The dust is beginning to settle after last night’s New Hampshire primary. Former president Donald Trump won the Republican primary with 54.3% of the vote, netting him 12 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second with 43.3% of the vote, garnering her 9 delegates. Other candidates together took 2.3%, but none of them won any delegates.
Truly discouraging to know there are thousands of people suffering & many dying because of US lack of promised support in dollars and in military munitions to Ukraine.
And what are we doing in the Middle East. . .? Helping Netanyahu?
It’s very late at night here. I pray every day for silencing all the guns and bombs and hand held tools of destruction & death.
"And what are we doing in the Middle East. . .? Helping Netanyahu?"
The Biden administration is helping Netanyahu to an off ramp. (Israelis are protesting Netanyahu's war crimes and want him out.) Blinken is building international support for sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states. Biden and Blinken are publicly condemning Netanyahu's plans to send Palestinians out of Gaza and use it as lebensraum for racist religious extremist settlers.
This is big, in context of previous American policy dominated by Jewish and Evangelical right wing extremists. Especially under Trump. There is a real opportunity to rebuild Gaza - without Bibi or Hamas. But not if we reelect Trump.
I agree except Hamas will have to be a part of the rebuilding; they can moderate especially as they have and will want to survive as a voice. If it was not for Hamas we would not be here looking at change. Netanyahu has the might which he counted on "making right", for Israel and himself personally. That game has been exposed to a world that has been looking away.
Respectfully, not a chance that Hamas will be part of anything as far as Israel is concerned.
When an organization's raison-d'être for its existence is to deny your existence, why would you engage with them? When they have used aid money to build tunnels, why would you let them be part of rebuilding?
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
Thank you Anil..Why would you believe Hamas extremists and not Israeli extremists who deny Palestinian's existence?
Let's not forget that Netanyahu's support for Hamas, to divide Palestinians, to oppose those in the PLO, Fatah, that wanted coexistence, helped it grow to this monster form of Hamas. Israel provided the conditions. Let's not forget as well, that Hamas had and has, for all we know, a moderate wing and the potential to moderate. They HAVE in the past (2008).
Have you listened to what they are saying NOW as to why they attacked on October 7th? Or are cherry-picking pointing to the/a charter because it's convenient.
There's a lot to forget when you tell one side, including what the Palestinians have endured for decades in occupation, Israeli disproportional named operation after operation, the blockading of Gaza. All that failed trying to teach Hamas and IJ a lesson, a lesson that continued to spawn more terrorism. This devastated Palestinians who had no other means of protest; peaceful protest was/is useless and has been suppressed often brutally.
Do you ever walk vicarously in those shoes?
The aid money did not all go to the tunnels. The tunnels were used to get survival goods in and out as well, some of them first built by Israel. Hamas has a lot of other means of financial support. This has been exposed lately in the NYTimes and WAPO and elsewhere.
The Israeli/Netanyahu government has become far right. The aim is to settle the West Bank. There is no tolerance for any equality of human rights, and certainly not allow Palestinians self determination ( which they have a right to). The far right denies their existence. Over the decades many Palestinains were forced to fight or flee, to leave for life elsewhere, a diaspora, like the Jews in fact ironically.
And Israel is crying about an existential threat??
Desperation is what brought October 7th on. Blaming October 7th on Hamas alone is ignoring a lot. This is just what Israel is attempting to do: cut off the context.. Much of the world now, after over half a century is not buying this anymore. Many who said the two state solution is dead are now realizing that this is the ONLY answer. The ( Saudi) Arab Initiative of 2002 is relevant. The US has a big roll to play. As well growing opposition to unconditional support of Israel is registering politically.
I don't understand how people can believe a two state solution will solve anything so long as Hamas exists. Given that polls show the Gaza population approaches 75% support for Hamas, to say the PLA (who also wants the elimination of Israel) will keep them under control is wishful thinking. Do not forget that Hamas defeated the PLA almost two to one in 2006.
You may have noticed over the years that terrorist organizations develop and thrive in areas where people are desperate and looking for help they aren't getting from elsewhere. The Palestinians were given no country status and have already lost most of their land to Israel since 1948. Gaza has been blockaded by Israel since the Israeli occupiers left. Even I might be a sucker for the promises of a terrorist group if I were as desperate.
JAL - The US (and Israel) have just as much power to "eliminate Hamas" as we did in eliminating the Taliban. Chronic diseases are a management problem; rarely are there cures.
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
And the poor people who've fled their homes and need some resolution of their situation, but those having a "little crisis" won't do anything about it out of pettiness and greed. And I'm looking at you Mitch, because you know better There isn't much time for you to leave this world a better place than you found it, and there's a lot to do.
Yes, Jen, I am looking at Mitch too. He is in a quandary as they all are. They know this immigration problem needs work. I am so disgusted that they use people as political pawns. Then there is the abortion issue and women, even those who are raped, unable to obtain abortions in their home states. I am Jill Biden has invited the ob gyn from Texas to be her guest at the SOTU.
The letter today is very depressing, though some of the Loser’s middle school quotes are hilarious. We’re fighting against such twisted evil in the guise of American leaders. We need Superman, the Lone Ranger, and Zorro in a hurry.
How do you detect a neo-fascist Biden Bully? They never discuss the book "Votescam: The Stealing of America."
"Votescam" gives the example of the 1992 New Hampshire Republican primary, featuring George H.W. Bush versus Patrick Buchanan, in which the results were "impossibly" at odds with pre-vote polls.
The 2020 Massachusetts Democratic primary featured an "impossible" brace of four-percent skews from the EXIT polls (at the expense of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), giving Biden a hair-thin win.
This comes from the same source that showed that the results for the 2020 Alabama Senate race were heavily skewed in favor of Tommy Tuberville. Computerized vote fraud is a bipartisan problem.
There is a bogus "fact check" article that dishonestly debunks the above-linked analysis of the 2020 Massachusetts primary:
I have both "muted" and "blocked" him and yet he keeps showing up. I have gone onto Substack's customer service to complain that their options don't work. This guy FEEDS on negative attention, and I am beginning to think that his mental problems might be serious and am unsure of whom to report this to.
Honestly, if you heard of some crazed person doing something that lands them in the news and this guy's name showed up, would you be surprised?
Please, let’s all give him his due. Here is a man who works hard to write crazy, teeth-gritting, delusional, and conspiratorial comments and then finds nutty posts from the internet to bolster his “thoughts” rather than attempting to argue from his own knowledge, experience, or resource.
I have been trying to find his posts where he attacks Copernicus’s theory that the planets orbit the sun,, or proves that anyone foolish enough to get Pasteur’s first vaccines against cowpox is now dead. 100% fatal!! I know they must exist!!
You voted for Dems who have lost their way and for such corrupt Dems? You specialize in information that is hidden from the rest of us. Must keep you very busy.
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
Hillary the Hypocrite personifies the Democratic Party's loss of its soul. In the 2008 primary race, it was do-or-die for Hillary in the North Carolina primary. I remembered, from the book "Votescam: The Stealing of America," the story of how "the computers crashed" late at night and eventually came back up with skewed numbers.
I planned to stay up late as results came in from North Carolina, and the same thing happened. Hillary and Obama were neck-and-neck when, around 11:00, the computers crashed. I stayed up to see the reported results the moment they re-started. Sure enough, somewhere around 3:00 in the morning, the first new result came in with Hillary's total flat and a big jump for Obama, putting both the primary and the nomination out of reach for Hillary.
For a couple days there was some speculation that Hillary would challenge the results, but she didn't. The North Carolina Attorney General Ray Cooper went on to become Governor, and North Carolina was gifted the next Democratic convention.
I voted for Hillary in the California primary, and for Obama in the general election.
Hillary went on, as Secretary of State, to become the Butcher of Libya, pressuring a reluctant Obama to go far beyond the United Nations mandate and effect regime change in Libya, turning that country into a festering failed state.
In the 2020 primary race, I supported Tulsi Gabbard , who aptly called Hillary the "corrupt queen of the war-mongers." The Democratic Party has lost its soul.
Question: How many people died suddenly when they were about to testify against Bill and Hillary Clinton?
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
Once again, if you want to talk through this, please speak up. I'll ask you to give a quote from that "fact check" article that you think debunks the analysis of Theodore de Macedo Soares.
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
I share the utter horror you feel, but I'm afraid that nothing will ameliorate the situation as long as Bibi is in control. He is in exactly the same predicament as trump--both criminally indicted cornered rats that must remain in power at all costs to avoid prison. He must be removed from power by whatever means....
Try this. Make the Negev triangle part of a new Palestine and make it attach to Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza is now destroyed and unlivable. Gazans need a place to go. Drive out the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Remove the Israeli military.
Hamas could never put an end to Israel. That is a total fabrication. They are no longer a threat.
The $3+ billion in US aid will be sent to Palestine instead.
The political situation in Israel is very much like ours. A few people in power like the radical republicans and Supreme Court determine policy for the masses even though the majority of the population want something else. Abortion for instance
Misogyny kills a woman every six seconds in this world. Usually by there so-called 'loved ones'. My God this is a war on women. And their babies. Texas ranks last in every demographic regarding the care of women and children. They would rather watch them die than get help. Just as thousands of rape kits end up in a garbage can. This is horrific. We need good men to hold other men accountable and speak up.
In Texas 149 million dollars was designated for the poor. Instead they took that money and gave it to religious groups to build pregnancy centers without any oversight. Guess who's buying mansions and private airplanes. It's not the poor.
That is absolutely barbaric, and I have no reason to doubt it. That might be the saddest thing I've ever heard. Fathers should repeatedly tell their sons that they should never hit a woman, and that no means no.
I would guess, way more than triple...the chance of a woman becoming pregnant is dependent on a slew of factors. It is absolutely horrifying to think about what this means about the actual number of women who were raped.
Christy, you would think so! Trump's "christian" followers who believe he is "ordained by God" have ignored his vile, immoral, and illegal actions because they see in him how they think all Americans should be- racist, stubborn, narrow-minded, afraid of change. In any form, homophoobic, anti- government, and what I hate most of all, "holier-than-thou" attitudes.
His ENTITLEMENT appeals to those who feel ENTITLED.
What a misguided, sad, and oh-so dangerous group of people.
Hello Dave. Thank you for the question. Women have always and still are considered second class citizens. It’s all about some men wanting control over us like they want control over native Americans, by putting Japanese-Americans into internment camps and I could go on and on about the atrocities by some men.
And then you have tRump talking proudly (disgustingly) about how he can grab a woman. And the evangelical group want him. What is wrong with people????
Good lord, what an indictment. I do know of family with 4 girls, two raped while working in restaurants, one while jr in college. The perpetrators are responsible, never the victims. for some who might assume that. Shocked me
“Not party girls for whom you assume that”??? Jeri, please rephrase that. I’m sure you didn’t mean to say that girls who “party” should expect to be raped but that’s how it read to me. Skating very close to the thin ice of victim blaming. When half the population has to consider the way they dress, the places they go and the activities they engage in out of fear of assault from the other half something is very very wrong and clearly that’s the case in the US, but let’s put the blame where it belongs - on the attacker, not the victim !!!
My parents talked to me about how I dressed; I did the same with my daughter. I did it to protect her. There are crimes of opportunity. Some guy takes advantage of a woman because, at that moment, he can. Like Brett Kavanaugh. Is this situation how things ought to be? Hell no!
Thank you, well put. While I’m sure Jeri didn’t meant it that way unfortunately there are still people out there, men and women who do. Victim blaming will be with us for a very long time if Roe v Wade is overturned. I for one will not stand by and watch this happen!
Reference the above, not one of the three (17, 18, and 19 at the time) would report what happened. They wanted to put it behind them. A hard lesson for the females, not so much for the guys.
It’s an appalling statistic, that doesn’t begin to transmit the suffering behind it, but I’m not sure how people are surprised by it when the creep that bragged about grabbing women by the pussy got seated in our Oval Office. We reap what we sow.
It's a sad commentary on our nation that TFG was ever elected. That set our civilization back immeasurably. Hillary was not wrong when she said "deplorables", even though blaming a portion of voters publicly wasn't the smartest political move. TFG has done nothing but to encourage bullying of all kinds and greed.
Appalling to hear the number. Sixty five thousand rape victims impregnated. SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND. Let that number sink in. That many angry hateful men, causing an unwanted pregnancy and the devout wring their hands and say it's gods will and she has to have the child and raise it too and sorry we won't help you.
Jen, that was EXACTLY my reaction after reading that number. I was gobsmacked. As a man, I am disgusted (not a strong-enough word, maybe Ill use 'appalled' as you did, but it still doesn't convey the right response.) And that's only across 14 states.
Jen, that is the same male-oriented "philosophy" that was rampant in law enforcement when I first started. It had modulated by the time I retired, but that it even existed in the first place shows how deeply ingrained the concept is.
It's hard to even imagine such a thing having been said. Yet, a "man" who used and abused the WH was/is a rapist himself, repeatedly denigrates women, takes pride in "grabbing them" by the genitals, treats marriage like his bankruptcies (who cares) and says "there has to be some form of penalty" (for a raped woman) is there for all to see and hear. His existence and emergence has taken humanity itself back perhaps centuries and I fear has led by example a whole new generation of degenerates to mimic him.
Obama said, "We get the politicians we deserve" and it sounded good and made sense at the time. But, in hindsight I disagree.
Oh my gawd. That's horrible. What emotional pain to have to deal with, and live with. (And please don't feel you have to thank me for my humanity -- humanity should be the norm, not what stands out.)
And those are just the ones who got impregnated--think of how many other thousands of women get raped. Alongside the rapists, I squarely put the blame on the doctors who won't treat these women. If I was a physician I would treat as many of these women as I could, and when arrested declare that I could not breach my Hippocratic oath....
Yeah great. Just what we need--more unwanted children. And if this number represents the PREGNANCIES from reported rapes imagine the number of MOST rapes that go unreported. Smash patriarchy!
'Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine. Here’s Why.' (NYT, excerpts)
'The U.K., often a wingman to the United States in defense, is pushing its ally to stand firm against President Vladimir V. Putin, amid fears that Russia poses an existential threat to Europe.'
'When David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary and onetime prime minister, visited Washington last month, he took time out to press the case for backing Ukraine with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who stridently opposes further American military aid to the country.'
'If the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States has taken on an air of special pleading in recent weeks, it is because Britain, rock solid in its support for Ukraine, now views its role as bucking up an ally for whom aid to the embattled country has become a political obstacle course.'
'British diplomats said Mr. Cameron and other senior officials had made it a priority to reach out to Republicans who were hostile to further aid. For reasons of history and geography, Britain recognized that support is not as “instinctive” for Americans as it for the British, according to a senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.'
'Unlike in the United States, where Ukraine has gotten tied up in a dispute with Republicans over President Biden’s border policy and come under the shadow of a dismissive Mr. Trump, support for Kyiv in Britain has stayed resolute, undiminished, and nonpartisan in the two years since Russia’s invasion.'
'Even in an election year, when the Conservative government and its Labour Party opponents are clashing over almost everything, there is not a glimmer of daylight between them on Ukraine, the biggest foreign policy challenge facing the country.
'When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) of additional aid for Ukraine, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, instantly lent his support. Britain, the third-largest supplier of weapons after the United States and Germany, was the first major power to commit to new aid in 2024.' (NYTimes) Sorry link below is not gifted.
I think it's more likely Cameron met with MTGreene just to see the Bride of Frankenstein in the flesh... and her to see Henry Higgins. I doubt either of them had any inclination that her mind would be changed on Ukraine.
While the R's are having their "little crisis" people die in Ukraine as a sovereign country literally fights for its life against Putin. People die at the southern border while Greg Abbott has the Texas National Guard flouting federal law, and women suffer death or impairment or imprisonment because of draconian abortion bans. The Republican Taliban is literally the party of death and cruelty at every. They have no interest in actually solving our country's problems, such as a broken immigration system that needs updating. They only want to rage against problems, not address them. They want to rule, not represent.
And in the meantime global security, including the security of our allies and the USA is at ever greater risk -- because of Republicans’ alleged concern for southern border security.
Ransom, it might qualify as schadenfreude if not for the fact that, if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, we might see American boots on the ground in Poland.
I have maintained for the entirety of the t-Rum presidency that that whole gang was working directly for Putin. They are totally commited to our destruction. One needs not to look very far or deep to identify the opperatives. Edit here, And to the MSM this is not newsworthy. They have only just begun to tentively say Fascist or dictatorial tendencies.
'The most illuminating analysts of America’s frightening recent political turn were turning out to be scholars specializing in Europe. When Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, or Richard Steigmann-Gall noticed phenomena in America’s past or present that resembled something in the right-wing movements they studied in Germany, Italy, or elsewhere, they just said so—‘ (AmericanProspect, by Rick Perlstein, excerpts)
'The most interesting voice thinking about the connections between interwar Europe and the present-day U.S. happens to be a scholar of both. John Ganz’s forthcoming book When the Clock Broke illuminates the exceedingly odd politics of the U.S. in 1992—including some haunting harbingers of America’s Trumpian turn. The most fascinating posts on his Substack Unpopular Front are deeply learned perambulations through the 20th-century European right. Their most important lesson: Fascism is always less simple than we think it is.'
"We have this image in our heads—and this is really hard to get out of people’s heads—of the fascist rise to power that comes from fascist propaganda," Ganz explains. The stereotype is thugs marching into the seat of government with truncheons, then marching out having seized state power. "It is much more political than that. It has much more to do with negotiations between established political factions and elites … None of these movements were destined to succeed. There was a lot of luck, and there were a lot of contingencies."
'Most fascist parties and movements—never seized any power. They were footnotes. That’s an important insight to address to observers who cite the sheer ridiculousness, abundant incompetence, and outright insanity within Donald Trump’s movement, and have a hard time placing it in the same universe with the movement that almost conquered Europe. After all, if Hitler’s little gang of beer hall brawlers had failed to achieve power, they surely would have looked precisely as ridiculous as all that. As Ganz puts it, "Everything kind of looks farcical until it doesn’t."
'The brawlers are never really the engine of the thing anyway. Ganz explained how Hitler and Mussolini used their more violent elements to destabilize and intimidate, while they took power through the more normal political channels of forming coalitions in parliament and ascending into leadership roles.'
"The constitutional system in Italy always remained intact," 'even when Mussolini became dictator, Ganz notes.
'At least as important to the story are the "responsible conservatives" 'who made their peace with the strongman, believing he could be controlled. Like Germany’s Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, architect of the 1933 coalition that made Hitler chancellor, who said:' "In two months, we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he’ll squeal." 'Or the guy who said in 2015,' "You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell." 'That would be one Lindsey Graham, who later decided he liked Trump just fine, once he started winning.'
Mainstream conservatives in Italy and Germany repeatedly claimed Mussolini and Hitler would turn out to be responsible actors, once they occupied positions of responsibility. American elites followed suit with the absurd refrain, on occasions when Trump managed to act normal for 15 seconds:' "He became president of the United States in that moment, period."
'... listen now to the reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos:' "U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term, while foreign chief executives are terrified." 'Replied one of the nonplussed:' "I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are. We have a justice system … it won’t be the end of the world." Another pronounced Trump "all bark and no bite," with his tossing aside the 2020 election returns mere bloviation. And besides, "many of his policies were right."
"The heads of these movements had to be very careful about how they would use the fascist paramilitaries, and make this implicit promise to the elite that they could be contained," Ganz says. "It was always something they needed in their back pocket, right?
'But Trump always thought differently. After Charlottesville, he called the thugs "fine people." Asked about the Proud Boys in a 2020 presidential debate, he said: "Stand back and stand by." I’d always worried that utterances like these were harbingers of things to come. I suspected that Trump never criticized supporters willing to commit violence on his behalf because that willingness might eventually become useful to him. I saw him as playing politics with something far more than votes: that thugs were valuable currency to keep in his back pocket, to send forth whenever that was what it took to keep power.'
'Then, on January 6th, he did.'
'For the briefest moment, the von Papens of the Republican congressional caucus considered cutting him loose. Then they thought better of it. Now that Trump calls his thugs "hostages," few Republicans seem even to consider expressing alarm. Some have even turned it into a MAGA term of art. "This movement between goons and conservative allies," Ganz notes, is' "something I saw a lot with Trump."
Ganz points out that a book that won a lot of respect for its explanatory power in the European context, Dylan Riley’s The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe, has been deployed in the American context by critics of the idea that' "fascism" 'is a relevant category here and now.' "[Riley’s] theory," Ganz explains, "is that, in a society where the political establishment is weak and cannot get consensus behind it, but there is a highly developed civil society—where there are a lot of pressure groups—you can expect something like fascism, as those groups make demands on the political system that it cannot satisfy. And these idiot fucks …"
'There are two ways to think about the failed, weak political establishment, abetted by the sclerosis-inducing nature of our constitutional system. One might think about the state’s failure to deliver the things it used to: adequate physical infrastructure, an economy that provides meaningful work with the kind of protections against firing that powerful unions provide, a safety net to smooth out its rough edges, and increasing moves (Medicare, Medicaid) toward affordable health care. The right sometimes claims they don’t want the government to accomplish these things, but they grew quite excited when Trump promised that he alone could restore, provide, or preserve them.'
'The other way to think of it involves things people in groups like these demand that no government can deliver: a Christian theocracy many Americans wrongly believe to be their birthright; protection from demographic change; return to a prelapsarian time when America was supposed to have been "great."
'Any way you slice it, the perceived absence of responsive government, the presence of groups positioned to clamor for response, and then government’s failure to respond, does things out in the world.'
“This cluster of demands coming from civil society being put on a very weak political establishment is a basic sociological formula for fascism,” 'as Ganz summarizes Riley’s paradigm.'
“And I think that’s what, basically, we have in the United States: a very weak political establishment, but a civil society underneath it that’s looking for a kind of expression. And the expression that it’s taking is pathological … It’s demanding a dictator. Because the party system is unable to answer the demands they have.”
'Or the 84 percent of Tea Party adherents who said their views “generally reflect the views of most Americans.”
''Or when Mike Lindell, in his campaign for RNC chairman in 2023, said, “This country is 70 percent red. If you remove all the garbage and all the corruption and everything. It’s 70 percent red, and it’s getting redder all the way.”
'And, of course, on January 6th.'
'Various aspects of fascism have been always present on the American right. (In 1981, the virulently and explicitly racist and anti-Semitic magazine The Spotlight had many times the circulation of any other publication on the right.) They remained contained or undeveloped. With Trump, they burst forth in full flower. The fantasy of the Republican plebiscite—the notion that the true nation is already with them were it not for the deep state’s depredations—was at the essence of the demand at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “If the government is no longer for the people, it is your duty to overthrow that government and reinstate a new government, for the people,” as a 1/6 terrorist named Christopher Alberts, convicted of bringing a handgun to the Capitol, roused the mob that day.'
'It is a point I’ll keep repeating: The most important thing for journalists to cover in this presidential election is not how many votes Donald Trump gets, either in the popular total or the Electoral College. To those subsumed inside his cult of personality, the conclusion is already foregone: If you took a true poll of the American people, swept aside the garbage and the corruption of the kingmakers in the media and the deep state (not to mention all those Democratic officials desperate to do anything to cover up their pedophilic cult)—obviously Donald Trump represents the views of most Americans, and is the only legitimate representative of “the people.” 'The question is how many will be willing to take up arms for this belief, should the people whose job it is to count the votes come up with the “wrong” answer.'
'Will that be fascism?
“One of the mistakes people make is they say, ‘Well, this doesn’t look like European fascism in 1936.’ "Well, because it’s American fascism in 2024.” (by Rick Perlstein, TheAmeriicanProspect) See link to piece below.
“ ... listen now to the reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos:' "U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term, while foreign chief executives are terrified." 'Replied one of the nonplussed:' "I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are. We have a justice system … it won’t be the end of the world." Another pronounced Trump "all bark and no bite," with his tossing aside the 2020 election returns mere bloviation. And besides, "many of his policies were right."”
Trump can’t hold a candle to the real problem; capitalism run amok.
The mega billionaire oligarchs have made a mockery of capitalism!Musk who has bought his way into every business with the inherited ‘blood diamond’ money has built his empire on the backs of no regulation, no taxation policies began under Reagan!
It would be fair to point to the transfer of wealth, most recently under Ronald Reagan's administrations for the growth of billionaires in the US as well as the reduction of the middle-class. This has has been fostered by our tax system, weak regulation, inequality, price growth in real estate and financial assets, housing discrimination, and lack of access to financial tools for people of color, etc. THE PICTURE IS TURNING AROUND UNDER PRESIDENT BIDEN.
'The U.S. economy boomed in 2023, thanks to consumers opening up wallets'
'New GDP figures today show strong growth at the end of last year' (WAPO)
'The U.S. economy grew by a bustling 3.1 percent in 2023, shaking off recession fears and offering an upbeat picture of consumers and businesses ahead of a pivotal election year.'
'Growth slowed slightly in the last three months of 2023 — to an annual rate of 3.3 percent, down from a sweltering 4.9 percent in the previous quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. The latest figures show the economy has soundly returned to stable footing following a period of dramatic pandemic-fueled swings that marked 2020 through early 2022.'
'The economy’s resilience has been driven by vigorous consumer spending. A strong job market and rising wages have made it possible for many households to keep shelling out — particularly on services such as entertainment, travel and dining out — even at a time of elevated inflation.'
'That spending by everyday Americans accounted for most of the economy’s growth in the fourth quarter. Increased government spending, at the state, local and federal level, as well as higher exports and more private and residential investments also lifted the latest GDP reading, which sums up the goods and service produced in the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, a rise in imports dragged down the latest reading.'
'Government policy played an important role in supporting the economy last year. The Biden administration’s efforts to fund new infrastructure and clean energy projects have created new jobs and spurred $640 billion in private investments around the country.'
“This is generally what a healthy U.S. economy should look like: growth driven by consumer spending,” said Lauren Goodwin, an economist and chief market strategist at New York Life Investments. “The consumer has been incredibly resilient and has certainly been stronger than we expected.” (WAPO) See gifted link below.
No, I do not think Trump knows that he is a puppet, either. In my mind, he is a also something more than one, because he's that 'snake oil salesman' who talked turkey to the angry Whites who couldn't stand that USA elected a Black man to the presidency, with the number of minorities growing, along with the other horrible indignities visited on the country's White nationalists. MAGAs don't think that Trump is a puppet because he's the dictator savior that they have been longing for.
Not everyone is cut out to write an ongoing Substack, which takes quite a bit of work. I appreciate the deep dives that Fern is able to do, and to share with us, because they are always on point to either the Letter itself, or comments on the Letter. I want her energy focused on the "deep dives"!
Ally, thank you so much for your thoughtful words. HCR's Letters and books, along with subscribers comments and exchanges promote my interests in knowing more and communicating on this valuable forum.
Louis, are you praising or faulting my comments.? It doesn't seem to me that I am riding on HCR's coattails. I respect and learn from her work, while my perspective, including, perhaps, more interest in foreign policy; how politics of countries comingle as well as impact on each, and curiosity about the temper of the American people, beyond the 'us v. them' so relentlessly reiterated. Do you mind elaborating on your comment to me? Thanks.
Fern, I don’t see you riding on the Professor’s coattails. I see you offering more information on selected news that she’s put into the newsletter. That said, for those who might not want to search through all the responses to find yours, they might well appreciate your breaking them out in a separate Substack. I don’t want to do that because part of what I love is to see the interaction between you and other responders.
I haven't missed your 'With all due respect' line followed by 'No need to ride on The Professors coattails! That may be the last I hear from you, which would be best. That gibe coming from you was an unpleasant surprise.
Ransom, like Tillerson getting the Order of Friendship, a Russian state honour, for his "significant contribution to strengthening cooperation in the energy sector”?
The list of documents goes on and on. The Mueler Probe has it all. He even said there was more but he was limited in what he could bring charges on. Buried like Truman did to the treason trial records of all the Nazi working for Hitler US Senators and Congressmen whose trial was declared a misstrial and it was buried for the good of the nation healing from WWII. Rachel Maddow dug them up. National Archive. That is where the Mueler Report is.
Without Exxon Russia could not manage the technology for exploiting North Sea oil. Rachel Maddows fantastic book Blowout from some years back is even more pertinent now.
I read that Putin is wanting to rescind the sale of Alaska territory to the USA: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4423913-state-dept-putin-alaska-russia/ Uh, don’t think so….wonder if he’s drinking the same “Diet Coke” TFFG is?! What chaps my ass is all the crap that’s being thrown on the world stage when we ALL have very real issues confronting our lives & our ecosystems survival. I wonder if, perhaps, off-world civilizations did a drive by and thought…nope, don’t like the vibe of this neighborhood.
Barbara Keating, I've heard it proposed as the "ferme paradox" that the more advanced we get, the closer we get to our own destruction. Which begs the questions. And how many planets before us have destroyed themse!ves? And how many have not?
It's the "Fermi Paradox" - that high technology civilizations create their own destruction. There's certainly some strong arguments in favor of the proposition.
Especially if one fully considers it regarding 'this' planet, with it's dominance too often by the worst of our species unchangeable natures, historically. But, let's not go down that rabbit hole, savor our good moments, and get back to that "understatement competition" that our mentor and dear professor kicked off so well. *edit > I should have said "kicked off so splendidly." That sounds a tad more high brow British. (lol)
The consensus now is that all civilizations extinguish themselves as they become more sophisticated, because of all the little work-arounds that are used to keep things running, and the complexity of those compromises create instability. A prime example, I think, would be the Constitution. It was brilliant for its time, but with all the little tinkerings to it over 236 years (especially the last 50), and the massive changes in our civilization that couldn't have been envisioned back then, its time has come.
Jeff, is that possibly what happened to the Romans? I could see it happening in the US BUT FOR the existence of many other, newer, national constitutions around the world, modeled on that of the US, which we could use as suggestions for the continued development of our country. Yes, there are a lot of naysayers around the US, but we could survive the present era if we chose to do so.
As with the Fermi Paradox, there is also the concept of “the great filter”, where a planet’s inhabitants reach a certain level of advancement & technology before they flame out & perhaps go extinct (and maybe why no “advanced extraterrestrials have visited us)…..not unlike civilizations crashing after a time as you note.
The Fermi Paradox is more specifically about the infinite vastness of the universe having so much potential for other life to exist on so many other planets and galaxies that go on and on into mind bending dimensions that there just must be other intelligent life and civilizations out there. Fermi then quipped, "But Where are they?" (no evidence for it or like Barbara said above not going anywhere near that hood...)
It's a fascinating concept that was discussed in 1950 when Enrico Fermi and co-workers Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York were having a lunchtime conversation at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carl Sagan had written about it too and it has always been something that is hard to reconcile when you look out at the stars.
And 'that' is a very real American problem; now or later, certainly. We watched the creeping grabs by Putin over time; facts in evidence. *edit in, next day > Now what I dislike about chasing that logic string, is that it's sort of 'doom-scrolling forward' to what 'could be'. Like when that string led us to costly "domino theory" interventions in civil wars like Korea / Vietnam. A closer look at civil wars, shows us that the wars aren't necessarily over when one side is vanquished by armed conflict; they continue to simmer, eventually sometimes to boil over again at nonlinear paces. Consider deeply the 'civil wars' of Mexico, U.S., Argentina, etc. for a bit.
From the quote of Mitch McConnell, it appears he’s willing to risk Ukraine’s fall to Putin if it will help Donald Trump get elected. That is disturbing. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan are turning over in their graves.
You raise an interesting question. My guess is Nixon, for all of his other failures, recognized, as did Reagan, or at least those from whom he sought counsel (Paul Nitze, George Schultz and Cap Weinberger) that Russia and its people have a fundamentally different view of the value of human life and the respective obligations of the governed and the governing class than we in the U.S. do. What I find most galling about McConnell’s capitulation to Putin’s revanchism is his price. He would trade increasing the probability of Donald Trump’s election for Europe’s stability and security? “Turning and turning in the widening gyre….”
I hate to be thinking this way, but if Putin wins in Ukraine, eventually he will go into Poland and then there will be another massive war in Europe. This will certainly happen if R’s win and our funding to Ukraine's ceases. While we’re all distracted fighting Putin, China will go into Taiwan. I see a nuclear end that will destroy our world as we know it. Like Einstein said, he didn’t know what weapons will be used in WWIII, but the next war would be stones and sticks. I don’t know if this is a possibility or probably, but Putin must be stopped and pushed out of Ukraine.
I look at the GOP right now and in my mind I see a cesspool with McConnell, Kari Lake, Ronna McDaniel, Trump, that state senator from Arizona who had to resign, etc, all in there, waving their harms and struggling to stay above the surface. The cesspool is swirling into a whirlpool, starting to go faster and faster. And then they all disappear under the surface come November.
God I hope they lose terribly in November. I hope this is massive humiliation. Because I am sick to death of living near the stink of this cesspool that is the GOP now, and I want it to go away forever. I want the day to come where I realize I haven’t thought nor heard the name “Trump” all day long. That will be a very fine day indeed!
Luckily for us, the republicans are not noticing that the abortion issue is drowning them. So allow my optimism: I believe that "The cesspool is swirling into a whirlpool, starting to go faster and faster" and will suck them down the drain....
just wrote to Susan Collins telling her that she must be so proud to be a Republican-- a Republican that works for Donald Trump and Mitch McConell instead of her constituents.
First and foremost the Republicans are Trumpanzees that work for TFFG and not their constituents.
Hey, Gary - I'd love to see what you wrote, because I've been planning to write another letter to Useless Susie myself. And possibly to Angus, because he hasn't exactly been a leading light in this Congress, either.
Without immigration to fight over, the MAGApublicans will lose what they see as their most appealing issue in the November elections. That's why they will fight any solution whatsoever regarding our southern border, especially a bi-partisan one. Reaching a solution would be like taking a hammer away from a carpenter.
That is what left me from all that Heather posted. A LITTLe crisis??! I would say a major crisis where most are afraid of tofg. He is vile for sure but he truly needs to be taken down, locked up for good!
Trump is evil. Let's smash the MAGA movement to smithereens at the polls this November.
But what will keep me up is the following factoid given in today's post:
"A report published today in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped."
That number is not the total number of rapes in just 14 of the 50 states. It's the subset of the total that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. That limited number is shocking. Even after Trump is defeated, our country will not be safe for women. WTF? Who the f** are we? Is Trump just the smelliest symptom of a deeper rot?
Those statistics aren't shocking at all. That's reality. I write an FBI series about crimes against women and children and am constantly doing research and talking to law enforcement about rape statistics and I don't even believe that the much more realistic 'one out of four women' comes close. I don't know ANY woman who hasn't suffered significant sexual harassment and/or assault. Zero. But rape is a serial crime, and it's 10-30% of men who are responsible for over 90% of rapes. Good men need to be condemning and coming down hard on the rapists so we can start taking this soul-crushing crime against humanity seriously.
And as I always point out, given the surge of Christofascism - there's no Commandment against rape. That is an enormous moral and legal problem.
The Christian-fascist drumbeat is that women and people of color are less-created to serve the men in charge. Women and poc are to be submissive. Therefore crimes like rape aren’t actually crimes, because the guys are entitled to take what they want-other peoples’ feelings/wants/needs be damned. I see it here in Florida where it is preached in churches that men are the head of the household and women are to submit.
Alexandra Sokoloff, I’m sure many of us... I’d say all but who knows?...thank you for your work.
For me, this count of rape is a shock. However, as I thought about that, I recalled how I was violently attacked in my own family home by a date; and managed to fend him off, just, without my Father’s help, who had heard noise and called down from the floor above.
Next morning my face: black and blue.
As the guy exited our home he pushed the front door open again saying: “this is what you need!”
Oh my God, Samm. That is horrifying. I'm so, so glad your father was there and YOU were strong enough to get rid of that monster.
I've heard hundreds and hundreds of stories like yours. And, like you had to think for a moment to even remember this horrific experience, I find it often takes women a while to even start remembering the many incidences of near escapes and frightening situations. I have a good friend who for years swore up and down she'd never experienced anything like sexual assault. And then she was talking about her family one night and it was clear she'd been molested by her older brother. I asked her some gentle questions and it finally came out that he'd raped her for years. We all have a self-preserving tendency toward compartmentalization. That's why MeToo was so, so important and continues to be.
Thank you for your courage, back then and now, for telling your story.
Thank you Alexandra Sokoloff. Initially I thought how ‘small’ my experience was compared with ie your friend and a friend of mine, whose Father raped her and her youngest sister for years. Of course huge trauma resulted to both of them with the younger sister committing suicide. This in an upper middle class family. Rape does not care about nation, class, race, anything. No. It knows no boundaries.
It’s wonderful people like you and many of Heather’s followers, who continue to fight this horror that make me hope some day, someway this will ebb and even end.
Agreed Alexandra....I don't know a single woman who has escaped rape, sexual assault or significant sexual harassment. Many have experienced it all. It's why we are constantly looking over our shoulders, are leary of stepping onto an elevator with only one or two men, regret that it is hard to trust men, but still try with all our might.
Having said that, I do believe there are some men who don't harass, assault, or abuse women. But even many of those are in disbelief (as in not believing) of all of the bad male behavior I've experienced and shared in an effort to explain the Me Too movement. Which leads me to agree that society has underplayed, cloaked, and ignored the role men play in unwanted pregnancies and sexual abuse of women (why else are women, not men, who have unwanted pregnancies and seeking abortion or medically need an abortion now the focus of societies wrath?)
This is huge! And the very fact that Roe could be reversed reveals how covert misogyny is in US society...and how no one, who ignores (does not actively address) this problem, is innocent.
Susan, I don't just -believe- there are some men who don't harass, assault, or abuse women — I KNOW it. If the statistics I quoted (and have found across multiple studies) are correct, then 30 percent of men are responsible for almost all sexual violence. The other 70 percent of men need to know that, stop letting those sociopaths tar them with the same sociopathic brush, and say NO - this is not how men act. NO, we're to going to let you freaks get away with it any more. ENOUGH.
Then we have to ask Alexandra, if only 30% are responsible then how is it that nothing is being done? Complicity is not an innocent act. Believing that women (knowingly or unknowingly) are culpable in violence against them, is not an innocent act.
Police officers are 2 to 4 times more likely to have been involved in sexual abuse than the average citizen. Their District Attorney offices would be complicit, because they can't do business without the police. So the whole judicial system becomes complicit.
I ask myself that all the time, Susan. I've written six books trying to lay out the complexity of issues. It's so many factors. Obvious ones - like centuries of laws (and church teaching) that said women were men's property, and no commandment against rape in the Bible. Men controlling the laws, the media, art, etc. and framing things from their own perspective without fully depicting women as human, and keeping women largely out of the top levels of all of those offices and professions. A whole history of law enforcement that skews patriarchal and conservative. The fact that women are vilified and re-victimized in the process of reporting rape and in the courts.
And less obvious but crucial ones, like the fact that rape is a serial crime. A proportionately small number of predators are committing the vast majority of rapes. And for some ungodly reason, we are not calling out sociopaths and making it a priority to identify them, early, and contain the damage they're likely to do.
And the fact that there are systemic, appalling holes in law enforcement. Like the rape kit backlog. Like the abject failure of police departments to log violent sexual crimes into databases like VICAP - rendering a system that should have been a game changer in rape arrests and convictions essentially useless. (Canada's version is a smashing success compared to the US's VICAP.
I could go on and on. I do! But I do it in fiction to get these statistics across emotionally, through readers' investment in my characters.
Thank you for the work you do. When I first started in law enforcement, I somewhat resented getting assigned every rape case that came to patrol to handle. As I gained experience, I lost the resentment. It is, however, the reason that I never went into detectives. Our patrol division was relatively small (2-4 main office deputies on duty at a time, and anywhere from 0-10, depending on the time of day, other uniformed deputies serving other patrol functions as resident deputies, contract deputies, or forestland deputies; we had at various times 4-6 deputies assigned to detectives.) Four of my closest friends ended up with detective assignments at various times. One of them, who was outstanding, said "I knew I had to get out of detectives when I started praying for a homicide so I could focus on something other that p's and v's and a's." Sex crimes were about 90% of the caseload.
Ally, thank YOU for stepping up to do that painful and vital job. It really is infuriating that women detectives get boxed into rape investigations, but I have no doubt that survivors would almost always rather have a woman on the case.
You should never have told me you're in/were in law enforcement. I will try not to plague you with technical questions.
Rape is a weapon of war, as you definitely know. What does that say about the state of our republic with MAGA looming large in our legislatures and courts?
Alexandra, I believe your observations. What I was going to accomplish with my post is to build an impetus to study rape as a public health issue. You state that every woman experiences sexual harassment or rape in her life (in only our society?). The study implies that in broad numbers and extrapolating from the 14 states (without getting into the weeds of actual population numbers in those states vs. total US population), over 1 million rapes occur in the US each year. Is that separate from "just" harassment or is that part of a continuum? Are environmental or cultural factors that affect this? Could this topic be out in the open, so that people squirm as they face the reality within the society they support? To change ourselves, we have to know ourselves better.
Jerry, I'm not quite sure if this is the answer to the question you're asking, but most studies will separate harassment and rape into separate categories, if you look at the full study. Sometimes the media will quote these two categories as one number, though. Numbers vary in different countries. (South Africa has the highest incidence of rape in the world.)
I would hope those two categories are separate. I am sure there are different classes within each. Just as critical race theory provides tools to perceive and hopefully change behaviors rooted in our slavery - enriched society, I'd like to see a "critical relations" theory that helps us recognize and hopefully change abusive and dangerous sexual behaviors. In not taking about personal preferences, but about unwanted harassment, abuse, and physical assault. The Me Too movement tried to shine light on this, but more is needed. If we are going to achieve the ideal this country's founders endeavored to emulate, we need the knowledge and tools to do it, and the prevalent sexual violence shows that our society has much work to do.
Separately from my call to publicly study our cultural tendency to sweep sexual harassment and rape under the rug, I'm curious about the title of your FBI book series. You are prolific enough for me to get lost in all the Amazon book descriptions, so I'm hoping to save a bit of time. You answer will contribute to my physical and mental health, because when I don't feel like walking, I will still head out and listen to a good audio book.
(I can't drive while listening because my reality is rhe story, and so I don't perceive details like red lights or squirrels on the road as diligently as I should..)
Jerry, thanks for your interest and your ability to get so lost in a story. The first book in the series is Huntress Moon, and my audiobook narrator is superb. All books in the series free with an Audible account or trial. Here's the link -
That figure stunned me, too. And I didn't even calculate, as you so brilliantly did, that that number is "only" a subset of all the women who've been raped during that time in those few states. Why are so many men forcing themselves on women? What is going on with men?
At the same time you ask your good Q, Jude, another site online answers it.
This other site examines the epidemic of men in the U.S. with no friends, no personal ties to any peers, mentors, or colleagues.
Just another side effect, Jude, from what happens to a country when its billionaire, corporate commercial, and dark money forces organize to dehumanize the schools (as the Powell memo did beginning 1971 through its new Heritage Foundation, its new ALEC, and its expanded Hoover Institution).
"What is going on with men?" might expand to ask what's going on with much of social media, too (its hate algorithms also replacing what humanities used to do) -- no, Jude?
Phil, how do you explain thousands of Catholic priests who rape and molest? They live in communities or have access to colleagues, friends, etc, and have been protected from justice by those same communities.
It isn't about sex, it is about power. Who is more easily dominated, adult women, or young boys? I have read (and sadly, it was a time ago, and I do not recall the source) of how many nuns either aborted or gave birth. In that article, it was posited that it was how there became Catholic "orphanages"...
That is not how Catholic Orphanages came about. In the pre antibiotic ages there were many deaths that left children orphaned. The early monastic orders took them in and established orphanages and hospitals.
I don’t know what you read or where but every nun I’ve known has been a fine upstanding individual, faithful to her vows.
When I was a boy, and going to Catholic services every Sunday morning, I heard the chants, refrains, and prayers in Latin, so I knew those using it mediated heaven and its ways.
I learned Latin at about the time I was going into puberty, which was just about the time all the girls around me had already gotten breasts -- as if I could equate these things in biology, nature, also with Latin, which had names for all that.
Intelligent of me? No, of course not. I was stupid, entirely naive, stupid, over-trusting of authority, the schools, the church.
About the same time came Vietnam, civil rights, the women's movement, rock-&-roll.
And now, Catherine, you think I can explain the "thousands of Catholic priests who rape and molest"?
Not at all. I’m just not certain loneliness is part of the equation. BTW, I grew up in the same environment as you and protested Vietnam, even though my dad served two tours there. I thought priests had all the answers and then, we learned more.
Misogyny is a socially accepted norm. That is what is going on with men. It's like institutional racism....it is so pervasive, many don't see it or understand it or recognize it.
Years ago, when the media was full of the Lorena Bobbitt case, I asked male family members to choose between castration and death and without exception, they all said, “I’d rather be dead.” Interesting.
Not exactly the same, but perhaps indicative. In Roots when an escaped slave (i forget his name at the moment) is offered a choice of castration or the loss of a foot (when the ability to work productively was the only thing close to a guarantee of survival) he chose to lose the foot.
What about a series based on the “Equalizer” concept, where justice is dispensed outside of the law? Maybe an incognito squad of women (and/or men) who show up and castrate rapists. I thought about Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, hiding because one never knows when justice will be delivered. Perhaps, just the fear of that occurring would be a deterrent. Who could write that screenplay?
We’re having constant ads on radio, TV, online for Viagra and it’s generics. But then, let’s ban birth control! And they wonder why women are furious and working so hard to take them down.
My orthopod stopped prescribing Celebrex for arthritis because it could cause heart issues. Then he laughed and said but anyone can get Viagra and that too can cause heart issues. It’s all about priorities.
This is a frighteningly sad reality that we have so much bad and evil to contend with ... and it’s not all related to ignorance and stupidity! In life we really have to encounter the good, the bad and the ugly as well as those among us who are just plain despicably. evil!!!
"In the United States, significantly more women than men are sexually assaulted. In 2022, about 442,754 women were raped or sexually assaulted in the U.S. - an increase from the previous year. In that same year, 89,053 men were raped or sexually assaulted, also a significant increase compared to the year before." After reading the number 64, 565 my heart jumped into my throat. Does anyone think for one minute this number will not continue to climb under a head of state who who promotes this abomination in word and deed. I literally am sitting here with tears running down my face. What have we become?
One thing we have become, Hoyt, is being ruled by dark money billionaires.
Another thing we have become is being ruled by those who support an American former president who has asked the Supreme Court to declare him above the law.
Also being ruled by genocidal Russian oligarchs and their genocidal priests in long skirts and jewelry. Being ruled, too, by royal Saudi murderers. Israeli far-right settlers busy stealing land. U.S. university administrators who speak wonk, have zero humanities, and profit by having students crippled by debts to banks. K-12 administrators all in service to standardized testers. Legally free manufacturers of AR-15s happy for their 11 million civilian customers. By nationalists such as Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, an idiot woman Congress person from northwest Georgia and another idiot Congress woman from Colorado. Social media billionaires and their algorithms for hate and divisiveness.
Tens of thousands of Ivy League grads in finance who floated the most corrupt of the former Soviet Union's nomenklatura and by overseeing the off-shoring of millions of U.S. working class jobs to profit the Chinese cadres and other dictators abroad.
Even as a women’s health nurse of many years I found that number shocking too. It’s gut-wrenching to realize that it’s a lowball number since not all will have been counted.
Yes he is just a symptom of a National pathology and he is taking tens of millions exactly where they want to go. The rest of us have to figure out how to stop this. So far, the timid DOJ has not been helping as much as it could.
It should surprise no one that Trump will NOT accept losing the nomination... and, more to the point, he will NOT accept losing the election in November. I don't care how poorly he does. He could only win one state (like McGovern did in 1972) and he will STILL CLAIM HE WON... as will his sure-to-be enraged supporters. I do not know what the Biden campaign can do about this "false reality" threat.
And as for the GOP deciding to refuse to pass border legislation (despite having said they would), Beau of the Fifth Column posted a video about this a late this evening. He is angry but not surprise that McConnell is willing to harm American security (by helping Putin beat Ukraine) so Trump can have something to scare people about ("migrants seeking to destroy America") during the upcoming election campaign. Here's a link to Beau's video. We are living in truly rage-producing times (for real), given the internal threat the GOP has become.
Steve, what I like about Beau is that not only does he seem to have well- researched posts, but he also seems to have a fair number of conservative followers, who may well be open to diverse thinking.
If we can stay steady and refrain from buying into the rage machine, we will be better able to think clearly about concrete ways to defeat The Party of Putin. If you buy into fear, big parts of your brain shut down.
Thank you Steve. Beau stopped putting his posts on my FB feed a while ago. Maybe I can link back up. Perhaps Biden will have to invoke the Insuection Act.
He would be there for quite a while but not in a few years. I have a Patreon Acct. I should just try there. He always had informative insights aand seemed to genuinely care. Out back in the shop, where I am all the time. I rarely look at FB.
McConnell will of course cave to trump&co. This leaves Ukraine -and the democratic world- in a tight spot. Robert Hubbell’s substack suggests donating to the official Unkrainian Website Unite24, if you hope to circumvent our obstructionist Congress, please consider donating directly to Ukraine. Here’s the link I use to donate: https://u24.gov.ua/
Yes. Although other groups like the Lincoln Project might help. But only the Biden campaign has the authority and power to put the necessary “counter programming” together. I’m thinking of the kind of educational effort our government has done before, enlisting Hollywood’s help. Here’s what I’m talking about…
So much in this that I could comment on, but I want to comment on Mitch McConnell. He proves, yet again, that he is a dishonest, manipulative man with no integrity who cares nothing about our country.
The plan is to cheat - probably by interrupting the election process somehow. That’s why he doesn’t care if he “ broadens his appeal.” He’s a cornered rat.
They can win by claiming fraud and manipulating the public and send the vote to the House of Representatives. SCOTUS will approve ( they have already been paid for that!)
Scary to consider. If that happens… the people will be angry and will protest at the Supreme Court. What will TFG do? Like Portland, he will send in the thug troops.
I remember watching the Army/McCarthy hearings on TV when I was about nine years old and then studying them later when I was teaching American History at the Darrow School in 1967-68. I just have this feeling that Trump and MAGA are going to get the same reaction that Joe McCarthy got in the end. Except for the potential of violence by MAGA, I believe that Trump’s influence will diminish by the end of 2024.
Roger Eaton, thanks for the reminder about McCarthy's violence and its popularity and, that abrupt and rapid change is possible individually and collectively.
And sometimes for the oddest reasons. McCarthy lost the financial and media backing from one of his staunchest and richest supporters because Joe got drunk at a party and pushed the supporter's wife into the swimming pool fully clothed.
of confronting the existing McCarthy / et al Red Scare. Noting here that an eventually more honest media helped do it in. May the present group of scared or whatever they are 'reporters' find their spines and learn how they are part of ongoing history. Get right with the unvarnished truth and stop equivocation. You have nothing to lose but your honor.
I would guess that Tucker Carlson would try to pick up the mantle, or Josh Hawley, or Ted Cruz. But eventually, there will be agreement that we are a country of Laws and not of a single man or men. There are always going to be threats to our Democracy; we have to accept some tension and unrest as part of it. Search for EB White’s essay on the “Definition of Democracy” written in 1943.
From outside the USA there is disbelief. How can it even be possible that such an abomination is in the position to destroy so much. A semi-literate, tantrum-prone ball of furious immaturity is set to annihilate the status quo and half the population is ok with it.
There are upwards of 74 million Americans who voted for Trump. Those 74 million are the problem and will continue to be the problem even if we are lucky enough to defeat Trump in November.
This is true, and it’s a problem I admit I have no ideas to solve. They have made up their minds and are impervious to learning anything that contradicts their world view.
Ain't that the truth! I've been jousting (again) with a RWNJ friend from the SO. She posted all the "good" things that happened in fpotus's term. They are ALL attributable to Biden, and not fpotus.
I fear the solution, if there is one, will be very ugly. A lot uglier than forced the integration of schools in the South by the National Guard in the sixties. Other possibilities, such as no solution or a “solution” administered by representatives of the 74 million, are even uglier.
In the UK the current government Business Secretary (they will all be gone by the end of the year) has just blamed the failure of the Brexit fiasco on Joe Biden.
And especially what Donald Trump wants them to do, Congressional Republicans are following the orders of a former president who wants to be back in office and a dictator. It’s a complete abdication of their responsibilities as lawmakers.
The congress critters are auditioning for cabinet seats and applying for campaign donations from Libertarian Robert Mercer. Thank Citizens United for keeping campaign finance dark.
This is true as well. Citizens United, along with Buckley v. Valeo and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti have truly wrecked our political system. SCOTUS needs to recall that money isn’t speech, and should not be used to wreck free speech from flesh and blood human beings. The late right wing oil billionaire H.L. Hunt wrote a novel in the early 1950s called “Alpaca,” and the novel proposed that money, not speech, should be used to influence political action. Hunt died in 1974, but SCOTUS finally adopted this idea in 2010. We need to reverse this line of decisions, make it clear that money is NOT speech, all political contributions should be limited, public, and open, and significantly reform our tax system to make it progressive again so these billionaires can’t buy the government for themselves.
I can see now how Robert’s “thinks”. It’s all about the money the court brings in. Just rule for dark money (Citizens United) for others, and call it free speech so that the justices are also protected from anti corruption laws. “ It’s not money or gifts or bribes, it’s just “free” speech. That is all, next case please”- John Roberts. And America falls for it, how did 40% become so sheepishly naive?
I love the "invincible" note our Heather strikes today regarding our would-be authoritarian.
This comes after, last night, I happened to see the full movie version of the Japanese hit anime, "Demon Slayer." The kids I teach here in Japan all love it -- many are doing dual readings of the Japanese and English texts that predate the film.
Main theme is how, for actual humanity, vulnerability, mortality, and chance all enter. This, as opposed to the near-invincibility for the demons who can live hundreds of years, who can grow new limbs virtually right away if arms or legs are severed, and whose other wounds heal also near immediately.
The demons scorn actual humanity, for the ways humans love, sympathize with others, and often well remember, honor family and other loved ones from the past. Demons vaunt themselves as if they are beyond natural law, beyond time, above all that makes humans tick.
Yes, our orange fat guy, his face caked with cosmetics, his diaper emitting its odors, still has his suit with the Supreme Court that he be deemed above the law.
Good luck I found myself in this country where kids thrill to the human as one young woman, Koyoharu Gotōge, scripted in her amazing manga and anime versions.
Good luck that Joe Biden and fellow Dems have working class America getting good, decent programs for them and their families, as our Heather also cites today via the U.A.W. support -- as if the demons of the Republican vulgar and their dark money allies may not be so above the law as they fancy.
We can only hope that Niki Haley will continue to tweak Trump until he looses it completely. He is clearly mentally ill. He no longer speaks intelligibly. He mixes people up and dates/ events/ wars too.
I am hoping that he cannot keep it together and that his mental incompetence will be on full display as an old man with dementia plus narcissism.
Trump must be stopped, then we can deal with the third of our population lacking in education and vulnerable to con artists.
I knew Trump was projecting his own problems on to President Biden. I think Trump is showing signs of dementia, the problems his personality disorders cause, and in psychological terms he’s decompensating due to fear and anxiety about his upcoming criminal trials.
Thanks Heather for all you have done and continue to do to protect our Democracy. My husband and I have read Democracy Awakening and are now giving it to others as a gift.❤️
MAGA and Trump are traitors to our country. They are not patriots. McConnell long ago vowed to vote against anything the Obama Administration presented even if it was "for the good of the country." Such a bunch of losers, all of them. Vote them out.
Between filthy tricks today and vile misrepresentations we are getting a political taste for the next 10 months and it’s totally unappetizing….indeed it’s ugly. Trumpsters can be counted on to lie, cheat and steal with abandon and their feckless followers are unmoved by Trumps crimes..crimes like rape…which Heather tells us are the experience of 65,000 women….these women and every other woman voter in the US absolutely must vote for Biden…..it’s our best hope of beating this vile guy.
“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,” I love a good understatement.
Me too, but I also can't help but think that while these dopes are having their "little crisis," Ukrainians are dying, inter alia.
Truly discouraging to know there are thousands of people suffering & many dying because of US lack of promised support in dollars and in military munitions to Ukraine.
And what are we doing in the Middle East. . .? Helping Netanyahu?
It’s very late at night here. I pray every day for silencing all the guns and bombs and hand held tools of destruction & death.
Please stop. Find a path to just talk.
"And what are we doing in the Middle East. . .? Helping Netanyahu?"
The Biden administration is helping Netanyahu to an off ramp. (Israelis are protesting Netanyahu's war crimes and want him out.) Blinken is building international support for sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states. Biden and Blinken are publicly condemning Netanyahu's plans to send Palestinians out of Gaza and use it as lebensraum for racist religious extremist settlers.
This is big, in context of previous American policy dominated by Jewish and Evangelical right wing extremists. Especially under Trump. There is a real opportunity to rebuild Gaza - without Bibi or Hamas. But not if we reelect Trump.
Great explanation Lin. Thank you for this.
I agree except Hamas will have to be a part of the rebuilding; they can moderate especially as they have and will want to survive as a voice. If it was not for Hamas we would not be here looking at change. Netanyahu has the might which he counted on "making right", for Israel and himself personally. That game has been exposed to a world that has been looking away.
Potter
Respectfully, not a chance that Hamas will be part of anything as far as Israel is concerned.
When an organization's raison-d'être for its existence is to deny your existence, why would you engage with them? When they have used aid money to build tunnels, why would you let them be part of rebuilding?
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
Please do not equate Israel with the Netanyahu administration. A majority of Israelis want Netanyahu out.
You come to the negotiating table with your enemies.
Thank you Anil..Why would you believe Hamas extremists and not Israeli extremists who deny Palestinian's existence?
Let's not forget that Netanyahu's support for Hamas, to divide Palestinians, to oppose those in the PLO, Fatah, that wanted coexistence, helped it grow to this monster form of Hamas. Israel provided the conditions. Let's not forget as well, that Hamas had and has, for all we know, a moderate wing and the potential to moderate. They HAVE in the past (2008).
Have you listened to what they are saying NOW as to why they attacked on October 7th? Or are cherry-picking pointing to the/a charter because it's convenient.
There's a lot to forget when you tell one side, including what the Palestinians have endured for decades in occupation, Israeli disproportional named operation after operation, the blockading of Gaza. All that failed trying to teach Hamas and IJ a lesson, a lesson that continued to spawn more terrorism. This devastated Palestinians who had no other means of protest; peaceful protest was/is useless and has been suppressed often brutally.
Do you ever walk vicarously in those shoes?
The aid money did not all go to the tunnels. The tunnels were used to get survival goods in and out as well, some of them first built by Israel. Hamas has a lot of other means of financial support. This has been exposed lately in the NYTimes and WAPO and elsewhere.
The Israeli/Netanyahu government has become far right. The aim is to settle the West Bank. There is no tolerance for any equality of human rights, and certainly not allow Palestinians self determination ( which they have a right to). The far right denies their existence. Over the decades many Palestinains were forced to fight or flee, to leave for life elsewhere, a diaspora, like the Jews in fact ironically.
And Israel is crying about an existential threat??
Desperation is what brought October 7th on. Blaming October 7th on Hamas alone is ignoring a lot. This is just what Israel is attempting to do: cut off the context.. Much of the world now, after over half a century is not buying this anymore. Many who said the two state solution is dead are now realizing that this is the ONLY answer. The ( Saudi) Arab Initiative of 2002 is relevant. The US has a big roll to play. As well growing opposition to unconditional support of Israel is registering politically.
I don't understand how people can believe a two state solution will solve anything so long as Hamas exists. Given that polls show the Gaza population approaches 75% support for Hamas, to say the PLA (who also wants the elimination of Israel) will keep them under control is wishful thinking. Do not forget that Hamas defeated the PLA almost two to one in 2006.
You may have noticed over the years that terrorist organizations develop and thrive in areas where people are desperate and looking for help they aren't getting from elsewhere. The Palestinians were given no country status and have already lost most of their land to Israel since 1948. Gaza has been blockaded by Israel since the Israeli occupiers left. Even I might be a sucker for the promises of a terrorist group if I were as desperate.
Especially as in splitting the Palestinians, Netanyahu favored Hamas.
JAL - The US (and Israel) have just as much power to "eliminate Hamas" as we did in eliminating the Taliban. Chronic diseases are a management problem; rarely are there cures.
Prevention might be how we should be thinking and not waiting for the need for elimination.
JAL64, I agree.
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
Seriously? What oracles are you consulting? What crystal ball do you have?
When Israelis and Palestinians come up for air ...
they might surprise you.
An agreed framework for two sovereign states may look like the best alternative.
Thank you for putting this in perspective. It offers hope.
Lin
Unfortunately, talk of a two-state solution is not going to get it done. Neither is it clear that either Biden or Saudi Arabia, the current most notable countries calling for such, really mean what they say. The UN, Britain, EU, and the other Arab states are mostly irrelevant.
I've written a detailed discussion of the so-called two-state solution in latest piece on Breakfast with Bwana on Substack. Check it out if interested.
And the poor people who've fled their homes and need some resolution of their situation, but those having a "little crisis" won't do anything about it out of pettiness and greed. And I'm looking at you Mitch, because you know better There isn't much time for you to leave this world a better place than you found it, and there's a lot to do.
Yes, Jen, I am looking at Mitch too. He is in a quandary as they all are. They know this immigration problem needs work. I am so disgusted that they use people as political pawns. Then there is the abortion issue and women, even those who are raped, unable to obtain abortions in their home states. I am Jill Biden has invited the ob gyn from Texas to be her guest at the SOTU.
Agreed.
Yes Peace is the way forward.
All this attention to JS is like attention to DT, only a larger waste of time and space. The letter today deserves more attention!
The letter today is very depressing, though some of the Loser’s middle school quotes are hilarious. We’re fighting against such twisted evil in the guise of American leaders. We need Superman, the Lone Ranger, and Zorro in a hurry.
The letter isn't what is depressing. It is the lack of education and Critical Thinking of the voters that is depressing.
How do you detect a neo-fascist Biden Bully? They never discuss the book "Votescam: The Stealing of America."
"Votescam" gives the example of the 1992 New Hampshire Republican primary, featuring George H.W. Bush versus Patrick Buchanan, in which the results were "impossibly" at odds with pre-vote polls.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Votescam.html?id=ZxpZCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
The 2020 Massachusetts Democratic primary featured an "impossible" brace of four-percent skews from the EXIT polls (at the expense of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), giving Biden a hair-thin win.
See https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/04/massachusetts-2020-democratic-party-primary/
This comes from the same source that showed that the results for the 2020 Alabama Senate race were heavily skewed in favor of Tommy Tuberville. Computerized vote fraud is a bipartisan problem.
There is a bogus "fact check" article that dishonestly debunks the above-linked analysis of the 2020 Massachusetts primary:
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/no-huge-red-flag-that-fraud-occurred-in-mass-primary/
If others want to talk through this, please speak up.
John, I dedicate part of this song to you:
"Well, I spent a lifetime lookin' for you
Single bars and good time lovers were never true
Playing a fools game, hopin' to win
And tellin' those sweet lies and losin' again
I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places
Lookin' for love in too many faces
Searchin' their eyes
Lookin' for traces of what I'm dreaming of
Hoping to find a friend and a lover
I'll bless the day I discover another heart
Lookin' for love
And I was alone then, no love in sight
And I did everything I could to get me through the night
Don't know where it started or where it might end
I turned to a stranger just like a friend
I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places..."
You probably won't find it on this page...
Bill, from the soundtrack “Urban Cowboy”. Good find. Using “the music” as the message. Woody’s guitar said “this machine kills Fascists”
Well played, Bill!
I wish I could like Bill's song twice. However, it didn't stop the main troll, who is again playing his favorite conspiracy theories ad nauseum.
What kind of people turn away from evidence of vote fraud? They're not democrats.
This issue is fundamental, but it's a taboo.
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
Please don't respond to this troll. Ignore him.
Why do people feel the need to? Negative responses don't matter to this guy, it's still feeding his craving for attention....
I have both "muted" and "blocked" him and yet he keeps showing up. I have gone onto Substack's customer service to complain that their options don't work. This guy FEEDS on negative attention, and I am beginning to think that his mental problems might be serious and am unsure of whom to report this to.
Honestly, if you heard of some crazed person doing something that lands them in the news and this guy's name showed up, would you be surprised?
Please, let’s all give him his due. Here is a man who works hard to write crazy, teeth-gritting, delusional, and conspiratorial comments and then finds nutty posts from the internet to bolster his “thoughts” rather than attempting to argue from his own knowledge, experience, or resource.
I have been trying to find his posts where he attacks Copernicus’s theory that the planets orbit the sun,, or proves that anyone foolish enough to get Pasteur’s first vaccines against cowpox is now dead. 100% fatal!! I know they must exist!!
...said Tom the Obfuscation Master (T.O.M.)
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
Devastating wit. I am crushed.
How fo you detect a neo-fascist bully? Just look in the mirror, John.
That's what you did, and it worked
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
Your ego is a match for Trump’s. And so is your truth- telling. Go away, troll.
Please click on his name/profile, and mute, then block him
...said Coke-head the troll
Aww, that's just dumb.
Hahaha.
No rebuttal so name calling.
Not so silly anymore.
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
You voted for Dems who have lost their way and for such corrupt Dems? You specialize in information that is hidden from the rest of us. Must keep you very busy.
The troll is back, Looking for the perfect while ignoring the putrid.
“Yelling at clouds.”
Please ignore him. Don't respond.
You're doing well with your usual spot on description.
The neo-fascist Biden Bully shows up
Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
I love all the silly people.
I voted for Hillary and Obama BEFORE they butchered Libya ans Syria, making a mockery of Obama's toilet-paper peace prize
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
Silly people are fun.
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
Unlike the Schmickler's Nobel Peace Prize, which is printed on the *cardboard* from a toilet-paper roll.
Troller
...said the troll, hoping to start a conversation
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
You crack me up.
Stay silly.
:-)
Hillary the Hypocrite personifies the Democratic Party's loss of its soul. In the 2008 primary race, it was do-or-die for Hillary in the North Carolina primary. I remembered, from the book "Votescam: The Stealing of America," the story of how "the computers crashed" late at night and eventually came back up with skewed numbers.
I planned to stay up late as results came in from North Carolina, and the same thing happened. Hillary and Obama were neck-and-neck when, around 11:00, the computers crashed. I stayed up to see the reported results the moment they re-started. Sure enough, somewhere around 3:00 in the morning, the first new result came in with Hillary's total flat and a big jump for Obama, putting both the primary and the nomination out of reach for Hillary.
For a couple days there was some speculation that Hillary would challenge the results, but she didn't. The North Carolina Attorney General Ray Cooper went on to become Governor, and North Carolina was gifted the next Democratic convention.
I voted for Hillary in the California primary, and for Obama in the general election.
Hillary went on, as Secretary of State, to become the Butcher of Libya, pressuring a reluctant Obama to go far beyond the United Nations mandate and effect regime change in Libya, turning that country into a festering failed state.
In the 2020 primary race, I supported Tulsi Gabbard , who aptly called Hillary the "corrupt queen of the war-mongers." The Democratic Party has lost its soul.
Question: How many people died suddenly when they were about to testify against Bill and Hillary Clinton?
Answer: Count 'em up for yourself:
https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/BODIES.php
Troll alert: Please don't respond.
I know a bunch of us have reported this guy - more than once. What else has to happen to block him?
Hahahahaha.
Hillary lives in your head, silly person.
"There's someone in my head, but it's not me"
https://youtu.be/1Z39KZAryzk?si=OwPBiVu37iFNTftg
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
Go onto Substack customer service and inquire why the mute and block options---which I tried with him---don't work.
Thank you.
Bogus because it disagreed? Hum
Once again, if you want to talk through this, please speak up. I'll ask you to give a quote from that "fact check" article that you think debunks the analysis of Theodore de Macedo Soares.
Please click on this person's name, and on the left of his profile, you can both mute and block him. It works temporarily, and I am addressing Substack as how to make this permanent. I like the idea of him posting into the void.
I share the utter horror you feel, but I'm afraid that nothing will ameliorate the situation as long as Bibi is in control. He is in exactly the same predicament as trump--both criminally indicted cornered rats that must remain in power at all costs to avoid prison. He must be removed from power by whatever means....
YES!!!!!
Try this. Make the Negev triangle part of a new Palestine and make it attach to Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza is now destroyed and unlivable. Gazans need a place to go. Drive out the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Remove the Israeli military.
Hamas could never put an end to Israel. That is a total fabrication. They are no longer a threat.
The $3+ billion in US aid will be sent to Palestine instead.
The Arab world will back this 100%.
😢😩
The political situation in Israel is very much like ours. A few people in power like the radical republicans and Supreme Court determine policy for the masses even though the majority of the population want something else. Abortion for instance
Exactly and women in the US are forced to leave their home states for abortions or endure forced births.
More women were raped in 14 states since June 2022 than Americans who were killed in the entire Vietnam war? WTF.
“64,565 women became pregnant after being raped” A horrific statistic, suggesting possibly triple that for the rape victims who were not impregnated.
Misogyny kills a woman every six seconds in this world. Usually by there so-called 'loved ones'. My God this is a war on women. And their babies. Texas ranks last in every demographic regarding the care of women and children. They would rather watch them die than get help. Just as thousands of rape kits end up in a garbage can. This is horrific. We need good men to hold other men accountable and speak up.
In Texas 149 million dollars was designated for the poor. Instead they took that money and gave it to religious groups to build pregnancy centers without any oversight. Guess who's buying mansions and private airplanes. It's not the poor.
The economic waste in this country is incredible.
@Lisa59
That is absolutely barbaric, and I have no reason to doubt it. That might be the saddest thing I've ever heard. Fathers should repeatedly tell their sons that they should never hit a woman, and that no means no.
And we'll never know the actual number of raids because so few are ever reported.
Beto O'Rourke
stated on June 27, 2022 in an Instagram post:
"Under Abbott, Texas leads the nation in rape offenses while the rate of arrests for rape has fallen by nearly half."
Fuck the patriarchy and the MAGANAZIs.
I would guess, way more than triple...the chance of a woman becoming pregnant is dependent on a slew of factors. It is absolutely horrifying to think about what this means about the actual number of women who were raped.
That number may be accurate but tests credulity.
Many more than triple. A woman is only fertile a few days out of 28, and even then often no pregnancy.
Rape is an extremely under reported crime. If you look at what women who do report go thru, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
That 65,000 number is in just 14 ststes
Yeah - that statistic is a real gut punch. WTF is wrong with some men?
Trump getting seated in our Oval Office after bragging about grabbing women by the pussy should have given folks a clue what we are dealing with
Christy, you would think so! Trump's "christian" followers who believe he is "ordained by God" have ignored his vile, immoral, and illegal actions because they see in him how they think all Americans should be- racist, stubborn, narrow-minded, afraid of change. In any form, homophoobic, anti- government, and what I hate most of all, "holier-than-thou" attitudes.
His ENTITLEMENT appeals to those who feel ENTITLED.
What a misguided, sad, and oh-so dangerous group of people.
Hello Dave. Thank you for the question. Women have always and still are considered second class citizens. It’s all about some men wanting control over us like they want control over native Americans, by putting Japanese-Americans into internment camps and I could go on and on about the atrocities by some men.
And then you have tRump talking proudly (disgustingly) about how he can grab a woman. And the evangelical group want him. What is wrong with people????
Good lord, what an indictment. I do know of family with 4 girls, two raped while working in restaurants, one while jr in college. The perpetrators are responsible, never the victims. for some who might assume that. Shocked me
“Not party girls for whom you assume that”??? Jeri, please rephrase that. I’m sure you didn’t mean to say that girls who “party” should expect to be raped but that’s how it read to me. Skating very close to the thin ice of victim blaming. When half the population has to consider the way they dress, the places they go and the activities they engage in out of fear of assault from the other half something is very very wrong and clearly that’s the case in the US, but let’s put the blame where it belongs - on the attacker, not the victim !!!
My parents talked to me about how I dressed; I did the same with my daughter. I did it to protect her. There are crimes of opportunity. Some guy takes advantage of a woman because, at that moment, he can. Like Brett Kavanaugh. Is this situation how things ought to be? Hell no!
100% agree. Just wanted to tell those who think such tripe that it is tripe.
Thank you, well put. While I’m sure Jeri didn’t meant it that way unfortunately there are still people out there, men and women who do. Victim blaming will be with us for a very long time if Roe v Wade is overturned. I for one will not stand by and watch this happen!
Reference the above, not one of the three (17, 18, and 19 at the time) would report what happened. They wanted to put it behind them. A hard lesson for the females, not so much for the guys.
When I read what Jeri wrote I didn’t come close to hearing ‘party girls’ or victim blaming. Seems we read 2 completely different comments.
Jeri -- Here's a thought: instead of anti-abortion laws, we should be PRO-CASTRATION for rapists, first offense.
I'll buy that. May slow down the victimizing a bit
YES
Houston we have a problem.
It’s an appalling statistic, that doesn’t begin to transmit the suffering behind it, but I’m not sure how people are surprised by it when the creep that bragged about grabbing women by the pussy got seated in our Oval Office. We reap what we sow.
It's a sad commentary on our nation that TFG was ever elected. That set our civilization back immeasurably. Hillary was not wrong when she said "deplorables", even though blaming a portion of voters publicly wasn't the smartest political move. TFG has done nothing but to encourage bullying of all kinds and greed.
I think she said it at a private fundraising event and someone leaked it. Then the opposition ran with it. She probably regretted saying it.
💯💯 I so agree!! I think that where Hillary was wrong, was that there were (shockingly) way, way more then just a basketful.
Yikes
extrapolated to 50 states that would be, in a year and a half: 230,589 pregnancies from rapes .
Appalling to hear the number. Sixty five thousand rape victims impregnated. SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND. Let that number sink in. That many angry hateful men, causing an unwanted pregnancy and the devout wring their hands and say it's gods will and she has to have the child and raise it too and sorry we won't help you.
Jen, that was EXACTLY my reaction after reading that number. I was gobsmacked. As a man, I am disgusted (not a strong-enough word, maybe Ill use 'appalled' as you did, but it still doesn't convey the right response.) And that's only across 14 states.
As a victim whose father said"how did you manage to get yourself raped?" , I thank you for your humanity.
I replied, "I was 15. And I met a rapist".
I think any man who thinks like my father is a wannabe rapist.
Jen, that is the same male-oriented "philosophy" that was rampant in law enforcement when I first started. It had modulated by the time I retired, but that it even existed in the first place shows how deeply ingrained the concept is.
It's hard to even imagine such a thing having been said. Yet, a "man" who used and abused the WH was/is a rapist himself, repeatedly denigrates women, takes pride in "grabbing them" by the genitals, treats marriage like his bankruptcies (who cares) and says "there has to be some form of penalty" (for a raped woman) is there for all to see and hear. His existence and emergence has taken humanity itself back perhaps centuries and I fear has led by example a whole new generation of degenerates to mimic him.
Obama said, "We get the politicians we deserve" and it sounded good and made sense at the time. But, in hindsight I disagree.
Nobody deserves this.
Oh my gawd. That's horrible. What emotional pain to have to deal with, and live with. (And please don't feel you have to thank me for my humanity -- humanity should be the norm, not what stands out.)
And those are just the ones who got impregnated--think of how many other thousands of women get raped. Alongside the rapists, I squarely put the blame on the doctors who won't treat these women. If I was a physician I would treat as many of these women as I could, and when arrested declare that I could not breach my Hippocratic oath....
President Biden calling out Trump for bragging about overturning Roe V. Wade.
“Just like he said: he did it.”
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1745290159304622336
📣📣📣
Yeah great. Just what we need--more unwanted children. And if this number represents the PREGNANCIES from reported rapes imagine the number of MOST rapes that go unreported. Smash patriarchy!
'Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine. Here’s Why.' (NYT, excerpts)
'The U.K., often a wingman to the United States in defense, is pushing its ally to stand firm against President Vladimir V. Putin, amid fears that Russia poses an existential threat to Europe.'
'When David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary and onetime prime minister, visited Washington last month, he took time out to press the case for backing Ukraine with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who stridently opposes further American military aid to the country.'
'If the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States has taken on an air of special pleading in recent weeks, it is because Britain, rock solid in its support for Ukraine, now views its role as bucking up an ally for whom aid to the embattled country has become a political obstacle course.'
'British diplomats said Mr. Cameron and other senior officials had made it a priority to reach out to Republicans who were hostile to further aid. For reasons of history and geography, Britain recognized that support is not as “instinctive” for Americans as it for the British, according to a senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter.'
'Unlike in the United States, where Ukraine has gotten tied up in a dispute with Republicans over President Biden’s border policy and come under the shadow of a dismissive Mr. Trump, support for Kyiv in Britain has stayed resolute, undiminished, and nonpartisan in the two years since Russia’s invasion.'
'Even in an election year, when the Conservative government and its Labour Party opponents are clashing over almost everything, there is not a glimmer of daylight between them on Ukraine, the biggest foreign policy challenge facing the country.
'When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) of additional aid for Ukraine, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, instantly lent his support. Britain, the third-largest supplier of weapons after the United States and Germany, was the first major power to commit to new aid in 2024.' (NYTimes) Sorry link below is not gifted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/world/europe/ukraine-uk-us-republicans.html
I think it's more likely Cameron met with MTGreene just to see the Bride of Frankenstein in the flesh... and her to see Henry Higgins. I doubt either of them had any inclination that her mind would be changed on Ukraine.
(Empty Greene; I just came up with that!)
Obviously the stain of Boris is cleansed from the Brit leaders!
I am so ashamed of these irrational Republicans....
While the R's are having their "little crisis" people die in Ukraine as a sovereign country literally fights for its life against Putin. People die at the southern border while Greg Abbott has the Texas National Guard flouting federal law, and women suffer death or impairment or imprisonment because of draconian abortion bans. The Republican Taliban is literally the party of death and cruelty at every. They have no interest in actually solving our country's problems, such as a broken immigration system that needs updating. They only want to rage against problems, not address them. They want to rule, not represent.
Spectacle vs reality.
You’re right, and still, McConnell can’t decide which way to go.
Honestly, what has HE, if all people, got to LOSE by doing the right thing?! At this point in his life and career!
My thoughts exactly! He could even benefit his reputation and appear to have a moral conscience!
That scoundrel's reputation could ONLY get better.
You set the bar too high for a lowlife like Mitch to ever hope to reach.
A shitweasel right to the end
You’re assuming he is able to recognize “the right thing,” but remember, this is Murdering Mitch McConnell.
Exactly. Lack of conscience
Absolutely
And in the meantime global security, including the security of our allies and the USA is at ever greater risk -- because of Republicans’ alleged concern for southern border security.
Indeed ... and I hope their crisis continues loud and clear because it casts them in a most vulnerable and unflattering light. Let voters see them.
Let's all work together closely to make sure voters see them even more clearly. We can do this.
Respectfully-how can we do this?
Haley’s campaign ad was just idiotic. Promising the fix the borders, immigration, the economy, etc. probably in a day.
Ransom, it might qualify as schadenfreude if not for the fact that, if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, we might see American boots on the ground in Poland.
I have maintained for the entirety of the t-Rum presidency that that whole gang was working directly for Putin. They are totally commited to our destruction. One needs not to look very far or deep to identify the opperatives. Edit here, And to the MSM this is not newsworthy. They have only just begun to tentively say Fascist or dictatorial tendencies.
'The most illuminating analysts of America’s frightening recent political turn were turning out to be scholars specializing in Europe. When Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, or Richard Steigmann-Gall noticed phenomena in America’s past or present that resembled something in the right-wing movements they studied in Germany, Italy, or elsewhere, they just said so—‘ (AmericanProspect, by Rick Perlstein, excerpts)
'The most interesting voice thinking about the connections between interwar Europe and the present-day U.S. happens to be a scholar of both. John Ganz’s forthcoming book When the Clock Broke illuminates the exceedingly odd politics of the U.S. in 1992—including some haunting harbingers of America’s Trumpian turn. The most fascinating posts on his Substack Unpopular Front are deeply learned perambulations through the 20th-century European right. Their most important lesson: Fascism is always less simple than we think it is.'
"We have this image in our heads—and this is really hard to get out of people’s heads—of the fascist rise to power that comes from fascist propaganda," Ganz explains. The stereotype is thugs marching into the seat of government with truncheons, then marching out having seized state power. "It is much more political than that. It has much more to do with negotiations between established political factions and elites … None of these movements were destined to succeed. There was a lot of luck, and there were a lot of contingencies."
'Most fascist parties and movements—never seized any power. They were footnotes. That’s an important insight to address to observers who cite the sheer ridiculousness, abundant incompetence, and outright insanity within Donald Trump’s movement, and have a hard time placing it in the same universe with the movement that almost conquered Europe. After all, if Hitler’s little gang of beer hall brawlers had failed to achieve power, they surely would have looked precisely as ridiculous as all that. As Ganz puts it, "Everything kind of looks farcical until it doesn’t."
'The brawlers are never really the engine of the thing anyway. Ganz explained how Hitler and Mussolini used their more violent elements to destabilize and intimidate, while they took power through the more normal political channels of forming coalitions in parliament and ascending into leadership roles.'
"The constitutional system in Italy always remained intact," 'even when Mussolini became dictator, Ganz notes.
'At least as important to the story are the "responsible conservatives" 'who made their peace with the strongman, believing he could be controlled. Like Germany’s Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, architect of the 1933 coalition that made Hitler chancellor, who said:' "In two months, we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he’ll squeal." 'Or the guy who said in 2015,' "You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell." 'That would be one Lindsey Graham, who later decided he liked Trump just fine, once he started winning.'
Mainstream conservatives in Italy and Germany repeatedly claimed Mussolini and Hitler would turn out to be responsible actors, once they occupied positions of responsibility. American elites followed suit with the absurd refrain, on occasions when Trump managed to act normal for 15 seconds:' "He became president of the United States in that moment, period."
'... listen now to the reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos:' "U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term, while foreign chief executives are terrified." 'Replied one of the nonplussed:' "I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are. We have a justice system … it won’t be the end of the world." Another pronounced Trump "all bark and no bite," with his tossing aside the 2020 election returns mere bloviation. And besides, "many of his policies were right."
"The heads of these movements had to be very careful about how they would use the fascist paramilitaries, and make this implicit promise to the elite that they could be contained," Ganz says. "It was always something they needed in their back pocket, right?
'But Trump always thought differently. After Charlottesville, he called the thugs "fine people." Asked about the Proud Boys in a 2020 presidential debate, he said: "Stand back and stand by." I’d always worried that utterances like these were harbingers of things to come. I suspected that Trump never criticized supporters willing to commit violence on his behalf because that willingness might eventually become useful to him. I saw him as playing politics with something far more than votes: that thugs were valuable currency to keep in his back pocket, to send forth whenever that was what it took to keep power.'
'Then, on January 6th, he did.'
'For the briefest moment, the von Papens of the Republican congressional caucus considered cutting him loose. Then they thought better of it. Now that Trump calls his thugs "hostages," few Republicans seem even to consider expressing alarm. Some have even turned it into a MAGA term of art. "This movement between goons and conservative allies," Ganz notes, is' "something I saw a lot with Trump."
Ganz points out that a book that won a lot of respect for its explanatory power in the European context, Dylan Riley’s The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe, has been deployed in the American context by critics of the idea that' "fascism" 'is a relevant category here and now.' "[Riley’s] theory," Ganz explains, "is that, in a society where the political establishment is weak and cannot get consensus behind it, but there is a highly developed civil society—where there are a lot of pressure groups—you can expect something like fascism, as those groups make demands on the political system that it cannot satisfy. And these idiot fucks …"
'There are two ways to think about the failed, weak political establishment, abetted by the sclerosis-inducing nature of our constitutional system. One might think about the state’s failure to deliver the things it used to: adequate physical infrastructure, an economy that provides meaningful work with the kind of protections against firing that powerful unions provide, a safety net to smooth out its rough edges, and increasing moves (Medicare, Medicaid) toward affordable health care. The right sometimes claims they don’t want the government to accomplish these things, but they grew quite excited when Trump promised that he alone could restore, provide, or preserve them.'
'The other way to think of it involves things people in groups like these demand that no government can deliver: a Christian theocracy many Americans wrongly believe to be their birthright; protection from demographic change; return to a prelapsarian time when America was supposed to have been "great."
'Any way you slice it, the perceived absence of responsive government, the presence of groups positioned to clamor for response, and then government’s failure to respond, does things out in the world.'
“This cluster of demands coming from civil society being put on a very weak political establishment is a basic sociological formula for fascism,” 'as Ganz summarizes Riley’s paradigm.'
“And I think that’s what, basically, we have in the United States: a very weak political establishment, but a civil society underneath it that’s looking for a kind of expression. And the expression that it’s taking is pathological … It’s demanding a dictator. Because the party system is unable to answer the demands they have.”
'Or the 84 percent of Tea Party adherents who said their views “generally reflect the views of most Americans.”
''Or when Mike Lindell, in his campaign for RNC chairman in 2023, said, “This country is 70 percent red. If you remove all the garbage and all the corruption and everything. It’s 70 percent red, and it’s getting redder all the way.”
'And, of course, on January 6th.'
'Various aspects of fascism have been always present on the American right. (In 1981, the virulently and explicitly racist and anti-Semitic magazine The Spotlight had many times the circulation of any other publication on the right.) They remained contained or undeveloped. With Trump, they burst forth in full flower. The fantasy of the Republican plebiscite—the notion that the true nation is already with them were it not for the deep state’s depredations—was at the essence of the demand at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “If the government is no longer for the people, it is your duty to overthrow that government and reinstate a new government, for the people,” as a 1/6 terrorist named Christopher Alberts, convicted of bringing a handgun to the Capitol, roused the mob that day.'
'It is a point I’ll keep repeating: The most important thing for journalists to cover in this presidential election is not how many votes Donald Trump gets, either in the popular total or the Electoral College. To those subsumed inside his cult of personality, the conclusion is already foregone: If you took a true poll of the American people, swept aside the garbage and the corruption of the kingmakers in the media and the deep state (not to mention all those Democratic officials desperate to do anything to cover up their pedophilic cult)—obviously Donald Trump represents the views of most Americans, and is the only legitimate representative of “the people.” 'The question is how many will be willing to take up arms for this belief, should the people whose job it is to count the votes come up with the “wrong” answer.'
'Will that be fascism?
“One of the mistakes people make is they say, ‘Well, this doesn’t look like European fascism in 1936.’ "Well, because it’s American fascism in 2024.” (by Rick Perlstein, TheAmeriicanProspect) See link to piece below.
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-24-american-fascism-john-ganz/
Money quote (no pun intended) here:
“ ... listen now to the reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos:' "U.S. industry leaders seem overwhelmingly nonplussed with a second Trump term, while foreign chief executives are terrified." 'Replied one of the nonplussed:' "I’m not sure Europeans understand how weak executive orders are. We have a justice system … it won’t be the end of the world." Another pronounced Trump "all bark and no bite," with his tossing aside the 2020 election returns mere bloviation. And besides, "many of his policies were right."”
Trump can’t hold a candle to the real problem; capitalism run amok.
The mega billionaire oligarchs have made a mockery of capitalism!Musk who has bought his way into every business with the inherited ‘blood diamond’ money has built his empire on the backs of no regulation, no taxation policies began under Reagan!
It would be fair to point to the transfer of wealth, most recently under Ronald Reagan's administrations for the growth of billionaires in the US as well as the reduction of the middle-class. This has has been fostered by our tax system, weak regulation, inequality, price growth in real estate and financial assets, housing discrimination, and lack of access to financial tools for people of color, etc. THE PICTURE IS TURNING AROUND UNDER PRESIDENT BIDEN.
'The U.S. economy boomed in 2023, thanks to consumers opening up wallets'
'New GDP figures today show strong growth at the end of last year' (WAPO)
'The U.S. economy grew by a bustling 3.1 percent in 2023, shaking off recession fears and offering an upbeat picture of consumers and businesses ahead of a pivotal election year.'
'Growth slowed slightly in the last three months of 2023 — to an annual rate of 3.3 percent, down from a sweltering 4.9 percent in the previous quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. The latest figures show the economy has soundly returned to stable footing following a period of dramatic pandemic-fueled swings that marked 2020 through early 2022.'
'The economy’s resilience has been driven by vigorous consumer spending. A strong job market and rising wages have made it possible for many households to keep shelling out — particularly on services such as entertainment, travel and dining out — even at a time of elevated inflation.'
'That spending by everyday Americans accounted for most of the economy’s growth in the fourth quarter. Increased government spending, at the state, local and federal level, as well as higher exports and more private and residential investments also lifted the latest GDP reading, which sums up the goods and service produced in the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, a rise in imports dragged down the latest reading.'
'Government policy played an important role in supporting the economy last year. The Biden administration’s efforts to fund new infrastructure and clean energy projects have created new jobs and spurred $640 billion in private investments around the country.'
“This is generally what a healthy U.S. economy should look like: growth driven by consumer spending,” said Lauren Goodwin, an economist and chief market strategist at New York Life Investments. “The consumer has been incredibly resilient and has certainly been stronger than we expected.” (WAPO) See gifted link below.
https://wapo.st/3Ugfbb4
Thank you, Fern.
This clarifies so many aspects of what is happening here.
But, do enough people understand he is a puppet, for very powerful and rich influencers? It is very frightening.
No, I do not think Trump knows that he is a puppet, either. In my mind, he is a also something more than one, because he's that 'snake oil salesman' who talked turkey to the angry Whites who couldn't stand that USA elected a Black man to the presidency, with the number of minorities growing, along with the other horrible indignities visited on the country's White nationalists. MAGAs don't think that Trump is a puppet because he's the dictator savior that they have been longing for.
And all the while, Putin thinks of him as a "useful idiot".
And the ones who were horrified by the idea of a woman President.
Fern, With all due respect, you need to start your own newsletter! No need to ride on The Professors coattails!
Not everyone is cut out to write an ongoing Substack, which takes quite a bit of work. I appreciate the deep dives that Fern is able to do, and to share with us, because they are always on point to either the Letter itself, or comments on the Letter. I want her energy focused on the "deep dives"!
Ally, thank you so much for your thoughtful words. HCR's Letters and books, along with subscribers comments and exchanges promote my interests in knowing more and communicating on this valuable forum.
Louis, are you praising or faulting my comments.? It doesn't seem to me that I am riding on HCR's coattails. I respect and learn from her work, while my perspective, including, perhaps, more interest in foreign policy; how politics of countries comingle as well as impact on each, and curiosity about the temper of the American people, beyond the 'us v. them' so relentlessly reiterated. Do you mind elaborating on your comment to me? Thanks.
Fern, I'll take you over Schmeekle the troll any day.
Fern, I don’t see you riding on the Professor’s coattails. I see you offering more information on selected news that she’s put into the newsletter. That said, for those who might not want to search through all the responses to find yours, they might well appreciate your breaking them out in a separate Substack. I don’t want to do that because part of what I love is to see the interaction between you and other responders.
I haven't missed your 'With all due respect' line followed by 'No need to ride on The Professors coattails! That may be the last I hear from you, which would be best. That gibe coming from you was an unpleasant surprise.
Fern, once again you’ve told us of a book that I very much look forward to reading.
My thinking has been along those lines myself RR; The dots are everywhere, only needing connecting.
His top advisors worked for Russian oligarchs for C....sake!
Ransom, like Tillerson getting the Order of Friendship, a Russian state honour, for his "significant contribution to strengthening cooperation in the energy sector”?
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1BI13H/#:~:text=In%202013%20Putin%20awarded%20Tillerson,cooperation%20in%20the%20energy%20sector%22.
The list of documents goes on and on. The Mueler Probe has it all. He even said there was more but he was limited in what he could bring charges on. Buried like Truman did to the treason trial records of all the Nazi working for Hitler US Senators and Congressmen whose trial was declared a misstrial and it was buried for the good of the nation healing from WWII. Rachel Maddow dug them up. National Archive. That is where the Mueler Report is.
Without Exxon Russia could not manage the technology for exploiting North Sea oil. Rachel Maddows fantastic book Blowout from some years back is even more pertinent now.
I don’t doubt that Trump gave Putin some of our most classified intelligence.
And apparently the Trump WH was a drug den -
From Rolling Stone -
Trump’s White House Pharmacy Handed Out Drugs Like Candy: Report
A Department of Defense report found an obscene lack of control over the handling of controlled medications while Trump was in office
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-white-house-pharmacy-prescription-drugs-1234953535/
I heard an additional story on this report on Progressive Radio this morning. They said the report is "easy to read and a real page turner."
(What's a "page turner?") I think I used to know......
I’m not at all surprised. Ronny Jackson was said to have had substance abuse issues on top of his uncritical endorsement of MAGA.
I would be surprised if Jackson doesn't still have substance abuse issues.
I guess he was a walking pharmacy under Obama as well, maybe even W., but not sure about that.
I saw that yesterday. YIKES!!!
Without going back to read it, someone was mentioned as getting controlled substances as a "reward" for leaving the White House!
I heard that too. Unbelievable!
Sold???
But look who owns MSM.
I read that Putin is wanting to rescind the sale of Alaska territory to the USA: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4423913-state-dept-putin-alaska-russia/ Uh, don’t think so….wonder if he’s drinking the same “Diet Coke” TFFG is?! What chaps my ass is all the crap that’s being thrown on the world stage when we ALL have very real issues confronting our lives & our ecosystems survival. I wonder if, perhaps, off-world civilizations did a drive by and thought…nope, don’t like the vibe of this neighborhood.
Barbara Keating, I've heard it proposed as the "ferme paradox" that the more advanced we get, the closer we get to our own destruction. Which begs the questions. And how many planets before us have destroyed themse!ves? And how many have not?
It's the "Fermi Paradox" - that high technology civilizations create their own destruction. There's certainly some strong arguments in favor of the proposition.
The Fermi Paradox seems to be the strongest description of our current dilemmas.
TCinLA, thanks for putting a finer point on my comment.
Especially if one fully considers it regarding 'this' planet, with it's dominance too often by the worst of our species unchangeable natures, historically. But, let's not go down that rabbit hole, savor our good moments, and get back to that "understatement competition" that our mentor and dear professor kicked off so well. *edit > I should have said "kicked off so splendidly." That sounds a tad more high brow British. (lol)
🤣
The consensus now is that all civilizations extinguish themselves as they become more sophisticated, because of all the little work-arounds that are used to keep things running, and the complexity of those compromises create instability. A prime example, I think, would be the Constitution. It was brilliant for its time, but with all the little tinkerings to it over 236 years (especially the last 50), and the massive changes in our civilization that couldn't have been envisioned back then, its time has come.
Maybe, but I’m still committed.
Jeff, is that possibly what happened to the Romans? I could see it happening in the US BUT FOR the existence of many other, newer, national constitutions around the world, modeled on that of the US, which we could use as suggestions for the continued development of our country. Yes, there are a lot of naysayers around the US, but we could survive the present era if we chose to do so.
As with the Fermi Paradox, there is also the concept of “the great filter”, where a planet’s inhabitants reach a certain level of advancement & technology before they flame out & perhaps go extinct (and maybe why no “advanced extraterrestrials have visited us)…..not unlike civilizations crashing after a time as you note.
The Fermi Paradox is more specifically about the infinite vastness of the universe having so much potential for other life to exist on so many other planets and galaxies that go on and on into mind bending dimensions that there just must be other intelligent life and civilizations out there. Fermi then quipped, "But Where are they?" (no evidence for it or like Barbara said above not going anywhere near that hood...)
Horhai, thanks.
You're welcome.
It's a fascinating concept that was discussed in 1950 when Enrico Fermi and co-workers Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York were having a lunchtime conversation at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Carl Sagan had written about it too and it has always been something that is hard to reconcile when you look out at the stars.
Trump could trade Alaska for Greenland.
*snort!*
🤣🤣🤣
Hey!!!!!!
As long as they take the (white) Alaskans, they can have it.
As in Texas, not all are magats
Noooooooo!!!!
A smart move. Perhaps there IS inteligent life in the universe.
And 'that' is a very real American problem; now or later, certainly. We watched the creeping grabs by Putin over time; facts in evidence. *edit in, next day > Now what I dislike about chasing that logic string, is that it's sort of 'doom-scrolling forward' to what 'could be'. Like when that string led us to costly "domino theory" interventions in civil wars like Korea / Vietnam. A closer look at civil wars, shows us that the wars aren't necessarily over when one side is vanquished by armed conflict; they continue to simmer, eventually sometimes to boil over again at nonlinear paces. Consider deeply the 'civil wars' of Mexico, U.S., Argentina, etc. for a bit.
From the quote of Mitch McConnell, it appears he’s willing to risk Ukraine’s fall to Putin if it will help Donald Trump get elected. That is disturbing. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan are turning over in their graves.
Troubling 'dots' again...
Eisenhower, certainly. Not sure about Nixon or Reagan.
You raise an interesting question. My guess is Nixon, for all of his other failures, recognized, as did Reagan, or at least those from whom he sought counsel (Paul Nitze, George Schultz and Cap Weinberger) that Russia and its people have a fundamentally different view of the value of human life and the respective obligations of the governed and the governing class than we in the U.S. do. What I find most galling about McConnell’s capitulation to Putin’s revanchism is his price. He would trade increasing the probability of Donald Trump’s election for Europe’s stability and security? “Turning and turning in the widening gyre….”
It is just disgusting.
I just started to type the same words. Horrifying is probably better.
I hate to be thinking this way, but if Putin wins in Ukraine, eventually he will go into Poland and then there will be another massive war in Europe. This will certainly happen if R’s win and our funding to Ukraine's ceases. While we’re all distracted fighting Putin, China will go into Taiwan. I see a nuclear end that will destroy our world as we know it. Like Einstein said, he didn’t know what weapons will be used in WWIII, but the next war would be stones and sticks. I don’t know if this is a possibility or probably, but Putin must be stopped and pushed out of Ukraine.
I look at the GOP right now and in my mind I see a cesspool with McConnell, Kari Lake, Ronna McDaniel, Trump, that state senator from Arizona who had to resign, etc, all in there, waving their harms and struggling to stay above the surface. The cesspool is swirling into a whirlpool, starting to go faster and faster. And then they all disappear under the surface come November.
God I hope they lose terribly in November. I hope this is massive humiliation. Because I am sick to death of living near the stink of this cesspool that is the GOP now, and I want it to go away forever. I want the day to come where I realize I haven’t thought nor heard the name “Trump” all day long. That will be a very fine day indeed!
Luckily for us, the republicans are not noticing that the abortion issue is drowning them. So allow my optimism: I believe that "The cesspool is swirling into a whirlpool, starting to go faster and faster" and will suck them down the drain....
just wrote to Susan Collins telling her that she must be so proud to be a Republican-- a Republican that works for Donald Trump and Mitch McConell instead of her constituents.
First and foremost the Republicans are Trumpanzees that work for TFFG and not their constituents.
Hey, Gary - I'd love to see what you wrote, because I've been planning to write another letter to Useless Susie myself. And possibly to Angus, because he hasn't exactly been a leading light in this Congress, either.
WTF, right???? Letting the candidate run things in the sidelines???? Screw that noise...... unbelievable
Absolutely
Without immigration to fight over, the MAGApublicans will lose what they see as their most appealing issue in the November elections. That's why they will fight any solution whatsoever regarding our southern border, especially a bi-partisan one. Reaching a solution would be like taking a hammer away from a carpenter.
Yes...indeed.
It is as they say: You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes
That is what left me from all that Heather posted. A LITTLe crisis??! I would say a major crisis where most are afraid of tofg. He is vile for sure but he truly needs to be taken down, locked up for good!
Trump is evil. Let's smash the MAGA movement to smithereens at the polls this November.
But what will keep me up is the following factoid given in today's post:
"A report published today in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped."
That number is not the total number of rapes in just 14 of the 50 states. It's the subset of the total that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. That limited number is shocking. Even after Trump is defeated, our country will not be safe for women. WTF? Who the f** are we? Is Trump just the smelliest symptom of a deeper rot?
Those statistics aren't shocking at all. That's reality. I write an FBI series about crimes against women and children and am constantly doing research and talking to law enforcement about rape statistics and I don't even believe that the much more realistic 'one out of four women' comes close. I don't know ANY woman who hasn't suffered significant sexual harassment and/or assault. Zero. But rape is a serial crime, and it's 10-30% of men who are responsible for over 90% of rapes. Good men need to be condemning and coming down hard on the rapists so we can start taking this soul-crushing crime against humanity seriously.
And as I always point out, given the surge of Christofascism - there's no Commandment against rape. That is an enormous moral and legal problem.
The Christian-fascist drumbeat is that women and people of color are less-created to serve the men in charge. Women and poc are to be submissive. Therefore crimes like rape aren’t actually crimes, because the guys are entitled to take what they want-other peoples’ feelings/wants/needs be damned. I see it here in Florida where it is preached in churches that men are the head of the household and women are to submit.
100% Jen. And it's not just in Florida that churches preach female submission. Not by a long shot.
Our former president endorses the practice.
Exactly. And it's one reason a lot of people support him.
Alexandra Sokoloff, I’m sure many of us... I’d say all but who knows?...thank you for your work.
For me, this count of rape is a shock. However, as I thought about that, I recalled how I was violently attacked in my own family home by a date; and managed to fend him off, just, without my Father’s help, who had heard noise and called down from the floor above.
Next morning my face: black and blue.
As the guy exited our home he pushed the front door open again saying: “this is what you need!”
Oh my God, Samm. That is horrifying. I'm so, so glad your father was there and YOU were strong enough to get rid of that monster.
I've heard hundreds and hundreds of stories like yours. And, like you had to think for a moment to even remember this horrific experience, I find it often takes women a while to even start remembering the many incidences of near escapes and frightening situations. I have a good friend who for years swore up and down she'd never experienced anything like sexual assault. And then she was talking about her family one night and it was clear she'd been molested by her older brother. I asked her some gentle questions and it finally came out that he'd raped her for years. We all have a self-preserving tendency toward compartmentalization. That's why MeToo was so, so important and continues to be.
Thank you for your courage, back then and now, for telling your story.
Thank you Alexandra Sokoloff. Initially I thought how ‘small’ my experience was compared with ie your friend and a friend of mine, whose Father raped her and her youngest sister for years. Of course huge trauma resulted to both of them with the younger sister committing suicide. This in an upper middle class family. Rape does not care about nation, class, race, anything. No. It knows no boundaries.
It’s wonderful people like you and many of Heather’s followers, who continue to fight this horror that make me hope some day, someway this will ebb and even end.
Agreed Alexandra....I don't know a single woman who has escaped rape, sexual assault or significant sexual harassment. Many have experienced it all. It's why we are constantly looking over our shoulders, are leary of stepping onto an elevator with only one or two men, regret that it is hard to trust men, but still try with all our might.
Having said that, I do believe there are some men who don't harass, assault, or abuse women. But even many of those are in disbelief (as in not believing) of all of the bad male behavior I've experienced and shared in an effort to explain the Me Too movement. Which leads me to agree that society has underplayed, cloaked, and ignored the role men play in unwanted pregnancies and sexual abuse of women (why else are women, not men, who have unwanted pregnancies and seeking abortion or medically need an abortion now the focus of societies wrath?)
This is huge! And the very fact that Roe could be reversed reveals how covert misogyny is in US society...and how no one, who ignores (does not actively address) this problem, is innocent.
Susan, I don't just -believe- there are some men who don't harass, assault, or abuse women — I KNOW it. If the statistics I quoted (and have found across multiple studies) are correct, then 30 percent of men are responsible for almost all sexual violence. The other 70 percent of men need to know that, stop letting those sociopaths tar them with the same sociopathic brush, and say NO - this is not how men act. NO, we're to going to let you freaks get away with it any more. ENOUGH.
Then we have to ask Alexandra, if only 30% are responsible then how is it that nothing is being done? Complicity is not an innocent act. Believing that women (knowingly or unknowingly) are culpable in violence against them, is not an innocent act.
Police officers are 2 to 4 times more likely to have been involved in sexual abuse than the average citizen. Their District Attorney offices would be complicit, because they can't do business without the police. So the whole judicial system becomes complicit.
Jeff, yes, it's horrific.
I ask myself that all the time, Susan. I've written six books trying to lay out the complexity of issues. It's so many factors. Obvious ones - like centuries of laws (and church teaching) that said women were men's property, and no commandment against rape in the Bible. Men controlling the laws, the media, art, etc. and framing things from their own perspective without fully depicting women as human, and keeping women largely out of the top levels of all of those offices and professions. A whole history of law enforcement that skews patriarchal and conservative. The fact that women are vilified and re-victimized in the process of reporting rape and in the courts.
And less obvious but crucial ones, like the fact that rape is a serial crime. A proportionately small number of predators are committing the vast majority of rapes. And for some ungodly reason, we are not calling out sociopaths and making it a priority to identify them, early, and contain the damage they're likely to do.
And the fact that there are systemic, appalling holes in law enforcement. Like the rape kit backlog. Like the abject failure of police departments to log violent sexual crimes into databases like VICAP - rendering a system that should have been a game changer in rape arrests and convictions essentially useless. (Canada's version is a smashing success compared to the US's VICAP.
I could go on and on. I do! But I do it in fiction to get these statistics across emotionally, through readers' investment in my characters.
Thank you. So well said.
Thank you for the work you do. When I first started in law enforcement, I somewhat resented getting assigned every rape case that came to patrol to handle. As I gained experience, I lost the resentment. It is, however, the reason that I never went into detectives. Our patrol division was relatively small (2-4 main office deputies on duty at a time, and anywhere from 0-10, depending on the time of day, other uniformed deputies serving other patrol functions as resident deputies, contract deputies, or forestland deputies; we had at various times 4-6 deputies assigned to detectives.) Four of my closest friends ended up with detective assignments at various times. One of them, who was outstanding, said "I knew I had to get out of detectives when I started praying for a homicide so I could focus on something other that p's and v's and a's." Sex crimes were about 90% of the caseload.
Ally, thank YOU for stepping up to do that painful and vital job. It really is infuriating that women detectives get boxed into rape investigations, but I have no doubt that survivors would almost always rather have a woman on the case.
You should never have told me you're in/were in law enforcement. I will try not to plague you with technical questions.
Fire away. One of the topics I comment on frequently are police use of force issues, and sometimes hostage negotiations issues. Two of my side duties.
Horrifying
Rape is a weapon of war, as you definitely know. What does that say about the state of our republic with MAGA looming large in our legislatures and courts?
Forced birth is the MAGA weapon of war. But they're decriminalizing rape, too.
Alexandra, I believe your observations. What I was going to accomplish with my post is to build an impetus to study rape as a public health issue. You state that every woman experiences sexual harassment or rape in her life (in only our society?). The study implies that in broad numbers and extrapolating from the 14 states (without getting into the weeds of actual population numbers in those states vs. total US population), over 1 million rapes occur in the US each year. Is that separate from "just" harassment or is that part of a continuum? Are environmental or cultural factors that affect this? Could this topic be out in the open, so that people squirm as they face the reality within the society they support? To change ourselves, we have to know ourselves better.
Jerry, I'm not quite sure if this is the answer to the question you're asking, but most studies will separate harassment and rape into separate categories, if you look at the full study. Sometimes the media will quote these two categories as one number, though. Numbers vary in different countries. (South Africa has the highest incidence of rape in the world.)
I would hope those two categories are separate. I am sure there are different classes within each. Just as critical race theory provides tools to perceive and hopefully change behaviors rooted in our slavery - enriched society, I'd like to see a "critical relations" theory that helps us recognize and hopefully change abusive and dangerous sexual behaviors. In not taking about personal preferences, but about unwanted harassment, abuse, and physical assault. The Me Too movement tried to shine light on this, but more is needed. If we are going to achieve the ideal this country's founders endeavored to emulate, we need the knowledge and tools to do it, and the prevalent sexual violence shows that our society has much work to do.
Separately from my call to publicly study our cultural tendency to sweep sexual harassment and rape under the rug, I'm curious about the title of your FBI book series. You are prolific enough for me to get lost in all the Amazon book descriptions, so I'm hoping to save a bit of time. You answer will contribute to my physical and mental health, because when I don't feel like walking, I will still head out and listen to a good audio book.
(I can't drive while listening because my reality is rhe story, and so I don't perceive details like red lights or squirrels on the road as diligently as I should..)
Jerry, thanks for your interest and your ability to get so lost in a story. The first book in the series is Huntress Moon, and my audiobook narrator is superb. All books in the series free with an Audible account or trial. Here's the link -
Audio: https://amzn.to/47U2x4K
ebook: https://amzn.to/3SwAC6w
Happy walking!!
Reading the first book starting tomorrow! Thanks for the links.
Thanks. I didn't know if that was part of the series you mentioned, but I had already just downloaded it using an Audible credit.
That figure stunned me, too. And I didn't even calculate, as you so brilliantly did, that that number is "only" a subset of all the women who've been raped during that time in those few states. Why are so many men forcing themselves on women? What is going on with men?
At the same time you ask your good Q, Jude, another site online answers it.
This other site examines the epidemic of men in the U.S. with no friends, no personal ties to any peers, mentors, or colleagues.
Just another side effect, Jude, from what happens to a country when its billionaire, corporate commercial, and dark money forces organize to dehumanize the schools (as the Powell memo did beginning 1971 through its new Heritage Foundation, its new ALEC, and its expanded Hoover Institution).
"What is going on with men?" might expand to ask what's going on with much of social media, too (its hate algorithms also replacing what humanities used to do) -- no, Jude?
Phil, how do you explain thousands of Catholic priests who rape and molest? They live in communities or have access to colleagues, friends, etc, and have been protected from justice by those same communities.
It isn't about sex, it is about power. Who is more easily dominated, adult women, or young boys? I have read (and sadly, it was a time ago, and I do not recall the source) of how many nuns either aborted or gave birth. In that article, it was posited that it was how there became Catholic "orphanages"...
Agreed. It is about power and domination. Men are raped also.
Yes they are. I have a friend whose son is a victim of male on male MST.
That is not how Catholic Orphanages came about. In the pre antibiotic ages there were many deaths that left children orphaned. The early monastic orders took them in and established orphanages and hospitals.
I don’t know what you read or where but every nun I’ve known has been a fine upstanding individual, faithful to her vows.
Latin, Catherine.
When I was a boy, and going to Catholic services every Sunday morning, I heard the chants, refrains, and prayers in Latin, so I knew those using it mediated heaven and its ways.
I learned Latin at about the time I was going into puberty, which was just about the time all the girls around me had already gotten breasts -- as if I could equate these things in biology, nature, also with Latin, which had names for all that.
Intelligent of me? No, of course not. I was stupid, entirely naive, stupid, over-trusting of authority, the schools, the church.
About the same time came Vietnam, civil rights, the women's movement, rock-&-roll.
And now, Catherine, you think I can explain the "thousands of Catholic priests who rape and molest"?
Not at all. I’m just not certain loneliness is part of the equation. BTW, I grew up in the same environment as you and protested Vietnam, even though my dad served two tours there. I thought priests had all the answers and then, we learned more.
Misogyny is a socially accepted norm. That is what is going on with men. It's like institutional racism....it is so pervasive, many don't see it or understand it or recognize it.
That stood out to me, too. What are we doing, as a country, to stop men from raping women?
Can’t believe I’m going to write this but it has been a personal wish that men who rape or molest children should be castrated.
Years ago, when the media was full of the Lorena Bobbitt case, I asked male family members to choose between castration and death and without exception, they all said, “I’d rather be dead.” Interesting.
Not exactly the same, but perhaps indicative. In Roots when an escaped slave (i forget his name at the moment) is offered a choice of castration or the loss of a foot (when the ability to work productively was the only thing close to a guarantee of survival) he chose to lose the foot.
I remember that. Roots was must see tv.
That would be the cure.
My crude thought: Diesel fuel soaked log. The member firmly affixed to the log. A dull knife. Light the log on fire. There are two choices...
What about a series based on the “Equalizer” concept, where justice is dispensed outside of the law? Maybe an incognito squad of women (and/or men) who show up and castrate rapists. I thought about Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, hiding because one never knows when justice will be delivered. Perhaps, just the fear of that occurring would be a deterrent. Who could write that screenplay?
Good question!
We’re having constant ads on radio, TV, online for Viagra and it’s generics. But then, let’s ban birth control! And they wonder why women are furious and working so hard to take them down.
My orthopod stopped prescribing Celebrex for arthritis because it could cause heart issues. Then he laughed and said but anyone can get Viagra and that too can cause heart issues. It’s all about priorities.
Excellent point
This is a frighteningly sad reality that we have so much bad and evil to contend with ... and it’s not all related to ignorance and stupidity! In life we really have to encounter the good, the bad and the ugly as well as those among us who are just plain despicably. evil!!!
"In the United States, significantly more women than men are sexually assaulted. In 2022, about 442,754 women were raped or sexually assaulted in the U.S. - an increase from the previous year. In that same year, 89,053 men were raped or sexually assaulted, also a significant increase compared to the year before." After reading the number 64, 565 my heart jumped into my throat. Does anyone think for one minute this number will not continue to climb under a head of state who who promotes this abomination in word and deed. I literally am sitting here with tears running down my face. What have we become?
One thing we have become, Hoyt, is being ruled by dark money billionaires.
Another thing we have become is being ruled by those who support an American former president who has asked the Supreme Court to declare him above the law.
Also being ruled by genocidal Russian oligarchs and their genocidal priests in long skirts and jewelry. Being ruled, too, by royal Saudi murderers. Israeli far-right settlers busy stealing land. U.S. university administrators who speak wonk, have zero humanities, and profit by having students crippled by debts to banks. K-12 administrators all in service to standardized testers. Legally free manufacturers of AR-15s happy for their 11 million civilian customers. By nationalists such as Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, an idiot woman Congress person from northwest Georgia and another idiot Congress woman from Colorado. Social media billionaires and their algorithms for hate and divisiveness.
Tens of thousands of Ivy League grads in finance who floated the most corrupt of the former Soviet Union's nomenklatura and by overseeing the off-shoring of millions of U.S. working class jobs to profit the Chinese cadres and other dictators abroad.
Thanks for asking, Hoyt.
Even as a women’s health nurse of many years I found that number shocking too. It’s gut-wrenching to realize that it’s a lowball number since not all will have been counted.
Would love to know the increase in unwed mothers since Dobbs, especially in underaged girls.
Yes he is just a symptom of a National pathology and he is taking tens of millions exactly where they want to go. The rest of us have to figure out how to stop this. So far, the timid DOJ has not been helping as much as it could.
Jack, one of the problems is that most of these enforcement agencies are run by, and predominantly composed of men.
It should surprise no one that Trump will NOT accept losing the nomination... and, more to the point, he will NOT accept losing the election in November. I don't care how poorly he does. He could only win one state (like McGovern did in 1972) and he will STILL CLAIM HE WON... as will his sure-to-be enraged supporters. I do not know what the Biden campaign can do about this "false reality" threat.
And as for the GOP deciding to refuse to pass border legislation (despite having said they would), Beau of the Fifth Column posted a video about this a late this evening. He is angry but not surprise that McConnell is willing to harm American security (by helping Putin beat Ukraine) so Trump can have something to scare people about ("migrants seeking to destroy America") during the upcoming election campaign. Here's a link to Beau's video. We are living in truly rage-producing times (for real), given the internal threat the GOP has become.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAXyuzIoHA
Steve, what I like about Beau is that not only does he seem to have well- researched posts, but he also seems to have a fair number of conservative followers, who may well be open to diverse thinking.
That's interesting, Mary. Now I'm going to check him out.
He really is excellent....he addresses a wide range of issues with information that is not discussed in the media...he is very balanced.
If we can stay steady and refrain from buying into the rage machine, we will be better able to think clearly about concrete ways to defeat The Party of Putin. If you buy into fear, big parts of your brain shut down.
Thank you Steve. Beau stopped putting his posts on my FB feed a while ago. Maybe I can link back up. Perhaps Biden will have to invoke the Insuection Act.
You’re welcome. I honestly have never looked for Beau on Facebook. Is he there? Was he?
I subscribe to him on YouTube where I’m also a Patreon supporter. I really value his wide-ranging interests and that he is such a caring person.
He would be there for quite a while but not in a few years. I have a Patreon Acct. I should just try there. He always had informative insights aand seemed to genuinely care. Out back in the shop, where I am all the time. I rarely look at FB.
McConnell will of course cave to trump&co. This leaves Ukraine -and the democratic world- in a tight spot. Robert Hubbell’s substack suggests donating to the official Unkrainian Website Unite24, if you hope to circumvent our obstructionist Congress, please consider donating directly to Ukraine. Here’s the link I use to donate: https://u24.gov.ua/
Do you think it is up to the Biden campaign to stop the "false reality" threat?
Yes. Although other groups like the Lincoln Project might help. But only the Biden campaign has the authority and power to put the necessary “counter programming” together. I’m thinking of the kind of educational effort our government has done before, enlisting Hollywood’s help. Here’s what I’m talking about…
https://youtu.be/vGAqYNFQdZ4?si=NTXKtf7M-mhd0i1U
So much in this that I could comment on, but I want to comment on Mitch McConnell. He proves, yet again, that he is a dishonest, manipulative man with no integrity who cares nothing about our country.
McConnell is only interested in power and implementing the plans developed by the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. He has no honor.
Now would be a real good time for Mitch to freeze up permanently.
Funny
McConnell has been one of the biggest problems in the whole MAGA world. His stacking of the SCOTUS has earned him my lifelong disgust.
good campaign material for Biden - especially if it's on tape
They can only win if they cheat. But they will cheat.
We must be ready for that. And outvote them by millions just like in 2020.
The plan is to cheat - probably by interrupting the election process somehow. That’s why he doesn’t care if he “ broadens his appeal.” He’s a cornered rat.
They can win by claiming fraud and manipulating the public and send the vote to the House of Representatives. SCOTUS will approve ( they have already been paid for that!)
This is why the blue vote must be overwhelming. The system was tested in 2020 and it held.
We can and must do it again.
Ted, I do think that is the reality of the 2024 election. One decided by a Right slanted Supreme Court.
Scary to consider. If that happens… the people will be angry and will protest at the Supreme Court. What will TFG do? Like Portland, he will send in the thug troops.
I remember watching the Army/McCarthy hearings on TV when I was about nine years old and then studying them later when I was teaching American History at the Darrow School in 1967-68. I just have this feeling that Trump and MAGA are going to get the same reaction that Joe McCarthy got in the end. Except for the potential of violence by MAGA, I believe that Trump’s influence will diminish by the end of 2024.
Scholars of demagogues think the same. It never ends well for demagogues or for malignant narcissists.
Nor for many who cross their path.
Unfortunately, the dark money will not go away.
Time to turn on more light.
Roger Eaton, thanks for the reminder about McCarthy's violence and its popularity and, that abrupt and rapid change is possible individually and collectively.
And sometimes for the oddest reasons. McCarthy lost the financial and media backing from one of his staunchest and richest supporters because Joe got drunk at a party and pushed the supporter's wife into the swimming pool fully clothed.
I was 19 then myself and part
of confronting the existing McCarthy / et al Red Scare. Noting here that an eventually more honest media helped do it in. May the present group of scared or whatever they are 'reporters' find their spines and learn how they are part of ongoing history. Get right with the unvarnished truth and stop equivocation. You have nothing to lose but your honor.
Hopefully Trump will get a prison sentence.
Keep hoping, but we need to work like hell to bury the. When you read the history of autocrats, this playbook is playing out right before our eyes.
Currently, they have many strategic pieces in place. ALEC is writing the model legislation being implemented across the states.
What will happen with those that follow him & listen to the rants of the sources winding them up?
I would guess that Tucker Carlson would try to pick up the mantle, or Josh Hawley, or Ted Cruz. But eventually, there will be agreement that we are a country of Laws and not of a single man or men. There are always going to be threats to our Democracy; we have to accept some tension and unrest as part of it. Search for EB White’s essay on the “Definition of Democracy” written in 1943.
How many whack jobs are waiting in the wings when tfg leaves this earth?
We all hope for that.
Your mouth to God’s ear. However the question can’t be ‘have you no shame?’ They’ve proven that they have no shame.
I guess it’s just a coincidence that Trump and Putin don’t want the U.S. to aid Ukraine.
There's those troubling 'dots' again. Probably nothing - just..... business.
From outside the USA there is disbelief. How can it even be possible that such an abomination is in the position to destroy so much. A semi-literate, tantrum-prone ball of furious immaturity is set to annihilate the status quo and half the population is ok with it.
Clearly the problem is not him at all.
There are not a few Americans who share the disbelief too.
There are upwards of 74 million Americans who voted for Trump. Those 74 million are the problem and will continue to be the problem even if we are lucky enough to defeat Trump in November.
This is true, and it’s a problem I admit I have no ideas to solve. They have made up their minds and are impervious to learning anything that contradicts their world view.
Ain't that the truth! I've been jousting (again) with a RWNJ friend from the SO. She posted all the "good" things that happened in fpotus's term. They are ALL attributable to Biden, and not fpotus.
Ugh
I fear the solution, if there is one, will be very ugly. A lot uglier than forced the integration of schools in the South by the National Guard in the sixties. Other possibilities, such as no solution or a “solution” administered by representatives of the 74 million, are even uglier.
They are ugly.
Christopher, he is the tip of the Murdoch iceberg. One that is filled with the racism of the old south, and the misogyny dating back milenia.
Yes Ally, and it is not limited to the US.
In the UK the current government Business Secretary (they will all be gone by the end of the year) has just blamed the failure of the Brexit fiasco on Joe Biden.
unbelivable cheek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68069994
Unbelievable cheek indeed.
Trumps a tool. Biden is so cool.
👍
Thanks Heather, it’s clear that the GOP does not want to govern. They want to disrupt and sow chaos and hide their cowardice to do the right thing.
In other words, they do what Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, Rupert Murdoch & the other American oligarchs tell them to do.
And especially what Donald Trump wants them to do, Congressional Republicans are following the orders of a former president who wants to be back in office and a dictator. It’s a complete abdication of their responsibilities as lawmakers.
The congress critters are auditioning for cabinet seats and applying for campaign donations from Libertarian Robert Mercer. Thank Citizens United for keeping campaign finance dark.
This is true as well. Citizens United, along with Buckley v. Valeo and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti have truly wrecked our political system. SCOTUS needs to recall that money isn’t speech, and should not be used to wreck free speech from flesh and blood human beings. The late right wing oil billionaire H.L. Hunt wrote a novel in the early 1950s called “Alpaca,” and the novel proposed that money, not speech, should be used to influence political action. Hunt died in 1974, but SCOTUS finally adopted this idea in 2010. We need to reverse this line of decisions, make it clear that money is NOT speech, all political contributions should be limited, public, and open, and significantly reform our tax system to make it progressive again so these billionaires can’t buy the government for themselves.
I can see now how Robert’s “thinks”. It’s all about the money the court brings in. Just rule for dark money (Citizens United) for others, and call it free speech so that the justices are also protected from anti corruption laws. “ It’s not money or gifts or bribes, it’s just “free” speech. That is all, next case please”- John Roberts. And America falls for it, how did 40% become so sheepishly naive?
"American oligarchs"?
Offshore, Australian, Off-Planetary oligarchs...
Trump going to a nonunion plant to "support" the autoworkers, is so on brand.
Up is down and down is up etc.
Watching it on TV was stomach churning for this union man.
Fain got it right when he shouted that the insipid clown, (he used his name, I won’t) was a SCAB. Spot on IMHO 🤷♂️
He’s a SCAB alright.
I was as well. Agreed
I love the "invincible" note our Heather strikes today regarding our would-be authoritarian.
This comes after, last night, I happened to see the full movie version of the Japanese hit anime, "Demon Slayer." The kids I teach here in Japan all love it -- many are doing dual readings of the Japanese and English texts that predate the film.
Main theme is how, for actual humanity, vulnerability, mortality, and chance all enter. This, as opposed to the near-invincibility for the demons who can live hundreds of years, who can grow new limbs virtually right away if arms or legs are severed, and whose other wounds heal also near immediately.
The demons scorn actual humanity, for the ways humans love, sympathize with others, and often well remember, honor family and other loved ones from the past. Demons vaunt themselves as if they are beyond natural law, beyond time, above all that makes humans tick.
Yes, our orange fat guy, his face caked with cosmetics, his diaper emitting its odors, still has his suit with the Supreme Court that he be deemed above the law.
Good luck I found myself in this country where kids thrill to the human as one young woman, Koyoharu Gotōge, scripted in her amazing manga and anime versions.
Good luck that Joe Biden and fellow Dems have working class America getting good, decent programs for them and their families, as our Heather also cites today via the U.A.W. support -- as if the demons of the Republican vulgar and their dark money allies may not be so above the law as they fancy.
What an interesting description of anime........my granddaughter loves it!
We can only hope that Niki Haley will continue to tweak Trump until he looses it completely. He is clearly mentally ill. He no longer speaks intelligibly. He mixes people up and dates/ events/ wars too.
I am hoping that he cannot keep it together and that his mental incompetence will be on full display as an old man with dementia plus narcissism.
Trump must be stopped, then we can deal with the third of our population lacking in education and vulnerable to con artists.
"his mental incompetence will be on full display as an old man with dementia plus narcissism"
Hiding in plain sight.
I knew Trump was projecting his own problems on to President Biden. I think Trump is showing signs of dementia, the problems his personality disorders cause, and in psychological terms he’s decompensating due to fear and anxiety about his upcoming criminal trials.
Reagan was another grandiose narcissist, whose dementia was showing in both of his presidential terms. With Trump it's hard to separate diminished capacity from his bone lazy dishonesty. He hardly tries to make sense; he just spouts whatever he want's his cult to believe. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iowa-caucuses-video-god-b2478729.html
Thanks Heather for all you have done and continue to do to protect our Democracy. My husband and I have read Democracy Awakening and are now giving it to others as a gift.❤️
I too read it and will recommend it.
MAGA and Trump are traitors to our country. They are not patriots. McConnell long ago vowed to vote against anything the Obama Administration presented even if it was "for the good of the country." Such a bunch of losers, all of them. Vote them out.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Between filthy tricks today and vile misrepresentations we are getting a political taste for the next 10 months and it’s totally unappetizing….indeed it’s ugly. Trumpsters can be counted on to lie, cheat and steal with abandon and their feckless followers are unmoved by Trumps crimes..crimes like rape…which Heather tells us are the experience of 65,000 women….these women and every other woman voter in the US absolutely must vote for Biden…..it’s our best hope of beating this vile guy.
Please scroll back to Jerry Helfand's clarification of that horrendous but tip-of-the-iceberg figure.