $6.2 billion, and has continued to see increases to its net income after earning $1.2 billion in net income in its most recent Q2 FY 2022, up $348 million from the prior year.
In February 2022, Lowe’s highlighted the “ongoing benefits of [its] new pricing strategies” as it saw FY 2021 net income increase 44% to $8.4 billion while spending $15.1 billion on shareholder handouts, including stock buybacks that were “$1.1 billion higher than anticipated” due to “better-than-expected financial performance.”
CVS Health—the sixth largest U.S. retailer and “the leading health solutions company”—saw over $7.8 billion in 2021 net income as it authorized a $10 billion buyback program and spent $2.6 billion on shareholder dividends, while paying its new CEO nearly $20.4 million.
Target—known to change its online prices depending on customer locations to “‘reflect the local market'” while maximizing sales and profits—saw its FY 2021 net earnings rise 59% and used those profits to boost buybacks by 887% while spending $1.5 billion on shareholder dividends.
The New York Times reported the story of Kushner's big deal a couple of weeks ago. A major wealth fund backed by the Saudi government invested $2 billion in Kushner's new "venture-capital" company called Affinity Partners. Now you may recall that Jared Kushner's experience before going to the White House consisted of some bad real estate deals and running a small newspaper in New York City. The rest of the financial world recognizes this and has not jumped at the chance to partner with Kushner on the project and it's reasonable to assume that many investors are reluctant to sign on with both the man who had a famous journalist dismembered in the Saudi embassy and the corrupt Trump family. That's a lot to swallow even for cynical, self-interested greedheads, especially since there is every reason to believe they will lose money in the process. Where's the upside? It's hard to imagine that the Saudi Crown Prince is any more naive about Kushner's business acumen, which leads to a lot of speculation that this is payment for services rendered and an investment in a future Trump presidency. Nobody was a better friend to MBS than Jared Kushner and there's evidence that Jared delivered handsomely. He would almost certainly come through again.
First of all, recall that the very first trip Trump took overseas was that very weird, over-the-top adventure to the Middle East in early 2017 where they did the sword dance and all put their hands on a white orb for inexplicable reasons. It was pretty clear that Trump had his eye on that big pile of Saudi money from the very beginning. But it was Kushner who made it into his own special project. From the beginning there was lots of talk about the two young Turks, Kush and MBS, chewing the fat late into the night, exchanging private mash notes on WhatsApp and basically spending a lot of quality bro time together. In 2018, the Intercept reported that MBS touted his close relationship with Kushner, revealing that Jared had shared classified information with him about Saudis who were disloyal to him. He was quoted as saying that Kushner was "in his pocket."
According to text messages obtained by investigative journalist Vicky Ward, author of the book "Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. the Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump", Kushner specifically shared intelligence with MBS about the previous Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was close to the CIA and was concerned about the ambitions of MBS. Ward reported that this information was used by MBS to strike against the crown prince. He was arrested and imprisoned. No one has heard from the crown prince in two years. Ward claims this was the reason Kushner was repeatedly denied a security clearance. If true, Kushner was instrumental in the ascension of MBS. Later, Kushner did him another solid by running interference for him over the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, ensuring that President Trump would let it go despite a global outcry.
MBS was good to the administration in return. When Trump asked him to raise oil production in 2018 he did it and when they asked him to decrease it in 2020, he did that as well, in stark contrast to how they are responding to the Biden administration's entreaties to raise oil production during this Ukraine crisis.
Meanwhile, Kushner has been bragging about his experience cutting deals with Saudi Arabia and Russia to entice other prospective investors to contribute to his "fund." This report from Josh Marshall reveals that MBS is hosting lavish conf-fabs with power players in the investment world in recent days --- and Jared is seated next to the Crown Prince at every event:
"My interlocutor had never seen anything like it. Sitting next to the ruler on a single night would be a career maker even for your average billionaire. But there Jared was every night — even for the private few-attendees dinner, apparently. The message seemed crystal clear and bold: Jared is my guy. In fact, he's my number one, number two and number three guy.
That would just be plain weird if it weren't for the fact that Trump is running again.
According to The Intercept, which broke the story about Kushner's touting his connections to the Saudis, even Wall Street players were a little shocked by the blatant corruption:
"A source in contact with multiple U.S. investors approached by Affinity said the investors were not attracted by the presentation and described their shock at how cavalierly it seemed to suggest influence peddling, a "value add" often handled with more subtlety in the investment world. "They said they'd never seen such a joke of a deck, openly talking about 'networking' and 'networks' — i.e., our corrupt insider contacts," the source said on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. "They're bragging about 'networks,' they're using cliches, with no serious investment discussion.""
This is beyond corrupt. Vast sums of money are changing hands and the Saudis are actually manipulating the world oil market in order to sabotage Joe Biden's administration and help set the table for Trump's second term. And yet, we have heard far more about Hunter Biden's laptop and Hillary Clinton's email server than we will ever hear about Jared Kushner's sweetheart deal with his Saudi bro.
Just as there are no repercussions for Trump running his business out of the White House and doing pay-to-play every weekend at his resorts and 24/7 bribery and influence peddling at the Trump Hotel in DC. And as Don Jr. and Eric Trump traveled all over the world doing deals while their father was president. They didn't even wink and nod about what they were really selling. The corruption was massive. And there is nothing but sighs and shrugs among the mainstream media which dutifully reports it and that's the last you ever hear of it.
By contrast, here is what you get if you are following right-wing media:
Laura Ingraham: Biden’s focus is enriching his family as much as possible…
and
JD Vance said today that the number one thing that changed his mind about Donald Trump was how he fought corruption in government while president.
"When asked if he said told her that, McCarthy lied and said he did not. When the NYT reported what he said, McCarthy said the NYT was lying, but the audiotape the reporters produced a few hours later proved McCarthy was the one lying about what he said."
maybe he didn't remember it
it was a wild and confusing day
"This fact that McCarthy is clearly a liar has been well established."
ah, could you provide the name of one politician, Dumbocrap or Republican, any one of them, that hasn't lied?
"But lying doesn't matter to lying GOPer trolls like you"
you seem to be no slouch at "trolling"
indeed, calling someone who simply has a different perspective than you a troll, is trolling
"-- even though lying can be a crime as well as a sin -- because lying is in the DNA of every Trump voting GOPer."
LOL!
that's rich
there are so many Dumbocrap examples but why not discuss the trailblazer, Bill Clinton, who rationalized his criminal perjury by arguing about the definition of "is"
he was actually impeached for lying
and his sidekick, Hillary, who paid to have lies manufactured and disseminated about Donald Trump
"U.S. companies post their biggest profit growth in decades by jacking up prices during the pandemic"
we live in a capitalist society
we're all better off if corporations charge the amount where supply and demand curves meet
this is only messed up if a President does something stupid, like send two trillion in checks to Americans who were already doing fine
or cripples our energy independence with regulations so we are dependent on oher non-capitalist countries
corporations aren't monsters
they are collectively owned by most Americans
Tennessee will soon add harsh penalties against public schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports, under legislation recently signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee.
Lee signed the proposal last Friday. The governor had previously signed a measure last year mandating that student athletes must prove their sex matches that listed on the student’s “original” birth certificate. If a birth certificate was unavailable, then the parents must provide another form of evidence “indicating the student’s sex at the time of birth.”
This year, the GOP-controlled Legislature decided to add penalties to that ban.
According to the bill, Tennessee’s Department of Education would withhold a portion of state funds from local school districts that fail to determine a student’s gender for participation in middle or high school sports.
"calling someone who simply has a different perspective than you a troll, is trolling"
Says the ill informed FOX News viewer.
Study up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
I rarely watch FOX News. If I watch TV news at all it's usually the evening news on CBS or NBC. I listen to NPR a lot, just because they play it on the radio station I generally default when driving. I will sometimes post an article here that is from FOX but I usually got there from some other site that collects different viewpoints. Most of you are well-versed in progressive propaganda rather than any real information.
Just 41% of young Americans approve of Slidin' Joe Biden's job performance, according to a new Harvard Institute of Politics poll of adults ages 18-29 released on Monday. That's down from 46% in fall 2021 and a 59% majority last spring -- a trend also seen in other recent surveys.
By comparison, 56% approved of then-President Barack Obama ahead of the first midterm cycle of his presidency, when Democrats went on to lose the House in 2010.
Young adults give Slidin' Joe Biden horrible marks for his handling of the economy (34% approve). That's a similar pattern to how the full American public's view.
"Overall, Slidin' Joe Biden voters who now disapprove of his performance rate him more harshly on the economy," John Della Volpe, Harvard IOP's polling director, writes in the survey's release. "They view the Slidin' Joe Biden as putting the interests of the elite over their own; they less hope about the future; are more liberal; and more passionate about canceling student debt for everyone."
The poll, which surveyed 2,024 US adults between the ages of 18 and 29, was conducted on March 15-30 using a nationally representative online panel. The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 2.89 percentage points.
Young Americans' political disenchantment isn't confined to opinions of Biden. Just 40% approve of congressional Democrats' job performance, down from 52% in March 2021.
And compared to spring 2018 -- heading into the previous midterm cycle -- young adults are more likely to agree with pessimistic sentiments about politics and their own political efficacy. A 56% majority say they agree that "politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing," up from 45% in 2018. Currently, 36% agree that "political involvement rarely has any tangible results," up from 22% four years ago.
In an interview with CNN, Ed Kakenmaster, a 27-year-old who lives in Chicago, said he believes "younger people are burnt out by political discussions."
"For a lot of my friends it's like, 'Alright let's have fun and not talk about it as much,' so it will be interesting to see what happens in 2022 because I think there may be quite a few people who don't turn out to vote."
In the Harvard poll, 36% of adults under 30 say they "definitely" plan to vote in the midterms.
While Kakenmaster said he cast a ballot for Biden in 2020, citing qualms with Trump, he said he is "conservative leaning" and plans to vote Republican in 2022. He listed rising crime, dissatisfaction with Chicago Democrats' Covid-19 response, the Slidin' Joe Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and inflation as reasons why he will vote for the GOP in 2022.
"With inflation and how he has blamed (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Covid, and his failure to take responsibility for inflation -- that is something that has rubbed me the wrong way because he's the President, and you kind of expect for him to take ownership of that," Kakenmaster said of Biden.
In the Harvard poll, 29% of young Americans name economic-related topics such as inflation and cost of living when asked to name the national issue that concerned them most. Another 18% name foreign policy or national security issues, with 8% mentioning environmental issues. Just 4% cite Covid-19 as their top concern.
Yet for her part, Krezzia Basilio, a 20-year-old first generation Filipino American, told CNN she still considers Covid to be one the biggest national hurdles, and as a student at University of California, she said it directly impacts her life on campus. She also listed wages and student loan forgiveness as issues she prioritizes.
"I know that Biden's been talking a lot about loan forgiveness, which I think is very important, but I hope I can actually see it happen," she said.
The Biden administration's latest action on student debt will bring 3.6 million borrowers closer to loan forgiveness, CNN reported last week.
Twitter (TWTR) announced on Monday that it has entered into a deal to be acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk for $44 billion. Twitter shareholders will receive $54.20 per share, and when the deal is finalized the social network will become a privately held company.
Twitter trading was halted Monday afternoon ahead of the news. Shares were up 6% just after 3:30 p.m. EST.
The announcement follows a tumultuous few weeks between Musk and Twitter's board during which Musk became the company's largest shareholder, rebuffed the board's efforts to recruit him as a member, and launched a hostile takeover bid of the social media company.
Musk now adds Twitter to his impressive portfolio of firms including Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Musk is a prolific Twitter user, regularly firing off news related to his companies, as well as his own stream of conscious tweets. He also, however, uses the platform as a means to tangle with politicians and critics
"Says the ill informed"
TTF has been telling us they are a genius
since the blog turned thirteen
in all this time of reading
we still don't what they mean
the whole gay agenda didn't turn out like they planned
the things that pass for knowledge we can't understand
New York Times columnist Charles Blow recently claimed to be “truly shocked” by a poll showing President Biden with a 33 percent approval rating. I was shocked, too — how could his approval rating be that high?
Blow, of course, is surprised at Biden’s unpopularity, and worried that the Democrats are stumbling into a bloodbath in the November midterms. Blow is paid to understand and explain politics and culture to his readers. That he is surprised reveals a lot about the bubble he is in. And his meandering analysis of Democrats’ problems illustrates how the ideology making Democrats unpopular is also preventing them from understanding why they are unpopular.
Blow initially blames Biden — for being too much of a “decent man … sober and straightforward” rather than a “showman.” This is a ludicrous assessment of a politician, who, until age caught up with his tongue, was one of D.C.’s preeminent bloviators. Nonetheless, Blow’s ordinary partisan delusion is less interesting than the ideological blind spots revealed when he turns to genuine sources of Biden’s unpopularity, such as “the fear of crime and the pinch of inflation” and that “Republicans are playing heavily into culture war issues.”
Although Blow does not seem to realize it, these issues combine to reinforce voters’ disapproval of Biden. Democratic failures on bread and butter issues such as crime and inflation are related to the culture-war radicalism that has captured their party.
Twitter, not the blue-collar union hall, is now the heart of the Democratic Party, which is controlled by the educated, urban professional-managerial class, epitomized by woke, union-busting CEOs. This faction has merged the class and culture wars — championing cultural radicalism, entrenching its own economic interests, and neglecting the common good.
The Democrats are the party of wealthy diversity consultants lecturing hourly workers about white privilege and cis-heteropatriarchy while inflation eats away at wages and investment firms buy up homes in the hope of making America a nation of permanent renters. The governing priorities of those running the Democratic Party are sending government money to their clients (from teachers unions to Planned Parenthood) and waging culture war.
And they are fanatical culture warriors. Consider Blow’s complaint that the GOP is “challenging the teaching of Black history and the history of white supremacy in schools, as well as restricting discussions of L.G.B.T. issues and campaigning against trans women and girls competing in sports with other women and girls.” He adds that “Republicans are using white parental fear, particularly the fears of white moms.”
This litany of whines highlights the bubble Blow and his audience at The New York Times are in. Ordinary Americans know the difference between teaching history and teaching poisonous ideology derived from critical race theory. Americans understand that it is unjust for males to compete in women’s sports, and that it is perverse to teach young children about sex and gender ideology. They are angry when educators encourage children to transition, and outraged when they hide it from parents.
Voters have also noticed that the cultural left never stops where it says it will. We were assured that the LGBT movement was about tolerance for consenting adult relationships; now it is about transgender toddlers, child drag queens, and men in girls’ locker rooms. We are also now told that being anti-racist somehow means judging people based on the color of their skin. Blow and other bubbled liberals may be okay with mastectomies for confused teenage girls, but most Americans are not.
This cultural radicalism erodes Democrats’ ability to govern competently. Sometimes this is the result of neglecting the basic tasks of government in order to prioritize boutique cultural issues, other times it is a direct consequence of ideology, as exemplified in the crime wave resulting from woke prosecutors and defunding the police.
In either case, wokeness is an ideology for those who are cushioned from its consequences. Indeed, wokeness is primarily a phenomenon of the college-educated, and especially the well-off; it is a niche, luxury political philosophy that thrives among the privileged and in the shelter of academia.
But though it is often a political liability, there are ways it serves the interests of its adherents. In particular, woke ideology legitimates the rule of the woke over the non-woke, and justifies economic exploitation and socio-political repression.
Wokeness claims to reveal the systems of unjust oppression that permeate society; it focuses on race, sex, and gender, and relegates economic class to a second-tier concern. This allows many of the privileged and powerful to claim to be righteous allies of the oppressed without having to sacrifice economic or social power or position. Indeed, many can claim to be oppressed themselves. This is why wokeness tends to focus on BIPoC and LGBT representation in boardrooms and Ivy League campuses, rather than helping the working class.
Thus, it is to be expected that woke discourse often suggests that the working class (especially working-class whites) have it coming for their sins of racism, sexism, transphobia, and so on — the wicked deserve punishment, not sympathy. This is why pundits such as Blow are so quick to accuse dissenters of racism and bigotry. And it is why the woke left supports oligarchic power in pursuit of its aims, and eagerly uses economic, technological, and cultural power to suppress dissent.
This is why professors are having to submit woke loyalty oaths in the form of diversity statements, and why mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training has become the norm in the corporate world. This is why the left is eager to use social media censorship to suppress “misinformation” — which in many cases is truth that is inconvenient to the regime (e.g., the Hunter Biden laptop story).
It is also why the left cannot understand its own failures. They have isolated themselves in a bubble that has drifted so far from reality and the concerns of normal voters that even electoral disaster may not bring them back to Earth. Cocooned in privilege and ideology, they think Biden is doing just fine. But most Americans have had enough of a government that is more committed to transitioning children than to controlling crime and inflation.
"we live in a capitalist society"
Actually, we live in a plutocracy, and corporations have been getting the politicians they've paid off for decades. They own the media and keep the ignorant distracted about how much they are screwing over the workers by stirring up culture wars and and blaming politicians while they take their tax breaks and play in the stock market.
"we're all better off if corporations charge the amount where supply and demand curves meet"
No jock, Sherlock. You must be a very stable genius.
"this is only messed up if a President does something stupid, like send two trillion in checks to Americans who were already doing fine
You keep bringing that up as a cudgel to blame Biden and the Dems while ignoring the most basic facts - but that's what conservatives depend on while whipping up their base to a frenzy.
From: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/whats-2-trillion-coronavirus-relief-package
"The CARES Act appropriates roughly $2.2 trillion of spending, tax breaks, loans, and other resources over the next decade. CBO estimates it would add $1.7 trillion to the deficit over that period. The difference is driven largely by the $454 billion from the bill dedicated to supporting roughly $4.5 trillion of Federal Reserve loans – CBO does not believe these funds will result in any net cost."
That 2.2 trillion dollars is spread out over the next DECADE. That's an average of 220B/year.
For comparison, Trump's annual budgets:
From: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budget-receipts-and-outlays
2018: $4,109.0B
2019: $4,447.0B
2020: $6,550.4B
2021: $7,248.5B (estimated)
The 220B/year amounts to 4.95% OF Trump's 2019 budget, and only 3.04% of his 2021 budget.
Meanwhile, the estimates for Biden's outlays (estimated, from the same source) range from $6,011.1B to $6,507.7B in 2025 - INCLUDING the CARES Act.
So it looks like Biden will be spending less per year than Trump did in his last two years, AND most of the 2 trillion hasn't even been printed yet.
But I'm sure you have a magical explanation as to why that is somehow already creating inflation.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is deciding whether he wants fine Corinthian leather in his next space ship.
"Amazon—which announced price increases to its Amazon Prime subscriptions in February 2022 and plans for a $10 billion stock buyback program the next month—saw its 2021 net income increase by over $12 billion to over $33 billion as its CEO pay ratio increased from 58-to-1 to 6,474-to-1."
For those keeping track, that $33 billion income is 15% of the $220B average annual CARES Act expenditure - all happening at ONE company. Amazon did this just by raising its Prime Subscription cost.
Tell me again about how Biden is causing all this inflation.
"or cripples our energy independence with regulations so we are dependent on oher [sic] non-capitalist countries"
Oil companies are sitting on leases and raking money in right now, because that's what they feel like doing:
The top reason domestic energy production hasn’t ramped up isn’t Joe Biden’s green energy agenda, according to oil company executives. Instead, it’s a lack of enthusiasm from investors.
A majority of oil and gas executives surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas this month pointed to pressure from investors as the top obstacle to growth. Less than 10% blamed government regulation.
Questions and data here:
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/surveys/des/2022/2201.aspx#tab-questions
“We are maintaining discipline in capital spending to maintain great internal rates of return,” said one executive at an unnamed exploration and production firm, referring to profits from earlier investments.
The Dallas Fed survey comes at a moment of fierce political debate over rising gas prices and overall high inflation, with Republicans blaming higher fuel costs entirely on Biden.
[Of course they would, why would Republicans care about facts when they can blame their favorite Democrat scapegoat?]
The Biden administration has also pointed out in recent weeks that oil and gas companies are sitting on more than 9,000 approved but unused permits to drill across millions of acres of federal lands.
But when asked at a congressional hearing this month about the impact of Biden’s leasing pause, Colette Hirstius, senior vice president of oil giant Shell, said, “I do not think that not having lease sales has raised the costs to consumers.”
Biden’s critics have ignored the fact that Wall Street investors are pressuring U.S. drillers to limit production amid record prices.
More than half — 59% — of the 139 executives surveyed by the Dallas Fed listed investor pressure as the primary reason producers are keeping production down.
Other comments reflected the pressure from investors to avoid plowing capital into new exploration and drilling projects.
“Investors dumped huge funds into shale drilling only to discover that when oil prices dropped, very little value existed at the end of the day,” one executive said. “Investors have demanded restraint and capital discipline of their client companies.”
[So they are recouping their private losses by making the American public pay for it. How sweet.]
So investors have pressured oil companies to keep production down so that they can keep their profits up. And then Republicans blame Biden for high gas prices.
Who could have possibly guessed that oil companies and investors are playing market games at the expense of the American public? Say it ain't so!
"corporations aren't monsters"
No one said they were.
And no one said they were angels either. They are paper legal entities designed to extract as much wealth as possible from the economy and transfer it to their officers and shareholders. Concerns for the wellbeing of the people (including employees), the planet, or the government are usually last on their priorities, and often considered an obstacle to greater profits. As such, many do as little as legally possible to keep out of jail. Often times we find that they'd rather risk fines than meet all legal requirements because it's cheaper for them.
"they are collectively owned by most Americans"
While technically that may be true due to 401(k) and similar retirement vehicles, it hides the real story:
https://equitablegrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/032119-wealth-tax-ib.pdf
The top 20% in the US have amassed about 88% of the wealth. The remaining 80% of us are fighting for the table scraps: the second quintile with about 8%, and the bottom 60% fighting over the last 4%. Between 1989 and 2016, the bottom 90% have seen their portion of the wealth shrink by nearly 1/3rd.
Thanks to Ronnie Raygun starting the dismantling of unions, workers have been handing over a larger portion of their paycheck to their CEOs, exacerbating inequality, increasing poverty, and making it ever harder for the poor to "lift themselves by their bootstraps."
Conservative economics - in particular Reagan's "Trickle Down" theory has proven to be a huge failure. The widening wealth gap is turning the US into basically two classes - the ultra-rich who own everything - including the government, and huge mass of powerless workers slaving for desperation wages.
Yes, there is still a shrinking middle class, but since all their votes get vetoed by the corporations that buy their legislators, their paper vote serves mainly as a cruel feather, making them believe, like Dumbo, that if they keep holding on to it they will be able to fly - somehow into the wealthy class because they believe in "The American Dream."
Certainly, a handful will make it there, but the vast majority will fall unnoticed further and further behind.
"Tell me again about how Biden is causing all this inflation"
OK:
1. by pushing through a 2 trillion dollar giveaway that was not needed in a quickly recovering economy
2. by creating incentives not to work
3. by amping up regulations on businesses
4. by eliminating our energy independence
5. by being a generally uninspiring fellow
"Actually, we live in a plutocracy,"
actually, we don't
in every society, including those such as China and Russia, who feign a commitment to egalitarianism, the wealthy have a lot of clout
but our society has more ways for the non-wealthy to evert influence than anywhere else in the world
you may remember 2016, when the wealthy were all behind Hillary and Jeb
despite their grandest attempts, Donald Trump addressed the needs of the working class and won
"and corporations"
you seem to equate corporations with wealth but corporations, at least publicly traded ones, consists of millions of owners, most of whom aren't wealthy
the corporation, as an entity, will try to grow the assets of their owners, who include union workers and retirees
but they do that by continually trying to meet the demands of their customers
these customers, most of whom aren't wealthy, are the ones in control
corporations can't even vote
which is why they shouldn't be taxed
taxation without representation is something our country was founded to oppose
any taxation of corporate profits should be determined at the beneficiary level
as is is, corporate taxes are double taxation and the owners are not receiving equal protection under the law
to take some current news, how about Netflix and Disney?
Netflix, despite its wealth, is currently scrambling to find ways to better serve its customers after a decline in subscribers
so, we see the customers in control
and Disney thought they could oppose the will of the voters in Florida and the corporate officers have found out who's in charge
"we're all better off if corporations charge the amount where supply and demand curves meet"
absolutely correct
this distributes resources to the most effective and efficient pursuits, to the benefit of the masses
"The CARES Act"
we weren't talking about the CARES Act
everyone agrees that Trump's actions to prop up citizens economically during the pre-vaccine lockdown phase of the pandemic were appropriate
"So it looks like Biden will be spending less per year than Trump did in his last two years, AND most of the 2 trillion hasn't even been printed yet."
what we're discussing is the money Slidin' Biden sent to Americans in his first months in office
4K to married couples
suddenly, there was a glut of discretionary funds in an economy already in full swing
everyone from Clinton economist Larry Summers to the very progressive Washington Post agrees that's a major factor in the inflation we're seeing
"Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is deciding whether he wants fine Corinthian leather in his next space ship."
Americans, which you don't appear to be representative of, are aspirational, not envious
try France
they all think like you
"Amazon—which announced price increases to its Amazon Prime subscriptions in February 2022"
when consumers decide it's not worth it, they'll drop the subscription
if they are paying, they think it's worth it
Amazon, btw, was a lifeline during the lockdowns
things would have been much different without them
"Oil companies are sitting"
we were energy independent under Trump
we aren't now
Slidin' Biden is President
he's responsible
if he doesn't like that responsibility, he is free to resign
"As such, many do as little as legally possible to keep out of jail."
actually, corporations do all kinds of things to contribute to the well-being of society
in a real sense, they are to thank for this paradise we live in
"The top 20% in the US have amassed about 88% of the wealth."
that's irrelevant to the fact that everyone is better off now then they were before
at least that was true until Slidin' Biden cam along
clearly, he cares less for the working people than the progressives and their agenda
real wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined significantly since Slidin' Biden became President
he's responsible
if he doesn't like that responsibility, he is free to resign
"Yes, there is still a shrinking middle class, but since all their votes get vetoed by the corporations that buy their legislators"
every politician in America caters to the middle class or is removed at the next election
"the vast majority will fall unnoticed further and further behind"
as long as Slidin' Biden, Scatterbrain Nancy, and Yucky Chuck are in charge, that's true
not to worry
the reckoning is coming in November 2022
"1. by pushing through a 2 trillion dollar giveaway that was not needed in a quickly recovering economy"
When Trump left office in Jan '21, there were 9.111 million fewer US workers than just a year before. While that was a huge improvement over the more than 20 million jobs he lost in 2020, it was still, by far, the largest job loss since 1939. You've got a funny idea of "recovering quickly" if over 9 million people are still out of work 9 months later. Some corporations were raking in money in 2020, but millions of American workers were still SOL.
Job data is here:
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
Biden put 6.727 million of those folks back to work in his first year - more than Trump put to work in his first THREE years, which was only 6.5 million. In Feb and Mar of this year, Biden added another (estimated) 1.181 million, for a total of 7.908 million jobs, nearly erasing Trump's job losses from his "horribilis annus."
"2. by creating incentives not to work"
Funny, 7.908 million people who went back to work in Biden's first 14 months missed that memo. Can't you make up something that doesn't fly in the face of the facts?
"3. by amping up regulations on businesses"
Really? Can you give an example of one regulation that materially impacted a company's bottom line?
"4. by eliminating our energy independence"
You've been following right wing memes again, and not understanding what "net energy imports" really means. The US hasn't been "energy independent" in the last 70 years:
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/verify/verify-united-states-energy-independent/85-be89122b-a991-4e5a-8d29-07a2665fa42c
This explains the fallacy of the "energy independence" claim:
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.326T98W
Don't forget, a big part of the reason we had net energy exports in 2020 was because the US economy crashed horribly in Trump's last year, and people didn't by gas because THEY DIDN'T HAVE JOBS!!
We still had net energy exports for 2021 (Biden's first year), which some people mistakenly call "energy independence," and this guy at Forbes thinks that will continue:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/03/08/surprise-the-us-is-still-energy-independent/
5. by being a generally uninspiring fellow
I'll take that over a crotch grabbing narcissist and pathological liar any day of the week.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday to create a police force dedicated to pursuing voter fraud and other election crimes, embracing a top priority of Republicans.
The new law comes after the Republican governor made voting legislation a focus this year, pushing the Republican-controlled statehouse to create the policing unit as states reevaluate their own election systems in the wake of the controversy around the relaxed rules due to COVID in 2020.
DeSantis, who is running for reelection and is widely considered to be a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has both praised the last election as smooth and suggested more rules were needed to deter fraud.
At a bill signing ceremony Monday at a sports bar in Spring Hill, Florida, DeSantis pointed out the need for the new law enforcement unit and suggested that existing law enforcement may not be equipped or willing to thoroughly investigate fraud cases.
“Some of them may not care as much about the election stuff. I think it's been mixed at how those reactions are going to be. So we just want to make sure whatever laws are on the books, that those laws are enforced," he said.
Republicans nationwide have stressed the need to restore public confidence in elections and have passed several voting laws in the past two years aimed at placing new rules around mail and early voting methods that were used in 2020 because of the pandemic.
The law creates an Office of Election Crimes and Security under the Florida Department of State to review fraud allegations and conduct preliminary investigations. DeSantis is required to appoint a group of special officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who would be tasked with pursuing the election law violations.
Existing state law allowed the governor to appoint officers to investigate violations of election law but did not require him to do so.
The law also increases penalties for the collection of completed ballots by a third party, often referred to as ballot harvesting, to a felony. It raises fines for certain election law violations and requires that election supervisors perform voter list maintenance on a more frequent basis.
Democrats, the minority party in Florida, have criticized the bill as a way for DeSantis to stop them from cheating and, thus, ensure Democrats can never win.
The trouble at the McLean Community Center started last summer, after the Northern Virginia cultural facility co-sponsored “Drag StoryBook Hour” for children during Pride Month.
Citizens in the affluent D.C. suburb of nearly 50,000 were outraged, accusing the center’s leaders of imposing their liberal ideology on the preschoolers who listened as drag queens in makeup and brightly patterned outfits read aloud books about gender fluidity.
Now, there is a power struggle underway at the 47-year-old Fairfax County community center whose board is usually occupied with such matters as whether to purchase a ping-pong table for the building or how plans are going for the annual McLean Day family festival, where the board’s elections take place.
Although the volunteer board with no taxing authority is hardly a steppingstone to higher office, this May’s election for three open seats — a contest that usually turns out about 300 voters — has attracted nine candidates. Among them: Katharine Gorka, a former Trump administration official who — along with her husband, Sebastian Gorka, an ex-aide to President Donald Trump — has railed against imposing the homosexual on children in ways like the drag event.
The local Democratic Party committee, of course, is backing three other candidates who support drag queen events for young children.
Several in the race lamented how the brick-and-glass building that typically hosts concerts or plays among towering oak trees has become its own spectacle by the lunatic fringe.
Few children were at the Dolley Madison Library in June with their parents when a group hired by the community center showed up in dresses to read books like “Neither” by Airlie Anderson, the story of a part-bunny, part-bird creature seeking acceptance, according to local news reports.
The backlash soon spilled into the McLean Community Center building, where the 11-member governing board of the facility, which is largely funded through a special residential tax district, holds its regular meetings.
The event’s critics argued that programming has veered too far away from the classic music concerts or small theater productions that have long defined the community center.
“Other people can come in and use the center, but I’m paying for it,” said Alice Middleton, 71, who estimates that $400 of her annual residential taxes goes toward the center. “I should have input on the kinds of performances they put on, the kinds of performances that this community supports.”
Well Alice,
You're not the only person who uses the McLean Community Center building - other people pay taxes too, and their input deserves to be heard just as much as yours.
If you don't want to listen to drag queens reading books, no one is forcing you to go.
For those parents who want to encourage kindness, tolerance, and acceptance to their kids, they deserve to derive as much benefit from that space as you do.
Just because Christian Dominionists are on a mission to eliminate gay people from the public sphere, doesn't mean the rest of us have to go along with their intolerant agenda.
"A brave new nightmare.” Those words from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the threat created by Elon Musk's bid to restore free speech values by buying Twitter.
Yet, despite warnings that censorship is necessary “for democracy to survive,” neither the Tesla CEO and billionaire nor ordinary citizens appear to be sufficiently terrified of free speech. Twitter confirmed Monday that Musk will acquire the company in a deal worth $44 billion. Once the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company.
Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.
Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was "tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist."
Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our "absolutist" views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.
Obama favors free speech only if it does not include disinformation, including what he considers to be "lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds."
However, it was notable that Obama called himself "pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist," not a free speech absolutist. The point became clear later in the speech when Obama noted that the First Amendment does not restrict private businesses from censoring speech. The First Amendment is not the full measure or definition of free speech, which many consider a human right.
For years, the First Amendment distinction has been the focus of liberals who discovered a way to circumvent constitutional bans on censorship by using companies like Twitter and Facebook. Now, that successful strategy could be curtailed as shareholders join figures like Musk in objecting to corporations and media acting like a surrogate state media.
Faced with that prospect, Democrats are falling back to their final line of defense – and finally being honest about their past use of corporate surrogates. They are now calling for outright state censorship. Obama declared: "This is an opportunity, it’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist."
He is talking about imposing "standards" on companies to force them to censor "lies" and "disinformation."
As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because "for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it."
Clinton's call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services." The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. One of Clinton's former lawyers is under indictment for the effort. And the Federal Election Commission recently fined her campaign for hiding the funding of the Steele dossier.
Given that history, it would be easy to dismiss Clinton's calls as almost comically self-serving. However, the 27-nation EU just did what she demanded. It gave preliminary approval to the act, which would subject companies to censorship standards at the risk of punitive financial or even criminal measures.
If implemented, it might not matter if Musk seeks to restore free speech values at Twitter. Figures like Clinton are now going to the EU to effectively force companies to continue to censor users.
Faced with liability across Europe, the companies could be forced to base their policies on the lowest common denominator for free speech.
Countries like Germany and France have spent decades criminalizing speech and imposing speech controls on their populations. That is why the premise of the DSA is so menacing.
European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
Sound familiar? Freedom is tyranny, and democracy demands speech controls.
Under the DSA, “users will be empowered to report illegal content online and online platforms will have to act quickly.” This includes speech that is not only viewed as "disinformation" but also "incitement."
Academics have increasingly echoed the call for such censorship. Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods have called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating in The Atlantic that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”
A glimpse of that future was made clear by Twitter last week, when the company declared that it would ban any ads disagreeing with its view of climate change. Previously, Democratic senators demanded that Twitter expand censorship to include blocking disinformation on climate change as well as an array of other areas.
The push to pass the DSA brings many U.S. politicians full circle but also exposes the true motivation of what is euphemistically called "content modification." Democrats turned to corporate allies to impose censorship programs that they could not impose directly under the First Amendment.
Now that Musk's purchase of Twitter could blow apart that unified corporate alliance, they are seeking to use the EU to reimpose censorship obligations. Again, such restrictions would not trigger the First Amendment because they are being imposed by foreign governments.
The result would be a delicious victory for the anti-free speech movement. Musk may buy Twitter only to find himself forced to curtail free speech against the wishes of his customers and his new company.
"and taxpayer money should not go toward grooming young kids to a perverted world view"
Reading children's books to kids while their parents are there in the room isn't grooming kids for anything.
As always, the Christian Right is stuck with conflating LGBT people with pedophiles to scare people away from them, because dealing with the actual facts of what was happening wasn't actually frightening anyone. Now that elections are coming up though, it's time to stir up the pot to get their voters out to the polls.
"young kids rarely have a choice about whether to go"
Yeah - it's because their parents were taking them there for story time. Funny how that works.
"clearly, lunatic fringe homosexual advocates lied when they claimed to just want tolerance
they wanted validation and social promotion"
Tolerating gay marriage was only "validation" and "social promotion" because LGBT people have been treated so poorly for decades. It must be terrible for you now that most gay and trans people don't hide in the closet anymore for fear of losing their jobs. I can't imagine how horrible it must be for you if you see a gay married couple on the Metro in DC.
"the backlash against those excesses has arrived"
The Christian right is always backlashing against SOMETHING. Some years it's the war on Christmas, at times it was because Starbucks didn't have enough "Christian" themes on their disposable coffee cups. One Million Moms backlashed against Ellen DeGeneres showing up in a TV commercial - was it for Sears or JCP? I don't recall. I would think you guys would get whiplash from all your backlashing, but you must have good chiropractors because you keep finding new stuff to backlash against, even if it's just kids being read stories to while their parents are in the room.
"the idea that the only opposition to homosexuality is exclusively from Christians is a lie"
Well no one ever claimed that, so you're just setting yourself up a straw man to knock down. But keep avoiding talking about real issues so you can flame your culture war.
"Reading children's books to kids while their parents are there in the room isn't grooming kids for anything.
As always, the Christian Right is stuck with conflating LGBT people with pedophiles"
I was talking about viewpoint grooming, no sexual grooming
and I have no idea what the "Christian Right" is
"Yeah - it's because their parents were taking them there for story time. Funny how that works."
the point is a perverted world view is being pushed on young children who can't just get up and walk out
"Tolerating gay marriage was only "validation" and "social promotion" because"
gay "marriage" was a redefinition of an institution vital to the survival of civilization
"the backlash against those excesses has arrived"
"The Christian right is always backlashing against SOMETHING"
Christian conservatives haven't changed their view
the backlash is the result of the concern of parents throughout the land
the San Francisco school board that was ousted in not exactly in the Bible belt
LOL!!!!!!!!!
"Well no one ever claimed that,"
sorry, but you never mention anyone else
the legitimate grievances you may have aren't against Christians
Yes, it’s very early. But if given the choice right now, which Democrats do Americans want to see run for president in 2024? The perhaps not-so-surprising answer emerging from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll seems to be: “Anyone but Joe Biden.”
In our April opinion poll, we asked Americans of all political affiliations across the demographic spectrum “Who do you want to see run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024?”
Just 19% of those responding answered “Joe Biden, 46th president of the United States.” The rest of the choices were spread among 18 candidates, along with “other” (6%) and “not sure” (28%). Put another way, 81% of Americans don’t want Biden to run again.
Specifically, other names on the list included (in declining order of preference) Vice President Kamala Harris (7%), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (6%), former First Lady Michelle Obama (6%), former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton (4%), former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (3%), and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (3%).
Trailing in the preference race is a long list at 2%, including losing 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy.
A third tier of candidates includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Luhan Grisham, all at 1% preference.
The data come from the April I&I/TIPP Poll of 981 registered voters. The poll was conducted online from April 4-6 by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, I&I’s polling partner. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points.
"I was talking about viewpoint grooming, no sexual grooming"
If you google "viewpoint grooming" what comes up are a bunch of links for pet groomers.
It's not a phrase that has previously been used to describe sharing viewpoints.
You chose the adjective "grooming" specifically as it is part of the radical right's current zeitgeist for getting any talk of gay people out of schools, and simultaneously invoking thoughts of pedophilia (and the negative associations with it) to anyone on the left who might push back against your censorship.
It's another right wing propaganda tactic, but David Colborne explains it a lot better than I do. (See upcoming post.)
By David Colborne
It seems terminally online conservatives have found themselves a new word to bludgeon opponents with.
Finding magic words to call opponents isn’t new and isn’t restricted to conservatives, of course. It’s common for a certain sort of leftist to call anyone to the right of Noam Chomsky a “Nazi.” Republicans, meanwhile, have been calling anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan “socialists” for decades.
Trouble is, it’s not Morning in America anymore. The Soviet Union, like Ronald Reagan, is long dead, and with them both rests any realistic fears of the Communist International subverting our culture and institutions. Pointing at political opponents and claiming they’ll make Red Dawn a reality feels every bit as realistic as the remade Red Dawn’s North Korean invasion of eastern Washington. If you absolutely must have a bogeyman to make your point, it’s best if your bogeyman still inspires fear and terror in your audience.
Oh sure, socialists still exist — they’re just kind of silly, for the most part (a lot like libertarians, in fairness). It’s a little difficult to maintain moral panic over the incipient socialist takeover of the United States when you’re also laughing at their sensitivity to sensory overload and gendered language. At some point, there must be a practical limit to cognitive dissonance — you can either tell yourself that socialists are hypersensitive college-aged snowflakes who melt down when you call a group of people “guys”, or you tell yourself that socialists are using George Soros’ money to rewire your children’s genitalia, but it’s impossible for anyone to keep both ideas in their head simultaneously. Even 1984’s Winston Smith couldn’t be tortured into squaring that circle.
Think about it — you feel threatened and powerless to resist people who get anxious when they hear clapping? As the youths might say, “Weird flex but okay.”
That’s why conservatives need a new magic word.
For a bit, conservatives thought they had something with Critical Race Theory. The recipe started simply enough: Take some overwrought and purely performative gestures made in the general direction of anti-racism, like San Francisco’s since-rescinded school renaming plan, then use each of them in an exercise of partisan pointillism to demonstrate how the Radical Left, empowered by the ideology of Critical Race Theory, is weaponizing America’s guilt over its racist past to erase even the parts of America’s founding mythology most people actually like — or, at worst, wish we’d do a better job of living up to. Since it’s easy to pick instances of administrative lunacy when you’re searching for samples in a grab bag of our country’s 10,000 or so school districts, conservatives would never run out of material.
There were, with the benefit of hindsight, two problems with pointing at anything conservatives didn’t like and labeling it as “Critical Race Theory”.
First, a lot of what conservatives identified as “Critical Race Theory”, like San Francisco’s aforementioned school renaming plan, was identified by most liberals and progressives as rank incompetence instead of some arbitrary culture war hill to die on. Sure, the proposed justifications for the incompetence might have sounded progressive at first glance (at least until someone found out one of the San Francisco school board members used racial slurs against Asian-Americans), but everyone knows incompetent people will justify their actions with just about any old ideology they find lying on the floor if it lets them continue to remain incompetent for a while longer.
Just ask Michele Fiore.
Second, conservatives cared far more about the fight over Critical Race Theory than their opponents ever did. Call someone a Critical Race Theorist and they might take it as a compliment — I certainly wouldn’t mind being smart enough to be thought of as a “theorist.” The only damage incurred by incorrectly labeling something as “Critical Race Theory,” meanwhile, is you sound temporarily confused and possibly a little racist. It certainly didn’t hurt the 1619 Project any to be placed under the umbrella of Critical Race Theory — that just let liberals know it was annoying the right people.
Calling someone a racist, by contrast, is exactly the sort of insult conservatives have been looking for since both the House Un-American Activities Committee and Sen. Pat McCarran’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee stopped blacklisting people for being alleged socialists. There are consequences for being identified as a racist. They’re not pleasant. Consequently, people care about being called a racist.
Get successfully and publicly labeled as a racist and the best possible outcome is you have to spend the rest of your political life surrounded by miserable “groypers” who invite you to events they schedule for Hitler’s birthday in the hopes you’ll inspire one of them to become the next Christchurch shooter. If you’re lucky, all you’ll lose is your ability to post on mainstream social media sites (Gab will let you post whatever racist screeds you want, of course, but then you have to spend the rest of your internet life with the sort of people who post on Gab). If you’re less lucky, you might lose your job, your spouse, maybe even your friends.
Of course, it’s a little hard for conservatives to call liberals racists. Not that they don’t try anyway, of course — the inherent “reverse racism” of “Critical Race Theory” was part of the sales pitch, and, as San Francisco’s recently recalled board members nicely demonstrated, there are some legitimately racist corners of progressive thought worth criticizing if you know where to look. Still, it’s a little difficult to do that and simultaneously act like the sort of people who think Nevada’s First Lady is in thrall to the Chinese Communist Party (because, you see, the Ely-born Nevada native is ethnically Chinese) are on the same side without it coming across as perhaps a little disingenuous.
Luckily, for a darkly facetious definition of the word, the miserable “groypers” of 4Chan and the retired housewives of QAnon converged on a solution: Call anyone who disagrees with you a pro-pedophile groomer.
Nobody, regardless of political affiliation, wants to be labeled as a pro-pedophile groomer, after all — being successfully labeled as such is the closest thing our society has to a scarlet letter. Taking advantage of children, especially for sexual satisfaction, is among the most morally heinous crimes our society recognizes. Our laws regarding such behavior reflect that — oftentimes to the point of absurdity, like when one prosecutor charged teenaged girls in Pennsylvania for “sexual abuse of children” because they sent (“distributed”) nude photos of themselves (as minors) to their similarly teenaged boyfriends (who were also minors). Luckily for the teens, that specific case was later overturned.
At the same time, it’s also undeniable that adults in positions of authority routinely groom teens (or even younger children) for their personal sexual satisfaction — and many of us have seen this grooming in action. When I started high school, for example, a teacher was arrested for repeatedly raping a student; he was later sentenced to life. Toward the end of my freshman year, my history teacher, who was also the girl’s basketball team coach, had sex with one of his players — he had the temerity to claim that he, a 25-year-old man, was taken advantage of by the 17-year-old student. Then there was my senior year, when a substitute teacher was convicted of transmitting HIV to one of my classmates while an English teacher was charged with multiple counts of sexual misconduct with a minor (he later pled guilty to one of the charges and paid a modest fine).
Given all of that, it’s no surprise that parents, like myself, might be a bit concerned about grooming and sexual abuse — we know it’s happening because we saw it happen over and over and over and over again when we were kids. It comes as no surprise, then, that politicians are trying to leverage those legitimate concerns to further their own agendas.
Trouble is, the agendas of the people throwing the word “groomer” around have nothing to do with protecting my former classmates, or our children, from predatory teachers.
Take perennial political loser Adam Laxalt, for example. As Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson pointed out, Laxalt doesn’t seriously think Ketanji Brown Jackson is a “pedophile apologist” — he just thinks that if he amateurishly copies Sen. Hawley’s (R-Missouri) near-libelous talking points, he can also follow the same attorney general-to-senator path Hawley took. To his extremely limited credit, though — and I cannot stress how faint the praise I’m damning him with here — at least threatening to throw anyone with a federal sex crime conviction into a dungeon and throwing away the key has some potential logical relation to reducing actual sex crimes. If federal sex crime sentencing guidelines actually had any connection to the harms experienced by their victims, he might even be on to something.
The rest of his political allies, however, have considerably more ambitious and less helpful goals.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) announced that she sees the existence of trans women as ipso facto pedophilia. Even that statement, however, is downright moderate compared to the conservative thinkers who are trying to redefine “grooming” and “pedophilia” away from adults abusing their power and authority to have sex with children — away from adults actually harming victims, in other words — and towards verbally acknowledging gay people exist.
No, seriously, that’s it — it’s apparently “grooming” now to acknowledge that gay people exist in fiction, if a child watches it. Go read Breitbart if you don’t believe me.
I don’t want to dismiss their point completely out-of-hand, though. Given how many of Disney’s classic stories from my childhood revolved around male princes delivering lifelong romance by kissing unconscious princesses without their consent, I wonder what behaviors I and my classmates were groomed by Disney to find acceptable?
I agree with the Claremont Institute about this much: There is, indeed, a problem with entitlement to other people’s kids. That sense of entitlement, however, doesn’t belong to gay or trans people who just happen to be gay and trans in public and talk about their lives with the same level of earnest transparency straight cisgendered folks like myself do.
It belongs to Ohio legislators, who seek to prevent students in both public and private schools from talking about gay people. It belongs to legislators across the country passing bills which explicitly prevent parents from providing gender-affirming care for their children, should they ask for it. It also belongs to Republican gubernatorial candidates in this state who think it should be up to the Governor’s Mansion, not parents or children, to decide whether transgender children should should get to participate in boy’s or girl’s sports.
That sense of entitlement to other people’s kids doesn’t end there, though. It most certainly belongs to actual groomers and pedophiles in positions of power and privilege. It belongs to the likes of Roy Moore and quite probably Rep. John Rose (R-Tennessee). It belongs to Tennessee legislators, who want to give pedophiles an obstacle-free path to marry their child brides.
It definitely belonged to at least four of the teachers I went to high school with.
I’m not an expert on grooming or pedophilia. But I’ve been in the same room as groomers and pedophiles, and I’ve been in the same room as gay and transgender people, and they were different people. Being straight and cisgendered didn’t make a few high school teachers groomers — going to work with a sense of entitlement for the bodies of their students because they felt a tingle in their pants did that. Why being gay or transgender would somehow change that calculus escapes me.
What doesn’t escape me, however, is who benefits by redefining grooming and pedophilia away from child sexual abuse and towards literally anything else — the people doing the grooming and the politicians pandering from the groomers’ votes.
"If you google "viewpoint grooming" what comes up are a bunch of links for pet groomers.
It's not a phrase that has previously been used to describe sharing viewpoints."
really?
try "groom for leadership"
I got 91,000,000 hits
you think groom only has a predatory sexual connotation because your mind is in the gutter
"You chose the adjective "grooming" specifically as it is part of the radical right's current zeitgeist for getting any talk of gay people out of schools, and simultaneously invoking thoughts of pedophilia (and the negative associations with it) to anyone on the left who might push back against your censorship."
well, you're entitled to your twisted opinion but "groom" just means "prepare"
lunatic fringe homosexual advocates are trying to groom (or, if our mind is in the gutter, "prepare") young kids for a certain viewpoint
facts are facts
Sen. Joe Manchin, once again, poured cold water on hopes the Senate would pass President Biden's ambitious Build Back Better social spending plan.
"There's not a Build Back Better revival," Manchin told reporters Tuesday at the Capitol. "There's not."
Manchin said legislation that deals with "major social changes" – as BBB sought to tackle free preschool, clean energy projects and health care – need to go through the regular Senate process and "build consensus."
"Then if you think you need reconciliation because you got a great piece of legislation, but people are playing politics with it that's another. … We haven't had hearings on any of these things," Manchin said.
With the Senate equally divided, all 50 senators in the Democratic caucus must be united in passing sweeping spending legislation through a process called budget reconciliation. But both Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have previously opposed the roughly $2 trillion social spending and environmental bill that passed the House in November – and efforts to pass a pared down bill that they could support have since sputtered.
Fresh off a spring break recess, environmental groups, lobbyists and progressives are making a new push to get at least something passed in the Senate before the midterm elections in November.
Many lawmakers view July 4 as a crucial deadline to get something passed before the midterm season, and White House officials are facing the "real fear" that they will fail to reach a deal with Manchin to get anything done, according to the Washington Post's conversations with Biden administration officials.
"you think groom only has a predatory sexual connotation because your mind is in the gutter"
No, I think that because people like you have spent years conflating LGBTQ people with pedophilia. It is your main modus operandi. Lacking good legal arguments for denying gay people marriage or discrimination protections, much of the religious right's anti-gay campaigns can be boiled down to a pearl clutching "What about the children?!?!" as they malign LGBTQ people for their gender identity and / or sexual preferences.
The religious right depends on slandering innocent LGBTQ people to raise funds for campaigns and to rile up their base for voting.
Now you guys are leveling "grooming" accusations at straight LGBTQ allies. We're used to that kind of treatment - they aren't. I dare say, you might expect a "backlash."
I don't know what drives your obsessive compulsion to smear LGBTQ people. Perhaps you were assaulted by a same-sex parent or relative. Perhaps it was even done to "cure" you of "gay behavior" you unknowingly exhibited as a child. Unfortunately, you wouldn't be the first one - or the last. But just because you can get away with slandering minorities, doesn't mean you should.
"No, I think that because people like you have spent years conflating LGBTQ people with pedophilia"
never have I ever done that
"It is your main modus operandi"
in order for it to be my main MO, I would have to have done it at least once
I never have
"Lacking good legal arguments for denying gay people marriage or discrimination protections"
gays can get married to anyone of the opposite gender, otherwise there is no marriage
also, no one deserves discrimination protection for behavior
"much of the religious right's anti-gay campaigns can be boiled down to a pearl clutching "What about the children?!?!""
only when gays attack the children by grooming them to a perverted world view
leave the kids alone
"Now you guys are leveling "grooming" accusations at straight LGBTQ allies. We're used to that kind of treatment - they aren't. I dare say, you might expect a "backlash.""
we're seeing the backlash now
lunatic fringe gay advocates promised they only wanted tolerance
they lied
"I don't know what drives your obsessive compulsion to smear LGBTQ people."
let's see an example of this smearing
"But just because you can get away with slandering minorities, doesn't mean you should."
let's see an example of this slandering
Across the country we’re seeing a movement to reclaim our culture take hold. This uprising is provoked by the far left’s egregious overreach into our everyday lives.
Regardless of political affiliation, it’s several bridges too far for most Americans who just want government to mind their own business so they can raise their kids and live their lives.
The first domino to fall in this cultural take-back arguably happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I live. It was led largely by parents who are politically colorblind but culturally very much aware of a government that overplayed its hand with fuzzy science, intrusive political mandates, and ultimately set a match to our education system.
Consider the status quo rocked.
Virginia has often been an indicator of the way the country will go in the midterm elections. Culturally, however, there’s no doubt the tea leaves have already been read.
From Florida to San Francisco — no that’s not a typo — business as usual is being challenged and cultural foundations are starting to crack.
In San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members recently for choosing their extreme liberal agenda over kids during COVID .
Last week in purple Wisconsin, conservatives swept three seats on the Waukesha school board running on parental rights, academic performance post COVID, and getting Critical Race Theory out of the classroom.
Also, last week, Kenosha, Wisconsin flipped from blue to red, electing a Republican executive for the first time since at least 1998 — it’s been so long people can’t even say for sure just how long.
Kenosha was a hot spot for Black Lives Matter riots following the shooting of Jacob Blake in 2020. The city racked up a bill totaling at least $50 million in damage. Who knows, maybe people don’t want their city lit on fire?
And it turns out the majority of Florida Democrats support the state’s new parental rights law — you know, the law that says schools can’t teach sex and gender identity to kids in kindergarten through third grade.
Who’s opposed to NOT teaching sex and gender to five year olds? Turns out it’s only people with an agenda to indoctrinate rather than educate your kids.
The rest of us would like them to learn how to read and write. And if we could teach them regular math instead of Common Core, that would be really great.
Hard to believe there’s so much Democrat support for this law given the uber-left histrionics that children will die. Has someone overplayed their hand?
They have a lot on the line with their indoctrination war — seven hours a day, five days a week with our kids all to themselves. It’s too hard for parents to deprogram that, and they know it. Hence their propaganda machine working overtime. Even Democrats see through it.
The suburbs, particularly suburban women played a significant role in President Biden’s promotion to president in 2020, as well as other Democrat victories.
It’s taken us years to get to this societal crossroads. While the tide may be shifting, we still have a long way to go to reclaim our culture.
Suburban women are some of the key people on the front lines of the culture war, the question is will they still blindly pledge allegiance to Democrats in November?
I’ve talked to women in my extremely liberal county who’ve said they voted for Biden, but they voted for the "centrist, uncle Joe" we were all sold. They most certainly didn’t vote for the Joe Biden they got.
They feel scammed and for good reason. In just over a year, it’s hard to imagine anything else Slidin' Joe Biden could have done to appease his friends on the far left in the culture war. Slidin' Joe Biden even weighed into the Florida flap and publicly endorsed teaching sex and gender identity to kindergarteners.
He’s chosen them over the American people every single time, making life worse for everyone across the board.
Not only have our schools become indoctrination camps instead of classrooms, but intrusive COVID restrictions that have nothing to do with public health or science are harming our kids and hurting our lives, our borders are wide open, and Slidin' Joe Biden has bowed to calls from the left to defund police before doing a mea culpa and calling for funding police this year — because, well election season and poll numbers.
We’re no longer energy independent because his far-left friends are allergic to fossil fuels, so we all get to pay more at the pump and inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years..
These are just the Cliff Notes of his successes at failure.
Even the most loyal Trump supporters could never have predicted the extent this president would "Make America Worse" — and just how fast he’d do it.
There’s no doubt there’s a great deal of buyers’ remorse and when Democrats lose in November, make no mistake there will be no course correction for the party now led by the radical left.
The fight to take back our culture will not be over, it will have only just begun. An emphatic rejection in November of left wing craziness would be an impressive, resounding first victory in that fight.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “It has been clear for decades that the Earth’s climate is changing, and the role of human influence on the climate system is undisputed.” The IPCC’s most recent report, published in August 2021, warns that increasing greenhouse gases, due to the combustion of fossil fuels, have not only caused global warming, but also have changed the Earth’s ice cover, precipitation, sea level, and ocean acidity, and have intensified extreme climate events such as cyclones.
In light of the intense academic and popular media attention on climate change, there is a serious need for a scientifically informed book that addresses the purported crisis, and Steven E. Koonin has produced just such a book. In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, Koonin shows that there is substantial uncertainty concerning the extent to which global temperatures will rise as a result of burning coal, oil, and natural gas. He demonstrates that there has been considerable exaggeration to support climate change projections. He also highlights the social and political challenges inherent in reducing harmful emissions on a global scale.
Koonin brings impeccable credentials to the climate science debate. He worked as a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech for nearly thirty years, served as Caltech’s vice president and provost, and worked as part of JASON, an elite group of scientists who advise the U.S. government on scientific matters related to national security. He also served as Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy during the Obama administration. With such deep experience, including extensive research using computers to model complex problems, he is highly qualified to comment on the validity of global climate models. (Full disclosure: I provided some scientific data to Professor Koonin as he was writing this book, but I had no input into the shape of his arguments, nor any chance to see the completed book before agreeing to write this review.)
The IPCC’s climate change claims rely on elaborate computer programs called global climate models (GCMs). Koonin describes how these models are formulated and the numerous assumptions they require. In particular, he discusses the tuning of models by varying a large number of parameters to avoid a physically implausible future climate. The different GCMs come up with a wide range of future warmings. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) analyzes the results of dozens of GCMs in an attempt to make a more accurate prediction.
Koonin notes two problems with this approach. First, the Earth’s average surface temperature varies among the models by about 3oC (5.7oF), three times more than the observed warming during the twentieth century. The models disagree less about the warming, defined as the temperature change relative to the average temperature. However, Koonin writes “one stunning problem is that in the years after 1960, the spread of GCM results considered by CMIP5 is larger than that of the models in CMIP3—in other words, the later generation of models is actually more uncertain than the earlier one.”
Indeed, the spread of GCM results considered by CMIP6, used by the most recent 2021 IPCC report, has also not decreased. In science, one normally expects results to become more accurate as our understanding improves and faster computers become available. The lack of such progress in climate modeling indicates the science is not well understood.
There is substantial uncertainty concerning the extent to which global temperatures will rise as a result of burning coal, oil, and natural gas.
Post a Comment
<< Home