“Pretty sure a Mar-a-Lardo membership was included in the payoff to stop the Florida investigation into Trump University.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
President Joe Biden keeps doing historically wonderful things as we end the week of seeing several of the Deadly Horsemen FARTUS put up for Cabinet Positions. I’m glad BB covered the Alpha Chad, who is uniquely unqualified to become the Head of the DOD. Pam Bondi has the credentials but would not answer questions about her constitutional duties and responsibilities. Pete the Cheat’s tagline was “anonymous smears.” Her tagline was “I won’t answer hypotheticals,” which makes me think she had the same trainer as Beer Enthusiast Brent Cavanaugh. However, having served as a personal lawyer to the guy who is a Felon, Adjuctated Rapist, and Traitor to the county, I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t see that as a conflict of interest. However, with this motley crew of discontents and zealots, that’s a feature, not a bug.
“The confirmation hearings are confirming that loyalty to royalty is the only prerequisite.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi took her seat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, her confirmation to be Donald Trump’s new attorney general almost a foregone conclusion. Her home state senator, Rick Scott, offered a glowing recommendation in his introduction, calling Bondi’s nomination a “home run” and a “grand slam.” But throughout her testimony, Bondi was incapable of giving a direct answer to the question, posed in various ways, of who won the 2020 election. If her introduction was full of sports metaphors, her testimony itself was more of a circus performance, with Bondi clumsily walking the tightrope between what she knew she had to say to get confirmed and what she knew she had to say to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces. She made it clear in the process that if she falls off, it will be in his direction. Bondi possesses the essential element for any Trump nominee, loyalty, and she’s not afraid to wear it on her sleeve.
So, I got a big glimmer of hope this morning when I got a text that told me that President Biden “President Biden on Friday declared that he considers the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution is “the law of the land,” a surprising declaration that does not have any formal force of effect, but that is being celebrated by its backers, who plan to rally today in front of the National Archives.” That’s how NPR described it today since there’s some confusion over whether or not the Archivist will (or even can) publish it.
President Biden on Friday declared that he considers the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution is “the law of the land,” a surprising declaration that does not have any formal force of effect, but that is being celebrated by its backers, who plan to rally today in front of the National Archives.
The amendment would need to be formally published or certified to come into effect by the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan — and when or if that will happen is unclear.
The executive branch doesn’t have a direct role in the amendment process, and Biden is not going to order the archivist to certify and publish the ERA, the White House told reporters on a conference call. A senior administration official said that the archivist’s role is “purely ministerial” in nature, meaning that the archivist is required to publish the amendment once it is ratified.
I spent a good deal of my 20s trying to get this passed. I went to Oklahoma. Started an event with a group of like-minded women in Nebraska to promote it while my state senator was trying to get Nebraska’s ratification removed. I also met so many Feminist leaders I’d adored for years. I still have my copy of “The ERA handbook.” Betty Ford was a big supporter, and I had hoped to get her to the podium at our event, but the cost of bringing the Secret Service in was overwhelming. It clearly had a lot of support, but White Christian Nationalists were organizing to kill it and everything they deemed unholy. The ERA was introduced into Congress in 1923, the year my late mother was born. The Brennen Center has a good analysis of its long history and why it has languished so long.
Danielle Kurtzleben has this headline. “Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear.”
Within a year, 30 of the necessary 38 states acted to ratify the ERA. But then momentum slowed as conservative activists allied with the emerging religious right launched a campaign to stop the amendment in its tracks. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative lawyer and activist from Illinois who led the STOP ERA campaign, argued that the measure would lead to gender-neutral bathrooms, same-sex marriage, and women in military combat, among other things.
The opposition campaign was remarkably successful. Support for the ERA eroded, particularly among Republicans. Though the GOP was the first party to endorse the ERA back in 1940, GOP lawmakers cooled to the amendment, leading to a stalemate in the states.
By 1977, only 35 states had ratified the ERA. Though Congress voted to extend the ratification deadline by an additional three years, no new states signed on. Complicating matters further, lawmakers in five states — Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, and South Dakota — voted to rescind their earlier support.
In 1982, following the expiration of the extended deadline, most activists and lawmakers accepted the ERA’s defeat. But in the four decades since Congress first proposed the ERA, courts and legislatures have realized much of what the amendment was designed to accomplish. A significant portion of the credit goes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who as the founding director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project found success in arguing for a jurisprudence of gender equality under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
And yet, despite these dramatic and important gains for women’s rights, pervasive gender discrimination persists in the form of wage disparities, sexual harassment and violence, and unequal representation in the institutions of American democracy.
Here’s the White House Statement.
BREAKING: President Biden declares that the Equal Rights Amendment should be published
I guess we’ll see what happens. We can be assured that the next administration will sandbag it. Even if this turns out to be a symbolic gesture, it’s a good one. It’s probably one of the last positive things from the Oval Office for a long while.
I had planned on discussing how odd it was that all these foreign dictators got invited to the inauguration and had seats saved for them on the dais. Among those invited was a list of Far-Right Leaders. I’ll briefly mention this and laugh with you as the cold weather seems to have relocated the entire thing indoors. That seems like a shamanic sign. Where’s the MAGA guy with the horn hat? Is he still in jail? This is from US News & World Report. “Bucking Tradition, Trump Invited These Far-Right Leaders to the Inauguration. For the first time in U.S. history, foreign leaders are invited to an inauguration. Most are right-wing politicians, though a few notables didn’t make the cut.” This portends the unpleasantness to come in the future.
President-elect Donald Trump has extended invitations to a handful of foreign leaders to attend his Jan. 20 swearing-in, a break with centuries of protocol by which heads of state were not a part of U.S. presidential inaugurations.
Trump floated the idea last month, saying it was something he was “thinking about.” The Associated Press at the time, citing State Department historical records, reported that no head of state has previously made an official visit to the U.S. for the inauguration.
“And some people said, ‘Wow, that’s a little risky, isn’t it?’” he said. “And I said, ‘Maybe it is. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens.’ But we like to take little chances.”
So who’s coming to Washington? The heads of America’s closest allies like the United Kingdom, Canada or Israel? Nope. It doesn’t look as if they were invited. Maybe a wild card like Saudi Arabia, where Trump took his first foreign trip after winning in 2016? If they were, no one’s saying. How about the leaders of geopolitical rivals or strategic global partners like China, India or Japan? Well, reports indicate that Xi declined. But all three have announced plans to send diplomatically face-saving, lower-level functionaries. So it seems a safe bet that the leaders of India and Japan were also on the list but RSVP’d that they had plans for the day that didn’t involve celebrating Trump’s ascension to the presidency.
Many of Trump’s invitees – and certainly the majority of those who have accepted – are far-right leaders with whom he has had a close relationship, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Argentinian President Javier Milei.
Here’s a roundup based on public statements and published reports on the current and former heads of state, politicians and bureaucrats who were invited or excluded and how they reacted.
President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration will be moved indoors, he announced Friday, due to dangerously cold temperatures projected in the nation’s capital.
“I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for LIVE viewing of this Historic event, and to host the Presidential Parade. I will join the crowd at Capital One, after my Swearing In,” Trump added.
CNN reported earlier Friday that plans were underway for Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance to be sworn in in the Rotunda and that Trump’s team was in talks to potentially hold some of the festivities at the arena, where Trump will host a rally on Sunday.
Officials are worried about the low temperatures being a health risk to attendees and guests — a concern Trump voiced on Friday.
“I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!),” Trump posted.
The last president to be sworn in indoors was Reagan in 1985, when daytime temperatures dipped to 7 degrees with a windchill of -25. Reagan took the oath of office inside the Capitol rotunda. His inaugural parade was canceled.
This year, the temperature on Inauguration Day at noon — when the president-elect swears in — is expected to be in the low 20s, which is around 20 degrees below normal — likely the coldest since Reagan’s second inauguration.
I almost used a different source for this because the tone seems awfully understanding and supportive rather than the perfunctory reporting of a change of venue. What’s this about “likely the coldest since Reagan’s second inauguration?” They couldn’t ask the NWS for the stats or something? Seriously? Since when is 20 degrees frigid? But that’s what our legacy media is reporting. Let’s just hope some independent fact-checkers get on it.
So, that’s it for me today. I’m waiting for the city to shut down when we get the “frigid” temps in the 20s on Tuesday and even some snow! Not! But I refuse to go anywhere near people driving cars that have never seen snow. Have a good weekend!
What’s on your Reading and Blogging List today!
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I never wanted a week to end so much in my life as this one. I’m not one for TV viewing because reality shows are not my thing. There are very few movies and series that grab my attention, too. This time of year, it’s good to have the weather channel. You already know I’m a news junkie, but the news is more like a staged reality show than about actual events that matter. It also is getting too far into the Beltway gossip zone to be of any real use. The media is on a few stories like flies on rice. I searched for something beyond the Beltway jive talk today.
[17] Mr. Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
[18] At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v. Wade, Bob Casey was told there was no place for him at the podium at Bill Clinton’s convention, no room at the inn.
[19] Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that same convention and say: “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history.” And so they do.
[20] Bill Clinton says he supports school choice – but only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or private schools, or Jewish schools, or Catholic schools need not apply.
[21] Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr. Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their parents, and Hillary has compared marriage and the family as institutions to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.
[22] Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
[23] This, my friends, is radical feminism. The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.
[24] The President of the United States is also America’s commander-in-chief. He’s the man we authorize to send fathers and sons and brothers and friends into battle.
[25] George Bush was 17-years-old when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high school graduation, he walked down to the recruiting office, and he signed up to become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific war. And Mr. Clinton? And Bill Clinton? When Bill Clinton’s time came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory room in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.
That time I got to see both President HW Bush and President Bill Clinton together presenting aid to the city’s Universities on the Campus at UNO. I was sitting nearly up front and even had a nice chat with a secret service woman. Where did those days go? (December 7,2005)
Needless to say, I voted for Bill Clinton even though I had previously supported Bush against Reagan when he pulled that stunt about Welfare Queens. If you haven’t read Josh Levin’s book ‘The Queen’, you should. Here’s an interview with him from PBS by Hari Sreenivasan from June 2019. Reagan used a criminal who was an outlier to slur an entire group of women, as detailed in “The True Story Behind the ‘Welfare Queen’ Stereotype.”
Hari Sreenivasan:
Josh there’s this “welfare queen” moniker that’s been used really to demonize entire groups of people. You go through this entire book and take a dive not just into that phrase but really that it’s based on a real person. She was an outlier while at the same time becoming an icon for a whole category.
Josh Levin:
Yeah that’s exactly right. Her name was Linda Taylor and she was identified by the Chicago Tribune in 1974 as a person who had committed welfare fraud while driving fancy cars, including a Cadillac. And very quickly after that she was given the nickname the welfare queen. And it was a nickname and a stereotype that really very quickly blew up.
Hari Sreenivasan:
You know it was a Chicago paper that gave her that nickname but it’s really Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail that makes that phrase such a household idea. How did it get from the Chicago paper into his speeches?
Josh Levin:
One of his advisers had found a wire story about it and Reagan was looking for kind of outrageous stories about welfare because welfare reform had been one of his big accomplishments as governor of California. And it was also something that voters were outraged about in the mid 1970s increased welfare spending at a time when the economy was really poor. And this idea that there were welfare cheats out there was something that created outrage.
Ronald Reagan Campaign Speech, 1976: In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans husbands. Her tax-free cash income, alone, has been running $150,000 a year.
Josh Levin:
He didn’t say the phrase “welfare queen” in his speeches he would talk about how there was this woman in Chicago who’d stolen as much as one hundred fifty thousand dollars in welfare money in a single year, which was an exaggerated sum. But there was such baggage attached to welfare at that point that I think the electorate really understood what he was saying and really knew what he was talking about. Welfare has been an effective talking point for a whole generation of politicians.
Me and the nuns at Congo Square protesting the caging of children and Donald’s family separation policy. (July 2,2017)
Now we have promises to deport and look up and one that is painted with the brush of ‘illegal immigrant with brown skin.’ They’re also developing a scheme of citizenship that would deprive citizenship for all kinds of folks that would actually include Melania if the law passed. This is from the page of America’s Voice.
Selected immigration components of Project 2025 are below:
Mass Detention and Family Separation: Project 2025 paves the way for mass family separation by eliminating important benefits for unaccompanied children and transfers the care of unaccompanied minors from Health and Human Services to DHS to allow for large scale detention of young children. The proposal recommends weakening standards for migrant detention, calling for mass detention in temporary structures such as tents.
Attacks on Dreamers and Parents of US Citizens: Project 2025 calls for the elimination of family-based immigration and DACA.
Raid Schools Hospitals and Religious Zones: Project 2025 removes prohibitions on ICE acting in ‘sensitive zones’ thus allowing raids on schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
Suspending Due Process: Project 2025 removes legal processes allowing immigrants a day in court by expanding the use of expedited deportations to the ‘fullest extent’ throughout the country. It also gives DHS the authority to declare a ‘mass migration event’ and enact anything to avert it (e.g. scrapping all Title 8 requirements and automatically expelling migrants). The proposal further undermines due legal processes by allowing immediate expulsion of migrants in the case of ‘loss of operational control’ or USCIS backlogs which is caused by consistent underfunding from Republican officials. Project 2025 would create a show-me-your-papers style mandate and require ICE to remove, arrest, and detain immigration violators anywhere in the country and without warrant, if possible. The plan authorizes local law enforcement to participate in border security actions and penalizes jurisdictions that do not comply. The project also plans to remove oversight authorities from ICE and classify all USCIS operations.
Use of the Military: Project 2025 encourages the use of the US military to crack down on peaceful migrants arriving at the border. The proposal also considers engaging in war with drug cartels in Mexico.
Attacks Legal Immigration: Project 2025 seeks to restrict legal immigration by barring certain groups or nationalities from accessing work and student visas, eliminates DACA, family-based immigration, TPS, and visas for victims of crime, reduces asylum and discounts gang and domestic violence as grounds.
Yup, I am photobombing my friends at the Women’s March (Jan.23, 2013). All the Donald Cult probably thinks I doth protest too much.
These kinds of things happen when White Christian Nationalists take over a party and embrace a criminal, narcissistic, lying, and authoritarian leader. We’ve gone from a B-movie Actor to a Reality Show Actor who sure does a good job at Crisis Acting, too. I’ll rely on JJ to outline the absolute misogyny demanded by Project 2025. My point is that the RNC this year was basically the showboat for Project 2025. It was a festival of the Donald Cult wreaking racism, misogyny, and white Christian nationalism. Plus, the Vice Presidential nominee is a self-loathing hillbilly. His book is all about blaming poor people in Appalachia for the systemic problems they face. This is from Aja Romano, who is writing for VOX. “Revisiting Hillbilly Elegy, the book that made J.D. Vance. The bestseller proves Trump’s VP pick has abiding disdain for absolutely everyone.”
At one time, liberal and conservative centrists alike hailed Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir of making it out of rural, poverty-stricken Appalachia, transforming himself from a tempestuous teen into a successful Yale law school grad.
Yet years on, Vance has undergone a transformation of a different sort, remolding himself from a fairly moderate professed conservative who once compared Trump to Hitler and wrote with disdain about the outer edges of the party into a would-be authoritarian.
That’s not to say Vance doesn’t have some nuanced and even appealing positions. His populist economic instincts are a running theme of Elegy, and today he makes deals across the aisle with Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But to understand his larger worldview, you have to look past his economic ideas to his social ideas — and to what Vance actually displays about himself throughout the book.
Perhaps readers in 2016 were eager to look past the book’s highly loaded subtext and overt classism, as the promise of a sympathetic conservative who could unlock Trumplandia for liberals was just too appealing. It also seems likely that readers loved the book because it confirmed all of the negative stereotypes they already held about country hicks. As a read on Vance himself, though, in the context of his subsequent embrace of Trump and far-right ideology, Hillbilly Elegy paints a portrait of a man obsessed with status — and brimming with contempt for just about everyone he meets.
Another one about J.D. This is from the Independent. “I’m from the same place as JD Vance, and there’s nothing to celebrate now that he’s Trump’s VP. We are both Appalachians, with eerily similar working-class backgrounds which JD Vance wrote about in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. Yet, says Skylar Baker-Jordan, our views — and our reactions to this attempted assassination — couldn’t be more different.”
Like so many millions of my fellow citizens, I watched in horror on Saturday as a would-be assassin came perilously close to murdering former president Donald Trump. This was not just an attack on him and those innocent people simply exercising their First Amendment right to attend a political rally. It was not just an attack on the Republican Party.
It was an attack on the very fabric of American democracy.
Political violence has become a norm in our divided and beleaguered nation. From the 2011 attack on Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to the 2017 shooting of Republican Steve Scalise to the attack last year on Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, to this weekend’s horrific attack which left one of our fellow citizens dead, we are increasingly solving our differences not with ballots and votes, but bullets and violence.
Neither side in this cold civil war, now cataclysmically close to boiling point, can claim the moral high ground. Would that someone told my fellow Appalachian, JD Vance.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” the junior senator from Ohio tweeted last night following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.
So the man they’re hailing as being just a good old boy is really just another elite enthralled by bigger elites. That’s what reality television has done with political reality. It’s made an entire group of people believe that a staged, scripted, false narrative wrapped up in a box with reality printed on it must be true. Let me show you some data rather than speculation. This is from Newsweek. This was published two days ago. The data comes before that awful RNC ho-down. “Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Election Are Declining.” This comes from who once was a candidate and has worked campaign since High School. Don’t trust polls too far away from Election Day!
According to the tracker, Biden is favored to win in 534 out of 1,000 of FiveThirtyEight’s simulations of how the election could go, while Trump wins in 462. The poll also shows that the simulations indicate that Biden is on track for a three-point win.
The polling website said its forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign “fundamentals,” such as economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency.
It comes after a Presidential Voting Intention poll of 3,601 swing state voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, found that Trump’s margins over President Joe Biden have narrowed since June in two key states: Florida and North Carolina.
Trump previously defeated Biden in both states in 2020, while he held a six-point lead over Biden in Florida in a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll from that June.
This craziness at The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign. No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.”
It is not the only recent poll to give Trump only a four-point lead in Florida. A June Fox News survey gave Trump 50 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for Biden.
You would think a few folks would be reading them just to notice the trend. But, nope. Not with a big dose of Potomac Fever going on. So this one from The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign, No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.” Notice how we get two for one here.
Donald Trump‘s campaign will attack the Democrats for conducting a “coup” if Joe Biden quits the presidential race, the GOP campaign co-chair told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
The former president’s campaign for president will try to throw the charge leveled at him over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection back in Democrats’ faces, Chris LaCivita told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Here’s what’s fascinating about it,” LaCivita said as he mingled on the convention floor in Milwaukee. “You are watching a coup. Literally. In front of your eyes.”
LaCivita, the architect with Susie Wiles of Trump’s 2024 campaign, offered the first insight into how Republicans will deal with a new Democratic candidate as Biden appeared increasingly likely to accede to calls to step aside.
The attack as a “coup plotter” will be matched with a playbook that continues to attack Biden’s record especially if Biden is succeeded by his vice president, Kamala Harris.
The campaign will run the same strategy if Harris takes over, he said. Biden has already given Republicans too much fodder, he acknowledged. They will also demand that Biden step down as president if he won’t run. That would give them extra ammunition to attack Harris as a sitting president who benefited from a “coup.”
“It’s Joe Biden,” he added, even if the nominee will not, in fact, be Joe Biden, should he step aside.
And AOC says the quiet part out loud. We knew this. “AOC goes live on Instagram saying many who want Joe Biden to drop out of race also want to remove Kamala. ‘A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,’ congresswoman says.” This is from the Independent.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave … that they will support, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she told viewers.
“My community does not have the option to lose,” she said.
“If they’re going to come out and say all their little things on background, off the record, but they’re not going to be fully honest, I’m going to be honest for them. I’m in these rooms. I see what they say in conversations,” the congresswoman said.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
We should really be careful. It is getting ugly out there. But, if there is a protest of anything here in Orleans Parish, I will be there. I will also vote. I will also drag my neighbors to the voting booth if I have to.
We shall overcome.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Nothing reminds me of the worst stuff to come out of the 80s than Disco. Nothing says cultural appropriation like three white guys from the Isle of Man morphing funk and black slang into a song that’s all about themselves!!!!!! But it’s a good message to the pols and media that won’t settle down and do their damned jobs!
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““No Mortal Man is Above the Law,” sayeth the Supremes. Enjoy your Independence Day; if the Conflicted Convicted Felon is elected, it’ll be our last.” John Buss, Repeat 1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Independence Day has always been my favorite holiday, and it’s my youngest daughter’s too. When we lived in the Quarter, we would always walk our 2 blonde labs to the Mississippi River Bank and watch the left and east bank boats launch a huge fireworks display. Down here in the Bywater, it’s still the same short walk to the riverbank, but the Poland Avenue Wharf or the newest Crescent Park are the favorite places to go. Cars always turn to our local NPR station for patriotic music and blast it loud. You can tell when it’s time for the display because all the bars and houses empty into the streets and head south to the banks of the Mississippi River. I have always wondered what past celebrations were like, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day.
I spent the pre-show hours with friends listening to his industrial band livestream their efforts while sitting in their driveway patio. It seemed like a normal fourth. While everyone headed to the river, I headed home to Temple to let her dig a burrow under me to hide from the noise. No displays for me in the last 10 years. Just time at home in bed comforting Temple. The weird thing this year was the fireworks didn’t seem to bother her, and she spent most of the time spooning me. Maybe she sensed that my fear was far greater than hers today. It’s a thought.
Twilight’s last gleaming from last night at my neighbor’s driveway patio.
The swiftboating of the democratic candidate season has begun. My friend who owns the bar on the corner told me she’s hearing from others besides me who are looking for places to become expats. Given the Le Pen elections, I’m researching the south of France right now, although they may soon have their counter-revolution. Russia is happy about that one. I’m sure they have high hopes for us.
If you haven’t seen this little speech, you really should. “Leader of the pro-Trump Project 2025 suggests there will be a new American Revolution. Kevin Roberts said the revolution will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.” This is from the AP but sourced at Politico.
The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made the comments Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.”
Democrats are “apoplectic right now” because the right is winning, Roberts told former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat, one of the podcast’s guest hosts as Bannon is serving a four-month prison term. “And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts’ remarks shed light on how a group that promises to have significant influence over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump is thinking about this moment in American politics. The Heritage Foundation is spearheading Project 2025, a sweeping road map for a new GOP administration that includes plans for dismantling aspects of the federal government and ousting thousands of civil servants in favor of Trump loyalists who will carry out a hard-right agenda without complaint.
His call for revolution and vague reference to violence also unnerved some Democrats who interpreted it as threatening.
“This is chilling,” former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson wrote on the social platform X. “Their idea of a second American Revolution is to undo the first one.”
James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, pointed to this week’s Fourth of July holiday in an emailed statement.
“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Singer said, adding that Trump and his allies are ”dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Roberts, whose name Bannon recently floated to The New York Times as a potential chief of staff option for Trump, also said on the podcast that Republicans should be encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent immunity ruling.
Bannon is in jail right now, serving time for contempt of Congress. The New Republic‘s Parker Malloy has a good point here. “Why Does the Media Insist on Helping Steve Bannon Act the Martyr? NBC and ABC snagged pre-prison interviews with the far-right globalist. But to what end? They became tools in his propaganda machine.” The press just falls right in line by normalizing this behavior.
NBC News’s Vaughn Hillyard and ABC News’s Jonathan Karl recently made a journalistic misstep by interviewing Steve Bannon right before he reported to prison. This move, which might seem innocuous at first glance, actually elevates Bannon’s “political prisoner” narrative, a misleading storyline that does little but bolster the War Room host’s victim complex.
By interviewing Bannon just before he heads to prison, both NBC and ABC are essentially giving him a platform to paint himself as a martyr.
It allows Bannon to control the narrative. This plays directly into the hands of Bannon and his supporters, who are eager to cast any legal action against them as part of a broader conspiracy to silence dissent. It’s a classic tactic: position yourself as a victim to garner sympathy and rally support.
But Bannon is not going to prison for his political beliefs or his support for Donald Trump. He’s going to prison because he defied a congressional subpoena. By allowing Bannon to put some focus on his claims of political persecution, these interviews shift attention away from his actual misconduct and the legal consequences of that misconduct. This undermines the rule of law and gives credence to the idea that powerful individuals can evade accountability by crying foul.
Beyond that, it normalizes extremist rhetoric. In his interview with Karl, Bannon doubled down on his inflammatory language, discussing “retribution” and the need for investigations and potential imprisonments of political figures. Bannon listed former FBI Director James Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former Attorney General Bill Barr as people who should be “very worried” about prosecution under a second Trump administration. Bannon defended his use of the slogan “Victory or Death!” at the recent Turning Point Action convention and rolled his eyes at Karl for even asking him about his 2020 comments about beheading Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Mark Robinson, the extremist GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, appeared to endorse political violence in a bizarre and extended rant he delivered on June 30 in a small-town church.
“Some folks need killing!” Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, shouted during a roughly half-hour-long speech in Lake Church in the tiny town of White Lake, in the southeast corner of the state. “It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!”
Robinson’s call for the “killing” of “some folks” came during an extended diatribe in which he attacked an extraordinary assortment of enemies. These ranged from “people who have evil intent” to “wicked people” to those doing things like “torturing and murdering and raping” to socialists and Communists. He also invoked those supposedly undermining America’s founding ideals and leftists allegedly persecuting conservatives by canceling them and doxxing them online.
In all this, Robinson appeared to endorse lethal violence against these unnamed enemies, particularly on the left, though he wasn’t exactly clear on which “folks” are the ones who “need killing.”
Robinson, a self-described “MAGA Republican,” has a long history of wildly radical and unhinged moments. He has linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called for the arrest of trans women, pushed hallucinogenic antisemitic conspiracy theories, endorsed the vile “birther” conspiracy about Barack Obama, described Michelle Obama as a man, hinted at the need to violently oppose federal law enforcement and the government, and posted memes mocking and denying the brutal, violent assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, among many other things.
President Joe Biden will hold a rally Friday in Wisconsin and then sit for his first televised interview since his disastrous debate performance last week, events could be crucial in determining whether he can salvage his embattled candidacy.
The interview with anchor George Stephanopoulos of ABC News is shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes moments for a president or a candidate in many years. Democratic elected officials, donors and voters will be closely watching to see whether he can still deliver in an adversarial setting and turn in a performance worthy of being the party’s nominee to defeat Donald Trump this fall.
The interview will “air in its entirety as a primetime special” at 8 p.m. ET Friday, ABC said, adding that a “transcript of the unedited interview will be made available the same day.”
Before that, Biden is expected to speak this afternoon at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin. At the rally, Biden will “underscore the stakes of this election for our democracy, our rights and freedoms, and our economy,” a campaign official said. Also speaking will be Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., among others.
The White House said the interview team from ABC “will be with us all day in Wisconsin” and able to cover the rally event and to observe the president as he participates in his schedule, and said it has “some flexibility” around the length of the sit-down but “no exact estimate” of the duration of the conversation.
Read the next paragraph, which I will not print here, and try not to bang your head against your desk, wall, or coffee table. Law Professor Richard W. Painter is floating a Constitutional Amendment on X.
Const. Amend. 28: “The President and the judges of the United States courts including the Supreme Court, shall be bound by the criminal laws of the United States and also by financial disclosure and conflict of interest laws enacted by Congress.” So who votes against?
So, I have to share this one from the New York Times even though I’m about to cancel my subscription. “Biden Tells Governors He Needs More Sleep and Less Work at Night. The president’s opening remark to a group of key Democratic leaders — that he was in the race to stay — chilled any talk of his withdrawal, participants said.” The usual suspects, Reid J. Epstein and Maggie Haberman, reported it.
President Biden told a gathering of Democratic governors that he needs to get more sleep and work fewer hours, including curtailing events after 8 p.m., according to two people who participated in the meeting and several others briefed on his comments.
The remarks on Wednesday were a stark acknowledgment of fatigue from the 81-year-old president during a meeting intended to reassure more than two dozen of his most important supporters that he is still in command of his job and capable of mounting a robust campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.
But Mr. Biden told the governors, some of whom were at the White House while others participated virtually, that he was staying in the race.
He described his extensive foreign travel in the weeks before the debate, something that the White House and his allies have in recent days cited as the reason for his halting performance during the debate. Initially, Mr. Biden’s campaign blamed a cold, putting out word about midway through the debate amid a series of social media posts questioning why Mr. Biden was struggling.
Mr. Biden said that he told his staff he needed to get more sleep, multiple people familiar with what took place in the meeting said. He repeatedly referenced pushing too hard and not listening to his team about his schedule, and said he needed to work fewer hours and avoid events scheduled after 8 p.m., according to one of the people familiar with what took place at the meeting.
After Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, a physician, asked Mr. Biden questions about the status of his health, Mr. Biden replied that his health was fine. “It’s just my brain,” he added, according to three people familiar with what took place — a remark that some in the room took as a joke, including Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, according to a person close to her. But at least one governor did not, and was puzzled by it.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, who attended the meeting, said in a statement that he had said, “All kidding aside,” a recollection confirmed by another person briefed on the meeting. Ms. O’Malley Dillon added: “He was clearly making a joke.”
So, I fully admit to being depressed and worried. I know that BB stopped her NYT subscription. I hope John Buss doesn’t mind. I shared this bit he posted to his FaceBook about canceling his. I seriously worry about him in North Carolina, too. None of us in the old Confederate States are safe right now.
This is from a poll taken in April and reported by the AP on May 1. “Half of US adults mistrust media coverage of 2024 elections, a poll finds. About half of Americans say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. According to a poll, 42% express worry that news outlets will use generative artificial intelligence to create stories. (AP Video: Serkan Gurbuz)”
I think it’s likely that if they redid that this month, they’d find a statistically significant increase in the number of people saying that. However, I admit that I live in the Southern City that promptly surrendered when Captain David Farragut of the Union Navy bombed two forts and arrived at the port. We are a haven for the GLBT community. We also have a strong Jewish presence and are well known for being a place of refuge for many diasporas. Our new governor hates us and wants to take away our city charter, which is the legal means by which we don’t become the rest of the state. You have to wonder how many cities like ours will come under direct attack if MAGA either gets its way or doesn’t.
The only way out of this is to VOTE and get everyone you know to VOTE because our lives depend on it.
I really hope you got to enjoy a little celebration on Independence Day. I’m still on board with ensuring liberty and justice for all. I am also standing by the Biden/Harris ticket. Again, you realize that I have had a lot of gripes in the past about Biden and what happened to Anita Hill. It is somewhat karmic that what is going on now is somewhat built in by the bad decision he, Teddy Kennedy, and John Kerry made about Clarence Thomas. Forty-eight percent of the Senate was against his confirmation. He should’ve been Borked. That, unfortunately, is toxic water under the bridge of democracy, but we have what we have now, and it is what it is. Remember the words of Benjamin Franklin and fight for it. The Roberts Supreme Court just took down the republic.
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
–Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean I love the country but I can’t stand the scene And I’m neither left or right I’m just staying home tonight Getting lost in that hopeless little screen But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags That time cannot decay I’m junk but I’m still holding up This little wild bouquet Democracy is coming to the U.S.A
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The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government may disarm a Texas man subject to a domestic violence order, limiting the sweep of its earlier blockbuster decision that vastly expanded gun rights.
That decision, issued in 2022, struck down a New York law that put strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. It also established a new legal standard for assessing laws limiting the possession of firearms, one whose reliance on historical practices has sown confusion as courts have struggled to apply it, with some judges sweeping aside gun control laws that have been on the books for decades.
The new case, United States v. Rahimi, explored the scope of that new test. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the majority opinion in the 2022 decision, dissented.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that Second Amendment rights had limits.
“When a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may — consistent with the Second Amendment — be banned from possessing firearms while the order is in effect,” he wrote. “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”
The case started in 2019 when Zackey Rahimi, a drug dealer in Texas, assaulted his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, leading her to obtain a restraining order. The order suspended Mr. Rahimi’s handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms.
Mr. Rahimi defied the order in flagrant fashion, according to court records.
He threatened a different woman with a gun, leading to charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Then, in the space of two months, he opened fire in public five times.
Now, if gun dealers would just follow the law. We’re still waiting for the big decision on absolute immunity. It’s now unlikely Donald will be put to trial for his insurrection. We also remember the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner as they fought for voting rights. If you haven’t watched the movie Mississippi Burning, you really should. Here’s a link to the FBI site and information on the case.
60 years later, we still struggle to achieve the ability to vote for every eligible voter.
And in other news, the state of Louisiana is getting national attention for going after the separation of Church and State. When people think of Louisiana, they usually think of good food, music, and fun! It’s a beautiful, diverse state in terms of geography and people. Now we’re in the headlines for this utter idiot that a very small number of people voted into the Governor’s House. The biggest lesson here is to go vote no matter what! Despite SCOTUS’s decisions over the years, he’s itching to take this case to court. Governor Klandry wants the state to create posters of the White Christian Nationalists’ version of the 10 commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom. The funny thing is the bill that’s now signed into law has 11 commandments. There are so many versions that you wonder why the Calvinist version always takes precedence. Oh, yes, White Christian Evangelicals want the ones positing the most control.
Still, I wonder if having a rainbow in your classroom is “grooming,” why is having to explain adultery to a kindergartner something else? Given the Dobbs Anniversary today, I’m not sure we rely on stare decisis. Remember when the late and not-so-great Roy Moore tried to get them displayed at Alabama courthouses? That didn’t go over so well with the court. Neither did the attempt to put them in classrooms in 1978. This current law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment. Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court overturned a similar state statute. The finding stated that the First Amendment bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. That was over 40 years ago. But remember, they ignored all kinds of precedents to dump Roe and are gunning for birth control. We need to vote and be vigilant
I found this CNN interview with Louisiana State Representative Lauren Ventrella conducted by Boris Sanchez. She actually makes Marjorie Taylor Greene seem a bit less unhinged. She screams and interrupts so much that it’s difficult to watch. At one point, she attacks the interviewer personally. (Check the tape at 2:54) I can’t believe these Republican women are getting more obnoxious than Michelle Bachman. At least this one wears professional clothing well do performance politics. Moses was that the first historical law giver. That would be Babalyonia’s Hammarubi about 500 years prior to the entire mountain event. The first time I went to the Louvre I had my exhusband take a picture of me standing next to a stone displaying his code. He presented 282 case laws over all kinds of subject areas too. That’s how impressed with it I was when I was studying ancient history in grade school and at university.
Much of the political press is yammering on about Trump’s big fundraising leap and speculation about the VEEP Sweepstakes with folks even saying Marco Rubio might be a game changer. However, let’s not forget the main point about Trump which is what my state did when the looked at the last govenor’s race and sat it out. his is from Stephen Robinson writing at Public Notice. ” Don’t be gaslit: Trump’s corruption is unparalleled. His egregious self-dealing is disqualifying no matter how much Republicans yell about Hunter Biden.” The author calls the move “classic swift-boating.”
“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses,” Trump tweeted on November 30, 2016.
It quickly became clear, however, that Trump’s divestment plan was a joke: He merely turned over active control to his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric, which hardly satisfied ethics experts. For instance, Richard Painter, former ethics counsel to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, argued that Trump should “put all his conflict-generating assets in a true blind trust run by an independent trustee.”
Trump held a press conference a week before his inauguration that was supposed to clarify how he planned to hand the family business over to his sons. However, the documents placed next to him as evidence of his complex financial preparations were just props, binders filled with blank paper.
There’s no way we can face any more of his monkey business in the Oval Office. However, there’s another court trying slow down the application of Justice. This is from Politico. “Is Jack Smith’s appointment constitutional? Trump’s Florida judge is set to decide. A hearing starting Friday will delve into Trump’s claim that the special counsel lacks authority.” It’s hard to see such frivolous issues tie things up. This is written by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump for allegedly stealing national security secrets is on trial Friday — just not in the way Smith intended.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has punted the case indefinitely and seems many months away from preparing it to go before a jury (assuming the case even makes it that far). Meanwhile, she has scheduled a multi-day hearing in her Fort Pierce, Florida, courtroom focused on whether Smith, the prosecutor leading the case, was unconstitutionally appointed or is otherwise acting without legal authority.
The claim is a far-fetched bid by Trump to scuttle the case altogether. Numerous courts have rejected nearly identical constitutional challenges to other special counsels.
And in a case that has moved like molasses for a year, Cannon’s decision to devote substantial time and resources to the argument is just the latest, and perhaps most blatant, example of her unusual approach. Her management of the case has frustrated the special counsel’s team and prompted critics to accuse her of being in the tank for Trump, who appointed her to the bench during his final year in office.
And in a case that has moved like molasses for a year, Cannon’s decision to devote substantial time and resources to the argument is just the latest, and perhaps most blatant, example of her unusual
The hearing on Trump’s challenge to Smith’s authority is set to begin Friday and to continue Monday morning. Later on Monday, Cannon plans to hear arguments on Smith’s request for an order barring Trump from lying about the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago that led to the criminal charges in the case. And then, on Tuesday, Cannon has scheduled an additional hearing on another Trump motion that could derail the case.
This comes after it was reported that at least two colleagues approached her to ask her to not take the case. Here’s some information on that. This is from LA Magazine. “Judge Aileen Cannon Rebuffed Senior Colleagues’ Plea to Step Aside From Trump’s Classified Documents Case. Cannon is the first judge in American history to preside over a criminal trial of the president who nominated that judge.”
New reports came out Thursday from the New York Times that Judge Aileen Cannon was encouraged to step aside by senior judges from her position as the assigned judge to ex-president Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
In June 2023, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon was just two years and seven months into her tenure as a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida, her first job as a judge, when she was assigned one of the highest-profile cases of our time — namely, the prosecution of Donald Trump in the classified documents case.
After Cannon was assigned the case a year ago, private expressions of Cannon-related concerns were raised across the courthouse due to her experience and lack of impartiality by her own colleagues.
Two senior judges — Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga was one — waged an extraordinary effort to privately urge Cannon to step aside and allow a judge with more time on the bench to take over the case. Cannon refused.
Since then, Cannon has slow-walked pretrial motions and delayed the trial indefinitely — declining to set to a date for the trial to begin — although prosecutors have said they are prepared to start.
Well, that’s it for me! Have a great weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“Martha-Ann Alito is single-handedly making flags great again.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The best thing about reading is learning new things and possibly finding a new word. I’ve always aced the university exams’ sections on vocabulary, and the Grammarly app hoisted upon me by Purdue weekly reminds me I still hang in the top users for nerdy words and tone. Don’t ask me about punctuation, though. Grammarly reminds me daily that I don’t use enough commas. So today, The Atlantic‘s Peter Wehner gave me the present of a new world. According to Meriam Webster, nescience is a noun that means a lack of knowledge or awareness. Its closest synonym is the word ignorance. I wish I had known there was a great synonym out there for the word ignorance when I was writing on all the crap coming out of the Supreme Court last week, along with the Alito lies around his wife’s red-flaggery (with apologist to A. de Blácam.)
Now for today’s example use. “The Motivated Ignorance of Trump Supporters. They can’t claim they didn’t know.”
Motivated ignorance refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts. It’s choosing not to know. In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity. Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance. If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others.
Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree or another, employ it. What matters is the degree to which one embraces it, and the consequences of doing so. In the case of MAGA world, the lies that Trump supporters believe, or say they believe, are obviously untrue and obviously destructive. Since 2016 there’s been a ratchet effect, each conspiracy theory getting more preposterous and more malicious. Things that Trump supporters wouldn’t believe or accept in the past have since become loyalty tests. Election denialism is one example. The claim that Trump is the target of “lawfare,” victim to the weaponization of the justice system, is another.
I have struggled to understand how to view individuals who have not just voted for Trump but who celebrate him, who don’t merely tolerate him but who constantly defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty. How should I think about people who, in other domains of their lives, are admirable human beings and yet provide oxygen to his malicious movement? How complicit are people who live in an epistemic hall of mirrors and have sincerely—or half-sincerely—convinced themselves they are on the side of the angels?
Throughout my career I’ve tried to resist the temptation to make unwarranted judgments about the character of people based on their political views. For one thing, it’s quite possible my views on politics are misguided or distorted, so I exercise a degree of humility in assessing the views of others. For another, I know full well that politics forms only a part of our lives, and not the most important part. People can be personally upstanding and still be wrong on politics.
But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside.
If a person insists, despite the overwhelming evidence, that Trump was the target of an assassination plot hatched by Biden and carried out by the FBI, this is more than an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure, and a serious one at that. It’s only reasonable to conclude that such Trump supporters have not made a good-faith effort to understand what is really and truly happening. They are choosing to live within the lie, to invoke the words of the former Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel.
One of the criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing the moral culpability of people is how absurd the lies are that they are espousing; a second is how intentionally they are avoiding evidence that exposes the lies because they are deeply invested in the lie; and a third is is how consequential the lie is.
It’s one thing to embrace a conspiracy theory that is relevant only to you and your tiny corner of the world. It’s an entirely different matter if the falsehood you’re embracing and promoting is venomous, harming others, and eroding cherished principles, promoting violence and subverting American democracy.
This is the rant part of this long read, with plenty of examples and sources to back this up. It’s brilliant, so forgive me if it is considered an excessively long quote for ‘fair use.’ I’m also feeling better because Grammarly flagged a lot of comma mishaps in the article, which made me feel even more comfortable with its author. I’ve got the Oxford comma down and am happy about that accomplishment. Go read the backup to the rant. It’s important.
In a nation where many voters have made up their minds, Denning and Etter are among the voters whose decisions about the presidential race are neither firmly fixed nor whose participation is wholly predictable. As a group, these voters do not exactly fit the description of being undecided. Some lean toward a specific candidate. Some even say they will definitely vote for that candidate. But age or voting history or both leave open the question of how they will vote in November — if they vote at all.
The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University surveyed 3,513 registered voters in the six key battleground states. The survey was completed in April and May,before a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts in the hush money trial involving an adult-film actress. Of the 3,513 surveyed, 2,255 were classified as “Deciders” — those who fit into one or more categories: They voted in only one of the last two presidential elections; are between ages 18 and 25; registered to vote since 2022; did not definitely plan to vote for either Biden or Trump this year; or switched their support between 2016 and 2020.
They are also classified as Deciders because they will have enormous influence in determining the winner of what are expected to be another round of close contests in the battleground states.
In 2020, a shift of about 43,000 votes from Biden to Trump in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin would have changed the outcome. As a result, it is common to see suggestions that the 2024 presidential election will not only be decided by just six states but by a relatively few voters in those states. While it is broadly true that a fraction of the total electorate will decide the election, the universe of voters whose behavior is not truly predictable is fairly large. By the definitions used in this survey, 61 percent of voters in those six states can be called Deciders. That includes 33 percent who are sporadic voters and 44 percent who are uncommitted to Biden or Trump, with 17 percent fitting both of these categories.
A woman who is “genetically male” has had twins, after three years of pioneering treatment.
The new mother looks like a woman, but has 95% male chromosomes.
Though she has no ovaries and has never menstruated, doctors in India were able to help the woman conceive and give birth to the children through treatment that helped develop her uterus, which was described as infantile.
“This is something similar to a male delivering twins,” Sunil Jindal, the infertility specialist who administered the treatment, told the Times of India.
The woman herself did not know she had the condition, according to Sky News. She was “flabbergasted” when she was told but her husband was supportive.
The mother’s condition is known as XY gonadal dysgenesis. That means that the woman has external female characteristics, but doesn’t have functional gonads or ovaries. Those organs are usually necessary for reproduction, helping to create the eggs from which babies will grow.
Instead, doctors developed embryos using a donor egg and then placed that in the uterus, after it had been treated. That allowed the woman to become pregnant.
Doctors then had to help the woman carry the pregnancy “in a body not designed for it”, as Anshu Jindal, medical director at the hospital that delivered the babies, described it to the Times of India.
The two babies, one boy and one girl, were delivered through caesarean section.
There have only been four or five cases where women with this condition have been able to give birth, according to experts. Even in women without the condition, assisted reproduction has a success rate of about 35%-40%.
I can only imagine what Alito and Thomas would make of a court case brought up by some fetus fetishist judge in nowhere Texas. So, there appears to be a bit of a rebellion in the news department of The Washington Post over its new overlords from across the pond. “Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting. Unpublished book drafts and other documents raise questions about Robert Winnett’s journalistic record just months before he is to assume a top newsroom role.”
The alleged offense was trying to steal a soon-to-be-released copy of former prime minister Tony Blair’s memoir.
The suspect arrested by London police in 2010 was John Ford, a once-aspiring actor who has since admitted to an extensive career using deception and illegal means to obtain confidential information for Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper. Facing potential prosecution, Ford called a journalist he said he had collaborated with repeatedly — and trusted to come to his rescue.
Winnett moved quickly to connect Ford with a lawyer, discussed obtaining an untraceable phone for future communications and reassured Ford that the “remarkable omerta” of British journalism would ensure his clandestine efforts would never come to light, according to draft chapters Ford wrote in 2017 and 2018 that were shared with The Post
That journalist, according to draft book chapters Ford later wrote recounting his ordeal, was Robert Winnett, a Sunday Times veteran who is set to become editor of The Washington Post later this year.
Winnett, currently a deputy editor of the Telegraph, did not respond to a detailed list of questions. Ford, who previously declined to be interviewed, did not respond to questions about the draft book chapters.
Winnett is now poised to take over the top editorial position in The Post’s core newsroom, scheduled to start after the November U.S. presidential election. He was appointed by Post CEO and Publisher William Lewis, who has mentored Winnett and worked with him at two British papers. Lewis is also mentioned in Ford’s draft chapters.
NPR’s David Folkenflik had an interesting take on this information, linking it to Rupert Murdoch. “New ‘Washington Post’ chiefs can’t shake their past in London.” BB pointed me to this story last night.
A vast chasm divides common practices in the fiercely competitive confines of British journalism, where Lewis and Winnett made their mark, and what passes muster in the American news media. In several instances, their alleged conduct would raise red flags at major U.S. outlets, including The Washington Post.
Among the episodes: a six-figure payment for a major scoop; planting a junior reporter in a government job to secure secret documents; and relying on a private investigator who used subterfuge to secure private documents from their computers and phones. The investigator was later arrested.
On Saturday evening, The New York Timesdisclosed a specific instance in which a former reporter implicated both Lewis and Winnett in reporting that he believed relied on documents that were fraudulently obtained by a private investigator.
Lewis did not respond to detailed and repeated requests for comment from NPR for this article. Winnett also did not reply to specific queries sent directly to him and through the Telegraph Media Group.
The stakes are high. Post journalists ask what values Lewis and Winnett will import to the paper, renowned for its coverage of the Nixon-era Watergate scandals and for holding the most powerful figures in American life to account in the generations since.
“U.K. journalism often operates at a faster pace and it plays more fast and loose around the edges,” says Emily Bell, former media reporter and director of digital content for the British daily The Guardian.
Allegations in court that Lewis sought to cover up a wide-ranging phone hacking scandal more than a dozen years ago at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers are proving to be a flashpoint for the new Post publisher.
On at least four occasions since being named to lead the Post last fall, Lewis tried to head off unwelcome scrutiny from Post journalists — and from NPR.
In December, before he started the job, Lewis intensely pressured me not to report on the accusations, which arose in British suits against Murdoch’s newspapers in the U.K. He also repeatedly offered me an exclusive interview on his business plans for the Post if I dropped the story. I did not. The ensuing NPR piece offered the first detailed reports on new material underlying allegations from Prince Harry and others.
Immediately after that article ran, Lewis told then-Executive Editor Sally Buzbee it was not newsworthy and that her teams should not follow it, according to a person with contemporaneous knowledge. That intervention is being reported here for the first time. The Post did not run a story.
As previously reported, on separate occasions in March and May, Lewis angrily pressured Buzbee to ignore the story as further developments unfolded in court.
You may read more salacious details at the link. One more article about nescience. This one is from Amanda Marcotte, who writes at Salon. “A tradwife drops a racist slur: Why the right’s trolling economy made Lilly Gaddis’ rise inevitable. Cashing in as a “cancel culture” martyr is getting harder, so attention addicts have to get more extreme.”
Let’s stipulate up front that it is theoretically possible that Lilly Gaddis, wannabe “tradwife” influencer, did not realize what she was doing when she used the n-word in a recent cooking TikTok. Her defenders, far more numerous now than in her more anonymous past, offer an “innocence by ignorance” excuse. But even not knowing the story, you’d be right to be skeptical. After all, she didn’t just let the word slip — she filmed, edited, and posted the content online. If you actually watch the clip that has gone viral, it becomes even harder to ignore the likelihood that it was a deliberate word choice
In the video, Gaddis is decked out in the standard tradwife gear of a cleavage-baring sundress and a cross necklace to justify the sexualized marketing. She is vaguely arranging food while providing a rant tailor-made to tickle the reactionary male brain. She accuses immigrants and Black women of being “gold-diggers,” while insisting Christian white girls like herself will love you, pathetic male viewer, solely for your masculine might, even if you are “broke.” She is going for maximum shock value, dropping not just the n-word, but other five-dollar curses that are clearly meant to to offer a transgressive thrill, coming from a young woman playing at being a more scantily clad June Cleaver.
But just in case there was any lingering doubt that this was a deliberate play for attention, Gaddis soon confirmed it in a tweet responding to the outrage: “Thanks black community for helping to launch my new career in conservative media! You all played your role well like the puppets you are.”
This wannabe Christian influencer is so obviously out for attention, so it’s tempting to ignore this story in hopes of not letting her have it. Still, Gaddis is an important illustration of the vicious cycle of greed and far-right radicalism driven by the social media ecosystem. The field of strivers wishing to be America’s next top troll is growing faster than can be maintained by the existing audience of incels, white supremacists and other miscreants radicalized online. Becoming the next big thing means attracting the coin of the authoritarian realm: liberal outrage. Yet as liberals get numb to the constant barrage of fascist provocation, the trolls have no choice but to up the ante. So this is how we get a woman in an apron pretending to cook on TikTok while dropping the most notorious of racial slurs.
I think I have done enough damage today. Fortunately, we’ve had a few days of rain and clouds, so the heat is off its highs from the 90s. Unfortunately, the humidity is oppressive. Thank goodness for long, billowy, cotton sun dresses. I hope you have a good week. BTW, “Trump challenges Biden to cognitive test, but confuses name of doctor who tested him.” This happened last night. Donnie Demento is just getting worse and worse with every rally.
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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.
I spent a good deal of my 20s trying to get this passed. I went to Oklahoma. Started an event with a group of like-minded women in Nebraska to promote it while my state senator was trying to get Nebraska’s ratification removed. I also met so many Feminist leaders I’d adored for years. I still have my copy of “The ERA handbook.” Betty Ford was a big supporter, and I had hoped to get her to the podium at our event, but the cost of bringing the Secret Service in was overwhelming. It clearly had a lot of support, but White Christian Nationalists were organizing to kill it and everything they deemed unholy. The ERA was introduced into Congress in 1923, the year my late mother was born. The Brennen Center has a good analysis of its long history and why it has languished so long.
I had planned on discussing how odd it was that all these foreign dictators got invited to the inauguration and had seats saved for them on the dais. Among those invited was a list of Far-Right Leaders. I’ll briefly mention this and laugh with you as the cold weather seems to have relocated the entire thing indoors. That seems like a shamanic sign. Where’s the MAGA guy with the horn hat? Is he still in jail? This is from US News & World Report. “Bucking Tradition, Trump Invited These Far-Right Leaders to the Inauguration. For the first time in U.S. history, foreign leaders are invited to an inauguration. Most are right-wing politicians, though a few notables didn’t make the cut.” This portends the unpleasantness to come in the future.
Follow the link to see their roundup. So let’s get back to that change of plans on the inauguration. This new deal still doesn’t include Former First Lady Michelle Obama. She is still staying away. CNN reports on the changes. I will not be watching either. I’m with her. “Trump’s inauguration to be moved indoors.” Evidently, FARTUS can’t take a little rain and cold weather. By the way, Happy Birthday Ms Obama!
I almost used a different source for this because the tone seems awfully understanding and supportive rather than the perfunctory reporting of a change of venue. What’s this about “likely the coldest since Reagan’s second inauguration?” They couldn’t ask the NWS for the stats or something? Seriously? Since when is 20 degrees frigid? But that’s what our legacy media is reporting. Let’s just hope some independent fact-checkers get on it.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today, Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries put to rest a story at the Washington Post yesterday. I would like to think this will stop all the headlines out there speculating when and if President Biden will give up his bid for his second term.
Another one about J.D. This is from the Independent. “I’m from the same place as JD Vance, and there’s nothing to celebrate now that he’s Trump’s VP. We are both Appalachians, with eerily similar working-class backgrounds which JD Vance wrote about in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. Yet, says Skylar Baker-Jordan, our views — and our reactions to this attempted assassination — couldn’t be more different.”
So the man they’re hailing as being just a good old boy is really just another elite enthralled by bigger elites. That’s what reality television has done with political reality. It’s made an entire group of people believe that a staged, scripted, false narrative wrapped up in a box with reality printed on it must be true. Let me show you some data rather than speculation. This is from Newsweek. This was published two days ago. The data comes before that awful RNC ho-down. “Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Election Are Declining.” This comes from who once was a candidate and has worked campaign since High School. Don’t trust polls too far away from Election Day!
You would think a few folks would be reading them just to notice the trend. But, nope. Not with a big dose of Potomac Fever going on. So this one from The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign, No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.” Notice how we get two for one here.
And AOC says the quiet part out loud. We knew this. “AOC goes live on Instagram saying many who want Joe Biden to drop out of race also want to remove Kamala. ‘A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,’ congresswoman says.” This is from the Independent.
One last story that really shows what the ramping up of Wipipo privilege has done to our society. This is from CNN. “‘Treated like a convict’: NFL legend Terrell Davis describes getting handcuffed on a plane near his kids after asking for ice.” This story is reported by Holly Yan.
Bannon is in jail right now, serving time for contempt of Congress. The New Republic‘s Parker Malloy has a good point here. “Why Does the Media Insist on Helping Steve Bannon Act the Martyr? NBC and ABC snagged pre-prison interviews with the far-right globalist. But to what end? They became tools in his propaganda machine.” The press just falls right in line by normalizing this behavior.
Also, from TNR is this headline about the black man running for governor on the insanity platform. “MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hateful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!” Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, has a long history of incendiary comments. But he may have topped himself this time.” 
If you want a real shock, go see The Economist Cover Picture today with the heading “No way to Run a Country.” The attached story is “Biden Must Withdraw.” This is from a country where the General Election just kicked the Conservative PM (a hedge fund manager) and replaced him with a Human Rights Lawyer and member of the Labour Party. Fourteen years of Conservative Rule has just been tossed for something different. Of course, CNN has joined the swiftboating effort. This is from Dr. Sanjay Gupta at CNN. “It’s time for President Biden to undergo detailed cognitive and neurological testing and share his results.”
So, I fully admit to being depressed and worried. I know that BB stopped her NYT subscription. I hope John Buss doesn’t mind. I shared this bit he posted to his FaceBook about canceling his. I seriously worry about him in North Carolina, too. None of us in the old Confederate States are safe right now.
Now, if gun dealers would just follow the law. We’re still waiting for the big decision on absolute immunity. It’s now unlikely Donald will be put to trial for his insurrection. We also remember the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner as they fought for voting rights. If you haven’t watched the movie Mississippi Burning, you really should. Here’s a link to the FBI site and information on the case.
Much of the political press is yammering on about Trump’s big fundraising leap and speculation about the VEEP Sweepstakes with folks even saying Marco Rubio might be a game changer. However, let’s not forget the main point about Trump which is what my state did when the looked at the last govenor’s race and sat it out. his is from Stephen Robinson writing at Public Notice. ” Don’t be gaslit: Trump’s corruption is unparalleled. His egregious self-dealing is disqualifying no matter how much Republicans yell about Hunter Biden.” The author calls the move “classic swift-boating.”
There’s no way we can face any more of his monkey business in the Oval Office. However, there’s another court trying slow down the application of Justice. This is from Politico. “Is Jack Smith’s appointment constitutional? Trump’s Florida judge is set to decide. A hearing starting Friday will delve into Trump’s claim that the special counsel lacks authority.” It’s hard to see such frivolous issues tie things up. This is written by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.
This comes after it was reported that at least two colleagues approached her to ask her to not take the case. Here’s some information on that. This is from LA Magazine. “Judge Aileen Cannon Rebuffed Senior Colleagues’ Plea to Step Aside From Trump’s Classified Documents Case. Cannon is the first judge in American history to preside over a criminal trial of the president who nominated that judge.”
This is the rant part of this long read, with plenty of examples and sources to back this up. It’s brilliant, so forgive me if it is considered an excessively long quote for ‘fair use.’ I’m also feeling better because Grammarly flagged a lot of comma mishaps in the article, which made me feel even more comfortable with its author. I’ve got the Oxford comma down and am happy about that accomplishment. Go read the backup to the rant. It’s important.
This article in the Independent shows how amazing science can be. It also gives us a window into the concept of gender. “Woman who is ’95 per cent genetically male’ gives birth to twins. Woman had no ovaries and 95% male genes, but was fertilised using IVF.”
I can only imagine what Alito and Thomas would make of a court case brought up by some fetus fetishist judge in nowhere Texas. So, there appears to be a bit of a rebellion in the news department of The Washington Post over its new overlords from across the pond. “Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting. Unpublished book drafts and other documents raise questions about Robert Winnett’s journalistic record just months before he is to assume a top newsroom role.”
NPR’s David Folkenflik had an interesting take on this information, linking it to Rupert Murdoch. “New ‘Washington Post’ chiefs can’t shake their past in London.” BB pointed me to this story last night.
You may read more salacious details at the link. One more article about nescience. This one is from Amanda Marcotte, who writes at Salon. “A tradwife drops a racist slur: Why the right’s trolling economy made Lilly Gaddis’ rise inevitable. Cashing in as a “cancel culture” martyr is getting harder, so attention addicts have to get more extreme.”
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