can November be any closer?…can the Mid-Term Election be any closer?…it’s a nail biter…just like the Phillies first game on Friday night at the Houston Astros stadium…Minute Maid Park…on the second to the last Sunday of October, a sad case for Halloween revelers in South Korea…where “150 people died and more injured after young partiers were trapped in a surging crowd on a narrow street in Seoul last night during Halloween festivities”…”some of the injured are in critical condition… it was a good day to lay…brooding that it’s already the end of October… Halloween tomorrow…I’m wearing my mask tomorrow…the Covid mask…going as a someone not wanting to get Covid…hahaha…I’m wondering if kids come around here…there are kids here, but not very many…and I don’t remember last year…was I here for Halloween last year?…how about that guy breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco with a hammer…Paul Pelosi, her husband, is fortunate to be alive and doesn’t have a crack in his skull…apparently he was able to dial 911 and they raced to apprehend the guy…who apparently “has a history of spreading bogus theories on social media, including myths about the Holocaust and claims that Democrats operated child sex rings.”…like that guy who stormed the pizza place in Washington D.C. with a gun because he believed that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were running a pedophilia ring out of the basement…from Sunday Morning, the Cover Story: “More than 300 Republican candidates for state and national office have been identified by CBS News as “election deniers” for having stated their refusal to accept the 2020 presidential results as legitimate. CBS News chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa talks with professor Michael Berkman, media critic Margaret Sullivan, and conservative think tank president Reihan Salam about what is driving voters (or feeding their cynicism), and how the outcome of this year’s midterms could impact our right to vote.”…our democracy is at stake…the Republican party is gripped with trump’s BIG LIE…the alarm must be sounded…and it may already be too late…this is so upsetting…media critic Margaret Sullivan tells us “it’s important to be an engaged citizen and to be informed of what’s going on”…the alarm has be sounded repeatedly…those 300 Republican election deniers have been coming for months in the making…and I wonder about those people who voted for them in the primaries?…I could scream and do…we are really in deep doo-doo…get out there and vote against these anti-democracy repugnant Republicans…don’t let Oz or Mastriano in for one second!…we’ll know next week – if we have “a republic, if we can keep it”… the world is in flames…in more ways than one, we have to put it out…
there were great interviews on Sunday Morning…with Bono of U2…super star, activist and fighter for social justice…people who use their pulpit for good, I admire…and Jaime Lee Curtis…love that woman…the queen of Halloween…now out in theaters, Halloween Ends…the “last” sequel of her performance in 1978 when Jamie was 19…and another great story…a happy success story of a six-year-old beating cancer…from Sunday Morning: Health: How an experimental treatment beat cancer: When Emily Whitehead was six years old, she became the first child ever to receive genetically-modified T cells, an experimental treatment for her leukemia. It cured her, and helped launch the field of cellular medicine. “Sunday Morning” contributor Kelefa Sanneh talks with Emily, and her parents, Kari and Tom Whitehead, about how they defeated her cancer; and with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer specialist and author of the new book, “The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human.”…Emily is now a senior in High School…cancer-free!…
my lay-low-Sunday…clean my bathroom and clean my kitchen floor…makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something when I clean my bathroom…which I usually do on Sunday, but more often than not, I clean it on Monday, when I do my laundry also…most of the time I busy on Sunday…no time for cleaning…I’m rushing to go somewhere or do something…but I spent the entire day binge-watching the first season of The White Lotus…in anticipation of Season 2 this evening…The White Lotus won Emmys for Outstanding Limited Series and Emmys for Jennifer Coolidge and Murray Bartlett…amazing performances of both…both deserved their Emmys…it was really good…watch this HBO series…if you’re not already…no one told me about The White Lotus…it was worth the binge-watching…and Episode 1 of Season 2 did not disappoint…Mike White is the writer extraordinaire!…he brought us School of Rock among other things…but The White Lotus, about a luxurious hotel chain…and it’s inhabitants for a week or two…the first season in Hawaii…the second goes to Sicily…Michael Imperioli from The Sopanos is in this one, as well as F. Murray Abraham as his father…it appears to be just as good as the first…check it out…
I was trying to find the name of the Houston Astros stadium…( The Minute Maid Stadium )…I came across this: “Houston Astros sign stealing scandal: The Houston Astros sign stealing scandal resulted from a series of rule violations by members of the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball (MLB), who used technology to steal signs of opposing teams during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
For years, some individuals on other teams had suspected the Astros of stealing signs, but there was no public reporting on the subject until November 2019, when reporters Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich at The Athletic published an article detailing the team’s activities. Mike Fiers, a pitcher who played for the Astros in 2017, told The Athletic that the organization used a video camera in the center field seats to film the opposing catcher‘s signals to the pitcher regarding the next pitch. Astros players or team staffers watching the live camera feed behind the dugout used various audio cues, such as banging on a trash can, to signal to the batter what type of pitch was coming next. MLB investigated the allegations and confirmed in January 2020 that the Astros illegally used a camera system to steal signs during the 2017 regular season and postseason, during which they won the World Series, as well as in part of the 2018 season. MLB found no evidence of illicit sign stealing in the 2019 season, in which the Astros advanced to the World Series, but lost in seven games to the Washington Nationals.
As a result, Astros general managerJeff Luhnow and field managerA. J. Hinch were suspended for the entire 2020 season for failing to prevent the rule violations. The Astros were fined the maximum allowable $5 million and forfeited their first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts. No players were punished because they had been given immunity by MLB in exchange for their cooperation. The Astros subsequently fired both Luhnow and Hinch on the day their suspensions were announced. MLB’s investigation also determined that Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora helped mastermind the Astros’ sign stealing while serving as Hinch’s bench coach in 2017. The Red Sox and Cora mutually parted ways the following day and MLB suspended him through the 2020 postseason, although the Red Sox rehired Cora after his suspension ended. Carlos Beltrán was the only Astros player from 2017 who was specifically named in the report; he had been hired to manage the New York Mets in November 2019 but parted ways with the team after the results of MLB’s investigation were announced.
The sanctions against the Astros were the most severe that MLB has ever issued against a member club, and are among the most severe sanctions for in-game misconduct in baseball history. A Wall Street Journal article published a few weeks after the MLB report described previously unknown details about the sign stealing operation and reported that it originated during the 2016 season, a broader scope than reported by MLB. After the scandal broke, players on the 2017 Astros apologized to varying degrees. The team’s actions were heavily criticized by players on other MLB teams. The scandal dominated the 2019–2020 offseason and the start of 2020 spring training. The scandal also led to lawsuits against the Astros and MLB.”…how about that?…had you heard of this?…
Brazil, in which “they have a lot of coffee in Brazil”, has rejected their trump guy, Jair Bolsonaro, and his trump-like far right administration…Bolsonaro also down-played Covid…with disastrous consequences…Brazil is still struggling in its recovery of the Covid pandemic…he was defeated by Luiz Inacio da Silva, a comeback for da Silva…who was imprisoned for 580 days because of corruption allegations…the sentence which lead to his imprisonment was annulled by Brazil’s Supreme Court…this will be da Silva’s third term…I hope it’s foreshadowing of our November 8 elections…reject trump and his anti-democracy “election deniers”…
and Goodness, Gracious…Jerry Lee Lewis has died…who knew he was still alive…one of the founder’s of Rock and Roll…who notoriously married his 13 year-old cousin!!!…Goodness, Gracious!!!…Jerry Lee Lewis who taught himself to play the piano at a broken-down piano in church…his profile on Sunday Morning said his parents mortgages their house to buy him a piano…good investment…I can picture him playing the piano with his foot…it was an extension of his musical talent…and Goodness, Gracious…he was married 7 times…
we have Julia Roberts and we have George Clooney…we want to see this movie…no matter what the critics say…a formula movie…that we love…divorced couple come together again…the twist?…they come together to sabotage the impending wedding of their only child…a daughter Lily ( played by Kaitlyn Dever ), who has just graduated from law school and is throwing all away for a “seaweed farmer” in Bali…it was love at first sight…and shades of South Pacific and Bali Hai…and “I’m gonna wash that man right our of my hair”…Bali was paradise in South Pacific…and it is in this film, even though it was filmed in Australia…this romantic comedy…with Julia Roberts and George Clooney…they are teamed up again by director/writer Ol(iver) Parker, his writing partner is Daniel Pipski…Ol Parker brought us Mama Mia, Here We Go Again, he wrote and directed that…it also stars Billie Lourd as Lily’s friend Wren…Lily and Wren go to Bali on vacation after school…( seemed like College, but apparently it was “law school”…and French-Indonesian actor Maxime Bouttier as Gede…le boyfriend…and Lucas Bravo as Julia’s “boyfriend” who happens to be an airline pilot…he proposed twice…in funny circumstances… all in all, it’s a formula movie…and I like the formula…you know they’ll get back together again after a 15 year divorce…I would recommend this funny, beautiful movie…who doesn’t like seeing Paradise on film…and watching a Balinese wedding…if that’s really a real Balinese wedding…interesting to see other culture’s wedding… and the rituals…we liked this movie…I was able to talk Pam into going with Elissa and I and Elissa’s aunt Lois…we have the same birthday…she’s exactly 10 years older than me…dinner at the Russian restaurant near the Grant…good food…Pam gave us the thumbs up for the restaurant…good salads, good potatoes, good shish kabob…and I always get beef Stroganoff…delicious…a good time was had by all… glad Pam came with us to the movies…
today was an especially good day…I finalized my lease buy-out…which took longer that I thought…but it’s done after much grief…first of all, trying to get financing…went to a credit union…great rate as opposed to my bank or the dealer…especially the dealer…buy directly from the leasing company…I got up this morning early to get there before 11:00, they would close at 1:00…signed the papers, got the checks sent to their respective places…hopefully, all is well…
the title…Ticket to Paradise…must have come from Eddie Money’s Two Tickets to Paradise…Eddie Money’s real name is Edward Joseph Mahoney…he must have changed his name because the last name of his children is Money…Eddie was born in Brooklyn…and died in Los Angeles at 70…although he had a home in the San Francisco area…Eddie died from esophageal cancer…from Wikipedia about his death: “Complications from the cancer resulted in his death at Keck Hospital of USC in Los Angeles on September 13, 2019, at age 70. A year later, his family filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful death against the hospital, with an additional allegation of medical malpractice.”…”in 1968 he moved to Berkeley, California and took on the stage name Eddie Money, dropping a few letters from his name M(aho)neyand sarcastically referencing the fact that he was always broke.”…Nancy and I went to see Eddie Money…I’m a big fan…he played at the Brandiwine cafe or something like that…it was a bar…a great place to see him up close and personal…I think it was the late 70’s or early 80’s…he was great in person…I was sad to hear he had died…just three years ago…and so young in retrospect…
Two Tickets to Paradise
I’ve got a surprise especially for you Something that both of us have always wanted to do We’ve waited so long, waited so long We’ve waited so long, waited so long
I’m gonna take you on a trip so far from here I’ve got two tickets in my pocket, now baby, we’re gonna disappear We’ve waited so long, waited so long We’ve waited so long, waited so long
I’ve got two tickets to paradise Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight I’ve got two tickets to paradise I’ve got two tickets to paradise
I’m gonna take you on a trip so far from here I’ve got two tickets in my pocket, baby, we’ll disappear Know why? We’ve waited so long, waited so long We’ve waited so long, waited so long
I’ve got two tickets to paradise Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight I’ve got two tickets to paradise Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight I’ve got two tickets to paradise Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight I’ve got two tickets to paradise I’ve got two tickets to paradise
I wonder about the Republicans blaming crime in the streets on Biden and the Democrats…that they’re soft on crime…especially ads attacking Fetterman…that he wants to release murderers…that he wants to eliminate life sentences for murderers…that he wants to legalize heroin…the NRSC – National Republican Senatorial Committee…running ads for Oz are false, misleading at best and taken out of context…they lie without impunity…consider their fealty to trump…the most lawless, corrupt president we have ever had…trump who plotted to overturn the 2020 Election…trump, who plotted to send a bogus, false, alternate slate of electors from various swing states to the National Archives…and speaking of the National Archives…trump, taking boxes and boxes of documents, some highly classified and injurious to our national security…trump and his allies spread the BIG LIE…undermining our democracy, our republic…and it’s still going on…and on…trump has unleashed and condoned white supremacists on our streets…and worst of all, instigated the one and only attack on the Nation’s Capitol attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of power…the the Republicans blame Biden…and here in Pennsylvania, Fetterman…
I saw an Oz ad attacking Fetterman on Nicole Wallace’s Deadline White House today…it first annoyed me to no end that Deadline White House was showing the ad…and then I thought do we spend money on ads attacking Oz on Fox?…and then finally, I wondered just how “true” Oz’s ads are?…enter A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center: FactCheck.org: FactChecking Republican Attacks on Fetterman’s Crime Stance by Robert Farley, Posted on August 25, 2022: Political ads and social media attacks by opponents of Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman have sought to portray Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor as dangerously soft on crime, but some of the claims stretch the facts:
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Fetterman’s Republican opponent, claims Fetterman wants to “eliminate life sentences for murderers.” That’s not accurate. Fetterman has said he wants to eliminate mandatory life sentences for people convicted of second-degree murder.
Oz says Fetterman wants to release a third of all prisoners. Fetterman agreed with a statement, which he attributed to the state’s former corrections secretary, that Pennsylvania could release a third of its inmates without compromising public safety. But Fetterman’s spokesman says he “does not support releasing 1/3 of all inmates.”
The Republican National Committee claims Fetterman wants to “legalize heroin.” Fetterman in 2015 said he wants to “decriminalize” all drugs — which is different from legalizing them.
Criminal justice reform has been at the forefront of Fetterman’s priorities as an elected official.
Fetterman proudly boasts about his efforts serving as chair of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons while acting as lieutenant governor and greatly increasing the number of recommended commutations of life sentences. He talks about needing to transition away from mass incarceration and toward “redemption and forgiveness and renewal.” He’s long been a proponent of “legalizing weed.”
Fetterman’s positions on crime are unapologetically progressive, but ads and social media posts from Oz and Oz’s supporters push those positions beyond what Fetterman has proposed. Oz and Fetterman face off in the Nov. 8 general election to replace Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who is not seeking reelection.
Life Sentences for Murder
Two recent ads paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and approved by the Oz campaign make the claim that Fetterman wants to “eliminate life sentences for murderers.” But that’s misleading.
As the articles cited in the ads make clear, Fetterman has advocated eliminating mandatory life sentences without parole for those who commit second-degree murder. So, he’s not talking about all murders, and he’s not seeking to eliminate life sentences as an option for second-degree murders, but rather to give judges discretion in sentencing — if a judge deems it appropriate. (One of the ads from the NRSC includes text on the screen saying Fetterman would “Eliminate Automatic Life Sentences for Murderers.” That’s closer to the truth, though the narrator drops the “automatic” qualifier and says only that Fetterman would “eliminate life sentences for murderers.”)
“More than 1,000 people are sitting in jail right now on what amounts to a death sentence despite never having taken a life,” Fetterman said in February 2021. “That’s not because a judge thought the sentence was deserved. It’s because a one-size-fits-all law makes it mandatory. Any reasonable person who looks at the unfairness of these sentences will acknowledge the need for change.”
Fetterman cited a report from Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity. “Unlike almost every other crime, second-degree murder – often called ‘felony murder’ – does not describe an act but a situation: it applies when someone dies related to a felony,” the report said. “In Pennsylvania, that felony is defined as committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing from an act of robbery, burglary, kidnapping, rape, or arson.”
According to Pennsylvania law, that felony also includes people who are accomplices to those crimes.
“These folks are not Hannibal Lecter,” Fetterman said during a town hall with prison reform advocates in June 2021. “These are individuals that may have been involved in a bad decision, terrible mistake, or something that they had no idea was going to occur.”
Pennsylvania’s mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole for second-degree or felony murder is a bit of a national outlier.
A report in March from the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocating an overhaul of the criminal justice system, said Pennsylvania was one of eight states that have a mandatory life sentence without parole for felony murder convictions for adults. Another 15 states mandate life in prison without parole for some felony murder cases, the report states.
According to the Sentencing Project, about a quarter of inmates serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania were convicted of felony murder.
The Oz ads say Fetterman’s position on eliminating mandatory life sentences without parole for second-degree murder “mak[es] us less safe.” However, the Sentencing Project says, “Felony murder laws have not significantly reduced felonies nor lowered the number of felonies that become deadly” and that they adversely impact “people of color, young people, and women.”
A recent ad from the Senate Leadership Fund hews a little closer to the facts, but still gets it wrong.
The ad claims Fetterman would “end life sentences for felony murder,” while displaying a quote it attributes to our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact: “… Fetterman’s position in favor of eliminating life sentences for second-degree murder…”
The quote from PolitiFact refers to another article, which makes clear that Fetterman opposed mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for second-degree murder. That’s an important distinction that’s missing in the ad. (PolitiFact rated as “false” the claim that Fetterman wants to “eliminate life sentences for murderers.” PolitiFact concluded that Fetterman “has called for reversing Pennsylvania’s law that mandates life-without-parole sentences for second-degree murder, or so-called felony murder, for defendants who are accessories in a killing.”)
‘One-Third of Prisoners’
One of the NRSC ads also claims that Fetterman would “release one-third of prisoners.” The narrator later says, “Emptying our prisons means more hardened criminals on the street.”
Oz also posted an ad to his Twitter account on July 18, claiming Fetterman “wants to release one-third of dangerous criminals back into our communities.”
Fetterman referenced that same quote in a July 20, 2020, tweet that said, “Our Corrections Secretary has said we could relaxes 1/3 of our inmates and not make anyone less safe. What if we directed those savings into our state schools?”
Fetterman attributes the quote to then-Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John Wetzel, who was nominated for the post in 2010 by then-Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, and renominated in 2015 by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. When the Philadelphia Department of Prisons hired Wetzel as a consultant, a city press release noted that Wetzel oversaw “the first prison population reduction in more than four decades.”
In an online panel discussion on “Second Chances,” posted to YouTube on Oct. 7, 2020, Fetterman said he “agree[d] with” Wetzel’s purported comment.
Fetterman, Oct. 7, 2020: I was on a panel with Secretary Wetzel earlier before the pandemic hit, and he said something remarkable that I agree with. He said we could reduce our prison population by a third and not make anyone less safe in Pennsylvania. And that’s a profound statement. Think about that, our corrections budget is around $3.2 billion. You reduce it by a third, you’re talking, what, conservatively $900 million a year that could be spent on our schools and our roads, on our broadband network, you name it. And we’re spending it warehousing people. Statistically we know, we age out of crime. We age out of crime. And the recidivism rate for juvenile lifers is, what, less than 1%? It’s astronomically small.
We couldn’t locate the Wetzel quote that Fetterman referenced in his tweets. But we did find a July 17 opinion piece for Penn Live co-written by Wetzel and Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The two encouraged policymakers to visit prisons to learn about them from “people on the ground.”
“They will meet many people that do not need to be there,” Wetzel and King wrote. “Yes, there are some dangerous people behind bars, but there are many others who no longer need to be incarcerated, either because they have been rehabilitated, were sentenced too harshly initially or because they’ve grown old or sick. By 2030, one-third of people in prison will be aged 55 and older — a population of more than 400,000.
“There are many people who simply no longer pose a threat to public safety and whose continued incarceration is wasting money that could be used on programs or personnel to reduce crime,” Wetzel and King wrote. “Allowing our prisons to turn into nursing homes isn’t tough on crime, it’s stupid, expensive — and it also makes us less safe, wasting resources that can be used on more effective crime reduction measures.”
Fetterman echoed some of those same points in his online panel discussion on “Second Chances” and in a November 2020 interview with Rolling Stone.
“I’ll say this: If you think Red should have died in prison in Shawshank Redemption, don’t vote for me,” Fetterman told Rolling Stone, referring to the movie character played by Morgan Freeman. “If you think that there are ample circumstances where redemption is possible, where a second chance is appropriate, then vote for me, because that’s what I want. We could reduce our prison population by a third, not make anyone less safe, and bank that $900 million, 1 billion in savings and reinvest that in our public education system. I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, and I don’t think that’s controversial at all.”
But Fetterman campaign spokesman Joe Calvello told Fox News Digital that’s not the same as wanting to release a third of all inmates.
“In all the tweets and statements you’re referencing, John does not say he supports releasing one-third of Pennsylvania’s inmates,” Calvello said. “And John does not support releasing 1/3 of all inmates.”
The claims that Fetterman wants to release a third of prisoners are sometimes combined with Fetterman’s quote, “I’m trying to get as many folks out as we can.”
The quote comes from a Politico profile of Fetterman in April 2021.
Politico, April 16, 2021: [Richard] Garland, an ex-gang member who now works with at-risk youth as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, asks Fetterman, “How can I help you to keep this moving?”
Fetterman tells him: “Whoever you’re mentoring, whoever you’re talking to—get their shit in yesterday. And I’ll do my best to expedite it as fast as we can because I’m trying to get as many folks out as we can.” He repeatedly stresses the urgency at hand, reminding Garland that his term ends soon: “We have 1.75 years.”
As lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Fetterman chairs the state’s Board of Pardons, which considers clemency applications from inmates serving life sentences, and makes recommendations to the governor. With Fetterman as chair, the board of pardons has recommended far more commutations of life sentences than in the years prior to Fetterman assuming that role.
In the past four years, the board has recommended 50 commutations, and Wolf granted 47 of them, according to statistics published by the Board of Pardons. In the four years prior to Fetterman becoming lieutenant governor, the board recommended the commutation of just six life sentences. “Since 2019, they’ve recommended more citizens for commutation than in the past 25 years combined,” Fetterman’s campaign website boasts.
“One of the things I believe in most strongly is the power of a second chance, and as the chair of the Board of Pardons in Pennsylvania, delivering that has been one of the things that I’m most proud of,” Fetterman says in a video on his campaign website.
Decriminalizing Drugs
The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, misleadingly tweeted that claims Fetterman wants to “legalize heroin.”
RNC Research@RNCResearchPennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman wants to “legalize heroin” and fund “safe injection sites” (read: taxpayer-funded drug dens)
The quotation marks around the claim that Fetterman wants to “legalize heroin” were from the RNC, which uses Fetterman’s words out of context.
In an online interview posted on Jan. 24, 2018, Fetterman talked about how he had long been warning about the need to address the opioid epidemic. (Starting at the seven-minute mark.)
Fetterman, Jan. 24, 2018: I’ll never forget the meeting I that had down at the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] where they evaluate you and your campaign and your candidacy, and one of the things I kept talking about was the opioid crisis. And they were just like, “Wait a second, what are you talking about, you want to legalize heroin? And why do care about these things?” And like, well, because as a small-town mayor, I’ve seen this firsthand and I know what a critical issue it is. And it’s only going to get worse and worse and worse. And now two years later you have the governor of our state declaring an absolute emergency on it. And we aren’t even worried about heroin anymore. It’s that we’re worried about the fentanyl and the carfentanil and things like that.
So this was not Fetterman stating as his position that he wanted to legalize heroin. Rather, Fetterman was relating a story about talking to leaders of the DSCC about making the opioid epidemic a priority of his, and DSCC officials interpreting that as him wanting to legalize heroin. Although he has not spoken about legalizing heroin, Fetterman has supported legalizing marijuana. And in a 2015 interview with The Nation, Fetterman said he supported “decriminalizing [drugs] across the board.”
The Nation, Sept. 25, 2015: What are some key issues you’re focused on?
Fetterman: I’m pro legalizing marijuana, but I go even further than some of my colleagues because I’m for decriminalizing across the board. I see it as a public-health issue, not a criminal issue. I’ve seen first hand for the last 14 years the effects it has on families, I’ve seen people overdosing —
The Nation: Is there a meth crisis in the state?
Fetterman: Heroin has claimed, as far as I know, at least 36 lives this year in overdoses. I’ve seen three people who’ve overdosed get the shard of the narc in their arms and it’s jarring. There was a huge car accident in front of our home earlier this summer. They shot up in a parking lot and crashed. It hasn’t worked. This isn’t me. It’s not my opinion. It’s a fact.
The Nation: The War on Drugs?
Fetterman: The War on Drugs, yes, the War on Drugs. If we start treating it as a public-health issue, with more compassion, without the criminal element, I think it’ll be a lot better for this society and a lot of these other issues like violence and public safety are also going to improve as a result, and we’ll also be taking a big step in taking down the prison-industrial complex.
But decriminalizing isn’t the same thing as legalizing.
As the FindLaw legal dictionary explains, “Decriminalization means that a state repealed or amended its laws to make certain acts criminal, but no longer subject to prosecution. In the marijuana context, this means individuals caught with small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption won’t be prosecuted and won’t subsequently receive a criminal record or a jail sentence.” Instead, offenders may face civil fines, drug education or drug treatment. But possessing large quantities of a drug, producing or selling the drug would still be prosecuted criminally.
As the RNC post said, Fetterman has spoken in support of “safe injection sites.” In his 2018 online interview, Fetterman said (starting at the 8:13 mark), “I think it’s important that we as a society get in front of it. I think it’s important that we as a society have all the options on the table, including needle exchange, which is only technically legal in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and even safe injection sites that are being considered like, say, in Philadelphia, where, like, you have tens of thousands of people dying across this country and when you have these kind of things and in this kind of crisis, you have to have everything on the table that has a chance of making it better, in my opinion.”
( Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104 )…how’s that for a pack of lies from the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Oz, the fraud as Fetterman refers to him…the liar endorsed by the BIG LIAR trump…
Emmett Till…his “lynching”, in 1955, lead to the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act signed into law by Biden on March 29, 2022…67 years after the 14 year-old’s torture and death…I went to see Till this evening at the Ambler…a stellar performance by Danielle Deadwyler who plays Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till…the Plot from Wikipedia: “Mamie Till became an educator and activist in the Civil Rights Movement after the death of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, who, in 1955, was beaten severely and shot dead, then thrown into the Talahachee river with a 75lb cotton gin fan tied around his neck by way of barbwired fencing by white supremacists for whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, while visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi. Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing her son’s body be left open to let the world see what they had done to him. The film is told entirely from her perspective. Emmett Till’s murder is heard, but not shown in the film.”…more from Wikipedia: “Till is a 2022 American biographical drama film directed by Chinonye Chukwu, written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg ( who plays Mamie Till’s mother ). It is based on the true story of Mamie Till, an educator and activist, who pursued justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, in 1955. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, and Goldberg. It is the second major media property based on Mamie Till to be released in 2022, following the television show Women of the Movement. The films release coincided with the unveiling of a statue in Emmett Till’s memory in Greenwood, Mississippi.”…the film was well done, and difficult to watch…even though, I think everyone should see this film…it’s still going on today…Medgar Evers was working at the NAACP at the time and was involved with trial…7 years later he was shot and killed in his driveway witnessed by his wife and children…the film presents Mamie Till’s point of view, and her decision to have an open casket…for the world to see what white supremacists did to her son…a decision that rock the United States…Mamie Till testified at the trial…the trial of the two men, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, in which they were acquitted by a jury of 12 white men… Emmett was accused by Carolyn Bryant, the shopkeeper who accusations lead to Emmett’s abduction, and torture and death…I read that Look Magazine paid Bryant and Milam $4000 for their story of how they killed Emmett Till…if that isn’t disturbing and vile!…
this from Wikipedia: “Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.
Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August 1955, he was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white, married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with, touching, or whistling at Bryant. Till’s interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of behavior for a black male interacting with a white female in the Jim Crow-era South. Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, who were armed, went to Till’s great-uncle’s house and abducted Emmett. They took him away then beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, the boy’s mutilated and bloated body was discovered and retrieved from the river.
Till’s body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, which was held at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. It was later said that “The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till’s bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention on not only U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy”. Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers.
In September 1955, an all-white jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till’s murder. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had tortured and murdered the boy, selling the story of how they did it for $4,000. Till’s murder was seen as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement. In December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott began in Alabama and lasted more than a year, resulting eventually in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. According to historians, events surrounding Till’s life and death continue to resonate. An Emmett Till Memorial Commission was established in the early 21st century. The Sumner County Courthouse was restored and includes the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. Fifty-one sites in the Mississippi Delta are memorialized as associated with Till. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, an American law which makes lynching a federal hate crime, was signed into law on March 29, 2022 by President Joe Biden.”…in 2017 it was said the Carolyn Bryant recanted her story… from Wikipedia: “In 2017, historian and author Timothy Tyson released details of a 2008 interview with Carolyn Bryant, during which, he alleged, she had disclosed that she had fabricated parts of her testimony at the trial. According to Tyson’s account of the interview, Bryant retracted her testimony that Till had grabbed her around her waist and uttered obscenities, saying “that part’s not true”. The jury did not hear Bryant’s testimony at the trial as the judge had ruled it inadmissible, but the court spectators heard. The defense wanted Bryant’s testimony as evidence for a possible appeal in case of a conviction.
In the 2008 interview, the 72-year-old Bryant said she could not remember the rest of the events that occurred between her and Till in the grocery store. She also said: “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him”. Tyson said that Roy Bryant had been abusive toward Carolyn, and “it was clear she was frightened of her husband”. Tyson believed Bryant embellished her testimony under coercive circumstances. Bryant described Milam as “domineering and brutal and not a kind man”. An editorial in The New York Times said, regarding Bryant’s admission that portions of her testimony were false: “This admission is a reminder of how black lives were sacrificed to white lies in places like Mississippi. It also raises anew the question of why no one was brought to justice in the most notorious racially motivated murder of the 20th century, despite an extensive investigation by the F.B.I.”
The New York Times quoted Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till’s, who said: “I was hoping that one day she [Bryant] would admit it, so it matters to me that she did, and it gives me some satisfaction. It’s important to people understanding how the word of a white person against a black person was law, and a lot of black people lost their lives because of it. It really speaks to history, it shows what black people went through in those days.”
However, the ‘recanting’ claim made by Tyson was not on his tape-recording of the interview. “It is true that that part is not on tape because I was setting up the tape recorder” Tyson said. The support Tyson provided to back up his claim, was a handwritten note that he said had been made at the time.
In a report to Congress in March 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice stated that it was reopening the investigation into Till’s death due to new information. In December 2021, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had closed its investigation in the case.”…
Bob Dylan wrote The Death of Emmett Till in 1989:
“Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago, When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door. This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well, The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up. They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what. They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat. There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain. The reason that they killed him there, and I’m sure it ain’t no lie, Was just for the fun of killin’ him and to watch him slowly die.
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial, Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till. But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime, And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs. For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free, While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust, Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust. Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow, For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan. But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give, We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
we win, or it’s rigged…”heads I WIN, tails you LOSE”…repugnant Republicans have set the stage to sow doubt, distrust in the forthcoming 2022 Elections…the same trump playbook he started in 2020, months before the November 2020 elections…Republicans against democracy…plus, already there has been over 100 lawsuits filed against the November 8, 2022, which obviously, hasn’t been happened yet…they’re turning to the courts to limit voting…more voting suppression…they are trashing vote by mail, trashing election machines, intimidating, sometimes armed and in tactical gear “poll watchers”…and already forcing “hand counts”…and also in the works…election deniers, on the Republican side, running for the Office of Secretary of State who oversee elections results…this from CNBC by Brian Schwatz: “Some corporate leaders are funding Trump-backed election deniers in races for secretary of state, a role that administers elections: KEY POINTS:
Some wealthy corporate leaders are donating to Trump-endorsed Republican candidates for secretary of state who have denied the results of the 2020 election.
Candidates Jim Marchant, Mark Finchem, Kristina Karamo and Chuck Gray have seen more than two dozen corporate leaders and businesses support their campaigns.
If the candidates win, they would have a critical role in both administering the election and counting ballots in 2024 — when Trump could again lead the GOP presidential ticket.
More than two dozen corporate leaders and businesses are quietly donating to the campaigns of at least four Republicans who have pushed false claims about the 2020 election results while running to become secretaries of state, according to a review of state campaign finance disclosures.
Secretary of state candidates Jim Marchant, running in Nevada; Mark Finchem, in Arizona; Kristina Karamo, in Michigan, and Chuck Gray, in Wyoming — all endorsed by former President Donald Trump — have disputed the 2020 election results on the campaign trail.
If the candidates win, they would have a critical role in both administering the election and counting ballots in 2024 — when Trump could again lead the GOP presidential ticket.
Nevada, Arizona and Michigan are each considered swing states during presidential elections, and Trump lost to President Joe Biden in all three of those states. The former president and his allies filed lawsuits challenging the results in those states, only for courts to reject them.
The candidates have echoed Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election against Biden, allegations that led to dozens of failed lawsuits attempting to overturn state results and prompted the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. Trump’s political action committee, Save America, has donated $17,000 combined to the Finchem, Marchant and Karamo campaigns, according to a report by campaign watchdog Issue One.
Despite the fact they have embraced false election conspiracies, the candidates have received donations from corporate leaders across a variety of industries. Those business officials started financing the secretary of state candidates in August 2021 and continued their donations through September, according to state records.
Overall, the 12secretary of state candidates who have disputed the 2020 election results have raised at least $5.8 million over the two-year 2022 election cycle, said Michael Beckel, a research director at Issue One, in a tweet. The other Republican candidates who have denied the election results are running to be secretaries of state in Alabama, Indiana, Connecticut, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont and South Dakota.
The wealthiest donors to Marchant, Finchem, Karamo and Grayinclude Richard Uihlein, a shipping magnate and conservative megadonor; Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO and current election denier; Jim Henry, the founder of oil and gas drilling company Henry Resources; Kyle Stallings, the CEO of oil and gas investment company Desert Royalty; Lewis Topper, a fast food executive who runs Integrated Food Systems Inc.; Matthew McKean, the CEO of energy company Frontier Applied Sciences; Ben Friedman, the CEO of restaurant food producer Riviera Produce, and Susan Gore, an heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune.
All eight have combined to give over $30,000, with donations since the start of last year split among Marchant, Karamo, Gray and Finchem, records show.
Fundraising for secretary of state races where deniers of the 2020 election results are on the ballot
◼ Republican ◼ Democrat
STATE
CANDIDATE
AMOUNT RAISED
AZ
Mark Finchem, R
$1.23M
Adrian Fontes, Dem
$700K
MI
Kristina Karamo, R
$919K
Jocelyn Benson, Dem
$4.26M
AL
Wes Allen, R
$805K
Pamela Laffitte, Dem
$38K
WY
Chuck Gray, R
$711K
No Democratic opposition
IN
Diego Morales, R
$670K
Destiny Scott Wells, Dem
$169K
CT
Dominic Rapini, R
$576K
Stephanie Thomas, Dem
$581K
NV
Jim Marchant,R
$437K
Cisco Aguilar, Dem
$1.13M
MN
Kim Crockett, R
$313K
Steve Simon, Dem
$1.37M
MA
Rayla Campbell, R
$77K
William Galvin, Dem
$1.1M
NM
Audrey Trujillo, R
$65K
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Dem
$475K
SD
Monae Johnson, R
$12K
Tom Cool, Dem
$0
VT
H. Brooke Paige, R
$0
Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Dem
$72K
Note: Horizontal axes unique to each state Data as of Oct. 11, 2022
Chart: Gabriel Cortes / CNBC
Source: Issue One
Mike Kalis, the CEO of Michigan-based real estate firm Great Lake Investments, gave $1,000 in September to Karamo’s campaign to be Michigan’s secretary of state. He told CNBC that he supports Karamo for her stance on elections — though many of her claims have been debunked.
“The number 1 reason I support her is her strength in wanting to make our elections have integrity,” Kalis said in an email explaining his donation to Karamo.
Karamo spread false election conspiracies at a rally featuring Trump earlier this month. She claimed that her Democratic opponent, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, aims to “keep dead people on the voter rolls” and is “intentionally trying to corrupt the election system.”
All the other donors mentioned in this story did not respond to requests for comment. When CNBC asked to speak with Jim Henry, the founder of Henry Resources, about the contribution to Karamo’s campaign, a company representative said, “Well he’s not available right now, but thank you for calling,” then quickly hung up.
Beckel noted in an email to CNBC that donors could be giving to secretary of state candidates for future help with issues more directly tied to their businesses. Those could include their handling of the Uniform Commercial Code — which governs transactions in the U.S. — and the process of registering corporations.
“While secretaries of state typically administer elections, these officials also have responsibilities that impact the business community and how business gets done in a state,” Beckel said.
Election denier Marchant gets corporate support
Marchant is running to be secretary of state in Nevada — a swing state that Trump lost in 2020 and which will play host to one of the elections that will determine Senate control this year. At a rally with Trump on Saturday, Marchant said, “President Trump and I lost an election in 2020 because of a rigged election.” Marchant ran to represent Nevada in the U.S. House during the 2020 election but lost to Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford.
Marchant later added at the rally that “when my coalition of secretary of state candidates get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024.” It is unclear who is part of Marchant’s coalition, though a PAC he runs has backed candidates including Finchem and Karamo.
His opponent, Democrat Cisco Aguilar, has outraised him so far in the election. But much of Marchant’s support has come from business leaders.
Some of Marchant’s biggest donations from corporate leaders or businesses so far include $5,000 from Uihlein, $5,000 from Byrne, $2,900 from Topper, $8,000 from Tradebloc Inc., a Texas-based credit and debt management firm, and $5,000 from Nevada-based home designer Blue Heron.
Jeff Fegert, the owner of Nevada-based Target Construction, used a limited liability company called Maico Ryder to donate $10,000 to Marchant’s campaign. Maico Ryder’s most recent public disclosure signed by an accountant in April lists Fegert as the sole member of the company, with a Nevada address matching Target Construction.
MDB Realty, a real estate firm headquartered in Las Vegas, also gave $100,000 in June to Marchant’s political action committee, Conservatives for Election Integrity PAC. The PAC has endorsed Marchant, Finchem, Karamo and Audrey Trujillo, a Republican candidate to be New Mexico’s secretary of state who has also questioned the results of the 2020 election, according to its website.
Marchant, the PAC’s president, is the only current secretary of state candidate who has received a donation from the committee, state filings show. Marchant’s campaign got $10,000 in March from the PAC he leads, according to a filing.
Trujillo pushed her false claims about the 2020 election on a podcast hosted by former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“Somebody asked me, ‘How do you know Trump won New Mexico?’ and I’m like, ‘We didn’t see Biden signs anywhere,’” Trujillo told Bannon in June.”…
Maya Angelou has told us “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”… Opinion from Jennifer Rubin: ” Republicans have shown who they are. Voters should believe them.: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has shown yet again that Republicans are no longer bothering to disguise their extremism and contempt for voters’ intelligence. He has indicated that ifRepublicans are put in charge, they would be willing to put aid to Ukraine on the chopping block and play a game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States.
McCarthy’s candor is not unique. MAGA candidates in debates, interviews and speeches have readily conceded their most extreme views and displayed their worst qualities. Here are six themes that keep popping up:
1) Republicans want politicians to control women’s pregnancies
Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz turned himself into a meme when he insisted in his debate with Democratic opponent John Fetterman that women, doctors and “local political leaders” should be making decisions about abortions. Thanks to him, many voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere will go to the polls thinking of politicians prying into women’s OB/GYN appointments.
Meanwhile, Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, attempted to walk back his extreme position on abortion in a recent debate, arguing that he always supported exceptions to abortion bans for cases of rape or incest or to protect the health of the mother. This is false.
If Republicans lose some close races in November, abortion may well be the reason.
2) Republicans won’t hesitate to back former president Donald Trump
It’s true, as the Hill reported, that “Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and former Vice President Mike Pence in recent days each indicated they’d rather see someone else on the ballot in the next presidential election.” But none of them are on the ballot. Virtually all those who are refuse to criticize Trump.
Oz declared: “I’ll support whoever the Republican Party puts up. … I would support Donald Trump if he decided to run for president.” Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters took a call from Trump after a recent debate and dutifully pledged to keep faith with election deniers. “Absolutely, we stay with those people,” Masters replied.
Forget the notion that Republicans would defy Trump if elected or show any resistance to a second term, even if Trump is under indictment. If you like Trump’s views on Ukraine, climate change and health care, you’ll love this crowd.
3 ) Republicans will instigate a constitutional crisis if they do not win in 2024
Masters is not alone in embracing election denial. Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, has repeatedly refused to say she would recognize her opponent, Katie Hobbs, as the winner if the voters chose her. Almost 300 Republican candidates have at least questioned the 2020 election, some indicating that they would not have certified valid results in their states — and wouldn’t in the future.
If Republican secretaries of state, governors and members of Congress refuse to acknowledge Democratic victories in 2024, we could face a constitutional crisis that will make 2020 seem orderly.
4 ) Republicans no longer pretend to support economic populism
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has declared his intention to tax poorer Americans. Meanwhile, The Post reports, “Republicans plan to push to extend key parts of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts if they take control of Congress in this fall’s elections,” thereby doubling down on large tax benefits for the wealthy. Many economists, The Post adds, say this “flies against their promises to fight inflation and reduce the federal deficit.”
Candidates aren’t advancing any anti-working-class friendly economic plans. Johnson has urged the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and has disparaged entitlements such as Social Security, which is sure to alarm the 1.3 million Wisconsinites on Social Security. And a slew of elite-educated Republican millionaires (e.g., Oz, Masters, Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance) have run on reverse-Robin-Hood platforms.
“Populism,” it seems, now amounts to fanning election denial and bullying pregnant women and corporations that decry discrimination.
5 ) Republicans have no plan to fight inflation
Republicans propose extending tax cuts, cracking down on immigration and eliminating cost-cutting measures for prescription drug costs. But none of these would address inflation; they would make it worse by increasing the national debt, further tightening the job market and acting as a fiscal stimulus in an already overheated economy.Worse, Republicans are willing to stage a default crisis to demand that Democrats accept cuts to entitlements.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), when pressed on his plan to fight inflation during a recent debate, insisted that the government must stop spending on items such as the American Rescue Plan (which ended last year) and produce more domestic energy (which is largely irrelevant to inflation). Had the media devoted fewer resources to horserace coverage, voters might have a clearer picture of whether Republicans would make inflation better or worse.
6 ) Republicans revel in cruelty
Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for Florida governor, effectively laid out the cruelty underlying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s policies in their recent debate. “You don’t have the temperament to be kind and decent to other people who don’t look like you, who don’t act like you and don’t contribute to you,” Crist declared. On DeSantis’s ploy to send asylum seekers to other locales, Crist said: “We have an immigration problem … but it doesn’t mean that you use Florida taxpayers’ dollars to charter jets to go to Texas, lie to people to get them onto planes, fly them up to the northern part of our country.” Crist continued: “It’s not right, and you were inhumane.”
Yet DeSantis, like many other Republicans, seem unbothered to be portrayed as a bully. They show no empathy for women with unwanted pregnancies or who have been traumatized by rape or incest. Indeed, cruel and ignorant rhetoric seems to be the norm in GOP circles.
Republicans are hardly the ideal image of masculine leadership. In many cases, their Democratic opponents have aptly portrayed them as small, groveling men trying to stay in Trump’s good graces. For that, they have no defense.”…
a few comments on Rubin’s Opinion piece:
Scientifically Minded: “To vote Republican in 2022 you have to be an ignoramus or a cruel person.”
Angoose: “The two are not mutually exclusive. I live in the south.”
Smarticat: “Yeah. All this and yet Democrats are poised to lose to a lot of these malignant Republicans. Why are they losing ground to this? And what do they need to do to reclaim the broad center of American politics, something you might think would be easy to do given how extreme the GOP has become around elections and voting, and their announced intentions for some seriously unpopular policies?”
Ctrygrl: “Name one time in the last 40 years electing republicans made life in this country better for 99% of us”…trk803: “Or even 9% of us!”
Hofnar: “The headline oversimplifies the problem.
Certainly the fact that one if the two major parties is run by racist, lawless, lying, corrupt, spineless, authoritarian nihilists is a catastrophe.
But an even greater problem is that so many of our fellow Americans like what they hear from the above mentioned lawless, mindless, anti-democratic goons.”
keithsmid: “Exactly so. Trump will be gone, but the seventy-some million who voted for him will still be here.”
jjmarold: “For many years, the now extinct Republican party claimed to be the party of “fiscal responsibility” as opposed to the “spendthrift Democrats”. Remember Reagan’s “tax and spend” description of the Democrat’s philosophy? The new Trumplican party, made up of some former Republicans, will happily outspend Democrats in order to regain and stay in power. And the gullibles love it!”
Retired Colonel 1: “Why do you write “President Trump”? He is NOT president. Perhaps Mr? Why elevate the clown any more than is necessary.
Yes republicans are running on taking abortion rights from women with contraceptives, gay and inter race marriage on deck. They are running on taking social security, medicare, veterans benefits and healthcare away. They are running on harassing gay and trans kids and their parents. They are running on christian nationalism and one national religion. This is all of the third rails of politics and lots of people are going to vote for them. There is no fixing stupid”
howardnmi: “The Maga mantra is the word FREEDOM. However, their definition of “freedom” is that the GOP’s major corporate and billionaire donors are “free” to not pay their fair share of taxes. And, at the same time, that the rest of us are “free” to worry about the ability to get decent affordable health care and “free” to receive wages/salaries not in line with our contribution to corporate profits and “free” to worry about our finances in our older age. AH FREEDOM!”
Bernard Demczuk: “Jennifer, I always appreciate your opinions and agree with you 99% of the time. But please begin to write on why Trump and the Republican leadership are anti-semitic and racist. The reason: that is who their base is! That is who they curry votes from. The American people have for 400 years hated and killed people of color starting with Native Americans, Africans, Mexicans, the Chinese and Japanese and Jews. Over 50% of White Christians Americans hate anyone who looks different than them. Tell the truth Jennifer. We are a cruel, violent, vicious, and vile people who love bombing the hell out of countries with majority people of color. For 246 years of slavery, 103 years of Black Codes, convict lease systems, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, redlining and violent attacks on civil rights activists trying to register Black people to vote, equals 359 years of White supremacy. White Christian evangelicals, the base of the Republican Party and Trump, think they are superior. We are a cruel violent people poisoned by racism, White supremacy, colonialism and male-toxicity who are in love with guns and violence. We are 4% of the worlds population owning 46% of the worlds guns. 50% of American voters are in this political spectrum. And the most vicious of the vicious are the White Texas Male Cowboy carrying guns and more guns with a big hat and no brains. The White Texan male invented lynching as performance art encouraging the entire town of White racists to view the cruel burning-alive of a Black person hanging from a tree. Tell the truth Jennifer. This is who the Republican base is including their well-educated White elite who love Trump’s tax cuts. Ye hates himself and he hates Jews and Black people. That’s who he is. They are a violent people. And our violent history is coming home to roost and tearing our country apart. Uncivil war in 2024. It’s already here. Speak the truth, please.”
kd1ks1: “No mention here of the dangers inherent in the erosion of the separation of church and state. This movement toward a Christian theocracy seems to me to be more pervasive than the media acknowledges.”
jimmycrackcorn: “No mention here of the dangers inherent in the erosion of the separation of church and state. This movement toward a Christian theocracy seems to me to be more pervasive than the media acknowledges.”
dnice1: “The head of the GOP Senate Campaign Committee also proposes raising taxes on the American families in the bottom half of the income distribution–working class and poorer families. He thinks they don’t pay any federal taxes or fees, but he is wrong about that. How much did his company steal from the federal government?”
Raventhunder: “The Republicans have shown themselves to be hypocrites. They will court the voters but will do nothing for them. The radical right strain has infected them further and once they secure their power they will again sell it to the highest bidder, which is not trump. The voters are only of use until they secure that power. They have done nothing for them in the past and will do nothing for them in the future. They work to secure their own interests by selling themselves. That doesn’t work very well for them either because they don’t realize they are being humiliated.”
Republicans do revel in cruelty and have embraced the TOXIC LIEE…they’ve become trump’s embodiment for the most part…misogynistic, racist, anti-semitic, and anti-democracy…there’s still some Republicans who are horrified by those who follow trump…but they’re in the minority…Liz Cheney…Adam Kinzinger…for two…like I said the other day, it’s scary times…and we are over the cliff is Republicans take back the House and the Senate… democracy is at on the chopping block…democracy is at stake…all for the sake of the toxic lie…trump’s BIG LIE…
in order to distract myself…Pam and Julia and I went to trivia at Creekside/Cheshire Brewing tonight…we haven’t been since this past summer…we call ourselves Three Generations…and we have come in second or third a few times…but not tonight…still fun however…we do love competing…last night I went to the Ambler with Elissa to see The Good House again…Sigourney Weaver’s tour de force…it was even better the second time…I feel like she will win an Oscar for her performance…go see The Good House…
the racist, repugnant Republicans are running ads on Crime against the black Democrat candidates like Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Cheri Beasley in North Carolina…they’re running ads on Inflation on white Democrat candidates like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania…Crime is the highest in red states… where they have relaxed gun laws…like Texas…from Google: “The West South Central District – part of the South region and composed of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas – had the highest crime rates of any district. Both property crime and violent crime were 22% higher in these states than the national average.”..and the area with the highest crime rate in California is Bakersfield, the District represented by Kevin McCarthy…and the rise in anti-semitic and racist violence is connected to trump…no doubt about it…and as for Inflation…we know that rising prices are directly connected to corporate greed…making sky high profits…and Republicans have no solution…just whining and blaming…and threatening to hold America hostage if Biden doesn’t cut Social Security and Medicare… they have given their corporate donors heavy duty tax cuts 5 years ago that tripled the national debt…and whatever they propose will result in chaos…just ask the United Kingdom…republicans are proposing Truss-economics…tax cuts for the rich and cutting social programs…from the New York Times by Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane: “Republicans Denounce Inflation, but Few Economists Expect Their Plans to Help: Proposed tax and spending cuts by the G.O.P., which is making a push to take back Congress, are unlikely to bring down rapidly rising prices any time soon.: WASHINGTON — Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture the House and the Senate this fall, hammering Democrats on President Biden’s economic policies, which they say have fueled the fastest price gains in 40 years.
Republican candidates have centered their economic agenda on promises to help Americans cope with everyday price increases and to increase growth. They have pledged to reduce government spending and to make permanent parts of the 2017 Republican tax cuts that are set to expire over the next three years — including incentives for corporate investment and tax reductions for individuals.
And they have vowed to repeal the corporate tax increases that Mr. Biden signed into law in August while gutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which was given more money to help the United States go after high-earning and corporate tax cheats.
“The very fact that Republicans are poised to take back majorities in both chambers is an indictment of the policies of this administration,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, noting that “if you look at the spending that they did on a partisan basis, we certainly would be able to stop that.”
But while Republicans insist they will be better stewards of the economy, few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term. Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy.
“It is unlikely that any of the policies proposed by Republicans would meaningfully reduce inflation in 2023, when rapidly rising prices will still be a major problem for the economy and for consumers,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee held a virtual meeting where they detailed plans to make the 2017 tax law provisions permanent, billing the move as a crucial step toward improving the nation’s economy.
“As we look forward to the strong probability of an upcoming recession, there is new urgency to preserve these pro-growth policies,” said Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida.
As they position themselves for the midterm elections, Republicans have also indicated that they might try to hold the nation’s borrowing limit hostage to achieve spending cuts. The debt ceiling, which caps how much the federal government can borrow, has increasingly become a fraught arena for political brinkmanship.
Multiple top Republicans have signaled that unless Mr. Biden agrees to reduce future government spending, they will refuse to lift the borrowing cap. That would effectively bar the federal government from issuing new bonds to finance its deficit spending, potentially jeopardizing on-time payments for military salaries and safety-net benefits, and roiling bond markets.
Mr. Biden has tried to push back against the Republicans and cast the election not as a referendum on his economic policies, but as a choice between Democratic policies to reduce costs on health care and electricity and Republican efforts to repeal those policies. He has accused Republicans of stoking further price increases with tax cuts that could add to the federal budget deficit, and of risking financial calamity by refusing to raise the debt limit.
“We, the Democrats, are the ones that are fiscally responsible. Let’s get that straight now, OK?” Mr. Biden said during remarks on Monday to workers at the Democratic National Committee. “We’re investing in all of America, reducing everyday costs while also lowering the deficit at the same time. Republicans are fiscally reckless, pushing tax cuts for the very wealthy that aren’t paid for, and exploiting the deficit that is making inflation worse.”
The challenge for Mr. Biden is that voters do not seem to be demanding details from Republicans and are instead putting their trust in them to turn around an economy that voters believe is headed in the wrong direction. Polls suggest Americans trust Republicans by a wide margin to handle inflation and other economic issues.
In a nationwide deluge of campaign ads and in public remarks, Republicans have pinned much of their inflation-fighting agenda on halting a stimulus spending spree that began under President Donald J. Trump and continued under Mr. Biden, in an effort to help people and businesses survive the pandemic recession. Those efforts have largely ended, and Mr. Biden has shown no desire to pass further stimulus legislation at a time of rapid price growth.
Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that “the first step in combating inflation is to stop the historically reckless spending spree occurring under one-party Democrat rule in Washington, and that will only happen with a Republican majority in Congress.”
“Republicans,” he added, “will fight to bring down the cost of living and impose fiscal restraint in Washington, and that begins by ensuring Democrats are not able to impose round after round of new inflationary spending.”
Economists largely agree that the Federal Reserve is most responsible for fighting inflation, which policymakers are trying to do with rapid interest rates increases. But they say Congress could plausibly help the Fed by reducing budget deficits, in order to slow the amount of consumer spending power in the economy.
One way to do that would be to significantly and quickly reduce federal spending. Such a move could result in widespread government layoffs and reduced support for low-income individuals — who would be less able to afford increasingly expensive food and other staples — and could prompt a recession.
“The amount of cuts you’d have to do to move the needle on inflation are completely off the table,” said Jon Lieber, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is now the Eurasia Group’s managing director for the United States.
Still, Mr. Lieber said that likelihood would not sully the Republican pitch to voters this fall. “Midterm votes are a referendum on the party in power,” he said, “and the party in power has responsibility for inflation.”
Biden administration officials contend that the Republican plans, rather than curbing inflation, could worsen America’s fiscal situation.
Administration economists estimate that two policies favored by Republicans — repealing a new minimum tax on large corporations included in the Inflation Reduction Act and extending some business tax cuts from Mr. Trump’s 2017 legislation — could collectively increase the federal budget deficit by about $90 billion next year.
As they eye the majority, top Republicans have suggested that they will consider an economically risky strategy to potentially force Mr. Biden to agree to spending cuts, including for safety-net programs. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is the minority leader and is seen as the clear pick to be speaker should Republicans win control of the House, suggested to Punchbowl News this month that he would be open to withholding Republican votes to raise the federal borrowing limit unless Mr. Biden and Democrats agreed to policy changes that curb spending.”…the Republican “proposal”…Robin Hood in reverse…rob the poor, raise taxes on them, and give to the rich, their corporate donors, with tax cuts…all on the backs of the dwindling middle class and the poor…all without shame…
and if they take back the House, they propose to IMPEACH Biden and others in his Administration including Kamala Harris…and Merrick Garland…they would absolutely shut down the January 6 investigation…leaving the now corrupt Supreme Court, with also dwindling integrity and America’s confidence…Marjorie Taylor Greene will be the face of the GOP…Jim Jordan would be head of the Judiciary Committee…he would “oversee the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement entities.”…a close, corrupt ally of insurrectionist trump who is also an insurrectionist…a major player in the attempted coup…and the failed attempt to stop “the peaceful transfer of power.”…the Republicans are on the way to destroy democracy…
Biden has pledged to ban assault weapons…again…the ban was in place until 2004 when the repugnant Republicans took over the House and refused to renew the ban on assault weapons…which lead to the massacres of children at Sandy Hook in 2012, the killing of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018 — and of course, Uvalde, Texas and the Walmart in El Paso…the Buffalo grocery store shooting…and on and on…Third Way report from March 15, 2022: “The Red State Murder Problem: Takeaways:
The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
Every news outlet from FOX to CNN to The New York Times to local newspapers has a story with attention-grabbing headlines like “US cities hit all-time murder records.” Fox News and Republicans have jumped on this and framed it as a “Democrat” problem. They blame it on Democrat’s “soft-on-crime” approach and have even referred to a New York District Attorney’s approach as “hug-a-thug.” Many news stories outside of Fox have also purported that police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and have pointed to cities like New York and Los Angeles.
There is a measure of truth to these stories. The US saw an alarming 30% increase in murder in 2020. While 2021 data is not yet complete, murder was on the rise again this past year. Some “blue” cities, like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have seen real and persistent increases in homicides. These cities—along with others like Los Angeles, New York, and Minneapolis—are also in places with wall-to-wall media coverage and national media interest.
But there is a large piece of the homicide story that is missing and calls into question the veracity of the right-wing obsession over homicides in Democratic cities: murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.
For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.
We collected 2019 and 2020 murder data from all 50 states. (Comprehensive 2021 data is not yet available.) We pulled the data from yearly crime reports released by state governments, specifically the Departments of Justice and Safety. For states that didn’t issue state crime reports, we pulled data from reputable local news sources. To allow for comparison, we calculated the state’s per capita murder rate, the number of murders per 100,000 residents, and categorized states by their presidential vote in the 2020 election, resulting in an even 25-25 split.
We found that murder rates are, on average, 40% higher in the 25 states Donald Trump won in the last presidential election compared to those that voted for Joe Biden. In addition, murder rates in many of these red states dwarf those in blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts. And finally, many of the states with the worst murder rates—like Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansas—are ones that few would describe as urban. Only 2 of America’s top 100 cities in population are located in these high murder rate states. And not a single one of the top 10 murder states registers in the top 15 for population density.
Whether one does or does not blame Republican leaders for high murder rates, it seems that Republican officeholders do a better job of blaming Democrats for lethal crime than actually reducing lethal crime.
Trump-Voting States Account for 8 out of the 10 Highest Murder Rates in 2020.
If you’re tuned in to the media, you’d think murder is rocketing skyward in New York, California, Illinois. But those states don’t even crack the top ten.
In fact, the top per capita murder rate states in 2020 were mostly those far from massive urban centers and Democratic mayors and governors. Eight of the top ten worst murder rate states voted for Trump in 2020. None of those eight has supported a Democrat for president since 1996.
The chart below shows the top 10 murder rate states in 2020. Mississippi had the highest homicide rate at 20.50 murders per 100,000 residents, followed by Louisiana at 15.79, Kentucky at 14.32, Alabama at 14.2, and Missouri at 14. The national average was 6.5 per 100,000 residents, but the top five states had rates more than twice that high.
These red states are not generating “murder is out of control” national headlines. They seem to generate no headlines at all. The rest of the top ten were filled out by South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee—all states rarely talked about in breathless media reports about rampant crime in Democratic strongholds. Notably, New Mexico and Georgia were the only Biden-voting states in the top ten, and they ranked seventh and eighth, respectively.
Five of the largest Biden-voting states by population, and those often in the news when it comes to crime, had much lower murder rates. New York at 4.11 per 100,000 residents, California at 5.59, and New Jersey at 3.70 were each well below the national average. Pennsylvania (7.22) and Illinois (9.20) were higher than the national average. But Mississippi’s murder rate was nearly 400% higher than New York’s, more than 250% higher than California’s, and about 120% higher than Illinois’s. In fact, the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s, the homes to some of the largest cities featured prominently in the “crime is out of control” narrative.
8 out of 10 Highest Murder Rates are in Trump-Voting States
2020 Murder Rates Are 40% Higher in Trump-Voting States Compared to Biden-Voting States.
Between 2019 and 2020, Murder Rates increased slightly faster in Trump-voting states than Biden-voting states.
6 out of 10 Highest Murder Rate Increases are in Trump-Voting States
Conclusion
The current narrative around crime and murder is convenient and wrong. Whether you’re watching CNN or Fox News, or getting news online or from a traditional newspaper, you would think that the increase in murder is a phenomenon found mostly in liberal cities. Many have tried attributing this increase to Democratic policies, specifically police reform. Republican lawmakers and ad makers have contributed to this narrative through clever messaging and strategies.
But the data clearly paint a different story. The increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem but a national problem. Murder rates are actually higher in Republican, Trump-voting states that haven’t even flirted with ideas like defund the police. Eight of the ten most lawless, high-murder states are not only Trump-voting states, but GOP bastions for the last quarter of a century. A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.”
the Democrats have to pound this message to America…they’re not doing it!…democracy is at stake above all…get it together Democrats…get the message out…make the case!…our democracy is at stake…
Elissa and I watched the debate tonight between Fetterman and Oz…it was not a good venue, and the moderators weren’t strong enough to stop Oz from interrupting and going over his time allotted…no to mention calling him out for not answering the question…not telling us what he would do to solve the problem but kept telling us what Fetterman would do…that he was the extreme…the projection…Oz is a TV star…he knows how to be on TV…and Fetterman tried his best to answer the questions…and seemed frozen…he did not come off well for the most part… I’m sorry about that…Oz did commit to backing trump, after being pressed to answer the question…and his abortion answer – he wouldn’t answer whether or not he would back Lindsay Graham’s national abortion ban…in a round about way, he wants to leave the question of abortion up to the state legislatures and you know what that means?…a blue state ban on all abortions…all the senatorial races are neck and neck..all across the country…and I’m not feeling confident…because the GOP is lying, making us afraid…distracting us away from what they would do when they take back power…we would go backward, into chaos…and over the abyss…and I just don’t get it…I don’t!…that people would vote for an “election denier”…that they pay homage to the most corrupt president we have ever had…who was twice impeached…who is under investigation for multiple crimes… and through Moscow Mitch loaded the Supreme Court with extreme “conservative” who are taking away our rights…with more to come in this new session…and don’t get me started with Clarence Thomas and his wife…it’s scary times…I have that sinking feeling in my stomach…this from Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post Opinion: “There is no compromise with election deniers. And that’s the problem.: Right-wing pundits and Republican apologists are quick to blame “elites” or “the left” for a failure to respect and recognize the legitimacy of a MAGA movement based in election denial, White Christian nationalism and hostility toward robust democratic elections. It’s a demand for acceptance that is eerily reminiscent of other periods in U.S. history (e.g., the 1850s, the 1920s, the 1950s), which can illuminate the depth of our national problem.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, for example, it was as if the South “could hear nothing more — could absorb nothing more — once it was told that the rest of the nation had found its way of life morally wanting. It felt judged, and it hated it,” writes Jon Meacham in “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle.”
Substitute “election denier” for “the South,” and you have a fair approximation of the current state of American politics. Now, one side believes its viewpoint is essential to maintaining its power and its conception of America. It insists its followers can be “seen” only if the rest of us agree with their delusions and conspiracies. Sorry, but in a democracy, there is no compromise with that mentality. Buying into the “big lie” and white nationalism means rejecting the premise of constitutional government based on the creed “All men are created equal.”
Aggravated by declining economic prospects, overwhelmed by the opioid epidemic and utterly divorced from mainstream news sources, they unsurprisingly glob onto conspiracies, hold up former president Donald Trump as their champion and refuse to process any information that conflicts with the victimhood they embrace.
While there are certainly persuadable voters who drift between the parties, one cannot attribute Democrats’ losses in certain areas of the country to “poor messaging” or even a specific policy failure. None of that would make any difference. It’s fantasy to think there is a segment of White male working-class voters eager to vote Democratic if only Democrats had not passed the American Rescue Plan or avoided dealing with bias in policing.
Sure, Republican politicians, big donors, right-wing pundits and GOP consultants would love us to believe that the misguided policies of Democrats have created the MAGA movement. Balderdash. There are some who see the disaffected MAGA mob as a means to their own ends of low taxes and right-wing judges, but let’s not pretend that sophisticated policy differences explain the movement.
That leaves us with an ongoing crisis in democracy in which each election puts us on the brink of chaos and democratic collapse. The solution if one wants to retain reality-based, democratic pluralism and the rule of law is threefold.
First, regardless of the MAGA camp’s irrational political beliefs, there are real problems in stretches of America. If one wants to have both widespread affluence and political sanity, it pays to draw down the venom in communities that feel left behind. Spreading chip manufacturing to the heartland and spending billions of dollars on infrastructure make both economic and political sense. The less aggrieved certain voters are, the less vulnerable to demagogues they will be.
Second, everyone else has to vote. There is no substitute for high engagement, high turnout and an educated electorate. If 90 percent of the money spent on ads that viewers literally tune out were devoted to organizing on college campuses and other low-turnout environs, the results would be quite different for the pro-democracy, pro-pluralism forces.
Third, one has to be at least in a position to win those reachable non-progressives. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is running neck and neck in the Ohio Senate race because he’s an economic moderate rooted in the sensibility of the industrial Midwest. But what works for uber-progressive Democrats in Vermont or Massachusetts probably will not work in swing states such as Wisconsin. Left-leaning Democrats cannot lead with their chin where they don’t enjoy big demographic advantages.
No, we’re not heading for a real civil war (although let’s not mince words about the right’s Jim Crow election agenda as a means to boost White voting power). However, the MAGA movement’s deep-seated, irrational pugnaciousness threatens functional democracy. Smart economic policy, well-selected candidates and supercharged organizing could provide some hope of returning to the politics of reason and inclusion. But do not underestimate the difficulty of the undertaking.”…
it’s scary times right now…some of the comments to agree with –
from PacificCoast Wren: “My question is, what happened to the 14th Amendment, Section 3?
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
to bring the movies in on this – from D D Marshall: “Our low info, lavishly misinformed, morbidly susceptible to quackery, traitor class is afflicted with the Chauncey Gardner syndrome. Remember when he said, “I can’t read… I like to watch TV.”
from Simon Magus: “trumpers represent the tyranny of stupidity”
further from Simon Magus: “From 1940 – 1970 America was the strongest nation on earth
we had the most robust economy
we built the interstate highway system
we had the best schools in the world
we built the transistor, the laser
we put man on the moon
we taxed the ultra rich and big corporations up to 70% federal income taxes
then came Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, and tRump
now we tax the ultra rich less than 7% of their income in federal income taxes
corporations less than 1% income taxes
and the middle class 20-30%% tax rate.
billionaires and corporations used to pay 80% of total tax bill
thanks to GOP, they now pay 21% …and you and I pay the lions share of taxes
republicans are why America is in declinebillionaires not paying taxes are why America is in declineGOPers have no solutions to problems, they are the problem“
more from Simon Magus: “vote Democrat
vote to save America from trumpism, fascism and stupidity
if Trumpers win, you won’t like the results”
from JOJOBLANCO: “The three most important issues in this election are democracy, democracy and democracy. All the other issues will be dealt with in time if we still have a vote that won’t be stolen or overturned to appease a demagogue’s narcissism.
I’m really sick of seeing these maga election liars being treated in the media as legitimate candidates. There is nothing legitimate about someone who knowingly lies in an attempt to overthrow democracy. We know who they are and if we don’t stop them at the ballot box, that’s on us. I’ve heard Costa Rica’s nice.”
from Chasmaporthertes: “God only knows what to do with the MAGA people. They’re hopeless, utterly impervious to facts, to logic, to common sense. They’ll follow Trump and the crazy wing of the GOP right off a cliff. They’re essentially lemmings, zombies, or pod people from the 1956 movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.
from wfb5221: “If Trump is ever re-elected Democracy is dead. The more MAGA candidates elected this cycle the closer we are to dictatorship. Now matter what dictator arises we will lose our Constitution thus our rights. The 2nd Amendment Rights will be gone and so will every ones weapons; dictators will not allow citizens to have weapons. So, think before you vote; Red for Dictatorship Blue for Democracy.”
I believe that not only our guns would be gone, but our bank accounts…our real estate…and will corporations be taken over by the dictator…and given to loyalists…like Putin and his Oligarchs…remember trump said he likes uneducated people…get in line to go over the cliff…it’s scary times…and I wonder how can this be happening?…why haven’t we been able to stop this…and then I wonder how the world can stand by and watch Putin kill innocent people…children…?…it’s more than scary…
The Voice -the battles are over…less than half have gone home due to saves and steals…and the kid who is 6′ 4″ who I wrote was 19, is 15…Julia told me…I took dinner to Elissa who came back from her trip this morning…I found a penny outside Creekside where I went to get Caesar Salads…I’m glad you’re back…I missed you…
in Arizona, “poll watchers”…in tactical gear…with weapons…”hanging out” watching drop-boxes for mail-in ballots…Arizona is still reeling from flipping red to blue…the trumpers are doing everything in their power to take it back…from election deniers spreading disinformation and lies to wanting to take over the state and decide who wins and who loses, voters be damned…they’re starting by voter intimidation…from The Hill by Julia Mueller: “Arizona officials ‘deeply concerned’ by armed ‘vigilantes’ at ballot drop box: “Arizona officials on Saturday sounded alarms about voter safety after two armed individuals deemed “vigilantes” dressed in tactical gear were found outside a Maricopa County ballot drop box Friday evening.
We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box. Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity. Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints,” said Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in a joint statement.
“Although monitoring and transparency in our elections is critical, voter intimidation is unlawful. For those who want to be involved in election integrity, become a poll worker or an official observer with your political party. Don’t dress in body armor to intimidate voters as they are legally returning their ballots,” the statement continued.
The two armed individuals left the Mesa ballot drop box after Maricopa County law enforcement responded, according to the elections officials.
The incident comes after the Arizona secretary of state last week referred a case of possible voter intimidation to the Justice Department and the state’s attorney general after a voter attempting to cast their ballot in Maricopa County was reportedly “approached and followed by a group of individuals.”
Maricopa County was a focal point of election concerns during the 2020 presidential election. After former President Trump claimed the election was stolen from him, the Arizona state Senate contracted the firm Cyber Ninjas to conduct a controversial audit, which confirmed President Biden’s win in the state. “No matter how you choose to vote in Arizona, you should feel safe doing so,” the state elections officials said in their Saturday statement. “We will do everything possible in our roles to protect voters, election workers, and our free and fair elections,” they added.”…it’s not only this type of Voter Suppression and Intimidation…but it other ways repugnant Republicans are “playing dirty”…beside lying…they are Photoshopping Democrats…not only making their skin darker, if they are people of color, case in point, Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, and Stacy Abrams in Georgia…they are also putting t-shirts on the candidates that read “Defund the Police”…completely bogus…Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor, is big on making election integrity shaking…she refuses to say that if she loses, she will accept the results…already making the trump “claim”…the only way she will lose is if there’s voter fraud…and in Arizona the Secretary of State oversees elections…Mark Finchem is the Republican nominee…pushes election disinformation…putting Biden’s win in doubt…he is trump’s choice and was at the January 6 rally…he wants to make the decision on who wins Arizona elections…never mind about your vote…it’s ugly…ugly!…
we have Clarence Thomas put a pause on Lindsay Graham’s subpoena to appear before the Georgia Grand Jury…Laurence Tribe says Thomas broke the law not recusing himself…”Justice Thomas violated 28 USC 455, requiring any “justice” to recuse when his or her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” or his or her “spouse is known by the justice to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome”…this from Robert Reich: “Today, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed to temporarily freeze a lower court order requiring Lindsey Graham to testify before a grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Clarence Thomas has zero business ruling on cases involving Trump’s attempted coup. His wife was directly involved in an effort to overturn the 2020 election…Hello?
The Judicial Code of Ethics which applies to all other federal judges requires a judge to recuse “from hearing any case in which personal entanglements could lead a fair-minded member of the public to question impartiality.”
Each week it seems we learn more and more about the role Justice Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, played in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
She sent at least 21 text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, contacted 29 Arizona state lawmakers (some of them twice), and pressured the chair of the Senate elections committee and at least one other Republican lawmaker in Wisconsin to set aside Biden’s popular-vote victory and “choose” new presidential electors that would vote for Trump.
Just as alarming is that Thomas used the “independent state legislature theory” as the basis for her argument, the same argument at the core of Moore v. Harper, the case soon to be heard by the Supreme Court.“…I had to look up Moore v. Harper…all about gerrymandering in North Carolina…from The Brennen Center for Justice by Eliza Sweren-Becker and Ethan Herenstein on August 4, 2022: Moore v. Harper, Explained: “The debunked “independent state legislature theory” is on the Supreme Court’s docket, with potentially disastrous consequences.:
What is Moore v. Harper about?
In Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court will decide whether the North Carolina Supreme Court has the power to strike down the legislature’s illegally gerrymandered congressional map for violating the North Carolina Constitution. The legislators have argued that a debunked interpretation of the U.S. Constitution — known as the “independent state legislature theory” — renders the state courts and state constitution powerless in matters relating to federal elections.
Last year, North Carolina’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed, on a party-line vote, an extreme partisan gerrymander to lock in a supermajority of the state’s 14 congressional seats. The gerrymander was so extreme that an evenly divided popular vote would have awarded 10 seats to the Republicans and only four to the Democrats. The map was a radical statistical outlier more favorable to Republicans than 99.9999% of all possible maps.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal courts cannot hear partisan gerrymandering cases, voters contested the map in state court, contending that the map violated the state constitution’s “free elections clause,” among other provisions. In February 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court agreed with the voters and struck down the map, describing it as an “egregious and intentional partisan gerrymander . . . designed to enhance Republican performance, and thereby give a greater voice to those voters than to any others.”
The unrepentant legislature proposed a second gerrymandered map, prompting a state court to order a special master to create a fair map for the 2022 congressional elections. Unwilling to accept this outcome, two Republican legislators asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and reinstate their gerrymandered map.
What has happened so far in the case?
The Supreme Court hasn’t made any substantive rulings yet. In March, the Court rejected the legislators’ emergency appeal to put the gerrymander back in place immediately. At the urging of four justices, however, the legislators filed a regular appeal asking the Court to consider whether to reinstate their map for elections after 2022. In June, the Court agreed to take up the case. The parties will file briefs over the summer and fall, with oral argument happening thereafter. The Court will likely issue its decision before July 2023.
What are the gerrymanderers arguing before the Supreme Court?
In urging the Supreme Court to reinstate the gerrymandered congressional map, the North Carolina legislators are relying on an untenable misreading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause known as the independent state legislature theory.
The Elections Clause delegates to states the power to regulate federal elections while giving Congress the overriding authority to make or alter such laws. Proponents of the independent state legislature theory — like the gerrymanderers — read the Elections Clause to give state legislators near-exclusive authority to regulate federal elections, prohibiting any other state entity — like state courts or governors — from placing checks and balances on that power. In this case, the gerrymanderers are arguing that the theory licenses them to violate the state constitution when drawing congressional maps and that the state courts do not have the power to stop them.
What’s wrong with the independent state legislature theory?
The independent state legislature theory runs contrary to the constitutional text, history, practice, and precedent. The framers famously distrusted state lawmakers, so much so that when they drafted the Elections Clause, they insisted that Congress retain the ultimate power to set the rules for federal elections. The framers would not have established — and indeed did not establish — a regime that would permit state legislatures to regulate federal elections without the ordinary checks and balances that apply to state lawmaking power. State practice, from the country’s founding to today, also refutes the theory. For example, many framers — including James Madison — voted to adopt state constitutions that regulated federal elections, as North Carolina’s does today.
On top of this overwhelming historical evidence, the theory makes no sense: it would be absurd for a state legislature to be allowed to violate the very state constitution that created it. Other problems doom the theory, as an avalanche of recent scholarship demonstrates. For these reasons, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the theory for over a century, including as recently as 2015 and 2019.
The Supreme Court could decide Moore without having to address the independent state legislature theory. As we have previously explained, the North Carolina General Assembly itself enacted the state constitutional provisions that prohibit extreme partisan gerrymandering and expresslyauthorized state courts to review and remedy unlawful congressional maps. In other words, the state courts just did what the legislature told them to do.
Why did the Court take the case?
The Supreme Court has not explained why it decided to take the case, although that’s not unusual. However, some justice’s statements at earlier points in the case shed some light. When the Supreme Court denied emergency relief to the gerrymanderers in March, three justices — Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch — voiced support for the theory, as they had previously done in other dissenting opinions in 2020 elections cases. A fourth justice — Brett Kavanaugh — voted to leave the court-approved map in place for the 2022 elections, but he said that he saw “serious arguments” on both sides.
None of these justices, however, have had the benefit of oral argument and full briefing before formulating their perspectives. And crucially, whereas it takes five public votes for the justices to decide a case, it only takes four private votes for the Court to take a case for review. So the fact that four justices voted to hear Moore doesn’t mean that a majority is willing to endorse the unprecedented arguments offered by the state lawmakers in the case. The Court could still reject the theory and reaffirm the way our elections have worked for over two centuries.
What are the broader stakes?
The immediate issue in Moore is whether the state legislators’ extreme partisan gerrymander will stand in North Carolina. But adopting the independent state legislature theory would also mean that voters across the country have no judicial remedy — in state court or in federal court — to fight partisan gerrymandering.
The potential consequences could stretch still further. The theory would throw elections into chaos, nullifying hundreds of election rules put in place through ballot initiatives, state constitutions, and administrative regulations — including foundational state policies like the processes for voter registration and mail voting and basic guarantees like the secret ballot. State lawmakers would be able to adopt vote suppression legislation without any checks or balances from state courts or even gubernatorial veto. In other words, the theory would upend key aspects of our elections.”…it irks the hell out of me that repugnant Republicans are “playing dirty”…doing everything in their power to keep power, no matter what…and gerrymandering is the “perfect” tool for them…especially with no consequences, so far…we have to give them a “shellacking” in the Mid-Terms…in 15 days we can throw them out on their respective butts…let it get uglier for them!…
it’s a great time to be a FAN of Philadelphia sports, the Eagles are doing well and amazingly, the Phillies are going to the World Series…thanks to Bryce Harper with the winning 2 run Homerun in the 8th Inning… we won 4-3 to win the National League Pennant, we took the series with the San Diego Padres 4 to 1… while they played Rocky music…
Trying hard now…it’s so hard now…trying hard now
Getting strong now…won’t be long now…getting strong now
Gonna fly now…flying high now…gonna fly, fly, fly…Go Phillies!!!
I want the Department of Justice to fly too!…we have Jennifer Rubin making us smarter!…from The Washington Post: “Opinion: Distinguished person of the week: This judge is holding Trump accountable: If you’re looking for a road map to hold former president Donald Trump accountable for his role in the attempted coup, turn to U.S. District Court Judge David Carter.
Carter, in a ruling back in March, wrote that Trump and his lawyer John Eastman “more likely than not” committed crimes in their scheme to reject certified electors and replace them with an alternate, phony slate. The potential crimes, he stated, included obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. As a result, he found that more than 100 emails from Eastman were not shielded by attorney-client privilege and must be released to the House Jan. 6 select committee.
On Wednesday, Carter held that eight more privileged documents fell within the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege because Trump consulted Eastman “for advice that will serve [them] in the commission of a fraud or crime,” andthe communications themselves were “sufficiently related to” and made “in furtherance of” the crime. Carter explained, “There are four documents … in which Dr. Eastman and other attorneys suggest that — irrespective of the merits — the primary goal of filing [election-related lawsuits] is to delay or otherwise disrupt the January 6 vote.”
Carter took aim at one lawsuit that Trump and his attorneys filed before a court in Fulton County, Ga., in which they alleged the county’s vote total included 10,315 deceased people, 2,560 felons and 2,423 unregistered voters. But these numbers were false, Carter wrote, and Eastman told Trump as much. Nevertheless, they filed a suit repeating this false allegation in a sworn pleading. Carter explains:
President Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them. President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers “are true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct” to the best of his knowledge and belief.
The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public. The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In other words, just as the Jan. 6 committee showed over the course of its hearings, Trump knew he had lost in Georgia and knew the numbers of fraudulent votes he was throwing about were false. Yet he kept repeating these lies, including under oath in federal court.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance writes in a Substack post, “This is a civil case and the issue before Judge Carter is whether to enforce the subpoena the [Jan. 6 committee] sent to Eastman. . . . It doesn’t mean an indictment of Trump will automatically follow.” Still, Vance explains, Carter’s ruling amounts to a federal court judge arguing that there is sufficient evidence “from the mouth of his own attorney, that [Trump] knew the Big Lie was a Big Lie.”
Between this ruling and the voluminous evidence presented in the Jan. 6 committee hearings, the Justice Department would have a difficult time explaining a decision not to indict Trump. As Norman Eisen, who served as co-counsel for the House impeachment managers during Trump’s first impeachment, put it on Twitter, “The new documents that Eastman was trying to hide and [Carter] just released are so important. They prove that Trump knowingly lied under oath about his 2020 election claims.” Eisen adds, “That bolsters the already strong criminal case” that Trump attempted to defraud the United States in challenging Georgia’s results.
And remember, there is also audio of Trump’s phone calls with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump tried strong-arming the election official to “find” just enough votes to flip the state’s election results.
The case against Trump also goes beyond Georgia. The Jan. 6 committee presented evidence about similar machinations in other states. Oh, and don’t forget the evidence of seditious conspiracy presented in the committee’s most recent hearing (i.e., that Trump had planned far in advance to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power, and that there were abundant indications that the mob on Jan. 6 would be violent).
Carter took aim at one lawsuit that Trump and his attorneys filed before a court in Fulton County, Ga., in which they alleged the county’s vote total included 10,315 deceased people, 2,560 felons and 2,423 unregistered voters. But these numbers were false, Carter wrote, and Eastman told Trump as much. Nevertheless, they filed a suit repeating this false allegation in a sworn pleading. Carter explains Carter’s ruling comes just in time for Bloomberg to report that federal prosecutors in the case regarding Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago think there is enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction. That may explain the latest reports that Trump wants to let the Justice Department come back for a further search. Alas, this kind of stunt will not obviate earlier alleged lies to federal investigators and apparent attempts to move documents after receiving a search warrant.
In other words, it seems there is ample ground ahead for prosecutors to hold Trump accountable for his actions. Evidence of potential crimes, and plenty of legal theories supporting state and federal prosecution, are piling up. For doing his part to uncover the truth, we can say, well done, Judge Carter.
and to continue with the wisdom of Jennifer Rubin…she speaks on the weakness of the GOP…who has everything wrong in regards to masculinity…when the most courageous Republicans are the women, Liz Cheney, and Cassidy Hutchinson…on the men’s side, let’s name Adam Kinzinger too…her “Opinion: Hawley is right that there’s a masculinity crisis. It’s inside the GOP: Cartoonish appeals to toxic masculinity are as much a feature of the MAGA movement as White grievance-mongering. Republicans whine about an emasculated, “woke” military. They insist on reducing women to second-class citizens without personal agency. They revel in Trumpian cruelty (e.g., manipulating unwary asylum seekers). It is a party consumed with “the thrill of cruelty and a juvenile boorishness meant largely to enrage others,” as the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols put it.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has made a cottage industry in bemoaning the loss of masculinity. As David French explained in an interview with Vox in January, “It’s the logic of a movement centered around aggression divorced from virtue that indulges in apocalyptic rhetoric.” This “flipping upside down of morality, turning bullying into strength, turning restraint into vice,” he explains, “enables the Trumpists and the Trumpist world.” Bizarrely, the test of manliness is now measured in one’s subservience to a cult of personality.
Ironically, the loudest of the bully-boys displays none of the virtues typically characterized as “masculine”: courage, strength and self-discipline. Former president Donald Trump avoided military service, and his followers have been cowed into parroting his lies.
The strongest, most courageous and most honorable Republican — by a mile — is Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who refuses to knuckle under to Trump and his mob. She’s a singular truth-teller, whereas House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the image of a cowering careerist who days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was back to kissing Trump’s ring.
Cheney has repeatedly slammed McCarthy for his weakness, dinging him for failing to stand up for the Constitution. She mocked him for going to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump after the attack on the Capitol. Indeed, she has publicly lectured her party for sacrificing their honor. As she put it during one hearing for the House Jan. 6 select committee, “There will come a day when President Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” She also contrasted the bravery of female witnesses such as former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson with the mealy-mouthed “50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege.” She has underscored that GOP leaders are cowering, “childish” flunkies — far from honorable, courageous and stalwart men.
The Republicans’ manliness deficit has been glaring in the recent midterm debates. Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee in Ohio’s Senate contest, went after his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, in their first debate for letting Trump take away his dignity at a recent rally. “I don’t know anybody I grew up with, I don’t know anybody I went to high school with, that would allow someone to take their dignity like that and then get back up onstage,” he declared. “We need leaders who have courage to take on their own party. And I’ve proven that. And he was called an a–kisser by the former president.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Val Demings, the Democratic nominee for Florida’s Senate seat, was the image of strength in her debate against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who seemed to personify the “Little Marco” put-down that Trump invented during the 2016 campaign. Demings declared, “Marco Rubio hasn’t run anything but his mouth.” She exuded pity for the man who twisted himself in knots to please the MAGA base. “I’m really disappointed in you, Marco Rubio, because I think there was a time when you did not lie in order to win,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to you.”
Put differently, far from displaying the masculine virtues they imagine are endangered, Republicans have become the party of fearful men afraid to stand on principle. By contrast, Democrats, who have long been accused of weakness or timidity, have seized the moment. Despite their historical wariness of talking about values, they have managed to do two things quite effectively.
First, Democrats in many cases have backed culturally appropriate candidates who sound and look like working-class voters (e.g., Ryan, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania) or who have proved their courage under fire (e.g., Demings, who served as Orlando police chief). And in backing independent Evan McMullin for Utah’s Senate seat, Democrats also found someone who risked his life for his country — a stark contrast to Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who violated his oath and dishonored his office by assisting Trump’s coup attempt.
Second, Democrats figured out that the “big lie” is not simply a constitutional outrage, but a sign of fear of telling the truth. They show real zeal in skewering opponents not only for policy positions but also for weak character. Republicans have certainly made themselves into easy targets. As Never Trumper Mona Charen observed in the Bulwark, in demanding that Republicans debase themselves, “Trump has emasculated every other Republican. He may look strong, but he demands that every other Republican become weak in his service.” None of their hysterical warnings about “woke-ism” or their bullying of pregnant women can conceal that.
Any voter not trapped in the right-wing media bubble can see that Republican politicians have sacrificed their manliness at the altar of Trump idolatry. Perhaps Hawley’s panic over lost masculinity isn’t so far-fetched.”…this from comment by Lionnair: “Hawley slavishly follows an unfit leader who readily put the national security of the American people at risk once he decided that stealing and retaining some of the nation’s most sensitive Top Secret national security documents might bring him some advantage.
Hawley dutifully follows a leader who has been a bully all his life, who brags about sexually assaulting women and when confronted with questions under oath, hides behind high-priced lawyers and the Fifth Amendment.
Hawley is intellectually unfit to represent his fellow Americans. He is morally unfit to speak for them in the United States Congress. He is simply trying to convince them that he represents some right-wing pop-culture version of masculinity.
It has been my honor to know men who showed enormous courage when their very lives were on the line in combat – when courage wasn’t spouting reactionary propaganda to supporters in order to please an unfit, cowardly bully.
Josh Hawley is about as far from courageous, principled masculinity we can imagine.”…Amen and Awomen to that!…
we have more wisdom from Jennifer Rubin…the repugnant Republicans will ruin the economy…lead us into a recession…gut Social Security and Medicare…Robin Hood in reverse…give, give, give to the rich and take away from the poor…from the dwindling the middle class…and have America default on its debt… this from Jennifer Rubin: “Opinion Democrats have a strong closing argument: The GOP would wreck the economy: Voters who follow the news closely will likely find it hard to believe that so many fellow Americans would even consider casting ballots for election deniers and Republicans who betrayed democracy. But“low information” Americans are the ones who will decide the midterm elections. Therefore, President Biden and his fellow Democrats must think carefully about their closing argument to win over these people.
Biden and other Democrats should follow the lead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose messaging is designed to benefit members from all over the country in competitive races.
Here’s how she described the choice voters have in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday: “We want to support and strengthen Medicare, Social Security, et cetera. [Republicans] want to use the debt ceiling to cut that.” She also noted that Republicans are willing to use the same tactic to reverse the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions to lower prescription drug costs.
That’s a real threat: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has threatened to use the looming deadline to raise the debt limit next year as a means to cut off aid to Ukraine and to roll back Biden’s economic agenda. House Republicans are also eyeing the debt limit deadline as a way to make cuts to hugely popular programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. At the same time, they are seeking to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
This is more trickle-down economics designed to make the rich richer, which would balloon the national debt and worsen inflation. As such, Democrats should describe the election for what it is: a faceoff between supply-side economics and Biden’s promise to build the economy from “the bottom up and middle out.” This would contrast the two parties as one for the little guy and one for billionaires, which has worked in the past to elect Biden and before him, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Republicans like to label just about anything that doesn’t benefit the rich as “socialism.” That’s plutocratic economics, not populism. Highlighting the GOP’s core philosophy just might help Democrats retain support among Republican voters who crossed over in 2020 and low-information voters who are suspicious of Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Business generally.
In that regard, Democrats can ding Republicans for opposing or resisting virtually everything Biden proposed that didn’t help the rich, such as protections against evictions during the pandemic; money to keep first responders working; expanded health care for sick veterans; measures to control prescription drug costs for seniors; and funding to create jobs in green energy, chip manufacturing and infrastructure. Here’s the message: “If you got help, Mr. and Mrs. Average Voter, Republicans want to take it away. If you’re rich, Republicans are going to make you even richer. And if Democrats don’t go along with the Republicans’ reverse Robin Hood policies, they are willing to burn down the economy with a default or paralyze the government to get their way.”
That’s the GOP inflation “plan.” Biden would be wise to use his time in the next few weeks highlighting it and making clear to working- and middle-class voters that Republicans’ idea of “progress” entails widening the gap between rich and poor.
He started down that road Friday when he bashed Republicans for threatening to crash the economy unless entitlements are cut and the wealthy can keep their “massive tax cuts”:
And at a Thursday fundraiser for John Fetterman, Democrats’ Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, Biden again made the case: “The threat came from McCarthy, the Republican leader, that if I were not willing to cut Social Security by the end of this year, then, in fact, they would not pay for the national debt and they would not extend the debt ceiling — meaning, for the first time in American history, we would in fact default on a debt and our credit as a nation would be demolished.”
So yes, while protecting democracy is an essential issue for those who rightfully fear the GOP’s assault on democratic institutions and values, Democrats must win over late-deciding voters, too. And there is nothing like a reminder that the economy could get a lot worse as Republicans revert to cutting taxes for the rich and starving government to motivate Americans to vote Democratic. Biden needs to keep that drumbeat going through Election Day.”…in our recent history, going back to Bush and trickle down economics, crashed the real estate market with their no down money mortgages…and caused a world-wide recession…the GOP, they will do again…they will always destroy our economy for the Democrats to clean up their mess once again…time after time…are we ready for another world-wide recession…and worst yet to cut funding for Ukraine…leave them out to dry against the cruel autocrat…and weaken the US worldwide…as well as our allies, NATO and the European Union…just what Putin wants…McCarthy would give it to him on a golden platter…we’re all screwed if the GOP gets power again…all they want, power…to reward their donors…and have the minority rule over the majority…and I would propose, breaking “norms” like Moscow Mitch…the “norm” that a sitting president can’t be indicted…it’s not a law…it’s like the filibuster…no constitutional anything describing law…and it can just as well be disregarded as Moscow Mitch and the Republicans as well as trump would, if it suited him…with not an eyelash batted…throw trump from the train, an indictment…now and forever…the man is a walking “felon, a crook”…
this afternoon I went to see the Exhibition On Screen: Hopper: An American Love Story…the documentary film directed by Phil Grabsky about Edward Hopper …as far as being the most recognizable art in America and as Robert Hughes writing in Time Magazine: “Hughes described Edward Hopper as “Along with Jackson Pollock… probably the most original American painter of the 20th century.”
Hughes also proposed that “no American painter has influenced popular culture more deeply,” a claim easily evidenced by the countless artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, cartoonists, and musicians who have drawn inspiration from his artworks.
Defined by “a unique pictorial vocabulary, pioneering use of color, and mastery of light and shade” [Another Man, 2020], Hopper’s work is some of the most recognizable art in America, referenced and immortalized by such diverse creatives as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, David Hockney, Mark Rothko, Norman Mailer, Paul Auster, Tom Waites, The Simpsons, and Banksy.”
I found the true story is behind every great man, in this case Artist, is a great woman…Edward Hopper’s wife, Josephine Nivison Hopper, a good artist in her own right, sacrificed her career to bring him to the head of the class…they were married for 43 years…she kept detailed diaries and when she had good things to say about Edward…she would write Edward such and such…but when she was “angry and resentful” she referred to him as E… and there were far more E’s than Edwards…from ARTPIL: “Exhibition on Screen launch their tenth season of art films with the release of Hopper: An American Love Story, in theaters across America from October 11, 2022. Written and directed by BAFTA award-winning director, Phil Grabsky, this fascinating documentary examines the life and legacy of one of America’s greatest artists, whose iconic streetscapes, and poignant portraits of American life continue to inspire and captivate audiences across the world.
Exhibition on Screen launch their tenth season of art films with the release of Hopper: An American Love Story, in theaters across America from October 11, 2022. Written and directed by BAFTA award-winning director, Phil Grabsky, this fascinating documentary examines the life and legacy of one of America’s greatest artists, whose iconic streetscapes, and poignant portraits of American life continue to inspire and captivate audiences across the world.
Writing for Time Magazine in 2011, Robert Hughes described Edward Hopper as “Along with Jackson Pollock… probably the most original American painter of the 20th century.”
Hughes also proposed that “no American painter has influenced popular culture more deeply,” a claim easily evidenced by the countless artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, cartoonists, and musicians who have drawn inspiration from his artworks.
Defined by “a unique pictorial vocabulary, pioneering use of color, and mastery of light and shade” [Another Man, 2020], Hopper’s work is some of the most recognizable art in America, referenced and immortalized by such diverse creatives as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, David Hockney, Mark Rothko, Norman Mailer, Paul Auster, Tom Waites, The Simpsons, and Banksy.
Yet for all their popularity, Hopper’s paintings remain as enigmatic today as when they were created, ensuring his place as one of the most intriguing artists of his generation.
Filmed on location in the USA and Paris, Hopper: An American Love Story takes audiences on a profound journey, shining a light on Hopper’s art, vision, eccentric lifestyle, and relationships. Central to the story is his enduring collaboration with fellow artist, Josephine Nivison Hopper, his wife of 43 years, who unwittingly sacrificed her own career to bring him to prominence.
The film features archival footage of interviews with Hopper, and insightful commentary from diverse international experts, interspersed with readings from Hopper’s and Josephine’s recently discovered diaries and letters.
Hopper: An American Love Story is released to coincide with the opening of the Whitney Museum’s major exhibition Edward Hopper’s New York (October 2022 – March 2023).”…if you’re a Hopper Fan…and who isn’t?…go see this documentary…you understand so much more about the artist and his work…he was a loner, who isolated himself from the start…and why we respond to his painting…it will be shown again at the Hiway on November 2…and for sure, if you can, go see the Whitney’s major exhibition…you have five-six months to see it…pretty sure they borrowed Nighthawks from the Chicago Institute of Art…it was already gone when Elissa was in Chicago last January…
there’s more to this painting from 1942 than this reproduction, I say today Hopper was also prophetic…haha…can you read “Phillies” at the top of the painting?…Jim spotted that…it’s referring to cigars but it doesn’t matter…it says Phillies!!!…we won the National League Pennant and that’s NO LIE!!!…it looks pretty good that we will be playing the Houston Astros…now ahead of the NY Yankees ( damn Yankees ) 3-0 in best of 7…( it is the Huston Astros…they won the American League Pennant )….
I walked around Jenkintown after the film…it was a nice brisk day, San Francisco weather…I’ll take it…discovered a new bakery to me…bought a slice of strawberry shortcake and a slice of carrot cake… and realized West Avenue Grille is only open until 3:00…Argana is closed, it looks like forever…on the corner on Greenwood across from the Fire Company…also the Fig Cafe…kaput!…and the Pergola is gone…they had great soup…but nasty and not accommodating…they lost my and Elissa’s business…not surprised they’re gone, now a restaurant called Lillys…authentic Indian Cuisine…and I’m always happy to know the building that was Woolworth’s is no longer Woolworth’s…for years now…it was still a Woolworth’s when I came here in 1966…they screwed their employees…my Mom included…firing her just before she was eligible for a retirement pension…she worked there 25 years…making Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, richer…Hutton was married seven times…for a little over 3 years to Cary Grant…the Media called them Cash and Cary…she inherited $Millions$ young…and was “dubbed” “Poor Little Rich Girl”…
are we really that susceptible?…apparently so…the GOP hitting Democrats with inflation, crime and the old favorite, taxes…not to mention the BIG LIE…do they really think the election was stolen?…and it’s beyond me that there’s 30% of us that believe the QAnon conspiracy…and that somehow Marjorie Taylor Greene is the face of the new Republican…and how trumpism enabled Marjorie Taylor Greene the New York Times political reporter, Robert Draper has written a book, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, in which he writes about the GOP embracing conspiracy theories…from NPR by Dave Davies: “Does Marjorie Taylor Greene represent the future of the Republican Party?: The majority of Republican candidates running for higher office right now have either expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election or said outright that they believe the election was stolen.
New York Times political reporter Robert Draper says the party’s embrace of lies and conspiracy theories has opened the door to fringe actors, who have become among the party’s most influential leaders. He points to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a prime example of the party’s extreme new direction.
Greene has expressed support for QAnon conspiracies and reportedly endorsed the idea of executing Democratic leaders. While campaigning for office in 2020, she posed with a custom AR-15 pistol in her campaign ads and presented herself as a “Trump mini-me,” Draper says.
“This seemed outlandish to sort of run-of-the-mill Republicans, but the base wanted a MAGA warrior to send from their district to Washington, and that’s what they got,” Draper says.
In his new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, Draper writes that in the time since Trump left office, the Republican Party has plunged deeper into conspiracy mongering — and the notion that Democrats are not just wrong, but also evil. He says the GOP’s stubborn embrace of the stolen election narrative undermines democracy and plays straight into the hands the nation’s enemies.
“When we’re having these kinds of troubles at home, every day that there’s trouble, this is a good day for Russia,” Draper says. “Russia has a compelling interest in the decline of America as a voice worldwide, in its promulgation of democracy.”
Interview Highlights:
On Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s early obsession with Donald Trump
Kevin McCarthy, in his 20s, according to a childhood friend who I interviewed back in Bakersfield, Calif., where McCarthy is from, was utterly obsessed with Trump, utterly obsessed with this author of The Art of the Deal. And so he had long felt that Trump had a way of not only capturing what it was that he stood for and developing a brand, but negatively branding the other side. And so McCarthy, to me, is emblematic of the establishment wing of the Republican Party that has enabled not only the rise of Trump, but the sustaining of Trump as a powerful force that far from criticizing him, as Liz Cheney has, for example, that they’ve largely felt that now we can use Trump. “Trump will be sort of the tip of our spear to get conservative policies done,” or at minimum, “We can’t stop the guy, so we’ll go to ground.” … The care and feeding of Donald Trump is something that McCarthy eagerly signed on to do from the moment that Trump took office.
On how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene won her congressional seat in 2020
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a native of Georgia. …She had not been any kind of participant on any level in the political process really until around 2017, 2018. She became an adherent to the QAnon conspiracy theory, and after that began to show up on Capitol Hill as a kind of confrontational journalist, as she would put it, basically harassing Democratic staff members, but was unknown by the Georgia political establishment. And indeed, she told me that Republicans in that state viewed her as “a three-headed monster” when she decided to file [to run for office].
But she was a self-funder and then ultimately moved to a more conservative district, the 14th District, in northwest Georgia, when that [seat] became vacated in December of 2019. And it kind of caught the party and the Georgia media unawares, [when she] suddenly won in the primary. Then opposition research files came out indicating that she had posted in the past all these offensive and conspiratorial theories online. That didn’t stop her from winning, but she came to Washington in January 2021 with the expectation from most of us, allegedly smart people, that she would soon be … given essentially that one term, otherwise [be] ignored by the Republican Party and would be out the door. That did not occur. In fact, in many ways the opposite occurred. It’s kind of a case study in the Republican Party in the post-Trump era, and thus forms a central foundation of my book.
On House members fearing for their physical safety after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol
There was a genuine fear of these gun-toting new members of Congress, like Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and people who are Democrats genuinely fearing for their safety, to the point where a senior staffer on one of the committees circulated a memo saying that she wished to see occupational safety worker guidelines applied to the U.S. Capitol, suggesting that it was an unsafe work environment, and in no other private business, would this kind of cavalier talk about bringing in weapons to the Capitol and demonizing the people who disagree with you be tolerated. The fear was not just the usual, “We disagree with them. We think they’re wrong,” or even, “We’re revolted by them.” It was a real fear. And it was one of the driving factors in Speaker Pelosi insisting on putting magnetometers just outside the floor of the House.
Two important things happened in the wake of her being stripped of her committee assignments: One was that she proceeded to be a fundraising dynamo. In, I think, the first quarter [she]managed to raise $3.2 million, which is unheard of for a House freshman and just simply had never happened before. And indeed, by the end of 2021 would outraise all but three of her House Republican colleagues, and two of those three are Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, two members of leadership. So that a freshman would do this is kind of remarkable.
But the other thing that I think got a lot less notice but still was significant, was that she began to use all of these procedural means of slowing down the House proceedings and basically forcing people to do a roll call vote when they just wanted to do a voice vote. This just seemed to be a pain in the neck. Republicans and Democrats alike were annoyed by it. But where did she get this idea from? She told me she got it from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who had also been previous to that, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
And so what this indicates to you is that far from being a marginalized person, here’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in active contact with a crucial member of Trump world. And, by the way, the day that she was stripped from her committee assignments, she got a sympathetic call from former President Trump. So there she was, still in the heart of the MAGA universe. And as she said, the day after she was stripped of her assignment, the party is still Donald Trump’s. He’s not going away. It’s nobody else’s party. And that would prove to be true.
On Greene now using more extreme rhetoricthan Trump
Trump has always been all over the map when it comes to [vaccines], because he’s very proud of Operation Warp Speed, when the research and development of the COVID vaccines began and then accelerated under his administration. So he’d like to take credit for that on the one hand. But on the other hand, he recognizes that a very significant portion — if not an outright majority — of the Republican base is distrustful of the COVID vaccines. And Marjorie Greene has said everything from, “They are, at best, ineffectual” to … “They are killers.” And so, after a while, you began to see Trump say nasty things about the vaccines of which he was a chief promulgate in 2020.
Trump also would often talk about radical socialists, but seldom use the word “communist” to describe Democrats. Marjorie Taylor Greene had no such timidity. And as early as June of 2021 was saying in a press conference that I attended that she believed that there were active members of the Communist Party in the Democratic House. And now that’s become something that not only Trump has said, but that others have said, too. So Greene in her effort to be relevant by mastering the so-called attention economy of the Internet, has, in a lot of ways, been more outrageous than Donald Trump has.
OnRepublicans who believe the election was stolen
There are hours of my life that I’ll never get back, talking to people who embrace this conspiracy theory that the election was stolen, but not one of them has given me any kind of coherent explanation of who did the stealing. Was it Biden? Kamala Harris, the CIA? [Brad] Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, a Republican? Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state in Arizona, a Democrat? I mean, this is quite a cabal here. But no one’s gotten to the bottom of it. No one can explain it. ( Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Maureen Pao adapted it for the web. )”…
from Robert Reich: “As the election fast approaches, Republicans aren’t pushing just the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.
Republicans are pushing three other bald-faced lies — on crime, inflation, and taxes — that could prove to be even more effective at fooling voters and putting the MAGA Republicans in charge of Congress.
We can’t let that happen, and that’s why Inequality Media Civic Action is working furiously to do what we do best: using our vast reach on social media to reach millions of people — including and especially young voters — to engage them and make sure they know the truth.
Young people are far less likely to show up and vote in midterm elections, and that’s why our task over the next three weeks is clear. We must work around the clock to produce and market our explainer videos, TikToks, graphics, and other posts to get the truth to the voters who matter most.
In the face of persistent inflation, of course Americans are worried about putting food on the table. With mass shootings and gun violence a daily occurrence, of course they are worried about crime.
But across America, Republican candidates are spewing blatant lies to voters about the nature and source of these problems.
Let’s take a look at crime. While violent crime rose 28 percent between 2019 and 2020, gun homicides rose 35 percent. That’s not because Democrats are soft on crime or defunding the police, as the GOP alleges. That’s because Republicans keep making it easier for people to get and carry guns.
Nor are Democrats to blame for rising prices on everything from gasoline to milk, as Republicans claim. In fact, the most important driver of domestic inflation is corporate greed — with companies enjoying their highest profit margins since the 1950s. The GOP wants to protect its corporate donors and cut taxes for the wealthy, not rein in corporate monopolies.
Perhaps the most absurd GOP lie of all? That Democrats have hired 87,000 IRS agents to go after the middle class. In fact, those new workers, phased in over time, will restore the IRS to its staffing levels before Republicans gave it the axe. And their role is to go after the wealthy — the richest 1 percent of whom are hiding a fifth of their income from the federal government.
These Republican claims are all utterly fact-free. But unless we aggressively market to young voters on social media and make sure they know the truth, these Republican lies just might work.”…now that’s disturbing…is it not?…this was from Robert Reich’s Inequality Media Civic Action…
Autumn is settling in…the colors of the autumn leaves, as usual are so beautiful…from pinks to yellows to oranges to reds…and to browns…more than the leaves changing, October is all about Halloween…people are decorating their homes with all kinds of Halloween stuff…I mentioned those 12 foot high skeletons…lots of cobwebs…and witches…and pumpkins…and the stores are filled with Halloween candy…so lets eat, drink and be scary!…which I did a little tonight…a birthday party for Julie…which was postponed until tonight from a few weeks ago… Covid…a lovely party…thankful that I was invited…she turned 60…I realized she could be my niece…like Lynne, my Iron Woman in California, who turned 60 the end of September…Happy Birthday to two Libras in my life…
it’s annoying and scary at the same time, Republicans on the generic ballot are up over the Democrats by 3 points from last week…they’re blaming Biden for the economy…violent crime ( crime rates are higher in Red States then Blue States ) ( and it’s working…blaming the Democrats )…and foreign policy and immigration…they’re trying and succeeding in scaring us…with no solutions…and if they take power again, they don’t have any policy, no solutions…they don’t have a platform, unless you call them tearing down all Biden has done including infrastructure and reducing drug prices ( we haven’t seen any of the results of that yet…not until next year, but repugnants will close it down along with the January 6 investigations )…they’ll just attack social security…medicare…give their donors more tax breaks and vote against gun legislation… more voter suppression…and an outright national ban on abortion…their message on inflation and the economy and higher gas prices and higher prices at the grocery store…they blame Biden and the democrats…we’ve all seen those price increases…Robert Reich tells us that inflation stems from corporate greed…from his Inequality Media Podcast: “Since March I’ve been screaming about the Federal Reserve’s total misreading of inflation — that it’s being caused by workers getting wage hikes and government spending, when the real domestic cause is powerful corporations raising prices higher than their costs.
Major corporations that dominate key industries are using the cover of inflation as a means to jack up prices, resulting in their fattest profit margins in 70 years. ( Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger…”a little inflation is always good in our business, we expect to pass that through.”…Jamere Jackson, CFO of Autozone “inflation is a little bit of our friend in what we see in retail pricing.”…Brian Niccol, CEO of Chipotle, “and we know if we have to take more pricing, we have the room to do it, we see not resistance from our customers.” )
In public, corporate executives blame “government handouts” and wage increases for inflation. Meanwhile, they talk with investors about how inflation has been their “friend” because it gives them cover to raise prices.
It’s the definition of corporate greed and deception. I’ve had enough.
Congress and the Biden administration must take direct action against powerful corporations that are driving inflation. We can no longer rely solely on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to slow the economy. Not only will this risk another recession — it will put the entire burden of fighting inflation on working people who are not responsible for it — and who are already hit hardest by rising prices.
There are better ways to control inflation that limit corporate profits rather than jobs and wages — such as a windfall profits tax, tougher antitrust enforcement, and even temporary price controls.
We can’t keep letting greedy corporate executives get away with this.
Many thanks to The Groundwork Collaborative for uncovering these corporate earnings calls and helping spread the word about corporate price gouging.
Know the truth!
Lindsay Graham asks the Supreme Court to block his subpoena from Georgia…let’s hope he will be smacked down and forces to give testimony under oath…
disappointing to me is greasy, sleazy Steve Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison and only fined $6500…a drop in his bucket…not only disappointing but annoying…he made out like a bandit…it’s stayed awaiting an appeal…which he could, in true trump fashion, run out the clock…for months as well as years…is this justice?…
and the January 6 Committee calls on trump to testify on November 14th…and to turn over documents by November 4th…from The New York Times by Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt: “WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued a subpoena on Friday to Donald J. Trump, paving the way for a potentially historic court fight over whether Congress can compel testimony from a former president.
The subpoena was the most aggressive step taken so far in what was already one of the most consequential congressional investigations in decades.
It came weeks before the midterm congressional elections, as the Justice Department conducts a separate criminal inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and was likely to thrust Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee into a legal battle that could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
In a wide-ranging, four-page document issued alongside the subpoena, the panel directed Mr. Trump to produce an extensive list of documents and communications — including phone calls, texts, encrypted messages and email — related to nearly every aspect of his effort to invalidate the 2020 election between the dates of Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021.
It asked for material on the former president’s bid to create false slates of pro-Trump electors in states he lost, his connections to the militia groups that attended the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, any attempts to delay or disrupt the electoral count by Congress on that day, and his interactions with members of Congress.
“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multipart effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, the leaders of the committee, wrote to Mr. Trump Friday.
They said the panel’s request was “narrowly focused” on information that the former president was “uniquely positioned to provide.”
The committee cited numerous examples of former presidents, including John Quincy Adams and Gerald R. Ford, who testified before Congress after they left office. But the Supreme Court has never decided a case in which a former president refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and the panel made no mention of cases where presidents have resisted legislative inquiries.
But it was unclear what the committee could do, particularly if Republicans win control of the House in next month’s elections. In that case, G.O.P. leaders, who fought the formation of the inquiry, boycotted it and have denounced it at every turn, would be all but certain to allow the panel to dissolve, as it is scheduled to do at the close of the current Congress in January.
The subpoena to Mr. Trump requires him to turn over documents by Nov. 4 and to appear for a deposition under oath on or about Nov. 14 that it says could last several days.
The panel asked the former president to inform the committee “promptly” if he intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In a statement on Friday evening, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said his firm would review the subpoena and criticized the panel for its handling of what he called an “unprecedented action.”
“We understand that, once again, flouting norms and appropriate and customary process, the committee has publicly released a copy of its subpoena,” the lawyer, David A. Warrington, said.”…the pot calling the kettle black!…
Mike’s Midterm Tsumami Truth Number 24 – from Michael Moore giving us HOPE…Vote Local, Win National…”
(A daily series to counter the reporting that the Republicans are going to win the House and Senate. They are not.)
I’ve spent all my time here on the Tsunami of Truths focusing on us winning the House, the Senate, and some Governors’ races.
But as one who himself was elected to local office at the age of 18, I’ve neglected to point out that all change begins at home — meaning right there in your neighborhood, your ward, your borough, your school district. It is there where the crazies are trying to ban Maya Angelou. Where the Right is trying to stop affordable housing from being built. Where the Chamber of Commerce is trying to eliminate environmental regulations. Their mission is to stifle debate, to put a halt to change, to lock things down so that the big money in town calls the shots. That’s where the Ted Cruzes of this world get their start on the road to perdition. And if we don’t stop them there, they will one day become the next Marjorie Taylor Greene.
In the small town in Michigan where I live, there’s a group of wealthy white men who meet quietly once a month for breakfast. They call themselves “The Owners”, and the meeting, “The Owners Breakfast.” They don’t do this out of self-aggrandizement. They are doing this because they believe it to be the truth, and they are probably right. They own mass amounts of local real estate and investments in Northern Michigan, and they can’t afford for any of that to be disrupted or closely examined. No one has elected them or appointed them to anything. They’ve declared themselves the town’s Owners and that’s that. Few in the area know about this secret group or its members. (Someday, when we’re all not busy trying to save the country, I will tell you how I discovered them.) The Owners are smart enough to make sure their existence is kept under wraps. After all, the everyday citizens in a democracy like to believe theythemselves are the ones in charge. Even if we know we’re not. Pretending and believing the myth of equality and democracy is 9/10 possession of the republic, right?
Nonetheless, we persist in the hopes we will all one day, regardless of status or bank account, be the real owners of at least the few square miles where we live and raise our families.
So while I don’t have the time or resources to cover all (random guess) 14,577 city, township, local judge and school board races across the country next month, I can humbly beseech you to do a little research to find out who these candidates are and make the right selections. It’s harder to do that these days, in large part because our local media has been decimated — radio is dead or racist, print is “what is print?“, and civic groups like the League of Women Voters are, in many places, a shell of their former selves.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whip-smart local bartender (AOC) running for town council, or a middle school principal (Jamaal Bowman) on the ballot for County Commissioner or a local activist and mother (Cori Bush) seeking to become the township clerk. There are hundreds of these good people running across the country and it will feel good to find them, meet them and vote for them. The bigger changes that we seek nationwide begin right here in Our Town.
As the t-shirt says above, the mayor in Jaws — the political hack who at the behest of the local business community demanded that the sheriff open up the beaches for that all-important tourism money-maker known as the Fourth of July weekend (even though a mad shark who had already killed a skinny-dipper was still lurking offshore) — by the time “Jaws 2” rolled around, this bastard was still the mayor! Proving unequivocally that if you don’t pay attention to your local elections, if we don’t do our duty as citizens, even in the “smallest” races on the ballot, there will be no night swimming left for any one.
17 days to Roevember!
Spirits up!
I can’t make this victory happen alone. They only let me vote once! We’re all in this together.
Fear of the Trumpsters gives that power over to them.
Believe in our collective power!“…yes, we can do it…get out there and vote those repugnant, lying Republicans out…way OUT!…
went to see Black Adam…all action and no substance…of course, good versus evil…and good wins with all kinds of special effects…Dwayne Johnson is Black Adam…going all the way back to 2600 BC…for the story…go see it if you don’t mind children at a 9:10 time slot…and paying a premium because “it’s a new film”…how much can it make on opening weekend?…found 2 pennies and a nickel…
Art Salazar 