After all these years of carefully avoiding Covid-19, I finally came down with it about a month ago. I wasn’t that sick at first, and I never got any upper respiratory symptoms. However I became extremely weak and after several days, I sat down and was unable to get up again. I had to call 911, and I ended up in the hospital.
Once I got there, it turned out that the sodium level in my blood was dangerously low. That may have been responsible for my weakness. I had no idea that sodium was so important, but apparently it is. You can have seizures and other serious health problems if it is too low or too high.
Day after day the doctors tried to increase my sodium level. Fortunately, the hospital had very good food. I was never really hungry, but part of raising the sodium level was to eat! So I was in the hospital for about two weeks. Then I was transferred to a rehab, but I signed myself out after 3 days, because they weren’t doing anything for me.
I’m doing OK at home, although I’m still tired and somewhat weak. I seem to have a bit of a mental hangover from the Covid. My memory seems a little worse and I feel spaced out at times. I think it’s improving though.
I saw my own doctor on Wednesday, and learned that my sodium level is back in the low normal range. That is a relief, but I also tested low for iron and protein. I’m waiting to hear back from my doctor about this.
I did manage to stay abreast of the politics news while I was hospitalized. My TV got CNN, but not MSNBC, and I could read news on my phone. Unfortunately, the news has been disturbing, what with the clear evidence that Trump plans to turn our county into a dictatorship and the war between Israel and Hamas.
So what’s happening today? A real horror story in Texas where the government is forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy even though the fetus will not survive and continuing to carry it will likely result in the woman being unable to have any more children.
The Texas Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a pregnant woman from obtaining an emergency abortion in a ruling issued late Friday.
The court froze a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed Kate Cox, who sued the state seeking a court-ordered abortion, to obtain the procedure. “Without regard to the merits, the Court administratively stays the district court’s December 7, 2023 order,” the order states.
The court noted the case would remain pending before them but did not include any timeline on when a full ruling might be issued. Cox is 20 weeks pregnant. Her unborn baby was diagnosed with a fatal genetic condition and she says complications in her pregnancy are putting her health at risk.
Following the ruling, Cox’s attorney said they remain hopeful the state’s request is quickly rejected. “We are talking about urgent medical care. Kate is already 20 weeks pregnant,” said Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This is why people should not need to beg for healthcare in a court of law.”
The ruling came just hours after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton petitioned the high court to intervene in the case.
Paxton’s petition stemmed from a ruling on Thursday by a Texas judge who granted a 14-day temporary restraining order against the state’s abortion ban, so Cox could legally terminate her pregnancy.
The decision marked a significant development in the ongoing debate over the state’s medical exception to its controversial ban on abortions after six weeks – one of the strictest in the nation.
Elizabeth Allan Fraser Seated, Reading with a Cat., by Patrick-Allan-Fraser
The state court’s ruling was in response to an appeal from Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who opposed the woman’s abortion.
The Supreme Court said that, “without regard to the merits” of the arguments on either side, it had issued an administrative stay in the case, to give itself more time to issue a final ruling.
The stay meant that, for the moment, the order from a judge in Travis County district court permitting the abortion was on hold. That order allowed the woman, Kate Cox, to obtain an abortion and protected her doctor from civil or criminal liability under Texas’s overlapping abortion bans.
“We fear that justice delayed will be justice denied,” said Molly Duane, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Ms. Cox.
While the Texas bans allow for exceptions to protect the health and life of a pregnant woman, doctors have said that vague legal language created fear of prosecution and an unwillingness to perform abortions.
Mr. Paxton’s filings came hours after a district court judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Mr. Paxton and others from enforcing the state’s overlapping abortion bans against Ms. Cox’s doctor, Damla Karsan, or anyone who assisted her with providing an abortion to Ms. Cox.
In granting the order, the judge, a Democrat, found that Ms. Cox, 31, a mother of two young children living in the Dallas area, met the criteria for an exception to the state’s abortion bans. Her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a fatal condition in all but a small number of rare cases; Ms. Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, had been to the emergency room several times for pain and discharge during her pregnancy.
On Friday, lawyers from the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is also representing Dr. Karsan, filed a response to Mr. Paxton with the state’s highest court.
“The State’s mandamus petition is stunning in its disregard for Ms. Cox’s life, fertility, and the rule of law,” the lawyers for Ms. Cox wrote. “Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court deny the writ and instruct the Attorney General to comply with binding orders from a Texas court.”
A ruling would apply only to Ms. Cox and her current pregnancy.
A showdown in Texas over one woman’s right to terminate a non-viable pregnancy could keep abortion at the center of the 2024 election and change the trajectory of legal challenges to state bans.
The case underscores the legal and ethical gray areas physicians have faced since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And it has amplified a debate over who is exempt from strict abortion bans, who has legal standing to challenge the bans and the liabilities doctors risk in interpreting vague laws with stiff penalties as they help patients navigate time-sensitive medical crises.
Legal experts say the Texas case’s implications stretch far beyond the state’s borders and highlight the defects of a post-Roe legal regime in which a patchwork of state laws is open to clashing interpretations. Several states have vaguely worded exemptions to their abortion bans that rely on the judgment of medical providers to decide who is sick enough to qualify. And those doctors risk losing their license, and can face steep fines or years in prison if a jury disagrees with their call.
“All of this confusion is revealing that Dobbs is not itself workable,” said Greer Donley, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, referring to the case that overturned Roe. “Dobbs is premised on the distinction between elective and therapeutic abortions, that … you can ban one while protecting the other. We’re learning in real time that that’s not possible.”
Read more at the Politico link.
Recently, there have been a number of stories in the mainstream media acknowledging the obvious fact the Trump plans to turn our country into a dictatorship modeled on Putin’s Russia and Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. Now the Trump campaign is trying to put the genii back in the bottle.
Top officials in Donald Trump’s campaign sought Friday to quell discussions about his possible second term in the White House, amid alarms about authoritarianism and reports about personnel.
“Let us be very specific here: unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a written statement to the media.
The unusual statement, which came after a similar message from the senior advisers last month, reflected growing concerns in Trump’s circle about some perceptions associated with his second term. It comes as experts and political opponents have raised alarms about the former president and his allies embracing authoritarian ideas and rhetoric.
Wiles and LaCivita added a warning to their missive: “Let us be even more specific, and blunt: People publicly discussing potential administration jobs for themselves or their friends are, in fact, hurting President Trump … and themselves. These are an unwelcomed distraction.” [….]
Two girls dressing a kitten by candlelight, by-candlelight-by-joseph wright of derby (1734-1797), English
The Washington Post and other outlets have previously reported that Trump and his allies have drawn up specific plans to use the federal government to punish his opponents, including discussions of invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, which would allow him to use the military against civilian demonstrations. Trump, who is campaigning on his grievances and vowing retribution, has also repeatedly said that he sees his prosecutions as justification to turn the Justice Department and the FBI against his opponents.
Friday’s statement also came amid an escalating response from the campaign against reports describing a second Trump term that would be more extreme and autocratic than his first. Trump advisers, who have sought to run a more disciplined campaign compared with Trump’s previous ones, view those reports as unhelpful for the general election.
Trump, however, has at times undercut that message, including on Tuesday during a town hall with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. When asked whether he “would never abuse power as retribution against anybody,” Trump said, “Except for Day 1,” and proceeded to talk about drilling for oil and closing the border.
A coalition of right-wing groups known as Project 2025 has been preparing for an incoming Republican administration. But in light of reports about Trump’s potential second-term policies, including on immigration and personnel, Wiles reached out to the project’s director, Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, to tell him the reports were not helpful, The Post previously reported.
Putting a genii back in the bottle is not an easy thing. Democrats should run on the autocratic threats that Trump himself has made repeatedly.
For 74 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been America’s most important military alliance. Presidents of both parties have seen NATO as a force multiplier enhancing the influence of the United States by uniting countries on both sides of the Atlantic in a vow to defend one another.
Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he sees NATO as a drain on American resources by freeloaders. He has held that view for at least a quarter of a century.
In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Mr. Trump wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” As president, he repeatedly threatened a United States withdrawal from the alliance.
Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Mr. Trump has said precious little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He and his team refuse to elaborate.
That vague line has generated enormous uncertainty and anxiety among European allies and American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role.
European ambassadors and think tank officials have been making pilgrimages to associates of Mr. Trump to inquire about his intentions. At least one ambassador, Finland’s Mikko Hautala, has reached out directly to Mr. Trump and sought to persuade him of his country’s value to NATO as a new member, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
In interviews over the past several months, more than a half-dozen current and former European diplomats — speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Mr. Trump should he win — said alarm was rising on Embassy Row and among their home governments that Mr. Trump’s return could mean not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but a broader American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance.
Read more at the NYT.
Platt Powell Ryder – American artist, 1821–1896 Woman at Spinning Wheel
Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who is warning about the potential dangers of a second Donald Trump presidency, said Americans should take his recent dictator remark “literally and seriously.”
Trump raised alarms earlier this week when he declined to flat out reassure the public that he wouldn’t abuse power if he is elected, instead telling Fox News host Sean Hannity he wouldn’t be a dictator “except on Day One.”
Some Republicans have suggested Trump was making a joke but Cheney — who had a lead role in investigating his actions after the 2020 election and on Jan. 6, 2021 — disagreed.
“I think we have to take everything that Donald Trump says literally and seriously,” Cheney said in an interview with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, which will air Sunday on “This Week.”
“And I think that we saw, frankly, what he was willing to do already after the 2020 election in the lead up to Jan. 6, after Jan 6,” she continued. “People need to remember that when Donald Trump woke up on the morning of Jan. 6, he thought he was going to remain as president. And we saw the extent to which he was willing to attempt to seize power when he lost an election.”
Cheney called it “wishful thinking” to believe that Trump would “now abide by the rulings of the courts or be stopped by the guardrails of our democracy.”
She is absolutely right.
Just a couple more stories before I don’t have the energy to continue:
Speaking of NATO, if Republicans continue to block U.S. aid to Ukraine, we may soon be forced to send U.S. troops into a shooting war. If Ukraine is no longer able to resist being taken over by Russia, Putin will not stop there. If he attacks a NATO ally, we will be forced to a war that could possibly become World War III.
Olena Zelenska has warned that Ukrainians are in “mortal danger” of being left to die if Western countries don’t continue their financial support.
Ukraine’s first lady spoke to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg a day after Republican senators in the US blocked a key aid bill.
It would have provided more than $60bn (£47.8bn) worth of support to Ukraine.
Speaking hours after a Russian missile attack, she said: “If the world gets tired, they will simply let us die.”
Auguste Lorange (1830-1875) Girl sleeping with kittens
The White House has warned that US funds for Ukraine could soon run out, but Republicans have held up a deal to authorise more assistance.
They are seeking to secure compromises from President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress on funding for US border measures, in exchange for their support.
President Biden said the failure to agree Ukraine aid would be a “gift” for President Vladimir Putin, warning history would “judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom’s cause”.
Nearly two years since Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the first lady expressed grave concern over delays in funding.
In an exclusive interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Olena Zelenska told the BBC the slowdown in aid represented a “mortal danger” for her country.
She said: “We really need the help. In simple words, we cannot get tired of this situation, because if we do, we die.
“And if the world gets tired, they will simply let us die.”
The first lady continued: “It hurts us greatly to see the signs that the passionate willingness to help may fade.
“It is a matter of life for us. Therefore, it hurts to see that.”
Another “first lady,” Casey DeSandis, really put her foot in it yesterday.
Florida first lady Casey DeSantis sparked confusion on the campaign trail Friday after calling on supporters of her husband, Ron DeSantis, to flock to Iowa to participate in its looming caucuses.
“We’re asking all of these moms and grandmoms to come from wherever it might be—North Carolina, South Carolina—and descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus because you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” Casey DeSantis said during an appearance on Fox News.
“So moms and grandmoms are going to be able to come and be a part and let their voice be heard in support of Ron DeSantis,” she continued.
The Iowa Republican party then issued a reminder that, actually, “you must be a legal resident of Iowa and the precinct you live in and bring photo ID with you to participate in the #iacaucus.”
[Emphasis added] The Iowa Republican party then released a statement explaining that you must live in Iowa in order to participate in the caucuses. Casey then pretended that she was only calling for volunteers, not out-of-state voters. Sure. Casey is apparently as dumb as her husband.
That’s all I have for you today. I know there is much more happening, so please post any thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread.
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We’re heading to the end of the year as measured by the Romans and their Sun God, who stole that calendar from the Greeks and other things from the Egyptians. The Egyptians were more interested in the Dog Star since it appeared in the east each solar year when the Nile flooded than the sun. Julius Caesar replaced the slightly confusing Greek Lunar Calendar with the Egyptian one in 45 BC. The Romans stole a lot from the Greeks, too. A later Pope, Gregory XIII, tried to correct the bugs in that one. However, we still have leap years and months with varying numbers of days. That’s why they constantly have to tinker with it. They’re forcing it to be what they want.
None of this is particularly relevant to the many folks who still follow the lunar calendar for important days. It shows you just how much conquerors can usurp everything meaningful to you as they rewrite your celebrations, history, and culture. I have a meeting next week where everyone is supposed to share their holiday traditions with pictures and stories before we go on the obligatory week off, which really is not the best time of year to have a forced week off. I always get to be the one who says there are no holidays in this month for me. But you can ask me on January 14th next year.
I just try to stay out of the way of all the money-centric activities during the month and the frenetic business that wears everyone out and causes many to be depressed. If you are one of those folks who experience depression this time of year, you are not alone, and do not hesitate to seek help. Also, please remind any of your friends and family who struggle this month that you stand by them and are willing to help them.
Fig. 2. Virginian Luxuries. Courtesy of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Va.
There is a genuine effort to white-wash history in this country. Texas is a mainstay in these activities. This is from the Texas Monthly. “The Texas Historical Commission Removed Books on Slavery From Plantation Gift Shops. An agency spokesperson claimed that the move had nothing to do with politics. Internal emails show otherwise. ” There are many plantations here in Louisiana and many focus on the treatment of slaves in their presentations of history. It’s not pretty and it shouldn’t be, because it wasn’t.
After visiting the Varner-Hogg plantation an hour south of Houston, amateur historian Michelle Haas was incensed by what she had seen. At an exhibit that details the farm’s use as a sugar plantation worked by at least 66 slaves in the early nineteenth century, she’d watched an informational video. To her mind, it focused too much on slavery at the site and not enough on the Hogg family, which had turned its former home into a museum celebrating Texas history. She’d also seen books in the visitor center gift shop written by Carol Anderson and Ibram X. Kendi, two Black academic historians who have been outspoken on the issue of systemic racism. Outraged, she emailed David Gravelle, a board member of the Texas Historical Commission, the agency that oversees historical sites at the direction of leaders appointed by Governor Greg Abbott. “What a s—show is this video,” Haas wrote on September 2, 2022. “Add to that the fact that the activist staff member doing the buying for the gift shop thinks Ibram X. Kendi and White Rage have a place at a historic site.”
Over the next eight months, Haas continued to email Gravelle, advocating for such books to be removed. In turn, Gravelle, a marketing executive based in Dallas, took up the cause internally at the Historical Commission, calling on agency staff to do away with the titles Haas didn’t think belonged at the gift shops. By November of this year, it appeared Haas’s demands were met. The Texas Historical Commission no longer sells White Rage by Anderson or Stamped From the Beginning by Kendi, or 23 other works to which Haas later objected, at two former slave plantations in Brazoria County, including Varner-Hogg. Among the literature no longer available for purchase is an autobiography of a slave girl, a book of Texas slave narratives, the celebrated novel Roots by Alex Haley, and the National Book Award–winning Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
The Texas Historical Commission did not provide Texas Monthly with a list of titles no longer for sale. Chris Florance, a spokesperson for the agency, said many books were removed from the historical sites as part of an effort that he said was launched in March to reduce inventory as the agency transitions to a new point-of-sale software system. Emails acquired by Texas Monthly through an open-records request reveal, however, that Gravelle was concerned about the way those books presented Texas history and about potential attention from state lawmakers over what books were available for purchase. The emails also show that he had raised those concerns in February, before the agency decided to change its software system.
Texas Attorney General, and all around corrupt crook is going after the Ob/Gyn who will hopefully, still perform a necessary abortion approved by a Judge just days ago. This letter was sent to Three Hospitals where the Doctor would likely perform the surgery. AG Paxton has done nothing to protect the children of Texas from death by guns, but that is his response to procedure necessary to keep this woman healthy and alive. It his not his or the state’s business. This is from The Guardian. “Texas attorney general says he will sue doctor who gives abortion to Kate Cox. Ken Paxton issues threat after judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, can get an abortion.”
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has threatened to prosecute any doctor who provides an abortion to Kate Cox, a woman with a non-viable pregnancy, advising hospitals to ignore a court order issued on Thursday allowing her to get the procedure.
The rightwing Paxton issued the warning to three Houston-area hospitals after a Texas judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, may obtain an abortion under the narrow medical exceptions offered by the state bans.
In a brazen dismissal of the court’s decision, Paxton wrote that the judge’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability.”
Paxton also wrote that the hospital where Cox obtains an abortion “may be liable for negligent credentialing the physician” who performs the procedure.
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cox after she learned last week that her fetus has trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition, as well as other health issues, including a spinal abnormality. Continuing the pregnancy could threaten Cox’s life and future fertility. The 31-year-old mother of two has already rushed to the emergency room four times with severe cramping and fluid loss, but doctors have told her that their hands are tied by the state laws.
On Thursday, the Travis county judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, issued a temporary restraining order to permit Cox’s doctor to perform the abortion.
“The idea that Ms Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” the judge said, following an emergency hearing on Thursday.
Late Thursday night, the state appealed the judge’s ruling, in a motion asking the Texas supreme court to immediately block Gamble’s order.
In Paxton’s letter to the hospitals involved in Cox’s case, the attorney general wrote that Gamble was “not medically qualified to make this determination”.
“He is trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer,” said Marc Hearron, the senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans. Rather than respect the judiciary, he is misrepresenting the court’s order.”
Cox’s case marks the first time a pregnant person has asked a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973.
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Muslim speech is a topic of a debate over freedom of speech in this country. It has been especially focused on the speech of students and professors at Universities. Michelle Goldberg provides this Op-Ed for the New York Times. “At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap.”
On Wednesday, a dear friend emailed me a viral clip from the House hearing on campus antisemitism in which three elite university presidents refuse to say, under questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates school policies on bullying and harassment. “My God, have you seen this?” wrote my friend, a staunch liberal. “I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Elise Stefanik on anything, but I do here.”
If I’d seen only that excerpt from the hearing, which has now led to denunciations of the college leaders by the White House and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, among many others, I might have felt the same way. All three presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania — acquitted themselves poorly, appearing morally obtuse and coldly legalistic. It was a moment that seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about the tolerance for Jew hatred in academia.
But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.
“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.
Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”
So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.
The anguished and furious reaction of many Jews to that viral clip is understandable. Jewish people of many different political persuasions have been stunned by the rank antisemitism and contempt for Israeli lives that has exploded across campuses, where Jewish students have been threatened and, in some cases, assaulted. This week, when I wrote that the backlash to anti-Israel protests threatens free speech, I received many emails from people who felt I was refusing to grapple with an evident crisis. “You are worried about an overreaction when there hasn’t yet been a sufficient reaction to the antisemitism terrifying Jewish students on campus,” said one.
But it seems to me that it is precisely when people are legitimately scared and outraged that we’re most vulnerable to a repressive response leading to harmful unintended consequences. That’s a lesson of Sept. 11, but also of much of the last decade, when the policing of speech in academia escalated in ways that are now coming back to bite the left.
Amid the uproar over the campus antisemitism hearing, many have claimed that if Stefanik were asking about attacks on any other ethnic group, there would have been no waffling. But Stefanik did ask about another group. Her first question to Gay was, “A Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Gay started to respond, “Our commitment to free speech,” but Stefanik, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to get the answer she wanted, cut her off and changed tack.
Yet clearly, at many universities, the defense of free speech has been inconsistent. Some elite schools now cloaking themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment to ward off charges of coddling antisemites have, in the past, privileged community sensitivity over unbridled expression. So when university administrators say, as Gay did, “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,” many in the Jewish community see a galling double standard.
But as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning civil liberties group, said in a statement about the hearings, “Double standards are frustrating, but we should address them by demanding free speech be protected consistently — not by expanding the calls for censorship.” Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening.
“The general point that there’s a hypocrisy around free speech and an imbalance around free speech on college campuses is right,” said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. But, he said, many of the people pointing this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”
They are now bombing Nassar Hospital in the South. When will the world wake up? https://t.co/eC0NvTTUMA
— Sarah Jayne – We'll be alright 💙💚🌹🗡️ (@soppysomers) December 4, 2023
This is from ABC News. “Hospitals in southern Gaza are at ‘breaking point,’ international organizations say. The WHO said patients are being forced to be treated on the floor.”
Hospitals in central and southern Gaza are at a “breaking point” and struggling to care for the influx of patients amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization say.
Two hospitals — Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza and Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza — are overwhelmed and are being forced to prioritize those with life-threatening conditions, according to Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has staff working at both medical centers.
“We hear bombing around us, day and night,” Katrien Claeys, an MSF team leader in Gaza, said in a press release Monday. “In the last 48 hours, over 100 dead and over 400 injured people arrived at the emergency room of Al-Aqsa Hospital. Some patients were taken for surgery right away.”
The fog of war is perhaps the worst place to get actual information on atrocities be it the brutal rapes and murders of Israeli women at a Music Festival or the bombing of young and elderly at a hospital.
She got famous during this genocidal war for this video in a hospital, where she said "I'm older than Israel".
The fog of the NRA is also difficult to traverse. We have a lot of festivals and holidays surrounding light this year; Diwali, Channukah, the birth of the light of the world, etc. But it’s sure difficult to shine the light on so many thing things these days even with global internet and news.
This is from NBC News. “Man federally charged after firing shots outside New York synagogue, officials say. The suspect was identified as Mufid Al Khader, 28, officials said.”
A man arrested in connection with shots that were fired outside a synagogue in Albany, New York, on Thursday has been federally charged, officials said.
Mufid Fawaz Alkhader was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, FBI spokesperson Sarah Ruane told NBC News.
Alkhader, 28, was born in Iraq and is now a U.S. citizen. He recently lived in Schenectady, New York, according to the criminal complaint.
No one was injured in the incident, in which two shots were fired from a Kel-Tec KS7 12 gauge pump shotgun outside Temple Israel around 2 p.m., Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said. Police don’t know in what direction the shots were fired, he said.
“We were told by responding officers that he made a comment, ‘Free Palestine,’” Hawkins said at a news conference.
The shooter fled but was confronted by another person in a vehicle in a lot, Hawkins said.
“The suspect at that point made some statement to this person who was in the vehicle to the effect of he feels that he’s being victimized,” Hawkins said.
The suspect then dropped the shotgun, and officers arrived and arrested him, said Hawkins, who emphasized that Al Khader acted alone and that there is no further threat to the community. There was also no damage to the building.
Hawkins said his understanding is that the suspect made the “Free Palestine” comment around the time he was taken into custody.
This is from The Daily Beast. “Bystanders Stop Woman Torching Martin Luther King Jr.’s Atlanta Birth Home.”
Off-duty police officers and tourists on Thursday helped to stop a woman setting fire to the house where Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta after she doused the property in gasoline, authorities said.
The 26-year-old woman was confronted by a pair of visitors from Utah as she poured fuel on the porch of the house, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. Two off-duty New York City Police Department officers who had been visiting the home then pursued the suspect and detained her until local law enforcement arrived, Schierbaum added.
“That action saved an important part of American history tonight,” the police chief said.
One of the tourists from Utah, Zach Kempf, said he initially thought the woman was watering shrubs in front of the house. Kempf told The New York Times he and the co-worker with whom he was visiting the home then asked the woman “what she was doing” as she tried to open the screen door, but “she didn’t respond.”
It was then that she allegedly emptied a five-gallon container on the porch and retrieved a lighter she’d left in the grass next to the porch. Kempf said he blocked the woman with his body as she attempted to get back onto the porch while holding the lighter.
He told the Times the woman had a “nervous energy” but “wasn’t aggressive” and eventually backed down, turning around and walking off down the street. Kempf said he called 911 and “yelled at the two guys down the street that she was trying to set the house on fire and to follow her.”
Kempf said the men—the off-duty NYPD cops—restrained the woman. He added that later, after local officers arrived at the scene, the suspect’s father and three sisters showed up after tracking her location from her phone. Her family described the woman as a veteran who was in mental distress, according to Kempf.
The Atlanta Police Department said the woman was arrested for attempted arson as well as interference with government property. In a statement, the King Center said an “individual attempted to set fire to this historic property” but was fortunately unsuccessful “thanks to the brave intervention of good samaritans and the quick response of law enforcement.”
“If the witnesses hadn’t been here and interrupted what she was doing, it could have been a matter of seconds before the house was engulfed in flames,” Atlanta Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry DeBerry told reports.
From a poster dated c.1913. Force Feeding suffragettes during a hunger strike in the UK.
Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau1: “Improved means to an unimproved end”. This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.
This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.
These words do not get as much play on his birthday as many of his other speeches and writings, but I think it’s worth reading the details he provides on his three categories.
It is also important to realize that the more we bury past actions, the more likely we will tolerate their repeat. The struggle for peace and justice continues.
Let me add a quote from Abigail Adams. “Don’t forget the Ladies.” Also, love is love. People know who they are better than you. Embrace the LGBTQ+ community and their rights.
If you celebrate light this month, be the light you seek at all times. You have several calendars to choose from to keep track of your path.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
[Verse 1] Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights What did they think the politics of panic would invite? Person in the street shrugs—”Security comes first”
[Refrain] But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
[Verse 2] Callous men in business costume speak computerese Play pinball with the third world trying to keep it on its knees Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea And the local third world’s kept on reservations you don’t see “It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”
[Refrain] But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
[Verse 3] Fashionable fascism dominates the scene When the ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means Tenants get the dregs and the landlords get the cream As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst
[Refrain] But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse The trouble with normal is it always gets worse The trouble with normal is it always gets worse The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
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The Iowa Caucuses are on January 15th. The New Hampshire primaries are scheduled for January 23rd. Get ready for the cray-cray. Abortion Rights and Trump’s campaign are in the headlines today. As the Boys from South Park say, “I call shenanigans!”
The election in Kentucky has brought a young woman to the front of the abortion debate. This is a Washington Postarticle about her and how she will join the national conversation on a civil right that is very personal and essential for her. “‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection — and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024.” The feature article was written by Caroline Kitchener.
One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.
Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president ora leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.
“They don’t hate me,” Duvall,21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned aboutDuvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enactedban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly atthe Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open toadditional exceptions.
“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.
“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”
She tells the story of the abuse in detail. So, I have to issue another Content Warning today. It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.
Republican Campaign Strategist Liz Mair wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. Mair has a list of clients that are basically in the deplorable basket. “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.”
Well, D’oh. Again, we see the Republican obsession with late-term “abortions,” which are usually the result of something gone horribly wrong, incredibly rare, and the OB/GYN profession considered to be deliveries with bad outcomes. Again, they’re not even considered abortions after the point of fetal viability, where babies will be saved if possible. The overwhelming majority are wanted pregnancies and devasting to the women and families involved.
Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.
Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.
Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary. There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters. We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday. Today, I feature this PBS News Hourreport from last August. Given what I read about South Dakota, I can’t help but believe that deplorables in states like Ohio haven’t shared their tactics.
Across the country, Republican officials and activists who oppose abortion access have worked to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot measures and added roadblocks to the process of getting abortion directly on the ballot These attempts to stop voters from weighing in directly on abortion aren’t new, but advocates say the current anti-ballot-measure efforts are taking on a renewed pace and ferocity. As voters even in conservative states have chosen to back abortion rights, GOP legislators and officials have been willing to fundamentally change the rules of democracy.
“We’ve been seeing an acceleration of these attacks on ballot measure processes more every year for the past several years,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass progressive ballot measures. “And the success that abortion rights advocates have had at the ballot box in 2022 is putting fuel on that already burning fire of red state legislatures wanting to exclude their voters from direct democracy.”
Comer engaging with his constituents. John Buss, @repeat1968
These types of initiatives are definitely part of a democratic republic that Republicans would prefer to disappear in a Trump autocracy. So, how is the Republican plan to overthrow a constitutional democracy going? Well, look at the Trump Campaign. This is from Politico. “Trump’s revenge? GOP braces for daily blasts from ‘orange Jesus.’ His reascension, as nominee or the eventual winner, threatens to spark the same clashes with the Hill GOP that took a heavy toll on the party.”
Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump — which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.
With Trump far ahead of the GOP primary pack and leading President Joe Biden in some polls, Republicans are getting a preview of future shellshock akin to their experiences in 2016 and his presidency. It’s likely to continue for the next 11 months. And perhaps four more years after that.
Trump’s recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP. Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they’re increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president’s often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements.
But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They’re distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down “hard” on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage.
“He is almost a stream of consciousness,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of only three Senate Republicans who will remain in office after voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — the other four have either already left or plan to next year. It’s “analogous to when every day he would tweet,” Cassidy added, “and 99 percent of the time it never came to anything.”
The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables. This New York Times article outlines his radical ideas for this election cycle. The byline includes Maggie Haberman, FYI. “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.”
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.
What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.
This article written by Philip Bump in the Washington Post also addresses Trump’s campaign style. “How Donald Trump uses dishonesty.” He might as well say the quiet part out loud.
Trump spent years trying to get people to buy gold-plated condominiums, apartments gilded with veneers of luxury and class. He spent years trying to get lots of people to buy lots of things, really, with allegations of fraudlingering around him and his company for much of that time. But he was never more successful in parlaying dishonesty into investment than since he embraced a career in national politics in 2015.
His approach that year was groundbreaking for a deceptively simple reason. Republican voters, frustrated by Barack Obama’s election and reelection, had increasingly embraced misinformation about national political issues. The Republican establishment, including elected officials, didn’t know how to deal with this. At first, they tried to co-opt the energy, reframing their desired policy preferences in the vernacular common with the tea party or fringe-right media outlets. But there was still a gap between what those outlets and right-wing commentators were endorsing and what established politicians would say.
Trump closed the gap. He said the things about immigrants that were common on the fringe-right, despite being exaggerated or false. He said the things about the left that those commentators, uncoupled from the party, were claiming on Fox News and in blogs. There was a backlash, including from the GOP establishment, that helped increase the audience for his claims. Republicans — especially the hard-right Republicans who were more likely to vote in primaries — heard him and viewed him not as a dishonest, opportunistic demagogue but as a solitary truth-telling pariah. That everyone in a position to know pointed out that Trump was wrong or lying reinforced his political branding: He was the guy challenging the elite hegemony. “Birds aren’t real,” but for an older generation.
This has been Trump’s sales approach ever since. You can see it in the rhetoric he deployed over the weekend at campaign events in Iowa, reiterating false, debunked claims about election fraud and attempting to reframe President Biden as a threat to democracy. But those are the endpoints of his approach, not the mechanism itself.
Consider this bit of rhetoric Trump offered in support of the idea that it is Biden, not him, who undermines America’s systems and history.
“You know that they’ve labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. I mean, can you believe it?” he said in Cedar Rapids. “But they have. You know, when I first heard that — they have actually gone after parents viciously and violently, and when I first heard it, I thought people were just making it up. They haven’t made it up. You’ve seen that.”
They did make it up. This idea that the Biden administration had called parents “domestic terrorists” has been debunked repeatedly. But — because it’s so compelling a reason to despise Biden and because the debunkings don’t permeate right-wing media — the idea has become embedded in anti-Biden lore. He’s right about one thing, though: His supporters have seen that claim, on Fox News and in right-wing commentary for years. It’s false, but they’ve seen it, and here’s Trump glomming onto the idea so that he can put it to higher use: disparaging Biden and his administration as the threat to democracy.
That’s how it works, over and over. He gets buy-in on a familiar claim and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements. Right after this riff, for example, he started talking about how his opponents purportedly cheat in elections. Graham Kates of CBS News reports that “Trump seeks “urgent review” of gag order ruling in New York civil fraud case.” Not even a court can shut this idiot up while he destroys others’ lives.
Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a ruling that upheld a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York, with his attorneys saying Monday that they plan to ask the state’s highest court to review the decision.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order barring Trump from commenting publicly about his staff after the former president published a social media post disparaging Engoron’s clerk on Oct. 3, the second day of the trial. The order was later expanded to apply to attorneys in the case.
The judge found that Trump and his campaign violated the gag order twice, and Trump paid $15,000 in fines, before the appeals court temporarily stayed the order on Nov. 16. That hiatus lasted two weeks, while a panel of judges in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court considered, and then rejected, Trump’s request to have the gag order lifted.
Trump is now seeking an “urgent review” by New York’s highest court, called the Court of Appeals, his attorneys said in a filing. Trump has accused Engoron and the clerk, Allison Greenfield, of bias in his filings.
“Without expedited review, [the defendants] will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote. “Petitioners’ counsel have no means of preserving evidence of or arguments regarding such bias and impropriety at this time, since the Gag Orders also prohibit in-court statements.”
I’m unsure how to endure all this since we must deal with it head-on. I suppose ranting here, going to my local to drink a glass of wine and rant, plus just plain ranting to the dog and cats, will suffice for now. I’m not quite too old to also rant at my elected officials, even though there’s not much they do about anything.
We will also get this mess that Republicans have cooked up to get us to ignore Orange Caligula’s rants. Here’s more of those Crazy Train Republicans as reported by Newsweek. “Joe Biden Impeachment Looks More Likely After Walmart Confrontations: Comer. Who had Walmart Confrontations on their Election Bingo cards? Anyone?
Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said on Sunday that an impeachment of President Joe Biden looks more likely after House Republicans heard from their constituents at Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The GOP has been investigating Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden‘s business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP’s impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.
Once the impeachment inquiry is complete, the Judiciary Committee will decide on whether to draw up any draft impeachment articles against Biden to be voted on by the House. Comer has said that a vote could take place by early 2024.
Better let MGT do it, or she will come after you with a machete and whack of little Jim. You remember what she did to Boerbert.
We have a few more weeks before we can actually see voter sentiment instead of reading misleading polls. Hang in here with us!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
You’ve got covert action Prejudice to extremes You’ve got primitive cunning And high tech means You’ve got eyes everywhere But people see through you
You’ve got good manipulators Got your store of dupes You’ve got the idiot clamour Of your lobby groups You like to play on fears But people see through you
You’ve got instant communication Instant data tabulation You got the forces of occupation But you don’t get capitulation
‘Cause people see through you People see through you People see through you People see through you
By Bruce Cockburn
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You may have noticed that JJ and I have been doing the posts recently. BB took ill with Covid-19. We were hopeful that a few doses of Paxlovid would have her back in no time. However, she has been in the hospital now since Monday. She developed mild pneumonia and will probably have more days in hospital before they release her. We all wish her the very best on her road back to health.
My mother used to love watching the A-Team back in the day. I didn’t watch it much, but I did love Mister T, and “I pity the fool” who didn’t love him calling out a “Jive Turkey.” One of Maya Angelou’s words of wisdom was, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Today, I have a long list of Jive Turkeys showing us exactly who they are.
A jive turkey is someone who is unreliable, makes exaggerations or empty promises, or who is otherwise dishonest. The phrase is so associated with 1970s culture.
On paper, she has scheduled a trial to open next May in the case charging Donald Trump with hoarding national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago.
In reality, she has run the pretrial process at a leisurely pace that will make a postponement almost inevitable, according to experts on criminal prosecutions related to classified information.
Delaying Trump’s trial until after the November election would have a momentous implication: It might mean the trial never happens at all. If Trump wins the election and the case is still pending, he’s expected to order the Justice Department to shut it down.
Even a shorter delay would be fraught: Pushing the trial into the summer or fall could run headlong into the Republican National Convention or the heart of the general election campaign.
For now, Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Florida, is officially sticking with the May 20 trial date she announced four months ago. She even recently denied Trump’s bid to push it back. But in a series of more technical rulings, Cannon has postponed key pretrial deadlines, and she has added further slack into the schedule simply by taking her time to resolve some fairly straightforward matters.
“It could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet,” said Brian Greer, a former Central Intelligence Agency attorney.
“There’s pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule,” he added.
David Aaron, a former DOJ national security prosecutor, agreed, saying a May 20 trial is unlikely “unless a lot of discipline is imposed.”
Congressman and longshot Biden presidential rival Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) did a comical bit of backpedaling when CNN anchor Abby Phillip confronted him for attacking Vice President Kamala Harris in another interview.
Rep. Phillips — who is polling at or below the margin of error in most polls since launching a primary challenge against Biden — lobbed a series of attacks at the VP in an Atlantic interview, couched as repetitions of criticisms from unnamed others:
“Is Kamala Harris prepared to step in if something happened to Biden?” I asked Phillips.
“I think that Americans have made the decision that she’s not,” he said.
I replied that I was interested in the decision of one specific American, Dean Phillips.
“That is not my opinion,” Phillips clarified. He said that every interaction he’s had with the vice president has been “thoughtful” and that “I’ve enjoyed them.”
“That said …” Phillips paused, and I braced for the vibe shift.
“I hear from others who know her a lot better than I do that many think she’s not well positioned,” he said of Harris. “She is not well prepared, doesn’t have the right disposition and the right competencies to execute that office.”
Phillips also noted that Harris’s approval numbers are even worse than Biden’s: “It’s pretty clear that she’s not somebody people have faith in.”
But again, Phillips is not one of those people: “From my personal experiences, I’ve not seen those deficiencies.”
The exchange even nonplussed the interviewer, Mark Leibovich, who compared it to “Trumplike ‘many people are saying’ attributions.”
Stay classy Congressman. You may want to read up on misogynoir.
This interview by Abby Phillip with Dean Phillips is interesting for a few reasons…
• He shifts blame but also doubles down that OTHER “people have been saying” to him that VP Harris isn’t well positioned, doesn’t have the right disposition & competencies to execute the office… pic.twitter.com/Fb7CZs5MXM
‘The Turkey is a noble bird.” Benjamin Franklin’s character in the musical 1776, John Buss @repeat1968
MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill posited that Donald Trump is “even more dangerous” than Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler because the only thing he cares about is himself, and he lacks any other kind of political center.
The former senator joined Alicia Menendez on Tuesday for Dateline, where the panel was discussing the New York Times’analysis of Trump’s most recent rhetoric against his political enemies. With Trump’s increasing levels of vitriol, aggression and thirst for vengeance, the Times pointed to the valid comparisons between the former president and various fascist leaders and dictators.
As McCaskill was invited to discuss Trump stoking violence and political extremism in America, she noted that “A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship.”
The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. He is not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America. He is not trying to overcome a neighboring country like Putin is in Ukraine. He is not going for a grandiose scheme of international dominance. All he wants is to look in the mirror and see a guy who is president. All he cares about is selfish self-promotion. That’s the only philosophy he has.
McCaskill argued this makes Trump “even more dangerous because he’s actually said out loud that it would be okay to terminate the Constitution to keep him in power.”
“He actually said those words,” she said. “And the irony is all of these supposed conservative folks that have populated the Republican party all stood around with their thumb in their mouth going ‘well, yeah okay.’ It’s bizarre.”
Les Dindons, 1877, Claude Monet
Peter Stone of The Guardian wrote this analysis. “‘Openly authoritarian campaign’: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm. ‘Openly authoritarian campaign’: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm. .”Trump’s talk of seeking to ‘weaponize’ the DoJ and ‘retribution’ for opponents poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US should he win a second term, experts say.”
Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US.
Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he’s branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.
Trump is currently the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for 2024 and has long maintained hefty polling leads over his party rivals. At the same time a slew of recent polls has also shown him ahead of president Joe Biden, including in key battleground states.
But scholars and ex-justice officials see increasing evidence that if they achieved power again Trump and his Maga allies plan to tighten his control at key agencies and install trusted loyalists in top posts at the DoJ and the FBI, permitting Trump more leeway to exact revenge on foes, and shrinking agencies Trump sees as harboring “deep state” critics.
Ominously, Trump has threatened to tap a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.
Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out”, echoing Fascist rhetoric from Italy and Germany in the 1930s.
“I’m hard pressed to find any candidates anywhere who are so open that they would use the power of the state to go after critics and enemies,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor and co-author of How Democracies Die.
“This is one of the most openly authoritarian campaigns I’ve ever seen. You have to go back to the far-right authoritarians in the 1930s in Europe or in 1970s Latin America to find the kind of dehumanizing and violent language that Trump is starting to consistently use.”
Republican Freedom Caucus Jive Turkeys are trying to pin January 6th on a false flag operation led by the FBI. This was denied by FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Congressional hearing and is an absolutely insane conspiracy theory. This is from Amanda Marcotte writing for Salon. ‘Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Lee get Jan. 6 footage — but trying to blame the FBI could backfire. Whatever, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Lee — no one actually thinks the FBI was behind January 6.”
No surprise from a guy who took the lead defending Donald Trump’s attempted coup, but the newly appointed Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., moved quickly to abuse his power in an effort to spread lies and disinformation. He’s pretending to do so under the guise of “transparency,” by releasing over 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 insurrection online this week. Of course, Johnson does not actually expect people to watch the footage, especially as pretty much every American already knows what happened that day: attempted murder, vandalism, bashing cops, and limitless jackassery from people dumb enough to listen to Donald Trump. But of course, the MAGA movement — now indistinguishable from the Republican Party — wants to rewrite history in gaslight, claiming that our lying eyes deceived us and that the Capitol riot was merely a tickle.
The purpose of this release is not subtle. Propagandists can soon cherry-pick a few moments where rioters were not beating up cops, and pretend that somehow negates the rest of the time that they were beating up cops. As I noted in Tuesday’s newsletter, the tactic is familiar to anyone who has survived a trash boyfriend, the kind who whined, “Why don’t you talk about all the days I didn’t cheat on you?”
Relitigating a day that makes Republicans look like fascists and cowards doesn’t seem like the smartest electoral strategy. But the GOP now is primarily composed of professional trolls who cannot turn down an opportunity to spew noxious gases online. Sure enough, some of the most annoying people in Congress tweeted conspiracy theories about the footage in language so fevered you could practically hear them panting as they typed. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a man who is only spared from being the biggest dweeb in the Senate by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, retweeted an image of a Capitol rioter with captions falsely implying he was an undercover FBI agent. “I can’t wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing,” Lee wrote, with a junior high student’s enthusiasm for being annoying to adults.
And, of course, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., repeated the same obviously silly story, because the woman never met a conspiracy theory she doesn’t like.
No Jive Turkey Trot would be worth its salt if it didn’t include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. This is from A.G Gancarski’s Florida Politics. “In attempt to reboot New Hampshire campaign, Ron DeSantis rolls out food drive. Hungry Floridians won’t benefit, but the Governor’s 2024 campaign will.”
While Floridians who are dealing with food insecurity this week may be on their own, it’s heartening to know Gov. Ron DeSantis is organizing a food drive.
That’s the good news.
The bad news for them is that it’s in another state.
“We are doing a big canned food drive today in New Hampshire. We’re going to be donating to the New Hampshire Food Bank. So I would just say Americans as they enjoy their Thanksgiving, there’s a lot of people that are struggling with this economy so we want to step up and do our part,” DeSantis said on Tuesday’s “Fox and Friends.”
Though Florida has been rocked by inflation that rivals anywhere in the country, DeSantis is strategically limiting his cost-of-living concerns to states where he needs votes more imminently. He has bemoaned spiraling prices in Iowa also.
“I’m going around and talking to voters across the country. I’ll have a family in Iowa tell me, you know, now they go and check out at the grocery store and it rings up so high, so quick they’ve got to take things out of their shopping cart,” DeSantis said in September on the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports.”
For the DeSantises, economic concerns are a family affair: First Lady Casey DeSantis has also talked about troubles in the economy, blaming “Bidenomics” for her need to buy her children’s “$2 t-shirts” at Walmart.
The Governor is spending Tuesday in the Granite State, where he will be the main attraction during a noon town hall event in Manchester, at the Executive Court Banquet Center, with Gov. Chris Sununu on hand. From there, his next stop will be a second town hall in Keene, a 6 p.m. start at Tempesta Restaurant.
Gov. DeSantis only has room to improve in New Hampshire generally, but his problems are especially acute in the Manchester metropolitan area, where he had just 2% support in a a recent survey from the University of New Hampshire.
He’s below 10% in recent polls of the state, including a drop to fifth place in the new Washington Post-Monmouth survey of New Hampshire GOP Primary voters. With 7% support, the Florida Governor finds himself behind Vivek Ramaswamy (8%), Chris Christie (11%), Nikki Haley (18%), and Donald Trump (46%).
Elon Musk’s new lawsuit against Media Matters, which X Corp. filed late Monday, has been dismissed by legal experts as a frivolous effort to bully a prominent critic into silence. But some Republicans apparently see this as a feature, not a bug: They are allying themselves with Musk’s effort for precisely this purpose.
Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically. Two GOP state attorneys general — Ken Paxton in Texas and Andrew Bailey in Missouri — have responded by announcing vaguely defined investigations into Media Matters.
Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller is urging Republican law enforcement officials to probe Media Matters for “criminal” activity. And Mike Davis, who is touting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, has declared that Media Matters staff members should be jailed.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, doesn’t deny that the juxtapositions between ads and pro-Nazi postings are real. Rather, it accuses Media Matters of creating an account following only fringe content and endlessly refreshing it until it finally generated the juxtapositions. Those are “extraordinarily rare,” the suit says, but were deliberately engineered to disparage X, harm its revenue stream and interfere with its contracts with advertisers.
It’s a weak case, as experts point out. The Media Matters article said it had “found” the juxtapositions, which X calls “false,” insisting they were “manipulated” into existence. But even if you question Media Matters’s presentation of the facts, it still wouldn’t show that it did “all of this to harm X’s market value,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Well, next November we get to see how all of this shakes out. If you’re not convinced the Republicans have gone Fascist by now, there’s not much hope for you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Place: Atlanta Ga., U.S.A. Date: 1993 Credit: The Carter Center
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Before I start kvetching about Appeals Courts today, I’d like to join the country in its appreciation of Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who passed this weekend at 96. Former President Jimmy Carter got the very first vote I cast in a Presidential election. I was at University and remember those turbulent times well. The Israel-Palestine conflict was as ghastly then as it is now. Iran introduced itself by capturing U.S. hostages from our Embassy there. Inflation was roaring. Rosalynn Carter was the face of humanitarian efforts during that one term. She was also active in trying to get the ERA passed and brought a new perspective to the treatment of people with mental illness and the elderly. The Carters’ work with Habitat for Humanity is the stuff of legends. She was both a social justice warrior and a humanitarian.
This is the tribute given to her by NBC News’ Daniel Arkin.
Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady and humanitarian who championed mental health care, provided constant political counsel to her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, and modeled graceful longevity for the nation, died Sunday at her home in Plains, Georgia, according to the Carter Center.
In a statement, former President Carter said: “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”
Rosalynn Carter was widely regarded for her political shrewdness, drawing particular praise for her keen electoral instincts, down-to-earth appeal, and work on behalf of the White House, including serving as an envoy to Latin America.
She devoted herself to several social causes in the course of her public life, including programs that supported health care resources, human rights, social justice and the needs of elderly people.
“Twenty-five years ago, we did not dream that people might someday be able actually to recover from mental illnesses,” Carter said at a mental health symposium in 2003. “Today it is a very real possibility.”
“For one who has worked on mental health issues as long as I have,” she added, “this is a miraculous development and an answer to my prayers.”
Place: Afeta, Ethiopia Date: Feb. 13, 2007 Credit: The Carter Center
Five first ladies have paid tribute to the extraordinary woman who was visibly a partner to her husband’s presidency. “Her life is a reminder that no matter who we are, our legacies are best measured not in awards or accolades, but in the lives we touch,” Michelle Obama wrote. Secretary Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former President, characterized Mrs. Carter as a “champion of human dignity.
The Washington Post‘s Karen Tumulty characterizes Mrs. Carter this way.
But Rosalynn Carter arrived at a time when women’s roles were changing at every level of society. And, according to Paul Costello, who was her assistant press secretary, the new first lady took to heart a bit of counsel from her own outspoken predecessor. “Betty Ford gave her wise advice: Do what you want to do because no matter what you do, you will be criticized,” Costello told me.
Still, the first lady was taken aback by the stir she created when, in the second year of the Carter presidency, she began showing up at Cabinet meetings and quietly taking notes.
“Jimmy and I had always worked side by side; it’s a tradition in southern families, and one that is not seen as in any way demeaning to the man,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I also think there was a not very subtle implication that Cabinet meetings were no place for a wife. I was supposed to take care of the house — period.”
It was not the only time she felt frustrated with the expectations that came with her role. Less than a month after the inauguration, she held her first solo news conference to announce the formation of a presidential commission on mental health — an issue that would become her biggest cause.
“The next morning when I picked up the Washington Post to read about it I found not one word about the commission or the press conference,” she recalled. This newspaper instead ran a story about how the Carters had established a policy against serving hard liquor at White House functions.
But the first lady continued to press against the constraints, and in breaking her own path, she would make it easier for those who followed — including Hillary Clinton.
Rosalynn Carter traveled abroad and met with heads of state to discuss matters of substance, not for photo opportunities, and made it clear she was speaking for the administration in her public appearances. “Dinner guests at the White House have seen her interrupt the President — not rudely but unhesitatingly — usually to explain something more clearly than he had been doing,” the New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote in 1979.
Two crucial cases are coming from two very different Federal Appeals Courts today. The first one is on Voting Rights and came out of the 8th District. It’s basically forcing the outcome that Republicans have championed for some time and will likely find an accessible Advocate in the Supreme Court in its Chief Justice John Roberts. Hansi is the NPR reporter for this case. It’s terrible news. Most of the judges on the 8th circuit were appointed by Bush or Trump.
BREAKING: An 8th Circuit panel of federal judges has struck down the main path for enforcing the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 protections for people of color, upholding a lower court ruling that says private individuals can’t bring lawsuits under the lawhttps://t.co/yUT8xItF1Gpic.twitter.com/SfTt7xunRh
The 8th Circuit just ruled that the NAACP is no longer allowed to sue under the Voting Rights Act. The decision came from two white male judges: Raymond Gruender (Bush) and David Stras (Trump). Lavenski Smith (Bush), the only Black judge, dissented.https://t.co/IsBLW96VLQpic.twitter.com/hvhoQA5Vry
A federal appeals court issued a ruling Monday that could gut the Voting Rights Act, saying only the federal government — not private citizens or civil rights groups — is allowed to sue under a crucial section of the landmark civil rights law.
The decision out of the 8th Circuit will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. But should it stand, it would mark a dramatic rollback of the enforcement of the law that led to increased minority representation in American politics.
The appellate court ruled that there is no “private right of action” for Section 2 of the law — which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race
That, in practice, would severely limit the scope of protections in the act. For decades, private parties — including civil rights groups, individual voters and political parties — have brought Section 2 challenges on everything from redistricting to voter ID requirements.
Rosalynn Carter, wife of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, appears on the ‘Meet the Press’ television talk show, September 26th 1976. She is wearing a ‘Carter/Mondale’ campaign badge. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
We’re also seeing action from the Appeals Court in the DC circuit on their”Hearing on Trump gag order in federal 2020 election subversion case.” This is breaking and updating news from CNN.
After 2 hours and 20 minutes of oral arguments, the three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals appears inclined to restore the limited gag order in former President Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case, but may loosen some restrictions so he can more directly criticize special counsel Jack Smith.
None of the judges embraced Trump’s claims that the gag order should be wiped away for good because it is a “categorically unprecedented” violation of his free speech rights.
Yet they also posed sharp questions to prosecutors as they tried to find the boundary of where intense campaign-trail rhetoric crosses the line of undermining a criminal case.
The limited gag order from district Judge Tanya Chutkan – which was temporarily frozen by the appeals panel when they agreed to hear the case — restricts Trump’s ability to directly attack Smith, members of his team, court staff or potential trial witnesses. He is allowed to criticize the Justice Department, proclaim his innocence, can say that the case is “politically motivated.”
The appellate judges, who are all Democratic appointees, heard the case on an expedited schedule and are expected to issue a ruling soon.
First Lady Rosalynn Carter on stage with Willie Nelson at the White House, 1978 Identifier
I believe that Jack Smith is more concerned about the attacks on his family than himself, but we shall see.
The Guardian discusses how recent data has shown that the Upper 1% of global wealth holders are responsible for destroying the World’s resources via carbon emissions. This study was done by Oxfam. “Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says. ‘Polluter elite’ are plundering the planet to point of destruction, says Oxfam after comprehensive study of climate inequality”
The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report.
For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide. It explores the causes and consequences of carbon inequality and the disproportionate impact of super-rich individuals, who have been termed “the polluter elite”. Climate justice will be high on the agenda of this month’s UN Cop28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.
The Oxfam report shows that while the wealthiest 1% tend to live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, their emissions – 5.9bn tonnes of CO2 in 2019 – are responsible for immense suffering.
Using a “mortality cost” formula – used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, among others – of 226 excess deaths worldwide for every million tonnes of carbon, the report calculates that the emissions from the 1% alone would be enough to cause the heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people over the coming decades.
Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans.
The suffering falls disproportionately upon people living in poverty, marginalised ethnic communities, migrants and women and girls, who live and work outside or in homes vulnerable to extreme weather, according to the research. These groups are less likely to have savings, insurance or social protection, which leaves them more economically, as well as physically, at risk from floods, drought, heatwaves and forest fires. The UN says developing countries account for 91% of deaths related to extreme weather.
The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
LAGRANGE, GA – JUNE 10: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn attach siding to the front of a Habitat for Humanity home being built June 10, 2003 in LaGrange, Georgia. More than 90 homes are being built in LaGrange; Valdosta, Georgia; and Anniston, Alabama by volunteers as part of Habitat for Humanity International’s Jimmy Carter Work Project 2003. (Photo by Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images)
Throughout much of the Western world’s history, the wealthiest have been viewed in their communities as a potentially unfavorable presence, and they have attempted to allay this sentiment by using their riches to support their societies in times of crises like plagues, famines or wars.
This symbiotic relationship no longer exists. Today’s rich, their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic, have opposed reforms aimed at tapping their resources to fund mitigation policies of all kinds.
This is a historically exceptional development. Helping foot the bill of major crises has long been the main social function attributed to the rich by Western culture. In the past, when the wealthiest have been perceived to be insensitive to the plight of the masses, and especially when they have appeared to be profiteering from such plights (or have simply been suspected of doing so), society has become unstable, leading to riots, open revolts and anti-rich violence. As history has the unpleasant feature of repeating itself, we would do well to consider recent developments, including legislators’ inability to increase taxes on the rich, from a long-term perspective.
Let us begin with the consideration that the presence of very rich, or even superrich, individuals has always been somewhat troubling for Western societies. Medieval theologians regarded the rich as sinners and thought that the building of large fortunes should have been discouraged. At the very least, the rich were expected not to appear to be wealthy and to provide generous bequests to charitable institutions to the benefit of their souls.
But with time, as new economic opportunities in trade and in finance led to the accumulation of fortunes of unprecedented size, the increased presence of extremely wealthy individuals within the community could no longer be dismissed as an anomaly. From the 15th century, and beginning with the most economically developed areas of Europe such as central-northern Italy, the rich were assigned a specific social role: to act as private reserves of money into which the community could tap in times of dire need.
Nobody made this point better than the Tuscan humanist Poggio Bracciolini. In his treatise “De avaritia” (“On avarice”), completed in 1428, he argued that cities that follow the tradition of instituting public granaries to build up food reserves should also be well provided of “many greedy individuals, in order … to constitute a kind of private barn of money able to be of assistance to everybody.”
US First Lady Rosalynn Carter plays basketball with members of the Harlem Globetrotters outside the White House, Washington DC, March 1980. They are teaching her how to spin a basketball on her fingertip. (Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images)
As with all good economics treatises, this one brings home the numbers, story, and background. Private jet travel is one of the biggest culprits.
His legions of fans call him “the madman” and “the wig” due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair. He refers to himself as “the lion.” He thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family, views his cloned mastiffs as his “children with four paws” and has suggested people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs.
A few years ago, Milei was a television talking head whom bookers loved because his screeds against government spending and the ruling political class boosted ratings. At the time, and up until mere months ago, hardly any political expert believed he had a real shot at becoming president of South America’s second-largest economy.
But Milei, a 53-year-old economist, has rocked Argentina’s political establishment and inserted himself into what has long been effectively a two-party system by amassing a groundswell of support with his prescriptions of drastic measures to rein in soaring inflation and by pledging to crusade against the creep of socialism in society.
This analysis is from the Washington Post. “Argentina set for sharp right turn as Trump-like radical wins presidency.” Argentina is now off the list for where in the Western Hemisphere one might go to escape a second Trump Presidency.
A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56 percent of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
Trump also congratulated Milei. “I am very proud of you,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!”
Voters in this nation of 46 million demanded a drastic change from a government that has sent the peso tumbling, inflation skyrocketing and more than 40 percent of the population into poverty. With Milei, Argentina takes a leap into the unknown — with a leader promising to shatter the entire system.
In his first speech as president-elect, Milei told Argentines that “the model of decadence has reached its end. There is no turning back.”
“Enough of the impoverishing power of the caste,” he said. “Today we once again embrace the model of liberty, to once again become a world power.” His supporters joined him in shouting: “Long live freedom, damn it!”
Milei will take office on Dec. 10, the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy after the fall of its military dictatorship.
Wielding chain saws on the campaign trail, the wild-haired Milei vowed to slash public spending in a country heavily dependent on government subsidies. He pledged to dollarize the economy, shut down the central bank and cut the number of government ministries from 18 to eight. His rallying campaign cry was a takedown of the country’s political “caste” — an Argentine version of Trump’s “drain the swamp.”
Why are so many people becoming dictator-curious and looking to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini again? Plus, these folks are raping the planet. It’s discouraging. I hope we can find a new model for Thanksgiving this year where we can celebrate with others and be thankful for what we have. I also hope it isn’t based on stealing your host’s land, committing genocide, and destroying their cultural practices.
Have a good Turkey Day! And it’s time we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act!
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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.
The fog of the NRA is also difficult to traverse. We have a lot of festivals and holidays surrounding light this year; Diwali, Channukah, the birth of the light of the world, etc. But it’s sure difficult to shine the light on so many thing things these days even with global internet and news.
Good afternoon, Sky Dancers!
She tells the story of the abuse in detail. So, I have to issue another Content Warning today. It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.
Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary. There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters. We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday. Today, I feature this
The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables. This 
This article written by Philip Bump in the 
Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a 
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
You may read the exact steps she’s taken to delay justice for the American people at the link above. Multiple Jive Turkeys are dissing our wonderful Vice President Kamala Harris. Dean Phillips, an obscure congressman from Minnesota, is challenging President Biden in the Democratic Presidential primary. This is from Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. 
Republican Freedom Caucus Jive Turkeys are trying to pin January 6th on a false flag operation led by the FBI. This was denied by FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Congressional hearing and is an absolutely insane conspiracy theory. 
The plumpest Social Media Jive Turkey of them all is getting support for Republicans. This is a Washington Post Op-Ed by Greg Sargent 
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