Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie — each rumored to be eyeing a presidential run — were quicker to criticize Trump.
Finally Friday Reads: Chicks coming Home to Roost
Posted: July 18, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, 2025 What Fresh Hell?, Abusive Relationships, child sexual abuse, impeach trump, kakistocracy | Tags: #TrumpCult, Epstein Files, Trump adjudicated Rapist, Trump coup attempts, Trump hebephile, Trump in girl's dressing room 5 Comments
“Come on, he picked it up at Walgreens.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Sex Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may be dead and gone, but the damage he and his buddies have done to the lives of teenage girls will never be undone. I can only imagine their suffering as the news cycle reminds them of a life they try daily to forget and move beyond. This is the reason everyone should honestly put them first in the search for justice for those men who joined Epstein in stealing their youth. More stories of the exploitation of these girls are reaching front pages.
Today, in People Magazine, we learn that an “Ex-Casino Boss Claims Trump and ‘Best Friend’ Jeffrey Epstein Were Once Caught Bringing Underage Girls to Casino Floor. A former executive at Trump’s Atlantic City casino told CNN that the duo brought three girls to the gambling floor who were not yet 21. The White House is calling his story “fabricated.” I’m enjoying the turning of the screw as many of the MAGA faithful burn their red hats in effigy. I just hope that support is available as the victims of their abhorrent crimes relive spiritual murder.
A former employee of Donald Trump claimed in a new interview that the president and Jeffrey Epstein were once caught bringing girls into Trump’s casino who were not old enough to gamble. The White House denies the allegations.
Jack O’Donnell, who oversaw the Atlantic City Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino for four years in the 1980s, spoke with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday, July 16, about the president’s friendship with the late billionaire, who later became a convicted sex offender.
“In my mind, [Epstein] was his best friend, you know, [throughout] the time I was there for four years,” O’Donnell said in the interview, noting that the pair “frequently” came to Trump’s casino together.
One alleged instance stood out to the former casino boss. He claimed that one night in the late 1980s, Trump and Epstein visited Trump Plaza with three women and brought them onto the casino floor despite them being under 21.
O’Donnell said he found out about the incident the following day, when state casino commission inspectors were waiting for him in his office. An inspector, it seems, had identified one of the girls with Trump and Epstein as “the No. 3-ranked tennis player in the world.”
“This [inspector] happened to be a tennis fan and he said, ‘Jack, I know she’s 19 years old,’ ” O’Donnell said. “They had determined that the women that they brought down were underage to be in the casino.”
In the state of New Jersey, it is illegal for anyone under 21 to gamble on a casino floor. Despite the law, O’Donnell claims the commission gave Trump a “break” for the incident, but told him to warn the future president about the potential consequences.
“I had to call them and say, ‘They’re giving you a break this time, but if this happens again, the fine is going to be substantial and it’s going to be on your head,’ ” he claimed.
O’Donnell also claimed to have told Trump that continuing to hang out with Epstein and underage women was “not gonna look good.”
“I did tell him in that conversation, ‘I don’t think you should be hanging out with this guy, just so you know, and you certainly shouldn’t be doing that in Atlantic City,’ ” he said.
When asked on Thursday about O’Donnell’s CNN interview, the White House passionately denied his claims.
“Jack O’Donnell is a stone cold loser who is a liar and fraud,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told PEOPLE in a statement. “This is completely fabricated story from his warped imagination as he suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his pea-sized brain.”
The repetitive use of the same old explanations has certainly become insufficient. Trump is the forever victim. We knew of his proclivities a long time ago. He even bought a teen beauty pageant to gain access to the dressing room of the contestants. But her emails. This is the PolitiFact take on the case from back in the day.
As waves of allegations of Donald Trump’s inappropriate behavior toward females swept over the presidential campaign, reaction from around the country was swift.
During an Oct. 12, 2016, meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., commented on one of the latest revelations, saying:
“I was just reading on the way over here this morning on how Trump would walk into the (Miss) Teen USA dressing room, all these 15- and 16-year-olds completely naked, just walk right in on them. Man, is that the image we want of the president of the United States? It’s just disturbing to think that he could get away with all this stuff.”
So, did Trump “walk right in on” naked 15- and 16-year-old contestants in their dressing room?
The implication is that the alleged incident, back when the Republican nominee owned the pageant, wasn’t a mistake.
We’re not going to rate this on our Truth-O-Meter, since some of the key sources are anonymous. But we’ll lay out what we do know about the allegation.
The nightmare of every woman, mother, and grandmother is that their young girl will fall under the power structure set up by these men to hide their proclivities. Hebephiles are omnipresent in places that give them access to prepubescent children. There is not a day that goes by where we learn some minister or priest is abusing an adolescent or young child. One of the most amazing things I’ve seen is this year’s book and appearances written by E Jean. Carroll. Just a week ago, a Judge ruled on Trump’s latest court attempt to overturn the verdict in her case. You would have to be deliberately blind to not see Yam Tits as a sexual predator. This is from The Hill.
The mandate reaffirms the 90-day clock for Trump to appeal the case to the Supreme Court after the court last month rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the verdict.
A three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict late last year, keeping intact Carroll’s $5 million judgment over claims Trump sexually abused her at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s. He denies her allegations.
Thursday’s mandate was issued after the full 2nd Circuit last month rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the three-judge panel’s ruling.
“Thursday, July 10th, 2025 So long, Old Man! The United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, bids thee farewell,” Carroll wrote in a social media post celebrating the mandate.
A White House spokesperson described Carroll’s case as “liberal lawfare” in a statement sent to CNBC.
You have to wonder about Paramount’s decision to end the successful run of Steven Colbert’s show. Colbert was undoubtedly the best Trump detractor on TV. The timing is definitely suspicious, and Yam Tits immediately celebrated the news on his propaganda social media site, Truth Social. This is from the Washington Post.
“The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026at the conclusion of its current broadcast season, CBS announced Thursday in a statement. It called the cancellation “purely a financial decision.”
“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said, describing it as an “agonizing decision.” Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of the show in 2015.
Colbert told the audience at a Thursday taping that he found out about the cancellation the previous night. “I share your feelings,” he said, when the crowd booed after his announcement.
He said it was the end of “The Late Show,” not just his stint at its helm. “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away,” Colbert said. He added that he was “extraordinarily, deeply grateful to the 200 people who work here.”
CBS staffers were caught off guard by the announcement. “We are flabbergasted,” said one staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
The announcement came days after Colbert spoke out against the decision earlier this month by Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump during last year’s presidential campaign.
We may never know for certain what role that lawsuit and the settlement played in that decision, but I have my suspicions. So does Senator Elizabeth Warren.
CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.
President Trump said Friday morning that he was thrilled by the news that CBS is canceling the decade-running “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. “His talent was even less than his ratings.”
Meanwhile, the Republican attack on children continues with a new trick to pull back funding for NPTV and NPR. Rural communities receive vital weather warnings from the stations, as it is the only provider of that information in the many middle-of-nowhere places in this country. It’s truly fitting that PBS News writes its own obituary. The Senate caved shortly after. “House gives final approval to Trump’s $9 billion cut to public broadcasting and foreign aid.”
The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPB represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.
The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.
Democrats were unsuccessful in restoring the funding in the Senate.
Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”
As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.
But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”
You may recall that early in this blog’s history, I was commuting about an hour to a university across the lake. NPR was my companion on the long commute. I can attest that there was a good part of the drive where my cellphone did not work, and that the only radio station I could get in the swamps along I-55 was NPR. I’d start with the local in New Orleans, and everything would drop until I got the NPR station from Baton Rouge. I can only imagine what the hinterlands are like up North in places like Montana and Wyoming. We’re definitely in the fascist country of Trumpistan now. Lisa Murkowski complained about the funds cut to NPR and voted against it. This is from UPI. “Coming PBS, NPR cuts already hurting many stations.”
The public stations already have received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to get them through September. Once that money runs out, more than 100 PBS and NPR stations are at risk of closing. The cuts will hit especially hard in rural areas.
For example, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit off the coast of Alaska on Wednesday. Public media helped broadcast a tsunami alert, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
“Their response to today’s earthquake is a perfect example of the incredible public service these stations provide,” Murkowski said Wednesday on X. “They deliver local news, weather updates, and, yes, emergency alerts that save human lives.”
Murkowski was one of two Republican senators who voted against the bill.
The effects of the cutting off of funding could be even wider-reaching than expected, observers said.
“Failing stations will create a cascade effect in this highly connected and interdependent system, impacting content producers and leading to the potential collapse of additional distressed stations in other areas of the country,” Tim Isgitt, CEO of advisory firm Public Media Company, told The New York Times.
An analysis by non-profit Public Media Company identified 78 public radio organizations and 37 TV organizations that will likely close. They rely on funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for about 30% of their budgets.
“I think unfortunately this is cutting off their constituents’ noses to spite NPR’s face,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said Wednesday on CNN. “It doesn’t help anyone to take this funding away.”
PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement that the cuts “will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas.”
Here’s some interesting analysis of the week’s events from TPM. “Nearly All The Trump II Depredations Run Through DOJ.”
The Trump Justice Department continues to be ground zero of his second term. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the impact of a White House-run DOJ dwarfs most other Trump II depredations precisely because it allows space for them continue unchecked. A totally compromised DOJ eliminates accountability for breaking the law in the criminal sense and for the mass lawlessness in non-criminal contexts.
I offer that as an introduction to the series of news items below that either directly involve malfeasance under Attorney General Pam Bondi or are a byproduct of DOJ bad acts. As the Jeffrey Epstein matter threatens to consume the Trump White House, remember that it, too, is an outgrowth of trying to abuse and misuse the powers of the Justice Department. It just happened to backfire.
Fired DOJ prosecutor Maurene Comey sent this note to her former colleagues in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.
Comey’s firing by Main Justice blindsided acting U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, who was reduced to “just a paper-pusher,” in the words of one observer.
Trump is starting a new initiative to put more political appointees into federal jobs. This is from GovExec.com. “Trump creates ‘Schedule G’ to add more political appointees to agencies’ top ranks. The new, non-career employees will serve in policy-making roles and add “horsepower” to carrying out the administration’s agenda, White House says.” Why aren’t folks screaming Communism at this attempt to stack the federal government with idiots? It sure sounds like a command and control model of government, ala the Soviet Union, to me.
President Trump created another new category of federal employee on Thursday evening, issuing an executive order to expand the number of political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation and will serve in policy-making or policy-advocating roles.
While presidents can already tap an uncapped number of appointees to serve in Schedule C positions, Trump noted those individuals serve in more narrow confidential or policy-determining roles. The new positions will therefore fill a gap that currently exists in federal appointments, the White House said.
The order is the latest in Trump’s effort to establish a tighter grip on the executive branch and its actions. He has already created Schedule Policy/Career, formerly known as Schedule F, which is similarly defined to Schedule G but reserved for career civil servants. Agencies are in the process of determining who qualifies for conversion to Schedule Policy/Career and those employees will become easier to fire for any reason.
“President Trump believes creating non-career Schedule G positions will enhance government efficiency and accountability and improve services provided to taxpayers by increasing the horsepower for agency implementation of administration policy,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the order.
Appointments to Schedule G positions are expected to lapse at the end of a presidential administration. The roles are particularly aimed at the Veterans Affairs Department and will go to applicants who prove to be suitable supporters of the president’s agenda. Agencies cannot take into consideration an applicant’s political affiliation.
“Schedule G employees will be hired to help faithfully implement the President’s policy agenda,” the White House said.
It boasted that Schedule G’s creation is just the latest effort to deliver “on his promise to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our government from Washington corruption.”
Trump tasked the Office of Personnel Management with establishing regulations to implement Schedule G. In April, OPM issued guidance that encouraged agencies to consider offering the maximum salary of $195,200 to attract Schedule C employees. It is not immediately clear if that pay cap will apply to Schedule G appointees. OPM’s guidance also removed career human resources staff from the process of vetting Schedule C appointees, onboarding them and setting their pay.
Don Moynihan, a professor at University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said the executive order was the president’s latest effort to strip career experts of influence within federal agencies.
The order “opens space at top ranks of government for Trump loyalists as policymakers, with no limit on hires,” Moynihan said, adding it “continues [a] pattern of politicization.”
This frightening analysis from David R. Lurie–writing at Public Notice--is not going to let your meals settle gently today. “The emerging coup. Lawless authoritarian regimes don’t give up power willingly.”
Six months into the second Trump administration, two things are becoming clear: First, the president remains a nearly entirely non-strategic actor, motivated only by an abiding desire to accumulate ever greater power, adulation, and wealth. And second, he’s fundamentally changing the nature of the United States in ways that threaten to bring an end to the nation’s 249 year old status as the world’s leading democracy.
Despite Trump’s consistently haphazard “governance” style, it’s becoming easy to foresee how his regime could effectively void our democracy. The now fully MAGA-fied GOP is increasingly likely to lose the next presidential electionafter incurring bracing losses in the midterms and other intervening state races. And as the nation learned before and following the 2020 election, Trumpists are more than willing to use force and other extra-legal actions to attempt to cling to power.
For Trump and his cronies, the prospect of losing power — or even sharing it with Democrats in the event control of the House shifts in 2026 — could prove to be catastrophic because of their reasonable fear of being held accountable for criminality that dwarfs Trump’s first term. And unlike January 2021 — when the Big Lie scheme failed — Trump and his cohorts will have new tools to carry out a coup, including a massive federal police force with a proven willingness to engage in systemic illegality.
Trump’s brownshirts
From its outset, Trump 2.0 has been grounded on systemic illegality and unilateral executive actions, a course of (mis)conduct the administration has succeeded in pursuing because of pliant GOP majorities in Congress the Supreme Court. It’s all but certain that the administration’s authoritarian conduct will grow in scope and intensity over the succeeding months, in no small part because the GOP reconciliation bill will hand over a staggering $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security.
The bill includes nearly $30 billion in new “enforcement” funds. DHS boasts that it is already the largest federal law enforcement agency, with over 80,000 officers spread across nine organizations. But DHS says it plans to use the new funding to quickly hire 10,000 more more ICE thugs. And in recent months, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has systematically dismantled DHS’s oversight offices, thereby paving the way for a lot of corner cutting.
My daily mantras these days are ‘We are so fucked’ and ‘Why doesn’t he just die?’ I have to pull myself back to my normal meditation routines. At least it hasn’t impacted my exercise schedules, where I actually am encouraged to focus on my abdomen.
So, this is “all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.” Funny, how my kindergarten cartoon hero seems more necessary given we have Orange Bluto for FARTUS.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
Finally Friday Reads: For our Children’s sake, the 100 year anniversary of the unpassed ERA
Posted: July 21, 2023 Filed under: cat art, children, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights | Tags: 100 YEAR anniversary of the ERA, Black History and First Nation History, Race Massacres, white washing, Women and Infants die when Politicians make health decisions, Women's Rights are Human Rights 13 CommentsGood Day,
Sky Dancers!
So my granddaughters turn 2 today. I keep reading things that make me worry about what sort of life they will lead as they grow. I’m glad they are relatively safe in terms of culture war crazies. But, it’s difficult to imagine what climate change horrors will await them when they head to university and grow into adulthood. Maybe I need a few hobbies that will send me down different rabbit holes. I could be this granny that crochets huge cats. I wish I could just detach more gently from the events of the day, but I cannot.
Today is the centennial anniversary of the introduction of the ERA on July 21, 1923. It was introduced by Alice Paul. This was the year both my late parents were born.
So, you know that I lived in Nebraska, and everyone that I really was good friends with could not get out of there fast enough. I wanted out because I didn’t want my kids growing up there because I had, and it was not a place that I ever wanted to be. Horrifying stories come out of there that put me in mind of Florida and Texas. This is one. This is from the New York Times. “Nebraska Teen Who Used Pills to End Pregnancy Gets 90 Days in Jail. Celeste Burgess, 19, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, were charged last year after the police obtained their private Facebook messages.”
A Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy was sentenced on Thursday to 90 days in jail after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally concealing human remains.
The teenager, Celeste Burgess, 19, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, were charged last year after the police obtained their private Facebook messages, which showed them discussing plans to end the pregnancy and “burn the evidence.”
Prosecutors said the mother had ordered abortion pills online and had given them to her daughter in April 2022, when Celeste Burgess was 17 and in the beginning of the third trimester of her pregnancy. The two then buried the fetal remains themselves, the police said.
Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. She faces up to five years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 22, according to Joseph Smith, the top prosecutor in Madison County, Neb.
The police investigation into the Burgesses began before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
But the case gained greater attention after the court issued the ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, fueling fears that women, and those who help them, could be prosecuted for abortions, and that their private communications could be used against them.
At the time, Nebraska banned abortion after 20 weeks from conception. In May, Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed a 12-week ban into law.
Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University Pittsburgh School of Law, said in an interview on Thursday that the case was a “harbinger of things to come,” as a flurry of Republican-led states have enacted abortion restrictions and more women in those states have sought abortion pills as a workaround.
“This case is really sad because people resort to things like this when they’re really desperate,” Professor Donley said, “and the thing that makes people really desperate is abortion bans.”
No kidding. Plus, the death of infants and pregnant women is on the rise. This is about control of women and reverting them to chattel status. This does not promote life in any manner. This is from Austin TV station KXAN. “Texas sees spike in infant mortality after enacting abortion restrictions, DSHS data says.” It’s reported by Erica Pauda and Cora Neas.
Since Texas enacted its abortion restrictions, it has seen a spike in infant mortality, according to preliminary data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
According to the DSHS data, 2,200 infants died in Texas last year. That’s 227 more than the year before, or an 11% increase.
At the same time, infant deaths caused by severe genetic and birth defects rose by 21%, DSHS said.
This comes after a nearly decade-long decline between 2014 and 2021. According to the data, deaths had fallen by 15%.
The race for the most cruel Governor in a state is between DeSantis and Abbott. They both promote ignorance and seek to torture and harm children. Abbott ordered the installation of razorwire across a lot of the Texas Border. He also has ordered State Troopers to push back anyone attempting to enter the United States, even if it means tossing nursing and pregnant women into a river. Another order was to not provide water to border-crossers facing imminent heat stroke. This resulted in a child of 7 passing out. Today, The Dallas Morning News reports, “Razor wire at Texas border is illegal and must be removed, Justice Dept. tells Abbott. Federal threat comes as Democrats in Congress prod Biden to halt Texas’ border security operation.”
The Justice Department has warned Gov. Greg Abbott that Texas’ use of razor wire and floating barriers to deter illegal migration across the Rio Grande is illegal. And Democrats in Congress pressed President Joe Biden on Friday to halt the state’s efforts, after reports of drownings and of young migrants being sliced.
Federal authorities told Abbott they may seek a court order “requiring the removal of obstructions or other structures in the Rio Grande River.”
In their letter, the congressional Democrats expressed “profound alarm” at the injuries, including at least one pregnant woman who became entangled in the 60 miles of concertina wire installed by Texas forces in recent months.
A Department of Public Safety trooper recently raised an alarm about migrants being pushed back into the river and denied water despite scorching heat.
“We urge you to assert your authority over federal immigration policy and foreign relations and investigate and pursue legal action, as appropriate, related to stop Governor [Greg] Abbott’s dangerous and cruel actions,” says the letter to Biden, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio and signed by nearly 90 other Democrats in the House, including all 13 Texans.
“As Governor Abbott continues to escalate his efforts on the border, we urge you to …stop this horrific abuse of power,” they wrote.
Abbott launched Operation Lone Star two years ago, sending National Guard and state troopers to the border when Biden took office, halted construction of the border wall promoted by predecessor Donald Trump, and began to dismantle many of Trump’s harsh immigration policies.
Democrats asserted in their letter that the state’s actions are “putting asylum-seekers at serious risk of injury and death, interfering with federal immigration enforcement, infringing on private property rights, and violating U.S. treaty commitments with Mexico.”
Mexico’s president denounced the “inhumane” treatment of migrants by Texas this week.
Meanwhile, the “pro-life” Justices on the Supreme Court love promoting death penalty politics. This is from Lawrence Hurley at NBC News. “Liberal justices blast Supreme Court majority for allowing Alabama execution. The high court allowed the execution of James Barber despite botched attempts to execute other inmates last year.”
The three liberal Supreme Court justices took aim at their conservative colleagues for allowing the early Friday execution of an Alabama death row inmate who had raised claims about the state’s history of botching the lethal injection process.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, declined to block the execution of James Barber, who was put to death at about 2 a.m. local time.
“This court’s decision denying Barber’s request for a stay allows Alabama to experiment again with a human life,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by her liberal colleagues, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Barber had argued that the execution would violate his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.
His claim was raised in light of the state’s problems executing three inmates last year. Two of those executions, those of Alan Miller and Kenneth Smith, were ultimately called off when prison officials could not access a suitable vein. Another inmate, Joe James, was put to death only after a three-hour delay.
The state subsequently reviewed its procedures, which was enough to convince the Supreme Court and lower courts that the execution could go ahead.
The Supreme Court’s brief order did not explain its reasoning in allowing Barber’s execution.
Sister Helen Prejean and me in my hood in June. I’m still not crocheting gigantic cats, and she’s still fighting the death penalty.
It gets to the point where you just don’t know what to say about the Sicko Six. However, there are 3 very strong women on the court that can call out the bullshit when the read it.
And now to Florida for your adventures in Orwellian speech. Nicole Chavez reports this for CNN. “Florida Board of Education approves new Black history standards that critics call ‘a big step backward’.” Sounds like they believe that everyone should be a slave every now and then because, wow, there are so many benefits to being someone’s personal property to do with what they want. Food and job training! Plus, you get the religious instructions that tell you it’s the Angry Sky Fairy’s will that there be slaves!
The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history.
The curriculum was approved at the board’s meeting Wednesday in Orlando.
It is the latest development in the state’s ongoing debate over African American history, including the education department’s rejection of a preliminary pilot version of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course for high school students, which it claimed lacked educational value.
The new standards come after the state passed new legislation under Gov. Ron DeSantis that bars instruction in schools that suggests anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color. DeSantis has used his fight against “wokeness” to boost his national profile amid a national discussion of how racism and history should be taught in schools.
The new standards require instruction for middle school students to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” a document listing the standards and posted in the Florida Department of Education website said.
When high school students learn about events such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre, the new rules require that instruction include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” The massacre is considered the deadliest Election Day violence in US history and, according to several histories of the incident, it started when Moses Norman, a prominent Black landowner in the Ocoee, Florida, community, attempted to cast his ballot and was turned away by White poll workers.
Similar standards are noted for lessons about other massacres, including the Atlanta race massacre, the Tulsa race massacre and the Rosewood race massacre.
“Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement condemning the new standards. “It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history.”
“We are proud of the rigorous process that the Department took to develop these standards,” Alex Lanfranconi, director of communications for the Florida Department of Education, said in a statement, noting the standards were created by a group of 13 educators and academics.
“It’s sad to see critics attempt to discredit what any unbiased observer would conclude to be in-depth and comprehensive African American History standards. They incorporate all components of African American History: the good, the bad and the ugly. These standards will further cement Florida as a national leader in education, as we continue to provide true and accurate instruction in African American History,” Lanfranconi said.
I was a history major and an American history explorer with my family. My mother made sure we saw every unblemished historical fact about our country, from sea to shining sea. She also became the family genealogy expert and hid nothing from me about the slave owners in our family tree. She could crochet up a significant number of things too. However, she never soft-peddled the ongoing US genocide of our First Americans. She also didn’t hold back on the slave uprising that ended the life and career of one whatever great Uncle back there on the side branches. He was an expert in breaking uncooperative slaves. That fits right in with the white-washing of American History. Sorry folks, there’s a newspaper out there that reports his death and the whys and hows of everything. I’d like to send that to every kid in Florida to take to their teacher who tries to teach that bullshit.
Did I feel good about any of this? No. That’s the point. It caused me to fight bullies twice my size as a kid when I saw what I saw. It caused me not to want to be like them. That was the lesson. This brings the fight I fought for at least 3 decades, starting five decades ago. It’s back, and I’m not about to give up on it now. This is from The Conversation. I’m sure unisex bathrooms will once again be a scare factor. “U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney speaks during a press conference in December 2022, calling to affirm the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Alex Wong/Getty Images. Democrats revive the Equal Rights Amendment from a long legal limbo – facing an unlikely uphill battle to get it enshrined into law.” This was my first big civil rights fight and we’re still fighting today.
Democrats in Congress are making a new push to get the long-dormant proposed Equal Rights Amendment enshrined into law. As legislation, it would guarantee sex equality in the Constitution and could serve as a potential legal antidote to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which removed the federal right to an abortion.
“In light of Dobbs, we’re seeing vast discrimination across the country,” said U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York in an interview July 13, 2023. “Women are being treated as second-class citizens. This is more timely than ever.”
Gillibrand, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri and other Democratic lawmakers are arguing that the Equal Rights Amendment, often referred to as the ERA, has already been ratified by the states and is enforceable as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
Efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to recognize women’s rights have faced major challenges for the past century. Most recently, in April 2023 Senate Republicans blocked a similar resolution that would let states ratify the amendment, despite an expired deadline.
The piece was written by Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. DeSantis will probably come for her job. She studies gender and politics. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Co-Chair of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Caucus, leads the fight that started 100 years ago. This happened on July 19th.
“Nearly 100 years since the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced, our broad, diverse, and intersectional movement is using every tool available to get the ERA over the finish line and enshrine gender equality into our Constitution,” said Rep. Pressley. “Our Republican colleagues have the opportunity, once again, to stand on the right side of history and support the dignity, humanity, and equality of every person who calls America home. They must meet the moment.”
“The Equal Rights Amendment is all about equality—the most fundamental of American values. After 100 years, we are closer than ever to realizing the vision of the ERA,” said Senator Cardin, lead sponsor of S.J. Res. 4, the Senate companion resolution. “The required 38 states have already ratified the ERA, and it is long past time that Congress formally recognized the ERA as a part of our Constitution. I’m committed to pushing forward on all fronts until we finally see equality enshrined into our Constitution. There should be no deadline on equality.”
“This week marks the 100th anniversary of the unveiling of the Equal Rights Amendment at Seneca Falls. Seeing the ERA through to publication will require bold and decisive action, which Rep. Pressley is taking today by launching a discharge petition to bring HJ Res 25 to the House floor for a vote. Today’s ERA movement is multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, intersectional, and inclusive, led by Black and brown women, LGBTQ+ people, and youth,” said Zakiya Thomas, President and CEO of the ERA Coalition/Fund for Women’s Equality. “We’re grateful to the leadership of Representatives Pressley, Bush, Dean, Garcia, Kamlager-Dove, and Spanberger for advancing equality of all women, especially women of color, and LGBTQ+ folks; making sure we are all represented and seen in our Constitution. This fight won’t end here! We are in this, along with our nearly 300 partner organizations, until we’ve achieved true equal protection under the law for all.”
I have to admit I’d love to have a hobby, but I’m not sure it’s really me. Meanwhile, I’ll go tilt at a few more windmills and hopefully, enough people will join they will topple. I’m not leaving a mess for my grandchildren to pick up if at all possible. I’d rather they not have to wait another 100 years before the ERA is ratified.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Tuesday Reads: Antisemitism and Extremism in the U.S.
Posted: November 29, 2022 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, children, Donald Trump, just because, Twitter | Tags: anti-semitism, child abuse, child safety, Elon Musk, Holocaust denial, Kanye West, Neo-Nazis, Nicoholas Fuentes, Republicans, Ye 15 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Last Tuesday, Trump hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and and Nicholas Fuentes. West has been spouting virulent antisemitism recently, and Fuentes is a white supremacist, holocaust denier, and Hitler admirer. Trump was reportedly quite taken with Fuentes, and during the dinner said, “I like this guy. He gets me.” Public outrage built over the holiday weekend. At first Republicans were hesitant to criticize Trump for this, but yesterday some of them actually spoke out against his behavior.
The Washington Post: Pence, other Republicans issue rare rebuke of Trump over dinner with Fuentes and Ye.
Former vice president Mike Pence and numerous Republican lawmakers on Monday criticized Donald Trump for dining with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, both of whom have a history of antisemitic remarks, marking a rare break with Trump in the upper echelons of the GOP.
Pence was most clear in his condemnation, saying in an interview with NewsNation, “President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table. I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”
He joined several Republican senators who also directly criticized the former president in statements disavowing the dinner with Fuentes and Ye. Pence’s comments were also one of the clearest instances of the former vice president trying to set himself apart from Trump, whom he served for four years, amid the expectation that Pence will challenge Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.
Christie tweeted on Saturday: “This is just awful, unacceptable conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former President and current candidate.”
“Well, I hope, someday, we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done,” Hutchinson said in an interview Sunday on CNN. “In this instance, it’s important to respond. … I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that is setting an example for the country or the party to meet with an avowed racist or antisemite.” [….]
“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) tweeted. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said Trump should have “certainly” known who he is dining with, telling reporters Monday, “I totally think it’s ridiculous to be sitting down with somebody who espouses such views.” [….]
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a statement that she condemns “antisemitism and white supremacy” and that “the president should never have had a meal or even a meeting with Nick Fuentes.”
The public critiques of Trump were notable after years in which many Republicans remained silent as he courted extremists. Still, many stopped short of a full denouncement.
Mitt Romney delivered the harshest rebuke. From Charlie Sykes’ Morning Shots at The Bulwark:
“There is no bottom to the degree to which he’s willing to degrade himself, and the country for that matter. Having dinner with those people was disgusting,” Romney said.
“I voted to remove him from office twice… I don’t think he should be president of the United states. I don’t think he should be the nominee of our party in 2024. And I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”
More Republican condemnations from Semafor:
“It was ridiculous,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa said.
“I just think that was a really bad idea,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D, the second-ranking Republican leader, said. “He shouldn’t have done it.”
While some lawmakers were reluctant to single out Trump by name, and many paired their statements with attacks on Democrats and reassurances they didn’t consider Trump racist, they almost all made clear he’d crossed a line. Importantly, they did what Trump would not — condemn and disavow the hate his dinner guests preached.
“There’s no room in the Republican Party for white supremacy and antisemitism,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a close Trump ally, said. “It’s wrong. I think Republicans should all condemn white supremacy and antisemitism.” [….]
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. called Fuentes an “ass clown” and told CNN he hoped Trump would condemn the “evil” and “disgusting” figure. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas told NBC News he was a “racist clown.”
And even some top supporters were, at minimum, willing to concede it wasn’t the best look. “There’s a lot of other people, I would think that he could have met with to help the country be stronger and go more in the right direction,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. said.
And what about Jewish Trump supporters? Jonathan Weisman at The New York Times: Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point.
For much of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, Jewish Republicans rationalized away the bigoted fringe of Mr. Trump’s coalition, arguing that the unsavory supporters in his midst and the antisemitic tropes he deployed paled in comparison with the staunchly pro-Israel policies of his administration.
Trump, Nick Fuentes, and Kanye West
But last week, Mr. Trump dined at his Palm Beach palace, Mar-a-Lago, with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, granting the antisemitic fringe a place of honor at his table. Now, even some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters say they can no longer ignore the abetting of bigotry by the nominal leader of the Republican Party.
“I am a child of survivors. I have become very frightened for my people,” Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, said on Monday, referring to his parents’ survival of the Holocaust. “Donald Trump is not an antisemite. He loves Israel. He loves Jews. But he mainstreams, he legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters. And this scares me.”
Not all Republican leaders have spoken out, but Jewish Republicans are slowly peeling away from a former president who, for years, insisted he had no ties to the bigoted far right, but refused to repudiate it. Jewish figures and organizations that have stood by Mr. Trump, from Mr. Klein’s group to the pro-Trump commentator Ben Shapiro to Mr. Trump’s own former ambassador to Israel and onetime bankruptcy lawyer, David M. Friedman, have all spoken out since the dinner.
For Jews, the concern extends far beyond a single meal at Mar-a-Lago, though that dinner has become a touchstone, especially for Jewish Republicans.
“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and a supporter of many of Mr. Trump’s policies, said on Monday.
For American Jewry, the debate since the dinner has brought into focus what may be the most discomfiting moment in U.S. history in a half-century or more.
“The normalization of antisemitism is here,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League.
From New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg: Antisemitism’s March Into the Mainstream.
Jews are thriving in America, and even with the violent resurgence of antisemitism in the Trump era, I’ve rarely felt personally threatened, perhaps a function of my privilege. Over the last week, though, I’m reminded that well-off Jews in other times and places have also imagined that they’d moved beyond existential danger, and been wrong.
At this point, there is no excuse for being shocked by anything that Donald Trump does, yet I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists, a smirking little fascist named Nick Fuentes. There’s nothing new about antisemites in Trump’s circle, but they usually try to maintain some plausible deniability, ranting about globalists and George Soros rather than the Jews. Fuentes, by contrast, is overt. “Jews have too much power in our society,” he recently wrote on his Telegram channel. “Christians should have all the power, everyone else very little.”
Fuentes was brought to Trump’s lair by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who was evidently serious when he threatened to go “death con 3” on the Jews last month. (The relationship with West is a bit of a coup for Fuentes, who, openly wishing for conflict between Jews and Black people, has been willing to sublimate his anti-Black racism in the service of his antisemitism.) According to Axios, at one point during the dinner Trump turned to Ye and said of Fuentes: “I really like this guy. He gets me.”
Since then, Trump has claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was. I find this unlikely. In September, I wrote a piece about a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate named Joe Kent that mentions Fuentes in the first paragraph. Trump scrawled a note of congratulations on the print version and mailed it to Kent, who sent the image out on his email list. But even if Trump’s ignorance was sincere, he still didn’t denounce Fuentes after learning his identity.
Most Republicans, in turn, spent days declining to criticize Trump, though former Vice President Mike Pence and several senators finally spoke out on Monday. There is a good argument that politicians and journalists should avoid responding to every one of the ex-president’s provocations. In this case, however, the reluctance to rebuke Trump erodes the already-shaky taboo against antisemitism in Republican politics.
Elon Musk
Goldberg goes on to note that “other narcissistic celebrities are now joining him in reveling in reactionary transgression.”
Ye is launching a vanity presidential campaign run by the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who recently wrote on Telegram, “We’re done putting Jewish interests first.” After buying Twitter, Elon Musk enthusiastically welcomed both Trump and Ye back to the platform, and has been tiptoing up to the edge of antisemitism himself. On Sunday, he tweeted that Alexander Vindman, the Jewish retired Army officer who testified about Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine’s president, is both “puppet & puppeteer,” echoing an old antisemitic trope about Jews pulling the strings behind world events. On Monday, Musk tweeted an image of the alt-right symbol Pepe the Frog.
And now Musk owns Twitter, which has become a kind of public square that is important to people, causes, and even government agencies around the world. I knew nothing about Musk until recently, when he began making noises about buying Twitter. Now it’s clear to me that he is a full-blown malignant narcissist, very similar to Trump. He appears to be on a path to turning Twitter into an unmoderated hell scape like 4chan and 8chan, where Qanon and other crazy conspiracy theories festered. Recently Musk announced that he will reinstate all of the account that were previously banned by Twitter moderators. According to NPR,
In the days after the Capitol insurrection, Twitter banned 70,000 QAnon-linked accounts for spreading the conspiracy theory. Some belonged to influencers with large followings, including high-profile Trump supporters Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, who had also spread false claims of election fraud and had tried to get the election results overturned.
Many more accounts have been banned since then. Even more concerning, despite his claims that protecting children is important to him, Musk’s layoffs and firings have made Twitter more dangerous for children.
Wired: Layoffs Have Gutted Twitter’s Child Safety Team.
REMOVING CHILD EXPLOITATION is “priority #1”, Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk declared last week. But, at the same time, following widespread layoffs and resignations, just one staff member remains on a key team dedicated to removing child sexual abuse content from the site, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who both requested to remain anonymous.
It’s unclear how many people were on the team before Musk’s takeover. On LinkedIn, WIRED identified four Singapore-based employees who specialize in child safety who said publicly they left Twitter in November.
The importance of in-house child safety experts cannot be understated, researchers say. Based in Twitter’s Asian headquarters in Singapore, the team enforces the company’s ban on child sex abuse material (CSAM) in the Asia Pacific region. Right now, that team has just one full-time employee. The Asia Pacific region is home to around 4.3 billion people, about 60 percent of the world’s population.
The team in Singapore is responsible for some of the platform’s busiest markets, including Japan. Twitter has 59 million users in Japan, second only to the number of users in the United States, according to data aggregator Statista. Yet the Singapore office has also been impacted by widespread layoffs and resignations following Musk’s takeover of the business. In the past month, Twitter laid off half its workforce and then emailed remaining staff asking them to choose between committing to work “long hours at high intensity” or accepting a severance package of three months’ pay.
The impact of layoffs and resignations on Twitter’s ability to tackle CSAM is “very worrying,” says Carolina Christofoletti, a CSAM researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. “It’s delusional to think that there will be no impact on the platform if people who were working on child safety inside of Twitter can be laid off or allowed to resign,” she says. Twitter did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Twitter in-house child safety team is vitally important to outside organizations who work to protect vulnerable children, because the metadata and analysis are only available inside Twitter.
Whether you love or hate Twitter, that is frightening. We’ve spent the past 7 years dealing with one narcissistic psychopath who could still run for president again. Now there’s another one in charge of the most important platform for communication with journalists, government leaders, historians, researchers, and more. Why do we do this to ourselves? That’s a topic for another day.
What do you think? What stories are you following today?
Monday Reads: Of Droogs, Unwinable Wars, and Civil Rights Protests
Posted: February 7, 2022 Filed under: Black Lives Matter, Black Women Lead, Capital Punishment aka Death Penalty, child sexual abuse, children, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, corporate money, Criminal Justice System, Feminists, History, Human Rights, immigration, income inequality, misogyny, physical abuse, police brutality, racism, Rape Culture, white nationalists 22 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Fifty years ago, Elton John released Tiny Dancer, and Clockwork Orange was playing in theatres. We were fighting what seemed like an endless war run by a lawless President. It was the year of the Easter Offensive when North Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnamese forces. It was probably the first true evidence of a war the US would not win.
Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed Congress and got 35 of the 38 votes to become a Constitutional Amendment. In 1972, Native Americans occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The protest came from tribal frustration with the government’s ‘Trail of Broken Treaties.’ It lasted six days.
After the Senate voted passage of a constitutional amendment giving women equal rights, Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., left, met with two supporters and one opponent, Wednesday, March 23, 1972 in the Capitol in Washington. Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., second from right, one of eight senators who voted against the amendment. Others are Rep. Martha Griffiths, D-Mich., and Sen. Marlow Cook, R-Ky.
Furman v. Georgia was decided in 1972. The United States Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty schemes in the United States in a 5–4 decision. Each member of the majority wrote a separate opinion. The Civil Rights act of 1972 passed which led to Title IX.
A recipient institution that receives Department funds must operate its education program or activity in a nondiscriminatory manner free of discrimination based on sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Some key issue areas in which recipients have Title IX obligations are: recruitment, admissions, and counseling; financial assistance; athletics; sex-based harassment, which encompasses sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence; treatment of pregnant and parenting students; treatment of LGBTQI+ students; discipline; single-sex education; and employment. Also, no recipient or other person may intimidate, threaten, coerce, or discriminate against any individual for the purpose of interfering with any right or privilege secured by Title IX or its implementing regulations, or because the individual has made a report or complaint, testified, assisted, or participated or refused to participate in a proceeding under Title IX.
1972 was also the year of the Gary Declaration coming from a National Black Political Convention. Reverend Jesse Jackson was just one of many to attend the convention.
What Time Is It?
We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short.
Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chicago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From the sprawling Black cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harlem and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are the witnesses to social disaster.
Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth — and countless others — face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable — or unwilling — to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and strength of our best young warriors.
Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.
Me in 1973 with friends.
I was in high school feeling like we might actually get through this all and get to the dream of a more perfect Union. It was definitely a year of ups and downs. Fifty years ago seems like another lifetime. You’d think we’d see more progress on all of this.
We do have a Black Woman Vice President but no ERA and we had our first Black Man elected President who served two terms.. The Department of Interior is led by an Indigenous woman who has planned reforms that might bring more civil rights to our native peoples. Women’s sports are taken a lot more seriously but not one woman player earns what her male peers make.
Black Americans face a new wave of voter suppression and a Supreme Court ready to tear through laws meant to improve access to American Universities not unlike what the 1972 Civil Rights law sought to do on the basis of gender. We just got rid of a second long, unwinnable war but will we have another?
We also have Elton John on tour and Droogs. The Droogs are the white male Maga Men and hide under names like Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, and Patriot Front.
Some things don’t change and in this country, we know why. They don’t share power. They don’t want to. They’ll do anything to keep as much of it as possible. We have a White Male problem and it’s mostly got the face of an extreme patriarchal take of Christianity.
So that’s the perspective. This is the reality in 2022. This is from MS Magazine whose first stand-alone magazine was published in 1972. Excerpts from Elizabeth Hira’s “Americans Are Entitled to Government That Truly Reflects Them. Let’s Start With the Supreme Court” are going to show you exactly how far the rest of us still have to go. It’s in response to the audacity the Republican Party has to hold up Joe Biden’s promise to appoint the first black woman to the Supreme Court as some kind of affirmative action for a less-qualified person which is total Bull Shit.
This is the premise she completely proves. “Our current system has created conditions where, statistically, mostly white men win. That is its own kind of special privilege. Something must change.”
This is her conclusion. “American government in no way reflects America—perpetuating a system where male, white power makes decisions for the rest of us.”
These are her descriptive statistics.
Data shows these claims are not hyperbolic. A Supreme Court vacancy started this inquiry: There have been 115 Supreme Court justices. 108 have been white men. One is a woman of color, appointed in 2009. (Americans have had iPhones for longer than they’ve had a woman-of-color justice.)
One might be tempted to dismiss old history, except that the Supreme Court specifically cannot be looked at as a “snapshot in time” because the Court is built on precedent stretching back to the nation’s founding. Practically speaking, that means every decision prior to 1967 (when Justice Thurgood Marshall joined the Court) reflected what a group of exclusively white men decided for everyone else in America—often to the detriment of the unrepresented.
In a nation that is 51 percent female and 40 percent people of color, are white men simply more qualified to represent the rest of us than we are of representing ourselves? That sounds ridiculous because it is. And yet that is the implication when naysayers tell us that race and gender do not matter—that the “most qualified” people can “make the best choices” for all of us, and they all just happen to be white men.
What’s worse, those white men aren’t just making broad, general decisions—each and every branch of government acts in ways that directly impact people because of their race and gender, among other identities.
- When the Supreme Court considers affirmative action, it will be considering whether race matters for students who are already experiencing an increase in school segregation—what Jonathan Kozol once dubbed “Educational Apartheid.”
- When Congress is inevitably asked to pass a bill to protect abortion should the Court strike down Roe v. Wade, 73 percent of the Congress making that decision will be men—not people who could even potentially experience pregnancy.
- When recent voting rights bills failed, it was because two white Democrats and 48 Republicans (45 white and three non-white) collectively decided not to protect all American voters of color against targeted attacks on their access to the ballot.
- When Senator Kyrsten Sinema spoke to the Senate floor about why she could not take necessary steps to protect Americans of color, she did not have to look a single sitting Black woman senator in the eye. Because there are none.
The Supreme Court is not alone in underrepresenting women, people of color, and women of color. Of 50 states, 47 governors are white, 41 are men. Nearly 70 percent of state legislators are male.
The pattern holds federally, too: Today’s Congress is the most diverse ever—a laudable achievement. Except that today’s Congress is 77 percent white, and 73 percent male. (As an example of how clear it is that Congress was simply not designed for women, Congresswomen only got their own restroomin the U.S. House in 2011.)
In the executive branch, 97.8 percent of American presidents have been white men. There has never been a woman president.
BIA Spokesperson at Trail of Broken Treaties Protest: 1972
John Crow of the Bureau of Indian Affairs answers questions from Native Americans on November 2, 1972 at 1951 Constitution Avenue NW in Washington, D.C on the first day of the Trail of Broken Treaties demonstrations.
The numbers don’t lie. I don’t even want to go into the number of American presidents that have been worse than mediocre including the previous guy. This is the kind of systemic discrimination perpetuated in this country’s primary decision-makers. It is no wonder 50 years later we are even losing the table scraps they’re stealing now.
I’m going to leave you with this one last analysis before telling you to go read the entire essay.
The first female major-party presidential nominee was dogged by questions of her “electability,” and recent data shows large donors gave Black women congressional candidates barely one-third of what they gave their other female counterparts. Some people don’t support women and candidates of color because they worry these candidates simply can’t win in a white male system of power—which perpetuates a white male system of power. To create equitable opportunities to run, we must change campaign finance structures. It’s a necessary precursor to getting a government that looks like everyone.
I’m trying to send money to Val Demings in her effort to take down Mark Rubio. Mark Rubio will never consider the interests of all of his constituency because he’s funded by white males with a vested interest in their monopolies on politics and the economy.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN0gy6fSRkU&list=RDGMEMc6JZQrQ__ROET3gGdz-Trw&index=1
Now Tom said, “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I’ll be thereWherever somebody’s fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody’s struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, and you’ll see me”
Yeah!
Like Tom Joad, I was born an Okie. I was born on the Cherokee strip one of those places on the Trail of Broken Treaties at the end of the Trail of Tears. “The Grapes of Wrath” was on many a book banning and burning list back in the day. Look for it again on a list near you.
Frank Friday Reads
Posted: December 3, 2021 Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, birth control, Black Lives Matter, Breaking News, children, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Discrimination against women, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Federal Government Shutdown, Feminists, fetus fetishists, Gun Control, health, Psychopaths in charge, religious extremists, Religious Freedom, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican Code Words and Concepts, War on Women, white nationalists 14 Comments
Ghislaine Howard, Self Portrait Pregnant, 1984. © Ghislaine Howard.
Happy Friday Sky Dancers!
I’m going to make this entire weekend TV-free. It’s easy for me because all forms of sportsball bore me and I certainly don’t need to see the endless talking heads as it’s been a depressing enough week already. Most movies and tv shows bore me too so my plan is to read and do creative stuff. I’ve got pies to bake, pictures to paint, and music to make!
There were a lot of depressing and insulting things argued during the Mississippi Forced Birth Enslavement and child-trafficking law loved completely by the out-of-touch right-wing Christianists on the court. They must have missed being exposed to the idea that women have moral agency during their important lessons in life sessions. BB covered a lot of it yesterday.
A lot enraged me but none more than the white savior complex of Amy “great white savior” Coney Barret. She seems to feel since she adopted two black children and saved them from whatever hell she imagines with her white nationalist vision and missionary position she can ride to the rescue of all zygotes and embryos everywhere in the country. She feels she knows what’s right and that adoptions are just the answer to everything surrounding a woman’s pregnancy. Adoption justifies the state enslavement of pregnant women resulting in state trafficking of commodity babies. It’s her perfect concoction of everything is better when the rest of us are just the property of white men.
I’m sure as many of you have experience with friends that were adopted and also couples that adopted for a variety of reasons. Even with all the best intentions and best parenting, I’ve never met an adopted person that hasn’t presented some combination of similar emotional and psychological issues. They always feel lacking in a way that I never experienced even though they can be a tremendous variation on that theme. My first real experience came with a young black woman who was adopted by a kind elderly white couple and never quite felt she fit into any community that she met. I’ve always hoped that since multi-racial families are more prevalent that has become less of an issue. I also had a friend who adopted a boy only to find out a procedure could take care of her fertility problems. She then had four kids right after him. His biggest problem was one of his grandfathers continually reminding him that he wasn’t really theirs. Then, another friend had been adopted by a white couple because they wanted her baby. It took years for her to be able to tell her son that he wasn’t her brother. They really couldn’t be bothered with her after the boy was born.
Stuff like this leaves scars. And these are examples of what most people would call successful adoptions. None of the parents in these scenarios are the monsters that many adopted or foster kids get a place with. I won’t even share the trauma I’ve seen an adopted nephew go through even though his parents try everything. Every time a girl breaks up with him he goes through a loss like I’ve never seen in a person. At the moment, I live with someone who was adopted and it’s a variation on this all over. She’s got a form of detachment disorder and just is constantly in therapy over those issues and other personality disorders. She spent time in an orphanage. She loves her parents. They’re annoying in the same way most parents are but again, there are just issues that come along with all that and some people handle it better than others or have been further complicated before they get to their adopted family. It’s a forced birth fairy tale that adoption all rainbows and unicorns for everyone!
Gustav Klimt – Hope, II, 1907
These kids didn’t end up in the foster system although a few came from orphanages. I want to share these three articles with you written today. BB shared a few yesterdays. Don’t get me wrong. Adoption isn’t like they used to do which was to dump a girl in an unwed mother’s home, take the child from her, then put the child wherever. But, it still has that feeling that the state shouldn’t be forcing child trafficking and making women nothing but vessels. This is the worst kind of state interference in a woman’s moral agency. It’s autocratic and it’s purely based on one’s interpretation of a few religions. Babies are not commodities. Fetuses cannot live on their own and women do not just play passive host vessels. My last much wanted pregnancy nearly killed both of us and me several times with cancer I developed during it. Every woman has a different story and every child has a different story. The state just can’t write us all off under one big power grab like we’re all property. It’s a woman’s decision to make. PERIOD.
This is from New York Magazine: “Amy Coney Barrett’s Adoption Myths. “They’re co-opting our lives and our stories.” written by
Twice in oral arguments this week for the abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked pro-choice advocates: Would banning abortion be so bad if women could just drop their newborns at the fire station for someone else to adopt? She conceded that forced pregnancy and birth are “an infringement on bodily autonomy,” but suggested, misleadingly, that the real choice is between having a later abortion and “the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion.”If advocates for abortion rights were so worried that “the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy” would harm women, asked Barrett, who adopted two children from Haiti, “Why don’t the safe-haven laws take care of that problem?”
The attorney for the clinics, Julie Rikelman, reminded Barrett that it’s 75 times more dangerous to give birth in Mississippi than to have a pre-viability abortion, disproportionately threatening the lives of women of color in particular. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said citing laws where parents can relinquish their newborns, no questions asked, “overlooks the consequences of forcing upon her the choice of having to decide whether to give a child up for adoption. That itself is its own monumental decision for her.” People who have lived and studied the realities of adoption also had a lot to say about Barrett’s blithe solution — one that drew on a well-established conservative political strategy to put adoption forward as the kinder face of the anti-abortion movement.
The day after oral arguments, I had a conversation with Angela Tucker, a transracial adoptee, host of The Adoptee Next Door, and media consultant; Kate Livingston, Ph.D., a birth parent and educator of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; Kathryn Joyce, journalist and author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption; and sociologist Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., who studies abortion, adoption, and reproductive decision-making in the United States.
Pablo Picasso Pregnant Woman Vallauris, 1950
Please go read the questions and answers in this conversation. They are enlightening, to say the least. Elizabeth Spiers writes this for the New York Times: “I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict.”
As an adoptee myself, I was floored by Justice Barrett’s assumption that adoption is an accessible and desirable alternative for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. She may not realize it, but what she is suggesting is that women don’t need access to abortion because they can simply go do a thing that is infinitely more difficult, expensive, dangerous and potentially traumatic than terminating a pregnancy during its early stages.
As an adoptive mother herself, Justice Barrett should have some inkling of the complexities of adoption and the toll it can inflict on children, as well as birth mothers. But she speaks as if adoption is some kind of idyllic fairy tale. My own adoption actually was what many would consider idyllic. I was raised by two adoptive parents, Alice and Terry, from the time I was an infant, and grew up in a home where I knew every day that I was loved. A few years ago, I found my biological mother, Maria, and three siblings I didn’t know I had via a DNA test and Facebook.
The first time I spoke to Maria on the phone — she lives in Alabama, not too far from my parents, and I live in Brooklyn — she apologized repeatedly for giving me up and told me she loved me and that I would always be family. “You are blood,” she would say later. I told her, and continue to tell her, every time she brings it up, that the apology is unnecessary. I had a wonderful childhood and I believe she had made the right decision. But she remains heartbroken about the years we missed together.
Both Maria and my mom, Alice, oppose abortion on religious grounds. My mom is white and Southern Baptist; Maria is Hispanic and Pentecostal. Both like to point to me to justify their beliefs, saying that had Maria gotten an abortion, I would not exist. It’s a familiar argument: The anti-abortion movement likes to invoke Nobel Prize winners who might never have materialized, or potential adoptees who might have cured cancer, if they hadn’t been aborted at eight weeks.
Here is my third offering on this topic.
You could make the argument that from Alito on … they all should step down. They were hired by the Republicans to tank Roe and whatever follows that insults their personal religious fetishes. We all have the right to practice our religions but not to force them on others via the state. It’s hard to believe they’re on the Supreme Court and they have such open disdain for the First Amendment of the Constitution.
‘How brilliant to paint yourself changing’ … Chantal Joffe’s 2004 self-portrait Photograph: © Chantal Joffe Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/ Venice
When should a Supreme Court justice’s deeply held religious beliefs require recusal — that is, that the justice not participate in a particular case? A difficult question, to be sure, but one that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has already answered for herself. And her answer requires her recusal in abortion cases.
The Supreme Court hears arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Wednesday, which challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Under current precedent, the law is unconstitutional — as both the district court and the court of appeals held. Both Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, and Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, decided in 1992, hold that a state cannot ban abortions prior to viability, approximately the 24th week of pregnancy. Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to overrule those precedents.
To follow her own words in a 1998 law review article, Barrett should have recused herself from deciding this case (and all other abortion cases) if she has any integrity at all.
In “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” published in the Marquette Law Review, Barrett (then a law clerk to a federal court of appeals judge) and her co-author address the dilemma that faces devout Catholic judges in capital cases. She writes that such judges are “obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty,” but they are also “obliged to adhere to their church’s teaching on moral matters.” They are therefore “morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.”
What’s a Catholic judge to do, then? According to Barrett’s article, the judge must recuse herself. She can neither enforce the death penalty and violate her religious conscience, nor fail to enforce it and violate her oath of office.
And even in a case in which a judge has discretion whether or not to sentence a convicted criminal to death, he cannot resolve to keep an open mind and then claim to have done nothing wrong if he decides not to impose the death penalty. Because, Barrett writes, “A judge who suspends his moral judgment during sentencing sets his conscience aside” and “cuts himself loose from his moral moorings.” That unloosing is itself a sin, she concludes — analogous to “looking lustfully at a woman” and thus committing adultery “in his thoughts.”
Barrett’s bottom line is that an “observant Catholic judge” may not “formally cooperate in bringing about the defendant’s execution.” And for that reason, “if one cannot in conscience affirm a death sentence the proper response would be to recuse oneself.” To do otherwise is to “betray a public trust” by manipulating the law “in order to save lives.”
Well, Well, Well!
Celebration of the body … Jenny Saville’s Electra (2012). Photograph: Prudence Cuming/© Jenny Saville. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
Here are a few other links to how Christianists are forcing everyone to follow their distinct takes on Christianity. They sound more like the Taliban every day. And take it from me, as a former Methodist who was frequently called not a real Christian, they will come for all of you.
A North Dakota school district superintendent sent an email that says racial injustice is being pushed by a “political ideology,” called for a “Christ centered Republic” and deemed critical race theory “bigotry cloaked in academic theory,” according to InForum.
The news service, which obtained a copy of the email that was sent to a North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders-run listserv, reported that in Starkweather Public School District Superintendent Larry Volk’s email, he said that it was “time to move away from godless corrupt woke, left-wing ideology and back to the devout Christ centered Republic the founders envisioned.”
Volk also vowed in his email that critical race theory “will never be taught in our district. We will not teach institutionalized bigotry promoted by the left.”
“Racial injustice has been pushed by a political ideology — not a race of people. There is no systemic racism in America created by our Founding Fathers — the racism is the project of the godless Democrat party that has rejected god, family, faith and America and embraced secularism in the form of Marxism,” Volk said in another portion of the email.
“My district will continue to teach the Christian heritage and origins of the American Republic focusing on primary source documents from the founding era,” he added.In an email to The Hill, Volk defended his email, which included some political commentary regarding a list of historical events, figures and groups, saying that “my goal is simply to teach as accurately as I can.”
Yeah, Jesus the street preacher and social justice warrior would surely not recognize the description of his work here.
My last set of links is basically a group of writers telling Dems to face the culture warriors .head-on and decimate them. As Amanda says below, “fight early and fight often.” There are also some gun fetishists that need to be dealt with.
- Democrats can win the culture wars — but they have to take on the fight early and often. Liberals are already winning the culture wars, which is why the right is so mad. Why won’t Democrats lean into it? by AMANDA MARCOTTE writing for Slate
- .Democrats need to fight the culture war — and win by Will Bunch writing for the Spokesman-Review
- .If Roe Is Reversed, Democrats Need to Be Ready by Ed Kilgore writing for New York Magazine
- Parents of Michigan high school shooting suspect charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter via the Washington Post
- DeSantis proposes a new civilian military force in Florida that he would control by Steve Contorno writing for CNN
In one good piece of news, there’s this. McConnell folded like a cheap umbrella.
https://twitter.com/YossiGestetner/status/1466459437137338372
In other good news, Donald Trump is still NOT president. We’re just back to fighting old battles like Women’s Rights, Voting Rights, and probably GLBT rights shortly. Have a peaceful and joyful weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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