Democrats don't want you to know about this free Trump 2024 hat for only the finest of Patriots

Hats are an important first line of defense for your neck-knob and can prevent cranial leaking, skinful bubbling, and Follicular Screaming Syndrome. (These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and should not be taken as medical advice.)

Hunter

Daily Kos Staff

Monday December 05, 2022 · 3:04 PM MST

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Hey, kids. Do you like hats? Do you like Donald Trump? Okay, let's all shut up for a minute and pretend you do. If you're the kind of person who likes Donald Trump and has a human head then you're going to want to get in on this hot new product advertised on Trump's Truth Social and shared by reddit user cujokila for the r/ParlerWatch community.

As marketed by PatriotSurging dot com, it's a "Trump 2024 Camo Hat" that's three parts camo, and one part Flags 'n Stuff. And it's absolutely "FREE" to all "Patriots." Made using only the most patriotic grades of plastic and other synthetics, "conservatives have fallen in love" with these hats. "But if the Democrats are successful, you won't be able to find these Trump hats anymore..."

Who could say no to a FREE hat? It only stands to reason that a "Trump 2024 / Take America Back!" hat made from only the finest and most luxurious material these kind of hats are made of would be loved by conservatives—and loathed by Democrats. And this hat could be yours, FREE, thanks to PatriotThrusting dot com.

And by "FREE," what we actually mean is free except for a small $7.95 shipping and handling fee. Those are low fees for shipping a product of this caliber! Your hat will be shipped across the Pacific Ocean in a mostly entirely rodent-free shipping container before being lovingly unpacked by only the most patriotic of North American workers. At only $7.95, there's never been a better bargain. You too can show your support for Donald Trump for the free price of $7.95, plus our low one-month membership fee of $67.32.

We've chosen that one-month membership price for the convenience of you, the customer. It's got a six, and a seven, and a three and a two, allowing number lovers from across the land to enjoy all four digits on their credit card statement. For the low total price of $75.37, you can own this free hat commissioned by an unnamed "patriotic survival company" and sent from PatriotPulsating dot com.

You do want to survive, right? What better way is there to survive than to cover your human head in a camouflaged pattern so that your noggin is less visible to North America's many apex predators? Normal camouflage patterns can be purchased anywhere, but only our product and possibly others like it break up the monotony of camouflage greens and browns with a big ol' honkin picture of the Red, White 'n Blue. Turn your head to one direction to blend into the very fabric of nature; turn it to the other to shout "I am a Trump-supporting patriot and I don't care whether you see me or not."

Imagine the reaction from The Libs when you materialize out of tall plastic office ferns to declare "Trump 2024, Take America Back!" Your coworkers will scream in surprise and know they have been owned. And you can own those Libs time and time again with your free hat for just $75.37.

And by $75.37, we mean that that's your low first-month payment for this luxurious imported patriotic hat. You'll pay just $75.37, plus a low monthly membership fee of $56.95 per month from now until you remember to cancel. If you decide to cancel your membership, we'll provide you with a phone number so that you can speak to one of our agents about your decision to not be a Patriot anymore. If you decide you are still a Patriot after all, you'll continue to enjoy membership in our Consumer Direct Savings store, not affiliated with Donald Trump or the family, campaign, or past sexual partners of Donald Trump. That's a low yearly fee of just $683.40, plus $67.32, plus $7.95, and this free hat can be yours.

You'll also enjoy shopping at our members-only store, where you'll receive a $200 gift card each month to purchase from our "hundreds" of products available at prices you and your fellow patriots literally won't believe. You can wear your free hat as a public sign that you aren't just more patriotic than other Trump voters, you're patriotic enough to pay nearly $700 a year to PatriotSoftlyBouncing dot com, a company that has absolutely no connection to Donald Trump whatsoever. If the Democrats are successful, you won't be able to purchase this hat from our company ever again—so act now, before the Democrats get their way.

Owning Libs through your headwear purchases is all fine and good, but what happens if your prized head-lid gets damaged? Imagine this: You're participating in a patriotic insurrection to install Donald Trump, or possibly Eric Trump or perhaps Tiffany, as the first patriotic god-king of the United States. Things are going well until, out of nowhere, your head intersects in a spacial way with a weaponized, concrete-filled flagpole swung wildly by one of your equally patriotic patriots. Your head looks the same as it always has, at least as far as you know, but what's this? Oh no, your free hat has been damaged!

Less patriotic factory-to-you membership companies might not be able to respond to such events, but we're different. That's why we at PatriotLeaking dot com are offering our Freedom Hat Protection Plan. For an optional add-on fee of $3.99, we'll replace your Freedom Hat if it gets damaged for FREE, charging you only an unspecified shipping and handling fee for the new hat.

That's one-fifth of a bee less than $4.00 to protect an investment of $7.95, plus $67.32, plus $683.40 per year forever. Democrats don't want you to pay that additional fee, but remember: Soon you won't be able to find these Limited Edition Trump Hats anymore, for any price. We won't have any left to ship to you even if you wanted one, unless you pay $3.99 now, in which case we will.

But there's even more at stake here. True patriots know that being able to camouflage their balding neck-knobs might be important, but more important still is showing support for Donald J. Trump and for the Trump Organization and all relevant subsidiary companies. Rest assured, patriot. For the low price of $7.95, plus $67.32, plus $683.40 per year, plus $3.99, you'll enter the elite membership of patriots willing to show their support for Trump 2024, Take America Back! without paying Donald Trump, his companies or his campaign a single cent.

That's right. We here at Interchangeable Shell Company, Ltd aren't the sort of non-patriots who would insult Donald Trump by sending him money. True patriots know that Donald Trump is the most wealthy Patriot in the world, a man in control of billions upon billions of mostly United States dollars. There's nothing the likes of you could do to make him more successful than he already is; he has already achieved peak patriotic success. That's why we at Somewhere Near Panama Holdings, Inc, make sure none of the money from your Trump hat purchase goes to Trump or anything related to Trump.

For the nearly free price of $7.95, plus $67.32, plus $683.40 per year, plus $3.99, you can "prepare yourself and your family to support Trump in 2024" without giving him any of your insulting small change. Few pro-Trump patriots will be able to say the same. Even fewer will have the ability to blend invisibly into office greenery, tall hedges, or your neighbor's rhododendrons.

Now how much would you pay? Unless the Democrats have their way, you don't have to pay a dime for this FREE hat after paying a $7.95 shipping and handling fee, plus $67.32 for your first month's membership in the Not Donald Trump Factory Import Club, plus $683.40 per year in membership fees, plus $3.99 for our Extended Hat Warranty Program.

Act now, because this offer from PatriotHeaving dot com won't last long. It's only a matter of time before Democrats stop EngorgedPatriot dot com from doing business in Your City—unless you love Donald Trump and hats more than we love Donald Trump and hats and—oooooh, you were too late. We're not offering the hats anymore. Now PatriotSurging dot com is offering (1) FREE Tactical Backpack. It seems Patriots have fallen in love with these free Limited Edition Tactical Backpacks. They'd normally cost you in the neighborhood of $200.00, give or take a few bees, but we're offering these Tactical Black Ops Backpacks for FREE if you act now. Prepare to "defend yourself and your family now, before it's too late" with your Free Tactical Black Ops Backpack…

[Editor’s note: This Is Real.]

Does this mean we can finally retire this blast from the past?  Or is it really true that hats have 9 lives?

Here’s what you need to know about the COVID bivalent booster and why you need to get it

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - SEPTEMBER 9: Margaret LaRaviere receives a COVID-19 booster during an event hosted by the Chicago Department of Public Health at the Southwest Senior Center on Sept. 9, 2022, in Chicago. The recently authorized booster vaccine protects against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the more recent omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5.

Prism Guest Writer for Prism Reports

Prism

Saturday December 03, 2022 · 9:15 AM MST

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With the holiday season fast approaching, experts recommend getting the booster sooner rather than later.

by Sravya Tadepalli

This article was originally published at Prism

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized bivalent COVID boosters for adults and children ages 5-11, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported that only 31.4 million people—or 10.1% of those eligible—have received the new vaccine, compared to 68% who completed the primary series.

The booster is designed to bolster protection against the original strain and better combat Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5, which are currently responsible for most cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. Public health officials are expecting a spike in COVID cases throughout the fall and winter and say the booster will help reduce the spread and severity of the virus in the colder months.

“[The updated COVID-19 boosters] can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a Sept. 1 press release.

Though COVID-19 cases have fallen since the summer surge, they are beginning to increase once more, with the U.S. seeing around 330 deaths and 3,400 hospitalizations from the virus each day. The average daily case count is around 41,000. New Omicron subvariants emerging in Europe are expected to soon gain steam in the U.S. Widespread use of the bivalent booster will be critical to mitigating the effects of the new strains.

Eligibility for a bivalent booster depends on age and completion of the primary COVID-19 vaccine series. The Moderna version is authorized for individuals 6 years of age and older while the Pfizer version is authorized for individuals 5 years of age and older. The vaccine also must be taken at least two months after completing the primary COVID-19 vaccine series or most recent booster. In addition, the CDC advises that patients with a recent COVID-19 infection wait at least three months to get the updated booster.

The bivalent boosters increase the number of antibodies that can protect the body from the Omicron variant. A new study from the Commonwealth Fund found that if 80% of eligible Americans receive the new booster, the country could avert as many as 90,000 deaths, 936,000 hospitalizations, and 25,900,000 infections.

The original series of vaccines and monovalent booster available last fall were designed to protect against the original variant of COVID-19, not the more recent, contagious strains of Delta and Omicron. The new booster—designed specifically to attack the Omicron variant—provides a fresh dose of immunity against the most prevalent form of the virus.

“If you compare the effect of the vaccine and the boosters against original variants, against Delta, and against Omicron, you can see that the effectiveness becomes less and less,” said Dr. Danyu Lin, a professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. “So for people who have been vaccinated for the same amount of time, the effectiveness against this newer variant is just lower.”

Researchers are still trying to figure out the extent of the vaccine’s efficacy, as the vaccine was rolled out without human clinical trials. However, the vaccine generated positive antibody responses in animals, and a similarly designed vaccine targeted at the original Omicron strain (BA.1) showed strong results on human test subjects. Because the bivalent booster and BA.1 vaccines are so similar, the bivalent vaccine is deemed to be safe even though it did not go through human testing. The FDA has extensive experience safely rolling out vaccines for different strains of influenza in the same manner.

Some early release data from the CDC has proven the new vaccine is more effective than the old and has an even greater effect if it’s been several months since your last booster. That effectiveness jumps 30% if your last vaccine dose was two to three months earlier, and up to 56% if the last original vaccine dose was more than eight months prior.

Getting the bivalent booster does not guarantee avoiding the infection, said Dr. Lin, but it will significantly reduce one’s chances of hospitalization or death.

“The public can be assured that a great deal of care has been taken by the FDA to ensure that these bivalent COVID-19 vaccines meet our rigorous safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality standards for emergency use authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an Aug. 31 press release.

Bivalent vaccines may cause side effects similar to those of the previous COVID-19 vaccines, including fatigue, chills, fever, and muscle aches. The CDC recommends relieving symptoms by drinking fluids, resting, and taking over-the-counter painkillers after vaccination. The CDC does not recommend taking painkillers before vaccination as the impact of OTC medication on vaccine efficacy is still unknown.

As influenza cases skyrocket across the country, it is worth getting a flu shot as well, and it is perfectly safe to receive both the bivalent booster and the influenza vaccine at the same time. With the holidays arriving, the chances of getting both flu and COVID-19 increase, and getting vaccinated can provide some peace of mind. It is also fine to mix and match the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

Because the immune system takes a couple of weeks to fully benefit from the shot, Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, has recommended people try to get vaccinated as soon as possible to help ensure safer social gatherings during the holidays. However, he emphasized that any time is a good time to get the shot.

“Don’t wait,” said Jha. “Get your new flu shot and get your new COVID shot today. If Americans did that, we could save hundreds of lives each day this winter.”

BIPOC have suffered a disproportionate number of cases and deaths from COVID-19. Black people also report the lowest rates of vaccination with both the primary series and first booster. Several communities are partnering with local BIPOC-centered organizations to host vaccine events and answer questions.

If you’re looking to get a bivalent booster, visit vaccines.gov to find vaccine sites in your location and make an appointment online. Boosters are being carried in major drug stores such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens, as well as health care facilities and mass vaccination events. Vaccines are currently free of cost, but patients may have to provide health insurance information if they are insured.

Sravya Tadepalli is a freelance writer based in Oregon. Her writing has been featured in Arlington Magazine, Teaching Tolerance, the Portland Tribune, Oregon Humanities, and the textbook America Now. Sravya is also a 2018 Harry S. Truman Scholar.

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. Our in-depth and thought-provoking journalism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. We tell stories from the ground up to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Sign up for our newsletter to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

For those of us who are still careful about not getting COVID-19.

ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: Trump bus runs over longtime employee Allen Weisselberg

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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December 04, 2022 · 5:05 PM MST

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Donald Trump has hired more coffee boys than Starbucks over the years, and they all get the same treatment after he’s through sucking the marrow out of their sad, brittle, untermensch bones: He claims he doesn’t know them, and if he happens to have been photographed with them 90 times over the course of 30 years, he’s quick to point out that he’s regularly seen with lots of sketchy people who are mysteriously drawn to his grand, elysian fiefdom.

The latest luckless java lad to be mercilessly ground beneath the wheels of the Trump bus is Allen Weisselberg, the ex-Trump Org CFO who’s been testifying in the criminal trial against the company. Weisselberg has long since started Trump’s bone spurs a-tingling, alerting the ocher oaf to the danger his ex-consigliere posed. It’s why Weisselberg was summarily “fired” in 2021—though he reportedly kept doing the same job for precisely the same salary. 

But now Trump’s lawyers are going full Trump, implicating Weisselberg—and absolutely no one else—in the company’s wrongdoing. As the Trump Org tax fraud trial began to wrap up, Susan Necheles, a Trump Organization lawyer, used her closing argument to point the finger at Weisselberg and Weisselberg alone.

The Guardian:

“We are here today because of one reason and one reason only – the greed of Allen Weisselberg,” Necheles said. “The purpose of Mr Weisselberg’s crimes was to benefit Mr Weisselberg.”

Necheles also pinned blame on Donald Bender, an accountant with Mazars USA, for turning a blind eye to Weisselberg’s wrongdoing.

“President Trump relied on Mazars, he relied on Donald Bender to be the watchdog,” Necheles said. “Bender failed.“

Yeah, okay. That sounds likely.

Sure, it’s possible that the Trump Organization’s alleged malfeasance—which involved fringe benefits Weisselberg reportedly received tax-free—happened without the direction and knowledge of Donald Trump. It’s also possible Trump discovered the Higgs boson yesterday afternoon in his Filet-O-Fish. Just about anything is theoretically possible, after all.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have cited evidence that points to a far less innocent conclusion—namely, that Trump and his company were up to their luffing neck wattles in dirty deeds.

CBS News:

For instance, Weisselberg and other executives received annual bonus checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars — signed by Trump himself — that were logged as if they were payments for work they did as independent contractors for various Trump companies, Weisselberg testified on Nov. 17. ...

"Did Weisselberg do it for Weisselberg alone? Or did he intend at least some benefit for the corporation?" Steinglass asked. "There is a tremendous amount of evidence here, completely ignored by the defense during their summations, that he also intended to benefit the defendants."

During the trial they pointed to luxury benefits such as high-end apartments lived in by Allen and others either rent-free or well under market rate, and untaxed. They showed spreadsheets that appeared to show more than half a dozen executives receiving untaxed bonuses, and elicited testimony from Weisselberg that Trump himself had a role in the scheme — though prosecutors failed to show conclusive evidence that Trump knew what was going on.

It would be one thing if Donald Trump had earned the benefit of the doubt, but come on. If there’s one guy on the planet who should be presumed guilty before all the evidence comes in, it’s this jabroni. (Not that Trump should be implicated if there really is no proof, but really now. He signed the checks, and his former tiny right-hand man testified against him.) We’ll find out soon if Lady Justice agrees—assuming Trump doesn’t assault her and force her to recuse before the final verdict comes down.

Would you trust this bible-waving man with your religion?  Your freedom?  Your democracy?  Your wife?  Your campaign donation?

Gas prices are down, oil production is up, and Russia's threat to energy markets is evaporating

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday December 01, 2022 · 11:30 AM MST

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As Russia began positioning forces for an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine at the end of 2021, oil speculators did what oil speculators do in every potentially difficult situation: They drove oil future prices up. A week before the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022, prices for West Texas crude had already been elevated by $20 a barrel to over $90. By the first week of March, prices were over $120 a barrel and some energy insiders expected that to be only the beginning of a new “oil rally.” As Bloomberg reported at the time, energy markets were very excited by the war.

The prospect of restrictions on Russian energy exports could send oil prices above $200 per barrel, according to Westbeck Capital Management. The London-based hedge fund is among a cadre of commodities-focused funds betting on an extended rally for crude after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here’s hoping tons and tons of those speculators laid down their billions betting on $200 oil, because just a week later prices began to fall. By the end of August, prices for oil were actually below where they had been when the invasion began, and in the last week have traded as low as $76 a barrel. 

Despite Republican claims that President Joe Biden has somehow crippled the U.S. oil industry, both production and refining of oil in the U.S. is now at near-record levels. The supply of oil and gas is currently down less than 1% when compared with 2021, and though gas prices have remained relatively high over much of this time, they have now fallen to an average price below that on the day Russia invaded.

One of the claims Republicans keep making is that Biden has emptied the national petroleum reserves. However that reserve is actually only about a third down from the average for this date over the last five years, according to the latest estimates from the Energy Information Administration. Both that reserve and private storage are recovering, with the overall crude oil storage now down less then 3% when compared to 2021. Expect both of these storage levels to return to full in the next few months with no more need to use reserves to control prices.

This past year also saw a record amount of ethanol blended into gasoline, increasing the supply in many areas. With refineries running full out and ethanol blending in, gasoline inventories are only 0.8% below 2021, while demand for gas is down by 2.7%.

The result of that supply outpacing demand is finally showing up at the pumps. AAA reported the average nationwide price of a gallon of regular Wednesday had dropped to $3.50, with many areas significantly lower. National average prices are expected to fall below the $3 level in the next few weeks, as projected by GasBuddy. 

Gas prices are now actually lower than they were on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Over the next few weeks, much of the runup to the conflict is likely to be factored out of the market, returning prices to where they were in 2021. This should not only result in more money remaining in the pockets of drivers, it should relieve inflationary pressure related to transport of parts and products. It should, if corporations don’t just decide to turn the difference into still more profits and dividends.

Oil prices routinely topped $100/barrel in the period from 2011 to 2014 before increased production of oil related to fracking drove prices to around the $60 level between 2014 and 2020. Now that Russian oil has largely been factored out of international markets (and Russian oil that is making it to market is entering at a sharp discount) oil prices can be expected to settle back to a similar level.

This will not, of course, prevent Republicans from citing gas prices from early 2020, when panic selling related to the pandemic drove oil prices down to just over $20/barrel and dropped gas prices below $2 … for about a week. And it won’t stop news agencies from snapping photos of gas prices in the rental car return lane at San Francisco International (strangely enough, the last photo from Getty showing prices on a gas pump shows a price of $6.13).

Neither of them is about to let go of a good fake crisis right before Christmas. But folks driving home for the holidays will appreciate the reality.

Democrats Issue Fresh Calls for Assault Weapons Ban After Shooting Tragedies

   

President Joe Biden meets with Senator Chris Murphy about gun control outside the Oval Office of the White House in June. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

  readersupportednews.org

2 December 22 

Edward Helmore / Guardian UK

Questions also raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws

Gun control returned as a leading topic over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats issuing fresh calls for a ban on assault weapons for the general public.

At the same time, questions were raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws, after shooting tragedies in Virginia and Colorado in the last two weeks.

“If you passed an assault weapons ban you would see less mass shootings in this country,” Connecticut’s Democratic US senator and leading gun control advocate, Chris Murphy, said on Sunday.

He added: “You are not going to magically eliminate mass-shootings, but an AR-15, or AR-15 style weapon, is generally the choice of mass shooters.”

Such a military-style rifle was used in the shooting at an LGBTQ night club in Colorado last weekend, although different firearms were used in the shootings of University of Virginia football team players earlier in the month and at a Walmart store, also in Virginia, two days before Thanksgiving, in a tragic spate of violence.

The Democrat lawmaker pointed to a “dramatic decline” in mass-shootings after the decade-long assault weapons ban passed in 1994. “It wasn’t until the expiration date of the ban that we started to see mass shootings spiral up.”

With Biden returning to the White House on Sunday afternoon after spending the Thanksgiving break with his family in Nantucket, the gun issue returned to prominence.

On Thursday’s Thanksgiving day itself, Biden spoke about the “scourge” of gun violence, saying he wants to sign into law a ban on high-powered guns that have the capacity to kill many people quickly.

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden said. “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”

The Democratic-led House passed legislation in July to revive the 1990s-era ban on assault weapons, following the passage of a landmark bipartisan bill on guns, strengthening background checks and red flag laws, which allow authorities to remove firearms from those posing a danger.

But the legislation is going nowhere in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and Democrats lack Republican support.

The House majority whip, Jim Clyburn, admitted that an assault weapons ban and other gun restrictions would not get through Congress, even in the lame duck session while Democrats still control the House, but that did not mean it was not worth pursuing.

“Just because it’s legal [to buy a gun] doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Slavery was legal but it was not right,” he said.

Murphy, who has been the Senate’s leading advocate for stronger gun control since at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, also told CNN on Sunday that one avenue Democrats might pursue is to restrict federal funding for law enforcement in counties that declare themselves gun sanctuaries.

“We learned in Colorado that the county in which the shooting happened was a so-called second amendment sanctuary state,” Murphy said. “The majority of counties in this country have declared that they’re not going enforce state and federal gun laws.

“It’s a growing problem in the country and we’re going to have to have a conversation about that in the Senate. Do we want to to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws?”

Red flag laws, Murphy added, had proved wildly popular across the county but “we have to do something” about the refusal by 60% of counties to enforce gun control laws.

On NBC, Kentucky Republican congressman James Comer said in respect of any additional gun regulations: “We already have many gun laws on the books … the number one priority with respect to crime in America for Republicans is going to be the fentanyl crisis” with respect to the traffic in illicit drugs across the US-Mexico border.

NBC’s Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, noted to Comer that “the states that have the most gun [control] laws have the least amount of per capita gun crime, and the states with the least amount of gun laws seem to have the most ... so there is a correlation here, if you have more gun-related laws on the books as a state you have … fewer gun-related deaths. That’s been proven statistically.”

Comer responded that in rural America most households had guns and “there aren’t a lot of crimes” because criminals know people are armed.

Kyle Rittenhouse: Everybody's favorite assault weapons poster child.  What a cutie, and he got away with cold-blooded murder.  And he pulled it off at a much younger age than Trump did.

Beware of Those Who Believe God Sent Them

Image by Amy Z from Pixabay

thomhartmann

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Tuesday November 29, 2022 · 8:56 AM MST

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Whether they believe their God sent them or that their DNA is superior to the rest of us, the new supremacists who own the GOP represent a threat to American democracy. They’ve tried to conquer America three times in the past: will they do it this time?

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who describes herself as a Christian Nationalist, is lying to the families of imprisoned January 6th traitors that Trump couldn’t possibly have pardoned any of them. She’s quite concerned that they’re upset with him.

Many, perhaps most, of the people who attacked our Capitol on January 6th believed they were doing work endorsed by their white male all-supreme god. Just like the men who flew planes into the Twin Towers believed they were doing work endorsed by their brown male all-supreme god.

There is no negotiating with people who believe they were sent by a god. Even in America. Or, perhaps, especially in America in 2022.

The events, podcasts, programs, and politicians whipping up the traitors who attacked us on January 6th were funded, at various levels and in various ways, by morbidly rich men and women who believe in their own version of a personal divinity.

They see themselves as standing apart from the rest of humanity, as genetically superior to the rest of us.

The headline from the November 17th edition of Business Insider pretty much sums it all up: “Billionaires want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’”

Ask relatives of holocaust victims if it’s possible to negotiate with people who consider themselves genetically superior. Or ask the descendants of enslaved Africans.

This is where the rightwing billionaire movement finds common cause with white evangelicals and Republican American fascists. And none of them — billionaires, evangelicals, or fascists — will negotiate in good faith with those they consider inferior to them.  

Their goal is to subjugate America and Americans, to create a Potemkin democracy in this nation (and others), to stand apart from and above the teeming masses of humanity, particularly those who are poor or whose skin is dark. They have no interest whatsoever in sharing or even paying taxes to support the common good.

Democracy, they believe, is their enemy. Some have openly said as much: that America went downhill when Black men or white women were allowed to vote, or when the Senate became elected by the people instead of appointed by state legislatures owned by local oligarchs.

Democracy, they believe, gives “the rabble” the power to take from them what they’re entitled to by virtue of their god’s blessing, or superior genetics, or both. The rabble is constantly trying to make their own lives better, but they’re just the rabble: why should the superior subsidize the inferior?

They say, often openly, words to the effect of:

“So what if most Americans want strong Social Security and Medicare, healthcare as a right instead of a privilege, free or affordable college? So what if workers want unions, a minimum wage one can live on and support a family with, affordable housing?

“It’s not the job of the superior, the blessed, to take care of the inferior, the cursed. It is, in fact, an affront to nature itself. A violation of nature’s basic law of the survival of the fittest.”

But the truth is that nobody is “worth” a million times more than another person. That our nation wasn’t founded or premised on any religion’s god deciding who should rule over whom. That most morbidly rich people either inherited their wealth or started from a foundation of substantial privilege, as Bill Gates’ father liked to point out.

They have no divine or inherent right to choose who will rule the rest of us, regardless of what their toadies on the corrupted Supreme Court say. They have seized that power — through decades of diligent conspiracy and elaborate, well-funded collaboration — but it’s a corrupted power, a perverted “right,” an inversion of the principles on which republican democracy is based.

But that doesn’t stop their rage. Their rage that others want what they have. Their rage that the miserable “takers” of society would think that the noble “makers” should have to pay taxes to support what our Constitution calls the “General Welfare.”

It’s vented from a thousand mouths a day on radio and television stations they own across the nation, from ten thousand websites and blogs, from a million bots and paid shills on social media.

It’s plastered across our television screens during political campaigns, it marches through our streets proclaiming that “Jews will not replace us,” it oozes and dribbles from the lips of their wholly owned politicians.

Their path to ultimate power and control of a nation is well trod throughout history.

Turn the people against each other. Make dissent a crime. Punish deviance from society’s norms.

And do it all to “save the children.” It’s always about protecting the children. From Nixon’s drug laws directed against young antiwar and civil rights protesters to Bush’s No Child Left Behind scam to make money for his brother’s educational testing company to DeSantis’ Don’t Say Gay laws promoting bigotry in schools it’s always about “protecting the children.”

Didn’t you know there are people who want to drink their blood? Who hide them in the basements of pizza shops? Even Putin reportedly told Trump that he’d started a campaign to — I’m not making this up — “save the children of Ukraine.”

We are mid-point in a recurrent arc of history that’s been experienced by our ancestors, by those in other lands, by nations all the way back to the earliest cities of pre-history.

It will end one of two ways.  

Either the ones acting on behalf of their god and their superior genes will conquer our nation, or our nation will conquer them.

In the 1930s they thought they could conquer America by assassinating President Roosevelt and leading a half-million veterans against the White House and Congress. An American patriot, General Smedley Butler, blew the whistle.

Still, they found common cause with the rising fascist movements in Germany and Italy, as Rachel Maddow has so brilliantly documented in her podcast Ultra. But President Roosevelt saw them coming.

On June 7, 1936 he told the American people:

“For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the Fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

“There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

“It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.”

He would later say, “They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred.”

In that era, they tried to conquer America, but instead America conquered them.

FDR hit them with a 91% top income tax rate that held above 70% until the Reagan Revolution. Congress regulated their businesses and legalized unions. Chastened, they retreated to their executive suites and mansions to play their games of finance, philanthropy, and monopoly, leaving politics largely untouched for two generations.

But now they’ve risen again, seizing over $50 trillion in wealth from working class people just over the past 40 years. They’ve taken over the Supreme Court and gerrymandered their way into control of the House of Representatives.

They’ve tried it three times before, and failed each time.

They were the roughly one-third of Americans who aligned with the British in 1776 and fought against the small-business American revolutionaries like tavern-owner Paul Revere. In 1861, they ended democracy in the South and raised arms against the United States. In the 1930s, they tried to kill Roosevelt and, when that failed, to destroy his New Deal.

Will they succeed this time? Will they end the American experiment and take us down the road that others, so certain of the blessing of their god and their DNA, briefly took most of Europe eighty years ago?

Or will this cycle — like the last three — turn toward the rabble instead of the aristocracy? Will “We, the People” prevail?

To a level not seen in generations, the answer to that question is now in the hands of millions of young Americans. And I, for one, am encouraged by what I’m seeing.

What would Jesus say to those who think they are superior to the rest of us?  If he is true to the precepts of Christianity, his response would be something like this.