You can have your cake and eat it too. #IndictmentDay #WhichWitchHunt #DingDong John (repeat1968) Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I get to go to the doctor tomorrow, so BB and I traded days again. Your eyes are not deceiving you! But, wow, did I get a Newsday today. I can’t see what’s going on in the news in the lowest hell realm, but they are celebrating a new denizen.
Let’s face it. The man was walking evil. I’m happier he’s gone than I was when Phyllis Schafly found her karmic spot in Avīci. There are actually 28 Naraka–hell realms–in Buddhist mythology. None of them are permanent, but then none of them are pleasant either.
Robertson’s run for president basically turned the Republican party into a place where culture war crusaders were welcomed and, dare I say, groomed for candidacy at all levels of government. He also was one of those who got everyone’s granny to give away her bank account by promising all kinds of things. Count me among his detractors.
according to the ny times, only pat robertson's "detractors" and not objective reality, found fault with him blaming 9/11 on gay people or saying feminism drove women to witchcraft. pic.twitter.com/uRWcmxSGEq
The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, adding further weight to the legal baggage facing Mr Trump as he campaigns for his party’s nomination in next year’s presidential election.
The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.
The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept at his Palm Beach, Florida property long after his term expired on 20 January 2021.
That section of US criminal law is written in a way that could encompass Mr Trump’s conduct even if he was authorised to possess the information as president because it states that anyone who “lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document …relating to the national defence,” and “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” can be punished by as many as 10 years in prison.
It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary.
Federal prosecutors formally informed Donald Trump’s lawyers last week that the former president is a target of the criminal investigation examining his retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The move – the clearest sign yet that Trump is on course to be indicted – dramatically raises the stakes for Trump, as the investigation nears its conclusion after taking evidence before a grand jury in Washington and a previously unknown grand jury in Florida.
Trump’s lawyers were sent a “target letter” days before they met on Monday with the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and the senior career official in the deputy attorney general’s office, where they asked prosecutors not to charge the former president.
Trump has reportedly said he had not been personally informed by the justice department that he was a target when asked directly by a New York Times reporter, but demurred when asked whether his legal team had been told about the designation.
The development comes as prosecutors have obtained evidence of criminal conduct occurring at Mar-a-Lago and decided that any indictments should be charged in the southern district of Florida, where the resort is located, rather than in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
To that end, prosecutors last month started issuing subpoenas to multiple Trump aides that compelled them to testify before a new grand jury in Florida, impaneled around the time that the grand jury in Washington stopped taking new evidence, the Guardian previously reported.
It’s nice to see Fleet Street give both the New York Times and the Washington Post a comeuppance. Their reporters are more like insiders than journalists on a beat. More from Andrew Feinberg.
MORE: It is understood that Mr Trump's last White House chief of staff, @MarkMeadows, has agreed to plead guilty to several lesser federal crimes in exchange for his testimony under a limited grant of immunity. https://t.co/7ZMm60nhxf
A separate grand jury that is meeting in Florida has also been hearing evidence in the documents investigation. That grand jury was empaneled in part to overcome legal issues posed by the fact that some of the crimes allegedly committed by Mr Trump took place in that jurisdiction, not in Washington. Under federal law, prosecutors must bring charges against federal defendants in the jurisdiction where the crimes took place.
Even if grand jurors vote to return an indictment against the ex-president this week, it is likely that those charges would remain sealed until both the Washington and Florida grand juries complete their work.
Another source familiar with the matter has said Mr Trump’s team was recently informed that he is a “target” of the Justice Department probe, which began in early 2022 after National Archives and Records Administration officials discovered more than 100 documents bearing classification markings in a set of 15 boxes of Trump administration records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, the century-old mansion turned private beach club where Mr Trump maintains his primary residence and post-presidential office.
Over the course of the last year, grand jurors have heard testimony from numerous associates of the ex-president, including nearly every employee of Mar-a-Lago, former administration officials who worked in Mr Trump’s post-presidential office and for his political operation, and former high-ranking administration officials such as his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Up next on the January 6th DOJ investigation is a subpoena for Steve Bannon. We are going to get subpoenas on some MAGArat congress critters next, and hopefully, Ginnie Thomas. I don’t know if there’s enough popcorn on the planet to carry us through the next few weeks. It’s going to be a glorious Independence Day at this rate!
Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., in connection with special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Jan. 6 & Trump's efforts to stay in office, according to two sources familiar with the matter. https://t.co/DJBhz39N5l
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama that civil rights activists say discriminated against Black voters in a surprise reaffirmation of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The court in a 5-4 vote ruled againstAlabama, meaning the map of the seven congressional districts, which heavily favors Republicans, will now be redrawn. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court’s three liberals in the majority.
In doing so, the court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — turned away the state’s effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.
In the ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law.
In 2013, Roberts authored a ruling that gutted a separate, important provision of the Voting Rights Act and has long argued that various government efforts to address historic racial discrimination are problematic and may exacerbate the situation.
He wrote in Thursday’s ruling that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power” and that the Alabama ruling “does not diminish or disregard those concerns.”
The court instead “simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here,” Roberts added.
As such, the court left open future challenges to the law, with Kavanaugh writing in a separate opinion that his vote did not rule out challenges to Section 2 based on whether there is a time at which the 1965 law’s authorization of the consideration of race in redistricting is no longer justified.
Civil rights groups and their supporters, including the Biden administration, reveled in a largely unexpected victory.
I’m already in need of a 7th Inning Stretch!
Alright! Let’s get this post published and take it down the thread!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Good thing Trump spent all of 2016 insisting that Presidential candidates who mishandled classified information should be prosecuted DURING the campaign and sent to jail. https://t.co/mK5Np2VW2a
Today I want to highlight two important days in our country’s history. Today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day, and yesterday was the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
— Mat McLachlan \ Battlefield Historian (@MatMcLachlan) June 5, 2023
"Today is June 6, 2023, the 79th anniversary of the airborne assault and amphibious landings made primarily by American, British and Canadian Forces along a 50-mile stretch on the Normandy Coast. So long as human beings live in freedom, it will rank as one of human civilization’s… pic.twitter.com/MyvgR4eHiJ
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Of those, 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain and Canada. Forces from several other countries were also involved, including French troops fighting with Gen. Charles de Gaulle against the Nazi occupation.
They faced around 50,000 German forces.
More than 2 million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day….
The sea landings started at 6:30 a.m. local time, just after dawn, targeting five code-named beaches, one after the other: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword, Juno.
The operation also included actions inland, including overnight parachute landings on strategic German sites and U.S. Army Rangers scaling cliffs to take out German gun positions.
Around 11,000 Allied aircraft, 7,000 ships and boats, and thousands of other vehicles were involved in the invasion….
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,501 Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The battle — and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities — killed around 20,000 French civilians.
New York Times tomorrow about D-Day 1944: “Allied Armies Land in France…..Great Invasion is Under Way”: pic.twitter.com/muWgNQ5V7j
Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, in a ballroom in the ornate Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a packed crowd watched charismatic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy give a victory speech after winning the California primary.
Almost five years after his older brother John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Robert Kennedy was making his own run for the White House. America was divided over the Civil Rights Movement and the war in Vietnam.
The New York senator was gaining momentum to potentially secure the Democratic nomination. But that night — 55 years ago today — was the last time he would address the public….
As Kennedy walked off stage at the Ambassador Hotel through a pack of eager reporters, the crowd chanted his name.
“We want Bobby,” they cheered.
Kennedy shook hands with supporters and exited the ballroom through the kitchen. Then, the crowd heard what witnesses would later describe as the sound of firecrackers. A gunman fired a .22 caliber revolver, hitting Kennedy and injuring five others.
Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson — one of Kennedy’s friends who worked on his campaign — wrestled the gunman to the ground and tried to disarm him….
Kennedy died the next day. He was 42. His widow, Ethel, was pregnant with their 11th child….
Mourners lined up before dawn outside New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Kennedy’s funeral mass. Inside the church, Sen. Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy.
“As he said many times in many parts of this nation: Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ ” Kennedy said. “I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’ “
Read more about Kennedy’s 1968 campaign at the NPR link.
Of course, that was not the only assassination in 1968. The Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4th. A highlight of Robert Kennedy’s campaign was the speech he gave in Indianapolis after informing the audience of King’s death.
Here is a short clip from Robert F. Kennedy’s speech on the night of #MLK assassination.
Every five years, we drag ourselves through a year of melancholy anniversaries. For some reason, we tend to account for these things in five-year increments, like college reunion cycles. And, in the litany of lousy American years, 1968 is right up there with 1860-1865, 1929, and 1941. And the sad and mournful commemorations are not limited to this country, or even to this side of the Atlantic. It was 55 ago this May that Paris erupted in riots and a nationwide wildcat strike. It was 55 years ago this August 20th that the Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague to crush the promise of the Prague Spring.
Over here, the 55th anniversaries of that misbegotten year began in January, with the 55th anniversary of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in which the American public got a good look at the lies it had been fed about that war for years. It would be the deadliest year for the U.S, military of the entire conflict and, 55 years ago this past March, elements of the 20th and 23rd U.S, Infantry marched into Quang Ngai province toward the hamlet of My Lai.
As the opposition to the war exploded, President Lyndon Johnson’s political support began to disintegrate. In January. Senator Eugene McCarthy ran him a close race in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and shook up all political expectations for that fall’s presidential election. And then, 55 years ago this past March 16, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced his campaign for president. Two weeks later, Johnson dropped out.
Kennedy’s campaign may have peaked 55 years ago this April 4. He was in Indianapolis. In Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. stepped out onto a motel balcony into a soft spring evening and a sniper shot him in the face. It was a crime almost unthinkable, but, sadly, not unanticipated. Kennedy got word of the murder on his way to a rally in a largely black section of Indianapolis. It would be up to him to deliver the news to his supporters already gathered there, most of whom had not yet heard it. Kennedy got up on the back of a truck and delivered one of the most remarkable spontaneous political speeches in the country’s history. He ended his address by summoning the year’s dark angels.
“We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
@Repeat1968 has high expectations for the Foghorn/Leghorn performance artist in the Senate from the Gret State of Lousyana. Oh, wait!
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Wow! The Monday news streams show just how out of whack things have gotten. Corruption and Theocratic Fascism are just out-of-control at all levels of government. Today’s corruption story goes right to the heart of my expertise and that of my youngest daughter, who works the derivatives market daily for an investment company. Not many knew that an obscure pipeline in Virginia was at the heart of the recent Budget/Debt negotiations. It came out of the blue for just about everyone but insiders to the deal itself.
On Wall Street, analysts had mostly expected vague promises on energy permits to be included in a bill to raise the US debt ceiling. Yet, options trading suggests something bigger may have been in the offing.
On May 24 — several days before an agreement was announced — a huge bullish bet was made on Equitrans Midstream Corp., data compiled by Bloomberg show. The company is deeply involved in the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline. The wager involved snapping up 100,000 call options on the firm’s stock.
It proved prescient and wildly profitable within just a few days.
On May 27, White House and Republican lawmakers reached a deal that would give the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline the final approvals needed to complete the project.
Throughout April and much of May, negotiators from the White House and Congress went back and forth on broad-stroke parameters of an agreement. Almost until the very end, the details were closely held and in flux. Doubts lingered over whether a deal would be reached before the US was scheduled to run out of money in early June.
The legislation, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Saturday, forced action on permits for the project. On paper, the bet appears to have earned $7.5 million through Friday. It has some asking whether more than skill and luck played a role.
“My questions are: Who’s the trader? How sophisticated are they? And what are their connections to the government?” said Donald Sherman, chief counsel at the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He added the bet raises the specter of whether the parameters of the debt deal had somehow leaked out ahead of time.
Digging into whether a trade is improperly based on confidential information is notoriously difficult, especially when it involves market-moving news from inside the government. The rules are also rife with gray areas and ambiguities.
Officials, including members of Congress, are barred from trading on confidential information they learned in their position. But if, for example, someone overhears a Congressional staffer loudly mention a piece of information on the train, they’re likely in the clear.
REPUBLICANS IN THEWisconsin legislature introduced a package of bills this week to “clarify” the state’s abortion ban, 174 years after it became law. The 1849 ban, which criminalizes abortion in every circumstance, except to save the pregnant person’s life, went back into effect last June after 50 years of obsolescence.
It’s a deeply unpopular law: By margins of 2 to 1, voters said it should be repealed in every single county where the question was on the ballot this April. (In a statewide judicial election held the same day, the pro-choice candidate — who, it is widely assumed, will vote to strike the ban down when it is challenged at the state Supreme Court next term — won by 11 points.)
But Republicans in Wisconsin can’t seem to grasp this obvious truth. Rather than repeal the 1849 ban, as Democrats have proposed, a group of GOP lawmakers — led by 32-year old Sen. Romaine Quinn — touted a total of four bills they hope will make the pre-Civil War law more palatable to modern Wisconsinites. Included in the package is an offer that has become trendy among antiabortion ideologues: tax breaks for embryos.
LRB-2486 would allow parents to claim an exemption on their tax returns for “unborn children for whom a fetal heartbeat has been detected.” Co-sponsor Rep. Donna Rozar made the proposal’s intent crystal clear: The bill, she said, “recognizes an unborn child as a distinct human being prior to birth by allowing the child to be claimed as a dependent.” The point isn’t to support Wisconsin families — the point is to change the definition of when life begins as part of an effort to enshrine in Wisconsin law the dangerous and dehumanizing concept of “fetal personhood.”
It’s all part of an effort to extend Constitutional rights to fertilized eggs — a legal theory that simultaneously revokes the rights of the individuals carrying those pregnancies.
Wisconsin Republicans aren’t the first to try this: Georgia’s Department of Revenue announced in August “any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat” could be claimed as a dependent on state tax returns. The representative behind Georgia’s LIFE Act, which created the tax break, later admitted in a leaked video that the credit was all part of a gambit to get the Supreme Court to recognize fetal personhood: “We’re going to take this to the highest court in the land.”
The consequences of a ruling recognizing fetal personhood are difficult to overstate: The moment that an embryo is recognized as a person with rights, virtually any behavior that poses any kind of risk to a pregnancy can be criminalized or litigated. In one infamous case, an Alabama woman was charged with manslaughter for losing her pregnancy after she was shot in the stomach by another person. (That case was dismissed after a public outcry.) In another instance, a court allowed a woman who was hit by a car while seven months pregnant to be sued by her future child for negligence because she failed to use “a designated crosswalk.”
Wisconsin Republicans apparently think bodily autonomy comes pretty cheap: the credit they’re offering is $1,000. That’s one-third of the tax break you can get in Georgia, in case you’re comparison shopping dystopian hellscapes.
Also included in the package of bills is $1 million in funding for crisis pregnancy centers, $5 million in funding to support state adoption programs, and language to clarify that the 1849 ban does not apply to “a medical procedure or treatment designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.” Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB-GYN who stopped practicing in Wisconsin when the ban went into effect and a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the law, says the new language would do little to alleviate the burden on healthcare providers.
“Imagine if you had chest pain, and you went to the emergency department, and your doctors said, ‘Yes, I know exactly what to do to take care of you, but the Wisconsin legislature has enacted some laws that could potentially put me in jail for doing the things that I know to be medically correct, let me call a lawyer before I take care of you,’” Lyerly says. “Now replace ‘chest pain’ with ‘vaginal bleeding.’ It is exactly the same thing. Our legislature is preventing doctors from taking care of Wisconsinites, from providing evidence-based, appropriate, standard-of-care medicine, and threatening to throw us in jail.”
It remains unclear if the new proposal has sufficient support to advance through both houses of the Wisconsin legislature. A previous proposal, floated in March, that would have added exceptions for rape and incest to the 1849 law failed to advance to a vote on the Senate floor. (“Discussion on this specific proposal is unnecessary,” Republican Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said at the time.) But there is reason to believe this proposal might be viewed differently: The most prominent anti abortion groups in the state — Wisconsin Family Action, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Right to Life and the Catholic Conference — all of whom opposed the rape and incest exceptions, have announced support for the package.
If Republicans in Wisconsin truly wanted to support mothers, there is an existing proposal they could throw their weight behind: a bill that would expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers for up to one year. Today, Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states that kicks new moms off of public health care coverage just 60 days after giving birth. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has repeatedly pushed for a 12-month extension — a proposal that was rejected by Republicans in the legislature twice before. But expansion is particularly critical in Wisconsin now that the 1849 law is back in effect: Multiplestudies have shown that the rate of maternal mortality spikes in states with abortion bans.
“More moms die in the postpartum period than when they’re pregnant or during the time of delivery. The postpartum period is a really important time for moms to be able to get medical care,” Lyerly says. Republican lawmakers, Lyerly says, “are not making logical decisions. All of the decisions that they are making are so political and so divisive — and not in the best interests of Wisconsinites and Wisconsin families.”
Ron DeSantis is so unlikeable and failing with the press so badly, that his wife, Casey, is stepping in to make him more human. We should have a vote-off. Who is more lizard-like Ted Cruz or Ron? Rumor has it that Casey sees herself as Jackie O. I wish I could stop right there, but it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t jump down that rabbit hole. This is from The Daily Beastas opined by Katie Baker. “Casey DeSantis Is the Walmart Melania. She’d better hope that pleather is pudding-proof.”
The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back, with the sneering words, “Where Woke Goes to Die”—that brought to mind nothing so much as the racks of a Red State big-bin store where it would be retailing for $24.99.
To be fair, Casey DeSantis wore the bomber to a charity biker rally and I’m sure the campaign intended it to be a viral moment, like Melania Trump’s infamous “I Really Don’t Care” coat that the former First Lady donned to check out the border crisis.
The message on Melania’s coat, like the one-time model herself, was sphinxlike. Was it a sign to the outside that Melania dreamed of escaping her boorish husband, the stuff of a thousand Resistance Twitter fever memes? Was it the physical manifestation of the Trumps’ casual cruelty? After all, Melania was flying down to where the administration locked up little kids in cages and tore them from the arms of their desperate parents. Did it mean nothing at all, like her spox insisted—maybe like Melania herself, a cipher whose eyes seem to betray an inner emptiness, like the infinite refraction of mirrored light off of all those gold-plated Trump Tower bathroom fixtures?
By contrast, Casey DeSantis’ coat is just like her husband Ron DeSantis’ campaign: Crude. Grasping. Saying the ugly part out loud. Whereas Trump would wink-wink at the fascists—who can forget his dog whistle to the “very fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville—DeSantis wants to peel off Trump’s base by being even more explicit about who he intends to target. You can see it right there on his wife’s jacket: DeSantis’ Florida is where the woke go to die—and a lot of other people die as well.
Florida under DeSantis has had one of the highest COVID death rates in the nation, even as he’s exulted in his anti-mask policies. And as the governor whips up anti-LGBT sentiment and bans books on race, Casey’s jacket and its message of death also bring to mind the horrific Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, not to mention the state’s shameful history of Jim Crow-era lynch mobs and the Rosewood massacre. But of course, DeSantis and his cronies want to prevent kids from learning about any of that by censoring their library books and AP curricula.
The jacket, then, is a warning: Watch out, America.
It’s hard to say one is reading too much into a coat that’s so explicit—and anyways, as The New York Timesnoted in a fawning profile, Casey DeSantis is definitely trying to make a political statement with what she wears, with her aspirations of “Camelot-meets-Mar-a-Lago.” But while Casey may be trying to position herself after Jackie Kennedy (good luck) and even Melania, if this weekend is any indication, she’s falling far short. It doesn’t matter how many times she wears that ice-blue Badgley Mischka cape-dress. The DeSantis’ will never be Camelot. Jackie and JFK symbolized the opposite of vulgar pettiness—they embodied youth, energy, a commitment to moral progress in the struggle for Civil Rights, a country fresh with idealism. Not an America that was obsessed with banning books about male seahorses and rainbows, or nuking the latest Disney movie.
We could also poll to see which media outlet wreaks bothersiderism all over its pages and the screen. It’s a tie between Jack Tapper’s fact-free zone interview with Nikki Haley and the New York Times’s surreal coverage. Both will give you the icks. Mark Jacobs, former editor of the Chicago Sun-Times characterized it thusly.
The New York Times gives Nikki Haley an embarrassing smooch today for her “reasoned manner”even though Haley blamed trans athletes for causing teen girls’ suicidal thoughts, an outrageous and fact-free accusation. 1/3 https://nytimes.com/2023/06/05/us/politics/nikki-haley-townhall-cnn.html
Suicide rates of teen girls and bi and gay children are high beyond the pale and should not be minimized or used for political fodder. This is from a February article in the New York Times discussing the real statistics. “Teen Girls Report Record Levels of Sadness, C.D.C. Finds. Adolescent girls reported high rates of sadness, suicidal thoughts, and sexual violence, as did teenagers who identified as gay or bisexual.”
Nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, double the rate of boys, and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide, according to data released on Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings, based on surveys given to teenagers across the country, also showed high levels of violence, depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. More than one in five of these students reported attempting suicide in the year before the survey, the agency found.
The rates of sadness are the highest reported in a decade, reflecting a long-brewing national tragedy only made worse by the isolation and stress of the pandemic.
“I think there’s really no question what this data is telling us,” said Dr. Kathleen Ethier, head of the C.D.C.’s adolescent and school health program. “Young people are telling us that they are in crisis.”
…
But about 57 percent of girls and 69 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers reported feeling sadness every day for at least two weeks during the previous year. And 14 percent of girls, up from 12 percent in 2011, said they had been forced to have sex at some point in their lives, as did 20 percent of gay, lesbian or bisexual adolescents.
“When we’re looking at experiences of violence, girls are experiencing almost every type of violence more than boys,” said Dr. Ethier of the C.D.C. Researchers should be studying not only the increase in reports of violence, she said, but its causes: “We need to talk about what’s happening with teenage boys that might be leading them to perpetrate sexual violence.”
The researchers also analyzed the data by race and ethnicity, finding that Black and Hispanic students were more likely to report skipping school because of concerns about violence. White students, however, were more likely to report experiencing sexual violence.
And this is the last sentence in this article. “The 2021 survey asked about students’ sexual orientation but did not ask about their gender identity, so data on risk factors for transgender students is not available.”
Haley also weasel-worded her way through drastic abortion restrictions. This observation is from Digby.
Tapper agrees with Haley that while Dems "don't use that language" yes, they do believe in abortion up until the moment of birth
Actually, most believe Roe v Wade, which laid out various restrictions based upon the trimester of gestation, and worked well for 50 years, was fine https://t.co/pgUIp4lNgn
I want to emphasize what my Ob/Gyn Dr. Daughter repeatedly tells me. There is no such thing as abortion after the point of viability. It’s a delivery. Successful or unsuccessful delivery depends on all kinds of factors. Haley obviously should be fact-checked, and I find none of this even slightly reasonable. So, I’ll just give the Bronx Cheer to Jack Tapper for not ‘veering into fact check-in’ and the New York Times’sTrip Gabriel for finding anything she said ‘reasonable’.
A Tennessee woman has been left infertile after being forced to undergo an emergency hysterectomy when doctors refused her an abortion.
Mayron Hollis, 32, learned she was pregnant soon after giving birth to her first daughter Zoe in February last year.
But her excitement at becoming a mother again soon turned into a battle for survival when she said she was denied a medically necessary abortion by doctors in the state after Roe vs Wade was overturned.
According to ProPublica, obsetricians at Vanderbilt University Medical Center grew concerned last August when she was eleven weeks pregnant after the embryo became implanted in scar tissue from the birth of her first child by caesarean section.
They feared that the ectopic pregnancy could rupture her uterus at any moment, which could lead to excessive bleeding and even death, according to the National Institute of Health.
But on the day of her treatment, 24 August last year, Tennessee was hours away from enacting one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, which would see any doctor who terminated a pregnancy imprisoned for up to 15 years.
The trigger ban automatically went into effect after women’s federally protected abortion rights were overturned by the Supreme Court last June.
Ms Hollis told ABC News that doctors did not explain to her prior to 24 August that she only had a narrow window to receive the life-saving abortion.
A lack of clarity from the state lawmakers who passed the bill meant that doctors, institutions and even criminal attorneys were unsure if the abortion might end up in a prosecution, ProPublica reported.
We’ve found a lot of Democratic candidates that don’t seem to fit their party affiliation recently. They generally get a lot of attention from Republicans, and that’s your first warning. Tech Weirdos Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have jumped on the RFK jr campaign bus. Seems they all love Bitcoin and hate vaccines. It’s a weird news day when I keep having to quote from Fortune. Here’s one from The Daily Beast too.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president, posting video of a Fox News segment with anchor Harris Faulkner from last week in which the 2024 candidate said he could beat the top contenders in the race. The videoshows Kennedy claiming that internal polling reveals that he is “stronger against both the Republican candidates than Joe Biden.” It was reposted on Twitter by Dorsey with the comment: “He can and will.” When questioned by a Twitter user if Dorsey was endorsing or simply predicting the Democrat’s win, Dorsey replied, “Both.” He claimed RFK Jr.’s voice—Kennedy has a lifelong neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia that affects the voice and speech—was his “super power and set him apart.” Dorsey agreed with another Twitter user that the Democratic National Committee “would never allow” RFK Jr. to win the nomination but argued: “True but they seem to be more irrelevant by the day,” while adding “all the more reason” to back him as candidate. Kennedy is set to appear in a Twitter Spaces chat Monday with Elon Musk. Dorsey replied at the time of Musk’s invitation: “This would be great.”
I’m not sure how much I can take of this. But this is some expected news. No profit-seeking corporation wants to be associated with the trash Elon Musk keeps bringing to the Twitter Party. Again, from the New York Times. “Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue .”
Twitter’s ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said. The company has forecast that its U.S. ad revenue this month will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago, according to one internal document.
I just find it extremely hard to use now. It also freezes continually. It’s basically gone back to AOL 1990s style.
Well, today, I will celebrate Pride Month with virtual Mike Pence. I’ll also spend time wondering how I managed to fit both my daughters into one blog post. I will mention I worry seriously about the U.S.A. my two granddaughters will inherit from us.
Since it’s Caturday, I decided to share this funny video I found on Twitter before I get started with today’s news. It shows how intelligent cats really are.
Cats prove that there are good things in this world, even though the news people make can be so depressing.
Neighbor's cat figures out he gets attention when he sets off this woman's Ring camera — so he does it 20 times a day ❤️ pic.twitter.com/PKvSmxuNWc
More than 260 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on Friday, officials said, a rail disaster whose toll was exceptionally large even by the standards of a nation with a long history of deadly crashes.
The crash, in the state of Odisha, shocked India, now the world’s most populous country, and renewed longstanding questions about safety problems in a system that transports more than eight billion passengers a year. The country has invested heavily in the system in recent years, but that has not been enough to overcome decades of neglect.
The crash killed 261 people, according to Indian railway officials. Odisha’s chief secretary, Pradeep Jena, said that an additional 900 had been injured. Officials said they expected the toll to rise.
As daylight broke, teams of rescue workers with dogs and cutting equipment were laboring to free injured people trapped in the wreckage of twisted train carriages. Officials said that 115 ambulances had been mobilized and that all nearby hospitals were on standby.
The government in the state, home to about 45 million people, declared a day of mourning after India’s worst rail disaster in two decades. Dozens of trains were canceled. Teams from the Army, Air Force and National Disaster Response Force were mobilized to help. And people near the site of the crash were lining up to donate blood.
About 1,000 people were injured in the collision Friday night in the state of Odisha, the government said in a preliminary incident report obtained by The Washington Post. Rescue operations were “completed” Saturday afternoon local time, India’s Railways Ministry said on Twitter, adding that “restoration work” was underway.
Pagan Cats, by Cécile Berrubé
The crash involved high-speed trains that collided “head-on,” Odisha’s director of fire and emergency services, Sudhanshu Sarangi, said, calling it “a major, major tragedy.”
“Psychologically, we were not prepared to see so many dead bodies,” said Sarangi, who was supervising the rescue operation. More than 300 rescue workers were involved in the search, “but then as our evening progressed … we were not really hopeful of finding survivors,” he said.
The disaster unfolded around 7 p.m. local time Friday, when the Coromandel Express, which was ferrying passengers from Howrah to Chennai on India’s eastern coast, derailed and hit a freight train near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, a district in Odisha. Soon after the initial crash, the Superfast Express running from Bangalore to Howrah with roughly 1,000 passengers crashed into the other two trains, according to Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, a spokesman for the South Eastern Railway zone.
By Saturday evening local time, the death toll had reached 288, Chaudhary said, adding that 17 passenger compartments had derailed and were severely damaged.
Photographs and video from the wreckage site showed overturned train cars. Witnesses said people converged at the scene and tried to pull survivors from the mounds of mangled steel as emergency alarms sounded and the injured cried out for help.
A medical officer at Balasore District Hospital said Saturday afternoon that 1,053 people had been brought to the facility, 183 of them already dead. Fifty-five died at the hospital, he said.
“I have never seen something like this in my life. This is the first time we have received so many patients,” D. Jagatdeo said by phone from his office, where he had been stationed since the previous night.
By Martine Coppens
Chris Licht has been demoted at CNN. He’s the moron who decided to give a platform to Donald Trump at a so-called “town hall” with an audience of MAGA fanatics. It was a disaster. CNN got great ratings for the “town hall,” but after that the MAGA folks went back to Fox News, and normal people turned off CNN.
A series of tough headlines are hitting CNN CEO Chris Licht. First, Mediaite reported Thursday on the appointment of a new executive to take over business operations at CNN in a move seen as a rescue operation for the network leader. Then, The Atlantic dropped a tough cover story on the network chief, and Dylan Byers of Puck News reported Licht faces serious headwinds.
Byers, who used to work for CNN, said in the Puck newsletter on Friday that confidence in Licht has “wavered considerably” following the appointing of David Leavy – chief corporate affairs officer at Warner Bros. Discovery – to now handle the business side.
The revelation of Leavy’s appointment as COO was first reported by Mediaite’s Colby Hall, who followed up with a piece spelling out what this means for Licht and CNN.
“There’s no way they would put David Leavy down into CNN to work for Chris Licht,” one industry insider told Mediaite. “He’s too important to Zaslav to take what on paper sounds like a demotion. It sure sounds like he’s taking one for the team.”
The Puck reporting came hours after The Atlantic also published a lengthy and not exactly flattering profile of Licht’s tenure at CNN, which has seen precipitous ratings declines since Licht replaced former chief Jeff Zucker.
I hope CNN will get back on track, but they’ve lost a lot of viewers. The simple truth is that CNN is never going to be able to compete with Fox News for the Republican audience.
As North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is due to come into effect on 1 July, an analysis from the non-profit Center for Political Accountability (CPA) shows several major corporations donated large sums to a Republican political organization which in turn funded groups working to elect anti-abortion state legislators.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) received donations of tens of thousands of dollars each from corporations including Comcast, Intuit, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Bank of America and Google last year, the CPA’s analysis of IRS filings shows. The contributions were made in the months after Politico published a leaked supreme court decision indicating that the court would end the right to nationwide abortion access.
Google contributed $45,000 to the RSLC after the leak of the draft decision, according to the CPA’s review of the tax filings. Others contributed even more in the months after the leak, including Amazon ($50,000), Intuit ($100,000) and Comcast ($147,000).
Google, Amazon, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment. An Intuit spokesperson pointed out that the company also donates to Democratic political organizations, and that “our financial support does not indicate a full endorsement of every position taken by an individual policymaker or organization.
That is sickening. I guess this all goes back to the SCOTUS’ Citizens United decision.
The Good Book is being treated like a bad book in Utah after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools convinced a suburban district that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children.
And the Book of Mormon could be next.
The 72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools after a committee reviewed the scripture in response to a parental complaint. The district has removed other titles, including Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” following a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes “sensitive material.”
On Friday, a complaint was submitted about the signature scripture of the predominant faith in Utah, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church. District spokesperson Chris Williams confirmed that someone filed a review request for the Book of Mormon but would not say what reasons were listed. Citing a school board privacy policy, he also would not say whether it was from the same person who complained about the Bible….
Williams said the district doesn’t differentiate between requests to review books and doesn’t consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire. The reviews are handled by a committee made up of teachers, parents and administrators in the largely conservative community.
The committee published its decision about the Bible in an online database of review requests and did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages it found overly violent or vulgar.
The decision comes as conservative parent activists, including state-based chapters of the group Parents United, descend on school boards and statehouses throughout the United States, sowing alarm about how sex and violence are talked about in schools.
Turning on his iPhone one day last year, the lawyer M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections about a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump inst an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Mr. Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Corcoran’s narration of his recollections covered his initial meeting with Mr. Trump in May last year to discuss a subpoena from the Justice Department seeking the return of all classified materials in the former president’s possession, the people said.
It also encompassed a search that Mr. Corcoran undertook last June in response to the subpoena for any relevant records being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. He carried out the search in preparation for a visit by prosecutors, who were on their way to enforce the subpoena and collect any sensitive material found remaining there.
Government investigators almost never obtain a clear lens into a lawyer’s private dealings with their clients, let alone with such a prominent one as Mr. Trump. A recording like the voice memo Mr. Corcoran made last year — during a long drive to a family event, according to two people briefed on the recording — is typically shielded by attorney-client or work-product privilege.
But in March, a federal judge ordered Mr. Corcoran’s recorded recollections — now transcribed onto dozens of pages — to be given to the office of the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the documents investigation.
The decision by the judge, Beryl A. Howell, pierced the privilege that would have normally protected Mr. Corcoran’s musings about his interactions with Mr. Trump. Those protections were set aside under what is known as the crime-fraud exception, a provision that allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services were used in furthering a crime.
Read more details at the link.
That’s it for me today. I hope you have a peaceful Caturday.
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There are a lot of headlines today on all the Trump Crime Sprees. Today’s news focuses on the insurrection, the stolen secret documents, and the racketeering law that will likely hold the Gang that Can’t Shit Straight’s election interference.
A federal grand jury indicted a former FBI agent from Bend Thursday on felony charges stemming from his alleged involvement with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The Washington, D.C., grand jury accused Jared Wise, 49, of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting and impeding officers, both of which are felonies, according to a Thursday press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Wise allegedly called on rioters to kill police officers as they fought back against the mob that attempted to disrupt a joint session of Congress certifying President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, the justice department said.
Federal prosecutors say that police body camera footage shows Wise — who moved to Bend in June 2022 — shouting expletives as law enforcement was being knocked to the ground in front of him and that he said: “Yeah, kill ‘em!”
An Atlanta-area investigation of alleged election interference by former president Donald Trump and his allies has broadened to include activities in Washington, D.C., and several other states, according to two people with knowledge of the probe — a fresh sign that prosecutors may be building a sprawling case under Georgia’s racketeering laws.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) launched an investigation more than two years ago to examine efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his narrow 2020 defeat in Georgia.Along the way, she has signaled publicly that she may use Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to allege that these efforts amounted to a far-reaching criminal scheme.
In recent days, Willis has sought information related to the Trump campaign hiring two firms to find voter fraud across the United States and then burying their findings when they did not find it, allegations that reach beyond Georgia’s borders, said the two individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the investigation. At least one of the firms has been subpoenaed by Fulton County investigators.
Willis’s investigation is separate from the one at the Department of Justice being led by special counsel Jack Smith, but the two probes have covered some of the same ground. Willis has said she plans to make a charging decision this summer, and she has indicated that such an announcement could come in early August. She has faced stiff criticism from Republicans for investigating the former president, and the ever-widening scope suggests just how ambitious her plans may be.
The state’s RICO statute is among the most expansive in the nation, allowingprosecutors to build racketeering cases around violations of both state and federal laws — and even activities in other states. If Willis does allege a multistate racketeering scheme with Trump at its center, the case could test the bounds of the controversial law and make history in the process. The statute calls for penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
“Georgia’s RICO statute is basically two specified criminal acts that have to be part of a pattern of behavior done with the same intent or to achieve a common result or that have distinguishing characteristics,” said John Malcolm, a former Atlanta-based federal prosecutor who is now a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That’s it. It’s very broad. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to charge a former president, but that also doesn’t mean she can’t do it or won’t do it.”
Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March in response to a federal subpoena related to a classified US military document described by the former president on tape in 2021 but were unable to find the document itself, two sources tell CNN.
Prosecutors issued the subpoena shortly after asking a Trump aide before a federal grand jury about the audio recording of a July 2021 meeting at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. On the recording, Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran.
Prosecutors sought “any and all” documents and materials related to Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Iran, including maps or invasion plans, the sources say. A similar subpoena was sent to at least one other attendee of the meeting, another source tells CNN.
The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.
The fact that Trump’s team was unable to produce the document underscores the challenges the government has faced in trying to recover classified material that Trump took when he left the White House and in understanding the movement of government records that Trump kept.
Over the course of the Justice Department’s investigation, prosecutors have expressed skepticism that all classified documents had been returned. The federal government recovered dozens of documents with classified markings from Trump at various points throughout 2022.
The sources say prosecutors made clear to Trump’s attorneys after issuing the subpoena that they specifically wanted the Iran document he talked about on tape as well as any material referencing classified information – like meeting notes, audio recordings or copies of the document – that may still be Trump’s possession.
The fact that Trump’s team was unable to produce the document underscores the challenges the government has faced in trying to recover classified material that Trump took when he left the White House and in understanding the movement of government records that Trump kept.
Over the course of the Justice Department’s investigation, prosecutors have expressed skepticism that all classified documents had been returned. The federal government recovered dozens of documents with classified markings from Trump at various points throughout 2022.
The man who famously disassembled Sen. Marco Rubio on a Republican presidential debate stage in 2016 may be prevented from doing the same to coup-attempting former President Donald Trump under rules being considered by the Republican National Committee for its 2024 primary debates.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and loyal Trump supporter who broke from him over his words and deeds after the 2020 election, is expected to announce his presidential campaign next week. He has openly said he plans to confront Trump about his “stolen” election lies and his actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, even as other candidates have shied away from criticizing Trump at all.
“If it takes a bully to beat a bully?” said one Christie adviser on condition of anonymity, acknowledging the criticisms of his brash personality. “At least Chris believes in the system. He’s read the Constitution.”
But such a showdown may not come to pass because of a proposed requirement that candidates must have at least 40,000 unique donors to make the first scheduled debate in August ― a threshold Christie, who had difficulty raising small-dollar donations when he ran in 2016, may not be able to meet in just two months.
“I definitely think the RNC rules were built to help Trump,” said Tim Miller, a former RNC communications director.
“In 2020, the RNC canceled 22 primaries and caucuses to protect their king,” said Joe Walsh, the former Republican congressman who ran against Trump in the 2020 primary. “This time around they can’t cancel primaries and caucuses, but they’ll still do all they can do to protect their king, like making it as hard as possible for challengers to debate him. Yes, the RNC will do all they can to keep Christie and any other Trump-critical candidate off that stage.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was surely hoping for abump from his presidential campaign launch last week. But a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows no sign of improvement.
In fact, the survey of 1,520 U.S. adults, which was conducted from May 25-30, suggests that DeSantis may have actually lostgroundagainst frontrunner and former President Donald Trump since officially entering the race for the 2024 GOP nomination during a glitchy Twitter Spaces event with the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.
Among potential Republican primary voters — registered voters who identify as Republicans or GOP-leaning independents — Trump now leads the full field of seven declared candidates with 53%. That’s up from 48% in early May, before DeSantis threw his hat in the ring. And DeSantis now lags further behind than he did just a few weeks ago; his 25% is down from 28% in early May.
Put another way, DeSantis trailed Trump by 20 points in the previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll. Today, he trails by 28 points.
None of the remaining candidates — former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (3%), Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (1%), South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (3%), tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (3%) or radio host Larry Elder (1%) — clear the 5% threshold.
A hypothetical two-way matchup, meanwhile, is no better for DeSantis, with Trump leading 55% to 31% (up from 50% to 36% in early May).
And they tell us women are too emotional to be president….
Iowa was the site of Trump’s town hall. Seven people showed up to see Hannity play softball.
Unlike during the CNN program last month, Sean Hannity let the coup-attempting former president’s rapid-fire lies and complaints go unchallenged. https://t.co/9omKtoKhsf # via @HuffPostPol
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Two UK newspapers have been on top of the news from yesterday. First, a Grand Jury in Florida is examing charges of espionage and obstruction. This is from the Independent.
This looks to be a bit of brilliant lawyering. They know Trump will drag things out, and they know he always has arguments that do that. This approach cuts off a lot of legal shenanigans and appeal opportunities. This is also the case with the selection of a Florida venue. They’re going for the quick kill. This is Hugo Lowell’s offering from The Guardian.
Let’s repeat this together. 
SCOTUS actually just did something surprising today on a day when everything has not been surprising but long overdue! 
There’s just so much weirdness going on in Republican-led legislation that really interferes with the civil liberties of the entire country that it’s hard to know where to start. This shocking article is from Tessa Stuart, writing for
Ron DeSantis is so unlikeable and failing with the press so badly, that his wife, Casey, is stepping in to make him more human. We should have a vote-off. Who is more lizard-like Ted Cruz or Ron? Rumor has it that Casey sees herself as Jackie O. I wish I could stop right there, but it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t jump down that rabbit hole. This is from 
We could also poll to see which media outlet wreaks bothersiderism all over its pages and the screen. It’s a tie between Jack Tapper’s fact-free zone interview with Nikki Haley and the New York Times’s surreal coverage. Both will give you the icks. 
We’ve found a lot of Democratic candidates that don’t seem to fit their party affiliation recently. They generally get a lot of attention from Republicans, and that’s your first warning. Tech Weirdos Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have jumped on the RFK jr campaign bus. Seems they all love 
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This one is from The Washington Post. “
This is from CNN. “
Most of these folks are headed to Iowa right now, but more interesting is this from HuffPost. “
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