Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): Grab bag

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Grab bag

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jussie Smollett Is Nancy Mace's Life Coach"

Love it and I also love this BlueSky note.

Funny how these kinds of posts only get posted on X but not on Bluesky. It’s almost like people only want to make these points to people there, but don’t want people here to see them.

[image or embed]
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 8:18 AM

And this one.

My condolences to Max Blumenthal and Katie Halper over the loss of their son, Bashir al-Assad.
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 4:08 PM

Now for some news. Matthew Rozsa (SALON) reports:

On Nov. 14, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) — the Republican chair for the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and a longtime climate science denier — sent a letter to the Democrats asking for information about government scientists accused of preventing “views that challenge the existing consensus” from coming out. Less than three weeks later, Comer claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has employees who “hamstring the incoming Trump administration’s ability to implement their own executive agendas.”

Comer didn’t reference Trump by accident. Since his first term, the once-and-future president has attacked environmental science at every opportunity, suppressing information about how human activity causes climate change and opposing scientists’ suggestions on the regulation of common chemicals known as PFAS linked to infertility and cancer. Dr. Kyla Bennett, director of senior policy at the activist group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), saw the writing on the wall almost as soon as Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. She believes this scrutiny of scientists reflects overt anti-science sentiments — and the American public will pay a terrible price.

Bennett heard stories from EPA employees across the country during Trump’s first term, detailing how their contributions to scientific knowledge were politicized and ignored. She warned that “every single employee” at the EPA is “at risk” right now. Having worked at the EPA for almost 10 years as wetlands enforcement coordinator in New England, Bennett understands EPA workers’ plight viscerally as well as intellectually. Perhaps that’s why she is unapologetically frank when speaking on behalf of government scientists, especially about the millions of American voters who share Trump’s hostility to science.

“When 98% of climate scientists say that climate change is human-caused and it's here, it's bad. We've blown past the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold,” Bennett said, a reference to the carbon emissions cap established in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Those who support Trump's anti-science views "have no understanding of ecology or science whatsoever, full stop, and they should not be in decision-making positions,” she added.

Satan Trump can't support science -- it has 'pesky' things like facts and he won't abide by facts.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, December 11, 2024. We know so very little when we don't know our history and we can fall for a lot of lies as a result. The next four years will be rough and tough but what's awful on the Dem side is the liars who want to push the party to the right and lie to people to try to get them to go along with a rightward push. All that and Aaron Mate finally gets the attention he's earned.

At SLATE, Christina Cauterucci writes:

Once upon a time, politicians refrained from using slurs to describe members of minority groups. Instead, they expressed their hatred through euphemism and impersonal fearmongering, lest they be deemed uncivilized. For public officials, it seemed like enough to pass discriminatory laws and promote negative stereotypes—they didn’t need to name-call too.

That era is over. Last week, a group of trans-rights activists staged a sit-in at the Capitol to protest a resolution, proposed by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, that would prohibit transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the building. After a few of them were arrested for protesting, Mace herself headed down to the offices of the U.S. Capitol Police to make a video at the scene.

Here’s how Mace explained the situation: “Some tr—y protesters showed up at the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill.” To make sure no viewers would miss the slur, Mace posted it with subtitles.

Mace read it like a throwaway line, but it was clearly calculated. Her Republican peers in the House have already made a practice of calling transgender people—including their soon-to-be colleague, incoming transgender Rep. Sarah McBride—by the wrong pronouns and names. If Mace wanted to be the national face of keeping trans people out of bathrooms, she had to go further. So she used a slur. Later that day, she did it again.

Her escalation marks a new stage of U.S. anti-transgender politics. When the current backlash against trans visibility began, about five years ago, right-wing politicians limited their rhetoric mostly to fantasies of protection: protecting trans children from medical therapies, protecting cisgender children from being beaten in sports, and protecting all children from malicious abusers in bathrooms. Conservatives have since expanded their pearl-clutching to transgender adults—but often, it’s still under that same guise of protection. Medicaid shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care for anyone, they said—unless patients jump through a series of arduous and time-consuming hoops—because it protects against future regret. However disingenuous all this was, it still suggested that most right-wing politicians considered it politically smart to refrain from trashing trans people in extreme ways.

Nancy Mace and her kind are disgusting.

As Ruth notes, we're in for "A world of hurt" on January 20th. And we're there for a number of reasons including the racism and sexism in the media (including Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and Katrina vanden Heuvel's THE NATION).

48 and 49%.

What's that?

AP's current toll for the US presidential election. Kamala's at 48% and Satan's at 49%. There are a few more votes still to be counted. When we repeatedly note that here, it's not saying, "She can still win!" We don't elect the president by popular vote. We need to. We need to do away with the electoral college. But we haven't. We've made no move on -- even when Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the presidency.

You want to increase voter turnout? Make voting matter.

It doesn't matter with the electoral college. I voted knowing Kamala would carry my state. When you know that, your vote doesn't really matter. If every vote mattered in the US presidential elections, you would probably get a higher turnout. Instead, we're left with the reality that we know our state will go this or that way -- know that in many states -- so why bother voting? Life's busy, life's tough, we all are short on enjoyment time, why vote if you already know the outcome.

So that's us in California, that's Texas that will go GOP, that's this state and that state. Only in the swing states does your vote really matter. Popular vote determining the president would most likely increase voter turnout across the country.

But the reason we note those totals over and over since the election is because it's reality.

As opposed to what the media told you immediately after the election and continues to attempt to lie about.

And they do that for a number of reasons including the right-wing tilt of the media. It's not a left wing tilt. It used to be a centrist tilt but it's gone on over to the right-wing.

Trump has no mandate. He has no landslide.

Now if most Americans grasped that -- especially Democratic voters -- it would harm a lot of people.

Like?

US House Rep Seth Moulton for one. Senator Mark Warner for another -- see Rebecca's "old man mark warner needs to retire already." People like that -- lazy fat asses who would just as soon sell their own mothers to get a vote -- who want to lie because they don't want to have to fight to defend women's rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, or Civil Rights, or human life for that matter. They're cowards and they're liars. And they will destroy the Democratic Party given the chance.

Simon Rosenberg. E-mails come in insisting that I have him all wrong.

No, I don't.

He may be a progressive today or pose as one. I have no idea.

When I bring him up, I'm talking about what he did in 2004 and 2005 right after that election. That's when he insulted Black women, that's when he was pushing for Dems to stop supporting ROE V WADE and abortion rights, that's when he rallied against LGBTQ+ rights.

He's done a 180, you say? I doubt that very seriously. WIKIPEDIA:

Simon Rosenberg (born October 23, 1963) is a Democratic political strategist and blogger. He was the founder of New Democrat Network (NDN), a centrist think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.^[1]

According to the 2015 book How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, Rosenberg and NDN were instrumental in shifting control of the Democratic Party away from labor unions and toward Silicon Valley businesses.^[2] Rosenberg said in 1999, "Our problem as a party is that the biggest source of our venture capital now comes from labor, which is a group that's becoming less and less important, and representing less and less of a percentage of American voters. [...] We have to replace labor's investment in the party with investment from another source, and hopefully from a source that's growing."^[2]

Rosenberg shuttered NDN in March 2024.^[3]

That's who you're wasting your time defending. NDN was the DLC made over. It was a right-leaning, Joe Lieberman hand-holding group of trash.

He waited until March of this year to shut it down. Now I felt sorry for him in 2004. He seemed gay and he was publicly gay hating, so I felt sorry for him. Closet cases can be so pathetic. But even that bit of sympathy didn't stop me from calling him out.

Rachel Maddow called him out as well. I'm not remembering a lot of others calling him out.

Simon was running for DNC chair (he would drop out of the race in February 2005 and tell his few supporters to back Howard Dean).

We see the same garbage over and over.

REUTERS notes, "The job of DNC chair is largely administrative and involves logistics and fundraising. But focus on who will next fill the role has grown given the breadth of the Democrats' losses and urgent calls from some party members for a complete reset." The first sentence is about the duties of the chair. Again, we need to make sure the person going in has the skills required. That's all the jobs about.

After the 2004 election, Simon went around insisting Dems needed to move further to the right and you might have thought this would result in his being called out. Very few bothered to call him out. We did. And after John Kerry lost to Bully Boy Bush, people lied to get what they wanted -- they wanted to push the Democratic Party further to the right.

And that's what the continued nonsense of 'oh, we lost the voters!' is about. It was a close election. We needed better turnout. Turnout was depressed and suppressed by all the attack pieces posted at THE NATION, all the segments trashing Kamala at DEMOCRACY NOW!, not one article praising Kamala by THE PROGRESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES. These are outlets that beg us for money and they used their space to tear down Kamala Harris. Nothing she did was good enough. Donald Trump was elected because of that.

No one should be giving a dime to DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES and so many other crap-ass outlets. A friend at THE NATION begged this week for an article on trans issues to be highlighted here. I replied, "Sure, and you can go back in a time machine and remove all those attack pieces on Kamala, right? Including the interns editorial that Kamala didn't deserve anyone's vote?"

What we need to focus on is turnout for 2028. What we need to focus on is how to respond -- and respond rapidly -- to attacks on our candidate -- especially when these attacks come from outlets that depend upon our money to stay afloat. Always begging us to send money. Only a damn fool would send money to Amy Goodman or THE NATION et al right now. Only a damn fool.

There were plenty of damn fools on the 'left' who attacked Kamala non-stop. She wasn't supporting Lina Khan! That's what the whores would say. And then they'd tell you that even JD Vance supports Lina Kahn! And attack Kamala and build up Trump. They did it -- from the 'left.'

POST-LEFT WATCH wonders:

They lied and they lie. And they think we're going to forget. We're not forgetting anymore than we're forgiving.

They built up Satan and they built up grifter Jill Stein. Where is Jill these days?

Exactly. She's a grifter, she's a fake ass.

We'll go out with an example of another fake ass.

For now, I pray that we survive the next four years.

The world of liars today who keep trying to water down the Democratic Party instead of strengthening it, they also fail to impart some basic wisdom.

If we do make it to 2028, the Democrats are very likely to win regardless of whom they nominated.

When the GOP embraces hate, America grows tired of them very quickly.

They wear out their welcome.

They preach hate and they pursue programs and policies that the American people are against -- even if it takes them a while to figure that out.

And if you'll watch, even though the new Congress isn't sworn in yet nor is Satan, you can see the signs as to why the American people are going to turn against the GOP. For example? Aliss Higham (NEWSWEEK) reports:

Republican Congressman Mark Alford has touted raising the retirement age to help cut federal government costs.

Speaking on Fox News, the Missouri representative said GOP members had recently sat down with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] under Donald Trump, beginning in January, to explore ways "to cut our budget."

"I think there's a way, when people are living longer, they're retiring later, then on the front end, we can move that retirement age back a little bit," Alford said. The current full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later, and is the earliest age at which workers can begin getting Social Security benefits without any financial penalty for claiming early.

Alford said the "$36 trillion" national debt and its interest payments is "unsustainable," with a whittling down of government spending required to "right the ship."

So to deliver even more tax cuts for the obscenely rich, the GOP is gearing up to raise the retirement age. Or take this from Jeff Schogol (TASK & PURPOSE):

A growing chorus is calling for cuts to Veteran Affairs disability benefits as a way to save federal dollars — a move that ignores the very real costs of two decades of war, and could cause irreparable harm to generations of veterans, experts warn.

The most recent call for cuts is a widely criticized opinion article in The Economist on Nov. 28 that described veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly generous.” Experts told Task & Purpose that the essay is representative of widespread public misperceptions that threaten to reduce veterans’ compensation for service-connected health conditions.

The Economist piece echoes an argument made by the Washington Post’s editorial board last year that limiting disability payments to veterans would help get America’s financial house in order.

These arguments may now have a real chance of becoming law.

Policies laid out in Project 2025, touted as a blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks. Produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., the policy guide states that a growing number of health conditions that qualify for VA disability are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service.”

In mid-November, President-elect Donald Trump has tappedRussell T. Vought, one of the key players in Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a powerful federal post that oversees government spending.

And then there are the efforts to repaint insurrectionists as heroes.

You've got Public Citizen noting:

Washington, D.C. — Today, President-elect Donald J. Trump declared on his social media platform that, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“The President has no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment. Trump’s claim deserves ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong, and it will not come to pass, no matter what Trump fantasizes.

“However, the statement does highlight Trump’s utter disregard for protecting the environment or human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push policies that jeopardize health, safety and planetary well-being.

“Of special importance, Public Citizen has noted Trump’s efforts to use national security designations to force bailouts of coal power plants during his firm term — which Trump may seek to expand to all domestic oil and gas production, transportation, and export, especially with Trump’s declaration that his Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum would have a seat on the National Security Council.

“This, along with other moves the administration is likely to take starting January 20, offers a more realistic and insidious Trump scheme to allow Big Oil to sidestep an array of environmental laws by designating domestic fossil fuel production and export as essential for national security.”

These are not things you can support and then run easily for re-election.

Let's get some humor in here. Trashy FOX "NEWS" and the gutter rats on it did an insulting segment on First Lady Jill Biden where they insisted that Jill was attracted to Satan Trump. No woman is attracted to Satan Trump which is why his current wife got a redo on the prenup. From Marcia's "Top 10 reasons Jill Biden would never be interested in Trump:"

1) She's never been a chubby chaser, let alone someone to run after the morbidly obese.

2) While Trump's never minded sporting lipstick on his collar, Jill knows damn well that orange foundation Trump wears will burn a hole through fabric.

3) His halitosis.

4) He farts with each step he takes.

5) She believes in marriage.

6) Hooking up with a rapist has never been on her bingo card.

7) She believes in and supports education.

8) Long ago, as a teenager, she made the decision to never couple with a man whose boobs were bigger than her own. As David Bautista has noted, Trump "has jugs, like Dolly Parton."

9) While she enjoys primates and animal documentaries, she has no desire to mate with an orangutang.

10) A bad boy might be intriguing but a traitor is a buzz kill.

Let's not another fake ass poser. Aaron Mate of Mate-Taibi-Halper-and-Scum.

At long last, Aaron Mate is finally getting the attention he's always craved. Speaking of I Need Attention Benjamin . . .

Susan Benjamin who goes by the stage name Medea. Actors have stage names and we all know that there's nothing real about Susan. There she is with registered sex offender, convicted pedophile Scott Ritter. You stand with Ritter, you stand with trash.

Here's the backstory on Susan's current problems. CODEPINK represents as a women's group. Don't dig too deep into those roots. Jodi who is the money behindf the project -- which is why she was able to marshal the group against John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and others seeking the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination (Jodi supported Barack and was, in fact, a bundler for Barack -- a detail that proved most embarrassing for Jodi when discovered in the summer of 2008 after she had deployed CODEPINK to bird dog Barack's opponents) -- Anyway, Jodi's the money of the group and she's gotten rather tired of Susan Benjamin's cozying up to Scott Ritter. It's bad for donations and it's bad for the brand. And when Susan announced she would be speaking at the faux Rage Against the War Machine, it appalled members of CODEPINK because they don't understand why anyone would be part of event featuring a convicted pedophile. So, faced with a huge rebellion within the ranks, Jodi had to tell Susan "NO!" Now, a few years later, Susan's taken the stage with Ritter and it's causing Jodi more problems. Things were so much easier for Jodi when she was just bungling her duties working for then-Governor Jerry Brown. So Susan's being told, yet again, to pipe down or find her way to the exit door.

It's Jodi's own fault for letting 72 year old Susan Benjamin remain the face of the group. I can remember as far back as 2005 when CODEPINK was facing criticism for being all White and all middle aged. They're still basically all White and Susa is still holding the mike.

The following sites updated: