From the Civil War to Conservative Ignorance

A big shocker at the end of 2023 is Maine removing Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) from the state primary ballot because of his insurrection. In the second state to do so, the state’s Secretary of State made that ruling; the state constitution gives her that power. Shenna Bellows, however, did say that the decision would not be enforced until the courts weigh in. With the ruling against DDT in both Colorado and Maine, the Supreme Court is likely to take up the issue. Earlier this week, Michigan joined Arizona and Minnesota in determining DDT could stay on the ballot because the state constitution does not give the power to remove him despite the U.S. Constitution superseding a state constitution. DDT’s spokesperson also verbally attacked the Maine Secretary of State. Maine and Colorado must send ballots to overseas military service members and others 45 days before their elections on March 5, making the deadline for mailing ballots January 20 because February has 29 days in 2024.

The other popular media story concerns Nikki Haley. Two days ago, she was edging out Ron DeSantis for second in the GOP presidential candidate race. That was before she explained at a New Hampshire town hall that the reason behind the U.S. Civil War was freedom.

“I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

By the next day, she tried to cope with the backlash for avoiding the subject of slavery when talking about the war that killed over 600,000 by saying she knew it was about slavery. Another Haley position was that the war concerned two sets of values, one for “tradition” and one for “change.” Then she blamed the question on a “Democratic plant.” DeSantis’ campaign jumped on Haley’s attempts at clarification by calling them “embarrassing.” Another candidate, Chris Christie, said that “she did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.” 

One assumes that Haley is for what she calls “tradition”: She tried to justify a Confederal History Month. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina which was the first state to secede during the Civil War, once defended states’ rights to secede from the U.S., a position which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) frequently supports. South Carolina’s ordinance of secession in 1860 mentioned slavery in the first sentence to outline reasons for seceding from the Union: “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) kept her South Carolinian colleague company in double-speak. He defined conservatism as the “get out of your business” and “leave you alone” ideology in declaring “war” on New York’s legislative proposal requiring restaurants in state highway system rest areas to operate seven days a week. Chick-fil-A, claiming to be religious, closes on Sunday. Graham bragged about conservatives being “tolerant …. You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.” He’s talking about the party that blocks abortion, marriage equality, parental healthcare for transgender youth, etc.

Recently revealed tapes and emails show that DDT’s campaign frantically worked to get fake elector certificates to Washington from Michigan and Wisconsin that were caught up in the mail. Using a chain of couriers and assistance from two congressional Republicans, Sen. Ron Johnson ((WI) and Rep. Scott Perry (PA), the campaign even considered chartering a jet to send the files. The campaign paid for the flights, but it needed congressional members to deliver the false certificates when they arrived in Washington, D.C. DDT’s former pro-DDT lawyer Kenneth Chesebro described these events as part of his plea deal to avoid prosecution in the Georgia RICO case. 

A Michigan Republican, James Renner, serving as one of 16 state fake electors, expressed regret after the state AG Dana Nessel dropped criminal charges against him after he agreed to cooperate. Renner told investigators he said in the interview process that he “knew nothing about the electoral process” and later let three others take over. Because he thought they knew “what they were talking about.” Not until he was being sued in civil court in January 2023 did he understand that what had transpired “was not legitimate,” that “there is an official state authorized process for this.”

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, appointed by President Barack Obama, handed Georgia Republicans a win by upholding the state’s GOP congressional—and racially gerrymandered—map, stating that it “fully complied with this court’s order requiring the creation of Black-majority districts in the regions of the state where vote dilution was found.” In reality, the map broke up the one minority-dominant district to create another which “blatantly targets” Rep. Lucy McBath by drawing her out of her district, according to Democratic state Rep. Jasmine Clark.

As her Democratic opponent gains ground on her, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is running away from the 4^th District to the 3^rd that she considers safer for a reelection. In her last run, she won by only 546 votes in a district learning 9 points to Republicans. Her new district leans 27 points to the GOP. Boebert doesn’t have to move into a new district to run for its representative, who is now Rep. Ken Buck, but said she will move. Buck has said he won’t run again, but at least six high-powered politicians have already lined up for the primary. Boebert’s departure gives Republicans a better chance to win the district again after her scandals.

Texas has until January 3 to say it won’t follow a new state law arresting people accused of unauthorized entry from Mexico. If not, the DOJ will sue the state because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. According to a DHS official in a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, the new law, Senate Bill 4, is “unconstitutional and will disrupt the federal government’s operations” vis-à-vis immigration and border enforcement. If Texas refuses, the agency will “pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.” Abbott’s spokesperson said Texas will fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Federal court rulings have determined that only the federal government can enforce immigration laws.

Florida has a solution for his serious labor shortage after Republicans drove off all the migrant workers: work the children. If 16- and 17-year-olds can drive cars, they are not children and can have a fulltime job, according to GOP state Rep. Linda Chaney. The proposed bill will eliminate state guidelines on when they can work and limit local governments’ abilities to enact stronger regulations. Current law prevents employers from working minors under 18 over 30 hours a week during the school year, working them during school hours, assigning them night shifts, and scheduling them to work more than six consecutive days.

As of August 2023, the state has only 53 workers for every 100 open jobs. After DeSantis draconian anti-immigrant laws, experienced migrant workers fled Florida for other states with no new migrants replacing them. The text for the bill was written by a right-wing think tank, Foundation for Government Accountability and calls its program “Empowering Teenagers Through the Power of Work.” The FGA’s biggest donor is billionaire Dick Uihlein, a major DeSantis donor, who has also funds election-denial efforts and other right-wing causes. Six other states—Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota—have introduced bills to weaken child labor protections. Arkansas has passed a law repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds.

Another proposed Floria bill would allow parents the decision of promoting their children lacking basic skills from third to fourth grade. It would also reduce requirements for high school graduation. In summary, Florida Republicans want their children to be uneducated workers.

A good part of MAGA ignorance comes from their conservative media. Jesse Kelly was lecturing on the superiority of U.S. art and architecture over that in Europe. Unfortunately for him, he used the Statue of Liberty as an example of U.S. superiority. The base of the statue was built in the U.S., but the statue is pure French, a gift from the country in ? The idea came from Frenchman Édouard René Lefèbvrede de Laboulaye, the design by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and the metal framework built by Gustave Eiffel of the tower fame. Laboulaye was President of the French Anti-Slavery Society and wanted to honor the U.S. for the Union victory in the Civil War leading to the emancipation of U.S. slaves. Thus the name “liberty.”

Kelly became defensive when X explained the statue’s background attached to his original ignorant statement with this attack:

“I thought @elonmusk taking over would let freedom ring on this site. Guess I was wrong.

Kelly self-identifies himself as “Host of the nationally syndicated Jesse Kelly Show. Host of ‘I’m Right’ on The First. Anti-Communist. World Famous Author.” His discussion of the Statue of Liberty made him more famous.

Despite the belief that homicides and crime are rising, it’s falling. The homicide rate will fall almost 13 percent in 2023 from the previous year, and other violent crime is significantly down—aggravated assaults 7 percent, robbery 9 percent, and rapes 15 percent.

Within the Insane GOP World

Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) plans to replace all those “Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs” (DDT’s words) in the government. Hundreds of DDT’s allies are spending tens of millions of dollars to vet people for 54,000 DDT loyalists to replace existing career government employees. Tech giant Oracle is helping the cause with artificial intelligence. These loyalists will fill legal, judicial, defense, regulatory, and domestic policy jobs in a plan DDT calls “Agenda 47,” an orchestration of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 with 80 partners, including Turning Point USA, led by MAGA star Charlie Kirk; the Center for Renewing America, headed by DDT budget director Russ Vought; and American Moment, focused on young believers for junior positions. Johnny McEntee, once DDT’s bodyguard and then his White House personnel leader, is a senior adviser.

In Letters from an American, scholar Heather Cox Richardson writes:  

“In the United States there is a big difference between liberals and the political “Left.” Liberals believe in a society based in laws designed to protect the individual, arrived at by a government elected by the people…. Most Americans, including Democrats and traditional Republicans, are liberals.

“Both ‘the Left,’ and the ‘Right’ want to get rid of the system. Those on the Left believe that its creation was so warped either by wealth or by racism that it must be torn down and rebuilt. Those on the Right believe that most people don’t know what’s good for them, making democracy dangerous. They think the majority of people must be ruled by their betters, who will steer them toward productivity and religion. The political Left has never been powerful in the U.S.; the political Right has taken over the Republican Party…

“The Right’s draconian immigration policies ignore the reality that presidents since Ronald Reagan have repeatedly asked Congress to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, only to have Republicans tank such measures to keep the hot button issue alive, knowing it turns out their voters.”

Richardson finishes her piece writing about testimony from DDT’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis in which White House deputy chief of staff and social media coordinator Dan Scavino told her in December 2020 that DDT wouldn’t leave after he lost the election. She said he had to go because he was voted out, and Scarvino said:

“Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave. The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.”

In this case, eviction from public housing may be extremely difficult.

On Veterans Day weekend, DDT also called his enemies “vermin” as German Nazis did to dehumanize anyone opposing him. He announced his plans to deport millions of immigrants because they bring infectious diseases into the United States and do away with Constitutional birthright citizenship. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment forced the reentry of a U.S.-born child of Chinese immigrants into the U.S. after he visited China.

The new conservative (self-identified centrist) NewsNation, owned by Nexstar Media Group, will broadcast the next GOP presidential candidate debate on December 6. Moderators will be former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, NewsNation anchor Elizabeth Vargas, and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the conservative Washington Free Beacon. SiriusXM, airing Kelly’s radio show, and the Beacon sponsor the debate which also appears on digital platforms and local affiliates of the CW, another Nexstar-owned broadcast network. Kelly anticipates “the margarita of debates … spicy, fun, and somewhat intoxicating.”

The last debate exacerbated tensions between GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) which controls rules for the debates. His accusation about the GOP being “a party of losers” included criticism about McDaniel for losing the elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022 after she became RNC chair in 2017. McDaniel said that Ramaswamy is “at 4 percent. He needs a headline.” The upcoming debate requires six percent polling for participants.

The wanna-be DDT, 38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy, wrote that he would “instantly” fire 50 percent of federal bureaucrats on his first day in office. He would purge government workers whose Social Security numbers end in an odd number. Ramaswamy claimed he isn’t violating civil service rules “because mass layoffs are exempt.” In a second post, he said that the layoff “avoids civil service protections because people can’t claim “their firings were politically motivated.” With only five percent in polling, Ramaswamy needs to boost his ratings to meet the six percent requirement.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the party for law and order, said the RNC will support a convicted criminal if he is elected.

Two days ago, Sen. Tim Scott said he would be at the GOP presidential candidate debate on December 6 despite flailing polling; now he dropped his campaign to be the “happy warrior” in the White House.

In Iowa, GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, and DDT are invited to appear at the Family Leader Foundation forum. The RNC threatens to disqualify all of them from debates if they participate after they signed pledges not to take part in debates not sanctioned by the national party. Scott has dropped out, and DDT doesn’t plan to show up for the official December 6 debate. After the threat, DeSantis said he’s attending the Iowa event.

Jacob Chansley, the “Shaman” called by a federal judge as “the public face” of the January Capitol riot, indicates he might be a Libertarian candidate for Arizona’s 8^th congressional district, now held by Debbie Lesko who will not re-run for reelection. Sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, Chansley was released after serving 27. Other insurrections, including Derrick Evans (WV) and Jason Riddel (NH), are also running for Congress.

Trying to avoid the Senate forcing rules on them, the Supreme Court issued its ethics code which both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have likely violated. Both of them, making laws for everyone in the U.S., are “confused” about ethics requirements regarding undisclosed property deals and gifts from those involved in high court proceedings.    

The “code” has two weaknesses. It has no specific restrictions on gifts, travel, or real estate deals; instead outside activities “detract from the dignity of the justice’s office,” “interfere with the performance of the justice’s official duties,” “reflect adversely on the justice’s impartiality,” or “lead to frequent disqualification.” Rules also prohibit justices from allowing “family, social, political, financial or other relationships to influence official conduct or judgment. One expert said that the code appears to be more of a suggestion with “53 uses of the word ‘should’ and only six of the word ‘must.’”

In a second problem, violation of these rules has no enforcement; federal judges other than Supreme Court justices can be investigated. For example, DDT’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, retired as a federal appellate judge in 2019 to avoid investigation into alleged fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings during the 1990s. Retired judges, who can still hear cases, are not subject to the conduct code although reviews can result in their censure or reprimand.  

Democrats may again bail the Republicans out of their messes, this time by supporting the clean continuing resolution with Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson’ (R-LA) “two-laddered”—or more—approach. (Think about the possibilities for cartoons!) Ultra-conservatives created the idea with “moderate” Republicans opposing it, but the Freedom Caucus doesn’t want a “clean” CR with no severe border restrictions and defunding of IRS funding that continues current budgeting until bills are passed. Johnson proposes the “easy” appropriation bills to expire next year on January 19 and the remainder on February 2.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the plan is “far from perfect” but approves of it’s having no poisonous amendments. President Joe Biden, who originally was against the idea, now says, “Let’s wait and see.” Democratic House leaders reluctantly consider the bill although Jim McGovern (D-MA) called it “a last minute hail mary” making a future shutdown only more likely. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the plan is likely to pass, but it’s a “sad thing” for the House, “setting up ongoing crisis so that we will never come to rest and make a decision, which is bad for government, bad for the American people, and bad for the image of America.”

To get a vote to the floor, the bill’s suspension of the rules permits it to bypass the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee after some Republicans warned they would not advance the bill. Suspension prevents amendments and requires a two-thirds vote. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) used the same process to pass the CR in September which stopped a shutdown before he was immediately removed from his position.

Recently elected Gabe Amo’s (D-RI) swearing-in on Monday gives the House 213 Democratic members; the GOP is down to 221 with one vacancy. Watch for House Minority Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to hold up a green card, his signal alerting Democrats voting. A win with two-thirds means that Johnson will need to rely on Democratic support, something he initially said he wouldn’t do. Will the Freedom Caucus remove another Speaker?

Chaos on Both Sides of the World

A bit of good—and amazing—news. For the second time, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the “social cost of carbon,” an important calculation in U.S. climate policy. The Biden administration can now quantify the price of carbon dioxide emissions throughout federal agencies in their climate-regulated regulations despite the multitude of lawsuits from GOP attorneys general. Last year, the 5th Circuit Court ruled that the suing states lack legal standing because they show no harm from the metric’s use. That ruling will stand, permitting regulations to evaluate the costs of deaths, lost homes, dying crops, etc. Beginning with President Barack Obama, the metric put the social cost of carbon at $43 a ton; former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) dropped the cost to $2. Last year, independent experts for the EPA judged the cost at $190 per ton although Biden rates it at $51.   

Whither the House Speaker:

When the going gets tough, the tough guys go home: the House recessed today—again. Summary of the past 24 hours: Steve Scalise (R-LA), the GOP pick for the Speaker, quit; Jim Jordan (R-OH), who said he would nominate Scalise—unless Scalise couldn’t get 217 votes—went back to running for Speaker; “conservative moderate” Austin Scott (R-GA) started running for Speaker because he wanted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to be Speaker again; Troy Nehls (R-TX) still wants DDT for Speaker; and Jordan was picked for the GOP nominee by 124-81 votes. A second vote was 152-55, and Jordan sent Republican home so he could beg for votes. BTW, Jordan said if Scalise didn’t get the 217 votes that he would have to nominate Jordan.

Jordan has a few flaws other than his acceptance of sexual assault against his wresting athletes while he was at Ohio State University from 1987 to 1995. With then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), he persuaded DDT to put the U.S. government into the longest shutdown in history, starting in 2018—all for nothing. Jordan has no history of any legislative accomplishments, and he refused to comply with a subpoena regarding the January 6 insurrection, perhaps because he was involved in planning it. Although part of the job of the Speaker is obtaining donations, he has no skill in that area. A dedicated DDT sycophant, he uses his power leading the Judiciary Committee in efforts to undermine prosecutors and interfere in any investigations of DDT as well as spread Hunter Biden propaganda.  

Scott, running against Jordan, said about his candidacy for Speaker:

“We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people.”

This description doesn’t fit Jordan. Scott said some of his party members “make us look like a bunch of idiots [who] “like to go on TV” instead of finding a solution to the party’s infighting.  

Another GOP House member, Nebraska’s Don Bacon, said “these guys want to be in the minority,” referring to the right-wing representatives. He said:

“They would prefer that, as they can just vote ‘No,’ and yell and scream all the time. But governing, you have to work together.”

Israel v. Palestine:

Halfway around the world from Washington, another chaos is killing people. On the seventh day of Israel’s war on Palestine after the Hamas attack, Israel told over 1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern part of the area. They can’t leave Gaza because Egypt and Israel have blockaded the area since 2007, and humanitarian aid cannot be sent into Gaza.

Hamas told Palestinians to ignore Israeli’s order to leave northern Gaza, that it was “war propaganda,” and they appear to be right. Israeli airstrikes hit the convoys of Palestinian evacuees heading south, killing at least 70 people, primarily women and children, after killing Palestinian on other Israeli-recommended evacuation routes. Southern Gaza is already being bombarded, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a continuation of the attacks.

Israel’s security forces are now shooting Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, killing dozens thus far as well as injuring others. To kill more Palestinians, Israel is giving Israeli settlers assault rifles and machine guns. The settlers have also set fires and damaged Palestinian property and trees. Israeli bombardments have killed at least 1,799 Palestinians, including at least 583 children, and wounded at least another 7,388 Palestinians.

Since Saturday, Israel has blocked Palestinians from travelling between cities and out of the West Bank. At least 10 journalists have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Saturday, and tens more injured, despite their wearing blue bullet-resistant vests marked with the word “Press.” Al Jazeera reported that at least two of their journalists were hit by Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon.

According to photographs and videos, Israel is using white phosphorus bombs in Gaza City. Typically used for marking targets, the white phosphorus burns when exposed to oxygen, creating intense heat and smoke. “Used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said Lama Fakih, the group’s Middle East and North Africa director. It can also “burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.”

After a week, 80 percent of Jewish Israelis blame the government and the prime minister for the Hamas mass infiltration into Israel; 86 percent, including 79 percent of the government coalition supporters, call the surprise attack a failure of the country’s leadership. Almost 99 respondents, 94 percent, believe the government must bear some responsibility for the lack of security preparedness with over 75 percent saying the government holds most of the responsibility. A majority want Netanyahu to resign at the end of the war.

GOP presidential candidates have had varying responses to the Hamas attack:

Nikki Haley accused “the left” of supporting “the beheadings” of Israel children and the “1200” Israelis slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.

DDT said Netanyahu is a “jerk,” and Hezbollah, the Lebanese military group supporting Hamas, is “very smart,” the same term that DDT used for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the same speech, DDT said Netanyahu “let us down” because he didn’t help with the killing Iranian military officer Qassem Soleimani. Repeating the myth that Barack Obama is actually running the government, DDT alleged that Biden has been “inviting” in “terrorists and terrorist sympathizers” because the former president is his “boss.”

Former VP Mike Pence complained about President Joe Biden just giving speeches in the Rose Garden instead of readying special forces to be deployed into Gaza if Hamas doesn’t give up the hostages. The previous day, an article pointed out that Biden already has a JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) unit on standby and sent hostage rescue experts to Israel. Pence’s idea that troops should be immediately dropped in Gaza shows why the U.S was lucky that he never became president.

Ron DeSantis avoided the question of sending assistance to Israel, saying it had “a very robust military capability.” He also criticized “Arab countries” for not being “willing to absorb some of the Palestinian Arabs.” A voter said DeSantis had lost his vote and walked out of the campaign presentation.  

Vivek Ramaswamy was concerned about getting into foreign wars.

Tim Scott has backed off from his lies that Biden is sending taxpayer money to Iran.

Before the Hamas attack, the U.S. had agreed to allow Iran to use the country’s $6 billion dollars, but only for humanitarian reasons. DDT provided the money to Iran in 2019 by permitting the country to sell oil to South Korea. Conservatives had lied about Biden giving Iran taxpayers’ money. Now the U.S. and Qatar have agreed to stop Iran from accessing the money after the Hamas attack on Israel, and the U.S. may put more sanctions on Iran. Thus far, Iran had obtained no part of the $6 billion. With no evidence of Iran’s direct role in the attack, the country may have provided weapons and training to Hamas.

Netanyahu, however, has supported help for Hamas. While trying to get reelected in March, he advocated Hamas’support with money transferred to them. Netanyahu said that this strategy would “isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” For years, he treated Hamas as a partner to block Palestinian statehood and denigrate the Palestinian group Abbas in the West Bank and allowed Hamas to obtain funding from abroad through indirect negotiations via Egypt. Hamas was part of discussions to increase the number of work permits from Israel for Gazan laborers to keep money for the blockaded community of 2.3 million people. The number of 2,000 to 3,000 work permits at the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021 rose to 10,000 during the next year. His increase to power in early 2023 raised the number to almost 20,000.

Israeli support for Hamas goes back to the late 1970s, according to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, Gaza’s Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. He said he helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat who referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” Segev said, “The Israeli government gave me a budget, and the military government gives to the mosques.” In 2009, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official working in Gaza for over than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal that “Hamas … is Israel’s creation.” In the 1980s, he wrote an official report to his superiors warning them against the “divide-and-rule” strategy in the Occupied Territories. He was ignored.  

WGA Settles, Media Focuses on GOP

Today had good news and bad news.

The five-month screenwriters’ strike may be over. The Writers Guild of America leadership unanimously voted for a tentative three-year contract agreement, and WGA members will vote whether to ratify the deal. It includes higher pay than studios had been willing to offer, improved healthcare benefits, viewership-based streaming residuals, minimum staffing requirements for television writers’ rooms, and regulations restricting studios’ use of artificial intelligence. The vote is scheduled from October 2 to October 9. More details about the agreement will be available when the contract has been prepared.

The WGA benefited from public support: 67 percent of all likely voters backed the strike in a Data for Progress poll. The Gallup poll was even stronger with public sympathy at 72 percent and only 19 percent opposed. SAG-AFTRA actors will stay on the picket lines, and the union has no scheduled dates to meet with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, representing the major studios.

Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers, who formed the podcast “Strike Force Five,” announced the return of their shows by October 1 with Oliver’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver back the Sunday before. They are also ending their podcast with a few more broadcasts.  Real Time host Bill Maher comes back on Friday and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on October 16.

The next strike is against video game makers: striking actors expanded their walkout to include that market with a 98 percent membership approval. Acting in video games comprise a number of roles from voice performances to motion capture work and stunts. Their last strike in 2016 lasted almost a year. Issues are the same as other actors: wages, safety measures, and protections on the use of artificial intelligence. For the first three-fourths of 2023, U.S. people have spent $34.9 billion on video games, consoles, and accessories.

Then there’s the problem with ultra-conservative Republicans in the House under the non-leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). McCarthy refuses to govern, a big problem as the entire U.S. faces a shutdown because he won’t even put a bill on the floor that could pass. Maybe Democrats would vote for it! Instead, he blames President Joe Biden for not giving him every cut he wants after shaking hands on another agreement four months ago.

Republicans did successfully pass proposals to their spending bills while they avoided dealing with the shutdown. One of them was to drop the salary of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III from $235,600 to $1. (No, that’s not a typo; it came from Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.) And in the usual “anti-woke” movement, another vote stripped funding for the Pentagon’s office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) accused Republicans of trying to use the specter of a shutdown “to jam your right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), recently thrown out of a Denver theater for inappropriate behavior, some of it sexual, followed the salary decrease trend by introducing an amendment to lower it to $1 for Assistant Secretary of Defense Shawn Skelly, a trans woman. In her speech, Boebert misgendered Skelly, calling her “a delusional man thinking he is a woman.” Claiming she knows her science, Boebert stated that she knew “his chromosomes are still XY” although she didn’t offer any proof. Many people don’t know that they have chromosomes different from their gender presentation at birth.  

GOP amendments in the $886 billion defense bill would defund gender-affirming healthcare for service members and their families, ban drag shows and the flying of Pride flags on military installations, and block the Department of Defense’s (DOD) educational arm from purchasing any books on “gender ideology” (that is, gender identity and transgender issues).

Basically, one person—McCarthy—is responsible for shutting down a country of over 330 million people. Even if the Senate approves the bill advancing through its chamber, McCarthy said he would not allow it on the House floor for a vote although some Republicans, such as Don Bacon (NE), said they would support the legislation. According to McCarthy’s rules, Democratic votes can’t be used to pass any legislation, a serious problem because at least ten of his caucus claim they won’t vote for a continuing resolution no matter what’s in it.     

The Senate even sent McCarthy a lifeline by moving forward on a bipartisan six-week continuing resolution which he immediately batted away. A Republican who attended a closed-door McCarthy session said the Speaker “told [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell he’s going to fight what the Senate sends over.”

Even McConnell, a conservative from Kentucky, is disgusted about McCarthy’s determination to burn the country down. On the Senate floor, McConnell said:

“The choice facing Congress, pretty straightforward: We can take the standard approach and fund the government for six weeks at the current rate of operations, or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy. Shutting down the government isn’t an effective way to make a point. Keeping it open is the only way to make a difference on the most important issues we are facing.”

That is what a grownup would say, but teenager McCarthy has only one goal—keeping the Speaker position. Biden, on the other hand, is following McConnell’s lead. About McCarthy’s approach, the president said, “Why the House Republicans would want to defund Border Patrol is beyond me.”

Suffering from serious delusion, McCarthy plans to pass a short-term resolution combined with the GOP hard-right immigration bill passed earlier in the year and then expect the Senate Democrats to fall all over themselves in accepting it. McCarthy wants Biden to bail him out as he did with not defaulting on the debt ceiling, but that won’t happen. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre was clear on that point when she addressed McCarthy’s agreement in early summer.

“A deal is a deal. The president made a deal with the speaker and a bipartisan deal that was voted by two-thirds of House Republicans back in June.”

To appease the lowest denominator of his caucus, however, McCarthy reneged on the agreement he made with Biden, and he’s still trying to appease hardliners by sacrificing tens of millions of people in the U.S.

On the good news side, the second GOP primary debate is over and done. It was uglier than the first one with lots of snarky remarks, petty faultfinding, squabbling, and shouting over each other. No one wanted to address policy; it was just an hours-long one-up-man-ship. Their only criticism of the missing candidate Deposed Donald Trump (DDT)—who has been convicted by a summary judgment of fraud and faces at least five more trials, all of them with indictments—is that he didn’t come play with them at their debate.

To demonstrate how shallow the debate was, here are the biggest takeaways as reported by a Sacramento (CA) station:

• Ron DeSantis started out by aggressively attacking DDT.
• Nikki Haley, daughter of Indian immigrants, called for cutting off all aid to Latin America until the border is secured (whatever that means).
• Vivek Ramaswamy, also the son of Indian immigrants, agreed and wants to revoke U.S. citizenship for children born to undocumented parents. (Forget that this right is enshrined in the Constitution.)
• Haley responded to one tirade by Ramaswamy, telling him, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.”
• Ramaswamy did start out by trying to be gentler, but he kept trying to shout over everyone.
• Tim Scott, working to be more aggressive, tried to criticize VP Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian descent before he talked about personal prejudice again himself. He finished by saying, “American is not a racist country.”
• Chris Christie spent most of his time slamming DDT, nicknaming him “Donald Duck” because he “ducked” the debate. He did take time out of criticizing DDT to attack Biden for “sleeping with a member of the teachers union.” As a community college teacher, she is a member of the National Education Association. [Note: Christie’s wife was an investment banker while he was a governor and now partner with her husband in a lobbying firm.]
• VP Mike Pence commented that he’s “been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.”

A remarkable argument between Scott and Haley, which went on for a couple of minutes, was her spending money on drapes in her house when she was UN ambassador. He blamed her for the cost, and she blamed him for not stopping the purchase because he was in the Senate.

In another oddity, Pence vigorously talked at length about how, as president, he would support civil rights for all before he said, “We’re going to pass a federal ban on transgender chemical or surgical surgery anywhere in the country.” Much was said by Pence and the others about parents’ rights, but they didn’t specify which parents. Pence also wants an “expedited” death penalty for mass shooters, eliminating due process in both the 5^th and 14^th Amendments. But no mention of guns.

Average of polls on September 27 before debate:

• Trump – 54.0%
• DeSantis – 13.8%
• Haley – 6.3%
• Ramaswamy – 6.3%
• Pence – 4.6%
• Christie – 2.9%
• Scott – 2.7%
• Burgum – 0.9%
• Hutchinson – 0.6%
• Hurd – 0.4%

And even uglier. DDT spoke at a non-union shop to get union members to vote for him. As usual, he made many promises with no specifics. One woman at the address held a sign “union members for Trump,” but she admitted she isn’t a union member. A man with a sign “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an autoworker.

Check Out Margaret & Helen!

If you follow just one blog, you might want to consider “Margaret and Helen,” subtitled “Best Friends for 60 Years and Counting.” Helen Philpot learned to blog so that she could blog with her best friend, Margaret Schmechtman. Philpot lives in Texas, and Schmechtman lives in Texas. Their last names have been changed because, as Helen wrote, “We got a few scary emails when I first wrote about Sarah Palin.”

Today’s post, as always, tells it like it is: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and hates immigrants, gays and people of color then what you have is a Republican duck.”

Thank you, Helen! You rock!

Margaret, once again I find myself stating the obvious – of course the KKK is a part of the Republican base.  Are Republicans really trying to suddenly be outraged by that?  When you hate immigrants, hate gays, question the patriotism of the first black President, use war to solve all your problems… Well hell, Margaret, I could have just used those exact same words to actually describe the KKK rather than the current Republican party.

The entire Republican leadership is culpable for the rise of Trump.  For years they have suppressed minority voters, denied rights to gays, and vilified immigrants.  How in the hell can the party of Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Joe Arpaio, Jan Brewer, Sarah Palin, Paul LePage, Mike Huckabee, Jason Rapert, Jon Hubbard, Loy Mauch, Bob McDonnell, Haley Barbour, Jeff Sessions,  Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, George Allen, … suddenly be offended by Donald Trump?  Hell, the list of racist, homophobic, immigrant-hating Republican politicians is so long, I haven’t even scratched the surface.  And who do you think voted them into office?

The numbers speak for themselves.

The KKK thinks Obama is a Muslim.

Almost half of the Republican Party thinks Obama is a Muslim.

The KKK is anti-immigration.

A majority of Republicans support a ban on all Muslim immigration and over half support an increase in the deportation of Mexican immigrants.

The KKK promotes hate crimes against homosexuals and is adamantly opposed to same sex marriage.

Almost 2/3 of Republicans do not agree with the Supreme Court’s decision to allow same sex marriage.

The KKK believes African Americans are second class citizens.

Republican controlled state houses have systemically passed laws to suppress the African American vote.

The KKK, small as it is, seems to do best in the Deep South where Republicans do best.  Coincidence?  Oh honey, bless your heart.  I have lived most of my life next door to women who cook and think like Paula Deen.

The Republican leadership can wish all it wants that Donald Trump isn’t their front runner, but in reality they can put wishes in their right hand and shit in their left hand and I promise you that the left one will always  fill up first. If they thought Donald Trump was electable the GOP would be blaming CNN for a faulty earpiece.

In truth, for the first time in my life I have enjoyed watching a few minutes of Fox News.  Those folks are so bent out of shape over this they could kiss their own behind while enjoying the sunshine on their face.  If Bill O’Reilly and company were to be totally honest, they aren’t quite sure what to do right now considering the KKK is probably a ratings point or two for the network.

I have no problem saying what the journalists seem unwilling to say. Until GOP voters demand that the party change its platform, to be a Republican today means you have more in common with the KKK than you probably care to admit.

Donald Trump was endorsed by a legitimate portion of the Republican base and the party leaders are upset that their little secret got out. I mean it.  Really.

Thanks, Margaret and Helen! And I’ll add the kerfuffle about Trump’s taxes. Furious with his refusal to release the information, Rubio and Cruz bragged about releasing their own—but only their summaries for the past few years, not the tax returns, were made public. As the Washington Post stated, “Without the full returns, key details about Cruz’s and Rubio’s family financial dealings – such as precise sources of income, deductions and amounts donated to charity – were not revealed.” Tax lawyer Martin Schenkman said, “The gross numbers without the schedules don’t tell you anything.” Cruz said he was just doing what Rubio did and didn’t plan to release any more tax information at this time.

As Trump and Cruz continue their battle after Super Tuesday’s wins today—and Rubio trying to moving into the big guys’ arena–there will be far more hypocrisy in the GOP.

 

GOP Presidential Candidate Climate Deniers

Midwinter Meetings for the American Library Association are typically at the end of January. This one this year in Boston was unusually early—January 8-11. If we have met at the customary time, over 10,000 people would have been unable to get to the conference or stranded in the Northeast as a blizzard threatens 50 million people on the East Coast. With this storm, we can expect Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) or one of his colleagues to bring another snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that climate change doesn’t exist. Once again, they lack the education—or willingness to accept science—to understand that “Snowmageddons” is all a part of the human-created changes in climate around the world.

Once again, climatologists try to explain to the uneducated how warming-fueled ocean temperatures super-charged all this snow. As Thomas Mann, Director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, explained:

“There is peer-reviewed science that now suggests that climate change will lead to more of these intense, blizzard-producing nor’easters, for precisely the reason we’re seeing this massive storm—unusually warm Atlantic ocean surface temperatures (temperatures are in the 70s off the coast of Virginia).”

Extra moisture plus a cold Arctic outbreak equals monster snowfalls, he said, pointing out that massive winter storms are favored by climate change.

Levom Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, added:

“At present sea surface temperatures are more the 3F above normal over huge expanses (1000 miles) off the NE coast and water vapor in the atmosphere is about 10 to 15% higher as a result. Up to half of this can be attributed to climate change.”

A long-term pattern of more extreme precipitation, especially in Northeast winters, has led to superstorms predicted by climate scientists. Trenberth stated that “all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” The U.K. Met Office explained:

 “Basic physics tells us that a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture — at a rate of approximately 7 per cent increase per degree [Celsius] warming. This is expected to lead to similar percentage increases in heavy rainfall, which has generally been borne out by models and observed changes in daily rainfall.”

When the temperature drops far enough down for snow, the storms will be fueled by more water vapor and thus be more intense themselves. The result is fewer snowstorms in regions close to the rain-snow line, such as the central United States, but with more intense snowstorms in the area when they do occur, just like more intense snowstorms in generally cold regions.

Climate warming is not enough to end below-freezing temperatures during midwinter but large enough to put more water vapor into the air. Studies show that warmer-than-normal winters favor snow storms as shown by wide fluctuations during the twentieth century, which experienced upward trends corresponding with strong cyclonic activity. Most of the United States had 71 to 80 percent of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years.

Climate change also causes snowstorms to be longer. The changing jet stream results in slower storm systems and longer periods of heavy precipitation.

Scientists announced that 2015 was the warmest year on record, the second year in a row. The world is on a trajectory of rapid global warming. Fifteen of NOAA’s 16 hottest-recorded years have occurred since 2000, and last year was the 39th consecutive year in which global temperatures have been higher than the 20th century average.  To Democrats, these facts make the fight against climate change more urgent than ever. Yet GOP presidential candidates laughed at Bernie Sanders when he said that climate change is the greatest threat to the U.S., preferring to stick with international terrorism. (It’s easier to scare the people in the U.S. with this position.) GOP candidates’ positions:

Donald Trump: The snowstorms are just “weather” until someone can prove otherwise to him.  Global warming is a “hoax.”

Ted Cruz: He uses incomplete data in an attempt to show that satellite data shows no warming in the past 17 years.

Marco Rubio: Climate change exists, but the U.S. shouldn’t bother with addressing any problems in this area if other countries don’t do the same thing. The Paris climate deal is “ridiculous.”  The U.S. can’t limit its economy to tackle climate change.

Ben Carson: “There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused. Gimme a break.” His spokesman tried to cover for his ignorance by explaining that Carson is a “questioner” and “could be persuaded.”

Jeb Bush: He follows Rubio, calling himself a climate “skeptic.”

Chris Christie: Although New Jersey has met clean air goals and expanded zero-emission electricity—according to the candidate—he doesn’t like government intervention “to chase some wild left-wing idea that somehow us [sic] by ourselves is going to fix the climate.”

John Kasich: He admits a problem with climate change but doesn’t “want to overreact to it.” Ohio is a fossil fuel-producing state (aka fracking) so Kasich doesn’t want to “worship the environment.”  Last September, he said, “I don’t believe that humans are the primary cause of climate change.”

Carly Fiorina: The energy industry should innovate on its own instead of having climate change regulations. The Paris conference was “baloney.”

Rick Santorum: A skeptic of climate change, he follows Trump and Cruz. He wants more than 97 percent of the scientists to believe in human-created climate change. “Lots of things cause climate change,” he said.

Mike Huckabee: In the past, he said that people need to take care of the Earth, a biblical precept, but he’s moved to “science is not settled” on climate change.

Rand Paul: Nature is a bigger part of climate change than humans. The planet has always had different climates, according to Paul, although he left out the parts in which humans couldn’t live on it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was the only candidate who believed in climate change, and he’s gone.

The Earth’s average land temperature of 2.39 degrees Fahrenheit above the twentieth-century average should make it difficult for climate deniers to claim that global warming stopped in 1998. Record-high temperatures in ten months don’t show the “pause” that some people claim. Republican climate deniers are now much quieter than in the past, but they still won’t agree. Pundit David Brooks wrote that the GOP “has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship” about climate science: even politicians who know the truth about global warming say otherwise “because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.”

A month ago, the North Pole temperature was 50 degrees higher than normal. Manhattan was over 70 degrees on Christmas, and people were surfing in Queens. The storm system drawing warm air to the North Pole caused recent tornadoes in Texas and heavy rain and flooding in the Mid- and Southeast. A January hurricane in the north Atlantic was the first at this time of the year in 78 years. During an upper level low pressure center above Tucson in December created a temperature of -26 degrees at about 18,000 feet while the temperature at the same altitude in Barrow, Alaska was just only a few degrees colder.

 

Do you live in a state that’s preparing for climate change disaster? Check the above map to see what grade your state receives.

Media Coddles White Lawbreakers in Oregon

Two central Oregon ranchers, father and son, were convicted of arson on public land in 2012 in an attempt to cover up an illegal deer slaughter on federal land in 2001. U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan Dwight ruled that Hammond, 73, spend three months in prison, and his son, 46-year-old Stephen, be incarcerated for a year. Under Amanda Marshall, then U.S. attorney for Oregon, a successful government appeal under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 changed the minimum sentence to five years, and the Hammonds are due to report back to prison tomorrow. At the trial, witnesses, including a relative of Hammonds, had testified that Steven Hammond handed out “Strike Anywhere” matches with instructions that they be lit and dropped on the ground because they were going to “light up the whole country on fire.” The government spent $600,000 fighting the fires.

Enter heavily armed gun-toting men this past November, including at three sons of Cliven Bundy, who had gathered around the Nevada rancher and aimed their guns at federal officials last year because they thought that Bundy shouldn’t have to pay his debt to the U.S. government for grazing his cattle on public land. After parading around the small town of Burns, they took over the federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, created 30 miles southeast of Burns by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 from unclaimed government lands. The occupiers declare that they will occupy the facility for “years” and are calling on “patriots” to join them and bring their guns. [Refuge watch tower above]

The men’t goal is not to protect the Hammonds but force the federal government to give the land to local ranchers, miners, and loggers. The land in question was once part of a Northern Paiute reservation established by President Ulysses S. Grant, but whites used violence to force the Paiutes off the reservation in the late 19^th century.

Closed for the holiday weekend, the building is now being monitored by federal officials, and Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward warned people to avoid the area. The Bundys claimed that about 150 people were in the building, but witnesses report between 12 and 15 are there. Ammon Bundy (right) said, “We are not hurting anybody or damaging any property. We would expect that they understand that we have given them no reason to use lethal force upon us or any other force.” Cliven Bundy said, “If the Hammonds wouldn’t stand …, the people had to do something.”

Several GOP presidential candidates support the Bundys’ actions. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) calls for private ownership of federal land, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) agrees with Paul and blames President Obama for his “assault” on “liberty.” Ben Carson calls the Bundy group “pretty outstanding people” before he rambles on into “freedom.” Donald Trump said, “I like him, I like his spirit, his spunk and the people that are so loyal…I respect him.” Mike Huckabee is another strong Bundy supporter.

The Hammonds are willing to go back to prison,  and many Burns’ residents, who have posted signs with “Militia go home,” are unhappy with the out-of-towners wandering the town while openly carrying guns. Rancher Melodi Molp said that the Bundys “are way more aggressive than what we want to do,” and Candy Tiller said, “I’m worried that there’s a trigger-happy idiot out there.”  She added, “This is crazy. This does not fit. These people need to go away.” Chris Briels, Burns fire chief for 24 years, said that the militia “seems like a bunch of people ready to shoot.  I don’t want that in my county.” Rancher Gary Marshall wants the Bundys to let the community “think and decide for ourselves” and said that 50 percent of the employed people in the county of about 7,000 people work for the government. “A lot of the people who work at the BLM are of families of the community,” said Marshall. “It’s not in any way a ‘them against us’ kind of a scenario here.”

Federal employees report they have been followed around town and to their homes. Three men, one of them with a gun strapped to his hip, and a woman went up to the county sheriff’s parents at an American Legion yard sale. When they criticized the sheriff, his 74-year-old mother, accompanied by the sheriff’s 78-year-old father, said that she didn’t need their protection from the government. Later the men went to the sheriff to say that she had threatened them.

After Sheriff Ward told “militia” organizers that he would not give sanctuary to the Hammonds, he received death threats from people in other states who called him an “enemy of the people.” He said, “What we’ve been threatened with here is civil unrest and the insinuations of armed rebellion.” According to Ward, the groups has come to town under false pretenses: instead of supporting local ranchers, they want to overthrow the government.

Mainstream media expresses little concern about a group of armed men taking over a federal building, depicting the event as a “peaceful protest.” Fox’s early report overlooked the danger of men in camo outfits with long guns who are frightening Harney County’s residents. Ryan Bundy tweeted that the self-appointed “militia” are “willing to kill and be killed if necessary.” Ammon Bundy said, “We’re planning on staying here for years, absolutely. This is not a decision we’ve made at the last minute.” One member of the group, Jon Ritzheimer, posted a goodbye video to his family on YouTube today and said “I want to die a free man.” For safety purposes, Harney County schools will be closed this week.

ABC didn’t bother to investigate the explosive situation: the network merely copied Fox news with the headline, “Peaceful Protest Followed by Oregon Wildlife Refuge Action.” NBC’s headline calls the armed men “Rancher’s Rights Protesters.”

The state’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, used its conservative bent to whitewash past events concerning the Hammonds although a few facts can be cleaned from this article.

• In 1994, Dwight Hammond was arrested, but not prosecuted, in his dispute regarding water access with the refuge managers when he tried to stop a fence to keep out his cattle.
• In 1999, Steven Hammond fired shots at hunters on federal land but claimed he was shooting at rabbits. He objected to “authorized commercial hunting of wildlife that temporarily wandered onto barren public land from private land lush with forage” but was convicted of interfering with use of public land.
• In 2001 the Hammonds claimed that they lit the 2001 fire to take out invasive juniper and didn’t see any reason to put the fire out when it reached public land. They were convicted of arson because of poaching.
• In 2006, the Hammonds list another fire to keep a lightning-caused fire from burning only the Hammonds’ ranch in spite of a countywide burn ban and endangering firefighters camped nearby.
• In 2007, the Hammonds were investigated for child abuse. Stephen Hammond, upset because a 16-year-old boy living with them carved initials in his chest with a paperclip, used coarse sand paper to sand them off. Hammond’s mother, Susan told the teen to clean up and “not to have a pity party.” Her husband, Dwight, said it was “decided by the family” to sand off the initials.

According to a new poll, conservative whites are angrier than the rest of the population in the United States because they feel more oppressed than any other group, often from their feelings about having a black president. Three-fourths of Republicans get angry every day about current events, and at least one-third of white people—over three-fourths of the people in the United States—own guns. Exploited by conservative politicians and media, these expressions of fear become increasingly toxic, resulting in the acquisition of increasing gun ownership by people who plan to take over the government. Combining this anger with guns results in increased gun violence.

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd did his usual avoidance of conservative views regarding the latest “militia” standoff. He didn’t asked interview guest Paul anything about the situation, and he nodded sagely while hard-right panelists Washington Post columnists Jennifer Rubin and Sara Fagen, the latter a former political director for George W. Bush’s administration, blamed a weak president and bad foreign policy for all the anger.

Tonight, CBS Evening News segment showed a benign view of the ranchers who determined that they could take public land by force through arson and other acts of violence, one man who abused a teenager, and a group of heavily armed men who charmingly said that they meant no harm as long as the law gave them whatever they wanted. The “militia” wants publicity, and they’re getting plenty of it, much of it positive  Angry armed white men are determined to overthrow the government, undermine the courts, and receive positive media attention for their actions, and the media media is obliging them–because they are white.

The Tragedy of Veterans Day

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day, a designated time to honor U.S. veterans for their willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good. For many years, being a vet meant moving toward the middle class, a benefit for struggling citizens. Yet today’s United States is a very sad place for many veterans.

One serious problem is health care for veterans who were sexually assaulted while in the military, ten times the rate for women as for men. Reporting these assaults while in the military is frequently ignored which impacts the lack of care later on, especially when military officials warn television stations to not air these stories.

Col. (Ret.) Kathy Platoni, a U.S. Army psychologist for more than three decades, cited problems such as hostile physicians and violations of HIPAA privacy regulations in the VA. Susan Avila Smith, advocate for raped and sexual abused women in the military, told about a woman placed on a VA co-ed psych ward who was forced to watch a New Year’s Day football game with a group of male patients. They cheered their team, and she screamed in fear, remembering her rape by a serviceman. She was strapped to a gurney, legs spread, and left alone in a quiet room instead of receiving appropriate care and support. Only 55 percent of the 150 major VA hospitals have women’s clinics.

Female service members account for about 15 percent of the armed forces, but 46 percent of military sexual assault victims. Of the victims who reported attacks, 62 percent said they received retaliation both professionally and socially because of their reports. According to an estimation, fewer than three out of every 100 sexual assaults in 2012 were prosecuted.

Among the homeless, veterans represent 8.6 percent, down from five years earlier because of efforts to end veterans’ homelessness. Overrepresented are black veterans who comprise 39 percent of the homeless veteran population but only 11 percent of the total veteran population. Feeding America reports that “20 percent of families served by its food banks and pantries include someone who has served in the U.S. military.”

At least ten percent of people on death row today—over 300 inmates—are military veterans although only seven percent of the population has ever served in the military. Many more veterans have been executed, according to a report from the Death Penalty Information Center. Researcher Richard C. Dieter reports that this disturbing statistic may be related to the serious traumas that veterans have suffered, receiving poor treatment or none at all. One-third of homicide victims killed by veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan were family members or girlfriends. Another 25 percent were fellow service members.

Jeffrey Toobin points out the difference between recent and past veterans:

“Earlier generations of veterans came home from war to ticker-tape parades, a generous G.I. Bill, and a growing economy that offered them a chance at upward mobility. Younger veterans returned to P.T.S.D., a relatively stagnant economy, especially in rural and semi-rural areas, and an epidemic of drug abuse. And they came home to a society where widening income inequality suggested the futility of their engagement with the contemporary world.”

Veterans also have a suicide rate 50 percent higher than those who didn’t serve in the military. Because the suicide rate is higher among veterans who didn’t deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq, the causes of suicide for the veteran population may not be limited to the trauma of war. Suicide among women veterans is much higher than men, almost six times the rate of other women. Suicide for women veterans ages 18 to 29 is 12 times the rate of nonveterans, and every other age group of women veterans is between four and eight times higher. In the general population, women tend to attempt suicide more often than men but use pills or methods other than guns. Female veterans, however, are more likely to have guns; 40% of female veterans use guns to commit suicide.

Veterans, like the elderly, disabled, and others on Social Security, won’t receive a cost of living this coming year, for the third time since 1975. In introducing the Seniors and Emergency (SAVE) Benefits Act—a one-time increase of 3.9 percent or about $581—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) selected that percentage because it’s equal to the average annual increase in CEO pay at the top 350 U.S. companies. Taxpayers subsidize CEO pay packages because they are considered a business expense. Closing that loophole would pay for this increase veterans and Social Security payments while still leaving funding for the Social Security Trust Fund.

Tonight the GOP presidential candidates met to debate issues. Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) supports privatizing the VA health care system, removing government-connecting negotiating power for prices. He also “advocated for leniency in the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation of Corinthian Colleges and its job placement claims” although Corinthian Colleges illegally used official military seals “in its advertising in an effort to recruit recently discharged service men and women” before abruptly shutting down “under the weight of regulatory and legal pressure.” The company was also accused of advertising programs that it didn’t offer and misrepresenting job placement rates to students and investors.

While governor of Florida, Jeb Bush tried to privatize health care for veterans, but the private company providing nursing and food services—a company that donated to Bush’s campaign—went into bankruptcy two years later. The facilities using the private companies provided substandard care and were ranked in the bottom 20 percent of facilities in the county. Records showed that nine out of ten patients did not receive proper care.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson wants to do away with the VA and put their care into facilities for the general population. Although not all VA-enrolled veterans seek health care during a given year, the U.S. had 9,111,955 VA-enrolled Veterans in 2014, a number equivalent to the combined populations of Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and both Dakotas.

Back in 1998, Sen.Lindsey Graham (SC) lied about seeing action while in the military when he claimed to be “an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran although he never got closer to the war than McEntire Air National Guard Base near Columbia where he was a military lawyer.” Later he said that he “didn’t mean to mislead people.” His job while in South Carolina was to make wills for soldiers sent to the Gulf War.

Sens. Rand Paul (KY), Ted Cruz (TX), and Rubio voted against spousal benefits for legally married same-gender spouses of veterans. The amendment would “establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to ensuring all legally married same-sex spouses have equal access to the Social Security and veterans benefits they have earned and receive equal treatment under the law pursuant to the Constitution of the United States.” It passed without the votes from the GOP presidential candidates.

In opposing giving veterans access to affordable housing, Paul was also one of 11 senators who voted against considering a bill that would “provide $142 billion in fiscal 2012 for the Department of Veterans Affairs, military construction, military housing and related operations. The bill also includes $52.5 billion in advance fiscal 2013 appropriations for VA medical programs.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill to set aside 3 percent of all state contracts for veteran-owned businesses. President Obama signed the Veterans Entrepreneurship Act this past summer, but Christie refused to hire them for state projects. During the debate, Christie said, “Hillary Clinton doesn’t respect [veterans] service.

Candidates in the debate were eager to create more crisis situations in the Middle East which would force more death and disaster for military members, but they did not go beyond empty words in helping them. Last spring, 41 Senate Republicans voted against a measure that would have expanded education and health care, including 27 new medical facilities, for veterans. The bill proposed the guarantee of in-state tuition rates at all public universities for post-9/11 veterans. Conservatives are ready to cause wars but reluctant to care for the “collateral damage” of their decisions.

In a recent poll, two-thirds of the surveyed veterans opposed privatization of VA health care. In addition, 57 percent of them said that this issue would determine the presidential candidate that they choose. The GOP presidential candidates might want to take notice.

State May Be Separating from Church

In another failure for Oklahoma conservatives, after they didn’t execute Richard Glossip at the end of September, is the removal of a one-ton granite monument with the text of the bible’s Ten Commandments. Afraid that protesters would obstruct their actions, a “large Oklahoma Highway Patrol presence” guarded the workers late at night. The behemoth isn’t gone; it’s just moved a few blocks away where it doesn’t violate Section II-5 of the Oklahoma Constitution mandating that public property can’t be used to benefit or support any “sect, church, denomination, or system of religion,” either directly or indirectly. Gov. Mary Fallin has asked voters to amend the state constitution so that the monument can return to the capitol grounds. Oklahomans might want to note the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” when considering future state executions.

 

Teaching evolution in public schools does not violate the First Amendment, a federal district court has reaffirmed. Kenneth Smith of Harpers Ferry (WV) had filed suit, stating that his religious freedom rights were violated because his daughter learns about evolution in public school. She plans to be a veterinarian, and her father claims that evolution is teaching her “a faith base (evolutionary ideology) that just doesn’t exist.” Judge Gina M.Groh ruled that he couldn’t prove that state agencies had committed any wrongdoing. Last year, the creationist group Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) sued to stop the state of Kansas from implementing new science education standards that included the teaching of evolution. COPE argued that by teaching evolution, public schools had effectively endorsed atheism as a religious viewpoint. They lost too.

Forced to find money elsewhere after her older brother’s sexual crimes, Jill (Duggar) Dillard, of 19 Kids and Counting, decided to collect money with her husband,Derick Dillard, for a mission to El Salvador. Disillusioned fans after the experience seemed to be more a vacation than actual work were  right: the Dillards had applied for missionary status to the Southern Baptist Convention that decided the couple lacked enough education. Fortunately for them, they still have the money from the “Dillard Family Ministries,” a tax-exempt religious organization that keeps them from having to declare how much money they have or where it is.

This tax-exempt status of religious groups may someday run into legal trouble. Pope Francis has already taken potshots at churches that “worship the God of money” instead of helping the sick and the poor as Jesus commands. Televangelists and preachers who run their “churches” like businesses or political organizations may want to take notice. As in the U.S., Italian churches act as umbrellas for its property and businesses to avoid taxation. Religious groups operate churches as hotels and still don’t pay taxes. One famous example of tax dodging in the U.S. is John Hagee, who reorganized his TV station in 2001 as a church to shelter tax records for his income of over $1 million. Hagee’s personally-owned 8,000 acre ranch is covered through the Cornerstone Church.

In one segment on his HBO show, John Oliver satirized U.S. churches and preachers such as Pat Robertson who run ponzi-like schemes in begging money in return for God’s favor. After the first episode of “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption,” the IRS was skewered for conducting only three audits of churches in 2013-14 and non for the four years before that. Any designated “church,” including the Church of Scientology, is tax exempt. Oliver didn’t reveal how much money he received, but the thousands of responses indicated quite of bit of loot. (Oliver gave all the donations to Doctors without Borders.)

Luckily for the Duggar family, they are getting financial assistance from GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee through partnership in the sales of a political DVD series. The company markets the series with an initial “free” item, available for only shipping and processing. Ordering it automatically enrolls the “purchaser” into future sales. The “Learn Our History” series supposedly teaches “historical facts without bias” and American pride as the videos  “…recognize and celebrate faith, religion and the role of God in America’s founding…,” and “…correct the ‘blame America first’ attitude prevalent in today’s teaching.” We can assume that many tax-funded charter schools will be showing the videos.

Pope Francis seems to suffer from ambivalence when regarding LGBT people. Progressives praised him when he seemed to support LGBT families before they were disturbed with a supposed meeting with Rowan County (KY) clerk, Kim Davis, who had refused to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples. The Vatican explained that she was just part of a crowd, and the pope met for 20 minutes with a former student and his male partner while in the United States. Now The Vatican has fired Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa after he said he was proud to be a gay priest and in love with his boyfriend. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombard, said that Charamsa could remain a priest but could not work at the Vatican.

Charamsa made his announcement just before the Vatican hosted bishops from around the world in a synod discussing families. The reports issued indicate confusion. One of the four groups spoke of a need to reach out to families while another claimed there is a need to point out the sins of current attitudes. Another question is whether the documents are to be distributed publicly or given to the pope as advice.

GOP presidential candidates take great pride in claiming their religious beliefs, but their anti-Christian positions may cause difficulties for them. In a townhall meeting, New Jersey Chris Christie was heard to provide too much information about his use of contraception with his wife. Concentrating on Christie’s sex life, the media failed to publicize the question that led to Christie’s humor. In his audience, a man had cited three biblical verses to argue that Christians should oppose foreign wars and support environmental conservation. Basically, the man was echoing the position of Pope Francis, who the GOP also opposes.

Purporting to be Christians, the GOP candidates oppose curbing global warming, raising the minimum wage, and providing a path to citizenship for undocumented people in the U.S. Jeb Bush said, “I don’t get my economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” and Rick Santorum accused the pope of not being a scientist although pontiff has a degree in chemistry. Marco Rubio said that protecting the economy might be more important than protecting the planet.

Both anti-marriage equality GOP candidates Rand Paul and Donald Trump are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, which supports same-gender marriage, and Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz use Christianity to oppose marriage equality and help for undocumented immigrants, a pathway that conservative Christian groups endorsed in 2013. Huckabee tried to work his way out of trouble at the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) in April by emphasizing the need for border security. That was the day after the head of the NHCLC had said that “Republicans must cross the Jordan of immigration reform to step into the promised land of the Hispanic faith electorate.”

It’s a difficult time for conservatives in a changing landscape.

Looking for ‘Character’ in GOP Presidential Candidates

“One of the benefits of a presidential campaign is the character and capability, judgment and temperament of every single one of us is revealed over time and under pressure.” That was Carly Fiorina’s introduction to the second GOP presidential debate on September 16, illustrating the flaws in all the GOP candidates. Even the conservative Washington Post wrote that Fiorina “couldn’t just admit she made a mistake but instead doubled down and worsened the falsehood [about Planned Parenthood.” She insists on describing a scene in the highly doctored, false videotapes of Planned Parenthood that doesn’t exist and continues to digging her hole deeper while demanding a government shutdown. The last debacle, two years ago, cost $26 billion, but she was “not aware of any hardship to anyone, other than the veterans trying to get to the World War II memorial.”

In an increasingly strident voice, Fiorina delivers graphic details about abortions from these fabricated videos debunked even by the Fox network. By now, Fiorina and other GOP presidential candidates claim that women are deliberately having abortions to “harvest their brains and other body parts.” Marco Rubio goes so far as to say that women deliberately get pregnant to make money from having abortions. He said that women “look forward to” getting abortions. Fiorina also lies about taxpayers paying for abortions. The Hyde Amendment forbids it, and every state investigating Planned Parenthood has found that government money doesn’t finance abortions. The question is what happens to Fiorina’s popularity when voters discover that she chaired Good360, a charity that gave $18,022 in goods to The Abortion Access Network of Arizona.

Lying about her business record also keeps getting Fiorina into trouble. She claims that she doubled Hewlett-Packard’s revenue, but that’s only because she merged with Compaq which HP dumped in a few years as a failed company. She claimed that she tripled the number of patents per day, but that also came from the merger. HP doubled the number of patents after she left. The public announcement that she was fired caused HP’s stock to go up six percent the next day, adding $3 billion in value to the company. Before she left, however, she artificially inflated HP stock illegally during a tax holiday bill with profits funneled to Fiorina and shareholders. Her mishandling of the company caused 30,000 employees to be laid off—although she tried to claim that they just moved to Texas because it had a better business climate. Fiorina’s layoff, however, gave her a $21 million severance package.

Jeb Bush stays out of the abortion debate but gets in trouble with his tax plan, something that even Fox calls “voodoo economics.” With Bush’s plan, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor, as shown by Bush personally gaining at least $3 million with his plan. Chris Wallace pointed out that “four conservative economists … said that [Jeb’s plan] would increase the deficit between 1 and 3 trillion dollars over the next ten years.” The top 1 percent would get an after-tax increase of 11.6 percent in their income. Bush also assured his mostly-white audience in South Carolina that he wouldn’t be giving black people any “free stuff.” He seems to be emulating Donald Trump’s success in bigotry:  while campaigning in Iowa, Bush said, “We should not have a multicultural society.”

Bush argues that his tax plan helps the economy in the same way that his brother’s two massive tax breaks did. Yet the Bush/Cheney era averaged about 1.6 percent in economic growth, slower than President Obama’s post-recession era and much slower than during the Clinton era.

Donald Trump joined the tax-cut bandwagon with his plan to give $3.48 billion to his children in estate taxes. He said that the hedge fund managers are “getting away with murder,” but he would reduce their tax rate from 23.8 percent to 15 percent. Trump’s plan would cost the country $1 trillion every year for the next ten years while Bush only adds $340 billion to the deficit each year.

While Trump rants, Ben Carson’s speech patterns are guaranteed to put people asleep while he spreads his bigotry. Jake Tapper grilled Carson about his position that a Muslim shouldn’t be president if that person practices the Islamic religion, but Carson continued to claim that the constitution doesn’t fit Islamism. Carson escaped when a disembodied voice stated, “This interview is over.” and Carson was gone. Fox’s conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer called Carson’s religious bigotry “morally outrageous”:

“His reason is that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. On the contrary. Carson is incompatible with a Constitution…”

The extremely conservative Values Voter Summit seems to bring out the worst in people, and Ted Cruz is no exception. He promised to not only rip up the Iran agreement but also kill Iran’s agreements. The speech brought standing ovations and won him the Summit for presidential candidate for the third year in a row.

Tear up the Iran agreement? That’s what most of the GOP presidential candidates are promising if they are elected. While in the United States recently, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani commented that several of the candidates don’t even know where Iran is. He then compared the GOP threats to another Middle East leader: “This is something that only the likes of Saddam Hussein would do.”

Scott Walker is gone from the GOP list because God told him to lead by resigning, Jim Gilmore is running but not campaigning, and three more candidates—Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, and Rand Paul—are on the chopping block. The GOP will never vote for Pataki because he claims that climate change is scientifically proven. That leaves an even dozen to spread their lies at the October 28 debate and show us their “character.”

Here is the yesterday’s average of 171 polls from 30 pollsters, a great site to follow:

 

• Donald Trump                    26.9%
• Ben Carson                         16.6%
• Jeb Bush                              8.7%
• Carly Fiorina                       8.7%
• Marco Rubio                        7.6%
• Ted Cruz                              5.8%
• Chris Christie                      3.4%
• John Kasich                         3.0%
• Rand Paul                            2.7%
• Mike Huckabee                   2.6%
• Rick Santorum                   0.7%
• Bobby Jindal                       0.5%
• George Pataki                     0.4%
• Lindsey Graham                 0.2%