Raid/Search, Classified, Stolen Docs, Nuke Secrets, Trump Loss, Biden Wins

Continue reading “Raid/Search, Classified, Stolen Docs, Nuke Secrets, Trump Loss, Biden Wins”

Kansas, Jan 6, DOJ, Veterans, Ukraine, Soc Sec, Alex Jones, Uhura, Bill Russell

  • The strategy worked for a while. The conservative movement, with their overt tax cut and implicit racism agenda, found a way to use the anti-abortion, anti-gay side of religion as a smokescreen.
     
    Infidel753 looks at the conservative disaster in Kansas, followed by the flatfooted Republican attempt to oppose veteran’s health care, and concludes the smokescreen has eaten the original agenda and taken over the movement.
     
  • Imani Gandy has a thought on Kansas:

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony looks at the Supreme Court changes to the Constitution affecting abortion, conservative activists pushing for even more, then Kansas – and suggests that maybe – well lets see how Iron puts it:
    This is what overreach looks like.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports that Kansas Republicans are facing a dark future in a state where women have rights.
     
    Best quote:
    “If this kind of nightmare can happen in Kansas, it can happen anywhere,” one Republican said.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers. Reputable polling shows the Republican campaign to move abortion decisions from individual women to the hands of government bureaucrats, conservative politicians, and anti-abortion activists is depriving Republican candidates of their traditional off-year advantage. Currently, Democrats are even ahead.
     
  • Darren Bailey is a candidate now catching a tsunami of flack after comparing abortion to the Holocaust. driftglass finds a lesson on how to tell what Republicans really stand for.
     
    Turns out it isn’t that hard.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit sees the overturning of Roe v Wade as already endangering women.
     
  • Julian Sanchez points out that a bogus accusation is suddenly turning real:

  • The Palmer Report considers how to limit a renegade Supreme Court apparently set to drastically slash basic rights, and comes up with an alternative to expanding the court.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life reminds us of the open plan of conservative activists to rewrite basic rights by Convention, replacing the US Constitution with something that fits a right-wing vision.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara makes a bad argument on his blog against a bad argument in an op-ed against a bad anti-vax argument accusing abortion rights advocates of hypocrisy.
     
    Michael agrees with abortion rights, but objects to making a needlessly weak case. He believes he can do better.
     
    He can’t.
     
    His standard is simple. It is at the heart of libertarianism. If government tells you what to do, it is wrong. That includes prohibition of abortion. It also would include proscribing a mandatory vaccination.
     
    Abortion prohibition is wrong.
    My body, my choice.
     
    Government mandated vaccination is wrong.
    My body, my choice.
     
    A private business vaccination requirement is absolutely right.
    My business, my choice.
     
    The weakness in his argument goes to definition:
     
    Properly understood, a vaccine mandate issued by the state violates individual rights. An employer “mandate”—which is really a condition of employment to work at that company—violates no one’s rights. When the government mandates vaccines, it means get a vaccine, period. A business can not mandate a vaccine for anyone. It can simply say if you’re not vaxed, you can’t work here.
     
    Aside from members of the military, there has never existed a government vaccine mandate in the US as Michael defines it. No private citizen has ever been forced to get a vaccine.
     
    Although he does not say it here, Mr. LaFerrara does oppose actual vaccine mandates as they have existed: the government requirement that businesses impose mandates, it is easier to oppose what does not exist.
     
    Government requirements on private businesses have been an integral part of American society since long, long before either Michael A. LaFerrara or I came into existence. Before Mr. Trump’s exaggerated influence, it was controversial only on the fringes.
     
    Libertarians are against any workplace safety standards. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan in 1911 killed 146 workers who could not get out of the building. Libertarians say that since that sort of thing is bad for business, that should be cost enough. Same with vaccinations. Whether to protect employees who do not want exposure to a virus to be a job requirement should be a business decision, unaffected by government standards.
     
    Libertarians are also against consumer safety standards. When the Bush administration relaxed food inspections, the Peanut Corporation of America sent out contaminated peanut butter to kids all over the nation. 8 people died. That sort of thing is bad for business, and that should be cost enough. Same with vaccination or masking requirements. Businesses should decide for themselves whether to protect their customers, whether we’re talking about a virus or Salmonella infection.
     
    Arguing against any and all work safety and food safety standards is a heavy lift, but Libertarians should take it on. They occasionally do.
     
    Arguing against government agents pushing needles into the arms of unwilling citizens is easier.
    But it is a bogus argument against a bogus example.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson reacts emotionally to Dick Cheney. Don’t we all?

  • Dave Dubya finds hope in the January 6 Committee, newly revealed DOJ investigations, and public reaction. But he warns there is much more that must be accomplished.
     
  • So Republicans reverse themselves and support healthcare for veterans after celebrating their success in blocking it. At The Moderate Voice Kathy Gill reads the bill and considers the Republican accusation that their opposition was misunderstood.
     
  • Scotties Playtime has Rand Paul explaining why he opposes health care for veterans.

Continue reading “Kansas, Jan 6, DOJ, Veterans, Ukraine, Soc Sec, Alex Jones, Uhura, Bill Russell”

Manly Josh, Jan 6, Secret Service Secrets, Biden COVID, Big Lie, Gaetz

Continue reading “Manly Josh, Jan 6, Secret Service Secrets, Biden COVID, Big Lie, Gaetz”

See Hawley Run, Jan 6, GOP, Tucker, Secret Service Secrets, Abortion


Oh puhleeeze watch this for 12 seconds:

  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson provides an overview, then a detailed account, of Thursday’s hearing. Trump’s deliberate inaction, and his fumbling resentments flowing even beyond the day of violence show a deliberate fanning of the flames. While Trump does not come off well, Senator Josh Hawley(Republican from here in Missouri) comes off worse: a tough talking bully who quickly gets frightened right down to his running shoes.
     
    She quotes journalist Adam Serwer:
    Hawley riling up the mob and then fleeing in terror is an incredible political metaphor.
     
  • Tough talk, raised fist supporting insurrectionists, instructing Americans that they are no longer masculine enough, explaining how to man up. In Hackwhackers, Senator Hawley runs in panic from the same lynch mob he had cheered on. The video has gone viral.
     
    He is up for re-election in 2024. I wonder if he will be, you know, running.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us Capitol Officer Michael Fanone, with some choice words for poor frightened Josh.
     
  • The Palmer Report believes the January 6 Committee has finally discovered the shared hidden weakness of Misters Trump and Hawley.
     
    The Achilles heel of Washington heels.
     
  • Former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler testifies as ordered before the January 6 Committee, but doesn’t like it at all. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors relays a couple of phrases from the resulting diatribe.
     
    In Garrett’s view female witnesses are garden utensils come on, you know what I’m saying. He also applies a term I had to look up. Hip young misogynists use it to describe women they consider too sexually active.
     
    Damn, I’m old!
     
    I am a little more familiar with Ben Shapiro, a virulent conservative who considers any Jew who voted against Trump as a bad Jew, a JINO – Jewish In Name Only.
     
    Apparently Mr. Ziegler explodes against fellow rightist Ben because he is Jewish.
     
    Ted McLaughlin helpfully offers Garrett a bit of useful career advice.
     
  • It seems Garrett Ziegler is not the only right-wing activist who hates fellow right-wing activists if they are Jewish. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil shows us the evidence as the right-wingers of the right wing revert to earlier roots.
     
  • Dave Dubya suggests the Zieglar rant is dangerously iconic: a view of future possibilities.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson does not seem enthused about the current crop of Wisconsin Republican candidates:

  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life talks about the story being told by the Committee from a different point of analysis: why a story is important to understanding.
     
    Best line:
    Lucky for us all the pointy heads over in the psychology ivory tower looking down on all us peons trying to infect us with their communist socialist feminist hatred of America for our freedoms have come up with narrative psychology.

Continue reading “See Hawley Run, Jan 6, GOP, Tucker, Secret Service Secrets, Abortion”

Jan 6 Planned, Self Doc Crime, Secret Service Served, Abortion

  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson considers new and developing evidence that the conspiracy to overthrow the peaceful transition was earlier, more explicit, more widespread, and involved people you would have expected to insulate themselves from grimy, incriminating details.
     
  • John Eastman is the lawyer who provided the legal sounding mumbo jumbo that served as the background for Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the results of the election.
     
    The Department of Justice wants to know the details of the plot. They got a warrant and took his cell phone.
     
    The Palmer Report tells us about Mr. Eastman’s court filing to keep them from peeking at the evidence.
     
    Spoiler alert: He lost and DOJ will be looking.
     
  • How often do criminals video tape their detailed plans for robbing a neighborhood bank? Here’s a moral equivalent.
     
    Frances Langum joins us with an amazed Rachel Maddow, watching Trumper extremists planning the Jan 6 insurrection, including their plans for Pence. On! VIDEO!
     
  • In Hackwhackers we find yet another video made a few days before the 2020 election. This one has close Trump associate Steve Bannon preview the plan.
     
    So yes, there was a detailed plan. And yes, it is captured on video. The plan:
     
    If Trump is losing on election night, he will declare victory anyway and claim election fraud.
     
  • The Jan 6 Committee wants communication records from the Secret Service. The records will help determine which of several contradictory accounts of the insurrection are true. Somebody may be lying and the records can show who can be trusted. The Committee goes through channels and gets a runaround. It’s one delay after another.
     
    Finally, the Secret Service runs out of road blocks. So they will comply. But first, they must conduct a device upgrade. We do want communication technology to be up-to-date, right?
     
    And a good portion of the requested records accidentally gets erased.
     
    Oops.
     
    Tommy Christopher says the matter is not closed. The oopsing of the now missing records is now the subject of its own section of the investigation. And maybe, just maybe, the records can be recovered from deletion.
     
    Oops.
     
  • Had to happen, I suppose: A 72 page conservative report of the 2020 election, including an analysis of conspiracy theories.
     
    At The Moderate Voice, retired U.S. Air Force Officer Dorian de Wind reads through the report. Eight prominent conservatives; retired judges, former Senators, legal experts, other officials; look into 187 allegations of fraud and other irregularities. They determine that each and every one is false. The 2020 election was lost, not stolen. The conspiracy theories are bogus.
     
    How about that!
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers. A growing majority of Americans are swayed by the Jan 6 hearings. Trump done it!!
     
  • Max’s Dad reviews a few of the things we have learned about witness tampering, Dick Nixon, Bannon, Uvalde, GOP intelligence, Musk v Trump, and a MAGA world in which the rape of a 10 year old girl is not really rape.
     
  • We have already reviewed the Supreme Court decision on who decides whether a woman will get an abortion.
     
    The Supreme Court says the 9th Amendment, the one that protects rights not mentioned in the Constitution, no longer means what it says.
     
    M. Bouffant at Web of Evil reviews the new conservative reality. When a 10 year old is raped, it is intolerable to force her to keep the pregnancy until she gives birth to the rapist’s baby. So, when it does happen, define the absurdity away with a more humane absurdity. In that singular case, an abortion is not an abortion.
     
  • Julian Sanchez reflects on the rape of a 10 year old and how political exploitation will affect the future:

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony brings a real incident illustrating the legal absurdity of declaring a fetus to be a person.
     
    I suppose, with the same logic, we can order a chicken dinner from the menu and find ourselves paying full price for a hardboiled egg.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails, da-AL encounters folks who simply don’t care either way about abortion rights because it does not involve them. In introducing an excellent personal account by legal expert Pam Lazos, da-AL wonders how “people justify take, take, taking, and never lifting a finger”.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit listens as a prominent Republican teaches us that demonic possession is a sexually transmitted disease.

Continue reading “Jan 6 Planned, Self Doc Crime, Secret Service Served, Abortion”

Shootings, Orphans, Roe Rampage, Alleys, Sex, Sin, Jan 6, Boris

  • Hackwhackers reports via tweets on a tragedy within a tragedy as Highland Park produces a two-year-old orphan. A Republican provides a stunning party reaction.
     
  • In two sentences, M. Bouffant at Web of Evil manages to explain how a trip to the library has changed.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life looks at the research. Experts go back more than a quarter century, to every mass shooting on record, and interview everyone who can be interviewed. They come up with a four ingredient recipe for making mass shooters.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice traces the abortion ruling to a deeply ingrained religious tradition that regards sex other than for procreation to be sinful.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz says America is about to find out what happens when a small minority weaponizes the very systems designed to protect its citizenry, and that people of faith need to take stock and respond.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged suggests the self-righteousness of the self-described pro-life movement turns out to be all about self and not much about life.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen rages at Republicans over the end of Roe, but suggests we not be too eager to praise Democrats.
     
  • A protest outside a restaurant is aimed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The right of a SCOTUS member to eat peacefully is defended by the restaurant, indignant supporters, and a mainstream online news publication.
     
    Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has an opinion:

  • Tommy Christopher does have to search hard to find reactions as Justice Kavanaugh is denied a peaceful restaurant dinner. Reports are he exits through the back into an alley.
     
    I agree that it is wrong to deny him, or anyone, a right to privacy. Forcing people to exercise their basic rights in back alleys is simply wrong.
     
    Infidel753 provokes an additional observation. We have seen a similar ethic during Vietnam war protests during my younger years, and examples of greater violence in more recent anti-abortion activism.

    The idea is that wrongful actions are justified because they are in opposition to a much greater evil. This is a moral self contradiction. A more minor wrong is still wrong.

    It is a tactic that lacks even the virtue of effectiveness. It alienates potential allies, and damages the cause it is intended to support. That makes it both wrong and self-indulgent.
     

  • Nojo goes to a founding document to suggest that our government has lost its legitimacy.
     
  • In the face of serious rollbacks of American rights, with more likely to come, Infidel753 urges a sense of perspective. Past problems, those we experience in history books, were more serious at the time than any we face now. Current loss, serious as it is, does not obviate the progress that remains, or the work which is still to be done.

Continue reading “Shootings, Orphans, Roe Rampage, Alleys, Sex, Sin, Jan 6, Boris”

Women’s Rights, Cassidy Sings & Stings, Tamper, Tantrum, Lynch Lunge

  • For a while, we have been told by prominent Republicans that the American public is simply not interested in anything the Jan 6 panel has to present. News Corpse has the numbers, and it turns out the latest ratings are shattering records.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson examines the explosive, what-in-hell, earthshaking testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson the young intern that Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows included in pretty much every meeting everywhere he went in the White House.
     
    And Boy Howdy! He went a lot of places!
     
  • driftglass gets down to the one singularly critical fact in Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor listens to testimony about the Jan 6 lynch mob insurrection and sees a vast coverup unravel on our screens.
     
  • Heroic young intern Cassidy Hutchinson testifies under oath that someone told her about Donald Trump throwing a tantrum when denied the chance to personally lead the lynch mob storming the Capitol. The story includes him lunging toward the steering wheel. Others confirm that was the gossip floating through and around the White House at the time. So she pretty much had to be telling the truth.
     
    It is a side detail to the critical point that the then-President of the United States was hell bent on committing treason.
     
    Tommy Christopher picks it up from there, as a couple of Secret Service agents are said to be ready to eventually testify that Trump never actually grabbed the wheel.
     
    Which means the intern was lying.
    Okay, it doesn’t mean that at all, but why let the truth interfere with a good story?
     
    And now: Oh Lordy there’s video!
    Of the Presidential vehicle with some commotion going on inside.
     
    Well-l-l…
    It’s blurry and seems ambiguous to me. At least at first glance.
     
    Is it authentic? Was it taken during the right time frame? Is it even Trump inside?
     
    For all I know it could be a Stormy Daniels fill-in performing all the frantic motion.
     
    Technology and sharper eyes might resolve things. Or some clumsy Trump denial might inadvertently confirm the gossip that Cassidy Hutchinson heard.
     
    Meanwhile, there is always the old story Bill Buckley used to tell. When accused of killing three men and a dog, the accused triumphantly produce the dog alive.
     
  • Frances Langum reacts to the newest defense of Mr. Trump. Ms. Hutchinson must be lying about what was told to her by others. The then President could not have tried to grab the steering wheel of the Presidential limo. Couldn’t have happened.
     
    Why? Because he’s too damn fat!
     
    THAT is their story and they’re sticking to it.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports as former President Trump denies ever knowing ketchup.
     
    I especially like this fictitious quote:
    “Using ketchup is a disgrace, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country,” the former President said.
     
  • Dave Columbo channels the Secret Service denying whatever today’s revelation is about Mr. Trump:
    @davecolumbo About time we got some clarification! #democrat #politicaltiktok #democratsoftiktok #political #january6 #politicalhumor #foryou #fy #fyp ♬ original sound – Dave Columbo


     

  • Now that the dust is settling, and the important points of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony are confirmed, the Palmer Report comes across additional reports on the Secret Service. Far from contradicting her, agents are confirming what she was told: that Mr. Trump, during a raging temper tantrum, really did lunge at the steering wheel of the limousine in which he was being driven. He was screaming orders to allow him to lead the lynch mob to hang Mike Pence.

Continue reading “Women’s Rights, Cassidy Sings & Stings, Tamper, Tantrum, Lynch Lunge”

My Apology and the 9th Amendment

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Apologies on the weekly list I enjoy compiling. There is extraordinary talent to be found on the internet.

I’m worn down.
Too many medical tests this week, with prospective surgery a month or two or a few down the path of life.

Age imposes limits that never seemed to apply in my distant youth.

But a lot is happening in our universe that cannot be ignored, even in favor of health issues.

The logic applied half a century ago in Roe v Wade is not hard to understand.

The 9th Amendment says that, just because some rights are not listed in the Constitution, it does not mean those rights are not to be protected.

Those freedoms are secured, enshrined as unenumerated rights.

The 14th Amendment says those protections apply not only to federal law, but to state and local laws as well.

This principle, that unenumerated rights must be protected, was applied in many cases.

In 1967, Loving vs Virginia became one of those cases. It involved marriage between couples of different races.

My wife and I have been married for 22 years. Had we met and gotten married as teenagers here in Missouri, our marriage would have been dissolved. She and I would have been imprisoned, presumably in separate cells, for 2 years. Interracial marriage was a felony under Section 563.240 of the Missouri Criminal Code.

The plain language of the 9th Amendment means our unenumerated right to interracial marriage has been constitutionally protected even before we found ourselves in love.

Other cases decided on the unenumerated rights covered by the 9th Amendment have included:

  • The right to birth control.
    Laws making contraception illegal were overturned.
     
  • The right of gay people to gay relationships.
    The practice of imprisoning gay people for having gay relationships was ended.
     
  • The right of gay people in love to marry each other.
    Prohibitions against gay marriage were overturned.
     
  • The right to privacy.
    Up to then, even adult heterosexual couples could be prosecuted for the wrong kind of sex. The 9th Amendment said the right to privacy would take government bureaucrats out of the bedrooms of ordinary citizens.

The logic applied this week to overturn Roe v Wade is not hard to understand.

The 9th Amendment no longer means what it says.

Those unenumerated freedoms, the ones that exist even though they are not mentioned in the Constitution, are protected, but only if they were deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions when the first ten Amendments were adopted in 1791.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrent opinion overturning Roe, made an obvious point. In a sense, it was a wonderfully unselfish point. He and his wife are an interracial couple whose marriage, like ours, is lawful everywhere in the US because of the 9th and 14th Amendments.

Lawful.
In every state.
In every locality.

At least for now.

Justice Thomas says the court has not gone far enough. Not yet.

Other cases decided back when the 9th Amendment meant what it says, should be reconsidered now that it means something different. The Supreme Court should consider overturning other rights.

  • The right to Birth Control
     
  • The right of gay people to gay relationships
     
  • The right of gay people in love to marry each other
     
  • The right to privacy

Justice Thomas did not mention a potential review of the rights of interracial couples.

You can’t think of everything.

Violence as a Political Way of Life

A threatening letter, one of many received by Representative Adam Kinzinger and his family, was shown on-line by the Congressman to illustrate what he and others experience every day.

Rep. Kinzinger has been the target of conservative ire ever since he voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting an attempted coup. He is now derided as a RINO, a Republican In Name Only.

In addition to the Kinzingers, the anonymous letter specifically threatens, by name, the Kinzingers’ 5-month old baby.


One day later, here in Missouri, Senate candidate Eric Greitens released a campaign video of himself leading a crew of armed men breaking down a door and entering a home.

In the video, he urges viewers to join him in hunting down RINOs.
Presumably, RINOs like Representative Adam Kinzinger.

Such is the dark path publicly followed by some of our fellow citizens.

Juneteenth, Slavery, Const Poison, March, Gun Play, Jan 6, Equal Time

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara has occasionally seemed reticent about slavery and the birth of our country. I thought his latest, a celebration of Monday’s celebration of Juneteenth was more of the same. You may be familiar with the routine:
     
    Slavery was an evil institution that we inherited, but abolished because it violated our deeply held national principles that we held dear from the very beginning.
     
    And this piece does begin just that way.
     
    He regrets, as all humanity should, that it took so long for freedom to become universal and our ideals to be firmly established.
     
    Then he ends with this pure revealed truth:
     
    But it did, finally erasing America’s most glaring birth defect.
     
    erasing? Really?
     
    Well… Perhaps close enough to provide some hope for those of us who pray for redemption for us all.
     

  • Dave Dubya documents 5 poison pills, all hidden in the US Constitution, that together threaten the better angels of our national character.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has a very brief, very sad summary of human history from Victor Hugo.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz explains the significance of marches, their limits, and what will most probably be the most important march of our lives.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Robert Levine covers the ongoing gun safety debate between politics and common sense.
     
  • At times, we are all astonishingly inept, some of us more than others, when confronted by tragedy. Sometimes it is because of an agenda that excuses or minimizes horror. Sometimes it is because we caught emotionally flatfooted.


    The Propaganda Professor compiles some of the worst responses to mass killings.

Continue reading “Juneteenth, Slavery, Const Poison, March, Gun Play, Jan 6, Equal Time”