Earlier this year, we learned that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas secretly sold his
childhood home, which his mother still lives in, to billionaire Harlan
Crow in 2014. The justice was a one-third owner of the property at the
time. Despite the obvious ethical concerns of a Supreme Court justice
doing business with a billionaire, the sale was never disclosed, and
only came to light thanks to ProPublica's reporting.
Today, in light of Thomas' most recent financial disclosure, which, wouldn't you know it, suddenly details all sorts of ties to Crow, the Supreme Court justice's lawyer released a statement defending the home's sale.
"In 2014, Harlan Crow, a longtime friend of Justice and Mrs. Thomas, visited Savannah with Justice Thomas," the statement from
Elliot S. Berke reads. "Mr. Crow witnessed firsthand how the
neighborhood was blighted and dangerous with derelicts, drug users, and
junkies, notably in the house next to the Justice's mother and in the
other houses on her street."
Thomas
joined the Supreme Court in 1991, meaning that in 2014, when his mother
was still living in a neighborhood blighted and dangerous with
derelicts, drug users, and junkies, he'd been one of the most powerful
people in the country for more than 22 years.
Let's pause for laughter. Back to the report:
"Mr.
Crow asked Justice Thomas what he intended to do with the home after
his mother (who was in her 80s at the time) passed away, and the Justice
replied that he intended to have the property bulldozed," it reads.
"Mr. Crow indicated he wanted to preserve the home for a possible museum
and asked his team to review the idea of doing so. When he first raised
the idea of purchasing this home to preserve it, Mr. Crow did not know
that Justice Thomas had a 1/3 interest in the property."
As
part of the transaction, Crow guaranteed Thomas' mother that she could
continue to live in the house — and its then-blighted neighborhood — in
perpetuity, a deal that Berke described as necessary to get her to sign
(she also owned a third of the property).
"Without
it, Mrs. Williams would likely not have sold the home at that time if
she had to move," Berke wrote. "This would have defeated Mr. Crow's
intent to purchase the home in order to preserve it."
In
other words — according to Thomas' lawyer — the transaction was
structured in such a way as to guarantee that Thomas' mother could
continue to live among junkies and derelicts.
Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time acknowledged that he
should have reported selling real estate to billionaire political donor
Harlan Crow in 2014, a transaction revealed by ProPublica earlier
this year. Writing in his annual financial disclosure form, Thomas said
that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be
publicly disclosed.
Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time acknowledged that he
should have reported selling real estate to billionaire political donor
Harlan Crow in 2014, a transaction revealed by ProPublica earlier
this year. Writing in his annual financial disclosure form, Thomas said
that he “inadvertently failed to realize” that the deal needed to be
publicly disclosed.
Unfortunately, Thomas has not always been on the losing side of these cases; in fact, he wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Florida,
a particularly egregious 5–4 decision in 2007. The facts were
depressingly familiar: A lawyer for Gary Lawrence, who contested his
death sentence, missed a deadline that prevented him from seeking
relief. Lawrence asked for an extension, equitable tolling, citing his
attorney’s error. Thomas refused. Writing for the court, he explained,
“If credited, this argument would essentially equitably toll limitations
periods for every person whose attorney missed a deadline. Attorney
miscalculation is simply not sufficient to warrant equitable tolling,
particularly in the postconviction context where prisoners have no
constitutional right to counsel.”
Marvel
at this irony: Clarence Thomas had the assistance of every lawyer he
could ever want in drafting his financial disclosures. Indeed, he subtly
threw some of them under the bus in his Thursday amendments, suggesting
that any genuine errors can be pinned back on bad advice received from
the Judicial Conference of the United States, which advises and
adjudicates judicial ethics compliance and which revised its reporting
requirements earlier this year in the wake of the Thomas revelations.
The justice has—as is increasingly evident—ample resources to pay his
lawyers, unlike the indigent defendants who are often given minimal or
substandard representation by attorneys with hundreds of other cases to
juggle. He also has ample time in which to comply with a standard
disclosure process followed by thousands of other public officials,
unlike capital defendants who face onerous deadlines with little or no
information on how to meet them.
At
the bare minimum, Thomas’ new filing proves that even the most powerful
jurists and attorneys make errors, grievous ones, all the time. Instead
of stating that with humility and offering the same grace to others,
the justice has taken the opportunity to remind us that when his errors
are pointed out, it’s a weaponization of the legal system by malign
haters. For Thomas, equal justice under the law means that to err is
human when the powerful do it, and that deciding which errors are
trivial, and thus forgivable, is what makes him nothing short of divine.
Friday, September 1, 2023. Crooked Clarence makes more claims, Iraq
convicts in the killing of an American citizen (convicts but apparently
does not name), we review the clownish Cornel West, a brief moment on
water rights and more.
Harlan Crow has paid for even more travel trips for Crooked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The news broke yesterday and Betty posted early with "Crooked Clarence lies again"
because the media was just repeating -- without question or comment --
Clarence's claim that his security detail told him he should try to
travel by private plane.
As Betty points out,
if that was the case -- if he's not lying again -- they didn't tell him
to let other people pay for his private plane travel.
And
I'm not sure they told him that. Clarence has a long history of lying
and I'm failing to understand why with all the FBI agents available and
with the Supreme Court of the United States Police Department if, after
DOBBS was leaked to the press, a threat assessment required more
protection, it wouldn't come from government agents? Doesn't make
sense.
I want to see that report. I want to
see a report where his security detail states he needs to travel by
private plane. And since this would be based upon a threat assessment, I
want to know why it wasn't covered by the US government.
Clarence
is lying yet again and Betty's right. This needs to be called out and
that's why we're starting with it in the snapshot.
Right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas revealed Thursday that he took three flights on the private jet of conservative billionaire Harlan Crow last year, a disclosure that came more than four months after
ProPublicareported that the powerful judge has been accepting luxury trips from the Texas real estate magnate for decades.
The trips are outlined in Thomas' required
financial disclosure
for 2022. Last May, according to the document, Thomas flew on Crow's
private jet to Dallas, where the justice delivered a keynote address at a
conference held by the right-wing American Enterprise Institute.
The disclosure states that the May flights to and from Dallas "were by
private plane for official travel" because Thomas' "security detail
recommended noncommercial travel whenever possible," citing "increased
security risk following the
Dobbs opinion leak."
That opinion, which was
formally handed down on June 24, 2022, ended the constitutional right to abortion in the U.S.
Kyle Herrig, a senior adviser to the progressive group Accountable.US,
said in a statement that "it's no surprise that Justice Thomas has kept
up his decadeslong cozy relationship with billionaire benefactor Harlan
Crow with even more lavish jet rides and vacation reimbursements."
"For years, Thomas has used his position on our nation's highest court
as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle—and that hasn't stopped," Herrig
added.
Thomas, who has
faced calls to resign
over the gifts from Crow and other billionaires, also acknowledges in
the filing that he "inadvertently omitted" bank account information in
financial disclosures dating back to 2017. Thomas previously had to
amend two decades of disclosures after he neglected to include information about his wife's income from conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation.
"In
a pathetic attempt to clear his name, Thomas' latest financial
disclosure confirms his financial dependency on right-wing billionaires
and his scorn for basic judicial ethics and common decency," said Brett
Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at Stand Up
America. "It's no wonder the Supreme Court is mired in an unprecedented
crisis of legitimacy."
And a friend just called regarding DEMOCRACY NOW! yesterday. I didn't catch it but we're noting this segment.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEENSHAIKH: “America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow.” That’s the headline to a major New York Timesinvestigation
that examines how the nation’s aquifers are becoming severely depleted
due to overuse in part from huge industrial farms and sprawling cities.
The depletion of the nation’s aquifers is already having a devastating impact. The Times
reports that in Kansas, corn yields are plummeting due to a lack of
water. In Arizona, there is not enough water to support the construction
of new homes in parts of Phoenix. And rivers across the country are
drying up.
AMYGOODMAN:
We’re going now to Oklahoma, where we’re joined by Warigia Bowman, who
has been closely tracking this issue, director of sustainable energy and
natural resources law at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
Thank you so much for being with us. Can you start off by just
explaining what an aquifer is, why these groundwater resources are under
such threat, why they’re so critical not only to the United States but
all over the world?
WARIGIABOWMAN:
Well, thank you so much, Amy. It’s really an honor to be on your show.
I’ve been listening for years, so I am grateful for the opportunity.
For your listeners, an aquifer refers to, essentially, a container of
soil and rock that holds water under the ground. This is not an
underground river. Rather, it’s water flowing through porous rock and
soil. So, if you have an aquifer very close to the surface, we usually
call that artesian, and that’s when you see a spring. So, if you see a
spring bubbling out of the ground, that means that the aquifer is very
close to the surface. Some aquifers are very deep below the surface, and
they were formed by glacial rainwater billions and millions of years
ago. So, an aquifer is just a fancy way of saying, you know, the place
that holds our groundwater.
Now, aquifers are critical for both the United and the world, because
we get so much of our drinking water from groundwater. It’s really a
significant percentage. In California, it could go as high as 60% in a
drought year.
NERMEENSHAIKH: And so, Warigia, if you could talk about how the federal government and state governments manage public water supplies?
WARIGIABOWMAN: OK. Well, the federal government does not deal with groundwater. They have the power to. The Supreme Court has said, in Nebraska v. Sporhase,
that the federal government has that opportunity. But all water law is
done at the state level for the moment. And what that means is that each
different state has a different approach to managing its water. So,
actually, who manages water at the local level, that’s a municipal
issue. That’s a little bit more of an infrastructure issue. But in terms
of who owns the water and the legal regime to utilize it, that’s a
state law issue.
AMYGOODMAN:
And can you talk about how aquifer depletion isn’t solely a problem in
the west of the country, how the tap water crisis is emerging in other
parts of the country, as well?
WARIGIABOWMAN:
OK, well, I’m not an expert on the tap water crisis, but I will say
that all coastal regions in the United States are really being
threatened by groundwater and aquifer problems. Some of the hardest hit
are going to be Louisiana and Florida. Obviously, New York will
eventually be hit.
Let’s take Florida. I’m sure you guys have already heard about how
residents in Miami are trying to move their properties or find property
on hillier areas, but in places like the Everglade, you have a very
delicate balance of freshwater and saltwater. But when we overdraw our
aquifers, then you get something called saltwater intrusion, which
upsets that balance. And that’s also a serious problem in Louisiana.
And surprisingly, under the Mississippi River between Mississippi and
Arkansas, there’s enormous aquifer depletion. It’s hard to believe
because the Mississippi is such a big river. But the farmers in that
region are withdrawing so much water so fast that actually the aquifers
underneath the Mississippi River are one of the most endangered aquifers
in the United States.
NERMEENSHAIKH:
So, Warigia, if you could talk about, very quickly, in the last minute
we have, how the climate crisis worsens this aquifer depletion and
accelerates it?
WARIGIABOWMAN:
Well, there are a few different ways. The first way is precipitation is
declining. Snowmelt is declining — I mean, snow is declining. But one
thing to understand it that aquifers and groundwater, they recharge
incredibly slowly. So, it can take millions of years to fill an aquifer,
but they can be depleted, you know, in 50 years. But as surface water
supplies, like rivers and streams and lakes, are depleted, farmers and
industry are going to draw more from groundwater, and so that
accelerates the depletion.
AMYGOODMAN:
Well, Warigia Bowman, we want to thank you so much for being with us,
associate professor and director of sustainable energy and natural
resources law at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
That does it for our show. A very happy birthday to Hany Massoud! Democracy Now!
is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes,
Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam
Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud,
Sonyi Lopez. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to
Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel
Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude, Dennis McCormick, Matt
Ealy and Emily Anderson.
If you want to sign up for our daily digest, news in your email box, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks so much for joining us.
That's an important story, and there's so much more to it.
If you live in Goodmanville and you've got a lake and you think this doesn't effect you, you're mistaken.
I've
whined here for years about how this isn't what I want to write here.
This is what we have to and I've whined since the start that I wanted to
cover water rights. This isn't not going to be that because there's no
time. And let's keep it conversational and emphasize just one key
point.
Danny Schechter was a media analyst. He
and I kept bumping into each other in 2004 (we already knew each other)
on campuses because I was speaking out against the Iraq War and he was
promoting his documentary on the media selling the Iraq War. Since we
were often bumping into one another, we'd sometimes plan a lunch
together for a future date. I believe we were in Dallas -- I was
speaking to three campuses and he was doing a film festival there. He
brought along someone who'd done a documentary about water issues who
also brought along a college professor.
The
college professor explained that Denton, Texas had all this water around
it. But Dallas didn't have enough for the coming years. So the City
of Dallas actually had the rights -- purchased them -- to Denton's
lakes.
This isn't just an issue to the areas
that will be depleted, it's all an issue to areas that can look out the
window and think they're safe -- oh, look, the lake's got plenty of
water -- because you may not be. Your city government may have sold off
your water rights.
I've condensed that but that's the basic point. You need to know who has the rights to area's water.
The Iraqi government has
discussed establishing a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes as the
country grapples with crippling electricity shortages.
The media office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that
the most recent meeting of the Ministerial Council for National
Security discussed “establishing a limited nuclear reactor for peaceful
purposes and the production of clean electric energy that contributes to
reducing dependence on other sources of energy such as gas and oil.”
The
Iraqi Minister of Electricity, Ziyad Ali Fadel, announced last June
that Iraq produces 24 thousand megawatts per day, an increase of 22
percent over last year. However, providing electricity 24 hours a day
requires production of 34 thousand megawatts per day.
Oh, look, 20 years after Bully Boy Bush was lying about "yellow cake uranium," Iraq may finally get some.
So
US troops remain on the ground in Iraq supposedly to train and help
with terrorism -- rooting it out -- and yet Iraq's the place for a
nuclear reactor. Hmm.
In other news, the US State Dept issued the following yesterday:
Press Statement
Matthew Miller, Department Spokesperson
August 31, 2023
We welcome the Iraqi court’s decision to convict and sentence
multiple individuals on terrorism charges for their roles in the killing
of U.S. citizen Stephen Troell. It is critical that all those
responsible for the brutal, premeditated assassination of Mr. Troell
face justice and accountability. We once again extend our condolences to
Mr. Troell’s family and hope this verdict brings them some measure of
justice.
The officials did not identify the Iranian and provided no further details about the case.
The Interior Ministry also confirmed the sentences in a statement, saying four other accused are still wanted.
"The Iranian man was the mastermind of the crime," one legal source told Reuters. All five were arrested in Iraq soon after the fatal shooting, the source said.
At
the time of the killing, Mr Troell was working in the local English
school, the Global English Institute, run by the Texas aid group
Millennium Relief and Development Services.
A
native of Tennessee, he had lived in the Iraqi capital with his wife
Jocelyn – who was the language school's manager – three daughters and a
toddler son, since 2018.
Shortly
after the killing, social media accounts close to Iran-backed Shiite
militias accused him of being a spy, although they produced no evidence
for the claim.
"Let's just go with Tina Louise." Yesterday's snapshot
was an apparently an eye opener for some. Again, let me repeat myself,
African-Americans are not going to line up behind Cornel West because
Cornel's Black. That belief is latent racism on the part of White
people. They are not lining up behind Tim Scott.
B-b-but Cornel's a hero.
Conrel's a hero to White blabber mouths.
You are ignorant of reality if you don't grasp that.
Cornel
is seen as an enemy by some as a result of 2008. It's not in his
WIKIPEDIA, big surprise. But Cornel went around 'pressuring' or
'attacking' Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries and election.
You have no idea, if you live in a White-focused world, how scarring that was.
Tavis Smiley partnered with Cornel for that 2008 action.
I
know Tom Joyner, love him, known him for decades. In 2008, Tavis had
to leave THE TOM JOYNER MORNING SHOW and Tavis and Tom were very close
and neither wanted it to happen. But despite being a beloved part of
the show, by staff and by the audience, it did happen. What Cornel and
Tavis were doing was leading to a huge ton of complaints from listener
and there was also some drop off in the ratings with more of a drop off
expected. So Tavis left the show.
NOTE:
I am not in the mood for stupid. I've told Martha and Shirley to
delete any e-mails coming into the public account that want to pretend
they know facts when they don't. Do not e-mail, "You are confusing 2012
with 2008." No, CRAPAPEDIA is wrong as usual. It's a White site, don't
trust it for information about any non-White person. 2008 is the
issue. I'll spoonfeed lazy asses once and only once on this: here's a link to ESSENCE and
it's from 2008 and that's when Tavis left. And Tom's quoted in there
and Tom told the truth. I have no idea why Cornel's lying in the
interview but Cornel's always lying.
This
is the sort of thing in the Black community that White YOUTUBE can't,
won't and doesn't tell you. Sometimes it's because they're young adults
too stupid to learn history before opening their mouths to offer
'facts.' Sometimes it's because they just don't care. It's not White
so it doesn't matter to them and, who cares, they're just going to say
whatever they want about Black people because isn't that the White way.
I'm sick of it, I'm sick of these people thinking they can weigh in when they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
After
Barack was elected in November 2008, Cornel could never figure out
where he stood on Barack which resulted in gushing and in attacks and it
never made sense and Tom Joyner's audience was vocal about that.
After the election, with Barack in the White House, some of the tensions
could have healed for Cornel. And he could have, for example, remained
a critic of Barack and that would have been okay. People would have
said he was being consistent. Instead, he was all over the map --
slamming one moment, fluffing the next. Over and over.
Cornel's
audience is and always has been people who could be male characters on
THE BIG BANG THEORY. A bunch of White men and Raj.
He talks a lot -- in circles -- he never does anything. He's a blabber mouth.
He's
not Rev Jesse Jackson who's got a lifetime of activism -- real activism
-- and then decides to run for president in 1984. He's a DSA academic
removed from reality. And since YOUTUBE is the same -- and is pretty
much hosted by people who could be male characters on THE BIG BANG
THEORY -- no one wants to comment on that reality.
He's not a doer, he's a talker.
He's
not an activist, he's an academic. And not a good academic because a
good academic can, for example, criticize Lawrence Summers without
sounding anti-Semitic. Cornel knows all about coded language and used
it repeatedly in his war with Lawrence Summers (and that goes far beyond
with the ridiculous comparison of Summers to Ariel Sharon). We have
criticized Lawrence repeatedly and harshly over the years and we never
had the need to do it with references -- coded or otherwise -- to
Lawrence being Jewish.
Your nerd fan boi fantasies about Cornel West are not reality.
Jesse
and Jackie Jackson are fixtures in the African-American community and
that's due to the fact that they have roots in and they are part of it.
They have given decades working in the community.
Cornel and all three of his wives can't make that claim.
I'd
say he was busy working in the academic community but that's a lie as
well and that was at the heart of his dispute with Lawrence when
Lawrence took over at Harvard -- Cornel was too busy trying to become an
academic celebrity, churning out co-written 'books' that were sloppy
and not scholarly.
Cornel was not leading
protests, he was not organizing within the community, he was shucking
and jiving and making funny faces in interviews to increase his own fame
and wealth.
He is weak ass and he's seen as a clown.
But you keep imposing how you see him onto others and pretend like that's reality. See where it gets you.
This
push to make Cornel West the Green Party presidential nominee (they
will choose their nominee at their party convention in the summer of
2024) makes about as much sense as White House chief of staff Jeff
Zients telling Joe Biden that the next cabinet secretary opening should
go to Tina Louise "because she was so good on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND as
Ginger."
And let's talk the real
harm if Cornel is the nominee. He's not a Green (he's DSA) and you're
yet again telling your own party that there is no one in the party
worthy of the nomination so you're going to draft from outside the party
again.
Canada warned travelers visiting the United States about state laws impacting LGBTQ people.
The country added a cautionary message for travelers who identify as Two-Spirit,
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or those who use
other terminologies to its travel advice and advisory page for the U.S.
on Tuesday.
“Some
states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+
persons,” the advisory said. The warning recommended travelers check
relevant state and local laws.
“The Government of Canada
takes the safety and security of Canadians abroad very seriously and
provides accurate and up to date information in its Travel Advice and
Advisories to enable travelers to make informed and responsible
decisions regarding their destinations,” a spokesperson for Global
Affairs Canada told USA TODAY in an emailed statement.
From the government of Canada's Global Affairs website:
2SLGBTQI+ travellers
Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws.
Travel and your sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics
Foreign
laws and customs related to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender
expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) can be very different from
those in Canada. As a result, you could face certain barriers and risks
when you travel outside Canada. Research and prepare for your trip in
advance to help your travels go smoothly.
The
updated advice does not mention any specific law or state policy, nor
does it suggest staying away from a particular state. When asked
for details, a department spokesperson pointed to laws targeting the
transgender community.
"Since
the beginning of 2023, certain states in the U.S. have passed laws
banning drag shows and restricting the transgender community from access
to gender affirming care and from participation in sporting events,"
the spokesperson said in a media statement.
"The
information is provided to enable travellers to make their own informed
decisions regarding destinations. Outside Canada, laws and customs
related to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and
sex characteristics can be very different from those in Canada."
I don't know what to say except, "Today, we're all the children of Florida."
Like
those poor unfortunates in Florida, we are the laughingstock. We are
looked down on by educated areas of the world, just like the children in
Florida who can't learn this or study that or read that. Government
officials have betrayed us and made us seem like idiots. Hopefully, as
we should grasp that the children in Florida are not responsible for
Ronald DeSantis' war on education, the people of the world can grasp
that we are not all as stupid and hateful as some of our leaders.
The
Florida section above was dictated but accidentally got left out when
the snapshot went up. It was put in on 9/1/23 at 11:27 am PST.
Let's wind down with this from Will Lehman:
Dear fellow workers,
As
the clock ticks down to the September contract expirations for 170,000
US and Canadian autoworkers, plans for a jobs massacre of historic
proportions are being concealed from the rank and file.
The transition to electric vehicles must not be carried out at workers’ expense!
Join an online meeting this Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Central time for an urgent discussion of
this threat. The meeting will review critical information on the scale
of the coming attacks on jobs and the strategy for workers to unite
internationally to fight the jobs massacre and reverse concessions.
Register for the event here.
I encourage all autoworkers and other UAW members to attend:
What
is being prepared is not a contract, it is a death warrant for hundreds
of thousands of auto jobs in North America and millions around the
world. To oppose this, workers must have all the facts so they can
develop a strategy to defend jobs and living standards.
This once-in-a-century industry transition threatens to eliminate half or more than half of all auto jobs in the US in the next five to 10 years, according to industry reports and research by experts.
In
the US, plans for a brutal restructuring of the auto industry are being
worked out behind workers’ backs by the United Auto Workers union
bureaucracy, which is conspiring with management and the Biden
administration. In Canada, the Unifor bureaucracy and the Trudeau
government are playing similar roles.
The
primary concern of UAW President Shawn Fain and the UAW apparatus is
not a “just transition” to EVs—which is impossible under capitalism—but
rather to maintain and expand its access to dues money from workers at
the new EV battery plants.
US
imperialism and its allies, meanwhile, see the transition to EVs as a
vital necessity, as they seek to undermine their economic
competitors—particularly China—and increase the massive profits pumped
out of the working class.
The
defense of workers’ jobs and the progressive resolution of any of the
life-and-death problems confronting workers requires an international
strategy, uniting autoworkers around the world, who confront the same
enemies in the world’s transnational auto companies.
To
stop the plans for a jobs massacre, the IWA-RFC and the Autoworkers
Rank-and-File Committee Network are calling for workers to form
rank-and-file factory committees and fight for the following demands:
Immediate release of the list of planned plant closures!
Not a single job loss or plant closure in the transition to EV!
If EVs require less labor time to produce, then reduce hours and increase pay!
Unite across borders to prevent a race to the bottom!
Place the auto industry under social ownership subject to democratic worker control!
Isaiah's comic just went up a few minutes ago (it's 4:47 pm on 8/31/23 as I type this) and I wanted to add it to this post. Below is how my post originally started.
-------------------
Posting early because Crooked Clarence is lying again and he needs to be called out.
Hi
there, OnPolitics readers. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
said back in May that justices were "continuing to look at things"
connected with issues of ethics.
The debate over Supreme Court ethics may gain new attention in coming days as annual financial disclosure reports for
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are released. Thomas, in
particular, has been at the center of controversy involving private jet travel and luxury vacations paid for by a Republican megadonor.
The Supreme Court’s public approval is back at record lows, and there is a common explanation: partisanship. The diagnosis is certainly understandable. Today’s court is extremely partisan by
any measure, and it has lurched the law rightward on a host of
important issues, from abortion to guns and voting rights to
environmental law.
He argues the bigger issue is overconfidence on the part of Justices:
The justices’ susceptibility to overconfidence bias is also visible in their personalities. I explore this phenomenon in Supreme Hubris, a
new book that shares several stories revealing the justices’ striking
inability to acknowledge doubt. During a lunchtime debate I once had
with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, Scalia expressed
absolute certainty in his views on far-ranging matters such as the death
penalty, criminal sentencing, abortion, and even the light-hearted
question of whether fish is meat. I had a similar experience over tea with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose self-assured views regarding the procedural rules that govern civil litigation have had surprisingly harmful consequences.
Perhaps
most significantly, the court’s overconfidence problem is apparent in
its opinions. In overturning the right to abortion, for example, Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion declared
that the legal reasoning embraced by respected jurists such as Sandra
Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Thurgood Marshall was “far outside
the bounds of any reasonable interpretation.” Never mind that the “most important historical fact” on which Alito rested his own conclusion — the number of states that banned abortion in 1868 — was riddled with historical inaccuracies.
[. . .]
The Supreme Court has followed this approach — which I’ve called the “least harm principle” — as recently as in 2020, when it issued modest rulings on a host of cases involving
subpoenas seeking former President Donald Trump’s financial records,
abortion, LGBTQ rights and immigration. Not coincidentally, the court’s
public approval reached record highs that year, with majority support among Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.
Yet
the court has changed markedly since then. With Ginsburg’s passing and
replacement by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s new 6-3
conservative majority has begun to act far more stridently, showing
little regard for the harm its rulings inflict. And its popularity has
plummeted.
The
big question for today’s justices, then, is whether they will continue
down this overconfident path, or return to the humbler, less harmful
approach used in earlier times. There is evidence that at least one
justice — Chief Justice John Roberts — has chosen the latter route. Last
summer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, for example, Roberts supported a compromise position on the right to abortion after humbly admitting that
he was “not sure that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment
of conception must be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban
after 15 weeks.” Alas, the chief was alone in taking that view.
Justice
Clarence Thomas said that his use of private jets in 2022 was partially
due to the "increased security risk" after the unprecedented leak of the Supreme Court's draft opinion of their decision that would later gut nationwide abortion rights.
"With
advice of the Administrative Office, flights were reported as advised.
Because of the increased security risk following the Dobbs opinion leak,
the May flights were by private plane for official travel as filer's
security detail recommended noncommercial travel whenever possible,"
Thomas wrote in his latest financial disclosure filed earlier this month
and publicly released on Thursday.
Then if you had to use
them, you didn't have to use them for free. Your paid money, you've
raked in millions and you could -- if you had to use private plane --
deduct them on your taxes.
You did not HAVE TO use them, though. You chose to use them. You are a crook, a filthy grifter and a disgrace. Ivana Saric (AXIOS) notes:
The big picture: Thomas'
financial disclosure form revealed that in February, May and July of
last year, Thomas received reimbursements from Crow covering
transportation, meals, and lodging. The report did not disclose
estimated dollar figures for the reimbursements.
Thomas also received a reimbursement from the Hatch Center for transportation, meals, and lodging.
The report also notes that due to "increased security risk" after the leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson,
Thomas' "May flights were by private plane for official travel as
filer's security detail recommended noncommercial travel whenever
possible."
See that?
"recommended." Not required. He made the choice to fly private. He
needs to pay the bill. I'm tired of Harlan Crow's side piece being on
the Supreme Court.
Thursday, August 31, 2023. Nouri al-Maliki is talking about the US
government, Amnesty International spotlights the missing, Bernie Sanders
gets called out (for the last thing he should really be called out
for), bad, bad, bad political 'analysis' from THE VANGUARD, and much
more.
Unless you're the US media, Nouri al-Maliki is yet again in
the news. I have no idea why the US media refuses to cover the former
prime minister and forever thug. Maybe it's guilt? They spent a long
time covering for him while he destroyed Iraq. And they refused to call
out the US government overturning the votes of the Iraqi people in the
2010 election. That's what led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq -- Nouri's
second term after the Iraqi people had voted him out but the US
government negotiated The Erbil Agreement to give him a second term. At
any rate, MEMO reports:
Former Iraqi Prime Minister,
Nouri Al-Maliki, said America intends to close the border between Syria
and Iraq in order to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar
Al-Assad.
Al-Maliki added in press
statements that he is not concerned about any American action against
Iraq but he is certain that the recent American military movements aim
to close the border with Syria.
He considered the movement of
foreign forces, whether in Iraq or neighbouring countries, to constitute
a major concern due to fears of a return to the tensions and conflicts
that had previously plagued the region.
Nouri al-Maliki, the head of the State of Law coalition, and other Iran-backed Shia militia leaders in Iraq claim
that the aim behind the United States military manoeuvres to seal off
the Iraq-Syria border is to topple the Syrian regime.
Nouri al-Maliki, the head of the State of
Law coalition, made these claims on Monday, 28 August, but he also ruled
out the possibility that the Biden administration might be planning a
"regime change" in Iraq.
"We have a belief based on proof that
movements by the US forces in western Iraq seem to be aimed at sealing
off the Iraq-Syrian borders," Maliki claimed to Iraq's Al-Sharqiya channel in an interview aired on Monday night.
He added that while the West had imposed
aerial, land, and sea blockade on the Syrian regime, it could "resist"
the embargoes via border crossings with Iraq and therefore, the US aims
"to tighten the embargo" on the Syrian government and "incite
demonstrations" to topple the Syrian regime.
Maliki was Iraq's prime minister for two
successive terms from 2006 until 2014, when the Islamic State (IS) group
conquered a third of Iraq. He also claimed that the US forces did not
consult the Iraqi government concerning its plans to seal off the
Iraq-Syrian borders.
In October 2021, Iraq held
elections and, taking their notes from the US State Dept, the US press
hailed Moqtada al-Sadr as the victor and spoke of what would happen --
what never did.
Now I'm not expecting a journalist be a psychic
but when you completely ignore a power player in a country, you are
going to make mistakes. In the lead up to that election, we repeatedly
noted Nouri al-Maliki. He refuses to go away and retains a great deal
of power.
While the US press was basically misleading people to
believe that Moqtada would be prime minister -- that was not going to
happen, success for Moqtada would have been being the power behind the
throne and that was highly unlikely as well -- Nouri was meeting with
various blocs and blocking Moqtada. And we were noting it in real
time. Moqtada's 'victory' was no victory and we were proven right when,
finally, over a year (one year and 17 days) after the election took
place, a prime minister was named: Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. He was not
from Moqtada's 'winning' bloc. He is not someone who gets along with
Moqtada. He is the candidate that Nouri backed.
Before the
election took place, the US media refused to see what could happen.
During the year long process after the election, the US media refused to
see what was happening. As late as spring 2022, they were still
hailing Moqtada.
From their bubble, they misreported. Today, they're still ignoring him. But let's pretend they 'report.'
Families of the disappeared wage a struggle for justice, truth and reparation in the face of state apathy
Across the Middle East, both state authorities and non-state actors,
such as armed opposition groups, abduct and disappear people as a way to
crush dissent, cement their power, and spread terror within societies,
often with total impunity. Human rights defenders, peaceful protesters,
journalists, and political dissidents are often specifically targeted.
Families and loved ones of the disappeared are left in limbo and
experience constant mental anguish for many years and, sometimes, even
decades. Most often, it is women who lead the struggle for truth,
justice, and reparation, putting themselves at risk of intimidation,
persecution and violence. And it is women who are left to shoulder the
financial burden of providing for their families and caring for them,
often with little to no state support and while facing oppressive
patriarchal norms. They can neither organize a dignified burial nor
properly grieve, and they spend their lives campaigning for the
authorities to reveal the fate and whereabouts of their relatives.
In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen alone, families have waited and campaigned more than a million years collectively for news of their missing loved ones
While the governments of most those states have not investigated
disappearances nor provided accurate numbers of those missing or
disappeared, family associations, human rights organizations and UN
bodies have published estimates for the number of people abducted and
disappeared in each country. In Iraq, the numbers range between 250,000
to one million disappeared. In Lebanon, the official figure is 17,415.
In Syria, human rights organizations estimate the number to be over
100,000. In Yemen, human rights organizations have documented 1,547
cases of disappearance. When these numbers are multiplied by a
conservative estimate of how many years these individuals have been
missing, a tragic picture emerges of the agonising number of years
families have spent waiting for answers – more than a million years.
In the absence of effective state action, families of the disappeared
have united under victim and family associations to demand their rights
– often at great costs and personal risks. The right to truth for
individuals and societies is recognized in international law and in the
context of enforced disappearances, meaning “the right to know about the
progress and results of an investigation, the fate or the whereabouts
of the disappeared persons, and the circumstances of the disappearances,
and the identity of the perpetrator(s)”.
To commemorate the International Day of the Victims of Enforced
Disappeared, Amnesty International is sharing the stories of
extraordinary sacrifice and persistence by the families of the
disappeared and by human rights organizations in each of these
countries. The quest for truth, justice and reparation looks different
for the families in each country, but what unites them is their shared
struggle and their vision for a more free, safe, and cohesive society.
Share these stories in solidarity with the families of the
disappeared and demand that meaningful action be taken to reveal the
fate and whereabouts of their loved ones.
MORE THAN A MILLION YEARS
Families of the disappeared in the middle east wait more than a million years collectively for their loved ones.
Despite Iraq’s ratification of the International Convention for the
Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, consecutive
Iraqi governments have repeatedly failed to take meaningful steps to
investigate disappearances, reveal the fate and whereabouts of those
missing, or hold accountable those suspected of criminal responsibility.
Crucially, the Iraqi authorities have still not recognized enforced
disappearance as an autonomous crime in national legislation, and there
have been no prosecutions for those suspected of criminal responsibility
for enforced disappearance.
In April 2022, families of the disappeared launched the
#DeadorAliveWeWantThem campaign to demand answers regarding the fate and
whereabouts of their loved ones who were disappeared during the
conflict with the Islamic State. The campaign was supported by Al Haq Foundation for Human Rights,
which is helping families organize themselves nationwide and unify
their demands across their locations, their backgrounds and the
circumstances under which their loves ones went missing. On 15 August
2023, in the lead up to the International Day for the Victims of
Enforced Disappearances, Iraqi families of the disappeared, survivors of
enforced disappearances and human rights organizations came together in
nationwide protests demanding truth and justice for abductions and
enforced disappearances.
1 million missing persons since 1968, making it one of the countries with the highest number of missing persons worldwide.
Demands to the Iraqi authorities:
Ensure timely, independent and thorough investigations into enforced
disappearances and provide regular and transparent updates to the
public about the progress of these investigations;
Ensure protection from reprisals for those seeking justice.
Sabby Sabs and others are so offended by what Bernie Sanders said and how he 'stabbed' Cornel West in the back.
Seriously?
Bernie's
been in Congress for decades and this is where you're going to land
your outrage? Not on the day that America learned the VA had two sets
of lists to make it appear that veterans were being seen much sooner
when they were being delayed and suffering health wise as a result? We
covered the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing that day. A
former Democratic chair of the Committee (not Patty Murray) was as
offended by the hearing as I was. Bernie was the chair and the news of
the dual lists was all over the news. But Bernie began the hearing, as
Committee chair, insisting that was not anything anyone needed to raise
or discuss in the hearing because he wanted to focus on things like
holistic medicine.
Veterans
were ill and some had died as a result of the delays. The VA faked a
fix by keeping two sets of books and no witness or member of the
Committee, per Bernie, needed to talk about anything other than holistic
medicine options.
Again, Cornel's where you land your outrage against Bernie?
You're ahistorical approach is laughable as is your glaring ignorance.
I have stated I will be voting for whomever the Democratic Party's nominee is in the 2024 election.
I mean that. And I can tell you why if you need to know that (though we may touch on it below in talking about Bernie).
I
am not telling anyone else how to vote. Don't plan to. If you want to
vote for someone, you should. If no one speaks to you and you don't
want to vote, that's your right as well. And if you're not voting due
to juggling work and maybe more work and/or family obligations, I
understand that we need a national holiday for voting. Or to do like
Oregon and vote by mail. But however you use your vote is your
business. My only hope for you is that the day of the election, you're
comfortable with how you used it.
"I
had to take my kid to ER because she sprained her ankle at soccer
practice!" Good. That was certainly important. I applaud you.
And
you don't need a worthy excuse like that for me. It's your vote. As
an American citizen, you do with it what you want. We don't have forced
voting in this country.
You
vote on X and two weeks later the press exposes something you didn't
know about the candidate? That's not on you. You're not required to be
a psychic to be an American citizen. But if you make your best choice
on election day, that's all anyone can do.
I
did not vote for Ralph Nader. I had friends who did and some felt
awful. Now Ralph never pleased me on women's issues -- he thought high
heels were more important than reproductive rights -- read his 2000
ROLLING STONE interview if you're not familiar with how dismissive he
was of women's issues and women's rights. So in the lead up to the
election, if someone wanted to talk to me about why they were supporting
Ralph, fine, I'm going to share my opinion and I did.
After
the election when the tallies were closer than anyone expected between
Al Gore and Bully Boy Bush, some friends expressed regret for voting for
Ralph. (Not all did.) Those that came to me with, "You were right"?
No, I wasn't. I wasn't right for them. They voted on election day
using the best information available. And Gore didn't carry his home
state. Ralph Nader voters voted for Ralph. And that is a good thing.
I'm strongly against the Iraq War but it's a good thing people had
something that they wanted to vote for. And Gore's 2002 speeches
indicate that he might have gone to war with Iraq as well.
So my point here is you need to use your vote however you feel is best. At the end of the day, that's up to you.
Just
as I noted Ralph's refusal to treat as citizens -- I'm not going to be
reduced to a "consumer," I am an American citizen -- I'll note things
about the Green Party candidate -- when he or she is named.
And Cornel needs to stop presenting as the Green Party's presidential nominee. He is not. (See Ann's "Oh, look, liar meets liar.")
More to the point, just as I questioned support for Ralph to friends, I will question support for Cornel West.
He
knows how to be a bit player in THE MATRIX franchise? He knows how to
bury himself in pop culture and academia? He knows how to run up
outstanding taxes and child support obligations in the amount of
half-a-million dollars?
Barack Obama was
dismissed as "just a community organizer." No, he was someone who had
held public office in Illinois and had been in the Senate for a few
years when he was running for the Democratic Party's presidential
nomination (sworn in back in 2005, announced in 2007). And at his age,
that was a strong resume. Cornel is 70s years old. I'm not seeing
strength.
I'm seeing a
motor mouth who wants to turn every Q&A into multiple sermons and
pepper them with dated (incredibly dated) pop culture references --
again, Cornel, 11 year olds today are not listening to Tony! Toni!
Tone. He's never come off more out of touch than during that recent
exchange.
I'm seeing someone who hypes himself constantly.
I'm not seeing anyone who actually does anything political.
He's
going to heal us? How? By calling Laura Ingram "dear sister"? Dear
liar's more like it but he apparently needs to fawn and flatter to get
FOX "NEWS" media attention -- and as Ava and I noted earlier this week,
Green Party members are getting very vocal in their distaste for Cornel
and for his right wing media appearances. We've been added to a
listserv and they are getting very vocal.
They're
also tired of him acting as though he's the nominee and pointing out
he's not even a Green Party member and how the party needs to honor its
own and not recruit from outside.
There's
nothing he's doing that shows he's trying to appeal to Greens and
that's the reality. You can have your hissy fit and pretend otherwise
but you're living in the same world of delusion as a Donald Trump cult
member.
In part, that's due
to the YOUTUBERS appalling ignorance. They don't know the Green Party
and don't bother to learn how it works. (There will be no nominee until
the summer of next year when the party holds its national convention).
In part, it's due to their whorish ways and their inbred behavior.
Serial plagiarist Chris Hedges talks to The People's Party and offers himself
up as vice presidential nominee and Cornel as presidential nominee.
Then Ms. Chris Hedges tells her husband he can't run so it's just Cornel
on the ticket.
Liar
Chris goes to all the YOUTUBE idiots that will platform him (Katie
Halper, et al) and isn't that interesting that Cornel's running, he's
known Cornel for years and, as an observer, he's just real happy.
Observer?
You worked behind the scenes and secured the nomination for Cornel.
And then you omitted that fact from your written reports and your
YOUTUBE interviews and while Katie Halper and that crowd doesn't know a
damn thing about journalistic ethics*, as a former NYT-er, one, who lets
always remember was the first to front page the false link between Iraq
and 9/11, Chris does know his actions violated basic journalism. (See
Ava and my "Media: Marianne's campaigning for right wingers, Cornel's trying to destroy The Green Party" about how Cornel didn't realize what he was exposing when
he talked about how Chris secured the nomination for him).
[*Katie
Halper declared that she didn't need to disclose certain relationships
because she was an opinion journalist. No, dear, that's not how it
works.]
Chris,
with the help of twice-failed nominee Jill Stein, then tried to force
the Green Party to name Cornel the Green Party's nominee. Grasp that.
Grasp that they wanted a political party to do a backdoor deal, to ignore their bylaws and written practices.
I'm
sorry, I could never get on board with that. I called out Donna
Brazile and Debbie Washerwoman for gaming the primaries for Hillary. I
don't have the hypocrite gene that Chris Hedges does -- the one that
lets him repeatedly steal the written work of others, that lets him
pretend he was against the Iraq War when he actually front-paged the
false link between Iraq and 9/11 and did so in October of 2001 beating
out Michael R. Gordon, Judith Miller and everyone else, the one that
lets him set up backdoor deals and then pretend like he wasn't
involved.
I'm not ever going to support someone who was part of that.
And lets go back a moment more. Lets go back to how he ran to the Green Party.
I'm
sorry, you're a grown ass adult and you take the nomination from a
political party and then announce yet less than a week later you're
running from that same party.
Running for it, running from it.
I believe that's the definition of a flip-flop.
And
I believe that a grown adult should do research on the party he wants
to be the nominee for before -- before! -- accepting their nomination.
In fact, the grown adult should do research on the party before trying
to become the nominee.
Where has Cornel shown any common sense?
Don't see it.
If you do, support him. But you'll never convince me.
Bernie doesn't think Cornel should run. He is supporting Joe Biden.
I'm a little more open than that because I'll support whomever the nominee is.
But
Bernie is genuinely worried about the election and about what happens
if Donald or some other nut job gets in the White House.
I
think we'll see at least one death on the Supreme Court in the next
four years. I could be wrong. But I think it's likely -- and if it
works by karma, it'll be Crooked Clarence Thomas. If you think the
Court is packed with extremists right now, let one of the current crop
of Republicans vying for the nomination become president and see what
happens.
It's a valid concern.
It doesn't have to be your concern.
Your
concern might be, for example, building the Green Party. I'm not going
to fault you on that. If that's your concern, that's how you should
vote.
I don't see how
Cornel's going to help you there since he keeps acting like they're
trotting out the 2004 strategy. That's the strategy that destroyed
every gain Ralph made for the party in 2000. Whomever the Greens
nominate for their nominee next summer needs to answer as to what kind
of campaign they're running and what the goals are.
Your
concern might be that America's not White 'enough' or straight 'enough'
-- like so many on Twitter -- and want to vote for Ron DeSantis. There
I think your priorities are seriously off as is your understanding of
the world but, again, it's your vote use it how you think is best.
Bernie
thinks it's best for Cornel to run as a Democrat and that he will do
damage in a Green or independent run. That's his opinion and he's
allowed to express it.
He didn't stab Cornel in the back.
The
YOUTUBERS wetting their panties need to calm the f**k down. I don't
have any stomach for high drama. Nothing shuts me down more than
someone blinded by hysterics.
I'm also not big on voting out of fear.
Let
me go ahead and disclose my reasoning regarding the decision to vote
for whatever Democratic is the presidential nominee. ROE's dead. And I
believe the Democratic Party betrayed us big time on that. They could
have codified it -- as Barack promised to do "first thing" in his first
campaign for president. Ruth could have -- and should have -- retired.
She was too ill to serve and her 'personal' nonsense (Hillary was going
to be elected she just knew and she needed to give Hillary a Court
appointment). Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House how many times and
she never pushed to codify ROE? Barack failed, yes. But Nancy was in a
very powerful position and she could have done something and did not do
anything.
I'm angry to this day.
I would love to sit this election out.
But
I look around stunned by what's being done to LGBTQ+ persons. The
attacks, the hatred. The murder of an LGBTQ+ ally (Lauri Carleton) for
displaying a Pride flag. The attacks on education by Ronald DeSantis
and others. The attacks on knowledge -- that's why you outlaw,
African-American studies, gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, to attack
knowledge. The violence towards people of color that these hate
merchants are fostering with their rhetoric is appalling. They refuse
to own the outcomes including their role in the murder of the three
people killed last Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida (Anolt Joseph "AJ"
Laguerre Jr., Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion and Angela Michelle Carr). As the editorial board of THE MIAMI HERALD notes:
What
happened over the weekend in Jacksonville isn’t a talking point. It’s
senseless, yet increasingly common, violence that claimed the lives of
three Black Floridians, targeted because of their race, according to law
enforcement. The Dollar General shooting shouldn’t be treated as an
outlier, an act carried out by a mad man. If mental illness were a
factor, as it seems to have been, it’s not the full story. The Justice
Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime. The racist
writings by the suspected gunman and the swastikas drawn on his
AR-15-style rifle should be treated with the same urgency with which
Florida lawmakers treated mental health after the 2018 Parkland school
massacre.
Were the mass
shooting to serve as a lesson for Florida policy makers, they would
quickly launch task forces to address the white supremacy that’s latent
in Florida. This is the state where neo-Nazis boldly marched outside
Disney World in June with flags bearing swastikas. Just as disturbing,
some flags bore Gov. Ron DeSantis’ image. Last year, Florida hosted the
America First Political Action Conference, a white supremacist event
that took place in Orlando. And the state is home to many Proud Boys, a
group that harbors white supremacists within its ranks.
A
mourning Jacksonville needed a leader, an empathizer, and a statesman,
qualities the divisive, ever-aggrieved Florida governor lacks on his
best days. And so in that fraught moment, facing constituents his
administration has insulted and disempowered,
DeSantis revealed himself to be an utterly spent force — lacking even
the vocabulary to speak lucidly about the awful thing took place the day
before.
"What
he did, what he did, was totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,"
DeSantis said in a stilted, brief speech during a prayer vigil for the
victims of the high-profile hate crime the prior day, in which a shooter
entered a Dollar General in Jacksonville's New Town neighborhood and
killed two Black men and one Black woman specifically because of their
race. Their names were Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph "A.J."
Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion, 29.
Unacceptable, the governor said — as if this shocking act was some social blunder.
The audience of mourners loudly booed DeSantis, forcing him to stop speaking and prompting Jacksonville City Council member Ju'Coby Pittman, who was originally appointed to the council in 2018 by then-Gov. Rick Scott,
to scold the crowd. "Let the governor say what he's going to say, and
we're going to get this party started," she said, somewhat awkwardly, of
the prayer vigil being held for the victims. It was a moment many
politicians might have found a bit humbling if not humiliating, but it's
doubtful the arrogant and thin-skinned DeSantis, whose campaign once
likened him to an earthly warrior ordained by God himself, found it to be anything other than an unfair — unacceptable? — personal insult.
Some
larger context here: DeSantis pressured the Legislature last year to
pass a congressional map that, for the first time in decades, wiped out a
Jacksonville district that allowed Black voters to elect the candidate
of their choice. It was those very constituents DeSantis was directly
facing on Sunday, coupled with their pain and outrage over the shooting.
New Town and most of the city's majority-Black neighborhoods are now
represented by a Republican in Nassau County who has about as much in
common with those neighborhoods as a porcupine does a goose down pillow.
And this was no mere accident but a deliberate political project by the
governor to challenge a provision in the state constitution that is
supposed to prohibit the dilution of minority voting power. Pittman's lifeline to the governor was a generous gift, indeed.
I know that overturning ROE felt like a gut punch. I don't want others to suffer because other rights are at risk.
I'm not Joe's biggest champion but he has refused to sell out the trans community.
Do
you know easy that would be for him to do? Do you know that advisors
have begged him to do that? And he's standing for equality. I applaud
him for that.
Ketanji Brown
Jackson appears to be a justice who will fight for democracy. She was
Joe's Supreme Court nominee and I don't fault him on that, I praise him
for it.
I can find other things to applaud. If he's the nominee, he'll have my vote without hesitation.
(Tara
Reade? She's a homophobic transphobe who would gladly slide into a
political bed with Marjorie Taylor Greene -- who she can't stop
reTweeting. She also defected to Russia -- abandoning her 'beloved'
pets in the process. I don't care about her. I think she told the truth
but at a certain point when you're doing nothing but advancing hate
merchants I just don't care. And I don't care about Tara. She's
exhausted all the compassion many showed towards her -- even those who
didn't believe her.)
When
ROE was overturned (see "Today is a story of betrayal -- one long betrayal"), I thought I'd said everything I needed to
that day. But it felt different the next day, much worse. Much worse
to wake up in a world where reproductive rights don't matter.
And then all the hate that people flaunted and their organized efforts to destroy -- a film, a store, a personality.
That's
before what's allegedly a flash drive with Glennyth Greenwald's browser
history was dropped off at my agent's office.That was another eye
opener -- regardless of whether is Greenwald's or not. The little punk
in Colorado that they're trying to turn into a hero because of "Don't
Tread On Me"? There are other things on that jacket and I'm not sure
people grasp what they are and what they mean.
Having
entered the flash drive world, I'm aware of what they mean. I was
disgusted and shocked by that browser history -- whoever's history it
was. The hatred. The violence. The organizing to destroy. I go
back and forth over displaying that garbage here -- not the stuff where a
woman is battered, that would never go up here. In then end, I don't
want it here. It's reality and if someone else posted it, more power to
them. But it's vile and disgusting racism and homophobia and
transphobia and some of this is Tweets (other things as well -- there's a
manifesto in there as well) and they're up at Elon Musk's site (even
women cowering with black eyes and bloody noses). They feel fine
Tweeting publicly about their racism, specifically, their hatred of
African-Americans. And clearly Elon Musk agrees with them because this
stuff has been up on Twitter for months and months.
We're up against more than we know.
And I'm not going to use whatever time I have left on this earth letting hate merchants destroy this country.
Those
are my reasons. I disclosed that I would be voting Democrat for
president regardless of the nominee as soon as I realized that was what I
was going to do. I'm disclosing my reasons above. Those are my
reasons. They don't have to be your reasons. It's your vote and I'm
not going to shame anyone for voting Green or anything like that. And if
you vote by voting (or vote by not voting), you shouldn't let anyone
else shame you for how you vote.
You also shouldn't be listening to idiots. And you can toss me in there if you want, that's fine.
But
I'm referring to Zac on THE VANGUARD. He really needs to push his
chair away from the table. He does not have the knowledge necessary and
he refuses to learn from his mistakes.
He
speaks what he wants to happen and pretends he has factual backing for
it. He doesn't. It just his uneducated hopes and dreams passed off as
fact and I'm really getting tired of it. He has plenty to offer on
YOUTUBE but political analysis escapes him.
His
big mistake was when he was convinced Marianne Williamson was the
candidate and used that to insist that the just-announced candidacy of
Robert F. Kennedy Junior wasn't going to matter. And of course it did
and any educated person knew it would. If you said it wouldn't you
either were an idiot or a liar. The country lost President John F.
Kennedy. That's a wound that has never healed. To fail to grasp that
was shocking. Now Junior let everyone down and his polling's going down
but, point of fact, he's still more popular than Marianne.
Long
before POLITICO wanted to report reality on Marianne's interaction with
others, we told you here about that. I know Marianne. But Zac (and I
think Gavin too) wanted to tell you those reports from POLITICO were hit
jobs and not true and blah blah blah.
They were exactly right, those reports.
Now
we've got Zac basically blowing Cornel West on air. He's not the Green
Party's presidential nominee despite Zac misrepresenting him every
time. Zac is not a Green Party member. Zac has clearly not followed
the Green Party's history.
At
one moment in yesterday's segment on Krystal Ball, Zac was saying Jill
Stein did this and Jill Stein did that -- praising the idiot (she's a
liar and a coward and those of who care about Iraq will never forgive
her for 2012 -- Zac scratches his head and says "Huh?" because he's
never done the work required) and then in the same segment getting upset
with Krystal's implication that Jill cost Hillary Clinton the 2016
election. Hillary cost Hillary the election. In 2008, running for the
nomination, she went everywhere, she mingled with the people -- was
there a bar in Pennsylvania she didn't go to in order to meet potential
voters? -- in 2016, princess didn't want to be out on the campaign trail
and couldn't make it states in the lead up to the general election.
When she did show, she presented one celebrity after another. Her 2008
campaign was people-based and her 2016 was a bunch of celebrity
nonsense. She was trying to copy Barack in 2008, copy how he won the
nomination. It did not work for her, she is not Barack.
But Zac's telling you all these idiotic -- I hope good pot-based -- thoughts that are miles away from facts.
Cornel's going to get this amount of vote and Cornel's going to do that and . . .
Stop it. Put the joint down for a moment, splash some cold water on your face and wake the hell up.
Cornel's
not the nominee and he may not end up being the nominee. You're
infatuated with him for some reason and your latent racism leads you to
conclude that because Cornel's Black a lot of Black people will vote for
him.
Ajamu Baraka was Jill's running mate and he's Black. Didn't help the ticket.
African-Americans
vote Democrat. African-American saved Joe Biden's ass both in the
primaries and in the general election. There's no indication that this
is changing.
You're
simplistic beliefs -- latent racism -- that an untested politician
(Cornel) is going to get X number of votes and do this and do that?
There's no basis in reality for your comments.
Reality:
Only 2000 saw the Green have real impact. That's when Ralph Nader
ran. He got 2.4 million votes in the general election. Jill? She got
1.4 million in the 2016 election (469,000 in 2012). She's a loser and
she'll always be a loser and the people of Iraq suffer to this day
because of her. Again, 2012. Don't have the time to spoon feed you, go
read "Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)."
Zac
just gets worse as the segment goes along as he starts talking Cornel
just getting votes in states that are already going to go blue. "Safe
blue states."
I just want
to slap him. If the Green Party wants to build -- and certainly if it
wants at least 5% of the vote -- it can't do the 'safe state' strategy
-- it can't do it again. It did in 2004 and destroyed all the inroads
that had been made via the 2000 election. (They went from Ralph's 2.4
million votes to idiot David Cobb's 119,000 votes.) That's not building
a party. That's a vanity run. And people have every right to call
that out.
Here's the video
because I'm done talking about it. I don't understand why you would
grin and speak in a boastful voice when everything you were saying was
so factually incorrect.
Zac has his strong points, analysis of campaign politics is not one of them.
