#dysfunction of President Donald Trump | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cazort · 23 days

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I have seen a post circulating that talks about US politics and basically insinuates that in the upcoming presidential election, Biden is "99% Hitler" and Trump is "100% Hitler" and it makes me so frustrated that people can't see this as the disinformation and anti-vote propaganda that it is.

I'm intensely frustrated with Biden for how he has acted too little, too late on the Palestine issue, and how the U.S. continues to send billions in arms to Israel. And yet I'm going to be voting for him, and the analogy above is hugely dishonest. There is a massive difference between Biden and Trump:

The Biden administration and Democrats have strongly and unambiguously protected abortion rights, whereas Donald Trump appointed three supreme court justices who overturned Roe vs. Wade, and Republicans have across-the-board passed draconian abortion restrictions far more conservative than even their base.

Biden and the Democrats are strongly pro-LGBTQ rights including trans rights, at a time when Republicans are threatening trans rights in every state they control, and when even mainstream, "center-left" publications like the NY Times have been publishing transphobic drivel.

The Biden administration continues to expand healthcare access and work to control costs whereas the Trump administration worked to undermine much of the coverage we had.

The Trump administration was hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional, with turnover in most appointed positions, scandal after scandal. Trump committed crime after crime in plain view, and incited an insurrection when he lost the election and has continued to back conspiracy theories undermining the very foundation of our democracy. Biden has been a relatively straightforward, "what you see is what you get" politician over his whole career, with a sort of level of flaws and corruption that is more typical of politics.

Trump had unprecedented anti-immigrant stances and under him, life became much more difficult for immigrants to the US as well as for non-citizens living here legally. Biden's administration has tried and worked against tough resistance to reverse many of the worst immigration changes made under the Trump administration, including doing things like giving 320,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status as refugees, trying to halt the border wall construction, and increasing legal immigration across-the-board.

Biden's rhetoric has become more critical of Israel over time, Biden has called for regime change and the ousting of Netanyahu, and under Biden the US Ambassador finally stopped voting against a ceasefire resolution and only abstained. Whereas Trump and the Republican's rhetoric has retained entirely critical of Palestinians and not at all critical of Israel, and Republicans have consistently supported draconian restrictions such as bans on BDS and some even introducing legislation banning referring to the region as Palestine. And weeks back, when public sentiment was not as anti-Israel as it is now, several Democrats voted for scrutiny to the Israeli military aid, whereas only one Republican did.

I am highly critical of Biden and I too am appalled that he's still running and that we don't have a better candidate who even ran in the primary. But it's far from truthful to say there is only a 1% difference between Biden and Trump, and even more dishonest and inaccurate to call Biden "99% Hitler", that's crazy talk and it serves only one purpose: to demotivate people and suppress voting.

There is a huge difference between these candidates. They will affect my daily life and your daily life and they will affect the whole world and they will affect Palestine.

Do you want a better candidate? Do you want to vote for an idealistic third-party candidate as a protest vote?

Support ranked choice voting first. Then, if you are in a state like Maine or Alaska that allows ranked choice for the president, vote for your ideal candidates and place Biden however low you want and then omit Trump entirely.

But if you do not have ranked choice in your state, especially if you live in a swing state, vote for Biden. And make sure to also join a movement that advances ranked choice, ideally Total Vote Runoff (TVR) as that is the best system for ranked choice.

#biden #trump #disinformation #voter suppression #ranked choice voting

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fandom · 1 year

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Trans rights are human rights.

March 31 marked Trans Day of Visibility, and we saw an outpouring of support, awareness, and uplifting of the trans community. The Welcome Home ARG is taking Tumblr by storm, and it seems like everyone is in agreement that Wally Darling is just a silly little guy. The new season of Succession is bringing folks’ favorite dysfunctional family back to the small screen. April Fools’ Day came and went, with standouts being @brickwhartley’s reactions, @sonicthehedgehog’s new game, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, and, of course, the tenth anniversary of the Mishapocalypse. We got our first look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s gameplay, and, well, it’s gonna be chaotic. Oh, and Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for over 30 counts related to business fraud. This is Tumblr’s Week in Review.

The Welcome Home ARG

Succession

Wally Darling | Welcome Home

Resident Evil 4

RWBY

April Fools' Day

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Trigun Stampede

Buddy Daddies

Donald Trump

Artists on Tumblr

Ted Lasso

Sonic the Hedgehog

Mishapocalypse

Star Wars

Trans Day of Visiblity

Vash the Stampede | Trigun Stampede

Leon Kennedy | Resident Evil 4

The Mandalorian

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

#week in review #04/03/2023 #welcome home

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simply-ivanka · 2 months

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To Understand Trump’s Staying Power With the White Working Class, Look at Michigan Supporters remain loyal to former president’s policies, personality

Tuesday February 27, 2024 Wall Street Journal

By Jimmy VielkindFollow and Ariel Zambelich

DEARBORN, Mich.—At its peak, more than 100,000 people streamed in and out of the massive

Ford Motor factory here along the Rouge River. In addition to cars and trucks, the behemoth plant helped mint the American middle class.

The thousands of people who still work here and at other factories across Michigan and other Midwest states helped forge those states’ politics. These blue-collar voters were for many years reliable Democrats, but in 2016 a big group of them, mostly white, helped Donald Trump capture the presidency—including an unexpected win in Michigan.

His supporters said they remain loyal to him thanks to a mix of economic policy proposals and a unique personality that they haven’t seen from many other Republicans, according to recent interviews conducted by The Wall Street Journal for its “Chasing the Base” podcast series.

His policies? They shined. They shined…I made more money than I ever had. My money went further.— James Benson

I just love Trump’s enthusiasm and positivity, he’s positive, he’s enthusiastic…But I like to see an American leader that says we can be great again, we can be number one.— Joe Pizzimenti

The United Auto Workers endorsed President Biden in January, but union officials acknowledge that a sizable portion of their members back Trump. More than 100,000 people in the Detroit metro area work in auto manufacturing alone. It is still home to the headquarters of marquee American auto brands such as Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.

Trump lost Michigan to Biden in 2020. Democrats made up the difference in white-collar suburbs, including Oakland County northwest of Detroit. They made some inroads in blue-collar areas like Macomb County, northeast of Detroit, but Trump still carried the day.

So did former Rep. Andy Levin, a Democrat who won the portion of his district in that county by 36,000 votes. He said Democrats need to be bolder to blunt the GOP. (Levin lost his seat in 2022 due to an intraparty fight following redistricting.)

Republicans were able to peel off people over culture war issues like abortion and guns and LGBTQ rights… They wouldn’t have succeeded if Democrats had—if the average workingclass person could say, well obviously I know what side my bread is buttered on.— Former Rep. Andy Levin

There are other dynamics that will be important in the general election. Biden has dispatched foreign-policy and political advisers to meet with Muslim and Arab-American leaders upset with the administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. The mayor of Dearborn, home to a major Arab-American population, has said the Biden administration “failed to act to protect the lives of innocent men, women and children.”

John Sellek, a Republican political consultant, said a loss of support from Arab-American and younger voters over the Middle East conflict was as important for Trump as his continued hold on the white working-class.

Macomb County is a bastion of the latter group. It is home to strip malls, sports bars and massive auto plants that cropped up as people moved from Detroit to the suburbs in the latter part of the 20th century.

Trump brought many new voices into the Republican Party here, and that has caused a fight about who controls it at the state level. Stacy Van Oast, 59 years old, said at a monthly coffee hour held at the Macomb County GOP office that one result has been dysfunction.

Peter Kiszczyc emigrated from Poland in 1984 and worked for decades at area factories. He said it was great that the former president has broadened the party’s appeal.

He’s changing the party…He’s appealing to many blue-collar workers especially, not only [in] Macomb county, but Michigan So I am Christian, [a] patriot, and I support Donald Trump 100%.— Peter Kiszczyc

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tomorrowusa · 4 months

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When you vote for president, you are voting for the person who appoints federal judges – including those on the US Supreme Court. When you vote for US senator, you are voting for one of the people who confirms those judges.

Federal judges have lifetime appointments. So bad choices for president or senator live on long past the four-year or six-year terms of the elected officials who put those judges on the bench.

If you want to know what a fully Trumpified federal judiciary would be like, check out the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. It covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Fifth Circuit makes the current US Supreme Court look liberal and capable.

The latest atrocity from the Fifth Circuit involves a decision where a state law forbidding abortion takes precedence over the survival of woman seeking emergency treatment.

The case is Texas v. Becerra, and all three of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s judges who joined this opinion were appointed by Republicans. Two, including Kurt Engelhardt, the opinion’s author, were appointed by former President Donald Trump. The case involves the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal statute requiring hospitals that accept Medicare funds to provide “such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition” of “any individual” who arrives at the hospital’s ER with an “emergency medical condition.” (In limited circumstances, the hospital may transfer the patient to a different facility that will provide this stabilizing treatment.) EMTALA contains no carve-out for abortion. It simply states that, whenever any patient arrives at a Medicare-funded hospital with a medical emergency, the hospital must offer that patient whatever treatment is necessary to “stabilize the medical condition” that caused the emergency. So, if a patient’s emergency condition can only be stabilized by an abortion, federal law requires nearly all hospitals to provide that treatment. (Hospitals can opt out of EMTALA by not taking Medicare funds but, because Medicare funds health care for elderly Americans, very few hospitals do opt out.) This federal law, moreover, also states that it overrides (or “preempts,” to use the appropriate legal term) state and local laws “to the extent that the [state law] directly conflicts with a requirement of this section.” So, in states with sweeping abortion bans that prohibit some or all medically necessary abortions, the state law must give way to EMTALA’s requirement that all patients must be offered whatever treatment is necessary to stabilize their condition. It is important to emphasize just how little EMTALA has to say about abortion. EMTALA does not protect healthy women who wish to terminate their pregnancies. Nor does it preempt any state regulations of abortion, except when a patient is experiencing a medical emergency and their doctors determine that an abortion is the appropriate treatment. But when an emergency room patient presents with a life-threatening illness or condition — or, in the words of the EMTALA statute, that patient has a condition that places their health “in serious jeopardy,” that threatens “serious impairment to bodily functions,” or “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part” — then Medicare-funded hospitals must provide whatever treatment is necessary. The Texas case, in other words, asks whether a state government can force a woman to die, or suffer lasting injury to her uterus or other reproductive organs, because the state’s lawmakers are so opposed to abortion that they will not permit it, even when such an abortion is required by federal law. And yet, despite the fact that the EMTALA statute is unambiguous, and despite the fact that this case only involves patients whose life or health is threatened by a pregnancy, three Fifth Circuit judges told those patients that they have no right to potentially lifesaving medical care.

Of course the ruling by the Fifth Circuit lacks basic logic. If the mother dies, the fetus is likely lost as well anyway. d'oh!

All three judges on the panel are Republicans – two having been appointed by Trump. Don't expect judicial genius from these folks.

Engelhardt’s opinion is surprisingly brief for such a consequential decision, and for one that reads a straightforward federal law in such a counterintuitive way. The section of the opinion laying out Engelhardt’s unusual reading of this federal law is only about eight pages long — yet it contains at least three separate legal errors.

This case will probably end up before SCOTUS. The best we should expect is for the Supremos to toss out the decision because of the legal errors made by the Fifth Circuit.

But in the long run, to protect reproductive freedom it's necessary to keep Republicans out of the White House and out of the majority in the Senate for the foreseeable future.

Be A Voter - Vote Save America

#abortion #the sanctity of reproductive freedom #reproductive freedom #a woman's right to choose #texas v. becerra #emtala #the federal courts #trump judges #us court of appeals for the fifth circuit #kurt engelhardt #us supreme court #donald trump #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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oh-my-damn · 1 month

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Feminist Icon-ism

I once posted on here that Taylor Swift is a feminist icon and then got told by some random anonymous person in the comments that she was far from it.

At the time, I paid it no mind – because isn't this the eternal struggle women have always had to go through? Isn't this in fact what Taylors song "The Man" is about?

"And everyone believes ya.. What's that like?"

But now I am rewatching The Eras Tour for the perhaps literally 100th time at this point and I am ready to make my rebuttal.

Unsurprisingly, it has to do with not only the patriarchy, and society, but the main man himself, the main character in many women's nightmare, Donald Trump.

The man who paved the way for a collapse of an already dysfunctional country that did and to some extend still do believe themselves to be superior in the western world, despite every empirical fact and piece of evidence telling them otherwise.

Donald Trump was an 80's icon. And then he went on to become a reality show and movie icon and then later graduated into simply being "an icon."

And this is the only reason he was elected president. Being someone born from money who had never had to struggle or work hard for his wealth, someone who decided to spend his family wealth on building a giant ugly building in New York and then tricked them into letting him skip taxes for forty years became an icon for "accomplishing" that.

The Trump Tower was legendary, Donald Trump was known around the world as the "savy" businessman he was claimed to be, despite never being any of the sort.

And then he was elected President, despite having never, ever, accomplished anything that wasn't outright handed to him, despite not having a career in politics, despite having committed several sexual assaults, and despite the fact he once said in an interview, to the world and the country he would become President of in the future, that were he ever to lose his fortune he would run for President and he would do so as a Republican because they will believe anything you tell them.

This man was elected President of one of the biggest superpowers of the world. And now, after being accused and convicted of countless crimes from before and during his presidency, he is still in the running to become President of the United States for a second time.

How does this all tie in to Taylor Swift, you might ask?

Well, the answer is simple.

Taylor Swift worked hard and fought for every single thing she has. She writes her own songs, and sings them herself, and has done so since day one. She started her career as a teenager, a fucking child, and powered through a grown man stealing away her moment because he was drunk and high and delusional – and she handled that moment with more class than most people could ever even fathom. As a teenager.

Her lyrics as they stand right now are literal spoken poetry, to a degree that people are unable to tell her lyrics apart from Shakespeare.

She has millions of fans around the world, she has worked tirelessly and relentlessly for what she has, and despite being one of the most famous people on the entire planet, you cannot find a single story of her out there where she seemed or acted ungrateful. She is humble and grateful for the millions of people who support her.

She was shamed and cancelled and took it all in stride, despite never actually doing what she was accused of, and she came back stronger than ever after it.

She is a feminist icon because she is just an ICON. But unfortunately, as it stands in 2024, we still need to put "feminist" in front of it because female empowerment and success is still an actual accomplishment and not just an ordinary expectation.

So yes. She is a feminist icon. In fact, she is an icon in general, and she is a hell of a lot better than a lot of the icons we have seen these past 100 years, even. She is an incredible inspiration who worked so hard for what she has accomplished, and both men and women are inspired and in awe by her every day, despite her career starting over 18 years ago.

Is she perfect? No, of course not, but why would you expect her to be? Would you honestly, truly, expect the same of anyone else?

The answer is no. Because you don't. You don't hold others accountable or expect the same as you do from her, even the ones working in the same field as she does. Where is your outrage against Justin Bieber, or Drake or even fucking Kanye West, who, might I add, is still being defended despite his anti-semitic remarks?

What's the major difference here? Please, do enlighten me. Because she does the exact same thing as those people do in regards to performance and portrayal of the brand she has created for herself, the major difference here is that she DOES IT BETTER and she is a WOMAN.

You never expected Donald Trump to act the way you expect Taylor to, yet you still adored him and labelled him an icon of New York. And then you elected him President.

Taylor Swift is more than just a feminist icon, because she goes way beyond that, but the world is not ready for that conversation yet, since it continues to excuse the behavior of men at their whim, yet shame women even if they do way more than said men ever could.

#mandy rants #taylor swift #feminist icon #icon #iconic #donald trump #patriarchy #the united states #the us #politics #swiftie #taylor nation #taylorswift #taylor #republicans

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month

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John Deering, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 24, 2024 (Sunday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 25, 2024

The Senate passed the appropriations bill shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, and President Joe Biden signed it Saturday afternoon. In his statement after he signed the bill, Biden was clear: “Congress’s work isn’t finished,” he said. “The House must pass the bipartisan national security supplemental to advance our national security interests. And Congress must pass the bipartisan border security agreement—the toughest and fairest reforms in decades—to ensure we have the policies and funding needed to secure the border. It’s time to get this done.”

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has refused to bring forward the national security supplemental bill to fund Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. He has also refused to bring forward the border security measure hammered out in the Senate after House Republicans demanded it and passed there on February 13. Johnson is doing the bidding of former president Trump, who opposes aid to Ukraine and border security measures.

Congress is on break and will not return to Washington, D.C., until the second week in April.

By then, political calculations may well have changed.

MAGA Republicans appear to be in trouble.

The House recessed on Friday for two weeks in utter disarray. On ABC News’s This Week, former representative Ken Buck (R-CO), who left Congress Friday, complained that House Republicans were focusing “on messaging bills that get us nowhere” rather than addressing the country’s problems. He called Congress “dysfunctional.”

On Friday, NBC announced it was hiring former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst. Today the main political story in the U.S. was the ferocious backlash to that decision. McDaniel not only defended Trump, attacked the press, and gaslit reporters, she also participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In an interview with Kristen Welker this morning on NBC’s Meet the Press—Welker was quick to point out that the interview had been arranged long before she learned of the hiring— McDaniel explained away her support for Trump’s promise to pardon those convicted for their participation in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by saying, “When you’re the RNC Chair, you kind of take one for the whole team.”

That statement encapsulated Trump Republicans. In a democracy, the “team” is supposed to be the whole country. But Trump Republicans like McDaniel were willing to overthrow American democracy so long as it kept them in power.

That position is increasingly unpopular. Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) wrote on social media: “Ronna facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot & his effort to pressure [Michigan] officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome. She spread his lies & called 1/6 ‘legitimate political discourse.’ That’s not ‘taking one for the team.’ It’s enabling criminality & depravity.”

McDaniel wants to be welcomed back into mainstream political discourse, but it appears that the window for such a makeover might have closed.

In the wake of Trump’s takeover of the RNC, mainstream Republicans are backing away from the party. Today, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said she could not “get behind Donald Trump” and expressed “regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.” She did not rule out leaving the Republican Party.

In Politico today, a piece on Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, by Adam Wren also isolated Trump from the pre-2016 Republican Party. Pence appears to be trying to reclaim the mantle of that earlier incarnation of the party, backed as he is by right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow (who has funded Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the years) and the Koch network. Wren’s piece says Pence is focusing these days on “a nonprofit policy shop aimed at advancing conservative ideals.” Wren suggested that Pence’s public split from Trump is “the latest sign that Trumpism is now permanently and irrevocably divorced from its initial marriage of convenience with…Reaganism.”

Trump appears to believe his power over his base means he doesn’t need the established Republicans. But that power came from Trump’s aura of invincibility, which is now in very real crisis thanks to Trump’s growing money troubles. Tomorrow is the deadline for him to produce either the cash or a bond to cover the $454 million he owes to the people of the state of New York in fines and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains for fraud.

Trump does not appear to have the necessary cash and has been unable to get a bond. He claims a bond of such size is “unprecedented, and practically impossible for ANY Company, including one as successful as mine," and that "[t]he Bonding Companies have never heard of such a bond, of this size, before, nor do they have the ability to post such a bond, even if they wanted to.” But Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact corrected the record: it is not uncommon for companies in civil litigation cases to post bonds of more than $1 billion.

Trump made his political career on his image as a successful and fabulously wealthy businessman. Today, “Don Poorleone” trended on X (formerly Twitter).

The backlash to McDaniel’s hiring at NBC also suggests a media shift against news designed to grab eyeballs, the sort of media that has fed the MAGA movement. According to Mike Allen of Axios, NBC executives unanimously supported hiring McDaniel. A memo from Carrie Budoff Brown, who is in charge of the political coverage at NBC News, said McDaniel would help the outlet examine “the diverse perspectives of American voters.” This appears to mean she would appeal to Trump voters, bringing more viewers to the platform.

But former Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd took a strong stand against adding McDaniel to a news organization, noting her “credibility issues” and that “many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting [and] character assassination.”

This pushback against news media as entertainment recalls the 1890s, when American newspapers were highly partisan and gravitated toward more and more sensational headlines and exaggerated stories to increase sales. That publication model led to a circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal that is widely—and almost certainly inaccurately—blamed for pushing the United States into war with Spain in 1898.

More accurate, though, is that the sensationalism of what was known as “yellow journalism” created a backlash that gave rise to new investigative journalism designed to move away from partisanship and explain clearly to readers what was happening in American politics and economics. In 1893, McClure’s Magazine appeared, offering in-depth examinations of the workings of corporations and city governments and launching a new era of reform.

Three years later, publisher Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times and put up New York City’s first electric sign to advertise, in nearly 2,700 individual lights of red, white, blue, and green, that it would push back against yellow journalism by publishing “ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT.” Ochs added that motto to the masthead. With his determination to provide nonpartisan news without sensationalism, in just under 40 years, Ochs took over the paper from just over 20,000 readers to more than 465,000, and turned the New York Times into a newspaper of record.

In that era that looks so much like our own, the national mood had changed.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#John Deering.#The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette #political cartoons #TFG #dysfunctional congress #history #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #yellow journalism #McDaniel #RNC gaslighting

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carolinemillerbooks · 17 days

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New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/a-curmudgeon-in-the-family-of-man/

A Curmudgeon In The Family Of Man

I was grateful to my neighbor for helping me with a technical problem. He’s the resident guru on computers at the retirement center and far too modest about himself. Aware that I might need his advice in the future, I asked if he’d care to adopt me despite my advanced age. A smile parted his lips as his gaze dropped to the carpet. “We’re all family here,” he said. I walked away thinking he’d uttered a beautiful notion, though I tend to reject sentiments that are warm and fuzzy. I’m old enough to know that the history of “the “family of man” is dysfunctional. Since Caine slew Able we’ve worked to perfect the art of violence. Murder isn’t the kind of glue to hold society together, so we attempt to contain it by inventing rules. Murder on a grand scale we call war. The rules on those occasions are those of The Geneva Convention. The smaller stuff we leave to religion, laws, politics, and the whims of tyranny. But, like the potter who leaves his fingerprints upon newly shaped clay, because we are flawed creatures, the systems we create can be weaponized and used to threaten others. Justice, after all, is the gloved fist of vengeance. Bill Clinton, our 42nd President, sees philanthropy as a better way to promote social cohesion. Philanthropy can help bust through political and cultural gridlock by showing what can be done. He has many true believers, so many that at his last conference on philanthropy, a thousand do-gooders had to be turned away. Enthusiasm on this scale is heartwarming, but I’m a curmudgeon. I’ve never been keen to turn the world over to philanthropists. Who are they, after all, but people otherwise known as oligarchs? Nick Caraway in The Great Gatsby told us about them. They are people who don’t think like the rest of us. I doubt any butcher, baker, cowboy, or tailor would choose to live in a Martian colony under Elan Musk’s rules. I place my faith in “we the people.” Democracy’s collective mind is where we are most likely to find common ground. Alexei Navalny, Vladamir Putin’s murdered opponent, was a man of the people. Having survived attempts to assassinate him, he warned his followers their fate didn’t depend upon his survival but upon their will. If it happens, if they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong. We need to use that power. (“A Hero of Our Time,” by Mariam Elder, Vanity Fair, April 2024, pg. 34.) His words may seem like a whistle against the dark, but the Ukrainian people are a living example of that courage. Their David and Goliath story can set this curmudgeon’s heart to racing. Even so, dreams can become fodder for blind ambition. Our Republican House has placed a chokehold on future aid to that country, reversing their past support. They did it to placate their revenge candidate, Donald Trump, in the upcoming presidential election. Trump holds a grudge against Ukraine and is happy to curry the favor of their invader, Vladimir Putin. If elected, our former president promises to leave Ukraine to the Russians. The predatory world in which we live is Nature’s doing, but humans have wasted no time in making a hell out of the heaven they inherited. Some attempt to escape the violence by turning to drugs or alcohol. Others rely on religion, mysticism, or conspiracy theories for the dopamine high that makes them happy. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and augmented virtual reality could provide other avenues of escape. Their illusions might help us create worlds so satisfying, that many won’t return to planet Earth. For proof of that possibility, observe how people are mesmerized by their smartphones. We humans aren’t algorithms, however. Wherever we go, we drag our dark side behind us like a beloved toy. That’s a drawback to consider as we cheer the coming of augmented reality. Despite the challenges ahead, like Navalny, I have hope because….well, what else is there? Fraternity, equality, and liberty are pretty good ideas. To obtain them all we have to do is curb our tribal nature, though some have argued it doesn’t exist. Whether Instinctive or learned, history confirms that group-think seems natural to us. We desire to be among people who look like us and share our values. That passion for conformity rivals our growing need to respect diversity and sometimes makes democracy seem like a fool’s dream. Given my doubts about the future of mankind, I left the caring gentleman at the retirement center with one request. “please don’t include me as a member of the community. I prefer to be the resident alley cat.”

#Alexei Navalny #Bill Clinton #Donald Trump #Elan Musk #Mariam Elder #Nick Caraway #oligarchs #philanthropy #The Family of Man #The Geneva Convention #The Great Gatsby #tribalism #Vladamir Putin

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Steps from the Capitol, Trump allies buy up properties to build MAGA campus | The Washington Post

At first glance, the flurry of real estate sales two blocks east of the U.S. Capitol appeared unremarkable in a city where such sales are common. In the span of a year, a seemingly unrelated gaggle of recently formed companies bought nine properties, all within steps of one another.

But the sales were not coincidental. Unbeknown to most of the sellers, the limited liability companies making the purchases — a shopping spree that added up to $41 million — are connected to a conservative nonprofit led by Mark Meadows, who was Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump. The organization has promoted MAGA stars like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

The Conservative Partnership Institute, as the nonprofit is known, now controls four commercial properties along a single Pennsylvania Avenue block, three adjoining rowhouses around the corner, and a garage and carriage house in the rear alley. CPI’s aim, as expressed in its annual report, is to transform the swath of prime real estate into a campus it calls “Patriots’ Row.”

The acquisitions strike some Capitol Hill regulars as puzzling, considering that Republicans have long made a sport of denigrating Washington as a dysfunctional “swamp,” the latest evidence being a successful GOP-led effort to block local D.C. legislation to revise the city’s criminal code.

“So you don’t respect how we administer our city and then you secretly buy up chunks of it?” said Tim Krepp, a Capitol Hill resident who works as a tour guide and has written about the neighborhood’s history. “If it’s such a hellhole, go to Virginia.”

Reached on his cellphone, Edward Corrigan, CPI’s president, whose name appears on public documents related to the sales, had no immediate comment on the purchases, which were first reported by Grid News and confirmed by The Washington Post. “I’ll get back to you,” Corrigan said. He did not respond to follow-up messages.

Former senator Jim DeMint, CPI’s founder, and Meadows, a senior partner at the organization, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Cameron Seward, CPI’s general counsel and director of operations, whose name appears on incorporation documents related to the companies making the purchases, did not respond to a text or an email.

As Congress’s neighbors, denizens of the Capitol Hill neighborhood are accustomed to existing in close quarters with all varieties of official Washington. Walk the neighborhood and you might catch a glimpse of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, among those who own homes near the Capitol. The Republican and Democratic national committees both have offices in the neighborhood.

But it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a nonprofit to purchase as many properties in such proximity and in so short a period of time as CPI has assembled through its related companies, a roster with names like Clear Plains Holdings, Brunswick Partners, Houston Group, Newpoint and Pennsylvania Avenue Holdings. The companies list Seward as an officer on corporate filings, as well as CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters as their principal address.

Now, in what may be an only-in-Washington vista, a single Pennsylvania Avenue block is occupied by Public Citizen, the left-leaning consumer advocacy group, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, and CPI, which bought four properties through its affiliates.

In addition to the nine D.C. parcels CPI’s network has bought since January 2022, another affiliated company, Federal Investors, paid $7.2 million for a sprawling 11-bedroom retreat on the Eastern Shore. In 2020, CPI, under its own name, also spent $1.5 million for a rowhouse next to its headquarters, which it leases, a few blocks from the Capitol.

DeMint, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, started CPI in 2017, shortly after he was ousted as Heritage’s leader amid criticism that the think tank had become too political under his direction. Meadows joined in 2021, after working as Trump’s Chief of Staff. He was by Trump’s side during the administration’s final calamitous days, before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and as the President’s allies were seeking to overturn election results.

On its 2021 tax returns, CPI reported $45 million in revenue, most of it generated through contributions and grants, and paid DeMint and Meadows compensation packages of $542,000 and $559,000, respectively. Its current offices, a three-story townhouse at the corner of Third Street and Independence Avenue SE, is a hub of GOP activity. During the chaotic lead-up to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, dissident Republican lawmakers were observed congregating at CPI.

CPI also provides grants to a cluster of nonprofits headed by Trump allies. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, for example, leads America First Legal, which received $1.3 million from CPI in 2021 and bills itself as a check on “lawless executive actions and the Radical Left.”

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who was on the call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking to reverse votes in the 2020 election, runs what the organization bills as its “Election Integrity Network,” which has cast doubt on the validity of President Biden’s 2020 victory.

“The election was rigged,” EIN tweeted last July. “Trump won.”

CLOSE TO THE CAPITOL

At an introductory meeting in December, recalled Gerald Sroufe, an advisory neighborhood commissioner on Capitol Hill, a CPI representative said the group planned to move its headquarters to a three-story building it had bought on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to Heritage’s office. Until the pandemic forced it to close, the Capitol Lounge had occupied the 130-year-old building. The bar had served a nightly bipartisan swarm of congressional staffers and lobbyists for more than two decades.

The CPI official, Sroufe said, indicated that the group planned to use the new Pennsylvania Avenue properties to “expand” its offices and “provide new retail.” But the official made no mention of Patriots’ Row, Sroufe said, or the three rowhouses the group’s affiliates had bought around the corner on Third Street SE. All of the properties are in the neighborhood’s historic district, which protects them from being altered without city review.

“This is much grander than what we were talking about,” Sroufe said after learning from a reporter about the other purchases. “On the Hill, people are always talking about how wonderful it is to be close to the Capitol and Congress. It’s kind of like a curse.”

As in many commercial corridors hit hard by the pandemic, businesses along Pennsylvania Avenue have struggled over the past couple of years. Tony Tomelden, executive director of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals, said CPI could energize a strip pocked with vacant storefronts.

“I welcome any business because the only thing opening right now are marijuana shops,” said Tomelden, an H Street NE bar owner who helped open the Capitol Lounge in 1996 and, as it happens, instituted a rule that patrons could not talk politics while imbibing. “If they’re going to pay a lot of money and raise property values, I’m all for it. I don’t care about anybody’s politics as long as they pay their tab.”

In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, finding those who are less sanguine about CPI’s growing footprint is not exactly difficult.

Yet politics is only part of the issue, as far as Krepp is concerned. CPI’s purchases, he said, threaten the area’s neighborhood vibe, as would be the case if any group, no matter its ideological leaning, bought as many properties. “I don’t want to create another downtown on Capitol Hill,” he said. “There’s a glut of available office space downtown. You don’t have to buy up neighborhoods.”

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a regular commuter to the Capitol from his home in Montgomery County, sees CPI’s acquisitions in terms more political than geographic.

“It just seems like a massive real estate coming-out party for the extreme right wing of the Republican Party,” Raskin said. “This is a very explicit and well-financed statement of intent. They set out to take over the Republican Party and they’re very close to clenching the power.”

Instead of Patriots’ Row, Raskin suggested an alternative name: Seditionist Square.

“Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene can be their advisory neighborhood commissioner,” he said.

A ‘PERMANENT BULWARK’ IN D.C.

On its 2021 tax return, CPI said its mission is to be a “platform” for the “conservative movement,” and to provide “public policy” training for “government and nonprofit staffers” and meeting space for gatherings and policy debates.

Although not required to identify donors, CPI reported seven contributions in excess of $1 million, including one of more than $25 million. Trump’s Save America political action committee gave $1 million in 2021, according to campaign finance records. Billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major Republican donor, gave $1.25 million a couple of years ago through his foundation, records show.

A CPI-related entity, the Conservative Partnership Center, rented space to two political action committees as of early January, the House Freedom Fund and Senate Conservative Fund, according to campaign finance records. CPI also received $4,000 from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has recorded his “Firebrand” podcast at the group’s studio, as has the host of the “Gosar Minute,” Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), according to the group’s annual report. Greene paid CPI $437.73 for “catering for political meetings” in 2021, the records show.

“No one stood up to the Left as courageously as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,” CPI declared in its 2021 annual report, hailing her as a “hero” who “endured sexist fury that always lurks just beneath the progressive surface.” The report described Boebert as a “gun rights advocate” who “wants to protect our environment more than anyone else.”

It was in CPI’s 2022 annual report that the group briefly referred to its expansion plans, writing that it has strengthened “its ability to serve the movement by beginning renovations to Patriots’ Row on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“In 2022, the Left tried to drag America further into a dark future of totalitarianism, chaotic elections and cultural decay,” the report asserts in an introduction from DeMint and Meadows. “The Washington establishment, per usual, did nothing to stop them. But neither the Left nor the establishment could stop the culture and community we’re building here at the Conservative Partnership Institute.”

“With our expanded presence in D.C.,” they add, “we’re launching CPI academy — a formal program of training for congressional staff and current and future members of the movement.”

“Even if we can’t change Washington, we can create a permanent bulwark against its worst tendencies.”

A SPATE OF SALES

CPI began its expansion in 2020, purchasing the rowhouse next door to its headquarters and christening it “The Rydin House” for Mike Rydin, a construction magnate and prominent conservative donor. When Federal Investors bought the Eastern Shore property, the group named it “Camp Rydin.”

On Capitol Hill, several property owners who sold their buildings to CPI-linked companies were surprised to learn that the buyers were connected to a group led by Meadows and DeMint.

“I did not know,” said Jacqueline Lewis, who sold a townhouse on Third Street SE to 116 Holdings for $5.1 million in July. The company’s officer, according to its corporate filing, is Seward, and the principal address it lists is the same as CPI’s headquarters. A trust document related to the transaction is signed by Corrigan, CPI’s president.

Brunswick Partners, which lists CPI and Seward as contacts on its corporate filing, bought the neighboring rowhouse for $1.8 million in January, according to property records. Brian Wise, the seller, said he did not know of the company’s CPI connection. An attorney who approached him and his wife, he said, “asked if we were willing to sell and we agreed on a price. It was a business sale.”

Keith and Amanda Catanzano also were unaware of CPI when they sold a garage in the alley behind Third Street SE to Newpoint for $1 million in June. Newpoint lists Seward as an officer and the same mailing address as CPI. “We had no idea,” said a woman who answered the phone at a number listed for the Catanzanos before hanging up.

Eric Kassoff, who sold the former site of the Capitol Lounge to Clear Plains, said he knew of the company’s CPI ties before the $11.3 million deal was finalized in January. He also sold the group a carriage house behind the building for $400,000.

Kassoff said he did not want to lease the space to a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store. He said CPI’s political leanings were not a factor in his decision to sell to the organization.

“Why would I have any issue selling my property to proud Americans?” asked Kassoff, who described himself as an independent. “We need to get past the labeling and demonizing and talk to each other, and that’s true in politics as well as commerce. If we were all to take that position we wouldn’t have much of a country left, would we?”

Although the Capitol Lounge closed more than two years ago, vestiges of its past remain on the building’s exterior, including a rendering of Benjamin Franklin beneath a quote concocted by the bar’s founder, Joe Englert: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

James Silk, the bar’s former owner, said he left behind memorabilia when he vacated the building that could be suitable for the new owner: Richard M. Nixon campaign posters still hanging on the walls of what the owners cheekily dubbed the Nixon Room (located across from the Kennedy Room).

“Nixon is finally with his people,” Silk said. He laughed and added: “Nixon was a Republican, right?”

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azspot · 1 year

Quote

There is a tendency today to reduce social and political analysis to studying the antics of a handful of personalities. Many people blame America’s current political dysfunction on former President Donald Trump, and they take for granted that the problem will go away when he, at long last, departs for wherever he is going. It is true that Trump has been exceptionally successful in weaponizing Spirit Warrior Christianity and has pushed it further along. But the truth is that he was more of a creation of it than the other way around; it preceded him and will long outlast him. Ron DeSantis understands this well, which is why he is working overtime to make himself into, in Trump’s words, Ron DeSanctimonious.

The Rise of Spirit Warriors on the Christian Right

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mariacallous · 6 months

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When a team of three top Biden administration national security officials gave a private briefing to the House of Representatives on Oct. 11, they proposed working with Congress on emergency funding to tackle multiple foreign-policy crises at once: the Israel-Hamas war, the war in Ukraine, support for Taiwan, and the U.S. southern border.

In the past, such a proposal wouldn’t elicit much controversy. Even in the hyper-partisan House, support for Israel is virtually unanimous, while nearly all Democrats and most Republicans broadly agree on funding to back Ukraine and counter Russia and China. But when the administration officials brought up the idea of a joint supplemental funding package in the briefing, a group of Republicans responded by jeering them with a chorus of boos.

The exchange, described to Foreign Policy by one lawmaker in attendance and three congressional aides briefed on the matter, offers a glimpse into how the chaos in the Republican-controlled House is morphing from a domestic political circus into a massive foreign-policy headache for the Biden administration. How that chaos plays out could have major implications for the scale and timing of U.S. security assistance to Israel as well as the continued flow of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, seen as critical in its war against Russia.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby warned last week that Washington is “running out of runway” to send security assistance to Israel and Ukraine without additional funding from Congress—all stymied by the glaring absence of a House speaker amid unprecedented infighting among House Republicans. The Republicans are inching closer to naming Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump and skeptic of U.S. support for Ukraine, to be speaker, but he still faces an uphill battle to scrape together enough votes from the Republican caucus to get the job.

“The sooner that there’s a speaker of the House, obviously, the more comfortable we’ll all be in terms of being able to support Israel and Ukraine right now,” Kirby said. “Because of existing appropriations and existing authorities, we’ve been OK. But that’s not going to last forever.”

The House has been mired in dysfunction ever since a fringe group of Republicans ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his job two weeks ago, with no succession plan in mind. Republicans are in the midst of a mini-civil war politically over how to climb out of the mess.

The first question is: Who will the next House speaker be? Under current rules, the House is extremely limited in what it can do without a confirmed speaker. At this point, the House can’t even pass a resolution voicing support for Israel after the Hamas terrorist attacks that has support from more than 400 of its 433 members, let alone pass complex security assistance funding packages. (There are currently two vacancies in the House.)

While nearly all Republicans and Democrats will back funding for new security assistance packages to Israel, Ukraine is more complicated. A coterie of the GOP House opposes further aid to Ukraine, with some arguing the United States has given the eastern European country enough, and with at least one, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, parroting Russian talking points on the origins of the conflict. If Ukraine becomes more politicized on the right, more members could follow suit and begin opposing—or, at the very least, not proactively supporting—Ukraine aid. Those dynamics matter when the Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House.

Jordan, a longtime budget hawk who has championed Trump’s falsehoods about the results of the 2020 election, has emerged as the only front-runner who may actually net enough votes to be speaker. Jordan still has to sway dozens of Republicans to his cause, including foreign-policy hawks and centrists who are skeptical of his leadership credentials. Since the Democrats will not vote for him, Jordan needs to convince 217 of the 221 Republicans in the House to back him to be elected, leaving little margin for any dissent.

The second question is whether defense hawks can use the House speakership race to their advantage to clinch gains for national security funding, including on Ukraine.

Jordan notched some significant wins on Monday when two prominent Ukraine supporters endorsed him. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Ken Calvert, who leads the powerful defense subcommittee on appropriations, both threw their weight behind Jordan. Those endorsements may signal that Jordan is willing to make deals on keeping U.S. military aid to Ukraine flowing, though neither Rogers nor Calvert explicitly said so in their statements.

The third question is what happens to future funding packages—known as supplementals—for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and border security. Three administration officials confirmed that the Biden administration wants to bundle funding together into one big package to pass both the House and the Senate—though the administration has yet to unveil the specifics of this plan. The package the administration is drafting could be presented to Congress as soon as the end of this week, these officials said. Democrats endorse the strategy of bundling these four national security measures into one supplemental, as do some prominent Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Nearly all Republicans endorse boosting funding for Israel, which has outsized significance in American politics, and for Taiwan, to counter China. Nearly all Republicans also want to pressure the Biden administration to spend more on border security. The hitch is Ukraine, where a sliver of the slim Republican majority can derail funding. Democrats, as well as some centrist Republicans, figure that linking all the funding together would make it all but impossible to block more money for Ukraine. Not all Republicans, including Ukraine supporters like Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, are sold on that plan, however.

The next big question is what those aid packages will contain. The Senate, fed up with the chaos in the House, is rushing to draft its own supplemental aid package for Israel and potentially Ukraine without waiting for the dust to settle in the House. Any final bill would ultimately have to pass both the House and Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee separately has scheduled confirmation hearings this week for President Joe Biden’s picks to be ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and ambassador to Egypt, Herro Mustafa Garg, as the crisis highlighted the growing backlog of national security nominees in limbo.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer traveled to Israel over the weekend and said he discussed what a U.S. aid package to Israel would entail. Among the Israeli wish list that Schumer outlined is replenishing stocks for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, precision-guided bombs, and 155 mm mortar shells.

So far, the White House and Senate leadership have been quiet on what Ukraine might get. However, several Western defense officials familiar with the inner workings of U.S. military aid to Ukraine say a supplemental would likely include funding to replenish U.S. weapons stockpiles as older weapons and artillery munitions are transferred to Ukraine, as well as training, upkeep, and maintenance for Ukrainians using and being trained on advanced U.S. weapons systems such as long-range artillery systems and M1 Abrams tanks.

Past supplementals for Ukraine have also funded salaries—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars—for U.S. service members deployed in Europe to train Ukrainians and conduct more military exercises with NATO allies in a bid to deter Russia from expanding the war.

The political battles in Washington constitute an existential issue for Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During a visit to Washington in September, Schumer recounted to reporters how Zelensky summed up his dilemma to U.S. lawmakers: “Mr. Zelensky said, ‘If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war,’” Schumer said.

House Democrats, meanwhile—stuck on the sidelines while they wait for Republicans to elect their own replacement speaker—have made their frustrations clear.

“We have a war in Europe, a war in the Middle East, challenges around the world, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and the United States is unable to elect a speaker of the House,” Democratic Rep. Andy Kim told Foreign Policy in an interview. “What kind of signal does that send to our adversaries and our competitors?”

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rapeculturerealities · 2 years

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JD Vance Suggests People in ‘Violent’ Marriages Shouldn’t Get Divorced

Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance speaks to supporters of former President Donald Trump on May 6, 2022 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

JD Vance said people need to be more willing to stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of their kids—and seemed to suggest that in some cases, “even violent” marriages should continue.

The Ohio Republican Senate nominee, talking to Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California last September, gave an extended answer that claimed that people now “shift spouses like they change their underwear,” and that it had done long-term damage to a generation of children.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said.

“And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages,” Vance continued. “And that’s what I think all of us should be honest about, is we’ve run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that’s making our kids unhappy

#Vance #Divorce #intimate partner violence #Domestic violence

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samueldays · 5 months

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You know that joke about the Jew who enjoys reading Nazi newspapers because they're talking up the power and influence of the Jews?

Well,

A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024.

Chunks of the article gives me a similar feeling of "Yeah, I hope/wish that were true". Trump better organised? Trump can find loyal personnel? Sounds good!

Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

You'd have to be a complete idiot to think Trump would be unbound in a second term, and the Economist writers aren't complete idiots, so I must conclude this is hyperbole verging on outright lies, which I could get in almost any internet comment section.

The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice is part of the executive branch and obliged to answer to the President. If it stands in his way, he is right to make war on it, and it should be punished for treason. The "norms" implied here appear to be norms in favor of the Deep State doing whatever it likes and disregarding the President.

Two nations in one country: the Harvard and the Amerikaner. Read Moldbug, etc.

Yet a Trump victory next year would also have a profound effect abroad. China and its friends would rejoice over the evidence that American democracy is dysfunctional.

No more dysfunctional than re-electing Figurehead Joe.

If Mr Trump trampled due process and civil rights in the United States, his diplomats could not proclaim them abroad.

Unfriendly reminder that Trump issued a "no racial scapegoating" executive order and Biden revoked it so he could engage in racial scapegoating, racial privilege and racial quotas.

US civil rights law as currently executed by Democrats is an evil system which tramples on other rights like freedom of speech, freedom of association, and presumption of innocence. Saying "civil rights" in contemporary law is a hefty motte-and-bailey term.

#all #journalism delenda est

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gilmores-glorious-blog · 4 months

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catching fire liveblog no one asked for!!

- “you are a strangely dislikable person” hey did you guys know i love haymitch because i love haymitch

- fucking insane that president snow is just. in her house. like imagine you come home one day and donald trump is standing in your living room.

- anything with rue gets me choked up instantly….. that whole scene in district 11? whoof.

- the “one day i’m gonna volunteer just like you did” is rough.

- i did not remember that snow was a grandfather… who on earth did he have kids with??

- the dynamic between katniss, peeta, haymitch, and effie is soooo. rotates them in my brain.

- i know it’s the point but this quarter quell concept is so deeply fucked up

- i want an au where haymitch fights in these games instead of peeta

- haymitch reaching for effie’s hand <3

- finnick was fourteen when he won his games,,,,, that’s wild (the trauma potential for his character,,, going insane)

- finnick is so. RAGHHHHH. he’s so hot.

- johanna lesbian-coded character of all time <3 to me <33

- mags is so sweet 😭

- i forgot about the painting of rue that i’m assuming peeta did??

- katniss making the dummy of seneca is. ugh. it’s so good.

- caesar has no morals but at least he serves cunt

- the mockingjay dress is so cool

- finnick and annie are so sweet i can’t wait for them to get married and for nothing bad to happen to them ever 🙃

- johanna was so real for telling everyone to go fuck themselves

- cinna sacrificing himself to make 👏 a 👏goddamn 👏 statement 👏

- “if it weren’t for the baby” truly is peeta’s most iconic moment

- also i love haymitch’s little toast to peeta at that bit

- all the tributes holding hands 🥲

- haymitch and effie are the dysfunctional parents of all time

- the peacekeepers killing cinna in front of katniss as she watches unable to do anything is so upsetting

- starting the arena in water is an insane fucking advantage for some people (finnick) and probably a disadvantage for a lot of other people

- i know it’s a whole revolution thing but i like to think of haymitch giving finnick his bracelet like ‘protect my dumbass kids please’

- wouldn’t it be funny if peeta was dying and finnick just made out with him (like katniss thinks is happening in the books??)

- i love katniss but,, my girl stared at the fog for so goddamn long before doing anything about it !! why’d you wait to TOUCH IT AND GET POISONED to see if it was dangerous?? it’s a fucking hunger games arena of course mysterious fog is gonna be bad!

- god finnick’s reaction when mags dies,,,,

- but also damn that fog kills you QUICK… maybe it’s just because mags is old but that canon went off like,, immediately

- the female morphling sacrificing herself for peeta 🥲 i know she was probably in on the whole revolution thing but still

- that post about all the district twelve victors holding someone in their arms as they died is sooooooo. yeah.

- the whole “tick tock” scene and realizing the arena is a clock is so cool

- i love their friendship and so i have to love finnick and katniss bonding over experiencing The Psychological Horrors

- johanna just casually trauma dumping okay girlie

- finnick looks so hot in this last scene on the airship,, i know i’m predictable but GOD 😩

- i love the little reminders we get sometimes that haymitch is strong and did in fact win the hunger games against 47 other people.

- this movie is so confusing ngl,, i can never keep track of who’s good/who’s in on the rebellion, etc.

- still a great movie though <3

#the games section of catching fire is my favorite part of the series for sure #not that the revolution isn’t interesting but like. it’s less interesting.#the hunger games #catching fire #eli.posts

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