ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: Trump promises to destroy Earth if Big Oil execs give him $1 billion

 

It's the Second Coming alright...of SATAN! 

By Aldous J. Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Daily Kos 

Friday, May 17, 2024 at 7:20:24a MDT

  

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The next time a MAGA tries to convince you the Biden family engages in influence peddling, show them this story. Just as Donald Trump plotted to withhold congressionally approved money for Ukraine unless its president did him “a favor,” he’s now vowing to make the fossil fuel industry’s pre-apocalyptic dreams come true. All he needs in exchange is a $1 billion cash infusion to his campaign.

Assuming you’re not Rep. James Comer—who’s so into Trump, the producers of “The Human Centipede” franchise have a viable case for trademark infringement—it’s clear that the kinds of things Republicans are falsely accusing President Joe Biden of doing are the very things that Trump does all the time … and openly. And, indeed, he’s so openly corrupt, he’s barely trying to hide it anymore.

To wit, this frosty mug of what-the-fuck from The Washington Post:

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

And in case you were wondering if Trump was simply making vague overtures toward industry leaders who follow the same train of thought he does—i.e., it would be ideal to stay out of prison until, say, 2040, when people start committing grisly crimes for the air conditioning—his offer went even further. 

The Washington Post reported that according to those Mar-a-Lago attendees, Trump said the it would be a “deal” for those Big Oil executives because of all the taxes and regulations they’d be spared under another Trump presidency.

Uh-huh. In case you were wondering, this isn’t the way the government is supposed to work. It often does, unfortunately, but rarely are the nihilistic cockwombles quite this cocky.

Of course, while a Trump promise is usually worth less than the sallow flap of neck skin his prison tattoo will eventually be printed on, you can rest assured he’d keep this one. For one thing, he wants that money spigot to stay open. For another, he hates anything that might save the planet and/or muss his golden tresses. And, well, he’s not exactly a policy maven so much as a clean slate that anyone with a couple billion dollars can write on like a yard sale Etch A Sketch.

And that’s exactly what the fossil fuel industry is doing. They’re not waiting around for Trump to complete his comprehensive energy plan—which will be available approximately two weeks after his interns are done scrubbing out the puzzling Hitler references. They’re anticipating a future Trump presidency now. 

As Politico reported:

The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.

The effort stems from the industry’s skepticism that the Trump campaign will be able to focus on energy issues as Election Day draws closer—and worries that the former president is too distracted to prepare a quick reversal of the Biden administration’s green policies. Oil executives also worry that a second Trump administration won’t attract staff skillful enough to roll back President Joe Biden’s regulations or craft new ones favoring the industry, these people added.

And you should remember this excerpt in four years when you’re squatting in an ice bucket in northern Alaska, celebrating Earth Day by watching oil refineries explode:

The Biden policies they would seek to unravel include a new fee on leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas equipment on federal land. The industry also wants to change an Environmental Protection Agency risk management rule focused on preventing refinery accidents, [Stephen] Brown [ director of energy consulting firm RBJ Strategies and a former refining industry lobbyist] said.

All this is particularly sad considering the clear benefits of Biden’s green infrastructure initiatives, which Trump would no doubt seek to roll back out of ignorance, spite, love of money, and a presumed hatred of narwhals. In fact, a little more than a week ago, the Biden administration “released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells,” according to The New York Times. 

Does anyone think a second Trump administration would prioritize desperately needed clean-energy projects? Trump would strip everything out of Biden’s infrastructure laws he doesn’t like and claim sole credit for the rest. It’s what Republicans do, after all. 

And as we all recall, while cosplaying as president, Trump thought the best remedy for a burning planet was raking forests, pulling us out of the Paris climate agreement, and swapping humid Puerto Rico for a still-somewhat-icy Greenland. He knows he’ll die sometime in the next 20 years anyway, and unless they can put him in cryogenic freeze until science comes up with a cure for spontaneously dying on the toilet, immortality is out of reach. So what does he care?

Meanwhile, to the extent that Trump cares about policy at all, he’s proposing actions that would make post-pandemic inflation—which has bedeviled every nation on the planet—permanent. These include enacting disruptive tariffs, cutting rich people’s taxes, and deporting willing workers.

All that would hurt ordinary Americans to the benefit of plutocrats, but then, Trump is nothing if not a phony populist. As CNBC reports, Trump is currently fielding calls from wealthy donors who are keenly invested in who Trump should—and, perhaps more importantly, should not—choose as his running mate.

“I would imagine some of Trump’s trade agenda is pretty concerning for many donors,” said Marc Short, Mike Pence’s chief of staff, “and they would hope for someone there to offer a different perspective to a 10% tariff across the board.”

Other Trump donors don’t particularly care for Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance because of his support for higher tariffs and what CNBC called “aggressive business regulation.”

Well, as the old saw goes, you got to dance with them what brung you, and it’s clear Trump is dancing for dollars—when he’s not fixing to jitterbug his way out of jail.

F#@k the planet.  F#@k civilization.  Just give me that billion dollars, baby!

ENOUGH!!! Samuel Alito's flag is upside down. So is the Supreme Court

  The Worst Supreme Court Justice.  Is it "Coke Can" Clarence Thomas or is it this reprehensible dude Samuel Alito?  Good news: you get two votes. They are both totally corrupt and compromised.

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff 

Friday, May 17, 2024 at 9:37:33a MDT 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that an upside-down American flag was seen flying over Justice Samuel Alito’s home in the weeks following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The inverted flag—historically, signifying an emergency—became a symbol for Donald Trump supporters who wanted to overturn the 2020 election. 

Images show the flag flying at Alito’s home on Jan. 17, while the Supreme Court was considering whether to hear a case involving results of the 2020 election. 

Alito is blaming the pro-Trump flag on his wife. In an email statement to the Times, Alito wrote, “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” 

The sign in the neighbor’s yard was reportedly an “anti-Trump” sign. While there is reporting that Martha-Ann Alito argued with neighbors over the sign, there’s no indication that it included language personally attacking her or her husband. Even if it had, that wouldn’t validate a Supreme Court justice making a clear signal of political preference on issues before the court.

How long Alito flew the flag isn’t clear, though it was there for several days, according to one email the Times reviewed— but judicial experts consulted by the Times say that this was a “clear violation of ethics rules.”

In a September 2021 appearance with a right-wing podcaster, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell outlined how Alito was supposed to play a role in a last-minute legal effort to block the counting of electors.  

“We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jibe with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” said Powell. “And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.”

That case wasn’t filed weeks in advance. It was filed while insurrectionists were swarming the Capitol. And it appears that only the steadfast action of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in bringing Congress back to order and completing the count that evening may have prevented Alito from delaying the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory.

The case before the court while Alito was signaling his support for Trump involved counting of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. The state Republican Party originally brought its application for a stay of a state Supreme Court decision to Alito in October, but Alito, joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, denied the request to hear the case before the election. Four days after the election, Alito issued an order requiring that the state segregate late-arriving mail-in ballots to await the Supreme Court decision.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately allowed the ballots to be counted, Alito, along with Kavanaugh and Thomas, voted against the ruling and wrote dissenting opinions. 

This isn’t the only time that Martha-Ann Alito was in the middle of an issue before the court. In 2023, she leased land to an oil and gas company, collecting between $100,000 and $250,000, just a month after her husband wrote the majority opinion in a case that radically scaled back the enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and opened more land to oil and gas drilling.

Like Thomas, whose wife was directly involved in Jan 6. events, Alito isn’t just conservative; he’s committed to eroding government power to help his billionaire friends. Any pretense that Alito has a judicial philosophy in election matters other than helping Trump is exactly that—pretense.

Rather than interpreting the law and the Constitution, the Supreme Court has become part of the process of destroying both, most recently by saving Trump by agreeing to hear his request for  immunity. In that case, Alito and other conservative justices made it clear that they weren’t about to let something as trivial as the facts stand in the way of providing a ruling that gives Trump what he needs.

“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” Alito said during oral arguments.

“I’m not concerned with this case,” Neil Gorsuch said.

“I’m not focused on the here and now of this case,” Kavanugh chimed in.

As it turns out, an upside-down flag still signals an emergency. In this case, it’s a whole nation under threat from Supreme Court justices putting their support for Trump above the law.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito

The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that an upside-down American flag was seen flying over Justice Samuel Alito’s home in the weeks following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The inverted flag—historically, signifying an emergency—became a symbol for Donald Trump supporters who wanted to overturn the 2020 election. 

Images show the flag flying at Alito’s home on Jan. 17, while the Supreme Court was considering whether to hear a case involving results of the 2020 election. 

Alito is blaming the pro-Trump flag on his wife. In an email statement to the Times, Alito wrote, “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” 

The sign in the neighbor’s yard was reportedly an “anti-Trump” sign. While there is reporting that Martha-Ann Alito argued with neighbors over the sign, there’s no indication that it included language personally attacking her or her husband. Even if it had, that wouldn’t validate a Supreme Court justice making a clear signal of political preference on issues before the court.

How long Alito flew the flag isn’t clear, though it was there for several days, according to one email the Times reviewed— but judicial experts consulted by the Times say that this was a “clear violation of ethics rules.”

In a September 2021 appearance with a right-wing podcaster, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell outlined how Alito was supposed to play a role in a last-minute legal effort to block the counting of electors.  

“We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jibe with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” said Powell. “And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.”

That case wasn’t filed weeks in advance. It was filed while insurrectionists were swarming the Capitol. And it appears that only the steadfast action of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in bringing Congress back to order and completing the count that evening may have prevented Alito from delaying the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory.

The case before the court while Alito was signaling his support for Trump involved counting of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. The state Republican Party originally brought its application for a stay of a state Supreme Court decision to Alito in October, but Alito, joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, denied the request to hear the case before the election. Four days after the election, Alito issued an order requiring that the state segregate late-arriving mail-in ballots to await the Supreme Court decision.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately allowed the ballots to be counted, Alito, along with Kavanaugh and Thomas, voted against the ruling and wrote dissenting opinions. 

This isn’t the only time that Martha-Ann Alito was in the middle of an issue before the court. In 2023, she leased land to an oil and gas company, collecting between $100,000 and $250,000, just a month after her husband wrote the majority opinion in a case that radically scaled back the enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and opened more land to oil and gas drilling.

Like Thomas, whose wife was directly involved in Jan 6. events, Alito isn’t just conservative; he’s committed to eroding government power to help his billionaire friends. Any pretense that Alito has a judicial philosophy in election matters other than helping Trump is exactly that—pretense.

Rather than interpreting the law and the Constitution, the Supreme Court has become part of the process of destroying both, most recently by saving Trump by agreeing to hear his request for  immunity. In that case, Alito and other conservative justices made it clear that they weren’t about to let something as trivial as the facts stand in the way of providing a ruling that gives Trump what he needs.

“I’m not discussing the particular facts of this case,” Alito said during oral arguments.

“I’m not concerned with this case,” Neil Gorsuch said.

“I’m not focused on the here and now of this case,” Kavanugh chimed in.

As it turns out, an upside-down flag still signals an emergency. In this case, it’s a whole nation under threat from Supreme Court justices putting their support for Trump above the law.

Opinion: All Signs Point to a Trump Debate Meltdown

Considering how Trump got his clock cleaned at their 2020 debates, we'll believe this one will happen when we actually see it.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Opinion by David Rothkopf

The Daily Beast

The news that President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have agreed to two debates, one in just a few weeks’ time, in late June, and another in September, has naturally got the punditverse buzzing.

Some commentators have focused on Biden’s sharp early morning announcement that he would welcome a debate with Trump. It was just the Egg McBiden the president’s fans—like the folks on “Morning Joe”—needed to start their day, served as it was with a side order of feistiness. Between the “Make my day, pal” opening and the “Let’s pick a date, Donald, I hear you’re free on Wednesdays” (a reference to his current court schedule) it got sharply to the point, did so with a humorous edge and obligated Trump to respond.

Trump replied in character with his own statement, using his day off from his criminal election interference trial to offer an irony-deaf reference to Biden being “crooked” and to criticize the president’s debating skills. And of course there were some strangely capitalized words for emphasis.

There were, of course, commentators who offered instant speculation about Biden’s motives—like Chris Cillizza, who concluded Biden was doing this because “he knows he’s behind” and because “he knows age/competence issues aren’t going away.”

Of course, Biden actually isn’t behind Trump in the polls, with most showing the race essentially tied—and several including the most recent NYT Ipsos poll showing Biden up by 3. Further, the idea that “age” is an issue for two guys who are essentially the same age, is one that does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. But never mind all that.

No, after talking to a number of Biden administration officials, it is clear that the primary reason Joe Biden chose to debate Donald Trump is… because he could.

The contest is so lopsided that even Trump’s pals at the WWE could not sell a ticket to it. (I know, I know. We’ve got to manage expectations. But, do we? Really? Each time Trump debated Biden in 2020 he lost..) And ever since then, as Biden pointed out in his debate announcement, Trump has avoided debating opponents.

So, he’s bad at it and out of practice. Not a good combination.

The Biden team calculus has to be based in part on the fact that it’s Trump who is actually losing his marbles. How else do you explain his recent praise for Hannibal Lecter and his noticeably slurred words during speeches?

Furthermore, in the view of those close to Biden, Trump’s got a serious problem on the issues. He’s on the wrong side of the American public on many of the policy questions most important to them. For example, Trump keeps proclaiming he is the one responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Almost two-thirds of all women and over six out of ten men support legal abortion according to a recent Pew report. That translates into 63 percent of all Americans. That’s not a winning issue for Trump and the GOP, and recent special election results even in red states like Kansas and Ohio have shown that.

Trump does badly on other signature issues. He loves Vladimir Putin, for example. In a Pew poll last year 91 percent of Americans indicated they have an unfavorable view of Russia with 62 percent having views that are very unfavorable. Trump’s one big legislative accomplishment was a tax cut that helped balloon the federal deficit and that tax cuts for those in the top five percent of earners were triple those received by the bottom 60 percent of us. Extending the cuts, as Trump has promised he would do, would add, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office,almost $5 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

Take Trump’s stance on another signature issue, immigration. Even though many Americans say they share his views, the reality is that when polled on his specific policies, according to a recent Washington Post study, they actually oppose them.

But set aside for a moment the fact that Trump is a lousy debater who is clearly addled and losing his ability to speak in public. And the fact that his policy positions are broadly unpopular.

And that historians consider him the worst president ever. And that Biden has a great record and has a demonstrated mastery over its details. There are other compelling issues for Biden’s team to be enthusiastic about the prospect of debating Trump.

In all likelihood, the first debate will follow by just a few weeks the conclusion of Trump’s New York election interference trial. There’s a pretty good chance Trump could emerge from the trial a convicted felon. That’s probably not a debate plus.

Even if Trump escapes a conviction, the trial has shown him in a very unflattering light and reminded the world of the sleaziest aspects of his past.

What’s more, by the time the debate takes place it is very likely the Supreme Court will have offered what will be a net unfavorable ruling on Trump’s immunity claims, thus tee-ing up his next dates before the bar—in Washington, D.C., Florida and Georgia. And if the court rules on Trump’s behalf—against all precedent and the very spirit on which the country was founded—it will produce an outcry about corruption on the Supreme Court that will not redound in Trump’s favor.

Further, reflecting on the New York Trial in its aftermath can’t help Trump—from its ick-tastic revelations about his attempts to seduce a porn star by comparing her to his daughter, to his daily sideshow at the courthouse, complete with a sycophantic chorus of back-up singers dressed exactly like him.

Indeed, the New York trial has been a revealing episode that could not be a worse prelude for a debate. It has shown once again that although Trump has virtually no deeply held political beliefs, the core of his philosophy of life is that everything is corrupt—and that money and lies are what make the world go around.

This, in turn, reveals him to be a kind of reverse neutron bomb—designed to destroy our institutions while leaving those people within it who are loyal to him still standing, or kneeling before him.

It is that Trump the world has seen in the New York trial. It is that Trump that they saw on Jan. 6. It is that Trump revealed in each of the 91 indictments against him. It is that Trump that is the clear and present danger America faces.

Biden is eager for the chance to stand toe-to-toe with his predecessor for these exact reasons. Trump’s defective character is so clear, and the danger he presents is so great, that the current president will have a hard time looking worse in comparison.

The contrasts between the two men and their beliefs could not be starker.

Remember this moment from their last presidential debate?  Expect more of the same this time around.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

COLORADO AND TENNESSEE: Stark difference between how Dems and GOP run states

Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado signed into law bills granting two free years of college for students from families earning under $90,000 and creating a fee on oil and gas production that goes to transit, conservation and renewable energy.

Republican Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee signed into law bills to arm teachers, to require teachers to out trans students, and age appropriate firearms training for pre-kindergarteners.

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, May 13, 2024 at 9:30:25a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

At the start of 2024, there were 28 state legislatures entirely under Republican control and 20 under Democratic control. Of these, many have majorities where one party has overwhelming control, like West Virginia where there are 88 Republicans and only 10 Democrats, or Massachusetts with 134 Democrats to 25 Republicans.

When voters elect such lopsided majorities, they give one party the power to enact their own platform. That’s especially true in states where the governor is of the same party as the legislative majority. In these situations, more than any other, parties express themselves to the detriment of constituents’ lives.

With many state legislatures wrapping up their 2023-2024 sessions, here are two examples of what voters get for their partisan investment. One state got guns and a culture war; the other got education, transportation, and housing.

In Colorado, the 74th General Assembly contains 69 Democrats (23 in the Senate, 46 in the House) and 31 Republicans (12 in the Senate, 19 in the House). Together with Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, this session gave Democrats an opportunity to execute on issues they had campaigned on in this cycle, as well as follow up on Democratic victories from the previous session.

As Colorado Politics reports, the result was one very successful year in Colorado politics. Democrats were able to pass:

• A program that gives students from families earning under $90,000 two free years of college. That’s not just at technical schools or community colleges, but it includes state-run universities.

• Property tax reform that provides relief for homeowners and more equitable funding for schools to make them less dependent on property taxes and the wealth of their local communities.

• A tax credit program for low income families that provides $1.4 billion that’s expected to drastically reduce child poverty.

• A bill that doubles the earned income credit for families.

• Changes to zoning policy to spur sustainable, affordable housing, especially in resort communities where housing costs far exceeded the incomes of many workers.

• A fee on oil and gas production that goes to promoting transit, conservation, and renewable energy.

As the session draws to a close, lawmakers are still looking at a collection of bills, including a plan to improve transportation for low-income areas and gun reform measures.

At the other end of the spectrum, Tennessee’s 113th General Assembly has 102 Republicans (27 in the Senate, 75 in the House) and only 30 Democrats (6 in the Senate, 30 in the House).

What does Tennessee have to show for their session?

• More guns in the classroom with a bill to arm teachers after a shooter killed students and staff at a private Christian school in Nashville.

• A law requiring teachers to out trans students with fines to teachers and schools who don’t comply.

• Gun reforms were shot down in favor of “fortifying” campuses by adding alarms that can be sounded to indicate an active shooter situation.

• Required “age appropriate firearms training” for children starting in pre-kindergarten.

The governor’s pet program, a bill to destroy public education and replace it with education vouchers, didn’t make it through this session, but $114 million in funding was set aside for the next session, just in case it does pass. 

Colorado and Tennessee are just two states, but they showcase the difference between Democratic and Republican policies. Colorado voters got education, housing, tax reform, and more funding for transportation, energy, and the environment; Tennessee voters got a legislature that concentrated on “culture war” issues and guns. Lots of guns.

Polis talks to constituents.  He says it's important to take into account what matters to voters.

Pregnant? The GOP wants to track you and any decisions you make

Alabama Sen. "Kitchen" Katie Britt

By Dartagnan for Community Contributors Team

Community

Daily Kos

Monday, May 13, 2024 at 4:03:28p MDT 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

Last week, three Republican senators gave Americans—and women, in particular—a clear, chilling, and unmistakable taste of how their lives would be altered if Donald Trump is put back into office. 

Republicans do not currently hold the presidency or a majority in the U.S. Senate, but they expect to after the 2024 election. The plans for governance, should Americans place them back in charge, are explicitly set forth in the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page manifesto known as Project 2025, a document that proposes to institutionalize the Christian nationalist ambitions of the anti-abortion lobby at nearly every level of the federal government. These plans are intended to be implemented almost instantaneously upon inauguration of Trump as president.

What that means in real-world terms is that Americans would experience an immediate, radical, and highly unsettling transformation of their relationship to their government. Federal agencies would, almost overnight, become playpens for the hard right, their functions converted and  weaponized to implement social engineering strategies intended to constrain and regulate behaviors that Evangelical Christians disapprove of. One of their primary targets will be the behavior of women and others who become pregnant.

To that end, Republican senators are carefully laying the legislative groundwork that will enable these strategies at the federal agency level. Last week, Alabama’s Republican Sen. Katie Britt, together with Marco Rubio of Florida and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, introduced an Orwellian bill that would establish a federal website, Pregnancy.gov. The website would enable the Department of Health and Human Services to solicit and collect personal identifying information on pregnant women and others, ostensibly for the purpose of providing them with prenatal advice on how to proceed with their pregnancies. The bill parallels an effort by Rubio in January to create a similar website called Life.gov. 

Innocently termed the MOMS Act, the explicit purpose of the legislation is to “support, encourage and assist” women in “carry[ing] their pregnancies to term,” by directing them to so-called pregnancy crisis centers whose purpose is to discourage—and often intimidate—women and others from terminating their pregnancies. The proposed law provides for direct, personal contact to be initiated by a cadre of newly installed, theocratic government employees toward pregnant patients who register their contact information with the site in order to pressure them in their reproductive decisions. It also implements a federalized regimen for child support payments that commences at the moment of pregnancy, laying the groundwork for governmental regulation that treats “fetal personhood” as a recognized status under U.S. law.

This legislation is being touted by Republicans—stung by recent electoral defeats by voters who abhor their forced-birth policies—as an example of their compassion toward women and others who become pregnant. What it  reveals, however, is not compassion, but coercion, harassment, and ultimately, control.

RELATED STORY: ‘If Roe can fall, anything can’: Which rights will the GOP come for next?

Four years ago this week: Trump claimed that COVID-19 would just ‘go away’

Former President Donald Trump appears to be sleeping through a roundtable discussion on donating plasma at the American Red Cross National Headquarters on July 30, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 7:00:28a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Four years ago this week, Donald Trump claimed that the U.S. had "met the moment and … prevailed," not over COVID-19, but over the test shortage that had hobbled the nation's response for over four months as the virus spread around the world and across the country. As with most things Trump said about the pandemic, that was a lie. 

The reason for that lie is almost as foolish as Trump’s statement—the U.S. had simply failed to stockpile enough nose swabs to go with the tests that were being made. Without those swabs, the tests were left sitting unused on shelves. And there were no swabs because Trump left the supply planning up to his son-in-law Jared Kushner who had no concept how to handle a medical crisis.

In May 2020, the U.S. passed a horrific physical and spiritual milestone as COVID-19 deaths reached 100,000. Job losses were off the charts. Trump was working with Saudi Arabia and Russia to keep oil prices high. And the United States was a nation in mass trauma with freezer trucks full of bodies in New York City and consumers hoarding toilet paper.

And now Trump is actually running on claims that America was better off four years ago.

When people look back at the tragedies of the Great Depression or the ravages of World War II, it’s understandable that information may be lost over generations. Younger Americans may not understand the fear, hardship, and disruption of a national crisis decades in the past. 

But according to some polls, most Americans seem to have forgotten what life was like just four years ago. By May of 2020, Trump had already started racking up a body count with hydroxychloroquine and pondered the possibility of injecting bleach. But Trump’s biggest contribution to America’s mishandling of the pandemic was just misinformation. To put it simply, Trump pretended that the pandemic wouldn’t happen until it did, and when it did, he promised it would go away like “a miracle.”

CNN has a nice graphic illustrating the relationship between the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the United States, and one simple phrase from Trump: “It’s going to go away.”

The Washington Post captured just how many times he’s said that very phrase:

In February, Trump insisted that the virus would just go away in April as the weather warmed. He would keep making this claim into the spring, even though outbreaks in the southern hemisphere showed that heat was not a magic bullet against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When April arrived, the U.S. was seeing over 30,000 new cases a day, and Trump’s advice was still that “It’s going to go. It’s going to leave. It’s going to be gone.” 

Only COVID-19 refused to pack its suitcase and depart. 

Even in May 2020, with over 20,000 new cases being reported each day, Trump insisted that COVID would "go away" even without a vaccine. Instead, the rate of both new cases and new deaths would triple in the next month.

The country that Trump left behind was a hot mess. The week of Nov. 7 when President Joe Biden was elected, almost 9,000 Americans were dying of COVID-19 each week, but before he could take office that number would reach 26,000 deaths per week. The rate of deaths would never again reach that level, even during spikes generated by new and more contagious variants. 

The unemployment rate when Biden was sworn in was 6.4%. It would never be that high under Biden. 

It’s hard to understand how anyone can feel they were better off four years ago than they are today. But then again, maybe brain worms are more common than we knew.

It Is That Simple; It Is That Important

An act of raw courage:  On this Mothers Day, I can think of no better role model than Liz Cheney, a mother of five and a staunch conservative, who looked deep inside and said this is bigger than labels, than parties, than doctrine.  This is about humanity.  This is about me, about who I am.

By James Keyworth

Gazette Blog Editor

Many years ago, Henry David Thoreau told us to “simplify, simplify.”  His message is even more vital today than it was then.

With all the noise around us, it’s important to not over complicate the decision that is now before us.

It really comes down to whether we choose to engage our best instincts or our worst instincts.

Our best instincts are compassion, tolerance, acceptance, a willingness to engage in life as a positive experience where we can learn more about ourselves and about those with whom we share this existence.

Our worst instincts are selfishness, fear, anger, intolerance, isolation, a desire to withdraw into ourselves and into those who feel the same as we do.

Our best instincts lead to new experiences, to wider horizons, to engagement and friendship.

Our worst instincts lead to vitriol, violence, isolation, even mob mentality.

It really is a simple choice.  Each of us needs to look inside and choose between what’s best in us or what’s worst in us.  This time, there is no middle ground.

And it’s not just a personal choice.  Whichever prevails will shape the future, not only for our country but for our world.  Our choice will set the example for the course our children and future generations will embrace and nourish.

It is that simple.  It is that important.