A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Every warning of post-Roe America is coming true, and there’s worse ahead
There are currently nine states where a rape victim under the age of 18 is forced to carry a fetus to term. Four states where that’s true even if there is a threat to the girl’s or woman’s health. This is the reality of America since the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022. Within days of the Dobbs ruling, a 10-year-old rape victim was forced to flee Ohio to find treatment. The child was almost six and half weeks pregnant, just past the cutoff for Ohio’s “fetal heartbeat” ban.
As grim as all of this has been, still is, and will be in the future, Republicans want to make things worse. That doesn’t mean just a national abortion ban that spreads these horrors to every state. It means forcing women to surrender their autonomy and be crushed by a patriarchy that demands control over every aspect of their bodies.
On Wednesday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “children,” showing yet another aspect of how radical conservatives are forcing their way into the most intimate decisions of women and families. And that’s just the beginning.
In vitro fertilization has been available as an option in the United States since 1981. For many individuals and families, IVF represents the only viable means of attaining pregnancy. It is often expensive and difficult, with a success rate of less than 50%. It may take several tries before establishing a successful pregnancy.
In the wake of the ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court—whose chief justice espouses a Christian nationalist belief that Christians must impose fundamentalist values on every aspect of American society and law—many would-be parents in Alabama have lost access to IVF. What happens now to the "extrauterine children" stored frozen in Alabama clinics remains unclear. What is clear is that, under a ruling that turns every fertilized egg into a “child,” thousands of individuals and couples seeking to start a family will go childless.
Far from running from this decision, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley endorsed the Alabama court’s position on Wednesday. And though she has since tried to walk that statement back—slightly—it’s clear that Republican politicians are closely aligned with the groups supporting these decisions.
That the Dobbs ruling could lead to an end of IVF might seem like a stretch, but the threat was not unexpected. The process of IVF is impossible to square with extremist abortion laws that insist life begins at conception. IVF is currently responsible for 84,000 babies a year, and it’s the preferred way for many LGBTQ+ couples to have a child—which is absolutely a reason why conservatives are more than willing to see this process stopped.
But that’s not the end of where Republicans want to take the nation after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. It’s not even close to the end.
Right now, the Supreme Court is deciding the fate of the widely used abortion drug mifepristone. The drug was approved in 2000, and the Food and Drug Administration affirms its safety based on over 20 years of studies. But those trying to block access to mifepristone are claiming that the FDA didn’t use a lawful review process, and conservative judges have repeated this claim, despite a lack of evidence.
That’s far from the end. From the moment the Supreme Court returned control over women’s lives to the men running state governments, the right moved directly into a war on birth control. Conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom—the same group that was behind the case of the Colorado cake shop that won the right to discriminate against gay couples—wants to convince Americans that the “birth control pill was a mistake, ”in the words of a longtime leader of the group.
Such groups have launched a propaganda campaign insisting that the birth control pill is far more dangerous than any study or decades of experience demonstrate. That propaganda is now being spread by Elon Musk.
But banning the pill isn’t the end goal. It’s merely a step along the path. The Heritage Foundation, which loves to brag about how it was instrumental in selecting the conservative judges that now pack the Supreme Court, is absolutely open about where it wants to go.
They released a video that would be shocking if it had been taken from some secret meeting of the group and smuggled to public visibility. But the Heritage Foundation posted this video to their own X (formerly Twitter) account. This is their public position. This is what they want you to see.
After a series of false claims about the dangers of birth control pills, the speaker gets down to business by insisting that birth control pills were invented for “the purpose of rendering a woman receptive to what is, for the most part, loveless and sometimes extremely degrading sexual access.” Then she moves on to the core of her argument.
“It seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill, and for rewilding sex, returning the danger to sex, returning the intimacy and, really, the consequentiality to sex.”
If that sounds at all confusing, what she’s saying is that women shouldn’t be able to have sex without being concerned about becoming pregnant. That’s the “rewilding,” the “danger,” and the “consequentiality” she wants.
The goal of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican politicians it empowers, and the judges it selects is to end the option of sex for any purpose other than reproduction. They’re not hiding this. They are proud of it. And if that means women surrender every ounce of agency in their lives … well, that’s the goal, after all.
The Supreme Court is about to rule on a drug that has been helping women since 2000.
Republicans are taking away an option used by would-be parents since 1981.
They’ve taken away rights that existed since 1973.
Now they want to roll things back to before 1960.
Even that’s not the true end. Because the end is somewhere back in the Bronze Age and in fantasies of what it means for women to “submit” to the control of men.
It’s been less than two years since the Dobbs decision, but America is a fundamentally different nation than it was in the 50 years leading up to June 24, 2022. Where we go from here will be decided in November. By women, and by everyone who genuinely respects them.
Saturday, February 24, 2024
There was an old fascist who lived in a shoe...
A cartoon by Lalo Alcatraz.
There was an old fascist... Please share #laloalcaraz cartoons! #Trump2024
ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: RNC co-chair candidate Lara Trump thinks GOP donors are eager to pay Donald's legal bills
By Aldous J. Pennyfarthing for Daily Kos
Community
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024
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Donald Trump is hoping to be our country’s first dictator—and last, if he can find a cutting-edge gene-editing tool that confers immortality while also allowing one to eat unlimited Hot Pockets. So he kind of has to line up the members of his brain trust now, lest they all find better opportunities hosing viscera off slaughterhouse walls or fighting seagulls for egg salad sandwiches.
That’s why Trump wants his daughter-in-law Lara to take over as Republican National Committee co-chair. She’s proven her loyalty, and then some, by staying married to his son Eric, and she also has zero shame when it comes to propping up Donald’s wobbly corpus as often as it takes. Also, Donald hates to play favorites, and since his son-in-law Jared got $2 billion for allegedly befriending a vicious murderer, it’s only fair that Lara get a top GOP gig for standing around looking goofy.
And she’s doing that—but she’s also talking. Which Trump may not have anticipated when he decided she should get the job.
On Wednesday, Lara was asked if RNC money should go toward Donald Trump’s mounting legal bills. Her answer? Oh, you know already. Don’t be coy.
REPORTER 1: “Do you think that the RNC should be paying Trump’s legal bills?”
LARA TRUMP: “You know, I’ve gotten this question already, and I don’t really know what the statutes are that guide that because I’m not officially there yet, but I would have to get back to you on that.”
REPORTER 2: “… Forget the statute, but just generally, do you think paying for President [sic] Trump’s legal bills is something that is of interest to Republican voters?”
TRUMP: “Absolutely, that’s why you’ve seen a GoFundMe get started, that’s why people are furious right now. When they see the attacks against him, they feel like it’s an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country. You can’t have a country and call it the United States of America that goes out of its way to target political opponents and try to bankrupt them and take down their companies, take down their families. I think that is a big interest to people, absolutely.”
Oh, right, the GoFundMe. Let’s see how that’s going.
Nope. Still nowhere close to $355 million. Come on, MAGA! Dig deep! Put your money where your mouth spittle is!
But while Trump’s campaign quickly contradicted Lara—“Absolutely none” of the RNC’s cash will go toward Trump’s legal bills, a senior campaign adviser told ABC News—it would make perfect sense for Trump to get all the RNC money, since he’s already swallowed the GOP whole. And judging by the way she’s talking, Lara knows this as well as anyone.
She told reporters on Wednesday that GOP voters will feel more trust in the RNC by having a Trump family member installed in leadership.
“Having someone like me in there I think will go a long way for people. I can assure you that my loyalty is to my father-in-law and I will make sure that every penny is used properly,” she said. “It should be going to fight for Nov. 5 for the causes that we care about.”
Those causes were electing Trump president in November, growing the Republican majority in the House with “patriots, America first candidates” and winning back control of the Senate, she said.
Of course, Trump’s electoral prospects will be a lot sunnier in November if he’s not in the slammer. And we all know that prison Zoom debates are notoriously hard to follow. So it’s important that all those donations get funneled to the fatally flawed candidate ASAP so he can promptly lose the White House and all of Congress for a second time.
But you don’t have to be one of Trump’s relatives to be his faithful sycophant. Just ask most of Congress. They can’t even get a bipartisan border bill passed because chaos agent Trump needs chaos in order to function. Without the border issue, Trump will have little to campaign on other than Biden’s booming economy—because there’s likely a limit to how much his Al Capone shtick will appeal to swing voters. At some point, general election voters may start to warm up to the idea that being criminally indicted in four separate cases is actually a bad thing.
But while Lara may want “every penny” from the RNC to go to Trump (no, really, she said that; see below), she failed to mention that those pennies are now few(er) and far(ther) between. Maybe because normal people don’t want to send their paychecks down a sinkhole in a vain bid to keep an (alleged!) serial offender out of stir.
The Democratic National Committee outraised its GOP counterpart in January, bringing in $17.4 million and ended the month with $24 million in available cash. That far surpasses the $8.7 million in available cash for the RNC, which marked a slight uptick from the $8 million it reported having in reserves at the end of last year, but still represents its lowest total in about a decade.
[...]
The RNC’s low cash reserves have been a major source of concern for the party and contributed to the exit of outgoing chair Ronna McDaniel, who is planning on stepping down from her role later this month – part of sweeping changes coming to the RNC with Trump poised to reshape the party infrastructure.
At $8.7 million, the RNC’s cash reserves remain the lowest it has reported since early 2015, and down significantly from a peak of more than $90 million as recently as 2021.
No worries. Lara Trump is on the job, and she’s promising that all future RNC donations will go to a likely felon. That will turn everything around. And if it doesn’t? Well, at least she’s not Jared Kushner. Or Kimberly Guilfoyle, for that matter.
Friday, February 23, 2024
A perfect couple: The worst former president and his wretched first lady
Melania Trump hasn’t been associating with her husband, Donald, on his retribution tour across America. She hasn’t been at his side during his trials for fraud or for defaming a woman he sexually assaulted in a dressing room. She didn’t even show up for her spouse’s New Year's Eve party. That level of dedicated absence may lead to suggestions that the Einstein visa-winning former nude model doesn’t really care for her ketchup-hurling husband.
But over the weekend, there was more evidence that the pair are perfect for each other. They may not be a match made in heaven, but in whatever spiritual sweatshop cranks out rich-old-guy-and-much-younger-trophy-wife relationships, these two are a chef’s kiss.
That fresh evidence starts with Fox News fuming over the latest presidential rankings from a survey of political scholars who specialize in presidential history. Those rankings once again have Abraham Lincoln in the top spot. It’s also no surprise who is riding in the historical caboose. Not only is Trump ranked dead last, he’s last by a huge margin. It’s bad. Like, way behind James Buchanan bad.
And to really get MAGA fans grinding their molars: Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are in the top 15.
The survey notes that since the last survey of political professors in 2018, Obama’s star has risen significantly, bringing him up nine slots, No. 16 to No. 7. Biden has entered the list at a more-than-respectable No. 14.
Trump is reliably at the end of the line, picking up so few votes that it’s genuinely amazing. Just three points separate the top three spots on the list, making the difference between fans of Lincoln, FDR, and Washington. But Trump is six points behind Buchanan—the biggest difference between two slots on the whole list. It certainly gives the impression that, no matter how many names are added in future surveys, Trump will have no problem defending his territory.
But how does this make him perfect for his disinterested import?
As a weekend article in The New York Times shows, Melania isn’t just disinterested in Donald; she’s disinterested in everything. Especially anything that looks like work.
As the Times put it, Melania spent “spent four years flouting many of the expectations about what a modern first lady should be.” Especially, it seems, when those expectations are visible, engaged, and giving a damn about the nation.
“For months, Mrs. Trump had taken to walking around the Executive Residence in hotel-style terry cloth robes,” insiders told the Times.
Throughout her husband’s presidency, she often perched on the bed in his room to listen to or join his calls with advisers and allies, Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s former press secretary, said in an interview. By the time her White House tenure came to an end, Melania was described as “checked out” and “exhausted,” but there’s not much evidence that she ever really checked in.
Between “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” and wearing a jacket stamped with "I really don't care, do you?" on her way to a detention center for migrant children, Melania never seemed to even make a gesture in the direction of being concerned about the institution of first lady, the White House, or the nation.
Her office in the East Wing was so rarely used, that it was converted into a space for wrapping gifts. Whether those gifts were for fucking Christmas or some other occasion isn’t clear.
There was one thing that Trump’s wife did seem to like about her time at the White House: how much she got to murder the aesthetics. Whether that was the “evisceration” of the Rose Garden or the hallways of nightmare trees, Melania loved the changes she had made to the White House. And she loved to arrange photo albums of those changes.
“All she cared about was those photo albums,” Grisham said. Though Grisham apparently tossed in an expletive that the Times chose not to print.
The Times also has a perfect description of how Melania spent her days leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
In the days before the attack on the Capitol, Mrs. Trump had been cataloging the contents of her swag room, including the small mementos and gifts that she would hand out to friends and allies of the Trump family. An aide traveled back and forth to the Executive Residence with a binder listing the current inventory, according to two former Trump White House officials.
In the middle of the assault on the Capitol, as Grisham was trying to get Melania to issue a statement against the violence, the first lady turned her down. Instead, Melania spent Jan. 6 taking pictures of herself with a new rug she had selected for the White House residence. More pictures for her photo albums. Because that was her priority.
Could we please get a fresh ranking of first ladies? It’s safe to say that Eleanor Roosevelt’s spot really isn’t in doubt. But if there was a new list, it seems a pretty good bet that Melania Trump could take the badge of dishonor with the same laziness and disdain she has displayed toward everything else.
Because she and her husband may hate each other, but they are also perfect for each other.
CARTOON: Trump Sneakers
A cartoon by Nick Anderson.
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Thursday, February 22, 2024
FAKED OUT AGAIN: Desperate GOP Biden Impeachment Inquiry based on info made up by Russian operative
The Room Where It Happened . . .
By Keith DB
Community
I previously wrote how the Republican star witness in the Biden impeachment inquiry has been indicted on charges of making the whole thing up. It now turns out he didn’t make it up by himself. He had help. That help came from Russian intelligence services.
Yesterday federal prosecutors filed a motion to keep Alexander Smirnov in jail pending trial, essentially to deny him bail. For the record, that request was denied and Smirnov was released on bail, with strong restrictions that included ankle monitoring and forfeiting his passports. However, the facts laid out in the motion detail that Smirnov is a Russian agent and attempted to frame Joe Biden at the behest of Russian intelligence agencies. Republicans, to include committee heads James Comer and Jim Jordan, played right into the Russian’s hands. The only question now, and it is a real question, is whether they did so knowingly.
It’s difficult to convey how thoroughly Republicans relied on Smirnov’s claim that Joe Biden was paid $5 million to get a Russian prosecutor fired who was supposedly (but not really) investigating, Burisma, the Ukrainian company Hunter Biden worked for.
Jim Jordan declared it “really the heart of this matter.” He described it as “the most corroborating evidence we have.” Comer threatened contempt proceedings against FBI Director Wray if he didn’t release the document where FBI agents memorialized Smirnov claim that is now known to be lie. Last July Chuck Grassley openly leaked the document touting it as proof of “Biden family influence peddling.” Upon reading it, Representative Anna Paulina declared Biden “100% guilty” of bribery. In what should now be viewed a reflection of her own credibility, Marjorie Taylor Green declared the now indicted for lying witness as “extremely credible” and presented his FBI interviews as absolute proof:
“This is an impeachable document. President Biden should be impeached. Secondly, he should be prosecuted. This is unbelievable. It’s a pay-to-play scheme. He took a bribe from a from a foreign national in a foreign country that paid millions of dollars. He needs to be prosecuted for this, and I would argue that he should serve jail time. If we were not politically divided, if we were the United States that used to exist, that is righteous and just, if we were a just nation, Joe Biden would be impeached. No one could argue with this. Democrat or Republican, I would say no one can argue with it now.”
That’s how deeply invested Republicans were into what are now revealed to be nothing short of Russian intelligence driven lies. Lies that continued through 2023. In short, 2024 Russian election meddling that Republicans were boosting.
Back to the motion to keep Alexander Smirnov in jail pending trial, when you read it keep in mind that “Public Official 1” is Joe Biden and “Businessperson 1” is Hunter Biden. When quoting from it, I will be substituting their actual names for those terms. I will also cite where in the motion something is by page and line number. For example a reference to “3–11” means you can find that on page 3 starting at line 11.
Smirnov was a confidential human source (CHS) assigned a FBI Handler who he talked to almost daily for ten years. In June 2020 Smirnov first told his Handler, that in meetings in 2015 and 2016, Burisma officials told him they hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” Smirnov told his Handler that Burisman officials said they paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million so that Hunter Biden would “take care of all those issues through his dad.” (4–11). Smirnov told his Handler that these meetings were one or two months before Joe Biden got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired. (8–12).
In the blunt words of the motion: “The events Smirnov first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications.” (5–1). In fact, Smirnov never met with, or talked to, any Burisma representatives until 2017, after Joe Biden had gotten the do nothing Ukrainian prosecutor fired, and after Joe Biden was no longer even in office and capable of protecting anyone from anything. Smirnov claims at least one of these meetings occurred when he traveled to Vienna and met with the Burisma officials in a cafe. Alas, prosecutors have proof that Smirnov never travelled to Vienna. (14–7).
For a decade Smirnov was a valued confidential human source because he had connections to Russian intelligence officials, including “a high-ranking member of a specific Russian foreign intelligence service” (16–17). His meetings included another Russian official “who controls groups that are engaged in overseas assassination efforts.” The motion makes clear that Smirnov used his extensive Russian contacts to try to frame Joe Biden to influence the 2024 election.
Smirnov met with yet another Russian intelligence official who Smirnov claimed told him Russian intelligence had intercepted calls made at a Ukrainian hotel made by prominent Americans. Smirnov told the FBI the Russian intelligence officer said they thereby gathered information the Russians planned to use as “kompromat in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” (17–1). Smirnov suggested one of the hotel’s users, so kompromatted, was Hunter Biden. The next five plus pages detail Smirnov’s extensive contacts with Russian agents.
Smirnov told prosecutors Hunter Biden went to this hotel in Kiev “many times” and that he had personally seen recordings of Biden entering and leaving the hotel as the Russians had the hotel “wired.” (23–5). Smirnov suggested the Russians had recorded calls Hunter Biden made while at the hotel. According to Smirnov, the Russians intelligence officers told him they seek to influence the 2024 Presidential elections, through Ukraine, by using the tapes they recorded of Hunter Biden while at this hotel. (24–1).
The huge problem with this is that Hunter Biden has never travelled to Ukraine. (23–13). You might think Hunter had to go to Ukraine, being on the Board of Burisma and all, apparently Smirnov thought that to. However, according to the indictment, Hunter Biden never travelled to Ukraine and the few Burisma Board meeting he did attend “were all outside of Ukraine.”
The prosecutors make clear:
“Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials who are affiliated with Russian intelligence services are not benign . . . Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues . . . the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.” (23–5) and (24–6).
Keep in mind this prosecutor, David Weiss, is no friend of Hunter Biden. He is the same Trump appointed prosecutor who has indicted Hunter Biden on charges of tax evasion and illegally purchasing a gun.
For how long have Republicans pushing Smirnov as the smoking gun in their impeachment inquiry known he was a Russian agent, and that his allegations were concocted by Russian intelligence services? I don’t know. However, that is what should be getting investigated now. The Bidens are exonerated. In breaking news today, Republicans are trying to scrub references to Smirnov from their impeachment records.
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